How big is the Seireitei consistently?

Introduction

The Seireitei is one of the central locations of BLEACH, and its size is truly controversial. Certain visuals make it seem like it's a few city blocks big, while the very consistent lore suggests otherwise. I aim to explain the most likely and consistent interpretation, based on the evidence Kubo has given us throughout the 686 manga chapters, 9 light novels, databooks, and canon movies. If you want the actual size first, you can skip to the "true size" section in the table of contents, but the rest serves to legitimize the size being that big.

What the Seireitei is

The Seireitei is the place where Shinigami live, and this is obviously repeatedly shown and stated. It is basically like a basic plot-point of the story so it shouldn't be controversial, but here are some databook statements to affirm this.

It is normally open, but when an intruder approaches the Seireitei, the walls known as the Seireimon come down. Once the Seireitei walls are down, the are 4 giants placed on each gate, and they guard the gates. The gates are placed at each cardinal direction, and are evenly spaced between each other. The shinigami organization is called the Gotei 13, where there are 13 Court Guards, the kido corp, the stealth force, the shinigami academy, and central 46. Each squad in the Gotei has at least 200 members, with over 6000 members total. This is consistent, as the Seireitei can lose 2200 squad members without having everyone die. When it is threatened by intruders, it's protected by a sphere-shaped wall that digests reishi.

Inconsistency in the Aerial shots (and why pixel scaling it to find the size sucks)

This first aerial shot we get of the Seireitei makes it look like it's a city-block. This does not look like a place where over 6000 people live, they would have to be under extreme overcrowding. It does not show the Rukongai being directly outside the seireitei. Also, it's by far the worst offender we'll see.

The shot we get literally the page after makes it look even smaller than this previous shot. It makes the Seireitei look significantly smaller than before, and yet the Seireitei can still hold at least 2600 people.

The next page shows it of a different size too, as in the previous shot it didn't look that much smaller than the gate, now it looks significantly bigger. This drawing shows no Rukongai, which is shown to be right outside the serieitei before, and non-spherical dome on top of it.

Next shot makes it look singificantly bigger than the first one, and you can visibly see there's way more buildings for just a fraction of the full size.

In this next shot, coming much later, we can actually see the a lot more of the details of the Seireitei. It does have a spherical dome, but it lacks the Rukongai district entirely. Furthermore, the walls are way too big, they would basically be nearly a kilometer tall.

In this next shot, the perfect roundness of the Seireitei's dome is dropped, and we then get the size of the Seireitei as being that of a few buildings.

This overhead aerial shot isn't necessarily bad, but it contradicts previous ones.

Although this next shot makes the dome look rounder, it still makes buildings too big, while missing key landmarks.

This next shot looks just as bad as that first one, and it clearly shows the Seireitei only being a few buildings long.

This next page is similarly flawed, lacking a lot of the key locations, while making the dome look flat, and the Seireitei radically small.

This shot can basically be eyeballed to be a walkable distance, less than most people's commutes.

This next shot is in this similar Seireitei-neighborhood vein, where it doesn't even look like it could fit 6000 people.

This is the last Seireitei aerial shot, and it does disappoint. We can see individual buildings, and the dome is still not a sphere.

Inconsistency in the Seireitei wall size

Jidanbo Ikkanzaka is the giant which guards the Seireitei. We actually see Jidanbo himself has the reach to knick the top of the Seireitei wall, and yet he only has a height if 9.88 meters. This would inherently contradict literally every single shot of the Seireitei. and we can actually pixel scale how big the Seireitei would be as a result.

If we take this detailed shot seriously, we literally end up with the Seireitei being 37 Jidanbo's tall (highballing it to have his reach be equal to his height), which would be 731.12 meters long. This is obviously inconsistent, and the Seireitei walls shouldn't even be visible from a distance.

Crucial details missing from every single Seireitei aerial

Massive thanks to IMadeThisOn8-1-2017 for this, I couldn't have done it without him making this post on VSBW where he really put down Damage3245's argument.

