Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-6296810-20140622193753/@comment-44061-20140622203150

theres a few issues with the question. For one the concept of stealing someone's zanpakuto makes little to no sense practically because it serves no purpose more then a average sword. The the question becomes who would be the one doing the stealing in the first place. Humans cant see it and those that cant have the ordinary sword situation to deal with. It also seems that the reason for the question is that its never addressed cause its never really happened. A zanpakuto in general has similar reiatsu as its wielder so sensing it wouldnt be a hard thing for the wielder to do though sensing it would aid in locating it. Zanpakuto dont grow, all zanpakuto are originally plain asauchi and the shinigami imprints its soul onto it. When its broken in shikai they are capable of healing a broken Zanpakutō using its own wielder's force of will, Reiatsu, and the time required to infuse the Zanpakutō with this Reiatsu. Outside of the imprinting upon first getting one and healing it in shikai it is largely unknown what happens if they lose it, most likely they would have to find it, as it doesnt cease existing just because it was misplaced. Disarming a shinigami has happened multiple times in the series, when disarmed its like any situation when someone looses their weapon they are at a disadvantage until they get it back unless they have other skills to draw on. There is no summoning of ones zanpakuto and what the hollow creature form ichigo did was something that happened exactly once in the series and cant be included as viable to pose as a possibility to anyone in the series including ichigo. There are also numerous occasions of broken zanpakuto, power negated zanpakuto, power absorbed, mutilated shinigami and the like in the series which shows numerous cases of varying types of being "zanpakuto-less" so to speak.