Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-2089817-20180823003054

So, ever since the final arc of Bleach, one of the most discussed (or well, not as much as I thought it would be, but it's still argued by some) topics is about the Beast Realm that Kubo introduced in Chapter 556. Is it referring specifically to the Animal Realm in Buddhism, or is it an actual place in the Bleach world, like Soul Society or Hueco Mundo? Now, on BFF, almost all of us seem to lean toward the latter, since we've all collaborated on the Yuanren project, but even so, it's never been clarified as to what Kubo meant by Beast Realm.

But I think I may have stumbled upon the answer.

I've been looking for some Bleach raws for a while now, ever since we found out that the East Branch of Soul Society was discovered to have been mentioned as early as Chapter 50, but scanalators and even VIZ decided to or mistakenly missed it. I managed to find a website that had the raw japanese written out for Chapter 556 where the Beast Realm is mentioned (https://textream.yahoo.co.jp/message/552018448/a1ybleacha1aaa1y/1/8259)

It took some doing, but I managed to isolate the phrase of importance in this long list.

「我ら人狼の一族は獣の生息地へと送られた」

This string of kanji is when Sajin's great grandfather told him that "Our clan was sent to the Beast Realm".

Now, before anything, let me turn your attention on the buddhist Animal Realm.

In Japanese, the Animal Realm is 畜生道 (Chikushōdō), or roughly, the "way of the animal/beast". Basically, it suggests a state of being as an animal, rather than some alternate dimension or whatever.

But now take that kanji, and look at the line from the Chapter 556 raw.

It's not there at all, is it. At least not in its entirety.

In fact, when you isolate the part of the string of kanji mentioning the Beast Realm, you get 獣の生息地, which roughly translates as "territory of the beast" or something like that. I'm unfortunately not good on translating kanji to english. But even I can tell that the Animal Realm of buddhism is not what Kubo was referring to when he wrote in the Beast Realm.

So I'd like to think that this clarifies that the Bleach Animal Realm is not specifically the buddhist Animal Realm. Now, whether this means the Animal Realm is in fact an actual place or a state of being, I can't say with 100% certainty, but considering that Kubo did not use the kanji for the actual buddhist Animal Realm, I'd like to think he wanted to make it clear that this Animal Realm is not a state of being but an actual place.

Anyways, just something I thought was interesting to bring up. 