THE FIRST DIVISION - An In-Depth History and Overview | Bleach: THE GOTEI 13 Series

despite being the division of the captain commander himself the first division of the goatee 13 has always felt like to me at least that it has an undeniable air of mystery surrounding it and i think that stems from the fact that we're never really allowed to get up close and personal with this particular division they always feel like they are quite aloof and separate from the rest of the goatee 13 even when they seem to be bearing the weight of soul society's own history on their shoulders what little we seemingly do know about the first division is that it is a division made up of seemingly quite mature shinigami seemingly shinigami that are acting as model examples for the rest of the officers within the court guard squads and i imagine that most of these officers are following the enduring legacy set by yamamoto and sasakibe and so join me as we begin this new short series in the run-up to the anime where we recap the individual divisions of the goatee 13 we look at the prominent figures of each division their role in the bleach storyline and a timeline of events that takes us to where that division is in the present day before we start the video however if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now as you're in the perfect place for bleach content like this every single week and if you enjoyed this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up as well as it really helps me and the channel it shows the video some love on the old youtube algorithm it means that more bleach fans like yourselves get a chance to see it and if you want to take that support for me a little step further we do also have a patreon for the channel as well where you can get videos like this one early and you can support me there for as little as a dollar a month and of course every name on screen right now is somebody doing just that they're supporting me over there on patreon helping me do what i love and bringing you bleach content like this every single week so as always an enormous shout out to all of you thank you so very much and before we dive into this video just a warning beforehand that we will be discussing the events of the thousand-year blood war arc of the bleach manga so if you haven't yet had a chance to read it or you're simply waiting for the anime then do be warned there are spoilers ahead so let's begin with a general overview of the first division as i said before they're a strange one i think they don't really ever kind of open themselves up to us as readers as i suppose and i think that does stem from the fact that they are definitely a very mature division and that obviously isn't helped by the fact that it's headed by two extremely old men and even the third seat okakeba is also seemingly quite ancient as well but this division absolutely embodies the soul society itself it is soul society's own wills and laws personified um and that is of course reinforced by those prominent figureheads shigakuni genresi yamamoto is one of the most enduring icons of authority and power the soul society has ever seen in fact he is the founder of the goatee 13 and for at least over a thousand years according to yamamoto himself no shinigami was born that was stronger than he was and then there's his vice captain chojiro tadaoki sasaki bay a steadfast icon of loyalty someone who stood by his captain's side right through to the very end and i think these two characters truly embody the core tenets of what it means to be a member of the first division all the shinigami within this division i believe are meant to be exemplary examples of what it means to be a model shinigami they're supposed to be groomed for leadership and in a position where they can be an example to everybody else um it takes it's a great honor to be accepted into the first division because it is quite a big deal and i think that contributes to this whole idea of the first division feeling very separate from the rest of them we kind of see many of the antics that the other divisions get up to but the first division has always had this almost air of superiority but also you know longevity about it as well it's been around and and potentially in this totally unchanged form since the earliest days of the goatee 13 and in that sense it is almost like that anchor point of the goatee it has never seemingly never changed at least not that we know anyway um up until of course the seismic events of the thousand-year blood war and in many ways it's this absolute transformation of the first division that helped make those early days of the thousand-year blood walk so captivating to me at least anyway and you really see it shift from this kind of steadfast traditionalist division that seems to embody the kind of oldest values of the soul society potentially to a fault into something brand new blossoming into something a little more unorthodox a little edgier perhaps something that's not quite going to abide by the laws um to the letter as much as yamamoto did and at least until the thousand-year blood war that really is what the first division stood for soul society its ancient traditions and following the law abiding by the law the law of soul society should be respected and adhered to above all else and we see this to a fault in the soul society arc yamamoto is so desperate to follow the laws passed down by the central 46 that he is effectively blinded by them you see this clash of ideals between yamamoto and his prodigal sons ukitake and kyoraku the two of them are seeking what they know or at least believe to be true justice a true sense of their own law taking it into their own hands whereas yamamoto is unflinching relentless in the way he won't question what he is being told the laws that are being passed down um and of course is having the rug pulled out from underneath him by eisen the entire time to the point where he would condemn an innocent soul to death simply to follow the laws of soul society this all feeds in nicely to the division's personal insignia each of the 13 divisions of the goatee 13 have a flower as their