Kenpachi Kuruyashiki

Kuruyashiki is a tall, powerfully built Shinigami with unruly dark hair and a notably hairy chest. He wears the usual black uniform beneath a captain's haori that he keeps stripped of its sleeves.

Warm and sociable, Kuruyashiki counts Shunsui Kyōraku among his closest friends and commands deep loyalty from his squad, above all his lieutenant Ashido Kanō. He shares sake with Shunsui and Jūshirō Ukitake and throws celebrations for his own division. For all his renown, he stays modest, freely praising the strength of Genryūsai Yamamoto, Kirio Hikifune, Retsu Unohana, and the Kuchiki and Shihōin house heads. He even turns down a seat among the Zero Division, calling himself too lazy to guard a hidden palace and insisting a Kenpachi must always be reachable by anyone who would challenge him.

Long before his death, Kuruyashiki declines an invitation to the Soul King Palace, unwilling to shut himself away protecting a king, and earns his division's awe by slaying a Vasto Lorde that claimed to serve Baraggan Louisenbairn. Two and a half centuries before Aizen's defeat, he throws a victory feast with the Eleventh and his friend Shunsui after clearing Hollows from the Rukongai. A soft-spoken young man, later revealed as Sōya Azashiro, arrives with a mysterious woman and challenges him for the Kenpachi title; Kuruyashiki accepts and asks Shunsui to bear witness, only to be torn open by an unseen force.

Dying, he releases his Shikai to drive back his furious subordinates and demands that they concede the loss with honor. Told he could have won by drawing on his Bankai, he admits he held it back to keep his own men safe, then names Azashiro the next Kenpachi and whispers a final lesson never to hold anything in reserve, passing with a smile and the conviction that the title itself is eternal. His Zanpakutō, Gagaku Kairō, is a living-type blade that conjures ravenous fanged creatures, and its Bankai summons colossal jaws so indiscriminately hungry that Central 46 forbade their use inside the Seireitei.