The meaning of Sailor Moon's ending

There's been a lot of talk about the ending of SM recently. I've seen unfortunately a lot of not so nice things about the Sailor Moon Manga which is my favorite series ever. As such I would like to help people see in it what I do, in particular in regards to the ending.

Before I get to it, I need to give the priming the series gives, "set the stage" as it were. Specifically, I need to explain Usagi, my favorite character of all.

The series begins with a demonstration of Usagi's unreliableness and her admission that she is "a bit of a crybaby"

Act 1 is all about introducing us to the paradox of Usagi's character. She is generally unreliable, immature and altogether unheroic.

However when she finds out her friend Naru is in danger, Usagi jumps into danger to try to save her

The first arc will continue to explore this paradox, that a flawed person can become the heroic archetype briefly for their loved ones. 

Later when the Senshi go to the Moon, Queen Serenity says that part of the purpose of Princess Serenity's rebirth as Usagi is she would be reborn as a (human/normal) girl

and the page prior venerates Usagi's love as part of the force that can unlock her power, the Silver Crystal

This characterization of Usagi abounds throughout the manga. She is a normal girl, rather then a distant transcendent figure, but her love makes her a hero, and allows her to save the world for each of the first four arcs.

Come the fifth arc, we are introduced to Galaxia. We aren't told Galaxia's origin or motivation initially, instead having it explained in pieces over the course of the arc. Galaxia grew up on a horrid world compared to Hell before awakening with godlike power.

she was dissatifised with her world, searching the cosmos a worthy world, rejecting each world that didn't live up to that standard and destroying it

Galaxia is thematically opposed to Usagi. Galaxia is not entrenched in the material world of things and people. She is the wandering philosopher spirit that is not satisfied without the perfect and eternal.

After finding out about Chaos, the corrupting force of existence, she masterminded a plan to destroy Chaos and create a new world, something eternal worthy of her.

Galaxia is the embodiment of the absolute, the eternal, the infinite. Star Systems and loved ones alike disappear into the nothing in the face of her. She spends the arc emotionally torturing Usagi by killing her loved ones in front of her to draw Usagi closer into using the full power of the Silver Crystal. There's some absolutely brilliant moments framing the conflict between them. In act 52, dealing with the trauma of watching her loved ones killed in front of her, Usagi walks outside and says she is afraid, that it feels like the world is going to fall away at any moment. 

This is a common feeling among those suffering from trauma. The disappearence of the feeling of object permenance, the feeling of uncertainty about everything. We can all, I imagine, relate to experiecing a much minor feeling about it. After a sudden large surprise, the world briefly becomes less transcendent objects and patterns and instead briefly becomes more a stream of pure sensory stimulus, colors and sounds not conveying meaning. It's also a parallel to Galaxia's quest to find the eternal transcendent meaning.

Later in that act there's a moment where Galaxia is looking at the star seeds of the senshi and questions why those girls cling to the human star seeds

with Galaxia saying that human star seeds are insignifigant dust. Star Seeds are representations of an identity with Sailor Senshi having one representing their human identity and one representing their Senshi identity. Galaxia here wonders why the Sol System Senshi cling to their human lives instead of living as eternal cosmic beings. This is definitely a possibility, Minako says after awakening as Sailor Venus that her entire human life before then was merely a temporary disguise for her identity as Sailor Venus

However they don't live constantly as Sailor Senshi, instead living normal human lives. This sets up the conflict between Usagi's and Galaxia's characters.

When Usagi and Galaxia confront each other after Galaxia resurrecting Usagi's friends and forced Usagi to kill them, Galaxia has an interesting statement. For the first time in the arc, Galaxia does something that does not contribute to tormenting Usagi and insists on getting Usagi's admission that she knows that such things as friendship are temporary illusions, using Galaxia's control of Usagi's friends as proof

Yet Usagi rebuffs her proclaiming that her friends are the source of her great power. We know this to be true, physically and metaphysically. Not only does the Silver Crystal depend on Usagi's heart but we've seen since act 1 that Usagi becomes her strongest and best self to help her friends. Her love truly is her strength.

Galaxia does not have her usual cool arrogant response to this. Instead she's visibly angry and confused asking herself "Why was she chosen?"  and "How can she have the Silver Crystal's power?" 

Galaxia does not seem to conciously believe in eternal ideals like justice, but it really easy to read the subconcious sting of injust treatment into Galaxia's words. Usagi, someone who as far as Galaxia can tell has lived a life never striving or suffering the pain of isolation, whose always had others to depend on instead of striving for meaning, and she has a power to rival or even surpass Galaxia's own?! Why has Galaxia suffered countless years in Hell, destroyed world after world to prove herself, if this upstart crybaby girl who has never suffered alike can have the same power?

Galaxia starts their interaction by presuming narcissistically that Usagi's power are powered by hatred for Galaxia

and later to awaken the truely infinite power of Usagi, all of her power, tries to make her feel true hatred from the pain of true isolation.

It is sad that Galaxia assumes that Usagi is still lying about the source of her powers and still thinks it must be hatred. Not to mention that Galaxia tries to awaken Usagi's power by subjecting her to what Galaxia has experienced: "True solitude."

However in a beautiful irony, when Chaos, the primal void tries to swallow Galaxia and Usagi alike, Usagi protects Galaxia because after experiencing "true solitude", Usagi saw the loneliness inside her in Galaxia

This scan also has one of, if not the most important statement in Sailor Moon and I'm really annoyed Miss Dream mistranslated it. Here Usagi says "All this time, I was never fighting for peace and justice. But only for my friends and loved ones..." following up logically with the next page where Usagi asks if there's no one left to fight for, what is the purpose of fighting

Usagi is not a philosophical spirit like Galaxia, looking for some perfect eternal ideal. She is only able to relate to people, which is why she bemoans earlier in the arc that these bodies we embrace each other with don't last for eternity. 

She also wonders without the Silver Crystal, representing her life as a soldier, the life of suffering, if she would ever be born.

These pages show that Usagi can't relate to abstractions, she recognizes the neccesity of temporary limited physical insubstantiatians to reconcile emotionally. You can't embrace the concept of peace when happy, you can't confess your insecurities to the concept of justice, you can't join hands with the concept of love. 

Back during the final confrontation, Chibi-Chibi, Usagi's future self, tries to ask Usagi to destroy the Galaxy Cauldron, allowing the Cosmos to die in peace because in the future she will lose everything she loves, and Chibi-Chibi can't bear the pain of war and  suffering any longer.

However Sailor Moon refuses, saying that no matter what state the cosmos shows to her, there will always be light and darkness, for that is what the cosmos is. In doing she affirms her willingness to face eternal suffering and war, all the horrible states the cosmos could possibly take because of her faith that she will always love the cosmos

I don't know how Naoko does it, but this at once the ultimate character development for Usagi and perfectly in character with what we have known about her since act 1. Usagi is a cowardly crybaby that hides from conflict but faces it for her loved ones. For the cosmos, and all the loved things that have ever and will ever be, despite her fears, she will face the future and all it's dark possibilities, literally the Chaos of being. 

