#anti-ichiruki

[n-linz]

I find it ironic that people will be outraged by adult and minor ships but then in the same breath will really look at a 100+ year old dead shinigami and a 15-17 year old high schooler and say hell yeah, I ship tf out of them.

To clarify

I am also outraged/disgusted by adult and minor ships because that’s gross as hell. But I do not ship a 100+ year old shinigami with a 15 year old.

(Masaki and Isshin are tricky but she was 18 and he became human, and ages normally.)

[ichinoue]

A friend and IR shipper presented to me the idea that Kino intended to give Ichigo and Rukia a romantic climax where they confess their feelings for each other but are unable to be together, thus the end pairings. How viable is this theory, and do you have any thoughts to add?

I guess my first question would be, what is the basis for this? Besides the fact that ichiruki fans (incorrectly) interpreted Ichigo and Rukia's bond to be romantic. When we consider that neither Ichigo or Rukia's supposed romantic feelings for each other were ever mentioned/addressed/cemented in canon, so there was no "loose end" to tie up there, nothing that called for a resolution of reciprocation or rejection from either party on either side (unlike Orihime's romantic feelings, for example, which were cemented in canon and referenced consistently enough throughout the series to call for a resolution, whether it be rejection or reciprocation, from Ichigo). But if Kubo's intention all along was to give Ichigo and Rukia a romantic climax where they finally confessed their hidden feelings for each other in the very end....why exactly didn't he do that then? What stopped that from happening? Why would they be "unable" to be together? Like, what's the reasoning behind that?

I mean, IR's will wax poetic about how Ichigo and Rukia are "fated lovers!!" and "the story of destiny!!" so if they were so incredibly destined to be together....what exactly stopped Kubo from putting them together?? (Unless, of course, it's because those fans were wrong about it being romantic in the first place).

lol do you see what I mean? There was nothing--nothing stopping him from making them endgame, if that's what he truly wanted. If they're saying they were "unable" to be together because they live in different worlds (even though, as we saw in the final chapter and this new arc, they're clearly still able to visit and communicate with each other), Kubo could have had Ichigo relocate to SS (remember when Shunsui gave that morbid threat about Ichigo possibly having to stay there permanently? It's not like that was some impossibility). Or, he simply could have had them remain in their separate worlds but still be in love and committed to each other despite the occasional distance because, remember, they're ~fated lovers~ right? Nothing can get in the way of their powerful love! Especially not a little thing like distance. It's the story of destiny!! ...Except, it wasn't romantic.

So then the question comes back around to, why wasn't it romantic? Why was it more important to Kubo for him to give Orihime the canon love for Ichigo way back at the start of the series, instead of giving Rukia the canon love for Ichigo from the start? Or Ichigo the canon love for Rukia...? If Orihime's love was going nowhere and IR was meant to be endgame all along....why would he waste time giving the one and only canon love for Ichigo to Orihime and a doomed ship like IH instead, in a series where he didn't want to focus too much on romance? This is why I've always said it's better for a pairing to be one-sided than zero-sided when weighing their potential for canon. He gave Orihime the canon love early on in the story, because he knew it would be reciprocated in the end. It's that simple.

Again, there was nothing stopping Kubo from making IR romantic right from the start, or in the middle, or in the very end if that's what he really wanted or intended. If anything, he had a huge incentive to make it romantic based on how popular it was. He knew IR was the most popular pairing, and once Bleach sales started to decline after the SS arc, you can bet that his editors were telling him that a surefire way to gain back fans would be to add some IR romance, or at the very least, write more interactions for them into the story.

...But yet the amount of IR screentime and interactions still drastically declined in the last 65% of the manga, as I outlined here. So, it's not like he was writing all of this IR up until the final arc or final few chapters and then suddenly pulled a switcher-oo and swapped the pairings in the end. IH development and screentime had long since surpassed IR's at that point, while Rukia was attached to Renji's hip ever since they reunited in the SS arc (for which Renji literally thanked Ichigo, for "getting them back to the way they were before" i.e. back to being so close that they rarely spent any time apart and then ended up getting married once things settled down shortly after the war.)

But, according to IR fans, IR was the pairing that had the most romantic development all along. I disagree, but I'll entertain that notion for the sake of argument: If IR was given the most romantic development and therefore was the easiest to make canon......Why the hell didn't Kubo make it canon then? There was nothing stopping him from writing some sudden climax of Ichigo and Rukia confessing their feelings in the final arc if they truly did have feelings for each other. But instead, he kept churning out more and more RR and IH content, even when he was crunched for time due to his illness and only had about 15 chapters left to work with.

