User blog comment:Lia Schiffer/406: Deicide 8 end of the Chrysalis Age/@comment-1454424-20100606013737

Not all Bankais are created equal and while all Bankais are powerful, some are more user-friendly then others. Hitsugaya, Ichigo, Gin, Byakuya and even Ikkaku, have more user friendly Bankai.

Soifon has the least usable Bankai, if only because she's isn't a tower of muscles and her Bankai kills her best feature - her speed.

Komamura's Bankai isn't bad. As Tosen put it and we saw against Poww in the Manga (the padding the Anime did take away the impact somewhat) Komamura is so strong that MOST people can't stand more then one hit from it. However, if you do dodge or survive the first hit - then the giant becomes a liability.

Mayuri's bankai is... well he seems to like it and it is quite deadly but it is not without its flaws. Renji's bankai is big and can be cumbersome. But again, Renji seems happy with it.

But the long and short of it is, not everyone will pull out their bankai at the drop of their hat like Hitsugaya and Ichigo tend to. In fact, it is precisely because Hitsugaya and Ichigo are so young that they pull out their bankais so very often. That and both Hitusgaya and Ichigo can't seem to do much with just their shikai.

I would probably say that both Hitsugaya and Ichigo get the full x10 boost from their bankai. Being so young, their base power-level hasn't fully developed, which is something people seem to forget.

Bankai augments the BASE power level of a character. Which means that if character x has a base power level of 10, bankai will take it to 1000. But if another character, character Y, has a base power level of 1000, character x going bankai isn't going to help them much. Something to remember when discussing Bankais.