- 32,315
- 20,163
This is going to be controversial but I feel it must be said...
In fact I am going to go on a limb here and imply that Psykos herself can't replicate her initial beam size under most circumstances and that Tatsumaki also doesn't fully scale to it.
It is made obviously clear that Psykos / Orochi's power is related to the biomass they consume from the environment around them, and as they expand and grow in power so too does their size.
When Orochi first shows up after being hit by Saitama, he is in a sorry state where he needs to expand and eat random monsters through the floors to grow in power.
Psykos even references the fact that Orochi's immense form is what is going to amplify her psychic power, while Orochi himself thanks Psykos for gathering so many monsters as sacrifices. The consumption of flesh and blood through Orochi's meat-roots is what grants him both physical power / size but also increases his energy reserve, which translates to Psykos' psychic power also drastically increasing.
As if this is not clear enough, when Psykos first fuses with Orochi this is her relative size:
... But later, after Psykos is amplified by God, her form drastically increases in size, which is noted by Tatsumaki. She goes from being a few dozen feet in height to being around a kilometer in height.
Again, Tatsumaki realizes that Psykos has gotten even bigger and concludes that she is drawing energy from the meat roots, which she immediately severs the ones closest to her body.
Let me repeat to make this clearer:
1) Tatsumaki marvels that Psykorochi has grown lmuch larger in size than before. She scans the environment for an explanation and sees that Psykos is drawing energy from her meat roots. As these panels follow each other, this indicates that Psykorochi is growing in size because she is absorbing energy through these roots;
2) Tatsumaki then says that by getting rid of these roots, Psykorochi will lose power. I don't really think I need to run you through this again, but just to make it exceedingly obvious: Psykorochi growing or decreasing in size is intrinsically connected to the amount of power she currently has. The stronger she is the bigger she becomes.
When Psykos is finally defeated and reduced to her current state, she states that she needs to absorb blood from normal people to recover. This is worse than how Orochi was after Saitama defeated him, cause at least then he could eat the blood and flesh from monsters, and even in that mishapen form his energy beams were more powerful than Base Psykos.
Then let's look at how Tatsumaki fairs against Psykos in her peak, and how she handles her after that to see the relative scaling?
After Psykos fires her continent-cutting energy beam, Tatsumaki is shocked and wonders how she could have gotten so strong from just eating monsters, and Genos comments that her energy levels were unreadable.
1) Tatsumaki fires entirely on the defensive, dodging Psykos beams:
She lifts the giant rocks from the sea, each of them easily over a kilometer in diamater, very impressive compare to 99% of the the series, but note that the effort makes her bleed from the brow, which in One Punch Man is an indication that an Esper is overexerting themselves:
When this isn't enough, we can see that Tatsumaki is stunned. And she has to resort to hiding her presence to sneak past Psykos:
After that, she famously destroys Psykos from the inside own, twisting her like a wet rag and destroying much of her meat roots in the process:
But Psykos regenerates, attacking the distracted Tatsumaki and charging an energy beam at her:
.
By now it should be exceedingly obvious that this form of Psykos doesn't scale to the full-power Psykorochi from before. Just look at her size, for goodness sake. Tatsumaki here is relative to her forks and Psykos herself doesn't appear to be over a few dozen meters tall. She is also mishapen and distorted. Compare to how big she was immediately before being torn from the inside out:
She was so big that Tatsumaki could comfortably fit between her lips. The decrease in size (and therefore the decrease in power) was astronomic, Psykos is literally hundreds of times smaller now than she was before, and she also got deprived access to a large portion of her immediate power source by having her meat roots twisted and squeezed out.
Look at how small her beam is, a beam which she charged with the intent to kill Tatsumaki, compared to her initial blast which was seemingly casual and just to see what she could do:
Psykos initial beam was hundreds of miles wide and it kept expanding in width as it went ahead to encompass a landmass the size of Australia. This charged beam is only a few meters in diameter, only slightly bigger than Tatsumaki herself.
Is it any wonder than when Genos diverts it to space, and the combined explosions of both their beams is nowhere near comparable to the damage which Psykos' initial attack caused?
Genos even described his Thunder Drill Cannon which he fires against a second beam from Psykos, and still only managing to divert it before being overpowered, as a last resort weapon, capable of destroying a Giant Meteor in a single hit.
This is the same Genos who two chapters ago described Psykos' power as unreadable and incomprehensible, and now he is shooting her with a power that he very much comprehends and whose scale he is directly aware of, and it is nowhere near comparable. You never stopped to wonder why that is?
