What Happened to UKITAKE in TYBW? | Bleach Discussion

considering he's one of the oldest most experienced and presumably most powerful captains of the goatee 13 i think it's pretty fair to say that fans had reasonably high expectations for what juchiro ukitake might bring to the table in bleach's final arc and i think it's absolutely fair that people had these preconceived expectations of this character i know i certainly had some after all he's one of the most prestigious characters in the soul society he's shun sui kyoraku's academy partner and he also wields one of the semi-mythical dual-bladed zanpak toe however unlike kyoraku ukitake has been afforded virtually no screen time up until now in the series feeling considerably more left out than his counterpart and also he was robbed of a crowning moment in the iran car arc so to be honest moving into the big final story of bleach it seemed the perfect moment for ukitake to really get a chance to shine and so in this video i'm going to be talking about just that okitake's role in the thousand-year blood war arc how it went for him how kubo wrote this character and whether or not he did him justice or not in the eyes of the fans so of course there will be spoilers for the thousand-year blood war arc to follow before we begin guys a massive thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far as we did hit our milestone of 60 000 subs which is just completely insane another one of those milestones i never dreamed we would hit and so thank you so much to everyone who has supported me so far on the road to 100k i think probably the next major milestone has to be 75 000 three quarters of the way there so if you are a bleach fan and you haven't subbed yet make sure to hit that button now for videos like this every single week and while you're here give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed what you saw as it does help with the exposure and getting it out there to more people so more people can join in the discussion and also if you want to take that support of my channel just a little step further we do now have a patreon as well where we're really close to 50 patrons which is another milestone i'd absolutely love to hit so if you want to go there you can support me for as little as a dollar a month so if you really enjoy what i do here on the channel so i just want to give a massive thanks to everyone who has become a patron so far it's really appreciated so looking at juchiro ukitake in the thousand-year blood war arc and as i've mentioned in some of my recent videos particularly the one about unohana the thousand-year blood war arc has real themes in it to do with history and looking at the past of some of these characters the guilty past of some of the older captains of the goatee 13. yamamoto having to deal with the skeletons in his closet the literal demon in his closet that is you har bark kyolaku shinsui being given so much responsibility and new burdens to shoulder unohana having to face up with her own reality in the fact that she used to be this rampaging criminal and then there's ukitake the fourth member of our group of elder captains in the goatee 13 many of whom are privy to the soul society's deepest and darkest secrets ukitake skeletons in the closet reach considerably higher than anyone else's as he is directly connected to the mystical and and very mysterious soul king um a character that i am going to talk about very soon on this channel as i haven't really spoken about him too much and to me he is still bleach's greatest mystery despite the answers we might have got in khan for your own world but ukitake is as it turns out is the closest thing any of these characters really get to the soul king and many of them don't even know it until right at the very end that being said ukutaki's role in the thousand-year blood war arc despite being cool and despite being unique and having some implications for the law is ultimately underwhelming in my opinion his overall role is a disappointment and i generally tend to defend kubo whenever his writing is called into question i love the thousand-year blood war arc and i can find many things about the arc that i truly enjoy however as someone who was looking forward to seeing ukitake take a real stand in this arc and do something of real purpose i was let down i have to be honest when i look at two characters who are often compared in terms of the treatment they receive from kubo ukitake and unohana as far as i'm concerned unohana had a much better job um done with her i think her character was just more interesting in the end kubo fulfilled a number of promises he made about unohana prior to the final arc that she would fight she would reveal her true nature and unravel her braid and all that sort of thing and i think just think overall she was handled better than ukitake was and i think ukitake was a problem character for kubo in many ways just based on what we know in the final arc and how the character was handled i don't think kubo forgot about him per se um as could be the case for many characters i think it's more kubo surveyed the story he had like like unraveling in front of him and just could not find anywhere to naturally include okitake at all and that's a real shame because the thousand-year blood war arc juggles so many characters and yet makes so many of them feel so worthwhile and that goes doubly so for a good number of the captains but ukitake well and truly draws the short straw out of them all but let's actually dive into his role then in the thousand-year blood war to see if we can't pinpoint where things go wrong for this character and where our expectations did not mesh up to reality so like i said ukutake is a major player in the seoul society although he is also slightly more of a background player as far as the captains go a lot of that can be attributed to his illness that is a recurring uh theme throughout this series