Halloween Verse Challenge: Michael Myers Comparison

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN BOYS AND GHOULS!!! It’s My fave Night of the Year, so Today I’m Gonna be doing this Special Blog on the Biggest Horror Franchise to Carry the Holiday’s Namesake, Halloween. The Films started as a simple, low budget slasher chiller by director John Carpenter, But has since grown into a crazy Choose Your Own Adventure story about a Spooky Psychopath Stabbing people on Halloween, containing numerous different timelines, universes and continuities. Which Begs the Question, Which of these Various Michael Myers’ is truly the Real Boogeyman. Let's Break it down.

Thorn Myers:

The First version of Myers’ spawned from the original Film, John Carpenter's Halloween from 1978, and continued on in the Sequels, Halloween II in 1981, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989, and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995, which actually had two different cuts that drastically changed the story, giving this version the most overall films, although not by much. In these Films, Michael Myers is a pure evil killing machine being affected by The Curse of Thorn, a Celtic Druid Curse that grants him supernatural powers and an uncontrollable drive to murder his entire bloodline and any who stand in his way to fulfill the ritual of Samhain, hence the title, Thorn Myers. Back when I made my Halloween VS Strategy Guide, I said that I thought Thorn Myers was the most powerful, but that was more of an assumption on my part, and I also wasn’t considering the Rob Zombie Reboot, and additional Halloween Material has come out since then, so let's see how that assumption pans out. Overall this Myers’ spread of films is really good, like Halloween II where at the end, Michael gets caught in the epicenter of a fiery gas explosion that obliterated the entire section of the Hospital he was in, which I calced to be Low Building level, and since Dr. Loomis also managed to survive this, and Michael can easily overpower him, his strength also scales. That said by far the Most valuable Film in this spread is Halloween 4. In that Movie Michael Myers manages to move fast enough to catch up to a pickup truck speeding down the highway, climb onto it while it's still moving, and Kill everyone in the bed before anyone inside realized. Michael would likely have had to have been moving over 100 Mph doing this, 4 times faster than the fastest speed any human has ever ran, and more than 1/8th the speed of sound. This film also Features the Best Feats of Michael’s Regeneration and Illusion abilities, allowing him to Regenerate from having dozens and dozens of massive shotgun blasts pumped through is body by a firing squad and still get back up, he's been run over by a car, been shot numerous times in the brain and heart, and stabbed a crazy amount of times. His Illusions can project images of himself to throw people off and misdirect them, or give them horrific nightmares. Myers’ also gets some decent feats in the rest of the films. In Halloween II he was able to storm the Haddonfield Police Station and kill every single officer inside so swiftly no one even called for help. He's also successfully escaped from Smiths Grove insane asylum twice, taught himself how to perfectly drive despite being in there since he was 6, and in Halloween 5, literally misdirected the entire police force away from his target via a phantom army strategy.

Strode Myers:

This brings us to our 2nd Myers, the Strode Myers, named due to the series’ close following of the original film’s main character, Laurie Strode. This Timeline keeps Both the original Halloween and Halloween II, but Nixes 4-6, instead building from 2 with the film Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in 1998, and then its sequel, Halloween: Resurrection in 2002. In these Films Myers is still a supernatural serial killer out to kill his sister, but all of the Cult of Thorn stuff is left out, leaving his powers completely unexplained and left to the imagination. This timeline grants Michael the least amount of total kills, despite having the 2nd most movies, and portrays Michael as being the most vulnerable, being fought evenly with and defeated first by Laurie Strode in H20, and then again in Resurrection by Freddie Harris, played by rapper Busta Rhymes, and the decision to drop Halloween 4 from the canon certainly won’t be helping, but let’s break down what this version does excel at. Firstly, Strode Myers is actually Stronger and more Durable than the Thorn one. This is because Halloween II is still canon, meaning Strode Myers, tanked the same gas explosion, but he also endured it much more casually. Thorn Myers was put into a coma by that blast, getting captured for 10 years before being revived by the power of Samhain, but in H20 Laurie states that in this timeline they never even found Myers’ body, and then he just shows up later in the movie with no dramatic resurrection stuff, meaning he was clearly fine enough after the blast to escape the area. And while Loomis DID die in the blast this time, this Michael still does get strength scaling to this due to having to fight characters that can harm him, like Laurie and Freddie. Speedwise, Michael still maintains the feat of being able to kill the entire Haddonfield police force at a rapid pace in Halloween II, which should be a low superhuman level speed feat. While he doesn’t have as impressive feats of regeneration as Halloween 4, he still manages to have fairly good ones, including being shot numerous times in his face and chest in the first two halloween’s, being repeatable stabbed with knives and hit with an Axe in H20, and being hung from a building, hit with a chainsaw and horribly electrocuted in Resurrection, and being fine. One thing this Myers is also Lacking in is his illusions, with his powers being much more limited and unexplored, and never once fooling someone. But by Far the best thing this Myers has going for him is sheer intelligence. Strode Myers is smart enough to track Laurie down despite her going into witness protection, actually frames other people for his murders to keep the police from knowing he's alive, and literally faked his own death by crushing a paramedics Larynx and swapping clothes with him so he could escape while Laurie chops the wrong guys head off.

