How to be OP in the Sugar Sugar Rune-verse.
Local Scale Threat:
Outside our universe is another world, whose top half is called the magical world, and whose lower half, a perfect mirror of the upper half, is called Underworld. The leaders of the Magical World are called Witches and Warlocks, the magical humans. Their society is one where things are opposite from the human world, where cuteness is outcasted and the most attractive people are the scariest. Two witches and best friends, heirs of the legendary witches, are sent to the human world to compete in collecting ecure, the magical energy of the heart, to compete to see who will become the next queen.
This is the tier for pretty much all inhabitants of the magical world and the underworld. Most are treated as physically relative with stronger power through magic. Physically everyone magical in the verse scales to wall level+ with the two queen contestants Chocolat and Vanilla, Vanilla being considered physically weak, being able too, as early as the first page of the manga, completely tank being submerged in the magma of a giant witch's cauldron acting as a portal to the human world. Chocolate, along with her male admirer classmates Haux and Saule, accidentally crash through the Palace roof causing a lot of debris without injury after a flying accident. Also, when Chocolat and Vanilla were very young a dragon threatened Vanilla and so Chocolat just physically beat it up to defend her. Chocolat might be higher physically as she is well praised for her physical capacity, with Vanilla thinking she could beat up everyone in their class including the boys, and who once survived falling from the magical world's moon to the ground, though given the magical world's strange physics, this may not mean the same as a similar feat in the human world.
With magic the characters attack potency and durability rises to building level with battles between experienced witches and warlocks creating small dimensions and warping the local environment. Chocolat and Vanilla's mentor, Rockin Robin was able to use his magic to split a house into two seperate complete houses, each half the size of the original, and darkened the sky with clouds with his anger. In the final battle of the manga, singular attacks from Ogres, the outcasts of magical world living in the desolate underworld could destroy buildings with singular attacks. Magical shields are of similar to even superior durability. When the warlock royal guard Liutenant Glace and Rockin Robin were attacking together, they were able to completely melt ogres yet Chocolate's shield was able to block an attack from both of them. Vanilla was also able to create a beach with her magic, although this was clearly a highly difficult taxing feat for her. The smallest beach in the world is "Playa de Gulpiyuri" which stretching 40 meters would easily qualify for building level. It's very possible this feat could be higher, and likewise Chocolate has her own ambigious but potentially really high feat of her love illuminating the depths of the Underworld.
In terms of speed Chocolat and Vanilla flew up to the Moon in the human world, which is one of the few entrances to the magical world. The timespan is unknown, but it clearly from context isn't a long time, and in pretty much any reasonable timespan would be at least massively hypersonic. Rockin Robin also claimed he had to fly back and forth between magical world and human world at least 3,000 times in one night because of Chocolat's antics, although he may be exaggerating for effect, and its unknown which entrance he used.
So this verse has a really large numbers of powers for its tier. As mentioned above, a battle between two experienced magic-users involves the two creating small shields/pocket dimensions around them and warping their surroundings as they battle. Various witches are specifically noted to be associated with specific elements, not that they can't use other elements, but that these are their specialties, for instance Poivre is a water warlock yet conjured a tornado. The elements that various characters have manipulated include light, darkness, sand, water, ice, wind, and lightning. Characters can also conjure things out of thin air however they've mostly been things not particularly useful in combat like flowers or chocolates, although as mentioned before Poivre created a small tornado. In terms of physical magic, witches can also use the classic witch trick of transmutation with Chocolat threatening to turn one of her classmates into a monkey if he doesn't ask Vanilla out. There's also a binding spell that feels like being constricted by thorny vines.
The verse moreso specializes in non-physical magic, the primary focus of the manga. Magic-users can create visions, even visions of the entire cosmos which is a pretty insane illusions feat. Witches and warlocks focus on emotional manipulation, stealing the hearts of people in order to use the emotional energy, ecure, for their power, with very skilled ones able to manipulate large groups of people at once. Taking the heart from someone erases their memories, though seperate memory erase magic exists for when they don't want to take their heart. Even deeper then one's heart, a witch or a warlock can steal a person's soul, that which generates new hearts, however this is a difficult forbidden act, liable to cause one massive punishment if caught. The verse is also full of enchanted items specifically for boosting one's charisma and ability to manipulate emotionally such as perfume that makes you smell whatever someone likes most and a spell that makes ones hair and lips shine and the very first spell Chocolat and Vanilla learn is a spell to see the heart and emotional state of others. It's pretty clear this is a verse built on emotional and psychological manipulation tactics, magical and not.
Of all the emotions, love is strongest, followed the negative emotions of jealousy and hatred the latter of which form the noir hearts. Noir hearts are usually untouchable to most as they passive suck the lifeforce of animals and plants, killing them, even killing them instantly through physical contact. The Ogres, outcasts of the magical world and inhabitants of the underworld have learned to channel this magic just as the witches and warlocks channel most emotions and can survive and utilzie the noir's power. Ogres can use their power to freeze people solid and resist even the powerful emotional manipulation of witches, with Pierre their prince being the exemplar of this to the point even Chocolat and Vanilla found it highly difficult to move his emotions. Ogres, while in darkness, also have a regen factor capable of letting them regenerate from being melted by intense light.
