Highlights
- The Hōgyoku is a crucial plot element in BLEACH, with the series antagonist Aizen using it to transcend the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow.
- The Hōgyoku was created by Urahara and Aizen, but Aizen's version was more ambitious. He used it to force high-ranking Shinigami to undergo Hollowfication.
- The Hōgyoku has the power to manifest the desires of those around it, making it similar to the Behelit in Berserk. It influenced events in BLEACH and played a role in transforming Aizen.
Perhaps the most important item in the BLEACH universe for its impact on what became primary plot developments and thematic explorations, the Hōgyoku is one of the series most mysterious yet most crucial plot elements. In fact, most of BLEACH is built around series antagonist Sōsuke Aizen's pursuit and subsequent use of the Hōgyoku to achieve his aim of transcending the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow.
The artifact was deliberately hidden in the soul Rukia Kuchiki during the early days in the Substitute Shinigami arc, and Aizen orchestrated the events of the Soul Society arc to extract it from her via her execution with the Sōkyoku, but why was Aizen so desperate to get it? What exactly is the Hōgyoku?
Background
The Hōgyoku refers to Kisuke Urahara and Sosuke Aizen's conception of a means that would enable a soul to transcend its limitations; more specifically, to transcend the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow. Roughly 101 years prior to Aizen's defection, Urahara and Aizen created Hōgyoku of their own, but they were incomplete and Aizen was far more ambitious in his research. He fed the souls of countless souls in Rukongai and the souls of fellow Shinigami to investigate its properties and soon came into contact with Urahara's research, prompting Aizen to devise a plan to steal the second Hōgyoku and combine it with his own to create a perfected Hōgyoku. He devised an experiment in which he used the powers of the Hōgyoku to force Shinji Hirako and several other high-ranking Shinigami to undergo Hollowfication.
At the time, Urahara was Captain of the 12th Squad, the Research and Development division, and attempted to use his incomplete Hōgyoku to reverse the Hollowfication but failed. Aizen then framed Urahara for the experiment, and portrayed his victims as criminals who sought to gain forbidden power. They escaped Soul Society with Urahara's help and established their own group of Hollowfied Shinigami known as "the Visored". In the World of the Living, Urahara sought to destroy his Hōgyoku but failed, choosing to hide it within the Gigai of an unsuspecting Rukia Kuchiki. Desperate, he deactivated it and buried it deep in the soul of Rukia Kuchiki, without her knowledge. He then gave her a special Gigai that slowly turned her into a regular human soul with hopes that the Hōgyoku could be hidden forever. Unfortunately for Urahara, Aizen was several steps ahead, and had betrayed Soul Society long before anyone knew what was happening.
Treachery
Aizen knew that Urahara hid his Hōgyoku in Rukia because he was the one who dispatched her to Karakura Town in the first place, knowing that she would invariably get mixed up with Ichigo, be brought back to Soul Society and tried as a criminal. Aizen murdered the Central 46, the main governing body within the Seireitei that imparts the will of the Soul King, and used his Zanpakutō Kyōka Suigetsu to impersonate them. Thus, Aizen manipulated the proceedings in the case regarding Rukia Kuchiki's breaking of various laws, most notably that which forbids the exchange of power from Shinigami to Human, and called for her execution by Sōkyoku, the most extreme punishment as this weapon generates so much heat it is capable of evaporating the target's soul. In doing so, Aizen would be able to retrieve the Hōgyoku embedded deep within Rukia and combine it with his own; however, the execution was thwarted. Aizen still managed to extract it from Rukia using the only other method of extracting artifacts from souls; a device invented by Urahara himself.
After retreating to Hueco Mundo, Aizen combined used the Hōgyoku he extracted from Rukia to create powerful Hollows that have transcended the boundary and gained Shinigami-like powers: the Arrancar. By using the Hōgyoku on highly-evolved Menos-class Hollows, Aizen was able to create an army of powerful Arrancar the strongest of whom he assigned single digit numbers and called them "Espada". After realizing that the item deteriorates somewhat after use, Aizen kidnaps Orihime Inoue to make use of her Shun Shun Rikka ability to repeatedly revert the deteriorated Hōgyoku and combines his with Urahara's before planting the "complete" Hōgyoku in his body. As a result of this, Aizen underwent some changes during his confrontation with the Gotei 13 in the fake Karakura Town that had been created to prevent Aizen from sacrificing the souls of its inhabitants to create an Ōken, a key to the palace of the Soul King.
Manifestation
What both Aizen and Urahara initially misunderstood about the Hōgyoku is that they thought it was a magical artifact that could specifically break down the limitations of the contrasting existences of Shinigami and Hollows; however, what they really created was an object capable of manifesting the desires of those around it, granted they have the ability to bring about those desires in the first place. For both Aizen and Urahara, understanding the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow was an exercise they undertook to different ends – Urahara invented the Hōgyoku specifically for the sake of research into reconciling the existences of Hollow and Shinigami into a single entity, which is why it took on this ability, but it was never the specific mechanic behind the Hōgyoku's power. Its desire manifestation and apparent selection of a master depending on the circumstance makes the Hōgyoku eerily similar to the Behelit in Kentaro Miura's Berserk.
Various characters have influenced the Hōgyoku and consequently the sequence of events in BLEACH whether voluntarily or not. Aizen even speculated that Rukia's guilt at the death of Kaien Shiba is allegedly what led to her yielding all of her Shinigami powers to Ichigo despite intending only to share a fraction; and even the abilities manifested by Ichigo's friends Chad and Orihime are thought to be the influence of the Hōgyoku, which has its own will. As such, the Hōgyoku enabled Aizen to transform into some kind of transcendental being for a brief moment before being overwhelmed by Ichigo using the Final Getsuga Tenshō. The desire manifestation properties of the Hōgyoku are not without limitation, and the object is merely the guiding force that can allow miracles to happen according to the will of whom it chooses to listen to.
BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 2 – The Separation is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.