Birth, Aging and Death In Soul Society

[Asianknight82]

I mustve missed that.... so, all things considering, in the bleach world is it so bad to die then? You're basically immortal.

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Asianknight82

I mustve missed that.... so, all things considering, in the bleach world is it so bad to die then? You're basically immortal.

Not bad at all, as long as you don't mind forgetting your entire life and becoming a baby when you get reborn into the real world. How do you feel about forgetting everything you care about and everyone you love? Is that enough of a price for shinigami to regret their deaths?

That's the down side to reincarnation. (Well, part of the downside, but the rest is somewhat more difficult to get into.)

[Zu Ra]

Originally Posted by kagato3

It is unclear exactly what happens to souls that are killed by other means such as being eaten by hollows or kill by a soul slayer.

Thats an intresting thought but if we presume that Ichi is the reincarnation of Kaien then we can say as other souls reincarnated .

How Old is Yamaji I mean Uki and Kyo are 2000 years old they dont appear that old . Uki maybe but can blame it on sickness , but Kyoshiro he looks like he is in early 30 s . If Uki and Shusnhui being 2000 years appear so young how old is Yamaji ?

[kagato3]

I only used the term old age only because it was the least wordy way of saying death by natural causes that I was sure not to misspell. It seems that everyone has a set amout of time they would spend in SS befpre they are reborn and that time seems to increase with how powerful a soul is, for instance all the kids that Renji and Rukia hung out with had died by 50 years ago.

Figureing out how old anyone in SS is nearly a fuitle task unless you are told outright as the vast numbers of souls in SS did not come in as babies or even children and ageing is not very constent.

The only problem with the Ichigo/Kaien theroy is that Kaien seems to have died alot more then 15 years ago, my guess is closer to 40 years ago. Although Kenpatchi did imply that death by soul slayer wasn't perment with his "be reborn to fight each other again" speach when he was fighting the 2 captains. Death by being eaten by a hollow is a bit diffrent as we know the hollow absorbs the powers of the other soul, but it is unclear it that soul is destroyed of if when the hollow is kill they are freed. But many of the conversations about it make it seem as though that soul is no more.

[Question]

These are my conclusions :

Physical Aging : Depends on the individual. Renji grew up a ton faster than Rukia, while Rukia is still physically a teenager......in the few hundred years since she died she seems to only have progressed from kid(10-12 years) to 16 at the maximum, while Renji has physically aged to young adult status(18-22 probably).

Most people in soul society seem to stop showing much(if any) signs of physical aging when they hit young adult age. They definately do not look middle aged. I assume this is the norm, although exceptions do exist.

I think yamamoto has been there since the founding of Sereitei.....which would put him at IIRC 2000 years old, or something like that. Ukitake and harem guy(you know who i am referring to) are nearly as old.....they were the first graduates of the academy, which would make them nearly his age, and they look at least 50 years younger.

My theory about how the aging in soul society is determined is.....it WASNT. The author clearly didnt give much of a damn of how the aging in soul society works, and drew the characters based on entirely different things. Rukia looks so young for storyline and moe reasons, seriously if rukia had been a attractive young adult physically, there would be way too much focus on her pairing with Ichigo, but shes taken the role of a younger sister, appearance wise, to Ichigo instead.

Renji looks like your typically young adult chav with his outrageous glasses, tatoos and attitude, and how he was introduced.....and also his early actions in the soul society arc. Yamamoto looks so old to fit the arche type of the old, respected general, Ukitake looks so young compared to Yamamoto because he is the poor young guy striken with a lifetime disease, harem guy looks exactly like a harem guy...most of the standard shinigami look like young adults because thats the age that makes most sense for a shinigami, just like how most soldiers in the army are around that age as well.

Physical maturity does not seem to have much to do with your power as a shinigami. When someone overpowers the other, its because his reiatsu is higher, not because he has more muscles, weighs more, or whatever. Otherwise Jidanbou would have flattened Ichigo into the ground through muscle mass alone, Ichigo's reiatsu non-withstanding.

Births : I am really not sure. I have seen nothing to suggest that souls can give birth. AFAIK all souls are constantly recycled as the norm. The giving birth in the real world requires a reincarnating soul from soul society, which is basically someone in soul society who has "died" there and is crossing over to the "other world", in this case, the real world. However the reverse is NOT true......all souls that come to soul society come "as they are" and are processed through a system and assigned a place in rukongai to live. They also keep all memories of their life in the real world.

This leads me to believe a resident of soul society cannot give birth, as this would require skipping the normal process of a soul transisting from the real world to soul society.

