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To commemorate the end of our months-long, start-to-finish foray through the Bleach anime, @smengus and I have made some updated graphs of our top ten Bleach men–now with commentary from both parties :D 

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not to be the kind of gross otaku that has some kind of over involved, pedantic opinions about anime titties, but like... I'm a little annoyed with the Isane swimsuit in BBS.

First and foremost I'm actually most upset that they didn't just go all-in on her little lifeguard costume. It's a genuinely good idea that suits her character: The fanny pack for medical supplies, the specific regulation model inflatable thing, even the little hoodie windbreaker(although it could've done with sleeves) to keep the sun off her while she presumably sits on a lifeguard's tower.

But then the actual swimsuit is both a really uninteresting design and not suitable to the theme... They easily could have put her in an appropriate one piece or sport top fit for a life guard. which brings me to the point of......

Isane's obnoxious chest size outside of or loosly orbiting canon... I know that technically the ""canon"" (on account of between chapter omake doodles and that one swimsuit cover spread) is that she's not only secretly been busty the whole time, but is one of the bigger shinigami girls, despite the obvious limitations and inconsistencies of just how flat she binds or is otherwise drawn.

In the one singular glimpse of her out of uniform in full canon, she still doesn't seem as comically busty as the swimsuit thing makes her out to be. And a lot of this stems back to her original appearance seemingly being a faceless, generic male body place holder, because Kubo likely hadn't designed a 4th division lt. yet. But he kept the general body type even as he gave her a proper face and personality, and changed bits of her demeanor.

Point being, she is shy, generally selfconcious about her appearance (albeit normally its about her height when its not about boob jokes) and she actively binds. So she shouldve had a goddamm sporty compression one piece not a fucking bikini! Yes this an actual thing that I am disproportionately mad about for some reason.

Here have some snippets of Isane's relatively consistent in-canon proportions across different arcs.

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I want them to cast the same VA as Orihime and let her do the exact same voice because it would be fucking hilarious.

Like just imagine.

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BLEACH - Name Games

At this point I think these are the only captains I’ve missed…

Yamamoto[山本] Genryuusai[元柳斎]

name reads “Mountain Root” and “Beginning-time Willow Sacred”  or if you want to rearrange that into something a little more readable in English “Sacred Ancient Willow” from “The Foot of the Mountain(s).”  Which lends itself pretty obviously to Genryuusai’s classic wizened old master look.  A look he actually kind of shed over time.  His first appearance had much more of a mysterious old man of the mountain vibe about it, and by the time he really came back into the picture he was more physically imposing, and eventually just full on BUFF.

Sasakibe[雀部] Choujirou[長次郎]

Not a captain but this is probably my best chance to cover him: “Sparrow Divide” and “Leader Next Son.”  To be clear that’s probably meant to read as “Next-Leader Son” and not “Leader Next-son.”  Literally just establishing him as Yamamoto’s right hand man.

The Sasakibe is a little vaguer.  Kibe[部] can read as either “divide” or “division” in both senses of the latter, so I’m really not sure what the aim was.  “Sparrow Division” as in “Sparrow Department” or “Sparrow Team” would be the more immediately obvious way to read this as a name in general, but that doesn’t appear to carry any meaning on its own.

On the other hand “Sparrow Divide” as in “Sparrow Split” or “Divided Sparrow” feels like it would hearken back to the Japanese fable of The Sparrow with the Split Tongue, which does actually loop back around, as in that story there is a large flock of Sparrows which is an image more or less equitable with the name “Sparrow Division.”  But I’m not entirely sure what the comparison to Choujirou’s character specifically is here. It may have been some unused concept, considering how little attention he really got in the story.

Komamura[狛村] Sajin[左陣]

I can’t believe I forgot Komamura until now.  The name Komamura literally means “Lion-dog Village” as in the kind that you always see stone statues of guarding temple gates; they have various iterations across different cultures around the far east, from China, to Korea, Japan, and even the Ryukyuan.  So alternatively you could read it like “Guardian-Dog Village.”

Sajin means “Left (en)camp(ment)” specifically in reference to the kind of battle encampment one makes when marching an army over land in older forms of warfare.  For one, this seems to paint the werewolf people of soul society as being pretty distinctly militant in their culture(what little of it we’re ever really shown)  But this is also interesting because it pairs with Tetsuzaemon’s name, meaning “Iron Left Defense Gate.”

