The official discord link if you wish to join the discord: https://discord.gg/j5RKwCvAFu
Support the wiki on our official Ko-Fi page or Patreon page!
User:MrWarnerTheGreat/Sandbox
Introduction
As of now, a majority of people have this idea that Todd is the most powerful Scott Pilgrim character and that nobody scales to him. This blog is here to debunk this idea since it's getting increasingly annoying facing the same arguments over and over again. If anyone has any disagreements with this blog, please share your thoughts and refutes in the comments.
Author and Official Statements
Clash at Demonhead Extras
To start, we have Todd's character draft description. This comes from the extra content pages in volume 2 about Clash At Demonhead where it states "He turned out to be bigger, stronger, and more powerful than Scott, but equally dumb, or even dumber."
Now there are several issues with this that I feel a lot of people blatantly ignore or just don't understand. For starters, the actual context of this statement refers to Todd's telekinetic ranged abilities. Todd doesn't actually ever fight Scott physically and just uses his ranged abilities. In both instances shown here, Scott misses and Todd responds by throwing him with his telekinesis. At best, this proves Todd has superior lifting strength, which means nothing in comparison to both's raw attack potency.
-
Test 1
-
Test 2
-
Test 3
-
Test 4
-
Test 5
-
Test 6
Secondly, as shown in the first scan, Todd goes out of his way to dodge Scott's punches. While this could be because he finds getting hit annoying, several other instances in the volume show otherwise. Him dodging these attacks are because he is more than aware of how strong Scott and co is, which directly affects how he chooses to fight Scott (Something Scott even says himself). Even if Scott was weaker than Todd, it wouldn't be to a massive degree that Scott could no longer scale to Todd.
Another thing to point out about the second statement is that O’Malley compares them to Ryu and Ken, Ryu and Ken are rivals around the same level, so all this would imply is that Todd is somewhat more powerful but not to an extent that would put him above Scott’s league.
Bryan's Tumblr Statement
Next off, we have Bryan's statement from tumbler which is fairly similar to the first one "Matthew went all-out because he sucks. Todd would never go all-out. If he went all-out, he wouldn’t be Todd. Todd is a smarmy jerk who wants to toy with Scott and feel cool and superior without trying. That’s the point of Todd."
First off, let's take a look at the original question here. "How come Todd Ingram didn't kill Scott in the beginning of volume 3? If he can punch a hole in the moon, couldn't he have finished off Scott the moment they met? At least Matthew Patel made the effort to go all-out in their first meeting." So based on the way the commenter views Todd, it's clear he doesn't see Scott as any more than an average joe who happens to know martial arts, which Bryan seems to follow along with. So by accepting what Bryan says about Todd, you alternatively accept Scott as an average human martial artist.
"That's a stupid argument! We don't know what either Todd or the reader are thinking!"
To a degree, this is true. However, we are expecting a casual reader and author to understand vs debate rules such as tiers, area of effect, scaling, and outliers. Of course they're going to say the dude who makes massive explosions is stronger. Heck, our Creation vs Destruction page paints this notion very clearly.
Furthermore, It's also important to note that this answer directly contradicts Todd's character. He's never shown to act cocky to the point of holding back to Scott's level or to torture Scott for fun, nor has this been stated by him or anyone else.
Funny enough, Who Bryan was really referring to in this question was Envy rather than Todd who happens to want to torment Scott for the past. It even says at the beginning of the volume that Todd doesn't want to make Scott suffer and just wants to end the fight as soon as possible
Todd is only continental with his Vegan Powers
Not only is this a wild assumption with no actual evidence, it narratively makes no sense. At no point is this ever mentioned or confirmed by Todd and he's even seen dodging attacks from Scott while in this "Vegan form" which defeats the entire premise of them being two different forms
Given that it's also established his vegan powers are a mental trait unlocked by learning secret techniques of the mind rather than physical amplifications, it makes more sense for his "base form" to be continental regardless of vegan powers.
Also, one major detail everyone seems to coincidentally ignore is that both of Todd's moon feats were done prior to getting his Vegan powers:
http://imgur.com/gallery/Rq2xxO0
"Soon enough, the boy had to leave for the faraway school where he would learn the ancient secrets of his people, The Vegans. There on the train platform, the boy and girl vowed Always To Be True and Never To Waver."
So not only is the idea that vegan powers amplify Todd when they activate baseless, but the biggest point against Scott and co scaling is completely nonexistent in the first place. And saying "He knew about the vegan powers prior as he was a vegan" is also a bad argument because it defeats the purpose of Vegan Academy even existing.
Even if we did assume Todd had his powers then, he wasn't even using them during his trip to the moon as shown by his hair in both the comic and the movie:
https://youtu.be/vqqGZBRBLcM?t=1m08s
Todd is only continental physically
This is a weirder refute I've seen pop up recently. So ignoring the obvious issues with this like Scott significantly hurting Todd twice, along with Envy doing the exact same, the main issue I see people have is Todd's vegan powers being weaker than his physical power.
So the first reason for the two not scaling is the difference in destructive radius. Now if we assume that AoE damage = higher power, we are now accepting Bullets are weaker than a human punch. Confused? Look no further than our AP page.
https://debatesjungle.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_Potency
"To explain this, take a hypothetical example of someone punching through an interior wall vs. bullet being shot at an interior wall wall. If a bullet is shot at a wall, the wall would have a small hole go through it, however if a person punches through a wall, a big hole would be left in place due to the size of the hand, with the logic of ignoring one's energy output in place for area of effect, the person's punch would in that scenario be stronger then a bullet."
So the idea that AoE = AP gets debunked by simple logic, really.
It's an outlier in the verse
Don't see how this would be an outlier when characters like Matthew, who is seen as weak in comparison to the other fighters, casually busts through ceilings.
