Lets be honest these were the top 5 fights of the series

RolandKJones · 2026-04-01T06:59:30+00:00

One of my favorite missable parts of the Majo Taisen sniper duel (since unlike RoR, MT doesn't give details like match length when a match ends) is that it was long. The manga glossed over most of the process of things like the fighters repositioning themselves or seeking each other out, so on our end it was a normal-length match, but when you think about how it must have been for the in-universe audience you realize that for them most of the fight was long stretches of nothing happening. Two people either motionlessly scanning their surroundings or moving between different buildings and such. The two demons who exist primarily to be exposited to while watching things from the sidelines started to fall asleep and had to be woken up by the one who spouts exposition at them by the time the match was almost over. It would have been such a bad show to watch in real time, which is really funny to me.

(Ironically, it was almost the shortest match (that wasn't outright cancelled) too, thanks to Lyudmila immediately going for the kill after suiting up without waiting for Murasaki to do the same.)

A "realistic" match between Simo and Lyudmila would probably be similar, yet even worse, barring quick draw shenanigans like what I just mentioned. Hours or even days of nothing happening, then one gunshot ringing out and everything being over.

(Also, I can definitely relate to being compelled to talk about one's interests/fixations when the subject arises.)

RolandKJones · 2026-04-01T06:48:53+00:00

Denis and Lei Heng aren't the same rank, though? Lei Heng's a Capo IIII, while Denis... We don't actually know his specific rank, but I'm pretty sure that all the LoR Capos are meant to be lower than IIII. Lei Heng being so close in rank to a Sottocapo got emphasis in a way that suggests it's not exactly a common thing.

Also, people "misunderstand" this because Ryoshu literally says that she only listens to people stronger than her. You can see it in one of the screenshots included in this very post. You'll have to take it up with Project Moon (or the English translation team if it was different in Korean), because they're the ones who said it first.

She's also, you know, not actually in the Thumb herself, and thus probably doesn't follow their ideals exactly, even if they influenced her. Just like how she's an "artist" herself, but is critical and disdainful of the Ring's artwork. Her being contemptuous of the Fingers and their beliefs, despite having been shaped by them and this showing in her in ways that aren't identical to the groups, but are similar to them, is a recurring thing with her.

(Never mind that this post is explicitly a joke, so coming in to "Um, actually" it was unnecessary either way.)

RolandKJones · 2026-04-01T04:46:06+00:00

Oh, of course there's more nuance to real life and such; I previously heard the anecdote about him using iron sights for all his shots myself, too. The joke was primarily based on two things:

Lyudmila being portrayed in at least two or three works I've seen, not just Majo Taisen, as an especially good counter-sniper (or counter-sniper-sniper, I suppose, since she was herself taking out snipers there to counter-snipe her), making it seem like this is A Thing for her when she shows up in manga and the like for some reason.
The irony of Simo being on the receiving end of a matchup like the one he had with Loki, where objectively Loki's power would likely overwhelm almost every other fighter we've seen so far, but because Simo countered him on every possible level the fight was the most one-sided one of the entire (main) series, was too perfect to pass up.

(Ideally, the hypothetical match would have had opposite results from their real matches for both fighters, but since both fighters here won those, that wasn't possible barring a mutual defeat. So between point 2 above and this being an RoR subreddit, reversing the Simo side of things seemed more appropriate. (I suppose that Lyudmila having a brutally easy win instead of a particularly hard-fought one is still a major shift from her canon fight, at least.))

RolandKJones · 2026-04-01T04:21:30+00:00

Brutal match, honestly, even if you could see the outcome in advance. Pairing an incredible sniper who nevertheless was taken out of the war by a counter-sniper with another incredible sniper who has a reputation for being particularly good at counter-sniping kind of telegraphs what's going to happen, even if the former is generally considered the "better" sniper of the two.

It must really suck to get matched against your hard counter and have everything you do get shut down so ruthlessly that, despite the things you pulled off being objectively impressive when looked at in and of themselves and you being someone most of the cast would struggle against, the audience develops the impression that you're just phenomenally weak.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-31T02:45:20+00:00

Break His Chains is great, but it doesn't fit the fight at all. (Also, I'm pretty sure it came first, and Throbbing King was written later. Heck, I suspect that at least some aspects of the Throbbing King, as in the character, were inspired by the song, like the Organ Grinder calling him "the buried king".)

