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As the title states, I've encountered some new issues from the series Bleach that force me to create another thread to address this controversial topic. Because of how controversial it is, I've decided to make this a Staff Only CRT after consulting with other staff members but knowledgeable members for Bleach will be allowed to comment on the thread to give relevant information. Please do not comment without permission or to try derail this thread with complaints or posts unrelated to the topic.
Some of the issues I've brought up haven't been addressed in previous threads from what I've researched, so this isn't simply a repeat. I want to get the viewpoints of as many staff members as possible on this, since I believe it to be a crucial topic for judging the consistency of evidence.
In chapter 76, Yoruichi gives a statement to Chad that they cannot simply walk to another gate to infiltrate Seireitei because it takes ten days to walk there. This is the only time this statement has ever come up.
Since there are four gates spaced evenly around the Seireitei, then it would take approximately forty days to walk around it based on her statement.
Assuming eight hours of rest each day means a total of 640 hours of walking to encircle the Seireitei.
Using an average walking speed of 1.389 m/s gives you a circumference of 3200 km and a radius of 509.3 km.
That’s the current basis for how the Seireitei has been calculated to have a diameter of 1018.6 kilometers.
To be clear, there is no statement on the Seireitei’s size within the manga itself. Our current figure is a calculation based on a statement.
For an impressive figure of 1018.6 kilometers, I would expect for there to be some supporting evidence of that size.
We have been given visuals of the entirety of the Seireitei several times since this statement was made in the manga, so I would expect at least one to match up with it.
Here are ten such visuals:
1) Chapter 84, Page 17
2) Chapter 84, Page 19
3) Chapter 546, Page 10 [This one is the best visual we have of the Seireitei as a whole, also showing us two of the gates on the wall in the same panel]
4) Chapter 576, Page 18
5) Chapter 608, Page 1
6) Chapter 614, Page 17
7) Chapter 615, Page 10
8) Chapter 621, Page 3
9) Chapter 654, Page 6
10) Chapter 684, Page 9
The majority of these are from the final arc of the manga, in other words the most recent and up to date appearance for the Seireitei.
Not one of them comes close to the calced figure based on Yoruichi’s one-time statement.
Naturally there are some inconsistencies between the visuals. Changes in art style over time, different perspectives, etc. But the overall impression of the Seireitei’s size is not vastly different except for the earliest one in chapter 84. We can't expect authors to be 100% consistent but there's no denying that every visual I've posted does not support our calculation.
Simple visuals of the entire Seireitei may not be satisfactory for everyone (despite how many of them there are up above), but there are a few other issues that crop up:
Ichigo’s party decides to enter the Seireitei by being blasted up in the sky and approaching the Seireitei from the air, getting through the protective dome.
We can see how high up Ichigo and company are launched into the air above Kukaku’s house & forest. It’s not extremely high up based on the panel where they look down and see the structure they were launched from.
Yet when they enter the Seireitei, they are plainly coming at it from an angle well above the Seireitei.
This would make the height they were launched to to be well over a thousand kilometers high going by the accepted size, but we have seen that this isn’t the case from the panels up above.
In chapter 576, we see a visual of Gremmy’s meteor approaching from outside the Seireitei’s dome and breaking through the cloud cover here.
With the currently accepted size making the height of this dome to be 503.9 kilometers tall, then this would make the clouds here to be approximately 900 kilometers high off of the ground.
The Soul Society is supposed to be a mirror image to Earth, which is why we currently treat it as an Earth-based planet with supposedly Earth-based oceans (for a different calc) and all the rest of it.
But these kinds of clouds forming 900 kilometers high in the sky is something that just doesn’t happen. No reason is given in the series for us to treat them any differently than to clouds on Earth, and we should avoid all speculation like “Maybe the clouds are just different in the afterlife.”
In case there’s any doubt that this is just a one-off, we also see clouds well above the Seireitei’s dome back in chapter 84.
For reference, an object 160 km above the Earth looks like this, and the highest clouds in recorded history vary from 76 to 85 km according to this.
In chapter 493, these Shinigami mistook Yhwach as being still outside of the Seireitei's dome while he hovered in the air above them and needed to be corrected that he's already inside of it.
Judging by the wording on the pages, this group of Shinigami aren’t near any of the gates to the Seireitei.
Mistaking him for being outside of it would make no sense if he had to be hundreds of kilometers away from them in order to be outside of the Seireitei’s dome (which currently has an accepted height of 503.9 kilometers).
This just further illustrates the inconsistency with the current size.
There have been some counter points to objecting to the calculated size for the Seireitei, the most notable ones being these:
One of the counter-points given against this is that the Seireitei is big enough to contain entire mountains within it, next to the 13th Division Barracks as seen here in chapter 230 and here in chapter 479.
The biggest problem with this is that I can’t find any explicit evidence that these mountains are within the walls of Seireitei itself and not just beyond them and near to the 13th Division Barracks. We know from this overhead shot that there are in fact mountains outside of the Seireitei, so these could just be those same mountains beyond the walls of the Seireitei.
So these other visuals aren’t explicitly supporting evidence for a massive country-sized Seireitei.
