‘Bleach’: Is Ryūken Ishida a Sternritter, and How Powerful Is He?

The Ishida family is an important part of the lore of Kubo’s Bleach series. And while it initially seemed that they would only be represented via Uryu Ishida, who is a secondary protagonist in the series, as the plot evolved, the importance of the Ishida family in the lore became more apparent. This is why this article is going to focus on one member of the Ishida family, Ryūken Ishida, who is also Uryu’s father. This won’t be a generalized article, as we are going to answer two precise questions about Ryūken. One, you’re going to find out whether he was ever a Sternritter, and two, you’re going to find out just how powerful Ryūken Ishida is.

Ryūken Ishida was never a Sternritter and never a proper Quincy, as he was disappointed with their ways and his inability to protect Masaki when she needed protection from Aizen’s Hollow White. He was, on the other hand, trained in the Quincy arts by his father, Sōken, which made him an exceptionally skilled and powerful Quincy, more so as he was a pure Quincy. Still, he never supported Yhwach, and he would not have joined the Sternritter even if he had been summoned.

The rest of this article will be dedicated to Ryūken Ishida and his powers and abilities. But also about his private life and his choices. We will explain how powerful Ryūken Ishida is and why, despite his strengths, he never really wanted anything to do with Quincy. We will also reveal how his decisions influenced the plot and what actually influenced his decisions in the first place. This article will contain a lot of major spoilers, so be careful if you haven’t actually read the Bleach manga, as this article will reveal a lot.

Ryūken Ishida was an extremely powerful Quincy, but he wanted nothing to do with them

Ryūken Ishida is the father of Uryū Ishida and was, along with his son, thought to be the last surviving Quincy for a very long time (well, that was until the reappearance of Yhwach and his army). He is the son of Sōken Ishida, Uryū’s grandfather, and an old acquaintance of Isshin Kurosaki. He is a physician by occupation.

Due to his relatively small role in the story, Ryūken Ishida is, by many perceived to be a relatively powerless character or someone who is weak, but the reality is quite different, as Ryūken is an exceptionally powerful Quincy. Namely, Ryūken Ishida is a fully trained Quincy who has years of experience and is much stronger than his son, which is why he calls himself the “last Quincy,” as he learned everything from his father.

His bow, unlike Uryū’s, is a materialized, syllabic bow. Ryūken’s arrows have tremendous power that can even easily kill an Arrancar. He seems to be able to shoot as many arrows with his bow as Uryū can with Ginrei Kojaku. He also has extraordinary precision, as he hit the exact spot that restored the lost Quincy powers of his son, which was exceptionally difficult to do. A distinctive feature of Ryūken’s marksmanship is his ability to shoot arrows with just one hand.

Ryūken has mastered the Hirenkyaku’s ability, which makes sense since he has been trained by Sōken, but has rarely used it in his life. On the other hand, Ryūken is exceptionally intuitive and perspective. He sees through his son’s tactics and immediately guesses that Uryū is rushing to help his friends without even reading the letter he left behind.

He also has much knowledge about the Quincy and their weapons and apparently also knows their secrets. This is how he knew the way to restore Quincy’s powers (which Uryū thought was impossible), which were lost through the Quincy: Letzt Stil. This is done by shooting a mentally and physically drained Quincy in the sinus muscle with an arrow 19 millimeters from the heart.

Being an older generation of Quincy, his Reiatsu is correspondingly high and can be felt from great distances. He is also able to track down Reiatsu himself. As Quincy, he can absorb the Reishi from the environment, combine it with his Reiryoku, and use it to form Reiatsu arrows. This ability is more effective in Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, where the concentration of Reishi is higher, making it easier to absorb.

As you can see, this short insight into his powers and abilities tells you more than enough. Ryūken Ishida might be a secondary character, but he has proven his power on more than one occasion and even participated in the battle against Yhwach.

As a pure Quincy, he was powerful enough to resist Yhwach’s Auswählen, which even killed some of Yhwach’s Sternritter (such as Robert Accutrone, who was simply turned into a skeleton). So, with all of this power, was Ryūken ever a Sternritter? Well, no – he did not want anything to do with the Quincy, which is why he also urged his son to stay away from them.

But why is that? Well, in order to fully understand why Ryūken disliked Quincy, we have to go back in time. Being a pure Quincy, Ryūken was raised without much freedom of choice, as the purity of the bloodline had to be preserved at all costs. From what we’ve seen, his mother was very strict, while his father was often absent, immersing himself in the teachings of Quincy.

Having a strict mother and an absent father who obviously forced him to train to become a Quincy, combined with having little freedom of choice, naturally led to Ryūken feeling some resentment towards Quincy, but the situation progressively worsened.

First of all, when White attacked Masaki, Aizen’s Hollow, Ryūken saw himself as incapable of protecting her (at the time, she was designated to become his wife, mind you!), significantly altering his perception of himself and his skills.

It was a big hit, and while he did care for Masaki, the fact that he could do nothing to protect her and, later, save her (as she was saved thanks to Isshin’s sacrifice) crushed him, and he lost confidence in his ability as a Quincy. Still, he respected his mother’s wishes and continued to live like a Quincy.

He later married Kanae Katagiri, who was not a pure Quincy, but in the eyes of his parents, she was the best alternative. The two of them had a son, but when he was just a little boy, Kanae collapsed and died. Ryūken, who was a doctor, conducted a thorough autopsy of her body and found a silver clot near her heart, which was the cause of her death. He knew that she died because of Yhwach, whose Auswählen drained the energy of all the impure Quincy; this killed both Kanae and Masaki, who ceased being a pure Quincy at one point.

As you can imagine, Ryūken was furious, and when everything was added up, it made sense that he wanted nothing to do with Quincy. His parents took away his life, the Quincy ruler killed his wife, and he found himself incapable of using his powers to help Masaki.

This is why he never actively used his Quincy powers and why he wasn’t even considered to become a Sternritter; we’re also quite certain that had he been considered, he would have certainly declined, as he only used his Quincy powers to help his son.