Galaxia who has spent all arc trying to destroy Chaos, trying to transcend past the painful war and suffering hears that Usagi is willing to face it for all eternity for the flawed temporary material world she has scorned and asks in wonderment if Usagi is the one who embraces all

Galaxia reaches for Usagi, having finally found that eternal transcendent being but can tragically never reach it, undone by her own power

Usagi recognizes that all her enemies, and indeed we all, feel the same way. That we are all lonely stars drifting through the cosmos drawn to each other to gather as one before leaping forwards to embrace Chaos, literally diving towards the chaos of being, regardless of what may come.

Later in the Galaxy Cauldron, Guardian Cosmos explicitly asks Usagi if she wants to remain in the Galaxy Cauldron as a eternal perfect existence but Usagi says she and her friends want to return to Earth, to live the material existence with it's joys and pains.

and the series ends at Usagi and Mamoru's wedding with Mamoru saying Usagi is that star which will eternally shine as the brightest star

The meaning of the fifth arc, though I have come to articulate it better, heavily effected me from the first time I read it many years ago. It is a perfect fusion of the message of the first four arcs and the final message of SM. The messages of the first four arcs can be phrased to the best of my understanding.

First Arc: Even a flawed coward can rise to becoming a perfect hero temporarily for their loved ones.

Second Arc: Love is an eternal power that transcends time, able to vanquish the phantom force of hatred.

Third Arc: Those that spend their lives trying to avoid death/the void are ruled by it, but those that are willing to embrace Death will find immortality.

Fourth Arc: The eternal reality is the bonds between people and one can find meaning and greater power/purpose in the focusing towards one's devotions

The message of the fifth arc seems to incorporate these into one and I would phrase it thus: "You can reject world after world for their imperfections, and you will find nothing but the emptiness from it. It is in embracing this temporary, material, imperfect world, that you will find the perfect eternal form of being called love."

This is a message that has helped me immensely in my personal life. I am naturally a timid person, prone to avoiding risk or threat in favor of the safe and comfortable. Usagi's story showed me that I didn't need to be afraid of the world, that in embracing this temporary material world, I could find that perfect existence of love. I hope this message helps you too. 

War of the Monsters-verse Strategy Guide

How to be OP in War of the Monsters-verse

City+ Scale Threat:

All the Kaiju are here as they are all fairly relative to each other. There are at least several of some of the kaiju (4 alternate versions are playable and it's known there has to be at least 9 of Preytor.)

Earth's history was irreversibly changed when the aliens invaded Earth, destroying much of the world. The Humans to defend themselves created a massive energy shield which succeded in knocking out the alien ufos, causing them to crash land on Earth. Radioactive green liquid leaked out then when added to material caused inanimate material to come to life and causing biological life to mutate and grow massive. The mutant monstrosities created by this would battle each other for control of the world.

The monsters are consistently in the kiloton to megaton range. Togera, the Godzilla reference, was only awoken by a nuclear bomb asnd Robo-47 uses an atomic bomb as his special attack. Any of the monsters can tank the nucleur meltdown of Atomic Island, which leveled most of the island. The monsters can trigger volcanic eruptions and earthquakes by unknown mechanisms and can easily smash alien UFOs which can trigger city-scale tsunami, which the monsters can also withstand. The monsters are possibly much stronger as they can fight final boss Cerebulon who is called "the destroyer of worlds" but this is probably too ambigious. The monsters have a number of impressive smaller feats to support this such as being able to easily smash UFOs that withstood the explosion of the alien mothership that dwarfed the already building sized UFOs or Congar in backstory surviving a terminal velocity fall from Earth creating a crater massively larger then a building. 

In terms of speed, the Monsters are all MHS scaling from Kineticlops who is living electricity. They also have likely relativistic reflexes. Alien UFOs can quickly travel the distance between the Earth and the Moon, likely in minutes and while they are faster then the Monsters, the Monsters can still react to them fine.

The Monsters lack much in the way of hax abilities but they do each have nifty arsenals. Robo-47 and Ultra-V are the American and Japanese Giant Mechs brought to life by the alien liquid, 47 having more conventional military tech and Ultra-V having a jetbooster and an energy katana. There is also the robotic first boss Goliath Prime known for his many explosive attacks and transforming into a spinning blade of death. Goliath Prime as a boss is much stronger then the conventional Kaiju.

Speaking of, in the conventional Kaiju there is Congar the giant ape who has a sonic yell attack and there is his adversary Preytor the mantis creature with flight and a form of homing attack. The Preytors attack as a group and may have some form of hive intelligence. Togera is a Sea Dragon Monster that manipulates it's own skeletal structure to attack with it's bones  and breaths radiation and Raptros is a flying dragon that breaths more conventional fire. In the Pacific the living volcano Magmo and the stone idol brought to life Agamo do battle with Magmo causing fiery destruction that Agmo's thick stone form can withstand. Agamo is also known for his unconventional attack of using his own head as a bomb. Kineticlops is living electrical energy who the game booklet states has the range and area of effect to consume whole cities in his electricity. Finally there's Zorgulon, one of the aliens who himself seems to have mutated and attacks with lasers and by summong UFOs.

There are also two even stronger bossess then Goliath Prime. The second boss is Vegon, a gigantic plant monster that engulfed all of Atomic Island and attacks both by attempting to consume Kaiju like a venus fly trap and by shooting poisons and acids. However even stronger is the final boss Cerebulon, the leader of the aliens Cerebulon is a giant brain-creature in a power suit. Cerebulon's claws and laser attacks can quickly one-shot any conventional Kaiju and his forcefield tech prevents almost any retailiation.

So attempting to get the biggest threats, the verse has logia and anti-logia, way over city levels of power, various forms of elemental and technological attacks, and poison/acid attacks.

So what are the weaknesses? Well size is not actually ALWAYS a strength in battle. Size usually comes with strength/durability but if you can match that, it actually provides a disadvantage in that it makes one relatively immobile. The monsters lack any strong detection abilities and even more agile ones like Preytor or Raptros would have difficult with a small mobile enemy, much like a human would a fly. If said fly had some way of killing the human, they would have a strong advantage. Though you can't rely solely on that as they do have relativistic reactions so they may tag even a very mobile opponent.

Another advantage is intelligence based strategies or technological manipulation. Some of the monsters are technology themselves, and even beyond that, most of them are never shown to be particularly intelligent as opposed to animalistic in intellect. They are also even outside of intelligence portrayed as warlike and combative. As such someone who is clever could probably do well in outwitting them.

Finally they lack much in the way of long-term capabilities. They rely on radioactive energy to maintain their massive forms and if drained, which can happen very quickly in gameplay, they either need to let their energy regenerate or find natural sources of radiation to feed off of. Thus regeneration, high endurance/stamina, forcefileds (like Cerebulon's!) really anything that makes it hard for them to win quickly would probably work well.

So that brings me to my first counter

Eva Unit-02 piloted by Asuka Sohryu

Eva Unit-02 Angel Israphel's self-destruction which was calced to be over 112 megatons worth of energy, suggesting she would be similar in power output to the Monsters, even without using Berserk Mode. With it, Unit-02 could likely rise to Cerebulon's level. She also has comparable reaction/attack speed being able to react to the Spear of Longinus which traveled to the Moon at about 18%c 

Eva-Units have an incredibly survivability exceeding the Monsters. They produce AT fields, basically forcefields made from their souls which should make them comparably durable to Cerebulon but also possess regenerative properties, able to regenerate whole limbs if needed and possibly higher over time. 

