Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4115054-20140903063305/@comment-26329270-20150420075446

Tenevhrael wrote:

I always took this as Aizen being arrogant and believing he had done the same thing as Ichigo so that he could feel somewhat superior because at that point in time everything was pretty much falling apart from him and he was being humiliated by Ichigo. There's nothing to say either way what happened, but to me I think that's when the Hogyoku started to reject him and his Zanpakuto disappeared due to Hogyoku-rejection related reasons.

I believe you are right. If you listen to what Kisuke Urahara says to Aizen, "Seems like it's finally activated. . . I concealed this kidou within another one and sealed it in your body before your transformation was completed, when you were the most vulnerable. It's a sealing technique. I determined that if you fused with the Hougyoku, killing you would become almost impossible. So I developed a new kidou designed specifically to seal you. . . This is the will of the Hogyoku. The reason that the kidou I implanted in you has finally triggered is that you have become weak. Thanks to [Ichigo]. It could trigger because he battled you and managed to push you to your limit. The Hougyoku no longer recognizes you as it's master".

The kidou only worked because he had been defeated. The zanpakuto was vanishing not because it was becoming a part of him; but because a zanpakuto's spirit is one with the Soul Reaper's soul. When he fused with the powered by the Hogyoku and it transformed his body and zanpakuto giving him arrancar like armor and matching zanpakuto it also affected his soul. When Ichigo weakened him by defeating him the Hogyoku abandoned him as it's master even though they were fused it no longer gave him power. Once that happened the kidou took over, and it was at that point that his zanpakuto was ripped from his very soul by the Hogyoku as it stripped away his power leaving him even weaker allowing the kidou to imprison him. His boast was nothing more than an over abundance of arrogance and pride. Had he really become "one" with his zanpakuto as Ichigo had done in his final attack the Hogyoku would not have seen him as weak, but rather as pushing beyond his previous limits to become even stronger and would not have refused him as it's master. Even though they're technically one in the same to begin with it is obvious in Ichigo's final attack he's become one with his zanpakuto both physically and spiritually on a total different plane than any other Soul Reaper ever has before. If Aizen truly had done the same he'd not looked weak and his zanpakuto would not have disintegrated in his hands but rather they would have transformed in some brilliant display as Ichigo had done. For a show where every change and or form of a zanpakuto is a theatrical production that was simply a broken toy falling apart like a shattered shell of arrancar armor or a hollow mask.