While I have a little bit of time now, I will shorten what I will counter later on right now by getting Reio's counters out of the way.
Counters for Reio’s Argument:
Points To Ignore:
Yhwach not destroying the realms with power
This point was not brought up by me, or brought up in the original post. Yhwach not using Reiatsu was not the issue that the original post layed out in the first place. Please re-read the arguments again.
World of the living and soul society not being universal
This point was also not brought up in the original post, or me, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the downgrade in the first place. My later counter arguments in fact even fully acknowledged and agreed with the Bleach worlds being universes. This line of argumentation is pointless here.
Points I Disagree With:
Almighty Being Needed to Create / Manipulate The Realms
Okay, let's get something out the way here first. Why are you using
these scans for the point about Ginjo being a Soul King candidate? These scans are not even from the CFYOW novel, they come from a game, which im fairly sure is Bleach Brave Souls. A
non-canon game. That already invalidates their place here, they don't have any standing in this argument at all.
Adding in another smaller nitpick to this too, the novel statements from CFYOW are using unofficial translations. The original post already made a point here about waiting for the official translations for Volume 3 to be released before using it in any arguments, which won't be available until the incoming months. This speaks to the relevance of these scans and their context.
But more importantly, the biggest issue with this part of the argument. What does Ichigo, Ginjo and Hikone being capable of becoming the Soul King have anything to do with what the Almighty’s feat? Like, in any way? These are 2 entirely separate feats and instances being dis-jointed together. Those 3 being Soul King candidates have to do with them becoming linchpins, aka
sustaining the worlds. They would be candidates to replace the weakened version of Reio as the Soul King to keep the worlds in check. It has nothing to do with the Almighty or it’s feat of splitting the original universe as the current translations dictate and go by.
And just to add in a minor point, this whole idea about Ginjo being a potential Soul King replacement just makes things even more messy than they do solid. It’s more of an Anti-feat than it is anything beneficial. Not only does Ginjo not make any drastically big improvements in power after being killed by Ichigo at the end of the Fullbring arc, but this idea of him being able to become a Soul King would mean characters like Grimmjow and Candace are Soul King level because they fight each other by the time of CFYOW and scale to each other, as stated so on their pages right now. This is even more of an anti-feat for you guys, unless Grimmjow and Candace are Weakened Soul King level now.
As for the Yhwach point, this doesnt disprove anything either. This easily includes the viable possibility that Yhwach’s own Almighty was not as powerful as The Soul King’s Almighty, and had his Almighty upgraded when devouring Reio and acquiring all of his abilities, which would include Reio’s Almighty.
TL;DR- This part of the argument is, no offense, entirely irrelevant to the main argument of the downgrade and doesn't change anything I said. Part of this evidence uses scans from a non-canon game that has no part in the canonicity here. The evidence that IS permitted is being taken out of context, Ichigo and the others being Soul King candidates speaks to the role of the Weakened Soul King to be Lynchpins in sustaining the world, and nothing more. The Almighty’s feat has nothing to do with this and is its own separate case.
The Destruction of The Realms Not Being Immediate (Once Again)
So not only does the opposition not seem to quite fully understand how Low 2-C and our tiering system works, but now it's time for false equivalencies to be brought up too. Before I repeat the point about how I explained and countered this part of the argument time and time again, I will address the false equivalencies and false argument that is other verses being brought in here to try and circumvent this point.
First, the case of Jiren and the rest of DBS while we’re at it. This false equivalence is a bad comparison, and not just because of the fact that DBS has actual context in support of their feats aligning well with our tiering systems standards. DBS’s Low 2-C status
doesn't even come from Low 2-C destruction in the first place. It comes from characters, like Jiren, scaling above Infinite Zamasu, a character who literally becomes a living breathing space-time continuum. Which as a result, becomes the core aspect of DBS’s Low 2-C ratings from that point on to where it is now. It’s case is completely different to what's happening here with Bleach’s ratings.
