dishonorable good guys in bleach

[Shdo]

its something i noticed, the good guys show more dirty tactics and cheap victories in dishonorable ways again and again.

list:

for example kira and the bird guy, he wasnt a threat anymore and just killed him right there. now he can talk bullshit about war all he wants but as a soldier i still see this action as disgusting act.

both hitsugaya and renji defeated their arrancar back in the first attack by attacking them from behind as they retreated (ikkaku on the other hand killed his enemy head on).

mayuri and kenpachi (though i never expected from kenpachi much, he isn't a soldier after all) killed their opponent when they were not a threat at all, especially mayuri.

even chad gave that mega Punch to a defensless arrancar after stopping his tongue, knowing that the enemy lost the will to fight.

i expect more and more such actions as the story progress.


it disturb me that those are the "good guys", that they committed 3 genocides in the last 200 years, that they dont even wait for explanation from their allies and former comrades before giving the 'execute them' command, their intolerance to anyone different, the maggot lair and i am sure you can come up with more and more examples.


why does the good guys have so many bad qualities?

[♥Mad,bad & sad♥]

its something i noticed, the good guys show more dirty tactics and cheap victories in dishonorable ways again and again.

list:

for example kira and the bird guy, he wasnt a threat anymore and just killed him right there. now he can talk bullshit about war all he wants but as a soldier i still see this action as disgusting act.

both hitsugaya and renji defeated their arrancar back in the first attack by attacking them from behind as they retreated (ikkaku on the other hand killed his enemy head on).

mayuri and kenpachi (though i never expected from kenpachi much, he isn't a soldier after all) killed their opponent when they were not a threat at all, especially mayuri.

even chad gave that mega Punch to a defensless arrancar after stopping his tongue, knowing that the enemy lost the will to fight.

i expect more and more such actions as the story progress.


it disturb me that those are the "good guys", that they committed 3 genocides in the last 200 years, that they dont even wait for explanation from their allies and former comrades before giving the 'execute them' command, their intolerance to anyone different, the maggot lair and i am sure you can come up with more and more examples.


why does the good guys have so many bad qualities?

When in war, you gotta do what has to be done. ;)

But seriously, Kubo can't get his characterization right. :hm

[Shdo]

as a soldier who was in a war there are things you dont do, and in this manga where you can make someone weight 20 times more then usual, rendering him helpless and then decapitating him...its gone beyond surviving, its reaching the level of pure cruelty and bloodlust.


i hope the shinigami will start getting losses (most likely the arrancar will attack from the front unlike the shinigami)

[Manifest Rage]

mayuri and kenpachi (though i never expected from kenpachi much, he isn't a soldier after all) killed their opponent when they were not a threat at all, especially mayuri.

Kenpachi will kill but he does it reluctantly. After fighting Ikkaku, Kenpachi walked away because the fight was over and it wasn't worth his time. After injuring Tousen, Kenpachi walked away because Tousen wasn't worth fighting anymore. And against Nnoitra, Kenpachi walked away because Nnoitra was gravely injured. But since Nnoitra wanted to keep fighting and since Nnoitra had a death wish where he wanted to die in battle "choking on his own blood," Kenpachi ended his life. Kenny wasn't eager to kill Nnoitra but since Nnoitra was so pushy and was so intent on fighting until Kenpachi killed him (hence, forcing Kenny's hand), there wasn't a whole of Kenny could have done there.

You're right about Kenny not being a soldier. Kenny is a warrior who follows his own code and his own heart, so he's on his own path.

[Ryin]

I personally think it's done intentionally in preparation for something coming in the future. I've always liked that there has been moral ambiguity in Soul Society. But, Soul Society themselves have ever said that they were the pillar of moral justice as noted from the SS arc.


Most simply say, these are the laws and they are to be followed. When moral questions arise, we will take them on then and choose our own paths. Soul Society is built on laws, not morals and the laws have worked for a very long time. Whether or not it is "right" is a different matter entirely.


We only call them "good guys" because they appear in the manga more than the "bad guys" and have been built up to be that way. In reality the "bad guys" are only guilty of trying to survive. The ones who are truly "bad" according to our own moral standards, when killed, are punished. (sent to Hell) The rest merely become "monsters" through holding on to bad feelings or painful memories.

Given Soul Societies adherence to its laws and the fact that they are on a wartime alert status I don't question some of the actions of the shinigami. Kira did what he needed to to. If he hadn't killed Avirama then Avirama might have come after him. (I assume that if he seals Wabisuke the effect ends so what is he supposed to do, sit there forever watching him?)

Kenpachi was walking away from Nnoitra, satisfied with merely defeating him, it was noi that whined about continuing the fight when he obviously had no chance of winning and Mayuri has never had moral scruples and never once had remorse about it so anything he does doesn't really count.

[♥Mad,bad & sad♥]

as a soldier who was in a war there are things you dont do, and in this manga where you can make someone weight 20 times more then usual, rendering him helpless and then decapitating him...its gone beyond surviving, its reaching the level of pure cruelty and bloodlust.

While the Shinigami's actions may seem exscesive, It's either kill the opponent or be killed. Besides Kubo only added the decapitaion becuase it would win Kira a few points with fans, not because of morals. :cool:

i hope the shinigami will start getting losses

Don't count on that happening anytime soon. I hope it does, but i'm sure it won't.:p

[balladbird]

I agree with you on most of your points, the Soul Society as an organization is disgusting in its self-righteousness, absolutely narrow-minded, and shameful in practice. There have been a number of occasions to showcase this fact.

I do feel the need to make a rebuttle on a few points, however.

1.) As has been stated by other members before me, Kenpachi wholly intended to let Nnoitra live after it was clear he couldn't fight anymore. The only reason he agreed to a final crossing of swords was to indulge Nnotira's sense of honor. While that whole fight was a disgraceful wank at the established power-level system, the resolution was hardly disgraceful on Kenpachi's part.

2.) Kira's power doesn't permanantly change the weight of what he strikes (if it were, Matsumoto's zanpaku-to would be all but unusable to her in its unreleased form). While the time limit on the ability hasn't been explicitly stated yet, it's safe to assume that it fades as soon as he disengages his shikai or shortly afterward. Thus it was prudent of him to make the kill while his opponent was vulnerable. He was, after all, charged with defending the pillar.

[Rain]

well, I agree SS is messed up, but do they ever really call themselves holier than thou good guys

I eman, it is a war, if they showed mercy it would annoy me

I'd rather the villains not mess around, and actually try to kill without wasting time


but I never saw SS are heros or good guys, not role models for children by any means, lol

its nice that they aren't the stereotypical heros

[Velius]

This is less to do with war and more to do with the natural order of thing in the bleach universe. Shinigami kill hollows. It's as simple as that. There needs to be no reason. It is their job as shinigami. To keep the souls in balance.

[Miyona]

Well they arent perfect, um...societies in real life like the United States arent perfect either >_>

but everything they do still has a reason behind it....why would Renji and Hitsugaya let their opponents go? So they can fight them again?

[redexquisite]

dishonorable? Yes i guess you could venture into honor and dishonor because the shinigami are concious...but remember the purpose of SS. Unless there is some big twist and SS is guilty and tainted the shinigami's main goal is to vanquish hollow. Now that the arrancar and Espada can talk and think and basically are humanesque it doesnt change the fact that they are hollow and the natural enemies....or declared enemies of SS and the human world.

There have been many scenes where hollows ran away and got sliced from the back and dissappeared like they always do....just because it's a stronger opponent with intelligence doesn't make it any different than a stronger hollow. I think the shinigami are doing them respect even treating them as equals. Not to sound one sided some of the hollows are smarter then SS but you get my point. All in all they are hollow and war is war. Honor can be used only so much

[gigantor21]

Honestly, I don't agree with any of the specifics on fighting the Arrancar. Nell and her Fraccion are the only decent ones--the rest are bloodthirsty, crazy and/or staunch Aizen supporters. I really don't care how they're dealt with.

I do agree, however, that SS is a deeply flawed organization. The way they dance between being too lenient and too strict, at the wrong times, is infuriating--especially when it's done just for the sake of tradition. That allowed Aizen to fulfill his plans; since all Central 46 decisions are absolute, he had free reign. That has to change.

[Aalicia]

SS isn't perfect. Truth be said, no system can ever be, and I seriously doubt KT has created it to mirror perfection, but instead to show the flaws and convulsions of any society practicable, and the ability of the individual to either help better it or help making it worse. If SS would never make mistakes, it would never learn from them aswell. With that said, Bleach's hero is Ichigo, and as such, I believe he'll always play the part of influencing SS towards the right way, directly or indirectly. If it were a perfect society, Ichigo's influence could only either be null or harmfull, since the system would be already perfect (as if any such hierarchy and functional order of distinct individuals could ever exist as perfection).

Are we so far from SS arc to forget how many shinigamis disobeyed direct irrefutable orders, in favour of their own sense of what's right, in order to help Ichigo prevent an unfair execution? Characters, along with societies, need to evolve, if SS would be perfect, there would be nothing to evolve and Bleach's hero would have no larger influence in the big picture than making SS stand in awe as his powers grow at the speed of plotkai. I'm personaly glad KT has created SS organic the enough to both play a part on developing the characters and on being developped BY the characters.

With that said, what's the alternative? SS should just sit back and watch, while Aizen & Co. of Miscelaneous Arrancar vaporize Karakura Town? Or have mercy on their defeated enemies, so they can get back, recover, do some needed training, pop some reishi carbon diet, and try again, next week? They have shown clear intention to invade and destroy Karakura, this is war.

[鬼鬼]

It's the shinigamis' job to slay hollows.

What's the point of fighting so hard till your enemy is no longer a threat, and leave them alone without slaughtering them? To allow them to make a comeback as a bigger threat? :rolleyes::rolleyes:

[Primera Espada]

you might all be forgetting that zanpakuto purify hollows and send the souls on to the cycle of life.

There's a huge difference between dying in the living world and "dying" once you're a spirit. With the exception of aizen, even shinigami deaths are largely glazed over. In Soul Society, where your average soul lasts 60 years, people are just accustomed to one day their friends and family not being there.

Once you've died once, death doesn't mean the same. The reason hollows react so differently to death is that as unpurified souls they have not moved on, they still cling to the world of the living, in a little way at least.

