Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-44061-20130307153642/@comment-1387259-20130312143259

Will-O-Wisp wrote: I think it's safe to say Ichigo's Quincy powers had been asleep all his life, until he met Yhwach (how the **** do you pronounce that?!), because Ishida would've been able to identify him as a Quincy otherwise. Remember the red ribbon thing every Soul Reaper has? That's how Ishida recognized Ichigo was one. A Soul Reaper, not a Quincy. Ichigo definitely has Soul Reaper powers that were his own since he was born. They are the ones Byakuya failed to destroy when they first met - they are Zangetsu. How he can NOT be a Soul Reaper while he definitely has that eludes me. Well, Ichigo's case is rather unique itself. If it does really turn out he unwittingly used Quincy powers to shape a zanpakuto, I'll be very disappointed.

Wait, when did they start calling him Yhwach? I thought it was Juhabach.

Anyway, that's not the important part. It seems that both you and Fatdude could be right in your own ways. Ichigo definitely did seem to have Shinigami powers from the start, hence Zangetsu's very existence as a spirit. But the fact that Masaki was a Quincy also plays a part in it. That large sword he had in the beginning, which ended up being Zangetsu's sealed state, was most likely created by the power transfer from Rukia in the beginning. However, when Urahara was helping him regain the majority of his powers, something had to help turn that broken hilt into the permanent-Shikai Zangetsu we all are so familiar with. This is where, at least how I see it, his latent Quincy powers come into play. Creating a sword from nearly nothing would be almost impossible without some form of Reishi manipulation, controlled or not.