Shunsui
Kyōraku

Shunsui Kyōraku drapes a pink flowered kimono over his captain's haori, wears a straw hat indoors, drinks through meetings and avoids work with real commitment. He is also one of the two oldest captains in the Gotei 13, Yamamoto's first student alongside Jūshirō Ukitake, and after Yamamoto's death he becomes Captain-Commander.

The laziness is a position rather than a personality. Katen Kyōkotsu is the only Zanpakutō in the series that fights by imposing a game on the battlefield, with rules both parties are bound by whether they agree to them or not, and losing the game means losing the fight. Its Bankai, Katen Kyōkotsu: Karamatsu Shinjū, stages a four-act tragedy in which every act inflicts a specific death, and Shunsui hates using it enough that he apologises to the person it is killing.

He tries to talk his way out of every confrontation first and takes the fight seriously the moment talking fails. He kills Coyote Starrk, who did not want to be there either, and he executes Retsu Unohana's judgement on Kenpachi Zaraki afterwards without pretending it was anything else. Nanao Ise is his niece, which he tells her in the middle of a war after keeping it from her for her entire life.