Thread:Omega64/@comment-4503935-20190703001710/@comment-10330822-20200211022630

Justin Holland wrote: Was there ever a true Zangestu during Ichigo's bankai training or was that some complex placebo effect? I'd always suspected the placebo effect. The training was meant to increase Ichigo's sword mastery and reiatsu until it reached Bankai levels, and the multiple swords were meant to give him continous hope that all he had to do was just keep at it and switch from broken sword to broken sword. To prove that, the pieces of the training we saw included Ichigo learning the Getsuga Tensho during the process, as he was holding a random sword during that. Which wouldn't make sense unless the sword was Zangetsu. Besides, knowing now that Ichigo's "Zangetsu" was just a manifestation of his Quincy powers, that means all the sword created for the training were just as "real" as his actual Bankai sword that he used against Byakuya. In that nothing Ichigo has used was ever truly "Zangetsu". So, in short, all the swords were fake, including his "real" one. In fact, Ichigo never had a real Zanpakuto until the final arc, he was just using a Spirit Weapon like all Quincy do and was channeling his powers, Shinigami and Hollow, through them. That was why the sword "repaired" itself during the battle with Kenpachi, because it wasn't actually a real object, and likewise Ichigo wasn't accepted by the Asauchi of Oetsu's domain because he never mastered an Asauchi up until that point, proving he never had a Zanpakuto.