Wednesday, December 22, 2021

My Life as a Teenage Robot VS Strategy Guide

 

Hey everybody! I know this isn’t Shirley VS Strike, I’m working really hard on it, but it's pretty busy with the holidays right now, so I couldn’t finish that massive blog and give it it’s due justice before the next year. SO I figured a good, fitting thing to tide people over would be a blog on a Nickelodeon show that so many people mistake for a Cartoon Network series! My Life as a Teenage Robot is an awesome and action packed superhero series set in a snazzy 50s Art Deco style world, and I’m gonna show you how to be OP in it!

Building Tier:

This is the verse’s lower tier, home to the civilian characters, low tier and joke villains, and some various alien species. Characters in this tier are building level in power from feats such as Tucker enduring numerous terminal velocity falls and being pulled into space, Sheldon tanking being tossed miles through the air by Jenny, and being smashed through a thick tree, and two bank robbers surviving an entire house being dropped on them Wicked Witch Style. That being said, characters in their tier also have very consistent Faster than Light feats, such as The Space Bikers being able to pilot their space cycles to other distant planets and dodge them when they aren't riding them, or Brad and Nora repeatedly being able to dodge and outpace laser fire from Jenny after it was shot. This already presents a unique challenge as this is a very unconventional stat combination that is hard to match, it almost guarantees that they will have a sizable speed edge over your counters.

My life as a Teenage Robot takes place in a futuristic Earth where science is much more advanced than our own, space travel and aliens are relatively normal, and evolution has gone mad. Most humans in the series are relatively normal, but some have occasionally displayed weird and wacky powers, like random civilians having Immersion that allows them to jump into signs, Jenny’s aunt Wisteria being able to control and manipulate plants, and the Mud Slinger being able to telekinetically create, control and attack with mud. There is even this old man who taught himself to control the weather, and is able to summon giant floods, storms, massive hails, lightning strikes and tornados. However most of the impressive stuff in their tier comes through the use of their advanced technology. There are several Genius characters in this tier as well as the advanced military force Skyway Patrol, which has access to teleportation technology, and freeze rays that can instantly turn a volcano of lava into ice. Some of the more advanced tech in the series can look into the future, reverse aging, animate inanimate objects, turn kinetic energy into electrical power, and even Drag the Sun out of its orbit at faster than light speeds. This is pretty consistent, as some of the metals in this show, like Lancer’s Shield and Killgore’s Body, have endured hits from large planet level attacks before without damage. The most dangerous human character is Nora Wakeman, who in addition to all the above tech, also invented some gloves and boots that let her fly and raised her stats to briefly fight the Kluster Queen Vexus head on, which could be a major threat. Beyond humans though, there's a fair deal of Alien Life to worry about. Such as Infrared Ivan, a large eyed tentacle monster who is completely invisible to everything but infrared vision, The space dust organisms which can infect people and completely rearrange their body and mind on a cellular level, and Worst of all, the Minutians, a tiny alien creature who can duplicate himself Exponentially, to the point he’d overtake the entire planet in less than an hour if he kept at it.

So what are some potential counters here? The powers here can seem like a rather random collection when laid out like this, and in a way that's because it is, but one power I think would be good universally in this tier would be having advanced Telekinesis of some kind. This would allow its user to disarm humans of their tech, and prevent all those with natural abilities from using them effectively. Another key strategy would be to disable technology to use to cripple these character’s arsenal. This can be achieved through Technopathy, but also through the use of certain elements like Water, Ice and Lightning, all of which tech in this world has shown some vulnerability too in the past. It would also be handy to have some form of Sealing or Bio Manipulation powers to deal with the alien threats.

