I’d wondered why I didn’t see anything mentioning the Golden Weapons in the last several years.
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A volcano is a pretty huge step down, but I can see your logic there.
I’m saying all of this as someone who wanted Tahu to win.
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Puts hands together.
Alright, I want you to watch a video and tell me if you agree with the outcome or not, and why it does/doesn’t work. Then read my explanation below.
Did you watch it? It’s only a couple minutes long and it’s really good. Yes? Perfect. I’ll get back to why this video matters in a moment.
Most frequently in discussions of character versus battles or even franchise versus franchise, the main element used to argue why a given side will achieve victory is power scaling. It is not the only thing, but it is the primary. Powerscalers, people obsessed with power levels or crazy feats and usually the suspects of such debates, often lack critical analysis and frequently misuse transitive properties.
The most common instance of this is characters defeating other characters. It’s a quick and dirty, though effective, writing trope to tell the reader/viewer that this new coming threat is even badder than the last one or at least a serious threat. Except without proper build up, because this is comics/manga/animation baby and we don’t got time for that. So there is an unproven assumption about their abilities. Thanos beats Hulk, Antman beats Thanos easily, therefore Antman also beats Hulk. But it’s not just narrative trickery that powerscalers are using.
A common joke about that involves who is faster, the Flash or Superman? Because what if Superman pulled out a gun and shot Flash in the leg. If the Flash is really extremely fast at all times, as indicated by other feats, but can get shot so easily and Superman, at a base level, is always faster than speeding bullets, then Superman is faster than Flash. It’s an absurd scenario and is misattributing facts and context.
Which leads into the next problem with powerscalers; lacking (or ignoring) context and literary analysis. To a certain extent, such ignorance is required for the format to work at all because certain characters wouldn’t behave that way normally because of their personality, morals, ethics, etc. But, powerscalers tend to go a step further and will bring out extreme use cases of the things abilities in ways that would never be used in the story, even though its technically possible.
Take, for example, characters with radioactive blood like Spider-Man or the Hulk. There’s plenty of stories about how it would be harmful or kill people if it got into their system. But it would be pretty unlikely for Spidey to suddenly weaponize his blood against someone, even in a fight to the death scenario. To a powerscaler, however, if that gives him an edge and his opponent is particularly weak to radioactive material, well, I doubt I need to paint that scene for you.
Now, what does any of that have to do with the video from earlier? Because, despite calling itself a parody, it demonstrates that its creator has an understanding of genre and literature that most powerscalers don’t employ. Both characters in the fight are Superman clones, but Metro Man comes a comedy and Omni Man is from a satirical drama. The fight works because it understands the underlining narrative, even if subconsciously, that both characters follow and which grants their powers. Simply put, Metro Man is operating on what is funniest and Omni Man is going off what is darkly dramatic. Metro Man winning is the funniest outcome and Omni Man dying in a pathetic manner is quite dramatic irony.
Understanding the narrative and genre is incredibly important. In a fight between comedy and drama, in a vast majority of instances a comedy character will win because that’s a far stronger force in storytelling. It’s way easier to ruin a good drama with some comedy than it is to ruin a comedy with some drama.
While most powerscalers will scoff and discount that idea, throw a joke character at them and they’ll choke. Joke characters tend to break all the rules and things bend around them, because they’re breaking the normal narrative structure. But even characters that exist in comedies, like old slapstick cartoons like Popeye can easily break powerscalers. Because the genre and narrative rules support their “toon physics” for whatever enhances the comedy in the moment.
In addition, without literary/media analysis, powerscalers often fall victim to exaggeration and unreliable narrators. They’ll take everything at face value, when in context and with some critical thinking it would reveal some very different information.
FYI, wiki writers also frequently fail in picking up unreliable info as well and make the problem worse. Especially when there are so many instances where the only time we learn a thing that does exist in a universe was only told in exaggerated or false manners. Most writers and show creators aren’t thinking about how people will be summarizing such info later, so it’s a complicated problem to solve.
All that brings us back to Death Battle. They vary quite a lot in quality in how they handle these powerscaler issues. They’re usually really bad about transitive properties and in the early days were also pretty bad about excessive power usage. Though they don’t always ignore narrative consideration, if that is the only way they can see a justification for who would win. See the ever infamous two-time fight of Goku VS Superman. By the way, it is correct that Superman would win but that’s a long narrative argumentation as to why. It’s also a major factor in the Bowser VS Eggman fight as well. So what happened here with Ninjago?