Pierre is one of the three strongest mages of this tier, the other two being the two queen contestants themselves; Vanilla and Chocolat. Vanilla is a sweet girl looked down upon in magical world but the most popular girl of her school in the human world. Most of her magic is cutesy things not particularly useful in combat like creating bubbles though late in the manga she develops the ability to seal things away in pictures. While she's a timid witch whose fears include "frogs, scary movies, birds feet, people dancing too fast" and most of her arsenal isn't that dangerous, she is well recognized for her sheer intelligence to the point that Chocolat called her "smarter then anybody." and who matched her's mothers legendary performance on the queenliness test.
Even stronger then Vanilla is her best friend, protector, and reluctant rival Chocolat. Chocolat is a physical powerful witch with Vanilla thinking she could beat up the boys of their class, a class which includes ghosts, and who has physically protected her since they were little. While not as smart as Vanilla, Chocolat is quite smart herself, getting all 100s on her exams in the human world. While all witches have some resistance to emotional manipulation, Chocolat in particular has extreme resistance to fear, nothing seems to scare her. When Sylvia cast a spell of Chocolat's greatest fears, Chocolat confidently said they would be a piece of cake. The spell then conjured a duplicate of Chocolat who only succeeded in making Chocolat angry. Chocolat also has an enhanced sense of smell, able to smell the scent of the magical world on someone, can unseal people that Vanilla sealed, and is a filter, a special type of witch that can touch noir hearts without dying and purify them into white hearts of innocence. Also Chocolat arguably has metafictional movement. While there are several instances of fourth wall breaking, with even a dog being excited to have more panel time, in a side story Chocolat tells Vanilla she snuck into the creator of the manga's studio which we see. This metafictional movement may make her very difficult to beat as she can just escape at any time going into a space almost no character could follow her. Chocolat also has special robes soft as a kitten's tummy, wet as morning dew, which keep her warm, particularly important for fighting ogres.
Beyond all these there's also several magical species that could get involved. Chocolat and Vanilla's class is a collection of Halloween creatures including ghouls and ghosts, skeletons, and walking pumpkins. The underworld has a vicious species called the Bionic Wolves, which get bigger and stronger the more you fear it. The magical world is host to an extremely dangerous plant species called Mandragoras who if picked from the ground will create a scream that instantly kills all who hear it. Finally probably the biggest threat is the Nihilist Spider, a giant spider made to erase the forgotten path to the magical world. The Nihilist Spider is a spider strong enough that even Chocolat and Pierre couldn't beat it without deception and working together, its blood being a darkness that can transport one to another dimension. The Nihilist Spider creates webs that erase anything that touches them; people or magic, and even spacetime. This erasure is so potent that it would erase even the forgotten path, a path between human world the magical world containing endless darkness and whole galaxies in some unknown time. Chocolat only managed to get around it by exploiting their shared history, as the Nihilist Spider used to be her mount in the magical world before its current job.
So how to fight this verse? Well while the verse has really broken offenses including existence erasure, reality-warping, and soul stealing its defenses aren't that good. Witches can be completely stopped by basic binding, characters using wind manipulation to keep them from speaking or stealing their voices. Even the fearsome Nihilist Spider was stopped basically by Chocolat distracting it from the front, and Pierre attacking it from behind where it couldn't block an attack. The verses defenses include a general resistance to emotional manipulation, Chocolat's robes protecting from the cold, basic magic forcefields, ogres regen and ghost astral existence, of which only the last two require any real strategy to get around. The verse also lacks much in the way of advanced fighting skills, mostly relying on magic. Speaking of emotional manipulation however, the power is actually really strong in the verse. While the heart of a witch is harder to get then a human heart, witches' souls can't generate new hearts if their heart is taken, so if her heart is taken she dies instantly. The combination of a highly stoic heart resistant to emotional manipulation along with extreme emotional manipulation is what makes the ogres so dangerous, their ability to take hearts and not have their noir hearts taken in turn. Of the four strongest threats at this tier Vanilla's timidity and lack of confidence and Chocolat's impulsive anger can both be manipulated, and the Nihilist Spider, while harder, can be manipulated with it only not really working on Pierre due to his specifically high resistance.
In addition the verse relies on ecure, the magical energy of emotions to perform their fear. Energy-draining can completely remove their magic, and in places without ecure like the human world, magic is vastly harder to do to the point that Chocolat couldn't fly in the human world for a long time when it's as natural as walking in the magical world. BFR-ing one to a place without magic is a threat to basically everyone in the verse. Haux and Saule also have a forest in the magical world where magic can't grow, presumably due to the strange nature of the forest, where BFR-ing any magic-user would completely nullify their powers.
