Chapter 213: Trifle
So…
Keigo brings his new friends home to meet his sister. Keigo explains the situation, and she decides to let them stay because Ikkaku’s her type and she’s crazy like that. Hate to burst your bubble, Mizuho, but I’ve always thought that his relationship with Yumichika is a tad closer than ‘friends’. Meanwhile, Tessai fixes up Ururu, and Orihime heals Rukia. Orihime notices the pained look in Ichigo’s eyes is back. Over in Hueco Mundo, Aizen welcomes Grimmjow back. The tension is palpable, but Aizen seems oddly calm and unconcerned about the whole thing, saying that he’s sure Grimmjow will take responsibility for his actions. Or Grimmjow will if he knows what good for him, the undertones seem to say. Grimmjow’s still being defiant, though. Maybe he’s just bad at reading undertones, or maybe he has no idea what’s good for him. Tousen angrily grabs him, asking Aizen if he can kill Grimmjow. Grimmjow supposes that Tousen just doesn’t like him, but Tousen denies that with a little speech I’ll go over later, and then cuts Grimmjow’s arm off and Kido’s it into oblivion. The understandably angry Grimmjow moves to attack, but Aizen, still speaking quite calmly and politely, says he’ll kill Grimmjow if he attacks Tousen. Grimmjow storms out, showing that he does have a certain amount of self-preservation instinct build in. Gin, who was apparently watching, says that Aizen shouldn’t play with his minions like that. When prompted, Aizen says that it doesn’t matter that five arrancar were lost because they were only Gillians. He mentions that his overall goals consist of finding Vaste Lordes and completing the Espada and the chapter ends.
So, the defeated Arrancar were no more than a ‘trifle’ to Aizen, were they? It’s kind of strange that he would let one of his prized Espada lose an arm over them then, isn’t it? Perhaps he wants to etch the memory of this little disaster into Grimmjow’s mind; wants to make sure Grimmjow thinks of this night as something significant, so he has Tousen humiliate and seriously injure him. Gin’s line would imply that Aizen staged that whole little exchange, after all. But, of course, for what I’m implying to be true here, Aizen would have had to already planned to gain the means to get Grimmjow’s arm back, which isn’t impossible; he already knows about said means by this point, but if true, it seems like an awfully multi-step plan with too many variables for my liking. So either Aizen was arrogant enough to believe he could make such a plan work and was willing to gamble an Espada on that, or he was just dicking around with Grimmjow for the lulz and to show the other Espada that they can’t get away with a screw-up like that when disobeying a direct order. Both are equally in-character for him, and the ‘making an example out of him’ part could easily be true either way. Still, that’s all a little vague and speculative, isn’t it? Let’s move on to Tousen’s little speech. First we have the declaration that he hates people who sow discord, fair enough, nothing about him we didn’t see during his fight with Kenpachi character-wise. But then… well, to paraphrase from the wikia’s way of phrasing it: “Justice without a higher cause is slaughter, but slaughter in the name of a higher cause is Justice.” If that line weren’t coming from someone who believes very strongly in justice, don’t you think it would read like a lampooning of the concept of justice? But, of course, that can’t be it, I mean, it’s coming from the mouth of a villain, so of course we’re supposed to agree with- Oh wait. I’d also like to point out that Tousen is a blind man who believes very strongly in justice, so ‘Blind Justice’, if you will.
Comments
There are two types of Gillian, the generic and the non generic. As we can see in the chapter Shawlong was a nongeneric Gillian that ate his way up to becoming Adjuchas. But when ones becomes a Adjuchas you must continuinly keep eating Hollows to staff off the regression to Gillian, at which point you become the lower generic Gillian, which you stay forever.
Since obviously Grimmjow's gang didn't die after they offered to be eaten by him, I'd say this happened to them, they became generic Gillian, until Aizen came apon them and transformed them into Arrancar. The lowest of the Arrancar that is. No problems.
