#relationship analysis

i dislike already ichihime. a lot. not because i hate orihime (i don’t), and not because i ship ichiruki (i don’t). but purely because the writing of their relationship was never what it was intended to be read as. they were friends. somewhat. and thats that. i don’t think orihime had a particularly strong bond or purpose to ichigo asides from being his friend. and orihime felt too much towards ichigo despite the fact that there wasn’t much going on that should’ve led to that. and it’s led her do questionable and reckless things.

i’m not gonna get too into that because that’s gonna make this 10x longer and i’m going to get off topic.

i still do not understand what was so strong about their relationship that made them have to be canon. if anything, what happens post tybw makes their relationship much worse for me.

we can start with speaking about wdkaly. as much as i don’t even like to acknowledge the existence of this novel. and i’m also unsure as to whether or not this is actually canon or not. either way.

renji asking ichigo if he was in love with orihime so suddenly felt so odd. where exactly was there any indications throughout the entirety of bleach that ichigo was in love with her? especially anything that renji of all people wouldve witnessed. and ichigo doesn’t even really get a chance to respond to that either.

and then telling him that he ‘shouldn’t leave such a nice girl waiting’ and ichigo’s response being that he knows that yet he says it in a voice that ‘seems to disappear’

what exactly does that mean? was he guilted into asking orihime out? it seems like it. if he’s saying something in a voice that ‘seems to disappear’, i really doubt its supposed to imply something like shyness or embarrassment or something along those lines. would ichigo had even have approached orihime at all or even thought about her in that manner had renji not interfered and said such a thing? i’m thinking no. and in a way, this implies or rather confirms ichigo was fully aware of orihime’s feelings towards him for a while before this and did nothing with that information. if he wanted to do something, if he had actually been in love with her, would he have not acted on it sooner? anyways, being set up while at a wedding would probably feel like a lot more pressure.

and then you move onto the fact that according to kubo, ichigo and orihime didn’t even start dating until several months to a year after this interaction because ichigo went to study abroad in england and etc etc….how exactly did these two survive a long distance relationship? that’s my question. it’s not like they ever had that good connection or i guess that strong of a connection with eachother that something like this would be able to suffice. and you’re telling me that orihime waited even longer just to be with ichigo romantically? it doesn’t even feel cute or dedicated or loyal at this point (not that it ever really did if i’m being blunt), it feels desperate. orihime was in love with ichigo for years. someone who didn’t even really acknowledge her in that way at all despite apparently being aware of her feelings. and the fact she never got over it makes even less sense than the fact she ended up with him.

and focusing on orihime, the fact she married ichigo is just even more severe character assassination than she had in the first place. she doesn’t get to go to college. she ends up working at a bakery or i guess the same one she was already working at straight away after highschool. sure you could say this was one of the jobs she dreamed of having, but do you really think THIS was the way she envisioned it happening? to make it worse, she likely just ends up working there part time due to the fact she got pregnant at (what is calculated to be) 23 years old. twenty three. that is incredibly young. if you really think about it, the only thing that orihime wanted that she actually got was being in a romantic relationship with ichigo. that is incredibly sad. why was orihime not allowed to have something unrelated to ichigo? she’s basically tied to him, someone that she never fully understood despite wanting to. someone who she didn’t always act fully herself near. the one character that is the sole cause of her lack of development (not intentionally so. i think my point here was clear, though).

i have no idea what i’m supposed to be seeing when it comes to these two. what i see is a marriage between two people who never actually understood eachother, who were never actually that close, who never had an honest conversation in the entirety of the series because ichigo is incapable of being honest of vulnerable near people he knows rely on him and expect him to be strong, and orihime has been shown to be uncomfortable when helpless when ichigo shows any form of ‘weakness’ or emotions like sadness.

whether people want to admit it or not, there is an imbalance in their relationship. someone who’s too interested with someone who was never interested at all.

and relationships, if to be developed romantically, need a very strong platonic core. especially with a character like ichigo, who’s written in a fairly particular way. he has deep bonds with people in a way that’s platonic or you could say in a deeper/greater than platonic way but just not romantic. those people are those he’s willing to be honest near and show when he’s upset. people he can likely trust fully. the greatest examples of this would be rukia and uryu. if ichigo can have deep and strong bonds and connections with them, why does he not have one with his ‘love interest’? why does he have such a flat and lacklustre relationship with orihime if he’s supposed to ‘be in love with her’? it doesn’t make sense, not really.

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Like, no, he’s not saying he’s not Ranpo’s friend he’s saying he’s not Ranpo’s fanboy. The appropriate response when someone assumes you are a fanboy of the man who’s both your rival and friend is that you are his rival, because rival is more contradictory to fanboy. You can be someone’s fanboy and friend very easily, but not fanboy and rival. Of course it’s possible but being a fanboy also implies a particular power dynamic(? Not sure if that’s the right word) where you are somewhat lesser in that specific field, which Poe refuses to imply because the man has an ego either the same size or somewhat lesser than Ranpo himself.

