Hao Asakura vs All For One

[BitVyper]

This'll be pre-great spirit Hao, still rocking the spirit of Fire, fighting...

1. All For One as he was when he he fought All Might for the last time

2. Current All For One (honestly I've lost track of the differences)

3. Current Shigaraki

They get one second of prep before the bell rings. Feel free to answer for speed equalized or not.

[big_adventure]

Can't speak for the rumble.

Current AFO has some issues in that his life support mask has been cracked and he seems to be suffering some issues done to him by the New Order quirk.

We don't know really what the extent of this will be in all-out combat. He's still a beast.

[Nik Hasta]

Welp, because it's a Shaman King thread, I have to ask the usual question of where OP stands on the whole issue of oversouls being somewhat impervious to non-spiritual damage.

Looking it up, we actually discussed this issue when I made a thread about Hao two years ago.

Speed is also something of an issue, AFO doesn't have many speed feats to my recollection. Shaman King as a series rolled merrily into pretty high end bullet timing before the superspeed technique Fumon Tonkou was even introduced and Hao was above basically everyone in the series in every stat. He has feats of snatching cruise missiles out of the air, outflying jets and decimating an entire naval fleet in a very short time span.

So that's a problem.

His firepower isn't on the same level as AFO though. Hao tends to work more on the sort of... nuking large buildings sort of level. The Emeth Golem, which was noted as being kind of beneath Hao, and he was blasting holes in small mountains though Hao never directly replicated that level. AFO is tearing chunks out of a city which is a bit higher.

Also AFO has a billion powers and I don't recall all of them haha. MHA doesn't tend to stick in my mind too much.

[big_adventure]

One more issue would be whether or not AFO can steal powers from Hao. I don't have a conclusive answer. AFO steals "Quirks", but that's just the name for superpowers or maybe "mutations" in the Marvel sense in the MHA universe. So does that allow powerjacking of someone who comes from somewhere else? I don't really have an opinion.

[Nik Hasta]

One more issue would be whether or not AFO can steal powers from Hao. I don't have a conclusive answer. AFO steals "Quirks", but that's just the name for superpowers or maybe "mutations" in the Marvel sense in the MHA universe. So does that allow powerjacking of someone who comes from somewhere else? I don't really have an opinion.

This actually came up in another thread about Arthur Petrelli and Hao.

I wrote this about the notion of powerjacking Hao:

So he can steal abilities and somehow make them not available to the person who had them previously?

The tricky thing is that Shaman abilities aren't tied to their physical bodies. They are a product of the soul, hence why they retain their abilities even when dead or in the afterlife.

Additionally to that Hao's abilities aren't necessarily innate. He has a metric ton of Furyoku (spiritual power) but that's not a product of any innate power, it's a product of him spending 1000 years in hell cultivating his power.

On top of all of that, Furyoku doesn't mean much if you don't have a spirit to work with. Even if Arthur can remove Hao's abilities and become a shaman in his own right, I'm not sure he'd be able to control the Spirit of Fire because it takes a monumental amount of Furyoku to manifest and, due to shaman abilities being tied to the soul, Arthur would have like no spiritual power to start off with.

I would be dubious on AFO being able to remove his Shaman Powers. Quirks seem to be tied to physical biology more than spirit or soul, hence the selective breeding that Endeavour engaged in.

[Sharpandpointies]

Does seem to be similar to 'can AFO steal the chi/qi/ki abilities of some magical martial artist from the various comics/movies/stories that have such beings?'

I would say a firm 'No' to that, for obvious reasons, and this seems to be pretty close to being in-line with that.

[big_adventure]

That's fair, and about what I'd expect.

I'd imagine he could steal a mutation or an innate power.

I don't think he could steal Bang or Bomb's stuff, given that's all training and technique.

He could perhaps steal Matt Murdock's senses, but not his training.

I know nothing about Hao, hence why I didn't have a comment on this particular match, and that includes the nature of his powers.

I guess that would also be the case with maybe Danny Rand... he can't steal his training or his techniques, and probably also can't steal the dragon power. I guess?

Anyway, works for me! Thanks for the replies.

[Sharpandpointies]

I guess that would also be the case with maybe Danny Rand... he can't steal his training or his techniques, and probably also can't steal the dragon power. I guess?

This one is interesting.

I would say no, and for an odd reason. It's BECAUSE Danny's power can be stolen from him by another trained martial artist that it can't be taken by AFO.

Danny's 'dragon power' isn't something naturally innate to him. It's something from outside of himself that he carries with him. That's pretty clearly shown by the fact that it CAN be stolen from him by people using specific, learned techniques. Since it's not something innate and natural to him, I would argue that AFO cannot steal it from him because that's effectively how AFO's powers work - he steals Quirks that are part of people's biology.

