Verse Challenge: Yang or Nora, Who's Actually Stronger?

There's a Little Scene in RWBY Volume 5 in which the characters Yang Xiao Long and Nora Valkyrie have a friendly Arm Wrestling Competition. These two are each considered the Super Strong Physical Powerhouse of their respective Team, and are often compared, hence why this scene existed in the first place. But while the match here is pretty inconclusive, I thought it would be fun to do a deep dive into this to find out, ‘Who actually IS Physically Stronger?’ 

For this, I will painstakingly scan every relevant bit of information we currently have on the subject between the two and be as objective as possible, applying sound verses logic, no playing favorites here, that just makes this boring after all.

So first and foremost, we wanna nail down some of the more floaty topics. First one being Size.

In this corner we have Yang Xiao Long, who is 19 years old, Stands 68 inches tall, and should weigh roughly 140 lbs based off of those metrics.

In the other corner, we have Nora Valkyrie, who is also 19 years old, but stands only 61 inches tall, and would similarly only weigh about 110 lbs as a result. So an interesting thing based on those Numbers, one would think Yang has a clear advantage, I mean come on? She outweighs her by 30 lbs, she's above Nora by at least 2 Weight Classes in Women’s UFC, and wouldn't even be allowed to fight her as a result. But remember the circumstances of their reputation. 

Yang is considered the strongest character on Team RWBY, of which she is clearly the biggest tallest girl there.

Nora on the other hand, is even shorter than most of Yang’s team, and is on Team JNPR, with two Male Characters, and Pyrrha, a protege warrior who is actually 4 inches Taller than Yang, yet Nora is still Easily considered the strongest there. So it's pretty apparent that trying to call this based on things that work in the real world like size, are not reliable.

The second point to address is Weapons. Yang wields the Ember Celica (and Later a Robot Arm) which are essentially just armored gauntlets which in Melee use, increase the power of Yang’s blows by adding their mass and hardness to Yang’s own fist. Nora on the other hand wields Magnhild, a giant metal warhammer with a handle as tall as she is. Now there's no question here, a Warhammer is a massively better force multiplier than simple gauntlets. Not only is it ridiculously heavier, but its striking end being so much further away from its wielder's hands, means it will be moving way faster and therefore have much greater impact for the same amount of effort. What this means is that Nora would naturally have a much easier time dealing damage because you could get SO Much more from the same amount of force using her weapon over Yang’s. So this basically means any Feat Nora has using said Hammer is significantly more inflated from her base strength than Yang’s is with her weapon, and thus should be treated with an extra grain of salt, as if the numbers are close on some feats, we know Nora had more help.

Lastly, and this is the most important point. There are 3 different versions of this comparison we have to look at. RWBY Characters are essentially normal humans, who can project an astral field called an Aura that allows them to do Superhuman things, and each of them also have a power called a Semblance, and in Yang and Nora’s case, both their Semblances dramatically raise their strength to absurdly higher levels than normal. So we are gonna analyze this in 3 Rounds. Round 1. Yang and Nora with their Aura’s Down. Round 2. Yang and Nora with Aura based Super Strength. And Round 3. Burning Yang VS Thunder Nora. Sound Good? Cool~

Round 1. No Aura:

As mentioned earlier, RWBY Characters Project their Soul outward onto their bodies as a forcefield called an Aura that allows them to do superhuman things. Should this ever be broken though, as it often is, a RWBY Character loses all their supernatural abilities and only has their normal human Strength to consider. Naturally this would be a pretty easy way to judge who is Physically stronger, however apart from times we actually see or know a character's Aura is broken, there's very little time in the series where they Don’t have their Aura up. But let's look at the data we Do have.

Yang’s aura is clearly broken 4 times throughout the series. Once when Neo knocked her out in Volume 2, Later when Adam cut her Arm off in Volume 3, Again in a rematch with Adam in Volume 6, and most Recently in a surprise attack from Neo in Volume 8. There are times you can argue that she wouldn’t have had her Aura up such as when under the effects of the Apathy in Volume 6, but it's less clear.

