Eikichirō Saidō

A tall figure with pale skin, Saidō has an angular face set off by a jutting chin. His eyes are dark brown with unusually small pupils, and his short black hair drops two bangs of mismatched length along the right of his face. Beyond the usual black shihakushō and sandals, his signature piece is a tan conical farmer's hat marked with a four-petal flower at its peak, held in place by cords looped under his chin and behind his ears. A string dangling from one side flips the engraved panel upward when tugged, exposing the word 'Correct' hidden beneath.

Saidō comes across as an oddball, breezy and joking even while on assignment. He tried to jog Rukia's memory as the academy's resident comedian, only to deflate when she drew a blank, then confirmed his Onmitsukidō ties by flapping his hat's panel while imitating a bell chime with his voice. He confesses to dozing off on duty, blaming a run of exhausting missions, and shows a lecherous side, ribbing Rukia about Ichigo and informing a young Plus girl her underclothes were on display.

Push him, though, and he sobers fast, answering resistance with force and grinning his way through a lopsided beatdown of the inexperienced Ichigo. Beneath the clowning sits a genuinely moral man: he is revolted by Grand Fisher gloating over his female victims, dotes on children, and throws himself in front of Grand Fisher's tendrils to shield Karin, taking the wounds himself because he refuses to let innocents lose the people they love. Moved by the bond between Ichigo and Rukia, he ultimately lets her stay and abandons his mission.

Two years before Rukia Kuchiki ever set foot there, Saidō was already a student at the Shin'ō Academy, remembered as its resident joke-teller while he in turn thought of her as the Kuchiki Clan's princess. Years afterward the Onmitsukidō handed him the task of locating Rukia, who had lingered too long in the human world, hinting that a deeper reason lay behind the order. He shadowed her to a cemetery, eavesdropping on her talk with Ichigo before she caught him napping under a tree.

When she refused to return quietly, he turned on the newly minted Substitute Shinigami and overwhelmed him with a fast, kinetic sword style and heavy kicks, breaking off only once a nearby Hollow surfaced. During the Grand Fisher fight he severed the Hollow's hand to free Karin, absorbed the retaliating tendrils with his own body, and then startled everyone by revealing he had merely fallen asleep rather than died. After Ichigo triumphed, Saidō chose to leave Rukia in peace. Much later he was posted to guard Kagamino City, where he gently coaxed a stray Plus girl to move on before the clash at the fake Karakura Town began. His sealed Zanpakutō is a black-hilted wakizashi with a gray guard, though neither its Shikai nor any Bankai has ever been shown.