Did Mayuri Deserve to DIE in TYBW? A Ramble on Moral Ambiguity in Bleach | Discussion

one of bleach's most fascinating and contentious characters is mayuri karatsuchi perhaps the most prominent example of the mad scientist trope within this series we know that mayuri's main goal in life is to further his scientific ambitions and he has very little regard for the lives of others when it comes to pursuing that goal we know from his battle with ulyu ishida that mayuri himself is responsible for the kidnap torture experimentation dissection and murder of many members of the quincy race just to simply find out what makes them tick and what makes them unique and by the time he was done with them he cast them aside no longer considering the race to be of any interest to him whatsoever i've always found mayuri and his existence to be truly well fascinating as i said before because although ostensibly he is on the side of the good guys in bleach the overall grayness of soul society's moral compass means it's quite difficult to actually pin him down certainly as far as the narrative is concerned the soul society are often presented as as close to good as you can kind of get as one of the major organizations but mayuri himself is definitely more on the evil side of the spectrum and you kind of get the impression that the majority of soul society mostly just tolerates his existence because genuinely speaking he's very useful to have around for them he is a real asset to the team and because of this i often think many of his transgressions are simply overlooked and i think for a lot of the series he was kind of coasting along despite his crimes and really just getting away with everything despite some pretty hefty retribution at the hands of uru at the end of their fight however when the thousand-year blood war arc rolled around and we realized that the villains were going to actually be resurgent quincy force i thought maybe the time was coming where mayuri would really have to face the music so to speak and actually really kind of answer for his crimes against that race um but unfortunately nothing really ever came of it miuri walks away from that arc taking yes some bumps and bruises and maybe losing a few limbs here and there but no worse for wear than really any other captain and in fact kubo's portrayal of mayuri in that arc is of something of a real hero someone who really comes through for the soul society despite his generally antisocial nature so in this video i wanted to explore the idea of whether or not mayuri deserved to die in the thousand-year blood war arc because i really expected him to answer for some of his crimes in this arc but the narrative ended up not really going the way i anticipated before we begin guys if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now you're in the perfect place for bleach content like this every single week give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it as well and help it reach other bleach fans like yourselves out there on youtube and of course if you want to help support me a little bit more we do have a patreon for the channel as well which you can support for as little as a dollar a month if you enjoy what i do here on the channel and you can get early access to videos as well so i just want to say a huge thank you as always to everyone who is supporting me over there i'm pretty sure i've mentioned it before but mayuri is definitely one of my favorite characters in the series and generally speaking i think he is a fan favorite character certainly he is a captain we have been heavily exposed to throughout the series um and i think there's just something really interesting about his portrayal kubo in general does a great job at portraying the moral grayness of soul society throughout the story of bleach and i think mayuri is a a real kind of symptom of that what i find funny is that if we go back to the beginning one of the earliest points we see mayuri in the timeline he's being held in the maggots nest presumably because they assume that if he gets out he's going to cause some real problems for the soul society commit illegal and horrible deeds so it's kind of funny to me that and it kind of perhaps in a way shows the real kind of ineptitude of soul society's judiciary system in that mayuri is imprisoned before having done anything bad and yet once he gets out and commits these heinous crimes no one really says or does anything truly he is depicted as a full-on monster in the soul society arc and i think we also do have to look at the trajectory of his character development to really see where he ends up by the time the quincy blood war rolls around so obviously in the soul society arc this is this is like pure mayuri this is him cackling maniacal i've experimented on all members of your race you're now worthless to me they were crying out in pain and i didn't i didn't care i just did what i needed to do and you know this is the miuri of this arc beating up nemu causing his own men to explode like living bombs this sort of thing just kind of gets swept under the rug and never mentioned again um but kubo goes out of his way to show you just how terrifying and destructive mayuri is in this first arc that moment where he blows up his own men is played up as really ultimately truly tragic these guys they're just normal shindigami and they don't they have no idea what's about to happen to them clearly at some point mayuri has implanted them all with these remote detonation bombs but it's it's unlike anything kubo has ever done before uh and he never really does it again afterwards either but you actually get to see for a brief moment the story from the perspective of one of these red shirts and he's like you know it wasn't supposed to end like this my life wasn't supposed to end like this and you see his like outstretched hand and his arm just boils and bursts and he just blows up and mayuri is obviously not bothered in the slightest um and it's again this disregard for life but it's it's interesting as well though because it's a universal disregard for life he doesn't only not care about the quincy he also doesn't care about the shinigami either and this is what i