How they Compare: Sakura Kaede (Kampfer)

 

In a far off galaxy there was a brutal war amongst aliens. However the death toll became too high. In order to settle this with no more of their own dying, they appoint a neutral party called Moderaters who give lesser races the power to become superhuman enhanced fighters called Blue Kampfer or Red Kampfer. The Blue and Red Kampfer fight, act as proxy champions for the two alien sides.

Sakura Kaede was a pleasant and kind young girl, who perhaps was a bit fearful of men. One day the young girl went exploring in the abandoned house next to her finding a secret tunnel underground. There she came across a strange statue with large glowing eyes that seemed to peer into her soul. On that day, Sakura's mind was inhabited by two personalities: the kind and gentle Sakura, and a manipulative and cruel misandrist who sought to do the will of the Moderators. It's unclear if other Sakura, the main villain of the series, is a moderator possessing her, or it's the result of Moderator brainwashing, or is a part of Sakura herself, but she spread the plushie toys called Entrail Animals, Stuffied animals in macabre deaths around, these toys causing people with potential to turn into the Kampfer. 

However one enigma stopped her plans. While for some reason all human Kampfer were girls, Natsuru Seno was a boy who turned into a girl when he transformed into his Kampfer state. More then that instead of fighting the Red Kampfer, he tried to foster peace between the two sides so that they could turn against the moderators. Sakura didn't like that. She tried to manipulate him into accepting that he was really a girl and stay in that form and by her side forever, seemingly determined to prove the superiority of her sex and also to allow the battle between Blue and Red Kampfer to proceed. However Natsuru and his allies were able to stop the other Sakura and her forces, even freeing the original Sakura mind. 

Kampfer is not a very strong verse, though Sakura does get the benefits of being one of the best fighters within it. One of her minions Rika was able to just burst through a ceiling and Sakura should be noticeably stronger. Someone more relative would be Shizuku who seemingly just deleted a wall in Chapter 23. Sakura when talking about other fighters commented that only Natsuru and Shizuku were any good, which strongly suggests those three as the top tiers. It's not entirely clear who's stronger between Sakura and Shizuku but at the very least the two have traded blows and it's clear Sakura doesn't think she's outclassed by her. Roughly calcs put the pulverization of the wall at energy values around 111 megajoules putting her in the Small Building Tier. 

In terms of speed, there's an abundance of bullet timing feats in the series for even the lower tier characters, with Shizuku again being suggested to being someone lower tiers struggle to ever get a hit on and Sakura being somewhere in the same range as her, suggesting she could have supersonic speed.

More impressive then this from an out of universe standpoint are Sakura's mental stats which are higher then most characters in her tier. She seems to have gotten the Moderators intelligence in particular, creating a high tech lab where she preserves the bodies of Former Kampfers, and giving the Entrail Animals their information. She is also an expert manipulator, having deceived people into thinking she was just Natsuru's innocent childhood crush Sakura the whole time, regularly manipulating people based on their personal wants, pretending to be the other Sakura when it suits her, etc. The only person in the series who can mentally get the upper hand on her is Shizuku and even then it's more pitched then anything. As one of The Three Beauties of Seitetsu, she also has a level of social influencing. 

In terms of combat, she can also personally lead her own lesbian harem of Kampfer called the White Kampfer into battle, Kampfer regularly doing absurd skill feats like blocking bullets with swords or making extreme feats of agility. 

Kampfer are normally divided into three types, each with their own power... except Sakura isn't a Kampfer, she's a Moderator, and so has all their powers. Schwert Kampfer summon a sword when they transform and use it with superhuman skill, and indeed Sakura can use her Japanese styled sword in combat when needed. Gewehr Kampfer summon a gun when they transform and Sakura also has a Beretta which she can use, and presumably creating an unrealistic fast fire rate with it the way Gewehr Kampfer do. Zauber Kampfer use magic and are more varied through broadly shoot some kind of elemental. Sakura has also shown this in the final combat, creating electricity which came off her to attack Natsuru and friends. Uniquely she also showed she could bind people with it as well to the point they couldn't break out. 

Sakura also showed a unique power, which is her iconic mind controlling eyes. Sakura can control someone's mind via eye contact. This can allow her to simply brainwash them, or have them act normal while following a command she implanted into them. It can also be used to mess with their memories which she uses so people don't remember she brainwashed them. Also if she's truly a moderator she may have their ability to cause people to cease to exist, though it seems unlikely she has that and wouldn't just use that and how Moderators do that isn't even entirely known. 

