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Between Magic and Mirrors
Would you believe me if I told you that this character
is like this
and this?
While I watched Neo in RWBY, I couldn't help but notice the similarities she has to Umineko's Beatrice and Bleach's Sosuke Aizen and I'll explain all of these in more detail here:
NEOPOLITAN AND BEATRICE - IMAGINATION, MAGIC AND ESCAPISM
Beatrice is a character of Umineko who is known to be the Golden Witch but her true identity is Sayo Yasuda, Kinzo's illegitimate daughter born by incest who after Natsuhi accidentally pushed the servant who was holding Sayo causing Sayo to lose her private parts, being saved by Genji and Kumasawa who raise her in secret to avoid another incestuous episode by Kinzo. This caused Sayo to have insecurities about herself and her own gender and to make matters worse the other maids start to pester her for her clumsiness in her work as a maid and her only friend was Kumasawa with whom she develops a love for mystery stories and magic in general. Sayo was unhappy and always alone so she started creating imaginary friends to make up for her loneliness and because of her love for magic she created Proto Beatrice (later know as Gaap) to explain her own clumsiness and later creates Shannon persona, the perfect servant girl. Sayo's imagination becomes her refuge but also her prison because it gave relief to her loneliness and made her feel good about herself but in turn this isolated her from others. Later she meets Battler and for the first time she doesn't feel lonely for long but due to her loneliness she trusts Battler too much to the point that she takes seriously Battler's promise that he would come back for her but when he doesn't come back which makes Sayo feel betrayed but to make matters worse she discovers her true identity as Kinzo's illegitimate daughter, she goes mad, takes Beatrice persona as her own and think that she's a real witch.
Later Sayo causes Rokenjima incident as a way to get revenge on the family that hurt her and especially Battler for leaving her alone but in turn she feels bad for everything she has done and chooses to commit suicide by drowning in the sea.
In the meta world Beatrice plays the killing games with Battler so that he knows that the reason for the Rokenjima incident is so that he would remember the promise he made to her when she was Sayo.
Do you know who more was born in a rich and toxic family that hurt her for her disability, used her imagination as a form of freedom and escapism and ended up loving a man just so that when that man disappears she goes mad and seeks revenge as a result?
Beatrice and Neo are adults who act like children so they lash out at others but they don't take responsibility for their actions nor do they realize how their actions hurt others, they only care about their own pain. This is even seen when Sayo and Trivia create their imaginary friends (Gaap or Proto Beatrice and Pink Neopolitan) not only to feel accompanied but also to blame them for their mistakes.
Beatrice's actions led to the terrible situation that Eva was forced to live in as the sole survivor of her family and having to deal with the media accusation that she killed everyone on the island when in fact Eva was suffering for the loss of her husband Hideyoshi and her son George and the rejection of Ange and Ange herself had to endure being bullied at school for being the daughter of Rudolf and Kyrie, alleged murderers of Rokenjima, and also in her desire for her parents to return, rejected Eva believing that her parents and brother would come back for her. Battler was also hurt by Beatrice's actions because by trying to follow her and stay with her in her death, he survives but doesn't remember anything and is found by Ikuko Hachiyo who he marries and is tormented by memories that come to him through nightmares. Neo for her part wants revenge against Cinder but she is manipulated for her to help her and unload her anger against Ruby which makes Neo help Cinder to destroy an entire kingdom without mentioning that her actions are indirectly helping Salem to destroy the world because Salem's plan is to make the world a chaotic place so that when the Brother Gods are summoned they will destroy the world as a result of the chaos that exists.
Another thing that both have in common is their powers and how both are based on the manipulation of reality through imagination to some extent. Beatrice is a witch whose powers basically consist of making what she imagines come true, forcing reality to make what she believes to be real be real because Sayo, her true identity, dealt with loneliness through her imagination. The above can be seen from the fact that she didn't ask to revive Sakutaro because she believed that Rosa denied it but Angel revives him simply because she believed that Sakutaro was alive by having a spare stuffed animal.
Neo's semblance allows her to manifest whatever she imagines into reality in illusions made of glass that everyone can see.
Both powers force reality to operate under the rules of Beatrice and Neo and even said powers are enhanced in places linked to the imagination (the Golden Land is a kingdom created by Beatrice where everything she thinks comes true and Neo is in Ever After, a magical place where it reflects the psyche of the characters and therefore also reflects the imagination). Beatrice's golden magic and Neo's semblance are perfect powers for a lonely and imaginative child and for deadly assassins, imagination is a double-edged sword because although Beatrice and Neo deal with their loneliness with their imagination (they create imaginary friends) and it gives them the freedom they feel they don't have with their original identities (Beatrice - Sayo Yasuda, Neopolitan - Trivia Vanille) in turn they get stuck in their own heads who just can't accept reality and instead look for reality to be as they want or believe it should be.
