So, iirc, a zanpakuto spirit is born from the soul of its master, right? So it embodies an essential part of who they are. Their inner world is a reflection of their own soul.

My point. My point is that Hyorinmaru is Toshiro’s zanpakuto. Often cited as the strongest ice-type zanpakuto. And Toshiro has made repeated reference to how the struggle, for him, was never in unlocking or strengthening Hyorinmaru’s power, but in trying to hold him back.

And it just occurred to me. Toshiro is protective as all heck. Overprotective as all heck. Only of like, one or two people, but still.

It’s so freaking obvious and adorable I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.

Hyorinmaru is overprotective of Toshiro.

You have this big eff-off Ice Dragon that could freeze anyone solid with a glance, and he sees his master—a tiny little boy—and this absolute primordial force of freaking nature looks at this tiny little lonely kid and goes:

“If anything happens to this child, I will kill everyone in a thousand mile radius, and then myself.” bruh you’ll already be dead but that’s beside the point

And whenever Toshiro goes into battle, he has to hold this guy back.

Hyorinmaru’s in full-on Papa-Dragon, I’ll-Make-Sure-You-Don’t-Ever-Speak-To-Me-Or-My-Son-Again mode, ready to murder everyone in the same area code of whoever so much as threatened his boy, and Toshiro has to focus on making sure he doesn’t.

And of course. Of course now I’m picturing their interactions through this lens. I mean. Can you just. Imagine an overbearing, manifested Hyorinmaru coiling around his little master and grooming him like a kitten.

Muramasa himself could only stay manifested while the sword was unsheathed and there's also a distance limit at play. And then the whole thing of him absorbing hollows in order to stay manifested.

So, I still think about that one post about Zanpakutos possibly representing certain aspects of the Shinigami that they ignore, feel ashamed of, or have some other negative feeling that they need to over come.

In that post, they surmised that OMZ is Ichigo's indifference while Hollow Ichigo was, I think a want for power?

What I want to ask is what do you guys think about the Zanpakutos and what they represent for their Shinigami?

Sode no Shirayuki, Zabimaru, Senbonzakura, Suzumebachi, Ashisogi Jizo, Hyourinmaru, etc...

And maybe you can glean from the Zanpakuto Rebellion arc, since it gives the Zanpakutos more visible personality.

The TYBW arc really brings into question on what can be considered canon from the fillers and movies...