Welcome to another Challenge-A-Viner. For this CaV, we have a clash between two famous manga antagonists: The Hero Hunter, Garou, and the Ghost Ninja, Madara Uchiha. In a battle between monsters and ninjas, who will come out on top? Read to find out:
Now you may wonder. How in the hell can a near haxless brick even hope to stand a chance against the king of hax himself, Madara Uchiha? Well, I'd argue that, in addition to having the physical advantage over Madara, Garou also has the tactical, skill, and adaptability advantage, a quality most bricks don't possess, that will allow him to win the day.
Garou | The Hero Hunter
"The popular will win, the hated will lose, it's such a tragedy. Then I won't lose to anyone. I will become the strongest monster ever and change this scenario."
Bio
Garou is a major antagonist in the webcomic, manga and anime Onepunch-man by ONE. Growing up, Garou would always cheer on the villains in his favourite TV shows, but was always dismayed when the villain would inevitably lose to the hero. He believed that it wasn't fair that the monsters always lost since they tried just as hard, if not harder than the heroes but would always lose regardless. Years later Garou trained as a martial artist under Bang (who is himself an S-Class hero, rank 3), but he eventually grew tired of his constant training at the dojo, desiring stronger opponents to fight. After taking out most of the other members of the dojo and scaring off the rest, Garou goes on his infamous 'Hero hunt', looking for ranked heroes to fight and ultimately defeat in order to become an even more powerful monster; he ends up becoming a self-styled near-unstoppable monster, and arguably the most dangerous adversary Saitama and the Heroes Association have yet faced.
The Hero Hunter: Pressing the Physical Advantage
In order for a brick to be of any worth in a fight, especially against someone like Madara, they have to have the physical advantage. And, luckily for me, Garou has physicality in spades:
Garou's Strength vs Madara's Durability
Garou without question has the strength advantage over Madara to the point that there is no question that Garou can overwhelm Madara in baseform and even give Madara's perfect Susanoo a run for its money:
The only feat I need to bring up to prove this point is Garou trading blows with Saitama. Now yes, he was eventually overwhelmed by Saitama during this exchange, but the operative word there is "eventually." Garou was still able to trade dozens of blows for Saitama before he began to even notice he was becoming overwhelmed:
The only reason City Z was still damaged by the meteorite is because Saitama's punch didn't completely obliterate the meteorite (which can't be used to lowball the feat due to the nature of blunt force attacks), but instead canceled out the existing momentum of the meteorite. But since the meteorite was still high in the sky, the meteorite chunks regained some momentum when it fell back to the surface, resulting in the damage to City Z. But by no means is that a knock on Saitama's strength, which should be at multi city level because of this feat.
Now, on paper, scaling off of Saitama, the most powerful person in the OPM verse by far may seem sketchy. However, in the context of Garou's fight with Saitama, this simply isn't the case. For one, Saitama accomplished the meteorite feat with the utmost casualty:
I bring up this scan in particular because it highlights how casually this feat was accomplished. Saitama is not phased in the slightest and looks absolutely bored. I mean, if Saitama was actually trying in this instance, don't you think Saitama would have commented on it? We are talking about a man who has lived years without having to exert any kind of effort into situations like this (for the most part). You'd think that if this meteor would pose any kind of challenge to Saitama, or push him to exert more strength than usual, he would have said something. But no, he just kept the same old, straight face, completely indifferent about the entire situation. Now normally, I don't use facial expressions to prove my points, but in the case of OPM, a narrative where Saitama's facial expressions are practically integrated into the storytelling (just look at Saitama's fight with Boros as an example), it becomes a viable way to prove my point. Another thing to consider was that this wasn't even a named attack. It wasn't apart of his Serious Series or anything of the sort, so it is pretty safe to scale off of from that perspective as well.
This should pretty much prove that a regular punch from Saitama should be equivalent to this meteor busting force. I mean, why else do you think that Saitama one shots almost every monster he comes across. It's because barely anyone can actually take this amount of force. And remember, Garou traded blows with a named attack from Saitama, not just regular punches.
To give you an idea on how big the difference is between regular punches and named attacks, look at his fight with Boros. Boros was tanking multiple nameless punches from Saitama and only coughed up blood, and yet a named attack from Saitama: "Consecutive Normal Punches," turned him to fish paste.
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And while Garou did state that Saitama was stronger than him on multiple occasions during the fight, the thing is, Saitama explicitly said on multiple occasions that Garou wasn't even trying, to the point that he lost the fight. In fact, Saitama himself said that determination determines the fight and that Garou wasn't serious.
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Another thing to consider is that Garou was fighting everyone in a way where he wouldn't kill them. He was holding back in other words:
All in all, while Garou is in fact weaker than Saitama, he was still able to temporarily stalemate Saitama's onslaught of punches before realizing he was being overpowered, given that Garou was holding back significantly and that Saitama was somewhat serious, the disparity in strength can't be that massive between the two. On the whole, Garou's statements and Saitama's statements should cancel out given the context behind both of them and how they relate to each other. I mean if Saitama was soo much stronger than Garou, he wouldn't have felt the need to use a named attack to defend against Garou's onslaught of attacks.
Now, let's see how this compares to Madara's durability. Madara's best base form durability feat is when he tanked a barrage of attacks from the Bijuu:
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Now, while impressive, this feat doesn't begin to compare to Garou's striking strength. The thing is that Garou and the Bijuu have at the very least comparable stats, but Garou is much smaller than the Bijuu, so he can exert comparable amounts of strength in a smaller, more concentrated area and deal more damage that way.
With an incomplete Susanoo, he tanked a Hirudora, but I don't think that this is beyond Garou's paygrade. I don't know what you think of the Hirudora's DC, but while it may be island level in AoE, that doesn't make the Susanoo island level. I mean the Susanoo is nowhere near island sized so it only tanked a portion of the Hirudora relative to its size, which obviously isn't island level.
On the whole, Garou should have no trouble harming Madara and knocking him out with raw striking strength alone.
Garou's Superior Speed
Ah speed. What every brick needs to actually stand a chance in a fight like this. Luckily, Garou is practically a speedster, even by Naruto standards (pre Light Fang feat of course).
You see, Atomic Samurai, a S-Class Hero, was able to cut through a monster dozens of times before said monster, who has supersonic combat speed, was able to complete his sword swing and kill Atomic Samurai. Bare in mind, the monster's sword was only an inch away from Atomic Samurai's neck at that point Needless to say, this feat is very impressive and has been calced at Mach 900 +. Thus, Atomic Samurai would give most if not all Naruto characters a run for their money when it comes to raw combat speed, at least at this point in the story.
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Yet what happened when Garou fought Atomic Samurai? Well, see for yourself:
Garou casually reacts to Atomic Samurai's Atomic Slash (note how Atomic Samurai actually used a named attack on Garou, which implies it was even faster), and blitzes him at the same time. Reacting to and blitzing someone in the midst of a Mach 900 + attack speaks for itself in terms of speed, and should put Garou in a different tier. And that's not even taking into account the speed boosts he received later on during his fight with Saitama, making him that much faster.
The only feat that comes close to Mach 900 that Edo Madara can scale to is the TBB feat, which is shaky to say the least. For one, the high end triple digit feat of miracle was accomplished by Kurama's TBB.
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Now, the only way to scale Madara to this feat is to scale him beyond Naruto, who reacted to several TBB from far lesser Bijuu, which is very shaky to say the least for fairly obvious reasons. I mean scaling a Kurama's TBB to the TBB of lesser, Bijuu is absurd in it of itself. So if you scaled Madara off of Naruto, you would get far less speed than Garou, and in reaction speed only since Madara really only reacted to Naruto's attack iirc. He doesn't have any Mach 900 + combat speed feats like Garou does.
Now if you don't use this shaky scaling, there is literally no other feat you could use that is high end triple digit mach. This is literally the only feat that even comes close to Garou's fairly casual Mach 900 + feat, and as I have proven, it can't be relied on. And that touches on the consistency argument as well.
I mean while Madara only scales off of one feat that isn't anywhere near high end triple digit mach, Garou scales off of two high end triple digit mach feats, the AS feat and Flashy Flash feat.
Just look at him absolutely punking Flashy Flash, the same person who has the casual triple digit feat of moving hundreds of meters before an explosion could fully expand.
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The Hero Hunter: Countering Hax
Oh boy, here comes the biggy. Garou countering Madara's hax. Assuming Madara somehow circumvents the speed disparity, avoids getting blitzed, or unleashes his deadly hax from jump, Garou still has a counter to it:
Fire Release
Let's first talk about fire release, a jutsu that, in any of its variations, will be completely no sold by Garou. Don't believe me? Well just look at half monster Garou, a far weaker form of Garou, tanking a multi floor level energy blast from Rover that was powerful enough to cause an Earthquake.
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And Garou tanked not one, but a bombardment of these energy attacks to the point that, despite being in a deep underground base, the destruction could still be observed in the city blocks far above.
