#Xcution
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2004 vs 2024
#bleach#bleach tybw#shinigami#arrancar#fullbringer#quincy#gotei 13#espada#xcution#sternritter#ichigo kurosaki#bleach ichigo#gin ichimaru#byakuya kuchiki#shunsui kyoraku#bleach shunsui#kaname tosen#toshiro hitsugaya#mayuri kurotsuchi#yhwach#kugo ginjo#sosuke aizen#aizen sosuke#ulquiorra cifer#grimmjow jaegerjaquez#20th key visual special pv
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Bleach Chapter 53.5 - "Bad Blood Exhaust"
Jackie was always one of my favorite, underrated characters in Bleach and seeing how she is one of the few Fullbringers to never get a Volume Cover, I decided to make one myself. Nothing special here; just a simple edit with Manga panel, title and a volume name based on the chapter of the same name.
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UraIchi. Xcution alternative arc
Setting: Xcution is after Sado and Orihime. Ichigo can't be manipulated by Tsukasa because of the state of his soul so everyone forgets about Ichigo safe for Urahara. Urahara remembers Ichigo because of any reason: soulmates, soulbond inflicted by Urahara secretly from Ichigo, Urahara's cunning nature keeping him from falling into the trap and etc. Ichigo still wants to help his friends despite not having powers, the fact that all fullbringers are humans helps him a lot.
Because the Kurosaki family could interfere, they forgot about Ichigo too. Ichigo would go and try to live on his own meanwhile studying, meanwhile working, meanwhile trying to save his supernatural friends from supernatural threats without having any powers. Urahara prevented it and secretly took him in (not to the shoten maybe) under excuse of Ichigo being the only one fully unaffected by Tsukasa's technique.
It's a small alley not so far from the bar where Sado and Orihime often disappear for days. Seeing his old friend slashed injured deeply by some weapon Ichigo wants to jump forward and to fight off the threat. He can't do it because of sudden presence behind him and pale hands holding him in place.
"Are you mad?" - Urahara hisses barely audible into Ichigo's ear. His palm covers the teen's mouth and he firmly presses the teen against himself.
Ichigo would respond but his focus remains fully at the scene not far from them. His instincts fully miss Urahara as any threat. Kisuke hums inwardly at the misplaced trust. Ichigo jolts few more times in Urahara's hold during the fight. Luckily it ends quickly with the temporal retreat of both sides. Ichigo is tense for few more minutes until he finally relaxes enough to register the position he is in.
Ichigo is firmly pressed, immobilised, against Urahara in one-hand grip around his body. The other hand keeps the teen's mouth shut pushing the jaw against the skull. Urahara's face is close and lips almost touch Ichigo's ear to be as silent as possible.
Kisuke smirks inwardly when Ichigo turns red from embarrassment. He takes them from the place back to Ichigo's temporal living place. In well kept anger Urahara throws Ichigo, back to the wall. He graps the teen's hair painfully, inwardly annoyed at how physical he always needs to be to convey his emotions.
"And what were you going to do?" - Urahara asks with voice on edge between mockery and anger, - "Jump before the weapon you can't even see? You *are* suicidal, aren't you?"
Ichigo growls in annoyance but heat in his eyes isn't as fierce and defying as Urahara would've liked. He's hit the spot. Some irrational part of Urahara wails how wrong it is. Something possessive demands to show Ichigo that the teen has no right to leave him like this, or in any way, for this matter.
#plot bunny#plunny#yaoi bl#bleach ficwriting#uraichi#urahara kisuke#kurosaki ichigo#Xcution#Xcution arc#possesive love#possessive#suicidal thoughts#suicidal behaviour
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Lille Barro's Godlike Power
In my opinion Lille Barro is the most interesting member of the Schutzstaffel.
He is the first Quincy that Yhwach granted a Schrift which makes him believe that he is Yhwach's greatest creation/masterpiece.
Despite not being part of the Soul King like the other members he had the powers of a god and led the Schutzstaffel or so it seems.
Lille Barro was quick to correct Oetsu when he stated that he gain an additional power when he was revived through Auswahlen but I think was a hint to why he is so powerful.