Rob Zombie Myers:

Next, Musician and Grindhouse Horror Director, Rob Zombie, was tasked with Rebooting the Halloween Franchise, making it a darker, grittier, more ‘realistic’ and cynical, and exploring Myers backstory and psychology…...I’m not really a fan, but hey, I’m giving these an objective shake. Being a Reboot, this version doesn’t rely on any previous films, solely using Rob Zombie’s Halloween from 2007 and its sequel, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II in 2009 both of which have notably different Director’s cuts to consider. This Myers was an abused tormented child who lived in a broken redneck home with his stripper mom and her alcoholic abusive boyfriend, causing him to torture animals, become obsessed with masks and other psychopathic tendencies, until he snapped and murdered tons of people, including most of his family, then broke out of an insane asylum later and kept on killing people and trying to find his sister Laurie. Because it's a reboot, it isn’t relying on feats from any previous films, becoming wholly independent, and also due to Zombie’s desire for the films to be more realistic, his supernatural powers take a pretty drastic nerf, to the point he doesn’t even have Illusion powers. Some people may point to his Ghost mom and younger him from Part II as an example of his illusion powers, but no one ever sees these things except Michael and his sister who is also unhinged, heavily implying they are either a separate ghost entity, or merely just a shared delusion between them. Anyway Rob Zombie Myers is a towering 6’9 and constantly portrayed to be incredibly strong, able to bust through wooden doors with ease and break himself out of metal shackles. In Part II he literally flips a car over with his raw brute strength. He's also surprisingly speedy and skilled, being able to take out four policemen armed with shotguns at the same time, despite them having him surrounded and him not having a weapon, already killing 3 of them before someone got a shot off. And while his Regeneration also took a nerf for these movies, he was still able to survive being shot through the forehead by a revolver at the end of part 1, and that's in addition to being shot no less than 3 times by Loomis earlier. That said, This Myers is still relatively mortal, able to be killed by being stabbed or shot about a half dozen times in the upper chest, and that’s in addition to him being relatively unintelligent, mostly being a large child minded psycho who solves every problem with brute force, he’s the only iteration of Myers that cannot drive a car.

Modern Myers:

After the Reboot, they decided to take the franchise back to basics by going back to the original John Carpenter’s Halloween and making a 3rd Timeline from it. This new timeline, which I dub the modern timeline, uses only Halloween (1978) and ignores every single sequel, even including Halloween II, and has built from there with the movie Halloween in 2018, and most recently Halloween: Kills in 2021. Although hilariously, the masks from silver shamrock in Halloween III consistently show up in these movies. In this timeline, Michael is yet again a supernatural serial killer, but is left even more mysterious, as not only is there no explanation for his powers, but the removal of Halloween II also removes the plot point of Laurie being Michael’s sister. This makes it the only timeline where they are completely unrelated, and makes Myers out to have absolutely no motive, just committing random acts of violence. Anyway, without Halloween II, this Michael doesn’t scale to the gas explosion, which is important as the original Halloween doesn’t have nearly as impressive physical feats, like carrying a large tombstone several miles, falling off a 2nd story balcony and punching through a door. This means Modern Myers will fittingly rely on the modern movies pretty heavily. In Halloween 2018, Michael manages to endure being hit head on by a speeding cop car, although it does knock him out for a few minutes. He is also shown in that movie to be capable of crushing parts of the human body like grapes, and smash through hardwood pretty casually. He also gets the intelligence feats of somehow learning to drive a car, escaping from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium twice, and tracking down those documentary filmmakers who had his mask. However this Myers’ most important film is Halloween Kills. In this movie Myers is able to quickly regenerate from being shot and stabbed about a dozen times that night and beaten to a bloody pulp by a neighborhood lynch mob armed with Blades, Clubs and Firearms. He also shows a tremendous amount of fighting skill, being able to defeat the entire Haddonfield fire department, who were armed with Axes and Buzzsaws, in a 20 on 1 fight, and later dispatch that entire lynch mob at once after getting back up. Some say this version actually can Teleport, although that would make a giant plothole with the end of the first film, more likely this is just a speed feat of being able to run across a street into a home within the 3 seconds Lonnie turned away, which would be consistent with him murdering everyone in the gas station in Halloween 2018 in under one minute. This version of Myers also has illusions, though not nearly as impressive, being about as strong as the Strode Myers’. Although he does have one totally unique power, that being his ability to draw power from his victims, becoming stronger and more unstoppable with each person he slays.

