User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 686 - Death & Strawberry (End of Bleach reMIX)/@comment-1489595-20160819152958

The whole ballyhoo about the pairings is kind of funny from both sides. You have a lot of angry shippers that their faves failed to materialize and you have the other side putting on Vulcan ears and going "of course...it was the only logical way it could of happened."

I'm not overly familiar with Kubo's past comments about it so I had to interpret what I saw in the manga/anime. While I might of preferred a Rukia/Ichigo pairing it remains that through out the run Ichigo himself was romance neutral. He never expressed a clear or pointed preference romantically despite the inclinations (or lack thereof) of the people around him. Sure...there were teases and Orihime had a clear if unspoken interest but that the usual for engaging audience investment in the characters. Nothing was definitive and this is characteristic of Bleach 'romance'.

So judging purely by the manga alone there really was nothing pointing to a predestined One True Pair that just 'logically' had to happen. Nonsense. Any of the pairings (er...the uncrazy ones) were as logically likely as any other.