Beatrice and Neo are witches, Beatrice, as I said before, is the Golden Witch and Neopolitan is based on Trivia, the Roman goddess of witchcraft and there is something interesting about the concept of a witch in Umineko which is that a person becomes a witch by feeling rejection of their reality but they puts aside their humanity and their ties to other people and this also applies in RWBY: Sayo couldn't stand her life as a human and took the identity of Beatrice to feel free and take revenge and in the end she ends up in the Golden Land and in RWBY while team RWBY looks to get out of Ever After and Jaune can't get out until he gets help, Neo seems rather comfortable in Ever After and may even want to stay there.
Beatrice dies in real life not accepting the blame for her actions and ends up alone in the Golden Land until the end of Umineko where Battler finally reunites with her and Neo is running the risk of ending up just like Beatrice: ending up as a lonely witch in an imaginary world.
NEOPOLITAN AND SOSUKE AIZEN - LIVING MIRRORS
If there is something we know about Neo, it is how she is essentially a living mirror, not only because she creates illusions made of glass that everyone can see, but also because she is a mirror for the characters, especially for Ruby, but they know that another character curiously share these same traits with Neo?
Sosuke Aizen is a character from Bleach and one of the main antagonists of the manga. Not only does he share some physical similarities with Neo, but his powers are illusions visible to all who have seen his Shikai's activation and something curious is that Neo's and Aizen's illusions are made of glass.
Glass is an element that in fiction represents fragility, which gives us clues that Aizen and Neo's senses of identity are as fragile as glass itself: Aizen's identity is fragile because it is only based on what he can do (his intellect and his powers) to the point that he feels that morality does not apply to him, he feels that only he can change and rule the Soul Society and Ichigo even speculates that the reason Aizen wanted to conquer Soul Society was because of his desire for an equal, that his extreme power and intelligence only served to isolate him from the moment he was born (this can be seen in his effort to strengthen Ichigo as well as his respect for Kisuke Urahara stems from seeing them as equals) and Neo feels oppressed by her own family for not accepting her because of her disability and she unconsciously feels that no one is going to accept her and takes refuge in her idealized identity (Neopolitan) where she is powerful and free to do what she wants without being nobody oppresses her but she defines herself only by her bond with Roman (after their relationship goes from transactional to something genuine, Roman is the only one who respects her and wants her) and her life as a criminal that gives her freedom makes her dependent on Roman and unable to form bonds with others. Aizen and Neo were born with physical and/or mental conditions (Aizen - high intellect and enormous spiritual pressure and Neo - muteness and her semblance) that made them feel different from others, which caused their actions and their identity to be based on said conditions to the point that their powers they serve to reflect that sense of self that both have of themselves: sharp but fragile.
Aizen and Neo not only have a glass motif because of their fragile sense of self but also because they are mirrors that reflect the characters.
Aizen is a reflects that reflects Kisuke, Toshiro, Starrk and even Ichigo himself:
Aizen reflects Kisuke because they are both renowned geniuses for their great intellect and even looking to create something new just because they could just because Kisuke has moral boundaries that he dares not cross and Aizen just doesn't care about morals.
Aizen reflects Toshiro in the sense that they were both born prodigies having extremely enormous power and were ostracized because of it but Toshiro didn't let their power define him as a person but saw it as a part of himself and he managed to bond with the others while Aizen saw his power and intellect as his complete identity, which made him unable to have a bond with anyone.
Aizen reflects Starrk because they are both extremely powerful beings but this distanced them from each other because the others were weaker than them, making both wish they were weak in order to bond with others or meet people who were as strong as them or mlre. Starrk created Lilinette and found people (including Aizen himself) for him to be with without being overwhelmed by his power, relieving his loneliness while Aizen is unable to bond with anyone because he finds no one he considers an equal or that they are powerful enough that they are able to withstand his own power.
Aizen reflects Ichigo because they are both extremely powerful but both just want to be normal, the difference is that Ichigo knows that this is his wish, he expresses it openly and in the end lives a normal life with his family while Aizen does not recognize or realize it of that desire and seeks to be superior to others.