So in Comparison, I Actually think that the Rob Zombie Myers VS The Modern Myers would be a pretty interesting fight. The two have similar speed and fighting skill levels, with RZ Myers being stronger and more physically powerful, but the Modern Myers covering it with better regeneration and the ability to become stronger by killing surrounding people. Would make for an interesting fight of who could wear the other down first, though I think I would side with the Modern Myers due to him displaying better intelligence and skill, and could well become stronger than him by dealing enough carnage. The Strode Myers is clearly beyond both these two, having pretty notably better Strength and Durability than either of them, better overall regeneration, and significantly better intelligence, while still being comparable in all other categories. With this in Mind, Strode Myers could create a more complex strategy to ensure he successfully attacks them while they fail to do the same, and his better ability to dish out, stop, and recover from damage, make that all the more easy to pull off. But then you have to compare the Thorn Myers, who would also be above these two most recent versions for similar reasons, while also having the clear cut fastest speed, better regeneration and illusions, and the best skill feat, as Killing an entire police force is more impressive than doing the same thing with a group of firemen and rioters who are mostly armed with melee weapons. Now yes Thorn and Strode Myers do not have access to that whole drawing power from his victims schtick that the Modern one does, this could potentially allow him to surpass them overtime like I argued he could with the RZ Myers (considering he'd only have to go from Wall Level/Low Superhuman to Small Building Level/Subsonic I think it's reasonable to assume he can get there without NLF), but consider than in Halloween Kills alone, the Modern Myers kills like 3 dozen people and still doesn’t get any higher end feats surpassing himself in Halloween 2018, very heavily implying that the boost he gains is rather small and he’d have to kill probably hundreds of people before he could compete which is just not happening during a fight. Now the Big question, Strode Myers VS Thorn Myers. So as stated previously, I think Strode Myers has the edge in actual strength and durability, due to him enduring the Explosion from Halloween II, better than the Thorn one did. But, as the Thorn one also did endure the Halloween II explosion as well, the gap here is pretty marginal so they could very well compete. Since the Thorn Timeline has Halloween 4, he also has Mid regeneration, which is superior to the Strode Myers having only Low-Mid, meaning that despite Strode Myers being slightly stronger, Thorn Myers can definitely endure his hits a lot better than Strode Myers can endure hits from him. We know that Strode Myers could die if decapitated, which is why he made an elaborate escape attempt to avoid it, yet as far as we know, The Thorn one may be able to survive that. Thorn Myers also has Bar none the best feats in Speed, Illusions and Skill, as yes while Strode Myers’ technically has that same cop massacring skill feat, he also has a lot more moments of vulnerability with being defeated in fights by Laurie and Freddie, which just doesn’t really happen in the Thorn Timeline. Yes the Strode Myers is smarter, but Thorn Myers is certainly no slouch either, and his ability to run relative circles around him, or throw him off with illusions, mean it's not that big of a hurdle to cross. I believe a fight between them would basically just be Thorn timeline Michael outmaneuvering him and stabbing him until he eventually wears Strode Myers down. Because of this it should be pretty clear that I was right in my assumption that Thorn Myers is the best, being the fastest, having the best supernatural properties and the best skill bar none, while also having a close second place in DC/Dura and Intelligence. This is largely due to the fact that most of Thorn timeline Myers’ movies were made in the 80’s where movies weren’t afraid to get wild and crazy and over the top with what's going on, and for this reason I feel pretty confident saying that not only could Thorn Myers defeat any of these other version, but he would almost certainly defeat all 3 versions at once, even if they were actively working together against him. Thus is the Curse of Thorn…...Happy Halloween.

How They Compare: Sagume Kishin (Touhou)

Hello Everybody! Today is a very special day for me, and to mark the occasion, I wanted to talk about a certain character whom I think is special, but also underappreciated. The Touhou antagonist who never got to be the main focus, the one who is shrouded in mystery, and even I feel as though I never mention, because honestly she's the character I feel is more like me than any other character in the series, and that makes me avoid the subject, but not today! So strap in as we look at none other than Sagume Kishin, The Goddess who Invites Unfortunate Slips of the Tongue. Let’s see how she stacks up?

When one looks up at the clear night sky, they see the pale celestial body known as the Moon, orbiting uninhabited around us, or so one would think. In reality, this sphere is home to the Lunar Kingdom, made up of a powerful race of Pure beings known as the Lunarians, and their legions of Moon Rabbits. This advanced alien race is one of the mightiest forces in all of Touhou, wielding advanced technology and reality warping powers, but it's their last and greatest line of defense we are discussing today. Sagume Kishin is a Lunarian Goddess, and leading member of the Lunar Capitol Counsel, who works directly under the Moon Gods, Lord Tsukuyomi and Chang’e. She is a Hybrid of a Heavenly and Native God, which resulted in her having one angel wing on her heavenly side, yet none on the other. This balanced state makes her great at considering situations from every angle, and making the most rational decisions to benefit her kingdom. She is a powerful and pragmatic crisis manager for the moon, who functions totally autonomously without needing permission, in order to assure the prosperity of her homeland.

Sagume is able to very casually fight the Touhou main characters, Reimu and Marisa. Despite letting them win against her, she’s one of the only characters in the entire series to not be shown taking battle damage from them. Just before their fight, these two were able to fly across Doremy’s dream plane in about 5 minutes. This dream she made, was an exact replica of the universe, which they physically entered from the edge and were able to reach the moon within that time frame, which would require speeds of nearly 5 quadrillion times the speed of light. They have also been able to defeat numerous characters that are easily able to wipe out the entire universe, one of which being Suika, who can casually destroy the Heavens, a celestial plane large enough to contain a god so enormous, he makes the entire universe look like a quantum string by comparison. Sagume’s true form is that of a Divine Spirit, in the Touhou world, these are primordial, nameless entities that existed before even concepts, once being part of Everything before becoming separate via choosing a physical being to latch onto. Because of this Sagume’s true self is Omnipresent, and exists on the Absolute Plane, making it unable to be hit or effected by anything short of metafictional manipulation, as it is simply more Real than what she is fighting. Because Sagume’s physical form is now inseparably tied to this, it has essentially become an avatar. This means that so long as her Primordial form remains, she can regenerate her physical form from total annihilation, and duplicate it as many times as she wants.