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And remember this was one of the weakest forms of Garou. Needless to say, fire release jutsus of any kind are going to do noting to the Hero Hunter
Wood Release
Okay, so while this is a very powerful jutsu, Garou can easily counter it.
For one, while it has great AoE, Garou can use this to his advantage and jump from branch to branch to close the distance. He most certainly has the agility to pull this off. He was bouncing like a tennis ball across falling rubble at high speeds, so doing this isn't completely out of the question:
If that's not enough, Garou clearly has the strength to punch through the wood should Madara try to restrain him and the speed to outmaneuver the AoE. It's really as simple as that. I mean has Madara ever even tagged someone as fast as Garou with these attacks?
As for the pollen that the wood generates, Garou has resisted poison before, so I could see him doing the same here. I mean human Garou, again the weakest form of Garou, was able to fight for extended periods of time despite it being stated that his body would be paralyzed after two minutes:
So Garou definitely has resistance to attacks of this nature.
Susanoo
Okay, here is a major one, and is in my opinion, Madara's only saving grace in this fight. However, I don't think that he can really do anything with the Susanoo that Garou can't handle. Now obviously, the Susanoo is way slower than Garou, but even ignoring that, Garou has regeneration, which should allow him to take the piercing shockwave generated by the Susanoo:
And bare in mind that, due to his small size relative to the shockwave, Garou will only take a small portion of it. This means that Madara will need to be precise with his sword swing if he wants to circumvent Garou's healing factor.
Skill and Adaptability
Those are the two major forms of hax Madara has at his disposal. With that said, let's address how Garou will counter all of Madara's other hax:
Garou is a master at adaptability. Take his fight with a group of heroes. He was able to quite easily assess the situation and read through their tactics and gameplan like a book:
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He was able to adapt to their wide range of abilities, strengths, and weaknesses and ultimately beat them down and win the fight despite not exactly being in peak condition. This kind of analyzation should allow Garou to adapt to Madara's skillset as well, ecspecially since he has never displayed the same levels of tactical awareness or planning as these heroes.
As for Garou's skill, he is a master. Despite Saitama being faster than Garou, as Garou admitted, Garou was able to completely outmaneuver him and dodge before he attacked by observing his movement pattern, stance, and muscle tension among other things. In fact, before Saitama could even finish his attack, Garou's attack begins, which as Garou stated and as was shown, completely overwhelmed Saitama's reflexes.
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This level of skill and observation will aid Garou's adaptability to Madara's hax and if the fight comes down to CQC, which I believe it will, it is over for Madara.
Now Madara does have the Sharingan to fall back on, but it has never been used effectively against a martial artist of Garou's caliber who with raw skill, can anticipate your next move through keen observation. So I don't believe that precognition nor skill copying will save Madara from the vast disparity in raw skill.
Intial Thoughts
Now Garou blitzes and Madara to high heaven. That's the plan I will be sticking with for this fight. However, there are other factors that Garou has in his favor should Krle prove Madara has the speed to keep up.
First, let's address Garou's character in this fight. He is in character, but serious. I want to emphasize the latter part of this because it is very important. Garou, similar to Saitama, is one who holds back and doesn't take fights seriously like he should. However, he have seen that even when he doesn't take fights seriously and holds back, his analyzation and tactical expertise is still on point. This means that in a scenario where Garou is serious, he should perform even better in a combat scenario from a tactics standpoint. Obviously, his physicals should be better as well as Garou was holding back in all of the feats I posted, but the tactical enhancement from this battle condition is what I want to highlight.
Another thing to consider is that Garou has experience with dealing with and accounting for different abilities, as seen in his fight with the A-Class heroes, where he takes account their strengths, weaknesses, and tactics before completely stomping them. This experience should allow Garou to adapt well to Madara's hax. If the fight extends beyond speed blitz gg, Garou will have more than enough time to analyze how Madara fights and make the appropriate countermeasures, and his physicality advantage will allow him this luxury. Not to mention, Garou has direct counters to some of Madara's hax, such as the pollen of the wood release or fire release. It's these counters that should allow Garou to close the distance and force Madara into CQC
Once in CQC, Madara will be forced on the backfoot. You see even disregarding speed, Garou has the raw skill to give Madara a run for his money. He may be a ninja, but other than on paper feats, Madara isn't very skilled compared to Garou. Garou on the other hand is, and Madara's only saving grace, the Sharingan, has never been used effectively against someone of Garou's skill caliber.
So even if we discount speed, Garou still takes this fight handidly
@defiant_will: Why would you challenge me to a CaV where you wanted me to use a character who you think would just get blitzed and defeated handily? Kinda dishonest given the fact that you know I know nothing of your character, so it is not like we were in disagreement which caused this match. Anyway, I may actually reply earlier given that I already memorized most of Madara's feats, so rereading doesn't have to be necessary.
@krleavenger: I challenged you because I know my view is unpopular and I am in the vast minority. And there has to be someone who could help you when it comes to OPM debating, or at least that's what I assumed. I mean I am by no means an expert on Naruto either.
@hittheassasin: The All Star match with Vulcan was the first time I’ve ever debated against a non comic based character and I realised I messed up on quite allot of things. Ive gotten into more Eastern/Japanese type media because of it.
I also like opm as of the last few weeks, so there’s that.
I want to make myself very very clear. I am not a Manga debater, and I do not participate in Manga debates, mostly due to my lack of knowledge and the fact that a lot of those characters are broken as hell. Naruto is one and the only Manga I am completely fine debating against, as I've done so before. And as you can tell, I am capable of supporting Naruto characters in debates as well (well, only Naruto, Sasuke and Madara), which I'm doing here.
However, just like my overall opinion on Manga debates, I barely debated against Naruto characters before and I don't really have any real interest in supporting them, and by the same token, do not consider myself a Naruto debater. They are just characters I am capable of using in case someone wants me to use them, just like here. I am well aware of the fact that Naruto and One Punch Man are sort of Manga rivals both on Comic Vine and other internet forums, similar to Superman vs. Goku or Hulk vs Thor, and debates by themselves are pretty hostile and controversial and CaVs between the two usually show parts of the fanbase debating.
Where I'm going with this is, that is not what's happening here. I know almost nothing about OPM, I am not particularly fond of supporting Naruto characters, and I never visited a single forum discussion related to these two sides. The ONLY reason why I am even doing this CaV is because Gear asked me to use Madara against him multiple times so I decided to do him a favor. That is all this is. A favor. So for those of you who are a huge fans of either Naruto or One Punch Man and are one of those people who debate for/against either, please, keep your bias, hype and hostility out of this and do not assume this is one of those fanbase war threads.
With that out of the way, lets get into it.
Opener Post: Madara Uchiha
Madara's origin is quite interesting and in my opinion, one of the most developed in all of Naruto, but I won't bother giving you the details since I am pretty sure most if not all the people interested in voting here are aware of it. Besides, origin by itself is completely unnecessary in debates unless you want your CaV Opener to be more "complete" I guess, but I already spent like 10 minutes explaining how you shouldn't see this as just another Naruto/One Punch Man flamewar CaV so, I won't bother you anymore with unnecessary details.
When it comes to powers, abilities, skills and ninjutsu/techniques, Madara has tons of them, but I won't bother listing them here since not all of them will be relevant here, and my opponent already got into some of Madara's abilities himself so, instead of separating my post into multiple sections, I'll focus on counters and bring up Madara's abilities as the debate goes along, either mentioning feats and abilities that are a good counter to some of Garou's powers/strategy, or simply abilities Madara can use to take him down.
I also want to make sure everybody is aware of is that I am using regular, Edo Tensei Madara. Reanimated Dead Madara during mid 4th Great Ninja War period in between Dead Kage Battle and Obito Juubi Jinchuuriki confrontation. This is the weakest non featless version of Madara in Naruto, who does not have Rinne Sharingan, God Tree, Tailed Beast Charka, Gedo Mazo, Full Power Rinnegan, Sage Mode, Zetsu Arm or Kurama. He also lacks speed and raw power of his alive counterpart, but he makes up for it with some, albeit limited Rinnegan abilities and Wood Release. As well as Immortality, Healing Factor and Pain Immunity provided by Edo Tensei.
Last thing I want to point out is, because my opponent's first section is pretty large (as well as some other ones) but does not focus on multiple feats and spends more time explaining one/two feats in particular, I will avoid using quotes here and will just counter/reply to entire post in this summarized section (with few exceptions). Countering paragraph per paragraph will be annoying to read and it will require me to repeat myself multiple times. It is tedious to type in and follow so let me just explaining my disagreement with this formula you tried to use. I will also avoid posting scans my opponent used and will just provide links. For the sake of not receiving praise I do not deserve, this format style was inspired by Riddlerfan77 and this CaV.
Finally, enough rambling. Time to focus on the debate itself.
