Death Battle Predictions: Erza VS Satsuki

 

“If the fire in your heart is strong enough, it will burn away any obstacles that come your way.”
-Suzy Kassem

Erza Scarlet, Fairy Tail’s enduring warrior mage and Fairy Queen.

Satsuki Kiryūin, Kill La Kill’s ambitious head of the Kiryūin conglomerate.

Stoic and serious, relentless and unyielding, and the pinnacle of strength – at least, that’s how the protag sees them at first. These two are deadly with a blade and draw incomparable power from the outfits they wear, but their standoffish exteriors bely a strong sense of justice and fierce loyalty to their comrades… no thanks to their absolutely rotten mothers, of course. It’s Titania of the Fairy Tail Guild VS Honnōji Academy’s student council president - will Erza’s Requip magic overcome Junketsu, or will Satsuki leave even an S-class mage crushed under her heel? Let blades clash and sparks fly, as we find out who would win a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

General

As was the case with our recent Ultron VS Brainiac blog, this blog is a collab between two of our core members rather than a blog that includes a full team of volunteers. Small formatting discrepancies should thus be expected.

Erza

The Key of the Starry Sky arc from the anime is canon, as it is directly referenced in the manga with Zentopia being explicitly shown. The Eclipse Celestial Spirits arc from the anime is canon, as Hisui was established to be a Celestial Mage in this arc, something later referenced in the manga. The Dragon Cry movie is canon, as the Fourth Generation Dragon Slayers from it were referenced in 100 Year Quest. The Phoenix Priestess movie is canon, with the titular character Éclair making an appearance in Natsu’s personal afterlife, as one of his comrades who fell in battle.

Satsuki

Kill La Kill: IF, the arena fighting video game, is canon to the original series. Studio Trigger’s Hiromi Wakabayashi considers the game and the anime to be in the same universe and part of the same story, and it’s described as a story that happened, but with no time left to depict it in the show despite Kazuki Nakashima, the writer of Kill La Kill, having these events playing out in his head. The game is also completely overseen by Nakashima and is described as an alternate scenario following up on the anime’s eighth episode, with specific mention brought up to the secret of the Primordial Life Fiber that was never revealed in the original anime.

Background

Erza

• Full Name: Erza Scarlet

• Age: 22 years

• AKA: Titania, Fairy Queen, Dancing Devil

• S-Class mage & 7th Guildmaster of Fairy Tail

• Member of Team Natsu

• Likes: Strawberry cake, cheesecake, soufflé, inappropriate novels, Jellal

• Dislikes: Evil (omg no way)

Hundreds of years ago, in the distant kingdom of Dragnof, dragons and humans lived together in harmony. Peaceful and without trouble, no one would have guessed that such a country would give rise to one of the most dangerous women to ever wield magic: the Queen of Dragons, Irene Belserion. While Irene was never a villain originally, having fought for her kingdom against an invasion of man-eating dragons, the Dragon Slayer power with which she was implanted began to turn her into a dragon herself. Humiliated and tortured for three years by a husband who saw her as a monster, Irene’s transformation eventually became complete, and her escape was mired in fire and blood. 

For hundreds of years, Irene remained in hiding, pregnant with a child but unwilling to give birth as a dragon rather than a human. Eventually, however, her body was - somewhat - restored by an encounter with the Black Mage, Zeref, who gave her human form but was unable to free her of the physical sensations that came with being a dragon. Driven mad by obsession, Irene finally gave birth to her daughter, whom she believed that she could transfer herself into, regaining a human body. When this failed, she discarded the girl like trash, leaving her to grow up alone in the small town of Rosemary Village. This little girl’s name was Erza.

Unfortunately it doesn’t end with “and then she grew up and lived happily ever after”, as this orphan got two tragic backstories for the price of one (worst rewards membership ever). As a young girl, Erza and the village’s other children were kidnapped by a cult devoted to Zeref, and imprisoned as slaves for the sake of building a tower to resurrect him. Forced into brutal labor and tortured for ever stepping out of line, the only silver lining was the new friends that Erza met, including a young boy named Jellal, who gave her a new surname based on the color of her hair. Eventually, a revolt was staged, and upon awakening her latent magical power, Erza Scarlet led her fellows to freedom at only 11 years old. Of course, not everyone could escape unchanged, as Jellal was manipulated into believing he was possessed by the evil spirit of Zeref, and cast her out of the tower, severing their friendship for years to come.

Emotionally broken and alone, Erza washed up on the beaches of Fiore, and soon was taken in by the Fairy Tail magician’s guild, gaining new comrades to fight alongside to replace the old ones - the Fire Dragon Slayer Natsu, the Ice Make Mage Gray, the Celestial Spirit Mage Lucy, and many, many others. Among Fairy Tail’s mercenaries, Erza became a steadfast and powerful warrior, though for a long time, could never quite mend her wounded heart from her experiences in the tower. Distant and stoic, she rarely opened up to her fellow guildmates, building a literal and metaphorical armor around her heart, to avoid reexperiencing the pain she had been subjected to.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, nobody can truly hide from their problems forever. When Jellal reemerged to enact his plans and resurrect Zeref, Erza was forced to confront the people she had said goodbye to years before, both friend and foe. And in the face of this experience, she broke down that armor around her heart - both literally and metaphorically - fighting without fear, regret, or weakness to protect the new friends who had become her family. From then on, whether fighting dark guilds, evil mages, monsters, Dragon Gods, or even Irene herself - Erza Scarlet’s convictions and will to protect her comrades would never falter again.

Satsuki

• Full Name: Satsuki Kiryūin

• Age: 18 years

• AKA: Lady Satsuki

• Former student council president of Honnōji Academy

• Sister of Ryūko Matoi

• Likes: Tea, Nonon (Rina that’s not canon you can’t just-)

• Dislikes: Ragyō

Millennia ago, an alien being known as the Primordial Life Fiber crash landed on Earth. From it sprung Life Fibers, parasitic beings resembling threads of clothing which infest planetary lifeforms and breed by devouring, using the electrical current of the creature's nervous system. However, because the host can’t handle the strain of wearing a Life Fiber internally, they instead decided to cover the host externally. The Life Fibers primarily attached themselves to Homo sapiens since they possessed the most well developed brains at the time, and sped up their evolutionary process. Life Fibers remained dormant as centuries went by, and so it was the duty of the Kiryūin clan to keep the Primordial Life Fiber safe, with only the current elder of the family being allowed to witness its awakening.

Enter Ragyō Kiryūin, previous head of the Kiryūin clan and contender for worst mother of the century. After awakening the Primordial Life Fiber from its slumber, she became power hungry, and plotted to take over the world using Life Fibers. She eventually met a man by the name of Sōichirō and married him, using his incredible scientific knowledge to conduct experiments on Life Fibers. Soon enough, Ragyō decided to go further and even crueler with her experiments, wanting to fuse Life Fibers with living organisms. Her first subject? Her very own first born daughter. This was Satsuki Kiryūin.

Fortunately for Satsuki, she was too old for the process to work. Unfortunately, Ragyō decided to use her second born child as a test subject right after she exited the womb. The child was deemed a failure still, and as a result was discarded by Ragyō. Sōichirō, realizing Ragyō’s true nature, secretly plotted against his wife to rebel against her and all Life Fibers. Alongside Satsuki, Sōichirō would raise the baby whose death he faked for the next 5 years. Eventually, he set his plan into motion, but knew well it would most likely result in death. As such, he told the young Satsuki the truth about Life Fibers, its research, her future wedding dress Junketsu, and her mother’s true ambitions before leaving. A lot for a 5 year old to take in if that wasn’t clear.

Despite spending most of her life being raised by Ragyō, Satsuki took her father’s words to heart and began setting the stage for her rebellion against her mother with her best friend and crush Nonon (RINAAAA-). She traveled to numerous other high schools in Japan and began recruiting other skilled students to join her cause. First was Ira Gamagōri, whom she helped save a young boy from death and tested his resolve. Next was Hōka Inumuta, whose hacking skills she found most useful. Finally, there was Uzu Sanageyama, the Northern Kanto Gang Leader Alliance Representative with impressive sword skills. She made these four her personal Elite Four and founded Honnōji Academy, becoming its student council president.

Satsuki ruled over Honnōji and the surrounding neighborhoods owned by the school with an iron fist, distributing power-granting Goku Uniforms to Student Council members and club leaders so they could fight for their school in violent but managed environments. Her rule and respect went unquestioned and unchallenged until the unexpected arrival of Ryūko Matoi, a transfer student following a lead on the murderer of her father. Although proving insignificant at first, Ryūko managed to gain possession of a Kamui known as Senketsu, rising up the challenges and proving herself a potential hindrance to Satsuki’s plans. As a result, Satsuki barged into the Kiryūin mansion and took Junketsu for herself, wearing it from then on to combat Ryūko and those who opposed her.

After several weeks of conflict and planning, Satsuki and the Elite Four organized the Great Culture and Sport Festival, a cover for Ragyō's plan to unleash Life Fibers and COVERS throughout the city. Seizing the opportunity she sought for her entire life, Satsuki literally backstabbed her mother and announced to the world her rebellion against Ragyō and REVOCS. Unfortunately, Ragyō proved too much for her, and she was promptly defeated. Not to mention the shock of Ryūko being her long lost little sister, which probably didn’t help. In the end, Satsuki was stripped of Junketsu, captured, and tortured under Ragyō for over a month. However, the fangs of rebellion never wavered, and Satsuki eventually broke free from Ragyō’s prison. When Ryūko was manipulated and turned mad by Ragyō, Satsuki had to do the unthinkable and wear Senketsu for a change. Despite losing their battle, Satsuki found the opening needed to help Ryūko break free and return to her normal self.

When all was said and done, before the final battle against Ragyō, Satsuki apologized for everything she did, and admitted that her methods were extreme and her actions villainous. She offered Ryūko the opportunity to punch her in the face to prove her sincerity, and, after a few failed attempts due to the overprotective Elite Four, Ryūko took her up on the offer. However, Ryūko couldn’t bring herself to do it, and forgave Satsuki. Ultimately, the two teamed up to take down their evil mother, and despite all the trials and tribulations it took to get that far, they both prevailed, saving the world from the threat of Life Fibers. In the end, Satsuki’s ambition was achieved, and she attended Rinne High School alongside her sister, finally able to live her life as a normal girl.

Experience & Skill

Erza

Erza has been a member of Fairy Tail ever since childhood, and is considered among the guild’s strongest and most capable members, comparable in stature to Laxus and Mystogan, and explicitly inferior only to Gildarts and the Guildmaster Makarov, though the hierarchy may have shifted around somewhat in recent times. As an S-ranked mage, Erza is allowed to embark on missions much too difficult for the majority of guild members, and over the years has acquired not only incredible skill with a blade, but also remarkable tactical skills and judgement.

She can sword fight with one hand, two hands, and even her feet, and her skill exceeds other bladed weapon specialists like Panther Lily, even by his own admission. She was able to singlehandedly beat 100 monsters back to back, and match expert swordswomen like Kagura Mikazuchi, who is skilled enough to fight with a sheathed sword. Erza is also skilled in hand-to-hand combat, having fought Azuma in close quarters and taken down entire groups of Alvarez soldiers barehanded. Perhaps most impressively, in general combat she was able to hold her own against Irene, who had four centuries of magical experience.

Satsuki

Satsuki has been a very talented fighter throughout most of her life and is one of the greatest in her series. Even in middle school, she was capable of defeating Uzu Sanageyama (7:31), a master swordsman and one of the most well-respected gang leaders within the Kanto Region, who personally trained 500 hundred martial artists at the age of 15 (6:46). Her skill only increased with age, as not only could Sanageyama still not keep up with her despite his increasing skill and MK 1 Goku Uniform, but she could also match Ryūko, another highly skilled and proficient fighter. Even when facing up against thousand year old enemies like the Primordial Life Fiber, Satsuki is able to hold her own and prevail.

She’s also a master tactician, often devising plans within plans within plans to disguise her true motives until the absolute last second, striking her opponent when they least expect it. The biggest example is her rebellion against Ragyō, where she hid her true intentions from her mother for years, carefully manipulating both her and those around her. She even devised a scheme to take over the several remaining schools in Japan outside of her control when in reality she wanted to fish out the secret rebellion fighting against her from hiding, Nudist Beach, managing to succeed in both (21:45).

Abilities

Erza

Magic

As is the case with all mages in Fairy Tail, Erza’s superhuman powers and physical attributes are the result of her manipulation over magic. In the Fairy Tail world, magic is performed through manipulation of magical particles called ethernanos, which are absorbed into one’s body from the atmosphere. By controlling this magical power, the mage can implement it to conjure specific effects. Being able to do so is relatively rare, however; only 10% of the world’s population is able to use magic.

This power is tied to the user’s life force, and each time a mage uses their magic powers, the reserve of magic in their body decreases, requiring some time to restore itself by taking in more ethernanos from the atmosphere. Expending too much magical power leads to a decrease in both physical ability and stamina, and recharging or absorbing more power conversely increases both. Emotions are also incredibly important to the strength of one’s magic, and especially strong feelings or desires can allow a mage to increase their power output or push through extreme conditions or fatigue. Some mages have even managed to keep fighting or tank strong attacks while their magic was almost or entirely gone.

Various mages in Fairy Tail are depicted as being capable of sensing magical energy, allowing them to do things such as gauge the strength of other mages.

The magic “container” inside a mage’s body can only hold a certain amount of magic at a time, but this power can be increased through unlocking their Second Origin, which refers to an additional, typically unused part of this container that contains dormant magical power. Erza’s Second Origin was forcibly unlocked through Ultear’s Arc of Time, which granted her magical reserves vast enough to utilize the Nakagami Armor, which had not been done in over ten years due to the extreme extent of its magic consumption.

It should also be noted that the quantity of ethernanos in a mage’s proximity can increase or decrease their magical abilities, with the parallel worlds Edolas and Elentear having a much lower and higher quantity of magic respectively, leading to mages being powerless in the former and stronger in the latter. Ethernanos can also vary in density between localized areas. In an area of extremely high density, it is possible for a mage’s magic to become “maxed out”, exceeding their full capacity and reaching a point where they are unable to use magic at all. In this event, however, it is possible to enter a state called Limit Break, in which the mage taps into power beyond their normal limits for a short time period.

Requip: The Knight

Erza’s primary style of magic, Requip, refers to the ability to store weapons and other equipment in the user’s personal pocket space, as well as transfer that equipment to and from said pocket dimension during combat. This allows the user incredible versatility and flexibility in battle, as they are able to adapt their approach in response to the situation, or rapidly switch between various equipment to vary their attack patterns.

Erza’s unique form of Requip magic is known as The Knight, and is focused specifically on armors and bladed weapons (other types of Requip magic specialize in other types of weapons, like firearms for instance). While there is a limit to the number of weapons and armors that Erza’s pocket dimension can store, she is stated to possess over 100 armors (including things like dresses and kimonos) and 200 weapons. While switching armors and weapons in and out depletes Erza’s magic reserves, she is capable of doing so many times in quick succession without tiring.

Enchantment

Enchant Magic refers to a branch of magic that focuses on imbuing a person or object with magical energy in order to achieve a desired effect. This can range from increasing one’s magical power, to more esoteric effects like transferring minds or nullifying magic reserves. Erza learned how to perform Enchant Magic from fellow Fairy Tail mage Wendy Marvell, who is an expert at the art. Erza is skilled enough to perform High Enchant, which allows her to imbue her swords with the magic of others, including Natsu’s fire and Gray’s ice, or Jellal’s Heavenly Body Magic, which channels the power of astronomical objects.

Artificial Eye

As she lost her eye while imprisoned as a child, Erza was later implanted with an artificial eye by Fairy Tail’s medicinal advisor, Porlyusica. This eye can see just as effectively as a normal one, and is immune to the effects of ocular-focused magic, such as illusions. This trait also halved the duration of petrification via Evergreen’s stone eyes, which affect their target upon making eye contact.

Inhuman Endurance

Of particular note among Erza’s many superhuman attributes is her incredible resilience. She is capable of fighting through incredible pain, injury, and inhospitable conditions through sheer willpower, often born from a desire to protect those she cares about. For example, she was able to survive Kyôka’s torture for a lengthy period of time, even when her pain receptors were increased to such a sensitivity that minor sensations caused agonizing pain, and then further amplified beyond this. This eventually reached a point where a slight breeze could cause agony, and she was feeling pain equivalent to having portions of her body blown away, on top of having all five of her senses shut off. Despite this, she was able to power through and win the fight.