Rukongai district

As we can see in this Chapter, the Rukongai is right outside the sereitei. A single Rukongai district has a population of at least 28,000 people as right before the Quincy invasion started, Mayuri had 28,000 people executed in just the 64th. The total number of districts reaches 320, as was stated twice in databooks.

Major landmarks

Yamamoto's first division building actually towers over others, and it is missing from every single aerial shot.

Near that is where Sasakibe was buried, which is a large hill that towers over other buildings, and it isn't ever shown.

This shot of the prisoner holding area makes it look like it towers over the rest of the Seireitei, and it's the burj khalifa. Most aerial shots make it seem like it's all basically level, and this area isn't that tall.

The forest around Sokyoku hill is actually gigantic, with branches that dwarf Yoruichi and Soifon. This forest isn't even shown in most aerial shots of the Seireitei.

The Soul Reaper academy building is huge, yet it's missing from every aerial shot.

Mountains inside it

The most convincing argument against using pixel scaling to downgrade the Seireitei size is the it has mountains inside it, which aren't visible in any aerial shot of the entire thing. First of all, we see pretty clearly that there is a mountain range right outside the 13th company barracks, where you can't see any Seireitei walls, and the terrain is far too rugged to even have them .

This scene is also specifically not an outlier or inconsistent because we literally see this place again a few Chapters after. Keep in mind, none of the aerial shots of the Seireitei accurately portray these mountains.

In the canon novel We do KNOT always love You, we actually find out that to traverse the seiretiei, you need to cross mountains mountains and forests, literally.

Stuff in each division

First division

As I mentioned earlier, the first division has the large building which towers over the others. It also has a huge prison under it, which is a large area with 8 levels. It is specifically noted to be a huge building by Shinji when he goes there. It is specifically noted that 116 squad 1 members died when the sternritter first invaded the Seireitei (pre-first invasion).

Second division

This is one of the biggest divisions in the Gotei 13, as per the tradition, it actually commands the Onmitsukidō too. This group is acually composed of five different ones, which have their own purposes. Three of these are the punishment force, the security force, and the secret remote unit. Additionally, it has a huge prison known as "Maggot's nest," which has 30 ken-wide moats. The unit "ken" is approximately 1.818 meters long, which would make the complete length 54.54 meters long, less than what reported it as . Considering Maggot's nest is just a small part of the second division, and the moats which are small in comparison to the entire thing are 54.54 meters long, it adds credence to it being a large structure. Needless to say, none of the aerial shots portray this.

Third division

Aside from the obvious barracks, we actually see this division has a very large open area. As for a direct size statement, we get some blatant mentions here. During Gin's fight with Toshiro, the 10th division captain uses his Zanpakuto's strongest ability, Tenso Jurin. This technique allows him to control the weather, and the weather control extends to a directly stated 3 ri. This unit is actually 3.927 km long, which would make the radius of his weather control 11.781 km. Toshiro's weather control specifically affects people as strong as Vice-captains, and as he stated, you need to run that distance away to be unaffected as he doesn't have great control of his Zanpakuto. Despite this, people from other divisions aren't harmed, and no one mentions Toshiro accidentally killing people from other divisions. Furthermore, the Seireitei dome is being used at this moment, so the storm cannot actually exceed the size of the Seireitei. The logical conclusion to draw from this is that the third division is at least 23.562 km wide, making it a very large structure through direct statements.

Fourth division

Aside from the obvious barracks and training grounds, it also has a hospital, where people from the Seireitei are treated. Additionally, its prison has at least 75 cells, given by how the one Uryu, Chad, and Ganju are held in is cell #75.

Fifth division

This division has Barracks, training grounds, and the typical stuff a division has. Additionally, it also has a prison with large cells that held Momo Hinamori. There isn't much here to be portrayed in aerial shots.

