High & Low: Where do they rank?

[Sharpandpointies]

So, on my vacation I watched some of the High & Low movies (partly to practice my Japanese - fail, it's waaaay too colloquial - and partly for fun). Given the kind of insane crap the characters go through, I'm curious to run some of them through a gauntlet and see where they land (roughly).

For the purpose of this thread, we're going to look at three of the characters in comparison to Everyone Else™:

1. Kohaku, former leader of Mugen;
2. Masaki Amamiya;
3. Hiroto Amamiya.

I'm choosing these three because they stand at the top of the pecking order in High&Low, and all three are billed as being roughly equal in ability (Ice as well, see pages 7-8).

High & Low is spare of feats, but I'll do a rundown of what I've seen thus far, working up the presentation/feat ladder.

*Some Spoilers Ahead*

1. The ordinary members of the gangs - ie, no-name people - regularly get in fights with each other using stuff like metal bats, 2 x 4's, telescoping batons, and the like. They fight for extended periods, beating each other up with these things, bottles, their fists, etc.

2. The higher level characters (name-level) basically one-punch these guys. Or pick them up and throw them around. As an example, a couple of name-level characters from the White Rascals (Kaito and Kizzy) beat up 10-12 members of Doubt, all of the Doubt guys armed with pipes and bats (High & Low season 2, episode five, below). It's easy for them. DTC (Dan, Tetsu, and Chiharu) often take on 6:1 odds and manage fine. This happens all. The. Time.

3. The higher level characters take hits from metal bats and such from the 'normal' gang members and keep on trucking. Some of them just ignore the hits, only taking a dramatic pause to look really angry. This happens too many times to count. Even bad hits - Chiharu taking multiple shots from metal bats, Chiharu being one of the smallest guys around, THEN taking a metal pipe in the jaw in slow motion, with flying blood and so forth...and he comes back and beats all crap out of more guys (High & Low, Season one, detailed below).

4. The higher level characters fight for extended - like, REALLY extended - periods against each other, beating each other bloody with and without weapons, throwing each other through plate glass windows, smashing up the scenery with each other, hitting each other WITH the scenery, weapons, fists, kicks, etc. These fights drag on for minutes on end. Characters get mangled, absolutely ruined, and get up to fight more. One of the best examples of this is Ranmaru versus Rocky, High & Low: End of Sky, detailed below.

5. Gang leaders are CLEARLY stronger than the name-level characters. People like Cobra, Rocky, Smokey, Murayama all basically beat hell out of name-level characters, or toy with them. The name-levels are good enough to fight back, but there's clearly a jump from them to the Gang Leaders.

Now we get into the three characters listed above.

6. The Amamiya brothers literally take on a hundred or so of the above 'normal' gang members and beat all shit out of them without really getting hurt. They hit these guys and send them flying 10' through the air, beat them up in groups at the same time, never get hit, that kind of thing.

7. The Amamiya brothers take on name-level characters, sometimes more than one at a time, and pretty much whip their rears. The other guys make a fight of it, but the outcome isn't in doubt unless it's someone billed as an absolute top-tier fighter. Even then? They lose (thus far, I've not yet seen the final movie). The Amamiya brothers take on Gang Leaders + name-level characters at the same time, and beat them down.

8. Kohaku is the only regular guy considered to be the equal of the Amamiya brothers (Ice, a sort of new character, takes one of them on, still waiting to see the rematch as the fight is called due to a situational thing). He runs evenly fighting with Masaki Amamiya, whereas Cobra (gang-leader), Tsukumo (gang-leader level, easily), and Yamato (a very strong name-level character) basically get beat down.

9. The Amamiyas go up against dudes with firearms, and basically wade through crowds of them (like, twenty guys with guns out), aim-dodging (yep, explicitly shown), using the shooters as shields from each other, controlling the shooting such that the shooters shoot each other, disarming them in groups (casually), etc. It's really not a big deal for them, so long as they don't start at a long distance.

10. Just as a small nod to their damage soak, someone billed as being slightly better than them basically stands in front of about a dozen guys armed with pistols and smgs, gets shot full of holes while shooting back with his pistol, and kills the lot of the goons before collapsing.

