RYUKEN ISHIDA, THE LAST QUINCY - Bleach: Forgotten Characters #2 | Discussion

despite uru playing a major role in bleach as one of ichigo's closest friends and the vanden reich having a massive villainous presence in the back half of the series when i think of a quincy i always come back round to one particular character that of ulu's cold and distant father ryuken in my opinion ryuken truly embodies so many of the personality traits and the tropes that we've come to associate with the quincy race perhaps more so than any other character his own son included to that end ryuken is cold he is distant analytical pragmatic and an incredibly sharp dresser and he does all of this while showing great disdain for just about everyone he meets ryukin's also a wonderful example of why i do this forgotten character series a great interesting character with a fantastic design not given anywhere near enough time to shine and so in today's video bleach forgotten characters episode 2 we're going to be taking a look at uliu's father the supposed last quincy brew ken ishida before we get started on the video guys if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now if you're in the perfect place for bleach content like this every single week if you also enjoyed the video don't forget to give it some love and give it a thumbs up as it really does help get the video more exposure on youtube and it really helps support me and it means other bleach fans like yourselves get a chance to see it and if you really enjoy what i do here we also have a patreon where you can get videos like this one early and you can support me there for as little as a dollar a month everyone on screen right now is a patron of this channel and you guys have my total gratitude for letting me do what i love thank you all so very much for your support so much like tessai before him as the topic of the previous forgotten characters video ryuken is a perfect example of if you dive deep enough into bleach's rich cast of characters you will find someone at the secondary or even tertiary level who is totally fully formed completely interesting and like i said just sidelined enormously throughout the series to the point where they really don't get a chance to deliver the goods and that's a real big shame it's a real side effect of bleach having one of my favorite casts of characters in any kind of fictional series is that so many of them do fly under the radar and ryuken is one such character ryuken is interesting though in the of out of all of these characters he is one of the only ones who could be considered truly neutral in that he has no real footing in so many of the conflicts that come to pass in the series which maybe explains why he doesn't show up so often but there are also some conflicts that show up that he really should be involved in more than he is and can i also just gush about ryuken's design for a second as i mentioned earlier it's one of my favorites i think it's a top tier design in the series kubo has this innate ability to totally effortlessly make even just normal humans look completely badass and for the most part ryuken does just wear normal human attire and he looks so cool in it i love the shock of white hair the casual cigarette the glasses that obscure his eyes that kind of do just give off that totally aloof and distant heir to him and i think he just looks wonderful he looks like a cooler version of uldu in many ways and i think kubo should just be continuously praised for how great he can make even the simplest of designs look but if we're to compare ryuken to tessai once more the kind of trend of his appearances almost goes in reverse tessai appears considerably at the start of bleach only for his appearances to dwindle before eventually completely extinguishing by the final arc ryuken on the other hand takes a little while to appear in the series but at least he gets a smattering of appearances right through to the very end and to that end his manga life spans actually a bit of a strange one his first actual appearance is in chapter 124 but this is actually in a flashback albeit a flashback that shows completely new material which is why this counts as his first appearance but his first appearance in the present day is not until 186 but then he lasts in the manga right the way through to 682 but take my word for it when i say he doesn't show up a lot in the in between those goal posts and ryuken is just such a fascinating character to me in in my opinion he's kubo's attempt at showing the queen that side of the quincy that's completely cold completely analytical um almost robotic and statuesque pushed to its maximum in a sense um when you look at uru you see he had two father figures one being ryuken and the other being his grandfather so ken and it seems like they're supposed to represent total polar opposites of what it means to be a quincy and both of those personalities would kind of come together to help form early use and so to that end we may as well dive straight into ryuken's role within the plot because it's not extensive as i said his first appearance is chapter 124 in a flashback during an absolutely crucial moment of his son uryu's development uryu has discovered mayuri karatsuchi a monster responsible for numerous atrocities against the quincy clan including his own grandfather soken who as i mentioned was a warm father figure to uri when