Pic 1: I feel like Orihime is suitable to be arrancar no.77 as a reference to Tanabata Festival. Her hollow is pink dragon with bird's wings. Trying my best to be as close as Kubo's vision before he created Orihime power.
The one that editor rejected Kubo's idea for Orihime power with horn and tail.
Additionally her mask I inspired from Burn The Witch dragon.
As for her zanpakuto I make her power to be as close as her OG Shun Shun Rikka. Her sword is just a normal blade while her 'handle' hairpin shape is function. Still got her 6 talking spirits.
I was thinking of making her weapon a magician staff (some fans refer her as white mage) but Orihime with dual swords looks cool to me and suitable with her 2 hairpins.
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Pic 2: Orihime maybe a hollow but her kind heart is still there.
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Pic 3: Arrancar Orihime resurrección.
Furthermore, I love Orihime. I have so much fun making her AU. Maybe next I'll make her a AU shinigami or quincy. When I have time. I have so many Bleach wip.
Random new year thought that I might make into a fanfic at some point:
Ichigo is meant to be this perfect culmination-slash-combination of everything but imagine an AU where Ichigo's contradicting origins (Shinigami/Hollow/Human/Quincy gag) actively handicapped him. Not the lazy 'Yhawch parasite holding him back' explanation. Simply by his very nature, its impossible for any of his powers to manifest to advanced levels without threatening to implode.
Try to advance his Hollow powers? His Quincy powers deteriorate.
Try to advance his Quincy powers? His Hollow powers deteriorate.
Try to advance his Shinigami powers? His Hollow powers love every second but his Quincy side weakens dramatically.
Try to advance Shinigami and Quincy together? Hollow wants a slice of the pie.
Try to advance Hollow and Quincy? Gets no where slowly because they're anathema - very nearly killing himself in the process.
No amount of 'achieving inner balance' would help him with it because by the nature of his existence, he lacks capacity to do these things. The only reason Ichigo managed to gain a high tier shinigami technique like Bankai in the first place? Yoruichi used a doll to force out a twisted malformed parody out of him.
Which would place a whole new spin on the asauchi trial when he fails: O'etsu reveals Ichigo's bankai shattered so easily because he was never supposed to have one in the first place.
Ichigo can never obtain a true Bankai or Vollstandig or Resurrección because the other aspects of his powers violently reject that from happening. At best he can mix-max his base stats to levels far beyond anything others could achieve but he would never obtain the advanced techniques of a pure Shinigami, Hollow or Quincy.
Ichigo could be like Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. Compared to the powerhouses of Kyle Katarn or Starkiller aka. Galen Marek, Luke is actually quite weak. But he brought balance to the force, he brought down an empire and his very name has the ability to shakes worlds (before Disney ruined him).
In my mind, that is the ultimate power Ichigo should've had. Not copious amounts of actual power piled upon him by being a cosmic paradox and freak of nature. His power comes from his symbolism, his feats of will, his ability to inspire change and unshakeable loyalty through sheer force of personality.
Especially since one themes of Bleach is how power shackles and isolates a person. The complete opposite of that theme would be not necessarily the most powerful character, but one with the greatest ability to forge bonds despite that?
It'd be interesting to see how Bleach's narrative would change from that perspective.
I decided to watch a bit of the new Bleach anime as a "might as well" type deal. I got like 10 minutes in before I closed it and was like "I am not getting back into Bleach".
So then I reread Bleach over the past few days.
It holds up pretty well. I was a bit surprised at how just being able to hit "next chapter" on a cliffhanger really takes the edge off a lot of the more meandering and frustrating parts. The first half was still pretty great. The more iconic fights are still absolutely bangers (Grimmjow and Ulquiorra in particular), a lot of the plot is less ass-pull than "huh, actually, that kinda makes sense if you think about it" because you just read the ~context like an hour ago as opposed to a year. The emotional beats are still decently impactful. Also, watching Kubo's art improve over a 15 year period in a couple days was fascinating. I enjoyed myself.
