In every profession, there are people that rise to the top, the elite of the elite, from their hard work and dedication, even in ones as fanciful and focused on teamwork as the Magical Girl. But Magical Girls require teamwork, and even the most elite girls will eventually be won over by a naive magical girl teammate with a lot of heart to save a magical world tree. But what if they came to blows...
Karin Miyoshi of the Sanshuu Middle School Hero Club from Yuki Yuna is a Hero
Diana Cavendish of Luna Nova Magical Academy from Little Witch Academia
Karin Miyoshi:
It had been centuries since the gods of the Heavens had declared all humanity must die and launched their attack, leaving the Earthly Gods to desperately defend by becoming the divine Tree Shinju. It was an age of monsters seeking naught but the destruction of humanity, and heroes appointed by the Shinju to stop them. Karin Miyoshi was born to this world, the younger sister of a member of the Taisha, the overseeing governmental body working tirelessly and ruthlessly to preserve humanity. Wanting to step from her elder brother's shadow, she began working tirelessly day and night without stop to become one of the protectors of the Shinju, a Hero.
Karin was selected as one of a class of candidates to be a hero to the place of the recently fallen Gin Minowa. She was the top of her class alongside her rival Mebuki Kusunoki. The two knew only one would be hero pushing themselves tirelessly. However while Mebuki trained only to better herself, Karin helped her classmates and aided the sick. As a result, Mebuki ended up surpassing Karin getting higher marks in their final exam and defeating her in a kendo duel. Despite this, it was Karin who the Shinju chose to become a hero, because a hero is more then her power of body and a mind, a hero is her soul.
Karin was sent to help the four completely untrained heroes of the Sanchuu Middle School Hero Club. While initially disdainful of their informal ways, she gradually grew to realize they were the friends she never knew she wanted. When it became apparent their entire world was a lie, and that the Taisha were essentially sacrificing them to preserve the Shinju, Karin stuck by her new friends. The five of them managed to stop two seperate world-threatening calamities and with their heroism convince the Shinju to give its own life to end the Heavenly Gods and allow humanity to decide their own destiny.
Skills/Intelligence:
Hero training consists of martial arts training, zen meditation, and stamina training.
Karin is an extremely natural talented warrior who has trained obsessively every day for the years of being a hero and a hero candidate, focusing all her time and entire life on being as strong a hero as she can be. Because of this Karin is perhaps the most skilled fighter in the entire series. Karin was able to perfectly match every move fighting alongside Yuki Yuna (8:42), the girl with the single highest natural hero aptitude (14:42) and who eventually defeated the Heavenly Gods themselves and was able to briefly fighting against an Enraged going all out Fu who had at the time two fairies to Karin's one (17:15), which should have given Fu an immense advantage in raw power. This same Fu from the strength of her rage was able to fight the aforementioned Yuki Yuna to a standstill despite Yuna's natural talent and the two both have two fairies. (18:12)
Karin has demonstrated A tier skill feats and scaling. She scales above her teammate Mimori Togo who had a one-girl crusade against justice apprehending criminals without her powers as National Defense Mask, (18:48) can effectively use a blade with her mouth (15:45), and while blind, deaf, and without usage of one arm and one leg, managed to quickly use superleaping to aid the other Heroes in blocking a sun-like fireball from the Leo Vertex. (7:35) She has skill in most forms of athletics and was described as a nearly professional tier swimmer from her training (10:05) and has a high level of academic intelligence as we well, scoring almost full points on her entrance exam, describing it as "almost nothing." (4:22) Karin in particular however, is trained in the usage of twin blades. This is a form of combat that allows for taking on multiple enemies, but requires impeccable spatial awareness. (6:54)
Hero System:
Karin was given by the Taisha a terminal to utilize something called the Hero System, with the strongest version Karin has used being Hero System Version Three. This System takes the blessing of the Shinju given to some humans and is refined through technology, making it a fusion of the magical and the technological.
Without purity and a firm willpower, a girl cannot transform a Hero.
Heroes have the blessing of Shinju's power itself infused into their biology itself
and all things of a Hero is recorded on the conceptual plane within the Shinju itself
meaning the spirits of every Hero to ever live forever resides within the Shinju. (12:48)
From their fusion with the Shinju, Heroes have a heightened degree of regeneration, to the point of easily recovering quickly from a fight, though it is not on par with the Vertexes
as well seemingly as have a higher degree of endurance. Hero Gin continued to fight after implaed through multiple times (18:40) and Hero Wakaba continued to fight after getting broken bodies, internal organs injured, and the rest of her body burned
Heroes are not just flesh and blood but can be said to be ideals embodied. This odd biology also allows them to do things like drink down large amounts of water (11:50), enhanced endurance to allow them to fight for three hours at a time as a time by resting in rotation
and is said to give them enhanced eyesight, enhanced awareness, and a strenghened mind. However the most notable advantage being a Hero gives is a massive enhancement to ones physical capabilities.
Power:
It is a statement made many times that the vertexes, the monsters sent by the Heavenly Gods were completely unaffected by any of humanity's weapons consistent with the fact that they destroyed all of humanity that wasn't protected by the Earthly Gods, depicting the general theme that the forces of nature far exceed the capabilities of humanity.
The most powerful human weapon ever devised was the Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons, though in theory its capacity could have reached 100 megatons.
This is consistent with the fact that the vertexes on numerous points are stated to causive massive tremors and earthquakes, tsunami, and unspecific natural disasters with it being heavily implied that these vertexes were the unevolved vertexes prior to any need to induce rapid evolution, the basic "stardust."
The Heroes are very consistently stated to have been given the power of the Earthly gods, the divine power Ikutachi, which would allow them to damage this basic level of vertex even without their weapons.
The power of the Gods fodderized this level of vertex, to the point that the first generation of Heroes would regularly fight hundreds of these unevolved vertexes.
In response to the threat of the Heroes, the vertexes underwent a form of hyper-evolution creating stronged evolved vertexes by combining together with many other unevolved vertex, with power "incomparable" to their original state. Even before gaining the power of the fairies, Heroes were strong enough to contend, with great difficulty with these evolved vertexes. The Hero Sumi launched arrows as a weapon, each comparable to a "missile"
and Wakaba Nogi, the strongest of the first generation of Heroes, bisected a serpentine vertex made of hundreds of unevolved vertexes
Prior to the Mankai system, the Heroes used "Trump Cards", temporary power-ups from drawing on the powers of fairies representing mythological figures. The Hero Yuuna Takashima drew from Ichimokuren, the fairy embodying wind and storms, a power of 1000 punches, each with the force of a nuclear bomb
Yet later after getting an even more evolved Trump Card Shuten-Doji, she was able to to pulverize this vertex's main body in one strike.
This was the power needed to defeat the 12 Zodiac Vertex in their "perfected" or fully evolved forms. However with the introduction of the Hero System 3, Heroes were assigned fairies giving them massively more power.
Upon appearing for the first time, Karin Miyoshi easily defeated the Capricorn Vertex (0:57), declaring herself the strongest hero. She then during the Season 1 penultimate episode with a blade in her mouth destroyed the Sagittarius Vertex with a single slice while between Mankai with a blade held in her mouth (15:45)
And in the Post-Season 1 game "Bouquet of Brilliance" the Heroes defeat the Leo Vertex, the leader of the vertexes, and the final antagonist of Nogi Wakaba is a Hero, who destroyed all the lands of the Earth in a fiery eruption
It's not entirely clear if the game is canon, though for what it's worth it is an original story written by the same people so I think it should likely count.
There's an argument she could be even higher as End of Season 1 Yuna managed to punch through the Leo Vertex's fireball compared to a Sun and destroyed its soul with a single strike, even after her mankai and her hero form burned away (8:30) presumably relying purely on Ikutachi like the Heroes prior to the Taisha's Hero System. However this scaling really isn't narratively implied at all. It's kind of implied that the reason there were three heroes named Yuna is that the Shinju names infants born with a special essence in them Yuna, and that they have a secret power to destroy the divine, which is what Yuna used at the end of both Season 1 and the Hero Chapter.
Speed:
Karin is on the faster side for a hero, managing to catch up to Fu despite Fu having a headstart and two fairies to Karin's one. (16:55) She's likely at least somewhat comparable to the Hero Sonoko who movement was a notable fraction of the mankai transformation vines from the Shinju. (10:42) This is particularly notable as once when Yuna was in space near a Moon-sized Vertex Soul, Yuna went Mankai and these vines reached her in 2 seconds. (17:12)
Assuming the Vertex soul was at a similar distance as the real world moon, this would require speeds of 192,200,000 meters per second or 64% the speed of light. Karin is not AS fast as these, but is likely somewhat relative, and not an order of magnitude slower then them. If you use the roche limit, the minimum distance a celestial body has to be from another celestial body for the lesser to not be torn apart by the other's gravity, it would have to be at least 18,470,000 meters away meaning it be speeds of 3% the speed of light.
Karin's reaction speed and attack speed would be far faster by scaling. Karin's predecessor Gin has three feats of blocking attacks made of light, including blocking a literal rain of light in two seperate fights.
strongly suggesting Karin would scale to FTL Reactions.
This level of speed is also likely consistent if you think the Leo Vertex's fireball is actually like the Sun as Karin quickly moved a space comparable to it's diameter to aid in blocking it, with it taking upwards of 5 seconds for light to travel the diameter of the Sun. Granted the fireball definitely doesn't look the size of the sun, it looks only several times larger then them. Though you could argue that is so that the Heroes can be depicted alongside it.
