#bleach furniture

[recurring-polynya]

The Bount Arc features many things and one of them is a rare glimpse of a place I had previously assumed didn't even exist: The Squad 11 Captain's Office.

As I said, I generally refuse to believe that Zaraki maintains any sort of "administrative space"--I think Yumichika does all the squad paperwork on a Formica, diner-style table that somehow died and got sent to Soul Society in the "officer's lounge", which has orange shag carpeting and smells mysteriously like Miller High Life (the Champagne of Beers).

Even so, this place is beyond my wildest imaginings. The pink walls? The elegant, arcing windows, spilling natural light into the room? It's hard to tell from this shot, but the chairs are purple:

The couches look oddly like the Squad 6 couches, but they are not--the Squad 6 couches are wingbacks and don't have that wooden frame along the back and sides, and they have legs so they are up off the floor. Also, Zaraki has a very similar mysterious paperwork tray-table to the one Ginrei had in the Zanpakutou Rebellion arc. Zaraki's seems taller. Also, why is there actual paperwork on it???

I can only come up with two possible explanations for this:

Squad 11 has a Captain's Office, but Zaraki never uses it, so he let Yachiru make all the decor decisions. This would explain the pink walls, and we know she likes Byakuya's house, so maybe she cribbed the rest from him. Possibly even stole the furniture out of the dumpster the last time Squad 6 redecorated (which I assume happens, like, twice yearly)

This isn't even their office. They're just squatting in Byakuya's digs while he's out running around in Rukongai.

Update!!: A few episodes later, they were still sitting here (over the same time period that Renji, Matsumoto and Hitsugaya ran from the Seireitei to Kusajishi, for the record) and it was identified as Squad 11, so I guess option 1 is the winner!

[bleachbleachbleach]

You've always been my go-to for all things Bleach lore and world-building! Do you think Shinigami all sleep in futons or beds? Or maybe it varies from character to character? We've seen the 4th division with beds in their wards, but I think every other character has slept in futons.

Haha, thank you! We do love a furniture deep-dive here, and people's headcanon speculations about shinigami life even more.

I started a list of any time we'd ever seen a character in some kind of bed (futon or frame), but it mostly just ended up being a long list of "_______ at the 4th," lol, so we'll see all those aside (almost all those aside). But canonically, there is a mixture! We see:

Hinamori in Aizen's futon

[Bleach 100]

Ukitake in his quarters

[Bleach e40]

Isane in her quarters

[Bleach 179]

Hisana at the Kuchiki house

[Bleach 179]

I think Rukia had a similar setup during the Bount Arc, as well.

Also, I'd like to note that for the record as I was retrieving *bed pictures* I got emotionally destroyed by my re-encounter with this panel. It is just SO deeply sad:

[Bleach 180]

The incredible, isolating vastness of the room, and the way the shadow cuts across the space. ToT <33333 It also reminds me of a really excellent meta piece done by afinepiece, where she analyzed the panels from Byakuya's story about Hisana and pointed out sections where the panel visuals might suggest Byakuya's memory/headspace more than physical reality. Her journal is deactivated but I know the reblog is on B3 somewhere! I'm inclined to go with that reading here, even though I also feel like the room probably just *looked like this* because every room in Soul Society is like this. (Maybe it's also for airflow, given her illness seemed partially respiratory and possibly contagious? ngl I'm basing this off that one anime elaboration scene and my co-blogger's post about Circus Hisana and Elephant TB).

In my mind Byakuya's convalescent setup was the same as Hisana's (is this the sad Seireitei equivalent of couples' outfits) but I was wrong:

[Bleach 180]

He's in a bed! But from the look of this building he's probably at the 4th and not at home. Put simply, this building is too brutish and workmanlike to be part of the Kuchiki complex:

[Bleach 180]

Hanatarou's quarters (implied)

[Bleach e259]

The tatami floor, layout, and big closet on the right-hand side seem to imply that Hanatarou uses a futon.

Abarai family quarters (implied)

[Bleach "No Breathes from Hell"]

This is probably not the only room in this house and they could put *anything* in those cabinets, but their sheer number and the style of the room suggests that this converts to a futon-filled bedroom, regardless of what might exist in other parts of the house.

Bonus 1: Renji in jail

[Bleach 118]

Is this at the 6th? Is this at the 4th? I always assumed the 6th, though obviously the 4th was involved. Idk, Byakuya left him on the ground. Maybe if you don't pick up your invalids the 4th just stashes them in their jail.

