Eren Yeager vs Ken Kaneki (Attack on Titan vs Tokyo Ghoul): Round 1 Fight Blogs

 

(Kaiser)

(WWAL)

(WWAL)

(Brokenlimit)

(Brokenlimit)

(Brokenlimit)

(Brokenlimit)

(door-kun)

(Pasbros)

(Pasbros)

(Gothic)

(Flip)

(Flip)

(Flip)

(Flip)

"The only thing worth living for, and dying for, is love.” - Felix Alexander

Eren Yeager, the Titan Shifter and Devil of Paradise of Attack on Titan.

Ken Kaneki, the draconic Kakuja and One-Eyed King of Tokyo Ghoul.

The world can be a cruel place, especially during a constant state of war. A single mistake or twist of fate can change your life forever, with no way to ever go back to the normal life you once had. These two are the epitome of this sentiment, and were unwillingly transformed into something far from human. Their once righteous intentions faded to the wayside until they reached their breaking point, and truly became like the monsters they strived so hard to defeat. Out of this pain, trauma, and sorrow, a singular choice to break the chains of hatred surrounding their world came to light for both of them. They have long since diverged from their original path, and now they will have to give it their all to protect the ones they love. The Devil of Paradise meets the One Eyed King, and who between them will push through and endure all the hardships in their way to emerge victorious? Whatever the outcome, the land will rain blood, the ground will rumble in protest, and one will be devoured to his very core.

Round 1: FIGHT!!!

Before We Start…

Both Eren and Kaneki will obviously receive the primary source material of their stories, being the original manga stories for Attack on Titan and Tokyo Ghoul as well as its sequel series Tokyo Ghoul:RE. The Tokyo Ghoul anime is infamous for changing up plenty of manga details, which means we'll only really be pulling from Season 1 and whatever Season 2 got right. The Tokyo Ghoul:RE anime is fairly accurate to the original manga, so we'll be using it as well. Beyond this, both worlds have various spin-offs from the original story that we will also be taking into account for a comprehensive look on the match. 

For Eren, despite Attack on Titan's overwhelming amount of content, we thought it’d be best to try and dive even briefly into most of its officially published/licensed content. This includes the existing guidebooks for the series, the Attack on Titan Short Stories series by its creator, as well as the OVA adaptations (and their source materials) by WIT Studio of Attack on Titan: No Regrets and Attack on Titan: Lost Girls. However, in line with how many other anime/manga series are treated in versus proper, Eren will also be getting content from related materials that don’t contradict or are radically different to the proper canon of Attack on Titan (such as say the Ninja Storm games to Naruto). This includes (but isn’t limited to) the spin-off manga Attack on Titan: Before the Fall, certain sections of the comic book Attack on Titan: Anthology, and the Koei Tecmo Attack on Titan games. Considering all of these were officially published by Kodansha and don’t heavily interfere with the exact canon of the series, we felt that it was more than okay to include in the research for Eren.

For Kaneki, obviously the main content will be the original series’, along with its prequel Tokyo Ghoul JACK and the side story Joker. The Tokyo Ghoul novels serve to add extra information for parts of the stories to fill in the blanks, and they were written by Shin Towada, who is Sui Ishida’s older sister. Ishida himself even drew artwork for the novels, and the manga makes some minor references to them sometimes, so they should be fine to use. The most notable example of proof is Chie, who debuts in the novel Tokyo Ghoul: Days and appears at the start of the Tokyo Ghoul:RE manga, with said story becoming a special OVA produced by Studio Pierrot. The game Tokyo Ghoul: Call to Exist is also a retelling of the story presented in the anime, without any changes or deviation from it, so by all accounts it’s fair game as secondary material. We’ll be looking at the other various Tokyo Ghoul games as well, as while some of them may not fully apply to canon, they’re clearly intended to be within the same universe as the manga and generally abide by similar rules, unlike the anime’s second season. It should also be stressed that despite our best efforts, we could not get EVERY piece of media they have, as multiple guidebooks and games for both of them are either lost media or entirely untranslated. 

Finally, MASSIVE thank you to Rina Antiqua and NormallyNormal for completing all the calculations on the blog. Y’all did amazing and words cannot express how much it means to us working on this.

Enough of that though, let's get into it!

Background

Eren Yeager

"I will hold freedom in my hands by taking it from this world. But from you, I will take nothing. You are all free. You are all free to oppose me, and defend the world's freedom. Just as I am free to move forward. Our convictions can never be reconciled, and our wills will not bend. There is only one way for this to be resolved. Fight.”

The year is 845, and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Surrounded by the 3 titanic walls known as Maria, Rose, and Sina, the last remnants of the human race are forced to live like cattle forever in fear of the greatest predator mankind had ever seen, the Titans. Despite many believing that these walls were their only savior, to the point there was even a religion formed around them, some instead believed that humanity wasn’t being protected by these walls. Instead, they believed that humanity was trapped within them, forced to waste away until their inevitable extinction due to the ever present corruption within or the terrors outside. But nobody resented these towering walls and their suppression of freedom more than a young boy from the Shiganshina District located in Wall Maria, and one who would go on to become the greatest threat humanity would ever know. That boy’s name was Eren Yeager.

Born to Grisha & Carla Yeager, Eren would spend the first 10 years of his life in relative peace with his family consisting of himself, his mother, his father, and his friend Mikasa Ackermann, who was adopted into the Yeagers after the death of her own family. Eren and Mikasa would go on to befriend a boy named Armin Arlert, who would show them a book containing details of the world outside the walls, such as seas of fire or lands of ice. Eren would become obsessed with the sights in this book, and the three would vow to see this ocean together one day, which led Eren to voice his desire and join the Scout Regiment to explore outside the walls. After getting into an argument with his mother, Eren and Mikasa set out to find Armin, but were given a grim reminder of the cage they were trapped in, in the form of the Colossal Titan. After the Titan broke through the wall, Eren and Mikasa would find Carla trapped under the rubble of their home, and despite his efforts, Eren was forced to watch as his own mother was brutally eaten before his eyes. On that day, Eren would vow to kill every last one of the Titans, which would drive his actions to join the Cadet Corps and the Scout Regiment with Mikasa and Armin in order to fight and take back their home.

During Eren’s years in the 104th, he would make a variety of connections with his classmates, with many of them becoming extremely close with each other. However, only a short time before their graduation ceremony, the Colossal Titan would reappear and smashed a hole in the Trost District. As the Cadets were forced into action, Eren would watch many of his friends die before his eyes, with Eren himself sacrificing his own life to save Armin’s. Trapped in the belly of a Titan, Eren would remember the tragedies he endured and cry out, desperate for this not to be the end of his life. In that moment, the Titan that ate Eren would explode, and from it would come Eren’s first transformation into what he hated most: a Titan. Thanks to his Titan form, humanity was able to launch a counterattack against the Titans and successfully seal the hole made by the Colossal Titan. After this however, Eren would be taken in for questioning by the Military Police, who planned to kill and dissect Eren due to fear over his abilities. After being convinced by Erwin Smith, and a brutal beatdown from Levi Ackerman, Eren would be handed over to the Scout Regiment and put under the protection of Levi and his Elite Squad. Eventually, thanks to new recruits from the 104th like his friends, the Scout Regiment would embark on an expedition outside the walls, even encountering other Titan-shifters that Eren would battle such as Annie. 

As the fight continued, Eren would uncover the secrets of the Wall with his friends, discover old allies like Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover were Titans themselves, learn of a being named Christa, and utilize the power of the coordinate to command other Titans to consume the very Titan who killed his mother 5 years ago. The Scouts would soon learn Christa’s true name, Historia, and that she was the daughter of the true royal family. Eren and Historia would then be captured by them, with her father Rod Reiss explaining to her that 5 years ago, Grisha killed most of the Reiss family using his own Titan and stole the Titan unique to them: the Founding Titan. This monstrosity has the ability to control all Titans and even humanity in the walls, with Eren learning that Titans are merely transformed humans, and that 5 years ago Eren ate his father Grisha and stole his Titan powers. Rod would attempt to convince Historia to turn into a Titan and consume Eren, but she would reject his wishes and instead free Eren. As Rod drank the Titan Serum he attempted to inject Historia with, Eren would follow suit and become an all-new Hardened Titan in order to save his friends, with his efforts resulting in stopping Reiss and appointing Historia as the true ruler of the Walls.

After many months of preparation, the Scout Regiment would embark for Eren, Mikasa, and Armin’s hometown of Shiganshina to seal the wall using Eren’s new abilities, and discover the secrets in the basement. There, in their toughest battle yet, Armin would become a Titan himself and stop Bertholdt, while Eren and their other friends would finally discover the truth, under his own house no less. From Grisha’s notes, they would find that not only was humanity thriving outside the walls, but that he and every person inside them was a “Subject of Ymir”; beings despised and feared for their unique ability to transform into Titans and the crimes they committed millenia ago. Even worse, Eren would also discover Grisha’s memories, learning that the Titan who consumed his mother was Grisha’s first wife Dina, who had royal blood and even a son before Eren named Zeke. This was the very same Zeke as the one who wields the Beast Titan, and finally, Eren would learn that the Founding Titan’s full power could only be accessed by a Titan of royal blood. As Eren processed this, he and the survivors would be given a ceremony to honor their victory and the lives of their comrades, but as Eren kissed Historia’s hand, he saw a vision that left him frozen in fear. 1 year later, when the Scouts would finally reach the Ocean, but instead of the feelings of joy and relief that the others felt, all Eren could do was stare and wonder, that if they killed all of their enemies on the other side of the sea…would they be free?

In the year 854, Eren responded to Marley’s declaration of war, and slaughtered most of its military along with civilians and children. Eren would consume the War Hammer Titan to steal its power, and successfully retreated back to Paradise with Zeke in tow, who knew of the plan to invade Marley. Afterwards, Eren would be arrested by his former allies for his crimes, with all of them losing their trust in him for his horrific acts of violence and his lack of care for the lives it cost. Eren would proceed to break out of this prison, meet up with radicals named after him, and fully utilize the Founding Titan’s powers. Before they could touch and activate the Founder’s abilities, Eren would be forced to face down Marley’s invasion that was spurred on by Reiner, but after a long and grueling battle and the help of his comrades in the Scouts, Eren and Zeke would touch and enter the realm known as Paths. Within this strange land, Eren would reveal he had been lying to Zeke the entire time in their plan, and had been using him to finally access the Founder’s powers. Zeke would take Eren through Grisha’s memories, trying to convince him that Grisha had brainwashed him into doing what he is now, but Zeke would slowly realize that Eren simply acted like this since he was born. Not only that, Zeke would find out the abilities of Eren’s Titan, known as the Attack Titan, with its special power being the power to send future memories to past wielders. Eren used this ability to send only select visions of the future to people like Grisha and even himself in the past all to ensure he would always receive the Founding Titan, with Eren even reminding Grisha of his trauma at the hands of Marley to ensure Grisha slaughters the Reiss family. Soon after, Eren would touch the Founder Ymir, finding out her history and pleading with her to free herself from the slavery that the royal family had put upon her. As Ymir finally gained the freedom to choose, she granted Eren the full powers of the Founding Titan, and with that Eren would unleash a calamity to end the entire world and rid it of its hatred in the form of the Rumbling.

Eren would thereafter reflect on his choices leading up to this, revealing that he and the Scouts had visited Marley to try and see if they could change the sentiment people held over Subjects of Ymir, only to be met with further hatred. Eren would also reveal that he knew he would start the Rumbling since the day he kissed Historia’s hand, with that and many other future visions being the memories sent to him by his future self. As Eren despaired over this, he would break down crying to a child he saved, telling him that the Rumbling wasn’t done out of a desire to save his country or even those he loves, but because the outside world wasn’t what he dreamed it to be. In the present, Eren would manipulate the Paths to show him the sights he dreamed of as a child, considering himself truly “free”. Eventually, Eren would come face to face with a group known as the Alliance, formed of Eren’s loved ones in the Scouts as well as the Titan Shifters of Marley, all intent on stopping him and his genocidal conquest. As the Alliance attempted to try and sever his connection to Zeke to stop the Rumbling, Eren would begin calling upon Titan Shifters of the past via the Paths to fight the Alliance. After a hard fought battle and yet another brush with death, Eren would transform himself into a Colossal Titan and fight the Alliance one last time. Using the Founder’s abilities, Eren would attempt to give Mikasa closure, showing her a life she always dreamed of and asking her to forget about him. Mikasa would then choose not to forget Eren, but to finally let go of him, entering the head of the Founding Titan and killing Eren once and for all. Upon his death, many of Eren’s loved ones would receive memories of conversations he had with them in the Paths, most notably Armin, where he would explain his motives for causing the Rumbling, and the fact that he would kill 80% of humanity. As Eren and Armin tearfully hugged each other and promised they’d be together in Hell, Eren Yeager’s life would finally end, and with it so would the ability to transform into Titans that plagued his people.

To some he was God, to most he was the Devil, and to a select few he was someone they loved. While the path he carved was littered with corpses, there’s no denying that Eren Yeager never stopped moving forward, even if what lay ahead was Hell itself.

Ken Kaneki

"I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything. I’m just a college student who likes to read, like you could find anywhere. But... if, for argument’s sake, you were to write a story with me in the lead role, it would certainly be... a tragedy."

“Kill or be killed,” and “It's a dog-eat-dog world,” are simple phrases to describe a simple mindset; survival of the fittest. This dictates that the right of the strong is to prey on the weak, and that you must take whatever path necessary to succeed, or you will be killed. That is the result everybody fears; to have your entire life uprooted, your family slaughtered before you, and your own efforts wasted as you are proven useless prey before a Predator. It is everything to the wild, and a law of nature itself, which nobody understands more than Ken Kaneki.

In this world, humanity is not the dominant species. Somewhere along the bounds of history, a new kind of superbeing came about, possessing far more of the RC Cells that give us strength than we could ever hope to. The catch to this strength is that these beings need to consume human flesh to survive, or they will slowly and excruciatingly starve to death. These monsters were dubbed Ghouls, and thus humanity entered a long and arduous war with them all around the world through specially crafted weapons forged by Ghoul Extermination protection agencies. Ghouls were forced into hiding regardless of if they were willing or not to consume flesh, which was rather easy given they look exactly like humans. This is exactly what happened to one Ken Kaneki on a fateful date, where he met a girl who loved the same author he did. Her name was Rize, and while she looked like a human, she was a Ghoul herself. On the verge of death, Kaneki was nearly devoured, but inadvertently saved when building construction coincidentally fell down to destroy his attacker.

Thankfully, Kaneki was saved via an organ transplant with an unknown donor, but when he got home, he noticed things…changing. Ordinary food began to taste like garbage, and he had an undying hunger that only seemed to get better when around other people. As the realization hit him, Ken raced home to find his eye blood red, and his body impervious to even his desperate attempts to cut out his own transplant. His new organs were in actuality from his Ghoulish attacker, and thus, Kaneki was turned into a half-Ghoul that needed to consume flesh like any other one, but he had the curse of being human beforehand, and the higher guilt from his case of cannibalism. As his life spiraled into chaos and he was introduced to the Ghoul side of reality, Kaneki met another young Ghoul named Touka, and her employer at a Cafe named Anteiku. This place was a home for Ghouls, and its owner was Mr. Yoshimura; a kindly and elderly Ghoul who had set out to provide help for other Ghouls in a world where they were a blight on society. Little by little, Kaneki began to see that Ghouls weren't exactly the monsters that humanity had painted them, and that both human and Ghoul alike had committed great good yet unspeakable evil. At this, Kaneki began to wonder if neither side was actually wrong, but that the world itself was. Due to being caught in affairs of his new friend Hinami's mother getting slaughtered by Ghoul Investigators, and his own philosophical debate with Kotaro Amon, Kaneki's view was further shifted until it was shattered completely and rebuilt anew. 

Ken was captured by the Ghoul organization known as Aogiri, and mercilessly tortured by the 13th wards “Jason” in an attempt to drive him mad as he had been driven himself. In the unnatural amount of pain, which included taking advantage of his regeneration to continuously mutilate him and even letting a centipede burrow into his ear, Kaneki found himself speaking to a manifestation of Rize, who encouraged him to stop holding himself back in order to be strong. This stemmed from horrid psychological pain he had suffered, due to his mother working herself to the bone for her lecherous sister and dying as a result; leaving Kaneki alone with this no-good aunt, who treated him like trash. Ken deeply hated that he couldn't be strong enough to talk to his mother, that she herself wasn't strong enough to choose him over her sister, and vowed to never again be anything but strong himself. Kaneki took control of his life, broke out of his torture, practically killed Jason, and freed all the captive Ghouls Aogiri held. To get stronger and protect his friends new and old like Touka or Hinami, Kaneki left Anteiku to fight with allies like Shu Tsukiyama and Banjo; beginning to view himself as a sort of necessary evil, and a necessary sacrifice where his own fate be damned if the people he loved were safe. This ultimately self-destructive mindset, combined with his failure to defeat a particularly resilient Aogiri martial artist and his growing consumption of Ghoul Kagune to survive instead of eating human flesh, led to Kaneki becoming a further Ghoul hybrid, the Kakuja. On the cusp of insanity once more, he was thankfully able to be snapped out of things by his friends, and rushed back to Anteiku, but by then, the Investigators had burned it to the ground while attempting to kill the legendary one-eyed owl; Mr. Yoshimura. In the resulting battle, Yoshimura was laid to rest, Kaneki nearly killed Amon, and was soon dispatched himself by the Ghoul grim reaper, Arima. However, this is not the end of his story. 

He would miraculously survive the injuries Arima dealt him, albeit with amnesia, and become the head of a new task force of Ghoulish allies in the CCG as Haise Sasaki. Even without his memories, Haise cared deeply for his new teammates, fought for good instead of just to slaughter all Ghouls, and eventually discovered the truth of his identity. With this newfound knowledge, Kaneki was back, and his fight began again, with him joining forces with all his friends once more; even forming a relationship with and marrying Touka. His bonds strengthened and his memories back, Kaneki fought the monsters who caused his creation in the first place, even when driven to death's door and turned into a monstrous Dragon that threatened all of Tokyo. Upon being freed, Kaneki did battle with Arata, the psychopath who unleashed all of this in the first place, and ultimately survived at the end. Thanks to Kaneki's efforts, a new age was brought forth where humans and Ghouls managed to coexist, and where even his enemies at the CCG became allies. More than that, he had a child with Touka, and salvaged all the relationships that he once had. With a legacy like that, and a future even brighter, it's no doubt that Ken Kaneki was strong, but not because of his physical ability, or any other thing like that. He was strong because of all the people who believed in him, and he will forever continue to forge a path onward, for their sakes. 

Experience & Skill

Eren Yeager

Even as young as 10 years old, Eren has consistently fought no matter how much the odds are stacked against him. Whether it be bullies, human traffickers, or Titans, Eren’s stubbornness and constant inclination towards combat has made him a natural at fighting since the day he was born into this world. He began proper military training at the age of 12 in the 104th Cadet Corps; even making it into the Top 10 of the class (especially impressive when the only people who outdo you are 3 child soldiers and an Ackerman). During his days in the 104th, Eren was noted for his strengths in ODM Gear training and especially capability  in unarmed combat, with Eren ranking 2nd only to Mikasa (who is again, an Ackerman). Although he was admonished at the time for his impulsive personality lessening his skills in martial arts, he endured training via Annie (Who herself was trained in martial arts since she was a child) and his own personal growth throughout the series made him an extremely skilled fighter. Eren uses a sort of reckless boxer style while in his Attack Titan form, usually attempting to overwhelm his opponents with blow after blow by draining their stamina to make dodging and counter attacking them easier. However, Eren is also extremely skilled at grappling techniques, shown most prevalently in his fight with Reiner during the Clash of the Titans arc, with him using these grapple locks to break apart Reiner’s armor and nearly win if not for Bertholdt’s intervention.

Before the timeskip, Eren showed a brilliant tactical mind when calm, being capable of adapting to his opponents on the fly or plans made by his allies in rapid time, like his multiple fights with Reiner or Armin’s plan to defeat Bertholdt. After the timeskip, while Eren was far from stable mentally, he became much less plagued by the impulsivity that haunted him in earlier years, usually approaching situations with a calm mind and striking when his enemies least expect it. Eren shows off this approach to combat most notably during his invasion of Marley, where Eren would take advantage of his 3 Titan transformations to feel out the abilities of the War Hammer Titan and how exactly he’d need to kill it; noting specific characteristics of the War Hammer to figure out where its Shifter was located or using its ultra-hard crystal as a shield to the Jaw Titan’s attacks; even figuring out how to damage the crystal thanks to that. Eren’s most notable showings of his intelligence however would come from his STUPIDLY complicated plan involving the Attack Titan, where by using its ability to send future memories of its wielders to previous wielders, Eren would manipulate the events of Attack on Titan’s entire story to ensure he gains the Founding Titan and can commence the Rumbling. By using the Attack Titan’s memory inheritance, Eren would send only select visions of the future to the likes of Kruger, Grisha, and younger versions of himself to steadily ensure that the events happening during the story would benefit him in the future, with there being a possibility that Eren manipulated Attack Titan users even further back than Kruger due to the Attack Titan mysteriously disappearing from both Marley & Paradis for hundreds of years. It cannot be understated how insane of a plan this is, and even more so that Eren successfully pulled it off, seeing as Eren had to manipulate events from before he was even born at all to create a stable time loop that always ensures he gets the Founding Titan.

Eren’s intelligence is obviously impressive as shown above, but he’s also far from the rookie he was during the series' early years. Eren has had military training and combat experience for 7 years, with him participating in two different wars in a 4 year time frame (850 and 854), and much of his time being dedicated to improving his capabilities in hand to hand combat or refining his Titan Shifting abilities. While Eren’s variety of foes isn’t massive, just being Titans and humans, Titan behavior has been noted for cases of spontaneous unpredictability (usually called Abnormal Titans), and Eren himself usually is able to adapt relatively fast to any enemy he encounters despite their unique skill sets. All of this so far is generally standard stuff, but as is the case for much of his kit going forward, things will become far more complicated thanks to the metaphysical extradimensional land known as the Paths. Via the Attack Titan and its ability, Eren pulled off the absurd plan that was mentioned above, using the Paths’ memory inheritance to manipulate events in his favor. However, Eren’s skill and knowledge can also extend to future versions of himself, which can send memories of their experiences to versions of Eren in the present, on top of whatever memories he inherited from Kruger, Grisha, and possibly other Attack Titan wielders. Despite that, Eren’s memory inheritance isn’t generally too impressive here in regards to the known previous holders considering Kruger’s generally unknown past and Grisha’s disdain for combat. But…upon being granted the full capabilities of the Founding Titan by the Founder Ymir, Eren became connected to every Eldian across the Past, Present, and Future as well as their memories and experiences thanks to the Paths and the Coordinate. Both of these will be elaborated on throughout this blog, but in short, Eren obtains the experiences and memories of every Eldian to exist. Notable examples include Levi who is noted as “Humanity’s Strongest Soldier” and has more than enough examples to prove it, or tactical geniuses like Erwin and Armin who could formulate battle winning plans under ridiculous pressure with very little time.

Also tbh for a guy who is meant to be not super special at ODM Gear he has serious schmovement.

Ken Kaneki

Despite having been, well, a nerd for all of his life who never punched anyone until he became a ghoul, Kaneki found out that he would have to adapt fast to this new world if he wanted to survive, so he started training with Touka, and occasionally an older ally in Yomo. While still relatively new to the Ghoul conflict, Kaneki showed promising potential by being able to break the large Mr. Scrapper's arm with a move he learned in a book and putting the idea into practice in a tight situation. He has knocked out Banjo via instinct, used his surroundings like a lamp post as makeshift weapons,  held his own against skilled investigators like Amon in direct combat, or put up a good fight against the Bin Brothers. However, after the Yamori incident, Kaneki would become far more dedicated, and furthered his training over Six Months, constantly trying to improve by fighting other Ghouls in order to measure up to Aogiri. He added grapples to his fighting skills, proving heavily superior to both Banjo and Naki in hand to hand combat, and brutalized his team of ghouls barehanded in his half Kakuja state. He has also shown capable of maneuvering around without his vision, relying purely on his senses and instinct. Kaneki could combine his Kagune with a mix of martial arts to get the best of both styles and still use the environment creatively, like slamming Yamori into a wall and dragging him across it to peel off parts of his Kakuja armor.

As Haise Sasaki, he would go through the CCG investigator program and be formed into an even deadlier warrior by the legendary Arima Kishou for around two years by the start of Tokyo Ghoul RE, where he was trained more formally. Being taught dynamic vision and going through Swordsmanship training with both Arima and Associate Special Class Investigator Akira Mado, it's been stated his swordsmanship is elegant to the point where he's controlling water, which he can use in conjunction with his Kagune in battle. He was so skilled with a blade he was an instructor at the academy for a time, and was personally given the task to shape and train the Quinx squad. Sasaki proved once again that he was far above them in skill, and his influence would in time turn them into Investigators able to challenge SS to SSS ranked Ghouls like the Owl or Roma Hoito, a dangerous ghoul who had up to five decades of experience in Tokyo’s system. Kaneki would personally reach the rank of Associate Special Class investigator, and has faced basically all types of ghouls that exist in his world, various experienced CCG investigators with decades of experience, along with Arata wearing ones like Amon, Shinohara or Suzuya. He even went toe to toe with Arima, the most skilled investigator in the world who had never lost to a ghoul in his 18 year long career, being dubbed the White Reaper for his accomplishments. Kaneki also fought more unorthodox adversaries, like an Investigator using a chainsaw Quinque, Ghouls with exploding bicycles, or more monstrous enemies like Dragon Orphans or Eto’s massive Kakuja avatar. He noted that the main body controlling it was placed in the nape of the giant’s body, and this was not his only clash with enemies bigger than himself, given how he’s had to tussle with other beings like Taro or the Dragon itself. Tokyo Ghoul starts when he was eighteen years old, with the ending of the series being him at twenty-three years old, and in the epilogue which takes place 6 years after when he 29, Kaneki is still shown to participate and be regularly called by Marude in case of conflict and difficult ghouls still on the loose like Shirokae.

Furthermore, Ken has shown remarkable intelligence, not only from a book smart perspective via being a model student for his whole life, such as understanding Takatsuki's in-depth work and her thoughts behind it, from which he managed to deduce the identity of the real One-Eyed Owl with a bit of clues from Yomo; a secret that had not been known for 24 years. He’s also shown knowledge of all the bones in the human body, and how to break each and every single one. Kaneki has broke into the Cochlea Database through knowledge in hacking, and he knows how to employ stealth tactics when the situation calls for it, even manipulating the CCG into believing he was still on their side and had not recovered his memories for entire months. From a strategy and battle standpoint, he furthered his skill from just reading martial art books and translating the ideas into movements in record speed, or to study his opponent’s movements to read them like them a book, carefully watching them to predict their motions and mimic their techniques. He could quickly analyze Yamori to adapt to his fighting style, and knows how to pick up on an opponent's traits in order to cut off their advantages or even change his approach on the fly via recognizing past experiences against certain opponents and their gear. Against Arima, he would quickly formulate a multi step plan of attack, and was shown capable of taking advantage of minuscule openings in his opponents defenses, but he’s also not above aiming for weak points in the body like the eyes or tendons. After becoming the One-Eyed King, Kaneki leads hundreds if not thousands of Ghouls across different wards and in different fields, such as communication, recon, resource searches, and even into dialogue through rousing speeches, or making plans for multiple squads at once to coordinate them in a short amount of time and he is pretty good at getting into people’s head and deciphering their intentions or inner thoughts 

Best of all, he can also do some sick backflips.

Equipment

Eren Yeager

Omni Directional Mobility Gear

The ODM gear (for short) is the standard equipment that all soldiers of the military in Paradise use. It was created by Angel Aaltonen for facing Titans in combat, and allows the user to "fight in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D one." There are several parts that allow the ODM gear to function; most noticeably the dual gas canisters on either side of the wielder, which are able to emit incredibly powerful bursts of air, allowing for immediate forward movement. This movement can be controlled by moving one's body along with the use of grappling hooks in the handles, along with 12 steel blades, with 6 on each side. While the equipment can grant a skilled user insane mobility (capable of moving its user 227 mph) it requires both strength and skill, which both must be honed through constant practice, and the blades themselves are rather breakable against durable enough materials.

Ultrahard Steel Blades 

These blades are the main weapon against Titans, and are capable of slicing through Titan skin and bone like it's nothing in the hands of a skilled user. Don't be fooled by their intended purpose, as they can be very good at chopping down humans too. While these blades are stronger than your normal swords, they do break pretty frequently, but it's much less of a problem then it normally would be. The ODM gear carry up to 10 sets of these, and they’re fairly easy to replace. Eren only has one kill in human form with these blades though (still better than most).

Attack on Titan 2 Gear

In Koei Tecmo’s Attack on Titan games, Eren and all other playable characters are capable of bringing up to 8 items on their person to help them mid-battle. Some of these obviously won’t be very useful in most scenarios, but will still be listed nonetheless. These items include:

• Blades: Traditional Ultrahard Steel Blades carried by all ODM Gear users.

• Gas: Fuel for ODM Gear created by compressing Iceburst Stones and carried by all ODM Gear users.

• Restorative: A potion that can heal someone to full health from a deadly Titan attack, whether that be getting chomped by a 3 meter Titan or crushed in the palm of the Beast Titan.

• Battle Alert Signal: A flare gun carried by ODM Gear users that increases their damage and speed for a short time as well as greatly reducing their Blade and Gas usage.

• Flash Grenade: A traditional flash grenade that can be used to stun Titans and Titan Shifters for a short period.

• Restraining Gun: A large gun that fires massive barbed nets; used by the Survey Corps to capture Titans, albeit the effectiveness of the net depends on how damaged the Titan is.

• Firebomb: A mini explosive that can be thrown at Titans and Titan Shifters, can deal damage to almost all kinds of Titans, including even the fabled Armored Titan.

• Distress Signal: A different flare gun carried by ODM Gear users that increases the damage and speed of allies.

• Smokescreen: A traditional smoke bomb that coats the user in smoke, makes it harder for Titans and Titan Shifters to figure out and track the location of its user.

• Shining Powder: The opposite of Smokescreen, this glittery substance makes the user more likely to attract attention from Titans and Titan Shifters.

Marley Suit

He’s got that shit on, complete with a fashionable hat!

Ken Kaneki

Eyepatch

A medical eyepatch that he wears in case his left eye were to turn red in public, while for more fashion sense he has worn a standard Eyepatch on other occasions

Eyepatch Mask

All battle-ready Ghouls need a mask to disguise their identity from Investigators, and Kaneki’s was designed by Uta. It was modeled after Kaneki's situation of becoming an artificial one-eyed ghoul, and as Uta explained, only the left eye was exposed, because he wanted to see the world that was hidden beneath the medical eye-patch Kaneki wore, as he was unable to control his kakugan from manifesting at that time. Kaneki's transformation into a one-eyed ghoul reflects on the apparent Frankenstein motif of his mask, with it mostly made out of leather and covering most of his face with the exception of his left eye and hair. While it doesn’t have much use apart from concealing his identity, and looking really cool the zipper can be opened to prey on meals and consume them while protecting Kaneki's identity without the need to remove it, which Kaneki has used in the past to surprise foes with an unexpected bite.

Gas Mask

A standard gas mask taken as a simple precaution despite his own resistances to the ROS toxin.

“Sugar” Cube

Offered to him by Yoshimura in his early days as a ghoul, these “sugar” cubes are infused with human flesh and can somewhat stave off his hunger in a pinch, so they could in theory give him a small boost assuming he is already in good condition when taking them.

Yukimura

Created and used by Ghoul Investigators, a Quinque is a weapon manufactured from a ghoul's Kakuhou used by CCG ghoul investigators. Typically carried in a suitcase for discretion, the Quinque emits electrical signals that stimulate the Kakuhou in order to release and control it. They can be made into some type of melee or ranged weapon, but mostly retain a few characteristics from the original Kagune. In Kaneki’s case, the Yukimura 1/3 is a Koukaku-type Quinque with a long, tapered blade similar to a sword. As its name implies, it is actually a set of three individual swords, albeit Kaneki only carries a single one with him, with the blade being sharp enough to slice a S ranked Kagune right down the middle.