Similarly, she managed to continue fighting and destroy Irene’s Deus-Sama meteor with most of her bones broken, and endured torture within Misaki’s Azure Dimension, which amplified seconds of torture to be equivalent to hours. Even in the face of receiving the equivalent of 24 hours of continuous torture, Erza described Misaki’s attempts as “weak sauce” (this might be a translation thing haha) and still managed to defeat Misaki regardless.

Concept Enchantment: Spirit Arts

At one point in 100 Year Quest, Wendy bestowed Erza with something called a concept enchantment, in which she applied the “concept” of an energy called Spiria to her, allowing Erza to cut through and destroy life forms created through spiritual powers that could otherwise not be conventionally eliminated. It is unclear if this was permanent or not; given most of Wendy’s enchantments are temporary, it may not have been.

Resistances

Illusions: See Artificial Eye section.

Mind Manipulation: Unaffected by Evergreen’s remote control ability.

Power Nullification: Thanks to her emotional connection with her comrades in the guild, Azuma’s attempt to seize full control over her magic power and negate it was ineffective, though it’s worth noting that this was somewhat contextual due to the unusual properties of Tenrou Island, and she was affected by Marin Hollow’s power nullification later on.

Soul Manipulation: Comparable to Natsu, Lucy, and Happy, who were all able to resist Franmalth’s soul removal via willpower.

Dehydration: Resisted Ajeel’s attempt to dehydrate her.

Extreme Heat & Cold: Withstood E.N.D. Natsu’s fire and I.D.S. Gray’s ice.

Satsuki

Light Manipulation

On multiple occasions in the series, whenever Satsuki makes a dramatic entrance, light inexplicably shines around her and in the surrounding area. Characters are blinded by this in multiple instances, meaning it should be genuine light. There’s no real explanation for this happening.

Air Manipulation

With sheer willpower, Satsuki is capable of creating high pressure air bursts that blow away the surrounding area and several people, even when she was a child. This isn’t just limited to willpower either, as even powerful enough sword swings can generate high speed air slashes that create shockwaves and powerful air pressures (14:46).

Resistances

Mind Manipulation: Goku Uniforms composed of 50% Life Fibers can overwhelm someone's mind to the point of becoming a berserk monster (6:23 - 7:14), and even weaker Life Fibers can take over the minds of people (9:24). Given Junketsu is a Kamui composed of 100% Life Fibers (3:56), he should have a similar ability, yet Satsuki was able to resist his influences and wear him properly just on her first go.

Extreme Heat: Survived being in the middle of a large fire tornado with no noticeable burns (15:47) and scales to Ryūko, who could grab her Scissor Blades despite them being caught on fire from reentering the atmosphere.

Spatial Manipulation: Can survive attacks from the Primordial Life Fiber, which was capable of causing spatial ruptures and destroying Junketsu’s time-space.

Equipment

Erza

Summoned Weapons

While armor-specific weapons will be cataloged under the armor that they are correlated with, it is important to keep in mind that Erza has access to hundreds of weapons at any given time. This ranges from swords, to lances, to axes, to giant hammers, on top of many other miscellaneous options that she has at her beck and call. Since these weapons are conjured through Requip magic, they are magical in nature and can deliver strikes that are enhanced beyond the capability of a normal equivalent.

Heart Kreuz Armor

Erza’s standard armor set that she typically wears both in and out of combat. Designed by the Heart Kreuz fashion company, this armor was custom-made for Erza at her own request, and she has progressed through five different models over the years. The armor consists of a metal breastplate, shoulder guards, and plated gauntlets, providing sturdy protection for her arms and torso. 

Beyond basic protection, the armor lacks specific functionality, so Erza tends to switch out of it should the situation call for something beyond basic swordplay.

Heaven’s Wheel Armor

One of Erza’s most commonly used armors, in addition to granting protection and allowing her to fly, the Heaven’s Wheel Armor grants Erza the ability to manifest and telekinetically manipulate numerous airborne swords. This allows her to command many more blades than she normally would be able to, slashing from a distance with greater flexibility in attack patterns. Notable attacks include:

Heaven’s Wheel: Blumenblatt: Erza charges at the opponent and performs a slash with the two swords she wields in her hands, before following up with a slash from her telekinetically controlled swords, inflicting additional damage.

Heaven’s Wheel: Circle Sword: Erza positions her airborne swords in a circle around her, before making them spin around her body rapidly, functionally creating a sort of buzzsaw which is then launched toward the opponent.

Heaven’s Wheel: Trinity Sword: By slashing at the opponent, Erza creates a projectile-esque sword slash that is shaped like a delta, slicing into the target from afar.

Heaven’s Wheel: Pentagram Sword: A similar technique to Trinity Sword; Erza instead creates a pentagram-shaped sword slash by slicing her swords.

Black Wing Armor

The Black Wing Armor grants Erza large bat-like wings which allow her to fly, as well as bladed weapons unique to the armor, including a sword or dual axes depending on Erza’s preference in the situation. The armor also allows her to strike with greater power. With Black Wing: Moon Flash, Erza slashes twice, producing two sword beams in the form of a cross pattern, cutting the target two times in one go. This also can take the form of a charge attack.

Flame Empress Armor

The Flame Empress Armor grants Erza pyrokinetic attacks, producing and manipulating fire for offensive purposes. On top of this, it grants her increased resistance to flame and heat, even on the level that a Fire Dragon Slayer like Natsu is able to produce. With this armor, Erza can perform Flame Empress: Soaring Fire Blade, an attack in which she slashes upward to hit the target, producing a spiral of fire that blasts them upward.

Giant Armor

In addition to making her look like a giant bumblebee with hands and feet 10 sizes too big (seriously what is this design-) the Giant Armor grants Erza increased strength, with the gauntlets on her hands specifically allowing her to charge up and hurl a projectile with immense force. As for the projectile, the armor comes equipped with a large spear called the De-Malevo-Lance, which is designed to destroy dark powers, and can be thrown with immense force. This lance was strong enough to shatter a barrier covering an entire island.

Adamantine Armor

An armor that exists exclusively for defensive purposes, Erza conjures the Adamantine Armor in the event that she needs to withstand a powerful hit. The armor was durable enough to barely withstand a blast from the Jupiter Cannon, as well as attacks from characters like Byro Cracy (17:25), a Gildarts-level foe. In the event that the armor is not large enough to block an attack, Erza can manifest an equally durable Adamantine Barrier in front of herself to block with (12:12), or portions of the armor as a shield, the latter of which is sufficient to withstand blows from Dark Dragon Slayer Knights like Misaki.

Purgatory Armor

Though presumably one of Erza’s most powerful armors, and stated to be so fearsome that nobody who had ever seen the armor survived the encounter, the Purgatory Armor was immediately oneshot by Ikaruga, and also proved ineffective against Azuma later on in the anime. According to Mirajane, despite its early hype, the Purgatory Armor is weaker than the Armadura Fairy, and by extension would also be weaker than Erza’s even stronger options such as the Clear Heart Clothing and Nakagami Armor. Regardless, it has a giant spiked mace that Erza can attack with, so that’s cool I guess.

Clear Heart Clothing

Arguably Erza’s strongest armor (the only other candidate being the Nakagami Armor) despite ironically not being an armor at all, the Clear Heart Clothing lacks special properties, discarding defense in the name of pure offense. Symbolically, the use of the Clear Heart Clothing represents Erza shedding the walls she had built around her heart, fighting without inhibition nor fear of getting hurt, in order to protect the people she cares about. It’s in the name - “Clear Heart”. The power boost she gets from this is immense, allowing her to contend with and overcome Kagura, who had oneshot many of Erza’s strongest and most durable armors immediately beforehand.

When using the Clear Heart Clothing, Erza’s weapon of choice is the Demon Blade Benizakura, into which she focuses all of her magical power for maximum attack power. The blade is shaped like a katana, and can also be used with other armors. With it, Erza can perform attacks such as Dragon-Slaying Blade: Belserion, specifically advantageous against dragons, which was originally achieved with an enchantment from Wendy. Benizakura can also be used for incredibly powerful slashing attacks of a more generic nature, such as Benizakura Flash.

Thanks to Erza’s own Enchant Magic, while using the Clear Heart Clothing she can imbue her blades with Natsu’s fire magic and Gray’s ice magic, referred to as Fire Dragon’s Flames and Ice Devil’s Chill, especially effective against dragons and devils respectively. With the two combined, Erza can perform attacks like Icefire Blade, striking with both elements simultaneously.

Lightning Empress Armor

Much like the Flame Empress Armor but themed around electricity instead, the Thunder Empress Armor allows Erza to attack with lightning, and grants her high resistance to electrical attacks, even those used by lightning mages as powerful as Laxus.

Flight Armor

Erza’s Flight Armor is all about speed, boosting her agility and rate of movement to match faster adversaries. The boost she received from it was sufficient to match the speed of Racer, a member of Oración Seis who fights by slowing down time for his opponents. With the Flight Armor, Erza can perform attacks such as Flight: Sonic Claw, where she blitzes an opponent at high speed and slashes them rapidly from many angles at once.

Robe of Yūen

The Robe of Yūen is a cloth-based “armor” which has elastic properties, allowing it to stretch to great lengths without being damaged. This came especially in handy against Midnight’s Reflector ability, which allowed him to twist and bind objects, which he attempted to use to bind Erza with her own armors. The robe also comes equipped with a pole weapon known as a Bisentō, which is a polearm tipped with a one-sided blade, similar to a spear.

Morning Star Armor

Erza’s Morning Star Armor comes equipped with two one-handed swords which can be used to produce light and energy blasts. By charging the two blades, Erza can perform Morning Star: Photon Slicer, an attack which produces bursts of photons to blast a foe. Even without the swords, she can emit light from her body bright enough to be seen through a sandstorm.

Armadura Fairy Armor

As it is named after the guild that Erza cares so much for, the Armadura Fairy Armor was once speculated to be Erza’s strongest armor by an alternate version of herself. While events since then make this claim dubious, the Armadura Fairy Armor is still clearly in the upper echelon of Erza’s options in terms of power, and she frequently makes use of it in especially serious situations where higher firepower is needed.

By charging her swords, Erza can create torrents of energy with the armor, powerful enough to destroy an entire floating island with an attack known as Fairy Burst. By enchanting her swords with Heavenly Body Magic, she is able to take this a step further and perform Fairy Blade: Meteor, an attack with speed and power presumably comparable to Jellal’s Meteor Magic.

Sea Empress Armor

Much like the other elemental empresses, the Sea Empress Armor gives Erza the ability to create and control water for her attacks, on top of high resistance to water-based attacks, making her a dangerous opponent for water mages like Juvia. Unlike the other elemental empresses, this one comes with a special weapon/ability called the Sea Empress Sword, which allows Erza to manifest a blade out of pure water with high cutting power, affecting targets that a normal sword would not, like sand for instance.

Seduction Armor

Because this is Fairy Tail.

Nakagami Armor

More than likely Erza’s actual strongest armor, with the Clear Heart Clothing being the only other one in serious contention. The Nakagami Armor is so powerful that it drains the user’s magic to a dangerous extent, making it impossible to use without immense magic reserves. Erza herself only gained the ability to use the armor after unlocking her Second Origin in the Grand Magic Games, becoming the first person in over ten years even capable of wearing it.

In terms of effect, in addition to a “peerless” blade (more specifically the armor uses a halberd), the Nakagami Armor possesses the power to dispel magic, nullifying a magical opponent’s offense while simultaneously bypassing any attempt to magically defend themself. This even allowed Erza to negate Minerva’s spatial magic, and perform a devastating slash called Nakagami: Starlight. While not explicitly stated, it is relatively likely that the Nakagami Armor is still significantly draining even for Erza, as evidenced by the fact that she has never used it for an extended period, only conjuring it on two occasions and winning quickly in both instances. It should be noted that the Nakagami Armor has never been defeated.

Samurai Armor

(Watch out!)

It’s a samurai armor that does samurai things. She used it in her battle against Eclipse Sagittarius, and for some reason it allows her to summon an artificial Metal Horse that for all intents and purposes acts like a real one.

…Can you tell this is from anime filler?

Strawberry Armor

It gives off a strawberry scent which can be used to attract monkeys. It also has a Strawberry Sword, which is a sword with a strawberry-shaped crossguard.

…Anime filler. Again.

Piercing Armor

An armor which comes equipped with a powerful Piercing Lance, which allows Erza to penetrate a target with immense force. The piercing power of this armor was great enough to puncture a giant hole through the enormous Plutogrim Cube.

Celestial Armor

Only used in the Dragon Cry movie, this armor allows Erza to use Heavenly Body Magic without requiring an enchantment. This form of magic allows her to channel the power of astronomical objects such as stars and meteors and such, enabling the use of attacks like Heavenly Body Magic: Grand Chariot, which forms a hole in the sky and blasts the target with an immense burst of energy.

Ataraxia Armor

An armor which manifests eight blades that float in midair behind Erza’s back. Similar to the Heaven’s Wheel Armor, these blades can “dance” in midair and attack multiple foes simultaneously. While some translations state that this armor allows Erza to cut an opponent without making contact with them, later official translations instead say that the armor can simply cut so quickly and smoothly that it remains undetected.

Wind God Armor

The Wind God Armor grants Erza the ability to attack with powerful wind magic, even to the point of overpowering Ajeel’s sand. It comes equipped with the Wind God Sword, a large broadsword that can produce powerful winds with every swing.

Thousand-Armed Armor

While the name is hyperbolic, Erza’s Thousand-Armed Armor grants her four additional artificial arms, allowing her to sword fight with three times the blades (plus maybe two more with her feet, some kind of “eight sword style” perhaps…?). Each arm can be moved separately due to each one being connected to its own “SE plug,” though Erza does note that this makes the armor a little heavy. With this armor, she can perform Thousand Arms: Evil Spirit Exorcism, which is a fancy way of saying she can slice the target real good with all her arms at once.

Satsuki

Junketsu

Translating to “purity” in Japanese, Junketsu is a living piece of clothing known as a Kamui, composed 100% of Life Fibers. Originally created by the Kiryūin family, Junketsu was intended to be worn by Satsuki when she was at the right age, her father calling it her “wedding dress.” However, Junketsu’s immense power made it uncontrollable, and thus it was sealed away in the Kiryūin Manor by Ragyō and kept under high security. Once Satsuki realized the power Ryūko had thanks to her own Kamui, she marched right into the manor to retrieve Junketsu despite her mother’s wishes. She soon gave it her blood, and through her sheer willpower, managed to tame Junketsu and keep his power under control.

As a Kamui, when Junketsu is fed blood, he transforms into a scanty outfit that increases his wearer’s physical prowess, enhancing Satsuki’s already insane strength. While Ryūko couldn’t unleash her own Kamui’s full power due to her embarrassment at its “exhibitionist” getup, Satsuki held no shame at her appearance, allowing her to easily access Junketsu’s full power. Aside from enhanced physicality, Junketsu can shapeshift its body for other purposes, such as turning its shoulder pads into a grappling hook (17:41) or a drill for extra piercing (19:52). Junketsu also offers multiple new forms for Satsuki to utilize depending on what suits the battle. Additionally, while Goku Uniforms can be unraveled by severing the Banshi thread connecting them (18:32), Kamui like Junketsu have several other Banshi threads, meaning it’ll take a lot of effort to unravel them (4:14 - 4:52)

Junketsu is shown to be under heavy restraint when not in use by Satsuki (5:38 - 5:51). This, along with Satsuki using the "Life Fiber Override" technique, implies Junketsu's personality is more feral and demonic, in contrast to Senketsu's more caring and calm personality. As such, instead of bonding with Satsuki, Junketsu must be tamed, having its ferocious nature subdued by Satsuki's willpower. Girl’s gotta girlboss.

Secret Sword Bakuzan

Satsuki’s primary weapon throughout the series. Despite its simple appearance, Bakuzan’s sharp edge is keener than Ryūko’s Scissor Blade, and it can cut through Life Fibers without issue, even from extremely durable threads from Kamui (21:43). Satsuki is extremely proficient with her blade, capable of slicing dozens of times in a second (2:10), and can swing her sword with such force that it can create shockwaves (21:52). Even after being split in two by Ragyō and becoming Bakuzan-Kouryu and Bakuzan-Gako, they’re still strong enough to slice through COVERS (5:10). It’s revealed that these two can mimic the Scissor Blade’s ability to nullify Life Fiber’s regeneration by cutting threads simultaneously, making them extremely efficient in cutting down Life Fibers and nearly any other material (3:21 - 3:50)

Fake Toenail

A fake toenail that Satsuki implemented. It has a sharp enough edge to cut through chains and Life Fibers, even from extremely durable beings like COVERS. No surprise there, given it’s made of the same material as Bakuzan (14:47 - 15:03).

