Kisuke Urahara

Tall and lean with fair skin and grey eyes, Urahara wears his pale blond hair in a tousled mop, strands hanging between his eyes and along his jaw above a scruff of stubble. His everyday outfit pairs a dark green work robe with a black haori edged in a white diamond pattern, a look that reads like a captain's coat turned inside out. A fan often shields his expression, wooden clogs clack beneath his feet, and a striped green-and-white bucket hat sits low over his eyes, earning him nicknames such as Mr. Hat-and-Clogs.

In his earlier Soul Society days he went clean-shaven in the standard black uniform, adding a long-sleeved captain's haori after his promotion.

In manner Urahara is easygoing, cheerful, and self-deprecating, forever playing the humble merchant, yet a shrewd and deadly serious operator lies just beneath. He loves to disarm opponents with idle chatter and feigned concern, speaks with unfailing politeness laced with sarcasm, and, as Yoruichi observes, throws himself completely into whatever grabs his interest; he cheerfully calls himself an honest, handsome, and lecherous businessman.

He tends to hover near momentous events without stepping in, preferring to nudge others into action as a quiet catalyst, and he is unashamedly manipulative. As a fighter he is ruthlessly practical, embracing any underhanded trick that improves his odds of survival. A century ago, though, he cut a very different figure, an anxious and unsure captain who doubted his fitness to lead before hardening into the man he became.

Urahara was raised at the Shihōin estate alongside his lifelong friends Yoruichi Shihōin and Tessai Tsukabishi. Rising through the Onmitsukidō as the 2nd Division's 3rd Seat and warden of its Detention Unit, he was recommended by Yoruichi to succeed Kirio Hikifune as captain of the 12th Division, where he founded the Shinigami Research and Development Institute and drafted Mayuri Kurotsuchi out of the Nest of Maggots. His career unraveled when Aizen's secret Hollowfication experiments struck down a group of Shinigami; Urahara's attempt to save them with his newly made Hōgyoku failed to work as intended, and Central 46 condemned him to exile until Yoruichi spirited him and the victims away to the Human World. There he opened the Urahara Shop and, years later, saved Masaki Kurosaki by binding Isshin's soul to hers.

Once Ichigo Kurosaki entered the picture, Urahara became his hidden benefactor, slipping the Hōgyoku inside Rukia Kuchiki's soul and forging Ichigo into a fighting Shinigami through a brutal ten-day course. He guided the boy's allies through the war with Aizen, fought Yammy and Wonderweiss, opened the Garganta to Hueco Mundo, and finally helped seal Aizen with a Kidō spell devised for that single purpose. After the timeskip he engineered the return of Ichigo's lost powers through a Reiatsu-charged blade. In the Thousand-Year Blood War he ferried Ichigo into Hueco Mundo, created the Shin'eiyaku to blunt the Quincy theft of Bankai, and built a gate to the Soul King Palace; against the Sternritter Askin Nakk Le Vaar he unveiled his Bankai, Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame, whose power restructures whatever it touches, and paired with Grimmjow to bring the Quincy down before collapsing from Askin's poison.

His truest weapon has always been his intellect. Aizen himself conceded that Urahara's mind outstripped his own, and the Wandenreich counted him among their Five Special War Powers. A peerless inventor and a master of the sword as well as of Hakuda, Shunpo, and Kidō, he wields the female-spirited Zanpakutō Benihime, awakened with the command "Awaken" and able to fire crimson energy blasts, raise blood-red shields, and bind foes in nets of light.