Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-44061-20130307153642/@comment-4822693-20130308210537

Salubri wrote: ...Ichigo is now shown on one level or another to be some sort of Mimic or Copycat. What I mean by that is he has the powers but not the true nature.

It would seem far fetched but its the only thing that can explain the huge amount of instances where Ichigo has basically attained ever canon races core abilities. Now if there is another explanation I can concede to that just throwing the concept out there.

I love this idea, but I think I have another possible explanation: ability creation. If Ichigo has the ability to create spiritual techniques/abilities/powers then he would seem to be just a copy cat. He could create "fake powers" that would seem to be imperfect copies, however instead of simply absorbing another power and making it his own he would really be recreating the power. That is why his powers would be imperfect; he hasn't yet realized his own power. Since he is doing all this subconsciously he would be unable to perfectly replicate other' people's powers. I think that this is a more likely explanation, because it would make Ichigo's power complementary and opposite Orihime's. Orihime has the ability to reject/destroy things. Ichigo would have the ability to accept/create things. Orihime can use her powers to form a barrier against a technique, or return the victim to its original state afterwords. Ichigo would instead create a copy of the technique to beat it, or create a copy of an opposite technique in order to neutralize it.

The only way in which my explanation would be different than Salubri's would be that once Ichigo learns the full extent of his powers he would be able to create new techniques that weren't quincy or shinigami or hollow techniques. They would be original and unique only to him.

I also thought of another example of Ichigo copying (or if I'm right recreating) a technique. Remember how he learned flash step? He basically saw Byakuya use it, and then he later spontaneously "learned" flash step during his bankai training.