Since it’s Aizen’s birthday, I might as well say something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

One of the most chilling parts of Bleach was when Aizen’s calm demeanor slowly eroded as Ichigo continually defied his expectations of the battle they had together before he was sent to Muken.

All throughout the series, Aizen acted as if he never had anything to worry about. He never acted with doubt, fear, or expressed any concern that his plan might not work exactly as he expected it to. For around ten years, it would have been hard to find a character in fiction that carried themselves so smugly and with such relaxed certainty.

That of course all changed when Ichigo returned to face him after he achieved his transcendental form. Throughout that entire fight, scene by scene, we watched Aizen transform from the cool, collected character we knew for years into an anxious madman whose panic rose with every panel. As their duel raged on, Ichigo consistently shattered Aizen’s reality, making him realize the possibility that things might not go as he so meticulously planned.

What makes Aizen’s radical attitude adjustment even more fascinating is the way he discussed the difference between gods and men. If you think about it, the final fight between Ichigo and Aizen is a very interesting manifestation of the ideas of gods, belief, and the illusions that come with them. Let me explain what I’m thinking.

The reason why Aizen was so calm and relaxed throughout the series up until his defeat was because he truly believed there could be no other outcome to his plan than the one he designed himself. He literally couldn’t comprehend that he might lose. Even Shinji found it hard to believe that Aizen didn’t have any doubts, despite Soul Society’s advantage in numbers. Regardless of any scheme Soul Society could cook up, Aizen knew it would never be enough to stop him. Gin affirms this sentiment when he remarked that no matter Soul Society’s preparations, they would always fall short of Aizen’s actions.

Despite the fact that throughout the majority of the series he had been successful, it was before any actualization of his plan that he confused himself for a god. To conceive and carry out a plan as far reaching and consequential as his, you would have to have the most unwavering faith to see any of it through. However, Aizen didn’t have faith in his plan, his comrades, or that anyone who opposed him could fail; he only had faith in himself and that he could succeed. Just as “god’s” plan for our universe is absolute and any deviation is impossible, so was Aizen’s. Or, at least Aizen believed that, because no one else did.

That’s what is so fascinating about Aizen.

Aizen thought he was a god, but his only believer was himself.

Everyone knew that Aizen not only could be stopped, but had to be. It was for the survival of everyone that they succeeded against him, and if they truly believed he was a god as he did, they would have accepted the futility in their opposition, and simply gave up.

This is where it comes back to Aizen’s fight with Ichigo. Even though nearly everyone failed (even Ichigo would have died by Aizen’s hand if it weren’t for Urahara’s master plan), further reinforcing Aizen’s vast delusion of grandeur, he still lost in the end, and it was the change Aizen went through in the face of his imminent defeat that wraps up this profound analysis I am projecting on that scene.

As Aizen experienced ass-kicking after ass-kicking at the hands of Ichigo, he not only realized his own mortality, but that he might not be the god he thought he was. For the length of the series, he described himself as a being that existed outside the realm of understanding that all others inhabited. He thought of himself as a three dimensional being living among two dimensional ones. The root of his fear he arguably began to feel for the first time wasn’t that he could lose, but it was that he was wrong about himself, the world, and his place in it. The reality he knew to be none other than fact was being tested as Ichigo forced him to realize his understanding of the world as he perceived it was wrong. He wasn’t losing his grip on reality, rather he was coming to terms with it while forfeiting his own delusional one.

Watching Aizen go from the calm, relaxed villain he was for years on end into this panic stricken lunatic during the length of one fight makes you realize that he was waking up from his own complete hypnosis.

Aizen was convinced he was a god to all other beings, and that perception he held was a greater illusion than any he could produce.

And I think that’s a really cool way to think about it if I do say so myself.