Summary
The following contains spoilers forBLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, available onHuluandDisney+.
While his lackadaisical attitude reflects some level of disinterest in the war (or anything too strenuous, really), Askin Nakk Le Vaar has been one of the more active Sternritters inBLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War.Despite his constant appearances, we haven’t seen him fight just yet because he is very serious about preserving his own life, which makes sense given the nature of his ability.
Assigned the Schrift D by His MajestyYhwach, Nakk Le Vaar has one of the most devastating abilities of all Quincies, and it is for the sheer potency of the ability that he was the only Quincy selected from the battlefield to accompany Yhwach to the Soul King’s Palace. So, what exactly are the abilities granted to Sternritter D – The Death Dealing, Askin Nakk Le Vaar?
RELATED:BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 2 — PePe Waccabrada’s Schrift, Explained
Chill, Bro
Characterized by his laid-back and eccentric approach, Nakk Le Vaar admittedly hates dealing with intricacy and will often avoid situations that seem like a lot of work. He’s also the type to enjoy a picnic on a battlefield. When he and Haschwalth infiltrated the 12th Squad barracks, Nakk Le Vaar explainedhow the Quincies managed to stay in hidingover the past 1000 years, but he removed himself from the picture when Mayuri Kurotsuchi arrived wearing his suit of light because he didn’t want to risk fighting one of the most formidable Captains of the Gotei 13.
He’s also the kind of person who relies on trickery to lure his opponents into traps. In the most recent episode, “Too Early to Win, Too Late to Know”, Nakk Le Vaar’s instincts enable him to narrowly avoid the full impact of a fatal slash from Oh-Etsu Nimaiya armed with the sharpest blade in existence. His big plan was to play dead, but Oh-Etsu was well aware of the tactic and slashed him again. Knowing Nakk Le Vaar, this second blow also could not have been fatal. In many ways, Nakk Le Vaar’s personality is reminiscent of Captain Commander Kyōraku, who also hates being too serious and tries tobring some levity to a situation.
LD50
The Schrift assigned to Nakk Le Vaar is D – The Death Dealing, and its ability enables him to calculate and manipulate the perfect lethal dose of any substance that he takes into his own body. “Lethal dose” is a term used in toxicology to describe the lethal toxicity of a given substance. Due to the variation from individual to individual, the lethal dose is specifically how much of a given substance it would take to kill a certain percentage of a given population. The dose itself is given in terms of dose per kilogram of the subject’s body weight and is most commonly calculated in the context of how much of a substance can kill 50% of the subjects in a population within a certain timeframe, which is known as the “Median Lethal Dose”, shortened to LD50.
The lower the lethal dose, the greater the toxicity of the substance and the “Lowest Lethal Dose” describes the lowest possible dose of a given substance capable of bringing about death to a certain subject under controlled conditions. The concept is far more complicated in reality, and sometimes, a given substance is specialized to be toxic towards a particular group as seen with snake venom that has adapted to be especially lethal towards mice,or Bankai temporarily imbued with Hollow reiatsuso that they become unusable for the Quincies who stole them. Anyway, Nakk Le Vaar’s ability is especially terrifying as he is able to manipulate the lethal dose of substances that occur naturally within a given subject (like blood, for example), making it almost impossible to escape.
I Am Become Death
Other abilities related to the Death Dealing include swift acquisition of immunity, which means that Nakk Le Vaar can quickly become impervious to various kinds of techniques and even physical attacks. This is due to his ability to analyze reishi as it comes into contact with him – which is how he could feasibly have survived the fatal attacks inflicted upon him by Oh-Etsu. He is also able to manipulate his own susceptibility to a given substance, so he can become more resistant to a chosen substance. The Death Dealing is a particularly terrifying ability in Nakk Le Vaar’s hands because he’svery intelligent and cunning, capable of accurately assessing the weight and amount of blood within a given subject at a glance, and he’s also highly inventive in pressing moments. It’s possible that the ability grants him a unique perception of death, which means, for lack of a better way of saying this, his Spidey Senses tingle much faster than other people.
In the manga, when Yhwach and Uryū ascend through the hole in the Shakonmaku, the gun-toting Quincy Robert Accutrone completely loses composure as he realizes that he is part of the soldiers left behind by His Majesty – meaning that he will soon steal their abilities through the Auswählen. Prior to their departure, Nakk Le Vaar calmly but solemnly ponders the possibility of his selection – a completely different reaction to the same impending doom. His expertise in pharmacology, high intelligence and combat IQ and Death Dealing ability make Askin Nakk Le Vaar one of the most formidable Quincies, buthis Quincy: Vollständig, Hasshein, yet to be revealed in the anime, takes the Schrift ability to a whole other level. He gains the ability to adapt to changes in the composition of a target substance, meaning that if the opponent gains immunity by altering the substance, Nakk Le Vaar can adapt immediately if the base of the substance remains the same.
