Ryuken Ishida is one of the most enigmatic characters in Bleach. Known as “The Last Quincy”, he is the son of Soken Ishida and the father of a major protagonist of the series, Ichigo Kurosaki’s friend and rival Uryu Ishida. Throughout most of the Bleach story, Ryuken spends his time working as the director of the Karakura Hospital.
By his own admission, Ryuken has no interest in his Quincy heritage. That said, he is a pure-blooded Quincy and is implied to be an incredibly strong fighter. Ryuken’s Quincy powers are suddenly revealed when he easily kills the Hollows who were about to kill his son Uryu. Each time Ryuken appears, he is portrayed as a tough, badass individual who fears no one.
This is no act, as Ryuken clearly has the fighting skills to back up his haughty demeanor. However, he rarely takes action, choosing to stay out of the fray even during major moments of danger, such as Aizen’s attack on Karakura Town. For this reason, it’s both difficult and interesting to assess just how strong Ryuken Ishida is in Bleach.
Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers from Bleach TYBW.
Fans would love to see Ryuken Ishida's true power in the Bleach TYBW anime
Who is Ryuken Ishida in Bleach?
Few Bleach characters are as much as complex and fascinating as Ryuken Ishida. Lonesome and seemingly cold-hearted, Ryuken is shown to have conflicted relationships with both his father Soken, and his son Uryu. In fact, Uryu never refers to Ryuken as his father and considers his grandfather Soken to be a surrogate parent.
While Ryuken openly despises anything related to Quincy, everything around him – including his hospital and even his own clothes – is imbued with evident Quincy symbolism. This is because Ryuken takes great pride in the Quincy name and tradition, but at the same time loathes them for causing the deaths of his loved ones.
Quincy is a race of spiritually aware humans that can absorb and manipulate the surrounding Reishi. They inherited their powers from an individual known as Yhwach and mainly used them to kill Hollows. About 200 years before the present Bleach narration, the Shinigami exterminated most of the Quincy to prevent them from eliminating all Hollows, which would destroy the balance of the worlds.
When he was younger, Ryuken cared deeply for the Quincy. Everything changed after Yhwach’s actions led to the deaths of Kanae Katagiri and Masaki Kurosaki. The last descendant of the Kurosaki family, Masaki was adopted by the Ishida family to one day marry Ryuken.
After coming to the aid of a Shinigami named Isshin Shiba, Masaki was infected by a Hollow. As a Quincy, the Hollowfication process would mean certain death for her. The only way to save Masaki’s life was to connect her soul to Isshin’s. Even though this would cause him to lose his Shinigami powers, Isshin accepted.
Soon after, Isshin and Masaki got married. Sadly, Masaki died a few years later. She confronted a Hollow to protect her son Ichigo, but the monster killed her as she was unable to use her Quincy powers to fight it.
Masaki was powerless because Yhwach had just performed a special technique called “Auswahlen” to forcibly remove and seize the power from any Quincy he deemed impure. The same process also caused the death of Kanae Katagiri, Ryuken Ishida’s wife.
As a maid in the service of the Ishida family, Kanae Katagiri didn't stand in the way of Ryuken’s previously established marriage with Masaki, which had been arranged to ensure the purity of the Quincy bloodline. However, she was very attached to Ryuken and was happy to marry him when Masaki left the household.
With time, Ryuken also came to love Kanae sincerely. Her death due to Yhwach’s Auswahlen was what made him hate the Quincy. When his father Soken died, Ryuken, wanting to at least protect Uryu, told his son to stay away from the Shinigami. When Uryu exhausted all of his Quincy powers after using Letzt Still, Ryuken helped him restore them.
Despite this, the relationship between Uryu and Ryuken remained cold. Uryu has never stopped loathing his father since he saw him perform an extensive autopsy on Kanae’s corpse. Uryu begged his father to stop, but Ryuken simply couldn’t.
In the final moments of the conflict between Quincy and Shinigami in Bleach TYBW, Ryuken gave Uryu a silver arrowhead and told him that he should be the one to personally shoot it against Yhwach when the time came. During the autopsy on Kanae’s corpse, Ryuken had discovered a silver clot in her heart, which he concluded was the direct cause of her death.
