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littleeyesofpallas · 3 years

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So i did a little thing on Kensei and his biker motif and that included his hollow form looking like he was made out of car parts. and i figure I might as well tackle Mashiro's hollow form now, since it's adjacent.

To start with, it should be noted that Mashiro has a whole thing going on with her right out the gate. Unlike the other Visored who all seem to have adopted some kind of passably human attire, Mashiro is out here running around in a super hero suit... The outfit itself pulls from some pretty clear influences:

The little stripey things down the chest are a look taken from Himitsu Sentai Goranger, the 1971 live action super hero show. In the team of five, each ranger has a number and a matching number of stripes down either side of the suit's front fastening zipper. Where as the ascot+jumpsuit is verymuch the definitive Kamen Rider aesthetic. It's also possible that her weird giant goggles and even her green hair are also meant to evoke the general look of Kamen Rider's helmet.

(it's really weird that her goggles just sort of sit on her head? they don't even appear to be connected to one another, let alone to her head... The only reason I even really identify them as goggle is actually because of her TBtP design replacing them with regular sunglasses, which retroactively makes it clear that they're definitely meant to be eyewear. (even if she never wears them, like some sort of digimon protagonist))

And, as usual, I've mentioned before(because i'm a broken record) that these are contemporary sources, as both shows came about in the 1970s, and are foundational works in the tokusatsu genre, and consequently the building blocks of the Power Rangers franchise. But I want to elaborate on that because there's a lot of cool trivia in there...

Both shows were created by legendary mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori, who was also the creator of the 1960s manga, Cyborg 009. Cyborg 009 also featured a team of uniformed, scarf wearing cyborg supersoldiers. In fact, Cyborg 009 is basically the first Japanese superhero team.(and remains an enduring classic, even as continual remakes and reboots in the past decade have butchered it....)

The uniforms, the 5 man team, the helmets/masks, the heroic scarf/ascot, the team poses(and the solo poses), the evil organizations and monsters of the week, the "<insert name> KICK!" all stem from this one man's body of work. So she's not just a throwback to one particular set of characters or shows, or even one person's body of work; her look really is quintessentially THE image of a Japanese superhero.

Anyway the original Kamen Rider helmet is designed after a grasshopper and thus has the big compound bug eye lenses --even as the later series drifted away from the bug theme, the iconic eye shape has stayed-- which is why Mashiro has the big goggles, as well as why her mask has the giant eye holes --Also the heart shape of the mask is a throwback to the heart shape of the Pink Ranger in Goranger.

As a grasshopper, the original Kamen Rider's finishing move was the now famously imitable RIDER KICK! And in every subsequent iteration, some variation on the Rider Kick has remained the Kamen Rider signature move. And this in turn is why Mashiro's hollow has a whole legs and kick focused thing going on.

Incidentally though, there's a whole thing about her demeanor that doesn't just echo the superhero look from the 70s; With her energetic and childlike demeanor, it seems like the indication is that she dresses this way very earnestly. She isn't just dressed in a way that makes her look like a superhero to us as readers, she looks like someone who is trying to dress like a superhero, even to other people in-world. On the one hand she probably reads most readily as a cosplayer, but I feel like the implication here is that she actually thinks she is/wants to be a super hero.

Also, not to dip too far into headcanon, but given the way the Visored were first introduced as a rag tag looking bunch of misfits, it really seemed like the implication was they all got their powers separately and sought eachother out only after struggling with their own inner hollows; Essentially just mirroring Ichigo's experience... That they, while human, started turning into hollows. They fought off the hollow process resulting in giving them shinigami powers. but they struggled with a growing inner hollow, until someone showed up and offered to teach them to control the mask.

Also, there was that real ominous throw away exchange where Mashiro brings up that the first time she pulled out her own mask it lasted 15 consecutive hours. and Kensei didn't believe her, as if he wasn't around when it happened, or isn't even closely acquainted enough to just know it as a personal fact... Obviously that's contradicted much later when the TBtP has her as his former lieutenant, but it has a few vague implications...

Mashiro: ね—ね— ベリたんてさ何でこんなことしてんだっけ?

Hey~ hey~ Why's Berry-tan doing this?

Kensei: 虚化状態を長時間キ—プする為の訓練だよオメ—もやったろ

It's training to keep Hollow state for a long time. You did it too

Mashiro: あたしやってないモン

I did not

Kensei: ンだと? ウソっけ...

What? That's a lie...

Shinji: ホンマや白は最初から15時間以上虚化できたからなァ一人だけ虚化保持訓練してへんねん

it's true. because Mashiro was able to Hollowize for more than 15 hours she's the one person who didn't do Hollow state training

As always there's just a lot to be reckoned with when it comes to any number of swerves that happened in the middle of the Arrancar arc, but given the implications of how the hollow mask really works, we're lead to believe the mask's overall power and effectiveness is one of two things...

Either, like the zanpakutou spirits, they're a matter of making peace with the reflection of the inner self.

OR it's possible that the mask correlates to a total lack of balance, and just embracing the selfishness

this would btw more readily address the initial conflict between old man Zangetsu and the inner hollow, as they're of course still one and the same, but Ichigo needs to accept and embrace the negative side of his inner self in order to make peace with both of them.

Anyway point being Mashiro's apparent lack of a need for training would suggest she's super in tune with her hollow? Given her childish and hyperactive personality, it might just be that she's so immature that she doesn't have much of an inner conflict. She wants to dress like a superhero? So she does. She's confused? she whines and asks annoying questions about it. She's frustrated or unhappy? She rolls around on the floor and throws a goofy little tantrum. She doesn't have shame or hangups or a part of her she wants to repress, she's exactly who she is.

Which makes me think that if they had just been a ragtag group that goes around recruiting new Visored when they find them, like they did with Ichigo(instead of just one group that had always been together, which was just a boring explanation) then I can't help but imagine that when they found Mashiro, she must have been running around in her human life actually being a superhero.

Oh right, and Kamen Rider is so named because he rides a motorcycle. So Mashiro's partyl based on a motorcycle riding hero, and the TBtP made Muguruma a biker gang leader. Which explains why they thematically fit on the same squad. But is hollow Muguruma supposed to be hollow Mashiro's iconic hero bike?

#bleach #mashiro kuna #visored

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