Hopefully Destructive Shinigami Tales

Starting off this little side series with a canon ship: IchiHime. Getting it’s name when combining Ichigo and Orihime’s names, this would be one of the more well known Ichigo ships.

Since this is a canon ship, and a way for me to test the waters with this, I thought I would go over two main topics: IchiHime vs IchiRuki and my general thoughts on it.

Before You Go: Shipping Name Convention

In my experience, you will see one of two types of naming conventions when it comes to ships: *insert*shipping and combining the characters names. I’ve only seen the former used in two instances, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, where the ship name will be based on a similarity between the characters, based on how an interaction will go and so on. For example, Ash and May’s ship name is Advancedshipping, which gets its name from the fact that May was introduced in Advanced Generation. Tristan and Serenity’s ship name is Ardentshipping is derived from the fact that Tristan does have a crush on Serenity with ardent meaning passionate.

However, most fandoms, at least in my experience, use the “combined the characters names” route. Bleach is one such series and is pretty straight forward. It just takes one part of each character’s name and put it together. The only real exception is when a name is short, three to four letters tops, where you may see one character’s full name (ex. KibaHina a.k.a. Kiba x Hinata).

IchiHime vs IchiRuki

It’s not uncommon for shonen series to have at least two potential canon ships when it comes to the protagonist. For Naruto, that would have been was NaruSaku (Naruto x Sakura) and NaruHina (Naruto x Hinata) (SasuSaku a.k.a. Sasuke x Sakura was also a runner for becoming canon). Inuyasha x Kagome and Inuyasha x Kikyo would be another.

While these certainly weren’t the only ships that existed, there would always be a ship or two that the series would lean heavily towards. Whether that be in the manga and/or the anime.

For Bleach, that would be IchiHime and IchiRuki (Ichigo x Rukia). Both make since Orihime and Rukia were close to Ichigo and the fact that Ichigo did everything he could to save them in the Hueco Mundo and Soul Society arcs respectively. And while the anime may have leaned a bit more towards the latter for a few reason, I doubt that the route the anime took was the only reason that people liked IchiRuki.

Now, I never really got into either ship myself when I was younger and first got into the series. Though, if you were to ask me to pick one, I would probably lean more towards IchiHime. This would likely have to do with the fact that I did prefer RenRuki (Renji x Rukia) more and liking Ichigo and Orihime’s interactions a bit more. I might even say Ichigo x Tatsuki for a hot second since it was a ship that I came across and could make sense due to their history. However, between the two I probably would have said IchiHime.

What are My Thoughts on IchiHime?

While I don’t really have much about these two getting together, I do like them as a couple.

In terms of when I was initially reading the series, pat of this could be attributed to the fact that I had known that they got together in the end during my Bleach hiatus (I was spoiled, but since I had taken so long to finish it, I didn’t mind at the time). It could also have been due to the fact that I expected/didn’t mind that they could or would get together.

Looking back at it know with a better understanding, I appreciate it for what it is. When I was younger, I didn’t really think about how part of Orihime’s growth had to do with the trauma she carried between her brother becoming a Hollow and being fearful of Ichigo’s Hollowfication/Hollow Form. Something that Ichigo did pick up on and tried to reassure that he was still the same Ichigo despite it (i.e. during his fight with Grimmjow in Hueco Mundo).

The only real criticism with them, at least when it came to the manga/anime, was how easily she sided with Tsukishima during the Lost Agent/Fullbringer Arc. One criticism I have seen was how she, and by extent the people closest to Ichigo, sided with him when Ichigo was trying to stop him.

Granted, Tsukishima’s ability does allow him to manipulate people’s memories. So it does make sense that people would think that Ichigo attacking their dear friend/relative would be troubling. And while I may not be bothered as much by it personally, I won’t say that this isn’t a valid criticism. However, at the end of the day, it doesn’t effect the fact that I think this is a good ship.

All in all, I do like it and it’s probably my favorite end game couple (RenRuki is cool too).

Conclusion

With this being my first entry in this little series, I hope it kicked it off well. Or at least well enough to get some interest. I thought it would be better to start with a canon couple to test the waters, especially since it was canon. And since IchiHime was a ship I was kind of leaning towards, but not outright enjoying at the time, it made sense.

I may do another canon ship as part of this series, RenRuki probably being the most likely, but as a preemptive heads up, you’ll probably notice that most of the ships going forward aren’t canon. Anywhere and everywhere on the popularity scale, but not canon.

Feel free to drop some feedback. And if there’s a ship you’d like me to cover, within reason, feel free to drop a comment.