With that said, My First Counter is…

Arthur Watts:

Arthur Watts from RWBY would do quite exceptional in this verse. Watts was able to match Huntsman General James Ironwood in a prolonged fight, meaning he would scale to numerous large building level and highly massively hypersonic feats from the verse. While not as fast, Watts is constantly defended by both Hard Light force fields, and his own Aura, a force field projected by one’s soul. The former of these are durable enough to tank repeated hits from characters of this tier without putting him at risk, making him impossible to blitz. Watts is a supergenius, one of the most intelligent characters in his entire verse, especially in the field of coding. While tech in MLaaTR is incredibly advanced, it is 50’s style advanced where it's basically all on gadgets, and powerful physical machines, and not on digital things like coding and networks, which don't seem much more advanced than our own. Watts on the other hand has hacking advanced enough to shut down entire cities that run on futuristic computer networks significantly more advanced than our own, like some kind of dark puppet master. Watts wears high tech rings on his fingers that let him remotely hack into and control any nearby technology by sending out advanced signals that override their commands. This allows him to scan his surroundings, learn vital information about targets, and cause massive havoc with any tech in his vicinity. He could take over robots and turn them against their masters, redirect spaceships away from their destinations, and deactivate any tech that someone tries to use against him. Watts would be able to completely take over the Skyway Patrols airfleet and force their ships to go around and destroy anyone in this tier he deems as a threat, much like he did to the Atlas Air Fleet in the fall of Beacon. He could also gain access to teleportation through this, making him far harder to locate and fight, and hold the earth hostage by threatening to pull the earth into the sun with their own tech. That being said, He could be defeated by foes if ganged up on, or if he fails to stop the Minutians from landing. While unlikely to get into that situation, another option…

Fuu Hououji:

Would be Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth! Fuu is the Magic Knight of Wind, and was able to tank the attacks of Lafarga and the castle bust of Princess Emurade, which would both be Large Building Level feats. In terms of speed, while the physical speeds of Magic Knights is only Hypersonic from scaling to Ascot, Magic Knights reaction speed is INSANE, enough to slash lightning back to sender, time and cut a monster made of Light, and pilot their faster than light Rune God Mechs, so she could easily keep up with and fight any characters in this tier despite their speed. Fuu is an incredibly skilled fighter with a great deal of experience fighting all kinds of wacky monsters, and has power over the wind itself. She can use the Wind to form force fields around herself which no one in her strength level can penetrate, fly through the air and bind foes in powerful wind restraints. She can use it to make super powerful wind attacks which can cover a large building sized area of effect, and are invisible to people's sight. This means she can essentially use a telekinesis-like ability to disarm people of their gadgets and attack them from angles they don’t expect. Fuu can also use the wind to Heal herself from fatal injuries, and due to her extreme willpower, is able to create dimensional portals which she can use as escapes that her foes would not be able to follow. Meaning even if she is caught in a jam, she could quickly escape and survive whatever damage she sustained. Her biggest threats would be the Minutians, and Nora radically boosting herself with tech. But when you think about how the Minutians were defeated, it was by being sucked with tremendous force into a pocket dimension, something Fuu could replicate by using wind to blow them into a portal that takes them to outer space in Cephiro, where they’d suffocate before they caused any problems there. And against Nora, she’s not the only one who can boost herself, Fuu is able to summon a Rune God Mech named Windom, which even without outside help from her friends was able to stand up to the planet busting power of The Pillar. It also has all of Fuu’s powers and because it’s technically a living organic entity, it cannot be hacked into, meaning it would certainly defeat Nora. But if you are on the fence on Fuu being able to summon that, my best option is..