Sagume’s physical form is that of a Half Lunarian, Half Amanojaku which was likely just her heritage before ascending to her current nature. Because of this she has many powers associated with both species, which combine together in interesting ways. Lunarians are pure beings who exist in a state separated from Life and Death, they cannot age or catch diseases and no longer require needs like food, water or oxygen to survive. This is because the Lunar Kingdom is an Artificial Pure Land where Time doesn’t exist, there are no seasons, days or nights, and everything in there is eternal and doesn’t decay. This also gives them massive stamina more impressive than any other youkai, senses that can detect life and death in beings, and intelligence enough to build the most advanced tech in all of Touhou. Lunarians are resistant to Probability Manipulation, due to having so much fortune that it cannot be reduced, and possess the mental fortitude to shrug off the effects of the True Moon, which was able to drive everyone on Earth completely Insane and can be fatal out of sheer madness. Sagume in particular can even resist Conceptual Manipulation, as her true form is in total control of her original name. Like Most Touhou characters, Sagume can fire a wide variety of Danmaku energy projectiles, hit and physically interact with Intangible entities, and despite only having one wing, is perfectly capable of flight. She can also Teleport, create Force Fields, travel to Other Dimensions, Drain Energy from others, and was able to Temporarily Freeze the entire Lunar Kingdom in Stasis while she dealt with Junko’s assault. However none of these are her most dangerous power, that comes from her Amanojaku side.

Amanojaku are twisted spirits of contradiction and perversity, they think and act contrarily, liking and disliking the opposite of what any normal being with common sense would, and possessing the power to turn anything on its head. But because Sagume is a Pure Goddess, she doesn’t think or act like this at all, instead, this power manifests in causing the world itself to move in opposition to her based on her words. When Sagume speaks about a particular situation or event, that situation will eventually proceed to reverse itself, through whatever means possible. If she speaks about an attempt to achieve a goal, it will fail in some way. If she speaks about something bad occurring, it will be resolved in some way. Every single state of things she speaks about will cause reality itself to change or prevent it, crises will all resolve themselves, Plans will all fail, and outcomes will all skew, as her voice is host to a power known as Causality Manipulation. Sagume’s causality changing voice is potent enough to effect events across the entire Touhou multiverse, and was even once used at the request of Yukari Yakumo to stop an all out battle of the most powerful characters in the verse, showing that not even characters like them can resist it, and it is able to accomplish things Yukari cannot. She can even impart her power onto a location itself to manipulate reality based on what anyone says. This made Lies into Truths, and brought every single Urban Legend that was spoken of into reality, including Turbo Granny, The Loch Ness Monster, Spontaneous Combustion, Kunekune, The M.I.B., and The Girl from The Gap. People could also utilize these legends to do things like boost their stats, control the elements, drive others insane, summon alien minions, and manipulate space. This was all part of Sagume’s plan to ensure The Lunar Kingdom would survive the assault from Junko. Should the rumor that NASA hid what they actually found on the moon spread, it would have transported The Lunar Kingdom atop Gensokyo. Sagume didn’t actually want to go through with that plan however, only setting it up as a last resort. When confronted by the Main Characters, she told them all about this, as she knew that in doing so it wouldn’t come to fruition, and the simplest way for her power to ensure that would be to make the main characters defeat Junko, thus rendering all her contingencies unnecessary. This does lead into the greatest drawback of her power..

This ability is passive, Sagume is not able to turn it off, and everything she says has the potential danger of altering reality in unpredictable ways. Because of this, Sagume tends not to talk much, only when necessary or when spoken too, and when she does, she is always extremely careful about her wording so as not to accidentally trigger her power. Also, As a Lunarian she is unable to see beings who are more pure than she is, plus, any muting abilities will take away her greatest weapon. Some Lunarians are also weak to impurity, things with Life or Death, which has led to the hilarious trait of them being terrified of the vastly weaker Fairies, due to them being made from Life Energy of Nature. Sagume however never shows this same fear, in fact being perfectly polite and reasonable to all those she meets and has even paid friendly social visits to Gensokyo multiple times after the fact.

Name: Sagume Kishin

Origin: Touhou Project

Classification: Lunarian Goddess, Half-Amanojaku

Powers and Abilities: Flight, Danmaku, Causality Manipulation, Reality Warping, Mid-Godly Regeneration, Absolute True Form, Duplication, Immortality, Can Survive in a Vacuum, Extrasensory Perception, Anti Intangibility, Teleportation, Dimensional Travel, Spacetime Manipulation, Stasis, Forcefields, Energy Draining, Stat Boosts, Sanity Manipulation, Simulation Summoning, Elemental Control, Mind Manipulation Resistance, Probability Manipulation Resistance, Sanity Manipulation Resistance, Conceptual Manipulation Resistance.

Weaknesses: Cannot Turn off her power, Muting, Pure Characters.

Destructive Capacity: Universal+

Range: Universal+

Speed: MFTL+ (Quadrillions); Omnipresent in true form

Durability: Universal+

Stamina: Massive

Intelligence: Godly (Comparable to Eirin, who can make medicines that remove the concept of Death from people, likely also millions of years old)

 

So how would she do in other verses?