It's obvious, really. Psykos is WEAKER. This isn't a case of Attack Potency vs Destructive Capacity. This isn't a "Area of Effect Fallacy", this is a case where the size of something directly correlates to its power, as pointed out by the text.
Psykos is smaller than she was before. She has less access to her meat roots. Her form is mishapen. Her beams are smaller. A character who couldn't comprehend the energy of her initial attack is now countering attacks with energy-levels he can read and understand and which are far smaller. Isn't it obvious that Psykos isn't as strong as she was before?
Beyond all that... like, I'm sorry, but isn't it just obvious that Psykos was stronger at first? Of course a larger creature is more powerful. It's bigger. It has more cells, more mass. And even with all else being equal, it has a greater energy requirements, and a greater capacity to produce said energy. This is specifically why when Psykos regenerates, she regenerates in a smaller form, because she no longer has the energy supply to sustain her larger self.
This is before looking at the overall context of the fight, which, I mean-
Tatsumaki using all of her power and pushing herself past her limits involves a feat whose scale isn't even 1% of 1% of Psykos' feat.
This is Tatsumaki's full power, when she goes all-out 100% no holds barrel on Psykos, and it almost completely exhausts her that she nearly falls unconscious and takes a nap for a few chapters.
Sure, Tatsumaki stopped holding back until the end point of the fight, because the conditions prevented her from going all out at any point,and she trivialised Psykorochi when she could finally focus 100% of her powers at her. But it's not like the percentage of her power up until that point was trivial, as evidenced by her bleeding from the brow upon lifting the giant rocks and throwing them at Psykorochi, and then bleeding even more when they fought in the storm.
And I really don't think that there is enough evidence to say that PsykOrochi was as strong as she was at the start of the fight. Rather, I think there is a good bit of evidence that would suggest otherwise.
Ideally we should calculate Tatsumaki's other feats and try to scale her from her own potency, and Psykorochi should have two power ratings. One for when she is at full power and could slice the continent and another after Tatsumaki twisted her from inside out and she was made weaker.
I already predict that some people will make the same kinds of excuses: That authors aren't versus debaters, that they don't understand science, that they don't care for collateral, that the scale of the twisting is secondary to twisting Psykorochi herself (Whislt ignoring the main problem being that Psykorochi at that point wasn't comparable to her earlier state.
But the thing is... Authors do think about this kind of stuff. They aren't Versus Debaters, sure, they don't care about calculating kinetic energy or pixel scaling. They don't care about quantifying things in specific levels of joules and biggatons. They won't overanalyze every detail... But scale, basic scale on this level? This is something any person in the world understands. Any author understands that:
1. Throwing kilometer-sized rocks.
2. Blowing up a giant meteor.
3. Twisting a single city.
4. Putting up a giant barrier over a single city.
None of these things even remotely come close to the scale of cutting an entire continent off the planet. And if there is one Mangaka that understands this, it's Murata.
Murata is more invested in Powerscaling and fight scale than probably any other Mangaka I ever seen besides maybe the people who made Toriko. Murata loves to draw huge detailed cityscapes to show the scale of destruction whenever a giant or powerful monster. He dedicates multiple double-page spreads to single attacks and he loves to show the side effects of said attacks, with shockwaves and collapsing buildings and effects to the environment. When Rover fights Garou, half the chapter is dedicated to Rover blasting Garou through several floors and his attacks creating earthquakes.
Saitama punches Rover, half a chapter is dedicated to the giant earthquake and shockwaves produced by his attacks. When a fight's scale is too big, such as Phoenix Man vs Child Emperor, he will redraw the fight to remove said scale (Retconning the Millennium Emperor Nova). When a fight's scale is too small (Saitama vs Boros), he will redraw the fight to increase the scale (The Moon Kick and subsequent Moon Jump were later additions not in the original chapter). When a fight is too balanced when it is supposed to be one-sided, he will redraw the fight to make it a stomp (Atomic Samurai vs Black Sperm, and the removal of the Focused Atomic Slash).
Do you think Murata isn't aware that Tatsumaki's attacks are on a lesser scale than Psykos' initial beam, and you don't think the constant hammering of the fact that Psykos and Orochi's size is relative to their power, and that the more biomass they consume the bigger and more powerful they become, followed by Tatsumaki destroying their source of biomass after tearing Psykos from inside out and the ensuing Psykos being much smaller... Isn't at all related?
I think it is. Psykos was weakened after being twisted for the first time and Tatsumaki doesn't fully scale to Psykos' blast.
