Summary
While mangaka Tite Kubo is often most praised for hisastonishing character designsand the way he constructs fight scenes, one area of his writing that fans only started picking up on by the time theBleachmanga was ending was his skill at foreshadowing events. There are so many parts throughout the story where Kubo gives the fans a massive hint as to what’s going to happen later on, and in some cases, he might as well be spelling it out to readers for how obvious it is.
Still, these are so subtly included in the story that they never act as spoilers and can be very difficult to catch since they will usually be a throwaway line or scene that seems pretty unimportant in the moment. Now that theThousand Year Blood Waranime is finally a reality, bringing with it a whole bunch of plot twists, it’s worth looking back at the moments when Kubo hinted that these revelations were going to happen sooner or later.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
7Shinji’s Shikai & Bankai
Shinji first pops up at the very beginning ofthe Arrancar Arcwhere he randomly starts appearing in Ichigo’s school, warning the Substitute Soul reaper that his inner Hollow would take him over if he didn’t receive the right training. At this point, fans were most concerned about how he even knew about the power at all, and where exactly he came from to find Ichigo. What many viewers probably missed though was his unusual behavior in class, such as the way he would spell his name backwards.
Additionally, when he appears to Ichigo outside the school, he also is shown standing upside down. It would be easy to assume that this was simply Kubo highlighting just how strange and unorthodox the young man was in how he acts, but it was actually foreshadowing both hisShikai and Bankaiwhich reverse people’s senses, causing them to see left as right, up as down, and ally as enemy.
6Shinigami Badge Properties
The Shinigami Badge is a small tool that is given to Ichigo just before he leaves the Soul Society after saving Rukia, but it isn’t fully explained to the characters what exactly it can do. Instead, fans are dropped small hints about the many properties of the badge throughout the story, but it’s not untilthe Fullbring Arcmuch later that they learn that it acts as a walkie-talkie between the Soul Society and the world of the living.
This is foreshadowed while Ichigo and his friends are returning home after the Soul Society arc where Uryu comments that something seems a little off about the Badge, only for the characters to ignore it. Then, during the Arrancar Arc, Ichigo starts badmouthing in front of the Badge, only for hisSoul Reaper comradesto appear immediately after, repeating what he said. During the fight with Ginjo much further on in the story, he reveals the true nature of the Badge was to “Observe and restrict” Ichigo all along.
5Byakuya’s Backstory
Byakuya is presented as a fierce andimmensely powerful captainat the start of the series who commits his life to abide by the laws of the Soul Society, even if that means letting his sister be executed. When retrieving Rukia at the end of the Substitute Shinigami Arc, Byakuya tells Rukia that he understands why she would want to protect someone who looks like a person she once admired, referring to the similar appearance between Ichigo and Kaien.
This wasn’t just Byakuya trying to mock Rukia though. This was him essentially revealing his past of adopting Rukia after his wife, Hisana, asked him to do so not long before she died. Kubo specifically highlights the similarity in appearance between Rukia and her older sister which makes this one line of dialogue so much more meaningful than anyone could have expected.
4Kenpachi And Yachiru
During the Thousand Year Blood War, fans finally got to feast their eyes on Kenpachi’s Bankai, and while it was even more powerful than anyone could have imagined, very few people could have guessed that Yachiru was related to his Banaki in any way. It’s revealed that Yachiru is the embodiment ofKenpachi’s Bankaiwho was separated from its body, and who only received the power to become a Shinigami once Kenpachi decided to give her a name.
Two key moments foreshadow this, and they both happen in the fight between Ichigo and Kenpachi during the mission to save Rukia. In Kenpachi’s flashback, when asking who the young girl is, she points to his blade, but Kubo makes it look as though she’s simply admiring the blood on his sword instead. Then, she says that the fight was unfair because it was “2 vs 1” since Ichigo was able toawaken his powerthanks to “Zangetsu,” suggesting that she wasn’t there to help Kenny use his full power too.
3Unohana’s Secret
Undoubtedly one of the most shocking reveals in the entire series was that the kindhearted and seemingly innocent captain of the 4th Division, Unohana, was once a Kenpachi who rivaled the current Zaraki Kenpachi in terms of strength, making her incredibly powerful. Kubo insinuates this on a few occasions, but most of the time, these are presented asslapstick bits of comedy, such as in the Soul Society where two guards became petrified after disobeying one of her commands.
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By far the biggest giveaway is during the Arrancar Arc where a group of Exequais soldiers, who are essentially Aizen’s elite force, encounter Unohana. After just seeing her, the leader of the squad, Rudbornn, orders all of his soldiers to retreat, despite Unohana still being in her regular form and without even a blade. Because the Exequais went toe to toe with Ichigo and Rukia, it was certainly a head-scratcher why Unohana of all people would force them to back off, but now it makes so much more sense.
2Ichigo’s Quincy Powers
Kubo scattered plenty of very small and subtle hints throughout the story that implied that Ichigo may have had some unique Quincy abilities, but since fans knew next to nothing abouthis motherfor a long time, it seemed unlikely for a while. Even during the very first episode, viewers get a hint that Ichigo is more powerful than he’s letting on when he breaks out of Rukia’s Bakudo, leading her to admit that he had extremely high spiritual pressure for a mere human.
The biggest indication of the massive reveal of Ichigo’s Quincy Powers was a lot closer to home, and to be more specific, on his bed. There are only a handful of scenes where fans see Ichigo relaxing in his room, but on the rare instance that viewers do, they can see his bed has a light Quincy cross stretched across it. It’s certainly a very easy detail to miss out on, which also makes it such a perfect method of foreshadowing one of thebiggest reveals in the series.
1Zangetsu’s True Identity
Throughout the majority of the story, Ichigo knows “old man Zangetsu” as being the representation of his Soul Reaper powers, while White Ichigo is the troublesome and annoying entity whoembodied his Hollow powers. However, White Ichigo constantly tells Ichigo during their encounters that he’s the one who is Zangetsu, which fans presume is just him trying to mock Ichigo and get in his head. It turns out that he was telling the truth all along though, being the result of a fusion between Ichigo’s Zanpakuto and Hollow powers all rolled into one.
In the manga, there’s even a panel when Ichigo and the man he thinks is Zangetsu meet for the first time when Ichigo asks who he is. After replying with “Don’t you know?” he goes on to say “It’s me…” but the rest of the text is covered in a small black bar. Many fans have speculated that this wasmost likely Ichibe, one of the Squad 0 members, using his black ink to ability to hide this fact from Ichigo so that he wouldn’t find out his Quincy origins too early.
