Zangetsu (Quincy Powers)

This Zangetsu presents as a gaunt, unshaven man past his prime, tall and lean with pale skin, sharp cheekbones, and shaggy black hair shot through with brown. He dresses in a frayed white shirt with the collar turned up, black trousers, low boots, and a shapeless black coat edged in burgundy that tatters at the hem, keeping his eyes hidden behind tinted wraparound shades, all of which earns him Ichigo's nickname of Old-man Zangetsu.

When Ichigo enters Bankai the figure sheds years, becoming a slimmer, hooded teenager in a more defined robe. Onlookers note his strong likeness to Yhwach as the Quincy king looked a thousand years earlier.

Where Ichigo runs hot, this spirit stays cool and measured, forever nudging his charge toward greater strength as a steady mentor. In Bankai his composure remains but his fighting grows fiercer.

His deepest motive stayed hidden for years. As the embodiment of Ichigo's Quincy blood, he never wished for the boy to walk the Shinigami path and quietly smothered that potential, dreading that it would drag Ichigo into pain and eventually force the spirit to kill him. When he at last admits that what he truly sought to shield was Ichigo himself, he releases his grip and confesses how proud the boy has made him.

The spirit first speaks to Ichigo during Urahara's brutal Shattered Shaft training, appearing in the inner world as Ichigo teeters on the brink of becoming a Hollow. He coaches the boy to gather the Reishi around him and to dig his buried Shinigami power out from a field of dissolving boxes, then withholds his name until Ichigo, fleeing Urahara in a later lesson, is finally ready to hear it, at which point speaking the name unleashes his Shikai.

Much later the truth emerges that this mentor was never a Zanpakutō at all but the manifestation of the Quincy power Ichigo drew from his mother, a fact settled when Ōetsu Nimaiya reforges him together with Ichigo's inner Hollow into a true Asauchi. Across those years he repeatedly saves Ichigo's life, sealing a mortal wound during the clash with Kenpachi Zaraki and blunting Yhwach's blade with Blut Vene. His powers reach well beyond a normal spirit, running from Reishi manipulation and dimensional travel through Shadow to spawning solid clones of himself.