Call to Exist Gear

In said video game, Kaneki had a bit more gear at his disposal during his time as an investigator of the CCG, like an Ukaku Gun Quinque, Incendiary or regular explosive grenades, along with CRC gas. Upon activation, the grenade releases the aforementioned gas, which when inhaled begins to affect the respiratory system and mucous membranes. If RC Cells are activated at that moment, it impairs the ghoul's kagune and causes it to break down.

White Suit

Kaneki has the drip.

Abilities

Eren Yeager

Terminology

Subject of Ymir/Eldian: A group of people who descend from the Founder Ymir. They are unique among other human races due to their ability to transform into monstrous beings known as Titans.

Titan/Pure Titan: A monstrous, mindless form that can be undertaken by a Subject of Ymir thanks to a variety of factors, whether it be a special serum created by certain governments, ingesting the spinal fluid of a Titan with royal blood, or being forcibly transformed into one via the power of the Founding Titan.

Titan Shifter/The Nine Titans: 9 unique Titans formed after the death of the Founder Ymir; each inheriting a specific ability from her original Titan, as well as remaining human unlike traditional Mindless Titans. These Titans include the Armored Titan, Colossal Titan, Female Titan, Attack Titan, Beast Titan, Jaw Titan, Cart Titan, War Hammer Titan, and Founding Titan.

Paths: An invisible, metaphysical force that connects all Eldians to each other. The term usually refers to both the Paths that connect all Eldians, as well as the transcendent dimension that hosts these Paths.

Coordinate: An ethereal pillar of light resembling a tree that serves as the connecting point for all Paths. All Paths intersect at the Coordinate, and this Coordinate connects all Eldians to the Founding Titan.

Hardening: An unknown but extremely dense material, likely formed from the Paths, that can be created and utilized by Titan Shifters.

Titan Shifter/Titan Physiology

A Titan is a form that can be undertaken by Eldians, with their bodies being created via the mysterious soil in the dimension known as the Paths via the Founder Ymir, who sends the blood, bone, and muscle through the Paths to an Eldian for the transformation. Titans are considered biological impossibilities that violate multiple known laws of science, but despite their immense size and potential for destruction, Titans are absurdly light for their size, with ridiculously high body temperatures to the point of creating steam. In addition, Titans have no need to intake energy via the ways of other living beings, and seemingly only consume humans out of a subconscious desire to try and become human again via consuming a Titan Shifter.

Despite having similar internal organs to other living beings, Pure Titans do not require food or water, and they are instead seemingly reliant on sunlight, as non-Shifter Titans’ activity usually slows down to a halt once they aren’t exposed to sunlight. Titans and Titan Shifters possess absurd survivability, with a Titan’s body only dying if sufficient enough damage is done to the nape of their neck. All Titans, no matter their size, only truly die if they are sliced across an area on their nape that is 1 meter long and 10 centimeters wide. Once this is done, the Titan’s connection to its nervous system will be severed and its body will rapidly deteriorate, until nothing is left but steam. The same idea also applies to Titan Shifters, who can survive almost any injury so long as they are connected to their central nervous system. While it can vary for Pure Titans, Titan Shifters seemingly do not feel any pain that is inflicted on their Titan, despite being connected to the Titan’s nervous system. It should also be noted that despite essentially serving as extremely fleshy mech suits for Titan Shifters, the 9 Titans all possess a brain of their own that, if damaged, can hinder a Shifter’s capability for combat and movement seemingly.

Memory Inheritance

Thanks to the dimension referred to as Paths, all Eldians are connected through a metaphysical force that transcends space & time itself, making it so that no matter time or place, all Eldians shall stay connected. Via this invisible force, all Eldians (regardless if they are a Shifter or not) are capable of receiving memories from other Eldians, no matter how far apart in space or time they are. This in particular allows Titan Shifters to receive memories from previous holders of their Titans, which Eren has used to enormous and convoluted effect. While it’s unclear if Titan Shifters obtain the memories of only those they consumed previously, what exactly triggers these memories, and if a Shifter will eventually receive all the memories of their previous wielder, this specific ability makes it so that Titan Shifters are capable of receiving years of information and experience they normally wouldn’t have.

While on its own this is a useful ability, the Attack Titan uses the Paths and the shared memories of Attack Titan wielders as its unique power. By utilizing the transcendent nature of the Paths, the Attack Titan is capable of sending Future Memories held by its wielder back in time, essentially allowing its wielder to see into the Future. While it’s unknown the exact limits of this power, Eren himself would send information he received to other Attack Titan wielders like Kruger, Grisha, and even younger versions of Eren himself to manipulate the events of Attack on Titan’s story in his favor. By sending only select information pertaining to the events of the story, Eren was able to manipulate Kruger, Grisha, past versions of himself, and possibly even more unknown Attack Titan wielders to ensure that he would gain full control over the Founding Titan and commence The Rumbling. Admittedly, this ability is hard to give any matter-of-fact definitive statements about due to the vague nature of it, as it is unknown if Eren has a limit on how many future memories he can send or just how far ahead into the future these memories can be for Eren. Things like Eren and Armin's conversation in Paths imply that upon kissing Historia’s hand, Eren foresaw certain events all the way up to what he calls “Mikasa’s Decision”, which he likely means is whether Mikasa kills Eren or not, but at the same time, the story makes it clear that Eren did not see every possible event that happens, especially in regards to combat, with Eren having to figure out the War Hammer’s power without any foresight and being completely blindsided by many of the events in the War for Paradis arc.

This ability, along with its much more powerful version as the Founding Titan, will get its own section in Before the Verdict due to just how interpretation heavy it can be. To try and put it as simply as possible, the Attack Titan’s Memory Inheritance allows Eren to see into the future.

Regeneration

While it is still unknown precisely why, Titans have routinely been stated and shown capable of regenerating from almost any injury as long as it does not destroy the Titan’s nape, and are given enough time depending on the severity of the injury. Thanks to Titan Shifters being human beings who can call upon the Power of the Titans, they similarly are capable of regeneration, albeit nowhere near as fast and potent as their Titan form’s regeneration. Some notable examples from Pure Titans, which are lesser Titans that are routinely shown to be far beneath a single Titan Shifter, include a Pure Titan regenerating its heavily damaged foot in an extremely short time frame if not almost instantly, a Pure Titan regenerating an entire leg in mere seconds, that same Pure Titan also regenerating all of its limbs in a likely similar time frame and surviving its head being blown off. While nowhere near as instantaneous as the above examples, it is also stated that Rod Reiss’ massive 120 meter tall Titan would’ve regenerated from the massive amount of gunpowder that ruptured the Titan’s body, and likely in a short enough time-frame for the Scouts to act as fast after the explosion that they did.

For more Shifter specific examples of Titan Regeneration, Annie (who had gotten her eyes sliced out and the muscles around her arms sliced apart) was capable of hyperfocusing her regeneration into one specific eye to regain sight. Reiner perhaps shows the most absurd capabilities of Titan Regeneration, with him surviving Levi stabbing him straight through the spinal cord and cleaving through his chest by transferring the functions of his brain throughout his central nervous system. Reiner would later use this ability to survive having his brain blown clean off by Thunder Spears, spreading his consciousness throughout the Titan’s body, and would regenerate himself and his Titan from this in a matter of minutes. Finally, Zeke was able to survive missing the entire lower half of his human body for a short period of time until his human body would be rebuilt by the Founder Ymir.

Hardening

An ability that can be learned and mastered by any member of the Nine Titans. While Eren originally struggled to use the ability, after ingesting a serum labeled “Armor”, he gained the ability to use Hardening. He has since grown extremely proficient in it, and has shown the most variety in usages of traditional Hardening, from using it to prevent a cavern’s collapse, filling holes in the Three Walls, creating brass knuckles to enhance his punching power (pictured above), to even trapping enemies in his Hardened Titan while he himself escapes. On top of this, thanks to Eren’s proficiency and Hardening being shared across all of the Nine, he should also be capable of things other Shifters have done using Hardening. Notable examples include coating their fingers and toes to create claws, or protecting vulnerable parts of their body, especially the nape. However, while all Titan Shifters creations’ using the Hardening ability are impressive, they all still pale in comparison to the Titan who is truly a master of the ability…

War Hammer 

The War Hammer Titan is one of the Nine Titans, and is the Titan most proficient in the use of Hardening. Obtained by Eren after consuming the spinal fluid of Lara Tybur, the War Hammer Titan is a deadly addition to Eren’s arsenal that essentially allows its user to create whatever they can think of, being limited only by their own imagination. Eren has primarily used it in a defensive manner, oftentimes creating gigantic spikes from himself or the ground as a way to give himself space between him and his enemies. However, considering he directly consumed the previous wielder of the Titan, Eren should likely be capable of the same level of creation skills showcased by Lara. In her fight against Eren, Lara used the War Hammer in a variety of ways, whether it be creating the titular War Hammer itself, erupting skyscraper-sized pillars from the ground, and forming titan-sized versions of weapons like Crossbows, Swords, Whips, with all of these being said to only be a fraction of what the War Hammer can create. Perhaps most notably of the War Hammer’s many powers of creation, is its ability to encase its host in a cocoon of Hardening that is explicitly more durable than traditional Titan Hardening and allows them to operate the Titan remotely. While some may put into question if Eren can even use this ability, considering that Annie is capable of doing the same thing (albeit without being aware of what is happening outside of the crystal unlike Lara), Eren should likely be able to do the exact same as the direct inheritor of the ability.

However, for all its incredible power, it has been noted that the War Hammer Titan massively drains the stamina of its user thanks to how advanced its Hardening creation is. Along with that, if the War Hammer user is controlling the Titan remotely, they are susceptible to being completely disconnected from their Titan form if one finds the cable of flesh that connects to the crystal. On the opposite end though, it can be theorized that the War Hammer’s stamina drain isn’t as intense as many theorize, considering the War Hammer was capable of somewhat recreating its Titan Body after being captured by Eren even after making a massive variety of different weapons and structures. It’s likely that much of the reason for Eren only transforming once during the War for Paradis was a combination of the massive AoE spikes he was creating rather than focused weapons, as well as the severe damage his Titan sustained directly to the brain throughout the battle. 

Paths

All Subjects of Ymir are connected through an invisible force, no matter how far away they are from one another. This phenomenon is known as the Paths; seemingly metaphysical connections that transcend the boundaries of space and time, allowing the inheritors of the Nine Titans and the Ackermans to inherit memories and experiences of their predecessors. It even allows for unique interactions to occur with the Attack Titan’s ability to inherit memories of future holders, but more on that later.

While impossible to stay within the Paths, with most that Subjects ever experience being a mere glimpse into it, inheritors of the Founding Titan have the unique ability to freely access the realm where all Paths intersect, granted they possess or are in physical contact with someone that possesses the Fritz royal bloodline. In this realm, time flows drastically differently in a near-empty desert under a starry sky. This realm has even been described as being of infinite time or where past, present and future exist all at once. It may even be possible the Paths don’t just connect to one timeline, but many different alternate timelines as well. The events of Lost In The Cruel World have Mikasa view alternate timelines that heavily allude to her decision and Eren’s eventual fate at the end of the series, though it’s possible as well that this is a very potent degree of memory manipulation.

While inheritance of memory is quite useful, the true power of the Paths is locked behind one Titan in particular. The Titan through whom the Paths of all other Titans cross…

Coordinate

The power to control all Titans inherent within the Founding Titan, or perhaps more accurately: Ymir Fritz.

As mentioned above, The Coordinate is where all Paths of the Children of Ymir intersect and inheritors of the Founding Titan gain access to the power that comes with it: Namely, control over all Subjects of Ymir through Ymir Fritz, the original Founding Titan, still persisting in the realm of the Paths far beyond the time of her death in the physical world. As she was utterly subservient to King Fritz, all their subsequent descendants would hold power over her upon inheriting the Founding Titan and could command her to do whatever they wished.

Within the Paths, Ymir’s main “power”, so to speak, is creation. As revealed by Zeke Yeager, Ymir, with the help of a small bucket and a well, creates all the Titans seen throughout the series. Every instance of a Titan being created, every single instance of a Titan Shifter transforming into a Titan, every instance of regeneration of a Titan Shifter is actually Ymir building the Titan/body parts within the Paths for the Subject of Ymir to morph into, and sending it into the physical world with the infinite amount of time she has in the Paths. Even building/rebuilding significant parts of a human body as shown with Zeke takes years to do, but due to the difference of how time passes in the Paths to the real world this incredibly long process translates to mere seconds in the physical world. This is merely scratching the surface of the Coordinate’s control over the Subjects of Ymir. As shown with Eren, the Founding Titan can communicate with all Subjects of Ymir telepathically through their link in the Paths regardless of physical distance. As shown with Eren’s usage of this ability, conversations and interactions through this telepathic link seemingly happen over incredibly small amounts of time in the physical world. The chief example of this would be the years Eren and Mikasa spent living out an alternate life where they ran away and lived together throughout Eren’s remaining time, only to pass as moments in the physical world. This link goes as far as extending beyond the confines of space and time as Eren was able to summon past Titan Shifters to aid him in the final battle and, especially towards the ending of the series, multiple characters could see deceased Eldian comrades and even Ymir herself outside of the Paths. It’s also presumably this connection that allowed for Eren to command his army of Titans across the world.

The Coordinate has also demonstrated a degree of control over the minds and bodies of the Subjects of Ymir, with them being likened as a part or extension of the Founder’s body. Memories can be locked or erased by the Founding Titan for all Subjects of Ymir at once. The physiology of the Subjects can also be altered, with a past king once using the ability to grant Eldians an immunity to a rampant disease in their time and Zeke wishing to use this power to facilitate his sterilization plan. This kind of control over Subjects of Ymir can even extend to inheritors of the Founding Titan, as shown with Karl Fritz’s vow of renouncing war being powerful enough that all those who inherited the Founding Titan were utterly incapable of breaking this vow to a degree of outright brainwashing. This is all scratching the surface of what the Coordinate is capable of, to be expanded upon when talking about the Founding Titan itself.

Ultimately, Eren would break the control King Fritz held over Ymir and reached out to her with his sincere desire and passion for freedom, extending to her freedom from control over the royal bloodline. And as is the natural outcome of Ymir siding with Eren, he now has full control over the Coordinate’s capabilities through her to fulfill all his goals.

Ken Kaneki

Terminology

Ghoul: A carnivorous and cannibalistic humanoid species that are only able to feed on the flesh of humans and other ghouls. They seem identical to humans based on appearance. However, Ghouls internal physiology has several major differences to that of a human. It is theorized that the Ghoul race came to be hundreds of years in the past after an unknown individual first underwent an explosive reproduction of Rc cells and experienced a Dragon-like transformation, releasing spores that mutated a number of humans into ghouls through ROS.

Rc (Red Children) cells: Cells that exist within both humans and ghouls alike, but are far more prominent in ghouls. They flow like blood, but can become hard as steel, and are usually in a state of "liquid muscles". Typically, a ghoul restocks Rc cells by eating people and/or other ghouls.

Kakuhou: This is a sack-like organ that is only present in ghouls, with the main purpose of the Kakuhou  being to store Rc cells.

Kagune: A Ghoul’s predatory organ that functions as their main weapon. When released, a ghoul's physique is strengthened, they are more resilient, and their mobility heightens. A Kagune is composed of Rc cells, which allows for it to be both malleable and durable at once,with even the most basic fodder Kagune being as hard as steel. The Kagune are voluntary muscles, as ghouls can control them and can repeatedly harden and soften them at will. Kagune size depends on the Rc cells' quality and quantity while the shape depends on the creativity and intellect of the user, with each Kagune type having its own unique properties and place of apparition on the body that separates it from the other, creating a rock paper scissors situation.

Half-Ghoul Physiology

After going through the incredibly dangerous Kakuhou transplant surgery by Doctor Akihiro with a 0.25% chance of successful adaptation, Kaneki became a Half-Ghoul, or a One-Eyed Ghoul. Ghouls are naturally superhumanly strong, fast, and durable, with the kinetic energy generated by the muscles of even the most baseline fodder ghoul being 4 to 7 times that of a normal human. This allows them to move faster than the eye can track, punch through concrete, leap great heights in a single jump, and rip people or other ghouls apart with their bare hands, with the gap only getting wider overtime. It’s been stated that hybrids are more powerful than ordinary ghouls due to hybrid vigor, and most specimens have demonstrated radical evolution of their abilities in a shorter amount of time than regular ghouls. Ghouls also possess hardened skin, making it so a regular blade or even a bonesaw warps on impact rather than pierces them, to the point that regular bullets cannot penetrate their skin. As a One-Eyed Ghoul, Kaneki shows immense agility, being able to run up walls without issue, just for starters. Rc cells play a huge part in their biology. Ghouls have an Rc factor ten times higher than that of a human, where if the average healthy human has about 200-500 Rc cells, then the average Ghoul has about 1000 - 8000 Rc cells. Kaneki’s last known Rc count at the start of :RE was 2753 (considering all that happens later and the multiple boosts/adaptation through the story likely rose much above this). 

Rc Cells are also extremely fuel efficient as they are composed of enzymes that extend telomeres, allowing the body to handle rapid cell division and reproduction, making it so that ghouls' endurance and stamina are much higher than that of a normal human. To put into perspective, engaging a ghoul for a human is “Like running a 100-meter dash for hours”. For example, Kaneki was imprisoned and tortured for days on end, while being fed just enough to keep his regeneration up by Jason. However, upon breaking out, he still had enough in him to defeat his captor and heal all his wounds just fine, fight multiple ghouls in the way, and then fight Ayato without any sign of getting tired. Consistent with the fact that Mutsuki (a Quinx with weaker abilities than actual ghouls) could still be able to fight after at least a week of torture, getting constantly beaten down and having their limbs cut off everytime they grew back, albeit immediately upon breaking out they could take part in the operation ongoing and fight an SS ranked ghoul without any sign of slowing down or getting tired. Even without their regeneration, ghouls are far more resilient to injuries, and can continue living and fighting through extreme wounds that would be fatal to any normal human. This includes impalement, loss of limbs, or in Kaneki’s case, managing to stay conscious and fight on after being stabbed entirely through the brain and gouging one of his eyes out (far from an outlier as ghouls have shown fighting without issue after being stabbed through the head). Kaneki also managed to keep fighting at the brink of death when reduced to just his head and torso against the Oggai Squad. Should a ghoul be inflicted with completely fatal wounds beyond what their healing factor can repair, their vitality is high enough for some to survive and keep acting despite it for some time.

As one may have noticed from the endless shifting of hair color Rc cells increase affects the production of melanin in the hair follicles. I-it’s cool. 

Enhanced Senses

 

Ghoul senses are much keener than those of humans. They can smell people or meat from afar (Kaneki even smelled a recently deceased human from entire city blocks away) and tell humans and ghouls apart by their scent. They also have a heightened sense of hearing that even allows some ghouls to discern individual footsteps from far away or even hear the conclusion of a battle happening multiple levels down below in Cochlea and a Quinque breaking. This is consistent with the fact that Eto in her cell multiple levels above can keep track of the battle between Kaneki and Arima. Their senses can even give them a basic reading on the individual’s intent and risk.

Internal Sonar

Ghouls come equipped with an internal sonar of sorts that allows them to sense and distinguish numerous targets across tens of meters, such as one's mass from the loudness of foot steps, texture from tone, sound reflection in the environment, form from rhythm, and the vibration Kagune gives off. This is something Ghouls learn and don't inherently have like Banjo's group, but while Kaneki hasn’t explicitly used this ability himself, even Quinx who are one fourth Ghouls with thus weaker abilities overall, after being personally trained by Kaneki, have shown to be able to use this ability to detect objects and Kagune within walls. Given he trained them and is an actual Ghoul himself, it’s very likely he can use the ability as well.

Rinkaku Kagune

Due to essentially being a hybrid of Rize and himself, Kaneki has not only inherited her Ghoul abilities, but her Kagune as well. Rize is a Rinkaku, and is portrayed in the anime as bright red tentacles bursting from his back, which becomes a darker shade as it nears the tips. The ever-changing colors are due to the Kagune’s constant state of bonding and breaking down. Kaneki can summon and control from one to eight tentacles at will while being able to manipulate the shape of his Kagune and command the tentacles to process different tasks at once or attack multiple enemies at once  and even burrow underground for a surprise attack or stretch to reach further. He is also noted to have better control over his Kagune than natural-born ghouls with complex movements, and he has stated wielding a Kagune is like “thinking of it as having another set of limbs”. By the time of his final confrontation with Furuta, Kaneki's Kagune had grown to a massive size; its thickness dwarfing that of a human being, in addition to its length growing as well.  

As a Rinkaku, Kaneki’s Kagune is highly offensive due to its structure yielding superior striking power. Rinkaku excel in brute strength, making them able to stab and shred through the hardened skin of other ghouls without any issue, and it’s so sharp it can slice through steel, Quinque Steel and Quinque’s. It can also be used as a bludgeoning tool, or even to stop Eto’s giant Kakuja dead in its tracks and rip it apart. In the event of one of his Kagune being damaged or destroyed, it can quickly be repaired, as Rinkaku regenerative power is a result of the Rc cells easily binding together. Their Rc cells are similar to liquid, however it comes with the downside that the binding force among the Rc cells are weak, therefore making the Kagune in comparison to other Kagune types more soft and easy to break, relatively speaking. However, Kaneki’s Kagune can still block attacks from an S+ ranked Quinque, so it’s still a viable defensive option. The Kagune can also come out to defend him instinctively if he feels his life's in danger, or to circumvent the defense issue, he can bind his multiple tentacle together to make a larger, stronger Kagune. His Kagune can also be used for mobility options, like using the tendrils as anchors to move and dodge quickly on the vertical side of a building, or to maneuver around quickly for scaling other large buildings from the outside which he has done so multiple times before, with it even being used to propel him forward or up in the air. The healing of wounds tends to be delayed if they are inflicted by a Kagune, which is the case because Kagune emits poisonous secretions that slows down or even in certain instances stops the healing factor of other ghouls, which is also the case for normal humans as well. As shown by other Ghouls with Rize’s Kagune it also seemingly is capable of absorbing and merging other organic material into oneself.

Kagune Detachment

Some ghouls possess a rare ability to detach part of their Kagune. Although Kaneki himself has not shown all of the ways to apply this, he’s likely able to use all of them if he would wish to. This detached piece maintains its traits for some time, and continues to function separate from the main body. Detachment can be used in several ways:

• Kagune Weapon: As seen above, it’s possible for Ghouls to detach a part of their Kagune to form a pseudo Quinque to aid them in battle. Kaneki himself shapes it into a sword which functions just like Yukimura does, and it’s durable enough to block strikes from Furuta’s Kagune. While not done by Kaneki himself, it’s shown Quinx can detach parts of their Kagune around their legs to enhance the strength of their kicks.

• Kagune Wall: This type of Kagune buries into the ground and sprouts like a thorn bush or other organic barriers. It extends itself to fill the entire area, making passage impossible.

• Kagune Trap: A unique variant for sure, and one which can be buried within any surface, and coils up on itself. These traps will lie in wait until nearby movement triggers them, bursting from their hiding place to impale what has set them off. It appears to be possible to set more than a half-dozen traps at a time, though the exact limitation is unknown. It’s also possible for the user itself to trigger the trap, and Kaneki has used this type of detachment in the past.

• Kagune Signal: Through this method, one is able to transmit data similar to a distress signal. How the information is transferred as well as received is unknown, but a small piece of kagune can reveal the owner's location. It has only been shown to work one-way so far.

• Limb Replacement: Kagune can also be shaped and fit into missing limbs to be able to form new more dangerous ones if their natural regeneration isn’t fast enough, and Kaneki has used this to change his hand into a Kagune claw and form himself new legs when Arima shredded him faster than he could regenerate them. Those special limbs can block attacks from other Kagune’s as well.

• Kagune Implantation: As shown with Eto, ghouls are able to "implant" their Kagune into others and significantly alter their physiology in a greatly painful way by transmitting Rc patterns to them, as she did with Kanae (and possibly Noro). The process can seemingly become fatal overtime.

Kagune Mimicry/Manipulation

As stated by Eto, the shape of the Kagune is only limited by the imagination and the creativity of the user. Throughout the story, Kaneki has constantly improved his usage and versatility with his Kagune by employing creative use for it, from simple ideas like shaping it into a large sword (as seen above) or hands, a mass of limbs, shields, whip, Giant claws, a centipede’s shaped Kagune, etc. Among other examples, he has copied Yamori’s own Kagune, mimicked Shachi’s own move after seeing it once, formed Mouth shaped Kagune with the ability to talk which can be used for distraction or to simply devour human or ghouls to replenish themselves (Not the only instance of that happening) without getting close, or more complex ideas like meshing together horizontal above ground tendrils and vertical underground tendrils for creating a pseudo net to trap Arima. In theory, any shape or idea can be formed from a Kagune as long as the user has enough control over their Kagune and has enough creativity to be able to form it .

Chimera (Dragon Body Modification)

After being removed from the Dragon, Kaneki’s biochemistry and anatomy was altered even further, becoming different than either humans or ghouls. This new medical condition came with a new set of undefined organs present within his body, and a whole new set of advantages. Not only is he now greatly resistant to ROS and toxins, but his abilities were greatly improved overall; completely curing him of the downsides of his human half (which caused him to age rapidly due to rapid cell division) on top of it. While it is unclear whether Kaneki’s mimicry abilities were amplified even further or if he literally has the ability to use all Kagune types respectively, he has shown his new mastery over Kagune by seemingly quickly cycling through the different types. Specifically, he slices apart Dragon Rize's massive Kagune tendrils using a Binkaku-type Kagune tail (Referencing Nishiki), forms a Chimera-type Kagune to block one of dragon Rize's tendrils (Referencing Hinami), forms a large Koukaku-type sword to slice through one of dragon Rize's tendrils (Referencing Tsukiyama) and finally obliterates several of dragon Rize's massive tendrils with a shockwave by transforming his Kagune into a Ukaku-type (Referencing Touka). 

Given how Kagune shockwaves is an exclusively Ukaku type ability (with the anime even showing electricity in the blast; another Ukaku only trait) it’s likely that his body mutation turned him into a Chimera ghoul (rare ghouls who inherit a Kakune type from both parents) which should allow him to use all Kagune types rather than simple mimicry. This would mean he is likely able to use standard Ukaku ability to crystallize his Kagune to deliver a high speed torrent of spike-like bullet projectiles should he wish so; powerful Ukaku Ghouls can even shape their wings into a tornado of projectiles so to speak. Having been directly linked to the Dragon has also seemingly created a mental connection of sorts to Dragon Rize, given Kaneki could feel her presence in the Dragon and could also hear the last words she could never finish after she had already died.

Regeneration

Due to their increased amount of RC Cells, Ghouls have a strong regenerative ability: small wounds and fractures heal in a matter of seconds. Larger wounds take longer to heal, but will usually vanish after a few days for even the most average of ghouls, as long as the ghoul has access to an adequate food supply. This regenerative ability varies among individuals with Rinkaku ghouls like Kaneki having the best regeneration overall. Kaneki’s regeneration is incredibly potent, allowing him to recover quickly from incredibly grave injuries, to name a few. He could completely twist his broken leg back in place without any issue, heal his broken fingers and arms just as easily, survived being almost completely cut in two while having one of his Kakuho destroyed in the process, having his organs crushed, kicked through the abdomen, suffering through all of his limbs getting cut off multiple times, regenerating back all of his skin by activating his Kagune and even overtime recover in Part 1 where he was weaker in all aspects after getting stabbed through the brain twice, destroying both eyes in the process.

Kaneki recovered from being completely crushed by the teeths of the Dragon tentacles in seconds and other ghouls like Eto (who can also literally laugh off getting cut in two and overtime casually regenerate her lower half) and Amon have shown the ability to regenerate their entire heads from a stump in a few seconds. Ghouls have also shown the ability to reattach or regrow entire sections and vital areas of their bodies back in place, even after being completely sliced in two, or even after being decapitated. Even weaker ghouls can repair deep wounds in their eyes without issue or fix their neck immediately after it being broken. After being extracted from Dragon and having his biology greatly changed from both ghouls and humans, it’s likely he would be comparable to Kagune living monsters, like Noro. Noro could heal himself from having his upper body blown off, being almost completely obliterated and was still alive as just a Kagune left, to the point that he likely would have recovered had Urie not finished him off immediately after.

Flesh Consumption/Increased Metabolic Rate

On top of having an incredibly strong bite force (one strong enough to bite and chew into reinforced steel), ghouls have been shown to regain their strength and heal wounds almost immediately after consuming a small amount of flesh, suggesting that they can quickly metabolize their food to boost their regeneration and condition. Eating even a relatively small amount can kickstart their regeneration and resupply their energy reserves. Kaneki even managed to go from near death without any way to regenerate his limbs or manifest his Kagune to slaughtering the entire Oggai Squad after biting Hajime’s face off. It’s even possible for a ghoul to eat its own flesh (Yes this is a viable strategy in universe) for an amp if the situation calls for it. On the contrary, a poor diet or being malnourished will impair a ghoul’s ability.

Reactive Power Level

Rc cells flow through specialized Rc cell vessels, and they spread from the Kakuhou to permit the body to produce a Kagune to the outside. The bodily capabilities can increase as the number of vessels increases. Vessels grow and spread throughout the body, stimulated through repeated injury and regeneration. Through this process, half-ghouls and Quinx become stronger to the degree they're hurt. Kaneki used this overtime through his days of torture with Yamori, to go from Jason being FTE to his point of view before, to then completely keeping up with him and even blitzing him in a similar manner. With training and adaptation, he managed to keep up with Shachi’s movements, wherehas he was previously left in the dust in their last encounter. Later on, in the time of a single fight after sustaining massive injuries against Arima who was faster than him, Kaneki started getting faster and closing the gap to a point he could completely keep up with him. For reference, Arima was holding back a lot when he originally blitzed Kaneki in their fight, but by the end of it Kaneki could keep pace with him going serious to a point he put Arima in a position where he couldn’t kill him. This process can be incredibly quick as seen during his first time as a Kakuja against Shinohara who initially managed to keep up fine and even score a seemingly fatal hit but immediately after recovering from it Kaneki gained a vast speed increase to the point that he became too fast for the investigator to even see. Dr. Kanou, while experimenting, compared his surgery and the adaptation of ghouls like grafting, a horticultural technique where the tissue of two trees are combined to help them both grow stronger. According to him, the process gives the subject a stronger, much more durable body and partially reduces their need to feed.

Fear Aura

Befitting the sheer presence of the One-Eyed King, Kaneki’s performance alone seemingly replicated the image of a snake capturing its prey from Urie’s point of view, and scared off Ghouls. He’s apparently so terrifying, it makes heavily trained soldiers literally freeze up and wet themselves at the sight of him, and this was early in the series by the way. Later on this feeling of dread around him seems to stay, and Arima, someone who Kaneki scales too as the previous One-Eyed King had something similar, being capable of completely shackling people with despair and fear, and would give the feeling of death by his mere presence alone. Actually insane.

High Pain Tolerance

Kaneki has always shown strong tolerance to pain. Which was heightened tremendously after Kaneki's torture at the hands of Yamori, where he managed to withstand twisting and breaking his own leg in order to land a blow on him. He later demonstrated this again against Naki, his only reaction being a faint smile. He is indifferent about being impaled through the chest by Arima's Owl quinque, literally making him give up the fight or even being able to power on through losing all of his limbs both against Arima and then against the Oggai Squad. When fighting Dragon, despite his prior battle to the death with Furuta, as well as being overwhelmed by Dragon's defenses, getting his arm ripped off and being completely crushed and nearly dying, Kaneki was able to push through the pain and continue on regardless.

Mental World

Within the deepest regions of Kaneki’s mind lies an imaginary world of sorts, where he has retreated to in examples like his torture by Yamori or near death from the Oggai Squad. In this innate domain, Kaneki seems to experience time differently than in the real world, with it seemingly passing slower from his point of view. This allows him time to reflect on his situation and his options at hand; even having full-on conversations in his mind before much can happen in real time, like against the Oggai Squad or Kanae. Furthermore, pieces of his mind can appear to talk to him in that period of time, whether it would be Rize or all the versions of himself through his life (See support below). 

