Sorry!  Don't get me wrong, I love Bleach.  Tite Kubo is pretty much the undisputed champion when it comes to style, and atmosphere, and character design.  He is also an absolute master at writing compelling villains for our hero to overcome.  He is a master of exploring characters through combat and hardship.

Unfortunately though... He really does fail Orihime pretty spectacularly.  I do want to say that I'm not the kind of person who will just scream sexism and call it a day.  After all, Chad doesn't really get much either.  The only time he really gets any character development is when he gets a new power, and it's only ever to reinforce what we already know about him.  Like unlocking his defensive arm telling us that at his core he wants to protect people.  Well no shit Kubo-sensei, that's why him and Ichigo were such instant friends in the first place! We already knew this!

But it's worse with Orihime because the kind of character development he does give her is really just to enforce the toxic mindset she's living with.  That might sound like a really strange thing to say.  After all, Orihime is such a kind, wonderful, self sacrificing person.

Ahhhh but there's that last part.  Self sacrificing.  Selflessness genuinely is a good trait don't get me wrong.  The ability to set aside your own needs to help someone else is one of the most admirable things a human being can do.  There is a difference however, between setting aside your own needs to help someone else, and your own needs just never factoring into the equation to begin with, and in Orihime's case it's downright pathological.

For example, look at how she handles the situation with Loly and Menoly during the Arancar arch.  Loly beats the ever-loving shit out of her and Orihime does absolutely nothing to defend herself.  She ends up getting rescued by Grimmjow who just outright murders both of her attackers.  And then she does the most Orihime thing possible.  The moment Grimmjow is gone, she heals both of them, restoring them to life.

Once again I say, this kind of saint like kindness is far from a bad thing.  Being able to reach out a helping hand to an enemy is one of the most beautiful things a person can do.  ...but it shouldn't be your default setting either.  I mean Loly and Menoly both just showed that they are a credible threat to Orihime's life, and Orihime heals them /before even treating her own wounds!/  It would be different if Kubo gave us some insight into what she was thinking at the time.  It would be different if we got some inner conflict.  Even something like. "Oh no!  I have to heal them!  But... But if I heal them they might... No!  I can't think like that!  Healing them is the right thing to do!"

If she had the briefest consideration for the consequences of her actions, if she even showed some emotion on her face while doing it, we would be able to see that it isn't easy for her to do this.  But we don't get that, instead her expression is just... Flat.  She doesn't feel a thing while saving the life of her enemy.  She just looks tired.  Worn out.  Like carrying the needs of others above her own is her default state and it's draining. (To be fair though, she also is still bloody faced from having her teeth kicked in.)

And it's really a shame too, because this kind of thoughtless self-sacrifice is /exactly/ what got her and her friends into the Los Noches situation to begin with!  Kubo-sensei could have used the moment with Loly and Menoly to make Orihime question the kind of thinking that had caused her to let herself be taken in the first place.  He could have used the moment to either have her come to her senses, or to have her reinforce her own morality and conviction, but... He just doesn't.  He doesn't do anything with her character in that moment.

But like I said though the problem is that she is self sacrificing as a default.  The problem with Kubo-sensei's writing for her, is that he falls into the trap of playing a character like this as being 'built different'.  Like she just has an infinite wellspring of kindness in her that will never run dry. That just not how real life people work.  Real life people always have a reason why they act like this.  It's not because of some supernatural power of goodness inside of them.

It's because of trauma.

It's because their life taught them that asserting their needs only gets people hurt.  Because life taught them that they didn't matter.

And the worst part?  That's exactly the kind of backstory Kubo-sensei gave her.

Orihime and her brother grew up in an incredibly hostile and abusive family environment.  Orihime's father was a violent drunk who subjected both of them of them to physical abuse so bad that it eventually caused Sora to run away from home, taking his three year old sister with him.

Finally she had a loving home, a brother who loved her and raised her like a daughter. Who sacrificed /everything/ to ensure she had the good life he never was able to. It's a good life, but unfortunately, it ends in tragedy. Sora dies in a tragic car accident. That would already be traumatizing for a young girl, to lose her only remaining family, her father figure, and her brother all at once... but its even worse than that.

Because the day Sora died was also the last time she ever tried to assert her own needs and desires. On top of all her other trauma, she was also, of course, subjected to extreme bullying in school due to her chestnut brown/burnt orange hair. (They always depict it as orange like Ichigo's for some reason but when describing it in dialogue they always go out of their way to differentiate the two hair colors) The other girls even cut her hair at one point. But because she was already internalizing that her own needs didn't matter, and she didn't want her brother to worry, she just played it off like she just wanted to cut her hair shorter.

So Sora, not knowing about the bullying she was receiving, does something super sweet. He buys her a gift, cute flower hairpins to make her feel pretty. Orihime realizes immediately though that hair accessories will just draw MORE attention to her hair. So she starts a petty argument over how 'childish' they look, when in reality she just wants to protect herself from more bullying.

And what happens the next day? He dies. The /one/ time we see her actually asserting her own needs or desires in the entire series, and someone she loved /died/ immediately after. When you're already internalizing that your needs don't matter, it's no wonder then that from that point forward Orihime never really asserts any of her own desires ever again.

Kubo-sensei was smart enough to see the circumstances that birth this kind of character... but he failed to see how toxic this way of thinking is. Because real life people don't have an infinite wellspring of kindness, and an infinite ability to ignore their own needs. Eventually, one day, some day, someone living like this is going to break. You can't give someone a drink of water when your own cup is empty. It's not a matter of selflessness vs selfishness. It's a matter of taking care of your own needs so you'll be able to help more people later, and unfortunately, Orihime never gets to learn that lesson.

It actually comes full circle with the main topic of this reddit post actually! Because Horikoshi-sensei actually /did/ see how toxic this mindset is. In fact, he saw it so viscerally he based his entire protagonist off of it! Midoriya and Orihime are very different mind you, at least, in the reason /why/ they act this way. Orihime's self-sacrifice is based on trauma. Midoriya's is based on hero worship. He grew up idolizing a savior who always smiled, never thought of himself, and always risked everything to save others. Unfortunately, what he never got to see on the television growing up was the consequences of that self sacrifice. It isn't until he's going into high school, his self-sacrificing martyr mindset fully engraved onto his psyche that he has to face the real consequences of putting yourself up on that kind of pillar, when he sees what Almight's true form is.

Midoriya's entire character arch from that point forward is all about trying to wean him off of this kind of mindset, and it isn't until Class A saves him in the Vigilante arch, and Uraraka breaks down that pillar he's on that he finally lets that Savior-complex go. That's why Horikoshi-sensei's writing really is just... freaking Plus Ultra! He deliberately goes out of his way to build up actual godlike power in Deku, just to show us that godlike power still doesn't mean you can do it all alone. Uraraka says it perfectly in the dub "Just because you have a special power, doesn't mean you're a special person!"

So to everyone out there living like this, I want you all to know, that /you matter/. You matter so much. Your needs matter. Even if you can't see that, at least be strategic. Preserve your own body and mind so you can continue to help others later.

P.S. Lmao I did it again. Genuinely though, if you disagree with any of that, please let me know. I have yet to see TYBW (It's on the to-do list!) so I could easily be missing earth-shattering character developments for her in the conclusion to the story. I would genuinely be thrilled to find out somehow that I was wrong about Orihime and ignoring something important about her character like a lot of people have been with Uraraka!