I want us to be on the same page throughout this debate so I'm starting with a topic we both agree on. The word "impractical" literally means not adapted for use or action, not sensible or realistic, and able to be practiced in useful situations. When I think impractical skill feats I think of feats that involve the character in question doing something that a) flat-out makes no sense, b) doesn't seem to apply to actual fights in meaningful ways, and c) can't be replicated by most even if they're highly trained. The last point is important, because a common misconception seems to be that the harder a feat is to replicate, the more skilled the person who can complete it is. I'm going to abandon that notion and focus on things that can actually be compared and things that are germane to this discussion.
Outside of things like scaling tiers above characters who master every form of fighting style in the world, a lot of Ninjak's accolades fall under the umbrella of impractical skill. But even that accolade has become so run-of-the-mill, overused and commonplace that it doesn't serve to distinguish Ninjak as a unique talent in combat. So I'm not going to put emphasis on that as well. If you haven't been able to tell by now, I am approaching this post completely different than my last one. Partially because the use of skill feats wherein Ninjak had gear was heavily criticized—substantially shrinking down my feat pool—and partially because in this round, I am facing a manga character. Manga series approach skill radically different from comic series. In comics writers think it's an impressive feat if you're a master of countless martial arts styles. In manga most characters only know a handful of styles and mainly stick to one. But there is a huge emphasis on individual techniques in manga and combat applicable movesets, counterattacks, and adaptability.
So I'll break down Ninjak in those aspects and make use of his primary assets in fights. Starting with a showing that, for all I can gather, was completely ignored/overlooked in my last post for some reason...
「Unarmed Capability // Ninjutsu」
In this issue, Ninjak #26, we see Ninjak training a young women Sister Gabriella in the art of Taijutsu, or unarmed ninja combat. Gabriella was already a martial arts master, having trained under Shimizu Dai Sensei, the 25th master of Shindo Muso Ryo. Ninjak taught her several things, and there are a lot of takeaways in these next few scans. Ninjak is a master at four major principles in the specific art of Ninjutsu that will carry him in this fight.
The First Principle
In this first scan we see Ninjak explain that ninjutsu is the art of stealth and invisibility. He was pretty much invisible to Gabriella for hours despite being in her immediate presence (right behind her), which just circles back to his ghosting feats that I'll show momentarily. Ninjak has soooo many more feats of disappearing from plain sight, which is extremely combat applicable/useful in fights, because it basically substitutes speed for stealth and has the same effect as blitzing. You already know of the Shanhara feat but I'll repost it for reference:
When Ninjak ghosted a guy named Malgam—who at the time was fused with a viral Shanhara Armor—he was (moments before) in the middle of the desert in plain sight, where there was absolutely nothing to hide behind in all directions as far as the eye could see. And he remained undetected even while actively taunting him.
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"I know what you're thinking. How can a bloke in gold, black and purple be hiding out in the middle of the desert in broad daylight? How does he do that? You ask yourself". And then Ninjak stabs him before he can be perceived.
This is made even more impressive considering there was *literally* nowhere to go. No shadows to lurk in, no buildings in sight for miles:
And the sensory and detection capabilities of the Shanhara Armor absolutely dwarf anything you can possibly show. The armor has been able to sense and detect major crisis' happening all around the planet from literally in deep orbit.
In other words, the Shanhara Armor has demonstrated planetary sensory ranges and has extremely powerful sensors, energy readers and motion detectors consistently throughout it's publication. And Ninjak ghosted one in broad daylight, in the middle of the desert with nowhere to go, wearing colors that might as well have been neon lights, and was able to remain unseen despite actively talking to his opponent.
Then there's also when Ninjak practically turned invisible to MI6 helicopters.
Based on the Shanhara feats and the fact Ninjak's whole shtick is being a ninja (who are very stealthy individuals) I do sincerely believe that Colin will ghost Kanoh at least several times, allowing him the ability to land uncontested hits.
In the second scan Colin explains that there are three levels of physical training that act as the basis of Taijutsu. The first involves conditioning the body for suppleness and agility. Ninjak's agility is very impressive, particularly in this instance where he leaps over Shadow man and literally hooks his neck with a wire while in midair during one swift, continuous motion, then throws him before he hits the ground.
Shadowman himself is a pretty agile guy seen here when he escapes from and decapitates Mr. Twist.
Another great example of Ninjak's unparalleled agility (that he can use to maneuver around his opponents and slip through attacks like water through cracks) is when he consistently dodged laser fire from expensive drones, considering they were owned by the richest man in the world. This continued even after he met one of the Shadow Seven La Barbe (Shadow Seven members have a level of skill that shitstomp those who master every martial art in the world).
Gabriella, the girl he was training, was already a martial arts master like I said, having trained in the ways of Jo which gave her an advantage over most people because of her balance of physical and spiritual discipline. What I find impressive about all this is that these are just the bases of taijutsu, not the full extent of it, which Ninjak knows. To even begin to learn the foundations you already have to be a combatant of such esteemed prestige that most of the feats and accolades I showed in my last post (or you can post) are entry level requirements.
In the third scan, Colin explains second level is channeling your body energies. He has such a mastery in this field that he can use a technique called Fu No Kata - A Ninja's wind like response that let them overcome enemies who have superior strength and speed. This means that even if Colin has an apparent disadvantage in physical stats, his coordination and control over his body energies blesses him with moves that he can use to outpace them and overpower them.
Now think about this: If this technique allows him to overcome those with greater stats, then in a situation where stats are equal, wouldn't he just be in a position to gain an insurmountable upper hand? Especially when he has greater skill on top of it, like in the areas of nerve manipulation and mid-combat ghosting especially?
In the final scan, Colin explains the third level is learning the dynamic of the universe. This is akin to the intricacies of the Dark Mystic Arts in the current Valiant. The key is to tap into the forces of the universe, which pushes Colin's skill what even the most skilled characters can compete with or defend against. And he outright demonstrates it. He tells Gabriella to position herself in a way that she wouldn't be knocked over if Colin pushed her. Colin doesn't even strike and she falls flat on her ass by herself. This showcases an invisible force acting on Gabriella that she couldn't account for, the force of the blow Colin mentions in the last panel before telling her to try again. This is something that I'm confident you or anyone else in the tourney will have a hard time defending against: invisible forces increasing the reach of his blows and propensity to disrupt balance. And do it in a way that can't be possibly dodged or detected.
I'm sorry but this is just absolutely insane, especially because, you have to combine everything I've told you up till now in order to achieve just the BASIS of Taijutsu (unarmed h2h combat).
Colin uses all these principles effectively and this is just his foundational level of his skill. Once you factor in his nerve manipulation and resistance to pain tolerance or virtually any form of damage then it becomes nigh impossible to beat him.
Pretty damn effective I'd say. Ninjak knows where every nerve ending in the human body is and he knows how to make each and every one of them "scream for days".
He can permanently disable a man with just a single tap to their vagus nerve. Just a light touch. That's all it takes.
Ninjak discovered that he actually killed the man who broke his back during the monk training, by internal injuries. Which means he has internal attacks as well.
Toyo explains in the following issue that the event was caused by a "mass psychosis" in densely populated areas. Myshka refracted light and bent space to alter the perception of reality for almost everyone on the entire planet.
Ninjak has shown his training in this area is effective in different settings. Here Ninjak overcomes psychic torture after being forced to experience his worst nightmares by the Immortal Enemy, and then he destroys part of his physical form. More on that front, Ninjak is straight-up immune to modern torture and interrogation techniques. He is consistently noted as having an unrealistic tolerance to pain. As a matter of fact, based on one of his psych profiles it's stated of him that he appears to lack real emotion to any stimuli.
His tolerance for physical pain is nearly as limitless as his tolerance for emotional suffering. Apparently, hundreds of healed fractures of unknown origin are a testament to this.
To conclude, Ninjak is a damage sponge with ballistic pain tolerance and stamina and can even heal injuries through his manipulation of nerve endings and cells. His meditation was so powerful that he's been able to ward off alterations in perceptive reality through sheer mental discipline, willpower and fortitude, further bolstering arguments that damage of any kind will not affect his mental state or slow him down here.
「Knowledge and Regulation」
Here I will discuss adaptability, combat analytics, senses, battle IQ and resourcefulness. Starting with senses, which are useful and combat applicable for the sense of having an edge in perception, awareness, detection (of moves) and analysis of techniques and styles, Ninjak has many of great feats:
Having greater senses than Bloodshot is particularly impressive when you consider Bloodshot's own feats due to his nanites. They can speak for themselves:
Here's another feat of the sub-atomic nanites in Bloodshot's bloodstream enhacing his senses to the point where they can pull crazy stunts, like the faint smell of the a hair spray or shampoo from the morning earlier.
「Conclusion」
So, a couple things, actually:
Ninjak is extremely agile and can abuse his acrobatics and maneuverability to dance around his opponents, slipping in between attacks, evading what a stout, unagile person would have trouble evading, and land his seamlessly while not expending lots of energy doing so.
He will ghost Kanoh several times and land uncontested hits that can't be reacted to due to his stealth and ability to disappear/be invisible in plain sight.
His nerve strikes will be extremely lethal, he can control nerves like fingertips and destroy cells.
His pain tolerance, endurance, stamina, and general toughness will make it extremely difficult to slow him down or generally harm him when stats are equal.
But the main clincher's as you can expect, are:
Fu No Kata -The aspect of Ninjutsu that allows Ninjak to explicitly overcome characters with greater speed and power than him through movements categorized as "wind-like" responses. This is something that when employed in a level playing field, with stats equal acrossed the board, AND in conjunction with his stealth and agility, while essentially allow Ninjak to completely pummel his opponent without ever being seen or tagged.
Dynamic of the Universe - Ninjak can employ invisible forces of the universal through pure ninjutsu skill that are combat applicable explicitly because their main function is literally increasing the reach of Ninjak's blows and allowing him to affect his opponents without even landing physical hits on them. He can disrupt your balance and center of gravity through these dynamics, which coupled with the advantages he already has in stealth and agility, on top of Fu No Kata, pretty much allow him to completely obliterate his opponents.
Kanoh Agito or Fang hails from the martial arts manga Kengan Ashura. I won't bother with a full bio here, it will suffice to say that Kanoh's verse contains very detailed and thorough displays of martial skill in all areas, making them very potent in pure skill matches as I intend to prove. This is just an introductory post so I've focused on the essentials without arguments yet. Since this is a stats equal tourney I will cut the usual stat sections from the post to focus on skill in all its aspects.
Note: Post will contains spoilers for any interested in reading the series.
