Is it Knk touko, mahou touko or case files touko?
as there "powerlevels" are entirely different
Is it Knk touko, mahou touko or case files touko?
as there "powerlevels" are entirely different
Touko in her adventuring days has spoiler-kun, who skews things heavily in her favor, and we don't really know if Zouken would have countermeasures to spoiler-kun unless he prepares something specific.
If spoiler-kun isn't around, it's a trickier question, but Absorption's likely to handle things like her rune preparations pretty handily, and in a battle between familiar masters, it's harder to say since we don't really know what Zouken looked like in his prime out of vague descriptors, but it seems reasonable to give him the edge.
Touko by the time of KnK has way lower combat power and likely gets handily thrashed by Zouken in his prime.
With that said, rank in the Association is more reflective of your ability "as a magus" than "as a combatant". Even if most high-up magi will be very powerful in combat, a magus is fundamentally a researcher in the end. Both Touko and Zouken are freak geniuses, but Touko especially has her combat performance as a product of the preparations she's able to make and the resources she has access to, which is why you see such a difference between her in Mahoyo and her in KnK (that's true for all magi to an extent, obviously). Maybe Zouken's the same way, we don't really know enough about how he fights to say, outside of making reasonable guesses based off what we know about the Matou magecraft and absorption.
Either way, the point's that magus rank isn't super reflective of combat aptitude and magi more generally are really a product of what they have to work with in terms of time and resources, so it's hard to say for someone like Touko who is a huge example of that and someone like Zouken who we've never really seen in a serious fight.
zouken has to be pretty dangerous even at his old age although he never displays any obvious firepower in zero or stay night
he managed to stop prelati from getting to fuyuki and he's p decent, as a heroic spirit he even gets the same rank of illusions as merlin
Rin says Zouken doesn't have any power to spare throwing offensive spells around, he's using most of his capacity just keeping himself alive.
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We have seen how Case Files Touko handles things and she is definitely pretty good at combat. Touko is the kind of person who always has some trick up her sleeve. And the monster in the box is completely busted.
The main problem with Zouken is that he is very tricky and hard to permakill. But we know he also can make some preparations to defeat Servants.
As a mage, I think Touko wins though. Even against prime Zouken, if it's a fight to outmage the other, Touko has the advantage there because that's her thing.
Last edited by yokushi; May 23rd, 2020 at 08:36 AM.
Sometimes her tricks just aren't enough, though, as seen when she fought Araya.
That said, do we even know anything tangible about Zouken in his prime?
Last edited by yokushi; May 23rd, 2020 at 11:57 AM.
Nah, she explicitly says she can't defeat him inside the complex.
I haven't read Case Files, though. What does she do in it?
And Araya then goes "are you sure? that thing can totally kill me". So we are told that it totally can, she just decides that it doesn't matter at that point.
And she shows a lot of stuff in Case Files actually. High capability combat puppets (on a level beyond other puppeters), runes that write other runes, the box monster is now also inside her (to specifically avoid the Araya situation again), a magical dragonfly transformer cannon, her multi-layered Mystic Eye, multiple 3D proyector cat monsters all at once... And they are hammering the idea all the time that being a Grand is super rare and means that you are absurd on a different level.
I'd agree with this, yeah. Touko's scary because she can probably kill you outright, but she's terrifying because if you annoy her enough, she'll go out of her way to design ways to hit you in your weak points, hunt you down, and generally ruin your life until she feels like she's satisfied. Zouken's no slouch, the stuff he's been able to design and showcase are definitely big deals, but if it's a contest between who can better prepare to take down the other, it's hard to imagine Touko losing out.
