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Yachiru

Character outline
Yachiru, who appears cute, small, and harmless, is cheerful, upbeat, and energetic. Most of the time she is seen latched onto the back of her captain, Kenpachi Zaraki, just over his left shoulder. She is surprisingly intimidating at times, especially when annoyed. Like Zaraki, she has no sense of direction. She is also revealed to be incredibly strong, as she easily picked up Zaraki, who is almost four times her size, and carried him away leaping great distances between very tall buildings.

Yachiru resents being criticized in any way and will often attack the perpetrator. For example, she headbutts Orihime Inoue and bites 3rd Seat Ikkaku Madarame's bald head.

Although she looks harmless, it should be noted that Yachiru is the lieutenant of the combat division within Soul Society. This is reflected when she gets into more serious moments and reveals her immense spiritual energy and speed.

She also likes to give people nicknames; She calls another member of the 11th Division "Maki-maki" (meaning rolled rolled), a humorous nickname. She has given affectionate nicknames to only two known individuals; she calls her captain 'Ken-chan' (Kenny in Viz translation) out of respect and because he is basically her only 'family', and starts calling Ichigo 'Ichi-san', because according to her, his battle with Kenpachi is the first time that 'Ken-chan' has been truly happy in a long long time.


History
Someone murdered Yachiru's parents in Rukongai's 79th district (Kusajishi) when she was a baby. A nameless but highly skilled sword fighter from Zaraki, Soul Society's 80th District, soon found her. The swordsman named the baby Yachiru after the only person he ever cared about. The swordsman from Zaraki named himself Kenpachi that day, and became Kenpachi Zaraki.

From that moment on, the two have been inseparable and have developed a caring, albeit argumentative, father-daughter relationship. There is currently no information on how they entered the Seireitei and became shinigami. In an interview, Tite Kubo mentioned that he plans on revealing who Zaraki named Yachiru after.


Zanpakutō
The name and ability of Yachiru's zanpakutō is unknown. She carries her zanpakutō around with a loose cord, rather than at the sash of her uniform. Her zanpakutō's scabbard even has wheels on it to carry it around. It has a child-like flower pattern on the crossguard. Since Yachiru holds the rank of lieutenant, it is likely that she achieved shikai, but considering the fact that she didn't have to take the entrance exam to get her position, it is possible that she doesn't have one either (like Zaraki). She also stated in an episode that getting help from your zanpakutō is cheating. She claims that Kenpachi actually won, not Ichigo.


Trivia
Bleach creator Tite Kubo assigned several characters theme songs which are used to give insight to characters that might not normally appear in the run of the manga or anime. Yachiru, along with Kon, is one of two characters who actually have two themes instead of just one. Yachiru's themes are: "Yahoo!" by Sora Izumikawa and "Veni, Veni, Venias" by Andre Previn.
Yachiru's name is written in kana (やちる). The only time the kanji version (八千流) appears is during a flashback. Her name in kanji means "eight thousand flows".[1]
Yachiru is the president of the Shinigami Women's Association.
According to the profile that appears in a tankōbon, Yachiru loves confetti candy. It does not matter how much of it you have, she'll eat it all. In a VJump comic, Byakuya Kuchiki takes advantage of this weakness to get her out of his house when she tries to interview him for the Shinigami Women's Association.
Yachiru appears to be fond of Byakuya Kuchiki, and talks to him as if he was a friend in some omake chapters/episode specials. This attitude seems to annoy Byakuya, who finds ingenious ways to get rid of Yachiru, such as carrying around snacks. This is seen in the Shinigami Cup sketch following episode 77 of the anime, where he takes a bun out of his left sleeve and stuffs it into her mouth.
When it flares up, Yachiru's spiritual energy takes the form of a large pink cat or demon.