[Shdo]

kira could have done a lot of things beside kill the bird guy, he could have sealed him, he could have ripped his tendons, he could have severe his wings. it was a cold blooded murder period equal to shot a handcuffed POW.

as for killing hollows and purifying them, have we ever seen anything to support it? a spirit who claims to have been a hollow?

and arrancars are something new, they are not mindless like hollows. what is the difference between nnoitre and kenpachi? szyel and mayuri? they also show the same strengths and flaws as the shinigami, they show mercy and honor and even help their enemies on several occasions. what disturb me is the set of mind of the 'good guys' that 'every single one of you will die' that include every single arrancar, regardless if they are redeemable or actually nice people.

and to all those who say this is war, there is a limit to how far you can go to achieve victory, a disarmed enemy who cant fight anymore shouldn't be killed, they can be captured, their blade can be destroyed.

i hope the shinigami will get what is coming for them, i would be quite pleased if kira would meet the same fate.

[Apsalar]

From rukia

http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/3/06/

obviously the shinigami do not consider hollows on the same level as humans or other souls, as she states that fighting dirty against hollows is how they are taught to fight in SS.

Also its stated clearly here that shen you "kill" a hollow you are purifying all the sins that they have commited since becoming a hollow and send them to SS

http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/6/14/

so kira sis not "ruthlessly kill an defeted opponent", he purified a lost soul and allowed it to continue on the circle of life and death in the bleach universe.

as for proof that they actually revent to their normal soul state its there as well a few pages later

http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/6/16/

you clearly see him go from hollow to her brother as he is purified and sent to SS. although this only applys to souls that were not evil before becoming hollows as shown here

http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/12/10/

[Shdo]

assuming that this is what actually happens, but besides her saying what was told to her in school have we really seen any proof for that? in those pictures it look like he disintegrate and they never shown anyone who claimed to have been a hollow before getting there.

[Apsalar]

okay, so your saying that the author lied to us on how the bleach universe works in the opening chapters of the manga. I see no reason that he would do that. You seem stuck on this and i don't think anything we say, or the author puts in the manga, will make you see that the shinigami don't see "killing" hollows in the same way. To them it is not ending a souls life. They see it as helping the hollow become free from his greif, and would really have no reason not to kill a hollow. Its basically why they exist.

[Rain]

It isn't tht the author lied, but rather, he can say Rukia wasn't told the perfect truth

or, it can be just as he says, it kind of gives kubo options, in case he wants to add to SS's crimes, lol


but would any soul remember being a hollow anyway, it cleanes what they did as a hollow, I'd assume it means they remove the "crimes" and the "memories"

its more likely it is as Rukia says

[Hiraeth]

As far as us having no evidence that hollows are actually purified, and don't just die, well look at it this way, if you were a hollow that became purified, would you want to remember all the horrible things that you had done in your hollow form? More to the point, being reborn in a sense in Soul Society, would you willingly admit your formerly hollow nature?

[Shdo]

it still dosnt change the fact we didnt saw anyone who was hollow, regardless of the reason.

besides the shinigami word we have nothing.

[Apsalar]

you are correct there, other than the word of the shinigami we have nothing. I mean they did kill all the quincy because they thought that the quincy killing the hollows, not purifying them, was one of the most horible crimes ever committed. Then again, by your logic, they must have made that up to cause they all like killing so much.

[Shdo]

actually i think they did that for another reason, to keep the hollows alive since without hollows there is no reason for the shinigami to exist.

you will agree with me that shinigami need food while regular souls dont, but who makes the food? i doubt its the shinigami. the entire purpose of SS is to keep the shinigami on top, while the people of rukongai live in squalor. but if there were no hollows, why would the people of rukongai agree to this disproportional diserbution of wealth and resources? all they will need to do to beat the shinigami is to burn the fields and let the shinigami die from starvation or force the shinigami to serve them.


if the quincy original plan of wiping out the hollows had happend this would be the end result, the shinigami would have lost their excuse of living as nobility and would face destruction from the hands of the people they abused for thousends of years.

[Apsalar]

actually i think they did that for another reason, to keep the hollows alive since without hollows there is no reason for the shinigami to exist.

I do not agree with this at all, i believe that if the quincy were to kill all the hollows that the amount of total souls available to be recycled in the circle of life and death would diminish. If taken to the extreme would result in the eventual destruction of the universe, as in there would be so few souls around that all human life would die out. This is not a Judea/christian universe hear and if you destroy all the souls in the"pool" of available souls to be reincarnated then eventually there would be not enough souls left to reincarnate.

This is also the reason that the shinigami exist. If they did not purify the hollows and keeep the souls flowing then the same thing would happen. Except that the all life but hollows would die out.

I also believe that (with no manga to back this up that i recall) when a hollow eats a soul it is absorbed into the hollow and basically "held" there until the hollow is killed. Given that arrancar are menos class (hundreds if not thousands of hollows in one), they could theoretically hold tens of thousands of individual souls out of the reincarnation cycle. So "killing" one arrancar is would be equivalent of saving thousands of souls.
Unless of course when a hollow eats a soul it is destroyed completely. Then killing hollows before they could destroy more souls would be top priority for keeping the human race going, but would eventually lead to its end.



you will agree with me that shinigami need food while regular souls dont, but who makes the food?

i do not agree at all, there are "regular" souls that also have spiritual power and need to eat as well. While some of them may eventually become shinigami i highly doubt all of them do.
i doubt its the shinigami. the entire purpose of SS is to keep the shinigami on top, while the people of rukongai live in squalor. but if there were no hollows, why would the people of rukongai agree to this disproportional diserbution of wealth and resources? all they will need to do to beat the shinigami is to burn the fields and let the shinigami die from starvation or force the shinigami to serve them.


okay, now i see the problem here, your a communist. j/k


can you really use this to support your argument? for someone who needs so much proof in the manga to believe the stated "facts" about the bleach universe you sure don't mind making things up completely, with nothing but your own unsupported views on how SS functions on a daily basis. Who is to say that the shinigami don't "pay", in whatever soul society uses as money, for the goods they consume?

We saw one part of the area outside the shingami wall. every city/country has poor areas, we may have just been in a bad part of town. Then again you could be completely right and yamamotto could just be like the worst piece of human(or soul) trash to have ever existed. I would rather belive that the shinigami are for the most part good, even if they have a flawed system of laws.

EDIT: spelling :P

[Shdo]

first, the balance of souls is bulshit, we know that there are souls who reside in SS for dozens of years (the kid who been there since WW2) and i doubt that the number of people in SS is enough to make any transaction with the real world (billions of people) when the people stay there for dozens of years at the same state.

besides, where do the current souls came from? billions upon billions that just popped out of nowhere? the balance is bullshit and the shinigami showed that they can breed and bring new souls.



as for the food thing, it was shown in rukia renji flashbacks that those with spiritual power need to eat or else faint, rangiku almost died in her own flashback but gin saved her.

i never said that they have to join the shinigami but if they want to be sure of getting food they must (since regular souls dont need food its less of a basic product and more of a rare commodoty) if not everyone are able to earn enough to buy water (from renji rukia flashback) how will someone get enough money for both water and food on a daily basis in a world that dosnt need those things? some will find a way but some wont, but you completly missed the point which is that the shinigami need the regular humans to make the food they rely on and the only reason for the regular souls to accept this way of living under the aristocrate shinigami boot is the hollows.


as for the so called facts, just because a shinigami tell you something dosnt mean its the whole truth or that the shinigami is even aware of the full truth.
and i didnt said they didnt pay, i said that the only way for a spiritual person to earn an assuard flow of money is to join the shinigami ranks.

[鬼鬼]

You guys are getting a little off the topic ;);)

[Shdo]

not really, making the population of rukongai live in squalor while the shinigami have everything is also pretty much dishonorable.

[Apsalar]

first, the balance of souls is bulshit, we know that there are souls who reside in SS for dozens of years (the kid who been there since WW2) and i doubt that the number of people in SS is enough to make any transaction with the real world (billions of people) when the people stay there for dozens of years at the same state.

I agree that the number of souls in SS is not equal to the number in the real world, but that does not mean that the souls in SS are there permanantly. I'm sure souls "die" in some way in SS and then are recyceld into the human world. We don;t really know exatly how this works or what causes a soul to go from SS back into the human world. There must be some place that souls not in "use" are stored.

Also how do you know that the balance of souls is bullshit? You have no idea if it is or not, and until there is something in the manga that states that the idea is false and the shinigami have it all wrong i see no support for your argument at all. You are just making it up based on your own speculations.

besides, where do the current souls came from? billions upon billions that just popped out of nowhere? the balance is bullshit and the shinigami showed that they can breed and bring new souls.

I would assume there was some sort of creation/big bang/God that got it all started. There is a hell and a heaven (ss) even if they don't fit the Judea/Christian forms. Why would you assume that in a reality that has these realms there was not a creation of some sort.

I would also assume that the shinigami "born" in SS have souls that come from the same place that human souls come are stored between SS and the human world.

as for the food thing, it was shown in rukia renji flashbacks that those with spiritual power need to eat or else faint, rangiku almost died in her own flashback but gin saved her.

i never said that they have to join the shinigami but if they want to be sure of getting food they must (since regular souls dont need food its less of a basic product and more of a rare commodoty) if not everyone are able to earn enough to buy water (from renji rukia flashback) how will someone get enough money for both water and food on a daily basis in a world that dosnt need those things? some will find a way but some wont, but you completly missed the point which is that the shinigami need the regular humans to make the food they rely on and the only reason for the regular souls to accept this way of living under the aristocrate shinigami boot is the hollows.

i am not arguing that the way the socity is set up is the best posible outcome for all the souls in SS, only that the shinigami are not the tirants that you are making them out to be, using the hollows as a way to supress regular souls. I mean i suppose that the regular souls could stop feeding the shinigami and let the hollows take over, ending all life in SS and the human world and let the hollows take over completely.

as for the so called facts, just because a shinigami tell you something dosnt mean its the whole truth or that the shinigami is even aware of the full truth.
and i didnt said they didnt pay, i said that the only way for a spiritual person to earn an assuard flow of money is to join the shinigami ranks.

Again I don't see the shinigami as ruling with and iron fist and keeping the regular souls in poverty for the soul reason of boosting their own status and welfare. I believe that they are providing a very essential service to the world by purifying hollows and keeping the cycle of souls flowing smoothly so that life can exist.

Without the shinigami all life in the bleach universe would eventually cease to exist. Even if the whole cycle of souls is bullshit with no one taking care of the hollows they would eventually kill everything in SS and on earth.

If you read my post carefully you would have seen that i put quotations around the word facts to establish the fact that they are only facts so far as we know thus far in the manga. While i doubt very much that kubo would take the manga this far only to revel that the whole hollows being purified and keeping the cycle of souls flowing was bull shit i admit is is possible. If not very likely.

