Kenpachi Zaraki

Towering and heavily muscled, Zaraki looks every bit the brawler, with a long, high-cheekboned face, oversized canines, hairless brow ridges, gray eyes, and stringy dark hair spilling past his shoulders. A thin scar cuts across the left half of his face and over his eye, a mark left by Retsu Unohana back in his childhood. Over the standard black uniform he wraps bandages across his waist and wears the short-sleeved captain's haori he stripped from the predecessor he beat. In his earlier years he spikes his hair and tips each strand with a small bell, and a distinctive eyepatch shields his right eye; seventeen months after Aizen's defeat, the bells are gone, his hair reaches mid-back, and the eyepatch becomes a single strapless piece.

Violence is Zaraki's joy, and he treats wounds and even death as the fair price of a satisfying fight, deliberately holding back so a battle runs longer. He is savage yet principled, insisting on one-on-one duels, sparing foes too hurt to continue, and killing without hesitation only those who refuse to quit. He reveres anyone strong enough to push or beat him, above all Ichigo Kurosaki, whom he claims as one of his own after his first defeat, and Unohana, the sole person he ever looked up to and the first to give him the thrill of a genuine fight. His bond with his lieutenant Yachiru is fatherly and among the few tender things in his life. Having spent his early years without a name, he draws deep meaning from his own and long felt guilt that his sword went unnamed; after accidentally killing Unohana and finally hearing his blade's voice, he grows quieter and more open to reason.

As a boy with no name in District 80 of the North Rukongai, a lawless place whose name Zaraki he later borrows for himself, he takes a dead Shinigami's Asauchi and makes it his own Zanpakutō, cutting down countless opponents until boredom sets in. A duel with the young Yachiru Unohana hands him his first taste of fear and, with it, his first real enjoyment; he unconsciously seals his strength to prolong it and loses, then resolves to fight the way she does. Later he takes in a fearless orphan girl, names her Yachiru after his admired foe, and claims the Kenpachi title for himself, reserved for the deadliest Shinigami of each era.

After later meeting Ikkaku Madarame and Yumichika Ayasegawa, he strikes down the captain Kenpachi Kiganjō in a single blow to seize command of the 11th Division, then is briefly made to study kendo under Yamamoto before Central 46 halts the lessons out of fear of his full potential. For most of his career he cannot hear his sword, called Nozarashi, and suppresses his own might with a power-draining eyepatch; only after defeating Unohana does he learn its name and unlock its Shikai, released with the command Drink into a huge cleaver that can slice through space itself. His raw power earns him a place among the Wandenreich's designated Special War Powers, and against the giant Gerard Valkyrie he at last manifests an oni-like Bankai that lets him cut his enemy clean in two.