Forms

Erza

None notable.

Satsuki

Junketsu Senpū

After having Ryūko’s blood and parts of Senketsu injected to it, not only was Junketsu made easier to tame, but he gained extra abilities and forms as a result. One of them was Junketsu Senpū (which translates to Whirlwind). Similar to Senketsu’s Shippū form, Junketsu Senpu allows Satsuki to fly into the air and combat overborne enemies while flying at blinding speeds.

Junketsu Senpū Zankan

The other form Junketsu gains, Senpū Zankan (translating to Whirlwind Slash) allows Junketsu to protrude blades around its body, acting as a greater offensive measure. When merged with Senpū, Satsuki can spin her body fast enough to act as a buzzsaw, perfect for greater ramming and cutting power (5:57)

Junketsu Shinzui

After Iori added repairs and enhancements to Junketsu from leftover Goku Uniforms, Satsuki managed to tap into its latent potential and achieve its ultimate form, Junketsu Shinzui (translating to Essence). Junketsu Shinzui equips Satsuki with a dual sided blade for greater coverage with her strikes, and Satsuki merely swinging it creates air slashes that travel the battlefield. The power in this form is so great, Satsuki was able to defeat the Primordial Life Fiber all by herself.

Feats

Erza

NOTE: The Fairy Tail planet is significantly larger than our own based on canonical distance statements (over 100,000 kilometers in diameter). This will be factored into calculations whenever appropriate, to ensure full comprehensiveness.

Overall

• Strongest woman in the Fairy Tail Guild

• Early in the series, considered on a similar level to Laxus and Mystogan, and only inferior to Makarov and Gildarts out of the entire Guild

• Aided in defeating Hades, the leader of Grimoire Heart

• Defeated 100 highly powerful monsters singlehandedly

• First mage able to wear the Nakagami Armor in over ten years

• Aided in battling the Celestial Spirit Beast in the anime

• Won a fight while all five of her senses were shut off, and her pain receptors were enhanced to the point that even a slight breeze would cause agonizing pain, with the actual reason given being “because she’s Erza”

• Aided in the battle against Acnologia

• Battled on even footing against Laxus and forced him to expend all his magic, albeit not before admitting defeat herself

• Frightening enough to make Natsu and Gray get along

• Defeated Natsu, Ikaruga, Evergreen, Midnight, Azuma, Cobra, Kagura, Minerva, Eclipse Sagittarius, Kyôka, Swan (not that one), Ajeel, Irene, Misaki, Signario Sisters

Power

• Casually lifted an enormous horn with one hand

• With Natsu’s help, shattered the large veil hanging over the island of Galuna

• Stated to have more raw power than Natsu during the Phantom Lords arc

• Stated to potentially have a chance of defeating Laxus during the Battle of Fairy Tail arc

• Destroyed 200 of the spheres composing Laxus’ Thunder Palace

• Clashed with Erza Nightwalker with enough force to destroy a huge floating island (7.64 kilotons of TNT - 65.9 kilotons of TNT)

• Cut through Hades’ magic chains

• Shattered the giant chains around the Infinity Castle (Fairy Tail episode 149)

• As of the Grand Magic Games, rated equally to Natsu and Elfman in attack power, and superior to Gray and Lucy

• Clashed repeatedly with Kagura on equal footing

• Stated to be equally matched with Minerva and Kagura during the Grand Magic Games

• Parried a slash from Kagura that carved through a portion of a city (41 kilotons of TNT); a slash from a still-sheathed sword (i.e. weaker than this one) had previously oneshot Erza’s own Adamantine Armor

• Parried a punch from a weakened Celestial Spirit Beast (Fairy Tail season 2 episode 43)

• Pierced through the enormous Plutogrim Cube with a spear (14.4 gigatons of TNT)

• Sliced through one of Ajeel’s airships

• Dispersed Ajeel’s town-sized sandstorm with Nakagami Armor (100.6 kilotons of TNT)

• Held back simultaneous attacks from E.N.D. Natsu and I.D.S. Gray

• Obliterated Irene’s enormous Deus Sama meteor, which was pulled from space and produced an enormous amount of fire upon entering the atmosphere, on top of causing a layer of clouds to form across the planet’s surface and producing an enormous smoke cloud in the anime

• Kinetic Energy: 52.3 petatons of TNT

• Fire: 14.4 petatons of TNT - 71.7 petatons of TNT

• Cloud Formation: 1.34 teratons of TNT

• Smoke Cloud: 3.2 zettatons of TNT

• Harmed Irene with a headbutt

• Harmed Post-SBT Dragon Form Acnologia with a hail of every weapon she possesses

• Made Laxus bleed with several Dragon Slayer magic enhanced slashes

• Overpowered and took control over Misaki’s Azure Dimension with her own magic

• Statement that Erza is stronger than Gray during the Dogramag Arc

Speed

• Fast enough to keep up with an early Natsu

• Kept up with Ikaruga’s FTE movements

• With Flight Armor, dodged an attack from the speed specialist of Oración Seis, Racer

• Kept up with Erza Nightwalker, who was able to react to and cut through Erza’s Photon Slicer attack (72% the speed of light)

• As of the Grand Magic Games, rated as the fastest of her team above Natsu, Gray, Lucy and Elfman

• Exchanged faster-than-eyesight blows with Kagura

• Reacted to being teleported in front of Kagura’s sword swing from a few centimeters away quickly enough to parry it

• Slashed Kagura too quickly for even Makarov to perceive with his eyes

• Pierced the Plutogrim Cube at hypersonic speeds (Mach 9.95)

• Dodged a barrage of attacks from Irene

• Reacted to and intercepted Irene’s Deus Sama meteor (46% the speed of light)

• Managed to react to a quickdraw strike from Suzaku, who immediately after was able to blitz Natsu

• Dodged attacks from Misaki while inside the Azure Dimension

Durability

• With Adamantine Armor, barely managed to block a blast from the Jupiter Cannon

• Withstood a blast of Laxus’ lightning

• Survived the backlash from destroying 200 of Laxus’ Thunder Palace spheres, with a single sphere’s worth of feedback being enough to oneshot weaker Fairy Tail members like Juvia and Bisca, and four spheres worth being enough to take down Gray

• Took part in a 24-hour endurance foot race against the rest of Fairy Tail, and never got tired throughout

• Survived her own island busting clash with Erza Nightwalker (7.64 kilotons of TNT - 65.9 kilotons of TNT)

• Survived Azuma’s Terra Clamare explosion, multiple times in a row (3.77 megatons of TNT)

• Blocked an attack from Byro Cracy, an enemy relative to Gildarts, with her Adamantine Armor (17:25)

• Unphased by having her Second Origin unlocked by Ultear’s magic, a process which causes immense pain and left the rest of Team Natsu feeling terrible and commenting about their joints aching

• As of the Grand Magic Games, rated as having the highest defensive power of her team above Natsu, Gray, Lucy and Elfman

• Survived a blast from Minerva that took out a large structure (13.8 tons of TNT - 119.25 tons of TNT)

• Endured Kyôka’s torture while her pain receptors were adjusted to maximum sensitivity, causing agonizing pain with every sensation; later survived further torture after having her sensitivity multiplied even further

• Endured attacks from Kyôka while her pain receptors were so enhanced that even a slight breeze was enough to cause “exquisite agony”

• Endured pain equivalent to having the side of her body blown away

• Endured the pain of having all her bones broken, and then got up and continued to fight

• Survived an attack from Misaki intended to destroy her entire body, and only had her armor broken

• Survived attacks from Misaki whilst inside her Azure Dimension, which imparts the equivalent of five hours worth of torture onto her

• Described 24 hours worth of torture as “weak sauce” (also endured the cringe of saying this)

• Survived being bombarded with attacks from the Azure Dimension itself

• Blocked an attack from a fully serious Misaki with an Adamantine shield

Satsuki

NOTE: Honnōji Academy is significantly larger than the previous calculations for its size have reached over the years (over 30 kilometers in diameter). This will be factored into calculations whenever appropriate, to ensure full comprehensiveness

Overall

• Became head of the Kiryūin conglomerate

• Successfully recruited Nonon, Gamagōri, Sanageyama, and Inumuta to become her personal Elite Four

• Founded Honnōji Academy

• Successfully tamed and wore Junketsu

• Took over all the schools in Japan

• Aided in the battle against Ragyō

• Saved the world from the threat of Life Fibers alongside Ryūko

• Defeated Ryūko, Gamagōri, Sanageyama, Ragyō, the Primordial Life Fiber

Power

• Clashing with Ryūko’s scissor blade creates an air pressure blast that blasts away students (21:52)

• Senketsu claims Satsuki is far above Ryūko’s current power (14:26)

• Satsuki and Ryūko create a massive air pressure blast with just their willpower (14:34) (1.14 tons of TNT)

• A sword strike forced Ryūko back and creates a powerful air pressure blast on contact with her scissor blade (14:45)

• Created a burst of dust by stabbing her sword to the ground (15:16)

• Tapped Ryūko with her sword hilt with enough force to send her flying (15:19)

• Sends Ryūko flying with a slash (15:38)

• Destroys part of a building, launching the debris so hard that they create dust explosions upon impact with the ground (16:22)

• Clashes with Ryūko craters the ground beneath them and creates air pressure blasts that blows away several students (20:25)

• Kicks Ryūko so hard that she creates a crater on the wall without making direct contact (20:50) (0.085 - 0.24 tons of TNT)

• Final clash with Ryūko creates air pressure that craters the ground around them and covers the entire arena they were fighting in (21:00) (231.3 megatons of TNT)

• Sanageyama admits she can kill him with just a teacup (6:10)

• During middle school, created a powerful airburst that knocked out 500 students (7:15)

• During middle school, pierced through Gamagōri’s armor with a sheathed sword (13:28)

• Her initial clash with Berserk Ryūko creates a huge burst of dust (15:22) (5.5 - 135.3 teratons of TNT)

• Clash with Berserk Ryūko launches giant pillars and creates a huge column of fire (15:48)

• Pillars: 1.6 teratons of TNT

• Fire: 1 gigaton of TNT

• Creates a large air pressure blast with her a sword swing (2:30)

• Topples the Tokyo Tower with a sword slash (17:13)

• Sends Ryūko flying with a kick (17:47)

• Stabs Ragyō, lifts her up, and throws her (21:30)

• Creates a large shockwave that blows away surrounding students (11:36)

• Sends Rei flying with a swing (17:22)

• Decapitates Ragyō (17:57)

• Cuts through COVERS with her toenail (14:50)

• Junketsu turned Satsuki’s dreams into a tangible alternate reality, which contains Earth and potentially far more

• Fought on par with Kisaragi Ryūko

Speed

• Performs multiple rapid sword swings in quick succession (14:52)

• Reacts to Ryūko’s counterattack without looking (15:04)

• Climbs up a building (fr fr)

• Reacts to and parries Ryūko’s sword swings (19:12)

• Narrowly dodges a slash from Ryūko and her Decapitation Mode technique in quick succession (19:41)

• During middle school, reacted to Sanageyama’s counterattack (7:31)

• Keeps pace with Berserk Ryūko (15:34)

• Slices up dozens of civilians possessions in seconds (2:10)

• Parries Ryūko’s attacks and moves just as fast as her (15:17)

• Dodges Ryūko’s sword strike (13:45)

• Keeps up with Nui in combat (17:12)

• Keeps pace with Ragyō’s flight speed (5:57)

Durability

• Blocked Ryūko’s counterattack, which created multiple bursts of dust to erupt around them (15:04)

• Survived a punch from Ryūko that craters the wall behind her without direct contact (20:44)

• Survives being in the epicenter of a massive air burst (21:00)

• Blocks a sword strike from Ryūko that craters the ground behind them (12:55)

• Withstood a sneak attack punch from Ragyō that sent her flying (18:51)

• Survives a brutal beatdown from Ragyō (19:43)

• Gets thrown by Ragyō to the edge of Ragyō Stadium, causing a large impact and crater (21:18)

• Withstood torture from Ragyō for over a month (13:25)

• Took a hit from Junketsu Ryūko that sends her flying and smacking her against a sheet of metal (5:34)

• Survives a beatdown from Junketsu Ryūko (8:51)

• Withstood a kick from Ragyō that creates a sonic boom (5:27)

• Survived a punch from Ragyō after she absorbed Rei (00:53)

• Survived attacks from Kisaragi Ryūko

Scaling

Erza

Overall

Erza is currently comparable to the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, based on her victory over Misaki. The four knights were all stated to be relatively on par with one another, which would put Misaki on the same level as Suzaku, who defeated the Moon Dragon God Selene in her human form. While Selene intentionally allowed herself to lose the fight, and proved far superior to Suzaku after entering her dragon form, she still admitted that she genuinely could not beat Suzaku in her human form. This would place Erza around the same level as the Dragon Gods in their human forms, all of whom are stated to be relatively on par with each other.

This is relevant because the Dragon Gods were all stated to have “eclipsed” Acnologia in power, who was previously the god tier of the series and impossible for anyone to kill without extremely extenuating circumstances. This would put the Dragon Gods, and by extension Erza, superior to just about everything in the verse pre-100 Year Quest, and comparable to the majority of top tiers nowadays, only falling short of the Dragon Gods in their dragon forms.

Likewise, she should also scale to other members of Team Natsu, the strongest of whom are also currently on par with the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights based on their own recent fights. Erza is also comparable to the strongest members of the broader Fairy Tail Guild like Laxus and Gildarts, the former of whom she directly fought recently, and the latter of whom is stated to be on par with Kirin, one of the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights. 

Natsu Dragneel

At the end of the original series, Erza was able to block an attack from full power E.N.D. Natsu and I.D.S. Gray, who were comparable to one another, at the same time. More recently in 100 Year Quest, she was able to defeat Misaki, who is stated to be on par with Suzaku, whom Natsu had an extremely difficult time with and was clearly relative to. As such, Erza should be comparable to current Natsu.

• Split a theater apart with a roar (148.27 tons of TNT)

• Destroyed half the pillars supporting the Forbidden Temple (27.4 kilotons of TNT)

• Caused significant damage to the Tower of Heaven (2.6 megatons of TNT)

• Dodged Laxus’ lightning from point-blank range (Mach 161.9)

• Together with Gajeel and Wendy, created a gigantic explosion with a combined roar (23.1 kilotons of TNT - 27.3 megatons of TNT)

• Split a portion of the ocean and caused a huge explosion on Tenrou Island with a Lightning Fire Dragon’s Roar (3.9 megatons of TNT)

• Made some big fire explosions near Magnolia (12.6 tons of TNT)

• Made a big explosion that engulfed part of Fiore’s capital city (6.45 tons of TNT)

• Made a huge blast of fire strong enough to harm a dragon (30.1 tons of TNT)

• Survived attacks from Jackal that made large explosions and nearly destroyed a town

• Shattered a building by punching the ground (0.99 tons of TNT)

• Melted the Doma Flau Grand Magic Games stadium with his heat (42.5 megatons of TNT)

• Created a gigantic blast of fire to overwhelm Bluenote (48.3 tons of TNT)

• Oneshot a mountain-sized war god, Ikusa-Tsunagi, who was strong enough to carve a giant chasm through the ground (10.6 megatons of TNT - 91.5 megatons of TNT)

• Overpowered and killed Animus after he had absorbed Dragon Cry (1:12:51)

• Vaporized large amounts of Ajeel’s sand (15.7 kilotons of TNT)

• Produced a huge blast of fire which altered the landscape of a battlefield (7.25 megatons of TNT)

• Evaporated Lake Scilliora with his heat (9.7 gigatons of TNT)

• Overpowered Fairy Heart Zeref

• Created a burst of fire visible in comparison to Aldoron’s body (2.87 megatons of TNT - 477.8 gigatons of TNT)

• Created an enormous column of fire on top of Aldoron with his Purgatory Slashing Dragon Fire (128.8 megatons of TNT - 22.95 teratons of TNT)

• Reacted to Suzaku’s attempt to blitz him, despite getting blitzed in the prior arc

• Survived an attack from Ignia which nearly brought down Dogramag’s labyrinth (13.5 gigatons of TNT - 988.8 teratons of TNT)

Gray Fullbuster

Erza would scale above Gray via the aforementioned blocking feat, as well as the fact that he outright admits she is stronger than him in 100 Year Quest.

