ShadOW THE hEDGEhog vs Ryucow mytoy Q and A

 “Death Battle hates Sonic the Hedgehog and they’re gonna make Shadow lose this fight. He’ll be treated like a fool and disrespected hard

#spoons #edgehog”

Ultraguy, the researcher for Shadow who has:

• 100% Sonic 1, 2, 3/K, CD, Advanced 1/2/3, Sonic Rush, Sonic Rush Adventure, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Heroes, Shadow, 06, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Lost World, Mania, and Forces

• Played almost every spin-off game, including the storybook series, all the racing games (All-Stars, Riders, R, and Drift), Knuckles Chaotix, Spinball, Fighters, SegaSonic, and every GameGear release

• Read every single issue of Archie Sonic, Fleetway Sonic, Sonic X’s comic, Sonic Universe, IDW Sonic, and misc manga

• Watched the entirety of Satam, Adventures, Boom, Underground, Sonic X, the OVA, and Sega’s recent mini cartoons

• Downloaded Sonic fan-games like After/Before the Sequel, Project Hero, the Infinite Engine, Sonic World, etc.

• Stated multiple times in the past that he thinks Shadow would beat Ryuko

Ultraguy: …So in conclusion Sonic the Hedgehog sucks. He was never good and you can trust my opinion cause I know this better than anyone else.

Anyway

How will Shadow deal with Ryuko’s healing factor?

Life Fibers can’t just repair any damage. If Ryuko’s body parts get completely lobbed off then they don’t regenerate(even when Ragyo was decapitated for example one life fiber line was uncut and Ryuko blocked herself from being cut from one side slightly when she was bisected). The reason this normally doesn’t happen is that her fibers move to reattach themselves before said body parts can be completely severed from all strands. This is why the series makes a big deal about cutting Life Fibers from both sides since it interrupts the re-attachment process. This is also the main reason why Nui’s arms stayed cut off when Ryuko did it for that matter.

Anyways, by all accounts given Shadow is significantly faster than anything found in KLK, he should be able to sever all of the threads embedded in a section of Ryuko’s limbs without having to cut them from both sides. Stopping time and cutting her limbs off would also have the same result, as he’s essentially cutting everywhere at once. Likewise, Shadow’s AP is probably high enough that a large-scale Chaos Blast would obliterate her in one shot.

How do they stack in terms of experience?

Shadow has way more fighting experience being honest. He’s been on a lot more adventures, is a member of a police agency, and has gone against world-ending threats dozens of times. Ryuko for the most part only got into street fights as a child delinquent and then had a single year-ish worth of high-stakes battles before retiring.

How do they stack in terms of arsenal and abilities?

Shadow has a lot more powers at his disposal. He’s got multiple kinds of shields, the color powers from Sonic Colors, multiple time stop or time-slowing abilities,  a multitude of weapons, projectile attacks,  and AOE explosions. He even has his own healing move, albeit not as great as Ryuko’s. His speed combined with teleportation is also obviously a huge advantage in his favor.

Ryuko’s transformations and Scissor Blades are nothing to laugh at, but they don’t really give her anything Shadow can’t already do with his quills or hover boots.

Can Ryuko outlast Super Shadow?

No. Kisaragi may be much stronger than Ryuko’s base, but it is not as powerful as Super Shadow. Shadow’s durability combined with outclassing Ryuko in power puts her in a position where she would most definitely be defeated before the time limit is up. Likewise, it should be noted that Shadow taking off his inhibitor rings allowed him to match the power of Mephiles the Dark, even when he had several Chaos Emeralds under his control. Even the power output of a single emerald is enough to overcome Ryuko(heck on that note multiple Sonic characters have beaten foes powered by one or more chaos emeralds).

I will also mention since people bring it up. I don’t consider the “50 rings” thing to be a hard limit on how long Super forms last. While Super forms do have a time limit, I think it’s likely influenced by how hard characters push themselves(since ring energy is used up faster in generations when boosting and Sonic struggles to keep his form after the fight in unleashed). It's pretty likely the form can last several minutes at full power and this was shown to be the case in unleashed where Sonic has a health bar instead of a ring counter during the final boss. The 50-second thing is generally just a baseline since collecting 50 rings and that being the minimum you run down from in most games is fairly consistent.

Edit: Just gonna add we are aware of the "several days" thing in Sonic advanced. Outside of it mostly being off-screen, we generally go with the stance that it potentially only lasted that long because Sonic wasn't actively fighting/draining power from the form.

How high did you put base Shadow?

Sonic surviving the Death Egg exploding was at least multi-continental to moon(if you check the Forces map the Death egg is pretty huge). People have also argued for putting them higher based on him fighting imperfect Dark Gaia, some black hole feats, etc. 

