KANAME TOSEN - Bleach Character ANALYSIS | The Blind Justice

at this point in the lifetime of the channel i've had the opportunity to talk at least at some depth about a lot of the major characters in bleach but one character who i haven't ever really had the chance to touch on is kaname tozen one of the main villains of the first half of the series however after 50 000 votes on our latest poll you guys voted for tozen to be the recipient of the next character analysis video and i'm here for that i'm actually really excited to dive into this very deep complex and flawed character to me tosin operates in a really interesting middle ground despite being one of the major villains of the series throughout his tenure in bleach you know he was never as popular as eisen or gene and he was never as prevalent as grim joe or ol kiyora but i liked that area that he operated in very much firmly a supporting sort of side villain but one with a really intriguing arc of his own and for what it's worth in my opinion one of the absolutely best fights in all of bleach before we get started on this video though guys if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now for more bleach content like this every single week and if you enjoyed the video don't forget to give it a thumbs up as well to support me and the channel basically hopefully we'll just get more traction on the youtube algorithm and more bleach fans like yourselves will get a chance to see it and if you really like what i do here and you want to take that support for me another step further i do have a patreon for my channel as well you obviously don't have to support me over there but if you did decide to you can get videos like this one early and you can support me for as little as a dollar a month everyone who is currently supporting me right now over on patreon who is a patron of the channel is coming up on the screen thank you all so very much a huge shout out goes out to each and every one of you so while kaname tozen was never the most popular villain in bleach i would say that he is one of the best written of them all i think that he is a genuinely complex deep and flawed characters someone who thinks he is a righteous man who is following a great cause and i just think that this is a really really cool character a really cool concept for a villain in this series tozen comes across in many ways like a zealot he is almost blindly loyal to eisen because eisen is offering him a view of the world that aligns with how tozen feels about things and i think it's really intriguing seeing him enacting almost sort of an enforcer of eisen but enacting eisen's goals because that's back because to him that is what true justice is and justice of course is a huge theme when it comes to tosin's character in general plenty of bleach discourse out there will tell you that eisen is more than just a villain and in some ways he's not even a villain at all he's somebody who just simply sought to change the way the world worked and in my opinion if you believe that if you see eisen from that angle tosin has a lot to do with that tosin's perception of eisen and the potential good that eisen could do should his plan succeed and i think it's really kind of enlightening to get that differing perspective and it makes tosun more than just a two-dimensional bad guy his motives that we'll get into later are understandable and i think it's great as well that he has these clear motivations that help to really push the character along as a trio these villains have always been totally fascinating and to me tozen perhaps does come across as the most virtuous of the three of them and in many ways a polar opposite of geen ichimari which i think was probably done on purpose gene is shrouded in mystery to the point where his entire design reflects that you know as soon as they move into the iran car arc you can no longer see his hands which of course is quite a suspicious look for someone to have as you don't know what they are up to tosun on the other hand is supposed to kind of come across as almost an open book someone whose motives are very clear it's obvious what it is he wants and kind of just where he falls in this entire situation he considers himself to be a pure being as well and there is a kind of thin veneer of arrogance that goes alongside tozen's righteousness which again i think to kind of helps to sort of flesh him out and add another layer to this character all that being said and despite tozen's role as one of eisen's lieutenants he doesn't play a massive part in the story his manga lifespan runs from chapter 81 which is when a lot of captains are introduced in the soul society arc right the way through to 533 but of course this character is dead long before that it's just he gets a brand new appearance in a flashback in the thousand-year blood war arc so while he doesn't play an enormous role in the story itself the character arc that tozen receives is a very effective one as far as i'm concerned anyway it's really cool seeing this kind of pious zealous self-righteous man slipping further and further into the darkness his hubris taking over that underlying arrogance finally coming out he makes almost like a deal with the devil and you see that playing out in real time as he realizes kind of his ambitions bring him to the point where he is given the one thing he has always been missing which is his eyesight of course but that leads to a tosin who has completely lost his way it's a really fun character arc for someone to go on and in my opinion it makes for one of the deepest and most interesting villains in the series because a lot of villains in bleach just don't get this kind of treatment this idea of him making a pact with the devil and being rewarded with something he thinks he has needed his entire life only for it to cause him to be sent astray is a really really nice idea and of course as well something that plays into tosin's character is that he is always seeking something and generally that is the path of true justice supposedly the path of the least bloodshed and eventually when you reach the point where he is killed or where he is about to die or sort of dying anyway where he has lost the fight he his vision clouds over again the last thing he sees is his friend kakyo and she sort of disappears and i think that's obviously supposed to represent that he has gotten to the stage where he has lost sight of what he was originally fighting for and so tozen's story really is about