Monday, December 31, 2007

Jin Kariya



Jin Kariya (狩矢神, Kariya Jin?) (seiyū: Toru Ohkawa) is the leader of the Bounts. According to the cast list in episode 83, his real name was Eugene Currier, but he adopted a Japanese-style name later in his life. He has white hair, a scar on his chin (the result of a Hollow attack which occurred when he was a child), long upward-curving eyebrows, and bright red eyes, and is the most powerful member of the Bount group. Initially, according to Yoshino, his goal was to consume living spirits and gain massive amounts of power. However, this had a 50% chance of ripping open the barrier between the mortal world and the world of hollows. As the series progressed, however, he revealed that his plans were to invade Soul Society. He controls the clan's power to the dolls with a pack of cards referred to as the seal. Kariya also has hidden powers, which allow him to easily defeat hollows and other dolls. He is also able to deflect attacks and immobilize opponents with a single touch. Unlike the other Bounts, Kariya can use the abilities of his doll without it being called out, which is what his tattoo (seal) on his upper body indicates. This would explain why he is able to deflect other dolls' attacks; in episode 95 it is revealed that his doll's ability is to manipulate wind. Although he unlocked the Jōkaishō and apparently gained the ability to annihilate Seireitei, he was defeated after a tremendous fight with Ichigo. Kariya's final words were "Kurosaki, I am..." before he turned to ash, the traditional way that past Bounts have perished.

Flashbacks showing Kariya's childhood as a small boy are seen throughout the Bount episodes. A former shinigami by the name of Ran'Tao however saves him and other bounts and gathers them in a hidden cave system, Ran'tao's appeal to "the 46" is rejected and shinigami are dispatched to annihilate the remaining Bounts. The young Kariya is saved by Ran'Tao however, and is given the first Bount seal to master and control their respective dolls.

Messer (メッサー, Messā?, German for "knife") is Jin Kariya's doll. When called, Messer causes the sky above Kariya to turn dark and the clouds to swirl towards him. Wind from this release can be felt from very far away. Kariya's raised hand and the swirling clouds meet in a massive tornado, after which his forearm and hand cover in metal. Messer is a wind elemental that takes the form of a liquid metal sword hilt in the shape of the Bount crest. The blade is made of a spinning column of wind, resembling a drill bit. It can also use air friction to electrify the blade. Messer is strong enough to contend with Zangetsu, Ichigo Kurosaki's zanpakutō, and his getsuga tenshō attack in bankai form.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Hō and Ban



Hō (鵬, Hō?) and Ban (磐, Ban?) (seiyū: Daisuke Sakaguchi) are child-like twin Bounts who work together telepathically and use their dolls (Hō controls Guhl and Ban controls Günther) to manipulate water. They attacked Karakura Hospital in an attempt to kidnap Uryū Ishida. They were defeated by a combined effort from Noba (whose plush form at the time afforded him immunity against the Bount Doll's power) and the newly arrived Ganju Shiba. After Noba used repetitive short distance teleports to knock Ban unconscious, forcing Hō to control both dolls simultaneously, Ganju destroyed their dolls with fireworks, killing the twins as a result.

Guhl (グール, Gūru?) and Günther (ギュンター, Gyuntā?) are Hō and Ban's twin dolls, respectively. Both dolls take the form of bottlecaps. When released, the dolls can control water, making destroying them quite difficult since the bottlecaps are small targets within the large eyestalk-like shape they take. In order to kill opponents, Guhl and Günther form a large stalk around their enemies and restrain them, forcibly drowning them. They also have the ability to force themselves into the human body (as 70% of the human body is water) and tear the enemy apart from the inside out. Of course, this attack is fairly useless against an adversary who doesn't have an ounce of water in them in the first place. They are stronger when more water surrounds them. Each control one doll, but both of them can apparently control either if need be, as Hō demonstrates. Ban and Ho can control the dolls to a more devastating degree by merging their large bodies of water. But the downside is, Ban and Ho need to be side-by-side with each other in order to coordinate properly the doll's attacks; the twins being more than a few feet away from each other would result their concentration (which is synchronized via something like telepathy) getting broken off.

Cain



Cain (seiyū: Takayuki Fujimoto) is a young male Bount whom Jin Kariya had left in Koga's care many years ago. He has cropped reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, and often seen with a similar expression to Ichigo Kurosaki's. He states that before he came to live with Koga, he had a difficult life.

Waineton is Cain's doll. Cain learned to conjure Waineton (a large praying mantis-type creature) using a training book written by Kariya which held the appropriate rites. However, Cain had not yet been properly prepared by Koga when he attempted to summon a doll on his own. Eager to show Koga his creation, Cain tried to push Waineton to show his abilities despite Waineton's claim to be tired and was killed when Waineton decided to 'test' him. Koga appears to carry a great deal of guilt over Cain's death.

