The Most Powerful Hollow in History

The Can’t Fear Your Own World novels by Ryohgo Narita provide context to Tite Kubo’s BLEACH that was not explored in the original manga, looking into what happened after the climactic Thousand-Year Blood War between the Shinigami and the Quincies. In the aftermath of the war, Soul Society entered into a period of restoration.

However, unbeknownst to most of the high-ranking officers of the Seireitei, a member of one of the Five Noble Clans of antiquity planned to take advantage of the chaos to prime a new candidate for the seat of the Soul King: Hikone Ubuginu, a modified soul and one of the two individuals in history with the same composition as the Soul King. Hikone is armed with a unique Zanpakutō derived from an ancient Hollow, since hidden away because it contained the strongest Hollow in history; one with no name but is referred to as “Ikomikidomoe”.

The One That Tried to Eat the Soul King

Just What Is Ikomikidomoe?

Long ago, in the earliest days of Soul Society, a powerful Adjuchas-Class Menos Grande became known across the realms. Its power was even respected by Barragan Louisernbairn; the Espada bearing the number 2, and the King of Hueco Mundo himself. The two agreed to never interfere with each other. Just to recap, Adjuchas is the intermediate stage of Menos Grande evolution after the initial Gillian stage in which Hollows are more intelligent and more powerful than the ones initially introduced, now taking on much more “human-like” forms as their size is significantly smaller than the Gillians.

The Menos Grande is an accumulation of hundreds of regular Hollows which have a far greater void than regular Hollows, causing them to eat each other because regular souls are no longer substantial enough. We can think of the evolution of Hollows as being partly inspired by their voracity, which is aligned to the emptiness that characterizes their existence. Evolution to Adjuchas only takes place if one of the countless Hollows that comprise a Gillian manages to take over the body and reign as its personality.

This ability to cease the mindless existence of a Gillian and “self-actualize” is what enables a Menos Grande to evolve, but it still needs to supply this growth with the countless souls it will invariably devour; souls that will need to be a lot more potent than usual Hollows go for. The ancient Adjuchas attacked Soul Society, long ago before the Shinigami had access to Zanpakutō, and even managed to get past a young Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni before attempting to devour the linchpin of the current order of existence: the Soul King.

The Hollow was defeated by Ichibē Hyōsube, who did so by erasing its name with the powers of his Zanpakutō, Ichimonji. The Hollow contained too many souls to purify at once, leading Ōetsu Nimaiya, pioneer of the Zanpakutō, to seal it away into a sword which was then renamed Ikomikidomoe through Ichimonji Shirafude and hidden in the Hōōden; the part of the Soul King’s Palace where Ōetsu resides. During the chaos of the Thousand-Year Blood War, Tokinada Tsunayashiro stole Ikomikidomoe and gave it to his subordinate, Hikone Ubuginu, an indiviual who is part Hollow, Shinigami and Quincy; built from the souls of countless Fullbringers.

The Tsunayashiro Clan

The Enemy Who Tainted Tōsen and Destroyed Ginjō’s Reputation

Tokinada Tsunayashiro is an individual from a distant branch of the Tsunayashiro Clan, one of the Five Great Noble Houses of Soul Society, who orchestrated a family annihilation in order to get himself promoted to head of the clan. As head, he gained access to some of the most top-secret areas of the Soul Society, and saw records which outlined the greatest sin of not just the Tsunayashiro Clan, but each of the Five Great Noble Houses. At some point, Tokinada got married to a woman from the Rukongai named Kakyō, at the instruction of his family. She was a promising Shinigami, but the sadistic Tokinada wanted to rip away her happiness, taking advantage of a misunderstanding and using it as an opportunity to slay his wife.

Despite being tried for the murder of his wife and another Shinigami, Tokinada’s status as a member of a Great Noble House meant that he would go free, to the anguish of Kakyō’s best friend, Kaname Tōsen. Tokinada found Tōsen demanding an audience with the Central 46 so that Kakyō’s killer could be properly punished, and pretended to be another friend of hers, apologizing for not being able to protect her.

He even told Tōsen that the killer, who was her husband, wasn’t convicted because he’s a member of one of the Great Noble Houses. When Tōsen asked why the Shinigami, protectors of peace, had allowed the killer to get away, Tokinada told him it was because the Shinigami’s version of peace had in fact been defended, further asking Tōsen if he desired vengeance, because that isn’t what Kakyō would want.

However, he sadistically told Tōsen that he is in fact the killer, after warping his perception of the Shinigami and his sense of justice. When Ginjō Kugō was made into the first Substitute Shinigami, it was proposed that surveillance of him and his Fullbringer comrades be carried out via the Substitute Badge, but Ukitake refused the proposition. Tokinada Tsunayashiro orchestrated the slaughter of Ginjō’s comrades, making it look like the Shinigami had in fact been watching the Fullbringers’ movements when it was actually to retrieve the vital element that makes them what they are: a fragment of the Soul King; which is what attracted Hollow’s to their pregnant mothers in the first place. He sought to use these fragments in the creation of a composite soul that could assume the position of the Soul King.

“Ikomikidomoe”

What Does It Mean?

The name “Ikomikidomoe” is the Romanization of 已己巳己巴. This is an unusual set of characters because generally, you’d read each one individually, with its meaning and pronunciation dependent on context. The first four characters are an example of 四字熟語; “yojijukugo”, a four-character idiom or compound noun. They are often true idioms because their meaning in context cannot be derived from reading their meanings individually (like how the meaning of a phrase like “it’s water under the bridge” has nothing to do with its component parts because it’s an idiom). The first four characters, “ikomiki” is an idiom that refers to things that are one and the same, derived from the fact that these characters look very similar to each other, not to mention the presence of “己”, meaning “self”, multiple times in the phrase.

The “tomoe” part is also rather difficult, and it’s notable that the meaning of “Ikomikidomoe” is difficult even for native Japanese speakers to understand without having it unpacked. According to the brilliant analysis of Arturo-Plateado on Reddit, the reading of the last kanji leans on Chinese, rather than Japanese, and looks similar to the previous four to maintain the theme of “sameness”. In Chinese, “巴” can refer to the Bā, a giant snake said to have been capable of swallowing an entire elephant and spitting out the bones after three years; giving rise to the idiom 巴蛇吞象, “bā shé tūn xiàng” – the Bā swallows the elephant, an idiom describing insatiable hunger, gluttony or more appropriately, inordinate greed.

This name shows Ichibe’s twisted sense of humour as it mocks its Hollowness, but it also bears another layer because it can refer to its ambitiousness in trying to eat the Soul King, but that was ultimately a self-destructive endeavour. The name can therefore be understood to refer to something with an insatiable hunger for those like itself. It is an Ouroboros, but given another Redditors insight that the Hollows carry mythological motifs, Ikomikidomoe is characterized as the serpent of chaos Apophis, the embodiment of darkness and disorder in Egyptian mythology – the one that swallows the sun.