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DEATH BATTLE! Discussion Thread (All-time Death Battle Spoilers Alert)

Just gonna copy paste this here for a fraction of what I have planned:

Alrighty, so after doing a ton of research on this fight, particularly in regards to Soul Eater, theres a LOT of issues with the arguments for Maka, which ive been asked to post here:

1. Maka's scaling - The most prevalent reasoning people have used to argue Maka beating Ruby is that she has Country/Continent level scaling/scales to Fire Force which is Multiversal. This is only partially true. She DOES scale to those things, but only with non-standard equipment and outside help.

  • The first part of her scaling comes from her fight with Crona right before the final battle of the series. There is frankly a lot wrong with scaling her to Crona directly, primarily due to the fact that she did no damage to Crona at any point in the fight. She was attacking Crona but Crona was visibly unharmed and unfazed by it the entire time, even when Maka is actively putting a crater in the ground from how hard she is hitting Crona and Soul is questioning if Maka is actually trying to kill Crona. 3 pages later, Crona sneak attacks Maka and she has to be saved by BlackStar, after which Maka outright confirms that if she were fighting Crona alone she wouldnt have been able to avoid or survive Crona stabbing her once because of how weak she is. BlackStar 3 pages after that says that Crona is stronger than him to the point that they can push him back with sheer brute force, and then 6 pages later Maka and BlackStar have a short conversation about how BlackStar constantly has to save Maka because she is so much weaker than him.Even the guidebook's description of the fight says that Maka was doing no damage to Crona. Crona starts attacking them wildly, and Maka is forced to dodge or redirect everything that comes at her as any one attack from Crona would kill her. Crona then uses their madness wavelength to disrupt Maka and BlackStar's own wavelengths, preventing them from using their weapons, and Spirit has Maka wield him in place of Soul, which, due to them sharing a unique wavelength as a result of their bond as father and daughter, amplifies her to the point of being able to casually shred every attack that Crona threw at her, allowing her to easily beat them.
  • The second part of her scaling comes from the final battle with Kishin Asura. The problem with this is Maka does not scale to Asura in any capacity on her own. In the final battle against Asura, Asura was able to directly sense how strong Maka, Kid, and BlackStar were and he only deemed the latter two to be worth fighting. He then casually backhanded Maka, nearly killing her in the process, and told her to not bother trying to fight him, with both Maka's father and the Little Ogre inside Soul's realm directly stating that he could have easily killed her with that slap if he wanted to and that Asura is on a completely different level than Maka. It takes Maka several minutes to be able to even move again, after which she immediately goes for Chain Resonance with Kid and BlackStar. A few pages later, Kid fully ascends to become the next Reaper and becomes directly equal to Asura in power, and Maka, who can see how powerful his soul is, comments that he is insanely powerful compared to her. And then in that same chapter, not only does Asura punch a hole clean through Maka's chest (With Maka stating that she only survived because of the regeneration that Black Blood grants her), but she directly states that she cant harm or even hit Asura herself and needs to use of the Madness of Black Blood to match Asura's wavelength and bypass his physical durability. And when she succeeds this and enters Asura's body, she briefly sees the outside world how Asura sees it, specifically seeing everyone's souls, with Kid and BlackStar being two giant lights with her soul being a small blip in comparison. For Maka to be given scaling to Asura, it would require her to be able to utilize Chain Resonance, and for her to achieve Chain Resonance and be amplified by it, both Ascended Kid and Awakened BlackStar would have to be physically present on the battlefield and actively fighting against the same opponent that Maka is fighting, ie. Ruby.
  • Basically, Maka is a weird anti-shonen protagonist, as she is consistently shown and stated to be vastly weaker than the rest of the primary protagonists.Throughout the story its a major part of Maka's character that she is not strong, that she is overly reliant on Soul as a source of power, and that she feels that she is actively holding Soul back by being a weak Meister. BlackStar while holding back has beaten her with ease on two different occasions, and even before he became the next Reaper a single one of Kid's guns in human form was stated to be more powerful than Maka at her strongest. Maka isnt even part of the three strongest students at DWMA, that spot is held by Kilik Rung.
  • Theres also stuff like the in-verse power levels, specifically the Star Ranking System. In Soul Eater, Death Scythes are ranked on a scale of 1-Star to 3-Star, with 3-Stars being the strongest. Soul spent the majority of the series as a low-ranking 2-Star, only starting to grow in power roughly 3/4ths of the way through the story when he consumed the witch Arachne's soul and attaining the rank of Death Scythe (Specifically because he realized he had to actively work to become more powerful because Death Scythe is basically just a title, not a powerup, something he was outright mocked for believing). And even then him and Maka are still only 2-Star, well below the power of 3-Star weapons like Spirit Albarn, Marie Mjolnir, Excalibur, and Justin Law. They even demonstrate the gap between the power of a 2-Star and 3-Star weapon in the final arc, where Maka was unable to even scratch Crona while she was wielding Soul, but casually cut their attacks apart while she was wielding Spirit, as well as Soul being unable to cut Asura, while Marie drew blood and gave him a minor concussion from hitting Asura in the face after being thrown by Stein, a 3-Star Meister. In fact, the first time Maka met Stein, she used her Soul Perception to view his soul to try to see how strong he was, and he was so incomprehensibly more powerful than her that she immediately had a panic attack.
2. Maka's hax - The second major reason people argue that Maka wins is due to her hax, primarily her ability to manipulate soulsto potentially turn off Ruby's Aura and Semblance. Because of the aformentioned scaling issues for Maka, there are actually issues with this as well.