Neo is also a mirror that reflects other characters, in her case, Team RWBY and Jaune:
Neo reflects Ruby in that they both deal incorrectly with the loss of a loved one, refuse to examine themselves so they can't face said loss, and dress like said loved ones (Ruby wears clothing resembling the ones her mother Summer wore and Neo wears Roman's hat and gray cloth) to feel close to them and/or to feel that they are still alive in some way. Ruby suppresses everything she feels and decides to move on and Neo gets carried away by her emotions to the point that she doesn't care if she and others get hurt.
Neo reflects Weiss in the sense that they both grew up in a rich but toxic family and wanted to be free but Weiss grows as a person because she had the support of Winter and then she has the positive support of RWBY which allows when Weiss goes down in Ever After After losing her father and her home, she doesn't lash out at anyone but rather seeks to leave the place while Neo has no personal growth because she did not know anyone, she loses her parents who oppressed her and Roman is left, who does love her but his support it's not positive and when she loses him Neo gets angry and lashes out at others and doesn't seem to be concerned about staying in Ever After.
Neo reflects Blake because they were both born with conditions that make them different from the others (Blake is a Faunos and Neo is mute) and they were strongly discriminated for it and they both get together with a man (Adam and Roman) who lead them astray but they stay with them for accepting them only Adam becomes more and more violent and Blake leaves him to have a better life and manages to have healthy relationships with other people while Neo stays with Roman and she doesn't form bonds with other people and Roman, unlike Adam with Blake, he truly respects and loves Neo but being a criminal he led her down that same path and when Neo loses him she has no one else.
Neo reflects Yang in the sense that they are both proud of who they are and violently attack all those who hurt their loved ones and don't think about the consequences of their actions. The difference is that Yang learns that she shouldn't live and show only her idealized self but must accept that her vulnerability is a part of her identity and that she shouldn't reject it and she also learns that violence is not the answer to everything but has to to think things through before doing them and pay attention to the big picture while Neo clings to her idealized identity but puts aside his share of Trivia (her vulnerability) and Neo in her eagerness to lash out without thinking doesn't think about her actions which makes her easy for Cinder to manipulate neither does she think that what happened to Roman was partly his own fault and partly just a circunstance that could have happened at any time nor does she think about the bigger picture and how their actions affect that big picture.
Neo reflects Jaune in the sense that they were both seeking revenge for the death of a loved one (Pyrrha and Roman) at the hands of Cinder (only Roman didn't die directly for Cinder but he die by agreeing to do her plan) because they have no idea how to deal with the pain of losing a loved one and in turn cling to an idealized identity that gives them a sense of purpose (Jaune as a knight and Neo in his current Neopolitan identity). Jaune tries to take revenge on Cinder but everything goes wrong until he discovers his semblance and saves Weiss and puts aside his revenge, later in Atlas he learns to improve his defense and embraces his identity as a knight until he is forced to kill Penny because she asks him and from what we has seen, Jaune will have to examine himself, accept Penny's death and also accept the fact that he hurt her in order to reconcile with himself and find a new purpose and grow as a person while that Neo tries to take revenge on Cinder but she manipulates her into helping her and attack Ruby, and later betrays her and Neo instead of examining herself and her purpose that has her current identity, she simply chooses to stay with her current purpose which is to continue attacking Ruby and probably against Cinder, doesn't accept Roman's death and she doesn't care if she or others get hurt because of her which makes Neo have no personal growth.
The fact that Aizen and Neo reflect the characters is so true that they can even literally become reflections of the characters as if they were mirrors. They reflect what the characters hide from themselves or what they can become if they give in to their flaws and even Aizen and Neo use their powers to confuse their enemies and turn them against themselves.
Like I said earlier, Neo, Beatrice and Aizen have powers that influence reality to make it whatever they want but they don't get what they really want. Basically their powers make them writers but they are writers who don't know write a story that they like, being writers of their own tragedy: Sayo ends everything and just wants to die, Aizen wants company but never realizes his wish and ends Sealed in the Muken and Neo can't accept Roman's death and lashes out at everything and everyone, leading to a bad ending for Beatrice and Aizen and Neo runs the risk of ending up having a bad ending like Beatrice and Aizen.
I don't know if you know Record of Ragnarok but I think that Leonidas and Geirölul are what Ichigo and Zangetsu would have been if they had had a good relationship from the beginning without the lies and the prejudices of everyone around them (considering the violent nature that Ichigo has always had, it wouldn't have been unreasonable):
Zangetsu would get angry with anyone who despised him or Ichigo just as happened with Geirölul.