Death : I imagine the most common form of death is basically to get killed while a hollow as a normal shinigami. The normal shinigami is absurdly weak and liable to get killed by a standard hollow on normal duties any day. Your average rukongai citizen will basically live like normal, except he wont have a job as there is nothing to do. Unless you get into a fight in the slums, your chances of dying are fairly low....nearly non-existent.

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Question

I think yamamoto has been there since the founding of Sereitei.....which would put him at IIRC 2000 years old, or something like that. Ukitake and harem guy(you know who i am referring to) are nearly as old.....they were the first graduates of the academy, which would make them nearly his age, and they look at least 50 years younger.

The Bounto arc reveals that this is not true. The creation of the Bounto was history to him, not something that he has any personal memory of. Since he needed people to find records about what happened, we can deduce that it was definitely before his time. Therefore Ran'Tao is clearly older than him. Since the Central 46 passed judgement on Ran'Tao and the Bounto, we can deduce that Seireitai is older than Yamamoto.

You can deduce what you want from Ran'Tao being much older than Yamamoto. Obviously Ran'Tao looks much younger than him, but he might have been a geezer when he died in the Real World.

[Zu Ra]

Originally Posted by kagato3

Although Kenpatchi did imply that death by soul slayer wasn't perment with his "be reborn to fight each other again" speach when he was fighting the 2 captains. .

Was your statement in refrence to this .This happens at 44.36 ( ep 52~53 ) . I think that was just pure bravado what Zaraki says is " If I kill you become a ghost to come back to kill me "

[kagato3]

Thats it. As I said it does at least imply that death by soul slayer doesn't destroy a soul but it could be bravado.

[Scep]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

The Bounto arc reveals that this is not true. The creation of the Bounto was history to him, not something that he has any personal memory of. Since he needed people to find records about what happened, we can deduce that it was definitely before his time. Therefore Ran'Tao is clearly older than him. Since the Central 46 passed judgement on Ran'Tao and the Bounto, we can deduce that Seireitai is older than Yamamoto.

You can deduce what you want from Ran'Tao being much older than Yamamoto. Obviously Ran'Tao looks much younger than him, but he might have been a geezer when he died in the Real World.

Well since the bount arc is non canon.... I do remember clearly yamatomo saying that he was the one who founded seireitei. The bount explosion which happened during gotei 13 times had to be while yamatomo was still in the gotei 13.

[NoSanninWa]

Wrong. He didn't say that he founded Seireitei. He said that he founded the Shinigami training academy.

[Question]

I noticed that plot hole, but then again the bount arc is full of plot holes anyway.

For one thing, how does one get shinigami powers? Thats never been properly explained. I think most people just assume that they manifest their zanpakuto, learn shunpo, kido, etc, etc in the academy. If we follow this view then Sereitei couldnt possibly have existed before Yamamoto, as like 99% of Sereitei is Shinigami occupied. The other 1% is for the 46 chambers, who have absolutely no function if the gotei 13 did not exist(you can say they "govern" soul society but they ignore Rukongai completely, they are basically a council that orders the gotei 13 around and decides how to respond to special events)

However we know Zaraki and Ikkaru had their zanpakutos before becoming shinigamis. At that time they were basically souls with spiritual power and basic zanpakutos. This is the only time a normal soul has been shown in the possession of a zanpakuto. Hinamori, Toshiro, Rukia and Renji have clearly been shown not to possess theri zanpakutos until they entered the academy and became shinigami, so we can rule out "spiritual power = zanpakuto!" theories.

It is debatable whether it was possible for the gotei 13, and by extension, Sereitei, to exist in some limited form before the academy was created. At max these would probably be a limited number of exceptional indivdiuals who are capable of manifesting their zanpakutos and with their own scattered knowledge of kido, shunpo, etc.

The bounto arc clearly showed a sereitei approximately the size of the current one, with clearly established research divisions and shinigami divisions....you clearly see a organziation similar in size and scope to the gotei 13 functioning, and burecracy existing to keep records of the bounto. If we take this as completely true, then we come to the following conclusions :

-Yamamoto is senile and forgot about the bounto events completely. All the other shinigami like Ukitake and Harem guy who are nearly as old as Yamamoto also "forgot" about the bounto totally.

-The predecessor to the gotei 13 in the bounto arc managed to train and arm a small army of shinigami without any kind of training facility like the academy, and they also had support facilities for research and administrative purposes. This is more or less equavelent to having a trained and equipped US army without all the officer cadet schools and boot camps.

