- 2,512
- 261
So I said I would discuss his stats after reading Volume 13, so I will do that here (for the second time actually, damn wikia bugs).
Note that I will restrict myself to Sai Akutos stats. The Law of Identity is a whole other story, given that to rank her one would need to know of the overall Cosmology and things said about it in other volumes to rank it, so I don't feel qualified for that.
Discussion point 1: Is Sai Akuto 1-A?
I make this a separate point of discussion, because I know that other sides have ranked him as such. On this sides usually not more than a vague point at chapter 3 and 4 of volume 13 are given as proof, so I don't know their reasoning behind this. I will guess where it may come from and say something to it.
Lets first take a look at the only part of Volume 13 that actually mentions infinite dimensions:
"Having all these different worlds is confusing. The real world, virtual alternate dimensions, outside the universe, non-virtual alternate dimensions, and the afterlife. Does that cover it?"
Hiroshi frowned and Bouichirou corrected him.
"Not quite. What you referred to as 'outside the universe' and 'non-virtual alternate dimensions' are the same thing. Not much is known about those alternate dimensions. We only know there are likely an infinite number. You had the rest right and the Law of Identity is related to them all. Most likely, she created them. That is why they are relatively easy to understand."
Ok, so here it is said there are likely infinite alternate dimensions. That in it self is already questionable to mean spacial dimensions and not universes. "Alternate dimensions" is a term that usually signalizes that dimension is here used synonymous to "alternate universes". Looking through this volume and some others I found that some other mentions of "dimensions" also seem to imply that the word is used synonymous to "universes", even though I also found some cases where the novel used dimensions correctly. I will now not bring up quotes from this parts as it is irrelevant to Sai Akuto. The discussion would be releveant when trying to judge The Law of Identity, but Sai only holds absolute power in the Afterlife, in any other realms he is by far not that powerful (which is also the reason why reading Volume 13 is likely sufficient to judge Sais power).
One part that shows well, that Sai only manipulates the afterlife if for example this:
The world let out a groan.
Only a small number of people noticed it, but Brave and Bouichirou were of course two such people.
"What is this?" asked Brave.
Even as he asked, he felt the world losing its shape.
"This is the instant in which the world is altered," explained Bouichirou. "I felt this on a small scale whenever you travelled back in time. The one doing it does not notice, though."
"Then the one altering it now is…"
"Needless to say, it is the demon king. Activate the suit. We need to escape this."
"Escape?"
He activated the suit's time travel functionality and expanded the range to bring Bouichirou with him.
"We will erase ourselves from this space. The demon king is freely altering the world of the afterlife, but we will remove ourselves as factors in that."
"You can explain later."
Brave travelled to a time period he had not visited before. In order to avoid being seen, he travelled to a tall mountain peak during a period when mankind had yet to develop magical civilization and was not even using electromagnetic signals.
Brave time travels on the timeline of the real world here, which is why he can escape by going into the past out of the afterlife.
So from this we can not conclude that Sai Akuto did anything involving infinite dimensions or beyond. Lets look at his biggest instead feat:
"You need to bring this world to an end…but that's a tricky thing. First of all, we have to explain what exactly this world is." She began her explanation. "The afterlife changes based on our…no, mostly based on your thoughts. It's as if it were made for us. That means this world can take on any form."
"I understand that much."
"No, you don't really understand what it means for it to take on any form. Are you familiar with the concept of possible worlds?"
"Possible worlds?"
Akuto "recalled" a term he did not previously known as if scanning through his brain and retrieving the data.
"I see. It's a thought experiment where you assume a world where anything is possible and thus say anything logically feasible can happen."
"Yes. In other words, anything that can be described in text can happen. That also tells us the limits of this world: anything that cannot be described cannot happen."
Yoshie then began explaining the concept of possible worlds which was difficult to grasp just from the database information.
For example, the two statements "an elephant flew through the sky" and "Hitler visited Paris in the year 2000 AD" were both impossible in reality, but they worked in writing. If elephants were flying creatures and if Hitler had not died, they could occur even in reality. They were true in a world that could have been. In that case, it became clear that near infinite possibilities were contained within the world. They could even be seen as existing as infinite parallel worlds.