By the end of the story, this place manifests as what appears to be a shrine (based on Itsukushima Shrine), surrounded by a vast ocean of water and a seemingly endless rows of gates while humans fall from the sky into the depths to remind him of all the lives he took and of his sins. This world also seems to contain the last thoughts of those killed by Kaneki as the Dragon. After the Dragon’s awakening however, whether or not this realm is fully imaginary is put into question. Rize does say that he devoured all of the Oggai Squad’s Kakuhou (all originally hers), as she puts it “I was in pieces but now you and I are one” and likely linked their consciousness to some extent. Kaneki even wonders if this place is a fantasy in his head, just like it happened during Yamori’s torture, but Rize stays silent and talks about how she remembers Kaneki meeting her once after she was taken by Yomo. Her own personal thoughts on it imply that this Rize is not a fragment of his imagination.

Finger Crack

Admit it, you probably tried to do it once.

Resistances

Eren Yeager

• Minor Acid Resistance: Eren is capable of surviving in the stomach of Titans for a time despite the massive amount of stomach acid located inside of one.

• Extreme Heat: Survey Corps members are capable of surviving the searing heat of Titans, most notably is Hange surviving for a few minutes against the Wall Titans, which are so hot that their steam melts the skin and muscle off of people’s bodies.

• Biological Manipulation: While not an inherent resistance, users of the Founding Titan can alter the DNA and biology of themselves and all Eldians, with one Founder using this to make Eldians immune to a worldwide plague.

Ken Kaneki

• Electricity: Blocked an electric attack from Narukami with his Kagune without being electrocuted (as shown above).

• Extreme Heat: Kagune can resist and block 4000 Degrees Celcius flames, and Ghouls like Takizawa weren’t too much affected by being blasted by said stream of flames directly in the face.

• Poison & Diseases: Despite absorbing far more ROS toxin than Saiko, who was infected with ROS, Kaneki was near completely unaffected.

• Fear Manipulation: Kaneki has gone into battle with Arima, even when he was shackled by the absolute despair and fear emanating from Arima's presence.

• Madness Manipulation: Ghouls overtime grow more and more likely to become crazy from eating their own kind with it being dubbed the “Power of Madness”. Kaneki by the end of the story has gained full control over that aspect of the Kakuja, and doesn't suffer any negative side-effects from it.

• Biological Manipulation (Cellular level): Ghouls like Takizawa can redirect explosive cells attempting to invade his body.

• Limited Absorption: Despite having been taken into the Dragon and absorbed by it serving as one of its Nucleus, Kaneki’s body was still “intact” and he was still alive despite the Dragon consuming all organic material it takes into itself. This furthermore also surprised Furuta who thought Kaneki would perish from it.

Forms

Eren Yeager

Attack Titan

The Attack Titan is one of the Nine Titans, and is Eren Yeager’s main Titan transformation shown throughout the series. Noted for its never-ending desire to move forward, the Attack Titan stands at 15 meters tall and is covered head to toe in refined muscle. The Attack Titan’s unique ability for much of the series was largely unknown, but as would be revealed by Grisha Yeager and noted more in-depth in the Abilities section, the Attack Titan has the power to inherit the future memories of its holders. Eren is the only known abuser of this ability, using it in Zeke Yeager’s words to “transcend time”. Eren also uses this Titan to utilize the powers of the War Hammer Titan (also expanded on further in the Ability Section), another of the Nine Titans that Eren obtained by consuming Lara Tybur, which is capable of using Hardening to create things limited only by the wielder’s imagination and stamina.

Besides those unique abilities, the Attack Titan is also noted for being extremely combat inclined thanks to its stamina and stature. Most notably, Eren is 2nd only to Pieck Finger, wielder of the stamina efficient Cart Titan, in number of Titan transformations within a short period, with Eren transforming into the Attack Titan up to three times in a single battle. It should be noted however that these transformations do have a notable limit, and that limit can be pushed further due to the intense stamina drain of the Warhammer Titan, with Eren most likely not transforming more than once during the War on Paradis arc precisely because of this stamina drain and the severe damage his Titan took during the battle.

Enraged State

A state of the Attack Titan taken by Eren Yeager during his fight with Annie Leonhart. Found exclusively in the WIT Studio adaptation of the Female Titan arc and Koei Tecmo’s Attack on Titan games, Eren would burst into flames and lose himself almost completely to the Titan, maniacally ranting to himself about destroying the entire world and attempting to consume Annie before she would go on to crystalize herself. The Enraged State of the Attack Titan has and still remains a mystery in the wider context of AoT, with my personal theory being that it is Future Eren exerting his will over Present Eren. Either way, while it looks REALLY cool, it is sort of a moot point in this debate sadly.

Founding Titan

The Titan Transformation attained by Eren after entering the Paths and being granted control of the Founding Titan by Ymir Fritz, it is undeniably the single most powerful Titan in all of Attack on Titan. The Devil of all Earth given form, the Founding Titan makes Eren into a walking crawling? calamity that wields and utilizes the full potential of every Titan power possible (due to being the progenitor of Titans in general) on top of a ridiculous amount of other abilities granted by this specific transformation. While the Titan’s size is ultimately unknown, most theorize it to be around 235 - 300 meters tall judging by its height in relation to a Wall Titan in the manga, while in the anime the Founder’s height is seemingly up to 700 meters in relation to a Wall Titan. While its size is enormous, due to the unique structure of its body, the Founding Titan itself is unable to do much direct fighting. However, the Titan’s ridiculous amount of abilities more than make up for this switch to passivity. 

Thanks to the Founding Titan, Eren can call upon the full potential of the Paths and The Coordinate, using it in a variety of ways. Notable abilities include Eren being capable of calling upon and summoning past Titan Shifters via the Paths, being connected to all Eldians across the past, present, and future, proving able to alter the DNA and memories of Eldians, and obviously transforming Eldians into Titans. It should also be noted that the Founding Titan seemingly has no stamina issues, and even if it does, its stamina is so vast that it can’t really be considered a proper weakness of the Titan. For a brief more in-depth overview of the Founder’s previously mentioned abilities, let’s start with its most combat applicable power, the Founding Titan’s ability to summon any and all past wielders of the Nine Titans via the Paths’ connection to all Eldians across all of space & time. With this, Eren can call upon an impossibly large army, and while Eren’s army may technically be limited by there being a set number of Shifters throughout the years, it’s stated by Pieck that Eren can likely just resurrect these Shifters over and over again. Considering that all Shifters that Eren calls upon are already deceased by the moment in time of his summoning of them, Zeke notwithstanding, any of them falling in battle wouldn’t matter in terms of reducing his army size. 

After that is the Founding Titan’s complete control of all Eldians, from wiping or altering their memories, forcibly transforming them into Titans, removing Shifter’s abilities to turn into Titans, altering the biology and DNA of Eldians, and likely far more. Eren’s immediate first usage of the Founding Titan had him remove all Hardening at the time, with this decision extending not just to unhardening the Colossals trapped in the Walls, but also stripping the Hardening off of Reiner’s Armored Titan and melting the crystal that Annie was encased in, showcasing just how wide reaching the Founder’s abilities are for such a simple command. However, while the previous abilities of the Founder are extremely powerful, possibly the most absurd ability it gives Eren is it directly linking him to all Eldians across the past, present, and future. The actual full specifics of this ability (and the Attack Titan’s weaker version of it) won’t be elaborated on fully here, mainly due to the interpretation-heavy nature of the ability and its lack of clear limits, and will instead be saved for a section in Before the Verdict. However, for a basic idea of what this means, Eren says that the Founding Titan has “Made it so that there is no past or future…it all exists at once.” In short (and I promise you this is as best as I can try to explain it), Eren is capable of receiving, sending, and even possibly directly interfering (more on that in Before the Verdict) in the events experienced by Eldians across all of time & space.

Doomsday Titan

As the dust settled upon Fort Slava, the Alliance watched on in melancholy (unless you’re Pieck, Annie, Falco, or Gabi probably) at the scattered remains of their loved one turned threat to humanity that was Eren Yeager, finally beginning to truly understand the weight of his final defeat… until, ya know, he came back. Despite being disconnected from the Source of All Living Matter as well as Zeke Yeager’s royal blood, Eren seemingly used the Founding Titan’s abilities to create a new Titan body for himself in an attempt to once again join with the Source of All Living Matter. This Colossal Titan, also known as the Doomsday Titan, is unique to others of its kind in that it apparently retained the abilities of Eren’s Attack Titan. Admittedly, it's sort of unknown just what exactly is implied by “the Attack Titan” as it’s obvious that Eren could only activate this ability using the Founding Titan. However, Eren never once seemingly uses the associated abilities of the Founder in this Titan’s showing. Obviously this Titan’s showing being extremely brief doesn’t help matters, but it's hard to infer if this Titan inherited only the abilities of the Attack Titan specifically or if this Titan inherited the abilities associated with Eren’s Attack Titan, most notably the War Hammer. Despite the vagueness of the transformation, it is an undeniably deadly trump card that Eren likely can use as soon as he is granted the full abilities of the Founder, and showcases above all how Eren never stops moving forward, even if what lies ahead for him is Hell.

Ken Kaneki

Incomplete Kakuja

It is said that through cannibalism, a Ghoul absorbs Rc cells, and this increases the concentration of Rc cells within a ghoul's body. If the concentration becomes high enough, it may trigger a mutation, which leads to the formation of an entirely new Kakuhou through the body, thus creating a new Kagune. Naturally, having multiple Kakuhou is extremely beneficial to a Ghoul; not only passively increasing the power and hardness of their Kagune making it “brisker and sharper”, but also allowing them to use both their normal Kagune and their Kakuja at the same time. On the other hand, if one of their Kakuhou is hit or damaged, they can just rely on the other one to keep going without any loss in strength or regeneration. Kaneki was stated to have multiple during Part 1 of the series, albeit with no precise numbers given. However, given that he devoured Yamori, who himself had three Kakuhou, and he later surpassed the One-Eyed Owl, who had between six and eight, it’s likely that he at least has that many himself .When activated, a Kakuja Kagune covers the Kaneki’s body and functions like living armor, amplifying his strength, defenses and agility, along with diversifying his abilities. It’s not just a defensive tool, as even at a baseline level a Kakuja can be used offensively, allowing the user to wield a stronger hybrid Kagune compared to their original one.

After consuming Yamori's Kakuja and the Kagune of various other ghouls, Kaneki obtained an incomplete Kakuja after his confrontation with Dr. Kanou. Kaneki's Kakuja are twin centipede-like tails protruding downwards from his back, with sharp talons on the side. In this form, Kaneki's Kakuja forms a mask that features a hole for his left eye and a bird's beak over the middle of his face, and it provides Kaneki with enough power to even overwhelm Shinohara's Arata Proto. As an incomplete Kakuja, Kaneki originally lost all aspects of his personality when using this form, and fought like a psychotic berserker as a result. Overtime and with the later evolution of his Kakuja, he managed to get a better grip on himself and his psyche without sacrificing his intellect in the process; being able to make precise calculations in battle.

Kakuja Version 2

After consuming Eto's Kakuja, Kaneki’s took the form of a large claw-like arm, with his Kagune forming  mouths and his mask forming a carapace covering his entire face. It replaces Kaneki’s severed legs with corkscrew-like appendages for movement, and this state of the Kakuja was strong enough to break Arima’s IXA quinque, which previously decimated Kaneki.

Kakuja Version 3

During his final battle with Arima, his third Kakuja encased his upper torso and arms in body armor, complete with claws that he can use for both offense and defense. Unlike most Kakuja, this one does not sport a mask, but instead he is capable of producing Koukaku-like blades. In this state, Kaneki has more free control of his Kagune, to the point he can make a cage from his Kagune to trap Arima and stretch it for even greater range.

Complete Kakuja

The complete version of Ken’s Kakuja manifests as bulkier body armor with a claw blade on his right arm, while the carapace covering his face becomes similar to a one-eyed dragon with a fully fanged jaw. Despite being greatly weakened and with his regeneration impaired, this Kakuja form was still more than a match for Suzuya and Hanbee both wearing upgraded Arata armors. Furuta describes Kaneki in this form as fighting like a demon/god, and that despite all his disadvantages, a single mistake on their part would have made him win the fight to the point that Hanbee literally had to go on a suicide strike to allow Juuzou a chance to take him out.

Dragon

After consuming the entire Oggai squad and the nucleus embedded in Furuta's body, Kaneki underwent a massive transformation where his body expanded into an ever growing mass of flesh, teeth, and eyes that consumed everything in its path. Eventually this mass grew to such an extent that it erupted from the underground 24th ward and overflowed into the streets of Tokyo, where it consumed scores of people and destroyed equally many buildings simply by moving. Eventually the mass assumed a centipede-like shape with an armored shell, multiple eyes, and a head that vaguely resembled a Dragon, which is where it got its dreaded title. In this form, the Dragon can generate Kagune tentacles that can cut through tanks and concrete, bears an armored shell durable enough to resist artillery fire without a scratch, and even when damaged, the Dragon can regenerate itself. The Dragon is also composed of IPS cells, which are real cells in the field of medicine, and even if it were cut out of any sustenance, it could still live for a little over 200 years. Should the Dragon be asleep to recover energy, it can still react to stimuli even in an inactive state, and go active again should it be harmed to form gigantic tentacles like maws to defend itself.

The Dragon is built on the idea of consumption and adaptation; growing bigger and stronger in a domino effect directly related to how much it eats or absorbs into its organic mass. Even if left alone without additional food supply, it would naturally grow tenfold in a matter of days, to a point it would encompass all of Tokyo. Further proof of its size would be it stretched to and breaching the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th,16th, and 19th Wards of Tokyo, and at this point its height is enough to coil around a skyscraper. It is also important to note that the Nucleus was just a means to speed things up, as consuming the Oggai Squad had already triggered the start of Dragon. In a similar manner, the previous Underground King mutated into a similar gigantic monster with no nucleus needed, just a loss of control apparently. 

Post Dragon Kakuja

Upon being rescued from the Dragon, Kaneki's body evolved into a species neither man nor Ghoul, and his Kakuja took the form of an elegant body armor, complete with wing-like structures on his back. In this state, he has massive cross-shaped blades attached to them that he can swing around as close range weapons or extend long distances or use these as shields, with their defensive power being great enough to withstand attacks from Kichimura Washuu and the Dragon. These cross blades can block attacks from different angles at once and be used both offensively and defensively at the same time, and if one of the blades were to be broken, Kaneki can still salvage it by using it as a makeshift sword. If he has to change approach, he can still use his other Kagune types in this form, such as when fighting Furata. During the battle, this new version of Kaneki's Kakuja was able to turn the fight on its head and overwhelm Furuta, who until then was generally having the advantage in the fight, forcing Furuta in turn to use his own Kakuja to catch up, but even that wasn’t enough.

Support

Eren Yeager

Ymir

The original Founding Titan and the progenitor of all Titans, Ymir is the most powerful thing in Attack on Titan, with her only real competition being the entity below her. While usually only able to be commanded by an Eldian of royal blood, Eren was able to break through her desire to please the original King of Eldia and his descendents, declaring she has the right to choose for herself. After almost 2,000 years of suffering, Ymir would side with Eren and his desire to end this cruel world that caused her so much pain, granting him the full power of the Founding Titan and serving as a sort of dark Guardian Angel to him. Ymir is responsible for the creation of all Titans; from a 3 meter tall Pure Titan to the 60 meter tall Colossal Titan, with all being molded into shape inside the Paths via its mysterious soil, with Ymir then sending the blood and bones through the Paths to the Eldians that turn into Titans. Ymir is also capable of rebuilding bodies via this soil, as shown by her repairing Zeke’s body after he blew himself in half with a Thunder Spear. She can also change the DNA & biology of Eldians due to the Founding Titan’s complete and utter control over all them, with Founders in the past using this to make Eldians immune to a worldwide plague at the time. Curiously, Ymir is capable of manifesting an astral projection of herself where she sees fit, with even non-Eldians like Ramses seemingly being capable of seeing her. Finally, thanks to Ymir essentially being the Paths and Coordinate herself, she (along with Eren) is connected to every Eldian across the past, present, and future due to the transcendental nature of Paths. Thanks to this, Ymir is capable of calling upon Titan Shifters across all of time and space to defend Eren’s Founding Titan, which will be elaborated on further in the Titan Army section.

The Source of All Living Matter

wormy mcwormington reporting for duty!

Long ago, when the Earth consisted of nothing but matter, forms of something kept appearing and disappearing until eventually life was created. Known as the Source of All Living Matter, The Source of All Life, Hallucigenia, or its best title, the worm; this eldritch monstrosity is likely the source of Titan powers, especially considering its name and connection to Ymir creating the first Titan, and possibly even life itself. The worm seemingly serves as the basis for Eren’s Founding Titan, ejecting from Eren’s spinal cord and connecting itself to his head, with Eren’s Founding Titan then being formed, and Eren’s Founding Titan even resembling the worm. When the neck/nape of Eren’s Founding Titan is severed, the Source of All Life appears and begins attempting to rejoin with Eren to likely form the Founding Titan yet again. While the creature still remains a gigantic mystery overall, it being the origins of Titans themselves likely means it can scale to Titan Shifters to some degree, if not fully. When threatened while attempting to fuse with Eren again, the Source of All Life will begin spraying a gas that turns any and all Eldians (that aren’t Shifters or Ackermans) into Titans to serve as a way to protect itself and Eren. It can be assumed that if Eren and the Source of All Life do successfully touch, Eren’s Founding Titan would be formed yet again due to how their reconnecting is framed in narrative.

Titan Army

As the Alliance descended upon the back of the Founding Titan, they would find themselves being faced with dozens of mysterious monochromatic Titans, with Pieck eventually realizing that these Titans are all past wielders of the Nine Titans being controlled by the Founding Titan. Thanks to the Paths transcending time and space, as well as connecting Eldians no matter where or when they are, the Founder Ymir is capable of summoning Titan Shifters throughout all of history to defend Eren’s Founding Titan from threats that seek to kill or disrupt him. Considering these are past wielders of the Nine, with some even being previously seen characters in the series, it stands to reason they should scale to any feats performed by Shifters in the series proper. Now, while there is technically a limited amount of Shifters for Ymir to call upon due to Titans existing for 1800+ years, it’s stated by Pieck that these Shifters can just be re-summoned over and over so long as Eren’s Titan is still alive, likely thanks to the fact that in the Paths, life and death have no meaning. While some of the Shifters under Ymir’s control did eventually stop fighting the Alliance, it was only thanks to Armin convincing Zeke of life’s value in the Paths and his own realization that the Founder Ymir seeks connection. Even then, it was only Shifters who were close to Zeke & Armin, as the other past Shifters still attempted to defend Eren.

Ken Kaneki

Split Personas

Lol, bro’s support is himself

As one might have noticed Kaneki has…issues, to say the least. The trauma through his story (and his entire life, let’s be honest) combined with his double brain injury causing amnesia had quite literally shattered his psyche. In his darkest moments of despair, he could take a step back in his mind to converse with all his personas or facets of his personality throughout his life, in order to discuss and get another look on the situation. All the personalities are different and thus have their own variable opinions, approach on morals or the matter at hand, and can even disagree with one another, albeit they will usually be united by a common point as they are still all Kaneki at the end of the day. They can even look back at previous events to analyze them until they find a solution, which is a good point overall, as time seems to proceed in slow motion in the real world while he’s there, given that all the personas had a lengthy discussion about their next course of action. This is further proven true by what happened previously that led Kaneki to this point, while the Oggai Squad right next to him had not even started to capture/take him in, despite him being defeated, limbless, right next to them and it being their order.

Personality List:

Kaneki (Original)

Kaneki’s original meek personality.  He suppressed memories of his mother's abuse. He is forced to “adapt” to being a half Ghoul and the torture from Yamori causes him to create a new persona that is more violent.

Kaneki (Shiro)

Kaneki’s personality after Yamori’s torture. He is more grim and considers that the World itself is wrong. He cuts off contact with his friends, as he doesn’t want them to suffer. 

Centipede

Kaneki's sanity after forming a Kakuja. He speaks in screeches and uses hand ticks akin to Yamori. Centipede is only seen onc3 in Tokyo Ghoul Re, when all the personalities  converge in chapter 144.

Child Kaneki (Kuro & Shiro)

A representation of Kaneki’s innocence. The white haired version doesn't  want to be erased but also felt death was his only salvation.

No. 240

Kaneki at the time of his incarceration. He has brain damage from being stabbed in the head by Arima, so therefore his speech is distorted. He eventually became amnesiac.

Haise Sasaki

2 years after his defeat by Arima, Kaneki believes himself to be a CCG investigator.  He is extremely kind and has a family in the form of his apprentices. He fears the person he originally was but eventually decides to learn his past.

Black Reaper

The most violent personality of all. Cold and calculating, Kaneki regained his memories and was overcome by guilt. He believed he had killed his best friend Hide, and decided to “die in style”. During his second battle with Arima, Kaneki came to terms that in truth he wanted to live. 

One Eyed King

The “perfected” personality. Kaneki realized he wanted to live, talking to himself via the image of Hide. Compassionate but determined, he led the Ghouls against the CCG while trying to form peace….

In reality Kaneki admitted though he was mostly filling a role he did not actually want from Eto. Kaneki only sympathized with some Humans and remained underground with the Ghouls.

Dragon 

In a moment of complete defeat, every Kaneki personality was forced to accept their shortcomings. Driven by a single desire to save his wife Touka, Kaneki devoured the Oggai (Furuta’ army of child half Ghoul soldiers), Kaneki was reborn as the all destroying Dragon. While in Dragon’space mindscape, Kaneki met and made peace with the deceased Rize. Accepting all his flaws, Kaneki rejected Dragon and re-emerged into the world with the Help of Touka and his former apprentices.

Post Dragon

Kaneki has accepted his flaws, and no longer runs from issues. He comes to the conclusion that the World isn’t wrong, it just…is, and we as people must keep moving forward.

Dragon Orphans

After the formation of the Dragon, strange humanoid creatures started spawning in Tokyo, who eerily look like Kaneki’s original idea of a Ghoul’s appearance. Created from the organism's massive oviducts, they can be shot out of the Dragon to reach further areas, or can be formed from the Dragon’s own body mass in a pinch to get rid of anything on its giant body. These orphans are aggressive pack hunters that consume any living thing they encounter, do not demonstrate any individuality (maybe), and appear to have intelligence on par with an animal, meaning they act for the general group rather than the individual. Because of this, they act without any sense of caution or fear, and will automatically come back to defend the Dragon if it is damaged or attacked. Two types are known to exist, with separate functions albeit. The majority are basic drones that attack anything they encounter, with no notable traits beyond their aggression. The second type is rarer; only being produced within the more protected roots of the Dragon before being sent out, and typically hiding among its normal comrades. Additionally, conventional firearms like bullets do not seem to be able to harm either variants of these Ghouls. When injured or killed, this variant explodes, releasing a dangerous toxin into the surrounding environment. This toxin is made up of a mass amount of Rc cells, and victims that inhale or contract this toxin receive an Rc Cell overload in their bodies, causing them to develop Rc cell over-secretion disease or become a ghoul. While an exact number is not stated for how many are present, it’s said that they outnumber the CCG forces by “one to a hundred” meaning there’s at the very least thousands of them, even with lowballing the CCG to just hundreds of members (which is a very low estimate, considering the Aogiri Tree had thousands of members and the CCG had at minimum equivalent forces). There is the potential for an even higher force, as the CCG’s bureau investigators act relatively like the police equivalent of the CCG, and considering the Dragon was such a risk both the military and the air force got involved, that would also count the normal police force of Tokyo being mobilized, which could possibly make up to 40 000 units just for the police alone, STILL being outnumbered one to a hundred. With that in mind, it's fully possible that there could be anywhere from hundreds of thousands to possibly millions of these little bastards running around should the Dragon will so.

“Rize”

The one who started this whole story was in a twist of fate, the last one in Kaneki’s way and in this situation the last one to help him out. To avoid overcomplicated story details, Furuta’s grandiose plan was to use the Dragon to put back all of Rize’s Kakuhou into one linked organism to bring her back to life, through the idea that Kagune are a product of imagination, and thus through chaos, life can be created. While Furuta does say the possibility for that to happen was close to Zero, it does surprisingly work, and a new Rize is reborn from the Dragon itself in the 19th Ward. As the main core of the Dragon, she is the key to the entire body, and managing to kill her would shut down Dragon for the most part. However, she is not only incredibly far in the back of the Dragon, with multiple dozens of Kilometers distance to even reach her, the army of Dragon orphans, and the Dragon itself defending her, so it’s quite unlikely that’s happening. However, in the off-chance that danger gets close and survives the ROS poison in high quantity around her, this Rize can also defend herself by calling upon the defense Systems of all of the Dragon’s biological material around her to be formed as gigantic tentacles for attacking anyone who gets too close. This can both rip foes to shreds, or be formed into other horrifying monster that can be shaped into giant maws to crush anyone it catches.

Feats

Eren Yeager

Overall

"From the moment I was born…there was always a stifling wall looming before me. Fiery water, lands of ice, the people who witnessed these things…were the ones who had achieved the greatest freedom in the world. This…is freedom!"

• Joined the fight against the world’s Titans to save all Eldians

• Uncovered several conspiracies and secrets on his journey to destroy the evil of the Titans

• Became humanity’s greatest enemy and united the entire world against him

• Successfully manipulated decades of events to ensure he gets the Founding Titan

• Orchestrated a mass war and ensured that his friends would finally be free from the shackles of fate

• Ended the Curse of Ymir and all Titans

• Defeated Reiner, Annie, Porco, Lara

• Has a top 5 animanga moment of all time (pictured above)

• Destroyed WWAL’s mind through the absolute BULLSHIT that is the Paths

• Best OST in Anime TBH

• Flip doesn't agree with this take

Power

Human

• Is highly proficient in ODM Gear, making it into the Top 5 of the 104th Cadets

• Users of ODM Gear are capable of lifting up about 7.1x their own weight. Eren in 854 weighs around 82 kg/180 lbs, meaning he is capable of lifting 582.1 kg/1278 lbs

• Users of ODM Gear are propelled at 227 mph/101.478 m/s, and consistently land on hard surfaces with no damage whatsoever while moving at these speeds (324 kilojoules)

Attack Titan

• Punched a Titan’s head clean off 

• Carries a gigantic boulder across Trost and used it to plug the hole in Wall Rose (0.12 - 0.46 Tons of TNT)

• Lifts a large ship out of the water

• Launches Annie’s Female Titan into the air with a punch

• Sends Porco's Jaw Titan flying with a backhand

• Crushes a stage with one hand

• Eren’s Hardening-enhanced punches consistently shatter the armor of Reiner’s Armored Titan

• Reiner was capable of surviving a portion of Armin’s explosion on the Founding Titan (72.86 Tons of TNT - 1.96 Kilotons of TNT) 

• Reiner survived Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan slamming his decapitated Armored Titan so hard onto the Founding Titan it created a massive shockwave. He possibly survived the impact directly, considering his broken ODM Gear and a lack of a visual for Reiner escaping before the impact occurred (6.78 - 179.56 Kilotons of TNT, Debatable, See Before the Verdict)

Doomsday Titan

• Shattered the skull of Armin’s Colossal Titan with a Hardened Fist

• Eren transforms into a specialized version of the Colossal Titan, which upon activation creates a massive explosion, usually likened to a nuclear bomb due to its sheer mass and heat release (395 Kilotons of TNT - 11 Megatons of TNT/3.5 - 101 Megatons of TNT, See Before the Verdict)

Speed

• ODM Gear allows users to move at 227 mph/101 m/s, with Eren being shown to be highly proficient in its usage (example above)

• Dodges a strike from Bertholdt's Colossal Titan

• Transforms and catches a cannonball to save Mikasa and Armin (Mach 1.5)

• Jumps out of a surprise attack from Porco's Jaw Titan, losing only his legs

• Seems to dodge fire from artillery, although one does hit him
  Eren processed Ymir’s entire life in a few seconds upon making contact with her (Mach 1862 - Mach 6109, Debatable, See Before the Verdict)

• Eren processed a minimum of 14 years of memories and a maximum of 43 years of memories in a few seconds upon making contact with Historia (Mach 794 - Mach 2607/Mach 1942 - Mach 6374, Debatable, See Before the Verdict)

Durability

Human

• Survives Annie's Female Titan collapsing an underground tunnel on him

• Users of ODM Gear are propelled at 227 mph/101.478 m/s, and consistently land on hard surfaces with no damage whatsoever while moving at these speeds (324 kilojoules)

Attack Titan

• Survives getting kicked into Wall Maria by Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan with only a short concussion (0.13 Tons of TNT)

• Was slammed into a building by Reiner’s Armored Titan and still continued fighting shortly after (0.15 - 0.51 Tons of TNT)

• Got kicked into a building by Annie’s Female Titan (0.69 Tons of TNT)

• Survived Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan falling onto him & Reiner and vaporizing himself on impact (0.012 Tons of TNT - 6.1 Kilotons of TNT, Debatable)

Founding Titan

• The head of Eren’s Founding Titan survived a portion of Armin’s Colossal Titan explosion (72.86 Tons of TNT - 1.96 Kilotons of TNT)

• Bertholdt's Colossal Titan threw Reiner's Armored Titan onto the back of the Founder, creating a massive shockwave, with the Founding Titan taking no noticeable damage from the impact (6.78 - 179.56 Kilotons of TNT, See Before the Verdict)

Doomsday Titan

• Eren transforms into a specialized version of the Colossal Titan, Colossal Titans are potentially more durable then their own explosions (395 Kilotons of TNT - 11 Megatons of TNT/3.5 - 101 Megatons of TNT, Debatable, See Before the Verdict)

Ken Kaneki

Overall

"What's important to you now? You know don't you ? I have always known, haven't i? I won't pull back, I will press forward, like a Centipede."

• Survived the attack from Rize and became a One-Eyed Ghoul

• Escaped attack from both the CCG and Aogiri

• Pushed past his trauma and Jason’s torture to accept his new life, and cut down the 13th Wards killer

• Rediscovered his identity after becoming Haise Sasaki and returned to being Ken Kaneki

• Became the One-Eyed King and eventually managed to unite human and ghouls

• Got married to Touka and had not one but two kids

• Defeated Jason, Eto, Arima, and Furuta

• Looks good in a dress

• Has a top 5 manga of all time

• Quite literally the Goat

Power

Normal

• K.O.'s a fodder ghoul with two hits

• Breaks the giant Mr. Scrapper's arm with one strike

• While poisoned, slaps Mr. Scrapper several meters into a wall

• Kicks Tsukishima into a church pew, breaking it.