This leads into a very specific strategy I think would be strong, that being sufficiently strong plant manipulation. Plants and herbs in the Sugar Sugar Rune-verse are quite strong, being the source of potions, thorny vines being able to bind a witch to keep her from casting, creating forests that nullfiy magic, and including the extremely dangerous Mandragora which can kill anyone with its cry. This brings me to my first counter
Poison Ivy from DC Comics
Poison Ivy is comparable in speed to her girlfriend Harley Quinn who has lightning timed and has withstood full force strikes from Clayface, who is considered one of the physically strongest Batman villains, putting her as roughly about on par with the speed and power of the verse, if a bit on the slower side.
Poison Ivy has a connection to the green that lets her sense flora on a city-wide scale at least and summon plants from across the planet. Given she is immune to all floral abilities she could simply summon up mandragora whose scream would insta-kill anyone nearby. For longer range options she could summon the anti-magic forest of Haux and Saule or simply bind any witch she's fighting with vines. She is particularly good at using poisons to induce brainwashing or paralysis. The former could just easily take advantage of the verse's weakness, by allowing her to steal her hearts (and her pheremones have worked on women before), while the latter would keep anyone nearby from interefering with magic as she did so. Her mind hax has worked at least briefly on characters with vastly better emotional resistance then anyone in the verse like Superman and Batman.
In terms of defense, Poison Ivy can distract with armies of plant/animal hybrids she's created before (which may be even stronger if she can incorporate things like Mandragora/Bionic Wolf), create a plant duplicate of herself, or layers of plant armor to keep them from reaching her. With this she can even probably defeat the Nihilist Spider, decieving it with a clone or minions from in front and then killing it from behind. Notably no one in Sugar Sugar Rune has demonstrated fire manipulation naturally which is traditionally Ivy's weakness and it's possible their emotional manipulation wouldn't work on Ivy as Ivy due to her mutation is described as more plant than animal, and one in the verse has shown the ability to affect non-animal based life. Especially given she's vastly more intelligent than anyone in the verse creating advanced technology like genetically enginerring a mind controlling plant and is a vastly more skilled fighter, being roughly on par with Harley Quinn and Catwoman.
There's really only three threats I can think of. One is that as a plant Poison Ivy needs nutrients in soil, water, and sun to survive. Magical world has stars but they're strange orange stars and the world has a different physics to the human world meaning she may starve in the magical world with no way to get back. The second is the Ogres in general. While the cold probably wouldn't bother her as she's withstood extreme cold before, the noir hearts explicitly draw out the lifeforce of animals and plants, and if she got around a black noir heart, it would likely kill her. Finally Poison Ivy can't hit the ghosts, though she can manipulate others into doing it for her. While none of these are likely a problem if Poison Ivy wins quickly, for a less flashy but arguably more efficient counter in the long-run one could us
Kyubey from the Puella Magi-verse
Kyubey is fast enough to avoid repeated attacks from Homura, putting it in line with the speed of the verse. While its power is neglible for the verse, it's not required.
Kyubey is an incubator, a species that is a Type 4+ civilization battling entropy focused on extracting energy from emotions. This is a verse of a magical humanoid species that extract magical energy of such signicant quantity it can create a universal space. It's a setting perfectly set up for Kyubey to manipulate its way to controlling. Kyubey is a skilled psychological manipulator with an intelligence cosmically higher than anyone in the verse and could easily manipulate someone like Vanilla into contracting, and eventually turning into a witch, a being far stronger then anyone in the tier.
Kyubey can come back from having its body destroyed any number of time, and it has literally no emotions meaning its almost impossible to stop for the verse. Witches can maybe steal Kyubey's soul but such is a forbidden technique they wouldn't want to do, and Kyubey can do the same to them. The Nihilist Spider's existence erasure...MIGHT work, but Kyubey can far better manipulate the Nihilist Spider then Chocolat.
Kyubey can manipulate its way into extracting and utilizing the immense magical power of emotions, even a full universe of it, that exists in the verse, and stopping anyone who threatens it goals via soul stealing and sealing or teleporting into an area like the anti-magic woods with hyperadvanced technology, where it can hax anyone who tries to follow. Incubators can even go inside peoples dreams, a place no one in the verse can follow similar to Chocolat's metafictional movement.
However, if someone were to try and use their emotional sensing on Kyubey, they'd realize it lacks emotions which may make them worry about it, and Kyubey who looks "cute" in-universe, would consequently be seen as ugly in the magical world, a world where scary is attractive. While these can be worked around, Kyubey has one more threat which is if it unluckly runs across Pierre too early and doesn't escape fast enough, Pierre could just freeze Kyubey and it wouldn't really have much it could do to stop that.
However the ultimate counter for this tier is a character I think could blend elements from both of these counters, that being
Zetsu from Naruto
Zetsu's power and speed varies depending on who he's currently attached too, but even attached to very low tier characters, Zetsu's power jumped to a level equal if not high for this tier's higher end interpretation given he was able to fight the Mizukage and amping young Obito to defeat a platoon of elite ninja from the mist village, scaling to at least above Chunin's feats of Kidomaru firing an arrow at lighting speed and characters moving relative to Sasuke's chidori which is made of lightning as well as to Jiboro's feat of throwing a Choji who grown massively larger than the surronding trees putting it about the power level of the higher end interpretation of Vanilla's beach creation feat something that was difficult for her although was done in the human world. Zetsu even by himself would thus be easily a high tier in terms of power and speed for the tier, complimented by his massive skill advantage. While more of a spy then a frontline fighter in Naruto, Zetsu demonstrates far more advanced combat skill than anyone in the SSR-verse, having mastered all 5 nature transformations a feat of masterful skill in the Naruto-verse.
