Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27392440-20160214172258/@comment-27802867-20160215155303

• Thanks @Shambankai :) Actually, reading your conversation with @DarkMuse616 on that thread about the nature of the FGT intrigued me a lot and I looked at other threads and found this one, joined the Wikia, and posted my first comment ^_^

• Now let's write about your question. First I want to tell you my ideas about the concept of "Breaking the Mask". If i'm not mistaken, the higher the level of an Arrancar, the less their mask. I mean that a Vasto Lorde that has become an Arrancar, almost lacks a mask (just watched the Anime episode 283 and checked that Halibel had no mask at all). But Findor Calius, for example, has a much bigger mask, therefore less power.

In my idea, the more a mask is broken, the more Shinigami-like a Hollow becomes, thus an stronger Arrancar. But it's not that they have any choice in determining how much of their mask they want to break (apart from Findor Calius who confuses me a little bit). If an Adjuchas turns to an Arrancar, it has X% of its mask remaining, but if a Vasto Lorde turns, it has Y% of its mask remaining (and Y<X). I mean that the mask acts like an inhibitor for all of them (any example to reject this saying?). We know that an Arrancar's true form is shown when it releases its Zanpakto and those Vasto Lordes almost lose their mask completely.

And isn't their mask one of the main differences between them and Shinigami? Don't the Visored just put on a mask and gain Hollow powers? Can we assume that the main point that separates Hollows and Shinigamis is the Hollow's mask? Thus when a Hollow actually breaks it's, it sets foot onto a new territory: Becoming an Arrancar; a being which was originally a Hollow but then received Shinigami powers by a process that results in the "breaking of their mask".

So, if what i've said is true and the mask is the sign that shows how much difference there exists between these two races, then I can have two new guesses or new questions:

1. If a Hollow, breaks its mask to become like a Shinigami, it means that having a mask that is more complete, means being more like a Hollow. Therefore, by breaking that mask, you get closer to a Shinigami. So, does this mean that the Visored have almost total Hollow powers? I mean, they ARE Shinigami to begin with, and they have complete masks (which going by what I said, may mean they have complete Hollow powers), so can we assume they have more power than, lets hypothesize, a Visored with a broken mask?

2. Going by what I said, then the more a Hollow's mask is gone, the more powerfull it becomes, because it IS a Hollow to begin with and it has total Hollow-powers, so it tries to remove the mask (by my definition, the difference between them), to gain total Shinigami powers too.

There's just one thing which came to my mind just now after writing all these, and it's that maybe the amount of the mask that remains, just shows at what level the Arrancar was when it was a Hollow. I mean that an Adjuchas turns into an Arrancar and has X% of its mask remaining, but further removal of the mask should not be possible and that is just the way it is: their power is just that. IF they had become Vasto Lordes, then they could have had more of their masks gone, thus gaining more Shinigami powers.