insignia and the first divisions is the chrysanthemum which here symbolizes the seeking of truth and innocence which again takes us right back to that idea of justice the first division seemingly like you know the keepers of truth and justice within the soul society meeting out punishments to those they believe deemed necessary um but as i mentioned a minute ago to a fault in the fact that their quest for justice can blind even their best judgment and of course the fact that the first division is such a stalwart such a bastion for soul society's laws and ways that's why it's such a big deal and such good character development for yamamoto that he's able to bend even slightly into granting ichigo his powers back in the lost agent arc that shows you just the magnitude and the weight of the debt that yamamoto clearly felt they owed ichigo rightfully so as well for saving them all from eisen um but i really did like that although yamamoto you know he's quite statuesque quite unflinching in his in the way he acts the way he looks as you would be if you'd been alive for several millennia again bearing that soul society weight as a burden on your shoulders yamamoto may not look outwardly any different as time goes by but inside he is changing ever so slightly and that is shown so well in that big moment where he openly defies soul society law quite brazenly because he feels they owe ichigo and i think that's a great moment and that also shows as well the changing tides of the first division the chrysanthemum also symbolizes loyalty and longevity two things again that seem very uh abundant within the first division as i mentioned both the figureheads yamamoto and sasaki bay are both clearly quite old men and okie kiba is as well and you kind of you really do get that impression from the first division they are the traditional kind of no i don't want to say elderly division but you know what you know what i mean again and again that does give them that air of superiority that they kind of not necessarily lord it over everyone else but it is that a real mark of respect for a shinigami to make it into that division in the first place and then of course the idea of loyalty is absolutely embodied by sas akiva perhaps more than anyone the first division's official color is apparently deep purple which makes again a ton of sense because outside of the actual royal palace they seemingly are about the closest thing to royalty within the goatee 13 and deep purple in particular is a very regal color there is a real air of regality to it and so you can really associate that with yamamoto who although he would never claim to be royalty you kind of get that sense with the amount of respect he commands and the amount of ore he commands among the shinigami as well so it makes sense for this division to have and bear that color now the first division has no special duties of it of itself but as i mentioned they are expected to be model shinigami for the rest of the goats a13 to follow as an example and in many cases i've always felt that the first division acts as almost a standard bearer for the soul society they are supposed to live and breathe the most traditional and ancient values of the soul society and the goatee 13 as a military organization this is wonderfully um embodied and reinforced by yamamoto during the fight with eisen when he puts everything on the line including the lives of his fellow officers when he uses ennetsu jigoku seemingly to obliterate the entire battlefield and he says that you know to fight and die in the service of stopping great evil that is what it means to be a member of the goatee 13. and i love that i think that right there perhaps more than anything else in the story absolutely sums up what it means to be a member of the first division it is to uphold the laws and values of soul society to prevent as he says great evil even if it means at the cost of your own life and another small point about that as well more about yamamoto psyche perhaps than anything but it's really nice how um he doesn't want ichigo to be caught up in his attack but also that stems again from these very traditional values that he doesn't see each ago as really a part of the goatee because he's a human even though he goes fully on their side and the shinigami as well at that point so it's both quite a nice thing that he doesn't want to get ichigo caught up but he also is perhaps too unwavering in in his belief that ichigo is not one of them um and this also seems to stem to his response to orahime as well he doesn't want his arm to be restored by her because she's a human and she shouldn't be involved interestingly we find out in the thousand-year blood war arc that the first divisions barracks actually sit right on top of the grand central underground prison itself and for some reason this just never really clocked to me until that moment i always kind of thought the prison would be kind of closer to the vicinity of central 46 but of course it absolutely makes a ton of sense that it would be here these shinigami as i mentioned are always seeking justice and innocence and it makes a lot of sense then their barracks will be situated directly on top of the sinners essentially of soul society and of course being the division of the captain commander himself the first division barracks are very impressive uh yamamoto's personal office has a pretty wonderful view that we get to see a couple of times but also the barracks host the meeting halls for both captains and vice captains as well and so i think a principal reason then why we don't ever really get a sense of necessarily the inner workings of the first division outside of a pretty nice tradition that yamamoto runs where he hosts a tea party for all of the members once a month is that because yamamoto and to even greater extent sasakibe are quite distant characters from ichigo our main character whom this world essentially revolves around for us as readers that's why they feel very distant because yamamoto doesn't have a close relationship with each other he has a working relationship with him at best and as i mentioned earlier of all the