Kūgo Ginjō

Lean and standing well above average height, Ginjō has pale skin and brown eyes, his black hair reaching the shoulders and usually swept back toward the nape of his neck. A sleeveless white shirt sits under a fur-collared black jacket, teamed with black trousers, and a slim chain holding an X-shaped pendant hangs at his throat. His clash with Tsukishima left a short upright scar above the left brow. Whenever that Fullbring's hold lifts, his hair falls loose and unkempt across his face, and back in his days as a Substitute Shinigami he wore it cut shorter and rougher.

On the surface Ginjō is composed and unhurried, a smooth talker charismatic enough to have coaxed his followers into falling in behind him. He keeps up small human gestures, insisting he carries ramen around simply because he likes it, and he shows real concern for his comrades, sheltering bystanders by staging his fights inside empty buildings and steeling himself to die for an ally. When he plays the heavy for someone else's sake, his acting is so wooden that he comes off as a stock villain. That mask hides his true nature. Once Tsukishima's influence lifts, he turns cruel and gloating, relishing Ichigo's anguish while blinding himself with arrogance, crowing over his own feats and brushing aside anything beyond his reckoning, from the reach of Soul Society to the true ceiling of Ichigo's strength. He is coldly pragmatic as well, ordering Shishigawara killed rather than risk a Fullbring growing past his control. For all that venom, he chose to leave Ichigo alive after taking his Fullbring, and later confessed he had never wanted to kill the boy he failed to win over.

Like others of his kind, Ginjō inherited his Fullbring from a mother whose body still held traces of a Hollow's power after an attack. He went on to become the first person ever granted the rank of Substitute Shinigami, receiving the identifying badge from Captain Jūshirō Ukitake, and around that time he took a solitary young Tsukishima under his wing and taught him to handle his own gift. The bond curdled once Ginjō realized the badge was a leash, a tool Soul Society used to watch him and cap his growth. Feeling betrayed, he cut down Shinigami to siphon their power and then vanished beyond the Seireitei's notice. In the living world he rallied other Fullbringers who had been shunned by ordinary people, binding them into Xcution.

Seventeen months after Aizen's fall, Ginjō fixed his sights on Ichigo and his dormant Soul Reaper powers. The plan had the whole group fall under Tsukishima's memory-warping blade so that Tsukishima alone would seem the enemy, letting Ginjō nurture Ichigo's Fullbring to completion before seizing it for himself. He carried it through, stabbing Ichigo to tear the power loose, only for a gathering of Shinigami to hand back Ichigo's real abilities with their own energy. In the duel that followed, Ginjō leaned on a Hollowfied release copied from Ichigo, and still he was struck down, his body later returned to the Human World for burial at Ichigo's request. His spirit resurfaced in Soul Society amid the war with the Wandenreich, where he trained under the Shiba siblings and, in the end, settled his debt by helping repair Ichigo's shattered Bankai at the Soul King's palace.