he was growing up and so uryu has taken it upon himself to destroy maori even if it means sacrificing all of his quincy powers this whole fight is about what it means to be a quincy in the face of great evil it seemed what does it mean to have pride in being a quincy and you get both sides of that perspective with these two father figures again they seem to be diametrically opposed but his grandfather so ken is much more of a traditionalist he's all about hope and helping people and really embracing what it means to be a quincy whereas ryuken is again the total opposite of that he's disregarded everything to do with his quincy heritage you want supposedly nothing to do with it because he is a man focused on business you know he is he is cold clinical ruthless and to the point to the point where uriu even confronts him as a child and says you know why do you hate the quincy so much to the point where ryuken turns around and says i've no interest in them you've no talent for them but crucially they don't make any money and this is interesting it's a potentially quite reductive motive for ryuken to have when you see how his character becomes later on he doesn't seem to be that business focused but i think what's important here is that ryukin focusing on profit is a uniquely human element to both his character and what it means to be a quincy the quincy don't have the luxury of being shinigami you know it's a shinigami's job to take down hollows to protect humans they actually get paid to do that in the soul society but that's not a quincy's job they quincy the quincy don't have an official organization like that um you know the vanden reich is about as official as it gets for a quincy and that's a genocidal racist empire that's been supposedly lost for a thousand years for a quincy this is a side gig you know it's just a thing they do to kind of try and help save humans from hollows but it doesn't make any money and ryuken does have a job as a leading doctor in the foremost hospital of karakura and he has a son to take care of as well and it's also hard to know if category his wife is actually still alive at this point in the story or not uryu does seem to be about the age ichigo was when his mother died so it's possible she is already dead at this point but it's hard to say and so ryu can at least hear it looks like his motive is fueled solely by selfish gain and that's why he's turned his back on his heritage however we can also assume that if category is dead by this point it's likely that he holds a great amount of lingering resentment towards the quincy in general because of what happened to her and that was why he turned his back on them also as a side note his hair is incorrectly colored here twice it's colored in the anime and that potentially makes a little more sense as they didn't have access to any official colorings at that point but it's i think it's like a light brown or something um but then it's also colored light brown in the official manga coloring as well which is interesting because kubo quite clearly wanted ryuken to have white hair from even a young child through to where he is in the present day because he has white hair in everything but the rain um so just a fun little note there that they somehow managed to get that wrong in the coloring as well but after uliyu returns from the seoul society now weak and effectively powerless is when ryuken shows up in the present day and this is an awesome awesome moment it's just a great moment in bleach in general and really it was talking about ishii that made me want to talk about ryuken as ryuken appears in the story around the same time as ishin is revealed to be a shinigami and so the secrets of the fathers are beginning to be tantalizingly spilled and this is a part of the story now where the scope of the fighting has grown to such an extent that even these bystanders who were originally in the shadows and now having to get involved but i just want to say briefly that i love the way uruyu fights this menos grande that tries to kill him even though he is effectively powerless we get to see quincy science and magic on full display here as he uses jinto he pulls these tubes and these wires out of small hidden compartments on his body uses abilities like heisen to tear off the hollow's arm and even wraps this wire around a tree i love seeing that sort of resourcefulness i love seeing him push to the brink like that and showing really everything a quincy can do in that kind of situation and again you get the idea that compared to the vast military of the soul society who have their magical zan puck toe to help them fight a quincy is a human at the end of the day and they have to get scrappy to fight hollows and i i really liked seeing that but as if to make a show of power and to make a real point for ryuken arrives on the scene by annihilating the menos grande in almost a single hit tearing off its massive tongue with a massive arrow blast and ryuken arrives on the scene putting down uru straight away which is of course going to be a running kind of factor of this character he basically walks onto the scene saying you've gotten clumsy over you and the impression you get of their relationship is that they are not on great terms clearly they're quite distant from one another maybe haven't even seen each other for a little while um obviously calling his father by his first name