In fact I am going to go on a limb here and imply that Psykos herself can't replicate her initial beam size under most circumstances and that Tatsumaki also doesn't fully scale to it.
It is made obviously clear that Psykos / Orochi's power is related to the biomass they consume from the environment around them, and as they expand and grow in power so too does their size.
When Orochi first shows up after being hit by Saitama, he is in a sorry state where he needs to expand and eat random monsters through the floors to grow in power.
Psykos even references the fact that Orochi's immense form is what is going to amplify her psychic power, while Orochi himself thanks Psykos for gathering so many monsters as sacrifices. The consumption of flesh and blood through Orochi's meat-roots is what grants him both physical power / size but also increases his energy reserve, which translates to Psykos' psychic power also drastically increasing.
As if this is not clear enough, when Psykos first fuses with Orochi this is her relative size:
... But later, after Psykos is amplified by God, her form drastically increases in size, which is noted by Tatsumaki. She goes from being a few dozen feet in height to being around a kilometer in height.
Again, Tatsumaki realizes that Psykos has gotten even bigger and concludes that she is drawing energy from the meat roots, which she immediately severs the ones closest to her body.
Let me repeat to make this clearer:
1) Tatsumaki marvels that Psykorochi has grown lmuch larger in size than before. She scans the environment for an explanation and sees that Psykos is drawing energy from her meat roots. As these panels follow each other, this indicates that Psykorochi is growing in size because she is absorbing energy through these roots;
2) Tatsumaki then says that by getting rid of these roots, Psykorochi will lose power. I don't really think I need to run you through this again, but just to make it exceedingly obvious: Psykorochi growing or decreasing in size is intrinsically connected to the amount of power she currently has. The stronger she is the bigger she becomes.
When Psykos is finally defeated and reduced to her current state, she states that she needs to absorb blood from normal people to recover. This is worse than how Orochi was after Saitama defeated him, cause at least then he could eat the blood and flesh from monsters, and even in that mishapen form his energy beams were more powerful than Base Psykos.
Then let's look at how Tatsumaki fairs against Psykos in her peak, and how she handles her after that to see the relative scaling?
After Psykos fires her continent-cutting energy beam, Tatsumaki is shocked and wonders how she could have gotten so strong from just eating monsters, and Genos comments that her energy levels were unreadable.
1) Tatsumaki fires entirely on the defensive, dodging Psykos beams:
She lifts the giant rocks from the sea, each of them easily over a kilometer in diamater, very impressive compare to 99% of the the series, but note that the effort makes her bleed from the brow, which in One Punch Man is an indication that an Esper is overexerting themselves:
When this isn't enough, we can see that Tatsumaki is stunned. And she has to resort to hiding her presence to sneak past Psykos:
After that, she famously destroys Psykos from the inside own, twisting her like a wet rag and destroying much of her meat roots in the process:
But Psykos regenerates, attacking the distracted Tatsumaki and charging an energy beam at her:
By now it should be exceedingly obvious that this form of Psykos doesn't scale to the full-power Psykorochi from before. Just look at her size, for goodness sake. Tatsumaki here is relative to her forks and Psykos herself doesn't appear to be over a few dozen meters tall. She is also mishapen and distorted. Compare to how big she was immediately before being torn from the inside out:
She was so big that Tatsumaki could comfortably fit between her lips. The decrease in size (and therefore the decrease in power) was astronomic, Psykos is literally hundreds of times smaller now than she was before, and she also got deprived access to a large portion of her immediate power source by having her meat roots twisted and squeezed out.
Look at how small her beam is, a beam which she charged with the intent to kill Tatsumaki, compared to her initial blast which was seemingly casual and just to see what she could do:
Psykos initial beam was hundreds of miles wide and it kept expanding in width as it went ahead to encompass a landmass the size of Australia. This charged beam is only a few meters in diameter, only slightly bigger than Tatsumaki herself.
Is it any wonder than when Genos diverts it to space, and the combined explosions of both their beams is nowhere near comparable to the damage which Psykos' initial attack caused?
Genos even described his Thunder Drill Cannon which he fires against a second beam from Psykos, and still only managing to divert it before being overpowered, as a last resort weapon, capable of destroying a Giant Meteor in a single hit.
This is the same Genos who two chapters ago described Psykos' power as unreadable and incomprehensible, and now he is shooting her with a power that he very much comprehends and whose scale he is directly aware of, and it is nowhere near comparable. You never stopped to wonder why that is?
