How Can You Die When You're Already Dead?

[ProtoFunc]

I'm not sure if a thread was created like this before (and if there was, honestly i'm too lazy to look), but if there was, then mods please feel free to trash this topic. But....

I know it's crossed our minds either one time or another, but how can you die in Soul Society when you're already dead? In these bountou (?) arcs they say i'm gonna kill this, or kill that.. but how? Is there another place you go after you die in SS or is that the end of the line? or is it just the circle of life [earth death ====> soul society death ====> earth death ====> etc.] ?? I know the last q is a little up in the air, but i'd still like some light to be shed on this matter a little if you ask me..

[Habanero]

As far as I've understood the whole thing. The souls just keep circling around between the living world and soul society. Unless they go to hell...

[ManjiSTP]

If that's the case, then I guess the souls that die must forget who they were when they end up back in the living world, or else everyone would know about SS and shinigami and so on. I guess that's why it would be sad if they die. They sort of lose their former identity - so if Rukia died she may become some farmer's daughter in Kansas or the son (who says they have to stay the same sex?) of a shop owner in London.

That would also explain how Ichigo could be Kaien, since Kaien died while being a spirit and the would have been reborn as Ichigo with no memory (or no conscious memory at least) of his former life, but with all the spirit power (well, the potential to regain it) he had before.

I think we'd have to assume that it's just the "raw materials" of the soul that gets recycled, not the ID, because it'd be pretty screwed up if, say, Kenpachi dies and meanwhile in the human world Mr and Mrs Jones have a wonderful daughter born... who is actually Kenpachi... x_x;;;

But, that girl would, perhaps, have the potential spirit energy of Kenpachi. Furthermore, let's say that two powerful Shinigami die, then their "raw materials" get reborn as two people who meet and have a child. That child would also be another recycled soul, but perhaps it would get some additional residual power from it's high-spirit enery parents?

Man, we should ask KT! Not that he'd tell us... He'll just say "Thanks for your support! Please keep reading the manga for all your questions and don't forget that Bleach DS 2 and Bleach Wii are in shops soon!"

[Habanero]

Aye manji, that's pretty much what I've been thinking about. I've considered it too obvious to be mentioned:redbiggri

[ManjiSTP]

Ah I see... But "As far as I've understood the whole thing. The souls just keep circling around between the living world and soul society. Unless they go to hell..." wasn't too obvious? :p

[Undying]

Bleach is all about balance. If you die as a soul you reincarnate. Otherwise how do you keep the number of souls intact? (remember why they butchered the Quincy?).

[Habanero]

Ah I see... But "As far as I've understood the whole thing. The souls just keep circling around between the living world and soul society. Unless they go to hell..." wasn't too obvious? :p

Oh well, could be :redbiggri

Undying already put forth the quincy thingy. I thought it as a pretty important part of the series, because it explained the whole quincy incident in the first place. I just assumed that it was more widely known/remembered.

[ManjiSTP]

Yeah, but it still hasn't got anything straight. I mean, it talks of souls cycling around, but there are still odd things like Ukitake's illness. If he's a soul and he has an illness, won't every incarnation of him have an illness - if the reincarnation can inherit the spirit powers (as maybe the case with Ichigo) why wouldn't it take any affliction as well? I'm not saying it will, just that it would be nice to get the finer point explained.

Also, the Quincy thing only focused on the Quincy destroying the hollows and not letting the souls go to SS. It didn't mention the conditions for a reincarnation nor did it address the long life-span of souls in SS, 'cause souls die far, far slower in SS than humans do on Earth, so there's an inbalance already that, over time, will "destroy the world" not to mention this; if a human is evil then they go to hell, not SS. That means that every generation more and more souls are being siphoned off to hell, as well as the aforementioned incongruity between the death rate on Earth and the death rate in SS.

Answer that, guys! :D

Edit

By "conditions for reincarnation" I meant that, in the way that an earthbound soul must be cleansed by a zanpakuto before going to SS - else it will simply perish - does it matter how someone dies in SS?

[Undying]

The data books mention that a regular soul dies after a while. Though I do not have the source or any translation of it, I believe that a "fixed period of time" is a regular human life-span. In other words, any soul that is not a Shinigami dies after somewhere near a 100 years of life.

Regarding the Quincy, I use it as basis for my theory that all souls reincarnate (even Shinigami).