And I think this means I’m officially running out of Shinigami to tackle in these…

Other Bleach - Name Games posts: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

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BLEACH - Name Games

Zaraki[更木] Kenpachi[剣八]:

Nice easy one, actually.

The placename, Zaraki means Zara[更] = “New,” Ki[木] = “Tree.“  It’s got no deeper meaning, really, just a literal description of a place where the most notable feature is a newly grown or planted tree, which makes sense given that we’re told he’s named after the Rukongai district he came from, and the newer, outermost slums are the most dangerous.

There’s a little bit of room to argue that some interpretation of the kanji [更] could mean “to grow at a late hour*” in the extremely specific reference to an old Chinese timekeeping system(it broke the night into 5 shifts, each 2 of our hours) where [更] refers to what would be around 3AM-5AM.  But you can see how something having only sprouted up at the last hours of the night is synonymous with “new.”

It could refer to Zaraki being a kind of latebloomer in terms of awakening to his sword and his true powers.  Usually you’d give a surname broader meaning, and a private name more specific, but it might be that Kubo leaned on this name, because it would be the only one the attribute direct meaning to the character since…

…Kenpachi[剣八] has no real personal name; at least not one we’re ever told of.  He inherits the title of Kenpachi[剣八] by defeating the previous one, who had taken it in place of his own name as per tradition with the 11th Squad.  But as what functions as his personal name, Kenpachi means Ken[剣] = “Sword,” Hachi[八] = “Eight.”  Which, by itself means very little, but we’ll clarify that in a sec…

Kusajishi[草鹿] Yachiru[やちる]:

Like Kenpachi takes her surname from the slums district she was found in.

Kusa[草] = “Grass/Lawn/Weeds,” and Jishi[鹿] = “Deer.”  So “the grassland where Deer are.”  It’s very literal, mostly unassuming, a vaguely characterizes the place as nice and safe.  But there’s a second reading to this, because Kusa[草] can also be used as a suffix to mean “Fake/Mimic,” and describing her as a “Fake Deer” (or perhaps “Fake Fawn,” if we draw on her physical characteristics) matches the very early foreshadowing we got that she was more powerful than she let on and that her seeming harmlessness is a facade.

And the name Zaraki gives her, Yachiru[やちる] is just written in hiragana; it’s purely phonetic and has no meaning.  Implication being that as a peasant, Zaraki can’t actually read or write, so while he can reference the name of a place that has a concrete writing of its own to figure out his surname, he doesn’t know what “Yachiru” means, just how it sounds…

…but as we know, he got that name from a different Yachiru[八千流], whose name means, Yachi[八千] = “8,000″ Ru[流] = “Style(s).“  The meaning here being that she’s named for having known/mastered “8,000 (sword) styles.”  The number might not meant to be taken literally, but as a hyperbole, or even just read as something like “Many/Myriad.”  It’s also suggested this isn’t actually her name, but a nickname, as it is clearly the basis for the title, Kenpachi[剣八], and put in this context, its meaning of “Eight (thousand) Sword (styles)” makes much more sense.

Unohana[卯ノ花] Retsu[烈]:

And since we’re right here, Uno[卯ノ] = “Early Morning’s” and Hana[花] = “Flower.”  It has a delicate and refined sound to it, conjuring images of morning dew in the soft light of the sunrise and bulbs opening into bloom.

A curious detail here is that the U[卯] here references the Chinese zodiac, specifically the Hare; but because of how older Chinese cosmology worked it can also refer to part of a 12 ″hour” day cycle that uses the same cycle framework.  It’s the “hour” in that system that co-relates to 5AM-7AM, hence my choice to translate it as “Early Morning.”  BUT the weird thing is that this isn’t part of the same timekeeping terminology as the Zara[更] in Zaraki; That one’s specific to a system of nightwatches, not to the zodiac related 12 hour day. (The zodiac sign of the 3-5AM hour would be [寅] = “Tiger.”)

But it’s interesting that they have similar time and night/morning related names.

The name Restu[烈] is literally just a word meaning “Violent”/“Furious,“ or “Intense”/“Fierce.”  In the latter case is describes her intimidating aura, even without hinting at violence like in most of her early appearances, but the former very obviously and literally references her persona as Yachiru and that whole twist that came much later in the story, but again, her name from the moment she was introduced was read as “Violent Morning Flower,” so really, we all knew what was coming.

