Ichigo, After Having Only His Human Friends To Rely On In A Tough Situation:

Ichigo, after having only his human friends to rely on in a tough situation:

Ichigo, after relying on a human friend again and a tough situation:

Just...time and again whenever Ichigo trusts his human group of friends it turns out bad. The narrative ultimately punishes him for it by handing him not just brutal defeat, but some kind of deep physical, psychological and spritual wound.

And every time the human group doesn't get to "redeem" themselves by coming in clutch and helping him turn it around.

Someone else always swoops in and gives Ichigo the key to getting back up, getting his power back, and end up being the ones fighting alongside him as he crosses the victory line.

It's no happenstance that when Ichigo does this:

It's after he leaves behind all his human friends.

A shinigami and a quincy are the ones fighting with him and the ones whose strength he relies on, and with them he wins.

It's also very telling his human friends are never invited by Ichigo to join him. They follow and he allows it, but he never goes to them first and asks them for help, never chooses to have them accompany him when they do come, and each time he is forced by circumstances to rely on them he aggressively does his own thing as much as he can despite them, so he never gets any benefit from them being there anyway.

Why write the story like this if you want him to end up in the human world unless it's to show that that ending isn't a victory for Ichigo but a new, inescapable low?