In the novel WE DO knot ALWAYS LOVE YOU, which isn’t written by Kubo, there are a couple of characters who travel through the Seireitei at night for a couple of days in order to reach a location within it.
It’s not stated that they travel in an exclusively straight line but assuming at least two nighttimates worth of travel (or two periods of 12 hours) and assuming the same walking speed further up, and assuming they never stopped, we get about 120 kilometers for distance travelled.
While that’s a big figure, it doesn’t explicitly support the 1018.6 kilometers figure for the diameter of the Seireitei found through the Yoruichi statement.
Personally, due to its origin being in a novel that isn’t written by Kubo and doesn’t have any hard figures attached to it like an explicit speed or timeframe, I don’t consider this to be very strong supporting evidence of the current size. Any distance we get from this will be mostly conjectural.
In the third Bleach movie, Fade to Black, there is a statement of a Reishi spillage affecting an area 200 spirit miles (488 miles) across, covering a third of the Seireitei’s grounds.
Some have taken this to mean that the Seireitei is 600 spirit miles in diameter but covering the Seireitei’s grounds suggests to me that it is covering a third of the Seireitei’s area, not a third of its diameter.
Be that as it may, the Fade to Black movie is non-canon and should not be used to back up the size of the Seireitei in the manga which is consistently portrayed as being nowhere near this size and has no statements of spirit miles given.
What is more likely? That every single overall view of the Seireitei was drawn incorrectly, and every other plot point concerning the Seireitei’s size is wrong and irrelevant, or that Kubo just gave Yoruichi a dumb, one-off line about how long it would take to go to another gate in order to make the characters try and enter Seireitei a different way.
If we get an outrageous figure from a size calc then I’d expect there to be more supportive evidence for it, and less counter-evidence.
Even if the multiple visuals not supporting the current calc aren’t convincing enough to you, then the other counter-evidence should be enough to provoke doubts as to the accuracy of the current calc. If we were given a straightforward distance/size figure from the author in the manga itself then that would be different, but instead we're currently using a calculating based on a travel statement which we have to make assumptions for. Our assumptions should not trump everything else presented to us in the manga.
Lastly, I don't want to pull a "Whataboutism" and drag in other verses because I think that verse's topics should be judged based on their own evidence and such, but a calculation for Toneri was thrown into question because 1 visual was contradicted by multiple other visuals which were more consistent with each other than with the outlier visual. With this kind of precedence I would not find it unreasonable to call Yoruichi's statement an "outlier" as well on the same basis. 1 statement is being contracted by multiple visuals and by multiple other logical issues with the derived calculation.
Some of the issues I've brought up haven't been addressed in previous threads from what I've researched, so this isn't simply a repeat. I want to get the viewpoints of as many staff members as possible on this, since I believe it to be a crucial topic for judging the consistency of evidence.
Background
In chapter 76, Yoruichi gives a statement to Chad that they cannot simply walk to another gate to infiltrate Seireitei because it takes ten days to walk there. This is the only time this statement has ever come up.
Since there are four gates spaced evenly around the Seireitei, then it would take approximately forty days to walk around it based on her statement.
Assuming eight hours of rest each day means a total of 640 hours of walking to encircle the Seireitei.
Using an average walking speed of 1.389 m/s gives you a circumference of 3200 km and a radius of 509.3 km.
That’s the current basis for how the Seireitei has been calculated to have a diameter of 1018.6 kilometers.
To be clear, there is no statement on the Seireitei’s size within the manga itself. Our current figure is a calculation based on a statement.
Visuals of the Seireitei
For an impressive figure of 1018.6 kilometers, I would expect for there to be some supporting evidence of that size.
We have been given visuals of the entirety of the Seireitei several times since this statement was made in the manga, so I would expect at least one to match up with it.
Here are ten such visuals:
1) Chapter 84, Page 17
2) Chapter 84, Page 19
3) Chapter 546, Page 10 [This one is the best visual we have of the Seireitei as a whole, also showing us two of the gates on the wall in the same panel]
4) Chapter 576, Page 18
5) Chapter 608, Page 1
6) Chapter 614, Page 17
7) Chapter 615, Page 10
8) Chapter 621, Page 3
9) Chapter 654, Page 6
10) Chapter 684, Page 9
The majority of these are from the final arc of the manga, in other words the most recent and up to date appearance for the Seireitei.
Not one of them comes close to the calced figure based on Yoruichi’s one-time statement.
Naturally there are some inconsistencies between the visuals. Changes in art style over time, different perspectives, etc. But the overall impression of the Seireitei’s size is not vastly different except for the earliest one in chapter 84. We can't expect authors to be 100% consistent but there's no denying that every visual I've posted does not support our calculation.
Other Issues
Simple visuals of the entire Seireitei may not be satisfactory for everyone (despite how many of them there are up above), but there are a few other issues that crop up:
Ichigo’s plan to enter the Seireitei
Ichigo’s party decides to enter the Seireitei by being blasted up in the sky and approaching the Seireitei from the air, getting through the protective dome.