Asuka with her Eva would also have vastly more mobility and fighting skill the monsters as well as the ability to hit them from a range outside theirs. While Kineticlops can engulf a city, the positron gun can fire into low earth orbit aided by the electromagnetic sensors described in the DVD booklets. 

And Asuka would likely use such tactics given her advanced intellect to the point that she is considered a child prodify who gained a university degree as a teenager. The only possibly downside is that her own arrogance and short-tempered nature might allow her to get caught off guard by some of the more unconventional abilities of the verse like Agamo's head explosive. 

For a more indirect counter, you could use

Jury Rigg from Ben 10.

Despite his small size, Jury Rigg can compare to the power and speed of Appoplexians and able to build advanced machinery in seconds which means in stats he should actually scale to power and speed to at least the normal Kaiju.

However his real trick is his superhuman technological abilities. The aliens tech in the verse has already shown to be able to create and do damage to the Monsters as has human tech and it's possible he could reverse enginee them to his side, or he could just build something of similar effect himself. More notably three of the Kaiju, including one boss are entirely robotic and Cerebulon relies entirely on a power suit. It's likely that if he could get his hands on such technology, he could create things as powerful or stronger then the monsters. 

It's especially likely he would be able to get such level tech since humans, when two kaiju are fighting, they put up shields they can't break to basically create an arena for them they can't get out off. However Jury Rigg could very well dismantle said shield technology, similar to what he did to the Highbreed pulse technology, and create personal bubbles for himself that would be nigh unbreakable. The only real threat for him would be getting caught out in the open by a non-robotic Kaiju like Vegon. 

For a counter that would be able to fight them more consistently, you could use

Cure Heart from DokiDoki Pretty Cure

By the time she Parthenon Mode, Cure Heart is several powerups above a form of hers that was able to fight Melan whose fire breath destroyed much of a island, calced at 12 megatons. This suggests by her Parthenon Mode she should be able to fight any of the Kaiju evenly in raw power. She is far above lightning in speed, bordering on 1% of c showing she should be much faster then the monsters. Combined with her flight rivaling Raptros she could easily dodge the Monsters blows and hit them with as much force as they do each other. 

She could hit Kineticlops directly as well as Pretty Cure have anti-intangibility let alone anti-logia intangibility. She's also an incredibly skilled fighter like most pretty cure and would easily be able to avoid the blows of the Monsters. She could fly around blasting the Monsters with energy like she did to Proto Jikochou. 

However there's a character I think would be able to deal a similar strategy, but with the addition of the most haxed counter ability to the War of the Monsters-verse. That would be 

Mew Mint from Tokyo Mew Mew

Mint with the Mew Aqua scales to Mew Zakuro who with one burst of energy destroyed a dome that covered Tokyo that the military couldn't break, calced to over 900 megatons of energy, suggesting she would be relative to the monsters, possibly exceeding all of them. She also scales to the Aliens who traveled from the Earth to their spaceship at a value calced over Mach 600, over twice that of Kineticlops' lightning at Mach 300. 

Mew Mint has mew power which has the power to restore matter to it's natural state. This would absolutely destroy the verse, as all of the Monsters are mutations brought on by radiation. However mew power restores on a genetic level, and would revert all of them to their small size or inanimate states. 

Mew Mint unless the other Mew Mews has flight and her attack is a bow and arrow which carries mew power showing she could fly out of detection from the Monsters and fire her bow, restoring them without them ever noticing her. Even if they did notice her, Mew Mint is noted for her agility, not just from her ballet training but from her genetic animal, the blue Lorikeet. She would be able to evade their blows gracefully, even ignoring the shielding effect of her mew power. 

A fight between Mew Mint and the War of the Monsters-verse would basically just be Mew Mint vs the Moth Kirema several times over, when Mint defeated the Moth purely as a side effect of restoring the city with her mew power. 

And that's how to be OP in War of the Monsters-verse.

How high is Galaxia's multiplier

Ok so this is going to be the most important thing I want you to take from this blog. Do NOT harrass the research team. Not for this blog, and not for any reason. Let me explain something. I have scaled Sailor Moon for over 10 years, and probably more consistently then anyone. I am probably the most influential Sailor Moon vs debater. This verse has absolutely crazy downplay. Every week it seems we have to go over, yes Usagi had godly regen. Yes lambda power restored the universe. Yet star seeds work on other verses because of verse equalization. You get people claiming End of Series Usagi has sub planetary durability and sub ftl speed. It also has crazy wank. You see claims like Sailor Moon being universal since start of series, or every Senshi having mid-godly regen since beginning, or the characters at the end of the series being above multiversal. There's probably not many verses that has as wide a range of interpretation outside maybe DC, certainly none then I know off. I've seen a lot of interpretations for this verse, so take this with as much authority as you will grant me on the subject: They did a good job. Do I agree with everything they've said. No. However their interpretation was a completely reasonable interpretation of the text. I've spoken to them personally and they have mentioned discussing the multipliers among themselves and accounting for them so they are aware of SM multipliers, and simply came to the conclusion that Beerus was more powerful. I don't know Beerus or DBS very much but I can tell you that their interpretation of Sailor Moon at least was completely reasonable.

So with that being said, let's talk about multipliers.

I am not a big fan of using multipliers. Sometimes it's easy. If Character A is baselike city level and then gets some undetermined amount stronger then it is shown to not be very much while Character B is baseline city before getting 100x stronger, you can make a pretty safe assumption who is stronger. However with verses like these in particular, where characters will get power boosts anywhere from tens to thousands of times off screen, it's impossibly to truly know who is stronger. If I was making this I would just say they are both cosmically stronger then universal and leave it at that.

But people seem to really want Galaxia's multipler. So let's get into it. Can you scale Galaxia to 9 or thousands or millions of times baseline? Well if you are saying Nehelenia is baseline, then yes you can.

