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thisisatesttai · 4 months

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IchiRuki is not "delusional," and saying that it is means you have no media literacy

IHs seem to think that all it takes to interpret Ichigo, Rukia, and Orihime's feelings is to read the epilogue. To a literary critic, that is absurd. Characters explain how they feel over and over again across a piece of media. An ending may give us context that alters the earlier scenes, but this is always in very specific ways. With Bleach, nothing about the epilogue indicates that Ichigo and Rukia are not supposed to be read as at least potentially romantic.

For posterity's sake, I should point out that I've only seen the first few arcs of the anime, so most of what I say below is based on the manga. That said, the anime is part of the story as much as the manga is, so just because something happened in the manga and not the anime, or vice versa, doesn't make it "truer" to the text, just true to different texts.

Let's start with the fact that the story repeatedly suggests that Ichigo and Rukia have a romantic vibe to them. The rumors at school make this explicit, but just from the setup of two classmates who clearly have a secret that are constantly sneaking off, especially when you add in that they go home together and sleep in the same room. I know a lot of people want IchiRuki to be the Platonic Boy/Girl Friends (TM) but honey, they just ain't them. You're thinking of Naruto and Sakura. Claims that they have a sibling vibe are utterly baseless, especially in Bleach, where sibling relationships are a very explicit theme. Not every non-romantic couple that's nominally the same age (don't get me started on the "she's 150" arguments; go prosecute ACTUAL 150-year-olds dating 15-year-olds and leave me alone) is automatically a sibling vibe. The most I could say is that they do bicker a lot, but we all know that's just as comparable to a married couple. Saying Rukia is a mentor to Ichigo admittedly has a little more basis, especially when Bleach doesn't have a designated mentor figure. I still think Rukia's role in teaching Ichigo about the Soul Society is more of a guide archetype, though; think less Genkai, more Botan.

But setting aside the setup, the Soul Society Arc, or Rescue Rukia arc, is loaded with romantic themes and imagery. Don't get me wrong; nothing says that Kubo couldn't have introduced these as a fake-out to the audience, with the intention of subverting their expectations. I don't personally think there's anything that really suggests that, at least not so far as the romantic reading of the Soul Society arc itself being entirely off-base. The whole arc kicks off because Rukia is asked by Orihime and her friends if she "like-likes" Ichigo. She says she only likes him as a friend, but all of the narrative cues suggest that she's being dishonest, from the narration to the fact that she was so bothered by the question that she chooses now to go to the Soul Society and face her punishment. The suggestion at this point seems to be that Rukia having any type of affection for Ichigo, be it friendship or romantic, is inappropriate or even impossible for a shinigami. Ichigo's feelings are treated similarly, as he never gives a straight answer when he's asked why he wants to save Rukia, but several characters suggest that it's because he's in love with her. This doesn't mean he is, but the narrative does not deny that that is a possible reasoning. We're not even really told what his answer is; the scene where he thinks, "That's why I fought so hard to save you" seems to be suggesting that he wanted her to be able to decide whether she would live in the World of the Living or the Soul Society -- or else it's saying he didn't want the last time he saw her to be her telling him she would never forgive him, or it's saying that he wanted to see her smile again. Like I said, we're not given an explicit answer to this question.

The rest of the manga is basically about Ichigo adjusting to life without Rukia. I think it's fair to say that even if you read Soul Society romantically, from the Arrancar Invasion Arc on, Rukia is no longer written as Ichigo's love interest. This doesn't invalidate anything suggested in the previous arcs, though. If anything, I would argue that Ichigo's feelings become pretty explicit by the time we get to Hueco Mundo. The dramatic reveal of Rukia coming to visit, and the fact that she's the only person capable of breaking him out of his funk, both have a romantic reading to them. When the team arrives in Hueco Mundo, Ichigo is shown to be overly concerned with Rukia's safety, explicitly singling her out aside from Renji, Uryu, and Chad. (I guess that could just be misogyny, though.) Even Ichigo's obsession with getting a rematch with Grimmjow could be traced to him nearly one-shotting Rukia during their fight in Karakura. I'm not saying any of these are exclusive interpretations, just showing how it's regularly reinforced that Ichigo feels differently about Rukia than any of his other companions, even to the point of letting it cloud his judgment.

