Welcome back to the 2nd Week of Monster Month! Today, we are covering a very special verse Infamous for its use of Horror, Invader ZIM! Coming out in 2001, Invader Zim is without any doubt, one of the most Dark, Disturbing and Scary kids cartoons ever made, and Easily the most Nickelodeon ever released. Yet despite that contributing to this series being canceled by Nick before the end of its first season, its overwhelmingly supportive fanbase has kept it alive over the years causing numerous continuations, including the release of several finished Season 2 episodes, a long run of comics and the new Enter the Florpus film! What’s interesting about this verse is it plays with horror so holistically, Aliens and Sci-Fi are prominent yes, but that doesn’t stop this series from also having dark sorcery, Cryptids, extradimensional horrors and more, all rolled up into one crazy and nightmarish world gone wrong. So let's find out how to be OP there!!
Island Tier:
This is the main tier of the verse where Irkens, Humans and most other beings in Invader Zim rest. Characters in this tier are all Large Island level due to everyone in the city enduring a massive city sized water balloon slamming into their city from orbit at the speed of a meteorite, which even accounting for surface area would mean each individual person endured 500 Megatons to 6 Gigatons of TNT casually, and this is backed up by many consistent feats of characters enduring City destroying Nukes from point blank. Speed wise, these same characters can dodge orbital laser fire, pilot Massively FTL spaceships, and compete with GIR who once physically flew from Mars to Mercury at speeds of 56 times the speed of light. Invader Zim takes place in a bleak and insane world warped from our own in ways that make it very apparent something has just gone wrong, most people in it are crazy or stupid or messed up in ways that even the actual Alien isn’t all that strange here. Even random civilians in this tier can do unexplained supernatural things like teleporting, controlling beans with their mind or survive having vital organs removed and replaced with random large metal objects, also for some reason Bees are basically indestructible in verse to physical harm, even to things that would destroy planets to give an idea. Some of the more impressive humans in this tier include the likes of Dib, a skilled paranormal investigator, who could survive being turned inside out, numerous times casually hack into alien tech, and use tech to turn invisible or render any alien unconscious. His sister, Gaz, is a LOT more dangerous than him, being even more intelligent, and having access to a series of unexplained Dark Powers that allow her to resist planetary Mind Manipulation, Possess people, levitate and defy Gravity, manipulate numerous elements such as light, dark, fog and fire, and has an Aura of Fear Manipulation. Having supernatural magic powers isn’t that abnormal in this series, in fact there is an entire secret war happening behind the scenes between Wizards who empower themselves with the Zim-Verse’s main brand of soda, Poop. These Poop Wizards have displayed powers such as seeing into the past and future, opening and closing dimensional portals, shooting lightning, manifesting energy, and summoning tornados. However the most powerful magical entity at this tier is Mortos, a being from the Overworld who travels down to our reality every millennium. Mortos can manipulate shadows, summon storms, steal souls, drain peoples life force, summon intangible ghosts and animate massive objects. All that said, the real strength in Invader Zim is not with Magic, but Science! The most intelligent human on the planet is none other than Professor Membrane, an extremely badass cyborg genius and the most powerful man ever. Membrane can fly even through space, Fire powerful energy blasts and turn himself into pure energy. He’s smart enough to invent a power source that could power the earth indefinitely forever, a device that can cause someone to fade into their own subconscious, and can make portals that can travel to or destroy alternate realities. But let’s get into the Aliens, the Zim series is home to a wide variety of extraterrestrials such as the hulking Planet Jackers, aliens that look like Babies which can merge together into a blob like kaiju, microorganisms that can rapidly adapt and evolve themselves based on others DNA, and the dreaded Ubertrouser, a race of Telepathic Alien Pants that can shoot psychic lasers and mind control those that they attach too and turn them into pant zombies. By far the most dangerous species of Alien in the known universe though, is none other than The Irken Empire. Irkens are a violent tyrannical species of Alien Conquerors who wield Level 4 Technology and incorporate countless worlds into their intergalactic empire just by despatching one of their elite soldiers onto its surface, The Invaders. Invader’s, as mentioned, are the most elite unit of the Irken Armada, made to infiltrate and conquer whole planets with the aid of their Robot assistants SIRs. Even the most primitive model of SIR, GIR is extremely impressive, being composed of a supermetal that allows him to regenerate from half his body being destroyed, as well as physically interact with logia and even metafictional plane objects. GIR can detect objects across the entire known universe, absorb data out of people and objects, molecularly remove all the liquid out of things, and even fire off a wave of energy that turns everyone caught in it into the mental equivalent of a toddler. To talk about the Invader’s themselves we can look at Zim, one of the biggest screwup Invaders, as a benchmark. Zim is an Irken, and has displayed many natural Irken abilities including the ability to resist mental attacks with his cybernetic brain, produce extra limbs from his body, survive consuming Dark Matter and regenerate from repeatedly being mangled into paste, shredded to pieces, being irradiated and set on fire. As standard equipment, he has his Pack, which houses multiple laser gun arms and robot spider legs, Rocket boosters for flight, a force field generator, a projector that creates holographic illusions and a teleporter device that can not only allow him to teleport at will but also teleport organs out of people's bodies. It can also allow him to magnetize himself to the surface of things, breathe in space with an energy helmet, and both hack or drain power out of nearby technology. Irkens like Zim and the vastly superior Tak also carry weapons such as explosives that can violently destroy planets, a plasma laser grid they can shape to cut through things, guns that can transmutate things into anything the shooter imagines, a built-in tractor beam which could immediately steal every weapon on earth and toss it into the sun, and a mental control device that can alter minds on a planet wide level.
