User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 474: In the Moment of Complete Silence, Review./@comment-26266140-20160222211437/@comment-5303512-20160222224805

Not as worse as the Espadas, they were arguably suppose to be stronger than the Captains based on Aizen's claim but each of them got stomped, sometimes horribly.

Then we got those Stern Ritters who had been reported as strong as captains, yet again they got stomped against, some worse, some ok and some just off screened. Then there are the elite Stern Ritters, they were able to defeat the Royal Guards who were suppose to be stronger than all the captains put together, then comes the rest of the captains and lieutenants and they are offing them one by one. And in this entire war, only Yhwach had done the killing of anyone significant (only Yamamoto by the way)

Then there was the Fourth Ninja War which was hyped up so much because everyone once dead was coming back for a big battle royale, but instead, it was only Madara, Obito and Juubi that did anything significantly damaging to the Shinobi alliance.

So in all retrospect, only the main antagonists are allows to kill in Shonen series while the grunts don't do much else.