Narunosuke

Gaunt and fair-skinned, Narunosuke is a young man whose messy indigo hair spills across his face in long strands while sitting cropped short at the back. An elaborate gold-and-white pauldron rests on his left shoulder, guarding that pectoral and the neck above it, while a dark snake-shaped bracelet winds around his left forearm. A red sash circles his waist, an exomis knots at one shoulder, and his eyes are brown. When he turns into a true Tōjū, a set of long black tentacles sprouts from his back and his eyes come to glow blue.

Soft-spoken and timid, Narunosuke politely calls his caretaker 'Miss Haineko' and takes her kindness with gratitude even though the two are supposed to be foes. He once served a cowardly Shinigami and owns up to his own cowardice, having bolted from the Tōjū he sided with the instant danger appeared. Though he treats his standing as a Tōjū with real gravity, he cannot at first grasp why a Zanpakutō spirit such as Haineko would trouble herself to help him, and in time the two grow genuinely close. After his transformation, that mildness collapses into raw aggression, and he lashes out at ally and enemy without telling them apart.

In the anime-only Beast Swords arc, Narunosuke walks away from his master and joins a group of fellow Tōjū to stay alive, only to run when Shinigami raid them and drop, wounded, into a patch of spider lilies, and it is Haineko who finds him there. Ordered to cut down every Tōjū, she instead finds herself drawn to him, spares his life, and carries him to a cabin to treat his wounds; there he admits he is really just a masterless Zanpakutō spirit rather than a genuine Tōjū. His health keeps slipping, the headaches mount, and his snake bracelet stirs on its own, until Rangiku Matsumoto spells out what is coming and he erupts into a full Tōjū, leveling the cabin and striking at both women. Haineko wraps the pair of them in the ash of her Shikai and tells him she knows he will not harm her, which lets him surface long enough to hold and thank her before he slips back into sword form and breaks apart. In that Tōjū state his blue reiatsu runs high enough to flatten a small building, and the tentacles at his back can fling a lieutenant away with one strike.