Masaki Kurosaki

Masaki Kurosaki (黒崎 真咲) was an Echt Quincy, and the late wife to Isshin Kurosaki. She is the late mother of Ichigo Kurosaki, Karin Kurosaki and Yuzu Kurosaki. She was killed 9 years ago trying to protect her son from the Hollow known as Grand Fisher.

Background
When Masaki was a teenage girl, she was the last of the Kurosaki family. She was taken in by Ryuken Ishida's mother so that she would be protected as one of the last Quincy, and so that one day she would marry Ryuken and keep the Quincy Bloodline of the Ishida family pure, due to the Quincy being an endangered race. She was scolded by her aunt at least once because of her slow progress in training.

Sensing two powerful sources of Reiatsu drawing near, Masaki, running into the hallway, was stopped by Ryuken, who asked her where she was going. When Ryuken told her she should care more about herself and how the pure-blooded Quincy should not fight for just any reason, Masaki, sensing the explosion created by the Hollow creature fighting a Cero, started running again. When told by Ryuken to stop, she told him even though she liked how he thought of everyone else before taking action, if someone died because she was forced to follow a custom, she could not live with herself.

Masaki eventually came to the injured Isshin Kurosaki's rescue firing at the "Black Hollow" he was facing attracting its attention. When she realized that the creature was too fast for her to accurately aim at, she allowed it to get in close and bite her so that she could shoot it from point-blank range.

This defeats the Hollow, but before she can react, the Hollow self-destructs, with her emerging unscathed due to Isshin taking the blast in her place. After saving him from a Hollow, she introduces herself and also says that she is a Quincy, when he asked her how she could possibly have defeated him. After this encounter, she realizes the Shinigami are not what she thought them to be. She spends the night and the next day thinking about Isshin. As she was walking and talking with friends, she suddenly feels faint as she unknowingly walks by Kisuke Urahara. When she recovers, she says that she's fine.

Later that evening, she is confronted by her aunt, who begins scolding her for going against Quincy traditions. However, during this, Masaki collapses in pain. Ryuken and his mother then notice what appears to be a Hollow hole forming on her chest. Seeing this, Ryuken immediately takes her and leaves the house. Her condition is eventually discovered by Isshin, who gets into an argument with Ryuken, and Urahara, who claims he has a solution.

At his shop, Urahara reveals that since his expulsion from the Soul Society, he has been studying Hollowfication and recognizes the symptoms in Masaki. He warns Isshin and Ryūken that the process was originally developed to strengthen Shinigami and while it failed, it was not developed for a Quincy, like Masaki and while he could help save her life, he could not return her to how she was before. Isshin agrees to save her life by giving up his life as a Shinigami, the opposite of a Qunicy and become a Human, the opposite of a Hollow, thus tethering her life to his own until the Hollow left her or she passes away. Meanwhile, Masaki imagines she is falling down a dark hole but is not alone. The Hollow spirit approaches her but vanishes when Isshin appears, catching her and declaring that he is going to protect her. Isshin then uses Getsuga Tensho to kill the Hollow. With the Hollow gone, Masaki begins frantically questioning Isshin. In the physical world, Urahara proclaims that he successfully connected their souls.

After she graduated high school, Masaki moved out of the Ishida household, and Isshin opened a small clinic. When Masaki started attending a university, while visiting Isshin, he told her that he lost his powers was because of a blunder that got him exiled from the Soul Society; however, she realized that he was lying to her. Years later, she married Isshin and have had giving birth to three children. A son named Ichigo Kurosaki, and two fraternal twin daughters named Karin Kurosaki and Yuzu Kurosaki.

On June 17th, Grand Fisher, a Hollow, used the forms of Humans whom he had devoured (mostly women) to attract other Humans with high spiritual energy. Ichigo, who was nine years old at the time could not tell the difference between the living and the dead. Ichigo saw Grand Fisher's lure, in the form of a woman about to jump into a rushing river, and ran after it. Masaki, realizing the danger, went after Ichigo to protect him. However, she was unable to use her Quincy powers, as Yhwach had stolen them from her, and she died as a result. According to Ichigo, Masaki was the center of the family and everything that went on with the family revolved around her. Due to this fact, Ichigo's family was greatly devastated by her death.

Personality
Though not much was seen of her personality, her family has described her as being a very loving mother and wife. She also found men who smoke to be attractive. Her view of "caring about herself" is to do everything she can daily. If she lets people die because of a custom her family upholds, she would never allow herself to live it down.

When she was a teenager, she was shown to put out a strong, confident front around others, though she was nervous around her adoptive mother and cried when she was alone. She also had a sassy personality, as shown with her interactions with Ryuken Ishida.

Appearance
Masaki is a woman of average height. She had fair skin and long, light, wavy brown hair down to her back, which she usually had tied in a knot in the back and bangs down to her chin in the front. She typically wore plain dresses and wore lipstick on occasion. She has brown eyes.

Reishi Absorption
As a Quincy, Masaki can absorb spiritual energy from the atmosphere, combining it with her own spiritual energy to form weapons and use different techniques.

Blut
Blut (血装 (ブルート), buruto; Japanese for "Blood Guise"): An advanced Quincy technique which grants one inhuman defensive and offensive capabilities by making Reishi flow into the user's blood vessels. As a pure-blooded Quincy, Masaki has possessed this ability since birth.

Blut Vene
Blut Vene (静血装 (ブルート・ヴェーネ), buruto vene, Japanese for "Stilled Blood Guise"): Masaki's defensive form of Blut has been noted by Isshin to be exceptionally powerful, preventing her from suffering any wounds from Hollow attacks after her fight with White.