It's obvious, really. Psykos is WEAKER. This isn't a case of Attack Potency vs Destructive Capacity. This isn't a "Area of Effect Fallacy", this is a case where the size of something directly correlates to its power, as pointed out by the text.
Psykos is smaller than she was before. She has less access to her meat roots. Her form is mishapen. Her beams are smaller. A character who couldn't comprehend the energy of her initial attack is now countering attacks with energy-levels he can read and understand and which are far smaller. Isn't it obvious that Psykos isn't as strong as she was before?
Beyond all that... like, I'm sorry, but isn't it just obvious that Psykos was stronger at first? Of course a larger creature is more powerful. It's bigger. It has more cells, more mass. And even with all else being equal, it has a greater energy requirements, and a greater capacity to produce said energy. This is specifically why when Psykos regenerates, she regenerates in a smaller form, because she no longer has the energy supply to sustain her larger self.
This is before looking at the overall context of the fight, which, I mean-
Tatsumaki using all of her power and pushing herself past her limits involves a feat whose scale isn't even 1% of 1% of Psykos' feat.
This is Tatsumaki's full power, when she goes all-out 100% no holds barrel on Psykos, and it almost completely exhausts her that she nearly falls unconscious and takes a nap for a few chapters.
Sure, Tatsumaki stopped holding back until the end point of the fight, because the conditions prevented her from going all out at any point,and she trivialised Psykorochi when she could finally focus 100% of her powers at her. But it's not like the percentage of her power up until that point was trivial, as evidenced by her bleeding from the brow upon lifting the giant rocks and throwing them at Psykorochi, and then bleeding even more when they fought in the storm.
And I really don't think that there is enough evidence to say that PsykOrochi was as strong as she was at the start of the fight. Rather, I think there is a good bit of evidence that would suggest otherwise.
Ideally we should calculate Tatsumaki's other feats and try to scale her from her own potency, and Psykorochi should have two power ratings. One for when she is at full power and could slice the continent and another after Tatsumaki twisted her from inside out and she was made weaker.
I already predict that some people will make the same kinds of excuses: That authors aren't versus debaters, that they don't understand science, that they don't care for collateral, that the scale of the twisting is secondary to twisting Psykorochi herself (Whislt ignoring the main problem being that Psykorochi at that point wasn't comparable to her earlier state.
But the thing is... Authors do think about this kind of stuff. They aren't Versus Debaters, sure, they don't care about calculating kinetic energy or pixel scaling. They don't care about quantifying things in specific levels of joules and biggatons. They won't overanalyze every detail... But scale, basic scale on this level? This is something any person in the world understands. Any author understands that:
1. Throwing kilometer-sized rocks.
2. Blowing up a giant meteor.
3. Twisting a single city.
4. Putting up a giant barrier over a single city.
None of these things even remotely come close to the scale of cutting an entire continent off the planet. And if there is one Mangaka that understands this, it's Murata.
Murata is more invested in Powerscaling and fight scale than probably any other Mangaka I ever seen besides maybe the people who made Toriko. Murata loves to draw huge detailed cityscapes to show the scale of destruction whenever a giant or powerful monster. He dedicates multiple double-page spreads to single attacks and he loves to show the side effects of said attacks, with shockwaves and collapsing buildings and effects to the environment. When Rover fights Garou, half the chapter is dedicated to Rover blasting Garou through several floors and his attacks creating earthquakes.
Saitama punches Rover, half a chapter is dedicated to the giant earthquake and shockwaves produced by his attacks. When a fight's scale is too big, such as Phoenix Man vs Child Emperor, he will redraw the fight to remove said scale (Retconning the Millennium Emperor Nova). When a fight's scale is too small (Saitama vs Boros), he will redraw the fight to increase the scale (The Moon Kick and subsequent Moon Jump were later additions not in the original chapter). When a fight is too balanced when it is supposed to be one-sided, he will redraw the fight to make it a stomp (Atomic Samurai vs Black Sperm, and the removal of the Focused Atomic Slash).
Do you think Murata isn't aware that Tatsumaki's attacks are on a lesser scale than Psykos' initial beam, and you don't think the constant hammering of the fact that Psykos and Orochi's size is relative to their power, and that the more biomass they consume the bigger and more powerful they become, followed by Tatsumaki destroying their source of biomass after tearing Psykos from inside out and the ensuing Psykos being much smaller... Isn't at all related?
I think it is. Psykos was weakened after being twisted for the first time and Tatsumaki doesn't fully scale to Psykos' blast.