"You will create all of those logically possible worlds," said Yoshie as if giving an order.
"All of them?" he asked back in astonishment.
"What remains after that will be your own will. You will see all worlds and choose for yourself."
"I suppose I should search for the possibility of saving the world in this world where I can do anything. If I don't, we may never escape this place."
"In that case, I think you should start right away." She produced a mana screen and displayed a model of history. "The data you can view is a copy of that from the world just before it was destroyed, but you can use that to calculate back and construct all possibilities."
"But I feel like the worlds I would create would fairly ridiculous," he said.
"That's fine," she replied. "Even the ridiculous worlds are a possibility."
Akuto then decided to bring out those possibilities himself.
Opening up all possibilities may have been a mistake.
The space itself was finite and the characters were finite, but the combinations were infinite. Opening up the possibilities was not just a concept. It actually released the walls of the world that supposedly existed within Akuto.
This was similar to further universes being born within him.
The props used naturally extended beyond him.
In other words, even the extra-universal gods became possibilities in the story.
As a result, all stories fell into chaos.
What is it called when stories fall into chaos?
The answer was included in a certain story from the past: the Tower of Babel.
Until then, it could be said that the story was shared by all. They had all been playing a part in that story and thus the world had not been allowed to interfere with the stories other than Akuto's.
So what if the people ceased to share the story?
That led to chaos.
The extra-universal gods all contained their own unique stories and were thus the protagonists of those stories. Those multiple protagonists had tried to advance their stories in the same space.
That may have caused a great disturbance, but it was not conflict. After all, the "weak" stories existed there in addition to the "strong" stories that attempted take the lead. The weak yet large ones ran everyday life. The strong yet small ones ran the oddities of life.
The concepts that explained the world's structure and made people aware of their identity were large, but they had mostly blended into everyday life to the point of not being noticed. The stories of individuals' lives were carved deeply into people's hearts, but they naturally went no further than that individual.
So Sai creates every possible story, with possible being defined as logically feasible and possible to describe. Now one could certainly argue that this would also include stories with infinite dimensions or even greater stuff, but should one? As a reader of to aru majutsu no index let me draw a comparison to To arus magic gods, which were also said to be capable of bringing forth every possibility with their powers. This even went so far as that omnipotence paradoxes applied. We can quite certainly say that they are no 1-A characters and I don't think the description and feat given here is enough for that.
In the following some stories that Sai mentioned are described. None of them is mentioned to contain anything with higher dimensions or multiple planes. There are some though which involve multiple universes as it seems (as Extra-Universal gods appear in them).
We can also clearly conclude that Sai can not truly have created every possible story. If he did he would also have created one where he is more powerful then the law of Identity, which goes against the power structure of the story, with the Law of Identity being the highest Supreme being.
So in the end the claim of creating any possible story is not different from an author stating his character is omnipotent and should likewise not be taken to such an degree, without fitting proof.
So this are the only points I can imagine the 1-A rating that he has comes from and I don't think they give sufficient proof. If I should have overlooked something here someone should give a specific quote on it and explain how it justifys 1-A ranking.
Discussion point 2: What should his ranking be then?
Since all this stories are supposed to be in Akuto, we can easily conclude that he should be omnipresent over them.
He is not Omniscient though, since he spent millennia viewing stories in order to find the one with a correct end.
Given that the stories are created as a whole, we talk about spacetime continuum's here, so a ranking of Immeasurable for speed would also be justified, as Akutos time is unrelated to the time in the stories/universes he creates.
Since he created infinite universes he is easily 2-A. But his body contains infinite spacetime continuum, so wouldn't that mean he has to be greater than that? 3 dimensional space + 1 time dimension for each spacetime and 1 additional dimension is required for the space in which they all are together. So if we count the time dimension of the spacetimes to dimensionality here that would mean his body as whole is 5-D which would mean that we can rank him and the Afterlife as 5-D objects giving him an High 2-A ranking. I am not quite sure about the counting time dimension part here though.
Let me mention here again: If anyone means I have overlooked the most essential feat or explanation he should quote the exact passage he means is meaningful and explain how that would justify another ranking.