as well they aren't they are not close and that is quite clear from the off and rukin's design again is just so good here and i love the fact that he is seemingly opposed within himself he continually goes on about how he wishes he didn't have quincy powers he says unfortunately mine are not so easy to be rid of as yours um but he also takes a certain pride in being a quincy like he never lost that pride that he had as a young man his tie is emblazoned with small crosses and he even now bears the quincy cross of his father claiming himself to be the last quincy and this is a pretty big moment for ryuken's character as he draws the quincy cross from within his clothes and holds it up again seemingly with some kind of tainted pride like he doesn't want this but it is his and he's going to carry this burden that his father has left him uh and it seems again like he's also mocking uryu here for having lost his powers being like i'm the last quincy now i hold that ryuken ishida holds that title and obviously urdu is like totally shocked thinking his father didn't care about quinces he hated quincy didn't want anything to do with them and reuken's kind of like well that's all true but it doesn't mean i'm not a quincy you know i have to have these powers whether i like them or not but ryuken offers to help uru retrieve his lost powers and i do question his motive here where you can you get the impression he's showing up on the scene in uru's life for potentially the first time properly in a short while anyway and he just immediately offers to help his son get his powers back because he's clearly feeling you know kind of dejected maybe even slightly useless or slightly worthless even though he's trying his absolute best he's the one who came away from seoul society worst of all so what is ryuken's motive here although he despises quincy's he wants to help uru become one again and i do wonder if again we come back around that issue of pride whether or not ryuken likes quincy's is irrelevant the ishida family is supposed to be a family of quincy's and he can't have his son running around fighting hollows like some scrappy mutt it could be something like that or it could even be that he does actually hold some kind of affectionate feelings towards his child i think that is probably the case he's not quite as cold and callous and heartless as he appears on the surface he probably laments seeing earlier so weak from both a pride perspective but also the fact that he does care about him and he wants to help him regain that power ryuken offers to restore ulu's quincy powers but with an ultimatum attached and that is that he cannot associate himself with shinigami ever again and it's obviously a pretty big deal but at the end of the day it's quite a flimsy ultimatum and ryuken must have known that uriu wasn't going to keep it and yeah he still trains him anyway so what it comes down to is i think ryuken does an awful lot of keeping up appearances like he definitely does harbor some ill will towards ishin because of their shared past because of what happened to masaki as we'll get into later on but at the same time i think the actual truth of this character is that most of that is a front and the reality is that he does care for uru he does care even for urus friends and he does actually have some semblance of friendship with ishii after everything they've been through once again we will get to everything but the rain but clearly ryuken's current attitude conflicts greatly with how he was as a young man as a teenager he cared immensely about continuing the quincy line ensuring the ishida quincy line remained pure and just being all focused in on the future of the quincy to the point where he was even going to enter into a marriage he wasn't entirely sure the participants wanted because it would continue that quincy line and after what became of both masaki and his future wife katagiri because of yuhabak it's not hard to see that he would eventually seal himself away from the quincy race but little mementos like his thai for instance do continue to act as clues towards his true nature so early you undergo some very intense training with ryuken in an underground training chamber beneath the hospital and you kind of wonder why ryuken has this chamber if he doesn't like being a quincy if he's not interested in even having his powers um maybe he comes down here to train secretly maybe it was built for the purpose of getting over you his powers back it's hard to say it is interesting that characters like urahara and ishin actually know where it is so i wonder if maybe it's been here for an awfully long time but regardless the training session is brutal it is tough on urdu as ryuken pushes him as far as he can go ryuken's power is really teased here you get to see him one hand in his pockets the other hand just blasting a volley of arrows um almost like a rapid fire gun with only with only one hand shows you the kind of level of expertise he actually has uriu does manage to get the drop on him right at the end of the training session and he uses grits to try and basically immobilize him rather than actually injure him probably out of some kind of latent sentimental feelings towards his father but ryuken chastises him for it burns through the trap with a massive arrow and blasts uryu in the heart and i absolutely love the end of this training session i think