this kind of shining star somebody who could see the good in the world who who kind of loved the world that his best friend was in but once she was taken it started him off down this horrible dark path this dark descent full of hypocrisy full of violence and in the end it kind of consumed him and he ended up in this like cavernous black hole this pit of revenge that eventually his ally his friend komamura would try to lift him out of and again that starts off a great arc for komamuro as well for the second half of the series but to look briefly at this character from a visual standpoint i think tosun looks awesome i think he's a really cool designer and what's also really intriguing about tozen is that he looks almost totally different virtually every time you see him he has a different look in the soul society arc the iran car arc the all the flashbacks we get of him he looks different in each of them and i just think it's really nice this character has a really cool look to him that i think helps him stand out my favorite look of tozens is probably how he appears in the iran car arc it's very sleek quite minimalist as well which i think is really cool and then of course how he changes throughout that epic battle he has with his former allies is great to see as well his personality you know it's not perhaps it's perhaps not hard to see why he wasn't as popular as his villainous cohorts eisen is you know immensely charismatic and a lot of fun gene is very sneaky very kind of charming in that in that way but also very sinister and gives off you know real villainous vibes tozen in contrast he is the straight man of the three of them really he plays everything quite seriously this is not a character who's ever likely to be used for comedic purposes shall we say and i think that works though he kind of comes across as almost that devout almost almost religious soldier who does see eisen as this god-like figure that he purports to be and so i think it makes a lot of sense for tosin to act and be this way and i think that's pretty cool so as for tozen's role in the story of bleach like i said he's not in it a huge amount but there's still plenty to dive into here but crucially while we don't normally do these from a sort of timeline perspective i think the most important catalyst in tozen's life is of course his relationship and the fate of his close friend kakyo who is not actually named until the light novels can't fear your own world but basically he has this really close relationship with this girl kakyo who kind of has this amazing pure world view who loves the world but but kind of wants to remove she kind of speaks metaphorically about removing the clouds from the sky so that you know kaname can kind of see the world that she does that she loves as well and tosin has kind of a little bit is a bit more closed off although he seems to obviously feel very um he can be himself around her he does seem to be quite closed off to this idea and when she is taken when she is killed by her husband who and you know that has gone into way more detail in the light novels it seems to affirm tozen's kind of beliefs his his belief system that the world is kind of broken as it is especially with seoul society not actually acting on the fact that she was murdered that she was taken someone so pure was robbed and it's it is all of this that is tozen's entire catalyst for being for wanting to become a soul reaper and presumably and and kind of carve out the rot from within essentially so he takes up kakyo's zones on bhakto um and kind of makes it his own so it's a cool starting point it is a bit of like a villainous origin story we get to see for for tozen perhaps more so than anybody else it feels that way it is cool to see him confronted with the injustices of soul society this is of course delved into even deeper in can't figure your own world and again while these character analysis videos are generally manga specific we will talk briefly about kant for your own world because it's important for tosin's character and his motivations later on but the crux of it is that his friend was robbed from him she was given no justice and so tozen kind of takes justice into his own hands and seeks out somebody who he thinks can meet out proper justice instead but this is why i think tozen's story is a cool one he is a victim of the system at the end of the day kakyo was murdered by a noble so that was always going to be covered up and tozen being essentially a commoner from rukongai has no way of getting justice unless he takes it into his own hands and seoul society this retay has always been painted as morally gray it is not a perfect place where you know fairy tales come true just because kakyo was killed by her husband doesn't mean that they will get the justice they deserve and i think that makes tosin a very relatable character you know he's not someone who's out for world domination or something like that he wants to change a fundamentally broken and vile system a place that he considers to be evil and i think that's really cool but toast himself kind of falls from that pedestal that position of grace um into this pit of revenge and it's interesting toson i think is a character built on hypocrisy at the end of the day he is someone who seems to want something and talk about something else almost as though he knows that what he wants is not what he is talking about if that makes sense so like he talks to komamura about wanting to join the shinigami for the sake of justice for the for justice for his friend who he lost as they are by her grave again a nice scene these two characters build a a wonderful bond together two outcasts in a way or at the very least two people who are missing something you know tosin is missing his eyesight and komamora is obviously a huge kind of wolf man and so has been an outcast for ages and this is an interesting dichotomy that we'll get into later as it really forms their individual world views and is is what will inevitably lead them to clash later on but tosun is talking to kawamura about justice and wanting justice for his friend in reality what he wants is his cold-blooded vengeance he wants revenge for his friend not really not not really justice in in i guess the kind of judicial sense he wants he wants blood um and i think that's really interesting because this character he kind of espoused this because this kind of whole virtuous self-righteous appearance but really deep down inside he just wants revenge