Bleach Meta - Blog Posts

Ise Clan

I thought Shinken Hakkyōken was a cool reveal and I wished we got more backstory to it and I'm hoping we might get some in the anime and/or hell arc.

I always thought it was a failsafe in case the Soul King broke free. When the seals on him were removed his powers did attack the Sereitei and the Shinigami.

My guess is that it was specifically designed by Oetsu to combat the Soul King. Oetsu's bodyguards are examples of zanpakuto with built in powers.

It was revealed that the Ise Clan suffers from a curse that kills all men that marry into the family and also that they only birth daughters.

Nanao's mother speculated that it was Shinken Hakkyōken's doing.

It made me think about the incorrect relationships between Shinigami and zanpakuto that could develop which were mentioned by Oetsu.

I also thought of Oetsu having a harem of female zanpakuto spirits to serve him. I think maybe Shinken Hakkyōken has a similar mindset as his creator and sees the Ise Clan as his wives and him as their true husband.

Oetsu regulates male zanpakuto to working behind the scenes. But I think Shinken Hakkyōken is more extreme so kills off their husbands and ensures they only have daughters.

Aizen's Bankai

Did we see it?

Really. Could it be possible that his bankai was actually stealth shown in the manga but, in pure Aizen fashion, no one noticed?

First: his shikai.

We know pretty well how that works. Kyouka Suigetsu is the most powerful illusion-type zanpakutou in the same manner Hyorinmaru is the most powerful Ice-type and Ryuujinjakka is the most powerful fire-type. Unmatched and insurpassable in power, versatility and sheer excellence by any other of that type.

He's able to cast illusions on people that control all of their senses and make people see and hear and taste and smell and feel what he wants them to.

His most common use of it as we see it to make one person seem like another. Those random shinigami to appear to be him so he can be off doing other things and no one is the wiser. Hinamori during that Fake Karakura battle.

He can also make people deaf and blind to things. None of the captains an lieutenants were able to hear the screaming, pleading and defensive actions Hinamori and Ichigo certainly made as they brutalized her thinking she was Aizen. He hid all evidence of his own movements and the swap with Hinamori and made himself seem like he was Hinamori so he could stand back and watch, which naturally requires hiding his reiatsu.

Through that whole fight he coordinated the illusion among dozens of people to make that work. It's horrible what he did, but also and impressively tricky bit of choreography and precision skill. Cruel but brilliant.

So, in specific, he can think of an illusion he wants people to percieve as reality, or of a certain bit of reality he wants them to not notice, and anyone who has been brought under it's power by witnessing the shikai release (the main achilles heel to it - the fact that it needs that prerequisite to have any effect at all) is completely helpless to resist or see through it unless he releases them or they find the trick of touching Kyoka Suigetsu's blade.

All evidence indicates he is 100% in control of and cognizant of exactly what illusion he is making and what the person sees.

So then, how the hell does this panel make sense:

He had no idea what Ywach was seeing until he said it.

That doesn't make sense with what was previously established.

Not unless Aizen is using his bankai and his zanpakutou is a more pure expression of the philosophy of shikai and bankai like Rukia's.

Rukia's cold freezes herself in shikai and she's able to send blasts of it out through the tip of her blade. In bankai she throws that cold out into a large sphere around her, freezing everything along with herself.

If Aizen's shikai is him internally crafting illusions and putting them in peoples heads, then perhaps his bankai sends his power out and lets the target mind create the illusion itself. Maybe it works more like the Mandela effect - giving a vague suggestion of Aizen's chosing, and then the mind fills in the details and certainty.

Having the call come from inside the house would definitely make a more unquestioned illusion - one that could even trick and blind a man/monster able to look into the future. Ywach, after all, is looking for actions the people he's fighting are going to take in the future. He's there for an epic battle with himself as the hero and about to smite the foolhardy, and especially the one he's deemed the pinnacle of the resistance - Ichigo. He's never said to be able to see the consequences of his own actions - or if he can then he doesn't. He just uses the Almighty to learn what his opponent is going to do and then counteract it - he never actually looks forward at his own actions to see which will succeed or fail.

If Aizen quietly activated bankai previously, without it being noticed (and he of all people could definitely do that, even with an all-seeing god) and implanted a suggestion like don't see Ichigo or to swap the face of whoever is fighting him with someone else, and therefore made Ywach's own mind create a narrative he's expecting to see (the narrative of fighting and defeating Ichigo, the only man with the power to kill him once-and-for-all, and damn but that makes him sound like Voldemort) well...then there's nothing for him to see but his own reflected thoughts bouncing back from the future instead of the truth (that Ichigo is sneaking up behind him), is there?

So: in conclusion, I suggest Aizen did use his bankai and that his bankai throws a general shape of the illusion Aizen wants to cast/the effect he wants to have, but instead of him crafting the details it forces the victims mind to warp and create the illusion itself, making it more completely entrenched - possibly something with permanent effects that makes the person unable to accept any reality but that even after Aizen withdraws his influence.

Why Isane still went after Rose and Kensei's bodies

lmao the screenshots

My first thought was that she didn't believe Gremmy saying they were dead but then I read the chapters for this episode and she did scan their pulse so she know they were dead in the manga. Then, I remembered the Echoing Jaws of Hell Arc one-shot Kubo wrote.

The Reisai ritual from the Hell arc

Renji talks about how captains who died in battle would get this ritual and we also know that shinigami who are greater than third class reishi are captains and they have to be cast into Hell. Kensei and Rose are Vizards adding to being captains so they would fit that category after the war if they weren't saved by Mayuri.

Now of course, most of the captains including Kurotsuchi, Soi Fon, and others didn't even know about the true purpose of the ritual so how could Isane know about it? (Even though the true purpose doesn't need to be known to do it)

Eh, I would just chalk it up to her being Unohana's lieutenant and Unohana being a OG Gotei 13 and the head canon of her having to send her fellow captains to Hell and knowing she would soon be in it.

Anyways, I kept seeing people asking why she went after their bodies when they were dead already and thought of this.