Masaki Kurosaki

Of roughly average height and fair-skinned, Masaki wears her wavy, light brown hair long, usually knotting it behind her head while leaving chin-length bangs at the front. Her eyes are brown, her wardrobe tends toward plain dresses, and she puts on lipstick now and then.

As a schoolgirl she kept the same hair much shorter, cropped near her chin, and dressed in a brown uniform: a red-hemmed skirt, a white collar pinned in red and tied at the front with a matching ribbon, knee-high white socks, and brown shoes.

Her family remembers her as a deeply loving wife and mother. To Masaki, looking after herself meant acting on whatever was in front of her each day; she felt she could never forgive herself if someone died because custom had held her back. That conviction defined her.

In her teens she projected boldness and self-assurance in company, yet she was uneasy under her adoptive mother's eye and wept when no one was watching. She also had a cheeky streak, which came out most in her back-and-forth with Ryūken Ishida.

Masaki grew up as the last living Kurosaki and was taken into the Ishida household by Izumi Ishida, both to shelter one of the few remaining Quincy and to one day wed her to Ryūken and keep the family's blood pure. Her training progressed slowly, drawing the occasional rebuke from her aunt. In 1981, sensing powerful spiritual pressure nearby, she ignored Ryūken's insistence that a pure Quincy should not risk herself and rushed toward the danger.

She found the wounded Isshin Shiba battling a strange black Hollow known as White. Unable to track the creature's speed, she let it close in and bite her so she could fire at point-blank range, destroying it; when it detonated, Isshin took the blast meant for her. Not long after, a Hollow hole surfaced on her chest, and Kisuke Urahara identified the onset of Hollowfication. To save her, Isshin surrendered his powers to live as an ordinary Human, tethering her fate to his own, then struck down the Hollow within her using a Getsuga Tenshō.

After graduating, Masaki left the Ishida home, married Isshin, and raised three children, Ichigo, Karin, and Yuzu, becoming the heart of the household. Years later, the Hollow Grand Fisher set out a human-shaped lure by a river to bait high-energy souls. Nine-year-old Ichigo ran toward it, and Masaki chased after to shield him, but with her Quincy powers secretly drained by Yhwach's Auswählen she was killed. Her loss devastated the family; Ichigo long blamed himself, and Isshin, who visits her grave each year, smokes only on that one day in her memory.

In her prime Masaki was a formidable Quincy, strong enough as a teenager to fell White with a single shot. She drew ambient Reishi to shape weapons, chiefly a compact bow no larger than a handgun that loosed volleys of Heilig Pfeil with full-sized force, and she carried the inborn Blut defense of pure-blooded Quincy, her Blut Vene noted as exceptionally sturdy.