for him he doesn't show up until the sort of midpoint of the soul society arc for instance because he's incapacitated for most of it prior to that despite that though it's well known that he is hugely respected among the goatee 13 he's incredibly wise very powerful wields this son yo no kotawari which like katan kyokotsu is a dual bladed shikai there's a lot of mystery around this guy a lot of things to get excited for but in the iran car arc he was wiped out of the fight before he even really got a chance to get off the ground and we missed out seeing him do anything of real importance there either so we moved to the thousand-year blood war arc and it's kind of weird then that ukitake basically does absolutely nothing for the third the first third or so of this arc he's kind of there every now and then he shows up at the start in the captain's meeting he's in the first invasion he's at the sort of semi-funeral for yamamoto and but during all of this he does really nothing at all and what's really interesting to note here is that the partnership the equal partnership between kiraku and okitake is skewed further in kiraku's favor here than ever before and i love kyoraku he's literally probably my second favorite character in the whole series but there can be no denying certainly in this arc but to be honest the groundwork has been laid for this ever since i would say the iran karak that kyoraku is kubo's favorite of the two or at the very least the character he feels more confident in pushing the story forwards with you know you can see this everywhere in the final arc kiroku is the one who gets the actual fight in the first invasion he dukes out with robert akutron ukitaki is shown a couple of times you never even get a proper look at who his opponent is many people have theorized it's asking but it genuinely could be one of a few characters it's inconsequential either way because you basically don't see the fight bukitake is there at yamamoto's funeral a greatly powerful and impactful scene where he says basically nothing and it's so weird to me because ukitake is one of yamamoto's surrogate sons alongside kyoraku you know as far as we know yamamoto didn't favor one or the other but it really feels like kubo does kyoraku is the one who gets everything out of this relationship he's the one who gets the mini flashback with yamamoto just before yammer dies he's the one who screams yamaji as he senses that yamamoto dies the best we get out of ukitake is a shocked eye you know like his eye widening in horror when he realizes but kirak is given everything in this relationship and it detrimentally affects ukitake's character and he fades further and further into the background you know it's so so noticeable in the scene of yamamoto's funeral they're standing around the shattered blade of ryujin jakka there's a lot of infighting going on beyond between the captains i've mentioned in the past how much i love this scene it's incredible character work but ukitake is virtually left out of the entire thing um and it's again kyoraku who comes in quells the fighting and lays the groundwork for him taking up the role of head captain and it's interesting because you get this dynamic between them where previously they were supposed to be like the equal sons of yamamoto but in this arc more than ever it feels like kyoku is like the eldest son who's really taking on all of the burdens and all of the responsibility that their father has left behind and ukitaki does virtually nothing um and it's a big shame like i can't believe wikitake he barely says anything the only thing he says in that funeral is that they they couldn't find yamamoto's body basically and so perhaps you can assume maybe he's giving some kind of eulogy at the start of that scene that we don't get to see but it's a real real shame how much he is pushed into the background and again the same is kind of true for the later events after this when the royal guard arrived for the first time in however long kyoroku is the one who engages them he's the one who talks up to ichibe and stands his ground and then after that when kiraku becomes the captain commander there's a wonderful scene where he receives the news and he's like so downtrodden about it he's really unhappy that this another burden has been placed on his shoulders but this would have been a brilliant opportunity for some ukitake council for a bit of advice from his best friend and his lifelong partner on the both on the battlefield and in the academy and everything like that and yet ukutake is nowhere to be seen okitake being nowhere to be seen is a bit of a trend in this arc if you hadn't worked out already the massive second invasion begins and this is the first time we get a hint that ukutake might be up to something a little bit more in the background he's seen in a shrine a strange shrine out in the recon guy with his two attendants kione and centaro however if you were hoping to see ukitake in any meaningful capacity after this tease you would again be disappointed there are a few captains who are not present at the start of the second invasion and i kind of thought kubo was going to stagger them all with you know pretty epic appearances and for the most part that does happen siphon arrives on the battlefield at the nick of time to save o mida from bg9s minigun just completely ripping it away from him and dropping the bullets on the ground it's a great display of her speed as the captain of the stealth division later on komomora arrives once again at the most dire moment crash landing in front of bambieta in this epic pose towering over her brand new armor on his head showing you that he has changed and then finally biaccio arrives on the scene cutting through as not veil of eyes to help rukia you know essentially amass the conviction needed to use bankai and win the day these are all meaningful arrivals that actually really help to change the course of the