1) Meteorite scaling & Damage Output
The main problem I have with this scaling of yours is the fact that context of Saitama's showing you are trying to scale Garou off of simply does not compare to his fight with Saitama. You tried to bring up the fact that Saitama apparently did not seem serious when he busted a meteorite, but that happened (I assume) after he actually destroyed it(1). When he was in the process of actually destroying it, his facial expression was waaaay more serious and focused(2). As opposed to his fight with Garou, where he not only looked equally bored as he was after he destroyed it, but even overwhelming him. You acknowledged this yourself, but the reason why I'm repeating this is because he was not just overwhelmed in some barely noticeable way. He went from being shocked, to screaming, to even running away. And it is also worth mentioning that he said that Saitama was toying with him(3). If he was toying with him, plus, again, the fact that his face during the actual process of destroying a meteorite was serious, as I've stated, as opposed to his complete lack of interest during his fight with Garou, makes this scaling off of meteorite feat still a bit sketchy to me. When it comes to named punches, while I admit my lack of knowledge makes me kinda hesitant to make claims against it, based on how punches actually work, blows Saitama used on Garou are not necessarily comparable to or equal to the meteor busting one. In boxing, you have quick strikes that do not gain power from body's rotation and shoulders. Just from arms moving forward. Those serve to stagger your opponent since they lack power, but have speed and are way easier to use to produce barrage of punches. Punches that do come from body's rotation and from shoulder, are way slower, but way more destructive. When it comes to Saitama, blows he dished out on Garou fit the former category, while the ones he unleashed on the meteorite are equivalent to the latter. Except meteorite one is even more destructive due to momentum he received from his flying(4), while with Garou, he stood still(5). You can say I am looking way too into this, but even from narrative and visual perspective, one he used on a meteorite seems way more impressive based on both implication and facial expression (something you argued for yourself, but in my opinion, it works against your point).
Even if we assume punches he used on Garou are equivalent to meteorite busting one (which I do not think they are, and using the logic of it being a named punch to support this is not something I agree with, but if you have more examples than the one with Boros, one you did not really provide a lot of details for, I could backtrack), it actually means that Garou's blows are way below that, given that they overwhelmed him and made him scream and run away. Which again, I do not think they are. Saitama was toying with him and I already brought up other reasons why I disagree with this. And overall, I do not think it is fair to just take one feat from a character and use it as base for your scaling off of another character. If Garou actually matched Saitama or there is some clear cut evidence to support the claim of all of his punches being comparable to the one he used to bust a meteorite, then I could possibly agree. But he was hilariously overwhelmed and an argument can be used that punches he used on Garou are actually way weaker. Therefor, I do not think this scaling has a lot of weight to it. As for the other thing, Saitama did not say Garou was not trying at all. He simply said how he was not serious and how he did not give his all, which does not mean much because he himself was shocked over Saitama not being serious at all, supported by the fact that he stated how he will show "how a little serious he can be"(6), as opposed to meteorite feat where he looked at least decently serious. As for Garou, it does not really matter how serious he was. Whether he used 1% of his strength or 50% does not matter. He is aware of his own limits, and regardless of how much effort he put into the fight, he was still amazed over the fact that he was overwhelmed which made him both scream and run away, meaning that him being serious completely or giving it his all, wouldn't make any difference aside from maybe the level of performance, and even that is based on assumption. In the end, I highly disagree with this formula you used and to me, it seems pretty clear that the gap between the two is so massive, you can't really scale Garou off of Saitama. I'm only convinced that Garou is solidly stronger than Madara, which does not really mean much given the fact that Madara is not the guy who is known for his strength, but is more than capable of compensating for sheer lack of it through means I will get into later.
That being said, Madara does have two or three strength feats that are pretty impressive, but more on that later.
Now, let's see how this compares to Madara's durability. Madara's best base form durability feat is when he tanked a barrage of attacks from the Bijuu:
Now, while impressive, this feat doesn't begin to compare to Garou's striking strength. The thing is that Garou and the Bijuu have at the very least comparable stats, but Garou is much smaller than the Bijuu, so he can exert comparable amounts of strength in a smaller, more concentrated area and deal more damage that way.
With an incomplete Susanoo, he tanked a Hirudora, but I don't think that this is beyond Garou's paygrade. I don't know what you think of the Hirudora's DC, but while it may be island level in AoE, that doesn't make the Susanoo island level. I mean the Susanoo is nowhere near island sized so it only tanked a portion of the Hirudora relative to its size, which obviously isn't island level.
I have no idea why you even brought this up. When Madara tanked blows from Biju, he had Sage Mode and was alive, as opposed to this version who has no Sage Mode and is dead, therefor weaker. Those feats do not apply here, yet I could use them to prove Madara can deal with Garou's blows since Biju actually have some quantifiable feats, ones I have yet to see from Garou since all he has is extremely sketchy scaling. Honestly if it wasn't for me acknowledging the fact that I am using weaker Madara, you yourself would provide me with better options than I already have. This is why you should avoid bringing up opponent's character before he even starts representing them (something you've done multiple times here which I will get into later). Or else you might receive worse results than you would have otherwise. Either way, you are wrong about Hirudora. Madara indeed took a direct hit. Everything else were shockwaves, which still covered extremely large area, and are way way weaker than direct hit, so not tanking the whole thing does not really matter.
You brought up Hirudora's damage output yourself so I don't need to get into details, but I would like to actually see some quantifiable feats from Garou, or at least more believable form of scaling to support the idea of him being capable of easily penetrating Susanoo. Because keep in mind, this is one of the weakest version of Susanoo and there are multiple stages of Susanoo that make it waaayyyy more powerful and more durable. And this is not even the best durability feat from this Susanoo, but more on that later.
On the whole, Garou should have no trouble harming Madara and knocking him out with raw striking strength alone.
Probably, but it does not really matter. I'm using Edo Madara. This version of him is dead. He loses no stamina, he can not feel pain and only absurd amount of damage will affect him, and even that is barely the case. He can heal from anything, and even before that happens, he can still move to prevent further damage. Amped Rock Lee for example basically split him in two with his blow, yet he crossed a city block worth a distance away before taking any further damage or being tagged (impressive given that Biju Naruto was there), healing in seconds.
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And this is not even the best healing/endurance feat Madara has. Hell, other resurrected Ninja with worse stats endured worse and healed pretty quickly, so even if Garou punches a whole through Madara, Madara will continue the fight, and he has means to prevent further damage, through his own speed, Sharingan and versatility. But again, I'll get into those later.
2) Speedblitz & Tailed Beast Ball
I am not completely sure if the feat you posted for Flashy Flash counts as 3-digit Mach feat, but I don't really care much either way since the feat with Atomic Samurai seems even more impressive so no point in discussing the other one. The feat itself is really impressive and showcases Garou's speed very well, but I do not believe he will blitz Madara because of it, reason being Tailed Beast Ball feat you yourself brought up. To be honest, I am kinda annoyed over the fact that you keep bringing up feats before I even use them, but since you've already done that, I guess we can get into debate right away and save even more time for different topics. Before I get into impressiveness of the feat, I want to get into...
Now, the only way to scale Madara to this feat is to scale him beyond Naruto, who reacted to several TBB from far lesser Bijuu, which is very shaky to say the least for fairly obvious reasons. I mean scaling a Kurama's TBB to the TBB of lesser, Bijuu is absurd in it of itself. So if you scaled Madara off of Naruto, you would get far less speed than Garou, and in reaction speed only since Madara really only reacted to Naruto's attack iirc. He doesn't have any Mach 900 + combat speed feats like Garou does.
...this. I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here. How is Naruto reacting to Tailed Beast Bombs in any way, shape or form relevant to Madara? It is not like it took Naruto a lot of effort into reacting to them, nor is it absurdly ridiculous to react to an attack faster than the one Naruto reacted to. Naruto did not fail to react to those attacks. He just reacted to them with ease. They do not scale off of him in any way. He scales off of them, and therefor any feat related to Tailed Beast Bomb other characters have is irrelevant to Naruto unless you want to scale Naruto off of them instead. This is equivalent to saying Superman can not react to lightning because Flash reacted to lightning and Flash is faster than Superman. It has absolutely no relevance. On top of that, it is not like scaling Madara off of Biju Naruto is bad in any way. The clone of Biju Naruto attacked Madara with SMTBB when he was pretty pissed, and Madara only noticed him way after he started the assault, when he was relatively close. Yet Madara still lifted his Gunbai and reacted to Naruto, while also tagging him with his Gunbai to preform Uchiha Reflection, without Naruto himself reacting.
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He also preformed this feat with barely any effort so even if Naruto reacting to TBBs is somehow relevant to Madara, there is no problem with it given that he already got the best of Naruto. While this is a clone, Naruto preformed such a feat a moment after receiving Biju Mode for the very first time and it was imperfect at the time. Based on this, Madara should actually scale off of Naruto and his TBB feat, making the entire argument against this kinda meaningless. Madara is also equal to Hashirama in speed and stalemated him in sword fighting, a Martial Art that actively requires one to use speed, and Hashirama reacted to TBB with greater speeds which you yourself brought up. On the whole, Madara has two sources that make this argument completely legit, from both Naruto and Hashirama. Now that this issue is out of the way, lets get into actual impressiveness of TBB's speed and how they can help Madara react to Garou by comparing it to his feat with Atomic Samurai.