And that's just the stuff they have on hand, with prep time, Zim can make super sophisticated robot copies of people, a Device that can Erase Beings from Existence another device that can erase his own or others memories, and even a device that can destroy the nervous system of every member of specific species across the entire earth. Zim’s tech can rapidly change someone's size and make them a hulkish monster or shrink things down to the microscopic level which he can use to attack someone’s insides. Irkin’s also have advanced SpaceTime Manipulation that allows them to travel to the past, temporally displace objects through time, drastically slow time to a crawl, and BFR people to other dimensions including a Room With A Moose! Irken lasers can completely destroy someone past the molecular level. They also have drugs that drain your free will and eventually make your mind explode, tech that can swap two people's minds, devices that bring inanimate objects to life, technology disabling nanites and the ability to easily track ships across the entire galaxy.
So how does one be OP against this? Well Invader Zim is interesting in one notable aspect, Intelligence. The vast majority of characters in this series are either extraordinarily stupid or completely insane, and normally both. Even the main characters of the series and their type 4 level brains still have massive mental weaknesses like extreme arrogance, naivete, apathy or denial that would make them very easy to manipulate or out-think for someone who may be much less scientifically smart but really clever. The characters in this tier also do rely rather heavily on technology to pull off a lot of their attacks, anyone who was particularly good at disabling tech would be able to quickly cripple a lot of this tiers arsenal. Even the Magic users in this tier have weaknesses such as having terrible stamina, relying on a fuel supply to cast spells that can be quickly drained before requiring a recharge. The Irkens also do have a lot of adherent weaknesses in and of themselves, such as being able to be poisoned by normal human food, and the fact that Water can burn them like a powerful acid. But beyond all that, one other weakness is the fact a lot of the powers this tier has, also let those who use them get really far In the verse as they don’t have a lot of resistance to their own abilities. So with that said, who would be some good counters here?
Carnage:
One character I was surprised to find would do pretty well here is Carnage, Spider-Man’s most dangerous adversary from Marvel Comics. Carnage is capable of keeping pace with the various Spider-Men, including Miguel O’Hara who was able to catch Mijolnir while it was specifically flying Mach 2000, as well as oftentimes blitz Peter Parker who can dodge beams of light and faster than light attacks. Spidey can also easily overpower casual City Busters like God Electro and Iron Fist, and shatter Doctor Octopus’ arms which could smother a hydrogen bomb, which would suggest Carnage could compete with the characters in stats. Carnage is essentially a Logia being composed of a hazardous alien goo that he can morph anyway he wants. He can regenerate himself from tiny scraps, fly, see everything around him, turn invisible, and transform his body into weapons, projectile attacks, and spread himself over a 2 mile wide area. With this in mind it would be very difficult for anyone in this tier to truly harm him, score hits on him, or avoid him themself. Carnage’s greatest advantage in this tier is the fact that with only a single touch he can infect others with a portion of himself, turning them into basically his own brainwashed clones of himself and multiplying his threat level astronomically, and the only character in this tier that has resistance to this type of infection ironically is GIR, so he can spread himself pretty much without difficulty. Carnage could basically do what the Ubertrousers did, slowly spreading themself until the entire population became part of their hivemind, which was treated as an enormous threat in verse that took up an entire event in the comics, except Carnage could pull this off even better. The only way they stopped the Ubertrousers in the comics was by Zim using his bomb that targets and destroys the DNA of a specific species to wipe them all out at once. But this is something that specifically wouldn’t work on Carnage as seen when The Inverted X-Men detonated a Gene Bomb that was designed to wipe out everyone on earth besides Mutants, which Carnage managed to stop by smothering the blast with his own body and survived, as it turns out this walking Biological Weapon is like impossible to kill with a Biological Weapon. Now to be fair there are a couple ways that Carnage could get defeated, like soul manipulation, BFRing him or if they manage to discover his weakness to extreme heat. More than Likely Carnage going ham and murdering others in a frenzy would let him get strikes in first. But if you want an even safer option.
