Masaki
Kurosaki

Masaki Kurosaki is Ichigo's mother, and for a hundred and fifty episodes she is a photograph on a wall and the reason Ichigo can see ghosts. She died when he was nine, killed by the Hollow Grand Fisher on a riverbank while holding him, and he grew up certain he had caused it.

She was a Quincy. An Echt Quincy of pure blood, raised in the Ishida household as Ryūken's intended partner, and strong enough that she saved Isshin Shiba from a Hollow that had already taken his powers apart. She married him instead, which meant leaving the family and the bloodline politics behind, and Isshin gave up his rank and most of his power to make it possible.

The reason she died is the reason Ichigo exists. Aizen's Hollow, White, had infected her years earlier, and Yhwach's Auswählen, harvesting the lives of impure Quincy to strengthen himself, stripped her powers at the exact moment Grand Fisher attacked. She was a soldier who had been disarmed remotely by a man she had never met. Isshin blamed himself for not arriving in time and Ichigo blamed himself for running toward the water, and both of them were wrong.