• Punched Ayato through several floors of a building (0.0178 tons of TNT)

• Slams Yamori into the ground, creating a large crater 

• Beheads Kanae with a single kick

• Slams Shachi through a several meter thick Kagune wall (0.81 - 1.6 Tons of TNT)

• Completely tears apart Eto’s Kakuja

Kakuja

• His half-Kakuka would have snapped a top Ghoul Investigator's spine from sheer impact if not for having equipped Quinque armor

• Completely punches through Banjo

• Slices through Amon’s Arata armor and cuts off his arm 

• Destroys Arima's Ixa quinque with one hit 

• For reference, a Post-Aogiri Kaneki barely made a crack in the same Quinque

Dragon

• Destroys buildings just by colliding with them

• Crushes Tanks below it just by coming down on them 

• Highly damaged multiple wards of Tokyo in its rampage

• An early form of the Dragon created an Earthquake that crumbled the 24th Ward, which extends all below Tokyo (19-106 megatons of TNT, see Before the Verdict)

• Could potentially “swallow Tokyo” and “devour it” (167.8 Megatons of TNT, see Before the Verdict)

• Digs upwards through the five Kilometers of tunnel to reach the surface of Tokyo in seconds

• This would create a massive amount of Kinetic Energy (9.5 Megatons of TNT)

Post Dragon

• In his clash with Furuta, Kaneki shook the 19th Ward (7.54 Tons of TNT)

• Obliterated several of dragon Rize's massive tendrils with a Kagune Shockwave (3.54 Kilotons of TNT)

• Finished off Rize, destroying the Dragon once and for all

• Acted as one of the nine Nucleus personally holding an entire section of Dragon together (1.05-18.64 Megatons of TNT for the Kinetic energy and destruction of Tokyo respectively, see Before the Verdict)

Speed

Normal

• Parries automatic gunfire

• Dodges Tsukiyama’s flurry of Kagune strikes extremely casually

• Evades gunfire from multiple shooters at once

• These particular SMGs seem similar to a Brugger and Thomet APC, which have a range of bullet speed that peaks at Mach 2.16

• Weaves all of Kanae’s attacks and disappears from her point of view from a good distance, going all the way behind her before she understood what was happening

• While in mid-combat with 2 One-Eyed Ghouls, slaughtered the entirety of the Gourmet restaurant as he passed by

• Blitzed Associate Special Class Investigator Hachikawa 

• Both he and his squad of lesser investigators have shown combat reaction down to 0.1 seconds

• Traveled across an entire rooftop to move Touka out of the way of Ayato's Kagune bullets

• With a hole in his head and an eye destroyed, he still managed to react to, dodge, and outmaneuver several electric discharges fired from Arima's quinque

• Outspeeds Eto in her Kakuja from a considerable distance

• Intercepts the redirected lightning from Arima’s quinque just before it hits Yomo (Mach 20 - 41,  possibly up to Mach 155 with electricity speed and Mach 281.54 - Mach 1387.01 with Lightning speed, See Before the Verdict)

• Outmaneuvers several of V's ghoul investigators that he notes are as fast as Arima and Squad Zero

Kakuja

• Creates a visible sonic boom as he attempts to blitz several ghoul investigators, and is too fast for investigators to tag with guns from afar

• Gets faster mid combat and blitzes Shinohara with his Arata armor, literally running circles around him, even though Shinohara could initially keep up with Kaneki prior

Dragon

• The Dragon rapidly covered the 5 kilometers between the 24th ward and the surface of Tokyo in a couple of seconds (Mach 1.82)

Post Dragon

• Slaughters numerous Red Dragon Orphans with his new Kagune before they can react

• Dodges and deflects numerous tendril attacks from Kakuja Furata

• Makes several visible mach cones while fighting Kagune amped Furata

Durability

Normal

• Endures getting kicked and sent flying by Nishki

• Impaled and thrown into a far wall by Half-Kakuja Yamori, and shrugged it off

• The anime version has said impact shake the entire building they are fighting in

• Barely registers being impaled four times by Ayato’s Kagune shards 

• Tanks being slammed through a thick Rc cell floor by Shachi

• Can still fight after having his forearm torn off and being slammed through a thick wall

• Survives an absolute thrashing and beatdown from Takizawa 

Kakuja

• Tanks being struck by Arata Armor Amon's Quinque; the impact of which leaving shockwaves as he is sent flying

Dragon

• Is barely scratched by point-blank shots from a tank

• Unfazed by Helicopter missiles 

• Dragon is unscathed by it’s body creating the 24th ward earthquake nor digging through the 5 Kilometers from the underground up to Tokyo’s surface 

Post Dragon

• Virtually unphased after a surprise hit from Dragon Rize's massive Kagune tendrils

• Furata attempting to decapitate him with his quinque only left a small cut

• Tanks being slammed into the ground by Furuta so hard that it creates a large crater (19 Tons of TNT)

Scaling

Eren Yeager

Survey Corps

“Shinzou wo Sasageyo!”

Considering Eren has been a member of the Scout Regiment for 4 years, with many of its best members being people Eren has fought alongside since his days in the 104th, it makes sense that Eren should scale to them. Even with its most revered members like Levi or Mikasa who can be argued to be iffy to scale Eren to, it’s likely that Eren should compare via the Founding Titan connecting Eren to every Eldian and their experiences via the Paths.

• All users of the ODM Gear must be able to lift 7.1x their own weight

• Hange was capable of killing multiple Wall Titans, who should be comparable to Colossal Titans

• Hange survived fighting the Wall Titans for a few minutes, who are so hot that the steam they produce melts people down to their skeletons on contact

• Thunder Spears are capable of peeling and destroying the armor of the Armored Titan

• Mikasa reacts to gunfire from Kenny's Elite Squad, with Levi doing the same thing (Mach 1.92)

• Mikasa saved Eren from a giant Crossbow Bolt fired by the War Hammer Titan (Mach 12.12)

• All of the Scout Regiment members of the Alliance are capable of dodging rocks thrown by Zeke's Beast Titan, with said rocks being thrown so hard they create Sonic Booms, which have yet to dissipate even after the rocks have already landed (Mach 50.4 - Mach 78.94)

• Levi can blitz Zeke’s Beast Titan with ease

Reiner Braun

“Come on, Eren. Give up already. You've lost this fight. It's over. You've suffered enough. We all have and that includes you. How did I ever believe we were the same? Let it end already! Just... go to sleep!”

As the closest thing Eren gets to a traditional shounen rival, any and all scaling that Reiner gets should be applied to Eren’s transformations and vice versa for Reiner, Founder, and Doomsday excluded for obvious reasons.

• Survived 7 Thunder Spears at once, and was able to fight again only a few minutes later

• Intercepts cannonfire from an armada of ships

• Slammed Eren through a building (0.15 - 0.51 Tons of TNT)

• Bashed through Wall Maria (2 Tons of TNT)

• Reiner was capable of surviving a portion of Armin’s explosion on the Founding Titan, while being much weaker than he would be normally (72.86 Tons of TNT - 1.96 Kilotons of TNT)

• Survived Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan falling onto him likely evaporating on impact (0.012 Tons of TNT - 6.1 Kilotons of TNT, Debatable)

• Reiner survived Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan slamming his decapitated Armored Titan so hard onto the Founding Titan it created a massive shockwave. Reiner and his Titan possibly survived the impact directly considering his broken ODM Gear and a lack of a visual for Reiner escaping before the impact occurred (6.78 - 179.56 Kilotons of TNT, Debatable)

Zeke Yeager

“Good job holding out on your own, Eren. Now leave the rest…to your big brother.”

As Eren’s older brother, it should be assumed that Eren logically scales to Zeke. While Zeke is shown to generally be superior to the other Warriors, considering Eren’s own experience and showcases post timeskip with the Attack Titan, it isn’t outlandish for Eren even pre-Founding Titan to scale to what Zeke is capable of.

• Zeke could survive for a short time after being blown in half by a Thunder Spear 

• Can crush Pure Titans and use them as projectiles, and can also crush boulders into dust (0.58 Tons of TNT)

• Can throw rocks at such a high speed that they create Sonic Booms, which have yet to dissipate even after the rocks have already landed (Mach 50.4 - Mach 78.94) 

Rod Reiss

“It’s time…to Rod Reiss all over you guys! Reisszord…activate!”

While things like Eren’s Attack Titan or even his Doomsday Titan likely don’t scale to Rod Reiss’ massive 120 meter Colossal Titan, the Founder dwarfing it in size and being the strongest thing in AoT should mean it scales to/above anything it performed thanks to its size.

• Rod Reiss sets trees on fire just from being near them (5.3 Tons of TNT - 7.5 Tons of TNT)

• The Scouts believed that Rod Reiss could break down a portion of Wall Sina (233 Tons of TNT)

• Rod Reiss' transformation into a Titan collapsed a cavern seemingly made primarily from Titan Hardening, which can potentially be comparable to steel due to being used to make steel weapons (2.1 Kilotons - 54.6 Kilotons of TNT)

Armin Arlert

“Eren. You said there was nothing to say, but you were wrong. I've got a question. and you will answer it. What do you really mean when you say you're free?"

With Armin being Eren’s best friend and boyfriend since childhood, it stands to reason that he and Armin should scale 1-to-1 when applicable. While Eren’s human and Attack Titan selves shouldn’t scale to Armin’s (or Bertholdt by extension) Colossal Titans generally, the Founder being able to call upon past Colossal Titans as well as Eren himself being able to transform into a modified Colossal Titan more than justify scaling.

• Survived the searing heat of Bertholdt's Colossal Titan

• Survived a (likely) 50 meter fall onto a roof after being burnt alive by Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan 

• Bertholdt's Colossal Titan kicked a hole in Wall Maria

• Bertholdt's Colossal Titan created a gigantic explosion upon transforming (1.5 - 2.3 Kilotons of TNT)

• Bertholdt’s Colossal Titan falls on Eren & Reiner’s Titans, and vaporizes his Titan to quickly escape (0.012 Tons of TNT - 6.1 Kilotons of TNT, Debatable)

• Armin’s Colossal Titan blows up Marley's Port (61.73 - 157.5 Kilotons of TNT)

• Bertholdt's Colossal Titan throws Reiner's Armored Titan onto the back of the Founder, creating a massive shockwave (6.78 - 179.56 Kilotons of TNT, See Before the Verdict)

• Armin's Colossal Titan blows apart Eren's Founding Titan (395 Kilotons of TNT - 11 Megatons of TNT/3.5 - 101 Megatons of TNT, See Before the Verdict)

Ken Kaneki

Various Ghouls

"What the hell do you know?! It's all because I can't eat, because I could be a target at any time, all because I'm a ghoul! No matter how much I try, there's a wall I can never jump over, and there's happiness that I can never have. But I'm still hanging on to life. Despite it all."

It should come as no surprise, but as a SS ranked Ghoul and being the One-Eyed King with superior potential than regular Ghouls, Kaneki should be more than comparable to the other Ghouls in the series. This is all the more backed up by him becoming the number one threat of the CCG, as well as fighting and defeating both Eto and Furuta, the undisputed strongest Ghouls in the world.

• Nishiki’s Kicks can behead other ghouls and even bisect two Aogiri Quinx

• Hinami reacted to Sound Waves

• Naki blocked a bullet after it was fired

• Gagi and Guge (low-tier soldiers of Naki’s) can intercept bullets about to hit him at near point blank range while they were nowhere to be seen just before (Mach 9.6)

• Koma and Irimi can dodge machine gun fire from multiple shooters at once

• Matsumae reacts to T-Human’s bolt in time to block it (Mach 18.71 - 92.07, See Before the Verdict)

• Renji Yomo reacts to and dodges Narukami’s bolts at close range (Mach 268.76 - 1332.64, See Before the Verdict)

• Touka moves Ayato out of the path of Narukami’s electricity at the last second

• Touka outpaces rockets and shockwaves to shield Ayato from them (Mach 1.5)

• Touka blasts away a large dragon formation (7.2 - 23.3 Tons of TNT)

• Amon's RC factor is 10,181, while Saiko's RC factor is 850, which makes her and Ghouls with higher Rc ratio downscale from Eto’s feat, as Kaneki’s Kagune could tear her Kakuja apart yet couldn’t break through Amon’s own Kakuja (88.4 Tons of TNT, See below for Eto’s feats)

The Aogiri Tree

"Aogiri Tree exists to create a good world for us ghouls, a world in which ghouls can live openly and freely. Our enemy are the Doves of the C.C.G. However, eradicating the warped root that lurks behind all of this is my true aim."

As the same with normal Ghouls, Kaneki has fought his fair share of the Aogiri members, like the Bin Brothers, Jason/Yamori, Takizawa, and even the leader herself Eto. Throughout all of this, Ken still managed to come out on top every time, so there’s no doubt he should be more than on par with the strongest Ghouls there.

• Donato moves so fast he seems to be teleporting across the room from Urie and Higemaru’s point of view, and manages to dismember Higemaru’s arm then go back to his starting position before they even see him move

• Takizawa while starting from a building away casually moves faster than the eye can track to an entire team of ghoul investigators and decapitates an Associate Special Class

• Takizawa’s clash with Amon creates a large shockwave

• Tatara creates 4000 degrees flames with his Kakuja

• Tatara easily dodges gunfire while moving forward to blitz Takizawa

• Yamori launches Kaneki into a wall so hard the entire building shakes in the anime

• Yamori can also launch large piece of concrete so hard they shatter

• Ayato initially dodges a wave of rockets at close range

• In the anime, Ayato manages to put his arms up to defend himself from a Narukami bolt which was just about to hit him (Mach 4623 - 2.6% SoL, See Before the Verdict)

CCG Investigators & The Quinx Squad

"The world is wrong, and you monsters are the ones distorting it!"

As Ghouls are naturally physically superior in every way to Humans and even Quinx, it’s no surprise Kaneki should be superior to Investigators feats through the series by managing to fight and defeat some of the strongest in the verse. Even Suzuya, one of the strongest investigators in the world, while wearing an Arata Armor and coming with backup, only barely managed to win against a greatly weakened Kaneki. All of this was prior to the Dragon buffs and his brand new Kakuja, so it’s unlikely any of the Investigators would stand much of a chance against EOS Kaneki.

• Saiko’s Kagune brings down an entire building 

• Ghoul investigators have combat reactions measured in 0.1 seconds 

• Amon in the Arata armor moves so fast that it creates a space without rain (Mach 26)

• Amon creates an enormous crater in Kanou’s Laboratory

• Amon with sheer physical strength breaks out of a Kagune binding him (99 259 Tons of force)

• Aura moves so fast he creates a double sonic boom

• Kaiko states that Yasa was but a “Millisecond slow”

• Shinohara could dodge at almost point blank the Owl’s Shotgun-like Kagune

• Urie completely shreds Roma’s SSS ranked Kakuja

• Juuzou Slices multiple trees into diced chunks in two moves

• Juuzou could additionally slice both of Kurona’s arms into bits before she could even react

• 3 Special Class Investigators have an estimated combat power of 5 points, while Yoshimura's regeneration is estimated at 8 points, making each of them downscale from SS/SSS Ghoul’s feats (1 Kilotons of TNT, See Below for Eto’s feat).

• Mougan and Kiyoko could both evade Touka’s lightning Kagune (Mach 227.41 - 1119.16 See Before the Verdict)

Eto Yoshimura

"You killed him, didn't you? The One-Eyed King. When it becomes known that a Ghoul killed Kisho Arima…I’m certain it will bring hope to Ghouls like the bright halo of the sun…the throne…the One-Eyed King, and I kept it warm. Sit in it, destroy it, it's up to you, Ken Kaneki."

The Leader of the Aogiri Tree and the Owl herself. Being one of the strongest ghouls in existence, along with a natural born One-Eyed Ghoul, it comes as no surprise that Eto has earned quite the fearsome reputation. Black Reaper Kaneki decisively defeated Eto in her Kakuja state, and has managed to beat both Furuta and Arima, who each have shown capable of getting the best of her relatively easily. So, by all accounts, Kaneki should be much superior to her in comparison.

• Without using her Owl form or her Kagune, Eto was very casually able to blitz Banjo from a considerable distance away and remove his ribs before he could even notice

• Even without activating her Kagune or Kakuja, Eto moves fast enough to appear to be teleporting in the eyes of two artificial One-Eyed Ghouls

• Eto in her Kakuja on more than one occasion manages to evade or even outpace Narukami’s electricity 

• Destroys an Helicopter just from colliding with it

• Created a massive shockwave that knocked down or otherwise kills everyone on the battlefield (0.22-2 Tons of TNT)

• In the anime, said blasts creates multiple building sized explosions 

• Destroyed a giant compactor made out of of Quinque steel (5.13 Kilotons of TNT)

• This also flipped and knocked over the compactor with her Kakuja form (812282568807 Kilograms of force)

Arima Kishou

"I... I've... always... hated it. I hated myself, who only ever stole from others... I feel like I was finally... able to leave something behind..."

Kaneki’s mentor and the strongest undefeated Ghoul Investigator himself. Arima has garnered an impressive list of achievements during his eighteen years as an investigator, from leading the prestigious S3 Squad to single-handedly turning the tides of large operations, with his lethal battle prowess earning him many names, including the White Reaper. Kaneki has been personally trained by Arima and has always been mentored to be able to surpass him. While he didn’t stand much of a chance in the initial parts of their fight, even with Arima holding back immensely, Kaneki would rapidly catch up to the point that he matched Arima blow for blow, broke his SSS Ranked Quinque, and put him in a spot where he was physically unable to kill Kaneki. While scaling to Arima in his absolute prime is somewhat in question, due to Arima in their fight being affected by the Itachi syndrome, their fight happened before Kaneki developed his complete Kakuja and before his Dragon buffs, not to mention prime Arima’s feats are largely nebulous apart from his 18 year win streak. Overall, Kaneki should be comparable to Arima’s on screen showings. 

• Even at 16, he was completely undefeated in every battle he ever fought (a streak he continued until the very end of the series until he fought Kaneki in their rematch)

• As a teenager, blitzes "The Owl" Yoshimura; avoiding numerous Kagune projectiles and defeating him

• Killed 30 ghouls single-handedly

• Casually blocked an enraged Yomo's Kagune projectile wave after it was fired

• Dodges several Kagune bullets from Yoshimura

• Single-handedly slaughtered dozens of Black Dober gang and Ape gang ghouls

• Tears up the side of a large building attempting to hit Eto

• With just one hand, blocked all of Ayato’s Supersonic projectiles in close quarter combat

• Dodges all of Ayato and Touka’s Kagune bullets and blitzes them from far away

• Reacts to Yomo’s lightning and redirects it 

• Dodges several attacks from Shachi and his Kagune, then instantly counterattacks an attempted attack from his blindspot

• Shachi could dodge point blank bolts from Narukami (Mach 7.28-Mach 1287.62 for electricity and lightning speed respectively,See before verdict)

• Clashes numerous times with Black Reaper Kaneki, then easily blitzes him when he decides to stop holding back

• This base version of Kaneki Intercepted the redirected lightning from Arima’s quinque just before it hits Yomo (Mach 20 - 41,  possibly up to Mach 155 with electricity speed and Mach 281.54 - Mach 1387.01 with lightning speed)

• Even in his Kakuja state which would greatly increase his speed, Arima could still keep up without issue and still prove to be the faster of the two, while Kaneki only evened the playing field after his adaptation fully kicked in.

• Supposedly killed a ghoul with an umbrella, caused ghouls to pass out at the sight of him, and fell asleep mid battle. These were confirmed to be true by the characters.

Weaknesses

Eren Yeager

I don’t want that! Losing a Death Battle Blog? No, I want to be the winner of it…for 10 years at least!

While the Power of the Titans is immense and Eren himself standing as the uncontested strongest character in the verse, neither are outright unstoppable. Titan Shifters like Eren can transform into their traditional Titan forms a maximum of 3 times, with each transformation taking its toll on the Shifter’s stamina. Shifter’s themselves can also be prone to losing the ability to transform for a time if their human healing factors are overtaxed, with characters cutting off the limbs of Shifters to ensure they have to regenerate before being able to fully transform again. Titan regeneration itself also is far from consistently perfect, with limb regeneration usually also taking stamina away from the Shifter and potential future transformations, albeit nowhere near as severely as human regeneration. Along with this, the Titan forms of Shifters can themselves be overtaxed and die suddenly even with a Shifter still inside, and can even attempt to absorb the human piloting it if used too many times. It should be noted however that the sudden Titan death and attempt at absorption is likely due to a lack of experience and training, as Shifters generally don’t suffer from this in the series after the Trost District arc. While the transformation into the Founding Titan can essentially give Eren a 2nd life if he is disconnected from his central nervous system, it also potentially makes Eren’s human self a sitting duck inside the head of his Founding Titan. While it’s never explained in-story why Eren didn’t regenerate his human body, it’s possible that the Source of All Life jutting out from his severed spinal cord and connecting to his head means that he would risk losing the powers of the Founding Titan if he were to regrow his own traditional human body. Finally, despite all of their absurd abilities, Titan Shifters generally are still just humans, and if overtaxed and unable to transform can be killed like pretty much any other human.

Ken Kaneki

Really, REALLY bad luck (It’s hard being a Seinen protagonist)

If there’s one thing that Kaneki had to learn multiple times through the series, it’s that Ghouls and himself are not invincible by any stretch of the imagination. While his regeneration is incredibly potent, it is not perfect, and can still be overtaxed by an attack beyond what he can recover from. In this sense, he needs time for his regeneration to stabilize his condition, and long battles without any nourishment tends to slowly but surely wear down a Ghoul’s healing factor. Furthermore, despite having multiple Kakuhou throughout his body, should all be destroyed without one left to pick up the slack or to give time for the others to regenerate, he will be left with his healing factor greatly impaired and without the ability to use his Kagune or Kakuja. His mental health is also a serious flaw, as while he did manage to regain control over himself by the end of the story in order to work through his trauma, it’s still an inner battle to not lose oneself as seen with Eto. His Kakuja abilities are greatly maddening, and it’s possible for even experienced Kakuja users to lose themselves to their Kakuja state if they are not careful.

As the Dragon, despite its incredible power, reach, and many abilities, it’s not without faults. First of all, it’s a berserker creature with a simple intellect to search and devour all it can find, meaning that its thought process is quite simple. What’s more, should one be able to somehow find and destroy one of the nine oviducts, the Dragon’s power will be reduced accordingly, and the linked section will collapse. Considering Kaneki himself is unconscious within Dragon, should he somehow be found within the kilometers upon kilometers of Dragon mass, he will be wide open. Should Rize be slain, the Dragon will completely shut down, leaving simply a much lower production of Dragon orphans as the last passive act of the Behemoth. The previous One-Eyed King with a similar transformation eventually turned to stone and weakened due to the destruction of his eyes, so considering the link between the two it’s possible it could apply to Dragon even if the CCG never considered that possibility. Although, it could simply be that destroying even one eye would fully awaken the beast and finding every single eye over multiple wards of a gigantic Kaiju sounds pretty impossible.

Before The Verdict

What About the Rumbling?

Simply put, within the context of a Death Battle or even a 1v1 in general, Eren cannot use the Rumbling due to main factors that go against the rules of traditional VS. For starters, both characters are put on neutral ground where neither have any advantages, meaning Eren will not be in a place where the three walls are right there next to him to even unlock the rumbling to begin with. Furthermore, even if they were placed here, there’s a key component still missing: royal blood, and the fact that in a random encounter Eren will not suddenly stumble upon Zeke in the middle of nowhere and be able to grab him to control the army, as without him connected, they stop dead in their tracks. In a similar manner regarding the Dragon, the fight would be on the other side and not happening in Tokyo, nor is there the Oggai Squad and Furuta waiting there just to give Kaneki an easy access to Dragon in the first ten seconds of the encounter, so this neutrality of the terrain goes both ways.

What The $%#& Is Up With The Paths?

So, if you’ve read basically anything regarding Eren’s side of this blog so far, you would realize that we’ve continuously mentioned and discussed the abilities of a certain thing that makes this discussion in particular far more difficult than it’d appear on the surface, and that thing is AoT’s space-time transcendent infinite dimension that exists across all universes containing Eldians, otherwise known as the Paths. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Attack on Titan, what was just said probably comes off as completely insane, but yes, this is a real thing in the series that is too important to any of Eren’s notable arguments to ignore, just from how many abilities it provides Eren that simply can’t be brought up without going into what exactly the Paths is. This section should clarify a lot of details and misconceptions regarding the Paths, as well as drive you insane from the bullshit that they are like WWAL was (bro is legendary for deciphering this nonsense).

So, as stated previously in the Paths and Coordinate section, the Paths refers to both the dimension that can only be fully accessed by a wielder of the Founding Titan and a descendent of King Fritz, as well as the metaphysical invisible force that connects all Eldians to each other, with a Path being formed every time a Subject of Ymir is born. It is in this dimension that the Founder Ymir creates all Titans via building them a body of sand, before sending the flesh, blood, and bone of the Titan to the Eldian who has transformed. It is also how the Founding Titan utilizes its power to the fullest through the Coordinate, a massive ethereal pillar of light resembling a tree that stands at the center of the Paths, with its branches being the the very Paths (the metaphysical force, NOT the dimension) that are formed every time an Eldian is born. It is said the Coordinate is the Founding Titan itself and vice versa, with a Founding Titan user’s control over Eldians and Titans comes from using the Coordinate, thanks to all Paths intertwining at the Coordinate. In addition to this, the Paths is stated to “exceed human comprehension” and “transcend space and time”, with time in the Paths repeatedly being shown to be almost non-existent and the Paths’ space warping entirely to the will of the Founding Titan. A notable example of this transcendence would be Zeke and Eren’s confrontation, with Zeke stating he “waited years for Eren to arrive” and was able to show Eren all of Grisha’s memories of Eren (which considering they likely went through every memory except Eren consuming Grisha would be 10 years worth), while for our characters outside the Paths, it was at most a few seconds, if not instant. Space in the Paths also bends to the user’s will, with Eren using his complete control over it as to show Armin the sights they so desperately wanted to see, or using it to give Mikasa the life he thinks would make her happiest.

The Paths has also been described as Infinite, with it likely referring to both the actual dimension itself just judging by its transcendence of space-time, as well as the metaphysical force that connects all Eldians going by the statement that “the Founder Ymir is connected to the Paths, and there are infinite Paths.” Finally, the Paths (at least going by the anime) can also seemingly connect Eldians to alternate universes, judging by what Eren sees when he first enters, likely meaning that the Paths exist simultaneously across all universes that have Eldians in some form. Now all of this is undeniably absurdly impressive in a Versus lens, with the Paths itself feeling more akin at times to something you’d see in an absurd cosmology discussion rather than something you’d expect out of the show about big cannibals and racism. However, to be abundantly clear, no character in Attack on Titan should scale to the Paths. The Paths was and still is meant to be a complete mystery in the grand scheme of Attack on Titan’s story, and the arguments for Eren getting traditional AP or speed scaling thanks to it just don’t work properly due to the complete lack of transparency around it, which is not helped by it being a ridiculously large outlier in a series whose absolute best possible peaks are in the triple digit Megatons range. Arguments that Eren was “holding back” on his friends also doesn’t work, as if Eren truly wanted the Alliance to stop him at all costs, he would not have risked the lives of them so carelessly, nor would he have transformed one last time to try and combine with the Source of All Life once again. Eren made it abundantly clear that his true desire for causing the Rumbling was because the outside world wasn’t what he wanted, and that any other motivations for doing so were merely “justifications” for the horrific act he knew he was going to undertake. It is extremely unlikely that Eren merely “held back” on his power so hard that he lost his absurdly powerful Titan to a nuclear bomb if he was a 5th Dimensional, Immeasurable God.

Now despite that, on the other end of the spectrum, Paths is also far too important to simply ignore for Eren altogether, as it makes up much of the arguments for a potential win for him. The Paths’ memory inheritance allows for Eren to send future memories to past versions of himself (more on that in the OTHER Paths-related section), its time transcendence allows Eren to call upon past Titan Shifters, and its ability to alter Eldians’ DNA allows for Eren to alter his own biology to resist things like the RC Gas. You can argue it wouldn’t even effect his cognitive abilities in the first place, due to his own consciousness being in a transcendent dimension beyond space & time, and it also connects Eren to every Eldian across the Past, Present, and Future, allowing him to gain the memories and experience of hundreds of thousands if not millions of different people. There’s also the possible argument that it essentially gives Eren “infinite prep-time”, since a single second in the real world would likely be years upon years in the dimension of Paths, but that’s a much more interpretation heavy argument, and Eren even being able to act on any of his plans sort of ties into the other point below and how big the stat gap is, which we’ll get into later.

Speaking of that other point below, it’s time to get into another major facet of Paths in this debate specifically, that is…

AoT and Time Travel?

During the constant bombardment of twist after twist that is the War for Paradis arc, it is revealed by Grisha that the Attack Titan has the ability to see the future memories of its wielders, thereby allowing it to see into the future. Zeke would later go on to describe this as the ability to “transcend time”, and Eren would reveal that he has been using this ability of the Attack Titan to send only select memories to the likes of Eren Kruger, Grisha, and even himself in the past (along with possibly all previous Attack Titan users) to ensure that he would obtain the Founding Titan and start the Rumbling.

Now on the surface this is sort of just your traditional time loop stuff. Eren only sends select memories to ensure that he has the power and motivation to do the Rumbling and make sure that he eventually reaches what he calls “Mikasa’s Decision”, however…Isayama clearly didn’t want to make this simple for us. There are notable occasions that imply Eren CAN use the Paths to alter time, with the immediate one coming after Zeke’s shock at realizing Eren was manipulating Grisha, with Eren explaining to Zeke that “I’m grateful to you brother, it is thanks to you that the path I’m now on is possible, because you brought me into our old man’s memories.” This statement implies a variety of factors that are absurdly interpretation heavy, but the most likely one is that if not for Zeke bringing Eren into Grisha’s memories, he wouldn’t have been able to convince Grisha to take the Founding Titan in the first place. However, if Grisha hadn’t done-so, then Zeke never would’ve been able to show Eren this sight due to Eren not having the Founding Titan, making it so Zeke never could’ve done this to make it so Eren CAN start the Rumbling. Later on, the other most notable moment of AoT and Time Travel comes from Eren & Armin’s discussion in the Paths. As Eren describes to Armin, there is no Past, Present, or Future for him anymore, due to them all occurring simultaneously. He reveals that he sent Dina’s Titan to eat Carla, with him implying that he did so to ensure Bertholdt’s survival in that moment. This statement seemingly implies that if not for Eren’s intervention, Bertholdt would’ve been consumed by Dina, and likely resulted in a completely different story then the one we see proper. BUT, only a short time after this statement in MAPPA’s adaptation of Attack on Titan’s ending, it would be revealed that the future that Eren sees has essentially been predetermined, with Eren saying that he tried tons of different scenarios where the Rumbling doesn’t flatten 80% of humanity, and that no matter how many times he tries to change the future, it will always happen as the timeline intends, making himself essentially a slave to “freedom”. However…this itself is also somewhat contradicted by Eren’s motivation speech to Armin, where he tells him the truth in that he wanted to see the sight brought about by the Rumbling, that he did so above all else because it is what he wanted to see, bringing into question the validity of Eren’s own statement about him trying different methods to change the future.

All of this is simply an EXTREMELY interpretation heavy situation that is hard to properly get a grasp on, and in the context of this fight especially, it is 10x more difficult to reasonably figure out. Some have argued Eren can just “Time, Huh?” Kaneki as a baby by sending an Eldian or a Titan to kill him, preventing this fight from even happening in the first place. However, that feels like being unreasonably biased towards Eren and would make any debate involving him pointless if Eren can just make it so the battle never happens, not to mention it’s probably not even possible for him to even do, considering Eren never used the Founder’s power to prevent the historical conflict that permeates throughout Attack on Titan in the first place. However, while Eren can’t just kill Kaneki before the fight occurs, it’s likely that Eren’s ability to send future memories to past versions of himself would be able to change the outcome of this fight provided he is able to enact on those memories, especially considering Eren would be getting the Founding Titan, which has a far grander scale of memory powers than the Attack Titan. Then again, it's also made relatively clear throughout Attack on Titan that while Eren saw much of the future, he never saw everything, especially in regards to combat, with his lack of knowledge on the War Hammer Titan or his lack of foresight during the War for Paradis. Like most of Eren’s kit, mostly due to the unclear nature of Attack on Titan’s actual power system, this comes entirely down to one’s interpretation. 

Going strictly by the known “limits” of the ability, Eren should be capable of sending any memories he desires to past versions of himself during the battle, and by using that can potentially change the outcome of the fight thanks to this knowledge. However, in the proper story of Attack on Titan, Eren is never shown using this ability to give himself the upper hand in combat, which can lead to wildly different theories on why exactly that is. One could argue that there is simply a restriction on the Attack Titan that doesn’t allow for Eren to send back memories relating to combat for an unknown reason, but it’s extremely unlikely that same restriction would apply to the Founding Titan, which has abilities far grander than the Attack Titan’s in regards to its memory inheritance abilities. One could also argue that Eren never sent these memories due to his own self-hatred and a desire to make sure that things never went too right for himself, so that he was always at his lowest point emotionally to ensure that he would choose the Rumbling above any other path he could take, and essentially served as a means of “testing” himself. It’s simply impossible to get a proper grasp on the limits or lack thereof for the ability’s potential, but it’s undeniably too important of a factor to not at least mention no matter one’s interpretation of it. Realistically, nothing in the text disproves the idea that Eren couldn’t change the events of something in the context of a fight by sending future memories of it to himself in the past, even if there are questions that come with why Eren never used that ability in that way.

