Momo Hinamori  

, 雛森 桃

Hinamori is an upbeat and easygoing girl who gets along with nearly everyone she meets. Hinamori is generally quite trusting, but also very impulsive and naïve. She greatly admires her former captain, Sōsuke Aizen, whom she became a shinigami just to serve under, and Hinamori refuses believing that Aizen intentionally betrayed Soul Society. Her appearance is fairly ordinary compared to other shinigami in Soul Society. She wears her hair up in a bun with a cloth wrapped around it. According to Tite Kubo, Hinamoris name was changed at the last minute; she had a completely different name in the sketch stage. Hinamori grew up in Junrinan, District 1 of Rukongai, along with Tōshirō Hitsugaya. While Hitsugaya tended to be a bit of a brat as a child and insisted that he would protect her, Hinamori found him amusing and treated him in an older sisterly fashion, and the two became close friends, with Hinamori giving him the nickname Shiro-chan (little Shiro in English Anime). When Hinamori entered the shinigami academy, she excelled at kidō. It was there that she met Kira and Renji, who soon became her friends and, later, her fellow lieutenants. They were placed in the 5th Division of the Gotei 13 under Captain Aizen and his lieutenant, Gin Ichimaru. While Kira and Renji would later leave to other Divisions, Hinamori remained in the 5th Division and became the divisions lieutenant (through much hard work, as noted by Hitsugaya). Hinamoris zanpakutō is Tobiume (飛梅, lit. flying plum tree). The command for its shikai is "snap" (弾け, hajike?). [Her zanpakuto is a kido type] Its Shi-kai form is like a rod with branches