#shinoureijutsuin

[hitsugaya-toushirou]

Shinoureijutsuin Gacha -Vigor-

[aizensamasuggestions]

What was your experience during the Shinōreijutsuin?

My Academy record speaks for itself…

Although I suppose you’re asking because the Gotei has destroyed all records of the awards and praises that they heaped on me? No longer the model student, am I?

So then, things you might not know: I was initially dual-enrolled at the Kido Corps, until I achieved shikai in my penultimate year in the Shinoureijutsuin and my path was decided for me by Kyoka Suigetsu.

Of course, everyone was under the misconception that my zanpakuto power was ‘fog,’ but, regardless, that put me in the rare few who left Academy with something more than a blank ausachi.

I had a summer internship at Central 46 near the end of my Academy career. I played gopher to one of the judges. It was…. an illuminating experience. To say that I learned a lot that summer would be a understatement. I most certainly cemented my very strong dislike for that particular governing body that summer, though, truthfully, I hated it even before then. You never wondered how it was that I knew how to enter the Chambers?  ….ah, the lack of follow-up investigation after I left the Soul Society never ceases to amaze me.

But otherwise, my experience at Academy was like that of most people’s. Despite what my current reputation might have you believe, I got along with most people and so never had many problems with my roommates or colleagues or instructors. I was well-liked, popular.  

The only class I hated with every fiber of my being was zanjutsu…

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hi! I was hoping to run some maths on the ins and outs of the academy, do you have any screenshots of classrooms or the like? I really want to figure out the graduation class sizes, specifically, but I also just love the weirdness that surrounds the academy in general, so any trivia is appreciated!

First of all, THANK YOU for this ask. This is the kind of nonsense we want to dedicate every waking moment of our lives to.

When you have them, I would love to hear your speculations re: class sizes and how many classes and what the size of an Academy graduating class is! I was talking with my co-blogger about this, and given that the Gotei itself is not that large, we figured each graduating class can't be THAT big, relative to the Gotei itself, or else the size of each division would increase very quickly, given that it's not as though shinigami are aging out of service at the same rate. I mean, I'm sure a lot of them die every year even without a Blood War, but if, say, the equivalent of an entire Division is dying annually across the Gotei, that is... alarming...

Let's begin with some potentially useful group shots (left to right):

a mixed-class lecture (~200-300?). They're doing problem sets on the board, so it's not an exam, but both Renji and Rukia are in this hall, and it seems like it's before the classes have been split up. Maybe it's Introduction to Shinigami Studies or something?

the people who showed up to ogle Aizen (I didn't count these). It looks like a sparse crowd but it's over 100 people, possibly well over.

the Trauma FieldTrip (66, not including Hisagi et al), which potentially offers us a hard number on at least how many people are in Class 1.

[Bleach e32/46]

Of course, class instruction seems to be split into a smaller teacher/student ratio, into what appear to be classes of 20-30. The practical kidou classes seem smaller than the practical zanjutsu classes, which in turn seem smaller than the lecture/theory classes.

This is all just for Class 1, though, which for all we know might be a different size than the other class(es), since you have to test into it. I wish we'd seen Rukia's class! Hitsugaya's zanjutsu class looks like it's basically the same size as RenjiKiraHinamori's, but I assume he was also Class 1.

[Bleach e46/DDR]

There's some shots that are mostly about architecture rather than population, but many could also give us a sense of the volume of students on campus, based on who many are in the halls, the quad, the study rooms, etc.:

[Bleach e46/DDR]

And to close, these are just pure architecture shots, because where else are we going to put them, lol, but the Academy is a pretty big-looking building. I mean, look at all those windows! And there's at least one other, separate building, which is where RenjiKiraHinamori's zanjutsu lesson was held. (Not that this matters, but Hitsugaya's is held in what appears to be a different building, re: the windows, so maybe we can say there's at least two different classroom buildings, separate from the main gold building.) The pretty green courtyard is also not the front courtyard immediately upon entering the Academy gates, because that one is just an open square.

