Sunday, April 25, 2021

How they compare: Susanoo (Dream Saga)


Far beyond the physical realm is the realm of High Heaven, a realm humans can only go to in their dreams, and which resides the gods controlling the forces of nature. Spoken of in fear in this land is the great dragon Susanoo, embodiment of nature's wrath who is destined at the end of the age to bring about the end of the human's world.

Physically Susanoo is obviously one of the god tiers of the Dream Saga-verse. Susanoo's most obvious feat is the feat that's hyped up all manga; it is his destiny at the end of the cycle to literally consume the sun. Such will cause the sun to disappear from both Heaven and Earth. Arguably his power should be far higher however as not only is literally consuming the sun a quite casual feat, he was able to threaten Yuuki after she merged with the Shinju, the divine tree that holds the Sun up, a feat likely higher then baseline stellar.

In terms of speed, Susanoo obviously scales to the Sun's motion as it is his destiny to consume the sun. The sun orbits the center of the galaxy at Mach 675 which is a speed the Heavenly Sun likely also moves, as things in the physical realm and in Heaven reflect each other and have the same inner capabilities. It's possible Susanoo is even faster as he flew from the surface of Takamagahara to its Sun. The timeframe for this feat is unknown as is the exact distance but this is very possibly a relativistic to faster then light speed contextually. 


Susanoo is a being of the plane of Takamagahara, high heaven. This seems to contain two planes of being, the lower mental plane of dreams where most beings reside and the the spiritual realm (Tenjukyu) inhabited by Amaterasu and Susanoo naturally, though one can travel between them freely. This means Susanoo is most likely a spiritual plane being, though can incarnate a body on the physical and mental planes during the end times. Susanoo is also the embodiment of nature's rage, and so during each end time, when the world is angry at being bespoiled, he will reappear even if previously defeated.

Susanoo's primarily ability is to incite rage in the forces of nature, causing natural disasters up to and including the consumption of the sun. Tidal waves, earthquakes, sandstorms are the result of his presence. Even delicate lotus blossoms become fearsome killers in the presence of Susanoo. All forces of nature become homicidal towards humans in his presence.

Susanoo has other powers. He can affect elemental forces, even forces of the heavens, as though solid such as cutting through liquid like a solid and in true dragon nature can resist magic used against him like a paralyzing spell. He can also fuse his incarnations or transform them to resemble his true body, partially or wholly. 

Susanoo is also an extremely skilled fighter, having fought the protectors of the world over the cycle of the world, to the point of one of his dream incarnations without his power or his memories defeated the giant 8-headed serpent monster Orochi. 

In terms of weaknesses, while Susanoo can cause much damage to the physical and dream planes of being, to interact with it finely requires him to use his incarnation, a single identity on the physical and dream planes he only gets one of per cycle, which may rebel against his will. Also the compassion and divine purification of the goddess Amaterasu is able to send Susanoo back to dormancy, if he is unable to consume her.


Name: Susanoo, Takaomi
Origin: Dream Saga
Powers and Abilities: Spiritual Being, Dream and Physical Plane Incarnation, Conditional Immortality/Regen (will return so long as the rage of nature exists), Ecokinesis (presence incites nature into a furious rage), Anti-Logia, Low A tier skill (Is an immortal warrior with a lifespan stretching centuries, defeated Orochi without his powers or memories), Resistance to Magic (Takamagahara's mages could not stop Susanoo)
Weakness: Can be limited by his physical or dream plane incarnations, Purification
Destructive Capacity: Stellar+
Range: Stellar
Speed: At least massively hypersonic, possibly FTL
Durability: Stellar+
Stamina: Unknown
Standard Equipment: As Takaomi carried a blade
Intelligence: Highly skilled fighter, knowledgable about the dream plane


So how would he do in other verses?



In DC Comics, the threat of Susanoo is not neccesarily how strong he would be, but how strong he would become almost instantly. His raw power would only be like roughly lower range Lantern Tier, even though most Lanterns wouldn't be able to really effect him. His magic resistance might seem helpful but it's probably nowhere near the level needed to stop the power of most DC mages outside of fodder mages (although in fairness 7 fodder mages managed to seal Dream of the Endless...)

The bigger problem is that as a spiritual entity that manipultes the dream realm he would almost immediatly have access to reality warping via the nature of the dreaming unless Dream decides to stop him for some reason. Likewise his ability to make nature turn enraged is a lot scarier in a verse where nature is things like the Green and the Red and the Rot, multiversal concepts that govern large swatches of existence.

Basically Susanoo is either stopped really quickly or he causes huge massively cosmic problems without much in between.


In the Marvel universe, Susanoo has almost the opposite scenario where he's almost certain to last a while but there's a pretty hard cap on what he could actually do. Unlike DC where crazy powerful magicians are around every corner, Marvel's cosmology is usually more science-y which means they won't be able to just directly attack him but he also can't just control some of the strongest things in the multiverse.

