Prediction Blog: Crona vs Ryuko

 

"I do things my way and I pay a high price.” - John Mellencamp

Crona Gorgon, the Black Blood infused Demon Sword from Soul Eater.

Ryūko Matoi, the Life Fiber infused human hybrid from Kill la Kill.

Some people say that we are born into the world for one purpose, a purpose destined for us from far before we ever existed. Who decides that purpose may vary. Perhaps it's the gods? Perhaps it's the indecipherable axis of fate? Or perhaps... it's just our mothers? Well, if it's that last one, you best hope that the purpose they imagined was a good one-

Oh, what's that?
World domination?

Okay sure that works too.

But fret not! No one says that you have to be one to blindly follow orders. You can pave your own path forward, punch that stupid "purpose" in the face, and rise to the top where you belong! But the peak isn't large enough for more than once, so when it all comes together, who will be the one to remain there? Let's find out!

Before we begin...

Getting it out of the way first, Crona's gender is unknown. Differing translations have used both male and female pronouns for them, and when asked about it, Soul Eater's creator simply replied "it is a mystery". Now, this does not mean that Crona is Non-Binary, we simply do not know their gender. This blog will respect that, and refer to Crona with They / Them pronouns, and hope that you will do the same.

ALSO, Kill la Kill (and Soul Eater too to some extent) is quite infamous for its large amount of nudity and adult imagery. Although, of course, nothing explicit is ever shown, it's kind of hard to avoid some of it when doing a blog on Ryūko. As thus, this serves as a simple "proceed only if you're comfortable with it" warning.



Anyhow, this blog will analyse the characters primarily from their original appearances, being the Soul Eater manga and Kill la Kill anime, alongside their respective opposite adaptions. But that's not what you're wondering, and yes, both Fire Force and Kill la Kill: IF are also being covered as well. Both of them are considered canonical to the series, with Fire Force being an in-universe prequel, while IF has been stated by Trigger to take place in the same universe, and was both written and overseen by KLK's original writer as an alternate, in-universe scenario.

Do not worry, there will be lengthy before the verdicts segments going in detail on both series to answer all of your questions. For now, bear with me as we go through the blog. (Genuinely please bear with me this one is looooong)

Source Citations

Background

Crona Gorgon

  • Full Name: Crona Gorgon
  • Gender: Unknown (They / Them)
  • Age: ~15
  • Height: 152 cm / 5'0" 
  • Weight: N/A
  • Child of Medusa Gorgon
  • Likes: Maka, poetry, pasta, not having the absolute worst time all the time
  • Dislikes: Medusa, being lonely, being scared, being useless, the dark, most other things
This story begins 800 years ago, in the ancient times when one of the great old gods was born. The Kishin Asura was created by Lord Death to aid in maintaining world order only to one day... develop fear. The fear of death itself, which caused Asura to run away, gaining an obsession with getting stronger in order to threaten humanity. If he was to not fear death, he would need to control it, inflict it on others.

Yet, Asura's dream didn't come to fruition, as his father managed to defeat him and seal him deep within the ground where he would then found the Death Weapon Meister Academy to train warriors against evil in case Asura was to ever return.

And that leads us to the present, where Asura's existence was forgotten... or, at least it would have been if not for one woman; Medusa Gorgon, who had grown obsessed with him. Medusa believed that she could day resurrect Asura via the usage of a creation of hers, Black Blood, if only she just had a little more experience...

So, what better way than to use your own child for the sake of science? Enter Crona, a shy, introverted child who never wanted to partake in their mothers sickening plans, but was forced to all the same. Apart from being made to kill small animals to get accustomed to murder, Crona was also physically abused, something which culminated when Medusa discovered her very own Demon Weapon; Ragnarok, and boiled him alive in Black Blood to be poured into Crona's bloodstream.

Usually, Demon Weapons and their wielders (or Meisters) form their bond through respect and a deep understanding after years of growing close, but this was as far from that case as it could have been. Although the result definitely showed promise, Crona and Ragnarok hated each other, continuing the formers torment and the latter's pain, something he took out exclusively on Crona. But Medusa didn't care, and soon sent Crona out on their mission: to absorb hundreds of souls in order to gather the power necessary to become a Kishin like Asura.

However, things didn't go quite the way they expected. During one of these slaughters, Crona was faced with one of DWMA's upcoming star students; Maka Albarn. Although enemies, Maka would grow to understand Crona's despair and loneliness, wishing to help them into a better life,  leading to Crona even eventually being allowed to enroll into Death Academy as a student.

Everything went great... until Medusa returned and forced Crona to become a spy for her and betray their friends to complete their mothers mission. Forcibly fusing Crona with more of her experiments, Medusa managed to unlock a new level of power: Mad Blood. Crona had reached their zenith, and in a confused rampage, murdered Medusa and set out to complete what they were made for, finally accepting Medusa's wish for them to become the Kishin.

And Crona would actually succeed in absorbing Kishin Asura, however things didn't go as planned, leaving Asura in control of Crona's body. As he fought against Crona's former friends, they could do nothing but live with the terrors that had built up their entire life. Yet, despite that, Crona held on hope with one single thing, one single wish; to see Maka one more time. And somehow, someway, that wish was granted. Maka managed to fight her way through Asura to reach Crona, giving them the Demon Tool "BREW" which would grant Crona the ability to end Asura's terror once and for all.

Sealing Asura away inside a massive dome of Mad Blood, Crona remained with him to keep the Kishin contained, forever sacrificing their chance at a normal life. But it didn't matter, as Crona was content with the ending that they chose. In spite of a life lived solely for the sake of torment and despair, Crona's ultimate ending was one of hope, securing a safe future for their friends, allies, and everyone else. In the end, Crona got exactly what they had wished for all this time... the chance to do something good.

Ryūko Matoi

  • Full Name: Ryūko Matoi
  • Age: 17
  • Height: 164 cm / 5'4"
  • Weight: 53 kg / 117 lbs
  • Human-Life Fiber hybrid
  • Daughter of Ragyō Kiryūin and Isshin Matoi
  • Likes: Mako, Satsuki, Senketsu, lemons, croquettes, pogchamps
  • Dislikes: Ragyō, exhibitionism, oppression, needles, sunsets
Let's once more travel back in time to the ancient era, where humanity first evolved into what it began to be today. Let me ask you, what was mankind's greatest invention? The wheel? Not quite. Fire? A good guess, but no. Humankind's greatest discovery was none of those, but instead... clothing. To keep us warm in the cold and protect us from all manner of conditions, we started to wear the skin of other animals, eventually evolving into fabric woven from plants, less for survival and instead more for style and fashion, becoming a necessity in today's life. At least... that's the story we've been told.

In actuality, we didn't create clothes out of any nessecity, we created clothes because they wanted us to. See, millions upon millions of years ago, an alien lifeform crashed on Earth, and began to spread its parasitic spawn. These entities, Life Fibers, needed nutrients from their carriers in order to survive, but the early humans couldn't survive bonding with them. So instead, the Life Fibers evolved to cover their hosts, giving birth to the idea of clothing. Eventually, they entered a dormant state, keeping humanity's unknown instinct to cover themselves with clothing for the day that they would reawaken.

And thus, we can roll the clock forwards to current times, and more specifically; the Kiryūin Clan, who took it upon themselves to safeguard the original, Primordial Life Fiber. This was at first to keep the world safe, but the newest head of the clan had a different idea. See, Ragyō Kiryūin believed that the Life Fibers could be used for something different, something greater. But not everyone would see eye to eye with her, so Ragyō decided to, what else, take over the world.

In order to accomplish this, Ragyō needed to fully understand the Life Fibers and their function, which meant that it was time to experiment. Specifically, experiments about fusing Life Fibers and humans together. Now, her first daughter was too old for the test to work, but perhaps her newborn was susceptible to it. At first, the child appeared to have passed away from the experiment, but Ragyō's husband Sōichirō had a change of heart, and rescued the baby before escaping. He would then change his identity, taking the name Isshin Matoi and raising his daughter himself. And thus, she was given the name Ryūko Matoi.

Ryūko and Isshin didn't have the best relationship, leading to her being sent off to several boarding schools during her childhood, becoming a juvenile delinquent and gang member. Still, father and daughter very much cared for each other, which resulted in Ryūko's utter horror when she returned home one day to find her dad murdered, and his killer running off.

Woving vengeance, Ryūko picked up the very sword that had killed her father, and began a search for revenge. A search that would lead her to Honnōji Academy and its Student Council President; Satsuki Kiryūin. Ryūko would enroll into the academy, where she would be convinced that Satsuki and something to do with her fathers death. And although she swiftly received a new friend in the energetic Mako Mankanshoku, she needed something else to do battle against the academy's Life-Fiber using warriors.

And somehow... she would wind up finding exactly what she needed. Below the ruins of her old home, Ryūko discovered a living outfit, a Kamui, a sentient entity crafted entirety out of Life Fibers. And when she wore this creature, she gained power far above any before seen, and while many powerful people utilised Life Fiber uniforms for a battlefield advantage, the bond that Ryūko and "Senketsu" would build stretched beyond simply one made for fighting.

A bond that would shatter the laws of the world and bring Ryūko to the top to face Satsuki, resulting in a rivalry that... ended in an unexpected way. See, Senketsu wasn't just a Kamui uniform, he was specifically built for Ryūko by her father. Satsuki wasn't just a rival that Ryūko felt a connection for, she was in actuality her sister. And that meant that Ragyō Kiryūin wasn't just an intimidating force hiding in the shadows, she was Ryūko's mother, having been aware of Isshin's betrayal the whole time. She had orchestrated his murder and had secretly been building up her plan for world domination, reviving the latent Life Fibers sowed into the clothing of almost everyone on the planet to entrap them via her Absolute Domination plan.

The fight against Ragyō was a difficult one, as the madwoman planned to spread Life Fibers across the entire planet to ensure her ideals. It took a lot to even attempt to stop this, so in a last ditch effort, Senketsu would absorb every battle uniform avaliable, ascending him and Ryūko to an unimaginable state of power where they could finally end Ragyō for good. However, the power output had been too high, and Senketsu could no longer support that level of strength as he burned away into the planets atmosphere.

Perhaps it was fitting that once the threats of Life Fibers was gone, the entity composed of it would too vanish, that the final gift her father had given her ensured the safety of the rest of the planet. Regardless, at Senketsu's request, Ryūko would keep his memory alive while moving on from that nightmarish past with Satsuki and Mako alongside her, finally alongside the family she truly belonged with. 

Partners

Crona Gorgon

Ragnarok

"Well too bad. I'm the only one who gets to beat up Crona! They're mine, you can't have them!"

Little is known of Ragnarok's origins, only that he used to be a standard Demon Weapon of some kind before Medusa discovered him. Following his melting and mixing into Crona's blood, he is capable of travelling through any part of their body and appear whenever he wishes to, usually in a muscular shape where he can utilise his brute force... mostly on Crona. However, he is also capable of taking many other shapes, the amount of which is dictated on how many souls he has currently absorbed. If the majority of his souls were to be removed, he would be stuck in a miniature form where he can't do anything but be annoying.

Due to their forced fusion, Crona and Ragnarok have a strange relationship. Ragnarok regularly bullies and abuses Crona, insulting them every chance he gets, but there has been hints towards some sort of mutual respect between the two, likely as a result of just how long they've been together. Regardless, their dislike for each other doesn't impact their ability to fight, as the two have been shown to set aside their differences when faced with a shared target.

Maka Albarn

Ryūko Matoi

Senketsu

“Dont worry. There comes a time when a girl outgrows her sailor uniform.”

Senketsu (direcrly translating to "Fresh blood"), was created directly by Ryūko's father out of 100% Life Fibers. In addition, Senketsu was infused with Ryūko's DNA, giving him the ability to directly communicate with and be properly worn by only her.

Senketsu is able to alter his shape at will, capable of forming anything from spikes to blades to fight with, as well as evolving on the spot, such as when he developed the ability to fly and defend against sounds in the battle with Nonon. He has a lot of non-combat tricks too, such as being able to monitor Ryūko's health by tracking everything from her weight and BMI to her internal temperature and salinity.