Merlin Prisimriver:
You can always look to Touhou to not let you down! Merlin Prisimriver is a Poltergeist Trumpeter and thus would scale above the feats of the canonically weaker fairies. The Ice Fairy Cirno is capable of launching ice projectiles at speeds fast enough to hit with Gigatons of energy, and the sunlight fairy Sunny Milk is able to intercept actual beams of light at over 400 times their speed. This would easily allow Merlin to compete with the tiers here. Merlin is a Poltergeist, meaning she is capable of turning intangible to avoid any form of physical attack, forcing the tier to use its higher plane stuff such as Soul Manipulation or Mind Control to directly affect her body. However the latter really isn’t going to work as Merlin was indeed able to resist the mind control of The True Moon, which would be good enough to stop their mind control abilities dead in their tracks. Merlin is able to create dimensional portals at will between The Netherworld and Gensokyo, making it extremely unlikely that she could be BFR’d, and because she was an artificially made poltergeist, there was no time when she was alive and more vulnerable that these beings could travel back to and attack her from. Merlin’s primary ability is to excite one with the sound of her mystical trumpet music. This tune forces you to dance and do physical activities, the excitement is so great it causes Insomnia, sleepwalking, heart attacks and other injuries and deaths related to overexertion. This would immediately gas out the Sorcerers who posed a threat to her with their astral manipulation, and basically prevent anyone from taking any action against her until they are completely excited to death. Really the only way to avoid this would be to stop themselves from hearing her music, and while that would be possible, I do think there's an even better counter here,
Jimmy Neutron:
Yeah, one way to take this tier down is to beat them at their own technological game, and there’s no better character to do that with than Nickelodeon's premier boy genius, Jimmy Neutron. Jimmy was able to endure Gigaton levels of force from reversing a gigantic Tornado that reached far into outer space with his own body, and while his physical speed is only MHS in comparison, he can easily react to piloting spaceships traveling Trillions of times the speed of light, making him more than capable of avoiding and countering them when needed. Another important thing to consider is how they scale in intelligence. Not only is Jimmy canonically the smartest being in the Nickelodeon multiverse, meaning he literally does scale past everyone in this verse in brain power, but he also does scale past them in direct feats, Jimmy was once able to manipulate infinite space, a blatant Level 5 Intelligence feat which trumps their consistent Level 4 stuff. This means Jimmy could clearly comprehend, and quickly hack into and take control of their own technology, to cripple their arsenal or even use it against them. Even ignoring that, Jimmy’s got plenty of crazy gadgets of his own, including better versions of and direct counters to practically everything the Invaders could throw at him. With Jimmy’s Flux Field Duplicator, he could literally erase any being in this tier from existence, disregarding any character's regen or logia state. It can even make copies of whoever or whatever he erases with any alterations he wants, meaning he could not only destroy their gear and kill characters, but give Jimmy upgraded versions of said gear or make clones of these characters that serve him. Jimmy can also one shot basically anyone in this tier using weapons like his Cheese Ray which can transmutate anything it hits into Cheese, or his Molecular Atomizer which digitizes foes into data. Jimmy has many of the same hax abilities that most Characters in Zim have struggled to defend against before, including advanced Time Manipulation, and Dimensional BFR which he can use to seal foes away, and Unlike them, Jimmy has the ability to come back from that if they tried that on him, like when he made a Spacetime remote while trapped in the Cretaceous Era using only minerals, sticks and fruit. He can also turn invisible, freeze foes on contact and, while his Hypno Beam may fail against some of the main cast, he could easily turn the general population against them. Against the Magic users, things get interesting. Magic in Zim tends to use ancient tech based tomes called Spell Drives, which despite being tech are still completely unable to be messed with by the scientists of the verse due to being Magic. But you know who CAN hack into Magic? Jimmy, as seen when he did so multiple times with the Fairy Magic from Fairly Oddparents in their crossover specials, so Jimmy could actually shut even their Magic abilities down. Now there are some Win Conditions that the Zim characters could pull on Jimmy, if they take this super seriously, like disarming him with their tractor beam or using planetary mind control, but Jimmy has gone up against foes who could do that before like The Junkman and Grandma Taters and still came out on top. While Jimmy can be arrogant, compared to the Zim Cast he’s as humble as a Monk, the chances they would take him super seriously from the get go are incredibly slim, while him taking hostile aliens seriously is extremely high. Jimmy’s biggest challenge in this tier would be Tak, the most competent and skilled invader in the series, but not only has Jimmy bested skilled characters like Beautiful Gorgeous before, who should actually be even MORE Skilled than Tak is because skill Tiering in JN is pretty crazy, but even Tak underestimates Humans all the time, which lead to her getting bested by Gaz twice. Overall Jimmy really has just got this.
Planet Tier:
This tier is where one can find more of the serious big name threats of the Invader Zim universe, including both the Maximum Potential of an Invader with their technology as well as a multitude of other cosmic space horrors. Characters in this tier are easily Large Planet Level due to numerous feats such as Zim’s Voot Cruiser physically spinning the Earth in the opposite direction and other monsters being able to casually move or destroy The Earth. The Voot Cruiser can also fly massive intergalactic distances in only months and even time travel out of sheer speed, its best calculable feats being over 343 Billion times the speed of light.
