Term · Bleach
Hollow
A soul left too long without a burial turns into something with a mask and a hole where its heart used to sit.
In Otakana the clue reads: Masked spirit with a hole in its chest
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Bleach
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
In Bleach, a spirit that lingers in the living world eventually loses its chain to the body, and when the chain finishes eroding the soul collapses inward. What crawls out has a bone mask, a hole punched through the chest, and an appetite for other souls, usually starting with the people it loved. Soul Reapers exist to send souls on before that happens, and to cut down the ones that did not make it.
Killing a Hollow is not punishment. A cleansed Hollow goes to the Soul Society like anyone else, which is why the sword stroke that ends one is called purification rather than execution. The horror is not the monster, it is that the monster used to be somebody, and Tite Kubo keeps returning to that with Hollows who are recognisable to the people fighting them.
They come in grades. Ordinary Hollows are animals. Menos Grande are the size of buildings and made of many souls fused together. Above those sit Adjuchas and Vasto Lorde, and Aizen's Arrancar are Hollows that have torn off the mask to borrow a Soul Reaper's shape and power. The mask fragment each one keeps is the tell.
Spelling HOLLOW
This one needs no romanisation at all. HOLLOW is an ordinary English word that Tite Kubo chose in English, printed as furigana over the kanji 虚, meaning empty or void. Six letters, a double L in the middle and a double letter again at the end, so half the word is paired. If your row has an L or an O confirmed, guess its twin next door.