I have a theory that Lille Barro's original Schrift was A: The Axis. I think like Uryu he received the same letter as Yhwach.
While Uryu received it because he was Yhwach's successor, I think Lille Barro got it because Yhwach's Almighty was sealed by Ichibei so a replacement was needed.
I think Lille Barro's original power had to do with the optical axis. According to Wikipedia it's the "imaginary line that passes through the geometrical center of an optical system such as a camera lens, microscope or telescopic sight." Which fits with his sniper aesthetic. The emblem on his eye looks like a crosshair. His eyes and third eye lid in his second Vollständig form are reminiscent of camera lenses. I think it gave him a superior eyesight for sniping.
Letzt Stil has an ability similar to Sklaverei. I think similar to Quilge he used it to absorb a soul and that soul being a Fullbringer. I think when Lille Barro restored his powers his new power awakened changing his Schrift.
I don't know if X has any special mean to the Fullbringers but I think this a big clue to Lille Barro's connection to Fullbringers.
Fullbringers can manipulate the the soul in objects. It was explained all things in the world have souls.
I think this ability augmented Lille Barro's powers allowing him to penetrate all.
I think it explains why his Vollständig is so unique among the Sternritter and why he as a second form. Similar to Ichigo having two Zanpakuto Lille Barro has two sources of powers.
He had similar powers to Aizen and in Bleach one way to Godhood is the pouring of one soul into another to sublimate it.
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It occurs to me that when Kugo and Yukio have their confrontation
Yukio says that what he is trying to do will depend on what it is Kugo wants
At which point Aura appears and is all “You should join Lord Tokinada he’s looking to turn the world upside down too”
Kugo rejects this with really no waffling and of course prompts Tsukishima to try and take Yukio back with a bookmark, which seems like it would be the most predictable move he would make. And then we learn that quite literally the moment Aura approached Yukio it was with the explicit aim in mind of relaying what Tokinada and the Tsunayashiro family had done (in relation to Fullbringers) to Yukio in a way Tokinada couldn’t notice. Knowing, with Tsukishima as a conduit, it was very likely for that information to get passed to Kugo—and he would do only one fucking thing to Tokinada once he knew what he was responsible for.
I don’t know. Something about Aura naming the cult X-cution and while none of the members have any idea about this, there being this plan in mind that meant it would also be acting for Kugo in this way like an extension of Xcution. That it was with certainty named that with the express purpose of getting our Xcution’s attention. Aura’s primary goal is for sure to save Hikone by removing Tokinada, but even if Kugo on her side is just means to that end it’s still unquestionably in a way that saves him too.
#bleach#Kugo Ginjo#aura michibane#bleach cfyow#xcution#ginjou kuugo#now that being said… how did the cult members who ended up in Soul Society uhh#aura. how did they get there aura. please say natural causes aura.
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#drawing#fanart#fan art#art#traditional art#traditional drawing#sketch#anime#manga#traditional sketch#dollhouse#Xcution#fullbringer#dokugamine riruka#riruka dokugamine#bleach thousand year blood war#bleach drawing#bleach 2022#bleach tybw#thousand year blood war#tybw arc#tybw
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Happy birthday, Riruka Dokugamine!
I don't usually like characters like her but she grew on me and is quite sweet!
#Riruka Dokugamine#Bleach#bleach manga#bleach anime#Fullbringer#bleach Fullbringer#Xcution#bleach Xcution#Riruka#Dokugamine#bleach Riruka Dokugamine#bleach Dokugamine#bleach Riruka#Dokugamine Riruka#please turn on Tumblrs date function to get the date right
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wip of a "draw six characters" esque meme
#cross sans#murder sans#dust sans#xtale sans#dusttale#dusttale sans#xtale cross#utmv#utmv fanart#utmv sans#ut au#utmv au#dtdrawz art#there are no other utmv parts to the rest of the meme sadly but that's ok#xcutioner gets to be posted separate because I think they turned out cool
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for the sanshipping: dust teaching cross how to flirt. i think it will be cute if dust is lowkey flirting with cross (terribly of course), and cross is flustered by the attention :)
[Xcutioner, Cross doesn’t know how to flirt, poor guy, verbal dust here, we bully Cross in this house…]
note: first sans ship ask done!