I mean we see rukia jump in front of ichigo to save him, completely disregarding her own life in order to keep a regular soul alive.

[Shdo]

like you said, it dosnt make sense, the numbers are off and with people stuck in that place for long periods of time it makes it even less likely. so if SS and the RW numbers are off how can there be balance?

and you missed what i said completly, its not like the hollows are better than the shinigami but that the shinigami dont want to trule exterminate the hollows (an alliance with the quincy like the quincy wanted) because it will effectivly make them unemployed, and how will they survive without the steady stream of cash from their shinigami job?

i am not saying that the shinigami indeviduals are corrupted (your rukia example) but that the reason behind the shinigami refusal to destroy the hollows is to keep their status as protectors (as it seems they have enough power to invade HM in the past and they could have reduced the hollows into a shadow of what they are but they chosed not to) its like a soldier who get propoganda and dosnt see the whole truth, it dosnt mean that the low ranking soldier is bad, it wasnt the soldiers decision to slaughter the quincy village, it was the higher ups, those who really enjoy the good life.

[Apsalar]

i guess i can see that, but i think we will have to agree to disagree here. Back to the original point tho. In Kira's eyes (true or not true) he was saving the arrincars soul (souls) not killing a living soul. Thus I do not think he acted in a way that was dishonorable.

[Rain]

I think the balance is more or less right, that was a rather big plot point Kubo gave, and I think we just have to take it for a fact

shingami work to protect the souls of the dead and to save them from hollows

if they could make it to where hollows didn't exist anymore I think they'd take it:lmao

[Aalicia]

and how will they survive without the steady stream of cash from their shinigami job?

What cash? Though I agree there is some sort of currency in SS, shinigamis aren't the only ones who can make cash in there, we've seen shopkeepers and sales tents on Rukia's memories. And no one has heard about any sort of tax on Rukongai to keep the shinigami lifestyle. And we don't even know if Seiretei is actually self sufficient, if the 4th squad has sewer cleaning as a task, the idea of shinigami farming isn't far fetched. Moreover, it's also canon information that the districts closer to Seiretei are the ones with better life conditions, given they're closer to the shinigami and order is more easily kept. Besides, their shinigami job of purifying hollows is mostly done in the real world, instead of SS, have you seen humans pay for shinigami service? And, if infact they didn't want Quincies to kill off hollows, so they wouldn't be out of a "job" (I put it in between commas because, obviously, humans don't know shinigamis do such a job, most of the time, let alone pay for it), wouldn't it be better for the shinigami, who you consider to so ruthlessly finish off the arrancar, to let them live instead? So that the threat is maintained and even increased within time, and shinigami never lose their purpose? As I see it, shinigami will never lose their purpose, as there will always be hollows and souls to protect.

As for taking a fallen enemy, Dordonii himself told Ichigo not to be mercifull on the arrancar, they aren't church choir boys, and they came to vaporize tens of thousands of souls in one go. And I would hardly consider their cause as mere survival, given the termination of KKT isn't mandatory in the slightiest for hollow survival, they were all fine before they left their world and decided to invade another one. As with war not justifying killing an enemy that's already down, the war is kill or be killed, and the only reason Avirama, or any other seemingly defeated enemy didn't have a trick up their sleeve, was KT's choice. So Avirama as it was, should be spared, but if he had explosive projectiles being shot out of his rear end towards Kira, then he would be fair game? Doesn't matter if he was down, he would try to kill souls, normal or shinigami, if he would get up. He was the one boasting on how he was going to kill Kira anyway. If you think it's unworthy of a soldier, I've seen human soldiers do far worst in real wars anyway.

if they could make it to where hollows didn't exist anymore I think they'd take it:lmao

They can't. As long as there are souls, there will always be hollows, because they'll always become either a plus or a hollow. Shinigami vs hollow is a never ending fight.

[Shdo]

remember renji glasses? he bought them with alot of money, rangiku bought some food and met hitsugaya, the shinigami who helped ichigo against GF gave money to children.
they get paycheck and as i said, its not impossiable to get money from other means but since food isnt a basic commodity in this world its harder to get enough money if you need to eat all the time, you will need to work your ass off to get enough money for food and water daily and unlike our world where everyone need food in that world only a few people need it so its more rare.

you think the shinigami do some farming? i seriously doubt it.

as for the letting the arrancar live because they are hollow threat, its pointless because the shinigami already keep the hollow alive and that is enough of an excuse for them.



the arrancar arent nice people as you said but its still murder of a downed enemy who could easily be disarmed. and the arrancar did showed nice behavior by helping both ichigo and chad.

kira could have ripped avirama wings or something but instead decapitate a pleading enemy.

as a soldier i cant accept this behavior, it means that when i enter a enemy territory i need to kill everyone regardless of white flags or hands in the air, its sickening.

[Apsalar]

you are applying human standards to something that is not a human. Besides being a hollow of that caliber basically means that he has already mass murdered souls, including other hollows that may have begged for their life. Again, and this is the last time i'll make this point, in the shinigamis eyes the are not killing a downed opponent, they are saving its soul. just because you refuse to believe that killing a hollow with a zan purifies them doesn't make that any less real to the shinigami.

[Shdo]

just like a bunch of religious fanatics.

[Apsalar]

no, not really. This is a world where heaven and heal really exist and demons walk the earth. Religion is based on faith, in bleach its all very real.

[Shdo]

the being called avirama was created from a sad turn of events but it still real, he have things he likes and things he dislikes, he is the sum of many souls inside of him.
by killing him the creature called avirama dosnt exist anymore, he isnt purified and live happily in SS but dissippears.

people dont care about avirama because we never seen him enough to get attached to him but what about lilinete? or chibi nell? killing them is something that the shinigami want to do with a zeal and when they will purified there wont be a nell and lilinete anymore, only alot of other souls.

in the buttom line this is murder.

[Rain]

Aalicia- yea, and that was kind of my point, they don't do this because they love to, or they find it fun, they must do it, and nobody else can

if they could prevent souls from becomeing hollows, they would, but they can't


Shdo- well one of those souls would probably be them, isn't it that the one soul becomes dominant above the others

and yes, its murder, but have they ever denied its murder

[Aalicia]

you think the shinigami do some farming? i seriously doubt it.

It's understandable that you doubt it, but, until canon material hinting shinigami actually make a living out of the people in Rukongai, I'll have to seriously doubt it myself. Shinigamis must have paycheck, yes. But have you seen it coming from the regular souls in SS, as payment to Seiretei for protecting them from hollows? One has hardly even seen hollows in SS to begin with, and no information about taxing was ever given. The poor condition on the farthest districts has always been considered as consequence of distance from Seiretei's surveilance and order maintenance, not Seiretei's exploit or taxing. Who am I to contradict canon material.

as for the letting the arrancar live because they are hollow threat, its pointless because the shinigami already keep the hollow alive and that is enough of an excuse for them.

Not sure what you mean with keeping the hollows alive here, so I can't even understand what excuse and for what purpose you're talking about.

the arrancar arent nice people as you said but its still murder of a downed enemy who could easily be disarmed. and the arrancar did showed nice behavior by helping both ichigo and chad.

Yes, and the arrancar that showed nice behaviour towards Ichigo and Chad were spared by them, ending up being attacked by their own kind, in the form of Execcias (SP?). What do you think would happen to Avirama, if he would ever be mercifull on shinigami? What was the alternative on killing him? Are you forgetting the human souls in KKT have absolutely no defence against the hollows that have come to consume them? What worst intent must an arrancar show to be worthy of termination, defeated or not? Because Kira's blow wasn't fatal and just made Avirama fall to the ground, would it make it any difference if the hit that caused him to fall would be the one to cause him to die, instead of the hit that followed? The result would be the same. And letting him live would just be giving points to the enemy for a later attack, in case this one doesn't follow suit. This is not swordfighting for show, any hit has the potential to be fatal and the intent is to kill, on both sides.

as a soldier i cant accept this behavior, it means that when i enter a enemy territory i need to kill everyone regardless of white flags or hands in the air, its sickening.

As a soldier, you have never even been on this position. As a soldier, you fight equals, human beings as yourself, only with different and coliding interests, loyalties or beliefs. Unless hollows suddenly become real, invade the world, start feeding on souls and threaten to reduce a whole town to dust, you shouldn't be so judgemental on shinigami kills (which aren't really kills, when it comes to hollows, but I won't even go in to that, given others already have). Even if the arrancar are much more complex as individuals, than the regular generic hollows, they are still hollows, and you can't compare, with justice at least, killing a hollow to killing a soldier in war, we aren't even talking about human beings to begin with, unless you can conceive a human being whose food is human souls. It's not the same as slaughtering an enemy that has shown you a white flag, I don't think Bleach is even meant to be compared with real life in such strict terms. I think you're focusing on a parallel that doesn't even exist in full extent and close your eyes to the much bigger picture. Hollows don't exist, untill they do, you can't say for sure if a white flag would be enough for you to let them live just for the sake of it, amist an invasion with the intent to nulify a whole town, that, if not done there and then, will just be tried again later. This is not the kind of war you're used to, we're not talking about equals, but rather of species who exist to clash with each other and whose battle is as old and as eternal as time itself, where one side's purpose in life is to protect human souls and the other' is to consume them.

[Fyrefox]

All we really have reguarding what happens to souls is what Kubo gives us. This is an original series, after all. Maybe one side of the RW/SS scale is lighter than the other, and needs more souls to balance?And no one said all human souls had to be reborn as a human. Rukia implied at one point that all beings that are born have a soul from SS. So I'm gonna say what we have seen and heard so far is right until Kubo says otherwise.

And, Kira wasn't being cold-blooded, in my eyes. He was taking the chance he was offered. Who was to say his opponent didn't have another trick up his sleeve? It would've only taken one good attack to completely destroy the pillar, and ruin things for SS. He was acting out of necessity.

[Shdo]

1)never said that the farther district are poor because they are been ripped by the shinigami. but it does seems that living around the 1st district is more costly than others.

2)it was in response to the claim that keeping the arrancar alive will serve the purpose of keeping the hollow threat and thus keeping the shinigami legitimate.

3)the alternative to killing him would be to cut off his wings, take his sword and from there to prison or something, i said that several times already.
also if he was killed from the attack its one thing, but here we have a downed enemy who pleah for mercy, its like shooting a handcuffed enemy (if you dont see anything wrong with that then promise me you wont join any kind of armed group, militery or police)

4)hollows are humans, they are just fallen souls, just because they have masks dosnt make them less human. to destroy a hollow i can understand but here we are talking about creatures who dont even feed on humans anymore as a need.
they also can have many solutions to beat those arrancars without killing them:

they can simply rip the cord that make spirits control their reitsu, without reitsu and with their sword taken from them they are not a threat (they would most likely be sent to jail anyway)
everything else is an excuse to hide a cold act.

