Well, I certainly picked a fine time to catch up on my Bleach manga: just as we’re starting a new round of battles, one of which involves one of my favorite characters.

Now I’m going to be hanging on the edge of my seat for weeks and weeks, wanting to see how it goes, and howling every time there’s an issue that isn’t about him. Not that Kubo hasn’t been quite nice about that so far… after a manner of speaking.

Incidentally, is it just me, or is most of fandom missing the point about why the Soul Society and Hueca Mundo arcs are so closely paralleled?

I keep running across complaints that Kubo is weird or lazy or whatnot, and they all seem to miss that it's necessary for the two arcs to be extremely similar. It supports one of the biggest meta-points of the whole series, which is that shinigami and hollows are not separate things--that they are two sides of the same coin.

We have hints of this from very early on. When Rukia, as a child, faints in front of a shinigami, he tells her to eat, that hunger is a sign of spiritual strength, an indicator that she may be strong enough to become a shinigami as well. When Ichigo is down the pit, at Urahara's, Jinta tells him that getting hungry while he's a spirit is the sign that he's becoming a Hollow. We hear about the arrancar, hollows who have removed their masks and use swords, and soon after we learn of the Visored, shinigami who gain those masks. In both cases, an increase in power is the result. Just in case we missed everything else, we have the reverse-image black and white uniforms for a cluebat.

And just lately, during Grimmjow's fight with Ichigo, Grimmjow points out that they fight because they are hollow and shinigami, and that's what they do. That's what they've been doing for thousands of years. In short, they've been connected for thousands of years, and need I remind everyone of the first rule of shounen? Your rivals are just like your teammates--the only difference is the angle of view.

Everything that frames these fights points out that shinigami and hollows are, at the root, the same thing. The similarity of the two expeditions highlights the fact that, while the characters may not think about this and may not know the significance of their kinship, the story is building up to some point or revelation about that kinship--about the nature of the world and the human soul.

My own suspicion is that Aizen knows it already. Or, at least, that he thinks he does.



So we have this lovely meta-narrative structure building up, facet by facet, sketching out the shape of something big and strange looming at the end of the story, and almost everyone seems to miss it. And then they have the nerve grouse about how boring and unimaginative the story is. Philistines.

But it's okay, KT. Some of us appreciate you.