You said Atomic Samurai's feat is around Mach 900+. Garou blitzed him so he should be way way faster than and he has gotten even faster since then, meaning he is solidly above Mach 900. While I do not think I need a feat that is by full 10% of it superior to the one you brought up, lets say I need a Mach 1000/lowest end 4 digit Mach feat to counter the blitz. I do believe Hashirama's TBB feat is on that level and I will explain why given that you called it 3 digit Mach feat. Instead of getting into details about Mach 1 speed to compare it to something else, I'll just provide this screenshot which provides information on what level of speed is Mach 1000 equivalent to in miles per hour second.
As you can see, 213.13 miles per second is equivalent to lowest end 4-digit Mach speed. Now lets take a look at Hashirama's speed feat where he reacted to Tailed Beast Ball (I won't post the scans because you already posted them).
When it comes to the speed of the Tailed Beast Ball, as you can see, it took it like 5 seconds to move past the entire ocean and reach the other shore. The length of the ocean is around 1.000 miles (below average) and this one crossed the distance in like 5 seconds, making it's speed around 200 miles per second, which equals Mach 938.3. This by itself should be enough to react to Garou's attack, but this is bare minimum and there is a different way to calculate the speed of this feat. As you can see, it also crossed the distance equivalent to a mountain range in portion of a second. This is absurdly impressive because mountain ranges are hundreds of thousands of miles long, and the Ball crossed that distance in portion of a second, evident by the fact that it moved past the entire ocean in like 5 seconds, which completely dwarfs the size of mountain ranges. But for the sake of not overrating the feat, we can look at more lower end size of mountain ranges, around 200-300+ miles. The ball still crossed that distance in a time span solidly slower than a second. I already pointed out how Mach 1000 is equivalent to 213.13 miles per second and the feat you showcased should be even superior to that given potentially greater length and undoubtedly shorter time span, as opposed to just 3 digit Mach like you pointed out.
It is even more impressive when you take into consideration the fact that Hashirama was already in close proximity to the Ball even AFTER it got fired, which is the moment when he noticed it. Now, I would like to point out that when he noticed it, he was already in the air due to launching himself several miles forward to escape from Kurama chasing him. This means that he was in one of the worst options for positioning when it comes to dodging, yet he still had enough time to land, turn around, bite his finger to make it bleed, and use Summoning technique. He did all of that quickly enough to prevent the Ball from coming at least a mountain worth a distance close to him despite the fact that the Ball was arguably even closer to him by the time he noticed it than by the time he landed and preformed 2 actions to block it. This can possibly apply to raw combat speed and not just raw reaction time speed, making it way more impressive. This would also make it way easier to dodge Garou due to Sharingan enhancing one's perception even further, allowing them to read, track and react to characters who would blitz the shit out of them otherwise, but more on that later. I know I did not really provide any proof for my ocean and mountain ranges claims, but this post is getting kinda long so I'll leave that for a different post.
3) "Hax" Resistance & Susanoo
The main problem with this section of yours is, you mentioned no hax what so ever. You only focused on techniques with some form of versatility, no hax to speak of. There are a lot of things Madara can do that you did not address at all, and I don't even agree even with the summary you provided for the ones that are addressed, like basic Fire Release and Wood Release techniques. Mind you, I said "basic". Madara has more Fire and Wood Release techniques you did not counter which I will get into later, but first let me express my disagreements with the ones you tried to counter before I brought them up.
First one being Fire Release: Majestic Destroyer flame. While you posted a nice durability feat to energy attacks, it is what it is. Resistance to energy attacks. You did not really provide resistance to heat. Madara's fire attacks do not overwhelm opponents with brute force. They do not cause Earthquakes. They burn. And you did not post high temperature resistance feats because those energy attacks you posted have no signs of producing high amounts of heat, just concentrated plasma esque energy. But energy attacks are not equivalent to high heat by default. Lightsabers and Cyclops' Optic Blasts produce no heat, yet they are pretty destructive forms of energy. When it comes to Madara's own jutsu, while we can't really quantify it's temperature, it's size by itself can tell us that it is pretty hot, or else it wouldn't be able to sustain itself. It even crossed great distance and it took multiple house+ sized Water Wall techniques from like 5-15+ Jonin level ninja to stop the attack. And it did not even overpower it. It just stalemated it. The water evaporated which created a big mist. Quite an impressive feat given that not only is Fire Release specifically weak against Water Release in Naruto, but we all know how flames react to water. And to make this even more absurd, in Anime only scene, the jutsu still possessed enough power and temperature to release powerful fireballs even Post-Water Wall stalemate, which created massive explosions.
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The second one is Wood Release: Deep Forest Bloom (you brought up Deep Forest Emergence and it's inability to do anything due to the fact that Garou can just propel himself upwards, which is the only real counter I actually agree with so I won't even bother bringing up that jutsu, never even planned to honestly) and you never showed me Garou fighting while being poisoned. You showed me him being hit by an arrow which will infect him with poison 2 minutes after he got hit, and I only saw two panels that I am pretty sure do not take place 2 minutes after he got hit. So, what happened after the poison was a factor? Was he able to fight? And for how long and how impressive was his performance. If you are gonna make a claim, please provide full context because I do not even see Garou being poisoned yet, even less him fighting and how well he can fight. Either way, there are two very different types of poison. One you posted is injected and causes paralysis.
Madara's Wood Release jutsu however creates poisonous pollen, which you inhale. Lethal or unhealthy substances that take the form of gas that is inhaled causes a very very different effect. It does not require pain tolerance, endurance or healing abilities like injected poison but one's ability to take unhealthy substances you inhale or not breath at all. Those are two very different things. You have characters in fiction who have absurd pain tolerance and can keep going after being poisoned, yet they can still be knocked out via gas. Thor being an example. If you want to prove Garou can counter this, you need to show me example of him inhaling something or simply being capable of holding his breath. Tho not even that would necessarily happen because Madara will keep him hard pressed and attack him while he will be concerned with pollen. Forest itself can serve as a distraction, one he used on 5 Kage.
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Like I said before, Madara has way more hax at his disposal but I'll bring those up when I get into your "skill and adaptability" section. This section of my post is simply there for me to establish my disagreements with Garou's apparent counters to Madara's two basic techniques. I'll get into Madara's more exotic Fire and Wood Release techniques as well as other abilities that can be useful. For now, let me just talk about Susanoo for a moment. And not Susanoo's durability, which I will save for my next post, but it's damage output specifically and it's ability to, in my opinion, still take Garou out.
Basically your argument to support the idea of Garou tanking slashes from Susanoo is the fact that he has regeneration. However, you only really showed me him regenerating his arm in few seconds. And not even regenerating it all the way. What happens if Garou receives way more damage than just amputated arm? Like his torso being cut in half or him being torn to shreds, or simply being overwhelmed with brute force? Regenerating limbs is way easier than regenerating head or torso, the latter also being way harder to tolerate long enough to heal.
The other argument you used to support the idea of Garou handling Susanoo is, the fact that he is small will reduce the damage he will take because he will not tank the full shockwave. My reply to this is, why does that change anything? You posted zero durability feats for Garou so even the portion of the shockwave would completely destroy him as far as I'm concerned as of right now. Aside from that, it is not like shockwaves are particularly lackluster here. To analyze Madara's feat, he did not just bust a Mountain with some strike. The feat is way more impressive than that.
1) It was a casual swing used to pull out the sword. 2) It hit two meteorites which are pretty massive, which by itself should take away from it's power and therefor the power of shockwaves. 3) The shockwave alone destroyed the Mountain, not the blow. 4) The mountain was at least close to a mile away from Susanoo, and the further it is, the harder it is to destroy, especially with shockwaves.
Now, the reason why I'm bringing up all of those details is, if you look at the context of this fight, blows here will be way more effective because 1) Madara will go for the kill, and will not just try to impress his opponent. 2) There will be no meteorites to touch which will not take away from the power. 3) The fact that shockwaves are so destructive makes the point of Garou not being hit with the blade itself kinda moot. Shockwaves by themselves are enough. 4) Garou will be in way closer proximity to Susanoo than the mountain was, therefor, he will take way more damage.
Which brings me to my final point as to why I don't think this "will not take full force" point is even relevant is. Shockwave did not like crack the mountain and tear it apart or even made it crumble. The shockwave basically split the mountain literally in a second. It provided absolutely no resistance. Even less than unfrozen butter would to absurdly hot knife. Shockwave alone split the mountain a second after it touched it, and not only that, but it basically lifted the top of the mountain that was cut off afterwards, with the gap being Multi-Hill level(1).
