Orihime Inoue: “Kurosaki-kun”
Bleach, a name that resonates strongly among anime enthusiasts, has held its place as one of the “Big Three” in the Shounen genre for over a decade. As the first anime I ever watched, it has a special place in my heart. Among the elements that have left an enduring impression on me are the stylish characters, cool sword fights, banger soundtracks, catchy opening themes, the thrilling shout of “Bankai”, and, undeniably, the ever-persistent “Kurosaki-kun” from our dear Orihime Inoue.
Fast forward a decade, and I was re-watching some episodes in anticipation of the Thousand-Year Blood War’s second season. This time around, I wanted to unravel just how many times does Orihime utter “Kurosaki” in the first 366 episodes of Bleach?
Sourcing Data
The first hurdle in any data-driven project is often sourcing the data itself. In this case, the challenge was even more substantial as there was no legal way to procure the data we needed. After treading into some gray areas, I eventually stumbled upon subtitle files uploaded by anonymous users on various online platforms. By parsing these files into a Python dataframe, I successfully obtained the English dialogue for the entire series of Bleach.
However, merely obtaining the data was the easy part. The true challenge lay in deciphering exactly which character said “Kurosaki”. If the English subtitles had consistently followed Japanese honorifics such as ‘kun’ or ‘san’, the task would have been straightforward. Unfortunately, this was not the case. In many instances, “Kurosaki-kun” in the original Japanese dialogue was simply translated as “Kurosaki” in the English subtitles.
The characters in Bleach have their unique ways of addressing Ichigo: Ishida sticks to the formal “Kurosaki”, Urahara employs the respectful “Kurosaki-san”, and Rukia, on the other hand, opts for the casual “Ichigo”. This diversity in naming adds another layer of complexity to the analysis.
Fortunately, the subtitle files I downloaded were in the .ass format, which includes an “Actor” attribute indicating the character speaking each line. But as a data scientist, I have learned that data is rarely, if ever, perfect. True to form, in this dataset, the “Actor” attribute is populated only for some episodes towards the end of the series.
The below code takes any file location with .ass files and parses and appends all those files into a single dataframe.
#Code to parse .ass files to pandas dataframe
def parse_ass_file(file_path):
with open(file_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
rows = []
in_events_section = False
for line in lines:
line = line.strip()
# If we are in the [Events] section and the line starts with 'Format:', extract the column names
if in_events_section and line.startswith('Format:'):
col_names = line[8:].strip().split(', ')
# If we are in the [Events] section and the line starts with 'Dialogue:', extract the row data
elif in_events_section and line.startswith('Dialogue:'):
row_data = line[10:].strip().split(',', maxsplit=9) # The ninth column (Text) can contain commas, so we limit the number of splits
rows.append(row_data)
# If the line contains '[Events]', we are entering the [Events] section
elif '[Events]' in line:
in_events_section = True
# If the line starts with '[' and we are already in the [Events] section, we have reached a new section, so we stop parsing
elif line.startswith('[') and in_events_section:
break
df = pd.DataFrame(rows, columns=col_names)
return dfAnalysis
The analysis begins with cleaning the text data, which involves removing any unwanted characters, symbols, or formatting that might interfere with our calculations. Once the data is clean, we shift our focus to the key variables — the text, episode number, and character name.
We then start creating plots using the matplotlib library in Python. These plots allow us to visualize the data, providing valuable insights into the patterns and trends that are hidden within the raw data. Specifically, we’re interested in finding out which episodes have the highest frequency of “Kurosaki” mentions, and, of course, which character utters this name the most.
The episode with the highest frequency of “Kurosaki” mentions is Episode 335 which is not something that I expected. The biggest surprise, however, is the character responsible for the majority of these mentions. Contrary to our expectations, it’s not Orihime but Urahara who takes the top spot, though Orihime still manages to contribute three instances.
Another standout episode is 271, which is the one that first comes to mind when I think about the “Kurosaki-kun”. In this episode, “Kurosaki” is mentioned 16 times, all courtesy of Orihime.