The two possess an incredibly strong bond. At first, Ryūko wasn't able to channel Senketsu's true strength due to her embarrassment over the skimpy clothing he forms into, but once she got over that, the two rarely ever butted heads. The trust that they share was instrumental for all of their battles, with Senketsu most often being the planner, and Ryūko being the executioner.

Mako Mankanshoku

Equipment

Crona Gorgon

The Black Clown

Clowns are a type of beings that embody fear and madness itself, created by Kishin Asura. The Black Clown isn't quite that, instead an entity built by Medusa and later absorbed by Crona to increase their strength. This new state, the "Madness Fusion", granted Crona numerous new abilities, which are detailed in the Transformations segment.

"BREW"

The Demon Tool "BREW" is one of the most dangerous creations to ever exist. Created by Eibon, one of the Great Old Ones, to form the sum of his infinite wisdom, BREW went from hand to hand before finally ending up in Maka's. Giving the Demon Tool to Crona, they were able to use its greatest power; Fusing seperate objects together into a single one. This allowed Crona to seal Asura and themselves away inside of the Moon.

Ryūko Matoi

Seki Tekkō

The Seki Tekkō is a glove made out of hardened Life Fibers that serves a simple, yet important function; supplying blood to Senketsu. See, if he were to consume blood in an uncontrolled manner, it would be extremely unsafe for Ryūko, therefore the Seki Tekko allows for a safe and controlled way to draw it out for him.

Scissor Blades

The Scissor Blades are the ingenious creation of Ryūko's father, Dr. Isshin Matoi. Stronger than any material on Earth, they are composed out of hardened Life Fibers, which also means that they are capable of cutting through practically any material they're faced against. (Oh, and they can also change colours!)

Originally, Ryūko only possessed one of the Scissor Blades, as the other was taken by Nui. However, after defeating Nui, she got access to...

Rending Scissors

The Rending Scissors! (alternatively known as the "Snippity Snips")

You would expect a giant pair of scissors to be a difficult weapon to work with, but these blades are so effective that it's hardly an issue for Ryūko. Although she is still capable of splitting them into seperate swords, the scissor mechanism is essential for her, as simultaneous severing from both sides is the only way to ensure that a Life Fiber can't regenerate from an attack.

While useful weapons by themselves, the Scissor Blades are also capable of transforming and adapting further, such as:

Decapitation Mode

Via Decapitation Mode, Ryūko extends the Scissor Blades to around double their original length. As expected, this increases their range and power. Oddly enough, it's not used for decapitations. 

Alumni Mode

Decapitation Mode not big enough for you? Don't worry, Matoi has you covered! Via the Final Adress Transformation and Decomission Mode, the Scissor Blades form what's most commonly referred to as Alumni Mode. This increased their size upwards of a thousand times, yet she's still able to swing them around like nobody's business.

Tiny Mode

And finally, for easier storage, the Scissor Blades can also shrink down to the size of normal scissors.

Motorcycle

Cool girls ride motorcycles.

Robe

Is it just a piece of fabric with no special properties? Yes. Is the only reason she wore it because she temporarily didn't wanna wear Senketsu? Yes. Is she literally naked beneath it? Yes.

Does it go hard as fuck anyways? Hell yes.

Powers and Abilities

Crona Gorgon

Swordsmanship

Despite having very little formal training, Crona is a surprisingly good swordfighter, capable of matching seasoned veterans such as Maka and Black☆Star in close range combat. Their standard combat style mainly consist of shockingly aggressive, erratic and crazed swings that take targets off guard and overwhelms them before they can block.

Black Blade / Darkness

Crona's primary blade and Ragnarok's primary form, the Black Blade (or Darkness) is a standard sword that Crona can customise in size and length. The stronger Ragnarok is at the moment (ei, how many souls he has absorbed), the bigger he can make himself in this state. Not only can this sword summon waves of darkness with every swing, but Ragnarok can also vibrate at extreme speeds to rapidly increase Crona's cutting ability.

Abyss of Despair & Uncleanliness

If one sword wasn't enough, then how about three? After absorbing the Black Clown, Crona gained two additional swords; the Despair & the Uncleanliness. With these, Crona fights with three arms, utilising the specific art of the sword style known as "Three Sword Style"... creative.

Wavelength

In Soul Eater, the soul is, as you may except, a very important concept that most characters utilise in some way. Specifically, this is done through Wavelength Control. This control allows the user to manipulate their own Soul Wavelength to varying degrees based on said user, with Meisters and Demon Weapons being capable of using it via a technique called Soul Resonance. This cycles the two's souls through each other, creating a powerful bond that causes a greater output (similar to, say, an electric guitar being hooked up to an AMP).

Scream Resonance

Through Crona's Wavelength, their primary ability comes out, a devastating wave of sound powerful enough to send foes flying and crack eardrums, loud enough to shatter rocks and even make the Moon itself bleed. This is Scream Resonance, a variation of Soul Resonance that channels Crona and Ragnarok's Soul powers into ultrasonic frequencies that blasts foes to kingdom come.
  • Screech α / Alpha: Crona sends a soundwave projectile flying at their target, resembling a giant chomping mouth. They can either slide this across the ground or blast it through the air.
  • Screech β / Beta: This attack is connected to Crona's weapon, as it follows after it like an aftertrail in order to juice up the power of the strike.
  • Screech γ / Gamma: Similar to the Beta version, this one is connected to their weapon. However, instead of being an aftertrail, it actively alters the blade, temporarily increasing its size and covering the entirety of it during the attack.
  • Screech δ / Delta: The most powerful of Crona's sound attacks, Delta is capable of manifesting wither as a series of quick projectiles, or as a giant tornado of sound waves that covers Crona and attacks from all angles.

Soul Absorption

Befitting the title of the series, Crona (or rather, Ragnarok) is capable of devouring souls in order to grow in strength and ability, with enough souls supposedly being capable of turning them into the Kishin. They can absorb dozens of souls at once from several feet away, sucking them all into Ragnarok in an instant. This is not a rare traits, as the ability to eat souls is shared between all Demon Weapons. However, an important thing to state is that this can only be done to opponents who are already deceased.

Black Blood

There's already been a lot of talk about Black Blood, and there will continue to be, but you may just be wondering what exactly it even is? Well don't you worry, sit back and I'll explain!


This icky paintlike goo is a synthetic substance created by Medusa to be as similar to ordinary blood as possible, ensuring that people with it inside of them (Crona) can still continue to live as ordinary people. However, as you may expect, it also alters their body in several ways.

Black Blood makes its users way stronger, faster, and more durable than any ordinary humans, and is also capable of hardening or softening on command. Wielders of the Black Blood are capable of commanding it as well, utilising it for various means such as;

Regeneration

As Crona's entire blood stream is full of Black Blood, that means that they are able to manipulate it in order to recover from hits, wether it be small wounds or extreme injuries such as impalement (See above). However, this requires active response to pull of, as its specifically done by Ragnarok forcing Crona's wounds together, and not like the standard passive healing factor most characters utilise.

Shapeshifting

The Black Blood allows for Crona to shapeshift their body in varying ways. The standard way they could do this at first was simply having Ragnarok rearranging himself, squashing and stretching or turning into weapons. After achieving Madness Fusion, Crona was able to turn their entire body into a goopy mess of Mad Blood that they can seemingly mould however they want.

Bloody Slicer

An attack where Crona slits their wrist and uses the Black Blood from the wound to create a blade, either for close range combat or as a ranged projectile (see above).

Bloody Needle

Crona can even manipulate Black Blood that they've already lost and lies spilt around them, summoning it back towards their body in the shape of large needles to try and skewer foes. Later, they were able to command these needles freely, attacking people from a distance.

Black Blood Spheres

Crona can also create bubbles of black blood to encase their targets, keeping them contained and unable to break out. These spheres passively emit Madness as well, making them dangerous to approach.

Flight

Ragnarok is able to shift into a set of large wings that can grant Crona flight. Post Madness Fusion, Crona seemed to be able to sprout these types of swings at any time, using a set of them to fly to the Moon amongst other things.

Madness of the Black Blood

Nah they tweakin

Should Crona's Black Blood enter someone else's body, they will be inflicted with one of the effects it causes: Madness. There are many different types of Madness, but the specific Madness of the Black Blood causes it's carriers to not feel any fear or consequences, making them more erratic, reckless, and as the professionals say, goofy.

Mad Blood

Mad Blood is... a little messier. The ultimate state of Black Blood achieved through Madness Fusion, this wave of unyielding miasmic blackness is unstoppable, capable of creating hardened spheres that can engulf an entire city. 

Once the target is swallowed, they are absorbed into it, becoming one with the Madness inside as they melt away into nothing. The Mad Blood is so powerful that Anti-Demon Wavelengths that can usually vaporise Black Blood carriers were unable to dissolve it, and even Maka's super powerful Wavelength could do nothing. 

When Crona utilised Mad Blood in a combination with Asura's Black Blood at the end of the series, it caused such a powerful wave of darkness that it covered the entire Moon and created Madness so potent it's effects were felt on Earth months after.

Bloody Coat

A Mad Blood technique, presumably one Crona can use with the normal Black Blood as well, Bloody Coat has Crona sprout a wing that they then form into a hardened barrier.

Bloody Lance

Thorn

Thorn techniques are some of the most dangerous ones that Crona can summon with the Black Blood, sprouting seemingly endless amounts of thorny vines that spread out like a spider's net around whatever area Crona is currently in. They can use these to ensnares targets, pull objects, or cut them into pieces.

More devastatingly, the thorns are coated in a special kind of poison released by the Black Blood, one that is powered by Crona's emotions and disrupts the Soul Wavelengths within its targets, cancelling Soul Resonance's and making Meisters unable to wield their weapons. However, the poison failed to affect Maka's family bond with her father Spirit, allowing the two to keep fighting.

Rose Thorn Storm

By unleashing an absolute torrent of thorns, Crona creates a Rose Thorn Storm, sprouting several vines into large black roses that they can then crash down onto foes, crushing them.

Thorn Defence

Resistances

  • Biological / DNA Manipulation: Crona is at the deepest level infused with Black Blood, which is a non-organic substance. Henceforth, it's very likely they can resist changes to their body.
  • Fear / Madness Manipulation: As Kishin Asura, Crona possesses his Madness Wavelength, which emmits fear and madness. Crona is unaffected by this. Crona is also bonded to the Black Blood, which can cause Madness in others.
  • Poison / Soul Manipulation: Crona is bonded to the Black Blood and can utilise its thorn techniques, which spread a powerful poison that affects the Soul Wavelengths of its targets. Crona is completely unaffected by this poison despite it residing within their body at all times.

Ryūko Matoi

Swordsmanship

Although mostly self-taught, Ryūko is still an expert swordswoman. Early series, she treated her blade as more of a club to brute force her way forwards, but as it went on she became practically uncontested in combat, even founding and subsequently destroying the "Fight Club". Only a few people have proven capable fighting her on even footing, such as Satsuki, Ragyō, and Nui, all expert combatants who have trained their whole lives.

Air Slashes

Through whatever means, Ryūko can swing her swords hard enough to send pressurised projectiles flying at her targets. These slashes can effortlessly slice through buildings several miles away.

Energy Projectiles

As shown in Kill la Kill: IF, the Scissor Blades are also capable of launching out explosive energy attacks that can either home in on targets or cause massive waves of destruction.

Sen'i Shōshitsu

Ryūko's iconic finishing move, where she lands a final attack that makes her opponent's clothes explode! This has actual practical use, as its the only way to expose the vital Banshi Thread within for Senketsu to absorb.

Life-Fiber Infusion

So, you already know what Life Fibers are, and that Ryūko is full of them. Now, what exactly does that mean? Well, Life Fibers have their few sets of quirks that causes Ryūko's biology to be altered from most other humans.

For instance, she possesses supernatural levels of speed and strength, capable of throwing around her skyscrapers sized Scissor Blades without Senketsu, and is durable enough to the point where she's completely undamaged by any conventional weapons or even extreme levels of damage like a fall from outer space. Life Fibers also adapt with their surroundings, increasing Ryūko's already crazy levels of power as a fight goes on.

