User blog comment:Toshiroichigo/Kensei and Rose's Deaths- Were they Necessary?/@comment-24113610-20140430134312

To answer your question about popularity affecting death, clearly it does. Rangiku's throat was slit and her head hit that cement pretty damn hard. Toshiro has a hole through his chest and "much of his upper body was blown away but Bazz-B's attack" but I can assure you both of them will be back later.

Some would argue that Rose and Kensei were such minor and weak characters that their deaths don't really matter besides the fact their captains. I agree with that to the extent that we didn't really get to know the Visoreds at all besides Shinji. For Christ's sake all we knew about their battle styles was Kensei= really strong; hand-to-hand combatant. Rose= artsy zanpakuto(?). But they were minor characters so that's why.

I understand that people on the hero side need to die to make the war more realistic. But I grossly despise the way Kubo handled it. It lacked creativity. I have not hidden my dislike of Mask de Masculine before and I wish Kubo had gotten rid of him quickly or at least gave Kensei a fighting chance(LIKE HIS HOLLOW MASK FOR INSTANCE) instead of getting his ass handed to him. And then added another Sternritter to the mix to fight Rose. Their defeat was clearly just a setup so we could see how powerful Renji and as cool as that was, everything felt rushed. Both of them got defeated within pages of each other.

And then, dying while healing. I said this before; it should have been two random shinigami instead. That's not how you should take out two captains(no matter how minor they may be) and supposedly with the strongest Sternritter there is.

And I agree with your comment about killing off a character close to Ichigo. If Kubo wants to really commit to making this chapter realistic, he should kill off Uryu or Chad or Orihime. Maybe his dad or one of his sisters.