"Wait, are you saying you've never...?" Dust let the words hang, hoping Cross would complete them.
That is, if the poor skeleton hadn't curled up on the couch, hiding the purplish blush on his face beneath his long scarf.
“Seriously?” Dust exclaimed in disbelief, lightly shaking the cigarette between his fingers. “I always thought you were the type that made guys and girls run after you.” A laugh escaped his teeth as Cross replied something, but all Dust could hear were some incoherent grumbles, muffled by the ever-present scarf.
Taking one last drag from the cigarette, Dust adjusted himself more comfortably against the couch's armrest, watching Cross burrow deeper into the cushions. “You don’t need to be embarrassed; it’s common for people not to know how to flirt.” There was no comfort in Dust’s voice; on the contrary, he seemed to enjoy making Cross even more nervous, grinning mockingly at the curled-up figure beside him.
Seeing his teasing take effect, Dust couldn’t suppress the lazy smile that reached his eyes, especially when Cross quickly emerged from beneath the scarf, revealing his skull painted with embarrassment.
“I know how to flirt!” he corrected, not very confident but still brave enough to meet Dust’s gaze — feeling small under those two red orbs that glimmered mischievously beneath the hood.
“Yeah?” Dust flicked the cigarette lightly in the air, letting some ashes fall onto the carpet as he turned to face Cross more fully. “Then flirt with me.” It wasn’t a request; Cross knew an order when he heard one.
Cross’s eyes darted up and down on Dust, searching for any crack in his composure, but the skeleton remained impenetrable. His gaze stayed fixed on Cross, savoring his nervousness like a fine dish.
“Uh… um…” Cross had never sounded so pathetic before. All that came out of his mouth were incoherent murmurs, embarrassed wordless sounds that exposed his inexperience.
The brief glimpse he caught of Dust beneath the hood — a smug expression, almost amused by the situation — made him look down, defeated by his own embarrassment.
However, Dust wouldn’t let such a delightful moment end so quickly.
Bringing his gloved hand to Cross’s face, Dust gently traced his fingertips over the other’s purple cheeks before firmly gripping his jaw and lifting his face — two white dots staring back at him again, both trembling under his gaze.
“Ah, ah, ah, eyes on me, pretty boy~” he purred, no longer an order but more of a request that Cross quickly complied with a soft whimper.
Dust took another drag from his cigarette, savoring the moment before releasing a puff of smoke into Cross’s blushed face — watching him squirm in his grip, coughing lightly as the smoke filled his nostrils.
Giving his face one last squeeze, Dust let him go, returning his hand to his pocket.
“Heh, you’re really terrible at this.”
“But—I didn’t even try!”
Dust let out a dark chuckle before letting his arm drop to his side — the smoke rising slowly. “You didn’t need to; your whimper was enough.” He laughed even louder when Cross curled back into his spot among the cushions, once again hidden beneath his white scarf.
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your hand-grenade heart
gift for lovely moot @qin-qin16. happy early birthday!! (better early than late lol) hope you don't mind lovers-to-enemies (... or is it) crossdust :3
2k+ words of sadness. no warnings applied... i think.
cross isn't sure what part of the multiverse he has stumbled into. it was a stupid decision he made on the fly, opening his own portal inside of nightmare's own to prevent the guardian of negativity from dragging him back to the hell he knows nightmare would love to put him through again. the sudden time-space disruption caused a small implosion to happen, flinging cross across the dimensional stream until he landed face-first into the hard surface of lava-surrounded rocks.
and now, he's here in this barren universe, this empty underground, walking all the way to the lab to figure out where he is. the dead silence is messing with him quite a bit - an unfortunate aftereffect after living in a white space with virtually no one else (apart from xchara) for who knows how long. he takes a deep breath in and marches forward, resolutely ignoring the deluge of frantic thoughts starting to bubble up in his mind.