Even those who weren't in direct proximity of the swing (or in front of it) were affected and pushed to the side, like 5 Kage, despite the fact that Madara did not want to kill them. Just show them his power(2). In other words, it does not matter if Garou tanks only a portion of the shockwave due to his size. Way more casual blow that was hindered and could not hit a target that was not close to a mile away still had enough force to split mountains in two with such force, it made perfect cuts and propelled tops of mountains upwards with the distance between tops and mountains still attached to the ground being around hill level in height to say the least, with even targets that are not intended to be taken down and not even being in range of the swing still being moved to the side like ragdolls.
In other words, even shockwaves hit Garou, he is dead or at least KO'd.
4) Garou's Skill & Madara's Arsenal
I'm not sure if you overhyped this feat or I'm confused due to lack of information on my part. Apparently Garou was only able to analyze those heroes either after they preformed their moves, or after successfully gaining an upper hand in some way or the other, tagging him multiple times. And even the analysis itself does not seem that impressive given that he is stating things that are more or less obvious or again, are explored right after they actually happened. Realizing what you got yourself into only after being in a very bad spot due to techniques that by themselves are not that unorthodox is not really impressive. You just showed me Garou analyzing people, something Madara has done with pretty much everyone he has ever encountered. Plus, you never really showed me Garou adapting to anything here, or countering for that matter. In fact, he seemed overwhelmed, having his bicep and knee damaged, taking a moment to retaliate and even getting poisoned. How and when did he beat them? What is the full context? Is simply beating them enough of a proof that he is adaptable enough to beat Madara when performance you yourself provided is honestly kinda poor and not really good, at best irrelevant? If you are not gonna post the entire fight, at least provide more details or give me the name/number of a chapter so I can look it up myself.
ecspecially since he has never displayed the same levels of tactical awareness or planning as these heroes.
I'll need a source to prove this claim. Madara is quite tactical, analyzing his opponent's skills, powers, abilities and even applications of those powers, even realizing how they work despite having any real, actual knowledge or experience with them. He has done so to Ohnoki, Clone Naruto, 5 Kage, Obito, Kakashi, Guy, Six Paths Duo, Sasuke and probably even more opponents. And he is quite tactical too, using unorthodox distractions to get the best of his opponents, like Limbo Shadows + Chibaku Tensei on Naruto and Sasuke, or Wood Release + Susanoo and then Fire Release on 5 Kage I posted above. Speaking of distractions, this is one showing of Madara's tactical skills which is both unorthodox and extremely effective. He fought 5 Kage, all of which are skilled leaders of their nations and posses a lot of power, one of them being a speedster faster than lightning. All of them had Madara in their sight, yet Madara was able to replace himself with Wood Release clone, making them believe they defeated real Madara, only to distract them and stab Tsunade, dishing out the killing blow. Keep in mind, all of them were watching Madara and were capable of following his moves, with no distractions. Yet he still tricked them and attacked the one he specifically stated was his main target. This showcases not only a degree of tactical skills, but Madara's dexterity, coordination and stealth capabilities.
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You did not really showcase actual tactical capabilities Garou has (if any), so I'm not sure why this wouldn't be effective. You yourself actually showed Garou being overwhelmed by way less unorthodox tactics and while he was in weaker form, I would like to see something that proves these heroes are in any way comparable to Madara. Or else I don't see why he can't dish out the killing blow. You posted Garou barely healing his arm so I am not sure how well he is capable of dealing with impaled gut, and you showcased no durability feats against sharp weapons either. And even humanoid Susanoo has swords that can one-shot Hashirama's Wood Release Clones, tear ground to pieces which releases massive waves of dust, and create energy slashes that can kill armies and spread throughout the area like shockwaves.
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When it comes to your skill feat against Saitama, while impressive, is not really relevant to this fight in particular. As explained by Garou himself, the basis of his move reading ability are stance and muscle tension, making it strictly related to hand to hand combat and will not help if Madara uses ninjutsu or Susanoo. Aside from that, it gives him a sort of fake/pseudo pre cognition, allowing him to read his opponent's moves so effectively, he can start moving before the attack even starts, similar to aim dodging bullets, reading shooters' pattern and move away so that he can not take a bead on you. The reason why this is not a factor is because Madara won't be attacking Garou physically. If this fight turns into CQC, it will be Madara who's on his back foot, dodging and maneuvering around, with no physical counter attacks. The technique by itself does not increase Garou's speed, but it proves him with better defense and counters. But again, against Madara, all he will have to rely on will be raw speed due to the fact that he is attacking and nothing else, and analyzing defensive and maneuverable pattern is way different than direct strikes with intention of harming an opponent.
Also, while this does show way superior raw fighting ability and Martial Arts proficiency in Garou's part compared to Madara, actual technical use of skill does not apply to this fight very well either, as Garou said himself, Saitama is an extremely poor fighter. Complete amateur with no training, skill, technique or even some form of talent. He just has raw power and speed, and countering something like that is pretty easy. Madara on the other hand is far from unskilled. He fought for his life ever since he was a boy (Pre-Elementary School age), killing adult warriors, becoming the leader of his clan, which was second mightiest in the world and rival to most powerful ninja of his time who he stalemated in swordsmanship multiple times. But to prove more clear cut feat, why not use infamous fight between Madara and Shinobi Alliance (1)(2)(3). While he had strength and speed advantage in this fight, as opposed to Garou who was weaker and slower than Saitama, Madara actually faced skilled and proficient opponents and was hilarious outnumbered. He also showcased both offensive and defensive as well as semi unorthodox moves more relevant to this fight.
So while Madara never showcased as nearly as much Martial Art prowess as Garou, and lacks any real fighting style in particular, his actual use of technical skill and hand to hand prowess should be comparable to Garou's, given the fact that he fought and humiliated army of multiple trained Ninja, Jonin Class on top of it, showing absurd levels of agility, dexterity, coordination, accuracy and even adaptability, changing his approach from subverting his enemies to overpowering them with raw force, to outmaneuvering them with agile kicks and punches, throws, dodges with quick counters and even changing his style from H2H to swordsmanship to staffs and kunai knifes with explosives, in portion of a second, or even using a more aggressive hands-on approach, breaking opponent's bones and stabbing them with knifes to vital spots.
The last thing I want to point out that I think is worth mentioning is, even absurdly superior technique Garou has (that being his move reading) which should put him solidly above Madara as a Martial Artist, by itself does not matter because Sharingan does the exact same thing, except more, with better proficiency, accuracy and versatility and overall has way better track record, as it was used against much much faster and stronger opponents who got overwhelmed regardless and actually possesses some degree of skill, as opposed to Saitama. I will get into Sharingan's Pre-Cog/Reading powers during my next post. This is already large enough as it is, but just to summarize skill section...
1) Garou's technique, while being extremely impressive and showcases how effective his Martial Arts Prowess would be, it simply does not fit here because Madara's style would be totally different. He will tell he can not pummel through Garou and will play defensive, dodging and maneuvering around and making Pre-Cog esque body reading ability not as relevant because counters he will have to dish out have completely different pattern. 2) Technique and Martial Arts are very important to regard one's fighting ability, but technicality and H2H skills are just as important to tell us how effective actual use it, and besting an opponent who's skill is basically non existing does not translate well to a fight with extremely skilled opponent. 3) Garou's absurd technique does not mean much when Madara has the exact same thing, except it is not skill based but actual super power, and it proves him with way more options and versatility.
There is just one form of hax I would like to bring up before I leave and that would be genjutsu. A mind technique Madara can dish out through eye contact with his Sharingan, putting his opponents to sleep, trapping them in an illusion, paralyzing them or simply mind controlling them. He used this at least 3 times in combat.
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I would like to see some feats that suggest Garou is capable of resisting mind attacks. Until then, I'll leave details on genjutsu for later, and I know this is like millionth time I said I will leave something for later but again, this post is already too long, way longer than I wanted it to be and I don't want to make it RT tier.
5) Your Summary & My Disagreements
Based on this summary of yours, the main reason why you think Garou will have an advantage is because of his speed and his fighting skills as well as tactical abilities. Which will allow him to analyze Madara's powers and abilities. The problem is, again, you haven't really showcased him doing so. All you showed me is Garou acknowledging powers and abilities those A-Class heroes used, but not only are those techniques, at least most of them, pretty strait forward, but Garou only "analyzed" them after they were at least partially successful in preforming the task (tagging/hurting/poisoning him), and you haven't even showed me him beating them. If he is capable of analyzing only after getting hit then it won't do him any good here. Plus, Madara's techniques are way more unorthodox than the ones those heroes used (unless I missed something), so I'm not sure if Garou will be capable of analyzing them, or at least use it to his advantage.