Here's the logic. Sailor Moon after first transforming into Super Sailor Moon gave of 10,000x the power of the Taioran Crystal at peak while a dying out Taioran Crystal was stronger then her base form so people using 10,000x as a lowball for the multiplier for her Super Henshin. This is the ONLY directly quantifiable modifier of power in the entire Sailor Moon series. What about Civilian Form to Base or Super to Eternal though? Base Form is some massive insane amount since it took them from being normal human level to cosmic guardians but if you wanna lowball it you can say that in Arc 2 the Senshi can take down at least 5 Droids at once when transformed and Makoto was relative to one in civilian form so the Base Multiplier is at least 5x. For Eternal it's treated as massively above but it used all their power including the power of the Present Silver Crystal, the Pink Moon Crystal of the future which is the future Silver Crystal, and Mamoru's Golden Crystal which is equal in power so it's at least 3x. This means that for a lowball you could say the difference in power between Civilian Usagi and Eternal Sailor Moon is 150,000x

You could then say Galaxia and Usagi in Arc 5 were more powerful then Nehelenia and Arc 4 Eternal Sailor Moon meaning that after transforming Base Eternal Sailor Moon would be 150,000x baseline. The other Eternal Sailor Senshi were relative to Base Eternal Moon before getting Galaxia's power but then got Galaxia's power. The power Galaxia grants made fodder tier aliens as strong as Eternal Sailor Senshi. Even if they were as strong as Nehelenia to begin with (they weren't, Nyanko would only have been as strong as base Luna and Artemis) this would be 150,000x meaning that the Eternal Galactica Senshi would have squared this power and been at 22,500,000,000 times baseline. Eternal Sailor Moon got stronger during the fight due to the Silver Crystal's ability to rise in power with her emotions and equaled 4 Galactica Sol Senshi at once even though they used a named technique and she simply used a casual energy projection and later after getting even stronger one-shot all 8. If she is 4 or 8 times stronger then the prior number that would make her 90-180 billion times baseline. Galaxia withstood an attack from an even stronger Eternal Moon after she was enraged by Galaxia erasing her loved ones' star seeds. You could also say Nehelenia is only as strong in raw power as a Super Senshi, or incredibly enough if you want Base Usagi from Arc 4 (since Usagi and Mamoru warded her off in civilian form and Usagi survived light that hurt Helios who is implied to be relative to Nehelenia) meaning you could multiple that number again by the Eternal multiplier of 3x or by the full civilian to Eternal multiple of 150,000 to get somewhere from 270 Billion to 27 Quadrillion times baseline. You can raise these if you want via various ways to get even bigger numbers like saying that Nyanko before getting her powers rivaling an Eternal Senshi would have to be well less then 10,000x weaker since she would be weaker then Base Arc 3 Sailor Moon instead of assuming she's relative to Nehelenia and that will boost the number further. You can say Base Sailor Moon is cosmically stronger...Blah blah blah.

This is not my saying that Galaxia is vastly stronger then Beerus. I'm sure Dragon Ball Super has the same kind of nonsense you can do. For instance I know Goku absorbed the god ki and then iirc he can go Super Saiyan God on top of that. Since Goku thought fusion stood no chance against Beerus this means that you can square whatever the fusion multiplier is just for early DBS Goku. I'm sure it has similar things you can get crazy numbers for. This is not my saying you should use multipliers to make Galaxia win, it's a general argument against trying to use multipliers as if they were an exact science. Galaxia and Beerus in my mind are both some unknown cosmic amount above universal.

Now this probably doesn't change the argument in the episode very much. Everything about the conclusion I thought was pretty spot on. Let's say for the sake of argument the two are roughly comparable to each other in power. Would this give Galaxia the win? I don't know Beerus enough to actually say who wins this however just going over the argument, that doens't actually change the argument presented. If the two are relative or equal, Galaxia and Beerus can both nullify each other's energy attacks. Galaxia then would not have the physical strength to hurt Beerus but Beerus would have the physical strength to hurt Galaxia. Everything else about it is consistent. Beerus is a more skilled fighter (some people are failing to make the distinction, Galaxia is a very skilled tactician, skilled general but not so much by feats a skilled fighter), he's got physical strength she can't nullify, he can get out of dimensional BFR via scale to Vice Shout etc. The only way to argue this is to argue either that Star Seed Rip works on Beerus which is....iffy.....as far as I know or that Galaxia is just way stronger then him and I don't think you can really prove that since again these mulipliers are super inexact and I don't think should be used in such a direct sorta let's count the numbers game.

There's one last point I want to bring up since people care about my opinion seemingly. Given all this and how I don't think you can definitively say either side is stronger then the other, do I dislike that they used that as part of their basis for Beerus would win. No. Look, Galaxia is my favorite villain of all time and one of my favorite characters as I explain here. If I thought this was a match she should clearly win and got robbed I would say so. Fact is that isn't what happened here. This is a matchup where you can make a compelling case for either side. You can either want one-sided matchups and then watch the expected happen or you can want these debatable matchups. If you want the latter you should expect nothing more then a reasonable argument for one side, even if you do some have some disagreements. As far as I can tell this is a matchup you can make a compelling case for either side, they picked the case they thought was most compelling and presented it in mostly the optimal manner.

What are the strongest powers in fiction

There's a lot of powers in fiction however what are the strongest powers? I can give what my current understanding is. Currently my understanding is the strongest powers are generally one set of abilities. There is one subset of those abilities that can be even stronger hypothetically.

This set of power is what I call Transcedence (X) where X is a concept that the character transcends the existence of. The more universal the concept, the more powerful the Transcendence though for any common concept, Transcedence will give an incredibly strong state of existence.

One of the most common is transduality which is Transcendence (2) meaning the character transcends 2-ness and thus duality. Transdual characters are at one with all being since there is no twoness that can be applied to them. This means that they are incredibly difficult to kill since they are a part of all being, including their opponent and any attack tried to use again them. Transcendence (1) means the character transcendence the concept of one-ness and thus is always of an indeterminate amount and wouldn't be able to be properly reduced in number as per normal. One can have with Transcedence (Numbers) or Transcedence (Quantificaiton) where one transcends any numerical system or quantification. Transcendence (Spacetime) is what vs battles wiki calls Outerversal and Transcedence (Power) is what I use to qualify for my Tier 1 characters, characters that are beyond the concept of power and which you can't be stronger or weaker then. Transcedence (concepts) includes all the below and would refer to a formless entity that can not be described by any concepts. You can then have hyper-concepts, the concepts of concepts which can be transcendence or meta-concepts of a higher metafictional layer that themselves can be transcendence with Transcedence (Meta-Concepts) or Transcendence (Reality-Fiction).

At the hypothetical furthest extreme there is the Absolute. The Absolute is by definition the highest form of being. By definition therre can only be one Absolute, though it's possible to appear to numerous to lesser beings via them seeing it from different lower perspectives (which is how I try and reconcile it when verses claim multiple absolute forces). Absolute traits of characters are defined as traits that have Transcendence (All), or in other words which are beyond any limit or boundary. A character that has Absolute Destructive Power for instance can destroy anything completely and without any fail even if not transcends normal concept of destruction. This is because it's defined as Destructive Power transcending all things.

I've long wondered how to deal with two verses absolute properties colliding. The boring answers are if they existed in the same verse they would just be the same or they would just be the same. The more interesting answer that I like is you work off feats, and try and find how many absolute properties exist to try and find a victor, IE see how many things in the verse are relevant to the Absolute Power.

Note: you can hypothetically have an Absolute Property and not be one of the strongest characters in fiction. Spider-Man has an Absolute Willpower feat where his will when put into the Nexus of all Realities effected the transcendent plane containing all of Marvel. However he's not like Lucifer Morningstar where his abilities allow him to manifest his will onto other things. It basically just means that if ONLY willpower is needed from him, he will always succeed, unless matched against another Absolute property in which case it's indeterminate since again by definition only one thing can have the "Absolute" property.

Imperator100 Reacts to Death Battle: Beerus vs Galaxia (Spoilers)

I've had a lot of personal problems in the last few days keeping me from doing much online but I was definitely not going to miss this. I want to personally thank Death Battle for using a Sailor Moon characters and it's research team for considering me in their creation of it. I am happy to help however I can.