[Bleach e46]

[bleachbleachbleach]

Damnit you just triggered my writers brain. The way I see it is that part of why the Shino Academy takes so long isn't just training the potential shinigami, but also covering things such as literacy. (Aizen had taught a Calligraphy class there before being made Shinji's lieutenant)

Part of that I think would be speach training and language. Think about how in the British army their officers were/are trained to carry themselves like a gentleman, including the king's English. Put simply, they are speeking in a generally agreed upon subset of language so that everyone can understand eachother. There are other languages used in rukon, as well as dialects, and shinigami use their natural language in like company. (It being tokyo Japanese is probably solely for the convenience of the one consuming the media)

[This is in response to musing from this post!]

If we’ve said something that triggered your writerly instincts, when we have carried out our life’s mission! <333333333

As someone who’s spent way too long in school, part of me is like "6 years isn’t that long given that they’re starting from 0" even as I also know that most military training is not that long by any means. One day I’d LOVE to put together a bunch of potential course curricula for the Academy, because 1) I am obsessed with Aizen’s calligraphy class to an unhealthy degree, and 2) I do think they take The History of Soul Society and Hollow Biology 103, etc. though I suspect all of this is sorely lacking in the way that all curricula are—especially because every shinigami we’ve met knows a lot of things while simultaneously knowing absolutely zero things.

Below the cut, some of my thoughts on the Academy's auxiliary curriculum:

Entrance Exam

My co-blogger pointed out that the Academy has an entrance exam, and one that’s difficult enough to fail—though it makes me wonder what the nature of the exam is. Is it rote memorization of concepts? Is it testing your logical and spatial reasoning? What else are they screening for besides reiatsu? Regardless apparently it’s a written exam, which I imagine puts you at a pretty distinct disadvantage with you’re from most of Rukongai, because first you have to go find someone who will teach you how to read and write well enough to sit the exam, before you even get to go to shinigami school.

Calligraphy Class

My headcanon for Aizen’s calligraphy class (besides it being one of the many way he cruises for new recruits) is that it has both practical and artistic components. The artistic part is self-explanatory. The practical part is basically just penmanship training, which comes from the fact that all the handwritten reports we see seem to basically be in the same handwriting, even though we see in Colorful Bleach that if they’re not writing those reports with their inkbrushes, everyone’s handwriting is different. The two pieces of this class are DEEPLY divorced from one another, because one is deeply personal and the other the exact opposite of that. But when Aizen sent his course proposal to the Faculty Executive Committee, he probably said something about how practicing artful calligraphy imbues young potential shinigami with a mindset better suited to successful kidou and zanjutsu training and he's probably not wrong. Everything is utilitarian/practical in the end.

Report Writing 101

It would make sense that everyone take Report Writing 101, but part of me feels like that might be a more on-the-fly skill, or Continuing Education, because most of these guys aren’t writing reports anyway, and the number of reports written increases with rank, and since the Captain is going to have to sign off on everything anyway, they probably ether fix anything that’s amiss or give no fucks about whether anything is amiss before sending it on. So maybe that’s beyond the purview of the Academy. I mean, if most people don’t graduate with shikai, I guess they probably don’t graduate with Report Writing either. Maybe it's one of those "if you get fancy enough, there's one more thing you'll have to learn on your own!" deals.

Language Preserves Hierarchies Class

So that’s penmanship and written language, both things that Soul Society seems very invested in. What of the spoken language? The Gotei, for all their… whole thing, really, seem perhaps more permissive about a lot of things than a company might be IRL. Crazy hair, uniform customization, pretty informal language (though there is definitely still some preservation of language register based on rank). I could definitely see the Gotei wanting their trainees to have at least like, a 1-credit practicum in keigo, just because that helps preserve the power dynamics/hierarchies the Gotei runs on. I could also see them staring imperiously at potential new shinigami until this information was magically pressed into them, LOL.

Maybe my big interest here is "what does the Academy teach" vs. "what does the Academy just expect you to just know" (regardless of how much or how little sense these expectations might make). This is in regards to life skills as well as reiatsu skills. I'm convinced that there's a lot a lo a lot of room for improvement when it comes to this curriculum, 2000+ years in the making or not!