As for speed, I already explained why I think Madara is more than fast enough to keep up and I haven't even gotten into Sharingan's Pre-Cognition and reading powers. Either way, even if Garou analyzes Madara's fighting pattern, it does not mean he will counter them or resist them. Again, you haven't really showcased any actual heat resistance feats, you never showcased resistance to poisonous pollen or even the ability to hold his breath effectively, and most importantly, you never showcased resistance to illusions/mind attacks like Genjutsu/Sharingan. As for skill, again, I agree he is superior Martial Artist due to his body reading technique, but technical use of skill and H2H proficiency is comparable, and Madara's eyes give him same abilities as Garou's fighting technique, but better and more versatile, which will apply here (but more on that later). Same can't be said for Garou because Madara won't strike in CQC.
He will rely on dodges with no real counters unless he relies on jutsu or physical attacks. At the end of the day, all you really have is strength, and I would like to see either some quantifiable feats or at least more believable scaling that suggest that he is capable of easily dealing with Susanoo. And I have yet to get into better durability feats for Susanoo. While Madara is not that strong, he possesses some decent feats which I will also get into later, but regardless, even if Garou damages Madara, he can retaliate and heal. Being Edo, he is immortal, immune to pain, has infinite stamina and can heal, as he has done so before, even after being split in half. I would also like to see some durability feats that suggest Garou can tank being stabbed through the gut by regular Susanoo while being distracted, or tank Multi Mountain splitting shockwaves. All you've shown me so far is unfinished and not so impressive healing process.
To summarize, for now, I think Madara wins due to having means to deal with Garou's raw power (either Edo immortality or Susanoo), multiple offensive options he will have to deal with (high heat, piercing attacks, blunt force) or simply using hax (mind attacks, poison) while also having enough speed as well as tactical skills and versatility to either counter Garou's own or simply end the match even more effectively (distractions, Sharingan...). Like I've said, Madara has more powers and abilities and feats, so stay tuned for those. This should be enough for now.
For this post I will be taking a different approach to the fight. Rather than counter your points word for word, I will lay out how I envision the battle going, countering your points and reaffirming my points in the process. This will be a more proactive way to form my arguments and I have found this fairly effective with debates. So with that said, let's get started:
The Battle I: The Speed Blitz Argument (CQC)
Having read your post, nothing you have said has dissuaded me from this stance in the slightest and I am still of the opinion that Garou would speed blitz Madara and then proceed to overwhelm him with his striking strength. I'm going to address speed first:
Speed
I have to say that I was fairly impressed with how you presented Madara's speed. While I still stand by the fact that scaling off of Naruto's TBB feat isn't that impressive, you were smart to press the scaling off of Hashirama instead because that feat is far more definitive and clear cut. However, I do question its consistency. I have shown you explicit combat speed feats of Garou stomping two of the fastest S-Class heroes, each with their own high end triple digit mach feats, quite casually. You have shown me one feat that Madara scales off of and isn't a consistent speed most characters in Naruto have exemplified at this point in the series. I would appreciate it if you could show me more high end triple digit mach feats that could help solidfy Madara's speed as consistent with not only himself, but within the series. And no, I am not just asking for more instances of people who scale below Madara reacting to TBB. That's not true consistency because it all comes back to the same exact feat of the TBB's speed. Now, let us address what we have been given:
Madara is also equal to Hashirama in speed and stalemated him in sword fighting, a Martial Art that actively requires one to use speed, and Hashirama reacted to TBB with greater speeds which you yourself brought up.
I would question how relevant Hashirama's TBB feat is to the topic of combat speed. I mean Hashirama reacted to the TBB and performed some bodily movements before the TBB could travel a certain distance, but these movements don't determine Madara's swordfighting speed, and therefore, don't scale to Madara's combat speed. Hashirama only bit his finger and slammed his hand on the ground. You can't tell me that automatically translates to how fast he is with a sword, especially when you consider how much more complex those movements are as compared to the movements require for summoning jutsu. Thus, the scaling for Madara's combat speed falls apart, and without combat speed, Madara really can't keep up with Garou in CQC. Hell, you can't even argue he could dodge Garou's attacks given how Madara only scales off of Hashirama's speed based on their swordfight, which I already showed isn't a valid way to scale Madara's speed. I mean you could argue that Madara scales off of Hashirama based on portrayal, them being equals in combat and all, but that would be a pretty flimsy argument considering that, generally, versatility is what determines the victor of a fight in Naruto, not necessarily physicals.
Skill
Now that speed is out of the way, let's counter the Sharingan. And let's disregard the speed disparity between Madara and Garou as one of the factors that renders the Sharingan moot. Admittedly, this is a tough nut to crack as the Sharingan has pretty good precognition abilities. However, like I said before, it has nothing on Garou. It has never shown itself to be effective against someone of Garou's skill caliber. I mean this is the same guy who has absorbed a plethora of different fighting styles through combat, and fused them into his own, unique fighting style:
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That is skill that completely trumps Madara's. You brought up the Shinobi Alliance scene as a skill feat, which is quite frankily absurd considering that that whole time Madara was abusing his physicals, blitzing and one shot every fodder ninja in his way. His speed was wildly above that of the other Shinobi to an almost comical extent. This was by no means a skill feat, especially considering the fact that the most skilled Taijutsu user in the verse, Might Gai, has no impressive skill feats to speak of (at least compared to Garou), and these fodder Shinobi are far less skilled than him. Also, like I said, there isn't much emphasis on physicals and taijutsu when people learn to become a ninja, given how important versatility with jutsu is, so you can't assume that these Shinobi are wildly skilled or anything like that.
How does this relate to the Sharingan? Well, as Lee pointed out against Sasuke, the Sharingan is of no use if the user's body can't physically keep up. And if Madara doesn't have the skill to compete with someone who, with raw skill alone, knows his next move, then it is game over. We have yet to see the Sharingan used in a CQC situation effectively against an opponent of Garou's skill caliber, who can adapt to different fighting styles and incorporate them into his own, practically on the fly and can strike before his opponent can even finish their attack. Needless to say, Garou will force Madara into situations where he can't quite frankly can't keep up, even with the Sharingan's abilities. I mean not even the Sharingan can counter Garou striking Madara before he can even finish his attack, which leaves him in a completely vulnerable position.
Striking Strength
So I've established that Garou can blitz Madara and the severe skill advantage is the icing on the cake. So now the question becomes: what can Garou actually do to Madara when he is blitzing him? Well oneshot him of course. Duh.
So some... interesting points were made by my opponent in regards to "debunking" Garou's striking strength scaling. Essentially, it boiled down to this:
When he was in the process of actually destroying it, his facial expression was waaaay more serious and focused(2)
Now I know you admitted you are ignorant of the OPM series, so I won't hold this against you or anything. However, this argument is flawed because, within the context of the series, the way Saitama's face is drawn in this instance is simply apart of a trope within the artstyle. Yes, it is nothing but a trope. Since One Punch Man is a Shounen parody, the artist often dramatizes the situation, as if to parody how seriously Shounen manga takes itself when it comes to fights. The exaggeration of Saitama's facial features to make him look serious and making the scene overall much cooler is simply a byproduct of this. However, Saitama's seemingly "serious" expressions isn't indicative of how much effort he puts into the situation.
His fight against Genos is a perfect example of this:
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This scene is drawn similarly to the meteor feat, making use of the exact same trope I was talking about (exagerrating Saitama's facial features, most notably his eyes). If we took this trope seriously in this specific context, then Saitama would have been putting ALL of his effort into this punch based on how serious he looked. However, to assume this would be contradicting the context of the fight and direct on panel evidence that supports the notion that Saitama was actually holding back in this fight. After all, Genos is his "student" and he even stopped is punch before it could make physical contact.
So in conclusion, the panels you referenced is nothing but a trope, a way for the artist to make dramatize the situation through exaggerating certain facial features on Saitama. And as I have proven, this really holds no weight in debates and often contradicts what is established within the narrative. Saitama's normal expressions are much more reliable in this regard because their purpose in the story is to convey Saitama's overarching boredom with his superhero lifestyle. In other words, Saitama's normal facial expressions convey what Saitama is actually feeling while his dramatized facial expressions are just there to make the situation look cool and parody Shounen manga.
Now, there are other arguments that were brought up that were quite, questionable:
He went from being shocked, to screaming, to even running away. And it is also worth mentioning that he said that Saitama was toying with him(3). If he was toying with him, plus, again, the fact that his face during the actual process of destroying a meteorite was serious, as I've stated, as opposed to his complete lack of interest during his fight with Garou, makes this scaling off of meteorite feat still a bit sketchy to me.
Garou tends to be a little bit hyperbolic at times. After all, this is the same guy who has won nearly every fight he was in and has never once met someone he couldn't adapt to and outfight. So, putting yourself in his shoes, is it that far of a stretch to think that Garou would be blowing the situation somewhat out of proportion? Unlikely. And this is supported by on panel evidence that shows the contrary. Not only did Saitama state that he was going to get a little serious, but he also used a named attack on Garou, an absolute rarity within the OPM verse.
Except meteorite one is even more destructive due to momentum he received from his flying(4), while with Garou, he stood still(5). You can say I am looking way too into this, but even from narrative and visual perspective, one he used on a meteorite seems way more impressive based on both implication and facial expression (something you argued for yourself, but in my opinion, it works against your point).
