I love powerscaling. It has beautiful simplicity, and is one of the most self-explanatory concepts that weeaboos have come up with. This is hyperbole and unsourced, I have no idea who originated the concept of powerscaling, and it is beyond the scope of this post to discuss that, however it is those with a greater than average fascination with Japan that seem to care the most about powerscaling, myself included. So, for the unintitated, what exactly is powerscaling? Put simply, it is the notion that one can scale the power of a fictional character to another character that they have been shown to have defeated or been defeated by. This is an instance of transitive relations, or if A >B, and B>C, then A>C (Encyclopedia of Mathematics, 2020). Powerscalers (or people who make use of powerscaling) often take this concept further by stating that if a specific attack, event, or achievement, generally referred to as a “Feat”, is superior in relative power to a similar occurrence that defeated one character, it can be stated that the character who performed the feat is stronger than the character who was defeated by a relative occurrence (vsbattles, n/d). Although the fundamental logic of powerscaling thus seems reasonable (even in the formal sense), this notion is complicated somewhat by other factors that influence an individual battle, as will be discussed later in the post. In a future post, I will write about the value of power in narratives, as well as the reasons why so many people put such weight onto which fictional character would win in a fight, but this is beyond the scope of this post.
When dealing with a deductive statement, i.e. a statement that must be true given a set of premises, the validity of those premises is essential in determining whether or not the deductive statement itself has value (Shanahan, n/d). This fact is not lost on powerscalers (vsbattles, n/d), but there are clear inconsistencies in the application of this conceded point. Take the YouTube channel Goji-Chronic, who is a moderately-sized Powerscaling-focused channel that covers a wide-range of characters, but with a special focus on Godzilla, as his name would suggest (and to be clear, I watch and enjoy this user’s videos, so although I am about to be critical of the content of the videos, know this is coming from the perspective of a fan who believes the videos are flawed, but enjoyable). In various videos on Goji-Chronic, the description of specific feats/victories of specific characters is weighted irrespective of context, such as the statement that because the character Biollante, who was defeated by Godzilla, was able to survive being sucked into a black hole (or more specifically, Biollante’s cells were able to survive being sucked into a black hole), Gamera being defeated by attacks that are less-than the energy output/input of black hole thus demonstrates that Gamera is weaker than Biollante, and therefore weaker than Godzilla (Goji-Chronic, 2023). In this example, Goji-Chronic ignores the context of each battle, and makes several logical leaps that do not stand up to scrutiny. Firstly, Biollante cells were described as surviving in a black hole because the essence of Biollante, which included some cells, left her body upon being defeated by Godzilla, and were ultimately sucked into a black hole, mutating into the character Space Godzilla, as described in supplementary material for, and implied within, the movie Godzilla Vs Space Godzilla (Yamashita, 1994). The problem with this statement logically, is that killing an organism, and destroying it on a cellular level are not interchangeable feats. Take for instance, the murder of a human being. If you were to shoot a person in the heart, that bullet would not destroy all the cells in the human body, but the damage done by the bullet’s destruction of an essential organ would all the same kill the human. Thus, it can be said that a gun/bullet scales above a human on a powerscale, but not above the entirety of the human cellular structure. So, how does Godzilla kill Biollante? In the film Godzilla Vs Biollante, Biollante is ultimately defeated by a blast of Godzilla’s atomic breathe which shot through her head (Ōmori, 1989). Following this, presumably as an effort to sustain existence, the essence of Biollante, including some of her cells as well as the soul of the daughter of the main character (long story), moves up into the sky, and exits earth (Ōmori, 1989). It is clear that Godzilla did not destroy Biollante at a cellular level, as otherwise no cells would be left for Biollante to mutate into Space Godzilla in the first place, rather, a critical organ of Biollante’s, namely her brain, was destroyed by one of Godzilla’s attacks, thus demonstrating that Biollante the total organism is weaker than Godzilla, but Godzilla is not, then, stronger than a black hole (or necessarily strong enough to withstand a black hole), as Goji-Chronic claims. Moreover, in the context of the battle with Godzilla, both Biollante and Godzilla had been weakened by the battle, and in the various feats of Gamera, he too was weakened (Kaneko, 1996). Thus, statements as to the relative strength of Gamera and Godzilla must take into account the totality of their power at maximum capacity, presuming no other factors are influencing the battle (which is impossible) in order to make the application of transitive relations valid. This can be further seen in the real world of fighting. In the fighting organization the UFC, or United Fighting Championship, the current as of the time of writing Heavyweight champion for the United States is Jon Jones (UFCstats, n/d). One particular fight that Jon Jones lost, however, was to the fighter Matt Hamill, who lost to the fighter Quinton Jackson, who lost to Jon Jones (UFCstats, n/d). This is an inherent contradiction to the fundamental assumptions of powerscaling, specifically that two entities may be assessed without fighting each other directly based upon the mathematical principle of transitive relations. But taken as a proof, we see the flaw in reasoning. If Jon Jones is < Matt Hamill, and Matt Hamill is < Quinton Jackson, it must then follow that Jon Jones is also < Quinton Jackson. Yet despite this, Quinton Jackson lost to Jon Jones, and as the Heavyweight champion within the United States, it can be said that Jon Jones ought to scale above every other fighter within the UFC, thus he ought to have a perfect win-loss ratio, but he does not (UFCstats, n/d). This is where the context of the fight comes into play. A fight is not just an equation in which one person/characters numbers are compared to another, is it not a questions of is A > or < C, but rather, a complex series of interactions both before and during the fight, which are inherently incalculable due to the impossibility of collecting all necessary data, that ultimately decide a fight. For instance, suppose that a fighter had just lost their mother the night prior; they will almost certainly fight sub-optimally, and would likely lose a fight they might otherwise win. This context, which is stated to be taken into account by some powerscalers (vsbattles, n/d), is clearly not always, as seen with Goji-Chronic (Goji-Chronic, 2023). Thus, there is clearly a problem with the application of powerscaling. However, that does not mean that the concept itself is inherently flawed, as within an ideal situation, where all data that can influence a battle is taken into account, the deductive nature of powerscaling is valid. In practice, however, the validity of powerscaling will never be deductive, as it will never necessarily follow that a given feat in one piece of fiction will translate to an entirely different context. Thus, powerscaling is not functionally valid, nor is it a functional use of transitive relations. That does not, however, comment upon the value of power within storytelling.
