Kubo-sensei, bless our manga-ka with the heart of a poet, is a nutberry. He's said that he's obsessed with seasons taking place in his story and the seasons in Real Time. He's urged his readers to read his "Memories in the Rain" chapters when it's raining. And this summer, in a Shounen Jump near you, just in time for Tanabata,  Ulquiorra Schiffer will be battling Kurosaki Ichigo. The air will be thick with mythology. Let the metaphors roar!

Now, I can over-interpret with the best of them, but I've cautioned against using symbology as a way to predict plot in my essay last year about Tanabata. Characterizations and the interactions between characters, I've argued, are a better way to predict happenings, but I may make an exception in the case of Ulquiorra. Our fourth Espada is (essentially) affectless, lacks a backstory (so far) and his interactions with other characters has been limited. "He is a stone," Kubo told Ulquiorra's seiyuu when asked how to play him. "A stone." Ulquiorra is supposed to have little to no emotions and he radiates pure mystery. Unlike Grimmjow who landed in the Bleach plot with personality running out of his ears, snarking out  a gut reaction to every remark and throwing a fist into the gut of every other character, Ulquiorra has been implacable.  In many ways, he's a walking talking SYMBOL just begging to be played with.

"El Que Llorra" means He Who Cries in Spanish. Nice irony, eh? His name Ulquiorra sounds like the opposite of who he presents himself to be. The tears on his face may have something to do with the boatman myths of several mythologies. In the Tanabata story, tears are rain and the rain is what separates lovers, and in Bleach tears are what, oddly enough,  unites people if we are to believe Orihime's volume poem by Kubo ("If I were Rain that unites Heaven and Earth that otherwise never touch, could I likewise unite the hearts of two people?").  Dizzy with the symbology yet?  And of course we know that the rain in Ichigo's inner world was a bad thing that needed to be stopped by Rukia.... Rain, pain, emo, schmemo--they are obvious connotations.

To continue with Ulquiorra's mythologies, however, Schiffer means boatman in German, one of the many languages Kubo likes to play with, and it's a boatman who in some versions of the Tanabata myth reunites the lovers. In the Greek version of Ulquiorra's story (I hope  r0ck3tsci3ntist will add a comment to this post that tells more about the Charon myth since I learned about its ties to Ulqui from her), Charon is the visually impaired ferryman who brings souls across the FIFTH (yeah, you heard that right--fifth tower, five lifetimes, whatever, five is just too much fun) river for the price of two coins.  This unemotional character was said to cry once in his morbid career and that was when Orpheus sang for him and thus Charon let Orpheus cross the river for free.

Those are some mighty symbolic eyeball you have there, Mr. Schiffer.  I'm sure it's a coincidence because I don't like to think of my Kubo-sensei as a Kabalah scholar,but here and there Bleach fans who play with Jewish mysticism have aligned the ten espada to the ten attributes of the Divine according to this ancient Spanish mystical tradition, and  Ulquiorra, the fourth Espada correlates nicely with the Hebrew principle of Chesed (mercy), the fourth emanation and the power of vision.

Ho ho ho, I could run a few yards down the crazy field with that one, but I'm going to turn to another Schiffer possibility.

The surname also recalls the Jesuit monk Hubert Schiffer who miraculously survived the bombing of Hiroshima (Kubo Tite's hometown, by the way).

"If You Rise From the Ashes" was the title of the chapter in which Ulquiorra last saw Ichigo. Shooting around the crazy bleachness theories with friends Jasse and Kaya the other day, we came upon the idea that Ulquiorra, unlike his fellow Espada, is capable of regeneration. His next encounter with Ichigo will have to engage that ability.



One last thing. We Ulqui fangirls are a little half-crazy with the possibility of seeing Ulqui's release soon but we're also afraid that our lovely Emocar is going to die. Sometimes I'm of the notion that no one who has put out a Bleach Beat CD will perish in the Bleach storyline; other times I'm convinced that Ishida (face it--I'm Ishida-centric) will have to wipe out one soul from existence with that Quincy power to destroy and that soul is going to be the one who isn't quick enough on the regeneration draw.  Of course, then, all the UlquiHime fangirls will hate Ishida and I will go have to hide under a rock for a few weeks.

Grimmjow's not dead--he's just been lying around for months. Ulqui? Standard tragic story-telling and even some sects of UlquiHime romantics call for Ulquiorra's death to happen this summer. The oldest call is that he'll die protecting Orihime somehow. I don't know how it's going to go down--all I know is that the myths can't predict it and knowing Kubo, it's gonna be FUN.