Ramona effortlessly tears a metal pole apart to block Knives' attack
Knives jumps several stories in seconds with ease
Scott punches someone around the planet, which is backed up by Stephen Stills, which is done even prior to the series taking place:
http://imgur.com/gallery/gGhiPBV
And even Todd's moon feats are done with no difficulty and for absolutely no reason other than to express his emotions to Ramona/Envy:
http://imgur.com/gallery/0RU4mjK
So the idea that Todd's feats are outliers is questionable at best and downright wrong at worse. Also worth noting is Gideon is downright unimpressed with Todd's vegan powers and can't even be bothered to remember how important they are, which only further sumits it's not an outlier
Scott was losing against Todd the whole time
It's directly stated why and how Scott was losing, which came down to Todd's range which Scott directly says is his main issue:
http://imgur.com/gallery/JnNS3Ko
"I can't even get near him! I need some kind of...like...last minute, poorly-set-up Deux Ex Machina!"
That plus Scott's few blows actually hurting Todd + no-selling most of his attacks make it abundantly clear that Scott does scale.
Along with this, Gideon is all powerful within Ramona's head and is even called an "Ultradimensional super villain" in the extra character bios:
http://imgur.com/gallery/78s3dYH
Which further proves that Todd isn't just some oddball character who's leagues greater than the rest of the cast.
__________________________________
Breaking down each of Scott's feats for Todd scaling
Scott no-sells a vegan nuke from an enraged Todd
The first major argument against this feat is that Todd only imploded Honest Eds, thus he wasn't using his full power or exerting continental levels of AP:
http://imgur.com/gallery/kNZykhE
Problem is area of effect doesn't equate to destructive capability. Otherwise characters like Mario should be destroying star systems with his jumps. We're scaling Todd's AP here off his previous feat. Mind you, him destroying Honest Eds was done with far more effort than both of his moon pulverization feats.
The next refute people like to make is that, because it was an implosion, Scott didn't actually tank anything from Todd himself.
However in the very next panel, we see Honest Eds cracking and swelling up with light pouring out of the seams as if an explosion inside was occurring.
How would the attack from Todd hit the walls and roof of Honest Eds while perfectly avoiding Scott? This wouldn't make any sense and is more likely that Scott was caught in the blow that collapsed the building.
With this, there should be no reason for Scott not to scale to Todd's implosion. This isn't even the only instance of Scott tanking a direct attack from Todd either as we'll get into later.
Scott hits Todd enough to make him bleed
Shown here near the end of the book:
http://imgur.com/gallery/q4jB6cM
Another clear as day feat for scaling. The first major refute is that due to Todd being off guard, his durability suddenly drops from Continental to Wall which objectively makes no sense.
People like to use the scene where Goku gets pierced by a laser far lower than his current tier as if Dragon Ball sets the standards for vs debating. Major issue with this, the Dragon Ball verse is a major false equivalence given how Ki works in-verse.
https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Ki#Ki_control
"Most beings cannot freely control their ki, but many who can manipulate it also learn to control the flow of ki within their bodies, allowing them to channel larger or smaller amounts of their ki reserves. In essence, they can adjust their strength to match the situation, and generate attacks which contain larger concentrations of ki than they are normally capable of. This ability is noted by Raditz when fighting Goku and Piccolo; whilst they had power levels of 416 and 408 respectively, their special attacks channelled such high levels of ki that they measured at 924 and 1,480. Despite being common amongst Earth's martial artists, this ability seems to be exceedingly rare in general, as the Frieza Force are continually surprised by the ability of Gohan, Krillin and the others to raise and suppress their power levels at will."
The only plausible explanation for something as dumb as a durability drop this massive is if his Vegan powers were like Ki and amplified his stats on command, which was adressed earlier on this blog.
Scott's other various feats of tanking Todd's attacks
There are several instances of Scott no-selling and clashing with Todd's attacks with the number one refute being Todd was holding back.
http://imgur.com/gallery/JnNS3Ko
http://imgur.com/gallery/pC1mfNY
At first, this seems like one of the few exceptions against Scott's scaling ignoring the original refute made against Todd holding back, however this is the same Todd who, while casually flying to the moon and punching a hole in it without the use of vegan powers, is going out of his way to dodge Scott's attacks:
http://imgur.com/gallery/0RU4mjK
http://imgur.com/gallery/HmS0ZUI
http://imgur.com/gallery/KvZHbaf
https://youtu.be/vqqGZBRBLcM?t=1m08s
Not only is this odd for someone countless times higher than you to go out of their way to dodge your attacks, but he's even shown putting more effort into hurting Scott than he was when flying to the moon.
Scott Pilgrim's statement
So we've gone over the issues with Scott not scaling to Todd by showing several instances of Scott tanking and hurting Todd physically, and we addressed Bryan's statements.
And just to further establish Todd isn't the most powerful character in terms of physical stats, here Scott directly says each evil ex gets harder and harder each battle.
"Not that fighting harder and harder battles for your love is getting old or anything..."
Before anyone says this doesn't necessarily refer to stats, Matthew Patel is the most skilled ex prior to Roxie, which means it's not referring to Scott having his skill challenged. And it definitely doesn't mean strategy since Todd is considered dumber than Scott.
Lastly, Gideon one-shots a base Scott, who was the same Scott to beat Todd Ingram and is roughly comparable to him then. So they're definitely getting stronger:
http://imgur.com/gallery/1rmBpsX
This makes sense given Scott Pilgrim's laws are based and directly influenced by video games (I.e Save Points, Stat Boosts through food, leveling up, etcetera) with natural progression. So each boss being physically stronger than the last makes plenty of sense in the context of their world:
http://imgur.com/gallery/4voDQhv