Regeneration

Ryūko's ability to recover from wounds is truly amazing, having been able to regenerate from impalement, being bisected, having her heart ripped out, and being skinned alive, all within seconds, and Senketsu even being able to heal after being torn into thousands of small pieces. Her regeneration is also comparable to her mother Ragyō's, who stated that as long as a single thread connected her body to her head, she would be able to put it back together.

In fact, it's been stated that some Life Fibers can regenerate wether or not they've been cut, and the only way to properly sever them is to slice it from both sides at the same time, thus why the Rending Scissors is such effective weapons against them.

Adaptive Evolution

Ryūko grows exponentially in power over the course of the series, as Life Fibers have the ability to adapt to outside elements in order to strengthen herself. And due to being infused with the things, Ryūko's adaption is incredibly potent, numerous times having been shown to overpower foes she moments earlier explicitly couldn't challenge. 

Quite frankly, her ability to evolve is honestly ridiculous, gaining entirely new powers as a fight goes on to match and counter powersets she hasn't even interacted with for more than a couple of minutes. Rest to be assured, you better take her out quick or you're gonna be in a whole lotta trouble, since she will literally get stronger the closer she gets to death.

Shapeshifting

Senketsu is able to mould himself into whatever shape he and Ryūko require of him at the moment, most often being some variation of spikes and blades. However, that is far from the limit of his capabilities, since he is also able to do thing like expanding to cover an entire arena and squash anything within it, scatter segments of himself to blind foes, sprout Wolverine-esque claws, or mould Ryūko's sleeve around her arm into powerful swords.

Jet Boosters

When Ryūko builds up too much excessive heat, it's nice for her to have a practical way to release it, right? I imagine that's what the Kill la Kill creators thought which lead them to the realisation that jet boosters are fucking awesome.

These boosters allow Ryūko to rapidly increase her speed and power, even granting her the ability to hover and dash through the air, something which she would fully harness via one of Senketsu's later transformations.

Thread Manipulation

Since Life Fibers are basically threads of fabric, it makes sense that Ryūko can control them for various purposes, such as tying up targets and latching onto them, and since they're harder than steel, good luck breaking free!

Anchors

One particular utility of the threads is via creating anchors that Ryūko can use in order to pin herself into the ground for stability.

Senketsu Mubyoshi

As stated before, Ryūko and Senketsu are ever evolving, one of the best examples of this being during their fight with Nonon Jakuzure. 

See, Nonon fights utilising powerful rhythmic melodies and sound waves, and in order to survive battle with her, Ryūko spontaneously developed the ability to counter them by putting her mind to ease and harmonising with the outside world's noise. So, by redirecting energy back at the attack, she was able to completely turn them against their user.

Smokescreens

For evasive maneouvres, Senketsu can produce smokescreens wide enough to cover a whole stadium. While potentially useful in combat to disorient foes, Ryūko more commonly uses this as a means of escape.

Shockwave Generation

That's right, Ryūko's sheer willpower alone is so strong that it's capable of causing massive shockwaves that can obliterate rock and send people flying.

Spatial Manipulation

During the events of (you guessed it) Kill la Kill: IF, Ryūko showcases spatial manipulation on quite a few occasions, the most major of which being her literally pulling Life Fibers from across all of spacetime and seperate dimensions into herself. In addition to that, she explicitly stated that she would be able to replicate anything the Primordial Life Fiber could do, including its usage of spatial teleportation and ability to spin entire timelines into a singular strand, putting this ability at both instantaneous and universal range.

"Ultimate Move"

Preformed not with Senketsu or her Scissor Blades, Ryūko's self-titled greatest technique involves her... running away.

Guess she has some Joestar in her.

Resistances

  • Extreme Cold and Cosmic Radiation: Can survive in the vacuum of space, where temperatures rest at −270 °C / −455 °F and the radiation can cause near instant heart failure.
  • Extreme Heat: Can survive her blood boiling and standing inside fire. Ryūko withstood atmospheric reentry, which reaches temperatures of 1477° C / 2691° F, and it's possible Senketsu also would survived this if he wasn't already dying.
  • Extreme Pain: Ryūko has an extraordinary resistance to pain. While she has no way to avoid feeling it, she can easily push through the likes of impalement and bisection, and was fine after ripping off Junketsu after it was grafted into her skin, literally skinning herself in the process.
  • Mind Manipulation: Ryūko is always wearing Senketsu, who is composed out of 100% Life Fibers. Meanwhile, even weaker Life Fibers can take over the minds of the people wearing them, and outfits composed out of 50% Life Fibers are capable of overwhelming their wearers minds to the point where they go berserk.
  • Emotional / Memory Manipulation: Ryūko easily overcame Ragyō's mind-stitching, which alters your mind on the fundamental level, completely rewriting your morality and memories. Even after Ragyō utilised a version specifically meant for her, she still broke out, albeit this did require a little help from Senketsu and Mako.
  • Spatial Manipulation: Can take hits from the Primordial Life Fiber, which can alter space. Senketsu is also comparable to Satsuki's Junketsu, which can take hits from the Rending Scissors that snipped Junketsu's realm. 

Transformations

Crona Gorgon

True Black Dragon

Crona's first noticeable increase in ability came after absorbing dozens of souls at once on the ghost ship Nidhogg. This state of theirs not only possesses increased strength and speed, but also sports a set of massive wings that can match even Death the Kid's flying speed. 

Madness Fusion Crona

The process of Mad Fusion is preformed when a Black Blood wielder fuses with a Clown, and Crona's absorption of the Black Clown would grant them a massive boost in power. This state granted Crona access to their three sword style of combat, but more importantly, the ability to utilise the Mad Blood. In addition to that, they gained a protective level of Black Blood armour, capable of no-selling attacks from Black☆Star.

Vector Arrows

Not an ability Crona has ever showcased, but one utilised by the Black Clown they absorbed, and as it is the signature ability of their mother Medusa, it's one they could reasonably replicate.

Vector Arrows is a form of snake / vector spell that focuses the idea of vectors into magic arrows capable of bending and twisting at command. What this specifically means is that they can act as chaotic and swirling blades to pierce and cut targets to pieces, or diverge before compressing into a single point to obliterate their target.

Infinite Propagation

Hoo- BOOOOY 

Alright, so this is another ability that Crona technically hasn't showcased, however the simple reason for that lies in it's nature. Infinite Propagation is a power shared by all Clowns, and allows them to recover from death and regenerate back to normal at any time, seemingly from any amount of damage. This ability is directly powered by the Madness Wavelength of Kishin Asura (who's powers Crona would gain a little later).

The only known way to kill someone with this ability permanently is via the usage of specific spells that can shut in Soul Wavelengths, cutting off their connection to the Madness. 

Kishin Crona

At the end of their story, Crona would reach the apex of the Soul Eater world, standing amidst the gods themselves as the new Kishin. Absorbing Asura into their body, two Madness became one, three minds became one body, and Crona harnessed a whole new level of might.

Madness Wavelength of Fear

Asura's wavelength of Fear is the mightiest one the world has ever laid witness to, capable of inflicting the entire planet at once, and only stoppable by the Madness of Order emitting from Lord Death himself. Even just Crona's initial release of this Madness covered the entire Moon in seconds, physically and emotionally crushing those with weaker wills. Finely attuned usage of the Madness of Fear can inflict a person's worst nightmares far within their very soul and awaken the very deepest evils within people.

Madness Wavelength of Boobs

#real

But Crona wouldn't possess that wavelength for very long, as they would break free of Asura's mindset and instead sacrifice themselves, causing a new emitted wavelength known as the Madness of... Boobs.

Yes, really. Likely due to Crona lack of motherly love received from Medusa, they had a longing for the most motherly of things, being breasts. This Madness caused people all across the world to develop a fascination with fondling and thinking about boobs, the ratio of people who prefer them over butts even increasing by 50%.

Verdict deciding, I'm aware.

Ryūko Matoi

Life Fiber Synchronise

When Ryūko and Senketsu activate their bond, they're combined into... this very skimpy sailor uniform. Life Fiber Synchronisation massively boosts all of Ryūko's stats, and provides her with durable Life Fiber armour that can't even be scratched by most weapons and attacks.

It took a little bit for Ryūko to get over her embarrassment over the revealing clothing, but once they finally fully synchronised, they were unstoppable.

Senketsu: Senjin

Spike time! Senjin equips Ryūko's entire body with lots upon lots of blades capable of revolving around her like a chainsaw and slicing up any enemy who gets in too close.

Senketsu: Shippu

For high speed combat and aerial manouvreability, Shippu morphs Ryūko's skirt into large jet boosters that allow her to nimbly fly around.

Senketsu: Senjin Shippu

You've got Senjin 
You've got Shippu
Put em together

Senjin Shippu!

Senketsu: Berserker

When faced with an immense amount of grief and rage after finding out the truth behind her fathers death from the very person responsible, Ryūko's body underwent this horrifying transformation. This berserker state lacks any direction or reason, having become a mindless beast of destruction that risked Ryūko's own life by continuisly spewing out incredibly ampunts of blood.

Fortunately, Mako was there to knock some sense into her, and following this as well as her and Senketsu's deeper connection, it's unlikely Ryūko would ever lose herself to this again.

Senketsu: Kisaragi

Ryūko's ultimate state of being, achieved by absorbing the Goku Uniforms and Life Fibers of Satsuki, the Elite Four, and everyone else, Kisaragi is the culmination of her and Senketsu's bond, a form powerful enough to fly into space and blow a hole in a massive dome of Life Fibers covering the entire planet. Senketsu Kisaragi provides an exceptional boost to all of Ryūko's powers, making her capable of surpassing even Ragyō's highest might within minutes.

Unrestricted Flight

Kisaragi grants Ryūko the ability to fly, and not just rocket propelled like her Shippu form, but completely unrestricted. This gives her the ability to soar around like nobody's business, even in the vacuum of space.

Mind Stitching

A technique Ryūko has never utilised, but certainly has access to and has a lot of experience being on the receiving end of, mind stitching does just what the name implies. By infusing Life Fibers into a targets brain, the user is able to alter their mind down to its fundamental level, rewriting their thoughts, memories, emotions, and personality. Mind stitching can be used on up to thousands of people at the same time and works effectively instantly, giving its victims no chance to escape.

While we have never seen Ryūko use it, we know for a fact that she has the ability to considering her absorption of Ragyō's Shinra-Kōketsu, and more specifically, her usage of...

Absolute Domination

As stated, Ryūko absorbed Ragyō's Shinra-Kōketsu, and thus gained access to her mother's most dangerous ability; Absolute Domination. With this power, she is able to flawlessly control minds on a planet-wide scale, bending thoughts beneath her whim to follow her every command- oh right it only works on Life Fibers.


Nevermind. At least she still gets mind stitching even if it's horrendously out of character for her to use it.

Feats

Crona Gorgon

Overall

  • Second being to ever become a Kishin. 
  • Has killed several hundred people and absorbed their souls.
  • Beat the absolute shit out of Maka in their first fight and would have killed her if Stein didn't show up.
  • Became a student at DWMA.
  • Was such an efficient spy for Medusa that they were only discovered by accident.
  • Successfully absorbed Kishin Asura... kind of.
  • Sealed away themselves and Kishin Asura on the moon, saving the entire world.
  • Defeated Maka, Black☆Star, Death the Kid, Eibon, & Medusa.