Reishi Bow
Like most Quincy, Masaki uses a bow as her primary weapon. She can generate a uniquely small bow similar in size to a handgun, which can fire Heilig Pfeil with the same force and power as an average sized bow.

Heilig Pfeil
Heilig Pfeil (神聖滅矢 (ハイリッヒ・ブファイル), Hairihhi Bufairu; Japanese for "Sacred Destruction Arrows"): By further condensing Reishi, Masaki can form spiritual arrows.

The Agent of Shinigami arc
During the start of the series; six years later when the Kurosaki family visited Masaki's grave, Grand Fisher returned as he could sense their high spiritual power. During the fight, when Ichigo began to lose, her memory upon being killed was released from Grand Fisher's lure, telling Ichigo her last thoughts before she died. All she could think about was how much fun they all had together, and for Ichigo to never stop smiling. Her spirit gave Ichigo the strength to nearly kill the Hollow, forcing him to retreat.

The New Captain Shusuke Amagai arc
Masaki reappears when Ichigo Kurosaki faces off against Hanza Nukui. Hanza Nukui uses his Bakkoto, Saiga, to look into Ichigo's memories, to see what Ichigo fears most. He then tortures him with the memories of the death of his mother. Hanza makes it so she tries to choke Ichigo, so this way Ichigo can't harm her or fight back. Before Ichigo chokes to death, the pleasant memories he had with his mother rise up from deep within him. A twister of Reiatsu surrounds them.

Ichigo then tells his mother how much everybody misses her, and how much he managed even without her. Before she vanishes, she smiles after Ichigo thanks her for protecting him that day; even though he couldn't protect her.

Bleach movie 2
She is mention by Ichigo during his conversation with Zangetsu, and appears in a flashback.

Bleach movie 4
She appears in a photograph. but Ichigo tells Isshin to really get rid of the huge memorial photo of her.

Legacy
The Kurosaki family now visits her grave every year, and that is the only day in the year Isshin smokes. The reason he smokes in front of her grave was because when they had first started dating, Masaki complimented him about how cool he looked while smoking. He also added that was the first and last time she complimented him about his appearance. Isshin hung up a large poster of her in his home, displaying the phrase "Masaki Forever", and he frequently talks to it as if it were the real Masaki.

According to Tatsuki Arisawa, Ichigo stopped crying every time he saw his mother. She claimed Ichigo had the most beautiful mother ever, and he took it upon himself for her death. Isshin also thought it was his own fault his wife died. His reason was: he could not get there in time to protect her from Grand Fisher. When Ichigo asked him why nobody ever blamed him for his mother's death, Isshin explained to him that he was "the woman I fell in love with was a woman I fell in love with gave her life to save." He also added that when they meet each other again, if he had ever blamed Ichigo, Masaki would not be able to forgive him.

Quotes

 * (To Ryuken Ishida) "I understand how you're always thinking about your mother and the Quincy as a whole. Always considering what's best for the future, taking into account all the consequences of your actions. And I honestly admire the way you're able to do that. But you see, I'm not you, Ryuu-chan. To me, "taking proper care of myself" means making sure I do what I can in the here and now. Because if I decided not to take action because of rules and customs and somebody died because I did nothing, I don't think I'd be able to forgive myself for that."

Knownable Relatives

 * Isshin Kurosaki (Husband)
 * Ichigo Kurosaki (Son)
 * Karin Kurosaki (Daughter)
 * Yuzu Kurosaki (Daughter)
 * Orihime Inoue (Daughter in law)
 * Kazui Kurosaki (Grandson)
 * Uzumaki Kushina (True Counterpart)
 * Quasimodo's Mother (Partnal-Counterpart)

Trivia
Masaki has many similarities with Uzumaki Kushina from Naruto Shippuuden. Masaki also has many similarities with Quasimodo's Mother from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
 * Both are the mothers to the main characters. (For Kushina : Naruto, and for Masaki : Ichigo)
 * Both of their past is reveal in the franchise.
 * Both loved their son, and risked their own life to save him.
 * Both get killed by a demon. (For Kushina : Kurama and for Masaki : Grand Fisher)
 * Both died after protecting their sons from their true murder.
 * Both gave a happy message to their son before dying.
 * Both of their sons can see them in ghost form.
 * Both of their past on how they meet their husband is revealed.
 * Both of their sons inherited their personality.
 * Both of their deaths have a huge effect on their sons.
 * Both of their sons thanked them for protecting them on the day that they died.
 * Both of them are present on the day that their sons are born.
 * Both are seen happily holding their sons when they were an Infant.
 * Both wanted their son to be happy before they died.
 * Both of their sons know the Anniversary of their death.
 * Both loved their husband, and family very much.
 * Both had a horrible past, in which they try to forget.
 * Both of their son cherish the memories that they had with them, in order to keep them alive in spirit.
 * Both are seen being rescued by their future husband. (For Kushina : Minato and for Masaki : Isshin)
 * Both of them can be seen in photo's or flashback throughout the franchise.
 * Both of their sons be having visions or Illusions of them til this very day.
 * Both are the mothers to the main characters. (For Masaki : Ichigo, and for Quasimodo's Mother : Quasimodo)
 * Both are seen holding their sons when they were an Infant.
 * Both are seen risking their own life to save their son.
 * Both loved their son dearly, and only wanted to make sure that he was safe from enemies.

Voice Actresses
all information on Masaki Kurosaki came from http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Masaki_Kurosaki
 * Japanese : Sayaka Ohara (2004 – Present)
 * English : Ellyn Stern (2006 – Present)