We basically said the same thing re: language variance in Rukongai, though oh MAN now I’m curious about like, to what degree standardization within Soul Society makes it out into Rukongai. Because on some level maybe it shouldn’t at all, because the Seireitei doesn’t seem to really care what’s going on in Rukongai except sometimes when whole swatches of souls go missing, but who’s doing all this teaching? To what end, besides Academy entrance exams? Is this a linear process where the resident Literate Soul needs to train the next one, or are there souls coming in from the Living World with different versions of this knowledge all the time? GAH I LOVE IT.

Unpaid Internship Class

I also wanna know, like, how much of Academy training is in situ vs. ex situ. Like, the Advanced Class leapt up to "field trip" really fast. Are the last year or two basically just Gotei Lite, except you don’t get paid (or get paid a lot less), even though you might die? Do you get TA credits if you’re like Hisagi et al, leading first-year field trips? Honestly I feel like a lot of Academy training is probably JUST learning how to interpret, control, and manipulate your reiatsu, and JUST trying to communicate with your sword and make it a true zanpakutou. Jinzen class is probably the hardest class series. If those two things happen to come easily to you, I imagine that’s mostly what fast-tracks you through the Academy curriculum.

But I’m coming at all this from a very contemporary, more-school-than-military, pretty Westernized perspective. Part of me wants to learn about how "school" has worked across the last 2000 years and part of me just wants to make it up in accordance with my own desires and interests because IT’S MAGIC GHOST MILITARY SCHOOL. 

Truly, I just want fandom’s 370 different versions of how this school works. There are so many great options. I want them all.

Anyone wanna do a "36 Views of Shinoureijutsuin" with me where we all make different potential curriculum plans lol. WHO WANTS TO DO FAKE ADMIN PAPERWORK WITH ME.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Fic: From Afar

Written (in my eternal tardiness) for HitsuHina Day 2022 and the prompt, seashells! Thank you so much for hosting, @rays-of-fire-and-ice​! <3

--

Characters: Hinamori (POV), Hitsugaya, Aizen; parenthetical Kira and Renji Word Count: ~5k Tags: Blanket Fic, Junrinan lore, Academy lore, the Hanbantai Players - the eminent theatre of the Seireitei, the Junrinan puppet festival, all of Soul Society was ocean once Summary: As her Academy training draws to a close and she struggles to manage the sharpness of her own ambitions, Hinamori goes home. There is change afoot in Junrinan, too.

She could say I really missed you, but she wants Toushirou to believe that she's okay. (But why wouldn't that be okay? To miss someone.)

--

It's not so different from home, she'd told him after her first four months. They each get a futon, which they are responsible for keeping clean and setting away. They sleep eight to a room (all boys, or all girls). In each room there is an alcove with a tall, many-drawered chest. Each student has a drawer for personal effects.

"Almost all of that is different," Toushirou had pointed out, and she hadn't even told him about the talon through Kanisawa-senpai's torso. She still hasn't.

Hinamori keeps letterhead in her drawer. With this letterhead, she has written nearly five years' worth of letters to Junrinan, all unanswered, and several dozen copies of her resume. She has earned a dozen interviews. Nothing formal at this stage, but everyone knows you cannot wait until your final exams if you are to stand out amongst the graduates. She has interviewed with the 5th Division nine times.

Beneath the letterhead, Hinamori keeps one seashell. (She'd lent Abarai letterhead once. He'd failed to buy the regulation size. Actually, he'd failed to buy any size at all. "Honestly, this is Kanashiro's fault," he'd said, his only elaboration the way his fingers danced over the lockboxes. "Did she sell it by the seashore?" he'd enunciated, when he saw the shell.)

Hinamori has never seen the sea.

[Read on AO3!]

