Bleach/Headscratchers/Miscellaneous

• How come no one notices the fights that take place in the human world? Like, Ichigo and co can take out a traffic light and create craters in the ground, and no one notices? Idiots.
  • Presumably the Soul Society repairs the damage and then uses their memory erasing devices.
  • That answer seems to be true as in Lost Substitute Shinigami Arc (of which the Soul Society has no involvement as of yet) a building in Naruki City mysteriously explodes and someone actually had the common sense to call the police and the fire department.
• How was Soi-fon's arm still holding together even though it had decayed to the bone?
  • Spirit Particles
• Nobody Dies In Bleach is really starting to bug me. Before, at least people got wounded and were out of commision until they healed (or were healed), but now? Ichigo receives a fatal wound, and this causes him to go Super-Powered Evil Side Uber-Hollow. Now he seems back to normal and none worse for the wear. At this point, it seems its now physically impossible for Ichigo to die. Willing Suspension of Disbelief can only take so much
  • No one but the bad guys anyway. Who must all die after revealing their tragic backstories. Okay, not really. But seriously, I don't expect a single Shinigami to die in this epic showdown.
  • Simple, when ever Tite writes someone is going to die he has a Zombie Powder flashback, freaks out and changes it in fear of fans would stop reading if their fav dies. Anyway, isn't there supposed to be a balance? The number of souls on Earth and in the Soul Society are supposed to be even. The left overs go become hollows, now the each Arrancar are supposed to have like 100 souls at least with the Espada 100,000. Yeah, that's going to tip something over.
    • Dude, where the HELL did you get that from? That's just f*** ing STUPID. Well, the latter half. The Zombie Powder thing I can see. We already know how Hollows become Hollows. It's not just a random lottery of, "Oh, some dude just died in the human world and threw our totals off balance. Go collect a random dead soul so we can turn him into a hollow and make everything better before he gets purified, sent back here, and everything gets f** ked up again."
    • Yeah, but the hollows in the upper echelon are hundreds of thousands of other hollows all devoured and mashed together. If one Vasto Lorde was purified, then that should mean that thousands of purified souls were all dropped into Rukongai at the exact same moment. That should at least mess with something. Because around five Espada are now dead, meaning that an indeterminate but enormous amount of souls just got tossed into Rukongai in rapid fire succesion. Barring the possibility that if you're a hollow and you get eaten by another hollow, you're gone forever.
    • I thought there was a purgatory so they just have a bunch of souls waiting around to become spirits or humans.
• What's the deal with the title? No, really.
  • It has to do with Ichigo's hair and the "purification" of Hollows, which is the main job of the shinigami.
    • This is purely fan speculation. Kubo has never verified this popular fan theory.
  • Tite states that he was looking for a cool name. Japanese think English is cool and Icihigo looks like he has bleached hair and thus we have Bleach
    • Fans guess that it's partly because the creator is a fan of the Nirvana album of the same name.
  • There's also a theory that Bleach is the result of that L/R confusion mess, and the title is supposed to be Breach. Lots of stuff does get breached.
  • Bleach turns your clothes white. Dead people are traditionally dressed in white for their funerals. The show is about dead people. You do the math.
  • Word of God - "Soul Reapers (Shinigami) are associated with the color black, but it would have been boring to use "black." "White," on the other hand, can suggest black as a complementary color. So I chose "bleach" to evoke the impression of the color white."
    • It really is Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good that is mentioned above. Add Yin-Yang life and death symbolism and that's it.
• What happened with the mod souls? The first episode Kon appeared in, it was said that mod souls were being hunted down and exterminated as soon as they were found, just a few episodes later however, even the shinigamis that came to warn Rukia didn't care that there was a mod soul right in front of them...
  • This Troper actually recalls that Kon is not a regular mod soul like the Chappy or the other ones Hitsugaya and the rest of the party used later in the Arrancar Arc. He was actually a mod soul created for combat purposes under the wings of a so-called Spearhead Project. After the project was cancelled because the Central 46 realized that using dead human bodies for combat purposes is maybe not as Lawful Good as they previously thought, all the created mod souls were destroyed. He was actually lucky that he go mixed with some other stuff and thus survied the mass execution. He might very well be the last one of his kind. Even after Renji and Rangiku have seen him in the Arrancar Arc, they probably couldn't even tell that he's not just a regular mod soul. They were actually surprised that it can be put into a stuffed animal. They're that dumb...
    • Minor nitpick: The regular replacement souls aren't Mod Souls. Mod Souls are specifically the combat-based ones like Kon.
  • For that matter, why does no-one try to capture the supposed criminals Urahara and Yoruichi?
    • The facts that they've proven to be very useful, and that they ought to be able to overpower most of the cast probably has something to do with it.
    • But still, They wouldn't be able to fight off all of the other captains at once, and even Rukia knew where they were. And this was BEFORE Soul Society had any of the problems with Aizen or either of them had done anything useful...
    • Rukia didn't actually know where they were, to be fair. The only reason she found them was because Urahara popped up the instant Ichigo left to offer an umbrella and a gigai, and she wasn't exactly in a "contact superiors" mood then- and, given how much info gets around in Soul Society, she probably didn't even know about them. Plus, Urahara's shop has some kind of connection to Soul Society to get him his merchandise, so SOMEBODY knows and doesn't care.
    • Being banished to the human world was Urahara's punishment. Granted, he was supposed to be stripped of his powers first, but at this point, as long as Urahara stays out of Soul Society, nobody has any reason to go after him. Plus, it was recently revealed in the Manga that he was framed by Aizen in any case. Presumably after Aizen showed his true color, Urahara's claim from his trial that 'Aizen did it' carried a lot more weight.
  • To respond to the original question; I don't remember Renji and Bakuya even coming in contact with Kon.
    • In Chapter 198, Renji notices that Kon has a Soul Candy inside him, but doesn't know about him being a modsoul.
  • While we're on the subject of Mod Souls, what's up with the powers given to the filler Mod Souls in the anime's bount arc? When compared to stuff like dimensional warping and illusions, Kon's supreme lower-body strength seems kind of like a ripoff.
    • Kon was a Mod Soul created by Soul Society, and they were just testing out basic Mod Soul Capabilities, Ririn, Cloud, and Nova on the other hand were created by Uruhara specifically to hunt down the Bount, so they had better powers
• If Yoruichi is a woman, then how come her cat form has a guy's voice?
  • The pronoun Yoruichi uses is "Washi" which is usually reserved for old men, so they anime gave her cat form a male voice before The Reveal happened in the manga
