Epic encounters
Epic Encounters is a podcast where we pit some of the most popular characters from different universes against each other in differnt scenarios to see hwo would win. We analyze the characters' strengths and weaknesses, and we discuss how we see the fight going down, round by round. We also consider the characters' personalities and motivations, when we aren't discussing fight we talk about various news from a range of fandoms
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Epic encounters
epic encounters: Power Systems
Fasten your seatbelts, anime lovers! Get ready for an enticing journey as we unravel the power systems in major anime series, including Avatar: The Last Airbender and Jujutsu Kaisen, and how they shape character growth and narrative development. Absorb intriguing facts about Avatar's consistent power system, deeply rooted in Eastern philosophy and martial arts, and how this reflects Aang's character evolution as he masters different bending techniques. We'll also shed light on the enthralling visual spectacle of characters like Gojo and Sakuna in Jujutsu Kaisen, and how the anime cleverly represents character ideologies through power system representation.
Shifting gears, we dive into the captivating world of classic anime Dragon Ball Z and explore how it seamlessly integrates power systems into the storyline without hindering the plot. We analyze how the well-structured narrative is built on the Journey to the West-style story, setting a benchmark for modern anime. This episode isn't just about superhero-like powers and supernatural abilities — it's a deep dive into the storytelling techniques that make anime fascinating and unique. So, buckle up for this thrilling ride, and don't forget to support the podcast if you love what you're hearing!
Hello and welcome to another episode of Epic Encounters. I'm your host, braylon, and thank you for joining me for the midweek mythos, where we cover various aspects of your favorite pop culture, whether that be stories, characters or myths from the ancient past or even the modern day. And today we are covering a particularly important thing among anime, comic books and many other stories, and that is power systems. Power systems are very important to weaving a narrative. Not only are they important to the character's journey throughout the story, but they're important to how consistent internally, the story is itself. And today I want to talk about two of my favorites and two of the best ones to do it as it currently stands, which is Avatar, the Last Airbender not the terrible version that comes in Korra and Jujutsu Kaizen, which is more on the anime side and a bit more wild and crazy, but still pretty good, but how important they are and how well they're weaved into the story.
Speaker 1:Firstly, we can talk about Avatar. Bending in, avatar draws a lot of its inspiration from Eastern philosophies, mixing together the whole idea of a lot of these Zen ideas that come from Buddhist philosophies, along with martial arts, particularly from the East. So from your waterbending, earthbending, firebending, airbending each of those unique styles reflect a crucial balance in the world and, of course, part of the main narrative of the entire story is that crucial balance. And throughout the story much of the power system is used to reflect characters' growth. Particularly, this is shown mostly through Aang, as his various parts of the journey throughout the story, each of his different masteries, shows a different form of growth in the story. For him, particularly, it seems to go in order with how he grows. So you may have the parts of the story where Aang is learning waterbending and not only does he learn to be more in control of himself and his feelings, but he also learns that he needs to be able to flow from one thing to the other and the story consistently shows that he needs to be more flexible. He can't be so rigid in the way that he is and even though airbending is shown as being more playful and open and so on, it's always shown as this pacifist thing which the waterbending is shown to be able to be Both fluid and rigid would need to be. And the power system relates that to all of the different characters who have the waterbending. Sometimes it's healing, other times it's violent, other times it's destructive and even Aang transforming into the Avatar state in the early part of the series shows exactly that, where he is using the water in a destructive way, whereas before you see Katara healing with it or characters making sacrifices, and that just shows how they integrate the power system into their storytelling.
Speaker 1:Another major way that that is shown is when Aang learns earthbending. Earthbending ends up being this entirely separate thing from Aang in the sense of he's very free-spirited and open and childish. But the show goes over the fact that he needed to be more rigid, more stuck in the earth, more grounded, which is. He is very opposite to the tough version of the character, who is tough, who is more grounded, more rigid, already suffers some sort of disability and that makes her more akin to earthbending. And throughout that season, throughout that part of the story, aang goes through his own trials, tribulations and basically he just gets hit with the life is hard and it sucks bat and has to learn that. Okay, maybe I need to be a little tougher. Great, of course Avatar uses that idea that their power system with bending is generally not only to reflect the power system itself, because Avatar goes into great detail with it where bending styles are completely reliant on someone's martial arts skills and their level of practice and how much time they invest into doing it, which is why you get characters like Iroh, who are old In fact, like all the characters who are extremely good at bending and Avatar, old.
