Ring VS Strategy Guide

Welcome to my 10th one of these! And today I decided to task myself with what is probably the hardest of these Guides I have ever had to do. I am not going to sugar coat it, this series is HARD to counter, and I knew it would be from the very beginning, Onryō are seriously disproportionately haxy creatures and Ring is the Premier Onryō series, also including Bunshinsaba and The Grudge in its canon, so there are a LOT to deal with. But hey, I wanted to prove it can be done, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out, Enjoy!

Wall Tier:

Here we have the first and weakest tier, what I refer to as the Base Onryō tier. In the world of this series all Onryō legends are real and as such there are numerous, numerous Onryō spirits as well as even Anti-Onryō Weaponry developed by human Scientists meant to hunt and defend against them. The most powerful and versatile Onryō in this tier is Kayako, the main villain of The Grudge series which is canon to Ring. Kayako is powerful enough to shake an entire apartment with her attacks and tear people apart, as well as travel faster than the human Eye can track so Wall Level Subsonic will be the limit for counters here.

Onryō are extremely versatile and haxy creatures who both come from and gain their power from an extra Dimension called The Demonic Abyss. They are able to teleport into and out of this dimension at will, as well as drag or banish victims into this plane, where they will remain trapped and wandering for all time.

Onryō are also able to teleport across the planet in an instant, turn intangible and invisible, fly, lash out and attack with their hair, use telekinesis, Hack into machinery and become an intangible shadow being.

Worse than this is their powerful mental attacks, Onryō can create powerful illusions, manipulate someone's emotions to a sad, panicked or even murderous state, and in many cases possess people and use them to enact their evil deeds.

Onryō are also able to Resurrect their victims as Zombie creatures under their will to attack people. Kayako in particular has other uses for her previous victims, she absorbed their souls and now is able to both Duplicate herself, making one clone per each of her victims, AND resurrect herself one time per victim. Kayako is one of the few horror villains to actually have a 100% kill record, so needless to say that is a LOT of clones and a LOT of lives that someone has to deal with, having killed hundreds of people.

So what are some weaknesses of this tier that one could capitalize on? Well first and foremost there is one defining thing about Onryō in this tier, in that they are all evil symbols of hate and darkness. This is actually disadvantageous for them as it means they rely on the power of The Demonic Abyss SIGNIFICANTLY more than more noble Onryō like Sadako or Bunshin. It is for this reason not only are they Weaker than them, but that they actually cannot remain outside of the Demonic Abyss for long periods of time without withering. A character who has some kind of dimensional sealing ability to Lock the Onryō on Earth would be a powerful strategy as they would be cut off from their powersource and eventually cease to exist. Another good strategy would be to capitalize on the fact that Humans in this world developed a large deal of Anti-Onryō weaponry, specifically weapons that can drain off their spiritual energy, or temporarily sever their connection to the Demonic Abyss. Someone with strong Technopathy would be able to capitalize on that. 

Because of the haxy nature of Onryō I would recommend having some form of mental protection and super senses to protect oneself from being attacked remotely or through stealth.

Another factor is that these Onryō rely on their opponents being rather powerless to stop them, Kayako had a 100% kill record and that lead her to attack Sadako without hesitation, and Sadako tore her body to pieces and minutes later Permanently Killed Kayako by absorbing her, and that was merely one of Sadako’s Avatars. This means Onryō can be overconfident, if your character has an effective hax they should walk right into it.

There is also the prospect of the large deal of threats had in this tier out of sheer numbers and ability to multiply, they will also need a plan to not get overwhelmed. This leads me to my first counter.

Affinity:

Affinity are a very low tier species of Angels from the Bayonetta series who are strong enough to endure being smashed through large stone pillars and fly at speeds so fast humans appear frozen, so would have comparable if not somewhat higher stats to the Onryō in this tier.

Affinity comes from Paradiso and can effectively move to Earth by entering into Purgatorio. Purgatorio is an alternate Dimension layered over our own Earth, and as such they appear Invisible and Intangible to anything on Earth due to not technically being present to interact with, but they ARE able to see and attack beings on Earth through this. Meaning that They could attack and slay Onryō as they appear on Earth, but Onryō would be powerless to retaliate against them.