Irken’s ships are also able to do crazy stuff such as fire lasers that can Cut through the Shell of the Planet Jackers celestial net that drags planets around, suck in the entire magma content of the Earth, and fly so fast it literally can travel through Time. Beyond that tech however there are actually several cosmic space horrors to talk about, the first of which being Santa. In the Invader Zim world, Santa isn’t a jolly old saint that gives kids presents every year, but instead a horrifying liquid metal blob monster that Zim artificially created to impersonate the Santa from folklore. This creature can shapeshift its body into literally anything, fly through space and absorb massive amounts of cosmic energy to increase its own power, and every year it returns to Earth to try and destroy it, causing them to live inside of a dome. Another yearly visitor to IZ Earth is a giant squid alien that comes to psychically steal intellect from everyone on the planet to feed itself, which is the actual in universe explanation for why humanity is so dangerously stupid in this verse. Beyond them you have Poopuhlu, the Poopwizards giant eldritch deity monster who can destroy the world. It is capable of creating dimensional portals, teleporting and using all the abilities of his followers. Something even better at spatial warping would be none other than Minimoose, a small floating robot Moose that Zim built that can use telekinesis. Minimoose is pretty nondescript most of the series but the thing is, he eats Dark Energy, the mysterious force that's causing the rate of expansion of our universe to accelerate over time, and it allows him to do INSANE things like spatially teleport the entire planet to the other side of the universe. After that, we have the terrifying Th’Gol an all powerful cosmic horror that was so dangerous it was sealed on the moon for thousands of years. Th’Gol is a mass of darkness, the absence of light, which predates the universe itself. It can fly, phase through any kind of physical attack and consume the Souls of every being on a planet in seconds. But the most dangerous creature in this tier is none other than The Star Donkey, an abstract Conceptual entity that exists beyond space and time, all real world donkeys are merely a projection of him, it is bigger than planets and casually kicked the earth into the sun in seconds.
So how does one become OP in this tier? Well many of the weaknesses from the previous tier still do apply here, with the weakness in brain power being even more extreme. The vast majority of threats in this tier are more beastial cosmic monsters that are not geniuses by any stretch of the imagination, more than half of them were simply sealed away by someone weaker than them, and were only freed by the outside help of someone else. Beings like Santa and the higher end Invader Tech can be disrupted via hacking, magnetism or other technology affecting abilities, and on the other side the Darkness monster Th’Gol is naturally weak against Light. Even The Star Donkey’s defense of being beyond space and time is not perfect as he is still able to be affected through his actual Donkey avatars, and is clearly physically present in a fight, his body being made of some kinda solid light. So with that said, one character I think could do quite well here,
Yellow Diamond:
Hailing from Steven Universe, Yellow Diamond is one of the 4 rulers of the alien Gem Empire, and thus scales to some of the strongest beings in the Steven universe world, including The Cluster who could violently shatter the earth if it wanted to. She also was able to score hits on and poof Lapis Lazuli, who could physically fly between galaxies at speeds billions of times the speed of light. Yellow Diamond is a Gem, a race of inorganic Rock aliens that project bodies made of hard light. By the very nature of that, literally every single one of the organic life threatening abilities like bone destruction, soul manipulation, and any of the other various biological attacks. As one of the Diamond authority, Yellow is extremely powerful and specifically controls aspects of the physical Gem empire, based on form, energy, intelligence and technology. Yellow is capable of producing powerful electric auras and attacks that are able to shut down or take over technology, as well as disrupt or control the physical form of others, not even the equally strong Blue Diamond can resist having her form destroyed by Yellow's power. With this in mind Yellows lightning could completely disrupt the Irken’s tech or take over Santa’s body or molecularly mess with the Star Donkey who also has a hard light body. Yellow’s attacks also produce a blinding yellow light which would be able to totally extinguish the Th’Gol’s darkness body in an instant. Yellow is also able to interact with higher planes, as seen with her ability to resist, detect and attack the mental projection of Steven, which would easily allow her to resist that Squid monsters' attempts to drain her intelligence. In a similar vale, Yellow’s own mental corruption attack that she, Blue and White used to turn every single Gem on Earth into an insane monster would have devastated most characters here. The foe most dangerous to her in this tier is Poophlhu, whose own dimensional abilities could potentially seal her. But considering that Yellow is also head of the Peridot division, the most intelligent Gem type, and the Gem Empire has made devices that let one traverse all over Spacetime before, it's likely she could just invent the means to come back even if that happened. That being said Should one of these beings manage to Target and destroy the Diamond on her chest they will defeat her. While that's unlikely to happen,
PED Suit Samus:
Samus Aran from Metroid, with her PED Suit equipped is powerful enough to defeat the full powered Dark Samus, who survived the epicenter of a Planet Sized dimension collapsing on top of her, and even without this suit she was able to defeat Gorea, who wiped out all life in an entire galaxy in 3 months time, making her massively faster than light, and that's not even mentioning she can increase her speed with Time Manipulation. Samus is an absolutely badass alien hunter who comes equipped with tons of advanced weapons and armaments that allow her to absolutely annihilate any that come her way. With her Annihilator Beam she can basically instantly defeat any type of Alien Craft by phasing through it to the pilot, destroy the monstrous Th’Gol with the blinding light, and even open portals to come back from various spatial shenanigans her enemies could potentially pull. She could freeze or short circuit the liquid metal robot Santa with her Ice beam or electricity attacks, and very likely resist a lot of the tiers own more ha attacks like mind manipulation due to her own badass resilience against the unstoppable dimensional substance Phazon which destroys or corrupts all it interacts with and can take over minds. Speaking of Phazon, the main benefit of the PED Suit is that it lets Samus use that as a weapon against others. Phazon could casually molecularly destroy basically anyone in this tier it came into contact with via matter manipulation and corruption, able to hit intangibles even, and in the hands of a warrior like Samus she could more than ensure it finds its mark. All this said Samus does have some weaknesses, namely if she fights too hard with the PED Suit the Phazon will corrupt her as well, similarly it is unlikely she'd be able to portal back from an alternate dimension, but for the best option.
