How Strong was Start of Series Danny Phantom

 

It was suggested I make more of these how strong was X Protag at the start of their series based on others of my favorite series and I agreed with the idea. The next one I decided to do was Danny Phantom and Danny's early scaling is a bit harder then early Usagi's scaling as Danny Phantom is implied to train off screen and gets vaguely stronger, so we don't really know how what feats are applicable to him this early on. This is compounded by the fact that Danny's powers do rise and fall based on his will and emotional state going from losing heavily to the Fright Knight to outright overpowering him mid sword swing. However even as of Episode 1 he should scale to some of the more basic ghost feats.

Ghosts in Danny Phantoms have their own realms including someone like Sydney Poindexter who's realm included a school building. These realms seem shaped to the Ghosts nature with Sydney's being an old timey school and is suggested by outside sources as being shaped by them. Given their school is large enough that "200 yards" is considered easily within the school's bounds, this would pretty easily put this at a city block level feat that even Episode 1 Danny should scale to as Sydney is not considered strong at all by ghost standards it seems. This is somewhat consistent as in the first episode Danny hits the Lunch Lady Meat Monster, a large building sized monster with enough force to crater the ground calced at 737 tons of TNT or Multi-City Block Level though the force is enough to make him tremble as he crawls out of the crater. There's an argument he should be stronger based on downscaling from later feats, in particular that Skulker's realm is an entire island and Skulker is actually a small weak ghost inside a power armor suit, though as his suit is ectoplasmic, it could be argued that it is part of him? 

Speedwise, Danny even in this early section of the story is likely relativistic in speeds downscaling from later FTL feats like the Spectre Speeder traveling from Saturn to Earth comfortably within a day and Vlad Plasmius thinking he could become a free-floating space nomad. Both are faster by Danny and maybe by hundreds of times or thousands of times for Vlad, but the gap is not likely to be higher then that. Being relativistic is also consistent with other depictions of Ghost Rays being like lasers and moving at lightspeed, as well as the fact that even in Season 1 Danny regularly had to keep up with Johnny 13's shadow which is literally a shadow and plausibly moves at lightspeed. 

In terms of abilities, Danny has numerous of his ghost abilities though many are yet to be developed by Episode 1, with him only accepting himself as the protector of Amity Park at the end of the first ep. Still he has access to invisibility, intangibility, and flight as the distinctive ghost powers, though the former two he doesn't seem to have full control over. He can also phase other people or objects invisible or intangible at will as he does to phase a dumpster so the meat falls on Dash. 

Danny also shows impressive body malleability stretching his body drastically in his ghost form and would still have ghostly regeneration, enough that his body being splattered into goo would only phase him. He would naturally have resistance to many abilities commonly had by Ghosts as well as a ghost sense.  

He would also still have his powerful will that lets him overpower possession attempts and grow stronger in times of determination. How much stronger isn't super important, just that it's vastly beyond his normal tier, though for context, it allowed him to overpower the Fright Knight who was causing a global storm, a country level feat. Some people argue the verse is much higher, but once again, not super relevant for this unless you think Episode 1 No-Training Danny also scales to a cosmic tier. Danny might be able to access his other powers accidentally. In Season 1 he had a tendency to unlock powers basically by accident including his overshadowing and energy projection though without knowledge of them it's unknown if they would apply.

Obviously this Danny's weakness is he has little control of powers, even accidentally de-transforming once mid-combat and has no combat training and little combat experience. While he proved himself capable and a fast thinker befitting of coming from a family of Ghost-Hunters, Danny is still inexperienced with his powers and mostly fights conventionally with some added benefits of his major ghost powers. 

So overall Danny in the First Episode is probably multi-city block level with the potential to rise billions of times stronger with likely relativistic speeds, superhuman willpower, regeneration and body malleability, an inconsistent ability to use intangibility, invisibility, and flight, the potential to use a much wider variety of ghost powers he's unaware of, and some more minor abilities such as adhesion and ghost sensing. 