[wych]

they can simply rip the cord that make spirits control their reitsu, without reitsu and with their sword taken from them they are not a threat (they would most likely be sent to jail anyway)
everything else is an excuse to hide a cold act.

So you think taking away their pride, powers and sword and locking them away in a cold dark cell for eternity is more callous than killing them and purifying their soul so they can be reincarnated?

[Shdo]

who said they want to reincarnate? if they wanted to they would have presented their heads to the shinigami long ago.

let me guess, you like the death penalty?

also, as others said, arrancars are the sum of many souls and therefor they themselves WONT be incarnated.




EDIT: people seems to thinks that everything the shinigami say is truth...then when Rukia told that parrot kid that SS is a wonderful place and that he will find his mother was that truth? last time we saw him he said that no one finds their family in SS, and rukia backstory shows that many kids dont have such a good life.
so if she lied then maybe others lied as well?

[wych]

who said they want to reincarnate? if they wanted to they would have presented their heads to the shinigami long ago.

let me guess, you like the death penalty?

Rukia did in the first few chapters, the shinigami's zanpaktos purify the souls unless they were truely evil before becoming a hollow.

They would not present their heads to the shinigami because they are filled with hate and emptiness, that is how they are formed. Do you think Bleach would be a good Manga if the bad guys just said "ok looks better to be a good guy, kill me please" ?

No I do not like the death penalty in real life, what the hell made you think that?

also, as others said, arrancars are the sum of many souls and therefor they themselves WONT be incarnated

Actually it was stated that they are formed when ONE person's personality takes over so yes they would be incarnated.

Also you neg repped me because I don't agree with the gospil according to Shdo? /respect gone

[Shdo]

rukia also said that SS is like heaven and a very nice place, apperantly its not so true...OMG! shinigami can lie! also this is more true to individual hollows but menos are the sum of many hollows, many souls, when they are 'purified' what about that new sum? he is killed.

as for the second part, i did put a if at the start.

mostly because you didnt thought about the option of simply prison and jumped right to execution option.

[wych]

rukia also said that SS is like heaven and a very nice place, apperantly its not so true...OMG! shinigami can lie! also this is more true to individual hollows but menos are the sum of many hollows, many souls, when they are 'purified' what about that new sum? he is killed.

I would say SS is generally a good place yes, you have only seen the shinigami part and the poor districts so you cant make the decision that it's a horrible place based on that.

As to the new sum, please read what I wrote, it was stated that sometimes one soul takes over and controls the menos.



mostly because you didnt thought about the option of simply prison and jumped right to execution option.

As I said, Kubo explained what happens when a hollow dies to us through Rukia, surely being reincarnated as a human or into soul society is better than living in a prison for eternity as a shallow being, full of hatred, had your pride stripped away and your sword taken.

Also this would disrupt the soul balance and eventually humans would become extinct as eventually every soul would turn into a hollow.

Sad I always thought you were a good poster but if somebody doesn't agree with you, you seem to get very aggressive and actually give negative rep. If that is how you live your life I am very happy I have not met you.

[Shdo]

rukia knew very well where he was going to, she lived there and lost many of her friends for the harsh life in rukongai.

but that soul isnt really the old personality of a single hollow, they dont remember their past they are influated by the other souls (they always fight and eat in order not to revert to a regular menos)

as for been reincarnated against keep living as who you are, i dont think the arrancar really wants that, they already made a new life for themselves, they have new friends and new place to live in. their arrancarization improved their life quality and they dont need to feed anymore on souls, so who are the shinigami to decide that their lives are meaningless? that its a favor to purify them?

as for the soul balance, i had a thought a moment ago...we know that there are animal hollows, so its safe to assume there were hollows for quite some time...so who killed them before there were shinigamis? or humans? were there shinigami dogs and lizards?
something is fishy here and i wouldnt be surprised if the slow shift of the image of SS from nice and good to more cruel shady is for a purpose.

[Fyrefox]

as for been reincarnated against keep living as who you are, i dont think the arrancar really wants that, they already made a new life for themselves, they have new friends and new place to live in. their arrancarization improved their life quality and they dont need to feed anymore on souls, so who are the shinigami to decide that their lives are meaningless? that its a favor to purify them?

as for the soul balance, i had a thought a moment ago...we know that there are animal hollows, so its safe to assume there were hollows for quite some time...so who killed them before there were shinigamis? or humans? were there shinigami dogs and lizards?

If there was a sociopath running amok with a knife, would you let him be because he was happy, instead of being removed from society?


Hollows take an animal form at first because they are a mass of instinct. They can't talk right after transformation (as far as we know) and are generally just feral. That's what's with the animal form.

[Shdo]

first, arrancars dont really strike me as complete sociopaths (somes are but the same could be said about some shinigami) and secondly, there is prison option (again, i am talking about arrancars and not hollows)

and hollows can speak after transformation, look at sora and the one kanonji created, they could talk pretty well right after been created. and i am talking about hollow animals such as the dog shintaro or the little lizard ichigo saw in HM. if not for those two i would think that only humans can become hollows as well.

[daisekihan]

I think Kira is pretty blameless. It's not quite clear how long Wabisuke's effect holds, but it's certainly not permanent. Consider also that if one of these towers falls, Karakura comes back to the world, and 100,000 people will be killed. As to beheading, this may be a brutal way of killing, but it is obviously only way Wabisuke can be used to to anything but incapacitate.

The institutional evils of SS are quite glaring, but many of them may have been on the order of the Central 46. Of course, SS had the choice (at least probably) to disobey, but didn't, so they are to some extent culpable. But that's how the world is---there are no purely "good" governments, only ones that are better than others. And if SS isn't destroyed or conquered by Aizen, hopefully there'll be some change.

[thewizardninja]

You're very stubborn you know that? ^^
Think about it this way - this is what they BELIEVE, whether it's true or not doesn't make a difference, it's what's been drilled into their heads. If souls aren't re-incarnated or if hollows aren't purified, then it isn't Kira's fault that he didn't know because according to what he was taught he was doing the right thing. He BELIEVES that by killing Avirama, he is sending thousands of souls back into the soul stream to be re-incarnated as human souls. Rukia BELIEVES that hollows are purified when slain by a zanpakutou. If the truth really is that this is all a lie, then those Shinigami are not the ones to blame because they are doing simply what they and everybody else BELIEVES is right. I don't know who would be to blame, but it won't be them.

[vaizado]

They're called DEATH Gods for a reason. It's not that they're dishonorable, but it's what they're suppose to do: kill Hollows.

[Shdo]

its still a cheap way to behave to a pleahing enemy. (also as i said he could rip the spirit cord or whatever its name was and make avirama harmless)

[Apsalar]

again you are placing American/Earth morals onto a world that has no bussiness being judged in that manner. It is also complete speculation on your part that hollows even have the same weakness as shinigami, and could have their spirit powers removed in that way. You also state as if it is a fact that arrancar do not eat souls, i don't remember it stating that, in fact we have seen yami eat a few souls.

stop demanding that we show absolute proof, and that what kubo tells us thru ruika can't be trusted, if your willing to just make shit up as you go.

[Shdo]

i base that of what ishida did to cirruci back in HM.
as for rukia, i showed that she lied once so who said she didnt lied in other instances?

[Budo]

Man, taking away the powers of an arrancar is just the same (or worse) as killing them. They would be kicked out of Las Noches and become jailbait for less evolved hollows. The world they live in is a thousand times more dog-eat-dog than SS.

Anyway, I don't see the drama in killing arrancar with them running away, begging for mercy, or being caught playing pokemon when slashed. This ain't the real world man. These dudes feast on human souls (yeah, remember Yammy). The guys are in Karakura to kill 100.000 people, and won't stop till they get their job done (remember Cirucci? and Dordoni?). Putting them "in jail" is pointless if they are not to be studied (and tortured :) ) by Mayuri. The duty of Shinigamis is to kill hollows and purify them, nothing else. Shinigamis are "genocidal" by definition.

We don't know for sure what happens to arrancar when dead, but if I had to bet I'd say their spirit bodies decompose to the (thousands) souls that each one of them must be made after they are slashed by a Zanpakuto.

[zerosquad]

This is war. There's no honor in TRUE war. When war occurs the boundary lines of sanity and honor have been transgressed and trampled to pieces.

And each side justifies their *dishonorable-ness* with illusions of honor that of course, place their well beaten-in ideals on top of the *other side*.

Those Fraccion would do the EXACT same thing to Kira.

Atleast that's how I view the *beheading*.

Yea thewizardninja.

Belief is a motherfucker. The question isn't in WHAT the belief is based on, the question is that how it affects everything in one's thought process. And naturally one's belief system will place them (the believer) on the right side, for ego's sake.

And I hope in BLEACH that the *ego death* or destruction of the foundations which SS was founded on and taught to believe happens with Aizen's true goal :D

[Budo]

Oh, something else: Shawlong mentioned that the dominant personality of the hollow pervades when it becomes a menos and that the traits of the dominant personality that allowed it to become a menos where maybe defined before it even turned into a hollow.

On this line of logic, I'd say that the dominant personality (which is the arrancar's personality) would be purified and reincarnated as just another (powerful) soul. The core of the arrancar's identity wouldn't be lost.

Come to think of it, I think there is a fair chance that those souls would be reincarnated as pluses with high spirit power (which is what originally allowed them to become Arrancar.. their original dominant souls had a high level of spirit power). I think this would explain why VastoLorde and uber-high level arrancar are hard to find: it's also hard to find normal souls with a high level of spiritual power, be it in SS or the material world.

I think this would also explain why a VastoLorde arrancar has a level that's (allegedly) higher than that of a Captain: VastoLorde arrancars would be former normal souls with Shinigami captain-level potential that have expanded their own power by feasting on that of others, which is a trait that no Shinigami has.

[Fortunate]

Honor? I thought this was all for fun.

[vaizado]

its still a cheap way to behave to a pleahing enemy. (also as i said he could rip the spirit cord or whatever its name was and make avirama harmless)

You dont get it do you? Its not that the Shinigami one day got together and said "hey guys, let's go kill some Hollows!" It's their PURPOSE. That's the whole reason of their existence, to kill Hollows and send souls to SS in order to keep the worlds in balance. What would be the point of taking away all its power? He could still go around chasing innocent souls, disrupting the balance and then he'd have to get hunted down by another Shinigami anyways.

