#bleach 666

Injure them to the point of almost death and stick them in a gigantic ball of poison with a small chance of escape….. Then never mention them again in the entire series leaving fans confused over their faith

Extra points if one of them is literally a half cat at the time

BLESS thank you for this question friend, I’ve been meaning to unload my feelings about that chapter for awhile now. Leggo

I honestly think my favorite part about all of this is how much Kubo is recognizing and developing Rukia’s strength. I love the way he has developed her as a shinigami from unranked soul equivalent to a foot soldier to losing her powers to gaining her powers to revealing a pretty bomb ass shikai to becoming a vice captain to revealing an even bomber ass bankai to using her as the last key step in winning the Quincy war.

Like that is HUGE. The fact that all seeing eye Kisuke Urahara chose to point directly to Ichigo AND Rukia as continuing on his work in the war means that homeboy has a plan and that plan involves the thorough work of Ichigo AND Rukia. Honestly, all shipping aside, that makes my heart so happy because Kubo is bringing back the two original characters (the first Bleach characters, really) full circle and using them as a tag team to win the war. The continuity of a story that seems pretty discontinuous at times is really important and I love that this has been revealed.

As for Rukia’s EXACT role, I honestly don’t know. Her bankai is still new and relatively unknown in the way it works. It’s also HELLA powerful. Like what she can do with her bankai and the fact that it’s so powerful it can kill after only a short amount of time in use means that it’s scary strong. I definitely think Kubo wouldn’t give his original character (one of his favorite characters, mind you) a bankai like that if he didn’t intend to use it in the end. How all of that is going to work in relation to Ichigo, i don’t know. A lot is still up in the air at this point. Keep in mind, we still don’t even know hardly anything about Ichigo’s new power. We don’t even know what his new bankai looks like.

Okay, at first I was confused by who did he meant since it would make sense for it to be Byakuya since he appears in the same chapter but then thinking about the worlding of the phrase, it meaning Rukia would make more sense.

After all while Byakuya appears his presence is not that important in the chapter (don’t worry bae, you’ll get awesome moments too...soon...probably), Kenpachi being the true reveal.

And while I’m no japanese expert (like, at all, but I’ll try to learn it) Urahara says only “Kuchiki” (since “Kurosaki” didn’t get it’s onorific I guess the translator either decided to leave it out or in it’s almost death situation Urahara decided to drop it, but I believe it probably was the first) that is the way he usally refers to Rukia (with onorifics), with Byakuya being the most respectful “Kuchiki-taichou”.

Besides how Rukia is an important character (in 13 Blades I believe Kubo refers to Rukia as “The Shinigami side protagonist”) and while you can think of it as romantic or not, it would make sense for them to be referenced together (or at least it makes more sense than Byakuya)

So I believe that unless it’s reveled something new about Byakuya, the chances are that the Kuchiki, Urahara meant was Rukia

(This one is about another matter about how Rukia is refered in the story, feel free to skip it if you don’t want to read it)