Baron Mharti:

Baron Mharti, the main villain of Monster Lab! Baron Mharti should scale to the Player Scientist who can tank the Castle Busting Explosion resulting from failed experiments, and should also scale to hypersonic, making him slightly stronger though not nearly as fast, but don’t worry, he’s Not gonna need that. The Baron is a mad science Protege who is so skilled and intelligent the entire Mad Science Alliance could not stop him and were forced to train up a new protege from scratch specifically to stop him to win. To be a master mad scientist you need to be a genius level mechanical engineer, biologist, and alchemist, and Mharti is superior in all 3 of these fields than anyone else in the game. With his mechanical know how, Mharti can surround both himself and his castle with force fields that vaporize people on contact, which considering that would be Island Level, would be more than enough to kill the characters in this tier, and also create powerful island level missiles which can move fast enough to shoot down a MFTL alien spacecraft, allowing him to easily snipe any character despite their speed, and shoot down the Minutians ship before they land. He would know they are coming too as his magic allows him to see into the future, as well as see and interact with spirits, allowing him to find Ivan and open portals to the Astral Rift, allowing him to both teleport to escape danger, and seal foes away where they could never escape. If you are worried about the Minutians, Mharti is a master of Biological mad science and could create instantly deadly pathogens coded to their genome, since they are all perfect clones, this would instantly oneshot all of them at once no matter how many of them there are. The biggest worry one would think Mharti would face is foes teleporting directly to him to take him by surprise, and stat bolstered Nora smashing through his force field. Except neither of these are big threats. First of all, Mharti’s magic allowed him to create an Alchemical Maze surrounding him and his fortress, that spatially warps you through the astral plane, someone trying to teleport to him would become lost forever. On the even more terrifying side, he also has tech that allowed him to Drain the Energy out of all his foes and their technology across the entire country-sized Uncanny Valley. This is very similar to what a High tier enemy named Gigawatt did and Nora was powerless to stop him, and Mharti’s is much more deadly. And that’s not even taking into account he can make a bunch of really high-quality monsters, which can just stat stomp like everyone, Mharti really takes this tier back to Mad Science School.

Large Planet Tier:

Now here we have the big name powerhouses of the series, including Jenny Wakeman herself, the forces of the villainous Kluster, and various other top tier Superheroes and Villains that show up from time to time. Characters in this tier are Large Planet Level in the Ninatons, scaling off an early Jenny Feat of her violently fragmenting a massive Meteor that eclipsed the Earth in size. They would also be Billions of times the speed of light, thanks to Jenny’s feat of physically flying a villain into another Galaxy, and then flying back in a short time frame that couldn’t have exceeded an hour.

So let’s start off this tier with our Star, Jenny Wakeman. X-J9 was designed to be an ultimate fighting robot and protector of mankind against all threats, and has tons of crazy robot powers to show for it. She can fly, shoot lasers, and shape shift her body into…well pretty much anything actually. Her body somehow contains a near endless amount of items that couldn’t possibly fit, allowing her to transform, stretch incredible distances, consume an entire lake, and pull out over 1000 different weapons and gadgets. This includes Blades, Guns, Explosives, bludgeoning tools and lasers that can completely disintegrate things at the molecular level. Her body can produce powerful Electromagnetic fields, reflect laser fire, generate a damaging energy aura around herself, and stick to surfaces with suction adhesion. She can mimic numerous different elemental attacks, able to blast streams of fire, poison gas, electrical attacks, powerful gusts of wind, and ice attacks strong enough to instantly freeze an entire invasion force of alien fire elementals. Jenny also has incredible super senses, possessing omnidirectional detection of her surroundings, radar, a danger sense, a stupidity sense, and numerous types of enhanced sight such as X-Ray, Infrared, Ultraviolet, Digital and Microscopic vision. She also has hearing so great she could hear Tuck call her from the other side of the planet, and beat up an entire alien invasion force that mind control you on sight by shutting her eyes and hearing their location. Also she can mimic voices and speak every possible language if that’s helpful, but that’s enough about Jenny.