Strength

Speed

  • Has kept up with Maka, Black☆Star, and Death the Kid, several times many of them at once.
  • Faster then even Black☆Star. (Chapter 96)
  • Outflew Death the Kid. (Chapter 19)
  • Flew to the moon in an unspecified time. (At least Mach 33) (Chapter 96)

Durability

Ryūko Matoi

Overall

  • Completely trashed every single person sent against her with little to no effort.
  • Founded and then tore down the Fight Club.
  • Collected all of Senketsu's pieces in less than a day after he was torn apart.
  • Defeated Nui Harime and avenged her fathers death.
  • Took down a legion of COVERS without Senketsu.
  • Defeated the Elite Four, Mako, basically all of Honnōji Academy, Satsuki, a Satsuki clone, Nui, and Ragyō.
  • Beat Satsuki and her Elite Four in a 5 v 1.
  • She's just like.... so fucking cool

Strength

 

  • Cratered a wall pre-synchronisation. (5 Tons of TNT)
  • Regularly punches Mako's dad and brother into the stratosphere.
  • One-punched out Senketsu Synchronised Maiko with her bare hands.
  • Caused a massive explosion alongside Satsuki. (135 Teratons of TNT)
  • Sent huge pillars flying in Berserk Form. (1.6 Teratons of TNT)
  • The air pressure of her sword sliced down two skyscrapers dozens of miles away. (381 Tons of TNT)
  • Caused a big splash by crashing into the Naked Sol. (75 Megatons of TNT)
  • Used her massive Scissor Blades to obliterate Honnōji Academy.
  • One-shot dozens of Nui's clones with ease.
  • [KISARAGI] Blew a hole in the Cocoon Genesis Sphere. 
  • [KISARAGI] Dispersed the Cocoon Genesis Sphere around the planet. (45 Yottatons of TNT)
  • [IF] Critically damaged the Primordial Life Fiber, which is composed of several million universal-potent threads. (More detail before the verdicts)

Speed

  • Dodged shots from Tsumuri's needle gun.
  • Ran up a pillar real fast. (Mach 2)
  • Rocketed into space in seconds. (Mach 23 - 291)
  • Quick enough to create afterimages.
  • Caught her Scissor Blade when it fell from space.
  • Sliced off Nui's arms before she could react.
  • Sliced thousands upon millions of tennis balls into strings in a flash. (2 c - 1 Million c)
  • [IF] Absorbed a whole lotta fucking Life Fibers, pulling them across seperate dimensions and timelines in moments. (256 Quadrillion - 414 Octillion c, likely Immeasurable) (See before the verdicts)

Durability

  • Survived a large explosion without Senketsu. (0.9 Tons of TNT)
  • Takahara's Goku Uniform shattered against her body.
  • Withstood a day long beating from Mako in her Goku Uniform.
  • Ripped Junketsu off her body when it was stitched into every Life Fiber in her body.
  • Withstood being in the middle of the blast that destroyed Ragyō Stadium. (3 Petatons - 9 Exatons of TNT)
  • Fell from orbit naked and was completely fine.... Senketsu wasn't.

Scaling

Due to the complexity of both series and their varying levels of power depending on scaling and interpretation, all specifics on scaling and feats will be addressed before the verdicts. Ryūko and Crona at their peak scale above anything else that happens in either series anyway, so justification for scaling to the likes of Maka or Satsuki is unrequired.

Crona Gorgon

DWMA Students

Maka Albarn:
Black☆Star:
Death the Kid:

Misc Characters / Monsters

Lord Death / Fire Force

Ryūko Matoi

Satsuki Kiryūin

  • Also withstood the explosion in Ragyō Stadium, surviving it despite being battered and naked.
  • [IF] Satsuki's Kamui, Junketsu, created a parallel universe made out of Satsuki's desires whilst she slept. Junketsu's Life Fibers sustained this realm, and removing them would destroy it. (Universal)
  • [IF] Using Ryūko's Rending Scissors, snipped Junketsu's realm. (Universal)
  • [IF] Also with the Rending Scissors, took down the Primordial Life Fiber, composed out of millions of threads capable of creating whole universes. 

Ragyō Kiryūin

  • Tanked the explosion in Ragyō Stadium. Yes, the same one.
  • Easily dodged the Naked Sol's missiles.
  • Flew into orbit in seconds. (Mach 15 - 182)
  • Covered the entire planet in Life Fibers. (77 Zettatons of TNT)

Misc Characters

The Primordial Life Fiber

  • Withstood crashlanding on Earth millions of years ago.
  • [IF] By absorbing Life Fibers across numerous timelines, caused Junketsu's realm to reach critical mass and break apart. (Universal)
  • [IF] Each of the threads that make up the Primordial Life Fiber has the potential to spin an entire timeline into existence, meaning every thread within it can become a universe.

Weaknesses

Crona Gorgon

Practically all of Crona's life was misery and gloom, so it's really not a surprise that they have a lot of unresolved problems. Aside from the general depression, Crona is far from mentally stabile, and is prone to chaotic bursts of madness and insanity, something thats not helped when wielding the power of the Kishin,  which they never properly leaned to safely harness, and definitely not helped with the burly and brash Ragnarok continously mocking and beating them.

Black Blood itself also has its fair share of downsides. While tough, it can't defend from everything, and special usage of it such as for healing requires cognitive activation from at least either Crona or Ragnarok, so if both of their minds are on something else, they can't heal.

Ryūko Matoi

While Ryūko is extremely, extremely powerful, all of that power runs on a very finite supply of blood that Senketsu constantly feeds on. Ryūko is prone to aggression and poor decision making, and with every increase in anger, more of her blood is drained. And while this is something she's mostly gotten over by the end of the series, it's still worth keeping in mind.

Alongside that, Ryūko's regeneration is Life Fiber based, thus making it vulnerable to damage if she's cut from both sides simultaneously, admittedly this would be hard to pull off since she can heal as long as one thread remains, but it's still a potential weakness.

Summary

Crona Gorgon


Advantages:
  • Could potentially be infinitely stronger with specific arguments.
  • Equivalent speed with higest ends.
  • Better AOE options.
  • Madness Wavelength and Black Blood infection could potentially affect Ryūko. While not a guaranteed win condition, it could theoretically still mess her up.
  • Infinite Propagation could make them incredibly difficult to put down.
  • Screech Resonance provides incredibly difficult attacks for Ryūko to defend against, even if she has experience with sound attacks.
  • Unlikely to be affected by mind stitching.
  • Madness of Boobs
Disadvantages:
  • Considerably weaker and less durable by most metrics.
  • Wayyyyyyy slower with measurable speeds.
  • Madness isn't a reliable win condition since many people have resisted it in the past.
  • Ryūko can in theory resist thorn poisoning since it struggles to affect familial bonds on the level that she and Senketsu should have.
  • Needs to put down Ryūko quickly before she adapts to all their powers.
  • Crona and Ragnarok's bond doesn't stack up to Ryūko and Senketsu's.
  • Doesn't like fighting and is less adept in it.
  • Is getting hard carried by Fire Force here.
  • Stuck on the moon forever 💀 

Ryūko Matoi


Advantages:
  • Could potentially be infinitely stronger with specific arguments.
  • Generally has the stat advantage by most metrics.
  • Faster to a ridiculous degree with measurable ends, equivalent with immeasurable ends.
  • Ryūko and Senketsu work exponentially better as a duo than Crona and Ragnarok.
  • Better regeneration and shapeshifting. 
  • Adaptive evolution means that if Crona is stronger, Ryūko will inevitably catch up assuming the fight goes on for long enough.
  • Her and Senketsu's bond means they can in theory resist Crona's thorn poisoning, just like how Maka and her father did.
  • Has specific defences that's aided against sound attacks before...
  • Generally more skilled as a fighter.
  • Wins out in willpower and determination.
  • Kill la Kill is peak fiction.
  • DON'T LOSE YOUR WAYYYYYYY
Disadvantages:
  • Can't match Fire Force's extreme high-ends.
  • Potentially can't resist Crona's wavelengths.
  • Runs on a way more limited supply of blood.
  • ...albeit Nonon's sound attacks are nowhere close to the level of Crona's.
  • Crona's Infinite Propagation could potentially be a struggle to get around.
  • If the soul poisoning can affect them, Ryūko stands no chance against Crona on her own.
  • Mind stitching and Absolute Domination are useless, not that'd she'd ever use them to begin with.
  • Main battle tactic relies on attacking clothes, which wouldn't affect Crona.
  • Somehow has the worse mom.
  • Still loses to Shadow 💀

Before the verdicts

Soul Eater

Fire Force in detail

Soul Eater and Fire Force are both manga written and illustrated by Atsushi Ohkubo, the former published by Square Enix and the latter by Kodansha. Soul Eater's original run ran for over 9 years, from May 2004 to August 2013, and after it was done, it seemed as if Ohkubo wanted to move on from it, starting Fire Force in Deptember 2015. However, as Fire Force went on, it's connection to Soul Eater was made evident.

Specifically, the events of Fire Force take place in the Old World, which vanished when Shinra Kusakabe achieved godly abilities and created the New World. Shinra also created Lord Death to govern over this world, granting him power explicitly stated to be equivalent to his own in order to be his replacement. This culminates in the final chapter as it shows off Maka, Black☆Star, and Death the Kid with the tagline "Next is Soul World".

How strong is it?

The majority of Fire Force's cast isn't actually as strong as the series reputation may have you think, but where things really get tricky is with the god tiers of Shinra and the like. Specifically, Shinra absolutely outclassed Haumea after she had absorbed the entirety of humanity’s collective unconscious, as well as Adolla, the world of ideas that's is physically merging with the real world. Shinra then proceeded to completely annihilate this world. This is at the very least Universal.

However, there's more. This world of ideas contains everything. As in, every concept that humankind has thought up during its entire existence. Explicity stated truths, laws, mathematics, religion, God, higher planes of existence, all of it. Obviously, it's a little hard to quantify something like this, but it paints the idea that there's way more to this level of power than what appears obvious at first glance.

Exactly how much more? Well, it's a bit hard to say, and almost definitely comes down to opinion. Vague statements like this are always close to impossible to quantity in the first place when trying to lock down as objective stats as you can get, so... I won't! Not here, at least. Refer to the verdicts to see people's own interpretations.

Does Crona scale?

Now, Crona themselves (in their earliest) forms definitely do not scale to this, but we still have a lot of evidence for the higher powered Soul Eater cast to be comparable. For instance, we knows that Shinra created Lord Death to be his replacement, and to wield his power. Asura is able to fight on par with Death and is considered comparable to him in many degrees.

But furthermore than that, remember how the whole reason Fire Force gets this high is because of Adolla? Well, it turns out that when the Old World ceased to be, all of the despair that made up Adolla would be reincarnated... as Kishin Asura. And not only is the EoS cast capable of doing battle with Asura, at that point in the story, Crona just straight up... is the Kishin, having absorbed all of his power. So yeah, uh.

There you go.

Is this even useable?

Those of you who have experience with Soul Eater but not Fire Force may be a little sceptical of... well, all of this. And yeah, no one can really blame you for that. These aren't elements of concepts ever brought up before Fire Force existed, so some people may find it difficult to accept.

However, both of these series were written by the same man who clearly had a vision for his series. It may not have been there from the start, but is something that he chose to implement before ending it, doesn't come from any non-canon additional media, and doesn't really have any arguments against it. You can't even use the normal "then why doesn't every fight blow up the universe" argument since these stats only apply to the high tiers in the literal final arc of the story.



TLDR; Crona, after having absorbed the Kishin, is at the very least universal, albeit potentially higher to an unquantifiable degree.

Religion Scaling?

You may have taken notice of one of the specific things explicitly stated to be within the world of ideas being religion, and you either didn't think much if it, or you instantly started asking how many tons of TNT that's worth. One of these options signifies a Death Battle fan.

Alright, so the argument is that because the Adolla contains all of religion, it means that any potential cosmic stats and dimensional tiering provided by them should also be included, and thus the Fire Force god tiers, and Crona by correlation, upscale from that.


Now... questionable religious disrespect for ideals that people today still very much believe in aside, this is immense amounts of vs brainrot. While sure, it's not... the least logical argument that one could make, it's also not really the most logical one either...

Either way, if you were to use this argument, then that's a level of power that's quite literally impossible to even begin to make sense of. There is no way for anyone to measure all of religion from across all of documented human history, there's just no way. At best, and if you're REALLY willing to go there, we can put this at some degree of Outerversal since it would have to include several omnipotent creator deities from the likes of Christianity and Hinduism.


I cannot believe I just wrote that out fucking hell
Don't make me vs debate religion ever again

Shinra's Time Travel

Immeasurable Fire Force is a surprisingly contested topic. The feat is as such, during a battle with his brother Shō Kusakabe, Shinra simply states that he was "trying to go fast", but ends up moving so fast that he vanishes. It's then explained that he traveled so fast that he surpassed light speed, effectively stopping time, and turned back time, with it later being stated that he "demonstrated an ability to transcend time".

Did you catch that? If you didn't, let me break it down.


