Howdy!
Since my Korokuma blog dropped, there’ve been a few things that I’ve seen popping up in discussion that I would like to further elaborate on, if not outright correct. I’ll only be covering talking points that I’ve actually seen and can respond to meaningfully, as well as questions or topics that I may have thought of myself whilst reading through the blog post-release. I still stand by the general verdict. Nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind on that front yet. But I’d rather take the time to address some concerns rather than simply leave them unsettled.
Diving Deeper into Mach 20
The claim that Mach 20 as a statistical cap should be disregarded is one that’s been met with mixed reactions across the board. Some people find Mach 20 as a narrative cap to be something incredibly difficult to look past. I have admittedly very strong feelings towards this topic in particular, since I feel that people’s insistence on using Mach 20 reflects an odd lapse in what is generally considered the norm in the VS community. I’m simply trying to look at the character from the most unbiased and zoomed-out lens that I can, treating them as if they’re basically any other fictional character.
It’s important that we are on the same page about two very important logical throughlines. Firstly, visible proof should generally be given more credit than statements. And second, a statement that is said multiple times isn’t any more true than if it was said once. I would hope that both of these statements are generally agreeable and do not need much elaboration.
One of the core things that people often latch onto with Mach 20 is the sheer quantity of times in which it’s referred to in the narrative. Almost any time Korosensei’s speed is brought up in conversation, it’s referred to as Mach 20, even by Korosensei himself. However, it’s important to think through the basic throughline of validating information from second hand sources; where did they get their information from?
For Mach 20, that’s the government at the beginning of the series, who presumably got the measurement from Korosensei himself. Whether that’s through physical measurements or just taking Koro’s word on it is up to interpretation, but either way the information comes from one specific spot at the beginning of the series. The government makes no further attempts to further fact-check Korosensei’s speed after their initial surmisal, at least that we see. Mach 20 was simply told to the students, the main speaking voices of the series, and they refer to it as such because, well, that’s what they think the speed is! None of them make any active measures to recalculate Korosensei’s speed after the first measurements given to them, as far as we’re shown.
The Reaper’s stated top speed of Mach 40 also stems from this initial reveal. Since the Reaper was modeled off of Korosensei, and Yanagisawa never showed any signs of clocking Korosensei’s speed to check for certain, it’s likely that it was simply made to be superior to Korosensei himself rather than by attempting to reach a specific speed. Mach 40 was likely attributed to it after it was created as a means to display that it was faster, albeit by an arbitrary amount. At the end of the day, comparing it to Korosensei, who dodged Yanagisawa’s light in the Reaper’s only fight as a tentacle monster, should be enough to disprove the notion that it’s Mach 40. A statement that’s made at the start of the fight and then immediately disproven less than five minutes into the fight should not be taken with any shred of sincerity.
Every single mention of Mach 20 ultimately stems from that one interaction at the beginning of the series. And, if that interaction ends up being proven to be inaccurate, then the entire house of cards comes falling down around it as well. I simply think that, given all of the evidence towards the contrary, insisting that Korosensei caps at Mach 20 simply due to this one repeated sentiment is hard to take seriously when given the sheer quantity of feats that blatantly surpass it.
Let’s take an example that I feel that many of you will be familiar with and use that as a jumping-off point.
Batman is a character that has been analyzed to death. We all know how he generally operates. He’s a simple character, at least in terms of his core identity.
Through incarnation after incarnation, one thing always remains the same about Batman: he’s only human. Peak human, absolutely, but human nevertheless. He may have one-off stints where he temporarily gains powers, or suits that grant him the ability to box with the big boys, but at his core he’s a street tier vigilante with no superhuman or unnatural powers. He’s been threatened by guns, bombs, and other relatively mundane things as if they were genuine threats to his life. He’s athletic, smart, and unfathomably rich, but underneath the cowl is Bruce Wayne, a human at the end of it all.
In spite of this, Batman has undeniably performed superhuman feats that simply do not coincide with that assertion. He’s punched through concrete walls with minimal effort. He’s been at the epicenter of massive bombs that turned everything around him to rubble. He survived atmospheric reentry, landing on his feet like some kind of cryptid. Nothing about that is even remotely human. Yet the narrative still insists that he is.
It’s not that Batman isn’t human. It’s just that the narrative’s definition of what a “peak human” might be capable of is incredibly hyperbolized to the point where it appears blatantly superhuman. And, generally speaking, we’re fine with that. We’re fine with Batman being superhuman in terms of feats and scaling because diminishing him to simply what has been stated about him ignores everything we’ve seen about him and, ultimately, flies in the face of what it means to do these research analyses in the first place. We aren’t interested in their average. We aren’t interested in what’s been told to us about them, or what would realistically make sense for them to be capable of doing. We want to know what they’re truly capable of. What they’ve done. How they’ve defied their preconceived limitations and performed beyond what the narrative generally reflects. We care about seeing characters at their true, unhindered, unrealistic strongest.