• Created a gigantic wall of ice (646.4 kilotons of TNT)

• Created multiple large ice constructs that dwarf buildings (3:25) (394.1 kilotons of TNT)

• Froze an entire water park together with Lyon (24:00) (27.55 tons of TNT each)

• Comparable to his father, who froze the Sun Village and the mountain-sized Eternal Flame (827.6 kilotons of TNT)

• Thawed the Eternal Flame (1.84 megatons of TNT)

• Instantly froze Ajeel’s sand golem and the surrounding area (191.9 tons of TNT)

Lucy Heartfilia

Lucy is generally depicted as one of if not the weakest member of Team Natsu, and in 100 Year Quest was still weaker than Mirajane and comparable to characters like Kiria, both of whom Erza is a rival to. She has also never shown to be on the level of mages like the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights whom Erza scales to.

• Taurus deflected all the pellets from a shotgun blast (Mach 12.7)

• All of her Celestial Spirits working together were able to overpower a dragon and close the Eclipse Door

• Celestial Spirit King punctured a massive hole through the Plutogrim Cube, splitting it into pieces (4 gigatons of TNT)

• Celestial Spirit King carved a massive trench through the ground to the horizon (13.9 gigatons of TNT)

• Engulfed a portion of a town with a blast (24.4 tons of TNT)

Wendy Marvell

Wendy may actually be nebulously stronger than Erza to some extent currently, as she performed better against Haku than Erza did against Misaki, with Haku and Misaki being stated to be comparable. However, Wendy did still have difficulty with Haku, and Erza did defeat Misaki, so the two would at least be relative regardless.

• Reacted to Haku’s movements and matched the speed of his punch (Speed of Light)

• Oneshot Haku after entering Dragon Force

Laxus Dreyar

Erza fought Laxus recently in 100 Year Quest, and while she did ultimately lose, she did push him to his limits and force him to expend all his magic in order to win, so she is comparable to him.

• Reacted to natural lightning (4:22) (Mach 1.2)

• Dispersed a thunderstorm over top of a town (5:15) (14.4 megatons of TNT - 1.06 gigatons of TNT)

• His lightning directly matches natural lightning in speed (20:38) (Mach 285.7)

• Destroyed a sandstorm with a single attack (17 kilotons of TNT - 2.04 megatons of TNT)

• Created a massive electrical explosion (61 megatons of TNT)

• Easily blocked seven 9mm bullets at once (Mach 15.77)

• Made Kirin bleed with a punch

Gajeel Redfox

While strong, Gajeel is not currently on the level of the strongest Fairy Tail mages, being more comparable to only base Natsu as of 100 Year Quest, so Erza should be above him.

• Intercepted Laxus’ lightning (Mach 1068.5)

• Saved Natsu from lightning called down from the sky (Mach 135)

• Created a giant blast against Rogue that covered part of a city (18.8 tons of TNT - 162.2 tons of TNT)

Juvia Lockser

Juvia is a mid-tier member of Fairy Tail whom Erza is easily superior to.

• Created a small rain storm over top of Phantom Lord (0.17 tons of TNT)

• Conjured huge storm clouds over Tenrou Island (amped) (58.74 kilotons of TNT)

• Created a perpetual rain storm around a village (15.9 tons of TNT)

Mirajane Strauss

Mirajane in the past was a notable rival to Erza, but has somewhat stagnated due to retiring from combat for a while after her sister’s death, while Erza has fought and improved more consistently, which is reflected in their feats. Current Mirajane has shown to be comparable to Pre-Elentear I.D.S. Gray, Skullion, and Lucy’s summons and star dresses, all of which are significantly inferior to the more recent threats that Erza is comparable to.

• Survived a large explosion from Azuma’s time bomb which created a crater (amped) (1 kiloton of TNT)

• Blasted Irene’s underlings Heine and Juliet with a huge explosion (110.7 tons of TNT)

• Passively caused the ocean water in her vicinity to dry up due to her magic (176.2 tons of TNT)

Gildarts Clive

Kirin, and by extension the rest of the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, is stated to be comparable to Gildarts. This would put Erza comparable or superior to Gildarts via her victory over Misaki.

• Made an explosion on the side of a mountain (690.4 tons of TNT - 5.95 kilotons of TNT)

• Destroyed part of a town by accident (42.3 tons of TNT)

• Destroyed a mountain (259.1 kilotons of TNT - 2.2 megatons of TNT)

• Shattered the ground across a huge area with a punch (946.1 tons of TNT)

Makarov Dreyar

Pre-Elentear Base Natsu was able to fight Wraith while he was using Makarov’s power, and Erza is comparable to later and stronger versions of Natsu.

• Fairy Law attack created a huge hole in the clouds (321.7 kilotons of TNT)

• Grew gigantic enough to tower over a huge battleship (amped)

Jellal Fernandes

Erza was able to defeat Irene, whose magic was stated to exceed Jellal’s, specifically the Deus-Sama meteor that Erza destroyed.

• Survived absorbing and dispersing the power of Etherion from the Tower of Heaven (245.8 teratons of TNT - 54.27 petatons of TNT)

• Created swirling clouds above the Grand Magic Games arena (4.8 tons of TNT)

• Blasted Oración Seis with enough power to cause a massive explosion (2.56 megatons of TNT)

• Split clouds on a large scale (13.7 kilotons of TNT)

• Blocked an attack from Acnologia

Erigor / Grim Reaper

Erigor was an early series villain who has been far surpassed at this point.

• Conjured a large storm (11:50) (522.2 kilotons of TNT)

Azuma

Erza defeated Azuma during the Tenrou Island arc.

• Uprooted the enormous tree on Tenrou Island with his wood magic (20.8 megatons of TNT)

Bluenote Stinger

Bluenote was comparable to Gildarts during Tenrou Island, but more recently has shown to be inferior to Avatar arc Natsu, meaning he has been sufficiently power-crept.

• Created a huge shockwave with his gravity manipulation (1.13 kilotons of TNT)

• Destroyed a large area in his clash with Gildarts (88.3 tons of TNT - 762 tons of TNT)

• Survived an attack from Gildarts that split the clouds above Tenrou Island (3.2 kilotons of TNT)

• Shattered a huge rock formation with his gravity (1.14 megatons of TNT)

Precht Gaebolg (Hades)

Erza was able to cut through Hades’ magic chains during Tenrou Island, and Natsu during Tartaros was able to defeat Franmalth while he was using Hades’ power, which was stated to make him as strong as the real Hades.

• Created a huge blast that tore apart part of Tenrou Island (68.7 megatons of TNT)

Kagura Mikazuchi

Erza fought and matched Kagura during the Grand Magic Games.

• Blitzed and cut through six missiles before the first one could explode (Mach 2602.5)

• Cut through a large rock formation, launching it into the air (0.62 tons of TNT - 412.8 tons of TNT)

Jura Neekis

Jura is a Wizard Saint who was previously considered a high tier magic user, but he lost to Laxus during the Grand Magic Games and was defeated by God Serena during Alvarez. Erza is comparable to a stronger Laxus than the one that beat Jura, and God Serena in 100 Year Quest admitted inferiority to the Signario Sisters, whom Erza recently defeated.

• Caused an eruption that, based on the name, could arguably be compared to that of Mt. Fuji (7 megatons of TNT - 24 megatons of TNT)

• Dodged and outsped Orga Nanagear’s Charged Particle Cannon attack (10.25 times FTL)

Warrod Sequen

Warrod is another Wizard Saint who has now been surpassed for the same reason that Jura has, being ranked only one spot above Jura and several spots below God Serena.

• Grew an enormous tree long enough to transport Team Natsu to the Sun Village, which was stated to be 1200 miles away (3.28 gigatons of TNT)

Plutogrim

Erza was able to puncture Plutogrim with her lance, blowing out a large portion of its cubical body.

• Produced a shockwave which destroyed the Kardia Cathedral and an entire town (312.36 megatons of TNT)

Brandish μ

Brandish is weaker than Irene, who is the strongest woman amongst the Spriggans. Since Erza was able to match Irene and destroy her meteor, she should be stronger than Brandish.

• Statement that as of the beginning of the Alvarez Arc, the 12 Spriggans are the strongest characters in the history of the series

• Stated to have magic power beyond anything Gray had ever sensed prior to that point

• Changed the shape of Caracol Island with her magic (1.36 gigatons of TNT)

• Statement that she has enough power to make nations vanish

• Grew Gajeel to such a size that he could match Aldoron

Ajeel Raml

Erza directly defeated Ajeel and dispersed his sandstorms repeatedly, including the one that covered Magnolia.

• Crushed a large area of the ground into sand (237.9 tons of TNT)

• Statement that his Ant’s Hell technique has swallowed up entire towns

• Created a huge tsunami of sand (17 kilotons of TNT)

• Deflected a Jupiter Cannon blast

• Conjured a sandstorm that covered all of Magnolia (100.6 kilotons of TNT)

Wall Eehto

Wall was defeated by Laxus, whom Erza fought more recently.

• Fired a blast that crossed 400 kilometers quickly (Mach 29.1)

Invel Yura

Invel lost to I.D.S. Gray, from whom Erza later blocked a full-power attack.

• Created a blizzard that covered a portion of the shrunken Fiore (2.4 kilotons of TNT)

Irene Belserion

While Erza did not outright defeat Irene, and only managed to strike a decisive blow when buffed by an enchantment from Wendy, she did fight her somewhat evenly and managed to destroy her strongest attack while most of her bones were broken. Erza’s more recent fights against the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights would also put her beyond the Spriggans regardless.

• Stated to be the most powerful woman among the Spriggan, and implied to be a rival to August in power (the latter is later stated more explicitly)

• Halted the perpetual snowstorm over Zonia and thawed the snow in the area (2.5 megatons of TNT)

• Shrank Fiore to 1/20th of its normal size with Universe One (653.6 teratons of TNT)

• Bonus: Her magic spread across the country in seconds (Mach 1933.7)

• Pulled a gigantic meteor from deep space, producing an enormous amount of fire and forming a giant smoke cloud upon its impact with the atmosphere (3.2 zettatons of TNT for the smoke cloud; 46% the speed of light for the meteor’s speed)

August

August and Irene are stated to be rivals, so Erza should scale to him for the same reasons she scales to Irene. It is also very likely that she scales beyond his Ars-Magia self-destruct, since it was stated that the Alvarez Empire had nothing that could kill Acnologia, and Acnologia has likely been matched or surpassed by the Dragon Gods and comparable enemies from 100 Year Quest.

• Statement that none of the other Spriggans come close to his level of power (this is later contextualized to only refer to the Spriggan whom Makarov is familiar with at this point, as well as just the male Spriggan overall)

• Caused an enormous eruption of energy in eastern Fiore that was visible from Magnolia (122.5 megatons of TNT)

• Threatened to melt the entirety of Fiore with his Ars Magia self-destruct (13.3 petatons of TNT)

Etherion

NOTE: See “Before the Verdict” for more information.

It is very likely that Etherion would be incapable of defeating Acnologia, as Zeref was not confident that he could do so after absorbing Fairy Heart, which was stated to be capable of producing an unlimited number of Etherion level blasts. As the Dragon Gods are stated to be superior to Acnologia, Erza would scale above it through her victory against Misaki. There is also other evidence for characters scaling to Etherion more early on - namely, Jellal was able to survive absorbing and dispersing its power from the Tower of Heaven, and Natsu in the Dragon Cry movie was able to directly overpower the Dragon Cry macguffin, which was stated to be dozens of times more powerful than Etherion.

• Stated to be able to engulf an entire country within its blast radius (245.8 teratons of TNT - 54.27 petatons of TNT)

• The Eclipse Gate, which is stated to be equal to Etherion, caused worldwide weather phenomena as a side effect of its activation (4:45) (564.9 teratons of TNT)

Dragon Cry

NOTE: See “Before the Verdict” for more information.

As previously acknowledged, Natsu was able to directly overpower Dragon Cry, ergo he, and Erza by extension, scales above it.

• Stated to be dozens of times more powerful than Etherion, and capable of obliterating entire nations (Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry movie) (5.9 petatons of TNT - 1.3 exatons of TNT)

The Phoenix

NOTE: See “Before the Verdict” for more information.

The “base” Phoenix was stated to be equal to base Zeref, so Erza would scale to that version of it with no issue. The Phoenix’s surface wiping attack did require absorbing magic from the planet’s population, but one could argue that Fairy Heart Zeref would exceed this, as Zeref is comparable to the Phoenix itself, and Fairy Heart was stated to be the pinnacle of magic and the ultimate power source. With this in mind, it is possible that Erza would scale to the amped Phoenix via Natsu overpowering Fairy Heart Zeref. That being said, this is debatable, as Acnologia, who is comparable or superior to Fairy Heart Zeref, was overpowered by the combined magic of a single continent.

• After absorbing magic from living things across the planet, produced a blast that could have surface wiped the planet and dispersed air across a large portion of the atmosphere (368.65 exatons of TNT - 390.77 zettatons of TNT)

Acnologia

NOTE: See “Before the Verdict” for more information.

Acnologia was originally stated to be the strongest thing in the setting, and beyond anything at the Alvarez Empire’s disposal, which is implied to still be the case even after Zeref attains Fairy Heart. This is without factoring in the power-up that he receives from absorbing the Space Between Time, which bolstered him even further, requiring the combined magic of an entire continent + all seven Dragon Slayers to overcome him. That being said, Acnologia has since been surpassed as the resident god tier, with the Dragon Gods being stated to individually exceed him, though the reliability of these statements could be questioned.

• Obliterated Tenrou Island in its entirety (399.77 megatons of TNT)

• Stronger than dragons that can destroy part of a city with casual attacks (27.6 kilotons of TNT - 238.3 kilotons of TNT), or destroy mountains (1.35 kilotons of TNT - 1.63 megatons of TNT)

• Survived an enormous explosion in his battle with Igneel (563.7 kilotons of TNT)

• Comparable to dragons who can cross large portions of Fiore quickly (Mach 1155.5)

• Tore through the majority of Igneel’s torso, and then killed him with a giant explosion (48 tons of TNT)

• Statement that the Alvarez Empire lacks a means of defeating Acnologia without obtaining Fairy Heart

• Zeref indicates repeatedly (1, 2) that he does not believe that he would be able to defeat Acnologia, even after attaining the power of Fairy Heart

• Split the sea with a breath attack (25.1 kilotons of TNT)

• Caused numerous huge explosions all at once (2.2 megatons of TNT)

Dark Dragon Slayer Knights

As covered many times already, Erza was able to defeat Misaki, and the four Dark Dragon Slayer Knights are stated to be comparable to one another, so she would scale to all of them.

• Diabolos is stated to have three members comparable in strength to Suzaku, which is later confirmed to be referring to the other Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, Misaki, Haku and Kirin

• Selene admitted that she cannot beat Suzaku in her human form, though is explicitly above him with her Dragon Form

• Selene believes that the Knights’ power added to her own would allow her to overcome the other Dragon Gods

• Kirin reacted to Laxus’ lightning from extremely close range (Mach 878.7)

• Kirin’s magic was stated to be comparable to Gildarts

• Haku was stated to be able to move at the speed of light (note: “almost” is an inaccurate translation) (Speed of Light)

Dragon Gods

Suzaku, one of the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, was able to outspeed and overpower Selene in her human form, with Selene later admitting that she could not have won while in said form. As Erza is comparable to Suzaku through Misaki, she would scale above the Dragon Gods in their human forms. However, this would not extend to the Dragon Gods’ dragon forms yet, as Selene easily blitzed and killed Diabolos’ guild master in this form, who was even stronger than Suzaku.

NOTE: For the sake of completion, section will include feats for the Dragon Forms, despite Erza currently scaling only to the Human Forms. Feats will be labeled to identify which are which, with statements that refer to the Dragon Gods in general (or that are unspecific) labeled “general.”

