Thousand-Year Blood War — Which Quincies Survived the Auswählen?

The Auswählen is a devastating feature of the Quincy King’s prophecy and his power to offer pieces of his soul. It has had immense consequences for the lives of several characters in BLEACH, including Ichigo Kurosaki, whose biggest trauma is feeling guilty over his mother’s death when he was nine years old. The Auswählen is shown as a blinding light that strips the Quincy powers of all it touches, often rending the flesh from their bones as it does so.

Despite the fact that the process is supposedly fatal, there are a few Quincies who have survived the Auswahlen, the very first of whom is Uryū Ishida. Which Quincies survived the Auswählen, and what do they have in common?

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Bleach: Yhwach’s Auswahlen, Explained

Allowing him to absorb and redistribute the power of any Quincy he decides to target, Auswahlen is one of Yhwach’s most powerful abilities.

The First Auswählen

The Truth Behind Masaki Kurosaki’s Death

According to the prophecy known as the Kaiser Gesang, the King of the Quincies will return after 999 years. When Ichigo was nine, nine years prior to the events of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, his mother died after an encounter with the highly notorious Hollow, Grand Fisher, after Ichigo fell for its lure. On June 17, 1995, Yhwach took away the powers of Quincies whom he deemed “impure”, resulting in a number of deaths, including Uryū Ishida’s mother, Kanae Ishida (née Katagiri), who was a frail woman.

Masaki Kurosaki’s death was caused by a failure of the deployment of her Blut Vene, which was top-tier among Quincies. The word “Auswählen” is German for “Selection”, and it is so named because Yhwach chooses those from whom he is taking back fragments of his own soul. Yhwach is a rare type of Quincy that can dole out power, and when those who have gained power from him perish, it returns to sender.

During the events of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 2, Yhwach and his elite guard, the Schutzstaffel, attempt to invade the Soul King’s Palace and successfully defeat the Zero Squad who were protecting the Soul King partly because of the massive power boost gained after Yhwach conducted another Auswählen. This time, columns of light erupted across the battlefield, stripping away the powers of those who have been deemed unnecessary and resulting in countless deaths. Sternritter N, Robert Accutrone can be seen in complete despair upon seeing the Auswählen because he knows what it means: those who are hit by the light have been deemed surplus to requirements, thus abandoned by His Majesty.

Being hit by the light is fatal, but several Quincies manage to dodge or hide, avoiding the brunt of the Auswählen. Despite not being hit directly by the light, all those who weren’t deemed necessary by Yhwach still lost their Quincy: Vollständig and were thus far weaker than upon their introduction. The difference between this Auswählen and the one that took place nine years prior is that this one is the Auswählen was specifically for the redistribution of powers to Yhwach’s Schutzstaffel, which gave them a boost in power enough to enable Uryū to not only escape from Shutara Senjumaru’s Bankai, but also kill her with a single shot.

Who Survived the Selection?

The Interesting Case of Uryū Ishida

When Masaki Kurosaki and Kanae Ishida died, Uryū should also have had his Quincy powers stripped away, but that didn’t happen. He would go on to live life believing himself to be the last Quincy after the death of his grandfather and mentor, Soken Ishida. Uryū is the only “Gemischt” Quincy to survive the Auswählen from nine years ago, and also saw no loss of his powers the way others did during the events of Part 2. The reason why he survived is never outright stated, but there is something particularly special about Uryū because, in addition to the fact that he survived the Auswählen, Uryū has never shown a weakness to Hollow Reiatsu even with extended exposure to them during the Hueco Mundo arc.

We know very little about the Ishidas, but they were Echt Quincies, therefore unaffected by the Auswählen; however, there may be a theory that explains Uryū’s situation, and it involves his grandmother, Ryūken Ishida’s mother Izumi. During the events of Everything But the Rain, June Truth, we learn that Ichigo’s mother had begun to undergo Hollowfication a while after the encounter with White. Ryūken, who had been primed to marry Masaki, another Echt Quincy, took her to Urahara, but his mother tried to keep him from taking her away.

We briefly see a horrific scar on Izumi’s leg, one similar to that left on Orihime’s leg when she was attacked by her Hollowfied brother Sora. There’s evidence that Izumi had knowledge of what was happening to Masaki, clearly because she had been attacked by a Hollow at some unknown point in the past. Here’s where it gets crazy: if Izumi had suffered the Hollow attack during her pregnancy with Ryuken, then Ryuken would himself not be an Echt Quincy, but a Quincy and a Fullbringer, making Uryū a second generation Fullbringer.

If the exposure to Hollow Reiatsu is a prerequisite of giving birth to a Fullbringer, and the resulting Fullbringer was already a Quincy, then the power that originates from Yhwach will have been tainted, and thus toxic towards the Quincy King. Uryū’s survival of the Auswählen led Yhwach to crown him his successor and put him through the Schrift assignment ritual, which imbued Uryū with a certain letter not yet revealed in the anime. Yhwach could supposedly see in advance what Schrift the assignee would get ahead of time, although it is unclear if this is only the case after the activation of The Almighty. The reason for Uryu’s survival could be tied to the Schrift he eventually got, meaning that the power in question was dormant within him.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War