but in the soul society arc itself you don't really get to see too much of that tozen doesn't play a massive role he's at the he's present at the first ever captain's meeting that we get to see then he is with komamura when they meet up with una hana and she kind of confirms that eisen has been killed and at this point tosin decides to step into the fray himself as he believes that the fastest way to getting answers is to bringing an end to the a ryoka invasion kubo seemed to be going for something slightly different with tosin i think here at the start of the series basically making him into an almost almost like a monk-like pacifist to the point where he says that he he hates battles he doesn't want to really get involved in a battle and then later on when he subdues uru ishida with a really cool looking ability by the way that basically inverts the page into like this negative zone look it looks really cool but he starts crying after defeating ulyu and he's like maybe now these pointless battles can begin to come to an end and he is like this almost monk-like pacifist early on in the story which i don't i don't know if that really fits with the character we get later on in my opinion he kind of becomes a bit more hardened as the series goes on it becomes a bit more hard line perhaps that is just to symbolize him falling deeper and deeper into darkness but in my opinion the chosen we see in soul society arc doesn't really line up with the toes and we get in turn back the pendulum who ruthlessly cuts down his captain and i don't know maybe maybe this is uh maybe this is um kind of an act he's putting on but it seems unlikely to me um i guess perhaps you could because so basically one of the most important quotes that tozen gives that i think offers a real uh insight into his mind is um something along the lines of uh slaughter with no cause attached to it is just slaughter but slaughter in the name of a of a great cause or a worthy cause that is justice and so i guess in tozen's eyes his fighting uryu this ryoka invasion this is pointless bloodshed pointless battling that didn't need to be now the fact that he's crying about it does seem a little extreme for this character but i guess from a philosophical standpoint it does make sense for him to be unhappy about what's going on here but again there's that idea of hypocrisy basically he's only really happy with violence if he is the one dishing out he he kind of sets the terms for what a great cause actually means and of course a great cause is completely subjective eisen wanting to wipe out thousands of innocent civilians in karakola town in tozen's eyes is apparently a great cause is apparently justified apparently that is genocide justified whereas in whereas apparently ichigo coming in to save rukia is is pointless battling that you know needs to come to an end so like i think that again tosin is a dangerous person he's a person whose mentality whose kind of ideology has been allowed to run rampant and that's why he is so loyal to eisen i think in many ways because eisen gives him what he wants basically um which is you know kind of a place where he can be himself vent his frustration and almost his hatred towards soul society and enact out a plan that will eventually bring it down another aspect of this which i find interesting is that tosun remarks to komamura that he thinks they walk the same path now these two are friends at this point in the story but later on towson would reveal that he always knew that one day they would cross blades now that's interesting to me because if he thinks they walk the same path and we know as we've discussed already that tosin is kind of a a very sort of zealous man so at this point he's presumably already following eisen basically if tosin truly believed that he and komamura walked the same path did he ever try and maybe start thinking about bringing common more over to eisen's fold if that were ever possible because if he chose to keep that secret from komamura despite believing they walk to the same path is that because he knew that what he was doing wasn't righteous after all or is it simply that he was just lying to komamura about them walking the same path this entire time both are possible i think tosun then fights kenpachi zaraki in a really cool scene that i think tends to maybe go a bit forgotten there are a lot of great scenes in the seoul society arc and there are a lot of fights as well and i actually do really like this one tozen uses his bankai suzumushi sushki en ma marcorigi which is a really cool ability enveloping an area in this enormous jet black dome which then just robs the enemy of all of their senses basically it's really cool tosun does quite well against zaraki but you know he is he basically he just gets too too ahead of himself i think too full of himself and allows raki to get the better of him but this is a cool fight i think because tozin goes almost you know immediately into barn kai we get to see one of his shiikai abilities just before this one i think it's um benehiko he uses that summons all the blades that's again a really that's really cool as well and i think this is just a great fight it's it's really great because again tosin has this idea in his head that zaraki is like a blood bloodthirsty fight-loving demon which you know is not exactly wrong but he he it's not that he hates saraki as he says but he as soon as he saw him as soon as he saw this man who joined the goatee 13 by murdering the previous captain he knew or at least he believed that this is somebody who would disrupt the peace and again there's some kind of nice irony there because tozen is the one who disrupts the piece zaraki has never really done anything like that zaraki is i guess in many ways the inverse of tozen tozen kind of on the outside looks respectable again he's like coming across as almost this pacifist he doesn't want to fight he doesn't hate supposedly um but on the inside there's a very a dark soul a bitter soul that has grown cold over the years whereas saraki yeah he kind of looks like a monster and he does love fighting but he i think he cares as well he cares about people he has friends you know really he he is that kind of a heart of gold trope but it works really well and eventually zaraki does get the better of him and nearly kills tozen but of course komamura steps in and then the arc ends with tozen being revealed to have been a traitor all along eisens kyoko suigetsu doesn't work on people who are blind