Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4976518-20140808063123/@comment-5898946-20200518032114

Timjer wrote: SIGH I'm getting tired of this discussion. There is no proof at all Aizen does not have Bankai. It's like saying "Ukitake has no Bankai becasue we never saw him use it".

See, there are so many reasons Aizen chose to never use it. It could be simply way to impractical, dangerous, and/or inefficient to use. It could be unsuited for direct combat. It could be that merely activating it removes the Hypnosis of his (extremely useful) Shikai.

Who knows? But as was clearly stated, Kenpachi Zaraki was the ONLY Shinigami to ever become captain without a Bankai. And even that does not count anymore.

Just playing devil's advocate here (I personally believe Aizen DOES have a Bankai), but there are two issues I'd like to bring up to argue that Aizen MAY not have one. I'll raise the stronger argument first.

1. Aizen's zanpakuto, Kyouka Suigetsu, grants perfect hypnosis to any who see its Shikai release. It's entirely possible that, during his exam to become a Captain of the Gotei 13, when asked to demonstrate his Bankai, all he did was invoke that hypnosis to make those around him believe that they were seeing a Bankai. Remember, he had lied to everyone and told them that his blade had an elemental effect (I believe it was either fire or water, it's been a while), so it would be a simple matter to just make those present experience the effects of a powerful elemental burst in line with the false Shikai he had fabricated.

2. If I'm not mistaken, the line we have "Kenpachi Zaraki is the only Captain ever to not have a Bankai" is a line WITHIN the series, meaning that it's true only from knowledge that the characters within the series itself have, it's NOT counting meta knowledge that Tite Kubo has. Therefore, this knowledge is NOT 100% foolproof. Knowledge taken from within a medium can be mistaken if it's taken from a character's words, because said character can be fooled or misled (see #1).

Again, I personally believe that Aizen is too powerful, too skilled, and too intelligent of an individual to not have unlocked his Bankai, this is just me raising issues that could conceivably be addressed.