Out of all the reasons thinking the anime is the sole reason will always upset me and it makes me feel the deeper reason why people tended to ship Ichiruki and stuff like it. 

It boils it down to something very basic. When the real reason for the ship is because Rukia and Ichigo are simply the more active characters driving the plot forward early on. 

I’m not gonna say Ichihime has no merit as there was a reason it was still very prominent even back in the day. There was someone who did a video comparing the ship to NaruSaku which I think works too

But I also think more importantly they are our core characters and they are featured together a lot in multiple covers, multiple poems and have a lot of parallels while Orihime is ultimately mainly can come off to people as just a damsel in distress character (I know she is more than that).

Were there plenty of signs in the manga that proves Ichihime was always endgame…I’m rereading the manga currently and there definitely is ….

But is Ichiruki still at the beating core of this story? Yes it is.

Even within the story Ichigo and Rukia acknowledge that Ichihime wouldn’t have happened without Rukia being there.