captains he's probably one of the few who really doesn't consider ichigo a part of them properly so especially compared to divisions like the 11th and the 6th for example um yamamoto does keep kind of a fair distance from ichigo just because that's what the way the plot and the world building would have it um and so that's really why i think the first division felt and has and used to feel at least quite distant from us as readers but their story and their role within the world of bleach um is quite a fascinating one in that it kind of goes in a direction i don't think i really ever expected um and so their role is to you know at least at the start of the series is to meet out those laws of this that the central 46 um put down uh ensure that they're being upheld ensure that seoul society is you know following this rule of law and the authority and a lot of that authority comes from the first division and that kind of carries on into the iran karak but you really get the sense as you move into the lost agent that yamamoto is softening the the first division in general is softening and that of course leads to their cataclysmic fate at the start of the thousand-year blood war where the first division is essentially completely dismantled and that's fascinating to me what happened to the first division is tragic but also like really really cool for the story's timeline and the continuity that within the say ray tape um so we'll kind of we'll kind of talk about it more in detail a little bit as we move on to the prominent figures but essentially they get raised to the ground both figuratively and literally and then replaced with a younger newer model essentially that changes up the way they do things slightly and i feel like we do get a little bit more of a personal insight into how the first division actually works so let's now look at some prominent figures of the first division of the goatee 13 and let's start with the obvious one shigakuni gen ryusai yamamoto um this incredibly ancient stalwart defender of seoul society the founder of the goatee 13 and originally a truly violent thug a criminal who gathered other like-minded and equally violent people with him to basically form the court guard squads and yamamoto from over a thousand years ago slowly changed although although he remained an authoritarian a figure of power uh within the soul society although he remained that he changed his heart softened he allowed the vizards to retake their positions after losing them despite the fact that they have hollow powers he allowed ichigo to restore his powers despite that being a brazen offense in the eyes of soul society law and all of this led eventually to yamamoto's downfall and death i've discussed what happens to this character in the thousand-year blood war extensively in my yamamoto's downfall video but the way kubo took this pretty rigid character and gave him some unexpected character development i thought was honestly inspired in the thousand-year blood war now for just a little bit of history despite the fact that this is a historic squad of shinigami that really does stretch back to ancient days of seoul society we find out precious little unfort and that's a shame that's a real shame and i would have loved to have learned more you know i'd have loved to have seen the original goatee for instance but we do get the briefest of insights into some of yamamoto's history anyway we know of course that yamamoto founded the shino academy that all shinigami must go through or at least most of them anyway um about 2100 years before the start of the bleach story and so it's difficult to say if this flashback we get of him and sassakibe is before or after the goatee 13 has been formed i'm inclined to say it's after because they are already wearing shihaku show which is the unif the standard uniform of the soul society military um although that also raises some serious questions and i don't really want to get too much into it um but let's just let's just break this down very briefly because it's fun sassa ki bay uh in this flashback notes to yamamoto that he has achieved bankai now it's it's said that sasakibe learned and mastered ban kai even before kyoraku and ukitake were alive and they are already two of the oldest captains in the series we also find out from driscoll when he's using koko gondry riku and some other characters as well that sasuke hadn't used bankai in over 2 000 years which puts this scene with him and yamamoto i think anyway very very close to the founding of the school and i'm kind of guessing that's where yamamoto is in this flashback because the flashback explicitly calls him the founder of the school and he mentions about being an instructor so where does that leave us in relation to the founding of the goatee 13 itself has it been founded yet is yamamoto still a thuggish criminal at this point i'd seriously doubt it because i think him founding this school was a big part of what changed him and also where does senju maru shutara fit into all of this because it's i believe heavily implied if not confirmed in the supplementary material but her contribution to get her into the zero division was the shinigami attire the shihaku show which is an absolutely worthy invention but if yamamoto is already wearing it that means senju maru has already created it which i guess would imply that the goatee 13 is already around or these are the absolute earliest days so i'm guessing it took a while for senjumaru to be promoted because she knows who maya is and mairie is absolutely not 2 000 years old so that's a little bit of a of a kind of messes up your mind a bit thinking about that none of that is really that important right now i just thought it was quite a fun tangent what's important is that yamamoto founded the school school has no real direct affiliation to the first division outside the fact he founded it and he was an instructor there and this was over two thousand years ago sasaki bay has been loyal to him for that time as well impressing him with his bankai back then and then effectively becoming the vice captain as well i am i'm kind of fascinated by this