Zetsu is the embodied will of Kaguya who manipulated all the events of Naruto, 1,000 years of history for the purposes of Kaguya's resurrection including every major event. Zetsu could pretty easily manipulate the emotions and psychologies of the verse, especially because his spooky appearence would fit the magical world way more then Kyubey and he actually has emotions. But while he has emotions, his emotions are formed from the will of Kaguya and he could easily resist all the non-physical hax of the verse. Sugar Sugar Rune from Zetsu's perspective is basically a verse of Genjutsu users, and while some are quite impressive, Zetsu was able to resist the Infinite Tsukuyomi, a Genjutsu cast on everyone on the world at once, a mental hax feat vastly anything in the verse. Zetsu could easily fit in to magical world society, manipulating people psychologically or stealing their hearts if needed while pretending to simply be another spooky halloween monster. Zetsu's usual tactic of inflitration would likely be quite effective especially when combined with his ability to shapeshift, which he could use to manipulate peoples emotions by pretending to be someone else. You might think Chocolat's superhuman smell would be able to detect him, but White Zetsu's Mayfly technique allows him to even copy Shinboi's unique chakra signature meaning even sensory Ninja were unable to detect him. In contrast Zetsu has his own potent sensory abilities, able to sense Jinchuriki's chakra from other countries, meaning he would have constant awareness of any threats current position.
Zetsu's usual tactic of stealth-ing behind someone, and attaching himself to them, paralyzing them allowing him to possess them would absolutely work on the verse as paralyzing a witch would clearly keep her from using her magic. This would give him the ability to use any of the abilities of the verse except with basically limitless stamina as he pump energy inside the person like he did to Obito to keep him from dying from Rene Rebirth. Even if caught out in the open by numbers, Zetsu can use his malleability and elemental manipulation to fight multiple people at once. Zetsu as mentioned has mastered all 5 basic transformations and so can use lightning, water, and wind, manipulation better then any demonstrated in the verse to counter their own, can use earth manipulation to counter the verse's sand manipulation, and his fire manipulation to counter darkness/ice manipulation. Only the verse's light manipulation does he not really have a defense against but the only known witch specializing in it is Sylvia who usually starts with summoning an enemy's worst fear, which Zetsu could likely resist due ot the above Infinite Tsukuyomi resistance feat. Zetsu can even hit ghosts as chakra can affect astral entities. Zetsu can also drain energy with his spores, even being able to drain the energy of Kurama, Naruto, and Sasuke, meaning he would pretty much instantly stamina-deplete anyone in the verse he gets a spore on. This would also provide a resistance to Noir hearts since they kill by draining lifeforce, but Zetsu himself can drain chakra from others, and has himself a massive amount of chakra and regen due to having Hashirama cells.
Most of this is what Black Zetsu could do without White Zetsu and would be enough, but White Zetsu adds a few extra broken abilities, most notably wood jutsu which would hypothetically allow him to manipulate the trees of Haux and Saule's forest and the mandragora. White Zetsu also gave the ability to fuse with the surroundings, and while a witch could hypothetically warp the surroundings to hit him still, this dramatically amps Zetsu's speed and gives him a massive stealth advantage making him another massive degree harder for the verse to stop. Oh and White Zetsu also showed the ability to grow THOUSANDS OF CLONES OF HIMSELF and hide them all underground to come up if he dies or all at once for an army, and if he does that it's obviously the end of the verse. A similar sized army of basic ogres was going to destroy magical world, and one Zetsu is a threat for the entire tier.
World Scale Threat:
So the strongest characters in the Sugar Sugar Rune-verse are the witches and warlock of legend, and when they're actually doing things it's like an entirely different series. 6 witches and 1 warlock fled from the human world to create a magical world, literally creating the entire dimension, a dimension very clearly its own universe with just one of the paths to it containing "endless darkness" as well as whole galaxies and the underworld palace being stated to have infinite rooms. In terms of speed, Chocolat's grandfather easily flew to Saturnus, another planet in the magical world in a short time for a vacation. While it's unknown how Chocolat's grandfather ranks in the magical hierarchy, contextually it's pretty clear that he's not as strong as the witches of legend the top tiers of the magical world. As such the top tiers of the verse reach FTL Universal.
The warlock of legend is Glace, grand duke of darkness and essentially the big bad of the manga. It is said that the 6 witches of legend were initially his wives, but in trying to please all of them, he could satisify none of them, who sealed him away together, making a seal only someone of Glace's blood could break.