There is also the Kluster, an evil empire of Alien Insect Robots who enslave humans to serve their kind. Average Kluster fighters have standard robot powers including flight, lasers, missiles, self destruction, the ability to telekinetically reassemble themselves from being smashed to tiny pieces and the power to possess people and robots into their hive mind if they get close. Some of its other members include the bumbling inventor Krakus, who’s disassembler can instantly force any machine to disassemble itself, and scatters the pieces across the planet, and users of the power crystals, minerals that grant the user cosmic powers including Telekinesis, space manipulation, illusions, size changing, and locking things in stasis. That said, the strongest Kluster member is their Queen, Vexus. Vexus is an advanced shapeshifting robot who can physically rip holes in space, allowing her to create portals to other planets with ease, which she can use to instantly travel, redirect attacks, summon people to her from anywhere and even BFR foes. Her unique body Allows her to disguise herself as practically anything, create shields and weapons, and attack in unconventional ways, she is also smart enough to quickly read Jenny‘s entire schematics, and memorize all of her weaknesses to use against her in combat. She also can summon and control numerous deadly cluster parasites, which can do things like corrupt a machine from within and turn them into a Kluster drone, or instantly induce full body rust that completely paralyzes robots.

Some other assorted threats in this tier include Armagedroid, who has force fields that are practically impenetrable, and numerous elemental aliens, such as the Rock Aliens that can regenerate their bodies from being shattered, the fire elementals who are so beautiful they render those that see them unable to attack, and Gigawatt. Gigawatt being a cosmic energy vampire who can passively absorb energy out of everything that surrounds him on a nationwide scale, travel as a mass of electricity, create storms and manipulate electricity and Electromagnetism. There’s other superheroes in this tier too, though the only notable one is Misty, an alien ninja hero with such high skill, she can induce instant full body paralysis with just a single touch. Her primary ability is to turn into a form made of Mist that exists on the mental plane, granting her Logia AND Intangibility. She can also use this form for powers like teleportation, environmental manipulation, invisibility and Reading/Messing With people's minds.

So what are some strategies to use against this verse? There are a few good ones in mind! In general, characters in this verse are pretty well rounded with great stats and secondary stats across the board and decent power variety, however the series itself gives several weaknesses to the characters we can exploit. First off, basically all those elemental aliens I mentioned have a common weakness against water/ice. Even the mighty Gigawatt was completely powered down by being sprayed with water, and Misty and the fire and rock aliens alike can’t endure being frozen. Against the Robots, there’s basically 3 avenues, one of which is magnetism, which has defeated or given difficulty to Jenny numerous times in the past, even against low tier enemies. Another would be energy draining and or sleep manipulation. Jenny and other robots surprisingly need to sleep, and have a limited amount of energy in their bodies they can use before they need to recharge, or else They’ll run out. However, by far the Most effective thing to use on the characters of this tier is some form of Mind Manipulation or Technopathy to take control of them. Throughout this three season long series, Jenny has been directly taken over and made to attack humans no less than seven times, and would have been an additional five times had it not been for outside interference. The only time Jenny managed to avoid mind manipulation was when Misty tried to use it against her and she turned her brain off so she couldn’t, though obviously at the cost of all cognitive functions and intelligence, had Misty actually been trying to kill her, she would’ve been a sitting duck. Obviously nobody has any way to deal with these kinds of attacks, with that in mind, my first counter is…

SA-X:

The SA-X from Metroid would be an extremely dangerous entity to deal with. The SA-X is essentially the incredibly deadly Parasite-X, after infecting to bounty Hunter Samus Aran in one of her strongest power suits, and thus scales to her Country level MFTL feats, now thats not as strong....but this isn't about strength. As an X Parasite, it is capable of absorbing any living beings DNA, gaining their memories and abilities while replacing their entire biomass, and can even interface with and possess machinery such as the Barrier Core X. They also reproduce Asexually at a rapid rate and can quickly infest an entire planet and become all life invasion of the body snatchers style. This would essentially be like the Minutians invasion but WAY Deadlier, they could take over Misty, the Rock Aliens, and likely hack the Robots. And even if that last part doesn’t work, they CAN assimilate those that control them. The SA-X in particular would also be able to freeze any of these entities with its Ice Beam, resist elemental attacks and mind manipulation due to the copied Powersuits own resistances, and interact with h non physical entities like the flame aliens. Essentially making it so there are no threats it couldn’t potentially defeat and could quickly spread and infect the entire Galaxy. That said, the Parasites would have notable trouble with Gigawatt, as his massive energy draining is exactly what Metroids do to kill them. They could stop him with the ice beam, or by coordinated assault, but the risk is still there, I think a bet that covers more enemies would be…

