iteration gotta be the top 3 best creative processes and top 5 worst creative processes mfer's always showing his ugly head lookin all cool and shit
peak fiction eating good as always
ALT: a girl with orange hair is eating a yellow item
Yhwach being unable to foresee the soul king's actions (literally breaking his sight!) was set up in episode 24 with being unable to foresee Pernida. That scene was anime original, but it pays off as foreshadowing for this moment which in the manga was explained as it was happening, like now.
Mimihagi and Ukitake residing in rukon district 76 "Reverse Bone (Sakahone)" calls to mind what W. Zangetsu said in 218. Ukitake is the white bone of death here, with Mimihagi being the black flesh of life. For them bone is exterior and flesh is interior, so it's a "reverse bone."
The blackened hair as Mimihagi's shadow is to be stained with the black of death (the color of the shinigami). While Ukitake was given new life (the black fading back to white), death will always be part of him, and will take him just like anyone else. (Quote from Can't Fuck Your Own Wife vol 3)
To drink Mimihagi's tears is a metaphor here to take Mimihagi's sorrow into himself, to share its burden relating to the poem from the end of last episode (assuming Uki was the poem pov). "I used to be you and someday you'll turn into me I wish the burden of lives you're shouldering could be eased"
Yhwach claimed last episode Adonaeus was complicit in the sorrow of the Quincy by creating the current world, while here we see compassion for and interference with the sickness of a dying boy, from that same being. Adonaeus is a being of duality (Mimihagi vs Pernida), so both are probably true.
Also, as a piece of the soul king, these tears would be the first look into Adonaeus' own emotions outside of what others tell us. Whether his will still resides in this piece of him, it is ultimately part of him, and I think is supposed to embody a contradiction to the callousness Yhwach implied.
I think this is occuring in Ukitake's inner world. Mimihagi is the source of the other half of his dual zanpakuto, but I'm pretty sure it's taking the position of the true essence of that half here. Yhwach is similar to the soul king, so similar to how Yhwach is the essence of half of Ichigo's own.
Himihagi's true appearance is new, previously we only saw the statue and the shadow-form. It's the same white body as Pernida's so it's not exceptionally strange, but Ukitake becoming a shadow him calls to mind the other black-white dualisms through the series.