Although it is clear that powerscaling is not functionally valid, does this matter? I would argue that it doesn’t. On a fundamental level, what one takes from a piece of art/enjoys about that art is inherently subjective, and that subjectivity is not subject to objective analysis. I cannot prove objectively that someone is incorrect for enjoying powerscaling (nor would I, as I enjoy it as well). Rather, if a person subjectively enjoys comparing different characters to one another on a quasi-deductive level, that enjoyment exists, and its existence cannot be attacked on objective grounds. That being said, if someone was to state that powerscaling itself is objective and/or deductive, they would be incorrect on objective grounds (Mulder, n/d; Shanahan, n/d), as demonstrated through the failure to adhere to transitive relations. I don’t believe that this ultimately matters, although me being a pedant, I wanted to write about it regardless. Fundamentally, if you enjoy consuming or creating powerscaling content, I support you, and as of the time of writing, am now one of you. I love you.
Encyclopedia of Mathematics (2020). Transitive relation. Encyclopedia of Mathematics https://encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Transitive_relation
Goji-Chronic.(2023).WHAT IF Godzilla and Gamera swapped Universes? | Godzilla Power Scaling.YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veaZUR9_i24
Kaneko, S., Higuchi, S. (1996). "Gamera 2: Attack of Legion".
Mulder, D.(n/d). Objectivity, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/objectiv/
Ōmori, K. (1989). Godzilla Vs Biollante.
UFCstats.com (n/d). Jon Jones: Fighter Details. ufcstats.com
UFCstats.com (n/d). Matt Hamill: Fighter Details. ufcstats.com
UFCstats.com (n/d). Quinton Jackson: Fighter Details. ufcstats.com
Shanahan, T. (n/d) Deductive and Inductive reasoning, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/deductive-inductive-arguments/
VSbattles.fandom.com(n/d) Powerscaling. VSbattles https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Powerscaling
Yamashita, K.(1994). Godzilla Vs Space Godzilla.
Addendum: Gojichronic made a point in a YouTube video (I do not remember which, unfortunately) that the strength of an organisms cells will extend across the organisms body, thus if Godzilla's atomic breath killed Biollante through destroying part of/the whole of her brain. This is a valid refutation of to an extent, but I feel it fails to account for a two main variables: the variability in cell strength, and the difference between the strength of the individual cell vs the strength of the connections between cells. Firstly, cells are "highly variable" (Mostafa, 2021), with different functions and characteristics, which can change the degree of stress that each cell can take in a given activity. For instance, the cells that make up the brain are far more vulnerable to physical strain, such as blunt force and sudden movement, as opposed to the cells that make up muscles, which are far more durable. Thus, different areas of Biollante's body can be stronger or weaker, meaning that if her skin cells may be strong enough to withstand a black hole (those same skin cells which pierced Godzillas skin), but perhaps the muscle, fat, bone, and brain matter are not as durable, and thus could not withstand Godzillas atomic breath when fired at the right angle (see: death star-type vulnerability/Achele's Heel). Secondly, the connecting points between cells are not necessarily as strong as the cells themselves. For instance, a cell wall may be stronger than the contents of its cell, the lipids and proteins that connect cell walls, etc. Thus, cells might be separated, even if not fully destroyed. Thus, Godzillas atomic breath may have been just strong enough to cause partial cell death/separation, but not total celular erasure. Although this is less likely, it is still a possibility, and thus one cannot deductively state that Godzilla does in fact scale to the strength of a black hole. Herein is the primary issue I have with power scaling--it is not as deductive as some may claim, only inductive based upon sources of varying validity and reliability.