TLDR: Eren doesn’t really have traditional Time Travel that would let him kill Kaneki as a baby, but his Memory Inheritance ability likely could make it so that an Eren would have knowledge of Kaneki during the future of their battle at the beginning of it, potentially allowing him to change the outcome of it if he can act on things well enough.

Colossal Titan Explosion Scaling?

A common idea for Attack on Titan’s characters, and more precisely Colossal Titans, is that they scale physically and in durability to their nuclear explosions when they transform. If you think about it just as a basic idea, it does make sense. They realistically should have to survive the explosion when they transform, and they are in the middle of it, so it’s pretty cut-and-dry right? Well, the more you look into it, the more holes start to show in the argument. Narratively for starters, no one is really meant to be able to survive and endure such an explosion. It’s always counted as a trump card (that is only ever used once with no Colossal Titans ever transforming a second time likely due to the stamina cost), would be a kill shot at the epicenter, and even the most defense-heavy Titan only survives the blast from a fair distance away from the epicenter, at ground level, while the explosion starts hundreds of meters in the air.

It's also important to point out that during an explosion, we never ever actually see the formation of the Colossal Titan in the blast, with other examples of Titan transformation (Eren, Annie, or Lara for example) often showing the Titans formation after the initial release of energy. The most damning piece of evidence is that near the end of the series, Bertholdt's Paths Colossal Titan self clearly just gets completely destroyed from it when he’s at the epicenter of said blast. While holding Armin in his hands, he is quite literally reduced to nothingness, along with every Titan and Armored Titans in range, apart from Reiner who was farther than the rest and thus saved by Surface Area. It's also important to note that size equals power in AOT; a concept which is fairly solid in proof and consistency. Physically, Eren stands absolutely no chance against the Collosal Titan in his normal Attack Titan form, and Rod Reiss in his 120 meter Titan form is capable of causing this amount of damage to the wall according to the Survey Corps; a LOT more than what The Collosal Titan did back then. So the extra issue comes in through this visual power-ranking ideology, in that it’s pretty explicitly shown that the Founding Titan got absolutely shredded by said blast, so it would make no sense for Colossal durability > Founder durability, especially considering the Founding Titan is meant to be the strongest titan and it easily towers over the Colossals with even the lowest estimate of its size being 3 - 4 times greater.

(Corrector’s note: 5’7 to be more precise)

In a nutshell, the idea makes sense at first, but the further you look into it the more you realize that this simply ain’t it chief.

Height of Eren’s Founding Titan and AoT Anime vs. Manga?

To put it bluntly, the exact height of Eren’s Founding Titan is unknown to our knowledge at the time of this blog, with many of the calculations involving it (namely Armin’s Explosion) using the commonly agreed upon 235 Meters tall, which is gotten by scaling the Founding Titan’s height in relation to the Wall Titans in Chapter 130 of Attack on Titan. However, as research on Eren’s side generally started slowing down, it was brought to our attention that Eren’s exact height in the Founding Titan is unclear to the point where the actual height of Eren’s Titan began being looked into.

For starters, in the Attack on Titan manga, Eren’s Founding Titan’s height is generally consistent, albeit having some small issues in terms of its height in relation to Wall Titans. Realistically nothing too notable, as even some pages make it look smaller than the commonly used page in 130, which many use to try and figure out its height, but generally in the manga, the Founding Titan is portrayed at around 4 - 5x taller than a Wall Titan. The most notable difference comes from Chapter 135, which makes the Founder much larger in comparison to the Wall Titans than how it looked in any previous shots. While obviously not super inconsistent, especially due to how intricate the Founder’s design is, this hopefully showcases how the Founding Titan’s fluctuation in height isn’t limited exclusively to the anime’s rendition of the form. Now this is all generally common knowledge outside of maybe the page in 135, but things get much more complicated when you take MAPPA’s adaptation of Attack on Titan into consideration, as Eren’s Founding Titan’s height in S4 Part 3 Cour 1 (say that 10 times fast I dare you) as it appears during a scene where an army of airships attempt to bomb it and the Rumbling clocks in at up to 700 METERS TALL. This is a ridiculous jump in height, being approximately 465 Meters larger than the Founding Titan’s generally accepted height in the manga, and makes it almost dwarf it in comparison. This depiction of height isn’t exactly an insane one-time only perspective shot either, as Eren’s Founder is generally put at a height similar to the 700 meter calculation throughout the 2 TV Specials that make up S4 Part 3. However, MAPPA’s previous showing of the Founding Titan in 2022 make this discussion a lot harder, as we go from the 700 meter depiction found in S4 Part 3 to Episode 12 of S4 Part 2, in which Eren’s Founding Titan is smaller than he is in those specials…but also still bigger than he was in the manga. It should be noted that an official CG model for Eren’s Founding Titan in the anime does exist, and was calculated to be around 450 meters tall via comparing its size to a model of the Shiganshina District. Even still, this in and of itself runs into the issue of the Founding Titan’s model being specifically from S4 Part 2 (due to it being from 2022), which as noted before, is smaller than Eren’s Founding Titan in S4 Part 3.

Truth be told, it’s difficult to get a general consensus on the exact height of the Founding Titan due to this. While it could be argued that the source material should take precedence above all else, the AoT anime and its staff are close with Hajime Isayama (the author of Attack on Titan) and he has even stated in interviews that he works with the staff during the production process, usually reviews the script, gives his input on the script, and suggests changes when reviewing the storyboards. On top of this, while the insane jump in size may seem absurd compared to the manga, MAPPA’s adaptation of Attack on Titan is already responsible for another higher scale bump to previous feats relating to the series in the form of Armin’s Colossal Titan explosion in Marley. Rather than the traditional pulverization that the manga seemingly makes it out to be, the anime explicitly shows the crater formed from the explosion as melted and blood red, making it so a melting end for any explosions related to Armin is more than feasible, which also shows MAPPA’s willingness to up the scale of the series’ presentation for more cinematic purposes. For all intents and purposes, with the information presented here, the anime should be considered more than equal to the source material, if not taking priority over it in some ways in the eyes of its own creator, going by an interview from Yasuko Kobayashi (screenwriter of Attack on Titan) that talked about Isayama and his desire to give the Uprising Arc a clearer narrative via making changes to the anime adaptation of it, with the entire first episode of Season 3 even being made in accordance with the wishes of Isayama.

To try and wrap this up as concisely as possible, Eren’s Founding Titan differs massively between the original source material of Attack on Titan and MAPPA’s adaptation of Attack on Titan. Despite that however, outside of a single episode at the very end of S4 Part 2 (which itself is inconsistent to both as stated previously), the height of the Founding Titan is generally consistent across their (admittedly very different) depictions in their respective mediums outside of an outlier for the manga which makes it appear much larger, and an outlier for S4 Part 3 which makes it appear much smaller. While traditionally it can be argued the source material should take complete precedence, it has been routinely shown that Isayama works closely with the anime staff, and therefore the anime should likely be considered on even footing with the manga. However, even disregarding S4 Part 2 entirely, there’s no denying the massive difference in size depictions between the manga and anime, and this will still come down to interpretation due to the discrepancy between these depictions.

TL;DR: Eren’s Founding Titan’s is much larger in the anime and that affects how the calcs for Armin exploding it as well as Bertholdt throwing Reiner onto it work due to the massive differences in size.

Koei Tecmo AoT Equipment?

As stated in the Before We Start section, for the purposes of trying to examine as much canon-adjacent material for both Eren and Kaneki, the video game adaptations of their respective series were considered and included. Truth be told, there isn’t anything too major to be found in either series’ catalog of games besides some minor equipment that doesn't radically change the verdict for either side…except for when it comes to Eren. While relatively 1 to 1 with the manga and anime for much of the game besides a few game original scenarios, Koei Tecmo’s Attack on Titan and Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle’s endgame equipment provides Eren with some truly ridiculous weaponry that is simply too fantastical for Attack on Titan or arguably even Tokyo Ghoul despite its modern setting.

Possibly the most infamous set of equipment as research on this blog progressed was the Chronos Set, a collection of ODM Gear capable of manipulating and controlling time itself. While one could chalk this up to flowery language, the game explicitly has mechanics revolving around involving the user slowing down an enemy as well as their own consumption of materials via time manipulation. Some other highlights include a set of Ultrahard Steel Blades that cut as hot as the sun, a set of literal laser guns, or ODM Gear that propels the user faster than a shooting star. It should hopefully be made clear by now that these weapons are just simply too opposed to the setting that Attack on Titan grounds itself in, which is very much meant to be somewhere in the early 1900’s, more specifically a range of the 1910’s to 1940’s. If Eren was to be given time manipulating ODM Gear and laser cannon weapons, it just wouldn’t really feel right at all. The games ARE really fun though, highly recommend them!

Attack on Titan Speed?

Without a doubt, the single most controversial aspect of this blog (and hey that’s saying something) will be the speed tiers given for Attack on Titan, for a wide variety of reasons. Attack on Titan’s speed, for the most part, is commonly capped in most circles at Mach 4.24 via a highball calculation of Eren reacting to and catching a cannon ball before it can reach him. This calc itself has varied in the past with some arguing lower speeds for it, but generally it is the most well known of AoT’s speed feats overall. Obviously if you have made it this far into the blog, you should be able to tell that some members of this blog have AoT’s speed MUCH higher than what is commonly seen or considered, most notably is 2 major feats for the verse and a minor supporting feat for one of them that push AoT’s speed far beyond what most know of for the verse.

To start with the much more blatantly on-screen feat, during the Return to Shiganshina arc/Season 3 Part 2, Zeke Yeager would begin a bombardment of boulder fire onto the Scouts with the intent to pick them all off successfully from afar. During this bombardment, Zeke’s first and most impactful throw created a massive sonic boom that only dissipated after the rocks themselves had already landed. While a bit of an understandably hard pill to swallow for some due to the jump in speed, this feat was calced at a minimum of Mach 50 and a maximum of Mach 78.94, putting much of AoT’s cast in the High Hypersonic range. While one could argue this as an outlier, a feat later performed during the Marley Arc by the War Hammer Titan would seemingly back up this greater amount of speed found in Attack on Titan. During the attack on Liberio, the War Hammer Titan would create a crossbow of hardening and fire it at Mikasa and Eren, with the former reacting to and dodging the crossbow bolt before it could hit either of them. Due to the much shorter distance this didn’t get as much as Zeke’s bombardment, but it did get calc’d to be around Mach 12, still much greater than the Mach 3 highball originally considered as the verse’s peak and serves generally as a good supporting feat to Zeke’s own. While obviously a major jump, we personally didn’t see any issues with using these speeds for Eren due to the calcs themselves being valid and even having a support calc in the form of the War Hammer’s crossbow bolt.

Now if this was all that needed to be discussed regarding Attack on Titan’s speed, this BTV section likely wouldn’t even need to exist. However, once lightning timer Tokyo Ghoul and calculations for speed based on it were being finished up, a point from much earlier on was brought up. That point specifically was everyone’s favorite way of calculating speed feats, Memory Processing (DAMN YOU ALEX MERCEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR). While there are plenty of examples of Memory Processing in Attack on Titan, the main ones that will be discussed here will be the ones performed by Eren during the epilogue of the Return to Shiganshina arc, and the climax to the War for Paradis arc. To start with context for the former, Eren and the rest of the cast would attend a ceremony meant to honor those who died during the arc, and would all eventually kiss Historia’s hand after receiving ceremonial medals from her. However, upon making contact with her, Eren would suddenly be flooded with horrifying memories that we would not find out the full context of until much later. For context on the latter, as Zeke ordered Ymir to make it so Eldians could never bear children, Eren ran towards and made contact with Ymir. In that moment Eren processed Ymir’s entire life and the suffering she has endured for so long, telling her she can make her own choices, which is what leads to Eren being granted the Founding Titan.

To explain this further: 

Even was able to view and process several years worth of memories from his father, Historia and Ymir. He was able to send specific memories to his father in order to manipulate him. 

This ties in with the realm of Paths, where several years worth of time can occur that would be a blink of an eye on Earth. Paths transcends time, and ties multiple points in time together via the Coordinate, the center point of Paths. The Coordinate is the Founding Titan, and in turn Ymir. Ymir's death and the consumption of her flesh by future generations  created more "branches" with Paths. Ymir controls Paths in tandem with the Source of All Living Matter, the Parasitic creature that gave her powers in the first place. 

Ymir gives all her power and support to Eren after he shows her much needed compassion. This granted Eren the full power of the Founding Titan, and made it so past, present, and future exist simultaneously for him. All the processing power of the Coordinate and Attack Titan can now work in tandem. Eren's own perception and speed increased to the point that he is capable of trapping Zeke within the forming founding titan as if he were frozen in time, before anyone else could react, and birds in the background are frozen.

This increased processing speed only applies to Eren's thoughts and any abilities he can trigger from said thoughts. The Physical movement of the Founding Titan is limited by its sheer weight and mass. Likewise, Ymir herself would be capable of performing actions at the speed as well given she is quite literally the coordinate and has full authority over Paths.

While Eren cannot move at the speed he can process information, it has been shown he can use thought based abilities at that speed. These would include Titan Transformation (specifically into the Founding Titan), Hardening, and Titan Creation (which is regulated by Ymir herself). It is very important to note that these created Titans do not scale to the speed as they are comparable to humans like Mikasa Ackerman, and are more so compared to husks.

The blog uses a calculation for Eren viewing many years worth of Grisha's memories. He is able to selectively choose and send his own memories via the Attack Titan while linked with Zeke (and thus having access to the Coordinate). Eren ONLY scales as the Founding Titan and not in any other form. His base state and Attack Titan form do not scale as he requires the full transformation in order to use the Coordinate. His Colossal Titan form also does not scale, as it is stated to be weakened and not fully connected to the Coordinate. This makes sense, since Eren lost physical contact with the Source of All Living Matter.

The last point to address is whether or not this would be considered an outlier. It should not be as this literally only scales 2 characters, that being Ymir (who no one scales to) and Eren (Only as the Founding Titan). Eren himself only directly fights other characters while he is weakened after losing the Source of All Living Matter, and therefore does not have the Coordinate's processing power. One might point towards Grisha being able to defeat Frieda, who had the Founding Titan. It is important to note that all prior users of the Founding Titan were pacifists who were bound by the Vow to Renounce War, and thus could not use its full abilities. We can see in brief displays from the Founding Titan that it is meant to be faster than anything in the series, such as when Uri Reiss caught Kenny Ackerman, a man comparable to the speed king himself, Levi Ackerman.

It should also be noted that these moments of viewing memories in the series are  important to the narrative. They are meant to be fast (Zeke's comment that event Paths are a "blink of the eye"/flash on Earth). Eren views all his future Memories via his hand contact with Historia in an instant. Eren in the anime perception blitzes Zeke to the point he is frozen in time while using the Coordinate. The Coordinate is meant to be fast.

Finally, while Paths is stated to transcend space and time and is potentially a higher dimension of some sorts, this does not mean Eren has "immeasurable speed". Eren notes that he is confused due to time being simultaneous for him. He did send memories back in time, but this is a byproduct of the Attack Titan's power. Eren was able to control Dina as a Titan in the past, But this is just another usage of hax and not speed. Ymir likewise never does anything to suggest immeasurable speed.

Via calculating this (viewing Grisha's memories and processing them), Eren’s reaction speed is at minimum Mach 794 and at maximum 6394, using the minimum and maximum of the Historia hand kiss feat respectively, with the maximum of the Ymir feat being only slightly lower overall. Now, do not get it twisted on how these interact with the fight. Eren’s ability to act at this speed is restricted solely to his thought and processing speed when in-tune with the Paths’ powers, with the only applicable example that benefits him being the Founding Titan and its own powerset. Before we move to that, for anybody trying to scale Eren’s overall reaction and combat speed to that, it's really not usable in this way. Eren could only really access this kind of power solely due to Ymir giving him all of her power, in a way that doesn’t benefit him much overall. See, it would only apply to his thoughts, or rather, the speed of his Founder abilities, like summoning Titans for example. He can’t actually block attacks or fight at this speed (as evidenced by basically everything else in the series speed-wise), so even if he can technically think at this speed, he can’t move or attack at it. Granted, he can still tap into it for hax like Hardening or otherwise, but it is an important distinction to make nonetheless. 

The only way you can argue the Founder can move off that speed is Uri Reiss being rather fast in combat with the Titan but that doesn't inherently mean it's just as fast. He was still shackled by the vow to renounce war, which we are told it explicitly nerfs the abilities of the coordinate. It wouldn't make much sense to use Uri as a basis that it can scale because then you have the issue with Frieda. Grisha managed to defeat Frieda. The only thing that can possibly be a basis to scale this to physical movement of the Funding Titan is when Eren blitzes Zeke, he also traps him within the forming skeleton of the Titan. The problem with that is that the formation slows down after the skeleton is complete, Eren's Titan flesh starts to form and at that point everyone can react.

TLDR: Yes, Eren scales to the processing speed, but only in a thought sense for certain powers, not his overall combat speed.

How Do RC Cells and Titan Flesh Mesh with Each Other?

In the world of Tokyo Ghoul, everyone, both Ghouls and Humans regardless of gender or age, will all have a set amount of Rc cells, with the only difference being the sheer amount of them present in Ghouls, as crossing the 1000 line turns you into a Ghoul. Considering this evolution via verse equalization, which is something tied to absolutely all of humanity across the entire planet, realistically, Eren and humans of his world would also naturally have the standard 200 to 500 Rc count for normal humans, as it’s a global biological process, after all. With that out of the way, it may come into question whether or not Titans would also have that set amount of Rc cells coursing through their veins, as they are impossibilities of nature on a logical and biological aspect. After looking at it more closely, there’s more than enough evidence to point towards them still having Rc cells in their body.

For starters, to get the obvious out of the way, Titans are mutated humans due to being descendants of Ymir’s line. A pure Titan does not have a human body in the nape or anywhere else, as they are the Titans fully, yet when they eat a Titan Shifter, their body completely reverts back (some Titans like Connie’s Mother even retain some memory and intelligence of them as humans in their Titan form). Titan Shifters are even biologically tied to their Titans nervous system in the neck, literally being attached to them via the flesh (Pure Titans and Titan Shifters even generally look more or less close to their human counterpart, which is physically more apparent with Reiner and Annie for example). Titans share a disproportionate but still fully “normal” biological structure, complete with internal organs (despite them not needing them), light weight in comparison to their size but still enormous in regards to a human, their body evaporates when they die or if a limb is removed from their body, and it’s also incredibly hot to the touch. An important point to bring up right off the bat is how Titans are even made as they originate from the Paths and originally created from the “soil” of Ymir, as we’re shown this Soil can more or less become anything she shapes it up to be; from it creating the Titan’s biological structure or even shaping chains to bind Zeke in place. As explained by Kruger, the Founder Ymir sends Blood, Bone, and Flesh through the Paths to create a Titan, so biologically, the soil transforms into flesh/bones/organs to allow them to function, rather than their bodies literally being made of “magical soil.”

Rc cells are not only hereditary as well, just like Eldians ability to turn into titans, but they also show a high amount of heat resistance, with Ghouls and Kagune’s formed from those cells being able to endure temperatures up to 4000 degrees celsius, meaning that those cells wouldn’t just evaporate due to a Titan’s high body temperature. Ghoul metabolism consumes flesh at an incredibly fast rate, with it being fully absorbed and processed into their body in a matter of seconds. Titans turn to steam once killed or have a body part removed from the main body, but that usually takes a few minutes to take effect completely, so the Titan’s flesh evaporation wouldn’t be a major issue, given it would be consumed at a much faster rate than it can decay. Rc cells are also no stranger to genetic mutations as seen with the Kakuja. One of the most direct piece of evidence is the fact that this soil, when used biologically, allows Ymir to completely reform Zeke’s human lower half to save him, with this same soil being used in the same manner to form Titans, proving a link between the two beyond just the ability from a human to turn into a Titan. Zeke can also form his normal human body out of Eren’s Titan bones while being directly linked to it, just like all the summoned Titans are, and while some may wonder if this would still be enough for a link of Rc cells to pass through to them, another biological fact can be used for reference.  “Bone marrow is found in the center of most bones and has many blood vessels”, so, there would still be a blood connection happening from Eren to his summoned Titans, plus, those Titans are shown to be exactly the same biologically. They are shown to bleed just like all the others when wounded, and evaporate upon death like all the rest. By all accounts, apart from not having an actual Titan Shifter controlling them, they share the same biological link, with nothing really implying otherwise.

Essentially, Titans are at the end of the day mutated humans pretty much exactly like Ghouls due to a hereditary genetic trait that is applied through verse equalization, and Titans share enough connections in their biology with human traits for Rc cells to exist within their bloodstream and bodies.

Lightning Timing Tokyo Ghoul?

In Tokyo Ghoul, there are a few Ghouls who can seemingly create electricity from their Kagune. Renji Yomo and his niece Touka can fire bolts of electricity from their Kagune, which are shown to electrocute their targets, and can even conduct in water. Likewise, Kishou Arima has a Quinque (Narukami) which discharges condensed RC Cells in a manner akin to “lightning” which also electrocutes its victim. It was made from the Kakuhou sack (the organ responsible for the creation of Kagune in a Ghoul) of Hikari Kirishima, the sister of Renji Yomo, meaning the general family share similar traits. The bolts from Narukami and Renji are consistently depicted as being very hot, and Renji’s Kagune has been called “lightning like” by Mutsuki (who was burned alive by it via conduction). Now, all this proves so far is that Renji, Touka and Narukami can create electricity. None of these properties inherently prove the “lightning” produced from the Kagune are actually the speed of lightning. That is where Eto comes in.

In Tokyo Ghoul:Re, the half Ghoul Eto revealed that imagination shapes the effects of Kagune in Ghouls, with her proving it by using her imagination to shape mouths and eyes from her Kagune, and her subordinate Tatara taking it one step further by producing 4,000 degrees celsius flames from his own Kagune. Renji himself can produce an electromagnetic field, but more importantly, Chapter 170 of TG:Re has Renji use a lightning rod to conduct his bolt to fry a Ghoul named Uta, with the scene being visually depicted as a lightning bolt crashing down from the sky. Combine that with the fact that Narukami is described as releasing its bolts “like Lightning,” and Renji’s Kagune is described as Lightning-like, you can see the argument forming. An immediate counter is that we don't specifically have factors like air resistance or cloud height taken into account, but they might not even be necessary in this case. Kagune are unique in that the host’s imagination shapes all factors of their effects, allowing something as bizarre as 4,000 Celcius fire to exist (the highest real-life fire temperature achievable is 3,400 degrees celsius in certain acetylene torches). Given Renji also has produced an electromagnetic field, his Kagune (and in turn Touka’s Kagune given they are from the same family and Rc cells are hereditary with similar traits) having the speed of Lightning is fair to assume given the visual depiction in the fight with Uta. It’s also likely this would apply to the T-Human Quinque given how it functions in the same way as Narukami does. 

Speaking of, Narukami actually holds a large answer to the problem of no air resistance. See, lightning is much hotter than normal electricity due to the air resistance it faces while moving. This is important because Narukami is clearly much hotter than normal electricity, given it can fry higher-up Ghouls in the series, with other examples of these kinds of foes being capable of shrugging off temperatures nearly 3,500 degrees without much of an issue. As such, it’s clearly meant to be much more effective than your average electricity. One thing you could say against it is that Narukami has a tracker as part of the weapon, which could be problematic, as that means it has a set path. This matters because one of the reasons lightning is as fast as it should be is because it fires through the air through the path of least air resistance, therefore meaning a guided bolt instead of a free-flowing one would naturally be slower. However, this doesn’t mean much in the long run if at all. The tracker is just a homing device of sorts added to the weapon to make it following others easier across longer distances, which wouldn’t apply to it simply firing at you in a straight path, like the impressive feats Kaneki benefits from such as his own or that of Ayato.

In terms of what this means here, Kaneki in TG:RE could block and react to lightning fired from Narukami at close range in order to save Renji. Given the Quinque uses the same basis to discharge its own lightning as Renji (the Kagune from his sister), at bare minimum it should be using the speed of electricity in air and should be also viable for the speed of cloud-to-ground lightning (given the support shown above, mach 286).

(NOTE: In the lightning feats shown, one of the calcers for the blog, Normal, used a speed of 200,000 mph for the lightning due to a weather website saying lightning bolts are around that speed, instead of Mach 286 like most others do. If you’re curious what they get under that standard, it is as follows.

Yomo reacting to Narukami = Mach 294.587400177

Matsumae reacting to T-Human = Mach 20.5062049566

Ayato reacting to Narukami = Mach 5053.28249364) 

Is Dragon Standard?

Look at that smile he seems so happy to be here

Normally, no, the Dragon simply is not standard. Kaneki needed all of the Oggai Squad as fuel just to start the process, and then Furuta’s nucleus to amp the monster further, so he can’t just snap his fingers and turn into it. Still, is it possibly usable? Maybe, since the nucleus is just a way to increase the speed of the growth of Dragon, and may have been a part in Furuta’s want to rebirth Rize. Kaneki devouring the Oggai Squad alone had already started Dragon, and the previous Underground King certainly did not have a need for a Nucleus for his own transformation to take place. Kaneki himself also thinks it could happen again should he lose control of himself. All Kaneki really needs to enter this form is enough food or meat to start the process, and to be put in a high stakes near-death situation for him to lose control. In the world of Tokyo Ghoul, all humans have between 200 to 500 Rc cells, meaning that with enough fuel/meat it is possible to start the process; it will just not happen as quickly as it did in the story.

Dragon Scaling?

To be blunt, all of us know that the most impressive feats in Tokyo Ghoul come from Kaneki’s rampage as the Dragon, where he created a massive earthquake across the Wards we see in the series. It did this before it devoured Furata’s nucleus, and Kaneki can fight a full-fledged Dragon, which should be much more powerful than this early form. Moreover, Kaneki successfully destroyed the massive tentacles of a full-fledged Dragon with a length of hundreds of meters, which were located directly in the core and attacked it in order to protect the main body. Due to this fighting a stronger version of the Dragon, Kaneki should scale to the previously mentioned earthquake feat, but does he compare to the Dragon at its best? To answer that, we know the Dragon is made up of several nucleus (basically hearts), and Kaneki was one out of nine of them. Upon him being removed from the Dragon, an entire section collapsed, literally self-destructing as soon as he was removed, and the beast went back to sleep, so it clearly took a hit in power. Therefore, since Kaneki was a Nucleus of the Dragon, of which there are 9, we can translate that to his normal attack potency by dividing things by 9, which is certainly believable at the worst given he’s dealt with numerous Dragon tentacles and destroyed the final core to end all of it, and his own God-tier status in the verse, now on that topic…

The 24th Ward Earthquake

You might be curious why the Dragon's earthquake got so impressive here, when other sources have it as not even breaching 100 kilotons. 

To give a refresher, the feat is simple: Kaneki turns into the Dragon and the initial burst of power shakes the entire 24th Ward to all but completely destroy it. We are shown several shots and viewpoints of the damage this caused, which is a nightmare incarnate. This includes wrecking basically the entire area, bringing forth oceans of debris, and severely damaging several buildings (Ghouls were even forced to go to the surface as the entire ward was simply impossible to go back to). After going through reports and comparisons for real life earthquakes and input from Rina, as well as several members on the blog who had experienced smaller earthquakes IRL, we concluded that it was at least a Magnitude 7. Previous calculations assumed a 5.5 Magnitude due to the City being underground, but that isn't exactly based on much that holds up when the 24th Ward is an entire city spreading through every corner of Tokyo and Tokyo itself having earthquake resistant structures due to the frequency of them in the area and in Japan as a whole.

So, with the damage done to the Ward, and the size ultimately affected by said shaking, this would land Kaneki 19 Megatons, or even 106 Megatons if you assume the earthquake got up to a 7.5 Magnitude. To be clear, we went over this between ourselves an extended amount of times in comparing notes, experiences, showing the damage and width to Rina, and etc, until we were all certain this was the most reliable end. The 7.5 higher end still applies to a lot of the damage Kaneki caused, but 7.0 is overall more reliable. You might think this is a bit of a stretch, but it does make sense overall, especially when it was stated Kaneki's rampage as the Dragon caused the 24th Ward “to crack at the seams” (worded as it crumbling directly in the english translation) and that this earthquake was flatout believed to be “beyond human comprehension.” It's stressed very clearly and consistently this was a huge deal, and the prior statement outright confirmed this did major damage to the city, so thus, the earthquake values we went through are the real deal, plain and simple.

As for how this matters to the debate, Kaneki at this point was the entirety of the Dragon without any of the other Nucleus’ added, meaning his base form, especially in his post-Dragon state, would be of a similar magnitude to this earthquake.

Dragon’s Size and KE

The most known estimate for the Dragon’s size comes from this calc which takes into account Dragon going from the one through four wards of Tokyo, which comes out to around 21.6 Kilometers in total. However, here’s perhaps more to it. Kimi does state on panels that it does spread across the 1st, 4th and 13 wards so those three are simple, but later chapters show that it reached other wards with the 3rd, 6th, 16th and even the 19th ward being occupied by the monster. In summary the Dragon reached into all the Wards with a red dot. Going through the numbers at its best it could clock in at around 46 Kilometers total. Now that we have sizing down, we just need weight, which we decided was best determined using the weight of steel, which you can see the reasons for in the following BTV. With that length and the noted weight, as well as additional size scaling in comparison to buildings, an average tentacle from the Dragon should hit with about 9.5 Megatons of TNT…which was a bit lower than what we were expecting, but still quite impressive.

Are Kagune Muscles or Steel?

This relates to the Dragon's kinetic energy, as it may seem a stretch to some people. Essentially, in order to get the result shown, we used a steel density for the Dragon to gauge its mass. For most, it could come across as more than a bit weird, but after further inspection into the Tokyo Ghoul series, it's surprisingly well backed. 

For a brief refresher on what a Kagune is (which is important given the Dragon is composed of Kagune), it is an extra organ Ghouls have that they use in battle that is essentially liquid muscle in its base state, with Ghouls being able to control its hardness and alter it at will, which is how they can clash with other foes almost like a blunt weapon due to it. You may think this just means a Kagune, and therefore the Dragon, would have a density of regular muscle, and thus less overall energy from this lower weight, but this is proven untrue. The liquid muscle statement is referring to a base Kagune that is not hardened for battle yet. Throughout the series, various Ghouls or Kagunes in general are stated to be as hard as steel, in even mediocre Ghouls simply due to their physiology. While hardness ≠ density, that's not all there is to the various comparisons.

Quinque’s (artificial Kagune made from Kakuho) are made from Kagune steel as well, and specifically note that the more Rc cells the object has, the stronger they become. This matters because Special Investigator Shinohara has also noted the very same in the case of the Ghoul type Kokahu. Even more support for this comes in that he directly says a Kokahu wields denser and heavier Kagune due to their high concentration of RC Cells in a specific point, similar to a Quinque being just a straightforward weapon. This is a blatant example of proof that Kagune becoming harder and more concentrated for battle increases their weight, even to that of steel, which again, makes sense. Quinque are made from steel to match Kagune and both the Quinque weapons/armor require an incredible physique to wield adequately (this isn't referring to the supermode where the armor consumes its users flesh to boost power if you were wondering), all Ghouls are stated to have the hardness of steel, and we outright know their Kagune makes them heavier. Kinetic energy for Ghouls in Tokyo Ghoul is stated to be 4 - 7 × more impressive than that of a human, despite similar weight without the Kagune. While higher speed does play into this, it also involves higher mass as well, thanks to the Kagune. There's also the factor that light novels have stated RC Cells are incredibly dense, and that a Kagune in its natural state is incredibly heavy, even to a Quinx like Saiko.

Now that we've established that Kagune can gain the density of steel, we then need to cover how it applies to the Dragon. Remember how Ghoul Kagune is originally liquid muscle, but becomes as hard as steel? Well, battle mode for them is what hardens this, and what they use to clash with other Ghouls and the Quinque of Investigators. Kaneki's Dragon transformation was immune to all of their weapons just like normal Kagune are, and he was in attack mode pretty much the entire time. Therefore, given he was at battle efficiency, and all of the above information, applying the weight of steel to his transformation and kinetic energy is perfectly reasonable. 