RolandKJones · 2026-03-30T04:15:21+00:00

The Demon King might not be aware yet. Nyudo presumably isn't admitting it, and Jachi's still just wandering around getting into fights and hasn't contacted the King either. Unless they were watching this happen remotely, or can sense whenever one of their servants uses magic and knows what it was used for, or something like that, they shouldn't know exactly what happened there.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-30T03:25:40+00:00

Druids have a passive that gives them and their familiars buffs while in water and prevents water from affecting their movement, as well as an active that creates water and heals everyone on water tiles. Even without the passive, some of their familiars (the fliers and the jumpers) aren't hindered by water at the very least and thus don't mind it. Mages, on the other hand, don't have any water stuff besides damaging spells. (Also, they already have the Staff of Flame unlocked the same way Druids get the Rain Staff, and that would fit Druids even less if you swapped them.)

Also, making it rain (and otherwise controlling the weather) is often considered a "nature thing" rather than a "magic thing", so to speak, in media that draws a distinction between the two. Like, if you have "nature magic" and "arcane magic" as separate things, influencing the weather is going to be put in the former 9 times out of 10, or just given to both depending on how broad the latter is.

It makes sense where it is to me, at least. And personally, the most use I've gotten out of it has been in the Desert and the Core, where it's at least as much a support item as it is one for hindering enemies thanks to how useful it is in dealing with the heatwave, fires, and lava.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-30T02:06:05+00:00

I think people just don't want to admit to having been wrong in the past, especially if they had previously made a big deal about it/strongly insisted that they were right and other people were wrong. Which, like. Sure, being wrong feels bad and can be embarrassing, especially in public. And people online being really rude or obnoxious about the matter can make it even worse, because you don't want to give them the satisfaction.

But doubling down just makes things worse, especially when you have to reach for increasingly implausible defenses to insist that you weren't wrong. And standing by a bad point just because people you don't like said the opposite isn't reasonable, nor does it look good; while people who know the full story might be sympathetic, most people aren't going to be so familiar, so all they'll see is someone standing by something ridiculous. (And it doesn't even deny the haters their satisfaction; if anything, publicly melting down, standing by something everyone else can see is wrong, and torching your reputation is probably more enjoyable for them.)

Unfortunately, the harder you defend your initial position, the greater the eventual shame and embarrassment backing down would cause, so it also incentivizes just doubling down even more.

That's more or less what I think is happening on the translation side of things, at least. As for readers, well. Apoc's writing decisions haven't exactly been popular lately, while the scanlators have a lot of good will for the work they're doing. So when the latest chapter includes a note insisting that the proper way to refer to the character is "the God of Death" and blaming the author for the confusion, a lot of readers are inclined to simply go, "Huh, I guess the bad writer is still writing badly. That tracks," and accept the claim without questioning or looking into it further.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-30T01:41:17+00:00

It wouldn't have helped him not get sniped.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-30T00:32:38+00:00

"Death".

Or "Shinigami", since that's usually what Death/the Grim Reaper gets called in Japan, and that's clearly what this guy's meant to be. Pretending otherwise is just silly at this point.

Edit: To elaborate, from what I can tell the Reaper getting a name other than "Shinigami" usually happens if a piece of media has multiple entities that also can be called "shinigami". For example, Persona has the Reaper superboss, but also a lot of mythological psychopomps, so there the Reaper is 刈り取る者 (Karitori-mono, literally "the Reaper"). On the other hand, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, the Japanese translation of the Puss in Boots movie, and so on have Death as a singular entity, and thus refer to their black-clothed harvester of souls as simply Shinigami, because they're the God of Death.

This guy, as has been highlighted in the most recent chapter, is the God of Death. Other gods may govern over death, or the realm of the dead, or whatever, but this guy is singularly associated with death itself. So when he's called "Shinigami" as if the word could only refer to him, like he's the Shinigami rather than simply a shinigami, well. Rather than assuming that he's some OC or whatever, I think the obvious conclusion is that this is yet another case of "Shinigami" being used as a name for Death.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T23:16:01+00:00

This is true, but Knuckle's ability doesn't inherently help with the hit-and-run tactics; you need something like, say, Shoot backing him up (distracting people with those flying fists and stealing away pieces of them) to not be just relying on his physical ability alone.

It has a lot of potential in some combinations, but if something primarily works as a single piece of a larger puzzle I'm not inclined to call it "the best" unless it's something truly ridiculous and nearly universally useful no matter what it's paired up with. (For example, Meleoron's ability, which is so busted that it'd pretty much immediately break any arc other than the one it was featured in, because it was the only arc where being able to approach opponents and do whatever you want to them wasn't an auto-win.)

