#i am but a floppy disk attempting to write the thousand floppy disks of data that is TYBW

[bleachbleachbleach]

Currently re-reading TYBW in anticipation of the new content and I can't help but be intrigued by the fact that Szayelaporro made enough of an impact on Mayuri that he's-- thinking about him? Vividly hallucinating him???? Whatever is going on there-- in the middle of a battle. Since we don't get a lot of insight into Mayuri's emotional landscape I think it's the first time we really see ANYTHING related to how he maybe feels about past battles

Anon, forgive me, these thoughts are going to be very preliminary because we are 0 for 2 on remembering this scene.

I KNOW, what right do we have to adorn this blog in the mantel of Sunflower Mayuri if we can't even recall his role in TYBW?? (In my defense, while I was cherrypicking bits and pieces to read on behalf of the Zombies, I was like, "hot damn, Mayuri really got around in this arc." I'm honestly not sure there was a single other characters who did more things or went more places or interacted with so many different other characters.)

But I did go and find the panels in question, and they are indeed fascinating! (It's Chapter 643, for those following along.) It's pretty impressive that Subconscious Szayel shows up here, given that it's been almost two years since that fight. Maybe mental time is different for shinigami, since two years is but a drop in the bucket in terms of their lifespan; maybe the memories hold firm because it's like That One Time I Studied Abroad in Hueco Mundo. But here's Szayel, comin' to give Mayuri an off-kilter pep talk:

I like Szayel quite a bit; he's probably my favorite of all the Espada. I liked his fight with Mayuri, too. But I think of all the ways to interpret this extended hallucination, the one that's most interesting to me ends up being pretty impersonal. Like, not thinking about Mayuri and Szayel as individuals with some kind of intense interpersonal relationship but as typology. Maybe Szayel the individual doesn't actually live rent-free inside Mayuri's head, but the fact that a type like him once existed in Hueco Mundo does.

Mayuri sees Hollows as scientific discoveries/lab rats (re: his whole Hueco Mundo caravan, and this extended bit about Arrancar zombies), even after engaging at length with Espada. Mayuri also has strong opinions about how shitty Quincy are. At this moment, he's fighting a war split cleanly between shinigami and Quincy, along ideological lines but also generally existential/essentialist ones. (NB: My grasp of the TYBW's wherefores is VERY limited, because I haven't cherry-picked my way to re-reading those parts yet, but I still feel pretty comfortable in saying this because I am POSITIVE most of the characters involved in this arc know even less than me. Mayuri is not one of them, but that's the general vibe.)

But man, as shitty as Mayuri thinks Quincy are, it's not like he holds the sanctity of shinigami life in high regard, either. He blows up his own men, advertises his desire for no-holds-barred test subjects--and is of course full-willing to modify himself. I think he probably sees this as stretching the boundaries of what "being shinigami" means, rather than leaving the identity behind (that's Aizen's schtick), but the fact that this innate, unyielding, immutable idea of shinigami just isn't that important to him. It's also what this whole big dumb war boils down to, in a way: Quincy right to exist. Shinigami right to exist. Whatever eschatological additions the Soul King stuff brings into all that.

I'm fascinated by a potential reading where, sure, we're talking about Nemu as a perfect scientific achievement (even though there's so such thing, and I firmly believe Mayuri really believes this), but we're also talking about the fact that the thing she is meant to replicate, the horizon she is meant to achieve, is a shinigami. ("Just" a shinigami, albeit idealized around certain subjective parameters Mayuri has defined for the project.)

She's this fantastic scientific achievement, but she's still created in a death god's image, and what's so great about that? This war is being fought for the sake of Soul Society (read: shinigami, fuck Rukongai), so what's so important about the war?

To be fighting in a war that doesn't align with your values (whatever those values are) is a pretty despairing thought. Mayuri just heckled Ikkaku and Yumichika about this earlier in the arc, and deploys similar ironic commentary against zombie Hitsugaya (he's like, "oh, you're probably fine with this horrible, unlivably painful thing I'm about to do to you because it's for the sake of Soul Society, right?"). Hitsugaya and Byakuya also later have a slightly unhinged convo about this later, about fighting for Soul Society vs. fighting for nakama vs. fighting for tomodachi. They come to vastly different conclusions than Mayuri does, but I think are engaged in a similar process of assessment/alignment.

I think Mayuri recognizes that there is no such thing as value-free science. He's certainly not 心優しい (tenderhearted)--I'm thinking about that phrase specifically because that's how he describes Hitsugaya to zombie Hitsugaya--but he's not objective, either. There's no such thing as perfection; there's no such thing as "objective." Nemu getting obliterated? Probably does hurt. He probably does love her, in some very specific definition of the term. But I think it's also a deliberation that's taking place at some higher-order, less personal, archetypal level re: the entirety of the TYBW itself. And Mayuri's basically like, fuck it, eat her, I will make her anew and I will make her better. And there's something in there that's not just about divesting oneself of attachment, or delusions of perfection--it's also about asserting some... viewpoint or vantage point about why the Gotei 13 should be winning this thing.

For Mayuri, whatever that reasons is, it's not noble, nor is it the pure-hearted tomodachi vibes that Ichigo's all in for. Yet whatever it is, it's still something he considers to be setting him apart from Subconscious Szayel. Whatever it is, it looks like Nemuri 8.