• If Isshin Kurosaki is actually a soul reaper- presumably in a gigai given his Captain armband, and the whole "living in Soul Society" thing it implies, then it follows that he is a dead man inhabiting a doll made of compressed ghost, as that is what a gigai is. So, how in the name of all that is just did a spirit inhabiting a doll made of compressed ghost produce viable living sperm?
  • The same way the parents of Byakuya, Ukitake, Kyoraku, Yorichi, Kira and the rest of the people who were actually born in Soul Society did it. Apparently having spirit power makes you fertile. Also, there's a high probability that he was in one of Urahara's patented, 'Wear it long enough and it turns you human' gigai.
  • This is the wrong question. What you should be asking is what the hell does that make Ichigo? Is he a human with shinigami powers or a shinigami in a natural gigai?
    • This troper is inclined to belive it's the latter (for starters it would explain quite a lot).
  • On the subject of Isshin Kurosaki, this troper would like to know which squad he used to lead. This troper blieves it would be awesome if it was Squad 11, and that Isshin used Zaraki to fake his death and retire.
    • By process of elimination this is most likely true. Back when Urahara was still on the roster the rest of the Squads have been revealed to either still have their current Captain or one of the Pre-Hollowification Vizard. With the exception of that squad. So Isshin is either from there or some generation of Captains we don't have any info on.
    • This leads to another JBM. Even assuming that Isshin is one of the unseen captains in the Turn Back the Pendulum arc, who the hell is other other missing captain? We've got four who still hold their positions (Yamamoto, Unohana, Ukitake and Shunsui), four who are now Vizard (Shinji, Love, Rose and Kensei), two who were known to be former captains (Yoruichi and Urahara), one new character (Byakuya's grandfather) which adds up to eleven out of 13. This means that even if Isshin is one of the unseen captains, there's still another one unrevealed.
    • That actually covers all 13. Isshin was a captain, so that's twelve. The thirteenth will likely never be revealed, as he was the Captain of the 11th Squad, and I'm pretty sure we all know how that went. However, that at least tells you who he was.
    • According to my count, we know the Captains of all but the 10th division and the 11th Division from that time. Sure, Isshin might have been leader of the 10th, but where's the dramatic tension in that? And, running with this Isshin faked his death against Kenpachi, wouldn't it make more sense (read: be incredibly awesome) if Kenpachi ran into the person he thought he had killed for his position? AND IT'S HIS BIGGEST RIVAL'S FATHER?!? Who else thinks Zaraki would stop what he was doing at the time and go on an all out blitz against him?
    • That pretty much needs to happen.
    • Even though the information backing this up is from filler, how can we explain Ichinose if Isshin faked his death when fighting Kenpachi? In the Bount Arc, Ichinose goes on and on about how he and his captain had such great dreams for the future of Soul Society, and he hates Zaraki for ruining all his dreams by killing his captain. If Isshin really was the captain of squad 11, then wouldn't that make him a complete jerk for abandoning Ichinose, who idolized his captain enough to desert Soul Society when he failed to defeat Kenpachi and avenge his death?
    • You have to take into consideration that Ichinose is a filler character, therefore he technically does not exist. The captain preceeding Zaraki never had any grand plans for Soul Society; even if he had, we don't know about it.
    • Okay, even without Ichinose, Isshin couldn't have been the 10th or 11th squad captains at the time of Turn Back the Pendulum; the reason being that Shinji mentions during his first confrontation with Ichigo that he doesn't recognize Isshin's spiritual pressure when Isshin releases it to fight Grand Fisher, thus ruling out Isshin from being any of the captains from that era. I guess we'll have to assume he's from a more recent time them.
    • Bus isn't he healing? If memory serves me he was stuck healing or he would have popped out of hiding much sooner. Same reason Grand Fisher survived when killing Ichigo's mother in the first place.
  • This troper would like to know why, during the "Rescue Rukia" mission, none of the high-level shinigami reacted to Ichigo's name: " Kurosaki? Wait a minute, is he maybe related to Captain Kurosaki? At which point, they might start taking Ichigo a little more seriously as a threat. Especially if the paragraph just above is true.
    • Easy - it's that he changed name either after defection or to his wife's one after marriage. The first is logical to do if you do not want to be found, second is not uncommon over the world Japan included.
    • Didn't Captain TB recognise him, though, and Byakuya too? When Ichigo is confronting Byakuya on the bridge to Rukia's prison, Captain TB turns up and when he sees Ichigo he's all like "wtf?" And Byakuya says something to the effect of "No, he's not related to the man you just thought of."
    • That exchange was because Ichigo strongly resembled Kaien Shiba, who was Ukitake's former Vice Captain. Of course, there's also the theory that Isshin is actually a member of the Shiba family who fled Soul Society when the family fell from power. Kaien could be Ichigo's cousin or something.
    • The manga makes Ichigo's parallels to Kaien more explicit, as after Ichigo defeats Byakuya, in Chapter 167, Byakuya notes that Ichigo is similar to Kaien in his attitude on the law compared to protecting loved ones.
  • One: Isshin stated that he had captain level reiatsu. This does not make him a captain. Ichigo has captain level reiatsu and (presumably) so does Ikkaku, neither of them are captains. However, Isshin was apparently a captain since he has a captain's haori. Two: If we assume that Isshin was a captain during Turn Back the Pendulum, the only captains not seen are the 10th and 11th captains. According to Kyoraku, the tenth captain died shortly before the start of the arc (the Binktopia scan says "was met with an untimely demise"). Following this line of thought that Isshin was the captain of the 10th Division, he could have either faked his death (doubtful, since Urahara said that he hadn't been a Shinigami for 20 years, not 100) or he could have replaced the captain that died (in fact, in chapter -105, Ukitake seemed to be trying to convince Kaien Shiba to take the position). As for being the possible 11th Division captain, it's implied that Kenpachi Zaraki was already the 11th division captain during Turn Back the Pendulum. As this troper remembers, Kenpachi was stated to be the 10th Kenpachi somewhere.
    • Kenpachi wasn't the Captain of the 11th during Turn Back the Pendulum. The Captain at the time was described as being lazy, which hardly fits with Kenpachi. In fact, lazy describes Isshin a lot better than it does Kenpachi.
      • Also, the 11th Division Captain at the time of Turn Back the Pendulum was a GIANT LAZY BLACK GUY. Not Isshin. Sorry guys.
    • Arguable, when not hunting down someone and fighting, Kenpachi tends to laze around a lot. Though, assuming there was no retcons between that arc and Kenpachi's fight with Tousen, it almostly assuradly couldn't have been him regardless. Tousen was shown in the exact same garb as in his fight with Kenpachi during his flashback to when Kenpachi became the captain. As in he was a captain when Kenpachi became one. Going by that, it would literally be impossible for it to have been him way back then.
  • I'm pretty sure the reason that he left the gotei 13 was that he feel in love and considering it was with a normal human it has to be within her lifespan. I'm guessing he led squad 10 before hitsugiya because considering toshiros age and the fact he left 20 years previously it seems most likely.