it's really really cool uriu crashes to the ground this kind of quincy emblem now burned into his chest and ryuken says that the only way to retrieve your quincy powers that were lost is to push your body and your mind to the absolute brink and then be shot i think it's something like 19 millimeters to the left of the heart xenoatrial node or something like that for whatever reason um to jump start your quincy powers again and that's really kind of cool it's cool that early gets his powers back thanks to his father and this is what i mean when i say ryuken doesn't do an awful lot in the series but the actions he does do are far-reaching you know he helps early retrieve his powers much in the same way as ishin would help his son in the future and also he helps create the item that would destroy the big bad at the very end of the series so ryuken doesn't do a lot but what he does do has a big rippling effect it's interesting as well that for a race that is depicted as being so kind of callous and almost heartless very sterile and clinical in the way they do things that so much of what makes a quincy what can both make and break a quincy is to do with the heart you know ryuken revitalizes rejuvenates urus quincy powers by blasting him in the heart and many quincy are killed by a blood clot forming in the heart thanks to the ability of their king you harbach so it's quite interesting that the heart plays such a vital role in a race that is so often considered to barely have one and i do adore the end of this training session this is one of my favorite ryuken scenes in the series where he kind of looks down at early who is unconscious at this point he says you know you should have attacked me with heisen instead of grits you could have actually wounded me but you chose not to you make me sick but maybe i'll let it slide this time i think that's really just really i love that panel brilliant use of negative space of ryuken looking down at his son and clearly there is something there like they don't utterly hate each other that rukin does care for him a bit and he's maybe even a bit proud that uri was able to go through with the training and has now become a quincy once more after uru gets his powers back it seems like they continue training for a little bit longer which makes a lot of sense but during a period of time ryuken slips out for a smoke break urahara sneaks in and whisks uryu away and then ryuken i guess comes back in although it seems like a lot of time has passed since then and sees a note left behind by his son um which he doesn't seem overly happy about but also not too surprised to see either the note i'm presuming basically thanks ryuken for helping uru restore his powers but he chooses not to read it and then ishin arrives on the scene for another very nice little conversation between these two um and it's interesting again like i mentioned ishii knows where this place is so presumably this training center is pretty old um but ryuken calls ishin kurosaki which ishin is surprised about and perhaps that is ryuken's way of signifying that he has you know let masaki go he's finally willing to call ishiin by her surname as we know that's obviously not his surname presumably he was calling him shiba up until now or maybe just ishin i guess um but i'm guessing that is what that's supposed to symbolize is that ryuken has finally accepted that he can call him by her surname thanks you know due to their combined past maybe it was difficult for him ambry you can plays coy but it definitely seems as though he allowed uru to leave to assist his friends much as ishin speculates um and then interestingly ishin actually sits down as opposed to leaving so it seems like maybe they're gonna have some kind of a catch up after this scene ends and unfortunately for ryuken he's not seen now for nearly 20 volumes of the series which is absolutely insane um and i just want to go briefly to one of the most disappointing cliffhanger resolutions in the series for me personally which is in the fake karakura town arc we've talked about this before on the channel but the mysterious foot that appeared to stop eisen uh when he was in the real karakura town you know so many theories were being flung about is this finally the zero division stepping in is it tessai as we mentioned last time but one of the absolute biggest ones was maybe this is ryuken showing up as he must be in karakura and there's no way he's unconscious tessai at least makes some sense in that he's probably protecting ginta and urudu but ryuken should be there and i'm also not accepting the idea that he's not getting involved in this conflict because karakola town is at risk which means he is at risk he probably would have been killed by eisen and yet apparently he doesn't get involved so he's just clearly chilling somewhere um which does feel like a big missed opportunity to see him in action ryuken's next scene however in the lost agent arc and this is a really interesting appearance for this character not only do we get to see him actively doing his job as a doctor in the biggest hospital of karakoram town where he is now saving his son who was attacked by ginjo and tsukishima but he also calls up ichigo and orihime because he obviously values their friendship with uru to some degree and he thinks they should be actively sharing information between them because ryuken clearly understands