Attack from Behind: Yuha Bach Is Zangetsu, and Other Soul Nazi Musings

Was it any wonder why he wore a mask, with an eyebrow like that? The real criminal is the cad who broke off the rest of his mask.

Now that the Vandenreich have seemingly contracted the sniffles and decided to evacuate Soul Society without rounding off their ectoplasmic cleansing scheme, I think it's fair to examine what's happened so far in this amazing, bone-chilling THOUSAND YEAR BLOOD WAR, the scope and emotional charge of which makes our paltry two-year spit skirmishes seem shallow and stupid by comparison.


The sheer number of plot threads that have shot through our hearts in a mere bajillion chapters, the astounding confluence of shocking brilliances, the other sentences that sound like machine-assembled blurbs! It would take a thousand blood lifetimes to analyze everything, like:

*A beloved mysterious masked man got off a bed
*Several beloved tits-having Numeros reappeared, with Halibel in chains because Orihime can't be allowed to do anything competently
*Five beloved bankais swiped
*Sasakibe, the most beloved Okikiba, and Yamamoto all dying with varying levels of spectacle
*The revelation that the Gotei 13 used to be MAD PACK KILLERZ out of a Tarantino movie
*Some ultimately non-mattering but nonetheless beloved Vandenreich soldier getting stabbed by a mystery foot in Hueco Mundo
*Ichigo's heart-wrenchingly mild peeves about his mom being a belovedly inept Quincy and his dad being a young Otto von Bismarck

You don't want to know what he can do with his mustache.

Militarize me, ohh





You know, Nazis were kind of stupid and not nice, but Soul-Nazis really take the cake in the delinquent department. Everybody knows that by stamping out all shinigami, they're dooming the human race, who will no longer have a hope of rescue from Hollow corrosion via purification. Everybody but the Quincies themselves. But they've got more important things to worry about, like sewing matching Nazi chic uniforms and condensing the German language down to the words that sound cool.

The fate of the cosmos is within our grasp as we execute our Final Solution, but we can't be arsed to emote because that would be too human

Where do you think Ishida has been? He's been dutifully sewing their outfits without rest.

They say Hitler was born when they rejected his art. And he's voiced by the one and only kaiser, Ken Ichijouji. Coincidence?

But the resolve of the villains is matched by that of our admirable heroes, defenders of the peace, the Gotei 13!! Rose was so affected by the horrific, mass slaughter of his subordinates that he couldn't shut up about his retro guitar.

For lesser, inferior people like real world people, sadness, grief and worry are conveyed through grimaces, or most ignoble of all, tears

I guess you could call Rose a

Guitar Hero

Ladies, line up to the left, and pre-pucker your lips

Indomitable wills clashed and heated taunts flew through the air as all of the epic Captain vs. Quincy matches that were lined up refused to happen, keeping readers on the edge of their patiences.

Yes, we've seen both extremes of the emotional spectrum, from neutral, to yelling, to neutral, and nobody has embodied this more than the deep, nuanced personage of Kurosaki Ichigo

ME NO CAN PROTECT!? SHOUT, SCREAM, SLASH SLASH SLASH

PROTEEEEEEEECT

Ichigo has almost single-handedly saved the universe 5,000 times, but an easily drawn hamster wheel cage is a truly fearsome obstacle

But Ichigo demonstrates how much he's truly grown from the last arc, where Ichigo felt helpless at his lack of power, by remaining totally helpless.

So, Soul Society as usual, then

All the other stuff that happened at Hueco Mundo was a 200-chapter blur. There was some Arrancar baby who was eaten by a bespectacled angel? I don't remember, it's not important.

Sir, your Rinnegans are crossing

Kubo didn't even bother drawing the other end of the sword that put the conflict to rest, so it was probably only meant to draw us into a false sense of anything mattering. Real mangaka play everything by ear so that nothing comes off as contrived, since in the real world events are random and no one plans anything unless they are evil, in which case they spend every waking moment orchestrating events that don't matter.

Pictured: Meaningless background fluff. Marked are the places Kubo didn't feel like pressing his pen on the page.

