Character · Bleach
Byakuya Kuchiki
The head of a noble house with a face like a closed door, whose sword turns into a cloud of cherry blossoms.
In Otakana the clue reads: Noble captain whose blade scatters into petals
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Bleach
- Letters
- 7 · Normal
Byakuya Kuchiki captains the sixth division and runs one of the four great noble families of the Soul Society, and he treats both jobs as a matter of rules rather than feeling. He arrives in the story to drag his adopted sister Rukia home for execution, does it without raising his voice, and cuts down anyone who objects. For a long stretch the series lets you think that is all there is to him.
Senbonzakura, his blade, breaks into a thousand blades too small to see, so the air around him fills with what looks like drifting pink petals and is in fact a moving wall of edges. The bankai plants rows of swords in the ground and turns them into a storm. It is a beautiful technique that works by giving an opponent nothing to block, which suits a man who never argues.
The reason he holds the rules so tightly is that he broke them once, marrying a woman from the poor districts and promising her family he would never bend again. Tite Kubo builds most of the character out of that single promise, and the scenes where it cracks are worth more than the fights around them.
Spelling BYAKUYA
The game asks for BYAKUYA, the given name, not Kuchiki. Seven letters and three beats, bya then ku then ya, and both Y sounds ride on a small kana rather than a separate syllable. Writing it as BIYAKUYA is the usual slip. Two Y's in one short word is rare enough that finding either one narrows the row fast. As a common noun byakuya means white night.