The Heroes are also able to somewhat move around with difficulty when near a black hole, and are not immediatly sucked into it, and could hypothetically have left it, suggesting a movement speed a notable fraction of light's. (11:50)
Superleaping:
Superleaping is a particular ability Heroes tend to do a lot. Heroes can leap even with literally zero experience. (18:35)
Heroes regularly can leap across hundreds of meters in single bounds, and quickly cross cities with superleaping, (8:00) with the hero Wakaba clearing a kilometer in a single bound.
Yoshiteru:
As part of Hero System 2.5, Heroes were assigned a Fairy. Fairies are spirits (5:52) said to be clones of the Shinju itself, an extention of it with the sole goal of protecting Heroes from dying
It is made clear that gaining more fairies gives far greater power for each fairy, and new abilities. Fairies are the one part of the Hero System unaffected by the Hero's will, they will not let a Hero die even if she wishes too. Fairies will forcibly control the systems of the body to keep it alive if need be, such that even if a hero's heart stops beating, she will remain alive. (17:30) Fairies can protect from burning, carbon monoxide poison, and seppuku. (8:40) Fairies will automatically project a barrier to protect their heroine from danger, these barriers can allow 4 Heroes to push back a fireball from the Leo Vertex (6:12) compared to the Sun (5:50), allow a Hero to dive into a Black Hole unharmed (13:20) and even allow them to withstand a Black Hole exploding while inside. (19:40) Because the Fairy is an extention of the universe-maintaining Shinju, it is practically invulnerable physically.
The Heroes also hypothesize enemy curses should be unable to affect them due to their barriers when first encountering the effects of Sange.
Because the fairies' number infinitely and are conceptual records within the Shinju, the Fairy matched to a person reflects their inner nature. Karin's is the Stoic Samurai Fairy Yoshiteru, known for his oft refrain of "Shogyou Mujou" or "All things must pass." Karin claims he is the strongest of all fairies (7:11) and strongly implies she can control him (6:42) though this may just be her being brash
Fairies also give another ability. As a Hero fights, she builds up her "Mankai Gauge" and when it fills she can "blossom" or "Mankai"
Mankai:
Mankai is the ultimate weapon of the Heroes from System 2.5 and on. Mankai is a release of all the energy the Hero has (10:22), in which she gains an artificial extention to her body, in Karin's case, four giant mechanical katana wielding swords, flight and an upgrade in stats.
Upon first attaining their Mankai, Togo flew up to the Leo Vertex's Moon-Sized Soul up in space (15:45) and Mankai Yuna destroyed it completely with a few punches. (18:50) This is especially notable as a Vertex's soul is even tougher then it's body, with Yuna easily blowing a giant hole in the first Vertex she ever fought with her first punch as a hero (22:08), but only hurting her hand on it's soul. (3:43)
Mankai Heroes in general can one-shot the Vertexes and Washio was also able to equal the attack of the Leo Vertex, leader of the vertexes. (15:30) Likewise Mankai Fu was able to knock over a combination of 3 perfect vertexes including the Leo Vertex with a strike (10:35) and Four Mankai Heroes were able to push back a fireball compared to the Sun. (7:50)
As befitting the idea of releasing all one's energy at once, Mankai is normally heavily stamina-draining though possibly due to her stamina training, Karin was able to go Mankai four times in a row (14:00) and was only forced to stop after the last one (16:43) and was even able to transform and go mankai AGAIN shortly after. (7:40)
In the Hero System Four, Mankai power and Barrier power would take from the same gauge, and as Mankai used up one's entire gauge, after Mankai the Hero's barrier would instantly lower. (4:15) However in Hero System 2.5 and Three, there was a more horrific but stronger vs ability, where Mankai would permenantly cripple a Hero after its usage in some way such as taking the function of a limb, a sense, or memories, an effect called Sange.
The Hero System would instantly adapt and give functionality via immediatly adapting things like mechanical legs to compensate for lost legs, so a Hero may continue to fight. (12:50) These were in combat, even more effective, so the Taisha worshipped the Heroes post-Mankai as becoming ever closer to the God Shinju.
Blade Summoning:
Hero Karin uses her twin blades to great effect. She can throw them accurately and make them explode at will. (0:55) She can easily summon more, likely from the Shinju's conceptual record, if she would ever lose them. (1:13) Her Mankai Form not only carries four giant blades, but can send a danmaku of thousands of exploding blades (14:23) or shoot a giant energy blade out of her sword. (14:18)
Sealing:
As part of Hero System Three, a sealing ritual was developed that would trap a Vertex in position and expose its "soul."
Usually this would require multiple heroes to do, but Karin is a skilled enough Hero to do it by herself. (1:16) There is a long invocation for the ritual, but anything said with enough passion including "Give it a Rest!" will work. (3:20) However a Hero's Sealing Power is limited, and if they run out of time, the seal wears off and they have to redo it. (15:40)
Enhanced Awareness:
Heroes have an enhanced awareness, with Karin being able to sense her enemies even when they are obscured. (1:43) She might have similar awareness to Sonoko who could sense the Heroes fighting when they were in Juukai (13:00) which is another dimension created by the Shinju (14:53) though given Sonoko is viewed as a comedic freak of nature for her mild gag powers of doing things like answering questions while sleeping, I think that's less then likely.
Karin's transformation device also has a radar that allows her to find ally and enemy positions, and gives basic size information on her enemy.
Time Stop Resistance:
Shinju regularly stops time to allow its heroes to fight the Vertexes, and they are completely immune. (9:25) Noticably, this is not something that fairies do, as even Generations of Heroes prior to Fairies were immune to time stop.
Purity:
Very few people are candidates to become a Hero, as it requires a level of purity in one's soul to be one. It was partially for her purity Karin was picked over Mebuki to become a Hero.
Possibly Power Summoning:
During the period of the Hero Systems One and Two, Heroes would draw on the power from the infinite records of natural forces, the fairies, within the Shinju to use their powers.
It's possible Karin could do this as well, as it's never said if this part of the Hero System was ended. That said, it's unlikely as it's never used by latter Heroes and with the assignment of specific Fairies to Heroes, it's likely that this replaced the old system. If it is sitll useable, it would mean Karin would hypothetically have access to every power demonstrated by a Hero in the entire series, save for the anti-divine power held by the Yunas.
Weaknesses:
Karin is a proud, brash, and impulsive girl with an inferiority complex prone to trying to show a strong face rather then admit when she needs help.
Beyond that, a Hero needs emotional stability and purity to transform, and both Mankai and Sealing have a time limit as both draw from a Hero's energy reserves. Likewise, a Hero's barriers consistently don't work on non-physical powers such as soul manipulation, memory manipulation, or fate manipulation.
Finally, Karin's power and skill are both optimized for fighting vertexes specifically. (5:10) While she is still plenty skilled when fighting other types of opponents, as shown in her fight with Fu, she lacks a degree of versatility.
Personality:
Karin Miyoshi is a serious, headstrong personality who is prickly and bragadocious on the outside but internally is a softer personality. Karin dedicated every day of her life, every moment towards being the best hero; eating nothing but that which provided nutrition, spending every moment training and studying. But while her competitor Mebuki truly wanted nothing else but to be a Hero, Karin internally was only striving to be a hero to find the emotional validation she had never had, chasing a cold ideal to find a warm reality she had never felt. This is why even though it cost her in her duel and in her studies, she helped the other candidates for the hero position...and ironically why she was given it.
When Karin met the other members of the Hero Club she judged them at first for being informal and from her perspective not taking their role seriously enough. Yet as they, especially Yuna, continually accepted her, showed her emotional validation and cared about her living like a human; celebrating her birthday, inviting her to join their activities, calling her their friend she came to slowly realize that being a hero isn't just a manner of being the perfect ideal; it's a substantiated reality shown in the way we act and live in our daily lives, that they had just as much to show her of being a hero as she had to show them.
During the penultimate episode of the original Yuki Yuna, to protect Yuna, Karin declares she is no longer a Hero of the Taisha, but a Hero of the Hero Club and battles an unprecedented five perfect vertex at once. To do so she goes Mankai four times in succession crippling her physical body over and over as she declares the five rules of the Hero Club, silly optimistic rules the Hero Club live by, as a declaration that in facing the great tragedies of being, the horrific world of monsters, we are sustained not by abstractions but by the silly little things in our daily life. That the kindness of four girls helping Karin to truly live for the first time showed her more how to be a hero then years of training. As she lay in Yuna's arms after; one arm and one leg unuseable, blind and deaf, despite the tragedy of her condition she thanks Yuna regardless as for years she had lived like nothing but a weapon, an object for the Taisha, and thanks to Yuna she had finally lived like a human. Karin Miyoshi is a symbol of dedication and devotion, willpower, and that a Hero is not defined by her strength or her smarts, grand as those may be, but the life she leads.
Diana Cavendish:
In the world of magic and witches, few house names bore so much respect as the house "Cavendish." Created 1500 years ago by one of the great olde witches, Beatrix, they were a house whose motto was "Affection" and known for their healing magic, who set up secret hospitals in wartime and aided all who were injured be they civilian or soldier, friend or foe. As magic in the world declined with the modern times, and even House Cavendish seemed to fall into disarray, a girl was born to them who seemed like she might be the savior of their house and of the old ways; Diana.