mean by his existence is probably only really tolerated and i feel like this is it's quite a it's quite a hard-hitting sentiment i think it's quite realistic it is quite realistic the soul society is not going to be just purely good and it's not going to be just full of purely good-hearted people um it's a it's a military organization and i think having a monster like mayuri as part of it makes it feel a lot more real they don't have to like him but they do have to put up with him he is a captain at the end of the day he holds rank over almost every other shinigami in the goatee 13 and i do find that to be really fascinating that he has this position of power despite being so openly you know just a horrible being and this of course extends to his treatment of nemu as well but it's really the crux of everything is mayuri's treatment of the quincy clan now you could you could argue that he he gets served up some serious comeuppance by uru himself and he does there's no getting away from that mayor he gets blasted to the point of near death um not only is he blasted though but mayuri is a hugely prideful character and his pride is massively hurt by this but is it really enough and i also don't feel like kubo really intended for the uru mayuri quincy storyline to just end there because it's not like they don't ever speak again there's a whole meeting in waikomundo and so it's kind of weird to me that when the quincy come around as the main villains mayuri and uru they never even interact and so i think going into the thousand year blood war arc yeah i re i expected something to happen regarding mayuri um and potentially being punished for the role he played um with the remaining with the survivors of the quincy clan after the purge we're only a few minutes in i feel like i've gone off on some crazy tangents i'll be honest i didn't really have any kind of a structured plan for this video or anything like that but it just kind of came to me as a topic i wanted to discuss the kind of whether or not mayuri should have lived or died really kind of opens up a bigger discussion about the the moral compass of soul society as an organization like who's really to blame here it's not like they didn't know what kind of a man mayuri was or else he wouldn't have been in the maggots nest to start with so there's a lot of people to blame here um and i think that's really fascinating now mayuri as a character does kubo seems to make a conscious effort to mellow him out as i mentioned as the series progresses he seems to be generally speaking nicer to nemo nicer not really being on his vocabulary but you know what i mean he's not smacking her around all the time like he is in seoul society arc um but he's you know he's still he still is ambivalent towards her near-death experience at the hands of xylipari but also again at the same time he's now being involved in some funny moments some light-hearted moments he has banter back and forth with ulyu you know the person who was trying to murder him in the soul society arc and because of this change in tone i think you kind of get the impression that kubo does want to leave their ugly history behind them but i really think the thousand-year blood war arc offered us a great opportunity to revisit that and to also show that actions have consequences because i think that's a crucial element here there are no consequences pretty much at all to mayuri's actions he doesn't die from uru's attack he's able to reconstitute his form as though nothing happened really um and although he's never explicit in doing anything quite as monstrous again as far as the main timeline goes you know he still has effectively gotten away with everything when we got to the very start of the thousand-year blood war arc i i actually thought kubo was maybe going to go down this route of having mayuri have to answer for some of the things he does in this world that moment where he speaks with yamamoto about murdering the wukong citizens to re-achieve balance again and stop the worlds from collapsing in on each other is a brilliant conversation and a a really enlightening look into their mindsets mayuri saw a problem saw that it would affect the soul society and he acted without asking for permission and that action involved the murder of an awful lot of people and again it was just kind of swept under the rug and i do think this is just such a brilliant conversation between mayuri and the then leader of the goatee 13 yamamoto because yamamoto is completely on board with this he says you know if you'd come to me first you almost certainly would have been given permission to do this um and this is this is a visualization of the attitude towards mayuri i think and in fact mayuri almost kind of comes off better in this conversation than yama does but that's something i discussed heavily in my downfall of yamamoto video but miuri is presented in such a fascinating way and he's just such an interesting and nuanced character and there are a number of different sides to him you you can certainly look at him and just take him as the wacky mad scientist who looks like a clown or something and changes his look almost every almost every day and just just see that if you want to but mayuri's existence asks an awful lot of questions about what it means to live in the soul society i think before we get on to the thousand-year blood war proper definitely the most egregious thing i think he's really done is the explosion of his own men and it's just so weird that it's it's never brought up again whereas gin ichimaru is admonished in front of all of the other captains simply for letting the ryoka go so i think it's really really interesting there is kind of this double standard or this blind eye turn to mayuri something that i don't think has changed at all with kyoraku taking over and that's because mayuri is a genuine asset to the soul society and as we move on into the thousand-year blood war arc we really that is more apparent than ever before but there are examples of it in the past as well um obviously mayuri is it's almost his department is it's single-handedly responsible for creating the fake karakura town and swapping it out with the real one