Songue85

If you can post something positive, do it.

We all need the reminder that things can be better.

Base form Yammy, using little more than pure physical force, cracked her shield with the poke of a single finger.

Baseform Ulquiorra smashed her shield in one swing.

Quilge tore her healing shield apart as a side effect of taking in reishi in general, he wasn't even aiming at her.

The only two times her shields successfully block something is in Hueco Mundo when Ichigo tries to get up out of her healing shield and is knocked back - when he wasn't braced for it or putting in any effort to push through - and Ginjou with her blowback shield, when he was only playing villain and probably pulled the hit.

This failure was both well foreshadowed and inevitable:

At the start of this "fight" Yhwach very performatively stayed seated for the beginning of it, then stayed in one spot after standing. Very pointedly stayed still and silent for long stretches while Ichigo tried to reach him and Inoue tried to stop and "calm down" Ichigo instead of providing her promised defense. Taunted Ichigo, thinking like Inoue did that he was unsettled and going berserk until he started using Zangetsu at a higher level, then got up and fought properly until he activated bankai.

Then he used his full power to break Ichigo's bankai, and then came this, the move to break Ichigo's spirit.

The last thing he thought he might be able to count on, a subconcious trust in Inoue's shield Yhwach had instilled through pretending to be stopped by it the two times prior to this she'd raised it, failing and Ichigo, completely unprepared, gets gored by it.

Every instance of Inoue blocking Yhwach's attacks in the prior confrontations was him setting her and Ichigo up to trust that shield at this exact moment so he could deal Ichigo a fight-ending blow.

Ichigo is shown to have fast enough counter-attacking reflexes that he shattered Kirinji's hand in the seconds of his punch connecting. He caught Ishida's arrow midair a hairsbreath from his torso and preventing himself taking the blow. He's shown a remarkable ability to dodge and weave around Yhwach's flexible shadow attacks.

But he doesn't dodge here.

The only reason is he let his guard down, and it was exactly at the most advantageous moment for Yhwach for it to happen.

This was as planned as the moment in the throne room when he got Ichigo to touch his sword to be able to infect him and use him as a puppet to kill the Soul King.

Was maybe even formed there as he saw that everyone honestly, erroneously, believed Inoue could heal the Soul King.

This was brutal and devastating for Ichigo, and left him wide open for Yhwach to tear out his power and cripple him properly.

It was also devastating for Inoue.

Her only goal was this:

and the next time Ichigo takes devastating injuries body and soul:

She can't do it. Tsukishima steps in and does...whatever, and she gets a token, offscreen involvement and then Ichigo leaves her behind without another word or letting her attempt to heal his physical body or replenish his reiatsu.

I really feel the both of them and their relationship fundamentally broke here along with that shield.

Ichigo was able to get up again because he's practiced at recovering from despair, but the person we see him trust and rely on most after this is Aizen, not any of his friends, and instead of doing anything the person he was up until this would logically do, he sticks his head in the sand and hides in his human life to avoid Yhwach's promised return.

Inoue never appears again except in an apron, retired from using her powers as anything but a baby monitor and entirely divorced from that ambitious, focused girl she'd been.

And their relationship is pretty distant and cold.

They share one panel together post-marriage and Ichigos face isn't shown, she's looking in another direction and they're drawn in two different styles - Ichigo full art, Inoue chibi. They do not share a single panel, aren't shown in the same room as or even floor of the house as the child they had.

The only basis we have for her power being godly is that the biggest liar in the manga told us so. That’s not to say her powers aren’t impressive, but there are too many contradictions.

For example, Orihime brought the Arrancar girl (Loly or Menoly?) back to life but a few chapters later she’s unable to bring Ichigo back to life.

We get two statements saying two completely different things regarding her powers.

Whether Aizen is being truthful or not, the fact of the matter is that when given the chance to heal a god, she failed.

And something I find interesting is that Orihime really took Aizen’s words to heart, because she seemed genuinely shocked that she couldn’t heal the Soul King. She was also shocked that Yhwach got past her shield. She was overestimating her powers a little.

Her powers are simply peak-human. Not godly. If it was, Kubo wouldn’t take every chance he got to prove how ineffectual her powers are.

And even outside the nature of her powers, there’s also the issue of spiritual pressure. She can’t heal/reject people with more reiatsu.

That may explain why at beginning of TYBW, she healed those shinigami kids quick and easy but 1-2 months before (in FB arc) she took much longer to heal Ichigo.