Against other Cartoon protags of the time Danny unfortunately wouldn't do very well as at the time it was very common at the time for most cartoon characters to not change that much or get much stronger over their series meaning it would be Episode 1 Danny vs essentially EoS versions. For instance if he fought someone like Episode 1 Spongebob, Timmy Turner, or Jimmy Neutron he'd mostly just be fighting their end of series versions but with less experience. Characters like Aang and Robin from Teen Titans would be more interesting as they're in mostly the same physical range. Robin is similarly fast and a few times more powerful going off several low kiloton level feats in Teen Titans but wouldn't be able to get through Danny's regen assuming he can maintain his ghost form with Danny being able to wear Robin down or if he needs to get tap into his willpower or possession. Danny vs Aang, Aang should have similar or higher attack potency via his bending though Danny should have notably higher physical stats and both can tap into a much higher power level temporarily. 

Against the newer cartoons where some of them tend to be more grounded in their stats, and there's a lot more focus on progression, Danny would be a lot more interesting. Vs Luz from TOH for instance, Episode 1 Luz might unironically scale to similar physical levels to Danny based on some city block to town level feats in TOH and light-timing, though Episode 1 Luz has no magic. Similar for someone like Anne from Amphibia. Finn the Human would have more abilities but Episode 1 Danny seems to have substantially higher stats. 

Outside of that, Episode 1 Danny would be pretty strong in most non-cartoons going up against start of series versions. Episode 1 Goku and Naruto would absolutely be taken down outside of a chance transformation into Oozaru or Kyuubi Chakra form, though as mentioned Danny can himself access much higher level of power with determination. Episode 1 Yusuke Urameshi is a normal ghost, something Danny is especially suited to beating. Episode 1 Luffy and Ichigo might scale to similar or a bit stronger, but not so much stronger that Danny can't use his superior speed to defeat them. Episode 1 Yugi has hax that can definitely beat Danny, especially if they engage in a game of darkness, but in a conventional fight Danny can probably blitz and hit him. Even some other more powerful Shonen/Seinen series alongside Dragon Ball, things Saint Seiya and Bastard!! while Seiya and Dark Schneider start more powerful then Danny and probably win, they definitely don't start as fast with Danny being possible able to pull a win just from getting very determined. While his power level doesn't look that impressive nowadays, the combination of speed and some honestly pretty potent abilities means that Episode 1 Danny would actually be a bit of a beast in crossverse episode 1 matches. 

How they Compare: The Nothing (Cardcaptor Sakura)

 

The Nothing is the antagonist of the second Cardcaptor Sakura movie, the Sealed Card, and possibly the most powerful villain in the Clamp multiverse, with the only competition being Fei Wang Reed. When the greatest magician in history Clow Reed created the 52 Clow Cards as expressions of his power, he had to create a negative power to balance them, the Nothing. The Nothing's power was dangerous as while the other Cards caused an affect, the Nothing unmade things. Anything that came into contact with it disappeared and so Clow Reed sealed it away.

Centuries passed and a descendant of Clow Reed named Sakura Kinomoto broke the seal upon the Clow Cards, freeing them. She would slowly collect them and change them to be her Sakura Cards. However this transformation combined with the mansion of Clow Reed being destroyed unsealed The Nothing. Released again into the world, the Nothing was terribly lonely, the only friends she had ever had being the Clow Cards who she felt Sakura was stealing from her. She attempted to take them back accidentally causing the disappearance of Sakura's loved ones.

In terms of power, Clow Reed explicitly put all his power into making the Clow Cards, and the Nothing is the exact equal and and opposite of them meaning she should scale to Clow Reed himself. Clow Reed in Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicles was revealed to have accidentally suspended the laws of death across the entire multiverse, shifting the entire thing, on accident, due to a fleeting desire to see the dimensional witch open her eyes one more time. This means The Nothing would be Multiversal in power. 

In terms of movement speed, several Clow Cards would logically move at lightspeed including The Light, The Dark, and The Shadow, with the Dash being faster then all them. As the equivalent of all 52 Clow Cards, The Nothing should thus be FTL. Her reaction speeds are likely far higher as much weaker characters like Yui and Clow Kingdom Syaoran reacting to magic that can quickly encompass a universe and the multiverse respectively, the latter magic that is stated to surpass space and time. 