I was internally debating just playing the video through, getting the full "impact" of it as it were and then giving my thoughts or continually pausing it to give my thoughts on each point. I decided on a hybrid where I would go through each section uninterrupted and then give my thoughts on it before continuing.

As I have pointed out before, I don't decide how I like an episode based on the verdict. I care much more about the character personalities being properly presented and the arguments used in the video rather then assessing based off who wins. What I like about this matchup in particular is, with a few exceptions, most seem to think this is a relatively even battle that could go either way. I won't be upset if Galaxia loses. My real hope is they present her personality well. She is my favorite villain and I hope people learn about her from this.

My pre-watching predictions and these aren't my thoughts on the fight, these are my guesses as to what they will say based on the previews and research blogs:
-I think they are going to end up saying Galaxia is a bit faster and Beerus is a bit stronger. They will probably say Galaxia is Uni and Beerus scales to Dragon Ball Macrocosm which has a few universal sized structures. They tend to go more off vs battles wiki type logic these days, so I am guessing they're scale Galaxia to the Usagi's light going to the end of spacetime feat calced at over 1 quintillion c and put Beerus at hundreds of quadrillions c. I could very well see them saying they mirror each other in stat advantage with something like Galaxia being ~3 times as fast as Beerus and Beerus being ~3 times as powerful as Galaxia
-I imagine they will say Galaxia and Beerus can't existence erase either one of each other. For Galaxia I imagine this is because Galaxia has resistance to existence erasure since they said in the blog for Galaxia that Senshi have resistence to physical, spiritual and temporal existence erasure. For Beerus probably because he scales above people who resisted destruction energy?
-They might bring up Galaxia being able to sense intent and Beerus being able to act without thinking as one of the counters since they seem to really like counters
-If they side with Galaxia, I imagine it will probably be either due to stamina or abilities. Stamina because in the Beerus prediction blog they said Beerus's omen can only last a few minutes while they stamina scale Galaxia to Usagi which I don't really agree with the logic for, but it's not a huge deal.
-If they side with Beerus it's probably just because they think he's stronger I imagine. He can counter her ability to sense intent but I don't think any of his abilities are super impressive enough for them to say Beerus wins, unless they are just really impressed by his pressure point combat. Though I imagine they could easily say Beerus is stronger as SM scaling is a lot more screwy.
-The prediction blog said that Senshi have regen and seem to use vs battles wiki's reasoning for it, which I am not a major fan off. It's based of it being stated that if Hotaru awoke as a Sailor Senshi her power as a Sailor Senshi would regenerate her. Now I always thought this was related to Hotaru's specific nature as the Soldier of the cycle of death and rebirth, hence why she has healing powers even in her civilian form. TBF it isn't stated that it's a power unique to her but if it isn't you have to ask why the senshi were threatened by normal physical attacks otherwise when Hotaru regenerated from physical and astral destruction. If you say well it's their energy that regenerates them so it only runs out when they run out of stamina, then Galaxia should stomp as she would be able to regen from even Hakai and they are going with she has infinite energy/stamina meaning she can't run out. Based off the preview vid for Galaxia, where they only stated she "heals fast" (going based on an anime scene, which tbf Anime Galaxia does have a mild healing factor) so they don't seem to be using that which is good.
-The thing I think could give Galaxia it is that the Sailor Moon manga has a whole bunch of random things happen in it via magic like exiting/entering video games or giving items conciousness and I could easily see them taking one of those and saying it was the decider.

My real hope going into this is that Galaxia's personality is maintained.


Beerus Section:

Don't have many comments here. I have seen barely any of Dragon Ball Super nor do I care very much either way about it.
-I thought it was cute that Beerus was based off Toriyama's cat (and the general cat footage)
-Interesting that he was put at 200 Quadrillion C (and I am glad they are describing it in multiples of light as opposed to just km/h per hour like they used to which sometimes obfuscated the answer). IIRC there was something putting him slightly higher then that wasn't there?
-I knew Beerus had energy nullification, didn't know how strong it was
-They didn't actually mention him having existence erasure resistance....perhaps that suggests they are gonna have Galaxia star seed remove him?


Galaxia Section:

-Small thing but I want to give credit to Ben's voice acting here, if he bothers to read this not that I think that's likely. At a few sections like when saying "the moon", talking about Galaxia's vanity or the climax of her arc I though he really captured the sense of gravitas the Sailor Moon series tries to build up.
-At one point a note comes up that Tuxedo Kamen is a Sailor Senshi. I am not sure where this comes from. Naoko has stated firmly and stronger that only women can be Sailor Senshi, which is why she was angry about the anime making the Starlights gender shifters. Tuxedo Kamen has the Sailor Crystal of Earth but he can't transform into a Senshi.
-The English Dub was a bit ehhhhhhh but I get it's for the casuals who half remember a few random anime eps.
-The DIC joke was funny. Have actually made similar joke before. I don't remember the context but we were talking about Sailor Moon and I said "Come on guys, don't be a DIC"
-Cute connection with Usagi being trained by a cat and Beerus being a cat
-Galaxia's age is a bit odd. I don't know what in the manga would suggest her age, unless it was something from the anime.
-Galaxia's star seed removal is, I think pretty well explained. I know the star seed stuff and the power of destruction can be somewhat confusing for new viewers.
-Just in case it's not known by any readers, Galaxia Superstring referes to the superstring theory of the cosmos being in 11 dimensions iirc. Galactica Inflation refers to the idea that empty space is expanding all the time.
-"Man, Magical Girls are metal as hell!" 😉 I love this genre.
-I am not sure where Galaxia desiring to kill Usagi to "maintain balance" comes from. Galaxia wanted Usagi to release the full power of the Silver Crystal to annihilate herself and Chaos so Galaxia could have both Silver and Saphire crystals and be supreme ruler of the universe.
-I am glad Anime and Manga Galaxias are being delinated, they are NOT the same character. The Sailor Moon Anime and Manga are basically differnet series, their plots being very unrelated.
-Interesting they are using Sailor Moon lighting up the universe as an attack for a feat. It's not a problem, but it's feels like one of the more sketchy feats to draw from. Still, no complaints if you want to use it. It's not like it's inconsistent given Nehelenia's feat.
-So they are giving Galaxia a speed advantage, albeit not as big a one as I thought they were going too, assuming they don't bring any more speed feats.
-In sidebar they mention the disrupting spacetime thing. It's a weird feat and I'm not sure if they are going to use it in the fight or if they do how they will.
-I am glad Wiz explained Galaxia's end. It is one of my favorite moments in fiction. The Soldier of Destruction rejected world after world unable to find something worthy of her, something eternal that would not leave, something worth loving. Usagi showed her that in loving the temporal, the fleeting, you find the eternal, that love. It is ironic, sad and beautiful that despite finally seeing the thing worth protecting she can never reach it.


