#zanpakutou

He was konsoing them, right? It was still cleansing them and sending them on to soul society, right?? That is how it happened???

[Bleach 055 | 075]

Sure, you can be jaded about shounen guys and their fancy weapons parades, like, if you want, but I think the way zanpakutou are introduced is immensely fucking cool. We have some sense of the thing--from Zangetsu, and from Rukia having started it all by thrusting hers through Ichigo's chest, but our introductions to Soul Society and the shinigami who lead it are through an introduction to these swords.

We see it first from Renji, in the dark on a street in Karakura: A sword that can cut, but one that can also be called forth to change shape, become teeth that pounce and gnash. The image is so visceral--you can feel it dig into Ichigo's shoulder, tear through fat and muscle.

But maybe we've forgotten that, in the broad daylight of the West Gate. Even Ichigo's life-or-death tousle to regain Zangetsu is a dim memory on the other side of the dangai, because we've made it to the gates and bested the gate giant without much trouble and even some hijinks. The world on this side doesn't yet feel real, because Jidanbou is Jidanbou and Jidanbou lives up to the sense of fantasy: If you beat the gate guardian, of course you get to go into the city. That's how fantasy works, doesn't it?

But it's not how gates work. Ichimaru rightly points out that beating the gate guardian should not logically mean said guardian then opens the gate for you. I'm not saying it should mean you get your arm cut off by Some Guy, but it's not like Ichimaru's entirely wrong here. That's fantasy logic. This is Soul Society, and this is his zanpakutou. Which is, if you recall, a brutal weapon. It's also other things, but the way we met it and the way we are reminded of it it now, is through its violence.

[Bleach 055 | Bleach 075]

And I love the juxtaposition of the pure violence of zanpakutou to the fact that they are also the object of konsou--and konsou, for most, is likely how such a sword is most often used. Konsou, an act of meditation, mercy, perhaps grace. There's a juxtaposition, too, between the pure violence of zanpakutou and the fact that our first glimpse of Soul Society as a place is through Renji and Rikichi talking about butterflies; our introduction to Ichimaru is him frittering time away with Byakuya; and he closes the scene with a goodbye that is both disarming and utterly apprehension-inducing:

[Bleach 075]