Masaki Kurosaki

was an Echt Quincy and the wife of Isshin Kurosaki, mother of Ichigo Kurosaki, Karin Kurosaki & Yuzu Kurosaki. She was killed 9 years before the resurrection of Yhwach while trying to protect her son from Grand Fisher.

Appearance
Masaki was a woman of average height. She had fair skin and long, light, wavy brown hair down to her back, which she usually had tied in a knot in the back and bangs down to her chin in the front. She typically wore plain dresses and wore lipstick on occasion. She had brown eyes.

As a teenager, Masaki wore a brown school uniform with a red-hemmed skirt and a white collar with red pins that fell over the top of her back and was tied in the front with a red ribbon, as well as brown shoes and white knee-length stockings. Her hair was cut to around chin-length.

Personality
Her family has described her as being a very loving mother and wife. Her view of "caring about herself" was to do everything she could daily. If she let people die because of a custom her family upheld, she would never allow herself to live it down.

When she was a teenager, she put out a strong, confident front around others, though she was nervous around her adoptive mother and cried when she was alone. She also had a sassy personality, particularly in her interactions with Ryūken Ishida.

History
When Masaki was a teenage girl, she was the last of the Kurosaki family. She was taken in by Ryūken Ishida's mother so that she would be protected as one of the last Quincy, and so that one day she would marry Ryūken and keep the Quincy Bloodline of the Ishida family pure, due to the Quincy being an endangered race. She was scolded by her aunt at least once because of her slow progress in training.

Sensing two powerful sources of Reiatsu drawing near, Masaki, running into the hallway, was stopped by Ryūken, who asked her where she was going. When Ryūken told her she should care more about herself and how the pure-blooded Quincy should not fight for just any reason, Masaki, sensing the explosion created by the Hollow creature firing a Cero, started running again. When told by Ryūken to stop, she told him even though she liked how he thought of everyone else before taking action, if someone died because she was forced to follow a custom, she could not live with herself.

Masaki eventually came to the injured Isshin Shiba's rescue, firing at the "Black Hollow" he was facing, attracting its attention. When she realized that the creature was too fast for her to accurately aim at, she allowed it to get in close and bite her so that she could shoot it from point-blank range.

This defeated the Hollow, but before she could react, the Hollow self-destructed, with her emerging unscathed due to Isshin taking the blast in her place. After saving him, she introduced herself and said that she was a Quincy, when he asked her how she could possibly have defeated the Hollow. After this encounter, she realized the Shinigami were not what she thought them to be. She spent the night and the next day thinking about Isshin. As she was walking and talking with friends, she suddenly felt faint as she unknowingly walked by Kisuke Urahara. When she recovered, she said that she was fine.

Later that evening, she was confronted by her aunt, who began scolding her for going against Quincy traditions. However, while this was happening, Masaki collapsed in pain. Ryūken and his mother then noticed what appeared to be a Hollow hole forming on her chest. Seeing this, Ryūken immediately took her and left the house. Her condition was eventually discovered by Isshin, who got into an argument with Ryūken, and Urahara, who claimed he had a solution.

At his shop, Urahara revealed that since his expulsion from the Soul Society, he had been studying Hollowfication and recognized the symptoms in Masaki. He warned Isshin and Ryūken that the process was originally developed to strengthen Shinigami and while it failed, it was not developed for a Quincy like Masaki and while he could help save her life, he could not return her to how she was before. Isshin agreed to save her life by giving up his life as a Shinigami, the opposite of a Quincy, and become a Human, the opposite of a Hollow, thus tethering her life to his own until the Hollow left her or she passed away. Meanwhile, Masaki imagined she was falling down a dark hole but was not alone. The Hollow spirit approached her, but stopped when Isshin appeared, catching her and declaring that he was going to protect her. Isshin then used Getsuga Tenshō to kill the Hollow. With the Hollow gone, Masaki began frantically questioning Isshin. In the physical world, Urahara proclaimed that he successfully connected their souls.

After she graduated high school, Masaki moved out of the Ishida household, and Isshin opened a small clinic. When Masaki started attending a university, while visiting Isshin, he told her that he lost his powers because of a blunder that got him exiled from Soul Society; however, she realized that he was lying to her. Sometime later, she and Isshin got married and had three children together, Ichigo, Karin, and Yuzu.