Bonus 2: Hitsugaya in Junrinan (non-shinigami, non-Seireitei)

[Bleach -16 (in between 286 and 287)]

These examples are pretty skewed in favor of futons, but if we think about this collection of characters, there is an overrepresentation of people who trend more traditional in terms of aesthetic, so they might not meaningfully represent the whole. Also, half the list is the same family.

We've seen a number of different offices and meeting rooms for each division, as well as some private residences, which have been a mix of Western and traditional styles in terms of the building itself and the furniture within it. Most of the offices seem to have Western furniture (or at least, the 10th, 6th, and 3rd), whereas Byakuya and Aizen, at least, seem to prefer the traditional at home.

Though, I don't know what this big-ass room is, but given its size and feeling of formal reception, this may well be the 5th's office?

[Bleach 100]

NB 1: I tried to look up what the office looks like under Shinji, but what is happening here:

[Bleach "No Breathes from Hell"]

NB 2: The 2nd also has traditional receiving rooms (used by both Yoruichi and Soi Fon, wherever the division between Shihouin and the 2nd is. But I assume Soi Fon's office is not the Shihouin Family Receiving room).

--

My feeling is that the differences are more regional/Division-based than personal preference-based, and *when*/by whom this design language was established depends on how much time and money the people in charge want to devote to furniture.

But that doesn't necessarily mean each Division is uniform, since we can see Isane and Hanatarou, both seated officers of the 4th, have different-style rooms! Maybe this is an effect of the 4th being an early bed adopter for their general professional purposes. Unohana is 100% a futon lady. I feel like Isane just accepted whatever was originally in the room, and that if there were no bed at all in the room she would sleep on the floor before asking to remodel. Does that mean a previous 4th VC wanted to modernize the VC quarters?

Was that previous 4th VC the original bedframe proselytizer, and got permission from Unohana to do up their quarters like a model home that gave examples of both types of room? Do Isane and Unohana live in an IKEA showroom?

What are the benefits of futons?

the room can be multi-use, a general common room by day and sleeping dorm by night

don't have to make a bunch of bedframes

Given what a big deal everyone makes out of transporting goods from the Living World, I feel like they probably make all their furniture and don't import particleboard from Nitori, so this would be expensive! Plus, given the amount of building reconstruction that needs to happen, I feel like there's probably a fairly small quota of wood released to civilians and/or divisions for non-essential use.

What are the benefits of bedframes?

BUNKBEDS

easier cleaning/long-term savings?

Yeah, you'd have to make the bedframes and have a whole separate common room, but having beds implies you've probably done away with the tatami in the room, since you're not really supposed to put heavy furniture on the mats. And I don't think in a barrack with heavy use you'd be able to rely on shinigami simply "being careful." Same logic as college dorms and their "IKEA, but completely indestructible" furniture.

So if you decide in the long-term that you don't want to do tatami maintenance/replacement and want wood furniture on wood floors, maybe the bed route is for you! ("You" here meaning "your division"!) At which point it'd be a matter of:

caring enough to do a cost/benefit analysis about this

whether or not you want to preserve the traditional aesthetic

whether you have the initial capital to invest in making the change

Some additional thoughts:

We know that at least a portion of the 2nd has heated floors, as financed by Oomaeda. I'm not a heated floors aficionado--though I stayed at an AirBnb once with a heated driveway--NUTS) but I feel like that would...not work with tatami? That over time the heat would dry them out too much and make them brittle? So maybe the 2nd has beds.

Despite the fact that the 10th office changes out their couch out a few times during the canon timeline, I feel like there's a 0% chance Hitsugaya has considered a bedding/architecture overhaul during his tenure at the 10th. He's spent the last 15 years developing a real filing system and an actual budget procedure. He didn't come in with extra money to put towards beds and the 46 doesn't generally approve that kind of line item. That's more of a "gift fund" expense.

Shinji is trying to get a Pod Hotel proposal approved, on the grounds that the idea would benefit more than just the 5th. They could implement it in the Tsumesho (Gotei WeWork)! And provide them in strategic outposts across Rukongai!

During what decade was the 11th briefly "HAMMOCK DIVISION" because it seemed like the cheapest, most low-maintenance option?

[bleachbleachbleach]

YOu’RE WELCOMEEE

[paintedcrows]

Was looking through some old art files and got hit in the face by Theta Sigma calling me a loser

[thefigureresource]

G.E.M. Rangiku Matsumoto : Tipsy ver [Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War] non scale from MegaHouse coming November 2024.