flashback though i can't really leave it alone is this the absolute oldest period of time we have ever seen in the bleach manga because this is definitely older than the hash wealth and basbe flashback that's about a thousand years old because it's just on the precipice of uhobark's invasion of soul society so this must be about a thousand years or so before that because it's prior to chojiro using his barangay so that's kind of crazy to think about and it's really awesome and honestly if the anime expands on anything i'd love more that sort of thing i would really i would happily take that but we mostly know yamamoto's storyline from here on out like i said at the start of bleach he acts as that real authoritarian figure you know trying to punish guinea chimaru for allowing the ryoka to leave trying to kind of crack the whip on the troublemaker kyoraku and ukitake who he clearly thinks kyoku is a bad influence on um and going so far as to actually try and basically kill them with ryujin jakkur when he learns that they have stopped the execution and are going against the will of seoul society yamamoto softens a little bit moving into the iran car arc willing to accept help from the humans to some degree working with orihime and ichigo asking her to tell ichigo about eisen's plan and all this sort of thing um and even teaming up with the vizards who he believed were traitors back in term back the pendulum but obviously the real big change for yamamoto comes after the defeat of eisen he has now lost an arm thanks to his sacrifice during that fight and that's of course a physical representation of him now being weaker both in body and spirit at least in the eyes bloodthirsty warlords who might be about to resurrect in the lost agent yamamoto probably gets his greatest character development yet and shows a real changing of the tides in the first division he allows the vizards back he allows kisuke urahara to enter the soul society and even work with them and of course above all gives ichigo his powers back and then in the thousand-year blood war everything goes wrong for the first division the vanden reich declare war on the seoul society by murdering sasaki bay in yamamoto's own office with a very well aimed javelin throw and yamamoto just goes on this absolute depression spiral essentially where he completely loses his mind completely loses his footing and his his kind of hold on power and responsibility and eventually winds up with him recklessly attacking uh what he believes to be uh and then being stripped of his power and killed it's a sad somber end for the first division or at least the original incarnation of the first division we even see again in a very literal representation of what's actually happening to this division the first division barracks are annihilated by yuharbach when he appears on the battlefield you know again just showcasing kubo really hammering home that we are stripping back the first division and starting all over again and that's really fascinating to me moving on to sasaki there's a little less to say about this guy because it's a bit of a running joke at this point that he does absolutely nothing in the series and is only developed posthumously um once he's already gone um but you know he's still a pretty interesting character nonetheless it's really cool that he just devotes himself to yamamoto it's very hard to say timeline wise if he is the original vice captain of the first division or not he's very young over 2 000 years ago as you would expect it's amazing he's even alive to be honest um and all we really know about sasuke bay having this position is that he has held it at least for 110 years because he is yamamoto's vice captain during the turn back the pendulum but i think it's a safe bet to say that he's had it for at least a couple of years prior to that as well but of course chojiro really doesn't do much his storyline is pretty sad he basically gets beaten up by ichigo at the end of the seoul society arc then in the iran car arc he kind of appears very briefly because he's in charge of the barrier surrounding the fake karakura town battle and then he's killed at the start of the thousand-year blood war which basically kind of kicks off everything um and it's again another sad fate for this character to see what happens to him he uses bankai for the first time in 2000 years and is instantly killed having it stolen from him it's pretty brutal and it's clear that i don't think kubo was overly interested in his character but then he does use him nicely to develop yamamoto a bit which i think is is pretty cool um and it's nice that he at least got some kind of use anyway and then the only other kind of named member of the first division at least for now is their third seat genshiro okikiba who basically isn't really seen it seems like maybe he assumes some of sasaki bay's duties and that he is the one reporting to yamamoto as the first invasion really kicks off but outside of that you don't really ever see him until well this era of the first division is destroyed and so after the first division is annihilated or the first division as we know it anyway and the shattered remains of ryujin jakka returned to the what's left of the barracks the first division transforms it undergoes major major changes for the first time and presumably at least a thousand years if not longer a new captain is appointed suicioraku that troublemaker we mentioned earlier is transferred from division eight to the first division becoming the brand new captain commander um and it's a he's a great choice for the role if an unorthodox one and he accepts it reluctantly as well now he actually brings his vice captain nanao with him from the eighth division and as far as i'm concerned i imagine that's quite unusual but before we move on i just want to say the whole thing is highly unusual and it's awesome we got to see it at all i really do think it's it's totally different to the vaisards just retaking their old spots this is a captain having been killed and an existing captain being transferred to his place instead that's something we've never seen before and so so much