that they work best as a team but as we've said before the lost agent arc is all about these guys being totally dysfunctional as friends ulu's pride but also the fact he's unclear on the situation means he doesn't share anything with these guys at all and it's instead left up to ryuken to dish out the details it is also kind of funny though that ryuken knows what buttons to press to annoy uryu and so his constant you know barbs and the fact that he jabs him all the time verbally must be making the situation a lot worse and and probably pushing uru to not say anything at all but ryuken understands that they are all allies at the end of the day and it's also just kind of weird and alien to see him acting in definitely more of a fatherly way than he ever did in the iran car arc where you know he's basically saying to ichigo like you need to get home or your dad's going to throw a fit at me and i'll drive horahime home because you know it's not safe that's just really it's just strange to see but i like it because it comes across as more mature almost like he is taking his role as a father a little more seriously but it's also nice here that he drops our first hints as to the nature of the villains that this arc when he tells arahime that he thinks they are human and that their rayatsu is like nothing he's ever seen before and he speculates it might be closer to that of chad and arahimes it's also really funny to me as well that he drops this like bombshell on arahime that you know you might be attacked next and then he's like alright we'll see you i'm going to drive you home now like you know i'm going to drive you home back to your apartment where you'll be on your own but don't worry you might be attacked next i always thought that was kind of funny but it's a nice scene nonetheless and then we get to the thousand-year blood war arc and this is obviously absolutely the most frustrating part of this character um for an arc about the quincy's about quincy history about bringing the quincy shinigami conflict into the modern day ryuken should have had such an active role in this there's no reason why he shouldn't the main villain killed his wife and i like that ryuken was working in the in the behind the scenes to eventually create something that would kill you hard work but that was also way before even bleach's present day story began so at the very start it's just kind of strange to envision what kind of role reuken had in this story because it doesn't seem like he's working with urahara it doesn't seem like he and ishin are really conversing and it doesn't really seem like he's even spoken to his son either which is strange so for me i think it would have made an awful lot of sense and gone a really long way to have uru and ryuken have some kind of cryptic discussion before uruyu was revealed to be with the vanden reich i think that really should have happened and i think ryuken could have dropped some very early hints about the still silver arrow ulu could have dropped some kind of tease about his true nature because as i've mentioned in my video about uru's role in this arc no one really bought that uri was a bad guy from the off and it seems like the only reason kubo wouldn't have shown udu consulting anybody prior to his supposed defection is because he wanted us to think that maybe he had maybe he had actually turned but it's so it's very strange that ryuken must be aware of the fact that vanden reich is back must be aware of the fact you harbach is back and doesn't seem to do anything until right at the very end of the battles so that's that's always been kind of weird to me but we'll get into that kubo does however dive really deep into ryuken's backstory and the history of the ishida family which to be honest i did love and everything everything but the rain is done exceptionally well so a small detail about everything but the rain uh is that so ken ishida is clearly a pretty bad father and that kind of does change your perspective of the character as he appears in the soul society arc and it also explains a lot about his relationship with ryuken ryuken is a teenager in this mini arc kind of you know a young man at this point and almost almost like the man of the house because his father seemingly is never around and some this is something that ryuken's mother uriu's grandmother is actively annoyed about so clearly this happens a lot but she mentions that soaking is currently at flintfeld i believe fifth field which is just basically apparently a training facility which we never get to see unfortunately um i almost wonder if like fifth field is maybe the name of the training facility underneath the hospital if that's been there that long it's kind of hard to say but so ken clearly cared more about you know increasing his own powers as a quincy then he really did spending time with his family and that like i said explains an awful lot about the the kind of earliest appearance of ryuken in that he's he doesn't really approve of his father doesn't approve of uru hanging around him and maybe that's another layer of why he had that motivation to begin with he thinks that so ken really prioritized being a quincy over even his own family and that's not something ryuken wanted to replicate and it is kind of interesting because it does kind of seem like not that being a quincy is something you should grow out of but like that is everything