Diana from an early age had an immense intelligence and talent for magic. She was fascinated with magic and began a lifetime pursuit of it but one day after returning from seeing the great performer Shiny Chariot, Diana found that she had lost all her magical ability. A despair filled the House of Cavendish that their savior had been seemingly lost. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, Diana trained day and night, studying and training in the ways of magic until she had become not just a skiled witch, but some would claim the most skilled witch of the modern age, despite her young age. She went to Luna Nova the magic school where she found not just the other students were totally awed by her abilities and looked to her as the potential savior of magic. And for all her knowledge, she was alone.
Until she met another student, Akko Kagari, a student who refused to admit inferiority to Diana. Akko lacked magical potency as Diana did and while Akko had nowhere near the knowledge Diana did, Akko had retained the spirit and optimism in magic that Diana, though she hadn't admitted it, had lost in her childhood. Akko continually challenged Diana, usually failing outright but never without surprising Diana with just how far a hopeful attitude could bring, and the two rivals began to push each other to be better and slowly became friends, Diana eventually helping Akko unlock the ancient magic of the Grand Triskellion and fully restore magic to the world.
Skills/Intelligence:
Diana is considered and repeatedly stated to be the best witch her school has ever seen (3:03), including her teachers, and is very possibly the best of the modern period despite her young age. While witches have their own specialties, Diana is unique in that she often proves superior to Witches in the field of their own specialities such as correcting her professor of divination on magical numerology. (8:20) This means Diana can likely perform almost any spell seen in the series save particularly obscure magic or the spells of other supergenius characters due to her obsessive study, down to even studying the Grand Triskelion, the ultimate secret top tier magic of the verse that can even restore the source of all magic Yggdrasil. (16:50)
Diana knows almost every magical art in the series including knowing the ancient Luna Language, something almost no witches know and is the first of the Luna Nova students to learn (7:05), learning the ancient Dragonic script age 12, which again none of the other students or teachers know (19:05), being the best flier in her class, and animating a statue, a feat Akko thought earlier would be a miracle and for which she was referred to as the "Miracle Witch." (11:45) However much like her family legacy would suggest, Diana's specialty is in White Magic, the art of fixing broken things. (5:12)
Diana in terms of raw intelligence can rival Type 2 or Type 3 supergenius intellects. In Chamber of Time she aids in the repair of the Horologium's Great Clock with control over time itself which is actually consistent with how she is multiple times confirmed to be the best student in all of Luna Nova's history. This would suggest she is at least comparable if not outright superior to Constanze, a supergenius inventor witch smart enough to create numerous sci-fi devices including a Transformer (7:45) and robots relative to the Witches or outright superior in stats as well as Croix who created advanced magitech (7:10) which can convert emotional energy into magic. In fact Croix is specifically noted as a prodigy "that could rival even Diana." (3:03) using Diana specifically as a benchmark to show how smart Croix is, and similarly Diana and Akko's progression is deliberately paralled with Croix and Shiny Chariot. (5:00)
Diana is also fairly crafty, and it seems would have been able to solve the fairy's strike without Akko's intervention (10:50) and seems to have some stealth capabilities as she seems to sneak into a room with a bunch of other witches there, with none of them noticing. (13:10)
Power:
Due to being a bit more of a toonforce-y verse, Little Witch Academia can be a little bit inconsistent with stats but one thing that is consistent, right from the very first episode is that witches regularly withstand falls from boomsticks, even as early as episode one where the witches crash land on a broomstick much faster than their own speed, (11:20) with Sucy even commenting that something like that wouldn't kill a witch. (12:35) Akko in particular withstood the legendary broomstick Shiny Arc flying to the ends of the Earth, smashing her into things including the ocean (18:35) with a calculated force between 2 and 31 megatons. Akko was also sneezed into the air by the ghost Vajarois diserpsing the clouds above (18:15) calced at being over 2 megatons of force, making this surprisingly consistent for an early Akko. For contrast Diana does more damage to Akko accidentally with a single magic blast. (19:00)
These feats are done by a character considered the worst witch near the beginning of the series. By the end of the series nine witches including Akko and Diana gain new white robes which is described as being a power-up.(4:44) they then fly off against a missile amped with Noir Fuel Spirit and neutralize it together by absorbing magic from people across the Earth (11:25) creating and tanking a continent sized explosion of magical energy. (19:10)
You might question this given their stated goal of turning the missile into "something harmless" but if anything this feat is even more impressive than it seems. Shiny Chariot was originally a witch without talent like Akko and became as strong as she was by absorbing the Dream Fuel Spirit of various crowds she befored for turning their dreaming energy into magic (5:40) creating a power "incomparable" capable of restoring the entire magic world. (6:03) This power released was able to crater the Moon in a crescent pattern (9:10)
Noir Fuel Spirit, the energy of anger, is even more potent. (5:07) During the Penultimate episode the noir energy is taken from vast amounts of people (4:00), large enough to threaten a coup d'etat across the nation (10:02) which causes Croix to declare she never imagined she could gather this much energy (5:08) as it absorbs the leylines (6:22), a feature of magic encompassing the planet. It would then continue to drain Noei Fuel Spirit across the nation. (12:44) This level of magic should easily eclipse the Dream Fuel Spirit Chariot used to crater the moon, and is what was within the Noir Spirit Missile.
Yet White Robes Diana was able to withstand alongside Akko the energy capable of overpowering it, and this is reflected in the themes as the point of this scene is to show Akko and Diana as the successors to Croix and Chariot. Croix comments that there there is nothing they'll be able to do to stop it, specifically comparing it to the Moon cratering incident (2:02) and later commenting to Chariot that they'll never be able to do it and claiming it would be a miracle but Chariot believing Akko and Diana can stop it due to her belief in Akko. (5:45)
This is consistent with an equippable item in the game Chamber of Time stated to be able to "destroy the world."
"Destroying the world" is a somewhat ambigious phrase but usually refers to at least life-wiping which supports continental level power.
There's actually an argument for them to be even higher. One of Shiny Chariot's cards mentions her creating the Sun and the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy
but as Shiny Chariot was mostly a performer, it's more likely this is a reference to an event that would happen in the story of one of her shows, rather then the rather bizarre interpretation she somehow created the actual celestial bodies when..those predate her.
In Chamber of Time there is also an item called the Stardust Rod stated to give "the power of the stars in the sky"
However as the next line states that it causes some shooting stars, it's likely more specifically referring to shooting stars, or meteorites.
Similarly there's the Fountain of Polaris which grants "the power of the stars" to a witch with hidden radiance
There are numerous ways to interpret this, some of which are consistent, some of which would be upgrades but basically none being both. The energy output of a Sun-like star per second is 95 petatons, which is potentially consistent with the continent sized energy explosion at the end of the season. If you think it's all the stars at once, there are about 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe, which would be an energy of 800 KiloFoe, vastly beyond anything else remotely implied in the series unless you think Chariot literally created all the stars in the galaxy. Most likely this is not a literal statement regardless.
Witches' physical strength is relative to their durability with Shiny Chariot briefly physically fighting the Noir Spirit Monster. (14:05)
Speed:
Both Amanda (16:20) and Akko (19:45) even early in the series are able to briefly contend in speed with the legendary broomstick Shooting Star while on foot. Shooting Star is a dangerous broomstick that will fly "to the Ends of the Earth" without regard for the witch on it (8:45), something that is demonstrated in the ep with the broom flying all across the Earth (18:35) at a lowballed calculated speed of 1.4% c. This is Shooting Star's randomly zipping around chaotic speed rather than straight line speed explaining why it is not inconsistent to scale characters to it's legendary speed as it's focused speed as it accelerates in one direction would likely be higher then this more "casual" speed.
It's implied that high tier witches are faster than this, relative to the witches reaction times and flight speed even while on foot. Shiny Chariot in her assault on Croix's base moved comparable to animated stone golems she was having difficulty reacting to (11:57), both of which seeming to move equal in speed to Croix's machines. (13:50) Likewise Chariot is able to save Croix repeatedly from the Noir Fuel Monster in the battle in the penulatimat episode. (14:00) This would easily scale this to Diana as later in the series Akko was able to move comparable to these machines (11:20 and 16:05) and Diana is Akko's rival.
White Robes Diana (15:00) and Akko (16:15) both are also able to react at close range to and dodge the Noir Fuel Missile, seemingly the top tier in terms of speed repeatedly with Diana only gettting tagged by it when she looks away in concern for Akko. (16:45) This should scale above the blast Chariot made on the Moon which reached the Moon in 4.48 seconds at 384,400,000 meters away, traveling that distance in 4.48 seconds (9:10) would be a speed of about 85,500,000 meters per second or 28.6% the speed of light. It's possible White Robes Diana is even faster then this due to how much higher she upscales from the Dream Spirit feat. As they race after their missile they get power from the emotions of people across Earth, reaching them almost instantly, which appear to form the strands of Yggdrasil. This travels in a form described by Croix and Chariot as "light" (12:00) and yet despite this, the two witches seem to keep pace with this light. However it's questionable if this speed really applies, as it's possible the light sticking close to them but not coming into contact with them isn't an indication of their speed but how the emotional energy works as they were being boosted, suggesting that it reached them. Also this speed was attained via the help of their friends first who each provided an individual boost to their speed. (6:20) The characters also use gravity based attacks in Chamber of Time moving a notable fraction of the speed. As gravity propogates at lightspeed, this might be consistent with relativistic speed.