The biggest threat of this tier is by far Glace. Glace is millenia old, and despite being sealed away all that time has shown through cosmic awareness that he has watched Chocolate even when she went to the human world. Glace is a cosmically powerful warlock capable of blanketing the magical world with the life-draining darkness of Noir and is implied he could do the same with the human world. Even more then darkness he is associated with ice, called the "Legendary Warlock of Ice and Snow" and capable of freezing the entire magical world. His power is so great that at his defeat, the stars fell from the sky due to his control of the world, claiming that he himself was the world. His power comes from his immense noir heart of hatred, granting himself the power of darkness and all the powers of the magical world, literally every ability of the previous tier. It certainly makes sense that it is stated that even everyone else in the magical world could not beat him even attacking at once.
Glace also has a few more special unique techniques. He can energy drain, even draining the power of the Fire Crystal which allowed a normal witch to gain power relevant to his. Glace created a dome around his palace that reflected all magic that was tried to use against it. He also can create a whirlwind of noir energy that made people similar to him in power shake from its power and was threatening the magical world. Glace also has creation and time manipulation for creating the magical world and underworld, a dimension where time moves 10 times slower. There's also the Moebius spell which causes space to cycle in on itself so one can travel infinitely and never reach where one's going inside Glace's palace, but its unclear if Glace caused this or its part of the seal on him.
The magical world does contain two witches strongly implied to be of at least relevant power to Glace, the successors of the witches of legend. One of these is Queen Candy, queen of the magical world and mother of Vanilla, known for her wisdom and intellect who ruled over magical world fairly despite attempts from the magical world senate to undermine her control. During the climax of the series, Queen Candy turns herself into pure spirit to carry the emotional energy of everyone trapped by Glace up to Cinnamon and Chocolat against Glace, though such ended her life. Cinnamon herself is the other one, the original rival to Candy for queenship, and mother of Chocolat. She is a cunning witch that managed to trick Glace despite his cosmic awareness, and liker her daughter is a filter, the two of them believing they could use their filter powers to purify Glace's massive noir heart. Cinnamon also showed some resistance to transmutation, maintaining her magical power as a cat and being able to claw open Glace's anti-magic dome. Candy and Cinnamon are master mages and should have at least most of the powers of the prior tier.
Roughly comparable to the queen are the magical world senate, a group of politicans and mages of high rank who act against her. Not much is known about their abilities but they're implied to be collectively roughly on Candy's level, and they control all spells that can be cast in magical world again showing they should have basically all abilities of the prior tier. The last threat on this tier is Fire Crystal Chocolat. Chocolat temporarily gained the Fire Crystal, a magical item that boosted her power to battle Glace, and gave her fire magic capable of warding off Glace's darkness and ice manipulation. Otherwise she seems to basically have the same abilities. The Fire Crystal normally sits within Queen Candy's wand, but went to aid Chocolat at her will.
So how do you fight this? These are extremely versatile hax magical users who unlike the prior do actually have pretty good defenses. Glace technically had the weakness that he was somewhat low on stamina, but this was a temporary weakness caused by his long imprisonment, and may not really apply here since it wouldn't apply to his prime self. Glace himself does have some weaknesses, one being he's arrogant and despite his cosmic awareness can be distracted only focusing on what he cares too. Powerful enough fire manipulation can also hold off his cold and darkness. Sealing obviously worked on Glace, but it took basically the 6 strongest witches in history to seal him away. Purification should also work as it was used to defeat him, though that would only really work on him rather than the other threats.
BFR would be a pretty potent ability in the verse as even the legendary witches were weaker in the human world to the point it was implied humans were a threat, hence them fleeing to a dimension of their own creation, filled with magical emotional energy of humans where they would be much stronger. I think the biggest weakness of the verse is the fact that all the top tiers use magic for all their abilities. Any kind of anti-magic or energy absorption that can absorb the energy used for magic cripples the verse. The most ideal strategies don't so much focus on fighting the inhabitants of the verse but on the verse itself, attacking the magical space the witches rely on.
So who would be a good counter? Well my first idea is
Tyrannon the Thousand-Headed God from Champions.
Tyrannon is somewhere in the top 3 strongest magical villains of the Champions Universe along with Shadow Destroyer and Takofanes, easily scaling into the universal range as it's pretty consistent that the strongest master villains are universal threats, as well as Tyrannon's direct feat of shaping his home dimension of Thulkos. There is some objection to this based on the note that his reality-warping is "only" galaxy level, but reality-warping capability isn't neccesary the same as destructive capacity. Just logically reality-warping something seems harder than just destroying it. In terms of speeds, even relatively low level Champions have lightspeed capabilities and Tyrannon should be faster than his hated rival's Istvatha's minions starships which can travel 1 lightyear per day, speeds over 365x lightspeed, giving him a distinct stat advantage over the verse.
Tyrannon is a gestalt entity residing within 888 bodies, 800 of which are his Emissaries which are individually as strong as a normal witch in the SSR-verse, 80 of which are Viceroys vastly stronger than anyone but a legendary witch or warlock, and the 8 thrones are the main threats each equal to one of the legendary witches, of which there's only 5 threats on this tier capable of one, one-on-one including the entire magical senate as one and Fire Crystal Chocolat meaning that even generous Tyrannon has the upper tier outnumbered nearly 2 on 1 and realistically if the Viceroys can seperate the senate and fight them it's more like directly 2 on 1.
