>>> "Age doesn't count for battle experience."
...When you've been doing nothing but fight literally every sort of enemy for centuries on end, it really does.
But sure, lemme go get some scans on this.
First off: You get a spirit, you can use all their skills. Not just experience: We're talking experience, skills, intelligence and general abilities they gathered during their life and afterlife. That adds to your own. You can do so even at 10% acceptance (Yoh's original skill level at the very first chapter) but then there's 100% Acceptance as well , a skill that comes so early up in the series (when Oversouls weren't even a thing yet).
Amidamaru had been fighting multiple adult enemies and generally defeating them without sustaining serious injuries since when he was a child at the age of eleve (he's 600+ years old in the series) but had no experience whatsoever in Shaman Fights at the time. Yoh had trained for years on end to be a shaman and didn't learn this skill and almost died. Then, they proceed to learn it on the spot right in the middle of a short death match just because Ren spoke about the general mechanics .
This whole 100% acceptance thing comes along so early that Ren over 200 chapters later mocks one of the endgame enemies that "You're so weak, my basic skill alone will do" .
Ren's guardian spirit, Bason, was said to do nothing but fight for 500+ years. Note that his sister's spirit, Lee who is more a spirit of the current age was skillful enough to create Daodando which was described as the strongest fighting style in story during his normal human life . At BOS, Ren fully doubts these skills would be sufficient to come any close to Amidamaru's ow
...He's sort of initially proven wrong, but only because Lee Pailong was fighting at a maintained 100% of his skills whereas Yoh was not channeling all of Amidamaru's own + lacked a sword . The moment he gets a sword he proceeds to instantly get past the defenses of the same guy who was stomping him a moment before thus proving that unlike what Jun initial assumption, people on Amidamaru's level are more than capable of outskilling fighters of the kind they should have awful compatibility with . The guy who taught him the roots of Kung-Fu was also 96+ years old "only" and he initially outskilled him enough for Lee to not even touch the guy as he was utterly predicted and read which they 100% state it's not because of Yoh's body . His skill is compared to a literal child against this guy, despite being the Kung-Fu Master of the strongest style in the world.
Showing again that Shaman's keep/can channel the skills of the spirits they have used or possess even while in OS as seen here as explained here as well as here . Which also means thatif the Shaman themselves don't see or can't react to an incoming attack the spirit uses its skills and moves the OS on its own to protect them .
An strategy that Ren at this point in the series didn't use as he saw Spirits only as tools and thus got him Outskilled despite being about 3x stronger than Yoh. Nonetheless, they tied by the end of the day since Ren then pulled more or less the same on Yoh who also pulled more or less the same by learning his technique mid-battle . Again. Just like this, to match him .
None of this begins to compare to Ren's skill at this point in the series, as Fumon Tonkou wasn't yet a thing at this point in the series nor would it be for a long while. Nor Ren's own crazy fast adaptation to skills since:
1. Lee's master (the 96+ year master from before) was latter fodderized by Jun and an Improved Pailong.
2. Ren defeats his father channeling all of the 2000 years old souls of the Tao Dinasty (See that Nonon thread).
3. Ren 100% states he's using the experience of Bason. who "has come across all sorts of weapons and different martial arts techniques, defeated them and learned all about their techniques", thus becoming the "ultimate spirit fighting machine".
4. Ren adapts to Mikihisa's skills - a part of the secret collection of skills (Chou Senji Rakketsu) that Hao left behind , not by learning it as it should be, but by watching it and learning it in the middle of a battle where he was HORRIBLY outclassed in power and blitzed to hell and back by Fumon Tonkou + Superior speed due to Spiritual Power Gap . This is the same skill which according to Yoh and the other Funbari Onsen members, takes literal "Training from hell" to get). And he does learn all of them. Despite being having barely been able to even follow what the hell Mikihisa was even doing.
5. In fact, Ren learns Fumon Tonkou so well that he actually outclasses multiple of Hao's own subordinates , who were directly taught by him, at once - despite having been just introduced to the skill and mastered it by being stomped by it and watching, he has it mastered to the point where instead of cancelling it out with other users , his version of it outclasses a bunch of them at once. To the point where he only gets killed in this fight because Nichrome deliberately tells him he's the brother of the guy he killed before so Ren hesitates in fighting back and gets insta-impaled with Great Prejudice by a surprise attack from Grande Fantasma.
6. Ren also adapts to Gandhara's Nullification skill and figures it out and learns it mid-battle despite not even knowing such a thing existed. Again, while being outclassed as all his attacks and defenses where being reduced to naught passively. by their own. These guys spirits are literal Buddhas , divine class spirits who are said to have attained a level of enlightenment superior to most others in the series.
7. That's due to the fact that they are directly related to literal Hell, which is where the strongest shamans go to for training later in the series, such as when Yoh, whose skill should be comparable to Ren's own at this point in the series, also engaged in fighting his ancestor who had battled Hao (and defeated him) prior to the story proper. Training in hell in this case consists of doing nothing but fighting and killing other spirits for all of eternity or until you return to the earth, all under the pressure of if you waver, your spirit disappears immediately. And that's ust the first hell. Yoh's first opponent is his Ancestor who, on top of having trained his whole life to defeat Hao 500 years ago , also spent the next 500 years in Hell doing nothing but fighting other powerful spirits of sinners under these conditions. Yoh defeats him. and he praises Amidamaru's ability as well.
There should be more stuff around in regards to this skill matter (since as Sati beating up freaking Enma or Ren instantly realizing what the skills of some other shamans were all about) but this is far as I'm committed to go for scans on this I believe.
