Rin Tsubokura

Rin wears his brown hair at shoulder length, gathering a small tuft at the front into a topknot bound with a red tie, and his lashes are short and brown. Like the rest of the institute's staff, he pulls a lab coat on over the standard black uniform of a Soul Reaper.

Mild-mannered and a touch clumsy, Rin comes undone the instant anyone brings up cake. His weakness for sweets is legendary among his colleagues, and Hiyosu remarks that he is forever snacking, with candy perpetually crammed into his pockets.

Stationed in the research institute, Rin spends much of his time monitoring spiritual readings, and it is he who first registers the arrival of Arrancar in Karakura Town and, later, the signature of the Espada. Eager to help captains and lieutenants shed their power limiters, he offers himself for a scouting trip to the living world; Akon dispatches him with a set of replacement molars for Ikkaku Madarame, and under the guidance of Hanatarō Yamada and Yumichika Ayasegawa he ends up baking a cake to fulfill the last wish of an earthbound spirit named Heita Momoyama. For these outings he hauls along strange slug-like devices, one that lets ordinary humans see souls without a gigai and another that records patterns in spiritual pressure. During the Quincy invasion he spreads word through the Seireitei that Ichigo Kurosaki is inbound and that the enemy cannot steal the substitute's Bankai, and when the institute comes under attack he abruptly stabs Hiyosu, murmuring a bewildered why in the aftermath.