and therefore he has managed to coax toes into his side from a very very young age because because tozen kind of fits the world view that eisen is espousing which is that the way the soul society currently works is broken but we can change that you know bringing about a revolution essentially which i think is really cool and of course there's that great moment i love the scene where eisen ascends to waco mundo i think it's one of the best scenes for his character but it's also a great scene for tozen's character because komamura you know smashes his fist into the floor and he's like you know tosin where's your sense of justice now i thought you know you did you did what you did for your friend where is your sense of justice gone and tosin says you know don't be a fool common more i walk the path of least bloodshed the path i walk that's laid out in front of my blind eyes is justice and it's that is that arrogance coming out of toast and again where he's like you know it doesn't matter if you think i'm doing something wrong here what i do that is justice to me and so it's this idea of tozen being judged jury and executioner he meets out the justice that he thinks is necessary and i think that's real i think again that's a that's a neat character trait for someone who has quite a lot of layers to them already in the iran car arc tozen does even less than he did in the seoul society arc at least until we get to the fake karakura town sub arc but now he has truly become one of eisen's commanders he is obviously in a new outfit now and sharing that role with gene ichimaru they're both commanders of the espada and he still believes despite having become a turn coat against the soul society he still believes in like a rule of law and this idea of order versus chaos and grim joe in many ways is you know like a new zaraki as far as tozen is concerned somebody who will bring about destruction to everything they have created because he is just reckless and does things with abandon and it's a i think this is cool because this moment where tozen reprimands grimjo for taking all those iran car out and getting them killed without permission is really cool because he just cut scrim joe's arm off he initially wants to kill grim joe but eisen eisen's kind of like whoa whoa slow down a little bit um but tozen getting the chance to dish out what he believes to be justice is cool because it's that idea like i said of him being judge jury and executioner um it's not even that eisen has told him to do this because as as we find out later game kind of says well you knew how kaname would react based on that situation so eisen was not so much manipulating tozen but i guess in a way he kind of was because he knew that grim joe would offend his sensibilities and so eisen is sowing discord um by really having tozen get riled up about someone who just completely flouts the law and they clash again in the espada meeting scene where as i mentioned in the last video about eisen moments uh grim joe just completely disrespects him and tries to leave and tozen tries to shut that down and as these characters are two characters that really should be butting heads i would have loved to have seen even more from their relationship i think that would have been really cool later on we get a rare scene of discussion between towson and gene and while the contents of the discussion is quite interesting basically talking about uh the inva the current invaders but also wonder weiss who doesn't seem to trust gene and tozen kind of puts that down to gene being a sort of sneaky sinister individual who people wouldn't would be wise to mistrust um basically kind of deciding that he and one device are both these supposed pure beings although tozen says he doesn't quite know where one device's purity lies yet what's really interesting about this scene however is that relationship between gene and kaname because when you think about it it's something that i don't think has ever really touched on but these two have been in cahoots for over a century which means that they have been liaising in you know secret for over a hundred years conspiring against the soul society against their supposed friends and family which means you would think there is more to this than just a business sort of part partnership do these two like each other at all because they've obviously been through a lot together they are working partners essentially or are they literally just here together as a result of them both following eisen you know for their own agendas i think that's a really interesting thing to consider you know is there any friendship between these two at all because they maybe don't know each other that well because obviously tosin doesn't know gene's true intentions but they have spent a lot of time together outside of the traditional circles and i think that's really interesting to think about tosun then plays a smallish role in the turn back the pendulum flashback where it's revealed that he betrays his captain as he's now part of the ninth division he betrays kent kensei using his bankai again which is really cool um basically just casting this net of darkness over the vaisards they're not vaisards yet but it lets him take them out and it's really cool because again it shows you that tozen is so devoutly loyal to eisen that he's willing to take out his captain and that makes a lot of sense based knowing what we know about tozen's relationship with the soul society the way he feels about the soul society he probably cares nothing at all for kensei and mashiro and it's pretty dark that he finally is like getting a chance to enact his vengeance i guess but he's also fascinated and seems to be devoutly interested in these hollow vacation experiments which in my mind was always more of like an eisen thing like he just that was what he was after was breaking those boundaries between hollow and shinigami and attaining greater power but tozen's like really all in on this as well and i suppose it's like him seeing it as a means of escape a way to not just be another shinigami not just be a cog in that machine that he hates so much and i i kind of wonder at what point did he decide hollow vacation was the way forward for him at what point did he decide to hollow fire because we see him observing the experiments here we see him observing them later on in everything but the rain and so it can't have been i imagine it was probably after eisen got uh kisuke's hogyoku at the end of the soul