From that, technically her most impressive Feat without her Aura is her stabbing Adam to death with Blake. Although considering that Adam also had his Aura broken there, that's just like stabbing a regular person with a blade, and wouldn’t be superhuman. Now if you counted the Apathy event then you could say Yang also was able to Punch through a locked hatch door, however I would take issue with this to some degree due to Yang using her robot arms shotgun blast to do it, meaning it isn't totally about her raw strength.

On the other side of the table, Nora has had her Aura broken 4 times too. Once in the Nuckelavee fight in Volume 4, Against the Cordovan Mech in Volume 6, when she Supercharged herself in Volume 8, and I’m PRETTY Sure when fighting the mechs during the fall of Beacon in Volume 3, it's harder to judge pre-Maya. So what's her most impressive Aura-less feat?

At the end of the fight with the Nuckelavee, Nora, after very clearly having her aura broken only minutes ago, was able drop herself off the roof of a 5 story building and slam her hammer  down hard enough to cripple a giant Grimm horse and fragment the stone pavement below. Despite not having Aura boosted strength here, this Feat is clearly superhuman. A normal person would not have survived this fall, and even if they did they would be seriously injured and likely permanently disabled. Even accounting for the Hammer, the damage she did to the pavement with it far exceeds what a human could do in one strike, and doing massive Damage to a boss Grimm like this makes it all the more impressive.

This is easily the most impressive thing anyone in the show has ever done without their Aura up, and really suggests that Nora has blatant superhuman strength even without the thing that’s supposed to make people in this verse superhuman active, and That makes sense. Nora is established to be somewhat of a Gymrat in verse. She has Clean and Jerked a 1000lbs Barbell over her head casually in Volume 3, and also offhandedly mentioned that she regularly bench presses 5 times her own weight (550lbs) in her workouts in the same volume. These serve as good explanations for why Nora clearly has super strength with her Aura down, and is also something we don’t see others do in the series.

That being said, Due to the fact we don’t see These two without their Aura very often it could easily be the case that Yang simply hasn’t had the opportunity to show how strong she actually is with it down, henceforth why we need to consider them as they are normally.

Round 2: Aura Active.

Now here we have a much more expansive contest, as this is how Yang and Nora are for almost the entire series. Aura is projecting one's soul around their own body in order to raise themselves beyond their human limits. It is more than a simple force field, as it can allow one to boost their Strength, Speed, Healing, Senses, and even allowed Penny to resist the Mind Control of Watts’ virus while it was up, clearly making any character more powerful in all regards with it active.

So first I want to Look at two Key points in which Nora and Yang were directly compared by the show head to head. The first one being The Arm Wrestle in Volume 5. There are many different ways you can interpret this. In the scene Nora challenges Yang to an Arm Wrestle to see how her new mechanical arm stacks up to the original, heavily implying they have done this in the past. Both Nora and Yang sound really confident of victory here, and this could be used to argue several points, such as;

1. Yang used to win all the Arm Wrestles and is confident She will again.

2. Nora used to win all the Arm Wrestles and is confident She will again.

3. Yang used to lose all the Arm Wrestles but thinks the New Arm is stronger and will win.

4. Nora used to lose all the Arm Wrestles but thinks the new Arm is weaker.

The Arm Wrestle goes pretty evenly for a bit and then Nora, with no loss in confidence states ‘It Certainly Feels like the Original’ and then Yang as a joke says it does have new features before detaching the arm and causing Nora to fall backwards. Now the Scene paints Yang as coming out on top there as Nora just got epic prank’d, however by the actual rules of Arm Wrestling, Nora technically won because what Yang did would qualify as a forfeit, intentionally taking her elbow off the table, that said a forfeit doesn’t help us. Nora’s comment about it feeling like the original is interesting, as it essentially removes the C and D options from that list, and her maintained confidence mixed with Yang clearly being more interested in pranking her than winning heavily implies the B choice is correct. Although that's not solid enough for me to call it there.

