In the Bleach manga and anime series

Ichigo is an orange-haired 15-year-old teenager able to see spirits. He meets Soul Reaper Rukia Kuchiki in the midst of a hollow attack. After Rukia is heavily injured by the hollow, she is forced to transfer her Soul Reaper powers to Ichigo so that he can kill the hollow and save their lives and his family.[12] Though he defeats the hollow, Ichigo absorbs almost all of Rukia's spiritual power, and he is forced perform her Soul Reaper duties until she recovers her powers.[13] When Ichigo was nine, he tried to save a spirit to be eaten by the hollow Grand Fisher, and his mother, Masaki Kurosaki, was killed by the hollow while protecting Ichigo.[14] Even after that discovering the hollow was responsible, Masaki's death continues to influence Ichigo by causing him to feel guilt for his inability to protect those close to him and therefore, he thanks Rukia for giving him the powers to protect them.

When his actions eventually attract the attention of Soul Society, Rukia is taken back to the spirit world to be executed, and Ichigo leads an effort to save her.[17] To rescue her, Kisuke Urahara trains him to become a Soul Reaper with his own powers allowing him to release the shikai of his zanpakutō named Zangetsu (斬月?, literally "cutting moon").[5] Unlike most Soul Reapers, who can seal their zanpakutō after releasing it, Ichigo's zanpakutō is always in its released form. Zangetsu's spirit takes the form of a middle-aged man, voiced by Takayuki Sugo in the Japanese anime and by Richard Epcar in the English dub.[18][19] Zangetsu is portrayed as wise and calm in most matters, and fond of testing Ichigo. While in bankai form, Zangetsu's spirit is a young man with shoulder-length pitch black hair. Zangetsu's special ability is the Getsuga Tenshō (月牙天衝?, literally "heaven-slicing lunar fang", translated in the English anime as "piercer of heaven"), a wave of spirit particles released from his blade's edge. Correspondent to the name, the wave is shaped like a crescent moon.[20] Zangetsu's bankai, named Tensa Zangetsu (天鎖斬月?, literally "heavenly chain cutting the moon"), shrinks the sword down to a fully black one while his uniform also changes to an outfit similar to Zangetsu's. Ichigo's bankai is a compression of his spiritual pressure, rather than a vast expansion as is usually the case. By compressing his power, Ichigo can move at incredibly high speeds.[21]

However, Ichigo partially becomes a hollow in the same training.[22] This leaves him with an insane inner hollow spirit that grows in strength as the series progresses and tries to take control of his body to fight. This control has manifested itself in several ways during the series, first as a berserker rage and later as a physical transformation. Within Ichigo's inner world, the hollow takes the form of Ichigo's evil alter ego and mirrors his appearance
Upon Ichigo's arrival in Soul Society, he repeatedly clashes with high-ranking Soul Reapers as he approaches Rukia Kuchiki's location. With the assistance of Ichigo's newfound allies, Rukia is saved, though she quickly falls into the hands of Sōsuke Aizen.[25] Aizen, the mastermind behind Rukia's execution, fulfills his plans by removing the Hōgyoku from her body. While he is unable to kill her, he and his accomplices manage to flee Soul Society as the Soul Reapers reunite against him.[26] In the aftermath, Ichigo is made a "Substitute Soul Reaper" and is allowed to return home with his friendsAizen, through the use of the Hōgyoku, creates an army of arrancar that attacks Ichigo and his friends in the human world. When Ichigo and company are unable to deal with the arrancar threat, Soul Society sends a group of Soul Reapers to help them.[28] In order to fight the arrancar Ichigo is taught to control his hollow by the Visored, Soul Reapers with hollow powers, allowing him to call upon his hollow powers at will and without sacrificing control by donning his hollow mask.[29] Ichigo can initially only maintain this form for eleven seconds, but the limit and strength of his mask increases substantially during his fights in Hueco Mundo.[30][31] Although they fend off the arrancar with the bolstered defenses, they are unable to prevent the abduction of Ichigo's friend, Orihime Inoue. When Soul Society refuses to save her, Ichigo and his friends go to Hueco Mundo to rescue her on their own.[32] With the help of a few friendly arrancar he meets along the way, Ichigo is able to reunite with Orihime.[33] However, she is recaptured by Ulquiorra Cifer. Ichigo engages him in combat and subsequently kills him in a new hollow form.[34] He later goes to Karakura Town to protect it from Aizen. Upon his failure, Ichigo begins training with his father Isshin to control the final Getsuga Tenshō. Concluding his training, Ichigo fights Aizen again within the real Karakura Town, weakening Aizen at the expense of his Soul Reaper powers, and as a result, his original powers. As Ichigo's powers fade away, Urahara seals Aizen within a kidō barrier, intending to allow Central 46 to decide his fate, imprisonment for 38,800 years in the lowest level of the underground prisons.


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