Fight Section:

-I know what people are probably most interested to hear about it is my reaction to the results. Like I said earlier, this one seems like it could go either way so I am more interested in their reasoning for Beerus. I am going to talk about that in the conclusion section
-I thought the fight was really good. I think they did a good job of mixing Sailor Moon style combat with Dragon Ball style combat, which are not very similar overall.
-I thought the energy animations were really impressive
-I thought it was a bit odd that Galaxia tried to melee Beerus. Physical strength is not really her forte.
-They are going with the two both resisting each others' techniques.
-I was confused later on when Galaxia removed Beerus' star seed but he managed to restore it? Unless they were just saying he could resist existence erasure and didn't need his star seed I would think that would erase him.
-It was amusing that they broke spacetime while fighting. I imagine this is based on Galaxia warping spacetime and Beerus scaling above Buu who broke spacetime.
-It was weird hearing Galaxia in English. Her voice actress did a good job though I thought, particulaly in her saying "The hard way it is, then!"
-It seemed an odd halfway point between her manga and anime personalities. I am really glad they didn't do the whole "Galaxia would just stand there and let Beerus attack her because she's arrogant" thing. Anime Galaxia did stupid things like that, but first off all that wasn't even her real personality since she controlled by Chaos, and more importantly manga Galaxia doesn't do stupid things like that. I would say she acted over the top like Anime Galaxia but fought like Manga Galaxia.
-I would say in particular I liked the part where they were in the exploding star, I thought it was really aesthetically impressive there

Conclusion Section:

-"Galaxia is faster, but Beerus's ultra instinct and fighting skill made up for it." Yeah, while I think the two are both probably a bit faster then Death Battle had them, I would overall agree I think Galaxia is a bit faster but not so fast Beerus couldn't keep up.
-"Galaxia not having martial arts." This is definitely true, it's something I myself said would be an advantage for Beerus. Sailor Moon fights are usually just "I have more power so I one shot" or "I have broken ability so I one shot"
-There is a sidebar comment that both can resist destruction because both control it, and because both are similar to beings that resisted it. This isn't how I would phrase it, but I get what they are saying, both scale to existence erasure. Fair enough. I don't know how their potencies match up but that sounds reasonably plausible.
-"Beerus can break out of dimensions because he's stronger then weaker Dragon Ball characters who could do the same so Galaxia can't dimensional BFR". Wow. That's actually again something I said. This analysis is really good.
"Galaxia's arsenal is ranged attacks, mostly energy, and Beerus has power nullification." (paraphrased signifigantly) Yeah, that is perfectly legit.
-Really tiny note but props for pronunciation on "Nehelenia". I know it can be tricky to pronounce at first.
-Saying ESM is only 8 times stronger then Nehelenia during Galaxia fight is I think a pretty signifigant lowball since Civilian Form Galaxia was stronger then Nehelenia and the Base to Super Henshi is 10,000x Base. That said I know Beerus is also way stronger then baseline as well, and as far I know it's contentious who has actual power output.
-I am VERY impressed they are doing actual scaling of Animamate~Fourth Arc ESM. This is good SM scaling, even if I disagree on the degree of the power increase.
-Not sure I'd agree on Lowballed Beerus being > Highballed Galaxia but sure, I don't think Beerus having more raw power in general is unreasonable.
-I probably would have been ambigious about their energy but said they both nullify energy attacks while Galaxia's physical strength couldn't hurt Beerus and Beerus' could hurt Galaxia, but that's a minor thing really.

"Special Thanks: Imperator100"
Happy to help, I am glad to help spread information about Sailor Moon around.



General Thoughts:
In general, I thought it was pretty good. Didn't agree on everything but thought it was a very reasonable argument for Beerus. It's up there in my Death Battle ranking. Probably not my favorite ep, that would still be Doctor Fate vs Doctor Strange, but it's one of the greater ones, I would say. Thank you very much to the Death Battle Team for making this and accepting some help from me.

How they Compare: Israphel (Shadows of Israphel)

Little is known about the Dark Lord Israphel of the deserts. What is known is he seems to have been the son of Reverend John of Terrorvale, the "quaintest little hamlet in Minecraftia". He was a mischevious personality and so he worked under the eccentric Professor Grizwold. When the professor's experiments went wrong, Israphel died by accident to creepers. 

However it seems some dark force related to the ancient sealed Sand God resurrected Israphel from the grave. Israphel now isolated due to his undead nature would take to pranking and trolling all the living he came across. However these acts grew more and more malicious, possibly as his sense of isolation or his devotion to the mysterious Sand God grew over time. As such he's gone from a mild troll to a force of chaos that wants to conquer all of Minecraftia and unseal the Sand God.

In terms of power, Israphel is one of the strongest fighters in the main Yogscast-verse. He almost completely destroyed the Yogcave, a structure containing many rooms, showing that he would be likely a building+ level entity. He's far above Swampy Bogbeard whose power was enough to restore an Oasis which would also likely be in this level. It's possible he could be much stronger if you scale his weather feats to his raw attack potency. 

In terms of speed, Israphel is known for being evasive and hard to catch. He's also fired arrows so quickly that it seemed like they were a single continuous stream of arrows, easily requiring subsonic+ speed.

Where Israphel really excels is in his abilities and skills. Israphel is a skilled fighter, superhumanly skilled with bow and at least proficient with a blade as well as being incredibly skilled at evasion, often evading BlueXephos and Honeydew's pursuit and employing both stealth and agility. He is also known for his incredibly manipulative skills called the puppet master who has masterminded the creation of the cult of Israphel across many cities serving his will. 

He seems to get stronger with his resurrections. He has slowly grown more and more dark powers as his mind and heart have descended into darkness. He and his minions are known for their usage of fire, and he has shown the ability to project fire.

Israphel is also known for his ability to manipulate the weather, creating a mini storm over part of the desert during his battle of the breach. He's also implied to be responsible for the neverevending summer with high temperatures. 

Israphel is also known for his necromancy/corruption. He resurrected his old father Reverend John turning him into a undead cultist of Israphel to advance his cause.  He will also resurrect automatically, giving him a strong regen factor. He can exploit this by making himself explode only to regen later.

Israphel has at times displayed ghostlike properties of non-corporeality and disappearing from one place only to appear in another, teleporting, though this is inconsistent and possibly a state he exists in between regenerations. He also sometimes demonstrates the ability to slow time to a relative crawl around him and possibly to time travel? It's unclear if it's an ability or a plot hole but it's stated he created the sands despite them existing before he was born. 

Israphel also has various mental tricks. He can enter into the dreams of others which he did to haunt Enoch. He focuses this through his special technique, the taint of Israphel. The taint of Israphel can passively occur to people just from being near Israphel but he can hasten it's effects by focusing it on an enemy. The taint can effect the mind of the target, turning them insane or brainwashing them to Israphel's cause. It can also act as a virus deteriorating the victim's health, age them rapidly, cause them to explode in blood and gore, and can even resurrect the dead raising them with dark powers. It is possibly this is where his necromancy comes from. It's also implied he can remove memories with it. The Taint of Israphel can effect an entire city at once as did to the Dwarven city of Stoneholm.

Finally Israphel has corrupted and gained some control over the Sands, magical living sands, which convert that which they touch to sand or sandstone.

Israphel's only notable weakness is that he seems to be at heart still a bit more of a troll then a conqueror and prefers even with his elaborate plans to wreak havoc to go straight for his objective.