Gigawatt:
The best counter I could think of for this tier is none other than the cosmic Energy Vampire from my life as a teenage robot, Gigawatt. Gigawatt was extremely capable of matching the hero Jenny Wakemen, being one of her most challenging opponents in the series, this same Jenny Wakemen who could casually fly a villain into another Galaxy and smashed apart a Planet Destroying Asteroid in only episode 1, easily allowing Gigawatt to compete here. Because Gigawatt is a mechanical entity, he would naturally have immunity from most of the powers in this tier like intelligence draining and soul manipulation, but the thing that makes Gigawatt uniquely suited to taking on this tier is how well equipped he is to take on other mechanical entities like he did to Jenny. Gigawatt as a Cosmic energy vampire, has complete control over energy sources, being able to drain it from his surroundings on an absolutely massive scale. His mere presence is enough to make entire cities go dark as conventional technology does not work in his presence, and could likely completely short out and power drain the other power absorbing entities like the Star Donkey and Santa. Gigawatt also has numerous other powers through his energy manipulation, able to manipulate the electrical system to create storms and control the elements, fire powerful electric attacks and manipulate magnetism which would completely wreak havoc on all mechanical creatures here including Minimoose and Santa. It would be complete childsplay for Gigawatt to defeat Th’Gol as he has numerous methods to generate massive amounts of light to snuff him out including Pyrokinesis which killed him in the first place, as well as the fact his head is literally a giant lightbulb. Beyond that Gigawatt also cannot be so easily spatially warped like the previous two combatants due to the fact he can travel around as a mass of electricity, which would actually make him impossible to target and displace as it has no defined shape or mass. Really he just has everything he needs to take this verse out.
Universe Tier:
Beyond our own reason and understanding, rests the very top of the Invader Zim series, God-like beings of unrivaled power that toy with the Cosmos as playthings. The Almighty Tallest’s powerful Irken command ship, The Massive, was once able to endure an extradimensional portal device exploding, which wiped out half of the entire Universe. Yet that is a pretty casual feat compared to other cosmic beings in this tier who can wipe out and move untold amounts of universes at will. Said blast The Massive endured also traveled across Half the universe in a fraction of a second, a feat in the low Quintillions of times the speed of light, something the other cosmic entities in this tier must be faster then. The Mothership of the Irken Armada is a force to be reckoned with, having access to similar tech from the previous tiers, as well as some messed up tech like the Unboner, which separates an entire planet's population’s bones from their bodies. This tier also houses the Sloobagloob, a species of extra-dimensional creatures that consume Time Itself as their food source, they naturally exist outside of time, and produce waste So hazardous that in our dimension it will immediately chronally wipe out the entire universe in an instant and reset it back to the way it was the previous day, with that days worth of time being gone forever. Beyond these creatures are The Abs of Space and Time. These Abs are essentially sentient universes that make up the multiverse and exist beyond the cosmic mechanics of our reality. They have cosmic super senses, can speak Telepathically, and can send people to any universe they want and pull them from holes in the fabric of reality. That said, the true top tier of the verse is none other than The Recap Brain. Recap Brain is Essentially The True Form of the Invader Zim Narrator, he exists in the multiverse itself beyond all the universes, and possesses omniscient knowledge of the multiverse. He can fly, use telekinesis to summon and spatially rearrange universes and has multiversal spatial hax that can send beings to and from universes, and he can even see and interact with the metafictional 4th wall.
So with all that said, what are the best ways to combat this verse? Well for one you will likely need some form of acausality and time manipulation to fight these beings, not that they are vulnerable to that but they are unbound by time and can manipulate it to their own will, so one would not be capable of doing much otherwise as they could not be hit. If you meet that requirement there's actually a lot you can do. For one, all the characters in this tier have basically no combat skills whatsoever, they never have to fight anyone or anything and are noted as not knowing how to. The Tallest are ungodly terribly strategists who are willing to fly directly into a multiversal rewriting wormhole rather than turn their ship, meanwhile the Abs of Space and Time were physically Unable to stop the godforms of Zim and Dib from ripping up the multiverse, and I don’t mean they were overpowered, I mean they didn’t know what to do. Even the Recap Brain is not as smart as he claims as he explicitly does not have knowledge of other verses, or characters who are meta themselves like his own avatars even. If you got a character that exists outside of time that actually was good at fighting, they could basically just bully them provided they had the abilities to kill them before they managed to actually use one of their powers effectively.