Flight:
Flight is one of the most basic abilities of a witch, and Akko's inability to fly was a major point as an indication of her lack of capability as a witch. (7:03) Witches far less skilled than Diana are able to do complex acrobatics (5:02) and even sleep while flying on their broom. (5:16)
Diana is a particularly skilled flier, setting a new record for brom flying (5:25), flying "neck and neck" with the legendary Shooting Star in a race (21:05) and even narrowly winning, (22:00) and dodging the attacks of three seperate witches while flying. (22:00)
Diana's flight speed should be roughly around the level of her reactions as she was able to catch up to Miraj despite her massive lead due to not slowing down at all for obstacles and doing complex aerial manuevers.
Physical Empowerment:
During her assault on Croix's base, Shiny Chariot demonstrated magic capable of enhancing her physical stats, which she used to physically knock back a stone golem of Croix's. (13:15) It's possible this may explain the various inconsistencies in the verse in terms of physical stats if they are amping themselves to various degrees physically with their magic throughout the series. Diana likely scales to Current Chariot, even Pre-White Robes as it's not only consistently stated Diana is the best witch to grace Luna Nova, including her professors, but in the same ep as earlier, Chariot is suggested by Croix to be nowhere near her peak claiming she's "hardly a shadow of her former self." (15:00)
Weapon Empowerment:
Similarly, Witches less skilled then Diana including Amanda (19:20) and Sucy (12:38) have combined their wands or magical flakes with physical objects to create more powerful weapons for combat.
Astral Plane, possibly Spiritual Plane Interaction:
Witches can easily see and interact with astral plane entities, to the point of hunting ghosts for sport. (0:38) They can also interact with fairies, which are referred to as spirits.
Energy Projection:
Diana can shoot energy blasts with the Magic Phrase "Murowa" strong enough to harm other Witches like Akko. (19:00) A seperate spell "Difranieado" can induce an omnidirectional explosion around the Witch to knock back enemies or free her from binds.
Energy Serpents:
Diana's aunt and cousins, Cavendish Witches of far lesser magnitude compared to Diana were able to attack by summoning snakes made of energy with the invocation "Aeguil" that were meant to be a credible threat to Diana. (17:35)
Elemental Projection:
Diana and pretty much all the witches in the Chamber of Time demonstrate a wide variety of elemental projections, both as single target attacks and danmaku style attacks. In particular all magic is classified into the four elements which they can project; fire, earth, air, and water.
From Air, Witches can also project lightning
and from water magic, they can project solid ice
Diana has also shown manipulation of smoke (7:50), and projection of light. Her aunt has also seemingly demonstrated manipulation of darkness (11:52).
Based on her performance in the Samhain Festival, it's likely that Diana is most accomplished at water magic of the four elements.
Metamorphosis:
Metamorphosis magic is magic focused on transforming the user or other objects in other forms. It is considered first level basic. Diana as a child was able to turn a squirrel into a rabbit (18:30) and Akko shows rapid metamorphosis into various animal forms in quick succession against the Noir Fuel Spirit Missile. (16:15)
Diana shows a particular talent at shapeshifting magic and should likely scale to the highest feats of metamorphosis magic. Diana's aunt, a far less skilled witch of the Cavendish Line was able to metamorphosis into an intangible shadow and phase through walls (7:30) and the very first thing seen in the series is the witch Shiny Chariot transforming as a bird of light (0:04), though given this seems to be Chariot's speciality, Diana might not scale to that.
There's also related magic to change the sizes of objects, making them grow and shrink such as Akko making a squirrel grow to the size of a building (6:00). Akko at one point causes some tomatos to grow until they explode. (49:30) Diana also just grows at one point, seeming without even using magic (14:07)
Sleep Inducing:
Through usage of the mystical "Dream Wind", Diana can induce sleep in those affected. This can also be done in a more general way.
Possible Memory Manipulation:
Croix at one point uses Amnesia Magic to emove the memories of a crowd (9:23) however Croix herself is a supergenius rival intelligence of Diana's, and it's unknown the difficulty of this spell.
Lifeforce/Mana Absorption:
Diana can create a magic sigil in front of her that slowly drains the lifeforce or magical energy of anything in front of her adding it to Diana's.
Swords Danmaku:
Diana can use the secret spell of the House Cavendish, the Fiery Barrage Spell which shoots many blades at an opponent.
White Magic:
The speciality of Cavendish House Witches. (13:10) White Magic is divided into two categories. The first is Revitalization Magic which is used to heal living beings, (12:40) hasten their developement from say a tiny plant, to a full plant bridge, (3:25) accelerate the being's regeneration or mana recovery, or remove curses as Diana did to her family members. (18:42)
The other form of White Magic is Mending Magic, which similarly works to repair broken objects.
Barrier Creation:
Witches can create forcefields with their magic. (10:00) Diana's was strong enough to protect from an explosion of both her and Akko's power.
These barriers are both physical and magical, as well as selectively porous, meaning it can protect from physical, magical, and even gas attacks.
Magic Nullification/Reflection:
Using the "Luna Lana" spell Witches can counter and dispel magic. (2:20) This is seen as a spell of the highest difficulty (3:17), usually requiring two people and not working on sufficiently powerful magic. (45:00)
Diana can also conjure "Reflecting Armor Spell," a spell which reflects magical attacks on the target.
Levitation/Telekinesis:
Witches can suspend objects, including themselves, in air with levitation magic or telekinetically move objects at will. (26:55) To do so requires unbroken concentration, but of course is no problem at all for Diana who is used as the example for unbroken concentration. (3:00)
Surface-Scaling Magic:
Shiny Chariot displayed the ability to walk on walls. (13:20)
Creation/Summoning:
Witches semi-regularly demonstrate the ability to conjure any basic object they might need including even living entities. For her talent at this magic, Diana is picked to perform this type of magic during Luna Nova's Samhain Festival, during which Diana demonstrates creating and manipulating a large amount of water, and summoning from it a Unicorn. (12:10)
Animal Empathy:
Witches on several instancces have shown the ability to speak to various animal species such as birds (4:10) and fishes. (13:13)
Teleportation:
The Teleportation Spell allows one to teleport from one place to another. Originally it was limited solely to the range of Luna Nova due to the magical restriction of the Philosopher's stone, but after magic was restored to the world, this restriction was likely removed.
Fusion Magic:
Fusion Magic is a type of magic where multiple witches join their hearts as one to bolster both their magical power to an immeasurable level. (0:48)
Time Magic:
A spell Diana is known for, she has the power to freeze and reverse time several seconds. (3:08) There are far stronger forms of time magic it is implied Diana knows, but these are outlawed for being dangerous.
Gravity Manipulation:
Diana can shoot blasts or conjure orbs dramatically altering gravity, weighing down anything affected by it. Most notably is she can condense gravity to such an extreme degree as to cause a Black Hole to emerge.
Animation:
Diana has the ability to cause inanimate objects to come to life, breathing life into a statue to cause it to come to life. (11:45) This was considered a miraculous feat of magic, for which she is known as "The Miracle Witch."
Illusions:
Diana can use Illusion magic causing enemies to see, hear, and feel things that are not real, and can use this on numerous enemies at once.
Invisibility:
Akko has displayed the ability to temporarily become invisible, and while this required a potion to supplement Akko's capability, Diana should easily scale above an early Akko with potion.
Can Survive in Space:
Diana can survive in space without difficulty. It's unclear if this is a spell effect or not but seems like it is not as there was no motions or words used to perform this feat. (20:45)
Weaknesses:
The most distinctive weakness of the Witches across the whole of Little Witch Academia, the highly limited amount of magic power usable depending on location, doesn't apply to EoS Diana as Akko restored all magic at the finale of the series. And that's good because Diana must rely on her magic. Even less then other Witches, Diana lacks flexibility or combat knowledge having devoted every moment to the training of magic. She was once defeated by a snake constricting her keeping her from speaking her or using her wand, causing her aunt to proclaim that without her magic, Diana was still just a child. (3:55) While Diana is probably the best character in the entire series at coming up with plans or finding solutions to puzzles, she lacks Akko's quick-thinking ability and is not especially geared mentally for combat.
Also Diana, for all her skill in spellcasting, is defined more then anything for her proud and stubborn personality. If Akko represents the new type of witch, Diana represents the strict traditions and legacies of magic. She is unlikely to ever show weakness or back down from a path she has determined is correct.
Personality:
Diana is a composed, formal, and critical personality. When Akko is told that the Motto of the House Cavendish is "Affection" she reacts in shock that affection would be associated with the usually sarcastic, critical Diana. But in her own way Diana is the most affectionate character in the series. Just as her mother pushed herself to help all she could, even sacrificng her own health until she died, so too does Diana push herself constantly to become what she sees the magic world as needing; a paragon of the old art, an idol to strive for, even as it costs her what she valued most; her love and passion for magic exemplified by Akko.
In the course of Akko's development, her relationship to Diana comes to reflect her relationship to the world of magic. At first they seem overly harsh, critical and judgemental of everything she does and cares about and an impossible ideal to live up too. As the series progresses she comes to find that they're secretly hurting too, struggling in the same way she is and that they share the same dreams just secretly and hidden away. When Diana finally reconciles herself to Akko, telling Akko that she believes in that magic that is Akko's believing heart, it mirrors Akko's reconciliation with the world of magic as she no longer needs to strive to be Diana or to be Shiny Chariot or to be Croix or anyone else. She just needs to be a witch like herself.
