Trading Places: Kenshin and Guts

[BitVyper]

Current Guts and post Jinchuu Kenshin for reference. They swap places, bodies, and power/ability sets such that they're basically just trading personas and histories. Guts gets plunked down at the start of the Kenshin comic, and Kenshin gets swapped in post Eclipse after having been forced to read the entire Berserk series up to that point. How do they handle each others' lives?

Scenario 2: They fully trade places, keeping everything, except Guts gets his speed bumped up to... lets say Aoshi's level.

Scenario 3: After either of the above, they sit and talk.

[Guy1]

Guts enjoys his vacation, Kenshin either dies or is traumatized to hell.

[Yun Lao]

Yeah. Pretty much what Guy said above.

This is especially bad for Kenshin as he's post-Jinchuu since, as the new Hokkaido series has shown, his body has begun breaking down.

[BitVyper]

I feel like both their lives would be pretty challenging for each other in particular ways. Like sure, Gutshin would absolutely breeze through something like Jinei Udou because well he's just going to immediately cut the guy's head off. That creates problems once you start looking at how he might handle something like the Kyoto arc though, and what relationships he may have built at that point compared with what Kenshin had. I think seeing him interacting with Hiko in that scenario might be interesting too, and wonder if he could learn the ougi, and what kind of person he might become if he did. Conversely, Kenguts, would be in a lot of trouble from the outset because Berserk is going to challenge his aversion to killing hard and may make maintaining that vow impossible, which maybe raises the question of how it applies to something inhuman (I think Kenshin eats meat?). If he gets beyond there though, I think he carries the possibility of some really interesting character interactions, and how he approaches some of the situations that don't just require killing people skills

This is especially bad for Kenshin as he's post-Jinchuu since, as the new Hokkaido series has shown, his body has begun breaking down.

Not an issue in the first scenario because he's not in his body. Could be an issue in the second scenario, only I'm pretty sure Kenshin's speed is so high there that apostles aren't really enough of a threat to push him into using succession techniques and the things that are super hard on his body.

Also I'm pretty sure when we saw Kenshin in that advanced state of physical deterioration, years had passed since Jinchuu.

Edit: Lets all pretend I didn't just say Kenshiro.

[BitVyper]

For that matter, in Berserk, he'll have a magical fairy that can heal career ending injuries, so his body's probably gonna be fine, given the things we've seen Guts recover from with fairy dust.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Well, Guts is dead when he faces off against a Soujiro who isn't having an emotional breakdown from facing someone who is a top-tier fighter, but also has a no-killing code and a Good Samaritan wider than most continents.

[The Chou Lives]

Well, Guts is dead when he faces off against a Soujiro who isn't having an emotional breakdown from facing someone who is a top-tier fighter, but also has a no-killing code and a Good Samaritan wider than most continents.

Given the crazy **** Guts has faced in his story, the only thing I see beating him is Kenshibs master who is a plot device. Even with Berserk Armor. Everything else gets mulched.

Kenshin? Oh he is fast and such. But he is going to be depleting fairy dust as he is far more human in regards to durability. Guys, is like Marc+ soak/durability in my eyes.

[BitVyper]

Given the crazy **** Guts has faced in his story, the only thing I see beating him is Kenshibs master who is a plot device. Even with Berserk Armor. Everything else gets mulched.

Kenshin? Oh he is fast and such. But he is going to be depleting fairy dust as he is far more human in regards to durability. Guys, is like Marc+ soak/durability in my eyes.

Scenario 1 Guts is in no way taking Soujiro on fighting ability alone. I feel that if he has actually attained the ougi as Kenshin did though, and gotten himself at least a bit more mentally healthy, he may be able to connect with the kid in his own way. Scenario 2 Guts might be able to wear him down by sheer virtue of damage soak with the Berserker armour.

Scenario 2 Kenshin is at the peak of his ability and likely fully healed of his long term injuries. Which apostle is going to hit him? Even with AoE. The bigger challenge for him is taking care of them while keeping his own vow,but then the apostles are all pretty human, and there’s no one really like Kenshin in the setting. I don’t think they’re all unreachable. Certainly fairy girl can’t be as tough a nut to crack as Soujiro.