Affinity are Drawn to Spirits awaiting to pass on to the other side and Ruthlessly attack those harboring darkness so would be drawn to an Onryō whenever they decide to surface and tear them to pieces in surprise attacks, effectively making them an equivalent to a real life Apex-Predator with the Onryō as their prey. 

That being said since they can’t seal them off from the demonic Abyss, it would take a considerable amount of time before Onryō are wiped out, for a more efficient hunter of Onryō, i would suggest,

Ammut:

A thematic counter to say the least, Ammut is a Divine Creature from Egyptian Mythology, a lord of Retribution who sits below Ma’at’s Scales of Justice. Ammut doesn’t have any solid feats or scaling, but is composed of a Hippo, Lion and Crocodile which alone should give her comparable stats to that of the Onryō in this tier. Ammut is a Conceptual plane entity, unable to be affected or changed by lower plane attacks including attacks to the mind and soul, In addition to that her very symbol is enough to ward off evil spirits, preventing them from approaching. Meaning she is safe from any of the Onryō’s abilities right off the bat.

Ammut is known as the devourer of souls, as it is her job to consume the souls of all those she judges to be evil, which would happen to include all the Onryō in this tier by definition. Onryō possess no defence against Soul manipulation except for Kayako’s extra lives ability, that being said Ammut has another devastating ability, the ability to seal off entities into an alternate dimension known as the Void of Eternal Restlessness, where any Onryō including Kayako would fade away into non existence before very long without the Demonic Abyss.

Even if the Onryō played it safe and remained in The Demonic Abyss the entire time, it is very possible that Ammut can still get there, as Ammut already has the ability to travel to other dimensions, particularly ones associated with death. As well as draw Onryō out utilizing shapeshifting and manipulation, given the sheer number of vengeful hateful spirits in the Demonic Abyss, it is almost certain that Ammut would do everything in her power to get in there and take these Onryō down. A daring but useful strategy, but the Onryō’s keepaway strategy could delay the process as Ammut would need to continue hopping from the Abyss to Earth to get them all. This leads me to my Final Pic,

Hollow Knight:

Hollow Knight from the Hollow Knight series is Exactly what we are looking for in a counter here. Hollow Knight is strong enough to battle the likes of False Knight, who fragmented apart a small bridge with enough force to be considered Wall Level, and while the Onryō of the series would still have a slight speed advantage, that won't matter much, as you will see.

Hollow Knight is a champion of a species called Vessels, which were artificially created to be able to Seal higher plane entities like The Radiance within their own personal void. Obviously using this on the Onryō of this verse would cause them to wither away to nothing over time AND even prevent access back to the Demonic Abyss so they couldn’t use it for a BFR. 

But that isn't the only helpful tool in Hollow Knight’s kit. Hollow Knight Possesses No Mind to Think Nor Will To Break, so every attempt by the Onryō to use a mental attack would be completely meaningless as he has none and can still operate uninhibited. Past that, Hollow Knight can read the minds of others, as well as fly, create illusions, and use gear to become logia intangible and gain supernatural luck, So needless to say the Onryō actually scoring a hit is extremely unlikely. If in a jam Hollow Knight can summon up a force field to protect from all the Onryō physical attacks, and one of the most Unique abilities Hollow Knight has is self resurrection, able to come back from death and leaving only a shadow where a previous death occurred, kinda similar to a Little Big Planet Character. So with that power in combination with the hax resistance and the Onryō of this tier basically can’t Kill Hollow Knight with their powers. And Lastly to put the Nail in the Coffin, Hollow Knight’s Nail weapon is able to hit and slowly absorb the souls of its victim, so even in just physical combat, the Onryō would become more and more drained until they eventually succumb or end up getting permanently sealed where they will succumb anyway.

Building Tier:

Here we have the real top tier characters of the Onryō world, this tier has powerful characters like the Youkai spirit, the Bunshinsaba, but none are quite as powerful and iconic as the Living Onryō herself, Sadako Yamamura.