Tyrannon has a vast magical arsenal of his own, easily capable of matching the verse's versatility, but it's one of his two most well known techniques that would make him almost uncounterable. During a time of a rare cosmic alignment in Thulkos, Tyrannon can bring his 8 thrones together, making him a bit more vulnerable than normal, Tyrannon can use the technique "Cosmic Fusion" to absorb another dimension into his own, rewriting its laws with his own space's rules, his ultimate quest being to absorb all the multiverse into his dimension and eventually into himself. Hypothetically Tyrannon would be more vulnerable during this...but the SSR-verse has no paths to Thulkos and wouldn't have enough time to make one in this scenario, and even if they did Tyrannon has already absorbed all magical energy of his own dimension meaning that any witch, even a legendary one, that went into Thulkos to stop him would be relatively powerless and helpless.
Even if they do engage in a direct fight, Tyrannon has a bunch of advantages. His other most distinctive ability is why he is known as souleater and the cosmic cancer. Tyrannon can consume entities body and soul into his being assimilating their energy and intellects. Tyrannon was once a single member of a species of wizards who sealed godlike spirits in their bodies but powerhungry Tyrannon began consuming the other wizards absorbing their spirits as well. There's little to reason to think this form of absorption wouldn't work on the SSR-verse, especially given their lack of relative power absorption and soul manipulation resistance, his ability to effect spiritual entities suggesting he could even effect Spirit Form Candy, consuming her like literal candy. Tyrannon also has magic barriers and extremely skilled spellcasting from his background giving him an ability to defend against most of the verse strategies. Against Glace by far the strongest single character in SSR, Tyrannon can not only seal his spirit within him and absorb his power but even at range is known for literally creating suns giving him the title "Sunmaker" and the Fire Throne focuses on fire magic which would probably allow him to ward off the darkness and cold of Glace.
Tyrannon's main throne focuses on plant manipulation and could very likely summon or even amplify the Mandragora scream. It's unknown if this would work on Glace, with a fair argument for either side but it just gives another broken thing he could potentially do, outside of literal galaxy level reality warping capable of reshaping an entire galaxy to his will or mental manipulation able to enslave people across his entire dimension, universal mind manipulation that could let him simply flash absorb the hearts of everyone in SSR.
However Tyrannon does have one weakness which is he's extremely arrogant and will accept suboptimal fighting conditions to prove his greatness. It's very plausible someone like Cinnamon could manipulate him into fighting in the Magical World and walking into a trap. Now granted even in the Magical World Tyrannon has an immense chance of winning but for a more invulnerable character you could use
Taishakuten from RG Veda.
Taishakuten absorbed the previous Ashura, Ashura being a tribe of war gods meant to bring about the end of Earth, Heaven, and Hell, Heaven at least being considered a universal space with "endless land." and which one of his tribe in Tsubasa being considered a more powerful wizard then Fai whose out of control power collapsed a dimension. He's also far faster than Larg the non-fighter who was able to launch "100,000,000 tweets per second" and as a god is presumably stronger than spirits like the Clow Spirits "Light" "Dark" and "Shadow." putting him similar to the tier in stats.
Taishakuten was the primary general of the last Emperor of Heaven and is a powerful thunder god who can use his burning white lightning to keep away the cold and darkness of Glace if they were to fight, though he doesn't really need too. As a magician of tier equivalent to Fai, Taishakuten has an absolutely immense magical resistance allowing him to resist almost all of the abilities of the verse.
Taishakuten also has sealing abilities strong enough to seal the next Ashura from incarnating which he could presumably use on Glace as the old witches did. He's also a powerful and skilled intellect, who can make plans that span the generations and rules over Heaven, suggesting he can at least compete intellectually with Candy and Cinnamon.
Taishakuten also has a level of absorption, absorbing the last Ashura and gaining his powers, although its not clear if it requires defeating them first. Regardless after absorbing Ashura, he's gained the war god tribe's power of ultimate destruction, to bring about the destruction of Heaven, Earth, and Hell which would allow him to destroy spirit form Candy and the ghosts of SSR with fire.
That said there's two possible counters the verse has. While the Moebius Trap can't be cast on him due to his magic resistance, it's possible he could be tricked into one by Cinnamon or Candy. If trapped in an infinitely looping space it's unknown if he could get out. Fai's mentor, one of the Ashura tribes is implied to have dimensional travel as Fai was worried he would pursue him through the worlds, but its unknown if this was a learned skill as it seems unrelated to the powers of a war god. Beyond that, Taishakuten's powers come from having absorbed the last emperor, something that sent his heart into spiraling despair. It's possibly Cinnamon or Fire Crystal Chocolat could purify Taishakuten cleansing his heart of its burden and removing the wrongfully gotten war god powers. If such happened, Taishakuten while still a threat with similar raw stats and divine thunder, would lost his resistances and could be beaten 2 or more of the tier's fighters.