Ooof, hang on. How does One For All work with being stolen by AFO? Because as I recall, that's a quirk that was imposed on the central character by All-Might. Can IT be stolen? Or not?

If so, then maybe the dragon power itself can be stolen. It's not something Danny just trained up, like normal qi; it's a specific power source he stole from the dragon, that he then trained to use. Soooo...if AFO can steal bestowed powers, maybe it would work on that as well. Granted, AFO would then just get the dragon power and wouldn't be able to do squat with it, because that does take training.

...then we're also getting into the issue of 'can OFA steal stuff that isn't specifically a quirk from his universe?' which barring the series actually having other forms of power crop up (like magic or whatever) for OFA to try to steal, is going to be hard to argue either way.

[big_adventure]

This one is interesting.

I would say no, and for an odd reason. It's BECAUSE Danny's power can be stolen from him by another trained martial artist that it can't be taken by AFO.

Danny's 'dragon power' isn't something naturally innate to him. It's something from outside of himself that he carries with him. That's pretty clearly shown by the fact that it CAN be stolen from him by people using specific, learned techniques. Since it's not something innate and natural to him, I would argue that AFO cannot steal it from him because that's effectively how AFO's powers work - he steals Quirks that are part of people's biology.

Ooof, hang on. How does One For All work with being stolen by AFO? Because as I recall, that's a quirk that was imposed on the central character by All-Might. Can IT be stolen? Or not?

If so, then maybe the dragon power itself can be stolen. It's not something Danny just trained up, like normal qi; it's a specific power source he stole from the dragon, that he then trained to use. Soooo...if AFO can steal bestowed powers, maybe it would work on that as well. Granted, AFO would then just get the dragon power and wouldn't be able to do squat with it, because that does take training.

...then we're also getting into the issue of 'can OFA steal stuff that isn't specifically a quirk from his universe?' which barring the series actually having other forms of power crop up (like magic or whatever) for OFA to try to steal, is going to be hard to argue either way.

OK, so OFA is a special case.

AFO had a brother. He thought his brother had no quirk. So AFO gave his brother a quirk that enables storing up power basically permanently.

Thing is, he DID have a quirk, OFA, a quirk that enables the owner to give it away. Kinda useless by itself, buuuuuuut when combined with other quirks, it's pretty amazing, since it also seems to enable quirk stacking AND the ability to communicate with the previous holders of OFA. So AFO gave his brother the power-buildup quirk, and this got combined with the "I can stack and give away my quirk" quirk that his brother already had.

And each time OFA has been given away, Deku is the 8th holder, it ALSO takes the quirk from the person who receives it. So OFA now combines the giveaway ability, the power build-up (the source of the strength, speed and toughness - it seems to work by just building up more and more power over time, hence All Might being stronger and tougher with it then previous holders), a precog danger sense, a tendril-spewing power, a flight-ish power (it's really a hover ability, but combined with the speed and strength from the power-buildup quirk and Blackwhip it allows for extreme mobility), ANOTHER power-build-up ability that works over the short term like a battery or a capacitor (Deku, despite not yet being able to handle 100% of the power of OFA, combines partial OFA with energy stored using this ability to hit as hard as 100% OFA), and a fog generation power. It ALSO seems to have some resistance to being stolen - AFO specifically couldn't steal it from All-Might or previous holders BUUUUUUUT then again, the some of the entire setup of the series is about AFO... getting that quirk again. Well, let's not examine that too closely.

[Sharpandpointies]

Okay, I get all of that.

.....

Doesn't help much figuring this out, sooooo...weird.

Thanks!

[big_adventure]

Okay, I get all of that.

.....

Doesn't help much figuring this out, sooooo...weird.

Thanks!

Yeah, the "special case" -ness makes it less useful.

One thing that seems to happen with AFO - when he steals a quirk he seems to get the ability to use it, despite that not being at all biologic. Half of the series is all about kids spending years training to efficiently use their quirks.

[Nik Hasta]

I know nothing about Hao, hence why I didn't have a comment on this particular match, and that includes the nature of his powers.

To touch on the outline of Hao's abilities and those of shaman in general and how Hao is kind of an aberrant individual in the setting.

Shaman in Shaman King are, essentially, biologically normal but have a spiritual attunement that allows them to perceive and interact with spirits. The level of this gift can vary and is governed by the amount of spiritual energy held by the shaman in question, this energy being called "furyoku".

Furyoku is cultivated by the shaman "drawing closer to death". Shaman can become closer to the death by, on one end of the spectrum, doing something like meditating for a week in a pitch dark cave with no food or water - all the way up to killing themselves and going to train in hell for a while before being resurrected by another suitably skilled shaman.