As we move to the second graph, which depicts the frequency of “Kurosaki” mentions by different characters, it’s crucial to note that the character information is only available for episodes 271 to 366. So, any mention of a character in this context pertains solely to these episodes.
A surprising find in this graph is the prominence of Ishida. He mentions “Kurosaki” a significant number of times, albeit without any honorifics, keeping with his characteristic style.
Extrapolation
Having analyzed the available data, the next challenge was to extrapolate these findings to the entire series. For this, I turned to an external source — a YouTube video titled “225 times Orihime said ‘Kurosaki-kun”. This video claimed that Orihime utters “Kurosaki-kun” 149 times in episodes 1–270, and 76 times in episodes 271–366.
Contrasting these figures with my analysis, however, revealed a discrepancy. According to my calculations, Orihime mentioned “Kurosaki-kun” 109 times in episodes 271–366. To resolve this, I made two assumptions. Firstly, I assumed that my calculations for episodes 271–366 were correct. Secondly, I presumed that the error rate in the YouTube video’s count would be consistent across all episodes.
Using these assumptions, I extrapolated the count for episodes 1–270, correcting for the observed error rate. This process led me to a surprising revelation. According to my calculations, Orihime might have said “Kurosaki-kun” a staggering 329 times throughout the entire series.
While my extrapolation provided a fascinating result, it’s important to note that there were other methods I could have pursued to potentially refine these figures. However, given the scope and complexity of the task, I had to draw a line somewhere.
One possible avenue for further investigation would have involved a more detailed scraping of episode summaries from the Bleach wiki. By identifying the episodes in which Orihime appears, I could have calculated the frequency of “Kurosaki” mentions in those specific episodes. This frequency, multiplied by a correction factor derived from the data for episodes 271–366, might have provided an alternative estimate for Orihime’s “Kurosaki-kun” count.
An even more ambitious approach would have involved audio detection of the original Japanese dialogue in the series. By counting the instances of Orihime saying “Kurosaki-kun” directly from the audio, we might have been able to arrive at an accurate count, albeit with a much larger effort.
Other Insights
Between episodes 271 to 366, the episodes for which we have character data, Orihime is responsible for a whopping 36% of all mentions of “Kurosaki”. This means that more than a third of the times someone mentioned “Kurosaki”, it was Orihime.
On average, in the episodes where she appears, Orihime utters the standalone word “Kurosaki” approximately 2.33 times per episode
In fact, the word “Kurosaki” makes up about 3.22% of Orihime’s total dialogue throughout the episodes 271–366. To put it another way, for every 100 words Orihime speaks, about 3 of them are “Kurosaki”.
The standalone word “Kurosaki” was mentioned approximately 896 times throughout all episodes of the series.
Conclusion
After investing a couple of hours in this analysis, one might wonder about the driving force behind such a detailed examination. The truth is, I embarked on this journey to unravel, in my own way, the reasons behind Orihime Inoue’s controversial reputation as one of the most disliked female characters in anime history.
While the numbers provide a tangible measure of Orihime’s “Kurosaki-kun” obsession, they barely scratch the surface of the larger issues with her character. Orihime’s character arc, regrettably, predominantly revolves around Ichigo. This narrow focus detracts from her potential as an independent and strong character. Instead, she is often reduced to the sidelines, her character depth overshadowed by her singular fixation on Ichigo.
Moreover, despite being bestowed with unique abilities, Orihime’s powers often come across as underwhelming and underutilized throughout the series. For a show that thrives on showcasing the growth and prowess of its characters, Orihime’s limited combat contributions stand out, further diminishing her appeal.
Using this data, or perhaps after scraping the episode summaries, I want to conduct a proper network analysis of the relationships between characters. Although it might not be very complex, given that Bleach is pretty straightforward, I’m keen on delving deeper into the first anime I watched. After all, it’s been 10 years since I first watched Bleach and anime.
And here is a word cloud of all words said by Orihime between episodes 271–366. (Removed some stop words). It seems she has a tendency to call out other people (Ishida, Sado, and Tsukishima). Or maybe this is how a word cloud would look for other characters too.
