Central 46

The body is built from forty learned men drawn out of every corner of Soul Society, joined by six presiding judges. Together they weigh every crime committed by a Shinigami, whether the offense took place at home or out among the living. Their reach also lets them authorize lethal action by the Gotei 13, the Onmitsukidō, or the Kidō Corps, and a verdict, once handed down, is almost never reversed.

Because the ruler and his line dwell in a separate dimension where their sovereignty goes unfelt by ordinary residents, the council governs in the Soul King's name and is treated, in practice, as the realm's ruling aristocracy. Its writ does not, however, extend over the Royal Guard or the Shin'ō Academy. When Sousuke Aizen slaughtered its entire membership during the Ryoka Invasion, Captain-Commander Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto shouldered its work until a fresh council could be seated.

Following the Wandenreich assault on Seireitei and Yamamoto's death, the reconstituted council named Captain Shunsui Kyōraku the new head of the Gotei 13. It bristled at his choices, including two co-lieutenants and combat lessons for Kenpachi Zaraki, yet yielded rather than risk a leaderless realm. Later it consented to freeing Aizen against Yhwach, on the harsh condition that the key to Muken be lodged inside Kyōraku's own heart.

Hearings are convened in a subterranean chamber inside the Central 46 Compound. A numbered tablet hangs before each seated member, veiling his face, and those numbers are the sole way to tell one from another. Any inquiry is run quietly by the Onmitsukidō at the council's request. An accused party learns the charge only when the sentence arrives, is kept ignorant of who accused them, and may speak solely to answer what is put to them; hard evidence weighs far more here than any spoken defense. Disrespect toward the proceedings tends to add fresh charges rather than earn sympathy.

A long code of laws underpins these trials. Feeding a Shinigami's power to a living human is forbidden, as is the use of banned Kidō, the forging of unsanctioned weapons, striking a captain, and killing a human without orders. Reaching for Hollow-like abilities is likewise outlawed, and the loss of a sacred treasure carries a death sentence. The council also keeps a walled residential enclave within Seireitei, the Seijōtōkyorin, which no one may enter uninvited regardless of rank.

Kubo has noted that the assembly is drawn from forty-six noble houses that pass their seats down through the generations, which keeps the individual members anonymous behind their tablets. Their identity is better understood through the verdicts they issued. They condemned Rukia Kuchiki to execution for overstaying in the living world and lending her power to a human, a trial Aizen secretly engineered from start to finish.

They stripped Kisuke Urahara of his abilities and banished him for forbidden experiments, sentenced Tessai Tsukabishi to imprisonment for a prohibited spell, and moved to treat Shinji Hirako and the other Visored as Hollows. Aizen himself drew a term of nearly twenty thousand years in Muken, the deepest cell of the underground prison, his sentence lengthened by his own outburst. Older punishments included the Nest of Maggots, reserved for dangerous or unstable officers, and the discontinued Spirit-Sealing Pit, where sekkiseki walls smothered a prisoner's powers before Hollows were loosed upon them.