when he finally arrives at his destination, the first thing he does is checking the security footage on the computer in the lab, which dates back at least two years as he can see. he skims through the footage - no soul pops up on the monitor at all. this place has been dead for a long time, which is... unsettling. is this a pacifist timeline where monsterkind has all moved to the surface? or is this a failed genocide timeline that the human refused to properly delete for some reason? either way, he has to get out of here as fast as possible.
the thing is, his multiverse travel token has been broken since his fall into this universe. without xchara's powers, cross is essentially out of luck. he doesn't think he's knowledgeable enough about the mechanics behind travel tokens to fix his own.
which means he's basically a sitting duck for anyone coming across him right now. nightmare will find him before dream can, judging by how hard cross is sweating right now.
happy thoughts, cross! he thinks to himself. happy thoughts!
easier said than done, honestly. being stuck in an angel-damned universe with no obvious dimensional travel technology is a terrible situation.
... wait. he just remembers something. killer and dust often commented on how the machine in the basement under the snowdin's house is probably designed for time-space shenanigans. it might be broken, as it is usually is in most universes, but maybe its magic signature is similar enough to that of a travel token for him to charge the token up again.
it is a farfetched idea, but he has to try regardless.
his trip to snowdin is less nerve-wracking than he thought. there's something both soothing and frightening about the white snowy landscape. there's a familiar scent in the air, an electrifying taste in the snowfall that makes cross stop in his tracks.
... it can't be, right?
cross opens the door to the house at the end of snowdin, and-
-and dust greeted him with a tired mumble from the couch. cross grinned and stole a quick peck on dust's forehead, making the hooded skeleton blink in surprise at him.
"rough day?" cross asked, to which dust nodded, quieter than he usually was. an especially tough day then.
cross hummed, joining his boyfriend on the couch. he snuggled into dust's slightly larger frame, and dust made a half-indignant half-pleased purr in his throat. cross purred back, stretching himself so that his cheek was pressed on dust's collarbones. he saw, from the corner of his eyes, dust clenching and unclenching his hands by his sides, as if he was conflicted on whether to hold cross in his arms or not. dust's body was cold, but cross didn't mind that. he waited for his body heat to gradually trickle to dust, his layered uniform keeping him warm enough in this forever-snowy weather.
as time went by, dust hesitantly wrapped his arms around cross and pulled him closer. both of them stayed there on the couch, indulging in each other's closeness. cross let out a satisfied rattle deep inside his bones. he wished this idyllic scene could go on forever and ever and-
-and he feels like he has been blasted back to the past. the couch is still the same, or maybe it has gotten even dustier. it doesn't surprise him - he was the tidier between them two after all. what surprises him is that the house is not destroyed. everything is the same as it was, as if stuck in time, a photograph of a memory left untouched in a house of still lingering ghosts. cross traces his hands on the coffee table. his hand picks up a fine layer of dust.
his feet lead him to the kitchen next, where he sees the first sign of difference: a bunch of wine bottles discarded on the floor that no one has bothered to clean up. the fridge is not closed, emitting another breeze of coldness into the atmosphere. cross sits at the dining table, as if he's in a trance, as if he's dreaming. it's been so long, and yet everything is the same.
he doesn't know what to think. he doesn't know what to feel. he puts his shaky hands on the table and-
-and waited for dust to put his plate on the table. it was a bit embarrassing, being shooed off the kitchen because he didn't know how to cook anything else but soldier rations. dust was kind enough to ban him to the dining table and order him to stay still so he could fix the surprise, now fire hazard, that cross had intended for his boyfriend.
when dust placed the dish in front of cross, the soldier didn't know what to do but hang his head in shame. dust took the seat across from him and started eating.
"dig in," dust told him, and cross reluctantly picked up his spoon and slowly ate through it.
"uhm, look..." cross stammered, embarrassed. "i'm sorry about the fire. i didn't know the stove would do that..."
"it's fine," dust said, flippantly. "it wasn't a big fire anyway."
"yeah, but still..."
"i think it's quite cute of you to try to cook a surprise meal for me, cross," dust interrupted what cross had to say, and cross flushed.