which sets the stage for the entire final battle of the iran karak and potentially saves an exorbitant amount of lives in many ways uh mayuri shares an awful lot of similarities with patchy uh you might think that is ridiculous sounding because kubo likes to paint them as very different individuals and of course they are and because of that they have great chemistry they play off well with each other um but they are very very they are very similar they're very rogueish characters they pretty much only care about doing things their way and and and achieving what they want to achieve with kenpachi he doesn't care about anything unless he's having a good fight you know he's got a good battle he's blood thirsty he'll fight anyone doesn't matter who and maiuli doesn't care about anything unless he's furthering his scientific goals doesn't care about hurting anyone he's just he that's all he wants to do at the same time they are both linked and grounded by their affiliation with the soul society and the fact that they do technically have to serve the soul society even if they don't necessarily care to and you get that both brilliantly in the thousand-year blood war from both of these characters um and actually mayuri i think kubo makes a concerted effort to show that mayuri does have pride in being a member of the goatee 13 um on numerous occasions in this arc particularly when he talks to characters like say ikaku and umuchika when he says things like you know is you know isn't that kind of the creed that the goatee 13 are supposed to live by or aren't those the words of your late captain commander that you respected so much i think this is what i mean when i say that mayuri is a nuanced character there's more to him than just the tropes and much in the way of kyoraku or even kenpachi the thousand-year blood war does wonderful things for this character but actually moving into the thousand-year blood war itself um the depiction of mayuri almost consistently throughout is that of a a real hero someone who really comes through for the soul society when they need him the most more than ever before mayuri is like a full-on team player in this arc um and that is seems to be a real conscious decision on kubo's part to make him one of the foremost characters mayuri is almost like a war general in this arc and it is it is kind of weird there is a bit of narrative dissonance i think to that to the fact that you do just kind of have to accept his crimes except that he has sort of mellowed out but for me it was just that that dissonance was a little harder to to take on when the enemies themselves were actually quincy and they had every reason to hate this guy and so some of the fault does lie with the vandonrike as well because they they basically don't now this is this is probably for an entirely separate video but the van the vanden reich do not care at all it seems about the past of the quincy uh there's kyrgy op mentions at one point about so can ishida and talking about the past of the quincy and their old techniques and stuff like that but outside of that these guys do not care about the quincy that well it essentially came after them because a lot of them are from a thousand years ago but they're they're quincy brethren i suppose you could say there's there's no mention you know going into the final arc the majority of us pretty reasonably assumed i think that the quincy would hold a massive grudge over the purge that happened 200 years ago but it's never mentioned outside of the outside of the contextual chapter very early on where um kajamaru explains to the 13th division the past between the shinigami and the quincy it is never never brought up and that's a that's really weird to me and that's all part and parcel of the thousand-year blood war lacking context in general which is um an issue i do have with that story arc but it just seems so weird to me that mayuri will meet so many of these characters and and not one of them has a bone to pick with him not one of them brings up the treatment of these characters in the past and yeah it's just kind of weird it is kind of weird to think that mayuri just coasts through the final arc doing mayuri things never having to answer for his crimes despite the fact that the the clan that he's so brutally experimented on are now the principal villains in fact mayuri just defeats a couple of them like they're they're normal antagonists to him it is it is weird and that there's a lot of um narrative dissonance with that i think there was some suspension of disbelief required that the quincy just don't care about what's happened before and that mayuri is nothing more than another shinigami to them the lack of historical context in the thousand-year blood war is a missed opportunity anyway but it really feels like a missed opportunity to have nothing play out with mayuri at all to have him really face the consequences of his actions even if those actions were years ago now in a wartime setting i think could have been a really powerful statement a statement of how serious the vanden reich are how dangerous they are um and what this grudge really means to them and i've mentioned before the motivations of the quincy are a bit of a problem i think i just i just think it's it would have been so easy for kubo to be like yeah we have we hold this massive grudge because of what happened to us back in the past i also think maybe something that could have been really cool is now i i really like mayuri as i mentioned already i didn't necessarily want to see him die i'm just arguing that maybe he should have done but one thing that could have potentially been really cool is back when ulyu is made yuhabax air you have mentions that uru's power will become known to everyone on the coming in the coming battles of course it never really is we never ever see any kind of particularly amazing showcase from uryu at all and it feels like one of those things that was kind of dropped but how it probably would have been really awesome to see ulyu come face to face with mayuri again and prove himself loyal to the vanden reich by either killing or at least again mortally wounding mayuri and the quincy being actually