[Fyrefox]

+1 Vaizado. It's not like cow tipping or whatever, it's the reason for their being, even if it's not honourable.

[Kastro187420]

I've always been for the theory that Soul Society is really actually Corrupt, and that Aizen is the only one who sees them for what they really are.. Well, Aizen and Tousen anyway. When you think about it, Soul Society really is kind of bad. Its suppose to be "heaven", and yet only seems to be when it comes to Soul Reapers, and even then, the higher ups are corrupt as could be it seems.

Aizen defected, brought some Order to Hueco Mundo, and wants to take over Ruling Soul Society to make it a better place...

I'm probably wrong, but it would be a good twist.

[Velius]

Yup ya got to agree with vizardo. In fact, I still agreed when I said the same thing on page one. :D Everyone wants them to show some kind of mercy now with the human form that they get from being an arrancar. This is one of those thin lines that exisist in this kind of moral dilemmas that appear a lot. Kubo does it on purpose.

Yes they are hollows. BUT there is a clear difference between what they were before (basic primal hollows) and what they are now (obtaining a human shame, reason and emotions). That raises the moral issue at hand that has been touched on a lot in stories about things that take a human shape.

Is it really still fair that they should be killed as beasts, when all of them clearly are not. That means that they should be judged on an individual basis and not all just slain as hollows. They have reached a level beyond that. Which means if you see it that way, which I could see some people doing, then what is going right now wouldn't be right to some people. Would you say that it is ok for them to just kill Nel if she was in the real world, just because she is a hollow? It's a tough call.

They don't have to kill all the hollows to maintain the balance. There will always be some around. But the story right now is in a war, that's really what it comes down to for me. There are no fair and honorable tactics in true war. It's kill or be killed. And judging from the way it's going, the shinigami are the ones who will be doing all the killing. Which means, the esapda and Aizen's take over the espada was all part of a plan to get the kings key. They will all be taken out in the process and the shinigami will live to fight Aizen's next group of misfits.

[vaizado]

I've always been for the theory that Soul Society is really actually Corrupt, and that Aizen is the only one who sees them for what they really are.. Well, Aizen and Tousen anyway. When you think about it, Soul Society really is kind of bad. Its suppose to be "heaven", and yet only seems to be when it comes to Soul Reapers, and even then, the higher ups are corrupt as could be it seems.

Aizen defected, brought some Order to Hueco Mundo, and wants to take over Ruling Soul Society to make it a better place...

I'm probably wrong, but it would be a good twist.

I always looked at SS as a purgatory more than a heaven. I mean, it's a place where souls go to hang out once they're dead. :rotflmao They're not really in heaven or hell. It's just the afterlife; "life is cruel, why should the afterlife be any different."

I agree SS looks like a bad place, especially the districts where people like Kenpachi came from, but I've always thought that's the way it should be. See, I have this theory that souls that die in SS are reincarnated in the real world. Well, if every souls get the Shinigami treatment and there's no violence or things like that, if no one dies then the balance of souls would be disrupted once more. I mean, look at Yama. How freaking old is that guy. If every soul in SS were to live that long, and more and more dead souls keep coming from the real world into SS yet no very little from SS go to the real world, then there's the balance of worlds Rukia talked about being disturbed.

[Primera Espada]

I dislike the whole "the author told us this, but unless they've shown us something to back it up, we are going to assume they are lying to us" thing.

This is LITERATURE.

The only reason an author has someone say something is to inform the reader, or to purposely mislead the reader. Given that we've known since chapter... what, 5? that hollows are purified.

Stop reading waaaay too much into it.

THe people of rukongai only live for 60 years which is why they're such low class.

Shinigami, nobles, etc, have a much longer lifespan, and can toil for years to make nice things and etc. Plus their sheer power allows them to do stuff.

[thewizardninja]

I dislike the whole "the author told us this, but unless they've shown us something to back it up, we are going to assume they are lying to us" thing.

Exacta!! It's ALWAYS meant to be the other way around - "What the author says is TRUE unless there is substantial evidence to prove that they are lying"

[Shdo]

but this dosnt change the fact that the shinigami tactics are still what is called dirty, attacking a downed enemy, attacking from behind and so one. of course they believe its the right thing, that what dishonorable people do and while they can tell themselves that they are doing the right thing it dosnt apply to the reader who can see them as an observer and see their tactics.

for example the quincy war, by destroyig the clan (thousands of people as it seems) that included killing children and elderly as well, now the shinigami can say its the right thing to do, that they have preserved the balance and so on but the buttom line is that the act remained, they killed children.

BUT THEY HAVE OTHER MORALS THAN OURS! well i am not a shinigami and neither are you. why shouldnt i be disturbed when the good guys commit genocide in this manga or stab people in the back, killing a downed enemy, destroying not 1 but 3 races (qunicy,modsoul and if you care about the fillers, bount)and so on.
i couldnt care less if they have other sets of morals, so does murderers, i can still criticize their behavior as the "good guys" regardless if their purpose is to kill little arrancar and quincy girls.

[Aalicia]

Plus, there's another canon fact that proves zampakutos don't kill hollows: the gates of Hell opening up for that hollow/former serial killer that was chasing Shibata. If zampakutos would really kill them, there would be no soul to be sent to Hell to begin with.

And about killing arrancars like Nell, Pesche, so on and so forth, none of the shinigami, Quincy, nor even human with special powers showed any intention nor mistreatment towards them. Why? Nell & Co. aren't the ones invading the real world, nor trying to kill shinigamis & Co.. So, so far, both SS and Ichigo & Co. aren't showing a mentality of killing arrancars for the sake of them being arrancars, but rather killing arrancars when there's a purpose to it. And it's the arrancars among themselves that show even less mercy, with sending the Execcias after every fallen warrior. At least SS doesn't have a rule of killing their own shinigamis that lost a battle.

And I still fail to see where's the major cruelty in shinigamis, with killing arrancars while they're on their backs running away or already fallen. Besides the fact arrancars, fictional creatures in nature, cannot be compared with human soldiers in full scale, shinigamis, compared with real humans in war, look like choir boys. I've never been in war, but I've known people who had been, decades ago. Fighting a guerrilla, for example, the hit and run tactics, most people were actually killed on their backs, as they were trying to run after the surprise fire. If soldiers would be so allergic to killing on the enemies' backs, there would be no way to win a war against a guerrilla, no matter how numerous the army. Not to mention one of the most cruel ways to blow up some guerrilla members was to secretly place grenades under dying old people, in villages, before the army would move out from them. The guerrilla soldiers would return to the villages, and they were usually the young strong men, that would carry the old people to be burried, after they die, being blown up as soon as lifting the corpses - among with any innocent civilian, nomatter how young nor old that would have the misfortune of being near. So, shinigami in war would still have to eat a lot of rice before even touching human cruelty. It's not by chance that a lot of people return traumatized after having been fighting on a war, human beings are capable of really sick stuff, and the difference in between the good guys and the bad ones will depend on who wins the war, because those will be the ones called heroes and write the story for others to read. And still, it's not man's purpose to kill man, but it is shinigami purpose to kill hollow. If there's someone to blame, it's KT, for actually creating a universe that revolves around their eternal conflict.

Oh, wait, now killing Quincy warriors has come down to killing young girls and children (not trained and skilled hollow exterminators, as the Quincies are supposed to be and rather like to think of themselves as such (oh yeah, given what characters say in canon is supposed to be taken as false till proven true, might aswell forget what the Quincy name really means and assume part of the clan as harmless for some odd reason)) and mod souls (which are artificial souls created by SS itself) are also somehow cathegorized right there in the same standards as human genocide. Well, yeah, maybe SS should have just kept a flask with all the mod soul pills inside, gaining dust throughout the endless millenia to come. ... it would at least give a good filler arc, to make some generic character with questionable intentions to take the flask and cause some havoc on earth... I'm sure the animators would agree with you, SS's genocide of mod souls just stole from them one perfect filler arc script opportunity.

[Shdo]

mod souls- they could have put them in gigai and let them live in SS or even have some job there (they seems capable fighters, they could have served well)

quincy-so you are saying its okay to kill quincy children? because they might be a threat? so the goal justifies the means? including killing of an entire human clan?

again you need to make the distinction between arrancar and hollow, as velius said.

somehow i doubt that the shinigami, who have a record of killing potential enemies and failed experiments (and it is canon) on industrial scale, will spare any arrancar out of kindness.

as for the gates of hell, that hollow was a single hollow, not a menos, when i am talking about arrancars which are creatures that were created from the sum of many souls with one more dominant one and then given freedom from their hollow forced habits.

[Shinrin]

assuming that this is what actually happens, but besides her saying what was told to her in school have we really seen any proof for that? in those pictures it look like he disintegrate and they never shown anyone who claimed to have been a hollow before getting there.


You've forgot something important.
Hollows are not made of Atoms but Spiritrons, same as the people in SS.
And when you purify them just the same as a death in SS you'll get your memories erased of your past life change a little and get reborn a new into the Living world.


So there's no option of a former Hollow remembering unless it's different for an arrancar.

[Shdo]

but some humans do keep their memories, remember the parrot kid and the kid from WW2? they kept their memories. i think hisane kept her memories as well.

[Shinrin]

but some humans do keep their memories, remember the parrot kid and the kid from WW2? they kept their memories. i think hisane kept her memories as well.

He's a plus.

He wasn't cleansed he was merely transportet into SS not reborn in the living world as the hollows do and he will when he die in SS.

Going from Life to death you remember, going from Death to Life you forget

[thewizardninja]

but some humans do keep their memories, remember the parrot kid and the kid from WW2? they kept their memories. i think hisane kept her memories as well.

That's from human to soul, not from human to hollow to soul. The hollows remember their past life as do the pluses but eventually, because they have existed so long, they forget them. Not to mention that the purified hollows are sent to soul society with no memories of them ever being a hollow.

PS. The data book 'SOULS' says that there's re-incarnation in Bleach and that hollows are purified by zanpakutou. You don't argue with the databook buddy ^^

[Shdo]

and does the artbook say that their memories are erazed? i know their sins are but what about the memories? i dont remember reading something about that (there is little info about memories as a whole)

as for 'if they incarnate its fine and they are not really killed' with this idea its teh same as saying that if pluses are eaten and then become hollows they are still alive. just like a plus dosnt want to become hollow i dont think that arrancar want to become plus.

[Aalicia]

if pluses are eaten and then become hollows they are still alive. just like a plus dosnt want to become hollow i dont think that a hollow want to become plus.

