User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 686 - Death & Strawberry (End of Bleach reMIX)/@comment-1489595-20160819152958/@comment-5398287-20160819234131

Well, even though I don't really ship anyone in any series and find the supporters of both Ichihime and Ichiruki (among others) to be completely ridiculous most of the time, there was more basis for Ichihime than Ichiruki within the series:


 * Kubo's said that Ichigo and Rukia are "more than friends, less than lovers". They have a very close bond due to the circumstances of their meeting and Ichigo's subsequent rescue of Rukia, but neither has demonstrated romantic feelings for the other in all 700 chapters of the manga. And on top of that, Rukia's like 10 times older than Ichigo - even if she looks hot, there is a clear age gap that would make people very uncomfortable if her appearance matched her age. Honestly, it annoys me that people won't let them remain platonic friends just because they're opposite genders.


 * Meanwhile, Orihime's expressed romantic feelings for Ichigo on multiple occasions (the most famous being the "5 lives" monologue), is Ichigo's age, and most importantly is a Human. People seem to forget that Ichigo and Rukia occupy two different worlds, which is a big part of their relationship: if they were to be together, one would have to give up their life as they know it for the other, which would be a bit too tragic for Shonen even with the "love over all" mentality that some have.

Again, I've never had any particular ships for any series and personally didn't really care about who ended up with who, but people are being extremely unreasonable and rash when it comes to this part of the ending.