Another point of comparison comes from the Food Fight in season 2. In this Nora actually outspeeds Yang and Smacks her through the roof so high, it actually takes her out of the fight. That is definitely a Point in Nora’s camp, but again, that doesn't technically prove who’s ‘Stronger’ so let's go deep into this.

Yang has had a great deal of fights throughout the series without tapping into her Semblance, let's list some notable achievements.

Volume 1:

• Defeated Both Malachite Sisters at once.

• Dazed a Nevermore by repeatedly punching into its mouth.

Volume 2:

• Clearly Defeated Ren in a Head to Head Fight.

• Shook a whole Giant Mecha Suit with her punches.

• Endured being Punched through a Concrete Pillar.

Volume 3:

• Was able to match Arsenal blow for blow, who was able to Punch a car sized sphere of Ice apart.

• Punched 3 Haven Students out of the Vytal Festival Arena.

• Took Dozens of attacks from Mercury all at once without going down.

Volume 5:

• Matched Mercury in a rematch.

• Endured jumping down the Vault Elevator Shaft, which is definitely tall enough to cause terminal velocity.

Volume 6:

• Briefly fought Adam by herself.

Volume 7:

• Was able to fight on par with Elm, an Ace Op who was strong enough to punch a Goliath Grimm into the air in a huge shockwave, Grab onto the leg of a giant Geist to briefly hold it in place.

Alright, those are all the Super Relevant Feats Yang has done without the use of her Semblance from my count. Let’s look at Nora’s.

Volume 1:

• Forcibly Rode an Ursa and broke it without even using her weapon.

• Destroyed a bridge with enough force to Catapult Jaune to the other side.

• Killed a Deathstalker with a big hammer swing that also destroyed the bridge beneath it.

Volume 2:

• Clearly Defeated Weiss in a Head to Head fight, Knocking her Unconscious and through a giant stone pillar in one hit.

• Launched herself over a city block and took down a King Taijitu in one strike.

Volume 3: 

• In the battle of Beacon she smashed a Nevermore’s head deep into the ground with a single strike, dazing it long enough to be killed.

Volume 4:

• She battled a large Rock Geist which was causing small Earthquakes in the Forest they were fighting, and shattered its entire arm in a single hit.

Volume 6: 

• Shook Cordoven’s entire Mech Suit with her hit.

Volume 7:

• Was able to KO team FNKI member Neon in a single strike.

So to give a final Tally in this competition, It seems to be relatively close but interesting. One notable thing I have found looking at this is that Yang has much more feats of dealing with other powerful people, such as The Malicites, Ren, Mercury, Adam, Elm etc. Meanwhile Nora seems to focus more on dealing with giant monsters and mechs, such as numerous kinds of large Grimm. This seems to kind of present Yang as more the skilled Hand to Hand fighter archetype, while Nora the more powerhouse Kaiju Killer archetype.

When they can be directly compared, against their opponents, Yang seems to defeat foes with more of a flurry of hits, punching them several times and eventually defeating them through Rushdown combat. Nora on the other hand generally only needs one single big hit to connect to defeat her target, such as one-shotting Weiss, and dazing a Nevermore in one swing while Yang needed to deal repeated hits into its mouth to do the same. This could be attributed to having a much more powerful weapon, but some of these feats were accomplished by Nora without her Hammer, like breaking a Ursa with her ‘Bear’ Hands.

So let’s settle this then, with the full use of their Semblances, who is stronger? Yang’s Semblance is called Burn, and it allows her to absorb and store up Kinetic Energy from hits she takes in order to add it to her strength and grow stronger. Nora’s is called High Voltage, which allows her to produce and absorb Electricity into her muscles in order to grow stronger and faster. In their max states Yang’s eyes turn Red and her hair becomes engulfed in flame, while Nora’s hair stands up and she glows with a Pink Electric Aura.