In DC Comics, Sagume would be an incredible threat, with power comparable to the strongest JLA members, and while lacking speed physically compared to them, her omnipresent true form would assist her in keeping up. Given her power sorta makes the opposite of what she says occur, it’s likely the mages would think she is using some offshoot of Backwards Magic like Zatanna. Which makes her vs the Justice League Dark an interesting discussion, with her having superior power, but then having an extremely diverse arsenal. It could be very interesting having Constantine try and manipulate her into saying things that benefit them in this bout, as Sagume wouldn’t try and kill him without reason, given how much weaker he is. Zatanna could also certainly disrupt her game plan with abilities like muting and sealing, it would be a dangerous fight, but she’s shown to be clever enough to survive The Great Evil Beast before, so certainly doable. In terms of actually stopping her for good though, you would need a 5th Dimensional Imp or better to be able to target her true form, or you could get lucky with Crazy Jane.

In Marvel, Sagume’s physical stats would rank her as a skyfather level entity, superior to all but the strongest heroes on marvel Earth, and due to her primordial form, would occupy a niche similar to Nightmare, the master of dreams. Because Marvel is much less reliant on magic than DC, it seems as though they would struggle so much more to figure out she was the source of the changes to the events of the world. With her ability to impart the power of her voice onto an area she could easily cause massive untraceable chaos. Take for example, her doing this to Marvel New York City, any of J. Jonah Jamerson’s famous anti-Spider-Man propaganda pieces would create Evil versions of Spider-Man loose on the city, and so would any other rumor or conspiracy someone brings up. In an all out fight, Sagume could only be ‘defeated’ by powerful magic characters like Ghost Rider, Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange or Doctor Doom, but none of them would be able to put her done for good, as Absolute Plane attacks are basically unheard of in Marvel, only possessed by vastly weaker characters like Deadpool, or some of the top tiers of Marvel like the celestials.

In the Clamp Multiverse, Sagume would be one of the top tier characters for certain, but there's actually a fairly large group of characters up there with comparable power to her, and while her speed is much more impressive, The Clamp characters do have comparable reaction speeds and passive spacetime warping to protect them from being blitzed. Sagume would greatly excel in a multiverse where Magic is in the mundane due to the very fact her voice packs the majority of her power, and her ability imbue her power onto others to bring their urban legends to life, or to open rifts to other dimensions to fully explore the multiverse would be extremely helpful in causing mischief throughout the verse. Her Causality Manipulation would even be able to effect Yuuko despite her timeless state, where as Yuuko likely wouldn’t be able to do that much against her, a large part of which being because Yuuko doesn’t know Sagume’s true name, and won’t be able to get any information out of her without Heavy amounts of manipulation. Though Sagume would likely rather just have tea with her, If she did become too much trouble there are things that could pose a threat to her. Sakura for instance would be able to shrug off all of her attacks thanks to her Hope card protecting her from Causality magic, and as her Clow Cards are the life energy of nature, like fairies, they would have some power over her, particularly the Western Magic cards, which uses the magic of the Sun as opposed to the Moon. And that's not even mentioning The Silent, which forcibly mutes the target, taking Sagume’s greatest weapon away. That said, Sagume’s Absolute true form still proves enough protection to prevent her from being destroyed for good.

In the Saint Seiya Series, Sagume would still remain quite the imposing figure. She's far above the likes of Silver Saints and could well compete with several weaker Gold Saints, but numerous of the more powerful Gold Saint Tier Characters manage to massively eclipse her in stats. But even if they were to say, One-shot her, Sagume can just come back, and could even duplicate herself to make an army of her if she wanted, essentially being a more broken version of the 8th sense. Sagume has a lot of powers to throw at them sure, but as anyone who has experience with Saints knows, it's rather hard to affect them, already having resistances to powers like Dimensional BFR, Insanity and Reality Warping, and can additionally gain resistance to new abilities after it is used on them once. However, that power would not work on Causality Manipulation, as it doesn’t target a saint, it changes the universe around the saint to create natural results, meaning this is potentially fatal, However even this could potentially be countered by The Power of Miracles.

I mean, Come on, she's a literal one-winged angel, I had to. That said, Even with the recent upgrades they received, Sagume would totally one-shot Sephiroth, and solo VII. In some of the Other Final Fantasy games however, she’d be more balanced. Sagume would fit best into Final Fantasy XIII or XIV, having stats even higher than Lightning Farron, and being able to compete with boss villains like Bhunivelze or The Cloud of Darkness. The Cloud of Darkness is a conceptual being that uses advanced Void manipulation powers to erase entire universes from existence, but because Sagume’s Divine Spirit body exists beyond concepts, she could interact with its true form and attack and potentially kill this monster before it managed to lay waste to its world. Even her physical form would be pretty well suited to stopping it thanks to her Purity protecting her from its corruption, and having the general inability to be BFR’d, she couldn't rely on her most Dangerous weapon though, thanks to its use of the Silent Materia, so would have to make due with her other powers.