(The anime better shows how quickly she healed those two shinigamis)

That being said, that may be the reason why Ichigo opted not to get healed at the end of the manga. He probably knew he was too much for her to handle and opted against getting healed because a.) it might’ve not worked and b.) if it did work, it would take too long.

They’re literally never on the same wavelength.

Orihime’s problem: she’s too human. She has trouble comprehending that Ichigo is not a human at all. Unless a Quincy is considered a human, he’s 0% human.

That’s why her (and Chad tbh) have trouble grasping that Ichigo’s battles are now beyond them and they just want to tag along.

Arrancar Arc, Yamamoto tells her to inform Ichigo of the details of the war and Aizen’s plans for Karakura town. He singles Ichigo out from his friends cause of his potential. So, she tells Ichigo and Ichigo is too preoccupied mastering his hollowfication to comprehend what she’s saying.

She sees his determination and decides she wants to fight too. She doesn’t understand what Ichigo is becoming but as long as Ichigo is fighting, she’ll fight.

Same arc, Urahara tells her she’d be ineffectual in the battlefield so she should stay off the front lines.

She doesn’t want to be lonely as everyone, especially Ichigo, fights in the war so she dismisses his words.

Hueco Mundo, she’s scared of Ichigo’s hollowfication and then is downright petrified of his Vasto Lorde form. She can’t see the hollow as a part of Ichigo.

TYBW, Ichigo is on a warpath to protect Soul Society and take down Yhwach.

Orihime (and Chad) see Ichigo going off to war and decide they want to tag along. They treat this world-ending conflict as if we’re back in the beginning of Arrancar Arc while Ichigo is taking it seriously.

Ichigo’s problem: he abandoned his humanity all the way back in HM. The minute he died and went full on hollow, his humanity was gone. He went to the Fake Karakura Town, went god-mode and then lost his powers.

Then spent a whole arc crying about how he doesn’t want to be just a human, he needs power. He didn’t even want to stick around in Karakura.

Then TYBW comes, he lets Chad and Orihime tag along but doesn’t expect much from them. He is too focused on the conflict at hand and Uryuu’s defection.

Yeah. They were both deceiving her into thinking she was going to have a bigger role, but ultimately using her as a tool against the other. As you said, Ichigo's using her to stall for time until he can start his real solo fight, Yhwach is using her as a trap to cripple Ichigo to win the solo fight, but she thinks she's getting to fight on even footing alongside Ichigo against Yhwach.

Long story short: Ichigo is probably too much for her.

I think he always was.

At the beginning of the Soul Society arc Inoue is startled at how much HARDER it is to heal souls.

From Aizen vs SoiFon we learned someone of a higher reiatsu strength is impervious to those after a certain level weaker than them. They can't effect them with their abilities.

We see her heal Ichigo a few times, but crucially he's welcoming it. The only people we see her heal that are unconscious or unwilling are weaker than her in reiatsu strength (loly and melony and those no-name shinigami in the dangai when Ulquiorra comes to take her).

Every time she fails to heal Ichigo, it's when he's unconscious and not able to allow her power to affect him.

The one and only time she successfully heals an unconscious Ichigo is before she goes with Ulquiorra and he's in his human body.

Inoue's power is human and human scale and human-centered. Interacting with the human world/human bodies is what it's made for. It inherently struggles with soul-stuff. She can do it, obviously, and is very strong, but souls are harder for her to effect and powerful souls out of her reach unless they allow her to affect them - it's just that she is, as you said, peak human and therefore very strong so only a lieutenant and above could actually reasonably resist her.

And something I find interesting is that Orihime really took Aizen’s words to heart

Yes! This is an example of her being self-centered and full of hubris. Who wouldn't find being someone able to "trespass on god's territory" an appealing thing to accept about yourself? She ignores all the evidence to the contrary and lets that idea build up, and while she isn't ever arrogant, she does very much see herself as capable of being the heroine that can gallop in to save the day like Ichigo - again, her stated goal is always to be equal to Ichigo, but she never accepts that that is very far out of her ability to reach.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

If we censor, we aprove that these words are not supposed to be used.

It’s time to activate it…

Bites The Dust! now this entire post will be reversed!

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to have someone see all the worst possible parts of you after you repressed yourself for so long in fear of rejection. only to have the first thing they say in response be "i didn't know you could play the piano."