Why was destroying planet Aquarius so low in yield

It’s a really small planet. It’s like a 10th the size of the moon. This is mentioned in the Jap data file cards.

Isn’t Senketsu Kisaragi non-standard for Ryuko?

Ryuko gains power and abilities over the course series by absorbing life fibers from defeated opponents. These powers/abilities then become a permanent part of her arsenal. While the entire cast may have willingly given up their uniforms’ Life Fibers to allow her to access the form in the first place, nothing suggests she wouldn’t have been able to access it at will after that. The only reason why it never happens is that absorbing Ragyo’s Shinra-Koketsu during the final battle overloads Senketsu and kills him, preventing him from ever being used in another fight. There’s nothing to otherwise suggest it was a one-time thing, as Senketsu wouldn’t really have a reason to regurgitate the Life Fibers he absorbed or something.

Ryuko has a time limit

Technically

Senkets consumes her blood to stay active. While the amount he needs lowered drastically after they truly synchronized, you still see him do this anytime they have the transformation sequence. It’s unlikely her stamina is infinite given that.

Are Shadow’s weapons like the Black Sword standard?

Using stuff that only has a single appearance has never really been against the rules of the show unless there are some massive outside circumstances. I’ve heard some people argue that Black Arms weapons shouldn’t be used since they were killed off at the end of Shadow’s game, but frankly given there were thousands of them invading all of Earth, I can imagine there still being a few of their weapons lying around (it’s not like all their tech just spontaneously exploded or something). Not to mention since Shadow has shown up twice, there was a desire to show off some more niche parts of his arsenal.

What about Kill la Kill IF?

Kill la Kill IF is a quasi-canon video game set in the Kill la Kill universe. Essentially Satsuki’s Junketsu uniform creates a false dream reality based on her thoughts and emotions. This is apparently because Life Fibers transcend time and can alter reality or something. In that dream reality, the heroes fight a version of the primordial life fiber, and the dream realities possible “destruction” could be seen as a universal feat. The characters wake back up in the real world afterward with little memory as to what happened when the game ends. Ryuko and the Primordial Life Fiber also apparently showcase the ability to absorb Life Fibers from across various locations in space-time. 

Anyway, even ignoring the whole “dream” thing, trying to amp Ryuko way beyond what the show implied is dubious. In addition arguments for Shadow involving Solaris, Time Eater, Egg Wizard, etc are all much more popular scaling options people have used to argue universal levels of power for Sonic characters and make much more sense comparatively. The black box mentioned this as a “counter” to IF, since there otherwise really isn’t a need to push that high for Shadow in this fight.

Why did Ryuko use IF’s transformation sequence in the animation then?

I think the animators just wanted to make a reference and thought it looked cool/more cinematic. It wasn't there in relation to research or anything, though I understand if it came off as slightly confusing.

Can Ryuko mind control Shadow?

In Kill la Kill there’s a mind-control move called “Mind Stitching” that Life Fiber hybrids can use to mind control, other humans. Ryuko never learned how to use this ability, so it's a non-factor in the fight. Even if she did know it, the move actually requires the user to pierce the head of the target and attach a Life Fiber string directly to the target's brain. Given Shadow is much faster than Ryuko that would be difficult to do. Becoming Super Shadow would make the move impossible since it wouldn’t get through Shadow’s invincible body to his head anyway.

Would Ryuko target Shadow’s clothing?

...No.

Did you use Archie Shadow?

Nah, Gerald Robotnik and Maria just lack footage. Most of Gerald’s appearances are in video logs and Maria’s illness is only really mentioned in Japanese Sonic sites or hard-to-record logs in Sonic Chronicles. A few panels from Archie were used to compensate. The comic also had better close ups of some of Shadow’s equipment..

Is the hole in the Cocoon Sphere Genesis feat legit?

14:04-14:07  https://www.wcoanimedub.tv/kill-la-kill-episode-24-english-dubbed-2

It’s portrayed a bit oddly, yeah. Essentially Ryuko chases after Ragyo as the Earth is being surrounded in Life Fibers. The sky seems clear before Ryuko flies off, but then she hits a layer of Life Fibers anyway. When she goes through them you can’t see a hole anywhere nearby, but shortly after you see a large hole over Japan (which is where she probably should have been flying from, meaning she shouldn’t have hit a layer of fibers at all). The hole is seemingly starting to close on its own after(granted this would happen regardless of how it was formed).. A simulation early in the series kind of contradicts the idea of the hole already being there, since the planet is supposed to be covered uniformly from multiple locations though.

https://imgur.com/Jj1OYul

Anyway, there’s been some debate on this feat due to the visual inconsistency, but honestly, I don’t think it matters much. Ryuko can’t really win either way and there were def people who were expecting to see it talked about, not to mention it’s the only thing we really have to go off for how powerful Kisaragi is since there isn’t any semblance of a multiplier you can use to upscale from lower forms, and Shinra-Koketsu doesn’t do anything worth scaling to either.

