crackpot theories of symbolism surrounding the 3rd division
I blame my English teachers. They told me to dig deeper; dig until I find the sauerkraut in the chocolate cake. See, now I can’t read anything without my mind automatically searching for the nasty secret ingredients. I can’t even read trashy manga without putting it under the fine microscope of armchair psychology. (Freud would be proud, but I prefer Jung. Archetypes are delish.)
I also blame my Asian lit professor, who taught me all the good stuff about the spooge gods of Japan. And thus I turn my analytical skills to Bleach...
Foxy snakes 4 teh lulz!
It’s not one or the other. It’s both, simultaneously. They might seem like completely unrelated animals, but they have far more in common than is expected, at least when it comes to East Asian folklore. And what they have in common is a deep relationship with goddess iconography.
Mythology is messy. Japanese myths are a mash-up of Shinto/Buddhist/Taoist influences, and (as is true with all cultures/religions) imported gods often become aliases for native deities that already served similar functions. I won’t get too far into that except to say that the traditionally Shinto deity Inari (associated with white foxes) became conflated with the traditionally Buddhist-via-Hindu deity Benzaiten (associated with white snakes). Thus the god(dess) of foxes is also sometimes the goddess of snakes.
Inari, even before partially absorbing Benzaiten, was already a composite god(dess) - a mixture of various local deities who have long been forgotten. Inari is portrayed as male, female, androgynous, intersex... All of it. The most popular images are either of a young female or androgynous figure accompanied by white foxes, or else an old man with a sack of rice. The old man carrying rice symbolizes prosperity after the harvest, seeing as he's way out of his reproductive prime. So let's just say Inari isn't exactly the most masculine of gods even as a male figure. Inari is all about the crop fertility and not the male virility, lolz.
(White) foxes/snakes are:
1) yin creatures
This means they are inherently aligned with feminine energies. There are male foxes/snakes, of course, but those are usually depicted as having some effeminate traits. For example, Abe no Seimei from the Onmyouji movies - he’s got that whole homoerotic thing going on with his buddy Hiromasa and he did that crossdressing-as-a-shrine-maiden thing - and Orochimaru from Naruto, whose seiyuu is a woman. Gin is also such a case. If ever there was a male character who embodied the yin, I’d vote for Gin.
As yin creatures, rather than yin-yang balanced like humans are, foxes/snakes are deficient in yang, which means they suck it out of humans through sex, leading to their portrayal as
2) seductresses
Male foxes used to seduce women until patriarchal society came to think those stories were inappropriate and stopped telling them lololol. So they mostly seduce men, take their semen life force, and are generally all-around sexxay thangs. (Google has shown me a remarkable... ancient fox-shaped phallus statue. Or is it a phallus-shaped fox dildo? I can’t tell.)
[Side note: I can totally justify GinRan this way, okay? They get along because foxes and cats are both shapeshifting tricksters. Nekomata have the sweet, sweet bonus of being somewhat fire elementals. I mean, they throw fireballs and stuff. (This stems from the legend that cats who drank lamp oil were monsters. But really, they drank it because that stuff was tasty and made from fish oil back in the day.) Fire = yang element, yo. And yellow chrysanthemums are associated with the sun and also with yang energy. The yang - it is strong in Rangiku despite the boobies.]
Snakes have always been female seductresses in the myths that made their way from southern China. Because they’re cold-blooded, and cold = yin. So guess what? They want your “male heat”. But aside from granting male sexual fantasies, these creatures also serve as
3) general symbols of luck/prosperity/protection
They’re white (or silver), and that’s a holy color because it’s so rare in nature (and albinos rarely last an hour out in the wild, haha). Inari and Benzaiten are both luck-bringers, so their messengers are good omens as well. Since Gin is referred to as both fox and snake, I think that gives him a double dose of CANNOT BE EVIL.
Did anyone familiar with Japanese folklore actually think he would turn out to be a bad guy? Probably not. Perhaps unnecessarily cruel, but not evil. Animals in East Asian folklore have a different system of morality than humans. They are often much more cruel in their methods even if their heart is in the right place. Foxes, for example, might grow attached to a particular human and become loyal guardians. Still, they would think nothing of stealing from others to give to their friend, or doing all sorts of bad things if there are benefits for those under the fox's protection.