Name: Israphel, The Dark Lord, The Pale-Faced Man

Origin: Shadows of Israphel

Classification: Undead Cultist of the Sand God

Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Stats, Regen (Mid-High), Can self destruction, superhumanly skilled in archery, fire projection, weather manipulation, non-corporeality/time manipulation/teleportation (occasionally), can enter the dreams of others, mind manipulation, disease manipulation, can make others explode, necromancy, corruption, disease manipulation, transmutation

Weakness: Can be a bit more focused on creating chaos rather then directly winning

Destructive Capacity: Building Level, possibly higher

Range: At least many kilometers (altered the weather for at least this far)

Speed: Subsonic+

Durability: Building Level

Stamina: Unknown

Standard Equipment: Bow with arrows, sword, TNT

Intelligence: Puppet master, very manipulative and cunning. Excellent at evasion and stealth, and supernaturaly good at archery. Built many complex structures.

So how would he do in other verses?

In the DC Universe, his raw power would be fairly considerable for the street tiers, though he would be massively slower then most serious fighters. That said unless he's fought by a magician, his regen and his more powerful hax abilities would allow him to quickly become at least a local threat, if he resurrects low level metahumans to be his minions for instance or if he uses his magic to cause someone signifigant to go insane as his mind hax would be quite strong in the verse. He'd only be signifigantly threatened within the street tiers if he fights the strongest street tiers or the magic-users. Or if he fights Dove of the Dove and Hawk Duo given her purification powers as shown in Blackest Night.

In Marvel Comics, Israphel's raw power would be negible compared to most street tiers, as would his speed and his mind hax while not nothing would be a lot easier to deal with given the regular levels of psychics and psychic resistance. Their science would also deal with the virus component of Israphel a lot easier. That said they might have some difficulty putting him down without going above the street tiers and his magical transmutation would be extremely dangerous. Best tactic I can think of is psychic tricking him into going in their dreams and creating a psychic battlefield. 

In the Dead Space-verse, Israphel would be comparable to most high tier non-boss Necromorphs physically, scaling off Isaac who can survive strikes from skyscraper sized Necromorphs and keep pace with the Twitchers, the fastest Necromorphs. That said Israphel would be a much smarter undead then any necromorph save a Breathern Moon. Israphel can potentially use his necromancy to control the Necromorphs but if he can't he can hypothetically use the taint of Israphel to make their bodies explode at their weak points or just turn them into sand. He can also regen from most physical strikes with the only real way to put him down being the Marker's mind hax which may not work as it's a form of corruption or some kind of biological assimilation, which also may not work. He'd have a particularly interesting fight against Isaac. His time-slowing would probably equal Isaac slowing an enemy with stasis and Isaac resisted the Marker which has similar corruption/mind hax as Israphel. Overall Israphel would probably be able to beat anything in the verse one on one save a Brethern Moon.

In the Prince of Persia-verse, Israphel would actually fit in pretty well. He's faster but not quite fast enough to blitz and they're stronger but not quite strong enough to one-shot, suggesting he'd be a bit of a fragile speedster in the verse. His time manipulation and magical sand manipulation would both fit in the verse well. His time manipulation is not nearly as versatile and is seemingly much more conditional but he has numerous other haxes that would make him a good fight for most of the verse's high tiers. Israphel vs Dark Prince would in particular be a really cool fight especially given their personalities.

In actual Minecraft, Israphel does....interestingly. Israphel has about as much power as Mid-Game Steven, and is faster then him even then. However both of them have a regen factor the other can't really get past and Steve has ways of defending against Israphel's haxes with purification and probability manipulation. 

What this means is that the two would get into a long long stalemate with Israphel trolling Steve. Steven could possibly eventually beat Israphel by tricking him into another dimension or purifying him, but both would take a long time especially if Israphel is ruining his efforts all the while. What most likely happens if Israphel wins 1,000,000 individual battles with Steve but eventually loses the war.

Chaotic Conquer: The worst flash game?

So there exists a game on the internet called Chaotic Conquer, a game based on the teleivision show Chaotic. I must be the only person in the world who cares about this game, but it does exist and with flash apparently going to die, I am worried this game will be lost when it should stand as a testament to poor game design in every possible way. This is my rant immortalizing Chaotic Conquer as how not to make a flash game. There's definitely worse, but certainly none then I've played. As of time of writing the game can be found here.

Chaotic Conquer is a game spin off of Chaotic, a tv show made by 4kids as basically an advertisement for the trading card game Chaotic. I watched it to gather feats and found it surpringly watchable. No revolution in children's television but pefectly capable of holding your attention. Just to go over the series a bit, the show features the world of Perim, divided primarily between 4 tribes. There's the Overworlders who are beast-men and oddly colored humans who are noble and have codes of honor and their primary mechanic is increasing their power from elemental boosts or from teamwork. Their opposite are the Undeworlders who are demonic creatures or animal-people that are meant to be more scary like snake-people or bat-people. They have a philisophy of survival of the fittness and their main mechanic is debuffing people or sacrificing their own creatures to gain an advantage. There's the insectoid Danians who basically are just serving the will of their insect queen and their main mechanics are their weaker creatures giving boosts to their stronger creatures via hive mind and later infecting opponent creatures to turn them into insectoids. The Mipedians are desert-dwelling lizards who are a mix of laid back/friendly and sneaky/deceptive. Their main mechanics are invisibility and speed, and are a bit glass cannon-y being able to do a lot of damage right off the bat with ambushes but lose in a long run match. They later added a secret evil fifth tribe of lovecraftian monsters though that's neither here nor there. Humans that are from "our world" teleport into Perim to scan creatures and places and whatnot to use in the actual card game. Some of the creatures there don't like humans and will kill them while others like to use their ability to teleport anywhere to use them as scouts in their war with each other in exchange for scans. The show's human characters are fairly likeable, and it's lore is decently developed. It also shows actual strategies used in the game being used in the show which is surprisingly rare for a TCG show, who usually go for what's dramatic and flashy. The show had some problems with it's messaging however, in particular it pretends that all 4 tribes are equally valid but the Overworlders are constantly being painted as the "good guys" and the Underworlders are constantly being painted as the "bad guys". There's an episode that tries to go against this by showing an Overworlder oppressing some Mipedians, and if you've seen the earlier Last Airbender episode with Jet oppressing a Fire Nation village, it's like that but stripped of nuance, depth or consistency with worldbuilding. Also the artwork for the series after the artwork changed, I really don't like. I'm not usually a visuals person but...

Anyway to get off this massive tangent, what good I can say about the show however does not at all translate to the game. I give such a long description because I wanna give an impression of just how many opportunies were missed with this game. The game is basically a Risk Clone except simplified even further. Risk is on the border to those games that are purely luck. If you look at a game like Monopoly, there's hypothetically some skill in it but in reality it is basically just luck who wins, especially without auctions. Risk is the most luck reliant game I would say actually does take some skill to win. Simplifying it down removes that skill element.

