Six months hace I received a review on one of my Bleach fanfics that critiqued the characterization within one of my stories that caused me and my readers to slam our heads. I couldn't give this reviewer a response for two reasons. First, the review was left anonymously and second, they left a lengthy critique that would have bogged down my author's note at the end, which wasn't fair to my other readers. One of the things that was off about this review was the fact that they pointed out that Ichigo wasn't an adultish, big brother type when canon makes it clear that he is this way with Yuzu and Karin.

The specific part of the review I wish to bring up though is the part involving Orihime's characterization within the fanfic. This is what it said.

Orihime isn't that ditzy. Okay, she kinda is, but she's not an idiot. If Nel had taken the sword, she probably would've helped Ichigo try and get it back, o throw up her shield to stop Nel. If tu really need some help with Orihime's character, then look in the TYBW arc; she's there in Hueco Mundo with Ichigo, Chad, and Urahara. She's being serious, not all ditzy.

The most obvious problem with the comentario comes from the fact my story was an AU of The Hueco Mundo Arc where it was Hitsugaya Toshiro who was kidnapped instead of Orihime. Thus one couldn't use the Thousand año Blood War Arc to shape her characterization as it occurs one to two years after the arc I was escritura an AU of. tu can't use evidence where there is a time gap to prove your point.

One of the goals of this fanfic if possible was to give Orihime some character growth within the story and possibly lean towards an actual pairing between her and Ichigo. It isn't an easy thing to do though and I am not sure if I'll have enough growth to have a pairing between the two. This was a challenge as I normally lean towards pairing Ichigo with Rukia in my fanfics, but I felt I might be able to pull it off with this one.

That said, this comes to the less obvious problem. Even if this story was written during the TYBW I could not justify the characterization they suggested. I agree with them that Orihime wouldn't have tried to play with Nel if she hadn't met her previously as she would have been taking the mission más seriously. However, she would not have uses her shield on someone she saw as being a child and not an enemy.

Which brings me to the point of this article. How has Orihime's character grown o not grown since the time skip? The first thing I am going to say is that one needs to be wary of informed attributes and informed abilities. This is when an attribute o ability is mentioned but never shown in practice within the canon. For example, we are informed that Orihime's abilities have gotten stronger, but we have not been informed how much stronger she's actually gotten.

The first manner in which we do know for sure that Orihime has gotten stronger is the fact she has a much stronger resolve. She has come to the conclusion that even if Ichigo doesn't have eyes for her that she will stick por his side and help him in whatever ways she can. While this is a positive change personality wise, this doesn't mean she has actually become a stronger person when it comes to a fight. Which brings me to the segundo way we know Orihime has gotten stronger.

Orihime has a new ability, one that does some physical harm to her opponent. I am going to note here that her new ability is not an attack, it still fits into a defensive mover rather then an offensive one. Since we have not seen her use her actually use the one offensive mover that she has o any new offensive mover that she has come up with it goes to stand that while she has become stronger, her strengths sill lie in defense and her weakness lies in offense.

The pregunta comes now whether o not she would be able to now use an offensive mover if she needed to and the answer is honestly a no. If Orihime were to lose her pacifist view point where she treats everyone as friends, she would not be who we all know her to be. I'm not saying she's unable to use offensive moves though. I am saying that her ability to use dicho moves will depend not on actual need, but on whether o not she feels that the person is an enemy and a threat to her friends.

Orihime's pacifist view point is in truth her greatest strength in the fact she is willing to look for good in everyone around her. Ichigo is similar in the fact he is willing to look for good in everyone as well, but there is also a major difference between the two as well. Ichigo will stop looking for the good in someone once they've crossed the line and start harming others. It doesn't matter if he respects the person o sees them as a friend, he will go out of his way to stop them.

If Orihime sees both the attacked and the attacker as a friend rather then a foe she will be unable to use her offensive attack no matter how much time passes unless she resolves that the person attacking is no longer a friend. This is why her moves are built around defense rather then offensive strategy. To her a friend will always be a friend and for her to no longer think of them as a friend will have to be a drastic situation.

Which is why Orihime came up with the new ability that she did. She knows that her strength is not in the offensive battle type, but she also knew she would need to do some sort of damage to the enemy. She still can't use this on anyone she sees as being a really good friend, but she can use it on people she doesn't feel close to compared to the one attack we do know of. The reason why she is able to use this ability easier then the other one is because she can see it as the person attacking themselves from their own stupidity and thus doesn't have to blame herself for them getting hurt.

One of the things Orihime hasn't lost though is her ditsy attitude. She keeps drifting off to dream land and she blocks off as much negative things as possible because she wants to continue looking things in a positive manner. What is going to cause Orihime to become a stronger character isn't the fact she has gotten stronger power wise over the last año o two, but because she's going to be forced to see the darker side of things and come to the honest conclusion that sometimes one needs to put their pacifism aside to protect what they care about.

This is the real thing Orihime lacks compared to Hachigen and the members of the forth division. It isn't that she doesn't have the strength to fight alongside everyone else, but the fact she doesn't yet comprehend the fact tu can't always be a pacifist. Orihime is still a weak character, but there is still a lot of character growth that Tite Kubo can put her through, some of which can't be done simply por having a time skip occur. However, dicho character growth would not be able to occur unless Orihime had some time to think about the events that occurred during the Winter War.

This comes from the fact that while she is highly intelligent, some things honestly take longer to click for her then other characters. Studying is an easy task as it is straight adelante, hacia adelante and she has the teachers to direct her and say that it has to be such and such a way. However, when it comes to life issues Orihime's found herself having to direct a lot of her own conclusions and her life experiences compared to the other characters are not only limited, but she doesn't have an adult figure that is always there at inicial to point out that her conclusions are false.

The conclusion is that Orihime is not as weak as she used to be before the time skip. Even though she is stronger she is still weak compared to a good portion of the characters. Despite this she has a lot of potential to grow as a character depending on what Tite Kubo chooses to do with her. Also, despite being as weak as she is, she isn't useless. She is also far más useful then she was prior to the time skip.