With enough furyoku and a deep enough bond with a willing spirit, a shaman is able to manifest an "oversoul" - a physical manifestation of a spirit that changes the form of the spirit into a weapon.

When doing this, the strength of the shaman matters but so does the strength of the spirit. The stronger the spirit, the higher the amount of furyoku required to manifest and maintain it as an oversoul. You effectively have to invest furyoku into a spiritual construct and, if that construct is forcibly destroyed, you lose that investment.

At the extreme ends of this there are instances of shaman summoning spirits way outside of their paygrade and pretty instantly dying from the stress as a result. Azazel of the X-Laws, basically an angelic tank kaiju, comes to mind wherein a shaman summoned him and was able to maintain it for only 13 seconds before dying from the amount of energy it took to do so.

Hao wields the primordial Spirit of Fire, one of the most powerful spirits in the world, being as it is one of the five cardinal elemental spirits. As one would expect, he has an absolutely ridiculous amount of furyoku due to him spending 1000 years in hell before being reincarnated. For comparison, the lead cast, who by the end of the story are effectively five of the most powerful shaman ever to exist, only ever trained in hell for like a week.

Hao, unlike most other shaman, always has his oversoul online. This did cause some of his enemies to think that he must have invested all of his energy into the Spirit of Fire and the loss of this oversoul would cause him to lose all of his energy. This turned out to be false because when his oversoul was eventually damaged by a golem that was blowing holes in small mountains, Hao revealed he had enough energy to resummon his spirit five times over if required.

This makes Hao a unique problem in the Shaman King universe. Firstly, he has one of the most powerful spirits at his disposal and second, because his reserves of furyoku are so huge even if you could destroy his spirit, he can just resummon it without issue because he's got so much power to draw upon. In this way he kind of breaks the soft glass cannon rule of the series. More power = more energy investment = more risk and greater loss if something goes wrong. Hao is playing with house money and does not care.

Also, from AFO's perspective, he's effectively fighting two enemies because the Spirit of Fire is a separate entity to Hao and has its own abilities and can make decisions and attack on its own.

In addition to being a shaman, Hao is also a born telepath and is constantly reading the minds of everyone around him. He can also resurrect the dead if he has their body to hand, is immune to curse magic, has pretty high level super speed, strength and durability and can also utterly nullify spiritual energy in his presence with a technique called Mumyuyakumu as a defence against pretty much all spiritual based attacks.

He's a monster by all metrics from the series he is from.

I don't know AFO could pull this out as a quirk as it is tied to his soul. He's not even in his original body at the start of the series and has spent more time in hell than he has in the physical world.

[BitVyper]

Shaman King as a series rolled merrily into pretty high end bullet timing before the superspeed technique Fumon Tonkou was even introduced

Does anyone outside of Hao actually have explicit bullet timing? I was trying to think about it, and I couldn't remember anyone besides him ever doing it. Not saying they don't, I just don't remember anyone else ever being actually shot at.

[Dark Soul # 7]

He could perhaps steal Matt Murdock's senses, but not his training.

This rather succiently sums up the working principles of AFO's ability to steal powers. He can steal the power but he can't steal the training and experience the person he's stealing the power from has.

When he intervened in Kamino AFO considered stealing Best Jeanist quirk since the dude was obviously strong what with being one of the top ranked heroes in Japan. But he decided against it since Jeanist quirk requires large amounts of training to use efficiently and at full potential. And AFO just didn't have the time to invest that much practice into mastering he quirk. So he just blasted a hole in Jeanist's gut instead.

As for his powers. Off the top of my head:
- His ability to steal others' powers is his bread and butter.
- He can shoot people with force blasts that easily smash through skyscrapers and rip through multiple city blocks.
- He's got enough enhancing quirks to duke it out pretty evenly with All Might, even the United States of Smash "only" knocked him out.
- He can fly.
- He can extend sharp tendrils from his fingers that are good for stabbing and tossing around people purposes.
- He's got another tendril ability where the tendrils end in tiny mounths that are good for ripping and tearing, and they can form together for a sonic blast attack.
- He's also partly shielded himself against some intense attacks from Endeavor.

And he's got a ton of other quirks that aren't really combat related as well.

[Nik Hasta]

Does anyone outside of Hao actually have explicit bullet timing? I was trying to think about it, and I couldn't remember anyone besides him ever doing it. Not saying they don't, I just don't remember anyone else ever being actually shot at.

Horohoro reflexively created a skin barrier of ice to block bullets at close range and then froze bullets in mid flight as they were fired at him.

There was that vampire guy who did early on before the tournament started, the cheetah themed jiang-shi who had a bunch of crazy blink movement stuff.

There's a wider speed algorithm that I used to know by heart but it's been a good few years since I last read Shaman King.