All Adaptions Have Agendas

Disclaimer: Honestly, this one has been sitting in the drafts for a minute because of how shipping heavy it is. This post is centered around specific pairings from Bleach. I don’t care if you support Ichihime or Ichiruki. This post isn’t trying to say that one is better than the other, but it does point out in a semi-negative light how Ichiruki gained traction in the anime. I don’t hate Rukia, and I genuinely can see the appeal of the ship, but if you’re sensitive to people criticizing the ship in any way, I suggest moving on.

Also, spoilers for the manga ending!

I’ve been watching a lot of Bleach lately. It’s weird cause it was never my favorite series, but I always found myself drawn back to it time and time again. While I have been trying to enjoy this most recent re-watch, something I read on Tumblr keeps bothering me.

When adapting Bleach into an anime, it is clear that the animators decided to lean into the Ichigo and Rukia pairing and pull back from the Ichigo and Orihime pairing. A decision that seems to have been made without Tite Kubo’s consent.

Why do I believe this? Kubo constantly writes Ichigo and Orihime in a way that points to them becoming a couple. And this is not speculation, because they become a couple in the last chapter of the manga.

Whenever given the opportunity, Kubo would reinforce the fact that the bond between Ichigo and Rukia wasn’t romantic. To be precise, he would say it was closer than friends but not romantic in nature (Which reads to me as a familial bond, but whatever). On the other hand, Kubo takes every opportunity he can get to sprinkle in hints that he planned to put Ichigo and Orihime together.

For example, Kubo often draws parallels between his story and the folklore that Orihime’s name comes from (“The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl”). When he said that if he had to change the characters’ names for the English release that Ichigo and Orihime’s names would be changed to Altair and Vega (which are alternate names for the lovers in the story). And, in his map of Karakura town, Orihime and Ichigo live on opposite sides of a river, just like how the lovers in the folktale are separated by a river of stars.

In the following sections, I will go over how the anime took one of Kubo’s methods of hinting at Ichigo and Orihime and show how they decided to repurpose it for Ichigo and Rukia.

The Old Switcharoo

There is a scene that I remember from chapter 76 of the manga. It was at this scene that I realized that the official couple was probably going to be Ichigo and Orihime.

After Ichigo’s group had just failed to enter the Seireitei, local shinigami Jidanbō lost an arm while helping the group. Since Ichigo was willing to fight for one of their own (and a ghost boy that they helped in an earlier area can vouch for them), the locals take a shine to them.

To help out, Orihime gets to work healing Jindanbō’s injured arm. After spending quite some time healing most of the arm, Orihime informs Ichigo that it will still be a couple of hours till she finishes. At this point, the locals insist that she rest from all the hard work she just did.

The locals then start fawning over Orihime. Commenting on how nice she is and how attractive she is. One even goes as far as to wonder if she’s single. However, the men realize they have no chance with him after watching her interact with Ichigo some more.

The reason I bring this scene up is that it was omitted from the anime. In fact, a lot of scenes that allude to Ichigo and Orihime as a couple got omitted.

If It were just the omission, then maybe I’d let it slide. However, similar scenes were added to the anime but with a potential relationship between Ichigo and Rukia being the subject.

A particularly notable anime-only scene involves an anime-only character. Eikichirō Saidō is an anime original shinigami who was sent to after Rukia for staying in the human world for too long. When Rukia refuses to tell him that she gave her powers to Ichigo (a crime that could get them both killed), Saidō speculates that Rukia is having a fling with Ichigo.

I think he also makes comments about them after Ichigo’s fight with Grand Fisher, but I can’t remember and refuse to check so, let’s move on.

While this is by no means the only character to make such comments, it stands out because of the circumstances. Other characters will make similar anime-only comments about Ichigo and Rukia, but it could always be passed off as dialogue padding until this point. This is an undeniable choice by the animators to push the narrative of Ichiruki.

I’ll let this slide because this was back when Bleach first started as a series. Of course, this isn’t the only way that the animators have tried to alter Bleach’s romantic subplot.

Lies of Omission

So I’ve never actually finished the Bleach anime. I stopped watching sometime in the middle of the Hueco Mundo when they started interrupting it with flashback filler arcs. I stuck to reading the manga until its somewhat abrupt end.

However, in my years of absence, the series still continued to air on Adult Swim. One night I caught an episode airing, and they had just made it to the Fullbringer arc. So I decided to start watching it again. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that there was something different about the order of events.

The only reason I remember this scene is because of the bizarre conversation that Ichigo’s sisters are having about him.

Let’s start with the anime’s events. Orihime visits Ichigo after school because she’s been picking up a strange feeling from him. They spend some time hanging out in his room. While there, Uryuu came by to investigate the same thing but figures that Orihime had it handled. He has an encounter with this arc’s new threat and gets hurt. When we cut back to Ichigo, he is alone and overhears the sirens of an ambulance picking up Uryuu.

From here, the main plot keeps advancing with more attacks happening to Ichigo’s friends and the introduction of more enemies. At some point, Ichigo leaves the house to brood by the river and throws his currently useless Substitute Shinigami badge into it. When he gets home, Yuzu shows him her aced test, and he fails at pretending to be happy cause he’s still brooding about feeling powerless now that he’s powerless. We get a scene of Orihime swooning over Ichigo in her apartment before cutting the weirdest scene in Bleach for me.

(This is where it gets weird.) Karin implies that Ichigo is jerking off…Yeah. Also, she implies that Yuzu has a crush on their brother. So all around, this was a weird-ass scene. During their talk, Ichigo gets a call saying that Uryuu is in the hospital, so he rushes out of the house to check on him.