[bleachbleachbleach]

BLEACH 007

My gosh, I’m never gonna get anywhere in this re-read if I keep going backwards, but I’ll latch onto anything about the Academy for headcanons!!! This is sorta continuing from my earlier post about Rukia’s chance to narrate her story/relationship to Soul Society, but I think it’s so charming that in explaining her use of healing kidou she immediately reverts to talking about her "top class" kidou grades. School on the brain after having attended Karakura High for a while? Because it’s not as though Rukia is fresh out of school—and we know she only attended the academy proper for a year, so it’s not even a place she spent a lot of time. (I’m assuming you don’t get "grades" when being privately tutored within the Kuchiki family, but who knows—maybe they run a homeschool co-op or something lol.)

Distant and fleeting memory or not, that year of Academy seems like something she’s been thinking about—something truncated/not quite grasped, and then returned to her in some way now. But even though she’s the one who introduces that framework she doesn’t actually want to talk about it, and just kind of vaguely affirms its existence. In the Viz translation she says responds with, "Something like that," which I’m interested in because it makes me think about what differences Rukia would have had in mind. The obvious difference is in its curriculum, but given that Rukia led with kidou it’s not like Ichigo would think shinigami school taught Contemporary Japanese Literature. And given that SOUL SOCIETY DOES NOT HAVE CAKE (I am never going to let this go) the way the Academy is set up really is astonishingly similar to a (Japanese) human school—the classes are separated the same way, there are gendered uniforms, the students get ranked… (God do they have clubs? I HOPE THEY HAVE CLUBS. I mean, if Seireitei proper has all these clubs and hobby societies, surely the Academy does too!) 

Sure, the Academy has the occasional fatal field trip, but what human school doesn’t have a few of those, too?

(OH NO NOW I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE NERD SQUAD’S CLASS TRIP. Do they go on a cultural excursion to a Rukongai district? To Seireitei?)

But then, Rukia’s reticence probably isn’t about the Academy itself, and whether or not it exactly fits Ichigo’s conception of “school.” Rukia just wants to change the topic, because she never actually had the full Academy experience, which makes her a lonely weirdo--but she doesn’t have to be here. Especially given the change in topic feels fairly emphatic to me--それより implies that whatever she’s about to say is more important than the topic being left behind. (She then goes on to ask about juice boxes.)

It’s worth noting that a few pages later, when she’s chasing after a Hollow (in her gigai, essentially powerless) the kidou she tries is Sokatsui, which basically only she and Byakuya ever use. If that’s her comfort kidou, then it’s also a reminder that she was trained fundamentally differently than the rest of her cohort. (And it foreshadows the coming flashback we get with Renji and Rukia entering the Academy, and then her adoption by Byakuya.) Rukiaaa ToT

NB: I am 10000% convinced that anyone else would have gone for a Shakkahou. I am at least 70% convinced that the only thing you really need to demonstrate in order to graduate from the Academy is Shakkahou, because it is the only offensive kidou anyone ever seems to use. Like, "Look, you don’t need shunpo, you don’t need to know how to heal, you only need to be a passable swordsman and you don’t need to be anywhere near shikai. If you can muster even the slightest hint of this single kidou we will just pass you gdi." Shakkahou is the algebra 1 of Shinigami Academy!!

[bleachbleachbleach]

💞誕生日おめでとう雛森ちゃん! 💞Happy Birthday, Hinamori! 💞

I felt so bad about forgetting about Hinamori’s birthday yesterday I thought to myself, okay, when I go to the grocery store tomorrow I’m gonna make it up to you, sweet girl!!!!!!! But... things did not go to plan. XP I TRIED MY LEVEL BEST but ultimately I just ended up with three misses, lol. So I feel like these offerings need a story to explain why they are so random: 

This is an Academy birthday. 

Kira and Renji were kinda limited in what was available, because it was only whatever the dormitory mess hall was serving and whatever they could manage to throw together on no sleep and an excess of trying to prepare for summer exams. BUT THEY TRIED THEIR BEST and they were able to put together a pink daifuku, a taro cream bun, and two rambutan that Kira’s aunt sent him in a care package.

They feel a bit sheepish about the whole thing, but they did only just meet her in April, so they’re not entirely sure what she’d really like. And anyway, Kira had only recently explained the practice of celebrating birthdays to begin with.

This is Hinamori’s first real birthday celebration--and even if it’s a glorified study session, it’s one she’ll treasure forever.