Not understanding context of several scenes and using the transitive proper in Kai’s favor to an absurd degree. Thankfully, Zhyndea already did an excellent job explaining why it’s absurd. Though I’ll also add that Lego is always, always super inconsistent as to whether power resides in a weapon/tool or the character. And I could be here for weeks showing that for both Bionicle and Ninjago. Though as a treat, have a Tahu example:
A lot of Stage 6 Kraata just hype up the Toa Nuva like that. Which is why I have an unfinished comedy series involving Kraata stages with a Light Resistance Kraata who at Stage 6 can survive the light reflecting off of Takanuva’s belt buckle. Anyways.
So first we have to establish what genres we are dealing with the two characters. Though I find Ninjago often doesn’t know what it wants to be (especially in tone), it is an action-adventure comedy at the end of the day. If you want, you can also tack on the superhero genre too. And Bionicle is a superhero drama in a mythical epic’s trench coat.
They are closer than what that might initially appear, since Ninjago’s comedy side is more in its dialogue and one-liners than the story or narrative itself being strictly comedic. Meaning we don’t have to worry about a victory being given because it would be funnier for whichever character to win/lose. Which is great. And they’re hotheaded fire dudes, losing and getting back up again is something that happens to both a lot. They’ve got some similar positions, so to a certain level that should be fair.
Except for a very key factor - Tahu is his power and Kai is not. Kai, and most of the other Ninja, rely on other factors to give them their powers (be it weapons, genetics, specific martial arts, dragons, god’s grandson, or some other new reason they’ll invent next week). Tahu, like all Toa, don’t rely on others for their powers (unless a specific failsafe is put on them like the Nuva Symbols for some reason). And because Toa are so powerful alone, they need to be constantly reminded about Unity because there are greater threats than one Toa can handle alone. Whereas the Ninja usually aren’t that great on their own and are only really useful as a team.
Though as a quick aside, in a grand irony, the Nuva masks were supposed to help encourage Unity. They can share their powers with others. So as long as the Toa Nuva were near each other, they didn’t need to all whip out their Hau from storage, they could just rely on Tahu…And then they did a mask collecting quest to be fully independent again if need be. Mask packs. Ruined a good narrative progression.
Also also, Tahu could have used the Kaukau Nuva specifically on Kai and choked him to death, because it would remove Kai’s ability to breathe air. Yes, that is a thing you can do with that mask. Want to bet that would cause Kai to pause long enough for Tahu to do something serious to him? Like, I don’t know, removing all his heat from his body to instantly freeze him to death? Again, extreme power usage Tahu would never think to do even if he was going to kill someone but just sayin’, I know a lot a tricks to pull in killing fools with Bionicle powers.
This also doesn’t take into consideration that G1 Tahu is not the most powerful incarnation of Tahu - G2 Tahu is. G2 Tahu took the original concept of the G1 Toa, where they were actual elemental spirits (aka small deities) and made that the actual case. The Toa are the literal manifestations of the elements. The Creatures are just one of their avatars (or a portion of themselves) that grants the elements to exist on Okoto. And if a Creature dies, it was stated on the website that specific element would cease to exist on the island. So G2 Tahu, with his memories restored and reunited with Ikir, is something akin to a Source Dragon in Kai’s realms.
And I could go on but I think you get the idea. There’s a lot more to consider for both and none of the proper tools were applied to either.
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Jokes aside, it’s clear Death Battle overscaled both Kai and Tahu, but only Kai was scaled to something he is explicitly stated to be incapable of doing. Tahu’s nova blast vaporizing the entire GSR isn’t something ever confirmed (as far as I know 
), as Jaller’s nova blast was never stated just how much of the Matoran universe it would incinerate, only that it would certainly be destroyed - which could mean punching a massive hole in the GSR’s chest.
Overall, I can’t even say the fight looked that good. A lot of the time the movements were very janky and the visual style tried as hard as possible to emphasize these two were toys the entire time with the environment and weight to the characters. Not Death Battle’s best fight by any means.
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The Golden Weapons were forged in the Golden Peaks (volcanoes), so, presumably, for Kai to melt down the weakened Golden Weapons, he would need temperatures somewhat less than that of those volcanoes.