11. Tsukumo (call him Gang-Leader, maybe Gang-Leader+) is a guy who gets into car crashes while hanging out the window of a car (and no belt on, obviously). He walks it off (not 'limps', just takes a moment to catch his breath). He then kicks the front side of the car so that the car spins about Edit: 30 degrees (it's a small four-door, as I recall) and knocks over a bunch of people. He does this after spending a loooong time in a coma and still not being 100%. The Amamiya brothers are above him when he's at his best. Kohaku effortlessly dominates him in a fight, taking his best shots while overpowering him with strength (at a time when he's kicking cars to spin them and knock people over).

12. Kohaku, in fact, takes on Tsukumo, Cobra (one of the gang leaders), and Yamato (billed as physically one of the strongest characters, who tosses people around like toys) at the same time. Even against three top-tiers of the series, he basically wins a rough fight (no spoilers as to how it actually turns out). During this fight he outmuscles them all at the same time, tosses them around one-handed, kicks them so that they slide 10' along the ground, that sort of thing. With that in mind, when Kohaku and Tsukumo, Cobra, and Yamato fight against the Amamiyas, the foursome is LOSING the fight, whereas when Kohaku fights against one of the Amamiyas, alone, it's basically a draw (the math actually works out: Kohaku + Trio < Two Amamiyas).

13. Fun feat: Kohaku and Masaki Amamiya are in a van that goes over the side of a bridge. AFTER it goes over the side, the two of them run up the near-vertical floor of the van as it's falling (Masaki starts in the driver's seat), jump, and both manage to catch the edge of the bridge.

13. Kohaku takes hits from a guy who punches through metal pipes and cracks concrete walls. And just looks angry and keeps fighting.

Sample feats, with more listed in the posts below.

Hiroto Amamiya, in a dust-up with a half-dozen gang members, beats the crap out of them while chatting on the phone with his brother. At one point he punches one of them - remember, he's not actually trying hard - in the face such that the other guy spins 270 degrees in the air and lands flat on the ground.

Cobra, potentially the central character who is nonetheless NOT on the same level as the Amamiya brothers or Kohaku (proven in fights with them), gets captured by the Yakuza. They string his wrists up and leave him like that on his knees. They then take turns swinging for home runs on his ribs with 3' long metal pipes, occasionally taking a detour to whack him on the head in a similar fashion. This continues over an extended stretch of time (it's not 3-4 hits, they go on like this for a few minutes). It really messes him up, but he doesn't end up with broken ribs or anything of the sort, and is seemingly okay to fight a day or two later.

Kohaku, Tsukumo, and the Amamiya brothers end up in a deserted factory with endless waves of Yakuza armed with short swords trying to kill them. They split up into two groups and fight their way out, with swarms of men attacking them with swords. None of them get cut through this mess as they beat large numbers of people unconscious. At one point, Kohaku picks up a large wooden pallet and forces back a group of about six people, using it as a ram one-handed (!!!). Masaki then running-jumps over his head, kicking through the pallet such that it basically explodes; it and all of the half-dozen people it is holding off are sent flying.

A mixed group of gang people are fighting against the Yakuza. Kohaku notes that one of the Rude Boys - Takeshi - needs to get from point A to B, but has about five Yakuza in his face. He picks up a downed fighter by the belt, and throws them underhanded at the group. The person hits the ground, skids about 20' (!!!) and bowls over the Yakuza members. Kohaku then makes a stirrup of his hands, shouting at Takeshi to come. Takeshi, a parkour demon, comes running over, puts his foot in Kohaku's hands, and jumps as Kohaku throws him. It sends him flipping and spinning over 20' up in the air (and quite a bit lengthwise).

Genji - superhuman Yakuza character - falls 30-40' to concrete and just gets back up again like it's nothing. He falls off of speeding cars and hops to his feet. He tanks hits from Kohaku just fine. He cuts stuff he shouldn't cut with his Katana (stabbing it straight through ~1/4" steel, for example, or slicing through heavy chains that are just hanging there). He slams people into concrete walls and creates small craters, punches through iron pipes without effort, etc. The Amamiya brothers take him on and, in a well-choreographed display of teamwork, use a lot of baiting and blind-side attacking to work him over (wolfpack techniques). It still doesn't really put him down (despite their showcased hitting power), and he starts landing hits with his Katana. Masaki comes up with the idea of wrapping chains around his shin and arm for protection as well as greater impact, Hiroto follows suit, and they promptly beat this guy down despite his amazing durability.