Zangetsu would call Ichigo with nicknames as a sign of affection and trust while he shows concern for him like Geirölul does with Leonidas when she calls him Leo.
Ichigo and Zangetsu would crush their enemies together with enthusiasm, just as Leonidas and Geirölul do in their fight against Apollo.
We know that Zangetsu's appearance was exactly the same as Ichigo's because he lacked an asauchi (which is basically a catalyst where the zanpakutō can manifest and shape it appearance however it wishes) but guess what appearance Zangetsu takes after getting an asauchi.
His appearance remains the same as Ichigo's and the only thing different is his face is the hollow mask that hints at the origins of Zangetsu as a product of the fusion between White and Ichigo's soul.
This shows that despite having the opportunity to look whatever he wants, Zangetsu loves Ichigo so much that he even wants to look like him.
As Himiko Toga once said:
Himiko: "Of course you wanna be like the one you love. It's natural. So you end up decking yourself out to look like him. But after enough time, even that's not enough. You literally want to become him. There's no helping it."
Between Magic and Mirrors
Would you believe me if I told you that this character
is like this
and this?
While I watched Neo in RWBY, I couldn't help but notice the similarities she has to Umineko's Beatrice and Bleach's Sosuke Aizen and I'll explain all of these in more detail here:
NEOPOLITAN AND BEATRICE - IMAGINATION, MAGIC AND ESCAPISM
Beatrice is a character of Umineko who is known to be the Golden Witch but her true identity is Sayo Yasuda, Kinzo's illegitimate daughter born by incest who after Natsuhi accidentally pushed the servant who was holding Sayo causing Sayo to lose her private parts, being saved by Genji and Kumasawa who raise her in secret to avoid another incestuous episode by Kinzo. This caused Sayo to have insecurities about herself and her own gender and to make matters worse the other maids start to pester her for her clumsiness in her work as a maid and her only friend was Kumasawa with whom she develops a love for mystery stories and magic in general. Sayo was unhappy and always alone so she started creating imaginary friends to make up for her loneliness and because of her love for magic she created Proto Beatrice (later know as Gaap) to explain her own clumsiness and later creates Shannon persona, the perfect servant girl. Sayo's imagination becomes her refuge but also her prison because it gave relief to her loneliness and made her feel good about herself but in turn this isolated her from others. Later she meets Battler and for the first time she doesn't feel lonely for long but due to her loneliness she trusts Battler too much to the point that she takes seriously Battler's promise that he would come back for her but when he doesn't come back which makes Sayo feel betrayed but to make matters worse she discovers her true identity as Kinzo's illegitimate daughter, she goes mad, takes Beatrice persona as her own and think that she's a real witch.
Later Sayo causes Rokenjima incident as a way to get revenge on the family that hurt her and especially Battler for leaving her alone but in turn she feels bad for everything she has done and chooses to commit suicide by drowning in the sea.
In the meta world Beatrice plays the killing games with Battler so that he knows that the reason for the Rokenjima incident is so that he would remember the promise he made to her when she was Sayo.
Do you know who more was born in a rich and toxic family that hurt her for her disability, used her imagination as a form of freedom and escapism and ended up loving a man just so that when that man disappears she goes mad and seeks revenge as a result?
Beatrice and Neo are adults who act like children so they lash out at others but they don't take responsibility for their actions nor do they realize how their actions hurt others, they only care about their own pain. This is even seen when Sayo and Trivia create their imaginary friends (Gaap or Proto Beatrice and Pink Neopolitan) not only to feel accompanied but also to blame them for their mistakes.
Beatrice's actions led to the terrible situation that Eva was forced to live in as the sole survivor of her family and having to deal with the media accusation that she killed everyone on the island when in fact Eva was suffering for the loss of her husband Hideyoshi and her son George and the rejection of Ange and Ange herself had to endure being bullied at school for being the daughter of Rudolf and Kyrie, alleged murderers of Rokenjima, and also in her desire for her parents to return, rejected Eva believing that her parents and brother would come back for her. Battler was also hurt by Beatrice's actions because by trying to follow her and stay with her in her death, he survives but doesn't remember anything and is found by Ikuko Hachiyo who he marries and is tormented by memories that come to him through nightmares. Neo for her part wants revenge against Cinder but she is manipulated for her to help her and unload her anger against Ruby which makes Neo help Cinder to destroy an entire kingdom without mentioning that her actions are indirectly helping Salem to destroy the world because Salem's plan is to make the world a chaotic place so that when the Brother Gods are summoned they will destroy the world as a result of the chaos that exists.
