The Infinite Souls Statement
I see we’re starting with this. Anyway, I'm opposed to this statement of infinite souls (which, as a small reminder,
has not been accepted in a CRT of its own yet) due to the
large number of inconsistencies surrounding it.
1st Issue: Lack of Consistency
For starter’s...the consistency of the statement itself. This is
a single statement that never appears again in any later arc, which doesn’t make it as consistent as claimed to be. That makes the legitimacy of the statement questionable.
2nd Issue: Threat From The Quincies
Next obvious issue is the entire threat the Bleach Cosmology faces from the Quincies. Infinite souls existing in the verse would make it
completely impossible for the Quincies to destroy the balance of souls across the worlds in the first place, as the balance would be impossible to break to begin with. The balance of souls would naturally restore itself and prevent itself from going out of whack.
3rd Issue: Shinigami Being Balancers
Going right along with the previous point is the concept of Shinigami’s being considered balancers in contrast to Quincies. They have
to monitor the number of souls that are present within the Soul Society and The World of the Living at all times, and must actively take action to balance them by sending souls between the 2 worlds. Sending dead souls to live in the Soul Society, and then sending them back to the living world as living beings. The sole fact that Shinigami monitor the souls across the worlds alone speaks to the soul cycle being finite in amount as you cant track the balance of something being infinite. On top of that, them actively making sure that an equal number of souls exist between the worlds at all times further says that infinite souls isn't the case.
4th Issue: Cant Fear Your Own World
The CFYOW novel also debunks the idea of infinite souls since if there were an infinite number of souls, they wouldn't all be eaten and formed into one single Hollow. It would take an infinite amount of time to eat them all, as well as an infinite amount of time to be formed.
5th Issue: Hyperbole & Poetic Language
The biggest problem out of them all. On top of the aforementioned issues, this one is a whole can of worms itself from the very fact that the entire infinite souls statement itself seems similar to statements such as “I have infinite power?” or “I have countless means at my disposal!”, etc.
The problem with these statements is that they tend to be hyperbolic and not literal. Especially when its very existence brings conflictions and major inconsistencies that were mentioned above, problems that you can only solve by going through a number of different mental gymnastics to create possible solutions out of nowhere in order to defend this ONE statement that should be taken no more than a grain of salt at best. What should be gleaned from these statements is the fact that the individual saying them is suggesting that they have an over abundance of resources or power at their disposal and not that they literally have an infinite number of XYZ. This is
EXTREMELY common in fiction, so much that its not funny, and I have several examples of similar moments to name here that aren’t accepted on this site like it's being asked here for Bleach.
1st Example: One Piece
One Piece has multiple of these moments to choose from as an example of why we dont take these statements seriously without some
EXTREME backing.
Kizaru, to start us off, has a databook statement saying he can shoot infinite numbers of light bullets, from the databook we currently use to give One Piece their light speed ratings:
Blackbeard proclaims to be able to create infinite gravity,
AND compress people with infinite power:
Charlotte Cracker creating infinite biscuit soldiers:
https://cdn.**********.com/attachments/795774096104620133/800815149387612170/0838-008.png
Impel Dawn’s hell being infinite in size too:
https://cdn.**********.com/attachments/795774096104620133/800763457937866822/0540-001.png
None of these examples are accepted here for One Piece.
2nd Example: Fairy Tail
Fairy Tail has an example as well. Ultear outright states she creates infinite possible futures, futures that are parallel universes, and can manipulate them at will to fire them at opponents:
https://cdn.**********.com/attachments/795774096104620133/800758770329583656/image0.jpg
But 2-A Fairy Tail isn’t on the table as you can see.
3rd Example: Naruto
Naruto offers examples to give here as well, 2 of them.
Might Guy’s databook entry on Asakujaku being one, stating to punch out opponents with an infinite number of fists:
Another Naruto example is the Juubi / Ten Tails being claimed to have near infinite chakra by Obito:
https://cdn.**********.com/attachments/795774096104620133/800762255042019358/0467-013.png
Both examples are obviously not viable here. Guy doesn't have infinite speed, or infinite hands, and near infinite chakra quite clearly refers to large reserves of chakra for the ten tails.
4th Example: Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball gives an example to add into this false trend as well. Androids 17 and 18 by the time of the Android/Cell Saga are confirmed by Trunks to possess an infinite supply of energy:
https://cdn.***************.com/file/mangap/1063/20154000/3.jpg
Neither of them at this point are considered anything higher than High 4-C, and it took new feats and scaling and a
bunch of discussions to finally get 17 into the 3-A and Low 2-C range by the time of Super. Infinite energy supply just refers to their unlimited reverses of stamina.
5th Example: Soul Eater
Soul Eater is another example to turn to.
Mifune has a technique that's called
Infinite One Sword Style. What does the attack do? Releases only a large abundance of swords for Mifune to use instead of literally releasing infinite swords. On top of that, Mifune is only considered
8-A on here.
6th Example: Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya could also be brought up here. Sigurd in Saint Seiya Episode G Assassin has an attack where he fires "an infinite number of energy beams at the opponent", but it's obviously not taken literally. It’s just a neverending beam spam.
7th Example: Kirby
Kirby is another example to be referenced too, and I name this one in particular because of how much of a controversial matter its been here. One of Kirby’s enemies,
Magolor, has had
numerous threads made on this site in attempts to upgrade him, Kirby, and the verse to High 3-A using statements of “infinite power” that came up several times for him across different sources. We even
acknowledge this currently on his page right now:
Multi-Solar System level (Possessed by the power of the Master Crown and is no more than a manifestation of the crown, which was portrayed above other ancient artifacts and repeatedly claimed to have "infinite power" whereas the Lor Starcutter wasn't, indicating an interpretably vast superiority over it.
And
not once in the history of this wikia have we ever accepted it for Magolor, despite how much the infinite power statement has been thrown around so many times. Despite
HOW BLATANT this claim is, it still means nothing here. Which is why he’s not rated as anything higher than 4-A.
I could continue to name cases of this all day, but we’d be here forever. All of this shows the point that infinite anything is taken as nothing more than a grain of salt here as it's almost never accepted because of how vague and poetic the statements are, so we give them incredible amounts of skepticism and require them to have large quantities of evidence to have any chance in getting accepted. And Bleach’s infinite soul statement gets the exact same treatment, especially due to the fact that “infinite” in this context can also very easily be referring to the fact that souls in Bleach are
endlessly renewable. They are sent back and forth between the 2 worlds in a reincarnation cycle that's endless, which in that sense, is “infinite” because it's an eternal cycle. But that doesn’t mean that the souls here are literally infinite in numbers. The only time souls being renewable is an exception is when Quincies completely erradicate hollows and remove them from the cycle permanently, which was why they were a threat to the soul cycle.
TL;DR- This statement creates far more inconsistencies than it does actual consistency. It’s a one time only statement, It goes against the nature, laws and makeup of the verse, using material that this site rejects in next to every case, with countless other verses, without having a huge abundance of evidence supporting it, along with the very possible chance that it's hyperbole and using poetic language to refer to the soul cycle. Once again, this is another example of having to use many levels of mental gymnastics and going through many layers of speculation in order to give this statement any viable backing to be accepted here without simply going with what takes FAR LESS amounts of leaps in logic to make. And that is the statement is just wrong and should be outright rejected.