Establishing Skill
Kanoh is god-tier in Kengan, having spent a long fighting career without taking any losses (until near the end of the series). At the start of the series he is unrivaled and regarded as unbeatable within the verse, which remains nearly true throughout the whole series.
This is rather meaningless to any reader without knowing what that means. So I will establish some baseline for skill level of Kengan fighters.
To establish a good baseline for skill in the verse, Koga at the start of Omega beats up a dojo of about 20 people. He's not completely uninjured afterwards, admittedly, but a 20v1 would be considered impressive to the standards of some verses. But Koga at this point isn't impressive in the slightest within Kengan. Several months later, after doing through a lot of training and improving in every way, Koga is able to edge out a Kengan fighter in a tough match. But the guy Koga fought here is revealed to be an absolute bottom of the barrel, entry-level fighter.
I don't think much needs to said regarding the gap between a bottom feeder fighter and "The Emperor of the Kengan Matches."
Even at comparatively low levels in the verse (Ohma at the beginning of the series), impressive skill is displayed, with Ohma and Rihito beginning a psychological battle of prediction, stances and anticipation before the first blow is even thrown. Ohma at this point in the series is stated multiple times to stand no chance against Kanoh.
Kanoh having the title of Fang is far above most fighters. The fighter Hassad displays considerable skill by stomping two reputed fighters. He is turn dominated by a random member of Metsudo's bodyguards who all boast impressive skill and are regarded as superhuman. Candidates for the title of Fang are only chosen from the very best of the bodyguards. (Chapter 205)
Fighting Styles
Kanoh does not utilize a primary martial art. His initial style was formless, allowing for flexibility and the ability to shift tactics to match the opponent's style. This gives Kanoh a number of options, though he eventually determines it has the weakness of sometimes taking too long to select the right tactic against opponents that have no such problem.
To compensate, Kanoh adopts a stance, operating primarily as a striking fighter, removing the potential for lag time. He opens with this in his last two fights in the series but this is because of the tournament setup requiring Kanoh avoid injury. For this fight he can choose between formless and a stance allowing for greater versatility.
The extent of Kanoh's formal martial arts training is unknown, but he has a seemingly endless range of styles to draw from. On-panel he has shown core MMA styles (holds, throws, blows and locks), Boxing, Jiu-Jutsu, Systema, Muay Thai and Indestrucible (a form of the in-universe Nico Style which increases durability by tightening muscles). It seems Kanoh dabbles in most everything, so he will have a number of tactics to draw from.
Feats
Fighting style and accolades are meaningless without feats to support them. Kanoh is hardly lacking in this area, having faced the best of his verse. 10 years before the series took place Kanoh defeated Wakatsuki Takeshi and wounded his heel permanently. The fight was not shown but by all evidence it was a one-sided stomp. Wakatsuki has Superman Syndrome giving his muscles 52 times the power of a normal human and massive weight as well.
Matching Kuroki in a contest of prediction is an exceedingly difficult feat. Kuroki has mastered pre-emptive counters to the point he was able to completely block and counter Rei, an opponent fully FTE to Kuroki in raw speed via sheer predictive skill. Contending with fighters on this level will require nothing less than the ability to think several steps ahead of the present. Anything else will result in being lead by Kanoh's script.
Abilities
Adaptation
Kanoh's strongest weapon, which has taken him to the top of his verse, is adaptation. He demonstrated this well in his first fight. Okubo managed to temporarily overwhelm Kanoh by rapidly switching between attack styles (blows, throws, locks, grapples and holds). Okubo is noted to be extremely good at this manner of offense and he has no seams or lags between switching up attacks.
But this soon becomes very ineffective. Even while taking a beating, Kanoh was adapting to Okubo's attacks, managing to take minimal damage from his strongest kick by simply going limp at the moment of contact.
Once Kanoh adapted, there was no contest. He completely predicted and countered all of Okubo's moves in the following exchange, and ended the fight soundly with a blow to the head. This level of adaptation is immensely difficult to counter in straight martial arts. Okubo himself explains what's so unmanageable about fighting an opponent like this: you can keep up with Kanoh, you can even do it for half a fight. But after that he will certainly adapt to all your moves and you simply can't beat him. The majority of Kanoh's opponents simply retired as fighters because of how mind-bogglingly terrifying this is.
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Dragon Shot
Kanoh has fully mastered Fa Jin, or transferring full power with minimal movement, the principle behind one-inch punches. This provides him his greatest asset offensively. He demonstrates his mastery against Hatsumi Sen, stopping his attack at point blank with a one-inch punch and downing him with another followed up by a kick. Notice the most important detail here: not the power of the blows, but that he uses them both at close range (point blank outright) and at a distance with a long kick after Sen tries avoiding the power of the attacks by building damage. This is the real danger of this skill, that he's mastered it at all ranges.
Every one of Kanoh's hits, at every range, will contain full knockout power. He has no disadvantages in infighting, outfighting or grappling: you just can't dilute his attack power.
Switching Styles
This is a skill Kanoh was pushed to gain against Kuroki Gensei, the only man in the verse to be his superior in raw martial arts. Kanoh learned to take his animalistic formless style, which uses no specific set of moves for versatility and unpredictability in exchange for a slight lag time, and his martial arts stance, which focuses on a specific set of moves sacrificing versatility in exchange for removing lag time, and combines them, rapidly switching between each style mid-combat.
The effect is devestating. It's compared to fighting two martial artists simultaneously. Any attempt to see through patterns or adjust to Kanoh's attacks will be utterly moot. Even someone outright superior to Kanoh by standard measures of skill is not likely to counter this.
Counters
Addressing Stealth
Ninjak's primary advantage in this fight seems to be his ability to ghost people mid-combat. There are several ways to work around this however. For one Kanoh has some knowledge of Indestructible, which strengthens durability by tightening muscles. He can use this to protect vulnerable points so Ninjak won't be able to get a finishing move even if he lands hits via stealth. In fact not knowing about this ability could even take Ninjak by surprise and leave him vulnerable to a counter.
Additionally, there is simple grappling, which Kanoh excels at, and gives no chance for a stealth breakaway.
The most dangerous counter for stealth would be Pre-Initiative. Kanoh displayed this against Hastsumi Sen, countering his most potent technique. He did this by leaning determining an opponent's move before they make the necessary motions.
I have to stress that this is a huge deal. Being able to fully determine moves, not just at the beginning of an attack to counter in time, but before any relevant movements begin is a massive advantage. Kanoh can fully shut down any moves Ninjak attempts without risking himself. This can't be countered by simple martial knowledge, comparable prediction skill or the ability to outplay Kanoh in a long game of mental chess are needed.
Regarding stealth in particular, Kanoh will be able to determine when Ninjak intends to escape his sight and counter in turn. Most likely he would close any distance and not give Ninjak the room.
Possibly the most simple counter for stealth in an martial arts fight would be it's own weakness in that scenario. In a 1v1 melee, breaking away from an exchange without a counter of some sort is very difficult. Ninjak won't be able to use every move in his arsenal here, he simply won't have time. Going back to the prediction exchange with Kuroki there is this particular detail:
Neither of them are capable of doing so much as kicking because it creates an opening. Sneaking away with stealth, a move that has no element of offense to guard against in and of itself, will be even less feasible.
Agility
Kanoh admittedly does not possess the degree of agility and acrobatics that Ninjak does due to the nature of his verse. This is hardly an absolute advantage however. Agility can be countered by the same means as stealth for the most part. The large motions leave huge gaps where Ninjak won't be able to counter properly. Kanoh can easily exploit these gaps to counter attack. Wasted movement is not the way to go against someone with this level of prediction: Kanoh doesn't have to match Ninjak in mid-air blows if he can predict where he is going to land.
Stamina/Pain Tolerance
Kanoh doesn't possess the same level of mental conditioning that Ninjak does so he's not going to be able to match him in this regard. Kanoh is not however lacking in pain tolerance. He endured a stabbing attack that drove right into his chest and simply used the opportunity to grab his opponent's hand. This was early in the fight and he continued the rest with this injury without being slowed by pain, only being disadvantaged towards the end in terms of pure strength.
So neither of our characters are likely to pass out from just pain. But while Ninjak has superior resiliance, he's not immune to head trauma. No matter how much pain he can tolerate, sufficient force to the skull is going to rattle is brain and make him pass out from concussion. I would say a Dragon Shot to the head would realistically be enough to cause this for a KO.
Dynamic Forces
This is Ninjak's strangest skill and possibly the hardest to counter. It doesn't seem decisive enough to grant a victory however. From the limited information you've shown, it doesn't appear the invisible force delivers especially powerful blows. The primary benefit of this ability would be throwing Kanoh off balance and providing minor distractions. This isn't going to be enough in full CQC, especially when Kanoh has shown a willingness to take advantage of hits to grab his opponent.
This skill especially doesn't seem helpful in grappling, unless the invisible force is enough to break grip. I question how useful it would be in close quarters at all frankly. On top of that, predication and adaptation will allow Kanoh to adjust if there is any sort of pattern in Ninjak's application of this technique.
Conclusion/Fight Breakdown
Ninjak's primary advantages going into this fight, ones which I'm unable to contest, are pain tolerance, stealth, pressure points and dynamic forces. Kanoh's advantages are raw martial talent, adaptation, striking (via one-inch punches), grappling, style rotation and build.
Kanoh has more key advantages here, and the ones he has are the most important in this setting. Ninjak is outmatched in any contest of martial arts. Prediction, at the tier Kanoh possesses, is near absolute without some equalizer. With Dragon Shot Kanoh will dominate in both grappling and striking. Adaptation means Ninjak won't have anything Kanoh can't adjust to, while Ninjak has no option but to outplay him in melee which will become less and less feasible as the fight goes on. Switching up styles with forms and formless is something Ninjak will be unable to handle at all from the feats shown.
Size is another factor worth mentioning. Weight has been equalized for this tournament because of a certain monkey, but height isn't. A quick search shows that Ninjak is 6 feet as per his profile in Unity. Kanoh is 201 centimeters which converts to a bit over 6' 5". That puts Kanoh nearly half a foot taller than Ninjak, and Kanoh has shown willingness to use his reach to his advantage in his boxing exchange with Gaolang.
A long fight is greatly disadvantageous for Ninjak here. More time means more chances for Kanoh both to adapt to his fighting style and flat out increase his own skill level in the process. Even a short fight isn't going to favor Colin: Kanoh has more unpredictable means beyond standard martial arts. Lacking knowledge of Dragon Shot or Kanoh's ability to switch styles means Ninjak can very well lose before figuring out Kanoh's deal. Rushing into melee is only defeat. Ninjak's only chance at a full victory is dependent on stealth. But the setup for this fight is not stealth-favorable at all, and Pre-Initiative remains the ultimate counter for even the most unfamiliar of abilities.