The Nothing most famous power is the reason it's so feared. Everything that comes into contact with her ceases to exist. This makes attacking her very difficult as any attack that comes into contact with her ceases to be. She can also disappear things from a distance as she did to cards on the top of Sakura's deck as she slept, and can open bubbles of erasure at will that were able to encompass large parts of buildings. This had no problem erasing someone like Fujitaka who had of Clow's magic within him, which had prior made him completely immune from Eriol's sleeping spell. This erasure can affect physical things as large as "buildings" at once according to Eriol and can affect non-corporeal things like memories, spaces, and the Clow Spirits. An example of this is when Sakura tried to stop time against the Nothing, not only was the Nothing unaffected, but the time stop quickly ceased. Eriol refers to this effect as "un-making" it, the opposite of the Clow Cards which case something to happen. As The Hope she was able to also undo this effect, restoring things from nothing. 

The Nothing has shown several other shown abilities. She can naturally levitate and teleport. She was able to sense Eriol talking to Sakura about her and erased the phone line showing some extrasensory perception. She showed telekinesis strong enough to move amusement park rides. Magic Users in Clamp have a resistance to magic lesser to then them and as a being made of the Negative Energy equal to all the Clow Cards, The Nothing has Multiversal Level Magic and Magic Resistance. 

While it's arguable if she should have this and whether it counts as standard equipment, during the film The Nothing steals away Sakura's cards and can potentially use their powers making her a mirror for Sakura's own powers just without her ultimate spell, that of Hope. This would hypothetically give her access to a vast array of powers but going over just the combat important ones this would give The Nothing access to many forms of Element Manipulation, Body-Swapping, Sleep Inducement, Illusion Creation, Sound Nullification, Time Stop, Spatial Looping, Sealing, BFR into a Maze Dimension, Attack Reflection/Copying, Shield Creation, Masterful Skill, Super Strength, Duplication, Summoning a Sword that can cut through anything, Size Manipulation along with Statistics Increase/Decrease, Creation, Transmutation (into Sweets), Freezing, summoning a matter-dissolving mist, and Speed Amplification

In terms of weaknesses, The Nothing's main one is that she isn't really a fighter. She's a confused and lonely spirit traveling around just erasing things to try and get back her friends. Her mental stats are almost entirely unknown and so can be defeated by love as Sakura showed. Also as you may have noticed her movement speed and sensory/attack range are quite low for her tier. Most characters anywhere near her own tier even if they can't beat her could fairly easily escape from her by traveling far away.

Name: The Nothing, The Hope, The Sealed Card

Origin: Cardcaptor Sakura

Powers and Abilities: Incorporeality (Is the Negative Energy Balance of the Clow Cards), Existence Erasure (Passive), Restoration (after becoming the Hope), Magic, Magic Resistance, Levitation/Flight, Teleportation, Telekinesis, Extrasensory Perception, Possibly the Powers of the other Sakura Cards

Weaknesses: Is a lonely and confused spirit rather then a fighter

Attack Potency: Multiversal (Is the opposite of the Clow Cards who had all of Clow Reed's power)

Range: Likely in the kilometers (was disappearing things across town)

Speed: FTL Movement Speed, Likely Infinite Reaction Speed

Durability: Functionally Multiversal (Presence erased attacks so has never been seen being hit by something, but is a multiversal energy and passively erases energy on that level that comes into contact with her)

Stamina: Presumably Infinite (Does not have a physical body to tire)

Intelligence: Human Level (Knew to erase the phone line to stop Sakura from learning of her)

What other verses could potentially stop the fall of nothingness upon them

Sailor Moon is the most famous Magical Girl series and the final villain is also an embodiment of nothingness, so what if the Nothing awoke in the Sailor Moon verse. The Sailor Senshi in general are a lot more well equipped to evade the Nothing given their cosmic tier senses, greater combat skill then base Sakura, and being able to fly much faster then it. That said the Nothing's erasure is much greater then something like Death Phantom's which is the strongest in the verse meaning no one could get into close to the Nothing. Hypothetically the most likely victory is Sailor Moon herself showing the Nothing love as Sakura did and winning similarly. But if Usagi herself wasn't there, would the Sailor Senshi or their villains be able to stop the Nothing?

So it's tricky because the Nothing really has two layers of defense even without the Sakura cards: a general magic resistance, and the fact that anything that comes into contact with her is erased. There are non magic powers that might be able to do it like Luuga sucking people into a video game but these are usually beams that would just be erased. There are powers that don't require contact like the Evil Eye, Nehelenia's Curse, The Silence or even Star Seed Removal but these are all magic. 