Speaker 1:Whether that be Iroh or King Bumi, everyone tends to be old. But that reflects the more eastern philosophy that mastery comes with time, and you see that a lot throughout Avatar and it's used as a mass part of their storytelling. Yeah, you get people like Azula who are prodigies, can shoot lightning across the range. She's also a crazy bitch, but shoot lightning and do all the firebending, is a better fighter than everyone else. You see, does everything that you would expect from someone with more powers and balance. But then you see her fight someone who is more balanced, who is more integral to the idea of the story that they're telling, and Azula fights Iroh and gets manhandled. Pause, it is his niece, but she doesn't get manhandled and he shows that he is significantly better at the art of not only firebending, but simply better at the art of bending, better at martial arts, more disciplined, and things like that are even shown when you see King Bumi, both when Aang first meets him and then later on at the end, with Sozin's Comet, where King Bumi shows that, even though we mentioned, toff might be one of the best earth benders, which I mean yes, she does have metal bending you see that there's a power disparity between King Bumi and Toff. The two are not comparable.
Speaker 1:I would say throughout the entire series King Bumi is definitely on the more powerful side, but the the power system in Avatar, unlike many other shows and unlike the terrible, terrible, god awful mess that is Korra, the Avatar, the last airbender power system is very consistent and it really brings you into the story. You could picture a world where people learn martial arts that allow them to shoot fire and control it with each of their motions, or slow, steady, very karate like moves would allow you to move the earth beneath you each time. Or Tai Chi like Tai Chi like movements might actually have you moving water with each of the different gestures and hand motions. And that gives Avatar both a power system that's cool to look at visually because who doesn't want to see people throw fireballs at people or draw down lightning in a contrived and overly done way but so cool as shit as compared to something less less good, which I think I will transition just a bit into talking about a not so great power system, and I know that. I know that people won't completely agree with me, but Dragon Ball Z is a good counter position to to Avatar.
Speaker 1:The power system has no bearing on the story whatsoever. The power system is, it's just there. Characters use some of the same powers. There's no real explanation as to how, except for everybody using the Kamehameha being from the same school of practice, everybody can throw a destructo disc, even though it's Krillin special move. Everyone can do solar flare, even though that's Tien special move. Everyone and their mother can do a Kamehameha, not even sure Master. Oh, she really had to teach anybody, since everyone can just do it, which is in complete contrast to Dragon Ball.
Speaker 1:But Dragon Ball Z, power systems make almost no sense and even when there was an idea of trying to construct a power system like power levels or scouter, is they pick up on your power levels? It tells people what they do and in the end it ended up not mattering. People can suppress their power instantly, increase it, flip it around, have weird power upgrades and all of those things I I'd almost say that it would be worth talking about, like people and their power, scaling stuff and things like that. But that would just be dumb and contrived, especially when you get into talking about things like Super Saiyan, where, oh, super Saiyan is a 50 times power boost and Super Saiyan 2 is two times power beyond that and Super Saiyan 3 is three times the power of Super Saiyan 2 and the Actually matters and none of it's consistent because the Kiritori ama himself couldn't stay consistent. He forgot that Saiyans had tails. He didn't want sale to be spotted and got tired of drawing him. He wrote things from Ajin Buu and then couldn't remember that he wrote them the day after.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking, while Dragon Ball Z is a lot of people's first animes and so on and it might even be the thing that kept you in Dragon Ball Z if you were staying for the consistency or the storytelling, you were staying for the wrong reason. It's a show about people punching each other in the face and screaming. There's not a lot else to it. If you wanted Dragon Ball Z to be berserk, it won't be. There will be no story consistency. It will be guys punching each other in the face and that's great, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's an example of a poorly written power system. Key isn't well defined. It's even worse defined when you get to Dragon Ball Super and, generally speaking, up until Super, the power system itself was only really about this person is more powerful than this person because more screaming, more lightning, more spiky hair Right, it's not really a lot to it beyond that and transformations Transformations playing the biggest part in Dragon Ball Z about, like power systems. More transformations, you get more power, even if it doesn't really make a lot of sense, which is where you know the show falls off as you get older and you start wanting to have some Storytelling integrity or some deeper storytelling for it, or you wanted something more complex. You're not getting it from Dragon Ball Z and even avatar for its, for its flaws, because there is some flaws for it, because you can like it. But it's not a more adult story. It is a very black and white story of good people good, bad people, bad. But the consistency in the storytelling is complex and the power system is woven into the story very well and following that and running right off the heels of one anime into another, jujutsu kaizen. Jujutsu kaizen has a Very complex story, not not as complex story and power system as something like hunter x hunter, but a very good one that ties into the series very well. And the only reason why I'm not talking about hunter x hunter is I Don't want to be here for two days. Maybe that'll be another episode of a midweek mythos, but not this one, but back into jujutsu kaizen.