"oh! uh..." cross scratched his head, laughing nervously. "it's our one-year anniversary. i just wanted to make you something nice..."
dust looked at him, a smile in his white eyelights. "like i said, it's cute. i appreciate it." he looked down at his plate. "no one has given me a nice gift in a long time."
cross felt his face get even hotter. he placed his spoon on the table, ready to say the words he'd been putting off for a while, and-
-and he resists the urge to flip it. is it anger singing in his veins, or frustration? or something else? he can't tell. all the memories here are suffocating in its sweetness, as if taunting him with a past that is no more.
it's dangerous to feel this way towards an enemy. it's his job now to protect other people from nightmare and his gang. penance for what he has done.
and yet, he can't help walking up the stairs. he can't help opening the door to their bedroom. he can't help staring at the untouched state of it. his - or more like dust's now - little plushies are still on his corner of the bed they have picked and put in the room. his shelf of comics are still there next to dust's shelf full of fiction novels. the crudely molded little ceramic rabbit he has made for dust still sits on the table, facing the window. everything is the same as it was. the same as the day he left dust behind.
*creaaak*
he doesn't know how long he has stood there at the doorway, but when he hears a click at the front door, his panic skyrockets. he quickly dashes inside the closet (where he briefly finds his monochrome clothes are still there) and holds his breath as he hears creaking footsteps coming upstairs and into the room.
peeking through the gap of the doors, he sees him. dust. his ex-lover. sitting silently on the bed, unmoving, staring outside of the window with his dull white eyelights. it's usually unsettling to see a silent dust on the battlefield, but in the domestic atmosphere of the house, dust's silence reads more as melancholic than dangerous. cross hasn't seen him like this in a long time. so still. so tranquil. so... pitiful. gone is the ferocious cannon of nightmare - what's left here is a broken vestige of a lonely being, trapping himself inside a house stuck in the past. he looks unhealthy, as if one breeze can take him down easily.
cross moves to see his former flame better, but then he accidentally steps on a coat hanger. a loud sound echoes in the silent space. and the figure on the bed twitches.
"who's there?" a murmur comes out of the hooded skeleton. cross doesn't dare breathe. dust continues, "come on. i know you're there. show your face."
cross doesn't obey. he stays still in the closet as dust walks around the place, his voice gradually getting louder.
"killer, i swear to asgore's beard, if i found you in here... i told you to get the fuck out of this universe!" a little mutter. "... yeah, yeah, you're right, paps. killer doesn't disobey nightmare, does he? must be someone else..."
cross can hear his soul beating frantically. dust walks back into the room, looking around and continuing to mumble to himself.
"might be that prissy error... though he wouldn't be stupid to destroy this universe... but that freak is crazy..."
dust swivels his head to the closet that cross is hiding in, his eyes a blazing red and blue. in a soul-stopping second, cross doesn't care that he doesn't know this place well enough anymore to do a shortcut, but he does anyway, teleporting himself to the middle of the living room. he stumbles upon crashing on the coffee table, and runs out of the front door once he hears the loud demented cackle from dust.
"i knew you're there!" he hears dust shout in delight.
cross runs and runs, uncaring of his injuries. his mind is a jumbled mess and his shallow breath is fogging up his already blurred vision.
he's gonna kill me, his inner voice yells at him. he's gonna kill me for sure. he never forgives me.
a bone attack sprouts from the ground and punctures his leg. with a pained yelp, cross collapses just as a heavy weight appears on top of him, one hand holding on his sternum.
"you fucking rat, i caught you!" he hears dust crow. "you think you can run from m-" the voice suddenly stops. "... cross?"
the grip on his sternum momentarily falters, and cross doesn't hesitate jabbing his smaller daggers right at dust's stunned face. the hooded skeleton falls back, and cross grabbed at dust's travel token, which he always keeps under his shirt, and yanks.
cross kicks at dust, hard, and wobbles on his feet again and runs. as if awaken from a nap, dust shouts, "wait! cross, wait!"
cross doesn't listen. he tries to keep as much distance as possible from dust, haphazardly teleporting through the snowy forest, all the while calibrating the co-ordinations of the token. his pain is at the back of his mind as he forces his body to power through the adrenaline.