These two are powerful enough to shake whole building complexes with the sheer power of their fight, as well as fast enough to fly across an entire mountain range in seconds, which would put their physical stats at Building Level, Hypersonic.

Now as I said in the opening, finding characters to be OP in this tier is very difficult as their abilities are extremely potent, to an almost unheard of degree for characters on this level. For starters, Sadako has passive defenses similar to that of a DC God, she is an intangible soul sealed inside an alternate dimension. She only interacts with the physical world through either remote manipulation from her dimension or by sending forth mindless disposable Avatars of herself to do her fighting for her. Sadako is smart and doesn’t risk herself so having a direct means of getting around that powerful defense is a requirement.

Sadako even from this dimension can remotely do numerous attacks on her foes without even using an Avatar giving her a limitless range. She can cause massive devastating weather events like earthquakes and storms, mind control or possess people, manipulate someone’s DNA, burn images into someone's mind, Control and Destroy Technology, spread a powerful deadly plague called The Ring Virus, and of course her trademark ability to induce Heart Attacks on people.

When Sadako gets really serious she can send Avatar’s out to do her dirty work. Sadako’s Avatars are completely inexhaustible and able to enter the world through any reflective surface, be it glass, screens, water, metal, mirrors or even technology in general, as long as there is some reflective surface around, Sadako can send an Avatar there. Sadako is able to send multiple Avatars out at once, even whole armies of them, however there is a limitation that she can only have one Avatar Per Reflective Object at a time, meaning she can only send one Avatar out of each object, rather than just sending 50 or more per object. That being said should one of her Avatar’s be destroyed, Sadako would be totally unaffected and simply send another to replace it, the army is endless so long as the true Sadako remains.

As for what these Avatars can do, That’s also quite a lot. One of Sadako’s avatars is able to drive a normal person insane just by being seen, and they can gaze back at a person and kill them with her trademark Death Stare that rapidly drains all a person's life force away. Sadako’s Avatar’s can Fly, Teleport and turn Invisible, giving her great stealth and maneuverability. They can manipulate energy, lash out with deadly hair attacks use Telekinesis and Hydrokinesis, Increase her size and create and control armies of Insects and Necromorphs. Sadako’s avatars can also attack, manipulate or even absorb people on the Astral, Mental, Conscious, and Spiritual planes, which is going to be next to impossible to resist all of, and worse yet, her doing this makes her much stronger.

Sadako herself is an extremely intelligent and adaptable fighter, possessing Clairvoyance, Mind Reading and Precognition as well as being able to create city sized pocket dimensions and open dimensional portals.

And as if all that wasn’t enough you also have to deal with The Bunshinsaba, who is very similar to a Sadako Avatar in terms of powers, with her also having Sealing, Possession of Objects, Intangibility and Immersion.

So ummmmm, what Strategies would be effective here? If I’m honest there isn't a huge amount of them due to just how Well Sadako decided to cover her bases against this very thing. Sadako cannot be affected by using Haxes on her Avatars, so killing her Directly in her current state already requires you to have 3 separate abilities, one to figure out what and where she is, one to reach where she is and one more to actually hit her once there.

You cannot simply go back in time and kill her before she became this powerful too simply because there WAS no point Sadako was vulnerable, she still had her powers in life, and her conception and birth involved a Powerful Ocean Onryō you’d still have to fight.

You would think a good way to avoid all her one shot hax like Death Hax, Bio Hax, Mind Hax, Soul Hax, etc would be to be a non biological living entity, BUT because of her extreme technopathy powers, being a robot, cyborg, Disembodied AI, or even just someone who Uses a lot of tech, is pretty much Suicide.

But let’s not dwell too much on what Doesn’t work and instead look to what things HAVE proven to be a threat to Sadako in the past. The most Consistent power that has worked on Sadako is Sealing, you see while Sadako can open dimensional portals and create her own dimensions, her ability to travel to Dimensions she is not already rooted in is very limited. Sadako was initially restricted to Earth and Dimensions she personally created, and was only able to get access to The Demonic Abyss after humans utilized Technology to get there, giving her a doorway in. Sealing was also the way the Bunshinsaba was able to stop Sadako in both their fights, and while she couldn’t hold her long it was only because Sadako is more powerful than her overall.