Speaker 1:The main thing about jujutsu kaizen is cursed energies and curse techniques, alongside domain expansions and the series concept of curse techniques, where all the different characters, all the different sorcerers Pull in cursed energy or manipulate cursed energy and they perform spells and techniques and the viewer can understand these based on different characters, thought process. Even all of the different curse techniques represent something about the characters. Whether it's Satro Gojo, with the fact that all his powers kind of go into the idea of breaking everything down into his constituent parts and having limitless like no one can reach him the ability to pull things towards him, repel them or to completely remove them, and of course, many of his powers both focus in on blindness and emptiness and being so separated from everyone else, because of course, like one of the things for limit is limitless technique is nobody can actually touch him, which is the part for his whole character is that he's separate from everyone else. He's kind of aloof. He's also not particularly a good person generally speaking, which, of course you have someone like Yuji, where he's grappling with loss and all the supernatural things that come into his life, and of course he both has Sakuna, which is a whole another story and what he represents, and then Yuji, who can basically make people his friend by touching them, and it's like the incels wet dream of being able to just go. You're my friend now.
Speaker 1:But leaving all that alone, the story, the story itself, all of the curse techniques represent to some degree the characters themselves and the domain expansions also represent that and it plays into the storytelling of Jujutsu Kaisen and I feel like it gives you a very dynamic way of looking at each of the individual characters. And then the power systems themselves, like the curse techniques are cool, and then domain expansions the sure hit power and the way that it's visually explained is it's awesome. You don't have to go into deep understanding to just get what's being shown to you. And of course it does play into that anime trope of over explaining your powers and shit, which is sometimes silly, sometimes cool. It doesn't get to Baku levels where literally if someone's throwing a punch, there's a narrator talking about exactly what the power does and explaining the physics behind it in some insane way. God, I love Baku. So fucking dumb, but it's so good. It's so good that it is dumb.
Speaker 1:But Jujutsu Kaisen is a very, very different beast in the sense that it's a very show, not tell, kind of story setup where something like something like Toto Toji fighting Gojo is a visual spectacle. You have all types of cursed spirits flying at him, being cut apart and destroyed, and even in that short view you get a picture of how Gojo is so powerful. He can treat everything like it's unimportant and he can kind of write off everybody else. And he's so far away from them and his skill that so much of it seems pointless. And even the way that they show him fight is this is easy, I'm aloof, I don't have to focus on fighting you. And of course in that fight he does pay the price for the very flippant way that he takes on the fight and then, of course, spoiler.
Speaker 1:The entire fight between Gojo and Sakuna is. It very much shows the two people's ideologies and the way that they are, with one of them acting more like a butcher and a savage from a feudal era time period, that being Sakuna with all of his abilities, in comparison to Gojo, who is more modern era physics, disintegration, keeping up with things, blitzing and so on. The two are very different and the power system for the show is easy to represent that with various monsters and ancient creatures and so on, like I don't really think there's any need to go into that too much more beyond that and I just feel like both of those shows or manga, whatever one you want to go, with both their animated counterparts and then their still image comics, manga, whatever you want to call them Both do a great job at showing the power systems well and describing them, giving you well breakdowns, guidebooks and, of course, everybody's like fandoms and so on, where we overanalyze them in all types of detail to the point where you've deconstructed it completely. But it's, they were written well enough for you to do that. It's not. You can poke holes in it and it doesn't make sense. It's that.
