#gikon

Soul Candy In Solo Leveling

One-Shot

Man, I love gigai. They’re so weird. They seem like the hardest, most complicated way to accomplish something but I’m also 1000% willing to believe technologically/magically it really is their best possible present solution. I’ve posted before about the buck-wild gikon lore we got from Rukia, and the potential that the way we see gigai and gikon used most often in-series is not the way they have been historically used by Soul Society--that the current usage is a newer development, and is possibly even further popularized by Influencer/Cultural Icon Rukia.

I also hc that the “potential of drawing Hollows by your presence” that sitting around in gigai ameliorates, according to the Advance Team arc, is more of a context-specific concern because 1) Arrancar are afoot, 2) they are focused on things other than routine Hollow extermination (if you ARE there to exterminate Hollows, being a beacon for them would be rather convenient!), and 3) the average shinigami on one of these patrols doesn’t light up the area like a county fair in the way that a pile of Captain/VCs does. 

But anyway, I’m actually here to talk about Episode 128, my latest installment of “I think about this way more often than it’s genuinely worth, but NPR gave me 5 minutes of airtime so I’m going to talk about it anyway.”

Nothing happens in Episode 128. Ichigo does 2 seconds of Vizard training and then the Advance Team Minus Renji stand around in a park at different times of day. But I love it anyway! Because I think so much about what the cultural norms around gigai/gikon are in this episode.

Step 1. When to Use Your Gikon

After standing around in a park in the afternoon, Matsumoto goes shopping. But when she gets an alert for a Hollow in her area, she realizes she has to go back to that park and stand around in it at dusk. Even though she is in full view of a human and is in fact interacting directly with this human, she stops what she’s doing and immediately bounces from her gigai, leaving her gikon in her place. I’m sure the assumption here is that any human in the vicinity shouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and that this is better than living a limp body in an alleyway. (Sidebar: The fact that there are multiple gikon types, and that the gikon dispenser has been redesigned for the Aesthetic, but NONE OF THE TYPES are good at blending, and most of them are actively bad at it, is absolutely god-tier. Love it. Perfection. Especially when you consider that Rukia says they’ve historically been used to bounce souls out of corpses lololol. Award-winning tech straight from the 12th!)

Step 2. How to Reclaim your Gigai

Anyway, Matsumoto et al do their standing in the park at dusk, and then they all go retrieve their gigai. For some reason, even though Matsumoto was closest to the park, everyone else has already retrieved theirs when they then all accompany her to get hers:

I guess it would make sense to retrieve the furthest first, since it’s faster to travel as a shinigami rather than having to walk around town in gigai. Why this needed to be a group project and they all needed to be here for Matsumoto’s retrieval? I have no idea. But anyway, the part about this I love is that Matsumoto does not seem to care one iota that her gikon is causing an absolute scene, and also was in the middle of assaulting this poor man:

Like, degree to which Matsumoto (or anyone else in this scene) is caring about the nature of this gikon/human interaction: 0. There’s basically no sense that this would be inappropriate or undesirable, or that it would create a disturbance better avoided. They just DO NOT REACT, which gives the impression that inasmuch that humans are to be protected and human buildings should not be subject to destruction-by-shinigami-battle, from the shinigami POV humans are essentially NPCs and it doesn’t much matter how you interact with them. (I also think that “caring about humans” is actually secondary to caring about their souls. Sure, it’s definitely better for humans to not die horribly by supernatural means, because that’s sad and it would make their families sad. That’s parseable. But whether their soul is in a body or not is still probably not as big a concern as whether their soul is headed for Hollowfication or Soul Society.)

There’s just this beautiful disconnect in that they don’t seem to have entirely mastered the art of existing within a living realm materially, rather than existing in its shadows. But even more than not having mastered the art, they also do not care that much about the art. Their priorities are elsewhere and it doesn’t entirely register as a consideration. That’s what I love.

