#ive had these drafted for a bit but finally posting now that ichigo got his order from me ^v^ third was the draft for the sketch i included

[lupato]

assorted lupats i dont think ive posted here

[ID: a series of digital Lupinranger VS Patranger sketches.

the first image is a three-panel sequence of the lupins in a cartoony style, popping out from behind a wall, descending in position, each in their respective colours. in the first, Kairi says "ル," followed by Touma saying "パ," and Umika saying "ン."

the second image is of the patrens taking a selfie together, in pink lines on a white background. Tsukasa and Sakuya are both smiling with the Snapchat dog filter over them, giving them ears and a long tongue, while Keiichiro points to himself and says "Why doesn't it work for me??"

the third is a red monochrome sketch of Kairi kissing a grumpy-looking Keiichiro on the cheek. the fourth image is a bust sketch of Touma in various shades of blue. he is wearing a chef uniform and staring up blankly as a rat peaks out from under his toque.

the fifth image is a drawing of Zamigo standing in the snow and eating a block of ice. his skin is blue and frostbitten. this drawing is partially coloured, but below his chest it is sketchy, unrefined, and uncoloured.

the sixth image is a doodle of Kairi, red lines on a pale yellow background, in his Lupin Red disguise, standing with three pokemon. to his right is a shiny Armarouge labeled "Magnum," while to his left is a Victini labeled "Victory," and a shiny Liepard labeled "Red."

the seventh image is a screenshot of a canvas with a photo of Ito Asahi behind a partially-painted sketch of the same image, redrawn as Kairi. he is sitting with his chin resting on his knee and looking to the side.

the last image is an unfinished sketch of Kairi, in his Lupin Red disguise, dancing with Keiichiro. it is done in pink lines on a white background and Keiichiro has more details filled in than Kairi. /END ID]

[littleeyesofpallas]

There's a Bleach rant ive been trying (and failing) to sort out in a nice orderly succinct post for a while now about how thru a mix of my usual rundown of the Arrancar Arc set up, my (also) usual metatextual reading, and then also slipping into some headacanon-y territory, I've convinced myself that the real endgame on the Arrancar Arc should've been a confrontation between the Visored as "surprise" villains and the Vastlord Arrancar as surprise good guys.

In part key to this being my already kind of established theory on this blog that the Fullbringers were basically a rehash of a dropped Visored plot that we never got to see fleshed out in the Arrancar Arc.  I'm pretty certain the Visored's goal (if they'd ever even gotten around to being given one...) would have been to obtain the Hougyoku to become human again(again this kind of banking on my other established theories including that the Visored weren't actually shinigami but human substitute shinigami like Ichigo) as their hollows were a curse. But then as a twist they'd really be out to further push their hybrid power as neither Shinigami nor Hollow.  Meaning they’d have been a ragtag group of 3rd party humans without rank, whom Ichigo turns to for guidance when the Shinigami and Urahara can’t help him, who appear initially hostile, end up friendly and kind of goofy, but ultimately were training Ichigo for their own benefit and not out of benevolence.

But then, opposite this, the Arrancar were clearly positioned to be an inversion of the Visored, not just in the basic outline of their powers but in their implicit alignment as well. Notably, the shinigami were already of questionable morality after the Soul Society Arc and it seemed like Kubo had every intention of following up on that.

Now, there’s a lot more to all of this than that... but that’s kind of where I keep tripping myself up in tangents, so let’s just kind of move along for now...

If we figure that the Visored were positioned to be villains masquerading as allies, and posit from there that the Arrancar might not all be as villainous as they seem we find that any potential evidence of this being set up hinges on the elusive nature of the Vastlord. We know they're human sized and stronger than a captain as hollows, that they are very few in number, and that Aizen is actively seeking them out in order to complete/perfect the Espada, and that he is quick to discard and replace weak Espada. (ala Grimmjow/Luppi and the Privaron.)

The first and only real Vastlord we see is Wonderweiss, as we catch a single glimpse of him as a Hollow, but bound in bandages, just before he’s turned into an Arrancar by Aizen; the only time we actually see this process; He is clearly humanoid in shape and size in this scene, and given the context above all being freshly exposited at that point in the story, it’s a pretty clear inference.  This would mean that Wonderweiss is positioned to be one of Aizen’s new, perfect Espada ranks, soon to replace one of the existing ones. (although this is never followed through on.)

Of note, Wonderweiss shows up in the diversion party covering up Orihime’s abduction alongside other Espada, and takes Urahara offguard, strongly suggesting that he is in the very least stronger than Yammy, who struggled to keep up with Urahara previously.  Other than just a nebulously high power level, Wonderweiss stands out by his vacant/dimwitter and/or child-like demeanor.  Of note: Tousen refers to him as “Pure” although even he doesn’t seem to know what exactly that means.