Speaker 1:No, here's cursed techniques and they break down into various versions of cursed techniques, and then there's powerful special grade sorcerers and there's people beyond that, and then there's domain expansions which are separate and are like tiny little dimension, pocket dimensions being opened up by a sorcerer, and these are different from this. And then, for when you get to Avatar, you have bending, and then, in Korra even though I'm remiss to talk about it, but they do then further break it down into you might be an earth bender, but you might be an earth bender who specializes in magma or metal bending or particular types of earth bending. Or, when it comes to fire bending, you have people who can do standard fire bending, and then some people can bend lightning and others can combustion bend if you have an extra eye or whatever, and even blood bending, for the water benders, which used to only happen under a full moon. And then, of course, bastardization and Korra, but I don't have too much more to say on that one. In reference to Jujutsu Kaisen, though and it's kind of one of the things that I wanted to talk on in regards to it as soon as I think Jujutsu Kaisen, I immediately think Naruto, because Jutsu's in the name, because, yeah, jujutsu Kaisen is new, but Naruto and Jutsu are synonymous. Kind of can't not talk about it, and I will say that Naruto in its early incarnation, when he's the snot nose kid, that's kind of annoying, and people sent for Sasuke and Itachi and everybody used to wear stupid ass headbands and shit.
Speaker 1:Naruto, in its early incarnation and even into early Shippuden, did a really good job of making Jutsu's techniques and even the way one fought Very important. Even early Naruto made it so that Jutsu's were while they existed and they were used. They were kind of rare. They actually had a cost Characters specialized in certain Jutsu's and didn't have a bunch of them, and the characters who could do more always had special abilities that allowed them to do more.
Speaker 1:I mean, even in Naruto, when you get introduced to the third Hokage, the thing that makes him so special is he's supposed to be this exceptionally well versed shinobi who can do all of these different techniques. And of course you see Kakashi doing similar things in early Naruto, but the only difference is, like with his fight with Zawuza, he can only do those techniques like copying the hidden miss Jutsu and copying the water clones and Water dragons. He only does them a very limited amount of times, whereas compared to the first time you see the third Hokage he's doing mass amounts of Jutsus with a Very little effort, even taking on two former Hokage and his, his former student, and the power system that defines it all is Jutsu level chakra, the type of shinobi you are and various systems that early on, they did try to keep consistent. This does start to fall apart in Shippuden, but you do still. You do still see it being kept up and expanded upon in Shippuden, where the various elemental styles of Jutsus Start to matter more than just you can do this by doing hand signs, now it's.
Speaker 1:You can do this by doing hand signs, but if you have an affinity for this or that, you can do more, like Sasuke's affinity for lightning style or data with his art style and his C4 creations, whatever you want to call those. Or even Naruto's affinity for wind style, or Yamato's affinity for wood. Yeah, that that sounds, yeah, that sounds strange. Anyway, affinity for wood aside, I think that Naruto had a Very consistent power system that was well thought out and well carried out and paced throughout the series up until near the end, where I I don't know what happened. There was just stuff, really cool fight scenes, like the moderate thing, but the ending of Naruto is a hot mess. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But you know Shonen anime, that's. That's kind of how it goes.
Speaker 1:That being said, I do feel like a lot of these power systems, dragon Ball Z excluded do a really good. Do a really good job of Helping better construct the world, help offer this visual storytelling to people who read the manga or watch the show, where you're looking at all of it and you can see the visual Consistency. But also it's a spectacle. It's beautiful to watch. It explodes onto the screen and it keeps your attention on to it, even though I know we all have the attention span of a chicken sandwich. That's okay, because anime tends to keep your attention even if you can't pay attention, because it's bright, it's flashy, and it's even better when that bright and flashiness is not only, incidentally, attention grabbing but also really good for the story and Dragon Ball Z withstanding, because you can give it a little bit of grace because it is old it's really old at this point and For the time period.
Speaker 1:It was well thought out and it was carrying on from a story that had already been done before being Dragon Ball, and there's an extension of Dragon Ball going from the Journey to the West style story to something of its own, and it did a good job at that. I mean, I Guarantee most people listening to this Absolutely fell in love with Dragon Ball Z when they were young and then, following that or some other thing, got introduced to so many other anime and probably some that you probably shouldn't have seen when you were a kid, like I Don't know even Gellion Not not kid friendly, or Berserk really not kid friendly, but all the same, I think that that early era and then some of the newer stuff for anime does do a really good job at integrating their power systems into the story without killing the story and Also being well thought out with how they tell the story using that. But, with that being said, I Think that's a. That's. That'll be the end of our episode.
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