#ywach

The Fraud vs. The Real Deal

So ironically just like the best way to understand Aizen is also by comparing him to Ywach. Everything Aizen tries to be, a force of fate, the controlling force in the narrative, the one who has everyone dancing on the palms of his hands Ywach just naturally is. Aizen tries to become divine through schemes and plots, Ywach was literally born divine. He doesn't need to call himself a god, everyone already calls him a god. The quincy gave him the name "Ywach."

Before we get deeper into their comparisons, I'm going to give an example of just how Aizen is a fraud. The reveal of Misaki's backstory in thousand year blood war really did salvage Aizen's character for me after I started to dislike him towards the end of Arrancar Arc.

There's a fine line to walk with mastermind characters. You have to ask yourself is the character genuinely smart, or is the author just moving things around in the plot and letting the villain have plot armor and plot convenience in order to make them appear smarter than they already are.

Aizen claimed that he'd had everything in the palm of his hand since Ichigo was born, and that was what made me officially call bullshit. Then, the Misaki backstory reveals that Aizen was in fact just bullshitting the entire time.

Aizen didn't actually engineer Ichigo's birth as he claimed. One of his experiments just happened to attack Ichigo's mom, and Aizen decided to stay back and observe the situation. Then he kept monitoring Ichigo to see if he would be useful later. Which is what Aizen does in general, he puts his fingers in a lot of people's pies and then is clever enough to push situations into his favor.

He claims to be an omniscient planner, but he's really just clever and good at improvising when random things like White attacking Ichigo's mother happen so he can turn those situations into his advantage. When Aizen claims "I had everything planned from the beginning" it's just another illusion he's using to try to control you, and characters who buy that are easy to manipulate.

Because Aizen is a fraud. That is literally his zanpakuto, making illusions that control the senses. Everything down to his zanpakuto the literal reflection of his soul is fraudulent. Aizen makes claims at godhood but he doesn't even believe what he's saying.

Aizen yells at Ulquiorra that people shouldn't accept the way the world is, that they should try to be gods if they have the ability to while at the same time Ichigo called him out that his true desire was to be just another soul reaper.

However, in the world of Bleach godhood isn't all it's cracked up to be. The closest thing to a god, the Reio, the lynchpin of the unvierse is a limbless being, sealed in a crystal, that was not only betrayed and backstabbed and brutally massacred by the shinigami who supposedly worshipped them he's also like completely helpless.

He's eternal and all powerful and the very being that holds the world together, and also all he can do is passively observe reality. Destroying the soul king is a mercy because it releases him from his eternal suffering.

This is where we finally reach Ywach, who is what everything Aizen pretended to be. Aizen had to rely on the Hogyoku entirely to give other people power, whereas Ywach naturally can gift the quincy with his power. Aizen wanted to become the soul king he was a mortal who tried to ascend to divinity.

Ywach is heavily implied to be the soul king's literal son. Unlike Aizen he can actually claim to be a divine being, and he's worshipped as one taking the name of the christian god.

Aizen claims to be behind Ichigo's every fight in the manga, while Ywach actually is behind Ichigo's every fight because he's been there all along, pretending to be Ichigo's zanpakuto spirit. Ywach as Zangetsu even admits this, he was limiting Ichigo from his true power while also convincing Ichigo he was an ally because he never wanted Ichigo to become a full fledged sorcerer since he's not only a fragment of Ywach but the embodiment of his quincy powers.

Ywach is responsible for ichigo's desire to protect others, because his decision to terminate all impure quincy killed Ichigo's mother. Ywach has been with Ichigo since birth, since all quincies carry a fragment of Ywach's power in them. When Ywach calls Ichigo his son, he's not bullshitting either, because Old Man Zangetsu the fragment of Ywach inside Ichigo was in a sense a mentor and a father figure to him.

Ywach is a force of nature, in this case he's fate. The same fate that Ichigo wanted to shatter with his sword. Unlike Aizen's claims to be in control he can actually back this up. He controls Ichigo to slay the soul king, and his literal ability "The Almighty" is to rewrite the future to bring whatever future he wants into being. He can peer into every possible future and see millions of possible variations fo the future like grains of sand and then just make the one he wants happen. He literally, creates fate.

However, as I said it's not actually a good thing to be god in Bleach. Ywach because he is divine, can't live in the world with everyone else because of his fear of death. He's terrified of death probably for two reasons, one because he existed in a world without death, he watched his own father get butchered in the worst way possible, and he was basically stillborn. He fears returning to the state he was at birth unable to itneract with the world. A state ironically that was much like his father when he was sealed in the soul palace.

He's also experienced the deaths of every quincy he gave his power to over and over again. So Ywach is the force of fate itself, but just like fate which cannot be controlled, Ywach is an entirely stagnant entity.

The exact opposite of Aizen who was someone who wanted to be just like every other soul reaper. It's why even though Aizen's a fraud, between the two of them Aizen is the ideological victor in the end.

Since Aizen was saved by Ichigo in a way. By giving him the worthy opponent that he always craved, Aizen was knocked back down by the pedestal he always stood on. He became just another soul reaper as he always wanted to be. That's why he was able to believe in humans in the end and give up his notions of becoming a god.