Sixth division

This division actually seems to be wealthier, with its expensive architecture. Note, these buildings aren't shown in any aerial shots of the seiritei. It also has a prison, like many of the other divisions, which held Rukia.

Seventh division

Not much of note, other than it having the mountainous terrain. It should also include its own training grounds, barracks, and whatnot.

Eight division

There isn't much to note aside from the necessary components, but we do know it has a huge flat floor, absent from any aerial shot.

Ninth division

This division is pretty average, and it contains all the necessary components. The only thing worth mentioning is it has the Seireitei Bulletin building in it.

Tenth division

Not much to say other than the minimum. It also seems to have a mountain with a cave in it, where Toshiro trains.

Eleventh division

Aside from the essentials, this division also seems to have theses tower-esque structures. Even if they aren't from this division, they're still not present in any of the aerial shots of the Seireitei.

Twelvth division

This division actually has a lot of unique qualities, and what we see of it initially doesn't include most of its components. First of all, it contains the Research and Development institute. It has large silo-like structures singificantly bigger than Jidanbo, who is actually about 9.88 meters tall. As usual, these don't show up in any aerial shots.

Thirteenth division

Aside from the obvious, this division additionally has Ukitake's Ugendo Quarters, with a pond, Bambuu's and some forests. A general trend with all of these pictures is they make it look a lot more vegetation than the Aerial shots. You'd think it's an urban area just by looking at pictures, but there are ecosystems here.

Stuff aside the divisions which exists in Seireitei

Shuhei Hisagi comments on how Yamamoto is fighting in the third old city of the Seireitei, implying there are multiple old cities within it. This literally shows there are several cities which can fit inside the sereitei aside from the divisions.

Byakuya has a mansion within the Seireitei, which is very large and has open gardens. It has a large mausoleum where Hisana is buried, and a large open field around that. In additional material, we see the size of Byakuya's mansion gates and just how many rooms it has . Byakuya doesn't even notice they're using one of them to have the Shinigami women's association until he sees Yachiru zipping around in a scooter. We practically see a new room every time we see it again, and he has an entire security team which lives in it. Its size is so vast, it has a private river in it .

Something else that's worth noting is there are at least ten more mansions in the Seireitei you can buy, as Byakuya's scarf is so expensive, you can buy ten mansions within seireitei with it.

"Why are the visuals so inconsistent, then?"

Kubo does not even draw backgrounds, so there's no wonder he doesn't care about drawing it accurately. He verbatum stated:

"For example, there's the background. The background is drawn to tell you where the characters are, but I don't think that's very important. I don't want to draw backgrounds in frames where characters come in. In Bleach, when a new character comes in, there are times when the background is blank. This is because I want the character to create the mood just by standing there. I think a world is created by the interaction of the characters, so I try to draw my characters under that premise"

So by Kubo's own word, backgrounds don't matter much, and it's character interactions that matter. Furthermore, they only work to show relative locations, or where a character is in relation to said location. This means statements >>> visuals, through Kubo's philosophy. Taking visuals over statements is a stance that directly goes against Kubo's storytelling style, and you'd be deliberately trying to not participate in his story how he wants it. Hence, we should default to the highly consistent statements, which are shown below in the true size section.

Another important piece of evidence is tite Kubo has a minimalistic approach, as he thinks overly drawing backgrounds is distracting for readers:

• Question: "Many readers are wondering why you tend to draw minimalistic to no backgrounds and focus on the characters instead."
• Tite Kubo: "Backgrounds distract the reader from what's going on inside the character. Whenever I leave backgrounds out, this is to allow my readers to see the heart of the character."

Furthermore, he gave us a very important insight:

• Question: "How do you distribute work?"
• Tite Kubo: "My assistants do [...] and the backgrounds."

So most of these inaccurate backgrounds were probably not even drawn by Kubo himself. Not to say they're non canon, or anything absurd like that, but it makes sense that we'd see very different backgrounds every time if he has his assistants do them.

