Nnoitra Gilga

Towering and rail-thin, Nnoitra wears a perpetual toothy grin. His shoulder-length black hair falls across the left half of his face, hiding a broad white eyepatch that in turn conceals the mask fragments, a cluster of small jaws and teeth, ringing his Hollow hole; a single dark gray eye shows on the other side. The tattoo marking him as fifth Espada rides his tongue.

His altered Arrancar coat carries an oversized spoon-shaped hood and gaps open from throat to waist to bare his midriff, and he sports three rings on each wrist above long, curved boots that swallow the ends of his hakama. Back when he ranked eighth, his hair was shorter and rougher, his collar upturned, his coat lacking the hood, and the number on his tongue an eight.

Crude, foul-mouthed, and gleefully cruel, Nnoitra treats Orihime as a plaything and looks down on women on principle, a chauvinism that fueled his lasting grudge against Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck, the third Espada who repeatedly bested and once even saved him. Salvation, he holds, was never on offer for Hollows, so he lives only to be the strongest, crushing all comers, cheating and striking the wounded without shame, and reckons himself in Aizen's debt purely for the power that lets him savor ever greater battles.

Beneath the bravado runs a death wish: he craves an end drawn out in the heat of combat, gasping his last as his blood pools around him, and he takes any refusal to kill him as an insult to his pride. That same pride, scarred by an inferiority complex bred during his time as eighth Espada, makes him spurn all help, snapping even at his devoted Fracción Tesra Lindocruz, though he shows Tesra a rare flicker of concern by warning him away from the too-powerful Kenpachi Zaraki.

Nnoitra's yellow Reiatsu is enormous, and it is that raw pressure that hardens his Hierro into the toughest of any Arrancar, past or present, a defense so absolute that Zaraki could pierce it only after learning to sharpen his own spirit energy against it. He is a master of his unusual weapon, equally deadly hurling it on its chain or swinging it up close, and backs it with startling strength, whipping the blade around to raise whirlwinds. He rounds this out with Sonído, a golden Cero that he spits from his tongue's tip, and a refined Pesquisa that reads an enemy's strength the instant he sets a hand to the ground.

His Zanpakutō, Santa Teresa, is a great twin-bladed scythe chained to his waist, and the release command to pray transforms him into an insectile, six-armed figure crowned with crescent horns, each new hand gripping a mantis-like scythe. He keeps one pair of arms hidden to spring surprise attacks, regrows lost or broken weapons at will, and hits harder still. Most dangerous is his rare high-speed regeneration, which knits wounds and even severed limbs back together, though a heavy enough blow finally puts it beyond his reach.