I'll start this post by examining your conclusion, refuting it, and progressively breaking down why.
Ninjak's primary advantages going into this fight, ones which I'm unable to contest, are pain tolerance, stealth, pressure points and dynamic forces. Kanoh's advantages are raw martial talent, adaptation, striking (via one-inch punches), grappling, style rotation and build.
Kanoh has more key advantages here, and the ones he has are the most important in this setting.
I disagree with the idea that Kanoh has more advantages, and also with the idea that the advantages he does have are more important. Let's go down the line. "Raw martial talent" is your leading advantage? "Ninjak is outmatched in any contest of martial arts"? It seems I need to remind you that I willfully omitted Ninjak's accolades to focus on the battle itself; because his training literally catapults him dimensions above characters that have mastered every single martial art and fighting style known to man to the point of boredom.
You mention that on-panel Kanoh knows of at least 6 styles: MMA, Boxing, Jiu-Jitsu, Systema, Muay Thai and Indestructible. But even if he is a supreme expert in all those styles, he would still be tiers below Ninjak in "raw martial talent" by virtue of how superior Ninjak's training is - placing him at the peak of the Shadow Seven who already dwarf martial arts experts in raw skill.
This isn't even considering that in terms of pure Martial Arts prowess, Kanoh by available evidence is inferior to someone who has mastered every style known to man to the point of boredom. Anybody who is a top student of Undead Monk (i.e a member of the Shadow Seven) should stomp over a dozen people at that level. Ninjak can literally ghost and one-shot a member of the Shadow Seven and has fought them all together, so when comparing Ninjak to Kanoh in nothing but pure martial arts prowess, how is this even a contest?
And guess what? Kanoh is not even the supreme expert in every style he knows. He admitted himself that he couldn't beat Gaolong in striking (Boxing/Muay Thai).
In terms of adaptation Ninjak is described as having the ability to prepare for any outcome and always be a step ahead of his opponents through his multitude of skills and keen intellect. It even states that no matter how outmatched he may seem, he always has an ace in the hole.
But that's just hype. He has actually shown the ability to adapt mid combat. Like when he got attacked by two highly trained webnet agents at the same time, Arkady Borkov and Zina, and managed to not only analyze their fighting style but use it to adapt to them after getting pushed around, and later trounce them handily in spite of his disadvantages (Arkady's inhuman strength and resistance to pain, as well as their coordination and synergy).
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I think the La Barbe instance is also a really good one of adaptability when you read the issue, considering La Barbe's insane tech advantage and Ninjak being barehanded, and the fact he was on the ropes and basically blind.
That said, when it comes to raw feats I'll admit that Kanoh's evolution is better because of how prevalent it is to his character and fighting style. But that leads me directly into my next point:
Kanoh has never evolved successfully past someone who themselves can adapt to fighting styles, and on top of that, he doesn't have the luxury to weather through a beatdown in order to adapt to Ninjak in the first place. What I mean is that, wen Kanoh adapts/evolves it's usually through getting the piss beat out of him. The Okubo scans you posted are enough proof of this. It was only halfway through the fight that Kanoh turned the tables, he was getting seemingly dominated moments before.
But the domination had to happen in the first place. So against Ninjak who can permanently disable him with the slightest tap of a pressure point, this is anything but a realistic option. What's more is I have objective proof that, when unarmed, pressure points are an opening move for Ninjak and he literally tries every single one:
I've read Kengan so I don't even need to bother with this; Kanoh has never faced pressure points or nerve strikes on anyone remotely close to Colin's level in terms of mastery of the cells and the nervous system at large. Colin's knowledge is precise enough and varied enough and he's never failed to use them successfully against people who don't have some kind of inhuman physiology or resistance specifically tailored to counter it. And he's also never failed to resist them in turn.
In other words evolution isn't an option here because Ninjak won't give him the chance. I'm planning on ending this match with a single touch after disappearing from your field of vision.
However I won't be cocky. I know that you went into this match fully aware of Colin's nerve strike prowess. While I'm not convinced that Kanoh can stop it, I know you probably have something up your sleeve to compensate. So I'll introduce something else. Colin has the ability to combine his nerve strike/pressure point/vital spot mastery into his blows to make even a single strike deadly. He killed a man in a single blow.
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These are trained agents in the same physical tier as Ninjak that he ran through via skill, so a fodder argument can't be used. meaning in a stats equal situation like this match, this is going to be exactly how it appears like: instant death.
I'll bundle striking, grappling and rotation all into one counter, because the same thing counters all of them: agility. But firstWith stats equalized no one has a striking advantage. What you mean is a range advantage. Kanoh can deliver a knockout blow from any range due to Dragon Shot. Knocking out Colin is going to be virtually impossible in a stats equalized situation, because through sheer pain tolerance because he's tanked beatdowns and blunt force trauma from characters way stronger than him.
These aren't durability feats because of how busted up Colin was after the encounters. But he was still conscious and not down for the count. His endurance, stamina and pain tolerance is inconceivable. So I'm absolutely certain that K.O. through raw strength is simply not an option against people with equal strength to him. So you have to rely on ring-out or something, but that's where agility comes in, which is also my counter to grappling and rotation.
You can not ring-out someone who is vastly more agile than you, and simultaneously stealthy enough to ghost you. It's just not happening. Ninjak can easily weave around laser fire from multiple shooters at once. And more impressive than dodging lasers from shooters is dodging them from drones.
But here is his flagship agility feat and I think the feat that is the easiest to prove is because of agility and not speed. In this scan Ninjak dodges lasers from drones that were literally cloaked and undetectable to him, from every direction, multiple times. He visibly flips, twists, bends, and outright contorts his body while still in midair to avoid getting tagged.
This is an absolutely remarkable display of agility, and it's usefulness in a match like this can't even be accurately described. because you then have to factor in that he can literally disappear from plain sight and won't be spotted if he doesn't want to, like so:
This feat was done in broad daylight, when cornered, and in civilian clothes without any gear!
When your only option is ring out, and your opponent can literally do flips and acrobatics over you whenever he wants combined with the stealth advantage of ghosting and disappearing from plain sight, how do you even mean to get a grip on him? That's why grappling is useless. Ninjak would be able to bend and slip out of any lock you can try to put him and or just do a backflip over you before you get the chance. And once he's hidden, he'll stay hidden until he strikes. Then he can just do it again.
「Section 2」
In this section I will be addressing specific rebuttals that you offered against my perceived primary advantages: Stealth, Agility and Pain tolerance.
Ninjak's primary advantage in this fight seems to be his ability to ghost people mid-combat. There are several ways to work around this however. For one Kanoh has some knowledge of Indestructible, which strengthens durability by tightening muscles. He can use this to protect vulnerable points so Ninjak won't be able to get a finishing move even if he lands hits via stealth. In fact not knowing about this ability could even take Ninjak by surprise and leave him vulnerable to a counter.
Simply tightening your muscles doesn't defend against death strikes and precise attacks to your nervous system and cells. So this is useless.
Additionally, there is simple grappling, which Kanoh excels at, and gives no chance for a stealth breakaway.
He's never successfully performed this against someone as agile as Ninjak, who can contort their body in unrealistic ways before a lock is fully tightened.
Also, grappling just seems like a really stupid idea to use against a person who can disable you with a tap.
The most dangerous counter for stealth would be Pre-Initiative. Kanoh displayed this against Hastsumi Sen, countering his most potent technique. He did this by leaning determining an opponent's move before they make the necessary motions.
Regarding stealth in particular, Kanoh will be able to determine when Ninjak intends to escape his sight and counter in turn. Most likely he would close any distance and not give Ninjak the room.
Yeah, no. When Ninjak ghosts he just disappears. From what I can tell there's nothing that telegraphs it at all. He simply becomes invisible.
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But there is actually further evidence supporting this, and an additional counter to Pre-Initiative. Going back to the Malgam feat, the Mother of all stealth feats, I will remind you that the X-O Manowar Armor is implied to be able to literally predict/sense attacks beforehand if it recognizes the energy, and it's very, very acquainted with Ninjak.
Kanoh admittedly does not possess the degree of agility and acrobatics that Ninjak does due to the nature of his verse. This is hardly an absolute advantage however. Agility can be countered by the same means as stealth for the most part.
?? How? When speed isn't an element in battle, coordination, balance, flexibility and fluidity of movements play an extremely valuable role in deciding how efficiently attacks are landed and dodged. Agility can be used in conjunction with things like Fu No Kata (wind like responses) that help Ninjak overcome stat gaps or gain the upper hand when they're equal. He can respond quicker and cleaner, and dodge with greater ease. Colin would also expend minimal effort doing what would take a lot out of a hunky, non-agile person like Kanoh to do. Pre-Initiative is honestly irrelevant to stopping agility or minimizing its effectiveness, and if you're relying on the same counter then my above response applies.
The large motions leave huge gaps where Ninjak won't be able to counter properly. Kanoh can easily exploit these gaps to counter attack. Wasted movement is not the way to go against someone with this level of prediction: Kanoh doesn't have to match Ninjak in mid-air blows if he can predict where he is going to land.
I think you're confused on the purpose of agility. It's literal definition is the ability to move quickly and easily. In fiction it also encompasses flexibility and balance. Having great balance is useful for controlling your center of gravity, and flexibility helps with dodging attacks from angles that can't normally be dodged.
Ninjak is a supreme martial arts master; I think the least you can do is give him enough credit to know that wide motions and gaps in large movements is an amateur flaw.
Prediction has been addressed. X-O Armor can't predict his movements and it has literal motion detectors and seismic sensors.
So neither of our characters are likely to pass out from just pain. But while Ninjak has superior resiliance, he's not immune to head trauma. No matter how much pain he can tolerate, sufficient force to the skull is going to rattle is brain and make him pass out from concussion. I would say a Dragon Shot to the head would realistically be enough to cause this for a KO.
It's a good thing my plan was never to take down Kanoh through head trauma. Unfortunately for you, that seems to have been your only plan, and I explained in detail earlier why it will fail.
This is Ninjak's strangest skill and possibly the hardest to counter. It doesn't seem decisive enough to grant a victory however. From the limited information you've shown, it doesn't appear the invisible force delivers especially powerful blows. The primary benefit of this ability would be throwing Kanoh off balance and providing minor distractions. This isn't going to be enough in full CQC, especially when Kanoh has shown a willingness to take advantage of hits to grab his opponent.
