The fact that characters such as Wonderweiss and Luppi, who are not Espada, but are still High - Mid Espada level shows the misconception of these rankings being absolute.

Kubo established the Espada to be 1-10 and then that is contradicted in the Story itself via Yammy.

Ulquiorras Segunda Etapa is arguably not Ranked because Aizen arguably didn't know about it. However, if he did, which he probably did, Ulquiorras rank is still contradicted by his own words "There are Three Espada above me", and yet, there are seemingly Four + Wonderweiss who is Espada level. And given that Ulquiorra literally had a Second Release, and no other Espada did, it implies he at least transcended his rank bare minimum.

You can say "Well Ulquiorra didn't know about Yammy", but he was the closest to Yammy, and it is stated that Yammy admired Ulquiorra. In fact, he was the only guy he respected.

Furthermore, Grimmjow himself says it's bullshit. Now you can just say he's being the cocky brash guy he is, but given the previous context, and the fact Nel, despite being 3, was surpassed by Nnoitra. It evidently shows there are still massive inconsistencies.

"But Kubo did the rankings, he ranked every Espada" and yet Kubo also contradicts this and adds several outliers. And Bleach isn't exactly a story that just hands everything to you on a plate, there is Nuance to it. But for some reason nobody likes this argument.

In fact, Luppi actually has comparable feats to Harribel given what he did to Toshiro, and yet Harribel couldn't finish him off so quickly in her Released State. And Toshiro said he needed Bankai against Base Yammy, who is 7 tiers below Harribel.

Battle takes place in Soul King Palace. Uryu cannot use his shrift, the Antithesis.

Everyone is always bringing up Aizen creating Wonderweiss specifically to counter Yamamoto and his statement about Yamamoto's power, like Yamamoto didn't literally spend most of the battle setting up a suicide nuke move, using other Captains as distractions, that was guaranteed to kill not only him, but also all the Soul Reapers present in FKT, as well as produce enough flames to annihilate the entirety of FKT along with the barriers, just to take out base Shinigami Aizen. You can't even use the argument that he was holding back his Bankai because of its destructive nature, because the option he chose was somehow even more destructive, required preparation and, unlike his Bankai, would've 100% resulted in death of everyone involved. I just can't fathom why he would choose to do that if he thought he had a good enough chance of beating Aizen in a normal fight, and he's usually extremely confident in his abilities.

And look, I'm not saying that Shikai Aizen is equal to Bankai Yamamoto. But most people are forgetting that Aizen has a Bankai as well, which Yama is most certainly aware of, and, regardless of what you think it does, we're yet to see a Bankai that doesn't significantly increase one's fighting power compared to their Shikai. My take on this is that both fighters had so much respect for the other's abilities that they didn't want to risk a direct battle, and therefore both took precautions before the fight. Aizen didn't think it was worth it engaging in the only fight he had a chance of losing, and Yamamoto evidently didn't want to gamble the existence of Soul Society and the Soul King on his ability to defeat Aizen in a 1v1 fight. That should be a good enough evidence to scale them as equals or at least on the same level, which is also in line with the narrative of being the peak of Shinigami that both of them have.

Yes, it destroyed planets and a star with absolute ease. And it's only their punches travelling casually.

Because his whole design is honestly amazing. like, not just visually, but also his fight style as a melee only fighter in a world everyone fights with swords, his abilities from his two arms.

Ichigo's human friends all got their moments: Orihime was the center of a plot point in the Aizen arc with Aizen saying her ability is a God's and not like anything else (even if nothing much came out of it at the end) and she was captured and had a whole storyline with Ulq; while Uryu despite being sidelined for almost the entire series, made a legendary comeback in TYBW becoming more powerful than most shinigamis and Yhwach's favorite. Poor Chad didn't get anything. Fullbringer arc should've been Chad's time to shine but he was pretty much reduced to the sideline after being used as a plot point to connect to the Xcution.

Yamamoto has both arms for reference.

What do you guys think? Disagree with any placement?

Shikai Shunsui

Base Unohana,like vs Zaraki

Bankai Unohana

Bankai Byakuya(TYBW)

Stats wise Gojo is pretty much inferior in all areas compared to the big 3 but his defense hax is pretty OP!

Curious to hear which one of you think of the Big 3 can bypass Gojo's Infinity.

He might be similar to what Butterfly Aizen originally believed Dangai Ichigo was, just a brute with massive strength that would still lose to his superior reiatsu, techniques and strategy. But still around his physical levels of transcendent strength by having a tradeoff (in this case, Zaraki is so strong the bankai is tearing his body apart, God knows when he'll be strong enough to contain it).

At least, it was a precedent, Aizen didn't discard that someone could get on those powerlevels although imperfectly.

Who Wins?

extra question considering that Ryujinjakka was the “oldest Zanpakuto” and Saizou doesn’t seem a day older than 2000 how likely is that he had an “evolved Zanpakuto” same as Ichibe? (ichibe says that his was “the first” not that it was the only one)

he seems a little too young to be learning new tricks after Oetsu invented Zanpakuto doesnt he?

it got explained to me earlier that Saizou who was the first captain of Squad 13 (which potentially makes him the last captain to join Gotei if they made the squads in order) has the last same name as the Rukongai district 78 “Sakahone” what could his connections to Ukitake be? was he just from Sakahone like Zaraki Kenpachi was from district 80 “Zaraki” or is it different for Saizou?

Translation by u/WheelSome-

Healing scales to reiatsu, so likely EoS Isane ~ Unohana?