Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre

Earlier today I completed rewatching the entire Soul Society arc. A few things stood out as being particularly interesting.

Probably the biggest element that I'd forgotten about – which admittedly was only touched on very briefly – involved a part of Aizen's megalomaniacal monologue in which he alludes to previous experiments that he's carried out on Hollows. As he's talking we're shown flashbacks to the sequences that involve both the Kaien incident and the unexpected attack during Renji, Kira and Hinamori's training session. The implication is clear, that Aizen has been toying with Soul Society all along, testing his creations and manufacturing incidents.

We're told by Byakuya that his wife died approximately fifty years before the current storyline takes place. A month after her death Rukia was located (Byakuya's wife's dying wish) and asked to join his clan. The incidents with Kaien and the disastrous training session could have taken place around this time, with her already exempt from further training and examinations due to her being accepted as nobility and Renji, Kira and Hinamori all still in training (the Rukia incident seems to have taken place very shortly after her acceptance into Ukitate's squad).

Tying the timeline together it's clear that Aizen has been collaborating with and modifying Hollows for fifty years, and while I can't recall any specifics on the timeline of the Grand Fisher's life it's certainly conceivable that even if the timings didn't fit for him to be involved in its creation he could certainly have played a role in its augmentation. This is something on which we speculated earlier in the thread (the appearance of what appear to be Arrancar in silhouette when the Grand Fisher is first deployed), and while this is all rather circumstantial it does seem to fit nicely. At this point we need to ask whether the seeming Arrancar silhouettes in episode eight or nine are canon to the comics… can anyone answer this for me? Grand Fisher seemed to be specifically targeted against the Kurosaki household, but Aizen's interest in Ichigo specifically seems to develop throughout the show, so the implication is that he wasn't the intended target… could that target have been Ichigo's mother all along? Or Isshin? At the very least, we know that even if the Fisher wasn't in league with Aizen all along he certainly was by the time of his defeat in Arrancar for at the hands of Isshin.

Placing responsibility for the Grand Fisher on Aizen does a lot for the shape of the series. Ichigo needs a personal motivation to go head to head with this enemy. Being the ultimate cause behind his mother's death provides that. Aizen is already the antagonist behind virtually everything we've seen so far, but he really needs to be Ichigo's antagonist to make the series work. The defeat of Aizen therefore brings Ichigo full circle, and as this has been forecast for a major battle in the coming Winter I believe this is likely to be when Bleach (or at least Bleach in its current form) will end.

Now, what about Mayuri? Again we have a sequence which I'm not sure is adapted from the comics. In the anime when Aizen's scheme and location are announced to the ryoka, Captains and Lieutenants there is a scene where Mayuri emerges from some kind of pool, without any of his usual trappings or body modifications, and says to Nemu that he isn't interested in the report. Is this canon? I've read elsewhere that his real face never appears in the comics, but is this scene in the comics minus his real physical appearance? The implication initially seemed that Mayuri refused the offer because he wasn't fully regenerated, but thinking about it… Mayuri has clear experience with the capture and modification of humans (the Quincy). His CV certainly fits as someone with the requisite skills to assist Aizen in his modification of Hollows (he took over Urahara's position, after all). Again, this is all speculation, but what if Aizen has maintained Mayuri as his agent in Soul Society?

I'm also thinking a lot about Isshin. I realise that to a certain extent it's daft to speculate based on apparent power levels as Tite Kubo himself plays pretty fast and loose with this in the text himself. However, during his first appearance as a Shinigami, Isshin kills the Arrancarised Grand Fisher with one swing of an unreleased Zanpakuto. It could be argued that Hitsugaya et al are have also done similar recently, but I'd argue that these slayings were a) of duplicates and b) part of a non-canon filler story. The Grand Fisher accounted for enough dead Shinigami even as a *normal* Hollow, so his power as an Arrancar must be immeasurably more. Isshin therefore seems to be considerably more powerful than your average captain, possibly a match for Aizen himself. This is part of my reasoning for speculating that he may be – or be involved with – Soul Society's King.

Finally what about Urahara? It's hard to judge the laws of Soul Society, given that they cover crimes for which we have no real frame of reference. So again, this is speculation. But doesn't Aizen's stated reason for Urahara's exile seem a little harsh, in the same semi-suspicious way that Rukia's execution seemed harsh? And has anyone other than Aizen confirmed this reason, as his testimony is rather dubious (I can't remember myself)? I can appreciate that an untraceable faux body is a problematic creation, but it's not without obvious applications that fall within Soul Society's remit, and Soul Society embraces other Technology Institute innovations that are just as if not more problematic. It rather has a history of this, in fact. Banishing him for this seems disproportionate, and rather makes me wonder whether there aren't other reasons for him getting the boot. For example… sacking Urahara rather leaves his former position vacant for a less principled person to take over the Institute. I entirely appreciate that when you're talking about someone less principled that Urahara we're into murky waters indeed, but I think you can see what I'm getting at. My only reservation here is that Mayuri seems to be a rather obvious traitor, and is rather more interesting when he's on the side of the supposed *good* guys.

Well, that's enough rampant speculation for now. None of it is based on spoilers, in case anyone is concerned about that. I now know next to nothing about stuff in the comic that we haven't seen yet.

Other stuff that I enjoyed on the rewatch was just how marvellously constructed the whole show is. It's so intricately thought out, in terms of plotting, character, relationships, design, world building, foreshadowing, delayed reveals, history. A lot of thought has gone into who has a relationship with who, where there's attraction in the subtext, where there are unexpected allies and histories between characters. I think that's a large reason behind why filler is so frustrating, as it goes against one of the primary rules of the Bleach universe. Bleach is never static. There are multiple things going on at once, all with their own conflicting agendas, but here we effectively have our principle cast in a holding pattern while minor players play out an inconsequential little drama.

I also love the way Ichigo thinks. He's an uncomplicated young man, not hugely intelligent, but a lot of his uncomplicated nature comes from definite decisions that he makes. During the Soul Society arc there are many instances in which a character is about to tell him about the potential consequences of failure only for him to interrupt or tell them that he's not interested. It's a little daft to draw a comparison to NLP, but Ichigo seems to consciously make sure that all of his goals are stated in the positive. All he needs to know is his goal, what he wants to achieve. He doesn't to act ambiguously to avoid something happening, he wants to act positively and accurately to cause something to happen. You can see this in his fight with Renji and the flashback advice that Urahara gives him.

Another interesting facet that I hadn't recalled is the humanising of Rukia. Aizen drops the interesting notion that her containment wihin Urahara's untraceable gigai will eventually fuse her with the faux body and sap her reiatsu to the extent that she becomes a normal human. A number of characters comment on how her time in the living world has changed her and made her more human, and I couldn't help but think that the psychological process is acting in tandem with the physical process of bonding with the gigai and the spiritual process of having her reiatsu constantly drained. Although I wonder which specific changes were being commented on by the various Soul Society characters… I could generally write reams and reams about why I think Rukia one of the most well depicted characters in current popular fiction. She practically leaps out of the text and seems like a real person.

Lastly, the number of characters who are orphans or have at least one parent either dead or unaccounted for beggars belief. And there's also quite a lot of people losing their spouse or in an ambiguous love relationship. Bleach isn't kind to your parents or your partner.