Board Thread:New on Bleach Wiki/@comment-957629-20151213135550/@comment-24769684-20151214003351

I honestly don't really know if Byakuya dying would have been good for the series or not. On one hand, it would certainly motivate Ichigo a lot, but then again Yamamoto also died in that fight and that did quite a bit for our characters, even if Ichigo never knew the guy like he did Byakuya.

I'm not really sure how Byakuya went out of character besides the stupid use of Bankai. As Xil pointed out, Byakuya illustrated very well that he had conditioned himself to the point where he could acknowledge and resist fear. However, As Nodt's abilities went far beyond that and triggered a bodily reaction as opposed to a mental reaction.

Then there was Byakuya pleading Ichigo to help, which I thought was incredible character development. You may like him, but the truth is, other than his moments with Hisana and Rukia, Byakuya is kind of a prick. He is overflowing with pride and it borders into overconfidence; excessive pride is not something you should encourage. Yes, Bleach characters are not child role models, but for Byakuya to acknowledge that he's been beaten and beg a human for help because he acknowledges that the human can succeed where he failed was a great moment for the plot and his personality.

Now, regardless of whether or not Kubo originally intended it Byakuya is without a doubt alive, which has led to interesting paths for him. For the most part, after recuperating, Byakuya is mostly back to his old self (Pepe aside). It will be interesting to see how he deals with his pride during the tag-team fight with Gerard, if it is brought up, which I hope Kubo does.