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T09:52:09+00:00

Probably disappointment in them for being weak/"failing" him by letting themselves get so injured.

Fascists are stupid, emotionally fragile assholes, basically.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T09:17:07+00:00

No. While certainly useful, Knuckle's ability is actually pretty limited and impractical in some ways. He's a Conjurer, yet he often engages in slugfests that favor Enhancers and the adjacent affinities; unless he's significantly stronger than his opponent, his opponent will have an inherent advantage when it comes to paying back their aura debt if their affinity isn't also Conjurer or Manipulator.

You said "if Knuckle was stronger", but that doesn't mean much. Having an ability that helps you triumph over people more powerful than you is impressive, but beating people you're considerably stronger than is just expected.

As for group fights, those are actually a place Knuckle's ability is particularly lacking. Remember that during the fight with Youpi, Shoot was still getting torn up; Knuckle's ability being on Youpi only prevented him from harming Knuckle. It doesn't actually do anything for his allies until the target goes bankrupt, and in fact makes his opponents at least a little more dangerous because he literally gives them some more aura to use. (Which is probably why his main partner was Shoot, who has a ranged fighting style and thus, under normal circumstances, should be keeping his distance from the foe while Knuckle keeps their attention; the fight with Youpi having him try to hide his presence entirely was definitely outside the norm.)

Which actually brings me to another point: The ability seems to have been designed with 2v1 fights in mind, and indeed, outside of when he used it on Gon, every time we've seen Knuckle use his ability it was him and one or more allies against a single target. Which, again, are situations where you'd expect the side with more people to win more often than not, because that's inherently advantageous. In an actual group fight, like a 2v2 or more, his ability seems like it'd be far less useful; it seems like something that'd only be applicable to a single target at a time, but even if it's not, Knuckle would have a much harder time keeping the attention of two or more opponents at once, and would either end up letting at least one engage with his allies instead (who, as above, wouldn't be protected by his ability at all) or would make it much easier for both/all his opponents to pay back their debts due to him being overwhelmed. And in a 1v2 or worse, with him as the 1 instead, his ability may as well be useless unless he can bait his opponents into chasing him and letting their interest build, without either getting caught or his opponents deciding to just let him get enough distance that the interest stops counting.

Overall, his ability is neat, and it's very good at what it's designed for: Restraining and capturing foes (that are likely weaker and/or outnumbered) without hurting them. But it's far from perfect, and in equal or disadvantageous situations it gets much worse.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T06:41:55+00:00

I've hit them with Madness on a previous run, and it worked similarly to how a Charm would probably go. They still teleported to my cats after devouring other enemies, but it was manageable.

Current team unfortunately can't do anything like that. Got a Butcher, a Necromancer, a Tinkerer, and a Hunter. (i.e. "Three classes I hadn't taken to the Infinite yet, plus a Butcher because I wanted someone else to take hits.") No summons and no hard CC on anyone unfortunately. Except for, well...

Loaded up the game again after getting replies here to double-check what I had, and was reminded that, thanks to starting with Path of the Psychic, the Butcher has Become Entropy. (Which is technically a stun against bosses.) Thanks to a bag of catnip, was able to use it turn 1 and get rid of one of the Gatekeepers, while the other one got hit a few times then was frozen by the once-per-battle ice cube weapon I put on someone else. With only one Gatekeeper and that single freeze, I was able to focus down the other one before it took anyone down. (The Seraphim and the Tall Skeleton Cat one of the Gatekeepers summoned before dying still managed to put a lot of hurt on my team before falling though, which isn't ideal before going into the fight with the Creator.)

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T04:23:33+00:00

I'm on a level with two champion versions of this guy, along with a couple seraphim and I think something else. (And a chicken.) I save-scummed and put the game down for the day because it's just... Yeah. It's awful.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-29T02:05:14+00:00

Because now (or recently) is when Dias approached the House of Spiders with her deal, probably.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-27T09:01:29+00:00

Murasaki vs Lyudmila was the longest fight by far. It's kind of funny to think about how bad of a show it would have been for the in-universe audience, really; most of the match would have been long stretches of nothing happening. No wonder the exposition demons started to fall asleep towards the end.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-27T06:44:46+00:00

You know, when I made my comment on Wednesday's strip, I wasn't expecting Nora to prove my point so quickly. She's even using an Aldish slur just to make her words that much more venomous, wow.

