Kira Izuru and loyalty

Among the many misconceptions people seem to have about Izuru, he’s “loyal to a fault” is a very, very popular one.

For some reason.

But he’s not. Not really. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

He’s not more or less loyal than any other lieutenant. Some lieutenants I would put down equally, if not more loyal would be

Iba



Rangiku



Nanao

Omaeda

for example.

For the context of this post, I’m seeing “loyalty” as not just being loyal to their captain, but to soul society, and their position.

Izuru is not particularly loyal. Not to Gin and CERTAINLY not to Soul Society.

Now, why do people think he’s so extraordinarily loyal? Because he does paper work and shows up to work on time? That has nothing to do with loyalty, that’s him doing his job. You know, his job, being a lieutenant, which he gets paid for. If he worked at a bakery he’d be “loyal” to that bakery. It comes down to the same thing.

AH but there’s also a few other things, aren’t there. There’s this

Ok, first of all, again, job. If Momo had tried to attack Hitsugaya, or Tousen, do you think Rangiku or Shuuhei wouldn’t have stepped in.

But more importantly, and more relevant, Gin is an important piece here. You know, master manipulator Ichimaru Gin, and by extention Aizen.

When people take this exchange as proof of Izuru being super loyal, they take it out of context.

Izuru didn’t protect Gin because he’s just that loyal, not even because it’s technically in his job description. It’s because he was manipulated into acting that way.

If he was just that loyal, he wouldn’t have regretted this actions. But he DOES,ooooh…he does

He regrets it so much that he had to be restrained because he was hurting himself. He’s confused, and panicking, and putting 100% of the blame on himself. Which is something gaslighting will do to you. And in this moment of confusion, Gin appears and offers to “save him”. To speak for him, to act for him, because “”he knows best”””.

So again, this had nothing to do with loyalty, it’s psychological manipulation at work. At the same time Aizen is doing the exact same thing to Momo.

Now, that panel where Izuru throws himself in front of Gin isn’t the only panel people point to when talking about his loyalty, there’s also this one,

I have very little to say about this except

Momo was about to chew out a captain who is apparently cold enough throw his own, injured lieutenant in prison. Momo getting herself also thrown in jail for something like this would have gotten all of them nowhere. What does loyalty have to do with anything.

And at the end of the arc, when Izuru is in Central 64 and leads Rangiku and Hitsugaya away,

at that point, Izuru 100% knows he’s on the side of the bad guys, something he had been gradually finding out as the arc went on. For christ’s sake, he was waiting around the corpses of the Central 64, he KNEW.

And he still went along with them. Because Izuru has strange morals and he doesn’t care what happens to him. Now, what happens to OTHERS, that’s a whole other thing. He does care about that, he doesn’t care if he gets hurt because of all this, but he does care about his friends. Momo, in this case.

He shows this by going against Gin and Aizen’s orders and telling Hitsugaya to go back to Central 64 instead of chasing him, since Momo was going to be there.

This shows a certain distrust in Gin and Aizen. That even though they had promised they wouldn’t hurt Momo, Izuru was sending Histugaya back, just in case.

Even still, them still hurting her in the end still knocks the air out of him.

Ok, so that’s everything on the surface. Now let’s go deeper, and get Izuru’s personality, character development, and perception of the world and people into this.



I said earlier that I don’t just count loyalty as “loyal to their captain” but also so Soul Society and the system in general.

Listen, Kira Izuru isn’t stupid. He’s actually highly intelligent.

Izuru knew he was on the bad side as the Soul Society arc went on. Gin is a bad, threatening person. Everyone knew that. And the fact that everyone knew that is why it was so easy for Aizen to make him the red herring.



But Izuru is an interesting character, and his motives never have anything to do with loyalty. He lives by a very peculiar personal code.

A code that seems to revolve around sin, guilt, and punishment. Concepts of “good” and “bad” are very muddled in that code, and loyalty has little place in it.

Which, by the way, is also something Gin knew. And when Izuru himself says he’s fully responsible for what he did during the arc, that’s a combination of abuse victim behaviour, and his strange personal view on the life talking.

Izuru is a strangely unreliable narrator.

The official novels make this even more clear than the manga, where he does and says some very interesting things.

ESPECIALLY in 13 BLADES. (translation credit to tumblr user akiramezu).

In 13 BLADES we get to know what Izuru’s trial was like. And first of all, he’s the only one out of the three of them (him, Shuuhei, and Momo) to legit be up for trial for treason.

Momo was pardonned and Shuuhei got himself in trouble by calling out Central 64 and defending Tousen (now there’s some loyalty for you).

But Kira spoke about his relationship with Gin in a detached manner. He admitted Gin worked with Aizen, but he said something strange. Kira said he wasn’t ordered to point his blade at Hinamori or Matsumoto. That action is his own sin. He asked this action to be removed from Gin’s list of crimes. Kira admits Gin is a criminal, nothing could excuse his actions, but he also protected Soul Society for hundreds of years. Nayura calls Kira’s words sophism. She admits Gin’s final actions support the hypothesis that he intended to betray Aizen all along, but that doesn’t erase his crimes. Kira is momentarily surprised to see a child among the sages, but quickly retorts he doesn’t intend to erase Gin’s crimes. But he doesn’t want Gin to carry his (Kira’s) crimes either.

This is all so interesting.

Izuru doesn’t say he was “just following orders”, and also doesn’t imply a sort of personal loyalty to him, and also doesn’t try to say Gin was a good person.

He says he did those things because he “decided” to do them.

Now here’s of course an example of that unreliable narrator thing. Because we know that’s not completely true. Yes, he acted without being told to do so, but he was manipulated and emotionally abused into making those kind of decisions.

Izuru feels a responsibility to his OWN ACTIONS, but not out of LOYALTY. He suffers and accepts his suffering, and guilt, with open arms because that’s his philosophy.

Now let’s fast forward to Izuru’s death and “revival”.

After his death he seems to have abandoned not only his name, but his rank as well, and with it, any sort of obligations that come with that rank.

He doesn’t wear his lieutenant’s badge during a war, and introduces himself as “no one” and “a dead man”.

He feels that now that he’s dead, his only purpose now is to fight. It’s his “work” , as Mayuri puts it.

Loyalty? Nowhere to be found.

Not to Soul Society, or Mayuri who revived him, or even 3rd Division anymore. He’s just a shinigami, is what he says in 13 BLADES.

“ — “I’ve lost everything, only the fact that I am a Shinigami remains. No matter what else might be taken from me, that fact won’t change.”

All he has, is his sins, his guilt. No loyalty, no thoughts of good and evil, just, his actions.

Kira speaks as if to say he will never forgive himself. Hearing those words, Nayura feels she understands Kira a little. Sin is the one thing tying him and the world together. By continuing to carry sins, he manages to tie himself to the world. That’s why…



So in conclusion,

Kira Izuru isn’t particularly loyal, not to Gin, not to Soul Society. He does his job, and otherwise his actions are formed because of a mix of emotional abuse and a very strange and warped personal philosphy.

And giving him that “does things because he’s loyal” label does a disservice to his character development, ESPECIALLY when pointed out as a character flaw. Yes, it would be a character flaw if it was part of his character, but it’s not.