Shō has the ability to stop time, and Shinra countered it with his own time stop by surpassing light speed, his body then travelling back in time to reverse the negative effects of moving at that speed. By all means, that should constitute for immeasurable speed, being a similar feat in vein to things like Archie Sonic outspeeding stopped time. Some people argue against this by saying that it's stated Shinra was just moving at vaguely faster than light speed and didn't explicitly outspeed it, however the later statament of him being able to transcend time directly backs up the idea of immeasurable speed. While this wasn't a speed Shinra was casually able to achieve at the time, he did this before gaining godly powers, and as such should upscale at his peak.

Our Deaths are different?

Seems today that all you see, is people not paying attention to what's on the screen...

Quick and easy one to debunk, apparently people think that Lord Death from Soul Eater and Lord Death from Fire Force are different guys?


Look, it's okay if you don't like the scaling, but please make better arguments against it than that.

Specifics on Kishin Crona

idk what I'm doing half the time I make these images

As you may have been able to tell, a lot of Crona's best abilities and higher stat arguments relies on the form they have when fused with Kishin Asura. However... is this even something we can give them?


I mean yeah pretty obviously 

While in the grand scheme of Soul Eater's story, Crona only had this state for a few chapters, potentially just hours... it's the one they ended the series with. Current Crona is the Kishin, and that's about as blatant as can be. Even in spite of that, Crona becoming the Kishin and absorbing / sealing away Asura is the entire climax of Soul Eater's plot, not really something you can just go and ignore. Dismissing it as "unusable" or "non-standard" is, quite frankly, objectively wrong.

Crona's "World where nothing fits together"

Crona's ability to disrupt Soul Wavelengths via Thorn and Kishin Asura's Madness is one of their most potent hax abilities... so let's talk about it!

In what they dub their "World where nothing fits together", Crona has the ability to, even without touching you, inflict that special kind of soul poisoning, which causes those affecteds Soul Wavelengths to go completely out of control, rendering meisters incapable of using their Demon Weapons.

But while this did indeed make it so that Maka couldn't wield Soul, something weird happened. Her father Spirit showed up, and showed that Maka was still able to wield him as a weapon, much Crona's complete and utter confusion. The reason given? Because they are family.

So what exactly is happening there and how does that impact Crona's abilities? Well, there are two ways to look at this and as to why Maka and Spirit's bond pushed through the Thorn poisoning. 


For starters, the body and the soul in Soul Eater, as you may expect, have a very important relationship with each other. If something affects the latter, it is bound to affect the former, hence why things like Soul Resonance or bonding with Demon Weapons are possible in the first place. Thus, it is possible that due to Maka and Spirit being literally physically connected on a level beyond any other Meister and Weapon, being father and daughter, makes that spiritual bond stronger than one that Thorn can affect.

Theres also a second way to look at this though. When Spirit tells Crona that his and Maka's bond cannot be severed due to them being family, Crona kinda... freaks out. Not only does Crona have a at best very skewed understanding of family to begin with, this was not long after Crona had just killed Medusa. It's very possible that the reason Crona couldn't affect Maka and Spirit's bond is because they simply don't understand that level of connection between two individuals, and thus the Thorn was never gonna work against it.


Which one of these being more likely, or even a mix of the both, is hard to say, as is to what exact level that can be pushed. Obviously, the question for this blog is wether or not it could affect Ryūko and Senketsu's connection, which is a very hard to debate topic without going into interpretations. For now, keep all of this information in mind and we'll take it into the verdicts.

Whats up with that Clown regeneration?

Infinite Propagation is... weird. It's easy to assume it's just a standard regeneration ability, but it's one powered by Kishin Asura's (now Crona's) Wavelength, one so potent that Lord Death needed to use a specific sealing spell to prevent it.

This ability is in general... both well and not well explained? A few uncertainties arise from how we see it used, but here's what we can tell just by reading the manga.
  • Its definitely not an instant process, considering Stein ordered Kid to leave "before the clowns regenerate". However, its still quick, considering Stein's hurry.
Alright, seems like a shut case right? Clowns can heal real good in a flash, Lord Death can't kill them so it much be some really potent healing as well. But then there's the statement.


After the Soul Protect goes off and they start being able to kill the clowns, Moonlight goes; "I can't regenerate them!". And evident from his sheer shock at the Clowns dying, it's not as if he only started regenerating them now, so... was he doing that the whole time???

And if you wanna start being a sceptic, Lord Death only proposes the idea of the Soul Protect specifically to stop the Infinite Propagation. He never says its a nessecity to do so, it may just be the easiest option available to wipe out all Clowns at once while Moonlight is still around. And it's very safe to say that Moonlight is not standard support that Crona should have.


So... what the hell does all this mean? Is Infinite Propagation as busted as you're lead to believe or is it a power that Crona can't even realistically make use of by themselves?


...
See () the verdicts.

Kill la Kill

Kill la Kill: IF in detail

(The majority of information for this segment involves arguments and information originally presented by Gmatchup's blogs about Kill la Kill IF. They are the ones who brought all this up, not me, so go and give them your praise, and check their blogs out if you're looking for further, more in-depth detail!)

Kill la Kill's original anime had a pretty short runtime of 25 episodes between October 2013 and March 2014, and aside from an (oddly enough unfinished) manga adaptation, it seemed like that was it for the series. The definition of short and sweet.

But THEN, it was announced in 2018 that there would be video game adaptation released, and in 2019 we got Kill la Kill: IF, which changed the powerscaling community forever.


Question 1: Is it canon? 

Well, game producer Takeshi Yamanaka has stated in an interview that he considers it the official "episode 8.5 of the anime" and that "It's less of an alternate universe story, and more of a story that happened, but there wasn't time to depict it.". The game was even written by KlK's original scriptwriter Kazuki Nakashima, and notable Studio Trigger staff Hiromi Wakabayashi has gone on record stating that "It’s not a continuation of the anime or a new anime by any means, but it is a very deep look into the story that’s done by Nakashima-san himself.”

And alongside all that, the ending to Ryūko's campaign just straight up tells you that the game leads into the rest of the anime. So yes, both the creators of the game and the original anime, as well as the game itself considers it canonical, and thus, Kill la Kill: IF is 100% canon.


Question 2: Wasn't it a dream?

Not at all!... well, kind of. See, the events of the game do technically take place in a dream world at first, specifically one that Junketsu created out of Satsuki's inner desires. However, her will was so strong that it caused the dream to become tangible, creating an entirely seperate reality with its own concepts of time and space. It's not really a dream, more of an alternate dimension with the same characters, meaning that the events preformed within it still apply to them.

Like Gmatchups does, I will link a thread made by Galo / STTGL here. There really isn't any way for me to explain it better than he does, and I would much prefer to give credit than plagiarise his words. I agree with everything he says about the matter, so read for yourself if you have any additional questions.

How strong is it?

In terms of direct, on-screen feats, IF actually has very little. However, those that it does showcase are incredibly powerful. Take, for instance, Junketsu creating an entire seperate dimension out of Satsuki's desires, a dimension specifically stated to be composed out of her Life Fibers, and a dimension explicitly stated to be able to transcend space and time. That alone definitely qualifies as Universal, but an argument could be made for potential dimensional tiering depending on how literally you take the wording. With Ryūko's Scissor Blades, Satsuki would snip this entire dimension, obliterating it, so both Kamui's and the Rending Scissors scale to this level of power.

Ragyō also states that a single thread of yarn from the Primordial Life Fiber can be used to spin into a existence a real such as the one Junketsu created. The same is stated in the Japanese version, and Ragyō has spent her entire life researching the Life Fibers and is extremely knowledgeable on them, so we can very likely trust her with this information. The low end for this comes out to over 10 billion times universal.

That's right, the low end. It's explicitly stated that the Primordial Life Fiber had begun to absorb Life Fibers from other dimensions, including the past and the future. Yeah, have fun trying to put a number on that one. At bare minimum, this could include billions to trillions of additional universal-potent Life Fibers, and if you want to take the wording as literally as possible, it would be a direct infinite amount.

Ryūko critically damaged the Primordial Life Fiber, to the point where it seemingly only survived due to its regenerative abilities, in her base form. Later, post it's absorption of those additional Life Fibers, Satsuki matched it in combat with her Shinzui form, a direct equal to Ryūko's Kisaragi. It's after this battle that Satsuki would snip apart this entire dimension.

Aren't those stats too high?

It's entirely understandable why someone would look at these super high stats and think that they're unusable simply because they'd conflict with Kill la Kill's story. Hell, I imagine many of you who are reading this right now have some sort of variation of those thoughts.

And yeah, it definitely seems very obvious that KLK was written as a planetary conflict with that level of scale in mind, alternate timelines or universes not ever being brought up once in the original anime.

But please, do hear me out as I do my best to try and convince you otherwise.


For starters, Ryūko and other characters who utilise Life Fibers are ever evolving in the series, increasing in power to match the foes that they go up against. At the start of the series, Ryūko is extremely weak comparatively, and it's only by fighting foes on a higher level of power that she gets stronger, so getting to that level by fighting the Primordial Life Fiber isn't too far out of the question.

Furthermore, while it may seem like a massive jump in stats to go from planetary to universal, keep in mind that prior to the last few episodes of the anime, planet level stats also are never even brought up, the best feats in the series prior to Ragyō's shenanigans only getting up to the Teratons. (And yes, that is way bigger of a stat gap than you might think, as one Yottaton of TNT is equivalent to one trillion Teratons (that's 12 zeroes fyi)), so all things considered going from planet level to universal within the span of one story arc isn't even that crazy. The billions to trillions times universal thing is a little harder to justify with this logic, but it ultimately isnt any different from other characters power levels rising by the millions in quick succession and people being fine with it.

And if you think that level of power that early in the series is weird, then don't worry, because you can make a solid argument for those stats only applying to Kisaragi anyways, as while yes, Ryūko damages the Primordial Life Fiber in her base form, Stasuki later fights it in her Shinzui form, which is directly comparable to Kisaragi, and it's only directly after this that they manage to destroy it. Ryūko only had Kisaragi for a few minutes before losing all her powers anyways, so it's not like you can prove that she couldn't achieve this level of power with it.


TLDR; Thanks to IF, Ryūko is at least universal in base, but it can be argued she's up to at least a billion times universal. In Kisaragi, she upscales from this to an immense degree, the max potential of which is impossible to quantify.

Is Ryūko higher dimensional?

Surprisingly, I haven't seen people discussing this basically at all in the KlK vs scene, which may just be because people have a tendency to lowball it rather than highball it, but I digress. 

Now, if you have considered this, it would likely because of the feat that we've already talked about and are going to continue to talk about; Ryūko absorbing Life Fibers from across other dimensions, supposedly all of them across time and space. The simple question you can then make there is "Would that include higher planes of reality and thus make Ryūko some level of dimensional?"


No.

The simple issue with this is that in no part of any Kill la Kill media is the concept of spatial dimensions even discussed, meaning that in context "dimensions" is likely simply being used as a stand-in for "universes".

"Kill la Kill can't be light speed!"

Oh, the statement that's plagued debates for years, thanks Inumuta.


In case you're unaware, Inumuta, in what is his only contribution to the Kill la Kill vs scene, directly states during episode 18 that it's impossible to move faster than light. This is often used as an argument to refute any notion of lightspeed feats for the series, but we have more than overwhelming reasons to go completely against this.

For starters, Inumuta isn't actually as perfectly smart as he may seem, since he's actually wrong about a lot of things and is taken off guard by things both before and after this scene in the series. Some examples include:
And to top all of this off, Inumuta made this statement before even being aware that alien infused superhumans existed, and wasnt even present for the infamous tennis feat. The man is certainly knowledgeable in many fields, but when faced with this much evidence against him, I have no option but to call cap on this so-called "debunk".

But is it really immeasurable???

With all the contention just lightspeed Kill la Kill has gotten, you wouldn't expect it's immeasurable speed feat to be so direct. Though, to be fair, this feat does also come from IF (yknow, everyone's favourite).

Just like how the Primordial Life Fiber began to absorb Life Fibers from other dimensions, Ryūko does the same, even visibly causing the Life Fibers that the Primordial one was absorbing to go into her instead. This is gets the Quintillions - Octillions calc if you count the number of threads visible, but we also know that the Primordial Life Fiber was absorbing Life Fibers not just form other dimensions, but also from across time, the past and the future, aka "every Life Fiber ever". Bada bim bada boom, that's an infinite amount of Life Fibers processed within moments, and thus incalculable speeds, or immeasurable. 