The true size

The Seireitei is an actual country (Narrative support)

We know Yhwach's empire exists in the shadow of the Seiretei, and when he takes over the Seireitei the Wandenreich is exactly as big. Now, are there any statements for the size of Yhwach's empire? Yes, and we literally see the Wandenreich is a country. This means that the Seireitei is a Country as well, and this makes it having a large size super consistent.

Yoruichi's size statement method

As explained before, there are four equidistant gates in the Seireitei. While in their assault on the Soul Society, Yoruichi states it takes about 10 days to walk from one gate of the Seireitei to another. This is in the context of people who ran away from the Kototsu for seven days straight, so obviously rest isn't an issue here. Using this we can derive a size, using the average walking speed of healthy adults, or 4.82 km/hr.

If walking across 1/4 of its circumference is roughly ten days, then walking around it is around 40 days, which works out to 960 hours. Using that, we can find that the circumference would be:

Distance = Speed / time = 4.82 km/hr x 960 hr = 4627.2 km (circumference)

To find the Diameter of a circle using the circumference, we use the formula Circumference = π x diameter, or diameter = circumference/π. Using this:

Diameter = Circumference / π = 4627.2 km / π = 1472.883 km

Fade to Black statement method

As is shown in the movie Fade to Black, there is a large reishi leak in the Seireitei. It starts in one of the Seiretei gates, and it extends to near the center.

It is directly stated that the length of this Reishi leak is 200 ri long, and to verify the translation, here is the japanese subtitle:

• 流れ出た霊子による損害は東西方向中心に二百霊里瀞霊廷内全土の三割に及んでいます

Here is the translation a friend that's a professional translator provided (massive thanks to him):

• The damage caused by the outflow of Reishi extends for 200 spirit ri in the east-west direction, covering 30% of the whole Seireitei.

He has a masters in Japanese translating, and is a professional translator. If you doubted the japanese subtitles, here is the Fade to Black anime comic saying the same thing.

A ri is actually 3.927 km long, which means that the reishi leak is 785.4 km long. Since the reishi leak isn't even as long as the radius of the Seireitei, we can actually deduce the full diameter of the Seireitei is at least:

1570.91 km

The Seireitei's districts method

This argument was originated by Overlord_Xcano and IMadeThisOn6-28-2015 (a great OG BLEACH scalers).

The Seireitei is actually stated many times to have districts in it. We know there are at least 601 west districts, so the total amount of districts should be around 2404(since there should be equal amounts in all 4 cardinal directions).

Now, considering the context that Tite Kubo is Japanese, we we can know there are a total of 480 districts in Japan. Assuming it'd have a similar quantity of districts per area, we can then estimate the size of the Seireitei.

Area of Japan / Quantity of districts * Amount of districts in Seireitei = Area of Seireitei = 377,970 km^2 / 480 x 2404 =

1,892,999.75 km^2

Then, to claculate it's diameter, we can use:

Diameter = 2 x ( Area / π )^.5 = 2 x (1,892,999.75 km^2 / π)^.5 = 1,552.49546 km

Most consistent result:

So, considering all three methods, we get:

Yoruichi's statement method: 1472.883 km

Fade to Black statement method: 1570.91km

District amount method: 1,552.49546 km

This shows there is an insane amount of consistency for the Seireitei being big as f*%k, and the last two results are less than 20 kilometers way from each other, while the size statement method is 94% of the Fade to Black method. This clearly shows Kubo knows how big the Seireitei is, and the information he gives us makes these results insanely consistent.

Travel time support

There are several pieces of travel time evidence that support both the Seireitei being huge and the calc, and I'll list them out in order of importance:

It's such a big area, that all things considered, you can just not see people for 40 years.

It takes vastly superhuman and faster-than-eye Assistant-Captains half a day to cross the Seireitei.