that so ken was even by the time he was an old man and maybe he really sacrificed his family for that and perhaps he was trying to make amends by spending a lot of time with his grandson but ryuken wasn't having it because of the bad relationship they had in the past who knows i'm just speculating but feels to me like that might make sense but i do also want to talk briefly about soken now and just how old this character actually is and it makes me wonder this whole story arc makes me wonder just how much these particular quincy in the almost modern day knew about the vanden reich and yuha buck we find out in chapter 674 when ryuken and ishin arrive at varvelt that soken had a gate of the sun key that's how they access it ryuken says that he's amazed that this decades old pass still lets them in and ishin says yeah we should be grateful that your old man stole one but just before he was banished that tells you right then and there that so ken was a member of the vanden right there's no other way around it that's why he has a key to the gate of the sun but that also implies that so ken is about a thousand years old if not older than that and so things do start getting a bit weird here but i also think i have an explanation for how this all makes sense but there are a few key questions here before we get into that as well is so ken over a thousand years old does the vandenrike maybe exist in some form in the human world and why was so ken banished in the first place so the first question about soken's age yes i think he probably is over a thousand years old two no i don't think the vanden right did exist in any form in the human world whatsoever and three why was so ken banished it seems to me like so can probably disagreed with the vanden reich's kind of genocidal schemes the schemes of their leader and also we know according to kyrgyz opie that sokin didn't really agree with the phantom reich's evolution with moving away from the more primitive bow and arrow to using the shrift i assume he wasn't a big fan of that either because it is kind of cultish it's very cultish very weird and it does kind of give you the impression of these extremists almost doing whatever they can to become powerful enough to exact revenge later on so my guess is so ken was part of that original vanden reich army maybe even a stern writer who attacked the soul society a thousand years ago he was part of the survivors who then hid in the shadows and just looking at the ages of yugram and basby we can assume pretty handily that these guys don't really age in the shadows at all because now they're aging on soul society time so so ken spends plenty of time there doesn't really age that much and is then banished from the shadow realm stealing one of the gate of the sun keys as he go as he does and lives out exile in the human world and it's here that he you know met uriu's grandmother and i guess began to age normally which is why he's an a relatively oldish man by the time we see him with urdu in their flashbacks pretty much that is my best guess as to what is going on here with so ken ishida so ryuken reveals as a teenager that he's actually being set up to marry masaki who is the last of the kurosaki pure blood quincy line and they're doing this union um to continue the quincy bloodline which you know this whole idea of blood purity and making sure the line it exists is obviously a little bit strange but when you look at it from their perspective their race has been nearly completely obliterated by the shinigami 200 years prior to the main storyline they're doing everything they can to kind of keep themselves alive but obviously ryuken kind of claims to really care about this whole pure blood ideology this lineage that he's got going on the future of the quincy line and the quincy clan but we also meet katagiri who is a half half-blood or gimmiched quincy um who and the half-blood quincy's are the ones the pure blood send out into battle because they're more expendable in their eyes um and category kind of sees through ryuken's not really a facade but almost like he's tricking himself into believing that he cares more about this sort of thing she says that you know despite the rules and the laws and the traditions of the quincy that would force you into a marriage like this you're a person of kindness who thinks that love should be a part of a quincy marriage even though it traditionally hasn't really ever been um and maybe that's a big part of the the kind of clash that so ken and uru's grandmother have is that they were a you know union of the quincy in there and not really um not maybe not really ever in love uh but ryuken so already here is shown to be on the surface trying to project quincy values but maybe not really actually that into them it is a shame we don't get to see ryuken and katagiri fight because they do look awesome kind of dressed up in their quincy outfits that they put on in everything but the rain but regardless ryuken again shows his disdain for the rules here by trying to cover up that masaki was bitten by a hollow despite the devastating effects that will have on their whole quincy family tree however katagiri goes behind his back and tells ryuken's mother the truth about masaki which leads to masaki being scolded and this is interesting because katagiri i think didn't do this out of spite or out of malice but because she really believed that