Q: How exactly is this anything else than just absorption speed? Why should her combat speed scale to it?

Acute observation, my friend. The actual feat itself isn't the actual absorption of the Life Fibers, but instead calling out to them and bringing hem to her within seconds. Ryūko isn't just standing there and waiting for them to come to her, she is using her own willpower to guide them to her, mentally processing each and every one of them. Even if it was just absorption speed, that's never something shown to be vastly quicker than her flight or combat reflexes even in the original anime, and there's no reason to assume she wouldn't scale to it regardless.

Isn't Kisaragi non-standard?

I honestly have no idea where this argument comes from? It's been around since the beginning of Kill la Kill debates, but even just a single look at the ending of the anime tells you otherwise, since Kisaragi is literally the final state Ryūko and Senketsu achieve before the latter's death. Sure, it took outside influence to attain it, but if Senketsu had survived they would have been able to access the form at any time, as seen with every other transformation they gain by absorbing the Life Fibers of others.

In addition, in IF she manages to achieve it via the beforementioned dimensional absorption of Life Fibers, so even if it wasn't standard to the anime, she still has ways to access the form.

"Trigger-Verse" Scaling?

So this is an argument that's come up more recently, that characters from across Studio Triggers shows all coexist within the same multiverse and can thus be scaled to each other. This stems from a reddit qna with one of Trigger's staff Hiromi Wakabayashi (remember him from earlier?), where he was asked the question and replied with;

u/Einlar:
Are Gurren Lagann, Little witch academia and Kill la Kill all set in the same universe at different points in time? My fan theory is that Akko's using spiral energy, and Croix will be the founder of the Anti-spirals.

Hiromi Wakabayashi: "Technically they exist in a different universe. However, we have few characters such as Trigger-chan and Inferno cop with the ability to cross between these walls and limitations."


So, they exist in seperate universes, end of argument, right? Nnnnnnnot exactly.

See, other Trigger properties have been shown to contain Life Fibers, namely "Space Patrol Luluco", and "When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace", and since Ryūko was supposedly absorbing every Life Fiber to ever exist across time and space, an argument can be made for her affecting those of these worlds as well.

Now, yes, the "Trigger-Verse" does likely exist to some extent (hell, we've even seen Akko and Luluco interact through the latter's ability to cross dimensions), however... this still does nothing for Ryūko stat wise. With IF's highest stats, she's already far beyond most characters Trigger has in their catalogue, and the potential of her scaling to Simon has... well, no evidence at all going for it, frankly. TTGL isn't even a proper Trigger property, it was made by Gainax. Sure, Trigger owns it now, but that doesn't do anything to strengthen this supposed connection to KLK.

Verdicts

Loka

How I look at Chris after he stole my image idea

Whoooooaaaaaand here we finally are, at the bottom of my longest solo blog thus far, it's length only rivalled by the collaboration blogs Bowser vs Eggman and and Gero vs Wily. It's not what I expected from this matchup, but after diving into both series I became a huge fan, and this turned into a massive passion project.

And now we're here!.... and I actually have to debate this mess. Goodness me! Let's try to dive into this one, shall we?


This debate is one hell of a headscratcher, to the point where their physical stats may be the easiest thing to figure out, so I'll start with that. EoS anime Ryūko massively outdoes any feats in the Soul Eater manga, the dispelling of the Cocoon Genesis Sphere coming out to around 10 times higher than Crona's covering the moon in Black Blood, whereas the infamous tennis feat gets up to a million times faster than Soul Eater's best speeds. If it was just those variables, Ryūko would statstomp.

But it can never be that easy, and Kishin Asura puts his own twist into the mixture by giving Crona very blatant scaling to Fire Force's higher stats, like the destruction of Adolla. The world of ideas is unimaginably powerful and capable of merging with the real world, definitely making it some level of universal, almost certainly higher. Meanwhile, the Primordial Life Fiber is made out of millions, billions, of threads, each of which can become entire universes. For concrete numbers, they favour Ryūko, but we're working with such massive levels of power that it's literally impossible to quantify. Strength / Power is a draw.

The same can be said for speed. Although quantifiable numbers once more favour Ryūko, both are immeasurable. Ryūko is capable of pulling Life Fibers from across an innumerable number of dimensions at once, while Crona scales to people capable of transcending time via speed alone.


Since neither can rely on a stat advantage (at least yet, more on that later), let's ignore it for now and focus on their abilities.

Crona's Madness hax won't be effective on Ryūko, since her mind is able to counter Life Fiber control as well as emotional rewriting from mind stitching. Conversely, Ryūko has very few potent hax abilities that can actually affect Crona, and wether or not spatial cutting would cause permanent damage is questionable due to their ability to reform their body at command. In fact, both heal and shapeshift really well, Ryūko having a slight advantage in the fact that her abilities get more potent as a fight goes on and she reaches closer to death.


But let's discuss the 3 big abilities that really matter for this debate; Crona's Thorn & Infinite Propagation, and Ryūko's adaption.

Thorn. Can Ryūko resist it? I'm leaning towards yes. While we don't have an exact knowledge on why Maka and Spirit were able to resist it's soul-altering effects, I simply feel that every theory is one that Ryūko would benefit from. Was it because of their genetic similarities? Well, then Senketsu and Ryūko literally share DNA with each other. Was it because Crona couldn't fathom their familial connection? Ryūko and Senketsu are best buds and have such a perfect connection that Crona wouldn't be able to deal with it either. Was it because of how Soul Eater shenanigans work and its just what happened? Well... Ryūko isn't from Soul Eater now is she? 

Infinite Propagation. What the fuck does it do and how well does it work? In terms of figuring out what exact level of immortality this gives Crona... yeah, that's a toughie. Evidently, it allows for regeneration of physical matter, supposedly to a full extent since we see Clowns get blown the hell up and come back from it. If Crona can come back just from their soul, then Ryūko is gonna have a really hard time putting them down, since she doesn't have any destructive hax on that level at all. On the matter of wether or not it's an ability Crona can use by themselves, I'm leaning maaaaaaaaaybe yes? The wording for it is so confusing, but I feel like it would have been elaborated on if Midnight was reasonable for the resurrection of every clown. For not even Lord Death to bring this up is odd.

Adaptation. Aka, Soul Eater, meet the indomitable human spirit. Ryūko's best advantage in this debate is her fucking ridiculous adaption powers. She and Senketsu are ever evolving and can multiply their power in seconds when faced with the right opponents. Remember how neither she or Crona could rely on a stat advantage to start the fight with? Well, with Ryūko's adaption, as the fight goes on, she'll rapidly increase in both strength and speed as it goes on. Even if they're both incalculably strong and fast, Ryūko will always ensure that she is both stronger and faster. 


And that, is her counter to Infinite Propagation. Because before I close out the abilities segment, let's have a little talk about their personalities. Crona doesn't like fighting, Crona doesn't want to be in confrontation and can't deal with it. Meanwhile, Ryūko loves a good fight. Her fighting spirit is rivalled by none, and what this means is that as her power and speed rapidly overwhelms Crona, they're not gonna wanna be part of this anymore. Even Madness can't last forever, so it's not gonna be too long before Crona's will to fight goes out.

If Crona's only way to stay in the fight is to endlessly respawn via Infinite Propagation, that's something they're eventually gonna stop doing. Crona simply does not have the will and determination to keep up with Ryūko in a prolonged battle. This would already be the case with someone on their power level, but against a foe who rapidly eclipses them in stats, experience, willpower, alongside having an ever evolving super uniform that can spontaneously develop immunities to powers, Crona is gonna choose to not come back. Especially when Ryūko becomes both fast enough that Crona will never touch her, and strong enough that every one of her attacks completely obliterate them.



Allow me to summarise that if you're confused. At first, Ryūko and Crona have a comparable level of stats, but this will change as the fight goes on, with Ryūko increasing rapidly. Ryūko can very likely resist Crona's list of hax, both the Madness of the Black Blood and the Thorn Soul poisoning. Infinite Propagation allows Crona to regenerate from damage to a point where Ryūko can't kill them directly, but at that level Crona simply has no way to damage Ryūko, meaning that it will start an endless cycle of them being blitzed and one-shot before they ultimately give up.

Am I expecting this to be the common opinion? Nope! Is this me sprouting nonsense in support of my favourite character?


...

Ryūko Matoi wins goodnight.

Chris

When GOATs collide

Hey guys it's me ChrisWarlock number 1 Fire Force glazer except for that part let's get this party started!!!!

Stats with this matchup sounds like something simple, right? After all, Kill la Kill absolutely eclipses Soul Eater in raw power, it’s not even close! The highest feat Crona performs only gets a few Yottatons through the Kishin, but Ryuko can reach and far surpass the level of power through Kisaragi. But then we get to Kill la Kill IF and Fire Force and shit gets a lot more even. Adolla and the Primordial Life Fiber are absolutely at least universal, without question. So if either of them are gonna have an advantage when it comes to raw power we’re gonna have to dig a little deeper.

Each thread of the Primordial Life Fiber has the potential to create an entire timeline. That is the highest argument you can make for Kill la Kill as a whole, and it’s a very potent one. Absurdly high into Multiversal, if not Multi+ outright. All good, and should by all accounts be the decider of this duel.

But the realm of Adolla is… a lot more than just a universe. It contains every concept that humanity has ever created. Every single idea that became a part of the collective consciousness of mankind. Every mathematical idea, every mythology and idea of what God is, every single thing. The Evangelist even merged with every mythological history ever created by the human race.

I do not feel comfortable talking about the implications of that latter part. But it’s incredibly powerful and likely some degree of complex multi but it’s just so vague. For the sake of the verdict, I have to take a stand, so I’ll consider Adolla as similar in scale and power to Ryuko, since that tends to be more fun than AP stomps. Speed, however, proves to be a similar ordeal, but one I’m a lot less lenient on.

Time Travel through sheer speed is an interesting argument, but in the context of Fire Force, I can’t say I buy it being immeasurable. You see, Shinra’s super cool speed powers allow him to reach the speed of light. This is consistently how it’s treated across the entire series. When he time travels, it’s when he surpasses the speed of light, in a way not straying too far from the theory of relativity (I think?). I believe that Shinra’s feats of surpassing time should be treated as FTL movement.

This means that Ryuko Matoi blitzes the shit out of Crona. Easy advantage. A huge one in fact. But in comes the real question:

Can Ryuko even actually kill Crona? She has a massive speed advantage, so overwhelming that it should by all means win the whole fight for her, but Crona’s regenerative abilities are incredible. In any other fight this shouldn’t be an issue, but Crona can last so long in a fight that Ryuko’s blood might not even last enough for her to finish the job. Infinite Propagation can only be cancelled out through specific power nullification tied to the soul. I believe that completely wiping out Crona, both body and soul, would probably do the trick.

However, Ryuko doesn’t really focus on soul destruction, does she? Her attacks are mainly meant for physical destruction, mainly clothes, which isn’t really enough to wipe out a Clown, as shown by Stein. So what the fuck does she even do here? This is bullshit, she has an astronomical speed advantage and spatial cutting, she should be able to win this easily! So because she can’t bypass regen and is running on a timer she just loses?! Crona might not keep up in sheer speed, but their AoE and Madness would keep Ryuko on the back foot for a while which just increases the chances of her eventually starting to run low on steam! That’s not even counting Thorn, which probably isn’t going to land on Ryuko, but could very well prevent her from combining with Senketsu at all if it does, which would automatically give Crona the win!

Maybe she could evolve to find a way, it’s not like she hasn’t figured out random tricks to counter her opps before, but that doesn’t really feel conclusive enough considering she can’t kill Crona normally so what the HELL is going on here this is fucking STUPID

No...

This is Fear.

The winner is Kishin Asura.

Pit

I’ve seen this debate over the years go so back and forth, especially as Fire Force and Kill la Kill: If entered the picture, that it could make your head spin. I went into this without much of a clear idea on who I would come out siding with, though I did have some ideas in mind- namely that I was sure Ryuko took stats, while Crona took hax. Let’s get into that first of all.