Also, regarding Ukitake and his ilness, since he was born in Soul Society, I think that he's somewhat of a special case, as in someone born in order for the balance ot be kept (since the Quincy destroyed many souls, I think it is logical for some new souls to have been created in Soul Society).

And also, where was it mentioned that an earthbound spirit must be cleansed? The onlt species that needs to be cleansed in order to enter Soul Society (or Hell, and nobody said that people in Hell don't reincarnate!!!) are Hollows. Normal Plus Souls need a Konso in order to enter Soul Society, but it has nothing to do with reincarnation - they just need someone to show them the way (some myth says that there is a ferryman that ferries people to Hell/Heavem in Buddhism, I believe that he was called Shinigami as well. At any rate, the Shinigami seem to have inherited some of his responsibilities).

Regarding Hell and its connection to Reincarnation - I think that any Soul that reincarnates does so as a new person - i.e. without the traits of the origin. In other words, a reincarnation of Ukitake will not have the disease, or even the facial features.

[Habanero]

Yeah, but it still hasn't got anything straight. I mean, it talks of souls cycling around, but there are still odd things like Ukitake's illness. If he's a soul and he has an illness, won't every incarnation of him have an illness - if the reincarnation can inherit the spirit powers (as maybe the case with Ichigo) why wouldn't it take any affliction as well? I'm not saying it will, just that it would be nice to get the finer point explained.

I've been thinking that also, but I just thought that the illness thing is just something that he has to endure at that current life. Can't really know that...

Also, the Quincy thing only focused on the Quincy destroying the hollows and not letting the souls go to SS. It didn't mention the conditions for a reincarnation nor did it address the long life-span of souls in SS, 'cause souls die far, far slower in SS than humans do on Earth, so there's an inbalance already that, over time, will "destroy the world"

That's simple, there's just a lot more souls in SS than in the "living world". There's "the amount of souls in living world"*X, where X= how many times longer souls live in SS.

not to mention this; if a human is evil then they go to hell, not SS. That means that every generation more and more souls are being siphoned off to hell, as well as the aforementioned incongruity between the death rate on Earth and the death rate in SS.

This is a hard one =P

It's a slow process but that should, in theory, destroy the balance, thus the whole bleach world. I doubt that Kubo has thought this all through though :rolleye09

[ProtoFunc]

well, so far, i think Undying's theory makes more sense to me than whatever you guys are debating about xP.. But basically boiling down to the bottom of it all, you don't live forever once you die (in SS or Hueco Mundo for that matter). I was under the impression that this was the case, but now that the ukitake sickness point was brought up, and seeing that others have deceased as well (who was it that rukia had to let die? ukitake's VC?), i guess the whole reincarnation thing makes the most sense so far.

But, i'm a little hesitant about the whole "balance" thing you guys are bringing up. The way i see it, if the reincarnation thing were true, then if the process is already in motion, then it would continue like this until a strict strain were to occur. IE) The bountou's desire to bring an end to SS, right?

[ManjiSTP]

Undying's idea still doesn't account for souls going to hell. Yes, shinigami need only cleanse hollows but still, it is said that they can only cleanse the evil commited as a hollow and any sins commited as a human stay behind and so they go to hell. So, whether it be a soul not becoming a hollow and going straight to hell, or whether it be a hollow being cleansed but still having sins - they'll be a lot of souls each generation lost to hell.

And as for regular souls in Rukongai dying after 100 years... That doesn't makes sense either. Why hasn't Kuukaku died? Or Yoruichi or Urahara etc. They're all just normal souls now that aren't shinigami. Also... If souls have a lifespan, then what happens if a soul is left on earth, and doesn't turn into a hollow? Does it just die on earth and go to SS that way?

Plus, even if regular souls did die after 100 years, a fair few of them are siphoned off to become shinigami anyway... The ones with high spirit power. So not only does this create another numerical problem, it also guarantees that the only souls on earth are the weaker ones - apart from the incredibly rare occasion when a shinigami dies.

