Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5218928-20140305213023/@comment-5398287-20140306220618

YoraeKaiser wrote: Kubo had fully-developed Renji as a character as far back as the Soul Society arc -- We've already seen his shikai, we know all his reasons for fighting and we saw his bankai. Compare to other characters who were introduced in the Soul Society arc and we STILL haven't even seen what their shikai looks like (until last episode, it was Yachiru [the kid] who held this 'honor'), let alone bankai. Renji suddenly discovering that his bankai wasn't "a true bankai" is a cop-out to me, because this allowed Kubo a chance to redevelop Renji's bankai/superpower and make him more awesome/appealing to the audience: it'd be the same as Kubo revealing in future episodes that Daiguren Hyorinmaru or Jakuho Raikohben aren't true bankais, either.

Sure, he has complete freedom to design his characters however he wants and if it makes the story cooler, more power to him ... but when he bypasses the in-universe rules that he himself established? That's a cop-out, d00d.

I still like the story, anyway. :P See, I'd maybe agree with you here if it weren't for one thing: Ichibei's explanation of why Zabimaru didn't grant Renji its full Bankai actually does make sense. See, Renji initially achieved his Bankai to save Rukia, right? Well, once that whole ordeal was over, he never really tried to develop it further. There's also the whole matter of when he was using his Bankai; as Byakuya noted, a Shinigami shouldn't use their Bankai in battle until they've really trained and mastered it, which Renji hadn't done at the time. Now, if any of those things were not true, then I'd agree about Kubo copping us out, but in this case it seems, well, retrospectively logical.

And that's not even getting into the strangeness of Renji's Bankai in comparison to his Shikai. Sure, it still had segments and stuff, but segmented sword doesn't exactly seem like a logical transition to a huge bone snake. On top of that, it was more about crushing and blasting his enemies than cutting and overwhelming them like his Shikai did, whereas Souou Zabimaru is much more close-range, has an actual melee weapon (two of them in fact), and possesses a "special" attack that still makes more sense than a huge snake Kamehameha.