#and I don't want to spread anything that's not accurate to Kubo's answers on Klub Outside

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

Don't quote me on this but japanese speakers on Twitter are freaking out over a question that Kubo answered on Bleach's official fan club (Klub outside). Hitsugaya is actually older than Hinamori. I don't speak Japanese so not too sure about it.

I'll preface this post by saying, like anon, do not quote me on any of this. I saw something big seemed to be happening in the Twitter fandom and just used Google translate to find out.

With that said, I saw the Japanese fandom freaking out about it yesterday. I didn't bring it up here because I also don't read or speak Japanese, so Google translate gave me some....interesting translations. However, the general gist is that it seems someone asked on Klub Outside a question regarding Hitsugaya's age and Kubo has said Hitsugaya is older than Hinamori. Needless to say, my reaction was basically this:

All this time it's been implied again and again that, while not specific about the number of years, Hitsugaya was the younger one of the two, and I'm not just talking about his height and appearance. Some have interpreted the way Hinamori treated him when they were younger is that of someone who's younger than her, and then of course there's the whole 'Shiro-chan' thing, so yeah, I was pretty bamboozled when I saw this.

If it turns out this is truly the case and canon, then seriously Kubo just drops these facts and let's the fandom freak out about them XD I don't know if he's just trolling, if he doesn't know just how much hitsuhina fans would freak out, or if he knows exactly what he's doing and expected this.

As for me, if this turns out to be true, it'll take a bit of rewiring because 1) I've shipped them for over 10 years and you tend to build up a pretty solid perception of the characters and ship over a time period like that (that being, in humans years, I headcanoned that Hitsugaya was 13-15 years and Hinamori was 16-17 years old),2) it's a pretty big fact to just causally give to the fans. Up until now (and for the foreseeable future until someone can translate the answer).

Honestly though, unless he's significantly older than her (I'm talking, like, if he's hundreds of years older, like he should actually be an adult by this point but for whatever reason he's stuck in the body of a teenager), it doesn't affect my perception of Hitsugaya and Hinamori all that much. While there were certainly fics I wrote where I had their ages in mind (ie Hitsugaya being the younger and Hinamori the older one), for the most part it has been a big factor for me while I was writing fanfic for them. It'd just mean I'd have to go with a timeline, based on my theories and headcanons about how each of them came to be in Soul Society, that looks more like this:

Hitsugaya was born in the Soul Society. Granny, whether related to him or not, took him in and raised him.

Some years or so later, Momo arrives in the Rukongai, having died in the World of the Living as a child.

Toshiro, still a young child because of how slow Soul's age in the Soul Society, meets her not long after she arrives in the Junrinan. This would techincally make him older than her even though, in human years, she was older than him when she died and came to the Soul Society.

However, until I see the answer get translated by a credible source (ie. someone who has translated answers before and hasn't receive many corrections on their translations), I'm still going to see Hitsugaya as the younger one between him and Hinamori. Again, it doesn't really affect how I see them or their relationship all that much if it turns out it was the other way around.