Geras:
Starting things off we have Geras from Mortal Kombat. Geras is able to do battle with powerful Mortal Kombat characters and ends up scaling to the multiple Universe Merging feats of Shao Kahn, and Shang Tsung fighting off the Injustice Green Lantern who could travel Billions of times the Speed of Light, which would mean Geras wields similar power, but is notably slower than the characters at this tier. Geras is the disciple of the Titan of time, Kronika and is basically her main enforcer battling Kombatants for the sanctity of the perfect Timeline, he has untold Eons of Kombat Experience and exists outside of time which would enable him to reach and destroy these characters. Geras can manipulate Time in all sorts of ways, one of the most notable being that every time he is Killed his body automatically moves backwards in time to before the damage was dealt, making him effectively immortal, and furthermore he gets stronger every single time he does this like a saiyan so even with their speed advantage they will struggle immensely to actually kill him. Geras can also teleport interdimensionally, preventing them from simply BFRing him away, he's got sand manipulation that would allow him to completely cripple The Tallests technology, and even temporally erase beings from spacetime, which would be a perfect finishing move to pull out on any of these guys. While Geras would clearly be a monster in this tier, the speed disparity would make this a somewhat lengthy task, for a faster option.
Sailor Pluto:
The Senshi of Time herself, Sailor Pluto. Setsuna naturally exists outside of spacetime, specifically existing in the gap between both which would completely allow her to interact with these beings. As one of the most powerful Guardian Senshi, Setsuna easily scales to some of the upper echelon of feats in the Sailor Moon series, such as the Eternal Amazoness Senshi, who are far weaker than her, flying to the Galaxy Cauldron at Quadrillions of times the speed of like very shortly after gaining this power for the first time, and similarly shed be above Arc 5 Civilian form Usagi who could tank even the power of the dark queen Nehelena, who created and maintains an entire dark universe with her own power. With this in mind Eternal Sailor Pluto could easily match these characters in head to head combat. Setsuna has cosmic level super senses throughout all of time and the ability to teleport and travel to alternate dimensions with her Planet Power meaning it is also virtually impossible for any of them to escape her as well. Setsuna can resist abilities including Poison, Transmutation, Death Manipulation and Spacetime Manipulation which would also enable her to shrug off basically anything this tier could throw at her anyway. Sailor Pluto is a Outer Senshi who has been guarding the Spacetime door against any and all threats for Eons making her likely the most experienced warrior of Usagi’s court, in addition to having several extremely useful powers her with her various magic abilities like the power to fade beings out of existence, manipulate her foes energy or seal off entire dimensions, all of which would be an instant win con against basically any of them. Really the biggest threat that Setsuna would face at this tier would be the Recap Brain using his Meta powers to attack her, but that really doesn’t seem like that much of an advantage as He has never shown the ability to destroy metafictional objects, nor has he thought to use this in combat. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I do have one final choice.
Time Master:
And that is none other than Time Master, the final boss of Freedom Force! Time Master is able to threaten the Celestial Clock which is the source of all time in the entire universe, and easily fight on par with and even defeat Entropy who could easily threaten universes and literally is the source of the multiverse’s chaos, which would more than let him compete here in terms of raw power. Time Master has complete control over spacetime itself and can freely exit it at will or even pull others into Spacetime, which potentially means he could force the beings of this tier Into the plane of time where they in fact CAN be affected by his Time powers which would just let him freeze them and they would be defenseless, or even attack them at a time when they were less powerful than they are right now. With his complete control over Spacetime Timemaster's own spatial warping abilities are far more advanced than the Abs or Recap Brain’s able to teleport into the FF HQ despite the fact it has a field that prevents beings from doing that exact thing, and had the ability to seal off Entropy into a single dimension despite her being able to freely traverse the entire multiverse. They simply couldn’t move him in the ways they want to, nor could they avoid him trapping them right back. Time Master is extremely intelligent and good at fighting, able to defeat Entropy, who was a well trained experienced superhero before reaching his level of power, quickly countering many of the hax abilities she threw at him despite him never having met her before. If that wasn’t damming enough he can also make basically an unending amount of clones of himself to fight alongside him, and create Spacetime rifts, directly equivalent to the Florpus Hole that stopped The Massive at will. Even if they do put him on the run, Time Master could simply retreat to the Celestial Clock, where they will have all their energy drained away by Wraiths if they try and pursue.
I did not expect to come out of this guide, knowing that there were abs the size of universes in the series. Invader Zim is weird. Good counters though, I especially appreciate Gigawatt being used considering he was the toughest one to counter in the MLAATR blog.
ReplyDeleteThis is in my top 3 of your strategy guides so far Thor! Absolutely fantastic work! It certainly doesn't hurt that I knew almost all the counters this time, in fact I knew at least a little but every single one of them.