Speaking of cruelty, a common motif involving snakes is that overwhelming or all-consuming negative emotions can turn regular people into snake spirits. In particular, it's the desire for vengeance that turns one into a snake. White snakes created in this way, however, are harbingers of righteous vengeance. And snake-people are capable of being saved if they either finish their revenge mission or somehow learn to forgive.
Foxes are also pretty damn fond of vengeance, but not to the extent that snakes are (because revenge is a dish best served cold-blooded). The difference is that foxes are always born as such, whereas snakes can be made. Gin has always been a fox, so you could say he always did have a predisposition towards vengeful feelings. But there had to be some catalyst (Aizen) that came along and did something that to Gin's mind was an unforgivable wrong which set him on the path to becoming a snake. With a fox's inborn sense of loyalty, that wrong was obviously "hurting the person I swore to protect".
Of course, you can’t talk about foxes and snakes without mentioning how fox/snake women often end up sacrificing themselves for their loved ones. They may start out as mere beasts, but they ascend to human or god-like status through experiencing human love - the ultimate expression of which is altruism at the cost of their own life. Some people said it was OOC and/or disappointing the way Gin turned out to be a "simple romantic", but it's not that simple, and it had to be that way in order to maintain the mythological consistency that the Japanese audience was expecting.
Further reading:
- The Loving Fox (and basically any other kitsune story except the really early ones that pre-date Buddhist influence)
- What the Snake had in Mind (Royall Tyler's version is better IMO, but this one's on Google books, so there!)
- Kiyo-hime
- The White Serpent God, aka Hakuja no Myojin
- Madame White Snake (which is a southern Chinese story, but also very popular in Japan)
Wait a minute! A goddess with a god-killing spear?
Yes. Yesyesyes. OH GOD THE SPEAR CAN I TALK ABOUT THE SPEAR? DAT SPEAR. UNF.
Let’s begin with a creation myth. In the beginning, the god Izanagi and goddess Izanami were given a heavenly spear and told to create Japan and its peoples. Izanagi took the really phallic weapon, thrust it in the water, and stirred up the vagina ocean until there was frothy spooge. Thus the spooge islands of Japan were created. Then they went on to make lots and lots of baby arrancar *ahem* gods and goddesses.
Izanami died due to complications from childbirth, and she descended to the underworld. (Japanese mythology has lots of words for places in the afterlife, but this is the classic Shinto underworld, Yomi.) Izanagi chased after her, intending to bring her back, but when he caught up to her, she had already eaten the dried persimmon fruit of the underworld and could not return. So then they did some shit and struck some deals, and Izanami said she would return if only Izanagi would not look at her until they reached the entrance to the living world.
But Izanagi was kind of a douche and he looked anyway. Lo and behold, the love of his life was in fact AUUUGH MAGGOTS GET AWAY FROM ME TRAITOR because she was a rotting corpse. And Izanami was like OH NO YOU DIDN’T MOTHERFUCKER! And they had this huge fight/chase thing where Izanagi was scared shitless and Izanami was all “get back here and let me kill you”.
Best. Breakup. Ever.
Izanagi managed to escape, and he sealed off the entrance to the underworld with huge-ass boulders. Izanami, once a mother goddess of creation, now became the goddess of death/decay/the underworld/what-have-you. They continue their hatred in the form of a happy little game involving human lives. Izanami vows to kill 1000 of Izanagi’s creations every day, and Izanagi vows to make 1500 more just to one-up her. And that is why we have overpopulation. The end.
‘Sup with that story? Oh, right. The heavenly spear, the two-faced goddess, and the part where she wants to kill him but he wins. Fuck yeah, that has Aizen and Gin hatesex written all over it.
Aizen is obviously some really warped version of a creator god. I mean, really. He’s obsessed with making stuff, like a gigantor palace and a bunch of Arrancar babies. Gin, meanwhile, is the creator-turned-destroyer. He starts out (seemingly) on Aizen’s side, the side of creation, and he conveniently has his own very “heavenly spear”. IT'S TOTALLY NOT A COINCIDENCE THAT SHINSOU IS SO EXTEND-O-MAGICALLY PHALLIC. That part is there to be all, "Guess what? I have a godly spear, and that means I take after Izanagi and I'm totally on your side, creator god!" (All the better to trick you with, my dear...)
All of a sudden, bam! Betrayal. That battle was seriously full of sexual imagery, BTW. "Bankai! Oh, wouldja lookit that... Let's slip this little kanji here and actually I was lying. I'm on Izanami's side, and my peen ain't a peen - it's a poisonous vagina."