Beyond Sealing there are a few other things to capitalize on, Sadako has really high secondary stats in every category except one, Skill, her and most Onryō don’t particularly have fighting skill, mostly using hax and wildly swinging blows like an animal when fighting physically. This is relevant as all of her higher plane absorption attacks Require physical contact, so a highly skilled individual could get by without resistance via outmaneuvering her.

That being said she does still have a LOT of potent hax she can do with sight or even remotely so you will almost certainly need resistance to Some of that. 

It would be great to be an entity that exists on a plane Higher than Spiritual, but that of course is also hard to come by. A good way I thought of to get by this is to be another undead entity like a ghost, but also having a great deal of fighting skill, as then you would have resistance to most of her non physical haxes, And could potentially defeat her without getting absorbed, although even that has holes in it.
I couldn't think of that many characters that there wasn't at least one hole with though, so lets see what I could get for counters!

Matoi Sumeragi:

Thanks to Imp for this suggestion; Matoi from the Sacred Slayer can bullet time and battle against building busting demons no problem so would be able to compete with Sadako in stats fairly easily.

Matoi VS Sadako or Bunshinsaba essentially boils down to Hax Quickdraw. Matoi as a Slayer, is an Intangible soul entity who can hit intangible soul entities, but it actually goes much further than that, she has Godlike dimensional abilities. With her Gates of Caelum, she can travel through 24-dimensional space, making her a much higher plane entity than Sadako and therefore not able to be reached or affected by her. This also allows her to teleport anywhere in the multiverse in an instant so she could locate and Hit Sadako while not able to be attacked herself. Past that she also has God of Myriads, where she can manipulate 24-dimensional space. This would let her permanently Seal Sadako in a higher plane dimension and stop her for good.

The Real problem with this counter is if Matoi doesn’t retreat to 24 Dimensional space immediately, Then Sadako would kill her. Now Matoi has a potent Anti-Stealth ability called ESP that lets her automatically perceive threats coming, and is more than capable of fighting demons that can appear before her in an instant, so I think she Would more often than not manage to do this before Sadako can strike. But Sadako is very smart and has a lotta extra sensory abilities of her own so it is somewhat dicey. For a safer counter,

Orpheus:

Orpheus from Greek Myth would be a pretty solid counter to Sadako. Orpheus has superhuman stats and all but believe it or not, his greatest asset is his musical Harp. Orpheus is SO good at playing music that reality itself bends to it’s will, able to control numerous aspects of nature through sheer musical talent. Orpheus’s music can manipulate the mind, emotions dreams and even reverse mind control a legion of Sirens, making it extremely unlikely he could be Mind Dominated by Sadako. His music also equips him with Fate manipulation, via literally convincing the fates themselves to aid him, which is a broken hax that Sadako, as a Non-Acasual being would be able to be affected by. This would greatly increase the chances that Orpheus would survive and win the day while Sadako would fail to stop him, despite the odds presented by their abilities otherwise which are greatly in Sadako’s favor in general.

With his Fate Manipulation working as somewhat of an Umbrella Defense, Orpheus could use his abilities like traveling to other dimensions and summoning all the intangible souls from the Underworld to rise up into Sadako’s dimension and fight her, which should be overwhelming for an unskilled fighter like her to have to deal with.

Orpheus would not stand a chance against Sadako in a 1v1 fight, but his music allows him to rally a great deal of support from other powerful beings around him to win the day, something that may be quite ironic.

Now truth be told this plan still has holes in it, The sheer amount of Hax Sadako has that he couldn’t resist if they hit makes this a very scary task, and IF Sadako plays her cards very carefully she could end up absorbing souls from the underworld he sends after her and growing stronger. While this is unlikely you shouldn’t worry, because after a LOT of thinking I have found someone.