ReplyDeleteInvader Zim I knew was going to be a difficult verse to counter. It's a rather bleak verse with rather horrific hax abilities, though what do you think when you hire the maker of Johnny the Homocidal Maniac to make a children's cartoon. It's pretty famous for being one of the most over the top science-fiction universes published, with a Type 4 civilization using planets for food courts and parking lots, singular troops to take over whole planets, and a lesser alien species focused entirely on stealing entire planets. Yet while it's depth is talked about a lot in terms of power, it's breadth is not, the sheer amount of crazy abilities and versatility in the entire verse. That first tier was absolutely insane, the sheer amount of haxes of all varieties, some getting up to planetary intensity, senses that could perceive the entire universe, insane spacetime hax, and so much more. It even has a whole sub-strategy of dark magic! All that on top of a somewhat unconventional stat combination.
With that said, despite the insane civilization level, the verse comically has a fairly dismal level of intelligence and general competence. Not only that was a crucial advantage used in essentially all these tiers, the fact that all the verses you used to counter were optimistic verses that comment on the exceptional nature of people, really goes to show the victory of an optimistic view of people as wise and capable over the such a dismal view of them. Despite their increasingly insane feats, and feel free to say if this is inaccurate, it seems like each tier got easier due to the higher stats allowed, as well as having increasingly conventional stats.
Going over the counters, I'm going to go in a somewhat unusual order, the order of my excitement reading them. Merlin, Yellow Diamond, and Geras were all characters that were clearly good counters, but I didn't know too much. I found it amusing in Merlin's section that she would make the unathletic sorcerers literally dance to they drop, and it was a cool point that as an artificial poltergeist, they couldn't mess with her timeline. SU Top tiers continue to shock me with how hax they are, I recall my surprise that Blue Diamond could kill the Queen of Tears, and Yellow Diamond doesn't disappoint being smart enough to literally invent a way out of other dimensions. Geras was a bit more of a conventional counter, though I found it cool to think of how he could avoid their speed advantage via passive time hax, even if technically he doesn't need too being out of time.
Carnage and Gigawatt were both two really cool counters I was excited to see, as I really like both series they come from. Carnage was an interesting one, he did always strike me as the most hax of Spidey's rogue gallery, but I was surprised because I figured his biological form of hax wouldn't work against a verse so technologically based as this. However IZ is apparently even more biological and "squishy" then I recalled. Of all the counters here, he honestly seems like he'd fit most, which really says something about the type of mind that made IZ a children's cartoon. I love the point that Carnage has already survived a biological weapon destroying DNA. Gigawatt was similarly cool. Once again when you realize IZ is such a biological based verse, being an inorganic being has a lot of advantages, especially if the verse relies on tech and you passively mess up tech...
DeleteTime Master was a great finish! I would have thought for sure his power was too high for the verse given his power is literally infinite, though apparently the Recap Brain can actually equal depending on interpretation? In that case, Time Master is a fantastic pick. He's truly the pick when you need a specialist in time hax at this tier. Those wraiths are underratedly broken as a threat to Time Master and it's funny to imagine them chasing after him back to the Celestial Clock only to get attacked by the Wraiths. It was also a funny comparison to compare his spatial rifts ability with the Florpus.
I was extremely excited seeing Samus and Setsuna, two of my favorite characters of all time, two stoic lawful good champions of justice! I was really happy reading both of their sections. Phazon is an incredibly broken weapon and I wasn't surprised it would mess up the entire tier it was in, given all the crazy things it can hit. Samus is also far more skilled and intelligent than the tier of course given she was trained by Bird Dads (wink) Reading Setsuna's section was really exciting, especially the degree to which she outscales the verse in raw power, and all the resistances granted by the Light of Stellar Protection which should indeed resist against everything in the verse save metastuff (and honestly might protect against even that, as Minako has mild toonforce/metahax)
However my favorite counter was surprisingly neither of them. It was Jimmy Neutron. This was maybe my second favorite counter you've ever done, only exceeded by Talim in the Ring-verse. I think there's two tendencies that are really fun in vs debating. One is finding the strange breaks in a verse's internal hierarchy. This is finding the random characters that are weirdly strong, the strange one-off powerhouses, the random monster of the week with one of the most broken powers in the verse. But the other is my preferred, it's the establishment of the hierarchy itself, it's the accumulation of abilities and achievements that is the undergirding joy of scaling characters in the first place, the finding order in the chaos. That is what this was to me. Jimmy Neutron is the premier Nick Scientific show and character. He is the one Nick wanted to promote as the heart of their science-fiction shows, and so seeing him fight this darker science-fiction show they had, and so perfectly counter it was fantastic!
I loved how he so perfectly could match or has defeated every single threat in the tier. They have planetary weapons? His first invention was a planetary "weapon." They can time hax? He can time hax back, and better. They have elites with superhuman skill? So does his dad, let alone Jet Fusion's biggest pal. He's a touch arrogant? He is, and I love this comparison a monk in comparison to them. They have Type 4 Tech and Dark Magic? He is literally the smartest scientist in Nick with consistent Type 5 feats and was able to hack far stronger magic from the Fairies! Tractor Beams, Planetary Mind Hax? Episodic villains for him. It really did feel like it was the spontaneous arising of an order, of Nick's true champion of science and it makes me imagine a crossover, where he shows the verse that science is not something to fear!