And then of course, the final chapter pays homage to the IR bond coming full circle with "Death and Strawberry," as their children meet. And Ichigo and Rukia are on the final volume cover, paying homage to and celebrating the very bond that kickstarted Bleach. Which caused fans to accuse Kubo of being a troll and shipteasing them like, "why are IR on the cover if it's not romantic!!?!! Why not put Ichigo and Orihime then if they're the ones who are supposedly so in love?!?!"

As if the forefront and covers of shounens is where you'll find romantic couples more often than the strictly platonic nakama bonds lmao. I talked more about this in this post.

Then you have the quote Kubo gave in the WDKALY postscripts: “…I wondered how she could ever write a novel about the wedding ceremony that way, but she executed it beautifully. It brought tears to my eyes. I’m sure that people who love Ichigo and Rukia like me, will also cry.”

Meaning he was so happy with the ending he gave to Ichigo and Rukia, it brought tears of joy to his eyes, and anyone who is a fan of Ichigo and Rukia should surely be happy for them, too.

Why would he be so happy for them, if he gave them some terrible ending where they couldn't be with their one true love and had to settle for some other characters instead? Not to mention, what author would actually want that kind of ending for their heroes and protagonists, characters they loved and had been writing for for over a decade? For the four of them to be in some sad, loveless marriages? Where Ichigo and Rukia are emotionally dishonest assholes, and poor Orihime and Renji are relegated to being nothing more than a consolation prize?

Like....why lmao. That makes no sense, unless you intentionally wanted all of your protags to suffer, but Kubo's never given a single indication that that's what he was going for. Again, the ending brought tears of joy to his eyes. He's happy for his characters, and how they ended up. I can't imagine that he would continue on writing about their lives and the next gen kids in this new Hell Verse arc if he genuinely wasn't interested in how everything turned out and hated his own ending that he was in no way forced to write.

I mean, the tldr of this is that the only thing that stopped Kubo from making IR romantic is that he did not want it to be romantic. He never intended for it to be romantic. He said it himself, he wrote the entire series, following chapter one, with their marriages and children to other people already planned. It was his plan all along for Ichigo's son to meet Rukia's daughter, paralleling the "Death and Strawberry" thing. He even used the same title for both the first and last chapter! Bringing it full circle. That was always his plan--not for Ichigo and Rukia to get together and have kids, but for each of their respective kids to meet one day.

So, romantic!IR was never on the table. People have such a hard time accepting that, maybe because they don't want to admit they were wrong about something they clung so hard to for years, but that's just the way it is.

Kubo has made it perfectly clear, so many times, with both the manga itself, and with all the quotes and interviews he's given over the years, that Ichigo and Rukia were precious nakama, and it is not romance (and that particular quote dates all the way back to 2008!).

I compiled a list of those quotes here.

[phoenixmiko]

Unpopular Opinion

I despise NaruSaku, IchiRuki, SoRiku and SorMik. Not only because the pairings themselves are rubbish but also because the toxic parts of their fandoms are the absolute pits. I have had the misfortune to run into many delusional, despicable and downright diabolical dastards over the years. Is it any wonder none of these ships entice me? Actually, let me call these “couples” what they really are - ghost ships. Their crews seem to think they are seasoned veterans sailing mighty galleons when in reality, they are ghouls fruitlessly haunting shipwrecks which have long sunk beneath the waves which dashed them to pieces.

[deathberry-kazuichika]

HAPPY DEATHVERSARY

For the poor tortured souls of ICHIRUKI-STANS and ULQUIHIME-STANS who being epic trolled by Tite Kubo :P 

NOW START TO MOVE ON FROM BEING SALTY OR GO TO HELL !

[crazyalligator]

