#quinciology

[anti-tenten]

What the fuck is his actual problem

Why is he always serving

[anti-tenten]

I think while nazi references are pretty obvious, regarding Christian imagery... I think he wanted to do something resembling Christian supremacists which is not uncommon in fictional media: the thing is in most media where cults and religious organisations are portrayed as evil, the villains are portrayed to genuinely believe to have a noble cause meanwhile in bleach it's not very clear why some Quincy follow ychwach. Some do it for money, sure, a couple of them genuinely respect him, some hate shinigami but they don't seem to be united in ideology in anything besides "ychwach good". But why? Just because he's their boss?

In general, I don't think there's an issue in portraying death cults who kill in the name of some imaginary noble goal: such exist in the witcher, dune, let alone people who idolise individual powerful figures because they genuinely believe in their good intentions. And those are often obviously inspired by tragic historical events of the past (like in due and the witcher it's respectively Arab colonisation and inquisition). Those parallels are incredibly obvious and they aren't meant to be condoned by any means just because they exist in these universes. Accusing the author of anything but maybe being not very sensitive with the topic based on how their villains behave wouldn't make sense

However the problem with Quincy worldbuilding is that they're a race. Except for some of Ishidas relatives and bazz not a single Quincy acknowledges ychwach as a threat to both quincies and everybody else. 99% of Quincy characters side with ychwach because they can without any resistance making them almost universally evil as a race. In the beginning one of shinigami characters says Quincy have every right to hate shinigami because the latter killed their families and friends and now they avenge them but after that not a single Quincy shows any hatred towards shinigami for any reason besides magical racism! You can't make an entire race that is 99% nazis by birth and then say the protagonist race committed genocide and still show how fucking evil the survivors are! What are you trying to say???

P. S. Don't Quincy souls disintegrate when they die? Otherwise the Quincy genocide, that would exclusively affect human world Quincy as they have not moved into the soul society then yet, would be pointless. I suppose, they're all people but soul societys conditions allow a mere human to be immortal unless killed as in they don't age and die by natural causes the way a normal person would

P. P. S. Also the grandmaster title is more likely a reference to crusader than KKK imo

At this point I've basically long since run dry on Bleach funfacts, certainly out of any that have any real weight in the broader readings of the series. But I do have one not-so-fun fact still left up my sleeve --a real dead end nothing contribution... So buckle up, I guess? I apologize in advance if this ends up, like, I dunno, spoiling the aesthetic(?) for anyone. Feel free to just ignore this and move on if you're touchy about keeping your obsessive fandom experiences squeaky clean.

So, I noted back when I was combing thru Quincy terms, that it felt a little less than comfy that in addition tot he general n*zi aesthetics Juugram's official title was in fact "Sternritter Grand Master" which felt, at the time, like an unfortunate coincidence that it would fall in line with the naming scheme of the K*K's nonsense titles like Grand Wizard/Grand Dragon, Grand Cyclops, Grand Magi and various other ridiculous sounding occultist LARPer horseshit they've cycled thru over the past century+.

But then I was reminded that in the early days of the K*K one of their stated goals was to establish a white supremacist "country" inside the united states, and as they dabbed in this insurgency fantasy, they dubbed this goal of a secret second white nation within the confines of the USA, their "Invisible Empire"...

And although the word we hear throughout the TYBW arc is the German Wändenreich[ヴァンデンライヒ] from Wänden:“Walls” and Reich:“Empire/Realm,” the Japanese underlying that term is [見えざる帝国]: “Unseen/Invisible Empire.”

In fact the white robed and hoods tradition stemmed from what were initially petty pranks(although they escalated very quickly in seriousness and danger) in which they would menace black communities and abolitionists by pretending to be the ghosts of dead confederates. In this capacity the imagery and language around them also evoked an "Army of Ghosts."

And although it was never properly addressed, there was always this vague issue of the Quincy's ages... Those with clear backgrounds like Juugram and Bazz-B seem impossibly old. And we see that As Nodt is recruited on what appears to be his deathbed --in a hospital, on life support and in fear of dying, with a bible on his bedside as if ready to be read his last rites, and of course the Quincy genocide of 200 years prior.

And tangential to this, we see the brief, if mostly pointless, return of the three dead Fullbringers --Ginjo, Tsukishima, and Giriko-- who seem to have retained their memories and powers across the borders of life and death. Is it safe to speculate then that the Quincy are in fact a literal Army of Ghosts? It explains how they're able to go toe to toe with the shinigami in ways Uryuu's initial explanations of their skills would've suggested wasn't possible. (i.e. that they were describes as being regular flesh and bone humans and only their weapons are actually supernatural, and thus they are not capable of particularly extraordinary physical feats, or blessed with any superhuman durability.)

There is also a lot of "Knight" and "White Knight" imagery and titles evoked in the K*K's long history, and while that's absolutely vague enough to be handwaved on its own, it's not not adjacent to all this....

