Kubo's Character Chapter Covers

[http://users.livejournal.com/_debbiechan_/]

No manga chapters for the next two weeks. Golden Week is so hard. In Japan, people celebrate. The rest of the world.... doesn't.

I'm jonesing already for more chibi!shinigami or backstory glimpses of favorite characters. Kubo's already given me two faves, Shinji and Gin, so maybe he'll grant another wish and show  baby Rukia and have Urahara explain why he put the hougyoku in her!

Rukia sure is a mystery.  syneiam  posted an entry in her private LJ today that contained some interesting observations about Kubo's character chapter covers and how Rukia was singled out from a pattern of those covers.  She gave me permission to re-post some of it here. Clicky on thumbnails to enlarge.

( Syn's observations on Kubo's Character Chapter Covers )

Black and white, yin and yang--the word "bleach" has never seemed a better title for the manga somedays. The current chapters seem to be stirring up all sorts of disturbing moral gray, but something tells me that Urahara is still the good guy and Aizen is still the baddie and Kubo is still the sadistic teasing manga-ka he's always been.

*headdesk*  Why is Rukia's name in her chapter cover in black and white font? Is it just because of Sode no Shirayuki and Kubo thought it would look cool to have the white lettering? Ever since Kubo drew the title of "To Close Your World" chapter in the shape of a key, I've been paying extra attention to his lettering.  He wants us to play along, so I play along.

Time and storytelling is decimal - or not?

[grass-angel.livejournal.com]

Firstly, I don't suppose anyone here can recall if any of the omake chapters are numbered 0.#? (Except for 0.8, but I'm getting to that.)

Due to recent negatively numbered chapters which take place approximately a hundred years before the present storyline occurs, I was looking at all the other minus/decimal chapters and observed they're all, more or less, in sequence.
There's 'The Sand, The Rotator' which are 0a and 0b and take place right before chapter 1, Hitsugaya's birthday omake which is -12.5, -15 with how Hitsugaya was motivated to join the Gotei 13, -17 is the academy flashback chapter and 88.5 which is with Don Kan'nonji in Karakura while Ichigo is off trying to get into Seiretei.

Then there's under-appreciated 0.8 which tells us that Mizuiro and Keigo are smarter than their comic relief rolls and that Mizuiro has issues with his mother. This chapter takes place at the beginning of the school year, which is around April in Japan, about a month or two so before Bleach 'starts'. (There is a pretty comprehensive timeline starting from Rukia's kidnapping here, but does not include an approximate date of series start or any of the events prior to her kidnapping.)
However, for those of you who forgot about integers and decimals, 0.8 is more than 0 but less than 1. -0.8 on the other hand, is less than 0, but more than -1.
However, I've checked the panel and page in-chapter with the chapter number scrawled all across it (because Kubo and many other manga-ka are crazy and like to tell you twice which chapter you're reading) and there is no half hidden minus sign. Which means, unless there's some crazy time travelling happening, someone's made a mistake.

Now, 0.8 was rather early as far as pre-Bleach chapters go, having been included in volume 12, so it may have been a case than Kubo was planning on having all the minus chapters be 0.### but then realised decimals are tricky things (like 0.14 is less than 0.146) or that they weren't less than 0 and switched to minuses instead. 
But an interesting inconsistency isn't it?

(Now feel free to present interesting time-travel ideas as to why this chapter is out of numbering sequence or other omake chapters that I haven't mentioned that were numbered with decimals as opposed to integers.)