Another thing that both have in common is their powers and how both are based on the manipulation of reality through imagination to some extent. Beatrice is a witch whose powers basically consist of making what she imagines come true, forcing reality to make what she believes to be real be real because Sayo, her true identity, dealt with loneliness through her imagination. The above can be seen from the fact that she didn't ask to revive Sakutaro because she believed that Rosa denied it but Angel revives him simply because she believed that Sakutaro was alive by having a spare stuffed animal.
Neo's semblance allows her to manifest whatever she imagines into reality in illusions made of glass that everyone can see.
Both powers force reality to operate under the rules of Beatrice and Neo and even said powers are enhanced in places linked to the imagination (the Golden Land is a kingdom created by Beatrice where everything she thinks comes true and Neo is in Ever After, a magical place where it reflects the psyche of the characters and therefore also reflects the imagination). Beatrice's golden magic and Neo's semblance are perfect powers for a lonely and imaginative child and for deadly assassins, imagination is a double-edged sword because although Beatrice and Neo deal with their loneliness with their imagination (they create imaginary friends) and it gives them the freedom they feel they don't have with their original identities (Beatrice - Sayo Yasuda, Neopolitan - Trivia Vanille) in turn they get stuck in their own heads who just can't accept reality and instead look for reality to be as they want or believe it should be.
Beatrice and Neo are witches, Beatrice, as I said before, is the Golden Witch and Neopolitan is based on Trivia, the Roman goddess of witchcraft and there is something interesting about the concept of a witch in Umineko which is that a person becomes a witch by feeling rejection of their reality but they puts aside their humanity and their ties to other people and this also applies in RWBY: Sayo couldn't stand her life as a human and took the identity of Beatrice to feel free and take revenge and in the end she ends up in the Golden Land and in RWBY while team RWBY looks to get out of Ever After and Jaune can't get out until he gets help, Neo seems rather comfortable in Ever After and may even want to stay there.
Beatrice dies in real life not accepting the blame for her actions and ends up alone in the Golden Land until the end of Umineko where Battler finally reunites with her and Neo is running the risk of ending up just like Beatrice: ending up as a lonely witch in an imaginary world.
NEOPOLITAN AND SOSUKE AIZEN - LIVING MIRRORS
If there is something we know about Neo, it is how she is essentially a living mirror, not only because she creates illusions made of glass that everyone can see, but also because she is a mirror for the characters, especially for Ruby, but they know that another character curiously share these same traits with Neo?
Sosuke Aizen is a character from Bleach and one of the main antagonists of the manga. Not only does he share some physical similarities with Neo, but his powers are illusions visible to all who have seen his Shikai's activation and something curious is that Neo's and Aizen's illusions are made of glass.
Glass is an element that in fiction represents fragility, which gives us clues that Aizen and Neo's senses of identity are as fragile as glass itself: Aizen's identity is fragile because it is only based on what he can do (his intellect and his powers) to the point that he feels that morality does not apply to him, he feels that only he can change and rule the Soul Society and Ichigo even speculates that the reason Aizen wanted to conquer Soul Society was because of his desire for an equal, that his extreme power and intelligence only served to isolate him from the moment he was born (this can be seen in his effort to strengthen Ichigo as well as his respect for Kisuke Urahara stems from seeing them as equals) and Neo feels oppressed by her own family for not accepting her because of her disability and she unconsciously feels that no one is going to accept her and takes refuge in her idealized identity (Neopolitan) where she is powerful and free to do what she wants without being nobody oppresses her but she defines herself only by her bond with Roman (after their relationship goes from transactional to something genuine, Roman is the only one who respects her and wants her) and her life as a criminal that gives her freedom makes her dependent on Roman and unable to form bonds with others. Aizen and Neo were born with physical and/or mental conditions (Aizen - high intellect and enormous spiritual pressure and Neo - muteness and her semblance) that made them feel different from others, which caused their actions and their identity to be based on said conditions to the point that their powers they serve to reflect that sense of self that both have of themselves: sharp but fragile.
Aizen and Neo not only have a glass motif because of their fragile sense of self but also because they are mirrors that reflect the characters.
Aizen is a reflects that reflects Kisuke, Toshiro, Starrk and even Ichigo himself:
Aizen reflects Kisuke because they are both renowned geniuses for their great intellect and even looking to create something new just because they could just because Kisuke has moral boundaries that he dares not cross and Aizen just doesn't care about morals.
