Mayuri Kurotsuchi

Mayuri cuts a ghoulish, nearly skeletal figure. He paints his face solid white over a black core that spares only the nose, his eyes glint gold, and his bared teeth lock his mouth into a permanent grin. Blunt golden cones stand in for his ears, a two-pronged white cap sits atop his head, and a broad purple scarf wraps his neck. Even his hands are colored black and white, a scheme he strips off nightly and reapplies each morning.

Beneath the makeup lie blue hair, honey-gold eyes, and a body crossed with scars, with grated, portcullis-like fittings and earrings where his ears should be. His look keeps evolving as the story goes on: he adopts a pharaoh-inspired mask and golden headdress on entering Hueco Mundo, and later arcs give him sun-like hooded coats, ram-horn crests, and other elaborate redesigns.

The archetypal mad scientist, Mayuri treats curiosity and cruelty as one and the same. During the Ryoka Invasion he proves willing to convert his own unwitting subordinates into living explosives simply to seize Uryu Ishida and Orihime Inoue as specimens. He holds nothing sacred, not even his own body, and believes every member of the Gotei 13 exists to be spent for the Seireitei, dosing former comrades with untested drugs and pressing zombified captains into service rather than granting them a clean death. Perfection repels him, since a finished, flawless state would rob him of anything left to pursue, and he sneers at Szayelaporro Granz for boasting of being a perfect being.

In combat he prefers to unravel foes slowly, studying and toying with them while seeding microbes or trackers should they escape. For all his contempt toward life, he is fixated on creating it, dreaming of building a soul from nothing, a quest sharpened by his long rivalry with Kisuke Urahara.

Mayuri's early years are murky, though he once belonged to an unofficial band of inventors under Senjumaru Shutara. A century past, he was judged so dangerous that he sat as the sole occupant of a locked cell in the Nest of Maggots, tethered by the ankle, until Kisuke Urahara came recruiting a deputy for the fledgling Shinigami Research and Development Institute and coaxed him out with the promise of things to tinker with. When scandal drove Urahara into exile, Mayuri inherited leadership of the Institute and, in time, the Twelfth Division's captaincy.

Through what he named the Nemuri Project he modified his own Zanpakuto and coaxed fresh life out of so-called godly soul cells, producing his artificial daughter Nemu Kurotsuchi and, later, Nemuri Hachigo. His research also encompassed monstrous vivisections of the Quincy, among them Uryu's grandfather Soken Ishida. In the field he wields the Zanpakuto Ashisogi Jizo, whose strikes paralyze, and its Bankai Konjiki Ashisogi Jizo. Uniquely able to remodel both his weapon and his flesh, he installs self-destruct triggers and auto-parrying sensors, rebuilds his body on the fly, and even reanimates fallen Arrancar to fight under his control.