However at the same time just as Akko begins to respark excitement in magic for the world, so too does she beign to show Diana what she had lost, the spark, the passion, the spirit. Diana was a girl with all talent, no spirit. Akko was a girl was all spirit, no talent. And seeing Akko repeatedly rival her, showed Diana the power of the childish dreams she thought she had to give up, that a believing heart was perhaps the strongest magic of all.
Diana walked up to the small silent witch working. "Constanze..." Diana asked "Is it ready?" Constanze gave a wordless nod and Diana breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad." Diana had seen horrific images in her divinations, images of a girl dressed in a joyful pink, but nontheless dressed for war, sacrificing the great tree and all magic at sometime in the future.
Diana stepped unto the small time-shifting platform and her mind turned briefly to Akko, and how hard they had fought to revive Yggdrasil, to revive everyone's dream of magic and her fist impercetably clenched. "I'll be back soon." Diana said "I just need to find this girl for questioning" as Diana shot through a leyline extending further then she ever had, burrowing through space and time along the branches of the great Yggdrasil...
The Heroes landed back down at the roots of the great Shinju-sama. All around them were its defensive dimension, the Juukai. Fu triumphantly said to the Hero Club "Good job team!" and then with a hint of mischief "Thanks to my leadership...the gods are finally at peace!" Karin rolled her eyes and said "If it was thanks to you, why did I have to save you against Leo?" causing Fu to gasp in mock horror, clenching her chest. Yuna said happily "We should all go back for udon now that...wait....why isn't the Juukai disappearing?" The Heroes noticed they were still in the dimension the Shinju-sama had created and the mood instantly shifted. But their radars detected no enemies.
Fu said, this time more seriously "let's split up to search, keep in touch on the radar!" The Heroes divided and Karin went further into the Shinju. Down and down she went along its giant branches until the rainbow colors shifted into a mixture of brown and an otherworldly green.
She was banging at her phone trying to get the communication to work when her heart briefly stopped as she saw a single pinging red light. "One Enemy? 168 centimeters? That can't be right. Damn thing's busted!" she said annoyed shaking the phone. However her she heard a shout and turned. Karin saw the red dot her phone was indicating. Karin tensed, raising her blades into a deensive position. "Bit early for Halloween, don't cha think?" Karin said flippantly. When the witch didn't respond Karin asked more firmly "Who are you?"
Diana saw the tenseness and the defensive crouch the strange scarlet suited soldier standing across from her had taken. From the similarities of their uniforms, she guessed this girl probably knew the girl from her visions. Her voice...her tone...it reminded her of her cousins in a conceited irreverence. This place...it was full of magic like at home but colder and darker, and the dense branches made it seem like an accursed forest she had wandered into. Diana tilted her head proudly, she didn't want to fight, but she had a mission, and wasn't going to back down.
Diana conjured an image of Yuna floating in midair. "This girl..." Diana said with complete composure. "I need to take her for questioning." Karin already hadn't liked this girl, the haughty superior look she had reminded her all too much of Mebuki. But the witch's words made her blood run cold. All hints of joviality gone, she said with steel-cold will. "You aren't taking Yuna anywhere."
Fight!
Karin leaped forward with an overheaded slash of her blades. A green grow emanated from Diana's wand and Karin's blade pressed into a tranlucent barrier around the witch. The two breathed heavily. The blow exerted Diana, but did not pierce the barrier...both knew that this meant this would likely be a long fight. At such close range, as the debris from Karin's leap hadn't even fallen, the two combatants looked into each others eyes, showing a fierce will, knowing neither would give easily.
Diana projecting her spirit outwards and into Karin's blades, causing them to come to life and begin flying around randomly. She gave a confident smile. Karin looked at her angrily before superleaping onto one of the Shinju branches and conjuring new blades, loudly declaring "I am Karin Miyoshi of the Sanshuu Hero Club. You won't beat me that easily!"
Diana watched the odd display with interest. "Diana of the House Cavendish."
The two fighters prepared themselves for an intense fight.
The air was tense but once more the scarlet clad heroine made a mighty leap, pushing herself with even more force. Diana saw the blow incoming and not knowing the exent each blow might be dangerous, decided to take no chances. raising her wand declaring "Yera Retoure" and instantly time crawled and came to a stop.
To her shock, the Hero kept moving unhindered and Diana briefly considered she might have massively miscalculated, however as time actually began to flow backwards, Karin was indeed pulled backwards to her starting position causing her to gasp in shock. Karin's heart raced in her chest, what kind of magic was that?
Diana breathed heavily. That was too close for comfort and raising her wand, pointing it at Karin, she prepared all her magical knowledge for one of the most powerful spells she knew. "Luna Lana!" she declared but as the magic shot at Karin, Yoshiteru manifested in front of her. The magic passed over Yoshiteru harmlessly as he very cogently noted "All things must pass." Diana showed none of it, but was internally shocked that a fairy could have such power. Karin took the opportunity and leapt again at her opponent but as Diana raised her wand again but before she could cast another spell Karin tossed her blade which upon impacting the land next to Diana exploded. The explosion launched the Witch painfully into one of the branches of the tree.
Just as Karin conjured new blades, raising one triumphantly at hitting successfully, Diana felt her body pains encompass her. However as Karin advanced on the prone witch, images started appearing of Diana all around her, more then even Shichinin Misaki. Karin closed her eyes, and sensed...her awareness projected out and she felt a single enemy. As she did so, Diana got to her feet, raising her wand. Karin yelled "I won't be decieved! I can still sense you!" but as she leapt at Diana, Diana called out "Vera Gurasare" and teleported outside Yggdrasil. Karin grit her teeth angrily and quickly pulled out her radar...
Outside, Diana took a moment to catch her breath from the intense battle. Calling upon the great and noble line of witches she bore the name off, she quickly healed herself. As she did, she beheld in horror that the whole world around her was barren, ravaged by war. "Did they do this?" she thought to herself.
Karin burst out of the Shinju, finding her enemy angrier then ever. Diana angrily raised her wand, and thinking of the countless who must have lost their lives and their dreams, conjured the great burning blades of her family. "Fineltina la Serano." Karin ducked and darted around fiery blades which came in great number. As the first two came, Karin looked both ways at each individually before blocking them both with her own blades, making Diana's eye widen slightly. Karin leapt closer and closer to Diana expertly dodging the many attacks, making perfectly coordinated manuevers, even in midair. As Karin got closer Diana closed her eyes, concentrating...waiting for the perfect moment... The Hero came close to the Witch and prepared a heroic slash and Diana opened her eyes shouting "Aruya Karegrana!" and a massive ice pillar emerged from the ground, the size of a small house.
The ice immediatly shattered against Karin's barrier, helplessly, though the force through her off course and she landed only a dozen meters away from the witch. Karin rested on her blade confidently. "Ha, guess a hero is harder to stop then you thought!" Diana's mind raced for possibilities, she needed something fast enough to hit, and strong enough to do meaningful damage... as Karin took a battle stance again, Diana figured it out and waved her wand.
Karin threw her blade to stop her but Diana got out first "Aros Tares Feriare!" and a gravity orb appeared between the two of them. Moving at the speed of light it's gravitons were something even Karin and her blade was sucked in by, as Karin yelped with surprise. Diana triumphantly said ready to finally finish this fight. "Tiomerdosh Dorhadona!" and the gravity orb was encompassed by a black hole which ate the Scarlet Hero wholly. But this was not the end of the fight....
Vines reached up to the black hole. Diana tried to command them away, but it was too late, and she felt a shaking as the black hole itself burst revealing a 4-limbed mechnical warrior with Karin at the center.
With a single wave of her hand, Karin conjured a massive rain of thousands upon thousands of blades making Diana's heart stop in her chest... but her composure was famed and cast quickly "Metamorphie Faciesse" and changed into a badger, the fastest digging animal in the world, burrowing into the safety of the ground. Even despite that, Diana could still feel the ground shaking with blow after blow from thousands of powerful impacts.
Karin's powerful vision granted by the Shinju caught notice of the magical badger burrowing away. Karin dug down into the ground with her powerful mankai arms and with a mighty yell lifted a mountain of dirt and rubble with her strengh. "Let's see you cast your magic words with no air!" Karin yelled before hurling the giant section of the ground into space.
The badger quickly burrowed to the surface, as she felt herself get pushed into the ground with massive force as she was hurtling towards the vacuum. She could feel the air quickly grow thin, and even though she knew her magic could maintain her she knew knew she would need SOMETHING, and quickly waved her wand before the blackness encompassed her. In a flash of greek sparkles, her broom appeared.
The air around Karin burned just as her lungs and her heart did as she spiraled into the stratosphere with her mankai, her body feeling the exertion. "This is what I trained for." She thought to herself. However to her surprise, Karin found the witch on a broomstick. In a different circumstance, it would make her laugh. But she was being pushed too far by her mankai and began to pursue. Diana plunged down into the Earth's atmosphere, feeling the wind push against her with immense force, but the magic running in her blood made it neglible.
Karin fired another volley of blades at Diana, but Diana was ready for it this time, agilely flying and dipping in complex sommersaults and barrel rolls like so many obstacles. It called to her mind visions of times past, of racing along Akko of the strange way they pushed each other and managed to dodge each blade with perfect agility, looking back at Diana with a steel-y gaze, a gaze of defiance that made Karin grit her teeth.