recipient to the fact that mayuri was the one who caused them so much pain in the past it would have been a really nice reflection of their first encounter in seoul society while also elevating uru in the standing of the vanden reich science on the whole plays a major part in the quincy blood war um kisuke is on the front lines from day one which is awesome because he's vacant for a massive period of the iran karak for some reason but kisuke is boots on the ground from day one and he works in tandem with mayuri to help tackle the quincy threat a big part of that is the softening of their relationship after so long uh and mayuri proves himself to be essential over and over again you know he was the one who was doing the research as quickly as he could into the bankai stealing capabilities of the quincy's but unfortunately for him the captains went ahead and used him in the first invasion anyway but then in the second invasion he's right there with urahara he's able to help counter the ban kai stealing medallions but also crucially it's mayuri who works out that the quincy travel via shadows and therefore he creates a literal headquarters for the shinigami to take refuge in in the just the fully illuminated version of his of his lab which is where the shinigami all eventually end up and of course mayuri is responsible for the defeat of of two stern wrestler gisele and then pernider as well later on in the royal palace so mayuri has a massive role to play again a video i have already made talking about why he was the mvp of the thousand-year blood war arc but in this one i really do kind of question if that was the right route to take that character in the final arc i think it could have been really really interesting and really helped to flesh out the kind of i guess social landscape of the soul society to have mayuri have to answer for his crimes to the quincy when the quincy actually returned as the main villains i think that would have been awesome because yet there definitely is this system in place that protects people like mayuri in in seoul society because he is of use to them and i just think it would have been would have been really cool to have seen him answer to that and i think the ulu was perfectly primed to do that um but kubo doesn't really do a lot with the um in the in the final arc and the fact that they don't meet again is is a bit of a shame but yeah this video has just kind of been a ramble it's been a stream of consciousness i do do do videos like this every now and then but it is kind of fun to just kind of talk and and hope something coherent comes out but let me know what you think in the comments below am i completely off base here with mayuri's character or would you have liked to have had him face up to his um deeds in the past as it were would you have liked to have seen him come face to face with uryu do you think his treatment in a thousand year blood war arc is a little bit weird i appreciate that science is on the forefront of this fight to help combat the quinces and therefore mayuri has a huge role to play but i just think it's it's it's really fascinating to think about how soul society is quite corrupt as an organization we've seen it many times in the past obviously in can't feel your own world as well it's really almost explicitly said that soul society is a dark organization at heart despite being in terms of their narrative position the good guys of bleach i think truly when you get into the nitty-gritty of it the the true good guys of the series are the karakura gang and it doesn't really extend beyond that the soul society in many ways is like a necessary evil and is an even deeper um version of that you know myrie is like the kind of best example of soul society being a sort of corrupt place and i think as a character he works wonderfully well i just wonder if maybe kubo kubo could have done it slightly different in the thousand-year blood war to really capitalize on the fact that the quincy were back as the main villains but as i mentioned historical context not the final arc's strongest point and so at the end of this video to answer my own question did mayuri deserve to die in the thousand-year blood war arc i think the answer is probably yes i would have loved to have seen how kubo would have actually handled the situation like that create some real drama among the shinigami especially since they would probably feel pretty lost if they lost mayuri because he has been such an asset to them throughout this fight and it would have also just been really good to have seen decades of crimes catch up to mayuri finally because he has felt both physically and figuratively untouchable up until this point in his battles against zio laporo and gisele he basically walks away completely unharmed and i remember i remember despite him being a fan favorite of mine i was rooting for him to actually really struggle against punitive because he he is just so untouchable and thankfully he does um and in some ways you know maybe maybe that's supposed to be his final comeuppance he ends up face down on the floor he can't even move anymore and it does it does work to a degree but maybe i just like to have seen kubo go a bit further with that but let me know in the comments below guys what do you think about mayuri karatsuchi kind of as a whole but also his character trajectory and how the soul society treats him i do think it's funny that he was in the maggots nest before he had done anything wrong but after he does things wrong they kind of just let him get on with it but also just answer that question as well do you think he deserved to die in a thousand-year blood war at the hands of the quincy's would have made narrative sense to you and would have been a fitting end for his character until next time guys i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 34,325

Rating: 4.9407115 out of 5

Keywords: bleach, bleach manga, bleach anime, bleach discussion, bleach review, bleach new chapter, bleach chapter review, bleach hell arc, bankai, aizen, ichigo, bleach tybw, bleach 20th anniversary, mayuri, MrTommo2304, MrTommo2304 Bleach

Id: k9v47fAa6gM

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021