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𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶཐི༏ཋྀ󠀮 18+ | No AI use Closes: April 15, 2026 ࣪ ִֶཐི༏ཋྀ󠀮 ˖𓂃

Rukia Week 2026 is coming 💜💚

They’re waiting for the hollows 🤭

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Just based on 685 and 686 we know that Uryuu and Chad are objectively in lives they hate because Uryuu’s left alone working while his friends are having a party (the nurses even comment on how he’s being forced to work instead of going when he wanted to go) and Chad’s career is fighting. Mr I’ll only use my hands to protect and my pride in my skin lets me protect the people I care about, is getting paid to beat people up now. Like just with those two we get the set up that this isn’t as happy as it appears (especially if you compare it to Naruto a contemporary of bleach that’s reasonably similar and yet it’ ending is happy, Naruto ends up hokage and has a family to go home to.) this is then compounded by what it is that brings Yhwach back, unlike his original resurrection he doesn’t give a timeline he specifies a moment. When Ichigo is his happiest Yhwach would come back. And what moment is this? Not the day of his wedding, not the day he sees his best friend “happy” and married. Not even the birth of his son, it’s bickering with Rukia after seeing her for the first time in what is from what we can assume is Kazui’s birth at the latest.

We see from dialogue in 686 that Ichigo and Rukia have drifted apart, and this is further compounded in WDKALY where their relationship is already basically non-existent. Orihime is the one Rukia talks to to invite her and the rest of the karakura gang and the two don’t have a single one on one conversation in the whole book. And yet Ichigo’s happiest moment that brings back Yhwach is bickering with Rukia. And then the real kicker that I don’t think I’ve brought up in my other posts is that post 686 we see that Ichigo and Rukia are talking all the time now! Suddenly Ichigo and Rukia have phones that work between the Seireitei and the human world that allow for calls (which is kind of a moot point because they could also just pop through Urahara’s to visit for half an hour) but the point is off the page their relationship has been totally reinvigorated and the only change is Yhwach’s final death at the hands of Kazui. And this is without even touching the insanity of the imagery used in WDKALY or even just its title.

And the reason this makes sense is because legitimately everyone in bleach bar two specific characters are cut from the “I’ll sacrifice myself for my friends.” Cloth and they all know not to talk to any one else about it because they’d try to talk them out of it with bs about honour or something. So as part of the debrief they would’ve had post TYBW (cause there was always a debrief at the end of an arc and TYBW is the only time we don’t see one) they bring up Yhwach’s threat to come back now at this point everyone starts coming up with contingencies to keep Yhwach’s threat from coming true, Chad takes up boxing as his career, Uryuu follows his father into medicine rather than tailoring, even Orihime gives up on her dreams of higher education or her other four lives and stays at the bakery without even dating Ichigo yet (based on what timescale we do get Ichigo would’ve been finishing his second year of uni in WDKALY and he hasn’t even had a single date with Orihime until after that book’s finished) and now the real kicker is Ichigo and Rukia let their relationship collapse completely.

Like even if you argue not from a ship perspective it’s incredibly clear that the state of Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship is horrendously worse after the second timskip than it is at any other point in the manga. The best of friends “platonic soulmates” have barely spoken a word to each other in years to the point that they don’t even get to celebrate Rukia’s captaincy in the seireitei. And yet we know from breathes from hell that if the primary person want Ichigo involved he is. And as we see as soon as the two bicker Yhwach comes back. Ichigo and Rukia sacrifice their relationship to protect the world from Yhwach that’s why they don’t end up together. Not because Kubo changed his mind at the last minute but because I believe at least this is the only thing he had planned in the entire TYBW.

TLDR: it seems insane because it is insane. Kubo slipped a tragedy into his happy ending and Occam’s razor after TYBW almost forces you to assume that its mistakes rather than intentional.

My posts on the absolutely insane imagery WDKALY is playing around with