One Character, who I know that I am 100% sure would Take. Sadako. DOWN… Are you ready for this?

Talim:

Yup, Talim from Soulcalibur would be OP against Sadako, it’s exactly as shocking as it sounds, but let me really break it down and explain just how that is possible. So to get this out of the way Talim scales past LizardMan's feat of surviving the shockwave of a massive building bust, and scales to numerous double digit mach feats of dodging and deflecting black powder bullets, so she'd be similar to Sadako in stats if not faster. 

So first and foremost I want to talk about exactly what Talim’s purifying winds can do. With these pure healing winds, Talim has numerous times been able to cure diseases, mutations, demonic possessions, insanity and mind control, all of which caused by Soul Edge, a powerful demon sword capable of making giant storms like Sadako does. It also allows her to heal herself and others from Grievous injuries and ailments that could be fatal, granting her a passive healing and purity ability. 

What this means is that every single ability that Sadako can do remotely; Mind Control, DNA Manipulation, Possession, The Ring Virus, making someone go Insane and even Inducing Heart Attacks; well, just plane Wouldn’t Work, as the purifying winds completely stop all of those dead in their tracks. So with this in mind, Sadako would be forced to deal with Talim more directly by sending Avatars to get her.

But How can she deal with one of Sadako’s avatars? Those things are Extremely haxy and dangerous with numerous higher plane attacks! You’d be right, but that's the advantage of Talim having the sentient winds share their knowledge with her, the winds are an ever present force around the world that existed long before man, and would have witnessed everything Sadako ever did on Earth. 

So the Winds, and by extension Talim, would know all of Sadako’s powers, as well as that she needs to get a hold of you to perform her higher plane attacks, and Sadako can’t simply counter this by generating a new dimension around them as Talim’s winds continue to aid her in other dimensions. 

So with this Talim would know not to allow Sadako to grab a hold of her, as well as know to avoid allowing Sadako to gaze upon her to use her death manipulation, and that is something Talim is More than capable of pulling off. With her small speed edge, levitation, vastly superior martial arts skill and Aerokinetic attacks, she’d have no trouble keeping out of Sadako’s reach and obscuring her vision by using wind to make a dust cloud from the ground. 

It also helps that None of Sadako’s Own mobility boosting abilities would be able to help much; Duplication? Talim stays mostly in nature and her blades are the only reflective thing she carries, she could make maybe two Avatars total; Teleportation? Talim has a danger sense; Invisibility? Talim can see invisible demons that normal humans cannot detect.

BUT Thor, Talim has no means of traveling to other dimensions OR attacking intangible entities, there’s no way she could Kill Sadako, so eventually she’d still win.

You are right about the first part, Talim can’t travel to other dimensions or hit intangibles, but that’s the beauty of it, She Doesn’t Have To.

In Talim’s ending in Soulcalibur 4, she manages to Resurrect Algol’s long dead son, pulling his soul from the afterlife, creating a new body, and bringing him right before them with her wind powers. This means Talim, with basically a snap of her fingers could essentially resurrect Sadako, bringing her in the flesh, right to her.

While Sadako does maintain her Onryō powers while alive, all her DC God defenses are immediately thrown out the window and she is vulnerable to Talim simply outmaneuvering her and kicking her ass with her potent wind manipulation abilities.

And if you still think it's Not a good idea for Talim to risk getting close to her, or are worried about Sadako returning as a normal dead Onryō, then Talim has got that covered too. Talim has powerful Sealing abilities strong enough to seal away Soul Edge, a demonic sword capable of ripping dimensional holes to the Astral Chaos all over the world, which is almost Mirroring Sadako’s own spatial abilities.

As for Bunshin, Talim’s same resurrection trick would work on her too, only even better as Bunshin actually WOULD lose all her powers if brought back.

There is a simple beauty in this counter to me, Sadako is one of the haxiest characters I have ever seen, especially in this tier, but Talim, a girl with mostly nonaggressive abilities and very little hax can just One Shot away all her defenses, Resist or Avoid all her Offenses handily and permanently defeat her, simply by just having the right tools for the job!