Zoisite:

Zoisite is one of the four Heavenly Kings from Sailor Moon, his stats are a little hard to find the upper limits of, but he is at least Large Country Level and Thousands of times the speed of Light from feats such as causing it to rain across all of Japan for Days, and reacting to the attacks from the early senshi. He’s not nearly as powerful and fast as the foes he’d have to face in this tier, but he does have a powerful energy field that was strong enough to block attacks from Tuxedo Mask and reflect attacks from Sailor Mars and Jupiter, who only a little bit later were able to tangle with Large Star level characters like Kunzite, so that should be able to protect him from attacks. Additionally Zoisite has interdimensional teleportation, and a crafty behind-the-scenes manipulator type personality which means he can quickly escape a direct fight, and would avoid getting into one with these powerful characters. Zoisite has advanced technopathy which he can use to both Brainwash, and Energy Drain anyone near a screen, with a range across the entirety of Japan. This essentially gives him a way to oneshot Jenny, any member of the Kluster, and even most of the organic aliens that would try to attack him, and across a massive Range at that. The only characters I could see giving Zoisite trouble would be the likes of Gigawatt and Misty, as Gigawatt would likely be unable to be mind controlled, and has much more powerful energy draining which would even allow him to get through his force field. That said, Zoisite could easily misdirect him using his illusion powers, and can make storms that spread over countries so could easily generate enough liquid to short him out. Misty would be harder since she could phase through his force field, while it’s questionable if her mind control would work on him, as hes controlled by Beryl who has much better mind control feats than Misty, she could still one-shot him normally in mist form, and wouldn’t be fooled by his illusions. However that all assumes that she knows about Zoisite and would be able to blitz and one shot him before he activates his mind control on her, and even if she did, there’s always teleportation to potentially save him.

That said, for a safer option…

Blue Diamond:

One could always use Blue Diamond from Steven Universe! Blue Diamond is one of the ruling members of the royal Diamond authority that controls the galaxy spanning Gem Empire, like the Kluster but for Rock Aliens instead of Robots. Blue Diamond would scale to the power of end of series Steven, who was able to overpower The Cluster (heh) which is able to shatter the Earth with its might, and also scales above Lapis, who was fast enough to physically fly from Earth to Homeworld, which is in the Andromeda Galaxy, in only days at most, putting her Billions of times the speed of light, and well into the power/speed range of this tier. Blue’s main power is a potent psychic Emotional wave that forces one to subconsciously succumb to the over 5,000 years of Grief she suffered. This area of effect move would be absolutely insanely broken in this verse as it has shown to be able to affect organic AND inorganic entities all at once, leaving them all completely unable to fight or resist her. Blue also has the mental abilities of Diamonds as a whole, she can resist advanced mind control attempts, and detect, attack and destroy mental plane entities, meaning Misty could not even Hope to manipulate her mind, or even get near her. Gigawatt would be a powerful foe with his energy draining potentially being able to disrupt and absorb her physical form made of hard light energy, except Blue Diamond was able to resist this exact kind of attack from the equally strong Yellow Diamond, who’s energy manipulation is even stronger than his. Furthermore, Blue has powerful hydrokinetic powers superior to that of Lapis, who could telekinetically lift all the water on Earth all at once, she could easily short out Gigawatt, and likely even control Misty’s body. Blue can also shoot powerful energy projectiles and create blinding lights that drive entire planets insane, which basically means this Gem Empire Queen could Solo the Kluster Empire, single handedly.