ryuken wanted the quincy family line to continue that she really believed that in his heart of hearts ryuken was going to go through this marriage even though he didn't want to because that's the kind of person he was and that she could show him her loyalty to the quincy lineage to the quincy family line by basically giving masaki up um but masaki obviously collapses the hollow hole starts to form and there's another interesting part here wherever you ken's mother is shown to have been attacked by a hollow there's the bruise on the scarring on her leg and that would have obviously tainted her in the eyes of the quincy so again i wonder if maybe that is why soken is so distant from her because again it's maybe not that nice a person it's hard to say but ryuken now meets urohara and ishin in their fated meeting and ryuken really blames ishin for what's happening to masaki but crucially he also blames himself as well inside you know he's going over and over the fact that i should have been there i should have stopped her from leaving this is all my fault and maybe that is regret that he harbours for a very long time moving forwards but urahara basically breaks it down to them how they can save her life and ryuken quickly deduces that ishii is the one who's going to have to make the sacrifice and this is obviously ryuken's kind of more calculating and pragmatic side coming out because he really just weighs up the situation in terms of advantages and disadvantages basically saying there's no way uh ishin would ever go through with this because it's just disadvantages for him basically not really taking into account the way a shiba or a kurasaki would actually act so when ryuken is truly taken aback by the fact that ishin will just do it anyway because you know he kind of owes her and he feels if he didn't help her out when she needed it you know he'd never be able to look at himself the same way again the fact that that kind of isshins response flies in the face of logic shows you the difference between masaki and ryuken ishin and ryuken and crucially the kurosakis and the ishidas so although ryuken probably does harbor lingering resentment towards ishin i also do wonder if he was grateful as well because it does seem like ryuken cares genuinely greatly about masaki whether he was actually in love with her or not actually want to marry her i'm not entirely sure but he definitely does seem to care about her and really feels the weight of what happens to her on his shoulders so you have to assume he was a bit grateful towards ishin for stepping up to save her but the final scene of ryuken in everything but the rain is another of my absolute favorites for this character he leaves urahara's shop dejected you know feeling like he can no longer protect the quincy race if he couldn't protect masaki he can't do anything and the rain is pouring on him he looks like a broken man he's sodden um and then who should kind of come and find him in his moment of need but category you know she's there with an umbrella and she basically says you know i'm not going to hear this i know i don't want you to be sad i said to you that i would dedicate my life to you from the moment i laid eyes on you from the moment we first met and i will continue to do that now um and really what this is is a roundabout way of category explaining her feelings to ryukin i think ryuken realizes that she has always been there for him and they decided to go back to the house together it's a lovely lovely scene that really encapsulates ryuken's character arc in everything but the reign so very well and later we discovered that ryuken basically was the one who decided masaki should leave the ishida household the official line being that she is tainted now but ishiin speculates probably correctly that it was a lot easier for the to move on with masaki gone and so clearly it took a long time for ryuken to accept the fact that maybe ishin and masaki got married it took him a long time to actually call ish in kurosaki we then do finally get to see a present day version of ryuken in the final arc in one of my favorite shots of this character in the entire series uh i think it's just so very well done but basically ishin reveals that around the same time masaki lost her powers ryuken's wife katagiri collapsed and then eventually died and the reason for this was because yu habakk deemed her unclean and he stole her powers in an effort to retrieve his own and because category was already slightly sickly that finished her off basically and that there's a lovely shot of ryuken looking out of his office window at the moon at the rain with the photo of category on the desk behind him and you can only imagine what's going through his head at this point in time like i said he must be aware that uh has returned so you kind of have to wonder what is going through his head and i'm thinking ryuken is probably thinking about that moment with category when she kind of expressed her feelings for him in the rain as it's raining at the moment he's thinking about what happened to her the day she died and they left that hole in their family and he's probably also thinking about the autopsy he performed on her and the silver blood clot he found and it's difficult to know if he's actually fashioned the still silver arrowhead or not yet maybe he made it the moment he found the blood clot or maybe he waited until