"darling, please! don't run away!"
cross punches the co-ordinations he wants to go and pours his magic into the token. he sees it light up and breathes out a sigh of relief.
"cross!" he looks back and sees dust a few feet from him. "cross, i-"
he doesn't hear the next words coming out of dust's mouth. light envelops him as his body fractures into tiny particles traveling through the in-between of the multiverse. the last thing his eyes see before disappearing is the strange emotion on the face of his ex-lover, frozen in an anguished expression with red tears running down his cheeks. it doesn't look like dust at all.
huh. what a silly mirage he encounters.
dividers here by @\cafekitsune
#weewoo on the sad train we go#i love doomed yaoi :3#i write#cross sans#dust sans#murder sans#crossdust#xcutioner#utmv#undertale au#sanshipping#sanscest
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#Psylocke#Morph#Cyclops#Scott Summers#X-Men '97#X-Men#Marvel#Xcutioner#gif#gifset#amazing morph#10's#also i didn't realize how based morph kinda is#they're carrying on#their powers kinda go hard
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◤ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄◥
𝟐𝟎𝐭𝐡 𝐊𝐄𝐘 𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋
◣__________◢
歴代の強敵たちと一護の戦いの
軌跡を描いた、アニメ20周年を
飾るスペシャルビジュアル──
✦20th公式サイトリニューアル
#bleach#bleach tybw#shinigami#arrancar#quincy#fullbringer#ichigo kurosaki#bleach ichigo#yhwach#kugo ginjo#sosuke aizen#aizen sosuke#ulquiorra cifer#grimmjow jaegerjaquez#byakuya kuchiki#sternritter#espada#quarto espada#sexta espada#captain gotei 13#division 6th#squad 6th#gotei 13#xcution
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Uncanny X-Men #295 / Published: October 1992 / Artist: Brandon Peterson
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"I did it for only two reasons. I did it because I hate you all. And I did it, ultimately, because I hate myself..."
#stryfe#nathan summers#Nathaniel Summers#xmen#xcutioners song#xmen fanart#Marvel#Marvel comics#cable
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The Kids in the Room
The Fullbringer Arc is tighter and more coherent than anything in the manga so far, telling a very straightforward story about a young person’s alienation from the world he lives in. It has very specific things to say about the role of parents, mentors, and friends in the process of a kid becoming an adult and does a pretty decent job of looking at how different organizations (the state, gangs) can play into that young person’s life. And then, at the climax of the story, it very intentionally takes all that hard work, and for what I must assume were business reasons, tosses it all away.
The Arrancar Arc was a glorious, grandiose mess. It featured no fewer than three separate worlds, four distinct factions, and probably around twenty characters with active character arcs. Although it started off with the truly breathtaking ambition of weaving all of this together, by the end Kubo had cut a considerable amount of the subplots in favor of actually getting to the end of the story he was telling. And it still mostly worked! Ichigo’s character arc, at least, ended where I think it was always going to: sacrificing his nigh-unlimited power after understanding the price of that power.
But of course, giving up all of your powers isn’t really a long-term solution for Ichigo, just like it isn’t for any of us in life. Ruling over three worlds might tend to corrupt a person, but we all want—and need—to feel like we have some power over our own lives. Ichigo, in his final year of high school, living on the precipice of adulthood, feels this in more than one way. He had this power. He sacrificed it. And yet now, he’d do anything to get it back. Anything except ask for help.
You see, asking for help is hard, but especially in the context of “seeking power”, which in this story is an even less veiled metaphor for “growing up” than it usually is in shonen manga. Asking for help means admitting both weakness (you don’t have the power to get what you want right now) and discontentment (there is something you want that you don’t have). For Ichigo, whose primary method of coping with his mother’s death was asserting a premature independence, this would be difficult even if the thing he was seeking wasn’t something he had very publicly given up in front of his friends and family. Yes, there are times when he doesn’t want to involve them to protect them, but a big part of his self-imposed isolation is his own ego, his unwillingness to reveal to people who love him just how miserable he is, out of fear that it will reveal him to be somebody they won’t love anymore.