Hold on - let me explain, okay?
Gin trouser-snake-y spears Aizen to get at the hougyoku embedded in Aizen's chest. The poison eats away at Aizen's soul, and Gin literally reaches in to take away his power. Penetration/emasculation imagery much?
The hougyoku, to butterfl-Aizen, is the seat of his power; it represents his creative force. Basically, it's his peen. What does a creator god fear? Having his peen rot off, duh. Because in traditional patriarchal Asian society, it was the possession of a phallus that granted social power. The vagina was sometimes depicted as a "pit of rot", like a nasty abscess or something, and that was how the feminine became associated with death and the underworld. Loss of the phallus, becoming a woman or an eunuch, was a deep-seated fear that made its way into many of these folktales.
When the otherworldly fox/snake women had sex with men, sometimes the eating-away of the man's yang manifested itself as illness, loss of virility, or... penile shrinkage. These seductresses were much more sexually liberated than "proper" women of the time, but the price was that such strong, independent, free-spirited lovers made their male companions feel emasculated. That's why regular (non-white) foxes/snakes are portrayed as evil until they are tamed by marriage and/or organized religion. That is, they are dangerous until they submit themselves to society's rules. (Bad women! No freedom for you!)
Hmm... What else could make a man feel emasculated? Oh, that's right! TAKING IT UP THE ASS. Here's Gin, a goddess' male avatar, who fucks up Aizen, a would-be god, real good with a poisoned spear. That spear is like a peen with vajayjay powers. It's like a peen that is a lie, like a vagina in the shape of a penis. Cue rotting away of the god's life-creating energy, and an extreme fear of death. Death, mind you, which is likened to a vagina. A descent to the primordial womb of nothingness from whence you came. Or something like that.
In summary, there's the spearing, and then the poison eating away at Aizen like what happens to guys who have unfortunate run-ins with those yin-licious succubi, the fox/snake women. And then the fox is like, “Gimme back Rangiku's my hougyoku wishing ball thing hoshi no tama,” and the creator god is scared shitless at the thought of being uke his own demise. But Aizen wins that battle, and poor Gin falls back down to his underworld.
So yeah, a goddess' avatar with a god-killing spear totally makes sense. I rest my case.
M’awww~ Who’s my favorite squishy? You are, Kira, yes you are!
I’m going out on a limb here to say that the 3rd division itself is rife with Yomi symbolism, and no one represents this better than Kira. (Well, he kinda is the only one who can represent it since all the other members are grunts...) Yomi is depicted as a place rather like the inside of a tomb. It’s depressing, and filled with rotting corpses.
Soul Society is rather like purgatory, where souls rest in preparation for reincarnation. Some Chinese tales have the underworld divided into “ten courts of hell” or “eighteen levels of hell” or however many. The Japanese concept of Yomi shares some of its origins with the Chinese courts of hell (let’s make it 13 just for kicks), and in some instances they’ve imported the bureaucratic ruler Yama/Enma (let’s call him king Ichigo riding on his Hollow horse the king of Soul Society).
The 3rd division, between Gin and Kira, is a Yomi-like manifestation of the underworld. Y’know, the part of the underworld that is related to the cold, hard truth about death. The part that earned the underworld names like “the land of shade” or “the serene darkness” or “the place of yin”. It’s a contemplative place; a sorrowful place.
Along comes Kira, who, in his own words, embodies the 3rd division. Sorrow. Repentance. His-shikai-just-so-happens-to-look-like-a-corpse-dude-carrying-a-tomb-thing. (When it’s not looking like a reverse-guillotine, that is.) And it makes things heavy. Like, maybe even as heavy as the boulders that Izanagi dropped on the entrance to Yomi OH BURN. See what I did there?
Kubo has also recently stated that he doesn’t feel like drawing Kira’s bankai because it would be really disgusting. I’m thinking that it would look like Izanami’s face or something, and be all BLARGH DEATH - THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. Seriously, it would be really depressing and rotting and gross. You know, it would be like Yomi. The underworld. The 3rd division.
It would be like Kira - fucking depressing.
But hey, let’s talk about marigolds! Cool fact: marigolds are a symbol of the Hindu goddess Saraswati. Cooler fact: Saraswati worship made its way to Japan where she absorbed a couple local deities and came to be known as Benzaiten. That would be the snake goddess I mentioned at the beginning. Just sayin’.