TLDR: Kagune are liquid muscles and flow like water in their standard state, before battle hardening. In this battle state, given surrounding context like the nature of Quinque's and how Kagune like that of a Kokahu work, it's more than reasonable to grant them the weight of steel, which other factors like higher kinetic energy compared to humans back up. Thus, given the Dragon is in this battle state, we can apply this weight to its kinetic energy, plain and simple.

The Dragon Destroying Tokyo

Damn how many Dragon BTV's can we get

This time regarding the Dragon, let's go over its statement of “swallowing Tokyo.” In short, this is actually a very solid level of power in Tokyo Ghoul :re. 

In length, essentially, the Dragon has been stated on several occasions to be capable of destroying

the entire city of Tokyo. This includes that first swallow Tokyo statement (which came directly from the Manga Volumes discussing the story), other knowledgeable ghouls and doctors in the story, and it's frequently established that when the Dragon wakes up, its rampage would be a major catastrophe extending across all 23 wards. There's also more backing for this in the form of the 24th Ward. Remember that this ward was a city that extended below all of Tokyo, and Kaneki caused such damage as to practically destroy it all on his first go as the Dragon. Of course, you could argue that the Dragon needed to get stronger to do so, and this level of power can't be attributed to him. However, that would not be the case. One of the doctors that goes over the Dragon’s capabilities, Kimi, specifically notes that it needed to replenish its energy to do this, meaning it was always capable of doing so, with the only reason Kaneki didn't do this as he got to the surface was there wasn't enough food to consume, and he needed to restore his power reserves. In other words, if he popped the Dragon on the surface, it would have just destroyed Tokyo anyway, with Kimi directly comparing the scale to the first example of his waking up. Kimi does state “in a matter of days it would increase in volume tenfold” which could potentially imply it would take days to destroy Tokyo, even when the Dragon is awake. However, that statement only really talks about the size Dragon could attain if not stopped in time, standing at around the 20 - 40 Kilometer mark. If it grew ten times in size, it would have already spread past Tokyo on top of it. Remember, the prime minister and the air force are involved, so it's definitely presented as a national threat if it gets out of hand beyond just Tokyo, especially due to the poison threat as theorized by Arima: “All Humans would become Ghouls.”

So to sum up, consistent statements and narrative confirmation that the Dragon would destroy Tokyo, the manga narrative agreeing with this, and the Dragon beforehand wrecking a city of similar size means we can attribute the destruction values of Tokyo to the Dragon.

Bonus Fanart

(Track art done by Masux on DeviantArt)

(Track art done by🌸AnnaBee⭐/theASTARart on Twitter)

(Track art done by Tyrannii on Twitter)

(Pixel art done by ItsCarl6148 on Reddit)

(Art done by Rashby2S2 on DeviantArt)

(Art done by ConekQ on Reddit)

(All arts done by Parking_External_182 on Reddit)

(Art done by thepicreeper on Reddit)

(Art done by the poster on reddit)

(Art done by Black_Pen_bp on Reddit)

(Art done by @Syruq on Twitter, please check him out!)

Track Art by @DK_DOart on Twitter and go listen to the amazing track made by Brandon Yates 

Fight Script

Of course with a big match up such as this, we’ve made a fight script for it! Fully fleshed out and written by Pasbros. Of course warning this will spoil the chosen winner so watch out. Apart from that, enjoy!!!

(Seriously. Read this. All of us on the blog completely and utterly love it, and think, no, KNOW it did a nigh-perfect service to the characters. Even if you skim the blog, which, fair, do give this script a read when you get the chance. Now, onto the main event!)

Verdict

Team Eren

Stats

Considering both Eren and Kaneki are the absolute strongest characters in their respective verses (Ymir notwithstanding), it should be extremely obvious that both should scale to/above any feats performed in-series, and with that have multiple different tiers of stats to go off of depending on what one buys for each.

Eren Yeager

To start with Eren, we’ll be first looking at what his stats would be as the Attack Titan. Going only by feats directly performed by himself, Eren’s Attack Titan would be sitting at around 0.46 Tons of TNT in terms of AP via slamming down the boulder he carried through Trost District, Mach 1.5 - Mach 4 via catching the cannonball fired at him, and a debatable durability of 6 Kilotons depending on how one interprets Bertholdt’s instant vaporization of his Colossal Titan. Obviously though, Eren should scale to fellow members of the Scout Regiment and other Titan Shifters similar in size to himself.

Eren’s Hardening enhanced punches are capable of cracking and shattering the armor of Reiner’s Armored Titan, which via surviving the surface area of Armin’s Colossal Titan explosion should put it at a minimum of 1.96 Kilotons of TNT for its durability. This can be gotten higher by scaling Reiner’s durability to 6 Kilotons via Bertholdt’s vaporization mentioned above, but the absolute highest end one could theoretically get for the durability of Reiner’s armor would be him surviving being thrown by Bertholdt onto the back of the Founding Titan. While the feat itself can be debated exactly for how Reiner survived it, it’s generally implied that Reiner’s Titan simply survived the impact enough for Reiner himself to suffer no real damage judging by the lack of visuals of Reiner jumping out of the Titan as well as Reiner’s ODM Gear being damaged by it. Using this, Reiner’s durability can reach a maximum of 179 Kilotons of TNT. Now, it should be clarified that it is extremely unlikely that Eren or Reiner scale to this fully, but considering Reiner’s survival of it as well as the aforementioned vaporization feat it’s likely both should be somewhere in the low Kilotons range with arguments for higher when it comes to AP and Durability. 

As for reaction speed, Eren should very much scale to Zeke, whose Beast Titan’s boulder chucking can reach speeds of up to Mach 80. Considering both are directly blood related with not too massive of a size difference, it’s very clear that Eren should scale. Even if you disregard that idea, Eren should obviously scale to fellow Scout members such as Connie and Jean, who could dodge this same boulder fire from Zeke. While this is obviously a major jump from the much lower Mach speeds performed by Eren, the cannonball catch was explicitly during the first arc of the series, and other Titans such as the War Hammer have shown mach speed feats that while not as high, are still much higher than something like the Attack Titan’s cannonball catch.

However, obviously the Attack Titan is far from Eren’s peak potential. Upon transforming into the Founding Titan, Eren should scale ridiculously higher than basically any other Titan in terms of raw stats. While the Founder itself obviously didn’t do much fighting, just going by the size of it, it should be far stronger physically than the likes of Rod Reiss’ Colossal Titan which can reach up to 56 Kilotons of TNT. However, even a smaller Colossal Titan like Bertholdt’s performed a feat worth up to 179 Kilotons of TNT. The latter feat itself was even performed on Eren’s Founding Titan, and did absolutely 0 noticeable damage, nor even stopped its movements. Therefore, Eren’s raw stats as the Founding Titan should be a minimum of 179 Kilotons of TNT, but likely far higher just due to the sheer size of it in comparison to Bertholdt’s, with it being around 12x taller than Bertholdt’s in height. This obviously doesn’t mean you should multiply the feats themselves by that amount, but it just should be noted that due to how size = power in Attack on Titan, that the Founder would obviously be much stronger.

Probably the most contentious part of Eren’s scaling however is his speed upon becoming the Founding Titan, due to being granted full connection to the Coordinate by the Founder Ymir, Eren should scale to any processing feats performed via the Paths itself. Using this, Eren’s reaction speed as the Founding Titan should be at minimum Mach 794 with a maximum of Mach 6374. As stated in the Before the Verdict section however, this only applies specifically to the Founding Titan, and even then only applies to abilities that are utilized via the Paths themselves, primarily Titan creation, Hardening, and the War Hammer’s abilities, mainly due to the fact that the Founding Titan’s actual movement speed is consistently shown to be obviously nowhere near that range.

Finally, the last major note for Eren’s stats is the Doomsday Titan. Upon being disconnected from the Source of All Life, Eren was seemingly able to use the Founding Titan’s powers to create a Colossal Titan body for himself. Colossal Titans upon activation create a massive explosion that’s visually meant to resemble a nuclear bomb, and have the strength behind them to back it up. At minimum Armin’s Colossal Titan explosion on the back of Eren’s Founding Titan yields 395 Kilotons of TNT, but considering that these explosions have melted the ground in the anime as well as the much larger height of Eren’s Founder in the anime (235 meters vs 700 meters), this explosion can get all the way to 101 Megatons of TNT. As noted in the Before the Verdict section on this however, Colossals very much do not scale physically to their own explosions, as it generally just contradicts AoT’s basic power system and the fact these explosions are explicitly meant to be major trump cards. 

Ken Kaneki

For Kaneki, his stat rundown will hopefully be a lot simpler mainly due to a much less grand stat disparity between transformations and the feats being far more direct. Kaneki with his Kagune as well as his Kakuja should be in a range of 18.64 - 106 Megatons of TNT (more on this later) via either the Earthquake caused by the Dragon upon Kaneki’s transformation into it and or downscaling Kaneki from the full might of the Dragon due to him serving as one of its nine Nuclei. As for reaction speed, Kaneki should be at minimum Mach 20-Mach 41 using electricity for Narukami, a CCG Weapon modeled after a Kagune that “fires like lightning”, and Mach 4623 - 2.6% SoL (also more on this later) using lightning speed and Ayato’s point blank reaction to Narukami. 

However, Kaneki obviously has a major transformation that can’t go ignored here, namely the Dragon. Throughout the final stretch of Tokyo Ghoul RE, the full might of the Awakened Dragon is consistently stated to be capable of swallowing Tokyo. While we (Team Eren) don’t fully buy the Awakened Dragon being capable of destroying Tokyo almost instantly, using the 1/9th argument for the Dragon makes it so this level of AP is around consistent with Kaneki’s own via the Earthquake. With that in mind, Kaneki as the Awakened Dragon should be at 168 Megatons of TNT via these statements, while it can be argued the Dragon is potentially higher, this would rely entirely on the idea of the Dragon getting much stronger AFTER consuming Tokyo of which it is completely unknown. Arguments that Kaneki should also scale to 8/9ths of the Awakened Dragon via “Rize” are also extremely unlikely, as “Rize” was specifically a weak point of the Dragon that had to be defended and the Dragon itself had gone fully back into slumber once Kaneki was extracted.

Comparison

No matter how you spin it, Eren’s actual direct stats simply don’t measure up to Kaneki’s. Even being as generous as possible to the Attack Titan’s AP and saying it somehow scales to the full 179 Kiloton feat performed by Bertholdt, this would still make Eren 106x weaker than Kaneki’s own base AP and Eren’s own durability without any Hardening (being generous with the 6 Kiloton durability feat) should be 316x weaker than Kaneki’s own base AP. When it comes to speed, Eren should be 2-4x faster than Kaneki in terms of actual combat reaction time depending on what ends are bought for the Narukami feat when using electricity speed for it, but gets utterly blitzed by Kaneki if lightning is used.

While the Founding Titan’s memory processing can help close that gap slightly, even the highest end arguments for its memory processing feats are in the high Mach 6000 range while Kaneki can get all the way up to 2.6% the Speed of Light and even heavily upscale that.

The only chance Eren has to close this gap in pure power at least is the Doomsday Titan, whose explosions can yield upwards of 101 Megatons of TNT. However, Kaneki should comfortably outpace that level of power via the Awakened Dragon or even the 7.5 Magnitude Calculation for the Earthquake, meaning he would likely casually be able to survive the explosion itself. As noted in Eren’s own stat section as well of course, Colossals should not scale to their own explosions for a variety of reasons, meaning that this explosion is well and truly a final trump card for Eren rather than something he can spam or scale to consistently. It should be noted however, that it’s unlikely Kaneki’s Kagune and Kakuja scale 1 to 1 durability-wise with his AP, as his fight with “Rize” (who should be close to Kaneki in power) had Kaneki be severely damaged multiple times and even overtax his healing factor, but it’s unlikely that you could downscale Kaneki’s durability to the point he would take severely lethal damage from the explosion anyways.

So with that said, it should be cut and dry right? Kaneki massively out stats in every category to the point that all of Eren’s own answers get shut down, and to be completely honest. This is generally true…if you go by the absolute highest scaling and ends given for Kaneki that you can, of which are pretty shaky.

Just How Valid IS Lightning-Timer Tokyo Ghoul?

To put it bluntly, we don’t think Lightning-Timer Tokyo Ghoul is as cut and dry and easy to argue as it is at first glance. While there is plenty of good evidence for it, just as easily one can argue against it for a variety of reasons.

To start with the main one that everyone brings up, Narukami is the main weapon of Special Investigator Arima Kishou, and is said to “release condensed RC Cells like lightning.” On top of this, a Ghoul’s Kagune (which Quinque are made of) can be shaped entirely to the will of the user’s imagination, allowing for general impossibilities like 4000* celsius flames. However, despite the ridiculous speed obviously posed by Narukami with these ideas, a major factor brought up against it consistently is the fact it holds a tracking mechanism. Lightning is only as fast as it is due to the fact that it follows the path of least resistance, meaning that a tracking modifier would mean that it evidently does not follow the path of least resistance to reach its target. While it can be argued that bolts fired from it that only move in a straight line do not suffer this sort of issue, the existence of a tracker in the first place would conceptually limit its speed even if it was lightning.

On that note, Kagune being capable of creating lightning in the first place itself is contentious. The main arguments for Kagune being capable of unleashing lightning are a few things, but the most notable are the above statements surrounding Narukami, the idea of Kagune being shaped by the user’s imagination, Renji’s Kagune producing an electromagnetic field, and Mutsuki describing Renji’s Kagune as “lightning-like.” While all of these are fine, and it’s undeniable this section can come off as incredibly nitpicky, lightning speed is so specific that having to pick and pull at each and every little thing respectively just comes with the territory of debating it.

Narukami’s tracking mechanism hurting it potentially being lightning speed has already been discussed, so let’s move on to other factors. While Kagune are entirely shaped by the imagination of its user to the point of creating things like 4000* Celsius flames, it is entirely unprovable if Kagune can recreate the specific weather conditions necessary to cause lightning. As has been stated, for something to achieve the speed of lightning the environmental and weather conditions necessary to cause it are absurdly specific that just arguing a Ghoul can fire lightning due to Eto’s statement can come off as sort of wonky. To move onto the 2nd point, Renji’s electricity cage he creates around Mutsuki is never once called an electromagnetic field and is instead just an interpretation one can form from it, this is easily the most minor point but should still be considered. Finally, Mutsuki’s statement of Renji’s Kagune being “lightning-like” can actually differ based on translations, as the Kanji specifically used by Mutsuki can refer to lightning OR electricity.

With all of this in mind as well as Narukami having a tracking mechanism in the first place, we personally don’t think lightning speed for Tokyo Ghoul is very clear cut, with its best supporting evidence visually relying on Renji’s fight with Uta. On that note however, even if all of this was bought still, Kaneki’s absolute highest speed feat comes from an anime exclusive scene involving Ayato reacting to a bolt from Narukami. On its own this is fine, but Tokyo Ghoul’s anime already is an extremely rushed and downright unfaithful adaptation to its source material multiple times to the point where it can be argued if content from it should be properly included. However, even if it is included, this feat runs into the issue of the anime itself further muddying the waters of this level of speed in Tokyo Ghoul. 

The most commonly used narrative argument for why Kagune can create lightning is Renji’s fight with Uta, however, in the anime (in which this Ayato feat is exclusively found) the depiction of it is nowhere close to something like cloud to ground lightning striking Uta. Via this, Tokyo Ghoul loses easily its best narrative depiction of Kagune creating lightning, meaning that the Mach 4623 - 2.6% Speed of Light found by Ayato reacting to Narukami can easily be debunked by virtue of losing this commonly pointed out depiction.

If lightning timing isn’t bought for Tokyo Ghoul, then Kaneki’s reaction speed should be in the Mach 21-Mach 40 range. While Kaneki obviously upscales this, it is to an entirely unknown degree, compared to something much more blatant like Eren scaling likely 1 to 1 with Zeke’s Mach 80 feats, not getting into arguments for the Founding Titan’s reaction speed even if it is only for specific abilities. However, none of this really matters for Eren if Kaneki’s base form is strong enough to simply tank his absolute best trump card, since Kaneki’s base form is at 106 Megatons of TNT from a 7.5 Magnitude calculation for the Earthquake right? Well…

7.5 Magnitude Earthquake for Kaneki is Kinda Silly

For a variety of reasons, we personally think the 7.5 Magnitude earthquake being used for Kaneki’s transformation into the Dragon just is sort of too much of a high ball to be realistically argued just going by the stats presented in this very blog.

Kaneki’s transformation into the Dragon caused an earthquake in the 24th Ward said to be “beyond human comprehension” that turned almost the entire structure into rubble. Previous versions of the calc usually put it in the 5.5 Magnitude range due to it occurring underground, but considering the 24th Ward runs across Tokyo and Tokyo has earthquake-resistant architecture, pretty much everyone working on the blog felt that a Magnitude 7 estimate for this earthquake was fine.

Using this, Kaneki’s base and Kakuja forms should be in a range of around 19 Megatons of TNT, which is consistent with downscaling the Awakened Dragon’s 168 Megatons by 1/9th (as Kaneki served as one of the nine nuclei) which itself yields 18.66 Megatons of TNT. However, arguments were made that a 7.5 Magnitude earthquake can be used instead due to the severity of how this earthquake is portrayed. The issue with this comes primarily from the gigantic leap in stats one gets for Kaneki’s base and Kakuja forms in comparison to the Dragon. A 7.5 Magnitude calculation being used instead jumps Kaneki’s base to 106 Megatons of TNT, a ludicrous number compared to the estimations for Magnitude 7. By simply dividing the Awakened Dragon’s numbers by this number, this would mean a base Kaneki is only 1.58x weaker than something this very blog argues he should get 1/9th the scaling of.

There aren’t really any good narrative arguments for Kaneki being this close in power to the Awakened Dragon either, as mentioned earlier, “Rize” was very much a weak point of the Dragon which had already fallen asleep meaning that arguing she had 8/9ths of the Dragon’s power behind her doesn’t make much sense. “Rize” should very much be closer to someone like Kaneki who served as a Nucleus rather than being comparable to the full might of the Awakened Dragon.

With this idea in mind, Kaneki’s absolute peak in power when it comes to his non-Dragon form should be somewhere in that 18-19 Megatons range. By comparison, while Eren’s raw physical stats obviously don’t compare, the Colossal Titan’s explosion yielding 101 Megatons would make this 5.3x difference in power between Kaneki’s best and Eren’s trump card. While Eren wouldn’t outright one shot Kaneki with it, Kaneki would be severely damaged to the point of likely having his RC Cell generation be overtaxed, meaning that it’s likely Eren would be able to kill him relatively simply after that, and this is without getting into the fact that Kaneki’s Kagune & Kakuja shouldn’t scale 1 to 1 with his durability as mentioned in the Comparison section.

Of course, Kaneki as the Dragon should still undeniably outscale Eren’s best, right? Right?

The Dragon is A Bit of a Weirdo

To put it bluntly, this section is the portion of the verdict stat-wise I (WWAL) have the least amount of major issues with from what I know of, as this is more-so interpretation based and you can argue is even supported stat-wise by the things we just listed above for Kaneki’s earthquake yields. However, it is undeniable that the Dragon’s AP overall is somewhat…difficult.

Upon transforming into the Dragon, Kaneki eventually fully manifested and began consuming much of Tokyo, with Chapter 150 of RE stating that the Dragon needs to consume people to restore its energy. After this initial consumption however, rather than the Dragon continuing on to destroy Tokyo despite the massive amount of food it consumed, the Dragon instead fell asleep for 3 days. On top of this, Kimi explicitly states the Dragon would grow tenfold in size over a matter of days, implying that the Dragon’s consumption of Tokyo and its size increase can easily be argued to again still be a gradual event rather than the Dragon simply swallowing all of Tokyo instantly.

The text can generally support either end here, but we personally don’t think the arguments for the Dragon’s consumption of Tokyo being instant are strong enough to definitively argue 168 Megatons for it. Despite that however, this is easily the least contentious of things brought up for Kaneki’s stats in my eyes (WWAL) personally, so arguments for it are still more than okay even if it can be shaky.

Obviously despite all these arguments involving them, stats are nowhere close to everything that can be discussed regarding a debate, especially one such as this where both have such a wide variety of abilities to draw upon and talk about. So let’s talk about them!

Arsenal & Abilities

Considering the sheer amount of things both characters have access to and can be compared, this section will be structured similarly to G1 Blogs like Ultron vs. Brainiac or R1’s own Archie Tails vs. Franklin Richards blog, enjoy the insanity.

Weapons

Obviously these two are far more known for their power sets once they embrace their monstrous forms, but they do still carry a good amount of equipment in their human forms that can be gone over.

While Eren doesn’t carry it with him much past Season 3, Eren is still a highly skilled ODM Gear user and therefore would likely be given the equipment in the fight. Eren himself never used Thunder Spears however, so it's debatable if Eren should get the equipment or not, albeit they don’t change the debate at all. As listed in his own dedicated section, Eren should also get his consumable items from AoT 2 but again they likely just wouldn’t change things too drastically, at most possibly giving Eren a way of healing himself besides Titan Regeneration, but eh one can argue it’s too game mechanic-y.

Kaneki meanwhile should get his trusty Quinque the Yukimura 1/3rd, a set of three different swords strong enough to slice even S ranked Kagune cleanly down the middle. Kaneki should also get his equipment from Call to Exist, which include a Quinque Gun and some explosives. Again, nothing major, but it should be made clear that Kaneki has the advantage here outside of the ODM Gear’s greater maneuverability options, which even then Kaneki can keep up with.

Transformations

While their human arsenals are fine and dandy, their actual transformations and applications of power respectively are the major chunk of what these two are obviously known for.

Starting with Eren, he has access to 3 different Titan transformations seen throughout the series. These include the Attack Titan, Founding Titan, and Doomsday Titan. Via the Attack Titan, Eren is also capable of utilizing the powers of the War Hammer Titan, which allows for massive creations of Hardening to be made that are limited only by the wielder’s imagination and stamina. The Founder will generally be having its own section due to the absurdity that is Paths, and as for the Doomsday obviously it allows Eren to create a massive nuke just like the Colossal Titan.

In comparison, Kaneki has around 2 transformations, the Kakuja and Dragon respectively. The Kakuja works as a general sort of stat amp as well granting Kaneki access to multiple Kagune due to the mutation caused by a Kakuja. The Dragon is a transformation Kaneki can achieve via consuming a high enough amount of RC Cells while in a stressful enough situation. This Dragon is absolutely massive, dwarfing even Eren’s Founding Titan in size, as it stretched across all of Tokyo in mere moments. The Dragon also grows in power and size concurrent to the amount it consumes, leading to a sort of positive snowball effect for Kaneki whenever it comes out. The Dragon also secretes an RC Gas that works as a sort of nerve agent that causes the host to grow a bunch of tumors and messes heavily with their mental state, along with creating Dragon Orphans, which will get their own point later on.

While Eren has more transformations generally and they do provide some serious advantages, the Dragon is simply too much to argue against in terms of sheer size, likely stats, regeneration, and the aforementioned growth in abilities every time it feasts, the thing is just REALLY silly.

Regeneration and Stamina

Considering both are famed for their dedication to moving forward no matter what, very much thanks to their absurd regeneration, it’d be smart to consider both’s respective healing factors.

As a normal human, Titan Shifters usually take a generally substantial amount of time to recover injuries, at least within the context of an actual fight. Titans themselves however have consistently shown some pretty crazy feats of regeneration, with even Pure Titans in series like Before the Fall regenerating almost all their limbs in a few seconds. Titan Shifters also have a nifty ability to transfer their consciousness as a way to escape what would otherwise be a surefire kill, albeit this again can come at the cost of regeneration time. As for something like the Founding Titan, its regeneration is almost completely unknown due to the fact it received 0 actual damage besides Armin’s one shot attack, but it can be inferred that it’d likely be extremely potent like other Shifters. As for the Doomsday, it should just also be similar to other Titans albeit nowhere near as overall potent due to a major issue with Eren’s regeneration, that being stamina. Transforming into a Titan costs stamina, using Hardening and the War Hammer costs stamina, and the Colossal Titan itself is noted to be horrifically stamina inefficient due to its sheer mass. Outside of his Founding Titan form, Eren’s regeneration is going to wane eventually due to this factor.

In comparison, Kaneki’s regeneration is just much faster and much more potent overall, most notably is when Kaneki got absolutely crushed by “Rize” and recovered in absolutely no time at all. On top of this, Kaneki’s own regeneration is nowhere near as stamina dependent or inefficient as Eren’s, with his consumption of flesh allowing for his already great regeneration to be heightened even more. While Kaneki can also have his healing factor overtaxed like Eren, his requires much more lethal damage just due to the obvious stat gap these two have in their base forms.

While Eren’s regeneration is far from bad, in fact most characters would kill for it, Kaneki’s is again just wayyyy more overtuned.

Miscellaneous Abilities

For this section we’ll be mainly going over more miscellaneous powers the two have before getting into the big stuff like Support comparisons or of course the Paths, more-so on Kaneki’s end since he just has way more.

For some more miscellaneous abilities Eren’s various transformations have, the War Hammer Titan can allow Eren to encase his body in a material harder than the Armored Titan’s albeit seemingly at the cost of autonomy, the Doomsday Titan should have the same heat manipulating properties as the Colossal Titan, and the Founder should be capable of a variety of different things but again we’ll go over it and the Paths in its own section.

As for Kaneki, perhaps his most important miscellaneous ability is a Ghoul’s natural reactive power level, which causes them to rapidly grow stronger and faster the more they are damaged throughout a battle. This is obviously an extremely useful ability, albeit it might ironically not be too important here due to the absurd stat gap outside of the Doomsday Titan’s explosion. Due to Kaneki being 106x stronger than anything Eren himself can dish out while being as generous as possible towards his scaling for that Bertholdt throw, Eren’s attacks likely wouldn’t push Kaneki enough to force this sort of reactive adaptation as the only attack Eren has capable of doing enough damage to threaten Kaneki is also an attack that could very much just kill or cripple him. For some other miscellaneous abilities, Kaneki’s greatly enhanced senses and built-in sonar means he wouldn’t have much trouble locating Eren’s in the nape and or head of his respective Titan forms, and his Kagune detachment and Mimicry can allow for him to change up his offense on the fly as well as serve as a great defense.

Again, while Eren has some useful stuff it just doesn’t compare too much to a lot of the phenomenal benefits Kaneki gets by virtue of being a Ghoul

Support

This section will be going over the primary support both characters have access to throughout varying stages of the fight, primarily the climax/end of it though considering many of these are tied to their most powerful transformations.

To start, once Eren becomes the Founding Titan he obtains the full support of the Founder Ymir, the Source of All Life, and the ability to call upon Titan Shifters throughout all of time to fight for his behalf. The Founder Ymir is essentially the Coordinate herself, and anything Eren does is because of her granting him that power. The Source of All Life should likely scale physically to any feats performed by Titans due to it serving as the source of them in general, and the past Titan Shifters throughout the ages that can be called upon should also obviously scale physically to any feats performed by fellow Shifters of their kind for obvious reasons.

To start with we’ll be primarily going over Ymir, as she is the most overall active of Eren’s support and most readily available, as the Source of All Life and Titan Army are exclusive to only the Doomsday or Founder respectively. Ymir should be capable of every single ability the Founding Titan has showcased across the series, and should also scale to every single feat performed across the series as no Titan can be stronger than Ymir’s own. While Ymir herself won’t do any actual proper fighting, her reaction speed should be at minimum Mach 80 via Zeke but likely much, much higher due to the memory processing feats found regarding Paths. Due to her being the Coordinate itself, Ymir is able to use many of the same abilities that Founding Titan’s have in the past, which include but are not limited to manipulating and wiping the memories of Eldians, removing Shifter’s ability to turn into Titans, forcefully transform Eldians into Titans, alter the biology and DNA of Eldians, and likely far more. Ymir should also be capable of regenerating Eren’s body whenever needed, judging by how she rebuilt Zeke’s body. The most notable of these is obviously the biological manipulation, as it allows Eren to have an easy answer against Kaneki’s more notable hax such as the RC Gas, especially due to Paths’ transcendence of time meaning she could simply make Eren immune to the disease after seeing it occur in the future.

As for the Source of All Life, it should again likely scale physically to any and all feats performed by Titans in the series based on its sheer size and it serving as the source of them in general. This means it should be somewhere around Mach 80 in terms of its own reaction and attack speed, and at minimum 179 Kilotons of TNT via scaling to Bertholdt throwing Reiner. While the Source of All Life does have some minor abilities such as its Titan Gas, it overall doesn’t matter due to Kaneki not being an Eldian of course.

Finally, Eren’s Titan Army. While technically limited in scope since there can only be so many Titan Shifters across their 2000 years of existence, it’s stated within the story itself that any Shifters who fall in battle Eren can simply just respawn due to the nature of Paths itself. This Titan Army should be made up of the hundreds if not thousands of different iterations of the Nine Titans across those 2 millenniums, and therefore should likely be comparable to any feats performed by fellow Shifters, along with also having the same powers as these Shifters. It should be noted that while this Army is commanded by Ymir to fight for Eren, they do not get the same reaction speed scaling as Founder Eren or the Founder Ymir due to not being full on puppetted but rather just influenced/put under mind control to fight for Eren.

In comparison, Kaneki gets his multiple personalities, the Dragon Orphans, and “Rize” for his respective support. To start with the multiple personalities, the severe trauma that Kaneki endured effectively caused his mind to split into plenty of different versions of himself that are capable of criticizing and analyzing events in their own personal mind space. This is somewhat similar to Paths albeit nowhere near the same level, but it is a still valid part of Kaneki’s toolset, albeit this only seems to happen once Kaneki is well and truly on death’s door and at the throes of despair. As for the Dragon Orphans, this is Kaneki’s main support once he has become the Dragon, and are effectively mass produced by the Dragon itself. While these Dragon Orphans aren’t as comparable to respective major characters of the verse as say Eren’s Titan Army is to fellow Shifters, they make up for it in sheer numbers. The Dragon Orphans are also capable of spreading the RC Disease seen at the end of RE, but this likely wouldn’t matter too substantially due to the point above with Ymir. While it’s unknown just how many Dragon Orphans there were during the climax of RE, considering they outnumbered the CCG 100 to 1, it’s likely that they should be at minimum in the thousands range. Finally, “Rize” serves as a sort of Core to the Dragon that will attack anything that gets too close to harming her. Nothing major, but useful in the event that someone does find out where the Dragon’s weakness is located.

This one is admittedly difficult to come to a consensus on for who has better support, as while we think Eren’s army’s quality is much greater as well as major benefits like Ymir and the Source of Life, Kaneki’s Dragon Orphans undeniably provide a massive amount of actual combatants that can stave off the difference in quality. We do think overall though that Eren’s support is better, even if it is close.

Paths

Easily the most important part of any debate involving Eren is the Paths, a transcendent dimension where time doesn’t flow in equivalence to our world and where time itself is essentially meaningless. In this dimension, years pass like seconds and seconds can pass like years, with Eren himself processing all the memories and experiences of all Eldians across the past, present, and future at once. This dimension also sort of renders death “meaningless” in Armin’s words due to how it functions, and that property is what allows for Eren to summon the past Titan Shifters in the 1st place.

Perhaps the most noticeable example of the sheer amount of disparity between the time that passes in Paths and the real world is shown in the War for Paradis arc, where Zeke apparently waited years for Eren to arrive in what was only a few seconds for Eren, on top of Eren later experiencing all of Grisha’s memories of himself as well as him experiencing Ymir’s entire life upon making contact with her. In that amount of time, time passed so absurdly slowly in the real world that Gabi hadn’t even fully fallen down yet until Eren successfully activated the Founding Titan’s abilities.

The Paths, for lack of a better word, gives Eren the ability to plan almost as long as he wants. More importantly however, is that Eren can use the Paths to transfer knowledge he has in the future to past versions of himself, effectively making it so Eren can sort of pseudo time travel. To try and put it simply, Future Eren could experience the events of a fight with Kaneki and then transfer that knowledge and any plans to fight back to a Past Eren who would then be able to act accordingly.

