I admit I have this love-hate relationship with Bleach. I loved it when it came out, but at one point it kind of overstayed it’s welcome, it got messy and threw all logic put of the window. I was glad when it was finally over, but every once in a while I go back and read or write some Bleach fanfiction, because I love shipping Bleach characters.
We’re getting close to the 5 year mark since the manga was ended and yes, I’m still salty over the endgame pairings. IchixRuki was a lot better developed and written than anything about or with Orihime, including her relationship with Ichigo. Also, the way the main characters ended up, just made no sense at all, because it was quite literally what none of them wanted.
Therefore, let’s dive into the wonderful world of fanfiction. The Bleach fandom quite literally pairs up everyone with each other, but I prefer stuff that makes sense. I’m open to some more experimental stuff, I mean, I can totally see the appeal of GrimmjawxIchigo, even though I don’t ship them myself. Ichigo belongs to Rukia, IchixRuki is sacred. By accident I rediscovered a delicious Omegaverse AU modern time IchixRuki, that I’ve read before and totally threw me back into Bleach fanfictions. Hot sex scenes, oblivious Rukia and overprotective Ichigo are just my thing.
Usually, Omegaverse is used in BL pairings in order to make babies and mpreg possible, it does work very nicely in heterosexual pairings, too. I’ve started reading a nice still unfinished Omegaverse IchixRuki with Omega!Ichigo and Alpha!Rukia, where their characters aren’t completely destroyed. Yas.
My personal favorite pairings are IchixRuki, of course. IchixRuki is life, IchixRuki is love. They’re my absolute favorite Bleach ship, they sail themselves no problem. That one time when Ichigo went ice skating with Rukia before he lost his ability to see shinigami and ghosts/spirits? That was the closest damn thing to an actual date we saw in canon. His world has literally faded away when we saw her. In canon, Ichigo never expressed any romantic interest in anyone, but his relationship with Rukia was the best developed point blanc. She made the most sense for him, she suited him best, they kicked the very best out of each other. I do find it quite hard to write about them, because I have trouble with their bickering sounding okay. I have a 20k words long IchixRuki fanfiction in the making, though. And yes, I may bash the idea of Ichigo having children with Orihime two or three times in that fanfiction, at least once from Ichigo himself.
My second favorite ship, which is my favorite to write fanfiction about is HitsuxHina. This is the childhoodfriends-gone-lovers ship in this series that I prefer. Honestly, like many others, I adore Hitsugaya, he’s such a cute angry cinnamonroll. He’s basically a child in this world full with crazy and strong people and behaves more mature than most of them. He’s awesome. And Hinamori is cute and together they’re even cuter. The way he opens up when he’s with her, actually smiles and wants to protect her from everything, it’s just too cute. I think in canon he just wants to protect her, because she’s his childhood friend, but his entire behavior towards her can be interpreted as a crush so damn easily, they sail themselves, too. I’ve written all sorts of stuff about them and since Hinamori has this tragic psychological abuse thing going on, you can make their stories center around her healing process or go further, say she’s fine and make it more spicy and fun. They give so much material to write about. Also, personally I love aging up Hitsugaya. He was a cute little brat, he’s a handsome teen, but he’s a banger as an adult. Momo… you’re in for a real treat. I have a 15k+ unfinsihed lemony fanfiction in the works about them post story aged up into adulthood. I would like to write an Omegaverse fanfiction about them with Alpha!Hitsu and Omega!Hina, where it starts out with Hinamori in a realtionship with Beta!Kira (I’m not very kind to Kira, he’s often her boyfriend until Mr Ice Prince comes around and steals Momo away in my stories), because she’s afraid of alphas, but Hitsugaya starts courting her anyways, pining over her and all that good stuff. Honestly, I just want to write Hitsugaya being nervous about his inner alpha wanting to provide for “his” omega aka Momo by making sure she properly eats and brings her bentos every day to work under the very amused eye of Shinji. Also, him blowing off steam in alpha-fights with Ichigo? Heck yeah.
I do like other pairings, like ShunsuixNanao, but that one got quite a blow by the fact that Shunsui is Nanaos bio uncle. Their relationship is awesome, they pretty much behave like a married couple anyways and they’re a lot of fun to play around with. They’re adults, wirte some lemony stuff, no problem. I love them … and than the entire family connection thing happend and it took my fun wout of this ship. I still kind of ship them and I think Nanao has a legit canon crush on Shunsui, if only he wasn’t her damn uncle.
Ishida deserves someone, too. Ishida can have Orihime, their interests and personalities match so much better anyway, And Renji can have Byakuya, I don’t mind.
So, the other thing is, due to going back to writing about Bleach, I reread some parts of the manga, watched some anime clips and stuff. I ended up watching an amv about the chase scene from Diamond Dust Rebellion where Kira and Hisagi are trying to capture a severly wounded Hitsugaya and fail very much so. I know it’s a movie and therefore not canon, but I’ve always really liked that scene, because it puts Hitsugayas strenght as a Captain in better perspective than the normal storyline does. He’s severly injured and completely destorys two Vice-Captains. Whoever had the bright idea of sending two Vice-Captains to capture a captain is bonkers anyways, but it helps to show how strong Hitsugaya is compared to “normal” Shinigami.
Hitsugaya is that boy genius. Shunsui said he would be stronger than him in a 100 years and Ichimaru said he’s a genius that only ever shows up once in a 100 years, he wields the strongest ice type zanpaktou, he’s the youngest Captain of all time. He’s a grumpy cute little dude, but he’s damn strong and his potential is acknowledged in canon. As a Captain who often fights at the front lines alongside the core cast memers he get’s himself into some very dangerous situations and is paired with some very very strong enemies and doesn’t always win. In the main supporting cast, he sometimes looks like one of the weaker guys even, but he’s actually a LOT stronger than Rukia and Renji from the main cast.
Honestly, at the very end of the manga when he shows his perfected Bankai where he literally needs to age himself up (however that works, but at that point Bleach had no logic left anyway so whatever) in order to manage it, he’s frightenly strong. Rukia has an ice type Zanpaktou as well and she’s strong, her Bankai is strong. Hyrourinmaru is on an entire different level, tough. I like that the story remembers Hitsugaya has this insabely strong Zanpaktou and is supposed to be special, by showing his potential as an adult with access to his Bankai’s true power, which is insane. He gains the power to freeze everything at will and he doesn’t even need to do anything for that. He flicks his finger and flashfreezes everything. Try to get close enough to him to hurt him, good luck and if you manage to and you touch him? You’re frozen. You can’t touch him. He freezes freaking fire. And when he freezes someone, their abilities are rendered useless. Why in the world, didn’t he fight Yhwach? Freeze him, render his ability useless, shatter him in a million pieces or just keep him in that block of ice for all eternity for all I care, but wouldn’t that have worked to much better than using Ichigo with his brute force?
Granted, aside from Hitsugaya himself, nobody knew he could even do that and he never used it in battle before, but instead of sending Rukia and Renji for sentimental reasons, even though they can’t do shit about Yhwach instead of sending adult!Hitsugaya true Bankai from, who could actually make a difference, is just mindblowingly stupid. Plot convenience for main characters, though.
As much as Bleach did some very stupid things, every once in a while there was that comedy that I loved in the beginning and for example in that particular scene when Renji and Rukia face adult!Hitsugaya Bankai and they assume he’s his own older brother and he just goes along with it, was hilarious. Byakuyas comment about Hitsugaya not even bothering to explain himself was the icing on the cake. Yeah, those two idiots won’t even get it anyways, why bother? I loved that.
A Glass of Manga 