Except there really was no implication that Saitama's jump boosted the force of his punch by that much. I mean Saitama only really used his jump to get within striking range of the meteorite, but that's about it. And if you want to talk about momentum, the attack that Saitama used against Garou involved him abusing his combat speed to unleash rapid fire blows. In other words, his punching speed gave his punches more momentum than his usual charged blows (like the one used against the meteor), so the momentum behind his meteor punch and his rapid fire punch should cancel out. And this is supported by Saitama's rapid fire blows (named attacks) turning Boros to fishpaste while his charged blows (unnamed attacks) only made him cough up blood.
it actually means that Garou's blows are way below that, given that they overwhelmed him and made him scream and run away.
Not way below that. Again, the difference in strength can't be that high if it took dozens and dozens of blows for him to start noticing he was being overwhelmed. Garou would have been oneshotted and immediately overpowered if he was vastly inferior to Saitama.
As for Garou, it does not really matter how serious he was. Whether he used 1% of his strength or 50% does not matter. He is aware of his own limits, and regardless of how much effort he put into the fight, he was still amazed over the fact that he was overwhelmed which made him both scream and run away, meaning that him being serious completely or giving it his all, wouldn't make any difference aside from maybe the level of performance, and even that is based on assumption.
Wait what? Garou doesn't know his limits. He was still new to his monster body during the fight with Saitama and wasn't even going all out. Thus he has no point of reference for what he is truly capable of.
Probably, but it does not really matter. I'm using Edo Madara. This version of him is dead. He loses no stamina, he can not feel pain and only absurd amount of damage will affect him, and even that is barely the case. He can heal from anything, and even before that happens, he can still move to prevent further damage. Amped Rock Lee for example basically split him in two with his blow, yet he crossed a city block worth a distance away before taking any further damage or being tagged (impressive given that Biju Naruto was there), healing in seconds.
I don't see how his prevents Madara from being knocked out and oneshotted by Garou's blows though. Healing and not feeling pain can only take you so far against insane blunt force output.
So overall, Garou has the speed and skill to completely outmaneuver Madara and the striking strength to put him down for the count.
Battle II: Setting Up For The Speed Blitz (Madara's Hax)
I knew this would become a significant part of the debate, and oh boy do we have a lot to discuss:
Let me first address one thing: You don't just need hax to counter hax. Sheer adaptability (tactical awareness, skill, etc.) can help to counter hax as well. If you can adapt to a lot of situations and have the necessary tactical smarts, an argument can be made for you countering hax. And I most certainly think there is a solid foundation for an argument being made for Garou's adaptability countering Madara's hax.
Fire Release
With that said, I want to address Fire Release first. You see, my opponent seems to think that the energy durability feat I showed for Half Monster Garou isn't enough to prove he can tank a Fire Release attack from Madara. This is despite the fact that he himself compared Rover's energy blasts to plasma, which in it of itself is very hot:
First one being Fire Release: Majestic Destroyer flame. While you posted a nice durability feat to energy attacks, it is what it is. Resistance to energy attacks. You did not really provide resistance to heat. Madara's fire attacks do not overwhelm opponents with brute force. They do not cause Earthquakes. They burn. And you did not post high temperature resistance feats because those energy attacks you posted have no signs of producing high amounts of heat, just concentrated plasma esque energy.
So right off the bat, your argument has lost some credibility. But it just gets worst from here.
But energy attacks are not equivalent to high heat by default. Lightsabers and Cyclops' Optic Blasts produce no heat, yet they are pretty destructive forms of energy.
My opponent then goes onto say that lightsabers don't have heat, bringing that up as a supposed counter example to my point. When, in reality lightsabers do in fact produce heat, and lots of it:
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So that argument falls apart as well. Energy based attacks tend to pack a lot of heat in fiction, so I fail to see where you are going with your point. I mean you can't tell me these blasts and their created explosions aren't generating insane amounts of heat:
Compare that to what? Evaporating water? Granted it was a large sum of water, but come on man. Explosions on average are very hot, so I don't see how this feat isn't enough to prove that Monster Garou (a far stronger form of Garou) can tank Fire Release.
Wood Release
Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about Madara's Wood Release:
You showed me him being hit by an arrow which will infect him with poison 2 minutes after he got hit, and I only saw two panels that I am pretty sure do not take place 2 minutes after he got hit. So, what happened after the poison was a factor? Was he able to fight? And for how long and how impressive was his performance.
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That's just a little taste. He took out half of the heroes and went onto defeat them all despite the poison having kicked in awhile ago. Needless to say, his performance was absolutely stellar.
Madara's Wood Release jutsu however creates poisonous pollen, which you inhale. Lethal or unhealthy substances that take the form of gas that is inhaled causes a very very different effect. It does not require pain tolerance, endurance or healing abilities like injected poison but one's ability to take unhealthy substances you inhale or not breath at all. Those are two very different things. You have characters in fiction who have absurd pain tolerance and can keep going after being poisoned, yet they can still be knocked out via gas.
Wait what? I fail to understand how the different ways poison is transferred require different types of poison resistance. One should be able to power through inhaling poisonous gases if they were able to power through poisonous injections. I don't understand why endurance and poison resistance has no merits when dealing with poisonous gas. Especially since the gas in question only renders people unconscious, and Garou has fought through worst symptoms before such as intense dizziness and trouble breathing:
For context, this panel took place prior to Garou beating up half of the heroes
Even if we assume that this is the case, Garou is pretty good with managing his breathing anyway, so holding his breath shouldn't be an issue:
Susanoo
Okay this is Madara's percieved trump card over Garou, and unforthunately, Garou has a way of countering it. The Susanoo uses physical, CQC based attacks, meaning that Garou is more than capable of anticipating the Susanoo's next attack, and dance around him. I mean we saw what he did against Saitama where he utterly humiliated him despite Garou admitting Saitama was faster than him. I see the same thing happening with the Susanoo, only this time it will be even worst since Garou is much smaller than the Susanoo and much faster, so it will be that much harder for the Susanoo to even get a hit in before he is utterly blitzed and destroyed by Garou.
Another thing that could happen is Garou could strike the ground, destroying it and unbalancing the Susanoo, causing it to fall down. Garou has used the environment to his advantage before, so this isn't out of the question and Garou will definitely be inclined to do so considering the Susanoo's immense size. Needless to say, Garou should be more than capable of taking on the Susanoo. And that's without factoring in regeneration.
I mean a lesser form of Garou was able to heal from a similar attack with localized pressure and all.
And he came back in style, reaching his next form as a monster and defeating Puri Puri Prisoner, an S-Class Hero.
And like I said, the shockwave from the Susanoo is proportional to the size of Garou in terms of what he actually will feel, so Garou healing from this attack proves that he should be able to tank the Susanoo's shockwaves as well, ecspecially when you consider that his healing should have improved massively since then.
Genjutsu
Keeping this short and sweet. Based on what has been shown, Madara has only ever used this ability effectively in the midst of combat on FODDER. The only time he has actually tagged someone who wasn't fodder was the Raikage, but even then, he needed to actually restrain him with his Susanoo and not just use it in the midst of combat. This is bad because the Raikage is far slower than Garou, and yet Madara needed to restrain him in order for his Genjutsu to be used effectively.
Adaptability
Reading your post, I think you are severely underselling the tactical abilities of Garou, specifically in regards to the feat I posted. Within a few seconds of the fight with these heroes, Garou was already reading through their plans.
Throughout the whole fight, Garou would very briefly fight with a certin group of the heroes and then immediately analyze their role on the team, and then fight another group of heroes and analyze their role on the team and so on and so fourth. Garou learns through combat essentially, and can adapt to nearly any situation. Sure, he was tagged a few times towards the beginning, but that was because of how coordinated these heroes were. I mean Garou's analyzation of their whole strat speaks for itself, but beyond that, in combat, they knew how to capaitalize on Garou's weaknesses. For example, immediately after Garou dodged a bullet through doing a flip, another hero unleashed a rain of arrows, tagging Garou in mid air.
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And their whole fighting style was centered around not letting Garou think given his ability to anaylze, something Madara won't do to the same extent given the fact that he doesn't have any knowledge of Garou:
And yet after having analyzed all of their fighting patterns, Garou, while poisoned and injured, was able to humiliate them in combat, using their own attacks against each other (which is impressive given their immense coordination) and giving breaking through their iron tight fighting structure.
Madara just isn't as tactical as these heroes. I mean you said distractions made Madra tactical, but these heroes made use of distractions to an even greater extent, such as the gun and arrows tactic I already showed. And yet they still got humiliated by Garou.
Needless to say that Garou will have no trouble to adapting to the less tactically skilled, Madara, despite all of his hax.