Anyway, they are symbols of death. No, really. Although largely supplanted by Rangiku chrysanthemums, marigolds are still used as funeral flowers in some parts of Japan. Traditionally they were revered as powerful healing herbs *cough* healer!Kira *cough*, but mostly they’re known as funeral flowers, I guess. I don’t know if this concept was native to Japan (probably not), but who cares? Kubo totally went for it when he said that they symbolized grief/sorrow. (Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.)
Bleach is also heavy on the Mexican influences, and even though that's mostly for the Hollow masks and Hueco Mundo stuff, I don't think Kubo would pass up on a symbol that means the same or similar things in both cultures. The Mexican marigold might be a different species of flower, scientifically speaking, but I don't think anyone really cares... It, too, represents healing, sorrow, and death. It, too, is a perfect fit for Kira.
...Just as the chrysanthemum is a perfect fit for Rangiku. I mean, it's not in her name just to be in her name. Its meaning is similar to that of the marigold, but without the healing bit. It's a funeral flower (white chrysanthemums are a must in East Asian funerals), but because of its large, showy appearance, yellow chrysanthemums remind people of a cheerful sun. Because of the extensive layering of the petals, it also represents a sort of "layered personality" that is both sorrow and happiness, which is very Rangiku.
What ties Rangiku and Izuru together is, of course, Gin. Would it be weird if I said these two characters are very much alike? Marigolds, like I said, have usually been overshadowed by chrysanthemums. But that's also because chrysanthemums have such an obvious presence that marigolds, with their somewhat similar appearance, are sometimes confused as little chrysanthemums - "golden cup chrysanthemums" or "longevity chrysanthemums", according to the Chinese characters. Longevity as in having healing properties? What! No way!
Flower symbolism seems kinda important in this series from what I've gathered. Could it be that Gin, goddess of the underworld as he is, coincidentally ended up with his two closest companions both being the embodiment of funeral flowers whose personality differences are also covered by subtle differences in the meaning of said flowers? Hmm... Inner conspiracy theorist says no.
So. In this here 3rd division, we’ve got a captain who’s an amalgamation of 3 goddesses and their animal messengers, and his lieutenant who is, like, maybe the really gloomy personification of Yomi, which happens to be ruled by one of those goddesses. IDK, it all made sense in my head.
I also blame my Asian lit professor, who taught me all the good stuff about the spooge gods of Japan. And thus I turn my analytical skills to Bleach...
Foxy snakes 4 teh lulz!
It’s not one or the other. It’s both, simultaneously. They might seem like completely unrelated animals, but they have far more in common than is expected, at least when it comes to East Asian folklore. And what they have in common is a deep relationship with goddess iconography.
Mythology is messy. Japanese myths are a mash-up of Shinto/Buddhist/Taoist influences, and (as is true with all cultures/religions) imported gods often become aliases for native deities that already served similar functions. I won’t get too far into that except to say that the traditionally Shinto deity Inari (associated with white foxes) became conflated with the traditionally Buddhist-via-Hindu deity Benzaiten (associated with white snakes). Thus the god(dess) of foxes is also sometimes the goddess of snakes.
Inari, even before partially absorbing Benzaiten, was already a composite god(dess) - a mixture of various local deities who have long been forgotten. Inari is portrayed as male, female, androgynous, intersex... All of it. The most popular images are either of a young female or androgynous figure accompanied by white foxes, or else an old man with a sack of rice. The old man carrying rice symbolizes prosperity after the harvest, seeing as he's way out of his reproductive prime. So let's just say Inari isn't exactly the most masculine of gods even as a male figure. Inari is all about the crop fertility and not the male virility, lolz.
(White) foxes/snakes are:
1) yin creatures
This means they are inherently aligned with feminine energies. There are male foxes/snakes, of course, but those are usually depicted as having some effeminate traits. For example, Abe no Seimei from the Onmyouji movies - he’s got that whole homoerotic thing going on with his buddy Hiromasa and he did that crossdressing-as-a-shrine-maiden thing - and Orochimaru from Naruto, whose seiyuu is a woman. Gin is also such a case. If ever there was a male character who embodied the yin, I’d vote for Gin.