We can see how high up Ichigo and company are launched into the air above Kukaku’s house & forest. It’s not extremely high up based on the panel where they look down and see the structure they were launched from.
Yet when they enter the Seireitei, they are plainly coming at it from an angle well above the Seireitei.
This would make the height they were launched to to be well over a thousand kilometers high going by the accepted size, but we have seen that this isn’t the case from the panels up above.
Cloud Height
In chapter 576, we see a visual of Gremmy’s meteor approaching from outside the Seireitei’s dome and breaking through the cloud cover here.
With the currently accepted size making the height of this dome to be 503.9 kilometers tall, then this would make the clouds here to be approximately 900 kilometers high off of the ground.
The Soul Society is supposed to be a mirror image to Earth, which is why we currently treat it as an Earth-based planet with supposedly Earth-based oceans (for a different calc) and all the rest of it.
But these kinds of clouds forming 900 kilometers high in the sky is something that just doesn’t happen. No reason is given in the series for us to treat them any differently than to clouds on Earth, and we should avoid all speculation like “Maybe the clouds are just different in the afterlife.”
In case there’s any doubt that this is just a one-off, we also see clouds well above the Seireitei’s dome back in chapter 84.
For reference, an object 160 km above the Earth looks like this, and the highest clouds in recorded history vary from 76 to 85 km according to this.
Yhwach being seemingly outside the dome
In chapter 493, these Shinigami mistook Yhwach as being still outside of the Seireitei's dome while he hovered in the air above them and needed to be corrected that he's already inside of it.
Judging by the wording on the pages, this group of Shinigami aren’t near any of the gates to the Seireitei.
Mistaking him for being outside of it would make no sense if he had to be hundreds of kilometers away from them in order to be outside of the Seireitei’s dome (which currently has an accepted height of 503.9 kilometers).
This just further illustrates the inconsistency with the current size.
Counter Points
There have been some counter points to objecting to the calculated size for the Seireitei, the most notable ones being these:
Mountains inside the Seireitei
One of the counter-points given against this is that the Seireitei is big enough to contain entire mountains within it, next to the 13th Division Barracks as seen here in chapter 230 and here in chapter 479.
The biggest problem with this is that I can’t find any explicit evidence that these mountains are within the walls of Seireitei itself and not just beyond them and near to the 13th Division Barracks. We know from this overhead shot that there are in fact mountains outside of the Seireitei, so these could just be those same mountains beyond the walls of the Seireitei.
So these other visuals aren’t explicitly supporting evidence for a massive country-sized Seireitei.
Characters travelling in the novel
In the novel WE DO knot ALWAYS LOVE YOU, which isn’t written by Kubo, there are a couple of characters who travel through the Seireitei at night for a couple of days in order to reach a location within it.
It’s not stated that they travel in an exclusively straight line but assuming at least two nighttimates worth of travel (or two periods of 12 hours) and assuming the same walking speed further up, and assuming they never stopped, we get about 120 kilometers for distance travelled.
While that’s a big figure, it doesn’t explicitly support the 1018.6 kilometers figure for the diameter of the Seireitei found through the Yoruichi statement.
Personally, due to its origin being in a novel that isn’t written by Kubo and doesn’t have any hard figures attached to it like an explicit speed or timeframe, I don’t consider this to be very strong supporting evidence of the current size. Any distance we get from this will be mostly conjectural.
Fade to Black movie statement
In the third Bleach movie, Fade to Black, there is a statement of a Reishi spillage affecting an area 200 spirit miles (488 miles) across, covering a third of the Seireitei’s grounds.
Some have taken this to mean that the Seireitei is 600 spirit miles in diameter but covering the Seireitei’s grounds suggests to me that it is covering a third of the Seireitei’s area, not a third of its diameter.
Be that as it may, the Fade to Black movie is non-canon and should not be used to back up the size of the Seireitei in the manga which is consistently portrayed as being nowhere near this size and has no statements of spirit miles given.
Conclusion
What is more likely? That every single overall view of the Seireitei was drawn incorrectly, and every other plot point concerning the Seireitei’s size is wrong and irrelevant, or that Kubo just gave Yoruichi a dumb, one-off line about how long it would take to go to another gate in order to make the characters try and enter Seireitei a different way.
If we get an outrageous figure from a size calc then I’d expect there to be more supportive evidence for it, and less counter-evidence.
Even if the multiple visuals not supporting the current calc aren’t convincing enough to you, then the other counter-evidence should be enough to provoke doubts as to the accuracy of the current calc. If we were given a straightforward distance/size figure from the author in the manga itself then that would be different, but instead we're currently using a calculating based on a travel statement which we have to make assumptions for. Our assumptions should not trump everything else presented to us in the manga.
Lastly, I don't want to pull a "Whataboutism" and drag in other verses because I think that verse's topics should be judged based on their own evidence and such, but a calculation for Toneri was thrown into question because 1 visual was contradicted by multiple other visuals which were more consistent with each other than with the outlier visual. With this kind of precedence I would not find it unreasonable to call Yoruichi's statement an "outlier" as well on the same basis. 1 statement is being contracted by multiple visuals and by multiple other logical issues with the derived calculation.