• [General] Statement that each of the Dragon Gods is “at least” as strong as Acnologia

• [General] Ignia stated that the Dragon Gods’ power “eclipses” that of Acnologia

• [General] Fairy Tail as a whole were said to be equal in power to Mercphobia

• [General] Selene states that the Dragon Gods’ power are all relatively equal, and later repeats this claim

• [General] Dogramag, the deceased sixth Dragon God, is stated to be the weakest of the Dragon Gods

• [General] Ignia claims that he would have defeated Dragon Form Acnologia had he been in Igneel’s place

• [Human] Selene made the moon appear larger in the sky, though the exact mechanics of her doing so are unexplained. Note as well that this feat occurred in Elentear, a parallel world where all magic is stronger than normal. (2.87 yottatons of TNT; debatable, see Before the Verdict)

• [Human] Dogramag’s magic created an enormous underground labyrinth post-mortem

• [Human] Dogramag’s death collapsed the labyrinth, causing an earthquake that shook the entire continent of Guiltina (2.035 petatons of TNT)

• [Dragon] Mercphobia lifted the sea into the sky (stated to be “the entire ocean” in the next chapter, and it’s later stated that he is not even using half his power) (1.2 petatons of TNT)

• [Dragon] Aldoron was so enormous that an entire town fit on the back of his hand

• [Dragon] Aldoron grew massive trees comparable in height to his own body (6.7 teratons of TNT)

• [Dragon] Aldoron crushed mountains beneath his feet (18.5 gigatons of TNT)

• [Dragon] Aldoron shattered a giant area of the ground (677.8 gigatons of TNT - 5.8 teratons of TNT)

• [Dragon] Selene and Ignia are shown to be comparable in their Dragon Forms, though Ignia ultimately wins the fight, albeit with a surprise attack

Satsuki

Overall

By the end of the series, Satsuki and Ryūko were relatively shown to be evenly matched with each other and could fight Ragyō even after she absorbed Rei into Shinra-Kōketsu. Ragyō with Shinra-Kōketsu is relevant to scaling as even before wearing the powerful Kamui, Ragyō was on a level of power beyond nearly everyone in the series. She clashed evenly with Satsuki and Ryūko, battled the Elite Four without trying, and even beat Satsuki to a pulp prior to their rematch. Shinra-Kōketsu increased her capabilities to a whole other level, yet Satsuki was able to survive direct attacks from her and even defeated her in IF.

In IF, Satsuki managed to gain her own super form and perform just as well against the Primordial Life Fiber as Ryūko did in her Kisaragi form, as well as fighting evenly with the latter. Thus, there should be little question of Satsuki scaling to basically all of the feats in the verse when at her best.

Ryūko Matoi

Satsuki and Ryūko have had several fights throughout the series, with neither gaining a clear advantage over the other due to their similar power levels. Once they team up, they both perform equally well against Ragyō together, and Junketsu Shinzui is evenly matched against Senketsu Kisaragi. As such, Satsuki should be more than comparable to Ryūko at her peak.

• Takahara’s giant glove shatters upon contact with her body (20:08)

• Sliced hundreds, potentially millions of tennis balls into string in less than a second (15:13) (2 times - 1.02 million times FTL)

• Smacked Omiko so hard that she causes a crater and small explosion on impact (20:40) (1.98 tons of TNT)

• Withstood an explosion that destroys a large boulder without Senketsu (9:32) (0.1 - 0.94 tons of TNT)

• Dodged shots from Tsumuri’s needle gun (6:33)

• Survived missile explosions (13:10 and 13:42)

• Moved so fast she created afterimages (11:40)

• Moved in tandem with a missile and survived its explosion (18:37)

• Ran to the top of a large pillar in seconds (20:21) (Mach 2.3)

• Pulled Nonon’s giant mech out of the air (19:21) (1895.5 - 11010.8 metric tons)

• Survived multiple explosions around the fighting grounds, eventually fragmenting the arena (20:03)

• Dodged Nonon’s Symphony Barrage, including catching a missile at close range (4:42)

• Survived a heart blast from Nonon that caused a crater (17:19) (0.24 tons of TNT)

• Survived being at the epicenter of an explosion that destroyed Ragyō Stadium (2:40) (3.3 petatons - 9.1 exatons of TNT)

• Sliced apart buildings with her sword swing (5:02) (381 tons of TNT)

• Crashed into the Naked Sun and formed a crater (20:16)

• Implied to be capable of sinking the Naked Sun (20:40)

• Caused a huge burst of water (21:00) (74.8 megatons of TNT)

• Destroyed the Primordial Life Fiber alongside the Naked Sun (17:12 - 17:56)

• Flew to space in seconds (13:44) (Mach 23.3 - 291.5)

• Used Absolute Submission to disperse the Cocoon Genesis Sphere (18:13) (45.1 yottatons of TNT;debatable, see Before the Verdict)

• Lifted large scissors and sliced apart Honnōji Academy

• Absorbed Life Fibers from beyond Satsuki’s dimension, across time and space (68.6 million times FTL)

Elite Four

(Inumuta has no feats by himself)

The Elite Four are Satsuki’s right hand men (and woman), all of whom have admitted inferiority to Satsuki in terms of raw power. Likewise, Ryūko managed to defeat all the members of the Elite Four, and Satsuki could still match her in raw power.

• Gamagōri kicked down a steel door which shattered upon impact (0:27)

• Gamagōri swung a student around the entire Honnōji Academy arena, sometimes crossing its entire diameter within a single frame (2:23) (Mach 2132.2 - 3349.3)

• Gamagōri deflected airsoft bullets (11:26)

• Gamagōri tanked an RPG explosion (13:19)

• Nonon survived an explosion that destroys a bathroom (20:36)

• Nonon created massive explosions in the sky (3:21)

• Nonon piloted her mech from cloud level to Honnōji Academy in seconds (4:00)

• Nonon survived an explosion that destroyed her whole mech (5:01) (69.3 tons of TNT)

• Nonon’s band created heart shaped craters (10:40) (0.63 tons of TNT)

• Nonon destroyed the Nudist Beach base (21:31)

• Sanageyama kept up with Ryuko’s speed (11:45)

• Sanageyama launches Ryūko into the air so hard that she fragments the ground upon impact (19:35)

• Sanageyama reacted to money fired from guns (12:10)

• Sanageyama bonked Nui dozens of times in less than a second (4:48) (Mach 10.8)

• The Elite Four combined cause dozens upon dozens of explosions and a large airburst (9:58) (18.5 tons of TNT)

Mako Mankanshoku

Satsuki is comparable to Ryūko, who survived multiple blows from Mako when she wore her Goku Uniform.

• Created a crater with a punch (20:58) (529.3 tons - 4.5 kilotons of TNT)

• Catched money fired out of a gun (14:38)

Ragyō Kiryūin

While she was defeated during their first battle, Satsuki’s power eventually grew to such an extent that she could later match and survive consecutive hits from Ragyō. Even when she put on Shinra-Kōketsu, Satsuki was strong enough to survive her attacks and later cut her down alongside Ryūko.

• Dodged a missile up close (13:52)

• Survived a barrage of missile explosions (14:03)

• Flew to a satellite in seconds (11:23) (Mach 14.5 - 182.2)

• With Absolute Submission, covered the entire planet in Life Fibers and formed the Cocoon Sphere (12:02) (76.7 zettatons of TNT;debatable, see Before the Verdict)

Nui Harime

Satsuki while wearing Senketsu was capable of clashing evenly with Nui, and even managed to defeat her in IF. With Senketsu Shinzui, she should be far above her.

• Blocked a strike from Ryūko that created a shockwave (1:05)

• Dodged bullets (16:51)

• Implied she could sink the Naked Sun (21:32)

• Sword slash, when deflected, created a huge burst of water (3:28) (1.58 tons of TNT)

• Survived getting kicked through multiple sheets of metal (5:23)

S.S. Naked Sun

Characters like Nui and Ryūko have statements implying they’re capable of sinking the Naked Sun, and Ryūko’s Alumni Mode scissors tore right through it

• Helped destroy the Primordial Life Fiber (17:12 - 17:56)

Primordial Life Fiber

In the anime, Satsuki scales to Ryūko, who pierced and nearly killed the Primordial Life Fiber alongside the Naked Sun. In IF, even after the Primordial Life Fiber absorbed other surrounding Life Fibers to become stronger than before, Satsuki was capable of matching and ultimately defeating it with Junketsu Shinzui

• Ragyō stated that a realm such as the one that Junketsu created can be spun into a single thread of yarn within the Primordial Life Fiber (4 FOE)

Weaknesses

Erza

While Erza is one of Fairy Tail’s strongest and most skilled warriors, she isn’t without flaw. In addition to the obvious “magic is finite and she can run out and be left defenseless,” many of her armors are also highly specialized and only effective for specific uses, requiring her to switch between them in order to achieve different boons and effects. Additionally, many of these armors are ironically weaker and less durable than Erza herself is physically, with explicit examples of characters like Ikaruga and Kagura cutting through the armors with ease, but then having more trouble against Erza without them.

She also has a massive sweet tooth and can get distracted by cakes and stuff. Very scary stuff.

Satsuki

There’s not a lot to cover as far as weaknesses go for Satsuki, but she’s still far from perfect. While Junketsu is without a doubt one of her greatest strengths, it can also be a detriment to her. Prolonged fights while wearing Junketsu drains Satsuki of her blood, and given enough time, she could get exhausted or even collapse from blood loss. Similarly, while Kamui have more than one Banshi thread to stay attacked, should they all be severed, Junketsu will deform, leaving Satsuki vulnerable.

Before the Verdict

Prelude

Keep in mind going in that for this fight, there are a lot of varying “levels” of argument for both characters that you could reasonably argue for or against - i.e. whether or not to use information beyond the original source for both, various scaling arguments that you could lean into or away from, and feats with many low and high ends which could drastically impact the level the two are operating on.

We will be going into this from a “holistic” standpoint, that is to say covering every possible argument that could be made for both, and looking closely at who would have the advantage at varying levels of leeway or scrutiny. Thus, keep in mind that we may not personally agree with every argument discussed, and are instead just thoroughly examining various possible viewpoints to give the most comprehensive breakdown possible.

Fairy Tail’s Planet Size

To provide a little more elaboration on this, there is a statement that while the Spriggan Wall was sailing toward Hargeon, his ship was 30 kilometers away, and that he was also 400 kilometers away from Magnolia, where Fairy Tail is located. Meaning the distance between Hargeon and Magnolia is around 370 kilometers, which can be used to extrapolate the size of Fiore, and then the full continent of Ishgar. 

Unfortunately, measurement becomes a bit tricky after this point since there are no full world maps of the Fairy Tail planet, with the largest ones only extending to adjacent continents and clearly not encompassing the whole world. However, since Ishgar is similar in shape, geography, and general culture to Europe, and of course we know it to be a continent, it’s possible to extrapolate the full size of the planet via the size difference between Europe and the Earth. This is what we did for any calculations that would be impacted by a larger planet, such as those involving horizon length, curvature shots etc., to ensure that nothing would be lowballed.

Irene’s Deus-Sama

While contentions on the infamous meteor feat aren’t as widespread as they used to be, there’s still disagreement in some places, and we’ve experimented with several new methods of calculating it, so let’s cover it in detail for the sake of being informative.

The meteor was summoned from deep space by Irene, traveling from its location to the planet in several seconds, per the anime depiction. The anime is canon, with Hiro Mashima being directly involved in its production and numerous anime-only events being directly referenced in the manga. As such, the anime time-frame is usable, especially since the manga gives no time-frame. While the meteor likely slowed down upon entering the atmosphere due to air resistance, at the relativistic speeds at which it was moving, the drop-off would be negligible, and Erza would still scale to Irene pulling it at the higher speed to begin with. Though some bystanders were able to observe the meteor and comment on it as it entered the atmosphere, this was done from a large distance away, where perceiving fast-moving objects is much easier. Talking is also a free action, and cinematic time do be cinematic.

With all this in mind, the meteor’s size can be measured in comparison to Erza, and its kinetic energy derived from the speed at which it was pulled. This would be impacted by the larger planet size, as the distance the meteor moved is derived via angsizing the planet, bringing its speed up from sub-relativistic to relativistic. With the larger planet size, the meteor’s kinetic energy is worth 52.3 petatons of TNT, which is multi-continental.

In addition to kinetic energy, there are several other possible methods for measuring the meteor’s output. In both the manga and anime, it produces a large amount of fire upon impacting the atmosphere, with the anime version being more impressive as the plume of fire is larger. The energy needed to heat the air to produce fire is quantifiable with a temperature change calculation. This gives results of 14.4 petatons of TNT for the manga version, and 71.7 petatons of TNT for the anime version, both also multi-continental.

Thirdly, the meteor entering the atmosphere causes a large cloud formation to form around its point of impact. While the clouds are not shown moving in the shot, making kinetic energy impossible to calculate, it is possible to compare the clouds to the curve of the larger planet, and solve for the condensation of water vapor. This gets results of 1.34 teratons of TNT, small country level, much lower but still respectable.

Finally, the surprisingly most impressive impact the meteor had was producing an enormous plume of smoke to billow up from the planet. By calculating the mass of the smoke and the speed at which it erupted upward, the meteor’s impact must have generated energy equal to 3.2 zettatons of TNT, which is small planet level.

While destroying the meteor directly wouldn’t necessarily require Erza to match the atmospheric effects that it caused, she should get it through scaling above Irene herself, as she has surpassed her mother by this point in 100 Year Quest.

Acnologia, Fairy Heart Zeref, and August’s Ars-Magia

In the original series, Acnologia was established to be the strongest thing in the setting, able to effortlessly defeat wizard saints, slay powerful dragons like Igneel, and was essentially unkillable to anything in the verse, with much of Zeref’s plans in the final arc centering around acquiring a way to defeat Acnologia, despite having the might of the entire Alvarez Empire behind him. This would put Acnologia above options such as Deus-Sama, super weapons like Etherion and Dragon Cry, and very likely August’s Ars-Magia self-destruct, which was powerful enough to melt all of Fiore. Even on the verge of attaining Fairy Heart, an unlimited source of magic and the ultimate power source, Zeref still believed he had no means of directly defeating Acnologia, instead seeking to win by turning back time and resetting history.

After this point, Acnologia proceeded to absorb the Space Between Time, powering himself up even further to the point where it took the combined magic of the entire continent to restrain his physical body in reality, and the power of all seven Dragon Slayers combined to destroy him within the Space Between Time. Despite the fact that one of those Dragon Slayers, Natsu, was able to overcome Fairy Heart Zeref before this. Altogether cementing Acnologia as the god tier of the series.

Until 100 Year Quest came along and power crept him. In the sequel series, the plot centers around defeating the five Dragon Gods, each of whom is stated to be “at least” as strong as Acnologia by Elefseria, with the Dragon God Ignia later corroborating this statement with the claim that their power “eclipses” Acnologia, as well as the assertion that he could have defeated Dragon Form Acnologia if he were in Igneel’s place. While Ignia could in theory be overestimating himself or underestimating Acnologia, Elefseria is a less biased source of information, and their statements combined are likely reliable. Likewise, while it’s possible that the two of them are both unaware of Acnologia’s power boost from the Space Between Time, Acnologia was already superior to every feat in the original series even before that boost, so that would not impact anything.

It should be noted that the Dragon Gods are still overall superior to the main cast currently, with Ignia casually melting Dogramag’s labyrinth when Natsu could not, enemies like Aldoron and Dogramag needing to be weakened before they could be defeated, and Dragon Form Selene oneshotting Georg Reizen, who was stronger than even the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights. It should also be noted that the Dragon Gods’ dragon forms are significantly stronger than their human forms, with Selene being beyond Suzaku with the former and weaker than him with the latter. With this in mind, it’s possible that the Gods’ dragon forms alone surpass Acnologia’s dragon form, and their human states would likely be more relative or superior to Acnologia’s own human state.

This is a distinction that’s important to keep in mind, but ultimately doesn’t change much, since as with the SBT amp, Acnologia’s superiority to everything in the original series and unkillable nature were not contingent on which form he was in. Scaling to the Dragon Gods’ human forms would be sufficient to exceed Ars-Magia and the various other pre-100YQ feats that Acnologia scales above.

Etherion & Dragon Cry

Etherion is a weapon stated to be capable of engulfing an entire country in its blast radius. Dragon Cry is a macguffin from the eponymous movie (which is canon) that is also stated to be able to destroy a country, and more specifically is stated to be dozens of times more powerful than Etherion.  This movie takes place in between the Avatar and Alvarez arcs.