In terms of weaknesses, Sakura has a very unlikely to show up weakness in most fights involving her where if the statue that brainwashed her initially and is now in her lab is destroyed, it will destroy the Moderator influence over her and she will return to being Good Sakura. Outside that Sakura seems to have a harder time modeling the minds of men and what they value, genuinely believing that Natsuru would choose her over his friends/love interests because life as a woman ruling at her side would be too tempting to pass up. 

Name: Sakura Kaede, Other Sakura

Origin: Kampfer

Powers and Abilities: Enhanced Physical and Mental Capabilities, Weapon Summoning (Sword, Gun), Elemental Projection (Lightning), Binding, Mind/Memory Manipulation, Possibly Existence Erasure

Weaknesses: If the Moderator Statue is broken, she will return to being Good Sakura, her Misandry can blind her

Attack Potency: Small Building Level

Range: At least tens of meters with Beretta

Speed: Supersonic

Durability: Small Building Level

Stamina: Likely Superhuman

Standard Equipment: Her Sword and Gun

Intelligence: Superhuman

So how would Sakura do in other verses?

Kampfer is often considered Magical Girl-adjacent, so how would Sakura do in a an actual Magical Girl Series that happens to be a Reverse Harem Series unlike Kampfer which is a regular Harem Series?

The Leafe Knights would have similar levels of power to Sakura as they scale to Goh the Knight of Fire who burned a Saihi Tree to Ash, however she'd have a notable speed advantage as they at most scale to Hayate the Knight of wind who can move at the speed of the wind, while she can move at the speed of bullets. While they do have very high levels of skill to fight this, Sakura has likely higher skill along intelligence higher then anyone in the verse. On the plus side for the Leafe Knights they all have a city wide range which is much higher then her and should be resistant to any manipulation from her as they are considered strong of heart and conviction, resistant to corrupting infleunces and with the Knight of Sound Sasame able to hear sound on a city-wide range meaning he'd here any thing she says when she thinks she's out of earshot. Her best attempt to manipulate them would be to pretend to revert to Good Sakura so they won't strike her down. If she tries to bind them they can use their dimensional travel which they use to travel their world and back. She'd have to basically wear them down which would be viable one on one given her speed advantage, though together they do they have the ability to seal entities away as strong as Saihi Fenrir away, much stronger then Sakura. So a fight between her and the Leafe Knights really depends on whether Sakura has the White Kampfer as backup or if she can pick them off one by one, as she can definitely beat a single one of them, but would probably lose to all seven at once.

If she fought Himeno or Saihi Fenrir though she'd pretty easily lose, they're just way stronger then Sakura fighting for the entire world. 

Fushigi Yuugi is another Reverse Harem series that is also considered Magical Girl adjacent, so what would happen if Sakura would dropped off inside the universe of the four gods. 

Sakura would be considered a relative high tier, with most godly warriors doing things like smashing boulders or cars and with the strongest setting the local environment on fire, something Natsuru was doing early in the story with his magic fire and Sakura being much stronger then. Likewise most of the verse has subsonic feats of moving faster then the eye something Sakura would be able to move much faster then if not outright blitz. Even outside the four Gods however, Sakura can't just brute force her way through the verse. While she can beat most of the outright Martial Artists in the verse who usually use fists, melee weapons, or various elementals which are not dissimilar to the elemental magic Kampfer uses, there are more illusions in Fushihi Yuugi including Chichiru and Tomo, both of whom would be threats that Sakura had never experienced before. There verses has their own enhanced geniuses like Chiriko who's celestial power is enhanced intelligence that could also mentally compete with her.

With that said Sakura playing her normal route would be highly effective. She can easily manipulate and brainwash people she comes across by pretending to be a sweet innocent girl. Even mentally intoxicating drugs were shown to very potent in the verse and Sakura can just do that via eye contact and on a much thorough level. Combine that with how she can beat almost anyone directly in a one v one fight if she does get found out and she'd be extremely difficult to stop.

In Hayate the Combat Butler, another Harem series set in Modern Japan albeit one with a lot more fantastical elements, Sakura would be considered a relative speedster, with bullet timing still being difficult for the faster characters in the setting. However with most characters being able to compare to at least a pre-Golden Week Hayate who was able to fight small building sized mech that could tech through similarly sized buildings, large demons that ripped up trees and large sections of the earth, minotaurs shattering multiple large stone pillars with one swing of its axe, etc. Sakura's power would be considered nothing particularly special. She's also as smart as anyone save Shiori who is a non fighter that makes the mechs while being as skilled as the better fighters in the verse meaning she would be a substantial mental threat.

