Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5218928-20140305213023/@comment-8986886-20140309154303

YoraeKaiser wrote: Now, if the modern Quincy managed to overcome imperfections of the Letzt Still and develop the Vollstandig, they would have developed immunity too, since as Kisuke points out, it would allow them to steal the Arrancars' Ressurrécion powers

Please try to refrain from speculation. It's much less of a hassle and you don't risk offending anyone that way. Obviously they didn't develop immunity, since they released the stolen Bankai, when exposed to Hollow energies.

YoraeKaiser wrote: Yeah ... no. Saigo no Getsuga Tensho is stated by make the wielder lose ALL his Shinigami powers. That's what Tensa Zangetsu itself said. So when Ichigo used it, he lost ALL of it, not just the "top layer" (or whatever that might be)

What I meant by “top layer”, was that Ichigo managed to awaken his Fullbring, without being infused with someone else’s power to do so. When Ginjo later stole Ichigo’s powers, he thought they were gone for good, but Rukia claimed that Ginjo only stole the “top layer”, or the part of Ichigo’s Shinigami powers that had merged with his Fullbring, and she used the Reishi sword as a catalyst, to recharge his powers. These events are similar to how he first awakened his powers, in Shattered Shaft. Ichigo had always had those powers, but wasn’t able to utilize them until then.

He did lose his powers, after using Saigo no Getsuga Tensho, in the sense that he couldn’t sense them, access them, or communicate with them anymore. When Ichigo first received the power transfer from Rukia, in chapter one, he took ALL of her Shinigami powers. Back in Soul Society, however, she eventually got them back. Another example is Uryu, who lost ALL of his Quincy powers after using Letzt Stil, but who later got them back with Souken’s help.

It makes sense that such powers can be depleted to the point where it takes a long time for them to recover, but at the same time they can’t be completely extinguished, because they’re part of the wielder’s Soul. In the case of the stolen Bankai, which turned out to be more of a high jacking really, once the Stern Ritter were forced to release their control of the Bankai, the captains were able to access them again.