- #26
Adilmeister said:
There's no way Toshiro is dead/will die at this point; Kubo can't afford to kill off a fan favourite at this point and risk ratings dropping even further. Mayuri being the badass he is will find a way to bring him back to normal, probably via killing Sternritter Z :)
Ulquiorra Cifer is dead and was a huge fan favorite, I think Bleach will be just fine if Hitsugaya passes on as well.
This^ just because Toshiro is a Shinigami doesn't mean he is safe.
BTW i read something interesting on Bleach Asylum.
Tekken13;249401 said:
Here's a post by Mila(OMF) about Hitsugaya and his role in the story that many may have missed.
This discussion is acting like Hitsugaya was introduced for a reason other than being a victim. It was very obvious during the early stages of the shinigami introductions that Hitsugaya was designed to be a victim.
Chapter 83: Hitsugaya is set up to witness the most obvious red herring scene in the history of storytelling: the hero warns the suspicious person he's onto him, setting himself up to be murdered before he can do anything, causing the hapless witness believe the suspicious person is the villain... only for the 'hero' to be the villain all along and the misdirection is designed to ensure the witness gets into trouble later on.
in interviews, Kubo said he hadn't expected Hitsugaya to become quite as popular as he ended up becoming but that it would have been a problem if Hitsugaya had not become popular at all. Given his first serious scene was this one, I think it's obvious why the lack of popularity would have been a problem: Hitsugaya was designed to be the captain that makes fans worried when he gets into trouble.
Most storytellers have a character in a story that they always crap on when they want fans to either worry about the fate of or to make fans really dislike the villain. For example, Joss Whedon was fairly shameless in admitting he was a fan of this - Willow (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer), Fred (Angel), Kaylee (Firefly), etc. Kubo is a traditionalist when it comes to storytelling: he has certain characters he uses to emphasise power levels or threat levels (Sado, Komamura, etc.) and characters he uses to emphasise villainy or to make fans worried (Hitsugaya, Hinamori - the latter being used to double-emphasise the trouble Hitsugaya gets into).
I have therefore never understood why parts of the fandom think Hitsugaya's somehow got fan-immunity. His purpose in the storyline is to end up in situations that upset fans.
