#when they die then we'll see what happens (rukongai revolution or hell uprising? I'll be there for it)

[el-yon]

[ personal sharing time ]

beyond all the character/narrative reasons for Ichigo to live a full life, I have a very personal/political/professional (cannot dissociate the three) appreciation for the fact that he does not join the Gotei - nor any organization, for that matter.

I know Kubo draws mainly from Buddhism, and I don’t think he’s worried about political organizations at all, since his message is about self-realization. However, as he takes us through Ichigo’s journey, he does take us through different political arrangements, meaning, organizations of violence: oligarchic and militaristic regimes, colonialism/imperialism, theocratic and totalitarian ideologies, you name it. For instance, I think Kubo said somewhere he chose the spanish/latin motif to Hueco Mundo and the Arrankar/Hollowfication stuff because he thought it sounded sensuous, which makes sense with the uh... subtext of it all, BUT, the predatory viciousness of Hueco Mundo is such a strong colonization subtext too!. Also, expropriating a population/territory (Karakura) to literally fabricate and access sovereignty (the Royal Key)... wow. Then you know, don’t even need to get into Ginjo literally stealing powers, or everything about the Wandenreich.

But the most important “organization of violence” here is not the one that imposes one’s will onto another, but the individual one that informs human agency and autonomy. Ichigo happens to have all the available types of power in his hands, he has a lot of means to inflict violence, but he gets to learn how to use them to be his own person.

No gods, no hierarchies, no masters but himself.

When we’re kids, we’re vulnerable. Things happen to us, and we are powerless. Then, as we grow up, we gain physicial strenght, we get the chance to walk on our own, to actually do things, to be active - we get access to power, including, to do things to others. When we start Bleach, Ichigo gets this immediate power boost in his life and we see him fighting the world: he chops off Sora’s hand, he chops off the serial killer hollow and he is angry, he’s brutal, he’s violent - as we see even more clearly in the whole hollowfication journey. A journey that, beautifully, comes to its closure when he finally learns the truth about himself, stops trying to supress it, and learns how to use it, how to regulate it, and once he relies on Orihime. Which brings me to the next part.

Growing up right beside him, we have the development of three other young people, each one relating to particular aspect of his own powers, dealing with violence too: Chad is a window to racial violence and learns how to fight back on his terms, Orihime is a window to gender violence and learns how to fight back on her terms, Uryu is a window to genocide and learns how to fight back on his terms. And they are also helping and being helped by Renji and Rukia, two people who have been hurt by class opression and nobility dynamics, who also found their own way to make it work - the “we gripped each other’s hand instead of the blade” is very important to lil old me.

In a world that is terrible, but also full of possibilities, Ichigo and Karakura are (to me, this is a personal take) an amazing ode to human agency that is informed by self-improvement, desire to help, to care and protect more than any disciplinary power out there, and I love that for them.

#bleach appreciation #ichigo kurosaki #six hearts beat as one #karakura gang #this is also my way of saying why i firmly believe karakura gang are a married poly #when they die then we'll see what happens (rukongai revolution or hell uprising? I'll be there for it)