Aizen reflects Toshiro in the sense that they were both born prodigies having extremely enormous power and were ostracized because of it but Toshiro didn't let their power define him as a person but saw it as a part of himself and he managed to bond with the others while Aizen saw his power and intellect as his complete identity, which made him unable to have a bond with anyone.
Aizen reflects Starrk because they are both extremely powerful beings but this distanced them from each other because the others were weaker than them, making both wish they were weak in order to bond with others or meet people who were as strong as them or mlre. Starrk created Lilinette and found people (including Aizen himself) for him to be with without being overwhelmed by his power, relieving his loneliness while Aizen is unable to bond with anyone because he finds no one he considers an equal or that they are powerful enough that they are able to withstand his own power.
Aizen reflects Ichigo because they are both extremely powerful but both just want to be normal, the difference is that Ichigo knows that this is his wish, he expresses it openly and in the end lives a normal life with his family while Aizen does not recognize or realize it of that desire and seeks to be superior to others.
Neo is also a mirror that reflects other characters, in her case, Team RWBY and Jaune:
Neo reflects Ruby in that they both deal incorrectly with the loss of a loved one, refuse to examine themselves so they can't face said loss, and dress like said loved ones (Ruby wears clothing resembling the ones her mother Summer wore and Neo wears Roman's hat and gray cloth) to feel close to them and/or to feel that they are still alive in some way. Ruby suppresses everything she feels and decides to move on and Neo gets carried away by her emotions to the point that she doesn't care if she and others get hurt.
Neo reflects Weiss in the sense that they both grew up in a rich but toxic family and wanted to be free but Weiss grows as a person because she had the support of Winter and then she has the positive support of RWBY which allows when Weiss goes down in Ever After After losing her father and her home, she doesn't lash out at anyone but rather seeks to leave the place while Neo has no personal growth because she did not know anyone, she loses her parents who oppressed her and Roman is left, who does love her but his support it's not positive and when she loses him Neo gets angry and lashes out at others and doesn't seem to be concerned about staying in Ever After.
Neo reflects Blake because they were both born with conditions that make them different from the others (Blake is a Faunos and Neo is mute) and they were strongly discriminated for it and they both get together with a man (Adam and Roman) who lead them astray but they stay with them for accepting them only Adam becomes more and more violent and Blake leaves him to have a better life and manages to have healthy relationships with other people while Neo stays with Roman and she doesn't form bonds with other people and Roman, unlike Adam with Blake, he truly respects and loves Neo but being a criminal he led her down that same path and when Neo loses him she has no one else.
Neo reflects Yang in the sense that they are both proud of who they are and violently attack all those who hurt their loved ones and don't think about the consequences of their actions. The difference is that Yang learns that she shouldn't live and show only her idealized self but must accept that her vulnerability is a part of her identity and that she shouldn't reject it and she also learns that violence is not the answer to everything but has to to think things through before doing them and pay attention to the big picture while Neo clings to her idealized identity but puts aside his share of Trivia (her vulnerability) and Neo in her eagerness to lash out without thinking doesn't think about her actions which makes her easy for Cinder to manipulate neither does she think that what happened to Roman was partly his own fault and partly just a circunstance that could have happened at any time nor does she think about the bigger picture and how their actions affect that big picture.
Neo reflects Jaune in the sense that they were both seeking revenge for the death of a loved one (Pyrrha and Roman) at the hands of Cinder (only Roman didn't die directly for Cinder but he die by agreeing to do her plan) because they have no idea how to deal with the pain of losing a loved one and in turn cling to an idealized identity that gives them a sense of purpose (Jaune as a knight and Neo in his current Neopolitan identity). Jaune tries to take revenge on Cinder but everything goes wrong until he discovers his semblance and saves Weiss and puts aside his revenge, later in Atlas he learns to improve his defense and embraces his identity as a knight until he is forced to kill Penny because she asks him and from what we has seen, Jaune will have to examine himself, accept Penny's death and also accept the fact that he hurt her in order to reconcile with himself and find a new purpose and grow as a person while that Neo tries to take revenge on Cinder but she manipulates her into helping her and attack Ruby, and later betrays her and Neo instead of examining herself and her purpose that has her current identity, she simply chooses to stay with her current purpose which is to continue attacking Ruby and probably against Cinder, doesn't accept Roman's death and she doesn't care if she or others get hurt because of her which makes Neo have no personal growth.
