CaV: Sephiroth (Floopay) vs Jetstream Sam (NickZ)

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Two warriors, both masters of the sword, advanced to something beyond human.

One by technology.

One by something less natural (or more natural depending on how you look at it)

Today, a duel between them will be waged, and we will all find out the reasons Sam will kick Seph's girly ass ;D

Yeah Floopay, I'm debating with a Revengeance!

Looking forward to this one...

@floopay

Samuel "Jetstream" Rodrigues descends from a long line of legendary samurai, dating all the way back to 16th century Japan, and creators of the Murusama Blade (not Murumasa). He is a master of the Rodrigues New Shadow School Technique, a custom made fighting style passed down and handcrafted by each successive member of the Rodrigues family, as well as a multitude of other styles including Kenjutsu, Uradachi, Kendo, and Yagyu Shinkage-ryu, learned while traveling the world and honing his technique under many great masters. He eventually returned to Brazil, where he singlehandely brought down an entire national drug cartel, just to kill one person (the man who killed his father). Sam continued in his free-willing vigilantism, taking out various Brazilian gangs and drug cartels based on his own sense of justice towards criminality and atrocities.

Sam is an expert swordsmen, having received extensive training from his father during childhood, and later learning several other disciplines across the world. He is skilled enough to take on a cyborg ninja with just his bare hands, and killed a 10-man assassin squad armed with automatic weapons long before receiving any augmentations. He displays great technical knowledge with both hand-to-hand and sword combat, and he is also completely ambidextrous with his blade, but Sam's greatest asset is in his sheer brutality. The above video is Sam's theme in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, with the lyrics being commentary about how he lives for nothing but battle. Sam spent years fighting in various wars across the world, for the sole reason of "sharpening his skills." He is literally stated to be a master of "The Killing Style", which is apparently a swordsman discipline which focuses on as much violence as possible.

Sam read Raiden's moves and style and easily dominated the ninja in their first encounter. He savagely cut Raiden's eye out, then chopped off his arm with a smile.

1:45 murders 2 police officers in the most brutal way possible for lulz.

As a fighter, Sam has an edge over Sephiroth through his brutality and wide range of disciplines and techniques under his belt.

This should be good

@floopay Just making sure you saw this.

This is going to be awesome, good to see Jetstream Sam in a CaV match.

I can barely contain myself.

The One Winged Angel Himself

Oh, and by the way, RESPECT THE BLACK MAGES!

Overview of his abilities

• Superhuman Strength - Sephiroth has immense strength. After running some math, it becomes clear Sephiroth could easily be Class 100+. He has thrown several hundred pounds over 50 meters and through several feet of steel/concrete effortlessly. He's also held several hundred pounds at the end of his 7 foot sword with one hand effortlessly for about a minute or so, with zero signs of strain. But more importantly, he impaled a giant snake on top of a huge tree, unknown as to how much effort he put into it, but it was done by him, and it was ridiculous. His greatest feat of strength puts him in the 6,000 ton range.

• Superhuman Durability - Sephiroth has been struck several times by fire magic capable of destroying large steel structures without showing any signs of physical harm. He has also been thrown through several floors of steel, and stood at point blank range for a wave of heat strong enough to melt the steel beneath him without any visual signs of harm. Sephiroth has blocked an all out attack from Cloud, which was capable of leaving a 1-2 foot deep crater in the steel structure he was standing on, and showed no signs of strain across his body. He has been thrown through several floors of steel and concrete and emerged completely unharmed.

• Superhuman Speed/Reflexes - Capable of blocking attacks from multiple sources effortlessly, as well as keep up with Cloud with zero difficulty. He can cover vast distances in a moments time both on foot and in flight.

• Master Tactician - Sephiroth was capable of manipulating Shinra, Cloud's party, and pretty much everybody within the entire Final Fantasy franchise. Almost everybody became subject to his will at one time or another.

• Genius Intelligence - Sephiroth was always a brilliant mind. He was capable of reading Hojo's entire library in a few weeks. After this, he falls into the lifestream and begins absorbing knowledge from there.

• Phasing - Sephiroth can phase through solid objects, both in and out of flight.