society arc that tozen was like this is my chance please hollow find me and you know set me free from these shinigami bindings essentially honestly that's kind of the sort of thing i'd have loved to have seen i think it's you know a great twist that tozen reveals he has holification powers a little bit later on but i think for his character it would have been cool to have seen that and to really see why he was so invested in these monstrous experiments but of course that leads us to the fake karakura town arc which is tozen's shining standout moment and i'm not i know i feel like i always say this but i'm not gonna go crazy in depth because this fight between tozen komomora and hisagi is one of the best in bleach's history one of my absolute favorite fights of all time in the manga it's it's fairly short but the dialogue here is kubo firing on all cylinders the character relationships here are wonderfully presented and we will dive into some of that now but this is a this is a chunky a beefy bit of character kind of character study i guess for chosen in this battle that really brings to light his flaws his ambitions and it all coalesces to make a really compelling bit of reading before that though there's a really nice moment where shinji insults kaname by calling him an underling um he's like you know those are that's big talk coming from just an underling and i i always found that to be really interesting obviously he's trying to rile tosin up and it kind of seems to work i think because tosin is like well we'll see how you feel about getting killed by an underling i i kind of like that though because it's like because it's shinji obviously doesn't really understand the relationship that eisengeen and tosin have and in many ways that relationship is a bit strange there's this idea that it is not your typical villainous relationship like eisen maybe consider the considers these guys to be not necessarily equals but and not necessarily friends either because eisen does a stripe is the type of person to be interested in that sort of relationship whatsoever but there is i think a mutual respect it's like this idea that eisen has a grander vision for the universe and those bold enough to take that journey with him deserve some kind of respect and they they do seem to have a quasi-friendship about them you know eisen apologizes to gene in the uh in the fate in the day of side arc when he accidentally distorts their passageway through the dhan guy and he apologizes to kaname as well kaname gets like openly offended by eisen in everything but the rain when he kind of just denounces their hard work and eisen's like you know i'm sorry you're right and they have this like civilized conversation where eisen doesn't come across as the head honcho and on the on the flip side there are moments that do feel like that that feel more like the traditional master underling relationship for example the most obvious one to me is when kisuke and tessai arrive in term at the pendulum and tosin is like i'll finish them i'll i'll get rid of these guys and eisen's like don't worry about it and then you know tozen's like tries to and eisen says kaname i said don't worry about it and he starts like crushing him with his rayatsu and tosin like bows and he's like i'm sorry my lord tozen is always calling him my lord as well which doesn't help that power balance you know you know you're not going to call your friend or or someone who supposedly shares respect my lord but i guess that's because tozen you know like devoutly worships eisen i think again we mentioned that already but that's one of the things that makes tozen so cool is that he in an almost religious sense does seem to worship eisen but i just wanted to bring that up because tocin is an underling at the end of the day but in many ways doesn't really feel like it and so their relationship is a really weird one but yes this is a truly wonderful fight and it feels like kubo wrote it incredibly well this is a fight where i am so satisfied with the dialogue exchanges we get the i'm almost kind of surprised to be honest because one of my as a real fan of the series one of my main kind of complaints i guess is that when you get characters coming together that you have been really excited to see clash sometimes kubo doesn't do enough with it there's not enough talking or they don't talk about the right things and i'm left frustrated and yes sometimes dissatisfied by what goes down here though i'm fully happy with what we get this they've been kubo has been building to this moment since hisagi approached komamura on the hill where kakio's grave was and they said that they would fight to open tosun's eyes again we've been waiting for this fight since that moment and i don't think kubo disappoints maybe the fight could be a little longer i always envisioned in my head that kaname would use his bankai one last time and he would encase komamura in it but then komomura would activate kokujo tengen mio and this massive giant would just like tear out of that dark veil but you know that's a bit fanfictiony what we actually get is really cool anyway and the dialogue here between them is great so tosin reveals that he has hollification powers he summons his mask he attacks them both and there's a great a great back and forth between him and komamura where komo mora claims that tozen has fallen far and tosin takes that to mean that komamura is insulting him for having achieved hollow vacation and towson's you know he says like you're friends with that half hollow half shinigami boy why do you why do you condemn me for achieving the same power and commonwealth's like ichigo didn't choose this path you were already an extraordinary shinigami and yet you craved greater power and tosun flips that back on him and he says you know so i'm evil because i've taken the powers of a hollow well that's just a narrow-minded viewpoint of someone who views all soul reapers as good and all hollows as evil but komamura comes back at him again and he says that is not what i'm calling depraved that's not why you've fallen komomora doesn't care that tosin has hollow powers komomora cares that tosin betrayed and abandoned his friends to attain that power i think that is a devastatingly great back and forth between these two characters that really highlights the difference in how they are attempting to approach this fight for komamura and hisagi it's deeply personal and they are willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and