You seem to have ignored the one crucial detail that Ninjak didn't throw a blow or even physically move in the scan against Gabriella. And she is a martial arts master in her own right who Ninjak commended the physical and spiritual balance of, meaning knocking her off balance would already be extremely difficult. So how can your counter be that it doesn't deliver powerful blows?
Ninjak completely dropped her on her ass without budging. With weight and stats equalized and Kanoh having zero balance/agility feats, he has no way to defend against this. If Colin threw a legitimate actual punch or a kick, Kanoh will have no ability to properly dodge it as opposed to when he is dodging attacks from someone who isn't harmonizing invisible forces of the universe to interfere with their balance and center of gravity.
You just can't win.
「Section 3」
To conclude, Kanoh doesn't have any advantages, and all of Ninjak's advantages are far more crucial to this battle. Ninjak is definitely a superior raw martial artist based on his combination of accolades and performances against established true-blue martial art masters. Kanoh has only shown six martial arts styles through the series and not all of them in the same fight, while Ninjak scales tiers above characters who've mastered every form of fighting.
Kanoh's adaptability advantages is useless because he's never evolved fully past someone like Ninjak who analyzes fighting styles and adapts to them himself. And Ninjak won't give him an opportunity to adapt anyway because he will take Kanoh down in one or two strikes at most. Kanoh has zero way to take Ninjak down in turn, because Ninjak simply can't be KO'd by someone with equal stats to him due to his pain tolerance. He's endured through being smashed by Malgam who is literally X-O Manowar's physical equivalent, a comfortable 100+ tonner. Kanoh is not taking him down with hits and would have to rely on ring-out, which is impossible considering Ninjak's gargantuan agility and stealth advantage.
Lastly Kanoh has no way to counter Dynamic Forces of the Universe and Ninjak has feats to suggest Pre-Initiative would be inconsequential, let alone turn the tide of battle. Ninjak has everything he needs to win the battle here and I can't see a single way he'd lose. Especially not when Kanoh has never even dealt with pressure points in the first place, has no way to drop him, and is severely outmatched in terms of X-Factors.
When I referred to "raw martial talent" I was simply talking about overall skill in combat, not esoteric or martial arts knowledge. The latter is usually the more accepted definition of the term so I will take responsibility for the confusion.
I would say Kanoh's technical skill shouldn't be underestimated though. One low/mid tier character in the verse is skilled enough to fool move reading by creating a "false body," using decoy movements to mislead the opponent and create an effective "after-image" to throw them off.
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Kengan Omega Chapter 22
Despite this Nitoku beat this opponent with mid difficulty at best. Nitoku being someone Kanoh defeated in the past. Kaede does speculate the fight could go different now but it seems unlikely that comparison would favor Toku, as Kanoh grows with every fight (becoming significantly more skilled by the end of the tournament) while Toku doesn't even fight much.
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Kengan Omega Chapter 22
And guess what? Kanoh is not even the supreme expert in every style he knows. He admitted himself that he couldn't beat Gaolong in striking (Boxing/Muay Thai).
I think you're giving Ninjak quite a bit of credit comparing him to Gaolang in boxing on this basis. Gaolang is the best Muay Thai fighter in history and has the second highest pound-for-pound boxing ranking (he's actually since outboxed the man with the highest ranking, but that's after a timeskip and can't be applied to the one Kanoh fought). It's not as if he was simply using Boxing+Muay Thai either, as the scan you posted shows he was using a unique synthesis of both. All this on top of Gaolang throwing 13 jab in a second that can't be countered by first rate boxers and I would put his overall striking game considerably above Ninjak.
Kanoh didn't beat the best pure striker in pure striking. But he did beat him in overall combat through adaptation and additional knowledge. Which I think matters more.
But that's just hype. He has actually shown the ability to adapt mid combat. Like when he got attacked by two highly trained webnet agents at the same time, Arkady Borkov and Zina, and managed to not only analyze their fighting style but use it to adapt to them after getting pushed around, and later trounce them handily in spite of his disadvantages (Arkady's inhuman strength and resistance to pain, as well as their coordination and synergy).
There are different tiers of adaptation. Ninjak managed to adjust to match his opponents, I would expect that out of most fighters. Kanoh has gone a step further. He develops entire style mid fight solely to counter his opponents. He created an anti-Gaolang style and managed to totally null his striking after simply being put on the backfoot for a while. Gaolang is forced to use non-boxing moves after this so I can safely say he was completely countered. I would say this is considerably more advanced than what Ninjak did there.
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Chapter 167
Kanoh has never evolved successfully past someone who themselves can adapt to fighting styles, and on top of that, he doesn't have the luxury to weather through a beatdown in order to adapt to Ninjak in the first place. What I mean is that, wen Kanoh adapts/evolves it's usually through getting the piss beat out of him. The Okubo scans you posted are enough proof of this. It was only halfway through the fight that Kanoh turned the tables, he was getting seemingly dominated moments before.
But the domination had to happen in the first place. So against Ninjak who can permanently disable him with the slightest tap of a pressure point, this is anything but a realistic option. What's more is I have objective proof that, when unarmed, pressure points are an opening move for Ninjak and he literally tries every single one:
This is much a result of Kanoh's mindset and is not a problem he will have anymore. Earlier in the fight allowed Okubo to mount him as a warm up. Kanoh has an animalistic side and tends to enjoy his fights, he even attempted to outbox Gaolang for this reason. But as I posted earlier the reason Kanoh sometimes takes damage before adapting is the delay caused by his formless style:
Adopting a form allowed Kanoh to overcome this weakness fully. He doesn't take any major beating in either of his subsequent fights until outright losing. In fact he's totally unharmed after beating Sen.
Pressure points are an advantage. But I'm highly skeptical he can pull them off against someone on Kanoh's level. Performing it on people with similar training is good but they clearly aren't equal to Ninjak and by extension Kanoh.
I'll bundle striking, grappling and rotation all into one counter, because the same thing counters all of them: agility. But firstWith stats equalized no one has a striking advantage. What you mean is a range advantage. Kanoh can deliver a knockout blow from any range due to Dragon Shot. Knocking out Colin is going to be virtually impossible in a stats equalized situation, because through sheer pain tolerance because he's tanked beatdowns and blunt force trauma from characters way stronger than him.
I've addressed this. Ninjak getting his brain rattled against his skull is going to knock him out. There are some things you can't get around through sheer endurance. Though for what it's worth Kanoh is not lacking in comparisons with superhuman opponents. One of Wakatsuki's (see the opener for feats) counters for Kanoh was Blast Core, a blow delivered with greatly increased power. That this of all things was made specifically for Kanoh suggests his durability was considered an issue for an easy 15+ tonner. Which is a more quantifiable accolade than Ninjak's showings even if those were against stronger opponents.
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Chapter 139
You can not ring-out someone who is vastly more agile than you, and simultaneously stealthy enough to ghost you. It's just not happening. Ninjak can easily weave around laser fire from multiple shooters at once. And more impressive than dodging lasers from shooters is dodging them from drones.
To be frank, agility can be severely reduced in value by simply grabbing onto your opponent. You haven't shown anything suggesting Ninjak could break from something as simple as a firm grip above the forearm. If Kanoh limits points where Ninjak has use of joints, his options will be severely limited. Not to mention breaking his wrist to Ninjak can't properly use pressure points. Kanoh has on-panel shown willingness to step on his opponent's foot to limit movement and create an opening, which is actually quite a common tactic in Kengan.
While this particular move is something Ninjak can likely break out of, even the smallest of openings is fatal, and it's not like Kanoh is limited to this.
Section 2:
Simply tightening your muscles doesn't defend against death strikes and precise attacks to your nervous system and cells. So this is useless.
Indestructible does counter moves that go beyond simply blunt force. Ohma used it to counter Rakshasha's palm, which has been shown to cause internal damage.
Chapter 212
Yeah, no. When Ninjak ghosts he just disappears. From what I can tell there's nothing that telegraphs it at all. He simply becomes invisible.
To be honest neither of these really say much. The pilot was high in the air, hardly in a position to observe Ninjak's movements. In the second instance, Ninjak blatantly uses the watch and the sprinklers to draw attention and create a diversion. None of this suggests someone like Kanoh wouldn't be able to observe any signs of movement. It's not as if the regular people Colin is ghosting here would perceive the stuff any martial artist would.
But there is actually further evidence supporting this, and an additional counter to Pre-Initiative. Going back to the Malgam feat, the Mother of all stealth feats, I will remind you that the X-O Manowar Armor is implied to be able to literally predict/sense attacks beforehand if it recognizes the energy, and it's very, very acquainted with Ninjak.
Ninjak doesn't give off energy of any sort, so I don't see how Manowar's ability to detect such reflects on him. Sneaking up on motion detectors is good, but Kanoh's not going to use his five senses to see through stealth.
For that matter, characters with similar ghosting abilities to Ninjak do exist in Kengan, specifically Kiryu Setsuna via use of Blink. Blink is a technique which allows the user to vanish to their opponent by timing movements with their blinks. In terms of application, it functions quite similar to how you propose Ninjak is going to be fighting here. Kiryu uses it to repeatedly ghost an opponent with a speed advantage. I won't say Blink is equal to Ninjak's stealth considering it lacks the same kinds of feats against characters with super senses, but honestly unless you can prove Ninjak has superior application in this particular scenario (a martial arts cage fight) I would have to conclude countering him is no more difficult.
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Chapters 95-97
Blink is, however, completely countered by Kuroki simply because he understands the principles behind it as several Karate schools do similar things. In fairness, Kuroki had advance knowledge of how the technique worked, but Genzan only even told him because it would be useless against him. Note that Kanoh watched this fight and observed Kuroki countering Blink. So Ninjak's variety of stealth is not totally foreign here and someone with thorough knowledge of Karate schools will at least have awarness of the principles. Hell, even Ren who is a low tier compared to Kanoh managed to somewhat counter Kiryu when he actively focused on him.
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Chapter 153
Now I'm not going to limit Ninjak to the assumption he works solely on a principle like timing movements to blinks and blind spots. But unless you can show how his stealth works mechanically the possibility that he is doing something similar remains. Yes, he clearly has skill in erasing sound and other such traces of his presence foreign to Kengan, but this is far less of a hurdle for characters who won't bother detecting him via such means. For that matter, while he may not doing anything in relation to blinking patterns, he most certainly targets blind spots (that is your proposed tactic for him here after all), so it's frankly not at all much of a stretch for Kanoh to adjust on basis of that.