• Teleportation - Sephiroth can teleport both short range and long range distances, and has been known to do so in order to ambush his opponents.

• Telepathy - Capable of reaching into a person's mind and trapping them, as well as other people, in that nightmare. He has done this feat once.

• Illusion Casting - Capable of projecting illusions of individuals.
• Invisibility - Via Illusion casting, he can make himself and others completely invisible.

• Telekinesis - Sephiroth was able to collapse an entire steel/concrete structure with the wave of his hand.

• Weather Manipulation - Sephiroth was able to turn the weather from sunny, to a full on storm with the flick of his hand.

• Rain Darkness - Sephiroth can make clouds of darkness rain from the sky in order to conceal himself and obstruct his opponents vision.

• Soul Energy Absorption - Sephiroth can absorb the corrupt souls of individuals after they have passed, or just plain absorb soul energy in its raw form if he is exposed to it.
• Soul Manipulation - Sephiroth was able to create a powerful disease to infect the planet, and consume them more and more as their wills grew weaker and weaker. This was called Geostigma, as these people died Sephiroth was able to absorb them.

• Natural Magic - Because of his extended time spent trapped within the lifestream, Sephiroth can cast most magic without the aid of materia.
• Force Field Projection - Sephiroth can conjure immense, near impenetrable force barriers.

• Astral Projection - Upon death, Sephiroth may project himself into the afterlife and continue to exist as an individual. He may also do this when he is living, but must abandon his vessel to do so.

• Conjuration - Sephiroth created the three Remnants of Sephiroth, with one of them (Kadaj) to act as his vessel when he returns (because Cloud's party destroyed him in FF7). This is useless in combat, but hey, why not?

• Long Ranged Attacks - Sephiroth is capable of cutting through several feet of steel from a distance with a single attack.

• Weapon Materialization - Sephiroth can conjure the Masamune into his hands.

• Flight - Sephiroth is capable of extremely fast self-sustained flight.

Strength

The Midgar Zolom

The Midgar Zolom is a breed of snake in Final Fantasy 7, that are found in one location in the game. They are very powerful, but over and above everything else, they are giant. Now then, the largest anaconda recorded weighed about 550 lbs, and was 30 feet long, and roughly 12 inches in diameter. This thing is about 100 feet long, and about 6-7 feet in diameter, these are rough numbers based on the player's height, and the size of the tree in the following picture. But at those dimensions, it would weigh roughly 6,000 tons (actually about 6,476 but I round down). That's a big snake!

Sephiroth encountered one of these...and what was his solution to the problem? Well obviously a quick fight with it would be...too easy.

Intangibility

Shown in the first minute of the video.

Note: Rest of the video is pointless to watch

Teleportation:

10:45-11:45 Sephiroth seems to phase walk, and then teleports in this scene.

Note: You can watch the rest of the video but it's 100% irrelevent

Phasing, Intangibility, Teleportation, Soul Energy Absorption

0:00-1:30 - Sephiroth teleports several times, displays flight, phase walking, etc.

1:30-2:30 - Talks about how he plans to absorb the Lifestream, aka Soul/Life energy.

19:30-20:45 - Sephiroth teleports in out of nowhere, displays flight, and then compels Cloud to give him the Black Materia (which is needed to call forth a giant meteor to crush a portion of the planet, but not destroy it). Cloud starts running to Sephiroth, but it's in slow motion, you can see Cloud's spirit attempting to save him from himself, but is unable to do so at this point in the game. Notice, while everything is slow motion, Sephiroth still whips off the screen in a moments time. Extremely high levels of speed here.

0:00-1:30 - Sephiroth teleports several times, displays flight, phase walking, etc.

19:30-20:45 - Sephiroth teleports in out of nowhere, displays flight, and then compels Cloud to give him the Black Materia (which is needed to call forth a giant meteor to crush a portion of the planet, but not destroy it). Cloud starts running to Sephiroth, but it's in slow motion, you can see Cloud's spirit attempting to save him from himself, but is unable to do so at this point in the game.

Sephiroth displays telepathy, speaking to everyone's minds within the northern crater, does some illusion casting, teleports more, flight, levitation etc.