Extra tidbit of Kubo’s wordplay: Both Unohana’s Shikai and Bankai are named “Minazuki.”  But the Shikai, Minazuki[肉雫唼] means “Meat Droplett Suck/Eat” basically the image here is slurping that last drop of fat off the bone of a well cooked bit of meat; and the Bankai, Minazuki[皆尽] means “Everyone/Everything Deplete/Exhaust/Use Up,” which can be a little tough to make sense of by itself.

(But in the context of her one use of it fighting Zaraki, it seems like it exhausts the stamina of everyone it affects; hence the imagery of Zaraki and Unohana being stripped down to skeletons, and the explanation that to unlock his potential, Zaraki needs to be pushed to the point where he can’t make excuses to hold back.)

Anyway, this has been another Bleach name post to add to the pile…

The Kuchiki family

The Kurosaki & Shiba families

The Ishida boys

Shihouin family (+Kisuke & Tessai)

Renji & Ichika 

The Visored

Shunsui, Nanao, & Ukitake

Kotetsu sisters, Kotsubaki family, & Iba family

Toushirou, Rangiku, & Momo

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Bleach - Name Games

Kyouraku(京楽) Shunsui(春水)

…is a name I got asked about.  Given he didn’t have a lot of directly related characters I wasn’t going to go into his originally, but I think I can pull a few other characters from his orbit into this to flesh things out.   The surname Kyouraku(京楽) reads ”Capitol”(city), and ”Music”/”Comfort”/”Pleasure” with the “music” here kind of elluding to theatre or concert performances, and not just any or all music. (and we know where that theme goes)  Basically he’s a spoiled city boy in the style of old courtly samurai dramas.  He’s born into a good family, he’s provided for, and although he may wield real power he doesn’t really need to, so he’s lazy and happy-go-lucky.  In that same theme, the name Shunsui(春水) Reads “Spring (the season) Water.”  Kind of a similar phrase to “rose water” or “sweet water” it compliments the image of a decadent and spoiled rich boy.  His name was always pretty definitive of his gimmick as a character.

So in relation to Kyouraku of course we have

Ise(伊勢) Nanao(七緒)

The name Ise(伊勢) appears to be based more on Chinese readings of the characters than Japanese, i(伊) is a kind of pronoun referencing “this”/”that” or even “him”/”her”/”it” depending on context.  Although as a name of course there isn’t the kind of context prose would have, but we’ll get to that…  The se(勢) can be read as “power,” “force” or “momentum.”  But let’s put this aside for now…

Nanao(七緒) means ”Seven String,” “string” here referring to a musical instrument string; given the kind of lingering tone of Chinese in her name, it’s possible this is a direct reference to the Chinese instrument, the Guqin.  The Guqin is an ancient and revered instrument, sometimes called “the grandfather of Chinese music” it is also the basis of the Japanese instrument, the Koto.  The Koto has 13 strings instead of 7, and is rooted in the culture of Japanese courtly entertainment.

So, when we put the two names together, “Him Momentum, Seven String” in the context of Nanao’s character being pretty solely defined by her roles as Kyoraku’s lieutenant I take this to mean, “The instrument of his momentum” as in she makes the music that gets Kyouraku up and moving.  It’s almost romantic at a glance, but also intentionally ironic in that she has to literally motivate him to do just about anything and rather than cute it’s just kind of a pain in the ass.

While we’re here, we might as well tackle…

Ukitake(浮竹) Juushirou(十四郎)

…since they have been a nigh inseparable pair of characters.  The take(竹) is a nice common kanji meaning “bamboo” a plant with a lot of associations thematically but we’ll come back to it once the other kanji start to specify meaning…  The uki(浮) is trickier.  The straight forward reading seems to be “float” as to float to the top of water (as opposed to in the air) but there is a secondary reading that’s based more in Chinese and isn’t a common usage in Japanese, meaning “excess“ or “superfluous.“  I bring this up because the name Juushirou(十四郎) means “14th Son” and helps suggest that the reading of ukitake should be “excess bamboo.”

You see, bamboo is a grass and one that grows with alarming speed.  Like other grasses they tend to have broad, shallow root systems —but other grasses don’t tend to get half as tall as bamboo!  Bamboo grows quickly, spreads far, and to top it off, the extensive shallow root systems have a tendency to “strangle” other plants, effectively growing all over and around other roots and absorbing all the local water before deeper roots can get any, causing competing plants to dry out and starve.  For this reason bamboo forests tend to be dense, singular and widespread.  It is due to this bountifulness as well as its unique strengths as lumber that bamboo has been a wide spread and affordable building material in the far east throughout history.

