Sajin Komamura

Standing as the tallest captain in the Gotei 13, Komamura is a wolf given human shape, though strangers frequently take him for a dog. Light-brown fur covers him, paling at the chest and jaw, and for years his shame over that form drove him to hide beneath a wicker Komusō hat and full-body coverings; only after Kaname Tōsen's treachery did he set the hat aside for good.

Over his haori he wears weighted shoulder pieces and heavy plated boots in place of sandals, an outfit he revises again and again across the years, adding red-and-gold armored collars, gauntlets, and, by the second Wandenreich assault, a rounded new helmet with fresh torso plating. When he invokes his clan's Humanization Technique, he shifts toward a human likeness that keeps his great size, long hair, lupine ears, and patches of fur running along his forearms.

Beneath that daunting exterior beats a warm and grateful heart. Komamura owes his place in the world to Yamamoto for accepting him, and his devotion runs so deep he would gladly lay down his life on the old man's behalf. Tōsen was the first to prize the person he was rather than the creature he seemed to be, so his friend's betrayal cut at his sense of self, though his capacity for forgiveness is nearly boundless, reaching even to those who have slaughtered innocents or mean to kill him.

Solemn and long-marked by the scorn Soul Society once showed his appearance, he leads his division with fairness rather than harshness. He favors meat, shuns carrots that his father once branded unfit for their kind, keeps a mixed-breed dog named Goro, and tends to growl when his temper flares. Gentle by default, he turns cold and calculating the instant a fight begins, then softens back into his mild self the moment it ends.

As a captain, Komamura wields tremendous, area-wrecking spiritual power that glows red, and he conceals it with the practiced ease of a life spent hiding himself. His swordsmanship holds up against Kenpachi Zaraki, and he backs it with brutal hand-to-hand skill, swift Shunpo, and raw strength great enough to hurl a released Arrancar of colossal size. He shrugs off punishment that would fell most, once walking away under his own power after Aizen's Hadō 90, and his beast heritage lends him sharp senses and the ability to speak with animals.

His sword, Tenken, conjures phantom limbs of a giant warrior that echo his own motions, so a single swing summons a huge disembodied arm to strike alongside him. Its Bankai, Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō, calls forth the whole armored colossus, a roughly hundred-meter samurai figure that mirrors his every move with proportionally devastating force. Drawing on the Wolfman Clan's Humanization Technique, which trades his physical heart for a deathless body, he can advance to Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō: Dangai Jōe, stripping the giant of its armor to leave a being of pure Reiatsu that regenerates freely and shrugs off physical harm. It is in that state that he shatters the Sternritter Bambietta Basterbine, before the technique's price drags him back into the shape of a true wolf.