Summary
Bleachhas its fair share of creepy characters, but one significant character in the manga was almost on a totally different level thanks to Ichigo and Rukia’s original plan. That character would be none other than Kon, the Mod Soul who Ichigo uses to occupy his body while he’s battling Hollows in Soul Reaper form.
Kon is an often controversial character inBleachdue to his perverted nature, something that’s partially mitigated by the fact that he spends most of his time in the form of a stuffed toy lion. However, this stuffed lion wasn’t Ichigo and Rukia’s first choice when it came to finding Kon a body; in fact, they didn’t even know if putting him in a stuffed toy would work until they tried it. Rather, Ichigo and Rukia were under the impression thata Mod Soulneeded a biological body, but any living thing would’ve had its own soul ejected when Kon took over their body.
That means that the only option for finding a new body for Kon, as far as Rukia knew, was to secure a freshly deceased corpse.
Kon Almost Ended Up Inhabiting a Corpse
In chapter 17 ofBleach, Kon is shown inhabiting his stuffed lion body for the first time, after they managed to retake Ichigo’s body from him.The story then flashes back to Ichigo and Rukia’s attempts to find a body for him, with Ichigo briefly considering a dog before changing his mind, and then of Rukia and Ichigo waiting around for some roadkill that Kon might be able to possess.It seems as if a human corpse may have been considered at some point as well, but that was practically impossible to obtain, and Ichigo didn’t trust the idea of putting Kon into a human body again anyway.
Needless to say, the idea of Kon inhabiting a corpse is pretty disgusting, to say the least. Even if Kon’s body was a dead animal instead of a dead human, the net effect of that would be to make Kon’s perverted antics a lot creepier. It’s bad enough when he does these things as a stuffed animal, but if he were some kind of possessed cat or dog, it would add a new dimension of grossness to his harassment ofBleach’s female characters. It would also be a lot grosser whenever Ichigo needed to make use of the Mod Soul and put it in his own body.
Of course, from a writing perspective, series creatorTite Kubo surely intended for Konto be a stuffed animal from the beginning. Kon was meant to be something of a mascot character forBleach, a role that he did live up to in the series' earlier days, before being sidelined almost entirely as things got more serious and Ichigo spent more time in spirit realms like the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. Kon was able to get away with a lot due to his cutesy appearance as a stuffed toy, and he certainly wouldn’t have beenBleach’s mascot if he possessed a dead body instead.
Bleach
Bleach is a multimedia franchise created by Tite Kubo. The franchise started as a Japanese manga series. Ichigo Kurosaki is the main protagonist who is granted the powers of a being called the Soul Reaper. The success of the manga led to two anime TV shows, four feature-length animations, and several video games.
