Why the Underbelly is the Most Underrated Quincy Schrift in Bleach
An underrated Schrift could have been Yhwach’s key to defeating one of Bleach’s top five strongest characters
One of the few people to do some harm to Aizen, this Quincy Sternritter has only sparse appearance and barely a character arc but his Schrift has
U – The Underbelly is the Schrift of NaNaNa Najahkoop that can analyze the Reiatsu of a target over a certain period of time, allowing him to determine an opponent’s spiritual power distribution and find holes in their Reiatsu.
After this, NaNaNa would attack the target’s Reitarsu holes, increasing their size until the target’s Reiatsu depletes and leave them either immobile or unconscious from the Reiatsu drain.
This leaves the target vulnerable to be finished off by an attack.
While skipped in the anime, in the manga, Nanana first used his ability by spending a long time stalking Renji while he was asleep in a random building, leaving the Shinigami vulnerable.
In the anime, we see it for the first time in Episode 23: “Marching Out the ZOMBIES 2” where Nanana analyzed Byakuya’s Reiatsu but is shocked to see that he has no holes.
Some have attributed this to the Oken clothing he is wearing, which has immense durability to withstand the 72 layers of barriers that separate the Soul King’s dimension and that of the Seireitei.
This could mean that without the Oken, even Byakuya would have fallen for this technique.
This is in contrast to the manga’s first usage in Chapter 623: “Against the Judgement” where we see the Morphine Pattern placed on Aizen and we see many spots around it, with NaNaNa even remarking that Aizen has holes everywhere and caused Aizen to fall unconscious for five minutes, which even caught Aizen by surprise.
However, Aizen was restrained by Mayuri’s chair, which prevented access to the full strength of Aizen’s monstrous Reiatsu, meaning Aizen’s holes might have been from the chair.
Then again, we have yet to see how NaNaNa would be able to win against an opponent that was mobile and in use of their full powers, having lost to Byakuya and not being able to finish off an immobile Aizen (who was arguably at his strongest even while restrained by the chair).
While we never see this ability used to its full potential or appreciated, the underrated Underbelly showed us that the Sternritters did have a counter to one of the Five Special War Threats, Sosuke Aizen, who is feared for his Reiatsu alone.
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