This ability, and the Paths in general, are just absurdly silly and not something you would generally expect from Attack on Titan. We do wanna make it clear that we aren’t arguing Eren is essentially immortal via this, just that Eren would likely be able to at least enact a plan to kill Kaneki before something like say the Dragon happens in the future. Obviously however, any of Eren’s general planning abilities are meaningless if he cannot overcome the stat gap, but we do overall think Eren can eke out a win more often than not despite the cards stacked against him.

Tertiary Factors

To close things out before jumping into the conclusion, we’ll be going over more extraneous factors that relate to both these characters. Namely their experience, intelligence, and general training.

To start with experience, despite Kaneki being older than Eren, one can argue that Eren has just had more direct time in combat training due to him joining the Cadets at 12 years old. Comparing direct years on the field, Eren should be at around 6-7 years while Kaneki is at around 5 years. Obviously one can argue that Kaneki still potentially did fight after the end of RE, but it’s just overall unknown. Now despite Eren’s greater amount of experience (not even getting into Paths), Kaneki clearly has much more versatile experience overall. Eren’s primary enemies have been Titans and humans, and while obviously Titans can vary, they don’t vary nearly as much as Ghouls do for Kaneki, not getting into Kaneki’s own share of fights against Special Investigators and such. It’s close, but this point should probably go to Kaneki.

As for intelligence, from a glance this would be an obvious point for Kaneki due to him having much more formal education rather than being a child soldier, and while Kaneki is absolutely far from an idiot…Eren does likely take intelligence, at least generally. To put it bluntly, Eren’s plan to ensure the Founding Titan is just far more complicated than anything seen in Tokyo Ghoul when it comes to the sheer amounts of planning and assumptions Eren would have to make, with him interfering in events that happen before he was even born. It should also be noted that while Kaneki should likely take Battle IQ, Eren himself is far from stupid and has routinely shown to be capable of analyzing his opponent’s patterns and weaknesses post timeskip, albeit not to the level of Kaneki. This is yet again a sort of close point, but we feel it’s probably around even here with Eren being generally smarter but Kaneki having better Battle IQ.

Finally, in terms of training, this point should obviously go to Kaneki. Eren’s formal training during his days in the Cadet Corps are far from anything to scoff at and he has been trained by someone versed in martial arts since she was a child like Annie, but none of Eren’s actual mentors should compare whatsoever to the likes of Kishou Arima in terms of benefits of training. It also doesn’t help that Eren’s training in hand to hand and grapple techniques won’t be nearly as important against a human sized opponent like Kaneki, as a 15 meter giant likely isn’t pile driving a 5’5 man anytime soon.

Conclusion

Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that we haven’t still fully argued on how exactly Eren can kill Kaneki, and while it is definitely an absurdly uphill battle, we do think Eren has the necessary tools to put the GOAT down for good.

Kaneki undeniably takes stats in terms of AP & Durability no matter the form, and while his best feats speed-wise are slower than Eren’s if you use electricity, Kaneki should upscale the Mach 21-Mach 40 feats to the point he can probably match Zeke’s Mach 80 rock throwing. As has been the case since this verdict started, Eren’s best chances to win are a combination of his Memory Inheritance, the Founding Titan, and the Doomsday Titan. 

We generally narrowed this down to 2 different ideas for how Eren could secure his victory here, albeit both do involve the Colossal Titan’s explosion and Eren’s Memory Inheritance.

To put it bluntly, Eren is likely never capable of actually defeating the Dragon, even if you don’t buy arguments for it getting the 168 Megaton calculations that are seen in this blog. The Dragon’s snowball potential, undeniable upscaling from Kaneki himself, and its sheer size means it’s unlikely Eren would be able to kill “Rize” and destroy the entire Dragon. Going by the rules of Death Battle itself, Kaneki also would always transform into the Dragon at least once, meaning Eren does have to fight it. However…Eren has a very nifty little ability when it comes to this conundrum. Due to the nature of Eren’s memory sending, Eren can essentially send future memories to past versions of himself to ensure they don’t cause Kaneki to turn into the Dragon, and by doing this make the battle lean in his favor far more.

The main way Eren could kill Kaneki via this is the Founding Titan, as while it’s never shown it is very likely that the Founding Titan can call upon past Colossal Titan shifters and cause an explosion similar in decimation to ones caused by the likes of Bertholdt or of course Armin. Via this, and Eren’s absurdly higher reaction speed in terms of activating abilities and creating Titans as the Founder, Eren could attempt to overwhelm Kaneki with War Hammer creations (due to the Founder’s seemingly complete lack of stamina issues) and Past Titan Shifters, before eventually detonating a Colossal Titan and killing Kaneki. While Eren in his own series obviously didn’t survive a full on Colossal Titan blast, it’s likely that Eren would be capable of surviving a Colossal Titan blast near the end of his Titan just due to the sheer length of the Titan itself and Armin specifically aiming for the middle of the Titan. While one could argue the surface area of the blast would allow Kaneki to survive, it should be noted that Kaneki’s durability is likely not exactly 1 to 1 with his own AP, primarily judging by the “Rize” fight. For all intents and purposes “Rize” should be relatively close in stats to Kaneki, but throughout their final confrontation Kaneki was getting absolutely crushed by “Rize” when it came to actually taking direct hits from her. While it’s unknown exactly how much lower his durability would be than his AP, it is important to note, and even then in a scenario such as this where Eren has complete and utter control over the battlefield as well as a greater army, arguably better reaction speed, and absurdly better reaction speed in-combat when it comes to specific abilities thanks to the Founding Titan’s reaction speed via Paths.

Another alternative but more difficult way would be Eren using the War Hammer in his Attack Titan form specifically to entrap Kaneki, trapping Kaneki inside his Attack Titan via Hardening (as he did to Reiner), and then unleashing the Doomsday Titan’s blast in that scenario. This is obviously much more difficult and less elaborate, but is another potential way for Eren to eke out a win.

While he was by far the most difficult opponent Eren has ever had to face, this One-Eyed King couldn’t stop the Usurper from taking his crown.

Team Kaneki

Stats

As the strongest figures in their world by a landslide, both Eren and Kaneki scale to their absolute peaks in every capacity, and thus have several different ends to go off of.

Eren Yeager

Starting with Eren’s raw power and durability, he is nearly unmatched in his own universe, with the feats and the scaling to prove it. He shattered Reiner’s armor with his blows, which have tanked blasts clocking in at 72.86 Tons to 1.96 Kilotons, and even survived a massive shockwave from Bertholdt's slam, which is  worth 6.8 to 180 Kilotons of TN. Similarly, as the Founding Titan, he should largely upscale Rod Reiss, who’s breaking the Wall Sina lands 233 tons of TNT, and collapsing a cave made from hardening gets 2.1 to 54.6 Kilotons of TNT. Finally, as the Doomsday Titan, Eren can cause explosions worth 400 Kilotons to 11 Megatons in the manga, and 3.5 to 101 Megatons in the anime. Due to the largely varying sizes of the Doomsday Titan across the mediums, it’s hard to accurately pick the “correct” end of the feat. However, due to Isayama’s heavy involvement with the Anime in several different fields and making changes at will to improve the story, it’s much more likely to go with the anime overall. It I'd important to note that Eren can't actually survive that kind of damage physically, as proven several times across the series, so his only option for reaching this power directly is the explosions from transformation (see more information in Before the Verdict).

Moving on to Eren’s speed, he’s transformed to catch cannonballs at speeds exceeding that of sound, which is more than consistent given other feats in Attack on Titan. This includes the feats of the Ackerman’s, where Levi has reacted to gunfire at about twice the speed of sound, and Mikasa breaking into the double digits through saving Eren from a giant crossbow bolt at Mach 12 - 16. Most impressively, the Beast Titan has thrown rocks hard enough to outpace the sonic boom shockwave they cause, which lands Mach 50 to nearly Mach 80. This may seem a bit high, but the higher tiers can all dodge these rocks, and Levi can even seriously blitz him, so it’s safe to say Eren can scale to these feats. The more muddy waters start appearing once we really start channeling this match being anime Cole MacGrath vs Alex Mercer through…ughhh, processing feats. Essentially, these come from Eren processing a rapid influx of memories similar to Alex Mercer through the power of the Paths, with the most notable and provable examples being his processing the lifespans of Ymir and Grisha. Through these examples, of processing 23 years in 18 seconds and 14-44 years in 33 seconds respectively, Eren lands in-between Mach 794 - 2607 with the lowest end of the 14 year end, and Mach 1862 - 6109/Mach 1942 - Mach 6374, for the 44 year end and the other processing feat. Fairly impressive indeed…if not for the fact that he can only access this speed in the Founding Titan for perception and activating its own powers, like summoning Titans.

Ken Kaneki

Moving on to Kaneki, he is similarly the most powerful character overall in his own world, with more than enough proof for that crown. He’s competing with Eto, who shattered a steel construct, which gets 424 Tons of TNT. To no one’s surprise though, all of his most impressive feats of strength come from the Dragon and it’s many rampages. Even as a virtual infant, the Dragon coming to life nearly destroyed the entire 24th Ward through an earthquake, which has been backed up by several sources. This would get anywhere from 19 to 106 Megatons of TNT depending on if you use Magnitude 7 or 7.5, which we concluded were the best choices after hours spent debating it. Even more powerful are the similarly repeated statements that the Dragon could destroy Tokyo upon waking up, which is extremely consistent off the manga volumes/series descriptions, high-profile doctors and individuals in-story who very clearly know what they are talking about, and the constant narrative notion that the Dragon getting back up would spell doom for everybody else on a likely national scale. Even if you were to try and say this was an over time ordeal, Kaneki’s earlier rampage destroyed the 24th Ward, which is a city extending below the entirety of Tokyo, and Kimi has also stated that this was simply replenishing energy, meaning the Dragon overall can absolutely achieve this. With all this in mind, the lowest possible value for destroying Tokyo, being simple fragmentation, lands a whopping 168 Megatons of TNT. In terms of comparing Kaneki to this, let's look at the fact that the Dragon was fueled by 9 Nuclei, with Ken himself being one of them. Given removing just a single Nucleus caused the Dragon to take a hit in power, and again, Ken was one of these, we can simply divide the Dragon’s power by 9 to grant Kaneki’s Post-Kakuja form 18.64 Megatons of TNT. Strangely enough, this is also VERY consistent with the Dragon’s earthquake, which lands 19 megatons, with Kaneki entirely being the Dragon at this point, meaning he would scale to this. Of course, as the Dragon, he would simply get the full number of 106 Megatons per a higher end of the earthquake and 168 Megatons for threatening Tokyo. 

In terms of how fast he can move and react, Kaneki has equally impressive ends to go over. Even fodder Ghouls in the series can intercept bullets at nearly Mach 10, with dozens of other examples of outpacing bullets or dodging machine gunfire like with Koma and Irimi, or Touka outpacing shockwaves to save Ayato at supersonic speeds. Even more impressively is higher ends like Amon moving so fast he created a space without rain at Mach 26, and given how the series has progressed, with Kaneki defeating him before getting stronger as Haise and even more powerful post-Kakucha, he would vastly exceed this. Of course, the most impressive speed feats in Tokyo Ghoul are when several Ghouls and Inspectors alike have dodged, blocked, or reacted to several electricity-based projectiles. This lightning may seem like just standard electricity, but all of the main examples come from the core group of Touka, Yomo, and the Quinque Narakami, which are from the same family and thus composed of similar Kagune. Not only are these blasts compared to lightning in release and make-up by people such as Mutsuki or official weapon descriptions, but extremely hot, which would indicate something akin to air resistance playing a factor when it can severely damage the same kinds of Ghouls who can shrug off 3,400 degrees flames. People have used lightning rods to attract these projectiles, they are continually shown as extremely difficult to dodge for anybody besides higher Ghouls (when even average Ghouls can move at hypersonic speeds as shown through Naki’s goons), and most importantly, Eto states that Kagune are directly shaped by the imagination of their wielder, with her showcasing it by unleashing those monstrous flames we have referred to. As such, they are comfortably proven to be lightning through the statements, the facts, and the literal proof that they are imagined as lightning. For Kaneki, his own feat of outpacing Narukami gets just around Mach 250, which is nearly 1:1 with the speed OF lightning. He scales or upscales to others with similar feats, such as Eto outpacing and evading Narukami, and is MUCH faster than somebody like Ayato, who blocked lightning right in front of his eyes in the :RE anime, which gets Mach 4,623. 

If you are curious for the reasoning behind these seemingly high stats, it does ultimately make sense for Kaneki to reach this pinnacle. Regarding the multi-megaton power, it is logical given his superiority over the other characters in the series, the other rather casual multi kiloton feats from characters like Eto, and it being reliant on his consuming Kagune to get this strong, which resulted in this massive power boost in the first place. The threat of the Dragon was always there for Kaneki, and he retains the potential, or rather the strength, to achieve something like this. For speed, narratively, it is rather odd when he can just move at the speed of lightning but explicitly took a while to run from the Wards to save his friends. However, this is mostly just author/story relevant details, which would by nature impact several other feats where the characters have shown they can move and react at these speeds, but are still caught by things they shouldn’t have. An example of this comes from Eren himself, whose Titan forms would compare to the Beast Titan who can move at nearly Mach 100 in attack speed, but these Titans are still blitzed by ODM Gear wielders who don’t even breach Mach 1.

Comparison

Comparing them directly, it may not seem like it at first, but Kaneki solidly takes the advantage. For their lower feats, Eren has shattered Reiner's armor, which has tanked a 73 ton blast, and scales past Rod Reiss destroying the Wall equals 233 Tons, while Kaneki has battled Eto, whose steel smash rounds out at over 400 tons. Moving on to their more meaty feats and scaling, Eren overpowering Reiner's durability also extends to his surviving Bertholdt's 6.8 - 180 Kiloton slam, and scaling past Rod Reiss includes his cave feat which equals 2.1 - 54.66 Kilotons. Of course, there's also the various Titan explosions they can cause, which are hundreds of kilotons to about 100 megatons in the higher ends of the anime's sizing for the Founding Titan.

Moving on to Kaneki, you might think he'd be outmatched by such power, but lo and behold, he's the one doing the outmatching. As the Dragon, Kaneki was capable of shaking and nearly destroying the entire 24th Ward with just his own power/Nucleus, which lands him an impressive 19 to 106 Megatons of TNT's worth in power output depending on using Magnitude 7 - 7.5. Similarly, the Dragon is also repeatedly stated capable of destroying Tokyo on its second go, which garners a whopping 168 Megatons of TNT at the very least. As for how this matters here, Kaneki would naturally scale to 1/9th of the total Dragon due to being one of its nine Nuclei, which does correlate to the overall power of the creature. Therefore, he would retain 1/9th of the Tokyo threatening statements, and simply receive the power to practically destroy the 24th ward due to being the sole power of the Dragon at that point, which lands him about 20 Megatons in his current base. Of course, he would also receive the full numbers anyway as the Dragon.

In that comparison, Kaneki is blatantly leagues more powerful than Eren physically. Even the highest end of the physical feats Eren scales to (the 180 Kiloton end of Reiner taking Bertholdt’s slam) is still about 100 times weaker than Post Kakuja Kaneki, whose earthquake feat places him at 19 Megatons, given the Dragon that did this only had his Nucleus. Of course, Eren can still match this might through the explosion application of his Titan powers, which is 400 kilotons to 11 Megatons in the manga and 3.5 - 101 Megatons in the anime. The higher ends are likely viable given presentation, meaning the anime end would place Eren around 5 times stronger than base Kaneki. However, this isn't anything Ken's own arguments can't counter. Not only could you argue the earthquake across Ward 24 (which he directly scales to) as around 100 megatons anyway through placing it as Magnitude 7.5, but to remind you of an important detail, this is base Kaneki. Once he goes Dragon, he would gain access to the higher end of his own in the form of the Dragon threatening Tokyo, which is at least 168 Megatons of TNT, and slightly stronger than Eren's best possible power argument. While this comparison does seem close, the ability/method of how they actually match this power is why Eren still falls short. It's important to remember, this is only covering the explosion Eren causes. He can't actually survive this level of damage himself, meaning Kaneki can still power through the damage he can cause in most cases, while even base Kaneki is capable of killing his most powerful Titans in just a few hits. 

Moving to speed, both is certainly more impressive than you might think. The universes they live in house many supersonic - hypersonic feats that both would scale or even upscale from, like the Ackerman’s dodging bullets or regular Ghouls outpacing shockwaves. Dipping into deeper waters, Eren should scale to the Beast Titan in his stronger forms, who can launch rocks at nearly 80 times faster than sound. The closest example to this that Kaneki could draw from is Amon creating a shockwave that dissipated the rain around him via speed, which does get Mach 30, but it is rather debatable in of itself. So, it would seem Eren is faster…but that’s not the full picture. Several characters in Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki included, can block, dodge, or react to lightning from the Kagune and Quinque of more powerful characters in the series. You may be curious if this is simply standard electricity, thus making all potential speed feats way lower, however, all of the details pretty concretely line up with it being actual lightning for all intents and purposes. If you’re curious, feel free to read the prior BTV for more information, but the long and short of it is that this lightning is much hotter and faster than normal electricity given its potency and speed against Ghouls, is dubbed lightning in release and comparison by Ghouls and weapon descriptions for Narukami, and was attracted via lightning rod to come crashing down just like a real lightning bolt. Given Kagune are also shaped by the imagination of their user, they would be imagined AS lightning, which fits, given characters like Mutsuki do believe so. In that vein, Kagune easily compares to several people who move just as fast as lightning, with even the average speed of the leader by most in vs debating (98,000 meters per second or about Mach 286) being over 3 times faster than the best raw speed feat Eren can scale to. 

However, we still have to discuss Eren’s processing feats. Ironically, both of them land similar numbers, in starting around Mach 800, with the high end and low end of these feats getting around Mach 2000, and the highest end of the superior feat getting nearly Mach 6400. All of these are frankly seriously impressive, and would lend Eren a sizable speed edge…if not for a few important factors. Starting in that field, Eren can’t actually access this speed in any sense aside from the Founding Titan, as evidenced by the context surrounding both being related to the Paths and characters having access to it allows them to blitz most others in their world, like Eren did to Zeke. In that sense, Eren would get its reactions as the Founder exclusively, and that applies to its abilities through the Paths, like Hardening, Titan creation/summoning, etc. This may sound like a large edge for Eren, but there’s a key difference between perception speed and actual combat speed. Eren can’t actually react at that speed to dodge an attack while the Founding Titan, nor can anything else he can unveil besides his abilities really. While that would give him ample time to plan ahead and try any number of applications of his powers, he’s still facing a nigh-unstoppable stat gap through practically every area of the debate. Even if he somehow could react at this speed, Kaneki holds a similar higher end through Ayato dodging Narukami at point-blank range, which clocks in at over 4,600 times the speed of sound, and over 60 times faster than the Beast Titan’s rock throw. While that is slightly slower than Eren’s highest end, the difference here is that Eren doesn’t even scale to that in combat terms, making Kaneki several dozen times faster than everything in Eren’s bag of tricks.

If that wasn’t enough, Kaneki would be leagues faster than Ayato just off the fight progressing on its own, considering by the end of it, he would be much faster than Arima thanks to his adaptation, who could blitz Ayato, than blitz Kaneki even as he himself got much faster through the Kakuja abilities. In layman’s terms, Adaption Kaneki is superior to Serious Arima, who is superior to Base Arima, who blitzed Ayato and Kakuja Kaneki, with base Kaneki moving around lightning speed and Ayato having the Mach 4,600 feat. That is easily 3 layers of upscaling on top of the feat, meaning Kaneki would be MUCH faster than Eren even if you accepted his perception feats as scaling to his actual reactions. 

So to sum up, Kaneki is always considerably stronger than Eren’s own physical capabilities no matter how high you put them, even in base (180 Kilotons at maximum vs 19 Megatons Post-Kakuja Kaneki), with this gap being furthered by the Dragon, which can directly endure the highest explosions Eren could cause to him (103 Megaton explosion vs 168 Megaton Dragon for threatening Tokyo). In speed, Kaneki is easily over 3 times faster than everything in Eren’s arsenal from just his own feats…except for select applications of the Founding Titan’s abilities, which don’t really apply to Eren’s overall combat speed. Even in the event that they did, Kaneki would largely upscale a similar feat in pure numbers from Ayato’s lightning dodge, and being realistic, he scales regardless with far easier accessibility, making him over 60 times faster than Eren’s overall arsenal, and still superior to the theoretical reactions Eren could get if you take his processing via the Paths as reactions.

Of course, stats aren’t all that matters, and Eren’s abilities could potentially pick up the slack given the sheer number and potential of them. So, let’s move to arsenal and abilities.

Arsenal & Abilities

Given the vast arsenals and abilities these two wield, we will be comparing them directly to find the best techniques, the haxxier powers, and who has the greater overall advantage here. Thus, the following will be structured similar to G1’s Ultron vs Braniac’s verdict, or my Tails vs Franklin Richards blog if you’ve read that. That said…

Weapons

Across both their more human-like forms to the monstrous heights that surround the debate, both wield several weapons and tools that can clash directly, albeit they don’t mean much in the long run. Eren’s ODM gear gives him rapid movement speed and several steel blades (albeit breakable), and he has several useful tools from the many Attack on Titan video games, like Gas for the ODM Gear, Restorative/A potion that can fully heal someone, and a Battle Alert Signal carried by ODM Gear users that increases their damage and speed for a short time, while greatly reducing their Blade and Gas usage. Among other weapons, this lends Flash Grenades, Restraining Guns for firing massive barbed nets, and bombs through the explosive Firebomb or the Smokescreens traditional smoke bomb that coats the user in smoke. For Kaneki, he has a Gas Mask, the Yukimara Quinque for whenever he wants to engage in swordplay, and of course the gear from Call to Exist, which includes an Ukaku gun, incendiary or regular bombs, and CRC gas that shuts down the functions of a Kagune.

Comparing them, Ken overall has the advantage. While Eren can zip around the area and slash to his heart’s content with the ODM gear, Kaneki does that pretty much all the time with just his standard Kagune powers, and any healing/strength boosts are similarly matched and exceeded, as we’ll discuss later on. While flash grenades and smoke bombs are certainly helpful, they don’t bring much to the actual debate that Kaneki can’t answer. Eren’s other bombs are matched by Kaneki’s own CCG gear, and Kaneki’s Quinque weapons not only allow ranged combat, but superior swordplay. Eren’s own blades are historically proven rather breakable over time, and he carries a limited amount. Quinque in comparison are much hardier, meaning Kaneki’s own swords won’t break nearly as easily. Finally, despite having options to save his fuel supply or extend it, it is still overall limited, and it running out leaves Eren no options in a close-up brawl.

Transformations/Higher Forms

Obviously what will play more of a factor in things is these monsters among men embracing the beasts inside them. Covering that angle, Eren can turn into several Titans on his own, which include the combat based Attack Titan, the Warhammer Titan’s abilities added through Hardening, which gives him several ways to amplify his defense or striking power with the crystal-like material; even creating weapons or protecting the vulnerable nape. The Founding and later Doomsday Titan hold the powers of the Paths, which we will discuss more in its own section. Important features to note are the impressive healing of Eren’s Titan forms, them being virtually unkillable unless you slice the Nape, extremely damaged and vulnerable if you damage their brain, and the overall drain of stamina in things like the Hardening.

Moving to Kaneki, as a Kakuja, he has several levels to this form, with them overall granting decent stat boosts, amplifying his other Ghoulish powers like regeneration, and replacing lost limbs with Kagune if needed. This obviously includes his Rinkaku Kagune, of which he can grow 8 at once, slash through objects while also using them for defense, easily heal them in the event they are damaged, and of course this leads into the eponymous Dragon. Upon eating enough flesh (which we’ll cover in its own section), Kaneki morphs into a massive mess of Kagune with much greater power, volume, and several other abilities, while also being immune to most lower attack power, and being able to regenerate at will while consuming more energy from what it consumes. Following that is his Post-Kakuja state, which includes several Kagune that Kaneki can use for shielding both internally and externally, large blades, ranged attacks or shockwaves, and ones to somewhat soar in the air via wings. 

While both of their more noteworthy tricks come from select abilities rather than forms, as far as these go, Kaneki pulls ahead. You might think otherwise given the sheer size of Eren’s forms, but practically anything they can do, such as heal wounds or grow armor through Hardening, Kaneki can do as well in any of his forms like using Kagune or Kakuja abilities. While Eren’s forms are certainly larger, that’s if anything more of a detriment, as the entire strategy Eldians came up with for fighting Titans is dependent on utilizing their small size but greater speed to bypass their defenses via cutting the Nape and ending things right then and there. This is literally a perfect comparison to Kaneki, whose main weapon in the form of his Kagune is perfect for slashing at these kinds of things. His smaller size and much faster movement speed even aside from Combat speed makes actually hitting him a rather ironic chore for Eren, and similarly, the many Kagune he can access Post-Dragon make for other weapons that can keep the Titan-Shifter busy, like shields, ranged weapons like shockwaves, or pseudo-flying around him like a hornet to strike at the first good opportunity, at multiple spots no less given he can wield several Kagune simultaneously. While Eren can shield his Nape via hardening, this can’t stick around forever, or protect him from much higher power like the kind of attacks Kaneki will be unleashing at him. What’s more, the Dragon is unironically MUCH bigger than any of Eren’s Titan forms, and holds much greater area control as a result. With its massive assortment of tentacles, Eren will have an exceedingly hard time getting close to Kaneki, especially given that the Nuclei of it are spread out across the beast, with the core ones, Kaneki and Rize, being farther back in the beast, meaning Eren can’t easily find them to shut down this massive threat. While he does lose any intelligence as the Dragon, his overwhelming power and ever-present advantages make this much less of an issue. The Dragon’s edges also lean more into abilities, which will be discussed now.

Power Boosts/Stat Progression

Concerning this area, both have ways to boost their own power in a few ways. Eren’s Attack Titan can enter an Enraged State to lose most of his sanity while bursting into flames, and there’s obviously the Hardening powers of the Warhammer, which can boost Eren’s physical power or defense, create shields, and make large weapons. For Kaneki, his nature as a Ghoul lets him take a bit out of his opponents for a strength boost, which he can do from a distance via Kagune mouths, as well as a utilize a reactive power level to adapt to his opponents over the course of a fight, getting much stronger and faster as a result. Without much surprise, Kaneki triumphs in this area. While Eren’s powers and versatility with the Hardening are fairly impressive, all of them have the key weakness that they consume his stamina the longer things go on and the more damage he takes. As a result, his stamina and options are on a timer the moment he starts using these higher abilities, which themselves also have the disadvantage of doing nothing for his speed. In comparison, Kaneki’s own power boosts aren’t vulnerable to some sort of stamina decrease, and they apply to speed as well. His adaptation and reactive power level will make him much stronger and faster over the course of the fight, with a good example of this being his growing to keep up with a serious Arima, who blitzed even Kakuja Kaneki while holding back. In regards to Eren, the already sizable stat gap will grow larger the more things proceed, and his being able to feast on Eren at will to further increase this doesn’t help Eren much either. Not only will his much higher power allow him to shatter the Hardening, thus furthering the stamina Eren wastes, but his own method of consuming flesh to amplify his power also means Eren’s body will have to put more energy into regenerating, with Kaneki himself getting…more energy to regenerate. Power boosts lean towards Kaneki.

Regeneration and Stamina

For both of these mighty warriors, their most admirable attribute is their ability to push past severe pain, and heal from it as well. On Eren’s side, his Titan forms can regenerate from rather absurd damage, like healing an entire leg in mere seconds or other limbs in short timeframes, surviving his head getting blown off or his brains being blown out, and even bisection. The Attack Titan can be affected by the stamina drain from using this transformation, and the Hardening can further this. Finally, cutting the nape does kill a Titan. For Kaneki, his Ghoulish regeneration is equally impressive, where he can grow limbs back, survive getting stabbed through the heart or brain, fight when just a head and torso, survive near full bisection, mass mutilation, recover from being crushed, heal from his head being a stump, or even compare to Noro’s stupid AF regen, which has pulled him back from getting bisected or persisted as just his Kagune. In terms of stamina, he would exceed weaker Ghouls like Mutsuki (Quinx are flatout inferior to regular Ghouls, let alone the strongest Ghoul in Kaneki), who could fight after getting tortured brutally for a week straight. In terms of healing, Kaneki surpasses Eren once more. 

While both have similarly busted levels of healing and regeneration, Eren’s is sufficiently more vulnerable to stamina burnout as the battle progresses, with powers like the Hardening furthering this stamina loss. Most detrimental to this is the obvious weakness Titans have, in that cutting their Nape bypasses this regeneration entirely. Kaneki in comparison is MORE than capable of deducing this, especially when used in conjunction with his later powers we will discuss soon. In comparison, Kaneki only really deals with stamina drawback in prolonged battles against much stronger foes who can overwhelm him, so against someone much weaker and slower, he won’t have this problem. Similarly, while Eren’s stamina decreases the longer he fights with the Attack Titan and other similar forms, Kaneki’s will only increase the more flesh he consumes, with it healing all of his wounds at a rapid pace, and Eren’s massive body providing plenty of flesh to keep up the process. Even in terms of general stamina, Kaneki has got right back up after multi-day torture to mop the floor with Jason no problem, and he should certainly exceed the inferior Mutsuki, whose weaker Ghoul abilities enabled extended combat after a week of torture. Eren’s Titan forms can’t really match that kind of healing or stamina, while his own weakness in the Nape is something Kaneki can exploit without having a similar drawback himself. To further add salt to the wound, reaching Eren’s real body and decapitating it is how he died in canon, meaning Kaneki is certainly capable of stopping his healing options for good.

Rc cells and Eldians/Verse Equalization

One of the more interesting aspects of this debate is whether or not Titans would have Rc cells, which does impact a good majority of Kaneki’s abilities, like the Dragon. While you can head to its section in Before the Verdict for more detailed information, yes, the Titans should have Rc cells.

Titans are essentially mutated humans due to being descendants of Ymir’s line, share a still fully “normal” biology complete with internal organs, and are made of the “soil” of Ymir, through her sending blood, bone and flesh through the Paths to create a Titan. Rc cells are hereditary, similar to Eldians abilities to turn into Titans, and are in everything in Tokyo Ghoul, with average humans holding these as well. Due to the Titans being mutated humans and still comparable to their biology, weird as it is, they would in-turn hold Rc cells through verse equalization. It’s no different than having any number of anime life energy tricks work on others from other universes despite never being stated to have that energy, except here it's even more concrete, as it is simply a biological trait that humans have as a specifically stated part of their biology. For that comparison, while we will elaborate more as we go, this means Kaneki can feast on the Titans for any Rc cells needed, affect them with any Rc cell negative effects, and use a good deal more of his arsenal as a result.

Similarly, a popular argument regarding Eren countering the Rc cells usefulness is simply burning them away via the high heat of a Titan and the explosions they cause, being similar to a nuclear bomb. Being entirely blunt, this holds no actual grounds as an argument. Nothing remotely implies these detonations are akin to a nuclear bomb in heat, with the Titan flesh examples only being hot enough to melt skin and bone. Compared to Kaneki, Rc cells are durable enough to shrug off 3,400 degree heat, meaning these explosions or simply the Titan’s natural body heat wouldn’t be able to burn them away, though the explosion itself would still be damaging based on its force.

Now, on the topic of verse equalization, you might also be curious about this verse equalization in-turn making Kaneki an Eldian, which would be similarly important to Eren’s arguments…if it were true. Unlike Rc cells applying to every human by nature as of Tokyo Ghoul’s worldbuilding, Eldians are very specifically a select group of humans exempt from other nations for example due to being descendants of Ymir. which Kaneki is simply not. Therefore, Kaneki would get access to the Rc cells through the Titans, but he wouldn’t be an Eldian due to the stipulations required to be considered one.