And now, let me try to be as perfect and vividly clear about this continuously repeated argumentation of mentioning other verses in an effort to circumvent the counter argument as I possibly can. Mentioning other verses
does not help you here, at all, and this argument needs to stop being brought up thinking it does. Putting other verses on the chopping block does nothing to help you,
because those verses will just get downgraded too. Period. And that's assuming the context and events of their feats are exactly the same as what's being argued for Bleach here. Fictional verses get looked at, and revised, everyday on this site. Day in and day out. There is no “perfect” verse that escapes the boundaries and rules given by our site’s standards. Any verse here that does not follow the qualifications, and requirements, of what our tiering system details out to be the case will get the exact same treatment as what we are doing here to Bleach. Equally and unconditionally. Latching onto another verse to use in an attempt to call out a double standard, when that very verse you mention can have different context or also just very easily be wrong too, almost never does anything here.
TL;DR- I don’t have anything new really to add to this compared to what I’ve already said here more than once. The destruction of these worlds, in no way, shape or form, is immediate destruction that accurately portrays Low 2-C destruction in a single instance like our standards require. Nothing dimensionally was getting destroyed, barely any destruction happened, it was happening over an extensive timeframe, and all of the affected worlds were not even affected the same way as each other. That is as far from Low 2-C as you can get under these circumstances. Shaking / affecting the realms means absolutely nothing more than unquantifiable 4-D levels of power being at work here, which does not grant any upgrades under these circumstances. So no, “effecting a universe” does not mean you scale to it, at all. You need much more than that to be granted an upgrade of this caliber.
This is not bias, this is listing, detailing and explaining more than once about how our tiering system works, which the opposition still does not seem to fully understand enough to properly be arguing about it here. And if it still isn't clear after this response is made, then perhaps the people arguing against this should not be defending a tier that they don't know the requirements for.
Yhwach Not Affecting The Cosmology Like The Soul King
The original post, and later counter arguments, already dealt with this at very big length. We know what Yhwach was desiring to do. We know he wanted to reverse what the Soul King did to the cosmology. We know what he planned to do. And thats irrelevant. Why? Because at the end of the day, again, this is not a perfect world where statements by themselves are enough to be given what's asked for here. Without any supporting feats, supportive scaling, or even supporting context, statements of what a character wants and what a character desires isn’t a solid enough argument to be given a drastic upgrade like this one. Refer to my entire response about this:
This is the last thing that I will say here on this point about “planning” arguments coming from characters.
Character Intentions vs Burden of Proof
I'll be honest here. Our standards for requiring concrete evidence, which are not perfect by any sense of the word and have already been set on a bar with new lows, has been lowered even further to levels where the intention of the character and statements by themselves are somehow solid enough evidences to accept upgrades so drastically large like this one. And that's a problem.
There was a time where our standards were held to a much, much higher level of scrutiny than this and required much more evidence and supportive backing in order to make a notable change in profiles, whether that be a large change in hax abilities or bumping characters to being several tiers above what they were previously. Now we go with accepting things that go anywhere from characters lacking tier 7 feats, having genuine anti-feats and a large lack in supporting feats to being bumped to Multiversal level on the basis of what could very easily be considered flowery language or statements lacking in the credibility department. This, however, was at least manageable where arguments have some kind of a basis behind them, right or wrong. But now, we’re dealing with "intention arguments" where people are accepting intentions from what a character has for an objective as core evidence.
If far more concrete evidence than this have led to characters getting only a “Possibly” or “Likely” rating for upgrades on this site, it should make an upgrade like this one here, under this premise, very questionable. It’s almost as if people have forgotten the concept of what extraordinary evidence actually means, because this most certainly doesn’t fall under that definition. Climbing tiers means you need to give more evidence the higher you go, and a character's intentions for what they want to do don’t mean they are guaranteed to be able to do that. If this evidence is used purely as a supporting argument? Then sure, that is solid to back main evidence up. But this evidence being used as the main core reason to keep an upgrade in its entirety? Without any supporting feats, viable scaling, or factors that can actually be considered concrete evidence? That just doesn’t seem to be concrete enough to give a proper rating and it needs to make us more self-aware of what should and what shouldnt be good enough to give upgrades here.