In addition to scaling through Acnologia, Erza also scales to Etherion through Jellal, who was able to absorb and disperse its power without dying, and to Dragon Cry through Natsu, who overpowered it directly in the movie after the villain had absorbed its power.

The Phoenix

(Not those)

In the canonical Phoenix Priestess movie, there is a huge metallic bird-like creature called the Phoenix, which is capable of destroying the world upon being unsealed. In order to do this, it absorbs magical power from the planet’s population, and condenses it into an enormous magical blast which would consume the world and destroy the Phoenix itself, before the Phoenix would be reborn from the ashes. While the Phoenix did produce this attack in the movie, it ended up getting launched into the upper atmosphere and detonating there, splitting clouds on a massive scale but not ending the world.

One could argue that this is scalable through Zeref, as the Phoenix was stated to rival base Zeref prior to absorbing any magical power, and Fairy Heart could be argued to exceed the amp from the world’s population, being the ultimate power source that grants unlimited magic. Since Erza scales above Fairy Heart Zeref nowadays, she could potentially be above the Phoenix’s blast too, which gets results of 368 exatons to 390 zettatons of TNT, the latter accounting for the larger planet size and the former using a normal planet size for the blast’s cloud dispersion. 

The counter to this would be, as previously mentioned under Acnologia’s section, the combined magic of Ishgar, a continent, was sufficient to imprison post-SBT Dragon Form Acnologia at the end of the series, who is stronger than Fairy Heart Zeref. Which would contradict the notion that Fairy Heart exceeds the magic of the planet’s population. Technically absorbing from the whole planet would also include characters like the Dragon Gods retroactively, which would be another point against the idea that it would be scalable. Realistically speaking, it’s fully possible that the “ultimate power source” statement was not referring to unconventional power sources like drawing from every person on the planet, in which case the basis of the scaling would fall apart.

That said, you could also argue that the mages throughout the world could have gotten stronger between the events of Phoenix Priestess and the end of the original series, as it’s established that people’s magic generally grows over time in-universe. Which would potentially throw a wrench into the notion of Acnologia’s defeat being an anti-feat. One could also argue that Selene was powerful enough to increase a full planet’s magical power all by herself, and thus should scale to the Phoenix’s amp for that reason. Regardless, the scaling is tenuous at best, but there are technically some avenues you could use to argue for it.

Selene’s Moon Feat

This is a feat that “might” be legit but is currently pretty vague in terms of mechanics, and has some context that makes it difficult to scale to anyone realistically. Of course, we will be covering it as a possible argument, but let’s go over the finer details of the feat that make it questionable.

In 100YQ chapter 81, the Moon Dragon God Selene makes the moon appear to enlarge in size when she gets serious. 

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-81-page-19.html

There is currently no explanation at all about exactly what she did or how she did it. It is never stated that she made the moon physically larger or moved it closer to the planet or anything like that. The sole reason people have for assuming that she is enlarging it physically is this page:

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-81-page-20.html

Selene’s underling Mimi says “size is righteousness”, and Lucy responds “why does the moon change size when she gets serious?”

There’s a lot wrong with using this as an explanation. First of all, neither of them are necessarily speaking literally here. When referring to the size of the moon in any normal context, 99% of the time people are referring to its size in the sky, in other words how big it looks. If you don’t believe me, here’s a scientific news article with the title “Why is the moon so big and low tonight?”, referring to its apparent size, and not suggesting the moon actually got physically bigger.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1551495/Moon-2022-why-moon-so-big-tonight-evg

When Mimi refers to the moon’s size and Lucy responds “why does it change size”, they are talking about how big the moon appears. Even assuming Lucy really believed it got physically larger (and there is no proof that she did), Lucy also has no knowledge of how Selene’s power works and is thus not a reliable source of information.

“But what else could Selene be doing?”

She could be creating an illusion to make it look bigger. In Chapter 90 she creates an illusory moon indoors within Diabolos’ guild.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-91-page-7.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-91-page-8.html

We also see in Chapter 68 that she makes it briefly appear to be nighttime (another illusion involving a fake moon). It reverts to midday when she disappears.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-68-page-16.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-68-page-17.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-68-page-18.html

Though this is not the exact same ability, it does prove that she can create illusions and that the moon is symbolic of her using her powers. It also proves that when she uses her powers, this often has visual effects related to the Moon which cannot be taken at face value.

Alternatively, she could be distorting or warping space to make the moon appear bigger. In Chapter 106, Selene makes mention of “the moon’s distortion” in reference to her own powers.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-106-page-20.html

In Chapter 111, it’s established that Selene’s powers allow her to “connect space”, creating windows/portals to other areas.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-111-page-16.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-111-page-17.html

In Chapter 119, she once again references distortions, speaking about how she has distorted many worlds in the past.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-119-page-14.html

There are many explanations for how the “feat” might have occurred which are supported by her other powers, and do not involve arbitrarily jumping to the most unreasonably generous assumptions possible.

“But it affected the tides! Doesn’t that mean it must have physically altered the Moon?”

If the effect was space-related, then the tides being altered would still make sense, i.e. space between the Earth and Moon was distorted, causing the Moon to appear larger and gravity between the two to intensify. Additionally, a frequently overlooked detail is that the tidal and storm effects were occurring in Earthland, NOT in Elentear where the moon feat occurred. Mercphobia even specifically points out that Selene’s powers are reaching Earthland from Elentear, another dimension.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-82-page-4.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-82-page-5.html

This proves beyond doubt that Selene’s power during the moon feat was affecting space in some manner. It is also entirely possible to disturb tides without altering the moon; earthquakes and such frequently do so. 

“But the Moon stays enlarged even after Selene leaves, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t that prove it’s not a temporary effect or illusion?”

Yes and no. It doesn't immediately return to its original size, but it is visibly smaller after Selene leaves than when she was present.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-85-page-18.html

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-87-page-3.html

There's also a panel between the two where it appears smaller than the first shot but larger than the second one, which might mean it was just steadily getting smaller over time regardless of Selene's presence.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-86-page-5.html

If you line the mountain in each shot up so they're the same size/position, the moon is visibly smaller in each subsequent shot. This also cannot be a matter of perspective, as the moon is so far away from the planet that changing your position on Earth won't make it appear larger or smaller. This is what it looks if you line up the mountain:

Natsu and Happy also make mention of how the world's magic is still going haywire even after Selene is no longer there, since she had simply set things into motion.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-87-page-4.html

Obviously a reference to Face and the overflow of magic that she'd been building up, but also a possible explanation for why the moon didn't immediately revert when she was gone. Regardless, the Moon visibly did get smaller, which suggests even further that this was a temporary effect or illusion and not physical enlargement. 

Tl;dr: Selene makes the Moon appear physically bigger, but there is no explanation currently about what she did in this instance, or how her powers work. She has created Moon-related illusions before as a side effect of using her powers, and we know her powers are related to spatial distortions which could be responsible for the Moon appearing bigger without physically altering it. In the specific instance where the feat occurred, Selene caused tidal effects in a parallel world, proving for certain that there were spatial distortions involved. Lastly, the Moon appeared to shrink gradually over time after the feat occurred despite initially appearing bigger, supporting the notion that its growth could have been a visual or spatial illusion rather than a physical size increase, which should be more permanent.

And with all this said, the feat also occurred in Elentear, where magic is much more powerful than normal, so there’s an argument to be had that it was amped anyway.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-67-page-4.html

While Selene was the one responsible for causing the world to overflow with magic in the first place, this was something she caused over a long period of time and not all at once.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-85-page-10.html

And it was indicated that she simply “got things started” and that Elentear’s magic eventually started going haywire on its own.

https://mangasee123.com/read-online/Fairy-Tail-100-Years-Quest-chapter-87-page-4.html

That being said, taking the feat completely at face value would net a yield of 2.87 yottatons of TNT, which is large planet level.

Eclipse Celestial Spirits Arc

So this is a weird one. Basically there’s an arc of the anime called the Eclipse Celestial Spirits arc, which takes place between the Grand Magic Games and Sun Village arcs, where Lucy’s Celestial Spirits become “eclipsed”, changing in appearance and personality and severing their contracts with her. This arc is technically canon, as revelations from the arc, such as Hisui being a Celestial mage, are later referenced in the manga (and also because every other anime arc is canon so this one should be no different). The reason why this is significant is because there are several feats in this arc that are potentially much more impressive than anything else in the series, being possibly cosmic in scale. 

For starters, in season 2 episode 39, the eclipse celestial spirits manifest as constellations in the sky, appearing out of nowhere (4:13). Later, a macguffin called the Celestial Globe is able to project beams of magical energy to these 12 zodiac constellations in order to liberate the celestial spirits (6:13), and Wendy and Happy are able to dodge these beams (10:28). Wendy even drastically outspeeds one of the beams with her roar in order to save Happy from it (17:58).

Subsequently, in season 2 episode 40, Natsu somehow is able to merge 12 pocket dimensions into each other (14:25 and 17:50). For context, the antagonist of the arc had previously sent everyone to different crystal dimensions which served as battlefields for them to fight in, and Natsu’s power ended up merging all of these dimensions together… somehow (seriously how, his power is burning things-).

Later, in season 2 episode 41, Lucy, Yukino, and Hisui together are able to use their combined power to make all of the aforementioned constellations spin around in the sky (19:11). Lastly, the arc ends with a battle against the Celestial Spirit Beast, a mutation of the Celestial Spirit King, who in season 2 episode 42, was able to turn people into constellations within the Celestial Spirit World (15:20, 15:45, 16:08 etc.), with Natsu even specifically saying that the people became “stars” (17:25).

Needless to say, this arc was more or less consistently on crack (the story also didn’t really make much sense, was a very weird arc). For what it’s worth, the feats are less objectively cosmic than they sound. There’s very little confirmation that the “constellations” that the eclipse spirits manifested as were full size, as they are all shaped like the constellations the spirits are named after, which we know already existed before that fight occurred. These facsimiles both appeared out of nowhere at the beginning of the fight, and disappeared at the end. This would throw the notion that the constellations are “real” and not just visualizations into question, which would in turn affect the speed feat with the magic beams, as well as Lucy and co.’s feat of making these same “stars” spin around.

The Celestial Spirit Beast’s feat is separate, but it’s worth keeping in mind that celestial bodies in the Celestial Spirit World are vastly smaller than real ones, with planets being building sized, which is something that would likely extend to stars as well. As for Natsu merging those pocket dimensions, they were all only roughly the size of a battlefield, so it’s much less impressive than it sounds.

Personally, the biggest nail in the coffin in terms of these feats being legitimate is how impossibly incongruous they are with the power scale throughout the rest of the series. The Spriggans, which show up well after this point, are stated to be the most powerful mages in the series at that point in time, with their feats mostly amounting to things like making blizzards and sandstorms, or reshaping islands, all of which were hyped up as extremely impressive. Even looking at the most powerful Spriggans, August needed to blow himself up to take out a country, and Irene’s Deus-Sama meteor was stated to be on an entirely different level than Jellal’s celestial body magic, which would be completely incongruous with far lesser mages creating actual celestial bodies much earlier in the timeline.

Coupled with the story being kind of incomprehensible and the feats themselves being less than objective presentation-wise, this inconsistency is difficult to reconcile. Though, if you were to accept stars as real just because they look like stars and are referred to as such (albeit by people who have no way of knowing what they are), then the argument may be acceptable under those parameters. However, it would also be important to apply such a standard consistently.

Honnōji Academy’s Size

You might be surprised to see such a large size for Honnōji Academy in this blog, and that’s understandable. Previously, most versions of calculating its diameter relied on using the S.S. Naked Sun’s size and comparing that either directly to Honnōji or using the giant mech during the OVA. Results for its size generally got around a few kilometers or so. So, what’s up with the new size?

In Episode 6, during Sanageyama’s rematch against Ryūko, as he goes on about how he unlocked “The Mind’s Eye” and could see more clearly than ever before, we get a view from outer space showing Honnōji comparable to the curvature of the Earth (18:50). Accounting for the fact that technically we never see half of the planet, but only ever a smaller part of the front of the sphere, and directly comparing Honnōji to that smaller part, we get around 30 kilometers for its size.

Obviously this is a bit debatable given Honnōji is never shown to be so big in scale, but each major calculation involving Honnōji (creating a shockwave that encompasses the entire diameter, creating large dust explosions, etc.) factored in this size to ensure nothing would be lowballed, similar to the size adjustments made for the Fairy Tail planet. Both possible measurements (for both verses) will be discussed in the verdict.

Ryūko & Tennis

The infamous tennis ball feat from episode 2 has gotten a lot of calculations over the years and consistently gets in the Massively Hypersonic to Sub-Relativistic ranges. The new calculation here is obviously a lot higher than before, so this’ll cover in detail the reasons why.

First off, nearly all of the calculations for the tennis ball feat assumed Ryūko cut each tennis ball only 5 times each, given that once they land they split into 6 distinct pieces. While this is reasonable, it’s also a gross lowball, as the tennis balls immediately burst into thin string, indicating that Ryūko cut each ball far more than initially believed. While one can argue that they burst due to the force behind Ryūko’s swing, it’s later shown that the tennis balls are durable enough to withstand the impact of Ryūko’s Scissor Blade without breaking (20:15), only being split when she directly cuts them. All of this would lead to the conclusion that Ryūko sliced up each tennis ball so many times that they ended up being cut into perfectly thin and even strings.

Next, all the calculations assumed the fastest tennis serve ever recorded for the speed at which the balls were served. Not only is this another lowball given Goku Uniforms enhance the wearer’s physicality to superhuman degrees, but Omiko visibly creates a small sonic boom when she hits her first serve (15:09), meaning the tennis balls were moving at the speed of sound, if not faster. This would be consistent with them being too fast for Mako to properly react to, who could catch money fired from guns later on in the series.

Accounting for these changes, Ryūko must have been moving a bit over 2 times FTL. It’s worth noting that this could easily get much higher, as it only accounts for the number of tennis balls shown on screen and disregarding the name of the attack being “110 million serve”, which would boost the feat at just over a million times the speed of light. That said, it’s understandable why one would rather use what’s shown instead of stated, so it’s mostly used as a high end estimate.

Funnily enough, the feat being FTL is a perfect segway to our next topic.

Inumuta’s Statement

Another rather infamous moment in Kill La Kill (in this community at least) is Inumuta’s statement during episode 18, where he directly attacks Sanageyama’s statement of moving faster than light, saying it’s impossible for such a feat to exist (4:56 - 5:10). Naturally, this led people to dismiss any and all potential faster than light feats and calculations for the verse, particularly the high end for the tennis ball feat. While at first glance this is fair, it’s a flawed reasoning when you look deeper into it.

While Inumuta isn’t necessarily dumb, he’s far from the most reliable source when it comes to this stuff. During his fight with Ryūko, despite his various analytics and measurements, he is unable to properly deduce her fighting style or measure her capabilities (10:32). He even commented that her speed is faster than he originally predicted (7:10), which would mean he doesn’t really have any concrete idea about Ryūko’s true speed.

It’s not even in battle that he ends up being wrong, as there are other instances throughout the series, such as:

• Being unable to gain any data about Nui Harumi (15:29)

• Incorrectly believed his camouflage couldn’t be seen through (5:14)

• Claimed that mind stitching only worked on those with Goku Uniforms, despite the fact that he had no reason to believe this and it being directly contradicted by Nui’s attempt at mind stitching people who had no Goku Uniforms to speak of, and it would’ve worked had Ryūko not intervened (5:32)

Additionally, Inumuta made his faster than light “debunk” before learning alien superhumans exist close to his proximity, alien superhumans that he specifically couldn’t properly figure out the speed of. Again, none of this is to say he’s exactly stupid, but taking his word as a hard cap for the verse is rather skeptical, especially when pit against a direct FTL feat. Multiple series like Jujutsu Kaisen, Hunter x Hunter, and A Certain Magical Index have speed statements indicating that those series’ peak at around supersonic or so, yet people understandably dismiss those due to direct feats performed that clearly outmatch said statements, and Kill La Kill should be held under the same standard. 

Ragyō and the Cocoon Sphere Genesis

Near the end of the anime, Ragyō revealed that she would unleash Shinra-Kōketsu’s Absolute Submission ability across the world to awaken dormant Life Fibers inside REVOCS clothing, lift them up into the stratosphere, and cover the planet in a single piece of cloth known as the Cocoon Genesis Sphere. There are arguments for and against this scaling to power, so we will cover those altogether.