?? How? When speed isn't an element in battle, coordination, balance, flexibility and fluidity of movements play an extremely valuable role in deciding how efficiently attacks are landed and dodged. Agility can be used in conjunction with things like Fu No Kata (wind like responses) that help Ninjak overcome stat gaps or gain the upper hand when they're equal. He can respond quicker and cleaner, and dodge with greater ease. Colin would also expend minimal effort doing what would take a lot out of a hunky, non-agile person like Kanoh to do. Pre-Initiative is honestly irrelevant to stopping agility or minimizing its effectiveness, and if you're relying on the same counter then my above response applies.
I think you're confused on the purpose of agility. It's literal definition is the ability to move quickly and easily. In fiction it also encompasses flexibility and balance. Having great balance is useful for controlling your center of gravity, and flexibility helps with dodging attacks from angles that can't normally be dodged.
Ninjak is a supreme martial arts master; I think the least you can do is give him enough credit to know that wide motions and gaps in large movements is an amateur flaw.
Well that's the thing: the scans you've shown for agility have been of a lot of acrobatics that do involve wide motions and leave several gaps. I understand Ninjak should know better than that, but if we're going off the comics you've shown, those wide movements are the sort he makes, and frankly that's just begging for a dragon shot to the chest.
Regarding pre-initiative, I still have no idea why it would be considered ineffective here. The purpose of it is to counter an action before the action begins. He would prevent Ninjak from moving around by attacking him before he can do so. Pre-initiative is honestly just a hard counter for specifically potent styles/techniques.
Prediction has been addressed. X-O Armor can't predict his movements and it has literal motion detectors and seismic sensors.
This has nothing to do with what Kanoh is doing. He's not detecting vibrations in the ground. I haven't seen evidence Manowar is capable of doing something as precise as move reading to determine actions based on stance, muscles, etc. Fact is Ninjak has no way of concealing his next moves as long as he intends to carry them out.
You seem to have ignored the one crucial detail that Ninjak didn't throw a blow or even physically move in the scan against Gabriella. And she is a martial arts master in her own right who Ninjak commended the physical and spiritual balance of, meaning knocking her off balance would already be extremely difficult. So how can your counter be that it doesn't deliver powerful blows?
Ninjak completely dropped her on her ass without budging. With weight and stats equalized and Kanoh having zero balance/agility feats, he has no way to defend against this. If Colin threw a legitimate actual punch or a kick, Kanoh will have no ability to properly dodge it as opposed to when he is dodging attacks from someone who isn't harmonizing invisible forces of the universe to interfere with their balance and center of gravity.
With respect, you're not giving much to go off of. This instance seems to be the only case where Ninjak has shown manipulation dynamic forces, and I just don't know what to gleam from it. The invisible force of Ninjak's blow seems to have done no damage at all to Gabriella, simply knocking her down. So how does this work in actual combat? Do every one of Ninjak's hits contain hidden force? How does that work in tight CQC? What is the relation of the invisible force to Ninjak's blows? How does it work in practice against other martial artists?
Not a single fight you've shown from Ninjak has any mention of dynamic forces. If this really is a one-time showing then it's honestly not useful as far as an actual fight goes, there is simply too little information.
Conclusion:
Your strategy hinges too much on two things: all of Kanoh's skills and abilities being nullified, and Ninjak pulling off a quick win. You state that adaptation is useless because Ninjak has some of his own, but in reality what Ninjak has shown is low-tier compared to Kanoh in that regard. Ninjak has no direct counter for pre-initiative - or even prediction in general - because the showing against Manowar is something else entirely.
Ninjak is utterly outclassed in any element of direct combat. He has no answer for switching between styles, prediction, or simply being adapted to. Pressure points are his only recourse, but I am highly doubtful he can pull those off against Ninjak. Grappling is hardly nullified altogether for this reason, and breaking wrist or fingers would further null pressure points. While agility, in theory, is an excellent edge against somewhat like Kanoh, the acrobatics you've shown for Ninjak are easily countered.
Stealth is Ninjak's only route to victory, but in terms of actually applying it in a martial arts fight, Kanoh has seen Ninjak's equal or better in Blink. Despite your claims pre-initiative is a counter for stealth and frankly everything Ninjak has, because all the fancy technique in the world is useless if you get shut down in advance. Pain tolerance can only save Ninjak somewhat, because Dragon Shot to the brain is going to rattle his skull past what Colin can take.
I would say Kanoh's technical skill shouldn't be underestimated though. One low/mid tier character in the verse is skilled enough to fool move reading by creating a "false body," using decoy movements to mislead the opponent and create an effective "after-image" to throw them off.
Despite this Nitoku beat this opponent with mid difficulty at best. Nitoku being someone Kanoh defeated in the past. Kaede does speculate the fight could go different now but it seems unlikely that comparison would favor Toku, as Kanoh grows with every fight (becoming significantly more skilled by the end of the tournament) while Toku doesn't even fight much.
No one was underestimating Kanoh's technical skill. I'm just saying that Ninjak is better in terms of overall fighting competence/effective skill. If you want to demonstrate Kanoh's skill on this front through scaling him above specific techniques shown by weaker characters then be my guest, but this doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Kanoh being able to defeat them doesn't mean he's better than them at everything they do.
If we abide by that logic then Ninjak still surpasses him, by virtue of being able to narrowly defeat Eternal Warrior on two separate occasions. This is the same Eternal Warrior who exploited his battle experience and foresight ability that enables him to "see every beat of the fight before it begins" against X-O Manowar.
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Now obviously, the gap between Ninjak and Gilad isn't anywhere as near as big as the one between Kanoh and the character who created after-images to throw off move reading. But in the same vein, Gilad has thousands of years more fighting experience than every living fighter in Kengan combined, and his ability to see every beat of a fight before it even begins similarly dwarfs seeing just one or two moves ahead after a match already starts. Which is what foresight does.
And keep in mind foresight is dependent on being able to see muscle and tendon contractions and breathing, something that would be impossible for Gilad to take note of through the X-O Manowar suit.
So Colin remains superior to whatever level of move reading counter you implicitly scale Kanoh to.
I think you're giving Ninjak quite a bit of credit comparing him to Gaolang in boxing on this basis. Gaolang is the best Muay Thai fighter in history and has the second highest pound-for-pound boxing ranking (he's actually since outboxed the man with the highest ranking, but that's after a timeskip and can't be applied to the one Kanoh fought). It's not as if he was simply using Boxing+Muay Thai either, as the scan you posted shows he was using a unique synthesis of both. All this on top of Gaolang throwing 13 jab in a second that can't be countered by first rate boxers and I would put his overall striking game considerably above Ninjak.
Kanoh didn't beat the best pure striker in pure striking. But he did beat him in overall combat through adaptation and additional knowledge. Which I think matters more.
I'm well aware of Gaolong's boxing prowess as that is literally my point, especially because in that fight Kanoh actually made it his goal to use Gaolong's style against him under the pretense he'd be able to use it better.
Yes he failed and resorted to adaptation to beat him instead. But it was still an extremely narrow win and Gaolong has no measure of adaptation himself on Ninjak's level.
My argument is that while Kanoh has better pure adaptation/evolution than Ninjak, anytime he's actually put that adaptation to use in battle he had to do so after getting his ass beat, and he's never successfully evolved past someone like Ninjak who has extremely capable adaptation as well per the Webnet agent feat (stomping two people at the same time who moments earlier where handily tossing him back and forth).
There are different tiers of adaptation. Ninjak managed to adjust to match his opponents, I would expect that out of most fighters. Kanoh has gone a step further. He develops entire style mid fight solely to counter his opponents. He created an anti-Gaolang style and managed to totally null his striking after simply being put on the backfoot for a while. Gaolang is forced to use non-boxing moves after this so I can safely say he was completely countered. I would say this is considerably more advanced than what Ninjak did there.
Once again Kanoh's adaptation itself is better than Ninjak but:
Gaolong has no adaptation on Ninjak's level or at all, so using Kanoh's feats of evolving past Gaolong or Okubo wouldn't be admissible evidence that he can replicate that against Ninjak. In order for your argument to work he needs feats of adapting past someone who can adapt themselves. I'm not saying he wouldn't eventually adapt to Ninjak in any capacity, but at the very least it would take a hell of a lot longer and a lot more injuries and time is not on your side.
Even if you argue that he WILL adapt to Ninjak, the amount of time it would take to do this would provide plenty of opportunities for Ninjak to take you down with nerve strikes or death strikes.
This is much a result of Kanoh's mindset and is not a problem he will have anymore. Earlier in the fight allowed Okubo to mount him as a warm up. Kanoh has an animalistic side and tends to enjoy his fights, he even attempted to outbox Gaolang for this reason. But as I posted earlier the reason Kanoh sometimes takes damage before adapting is the delay caused by his formless style:
Adopting a form allowed Kanoh to overcome this weakness fully. He doesn't take any major beating in either of his subsequent fights until outright losing. In fact he's totally unharmed after beating Sen.
You mention that Kanoh didn't take a major beating until losing but that's literally my point. Kanoh's delay was functionally gone by the time he fought Hatsumi. This didn't stop Kuroki for bashing him to a pulp before he finally evolved.
It was literally stated on-panel that it was only after he was "wounded more than ever" that he obtained a new power.
In those subsequent matches the evolution wasn't anywhere near as big as the one against Gaolong or Kuroki and it still took an exchange of MANY blows before it kicked in. If you really want to argue that Kanoh adapts instantly then you're simply wrong. He has to weather through enough attacks first to have complete understanding of the opponents style. This is not a luxury against Ninjak who can just drop him with on or two hits. There isn't even anything to adapt to.
Pressure points are an advantage. But I'm highly skeptical he can pull them off against someone on Kanoh's level. Performing it on people with similar training is good but they clearly aren't equal to Ninjak and by extension Kanoh.
??? What? All he has to do is tap him man... it's not that deep.
I've addressed this. Ninjak getting his brain rattled against his skull is going to knock him out. There are some things you can't get around through sheer endurance.
Someone with MCU Cap strength would be incapable of rattling Ninjak's brain when Ninjak regularly tanks punches from people stronger than his normal self which is already > MCU Cap. You can't downplay the importance of endurance when it's literally the sole reasons characters are still standing after taking beatings that would leave regular people in a coma.
Though for what it's worth Kanoh is not lacking in comparisons with superhuman opponents. One of Wakatsuki's (see the opener for feats) counters for Kanoh was Blast Core, a blow delivered with greatly increased power. That this of all things was made specifically for Kanoh suggests his durability was considered an issue for an easy 15+ tonner. Which is a more quantifiable accolade than Ninjak's showings even if those were against stronger opponents.