Askin’s “Infinite Reishi” Statement
There’s quite a lot wrong on this statement, and this doesn’t even factor the argument I gave earlier about why we don't accept “infinite XYZ” without it being very strongly supported.
First off,
absolutely nowhere in this statement does Askin imply that there’s infinite Reishi. He said the things Quincy
CAN DO with Reishi is infinite. This has nothing to do with the Reishi itself being infinite in amount.
Second, “infinite energy” being needed for this is also very very wrong. It’s just Askin speaking about the possibilities Quincies can do with Reishi since Quincy can manipulate it at will. Just like how someone has a lot of possibilities to choose from on something to do. They aren’t manipulating, or effecting, infinite amounts of Reishi or infinite amounts of anything. Thus, infinite energy being “required” is just entirely pulled out of nowhere here.
And finally, the “infinite” aspect in this entire statement. You can, once again, refer to my very in-depth comment on infinite XYZ from the Infinite Souls counter argument earlier:
The Infinite Souls Statement
I see we’re starting with this. Anyway, I'm opposed to this statement of infinite souls (which, as a small reminder,
has not been accepted in a CRT of its own yet) due to the
large number of inconsistencies surrounding it.
1st Issue: Lack of Consistency
For starter’s...the consistency of the statement itself. This is
a single statement that never appears again in any later arc, which doesn’t make it as consistent as claimed to be. That makes the legitimacy of the statement questionable.
2nd Issue: Threat From The Quincies
Next obvious issue is the entire threat the Bleach Cosmology faces from the Quincies. Infinite souls existing in the verse would make it
completely impossible for the Quincies to destroy the balance of souls across the worlds in the first place, as the balance would be impossible to break to begin with. The balance of souls would naturally restore itself and prevent itself from going out of whack.
3rd Issue: Shinigami Being Balancers
Going right along with the previous point is the concept of Shinigami’s being considered balancers in contrast to Quincies. They have
to monitor the number of souls that are present within the Soul Society and The World of the Living at all times, and must actively take action to balance them by sending souls between the 2 worlds. Sending dead souls to live in the Soul Society, and then sending them back to the living world as living beings. The sole fact that Shinigami monitor the souls across the worlds alone speaks to the soul cycle being finite in amount as you cant track the balance of something being infinite. On top of that, them actively making sure that an equal number of souls exist between the worlds at all times further says that infinite souls isn't the case.
4th Issue: Cant Fear Your Own World
The CFYOW novel also debunks the idea of infinite souls since if there were an infinite number of souls, they wouldn't all be eaten and formed into one single Hollow. It would take an infinite amount of time to eat them all, as well as an infinite amount of time to be formed.
5th Issue: Hyperbole & Poetic Language
The biggest problem out of them all. On top of the aforementioned issues, this one is a whole can of worms itself from the very fact that the entire infinite souls statement itself seems similar to statements such as “I have infinite power?” or “I have countless means at my disposal!”, etc.
The problem with these statements is that they tend to be hyperbolic and not literal. Especially when its very existence brings conflictions and major inconsistencies that were mentioned above, problems that you can only solve by going through a number of different mental gymnastics to create possible solutions out of nowhere in order to defend this ONE statement that should be taken no more than a grain of salt at best. What should be gleaned from these statements is the fact that the individual saying them is suggesting that they have an over abundance of resources or power at their disposal and not that they literally have an infinite number of XYZ. This is
EXTREMELY common in fiction, so much that its not funny, and I have several examples of similar moments to name here that aren’t accepted on this site like it's being asked here for Bleach.
1st Example: One Piece
One Piece has multiple of these moments to choose from as an example of why we dont take these statements seriously without some
EXTREME backing.
