Katen Kyōkotsu: Karamatsu Shinjū

Shunsui cuts an unmistakable figure among the captains: a towering, grey-eyed man with long brown hair worn in a ponytail, thin facial hair, and a flowered pink kimono thrown over his black robes, usually shaded by a woven straw hat. The Wandenreich conflict left its mark in a permanent eyepatch over his right eye, a scar down the temple, and the top of that ear shorn away, all souvenirs of the fight in which he first called on his Bankai.

Beneath a lazy, sake-loving surface, Shunsui is perceptive and quietly principled, preferring to defuse conflict and declining to fight before a child or take an innocent life. Raised to Captain-Commander after Yamamoto's death, he shows a pragmatic readiness to court controversy, appointing two lieutenants, setting Unohana to retrain Kenpachi, and releasing Aizen from prison, reasoning that meeting evil with evil is no sin when the world hangs in the balance. He also carries a private burden of guilt for the sorrows dealt to those he loves.

As one of Soul Society's oldest and most formidable captains, Shunsui pairs immense spiritual power with elite, ambidextrous swordsmanship, deft flash-step, and Kido he can cast without incantation. His signature lies in the Zanpakuto Katen Kyokotsu, whose Shikai turns children's games into binding rules, but his true trump is the Bankai, Katen Kyokotsu: Karamatsu Shinju. Releasing it drapes the surroundings in a bleak, despairing gloom and, rather than a game, forces both Shunsui and his foe to perform a doomed lovers' tragedy told in four acts. The first shares any wound between the two, the second scatters bleeding black marks across the enemy, the third drowns both in an inescapable flood until one runs dry of power, and the closing act loops a thread around the opponent's throat and severs it, destroying the head. Only a foe able to survive losing its head can outlast the play. Because the effects strike friend and foe alike and the performance needs two players to run its course, Shunsui keeps it in reserve and shields comrades from its range.