Malgam scales to X-O Manowar in strength who is way above 15 tonner... the man crushes tanks in single blows and has even bullrushed through a commercial plane, one-shotting it and coming out unscathed.
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Unity (2013) #7
...and Ninjak while damaged was still conscious and able-bodied after being smashed into the ground by him.
To be frank, agility can be severely reduced in value by simply grabbing onto your opponent. You haven't shown anything suggesting Ninjak could break from something as simple as a firm grip above the forearm. If Kanoh limits points where Ninjak has use of joints, his options will be severely limited. Not to mention breaking his wrist to Ninjak can't properly use pressure points. Kanoh has on-panel shown willingness to step on his opponent's foot to limit movement and create an opening, which is actually quite a common tactic in Kengan.
While this particular move is something Ninjak can likely break out of, even the smallest of openings is fatal, and it's not like Kanoh is limited to this.
When strength is equal, agility and flexibility is most effective for breaking out of holds and locks, or moving in angles that make it hard for your opponent to tag/latch onto you.
「Section 2」
Indestructible does counter moves that go beyond simply blunt force. Ohma used it to counter Rakshasha's palm, which has been shown to cause internal damage.
Not the same. Pressure points and nerve strikes don't even cause damage.
To be honest neither of these really say much. The pilot was high in the air, hardly in a position to observe Ninjak's movements. In the second instance, Ninjak blatantly uses the watch and the sprinklers to draw attention and create a diversion. None of this suggests someone like Kanoh wouldn't be able to observe any signs of movement. It's not as if the regular people Colin is ghosting here would perceive the stuff any martial artist would.
A fair counter, specifically that last point. The same way I pressed on the fact that Kanoh hasn't successfully adapted past people with Ninjak's specific level of adaptation, you're within your rights to argue that Ninjak ghosting regular people isn't sufficient by itself to ghost Kanoh, especially when Kanoh has his attention trained on him.
But Ninjak was able to remain invisible to Gabriella for hours despite standing directly behind her, and she is an esteemed martial artist herself. And even if those examples don't cut it, the Malgam feat is enough, since in those circumstances there was nothing to hide behind and no shadows disappear into. It was the middle of the desert in broad daylight and he was wearing distinctive colors and remained close enough to his body to taunt him yet remained unable to be seen, in spite of all the sensory and detection feats the armor has.
Also if we use the scaling to Eternal Warrior your pre-initiative or foresight pales in comparison to Gilad's which Ninjak has triumphed against.
Ninjak doesn't give off energy of any sort, so I don't see how Manowar's ability to detect such reflects on him. Sneaking up on motion detectors is good, but Kanoh's not going to use his five senses to see through stealth.
For that matter, characters with similar ghosting abilities to Ninjak do exist in Kengan, specifically Kiryu Setsuna via use of Blink. Blink is a technique which allows the user to vanish to their opponent by timing movements with their blinks. In terms of application, it functions quite similar to how you propose Ninjak is going to be fighting here. Kiryu uses it to repeatedly ghost an opponent with a speed advantage. I won't say Blink is equal to Ninjak's stealth considering it lacks the same kinds of feats against characters with super senses, but honestly unless you can prove Ninjak has superior application in this particular scenario (a martial arts cage fight) I would have to conclude countering him is no more difficult.
I have no idea how you can reach that conclusion when you outlined yourself the issues with the logic. For starters they're not similar at all in terms of application, Ninjak's ability isn't dependent on his opponent's field of vision. His is stealth through ninjutsu, and the feats of working on Manowar and Malgam disprove all comparisons to Blink when you consider Shanhara armor offers an extra set of eyes that never blink.
Now I'm not going to limit Ninjak to the assumption he works solely on a principle like timing movements to blinks and blind spots. But unless you can show how his stealth works mechanically the possibility that he is doing something similar remains. Yes, he clearly has skill in erasing sound and other such traces of his presence foreign to Kengan, but this is far less of a hurdle for characters who won't bother detecting him via such means. For that matter, while he may not doing anything in relation to blinking patterns, he most certainly targets blind spots (that is your proposed tactic for him here after all), so it's frankly not at all much of a stretch for Kanoh to adjust on basis of that.
This is a huge reach. Shanhara doesn't have blindspots as demonstrated clearly in the scan above. Being able to counter a technique that uses footwork to exploit blindspots won't work on a technique that doesn't do anything similar, and simultaneously has way better feats in terms of remaining undetectable. Ninjak ghosted a bio-mechanical armor equipped with planetary ranged sensors, movement detectors, energy scanners, and more, and you mean to tell me that Kuroki being able to counter Blink because of his knowledge on it will let Kanoh counter stealth, especially when he doesn't have any knowledge on Ninjak???
Well that's the thing: the scans you've shown for agility have been of a lot of acrobatics that do involve wide motions and leave several gaps. I understand Ninjak should know better than that, but if we're going off the comics you've shown, those wide movements are the sort he makes, and frankly that's just begging for a dragon shot to the chest.
Regarding pre-initiative, I still have no idea why it would be considered ineffective here. The purpose of it is to counter an action before the action begins. He would prevent Ninjak from moving around by attacking him before he can do so. Pre-initiative is honestly just a hard counter for specifically potent styles/techniques.
The agility counter is just an insult to Ninjak's fighting competence. The whole argument about leaving gaps in movements which provide opportunity for attacks make no sense when it's the agility that lets Ninjak evade Kanoh's attacks in the first place. You're basically saying because he'll use his larger movement range and flexibility to maneuver around Kanoh with drastically greater ease than anyone Kanoh has ever fought, that Kanoh wouldn't have a harder time striking him because the motions are large? It defeats the whole purpose of agility if you don't think the practitioner of the moves can fight effectively when performing motions that give them an upperhand.
Pre-Initiative doesn't work to anticipate a kind of movement that's impossible to track like stealth ghosting. Ok let's say Kanoh shifts his ankle two inches to the right. Kanoh anticipates him moving to the left with Pre-Initiative because his center of gravity is now in the opposite direction. But instead of launching a roundhouse kick or shuffling his body like Kanoh is in the process of countering, Ninjak simply disappears and becomes invisible.
Then what? What are you gonna do? Nothing.
This has nothing to do with what Kanoh is doing. He's not detecting vibrations in the ground. I haven't seen evidence Manowar is capable of doing something as precise as move reading to determine actions based on stance, muscles, etc. Fact is Ninjak has no way of concealing his next moves as long as he intends to carry them out.
Yes but unfortunately for you Eternal Warrior is even better than Kanoh is this sense and Ninjak won't fair any worse here than he did against him, which apparently was good enough to beat him.
With respect, you're not giving much to go off of. This instance seems to be the only case where Ninjak has shown manipulation dynamic forces, and I just don't know what to gleam from it. The invisible force of Ninjak's blow seems to have done no damage at all to Gabriella, simply knocking her down. So how does this work in actual combat? Do every one of Ninjak's hits contain hidden force? How does that work in tight CQC? What is the relation of the invisible force to Ninjak's blows? How does it work in practice against other martial artists?
Not a single fight you've shown from Ninjak has any mention of dynamic forces. If this really is a one-time showing then it's honestly not useful as far as an actual fight goes, there is simply too little information.
I think with this here you're just being extremely painstaking on purpose. It's not a one time thing, because remember those techniques are just the fundamentals that need to be mastered to learn Ninjutsu; Ninjak is amaster of ninjutsu itself. However that is the scan that explains and describes the actual ability. (How many scans do you really need explaining a skill move tho?) There's enough proof in the scan itself to show that Ninjak can drastically change the balance of someone with incredible agility and spiritual balance which is all I need to show it's useful in a fight, especially against Kanoh who has neither. You're focused on the damage and the force it contains when the knocking down is what's impressive, knocking down someone without moving which is what we clearly see. The other questions are more or less irrelevant.
Look, it's just an X-Factor edge to give me an advantage in an area you can't compete in or respond to. Just because you don't understand it down to the letter doesn't mean it's not useful when we literally see its effects in a combat situation and the intent.
Conclusion
This battle is actually very simple. My argument boils down to just two steps: Ninjak ghosting Kanoh and dropping him with nerve strikes. Your only counter to ghosting was citing Setsuna's Blink and how Kuroki (a better raw martial artists than Kanoh, mind you) was able to counter because he had prior knowledge. And in your mind, that somehow meant that Kanoh would counter Ninjak despite having no knowledge on anything he can do, and despite the techniques working COMPLETELY differently, and finally also ignoring that Ninjak's feats with stealth far outstrip Setsuna's Blink and don't share the same dependencies.
Your counter to nerve strikes was Indestructible shielding against.... something that isn't a nerve strike or pressure point. Rather, just a low level internal attack. Not even precise ones like the ones that targets organs or blood vessels. Just raw damage.
I'll repost my original conclusion with some tweaks because all my core points stand defiantly:
Ninjak is extremely agile and can abuse his acrobatics and maneuverability to dance around his opponents, slipping in between attacks, evading what a stout, unagile person would have trouble evading, and land his seamlessly while not expending lots of energy doing so. Your counter about leaving gaps in movements which provide opportunity for attacks make no sense when it's the agility that lets Ninjak evade Kanoh's attacks in the first place.
He will ghost Kanoh several times and land uncontested hits that can't be reacted to due to his stealth and ability to disappear/be invisible in plain sight.
His nerve strikes will be extremely lethal, he can control nerves like fingertips and destroy cells.
His pain tolerance, endurance, stamina, and general toughness will make it extremely difficult to slow him down or generally harm him when stats are equal. You for sure can't knock him out and ring-out will prove to be impossible when Ninjak is so much more agile than you are.
Then there are the X-Factors:
Fu No Kata -The aspect of Ninjutsu that allows Ninjak to explicitly overcome characters with greater speed and power than him through movements categorized as "wind-like" responses. This is something that when employed in a level playing field, with stats equal acrossed the board, AND in conjunction with his stealth and agility, while essentially allow Ninjak to completely pummel his opponent without ever being seen or tagged.
Dynamic of the Universe - Ninjak can employ invisible forces of the universal through pure ninjutsu skill that are combat applicable explicitly because their main function is literally increasing the reach of Ninjak's blows and allowing him to affect his opponents without even landing physical hits on them. He can disrupt your balance and center of gravity through these dynamics, which coupled with the advantages he already has in stealth and agility, on top of Fu No Kata, pretty much allow him to completely obliterate his opponents.