I don't think I need to say anything about Ichigo and Rukia's goodbye before the timeskip. The way the scene is drawn, and written, and framed by the narrative, is very reminiscent of romance scenes, to the point that if it was meant to be read as exclusively platonic, it comes off as a very bad satire. And jumping to the anime real quick, I know episode 342 is anime-only, but by no means do I think that invalidates everything it says about Ichigo and Rukia's feelings for each other. That episode oozes with ship-bait, to the point of turning the subtext of their relationship into text. And if you think this is something that the anime studio injected into the narrative -- well, first of all, then we'd also have to parse out everything that the Shonen Jump editors injected into the manga -- but Kubo himself has said that he thought the episode was a welcome addition. So, if your'e someone who thinks the author's vision is the final say on the manga, there you have it; Kubo basically canonized ep. 342.

With all that in mind, I think that, at the very least, Bleach's narrative suggests that Ichigo and Rukia are coulda-beens. Maybe Ichigo was more invested than Rukia was, maybe Rukia deemed it inappropriate due to them being from different worlds, but in the language of manga and storytelling in general, the idea that they might have feelings for each other isn't some fan's "delusion"; it is actually part of the text. Whether or not they actually felt something for each other is for them and them alone to know, but the story tells us that these are two people who met, came to care very deeply for each other, and then drifted apart without ever taking the plunge.

The question that this leaves us with is, where does that leave Orihime?

If there's one character whose feelings are never up for debate, it's Orihime. We know from practically her first scene that she has a crush on Ichigo. Now, at first that's never taken seriously. It's mostly just a setup for the running gag of her bonkers imagination. Over time, though, we get a little bit more insight into Orihime's feelings, and she starts to get taken more seriously as a character. There's a version of Bleach where, as Orihime steps up to be by Ichigo's side in the latter arcs, he moves on from his feelings for Rukia and the two develop as a couple. If that were the case, even if IchiHime doesn't appeal to me, personally, I would still accept it. It would actually be a refreshingly mature take on teenage romance. Unfortunately, that version is not in the text.

For that reading of Bleach to work, we would need to see their love for each other build to a place where both characters bring out the best in each other, at least comparably to Ichigo and Rukia. Unfortunately, Ichigo and Orihime don't seem to bring out the best in each other. Ichigo brings out all of Orihime's insecurities. During the lead-up to the Arrancar arc, Orihime starts to compare herself to Rukia. (There's literally a panel sequence that says, without a single word "find you someone who looks at you the way Ichigo looks at Rukia", to anyone who's still unconvinced that there's a romantic reading to those two.) And as the entirety of the Hueco Mundo hammers home, Orihime is personally ill-equipped to be Rukia. Both Rangiku and Rukia herself have speeches where they tell Orihime that she needs to stop trying to live up to what she thinks Ichigo wants and just be herself, but she sticks to the mantra that she wants to "fight by Ichigo's side" -- you know, like Rukia does. Urahara even tells her outright that she needs to stop trying to put herself on the battlefield. It's not particularly nice of him to squash her dreams like that, but it's not as though she doesn't get an out; Hachi is already there, trying to teach Orihime to be a healer, something she has a natural talent for.

