#actually is this really shinigamiology? it's about ichigo who is sort of a shinigami | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bleachbleachbleach · 10 months

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You can't kill my vibe

Like many others, I have been both enchanted and intrigued by the new TYBW opening theme song, "Stars." It has everything! Modern living world fashion! Coffee shop AU! Karaoke sing off! But I think the thing that has really captured everyone’s attention is whatever the hell Ichigo is doing with that guitar.

[TYBW OP 2]

At first glance there’s some things we can infer. Ichigo’s zanpakutou has been reforged and now he’s a dual wielder. He absolutely has no idea what he’s doing and needs to relearn how to use his sword, so of course he’s going to be clumsy and awkward in the beginning. But if Ichigo has one thing going for him, it’s gonna be his ability to just Square Peg Round Hole his way through any situation. No technique needed, if you can blunt force trauma your way through.

Notably, there are very few characters in Bleach with multiple swords (Ukitake and Kyouraku) and both of them I think we can go so far as to say have achieved mastery, as they have bankai and are Old (TM). So that’s great! Ichigo has some role models to look up to and can be inducted into the dual-wielder Hall of Fame!

Taking a closer look at the guitar in the OP though, it’s not just any double-neck guitar. Ichigo appears to be holding a Gibson EDS-1275, which is the “coolest guitar in rock” according to the Wikipedia page. While never widely used, the guitar was played by a couple of famous musicians such as Elvis Presley, Steve Miller (Steve Miller Band), Don Felder (Eagles), and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin). I’ll give it to the wiki page, that is pretty damn cool.

[And just for the sake of being thorough: Japanese guitar maker Ibanez produced a double-neck guitar that was based off the Gibson EDS-1275. It looks virtually identical to the Gibson (at least to my untrained eye).]

The Eagles are most famous for their song "Hotel California" and Don Felder famously used a white EDS-1275 for performances of that song. There are lots of various themes and interpretations of "Hotel California", many of which are fun to apply to Ichigo and Bleach. The Eagles vocalist said, “Lyrically, the song deals with traditional or classical themes of conflict: darkness and light, good and evil, youth and age, the spiritual versus the secular. I guess you could say it's a song about loss of innocence” which I think is some interesting fodder to mull on.

BUT! Ichigo is holding a red guitar! And someone else famously had a custom-made, cherry-red EDS-1275. And that someone was Jimmy Page. Page was arguably the one who popularized the EDS-1275, as he famously played it during live performances of "Stairway to Heaven."

[Jimmy Page in 1973]

I don’t have much to say about "Stairway to Heaven" other than it also seems to be a song about death. However, on a very literal sense, the song is about, well, a stairway to heaven. And you know who is ascending into the heavenly skies in TYBW???

[TYBW ep14]

So. Many. Stairs.

#I've connected the dots #B3 you didn't connect shit #I've connected them #I originally thought I was going to go somewhere with this and then I absolutely did not #no brain just bleach #kurosaki ichigo #bleach tybw #bleach meta #bleach anime #shinigamiology #actually is this really shinigamiology? it's about ichigo who is sort of a shinigami #but it's really more about guitars

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