Oh, and it's obvious that reincarnated souls don't keep the appearance; if they did then we'd soon realise that everyone looks the same as someone else from about 100 years ago or so! :D

Though, another issue has just popped into my head. Since about 1930 to the modern day, the population of the earth has risen by something like 4 billion. Does that mean that SS had to suddenly build one hell of a large extension to Rukongai? Wouldn't that disrupt the balance. Furthermore, I wonder what happens when an event like WW2 occurs where millions of people die every few months. :o

[Habanero]

Hahhaa. you made me lol IRL, in a positive way though :biggrinlo

I don't think we should mix the story too much with our world events =P

[Askand]

I was wondering that thing about the people dying in SS. But also guys remember that Aizen wants to go to Heaven. Maybe SS is not but a place where you get a second chance in order to really enter Heaven. Shinmigami's job is to help people who deserved it (as it look like in the anime) go to SS and then gets the chance to help or something. I'm have to ponder about other things. Undying's view of reincarnation is a good point. But still is necessary to see KT point of view. He made a surprise with Aizen maybe this is another surprise in store for us.

[TwilightFlower]

As to the matter of Ukitake's illness, maybe he had it in life and carried it over when he died. However, the transition from the living world to Soul Society is vastly different from the one back to Earth from SS. In the former, you keep your living identity. In the latter, you are reborn as a completely new identity. It seems to me that a person could carry some quality or trait over from life to SS but lose it on the journey back to Earth.

[Askand]

But that would be like a Genetic trait, and as far as we know this could not take place in a spirit unless it is in a form of a curse.
Maybe that could be on explanation. Or it could be that Ukitake's illness can be a form of limitation for him to deal in this current life spam.

[TwilightFlower]

But the question of how he contracted it in SS still arises.

[Undying]

Damn Manji, you just have to make me go writing long, eh?

Ok, so here goes: for Souls going ot Hell, they get a process of "cleansing" in order to cleanse their earthly sins from them, then reincarnate into the world as new people. The same happens to regular Souls in Soul Society minus the cealnsing process (because they weren't evil enough).

As for Shinigami, what I meant was that anyone possesing Reiryoku (and if you don't know what that is, shame on you! It's Spirit Power), and knowing how to use it (most common are Shinigami but people like Kuukaku, Ganjuu, and exiled former Shinigami like Urahara count too in the general terms of Reiryoku Users), are apparently outside this circlt of reincarnation unless killed.

So my idea does account for those going to Hell and those who aren't official Shinigami.

:Haha I pwn.

[Askand]

But isn't cleasing a confusing term for the ones who go to hell?
I mean those who go to hell are sent there because of the sins they made in earth. And if these sins are bad enough to not pass this cleansing that means the other destiny they have is hell?

[Undying]

Hmmm... yes, cleansing is indeed confusing since we used it for Hollows. Then 'reabilitation'?

[ManjiSTP]

Well, people that go to hell stay in hell. It's not mentioned anywhere that they can leave it. And evil people and evil hollows alike are destined to go there.

All your other explanations are air-tight though.

Well if there's one thing I've taken from this it's that there's little soul viruses and bacteria, significantly yeast, so that alcohol can be made. Reading into things too much rules!

[Undying]

Definitly... and I didn't understnad anything from your post.

And for god's love and sake, this is anime. It has no logic other than its own.

[Askand]

If you go into the Hindu practices they think you would reincarnate into anything that lives so is a possibility. About the contracting the illness like I wrote before it could be a curse to trouble him and make his mission harder to full fill in this cycle of life.

{Edit} I differ on that Un I think it has his logic since the traditional stuff after being dead is heaven and hell. Maybe and if a BIG Maybe there is a middle thing between it. And we may not know this.

[Undying]

Or it's just there because if it wasn't, Rukia wouldn't be the one to kill Kaien because it would've been Ukitake, which would've changed the story a lot.

[ManjiSTP]

Definitly... and I didn't understnad anything from your post.
And for god's love and sake, this is anime. It has no logic other than its own.

;_; What didn't you understand?

I'm just saying that when things go to hell (in Bleach) they go through those massive gates and that's the end of them. Unless KT springs some surprise on us, like that hell is actually HM or something.

Therefore, every generation X amount of souls are permanently lost. That's all. :D

And as I said before, I find it pleasurable to read into things too much. I like things that are both hideously complex as well as things that are playfully simple. As a result I find it easy to start analyzing the simpler things as if they were the complex things. It's just for fun though. I guess it's my version of writing a fanfic or something, as I never seem to be able to do one of those (though I am on the brink of some fanart, I think...)