I think that if it's a fight between magi where both sides have awareness of the other and prepare/fight as magi, Touko would probably take it because she thrives in that environment and is the sort of person to be absolutely ridiculous in what she can put together when she's got the time to. If it's a more barebones 'you drop Touko with the stuff she carries near her in Mahoyo/Case Files/KnK and Zouken in his prime in an empty field somewhere' thing, then I think Zouken's probably got more 'immediate' power he can bring to bear and that sort of fight doesn't really showcase Touko's strengths. Ultimately I think it's hard to say though just since we don't really know what either side would really bring to bear in those circumstances where neither side's making preparations. We know what Touko's usual outfitting is depending on which work we're talking about, but she always has plenty more that's not within that space, and we know prime Zouken's a big deal and have seen some of his accomplishments, but we don't really know what he looks like in a proper fight, so it's a weird case.
Nasu said Prime Zouken can fight servants, no problem. Under good conditions, he will beat one.
Did Touko get any sort of showings like that against servant equivalents in CF?
Yeah, that sounds about right with what we know. The problem is that everytime we see Touko fight it's usually against someone on the same level or higher, and the only time we saw her fighting against people below her level she kind of styled on them. With Zouken we have a complete different problem in that we never saw him fighting other than a short fight against Shirou. But thinking about it we kind of have Francesca as a measure here, Touko totally put her into a death loop and Zouken was able to scare her off.
I'm pretty sure that was Nasu talking about how Zouken has some countermeasures againt Servants specifically, not that he was a powerhouse that could take them in a power struggle. I mean it makes a lot of sense, he was basically an expert in Ghost Liners to a level that he even wrote a book that old Lord Eulyphis has in his possession. If someone was a lead researcher on Servants, that was Zolgen.
Touko (with Svin's assistance) had a fight against Heartless and Faker (who is an AoG mage) that kind of ends in a stalemate.
Last edited by yokushi; May 23rd, 2020 at 01:57 PM.
Good enough to make the fight competitive then. Nasu likes Toko more so she'd probably win.
It was a blanket statement in the HF interview about how strong a mage Zouken was. Nothing was stated about him using any sort of countermeasures. If anything, that would take place in the second scenario where he'd be the winner.
Spoiler:
Last edited by Ronove; May 23rd, 2020 at 02:07 PM.
Yeah but context is important too. And what we know about Zolgen specifically and Brands makes me thing is more about him having the means. Otherwise Nasu would be also implying that a "level 70 Brand" can beat Servants under good conditions, and that doesn't sound right. Even more given that Touko is a Grand, her rank is even higher.
...The context is how strong Zouken is/his capability as a mage, not what he is specialized against. Implying countermeasures would be used here (which again, is a supposition based on his theories of servants, which is then extrapolated to him having counters against servants and that can hardly be substantiated) would only muddle a measure of strength. As an example: Would you say Shirou beating Gilgamesh because of UBW or Tohno killing Nero would give an accurate estimate of their strength relative to servants and other powerhouses? I don't think so. Counters are called counters because they circumvent power or general ability.
Rank in the mage's association isn't just about combat.And what we know about Zolgen specifically and Brands makes me thing is more about him having the means. Otherwise Nasu would be also implying that a "level 70 Brand" can beat Servants under good conditions, and that doesn't sound right. Even more given that Touko is a Grand, her rank is even higher.
Last edited by Ronove; May 23rd, 2020 at 02:18 PM.
I know, but thinking that whole answer is just about power then would mean that it is about combat, given that Nasu is using the Brand rank as a way to express Zouken's capabilities. The problem is that whole question wasn't even about powerlevels, it was about how good Zouken was as mage after all.
So yeah, with what we know about Zouken, his level and what he as an expert about we can assume things here. It's not a perfect answer but it gives us something.
it's not like servants are all made equal anyway
beating a berserker with no magic resistance vs beating someone smart with A-rank magic resistance has to be pretty different for a magus
Prime Zouken = Lv 70 Pride = can kill Servants under good conditions
Kayneth = Brand = can kill Servants under horrible conditions
Makes sense
Originally Posted by FSF 5, Chapter 14: Gold and Lions IThough abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
Wasn't Zouken an archmage tho?