But the best counter I think incorporates the best elements of both of the prior counters. For the ultimate counter to this verse you can use
Onaga, the Dragon King, from Mortal Kombat.
Onaga is powerful enough that Shao Kahn resorted to poisoning him rather than fighting him outright, Shao Kahn being the one who was able to merge two realms each the sizes of universes or more as one realm contained a sea that was stated to be bottomless, without end. He's also easily relative to the lightspeeds attacks of Kotal Kahn. This suggests he would be a bit slow for the tier, but dramatically strong in raw power, though he could supplement the speed gap due to his massive skill advantage as he can fight evenly other immortal deities that fight constantly, a level of superhuman skill and coordination way above the SSR-verse.
Onaga is a dragon, and as such has his species natural resistance to magic to the point that even the sorcerers Quan Chi and Shang Tsung could not affect him with their magic, suggesting he'd be able to just flat out tank most if not all of the abilities of the verse. His draconic eyes also gives him another power, a very underrated but extremely strong ability in this matchup, the ability to see souls and into other dimensions. Seeing souls isn't particularly new to the verse, it's basically just the spell to sees peoples hearts passively but seeing through dimensions only Glace was able to do and combined with his travel between dimensions at will, he could simply ambush anyone else in the verse save for Glace, appearing out of nowhere when they don't suspect and hitting them off-guard. This also means he could simply escape a Moebius Trap by going through dimensions.
In combat with Glace Onaga can fight off an initial darkness and cold attack via his draconic fire breath and by then it would be too late as Onaga has the ability to copy abilities after seeing them and if he copied the Ogres ability to manipulate noir freely he would become essentially immune to most of Glace's magic. Literally if Onaga sees any Ogre in the verse use their powers he'll get some resistance to Noir anyway, something aided by him being able to watch them from other dimensions.
He could also manipulate things via astral projecting into the Magical World from another dimension manipulating someone like Chocolate, Glace, or the Magical Senate all of whom have notable personality flaws much in the same way as he manipulated Shujinko his entire life. Only Glace would be able to detect him doing thing, and as mentioned Glace is someone Onaga could manipulate himself. On the other Onaga could use his dragon heart to create a horde of zombie warriors that were capable of battling Earthrealm's protectors, relative to Onaga himself. A similarly sized army of ogres at the end of the manga was a threat to the Magical World, and while not as hax Onaga's zombie army is vastly more powerful, especially if Onaga can revive the fallen of Magical World.
You might think that Chocolate or Cinnamon could purify Onaga as his body was originally Reptile's that Onaga possessed and infused with his own energy transforming it. While Onaga's magic resistance may protect against this, even if it worked, the Magical World has its own dragons, and Onaga could infuse his energy into a dragon egg to be reborn again so long as they lived. Even beyond that filter abilities require physical contact and Onaga can easily keep at range if need be with fire breath and winds sweeping from his wings.
But his real strongest assest alongside his magic resistance is the Kamidogu, six enchanted artifacts that are his goal throughout his entire game. Their ability allows Onaga to absorb realms into him, suggesting he could just flatout absorb the Magical World, power nullifying the entire verse. Onaga has the potentially to immediatly absorb and power nullify everyone in the verse, can resist almost anything they can do, can recover or protect from the rest, and can raise an unending zombie army relative to the roughly 5 top tiers of the verse.
And that's how to be OP in Sugar Sugar Rune. Happy Halloween!
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ReplyDeleteHAPPY HALLOWEEN IMP! and PERFECT Blog Choice for the Occassion! SSR was always a verse i was very interested in, i mean Halloween Themed Magical Girls? Sign Me Up. But as hard as this is to believe, I am even MORE interested after reading this! This blogs description of the verse was Great and extremely captivating, showing cool themeing and a Vast dynamic arsenal of powers and magic that were not only cool but worked into the verse's own unique magic system! I was blown away that some of the feats were as impressive as they are and by how much of an Absolute final boss that Glace was! I thought this was suppose to be a cute magical romance show about two best friends competing for the same thrown with a Halloweeny twist. But apparently it also has an apocalyptic threat to the multiverse, that they had to stop and people even died in the conflict! Magical Girl shows never cease to amaze me! Vanilla and Chocolate of course seem really cool, I like how they keep them distinct with Having Vanilla be a more technical supergenius, while Chocolate as an all out magic warrior, but also don't feel the need to make their strong suits a complete weakness for the other, having Vanilla and Chocolate still be very Powerful/Smart in their own right. The huge disparity between the first and second tiers made the counters really diverse I thought, not every day you see High tiers from Clamp AND DC Street Tiers. I Really liked Poison Ivy as a counter, I thought it was simple but extremely effective and really showcased how Badass and potent her abilities are, The fact that you noticed Plant Manipulation is uniquely OP in this setting I find to be really impressive and I love how you pointed out it would even allow her to create anti magic areas and pull death hax sonic attacks. But WOW WAS THAT Zetsu guy One Overpowered Dude, Like the fact that he is flatly immune to all their higher plane hax, is actually notable stronger and better at fighting, And can induce Paralysis to stop them in their tracks to defeat them is broken enough, but then you can potentially have him able to make an entire army of himself and stuff, My Word. And the top tier counters were equally great, Its funny how its a very specific tier this occupy but we already knew 3 verses with the perfect stats.....all ironically very different with the whole Superhero Champions, Sorcery CLAMP and Wuxia Mortal Kombat, but here that gave this such variety. Onaga was Obviously my fave counter here and still one of my all time favorite things I have ever read online is when you put him in a prediction blog! so seeing him here again to showcase his awesome might was absolutely something to behold, Happy Halloween Imp Chan! you already have certainly made mine all the more special!
