I Didn’t Even Think About The Al Pacino Connection - Blog Posts

If you’re still taking responses for the Stupid Innocuous Bleach Faves, I love that Ichigo reads Shakespeare. Like, he doesn’t just have a casual interest. He went to college to study English Literature and became a translator. The man really likes Shakespeare. And that makes me wonder, what’s Ichigo’s favorite comedy? Favorite tragedy? Historical play? Sonnet? Do he and Orihime look for theaters putting on Shakespeare productions for date nights? (Yes, and they have a great time.) Who does he talk to about Shakespeare? I’d like to think at first he only talks to Chad about it because Chad is a great listener. Then he meets Rukia and gets her into it because she loves drama. After he gets closer with Orihime he starts recommending plays to read: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer to start. It makes me wonder what other authors he enjoys. Agatha Christie? Jane Austen? Mark Twain? Who knows? Anyway, I just love that Ichigo is a book nerd. Specifically a Shakespeare nerd.

Stupid Innocuous Best Fave

MAN I wish I knew more about Shakespeare so I could pick out all the plays and sonnets that would be Ichigo's faves! But I've only read the few plays you get through the US public school system (mine were Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Merchant of Venice, one of the King Henry plays, and a truly terrible high school production of Julius Caesar, which was also somehow both a sci-fi AU and a musical) and one quarter of Jacobean Shakespeare in undergrad. BUT I agree with everything you've listed here and all of these headcanons, and want to add one more.

Ichigo's favorite filmic adaptation of Shakespeare is The Merchant of Venice (2004), because Al Pacino, ICHIGO'S FAVORITE ACTOR, plays Shylock, and imho does it absolutely splendidly. He is just so good at speaking Shakespearean English and making it sound fluid and natural:

Granted, I haven't seen this movie in like 15 years, so ymmv, but I would 100% watch it again--both for Al Pacino and for Ichigo!