particular moment they are involved in ukitake gets no such arrival unfortunately in just a long string of okitake related disappointments in this arc at the very start of the battle between ichibay and yamamoto the fighting has now essentially left the seireite and moved up to the royal palace for the final few stages of this war things are really on the line now yuhar is close to achieving his goal the soul king is in his sights um and really you should be worried and kiraku is kind of surveying the damage on the battlefield wondering that when the vandam reich city leaves will it just be replaced by seoul society and will if seoul society is destroyed will it be reduced to rubble and he just turns around and says what do you think ukitake and okay so he's just standing there um and it's it's kind of weird like that he gets afforded no such important introduction really whatsoever he's just standing there he even looks kind of sad on the page he's just this small drawing only given the small panel essentially the top of the page um and there you there really is no importance afforded to his arrival just yet anyway um and it's a bit of a shame to see that he's not really given any kind of gravita whatsoever he just sort of shows up how long has he been there i have no idea did he just arrive we have no idea we then finally get a conversation between shinsuit and okitake these two have such a bond that it is criminal that they don't talk more in the final arc especially when you realize eventually just how permanent the ramifications of what's about to happen will be there is a nice couple of moments here though for ukitake when he says well if the soul society is destroyed we'll simply rebuild it brilliant ukitake line that sums up his character very well ever the optimist you know he's always uh thinking about the best side of things even in moments of pure chaos and and trouble in that sense he is kind of the light to kiraku's darkness which i really do like we then get into a little bit of conversation about the current scenario where kiraku is like well we've allowed them access into the royal palace and ukitake says i'm aware of that it's for that reason i've initiated kami kake which i believe translates to divine vow or divine possession and this is when things do start to get interesting when ukitake says this he looks real sinister um and this big black shadow appears behind him stretching out across the floor with this one sinister eye opening in the middle of the shadow um and that's really cool like the whole soul king motif that you start to get here you realize immediately that ukitake has done something to do with rayo some kind of a contract or even as it says by the name some kind of possession and immediately i think most people worked out that ukitake was working on some kind of contingency plan for if the soul king fell and that's cool i'm happy with that and in fact i like that ukitake has such intimate ties to rayo because the soul king is an entity that is so far removed from just about every single character that it actually makes a lot of sense for one of the older captains to have those ties to the the monarchy essentially i want to point out now though what i find to be so weird about this conversation between the two of them these two again are supposed to be you know best friends like close friends uh brothers in arms essentially and yet kyoraku treats the whole situation with his usual flippancy and ukitake himself doesn't seem too concerned either kiraku basically kind of says that well you know because you've done the kamikake and it looks like it was successful we can maybe push things a little bit and you know essentially what he's implying here is that even if the soul king is killed even if the zero division are killed we still have us a way out okitaki then says oh you know you're starting to sound like a doctor obviously his medical history he's dealt with a lot of that sort of thing at which point kiraku basically just says okay i'll see you later then what's really weird here to me is unless kiraku is incredibly ignorant which i don't think he is because he know he seems to know what the kamekake is he must know that ukitake is about to stake his life on the line he must realize that if ichubai falls in this fight and uh bark is successful in taking out the soul king ukitake is about to give up his life and you you could maybe argue well kioraku doesn't think ichiba is about ichabe is going to lose he just thinks it's a contingency that's fine except kiraku mentions that he's about to go and speak to the central 46 which means that he's about to try and get eisen released from prison to help if the end of the world comes essentially which means he can't have enormous amount of faith that ichibe is not about to die it's for this reason i find this whole conversation between them kind of strange it is their last conversation they ever have alive together because the worst scenario does happen ichibe is killed the soul king is killed ukitake must step forward and offer up his life so it's just weird to me that kiraku is so flippant about the whole thing maybe he just doesn't want to accept that okitake might be about to die or maybe it's the darker side of kyoraku the very pragmatic side who's always willing to do what's necessary who can kind of overlook that but the whole thing is a little strange to me regardless we do move on now anokitake has joined many of the shinigami at their makeshift stronghold um and he is helping administer first aid to those who are injured ikaku umachika kenpachi etc and it's nice to see him again taking an active role in the war he hasn't been able to fight anyone yet despite the ample number of enemies that were running around previously um but he is taking up a role he's helping out probably the very struggling fourth division who are currently being run by isane and hanataro so i like to see that however