Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27565137-20160320034902/@comment-27565137-20160328223749

I believe it was the Hougyoku that fueled the Arrancars evolution further because as seen in Nnoitra flashback when he almost killed Nel. He at the time was the 8th Espada, and even to defeat Nel he needed help.

Later on we see that he went from being rank 8 to rank 5. Not only that we saw that there were a third class of Arrancars. The privation Espada. Or to be more accurate. Former Espada that for whatever reason lost their ranks.

And remember what Aizen said about the Hougyoku. It can only grant the being it connects to, the power that being has in itself the potential to achieve. The Hougyoku basically can't simply give power out of thin air. The user or subject has to have the potential within himself to reach the power he or she desires.

Another clue to this was Wonderweiss. Aizen manipulated his Arrancar transformation, so he would sacrifice everything to achieve a great form of raw power. Even his sanity was sacrificed. Not willingly but because Aizen made it so.

We can then look at all the data and arrive at the most logical conclusion. That Aizen used the Hougyoku to enhance to their fullest potential, all the Arrancars under his command. With perhaps the exception of Starrk. He didn't needed to become more powerful. By his standards, he was already too powerful for his own liking. And things like Ulquiorra segunda etapa, were just byproducts of the use of the Hougyoku.

Aizen clearly used the Arrancars as ginny pigs, to fully understand the range of the Hougyoku power. Also why would Ulquiorra refer to the sacrifice others made in order to become more powerful, if that wasn't an important fact about the Hougyoku itself? Also as some of the Arrancars liked to point out, some had aspects that made them better than the others. Ulquiorra praised his unique decision to keep his healing abilities. Nnoitra praised the fact that of all the Espadas he possessed the strongest hierro. The 7th Espada claimed to be the fastest of all the Arrancars. And so on...

Maybe some Espadas were already Arrancars before Aizen arrived. Like Nel, Nnoitra Ulquiorra and Starrk. We know Barragan wasn't, and Harribel also wasn't. But that's kinda besides the point. The point is that some Arrancars were able to evolve while others were not. Like the one that fought Ichigo and kept calling him Nino (kid). That was a former Espada. He believed that if he defeated Ichigo, Aizen would take him back and reinstate him into the Espadas. Mostly because maybe he believed Aizen had chosen to keep some Arrancars from evolving when in fact Aizen had little choice in the matter. If the Hougyoku found no potential for evolution then it couldn't evolve that Arrancar any further, and most likely Aizen knew that but the Arrancars themselves didn't.

Either way. That's why I see things as I see them.