- 3,069
- 1,659
There is a huge confusion with the level of forces in the verse, the main reason for which is the Prime key for Orochi, suggesting that after the battle with Yujiro, Orochi weakened many times, which affects the scaling chain of the entire verse. I will quote the arguments of @Twellas and say a special thank you to him
"100% lol, as a matter of fact, this feat would quite literally scale to every single character in the maximum tournament and after lmao.
Baki after seeing Yujiro perform the feat was 100% confident Doppo could defeat Yujiro. Doppo was beating the DOGSHIT out of Yujiro in the fight to the point where Yujiro was getting mad because he couldn't do anything to him. He had to enter Demon Back (which, as we know from Baki, even an imperfect demon back can cover a no-sell level gap). Doppo then goes on to be stated to be inferior to Katsumi (who, BTW, the same Doppo considers him to be "the strongest man" and he thinks he can beat ANYONE) and then pretty much everyone in the Maximum tournament end up scaling in some way or another to Doppo and Katsumi.
Oh also, the mach punch was created by Katsumi in collaboration with Doppo in order to beat Yujiro, Hanayama eats like 4 of those without even getting wobbled.
People try and "fix" this by saying that Doppo got weaker after the Yujiro fight, which is not only never stated or even implied (the only thing that can even remotely be considered to imply this is the fact that Doppo says that his current level is "nothing" if he wants to beat Yujiro, which is a statement given with the knowledge that 1)Yujiro has the demon back and 2)Yujiro gets constantly stronger at an insane rate, so it doesn't even necessarily mean Doppo is any weaker than he was, especially since he himself thinks that his rehabilitation went well and everyone of his students, who spar him daily considers him to "be back") it's outright debunked by things such as Katsumi being shocked at how good his physique is in NGB (Katsumi would obviously know Doppo's physique during the first saga of the series) and, most directly, in the most recent series, where Doppo is stated to be "the same" as he was at the time of his debut in the arena and he "doesn't show the slightest sign of aging" (so yeah, age being a factor in him getting weaker is debunked, not that it was a reasonable logic to begin with given how Shibukawa is older than Doppo and still kicking).
Now, let's ignore Doppo for a second, let's just say he got weaker (he didn't). Then, what about Motobe? Motobe could tank hits from Yujiro without sustaining any serious injury, could manipulate his joints and was considered worthy of seeing Yujiro's demon back. Motobe would then go on to be completely humiliated in the MT. Did motobe also get weaker?
The only real "debunk" to this is "well, Doppo and Motobe struggle with X and Y character, but then Yujiro comes up and no-diffs them, this must mean they got weaker", which is a non argument, because the very first thing (and I'm not kidding, this is the first scene where Yujiro gets mentioned) we are told about Yujiro in the ENTIRE SERIES is that he grows stronger (and more skilled) at an INSANE rate, to the point where Strydum is like "during the few minutes we've spent talking, Yujiro just got stronger". So Yujiro no-diffing characters that scale to people who previously beat him is not a debunk to the fact that said people scale to him, it's just proof of Yujiro getting stronger at a faster rate than anyone else since their first fight.
Yujiro is a constantly moving goal-post: in NGB Kaku Kaioh was 100% down to fighting a demon back Yujiro, drew blood from him, and only resorted to playing dead once he was 100% sure he'd die, meanwhile, at the start of the Pickle arc he straight up says he wouldn't even TRY to fight a casual Pickle, the same Pickle who would go on to be hurt severely by Katsumi. In the same vein, Retsu in SoO is stated to be "the best in the 4000 year history of Chinese martial arts", which is also supported by the fact that he mastered Shaori in only a few days, while it took Kaku several decades to do so.
This is portrayed as late as the end of Baki Dou 2, where a post-father-son-fight Baki (who btw, upped his training to the point where he is getting VISIBLY bigger, and I don't think i need to tell you how good baki did against Yujiro during that fight) states that he couldn't possibly beat Sukune in a head on fight to the point where his body instinctively used a technique to negate his durability, Yujiro one-shots him casually"