I am shooketh

I think I fully, consciously realized, just today, that there are more fanfictions and fanworks with a plot that goes like this-- 1. Ichigo and Rukia are dissatisfied with their respective marriages for many years and grow to hate their spouses (despite how much their bonds with their spouses are so intensely deep and rich regardless of their romantic aspects) 2. Ichigo and/or Rukia has an internal teen angst monologue about how they yearn for the other and suffer at home, and whenever they see the other they get that supersecretspecial glow in their eyes that everybody else instantly notices (even though it's neither in-character nor ever explained why they would marry people they didn't love, with the exception that apparently the IchiRuki community is convinced that "RUUkia was FORCED to marry that ABUSER RENjii" (which makes 0 sense?), and then, in grief about this, "ISTUGO married that BITCH CUNTihime out of PITY and heartsickness" (even though what Ichigo wouldn't do something like that to his dear friend Orihime which, even if you hate her, you really can't deny that Ichigo is very obviously shown to care for her a lot like jfc he went to a different dimension to save her just like he did for Rukia who you apparently think he blindly loves so much that he would deceptively marry his dear friend, thus taking advantage of the fact that she loves him)). Like what? 3. After something-something-something blah-blah-blah happens, "Ywach's curse" is broken and the two of them get together the way they were always supposed to be and for some reason sometimes Ichika and Kazui are fucking each other all along? Used as plot tools apparently to strengthen the validity of the supposed romantic bond between Ichigo and Rukia (cough cough Ulqihime) to mask the fact that, in reality, the author actually hates "those little ugly fucklings" (I don't have a direct quote on that but I can only imagine that some IchiRuki shipper somewhere has said it). --than the total amount of anything RenRuki that has ever existed in the fandom. Like I'm just out here trying to find some Renruki smut that isn't 2000 years old. And my ship is CANON. But these bitches be out here playing like Ichigo and Rukia are grief-stricken, hateful cheaters and that their spouses are selfishly obsessed with them as opposed to truly loving them. Like what did we do to deserve this injustice pls somebody pm me I need answers

[hoehime]

Hello, I just want to know what receipts you have of Ichirukis being racist? I’m a nonshipper but I’m just curious because I know they attacked a blogger once for with ableist slurs.

When did I ever say that Ichirukis were racist? I said popular blog y’all knew about who happened to be an IR was a trump supporter aka a racist despite trying to drag people using black lingo.

And I said this like 2 years ago?

[peonyrosebat]

I know this topic is outdated, but...

One thing I hate about the IR fandom is that every interaction Ichigo and Rukia have is seen as romantic. (Even though Renruki is canon, and there is no romance with ir, and there are still posts being made to this day about this...)

They look at eachother. Must mean they're in love. (I've seen many posts say this.)

They argue. Must mean there's sexual tension... (again, i've seen posts similar to this.)

IR would definitely be a nice pairing if a lot of the fandom wasn't so toxic. I'm just saying that you should respect the author, (honestly, the amount of hate tite kubo got really made me feel embarassed as a fan) and that you're mixing facts with headcanons that make literally no sense. I don't see any toxic Renruki shippers on tumblr (that I've seen anyway...), so why should a lot of ir shippers be toxic?

I know this post is pointless, but I really needed to get this out of my system and rant. And don't tell me that I shouldn't post this. I can post whatever I want. It's my tumblr, so, yeah. (Besides, I doubt this post will matter much with the amount of hate IR's post.)

Now I'll wait for the anti's to show up. Heheh.

[biased-maybe-lovely]

me watching the ir fandom doing exactly what I expected:

[halsway]

Ichiruki fans must have found Inoue in the Bleach live action movie to be pretty relatable...

because they both completely misunderstand Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship!

[ichinoue]

Yesterday and IR brought up how ichigo thought about rukia in order to awaken his FB they said it’s because ichigo loves rukia and I tried to explain that, it doesn’t mean romantically but 🤷🏾‍♀️

Yeah, they cling to that moment pretty hard, as if it's indisputable proof of Ichigo being in love with Rukia. As if that's the only possible explanation. Instead of: A) Ichigo being told to remember a moment he felt "pride" as a shinigami and then recalling a sequence of those moments where he was protecting someone important to him, in chronological order (x), lamenting that he can't even begin to count them all, because they all gave him pride. The last page, and the one given the most focus, of course, is of Rukia fading away...The moment he lost those powers that gave him so much pride. Again, chronological, as being ‘the final moment’ of having such powers. Demonstrating that he was proud of being a shinigami from start to finish, up until the very moment he lost his powers, a.k.a., when Rukia disappeared completely, as a symbol of his powers disappearing, too.

B) Even if you set the chronological sequence of events aside, thematically, it makes perfect sense for the most focus to be put on Rukia when we consider that Rukia is the one who gave Ichigo his powers in the first place and taught him how to be a shinigami at the start of the series, to then being the one to “stab” Ichigo at the climax of the FB arc and restore his powers once again, less than 30 chapters later.

C) If this scene were meant to cement Ichigo's love for Rukia in canon once and for all, then surely he would have thought about her when he broke down in tears towards the climax of the FB arc, lamenting how all he wanted was to regain the power to protect...? But Rukia is not shown or mentioned (x).

That being said, is Rukia given the most focus in regards to Ichigo regaining his powers in the FB arc? Absolutely. She's given the biggest panel during Ichigo's "pride" moment (x), she's the one to return his powers at the big surprise moment of the FB climax (x) (x), she's the one given a colorpage with him for the following chapter (x). LOTS of focus on the bond between Ichigo and Rukia at the forefront here; it's highlighted, it's celebrated.