Yang has used Burn a total of 10 times in the show.

-In her first occasion she created a fire Aura that leveled Junior’s club, then proceeded to break his weapon and punch him through a pillar and out of the building.

-Technically before this, she used her semblance to kill this big Grimm Badger looking thing, tearing up a great deal of land and basically killing it by fist bumping it too hard.

-Later she used it to beat the shit out of this one Ursa Grimm, killing it after repeated blows.

-In Volume 2, Yang used it to defeat Torchwick’s mech suit. She flat out stopped and shattered its arm in one punch.

-Then completely shattered the entire thing in one more punch, despite it enduring repeated punches from her earlier with minimal damage.

-In Volume 3, Yang has 3 separate uses of it, the first against Team FNKI, where she causes the volcanoes in the area behind her to erupt with her power. She then proceeded to overpower Flynt’s strongest attack and knock it back at him. And then one shot Neon, reducing her Aura from its max in a single hit.

-Next Yang uses it to defeat Mercury, managing to completely deplete his Aura down to nothing through repeated punishment.

-She lastly used it against Adam, and that didn’t exactly work, to the point she didn’t even use her semblance until 3 volumes later.

-When she did though, it was against Adam again and it worked that time! She punched him so hard it embedded him into the rock and broke his Aura.

-In volume 7 Yang again used her Semblance to gain the advantage against and defeat Elm, knocking her into the air and double hitting her aura away with Blake. Also she used it in Volume 8 to shield Ruby from a surprise attack.

Nora has used High Voltage a total of 6 times in the show, likely due to her having a harder time activating it herself.

-She first used it in the JNPR VS BRNZ fight in volume 3. And upon doing so she basically single-handedly dominates the entire enemy team. She makes massive concussive blasts that cover wide areas of the arena and knock them away. And the fight ends with her just speed blitzing BRNZ and knocking the entire team out of the Arena like they’re Team Rocket.

-After this, Nora uses her semblance to Hit that Rock Geist with enough force to shatter it’s entire body in one shot.

-Later Nora used her semblance against the Serial Killer, Assassin Tyrian and actually managed to Outspeed him and forced him to seriously block the blow,

-Even more impressive, Nora with her Semblance active was able to Overpower Hazel, standing up against his force, Judo flipping him over and smashing him through the entire building, each time with enough force to daze him.

-That said the most impressive thing she did with Her Semblance was to smash her way through this giant security door. This door was intended to trap her and the members of team RWBY, and proved so impenetrable that Weiss’ Knight Summon actually Disintegrated from trying to attack it without leaving a scratch. Consider this is the same Knight that Killed the Queen Lancer in one hit, the Queen Lancer that later went on to Impale a hole through Hazel, and It still couldn't handle this door. Yet Nora with her maxed Semblance annihilated it. And while she did get injured, she was fine enough to use her semblance again to knock around General Ironwood only hours later.

Final Tally:

So to give my conclusion here from all the data, I would first like to mention, this is merely a measure of how physically strong the characters are, and not who is overall better, as any good versus debater knows that there is far more that determines a fight than raw strength alone. Having said that, yeah Nora is Significantly Stronger than Yang is, and it’s evident at practically every single instance here. So as we have already mentioned, when it comes to how physically strong the characters are without their Aura, Nora’s feats clearly blow everyone else's out of the water. And while from an outside context, they seem fairly comparable with their Aura up, the greater context shows us Numerous examples of Nora in her Base State, accomplishing very similar Feats to things Yang had to use her Burning state to accomplish.

• Yang went full Burning on this Ursa and hit it over a dozen times with it still being intact, Nora killed a different Ursa at the same time as this in Base State without even using a weapon.