Bount

I'm going to post about all the Bount's now
Enjoy

Bount : Powers

The Bounts's inability to age is a product of how they survive: consuming human souls. This gives them potentially everlasting youth so long as they can find souls to consume. This also seems to make them infertile, as only one Bount, Yoshino Sōma, had the ability to reproduce out of the entire species. Normally, Bount consume human souls that have already died. Under the leadership of Jin Kariya, however, they began consuming living souls. Consuming living souls causes a Bount to physically age to a small degree[2]; the only person to have consumed enough to have noticeably aged is Sawatari, who appears as if he is well into his eighties while normal Bount retain an appearance of someone in their twenties or thirties. It is not known if a Bount could also die this way.


Dolls

Bount, being created as variations on a shinigami soul, have similar powers to shinigami. The foremost of these powers is the Bount doll, a familiar equivalent to the shinigami zanpakutō. Like a zanpakutō, a doll is its creator's power given physical form. Also like a zanpakutō, a doll's personality is much like its creator's, though the dolls seem to have more personality variation than the zanpakutō spirits seen thus far.

The main difference between a doll and a zanpakutō is how they operate. Unlike a zanpakutō, whose personality is generally dormant except when the shinigami wishes to speak to them, a doll's personality is always dominant. Dolls are self-sufficient when released, though they can easily be resealed. The Bount's ability to control their doll is largely based on their individual power and relationship with the doll. Moreover, if either the doll or its Bount partner sustains severe damage in a battle, the Bount may lose control over his doll, depending on the amount of damage dealt. If a doll is injured, it will simply return itself to its sealed state. However, should its master be injured, the doll may go berserk and kill its master, as Ugaki and Mabashi's dolls did. A doll may also kill a Bount who is not powerful enough to contain it, as was the case with Cain. Bounts with a genuine bond with their dolls can transgress this (but only if their interaction goes well beyond that of between master and slave), however ,as shown by Yoshino's doll's loyalty towards his master to the point where he refused to leave her side to fulfill her final wish: for her to bemerged with him

Like a zanpakutō, dolls are generally sealed into an object and released as necessary (Koga Gō's doll, for example, is sealed into a metal sphere). The object varies greatly from person to person and is often an expression of the doll's abilities. In order to call upon a Bount's doll, the phrase "Zeige Dich" is said, which is a German phrase meaning "Show yourself."

To summon a doll, a Bount needs to undergo a ritual where they chant an incantation. These instructions were first given to young Kariya by Ran'Tao after the shinigami attack. The ritual includes sulfur, phosphorus, carbon, water, fat, magnesium and lime (the ingredients of the human body). When a doll is summoned, it is small in size and power, but grows as the Bount's power grows.

Bitto

Jin Kariya and Ugaki were also able to create a unique form of dolls known as the bitto. The bitto are mosquito-like beings which drain the souls from humans and condense the energy into a purified liquid for the Bount to drink. They even produce a useful vial in their sacs to store the elixir (which takes the form of a red blood-like liquid). After the soul elixer has been ingested, the Bount who took it immediately experiences the effects, with veins popping from their skin. Kariya created the bitto by sacrificing Yoshino Sōma, the only Bount able to reproduce, in an elaborate ritual, producing a large swarm of them

Bount : History

The Bounts were created as the accidental result of an explosion during an experiment by the predecessor to the Seireitei Technological Institute. The experiment was an attempt to develop eternal life using the already slow-aging shinigami souls as the base, but the materials used in the experiment crossed with the development of souls in the real world and led to the creation of a new spiritually-active human race, the Bount.

The Bount souls were scattered about the world, giving rise to a new race that never aged after reaching their twenties or thirties. They were generally treated as outcasts due to the fact that they did not age. The shinigami scientist responsible for their creation, Ran'Tao, gathered most of the Bount into a small community in a secret cave structure, several centuries before the main storyline. It was her intent to improve the quality of life for the people whose suffering she felt responsible for.

However, the embarrassment of this accidental creation, as well as the fact that a tenth of Seireitei was destroyed in the resulting explosion and the possible threat they posed to the balance between the worlds, led the Chamber of 46 to rule that the experiment and its failure was to be covered up, and the Bount destroyed. Shinigami were dispatched to kill the Bount community, but a handful survived, including a young boy saved by Ran'Tao herself, to whom she gave a seal that would help unlock the Bounts' true power.

The Bount who survived the massacre wandered nomadically and eventually fell prey to constant attacks by hollows. It was during this time that the boy, who would later become known as Eugene, activated the seal's power and merged with his doll - the Bount equivalent to a shinigami's zanpakuto - and killed off the attacking hollows. The survivors eventually found refuge in another cave and began devising a plan to return to Soul Society, which they saw as more of a home than the real world ever could be. Eugene, now an adult, was against this plan. He had witnessed the massacre and believed the only thing that would await the Bount if they returned to Soul Society would be subservience or death. Regardless, the Bount leadership decided to gain access to Soul Society by means of the Quincy's powers. The Quincy were unwilling to assist, and a battle ensued, in which the Quincy and shinigami killed most of the surviving Bount.

Further infuriated by this, Eugene took the last few surviving Bount, all of whom were of a similar mindset to him, and began plotting revenge on Soul Society. These Bounts managed to perfect the control of their dolls, and by the time of the main storyline Eugene, now going by the alias, Jin Kariya, was ready for vengeance.

Get Ready

I'll be posting aout te Bount's now
Enjoy