-The bount arc is full of plot holes and events in it should be taken with a bottle of salt

Ive already concluded that no one in society(except ran'tao) remembered the bounto purely because of plot device. If Yamamoto and other captains had been present during the bounto disaster we would have significant less screen time devoted to "omg what are these guys and how do we stop them?!" which would have dramatically cut down the length of the filler arc.

I could not find any indication of Rukia dying as an infant in either the anime or manga, if this info exists its in some official character book in japanese. Either way by the time of Rukia meeting Renji they are roughly the same physical age, yet they aged physically at dramatically different rates.

All current info points to the fact that souls arrive in soul society as they were at the point of death......i believe there is an anime scence where souls are queueing up and issued tickets to live in different sections of Rukongai. I cant remember if this scence is in the manga. The parrot boy's soul was that of a young boy, but the soul was simply placed in a parrot. So when he finally "died" and went to soul society, his soul was still that of a young boy, and not that of a parrot. For all intents and purposes the appearance of your soul seems to match what your physical body originally was at the time of your death(minus wounds and stuff since those dont translate over).

Ichigo didnt go to soul society when he died because no one performed the soul burial process for him. Souls cant go to soul society without a burial.

[kagato3]

Originally Posted by Question

I could not find any indication of Rukia dying as an infant in either the anime or manga, if this info exists its in some official character book in japanese. Either way by the time of Rukia meeting Renji they are roughly the same physical age, yet they aged physically at dramatically different rates.

It was pretty much stated that Rukia's sister left her when she was almost too young to remember her.

I think Rukia and Renji still look and are the same physical age Rukia's sister wasn't much diffrent in looks and she was clearly an adult, the waifish look seems to run in their family. As for Renji I don't think he looks any older then Ichigo, who is at most 16 by now. Part of his looking older may be do to his hair style. Part of his hair is shaved off for his Tattoos, some pictures have the points going all the way to the top of his head. This makes his face look longer there by makeing him look older.

[SinsI]

I think two important points are missing from this discussion:
1) animal souls
2) artifical souls
First of all, it might be that after dying in hell, the souls of the criminals are also reincarnated as animals (karmic judgement)
Second, since souls can be created they can be destroyed. Perhaps destroyed souls join something like a big proto-soul mass and from that mass the new souls are born. What is the problem with Quincy's is that hollows destroyed by them are not joining that soul mass and are thus wretched away from the cycle.

[SinsI]

In the manga, as well as anime - i.e. Kon's and that techno-maniac's lieutenant's souls are artifical souls. And they are destructable since Soul Society wanted to destroy all the mod souls they created.

[SinsI]

And I understood it as them creating a brand new soul with some additional powers, and scrapping them by breaking down into the basic parts (that "soul mass"). And creation of new souls is simply a must because population of Earth is not constant.

[fizzmaister]

@ question. Perhaps we may have had different translations, but when I was rewatching the fight between Yamamoto and the two captains, he said they were his first two students to graduate, implying that there were previous teachers.

However there is still something nagging in the back of my head that say he founded the academy, in that case it would have been like apprenticeships. If a shinigami came across a spiritually powerful soul they would take them under their wing as an apprentice.

[cardslash02]

Hey I just wanted to throw a random question out there: What would happen if Ichigo died?

Hypothetically speaking - let's say he was in a car accident. His soul leaves his no longer functioning body. Now normally a soul would either hang around and eventually become a Hollow or it would find its way to Soul Society by itself. Ichigo, on the other hand, can already fully manifest his soul as a Shinigami and has full awareness in that form. Would he still be able to keep these powers after his death? Maybe Urahara can just make a gigai for him and he could pretend he never died? Or would the powers that be force him to come to Seireitei? Would he be able to keep all his memories intact? I'm sure he would graduate Shinigami academy with flying colors....

[Thewanderer]

Originally Posted by The Small One

I think you missed something: Ichigo is already dead!
He was killed by Urahara before his Shinigami Training. His current body is nothing more than a corpse, that works as a Gigai for him.

That's creepy. But sounds pretty accurate.

I'm wondering if his corpse/gigai can function like a living one though...

[kagato3]

I disagruee with the statement that his body is a corpse as I don't belive it has already died, but Ichigo's soul is no longer tied to his body and when he is out of it he is most likely brain dead and his body will die if uninhabited by a soul for a long period of time. So all and all the death of Ichigo's body will have little effect on him.

[Icehawk]

Ichigo's body cannot just be a corpse, it'd be degrading and rotting if it was and would continue getting worse even when he goes back into it if that were the case. Theres no evidence that any treatments were done to his body to maintain it.

Also, if he did die, why is he not allowed to stay in SS then? They all treat him as though his is a living person who doesnt belong there yet.