system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Bleach] Why do the Shinigamis have a giant army organized into 13 divisions if their only jobs are to send souls to soul society and defeat hollows?
gpt
There are a quarter of a million cities in the world, each city is assigned a soul reaper from what we can tell, not to mention various expanses of wilderness that would still be wise to have someone watching over-- that amounts to quite a large standing army just by itself.

But then you have to factor in populating the Seireitei with a standing defence force. Even if you don't expect a massive attack, you might have an intruder trying to steal secrets, and you don't want that to be easy.

Now, you also have to think about this. You have all these super powerful soul reapers, with innately powerful levels of spiritual energy. Basically anyone who is a third seat or higher could cause some amount of trouble *if they aren't part of your military*. The reason to have so many squads is so that there isn't competition between the incredibly powerful soul reapers for ranked positions during the times that there isn't a suddenly powerful enemy.