Karin took her blade and extended it into a giant energy blade to stab into Diana but Diana said something impercetible to Karin and a golden circle appeared around Diana. Moments later, as fast as Karin's mankai itself, Karin's own energy shot backwards blowing away all the clouds for kilometers on end, making the very atmosphere along an entire country-sized section of the Earth burn away. Karin caught the blade, feeling herself fight for her own strength, to not be flung away. Feeling the strange feeling of fighting herself, Karin remember a time not so long ago when she fought herself everyday, fighting always to be the best until Yuna had come into her life, had given her purpose beyond, which this girl was trying to take away.
Karin yelled in fury and attacked even more ferociously slamming her blades even faster than light over and over. Diana felt shocked at this. With every blow, this girl was only hurting herself, throwing her attacks back at her, yet Diana could also feel her own body wearing from maintaining this spell and with a single defiant yell broke through the reflecting armor sending Diana careening into the ground, causing a mild shaking across the planet.
Karin breathed harder and harder, her eyes growing blurry. She followed her radar, coming down to the ground before Diana's prone form. "I figured it out earlier..." Diana said, more to herself then anything as Karin came closer and closer to the ground in front of her "When you had to look to see my blades attack...you don't sense non-living things can you?" and she dispelled the illusion of the earthy ground to reveal the bright shining green lifesap circle
Karin yelled in pain and Diana stood breathing in as she felt Karin's lifeforce transfer into her. The mankai form disappeared as Karin lost the energy to maintain it. Diana smiled at the success there, but Karin was even more disturbed at something else. She felt pain course through her body and saw Yoshiteru appear and look at her, even his blank face able to show concern. "That hurt...?" Karin said in shock. "How?"
Diana gave a confident smile and tossed her hair elegantly. She had a weapon that would work. Karin gave her a cocky defiant smile in return "Don't think you've won yet. Heroes don't die that easily!"
Diana quickly conjured a lifesap circle but Karin, anticipating this leapt far into the air throwing her blade at Diana. Remembering the prior explosion, Diana suddenly shifts her form, turning into pure darkness.
Seeing the explosion engulf her enemy, but also sensing her presence Karin confusedly asked herself "Huh?" But Diana having moved at the speed of darkness emerged behind her. Karin could sense her and her soldierlike reflexes caused her to turn go into an overhead swing. Diana had begun casting, and right before she finished the blade sunk into her shoulder but her will was strong and she finished the invocation "Korri Dulala"
Instantly Karin felt drowsy and disoriented. She tried to fight it but the strain of combat was catching up to her already and she quickly fell fast asleep. Diana breathed a sigh of relief, grunting from the pain in her arm, quickly using her advanced knowledge in healing and mending magic to fix both her arm and her robes of protection. However as she did so she saw the little fairy move to wake up her enemy. "No you don't!" she said reaching to grab the fairy but her hands were repulsed by the fairy's barrier.
Yoshiteru knocked Karin on the head with a "Klonk." Karin woke with a start, rubbing her head and saying "Hey!" before remembering where she was and immediatly taking a defensive posture again. "Thanks for the refreshing nap." she said confidently. "Now I'm ready to do this."
At the Hero's word the sealing ritual began, a shiny circle encompassing the witch's position. Diana felt something like her soul pulsate and be pulled from her. However Diana, annoyed more then anything, simply grabbed her soul and with a wave of her wand invoked her fusion magic to put it back. Karin looked at her shocked, and not wanting to escape attempted to swing at her again but Diana simply teleported outside the sealing circle appearing far in the distance.
Karin tried to rush Diana and throw one blade, throwing another blade after the other. Diana changed into her shadow form again to phase through the explosion only to find the second blade phased through her as well. Diana pondered at this "Is magic so primitive in this time, that they can't affect the soul?" Diana wondered. Karin continued rushing towards her at breakneck speeds and confidently yelled "That's right, I got plenty more where those came from." and began to slice at Diana's form.
Diana watched her approach and, taking a gamble, shifted into a shadow watching the hero slice at her over and over helplessly, wearing herself out. The shadow shifted back into a witch only for brief moments as Diana mocked and cajolled Karin "Some 'hero' you are. Letting the world be destroyed like this..." and Karin angrily yelled "Shut Upppp!" angrily attacking more and more energetically "Come out and fight coward!"
The keen perception of Diana saw Karin's movements start to slow, as she tired and took the change to cast the metamorphosis spell. Before Karin knew what was happening, Karin was turned into a little mouse with Karin's distinctive red bow. Diana smiled to herself and shifted into a cat. She chased the little mouse playfully along the barren ground. But as she pounced on the scurrying little mouse, her law bounced off a tiny barrier, making cat-Diana's eyes widen dramatically. She returned to humanoid form and tried to blast the little mouse only for it too to not work.
Tiny vines began to extend up too the little mouse. The witch knew what this means and furiously tried to stop them from reaching the hero-mouse but with such a tiny distance to the ground, it was too late. The giant four armed mankai structure returned, and at its center was a tiny, very determined mouse, with one paw in the air angrily.
Taking to the air again, the two fighters engaged in a dramatic dogfight with Diana's aerial skills being pitted against the small mouse's martial skill.
The two fighters spiral and weave around with Karin primarily pursueing throwing her mankai's large blades at Diana. Narrowly avoiding being struck by shifting into her shadow form, Diana's mind raced in fear...off the ground Diana couldn't reasonably sap the life from her enemy, and most of her Murowa blasts were simply being nullified by that bizarre fairy. In a puff of magic Karin was restored to her human form...Diana knew her stamina was dropping as her magic potency was fading. Her breathing was harsh, she was expending too more energy dodging aroung and needed to think of something fast.
She wasn't aware of it but at the same time Karin's breathing was also heavy, her eye was blurry, and her side ached from the strain of going mankai twice and exerting herself to the fullest. Before her the enemy disappeared again, teleporting away. Checking her radar Karin saw that she had taken refuge in a nearby cave next to the opening in the Shinju she had come from. Karin undid the mankai transformation as she landed on the ground, wanting to conserve energy, breathing heavily in and out, catching her breath. Mankai's dangerous powers were taking things from her, but Yuna saved them all once...she could do it again.
Meanwhile in the cave, Diana was putting a desperate plan into place, encompassing the cave in darkness. The Hero leapt into the large cavern, pushing into the small cave filled with an unnatural darkness.
"Hmph" she said defiantly, feeling the witch right above her. "When are you gonna learn? I can sense you! Or did you think that walking on the celing was going to impress me." Diana smiled in return, for indeed she was on the ceiling, and indeed she DID have something to impress her.
"You're a fool" she said "who doesn't understand the signifigance of the fact...that every wall and ceiling is a floor..." and with that Diana allowed the darkness to leave revealing that on every single surface of the cavern was a lifesap circle.
Karin had just enough time to notice and felt her lifeforce pull out of her in a huge burst, draining into Diana. Karin yelled in pain as she felt her entire body turning numb, blood leaking out of her eye and wounds just appearing on her.
...But a hero is more then her body, and feeling the spirits of everyone inside her Karin yelled in defiance "NO!" and with a single huge leap threw herself upwards at the witch, who at such close quarters had no time to react as the hero stabbed her clean through, causing her to fall unconscious . The scarlet hero felt her vision dim but completed the sealing ritual and grabbing the witches' soul threw it off into the distance into the Shinju so it would return where it came from.
"AND STAY OUT!" she roar defiantly before passing out completely.
KO!
This is a pretty odd fight because something that's usually both side's biggest strengths are actually some of their biggest weaknesses. Going over stats first however...
If you lowball both the characters power, Karin is immensely stronger with the megaton feats performed by Akko and their witches inability to stop a missile comparing immediatly massively unfavorably to Stardust easily withstanding missiles with higher megaton feats, Washio with zero fairies shooting arrows cxomparable to missiles and characters far weaker to Karin causing natural disasters more powerful then human technology. This is probably how they would be written outside of gags if the two series were to legitimately crossover as it's a major theme in Little Witch Academia that magic is struggling to be relevant in a world of modern technology while it's a major theme in Yuki Yuna is a Hero the inability of human technology to compare with spiritual/divine things and the power already used by nature.
If you highball both the characters' power in contrast taking a more mythic/legend view on them, Diana is cosmically stronger, being on the same tier as characters use the power of all the stars compared to Karin who is at best on the same tier as a character who can overcome the power of one star.
However if you midball, as I would suggest, the two actually end up somewhat similar in power. Karin scales to the Leo Vertex burning away the entire "world" save for the section the Shinju protected while Diana scales to an item in Chamber of Time threatening the "world" and to the Moon-scarring feat. Karin's feats are arguably notably higher, but Karin downscales from them while Diana upscales from hers, as Diana with her robes of protection was able to withstand and transform a far greater spirit energy, and a more potent type of spirit energy as the Moon-scarring feat. Meanwhile even Sonoko, Karin's self-admitted superior is not as strong as the Leo Vertex in base, and while Karin should be relative to it able to do damage to it in the moba game, she's somewhere below it's feat. This suggests the two would actually be fairly comparable in strength, energy projection, and technically durability.
In terms of speed it's a fairly similar situation. Karin is dramatically superior if you lowball as Witches are viewed as inferior to missiles in speed, and if you say they shouldn't scale to the big speed values in the verse because they're meant to be much faster, Karin scales to much faster feats like Gin creating a powerful tornado with her arm motions. Diana is cosmically superior if you highball as Karin at best scales to Gin light-timing while Diana is scaling to characters like Shiny Chariot being said to have created all the stars in the galaxy and Akko absorbing the power from the stars instantly. If you midball it gets fairly interesting.