While him causing several disasters would be pretty immediatly noticable and troublesome, his ability to trouble the dream realm is a problem as most Marvel psychics can control the dream realm pretty easily and are way more versatile there then Susanoo is. Most likely is that he eventually gets recruited as an ally of some magic-based cosmic villain.


In Saint Seiya, Susanoo would have power roughly comparable to someone first attaining the Seventh Sense who can destroy a star with their cosmo and travel at the speed of light. Susanoo would probably be able to defeat most characters like this due to his ecokinesis and skill and even possibly really low tiers of the gods like Hecate despite her speed due to being able to likely tank her attacks though against any gold saint or god he would be massively out of his depth, particularly as cosmo can be used to attack concepts as shown in Saintia Sho. 


In the LittleBigPlanet-verse Susanoo would, similar to DC either get beaten really quickly or cause massive destruction. He can't directly affect most of the inhabitants of Craftworld as they are conceptual although he can cause destruction to the dreams of mankind that make them up so it's more like a character who can't hit your body normally but can attack every atom making it up. That said his level of power is only about as strong as Sackboy. Susanoo is likely similar to a lowballed speed for Negativitron and consequently Sackboy suggesting he would be about rivaling Sackboy overall.

This is particularly funny as Susanoo is a threat to basically everyone in the verse except Sackboy. His ecokinesis could cause the world of Craftworld to become hostile and dangerous sort of similar to Vex's manipulation but less comedic and obvious. With his divine skill it's likely Susanoo could beat most of the same enemies Sackboy could in probably very similar ways, just without the befriending element.

In a battle between Sackboy and Susanoo...Susanoo COULD manipulate him, but that's not really a standard tactic for Susanoo at all. More problematically for him, Sackboy would almost certainly befriend Takaomi and try to purify him with his dreamer orbs which would work virtually identical to Yuuki's defeat of Susanoo in Dream Saga, functionally Sackboy is actually a really good counter to Susanoo as a fight between them would almost be a repeat of the end of Dream Saga. 


In the Clamp multiverse, fights in the dreamscape is something most high tier mages can do and so being able to combat Susanoo is possibly, although he would have a pretty considerable deal of power, having power on par with the Light and the Dark who can control the Sun and speed likely similar as well.

Susanoo would be an especially big problem in Cardcaptor Sakura, as his presence would cause the Clow Cards to turn violent and rage-filled as well as power that would take one of the Card Guardians to stop. In X/1999 Susanoo would actually fit extremely well leading the Dragons of Earth in the war against humans for bespoiling the environment against the Dragons of Heaven, especially as his physical incarnation would be limited to power likely on the dragons level. 

While most high tier magicians like Yuuko or Fei Wong Reed could ward Susanoo away on the physical and dream planes, it would be difficult to get to his true nature though Yuuko does have at least some limited interaction of the spiritual realm. It would seem to take a Top Tier like Sakura or Clow Reed to warp the multiverse's conceptual rage of nature away to defeat him or one of the gods like Divine Mokona or Ashura-oh, however he does have one Achilles Hell within the lower tiers; the people of Cephiro.

Cephiro is a dimension where one's will controls all, with the world itself held together by the Pillar of Cephiro. The Pillar's disappearence caused nature to turn chaotic and violent like Susanoo's presence so it's likely the Pillar's presence could surpress the Ecokinesis of Susanoo. Those in Cephiro on the level of the Rune Gods have speed equivalent to the high end of Susanoo and the power of the wills of the people of Cephiro was strong enough to purify Debonair, the Dark Pillar formed of their collective darkness, suggesting it would be able to send Susanoo back into dormancy.

2 comments:

  1. This is another series I had no knowledge of but yet again you show off your versatile knowledge of series as this was pretty cool. This Dragon is an Apocalyptic force of Nature, in as literal a sense as you could get, and has a great deal of hax powers that would carry him quite far like Spiritual Existance and attacking within Dreams. I think this was Shown off really well when you put him in several extremely powerful verses like DC, CLAMP and LBP And in each one he was able to hit way out of his weight class with his manipulation of various mechanics of the series, even enough to give trouble to Sakura herself. But more than that it’s pretty interesting to see how the people of magic knight Rayearth good actually counter all that when the more powerful characters could not. And funny how how well he does in DC and Marvel depends on how passively dream of the endless a nightmare or to his presence

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  2. Susanoo seems like a cool villain (or I guess force of nature might be the more accurate term). He has an interesting combination of having a dreamscape nature and his ability of inciting rage in nature. The Marvel/DC comparison is compelling as usual, with Susanoo turning into an exponentially growing threat in DC while not being too bad a threat in Marvel. It's kinda funny that Sackboy of all characters would be a suitable substitute for Yuuki in defeating Susanoo, but I am all here for it. As for Clamp, I kinda like how it's one of the lesser powered dimensions that would be able to manage Susanoo's influence (there's a good story in there somewhere)

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