We also used Japan so size the hole btw

Ryuko is 3 feet tall?

That was an error. She’s 164cm and the scissor blade is like 3-4ish feet long.

Why did you use steel for the life fibers for the hole calc?

Life fibers are more durable than normal fabric. It’s mentioned by one of the earlier characters that his life fibers gloves are harder than steel, so we used that as a baseline. It makes sense given the series involves superhumans.

What do you think about high ends for the tennis ball feat

The 100million tennis balls(or whatever it was) part of that name of the attack is probably an exaggeration. There clearly aren’t that many on-screen, given the entire sky would be blanketed if there was.

MFTL Super Sonic

We’re aware of the stellar parallaxes super characters have when flying in some games, but some vs communities just don’t like using those kinds of feats because a lot of games tend to have non-descript moving backgrounds with stars.  Some think it may set a precedent of making characters from other series way faster than they would be implied otherwise. 

Similar disagreements in multiple communities arise regarding the non-aggression feat and Solaris speed scaling. I can say in the case of Solaris that it’s a plot point that the 3 hedgehogs need to attack him in 3 different time periods because they can’t be at multiple points of time on their own. So they aren't temporally omnipresent between multiple locations in time at once or anything. The Non-aggression is just vague, but it was almost mentioned in a black box(particularly as a counter to higher ends of the tennis ball feat or the "speed" feats in IF). We just forgot to write it.

Does Ryuko scale to the Life Fibers causing the Earth to explode?

No, because that entire plot point relies on the Life Fibers not being durable enough to survive its destruction in order to blast them apart and send them throughout the rest of the universe. The Cocoon Sphere Genesis is also massive, so fibers in the higher levels wouldn’t be making nearly as much of the force. For comparison’s sake, if you cover a bomb with your body and then get splattered to pieces, you obviously weren’t durable enough to survive the bomb. Anything that was still intact after the blast was just the result of it being further away.

Why do Shadow vs Ryuko as a matchup?

Shadow and Ryuko have no connections 

To be honest I can’t believe people who say this have in-depth knowledge of both characters or have thought about the match very thoroughly.

The connections between Shadow and Ryūko is that both are powerful anti-heroes that sport a black and red palette while also having similar backstories primarily based on vengeance over losing a close friend/parent (Maria Robotnik and Isshin Matoi respectively) and are genetically half-alien as well as the biological offsprings of the main villains of their story (Black Doom and Ragyo Kiryūin, respectively). Both also receive increased powers via extraordinary sources (the Chaos Emeralds and Kamui Senketsu respectively) and both are noted for having short tempers. 

They also have origins involved in a lab experiment (Shadow was created to be the Ultimate Lifeform by Gerald Robotnik, while Ryuko’s mother attempted to fuse her with life fibers as an infant) and both initially start out as enemies to a blue-colored rival with a similar powerset (Sonic the Hedgehog and Satsuki Kiryūin, respectively) before eventually teaming up with them. Additionally, both also have a super form involving them glowing a golden color with red streaks (Super Shadow and Kisaragi, respectively). Furthermore, the climaxes of both their stories involve them falling from space after a battle in the aforementioned golden super form. Both also put their pasts behind them at the end of their given games/stories.

The amount of duality on display here is much higher than most normal death battle fights and is probably more than Shadow’s previous opponents Vegeta/Mewtwo. These similarities are pretty obvious to fans of both series, to the point where multiple videos and sega themselves have made a nod to it 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWTsVeDiFZw

But Shadow vs Ryuko is a stomp

Most vs fights are stomps tbh. If a person doesn’t have a specific hax, it’s normally gonna be determined by who’s stronger or faster. The tiers in most series generally don’t align well because the power scales aren't built with each other in mind. EXE stomped, War machine stomped, Machamp stomped, etc. The fact Shadow got a clear-cut win doesn’t stop the fight itself from being interesting. The only difference here is Sonic characters are well known enough from the get-go that most people know Shadow wins from the start.

“Animation potential”

I don’t think people need to worry about “animation potential” when it comes to these fights. The animators are pretty talented and as the full episode showed can animate the potential out of any given fight.

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Anyway, before we end off I should probably mention. The researchers aren't actually contractually obligated to make written Q and As. They get made on a case-by-case basis depending on if the people working on a specific ep want to make one. Some people prefer the cast q and a, some eps don’t really need one, etc. “Ultraguy” tends to write them the most consistently since this is his Blogspot, he posts everything here anyway and he tends to be the most interested in talking about eps he’s involved in. There’s not necessarily a guarantee you'll get one for each match on the show.

Edit: Thought it best to alter this blog a bit, given some of the discussion.