As yin creatures, rather than yin-yang balanced like humans are, foxes/snakes are deficient in yang, which means they suck it out of humans through sex, leading to their portrayal as
2) seductresses
Male foxes used to seduce women until patriarchal society came to think those stories were inappropriate and stopped telling them lololol. So they mostly seduce men, take their semen life force, and are generally all-around sexxay thangs. (Google has shown me a remarkable... ancient fox-shaped phallus statue. Or is it a phallus-shaped fox dildo? I can’t tell.)
[Side note: I can totally justify GinRan this way, okay? They get along because foxes and cats are both shapeshifting tricksters. Nekomata have the sweet, sweet bonus of being somewhat fire elementals. I mean, they throw fireballs and stuff. (This stems from the legend that cats who drank lamp oil were monsters. But really, they drank it because that stuff was tasty and made from fish oil back in the day.) Fire = yang element, yo. And yellow chrysanthemums are associated with the sun and also with yang energy. The yang - it is strong in Rangiku despite the boobies.]
Snakes have always been female seductresses in the myths that made their way from southern China. Because they’re cold-blooded, and cold = yin. So guess what? They want your “male heat”. But aside from granting male sexual fantasies, these creatures also serve as
3) general symbols of luck/prosperity/protection
They’re white (or silver), and that’s a holy color because it’s so rare in nature (and albinos rarely last an hour out in the wild, haha). Inari and Benzaiten are both luck-bringers, so their messengers are good omens as well. Since Gin is referred to as both fox and snake, I think that gives him a double dose of CANNOT BE EVIL.
Did anyone familiar with Japanese folklore actually think he would turn out to be a bad guy? Probably not. Perhaps unnecessarily cruel, but not evil. Animals in East Asian folklore have a different system of morality than humans. They are often much more cruel in their methods even if their heart is in the right place. Foxes, for example, might grow attached to a particular human and become loyal guardians. Still, they would think nothing of stealing from others to give to their friend, or doing all sorts of bad things if there are benefits for those under the fox's protection.
Speaking of cruelty, a common motif involving snakes is that overwhelming or all-consuming negative emotions can turn regular people into snake spirits. In particular, it's the desire for vengeance that turns one into a snake. White snakes created in this way, however, are harbingers of righteous vengeance. And snake-people are capable of being saved if they either finish their revenge mission or somehow learn to forgive.
Foxes are also pretty damn fond of vengeance, but not to the extent that snakes are (because revenge is a dish best served cold-blooded). The difference is that foxes are always born as such, whereas snakes can be made. Gin has always been a fox, so you could say he always did have a predisposition towards vengeful feelings. But there had to be some catalyst (Aizen) that came along and did something that to Gin's mind was an unforgivable wrong which set him on the path to becoming a snake. With a fox's inborn sense of loyalty, that wrong was obviously "hurting the person I swore to protect".
Of course, you can’t talk about foxes and snakes without mentioning how fox/snake women often end up sacrificing themselves for their loved ones. They may start out as mere beasts, but they ascend to human or god-like status through experiencing human love - the ultimate expression of which is altruism at the cost of their own life. Some people said it was OOC and/or disappointing the way Gin turned out to be a "simple romantic", but it's not that simple, and it had to be that way in order to maintain the mythological consistency that the Japanese audience was expecting.
Further reading:
- The Loving Fox (and basically any other kitsune story except the really early ones that pre-date Buddhist influence)
- What the Snake had in Mind (Royall Tyler's version is better IMO, but this one's on Google books, so there!)
- Kiyo-hime
- The White Serpent God, aka Hakuja no Myojin
- Madame White Snake (which is a southern Chinese story, but also very popular in Japan)
Wait a minute! A goddess with a god-killing spear?
Yes. Yesyesyes. OH GOD THE SPEAR CAN I TALK ABOUT THE SPEAR? DAT SPEAR. UNF.
Let’s begin with a creation myth. In the beginning, the god Izanagi and goddess Izanami were given a heavenly spear and told to create Japan and its peoples. Izanagi took the really phallic weapon, thrust it in the water, and stirred up the vagina ocean until there was frothy spooge. Thus the spooge islands of Japan were created. Then they went on to make lots and lots of baby arrancar *ahem* gods and goddesses.
Izanami died due to complications from childbirth, and she descended to the underworld. (Japanese mythology has lots of words for places in the afterlife, but this is the classic Shinto underworld, Yomi.) Izanagi chased after her, intending to bring her back, but when he caught up to her, she had already eaten the dried persimmon fruit of the underworld and could not return. So then they did some shit and struck some deals, and Izanami said she would return if only Izanagi would not look at her until they reached the entrance to the living world.