ReplyDeleteHappy late Halloween! I may be repeating myself here, but this seems like a fun and interesting verse. It has a nice Halloween theming, while not getting too dark. It looks like the series changes significantly with the addition of Glace, which I also find interesting. I think its cool how you highlight all these magical girl series.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite counter out of these is probably Zetsu; I found it funny how you carefully laid out why Zetsu would be OP for the verse and then go like "Oh yeah, and he can create thousands of clones of himself as White Zetsu" which pretty much obliterates any possible doubts that were left regarding his efficiency as a counter :P. Kyubey was also a pretty thematic and well thought out counter; he'd be a formidable emotionless manipulator here just like in Madoka. I like how you laid out 888 bodies Tyrannon resides in and who they would be comparable to in the verse. Come to think of it, it seems like counters that use high numbers of minions, clones, or the like seems like a general theme in the counters.
Happy Halloween to you too, though I suppose it's closer to Christmas now lol. Hope you had a great one. This series sounds like one that could be enjoyed all year-round, though I can see how it's got great Halloween vibes with that class of ghouls, ghosts and goblins. My interest in it has skyrocketed as a result of this blog; Sugar Sugar Rune's gotta be in my top ten most wanted magical girl series to watch. I think the element of it that grabs me the most out of what you presented in your blog is the dynamic between the two main characters. They both have personalities I would enjoy see clashing and complimenting each other, and the way their social situation flips when they go to the human world sounds like it has great potential for storytelling.
ReplyDeleteBut on to the meat and potatoes of the blog, how to counter this verse? Sort of an unusual tier you have here, where everyone's glass cannons so to speak. Cool of you to notice that energy-draining also works on magic here due to the nature of this verse's magic. And even cooler to suggest plant manipulation. I tend to ignore this niche ability unless it's a heavily nature-focused setting, but you've come up with a bevy of useful things that can be done with plants specific to Sugar Sugar Rune. I was so happy to see Poison Ivy make an appearance; she's one of my fave DC gals! I never expected to see her when I read the title and intro of this blog but for the reasons I just mentioned, she fits like a glove. Definitely my favorite counter of this tier even if the other two have less weaknesses and get the job done arguably faster. That menace, Kyubey, is in a prime position to screw with magical girls once again in Sugar Sugar Rune. Being a void of emotion is very strong here, though to SSR-verse's credit, freezing is a good way to circumvent Kyubey's infinite extra lives. Zetsu was a character I've never even heard of before but boy did you ever find a perfect counter for this tier! His spores alone would likely wipe out this verse (at this tier), but he's got a whole toolbox full of useful tricks to circumvent every threat they could pose to him. He can even put numbers on his side to infiltrate and destroy the world as an entire army of instantly deadly, virtually invincible Zetsus.
Gonna talk about the second half of this blog in a reply to this comment, seems I've hit the character limit.
Cont from above
DeleteAs for the second and final tier, holy cow that jumped up a lot! Did not expect this cutesy series to get this extreme, you'd think I'd learn that about MG series after all these years. Fixing the poor defenses problem of the previous tier while maintaining the wide variety of hax and amping the raw power up as well, it sounds like this tier will be much trickier to counter. And then you reminded me that anti-magic was a thing lol. I'd ask why that wasn't the answer to the previous tier too, but I suspect it's hard to find that many good anti-magic counters for such a low tier. Except for the final and best counter, these ones were all-new characters to me so thanks for introducing me to some very powerful ones. Tyrannon is a very cool concept for a villain. Being able to assimilate both the entire verse and anything within it on sort of a macro or micro scale depending on what he wants is a huge advantage considering his opposition can't do the same. And thankfully, he's not one of those power/energy stealing characters that needs time to ramp up; he starts off strong! Taishakuten seems to match the verse by being such a magically powerful being he can take anything they throw at him and dish it back out, with that handy absorbtion power as well. I'm glad you were able to stick a mage in here for this verse. His weaknesses are a potential issue, wise of you to note those and keep searching for the perfect OP counter. I could totally see this guy's heart being “cleansed”, a very magical girl solution to the threat he poses. Onaga returns to your blogs and fits in excellently as the best and my favorite counter for this tier. He's the one who most made me say “that's OP.” Magic resistance, dimensional mastery, specific counters to the strongest mage's preferred elements, that copy ability...it's a bonanza of counters! The Kamidogu feels like cheating (in a good way!); Onaga could sweep the verse with that busted power alone. You've struck another home run Imp, way to perfectly counter this verse!