  • Soul Adagio - The primary hax brought up as a wincon for Maka, Soul Adagio allows Maka to turn off the opponent's soul, nullifying their abilities and putting them in a lethargic state where they can no longer fight. This would be a powerful tool normally, there's just one problem; It explicitly does not work against opponents that are more powerful than Maka. This is blatantly shown in the fight against Giriko, where Maka tries to use the technique and instead of turning Giriko's soul off, the technique backlashes onto Maka and Soul, with Maka saying that it wouldnt work on Giriko because of how much stronger they are than her.
  • Soul Hack - The other major hax that is brought up as a wincon for Maka, Soul Hack allows Soul to project a wavelength that can take control of objects and weapons projected and controlled by an opponent's soul...thats it. People argue that this would allow Maka to take control of Ruby's soul directly somehow, but the power just doesnt do that at all. At best you could argue that it would let Soul manipulate Ruby's Dust ammo in some capacity, but even then she doesnt outright control them herself.
3. Maka's weaknsses/disadvantages - Something that is almost never brought up in this is the fact that Maka has numerous crippling weaknesses, both for herself as a fighter and for her powers.

  • Ruby can very, very easily depower Maka by disarming her with her Semblance. If Maka and Soul's Resonance is disrupted by another soul-based ability, Maka reverts to her normal self in terms of power, where se caps at roughly Building level in power and durability with no offensive abilities. Ruby has used her Semblance to do exactly this to multiple people in her own verse, and with her semblance both being soul-based and breaking matter down on a molecular level would definitely sever Maka and Soul's Resonance.
  • Maka's Black Blood has a specific weakness to an in-universe technique called Soul Menace, where the user channels their soul into their physical strikes to enhance their attacks. This is near identical to Ruby's Aura coating her weapon and empowering her physical attacks, and thus would allow her to bypass the Black Blood in the same way Soul Menace does.
  • Maka's Hunt techniques would be effectively useless against Ruby. Hunts are techniques tailored solely to work on beings like Witches, Demons, Immortals, and Monsters as a form of durability negation through Maka's Anti-Demon Wavelength, with the drawback that they dont do anything against enemies that dont fit those criteria other than acting as larger versions of her normal attacks. Kisin Hunt in particular wouldnt even be useable as it requires Maka to be working alongside Crona to utilize, and it explicitly does not affect beings with pure hearts, like Ruby.

TL;DR:

  • The Country/Continent/Fire Force scaling doesnt apply to Maka normally, she needed amps from non-standard equipment (Lord Death's Death Scythe in place of Soul to fight Crona) and outside help (Chain Resonance from Death-ascended Kid and full-potential BlackStar to fight Asura) to reach that level, and even with that she still needed to use the Black Blood Madness Wavelength to negate Asura's durability because she couldnt hurt him normally.
  • Without that scaling, Maka's best scaling is Town level and Relativistic while Ruby sits at Small City and FTL.
  • Because of this, Maka's soul hax more than likely would not work on Ruby.
  • Maka has several crippling weaknesses that Ruby can exploit just by fighting the way she normally does.
There is honestly a lot more I could go over, but this is just some of the major stuff. With all of this taken into consideration, Ruby should win.
All of this and still loses to Deku.
 
I honestly would've just left powerscaling if I got banned for 2 years idk why y'all cling to this place so much
 
Funnily enough that wasnt me, though I have been doing a lot of debating on there
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How does one even scale to a feat done in a dream? Unless it was a case of Ruby's dream self being equal to her awake self, I don't know what the logic would be to that argument.

Also, ain't the manga dubiously canon or something along those lines? I know there's several pieces of media in RWBY that are considered secondary canon, but I don't know the status of the manga.
 
How does one even scale to a feat done in a dream? Unless it was a case of Ruby's dream self being equal to her awake self, I don't know what the logic would be to that argument.
Technically its possible due to the events of Ice Queendom giving the girls reality warping powers when theyre in their dreams, but it wouldnt apply to her normally, it wouldnt apply to anyone unless theyre like, fighting Freddy Krueger.
Also, ain't the manga dubiously canon or something along those lines? I know there's several pieces of media in RWBY that are considered secondary canon, but I don't know the status of the manga.
Depends on which one youre referring to. The Official Manga is non-canon, the 2015 manga is secondary canon (by RT's own words its 'canon until its contradicted by the show'), and the Anthology is canon, serving as an expansion on the stories that the writers wanted to tell during the Beacon Arc but had to shelve due to time, writing, and budget constraints.
 
How does one even scale to a feat done in a dream?
Well you see, you have the brain power to create such a scenario of making yourself strong and it requires energy to do so for the brain and that energy flows in your body to function, thus by UES (universal energy system) you scale physically to that
 
Well you see, you have the brain power to create such a scenario of making yourself strong and it requires energy to do so for the brain and that energy flows in your body to function, thus by UES (universal energy system) you scale physically to that
Aside from the UES stuff thats actually close, Ice Queendom made it an entire thing that when youre in a dream, you are as strong as you perceive yourself to be, with the only thing holding you back are the limitations imposed by the way that other people see you. Its the whole reason why Negative Weiss and Negative Blake were created, and how Yang pulled off the country level feat, both her and Ruby believed that she was strong enough to accomplish it so she became that strong.
 
I was mostly making shit up with that comment to make it sound logical, idk if that kind of thing would even be considered legit here
It either wouldnt or it would just be an entire 'dream world' key to itself, its technically not even something they can access on their own, the team needed a huntsman with a dream manipulating semblance in order for them to do that.
 
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