So just from reading the Manga and Volume 13 this is where my reasoning has taken me. What do you think, everyone?
Note that I will restrict myself to Sai Akutos stats. The Law of Identity is a whole other story, given that to rank her one would need to know of the overall Cosmology and things said about it in other volumes to rank it, so I don't feel qualified for that.
Discussion point 1: Is Sai Akuto 1-A?
I make this a separate point of discussion, because I know that other sides have ranked him as such. On this sides usually not more than a vague point at chapter 3 and 4 of volume 13 are given as proof, so I don't know their reasoning behind this. I will guess where it may come from and say something to it.
Lets first take a look at the only part of Volume 13 that actually mentions infinite dimensions:
"Having all these different worlds is confusing. The real world, virtual alternate dimensions, outside the universe, non-virtual alternate dimensions, and the afterlife. Does that cover it?"
Hiroshi frowned and Bouichirou corrected him.
"Not quite. What you referred to as 'outside the universe' and 'non-virtual alternate dimensions' are the same thing. Not much is known about those alternate dimensions. We only know there are likely an infinite number. You had the rest right and the Law of Identity is related to them all. Most likely, she created them. That is why they are relatively easy to understand."
Ok, so here it is said there are likely infinite alternate dimensions. That in it self is already questionable to mean spacial dimensions and not universes. "Alternate dimensions" is a term that usually signalizes that dimension is here used synonymous to "alternate universes". Looking through this volume and some others I found that some other mentions of "dimensions" also seem to imply that the word is used synonymous to "universes", even though I also found some cases where the novel used dimensions correctly. I will now not bring up quotes from this parts as it is irrelevant to Sai Akuto. The discussion would be releveant when trying to judge The Law of Identity, but Sai only holds absolute power in the Afterlife, in any other realms he is by far not that powerful (which is also the reason why reading Volume 13 is likely sufficient to judge Sais power).
One part that shows well, that Sai only manipulates the afterlife if for example this:
The world let out a groan.
Only a small number of people noticed it, but Brave and Bouichirou were of course two such people.
"What is this?" asked Brave.
Even as he asked, he felt the world losing its shape.
"This is the instant in which the world is altered," explained Bouichirou. "I felt this on a small scale whenever you travelled back in time. The one doing it does not notice, though."
"Then the one altering it now is…"
"Needless to say, it is the demon king. Activate the suit. We need to escape this."
"Escape?"
He activated the suit's time travel functionality and expanded the range to bring Bouichirou with him.
"We will erase ourselves from this space. The demon king is freely altering the world of the afterlife, but we will remove ourselves as factors in that."
"You can explain later."
Brave travelled to a time period he had not visited before. In order to avoid being seen, he travelled to a tall mountain peak during a period when mankind had yet to develop magical civilization and was not even using electromagnetic signals.
Brave time travels on the timeline of the real world here, which is why he can escape by going into the past out of the afterlife.
So from this we can not conclude that Sai Akuto did anything involving infinite dimensions or beyond. Lets look at his biggest instead feat:
"You need to bring this world to an end…but that's a tricky thing. First of all, we have to explain what exactly this world is." She began her explanation. "The afterlife changes based on our…no, mostly based on your thoughts. It's as if it were made for us. That means this world can take on any form."
"I understand that much."
"No, you don't really understand what it means for it to take on any form. Are you familiar with the concept of possible worlds?"
"Possible worlds?"
Akuto "recalled" a term he did not previously known as if scanning through his brain and retrieving the data.
"I see. It's a thought experiment where you assume a world where anything is possible and thus say anything logically feasible can happen."
"Yes. In other words, anything that can be described in text can happen. That also tells us the limits of this world: anything that cannot be described cannot happen."
Yoshie then began explaining the concept of possible worlds which was difficult to grasp just from the database information.
For example, the two statements "an elephant flew through the sky" and "Hitler visited Paris in the year 2000 AD" were both impossible in reality, but they worked in writing. If elephants were flying creatures and if Hitler had not died, they could occur even in reality. They were true in a world that could have been. In that case, it became clear that near infinite possibilities were contained within the world. They could even be seen as existing as infinite parallel worlds.
"You will create all of those logically possible worlds," said Yoshie as if giving an order.
