#general meta talk (rambling) about me liking kubo's use of narrators and audience proxies

[jinjahime]

(reposting a meta rant from the old blog)

so, kubo imparts bleach lore primarily through someone "knowledgeable" about a subject to someone who is not- aka, an audience surrogate. more often than not, this takes the form of ichigo, learning about soul society and the greater spiritual world at large; he's taught by a number of people, each with varying levels of knowledge, but also intent. for example, rukia is often used to explain things at their basest level, both through her crude drawings as a visual gag, but also in the sense that she is providing the audience an introductory look into the lore: souls come from departed humans, and hollows come from corrupted souls.

then there are explanations from urahara, often more in-depth while simultaneously not explained in a way ichigo (or even the audience) can readily understand. similar to him, mayuri, aizen, and szayelaporro all have clinical, scientific ways of describing things, befitting of their characters and ways of thinking. (urahara is special though, he's just particularly autistic <3)

kubo is especially good at having characters explain things in ways that, while not always black and white or even detailed, paint a larger picture of the world and its lore, all through audience surrogates learning it and with a unique flare in how the lore is delivered based on who gives it. not everyone can give textbook explanations for kidō, or what exactly fullbringers are, or how shinigami tech works- and that's a good thing.

but.

but, while this is all well and good, that brings me to the second part of my thought- what this means for the characters imparting the knowledge.

in some cases, that can be easy- rukia has less of an understanding than someone like urahara, and so her explanations are going to be more basic than his would be. in other cases, we run into a particular happening in bleach:

the unreliable narrator.

no, this isn't about aizen; aizen as a character is very calculated and while he was keeping his intentions from not just the audience surrogates but the cast as a whole, i would not file him under unreliable narrator. unreliable actor, perhaps, but he was not the narrator. specifically what i'm referring to is the scene where isshin appears as a shinigami for the first time. kon, after being chased by the newly formed arrancar form of grand fisher, is saved by isshin arriving, his shinigami powers restored. in this whole scenario, what is interesting is that ichigo is not our audience surrogate- kon is. this will be important.

kon is obviously shocked to see isshin, but then urahara shows up, further shocking him- urahara and isshin, through a brief conversation, reveal to kon (as our audience surrogate) that they know each other. urahara knows masaki was killed by grand fisher, and he was connected to isshin losing his powers 18 years prior. at this point, we, the audience, do not know the events of the everything but the rain arc- we are learning of this connection for the very first time, alongside kon.

isshin then makes a point to say to urahara that "he was right- they have contacted ichigo." they, in this instance, is referring to the visoreds, and how shinji had reached out to ichigo- in fact, shinji was with ichigo facing a hollow at that very moment, and shinji did not recognize isshin's reiatsu. cutting back to isshin and urahara, they talk about the visoreds, and this is something that sticks out to me, because ultimately the discussion being had is one of the least natural exposition dumps of bleach. the two of them are talking to each other about the visoreds, stating that they were a rogue group of shinigami who used the hōgyoku to break the barrier between shinigami and hollow.

what makes this conversation so particularly unnatural is 1) clearly this is something the two of them have discussed before; they need only say "visoreds", or even when isshin just said "they", urahara knew who was being discussed. isshin even said that it was as urahara predicted- they both knew what was going to happen. 2) they are having this discussion in full view of kon; they aren't talking to him, as primarily is the case in audience surrogate scenarios- whether it's ichigo learning about shikai and bankai from shinigami in the seireitei or uryū learning about quincy lore from ryūken, lore getting imparted to the surrogate is always directly to the surrogate. however, kon is not involved in the conversation at all.

and perhaps the thing that intrigues me the most about it: 3) it's all a lie.

isshin's lore drop about the visoreds is entirely incorrect, making them sound like some gang who willingly sought out the hōgyoku's power to make themselves stronger. even though we won't learn about the turn back the pendulum arc for some time still, meeting the visoreds shortly after and getting to know them does not lend itself to isshin's purported lore. which is where it begs the question: what does this mean for isshin? why was he telling inaccurate lore? does he not know the truth about the visoreds? shinji doesn't recognize isshin's reiatsu, which means he either a) doesn't remember him as a shinigami from 100 years prior, (which tracks, isshin was not captain during tbtp and therefore shinji would never have known isshin's reiatsu level at captain-strength), or b) he has never met isshin and does not know he was also a shinigami. and with this, that leaves of us with one of two possibilities: a) isshin and urahara previously agreed upon a false narrative to say in front of kon for the sake of obfuscating the truth for the audience's sake (see: why isshin had to take masaki's surname in ebtr for the sake of keeping the secret of ichigo's relation to the shiba clan in the soul society arc), or...

b) urahara lied to isshin about the visoreds, spinning a false narrative about them being the willing enactors of their own hollowfied fate, which is what isshin was simply reiterating back. i say that it was urahara's explanation and not soul society's simply because soul society didn't know about the hōgyoku at large. the narrative central 46 had at the time of tbtp was that urahara had experimented on his fellow captains and lieutenants, and had been behind the greater hollowfication experiments, and that the captains and lieutenants were to be "disposed of like hollows". soul society did not know the outcome of the visoreds. they know that they were taken, went to the world of the living with yoruichi, urahara, and tessai, but after that, the visoreds seemingly kept to themselves in their warehouse, unbothered by anyone.

seeing interactions between the visoreds and ichigo, and also the conversation between urahara and isshin, it paints a picture of the visoreds and urahara not interacting much, which leads me to believe that b) is likely the case- it seems that he has sought to give the visoreds their space and privacy and safety over telling others the truth, even if those people may be ones who could benefit from it (in this case, isshin).

now, why it's important that kon is the one as the surrogate and not ichigo is that ichigo never even learns any of this- he doesn't even learn on page or screen about the history of the visoreds; we, the audience, learn about it though an extended flashback mini-arc! kon doesn't reveal what he learned to ichigo, not just about isshin's shinigami powers, or his connection to urahara, but also about the visoreds- thus meaning there was no reason for isshin or urahara to lie in-context of the story. it's a pointed, narrative decision to have isshin lie to the audience, which if you break it down, doesn't make sense unless isshin thought it was the truth.

overall, i think this scene is just a prime, grade-a example of how truly masterful kubo is with how lore gets revealed; no, not everything CAN be explained in bleach, and that's okay- the world at large has explanations, and the people who explain it know different levels of truth to it. it makes the story more layered, more multifaceted, and ultimately? more realistic. not everyone is going to know everything, and not everyone is going to be able to explain it properly, whether they want to or not. sometimes, people may even lie about the truth of the world, because it's simply not the right time for us as the audince to know it. it just makes the world and the lore that much more lived-in.