In the real world, not everything makes sense, and not everything is fair, which is why Kubo teased dedicated fans with countless excruciatingly tantalizing pages of Byakuya breathing his last, only to have him inexplicably alive without even a throwaway line addressing... how.

Dying is what you should be doing much of currently

DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I was getting worried but justice always prevails

Well. The silver lining is that maybe Byakuya will get to suffer more?

Fuck it, I can't even be sarcastic about Byakuya. I hope you choke on a stroke.

Here's another asshole

Quincies were instantaneously matching the strength of their enemies before you ruined it for them, Kenpachi

Yes, the guy who was portrayed as essentially invincible in the novel series Kubo declared canon. Offscreened to show off what a strong guy the villain is. Gag me.

So, okay, here's where my awesome theory comes in.

Yuha My Baby Back Baby Back Baby Back Baby Back Yuha My Baby Back Baby Back is Zangetsu.

Why has Ichigo so callously disregarded the fact that his sword is a person with feelings ever since he sacrificed Zangetsu to take down Aizen? During SS Arc, Ichigo disregarding Zangetsu was a plot point, now it's plot dust. Ichigo treats his sword getting broken like a minor distraction. He isn't distraught about it at all.

"Does it have something to do with how everybody died?" "Don't be silly, they were fodder, besides, whoever heard of having a sorrowful face when sad things happen? That's when you talk about your goddamn fucking guitar."

Well, who do you think would be the most pissed off by Ichigo's neglect? Zangetsu himself. Muramasa could materialize at will, why couldn't Zangetsu? Ichigo may be a human Quincy Fullbringer and a Hollow-shinigami, but he's not got a whole lot of abilities taking up RAM in his sword besides color swaps for his generic energy slashes. It stands to reason that Zangetsu would have other abilities, and Ichigo is simply too distracted by alternately sitting in his room doing nothing and using his sword to save the world to have spoken with his sword spirit and discovered them.

If Zangetsu left Ichigo and began to resent him after he lost his powers one and a half years ago, why is Ichigo able to use Zangetsu's powers now? This is a whole new second Zangetsu, one Ichigo hasn't come to know at all, and probably never will. This is further supported by his being a Quincy from birth (excuse me while I punch myself into an impossible Escher shape).

A Quincy. FROM BIRTH.

Even though it's something you're supposed to be training to do but ohh conveniently now reiatsu has "memory" and no, NO. BAD KUBO. BAD, BAD WRONGNESS.

Anyway, given this framework, isn't it obvious why Zangetsu decided to take down Kenpachi and Byakuya? Ichigo had trouble taking them down before, and Zangetsu wants to show him that he doesn't need his help to utterly wreck them now. That both Kenpachi and Byakuya are unlikeable turds is just the strawberry on top.

Why aim to exterminate shinigami and decimate Soul Society? Once again, solely to make Ichigo fall into despair as he watches the realm he's defended and sworn allegiance to, crumble into chaos before his very eyes. Zangetsu is very, very butthurt.

Why tell Ichigo about his supposed Quincy heritage? Not only to vex him as Aizen did, but to secretly direct him into wasting his time developing his Quincy powers as opposed to growing alongside his new, second Zangetsu, the base mongrel Zangetsu that was formed through the reiatsu of others. Has Ichigo thrown away his pride?

Why did Zangetsu ally himself with Quincies? Do you even need to ask? Quincies are naturally moronic and easy to manipulate. They're such herd-minded buffoons that they can be led on a campaign of mutually assured soul annihilation without the faintest peep of protest, all that's required is bringing up a silly grudge from a 1,000 years ago and all Quincies from all cultures will robotically form ranks and single-mindedly seek vengeance for your sake.

How does one explain why Bach knows and hates Yamamoto from a millennium ago? It's simple: Zangetsu made a wish on the Hougyoku while attacking Aizen that it would hate Yamamoto 1,000 years before he was born so that he'd gain the power necessary to enact his diabolical ambition of extreme Ichigo trolling (precisely like the other main villains of BLEACH and Ichigo's prior archenemies, Aizen, Tsukishima and Ginjou, and now Yuha).

Go on, BLEACH fans, I dare you to disprove any of this. It all makes a sick sort of sense, doesn't it? As opposed to canon, of course.