Mewtwo vs Sephiroth FAQ
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Mewtwo
Why are you using the anime and manga to composite Mewtwo? Why didn’t you use Pokken, Mystery Dungeon, or other spin-off games?
Pokemon has a plotted out canon, discussed here. Also included is the reasoning for the omission of pokken and the mystery dungeon games. We’ll have a more direct breakdown of our canon rules coming out in a few days.
Why didn’t Mewtwo just use Me First to win?
Sephiroth’s durability is high enough that, even if we assumed Me First would work on Sephiroth’s attacks, it wouldn’t be enough to take Sephiroth out.
Doesn’t Mewtwo scale to Deoxys, Zygarde and Necrozma?
Mewtwo doesn’t have any feats that are direct enough to meet our rules that allow him to scale to these characters. Regardless of how strong Deoxys, Zygarde, and Necrozma would be under our rules, there just isn’t enough evidence that Mewtwo should scale to them.
Couldn’t Mewtwo just mind control/mind wipe Sephiroth?
Sephiroth is immune to a status called Manipulate in FF7. This status takes direct control of an enemy, which seems to be very inline with how Mewtwo’s mind control worked in his first movie. In that movie, he presented mind control and mind wiping as two sides of the same coin, so it’s reasonable to assume Sephiroth is immune to both effects. Sephiroth also has several other points that hint at him being resistant to mental manipulation, such as when he hid himself from the lifestream, the fact that he was able to endure the lifestream without going crazy, and being immune to other mental status effects in game.
Why couldn’t Mewtwo win by stacking status effects on Sephiroth?
Sephiroth is immune to many of the most potent status effects from Pokemon. He’s immune to Sleep, Poison, Confusion, and Paralysis. There are other status effects that Mewtwo would have access to that he could inflict on Sephiroth, but none of them are going to be super meaningful. Burns would help bypass some of Sephiroth’s durability, but Sephiroth’s healing is good enough that it wouldn’t matter long term. Freeze wears off, so it wouldn’t put Sephiroth down for good. Stalling conditions like Freeze, Flinch and Infatuation (not that Infatuation is a real option for Mewtwo anyway) would help Mewtwo, but Mewtwo’s attack power is just far too weak to be able to take Sephiroth out in the time he would be buying. He would need to be able to hit Sephiroth hundreds of thousands of times in order to win.
Couldn’t Mewtwo just teleport Sephiroth away/send to another dimension like in Pokemon Rangers?
Mewtwo could definitely just teleport Sephiroth away somewhere, but the team is a bit split on whether that would actually count as a victory or not. However, even if Sephiroth was teleported hundreds of miles away, he could probably still just destroy Earth in order to wipe Mewtwo out. He has access to teleportation, but it’s a bit unclear just how far he can teleport with that power.
As for Mewtwo trapping Sephiroth in another dimension, that likely wouldn’t work. Sephiroth is able to cut through dimensional barriers, so he could easily escape or just destroy the attack. Sephiroth also has access to Exit, which would let him escape from BFR and gives him BFR of his own.
Sephiroth
Why does Sephiroth get Supernova? Isn’t it super contradictory?
Supernova seems completely nonsensical at first glance. Sephiroth can use it multiple times (you can’t destroy the same solar system more than once), he destroys Earth but the battlefield still exists afterward, and it seems to contradict the whole point of the story (why would he need Meteor if he can use Supernova). However, all of these apparent contradictions are explained in other canon sources: Sephiroth sends his opponent to an alternate dimension and destroys their solar system. This one move is an absolutely massive rabbit hole to dive down for research, but it’s super clear that this move was intended to be a literal supernova, even if you interpret other parts of the explanations differently.
For a detailed explanation behind the legitimacy of the technique refer to here and here. The first write up also delves into the power of Meteor and why there’s no real contradictions with supernova.
Why was Sephiroth given techniques he has only shown in gameplay? Those are not shown to be canon.
Smash Bracket’s philosophy means that we give a lot of weight to gameplay. We understand the potential issues that arise when using gameplay, but we feel like it is an important part of the canon representation of a character, so we use feats from gameplay. Also, Sephiroth should have access to all spells he shows in gameplay (and even all spells in the game), since he gained knowledge of them from the lifestream.
Why are you considering Dissidia canon?
This site has a much more detailed write up on the canon to Final Fantasy 7 than I’d be able to provide here. The site is generally considered to be reliable in this assessment and most people I’ve consulted who are familiar with the verse (including Cyber, one of our researchers who is extremely familiar with every argument for the game) seem to agree with their take. What it boils down to, though, is that there is clear creator intent for the Dissidia games to be considered canon and the contradictions that arise don’t really matter in the context of our analysis.
Beyond the linked site these documents explain the canonicity, including the shared cosmology of the overall franchise. Note that with these documents (and all other ones I link) I am not endorsing a full belief in everything they are claiming, but using them as a compilation of sources. We look at dozens of documents like these for every fight and try to compile all the evidence and arguments we’ve seen into something that we agree with and feel is supported.
Why wasn’t Sephiroth scaled to Bahamut Fury?
Bahamut Fury has an incredibly fast travel speed feat, but never displays similar speed in combat. There aren’t any characters who have fought Bahamut Fury in a way that would let us scale this travel speed feat to their combat speed, so Sephiroth is out of luck here. There are statements that imply that Sephiroth is stronger than summons, but these are too ambiguous to assume they mean that he is better than summons in every possible respect.
Zack and Cloud have been harmed by bullets. Wouldn’t this mean Sephiroth is far weaker than what you claimed?
There are several reasons at play here for us not considering the bullets as damning anti-feats. First, we usually don’t consider one or two anti-feats as cancelling out all of a character’s best feats. Second, there is some evidence in FF7 that a character’s durability is tied to emotions and thus in a constant state of flux (our researcher Cyber has a very detailed write up of that argument here). Third, there are a lot of implications that the bullets Shinra is using are far more powerful than real-life weaponry that we could compare it to. Finally, Sephiroth is not Cloud or Zack, so their anti-feats wouldn’t matter for him anyway.
Why was Safer Sephiroth used?
While there are some justifications for interpreting Sephiroth as being on a similar level of strength to Safer Sephiroth at all times now, it ultimately came down to two points. First, Safer Sephiroth doesn’t actually have feats, so using it isn’t really a game changer (Sephiroth is able to use Supernova outside of Safer form in other games). But more importantly, Safer Sephiroth is represented in Smash and is an iconic part of Sephiroth’s character, so we felt we needed to include it for a full picture of who Sephiroth is.
Why wasn’t Sephiroth scaled to Dissidia statements for Summons?
There are some statements in Dissidia that imply that certain summons (Ifrit is the one I usually see) have planetary levels of strength. However, these comments don’t hold up to our rules and, even if they did, Sephiroth doesn’t have any direct feats that meet our rules and would scale him to those summons.
Since Dissidia was used, why wasn’t Sephiroth scaled to other Final Fantasy characters like Lightning, Exdeath, etc?
Sephiroth doesn’t have any direct feats that meet our rules and would scale him to those characters. This is especially true since the game explicitly states that all of the characters are having their power massively boosted.
Are Ultimanias usable as evidence?
Yes, but they follow the rest of our rules for how they work. Ultimanias are able to clarify ambiguity or support feats, but they cannot create feats on their own.