admit that outright this is about them bringing back a fallen friend for tozen he's trying to stay way above it all like and look down on them taking like a snooty moral high road essentially and it's not really working for him because common more is able to keep coming back and you get that lovely moment where it looks like tozen might say something but he suddenly gets a chain wrapped around his neck also if you are wondering where the title can't fear your own world comes from well it comes from chapter 384 can't fear your own sword which of course is about hisagi his relationship with toast and all that sort of thing um this idea that tozen taught him that the a true warrior power is not what what matters in being a true warrior what really matters is knowing your power understanding it and crucially fearing it fearing the blade you wield only then do you have the right to wield it which is where everything came from that kind of builds to those light novels in the end tosin's holo mask is really cool now i remember it being criticized when the chapter first came out for being you know just completely boring and bland it's completely blank essentially save for a single slot a single line running straight down the middle the obvious surface level uh takeaway is it's just supposed to reference the fact that he's blind you know fair enough but it is a little bit more than that i think as well i think it also represents the way he perceives the world but also it is a blank canvas for his journey to come he has just activated his hollow powers but he has further yet to fall and we see that play out on his face going from a featureless face to a monstrous face as time changes is really cool way of of showing you know showing not telling which is something we always talk about on this channel one of the best things as a writer to do is to show and not tell and as tozen becomes more and more animated reveals his motivations his true underlying hatred the mask transforms it twists and and just corrupts and looks awesome i think when it gets the we the creepy skeletal mouth is when it looks the coolest um but i really love the design of this thing i think it works really well and in many ways it feels like the mask represents tozen and his um volition kind of coming forth you know the mask deforms and contorts and then eventually cracks wide open as he espouses his true motivation you know he's saying to komamura like why do you think i joined the goatee 13 and comma morris like i i thought it was for justice you said it was justice for your friend and tozen's like wouldn't it be lovely if i could just join the organization that killed my best friend and then did nothing about it and i could just forgive and forget that would be lovely beautiful it would be that would be absolutely just wonderful if i could do that but if i lived within that organization without avenging her death that would be evil and as he kind of just goes off on that rant his mouth is revealed the mask opens up and it kind of like exposes the heart of the man within which again i think is great imagery here but the dialogue is working wonders in this scene as well as tozen's motives are laid bare and komomora does seem to talk down to him a little bit here it does feel a little bit condescending komamura clearly believes he is in the right here whereas tosun as kind of twisted as he might be appearing on the outside obviously still thinks that what he is doing is righteous as well and so it's intriguing to see one character talking to the other as though they are in the wrong and you know common more is like my heart has already forgiven you perhaps our views are incompatible there is no way now that i know the truth about how you feel i must destroy you for the sake of soul society and tosin is blunt about how he feels about that he says you'll kill me because we don't see eye to eye is that what justice is to you common water and coromora is like yeah he basically says because i do everything i do for the soul society i must destroy you and it's it's i think it's fascinating this i think it's fascinating because no character feels like they are truly in the right or in the wrong i think obviously komamura and hisagi are the good guys in this scenario so by virtue they are in the right here and chosen is the villain and i think you know you it's obvious that just by wanting to affiliate with eisen who is trying to wipe out a town of innocent people tozen is the bad guy and that's the kind of black and white binary version of this but i like that kubo goes those extra steps in this fight in particular where these themes of duality of black and white justice are really being brought up i think it makes an awful lot of sense to i don't know at least make it so we can question komamura because it is it is fascinating that he does sort of just almost not listen to tozen at this point and he's just like i've already forgiven you and tosin says like don't talk to me like you're a god you know when did i ask for your forgiveness i don't need your forgiveness because it doesn't matter to me and and as far as i'm concerned i'm in the right why would tosan want the forgiveness of someone who who he thinks is in the wrong i think that's that those perspectives just work so well crucially with these two characters where their paths differ at the end of the day is the way they perceive the soul society they've both had different experiences with the soul society at the outset of their journeys which has formed their paths moving forwards they both lacked something like i said tosin can't see and commonwealth was shunned by everyone thanks to his appearance they were both gifted shinigami but ended up going separate ways the first real kind of experience tozen had with seoul society was the unjust murder of his friend and the fact they did nothing about it on komamura's side genre site took him in gave him a home despite his appearance and the soul society became his home and so from that point on they are on irreconcilable paths to conflict and i think that's really cool eventually they will clash because they both stand for something different komamura loves and cares for the soul society because it took him in it gave him shelter tozen hates it thinks it's rotten to the core and despite them seemingly being friends their clash is inevitable but i do think what makes this fight so compelling is that both sides are at least understandable of course though tozen from