I'll be offering some thoughts on why I think Nokia 17 should be Low 2-C but first the important bit;
If Ribrianne cannot get 3-A, 17 cannot get Low 2-C!
Ribrianne could push back Base Goku, so she's probably 3-A unironically
Anyways, lets begin.
This was so dumb. 17 was clearly portrayed lower throughout, getting overpowered by base Toppo not to far back from the first clip. Then he somehow damages Jiren, took an attack meant for SSBE Vegeta, fought on par against Jiren with Goku and Vegeta iirc, etc.
We actually have a statement from Frieza implying that 17 wasn't going all-out during his fight with base Toppo, which is actually consistent as he was mostly fighting to stall and given the feats we would see from him later.
The statement actually gives
A LOT of validity as it explains how 17 seems so much stronger in such a short of amount of time.
I'mma input some of my own logic into this.
For the first video, to me, doesn't it seem like 17's attack only damaged Jiren's clothing and lightly scratched his alien hide? It didn't seem it did shit to Jiren and seemed like 17 put a lot of energy into the aforementioned attack. Also, surprise attack. Remember that time Goku almost died from a sneak attack in RoF?
Jiren quite literally didn't give a damn about the attack. He stood there, basically unfazed by the attack. Besides, Goku already mentioned that Jiren wasn't able to guard himself from the attack.
17's attack on Jiren was
by far the most potent attack Jiren had taken at that point in the tournament.
It was the first time he had taken damage on that kind and the 2nd time an attack had left a visible mark on him since UI Goku 1 (which was a literal scratch compared to the actual scar in his suit that 17 gave him)
Neither SSBE Vegeta, nor SSB Goku did damage of this calibre on Jiren (who are both listed at Low 2-C)
Also, surprise attack. Remember that time Goku almost died from a sneak attack in RoF?
We actually saw base Frieza attempt a sneak attack on Jiren right after Vegeta, Goku and 17 had all been beaten which amounted to nothing and ended up getting him demolished right after.
So you do need relevant strength for a sneak attack to deal damage comparable to what 17 did. The only real exception to this is the Sorbet feat (which is extremely bizarre for a dozen reasons)
So 17's feat being a sneak-attack does not invalidate it by any means.
For the second video, Jiren was assaulted by 17 and Frieza after he got ****** over by MUI Goku and was still reeling from the ass-kicking that occurred back then, mentally and physically. That barrier self-destruct didn't do shit to that extremely exhausted and weaken Jiren who needed a long pep-talk from Toppo to muster the last of his energy to kick U7's ass, and by that point, Base Goku and Frieza could hurt and react to Jiren to a degree, but the only way to defeat him was still by pushing his ass off of the stage.
I mean, 17 did literally one-shot the fatigued Jiren that was equal to Golden Frieza. So saying it did nothing isn't really accurate. But I agree with the rest, this does not scale 17 nor Frieza.
We already had numerous discussions about this but, it was agreed to be plot convenience. And the bomb barely did anything to Base Jiren and that was agreed to be enough for proper scaling. As for what happened much later; Goku and Jiren were already heavily exhausted and severely weakened at this point, so it was for that reason that neither 17 nor Frieza scale.
Concluding this as plot convenience seems even more bizzare than just taking it at face value for me. There's half a dozen feats that would have to be converted to outliers for the sake of consistency then.
- 17 taking hits from Jiren must be an outlier
- 17 pushing back Jiren with his ki-blasts must be an outlier
- 17 taking hits from GoD Toppo must be an outlier
- 17 keeping up alongside SSB Goku and SSBE Vegeta must be an outlier
- 17 briefly clashing with the Jiren that Goku and Vegeta could clash with, must be an outlier
- 17 hurting Jiren with the suprise attack must be an outlier
If we wanna leave this for another time, that's fine by me (I will admit that this post is probably uneccesary instigation, as it's unlikely to change opinions)
But i'm really not a fan of this conclusion at all, judging so many feats as inconsistencies just ends up making any proper scaling extremely cluttered.
Especially as there are statements that explain the original feats, which ends up going against the idea that these are outliers.