Any Quincy targeted by Yhwach’s Auswahlen would form a clot of silver in their heart, which would eventually kill them. However, any contact with the same silver would cause Yhwach to temporarily lose all of his powers. Upon learning this, Ryuken forged Kanae’s silver clot into an arrowhead and started planning his revenge against Yhwach.
Uryu shot the arrowhead through Yhwach’s body, helping Ichigo to land the decisive blow on the villain. The same silver blood clot that killed Kanae became instrumental in Yhwach’s defeat, finally allowing Ryuken to avenge both his wife and Masaki in a sort of poetic justice.
Ryuken is implied to be a powerhouse
It’s hard to say precisely how strong Ryuken is, as Bleach author Tite Kubo never showed him fighting for real. As the “Last Quincy” and the son of Soken Ishida, Ryuken inherited and can use all fundamental techniques from the previous Quincy generations.
Ryuken has immense mastery of the Quincy’s spiritual weapons. He could create a bow, wield it with just one hand, change its size at will, and shoot multiple Heilig Pfeil at once. His accuracy is also unreal. He can perfectly hit a point a few millimeters near the heart without hitting the heart itself.
In one of his few appearances in Bleach, Ryuken effortlessly killed Menos Grande Hollows, which are as strong as Gillian-class Hollows. For reference, the Visored group members had to put their masks on before attacking Gillain-class Hollows.
Ryuken keeps an entire storage of Seele Schneider blades, which suggests that he is skilled at using them to harm his opponents, increase his own power, and perform the special Sprenger technique.
Ryuken’s father Soken Ishida was exiled from Wandenreich because of his desire for coexistence between Quincy and Shinigami. Soken was most likely a Sternritter in the past, given that he possessed a Sun Key. These items are special medallions given only to Sternritter members.
Considering that he has a Wandenreich uniform, Ryuken himself may have been a Sternritter in the past and thus was granted a Schrift ability. The novel Bleach: Can’t Fear Your Own World implies that Ryuken was a Sternritter at one point. It also explicitly states that he can use Sklaverei.
This technique is directly linked with the Vollstandig form, which suggests that Ryuken can use this special transformation as well as Blut. As an Echt Quincy, i.e., a pure-blooded Quincy, that would only make sense. Moreover, taking into account how Ryuken is hyped throughout the Bleach story, his mastery of these techniques should be quite high.
During the Soul Society Arc, Uryu Ishida used Letzt Still – the precursor of the Vollstandig transformation – to unleash all the power he had at the time. Using this technique, Uryu became strong enough to completely outclass a Shinigami of the caliber of Mayuri Kurotsuchi, crushing his Bankai as if it were nothing.
Ryuken described the same level of power as feeble and weak. He also mentioned that his own powers are very different, and much harder to get rid of than those. This implies that Ryuken is much stronger than Uryu was when he used Letzt Still to annihilate Mayuri.
It also suggests that either Ryuken can use Letzt Still without suffering the negative effect of losing his powers, or that he uses Letzt Still permanently but without the need to gather energy with the Sanrei Glove.
In any case, this proves that Ryuken’s power is far beyond a power that, in turn, far surpasses that of an average Gotei captain. To put it briefly, most Gotei members, Espada members, or Sternritter members wouldn’t stand a chance against Ryuken. He would destroy them with just his basic Quincy skills and incredible spiritual energy.
Ryuken is to Uryu – a Quincy with enough potential to one day surpass Yhwach himself – what Isshin has been to Ichigo. It must be noted that Isshin is strong enough to put pressure on the all-powerful Sosuke Aizen before the Hogyoku causes Aizen’s powers to evolve.
At the bare minimum, Ryuken’s overall battle power should be similar to that of the post-Royal Guard training Byakuya, who was able to defeat multiple Sternritter members at once. Perhaps, Ryuken is strong enough to be comparable to the members of Yhwach’s Schutzstaffel.
Always shown to be in control of the situation, Ryuken doesn’t show his strength more than strictly necessary as he is disillusioned with the world after his wife’s death. That said, he is a powerhouse, and it would be amazing if Bleach TYBW displayed the true extent of his abilities.
Related Links
- Every hidden spoiler and Easter Egg in the Bleach TYBW part 3 opening
- Is Ichigo Kurosaki a jobber in Bleach? Explored
- Bleach TYBW part 3 episode 4 release date and time, where to watch, and more
- Are the Bleach movies worth watching? Explored
- All Bleach openings, ranked from worst to best