Attack From Behind: Secret Lives of the Karakura Fullbringers

Hey, remember when Kubo teased a Ginjou and Tsukishima flashback, only to never deliver?

"Don't worry, kid, that bulge is just some ramen I stuffed in there. You know, in case I need some tripwire to delay the other reapers of death from collecting my head. Say, would you like some pants ramen?"

Let's fill in the blanks of all the Fullbringers' pasts using every bit of information we have at our disposal, as Kubo clearly intended. The following reasoning will be totally beyond reproach, and therefore canon.


 

After all, even if I guess wrong, history isn't exactly stable when you're pals with

Tsukishima "Biffle" Shuukurou

Let's just say there's a reason Ginjou's sword has slits in it.

Fun Fact:
Tsukishima has a scar over his left eye, from when he was dropped as a child. (What he was dropped on to have formed that scar is anyone's guess.)

Life Before Fullbring:
Given Shuu-chan's obsession with controlling people at the most fundamental level and brushing away inconvenient facts, there's no doubt he is in fact the bastard son of a backdoor orgy at the 1992 Republican National Convention. His mother must have been attacked by a Hollow shortly thereafter, as Tom DeLay's especial soullessness rubbed off on her and Hollows love weak prey. However, she managed to narrowly survive the attack by ordering a one-way flight to Japan. Being a single mother was never easy, and Ms. Tsukishima never told Shuu about his true heritage, causing endless nights of restless indifference from the poor, lanky little demon. This is why he would simply go on to create a whole new heritage for himself, invalidating this paragraph entirely.

The Explosion:
The birth of one's fullbring comes at a confusing time in a young man's life, full of hair where they used to be none (unless you're Asian) and deepening voices (unless you're an Asian voice actor), and also spontaneous human combustion. Unless there's somebody there for you when Fullbring puberty comes a-knocking, you will end up in Soul Society's human goo trough with the rest of them. Luckily, Shuu-chan had just such a partner in the form of the affable but slightly cuckoo bananas substitute shinigami, Ginjou Kuugo. He came rushing to the strange serial stabber's aid when he thought he smelled burning ramen in need of rescuing.

Ginjou and Ichigo at their least confused

Since this was his first time witnessing the power of Fullbring, Ginjou had to spend the rest of week in the burn unit of intensive care, after which he took to his shinigami form rather more frequently.

Life With Fullbring:
Ginjou could be a handful to be around, to say the least, and so Shuu-chan's understandable natural inclination was to whip himself up a planet of slavishly devoted drone-friends. Far from being taken aback by unrestrained mind hacking, Ginjou saw this power as a sterling opportunity for in-depth role play--gallivanting about as a shinigami in charge of merely tossing souls up into another dimension was beginning to grow stale, after a goddamn week of that shit. After several madcap adventures in ancient and present times, all of which revolved around rescuing bowls of ramen, the stab-hole in Ginjou's chest became so well-worn that it resembled a Hollow hole, a gaping reminder that hey, those existed, and that they could retroactively generate more Fullbringer friends for their own amusement.

Life With Ichigo:
Tsukishima's suspenders were far too good for Ichigo, and so he settled on being the artificial enemy of Xcution while Ichigo was busy getting slashed across the eyes for his love of sentai costumes.

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
We can't know for certain what it is Tsukishima is doing now that he is allied with Soul Society, but we can be certain he's swapped out his regular earth suspenders for training weights. And since he's no longer in a flesh and blood body, nothing, he's still making siccing Hollows through the past on the moms of half the souls in the Rukongai (the other half, you will recall, got flushed down heaven's toilet by Mayuri after he skimmed two sentences of the abstract of Why Flushing Souls Down the Toilet WON'T Preserve the Balance Integral to the Survival of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).

Ginjou Kuugo

Fun Fact:
In a brilliant stroke of subtlety, "kuugo" is comprised of the kanji  空吾, meaning "empty speech." Kubo (meaning "empty bo"), has made it his mission as a mangaka to adhere to empty speech as faithfully as possible in honor of him.

No, you are literally just like Hody Jones.

Life Before Fullbring:
Ginjou was presumably already a substitute shinigami before he learned of Fullbring, and with just one little Tsuki-stab, he could subject his mom to a deathly struggle with an unseen undead horror from the sandlands of soulless devourers--the very same Hollows Ginjou had always been raring to fight. And now he had a tragic enough backstory of his very own to justify going rogue and kicking it as a badass dude who never took marching orders from on high. He preferred the 46 voices in his head to the dictates of the Central 46. His mom almost got eaten by a Hollow, see! There should be more substitute shinigami with less restrictions! And more ramen, and booty and blow! And more altering history as Ginjou Kuugo deemed ideal!

The Explosion:
Ginjou's explosion was a disappointment, since it didn't seem all that different from his typical hyperactivity.

Life With Fullbring:
Ginjou's Fullbring is centered around his pendant, not because he loved it all that much, but because he simply had it on him all the time. It turns the pendant into a very unwieldy claymore that even a dragon would think is overcompensatory. This is what happens when you can't net yourself a bankai in three days like some other substitute shinigami.

