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Gin? In it for fucks and giggles. This is my position.
There is a moment when he is really vicious and manipulative with Rukia, as she was being led to her execution way back when. I can't remember how the anime handled that.
It was handled very well, and rates as a defining moment of characterisation for both Gin and Rukia i.m.o. - I wrote about it earlier here. Thinking about it, Rukia's revulsion for Ichimaru on a personal, visceral level has really coloured our understanding of his character ever since that time. Seth's notion of Gin as an extremely sophisticated double agent is something that never occurred to me, which might just go to show that Kubo has crafted for us the vulpine personification of slippery eeevil as a cast-iron cover for sabotage (something that Urahara would certainly have been able to orchestrate if he had a hand in it). Once again, the relationships between Las Noches' top three are key - is it, as it appears, Aizen + Ichimaru with Tousen as deluded yet useful patsy, or do each of the three of them have a slightly different agenda that we're not privy to? Once we see the fallout from this week's ugly business with Orihime, maybe we'll get another clue.
On that subject, I'm surprised and relieved that Grimmjow's slaughter spree was toned down - it doesn't matter where it appears or how it's treated, I've never yet been convinced that fictional violence against female characters can be depicted in an 'acceptable' manner. For all that, it's slightly easier to deal with when meted out by such a character as Grimmjow, who despite his likeable, rebellious image remains an unrepentant murdering thug and bully, than by a good-guy character like Ishida - whose fight with Thunderwitch a few weeks ago, in which he managed to humiliate and destroy her in no uncertain terms, seems to have left a bad taste in my mouth ever since.
I wanted to get to the bottom of this, since despite his being one of my favourite characters, it seems I have to admit that I don't actually like Uryuu Ishida very much - after all, he's extremely self-impressed with his own abilities, aloof, arrogant, has a great gift for one-upmanship and tends to win through cold pragmatism, strategy and technical trickery rather than determination and fighting spirit. All of which makes him hard to root for, no matter that his battle with Mayuri Kurotsuchi - in which he broke all of the above conditions and laid everything on the line for his family honour - remains one of Bleach's greatest moments. Just as with his rival, Uryuu's character makes perfect sense once we get to know his old man - apples never fall far from the tree in anime, it's an iron law - and Ryuuken's chilly manipulativeness and drive for perfection have made his only son a crusader for righteousness who also happens to be a bit of a prick. At the same time, one of my favourite elements of Uryuu's character is the odd, knightly attitude he adopts around women - Orihime Inoue, Nemu Kurotsuchi and, from the Bount arc, Yoshino are all female characters with whom he has a paladin-like relationship that's played for various dramatic, comic or (arguably) quasi-romantic ends - and so seeing him beat down in his calculating fashion on Cirucci Thunderwitch, a proud outcast and underdog whose strength is the only self-identity she has, doesn't look good.
tl;dr: Only girls should fight other girls - that's why we need people like Yoruichi. |
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