No one was underestimating Kanoh's technical skill. I'm just saying that Ninjak is better in terms of overall fighting competence/effective skill. If you want to demonstrate Kanoh's skill on this front through scaling him above specific techniques shown by weaker characters then be my guest, but this doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Kanoh being able to defeat them doesn't mean he's better than them at everything they do.
If we abide by that logic then Ninjak still surpasses him, by virtue of being able to narrowly defeat Eternal Warrior on two separate occasions. This is the same Eternal Warrior who exploited his battle experience and foresight ability that enables him to "see every beat of the fight before it begins" against X-O Manowar.
I would agree that Kanoh cannot do everything everyone below him does because Kengan doesn't have the same focus on knowing every style in existence and I am not going to apply the knowledge of other characters to him. But I think establishing a high level of technical skill for low tier characters is relevant if you're going to similarly present scaling above Fitzguh. Neither are the crux of our arguments however so let's move on from that.
Regarding Eternal Warrior's ability to play out a whole fight in his head (which would be a mental chess feat), Kanoh can actually match in that area. Sen is very capable of outplaying/outthinking his opponents shown in his fight with Bando where he leads the latter by a script once he figures out his patterns. He purposefully goes for an unsuccessful joint hold (Bando is triple jointed), all so he could make Bando drop his guard, leading up to a successful bone break several moves later.
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Chapter 162
Once he had full knowledge (which Gilad had against Manowar), he effectively saw the fight out to the same degree. But against Kanoh, it was a complete reversal. Sen even showed the same level of strategy as he did in the earlier fight, planning a hold and counter several steps ahead to the point of planning for Kanoh to break out of the hold to create an opening. But Kanoh saw through it completely, countered, and dominated the rest of the fight.
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Chapter 204-205
If we abide by that logic then Ninjak still surpasses him, by virtue of being able to narrowly defeat Eternal Warrior on two separate occasions. This is the same Eternal Warrior who exploited his battle experience and foresight ability that enables him to "see every beat of the fight before it begins" against X-O Manowar.
I exactly wouldn't say Ninjak outskilled him. Even putting aside that it was a weapons fights, he used the knife in his boot to win the first exchange, and there were several favorable environmental factors in the second, what with Eternal Warrior falling into some acid.
I'm well aware of Gaolong's boxing prowess as that is literally my point, especially because in that fight Kanoh actually made it his goal to use Gaolong's style against him under the pretense he'd be able to use it better.
Yes he failed and resorted to adaptation to beat him instead. But it was still an extremely narrow win and Gaolong has no measure of adaptation himself on Ninjak's level.
This is inaccurate, Kanoh did beat Gaolang in boxing. Reposing a part of the fight shown above, once Kanoh develops an anti-Gaolang style he does indeed win a punch out.
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Chapter 167
And this is the scan directly afterwards:
Gaolang using a headbutt is an indirect admission he couldn't win with just boxing. At most, you could say some of Kanoh's moves in the earlier exchange are a little suspect by boxing rules, but the fact they aren't wearing gloves has been noted to be an advantage in regards to Gaolang already so really it balances.
For the rest of the fight, Gaolang is forced to add in Muay Thai. So Kanoh did defeat him boxing, just not overall striking.
Once again Kanoh's adaptation itself is better than Ninjak but:
Gaolong has no adaptation on Ninjak's level or at all, so using Kanoh's feats of evolving past Gaolong or Okubo wouldn't be admissible evidence that he can replicate that against Ninjak. In order for your argument to work he needs feats of adapting past someone who can adapt themselves. I'm not saying he wouldn't eventually adapt to Ninjak in any capacity, but at the very least it would take a hell of a lot longer and a lot more injuries and time is not on your side.
Even if you argue that he WILL adapt to Ninjak, the amount of time it would take to do this would provide plenty of opportunities for Ninjak to take you down with nerve strikes or death strikes.
Whatever adaptation Ninjak has - and looking at the fight with Zina and Arkady it doesn't seem all that impressive within the course of a fight - does not inherently give him a resistance to being adapted to. Unless you can prove he outright has resistance/protection against such a tactic, Kanoh will still adapt to him. Not instantly, no, but as long as there is any sort of pattern in his moves, it will happen eventually. On the other hand, Ninjak's adaptation is quite useless as Kanoh is near impossible to adapt to. Swapping between a form and formless styles would at least double the time needed to do so, not to mention introducing a number of other factors, and formless style is flexible by nature so there's nothing concrete to adapt to.
Ninjak cannot win in adjustment warfare.
You mention that Kanoh didn't take a major beating until losing but that's literally my point. Kanoh's delay was functionally gone by the time he fought Hatsumi. This didn't stop Kuroki for bashing him to a pulp before he finally evolved.
It was literally stated on-panel that it was only after he was "wounded more than ever" that he obtained a new power.
In those subsequent matches the evolution wasn't anywhere near as big as the one against Gaolong or Kuroki and it still took an exchange of MANY blows before it kicked in. If you really want to argue that Kanoh adapts instantly then you're simply wrong. He has to weather through enough attacks first to have complete understanding of the opponents style. This is not a luxury against Ninjak who can just drop him with on or two hits. There isn't even anything to adapt to.
Kanoh doesn't adapt instantly, no, I don't believe I've argued such. However he'll do so faster than he did there. Let me explain:
The reason Kanoh didn't show as much adaptation in his last two matches is that he had to abandon adaptation in favor of a solid form. Formless style is what allowed him to apply adaption so freely in the first place:
In the fight with Kuroki, he learned to rotate between them, and he only learned to do so mid-fight. Metsudo's comments make it clear he didn't develop this ability prior to fighting Kuroki:
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Switching between them would eliminate the effective sacrifice of adaptation, as he can utilize his form at the start of the fight, and switch to formless once he has a grasp of Ninjak's fighting style. For that matter, Kanoh is not restricted to simply adapting to his opponents, he has full out evolution. He reduced the time needed to switch between form and formless mid-fight with Kuroki by a few miliseconds. So his own skill will grow at the same rate as he determines Ninjak's.
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Chapter 225
??? What? All he has to do is tap him man... it's not that deep.
A precise tap to a limited number of viable points is indeed difficult to do in the middle of combat. Several fights posted for Ninjak
For that matter I want to address the perceived issue of Kengan fighters lacking pressure points. That simply isn't true. There are several documented cases of characters showing pressure points, some even highly advanced:
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1-3: Muteba uses "Heart Jab," a move that attacks the heart and shuts it off with a touch without even piercing skin. The next two scans show this likely comes from Chinese medicine and Muteba proves his knowledge of pressure points to escape a hold from Wakatsuki.
4-6: Hanafusa uses accupuncture points to stun Bando.
7: Masters Kaiwan style (what Kuroki uses) are noted to have trained in knowledge of acupuncture and meridian points.
8: Ohma displays chi blocking, capable of destroying and suppressing nerves.
9: Rei targets multiple vital points with a flurry of blows.
10: It is explained that Nico suppressed Ohma by creating a bend in the spine to restrict use of Advance, which would require precise manipulation of muscles and nerves.
So pressure points are not foreign to the verse at all. The reason they are seldom used in combat is simply that it is quite impractical outside of certain circumstances. And this applies to Ninjak as well: he's going to have a hard time jabbing a specific point on the neck while Kanoh is swinging at him. In fact, Kanoh has shown Jiu Jutsu finger hold that seems perfect for countering such a tactic.
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Chapter 205
Someone with MCU Cap strength would be incapable of rattling Ninjak's brain when Ninjak regularly tanks punches from people stronger than his normal self which is already > MCU Cap. You can't downplay the importance of endurance when it's literally the sole reasons characters are still standing after taking beatings that would leave regular people in a coma.
Ninjak also has MCU Cap's body so this logic doesn't work...I mean come on, pain tolerance isn't perfect at all, your own scans show Ninjak visibly affected by physical attacks from Zina and Arkady, he's clearly not just shrugging off everything from sub-powerhouse characters. Hell, pain resistance isn't even unfamiliar to Kengan. One low tier fighter could literally control opioids in his brain to shut off all pain and he still got bodied by Rei (who is far below Kanoh as Kuroki dabbed on him) via the simple tactic of breaking his legs. And to show this isn't ABC scaling Kanoh literally beat this same guy.
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Chapter 23.5
There is honestly little reason for Kanoh not to break Colin's joints once given the opportunity. The fact that this particular skill of Ninjak's you've presented is possessed to a greater degree by someone Kanoh canonically bodied is really enough to say it's not going to be game-changing.
Malgam scales to X-O Manowar in strength who is way above 15 tonner... the man crushes tanks in single blows and has even bullrushed through a commercial plane, one-shotting it and coming out unscathed.
...and Ninjak while damaged was still conscious and able-bodied after being smashed into the ground by him.
Ninjak tanked hits here and there, yes, he didn't take any major, quantifiable punishment aside from incidental attacks. I think you know peak humans taking attacks from powerhouses happens plenty in fiction, unless the attacks do quantifiable damage it really means very little.
Section II:
Not the same. Pressure points and nerve strikes don't even cause damage.
I'm not sure what pressure points that cause instant death do if not damage. Regardless, my point isn't reliant on face tanking Ninjak's most potent pressure points, merely mitigating the effects of a stealth takedown.
A fair counter, specifically that last point. The same way I pressed on the fact that Kanoh hasn't successfully adapted past people with Ninjak's specific level of adaptation, you're within your rights to argue that Ninjak ghosting regular people isn't sufficient by itself to ghost Kanoh, especially when Kanoh has his attention trained on him.
But Ninjak was able to remain invisible to Gabriella for hours despite standing directly behind her, and she is an esteemed martial artist herself. And even if those examples don't cut it, the Malgam feat is enough, since in those circumstances there was nothing to hide behind and no shadows disappear into. It was the middle of the desert in broad daylight and he was wearing distinctive colors and remained close enough to his body to taunt him yet remained unable to be seen, in spite of all the sensory and detection feats the armor has.
I don't see how the case with Gabriella proves anything at all really. He was standing behind her, so at that point it's just about not breathing hard. Being a martial artist doesn't inherently give you a counter for stealth in the first place. This was a non-combat scenario and frankly means very little in one.
Also if we use the scaling to Eternal Warrior your pre-initiative or foresight pales in comparison to Gilad's which Ninjak has triumphed against.
If you're arguing Eternal Warrior's ability to "see a whole fight play out" as an equivalent to pre-initiative, I would say this is quite a miscalcutaion. What Gilad did is no different from what Sen did - seeing a fight play out merely means having some conception of how the immediate battle will go, unless you're suggesting that this skill of Gilad's is flawless and he can never be tagged or countered as a result.
