Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“O' anonymous friend of Tousen... If you had been there...What would you have said to stop him?”
Sajin Komamura Quotes
2 quotes from Bleach, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
Hides his face because he expects to be treated as an animal, and behaves better than almost anyone in the Gotei 13 who looks human. His moral position is borrowed from a woman he never met.
“Don't retreat, Tetsuzaemon. No matter what. You stand firm right behind me!”
Read coldly, this is a commander ordering a subordinate to stay in a fight he cannot survive, which is what it is. The defence is in the preposition. Behind me is not a position in a formation, it is a promise about who absorbs what is coming, from the captain who spends the series hiding his face because he expects to be treated as an animal and behaves better than almost anyone who looks human.
Read Sajin Komamura's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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Addressed to a grave, about a man who is still alive, by the person who has spent the arc trying to talk him back. The series builds its captains in pairs and this is the load-bearing one: Komamura's entire moral position is borrowed from a woman he never met, whose death sent Tosen into the Gotei 13 and then out of it. Asking her what she would have said is the closest he comes to admitting he has no argument of his own.