While we are talking about Angels on the Moon, in Sailor Moon, Sagume would be comparable in power to the top tiers of the Stars arc, with speeds relevant to the Dream arc. Sagume, as an ancient defender of the Moon against all threats, and as someone who has no problem with the earth on top of that, would almost certainly ally herself with Usagi and her Senshi to protect it from the various Chaos Stars. And against them, Sagume would be extremely hard to stop. Sagume being able to manipulate causality, means not only can she resist Nehelenia’s curse technique, but use an even more potent version against any of them. Sagume can resist the Mind Manipulation of The Evil Eye, and even if reduced to a Star Seed, would still be able to just regenerate back, unaffected by any changes even Galaxia would try to make to her concept. Because there’s very little Absolute plane abilities in Sailor Moon, Sagume would be functionally as hard to permanently defeat as Sailor Chaos itself. And while it’s questionable if she could kill Chaos, she COULD use her power to delay her return indefinitely.

In the Billy and Mandy verse, Sagume’s nature would put her in a similar place to the various Deities like Eris, with her initially having the stat advantage over everyone, but them having the potential to surpass her via stat bolstering themselves. Sagume’s Causality Manipulation would certainly be a threat to the verse, but not that uncommon a threat, as monsters and gods being able to subtly manipulate the universe with their casual actions is pretty commonplace here, as seen in the ep, Chaos Theory. Her powers like Dimensional Travel, simulation summoning and reality warping would all be extremely helpful here, but are also not unusual powers for the verse. Funnily enough the thing that makes the Gods in the verse so hard to stop is them being Platonic Concepts in their true form, which Sagume likely couldn’t stop. But Sagume still does them one better by being an Absolute entity in true form, and given The only meta-fictional powers Grim, or any of the guards have shown is simply awareness of the 4th wall, they couldn’t attack her. One character however, CAN affect her true form, and that is Mandy, who was once able to straight up walk out of their cartoon world through the 4th wall, meaning she Can hit Sagume’s true form. Now obviously Mandy is not equipped normally to take on someone like Sagume in a fight, even her very impressive planetary mind control would not work as Sagume happens to have mind manipulation resistance exactly as strong. But the future Empress Mandy, established to be invincible in verse, certainly could! Who would win in that scenario would be difficult to say, as they could resist all of the other’s powers, but Mandy would be smart enough to find her true form, and could potentially beat her in a slugfest should she have the stat bolstering of Grim’s scythe.

And while we are talking about Gods, Why not Bring up the furthest possible series from Touhou, God of War! So I think an immediate comparison to draw here would be to the Fates, ancient angel-like beings who control the destiny of every being in the verse with their threads. Their Fate Manipulation and Sagume’s Causality Manipulation would be naturally clashing if these two were to be in the same universe so a fight would likely be inevitable. The Fates in God of War have a Tremendous speed advantage over Sagume, being well into the septillions of times light speed, however are not quite as raw powerful or durable. Sagume actually should be able to naturally resist the fate manipulation of the Fates, thanks to her own Causality manipulation, Absolute plane true self, and most of all, her Probability manipulation resistance, a trait that allowed another Lunarian, Yorihime, to defeat the vampire, Remilia Scarlet, despite her Also having potent Fate Manipulation. This is certainly something that would surprise the Fates, and I believe Sagume would be able to defeat them using her Various other powers and hax.

In the Animaniacs verse, Sagume would be essentially unmatched in terms of raw stats, with even the Warner’s Reality Warping feats like capturing the entire universe in a jar being just overpowered by her raw strength and speed. That being said, The Warner’s and other various cartoon characters like Slappy, have a massive grab bag of hax and abilities that would allow them to compete, including a slew of dangerous metafictional hax that would allow them to attack and potentially destroy her true form. The Warner’s likely would be able to resist her Causality Hax due to their ability to manipulate Metafictional time, and also funny enough because Yakko is amazing at getting people to say whatever he wants them too. They can also MK arch several other powers she has including manipulating reality, putting things into stasis, and duplicating themselves. I think if the Animaniacs Verse teamed up against Sagume she’d have little chance. But she also has the potential to one-shot people with her stats if she is super tactical about it.

Lastly let's discuss my Favorite verse, Skullgirls. The only real comparison to make here is between Sagume and the Goddess Trinity. The Goddess Trinity in some ways are like the Billy and Mandy gods here, being Platonic Concepts, and having infinite stats with their full power. While Sagume certainly has a more powerful Avatar than they do, she couldn’t hope to match the power of their true forms, which stretch across the infinite multiverse. Sagume has some great powers to use in battling these gods, like her ability to freeze them in stasis which isn’t technically space time manipulation, and they wouldn’t have resistance too. She could also use her Causality Manipulation to simply stop Skullgirls from occurring ever again, just by talking about how they always come back. She can also reach them with her dimensional travel, and hit them with her attacks. That being said, despite being conceptual beings, Venus and Aeon are both clearly able to see and affect the Absolute Plane, meaning they could easily and permanently kill her by destroying her true form if she's not careful.

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters VS Strategy Guide

 

Happy October everyone! I originally covered this series last year in my Analysis of my favorite character, Oblina. But I figured now that it's spooky season all over again, it’s high time I dug this gem back up and celebrated my favorite time of the year by breaking down this whole boogie woogie world! Here’s how to be OP in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters!

