Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto

Ages beyond counting have weathered Yamamoto into a stooped, bald elder, his face lined deep and set with a hooked nose and jutting cheekbones. A white beard falls to his hip, bound partway down by a purple cord, while long brows and a long mustache frame red eyes usually narrowed to slits. Old scars mark him, most notably a crossed pair above his right eye, one of them carved by his own lieutenant in a past duel. He lets the sleeved captain's haori hang from his shoulders rather than wear it properly, and his frail slouch hides a genuinely powerful, well-muscled frame that he bares only when serious for battle. His clash with Sōsuke Aizen would later cost him his left arm.

In his younger years he kept black hair at the sides of an otherwise bald crown, gathered into a small topknot at the back, with a thick mustache and no beard. A single large scar then crossed his forehead in the shape of a brush stroke that earned him the nickname Eijisai, until Chōjirō Sasakibe added a second slash across it and the name shifted to Jūjisai.

Yamamoto is conviction made flesh. He upholds the laws of Soul Society to the letter and demands the same discipline from every Shinigami beneath him, answering insubordination with sharp rebuke and reacting to any hint of treachery with swift fury. In peacetime he wears an air of frailty, once dozing on his feet while awaiting a colleague, and long centuries have drained him of visible surprise, so that he tends to respond by cracking open one or both of his habitually shut eyes. In combat he turns aggressive, brushing off opponents as youngsters and framing a fight as a punishment to be delivered.

His loyalty runs so deep that he was willing to burn away both himself and the whole Gotei 13 to bring down Aizen, viewing such sacrifice as the corps' true duty. He bristled when captains treated the loss of their haori lightly, since to him the garment embodies their office, and he preferred to keep outsiders, humans especially, clear of the fighting. Yet he is not without mercy: he hesitated to cut down the childlike Wonderweiss Margela and pitied what Aizen had made of him. A devotee of Eastern custom and a master of the tea ceremony, he privately carried shame for the ruthless figure he had once been, a man Yhwach remembered as an outright demon who spent lives, allies and enemies alike, without a second thought.

Yamamoto's life stretches back more than two thousand years to the founding of the Genji School, the institution that would grow into the Shin'ō Academy, where he taught pupils including Shunsui Kyōraku and Jūshirō Ukitake. Roughly a millennium ago he established the Gotei 13 and took its helm as the first Captain-Commander, recruiting even the notorious swordswoman Yachiru Unohana among his founding captains. In that era he warred against the Quincy emperor Yhwach, defeating him but failing to finish him off, a lapse that would haunt Soul Society centuries later.

When Ichigo Kurosaki disrupts Rukia Kuchiki's execution, Yamamoto pursues and battles Kyōraku and Ukitake, unsheathing the flames of his Zanpakutō, Ryūjin Jakka, the oldest and mightiest fire blade in Soul Society. During the war against Aizen he seals the traitor and his companions inside a dome of fire and cuts down much of the Espada's support, only for Aizen's engineered Arrancar, Wonderweiss, to smother Ryūjin Jakka's flames. Forced onto his fists and a forbidden Kidō, Yamamoto burns through his own charred body casting the sacrificial Hadō Ittō Kasō, surviving the ordeal but losing his left arm.

The Wandenreich's assault opens with the murder of his lieutenant Chōjirō Sasakibe, whose stolen Bankai Yamamoto avenges by reducing its thief, Driscoll Berci, to ash. Believing he faces Yhwach himself, he unleashes his Bankai, Zanka no Tachi, a blade that burns away whatever it touches and whose four techniques, each named for a compass point, culminate in raising an army of those his flames have slain. The foe proves a decoy, however, and the true Yhwach steals the Bankai with a medallion before cutting the old commander down. Twelve years after his death, a mourning rite misfires and casts Yamamoto into Hell, where he takes on the epithet Founder of the Gotei.