They were in Crystalized in 2022, but they disappeared after turning into the Golden Ultra Dragon at the end of it (Crystalized was SO bad) and have not reappeared since (one of the current writers said that they are not a focus for the current show).
@ajtazt Amazing post!
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You all make some fair points that I hadn’t considered, though, it’s crazy how the Golden Weapons had the ability to create a star, yet were forged by the fires of a volcano.
I’m someone who likes to talk more about the stuff I like rather than the things I dislike. It makes me less of a critical person, but I’m just weird like that.
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Yes, I watched the video
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Metro Man wins every time - but only when it comes to who has the most flamboyant super suit.
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I agree with Ghid - that is A LOT to read, however I did read it.
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The main issue any Vs. Discussions have is that most of these are taking characters from differing universes and hoping to make those worlds compete and expect the outcome to be just and fair. This can’t happen unless the worlds are forced to work together in a common arena that will require nerfing abilities and skills to make the arena fair.
In the end, the discussions are fun reads, but always end with the writer’s opinion and little more to justify those outcomes.
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I forgot to mention this before, but, in the show, they also didn’t technically create a star. Rather, they fused into a boulder-sized mass that was launched into the sky (the energy emissions briefly making it glow like a star) until it crashed into the Delta V comet.
Plus, as I said earlier in this topic, taking any serious lore from Wrong Place, Wrong Time is disingenuous, since that episode famously contains copious paradoxes and nonsensical events.
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lol. There’s reasons why they call mine text nukes rather than text walls. Because ain’t no wall great enough for this level of ordinance. 
This is one of those Ask Greg things. Which at this point I’m not sure what is considered the most accepted answer these days.
Previously, the understanding was that the GSR island domes, and the MU itself, actually dampens the potential damage of Nova Blasts and other extreme powers to try and keep everything else contained. So a base Toa could vaporize a small country in the damped environment and outside the potential strength is much higher. But even in most of the calculations my Bionicle RP buddies did back in the day, the general conclusion was that the GSR could survive any Nova Blast from the outside as well, even if from a Toa Nuva.
There are many things you can do to enhance the power of a Nova Blast that would make them Death Star level, but Tahu doesn’t have access to those. So.
See, now that’s what any reasonable person watching the show would assume. The one thing this Death Battle did reveal is that, evidently, the show producer and writers insist that it created a star even after Rebooted. I believe the best course of action is to ignore them on that matter because nothing in the show supports their statements.
Though on a side note, we don’t know what the limits are on the power of Creation. So I guess handwave magic explosion created a star…But that doesn’t suddenly mean the weapons have the power of a star either. That’s not how the magic works.
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I thought it was more of the fact that the weapons created a star, but landed on the Delta V comet.
That’s not quite how word of God works.
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And tell me, even if that was a method in which canon should be understood, who is Ninjago’s god? Which producer? Which of the dozen or more writers who worked on this IP? If a pantheon, what’s the structure like?
I don’t have the time for a canon argumentation and the various ways as to why, so have a video that can give some food for thought on how authority on fiction can be handled.
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I do know that this is unconfirmed for certain elements (gravity and iron), as those two would potentially be capable of rapidly spiraling out of control (depending on how iron Nova Blasts actually work, it would either pretty much make everything a part of the GSR’s structure or make a giant sphere filled with solid metal, while gravity would either make a wormhole or a black hole, either of which could produce uncontrollable physics anomalies).
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Tommy Anderson? I don’t know. That’s what he said, and there haven’t been any writer’s statements to contradict it.
The star is canon, whether we like it or not.
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Yes, just like how the Shadowed One’s a mammal.
I think this, for fans, should be taken as a case of the word of the law versus the spirit of the law. While it is valid to be added to the wiki, it perhaps should not be considered seriously in any fan production that wants itself to be seen as legitimate. (Unless that fan production is directly exploring the consequences of time travel creating a new star, that is.)
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Greatest hack writing idea. The star in question is a pure massive ball of Creation energy/power. Some villain realizes this and if they can harness it correctly, it wouldn’t just allow them to remake Ninjago but potentially all the realms. Cue space race and dragons in space suits.
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The original plan for the season following Rebooted was space-exploration themed (explaining the focus on astronauts and spaceships at the end of Rebooted)…
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And thus, we got a terrible, horrible, awful crossover episode with the game the Ninja currently are in (you just described the entire plot of Fortnite BR).
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