In favor of the feat, Absolute Submission is stated to grant control over all Life Fibers across the globe, and Ragyō has shown the capability to manipulate Life Fibers just by herself (episode 18 12:16, episode 24 at 2:57). She even used Absolute Submission in combat before to control and neutralize the Life Fibers of Kamui and Goku Uniforms her opponents were using (1:05). The energy required to gather all the Life Fibers to such high altitudes and spread them across the planet had to come from somewhere, and Ragyō’s direct control over Life Fibers in her fights would lead credence to the idea she’s directly manipulating and causing their movement.

In argument against the feat, one could argue Absolute Submission doesn’t necessarily require Ragyō to directly manipulate Life Fibers, and instead it could just be an action of her commanding them to move in a set manner, which is a valid take of the feat. The exact specifics of how Absolute Submission works isn’t made exactly clear in the series, which makes this kind of a pain to dissect. Accepting it or dismissing it is valid one way or the other.

That said, if one were to believe Absolute Submission requires energy to perform, Ragyō’s utilization of it hits around 80 zettatons while Ryūko’s version gets around 50 yottatons, which is planet to large planet level respectively.

Kill La Kill: IF - Misconceptions & Feats

(Thanks to Yves/Sunmellows for the art)

Kill la Kill: IF is an arena fighting game released in 2019, where the main story is split in two chapters. The first chapter follows a "What if?" storyline with Satsuki as the protagonist, while the second chapter follows Ryūko, continuing to explore alternate scenarios of the story in the show. The main setting is an alternate world created by Junketsu, which is a manifestation of Satsuki’s dreams, ambitions, and emotions. For many years in the community, IF was considered both a non-canon entry with no backing and with the idea that none of its feats were applicable due to the dream world setting.

To put it bluntly, all of this is wrong.

First, Kill La Kill: IF is undeniably canon. As stated in our “before we begin” section, Studio Trigger staff have considered the game and the anime to be set in the same universe, and Kazuki Nakashima, the writer of the original series, oversaw the production of the game’s story. It’s also stated in an interview that IF was a story Nakashima always had planned out in his head but could never put into the show. All of these combined paint a clear picture that IF is undoubtedly canon to the original anime.

Second, calling the setting a “dream world” is leaving out a lot of context. While this isn’t alluded to in Satsuki’s side of the story, Ryūko’s side reveals that Junketsu turned Satsuki’s dreams into an alternate, tangible, and physical reality with its own distinct flow of space and time separate from the main reality. Because of that, any feats involved in this reality are applicable to physical stats.

With that out of the way, IF has some notable feats, both for strength and speed. The obvious is Junketsu creating an alternate reality that contains at least the Earth. More interestingly, Ragyō stated that the Primordial Life Fiber could spin the entire realm into a single thread of fiber into itself, an insane feat that would translate to the Primordial Life Fiber’s total power output being a trillion times above the GBE of Earth. For speed, there’s Ryūko absorbing Life Fibers from beyond Junketsu’s reality across time and space.

It’s also rather easy to push these feats even higher, as Junketsu’s reality seems to contain far more celestial bodies than just the planet, with potentially hundreds of stars being visible during the night sky, and maybe even more beyond. Admittedly, this would require accepting those stars as real despite no concrete evidence existing for such besides the fact they look like stars, and would thus only be a high end interpretation to counter similar leniency for other series.

Fight Script

(Credit to Twice for the art)

Y’all know how it be by now. We hope you enjoy!

Verdict

Stats

As we’re sure you can see by now, there are a lot of varying interpretations that you could go with for where each fighter lands.

For Fairy Tail, we have:

-feats from the manga, which could be evaluated with or without the higher planet size

-stuff from other media that’s still canon, like the anime and movies

-specific high end scaling arguments that are more questionable like the Phoenix

-feats that have unclear aspects such as Selene’s moon feat

-potentially cosmic level feats from the Eclipse Celestial spirits arc

For Kill la Kill, we have:

-feats from the show, which could be evaluated with or without the higher size for Honnōji

-stuff from other media that’s still canon, specifically Kill la Kill: IF

-specific high-end scaling arguments that are debatable or have unclear aspects, like Ragyō’s cocoon sphere feat

-potential higher end cosmic interpretations of Kill la Kill: IF feats

As we’ve already said, for the sake of comprehensiveness we’re going to be going over the many different “levels” of argument you could use for both, to get a stronger sense of who has the overall better arguments.

Let’s start with the absolute most basic arguments you could go with. For Erza, let’s use the kinetic energy for Irene’s meteor - without the larger planet size, and for Satsuki let’s go with the kinetic energy of Ragyō Stadium’s destruction - without the larger Honnōji size. Erza’s feat has been calc’d numerous times and generally gets results in the double to triple digit teraton range, while Satsuki’s clocks in at over 3 petatons. Which would give Satsuki the advantage.

Taking it up a notch, we can get both feats higher by leaning into higher sizes implied by both series. This would bump Deus-Sama’s kinetic energy up to over 50 petatons, but would also bump the stadium feat up to over 9 exatons, maintaining the previously established advantage.

That 9 exaton result beats out a heavy majority of Fairy Tail feats. Etherion and Ars-Magia both aren’t turning the tide, nor are the Dragon Gods’ more basic feats like Aldoron crushing mountains and growing bigass trees. Country level feats such as Irene’s Universe One and Natsu’s Purgatory Slashing Dragon Fire are likewise outclassed, and while Dragon Cry’s 1.3 exaton high-end comes somewhat close, it’s still over 7 times weaker. That isn’t to say that Erza can’t beat it, but we’re only left with four arguments that can put her ahead: the atmospheric effects of Irene’s meteor from the anime, scaling to the Phoenix’s cloud-splitting blast, Selene’s moon feat, and the various arguments you could make from the Eclipse arc in the anime.

Starting with Irene, the smoke cloud produced by Deus-Sama gets results worth several zettatons of TNT with the larger planet size, beating out Satsuki’s feat by nearly a thousand times. Technically scaling this to Erza isn’t the most direct thing in the world, as she matched the meteor’s momentum and would not necessarily need to overpower the atmospheric effects to break the meteor itself. That said, the energy to create that smoke plume needs to come from somewhere, so it should at minimum apply to Irene herself. Given Erza’s more recent performance against stronger characters like the Dark Dragon Slayer Knights, she should likely be comparable or superior to Irene at this point, allowing her to scale to the feat indirectly.

Fortunately for Satsuki, Erza isn’t the only one with a powerful mommy, as Ragyō forming the cocoon sphere over Earth yields a kinetic energy of nearly 80 zettatons of TNT, dozens of times beyond Irene’s feat. Now, again this is difficult to scale directly. Ragyō performed this feat after absorbing Nui, and Satsuki only fought her beforehand, so no scaling, right? The thing is, however, Ragyō originally planned to create the cocoon sphere using Rei rather than Nui (Episode 23, 23:47 for when she absorbs Rei, Episode 24, 2:07 for when she explains her plan), and Satsuki and Ryūko did fight her when she had Rei. As she was still capable of performing the feat pre-Nui, Satsuki would scale to it. And of course, given access to Junketsu Shinzui, Satsuki at her peak would be on a level comparable to Senketsu Kisaragi and post-Nui Ragyō regardless. A point could also be made about her scaling to Nui herself.

Now, a more pertinent question is whether the cocoon sphere’s formation even applies to Ragyō’s AP, as it was performed through her Absolute Submission ability, which grants her control over all the Life Fibers across the planet. One could argue that this isn’t a direct showcase of power, and instead just a matter of her commanding the Life Fibers to move in a predetermined manner. While this would be a valid stance to take, it’s important to note that Ragyō does use her Life Fiber manipulation and Absolute Submission for combat, and that the energy for the cocoon sphere’s formation couldn’t have come from nowhere. In this sense, the feat isn’t terribly different from scaling Irene to the indirect effects of Deus-Sama’s reentry into the atmosphere, so under equal leeway the two would both be applicable.

It’s also worth pointing out that the cocoon sphere’s formation is not so different in nature from other feats that are commonly accepted for other series, with Madara spreading the Shinju Tree’s roots being the most direct comparison that comes to mind. Lastly, while Ragyō did require use of her satellite to broadcast Absolute Submission worldwide, this was a matter of range and not potency, as she needed to be able to reach every Life Fiber to command them to move as she desired, and the satellite did nothing to amplify her power, only transmit it.

Of course, one might argue that the exact mechanics of Absolute Submission are vague and could be interpreted multiple ways, and thus granting it to Satsuki, Selene’s moon feat would be fair game with similar leeway. And this would again be somewhat fair. In fairness, Ragyō’s feat is a bit more explained than Selene’s feat which has no explanation at all, but it is true that the mechanics of both are unclear in a manner that could arguably make them not AP feats. However, even taking them as equivalent and granting Erza Selene’s moon feat for fairness’ sake, which would exceed Ragyō’s formation of the cocoon sphere by a few dozen times, Ryūko’s usage of Absolute Submission to disperse the cocoon sphere is even more impressive, clocking in at nearly 50 yottatons, a fair bit beyond Selene’s 3.

But what if instead of granting both, we say no to both? That would be just as fair and arguably more valid, right? If we do that, then Satsuki drops all the way back down to 9 exatons, and Erza would still be in the zettatons off of Irene’s atmospheric effects, which are admittedly a little easier to argue than the cocoon sphere. In that case, Erza would have the advantage… if it weren’t for Kill la Kill: IF.

Yeah, despite all the misinformation you’ve likely heard, IF is completely 100% canon, as the game's story is completely overseen by Kazuki Nakashima, the writer of the main series, and it's described as an alternate scenario following up episode 8, with specific mention being made to "the secret of the original life fiber that was not revealed in the original series". It’s been explicitly described as canon, in the sense that it’s “in the same universe as part of the same story”, and referred to as “parts of the story that [Nakashima] wasn't able to tell in the anime”. Keep in mind that Erza’s current advantage is based on an anime only feat, which is being used because the anime is canon to the manga for similar reasons that IF is canon to the KLK anime.

The argument that IF’s events took place in a dream are also taken out of context, as Junketsu made the events of that dream tangible, creating a new reality outside of time and space that is established to have its own distinct flow of time. Feats within that reality are applicable in a physical sense for that reason.

With all this said, at absolute bare minimum, IF would push Satsuki up to baseline planet level, due to Junketsu creating a new realm that at minimum includes the planet. This is already 10 or so times beyond Irene’s feat, and likely a lowball, as Satsuki in IF was able to defeat the Primordial Life Fiber, who was stated to be able to spin that entire realm into a single thread of itself, putting its own power many times beyond baseline planetary. Extrapolating this based on the PLF’s size, this would end up exceeding both the Phoenix and Selene’s feats in power, even without applying the cocoon sphere calcs from the anime.

Which leaves us with only one avenue to put Erza above: the Eclipse Celestial Spirits arc.

Now, being left with only this one argument is a bit less dire for Erza than it sounds at first. Remember, the arc is canon as it was acknowledged in the manga, and the anime has oversight from Mashima. While the feats in the arc are a bit weird and could be argued as outliers to the rest of the series, one could easily make the same argument about feats from Kill la Kill: IF being incongruous with the show. So it would be pretty easy to argue that both should be acknowledged for the same reasons. And if you were to accept the feats from the Eclipse arc, they would put Erza roughly in the ballpark of large star level, well beyond the planetary+ minimum for the Primordial Life Fiber.

…Keyword. Minimum. While there’s not all that much evidence for Junketsu’s realm being a full-sized universe or anything like that, making multiversal interpretations shaky, the realm does include numerous stars in the sky. And remember, all of the feats from the Eclipse arc are contingent on the assumption that magically created stars are real celestial bodies because they look like stars. Which means, unfortunately for Erza, that to accept those feats, you need to apply that standard consistently. In which case Junketsu’s realm would be much larger, containing multiple solar systems at minimum, and the Primordial Life Fiber would be significantly beyond that. Which in other words means that Erza has unfortunately run out of arguments.

To recap, looking at things holistically: restricting things to just the manga for Fairy Tail and the show for Kill la Kill, and excluding high-end arguments of debatable validity, Satsuki is stronger with or without larger size measurements. Expanding things to include more questionable feats with similar pitfalls to one another, like Selene’s moon feat and Ragyō/Ryūko’s showings with the cocoon sphere, Satsuki maintains the advantage. Expanding things further to account for additional canon sources like the Fairy Tail anime/movies and Kill la Kill: IF, Satsuki’s feats from IF even at minimum would beat out anything short of the star feats from the Eclipse arc, and even then, Junketsu’s realm would be stronger than that as well with similar standards applied for both.

Ergo, with everything laid out on the table, Satsuki is consistently stronger with similar leeway.

…Now let’s talk speed!

What, you thought we were done after all that? Pfft. Stupid.

At minimum, Erza is roughly baseline FTL, as she scales slightly above Misaki, who is equal to Haku who stated he was as fast as light. While Erza doesn’t upscale significantly from Misaki due to having a lot of trouble with her, keep in mind that she scales to Misaki without Flight Armor, which makes her significantly faster. That’s about as straightforward as you can get, and since Inumuta stated that FTL speed is impossible-*shot*

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: Inumuta is a fraud. Literally the first thing he says during his fight with Ryūko is “she’s faster than I thought”, and he repeatedly fails to correct his measurements throughout the rest of the fight, meaning he literally does not know how fast she is. And his track record isn’t exactly better in most other instances; he didn’t know anything about Nui, he wrongly thought his camouflage couldn’t be seen through, and he claimed in IF that mind stitching only works on people with Goku Uniforms, which is just objectively not true, and he had absolutely no reason to believe it was true, he just assumed such for no reason. He also made his claim about FTL speed prior to learning that literally alien superhumans exist that were on a level of capability he had obviously never seen before. Needless to say, his claims about something being impossible are not the end-all-be-all.

A better question is whether Kill la Kill has any FTL feats to begin with, and luckily for Satsuki it does. Let’s talk about tennis.

Now, obviously everyone knows about the infamous feat from episode 2 where Ryūko cuts numerous tennis balls into confetti all at once. The enemy who launched this attack, Omiko, calls the attack the “110 million serve”. Of course, however, there visibly aren’t 110 million tennis balls onscreen during the attack, only a measly couple hundred. Reasonably, it’s more conservative to go with 220, the number of tennis balls onscreen, for the calc. That said, surprisingly, it’s actually FTL either way.

There are a couple reasons why previous calcs for this have gotten lower results. First of all, the number of swings that Ryūko made is lowballed. Initially, when the tennis balls land, they split into six distinct pieces. However, immediately afterward, they split apart again into thin strings, meaning she actually cut them a much greater number of times than five. It’s possible to argue that maybe they just broke afterward because she hit them really hard, but this doesn’t make much sense, since they split into thinly, evenly cut strings, which is unrealistic to what it would look like if they were pulverized.

Additionally, while ordinary tennis balls would likely be destroyed by the kind of blunt force that Ryūko was applying, these tennis balls specifically were durable enough to take multiple blunt force hits from her blade later in the episode without breaking, only splitting apart when directly cut. Meaning that splitting to strings in the fashion they did could only be the result of a larger number of cuts than previously believed.

Secondly, previous calcs used real-life examples of fast tennis serves for the balls’ speed. However, when Omiko serves the first tennis ball, her strike creates a shockwave/sonic boom. Meaning she actually hit them faster than the speed of sound. This would be consistent with the fact that the balls were too fast for Mako to react to, despite the fact that she is able to react to gunfire.

With all this in mind, factoring in the larger number of cuts and the higher initial speed of the tennis balls, Ryūko cutting all of them up in such a miniscule time-frame would clock in at over 2 times FTL. A solid feat to supersede Inumuta’s statement. It’s also worth acknowledging Ryūko performed this before she fully synchronized with Senketsu, and has since gotten faster as the series progressed.

This beats out most of Erza’s feats. In addition to Haku’s lightspeed movement, Erza was also able to intercept Irene’s relativistic meteor, and her alternate self Erza Knightwalker was able to react to Erza’s own photon slicer, another relativistic feat. However, there is one that could still give Erza the advantage, that being Jura’s feat of outspeeding an attack that, based on its name, could be considered a particle cannon. This would get results over 10 times FTL, exceeding the tennis ball calc, and just as Satsuki upscales from the tennis feat, Erza would upscale from this as it occurred a long time ago.