up in the royal palace things are not quite so rosy itchy bay has been murdered by uh bark uh bark has trespassed into the throne room of rayo himself and stabbed his father through the chest however rayo is actually not quite dead yet ichigo himself does that deed and accidentally finishes off the king cutting him in half and now of course the moment the king is killed the three worlds begin to return to their primordial state they sort of begin to start smashing together again it's a very slow process though it seems um and places only really start to feel tremors the soul society is affected more so as it's so directly in the vicinity um and i actually loved this moment this was the kind of plot progression i was desperate to see because it really does mean that the stakes have come true you know uh has pushed the heroes essentially as far as they can go and i think this whole section does a great job of showing that despair and that concern i love the cliffhanger the way you see rukong start get splitting in half there's like an earthquake waco mundo and karakura feel the effects and renji is just like the sulking is dead what do we do like what do we do in this situation where everyone has failed we're all down here even urahara is like i don't know what to do and ukitake steps forward and it's really cool because it's like that is awesome ukutake is the contingency he had this planned that's what he's been working on this whole time uh and yeah urohara is like i literally i don't know what to do in this situation and nukitake steps forward he's like i will become the soul king and that's awesome so basically what's going on here is ukitake has always housed a part of the sulking he is essentially a retainer for the sulking the soul king in shinigami form when he was a very young boy we've always known that ukitake had some kind of serious debilitating illness it's affected him throughout the series so far and we see when he was about three years old or so he's foaming at the mouth this you don't get much backstory for him unfortunately in the final arc but you do get this tantalizing little teaser of him like dying on the floor essentially and his parents turn out to be very superstitious and they worship this god of rukon guy this fallen god called mimi hagi summer and mimi hagi-sama is a character who was introduced in bleach kind of randomly i remember reading the chapter name which was literally mimi haggy summer and being like what the hell is this on about like what is this um but mimi haggi's ramifications for the law are huge and you find out that mimi hagi is essentially a sentient right arm it literally looks like this with an eye on its back it seems to be wearing clothes as well in this panel which is the best look we get at it and honestly is fascinating in my opinion is this a new robe it has fashioned itself or is this a portion of the soul king's own sleeve i have no idea but essentially this is the soul king's right arm that some undisclosed point in history fell from the heavens and landed in the rukong and has since been worshipped by its people and mimi hagi grants their parents his wish and he saves ukitake's life by removing his diseased lungs and taking place they're taking their place inside him essentially so ukitake has been housing this piece of the soul king for centuries now and you know he has immense rayatsu because of it he has massively powerful reaction because he's been having to keep himself alive as well at the same time sustaining mimi hagi which i think is really cool um and so what happens here is that now the soul king has been killed essentially the worlds are all starting to be destroyed and ukitake steps in to act as an anchor point essentially for mimi hagi to try and right this wrong so we know of course that mimi hangi is the right hand of the soul king which represents stillness and its counterpart is perna dapanka jazz the quincy the represents progression that's not important for now we just need to look at mimi haggi mimi hagi represents stillness and we see that in we see that first hand when okataki essentially invokes the right of kamikake and allows mimi hagi to come forth from his body in doing so he offers up all of his internal organs now not just the lungs but all of his internal organs to mimi-haggi to give it the power to basically rush towards the soul king palace and save the day ukitake's body is now literally a husk a vessel for mimi hagi to use as it needs to um and you see this it's actually really really cool i love the the imagery on display is awesome okay he's like hunched over he takes off his robe there's a massive black shadow that comes off of his back bursts in the air above him revealing this huge eye it's all very occult it's all very sinister and creepy and i really like that actually um and it fits with the whole theme of the older captains having these dark secrets and it looks creepy and eerie and you know it's not quite right um but it is being used for the the good of the world um so mimi haggy races into the sky and grabs the two halves of the soul king and basically pushes it back together again like so mimi hagi is holding on to the soul king that's the stillness that it governs and by doing so ukitaki has become a makeshift sulking replacement he is anchoring mimi hagi and mimi hagi is saving the day and stopping the tremors as for ukitake himself this is a noble thing for him to do and it is very memorable as well i like how it's portrayed and it does give you something by which to remember this character by you're like that's the guy who became the right arm of the soul king in their time of need that's really really cool he gains like all these tattoos and markings over his body which look awesome his actual fate however is grim like it's really dark it's brutal and again i kind of like that i think it's really great seeing how kubo depicts the horrors of war like ukitake