Man, this was a great strategy guide. I always love how you describe the powers of the verse in these; in this verse in particular, you show how these characters’ powers naturally flow from this weird, dark setting really well.
ReplyDeleteThe Island tier was generally what I expected, with some characters like Gaz being stronger than I thought. I really loved Jimmy Neutron as a counter, and it's potentially my favorite (of course it's a funny similarity that both verses have variants of evil pants :P). I thought it was a funny yet accurate comparison to say he may be arrogant, but he is nothing compared to the self destructive arrogance displayed by the characters of this verse. Your point about Jimmy hacking into magic was also really good, partially because it seems like something people might miss in Jimmy Neutron and yet it is really useful here. I really like Carnage a lot as a counter as well, especially with the fact he surprisingly directly counters the DNA bomb. Once again, it seems like Touhou makes for a great counter in general for many of these verses.
Star Donkey was maybe the funniest thing I learned about the verse from this blog XD. This is closely followed by “the Abs of Space and Time” (man, Invader Zim is wild sometimes; I honestly would have expected that more out of Billy & Mandy)
It was cool to see Yellow Diamond here since I’ve heard IZ and SU compared; I really liked the point that she could potentially come back from being dimensionally sealed because of her intelligence. Samus was great also, simply for the fact of putting a super competent space warrior in a verse full of incompetant space warriors :P. Interesting to see Gigawatt’s ability of traveling around as electricity would help him tremendously from being spatially warped.
The funny thing is the characters of the verse seemed to get more and more incompetent the higher tier they were, at least in certain regards. The universe tier having a problem of not knowing how to stop someone who was a competent fighter is a perfect example. It was cool to see you explain how Geras would work despite the speed gap. It was interesting to see how much Sailor Pluto would be able to resist. And finally, I like the idea of Time Master pulling these beings into time.
A minor thing I would like to note is that I am glad that you go to the trouble of showing that goofy, cartoony verses aren’t unbeatable; it seems like it's becoming a little cliche to have a comparatively more serious character stomped by a cartoony character when that isn’t always the case. Just a fun blog overall.
We're being invaded! By more spooky blogs ;)
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this blog, I must say it is a travesty that this series was cancelled so early. It sounds insane, in the most wonderful of ways! And very, very funny. Despite (or perhaps because of) being so kooky, this verse seems dangerous as heck! Seriously, the stuff available at even the lowest tier looked like it'd take care of so many characters out there. Targetting and taking advantage of the incredible technology the Invaders have seemed like a good strategy, and that made Jimmy my favorite counter in the first tier. He doesn't just have the capability to destroy them; he could be the ultimate “invader” himself, forcing the whole verse to bend the knee! Merlin has some really great defenses and I like characters that can use powerful music hax, so she was a fun and clever counter as well. Rounding out the first tier in reverse order, I didn't expect Carnage to so handily threaten an advanced alien civilization so well, but as we both know, viral infections are often a key weapon in the fight against the extraterrestrial menace!
I loved the cosmic monsters in the second tier, especially the Star Donkey! There's so much crazy danger being tossed around, I'm amazed this verse can even survive ITSELF! Seems like the counters got more sci-fi this time, with other spacefarers joining the fray. That write-up on Yellow Diamond was quite extensive and for someone with very little understanding of Steven Universe, it was really fascinating. Good job finding the only possible weakness she could have here, as unlikely as it is. Busting out an extremely powerful version of Samus is a testament to how tricky this tier is. I've seen how effective Phazon can be and this is no exception (even hitting intangibles, jeez). But my fave counter for this tier is once again the strongest one you've presented: Gigawatt. Energy draining seems totally broken vs this tier, provided one has the immunities to make use of it and this guy totally does! Just sucks it all up like a milkshake, nice!
The last tier kinda blew my mind; was not expecting things to get this strong! The Massive is a crazy powerful ship and Sloobagloob sound like one of my favorite time-related organisms ever! The Abs of Space and Time are the coolest of these “beings” (that definition's getting sorta loose) and wow, the narrator even got involved? Sounds like it's gonna be tricky to counter someone like that, but I'll leave it up to you! Digging the thematic counters once again, with time being a huge theme here. Geras is a MK character I'm not familiar with, but I dig his style. His ability to cheat death is one of the coolest powers in this whole blog! Setsuna's my fave counter here though, but that's probably a lot of personal bias talking as she's my favorite Outer Senshi. Her experience, freedom of movement and sealing make her a very potent counter. To a genius like her, the beings at this tier would be child's play to run temporal circles around. Time Master's gotta be the most effective counter here though, no matter how much I like Setsuna. What's better than a perfect counter to this tier? Infinite copies of that perfect counter! He can manipulate the spacetime of these universes and multiverses like clay in his hands and you've shown him to be a combat genius. What more needs to be said other than “That's OP!”
Great job tackling this verse dude, I know it's a fave. I'm looking forward to what's next on the Halloween agenda!
"guns that can transmutate things into anything the shooter imagines"
ReplyDeletewait.. when was that lmao
There are lots and Lots of comics.
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