6:45-7:00 - Sephiroth clone easily puts down Cloud and his party after appearing out of nowhere and flying into them with a single attack. Also, you can see he is somehow broadcasting his thoughts to everybody in the northern crater.

Note: the rest of this video is completely irrelevent, feel free to watch it if you REALLY want, but again, nothing special in there.

Telepathy, Illusion Casting, Invisibility

0:00-6:30 - Feel free to skim through it - Sephiroth drags the full party into Cloud and Tifa's darkest memory.

7:30-8:30 - Sephiroth KO's the entire party, and sends Barret into an illusions. When he comes out of the illusion, he can't see anybody. At that point Sephiroth, who has now cloaked himself to look like Tifa, appears and send Barret to the party, so that he may obtain the Black Materia he desires. At this point you see the whole party on the ground, KO'd and just coming to. Clearly a showing of illusion casting, invisibility, and mind assaults.

Forcefield Projection

Sephiroth creates this giant forcefield over the northern crater in the game. From halfway across the planet, they use this super powered canon powered by life energy and magic, and fire it hard enough to blow through this Weapon (giant thing firing at the city), and all the way to the northern most continent to burst the barrier.

Extends to the Metaphysical Plane of existence (LIfestream) for protection

The Maiden Who Travels the Planet

Chapter 5

Aerith knew one of the reasons why there was a place that the Lifestream couldn't approach. That place had a barrier that Sephiroth setup. The disaster that would fall from the skies, Jenova, brought with it a meteor that created an enormous scar on the Planet due to its impact. Now that place, where lots of energy was gathering to heal the scar, had become a cradle for Sephiroth's resurrection. The flows of life all around were drawn into the unnatural swirl, preventing a discarnate entity like Aerith from approaching it.

Personality

Overview

Watch 2:55-End

Willpower

Sephiroth is able to keep his consciousness alive, and separate from the lifestream. Even after his spiritual body was hacked to pieces by Cloud.

On the Way to a Smile - Case of Denzel

Lifestream Black 1

The man could sense the Lifestream trying to erode his spirit- the memories of his former experiences, thoughts and emotions. If he allowed himself be taken into the current, the being he once was would soon disseminate and disappear amongst the spirit energy cycling around the planet. The man thought this unacceptable. The planet was to be his to rule, and to become a part of that system would be nothing short of defeat.

The man sensed a large flux in the Lifestream. A sign of another, different defeat. When the Lifestream erupted onto the surface of the planet, the man thought that Cloud was no doubt certain of his victory. Cloud was the one who had twice sent the man into the Lifestream. The man knew that if one could hold onto some core of their spirit, then one could remain a separate entity, independent from the planet's system. Cloud. The man decided to make Cloud that core. And he wanted to let Cloud know of that. I'm still thinking of you. And I'll show you the proof of that as well.

Ruthlessness

Sephiroth I've seen referred to as a person who likes to toy with his victims before killing them. That's simply not true, he only does this with Cloud, because he hates Cloud, and wants to make him suffer.

This video doesn't show Sephiroth, but at about 11:00 through the end (feel free to skim rather than watch), the Jenova Clone of Sephiroth kills dang near everybody in Shinra Headquarters, and continues to the top floor and kills the President of Shinra. Now there is blood everywhere, and almost all the guards are dead, so it didn't just kill everything in it's path, it seems to have gone through and butchered what it could find....

Again, jump to 9:00 and skim through as much as you'd like. Sephiroth does not give pause, he kills everyone on the bottom floor of this Cargo Ship.

The ultimate showing of ruthlessness.

WARNING: If you haven't played FF7 but plan to (who knows why you waited til now), you can buy it off of the Playstation Network on the PS3 and play it. Do NOT watch this video if you plan on doing so, it ruins a crucial part of the game.

Yeah, I may have shed a tear during this scene, but what am I? Made of stone. This was the most heartbreaker scene, and still remains the most heartbreaking scene in video game history!

Overall:

What's his telepathic resistance like? Because as far as I see, Sephiroth could just KO him with a thought.

