AFB: Quincy Queries

I know it's from a bygone time, wee lads, but massage your mind and try to remember, a time when Quincies were actually human! It seems like that conception of Quincies was from around roughly the era of Australopithecus at this point!

Please, tell us about your tragic past

Now I'm not sure what bizarre, tortured automatons they might be, but they sure as fuck ain't human.

THE GREAT QUINCY PUREBLOOD PREDILECTION

Kubo already used "bitten by a radioactive Hollow" for Fullbringers, so this time it's the opposite! Evidently, regular humans can have some Hollow in them and it'll actually give them the ability to commune with the spirits of the objects around them, a la Xcution. However, with Quincies, who possess the power to likewise absorb the spirit particles around them... Hollowness is poison. Because they lack the HOLLOW ANTIBODIES the rest of us enjoy.

HOLLOW. ANTIBODIES.

HOLLOW. ANTIBODIES.

And that's the real reason Quincies obliterate Hollows. Aha. Ahaha.

Orihime, Chad and Grimmjow are still stuck in Hueco Mundo, playing strip poker to while away time. They are useless when we have our plot convenience god Urahara Kisuke, you see.

So Urahara dissolved the Sternritters' grip over their stolen bankais by remotely Hollowifying them with convenient plot pills. I guess when Opie absorbed Allon like a year ago, he had prepared for the meal with an appetizer of subordinates who weren't pureblooded enough to be missing the proper antibodies. Quincies don't seem to think anything of murdering valuable personnel on a whim, after all.

What a standout seinen-like manga unworthy of its trappings in the mere shounen rag by the name of Shounen JUMP. I can smell the depth and complexity issuing from this series' every malodorous pore!"

Okay, so here's a question: If being a Quincy means lacking Hollow antibodies, and that's the real reason they despise Hollows... THEN WHY AIM FOR PUREBLOODEDNESS?? Wouldn't you want to be as mongrel as possible? What, is there some sort of negative correlation between Hollow antibodies (UGHHH) and the ability to draw spirit particles? Even if that's the case, then it's preferable to simply breed out the weakness to Hollows then to jump unquestioningly into some multi-generational blood vendetta against hungry ghosts that became that way through absolutely no fault of their own. Plus, the original explanation for why Quincies were in the wrong was because of butthurt over the Hollows getting purified; however, if they actually want to eradicate Hollows because of their inherent weakness to them, then it shouldn't matter whether they're obliterated or purified--either way, it gets rid of them!

Not to mention that killing the shinigami that'd be doing their job for them would also inevitably result in the evaporation of the universe. And so, the blood results are in--the Quincies, as a race (species?) are officially stupid.

What is Quincy culture like?

Okay, let's say they prize Quinciness because it seems to grant them random special powers from birth, like the X gene.

One can only imagine what the childhood of the Sternritter that ROARS was like.

And the PUREBLOODED Ishida family exhibited... none of those unique powers!

L for "The Lameness"

So when Mayuri had all the Ishidas apart from Uryuu and Ryuuken and a few other random packs of Quincies killed (or something), he was under the impression that he'd killed all of them. Does that mean the Vandenreich's soldiers were underground for, like, a thousand years? Despite all those flashy ass abilities they manifested? Soul Society didn't sense a disturbance in the spirit particles or something? They have a whole fucking Science Division, and nobody caught a whiff of any Quincies besides the Ishidas? Is Quincy power transmitted hereditarily, like Harry Potter magic? Wouldn't that make for vast swaths of Quincy lineages? What's with there only being like 100, maybe 200 or so Sternritters? Are there other Quincies, their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers? How were they raised? Were they completely shunned by society or did they keep to themselves for no particular reason? Did all Quincies obsess over killing Hollows?

Judging by the Vandenreich's complete diversity and unrelatedness to one another (apart from the THE YOURSELF twins), there would seem to be pockets of Quincy populations all over the world... right? That's all well and good, but then why do they all follow YHWACCCCHH so loyally? What's in it for them? Why do these Quincies care about a dude from a thousand years ago, progenitor or not? WHAT IS QUINCY CULTURE!?!?

I am most fascinated by Robo Quincy. How in the hell did he end up like that? Was he born an otherwise normal human boy who found that he could spawn robotic limbs or something? Why the inhuman obsession with collecting data? NONE OF THIS GELS. There is no coherency to any of this shit whatsoever. You can't just punch out twenty-something villains out of a generic character design randomizer. They need some sort of background to them, some grounding!

Let's take the Phantom Troupe from Hunter x Hunter as an example. They're all diverse with completely unique character designs--but they all have something in common that brings them together, a shared identity outside of their powers. Most of them were born in the forgotten slums of Meteor City, and fought their way out together, forging a strong camaraderie. THAT'S what makes them compelling as a league of antagonists. As for the Vandenreich, we haven't the faintest idea what the fuck their deal is. If they hate Hollows because of their lack of Hollow antibodies, then what sense does it make to attack Soul Society? Why hate shinigami at all?

Ahh, of course. For one hot minute, it slipped my mind that the Quincies aren't human beings at all. They're cardboard cutouts infused with superficial coolness, the only thing Kubo cares about. Who needs plot progression when you can have COOL ONE-LINERS and a BADASS DEARTH OF BELIEVABLE HUMAN EMOTIONS? Who needs satisfying conclusions to fights when they can be ever extended with a single "I planned for this all along because artificial stand-ins for people have no weaknesses." And this extends even to the shinigami, who used to have emotions, but now stand strong as badass banter machines... and nothing else.

I see you have your priorities straight, Shitsu.

Dudes. The very fate of the cosmos hangs in the balance. I think your voices are allowed to waver a little.

There actually were scenes of shinigami running in visible fear during the initial blitzkrieg, but the captains so far have shown precious little concern, not even when they had only five days to perfect their non-bankai finishers. I guess that all the strong people in BLEACH were born dead, and the stronger you are, the deader you are.