So then, as Rukia explains with the aid of her wonderful illustrations early on in the series, she (and Ichigo ofc) are 'shinigami'...kinda the police of the spirit world, getting rid of the bad spirits, or 'Hollows' (incidentally fans of Bleach might want to search for T.S. Eliot's poem entitled "The Hollow Men"...the men in question here are slightly more corporeal than the anime hollows but no less dangerous non?
) by the simple expedient of hitting them with swords
and sending good spirits, or 'pluses', to the other side as well. So far so good...but it's the explanation of the other side, this 'Soul Society', that I was wondering about. You see when it's first explained Rukia does indeed describe it as Heaven, saying it's "better than the living world 9 times out of ten and you never need to worry about hunger", she also promises Yūichi Shibata (the kid's ghost in the parakeet) that he'll meet up with his dead mother again and everything will be ok...but, as we learn in series 2, this is all complete pish!
For a start Soul Society is seperated into 2 distinct areas; Rukongai for the lower class and Sereitei for the upper class, shinigami and nobility...which, from the outset doesn't sound overly heavenly huh? Then there's the fact that Rukongai, which oddly enough closely resembles Edo period slums, is seperated into 80 different sections with each one being more poverty stricken and rife with crime than the last (I know what you're thinking "poverty? crime? in heaven...whu?"), as well as the fact that even though these souls are in heaven they can still die...mainly of startvation it seems (so there goes that lie-spinning Rukia again! Pshaw!). And the upper classes within Sereitei don't have it *that* much better...I mean sure they're looked after and well fed but they DO have to spend a lifetime training and fighting and so on.
All of which makes this 'heaven' sound decidedly naff non? But, when I was thinking all this through, I hit upon something else that would describe Soul Society *much* more accurately than 'heaven'; it surely sounds more akin to purgatory doesn't it? Souls going from Earth to another place to be faced with another lifetime of struggle and endurance sound more like purgatory than heaven to me! And then there's the fact that they can die...where do they go when they die? Do they go back to Earth or is death in Soul Society really just passage on to the real heaven? It's all pointless pontificating over what is merely an anime series I know but it kept me amused for a while
and, even more interesting, in episode 62 as the newly revealed uber-villain Aizen taicho is about to get his comeuppance and the Menos Grande break through into Soul Society to whisk him away with their 'Negashion'...just look at the symbolism there; as Aizen is being carried away on a shaft of pure light he says:
"From the very start, no-one was standing in Heaven. Not you, not me, not even God. However, that emptiness in Heaven which is very hard to endure, shall end. From here on, I will stand in Heaven."
So there we have an undoubtedly evil character proclaiming himself as god as he's carried away into some demon world (we know it's not hell, we've seen what happens when *those* gates open!) by the ultimate incarnations of Hollows? Interesting.
As I said before this is all just idle rumination but it wouldn't be the first time an anime series was heavily loaded with *very* interesting religious symbolism non?
On my way home from Ipswich I discovered I live approx an hour's drive from Cambridge (or at least the exit from the A14 that goes to Cambridge Town Centre). The time for beer is approaching. I will be in touch.
Happy New Year!