But Izanagi was kind of a douche and he looked anyway. Lo and behold, the love of his life was in fact AUUUGH MAGGOTS GET AWAY FROM ME TRAITOR because she was a rotting corpse. And Izanami was like OH NO YOU DIDN’T MOTHERFUCKER! And they had this huge fight/chase thing where Izanagi was scared shitless and Izanami was all “get back here and let me kill you”.
Best. Breakup. Ever.
Izanagi managed to escape, and he sealed off the entrance to the underworld with huge-ass boulders. Izanami, once a mother goddess of creation, now became the goddess of death/decay/the underworld/what-have-you. They continue their hatred in the form of a happy little game involving human lives. Izanami vows to kill 1000 of Izanagi’s creations every day, and Izanagi vows to make 1500 more just to one-up her. And that is why we have overpopulation. The end.
‘Sup with that story? Oh, right. The heavenly spear, the two-faced goddess, and the part where she wants to kill him but he wins. Fuck yeah, that has Aizen and Gin hatesex written all over it.
Aizen is obviously some really warped version of a creator god. I mean, really. He’s obsessed with making stuff, like a gigantor palace and a bunch of Arrancar babies. Gin, meanwhile, is the creator-turned-destroyer. He starts out (seemingly) on Aizen’s side, the side of creation, and he conveniently has his own very “heavenly spear”. IT'S TOTALLY NOT A COINCIDENCE THAT SHINSOU IS SO EXTEND-O-MAGICALLY PHALLIC. That part is there to be all, "Guess what? I have a godly spear, and that means I take after Izanagi and I'm totally on your side, creator god!" (All the better to trick you with, my dear...)
All of a sudden, bam! Betrayal. That battle was seriously full of sexual imagery, BTW. "Bankai! Oh, wouldja lookit that... Let's slip this little kanji here and actually I was lying. I'm on Izanami's side, and my peen ain't a peen - it's a poisonous vagina."
Hold on - let me explain, okay?
Gin trouser-snake-y spears Aizen to get at the hougyoku embedded in Aizen's chest. The poison eats away at Aizen's soul, and Gin literally reaches in to take away his power. Penetration/emasculation imagery much?
The hougyoku, to butterfl-Aizen, is the seat of his power; it represents his creative force. Basically, it's his peen. What does a creator god fear? Having his peen rot off, duh. Because in traditional patriarchal Asian society, it was the possession of a phallus that granted social power. The vagina was sometimes depicted as a "pit of rot", like a nasty abscess or something, and that was how the feminine became associated with death and the underworld. Loss of the phallus, becoming a woman or an eunuch, was a deep-seated fear that made its way into many of these folktales.
When the otherworldly fox/snake women had sex with men, sometimes the eating-away of the man's yang manifested itself as illness, loss of virility, or... penile shrinkage. These seductresses were much more sexually liberated than "proper" women of the time, but the price was that such strong, independent, free-spirited lovers made their male companions feel emasculated. That's why regular (non-white) foxes/snakes are portrayed as evil until they are tamed by marriage and/or organized religion. That is, they are dangerous until they submit themselves to society's rules. (Bad women! No freedom for you!)
Hmm... What else could make a man feel emasculated? Oh, that's right! TAKING IT UP THE ASS. Here's Gin, a goddess' male avatar, who fucks up Aizen, a would-be god, real good with a poisoned spear. That spear is like a peen with vajayjay powers. It's like a peen that is a lie, like a vagina in the shape of a penis. Cue rotting away of the god's life-creating energy, and an extreme fear of death. Death, mind you, which is likened to a vagina. A descent to the primordial womb of nothingness from whence you came. Or something like that.
In summary, there's the spearing, and then the poison eating away at Aizen like what happens to guys who have unfortunate run-ins with those yin-licious succubi, the fox/snake women. And then the fox is like, “Gimme back Rangiku's my hougyoku wishing ball thing hoshi no tama,” and the creator god is scared shitless at the thought of being uke his own demise. But Aizen wins that battle, and poor Gin falls back down to his underworld.
So yeah, a goddess' avatar with a god-killing spear totally makes sense. I rest my case.
M’awww~ Who’s my favorite squishy? You are, Kira, yes you are!
