Bleach: Hueca Mundo
Nov. 3rd, 2005 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootThe Hollow world's names, and some aspects of the Hollows' appearance, clearly derive from Hispanic languages and traditions. Terminology covers most of the linguistic issues, but it is worth noting here that the speech of the higher Hollows is peppered with words in Spanish. Basura: trash. Suerte: luck. One of the earliest observed attacks was named as Sero, that is, cero, zero.
Given the facility with which Kubo uses Spanish I'm guessing he's personally familiar, perhaps with Mexico specifically. If that is the case, then the idea of hungry ghosts may well have immediately suggested El Dia de los Muertos to him.
The Hollows' masks, in particular, bear an extremely strong resemblance to calacas, the skull masks worn by dancers and placed on family altars during El Dia de los Muertos. (source, source) (Thanks go to Andrew JP for pointing this out.)
Thing is... El Dia de los Muertos welcomes back ancestors, and feeds them. It celebrates the dead and offers them the pleasures of the living. There's a certain resonance with the whole idea of spirits that linger for their families' sakes becoming Hollows, as per the arc with Orihime's brother. But it crosses up strangely with the hollowness of the Hollows. They're a much better match with the hungry ghosts of Buddhism than with the (generally happy) dead of this festival.
To be sure, hungry ghosts in general do seem to be a two-edged concept, sometimes only desiring due and proper sustenance from their families, and sometimes malicious/greedy/insatiable. And, of course, Kubo never seems to take content too directly from his sources, so the merging of the Asian-style ghosts with the Mexican-style ones is very consistent with his writing style as a whole.
Hollows themselves progress along somewhat the same path as a shinigami's zanpaku-tou--reasonable enough if the shape of "shinigami powers" is the sword as we see when Ichigo finds his own during his re-making down in Urahara's pit. They start small, increase in size as they increase in strength (rather like shikai and bankai), and finally compress in size as they gain sufficient control to command all that power with precision (much they way Isshin points out captain's can compress the size of their swords).
What Rukia explains in 28 is the axis along which Hollows move. A soul becomes a Hollow, she says, when it loses its heart and becomes reduced only to instincts--hence the skull-like mask that protects those raw instincts. Based on how Orihime's brother behaves as a Hollow we can read heart as conscience, altruism. These are, indeed, things that would mitigate instinct. Clearly, though, the Hollows who are able to dispense with their masks have not regained their hearts; they still have the holes that make that much clear. What they gain, that can protect or direct their instincts, may be mind, instead--power and mind. Hitsugaya's description of the three grades of very powerful Hollows make it clear that the lowest level, the Menos Grande, has very little intellect. This makes a certain amount of sense, for a merged entity; the mind of something created by lots of beings mushed together might be a bit soupy. The higher the level, though, the greater the intellect. And the smaller the size. So power plus intellect seems to suffice to guard the instincts.
The fact that Grimmjow was able to remove the Grand Fisher's mask, in 25, suggests that power is a manipulable thing, and that it is possible for Arrancar to skip other Hollows past stages of development. This runs nicely parallel to the way Rukia transferred power to Ichigo and "skipped" him up to shinigami.
Given the way Arrancar are referred to as gaining "shinigami powers" we might consider the hallmark of shinigami to be the ability to command and manipulate their spiritual force, not as a gross physical transformation, the way Hollows do, but as an art and weapon external to them. Conversely, what the Visored seem to gain is the strength of raw desires, though still mediated by the heart; certainly what Ichigo shows in 55, when he first fights Renji, is a wild, almost hysterical, release of emotional control very much like his Hollow self, when that aspect develops--and this after his spiritual strength has been opened by what Ishida calls "resonance" with the power of a Menos. I find it significant that the sketch at the end of that chapter is of a faucet, the metaphor used for Ichigo's power, with the knob broken off.
Wildness, as Ichigo's Hollow-self demonstrates, and control, as Zangetsu says in 63, seem to be the sides of the coin that define Hollows' power and shinigamis' power. From two different directions, the Visored and Arrancar arrive at a balance of self-control and uninhibited action.
I also find it significant that the nature of a shinigami's power (the zanpaku-tou) is cooperative. As Zangetsu teaches Ichigo, the first step is to acknowledge the sword's identity, its separate existence, by learning/asking its name. The next step is to trust it, as Ichigo understands while fighting Zaraki, to offer the shinigami's power to the sword and accept the sword's strength and support. The last step, according to the training Ichigo receives to reach bankai, is the other way around; to convince the sword to give it's full strength to the bearer. Since Ichigo is challenged to find the bit of his own soul that corresponds to Zangetsu, the part that is his strength, I suspect that the shinigami also needs to find the heart of the shinigami's own power. I infer, by the way this ramps up the power of the zanpaku-tou, that the point of that last step is to make the full abilities of the bearer available to both halves of the partnership.
How this partnership is reflected or altered among the Arrancar has yet to be seen; I'm very curious to find out how it will show up. Given the basically selfish nature of Hollows, I suspect the reflection will be very skewed indeed.
The only character who is not a Hollow who has an explicit connection to Mexico is Sado, whose grandfather is Mestizo, and who was raised for a time in Mexico. And I'm a bit twitchy about that coin of his (identifiably a Mexican coin, with Mexico's arms on it), wondering whether it will become anything other than a symbol-of-grandpa.