Life With Ichigo:
"Lost his powers, eh? Hmmm... well you know I've always wanted to SLASH HIM IN THE EYEBALLS AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
Ginjou was able to put away his grudge against Seireitei after Ichigo's good heart and windswept hair solved every political obstacle to improved substitute relations. These days, Ginjou serves as Soul Society's sole dentist.

Doing dental work with a gigantic broadsword is challenging but rewarding.

Asshole Beret

Fun Fact:
Asshole Beret isn't his actual name, which is Yukio Hans Vorarlfuckface

Life Before Fullbring:
Aloof and utterly detached from his parents, Asshole Beret stole from his father's company and flew the coop, after which his parents committed suicide. He shed no tears for them and instead devoted his life to his true parents, Ridge Racer and Super Dangan Ronpa 2. He even learned to code, but only in the programming language that specializes in generating grotesque digital monsters (also known as PHP).

"I wish my parents would leave me even MORE alone."

The Explosion:
Suicide my ass. Unless they killed themselves by tanning salon overexposure, they definitely ate some soulsplosion. And luckily for Asshole Beret, there's no such thing as law enforcement in Karakura, so he got away scot free.

Life With Fullbring:
Asshole Beret's fullbring is located neither in his beret nor in his asshole, but in his product placement.

Look how much fun he's having. He's having a lot of fun, he is.

Asshole Beret is the god of his own little digital world, and can even set a scoring system for best eyeball mutilations. He uses this fantasically powerful ability to play Ridge Racer with cheats, and also as a training chamber for other people he doesn't care about.

Life With Ichigo:
In order to join Xcution, Asshole Beret had to engage in some sort of partial Fullbring power swap which gave everybody leverage against each other's abilities in one way or another; for example, he couldn't delete the dimensional box that housed Ichigo and Ginjou's final battle unless Ginjou himself gave the go ahead. One wonders why a wealthy, sociopathic  CEO would bump around with peons he feels no attachment towards. Was it just because of their Fullbrings? Or was it due the cutting edge, revolutionary gaming experience of the PSP Vita, which industry magazines from Game Informer to EGM are calling a must buy, especially for the holiday season where for a limited time you can add a carrying case for only $69.99?

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
Asshole Beret is currently fighting against unemployment by expanding his company, and only after it grows three sizes will he be able to give the other Fullbringers jobs (it's difficult getting dead people into a pension plan). Since they'll be entry level jobs sorting paperwork and communing with the soul of that GODDAMN printer, they'll only be able to afford six-way rent in their old headquarters, now situated in Yakuzatown.

Kutsuzawa Giriko

 

Giriko forming a two man band.

Fun Fact:
Part of the reason Giriko was able to hulk out is because he's half homunculus.

See, he's not Bradley, he's Sloth

Life Before Fullbring:
The Kutsuzawa family heirloom was the Good Luck Watch. Giriko came to see the watch as a "god," and sought to use its power to usher death as he wished, which is absolutely evil since none of our heroes think of themselves as gods of death

The Explosion:
Giriko's backstory is rather tough to reconcile with what we've learned about Fullbring. The power was in the watch itself, and then because Giriko wanted to stop the watch from going all the way while remotely killing his wife as an experiment, the watch took his eye as collateral for reneging on the "contract."

Becoming a Liefeld character, the worst fate of all

I suppose this counts as our explosion? In any case, it's definitely what convinced Ginjou that the best way to bring about people's Fullbrings is wanton eye mutilation.


Life With Fullbring:
Using his power to fling floating numerals, Giriko made a mint working for Sesame Street.

Will he escape!?

Giriko's ability is confusing and there doesn't seem to have a limit to what he's able to do, which is why his time was caught between appearing in this series and Medaka Box.

Life With Ichigo:
Giriko's duty in Xcution was to set his time god timers to burn Ichigo if he didn't excel in his training within a totally arbitrary time limit. This is because he understands the god of time is in fact the JUMP Table of Content rankings.

When he realized his NUMBER was up, Giriko was quite happy going out with a bang. Evidently, with time one not only becomes four times taller, but his entire body fills with gangrene (those aren't muscles).

When you turn Giriko's knob, he engorges appreciably.

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
You would think Giriko especially would have gone to Hell instead of Soul Society, what with his casual disregard for his wife's life, but that sort of tossing family under the bus in order to appease a mindless law is just the sort of values Soul Society cherishes most.

Pictured: Posing for their romance novel cover

Jackie Tristan

The shit Renji's seen.

Yeah, it's impressive until you remember those rock pillars are digital constructs and could be toppled by a .01 mph digital air current.


Fun Fact:
"In chapter 471 of Jackie's past, her boots were black, but in the anime, her boots are white." Thanks Bleach Wiki! But where are the other 470 chapters of Jackie's past!??

Life Before Fullbring:
The only sympathetic Fullbackstory, Jackie's family was slaughtered due to her father's black market shenanigans and the pretty boots he gave her became stained with their blood. How she managed to get by afterwards is anyone's guess, but I should put the idea out there that there's more than one way a woman can become dirty.