I’m going out on a limb here to say that the 3rd division itself is rife with Yomi symbolism, and no one represents this better than Kira. (Well, he kinda is the only one who can represent it since all the other members are grunts...) Yomi is depicted as a place rather like the inside of a tomb. It’s depressing, and filled with rotting corpses.
Soul Society is rather like purgatory, where souls rest in preparation for reincarnation. Some Chinese tales have the underworld divided into “ten courts of hell” or “eighteen levels of hell” or however many. The Japanese concept of Yomi shares some of its origins with the Chinese courts of hell (let’s make it 13 just for kicks), and in some instances they’ve imported the bureaucratic ruler Yama/Enma (let’s call him king Ichigo riding on his Hollow horse the king of Soul Society).
The 3rd division, between Gin and Kira, is a Yomi-like manifestation of the underworld. Y’know, the part of the underworld that is related to the cold, hard truth about death. The part that earned the underworld names like “the land of shade” or “the serene darkness” or “the place of yin”. It’s a contemplative place; a sorrowful place.
Along comes Kira, who, in his own words, embodies the 3rd division. Sorrow. Repentance. His-shikai-just-so-happens-to-look-like-a-corpse-dude-carrying-a-tomb-thing. (When it’s not looking like a reverse-guillotine, that is.) And it makes things heavy. Like, maybe even as heavy as the boulders that Izanagi dropped on the entrance to Yomi OH BURN. See what I did there?
Kubo has also recently stated that he doesn’t feel like drawing Kira’s bankai because it would be really disgusting. I’m thinking that it would look like Izanami’s face or something, and be all BLARGH DEATH - THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. Seriously, it would be really depressing and rotting and gross. You know, it would be like Yomi. The underworld. The 3rd division.
It would be like Kira - fucking depressing.
But hey, let’s talk about marigolds! Cool fact: marigolds are a symbol of the Hindu goddess Saraswati. Cooler fact: Saraswati worship made its way to Japan where she absorbed a couple local deities and came to be known as Benzaiten. That would be the snake goddess I mentioned at the beginning. Just sayin’.
Anyway, they are symbols of death. No, really. Although largely supplanted by Rangiku chrysanthemums, marigolds are still used as funeral flowers in some parts of Japan. Traditionally they were revered as powerful healing herbs *cough* healer!Kira *cough*, but mostly they’re known as funeral flowers, I guess. I don’t know if this concept was native to Japan (probably not), but who cares? Kubo totally went for it when he said that they symbolized grief/sorrow. (Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.)
Bleach is also heavy on the Mexican influences, and even though that's mostly for the Hollow masks and Hueco Mundo stuff, I don't think Kubo would pass up on a symbol that means the same or similar things in both cultures. The Mexican marigold might be a different species of flower, scientifically speaking, but I don't think anyone really cares... It, too, represents healing, sorrow, and death. It, too, is a perfect fit for Kira.
...Just as the chrysanthemum is a perfect fit for Rangiku. I mean, it's not in her name just to be in her name. Its meaning is similar to that of the marigold, but without the healing bit. It's a funeral flower (white chrysanthemums are a must in East Asian funerals), but because of its large, showy appearance, yellow chrysanthemums remind people of a cheerful sun. Because of the extensive layering of the petals, it also represents a sort of "layered personality" that is both sorrow and happiness, which is very Rangiku.
What ties Rangiku and Izuru together is, of course, Gin. Would it be weird if I said these two characters are very much alike? Marigolds, like I said, have usually been overshadowed by chrysanthemums. But that's also because chrysanthemums have such an obvious presence that marigolds, with their somewhat similar appearance, are sometimes confused as little chrysanthemums - "golden cup chrysanthemums" or "longevity chrysanthemums", according to the Chinese characters. Longevity as in having healing properties? What! No way!
Flower symbolism seems kinda important in this series from what I've gathered. Could it be that Gin, goddess of the underworld as he is, coincidentally ended up with his two closest companions both being the embodiment of funeral flowers whose personality differences are also covered by subtle differences in the meaning of said flowers? Hmm... Inner conspiracy theorist says no.
So. In this here 3rd division, we’ve got a captain who’s an amalgamation of 3 goddesses and their animal messengers, and his lieutenant who is, like, maybe the really gloomy personification of Yomi, which happens to be ruled by one of those goddesses. IDK, it all made sense in my head.