Shūhei
Hisagi

Shūhei Hisagi is the lieutenant of the 9th Division and, for most of the series, the man holding that division together on his own. The scars over his right eye came from a Hollow attack in his Academy years, and the 69 tattooed on his cheek is a tribute to Kensei Muguruma, the captain who saved him from it when he was a boy.

He served under Kaname Tōsen and believed in him completely, which made Tōsen's defection alongside Aizen the defining wound of his career. Hisagi was left running a division with no captain, editing the Seireitei Communication on the side, and carrying a Zanpakutō he openly dislikes: Kazeshini takes the form of twin bladed scythes on chains, a shape he calls the ugliest kind of weapon because it exists only to reap lives.

The Thousand-Year Blood War puts him back in front of Tōsen and then back under Kensei, who drags him into the forest outside the Seireitei and tells him to achieve Bankai because the Gotei 13 cannot afford to be short of them twice. Hisagi is not a prodigy and the series never pretends otherwise. He is a competent officer who keeps standing in the right place, defeats a Sternritter without ceremony, and is still there when most of the room has been carried out.