a binary sense being the villain is pushed to the point of no return and transforms into a grotesque monster with his resurrection gria grigio which thematically interestingly is similar to his zan puck toe turning him into this kind of monstrous cricket-like bug thing which again drew a lot of criticism from fans back in the day for looking ridiculous i actually think he looks really cool apart from the head that does look a bit strange that tozen's like chin is just sticking out of this massive bug-eyed head but everything else actually looks pretty awesome to be honest um and i think this resurrection is a was a big surprise back in the day but it is also just a really kind of cool twist for the end of the fight as well but of course this is the end of tozen's journey and it's at this point that he is at his most you know dire he has reached the darkest point of his cavern he has fallen about as far as he can he has lost sight really of who he once was and of course that's the great irony with this moment tosin has gained the ability to see finally but he has completely lost sight of everything that really meant anything to him his crusade for what he believes to be justice is leading him to murder his true friend komamura and that is the point of no return and i think this really powerful moment it's not so much that tozen's motives are wrong but the execution the way he goes about it his thirst for greater power has corrupted him and finally gifted sight he uses it to inflict cruelty on komamura the cruelty that he knows komomora has suffered from his entire life when he says that you are uglier than i even imagined of course if tosin could truly see he would see the monstrosity that he has become as well and it's you know stuff like that there is you know fairly surface level but really well done of course just before tocin can deliver the finishing blow after their battle between commonwealth bankai and his resurrection which again is pretty cool but very very short hisagi manages to land a devastating hit impaling tozen through the head and then using kazushini activating it this blade this scythe comes out of tozen's mouth it's pretty dark like it's pretty gruesome bleach you know has its fair share of gore but when you think about what's actually happening there especially since kazushini has a second scythe which is going backwards that's pretty rough um the implication i think is that tozen could survive it but in my opinion i always thought when the when the story first came out that tosin was gonna die here but it seems like now the idea is that he probably could have survived it i'm not entirely sure but regardless the fight is over thinking about it it is kind of insane that hisagi kills his captain and still wasn't promoted i think in the light novels it mentions he was offered a promotion but certainly as far as the canon manga is concerned it seems like he was never offered anything really um and they just they just accepted kensei back instead um but you know i guess thematically it makes more sense for kensei to come back and and retake his old position but regardless this final scene of tozens is nice it's nicely handled i think it's a sort of tender and soft moment toesen has mostly returned to his former self the effects of his resurrection are effectively gone although one of his arms is still this like monstrous bug arm which again is kind of interesting because it's like what's actually happening here is he fully turned back or is just the serious damage that hisagi has just done to him weakened him to the point where a lot of his powers are like falling away from him from him i don't really know but he mentions that because of his holification a he can still see but crucially he can still breathe and komamura you know he's like don't talk you know your throat has been severed but you can still currently breathe which was what made me think he was about to die um but komamura goes on this lovely speech again just capping off this fight with more excellent dialogue about how you know even though common water himself felt that they were destined to eventually clash as well and that's the truth but he still saw tozen as a true friend and that if tosin were to disappear completely it would leave a gaping wound in komamura's heart if tosin gave himself entirely to revenge and lost himself forever it would have that effect on komamura which of course is lovely in hindsight i mean it's a great moment for common water as well because it effectively sets up although we didn't know it at the time his character arc for the final arc leading to a very literal representation of that which is really cool but towson is clearly moved by this you know he cries a little bit he's like thank you common more you know so this is a moment of coming together for these characters i think where they realize that actually they do all mean something to each other and although their clash may have been inevitable they've kind of come out at the other side their bonds mended in some way just as tosun tries to look at hisagi's face one last time his body completely ruptures and he explodes he literally explodes like blood is just going everywhere his arm goes everywhere and it's a another horror movie moment and hisagi is like just in utter shock as he just screams captain you know what you know captain and komomora turns to eisen who is smirking at them and he roars eisen's name now this scene is a weird one for me and you know i i'm ready to accept what the novels say is going on here but at the same time i'm not so i've basically i've always had in my mind i've always had an idea of what is happening in this scene which was that tozen because he was now heavily weakened you know near death was no longer able to keep back the hollow rayatsu and it devoured his body his body was destroyed it committed soul suicide which is literally what is explained to us in everything but the rain which is a body that has undergone hollow vacation needs a stabilizing agent or it will break down it will be completely destroyed and so that's exact that is what i thought i thought it was plain and simple that basically his body was just blown up in that moment because it was no longer strong enough to stave off the imbalance of rayatsu within it and when we saw that and everything but the rain i was like kubo is telling us this to explain what happened to tozem khan for your own world throws that all into whack however basically saying that