3 comments:

  1. Cool blog Thor! Reading this took me back to watching the series. It was really cool to see this 50-styled science-fiction and the wackier scientific ideas it used for its verse's powers. Both these tiers, especially the former were kinda difficult due to their very high speed for power ratio, but I thought you did admirably arguing around that.

    For the first tier, Nora really stuck out given just how insane that stat amplification is for the tier she's at naturally. The aliens were also quite potent for their tier with things like invisibility, molecular rearrangment, or expotential growth. Although the real danger is that filthy mud-slinger. Truly one of anime's most dastardly villains. Baron Mharti seemed really broken with just how versatile his intellectual prowess was and Arthur seemed quite an interesting pick. I liked your thought that MLaaTR uses 50s science and so its' all gadgets and gizmos rather then hacking and programming like he can do, giving him something of a way to circumvent the verse's strength. But my favorite counter of the blog was using Fuu. Not only was she able to really perfectly fit the verse's stats with her extremely high reaction speed for movement speed, but I though her ways of countering were very clever such as using portals to stop the Minutians the same way Jenny did, using her wind to telekinetically remove the verse's tech, and coolest of all countering Nora's scientific brilliance and stat amplification with her Rune God. Despite their opposite temperments, I'd hope that would get Dr. Wakeman to respect Fuu.

    For the second tier, the verse got a lot more traditionally threatening, with powers like logia, energy-draining, molecular lasers, possession and assimilation. Gigawatt and Misty were real stand-outs and the most care was clearly taken to stopping them with their most broken arsenals. The verse seems really devoted to fighting machines so you're usage of technopathy against it was a really good strategy, especially combined with a few specific powers that seem strong in the verse.

    I thought it was really cool to see SA-X and Zoisite, even if both are kinda outstat. Despite that both definitely have the arsenal the verse would find dangerous with technopathy, SA-X having freezing, Zoisite having weather manipulation and energy-draining. Given how skilled SA-X is and how clever Zoisite is, I could see them being as threats. Though Blue Diamond was definitely the most fitting with powers pretty much directly being the weaknesses of the verse, and with stats to really go head to head with them if need be. If the Kluster went to war with the.....Cluster and the Gem Empire, it's pretty incredible that Blue Diamond could turn the tide of the war herself.

    Was really cool to see Thor, and don't worry about not getting out Shirley vs Strike. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'd rather wait to see it in all its glory, then you trying to rush it and it not reaching its potential.

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  2. So considering how Blue Diamond can take down the MLAATR top tiers, I guess White and Yellow can fair really well too. Probably not to the extent considering they don't have hydrokinesis, but Yellow does still have Energy Draining and White still has Mind Control.

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  3. Fantastic blog Thor! Good to see you return to MLAATR. Reading this reminded me of a lot of things I forgot about from the series, including a lot of the more wacky abilities (like immersion into a sign haha). One thing I'm struck by is this series seems to have somewhat different weaknesses than you would expect from a verse known for robots as you've mentioned, like with needing sleep, mind manipulation, and even hacking to a certain extent since they focus on gizmos instead of coding in the setting.

    I was interested to see how you would get around the FTL speed issue in the Building Tier and you didn't disappoint. I thought Baron Mharti was a really cool counter, especially with him being a master of a few disciplines to allow him to do stuff like send people into the astral plane or see the future. Arthur was an perfect idea to exploit the verse's hacking weakness, and it was fun to see you talk about Fuu again and her wind abilities is a good substitution for telekinesis.

    For the planet tier, Blue Diamonnd was a perfect counter thematically (huh, the Gem empire really is like the Kluster isn't it?). I like how you brought up that SA-X is essentially a deadlier form of the Minutians. I thought it pretty well done at how neatly you handled both the robot and biological opponents in the planet tier; SA-X, Zoisite, and Blue Diamond efficiently take care of both .

    So great job as usual. Also, I am sure the wait will be worth it for Shirley vs Strike. Take all the time you need :)

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