Poe himself has an ego the size of the moon, it’s just not as evident because he despises social interaction, not because he’s shy but because everyone is utterly insufferable and refuses to be on their level. That’s also the reason why he was so insulted by Ranpo winning in the battle of wits, it’s because he was just humiliated in front of a bunch of people he viewed as lesser than himself.

He gets along so well with Ranpo because Ranpo doesn’t crush those beliefs, if anything he endorses them with his own belief that he is better than everyone making Poe feel special by being special to Ranpo.

Ranpo and Poe are in a perpetual state of constantly making each others ego bigger, because with the better Ranpo is, the better Poe is, and Poe is constantly trying to challenge Ranpo making Ranpo better.

Don’t take this as me saying the irl Edgar Allan Poe was egotistical, he just tended to mainly write through the lens of an incredibly egocentric and hypocritical person.

Ranpo is under the responsibility of knowing something that he should not know. Yokomizo wanted his death to be unsolvable, it was his dying wish, and Ranpo solved it. I’m quite sure that Ranpo does feel guilty about this and it’s why he is so sympathetic with Mushitarō. He ruined the dying wish of the most important person to his new friend.

Poe is where most similarities are obvious. They’re both mystery authors with a blatant fascination with the murder method and the goal of an unsolvable mystery. It can also be seen in how they interact with Mushitarō, they both really annoy Mushitarō with simply enjoying their passion and find it endearing when he gets mad at them. It can and sometimes does come across as outwardly teasing him.

A fun little tidbit is also the fact that no one knows how the irl Edgar Allan Poe died! Most believe it to be alcohol poisoning but that was proven false, others think it was suicide. There are many different ways people speculate his death, but so far no one knows.He was simply found one day in another persons clothing out in the street. No injuries or anything to prove the truth of his death, similar to Yokomizo in bsd.

I really don’t think I need to get into Yokomizo and Mushitarō’s relationship, I’m sure you get the point.

Before Spoke arrived, there was already a Black Market. There were already people placing hits on each other (that's how Vix got all of his armor). There was a prolific smuggling business. There was a gladiator pit. And there were people making their plans of escape all the same.

Spoke changed nothing. Spoke did nothing exceptional beyond revealing Jamato's identity (which happened later). The very presence of an execution chamber and such harsh solitary that, according to Found, people do not return from, implies that Jamato should know that there were problems.

But if Jamato admitted that there are problems other than Spoke (that the world out there is falling apart perfectly well without Spoke in it, too), then what's all he's doing for? And, even worse, what would that mean about him being so willing in the past to doom the entire server for Spoke's sake if he's not that important?

Of course, for Jamato it makes sense to assign Spoke so much value when he's basically the only person he interacts with. He talked with Wemmbu once and it went horrendously. Who else is he meant to obsessively latch onto while emulating the source of his trauma? (Because the parallels between NULL and the Invisible Mafia as well as between Jamato and Ash are undeniable atp. Jamato even tried to frame Spoke in a very similar way. He just didn't keep in mind that Spoke has grown and learned and he knows how to deal with power-tripping nerds with a fear of responsibility).

Making fun of Jamato aside, I think that's also why he's been executing and trying to execute people around Spoke the entire time. We know Spoke is not the only one of his kidnapping victims who tried to run away. Obviously, it's quite natural to try when, again, they've all been kidnapped. And yet I wonder how many of them got outright executed for it before Dev got involved with Spoke. Vix is another story entirely, because the justification for executing him was even flimsier. It was literally just to hurt Spoke and to drive home the point that everything he touches breaks... except from the point of view of the abuser smashing his things in front of him and telling him he's to blame.

Which actually ties neatly into the fall of the rebel groups, too. Because, like, objectively, Spoke there had been given two wrong choices. He was being blackmailed and he knew Jamato was behind NULL. He could let himself and his friends get kidnapped or try to find allies to fight back. Those were his options, neither would have brought him anything good, and under stress as he was, he chose one of the two wrong ones instead of trying to think more outside the box. He could have revealed the truth, too, but chances are that would have just delivered Jumper and Mapicc straight to Jamato, so it's only another wrong option.

And in the end, Jamato is the one who was blackmailing him and who put him in this impossible conundrum. He was the one attacking the rebel groups. He was the one deciding all of that. And yet he acts as if Spoke brought upon them a natural plague he's unrelated to. Because, Jamato will do anything but admit he has agency and he makes choices of his own. Cruel and violent ones, for the most part.