Once again Karin scales to a higher feat then Diana, but Karin downscales from it while Diana upscales from hers. The Mankai vines traveled a likely Earth-Moon distance in under 2 seconds, while Shiny Chariot's blast at the moon, reaching the Moon in under 4.5 seconds, putting the Mankai Vines at 2.5 times faster than Shiny Chariot's speed. Sonoko herself was only a fraction of the Mankai Vines speed, and while Karin should be similar to Sonoko given her vaunted speed, Sonoko is Karin's self-admitted superior senpai. Meanwhile Diana fought a far greater amount of spirit energy, and was only tagged when she looked away in concern for Akko. Granted this was when she was flying and witches are only somewhat comparable to their flight speed. As Mankai also dramatically amps speed to an unknown degree, it seemed likely to me the characters had fairly similar land movement speed and flight speed. Diana's reaction speed is similar to her flight speed, but Karin's FTL reactions are thus 3-4 times faster than Diana's reactions, which works well with Karin's greater combat skill.
This is a fight roughly between Diana's versatility and Karin's barrier. Karin's barrier..if you interpret it one way it would do absolutely nothing against Diana's powers as LWA-verse magic can affect astral plane entities like ghosts, while Fairies can't protect the soul in Yuki Yuna. However that's not really suggested as it's more like LWA-verse Witches have anti-intangibility rather then soul manipulation, as witches don't one-shot entities without magic. Conversely Karin's forcefield might protect her from anything Diana can do as it was suggested that Barriers can protect against enemy magic in general, but once again this isn't really suggsted as it was basically just a hypothesis based on the Vertex, and even if it was true Diana is far more skilled magic-user than the Vertex. As such it's most likely that the barrier would protect Karin as it noramlly does; against all physical attacks but not against non-physical.
This means Diana trying to kill Karin via raw power or various forms of energy/elemental projection wouldn't work, even if you highballed Diana. Karin's forcefield is a part of Shinju, a universal entity essentially equivalent to Yggdrasil. These things could help her fight against Karin's attacks, but can't do anything against Karin herself. For a similar reason magic nullification and magic drain are highly unlikley to work. Not only is it implied Diana can't nullify magic by herself, but it doesn't work on characters sufficently strong enough and this case it would be like trying to nullify the magic of Yggdrasil itself.
Diana does have numerous other things that could work at least partially. Gravity, traveling at lightspeed, still affects Heroes, even if Black Holes themselves can't kill them. Things like animating Karin's blades to nullify her offensive tools, reversing time on Karin's position, inducing sleep, metamorphing Karin's body, and controlling Karin's body with puppet magic would all probably work despite Karin's barrier. The last three may be somewhat inefficent given Yoshiteru also has some control over Karin's body and ability to act independenty, but all of them can stall Karin for a long time. However does Diana have anything that can kill Karin? Yes, she has lifeforce draining which given enough time should work.
In contrast, can Karin kill Diana? Either not easily, not clearly, or both. Karin doesn't have many forms of offenses and while her blades should be able to hurt Diana normally in anything but a highballed scenario, in anything but a lowballed scenario, Diana has multiple layers of defense she can do including teleporting away, magic reflection, forcefield normally, and healing herself, and especially given she is especially skilled at healing herself and the reason Heroes struggled so hard to kill perfect Vertexes is because of their regenerative property, though Karin can kill a perfect vertex normally through speed and skill, it's likely Diana wouldn't be easily killed by Karin just striking normally, especially given how predictable her attacks are after for someone like Diana after seeing them. It's unclear whether YuYu verse sealing actually would affect the "soul" of a humanoid character if used on them but Diana can affect her own soul with her magic and has fusion magic that would allow her to fuse together with her soul if need be. Likewise Diana can teleport out of being physically sealed in place if need be.
Mankai does change things considerably. Mankai boosts Karin's speed to comparable to Diana's own flight/reaction speed and gives her enough attack potency to one-shot Diana even through a shield. It's possible Diana's magic reflection would work, but even Mankai Karin's attacks can't break her own barrier. However that brings up Diana's greatest possible defense, the shadow form. Being made out of darkness, Karin's attacks would do absolutely nothing to Diana if she was just a shadow. Karin is relatively intelligent herself and might think to use light in some way to hit this Diana, but Karin doesn't have any easy way to make light with her powers and even if she ripped off a chunk of the land and threw it into the Sun, Diana can change back or teleport away. The only way for Karin to hit her then is the unlikely case where the Heroes sealing actually would pull the soul from Diana's body.
This might seem like Diana wins because she can life-drain and go intangible when she would otherwise be hit. But it's not that simple. Lifesap circle is technically an optional spell to obtain late into Chamber of Time and is unlikely for Diana to have it highly level, assuming she has it at all. Partially because of that Lifesap Circle would be a very inefficient way to kill Karin. Not only does Karin have high stamina, high willpower, and a fairy trying to force her body to stay alive, but the Lifesap circle is a big obvious and painful circle described as "slowly" draining lifeforce appearing on the ground when superleaping hundreds of meters is one of easiest powers a Hero can do. Considering Karin's abilities, Diana trying to kill her with Lifesap circle is probably best described as trying to kill someone by hitting them with a stick. It'd probably hurt, but it would take a long time to kill.
In other words both characters have ways to kill the other, but in both cases it would be very difficult due to the others defenses, and so I think most likely this fight actually comes downs to stamina more then anything. Diana doesn't really have any notable stamina feats however humans in general have a much higher stamina then you'd think, being a stamina-based hunters in nature. It was frustratingly hard to find information about levels of stamina, however to use an arbitrary system, let's say Diana has a stamina of 1, the normal somewhat physically active human amount. This is similar to most Heroes seen in the series and Mankai regularly drains them completely knocking them unconscious. Karin was able to do so 4 times, and still wasn't unconscious, even recovering slightly and using it a fifth time before falling unconscious. This means Karin would have a stamina somewhere between 4 and 5. This is consistent with Karin's constant stamina training. She also had an additional advantage stamina-wise in that she has a massive endurance from being a hero, that Diana just doesn't have. If Karin stabs Diana, even if Diana can hypothetically still heal herself, it's possible Diana will black out from shock as is common with physical trauma, especially for civilians. Conversely Karin scales to heroes who've been repeatedly stabbed through or had their body covered in burns and continue to fight.
So the question becomes can Diana make Karin use up her stamina before Diana uses up hers. And there are definitely ways she can do this; lifesap circle drains Karin and gives Diana some lifeforce back. Karin's form of combat jumping and slicing around is far more stamina-intensive then Diana waving her wand around and speaking magical invocations, though Diana's flying would be comperably intensive, Diana can trick Karin as Diana is characteristically patient and composed while Karin is brash and impulsive. And most of all, Mankai would lower Karin's basically by Diana's full stamina. In this way one of Karin's usual strongest assets, her mankai, is basically a trap in this fight. It doesn't at all help Karin get past Diana's shadow form and it would drain her stamina. At best it would let her get wins early on just from surprise factor.
However all of the things that can drain Karin of stamina are things Karin and Diana hve to actively do. Meanwhile the entire time Karin's regeneration means she can regain energy, maybe not that quickly, but fast enough to be noticable. Hypothetically it can be overclocked but this would require a very strong effort to do so, and given Karin's additional endurance I can't see Diana just outlasting Karin.
However the real thing that decides this fight for me is what I just described is the OPTIMAL scenario for Diana and it's basically a 50-50. While Diana CAN counter everything Karin can do. Karin WILL counter everything Diana can do, at least partially, without even knowing it. This is because all of Diana's abilities, down maybe even to her stats, are abilities she activates. Conversely Karin's strongest powers, her barrier and fairy immortality are completely passive to the point of happening even if she wanted them not too. Diana at all moments needs to choose whether to attack or defend as she can only cast one spell at a time while Karin can just keep attacking as her defense is always on.
Diana is very powerful in Little Witch Academia, but it's not for having particularly strong powers, it's for her immense knowledge on the verse and its lore. Against Karin she's fighting someone far more skilled in general combat, far quicker to adapt, and which she has no knowledge on. Diana doesn't know that Karin can't hit on the astral plane, and so her shadow form would be invulnerable. She doesn't know what powers, if any would work on Karin. Diana is very intelligent and perceptive and would probably quickly figure out what the optimal strategy is against her, but some versions of the fight would end early with Karin just stabbing Diana or an explosion knocking the wand from her hand, or Diana teleporting behind Karin only for Karin to reflexively slash her with higher reaction speed. Meanwhile Diana has no similar scenarios of killing Karin quickly, she basically can only outlast and lifedrain her, not helped by the fact that while Karin is brash, impulsive, and likely to change up her strategies (as best she can), all the time, Diana is stubborn and unlikely to divert from a plan once she's decided on it. Likewise, Karin can shut down most stealth things Diana can do with her radar and sensory abilities or that most of Diana's stalling abilities are things that would actually make Karin use up less energy like taking away temporarily her offensive tools, or keeping her from moving with things like gravity or sleep manipulation. This is why Diana's versatility, usually one of her biggest strengths, is actually a weakness as well this fight, as it would keep her from quickly finding what is the most useful abilities to use against Karin, as they're abilities she uses less often.
While Diana is vastly more versatile, and is smarter, Karin's ironclad defense, both her barrier and her ability to recover, her hero training in skill and stamina, and her sheer tenacity would allow her to outlast and eventually win.