The main takeaway though, what I actually got from the whole thing:
This one?
Still Best Girl. It's not close. Teenage me was right and I still Absolutely Would The Antelope.
Adult Nel has like 100 panels total screentime but it doesn't matter, bro. Someone mentions Bleach and I think of Ichigo first but .0002 seconds later it's the 3 on Nel's back. I got to the point in the Hollow World arc where her kid form shows up with her dumbass servants and was just kind of vibrating waiting for The Thing
to happen. This is AFTER Ulquiorra nearly kills Ichigo (effortlessly) and sends him into complete despair by showing he's only #4, and being pushed to his absolute limit by #6 who was actually playing fair and being amicable. It was obvious she was a bit more important than just Random Child simply because she was an arrancar but #3? Even after the (ostensible) power increase of the 10 from her time it was a wild jump
The past visions of her being arrogant and superior to the weak ass misogynistic loser Nnotria (along with that arrogance being her downfall because she refused to take him seriously on principle - him working with Szayelaporro was Entirely out of her scope of what he was willing or able to do). The instant mood swings from cold and in control to Ichigo Must Be Tackle Hugged. Her absolutely dunking on present-day Nnoitra is still legendary despite the outcome because she was weakened from the get-go and if she'd been slightly more ruthless to what she still saw as a weakling she'd have ended it before her time ran out
Then 380 chapters later she finally reappears and is just her usual goofy affectionate self with a side of casually Asserting Dominance on Grimmjow for telling her what to do. Queen shit. Deserved so much more spotlight.
The funny part is Kubo seems to agree. Apparently he's spent the post manga years simping for her, making her co-ruler of the hollows with Harribel despite the latter being the top dog previously (and implicitly stating if Grimmjow fucked around he'd find out), making her super important to the politics of the setting by being the one the shinigami want to use to make a peace deal with the hollows, and even giving an alt of her a second stage of her Resurrección (that fucks)
Buddy even retroactively declared her the curviest woman in the series over Rangiku and says his swimsuit alts of her in Brave Soul are the greatest swimsuit art to exist.
... He might not even have been using marketing hyperbole.
"That's why I’m here, fuckface," Grimmjow replies. "The. The purring. Helps. With being sick." He's scowling so hard while he says this that Ichigo grins on automatic.
Ichigo is missing his first sparring session with Grimmjow for the first time since they started, because he's sick. Lucky for him, Grimmjow shows up to flop on top of him in his resurrección and starts purring because he says it helps. He doesn't look happy about it, but Ichigo will take what he can get.
[Bleach] Jewel using Hyougufuu on three occasions with Grimmjow;
One: They’re fighting each other and he was fast enough to get into her tornado before it was in full swing. The storm rages around them, deafening.
She was too slow and now she’s confined in her own attack with him and he thinks he’s got her now. One more hit and she’ll be done, he thinks.
He’s thrown off when she stabs her own palm and commands her storm to invert. Jewel knows she won’t get ‘wet’ by her own ‘rain’, but him? He’s in trouble if he doesn’t move.
Two: He’s down for the count and she’s jumped in at the last second to save him. She’s got to hold him close while executing the attack so he doesn’t get caught up in it.
He can’t even talk because of how beaten down he is but she tells him to hang on a little longer. she flares the attack outward to destroy whatever targeted him.
Three: Where he’s standing with her in the eye of the storm in his Resurrección and any time an opponent blows a hole into her tornado they’re met by his Garra de la Pantera before the wall of needled ice is covered again. It’s a solid defense and offense joint attack that is guaranteed to be devastating.
#[ i originally thought of it as yoruichi's (late) commentary on 'leaked nudes' ]
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Something that lowkey pisses me off is how little credit Yoruichi gets in the Bleach fandom.
