gin???

I'm... totally speechless. Gin not only had the intelligence to betray Aizen, but was actually not a total incompetent? I never liked Gin, and I don't know if I like him much right now, either, but what he did in 414 was awesome beyond a shadow of a doubt. I wouldn't call it "heroic" -- "conniving" would be the mot juste. He had intended to kill Aizen all along, and actually had the foresight to play along, just to discover Aizen's weakness. He played it really carefully. All Aizen could say after Gin stabbed him was, "I knew you wanted to kill me, but I wanted to see how you would go about it," or words to that effect. He was also deceived by what Gin told Ichigo about his Bankai. I won't go so far as to say Gin wants to defend the Soul Society. Aizen probably did something bad to him a long time ago, and Gin only wants revenge for personal reasons. Also, I'm kind of tired of watching Aizen come back to life over and over again, so I'm hoping he's dead -- for good -- before Ichigo arrives and finishes him off, and takes all the glory for it. It would be an extremely ignoble way for a villain to die, so I'm not counting on it happening. On the last page, Aizen is shown being literally torn apart. It would take more than a little Hoygyoku voodoo to fix that. Well, at least Gin isn't as superficial as I previously thought him. At least there's a more interesting facet to his personality. I would never have thought him capable of the necessary ratiocination to betray someone as impossibly intelligent as Aizen. Apparently fighting fire with fire is your best bet -- at least until we find out what happens next.

Oh, and on the July 26 IIT-JEE Paper II style test, I got the 30th rank out of some 400 people.