[Hiromi]

the real issue here is can he do enough damage to them to actually kill them, he certainly isn't non lethally incapacitating them(he's going to have to get over his no killing thing pretty quickly or at least make an exception for Apostles), and even as good as Kenshin's Kyoto sword was you have to wonder if it can survive the Black Swordsman arc as a sword specifically made by a somewhat legendary sword maker in his own right specifically for Guts lasted all of what two cuts or so into a fodder level demon before snapping? Dragonslayer does the job more because it's a 400 lb hunk of steel that kind of resembles a sword shape than any sharpness it doesn't really have.

Edit: Yep, snapped off on the third strike,



please note that this sword in the previous chapter cut through another sword and the tip of the anvil it was laying on with no trouble or structural damage whatsoever

[BitVyper]

Kenshin’s sword pretty routinely survives supersonic impacts that are all blunt force thanks to its nature. The sword Guts broke is lacking any feats except breaking, so far as I can recall. Kenshin’s also survived impacting Shishio’s sword hard enough to create a vacuum strong enough to actually pull a full grown man with at least some degree of super strength forward.

[Hiromi]

I just posted a feat, it survived breaking another sword in two and the iron anvil it was sitting on in a single strike without any damage, that's a grossly superhuman(supersword?) feat for a sword.

I have no doubt that the Kyoto arc sword is stronger, but how much stronger when the other swords baseline has already been set at well above a normal sword, and yet didn't survive combat with Gut's first opponent with a very low level opponent, especially since immediately after that is the entire blackswordsman arc which is several years of nonstop fighting against those kinds of opponents with occasional actual much stronger Apostle.

Also while Kenshin does almost certainly swing his sword faster, Guts is still swinging his with the strength necessary to wield a 2-600(depending on your calcs) lb sword effectively one handed, in other words I doubt the difference in impact both their weapons make is really all that much. Plus the whole being able to hold on to the swords handle when he swung it hard enough to break the blade off despite earlier showing of how durable it was

[The Chou Lives]

Two things.

1: Guts can swing sword and partied such speed that Puck, a super natural being known for senses could not keep up.


2: If Kenshin is on Furs place. Means the mark, which means he will not find sleep except maybe up to a hour before random spectral **** tries to kill him.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Kenshin swings his sword fast enough that people with Super Speed see 9 precisely targeted strikes as one simultaneous attack and his current sword was able to easily keep treating blows with a sword stronger than the legendary blade that sliced his old sword (which was forged by the same legendary swordsmith who forged his final blade and was strong enough to bisect a Dragonslayer-esque zanbatou [which in turn was strong enough to smack artillery fire like a baseball once it was bolted back together], casually slice through a lamppost and send it flying through a second story window, trade blows with a guy who shattered an enormous armored door with one strike, and hit the ground hard enough to send rocks flying with enough force to pummel a guy severely) in half.

He also smacked a very large fat guy puppet filled with cables around 20-30 feet into the air with one strike, pretty casually slice through an RPG launcher, etc... Also, he can flick his thumb hard enough to unsheath his sword with enough force to bury a grown man up to his chin in the ceiling, for what that's worth.

And honestly, I'm not sure that Guts has much of an edge on soak, since Kenshin did things like bury an entire battlefield with his bare hands the same day that he met his teacher and tends to get into marathon matches against legendary swordsmen while deliberately handicapping himself, and now he's largely going to be facing off against a bunch of statues. Or that soak will really come into it when he's just not going to have to eat a hit anywhere near as much as Guts does and hits at least as hard as Guts does.

Hell, if he takes to napping in the day, Kenshin can spend his evenings destroying armies of evil demon punching bags to give his (realistically) blessed blade an astral component, and most apostles are probably vulnerable to having their joints crushed into a fine powder against an opponent that seems to teleport, assuming that they aren't capable of getting along with humans, eventually (ala Griffith's current army).

[The Drunkard Kid]

Double Post.