If you stick exclusively to the manga/anime series Crona and Ryuko both debuted in (Soul Eater and Kill la Kill (duh)), then stats is for sure in Ryuko’s favour. In terms of their earlier forms, we’re looking at teratons vs megatons favouring Ryuko and even the most conservative estimates of Ryuko’s speed from the likes of her cleaving millions of tennis balls in the blink of an eye are faster than anything Crona has shown or scales to. Their strongest states are closer in raw power, both in yottaton range but Ryuko dispersing the Cocoon Genesis Sphere would still put her ahead of Crona coating the moon in Black Blood.

Fire Force and Kill la Kill: If is where things get very wackadoodle. Their best feats go from planet tier to universe busting at the absolute lowest from Haumea absorbing Adolla and the Life Fibers creating entire dimensions that Ryuko then slices apart. Between the two, however, only If really gives us an actual high end to work with, given we know just one of the threads from the Primordial Life Fiber can create these dimensions, which as discussed in a previous segment, gets you anywhere from 10 billion times universal to infinitely universal.

Fire Force brings up Adolla containing and being composed of fundamental concepts such as higher planes, religions, Gods, mathematics, etc. but if you haven’t noticed, that isn’t something you can really quantify off of a vague statement alone. If you, without question, bought “higher planes” to mean higher spatial dimensions, then that could in theory put Crona ahead in power. For me, however, it’s much too vague and nebulous for me to feel comfortable using it as evidence of Crona’s full power, especially off of an assumption of what some of these ideas are truly referring to or manifesting as. Same deal for speed, Ryuko is either on par or far exceeding Crona in that regard.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about Crona scaling to irl religions, or Ryuko scaling to other characters and series throughout Trigger’s history, I’ll quickly address that.

No.


So okay, that about covers their stats. As far as hax or abilities are concerned, Ryuko isn’t really one for methods more complicated than hitting somebody really hard. Not in the sense of having straightforward strategies, but more in the sense that she doesn’t rely on more abstract win moves beyond exposing an opening in the opponent and then beating them down mercilessly. There are exceptions, such as manipulating Life Fibers or bending space in KLK: If but that’s about it. It is worth noting she could feasibly use the Life Fibers for mind stitching to control a foe but she’s never been shown to do this herself and odds are very slim it’s a move she realistically would pull out in a fight.

Crona, on the other hand, is a different story. Many of Crona’s tools fundamentally are win moves all their own. Black Blood can drive whoever it gets inside to madness, their thorns can cancel out symbiotic relationships such as the Soul Wavelength of Weapons and Meisters, Ragnarok can down souls like a Happy Meal, the list goes on. Crona is a much trickier combatant than the scissor girl.

So with all this in mind, it should seem straightforward, right? Sure Crona has tools that could net them the win, but Ryuko should just be strong and fast enough to paste them immediately. Hell, most of Crona’s instant win moves I mentioned before aren’t even guaranteed, or even likely to work. Similar to Maka and Spirit, Ryuko and Senketsu’s bond could prevent the thorns from desyncing them. Black Blood could likely drive Ryuko completely insane if it gets in her system, but it’s questionable if this would last forever given Senketsu broke Ryuko out of Ragyo’s mind control with a bit of help (ironically by getting into her system as well). Even soul stealing, something Ryuko hasn’t had to defend against before, would require Crona to actually… y’know, kill her. So, Ryuko should just flatten Crona like a pancake, right? Yes!...


Until the funny nightmare gremlin comes into the picture.

Crona’s regeneration via Infinite Propagation is the biggest hurdle for Ryuko to overcome. Unless she can cut off Crona’s soul wavelength, she’s never putting the kid down permanently… and Ryuko doesn’t really have abilities specifically tailored for soul based nonsense. While Ryuko resists several options Crona has to take the win even without physically overpowering her, she doesn’t counter ALL of them. Tactics such as poisoning her soul or exposing her to the Madness Wavelength of Fear and breaking her spirit (even if Ryuko’s sheer willpower would make the latter difficult still) could allow Crona to slip on by without having to deal with Ryuko’s immensely higher stats or physical regeneration. Or worst case scenario, Crona could simply wait until Ryuko is fresh out of blood from using Senketsu and then dogpile her the minute she has to turn back. Infinite Propagation can be shut off through affecting wavelengths but, remember. Ryuko doesn’t have anything to do that with.

Now... there are some questionable aspects to Infinite Propagation that ultimately keep me from saying with confidence that it’s a hard wall to anything Ryuko throws at Crona. The suggestion that it requires outside help from other clowns or Moonlight would make it a no-go for a one on one fight, and judging from his shock when the clowns did start dying after Soul Protect went off, there may be a limit to the extent of its regeneration. Once again, your mileage may vary on this one. Without it, I just think Ryuko very clearly splatters Crona across the pavement. Do I think Crona wins with it? Maybe?

Ryuko and Senketsu’s reactive evolution means Crona’s window of opportunity to take the win would grow tighter and tighter as the fight progressed, and it wouldn’t be quick given how many of Crona’s best tools here aren’t immediate. It would be a major no limits fallacy in my opinion to assume Senketsu could evolve to counter the likes of soul poisoning, given Kill la Kill doesn’t even really dive into interaction with souls, but either way, it wouldn’t be as straightforward a matter as Crona simply waiting until Ryuko eventually dropped dead unless the fight drags on that long. At the end of the day, there are a ton of question marks in this debate that make it hard for me to comfortably lean one way or the other.

Given I find Crona’s biggest saving grace in this fight to still be somewhat questionable however, nearly all of their win conditions have massive asterisks next to them, and seeing as how nearly every other advantage of note, including ones yet to be brought up such as teamwork with their symbiotic partner of choice or overall range, goes to Ryuko, I think she is ultimately who I side most with in this debate.

If you buy absolutely everything I mentioned for Soul Eater, no questions asked, have 100% faith in them, then I think a Crona win is completely feasible. I, however, don’t see anything Crona can throw at Ryuko as completely foolproof, while Ryuko’s advantages are so clear as day.

No bad blood to be had here, but Ryuko was simply too in sync to lose her way.

Soma

My sillies how I love them
(my agenda will never die)

Many thanks again to Loka for having me on! I love Kill La Kill a lot, and Soul Eater has been one of my favourite anime since I first started watching, so this is a matchup perfect for me.

Without any further ado though, let's get into it.
The biggest factors in the debate here are the extent to which Fire Force and KLK IF affect their stats. Loka has already gone over how and why both are fair and reasonable to use and how Crona and Ryuko scale to them, so let's directly compare their respective ends. Shinra destroying Adolla and recreating the world is at least universal, matching Junketsu creating the dimension from Satsuki's desires, and then Satsuki destroying it with the Rending Scissors. Both feature statements of being disconnected from, or above reality, as a reality beyond imagination and one that transcends space-time.

As for higher ends, Adolla is directly stated to be contain concepts held within mankind's collective unconscious, including platonic concepts such as mathematics, truth, laws, and higher planes of existence. Such concepts exist in a higher plane of reality than our own, similar to how we view a flat, two dimensional drawing. The series directly states that it is an infinite realm containing all of time and human history, above the real world in such a way that those in the real world cannot interact with, travel to, or grasp the higher dimensional plane of Adolla under ordinary circumstances. Those who do manage to get there, or utilise power due to Adolla (such as Shinra and Sho), do so only through the Evangelist. Shinra destroying a higher dimensional space such as Adolla would require his own attack potency to be equal to, if not greater, than that higher dimensional plane of existence. Ergo, a plane higher than his 3 dimensional existence is 4 dimensional.

On Ryuko's side, Ragyo says verbatim that the Primordial Life Fiber (PLF) can spin Satsuki's dream dimension into a single yarn, and given the size of the PLF with all of its threads, that gets us up to about 10 billion times universal. Ryuko damaged it, and Satsuki matched it in her Shinzui form, which is her own version of Ryuko's Kisaragi state, so scaling is valid. Moreover, the PLF had begin to absorb Life Fibers from other dimensions, including the past and the future, increasing the minimum number of Life Fibers up by billions and trillions at least, given that no defined limit was given. Given its undefinable quantity, and with the power of spatial manipulation Ryuko and the PLF have, the highest possible end for this would be an infinite amount of universes.

So, how do they compare? Well, firstly to clarify, the PLF absorbing Life Fibers across dimensions is more in line with alternate dimensions and realities, rather than any higher spatial dimensions. We have confirmation that Kill La Kill exists within a sort of "Trigger-Verse", a collection of universes wherein the series created and owned by Trigger take place, with characters such as Luluco and Inferno Cop able to cross these boundaries and go to other series, like when Luluco met Akko from Little Witch Academia. Kill La Kill has never made any sort of mention of higher spatial dimensions, the words "dimension" and "universe" are often used interchangeably, and with their spatial manipulation powers, it's clear that they are reaching to pull Life Fibers from across these universes rather than from any higher planes.

This is not the case with Crona however. Fire Force deliberately and repeatedly mentions how Adolla is a higher dimensional plane, not only itself dimensionally above the real world, but even within it are concepts that transcend a 3 dimensional existence. Concepts that would continue to exist even if the real world (universe) were to be destroyed in its entirety. For example, there could be no triangles left in the universe, any people left to comprehend or understand a triangle, and all information about it could disappear, but the concept of it within Adolla would still remain, as the dimension transcends the reality in which Fire Force and Soul Eater takes place.

Now, you've all read the blog (or at least I hope you all have! Loka put a lot of work into it and it's great, so appreciate their efforts), so you know that Adolla returns in Soul Eater after Shinra destroys it, in the form of Kishin Asura. Not only is Crona on par with the endgame cast who fight Kishin Asura, but Crona absorbs Asura himself, and becomes the second ever Kishin. Crona is undoubtedly on that kind of level physically, and thus Adolla, Kishin Asura and Crona are above Ryuko, the PLF and Senketsu Kisaragi. A higher dimension of infinite size, containing 4 dimensional concepts within itself surpasses infinite 3 dimensional universes, so Crona takes strength and durability.

Given that we've covered how their cosmologies compare and how that applies to AP, the hard part is over and it's all smooth sailing from here. When it comes to speed, base Crona has a few relativistic speed feats to compare to, and early-series Shinra was able to surpass light speed with his Adolla Burst, but early-series Ryuko slashing all those tennis balls comes out to over 2x light speed, giving her a slight edge. But at their highest, both are able to move at immeasurable speeds. With Crona absorbing the Kishin Asura, and thus the infinite realm of Adolla with its higher dimensional space within, speed within a lower dimension is hardly a problem. Combined with early-series Shinra being able to move himself through time with sheer speed, and him repeating the same speed in Shinrabanshoman form against the Haumea-Evangelist fusion, it's more than a match for any of the possible ranges of Ryuko pulling in the Life Fibers from across time and space (Quadrillion to Octillion range), aside from the highest end of infinite universes begetting immeasurable speed.

So with a solid lock on AP and durability, and tying in speed, Crona just has a lot more ways to finish the fight from here than Ryuko does. Firstly, passively emitting Madness. They can do this though multiple means, such as Black Blood infection, the Black Blood Spheres in base, and as the Kishin, they have a Wavelength strong enough to affect Earth from the moon for several months straight. Strong enough wills have been able to resist Madness ordinarily, and Ryuko certainly has an absurdly strong will, but even those who resist such Madness Wavelengths were susceptible to Crona's Wavelength as the Kishin, and a prolonged, concentrated passive effect on Ryuko and Senketsu both would wear down at the two over the course of the battle.

Ryuko and Senketsu have the ability to adapt to external physical forces, such as when she faced Gamagori and Nonon, adapting with spikes and redirecting Nonon's sound waves, but she has been susceptible to less direct means of attack in the past. Most notably when Ragyo used Mind Stitching to control Ryuko for a month, and though she did break out of it eventually, it was with the help of her friends, and physically removing the Mind Stitching from her brain. In contrast, Madness affects the soul, which Ryuko has never encountered before, and has not shown that she could interact with. It's unsupported to say that her adaptation in response to physical phenomena would also work when faced with a non-physical threat that neither she or Senketsu could detect, and thus without any resistance to soul attacks, she's only got her willpower to fight it off at all times.