Town Tier:

So here we have the primary tier of this series, something I like to call The Monster Tier, populated by pretty much the entire main cast of ghouls and goblins themselves! Characters in this tier are well into the Kiloton range, scaling off Krumm’s feats of sucking in a 20 mile oil spill in about a second, they can physically travel to other continents in minutes for hypersonic speed, although some members can react to and fly a Space Shuttle, which would be Massively Hypersonic reaction time, so this will be the limit for counters. The Characters in this tier are monsters, creatures spawned from the primordial fear humans possess of the unknown. They are a varied and grotesque, often cannibalistic species without much defined traits. They live in dumps, graveyards, sewers and other places humans naturally avoid, and consume garbage and pollution. These Monsters go out of their way to journey into human society and scare people, as mankind's collective belief in and fear of monsters maintains their existence. Monsters have a wide variety of abilities and come in all different shapes and sizes, with very little uniform traits connecting them because everyone's idea of a monster is somewhat different. Generally, Monsters possess incredibly powerful Fear Aura’s which are so potent they defy the laws of reality, enabling them to literally scare away their own shadows, make inanimate objects jump away from them, allow paralyzed humans to run away in terror, and drive those exposed completely insane. Monsters also tend to have extremely malleable bodies, they are able to shapeshift, alter their own size, manipulate their hardness, detach their own body parts and control them like a hivemind, change colors and regenerate from anything that doesn’t completely destroy their form. Monsters are also ancient entities that are all casually hundreds-thousands of years old, they are completely immune to toxins and the cold, and are capable of rapidly traversing through toilets. Monsters like Krumm are able to produce a foul smelling Noxious Gas powerful enough to kill plant life, collapse a circus tent and send crowds of people fleeing in terror, it can even reveal infrared lasers. Many Monsters are logia creatures, made of materials such as slime or even shadows to shrug off attacks, some can even use attack reflection abilities like The Shroink’s burps. There's also a suite of Mental Plane hax that monsters have, which allows them to enter into humans dreams and attack them, cause nightmares and hallucinations, directly hypnotize foes, and even crawl inside their brain and possess them. Monsters are also super intelligent, with even relatively average ones like Ickis able to build a working satellite TV out of garbage in an afternoon, and more advanced ones actually making a machine that can project one's thoughts like a movie. Other noteworthy powers some monsters have shown include shooting fire balls, flight and levitation, spatial manipulation, and the ability to Fuse things together or separate them at will. Monsters can have super senses able to detect everything in the surrounding environment through stench, possess enough stealth to sneak through buildings under constant video surveillance, and unlike humans, have no fear of things they don’t understand. Plus if all that wasn’t enough, The Gromble actually owns a legendary clock that can allow the user to rewind or stop time.

So what counter strategies would function well here? Monsters have fairly high Stealth and intelligence, as well as stamina with characters like Oblina being able to function for 10 straight days without rest, but very few monsters possess decent ranged attacks so bombardment would be a fair tactic to employ. Most monsters aren’t particularly skilled fighters either, being roughly average human level at it, and still fearing animals like dogs, which they refer to as bark & bites. This seems only natural for creatures that live in the shadows and rely on fear. Monsters have very resilient bodies, especially by human standards making them difficult to take down, but they don’t have any defense against higher plane attacks like soul manipulation and mind control. But some of their biggest weaknesses are their official ones, for example, Monsters are immune to everything toxic to humans and animals, however things like soap, perfume, beautiful music, healthy food and anything else fresh, clean or pure is toxic and deadly to them. Even the very fresh air can suffocate them, hence monsters actually fill an air sack in their body with Pollution from their home, which will allow them to breathe in the open air for up to a week before refueling. But one of their biggest weaknesses comes from their nature themselves. As the physical personification of Mankind's primordial fears, if humans in large numbers stop believing in them, or fearing them, monsters will literally begin being erased from existence.

One counter For this verse I think could work, 

Mysterio:

Mysterio from Marvel Comics would do perfectly here, he may not be able to compete with the Monsters of this tier in raw stats, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a dangerous foe to the stronger and faster Spider-Man. This is because Mysterio is a total Master of illusions and perception manipulation, making people believe he is a mighty sorcerer. Mysterio’s Illusions are potent enough to completely fool someone into believing pretty much anything he wants, affecting all 5 main senses, as well as some side ones like ones kinesthetic sense and even superpowers like the Spider-Sense. When you consider that he can also teleport on top of that, the monsters of this tier would have No Idea where he actually is to attack, and he could easily make them attack each other on a whim. Mysterio is essentially what happens if the Monsters sacrificed their physical stats to go ALL in on their mental suites potency, allowing him to hypnotise great numbers of foes alike into believing whatever he says, meaning he could convince monsters they are suffocating, or even use it on a large amount of humans and make them not believe in monsters regardless of evidence to weaken them. He also packs Lasers that move at light speed and can moderately damage Spider-Man, which should be able to take care of a monster here if he needs to. Still he has a risk of getting tagged by a lucky hit from a monster, for a more safe bet.

