User blog:Zf6hellion/Zf6hellion's Shitty Guide to Characters: Hybrids

Ready for round three, folks? No? Ha, too bad.

Today we're going to talk about one of the more complicated aspects of Bleach: the hybrids. Hybrids are a common thing in most any kind of fiction, half-elves, half-dragons, half-aliens and so on. Its an incredibly common trend, because it allows people to be "unique", after all, when everyone around is an Elf, you'd stand out for being that one woman with the Human ears. Many forms of fiction will set out to accommodate this kind of thing, like rulesets in D&D for a variety of half-and-half races, or a fairly popular example that can be found in the recent superhero series  where 80% of the population of Earth in its universe have gained a "Quirk", in other words, super powers. The world is specifically set up to allow for hybrids from the very first couple of chapters with the explanation that a child of two people with a "Quirk" is likely to end up with one of their parents Quirks, both of them, or some mixture of the two. This creates a great sense of natural variety as you can mash just about any two elements together to create something new.

Like Hero Academia, Bleach has also set up various rules to govern its own form of hybrids, the primary one being that it is exceedingly rare. See, everything in Bleach is made up of "shields" or barriers that help keep everything separated so that they remain intact. This is because things like souls have a natural predisposition towards seeking each other out, such that an imbalance in the populous of the Human World or Soul Society would cause one of those worlds to start merging with the other. Everything is locked behind little barriers, allowing them to interact but not truly connect with one another. When you're given the ability to manipulate these shields, as Orihime can, you end up with some incredible power. But, what happens when you don't have access to your own portable Kurosaki-kun Yeller 5000? Well, Soul Suicide happens. When a soul tries to merge with a different soul, the differences inherent between them effectively cause the two to "wash" together and breakdown on a fundamental level. Think of it like a fresh painting being splattered by a random can of paint, it ruins the work entirely, because you can't get the new layer of paint off as its already muddied what was underneath and mixed together. Only thing you can do is start again with a new canvas, which is what happens to hybrids here, only with a lot more death.

BUT. Hybrids clearly exist, so there has to be a means of achieving it, right? Yes, yes there is. So, read on and find out.

Types of Hybrid
There are two primary types of Hybrid in Bleach (with a far more murky third version), two of which are Shinigami-to-Hollow hybrids, and one of which is a Hollow-to-Shinigami Hybrid, otherwise known as. Lets cover each of them, one by one.

The "Visored"
Shinigami-to-Hollow (Or more correctly Soul-to-Hollow) hybrids are probably the most complex of the bunch, as they are the hardest to properly make. For one thing, they do not have an actual name within the series. The Visored as they are typically referred to as, is not the name of them as hybrids, but the name of the group all of them are a part of. There is only one true hybrid on this side of the scale,, and he is never referred to as a Visored, because he's not with that group. People will most likely refer to them as Visored regardless of what I say here, but I felt the need to at least bring up the fact that they don't have a real name, they're just Hollow-Shinigami, or Hollow-Soul, hybrids.

How do they work, though? Well, there are two types, the "failures" and the "successful". The failed hybrids, which comprises all of the Visoreds gain access to the ability to summon a Hollow mask, white bone masks of various designs that augment their physical abilities and give them access to the generic powers of a Hollow, namely,. The successful version, which is Kaname, gains access to his own mask as well, but in addition to that he also possesses a a merging of the concept of Hollow powers and a Shinigami's.

They are the hardest to make because the means of achieving successful hybridisation is incredibly rare. The most natural outcome is that the soul is destroyed and the person attempting to become a hybrid is killed off. All of the Visored are rendered failures because they would have died if Kisuke did not halt their conversion. This gave them the lesser form of hybridisation, and kept them alive. Likewise Kaname achieved his through the use of the, a device that can grant wishes. So, there are means, they're just incredibly difficult to get to.

The Arrancar
Hollow-to-Shinigami hybrids are the easiest to achieve, relatively speaking, and they also happen to be the best documented in that regard. Unlike the Shinigami which require an outside source to get themselves all masked up, the Arrancar method is incredibly simple. They remove their masks.

Now that sounds incredibly easy, but one has to remember that breaking a Hollow's mask is also the primary method of killing them. in particular has a nasty predisposition to absolutely punching the shit out of those masks, and the results don't tend to give us happy Hollows. The stablising factor isn't established, but we do know that both artificial and natural Arrancar can occur, so it is likely the result of random chance or a factor of a particular Hollow's power when they try to invoke the transformation.

As a result of "Arrancarification", a Hollow gains a humanoid body with the physical characteristics of your average Human, though they have a series of fragments around their face, which are the remnants of their old Hollow mask. Their internal physiology becomes similar to a Shinigami (Meaning they gain their weaknesses), and they are capable of sealing their unique Hollow powers into the form of a sword, an equivalent to the Shinigami's Zanpakutō. If they activate these powers, through the aforementioned Resurrección, they regain a lot of their old Hollow traits, and enhanced forms of their original powers. For example, if were to become an Arrancar, his Resurrección would revolve around his little critters that shoot exploding leeches.

The power of an Arrancar depends on when it was made, as well as the method used to make it. After all a Menos Gillian will be weaker than an Adjuchas if both of them became Arrancar at the same time. As well, Natural Arrancar are stated to be weaker than the Artificial Arrancar that were made through the Hōgyoku, so its probable that a Natural Arrancar suffers a penalty for the transformation, if not the Hōgyoku simply being better at its job.