Pluses become hollows if they hang around the real world and their chain of fate is completely destroyed, or if hollows force them into becoming hollows, like what happened to Inoue's brother. Eaten pluses, however, don't become hollows, they really die. And of course a hollow doesn't want to become a plus, you see Inoue's brother as an example, as a hollow, he didn't want to become a plus, he just wanted to kill his sister and her friends. However, on the brief moment in which he regained some of his heart, he did come to his senses and decided to purify himself. But, under the lenses in which basicly anything SS does is bad, guess even turning hollows into pluses hits that sac. I'm surprised we never saw public protests in SS under the banners "We would rather be hollows!" "Stop plus enforcement!" "We want our masks back!", so on and so forth.

Mod souls on gigais working for the shinigami? Yes, that would rid them from being accused of destroying the pills, but you'd be accusing them of overspending the money and resources they get from exploiting the souls outside Seiretei into very expensive gadgets to give use to their bad experiments, not to mention exploiting the mod souls themselves, with making them work when they maybe don't want to, shouldn't have to, or maybe later cause some kind of havoc in the real world, which would actually be SS's fault over having created them. ... or maybe not having destroyed them before they would cause the rukus... we'll never know.

To achieve Quincy proficiency, it takes extensive training, I seriously doubt young children would be baring bows during the shinigami vs Quincy conflict, unless Quincies already had a history of seriously distant parents. And I never said it was ok to kill Quincy children, but no canon line says they did. There were several Quincies spared from their 200 year old termination till this date, or Mayuri wouldn't have had an enourmous number of Quincy experiment subjects on his resume. 200 years ago, he wasn't even a captain, so everyone on his research were actually the spared ones. Were they the children? I can't state it, given no canon states it, but no canon states the killing of children neither. For one so easy to state canon confirmation as false on certain matters, you sure are easy to take absent canon confirmation as certain on others, depending on which fact would bare a stamp of SS's evil conduct. SS isn't perfect and makes mistakes, that far, everyone agrees with you. On many points, however, I think your eyes see what they want to see, and it's your own bias to just paint everything SS does on a darker shade of grey.

Because, on KT's Bleach, untill shown wrong, the end of SS is the end of the world, and their way to maintain balance has been what kept the world from being destroyed and the only line of defense for humans, both alive or dead, that don't want to turn into hollow food. In fact, the very basis of their laws is the protection of human souls. All this has been stated in canon lines. But then again, maybe humans wish not for protection, maybe some would rather be eaten (there are living suicidals, why the hell not dead ones aswell, eh) and maybe the world should actually end, no one asked its opinion anyway, and everyone says it's a dog world, except Sinatra. Plus, they're just canon stated facts, so meant to be assumed as a product of a fake doutrine. It's what canon never states that's always how things really are in Bleach.

[Shdo]

we seen that modsouls likes (or programmed) to fight hollows, if they were given a gigai and a job in SS they would love to fight hollows and it wouldnt be a waste of money but simply more soldiers, this is based on ururu(the general assumption is that she and ginta are mod souls) and kon reaction to that hollow. still the buttom line is that the shinigami decided to kill them all instead.


mayuri made experiments on 2000+ quincy according to his words, i doubt that those qunicies didnt had children and from ishida and other sources there are few quincies left today. now i dont really see how you can destroy an entire clan over 200 years without killing children here and there.


but again we are staying from the point which is that the tactics the shinigami use are dirty at best and that their view of any threat or experimental mistake is quite fatal. now the arrancar are both a threat and a failed experiment so do you really think they will allow any arrancar to live?

[SenorGhost]

So shinigami are not all saints. This isn't new at all. We've known from early on (the mod soul chapter you mentioned is the earliest I can think of) that soul society has a dark side. So what? It's not stopping me from reading Bleach. I like it better than having completely honorable good guys and completely villainous bad guys.

The reason that these traits exist? The decisions of Soul Society are based on the best interest of the Bleach Universe I presume. The individual fairness of any particular decision pales in comparison to the effect it may have on the order of the Soul Society/Earth system.

Besides that, from a literary viewpoint, amoral acts by Soul Society were added to generate the type of emotion that you have expressed. At the point in the story that they were introduced we knew nothing about Arrancar and Aizen's plan. Soul Society was established as the villains and Ichigo and company were going to stop them. Along the way we find out that it isn't that simple, much like real life. In fact, when exactly did Soul Society become these righteous good guys? They're acting in their own interest still. Aizen being introduced as the main antagonist does not make all of the Gotei 13 righteous protagonists.

On the topic of war, where is the honor in dropping bombs on populated buildings that may or may not contain enemy soldiers? How many weapons exist to efficiently kill enemy soldiers? I don't find long distance artillery, land mines, napalm, hand grenades, etc especially honorable, but in war they have their purpose and are effective. And yes, sometimes people that surrender and beg for their life still get killed. Don't pretend there are absolute morals in real life wars. I'm not challenging your morals, I take your word, but not everyone follows them, as history shows. This way of thinking may be directly applied to the Gotei 13.

[Shdo]

did i said to stop reading bleach? only tried to show that their behavior is shady at best, and also i would like to add that i think this have a very big purpose for the future.

with the amount of good guys when compared to bad guys i think that there will be another arc even after Aizen demise, maybe yamamoto(or the king) will decide to wipe out the rest of the arrancar (such as nell and other survivors who arent really that hostile) and vizards (they were hated in the past and i dont see that change) and it will reach the level of a civil war between the different captains (change vs old mindset)

i think that the reason that TK slowly show us more and more wrongdoing of SS is to prepere us for this possiability (almost every filler showed SS in bad light, for example the first movie where the bad guys were castaways who wanted revenge, even when SS are the good guys its somehow their fault for the current situation).

[ichimaru gin]

i agree with what the OP is saying the tactics are dirty. but the reason why they do it from what i can tell is because they are taught that what they are doing is right by "cleansing" the hollows no matter how it is done

[Fyrefox]

XD I see what Shdo's trying to say. I'm about 67% certain that SS is going to chase after the Vizards and other people who don't really deserve it (the captains have orders to treat the Vizard like Hollows).

[vaizado]

but this dosnt change the fact that the shinigami tactics are still what is called dirty, attacking a downed enemy, attacking from behind and so one. of course they believe its the right thing, that what dishonorable people do and while they can tell themselves that they are doing the right thing it dosnt apply to the reader who can see them as an observer and see their tactics.


God, dont you understand that Shinigami killing Hollows isnt bad? The zanpaktou CLEANSES them! Of course it's the right thing to do! If you have the power to stop an evil being from hurting innocent souls and humans by turning that evil being back to normal, wouldnt that be the right thing to do?! In Kira's case, if that eagle guy was left alive, would you rather cleanse him or leave him to die a dog's death by another Hollow? I'd like to know which of those you'd consider the "right" thing to do.

And the ones who dont get cleansed get sent to Hell. Why be merciful to a soul that was a cunt while he was human?

[Shdo]

first chill.

second, i said there are other options beside killing them and you chose to ignore them, you can go and search for them if you want i am tired of repeating the same thing if you arent willing to read it.

[vaizado]

You didnt answer my question:

In Kira's case, if that eagle guy was left alive, would you rather cleanse him or leave him to die a dog's death by another Hollow? I'd like to know which of those you'd consider the "right" thing to do.

[Sidonzo]

I agree that the SS has done bad things. The moment I saw this thread the two things that came to mind were the destruction of the Quincy and the modsouls. It doesn't matter the reasoning, both of those are immoral acts. Also the ruthless way Rukia was delt with has never sat well with me. Notice I am not singling out individual shinigami, but the society as a whole.

I always contrast Ichigo with SS. He spares life where shinigami would destroy it. He always thinks of the individual and doesn't just blindly kill because SS says it needs to be done. He does it from the very beginning when he tells Rukia that it is horrible that the modsouls were destroyed to the last person we have seen him defeat. He actually defends Grimmjow from Noitra, because Ichigo understands that you don't kill an enemy when they are down. I think Ichigo is meant to be the contrast to the shinigami. While it is especially apparent in the SS arc where the shinigami are portrayed as the bad guys, I think that contrast is still supposed to exist to this day. Look at the way Ichigo treats the fallen arrancar versus the way the shinnigami treat them.

Notice that I didn't bring up the arrancar in this discussion too much because in killing them the shinigami are more easily forgiven, since they are hollows. The modsouls and the Quincy though...that was totally morally wrong despite the reasoning. So though I don't include the arrancar in my arguments, I still agree that arrancar are a more ambiguous subject than some here make them out to be. In some cases they have acted better than the shinigami, such as Dorodini (sorry I can't ever remember how to spell his name) actually giving his life so Ichigo could get away.

I'm not saying that the shinigami are all bad, but I also don't think that they are the bastion of good that a lot of Bleach fans believe them to be. I actually don't even see them as the "good guys" (except for a few exceptions such as Rukia and Renji), Ichigo earns that distinction in Bleach...not only because he is the main character, but because of his mercy. I honestly think that is what Kubo wants us to see as well and that Ichigo will bring change for the better to SS.

~Sid

[Shdo]

if any of you seen the 2nd movie you get another example for this shift towards criticizeing SS while showing ichigo as a critic to their rules and ruthless behavior towards their own.

[Sidonzo]

Ichigo is already a critic of the SS rules...he has been since the beginning of the manga.

You know I didn't even add the vizard in my previous post. Here were respected captains and vice captains and yet when something evil befalls them through no fault of their own, the SS doesn't even consider trying to see if they can be helped in anyway. It's immediately to the kill the hollows order. ><

I also think that Nel and her fraccion are good examples. Though it's true no shinigami has tried to kill them yet (they are all tied up with this war and all ;) ), can anyone honestly say that besides a select few any shinigami would spare them if they saw them in the human world under normal circumstances? I'd say given their record, no. It would be a purify first, ask questions later type deal.

I want to say what a relief it is that my favorite character in all Bleach is being fought by Ichigo at this moment and not a shinigami. It gives me hope that he will live (or if he dies, it won't be at Ichigo's hands). I wouldn't have that hope if he was fighting any shinigami.

Again I am not saying that SS is all evil. There are many awesome shinigami that stand up for what is right and even the society as a whole isn't evil and does great service for humanity. I just don't think they are without fault...I actually think there is a lot of fault one can lay at their feet. Hopefully at the end of Bleach we will see a better, more merciful SS ushered in by the events of the story.

You know the more I think about it, I think it is the whole reincarnation...keep the souls in balance thing that make the shinigami so ruthless at times. They probably feel that since there is no ending to a soul's life (expect being devoured by a hollow maybe...that is not really clear) none of these actions are really killings at all. I still don't agree with it though. I think Ichigo has the right of things in this case.