The Explosion:
Tsukishima's blade decided to spare her an explosion, what with the grisly murders of her entire family. Those might have been a tad excessive, but this is shounen manga we're talking about.


Life With Fullbring:
Jackie's amazing super strength necessitated that she keep her boots dirty, an insufferably onerous ordeal nobody should have to go through. Thankfully, she would eventually meet someone who was practiced in the art of dying everything black.

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been sleeping like a log

Life With Ichigo:

Jackie's true calling was as a dance instructor or gymnast.

Jackie helped Ichigo train his Fullbring to its fullest potential so that Ginjou could somehow steal it and give it to all of them, all with the grand ambition of installing an oil slick into her shoulder firmly in her un-un-un-brainwashed mind. She sure hated her Fullbring though

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
Jackie was the only one who truly hated her powers, which is why she randomly lost hers. This speaks more to Renji's pitifulness than it does anything else--even boots can't bear watching Renji try his hardest. Jackie's current whereabouts can't be determined until the hiatus ends and Chapter 472 of Jackie Tristan finally comes out.

Dokugamine Riruka

If you ever find yourself in this position, consult a life counselor immediately, the snipers will come as soon as they can to put an end to your embarrassment

Fun Fact:
"Doku" means "poison," and "gamine" means "Hitler's true love and hero."

Life Before Fullbring:
Riruka was actually the only Fullbringer not to have been born of a human mother, instead forming within the bowels of Lucifer himself. (I suppose the technical term is "coagulating.") All it took was a puff of donut dust colliding with some of Hell's emptiest harlots to give rise to the Ultimate Strumpet, so magnificent in her pettiness that every sinner called a truce and cannon-shot that baby into a crib in Karakura, Hell's sister city.

From infancy, Riruka ate sweets and was featured in newspapers as the columnist of "The Bitch's Dishes," a column that came pre-splattered with tomatoes. She also came to love stuffed animals and invested in the Furby, finally giving everyone a concrete reason to despise her--the only good thing she's ever done.

The Explosion:
As alluded to earlier, it was Hitler who was there for her. Tsukishima had grown particularly fond of Hitler that evening after getting annoyed by the overt earnestness of the acting in Schindler's List.

Life With Fullbring:
In a sad state of affairs, Rukia was forced to flee from her home once she was spurned by the cute boy she had seen fit to use her shrinking power to trap into her doll house. Of course, Riruka's parents were forced to flee their home when they locked eyes with Riruka at 4 minutes old. They knew. They knew.

Even while on the lam, Riruka continued to apply her powers creatively by sticking host club boys into the vapid object she loves most of all--herself.

Life With Ichigo:
Riruka developed a crush on ickle Ichigo, so much so that it caused her to blurt out "He's so hot!" as though he were a piece of meat without any emotions.

Riruka, you're blowing your cover among the earthlings.

She would soon learn her lesson, however: Ichigo is a piece of meat with two wildly swinging emotions. As boyfriend material, he's not a rock so much as a Sisyphus rolling boulder ordeal.

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
When Riruka airwalked into the sky and disappeared with a dramatic plink (doubtlessly meeting Team Rocket in transit), where else could she have ended up except Soul Society? There she currently wallows in acute stuffed animal withdrawal, disallowed even the basic right to stuff herself with buff boy penises.

Well, I've managed to follow through with yet another thinly veiled excuse to cast aspersions at Riruka, and so we've come to an

Dokugamine Riruka

Fun Fact:
Dokugamine Riruka has the most hypnotically undulating pigtails in the history of fiction.

Life Before Fullbring:
My undying love for Riruka began the moment she lightened all of her hearts with her love of plushies, for whom she has sacrificed so much, including treasured things like intelligence and money. I just love how genuine she is, not like all those other rough exterior but secretly sweet girls who are only created to appeal to otaku.

The Explosion:
Riruka's explosion was less incendiary in nature, and more of an explosion of her ranking in the world's lists of role models! Although sometimes her fine booty issues little invisible explosions that shoot her into space, from which point she's able to see the top of those lists.

Reasons the Fullbringer Arc Is a Testament to Storytelling

1. Riruka
2. Riruka
3. Riruka

...

     17,012,650. Riruka
     17,012,651. Riruka

...

Life With Fullbring:

Due to her saintly, morally superior nature, her ability to shrink others down to size was a natural extension of her unparalleled virtue and honor. It also provides a valuable service to shrinking fetishists who otherwise would never find an outlet outside of make believe. Riruka dutifully fields all such requests.

Life With Ichigo:

Judging from a pixel-by-pixel analysis of Ichigo's eye pigmentation whenever Riruka is nearby, it's unbelievably obvious Ichigo is so in love with her it buckles his knees.

I dunno, it just popped out when Riruka drew by

Tragically, Ichigo forgot his maddening infatuation with undulating pigtails after Ginjou slashed him in said eyeballs. It's a tale of star crossed lovers that will last beyond Shakespeare, a tale the huddled masses will clutch tightly even as Riruka's galactic ass explosions herald the end of mankind.

Life With the Enemy You Should REALLY Be Fighting:
Duck, she's taking the moon for her donuts!!!