Wait. Forgive me if I'm a little late to the draw, but lilynette is Starrk permanently manifesting his zanpakuto.
For years I just took it at face value when he said they'd done some weird hollow thing and 'one became two' or whatever that enabled them to cull their power a bit or whatever but!! She's a hollow zanpakuto spirit! Yeah no kidding it's limiting his power zanpakuto spirit manifestation is a drain and a half to maintain no wonder he's ranked number one.
There was canonical proof of arrancar having zanpakuto spirits the WHOLE TIME!?!
Ulquiorra (?) gives us this whole spiel about how swords work very differently for hollows, sealing their hollow forms which leads to resurreccion over shikai/bankai, but lilynettes over here manifesting from starks body and physically turning into weapons like we won't notice! Her personality is exactly the same compare/contrast to Starrk as every other spirit we've seen!
Hang on *scrubs face* but mister zanpakuto man says all the zanpakuto are shinigami zanpakuto. But to my knowledge there are no hollows in the SK Palace, it's all shinigami! So what's going on??
Are there supposed to be hollow minor deities?! Masters of resurreccion and sonido and what have you? Are hollows that inherently lawless that they don't have any?? Or... Do they fall under the same up top rule as every other human spirit? Are hollow zanpakuto, as ulquiorra says, a version of shinigami zanpakuto, one inherently different enough to not be counted in the census nimaya (?) gives us, but still worthy in their own right? Is nimaya in charge of segunda etapa too??
