Character · Bleach
Sosuke Aizen
For eleven volumes he was the kind captain with the glasses. Then he took them off.
In Otakana the clue reads: Bespectacled captain behind the perfect betrayal
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Bleach
- Letters
- 5 · Easy
Sosuke Aizen led the fifth division of the Soul Society and made a point of being the least threatening man in the room. Soft voice, gentle smile, wire-framed glasses, a lieutenant who adored him. When the Soul Reapers found his body pinned to a wall early in the Soul Society arc, the story appeared to be about avenging him. It was about giving him a clean exit from a role he was finished with.
His blade, Kyoka Suigetsu, does one thing and does it completely. Anyone who has seen its release once falls under total hypnosis, so Aizen can rewrite what they see, hear and feel from that moment on. The trick is that the release happens long before the fight, in a corridor or a meeting, at a moment nobody was counting. By the time it matters, the reveal is only bookkeeping.
Tite Kubo ran Bleach in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2016, and the shot of Aizen removing his glasses and sweeping his hair back is still the image the series is quoted by. It works because the design changes almost nothing. Same face, same voice, different posture. He never raises it, which somehow makes every later line worse.
Spelling AIZEN
AIZEN is the family name and it opens with a vowel pair, A then I, which is where most guesses go wrong by trying AZ or AI as a single sound. The kanji is 藍染, indigo dyeing, a colour that soaks in and does not wash out. Five letters, two vowels at the front, Z in the middle. Once the Z is placed the row has almost nowhere else to go.