8/08: Indeed, I was correct. Sado's arrancar opponent, Gantenbainne Mosqueda, provokes an epiphany and makes the connection explicit for us. Following up on earlier hints, this fight confirms that Sado's powers are like the Hollows', rather than Shinigami or Quincy's (ch 260-1).
Why Hispanic sources?
Given the facility with which Kubo uses Spanish I'm guessing he's personally familiar, perhaps with Mexico specifically. If that is the case, then the idea of hungry ghosts may well have immediately suggested El Dia de los Muertos to him.
The Hollows' masks, in particular, bear an extremely strong resemblance to calacas, the skull masks worn by dancers and placed on family altars during El Dia de los Muertos. (source, source) (Thanks go to Andrew JP for pointing this out.)
Thing is... El Dia de los Muertos welcomes back ancestors, and feeds them. It celebrates the dead and offers them the pleasures of the living. There's a certain resonance with the whole idea of spirits that linger for their families' sakes becoming Hollows, as per the arc with Orihime's brother. But it crosses up strangely with the hollowness of the Hollows. They're a much better match with the hungry ghosts of Buddhism than with the (generally happy) dead of this festival.
To be sure, hungry ghosts in general do seem to be a two-edged concept, sometimes only desiring due and proper sustenance from their families, and sometimes malicious/greedy/insatiable. And, of course, Kubo never seems to take content too directly from his sources, so the merging of the Asian-style ghosts with the Mexican-style ones is very consistent with his writing style as a whole.
.
Evolution
Hollows themselves progress along somewhat the same path as a shinigami's zanpaku-tou--reasonable enough if the shape of "shinigami powers" is the sword as we see when Ichigo finds his own during his re-making down in Urahara's pit. They start small, increase in size as they increase in strength (rather like shikai and bankai), and finally compress in size as they gain sufficient control to command all that power with precision (much they way Isshin points out captain's can compress the size of their swords).
What Rukia explains in 28 is the axis along which Hollows move. A soul becomes a Hollow, she says, when it loses its heart and becomes reduced only to instincts--hence the skull-like mask that protects those raw instincts. Based on how Orihime's brother behaves as a Hollow we can read heart as conscience, altruism. These are, indeed, things that would mitigate instinct. Clearly, though, the Hollows who are able to dispense with their masks have not regained their hearts; they still have the holes that make that much clear. What they gain, that can protect or direct their instincts, may be mind, instead--power and mind. Hitsugaya's description of the three grades of very powerful Hollows make it clear that the lowest level, the Menos Grande, has very little intellect. This makes a certain amount of sense, for a merged entity; the mind of something created by lots of beings mushed together might be a bit soupy. The higher the level, though, the greater the intellect. And the smaller the size. So power plus intellect seems to suffice to guard the instincts.
The fact that Grimmjow was able to remove the Grand Fisher's mask, in 25, suggests that power is a manipulable thing, and that it is possible for Arrancar to skip other Hollows past stages of development. This runs nicely parallel to the way Rukia transferred power to Ichigo and "skipped" him up to shinigami.
Given the way Arrancar are referred to as gaining "shinigami powers" we might consider the hallmark of shinigami to be the ability to command and manipulate their spiritual force, not as a gross physical transformation, the way Hollows do, but as an art and weapon external to them. Conversely, what the Visored seem to gain is the strength of raw desires, though still mediated by the heart; certainly what Ichigo shows in 55, when he first fights Renji, is a wild, almost hysterical, release of emotional control very much like his Hollow self, when that aspect develops--and this after his spiritual strength has been opened by what Ishida calls "resonance" with the power of a Menos. I find it significant that the sketch at the end of that chapter is of a faucet, the metaphor used for Ichigo's power, with the knob broken off.
Wildness, as Ichigo's Hollow-self demonstrates, and control, as Zangetsu says in 63, seem to be the sides of the coin that define Hollows' power and shinigamis' power. From two different directions, the Visored and Arrancar arrive at a balance of self-control and uninhibited action.
I also find it significant that the nature of a shinigami's power (the zanpaku-tou) is cooperative. As Zangetsu teaches Ichigo, the first step is to acknowledge the sword's identity, its separate existence, by learning/asking its name. The next step is to trust it, as Ichigo understands while fighting Zaraki, to offer the shinigami's power to the sword and accept the sword's strength and support. The last step, according to the training Ichigo receives to reach bankai, is the other way around; to convince the sword to give it's full strength to the bearer. Since Ichigo is challenged to find the bit of his own soul that corresponds to Zangetsu, the part that is his strength, I suspect that the shinigami also needs to find the heart of the shinigami's own power. I infer, by the way this ramps up the power of the zanpaku-tou, that the point of that last step is to make the full abilities of the bearer available to both halves of the partnership.
How this partnership is reflected or altered among the Arrancar has yet to be seen; I'm very curious to find out how it will show up. Given the basically selfish nature of Hollows, I suspect the reflection will be very skewed indeed.
.
Sado connection?
The only character who is not a Hollow who has an explicit connection to Mexico is Sado, whose grandfather is Mestizo, and who was raised for a time in Mexico. And I'm a bit twitchy about that coin of his (identifiably a Mexican coin, with Mexico's arms on it), wondering whether it will become anything other than a symbol-of-grandpa.
8/08: Indeed, I was correct. Sado's arrancar opponent, Gantenbainne Mosqueda, provokes an epiphany and makes the connection explicit for us. Following up on earlier hints, this fight confirms that Sado's powers are like the Hollows', rather than Shinigami or Quincy's (ch 260-1).