~Sid

[Shdo]

You didnt answer my question:

this question was asked before and i answered it at least couple of times, simply search for it it you want.




i think that their behavior towards the visard are really bad, those were loyal captains and instead of helping them the shinigami preffered to do something else (they didnt really shown what it was but its bad enough for the visard to hate them, i guess it was something in the style of cleanse their souls)

[Arthas]

Just a straight response to the OP as I haven't read everything else yet but:

Did you forget This (http://www.onemanga.com/Bleach/6/14/) Cutting a hollow does not kill them, it merely sends them to Soul Society.

So let me put it this way: Kira cut off bird boy's head, not only does bird boy go to SS but all the spirits/hollows that he ate and absorbed also go there and plus that guy no longer has hollow powers so he is no longer any threat. Somehow I don't think that is a bad thing to do.

[Shdo]

the general idea is that doing that will either erase the arrancar memory or break the arrancar to the many souls that created him (arrancar are menos and menos are made from the sum of many souls) either way the existance that is the arrancar will dissipate and be no more. when this POV is used all the time we see situation where visard are persecuted as well because they should be "cleansed".

my problem with the shinigami is the act itself of what they are doing, be it to kill the quincy clan, destroy the mod souls, being asses in the central 46 and so on.
also i make distinction between arrancars and hollows who are truly pityful existance.
as i see it the shinigami have no right to disregard the arrancar life only because they are half hollow, after all ichigo himself have a strong hollow inside of him and it makes me wonder if they would order for his "cleansing" if they didnt wanted him for the war effort.

[Fyrefox]

I don't think they'd kill him, given that they went through all the effort of digging up his little thingamajig. You know, his little deputy badge. Since having it means they recognize him, why make someone official and then go and kill them? And honestly, I don't think many of them could. Maybe four of the captains at the most, not counting the zero squad.

[thewizardninja]

the general idea is that doing that will either erase the arrancar memory or break the arrancar to the many souls that created him (arrancar are menos and menos are made from the sum of many souls) either way the existance that is the arrancar will dissipate and be no more. when this POV is used all the time we see situation where visard are persecuted as well because they should be "cleansed".


An arrancar's personality is formed from a single soul's influence. That one soul will go to SS along with all the other ones that were combined to create that particular menos. Therefore that arrancar will exist as that one human soul somewhere in SS and the other ones will be free to exist as themselves, something those souls were denied as an arrancar. And about the memory thing, who would WANT to remember being a hollow? Who would want to remember causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent humans and souls? Oh they may have had a good time doing it as an Arrancar but I doubt they would enjoy keeping those memories as a soul. Not to mention it would be thousands of souls with those same memories haunting them. Believe me, having the memories of their existance as an arrancar is a GOOD thing.

[HkRevan]

I agree with that. Cleansing is better than imprisoning the arrancar for a long time.

Also, I would say the shinigami are there to keep balance. If SS is destroyed, if all the shinigami are dead then the hollows would have free reign. Its like in the Lion King almost, when Scar took over there was no conservation. The land dried up and the prey left. With hollows in control, there would be no life. There would be endless death but with no way to get reborn the world will end. The hollows will continue to exist.

I think Kira's actions were Kira's actions. We can't say if his actions were evil or not, but we could say it were rather ruthless. He was a solider in a war that has existed for as long as human conscious existed.

Sure SS is rather dark, but then again if they weren't then there would be no plot. They are not blameless.

I think with the Quincy, they were what they didn't want to happen. Quincy's destroyed the hollow and all the souls the hollow had. So then there would be no reincarnation. So in that case, I think the 'group of oldies' over reacted. Working together would be better than slaughtering them completely.

I think we shouldn't doubt what Kubo is doing. If you still have troubles about whether or not SS is holier than thou you know they arn't. Their actions are for one purpose only, keeping balance and killing hollows. Hollows will never disappear because there are not enough shinigami to patrol the world. People will still feel doubt, regret and sadness becoming a hollow. It is an endless cycle. The three beats of life, war, peace , revolution. A thousand years later in the Bleach universe this war would be forgotten and even repeated.

Shinigami are not good people, they are decent on certain things but they are not black and white. It is all in shades of gray. If it were black and white it would be one boring ass book.

That's all I have to say on the matter.

[blackluster]

I'd have to disagree with the OP. Striking an enemy from behind and while he's down may be dishonarable tactics by our standards, but in the cases where they have happened in Bleach, I feel they are completely justified. Shinigami simply can't let such enemies escape. As far as we know, simply robbing a hollow of soul powers is not possible. My understanding of where a shinigami loses their powers is when some sort of link in their soul sleep is destroyed. In hollows, this is already missing since it is where their hole is.

We've also, as far as recall, seen absolutely nothing to contradict Rukia's information that zanpakuto cleanse spirits. This is made clear with the introduction of quincy, noting that unlike zanpakuto, their powers destroy hollows completely upsetting the balance. Thus from the point of view of the physics of Bleach, shinigami are well within their right to kill hollows.

A crucial note to the above though, is the exisitence of HM. If shnigami disired nothing else but killing hollows, they would have invaded HM ages ago. Instead, we find that hollow communities can thrive there. As long as they don't threaten the living, or make war with shinigami, they can live in peace. Hollows like Abirama though, forfeited this mercy when he ventured into the real world threatening human souls and with the intent to make war with SS. In that sense I feel Kira was justified in making sure that Abirama didn't make it home. It was clear from the recent chapter to, that it wasn't even something Kira reveled in, but rather an unpleasant neccessity.

Hollows can live as they please in HM. When they venture into the real world though, they are fair game for the shinigami. If Kira were fighting in HM, he would probably have let Abirama go on his way. Since Abirama knowingly made a choice to align himself with someone who would kill people that can't defend themselves, he had to be executed, which in Bleach terms really isn't an execution anyway. Letting him go back could hardly be an option, since all sides in Bleach possess techs that can heal even the gravest of injuries. Removing limbs is pointless since we've alredy seen that the hollows can re-attachs them, so cutting his wings or tendons is meaningless. Sealing hollows using something like gigai isn't feasible, since it's seemingly rediculously difficult tech to replicate properly where in the centuries SS has existed, it took a genius like Urahara to even come close.

[Tokoyami]

At the end of the day, despite all the random things that the OP tried to make a point out of the one fact still remains: Hollow in any incarnation are the enemies of soul society. Not because they are hollows but because of there nature towards humans. I completely agreed with Kira's actions despite how immoral it may seem by real world standards. Not only because of an Zanpakuto's ability to purify but because Kira himself recognized the actions as Immoral and spoke as such. I mean who goes on about despair and the weight it bring to a soldier and after killing his opponent prays that you "wont" forgive him? The Only logic time that'd happen is if you dont see your actions as justified/forgivable and never want them to be seen as such... anyway i better end this before i ramble on.:gin

[Budo]

mayuri made experiments on 2000+ quincy according to his words, i doubt that those qunicies didnt had children and from ishida and other sources there are few quincies left today. now i dont really see how you can destroy an entire clan over 200 years without killing children here and there.

You forgot to mention that Mayuri made a father burn his own son. :)

I think you missed the point by Aalicia, those quincies he experimented with had to be children (and children of those children) during the time of the war. So we know for a fact that Shinigami spared Quincy children.

On a side note, no one mentions how morally questionable is Ishida by destroying souls without purifying them...hmm.

[Shdo]

i do...i think he should retire for that reason. i feel very bad when he uses those 1200 arrows and waste an entire army of hollows, he got one of the greatest kill ration in the show.


as for the shinigami not seeing cleansing of arrancar,visard and so on as immoral, well i think its quite given that they dont see anything wrong with that, much like a murderer or a theif wh dosnt really see his crime as all that bad, to them its a necesity.

but its not a reason not to judge them as an outsiders according to our own beliefs.

[Budo]

i do...i think he should retire for that reason. i feel very bad when he uses those 1200 arrows and waste an entire army of hollows, he got one of the greatest kill ration in the show.


Well, ain't that cute? :)

Now think of this: Ishida can wipe out up to 1200 hollows in a second. A second!

Wouldn't an army of (just) like 500 Ishidas be able to wipe out a couple of billion souls over the course of a lifetime?

Now, genociding them (I just made the word up) seems kinda cool. ;)

[Aalicia]

much like a murderer or a theif wh dosnt really see his crime as all that bad, to them its a necesity.

Yeah, murderers and thieves do what they see necessary to keep the world's balance and protect human souls, never to their own personal needs and ambitions. It's as good a plea as any other, in an attempt to exchange the time they would spend in prison for time spent on a mental institution instead. It's like looking at a tree and not seeing the forest. You take things into comparison with real life standards, forgetting the fictional contextualization completely compromises the vality of the comparison, when it comes to a universe built like Bleach's.

And you think Ishida should retire over killing too many hollows?... Funny, so did SS. But given they refused to retire, SS had to force them. The only difference is, unlike you, SS didn't feel the Quincies had to retire over them having a high killing rate, or they would really kill every single one of them, but rather over that killing rate threatening to cause the end of the world, hence them stopping when their numbers couldn't cause unbalance anymore. At least untill Mayuri started to have a say about it. Some people also criticise the maggot's nest, but, looking at what Mayuri has done, if voice would be given to the 2000+ dead Quincy experiments, they would probably say Mayuri was better off locked up, alright.

If Quincies' way wouldn't go beyond protecting humans from hollows into world unbalance, Quincies would be just fine. And it has ALWAYS been about protecting human souls, the only reason that made shinigami barge into HM ground was a human soul having been brought to it. Arrancars were the ones to invade the real world and to do so with the intent to kill. If they would rather sit on their world - HM - they wouldn't be falling like flies by shinigami hands, at this point.

Fighting dirty... the arrancars are the ones trying to annialate 100.000 unsuspecting humans, supposedly to make a key and shinigamis are the ones fighting dirty... Again, if one would so strictly depict shinigami actions into real life comparison, they would still look like shy sunday school kids, when compared with what real people can do in war. SS aren't the good guys nor the bad, they are the ones with a duty which is their whole point of existance: to protect human souls under threat, on this case, Karakura Town. If they have to kill arrancars to so do it, fine - if the arrancars had a problem with dieing, they shouldn't be invading territory with the intent to kill, and we've seen a pattern of them only stopping when dead anyway. If they kill them after they're down, fine. In practical terms, it just means all the other strikes missed the kill. They're not fighting to see who's best, they're protecting souls from being obliterated and, to me, thining the enemy's numbers is good tactic.