• How did Rukia lose to a hollow at the start of the first episode? Ichigo was shown to be able to defeat it easily (before even gainig his strength), and Rukia is show to be strong enough to defeat an Arrancar when she first returns from the Soul Society; so how did she lose to such a weak hollow before Ichigo took her powers and before Urahara's human-making gigai?
  • Ichigo's natural reitsu was dulling her senses. As for how she got hurt, trying to save Ichigo. Think of what his dulling of her senses and breaking kido bondage that even a low level Soul Reaper would have trouble with meant to her. Here was a human, not even dead, that was leaking more reitsu casually than most Soul Reapers even can willingly use. Confusion, idiot human offering himself to a hollow that would make it even stronger. She paniced, got injured, and then Ichigo beat it with a combination of her and his powers.
  • Also, it was implied that it wasn't just the gigai that was dulling her ability. Although not explicitly said, it is implied that the thing Ukitate put into her soul a while ago caused a bit of interference. The way I see it, it's like Naruto in the beginning where the nine-tailed fox disrupted the natural flow of his chakra. Plus, in that first fight we see, as mentioned above, Ichigo was dulling her senses, plus he was distracting her, and she kinda threw her own shoulder into the bite that "killed" her.
  • Three things:
    • It was Urahara who put Hougyouku (no idea how it's spelled) in her soul, not Ukitake.
    • Urahara didn't put it into her soul until after she lost her powers to Ichigo; he found her after she lost her power and gave her the gigai, and put the thing in then. It wasn't in her soul when she got hit by the hollow, so it's just Ichigo's massive reitsu messing up her senses.
    • If Ichigo's father is a captain-level shinigami, why the hell would he let himself and his daughters get beat up by a hollow that isn't even that strong? The guy is capable of killing the arrancar-ized Grand Fisher in one hit, so killing that hollow should have been easy for him.
    • Shortly after Ichigo & Co. storm Hueco Mundo, Isshin visits Ryuuken, Ishida's dad. One of the first things said is that Isshin got his powers "back," which would seem to imply that Isshin's powers were sealed to some degree, whether partial or complete. This would follow with the comments made about Hollows seeking humans with high spirit energy to eat them; were Isshin's powers not suppressed somehow he'd be a mile-high "Eat at Joe's" sign for every Hollow in Karakura. As for when Grand Fisher ate his wife, if I'm recalling it right, Isshin was nowhere nearby anyway.
    • 20 years of not fighting on a survival level combined with the spiritual overload of living with both Ichigo and Karin? Being the first one hit? Karin did say that he was suddenly attacked and they were so shocked that they didn't have the common sense to run away.
    • As of now it seems he lost his powers from using Mugetsu Just like Ichigo
• The most recent manga chapter as of this typing contains a puppy with a hollow mask, in Hueco Mundo. So, do dogs also leave behind hollows, in which case, is there also an all-doggy Soul Society counterpart? If its a human soul that LOOKS like a puppy due to hollowfication mutation, why is it only yipping like an ordinary puppy, rather than talking like the animalistic hollows from early chapters/episodes?
  • Considering there is a huge, anthropomorphic wolf acting as a Captain in Soul Society, that could end up being wierd.
    • Many of the earlier hollows seem to resemble animals to some degree (the hospital hollow looks a bit like a frog), even though they're human souls. Its said that the weak hollows are further from human, so presumably the various small animal hollows in Hueco Mundo are very weak hollows that are generally munched by hollows on their way to Gillian. So then, the only animal soul-based hollow we see is in one of the filler episodes that's a fusion between two dog souls.
    • Sidenote: Komamura also has a pet dog. Wierd.

