Kyouraku's entry:
- Mood Whiplash: This is the theme behind his zanpakutou. His shikai is based around whimsical children's games. Although the stakes are life and death, Kyouraku still has to put up with her temperament and she will only play when she's in the mood. On the other hand, when his bankai is released, the fun and games are officially over, and even the very environment becomes gloomy and melancholy. By comparison to the unnamed child, Sakuranosuke (the older woman) will come to Kyouraku's side no matter what, because his bankai imitates a Japanese suicide pact between two lovers.
I agree with the sentiment, I'm not sure which trope is best for it. However, Sakuranosuke is the sword's nickname for him. It's a voluntary reinterpretation of his middle name and effectively means "Cherry Boy". His nickname for her is "Ohana", which is probably a play on the fact that she's the "Flower God" part of his sword.
In terms of the trope, he's almost acting as her puppet. She's dictating the rules, the games and the story, and he has to play along according to the narrative she dictates. The games were dark enough (children's games weaponised into a death match) but this bankai is downright morbid. Even the comedy scene in this chapter is based on gallows humour.
His bankai is quite literally the despair that drives lovers to suicide. Romeo and Juliet is tropable, and Japanese love-suicides are a big thing in storytelling, so there must be a trope that covers it:
- Driven to Suicide?
- Death by Despair (which seems to be the point of the drowning scene)?
Oh sorry, I didn't even see this before.
In any case, maybe we should hold off until we learn the truth about the zanpakutous. This week's reveals casts doubt on everything we've known until now.
Yeah, things do seem to have fallen through the looking glass a bit.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Ukitake's entry:
This is a shoehorn. The trope is about a story that unfolds where protagonists go to great effort to achieve their goal, and just as they reach the point where it should be achieved... they completely fail and then die.
There is no story build-up here. Aside from two ambiguous, foreshadowing scenes that indicate Ukitake is up to something, there is absolutely no story build-up and no prior reference to anything like Mimihagi existing. In two simple scenes, Ukitake releases and explains Mimihagi and begins to die, everyone acknowledges Mimihagi can stabilise the world for only as long as Ukitake's dying reiatsu exists (no-one expects that to be for very long), Mimihagi stabilises the world for only a few moments before Yhwach absorbs him, and Ukitake dies.
Ukitake's explanation is as follows: he contracted his fatal, incurable lung disease at the age of three. His parents begged a divine being (Mimihagi) to save Ukitake. Mimihagi did not cure Ukitake. He agreed to delay Ukitake's death and act as Ukitake's lungs in return for Ukitake's understanding that this was temporary; one day the Soul King would die, and Mimihagi would need to be released in response, killing Ukitake in the process.
There's no story build up, the explanation occurs at the same time Mimihagi is introduced and fails. There's no expectation of this being a solution - it's made clear Mimihagi could only ever be a (very) short-term temporary fix at very best, and even at its most successful, Ukitake had to die. Mimihagi lasting for less time than the short period of time the Shinigami had been hoping for doesn't make this an example of this trope.
This is a Sacrifice trope, but it is not a Shaggy Dog trope.
Edited by Wyldchyld If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.