Thanks for reading,

Floopay

@nickzambuto: Bump.

Thanks for reading,

Floopay

@floopay

As versatile as Sephiroth is, half of his abilities aren't very actually useful in a fight. Things like phasing, invisibility, telepathy, soul manipulation, illusion casting, weather manipulation, astral projection, conjuration, and materialization are all either A) one-shot abilities that he only ever used once and never utilized in combat, or B) useless in combat either way. All Metal Gear characters have very impressive telepathic resistance; Solid Snake resisted Psycho Mantis's mind control and also broke free from his illusions. Mantis was mentally controlling an entire army, easily dominated Meryl Silverburgh (who is not at all short on willpower), and according to Nastasha, is one of the most powerful telepaths in the world, capable of causing natural disasters with just a thought. Jetstream Sam never fought any telepaths, but it's safe to say his cybertronic implants and willpower can keep him alive. The important factors of this fight – strength, speed, range, technique – are all in Sam’s advantage. In fact, when it comes to strength, Sam’s edge is pretty much overwhelming. All of Sephiroth’s feats paint him as a 5 tonner being generous; this is consistent with other characters in the FF7verse. Things you listed like holding Cloud at the end of his sword and putting people through steel walls are clearly inhuman feats, but nothing at all to suggest he is anywhere in the 100 ton range. Seph only has one big feat; the Midgar Zolom, and I don’t think that single instance is enough to put him over Sam, especially considering it was an off-screen feat where Cloud and Co. only speculated that it might have been Sephiroth – and even then! That doesn’t mean he lifted the serpent, there are a variety of other ways he could of impaled it, for example he could of lured it over the spike and just pushed it down. There are too many holes to say that one feat is Sephiroth’s average.

In any case, I’d also like to contest the weight of the Zolom anyway. I think you might of made a mistake in your calcs (this is something I’ve done before); it’s not 6,000 tons, it’s 6,000 pounds, or 3 tons. That would be much more consistent with Sephiroth’s other showings, not to mention it’d make a lot more sense considering the serpent’s size (that can NOT be 6,000 tons)

When it comes to other physical areas; speed, endurance, reaction time, I don’t have much to say about Sephiroth, other than that I just think Sam is better. His CNT exoskeleton totally outclassed Raiden's standard cyborg frame in every possible way; even Raiden's custom frame was noticeably less powerful by a good margin. Raiden performed numerous feats, that I honestly can not see Sephiroth coming anywhere close to replicating.

2:10 Raiden clears the entire dock on foot in an instant (speed) and stops a 200,000 ton warship in it's tracks with one arm.

Raiden parries and blocks physical attacks from Metal Gear RAY, and bodily hurls the mech tens of meters through the air (RAY itself was a thousand tonner, capable of launching it's 500 ton body for incredible distances. Raiden overpowered it)

In the same video, Raiden plays hopscotch across a barrage of transonic AGM-65 Maverick missiles; that's reflexes, and it's matched nicely by the movement speed to vertically run straight down the side of a tower.

Raiden has plenty of feats that show him as a hypersonic fighter, in both movement and reactions, and since he could barely react to Jetstream Sam's movements, that makes the samurai a massively hypersonic fighter. And with his exoskeleton jacked directly into his spinal cord and central nervous system, he has the reaction time to match.

2:20-3:40 Solos three armored military convoys and a couple dozen mercenaries, as well as several national soldiers, effortlessly outracing gatling gun bullets (mostly off-screen unfortunately)

2:30 Most cyborg ninjas can deflect bullets pretty casually, but Sam did it from three mounted miniguns simultaneously from across a great distance. That would mean the samurai can actively perceive the bullets movements midair, and has the precision to slice each individual one in half.

Sam can make dozens of slashes with his blade in a millisecond, expertly cutting out and harvesting cyborg electrolytes before their bodies can even hit the floor. Skip to the 32 second mark, Sam can actually outrace the light streaks left behind by his sword, making multiple more cuts so they all appear simultaneously while appearing to only make a single slice.

