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.

I've never written this pair before. bleach_flashfic  is an awesome community for the challenges.

Is anyone watching the anime? I used to love the anime; I've forgotten all about it now that it's in filler mode again. After the last filler made such a weepy wuss out of Ishida, I'm not going to trust filler again (and I so wanted to give that storyline a shot too! I liked some of those Bound characters and the plushies were cute). The animation of the Arrancar arc was disappointing--less blood and terror than in the manga--and after Ichigo's head looked deformed in one too many frames, I gave up on the anime altogether.

Today I  did a search for Bleach art, and I was astounded by how much of it was on DA. I felt like a fandom old fogie--I remember when you could type "Ishida" on the search line and only my arts,  dbnext's fantastic two or three arts, and a few sketches on notebook paper would come up. Now there's pages and pages.

Fandom's  been a long time of waiting and waiting and waiting. I know mysteries and cliffhangers sell Jumps and the suspense keeps the fandom alive, but geez, it was last year that I was predicting Tatsuki's power-up, and where is she now? It felt like a few eons of waiting for the revelation we all knew was coming--that Isshin and Ryuuken knew one another--and those few panels of the truth come true held me for a while. At the beginning of the HM arc, I was excited about ishida's eventually seeing Orihime again. I predicted a reunion by the end of the summer and it's already July. And now, Kubo has done the terribly cruel thing of hinting at Shinji's arrival in HM by drawing him about to jump into the pond o'troubles that Ichigo et al are wading. Oh and not to mention, Rukia drops "dead" and we haven't seen her for chapters and chapters.

I was starting to feel more than impatient.  Earlier this afternoon I found myself cutting out manga pix on PSP and loading them on photobucket to accompany a whole slew of predictions, but then I just got tired. One day I'll say I told you so (well, I did a couple chapters ago when the Ichigo/Grimmy fight continued--I was one of few who said it was going to go on and on after Ichigo regained his confidence....) All day I'd been squirming in my seat in anticipation of the mere nineteen or so pages of story that would be leaked today. Then for my impatience I was rewarded the beauty of chapter 285.


Oh, I'm still impatient. I want to see Tatsuki's power, Shinji's bad-assery in HM, Szayel's release, a romantic IchiRuki reunion, and most of all, a Hime who comes of age and gets a grip. But what else can I do but wait?

I think I've figured out a way for Renji and Ishida to escape---they have to somehow CUT OFF SZAYEL'S HEAD! That way he can't eat any one of his fraccions to restore himself. Doesn't it seem like his chapter cover drawing might refer to that?

Cut off his head. Renji could catch him by surprise with Zabimaru. Or ... Renji and Ishida could just get the hell out of dodge while Szayel is getting dressed (I'm really looking forward to his new outfit). I prefer the escaping solution because 1) I don't want Szayel my wonderful gay villain to die and 2) I want the arc to move it, move it--how long has Renji been with this guy anyway?

Oh, and this week. I predict Grimmjow is so NOT dead.

A discussion about Orihime's odd behavior here at metaphore_art's LJ.  Caution: there's some Hime hatred there. I love all the people who hate Hime, though. Imagine that. And I agree with a lot of Jenni's assessment except for a few fine points. I could get into semantics over use of the word "selfish" but Orihime has been locked inside her own fear and insecurity for a while.

Two stories coming up from me. I may post tomorrow. Both are ... strange, take place during the manga timeline and involve the deaths of two favorite characters and sex with a corpse. Yes, I don't know what's gotten into me. Szayel-baby's influence, I guess.

No dilly-dallying, no fence sitting. Yes or no. See, I believe that Ichigo will appear to have killed Grimmjow but that like most Kubo characters, Grimmy will pop right back up (in the next chapter or in 25 more). Therefore I have to vote "no." I believe, personally that no character who has made a Bleach Beat single can die, but Grimmjow's death at the moment seems so essential to the plot and to Ichigo's Hollow development.
So....

Poll #1018671 Is Grimmjow a goner? Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Will Ichigo kill Grimmjow?

Not necessarily about Bleach, but 2 links to some (pedantic?) posts about shipping:

A Lucky Guess

3 Stages of Shipping

EDIT:
interesting review of chapter
by metaphore_art

I don't know about you, but I am ridiculously happy about the fact that the next Bleach Beat Collections will be  ULQUIORRA (one whole collection) and GRIMJOW (the other).  People who sing can't die in the manga, right?  The singles will be released in June.

In the meantime I've been googling around for info after Ulquiorra's namesake, the ship that wrecked off the coast of Spain and can't find a thing. Anyone know anything? I'm spelling Ulquiorra wrong?