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One of the most exciting aspects of any anime is the strength exhibited by the characters. Whether it is an anime where humanity’s strongest soldier Levi is fighting off the Titans or an alien-like Goku fighting other aliens to protect the Earth, can we measure the strength of anime characters? Is there a way to quantify their abilities beyond mere storytelling prowess? In this article, we delve into the world of anime fandom to explore whether it is possible to assess and compare our beloved characters’ strengths objectively.
Can We Measure The Strength Of Anime Characters?
There are thousands of anime with different anime characters and anime verses with varying levels of power, other power systems, fighting styles, etc. Every anime differs vastly from one another. But there are many different ways by which we can measure the strengths of anime characters. Using these methods, we can put different characters from other anime together in the same power tier list.
Methods To Measure The Strength Of Anime Characters
Following are the different methods through which we can measure the strength of anime characters from various shows with different power systems and power levels.
Feats
Feats are the displays of power by a character to showcase their strength. A character destroying a building is a feat that shows their strength. It is the best and easiest way to measure the strength of an anime character or any character in general. Feats are what most fans see and make assessments of how strong their favorite characters are.
For example, some of Naruto’s strength feats would be basically creating Bijuu bombs as big as mountains, and speed feats would be dodging Madara’s light-speed laser beams. For detailed insights on Naruto topics, visit Naruto Explained.
Saitama’s strongest feats include sneezing away Jupiter; YES, SNEEZING SO HARD THAT JUPITER BLEW AWAY. For his speed, he is casually faster than light.
Narrative
Most of the time, the narrative is used to hype characters without showing the character itself. In most cases, it will be used to either hype up overpowered allies or big villains who will show up in the future for example characters. The narrative will imply the strength of the characters to be of a certain level by using other characters to vouch for their strengths or basically character statements. This is mostly used in One Piece for every major character in the story like Shanks, Dragon, Imu, Whitebeard etc.
Lore
Lore is basically the background knowledge and history of a story. Lore is mostly used for dead characters who won’t be making an appearance in the current storyline. Even if they do make they would have become very old and not in their primes.
The best example of this would be Hagoromo, The Sage of Six Paths from Naruto, we know from lore that he was as strong if not stronger than his mother Kaguya Ohtsutsuki. Rocks. D Xebec is also another example from One Piece who was so strong that Gol D. Roger and Monkey. D Garp had to team up together in order to defeat him.
Extra Material/Databooks
Authors sometimes use databooks to show the stats of characters like strength, speed, intelligence, potential, etc. This is very common for most shounen manga to have a data book with this supplementary information. Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, Demon Slayer, etc just to name a few.
These databooks not only just give the stats but have statements related to a character’s strength. This does not include only the main characters but also side characters and characters from the past. An example would be Madara Uchiha’s brother Izuna Uchiha who is said to be on the same level as Madara in the Naruto databooks.
Pixel Scaling
The most confusing way of measuring determining a character’s strength. Most normal people won’t be able to do that or won’t bother with it at all. Since it basically measures the art of the artist. Like how big the characters are drawn relative to the buildings around them or the scale of the attacks how big were they drawn?
Manga panels are used for this not only it is used to measure a character’s body size but also the scope of destructive powers and their attack potency. But this is an unreliable way of measuring a character’s strength since mangaka have limited space to draw and most of them won’t be doing mathematical calculations of everything before they draw.
Real Life Calculations
Some absolute mad lads use real-life calculations to measure the strength of anime characters. This includes the physics of what the attacks are. How big they are? What is their composition? Their surroundings? Etc. But this is also unreliable in most cases since again most mangaka won’t be using real-life physics in their stories. Mangaka are not mathematicians or physicists they are storytellers who are telling us a story.
Power Scaling Tiers
Power scaling has different tiers all of them which are created by the fan bases and writers throughout the years to measure and quantify the strength of characters. The main tiers of power scaling are:
- Nuclear Level: The destructive power of this tier is from an island to mountain level.
- Tectonic Level: The destructive power of this tier is from island to continent level.
- Planetary Level: The destructive power of this tier is from the moon to the small star level.
- Stellar Level: The destructive power of this tier is from a small star to a multi-solar system level.
- Cosmic Level: The destructive power of this tier is from a galaxy to a high universe level.
- Multiversal Level: The destructive power of this tier is from the universe to beyond the multiverse level.
- Extradimensional Level: The destructive power of this tier is from a low complex multiverse level to a high hyperverse level.
- Transcendent Level: The destructive power of this tier is from a low outerverse to a high outerverse.
- Boundless Level: The destructive power of this tier can not be measured it breaks all the previous tiers even omnipotent beings won’t be able to reach this level.
Conclusion
We can not measure the strength of every single anime character but we can still measure the strength of most anime characters by using these different methods fans have come out with. Different fans have different opinions and it all comes down to the perspective of an individual in some cases different people will interpret the same thing differently and come to a different conclusion. But this is one of the best things about power scaling having healthy debates with other people about your favorite characters.