So to sort of loosely review everything going on with the Quincy....

Catholic inverted priest frocks, crosses, silver and exorcisms, holy eucharist angel wings&halo final forms, blood eucharist schrift, conversion based recruitment policies, the whole "one kingdom under god" shtick, miracle baby son of god christ figure, explicit mention of monotheism

but then also 5 pointed crosses/stars and pentagrams,

victims of a genocide with a dr.mengele nemesis, YHWACH-v-YHWH

inverted Hugo Boss uniforms, german themed attacks, skills and tools, crosses again, explicitly evoking the Schutzstaffel with Yhwach's royal guard, and nonsense blood purity eugenics b.s.... weirdly not touched upon "black sun" or swastika imagery tied to Ichigo

For some reason a few loose threads of what appear to be Loius XIV and his sun god apollo fixation, purifying light and sun and stars motifs

YHWACH having big Backbeard energy, the literal evocation of Backbeard, being a western ghost army

and now these mismatched crumbs of what appear to be deliberate K*K references: ghost army, invisible empire, grandmaster, etc...

Like... I don't think this makes them worse, or paints Kubo as some kind of crackpot racist, but like... I don't know what to make of it honestly... It's as inconsequential to the actual message or plot as anything else, including the n*zi stuff, but it just feels weird knowing it's there? Just sorta loitering around in the background?? Also the Quincy are just such a bizarre clusterfuck of unfocused nonsense ""themes"" with like zero actual acontent. Given everything that's in the slurry I think that might be for the better? because any coherent message drawn from all of these influences probably couldn't have been any good...

[anti-tenten]

Tosen would make way more sense as a tybw villain

Like during """" Winter""" (even though it did not happen in winter) War and some time before that tosen claims he "follows the path of least bloodshed" but the only thing we know about aizens politics is that he's a control freak. Did tosen think aizen would bring peace between shinigami and hueco mundo as the sole leader? It's never really explained at least I never understood why he sided with aizen for any reason besides "I want to see seiretei burn". He did respect aizen, and not just his power and genuinely saw him as more than just a man with a similar goal. But why?

Meanwhile him becoming a traitor during the Quincy war would fit perfectly. He has trauma around someone close to him dying? Ychwach wants to abolish death altogether. Tosen himself is afraid of dying? Previous statement. He hates shinigami and wants a revenge on them? Ychwach hates shinigami. A powerful leader that does not just strike fear but has very clear ideological stances, honest and has a semi-legendary status due to an extremely long life full of leading armies and winning battles? Ychwach. It's wayyyy easier to see a self-hating shinigami to fall for the Quincy ideals than moving to a world full of creatures you spent your life seeing as a personal threat and try to live alongside them just to destroy seiretei and then what exactly. Just flood the human world with hollows or what? Also seeing a shinigami traitor in tybw would be way more interesting but the problem is that kubo made an entire race full of evil people™ and still tried to make them victims sometimes just to forget about it and demonise all of them on the next page for the sake of a cool looking battle of Ichigo and friends Inc. against Quincy meanies with no substance. What a shame

[anti-tenten]

Sternritter uniforms are so obviously customised which is so funny like I wanna see the process of them submitting design ideas and how the tailor reacted

Like

"Are you sure about that. That's a stripper outfit"

"What the fuck why do you even need this how are you gonna stick it to your head

"Why do you want me to suffer"

"That's a potato sack. You can handle it yourself"

"What"

"Neither of you look like Quincy"

"Should I offer you umm... A glove instead???"

"This is not a cosplay event. We're at war"

"Do I really need to sew your boots to your pants?... "

[anti-tenten]

It's so crazy to me that kubo was like: "btw there was an entire Quincy empire in the Middle Ages" So like. Did nobody notice or do humans know Quincies at least existed at some point???

[anti-tenten]

Ychwachs "you guys are all replaceable" rubbed off on them

The Wandenreich forces really are not well disciplined at all...Bazz B surprise attacks the remaining Bambies for no reason other than his own desire to fight Ichigo 1v1. And it doesn't even work! Not only do three other Sternritter show up, but it turns out his attacks didn't even take the Bambies down for the count. And as Soul Society could tell you, the last thing you need when dealing with Ichigo Kurosaki is to also be fighting each other.

