They 'pull' on the souls of matter to manipulate it, yeah. Shown by light appearing around their feet or the object they're "fullbringing".

 

Heard the theory that this would mean that Ichigo's mom was a Quincy. Probably the sister of Ishida's father or something lame like that.

 

It doesn't really matter if she was or not in terms of Ichigo's latest technique. Anyone can become a Quincy as long as they have spiritual power.

Though Masaki being a Quincy wouldn't have been surprising even before the last chapter.

 

If she was a quincy, wouldn't she have been able to kill Grand Fischer?

 

I was under the impression that Quincy powers could be viewed as quite a bit like the Dresden Files' magic. If someone doesn't want/rejects it, it grows weaker. Then again, Ryokan hates the fact that he's a Quincy and is arguably one of the more powerful people currently living in Karakura Town.

There's also the theory that she was a Quincy but it simply never manifested for her. She never needed the power because Ryokan and the Soul Society were assumedly defending Karakura Town, which meant that up until she died, it simply wasn't needed, and when it was she didn't know how to call on it.

Or this is all a bunch of hearsay and we'll find out how Ichigo is a Quincy in the next couple of weeks.

In other news, One Piece is making more sense than Naruto and Bleach for something like five months running, now. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this fact.

 

One Piece always made more sense. Oda just presents everything in a comedic fashion, but he's actually pretty consistent with how things work.

Except with that whole magma burning fire thing. I still have no idea how that works.

 

One Piece always made more sense. Oda just presents everything in a comedic fashion, but he's actually pretty consistent with how things work.

Except with that whole magma burning fire thing. I still have no idea how that works.

 

Magma is hotter than fire so it burns it. Plus plot shield always defeats logic. The whole Quincy power thing was weird, I'd rather Ichigo have pulled out his mask ;/

 

Keep in mind that the Grand Fisher was able to evade and kill Shinigami for 50 years. Yeah, he's a weakling in the overall power-scale but he's still somewhat dangerous. Masaki would also have been concerned about Ichgio and could have been caught off-guard by the hollow's powers.

I don't think there's anything to suggest that, tbh. At most it would be case of letting your skills get rusty by not using them.

Quincy powers don't "manifest"; it's not like shinigami powers where they can manifest a zanpakuto. If Masaki was a Quincy it was because she was born with spiritual power and underwent training to fight using reishi. She might have been the daughter of a Quincy, possessed spiritual power but never learnt to fight like so she'd 'just' be a spiritually aware human.

Like I said, it doesn't really matter for Ichigo if his mother was a Quincy or a descendant of one. Even if she were a regular human, the fact that he was born with spiritual powes means that he could use Quincy tech if he learned how.

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear. She never needed them, as such she never learned them.

Also, if anyone with spiritual powers could learn to fight like a Quincy, couldn't we then extrapolate that there should be at least some running around in Soul Society? After all, we have it straight from the horse's mouth that Mayuri has experimented on them in the past, and it seems like that would be something he'd be interested in recreating amongst Soul Reapers. After all, Quincies fight entirely with Reishi, which means they don't need to wield a sword to defeat a Hollow.

Theoretically, a crippled shinigami could continue serving the Seireitei by fighting as a Quincy, instead of being forcibly retired. By your exact logic, Yamamoto's lieutenant wouldn't have had to resign, if he had learned such powers, which one would think Mayuri would have been able to torture out of his victims. While that is a leap in logic, it isn't an unfounded one.

Working on the assumption that Mayuri had, in fact, tortured it out of one or more of his victims, this leads us to one of two roads. Either the methods to manifest Quincy powers were seen as barbaric, or Shinigami simply cannot learn them.

As I recall, Quincy methods in general were seen as barbaric, because a Hollow killed by a Shinigami was put to rest and sent on to the afterlife, whereas a Hollow killed by a Quincy simply ceased to exist. Again, as I recall, Hollows are created when a soul refuses to move on and their Chain of Fate fully erodes into their chest. Only truly evil souls are sent to Hell, rather than Soul Society.

Perhaps this is the reason why the Shinigami hunted down and committed genocide against the Quincy, because they were destroying beings who could, down the road, be potential recruits into the Shinigami Academy.

But that's neither here nor there, and was simply me word-vomiting my thoughts as they came to me.

Honestly, Bleach is getting to the same point as Naruto for me, where I've read this far into it, I might as well finish it. One Piece is the only one I still look forward to.

EDIT; Furthermore, on the subject of manifestation, in order to learn such things you either need to pick them up yourself or be taught. The original 'Quincy', so to speak, obviously picked it up him/herself, so one would assume that it was not out of the question for someone else to do so.

 

My bad.

Though you've hit on something I've been wondering myself for a while now.

