User blog comment:Godisme/San'ou/@comment-5331679-20120725204508

Fundamentally, compare Byakuya's fight/death to Kirge's fight/possibly-still-not-death.

I see Byakuya's death as Kubo sending a message that this arc is gritty and serious. He had to kill a major protagonist, and maybe doing it in such a senseless, abridged manner is also a bit of a shot back at all the times he's been criticized for never killing major protagonist and always having them make miraculous recoveries. It's crappy because doing so also involved tossing out all of Byakuya's other established abilities (not even a reference to the Hurtless Area?). I figured that since all four of the stolen Bankai had an established weakness that they'd factor in. Guess not.

There's also still the open issue from Chapter 490 where Kirge said that Uryu's Heilig Pfeil being weaker than his was impossible. Presumably Uryu is either holding back (or restricted) for some reason, or the Vandenreich assume he's the Last Quincy and don't know about Ryuken, in which case Ryuken must be an absolute killing machine if he's that much more powerful than Kirge.