I mean, to be frank, Kanoh should have a clear edge over Gilad simply because we've seen his abilities beyond a single one-line boast that clearly isn't meant to be taken literally.
Shanhara seems to be talking about the environment here, based on his comment that "our capabilities may be diminished," which I am fairly certain is not due to the butterflies.
I have no idea how you can reach that conclusion when you outlined yourself the issues with the logic. For starters they're not similar at all in terms of application, Ninjak's ability isn't dependent on his opponent's field of vision. His is stealth through ninjutsu, and the feats of working on Manowar and Malgam disprove all comparisons to Blink when you consider Shanhara armor offers an extra set of eyes that never blink.
This is a huge reach. Shanhara doesn't have blindspots as demonstrated clearly in the scan above. Being able to counter a technique that uses footwork to exploit blindspots won't work on a technique that doesn't do anything similar, and simultaneously has way better feats in terms of remaining undetectable. Ninjak ghosted a bio-mechanical armor equipped with planetary ranged sensors, movement detectors, energy scanners, and more, and you mean to tell me that Kuroki being able to counter Blink because of his knowledge on it will let Kanoh counter stealth, especially when he doesn't have any knowledge on Ninjak???
Sneaking around Shanhara could be done by a number of means: it not focusing on the right place at the right time, Ninjak cutting off detection to certain signals, not knowing where/what to look for etc. Not that the explanations necessarily make perfect sense, but Ninjak's stealth doesn't make sense in the first place so unless we have outright explanations of the mechanics behind how he can be so stealthy, it's hard to apply it as absolute here. I know this is an appeal to the techniques being kept mysterious because no writer could ever explain them (we're never really going to learn how Batman pulls one on Superman), but that same ambiguity is what makes it hard to definitively refute everything.
I mean the fact of the matter is that if Ninjak is going to use a stealth attack, he is going to have to aim for a blind spot, as that is the whole point. As long as Kanoh is aware of this principle, he has the means to counter. Kuroki did have knowledge of Blink, but the whole reason the creator of the technique was fine telling him about it outright was that it's useless against people with his level of knowledge. Which Kanoh would be.
As an aside, I don't believe Ninjak abuses stealth like this in actual one on one fights with perfect consistency. The fights with Eternal Warrior, Zina and Arkady, Shadow Seven, other agents, etc. While I don't doubt that Ninjak uses stealth fairly frequently, that he relies on it to have a shot in this fight doesn't seem sound at all.
The agility counter is just an insult to Ninjak's fighting competence. The whole argument about leaving gaps in movements which provide opportunity for attacks make no sense when it's the agility that lets Ninjak evade Kanoh's attacks in the first place. You're basically saying because he'll use his larger movement range and flexibility to maneuver around Kanoh with drastically greater ease than anyone Kanoh has ever fought, that Kanoh wouldn't have a harder time striking him because the motions are large? It defeats the whole purpose of agility if you don't think the practitioner of the moves can fight effectively when performing motions that give them an upperhand.
I understand what you're saying. But you haven't given any showings that would prove your point here honestly.
Pre-Initiative doesn't work to anticipate a kind of movement that's impossible to track like stealth ghosting. Ok let's say Kanoh shifts his ankle two inches to the right. Kanoh anticipates him moving to the left with Pre-Initiative because his center of gravity is now in the opposite direction. But instead of launching a roundhouse kick or shuffling his body like Kanoh is in the process of countering, Ninjak simply disappears and becomes invisible.
Then what? What are you gonna do? Nothing.
That isn't how it works. Unless Ninjak can full out make the light coming off of his body go away, he's going to have to get out of Kanoh's vision to perform stealth. He will have to give indicators of any movement, and Kanoh can capitalize on that. The fact that the end result of this process is Ninjak going invisible doesn't change this.
I think with this here you're just being extremely painstaking on purpose. It's not a one time thing, because remember those techniques are just the fundamentals that need to be mastered to learn Ninjutsu; Ninjak is amaster of ninjutsu itself. However that is the scan that explains and describes the actual ability. (How many scans do you really need explaining a skill move tho?) There's enough proof in the scan itself to show that Ninjak can drastically change the balance of someone with incredible agility and spiritual balance which is all I need to show it's useful in a fight, especially against Kanoh who has neither. You're focused on the damage and the force it contains when the knocking down is what's impressive, knocking down someone without moving which is what we clearly see. The other questions are more or less irrelevant.
Look, it's just an X-Factor edge to give me an advantage in an area you can't compete in or respond to. Just because you don't understand it down to the letter doesn't mean it's not useful when we literally see its effects in a combat situation and the intent.
I'm going to have to leave this one to the voters because there's really not much to discuss. This ability has only been shown once, it's unclear how useful it is in actual combat outside a spar where the target was literally standing still so Ninjak could demonstrate that ability. Gabriella having agility and spiritual balance isn't even a relevant defense for this as far as I can tell so I'm not sure how that elevates the feat.
There simply isn't anything to go off and you've shown a number of fights for Ninjak where this ability was seemingly absent or irrelevent.
Conclusion:
My argument has remained largely unchanged since post 1. Kanoh is plainly superior to Ninjak as a combatant. He is more skilled and has abilities/techniques that will give him a greater edge in martial combat than Ninjak. Your argument relies on stealth and pressure points, two elements which Ninjak would have to abuse perfectly in a way he hasn't shown to, and which are not perfect tactics themselves, with Kanoh being familiar with both of them. Agility is an advantage as well, but this is a cage fight, and there's only so much Colin can do. Ninjak's pain tolerance isn't anything Kanoh hasn't seen either and it's hardly a foolproof way to win a fight such as this.
Dragon Shotallows him to dominate an exchange of blows. Prediction gives Kanoh a clear edge in any exchange via having a step up on Ninjak, and Eternal Warrior's single statement does not detract from Kanoh's feat or advantage in this regard. Adaptation will make the fight disastrous for Ninjak over time.
Kanoh has the advantage in a long fight via adaptation, and the advantage in a short melee rush via superior skill and the means to end it quickly with well placed prediction and Dragon Shot. These are the most crucial factors in the fight and they are squarely in my bag.
Yeah I will vote for @sy8000 this time around. He definitively proved Kanoh has an advantage application wise of his skill in a direct, combat scenario and made some great points about why the on paper fancy techniques of Ninjak, like stealth, acrobatics or the whole invisible forces thing won't really come into play too much under the confines of a martial arts cage fight. Although I came into this debate thinking pressure points would likely lead Ninjak to an easy win, the emphasis on Indestructible and Kanoh's skill in applying it, as well as Sy pointing out how hard and impractical it would be to pull off pressure points in practice against a skilled martial artist shifted my stance.
@shirso: Thanks for voting, though I will point out that this isn't a literal cage fight in case that gets confusing. There is a picture of the ring in the OP.
Honestly, this was a really, really tight debate. When each post makes you bounce between sides, you just know that the debate was extremely even. Even as I type this vote out I find myself double questioning my decision. So before we dive into who won, I have to say, kudos to both sides.
I'll begin by listing what I felt were the deciding aspects of this debate:
Foresight vs Stealth/Agility
Nerve manip vs indestructable/JJ finger hold
Battle of evolution
Application of feats
I think these encompass nearly everything important and decisive. In regards to Foresight vs Stealth/Agility, I don't actually believe Foresight/pre-initiative can actually negate/counter stealth. But this isn't what I believe, it's about which of you two was more convincing, and I'll have to give this one to HA. HA's arguments made more sense to me, Vulcan had about two counters to this, and both of them relied on trying to elevate Collin above precog, and honestly both of them were hardly convincing by themselves, and HA's counter to them were good. I just felt all Vulcan would have to do is post this scan
Capitalise on it well enough and he would've probably taken the win in this regard.
In regards to nerve manip, I give that win fully to Vulcan, Nerves don't do damage by impact, and damage by impact is the only thing that Adamantine kata guards against. While I do think that HA convinced me pre-initiative and a the finger holds would be effective against nerve manip, his main counter against nerve manip was definitely not convincing at all.
In regards to both the evolution tussle as well as the general application of feats I have to give HA the win. One of the best apsects of Kengan is that all skill feats are perfirmed in the same conditions as this tourney, so there is very, very little extrapolation of how feats apply to combat. On the other hand, a large amount of Vulcan's showings and feats, in the end, needed some extrapolation to combat, sometimes a lot and I think HA capitalised on that shortcoming very very well.
All in all, I give my vote to HA, very narrowly. I still think that in a fight between Ninjak and Kanoh, Ninjak would take a slight majority, but CaVs are not a battle between characters, they're a battle between debaters, and HighAccuser won this battle.
As many have said, this debate was really close and I had to read it over a few times to reach a final verdict. I think this CaV really came down to a definitive win condition vs practicality. Ninjak had a very clearly defined win condition by way of his nerve strikes and I wasn't convinced Kanoh could directly counter those attacks with his own techniques. As Vulcan illustrated, these nerve strikes are borderline lethal and can even cause instant death. Needless to say, Vulcan's win condition was set since he posted his opener. HA, on the other hand, placed more of an emphasis on the practicality aspect of the debate. This approach worked well in debunking Vulcan's arguments for Ninjak ghosting Kanoh given Kanoh's Pre Initiative, a technique Ninjak's stealth hasn't been tested against. And while I didn't think Indestructible would counter Ninjak's nerve strikes at all, the finger hold techniques could definitely set up for a counter attack of pulled off right. Dragon Shot was also a massive boon for Kanoh in fighting at all ranges while maximizing his striking force and it should also be able to counter Ninjak's agility, especially when used in tandem with Pre Iniative.
In theory, Ninjak should win here by virtue of being able to put down Kanoh before the vice versa. However, practically, this seemed unlikely. HA made a great point about the nature of nerve strikes, where the is a limited amount of viable areas to strike that will produce the desired result. Meaning that Ninjak would skill high enough to strike these specific areas while dealing with Pre Initiative and Dragon Shot, which are techniques that can help Kanoh to evade blows or counter attack. While nerve strikes are usually portrayed as a one shot attack that ends the fight quickly, the reality is that there are specific areas one needs to aim for for them to work, which can be very hard to pull off against a martial artist like Kanoh. And while Ninjak may have very high endurance, that doesn't mean you can power through a full power strike to the noggin. On the whole, I am going to side with @sy8000 for this debate. Very nice and close CaV, but i think HA made the more convincing arguments.
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