Overall, some very good points were made by mt opponent. However, I do have some disagreements with the points presented, which stems from either an ignorance of the OPM series or blowing Madara's feat out of proportion. That said, let's get started:
Garou's Superior Physicals
I saw some very interesting arguments made against Garou's physicals. However, there were some problematic arguments that I am going to address in this section:
Okay, so let's start with Garou's striking strength, the elephant in the room. I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of my argument and why Saitama's meteor feat was completely casual. For one, the meteor busting punch wasn't a named attack. This is a point that was completely unaddressed, or at least not addressed in a satisfactory way. The only counter to this point was the implication that the meteor feat had more momentum than Saitama's named attack, when in reality, Saitama's named attack had equal momentum if not more momentum due to the fact that "Two Handed Normal Punch Combo" involves Saitama abusing his combat speed, and speed generates momentum, which in turn, generates power. And even beyond that, the fact that it is a named attack as compared to Saitama's unnamed meteor busting strike shows the difference in power. I will bring up the Boros example again where Boros is turned to fishpaste by a named attack, despite merely coughing up blood when hit with casual strikes. And again, like I said in my last post, if the meteorite really forced Saitama to exert my force than usual, Saitama would have commented on it given his character.
So now that we have established that Saitama's casual punch can bust meteorites, let's address Garou's scaling. Now my opponent seems to think that Garou is way below Saitama even though Garou is strong enough to match dozens and dozens of blows with Saitama. If there was truly a massive disparity in strength, Saitama would have been overwhelmed immediately without question and without fail. But as we all know, that didn't happen. Instead, Garou was able to hold his own and temporarily stalemate a named attack from Saitama. Not to mention, Garou wasn't even really going all out. Hell, he isn't even aware of his limits (meaning that he has no reference point) since he has never really gone all out in a fight before, so he has no idea how he stacks up to Saitama if he were to be serious about the fight. I just want to bring up Saitama's wording again. Note how Saitama didn't say he won because of superior strength or speed, but because Garou wasn't serious enough, implying that if Garou were serious, it would have been a much closer fight:
Now onto speed, we have Hashirama's TBB feat. Which in it of itself has some inconsistencies. I mean in the same chapter where it supposedly crossed an ocean in seconds, it took several panels for the TBB to travel a few meters into the area where the walls were summoned by Hashirama.
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The fact that there are inconsistencies WITHIN the actual feat in question makes this feat lose major credibility. And then there's the topic of consistency within the series. All of your scaling for Madara comes back to this one feat. Meanwhile, I have shown you two instances of Garou blitzing two S-Class Heroes who are speedsters of their verse, each boasting high end triple digit back feats of their own. I would like to at least see one more high end triple digit mach feat for Madara/someone who scales below Madara. As it stands, Garou still has the speed advantage until these inconsistencies are addressed.
Counters to Madara's Hax
With Madara's hax, I will move away from the inevitable plasma heat debate, and just give you a heat feat I was saving in my back pocket. That being a lesser form of Garou tanking a fire based attack that is described to possess "extreme heat." And he tanked this attack just fine.
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Needless to say, Garou will NOSELL Madara's Fire Release, and that's not even a question considering that this was a vastly inferiorr form of Garou.
Now, let's address Wood Release. Garou holding his breath shouldn't be a problem due to his ability to manage his breathing in different ways:
Needless to say, this shouldn't be too much of a problem for Garou.
Then there is the Susanoo, which relies on CQC based attacks in order to tag foes. This means that Garou can abuse his superior skill and completely outmaneuver Madara's Susanoo. We saw how Garou utterly humiliated Saitama despite Saitama being faster than him, so given that Garou is faster than the Susanoo and is way smaller, it will be hard for Susanoo to actually land a hit without being utterly blitzed and destroyed by Garou. In a CQC battle, even with someone as giant as the Susanoo, you need to prove Madara can keep up with Garou before you can argue that he will oneshot Garou with its shockwave.
Finally, there is genjutsu. Personally, I think it is very telling that Madara has only used this attack on fodder with the exception of the Raikage who he needed to restrain with his Susanoo before he could actually attack him with Genjutsu effectively. This fact becomes problematic for Madara because Garou is far far faster than the Raikage, so it will be even harder for him to tag Garou with Genjutsu.
Garou's Skill and Adaptability
This is another point I would like to touch on. Garou's ability to adapt to nearly any combat situation is an invaluable asset, especially against the likes of Madara. Garou learns from combat, acquiring several fighting styles he learned from previous fights, into his own, unique, blended fighting style.
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But even beyond that, Garou has the tactical edge here. He would fight the A-Class Heroes in different groups, and after briefly fighting each group, he was able to immediately analyze their fighting patterns. The only reason it took so long was because of their numbers, but he actually analyzed each group of heroes only after seconds of fighting them.
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Sure he was tagged a few times, but that was because of how coordinated these heroes were. As can be seen by Garou's assessment above, these heroes had a fairly detailed strat and formed their fighting style around taking out Garou. I mean they purposely made sure to not give Garou room to think:
If distractions determine what makes a strategist (which my opponent seemed to argue), then the heroes are still far more tactically advanced than Madara. I mean a prime example of this is when one hero shot Garou at such an angle that forced him to do a flip to dodge it, which set up for another hero to unleash a rain of arrows immediately after, tagging Garou in mid air:
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Yet despite the tactics of these heroes, Garou was still able to humiliate them while poisoned and injured. Here is just a glimpse, where he takes out half of them, breaking through their iron tight fighting structure and using their own attacks against each other (impressive because of their teamwork and coordination).
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Needless to say, Garou's skill and adaptability are quite formidable here. And Madara doesn't compare in that regard. His best skill feat is stomping a bunch of fodder Shinobi he grossly outstatted in a fight where he abused said stat advantage, blitzing and one shotting each one. Not to mention that fodder Shinobi aren't the most skilled considering that Might Gai, the best Taijutsu user in the verse, has no skill feats on Garou's level.
Needless to say, Garou will have no trouble reading through Madara's fighting style and adapting to his hax. Now I know the Sharingan can circumvent this skill disparity, but Garou's adaptability and tactical awareness makes up for this. I have shown Garou's ability to adapt to unfavorable combat situations, so Garou should have no problem replicating that here. Not to mention, Garou's analysis abilities should allow him to pick up on the Sharingan's capabilities rather quickly and physically adapt his body to meet the battle's needs. Yes I say physically adapt because Garou was able to do that throughout his whole fight with Saitama:
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Here he increases his physicals to the point that he was moving massively FTE to Saitama. And this was done mid combat in an attempt to match Saitama's power through raw adaptation. While it didn't work against Saitama, it will most certainly work against the likes of Madara. So on the off chance that Madara's precognition can counter Garou's speed, Garou can kick it up a notch and go even faster to overwhelm Madara.
Yeah, I can't do this. I quit. I thought you will just remove some points, add few more paragraphs or change few things. But you completely changed the length of your post, your format was changed, the structure of your paragraphs are changed and even some arguments attacking my own are a bit different than before. I just finished my entire post talking about your original one and I thought I'll have to change it a little bit, but this requires me to completely change a lot of stuff. I'm sorry, I can't do this. I spent an entire day working on this and I have no willpower to continue. I put a lot of effort into this post and I have no intention of spending even more time changing it, even less comparing it to your original post in my notification feed and even that one to your new one for the sake not not countering arguments and quotes that do not exist anymore. I wanted to post my reply below in the spoiler block in case some just want to read it, but even that would be pointless since I talked about points from deleted post that are either changed or completely removed from your new one.
I simply do not want to deal with this. It kills all the fun and it is not worth it. I really wanted to do you a favor but you put be in a really bad position. No reason to apologize again. Everything is forgiven. We all make mistakes and there is no reason to be intolerable. It is just that I simply can't do this. I'm sorry. CaV is closed.
There is no character that could possibly touch Kono Yo no Kyūseishu Futarime no Rikudō Juubi Jinchuuriki Gedou Rinne Tensei Uchiha Madara with the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan (which is capable of Enton Amaterasu, Izanagi, Izanami and the Tsyukuyomi Genjutsu), his two original Rinnegan (which grant him Chikushōdō, Shuradō, Tendō, Ningendō, Jigokudō, Gakidō, Gedō, Banshō Ten’in, Chibaku Tensei, Shinra Tensei, Tengai Shinsei and Banbutsu Sōzō) and a third Tomoe Rinnegan on his forehead, capable of using Katon, Fūton, Raiton, Doton, Suiton, Mokuton, Ranton, Inton, Yōton and even Onmyōton Jutsu, equipped with his Gunbai (capable of using Uchihagaeshi) and a Shakujō because he is a master in kenjutsu and taijutsu, a perfect Susano’o (that can use Yasaka no Magatama), control of both the Juubi and the Gedou Mazou, with Hashirama Senju’s DNA and face implanted on his chest, his four Rinbo Hengoku Clones guarding him and nine Gudōdama floating behind him after he absorbed Senjutsu from the First Hokage, entered Rikudō Senjutsu Mode, cast Mugen Tsukuyomi on everybody and used Shin: Jukai Kōtan so he can use their Chakra while they are under Genjutsu.
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