[justmaghookit]

It turns out that Aster's repeating skin infection has been hiding out in his tail, and it's so fluffy on the outside that I didn't notice until now. So I had to spray it down with iodine and then try and brush out all the tangled gunk and he HATED IT so bad I feel awful :(

It must be so painful no wonder he's always hated having his tail touched. I'll start treating it daily and try and track down any other lingering spots. Worst comes to worse we might have to get him and Magpie shaved so we can more easily look for spots.

Please pray for my boy so we can finally kick his skin issues to the curb.

[saintsurvivors]

muramasa has soooo many things wrong with him and I want to make exactly all of them even worse

[brw]

oh the misery.

[astrifurious]

stress really just exhausts you huh. I feel like a deflated balloon

[lauryn-order]

Alright besties. Let’s play a fun game called Why Is Lauryn’s Hair Falling Out?

[recurring-polynya]

is that...a white board?? i mean, if any squad is going to have a white board, it's squad 10 but also: how does squad 10 have a white board???

[bleachbleachbleach]

12th Division Chair Count

I love learning more about the different rooms that are available in each division--like the 2nd Division Shihouin Receiving Room (Oomaeda Filler Episode), and the second-floor 4th Division Map Room (Bount Arc), and the 6th Division Panopticon Hallway (Zanpakutou Rebellion Arc), and the 10th Division Room That is Not the Office with Exactly One Small Table In It (Soul Society Arc denouement). We also know that the 10th has a courtyard that is apparently better-suited to hosting large outdoor events than other places (Beast Swords Arc).

But I’m pretty sure the 12th has everyone beat for furniture procurement orders. They have so many different seating areas???????? Like, okay, there’s the lab, and then there’s the office. But also like...

The Lab

Here’s Byakuya trying his best to make contact with as little of the 12th’s weird yellow chairs as is physically possible. The camera is bolted to the ceiling and even from here you can tell how much he hates that chair. Look at him:

The Office

There’s also this office receiving area, which looks a lot more like a dental office than a dank basement where chairs go to die:

It even has plants! (There are cubicles on the other side of that white partition, where some of the 12th Division members are working.)

And you’d think that, okay, it makes sense that there’d be two seating areas and two primary work nodes in this place. But then there’s also... this seating area?

Which I took notice of because the plants are different, and I was curious about whether it was a different location or whether the plants in the previous shot had already died and been replanted with something new. But my co-blogger thinks it’s an entirely different seating area, because it looks like Kyouraku is sitting on a second couch in this one, as opposed to the two chairs. And there’s another white partition on the right/a suggestion of additional depth over there that the window(?) in the first shot doesn’t have.

I don’t know what’s going on with that window, but based on the color alone I’m assuming that there’s a full dress rehearsal of “The Dark of the Bleeding Moon” number from the Bleach Rock Musicals going on next door.

So the office has a least two different receiving areas for guests of the 12th. Understandable, since they have more reasons to have guests than any other division outside the 4th. But I’m still impressed that these rooms exist and seem to accept and invite the idea that they will have guests. They could just make everyone stand around like the impositions to the Work that they are, LOL.

And then there’s THIS ROOM. Which is also in the 12th, and looks like it could be the receiving area in the above shot, except there’s clearly more room behind Ukitake, not just wall, and this couch set-up has TWO planters, bookending either couch!

In the scene, Kyouraku and Ukitake are looking at secret Dangai archives, so maybe this is part of some kind of secret Dangai archives reading room, rather than the main office.

THERE ARE SO MANY OF THESE.

[mini-uzzy]

I don't live in a first world country, but when I saw houses of people in media I watched, I was super confused, because everyone seems to have brand new furniture and walls. I though they were just good at taking care of stuff, and being poor that concept is beyond me. Then I realized that corrupt corporations deliberately do this, they take advantage of the people, rich and poor, to profit and pollute.

Death to planned obsolesce and fast fashion. Preach resourcefulness and environmentalism. Useful DIYs, nutrition and creativity should be on trending. But instead, we have all this wastefulness and vanity plaguing social media, and worse, poisoning children.

"smart appliances" fuck u i want them dumb as a brick and incidentally as sturdy and enduring

[sampersander]

I love my wife. She makes scary phone calls so I don't have to

[nikkilouloony]

look I know that the home I grew up in wasn't always what you could consider "clean" but I have been seeing a huge uptick in what looks a lot like contamination fears online and I think it's time we admit that the pandemic personally affected our mental health.

[parakeetpark]

Found out the corner of the wall behind my shelving was so covered in mold it pulled the wallpaper clean off. Bleach time today!