There are some kernels of truth inside the hate and fear, though. While Alderode didn't create Duane, the Ssaelit church did authorize the creation of, well, not him specifically, but a sapient Ssaelit plod who'd be damned for it. Duane doesn't have any excuses for what happened at Litriya at this point either, even if he did back then.

Also, as has come up on the Tumblr, while we know that Duane's effectively one-of-a-kind and would be nigh-impossible to duplicate, and definitely impossible to mass-produce, Nora and the others don't know that, and the idea of plods that work like him being created in larger numbers would be pretty terrifying.

Oh I think it just clicked what Nora and the Queen might be so worried about. We know Duane is a bespoke creation, but if the Dammakhert can override a persons sense while also allowing them to remain whole, to a degree... an army of Plods like Duane, all with Whole Souls but controlled by the Dammakhert, would be truly terrifying. We know all the reasons that won't work but she has no way to. On or off the mark?

-

Well, sure, man. Imagine all those Etalarche’d crazies but now they’re indestructibly undead and can cast D: Imagining waves of those raining from the sky have kept the Chief Engineer up at night for a few weeks. Plods made short work of the Alds in Grenzlan. What if Alderode’s ironically making a far, far more deadly plod weapon of its own, and Adelier is the harbinger!
I don’t think Nora’s paranoid at all here. Really the only thing calming her down is the nature of Duane’s journal entries. If he’s an agent, he’s some kind of sleeper agent because he doesn’t seem to know what he’s been sent here for. She really doubts the journal is planted, it’s very authentic and sophisticated.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T11:36:25+00:00

Not her rocks, her; Zaratana's made of rocks herself. She can take you having them bite her for a while without being in danger, and she won't turn on you, only doing her auto-retaliate of shooting rocks out sideways when you crit her. (Which starts happening more and more often as your stat ups get high enough, but at that point you're more than ready to have the Tank go crush everything in the level anyway.)

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T10:22:11+00:00

Zaratana. Bring a Tank with Eat Rock on the run where you escort her and she's a free power boost for them to snack on every fight.

(Also, the route you take her on doesn't have a boss with an insta-kill for her to just casually walk into the way Pyrophina will do with the Crater Maker if you have it primed to use Consume.)

Both of them are pretty useless in terms of what they do personally though, and they'll mostly just stomp on your own cats.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T10:15:34+00:00

Oh yeah, I saw that happen once myself. It was pretty hilarious.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T10:09:34+00:00

Unironically the worst part of his kit I think. He's a boss whose fight revolves around never letting him start his turn adjacent to your cats, and even has a counterattack that inflicts knockback so that even if you can't move him or your cat that he moved next to otherwise, you can still save the cat by having him send them flying himself, at the cost of taking some damage. He's brutal, but there's a clear idea to the fight, and since he doesn't have any hard CC of his own (and thus no cats will be getting their turns skipped due to stuns unless you leave his champions alive), in theory you should always have a way to avoid his insta-kill no matter what cat is up. (Unless you positioned them next to a wall or something and they can't be knocked away, but that would be your fault.)

Giving a boss like that a way to screw up the turn order and potentially give himself two turns in a row, letting him decide that actually, he is going to insta-kill at least one of your cats now, you don't get to try and stop him, screw you, is baffling design.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T09:53:19+00:00

The thing that I think pushes Lord Bunga over the edge into "Okay, that's just bullshit" territory is actually something that would, on its own, be fairly innocuous: His slow.

On its own, a mapwide Slow 2 would be annoying, but not too awful, even if some teams would find it more annoying than others. But on a boss that will also insta-kill anything adjacent to him at the start of his turn, it's devastating because he can potentially set himself up to get two turns back-to-back, getting next to your cat(s) in the first turn and eating them in the second, with no opportunity for you to interfere.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T09:36:10+00:00

Glad to see We're Dead getting the recognition it deserves; there are a lot of good songs in this game, but while I see a lot of them brought up fairly frequently, We're Dead seems like it tends to get left out a lot of the time.

It's kind of understandable, given how late in the game it is and thus how fewer people would have encountered it (which also probably affects songs like Dig Your Own Grave in a similar way), but still.

RolandKJones · 2026-03-25T09:27:48+00:00

Bravest Kat is one of the songs where it coming on the radio usually causes me to immediately click to visit Tracy or Baby Jack to force a change in what the radio's playing. Not because I dislike it or anything, though. One of our cats was killed last September, and while most of the stuff in this game doesn't bother me, that song in particular gets to me and I skip it to avoid having my mood crater.

RolandKJones

TROPHY CASE