That being said, this is reliant on taking the name of the attack literally, despite the fact that the attack did not visibly resemble a particle cannon. With similar leeway, you would need to likewise take the name of Omiko’s attack literally in spite of visual incongruity, in which case the tennis ball feat would become thousands of times more impressive. In either case Satsuki maintains a speed advantage, either by a little or a lot depending on which route you choose to go.

Lastly, it’s worth acknowledging that the Eclipse arc has a feat that’s arguably MFTL+, with the Celestial Globe’s beams reaching the zodiac constellations within a little over 8 minutes, which would net speeds of around 16 million times FTL. Likewise, Kill la Kill: IF has a feat where Ryūko absorbs Life Fibers from beyond the edge of Junketsu’s realm, which would net speeds of over 68 million times FTL at minimum, as while the distance is smaller, the time-frame is shorter than the Fairy Tail feat. Once again, the comparison remains unchanged.

If you wanted to, you could perhaps be especially strict with both, dismissing the FTL low-end tennis ball calc for various reasons, taking Inumuta’s statement as fact, ignoring attack names for both, and taking the stance that Haku seems to specialize in speed and that Misaki may not be his equal in that particular aspect. In which case, more conservative ends for the tennis balls still get relativistic, and Erza would still scale to Irene’s relativistic meteor, so they would still be relatively on par at worst. All things considered though, as is the case with strength, Satsuki “mostly” has the speed advantage at various levels of argument. Giving her an overall advantage in strength and speed going into this match.

Arsenal & Abilities

As far as sheer versatility and quantity are concerned, Erza definitely has this category locked down on paper. At first glance, it would be fairly reasonable to assume her huge arsenal of armors could ultimately overwhelm Satsuki, with over 100 different armors to her name, 24 of which we’ve seen. However, a large number of weapons won’t always be more effective for killing the other guy or gal than just one, and Erza’s variety is less overwhelming than it might seem at first, especially considering she can only use one armor at a time. With this in mind, let’s discuss how each armor does against Satsuki individually.

For starters, the Heaven’s Wheel Armor grants Erza the ability to fly, but Junketsu Senpū gives Satsuki flight as well, and the same goes for the Black Wing Armor. Heaven’s Wheel has a variety of swords to attack simultaneously, but Satsuki’s speed advantage could allow her to react and counterattack accordingly. The Elemental Empress Armors (flame, sea, and lightning) are useful in terms of granting new methods of attack, but are most effective against opponents who utilize their corresponding element, less so against an opponent like Satsuki whom they aren’t specialized for. While different elements sound handy, all of them hit with similar attacks reliant on raw power, a field in which Erza is at a disadvantage. Satsuki surviving being in the center of a huge column of fire and scaling to Ryūko would allow her to withstand flame attacks just fine, and while Kill la Kill characters surprisingly don’t have feats of surviving electricity, lightning isn’t some magic element that bypasses durability either, so Satsuki’s sheer resilience should be enough to handle it.

Erza also has access to various stat amps, with Giant Armor, Clear Heart Clothing, Armadura Fairy, Piercing Armor, and Celestial Armor all granting her much greater firepower than before. Flight Armor also gives her a boost in speed to combat faster foes, and Adamantine Armor boosts her defenses. However, Satsuki can amp her stats as well with Junketsu Shinzui, meaning that since Erza’s boosts are generally unquantifiable, it’s impossible to prove they could bridge the gap. It should also be noted that Erza's armors amp singular stats, and she can’t stack them with one another, needing to instead switch between whichever stat she needs at a given moment. In comparison, Junketsu Shinzui amps all of Satsuki’s stats, and does not need to be switched out. 

The Wind God Armor is countered by Satsuki also being able to manipulate air, and likely to greater effect given the size and power behind her shockwaves. The Thousand-Armed Armor gives Erza a lot of swords to slice with, but Satsuki’s has the speed to counter. The Purgatory Armor jobbed. The Robe of Yūen’s elasticity is nice, but Satsuki’s Bakuzan can cut through the extremely durable Life Fibers (which are described to be harder than steel) and other durable objects, meaning she could likely let her cut right through it.

Morning Star Armor shines light. Satsuki does it normally. Light fight everyone. (In all seriousness the armor basically just has energy blasts which Satsuki could certainly tank)

The Ataraxia Armor is believed to cut things without touching them (I believe this was due to fan translations?), but it’s clearly specified that Erza is just slicing and dicing so quickly and smoothly that people don’t detect it, which is a lot different and makes more sense. Satsuki’s heightened senses and speed advantage can likely compensate for that, and even if not, she’s too tough for normal sword slashes to do much to her.

Of course, we can’t forget about the Seduction Armor, but it’s also important to remember that Satsuki’s a high schooler. Erza’s trying to win a fight, not catch a case.

Most important is of course the Nakagami Armor, and for the first time we have actual hax to talk about, but it’s important to establish what that hax is exactly. Some communities mistakenly believe the armor can cut through space, as when Erza cut through Minerva’s spatial magic, Elfman speculates that she cut through the space itself. However, Levy confirms in the next panel that what the Nakagami Armor actually does is dispel magic, explaining the method by which she overcame Minerva. This is also congruent with later uses of the armor, such as Erza using it to dispel Ajeel’s magical sandstorm. Even if we assume it actually has spatial cutting properties, Satsuki surviving attacks from the Primordial Life Fiber, which could affect space and time, ensures that such an attack would not bypass her durability regardless.

Misinterpretations aside, the Nakagami Armor’s ability to dispel magic won’t really come into play for this match. Life Fibers are not at all comparable to magic, as they’re sentient multi-cellular organisms that are extremely durable. They serve as a sort of “power system” for Kill la Kill, but they’re still living beings. Even if we decide to equate them to magic and say the Nakagami Armor could dispel Junketsu, then it’d literally and figuratively cut both ways, as Bakuzan can cut through Life Fibers, even Kamui and COVERS. Meaning that they’d both have tools that negate each other’s defenses, in the event that their (clearly dissimilar) power systems were somehow equalized.

As you may have noticed, despite the sheer number of armors Erza has, a lot of them aren’t really viable in this fight because none of them have any meaningful hax to speak of. The sole exception to this is of course the magic negating Nakagami Armor, the usefulness of which is greatly diminished by the fact that Life Fibers and magic are completely different. This is a case where versatility doesn’t necessarily equal “hax” or “more effective win conditions,” as the majority of Erza’s armors just allow her to hit hard in a different font, or perhaps amplify individual stats, neither of which will be effective at combating a significantly stronger and faster opponent. As far as stat amps are concerned, Satsuki can match them with her own transformation, and they lack quantifiable showings to establish they can overcome a significant power gap. 

Of course, Erza may have nearly 80 other armors we haven’t seen yet, but it is worth noting that already a fair amount of armors we have seen are redundant, sharing similar effects, such as the Elemental Empresses and various strength amps, and she’s carried other armors or outfits that serve no combat purpose. For instance, she uses her Requip magic to store a wedding dress in the Phoenix Priestess movie, and one of her armors is a literal giant strawberry. With this in mind, it’s impossible to conclude that Erza’s unseen armors would be relevant to this fight at all, as they could simply overlap with her other armors, be useless outright, or be hyper-specialized to specific circumstances that don’t apply to a straightforward opponent. This would make sense; since she doesn’t use these armors nearly as much as her other ones, they’re likely not as effective or useful as the ones she typically goes for, or are too specific to be useful in most cases.

For other miscellaneous things, Erza can conjure Natsu’s fire, which could end up being dangerous to Satsuki. Natsu’s fire can reach up to 200 million degrees Celsius and has other impressive heat feats. In comparison, Kamui like Senketsu got burnt up by reentry speeds, which is up to 1650 degrees Celsius. Should Erza land a hit with that, it could easily burn up Junketsu and leave Satsuki vulnerable. That said, it is worth noting that with the strength gap in mind, Erza relying on heat to do any damage means she only has one attack that could be fatal, while all of Satsuki’s attack options can be fatal in comparison.

Both can fly into the air, so neither would hold a mobility advantage over the other. Erza has solid AoE with her attacks like destroying a floating island alongside Erza Knightwalker, but Satsuki’s willpower has shown similar range before, and her clash with Ryūko created a shockwave that covered the entire diameter of Honnōji Academy before, a size greater than anything Erza has affected by herself or in clashes. Technically, other Fairy Tail mages that Erza has fought, specifically Natsu and Irene, have shown greater AoE, but scaling to those characters does not necessarily mean that Erza can match their range of effect.

Tertiary Factors

As far as sheer swordsmanship is concerned, the two surprisingly have little established training, just being unspecifically skilled. Erza’s skill is great enough to exceed expert blade users like Panther Lily and Kagura, while Satsuki is so skilled that even her middle school self with no Kamui was on par with trained swordsman and martial artist Sanageyama when he had his MK 1 uniform. Comparing these two directly, superiority to Sanageyama is perhaps a bit more impressive than Erza’s showings, as he was a gang leader who personally trained hundreds of martial arts masters before he was 15 years old, and Satsuki was his superior in skill to a much greater extent than Erza was to Kagura or Panther Lily.

That said, in terms of specific other advantages swordsmanship-wise, Erza has demonstrated the ability to wield swords with her feet, and her Thousand Arms Armor allows her to dual wield at least six at once, while Satsuki has never demonstrated the ability to fight with so many swords.

In terms of experience, both have been training since childhood, with Erza being older and likely starting a bit earlier, based on the earliest examples we’ve seen of Satsuki fighting. The difference wouldn’t be terribly significant, however, and both have feats of skill exceeding this level of experience. Erza was able to match Irene, who had 400 years of combat experience, while Satsuki was similarly able to take down the Primordial Life Fiber, which is thousands of years old.

As far as intellect is concerned, both have demonstrated considerable tactical expertise, with Erza frequently adapting her tactics in response to the situation with her Requip magic, and dealing with a variety of difficult opponents of differing power sets. This includes feats such as very quickly deducing the weaknesses of Midnight’s magic mid-fight, based on several smaller actions he took, such as choosing to dodge in a specific circumstance or using his power in certain ways but not others. Meanwhile, Satsuki has a history of devising multiple plans within plans and hiding her true intentions until the proper moment, completely and consistently fooling even an evil genius like Ragyō for years on end, despite essentially acting right under Ragyō’s nose. 

With all this in mind, Erza is technically more experienced and has some specific skills that Satsuki lacks, but Satsuki has better showings against opponents with more well-established skill and experience than the opponents Erza has fought. Namely, Satsuki’s showings against Sanageyama being more impressive skill-wise than Erza’s against Kagura, and the Primordial Life Fiber exceeding Irene in experience. Intellect is fairly relative with Erza having better showings of mid-combat adaptability and deduction, and Satsuki demonstrating more careful cunning and planning in a broad sense.

Of course, moving beyond skill, it wouldn’t be a proper Erza analysis without talking about endurance and pain tolerance (cough). Needless to say, Erza’s tenacity is one of her most consistent aspects, allowing her to power through almost impossible amounts of pain and fatigue and still prevail. From enduring torture from Kyôka and Misaki, to shattering Deus-Sama with most of her bones broken, to taking giant explosions and intense battle damage many times in succession and managing to fight on every time. “Because she’s Erza”, after all.

While not as notorious for it, Satsuki’s willpower and endurance are also fairly cracked, with her having withstood torture from Ragyō for a month straight without any notable issues afterward. On top of this, she also frequently makes extended use of Junketsu, which drains her blood constantly, something that no unenhanced human is supposed to be able to handle - except for Satsuki. Of course, the exact details of Ragyō’s torture are left to the imagination, and Satsuki’s never been subjected to the same kind of pain that Erza has powered through onscreen, such as agony equivalent to getting part of her body blown away. Still, on the other hand, a month straight is longer than Erza has ever been tortured in terms of sheer duration. Of course, Junketsu’s effects are much more debilitating than torture, and frequently leave Satsuki drained after much shorter durations, so in all likelihood, she won’t be lasting as long in a straight fight as Erza will, even accounting for Erza’s limited magic reserves.

Now that we’re done power scaling torture, it’s important to keep in mind that while both can endure incredibly inhospitable conditions, neither is invincible or capable of recovering from fatal wounds. While Erza most likely takes an overall advantage in both stamina and pain tolerance, with long-term endurance perhaps being relative, both she and Satsuki won’t exactly be able to endure their way through lost limbs or decapitation or other such maiming.

Conclusion

"I will withstand any physical pain, to protect the ones that I love!"

Advantages:

• Larger variety of armor and weapons

• Ability to conjure Natsu’s fire could allow her to exceed Satsuki’s heat resistance

• Greater experience in terms of duration

• Superior feats of tactical analysis mid-combat

• Greater stamina and pain tolerance

• Has shown to be able to wield more blades at once

• Magic use is less draining than Junketsu

Disadvantages:

• Physically at a consistent disadvantage with similar leeway

• Lacks hax options that could bypass Satsuki’s durability outside of fire

• Needs to swap between armors instead of reaping their boons simultaneously

• Nakagami Armor’s magic negation is useless

• Somewhat inferior feats of direct skill and performance against more experienced foes

"Fear is freedom! Subjugation is liberation! Contradiction is truth! These are the truths of this world!"

Advantages:

• Physically at a consistent advantage with similar leeway

• Capable of powering through the vast majority of Erza’s arsenal

• Nakagami Armor’s magic negation will not affect her

• Does not need to swap between different boosts

• Has demonstrated more long-term planning and careful cunning

• Has battled somewhat more skilled and experienced foes than Erza has

• Endurance is great enough that the fight will likely end before attrition matters

Disadvantages:

• At a disadvantage in versatility

• Lacks the heat resistance to withstand Natsu’s fire

• Lesser stamina and pain tolerance compared to Erza

• Using Junketsu drains her more quickly than Erza’s finite magic reserves

• Can’t wield six blades at once or fight with her feet

There’s a lot of stuff that goes into this matchup, mostly due to the varying power levels you can put both combatants at. However, when all arguments are gathered, Satsuki has more solid arguments for taking the edge in strength. The destruction of Ragyō Stadium is higher than the kinetic energy of Deus-Sama with and without larger sizes for Honnōji and Fairy Tail’s planet. Junketsu creating a planet sized reality at minimum exceeds the atmospheric effects of Deus-Sama. Ryūko’s usage of Absolute Submission triumphs over Selene’s moon feat. Even the feats from the Eclipse Celestial Spirits arc are outclassed by higher end arguments for Junketsu’s realm. As long as both fighters are given similar leeway, Satsuki should hold a decisive edge in strength.

Speed is also similar. The low end for the tennis ball feat is slightly above Haku’s lightspeed movement, and its high end massively outpaces Jura dodging a particle cannon. The Celestial Globe’s reaching constellations is also slower than Ryūko absorbing Life Fibers from beyond Junketsu’s realm. Like with strength, there’s multiple different arguments you can give both combatants, but Satsuki generally holds the advantage here.

While Erza’s vast variety of armors seem overwhelming at first, none of them provide meaningful hax options to get past the gap in stats. They usually amount to letting her hit harder than normal, which Satsuki can also do with Junketsu Shinzui, and Erza can only amp one of her stats at a time compared to Satsuki amping all of her stats. Even the Nakagami Armor’s ability to dispel magic is useless here due to the different power systems Fairy Tail and Kill La Kill operate in. The biggest advantage her arsenal gives her is being able to conjure Natsu’s extremely hot flames to burn Junketsu, but that’s only one potential win-con, while Satsuki just needs to hit Erza with any direct attack to win.

Erza offers more direct experience and arguable skill feats to the table, but Satsuki has fought enemies with thousands of years of experience over Erza. However, while both have fought incredibly skilled sword fighters before, Sanageyama’s skill is more well established than Kagura and Panther Lily, making Satsuki’s showings against him more impressive than Erza’s showings against the latter two. Both are likely similar in intelligence (albeit they use that intellect in different ways), so it’s unlikely either will get a jump on the other.

By far one of Erza’s biggest advantages in this fight is her inhuman stamina and pain tolerance, especially compared to Junketsu constantly draining Satsuki’s blood constantly even in small durations, meaning that if the fight managed to go long term, it’s unlikely Satsuki would win out. However, given the gap in power between them, a fatal enough sword swing or decapitation would be enough to put Erza down, and all that endurance can only take her so far against a much stronger opponent.

The Fairy Queen was a versatile, experienced, and tenacious fighter, but when put up against Satsuki’s greater physical prowess, skill, and just as fierce tenacity, her chances of victory were cut short.

Next Time…