eisen mercy killed tosin in this scene because apparently tozen came to him and said you know if if i ever come to a time where it looks like i am forgiving seoul society where i am ready to be assimilated back into them please kill me put me down and so eisen just sort of says incarnate for your own world but his reasoning for that moment was he just bestowed a mercy killing upon his most loyal servant a final parting gift essentially that he knew that if tozin was to be taken and assimilated back into soul society someone with such beautiful resolve and again it's this idea that i mentioned earlier of eisen having some kind of respect for the people bold enough to join him on his platform someone with that kind of resolve would just wither and die and he couldn't bear to see that that's that is okay with me that's fine but in my opinion there are parts of it that don't really work so if eisen actually respected tozen to the point where he wanted to give him a mercy killing i feel like blowing his body to smithereens in the most like grotesque fashion possible is not particularly respectful and also what doesn't really work for me is that it's patently obvious that tozen is currently enjoying a sort of a moment of reconciliation between him and kamamura and hisagi to the point where he's literally lifting his hand to his sagi's face to be like let me see your face one last time eisen just detonating him in that moment again feels a bit disrespectful he could have just waited a little bit and he's like literally smirking at komamura as he turns around and also how does he do this does he just exert his spiritual pressure to blow him up or is there a keto that's just like a bomb i don't know i just don't know if that scene works for me but it's what it said in the light novels so i'll go with it but also the idea of tozen being assimilated back into the soul society where he would then wither and die also doesn't really make sense to me because there's no way he would be assimilated back he's going to prison if he survived he's going to prison um so again that scene has always been has never sat right with me but that's a me problem and uh you know i i will take what the light novel says because i do think it is interesting that eisen will supposedly grant tosun this if that's what he so desires i think that is kind of interesting adds a new dynamic to their relationship as well and although tozen is now out of the story we do get to see him much later on in the thousand-year blood war in the everything but the rain flashback which again it is pretty nice he doesn't play a huge role here but he's overseeing the uh experiments with their their holo shinigami hybrid which would serve as the basis for each of those kind of hollow powers white which like i meant which is what i mentioned earlier about when he kind of gets offended at eisen for what he says but it's again it's cool seeing them here tozen once again has a totally different look um but again it's just nice seeing him in this instance getting to see him ever so briefly in the final arc and it's cool as well that tozen would continue to have a lingering effect on his sagi even after his betrayal you know his sagi echoes his words to find or about not being not fearing your own weapon and then even later on his sagi takes offense at kensei basically you know saying tozen was a wimp and didn't really know how to discipline his men which i again is another scene i've always found a bit weird but regardless it's cool to see that he had effect an effect on his vice captain and that is basically it for our in-depth character analysis on kaname tozen you can see by the length of the video that this is a character i have been wanting to talk about for some time this is a villain who has real character relationships in komamura and hisagi they forge this really fascinating trifecta of personalities who are always destined to clash one day and i think kubo just pulls it off masterfully i really do love their final battle i can't wait to do a video dedicated just to that at some point in the future but those relationships are key to tosin's character his almost entirely off-screen relationship with kakyo one that we just don't really get to see is also crucially important as a catalyst to his kind of villainous turn as well and his world view although hippocraft is one that i think is also just really interesting to see play out um and to see him kind of abandon the soul society just to just follow this dream of perhaps changing it one day as well i think just it works this character really works i think and i've never really although tozen is not my favorite character really by any stretch of the imagination i i enjoy him i think he looks great i think his abilities are really cool suzumushi is an awesome zanfak toe that we do not get to see a lot of like i said that ability right in the soul society arc where he kind of inverts the world is just really cool to see on the page um like i love his bankai as well and his hollow powers and everything about tozen comes together really nicely into a satisfying package of how to do a supporting villain right and i think that he is handled really really well there's an emotional core to his character in his relationship with the girl who was killed in his relationship with komamura and hisagi and you get to kind of see his destabilization in real time and i think that's just really awesome the character is handled exceptionally well and he's a joy to talk about but that's it for our video on kaname tozin what do you think of this character do you enjoy him in bleach is he one of your favorite villains what's your favorite tosun moment in the entire series perhaps a slightly deeper question is tosin in the right at all here is he right to kind of crusade against the soul society because they wouldn't deliver him and kakyo justice or perhaps you may be more see komamura's side of things let me know in the comments below i'd absolutely love to hear it don't forget subscribe guys and until next time i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 102,417

Keywords: bleach, bleach manga, bleach discussion, bleach tybw, bleach anime, bleach new anime, bleach tybw anime, bleach new chapter, bleach hell arc, MrTommo2304, MrTommo2304 Bleach, bleach anime trailer, bleach tybw trailer, bankai, tybw anime, bleach hell chapter, tybw bankai

Id: Rh6CH-VuBA4

Length: 54min 55sec (3295 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022