I’ve touched on that before here, noting that everyone hands Aizen and Kisuke all the kudos while minimizing if not totally ignoring the contributions of Kaname (who actually ran the Hollow program) and Yoruichi (who just straight up is Kisuke’s boss) with there only really being one common explanation for that (hint: it’s the skin color of the latter pair). But I think Yoruichi actually gets it worse than Kaname because she’s also a woman on top of that.
Kisuke gets this reputation for always having a plan and his superpower being means and all this other stuff, like he’s Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and L all rolled up into one. But I want you to really, really think about Soul Society arc.
Kisuke isn't there. This is the sum of his action until the arc is over. He only appears in flashbacks. He set up the pieces but he has zero ability to influence the outcome. He may as well be on the dark side of the moon while it all plays out. The person actually in charge is Yoruichi:
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39 notes - Posted October 13, 2022
#4
something like this seems to break down the power parallels
Basic Movement: different methods but basically similar results
Advanced Movement: Shinigami need the physical Senkaimon to act as a structural basis (along with Hell Butterflies), Quincy seem to need the Gate of the Sun similarly
Sensory Perception: Quincy actively use equivalent techniques to Shinigami, as Uryū demonstrates to Ichigo and Shunsui demonstrates to Lille
Defensive Utility: there is no Shinigami name for the defense provided by reiryoku but Kenpachi demonstrates it handily
Combat Utility: this one is iffy but these all largely fill the same roles
Special Utility: each has a method of ignoring or reverting damage; more powerful Shinigami display no pain response or impairment from injury despite having organs crushed or limbs removed (though there is no name for this), lower-ranking Arrancar and Hollows regenerate, Quincy can puppet themselves
Tier III Upgrade: basic combat ability upgrade. Arrancars seem superior to their equivalents because they are essentially always passively in this mode at minimum
Tier II Upgrade: this is fairly self-explanatory; the fact that Shinigami Bankai prevents the use of Quincy: Vollständig suggests they are equivalent. (from raw destructive power it seems like the claim that Vollständig is superior to Letzt Stil is specious; Vollständig seems weaker but lacks the drawbacks... however, Vollständig is run through Yhwach as Quilge and Auswählen reveal, which is itself its weakness)
Tier I Upgrade: we know there are such things as “Final Bankai” because of Isshin. these seem equivalent to Quincy: Letzt Stil in terms of depowering the user after use. Resurrección: Segunda Etapa seems unique in that it appears not to have limited uses
(there is an implication as a result of this that the Sanrei Glove is actually the Quincy equivalent of the Shinigami and Arrancar zanpakutō, which may or may not be really related to one another that much)
(it seems likely that Ichigo was actually using something like all three Tier I Upgrades simultaneously given his heritage and his lack of an actual zanpakutō)
even if one wants to quibble over these entries (which aren't exact as each has pros and cons versus the others) the general parallelism strongly suggests that all three systems are correlated and related rather than completely disparate. the odds of three systems coming to resemble each other this closely by pure happenstance are poor, even accounting for convergent evolution. this suggests a common origin
47 notes - Posted February 8, 2022
#3
Great Noble Color Theory
This is just a little bit of a stretch, but it seems to me that Great Noble Clans tend to have color themes which may filter down to their Noble retainers.
Shihōin
While Yūshirō wears something like a wisteria or heliotrope sash and arm warmers on top of what looks like a mildly modified shihakushō, this isn’t the “official” color of the Shihōin. Yellow/gold is:
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49 notes - Posted June 4, 2022
#2
My commission from Sora of K-Pop AU Yoruichi and Kūkaku as Itzy Yeji and Itzy Ryujin covering Bebe Rexha’s “Break My Heart Myself”!
59 notes - Posted November 10, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
It’s October 1st in Japan, and that means...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KŪKAKU!
I’ve had a delightful time with Digi (@crashingheavens) figuring out these two finally getting together and discovering how they mesh with one another, and I hope that continues for as long as it may, so I had to get something done to commemorate it! I commissioned the lovely and talented Sora to make this and I believe she’ll be putting it up on her Twitter on the 10th, but for now it’s only here!