[anti-tenten]

I like that with their deaths being confirmed, meninas and candice received something like modified vollstandig (even though they should not have any after auswahlen so I guess it's like just a zombie representation of their schrift??) but what about bambietta? her abilities are just a regular blue reishi colour even though she used to use red bombs before auswahlen also why did she not get cool skull decor and horns -_-

[anti-tenten]

Kubo really placed Lichtreich in such a fascinating era of high middle ages and all we got out of it is vaguely Romanesque/Gothic backgrounds, a horse and kids with wooden bows

Meanwhile everybody's dressed like 19th century Russian officers with enough time to do the laundry every day on their hands. And somewhere in seiretei sasakibe is wielding a weapon that will only be invented in the Renaissance

[anti-tenten]

so let me get this straight.

not for discourse but just overall

so the balance between three worlds is settled until someone else like ychwach is born again?

because there seem to have been very little Quincy previously and even though he is called the father of all Quincy, not all of quincies descend from people who received Quincy powers from him. Quincy were originally said to be an ancient clan (not a race) so possibly ychwach was born in this clan but as a result of immaculate conception with the soul king giving him unique powers he was had very powerful not only soul redistribution powers but also an ability to take these powers back when they were more developed, unlike jugram? then, since such Quincy were seen as defective and mercilessly killed, I'd assume he was not born in an Echt Quincy clan or was the first Quincy in his clan possibly? (I assume that's what most people have as a hc)

with such an immense power buff from actual god he was capable of distributing his power to hundreds of people whose descendants became professional Quincies and went on to colonise nearby settlements, forming an empire. to get recruited into the army you must've had some special type of cynical mindset: we see that ychwach's early sternritters never seemed to pressure people they colonised into joining the military, seems like ychwach was never concerned about the shortage of troops, so I assume a large portion of people got recruited, not drafted.

that would largely explain the "evil Quincy race from Wandenreich" issue: if most Quincy serving in the military got recruited semi-voluntarily, that would mean they were loyal to ychwach because they agreed with him and whether sternritter from tybw were born during Lichtreich or are descendants of those recruits, their families must've upheld this ideology not because they were brainwashed but based on their personal feelings about ychwach and his imperialism.

those who rejected the idea of colonising soul society or joining Lichtreich military as a whole, were left in human world (like Masaki-Kurosaki clan that were explicitly shown to be comparatively pretty nice if you ignore eugenics and incest I guess) and although they were a fairly small percentage of Quincies, there were enough of them to lead to Quincy genocide that was excused by "too many Quincies killing too many Hollows", cutting down the numbers of Quincies in the world significantly. then, almost 180 years later the first Auswählen happened, killing Quincy like Masaki and Katagiri and most of weak or Gemischt Quincy.

but knowing that there were at least two known Quincy clans - since Katagiri was from a clan different from Ishida-Kurosaki, Ishida-Kurosaki were not the last clan left after Quincy genocide: and amount of fresh graves after Auswählen proves that - and if fairly strong but not outstandingly so Echt Quincy like Ryuuken managed to survive, I would assume there are still at least a couple dozen of them left all around the world, but since there are so little of them, the possibility of powerful Echt Quincy to be produced without inbreeding into Quincy Carl II of Spain instead of Ychwach-Kwisatz Haderach 2.0 is borderline impossible, until whatever is left of soul king (which is not a lot but it has to be around because otherwise the worlds would have collapsed) goes around impregnating women again, these two and a half Quincy left are not a threat to the shinigami and that's why they aren't hunted down for sport as inherent enemies of the state I guess:///

[anti-tenten]

I'm sorry but this is nonsense....

please tell me which one of these two is stronger

hint: one of them survived auswählen and had to personally be killed by the son of god

[anti-tenten]

Quincy background characters uniforms ft. ishida family

[anti-tenten]

If I was ishida I would be soooo mad. Like imagine you discover there are hundreds of Quincies that avoided both genocide on shinigamis hands and Auswahlen and they're all nazi bitches bootlicking a guy who treats them just as bad as gotei did. Quincies deserved better and it's a shame kubo turned them into punching bags to make more 'epic fight scenes' and didn't think it was necessary to explain what happened to an entire race that mostly depended on their evil boss existing to survive. Did they all die? Will new Quincies be born? Did the Wandenreich empire fall? Who's ruling it now, if not? Will shinigami massacre them once again when they decide Quincies are a nuisance and interfere with life/death cycle too much?

They had such an interesting premise but were treated as exclusively bad guys with barely any substance except for ishida and maybe jazz and jugram. We don't really see them outside of the context of wartime, just hanging out and being themselves except for stuff like the bambies introduction that is just misogyny for the sake of few awkward laughs. If Pierrot studio doesn't give us Quincy fillers I'm eating the CEO for lunch and I know they won't so it's settled

[anti-tenten]

Like I genuinely cannot emphasise this enough how underexplored Quincy are in canon and are instead portrayed as a fancy evil empire (despite being victims of genocide) of humans that are almost all inherently evil and all of their aesthetic has barely any spiritual background despite them literally being a religious death cult. Like they are devoted to ychwach but they only seem to see him as a powerful leader and except for Lille and jugram most of them don't seem to look up to him or even like him as a person. They just see him as a boss imo

Did kubo ever explore the Quincy symbolism? Why do they use the pentagonal cross as basically a coat of arms? Is there a cultural or practical reason?