Other than the fact that we haven't seen them do so, there's nothing to suggest that Shinigami are incapable of fighting like Quincy do. Ishida was able to fight in his usual style despite being in a spirit body (though technically, it was his human body turned into a spirit body), the Vandenreich are running around in spirit bodies, we've seen a non-human arrancar using Quincy powers and even Ichigo's doing it in his Shinigami form.

And whilst the Quincy method results in the destruction of the soul, we've only ever been told that this was a deliberate choice that they made. Quincy kills hollows not because they're unable to purify them but because they want to. So far as we know, the Quincy should be fully capable of using their powers to purify hollows.

Which makes it more difficult to understand why Shinigami don't try to use their method when it could easily become one of their combat styles. The only in-universe explanations I can think of are that it was made illegal by the Central 46 to use Quincy powers, despite the fact that they should technically be capable of purifying instead of killing*, and/or because the Shinigami's top brass decided against learning their method because they had ended up becoming embittered enemies. Or maybe it could have been seen as them approving of the Quincy's actions since that would make them even less likely to stop using their powers and endangering the balance of the world.

Otherwise it was done so that the Quincy powers are kept focused on Ishida's family and because Kubo was planning to use the Quincy as enemies.

(I'm not sure what you mean about Yamamoto's lieutenant though. He never resigned, he took a brutal wound and died.)

Also, on the topic of Mayuri I don't believe his actions were approved by SS. I'm pretty much him kidnapping and experimenting/torturing was something he did himself secretly to satisfy his own curiousity. It's quite possible that the other captains had no idea he had done any experimentation of the remaining Quincy.

Hm, that post kinda ran away from me.

tl;dr Shinigami should be capable of fighting like Quincy but don't, Quincy should be capable of purifying instead of destroying Hollows hut didn't and Mayuri's an asshole.

*EDIT: This could be a definite possibility since Quincy are the only known being capable of removing hollows from existence, meaning that the offensive use of reishi is likely key to that. They wouldn't want Shinigami to have the option of destroying hollows instead of purifying them.

 

Sauce? Kind find anything to this affect at all from google or any of the other resources for Bleach.

The shinigami wouldn't use quincy powers even if they could because they hate them, and quincy powers are not as strong as shinigami ones. After all, they had a war, and lost.

Similarly, unless you can provide sauce for how a quincy can purify (which makes no sense, otherwise the rational response to the shinigami mandate of "killing the hollow disrupts the balance of the world, so stop or you all will die" would have been "okay, we'll just purify them.) doing so would disrupt the balance of the world.

 

This was probably me remembering fanon, as, now that I think about it, that scene was from one of the better Bleach fanfictions I've read in recent memory.

I can't for the life of me remember much else about it, although that scene seems to have stuck me with me.

 

This and this page are the ones I'm referring to. We're told that Quincy destroy Hollows due to the belief that they don't deserve purification, not because that's the only method available. To me that suggests they could potentially be able to purify Hollows just like the Shinigami.

And yeah, it's pretty messed up if they could do that but choose to carry on killing. But the Quincy are noted for their obstinancy and this seems like a strong example of them refusing to compromise on their beliefs despite the consequences. Hell, they might have been zealots for all we know.

Since we're in the middle of a Quincy arc, we may get more up-to-date details on the subject but right now there isn't confirmation that using reishi as a weapon can only be used to destroy hollows. Unless someone could point out info that I missed somehwere.

Is that how it works in RL? I was wondering how realistic it would have been for countries in the past to ignore potential new weaponry because it was used by a hated enemy, but I don't know much on the subject.

Whilst it certainly wouldn't be used as a substitute for their current style, I imagine it would be possible for Shinigami to turn the Quincy's combat method into one of their own like hakuda, hoho etc. An interesting fic idea, if nothing else.

 

For a second there I thought that Ichigo would become the next Kenpachi, having such a huge reiatsu that the other guy sword couldn't hurt him, and proceed to smack him silly with the sword handle.

But he had to become a Quincy.

Yea, I'm keeping my first impression in my mind till next chapter...

 

Sauce.

Sauce here, as well. Also, history is written by the victor. It's not unthinkable that we are told that because we read a manga about Shinigami from the perspective of a Shinigami.

Also, the very fact that Soul Society was handily destroyed in this recent arc with minimal losses on the part of the Quincy, tells me that their powers are at the least on par with a captain-level Shinigami, if not stronger.

 

They lost because Yamamoto + his band of merry men went burn the world to ash on their asses. What you see here probably took hundreds of years to build back up in addition to waiting until SS is in one of the worst positions possible.

 

Nothing really surprising was revealed in this chapter.

What I liked was the fact that even imprisoned Aizen could do more against Bach than anyone else who was facing him directly in the battle. Makes you wonder what else he can still do.