Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24815992-20140426145103/@comment-24282510-20140427013047

SirCraw wrote: surely they would need all the power they could get in this fight, considering who they were going up against.

Who they were up against are you talking about? The Espada? Or Azien?

If you're talking about the Espada. The elder captains didn't need it. Remember Shunsui Kyōraku fight with Starrk? At the beginning he did say he was thinking of releasing it but also recall that he stated that his Katen Kyōkotsu does not like to fight at full power until she is in the mood for it. And once she was in the mood for it how many hits did it take for him to kill Starrk the prime Espada (meaning he was the 1st or 2nd most powerful depending on how you look at it)? 2-3? Not many Shunsui completely overwhelmed Starrk.

Ukitake was sick so he could not fight at full power. And he was taking out by Wonderwiss before he could fight back.

Yamamoto's shikai was so powerful he barely needed it to fight/kill Ayon.

Actual bankai releases. Suì-Fēng, Kensei Muguruma and Sajin Komamura. All non elder captains.

Sui Feng's fight with Baraggan is a hard one. Baraggan had the power of aging and could use it has a compete shield around him. This versus a mainly hand to hand combat user. Did she really need to use bankai? She could not get close to him so barring any kido (which was shown later to non work for long against Baraggan) she did. But even her bankai had to be backed up with kido and it didn't fully work.

Sajin Komamura used his on a freaking Fracción not even one of the big fish (in terms of power) and that was an instant kill. Did he really need to use bankai? Unless he wanted to defeat that fraccion right then and there no.

Kensei Muguruma used his on Wonderwriss (someone that had one shotted an elder captain) but we never saw the fight and he still lost.

If your talking about Aizen. Remember he has the power of Complete Hypnosis so no amount of power expect for Yamamoto's bankai has even Aizen could not touch him in that mode (barring a sealing of Yamamoto's zanpukato) could stop him. For expamle when the the 13 was ganging up on Hinamori thinking she was Aizen, Ichigo seemed to wait until they were done to tell them to stop. Why did he wait? Because of the complete hypnosis he could have been shouting in their faces to stop and they would not hear him.

Barring the fact Kubo likely didn't think their bankais up due to him wanting to give Ichigo a flashly power up.