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• When Tesai saved the Vaizard, he had to use two forbidden techniques: one to stop time the other to teleport. Why the heck would they be forbidden and why would Tesai know how to cast spells, ones that he's never been able to practice with much, on the spot?
  • He was the captain of the Kido Corps, so it was his job to know every single kido in the book and he probably got an exception from the whole "forbidden" thing. As for why they're forbidden, it could be that they're simply so powerful that the higher ups didn't want just anyone to know them in case they were to go rogue, but they needed someone to know them to counter a rogue shinigami who had learned them.
    • Tesai was sentenced to imprisonment for using the techniques in chapter -97. So apparently he is not allowed to use them.
    • The same way Aurors in Harry Potter know all about the forbidden spells and are very proficient at them despite the fact that using these spells is one of the worst offenses in HP's universe? Because some day, someone who will be powerful enough to use timestop & teleport and have absolutely no qualms with them being 'forbidden techniques' will show up and if your own commanders don't know how to counter the same techniques against him, you'll be sincerely fucked.Kind of like Nuclear Weapons.Every country has them, but they're all forbidden to use them and generally keep them as a preventive measure in case other countries use theirs.Besides, I always had the impression that Tesai was banished for using them on his own, without direct order from Yammamoto/Central 46 rather than being banished simply for casting the techniques.
• Why is Kido not used more often in combat? It seems to be highly effective at combatting Hollows, or anyone else for that matter. So why leave it out?
  • Anything powerful enough to be useful has a prohibitively long chant. Since going without the incantation reduces power, only kido specialists can get enough bang out of an unincanted kido to use it effectively. And, if you'll recall, of the Kido corps captain and liutenant (the ideal people for using kido in battle), one is currently a shopkeeper at Urahara's and the other is a Vaizard, still lacking a real fight scene.
• When comparing Aizen's descriptions of the events of Turn Back The Pendulum done during his big reveal speech, I've noticed a few contradictions. Most notably, the function of Urahara's special gigai. Aizen claims that the material it's made out of turns the shinigami into a human, removing their spiritual abilities in the process, and that it also hides the shinigami from all detection. However, the Vizard and several members of the Urahara shop have apparently been using said gigais in the real world for quite some time to escape detection, yet they still possess their spiritual powers. So are they really the same type of gigai, or is Rukia's truly unique? If that is the case, then the only reason I can assume Aizen was mistaken about what the material did was because he managed to examine Rukia's recovered gigai and assumed all the gigai urahara made were like that. Furthermore, Aizen apparently lies when he claims the power-sapping gigai was the reason Urahara was banished, but I can't fathom any reason for him to lie at that point, since he had already mentioned his creation of the hogyoku. Thoughts?
  • If he pointed out that Urahara was banished more or less for the creation of the Vizard, then he'll bring attention to the fact that really, it was HIM that created the Vizard. If he has any spies left in Soul Society, that reminder would bring undue attention to anybody that he'd been close to, so he lied to cover up how long he'd been plotting his little rebellion.
  • There's also a contradiction in that Aizen said Urahara tried, but failed to destroy the Hogyoku, but Urahara reveals near the end of Chapter -98 that he created it when trying to prevent the souls from breaking down.
• Is it just me, or does Tatsuki take the death of her sempais from the karate club after Yammy's soul suck attack just a little too well? She seems far more concerned at that point about the fact that Ichigo is a shinigami.
  • Ichigo returns to school a few days after the attack, so Tatsuki's had some time to mourn. It's also unclear whether they were actually mentoring her and providing guidance or whether she just respected them as senior members, whereas she's known Ichigo for over a decade. But what bugs me about this instance is how it seems to be a case of Bleach characters' actions affecting real people; previously, people killed by hollows were often ghosts (invisible to normal people) or living relatives (Rukia says widows dying after their husbands was the result of hollows eating those closest to them), but it would seem odd for dozens of people to inexplicably die en masse without people noticing and wondering why.
    • Have we forgotten about the fact that the shinigami are at least on the level of MIB when it comes to memory blanking? I'd always assumed that there were shinigami who specifically went around and did clean-up, wiping memories and making sure everybody knew that it was really a gas leak or something. As for Tatsuki, what would you take worse, some people from your karate club dying (no matter how well you knew them) or finding out that not only do supernatural beings with crazy powers exist, but that a friend of yours you've known for years happens to be one?
    • It seems that Yammy sucks in about a whole suburb's worth of souls, take a look: . When hundreds of people randomly die like that, I was very surprised when no one gave a damn. The reaction seems to be: 'everyone in my neighbouring suburb just randomly died in their homes, there are bodies in the streets and the whole place became a ghost town, a quarter of everyone I know are dead. Oh well'. Even their school was still open despite it likely that half the students mysteriously died over the weekend.
  • EVERYBODY takes things well in the Bleachverse:
    • Urahara: Yeah, I hid an artifact of doom in your friend's soul and put her in a gigai that'd permanently seal off her powers and nearly got all of you killed... sorry bout that. - Ichigo: No worries!
      • Ichigo didn't take it nearly as well as that. He was pissed, but didn't make a big deal out of it in front of everyone because Urahara had already done so much to help them. He saved Ichigo after Byakuya left him for dead, trained him, and helped them get into Soul Society.
    • Kyoraku and Ukitake: We sort of blew up the artifact-with-the-power-of-a-million-Zanpakutos-inside-it... Hell, if we've got the power to do that, we probably coulda just, I don't know, got Rukia down from the tower instead, but this seemed so much more fun... - Yamamoto: No worries!
      • Possible (personally I think they took the long way round) that they were trying to limit damage to themselves personally (the single act of blowing up the giant execution-thingie) rather than involving those they'd need to get round by simply breaking in and freeing Rukia . OTOH, Ukitake didn't stop his third seats got involved and they were punished for it. So if he was trying to avoid anyone else getting hurt - along with Kyoraku dragging him off a cliff to make Yamamoto follow them - he failed. By contrast, Nanao wasn't involved because Kyoraku acted unconcerned (?). When it comes to Yamamoto deciding not to kill them after all, it seems even his kind of Lawful Good can accept the need to keep your allies (and he acknowledges they are allies/his students/like sons to him) alive when you've been betrayed quite so spectacularly/ludicrously.
      • Kyoraku and Ukitake had to use a special artifact of the Shihoin clan to stop the Sogyoku. And we don't know what was used to hold Rukia up for the execution, and even if they did get her down, there's still a giant flaming bird waiting to kick their ass. Yamamoto wasn't at all happy about what they did; the conversation between the three made that very clear. Also, I don't recall Ukitake's third seats getting punished by anyone. Soi Fon punished Kiyone for not going after Ukitake after Kyoraku pulled him down the mountain, but then Yoruichi showed up and ran off with Soi Fon to kick her ass. Nanao was envolved--she followed Ukitake and Kyoraku down the mountain to help her captain fight Yamamoto. When Yamamoto released his spiritual pressure Nanao stopped breathing, so Kyoraku flash stepped her far away to safety.