Charlotte:

Yup, Charlotte from Making Fiends! Charlotte is on physical par with Vendetta who can tank explosions enough to violently shake all the buildings in a city block, and could react to flying out of the atmosphere, which would make her weaker than the monsters at this tier, but more than able to keep up in speed. Like Vendetta, Charlotte is partially a mental plane entity who is able to regenerate herself from the mental plane. Not only does this mean that Charlotte would be impossible to physically kill, but she would be able to resist the entire Mental Hax suite that monsters can use, due to having a sentient mental plane self, who was not able to be mind haxed by Vendetta in similar fashion. She also has powers like extrasensory perception and teleportation which would allow her to track monsters wherever they go, and her tendency to sing stupid happy songs wherever she goes will directly harm the monsters. Charlotte would be totally immune to the fear aura and scare tactics that monsters employee due to her ironclad belief that everything in the universe is good natured, which has allowed her to resist being afraid of any of Vendetta’s terrifying Fiends, and actually rehabilitate some of them into being kind creatures. And furthermore, would likely try to advocate that people shouldn’t be afraid of monsters and they are actually nice and cute, which obviously will reduce the level of fear people have of their kind. Still, Charlotte is not nearly as intelligent as them and potentially could be tricked by the monsters, for a perfect counter, one could always go with,

Kalifa:

Kalifa from One Piece would be an actual Nightmare for any Monsters to face. Via scaling to an early Sanji, Kalifa is town level and can dodge lightning and electricity, putting her on relative par with the Monsters in stats. Kalifa’s primary abilities revolve around what is known as Cleanliness Manipulation, which allows her to ‘wipe clean’ everyone and everything around her, not only removing all dirt, odor and filth, but sapping away their very strength of her foe. Normally the latter part of that would be the dangerous part, but here, her ability to wipe the monsters and their surroundings would horrendously burn and poison their bodies, and would even clean the pollution out of their air sacks causing them to suffocate. Kalifa can also create Soap Armor around herself that would effectively prevent any monster from being able to land an attack on her without being exposed to the deadly suds, and that's on top of being a master martial artist who could easily out skill them in a bout. As a user of Observation Haki, Kalifa would be able to detect any monsters in the area, rendering their stealth useless, and can control water, bubbles and air to use as a cleaning distance attack giving her superior range. Also thanks to her soap also reducing an enemies friction levels, The Gromble likely wouldn’t even be able to activate his time clock even if he tried to use that on her. Not only do I Think Kalifa would be able to beat any monster in a fight, but she could easily capture one in a bubble orb and use her influence to bring it into the public eye. Once Humans study and understand monsters, they will stop being afraid of them, it’s the whole reason Bigfoot is a criminal there, he’s a monster people got evidence of.

Large Planet Tier:

Ya’know, this really should be a single tier verse but I just have to talk about how inexplicably broken the humans are in this verse, completely in the background of the Monsters adventures. The Human’s of ARM have developed Technology strong enough to crash into Saturn’s rings at Faster than light speeds and shatter them to pieces, and missiles that can violently break the moon to pieces. Other than that, this tier has a fair deal of magic user humans, who can make entire spatial dimensions, as well as portals to travel around or BFR people. Ghosts also exist in this verse, which are passively invisible and intangible, and can attack using slime.

So who would work to counter this tier?

Leroy:

Leroy the 629th experiment from the Lilo & Stitch series, designed to be essentially a better version of Stitch. Leroy is strong enough to defeat any other experiment at the time in 1 on 1 combat, and even relatively unimpressive experiments can tank the shockwave of 2 planets colliding and out speed lightning. With power like that Leroy could overtake any human tech head to head. Leroy is also a supreme master of martial arts and stealth, complete with having potent super senses, a brain that works faster than a supercomputer, and resistance to all forms of mind manipulation. He was also able to capture every other experiment that existed at the time, including portal creators, ones that can turn invisible, and Phantasmo the intangible ghost experiment, meaning he can hit the astral plane. His only real weakness is the failsafe in his code that causes him to instantly die upon hearing the song Aloha Oe, unlikely as that may be, another suggestion would be.

Constanze Amalie von Braunschbank-Albrechtsberger

Constanze from Little Witch Academia! Constanze scales to the same Continent Level, Relativistic feats of Akko, meaning she could be oneshot by some of the tech, but is just as fast so could very well dodge. Constanze is a master of Magitech, the art of combining science and magic to make deadly new devices. She is very arguably the most intelligent character in her entire series, and surpasses the super geniuses of this verse, including Simon the monster Hunter. With that in mind, Constanze could easily hack into any technology they try to use against her, and turn it back to sender. And that’s in addition to all the stuff she already has in her kit, including teleportation and flight, giving her a massive mobility advantage. And hax like transmutation to one shot pretty much anything. Constanze can also hit ghosts so casually that she literally hunts them for sport, meaning nothing is safe from her. That said, if you are still nervous about them scoring a lucky hit…

Hisako

You can always go with Hisako from Killer Instinct. Hisako was amped by the dark energies of Gargos when he was destroyed, meaning she scales to his feat of flying into the Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 19,000 and dispersing away a cloud covering all of North America, requiring Planetary Levels of Energy. Hisako is a Onryō, an extremely dangerous type of Japanese ghost who is both incorporeal and intangible, yet is still able to hit on the physical plane. This means that she can effectively attack and destroy anyone in this verse, but only the ghosts have a chance at hitting her back. That’s also unlikely to happen as Hisako is significantly more skilled in combat than basically anyone in the series, and also has the ability to teleport, which makes hitting her even more complex. Hisako can also possess beings and machinery to turn members or weapons of the verse on itself, as well as banish things to hell with her power, both of which this series has no counterplay to.