• Yang was able to stop this Giant Prototype Paladin's Arm and smash it in one hit in her burning state. But Nora in base form stopped and shattered the rock arm of this Giant Geist Grimm. Both these foes were able to take on a team of 4 Huntsmen in Training at once, so they should at least be similar, but there is some evidence saying the Geist should probably be stronger. The Geist was able to cause localized earthquakes, and are consistently treated as big threats, being noteworthy enough to call in the Ace Ops to stop one, and being responsible for Weiss’ Scar. Meanwhile the Paladin Prototypes were more fodderized by the end of Volume 2, with Oobleck and Zwei being able to oneshot them, and Weiss and Velvet being able to take out the Full Versions of them with difficulty one on one in volume 3, which was before the Nora Geist fight.

• Yang was able to go into her Burning State and Oneshot Neon with her blast, but Nora later also Oneshot Neon while again in Base Form, Yes this was Nora after becoming a Fully Licensed Huntress, but this is also a Neon after 2 additional years of Combat School therefore meaning she was also stronger then when she fought Yang.

Now to be fair one could try to argue this for the other side by drawing attention to how Yang was able to Punch Team ABRN out of the arena in her Base Form which is similar to Nora doing that to BRNZ in her Thunder Form. However, there's quite a few holes in that, like how Yang needed the help of her teammates in a combo attack to set up that hit up, and only punched out 3 members of that team as Reese was already eliminated, while Nora speedblitzed BRNZ without any help, and knocked all 4 members significantly further than Yang did. But most importantly, we can’t really say for certain if Nora NEEDED to use her semblance to do that feat. Unlike Yang, Nora doesn’t really activate her semblance herself, 2/3rds of the time it gets activated by an outside source without Nora’s control, and another time she activated it because Jaune told her too. Meaning the ONLY time she actually decided to use her semblance was when she broke down the Security Door, and therefore that's the only time we know Nora thought it was necessary.

Yang on the other hand, can activate her semblance at will much easier, and we KNOW she couldn’t have accomplished several of the feats she did with it active in her base state. The Prototype Paladin was Eating Her Punches like nothing before she used her semblance, and she couldn’t even land a hit on Neon for the entire fight before kicking it on.

So with these comparisons in mind, that basically means Nora as she is normally, is as strong as Yang while she's Using her Semblance, and therefore could accomplish any feat of Power Yang had done with it. This I find to not only be true, but also quite justified because the Feats Nora has accomplished with HER Semblance are far beyond anything we’ve ever seen from Yang.

With her Semblance engaged, Yang was able to compete with and break the auras of impressive foes like Mercury, Adam and Elm. Mercury was able to clearly battle Coco and Yatsuhashi at once in the Tournament. Similarly, Adam was able to Briefly battle both Sun and Blake at the same time, attempting to lure both of them into the forest to pick them off, and later was able to fight both Blake and base Yang at once to nearly a standstill. Competing with these two would therefore mean Yang’s Burning state would at least be equivalent to 2 top tier Beacon students.

Nora in her Thunder state was able to completely shatter that Rock Geist’s entire body in one hit, and Geist’s are so strong that the Ace Op Elm was only able to hold one's leg in place in Volume 7. It also allowed her to briefly compete with two different members of Team WTCH, Out Speeding Tyrian and Overpowering Hazel. Tyrian was able to fight all of Team RNJR at once, and Hazel was able to easily overpower Qrow, who fought Tyrian to a draw twice. Hazel was also strong enough to restrain Salem, who could actually casually restrain Yang with only one arm. This would suggest that Nora’s Thunder State would be equivalent to 4 Beacon Students, something she kinda proved directly by basically taking out BRNZ by herself. Heck, she broke through that Atlas Security Door, which Disintegrated Weiss’s Knight. Weiss’s Knight oneshot the Queen lancer, which later as a summon Impaled a Hole through Hazel. The Difference in Power here is quite clear, and finally explains Why Yang decided to forfeit with a prank, she knew she was beat and didn’t want that proven.