Kizaru, to start us off, has a databook statement saying he can shoot infinite numbers of light bullets, from the databook we currently use to give One Piece their light speed ratings:
Blackbeard proclaims to be able to create infinite gravity,
AND compress people with infinite power:
Charlotte Cracker creating infinite biscuit soldiers:
Impel Dawn’s hell being infinite in size too:
None of these examples are accepted here for One Piece.
2nd Example: Fairy Tail
Fairy Tail has an example as well. Ultear outright states she creates infinite possible futures, futures that are parallel universes, and can manipulate them at will to fire them at opponents:
But 2-A Fairy Tail isn’t on the table as you can see.
3rd Example: Naruto
Naruto offers examples to give here as well, 2 of them.
Might Guy’s databook entry on Asakujaku being one, stating to punch out opponents with an infinite number of fists:
Another Naruto example is the Juubi / Ten Tails being claimed to have near infinite chakra by Obito:
Both examples are obviously not viable here. Guy doesn't have infinite speed, or infinite hands, and near infinite chakra quite clearly refers to large reserves of chakra for the ten tails.
4th Example: Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball gives an example to add into this false trend as well. Androids 17 and 18 by the time of the Android/Cell Saga are confirmed by Trunks to possess an infinite supply of energy:
https://cdn.***************.com/file/mangap/1063/20154000/3.jpg
Neither of them at this point are considered anything higher than High 4-C, and it took new feats and scaling and a
bunch of discussions to finally get 17 into the 3-A and Low 2-C range by the time of Super. Infinite energy supply just refers to their unlimited reverses of stamina.
5th Example: Soul Eater
Soul Eater is another example to turn to.
Mifune has a technique that's called
Infinite One Sword Style. What does the attack do? Releases only a large abundance of swords for Mifune to use instead of literally releasing infinite swords. On top of that, Mifune is only considered
8-A on here.
6th Example: Saint Seiya
Saint Seiya could also be brought up here. Sigurd in Saint Seiya Episode G Assassin has an attack where he fires "an infinite number of energy beams at the opponent", but it's obviously not taken literally. It’s just a neverending beam spam.
7th Example: Kirby
Kirby is another example to be referenced too, and I name this one in particular because of how much of a controversial matter its been here. One of Kirby’s enemies,
Magolor, has had
numerous threads made on this site in attempts to upgrade him, Kirby, and the verse to High 3-A using statements of “infinite power” that came up several times for him across different sources. We even
acknowledge this currently on his page right now:
Multi-Solar System level (Possessed by the power of the Master Crown and is no more than a manifestation of the crown, which was portrayed above other ancient artifacts and repeatedly claimed to have "infinite power" whereas the Lor Starcutter wasn't, indicating an interpretably vast superiority over it.
And
not once in the history of this wikia have we ever accepted it for Magolor, despite how much the infinite power statement has been thrown around so many times. Despite
HOW BLATANT this claim is, it still means nothing here. Which is why he’s not rated as anything higher than 4-A.
I could continue to name cases of this all day, but we’d be here forever. All of this shows the point that infinite anything is taken as nothing more than a grain of salt here as it's almost never accepted because of how vague and poetic the statements are, so we give them incredible amounts of skepticism and require them to have large quantities of evidence to have any chance in getting accepted. And Bleach’s infinite soul statement gets the exact same treatment, especially due to the fact that “infinite” in this context can also very easily be referring to the fact that souls in Bleach are
endlessly renewable. They are sent back and forth between the 2 worlds in a reincarnation cycle that's endless, which in that sense, is “infinite” because it's an eternal cycle. But that doesn’t mean that the souls here are literally infinite in numbers. The only time souls being renewable is an exception is when Quincies completely erradicate hollows and remove them from the cycle permanently, which was why they were a threat to the soul cycle.
TL;DR- This statement creates far more inconsistencies than it does actual consistency. It’s a one time only statement, It goes against the nature, laws and makeup of the verse, using material that this site rejects in next to every case, with countless other verses, without having a huge abundance of evidence supporting it, along with the very possible chance that it's hyperbole and using poetic language to refer to the soul cycle. Once again, this is another example of having to use many levels of mental gymnastics and going through many layers of speculation in order to give this statement any viable backing to be accepted here without simply going with what takes FAR LESS amounts of leaps in logic to make. And that is the statement is just wrong and should be outright rejected.