• • • In Bleach: Shattered Blade, this also results in an ancient arrancar who is the game's main villain being unsealed.
    • Urahara: I woke up Ichigo's Hollow side without telling him and I don't even have the means to control it. - Isshin: No worries!
    • Mayuri: I had Ishida's grandpappy killed, then I experimented on him, killed him again by torturing him to death, and made such a mess of his body that even a series that shows graphic depictions of people being cut in half didn't reveal it to the audience. Oh yeah, I carry that photo round for shits and giggles, too, just to show it to random people before I kill them. Oh, and I regularly beat the crap out of my assistant too, just for fun. - Ishida: No worries!
      • I don't know how you got that idea. That's so far off from how Ishida reacted that it almost seems like you're trolling. He declares to Mayuri that he'll kill him, and procedes to blast a giant hole through his body.
      • Yeah...after that point though, when he sees Mayuri again in Hueco Mundo, his reaction is mild annoyance. What, did blowing a hole in Mayuri's chest complete his revenge, even if the former didn't die? It just seems like Ishida just didn't care anymore, is what I think the original troper meant.
    • Urahara: You're asking me to stabalize a path to Hueco Mundo? I'm a wanted criminal! - Yamamoto: No worries!
      • At that point, it was pretty clear that Aizen screwed everyone over. Urahara is smart, capable, and not a threat to Soul Society. The Gotei 13 need help, Urahara can provide it, and there's no reason they shouldn't ask for it.
    • Aizen: I mind-raped you and then stabbed you! - Hinamori: No worries!
      • Momo was clearly not in her right mind. She's known Aizen for many years now, and seemed to view him as a father-like figure. It's not at all uncommon for victims in those kinds of situations to fall into extreme denial.
• WHERE ARE THE VISOREDS?!?!?!?! I swear they have been out of focus for so long when they finally show up people will have forgotten who they were.
  • What's especially worrying about this is that it's not even clear what dimension they're in. They might have been teleported away with the rest of the real town for all we know.
    • Probably not. Urahara was the one who moved the town, and he probably would have warned them-- either because he wanted them around for the fight, or because they're still fugitives and didn't need to be in Soul Society.
  • They were finding a way inside the barrier
• Where the hell are most of Kubo Tite's characters from his big bucket of Loads and Loads of Characters?
  • He said at some point that he creates lots of characters to counteract writer's block, so presumably the less interesting (in his eyes) ones get edged out of the story. Still, it's a bit odd that Isshin and Ryuken vanished from the plot, and there's no evidence of what they're doing after Karakura was transported into Soul Society (or what the Urahara shop people are doing).

• Okay, whenever Ichigo and Rukia find Hollows in good ol' KT Town, Rukia always hitchs a ride on Ichigo's back to wherever they're going. Now, since Ichigo is usually in shinigami form at the time, and Rukia is not...wouldn't someone notice a school girl that is, apparently, flying?

• One thing that bugs me is the tendency of the rescuers to join the Rescue Arc for reasons unrelated to rescuing the character in distress. In the Soul Society arc, of the seven people involved in the rescue, only two or three are in it to save Rukia; Ichigo, Hanataro and to some degree Orihime (Orihime says she doesn't want Rukia to die, but when asked by Yoruichi why she wants to help, she says she wants to protect Ichigo). As for the others, Chad went in to help Ichigo, (admitting that he isn't close enough to Rukia to risk his life to save her), Uryu wants to fight the Soul Reapers, Ganju wants to find out more about what the Soul Reapers are like (and doesn't know that the rescuee killed his brother), and Yoruichi is presumably helping because of Urahara's involvement. It's somewhat disheartening that one's own True Companions would consider personal agendas (albeit in Chad's case, a promise to a friend), more of a reason to fight than helping out one of their own.
  • I think that Ishida truly wanted to save Orihime, Renji might feel obligated for two reasons, those reasons being that Rukia wants to, and he may feel indebted to Ichigo for saving Rukia- so he will help save Orihime in payment. Chad, as you said, has the promise going on. Just adding to what you said.
  • Promise??? Or maybe Chad and Orihime are friends! Seriously! Just because he wasn't as passionate about it as Ichigo, Rukia and Ishida, doesn't mean he was only doing it for Ichigo. The only person who went there really as a debt or obligation than anything was Renji. With SS arc, Orihime and Ichigo geniunely wanted to save Rukia. Chad did it more of loyalty to Ichigo....Ishida's was more difficult to place. However many feel, it was probably out of guilt for not being able to protect her the first time around when Renji and Byakuya showed up to take her away.
• OK, so what's with the Magical Hair Growth Formula? And why does it only affect the back of the head, giving the character in question a mullet? This confused the hell out of me during Ichigo's hollowfication. Is there any reason why the rest of his hair shouldn't grow? Or better yet, why should it even grow at all? And let's not forget Grimmjow's released state. He didn't have any hair as an adjucha, so why does his released form look like a rejected Jem character?
  • It's because Ichigo and Grimmjow are FUCKING METAL!

