reading: bleach - can't fear your own world

[sword_logic]

wow it's been a while since i last used DW. but. can't fear your own world is a light novel in three volumes written by narita ryougo in collaboration with kubo tite. it's set six months after the end of the bleach manga, and follows 9th division assistant captain hisagi shuuhei as he gets tangled up into events wildly out of his scope purely by accident.

first and foremost: the prose was, uh, nothing to write home about. it was awkward and almost felt like a direct translation with little editing. there were also a few typesetting errors, that was awkward. anyways, it wasn't enough to detract me from reading, it was just... awkward. i wish these had gotten another editing pass.

as for the rest: damn. this was legit really good. the plot was awesome and the pacing was actually stunningly good, even by way of underwhelming writing. it provided a lot of genuinely very good closure and loose-thread-tying that the end of bleach desperately needed, and it checked in with some characters who needed checking in on. the layer of depth that these novels added to the worldbuilding was also unbelievably good.

what surprised me (and resonated with me) the most was the emotional journey that hisagi went through over the course of all these events. his emotional state after losing tousen was very deeply explored in a way that felt really, really good - the author took all of his conversations with tousen and built a really satisfying resolution to all of that really complicated emotion. it was really good.

okay, so for a summary: i'll split this up into sections, i guess, but there's A Lot and it's all deeply interwoven.

yhwach's defeat: so yhwach, after absorbing mimihagi and the rest of the soul king fragments, gets trapped in that crystal himself and turned into the next 'soul king' since he's not quite dead but definitely not alive, and that power is necessary to maintain balance. fucking wack.

the soul king: the being who became reio was the first person — in a pre-balance world where there was no line between life and death — to be born with the powers of a quincy, a hollow, a soul reaper, and a fullbringer. the five great noble clans (shihouin, tsunayashiro, kuchiki, shiba, and an unnamed clan) knew that this person would be the key to stabilizing the world somehow, and when they all moved to persuade the would-be reio to take that position, the tsunayashiro clan imprisoned him in a crystal in a state of suspended animation. the tsunayashiro clan then tore off his right and left arms (mimihagi and pernida), and then continued to scrape out his organs, cut off his legs, and literally shave him down to nothing. capital-F Fucked Up, man. the shiba clan tried to research how it'd be possible to replace the soul king with a volunteer (kyouraku had a great comment about self-sacrifice being self-indulgence at a point), but the other clans looked down on them for this so the shibas ended up being first socially outcast, and then formally outcast with isshin's 'defection.'

the history of the three worlds: some time over a million years ago, there had been no division between the worlds and no separation of life and death; being a hollow was just part of the circulation of reishi. that circulation only stopped once hollows began to consume human konpaku; reio was able to destroy/sublimate them and turn them into reishi sand, which is the sand in hueco mundo.

fullbringers: they've got aforementioned shaved-off fragments of reio in them, passed down through parents and infused with hollow spiritual pressure (and/or awakened by it, in orihime's and chad's cases). ginjo was also technically capable of becoming the reio, as was ichigo. fucking wack! it's also possible to be a fullbringer without an object of attachment, in which case you just have a wild amount of reishi subjugation power.

soul society: there's been a massive propaganda/censorship campaign in the seireitei to cover up what actually happened during the blood war, meaning that most people don't actually know that the soul king died and that yhwach's remains were installed in his place. classic soul society!

ginjo's history with soul society: okay, this was something i was SO glad we finally got the full picture on. ginjo had beef with the soul reapers not just because the deputy soul reaper badge ukitake had given him was bugged — it was because a soul reaper was dispatched to kill him and his other fullbringer friends. he blamed the attack on ukitake, who'd bugged the badge. it was actually tsunayashiro tokinada (the Big Bad, and the man who had killed his wife — tousen's friend — and gotten away with it unpunished) who had sent the soul reaper to attack ginjo, and he'd let ukitake take the fall for it. ukitake had shouldered the blame.

this whole fucking bit on hollows:

When they evolved from a Gillian to an Adjuchas, or even further into a Vasto Lorde, their stature would shrink as the reishi that had been enlarging their body steadily condensed. In the end, they would become a "high-density monster," concentrating several hundred thousand Menos Grandes' worth of spiritual pressure into a human-sized body. In other words, for part of their growth, the larger they became, the more they were recognized for being a powerful Hollow—until they passed Menos Grande level, at which point the smaller their bodies were, the more they were recognized as being powerful due to their markedly condensed spiritual pressure.

the espadas: nel, grimmjow, and halibel just like... hang out in hueco mundo and chill after nel and grimmjow rescue halibel from where she'd been imprisoned in silbern. it was also basically confirmed that aizen sought hollows that matched an aspect of death for each particular number; luppi was chosen to succeed grimmjow (briefly) (F) specifically because they both embody destruction.

"Don't try to tell me you had no idea. The only way you can establish a connection with anything is through destruction. If the holes bored through us Hollows are what we lack, then you—or rather you [and Grimmjow] both—can only use destruction as a means to fill that void. The reason you hate Grimmjow from the bottom of your heart is simply because you hate others the same way you hate yourself."

other cool shit:

• hisagi bankai! shinji bankai! both are incredibly fucking cool!!
• if part of a resurrección gets eaten (like by lil, the gluttony) then part of that arrancar's soul is erased and they can feel it :)
• loads more context for tousen as a person and his involvement with aizen
• soi fon basically #confirmed gay for yoruichi
• literally every single scene that grimmjow showed up in, he found a way to make it about ichigo
• there was also a really, really good introspective bit about grimmjow and his fracciones that was about five whole pages long so just trust me when i say it was really good
• this whole thing. just take it.

"When I fight to the death with Kurosaki, don't let any of the Soul Reapers get in the way. Of course I would just crush all of them, but I don't want to go to all the trouble." [...]"Ichigo likely also wants to fight with you one on one, I would think. I won't interfere with that."

[Halibel interjected,] "Can you swear that's the case for Stark too?"

Remembering [...] he had cut down [Stark] while intruding in someone else's fight, Kyouraku nodded with his usual unchanging expression. "If we have another war against you, then that's a different conversation. [...] Since I think the fight that Ichigo wants is something other than war."

do i (air quotes) recommend reading can't fear your own world? honestly, if you're invested enough in bleach and some awkward prose won't turn you off? fuck yeah. this was a super fun read and it brought a lot of closure for the end of the series and the general world-state, the pacing and plot were great, and again, hisagi's emotional journey was really fucking good. while they're kinda pricey you can always check to see if your local library does ILLs (fingerguns)