At least, that’s what I care about.
“Korosensei is only Mach 20” is a statement with a similar context surrounding it as “Batman is only human.” It’s not a perfect comparison, but both take the massively perpetuated stigma surrounding the character and view them as fact rather than giving the character their due credits and properly considering what they are visibly and provably able to accomplish. In the same way that DC’s definition of “peak human” is hyperbolized, perhaps Matsui’s definition of “Mach 20” is similarly hyperbolized? That’s at least one way of looking at it that I’ve considered. At the very least, in both instances, the two statements are hard to take 100% seriously when considering the piles of evidence contradicting them. And, generally speaking, it should be easier to ignore a statement than it is to ignore several feats.
We’ve done this song and dance, specifically with anime speed caps, several times in the past. Prime All Might has a stated top speed of Mach 10, Naoya Zenin has a stated top speed of Mach 3, Jotaro has a stated top speed of 1c… yet these are all numbers that have been canonically breached. In all situations, we ignore these statements because they do not reflect the visibly fastest speeds we see in the verse. The only difference between these examples and Korosensei is the number of times the statement is repeated, and, as we established before, repeating a statement should not make it any more true.
At the end of the day, Mach 20 is an arbitrary number that’s adhered to as often as it is ignored. The mental gymnastics needed to dismiss every single instance of Korosensei surpassing it as outliers, fraudulent, or otherwise inapplicable are much greater than simply accepting the fact that the estimate is not reliable. Despite the repeated nature of the statement across the series, it is simply incompatible with the reality that the manga depicts.
UDG Missiles
This is something that I didn’t really touch on in the blog, and I feel like you’d understand why if you read the section on the Hacking Gun. Long story short, during Toko and Komaru’s fight with Masaru Daimon, Daimon’s mech is capable of shooting missiles at the pair. By comparing the speed of Komaru's shots from the Hacking Gun to the speed of the missiles, you get relativistic kinetic energy that, on impact, distributes over a hundred megatons of TNT in force.
I think this is bogus for the same reason that I think Hannibal X’s tandem movement is bogus. The missiles are likely meant to be taken at their literal speeds in gameplay, and comparing them to the Hacking Gun’s EMP waves is an assumption that has no real grounds to be made other than as an attempt to buff the verse via a screwy interpretation of in-game mechanics. Not much else to be said.
Korosensei’s Tornado Calc
I’m gonna be up-front with you. I goofed.
When calculating the cloud-split caused by Korosensei’s tornado, I assumed that there were no more clouds visible in the sky after the feat was finished, based on the sunny skies present after the fact. This is visibly untrue, as you can make out some clouds in the back during the final shot.
Here’s a recalc that accounts for the visible clouds, as well as adjusting a few other factors to make it more consistent with the other cloud calcs I’ve done (including BBM.) I got 2.75 megatons. A somewhat significant downgrade, but the calc is a low end regardless.
A Message
There’ve been a lot of, putting it bluntly, worrying comments that I’ve seen in regards to this blog. Nothing as severe as targeted harassment, but just a generally dismissive and hostile sentiment that isn’t healthy nor productive towards the conversation. Some of them came from people that I genuinely thought better of and were only brought to my attention by a third party due to them choosing to badmouth me behind my back rather than discuss their disagreements with me normally. It kind of stung, honestly. I’m disappointed that this is the response that an alternative take spawned, but I can’t exactly say I’m surprised.
I never meant to insinuate that my word is law or that I’m objectively more correct than others. I make mistakes; the tornado calc should be proof of that. I never pretended that I was perfect. I don’t think anyone who makes blogs does. This is a hobby that is ultimately founded on differing opinions, and if you can’t express them in a constructive and non-hostile manner then I frankly don’t think this is the community for you. If this is the kind of response that I’m going to be getting, then I’m starting to feel much more validated in my decision to effectively retire.
Thank you to those of you who read and appreciated the blog, and especially thank you to those of you who dropped some kind words about it, both publicly and privately. You all are the reason I like doing this kind of thing, and as long as that communicative spirit remains alive to some degree, I’ll probably be sticking around, regardless of the vocal outliers.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care if the blog sells you or not. Of course, I make them with the general intent to portray my point of view, and I try to word my arguments in a way that would allow somebody to be convinced by them, but I never expect my projects to be earthshaking adjustments to the status quo or anything. But, if you do end up disagreeing for whatever reason, please keep it constructive, civil, and polite. Making ad hominem attacks without even explaining why you disagree does nothing to help any side of the conversation.
Again, if you have any further questions or concerns, please take it up in the Discord. I probably won’t release a second follow-up to the blog unless it’s something critical, but I’m open to having my mind changed regardless.
Take care, and I'll see you when I see you.
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