This third piece of evidence is more nuanced but it has reason, still. Yamamoto is obviously the strongest character in the Fake Karakura Town arc, and he's equally as strong as he is in the Soul Society arc. Considering this, we see the Shinigami's reiatsu reaches to 22km away and starts to Reiatsu crush fodder hollows and a little girl. Yamamoto is far far stronger than the next strongest shinigami at this time, and given how they underestimate Aizen later on, he doesn't have his power at 100% at this time. This should just be the range of Yamamoto's reiatsu effects, and this actually helps establish a good size for the Seireitei. When Yamamoto crushes Nanao with his spiritual pressure, Shunsui takes her away using shunpo. He gets her to a point where she will be unaffected by Yamamoto's spiritual pressure, and this should be at least 22km away based on his range later on.

Fade to Black's canonicity

This might be a controversial point, but the movie should be taken as canon. These are Kubo's relevant statements:

Like your previous work, in this year’s movie we heard you were involved since the early stage.

Around March I think it all started when the director Abe and the movie staffs came to me. From that time director Abe wanted a “Back to the beginning” theme and wished the main characters Ichigo and Rukia to be the focus of the story. On top of that he wanted to portray something that linked to the first chapter of Bleach, the original appearance of Bleach… For me, I was very happy to know that the movie was heading that direction and said “That’s good, let’s go with that!” And from there on I joined in the production and put together the story and the setting after discussing it with everyone.

You were watching the voicing from the start to the very end?

This was my first time to witness the voicing from the start to finish. I try not to speak much during the recording but when the director or the music director needed help I gave them advices. The brother’s voice actor, Kamiya-san had difficulty with the intonation so I did help him with that.

You are putting a lot of effort into it

I was also part of deciding the original character of the second movie, Kusaka Soujirou however with him there were too many cross-over with the original manga there were many restrictions. But compared to that in this year’s episode, because the story took place before Rukia met Renji the existence of the siblings gave me a stimulating inspiration. And because of that I wanted to know how these two would open up a story and I was at the voicing studio until they finished. I had fun watching them.

You went and watched the movie at the private screening but what sort of feelings do you have for that?

I had fun (laughs) because it is my work it feels completed but on the other hands it means that you can’t create something stronger than that. In some bits while I was drawing it made me think “Would this sort of situation really happen?” but even so I was the one who thought and came up with the plot so even if I am surprised it does not feel fresh. Even if the author like me is involved in the production the drawings are done by other people, the voicings are done by the seiyuus, so when the movie is completed I always savour the feeling of surprise. They move like this, their voices are like this, with emotional excitement I always say my feed backs and I am always looking forward to that.

Finally at last, got any message to the fans?

In this year’s movie the theme of “Back to the beginning” is shown in the movie. Compared to the other movies I believe this one is the one which has the closest link to the original work, and giving a link to the first chapter was not seen in the anime or the original manga and I think that is something very special. I think a fan that loves the original manga would love the work. I think I made a movie where even if you touched Bleach first by watching this movie you would end up wanting to read the original manga. Please enjoy it!

What is highlighted is the most important information for this topic. Kubo speaks very highly of this movie, and speaks on how he considers it to be the closest to his original work. This is very interesting because the first film is already canon, and although this one doesn't fit into the timeline, we'll later see what specifically is so close to the manga. He also explains how he was deeply involved from the start, and he listened to the voice recordings. This means he heard the statement and thought that was very close to his original work. Furthermore, he created the plot and oversaw the setting of this movie, so if he considers the setting of the movie very close to his manga, it should be taken as canon. Eventhough the events don't directly take place, they are a viable possibility that could've happened, and the information is accurate to his own manga.

Acknowledgements

Massive thanks to IMadeThisOn8-1-2017, Arc7Kuroi, Deceived, and Arcker. I used Imade's post on VSBW as a reference to find a lot of these pieces of information and scans, which I then found the page for and the colored version. Arc, Deceived, and Arcker were obviously there to help giving and polishing arguments too.

Citations

Here are all the sources for my pieces of evidence.