The fact that Aizen and Neo reflect the characters is so true that they can even literally become reflections of the characters as if they were mirrors. They reflect what the characters hide from themselves or what they can become if they give in to their flaws and even Aizen and Neo use their powers to confuse their enemies and turn them against themselves.
Like I said earlier, Neo, Beatrice and Aizen have powers that influence reality to make it whatever they want but they don't get what they really want. Basically their powers make them writers but they are writers who don't know write a story that they like, being writers of their own tragedy: Sayo ends everything and just wants to die, Aizen wants company but never realizes his wish and ends Sealed in the Muken and Neo can't accept Roman's death and lashes out at everything and everyone, leading to a bad ending for Beatrice and Aizen and Neo runs the risk of ending up having a bad ending like Beatrice and Aizen.
I don't know if you know Record of Ragnarok but I think that Leonidas and Geirölul are what Ichigo and Zangetsu would have been if they had had a good relationship from the beginning without the lies and the prejudices of everyone around them (considering the violent nature that Ichigo has always had, it wouldn't have been unreasonable):
Zangetsu would get angry with anyone who despised him or Ichigo just as happened with Geirölul.
Zangetsu would call Ichigo with nicknames as a sign of affection and trust while he shows concern for him like Geirölul does with Leonidas when she calls him Leo.
Ichigo and Zangetsu would crush their enemies together with enthusiasm, just as Leonidas and Geirölul do in their fight against Apollo.
We know that Zangetsu's appearance was exactly the same as Ichigo's because he lacked an asauchi (which is basically a catalyst where the zanpakutō can manifest and shape it appearance however it wishes) but guess what appearance Zangetsu takes after getting an asauchi.
His appearance remains the same as Ichigo's and the only thing different is his face is the hollow mask that hints at the origins of Zangetsu as a product of the fusion between White and Ichigo's soul.
This shows that despite having the opportunity to look whatever he wants, Zangetsu loves Ichigo so much that he even wants to look like him.
As Himiko Toga once said:
Himiko: "Of course you wanna be like the one you love. It's natural. So you end up decking yourself out to look like him. But after enough time, even that's not enough. You literally want to become him. There's no helping it."
Why Isane still went after Rose and Kensei's bodies
lmao the screenshots
My first thought was that she didn't believe Gremmy saying they were dead but then I read the chapters for this episode and she did scan their pulse so she know they were dead in the manga. Then, I remembered the Echoing Jaws of Hell Arc one-shot Kubo wrote.
The Reisai ritual from the Hell arc
Renji talks about how captains who died in battle would get this ritual and we also know that shinigami who are greater than third class reishi are captains and they have to be cast into Hell. Kensei and Rose are Vizards adding to being captains so they would fit that category after the war if they weren't saved by Mayuri.
Now of course, most of the captains including Kurotsuchi, Soi Fon, and others didn't even know about the true purpose of the ritual so how could Isane know about it? (Even though the true purpose doesn't need to be known to do it)
Eh, I would just chalk it up to her being Unohana's lieutenant and Unohana being a OG Gotei 13 and the head canon of her having to send her fellow captains to Hell and knowing she would soon be in it.
Anyways, I kept seeing people asking why she went after their bodies when they were dead already and thought of this.
Aizen's Bankai
Did we see it?
Really. Could it be possible that his bankai was actually stealth shown in the manga but, in pure Aizen fashion, no one noticed?
First: his shikai.
We know pretty well how that works. Kyouka Suigetsu is the most powerful illusion-type zanpakutou in the same manner Hyorinmaru is the most powerful Ice-type and Ryuujinjakka is the most powerful fire-type. Unmatched and insurpassable in power, versatility and sheer excellence by any other of that type.
He's able to cast illusions on people that control all of their senses and make people see and hear and taste and smell and feel what he wants them to.
His most common use of it as we see it to make one person seem like another. Those random shinigami to appear to be him so he can be off doing other things and no one is the wiser. Hinamori during that Fake Karakura battle.
He can also make people deaf and blind to things. None of the captains an lieutenants were able to hear the screaming, pleading and defensive actions Hinamori and Ichigo certainly made as they brutalized her thinking she was Aizen. He hid all evidence of his own movements and the swap with Hinamori and made himself seem like he was Hinamori so he could stand back and watch, which naturally requires hiding his reiatsu.
Through that whole fight he coordinated the illusion among dozens of people to make that work. It's horrible what he did, but also and impressively tricky bit of choreography and precision skill. Cruel but brilliant.