probably wasn't expecting a lovely death to come out of this scenario and it really doesn't you see him screaming agony as mimi haggy like bursts forth and goes up to the royal palace its energy leaves his eyes his mouth his nose you get the sense that he has just become a shell and there is nothing left inside him which is kind of gruesome and you see rukia freaking out you see um centauro and keone freaking out looking really upset about it it's a shame that ruki doesn't spend more time with ukitake prior to this especially after becoming his vice captain but it's a nice moment all the same unfortunately this doesn't last and now we get to the reasons why i think ukutaki is not handled well and there are two reasons the reasons are twofold number one this is ukitaki's big crowning moment and i get that and that's fine the problem i have with it is that he does absolutely nothing before it he does nothing in the ark before this moment at all so he basically just shows up to die he could have fought a stern ritter killed us stern ritter had an awesome moment where we see his barn kai perhaps we see why he's so respected and revered in the goatee 13. we see yeah he is kyoraku's equal in many ways he's really powerful himself and then he goes on to give his life for the goatee i think people wouldn't have minded so much but it's just the simple fact that he does just pop up out of nowhere and he's like i've done the kamikake and then he just he dies essentially four chapters later it's a bit of a shame that is a shame that he just shows up to die and then we move on to my second issue with this which is that his big sacrifice kind of feels like it was for nothing and not only does it feel like it was for nothing it almost actively helps the enemy so we see that once mimi hagi has gone up to the royal palace it manages to stabilize the world and this is the kamikake working as intended ukitake says that he knows he was supposed to die he wasn't even supposed to have this body anymore so he's very happy to give it up for the soul society that he he so loves and so cares for and so yeah it's really hard seeing him just like lying there as like an empty husk you can imagine in the anime maybe he's been like twitching every now and then while this black rayatsu just gushes from where his face once was unfortunately though even though he does succeed it's a brief um success because ichigo and his friends they managed to sort of start making mimi haggy the new sulking replacement they put a barrier up around it but because of yuha because of uriu's treachery in this scene and the shut-scoffle they are not able to keep uh away from mimi hagi for very long and new har just basically walks over there rips mimi haggy off the sulking so ukitake has died given his life for this and mimi hagi stabilized the world for 10 minutes like when you think about it in terms of you ignore the fact that we had to wait for these weekly it's about 10 minutes and that really sucks and he just basically tosses mimi haggy to the ground and then when mimi haggy tries to attack him again he absorbs its power and becomes the soul king so i guess in that sense the world is stabilized but it's undeniably a real shame to see this is the outcome of ukitake's valiant sacrifice and it's clear that once again he is massively shafted in the story in comparison to kyoku and frankly most other captains in the story it's a real shame that he basically shows up out of nowhere to enact this very cool ritual that has great law implications um but unfortunately just doesn't really do much and he kind of looks in a little bit silly in some ways like giving his life with this grandiose speech only for you her forcibly pulled mimi haggi out of his body mere chapters later and you see like the darkness blow out of wukitake's mouth as he just collapses backwards being cradled by keone and centauro so that's pretty much it for ukitake's role you know the next time you see him in the present storyline he is just just his gravestone it's confirmed that he was killed um and it's a big shame it is a shame but that's pretty much it for this character in bleach there's a little bit more with him and can't fear your own world but as far as his canon manga appearance in the thousand-year blood war art goes i unfortunately have no hesitation in saying i was disappointed um and i think if he had just done more of substance prior to this moment people would have accepted it more because i do think it's a cool moment and i do think it's awesome like i said that the one of the elder captains has these ties to rayo who is a character that i'm going to talk about very soon because i do still think he's the greatest mystery in bleach even with the new answers we have so it's really cool seeing this kind of occult magic being used but at the end of the day it's a real shame that this is ukitaki's contribution and it seems to be cast aside so easily like it felt like kubo was like i don't know where to fit ukutake in we'll use him here as this very temporary counter measure and then i'll just kill him off and that's a real shame to me all right guys but i really hope you enjoyed the video let me know in the comments below what you thought of ukitake in the thousand year blood war did you like what happened to this character let me know in the comments below as well maybe i've missed something about him too do let me know i'd love to read your thoughts don't forget to hit the subscribe button as well if you haven't done already and until next time guys i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 48,795

Rating: 4.9497366 out of 5

Keywords: bleach, bleach manga, bleach anime, bleach discussion, bleach 2021, bleach 20th, bleach new anime, bankai, ukitake, bleach tybw, bleach final arc, MrTommo2304, MrTommo2304 bleach, bleach face again

Id: 3tcJgg5lxMw

Length: 30min 4sec (1804 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021