Sam doesn’t have any fancy magic powers or special abilities. Everything he has done is either through sheer samurai skill, or cutting edge technology (Sam is actually a genius, in both martial arts and strategy, singlehandedly bringing down numerous powerful drug cartels and mafia operations on his own and masterminding a one-man raid on World Marshal HQ, the most powerful PMC on the planet, not to mention an expert in manipulation and reading emotions, often knowing exactly what to say to an opponent to receive the exact reaction he was looking for, such as taunting enemies into a blind rage, or bringing out Raiden’s Jack the Ripper persona by playing on his guilt, but besides fighting he is clearly well versed in technology and a great hacker). To sum it up, he is a master swordsman with both the inherit instinct for swordplay passed down through his family's generations, as well as the vast training his world travels could afford him, mastering numerous samurai styles including laido, and kenjutsu, not to mention studying a plethora of samurai disciplines, mostly his family's own New Shadow School Technique, and Uradachi technique, better known as Satsujin-ken or "the murdering sword." Sam is also experienced in several h2h styles such as Judo. When it comes to training and experience, Sam can't be beat. His exoskeleton is also a major advantage in any fight, considering Sephiroth's sword very well may go flying if the two clash, leaving him defenseless.

Yes I am horribly late I know shut up.

@nickzambuto:

I dunno where you got the calculation for the Midgar Zolom, but the largest snake on Earth (recorded, measured, and etc.) had a diameter of about 10 inches at it's thickest (without something in it's stomach), was 29 feet long, and weighed over 550 pounds.

However, this is closer to a King Cobra (actually, after running measurements it's almost exactly the same). I compiled a list of cobra measurements measuring from 13-16 feet, and weighing from 13-28 pounds, and looked up a host of images to get an average girth (4-6 inches), and then used the volume of a cylinder to get a rough idea of it's average weight per square inch. Which is accurate, though not precise. I found a baseline average that was actually very close, and only removed one outlier, which seemed to be a very fat cobra for it's length (this makes the average a lot tighter, and allows for a more accurate guessing based on minimum values).

The Midgar Zolom is about 6 feet at it's thickest (based on Cloud's height), and about 110 feet long (based on Cloud's height again). Based on the average cobra weight I found (0.0451 ounces per cubic inch), this thing would weight 121 tons. So both of us were wrong.

Dozens of Slashes per millisecond

Really? Where did you see that, because I watched all those videos, and the fastest I tracked was he threw out 2 slashes in the span of approximately 1/8th of a second.

Telekinesis

I still see no counter to his telekinesis, Sephiroth can provide several thousand tons of force with a wave of his hand, as shown in the video I already provided. Where am I getting that number? That's how much force it would take to rip down the top of a building made with reinforced (the building is the size of a small city, so it's not just some random city).

Thanks for reading,

Floopay

Things like phasing, invisibility, telepathy, soul manipulation, illusion casting, weather manipulation, astral projection, conjuration, and materialization are all either:

A) one-shot abilities that he only ever used once and never utilized in combat

B) useless in combat either way.

Lets address this shall we:

Invisibility - Used it to get the jump on Barret and his crew, though wasn't in combat, but still.

Illusion Casting - Same as above

Telepathy - He's used it to knock out the entire Final Fantasy 7 crew, including a Vincent Valentine, who was in possession of the Protomateria at the time. Vincent has stood up to powerful telepathic assaults before, and Sephiroth easily KO'd him. Again, I'd like to see something showing Jetstream Sam being immune to telepathic assault.

Weather Manipulation - He absolutely uses this in combat, and he also can cause it to rain darkness. He uses this to obscure his opponent's vision.

Astral Projection - Has only been used in combat

Conjuration - Kadaj uses this multiple times in combat. I'll address that statement later.

Phasing - This is the big one I'd like to address. A lot of the Sephiroth arguments I've used this for people like to bring that up. The reason for him not using this in combat? Because Sephiroth has only been tagged 3 times in all of Final Fantasy 7 canon. Or at least only been tagged on 3 occasions.

