Bleach : A Fan Site
Welcome! This site contains everything you need to know about the series, Bleach! Look around, join the fanlisting and enjoy your stay!
Don't forget to Join the Bleach Roleplay and own your own Bleach Character shrine!
- Races and People
There are two distinct 'races' revealed in BLEACH thus far - humans and spirits. The humans are mostly ordinary like real-life humans, and usualy cannot see or sense spirits in any way, however about 1 in 50,000 can and only a third of them can see them clearly. Spirits inhabiting human bodies, however, can be sensed like ordinary humans. Some humans, such as the Quincy, have the power to not only sense but also fight on equal footing with spirits. Humans unable to sense spirits can gain the ability to do so by spending enough time around a large source of spirit energy, as is the case of Sado and Inoue. Spirits have a form composed of reishi (ectoplasm), with an anatomy similar to an ordinary flesh body, including organs and blood. However, this form seems to encompass all of a spirit's being. In other words, there is no distinction between soul and body.
Plus
A plus (called a whole in the official English version of the manga) is the disembodied spirit of a person who has died. A plus has a spiritual body composed of reishi that resembles its former material body at the time of death. From the chest hangs the Chain of Destiny (????, inga no kusari?). This chain ties the soul to something in the world that keeps them there. In the case of a human soul removed from their body that isn't dead, this chain is tied to their body, and if it breaks in this state, they die. If the chain of a spirit tied to an object is broken, the chain begins to corrode. If the corrosion is completed before a shinigami can perform a soul burial on the soul, the plus descends into a hollow, unless they have shinigami powers and are able to call them forth.
Pluses are sent to Soul Society by the shinigami in a ritual called soul burial (??, konso?).
Once in Soul Society, a spirit is able to live much longer than humans would in the living world, with many spirits aging in the thousands. Spirits generally do not die unless they're murdered, but they are also able to be killed by diseases. One example of this is Byakuya Kuchiki's wife, Hisana. Once a spirit dies in Soul Society, its soul is sent back to the living world and is born as a new human (see reincarnation). This provides the two worlds with the balance that the Quincy are said to destroy.
Shinigami
Shinigami (known as Soul Reapers in the English version) in BLEACH are psychopomps. They are made up of spiritual matter and cannot be seen or detected in any way by normal humans. Their archrivals are the hollows.
The shinigami mainly use soul slayers (zanpakuto) and demon arts (kido), to fight.
Some shinigami acquired hollow powers using illegal methods; they are known as Vizards.
If a Captain or Lieutenant-rank shinigami travels to the human world, their power level is set to a limit of 20% of their usual strength. They must ask Soul Society for permission to "lift the limit" to release their full power while in the human world.
Modified Soul
Little is known about this experiment authorized by shinigami, except that they were created to hunt hollows by utilizing dead human bodies. The shinigami decided to scrap the project due to the inhumanity of having dead bodies fight. This meant destroying all mod souls. Those who were yet to be activated and thus still in pill form were also to be terminated but it appears some have escaped.
Quincy
The Quincy were a tribe of spiritually aware humans who fought against the hollows in the past, using weapons composed of spiritual energy to slay them. The Quincy are now nearly extinct due to necessary extermination by the shinigami about 200 years before the main storyline - in addition to Uryu Ishida, there is at least one other remaining.
As opposed to shinigami, who operate using only their inner spiritual energy, Quincy absorb and channel energy from their surroundings. When a shinigami slays a hollow, they are cleansing its spirit and washing away its sins, thus allowing it to enter Soul Society. The Quincy technique to slay hollows however did not cleanse a spirit, it simply destroyed it. If this was allowed to go on, the balance of the universe would be shattered, because the number of souls entering and leaving Soul Society, and the living world would not be equal.
Hollow
The hollows are the main antagonists of BLEACH. They are evil spirits who reside in Hueco Mundo. Like shinigami, hollows are made of spiritual matter, cannot be detected by ordinary humans, and use their internal spiritual power to fight.
All hollows wear masks, except for a recent few created under the influence of former Gotei 13, 5th Division Captain Sosuke Aizen. These hollows are called arrancar and have been able to remove their masks and tap into the powers of the shinigami. Although they carry zanpakuto, the manner in which they release their swords is different from the shinigami, in the sense that rather than modifying the weapon, it modifies the body of the arrancar itself.
Bount
The Bount, like the Quincy, are a group of human beings with special abilities. But unlike the Quincy who destroy hollows, the Bount consume the souls of human beings. They also differ from the Quincy in that eating souls allows them to live for centuries: theoretically, a Bount could live forever.
They were officially discovered by Kisuke Urahara, though their existence has been known for centuries in the guise of vampires. While they usually feed on the souls of the dead, recently the Bount have started consuming those of live human beings, leaving only death without rebirth. Bount also carry living "dolls" with them that are used in the way that shinigami use zanpakuto. The dolls, however, are different from zanpakuto in that they actually move and talk on their own, while zanpakuto remain in sword form. Only three dolls have been revealed so far. The first summons a fire being that is supposedly devoid of weak points, the second is a snake that is able to turn anything in its surroundings into a snake when the owner imagines it, and the third is a doll with the ability to completely control water.
It should be noted that Bount have also been labelled "Bound", "Bounto" or "Bountou" in various translations.
Information from Wikipedia.