User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 575 - THE KILLERS HIGH/@comment-24153155-20140404002617/@comment-24153155-20140407213937

Kenpachi brain science... I love Marvel Comics, but I personally feel they really can't compare to Bleach and some other manga I like to read (no, not even Marvel Comic's Silver Samurai). Intelligence often is a measure of how much ahead a person is mentally, as compared to this person's actual age. As for now, I expect Yachiru to be childish as she is a child, but for a Gotei 13 Captain, Kenpachi certainly doesn't seem to be a Shinigami-Einstein (but he is by no means a Wonderweiss-prototype). Kenpachi seems to operate from a reptile brain perspective in a sense that he seems to be in a constant survival mode ever since his Rukongai days, and he displays various ways showing that he is "dangerous" (lifting his eye patch or when he told Ichigo to cut him anywhere on his body back in the SS Arc). The survival mode is further seen in any of his battles thus far: he strikes before assessing the enemy/situation. Despite all this, he seems to be some sort of Ronin (masterless samurai) and wanders around in a rather restless state: upon meeting Ichigo for the first time, Kenpachi kinda ran around fighting for "fun" without any real technique or true resolve due to failure of finding a combat equal (except for Unohana and Ichigo) to really make him stronger. All resulting in Kenpachi putting limits on himself. Ichigo made him aware that he is not in sync with his zanpakuto. It wasn't helping very much either that he was using the Kenpachi title without inheriting the title (in a sense one can even argue if he possessed a zanpakuto before the last fight with Unohana, due to that he didn't know the name and that he kinda plucked the zanpakuto off a Shinigami he killed). All this relates to Kenpachi being weak, despite being physically (!) strong, he is spiritually (soul) weak. His inability to strategize is an example of that. No matter how futile one's opponent, if the body-mind thing is not on good terms a Shinigami won't grow in overall strength (and could possibly lose a battle- Ichigo has proven this several times when his resolve was unclear due to depressions). This is part of Neo-Confucianism (there are several aspects in Bleach based on this, i.e Jinzen, knowing the name of your zanpakuto), whereas the zanpakuto/katana is part of the Samurai code. Kubo rocks for his character development as well as his ability to weave so much culture and history into Bleach. Let's hope that Unohana's death was not in vain and that Kenpachi was able to stop wandering =)