Thread: Zampaktous:classes,relation to Heavenly creatures,guardian gods and Five elements

first off, i tried to search a good zanpaktou thread but couldn't find none, and also i don't know if any of yous ever thought this about Zanpaktous and their relation to heavenly guardians and Five elements which define their classes.

-First off we got Hitsugaya Toushirou, and we know from the anime that his soulslayer is a water-ice type and the incarnation of one of the heavenly guardian, from the look it, it looks like a dragon and we could tell that it is Seiryu, a blue green dragon, God of the East and Water
-Second we got the Soukyoukou, when released take the form of a phoenix which probably is Suzaku, God of the south and fire.(ps: i was gonna put captain yamamoto's because his soul slayer is a fire-type but the soukyoukou looked like the phoenix so i went with it)
-Third we got Genbu, black land turtle alternatively combined with a snake(has a snake head), God of the North and earth.
-Fourth we got Byakko, White tiger, God of the West and wind.

Now according to Japanese philosophy, the five elements are: Chi(earth), sui(water), Ka(fire), Fu(wind), Ku(void). Miyamoto Musashi's famous text Gorin no sho (The Book of Five Rings), in which he explains different aspects of swordsmanship by assigning each aspect to one of these elements.
Ichigo
Id say that Zangetsu belongs to Ku(void). In Japanese phylosophie Kū, is the highest of all the elements,and is most often translated as "Void", but also meaning "Sky" or "Heaven", represents those things beyond our everyday experience, particularly those things composed of pure energy. Ichigo shoots strong energy with his sword and that technique is getsu gatenshou which is moon sky fang charge or charge toward the sky or charge toward the heaven.when he switches to bankai zangetsu shoots a black(usually the color of void) getsuga.
Even in western philosophy the five elements are Earth, water, fire,Air and Aether. Aether means void and it is at the center of these five elements in western philosophy. Aristotle included it as a fifth element on the principle that nature abhorred a vacuum. Aether was also called quintessence(fifth element).

Now i can't say that zangetsu has any relationship with the Genbu one of the four heavenly creatures, even though it is a black turtle with a snake head and gen means black. But in japanese Budhism philosophy Genbu's counterpart is known as Tamonten, the most popular and powerful of the Shitenno (the Four Buddhist Protectors of the Four Directions). Tamonten is also known as the Black Warrior and is also called Bishamonten; like the tortoise, his imagery corresponds to north, winter, and black.

In Japanese Buddhism, the Four Guardian Gods (Jp. 四天王 shitennō), also known as the Four Kings of Heaven, are deities who protect the Dharma. They are known as the Lokapalas (Sanskrit "world-protectors"), a set of four Hindu (Vedic) deities adopted by Buddhism:

Jikokuten (持國天, also 治國天), protector of the east
Zojoten (増長天), protector of the south
Komokuten (廣目天), protector of the west
Tamonten (多聞天, also known as Bishamon or 毘沙門, protector of the north(genbu's counterpart in japanese budhism) and ruler of the yakshas)

That's great. What are we discussing?

Ichigo's attack is called "Getsuga Tenshou" not getsu gatenshou, isn't it?

And I would say Zabimaru is closest to Genbu right now, but with a monkey's body instead of a tortoise.

remind me of digimon

Originally Posted by Playtoy

That's great. What are we discussing?

there are five elements in jap. phisology and from all them you can say that zangetsu belong Ku(void). If you look up what Ku is you'll find out its characteristics is similar to zangetsu's. thus you can conclude what element zangetsu belongs to.

>_> And could you please put the source that you copied all this from.

Yes in AP style. Also I will need you to use quotations. heheh Just kidding. This is all really interesting, and I was actually wondering about this kind of thing myself.

From what i've seen so far there seem to be a lot of fire and water/Ice types about. But as far as Wind elementals there seem to be very few, Matsumoto's being the only one I can think of right now. And I haven't seen any openly earth type Zanpakuto's.

I think the question is, do all zanpakuto's fit into these categories. Like Senbonzakaru is probably an earth type or maybe like and Earth/wind combo type, but what about Gin's? Is that some sort of wind thing?

There are some other Zanpakuto's that defy description. Like for example, Zabimaru, or Mayuri's sword. Even SoiFon's has attributes that don't lend to classifcation in this manner.

I would hope that the Mangaka would decide to go more in depth on this subject, but that seems unlikely since he usually just fuzzes over those kinds of details.

And if Hitsugaya's is the most powerful Ice/Water type, why does it seem so weak? And is Yama-ji's stronger than Soukokyo?

I do like the theory about Ichigo's being Ku type though, that seems logical and thought out. Tousen's is also probably Ku type.

I found out that hitsugaya is the incarnation of one of the heavenly guardians in episode 48. in japanese budhism the heavenly guardians are the four kings of heaven, protector of the east is Jikokuten and its counterpart in jap myth is the seiryu and hitsugaya's soulslayer is indeed a dragon. now there are five elements according to jap philosophy and Ku is similar to zangetsu. About Soukyoukou, it is plain as day that it is Red Phoenix, similar to suzaku. from my own opinion i would probably say that ichigo is the incarnation of Tamonten, protector of the north but that would contradict with the fact Tamonten's counterpart is Genbu which is a black turtoise with a snake head but snakes are famous for trickin people so who knows. But why i would say that He is the incarnation of Tamonten because everything about Zangetsu is dark, the attacks, his character and his speech.

i found all this at:
for the elements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_el..._philosophy%29

for the guardians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Guardian_Gods


main website: en.wikipedia.org

Nice topic. Really interesting. I also learned a lot, thanks!

Originally Posted by XP_OMG11

Ichigo's attack is called "Getsuga Tenshou" not getsu gatenshou, isn't it?

I don't think there are word spaces in Japanese so it would all be written as one - unless you understand what the individual words mean and can separate them... well, it's basically the same thing, right? Ge-tsu-ga-te-n-sho-u? (Edit: Is how it would be written in hiragana...? I don't know what kanji are used.)