*grins* My pleasure. And, oh god, Bleach and women. I just... *itches to bang KT's head off the wall a few times* It could so /easily/ have been awesome! He created genuinely powerful female characters and then went to truly astonishing lengths to hamstring them. It makes me crazy.

I hang on mostly for the fascinating-artifact factor. Well, that and the narrative structure. While KT sometimes falls down appallingly in his pacing, I do appreciate a manga that has serious thought put into the narrative structure. I'm just hoping it stays tight in the (probable) endgame, here, and doesn't dissolve into a mess of unanswered questions and dangling dramatic tension.

My current guess is that Ichigo will not really want to ascend, and that Orihime will deny/reverse what he does to himself to win this one and allow him to return to being more or less human. KT has a thing for symmetry, and it would be symmetrical for her to stop him from sacrificing himself just as he (and company) turned up in Hueca Mundo to stop her.