"All of them?" he asked back in astonishment.
"What remains after that will be your own will. You will see all worlds and choose for yourself."
"I suppose I should search for the possibility of saving the world in this world where I can do anything. If I don't, we may never escape this place."
"In that case, I think you should start right away." She produced a mana screen and displayed a model of history. "The data you can view is a copy of that from the world just before it was destroyed, but you can use that to calculate back and construct all possibilities."
"But I feel like the worlds I would create would fairly ridiculous," he said.
"That's fine," she replied. "Even the ridiculous worlds are a possibility."
Akuto then decided to bring out those possibilities himself.
Opening up all possibilities may have been a mistake.
The space itself was finite and the characters were finite, but the combinations were infinite. Opening up the possibilities was not just a concept. It actually released the walls of the world that supposedly existed within Akuto.
This was similar to further universes being born within him.
The props used naturally extended beyond him.
In other words, even the extra-universal gods became possibilities in the story.
As a result, all stories fell into chaos.
What is it called when stories fall into chaos?
The answer was included in a certain story from the past: the Tower of Babel.
Until then, it could be said that the story was shared by all. They had all been playing a part in that story and thus the world had not been allowed to interfere with the stories other than Akuto's.
So what if the people ceased to share the story?
That led to chaos.
The extra-universal gods all contained their own unique stories and were thus the protagonists of those stories. Those multiple protagonists had tried to advance their stories in the same space.
That may have caused a great disturbance, but it was not conflict. After all, the "weak" stories existed there in addition to the "strong" stories that attempted take the lead. The weak yet large ones ran everyday life. The strong yet small ones ran the oddities of life.
The concepts that explained the world's structure and made people aware of their identity were large, but they had mostly blended into everyday life to the point of not being noticed. The stories of individuals' lives were carved deeply into people's hearts, but they naturally went no further than that individual.
So Sai creates every possible story, with possible being defined as logically feasible and possible to describe. Now one could certainly argue that this would also include stories with infinite dimensions or even greater stuff, but should one? As a reader of to aru majutsu no index let me draw a comparison to To arus magic gods, which were also said to be capable of bringing forth every possibility with their powers. This even went so far as that omnipotence paradoxes applied. We can quite certainly say that they are no 1-A characters and I don't think the description and feat given here is enough for that.
In the following some stories that Sai mentioned are described. None of them is mentioned to contain anything with higher dimensions or multiple planes. There are some though which involve multiple universes as it seems (as Extra-Universal gods appear in them).
We can also clearly conclude that Sai can not truly have created every possible story. If he did he would also have created one where he is more powerful then the law of Identity, which goes against the power structure of the story, with the Law of Identity being the highest Supreme being.
So in the end the claim of creating any possible story is not different from an author stating his character is omnipotent and should likewise not be taken to such an degree, without fitting proof.
So this are the only points I can imagine the 1-A rating that he has comes from and I don't think they give sufficient proof. If I should have overlooked something here someone should give a specific quote on it and explain how it justifys 1-A ranking.
Discussion point 2: What should his ranking be then?
Since all this stories are supposed to be in Akuto, we can easily conclude that he should be omnipresent over them.
He is not Omniscient though, since he spent millennia viewing stories in order to find the one with a correct end.
Given that the stories are created as a whole, we talk about spacetime continuum's here, so a ranking of Immeasurable for speed would also be justified, as Akutos time is unrelated to the time in the stories/universes he creates.
Since he created infinite universes he is easily 2-A. But his body contains infinite spacetime continuum, so wouldn't that mean he has to be greater than that? 3 dimensional space + 1 time dimension for each spacetime and 1 additional dimension is required for the space in which they all are together. So if we count the time dimension of the spacetimes to dimensionality here that would mean his body as whole is 5-D which would mean that we can rank him and the Afterlife as 5-D objects giving him an High 2-A ranking. I am not quite sure about the counting time dimension part here though.
Let me mention here again: If anyone means I have overlooked the most essential feat or explanation he should quote the exact passage he means is meaningful and explain how that would justify another ranking.
So just from reading the Manga and Volume 13 this is where my reasoning has taken me. What do you think, everyone?
