Term · Bleach
Zangetsu
The sword has a name, the name has a face, and the face lives inside a city turned on its side.
In Otakana the clue reads: The name of the hero's oversized sword
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Bleach
- Letters
- 8 · Normal
Every zanpakuto in Bleach is a spirit with a name, and the wielder cannot use its true form until it agrees to say what that name is. Ichigo Kurosaki's introduces itself as Zangetsu, and it appears to him as a tall man in a ragged black coat and dark glasses, standing on the side of a skyscraper in an inner world where gravity runs sideways and the sky is below your feet.
The sealed shape is famous for what it lacks. Zangetsu is a slab of a blade the length of its owner, with no crossguard and no wrapping on the handle, carried across the back in cloth. It is a design that looks wrong for fencing and right for someone who fights by swinging as hard as possible, which is an accurate summary of Ichigo.
The attack that comes with it is Getsuga Tensho, a crescent of compressed energy fired off the edge of the sword. Later releases strip the blade down rather than making it larger, which is unusual in a genre where power upgrades normally mean more sword rather than less.
Spelling ZANGETSU
ZANGETSU is eight letters and the kanji is 斬月, slaying moon, which explains the two halves: zan for the cut, getsu for the moon. The ending is the trouble. TSU is a single kana, つ, so the word finishes on a T and an S and a U rather than the ZU or TZU that English ears reach for. A Z at the front makes it a strong opening guess.