Moreover, whilst the high end of her pulling all the Life Fibers across time and other universes sees her reach a level of up to infinite universes, this is due to her Life Fiber absorption, and she had to take in every Life Fiber across all of time and space, even in other universes, just to reach this level. Her adaptation lets her grow stronger, but just adapting would not have let her cross such a distance between her and Ragyo with the PLF. In a fight against Crona, Ryuko's highest state has her absorbed every Life Fiber she possibly could, and that's essentially her cap in terms of strength. It's a bit of a stretch to say she could adapt to a gap in strength of an entire higher plane of existence when her adaptation has not let her evolve to cross an infinitely lesser gap between her and Ragyo. Not to say that she couldn't possibly get stronger, but adding onto infinite 3 dimensional universes won't necessarily allow her to bridge the gulf between an imperceptibly higher realm of 4 dimension that Fire Force (and thus Soul Eater) have shown cannot normally be interacted with without external intervention.

Ryuko's regeneration may be faster than Crona's Black Blood, but she's going to struggle to do meaningful damage to Crona with the power differential between them and the Black Blood armour protecting Crona, as well as hardening their skin to external damage. Plus, any blood lost by Ryuko is lost forever, and that's a lot more detrimental for her than it is for Crona. Firstly, Ryuko's transformation with Senketsu is dependant on how much blood she has in her body. She's able to hold the transformation for a significant amount of time, but it does drain away at her, even if slowly, putting her powers on a timer that Crona doesn't have. Secondly, her regeneration pulls her body back together, but Crona has full control over the Black Blood, even when it has left their body. They've used it lying around the battlefield for attacks like Bloody Needle or Bloody Lance, and can pull it back into their body, so while Ryuko will be losing blood with each hit, Crona can just pull theirs back into their body and be restored good as new.

Crona's multitude of techniques with Black Blood and Ragnarok are also much more versatile and creative than Ryuko's adaptations with Senketsu. Her evolutions are often reactionary in nature. Bound by wrappings? Spikes to break them. Need to get into the air? Wings to fly. Being bombarded by sound blasts? Redirect it back. And this is continued with her Anchors (to hold her to the ground), Air Slashes (to hit far away targets), Jet Boosters (to speed her up), and so on. It's by no means bad, and she could likely react to some of Crona's own attacks, but Crona's own techniques are often offensively designed, and specifically used to target people. Ragnarok's ability to vibrate increases his cutting power, the swords Despair and Uncleanliness provide two additional means of attack (plus a third arm!), Crona's four Screech Resonances (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) can take the form of projectiles, aftertrails to empower attacks, enhancements to Ragnarok's blade, or tornadoes of sound to cover Crona from attacks. There's more, but the gist is that Crona's techniques often see them taking the initiative with their unique adaptations in battle.

Crona and Ragnarok can use Black Blood to fly, shapeshift, turn into tendrils, spikes or other weapons, create bladed projectiles, shields, walls and wings. They can encase, absorb and dissolve foes in Mad Blood, ensnare, control or cut foes with Thorn, even create storms of Thorns, and disrupt the Wavelengths between partners to such an extent that Maka couldn't even hold Soul. The bond between a Meister and their Weapon is so intrinsically linked, much like Ryuko's connection with Senketsu, and in the "World where nothing fits together", Ryuko and Senketsu would be separated, just leaving them on their own. Maka was able to overcome this with her father due to the familial bond between them and their connection, but while Ryuko can fight without Senketsu, as we see in the anime, she's nowhere near as strong without him as they are working together. Even if her adaptation and extreme will may be able to resist it, continued exposure and attacks with Thorn would chip away at their connection until Crona could separate them.

Soul and Maka's connection has been forged through their years together, learning each other on such a personal level that they act as one, down to the soul. Ryuko's connection with Senketsu is born from her DNA being part of his creation, and they are the best of friends through all sorts of trials, but I could not say in good faith that it surpasses Soul and Maka's own bond. Equal? Sure. But not greater than. If Crona could seperate them, I feel confident in saying they could seperate Ryuko and Senketsu too. As awesome of a best friend as the sailor uniform is, it's not her father (who's dead), her mother (who's evil), or her sister (who's the GOAT but isn't a Kamui uniform).

Any wounds that Crona inflicts upon Ryuko are chances for Black Blood to get into her bloodstream and infect her. Life Fiber regeneration works by closing the wound as the offending object passes through it. It operates at a speed that can start repairing wounds as a blade is cutting through the body, but with others like puncture wounds, the object needs to be removed first before healing can properly begin, like when Ragyo stabbed through Ryuko in their final fight. Ryuko's pain tolerance is super high, but if Crona stabs through Ryuko with any of their Black Blood attacks, and they have MANY, that's all opportunities for Black Blood to enter through the wound and spread Crona's Madness. Adding onto this is the fact that Crona controls all Black Blood from their body, so they may be able to manipulate it inside of Ryuko herself, creating weapons to puncture her from the inside. This is especially dangerous for when the blood reaches the heart, as destroying the heart will destroy Ryuko, like we saw with Ragyo.

Crona also has a lot of massive AOE attacks to do this with, like when their Mad Blood covered an entire Ukrainian city. And speaking of the Mad Blood, its ability to absorb beings even on the level of Kishin Asura means that it's a surefire way to get around Ryuko's regeneration (assuming that the massive gap in AP wouldn't already do this). With Thorns, Bloody Needles, Shapeshifting and Vector Arrows, Crona has multiple means to hold Ryuko down and get her in a position to be encased within and absorbed by the Mad Blood, which is a win-con Ryuko hasn't encountered before and wouldn't be fully prepared to fight back against, given how lethal it can be in such a short time.

And as Loka mentioned, Mind Stitching isn't something Ryuko would try in character, but even if it was something she would think to resort to, Crona's bond with the Black Blood would allow them to resist the Mind Stitching. Ryuko was able to physically remove it from her brain in what would've been lethal for any ordinary human, but even if destruction of the brain would have killed an early series Crona, getting access to the Black Clown gave Crona their Infinite Propagation ability, which is directly powered by the Madness Wavelength of Kishin Asura, whom Crona absorbed. With the power to regenerate from death, and the only known way to stop this being severing their connection to the Madness Wavelength via specific soul-based techniques, Ryuko is in a real tough spot here.

With her struggling to deal meaningful damage to Crona in the first place with the AP gap and Crona's Black Blood regeneration, the Infinite Propagation resurrection thanks to the Black Clowns empowered by Kishin Asura's Madness Wavelength is something Ryuko has no way to stop unless she can destroy all of Crona down to a level beyond ash, which she cannot do. She has no way to interact with the soul in general, much less use the specific techniques necessary to shut off connection to the power that Crona could likely just re-establish, given that they absorbed Asura and are now the Kishin themselves.

Ryuko's spatial manipulation is also very specific and she's only been shown to use it in summoning Life Fibers from across time and other universes to coalesce into her. Given the hyper-specific nature of her actions when using it and her unique connection to Life Fibers, I feel it's unlikely that Ryuko could use this ability in another way, such as an offensive means of attack. Any lastly, it's also highly unlikely that the Berserker state would ever come into play. It's obviously not beneficial for her, losing blood and sanity so quickly, but Crona wouldn't be able to trigger (heh) it either. It appeared once in Ryuko's single greatest moment of rage she's ever felt, was deeply personal to her, and she's much better controlled now. Being affected by the Madness Wavelength would make her erratic, crazy and out of her mind, but not outrageously angry to such an extent.

So, with everything covered, let's do a quick recap. At their highest states, speed is equal, but Crona is an entire dimensional plane stronger than Ryuko, and she wouldn't be able to close the gap. Ryuko has no resistances to soul manipulation of any kind, and Crona's Madness Wavelength would eventually affect her and Senketsu, even if over prolonged exposure. Crona has the means to seperate the two via Thorn and the "world where nothing fits together", and a far more consistent means of regeneration with the Black Blood and Infinite Propagation, while Ryuko's blood timer is lessening with every attack she takes. Crona has far greater AOE with their attacks, and any piercing attacks give Crona the opportunity to inject remotely controllable Black Blood into Ryuko's bloodstream and attack her from the inside, destroying her heart and taking her out for good. Lastly, Crona has plenty of options to pin Ryuko down long enough to absorb her with the massively powerful Mad Blood.

Ryuko definitely has the edge when it comes to combat skill, tighter teamwork, overpowering will and a reactive evolution, but Crona's vastly greater strength, more reliable means of regeneration, crucial madness wavelength and fully controllable Black Blood gives them the perfect soul-ution to Ragna-rock Ryuko.

The winner is Crona.

Mannington

These ties are pissing me off.

I’m the original              deciding vote.


Gonna tackle this as cleanly and quickly as I can, but don’t mistake that for not loving this MU or characters, they’re goated.

Let’s tackle everyone’s favorite part of debates, stats, and more specifically, what I buy for them. It should be pretty clear at this point the general highs are being taken for both, not a very fun debate when neither have the IF or FF nukes on hand. Bare-minimum, the both of them are duking it out around universal with speed to match, but things get crazier when you start buying speed statements. Between Shinra’s funky time hopping and Ryuko calling out the Life Fibers, both sit around immeasurable levels, and for both debate’s sake and generally buying them, these speeds work for me. Power is a whole other debate since it's kinda hard to get a number on them. Crona batting with the power equivalent of the collective human unconscious and Ryuko snipping the PLF with potentially endless power from all time in the future and present. Finding the high end for these is pretty difficult, given the latter lacks any direct mentions of a cap to this and the former… I don’t know, you tell me how much of a power boost Scrabble and sliced bread gives Crona. There is a clear power boost from it, enough I don’t feel comfortable just looking at the low end and giving it to Ryuko, so let me give this the simplest look I can. Going by my own logic for buying Ryuko’s upper speed, we don’t have any reason to assume there’s an upper limit of dimensions or universes that are being pulled from. This including both their past and future, ones that could have far outlasted the time we see in the show, can be an absurd amount. With all this, I feel comfortable landing her at this power. Crona meanwhile, is far harder to get the exact details on. It’s very clearly powerful, all these concepts juicing them up, but there’s one thing it has that the Life Fibers don’t: a limit. Granted, this limit can be quite absurd, for all we know, humanity never goes extinct even billions of years past SE. But that is just one universe they have to live in. The Life Fibers, even if they have a clear end, have tons of universe they’ve been pulled across. Purely for the sake of simplicity, I’ll be handing pure power to Ryuko.

I’m very aware of how easily this could be spun for someone that believes Crona is stronger, so let's take a look at their pure powers: how would they handle this in a mostly equal fight? They both have plenty of showings of pure skill and plenty of options in combat. Crona is definitely better at controlling the battlefield and keeping their distance with Black Blood manipulation, but Ryuko is agile enough to keep up and has ranged slashes to match the distance. Conversely, she is far more aggressive up close, with multiple forms Senketsu can take to help even further, but Crona can use defensive options to catch their breath and can hold their own upclose just as well. The best option Crona has that Ryuko doesn’t is madness, which theoretically could mess with Ryuko. However, the familial bond she has with Senketsu should be plenty to help resist, at least for a long time. Hell, the worst Ryuko was handled by forms of manipulation, with Junketsu, was when she was alone without Senketsu, bouncing back when he and a totally metaphorical wedding crasher Mako showed up. All this comes to the one major thing Ryuko has that Crona doesn't: unconscious healing. Crona and Ragnarok have to actively focus on regenerating, to patch up and pull wounds together while Ryuko gets that on the fly. If she’s fighting as aggressively as she usually does, Crona’s gonna fall behind in damage one way or another, Ryuko just taking less overtime as she heals while they need to focus on healing.

Overall, this matchup is absurdly close. Stats in barely measurable metrics, tons of abilities and counters, both coming to make this the fight of everyone’s life here. But Ryuko Matoi and Senketsu just had the power and abilities to make the cut.




Star                        walker

Results

Team Crona: 2 (Chris, Soma)

Team Ryūko: 3 (Loka, Pit, Mannington)


Hey, did you read this far and enjoy what you saw? Well, then you should follow my BlueSky account! I'll be posting blog updates there as well as all other things Death Battle and what other interests I have! Thanks for reading!

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(I'm gonna take a nap...)

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