The difference between these versions is when these events occur and how it changes the context of what is happening.

In the manga, this visit plays out the same. Orihime visits Ichigo to investigate. Uryuu comes by but doesn’t go inside. He has an encounter with this arc’s new threat and gets hurt. Like in the anime, at some point during Uryuu’s fight, Orihime’s visit ended. Ichigo overhears the sirens but doesn’t investigate.

In the mange, these next couple of scenes appear to happen at the same time. First, we cut to Orihime at her apartment, and based on her swooning, not much time has passed since she left Ichigo’s place. After she calms down a little, she gets a call telling her that Uryuu’s in the hospital. Cut back to Ichigo’s house, and his sisters are having the same conversation; however, because of the timing, here Karin is implying that Ichigo is jacking off after having such a hot girl in his room….I don’t know when this series got so weird. Eventually, Ichigo gets a call saying that Uryuu is in the hospital and runs out of the house.

Long story short, in the manga, Karin implies that Ichigo thinks Orihime is hot. In the anime, because of the added scene, she just implies he is jacking off because he is a teenage boy.

While the added scene by the river does fill time in the episodes, the placement was just a little too convenient for me. Unlike before, when the anime would regularly remove hints of Orihime’s feelings for Ichigo, this time, they did the opposite. At this point in the series, this is no more hinting on Orihime’s side. She has plainly told the audience that she is in love with Ichigo. What wasn’t very clear was if he felt the same way. By changing the events, the anime removes one scene that hints at how he might. (Also, this arc is full of brooding thoughts about Ichigo missing his powers and Soul Reaper friends, mainly Rukia, so they kind of added hints that he might like Rukia.)

Quickfire: Episode 15

So Episode 15 of the anime is weird. It’s half filler and half canon filler. It’s made up of 2 breather chapters in the manga, so not a lot happens in the story. The way the events of the episode play out heavily lean towards Ichiruki as a couple while giving Ichihime a much less serious tone. So here’s a lightning round.

Anime Only: Rukia and Orihime walk to school together. Rukia comments that she didn’t think Orihime liked Ichigo very much. (Where did she even get that idea?) Orihime says that something is interesting about his face. Rukia gives a mysterious laugh. This can either be interpreted as Rukia either supporting Orihime’s feelings for Ichigo or Rukia agreeing with Orihime about Ichigo’s face.

Anime Edit: Orihime and Tatsuki (and friends in the anime) playing a weird combination of soccer and baseball. In the anime, they are doing this during gym class, so Ichigo is there watching in confusion. Keigo starts teasing Ichigo about staring at Orihime, but Ichigo says it’s normal for teenage boys to stare at girls. I guess Keigo interprets Ichigo’s deadpan tone as disinterest because he figures Orihime isn’t his type and asks who is. Ichigo doesn’t answer, but in the next scene, Ichigo mentions he wants to invite someone to eat lunch with them (Uryuu), and Keigo thinks it’s Rukia, implying that the person Keigo thinks Rukia is Ichigo’s type.

Anime Edit: The girls invite Rukia to eat lunch with them. The scene in the manga ends there. In the anime, they start asking about Rukia’s interests in Ichigo. The girls imply that they don’t hang out with Ichigo cause he seems scary, but Orihime disagrees. One of the girls says Orihime must have changed her mind since she used to be afraid of him too. (All of this is a clear contradiction from interactions between Ichigo, Tatsuki, and Orihime, and a contradiction of Orihime’s backstory). When Rukia insists they are only friends, Orihime says it’s a shame because if Rukia (and the other girls) liked Ichigo, then they could talk about him all day, and eventually, if they all teamed up, he wouldn’t stand a chance…I have no idea what that was supposed to mean, but neither did the other girls, so moving on.

Anime Only: All episode Rukia is mentally preparing herself to leave/be arrested, so she maintains a melancholy mood. At the end of the school day, she meets up with Ichigo at the school gate and tries to have a heartfelt goodbye. The framing of the scene comes off as a love confession. They get distracted, so we never really hear what Rukia was gonna say.

Bonus Round: At the beginning of episode 16, Rukia thinks back to various events from the previous episodes. The second memory we see is of the classmate from the last episode asking Rukia if she likes Ichigo and Rukia’s shocked response. The flashbacks then continue to show a couple of moments the two spent together (implying that she does) before ending back on the lunch with the girls.

To summarize, this episode establishes at multiple points that Ichigo and Rukia have the potential to start a relationship while seeding the idea that Orihime would gracefully accept the couple by implying her feelings aren’t that deep.

I am not at all surprised that anime-only fans were convinced that Rukia was Ichigo’s love interest. Because she is, in the anime, at least. The anime did everything in its power to make that true.

In Conclusion

The reason I’m writing this post is that, as a writer, I don’t like how they changed Kubo’s work. Kubo made a plan for this romantic storyline, and the animators just changed it cause they liked Rukia better. It feels a little disrespectful.

I understand why they might have assumed Rukia and Ichigo would end up together. When Bleach was first being made to be an anime, the manga wasn’t that far along. In the early 2000s, animation companies tried to snatch up any well-performing manga and strike while the iron’s hot.

While I don’t know exactly when production for the anime started, I do know that the first episode of the anime aired while the manga was in the Rescue Rukia arc. So, the story was fully saturated with the deep connection between Ichigo and Rukia. I’m not even sure if Renji’s backstory and his obvious crush on Rukia had been revealed at that point.

None of that excuses the fact that they choose to undermine Kubo’s choices for the Ichigo and Orihime pairing. This was not a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or even an attempt at a love triangle. This was the animators deciding they wanted a different main couple than the writer and did everything in their power to change his story.