Life is Sweet

Death, Ikkaku, and Ishida
Ikkaku-mun put up something talking about the people in camp who are "real" to him, and Death came up. Said Ikkaku-mun:

Actually, [Ikkaku] has been angry with [Death] before--when she made Ishida invincible. But I'll talk about that some other time. Because Ikkaku has more issues than Entertainment Weekly.

Which made me sit down and think about why my approach to Ikkaku and Uryuu has been different, almost instinctually.

First of all, there's something I should clarify. Death didn't make Ishida invincible. Death made Ishida immortal, which isn't the same thing. Death's nephew, Orpheus, lived for centuries as a bodiless head even after he was torn to pieces by the Maenads. Ishida's immortality is not a favor, no matter what he and Ryuuken think. Death is interested in Uryuu as a person, not a Quincy. She's interested in the boy that lives in the shadow of the duty, the one who sews Quincy crosses onto everybody's clothing and is all fussy and formal. She's disgusted by the idea that he lets his vengeance and duty blind him to everything else that's important: that his father still loves him, that Heine is alive here and now, that his grandfather wanted to make peace with the shinigami. So she made Ishida's life something he literally cannot throw away. Which leaves him with two paths. He can pursue and kill as many Shinigami as he can until they injure him so much he can no longer fight, at which point his immortality will be a curse. Or he can be careful with his life, and treat it as if it's precious, in which case, it's a gift.

Death loves Ikkaku back (she loves everyone, after all) but she thinks he's... I hesitate to say "wasting his life" but that's pretty much it. It vexes her that despite him having at least one person who cares about him, he's basically just waiting to die. That said, when his time comes, she will take him, because it's what he wants. He's already living his life as if he's dead, after all, and I say that even though he's a shinigami. As far as I can tell, life in the Seireitai, even if it's the afterlife, is still life, and to Death, life is the most important thing in the world. Period.

As I understand Ikkaku's annoyance with Death's decision to make Ishida immortal, it's that he thinks she took away Ishida's chance to go down in a blaze of glory, to die in the name of the Quincy. But I read that as a projection of Ikkaku's wish for himself onto Ishida, and not necessarily as something that Ishida himself wants.

I think the key difference between Ikkaku and Ishida for Death is that Ishida is, in her view, too young and too alive to be throwing his life away in pursuit of his duty, where Ikkaku has already fossilized. There's a chance for Ishida to not become Ikkaku, and she's extended that chance by gifting (or cursing) him with immortality.

Current Mood: thoughtful