Especially since this scene honestly makes it seem like the more jaw-dropping part of this is not gikon shenanigans but the number of shopping bags Matsumoto has. Like, Hitsugaya is not making that face about the gikon. This is about Matsumoto’s comment about her bags, LOL:

It’s not even just Matsumoto being deeply unselfconscious. If there were established gigai/gikon protocols for how to limit your impression on the living realm, I feel like at least Hitsugaya would care about them. Hitsugaya does not care. He barely cares when the Muppets Take Karakura High and he does not care about which of Orihime’s neighbors see them when they’re bringing in the Worm TV, LOL. Maybe he just immediately relinquishes that hope and is picking his battles here. Still, I feel like the main reason blending was even part of the conversation was because Rukia, as Soul Society’s current foremost expert, brought it up. But it’s on page 392 under the heading “Recommended but not Required” in the Advance Team “Before You Go!” pamphlet and these guys just cannot be bothered.

Though now that I think about it, I’m actually not sure why they’re not in gigai here:

It’s not like they’d just come from battle and simply hadn’t gotten back into their gigai. They just spent all night going to retrieve them and walk to the house in them! And I mean, sure, take off your outside clothes (and your little ghost sandals asfajkfjlja), and I’m sure it’s more comfortable to not be in gigai, but unless Orihime’s house is a faraday cage (who’s to say it isn’t, though), isn’t this just attracting Hollows unnecessarily, AKA one of the primary reasons gigai feature so prominently for this mission? Especially since they are in gigai to talk to Yamamoto on the Worm TV, and also(?) to attempt jinzen later, which seems--well, that seems like Challenge Mode.

Bleach 013

They’re for WHAT. 

Since that’s never how we see them used, I definitely forgot/never knew about this origin story!!! Omg, I love it, though. I was trying to decide whether Rukia invented this new (now semi-standard) usage, where shinigami themselves use it to vacate gigai. And I suppose not, since gigai exist in the first place, and what use would shinigami have for them if not to get inside? (Unless there is a more formal process for getting back out and Rukia’s just like, eh, dog food is edible! This should be fine! and everyone has since followed suit.)

I think a lot about gigai usage, mostly in circles, trying to figure out like, why using one would be useful (outside of the potential for Shenanigans). I think someone mentions at some point that it’s to mask themselves from Hollows better (which vibes with Rukia’s explanation that shinigami use them when recovering from injury in the living realm). And also...to eat? Mainly to eat? Which seems like it would make these month-long deployments incredibly tedious logistics-wise, because you’d need to take on an entirely new form just to maintain homeostasis, unless you packed a lot of shinigami lembas bread and brought that with you. But I guess that’s no different from how much more work it is to eat/have food to eat in space vs. on Earth, haha.

But I love the idea that all of that is the B-side of what gikongan are for, and that they were initially developed (and still primarily used) to coax souls from dead bodies. I say “still primarily used” because lmao if that weren’t the case Rukia sure chose an interesting marketing pitch to get Ichigo to use them. XDD “This is how we force SOULS from their CORPSES--EAT IT” vs. “This is how shinigami typically transition from corporeal to spiritual form.” Not that I don’t think Rukia wouldn’t say the former and expect Ichigo to get on board, because she totally would--but she was genuinely trying to be persuasive here, and had some real reasons to not want Ichigo to ask too many questions. (This is right after we learn that it’s actually dangerous/harmful for a shinigami to stay in gigai as long as Rukia has.)

Also dying at the idea that like, sometimes shinigami need to bribe souls with literal candy to leave their corpses. 

And then those corpses have a weirdo soul running around inside them?!?!

But I’m into that too! Because I can see how back in the day this could have been really useful--as an oddly specific kindness to humanity, in any case. Like if you’re on a battlefield doing konsou you can have the gikon walk the bodies into friendly territory, so they’re easier for their comrades to retrieve. Or if you die in some terrible accident in the wild, the gikon can walk your body somewhere easier for your village to recover it.

Less useful, obviously, in the present-day, where the authorities generally prefer the bodies stay where they died, lol, but it’s kind of thoughtful, really. 

Naruto can use Gikon (Artificial Souls) and Gigai (Artificial Bodies), thanks to Urahara sending samples of his products, also the method needed to make them. 

Gikon Types

Chappy

Gringo

Ginnosuke

Blues or Bruce

Momone