Tenjirō Kirinji

Lanky and very tall, Kirinji tops his head with an enormous pompadour and tapered sideburns, and his narrow, inward-slanting eyes hold tiny pinprick pupils; a small stick usually rests between his teeth. He wears a cropped, sleeveless take on the Shinigami robe that leaves his chest open, topped by a short white jacket bearing the Royal Guard crest, with black hakama, a yellow wrap about his waist, and sandals worn without socks.

Loud and swaggering, Kirinji carries himself like a street punk, talking down to the Gotei 13, captains included, as though they were children. His fellow guardians tend to correct the attitude with a smack to the head. He is thoroughly sure of his own strength, and was the first of the Royal Guard to step up against Yhwach, insisting he would never have done so without believing he could win.

Before ascending, Kirinji was a Shinigami captain who devised Kaidō, the healing art, and taught it to Retsu Unohana; the Soul King prized the invention enough to raise him to the Royal Guard. When the Guard returned to Soul Society after Yamamoto's death, Kirinji carried the wounded, Byakuya Kuchiki and Ichigo Kurosaki among them, to his Kirinden and mended them in his hot springs, then judged Ichigo healed by testing whether he could shrug off a punch.

As the Wandenreich pressed their assault on the Soul King Palace, he faced Yhwach head-on but could not land a single strike, thwarted by the Sternritter Nianzol Weizol's power. In the battle against the Schutzstaffel he cut down the Grandmaster Jugram Haschwalth and used his Blood Pond Hell to replace the poisoned blood of Ōetsu Nimaiya, before taking his own life alongside his peers to release Senjumaru Shutara's Bankai. His weapon Kinpika, a bladed polearm, flares with blinding light in Shikai, and he can summon and steer the scalding waters of his springs as a weapon.