Let's start with probably the first problem with the game you'll notice, outside of it's weird scratchy audio of some of the show's music. When you begin the game you are given the choice of which tribe to pick. However no matter what you select, you are given the Overworld tribe. This is not intentional, the game gives you a screen to select a tribe but no matter where you click you are given Overworld. There's something almost comical to how the show went so far to try and make the Overworld the good guys, the ones you want to root for and the game then basically forces you to play as them. I know that in reality it's almost certainly just a bug, but it makes me imagine them saying "present them a choice, but they're DEFINITELY going to choose Overworld". Bear in mind the brief time I looked into it, the player base who actually play Overworld in the game are actually commonly disliked. I remember seeing one forum post of "proposed alliance of Mipedians, Danianis and Underworlders against the Overworld".

Anyway upon beginning the game you'll find that starting the game is quite different from actual Risk. In Risk you take turns choosing territories and then placing armies in those territories. That isn't what happens in Chaotic Conquer. Instead the game gives you an auto-generated map with territories randomly divided beteen the players and a random number of armies on each territory that all equal the same amount asking the player to accept or to reroll. There does seem to be a minor selection bias that territories controlled by each tribe are closer together, but you will often have numerous individual territories that are completely isolated.

Most of the flaws of this game can be explained as the designers were lazy/rushed or it was simplified for children. Simplification for children I don't think can explain a lot about this as children can and regulaly do play Risk. It's not that complex a game. This system of randomly assigning territories I am guessing was some attempt to simplify the game, though I can't imagine how selecting territories in turn is too complex for a child. The ability to keep going though presets is actually extremely powerful as you can keep going until you get basically a corner of the map with all your troops there, something you actually have to do to win but more on that later. And in case you're wondering, no there's no multiplayer at all. Online, hotseat, nothing. It's not like this is a really complex game to make multiplayer for. There are plenty of online versions of Risk, which are more complex then this game, that allow hotseat or online multiplayer including free versions.

So this game only has 1 map, and it's completely and totally generic. This is a massive missed opportunity; a lot of versions of Risk have areas on the map that give special bonuses, and the world of Perim is loaded with interesting locations that have explicit effects. It would have been a great idea to make a two-layered map for the above ground and below ground modeled after map of perim and it's canonical locations. Chaotic already has locations in the show that are strategic chokepoints between the Overworld and the Underworld like the Passage and Cordac Falls. It would have been easy to make those the chokepoints in the game. Even if you aren't going to put in unique effects, the least that could have done was naming the areas after locations. If I'm some kid playing this, I'm going to want to say I'm launching an attack from Gigantempopolis to Kiru City or from Castle Gothica to the Lava Ponds but I can't do that because this map has nothing to do with Chaotic, the series.

Not that there's anything else Chaotic in this. If you wanted to make this right, you'd probably get special "mugic" abilities themed after your tribe. In universe there is mystical music used by the tribes called mugic, and they all get unique ones depending on affiliation. If you're playing Underworld you could for instance cast Cannon of Casualty to wipe out some armies in an enemy territory. Danians could use Song of the Mandiblor to give them an additional really strong roll on their next die roll based off the number of armies they're attacking with. Battlegear might be hard to include but anything is better then this complete lack of anything. And you can't tell me it's for balance purposes when you can only play one of them anyway. Instead of getting cards, which you don't get in this game anyway further removing any strategy from it, have it so each tribe gets a mugic counter each turn if they take territory and they then can spend x amount of mugic to cast one of say 3 different options.

However none of this is the biggest problem with the game. The biggest problem with the game is not what it lacks but what it does actually have, that being attacking territories. Believe it or not, they somehow messed even just attacking territories up. In normal risk attack assigns a certain number of armies to attack a territory, leaving at least one in the territory they attack from. They then roll up to 3 dice. while the defender rolls up up to two dice but wins ties. The highest result from both are compared and the second highest result from both compared with the loser of each roll losing one army. The attacker can withdraw after each roll but if they destroy all opposing armies they move all the armies they assigned to the attack in. Chaotic Conquer simplifies this already simple system causing it to break entirely. You don't choose any number to attack with, instead when you attack a territory virtual dice are rolled for both sides equal to the total number of armies they have. The results of all the dice rolls are added together. The two results are compared with defender winning ties. If the defender wins they lose NO ARMIES and the attacker is left with one. If the attack wins they again lose NO ARMIES, and move all their forces into the attacked territory except one remains in the territory they moved from.

The fact that you get almost no choices in this whole manner, you can't choose to disengage, you can't choose number of armies to attack with, you can't choose how many to move in or out would be bad enough since it removes some of what strategy Risk has, but the bigger problem is how only one side loses armies no matter what. I can not explain how fundamentally this changes the game. This means that every single roll is all or nothing. There are no degrees of success in Chaotic Conquer, every attack means that one side is exceedingly punished. This becomes even more of a problem with how armies are given at the end of the turn. In normal Risk, you place armies at the end of the turn in territories at your discetion. In Chaotic Conquer however you are given armies in random territories you control and you can't fortify at all. What this means is the only strategy that works, the ONLY strategy is to get incredibly lucky, taking a lot of territories early on, walling up until every single territory hax max armies on it and then taking your opponent's territories one at a time. The reason why is the random armies at the end of the turn can only fully replenish one or two territories at the end of a turn (if that, depending on how much of the map you control) so if you lose any more offenses in a turn then that, then you will lose more territories then you take. In Risk, there are degrees of success, so maybe you lose offenses but you deplete your opponent's forces on the border enough that if they try a counter-attack, they will risk the same territories. In Chaotic Conquer, the degree of success vs failure is so absolute that you can only afford failures that are completely meaningless since it will be undone at the end of your turn. If you attack, lose and then don't get that territory refilled at the end of the turn, the AI will take that territory basically for free.

You'd think with a game this poor, the AI would at least have the decency to be fittingly awful, yet somehow, incredibly the AI for this game is incredibly smart and does that exact strategy. Maybe it's because the game is SO simplistic that it couldn't mess it up, but the AI tries to take a lot early, wall up and take territories slowly from a corner of the map. If they had the ability I half suspect they are smart enough that they would resign when the player controls majority of the map.

All of this is compounded by the fact that the AI cheats. I can't prove this obviously, but it's incredibly clear if you play more then one game. You lose even matches the clear majority of the time and lose more often then is statistically probable when you have a larger force. This is partly why you can only afford to attack when any losses you sustain you know will be replaced at the end of the turn. This is the part that confuses me th most about this game. Stripping down the rules of Risk I can understand as some attempt to make the game accessible to children, even though children can understand Risk fine. Having nothing related to the Chaotic series outside of some poor sound assets and the tribe colors I can understand as just laziness or lack of time and resources. But I can't understand why this game cheats in favor of the AI. You would think that would be harder to implement, if only by a bit, because you're adding an extra variable. Children aren't going to like this game, but assuming they did they would only get frustrated by the rampant cheating. Maybe they won't notice it's there, but they will notice they always lose, and very often unfairly. If anything you'd expect some poor flash game made as a tie in to a children's television series to be easy to win, something a child could realistically do. I have no idea why this game has that element, outside maybe some attempt to try and extend the game's playtime by making it harder to win.

Chaotic Conquer is I think a perfect example of how not to make a game.