Key insights
- Shinigami's moral direction is challenged by a distorted view of peace and false protection.
- The universe and peace are based on innocent sacrifice and prevent change or progress.
- The Shinigami's genocidal methods are justified by maintaining balance and hidden motives.
This was already done in the Substitute Shinigami arc BLEACHING The narrative has called into question the actual moral orientation of the series' central race, the Shinigami. The Shinigami were introduced as balancers, maintaining the cycle of life and death to maintain the current cosmological order, which includes three distinct realms of existence. Many would refer to them as “the good guys” because their goal is always described as protecting peace.
However, over the course of Ichigo's journey, we saw many ugly sides of the organizational structure, worldview, and history of not only the Shinigami, but also the Shinigami BLEACHING Universe as a whole. What is the Shinigami concept of peace and what is so distorted about it?
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The battle between Ichigo and Yhwach begins, but the intervention of the substitute Shinigami is exactly what Quincy King foresaw.
“Balancer”
Understanding the Origins of the Shinigami's Main Role
When the Shinigami are introduced at the beginning through Ichigo and Rukia's fateful encounter BLEACHING, She teaches Ichigo and the audience the basics BLEACHING Cosmology and the reincarnation cycle of souls. She explains that there are several areas; one in which souls (aka “Pluses”) incarnate and live human lives, and the afterlife, also known as Soul Society. Rukia further explains the precariousness of the Pluses' journey, as they feed on monstrous evil spirits called Hollows, named for the telltale hole somewhere in their bodies that represents a “physical” manifestation of the deep void; the emptiness of their souls that remains after they lose their hearts of despair.
It is the job of the Shinigami to guide the souls of the deceased safely into the afterlife and to cleanse the Hollows so that their corrupted souls can also re-enter the reincarnation cycle. In this way, balance is maintained as the number of souls entering the human world matches the number of souls returning to the afterlife having just lived a human life or been cleansed as a Hollow.
I'm sorry guys, but you won't be able to defeat Yhwach. But don't worry…that's what peace is all about. Right, Yhwach?
This is just not the case with Hollows who were heinous criminals in their human lives, as seen with Shrieker, a powerful and intelligent Hollow who fondly remembered and even enjoyed his life as a serial killer, Yuichi Shibata's son of mentally torturing his last victim, even after his own accidental death at the hands of the child. By maintaining the cycle of life and death in this way, the Shinigami earned the nickname “Balancers” in the distant past, and it became apparent very early on that completing this important duty, or disrupting the balance, would cause realms to merge and bring about the end of the universe. What makes the current structure possible turns out to be the enigmatic “Ruler” of the Realms, a mysterious being referred to as the Soul King, whose existence serves as the “pivot” of the current order.
The original sin
How the three kingdoms are maintained
In the beginning, the universe was a gaping chasm in which life and death were not separated and chaos reigned. A mysterious being with the composition Shinigami, Hollow, Quincy and Fullbringer named Adnyeus created the realms: the human world or the world of the living; Hueco Mundo, where hollows live, and Soul Society; the afterlife. From the primordial waters, Adnyeus formed the empires and created the separation between the concepts of life and death, creating the cycle of life and death that we learn about at the beginning BLEACHING. In the I can't fear your own world In novels, it is revealed that the Soul King created the realms to act as a lid for Hell. As a result of his creation, Adnyeus became known as the Soul King and is believed to have possessed both precognitive powers and omniscience, meaning he should have been able to see what the ancestors of the Five (now Four) Great Ones had Soul Society noble families planned to harm him.
Because of the way the universe returns to its original, merged and chaotic initial state, a pivot point was needed. The ancestors of the Shihōin, Shiba, Kuchiki, Tsunayashiro, and the yet-to-be-named Fifth House carried out a vile plan in which they attacked and mutilated the Soul King, using his torso as the fulcrum that holds the universe together in its current state. His left and right arms; who presided over the concepts of progress and stillness respectively, as well as his heart, became sentient, with the left arm becoming the Quincy known as Pernida Parnkgjas, while the heart became Gerard Valkyrie. The right arm became the local deity, worshiped in the Rukongai as Mimihagi.
Protecting the Shinigami from a false peace
Winners rewrite history
The ugly truth behind the universe protected by the Shinigami is that the very world and idea of peace they claim to protect and represent is based on a gruesome murder and the constant sacrifice of an innocent. The sacrifice is permanent, as the removal of the Soul King's arms that control stillness and progression means his situation is no longer able to change, essentially putting him in a sort of suspended animation within a special crystal, which can only be broken by him being a being with a similar composition to the Soul King. In order to protect this universe and the order that their ancestors “created,” the Shinigami became “Balancers,” making the decision that Quincies should not exist due to the threat they pose to the balance. The Shinigami justified full-scale genocide; This included desecrating corpses and creating synthetic/modified souls for war purposes (souls which they then scrapped regardless of sentience) because of concerns about the ethics of their creation and use.
Protecting Shinigami interests is a consistent theme BLEACHINGand even though the Shinigami initially tried to kill Ichigo and his friends, they can be counted on to help them clean up their mess and protect their current order. The Substitute Shinigami Badge is another example of the Shinigami's distorted sense of justice, giving the badge to Ichigo under the pretense that it was a gesture of their trust in him, but in reality it was a surveillance device. The darkest thing the Shinigami are currently doing is the training Ichigo received BLEACH: Thousand Year Blood War Part 2which supposedly made him stronger to take on Yhwach, but Ichibē Hyōsube, who literally begged Ichigo to stop Yhwach, sent him with the knowledge that they cannot win: the training was the creation of a replacement linchpin by the Soul Society The Soul King will ever die. Ichibē Hyōsube plans to sacrifice Ichigo Kurosaki and make him the new Soul King, and Captain-Commander Shunsui Kyōraku knows this.