Bleach has more than a few members of the Soul Society who are insanely powerful, whether they be captains, lieutenants, or something in-between like Ichigo Kurosaki. With a new special released to celebrate the anniversary of the Shonen franchise created by Tite Kubo, the manga chapter doesn’t just hint that a new story is on the way for the popular series, but also gives fans the opportunity to see how the power levels of some of their favorite Soul Reapers can be explored and measured.
Bleach hasn’t been the most concretely defined in terms of its power and levels of strength among each fighter, and while our biggest hint to this before had been a Soul Reaper’s rank within the 13 Court Guard Companies, this new chapter revealed an older way to measure these powers and spiritual pressure with something known as “Spirit Class.” This will become much more important as the series heads into its next wave of fights.
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As Captain-Commander Shunsui Kyoraku explains in the new chapter, an old wives’ tale has been told through the Soul Society about something known as “Spirit Class.” He notes that it had been solely used by Aristocrats in the past as a scale used to measure the density of the spiritual pressure within Reishi. The way it broke down was that a standard member of the company would be in the 20th Class, and it would rise up from there with Assistant Captains being in the range of Fourth or Fifth Class.
Captains would be greater than Third Class, and their Reishi had to be dealt with in a different way as it would be too dense to simply be absorbed back into Soul Society’s soil, and could never actually be absorbed at all. This meant all of these stronger powers had to go somewhere else, and this is what kicks off the whole new wave of threats. But the important piece here is that this scale for spiritual pressure seems to be more of a danger scale than not.
Marking a fighter above a certain class means that it was known that their power could never rightfully return to the ecosystem, and it ties back into the political hierarchies we had become aware of from the original series. Rather than power level rankings being used for each Soul Reaper to distinguish themselves from one another, it was instead used as something to keep an eye on lest they become a problem later…a problem we’re finally seeing explode with this new arc.
But what do you think of Bleach introducing power level rankings in such a fashion with its new chapter? What did you think of Bleach‘s return overall? Excited to see more? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!