Grand Fisher, a Hollow, used the forms of Humans whom he had devoured to attract other Humans with high spiritual energy. Ichigo, who at the time could not distinguish between Souls and Humans, saw Grand Fisher's lure in the form of a woman about to jump into a rushing river, and ran after it. Masaki, realizing the danger, went after Ichigo to protect him. However, she was unable to use her Quincy powers, as Yhwach had stolen them from her, and she died as a result. According to Ichigo, Masaki was the center of the family and everything that went on with the family revolved around her. Due to this fact, Ichigo's family was greatly devastated by her death.

The Kurosaki family now visits her grave every year, and that is the only day in the year Isshin smokes. The reason he smokes in front of her grave was because when they had first started dating, Masaki complimented him about how cool he looked while smoking. He also added that was the first and last time she complimented him about his appearance. Isshin hung up a large poster of her in his home, displaying the phrase "Masaki Forever", and he frequently talks to it as if it were the real Masaki.

According to Tatsuki Arisawa, Ichigo stopped crying every time he saw his mother. She claimed Ichigo had the most beautiful mother ever, and he took it upon himself for her death. Isshin also thought it was his own fault his wife died. His reason was: he could not get there in time to protect her from Grand Fisher. When Ichigo asked him why nobody ever blamed him for his mother's death, Isshin explained to him that if he was to blame Masaki's death on him, Masaki would get mad at him. Its not anyone's fault that Masaki died. "The woman I fell in love with...was a woman who could die protecting her son."

Agent of the Shinigami arc
When the Kurosaki family visited Masaki's grave, Grand Fisher returned as he could sense their high spiritual power. During the fight, when Ichigo began to lose, her memory upon being killed was released from Grand Fisher's lure, telling Ichigo her last thoughts before she died. All she could think about was how much fun they all had together, and for Ichigo to never stop smiling. Her spirit gave Ichigo the strength to nearly kill the Hollow, forcing him to retreat.

Former Powers & Abilities
Reishi Manipulation: As a Quincy, Masaki primarily absorbed spiritual energy from the atmosphere, and combined it with her own spiritual energy to form weapons. She had an easier time collecting this energy in environments with higher concentrations of Reishi, such as in the Soul Society or Hueco Mundo.
 * An advanced Quincy technique which grants one inhuman defensive and offensive capabilities by making Reishi flow into the user's blood vessels. As a pure-blooded Quincy, Masaki has possessed this ability since birth.


 * Masaki's defensive form of Blut has been noted by Isshin Kurosaki to be exceptionally powerful, preventing her from suffering any wounds from Hollow attacks after her fight with White.

Great Spiritual Power: As a Quincy, Masaki possessed an above-average amount of Reiryoku. Even as a teenager, she was powerful enough to defeat the powerful Hollow White with a single attack. Isshin noted that had she not lost her Quincy powers, Masaki would have effortlessly defeated the considerably powerful Grand Fisher, and stated that their levels of power were as different as "night and day".

Spirit Weapon
Heilig Bogen (神聖弓 (ハイリッヒ・ボーグン), Hairihhi Bōgun; German for "Holy Bow", Japanese for "Sacred Bow"): Like most Quincy, Masaki used a bow as her primary weapon. She could generate a uniquely small bow similar in size to a handgun, which could fire Heilig Pfeil with the same force and power as an average sized bow.


 * By further condensing Reishi, Masaki could form spiritual arrows.

Appearances in Other Media

 * Masaki makes her video game debut in Bleach: Brave Souls, where she is playable as her younger self and wields her Heilig Bogen.
 * Masaki is portrayed by actress Masami Nagasawa in the live action film adaptation.

Quotes

 * (To Ryūken Ishida) "I understand how you're always thinking about your mother and the Quincy as a whole. Always considering what's best for the future, taking into account all the consequences of your actions. And I honestly admire the way you're able to do that. But you see, I'm not you, Ryuu-chan. To me, "taking proper care of myself" means making sure I do what I can in the here and now. Because if I decided not to take action because of rules and customs and somebody died because I did nothing, I don't think I'd be able to forgive myself for that."

Navigation
Masaki Kurosaki Masaki Kurosaki Masaki Kurosaki