• First Time - Weakest version of Sephiroth, he had been awake for several weeks doing research, and had just finished burning down a city, dealing with his former best friend, defeating Zack Fair (and Tifa Lockhart), and was distracted when he met his mother for the first time. At this point Cloud stabbed him from behind with the Buster Sword.
• Second Time - He was on a metaphysical plane of existence where he couldn't use any of his phasing or illusionary abilities, and the physical stats of him and his opponents were evened out.
• Third Time - Cloud struck right through his soul, which he couldn't phase through anyway.

Jetstream Sam's Speed

I don't doubt that he's fast, and that he's skilled. At all. However, I do doubt Steven Armstrong's speed when compared to Sephiroth

These are your own posts:

7:00 He easily counters all of the samurai's best moves. Jetstream Sam has very similar training and history to Samurai Jack. It's clear that Armstrong is a ferocious fighter and is clearly experienced with boxing, along with basic military CQC. He also displays knowledge on a few wrestling maneuvers and holds/grapples in his fight with Raiden. Obviously he can't come anywhere close to guys like Sam and Jack in technique though, nowhere close. Again, his "skill" is his reaction time, a VERY important factor in actual martial arts.

Armstrong vs. another MGS Powerhouse

From your own post, with some added of my own.

0:50 Armstrong blitzes Raiden

1:04 - Armstrong's blitz seems to cover about 12 meters in 1 second. That puts his speed at about 24 meters per second, which is about 60 mph. Impressive, but nowhere near hypersonic.

1:50 - A full kick from the scenator sends Raiden flying, but he bounces off the capsule, leaving it completely intact, and Raiden rolls about 3 meters from the base.

3:00 catches his sword midswing and snaps it - Something I want noted.

3:15 - A punch from Armstrong sends Raiden flying about 10 meters. Looks like he put some effort into it too, judging by his grunt.

3:25 smacks it out of the air

I looked up a few other videos, looks like Sam and Raiden are about equals, though Raiden seems to have killed Sam.

Sephiroth

A casual throw from Sephiroth sends his opponents flying 10-15 meters and through A36 building steel, which can withstand upwards of 30 tons of force before denting (at least when over 1 foot thick like the stuff he's throwing Cloud through), and ten times that before it snaps. It's extremely common for Sephiroth to put out this kind of power without even trying.

Final Fantasy 7: Before Crisis: Elfe vs. Sephiroth

Jump to 1:30

As you can see, blocking an attack from Sephiroth is more than enough to destroy the steel and concrete beneath their feet. This girl is empowered by something reminiscent of a god, which is why she was fast enough to block an attack from Sephiroth. She just finished slaughtering entire squads of Shinra infantry, and taking on an extremely skilled spy. However, after blocking an attack from Sephiroth, she looks pretty defeated. It's only through CIS that she escapes, realistically Sephiroth should have slaughtered her. Though this was early in his career, he was much less ruthless at this point.

Sephiroth vs. Zack Fair

Zack is an amazing fighter, I could put up a host of arguments showing his level of reflexes, combat senses, and etc. But I'll just post a previous thread with many of his feats:

http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/cav-thatguywithheadphones-guts-vs-floopay-zack-fai-1461629/#19

4:30-4:40 - Sephiroth has Zack's swords inches from his neck, and his own sword a good foot from his grasp, and it's buried halfway up it's blade in steel. Yet before Zack can even register Sephiroth has moved, he finds himself being flung across the room with a casual blow.

4:40-4:50 - Zack just can't keep up with Sephiroth.

4:50-5:10 - Blasts through Zack with ease, and doesn't even kind of show like he's trying, but Zack can't keep up, he even knocks aside an energy attack with zero issue.

5:10-5:20 - In an instant, Sephiroth blitzes Zack. He moves from across the room to on top of him before Zack even registers his movement.

5:20-5:30 - Then he sends Zack flying out of the room and through a heavy steel capsule. A few weeks prior, one of these capsules was standing up to Sephiroth's casual sword strikes, which have been shown to easily plow through reinforced steel.

Note: This version of Sephiroth is the absolute weakest, by no small margin. This is also the same situation where he hasn't been sleeping, and he lost his best friends over the past few months, and his best friend (the one that's still alive) just told him he was a monster a couple dozen times a few minutes prior to this. So he's got a lot going against him.

Thanks for reading,

Floopay