Ōetsu Nimaiya

Dark-skinned and sporting thick black hair shaved and dyed green at the sides, Nimaiya cuts a distinctive figure. He wears a reworked Soul Reaper outfit, a green underlayer beneath a cropped hakama that bares his shins, topped by a sleeveless white puffer jacket marked with the Royal Guard's crest on the back and a captain's patterned hem. Blue-tinted, gold-rimmed sunglasses and gold-trimmed green slippers complete the look.

Kirio Hikifune calls him unpredictable, and he lives up to it, given to booming entrances, theatrical greetings, and a habit of overplaying everything to mask how modestly he actually lives. He slips freely between Japanese and English, often within a single breath. Even mid-battle he stays cheerful, bantering while he cuts foes down, and he will make ruthless, self-endangering choices to win, once slitting his own throat to purge poisoned blood.

Nimaiya is credited with inventing the Zanpakuto itself, a contribution so significant that the Soul King raised him into the Royal Guard, and he personally forges every Asauchi, the nameless base blade each Soul Reaper carries until it takes on the shape of their soul. When Yamamoto fell, Nimaiya descended to the Seireitei with his fellow guardians and escorted Ichigo and the wounded back to the Soul King Palace.

At his own domain he greeted Ichigo Kurosaki and Renji Abarai with theatrics before smashing their swords and casting them into a trial against enraged Asauchi. Renji passed; Ichigo he declared a failure and kicked back to Karakura, having deduced that a blade without an Asauchi meant Ichigo was no true Shinigami at all. He soon brought him back, reforged his weapon, and revealed the hard truth that the figure Ichigo had known as Zangetsu was in fact the manifestation of his hidden Quincy power fused with his inner Hollow. Choosing to keep that heritage, Ichigo poured his own soul into the forging and walked away wielding a pair of twin blades.

When Yhwach's Schutzstaffel breached the palace, Nimaiya drew Sayafushi, a sword he deems a failure because its edge is so flawless that no scabbard can contain it, and felled Gerard Valkyrie, Lille Barro, Pernida Parnkgjas, and Askin Nakk Le Vaar in a rapid string of single strokes. Askin survived by making the blood in Nimaiya's body lethal, so Nimaiya slit his own throat, had Tenjiro Kirinji swap his blood for hot-spring water, and cut the Quincy down before turning on Yhwach. The tide reversed when Auswahlen revived and empowered the Schutzstaffel; the reborn Lille eventually shot Nimaiya through the heart. Revived by Senjumaru Shutara but unable to overcome Lille's all-piercing shots, Nimaiya, Kirinji, and Hikifune took their own lives to break the Blood Oath's Seal and free Senjumaru to unleash her Bankai.