Ichigo & Orihime

I don't think there was a scene where they told Ichigo? Unless there was one but it was released separately from WDKALY? But my memory for things that were released after the manga ended is honestly so bad lmao

oh gosh, I feel like we did figure this out or get some kind of confirmation but I legit don't remember lmao It's been too long. I think she was 25 when Kazui was born?? but idk for sure.

There's a masterpost with translations here :) thanks to missstormcaller!!

tbh I've never really paid much attention to the musicals??? But I love the arrancar so maybe this time I will hahah :)

Hi!! Thank you :) The first thing that comes to mind for me is the lust arc, I think they did such a good job at capturing the fear and hopelessness of those chapters, and the Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra battle was immaculate, it was just animated so well. And I also loved the episodes from the new anime with the Yamamoto battle followed by the wandenreich invasion, the animation and the music!!! So well done.

Yeah, I think things got better after the SS arc. I think once the arrancar arc started with all the Orihime/IH-centric scenes, the animators just couldn't ignore it anymore. It was becoming too obvious for anyone who didn't already have a strong IR bias that IH was where the romance was (the vow to protect followed by a love confession, etc). If you watch the AotS and SS arcs, it feels like the animators were intentionally cutting Orihime out and downplaying her importance, taking moments where she talks about Ichigo and having her talk about food instead, etc. while super embellishing canon IR scenes by adding in a bunch of flowery backgrounds and soaring music, on top of all the IR filler they added in (like the random filler shinigami guy who asks if Rukia and Ichigo are dating, and Rukia's just like "that's none of your concern" pffft.) I think the animators thought that Bleach was going to be a typical boy meets girl, main male/female duo that fall in love and that Orihime was just some bimbo who would never become important to Ichigo or the story as a whole (and interestingly, a lot of anime-only fans seemed to walk away with that impression as well). Things got better over time (albeit it still wasn't great), but I feel like the damage from the first two arcs was already done. People had already declared IR as their OTP in chapter one and were reluctant to jump ship (especially when it meant jumping to a ship they had already spent years hating on).

With Orihime, I think she should have been given some kind of power or origin reveal or something, because the way it wasn't confirmed she was a fullbringer until one of the novels just felt like sloppy writing, like why not confirm that in the actual arc at the time?? Plus I think he could have done more with how so many characters talked about her mysterious and god-like powers across the series, it seems like there was foreshadowing there that he didn't do enough with. As far as IchiHime, I would have liked to see Ichigo finally walk Orihime home! A lot of things with the final arc felt so rushed, especially those last few chapters, so it would have been cute to see them return to Karakura and him walk her home since the first two times he asked didn't work out. Especially after they just tag-teamed the final boss together, seeing him walk her home after that would have been so cute dkjlfkjggj

I mean, I feel like they're leaping over the object affinity in regards to fullbrings (i.e. the love of the object), as well as taking Chad's speech about pride and replacing it with love.

Quoting from the bleach wiki on fullbrings:

Object Affinity: By developing an affinity for a particular object, a Fullbringer can alter its form, granting powers that vary greatly among individuals. This affinity can be defined by one’s love for the object in question, or simply by an overall fondness for it. As such, this power is usually awakened through a strong emotion associated with the object, such as pride. Using this affinity, Fullbringers pull out the object’s soul and boost it with their own, transforming it in the process. 

Riruka says that you're drawing out the maximum power of something a person loves, a physical object. Ginjo loved his pendant, Riruka loved so many things she collected them in a dollhouse.

So Ichigo tries to think of a physical object that he loves or is attached to, or that's with him all the time, and obviously it ends up being his shinigami badge. Because that's what he loves, what that badge represents--protecting.

Chad then tells Ichigo to use pride. Not love, but pride. Unlike with the object affinity, the word love is never used here. And even if it were, I feel that people tend to conflate Kubo's use of "love" and "the heart" with romantic love, when it's about the bonds between people (as seen in Kaien's speech, and six hearts beat as one, etc.) Chad tells him to think of moments that he took pride in his soul reaper powers (and not, as you see, to think of the person he's supposedly in love with lmao). To which Ichigo responds there's too many moments/he felt pride all along, remembering multiple instances of his nakama, and Rukia is the last thought, rightfully so, as she is the one who gave Ichigo those powers in the first place, and her disappearing before his eyes was a representation of those powers being lost.

So, I think they're conflating what Riruka said about love of the object (the badge) with romantic love being the emotion Ichigo used to draw out the power of that object. But instead of love, Ichigo drew on pride. Or you could even say that he drew on pride as well as love, his love of protecting, of being a shinigami because that meant he could protect. But romantic love? That's not what's being presented here.

Nor would it make sense for that to be presented, given that Kubo said that romance is only supplementary in Bleach. The platonic, nakama bonds and "the power of friendship!!" like what Ichigo has with Rukia, is obviously going to be the one at the forefront in a moment like this, not the romantic bond with a love interest/future wife (although it's worth noting Orihime was shown twice in his memories of pride). She's there, but she's not at the forefront, and that's okay, because she is where the romance was at, and Bleach is a shounen. Kubo wasn't going to put Ichigo and his future wife front and center all the time when romance wasn't the focus. That's basic shounen formula, and people need to understand this lol

But, as per usual, IR fans always try to rewrite Ichigo's most notable trait--his desire to protect--as a desire to be with Rukia. Even towards the end of this arc, when he thinks he's lost his powers once again and is crying in the rain about how helpless he feels that he can't protect anyone...they still think he's crying about Rukia lol.

hey my inbox is working on web browser again!! hahah finally.

But yeah, I feel like so many IR arguments center around Ichigo's alleged romantic feelings for Rukia and how much she means to him, but you don't hear much "proof" from Rukia's side. She was the mentor, she was the older and wiser one, so she didn't need guidance and pep-talks from Ichigo the way he did with her (and even he grew out of needing pep-talks as the story progressed and he matured, but IR's still like to paint him as some lost, lovesick puppy without Rukia). There was an imbalance of power there--Rukia never had any romantic interest in the literal teenager she was mentoring, and it would be weird as hell if she did lmao. The day she met him she was bragging about how much older and more experienced she was than him, idk how people saw that as a romantic set-up 🥴