And that’s where the Fullbringers come in. Ginjo puts in a tremendous amount of work into getting close to Ichigo—lying to him, giving him little bits of information piecemeal without telling him the whole thing, and of course, offering him power that Ichigo desperately wants. But none of it would be possible if Ichigo didn’t have this preexisting desire to do it all himself, or at least to appear to his friends and family like he’s doing it himself. Ginjo does what nobody else in Ichigo’s life does—offers him assistance without making him ask for it. Hook, line, sinker.
The body of the arc covers this masterclass in manipulation from Ginjo, and it’s a huge change from what has, up until this point, been a very standard shonen battle manga in terms of content, where the fights happen on a more or less weekly basis. Here, it takes over half the arc for Ichigo to fight anybody! It’s all character development, even for the side characters like Orihime and Chad, who don’t get fights of their own but do get to express themselves and show initiative in ways they were largely denied in the previous arc. It’s all a long, slow burn to the climax, where Tsukishima suddenly strips away the support system that Ichigo had so undervalued, leaving him defenseless against Ginjo’s theft of his power.
And that’s my big frustration with the climax. It’s not that I like the Karakura kids more than I like the Soul Reapers, although I very well might. It’s that so much work has been put into drawing out and developing these relationships, so much effort put into showing how this is affecting all of them. And it’s not just metatextual effort either—yes, we spend a lot of pagetime with Chad and Orihime and Uryu, but Xcution also targets them all because of their importance to Ichigo! The very story itself recognizes that they’re the support system that Ichigo needs to be an emotionally healthy adult! Any logical resolution must therefore involve them!
But it doesn’t. Instead, it’s the Soul Reapers, who have not been physically or even narratively present at all for four volumes, who come in and repower Ichigo. They’re the ones who pair up for the fights against Xcution, fights that are very light on the sort of character work that is so characteristic of Bleach fights because there just isn’t the grounding for it! Even the fights that show character are mostly showing development that seemingly occurred off-panel, leaving you wondering when exactly Toshiro and Ikkaku achieved their newfound maturity. But the supporting characters from the bulk of the arc are written out, and even the personal feelings of Shigekuni Genryusai Yamamoto wind up being more important to the narrative.
This isn’t just unsatisfactory on the level of the supporting characters, it also fatally undercuts Ichigo’s own development. We expect the story to end with him overcoming the challenge set in front of him, which at the beginning is clearly his alienation from the people he loves. But he doesn’t really do that—instead, the Soul Reapers showing up is what solves his problems, which suggests that the actual problem in his life is just “they weren’t around”. I don’t think that’s actually what we’re meant to take away here, and the narrative doesn’t seem to think so either, which is why we end with the character development being passed on to Soul Society instead. They learn something in this arc, which is to trust Ichigo. But he doesn’t seem to have learned a damn thing.
And that’s what frustrates me so much about this arc: the lost potential, the fact that there was a very obvious story being told that was abruptly discarded, right at the moment it mattered most. There was probably no way Kubo could have fulfilled all the potential of the Arrancar Arc: there were just to many characters, too many storylines. But here, he condensed his writing, narrowed his scope, and still told a compelling story up until he suddenly threw it all away. Whatever the reason for it-- and I have no insight into the editing or business pressures that might have motivated a climax so different from that the story was obviously building to-- it’s disappointing.
#Bleach#Troius reads Bleach#I spent the weekend on this lol#hope y'all are in the mood for 1200 words of my complaints about this arc#it just really annoys me when an author appropriately limits their ambition and yet still fucks it up#anyhow I'll have more positive content out this week#my six hearts vs Xcution matchups#but I wanted to get this out first so you knew where I was coming from#wrap up post
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Generation X vol 1 16 (1996)
Out Of Sync!
Written by Scott Lobdell and Todd DeZago
Penciled by Tom Grummett
Inked by Al Milgrom
Colors by Steve Buccellato
Lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft
Edited by Bob Harras
Cover by Joe Madureira
Synch had been corrupted by Emplate and it was up to Generation X to help him...
#marvel#90s#comics#superhero#xmen#jubilee#husk#synch#joe madureira#tom grummett#emma frost#hellfire club#banshee#monet#skin#chamber#xcutioner
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