But what this means for our favorite sickly captain is that his name seems to peg him as one of many and kind of disposable…  Worth noting is that Kubo’s character notes have mentioned that Ukitake has 7 younger siblings, but no mention of older ones.  Given the familiar tropes at work here of sickly children in large families, the implication of his name is that Ukitake is the oldest surviving child of a poor family; their children ill from poor living conditions, and untreated due to costs.  This also positions Ukitake as a polar opposite facet of Soul Society’s social structure from Shunsui, whose name denotes a life of luxury and comfort…

Also there is of course the minor wordplay here on “Shiro” meaning “White” and the “-shiro-” in Juushirou.  Accounting for the white hair that also helps illustrate his sickliness.  

And I was gonna do Ukitake’s 3rd seats while we’re here, but if I were to do Kiyone’s then I’d have to do Isane’s as well.  And Sentarou’s got his dad, Jin’emon, and that technically has some fun indirect ties to Tetsuzaemon, and then that means also having his mom, Chikane in there… and you can see how that’d just ballooned the size of this post.  So maybe I’ll bundle the Kotetsu, Kotsubaki, and Iba families all together next.

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sternritters valentine cards <3

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new bleach key visual!!

this was the first thing when i saw when i went online this morning and im SCREAMING, it looks insane

according to someone who kindly translated the writing (not included in this pic) , there will be a special pre-screening of the 1st and 2nd episode on 11th September but it looks like this will be Japan only… Also new PV is expected to drop @ anime expo this weekend (edit: this isn’t 100% confirmed but heavily rumoured, if it doesn’t happen pls don’t blame me lmao) !! in the meantime, catch me crying over the new shinji art <3<3

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Put Them On A Team

Who's Getting Lost First

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地獄の燐気だよこれは

This is Hell's phosphorous energy

Wow I thought for sure from the English alone that Viz had done something weird here, but no. Kubo just picked the extremely specific and singular kanji rin[燐] for the chemical element Phosphorus, and also just ki[気] which in Bleach usually gets used to mean "spirit" but is also "life energy" in the Daoist sense.

The "plasm" bit in Viz's translation is a little wonky, but technically isn't 100% wrong? But it's not that kind of "energy." I also went with "energy" but it seems like it's comparable to reishi, or even the Fullbringer's bringer light.

Oh and of course Japan has various different folklore about fireballs and ghost lights, and this isn't the kanji or even a homonym for any of them.

But speaking of homonyms, rinki[悋気] and rinki[吝気] both mean "Jealously," and that might actually be a deliberate pun as it reflects on the nature of the gaki[餓鬼] being the "Hungry Ghosts"/Preta of Buddhist cosmology; dead, emaciated, invisible spirits tormented by strong desires they can't satiate, and who sometimes are said to antagonize the living to prevent them from indulging in what the Preta themselves cannot.

So, alternatively the line could be read simultaneously like,

This is Hell's Jealousy

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jigoku no gakidomo[地獄の餓鬼共]

The jigoku no...[地獄の...] bit I trust any weeb worth their salt can recognize as "...of Hell," but Gakidomo[餓鬼共] literally means "Hungry/Starving + Spirit/Ogre + <pluralizer>" and [餓鬼] is specifically the Japanese word for the Buddhist Preta(प्रेत) which are part of The Six Roads in Buddhist cosmology, which I've brought up in relation to Bleach before.

This is also why GAKIdomo[ガキ共] is used to refer to unruly children. Most translations I found went with the very non literal "Damn Kids" or "Damn Brats," but literally calling them "Hungry Spirits" as a comparison of their behavior is much like calling kids "little monsters/gremlins/devils"

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Jugram: Anyone can give me an example of failure?

Bazz-B: *rises hand*

Jugram: Perfect, another example?

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sternritters valentine cards <3

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Aizen, to the Espada: And that concludes the battle plan. Gin, you’re up.

Gin: Alright, time to see if you little shits were paying attention

[kahoot music starts to play]

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Detail I Love

The physical differences in Nemu and Hachigo that show how Mayuri’s work improved. Nemu looks mature for a child while Hachigo looks like a young child would. It also shows the personality differences of them.

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I’m pretty sure I’ve started this one, like, shitload of ages ago, but didn’t bother finishing due toooo… hmm, god knows why now.

still not forgiving you this shit kubo

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Bleach Text Posts - 15/?