Thread:Silver-Haired Seireitou/@comment-24384232-20150518001817/@comment-24384232-20150518130911

Hmm, well with Chrono's suggestion, I think we have two broad categories of how Hakuda is used.

1) Hakuda uses soul resonance to find the weakpoints and breaking points within a spirit allowing them to destroy the integrity of said spirit. In this way Hakuda is very effective against Hollows whom already suffer from a critical spiritual injury ie the Hollow Hole. By taking advantage of this disruption within the soul, Hakuda practitioners can deliever crippling blows to such damaged spirits, as to discorporate them entirely. The method by which the shinigami finds these weakpoints is referred to as Soul Cadence.

2) Hakuda applies soul resonance as an expression that manifests an internal conceptual idea physically through the practitioners body. The idiom, "Flow like water" is one of the most widely known forms of soul resonance that a Hakuda practitioner can follow. By resonanting their soul with this concept, they can alter the physical properties of their body to allow them to literally move and flow like water.

Hmm, that.. makes much more sense to me. If we follow Nanja's example for his concept of Zanjutsu, than this paradigm works. Hakuda is self expression, Zanjutsu is soul resonance with the Zanpakutou. This would allow the pracitioner to more easily use their Zanpakutou's abilities to emulate the skills of the other three disciplines, but using the abilities of the Zanpakutou as the "template". Further enhancing that is the Shikai and Bankai would would grant them even more power.

So the real difference is that while Zanjutsu appears more difficult because you must resonante with another soul, in the end it is considered the strongest because it generates the largest net gain, and is largely more reliable. Very few individuals are capable of harnessing Hakuda or Kido alone to such an extent as to obtain or even exceed Captain-level ability. But I think this can work. For now we can concentrate on Buki, but I had define the others first in order to narrow down how Buki can be different.