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• What exactly happened with Rukia after her arrest? Was she tried in absentia, or did she just enter a guilty plea and get her sentence? Aizen's plan would require her to never appear before the Central 46, or else she would see that he killed them after she was discovered. (Then again, Urahara and Tessai's "trial" basically consisted of them listening to accusations, never speaking in their own defense, and hearing their sentences, which makes one wonder about the Soul Society's justice system).
  • Captain Broken used his Brokenputo to create an illusion of Central 46 being functional. He would have no problems with making a show of a fake trial. As for Urahara, the evidence against was such that I don't see anything unreasonable about them being considered guilty on the spot. He did do Hollowification research. He did create the Hougyoku. He was at the scene of the crime. Tessai did use forbidden techniques. On top of that, Aizen's alibi was pretty much bulletproof.
    • Aizen had an alibi, but Gin did not (although Urahara didn't mention his presence there), and Tousen is suspicious as the sole survivor of a mysterious incident that resulted in the deaths or hollowification of the men sent to the site. The judges also didn't even allow Urahara or Tessai any opportunities to even try to challenge the allegations, which seems remarkably unfair even compared to other trials where conviction is a foregone conclusion.
  • What made no sense was the fact that Aizen was able to discover Rukia even when she had on an unTRACEABLE gigai. How did Aizen knew Urahara put the Hougyoku inside Rukia? How did he even found Rukia? Did he use hollows to track them? If so, why didn't he jsut took the hougyoku right then and there to begin with in the first place. He was going to Hueco Mundo every now and then even way before the turn back arc. He could had easily used his illusions to cover himself if he did not want to be discovered too soon. What is really annoying is the fact that 110 years ago, the whole forbidden kido and such was discovered right where the raging battles were taking place. How did Central 46 not be able to find out? It wasn't Aizen using his illusions because everybody else would had been effected as well. They weren't. How is Aizen so omnipotent and omniscient?
    • One of the comments Aizen makes suggests that Urahara hid the Hougyoku in Rukia before she left for the real world. See here. "By the time I discovered this you had already gone missing in the real world". Locating her would've been by no means hard - she stayed in Karakura town - that's where her assignment was. As for why didn't he just do something easy instead of convoluted? Hard to tell. Maybe he felt that if he made an overt move earlier then his plans would get screwed up or something. His plan also had added benefits - by killing Central 46, he probably weakened the morale of SS. His plans made several captains move against each other - further weakening Soul Society(this failed only because no one dies in Bleach). Or maybe he just has a flair for dramatics.
    • Actually, the hogyoku couldn't had been placed inside her after she left for a few reasons. One, Urahara can't enter SS after he escaped without risking being captured. Rukia never existed till over nearly 60 years after Urahara was banished. In order for him to had placed the thing in her, he would need to had been in SS. Another reason is the fact that it was placed in the untracable gigai, not Rukia. It only merged with her soul once she put the gigai on. His plans also did not involved most of the captains like Kenpachi, Ukitake, Shunsui, Soifon, Sajin, or Byakuya from actually doing anything. Aizen is a man that plays a great deal of speed chess. All of the stuff that happens aren't exactly planned by him, but it sure as hell benefited Aizen. It was the fact that Aizen found out exactly what Kahn was doing that needs an explanation(s). How could he had found out? Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
    • Let's look at it like this: I don't think it's exactly unknown where Urahara is in the real world. So Aizen probably kept a close watch on Karakura town - he couldn't afford to kill him, because that could mean the Hougyoku being lost forever. So he waits until Urahara makes his move/gets bolder/makes a mistake. Then, Rukia goes to Karakura and gives her power to Ichigo. Some months later she comes back but still hasn't recovered her power - something that is very unusual. So he puts two and two together. Someone who has been in contact with Urahara has mysteriously not recovered their power for a long time - and that's the precise method you'd want to use if you wanted to get rid of the Hougyoku. So he figures out that Urahara placed it in Rukia.
    • Aizen must have known that Rukia had the Hogyoku before she returned to Soul Society, because the whole reason he had her put on death row was to get to the Hogyoku in her soul.
    • How did Aizen figure it all out? Deduction, my dear Watson. The Hogyoku was created by a mad scientist known for playing around with gigai. It was not in Soul Society. A shinigami had gone missing in the Real World, and was proving extremely difficult to find, meaning she must have a gigai. She couldn't have gotten the gigai through normal channels. Therefore, she got the gigai from the mad scientist who created the Hogyoku. What's the best place to store something you don't want found? In a place that CAN'T BE DETECTED! Rukia couldn't be detected. Ergo, that was where the Hogyoku was: in Rukia. Continuing in this vein, Aizen had studied all of the notes Urahara had left behind, from which he found the thingy that let him take the Hogyoku out of Rukia's soul without killing her. Now, why would Urahara make something to take an object OUT of a soul if he was never planning on putting an object IN a soul? And considering what a desperate measure item-soul implantation was, it would have to be an extremely important object.
    • It's implied in the manga that Ichigo's fight with the Menos Grande attracted the attention of the Soul Society, which is why Rukia decided to leave shortly afterward. At that point, Aizen killed Central 46.

• When Ichigo was fighting Renji, there was the whole flashback-ish...thing where Urahara used an analogy along the lines of "a revolver fires six times, while a missile only fire once" to describe the fact that Renji's zanpaku-to tends to be used in a sequence of three attacks. I'm sorry, but a missile isn't used once in sequence, it's just used once...because it blows up, not because it's more powerful. I understand what the analogy meant, but still...saying a rocket launcher or something would've made more sense. My guesses are either that Kubo meant something like that but didn't quite translate it correctly, or knew that sounded odd and just threw it in to make Urahara sound like wierd.
  • I think the missile launcher is the weapon in this case, and it has to be loaded with a new one each time. Technically, the analogy still fits, although we haven't seen any attacks with clear "limits" since then (maybe except for Soifon's Bankai, which also seems to be a literal missile).
    • You're right, I guess "missile launcher" was the intended idea there. Although on an unrelated note, I just realized that continuing with the weapon analogy kinda makes it fall flat if you added, say...a minigun. If a more powerful attack has a limit, well...I mean, a minigun can fire over 3000 rounds a minute, which'll reduce nearly anything you point at it to scrap. It still works if you compared it to a missile launcher, because that one shot'll just blow a target to bits, but...a revolver isn't going to do more damage than a minigun, despite having a lower limit. In other words...crap, now the whole thing's a Just Bugs Me to me. So...yeah.
      • Not completely wrong. If you consider a minigun, a revolver and a rocker launcher, in this order: increase in firepower PER BULLET (missile) and decrease of bullets (missiles) that can be fired before reloading. So the analogy still works, with the caveat that the minigun is stronger that the revolver because of the number of bullets fired per second, and much more precision than most people think (except if you carry it of course...).
  • Urahara's lecture centers around the idea that when someone gets pressed in a fight, they'll do the equivalent of button mashing or spaming their strongest moves as much as possible. And just like a video game, those attacks tend to follow patterns. He was trying to teach Ichigo to attack during the 'reset' part of the pattern.
    • Not really. What he was getting at more was, the stronger an attack is, the harder it is to make that attack. It's easy to make a bullet, cheap and simple. There are lots of them, and firing a revolver is easy. But a missle launcher is much more difficult, even if it is more powerful. Practically, in a fight, the stronger an attack is, the fewer number of times you can do it. And if you are in a long, intense fight, you will be forced to use it the maximum number of times. In which case, you'll have to regroup to keep on going. And during that moment, your vulnerable.