Sakura's binding ability and her lightning attacks wouldn't be especially strong in a verse of characters with such high power but her brainwashing should do pretty well, especially in a verse with such high female cast she can manipulate, as brainwashing, or really powers in general, are pretty rare in Hayate, mostly shown by spirits who possess people. They wouldn't suspect a non-fighter to just be able to do that. Now there are some characters who have exorcism abilities like Isumi who may be able to exorcise the Moderator influence from Sakura, though she'd have to know it's there and Sakura could simply brainwash or kill Isumi beforehand with relative power and much higher speed. Of course if she's found out she could obviously be overwhelmed as any attack from one of the big names could one-shot her. 

Cutie Honey is another anime/manga series where the villains are all girls and have sapphic and misandrist influences with a similar power level so I thought it worked.

Sakura would fit right in with the high Tiers of Cutie Honey in terms of stats. Fire Claw was able to turn a tree to ash and Angel Honey was able to turn a normal Panther Claw Agent to ash, calced at 243 megajoules, over twice that of Shizuku's calc though Honey is the Hero of the verse. In terms of speed, Honey and Sister Jill were both able to bullet time from close range, similar to what Kampfer do and should be around Sakura in terms of speed. 

Sakura in Cutie Honey would be entertaining. She's powerful enough to contend with the high tier fighters well but with a different arsenal type. As Honey is an Android and her enemies Panther Claw are demonic cats from another dimension I don't know if Sakura's hypnosis would work on them though it's likely she could manipulate Panther Claw anyway as they are very obvious personifications of greed and lust, thinks easy for Sakura to give. That said this would be a dangerous game for Sakura as she doesn't have an easy to kill the regenerating demons on her own level of power. She could try binding them though even if they aren't strong enough to escape, if she runs out of stamina they will escape. What's more, with her crystal ball, Witch Zora, their supreme leader may be able to tell where the Moderator Statue, the source of her abilities is and send the Panthers to destroy it. 

Against Honey herself it's the other way around. Sakura would have a harder time manipulating Honey. She could do it, taking advantage of Honey's heroism, though on the other hand Honey could also manipulate her as she's a trickster heroine similar in trickery as Shizuku and has the benefit of her many disguises. Honey has a lot more weapons including ones that could potentially one shot Sakura like acid spit. That said Sakura has lightning projection which would be especially bad for the Android Heroine. 

Overall Sakura would be a dangerous threat in the Cutie Honey verse but not one that is insurmountable and would form a third party contrasted with Panther Claw's drive to take Honey's beautiful body by force, instead manipulate it to her side one way or another. 

Finally the Xena-verse isn't an anime/manga obviously or a harem series, but I just wanted to see the sapphic villain be hopefully defeated by a series with just as strong sapphic energy. Sakura would not be quite as strong as the High Tier Fighters in the Xena verse who scale to the Gods creating avatars as small as small buildings, one shotting each other, or destroying temples in one shots. On the other hand with arrow timing being one of the fastest things in the verse, she'd have a pretty big speed advantage, though she can't really rely on this with the skill scaling of the verse being so high they can still react to and tag Sakura moving at full speed.

For the most part, Sakura has an arsenal that would make her too strong for most of the conventional fighters. Binding, Lightning Projection, Enhanced Agility, and Brainwashing would make her definitely more a match for most of the superhuman fighters, especially as she would definitely be seen as a speed focused fighter, perhaps blessed by Hermes. She'd have some interesting fights against either high tiers. Immortal Callisto for instance she wouldn't be able to kill but could incap at least temporarily via binding and mind hax, though she'd have to figure out some way to stop her or Callisto would eventually get her. Against Eve the Bringer of Twilight it really depends. Eve should have the advantage in most physical stats, the sight which lets her see into corrupted hearts to know Sakura's true intentions, and exorcism powers, but if Sakura can get her into eye contact with her superior speed she may be able to brainwash her. Otherwise she'd have try to wear Eve down and I don't think that would work. 

If she had to fight Xena herself however, I think she'd lose clearly. Xena has resisted hypnosis before and has shown both the strength to overpower Sakura's bindings as well as just the ability to escape bindings. Sakura would be faster but Xena would have pretty much every other category and would be able to hunt her down. The best thing Sakura would have is manipulating Xena's good nature, brainwashing her allies against her, taking hostages, or pretending to be innocent Sakura so Xena can't stop her. This might temporarily work but Xena has been in basically all of these situations before and has figured out ways to get around them and would probably still win.