Instead of reframing her wishes with the advice of her friends, Orihime makes the worst decision of her life and goes to Hueco Mundo with Ulquiorra. Now, obviously this is coerced by the Espada and not her actual response to the situation, but that doesn't mean they're not framed as consequential to each other, narratively. Orihime is told she has a flaw that she needs to change, but before she's able to do so, she must go through hardships so she can let go of the façade that she's using to cover up her flaw. Well, she goes through hardships alright. She's imprisoned, assaulted, and threatened with death. Orihime is confronted both with her weaknesses, and with her strengths, as she is eventually able to appeal to Ulquiorra's humanity through her willingness to see the goodness in people, even those who are actively abusing her. You would think this would lead to a change in Orihime that goes back and answers the underlying question, but it doesn't. By the end of the manga, she is still fantasizing about being a Battle Couple alongside Ichigo, and she's still not good at it. I don't know how many times I've had to say this, but Orihime and Ichigo losing their fight to Yhwach is not a triumphant moment. The fact that it's the result of Orihime achieving her series-long dream is more of an indictment against their relationship than anything else I could say.

To adopt the narrative that Ichigo got over Rukia to be with Orihime, we would also need to see him come to appreciate Orihime in her own right, something that he is...hopelessly uninterested in. No, we can't just take for granted that he's a dopey shonen hero and "that's just his character"; if he's supposed to be . We also absolutely cannot take for granted that this happens offscreen; that can be a headcanon that you, as the audience, choose to adopt, but it's not suggested by anything other than the assumption that the ending is supposed to be, and can only be, saccharinely happy. There's nothing to suggest that Ichigo changes the way he thinks about Orihime in the text, and we only ever see him thinking about her is when reacting to her in scenes, and just generally not wanting her to die. The closest we get to him expressing a romantic interest in Orihime is the scene where he asks her to "wait for him" -- at Rukia's wedding, no less. I shouldn't have to spell out how having this happen on the very day, at the very moment, that Rukia is considered "off-limits" to conventional societal standards undercuts the idea that Ichigo is not taking Orihime as a consolation prize. Which, don't get me wrong, SUCKS. But it is implicit in the framing, and can't be ignored.

And that's without getting into Rukia's relationship with Renji. I think in this case, we can very obviously see that Kubo tried to write a romance between them, but he did so in such a half-assed way that I find it very hard to take seriously. Yes, Ichigo throwing Rukia to Renji is obviously meant to tell us that Renji is her love interest from that point in the story, but that doesn't mean it works. First of all, we can't pretend Renji wasn't awful to Rukia for a majority of the Soul Society arc. Sure, this is him pre-character development, but it's a huge leap to go from "I'm conflicted over whether I should tell off my boss for killing you" to a canon couple. But even with Renji beating up Rukia and telling her he wished she was dead, you can still get to the point where they repair their relationship -- it just takes a lot of work that Bleach simply doesn't do. We need more than Renji promising to turn things around, we need to see him do things that make up for that. To be fair, though, Kubo spends very little time showing us what they're like when one of them isn't on death row. At most, they seem to train together a lot. Like, you want platonic boy/girl besties? THESE are platonic boy/girl besties. Actually, they're the ones with the sibling dynamic, given that they literally grew up calling each other family.

So where does that leave us? Some people seem to assume that despite Kubo fumbling the ball, the canon couples were meant to be, and that they somehow found happiness despite all the evidence to the contrary. Again, you can hold that headcanon for yourself if it makes you happy. However, if we're going strictly based off the text, the answer seems to be that Bleach doesn't have a happy ending. The characters whose endings are not related to getting married off all end up doing the one thing they didn't want to do -- Chad ends up using his fists for personal gain as a boxer, Uryu ends up alone, etc. -- and the ones who DO get what they want are the ones whose dreams are framed as being misguided, in Orihime's case, or unearned, in Renji's case. I'm not saying you have to ship IchiRuki, of course. I can't tell you how to read the series. At the end of the day, Bleach is to you what it is to you. But saying that reading IchiRuki as romantic is "delusional" is more than just false, it diminishes media literacy for all of us.

#bleach #rant #shipping #ichiruki #ichihime #ichigo kurosaki #rukia kuchiki #orihime inoue #renji abarai #we do knot always love you #i mean look at that title #that's supposed to be the big renruki book #why is it based around a double entendre that's basically #we always love you -- NOT!

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