• So since Tosen revealed himself to be a Hollow-mask bearing, Resureccion knowing person, does that mean Gin and Aizen can probably do that too?
  • It's hard to say. If Tosen was just the test subject to see if that would actually work, probably not. Either way, I'd still say Gin is much more likely than Aizen since Aizen is the only one who can release the Hogyoku. Of course, it's still possible he can release it while using it on himself, though I would consider that less likely.
• Well, at this point, it's not even plot relevent but, you know those two kids, Jinta, Ururu, working at Urahara's shop? Just exactly who/what are those?
• If Tousen knew he had a Resurreccion, and knew of some of its abilities, such as the massive attack he hit Komamura's Bankai with, then how the hell did he not know his Resurreccion gave him eyesight?
  • Maybe the abilities were instinctive, and he'd never used it before for fear of bloodlust consuming him?
• MASSIVE LAST CHAPTER SPOILERS: If Ichigo was able to see through the illusion, why didn't he just scream "GUYZ IT'S EFFING HINAMORI THERE NOT AIZEN" before? He had time to scream it. Everyone would stop because they know he isn't affected. Nothing could justify this.
  • Mentioned above. Aizen's Complete Hypnosis ability controls all of the senses, including hearing. He might have been shouting that the whole time- but Aizen didn't let them hear it.
  • What I wanna know is why Ichigo didn't just rush in there and stop them himself...
    • Of which speaking of, Aizen should've used the trick to make them target Ichigo instead, and let the Captains turn the only present threat to kibble for him.
    • Rushing in when allies aren't paying attention, and possibly don't even know you're there, is liable to result in more friendly fire. Aizen may not have done it to Ichigo because Ichigo would possibly put up a better fight, and more importantly is immune to the illusions. Hinamori could be tricked into acting as Aizen desires, making the overall image easier to maintain. Ichigo would require precise illusions on the fly, and Aizen might not be able to keep up.
    • Also, Aizen probably wanted to save Ichigo for himself. Didn't he want to "eat" him?
• Sorry if this has already been covered above/maybe I'm just missing something obvious, but how is it that the denziens of the afterlife (as in, they're technically considered dead) can have children, as was the case for Byakuya and several others? Not that I have anything against shinigami having kids, but seriously, why does that happen? Would that mean they're not actually ghosts then, or is this somehow following the same logic that you can die again in the afterlife?
  • They still have blood(or its ghostly equivalent). They still breathe - so they have lungs, or their ghostly equivalent. They can eat, so they have stomachs and the entire digestive tract. And so on. Spiritual entities in this series seem to have all the same organs that humans would have, the only difference being that they're built from spirit particles instead of atoms. Therefore, they'd have the spirit particle equivalent of reproductive systems as well.

• There are four Vizard who were previously captains of the Gotei 13: Shinji, Love, Kensei, and Rose and yet Kensei is the only one to reveal his bankai (which wasn't overly impressive). If Shinji's shikai was to invert all the senses, the mind boggles at what his Bankai's effect might be. I suppose they thought that since it seemed they were beating Aizen they thought it was unnecessary but still...

• Where the hell is Kensei?
  • The Chad Treatment.
  • Well, considering the last time saw him he was about to fight Wonderweiss, who later showed up in his Resurrection form to counter Old Man Genocide, he probably lost and is lying in a pile of rubble somewhere.
    • While we don't see the end results of the fight, Kensei is seen to be re-instated as one of the Captains after the Ginjo arc.
• Where is Unohana during Aizen's latest ramapage? Aizen even tells Yamamoto that he's the only captain left capable of fighting. Unohana's been confirmed as strong but we haven't seen anything yet. Granted she's probably helping heal the injured but she could do SOMETHING in the way of defending the good guys from Yamamto's "burn the world down" plan or help or something, plus the way Aizen says it is comes off as "You, me and Ichigo are the only strong men left, she can't fight because she's a girl, nyeh." Which fuels more into the lack of awesome moments for females lately.
  • Unohana essentially falls under the category of "kind of busy right now." When she first showed up, she already had a lot of healing to do, including Hyori who had been cut in freaking half. And then, of course, Aizen goes on to drop another whopping load of heavily wounded people on her lab including poor Hinamori. Unohana is probably just too busy trying to keep them all from dying.

• Is it just me or does it bug anyone else that when Byakuya and Renji went to retrieve Rukia, they left Ichigo for dead? Especially since a shinigami's entire purpose is to take care of the souls of the deceased and they are removing the resident shinigami for Karakura Town? So they are responsible for a human death and not sending it to the soul society, giving oppurtunity for him to either hollowfy or be a veritable fountain of spiritual power for another hollow?
  • Well, considering that he was technically a shinigami at the time, it's less about taking care of his soul than it is taking care of a threat. As for the whole hollowfication business, it wasn't shown at that point that a shinigami could become a hollow, and since they expected him to die soon, his spirit would just fae off to wherever souls go.
• On the topic of Rukia being taken away, why did she say to Ichigo that "she won't forgive him" if he even thinks about bringing her back? That sounds like a harsh thing to say. Then again, this is before Ichigo became strong enough to take on the Soul Society, but...
  • She was trying to protect him. She thought if Ichigo managed to live he'd try to save her and get himself killed. To keep that from happening, she would have said anything.

