User blog comment:Imhungry4444/What is Ichigo?/@comment-1248963-20101119050337/@comment-1454424-20101119114157

Mangastream did issue an announcement and it is part of our forum thread addressing this issue: Forum:Inconsistency_between_chapter_397_and_398.

Everybody and their mother has made clear this was a mistake and nothing more. Indeed, Cnet went so far as to leave 397 ambiguous. But because the mistake played into the narrative "Masaki isn't a normal human" that some people seriously believe, the mistake is "living on", so to speak.

In a way, what is happening in fandom is not so different from whats happening in politics and is explained rather nicely by John Hodgman in the following clip. When the Espada started dropping like flies, that didn't "gel" with the narrative that some fans expected and so even though it was "canon" they cried plotkai and you had absolutely idiocy on display with people believing rubbish like Harribel freed herself from Hitsugaya's ice and Wonderweiss's scream didn't break the ice but told Harribel to just hurry it up. However, this mistake, as clearly as it is a mistake and has actually been corrected when the chapter was bound in a volume is sticking around because LONG before this mistake come out you had people wondering if Masaki was a Quincy and fanfiction where Masaki was an Arrancar or some rubbish like that. That's why we are having such a hard time not only squishing this but also keep having to address "can Arrancar have babies?" question on Bleach answers. Tiring I know but someone has to do it.

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