...However, and I can't stress this enough: Kubo reinforcing/celebrating the bond between the two main characters of his shounen series does not automatically equate to romance. Remember, this is a shounen....y'know....where nakama bonds and "the power of friendship!!!" is always at the forefront..???

I really feel like some people forget that Bleach is a shounen sometimes. Platonic, nakama bonds are always the ones that are celebrated and featured and paid homage to the most, as opposed to a shoujo where romance is the main feature. So I don't know why seeing Ichigo and Rukia's bond being highlighted in a shounen series instantly meant romance to some fans. That's not what you find at the forefront of shounens??? Not romance, and the power of love!!!, but friendship. Platonic, familial, non-romantic, friendship bonds.

This is....very basic shounen formula, holy shit lmao.

[im-ichihime-trash]

So there’s a cute pic of Ichika, Kazui and Baby Nemu innocently playing with Kenpachi..... My thought: “Aww, it’s so cute!” A salty IR in the comments of the pic: “2 of those children need to be deleted/retconed.”

[xoangel-dust]

Lmao the bleach fandom fuckin condoned Ichigo cheating on Orhime with Rukia (the Naruto one has done it too having Naruto cheat on Hinata with Sasuke or even Sakura, Sakura cheating on Sasuke with Kakashi, Sasuke cheating on Sakura with Karin or even Naruto or Hinata) and some “fans” even burned the manga volumes over a got damn paring not happening.

These same IchiRuki fans have reached sooo far as to compare it to Zutara like can y’all NOT

[hoehime]

Are you stupid Orihoes still angry that Kuborg gave us ICHIRUKI and made your retarded kids ours? You mad you didn't get your wedding? LOLOLOLOLol

...........

[deathberry-kazuichika]

STUPID AND HEARTHLESS IR LOLGIC

IR-Tard : RENRUKI IS ABUSIVE !!! RENJI IS WOMAN HATER !!! HE SO STUPID !!! HE ATTACK RUKIA !!! HE ABUSE RUKIAAAAA !!!

Fact : Renji actually NEVER abuse rukia ! He only do his job ! He is greatly fear with SS rule and to byakuya, so he has no choice but pretend to be jerkass to the other. In fact, Renji is greatly respect woman, he will never hit a woman . He said this in front of Jackie, he such most gallant man ever !

IR-Tard : ULQUIHIME ALMOST CANON!!! WHY KUBO NEVER MAKE HIM RETURN FROM HIS DEATH :’’’’’’((((((

Fact : ARE. YOU. FUCKING. SERIOUS !!! He clearly mentally torture and manipulate orihime. He make her to admit why she is in HM. He threaten her to force her to eat a plate and spoon because she refuse to eat and SHE SLAP HIM and crying ! He has no heart ! He wanted to know “heart” by threaten her to crack her skull and her chest ! AND THE WORST THING. . . HE MAKE ORIHIME CONFUSED WHY SHE NEVER HELP ICHIGO AND LATER HE BLAST ICHIGO WITH CERO MAKING A BIG HOLE IN CHEST, AND MAKE ORIHIME MENTALLY BROKEN AND SUFFER STOCKHOLM SYNDROME !!! WOW. . . ULQUIHIME INDEED SO SO SO SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. . . . ROMANTIC !!!! LETS PRAISE IR-LOLGIC !!!! 

Me to IR-Tard : 

[criminallynerdy]

By the way for those who don’t know, Ichiruki is a pedo ship. Ichigo is 15 and Rukia is an old woman who just looks like she could be a teenager. It’s literally pedophilia no matter what countries approve of adults diddling 15 year olds. And it doesn’t stop being that if you age up Ichigo either.

[biased-maybe-lovely]

It's so good to see you back! Your posts are always hilarious and I think you also noticed that ichiruki's delusions are at a all time high again due to the live action movie - that they didn't want to support but still claim it as a "ichiruki love story" movie 😂

Omg, thank you i feel blessed!

I don’t know when alot of these messages were sent in, but I appreciate this so much!

And i’ve seen some of their delusions and denials, especially how they can’t bare the thought that even the live action actors see ichigo and rukia as a motherly bond.

Don’t forget they tend to twist words so in their opinion what rukia’s actress meant was that she actually wanted to be the mother of ichigo’s children- child lol. 

Smh, I would be surprised if they weren’t saying how we are delusional for supporting the romantic relationship between ichigo and orihime in the movie.