The winner is Karin Miyoshi
Next Time:
Next Time, join me as I analyze the strongest character I will have ever fully vs analyzed
Thank you to my friend Thor for making the awesome soundtrack for this fight!
Oh My God its Here! Its Finally Here! this really has been an edge of my seat matchup ive been waiting for with massive amount of anticipation and i can say it DID live up to the hype. I was SO excited when you told me about this Matchup because Little Witch Academia is easily one of my top 3 Magical Girls Series' Ever and I couldn't wait to see you analyze it because no one does a better job making fights than you. But this got even more exciting for me when I actually watched All of Yuki Yuna is a Hero while this was in production and Karin easily became my favorite character in the entire series. Karin is such a complete badass, she's almost like a heroic Magical Girl Version of Peacock, which really made me struggle to decide who to root for here. Little Witch is one of my favorite anime and it doesn't get a lot of respect, people think Harry Potter and My Hero characters can compete with it generally, so I really wanted to see it get a win here. But Wow, I really didn't wanna see someone who reminds me so much of Peacock go down either. That being said it hardly matter because WOW you analyzed these two series like a well oiled machine, and left no stone unturned when talking about how incredibly badass these verses are. You even brought up extremely hypothetical high and low end feats and powers they possibly could scale too and addressed them, it was impressively thorough and paints a really clear picture and understanding of how powerful these verses are and how all their powers work. I liked how you laid out How Karin in base form was WAY stronger than I once thought her and the numerous subtle resistances and abilities that Heros have. And Wow seeing all Diana's powers listed out in a long power list like that was really awesome to watch. But I think the really cool thing is even with how completely insanely detailed the analysis' were, it was still basically impossible to predict who would win the fight because it was just THAT Even.
ReplyDeleteI had to try and consider every possible angle for how Diana could get through that force field and if any of them were more likely than Karin just grabbing her and beating her ass, that I think I got tunnel vision and left some obvious factors on the table. I literally forgot at the time that Diana could turn intangible and still picked her to win. But Hey that made a really cool moment at the end where Karin just completely overcome what I thought of her and punched my Expectations lights out! Hot Damn, I have done a lot of fights between characters and often times a character I liked more will lose. People have told me why don't I just find a character I think they would beat from the outset, THIS is why. I love a character because they are Awesome, Awesome characters don't get thrown a free win, they get a CHALLENGE, someone who can test them to their limit so then they rise and exceed that challenge it Means something. Karin beat a character I didn't believe she could here and that is SO cool for a character I really love. The Entire Fight was just full of cool moments on BOTH Sides really, i Love how you had their personalities clashing so hard, and introduced the theme of stamina very early on and kept it going in the background the whole fight, and how you gave both of them these moments to seem really overpowered like Diana using intangibility to make Karin feel useless and then turn her into a mouse to humiliate her....only for Karin to turn it around and use her shield to make Diana feel useless and use her Mankai AS A MOUSE to terrorize her right back. Its clear you understand both the characters, the themes and the debate to an expert degree and I loved every part of this fight. The End Results were Extremely convincing, especially near the end where you laid out how Karin had all the easier advantages after playing devils advocate for Diana all along. I am REALLY Excited for Lucifer and whatever comes next, because If one guy is a legend in the art of VS debating, its goddamn Lucifer Morning Star, the man who is half the strength of the presence, the man who can still solo Sailor Moon after getting his powers stolen, the Man....who even DBZFanboys conceede would beat Goku. :D
DeleteNext Time... Lucifer Morningstar.
ReplyDeleteOh I am curious to see who his recommended opponent is.
Fantastic battle Imp! I was very interested to read this, especially after experiencing both series. All the scaling you did in the analysis seem very logical. I am less familiar with all the details of the world building of Yuki Yuna, but I find your explanation of the Shinju cool, with the heroes being "ideals embodied" in their relationship with the Shinju; also cool to see what heroes were like before extensively utilizing fairies. Though I haven't had any experience with these
ReplyDeletekind of calcs, there is something satisfying about figuring out how fast or powerful these fictional feats would be in real life, so I enjoyed reading the speed section. I also like how you gather various types of evidence to give support to a feat, including item descriptions, to really portray the consistency well. The personality sections are beautifully written. I did really like that aspect of Yuki Yuna where the care of Karin's friends helped her to loosen up and value others.
I particularly like your statement "we are sustained not by abstractions but by the silly little things in our daily life". Diana's personality section was just as great with how you showed she was actually a super affectionate person, and how Akko's believing heart helped Diana gain something she lost.
The fight was super entertaining. I can definitely it captures the feel of the characters and series very well. I like how you gave both characters reason to dislike each other by them comparing the other to negative experiences to people they know like Diana's cousins. Also like the touch of Diana thinking about the implications of the war torn world. Stuff like this makes it seem more organic I guess. There were so many fun and epic moments, from Diana grabbing her
soul when it was separated from her, to the reveal of the lifesap circle, etc.. The absolutely best part of the fight was the scene where Diana changed Karin into a mouse lol; the fact it ended in a mankai was amazing. And it was a pretty solid fake out at the end, where I thought Diana was going to win with the lifesap.
Results seem solid; I like how you explained the role of stamina in the battle and how Karin's defenses were passive would help her. I don't know much about the character in the next time, besides the fact that he is super OP so I am looking forward to learning about Lucifer.
Ah, I loved this one! It brought together a lot of elements I really like, I'll get into that in a second. I was so excited to see you doing a battle involving Yuuki Yuuna Is A Hero, one of my all time favorite magical girl series and the character that got in is one of my fave characters from it! The only gal I like more than Karin is Gin. And she's going up against someone from a Trigger anime; I knew this battle was gonna be awesome! LWA is actually one of the few Trigger series I haven't seen for some strange reason. Don't really have an explanation for that lol. Anyway, this fight brought together a sword-wielding hero and a master of magic (holy cow is Diana ever a prodigy!) in what felt like a classic fantasy battle for the modern age. I love that sort of stuff; fantasy is my favorite genre for games, books and anime and Karin exemplifies the sort of character I like to play in fantasy games: a straightforward warrior with fantastic defense who can also dish out a ton of damage. The preferred term is “bruiser”, though it sounds sorta funny to apply that to a cute young girl like Karin. Though make no mistake, she's totally badass! Really took me back seeing you talking about her big multi-Mankai moment.
ReplyDeleteSorry, got a bit sidetracked fanboying over Karin and how much this blog appeals to me. Most of her section was pretty familiar to me; great job providing a lot of sources to back up your info for those unfamiliar with the series. I appreciate you going over the different incarnations of the Hero System, as that's something that's easy for me to forget. One thing that surprised me was the reveal of how powerful the very weakest of the vertexes (vertices?) are. Those things are fodder that get slaughtered in high numbers by lone Heroes and yet they're still so strong! No wonder the world got mostly wrecked. It's hard for me to pick a favorite ability of Karin's between her four-armed Mankai and her nigh-invincible shield. Aaaaaaaa you know I'm gonna pick the sword between sword and shield :P
While Karin's section was enjoyable because of nostalgia, Diana's was fun because all the new information was very interesting. I think you're quite good at analyzing magical characters (by that I mean mage-type or caster characters), and it's a real treat getting to read through the encyclopedia of spells you detail for them. I was tremendously impressed by Diana, and nearly every new section and paragraph had something that blew my mind over how much of a paragon she is for her world. Despite Diana having so many more abilities to choose from, it's pretty easy for me to pick my favorite power of hers: that secret family spell that shoots a bunch of fiery swords! Though her metamorphosis magic is also REALLY cool! It's so much better than my other versions of that magic I've seen, allowing transformations into other states of being like pure darkness or light.
Anyone who hasn't read the fight, spoilers ahead so go back and read it now.
This was the action-packed, sword-swinging, spell-slinging battle I was hoping for. It was awesome to see so much of their kits show up. My favorite part was definitely Mouse Mankai! What a surprise! Multiple times I thought Karin was done for, only for her to do the hero thing and press on to victory! Her victory line had me crackin' a smile. I love the way you describe the grand scale of very powerful characters, like when Karin flung the earth Diana was in up to space, the subsequent clash in the atmosphere and shaking of the planet afterward. You can really tell that writing superheroes and magical girls is one of your fortes. And yet there's still cuteness and comedy mixed in with the grand spectacles and edge of your seat battles, much like the series themselves. It's always wonderful to read something by someone who really gets both sides of a crossover and fuses them in a way that feels natural to both. Speaking of that, I'll end at the beginning and say the set up, the “hook” so to speak, for this one was perfect; truly inspired.
Cont below
Cont from above
DeleteThis felt pretty close; I was having a tough time picking who would win. In the end, I guessed incorrectly that Diana would win assuming she could hax out a victory. I wasn't sure which options would be effective to what degree, but I thought either using metamorphosis hax while being able to affect other planes or disabling Karin with hax (probably sleep) and then lifedraining would do it. Turns out I was on the right track with that last one, but to my delight Karin still won! Your post-fight analysis was fantastic, a wonderful breakdown that explained that while both could win, Karin was more likely and would win in many more scenarios, which is my favorite sort of close fight. It's so rare that muscle wins over magic, I love to see it! Though yeah, yeah, I get Karin's muscle is magic too :P
You'll see no arguments from me here, great job doing this battle justice!
Very much looking forward to next time, as this fella's incredible power level has been mentioned numerous times throughout several of your blogs. Oh, and shoutout to Thor for the awesome tunes in this one!