uh bark came back to make it i think it was great that we got to see him searching for this blood clot but i really wish we had also seen him forge the arrow i think that would have been really cool like a really powerful moment but unfortunately we don't get that but instead i'm guessing what you can is thinking about what his son is currently doing the risks uru is taking and the fact that the ishida family is potentially close to finally avenging category and much later ryuken does get a chance to exact that revenge and you do get a nice flashback of who are you basically talking to ichigo about not wanting to become a doctor because of something traumatic he saw his father doing as a young boy and that was him continually autopsying on his wife's dead body now we would eventually find out that this was for a good reason but for ulyu this was a horrible thing to witness and it and he didn't understand what his father was doing and it made him not want to become a doctor but at the end of the series uru has become a doctor clearly because he realized what his father was doing was was something good in the end and so finally ryuken arrives at varvelt with ishin right at the very end of the series and i know we all hoped that they would fight it really felt like they were going to it seemed like almost the perfect setup i was certain that ryuken was going to intervene in the fight between uryu and hash wealth just as early was about to be killed but it doesn't happen hashwath is taken out by yuhabak and then ryuken arrives at the battle scene to give uriu the still silver arrowhead now the still silver arrow is very controversial and i want to make a video on it in its entirety at some other point but i will say i really love this moment i wish there had been more build up i would have loved to have seen whether you can make the arrow at some point have a conversation with urlu prior to this but i actually think this does work quite nicely um i think this whole scene is just done so very well it feels like a culmination of their relationship i think ryuken deciding that ulyu should be the one to fire the arrow is a is a really big moment for him katagiri was his wife and obviously he feels awful about what happened and he wants revenge but in a way he's done his part by finding the blood clot and forging the arrow but katagiri was also uru's mother and so ryuken clearly feels that he can give this to his son to get revenge for her as well so both members of the family are able to do something that you know culminates in the downfall of this monstrous quincy all father it is a bit of a shame that ishin just sort of tags along at this point but at the same time he is there to witness the still silver arrow being passed along and the results of ryuken's work and in a sense by being there he's able to honor masaki's life and of course ryuken wearing his quincy outfit here for the first time since presumably the end of everything but the rain is very significant as well um as he must expect this to be the end of yuhabuk it's a big deal he's honoring katagiri by wearing this outfit but also it reinforces the idea that he turned his back on the quincy after what happened to her and now that he's expecting her killer to finally be brought to justice he's comfortable wearing this outfit again and so i'd be really interested actually in seeing ryuken in the future of bleach if he is actually fully embraced the mantle of being a quincy once more and of course the reason i do really like the still silver arrow at the end of the day is it's a message not just from the ishida family who were left with a huge hole in their heart but a message from all quincy who have been ruthlessly used by their supposed father one thing that makes me think ryuken crafted the arrowhead perhaps earlier than the thousand-year blood war is that ryuken tells uru that it was so ken who explained to him the still silver arrow essentially the concept of still silva that clogs the the heart and causes a quincy to die after al's valen so maybe that was a coming together of father and son in revenge for uru's mother but also i wonder if uru's grandmother was maybe killed by ausvalin as well because she was tainted after being attacked by a hollow so all of the issue of men maybe had some stake in this and it was so ken who told ryuken about this whole thing ryuken who forged the arrowhead and uliu who fired it alright but that's it for this episode of bleach forgotten characters this was longer than i was expecting it's quite extensive maybe ryuken does a little more than i gave him credit for but i don't think that's the case i think ryuken's just a very interesting character with an awful lot of baggage and i'm really happy to have finally been able to talk about him in some detail i really hope you enjoyed this video guys let me know in the comments below what's your favorite ryuken moment in the series do you wish you'd seen more of this character and would you have liked to have seen him intervene in the battle against hash wolf let me know in the comments below don't forget to subscribe but until next time guys i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 51,243

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, uryu bleach, bleach quincy, bleach ryuken

Id: XBTm0-0h4oM

Length: 43min 34sec (2614 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 04 2022