Sailor Mercury could create a hyperspace and Sailor Pluto can seal off spaces so it's possible they could seal the Nothing, though as the Nothing can erase spaces, the effectiveness of this may only be temporary. The best counter is Professor Tomoe's advanced technology which temporarily trapped Super Sailor Moon in a dimension large enough that it seemed to contain a star. The Nothing could probably escape this, it would just take a while given her moment speed. The best strategy I can device is Saphir of the Black Moon Clan using his technology to BFR The Nothing into another time, though if she has the Sakura cards, she'd have The Return and even this would not stop. Because so much of the powers of the verse are magic, I do think they'd need Sailor Moon herself to fully stop the Nothing, though they can delay her and avoid her a long time, much longer then Sakura and friends were able to mostly due to the Sailor Moon verse having a lot better movement speed. 

What about in the other of the big 3 Magical Girl verses? What if the Nothing awoke in a much darker Magical Girl universe? In Puella Magi The Nothing would also obviously be a massive threat for the same reasons. Most of the verse relies on magic and Homura's time stop magic in the original timeline was considered a high tier magic, yet Time Stop did nothing on The Nothing. Witches could try to trap The Nothing in a Labyrinth assuming they are cognizant of the threat, but they're not large enough to contain the Nothing very long outside of some very high end interpretation of the sizes of Witch Labyrinths. 

Like with Sailor Moon there are powers that are non-magical. The Incubators were able to scientifically create a field to trap Kami Madoka a conceptual entity so I'd think they could do something similar to The Nothing assuming the Nothing's presence doesn't automatically erase it. The problem is whether they can do this to her without the Nothing just unmaking them with her speed which really depends on what you think of their stealth and manipulation abilities vs the Nothing's extrasensory perception. As a team effort they should be able to do that if The Nothing is distracted. Also the Wraiths from the new reality also may not all count as magical as they were created as a retroactive replacement for the Witches and in that case Wraiths have abilities that might work. If she ran across False Madoka, she could literally just recreate Clow Reed from The Nothing's memories. Though this hinges on whether you think those abilities count as magical. 

Against someone like Kami Madoka the Nothing has never shown the ability to disappear conceptual entities so I don't think the Nothing could do anything to Kami Madoka. On the other hand Madoka uses magic and so the Multiversal Magic Resistance of The Nothing means Madoka can't affect the Nothing in contrast. Madoka could potentially beat it via the power of Love. This is complicated by the fact that Madoka can't make herself known to people though the Nothing may not count as basically an embodiment of nothing and a mass of negative magical energy. If Madoka can appear before The Nothing, presumably she could save her the way Sakura did. 

Yugioh is another anime about spirits in cards that are collected and is of a similar power level to Clamp mostly, so what would happen if the very dangerous card was unsealed in Yugioh? Well the magic of the magicians in the verse would obviously do nothing against The Nothing for obvious reasons and because of that they couldn't induce a game of darkness and bring the rules of Duel Monsters for life, so for the most part the other things the verse could try are the natural abilities of monsters and the verse's technology.

The latter is much more impressive then expected, whether one is talking about the manga or the anime. For the former canon KaibaCorp has invented technology that can project one's consciousness into a hyperdimension. This might work on the Nothing, assuming you think that they can do this to an incorporeal entity like her. Most monsters as you might imagine don't have anything that would effect the Nothing outside the possibility of psychic monsters being able to mess with her mind like they can do with other Duel Spirits. 

The Nothing vs the Egyptian Gods might be interesting as they are big enough naturally she would have trouble erasing and they have a natural resistance to magic from anything less divine then they. They've never shown resistance to erasure on the scale of The Nothing but the Prana in DSOD was arguably comparable and they likely could resist magic on that scale. The question from there is if they have anything to stop her before she eventually erases them in pieces. They were able to induce madness and instantly kill normal humans though this is likely less to work on an incorporeal entity like the Nothing. Osiris and Obelisk's clash were able to send Yugi and Kaiba's souls back to the ancient past which they might be able to trap the Nothing though if that counts as a victory is debatable. It may take top tiers in the verse to beat the Nothing just from being divine or otherwise non magical entities on her own scale like Horakthy and the Numeron Code but the Nothing is probably a similar top tier of the verse.