of what happens next is just something we've never really seen in bleach and again that's so awesome for the world building so kyoraku takes command of the goatee 13 during a pretty tumultuous time to say the least they are literally in wartime against an empire of enemies um with a pretty bloodthirsty uh ruler at the top who has it in for the soul society but kiraku does a pretty good job of getting them through these choppy waters i think using very unorthodox and unexpected methods to do so which i really appreciate unlike yamamoto who did take everything in his stride he was very rigid unflinching statuesque you know like i said before the anchor of the soul society kiraku is far less predictable and i think that really works in his in his favor you know almost the first the very first thing he does as captain commander is essentially manipulate the central 46 into allowing him to have two vice captains which i think is the first in seoul society history basically he says to the centre of 46 that genshiro okikiba that third seat we mentioned earlier should be promoted to vice captain because he knows the day-to-day of squad one better than either kyoraku or nanao do which makes a lot of sense you know okie keep has been there presumably for a while he can handle the business affairs but nanel knows how to handle kyoraku the two of them have worked together for years and years and years and it makes a lot of sense for her to come with him and so they allow it because kiraku basically manipulates them into it and then manipulates them into allowing him to teach kenpachi zaraki the art of the sword so i really like his tenure which is still ongoing as captain commander i think he does some cool stuff again like releasing eisen as well it's a highly unpopular decision but one that proves fruitful in the end and i also i just have to say briefly about that scene that is probably the most captain commander kyoraku ever feels that scene where he reveals that he was the one who released eyes and he then has to put forth his argument for why he thinks it was the right thing to do and he receives major pushback from you know vice captains third seats fourth seats etc and that's so cool it just shows you how much different i know it is a time of war but you know yamamoto was not the kind of character to really receive or even tolerate much pushback you know he just just wasn't going to have it because again he has that staunchly old traditional viewpoint where he is right and everyone else is wrong um but here kiyoraku although he he does even you know comes out on top by putting his his um perspective forwards i love this little debate they have it's a great moment and it really shows how kiraku has a real handle on how to command these guys and then like i said kyoraku now has two vice captains nanao was transferred from squad eight and okay but was given a promotion to be the co-vice captain alongside her this again seems to be very unusual um but this is a new soul society this is a brand new first division and kiraku is here to change the way things are done even in the face of the equally unflinching central 46 who are at this point really the last bastion of seoul society's old ways it's interesting as well because the way central 46 didn't seem to want kyoraku to have two vice captains implies to me that they at least wanted nanao to remain with the eighth division and take up some kind of a leadership role and okekeba would be the only vice captain of squad one so now the eighth division has effectively been left leaderless in kyoraku's wake unless of course tatsu fasa and joji stepped up to the plate which i somehow don't think and at the end of the story this is where we are with the first division not much has changed since the start of the thousand-year blood war kyoraku all made it out alive and i think that's obviously done very much on purpose you know the first division was the one to really go through hell to get absolutely raised to the ground because the as i've mentioned before the thousand-year blood war arc is all about these older characters confronting their demons and being judged for it and the first division gets judged pretty hard um but it rises again it comes out new shiny new with a new captain at the helm and i think okekeba he seems like a weird character in that he basically does nothing but kubo's content to keep him around and keep mentioning him as well and i think the only reason for that really is because he is a reminder of what the first division was before this new age it's a shame that kyoraku's almost entire tenure as captain commander was during a war time period because we never really get to see what that division becomes after that but here's hoping if kubo does decide to do more of his hell arc in the future we might get to see a little bit more of that as well and i would love that all right guys but that's pretty much it i think on the first division of the goatee 13 next month of course we'll be looking at the second division uh there's definitely not 13 months between now and the anime coming out so i'll have to double up on a couple of those months i imagine but next month will be the second division as well so i hope you look forward to that but yeah i hope this video was interesting maybe it was stuff you already knew entirely but it's really cool to kind of go back and look at these individual divisions within the goatee 30 and take a deep dive look at really what makes them tick who's important to them and where they end up in the story and like i said kyoraku's unorthodox unusual leadership sense does see the soul society through to the other side of the quincy war and this is where the first division is right now all right guys but i hope you enjoyed the video hit subscribe if you haven't done already and until next time i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 68,690

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, yamamoto bleach, bleach gotei 13, yamamoto bankai, sasakibe bankai, tybw bankai

Id: JlIr2PRQv6w

Length: 32min 36sec (1956 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 22 2022