• In the anime at least, by his own admission, every Soul Reaper who ever achieved Bankai has been permanently recorded in the history of the Gotei 13; why, then, is Byakuya so surprised by the size of Ichigo's Tensa Zangetsu, when a Zanpakutou with a similarly-sized Bankai has existed since well over a hundred years prior, in the form of former 9th Division Captain Kensei Muguruma's Tekken Tachikaze?
  • Just because the records exist doesn't mean everyone's memorized it.
    • Also Tekken Tachikaze, while fairly small as Bankai's go, was a pretty good size increase from Tachikaze itself, which was a dinky little combat knife. I took Byakuya's surprise as not so much about the size of Tensa Zangetsu itself, but from its size in relation to Zangetsu's Shikai form. Most Bankai's create bigger versions of their Shikai, Ichigo's went from a huge butcher knife to a slender sword, and I think that's what threw Byakuya for a loop.
      • Beyond that, Tensa Zangetsu's size isn't what surprised Byakuya. He was surprised by the fact the Tensa Zangetsu is, unlike any other Bankai in every in the history of the Soul Society, a compression of its user's power, rather than a further release.
• Not a huge issue, but it just kind of bugs me that we have yet to see Aizen's zanpakutou spirit's reaction to all of his recent freaky changes. If I were Kyouka Suigetsu I'd be all "get me the FUCK away from this freak".
  • Not really. Since Zanpakutous are part of a shinigami's soul, his Zanpakutou is probably equally crazy with a god complex.

• Okay what the hell Kubo, all of sudden an entire town with a population of around 100,000 is sleeping, um wouldn't like the entire world notice that all those people are missing espically since Kakakura Town is Japan. Last time I checked they isolated that one town not the entire world or froze time. Seriously this series makes no sense anymore and the latest arc Deicide just proves it.
  • People probably just saw the Fake Kurakara Town, or an illusion of it.

• How did Tosen know his friend was beautiful if he never saw her face?
  • Maybe he didn't, he just imagined that she was. He idealized her so of course she's going to be beautiful to him.

• A minor issue concerning fullbrings. The ability of Fullbringers is to communicate with the 'soul' of an inanimate object, yes? Well, Chad has remarked that his focus is his 'skin' which is a sign of his grandfather. Um, Kubo? Skin isn't inanimate, it's an organ.
  • People aren't inanimate objects either, but it's plainly seen that Fullbrings can affect them too. Just roll with it. Don't be hatin'.
  • Well, Ginjou actually said the souls of matter - technically, that'll include living things as well. He was simply clarifying to Ichigo that one shouldn't think of just living things having souls, which is why he focused so much on inanimate objects - to try and explain why inanimate objects would have souls that can be manipulated. That's the easiest way to look at it, anyway.
  • Actually (don't quote me on this) but I've heard that the layer of skin you usually see on a person's body isn't actually alive; the living skin is underneath it, with the dead skin acting as a barrier to keep the very sensitive living flesh protected.

• How is the afterlife for people that aren't Japanese? It's Feudal Japan..With GHOSTS.
  • Maybe there's another Soul Society-like city that resemble medieval Europe and is staffed by black-cloaked, scythe-wielding psychopomps.

• Where were Tessai Tsukabishi, Ryuken Ushida, Kukaku Shiba, Nanao Ise, Chojuro Sasakibe (after letting the Vizards in), the current Kido Corps Captain and Lieutenant (if they were replaced in the last 100 years) and every other captain or lieutenant level fighter during the FKT arc?
  • Well, for Nanao, since Shunsui's so protective of her to start with he may have pulled strings to keep her out of the battle. Ryuken may have outright refused to get involved, given his stance on the spirit world--and really, who would have tried to force him to get involved? There's no excuse for why the rest of the people on this list weren't around. This brings about another question. Aizen was explicitly going to kill the Spirit King, so where on Earth were Squad Zero?
• Did Ginjo actually know anything secret about Ichigo's dad, or was it just manipulation/another dropped plot point?
  • He admits when Ichigo finally comes to Xcution that he just wanted to pique Ichigo's interest, and was just bluffing about knowing things about Ichigo's family. So, yeah, Ginjo was just being manipulative.
• Ginjo says the fullbringers want to get rid of their powers but never really explains why. He alludes to Ichigo's struggles with Hichigo but that doesn't really make any sense when you think about it. Why would Ichigo feel his hollow powers were a source of grief when Hichigo turned out to be an alright guy and his hollow powers only helped him? And even if he did, why would he think the fullbringers are the same when they've never given any indication that they have a hollow/berserker side to them? Chad should have also noticed since he has never given any indication that he disliked his powers and has no real reason to. Ginjo was obviously manipulating but why didn't Ichigo and Chad notice?
  • Chad doesn't dislike his powers, he's just willing to give them up for Ichigo. As for the reason, it no longer matters, because it was all a lie, and he was planning on taking Ichigo's fullbring to enhance his own
    • Ginjou's reasons being circumspect isn't the Headscracther. It's Ichigo and Chad's inability to see that Ginjou's reasons are circumspect that's the Headscratcher.
• Bleach has a lot of similarities to Inuyasha: Ichigo's Zangetsu and Getsuga Tensho are similar to Inuyasha's Tessaiga and Wind Scar, and Zangetsu is also part of the name of one of Inuyasha's powers, Meido Zangetsuha, which, like Ichigo's bankai Getsuga Tensho, takes the shape of a black crescent. Then there's the Hogyoku and Shikon no Tama: both are sentient, possibly malevolent black spheres that grant the wishes of those that possess them, and both are obtained by the main villains early on in the stories. Furthermore, both Naraku and Aizen use their respective orbs to transform into more powerful, monstrous forms shortly before being defeated. Is this intentional, or just coincidental?
  • Probably more coincidental. The two authors have clearly been inspired by the same Buddhist-originated stories of the wish-fullfilling jewel known as the cintamani stone which in Japanese is called the "hougjyu". It's like western authors choosing to do stories about King Arthur. There's going to be overlap. The main difference between the two stories is that Inuyasha goes the shinto route and explores to cintamani concept in relation to the Ichiren Shikon theory whereas Bleach goes the more Buddhist route and explores the relationship between the cintamani stone and the Wisdom King known as Aizen Myou-ou. And that difference would be like having one western author rely on Thomas Mallory for their King Arthur inspiration and another author relying on the Mabinogi for their King Arthur inspiration.
    • So THAT'S where Aizen, Shikon Jewel, and the Hogyoku got their names...
      • Well, that's the theory, anyway.
• Since they gang didn't know when Ryunosuke would wake up, and left his gigai beside him in the bed, was Ichigo sleeping with it/him/them, somewhere else? What did Yuzu think?

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