Kaneki vs the Nape

We spoke of it a bit earlier, but Eren’s Titan forms and his real body are vulnerable to decapitation and the Nape being sliced. So, how can Kaneki do this and what are his options for it? Well, Kaneki actually has multiple ways to figure out the Titan’s weak spot and where Eren is hiding. Not only has he fought Giants with the exact same weak spot before, meaning he will go for the nape very early on, but furthermore, Titans have a special odor (as seen with Mike), so Kaneki could pick up on the different scent between Titan and human in order to find Eren that way. His smell can pick up people city blocks away, and his hearing can perceive people in other parts of a building he’s in, meaning Kaneki can certainly find Eren with these if need be. If that somehow fails, he can use his Sonar, which would likely give him a view of the Titan’s interior and thus Eren’s location. It can glimpse people from distances away with other key factors like mass, texture, form, and vibrations, and even detect hidden objects in walls, with all of these factors making it quite clear Eren couldn’t hide himself from something like this. Eren could likely try to change his placement with Warhammer if he is found out once, but not only is the flesh cable pretty obvious, there’s also the point that Kaneki would definitely notice it, and once again utilize his sense of smell and sonar to catch onto that new location. Given his higher movement speed and options to zip around the battlefield, along with the blades he wields through his Kagune, Ken is more than capable of killing Eren like ODM users would, which is rather ironic all things considered.

Support/The Titan Army vs the Dragon Orphans

By far one of Eren’s most notable advantages here is sheer numbers through his literal army of Titans he can pull across time and space due to the abilities of the Paths. Through the powers granted to him by the Founder, Coordinate, and Ymir, Eren can call several hundred Titan’s to his side at any point, create Titans in seconds, communicate with them telepathically, always be connected to all Eldians across time and space, and simply bring any killed Titans back from death instantly thanks to the Paths control over time. From there, Eren can access virtually any of the prior powers listed, such as Hardening, healing, and incredible size to match their incredible strength, while on a scale of hundreds of soldiers he can resurrect in the event that they die against Kaneki.

On Kaneki’s own side for support, he has schizophrenia his other mental selves in his own mental world with which he can converse for help, and the Dragon’s own allies in the form of the Dragon Orphans. These mindless creatures spawned from the Dragon itself act for the general hive rather than themselves, will return to the Dragon to defend it should things go awry, outnumber the CCG “a hundred to one” (the CCG is at minimum breaching the thousands in comparison to Aogiri) and emit poisonous gas that overload a subject with Rc Cells upon being damaged or destroyed. This gas floods your system with Rc Cells, to the point that a Kagune-like construct grows from their bodies. As a result, you could either inherit a deadly sickness that brings severe pain, memory disorders, mental degression, and the death of your senses, or simply turn into a Ghoul anyway. There is no cure for either condition, with the only things that can stop it being Rc Suppressants, but only for a time. Another key factor is how these are Rc cells that are flooding the target, which have been shown as poisonous to both humans and Ghouls through attack, as shown by them messing with the healing factors of other Ghouls or humans in short times, and lasting for days on end for people like Touka or the Inspectors.

At a baseline level, you’d expect Eren to have the edge, and he does in the sheer strength of his army, but overall, Kaneki surprisingly has quite a few counters to this. As deadly as the Dragon Orphans are, they aren’t touching the Titans in overall power, and are easily destroyed by these mighty behemoths upon contact. Therein lies the problem; they are destroyed upon contact. Remember, upon dying or being injured, the Dragon Orphans will emit a toxic gas that flood their target with Rc cells, which makes you a virtual vegetable or simply turns you into a Ghoul. This means that the mere act of the Titans fighting Kaneki’s forces will leave them wide open to these severe debilitations that will actively wreak havoc on their healing factors and senses, or simply turn them into Ghouls who act as even higher Rc tanks for Kaneki to potentially chew on. Even worse is how they severely outnumber the Titans, with their bare minimum number landing in the thousands compared to the hundreds of Titans Eren wields. While yes Eren can revive them in the event they are killed, he is still ultimately stuck with a finite number of Titan’s whereas the more energy the Dragon gets from consuming, the more Orphans it can make, with their natural number from a tired Dragon already outnumbering Eren’s forces. Granted, they are weaker overall and disposable by the Titans, that just means the more they kill, the more the Titans get infected with this gas that actively destroys Eren’s forces or makes them greater power stockpiles for Kaneki to get even stronger as the Dragon.

Of course, Eren does have a counter to this in the Founder’s ability through Ymir to rewrite the biology of Eldians and therefore his Titan armies. It has similarly rewrote far larger groups of people to have them resist the fatal effects of a once world-threatening virus, albeit not be immune to the virus in-full, as people did catch it despite not succumbing to it. In this sense, it’s highly likely Eren could revert the negative effects of this issue, but he can’t outright stop it. While he can stop the negative effects due to it being a virus via altering biology, nothing dictates or implies he could stop the extra Rc cell in-take due to it not being a negative trait in that case. The Titans would still have more Rc cells flowing into their systems, which would give Kaneki a veritable Thanksgiving feast squared onto itself if it wasn’t already. This leads into perhaps Kaneki’s biggest advantage; his nature of being a Ghoul, and being able to increase his powers by consuming flesh and adding their Rc cells to his own. The Titan army will be akin to a never-ending feast for Kaneki, and given his own higher stats, he will have no trouble chowing down on any number of them, which allows him to grow much stronger and faster, the Dragon to become even bigger and more powerful, and creates all the more Dragon Orphans to further this issue.

Finally, when it comes to actually reaching Eren to put him down for good, Kaneki already has plenty of experience fighting and taking down giant monsters with weaknesses nearly identical to Eren, and his senses coupled with the sonar can certainly find Eren’s actual body to decapitate him and finish the fight. As for getting past the actual Titans in his way, none of them have the power or abilities to stop the Dragon, nor the speed to stop Kakuja Kaneki running past them all to head straight to the Founder or Doomsday Titan. They will simply serve as more fuel to Kaneki’s fire, and Eren lacks any means to stop Kaneki at this point…potentially. Let’s talk about the Paths.

The Paths and Founding Titan’s powers

Now then, onto the most relevant discussion of the abilities present, the Paths. Thanks to these practically transcendent powers, Eren can achieve any number of broken hax through the Paths themselves, the Founding Titan’s powers through them, the Doomsday/Attack Titan, as well as additional support in them through Ymir/the Coordinate/The Source of All Living Things. The Paths are essentially an infinite realm where Eren can see the future extending to several alternate outcomes, with which he can plan accordingly to change the present to suit his benefits. Similarly, he can receive future memories from his future self at any point, sending crucial knowledge and information that he could use when in a tight spot. This extends to years ahead of time thanks to the Coordinate as evidenced by Mikasa’s flashforward example, and this ability also allows Eren full control over all Eldians both physically and mentally. From that angle, he can alter the biology of others in conjunction with the Paths like making people immune to a disease, locking away or erasing memories, or brainwashing you. Ymir and the Source hold their own abilities, like Ymir being able to rewrite genetics or create Titans like Eren can (duh), and the Source being able to spray a gas that turns Eldian’s into Titans. Among other miscellaneous tricks, he can also likely detonate any of the Titan’s at will, and use those weapons against Kaneki.

Those are certainly ludicrously impressive in a 1-on-1 fight, but surprisingly to the highest degree, Kaneki would still prevail. Don’t get us wrong, arguing he would in most scenarios sounds rather insane, but Ken simply has the better advantages all-around. Starting off with more miscellaneous points, Eren’s Paths are objectively a better waiting place to plan than Kaneki’s mental world, as time moves much slower there than in reality from an objective standpoint, unlike Kaneki’s perception. Now, let’s cover how Kaneki still triumphs despite the odds stacked against him. For the most obvious edge, a large portion of Eren’s better powers are solely reliant on his opponents being Eldians, which Kaneki is not. As a result, Kaneki is immune to any mind control powers (which he already has examples of resisting), Eren altering his or any of the Orphans biology, or anything on his side being turned into a Titan. Similarly, while Eren can look into the future, he can’t scan Kaneki’s mind or memories as a result due to his not being an Eldian, which is very detrimental to him. That already nullifies most of Eren’s offense, but the real trick is his defense. Thanks to the Paths, he can see the entire future all at once, and plan accordingly to theoretically counter any trick Kaneki throws at him, while also being able to trap Kaneki with his other powers, like the Titan’s massive explosions. 

Against the explosions, they aren’t as useful as you think as any sort of trump card. While they are somewhat similar to Kaneki’s best power arguments, meaning several going off at once would be very detrimental, Kaneki has more than enough counters for this, with the primary thorn in Eren’s side being surface area. The further away you are from a blast, the less energy you’re getting hit with, as most any debater with experience in calculations knows. While these rapid-expansion explosions are impressive for hitting people like Kaneki, they still can’t actually consistently hit him. Not only is his combat speed leagues faster than they are, but his actual movement speed, as his saving Yomo from Arima’s lightning was literally him running. You can say narratively this doesn’t make much sense, but narratively Titan’s would blitz ODM Gear users moving at under Mach 1 when they can move at Mach 80 so, this comparison doesn’t make much sense. There are dozens of other examples across media of characters' stats contradicting their capabilities in story-important moments, so applying this standard to Eren is just as detrimental. Given his much higher movement and combat speed, Kaneki is more than capable of evading one of these blasts, and while he might not entirely depending on what you believe, however much he does simply doesn’t matter. Actually regarding surface area, even minimum distance away from it rapidly destroys the damage it does to Kaneki. With math from Masux, a 10 meter distance lowers the yield to 55 Kilotons, while even being 1 meter away makes the explosion impacting Kaneki roughly 5.5 Megatons, which is about 4 times less than his base durability, and certainly not fatal given his additional defenses and healing. 

Furthering this, the explosions can’t do anything of note to the Dragon. Not only is the Dragon outright stronger than the highest possible argument for the explosions, but they don’t carry the AOE to effect the Dragon. The explosions cover an area of about 500 meters long, while the Dragon’s body is over 20 kilometers long. Given the Dragon is built upon Nuclei spread out among its body, not only is it extremely unlikely Eren can actually disable the Dragon via this method, but even more importantly, that the explosions can do any lasting damage when the explosion is impacted by surface area, so it being as strong as it is would be entirely dependant on his Titans getting close. Good luck getting more than one close when any of the Dragon’s tentacles can oneshot any of Eren’s Titans at will, while also bearing much faster travel speed in nearing Mach 2. This also carries the problem that Kaneki can simply blitz any Titans trying to get closer and use them as literal batteries, chowing down on them for getting even stronger and increasing his healing in the event he is seriously damaged. Even worse is the fact that Rc cells are extremely resistant to heat as stated earlier, being able to resist 3,400 degree flames while Titan heat hasn’t showcased that by itself, and furthering this is the fact that at no point is it stated to have the heat of a nuclear bomb. Finally, some have brought up the strategy of Eren sending all his Titans to suicide bomb Kaneki at once, killing him instantly with all the accumulated damage. Once more, surface area and Kaneki being able to kill the Titans from a distance shoot this plan in the foot, with his higher stats helping that aspect further, and Eren having no option for countering either. To close that out, he hasn’t even used this strategy in-universe, so it’s not playing any relevant factor here.

Now, let us discuss the time visions Eren can see. While it is essentially absolutely ludicrous precognition, and would let Eren plan for anything Kaneki does that he is aware of, this is where it falls apart, as again, Eren has to be aware the attack is happening, and he has to be capable of stopping it. As were clarified in the stat section, Kaneki is over 100 times stronger than Eren or his forces physicality in just his base Post-Kakuja state, while the Dragon is 1,000 times stronger. Speed has him 60 times faster (or 3 times faster if you don’t use the Ayato feat for some reason), with several levels of in-canon upscaling solely based off how the fight with Arima had him grow much faster over the course of it, to the point that he could match a foe that was casually blitzing his then best at the time. As such, Kaneki is leagues stronger and leagues faster, to the point that Eren seeing the future and having prior knowledge isn’t enough to actually change the overall result of battling Kaneki. It would be one thing if Kaneki could already blitz and oneshot Eren’s entire arsenal, but he also holds most of the relevant advantages in countering everything Eren can throw at him, has resistances and counters to all of his best tricks like the Titan numbers or explosions, superior stamina/healing reaches with Eren’s forces increasing only bettering this, with several more examples to only re-state the same result.

While Eren could act with the Paths theoretically right as the fight starts to kill Kaneki before he reaches something like Dragon, this wouldn’t really work for a large number of the reasons stated above. Kaneki is leagues stronger and faster, meaning his only option for meaningful damage are the Titan explosions, which Kaneki can move fast enough physically to evade and mitigate the damage to the point where it is practically meaningless. Even if he did suffer damage, his healing factor and Eren providing him with an all-you-can-eat buffet to restore and increase his strength/healing. Kaneki being this superior in stats means he can certainly make it to Eren’s real body and kill him, given none of his resources can match or react to him in time. If worse came to worse, Kaneki can always enter the Dragon the more he eats, and with the Titans available, Eren really can’t stop Ken from transforming before he does. As the Dragon, Kaneki retains all his advantages but on a much bigger scale, with the same edges of being rather unbothered by any arguments of bombarding him with Titan explosions due to surface area and ranged options coupled with higher speed and healing in the event he is damaged. The Orphans make things worse, as they flood the Titans with extra Rc cells, and while Eren can stop the poison, it’s exceedingly unlikely he would figure out to stop the Rc cells, making healing or getting stronger even easier for Kaneki. As such, while Eren can see any number of futures, plan accordingly, and play literal 5D chess to his heart's content, he simply doesn’t have the means to counter Kaneki’s abilities, or use his for the better when Kaneki bears such counters to everything he had.

Kaneki takes abilities and arsenal despite some strife.

Tertiary Factors

Obviously powers and abilities are not all these two bring up to the table, as they are both highly skilled fighters and soldiers who practically went through hell and back in their journey, so we’ll go part by part on those categories.

Experience is something that can be a bit more debatable in terms of sheer years of it. It's somewhat up in the air, but Eren did start his military career at a younger age than Kaneki, although Kaneki’s story stretched further into his life in comparison. Comparing direct years on the field, Eren would have around 6-7, while Kaneki would have roughly 5 years at the end of :RE. While not entirely clear, he his still taking part in operations after the timeskip to his future, so it’s possible it could be closer to a decade, but even then, with Eren being connected to Paths and Eldian’s lives, it’s no surprise that it would give him a hell of a lot more of sheer battle time than Kaneki could ever hope to get in his lifetime. That said, even with that against him, Kaneki does benefit more from having a wider variety of foes that he’s fought or beaten. Ghouls are quite simply much more varied as opponents than Titans, not to mention existing in a modern day series where the technology is much MUCH more advanced than in AOT, coupled with the crazy scientific aspects of the CCG which pushes beyond even modern day technology. In comparison, Eren’s experience is almost entirely composed of fighting Titans or Titan Shifters, and he has quite literally never actually fought an ODM wielding soldier directly in the whole series. Even more damning is how Titans (including Titan Shifters) generally struggle against extremely agile opponents such as Levi or Mikasa, which is blatantly how humans have fought Titans for years.

Kaneki has taken on and defeated a much wider variety of enemies with crazier and more diverse power sets, and on top of that, most of these enemies possess skills similar to that of Eren himself in one way or another. Warhammer’s versatility and various traps or attacks from underground are all abilities normal ghouls and Kagune can do, and Kaneki himself can do the same things. Fighting giant monsters with the real body in the nape is nothing new to him, as considering his fight with the similar sized Eto and him writing a report about the encounter, this means if anything he would go for the nape right off the bat. Fighting while being heavily outnumbered or even tackling hundreds upon hundreds of meters tall Kaiju is also something he has done before, given his Dragon encounter in the past. In addition, none of the Eldians he could connect himself to have any real relevant experience in dealing with anything even remotely close to a Ghoul. The closest example would simply be ODM gear due to bladed weapons and their similar agility, but it’s still quite the stretch considering all the other things a Ghoul can do in comparison, so any strategy he adapts would need to be formulated on the fly. Paths can help with that issue, given Eren could have a LOT of time to prepare and try to adapt to what Kaneki can do, especially with his past self basically allowing him to know Kaneki’s toolkit. Still, it means that Kaneki would have a rather easy time adapting to Eren given the many similarities he has to opponents in his own universe, so despite not having any Paths shenanigans of his own to give him information, there’s simply not a lot that would really catch him off guard, as it’s mostly things he has dealt with in the past.

Intelligence is also a rather complicated case. In terms of sheer book-smarts, there can be no doubt Kaneki is better there, due to actually having, y’know, gone to school and being a prime student, while Eren went into the military at a young age. However, general intelligence is something that can be argued both ways, but generally speaking, Eren likely takes the edge here. Both characters are incredibly intelligent and cunning, but Eren’s Paths’ timeline manipulation is so overly complicated that it is overall on a broader scale more impressive than Kaneki can draw comparison from, so while far from a sweep, Eren likely takes the cake here. However, despite Eren’s edge in direct intelligence, in terms of Battle IQ and strategy, it’s more likely Kaneki pushes ahead in that category, Eren was plagued by his stubbornness and fiery spirit for most of the first half of the series, and as a result acted a lot more straightforward compared to after the time skip, where he would be much calmer in his approach and quickly figure out the multiple layers surrounding Warhammer’s abilities. Even at this point, he still has his cases of somewhat rash decisions, like deciding to keep going instead of retreating against the army and three titan shifters at once. While hardcore, this still put him in a rather harsh spot and would have gotten him overwhelmed due to it without help from Zeke and the Survey Corp. While the Paths could technically link him to the minds of all Eldians, it also has to be pointed out that he quite simply doesn’t have much showings of high battle strategy from that point onwards so not a lot to draw from as proof, so it is mostly hypotheticals on that aspect. Meanwhile, Kaneki from the start of the series and throughout it all has always had a more important leaning on battle strategies, and how to employ those in battle. Across the board, he simply had much more consistent, deep, and important key showings of battle smarts and tactics while in the middle of battle. Meanwhile Eren’s dissecting the Warhammer powers for example while very impressive were mostly during breaks in the battle while it was focusing on Mikasa, so while the pressure is certainly there, Kaneki just outdoes Eren in direct battle strategies by a noticeable margin,you kinda do not see Eren coming up with a triple part trick plan in the middle of battle which is exactly how Kaneki outdone Arima. 

Skill and Training is as expected relatively close on paper, but Kaneki ultimately pulls ahead in that category. Military/Survey Corp training is nothing to scoff at, and pretty even with CCG investigators training program, but the difference mainly comes from the teachers in question. Not to diss on Keith Shadis, but he simply doesn’t have credentials quite on par with Akira Mado and especially not Kishou Arima. Imagine if Eren went through hardcore training with Levi for two years: This is basically the equivalent of the situation here for Kaneki. This is further pushed by general skill, as while Eren is a very talented martial artist and his memorizing all the Martial Arts Annie briefly taught him is incredibly impressive, Kaneki is just as much of a martial art master, to a point he’s actually teaching an entire squad combat. Even at a baseline level, Kaneki memorized martial arts by reading a book and managed to accurately pull it off on the first try. There’s also the matter of how both can apply said skill into the battle, where Kaneki can more easily make use of it, given how he managed to use everything he had against giants like Eto or Dragon without issue. Most importantly, while Eren’s extensive combat training mostly applies to equipment and approach, he can’t really employ it in a match-up like this (grapples are pretty much useless against a human-sized opponent when you are a 15 meter giant). While Paths could give him access to the combat experience and skills of all Eldians like the Ackermans (how much it even impacts is also relatively up in the air, let alone if he even can use it given his fights after don’t employ any of it) which would in theory tip the scales on that aspect, once again, every approach he can take in the fight as the Attack Titan is out of his normal comfort zone. As soon as the Founding or Doomsday Titans are out, there’s quite frankly not a whole lot more combat Skills involved at this point rather than just raw strength and scale. 

As the Dragon, he does lose basically all intellect and simply acts as a ravenous beast, meaning that every bit of intelligence and experience goes out the window, albeit at this point should it happen he really does not NEED it anymore to win via the difference in scale, power, and travel speed. It’s quite likely Eren would just get run over and consumed, unable to handle or defend against the Kilometers upon Kilometers of hellish biomass looking for its next meal. Founding Titan acts more like a summoning tower without any real way to fight back outside of it’s army, meaning a direct physical clash between the giants is bound to not end well for the Titan Shifter. With Path’s prep time, logic, and future sight, it's more than likely he would figure out the eye weakness of Dragon or even spot that destroying oviducts would weaken it, or maybe even find out Kaneki or Rize’s locations, but once again, he cannot properly put those into action. Destroying all of the eyes is frankly an impossible task to begin with, and Kaneki being in the middle side of the Dragon while Rize is at the back means Eren would have to quite literally force his way through multiple Kilometers to even try to be able to take them out, while multiple wards worth of gigantic tentacles that outstat him all converge onto him from every angle. His Titan army will have its hands full dealing with the sheer number of Dragon Orphans (there are potentially millions of these things), let alone a Kaiju of this magnitude that outscales the Founding Titan in size on top of it.

So, while Eren is more intelligent, experienced, keeps his sanity in check as a Kaiju, and has the Paths, which give him what one could only describe infinite time to prepare himself or come up with strategies, most of that ends up falling apart against someone like Kaneki. Eren has never seen or fought anyone similar to him before, whereas Kaneki has fought and adapted to fighting a wider array of opponents pretty much identical to Eren, so his experience is far more directly applicable to this battle. Not to mention, his showings of direct training, skill, and battle strategy are much greater, meaning he can more than hold his own when push comes to shove. While overall it goes back and forth on certain categories, with each having their own edges or disadvantages to a point that it’s hard to really give the true definite edge for any of the two here, but the gap in any individual category is never completely lopsided to the point where one is completely dwarfed by the other’s resume. However if you really had to give a point to someone here Kaneki would likely ever so slightly come out on top with the slight edge overall simply due to his own advantages in that category being more simple and directly useful compared to Eren’s which might run into problems of how to properly puts those into use due to stats and other factors highlighted above.

Eren Yeager

"From the moment we’re born, we’re all…free…Some might try to deny that, but it doesn’t matter how strong they are! Fiery waters…Lands of ice…Or whatever else! Whoever gets to see those things…will have the greatest freedom this world has to offer! Fight! If anything is worth giving your life, it’s that! It doesn’t matter how terrifying or cruel the world may be! Fight! Fight! FIGHT!!!"

Advantages: 

• Faster processing speed as long as he’s tied to the Founding Titan powers and the Source of All Life

• More experienced overall, and has fought giant monsters before much more consistently (duh)

• Regeneration, while overall inferior, is still extremely potent

• Better defensive options with plenty of ways to stall the fight

• Ymir can undo the ROS Disease if Eren is affected

• Much bigger than Kaneki himself in any of his Titan forms…

• Colossal Titan explosion could do massive damage if not cripple base Kaneki

• Overall more intelligent

• Future Memory Inheritance could theoretically allow him to change the direction of the fight in his favor…

• Titan Shifter army is generally better individually than the Dragon Orphans…

• Anime actually adapted his manga well…

Disadvantages:

• Is much weaker in direct stats no matter the form, with this gap increasing through Kaneki eating flesh or adapting via reactive power level

• Very little actual experience against human-sized opponents, let alone something akin to a ghoul

• …but even as the Founding Titan, is still smaller than the Dragon (weirdly enough)

• …but would have difficulty enacting any of his plans depending on the stat gap

• …but likely has far less overall numbers and can potentially backfire by benefitting Kaneki

• …but the manga ending was kinda ass until the anime fixed it

• The AOT fandom. Feels like there’s Weekly nonsense going on over there.

• Didn't get laid (Actually bitchless. How did you fumble Mikasa that badly.)

• IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ARMIN (The AOT Team)

Ken Kaneki

“On that fateful day with Rize, I was sundered from the human world. And everything began to change. My life was threatened. I was horrifically tortured. Unable to achieve what I wanted. I even lost. But I found a new place where I belonged. Allies. Friends. People I could call my teachers. People I love. And even though I have erred so much, and hurt so many, I simply don’t believe it was for naught. And that’s why, even if I were to know everything that came after, I still would have gone to meet Rize on that day. To me, all of it was necessary. This world… this world isn’t wrong. It just is. And even if, ‘eventually’, everything will come to naught, I’ll still strive. Like I did today, Furuta. "

Advantages:

• Takes the edge in direct power and durability with or without Dragon

• Superior mobility coupled with much faster combat and movement speed

• Overall more potent and faster regeneration

• Reactive power level would keep his already more impressive stats on the rise throughout the fight

• Superior combat skills and went through superior/more varied training from more skilled teachers

• Can feed off of Eren’s Titan form and army (technically an endless supply to draw from) to keep his regeneration and stamina up, and has an easy way to access Dragon this way too

• Much, MUCH larger than any Titan form as the Dragon (funnily enough)

• Generally superior in Battle IQ and in coming up with strategies on the fly

• Has fought giants similar to Titans in size with the same weak spot before (Convenient, ain’t it?)

• Enhanced Senses and Sonar could locate Eren’s human body in the nape, or find him out should he try to control it remotely

• Dragon orphans are likely greater in sheer direct numbers than the Titan army….

• Heat Resistance is high enough to a point he’s likely to not be affected much by Titan passive heat or Colossal Titan’s Heat Wave 

• Paths powers like memory manipulation, titan gas, or biological manipulation are completely ineffective against Kaneki due to him not being an Eldian, which also means Eren cannot look into his previous history and life due to not being connected to the paths.

• Got laid (with best girl no less)

• Ishida dedicated a whole chapter to this. Your favorite manga could never.

Disadvantages:

• Overall less intelligent

• Less experienced on a broader scope

• While likely to survive, the Colossal Titan explosion would mess him up in base form if he got caught in it

• …but they are not as powerful, large or as varied in units as The Founding Titan’s army

• ROS disease and Kagune secretion are unlikely to work

• His Mental World, while still very useful, is not nearly as flexible to use nor give as much prep time as Paths

• Completely loses any intellect or logic as Dragon, acting like a wild beast

• The shitshow that was the anime after Season 1 (The OST still slaps tho)

• The ten years anniversary event was simply just an art expo and not a remake 💀

• “10 years” became a cursed line for both franchises it seems

• “The worst she could say is no”

Conclusion

At face value it may seem rather surprising, but on a broader and more consistent scope, Kaneki simply has all the edges he needs to pull ahead, with his arguments and abilities being more reliable and simple to argue. He holds large stat edges over Eren and all of his support through all areas of the debate, with him only getting stronger and faster thanks to being able to consume Eren’s forces and his own reactive power level. He holds superior weaponry and is consistently superior in core aspects of the debate, like healing/stamina, having stronger and larger transformations funnily enough, naturally being much harder to hit with powerful attacks thanks to his insane movement speed and surface area, and the Dragon being more than a match for his Titan army, with several ways to ward off the explosions while only ever increasing as time goes by. The Dragon’s own Orphans achieve a much higher number actively on the battlefield, being easily in the thousands and likely reaching the millions, and while they can’t match the power of a Titan, being killed by one only spreads Rc overload for them that fuels Kaneki’s forces all the more. Due to how their worlds work, the Titans and Eren himself would all bear Rc cells for Kaneki to devour for increasing his stat trinity advantage and healing factor in the event he is severely damaged. On the flipside, practically all of Eren’s more impressive hax are gridlocked behind specifically affecting Eldians, which Kaneki is not, meaning a large chunk of Eren’s hax are effectively useless, so he can’t see Kaneki’s own memories or anything like that. While he can see the future and plan accordingly via instructions from his future self, even base Kaneki has plenty of counters for his arsenal and more than enough ways to reach the Dragon from Eren’s own arsenal no less. Eren’s options for quickly ending things like his explosions are countered, dodged, or easily healed from, while Eren himself lacks the means to defend himself from the Dragon or survive a drawn-out battle. 

The odds against him may have seemed titanic at first, but as per fitting of a tale, the Devil of Paradise was stopped in his tracks by the One-Eyed King who endured the flames of his rage, and all the paths of their conflict led to a singular ending. So, at the end of it all, Ken Kaneki had the stats, abilities, counters and brutal tenacity to pull through. The Devil of Paradise will be freed from the perpetual hell he was trapped into, and on this bloody night his rampage comes to an end, where his never-say-die spirit will be remembered for 10 years, at least.

The winner…is Ken Kaneki.

Final Tally

Eren Yeager (3) - WWAL (Eren believer to the end), Brokenlimit (Eren Yeager’s second biggest defender (pity vote)), Cyber

Ken Kaneki (9) - Asura, door-kun, Flip, Gillian, Minato, Pasbro (Birthday boy), Round 1 Fight, TheCardinalKing, Nex

Afterword

Wow. We’re finally here. After nearly 2 months of non-stop cooking, Eren vs Kaneki is done. Words can not put into practice how proud and impressed I am at the passion and detail we managed to place into one blog, which is sure to be my best project yet. So, since they can’t, I’ll simply try my best to make that stick.

WWAL, thank you for yapping and yapping about Attack on Titan. You managed to make the freaking PATHS make sense for a debate, added who knows how much onto the doc yourself, and that's all forgetting the teensy-weensy detail that this is your first blog. When I started talking with you during the first Eren vs Kaneki DDB over a year ago at this point, I already thought you were a nice guy and excellent debater, but my expectations were completely and wholly blown out of the water with your performance. Absolutely stellar job, and hopefully we’ll BOTH get on the G1 for Bowser vs Eggman.

Gillian, as a contrast to WWAL, you were one of the main Kaneki representatives on the blog, and similarly impressed me with the detail and perspective you brought to the table. More than that, you reminded me just how fun it is to talk with others on a series I love, and this entire experience was a wonderful blogging period where I could talk about my love for one of my favorite manga series ever written. It was truly a treat to work with such wonderful company like yourself, and you gave me more than enough praise for actions that I myself don’t hold to that high a standard. Thank you, truly.

Pasbros, you were like Gillian and WWAL spun into a blender with just a hint of sarcasm, which lended plenty of laughs at the points of discussion in the match. You took even more time out of your schedule to genuinely write one of the greatest fan-made scripts I’ve ever laid eyes on, and I can only hope this matchup happening one day channels even half of the beauty you’ve put into writing. DB should legitimately take notes from your work, and I don’t say that lightly. Stand proud…you are peak.

Door, take all of the above, blend it together, and that’s how you’ve contributed to the blog. You brought much needed knowledge and humor to the blog on both ends, and were a blast to work with in all areas, despite the work you had from other blogs like G1. This truly was your Jujutsu Kaisen.

Minato, buddy, how to put into words how much of a bro you’ve been? Similar to Gillian, you provided plenty of knowledge on Tokyo Ghoul, and reminded me just how much I love talking about it. You helped me format my arguments and provided much needed debate/conversation over several aspects of the debate, all while putting in everything you had to cook for one of your favorite matches. Hope we can keep cooking in future blogs bro.

Cyber, you were one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place, and one of the first people I wanted to invite due to your clear passion for the match. I’m more awestruck than anything else you genuinely wanted to join my blog, and I’m proud of all the work that you did, even when you were sick and feeling like crap. It was such a joy to work with you, and I truly appreciate all the perspectives, details, blog advice, and help you provided to make this blog the best that it could possibly be. Well done, from the depths of my gratitude.

Rina and Normal, may I present to you the (non-physical) award of a standard house lock, from how you both locked the %$&# in and finished all the calculations for the blog and a deep dive into these characters' feats and franchises. You put up with all this and spent your own time on it when you certainly didn’t have to, and were one of the driving forces that ensured we finished at all. Now just let me make a trailer for y’all since I feel guilty after you helped this much.

For everyone else who joined the blog (Asura, Brokenlimit, Flip, Nex, Masux, John™), thank you for all you added in art, brief chatting, and simply joining the blog in the first place. Y’all might have been busy or not had much to contribute in ways of research, but your simply being here is enough contribution for me.

To everyone involved, I’ve worn out my thank you card until next month (at least), but even without it, I can’t express how much I’ve loved working on this with y’all. Even when this episode happens and there’s a G1 blog (which I’m 100% trying to  joining btw), I’ll always treasure this blogging period and the passion that we put into writing. 

Have a great day, thank you for reading, and now…lets see what’s next, shall we?

Next Time…

For those unaware, the next time was originally Kingpin vs Penguin (Marvel vs DC), but that needs more time to bake. I’ll be going around it and getting back to it once ready, but until then, we continue as usual. Next time is…