But you know who else has a nebulous power level, ominously foreshadowed (before not being followed up on for a long time) and a generally innocent and child-like demeanor?  Nel.

When Nel is first introduced she actually drops a bit of info about how the Numeros are the ranked Arrancar of Aizen’s army, and how she isn’t one of them, implying that there are just other arrancar living out in Hueco Mundo.  Additionally there are a few peculiarities about her and her companions: For one her mask is not clearly broken nor actually missing much of itself at all, which seems to imply her mask wasn’t removed properly (something Kubo does happen to follow up on, but I’ll get to that later...) and although their brief discussion with Ichigo does identify all three of them as Arrancar, Dondochakka and Pesche don’t actually look like Arrancar at all.  Although it can be argued that Pesche’s mask is broken and hidden under the fabric bolted over one eye, Dondochakka’s mask appears fully intact, and he doesn’t even have a hollow hole...

So here’s another bit of where I get tripped up by my own meta headcanon...  Kubo seems to have a general habit of taking old ideas and reusing them, sometimes it’s character types or dynamics, sometimes its powers and themes, sometimes it’s certain panels or scenes.  And I feel like he does this most often when the first time he tried, he didn’t quite get everything he wanted out of it.  

I also believe that Kubo’s very traceable plans for the Arrancar Arc that he set up early on, were effectively ditched by around the time the Grimmjow fight happened.  And broadly speaking, I realize that that is a less substantiated theory than some of what I peddle.  And I can go into a lot of the kind of orbital evidence that I think suggests it, but it still only goes so far, and doesn’t amount anything irrefutably concrete, so I’m going to also fight the urge to go on that particular rant...

NOW, with that in mind, I think Nel’s dynamic with Nnoitra was originally part of something that Kubo was effectively at risk of losing when he shifted gears to wrap up the Hueco Mundo rescue mission faster.  And in his usual style, I think he quickly retooled key moments of that dynamic into what we wound up with in order to quickly shoehorn it into what remained of the Hueco Mundo phase of the arc while he still had the chance: Nnoitra taunting Ichigo for not knowing “what” Nel is; his inferiority complex; and a number of small scenes and exchanges, including the one where Nel waxes philosophical on what it means to have gone from Human to Hollow to Arrancar.  I believe that this accounts for a number of issues I see with Nel’s whole reveal and fight and backstory with Nnoitra not really fitting into the general flow of the story or the timeline we’d been given prior. (which is, you guessed it, another rant I’m not getting into here!)

A few additional weird notes that I don’t even know how to rectify personally...

in the Unmasked character book Ulquiorra gets his little flashback origin story, which I don’t really know if I’d place in the realm of building on Kubo’s final continuity for the arc, as something he salvaged from old ideas, or something he honestly just did more or less outside of continuity as bonus content just because it’s what he was vibing that week...  But it suggests Ulquiorra wasn’t actually made by Aizen but was a naturally occurring Arrancar who removed his own mask.  And in the bounds of this particular building theory that  actually puts him in a category similar to Nel, as a Vastlord who got his masked removed by means other the the Hougyoku.  And I don’t think I need to remind you about his whole character arc with Orihime and his fixation with finding out what Heart is and how he die a more sympathetic figure than most of the Arrancar.

Starrk’s awkward death flashback where he also appears to have not actually been made by the Hougyoku at all, but is in fact a naturally occurring Arrancar.  And his similar disposition to Ulquiorra, where they both seem possessed by a sense of longing for surprisingly human connections(and understanding of Heart, and companionship) and is actually rather adverse to fighting if he can help it.

And finally (I promise this is all going somewhere...) Zommari’s extremely peculiar death in which he berated Byakuya and shinigami for having arrogantly and self-righteously appointed themselves protectors of humans and executioners of Hollows, something he suggests is against a kind of natural order or sense of justice.  He dies praising Aizen, implicitly as someone who appears to have promised him and the other Arrancar an alternative to this system.  As a tiny tack on, Aisslinger also dies with similar praise for Aizen, saying that Hollows are born from fear and only someone fearless like Aizen has the right to lead the Arrancar.

SO...  Now that we’ve collected these kind of disparate bits of data I’m not even gonna waste your time with trying to suss out the difference between the inferred continuity, the meta-textual intent, or speculation(because that’s where I get lost in these drafts) I’m just gonna launch right into fullblown headcanon...

...in a part 2 post.... because otherwise this’ll be twice and long and nobody wants that...