Pokemon is another anime highly nostalgic for people from a young age, and Sakura and Tomoyo were referenced with a little cameo in one of the episodes so what if Giratina found another Negative Cosmic Force appearing? Pokemon has similar light-timing feats as the upper tiers of CCS so her movement speed should be fairly normal for at least strong pokemon. Her power on the other hand would be similar to Giratina on the low end, and Arceus on the high end depending on of if you think the Creation Trio are multiversal. Her Magic Resistance would probably be translated as something like an immunity to Fairy Type moves. Combined with her erasing any move that makes any form of contact, most Pokemon would be hard pressed to find ways of affecting the Nothing.

Similar to the above Psychic Type moves could presumably at least delay her as they can affect Ghost Types who are spirits, though they are weak against them. The Legendaries in general have a lot more tools for fighting her then most of the previous verses, mostly as numerous of them have abilities that are neither magic nor make contact. Mewtwo was able to wipe Nurse Joy's memories just by waving his hand, Jirachi can grant wishes, and Yveltal's corruption is an aura effect for comparison. Now that doesn't make this easy, as if they are close enough to use this, they're broadly close enough for the Nothing to fight them too and given her reaction speed and ability to just open up existence erasing bubbles let along if she gets close to them with teleportation she could one-shot any of them. Defeating her would be an extreme effort and she would probably be classified as a special legendary tier threat alongside the likes of Darkrai and Cressalia, Darkrai able to put up something of a fight against the Creation Trio.

Against the Creation Trio and Arceus themselves, The Nothing would be a bit of a disadvantage. She has rivaling or even surpassing power, but she has much bigger weaknesses then they do. They have cosmic awareness and range, as well as versatility surpassing even the Clow Cards. While Dialga and Palkia's time and space manipulation conventionally likely wouldn't work, and Giratina's antimatter would likely be erased trying to come into contact with The Nothing, they also have more esoteric powers like conceptual manipulation. That's not an instant win, as even Clow Reed who could suspend the laws of the multiverse only sealed away the Nothing, but it does mean that they could just monitor her from outside her awareness and figure out some way of stopping her. 

Finally, Touhou is a series that has been aesthetically compared with Clamp's before and has copious magic card usage, so what would happen if a seal of an ancient magician was broken in Gensokyo and The Nothing floated into the Land of Fantasies? In Touhou the Nothing would have bizarrely lopsided stats, having power akin to that of the Sages but speed like that of Fairies, if that. However needless to say the usual style of combat in the verse using magic danmaku projectiles would not work against either of the Nothing's defenses. In fairness most of the characters should be able to avoid attacks from her fairly easily so long as she doesn't get close, it's moreso just a matter of if they have any way of getting through her defenses.

Against someone like Reimu for instance, while Reimu can avoid being erased entirely by floating above existence where The Nothing can't affect, whether Reimu can do anything back depends on if any of her spiritual techniques are considered non-magical which is unlikely given how broad magic is in Touhou. There are some non magic abilities. The Kappa are a race of supergenius who build things like optical camouflage and the verse has numerous Type 5 supergeniuses that scale to such things as making elixirs that remove the concept of death from oneself, especially the Lunarians, who could pretty easily manipulate The Nothing. Depending on what counts as magic it's possible almost nothing a lot of the main fighters could do to hurt her though they have plenty of ways of evading or delaying her. There are some however some win cons. Moon Rabbits like Reisen have ESP that allows for psychic manipulation and this is treated as a biological ability of theirs rather then magic. Sumireko is a human esper from outside of Gensokyo whose powers may work. Honestly the most likely win con would be someone like Byakuren, the symbol of Buddhist compassion befriending her by showing her love as Sakura did. Outside of that Sumireki is a human esper from outside of Gensokyo who's powers might work

Against the actual Top Tiers the Nothing probably wouldn't do that well. While her raw power would be viewed as substantial, most of the characters are metaconceptual entities who take on forms willingly and so are entirely immune from anything the Nothing can do. In contrast they would have things they could do such as Yukari shifting the boundary of The Nothing's existence erasing aura to a small circle within her allowing her to be affected or Eirin can potentially make a potion that removes the concept of "disappearance" from people. As such while they would take notice of her for her raw power, she would not be viewed as Sage Tier herself.