Don't compare so narrowly with real life situations. A beaten army surrenders and goes home, these guys are either killed by shinigami or killed by their own kind over losing. Real life wars are conflict of interests among equals, Bleach's war, however, is eternal and with the salvation or destruction of the world on its shoulders, shinigami are the balancers. They can be overly strict and drastic, but, if the end of the world would dangle at the tip of your sword, how would you be? You don't know. Neither of us does. And, on KT's view, that's how SS would be, meaning, if not for a universe where one side has the purpose of keeping everything else together, whatever afterlife KT would come up with wouldn't be the SS we know, but a whole different society, although likewise unperfect. Humans make mistakes, if there's life after death, it's only predictable you'll keep doing mistakes. If the price of a big mistake is the end of the world, the fact alone it didn't end yet means you've done more right than wrong. SS never said they were the saints - just the balancers.

[Budo]

If Quincies' way wouldn't go beyond protecting humans from hollows into world unbalance, Quincies would be just fine. And it has ALWAYS been about protecting human souls, the only reason that made shinigami barge into HM ground was a human soul having been brought to it. Arrancars were the ones to invade the real world and to do so with the intent to kill. If they would rather sit on their world - HM - they wouldn't be falling like flies by shinigami hands, at this point.

I think this is not accurate. Shinigamis care not most about preserving human life but about balance. They are not protectors of life, they just assure the balance of the realms.

In bleach, death is not absolute, it's the passage from one realm to the other with a clean slate of memories. This is why Shinigami are so harsh and prone to "killing". Heck, if I were the Shinigami Captain Commander or a member of the C46 at the time of the Vizard incident I would have voted for them to be purified as well. They are to be reborn as humans. They would pose a greater threat to *balance* (NOT "life") as hollows. Besides the only guy who would be able to fix them (someday...maybe...if he had the intention to do so...which I don't have any reason to believe) was (from my pov at the time)the sole responsible from the mess.

By the way, In the light of *balance* a Quincy is just as bad as a Hollow. They both destroy souls without giving them in into the rebirth cycle. Wipe out the fuckers I'd say, on the grand scheme of things they had to be stripped of their memories...which is the reason why Mayuri was given the luxury to "kill" all those people.

Ah...the great circle of life. Funny how the most twisted guy on the series was serving a greater good, while the most honorable and righteous is quite literally fucking it.

Come to think of the matter, (besides Hollow and Quincy) the only reason people grieve for their dead in Bleach is a broken sense of attachment. There are no disappearances, just movements.

I think I respect Ryuuken a lot more than Uryuu, btw.

[thewizardninja]

Well, ain't that cute? :)

Now think of this: Ishida can wipe out up to 1200 hollows in a second. A second!

Wouldn't an army of (just) like 500 Ishidas be able to wipe out a couple of billion souls over the course of a lifetime?

Now, genociding them (I just made the word up) seems kinda cool. ;)

Don't say it's cool! XD
It was JUSTIFIED. Saying it was cool gives the wrong impression XP

[Shdo]

wouldn't say all of it was justified, for example him wiping out an entire hollow army at the start of the current filler, ichigo wasnt about to die and neither was rukia, he could simply stay out of it and allow the balance thing to take place instead of wiping them all out.
saving someone who is about to die i understand, saving yourself i can understand, but destroying 100+ hollows so ichigo and rukia wont need to break a sweat isn't so justified (he could still stay there and help them if a hollow attacked them from behind)

and the bait thing from the early episodes? which was destructive in any possible way (the hollows destroyed+the damage they caused+pretty much exposing ichigo presence to the shinigami, according to byakuya and renji conversation when they met him for the first time, thus starting the rescue rukia arc which was nice but still from the perspective of responsibility he really fucked up there)

ishida should be more careful about his use of power

as for alternative solutions to the quincy-shinigami war, they could strip the quincy powers from them (if a device such as the glove can burn the quincy power then maybe the shinigami could have researched something similar that only burn the power without giving them god like powers for 10 minutes)
they could use that spirit gate that urahara made for the living friends of ichigo and move the quincy to SS where hollow attack are pretty rare, thus reducing the amount of quincy-hollow fighting.
they could use that memory altering device to mass memory wipe the quincy from their memories of their heritage as quincies and fighting techniques one community at the time.

they could assign special forces only to protect quincy areas so that there would always be a shinigami present around large groups of quincy, reducing the amount of fighting as well.

its true that the shinigami said they tried to negotiate so some of those suggestions are forced on the quincy and therefore were not used.

[thewizardninja]

wouldn't say all of it was justified, for example him wiping out an entire hollow army at the start of the current filler, ichigo wasnt about to die and neither was rukia, he could simply stay out of it and allow the balance thing to take place instead of wiping them all out.
saving someone who is about to die i understand, saving yourself i can understand, but destroying 100+ hollows so ichigo and rukia wont need to break a sweat isn't so justified (he could still stay there and help them if a hollow attacked them from behind)

and the bait thing from the early episodes? which was destructive in any possible way (the hollows destroyed+the damage they caused+pretty much exposing ichigo presence to the shinigami, according to byakuya and renji conversation when they met him for the first time, thus starting the rescue rukia arc which was nice but still from the perspective of responsibility he really fucked up there)

ishida should be more careful about his use of power

I was talking about the Quincy massacre being justified. Which it was, very much so. I don't think it was right (and I'm sure many Shinigami felt the same at the time) but it WAS necessary. I already explained to somebody else why the only option left for SS was genocide and I'm really annoyed I'm going to have to do it again.

as for alternative solutions to the quincy-shinigami war, they could strip the quincy powers from them (if a device such as the glove can burn the quincy power then maybe the shinigami could have researched something similar that only burn the power without giving them god like powers for 10 minutes)

The Shinigami would know nothing about the glove apart from maybe what it does. I'm not even sure they knew what it did because if the Shinigami knew about it Mayuri would have known he should have destroyed the glove while Ishida was wearing it. He wouldn't have gotten a major suprise when Ishida took it off either.

they could use that spirit gate that urahara made for the living friends of ichigo and move the quincy to SS where hollow attack are pretty rare, thus reducing the amount of quincy-hollow fighting.

Not possible seeing as Urahara created the door AFTER he was exiled whereas the massacre itself happened long before Urahara even became captain. And the whole point of Quincy's killing hollows was that they wanted to kill hollows, sending them to SS would cause many to think they were being imprisoned and that wouldn't end well. Rather than having to massacre them all in the human world, they'd have to stop uprisings and rebellions and it would all end the same way. Much cleaner the first option would be.

they could use that memory altering device to mass memory wipe the quincy from their memories of their heritage as quincies and fighting techniques one community at the time.

Memory wipes. You think that's more humane than death, wiping out the whole history and culture of the Quincy? Man the Nazis would just LOVE you. And besides, do you seriously think that would even work? The memory wipes wouldn't remove their powers or high reishi levels which would inadvertently come out when they're in serious danger from hollows coming to prey on their reishi-rich soul. If their powers don't come out they get eaten by a hollow or get turned into a hollow, there's no way around it. So sending a soul to SS or being turned into a hollow? Hmmm, I wonder what the better choice is?

they could assign special forces only to protect quincy areas so that there would always be a shinigami present around large groups of quincy, reducing the amount of fighting as well.

You forget that Quincy want to obliterate hollows. They don't think the Shinigami way is good enough, they don't want to purify hollows they want to destroy them. Just putting Shinigami there won't change a thing. Not to mention the point I mentioned earlier about imprisonment, as this is the same concept except in the real world. The Quincy would pretty much all be under house arrest by the Shinigami and they won't like that. As mentioned before there would be uprisings and revolutions and the Shinigami will be forced to kill them all anyway.

its true that the shinigami said they tried to negotiate so some of those suggestions are forced on the quincy and therefore were not used.

They were hardly "forced on the Quincy" as you put, otherwise they would have done it. They were SUGGESTED to the Quincy, hence why it's known as a suggestion (not that the ones you presented were very good or likely suggestions). This is how the negotiations would have gone down if the suggestions you gave were used (condenced form obviously)

Shinigami: Hey man, you should let us beat the hollows. We purify their souls and cleanse their sins and stuff.
Quincy: I don't want you to purify their souls OR cleanse their sins. I want them destroyed, obliterated, gone.
Shinigami: You know going on like this will destroy both our world and your world right?
Quincy: So? I want the monsters that killed my family punished and I want them punished my way.
Shinigami: I can't interest you in imprisonment? Or a memory wipe perhaps? It comes with a free loss of identity and culture!
Quincy: Nope
Shinigami: I know a great place where you can get a "take two people's powers and get another person's powers taken free"...
Quincy: Not interested
Shinigami: Well you leave me no choice *stabs*

The Quincy don't want to be imprisoned, they don't want their powers taken away, they don't want their memories wiped and their whole culture lost, they don't want to let the Shinigami handle it... What else could SS do?

[Shdo]

wiping out the whole history and culture of the Quincy? Man the Nazis would just LOVE you.


the nazies would love me? doubt it since i am jewish.

i still thinks its better to make them forget about being killer archers against masked monsters then to kill them, oh the evilness for not resorting to genocide...evil me...

as for the taking away the quincy powers, this is where research kick in before genocide. also where did you find that urahara created the doorway AFTER he was exiled? when i check info about him in wiki i didnt find that doorway under his inventions.
also you could combine the suggestions, for example moving them to SS and then wipe their memories, if they dont want to go there you can fool them that this is an attack on a place with hollows and mind wipe group after group (the mind wipe dosnt seems that bad, as seen on orihime and others, they can still keep most of their memories, only some of them would be erased)

in the end you tries to justified a genocide where there is always another way.

[furato]

Don't think from a human's point of view. Kira is a shinigami, whose job is purifying hollow souls with their soul cutter. It is not seen as mercy to spare a hollow's life, regardless of what Ichigo and Uryuu have been doing (rather contradictively because they had no problem slaying hollows in Karakura, so why not Grimmjow and Cirucci?).

In Kenpachi's case, his principle is going for the kill but if the final blow doesn't kill, he doesn't finish it (Ikkaku for example). Nnoitra, however, seeks to die in battle, and that's what Kenpachi gives him. I don't see dishonour in that.

I do agree with your last paragraph though, the ease with which they dispose of Vizards, the corrupt practices that brought death and afterlife-torture to Quincies and the abrupt execution order on Rukia is signal that there's something wrong with the organisation.

[Shdo]

ichigo do what he do in contrast to the shinigami mostly because he isnt one, he dosnt see killing them as a natural thing or a right thing (as of no