Bleach is a classic action shonen series packed with a variety of supervillains. During the Hueco Mundo story arc, some of the best ones of all stepped onto the stage -- including the ruthless Szayelaporro Grantz, a scientist Arrancar with a serious mean streak. He was one of the ten Espadas with a terrifying zanpakuto to match.
At #8, Szayelaporro ranked lower among the Espadas, but his enemies quickly learned to not take him lightly. In fact, he had once been a Vasto Lorde until he somehow restarted his Hollow evolution, so his character arc is based on constant growth and adaptation. The same is true of his zanpakuto, named La Lujuriosa in the Viz manga edition of Bleach.
The Form & Powers Of La Lujuriosa, Szayelaporro's Zanpakuto
It should be noted that an Arrancar's zanpakuto is not based on a zanpakuto spirit, and these swords don't have shikai or bankai. Instead, such zanpakuto are the sealed form of an Arrancar's original Hollow powers and physical form. When a power like that is released, it vanishes and the Arrancar regains his or her original powers. The same is true for Szayelaporro's own zanpakuto, La Lujuriosa, and it's deadly regardless of whether or not he releases it.
This zanpakuto's sealed form resembles a fairly typical katana shape. Its hand-guard is minimal, having several bulbous growths on it that don't even protect the user's hands during a sword duel. This may look like a poor design at first, but Szayelaporro rarely fights his foes with his sealed zanpakuto, and hardly needs a proper hand-guard at all. He keeps it by his side, the sheath being held to his uniform with a short, braided rope.
La Lujuriosa can function as a normal sword, and Szayelaporro used it as such during a tense battle against his first major opponent in Bleach, Renji Abarai. Even La Lujuriosa's sealed form was sufficient against Renji when the latter's bankai was sealed, but then Szayelaporro performed his release, shoving the sword down his own throat to activate it. The zanpakuto's true form emerged, giving Szayelaporro a sort of tentacle gown and four long appendages on his back, and he gained a new ability.
Szayelaporro can grab an opponent in his appendages to analyze their form, then create dozens of clones to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers while also keeping himself safe behind a wall of minions. If that isn't enough, he can also create a voodoo doll of his opponent and open it, then injure the target's tendons, ligaments and even their internal organs by destroying corresponding doll pieces. Szayelaporro can slowly torture his enemies to death like this, getting drunk on his own power and thus matching his aspect of death, intoxication.
In a serious emergency, Szayelaporro can lay an egg containing a clone of himself. Once his original body is destroyed, he can hatch from that egg if it absorbs enough vital energy from a host. With this ability, dubbed Gabriel, La Lujuriosa can hypothetically make him invincible, a perfect being. However, it didn't quite work.
Szayelaporro's Zanpakuto & The Futility Of Perfection
La Lujuriosa was put to good use during Bleach, even when Szayelaporro was outnumbered during the Hueco Mundo arc. He fought Renji and Uryu Ishida at the same time with it, torturing them half to death with the voodoo dolls. Szayelaporro fully intended to drag them back to his lab to experiment on them, but then Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi arrived and proved himself the superior scientist -- even when up against La Lujuriosa's full power.
While La Lujuriosa had many tricky abilities, Szayelaporro was overconfident and ill-prepared for Mayuri's endless countermeasures. In the end, he couldn't escape even with the use of Gabriel, and La Lujuriosa was helpless when Mayuri injected Szayelaporro with a mind accelerant to paralyze and kill him.
The zanpakuto wasn't just Szayelaporro's combat form -- it was intended to be his tool for becoming the ultimate being, but it failed his ruthless aspiration to become the strongest Hollow ever. Many Hollows and Arrancars sought to escape the terrifying futility of a Hollow's life by using their ever-increasing powers to break out of that paradigm, and Szayelaporro thought he was in the lead with La Lujuriosa's powers of science.
In the end, though, Szayelaporro and his fellow Espadas fell to the Soul Reapers, with or without their released forms. Only Captain Kurotsuchi understands the quest for perfection is folly in Bleach, and nothing on La Lujuriosa's part can change that.