So, in specific, he can think of an illusion he wants people to percieve as reality, or of a certain bit of reality he wants them to not notice, and anyone who has been brought under it's power by witnessing the shikai release (the main achilles heel to it - the fact that it needs that prerequisite to have any effect at all) is completely helpless to resist or see through it unless he releases them or they find the trick of touching Kyoka Suigetsu's blade.
All evidence indicates he is 100% in control of and cognizant of exactly what illusion he is making and what the person sees.
So then, how the hell does this panel make sense:
He had no idea what Ywach was seeing until he said it.
That doesn't make sense with what was previously established.
Not unless Aizen is using his bankai and his zanpakutou is a more pure expression of the philosophy of shikai and bankai like Rukia's.
Rukia's cold freezes herself in shikai and she's able to send blasts of it out through the tip of her blade. In bankai she throws that cold out into a large sphere around her, freezing everything along with herself.
If Aizen's shikai is him internally crafting illusions and putting them in peoples heads, then perhaps his bankai sends his power out and lets the target mind create the illusion itself. Maybe it works more like the Mandela effect - giving a vague suggestion of Aizen's chosing, and then the mind fills in the details and certainty.
Having the call come from inside the house would definitely make a more unquestioned illusion - one that could even trick and blind a man/monster able to look into the future. Ywach, after all, is looking for actions the people he's fighting are going to take in the future. He's there for an epic battle with himself as the hero and about to smite the foolhardy, and especially the one he's deemed the pinnacle of the resistance - Ichigo. He's never said to be able to see the consequences of his own actions - or if he can then he doesn't. He just uses the Almighty to learn what his opponent is going to do and then counteract it - he never actually looks forward at his own actions to see which will succeed or fail.
If Aizen quietly activated bankai previously, without it being noticed (and he of all people could definitely do that, even with an all-seeing god) and implanted a suggestion like don't see Ichigo or to swap the face of whoever is fighting him with someone else, and therefore made Ywach's own mind create a narrative he's expecting to see (the narrative of fighting and defeating Ichigo, the only man with the power to kill him once-and-for-all, and damn but that makes him sound like Voldemort) well...then there's nothing for him to see but his own reflected thoughts bouncing back from the future instead of the truth (that Ichigo is sneaking up behind him), is there?
So: in conclusion, I suggest Aizen did use his bankai and that his bankai throws a general shape of the illusion Aizen wants to cast/the effect he wants to have, but instead of him crafting the details it forces the victims mind to warp and create the illusion itself, making it more completely entrenched - possibly something with permanent effects that makes the person unable to accept any reality but that even after Aizen withdraws his influence.
Bleach things I want to talk about
June has been a terrible no good very bad month. Recent thunderstorms have brought to my attention a leak somewhere in my roof I’m going to have to get repaired, I’m riding out the ebbs and flows of grieving a lost one, I got scammed out of $1500 the week before my birthday, and work continues to pile up. (I’m also not sure if some of my coworkers are being passive-aggressive or if my English really is that bad. I’m feeling ignored and talked-over!)
Anyways:
I’ve been reviewing my “old” Bleach posts—I’m trying to go back, review, outline, and expand on them—and I don’t know why I have such a negative, if not mournful, outlook on zanpaktou?
Some possibilities include:
It’s weaponizing the soul via the Seireitei’s tools and teachings
The closer shinigami are to one thing (shinigami), the further they are from the other (the state of their soul before “becoming”)
A crackpot theory that randomly popped into my head after reading some meta and rewatching the zanpaktou filler arc: what if zanpaktou are like, this piece of the spirit/soul that would hollowfy without the shinigami mythos? (Specifically because of the Seireitei/new order of SS.) I guess I see the insertion of shinigami in the order of the universe (because they’re babies in the grand scheme of things) as running from death? Are shinigami necessary? What if hollows are part of the cycle but after the creation of the Seireitei and the asuachi, it just threw everything out of whack? (Memory plays a major role here, institutional and individual. Unrelated but I reblogged a meta post about Renji and his relationship with Zabimaru. OP suggested that the chimera form was a way of holding onto his Rukongai experience—the brutality of his ghost life, and I love the idea that a zanpaktou can be used as way to retain a “past life” in a place that does so much pretending.)
Also, I loved the dynamic between Tobiume and Hinamori <3 Tobiume really loves Hinamori and I love that for her. And Hinamori is so patient and understanding of Tobiume, even when she’s casting aspersions.