It’s quite obviously hyperbole, since again, this is just referring to the number of ways a Quincy can use Reishi and manipulate it. Its as simple as that.
Anti feat of captains attacking Yhwach's spirit energy
This point was, once again, already addressed by my counter arguments earlier in the thread.
Yhwach holding back (which is unsupported headcanon anyway, he has 0 reason to be holding back against the people he considers his mortal enemies) means absolutely nothing here, because “holding back” doesnt stop the fact that the Reiatsu he unleashes on them is still Low 2-C. I made an entire explanation on this before already in my counters, read it again:
Offensive Reiryoku & Reiatsu & Yhwach / Reio Reiatsu Remnants
Okay, let’s get something clear here first so that everyone reading through this will be able to understand.
The point about “a casual use of it will never be greater than a focused attack” literally and completely doesn’t matter at this point when dealing with Tiers 3 and above. Or more specifically, 3-A, Low 2-C, and tiers above them. Why? Because now, we are dealing with tiers that involve infinite energy where things cannot be quantifiably divided like they could in tiers like 6-A or 5-B. Low 2-C power will always continually be Low 2-C, no matter how much it is divided into smaller amounts. Dividing it in half? It’s Low 2-C. Divided by hundreds? It’s Low 2-C. Divided by billions of times? Sextillion amount of times? Power used at 0.0000000000000001%? It is still Low 2-C, period. The only differing factor here is that these lower amounts of Low 2-C power are unquantifiably lower the more it is divided up. But it’s not going to be so much weaker upon division that it drops out of the tier. This is the basics to how Low 2-C works and why downscaling from Low 2-C is very much a thing on this site to cement characters scaling to the tier, even if just lower to unknown extents.
So in the case of Bleach here, where your side is still adamant on keeping the Weakened Soul King’s sustenance feat Low 2-C, this is the same thing. The Reiatsu would still be Low 2-C levels of power, no matter how much unquantifiably lower the divided pieces of Reiatsu would become. Reio’s gremlin monsters and the remnant of Yhwach’s Reiatsu would still be using Low 2-C power under this premise, they would just simply be much weaker than the total sum of Low 2-C power that Yhwach and Weakened Reio would have at once. So in order to even be in the presence of these Reiatsu pieces without so much as getting vaporized, much less be able to combat and destroy them, you would need to be Low 2-C still in order to do that. It’s as simple as that.
So this, again, returns to my earlier argument. Either characters as weak as Kazui to as strong as Byakuya become Low 2-C for being able to combat and destroy Low 2-C Reiatsu, or the Reiatsu being Low 2-C offensively is just much too inconsistent to be used at those levels. The choice here is yours.
And keep in mind, this is under the assumption that the Reiatsu would be Low 2-C in the first place, which the many points given here explains why it shouldn't.
Low 2-C power cannot be quantifiably divided like lower tiers can. At all. No matter how much the power is divided, it is still Low 2-C in every single way, just unquantifiably lower. Meaning, Yhwach was still unleashing Low 2-C reiatsu against them, making this inconsistent.
And no? They were handling the Reio gremlins incredibly easily, their strength was fodder compared to the Captains and Assistant captains. Hisagi, Ikkaku, and Yumcihka attacked them and were dwindling down the groups of them without any difficulty. Omeada was crushing through them easily too. Sui-Fung didnt receive so much as a scratch against them when activating Bankai. And Byakuya blasted away an entire wave of these creatures incredibly easily with Senbon-Zakura. The strength of the creatures were 0 threats to them, Aizen was needed to get rid of them all at once because of the vast difference in numbers against them. While stronger, Aizen being used doesnt negate the fact that these guys can go up against what your side adamantly claims is Low 2-C reiatsu and be just fine.
TL;DR- This point is irrelevant, it was dealt with at length already and nothing new was brought here to change this.