Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27458826-20180127131846/@comment-27565137-20180329232556

Ichigo is no Vizard and to believe in that is to believe in something that simply isn't true. Vizards were shinigami which were forced to undergo hollowfication. So their shinigami and hollow souls are separate. While with Ichigo, Zangetsu is both Shinigami and Hollow. The main proof of this was that Ichigo hollow form evolved and even his dominion over his mask (when he still needed one) eventually surpassed that of all of the Vizards. I mean most had one hundred years to perfect their hollowfication but still they could only sustain their masks for mere minutes, like Love and Rose. Ichigo however went from a few seconds to being able to keep his mask during a entire fight, to having no limit on the time he used it. At least until his new hollow form was revealed. Once that happened Ichigo hollowfication once again went haywire. But later on we learn through Young boy Yuha that not only did his Quincy side prevent Ichigo from becoming a permanent hollow but that his hollowfication began to go haywire really because Ichigo was subconsciously afraid of his own power and of turning back into his hollow form.

Also Ichigo is not a Vasto Lorde or whatever anyone wants to call it. Not a Vasto Lorde and not a Vizard. A Vasto Lorde could not possess a Zanpakutou! And when Ichigo went full Hollow on Ulquiorra, his Zanpakutou didn't disappeared, did it? That because Ichigo was something else. Ichigo form when he fought Ulquiorra was more like a updated form of White, seeing Ichigo hollow and shinigami power were one and the same. Forever united in Zangetsu. Ichigo in some ways he was more like Tōsen when he revealed his hollow power. Tōsen was the closest thing to a perfect hybrid using his full potential. Almost everything Tōsen did Ichigo should've been able to do the moment the truth about Zangetsu was revealed. So if anything Ichigo powers, hell even his sword was more like the one of a Arrancar than a Vizard. So if you want to call Ichigo something, call him a something in between Vizard and Arrancar.

And we know Ichigo never actually learned anything from Zangetsu and his Quincy side, really because the simplest things were out of his control. When Yuha tried to pierce Ichigo through his neck what prevented it was Ichigo's power of Blut Vene. Something Ichigo had no control over. Before and after he found the truth. There were several instances where we were shown that what we thought was true was in fact false. Zaraki zanpakutou being a full time released sword when it wasn't. Yuha said that Ichigo's Quincy powers only awoke when he was trapped inside the Garganta, but that was 100% false. We know that when Old Man says that up until that moment he had been Ichigo's main power source while mostly suppressing Zangetsu. We also learn that Old Man saved Ichigo in his fight with Zaraki by using Quincy Shadow on him. So Yuha was dead wrong about when Ichigo's Quincy powers awoke. There was a lot of things that were contradicted in the last arc.

And yes. Every shinigami Zanpakutou has a special ability. Zaraki sword Nozarashi had the ability to cut through anything. Zaraki even said so quite clearly. Ikkaku Zanpakutou also has a special ability that was only revealed in its bankai state. When he starts spinning his dual bkades and the dragon symbol starts to fill, Ikkaku said that as the dragon symbol became red his attack power would continuously increase. So that's also a special ability. What you all can say is that not all Zanpakutous have a flashy ability like Yamamoto, Hitsugaya and other Zanpakutous that had elemental or Kidou based powers. For example Izuru Kira zanpakutou Wabisuke, power was of increasing the weight of everything it touched. Get hit one time the weight doubles, gets hit again and the weight again doubles, and so on and so on, until it became so heavy his opponent couldn't lift his or her own weapon.

And if there is any doubts about Ichigo secret ability that we never got to see all you got to do is remember what Askin Nakk Le Vaar said about the list of the special war potentials. They were five and all were in it for a good reason. Zaraki was in it because of his unparalleled fighting skills. Aizen was in it because of massive Reiatsu. Urahara was in it because of his intelligence and ability to predict almost every possible scenario. Ichibei was in it because of his wisdom, and Ichigo was in it because of his latent ability. Latent ability that kept being unknown even with the novel You Can't Fear Your Own World.

So Ichigo even in that department he was lacking. After all an ability could've turned the tie when Yuha began using the Almighty. Obviously it would need to be something better than Uryuu Antithesis ability. But Ichigo never showed anything like that when he could have. Even if it was something White related. The White was created to study hollow evolution, and it had the ability to infect other people with hollowfication if it sensed the potential of that person to allow for further evolution. That's why White once he noticed Masaki he completely forgot about Isshin. Also the White showed the ability to completely fuse and assimilate Ichigo's shinigami power he had inherited from his father. So Ichigo's special ability could've been something along those lines. The ability to assimilate the power of his opponents and add them ti his own. That way Ichigo would have had the similar abilities to those he had fought in the past and he could even assimilate Yuha's Almighty power and use it against Yuha. But as it was Ichigo showed nothing at all.

As for Ichigo's bankai I always believed that it was a evolution of the Final Getsuga Tenshou form. And that it would've been eventually revealed that the real reason why Ichigo lost his powers using the Final Getsuga Tenshou was because A) His Quincy power was still in charge B) Because Ichigo didn't had a real Zanpakutou going into his real bankai simply overwhelmed Ichigo's body and made his power hide deep inside Ichigo in order to protect him C) Also the so called Final Getsuga Tenshou had many similarities with the Quincy Letzt Stil. All important things that we never got any answers.

That's why to me Bleach will go down as the Anime/Manga in which I wasted more time and got almost nothing in return, despite its huge potential.