User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 604 - REVITALIZE/@comment-24153155-20141106205952/@comment-24153155-20141107122837

@ Michael S. Sandwich and Bcb3: Thx for your awesome responses!

I have a slightly more Asian take on things. I think that what is at the core of Bleach is the heart or soul. I consider them interchangeable, but with the difference that with humans you would most likely talk about the heart, and souls up in Soul Society could be considered "bare hearts". Hollows are complete opposite to souls (also previously stated by Urahara to Ryuken and Isshin in the Masaki matter), and instead of a heart/soul, they have just the "backbone" left: their mask. The similarity in both the heart/soul and the mask is that they are inert. Without a catalyst of some kind they are not powerful at all. Some humans may have a good idea of what their heart is, they may be open to receive potential power and thus upon meeting a catalyst, such as Ichigo, they obtain the potential to develop their powers. What makes powerful souls different from regular souls, is that the former has the ability to act upon their own heart(yes, their ability is strongly related to what their heart is made of), the stronger this connection, the more powerful they become (shikai, bankai etc). This is something completely in line with Asian (Japanese) philosophy. Duels are some sort of fights of the heart (this is also why the Unohana-Kenpachi duel was awesome, and I guess why fights in Bleach/manga are so chatty to begin with). I feel there is a distinct difference between Sternritter and anyone else that developed a power of their own: they seem to have a troubled/desperate heart (as given in the few histories of fallen Sternritter). What if Yhwach just selected these people and gave them a Schrift based on that, plus the potential power? I found it kinda interesting that most powers seemed to be based on typical brain processes, such as fear and love. Hollows are entirely different: without a heart they somehow seem to be able to become more powerful by just eating heaps of souls or other hollow. I guess they do that out of instinct. Fullbringers might be those that have lost a piece of their heart due to Hollow intervention.

The catalyst thing might be that what transcends the various dimensions, and for elite Sternritter to gain access to this, they need to have a higher concentration of potential power.