An interesting element of the Hueco Mundo arc that we've skirted around in various ways but not addressed directly is Aizen's attitude towards his soldiers and the nature of the game that he's playing with them as well as with the Scooby intruders.
At the very beginning of the invasion he makes sure that all the Espada know Ichigo, Ishida, Chad, Rukia and Renji's histories in the Soul Society rescue and asks them not to underestimate the threat that they represent… before effectively confining all of them to their respective quarters and asking them not to seek out their enemy and to only engage if the intruders come to them. And what do we get subsequently? We see Gin playing with the pathways, presumably manipulating the encounters. We see Espada after Espada flout their orders in order to seek out the enemy, indeed every one of them that dies does this in some manner. Aaroniero Arruruerie and Zommi go to find Rukia; Szayel allows Renji and Ishida to come to him but overstretches his mandate by deploying the Exequias; Nnoitra first locates Chad and then Ichigo; and Grimmjow, while not being killed, is defeated after using Orihime to play out his own game. Ulquiorra also defies his orders when he seeks out Ichigo, and interestingly he is left behind in an alarmingly prone and outnumbered position to guard the fort while Aizen takes his three loyal Espada to what he believes to be Karakura Town. The only Espada that doesn't fit this schema is Yammi, and I guess that's part of the reason I'm suspicious regarding the tenth Espada's absence when so many of his superiors have been cut down (he is neither a loyal member of the Karakura Town invasion team nor a disobedient upstart in need of teaching a fatal lesson. Is he being discarded because he's a bit thick and therefore a liability?). Aizen doesn't lift a finger to help any of them in their battles, even when the fight seems even or when they're close to defeat. And we can be fairly sure that he can save any of them at any time he likes, either by sending reinforcements (Hueco Mundo is home turf and teeming with powerful Hollows, Menos and Arrancar) or by intervening himself.
It would seem to me highly likely that he has used Ichigo's invading force (and subsequent Soul Society reinforcements) to do his housekeeping for him. By giving an apparently unreasonable and inexplicable order he has whittled down his forces to the ones he can truly rely on to do exactly as he says, while making it appear as though the dead bought it on themselves by stepping out of line. Aizen perpetually seeks absolute devotion, people who will follow him to the letter, so it's notable that he sidelined Renji at the earliest opportunity because he was too much of a wildcard whereas Kira and Hinamori were allowed to remain in key positions. Aizen's game could be seen in this light, as adhering to traits he possesses that are already well established.
Another frequently used strategy of his is to divide and conquer. We've already noted that he's been doing this with Soul Society all along, firstly by securing the defection of Tousen and Gin, then by setting Shinigami against Shinigami in the Rukia execution scenario, then by dividing the remaining manpower between Hueco Mundo, Soul Society and the real world. But it would seem that he is also doing it to his Hollow followers, firstly by demoting the original Espada to humiliatingly low numbers, then by giving his new ruling ten Arrancar an order that he can fairly guess over half of them will prove unwilling to follow. By giving them orders that they must defy in order to stay true to their own basic nature he ensures that their fear of him and distrust of each other isolates them from pairing up or working as a team, because such a status hungry bunch would surely report each other's disobedience in order to climb the ladder rather than accept an offer of mutual support. He splits them again when he only takes three Espada with him to attack Karakura Town with Aizen and Gin.
One of the things that many of us have noticed is that Hueco Mundo is a mirror for Soul Society and that the two narrative arcs have also seemed to be a reflection of each other. What interests me at the moment is how this may have caused key differences between the two worlds and stories to be ignored and the suggestion that Kubo may be using the audience' intelligence and analytical abilities to make them more susceptible to his narrative sleight of hand rather than less. I wonder whether he's deliberately trying to make us complacent by giving us a story that we think we know.
For example, one key difference between Hueco Mundo and Soul Society is that the Arrancar already ruled the roost in the former whereas the Vaizard have never (to the best of my knowledge) had an equivalent position in the latter. For all its horror HM is actually far closer to the natural world than SS. It's a world in which we're told that the inhabitants act purely on instinct and the fittest survive, with no kind of civilising influence whatsoever. We are being taught to see it not so much as a culture or society but as an eco-system, and the implication is that the Arrancar are just those who naturally fall at the top of the pecking order. There is no parallel for this in SS, and this may be because as soon as you impose societal rules you naturally have a culture in fear of punishment, capable of being lied to by leaders and controlled by taboos. It's perfectly possible that the Vaizard should naturally occupy a similar place to their underworld counterparts, but that they have been ostracised through the kind of good/evil binary law making that cannot easily be generated in HM, which actually seems to be a perversely *innocent* place by comparison.
If Aizen's stated plan to become a Vaizard is true then his biggest enemies will be both the existing Vaizard and the Arrancar. The former are in exile, either through their choice or through expulsion, their allegiance with Soul Society already effectively destroyed. We don't yet know whether Aizen had a hand in that, but given his position in -108 it seems highly likely. Whether there were ever *natural* Vaizard in a similar sense to the Privaron Espada remains to be seen, but it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine a culture like Soul Society hounding them into extinction after declaring them to be an abomination even prior to Aizen's manipulation.
Aizen's tactics frequently operate to achieve more than one goal at a time. I'm starting to think that kidnapping Orihime and allowing her friends to attempt a rescue has had the sixfold effect of stalling for time, assessing Ichigo and Orihime, dividing up the Soul Society forces, allowing him to eliminate potential opposition in Hueco Mundo, cultivating unquestioning devotion from whichever Espada are left and whatever unresolved ploy lies behind showing Orihime the location of the Hougyoku. If all of this is the case then the HM Arc could be amongst the most beautifully elegant strategies ever pulled off by a villain in popular fiction. He's already bought HM to its knees and sealed it away, in order for the story to progress he has to be victorious against the Shinigami in the battle over decoy Karakura Town, and that leaves him with only Urahara and the Vaizard left to face (is anyone doubting that they're allied?)… although what with the Shiba Clan, Royal Guard, Isshin, Ryuken and the possible identity of the Unknown King in the mix there are still quite a few wildcards… and if Ulquiorra and Grimmjow realise the game Aizen's playing with them it could tip the scales in favour of Strawberry winning two more unusual allies. Just don't call them nakama, eh? It leaves you wondering just how he intends to manipulate Ichigo and the Vaizard into fighting the Royal Guard for him.
If all this speculation is accurate then Tite Kubo is in the process of pulling off the masterstroke of turning the genre upside down, in that the standard hero's quest in all Shonen anime is being used to further the principle antagonist's plan rather than foil it. |