Ichigo Kurosaki: The Beast of Circumstance
There is a third type of hybrid, which is best summed up as simply,. Due to the sheer amount of contrivances surrounding his birth, he has ended up with a combination of most of the races in the Bleach universe. He is a Quincy by birth, through his mother, with a predisposition towards Shinigami through his father. On top of that, as his mother was infected with a Hollow, and only kept alive by acting as a balancing point for her Quincy powers and 's Hollow powers, those same Hollow powers would migrate into Ichigo's body after his birth. It remained dormant for most of his early years, and only woke up when bestowed her Shinigami powers upon him.

After he lost those powers, he was able to attain his own Shinigami powers by turning his Hollow powers into his Zanpakutō, albeit unknowingly. Through out the majority of the series, his Hollow powers act as an antagonistic force, trying to consume Ichigo and manifesting outwardly in means similar to the Visored. He is able to manifest a Hollow mask, but unlike the others, he can also assume a full on Hollow form, turning him into an outright monster. The closest anyone else has to this is Kaname, when using his Resurrección to assume a Hollow form of his own. While acting as an antagonist, Ichigo's Quincy powers filled in for the Hollow, acting as his Zanpakutō abilities in the mean time. After losing both of them at the end of 's run as the main villain he then attains powers, because as a Human with Hollow Reiryoku he fulfills the pre-requisite to use their powers as well.

By the current arc his Shinigami powers have been returned, and having reforged his sword and come to terms with their identities, he is now able to wield both Shinigami and Hollow powers unlike anyone else does. For one thing, he's the only non-Arrancar in the series to perform Gran Rey Cero so far, and still the only one with a Hollow form without an accompanying Resurrección. He can, at least unconsciously, tap into Quincy abilities such as as well.

What's my advice for this craziness? Stay away, Ichigo is a fuckin' abomination.

Hollow-Shinigami Hybrids
Naming these guys is pretty straightforward, they're Shinigami in most cases, so you simply follow the established rule set for them. In canon this is strictly Japanese names, but I feel you can stretch this to encompass any number of cultural spheres so long as you stick within reason. As in, a guy born in 3000 BC wouldn't be named Billy Madison, because English didn't exist at that point in time. You could feasibly have a Captain from just about anywhere in the world, but they shouldn't predate a point where they could logically show up. It takes all of five minutes to find out when and where most cultures came into existence, even in a prototypical form and that is often enough to say Gaius Maximus of the Seventh Division became a Shinigami in 15 AD, because the Roman Empire had been around for a long while at that point.

Physically, a Hollow-Shinigami experiences absolutely no changes to their appearance. You look as Human as the day you died. What they gain however, is a new tool, the Hollow mask. These come in all shapes and sizes. They are primarily white in colour, just like actual Hollows, and have a few common features, namely a jagged maw of diamond-shaped teeth and the eyes gain blackened sclera with yellow pupils. This is not always the case though, as some Hollow masks come without the altered eyes, or hide them entirely, and some likewise have no teeth to them. The masks themselves often depict something similar to a variety of masks found in the real world, such as a plague doctor or depictions of Oni. The masks also have a variety of patterns to them, similar to the estigma of Arrancar, which can alter as a hybrid grows in power, as shown through Ichigo's mask as the series progressed.

Arrancar
The Hollow guys, on the other hand, gain a whole slew of physical traits. Where, before they were a variety of animalistic monsters, or giant walking bed sheets, they now gain a Human-looking body. The vast majority of Arrancar look entirely Human in appearance, they can appear male or female and run the gamut of physical characteristics, they can be short, they can be huge, they can slim, fat, or rippling with muscles as likes to attest. What sets them apart is the fragments of their old mask that they wore as Hollows, all Arrancar without will have these somewhere on their face or around their head, and rarely will they be elsewhere (As is the case with ). Broken pieces of white that reflect some portion of how they used to look, they come in a variety of forms such as 's crown, or the jaw on, they can even be odd accentuating features like 's glasses or 's Mohawk for ants. In addition to their mask fragments, they also each possess a Hollow hole just as they did as regular Hollows. Where this turns up usually has implications for the character's personality, and they have a tendency to end up in a variety of odd locations, such as 's eye socket, or 's throat. They can also have a variety of tattoos known as estigma which are likely to have come from the way their Hollow masks looked in the past and simply carry those attributes over. Ulquiorra's "crying lines" thing is one such example, which were present on his mask as a Hollow.

Of course, despite becoming humanoid, they don't have to look identical to them. Among the cast, they are the ones with the most flavour amongst their hair colours, sporting a variety of blues, reds, greens and so on where the other races rarely use more than the natural hair colours (with a few exceptions). is notable for having a completely different head from the rest of the cast, which is two small fleshless little things kept inside a liquid-filled case. Why this is, isn't explained, but given that he's the only Gillian-class Arrancar among the Espada suggests that the further down the evolutionary chain you are when you become an Arrancar, the less Human you end up looking. If not, then its probably to do with his Resurrección, which is weeeeeeeird.

Names for Arrancar are, unusual. They follow two themes, the first of which is double letters. If you look through the list of Arrancar that I've mentioned in this guide, you'll notice that every single one of their names contains a use of double letters at some point, be it the first name, surname, or both. A lot of the time these names also come across as gibberish, and this is intentional. The second theme that they follow is being named after various designers from the real world. Aaroniero was named after, a Finnish designer, and Starrk was named after , a designer from France. There is also the implication of name change.

All of the Hollows we encounter in the series have more odd names. , and so on, they act more like descriptors than true names, and none of the Arrancar share this trait except for Grand Fisher, who kept his Hollow name after becoming an Arrancar. Its likely that had he been able to spend a decent amount of time as an Arrancar he would've changed his name as well. So, that leaves an easy way of deciding which way to go. If you have a new Arrancar, give him a descriptive name that lets us know he's only recently changed, and if he's been an Arrancar for a while, well, time to familiarise yourselves with some interior decorators, my friends.