Ryu Hayabusa vs Strider Hiryu: Cosmic Ninja Gaiden Explanation

 

IMPORTANT NOTE:

As of the 25th of June of 2024, this blog has been updated with added scans and information for the first “Before the Verdict” section, providing added support for the claims that were made. None of the new material changes the stance of the blog in any way, and none of our participants changed their opinion on what was bought and used for the characters because of it. Thank you for your comprehension.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly if you have been following Ninja Gaiden versus discussions for long enough), Ryu has means to scale to a good few solid universal AP feats, and a possible infinite/immeasurable speed one. Let’s discuss them.

First off, we have Gurdu. Gurdu, the first deity of the Ninja Gaiden/DoA universe, is stated to “give birth to all elements, and provide them with order and function” amidst a sea of “pure nothingness”. This feat can easily be interpreted as the creation of the physical universe, as it follows the usual pattern of a creator deity shaping our reality into being from pure nothing found in many mythologies and religions.

Furthermore, we have Vigoor, Gurdu’s counterpart of pure evil and chaos, born from the Hatred that formed from the void that preceded creation. Vigoor is stated to have entered a conflict with Gurdu and started to devour his territory, causing a fight with massively destructive effects that burn down all of existence itself, ignoring the concept of time, leading the world (obviously universe in context, as they burned down existence) to the same shapeless chaos that it was born from before Gurdu. Pretty clear cut universal feat. Their fight caused such cosmic scale destruction that existence itself burned down and everything went back to the way it was before Gurdu created it, meaning the conflict resulted in the destruction of the universe. Since the fight caused the destruction of the universe, ignoring the very concept of time, it would obviously mean they would have to be moving and attacking while ignoring the concept of time, resulting in speeds that would eclipse any measurable speed feat, meaning they would be able to tap into infinite or immeasurable speed. 

Right after his defeat, Gurdu’s body is split into four deities, which “shaped the world back into form", essentially rebuilding the universe that Vigoor destroyed, another universal feat. This counts 3 in total from the lore of Ninja Gaiden 2 alone, making cosmic levels of power and speed consistent.

Mind you, while the texts do use “the world” instead of “the universe”, it is very clear Gurdu is the creator of the universe, not just the planet. There are mentions of the earth splitting and solar eclipses, but in context, the higher scale interpretations are much more well founded. Vigoor’s fight with Gurdu is stated to cause “all of existence” to burn down and be destroyed, so it’s unlikely they’d only be referring to our planet. VS Battle Wiki suggests the high end for Ninja Gaiden is planet level, but looking into the lore better, it is very clear that the cosmic destruction and creation feats present in the story are blatantly referring to the entire cosmos and not just our planet. Even then, if you really want to not believe it for unknown reasons, the speed feats aren’t reducible or can be argued against.

It is also important to note that none of the enemies in the actual games are Vigoor, but either representatives of his ideology or beings that possess his power. Directly confronting Vigoor isn’t necessary to scale to his feats nonetheless, which leads us to the question: why does Ryu actually scale to this?

The reason why Ryu would scale to any of this is fairly straightforward. The 13 Dragons born from the deity known as “The Serpent” waged war against Vigoor and eventually defeated him, banishing him to “the ends of the world”, meaning they scale to his levels of power and speed as they are able to fight and defeat him. The Dark Dragon, formerly one of the 13, plunged the Earth into darkness, forcing the remaining dragons to create the Dragon Sword, a weapon “inhabited by the very essence of the powers of the Dragons”. The sword was used to defeat the Dark Dragon, making the scaling pretty blatant. The Dark Dragon was later resurrected, and Ryu engaged in combat with him, and defeated it again with the Dragon Sword, obviously matching his speed and tanking attacks from him. It’s important to note that it is stated that, when holding the Dragon Sword, Ryu’s body “courses with unfathomable power”, giving more evidence that Ryu should scale to all of the previously cited feats physically.

In the original Japanese version of the lore text about Gurdu and Vigoor, the  meaning remains roughly the same, and we believe the different phrasing adds more support to universal and immeasurable interpretations. 

First off, the area outside of Gurdu’s creation is straight up called “the border of the universe”, giving more support to the idea that he is the creator of the entire universe, not just the Earth.

Refer to the original text: “グルドゥー神が恐怖にかられるまま秩序を生み出してゆく宇宙の辺境では、いまだ形成り成らぬ元素が混沌の領土を保っていた”, which can also be directly translated to “In the frontiers of the universe, where the god Gurudu creates order in fear, elements that have yet to be formed maintain a territory of chaos.” 

We then have the text referring to Vigoor’s destruction of Gurdu’s territory as an “immeasurable destruction” and fires that swept over “everything”, and that the world was meant to “return to chaos”. Simple enough, since Gurdu’s creation involved him giving order to nothingness itself, which extended to the border of the universe. Since Vigoor overpowered Gurdu and destroyed his creation, our original interpretation remains.

Secondly, we have the speed implication of Vigoor’s feat. The text very literally states that the immeasurable destruction caused by Vigoor caused several natural disasters over everything and “continued endlessly without any concept of time”. This line (時の概念すらなくして果てしなく続) can also be translated as “It continues endlessly without even the concept of time” and “It goes on endlessly without even the concept of time.” These translations all mean roughly the same thing, even as the official english translation. Vigoor was causing destruction ignoring or without the concept of time, meaning there’s no reason he wasn’t performing actions that were doing the same. Without the concept of time itself, his actions were performed at immeasurable speeds, as the other interpretations are way less straightforward than this. 

“But is it really referring to that? Couldn’t it be that it went for so long that people forgot about time? Couldn’t it be referring only to Earth”

Well, there were no people. The lore states that humans only appeared on Earth much time after Vigoor’s defeat, so we can’t use that argument at all. It is not something written from our POV, as it’s clearly knowledge passed down to humanity from accounts that were there to witness the creation and destruction of the universe (most likely the dragons themselves). Given how literal the Japanese text is about it, we don’t see any reason as to why it would only refer to planet Earth or a vague long time.

“But wouldn’t the immeasurable speed argument fall under timeless voids?”

Well, to put it bluntly, it requires even more leaps in logic to assume that. Gurdu created all of the elements and everything from nothingness, which would logically assume time as well, as it’s the same with… literally most of interpretations of divine creation in our history as a species, including the one that the lore excerpt is based on (it’s literally called THE BOOK OF GENESIS, like… seriously?). It would also make the assumption that Gurdu created the Earth, the sun and the moon (remember, the text mentions solar and lunar eclipses), before TIME EXISTED. Nowhere in the rest of the text mentions the creation of the concept of time, nor does it mention that Vigoor specifically has time manipulation powers of any sort. The plain implication of the text is that Vigoor performed actions and his fight with Gurdu created an immeasurable level of destruction eternally/endlessly without the very concept of time, which is very easy to interpret as an immeasurable speed feat on top of obviously being universal.

“But they state Gurdu was at the edge of the universe creation order, wouldn’t that mean that Gurdu didn’t actually create the universe and instead just the Earth?”

This one also requires more leaps in logic. First off, the text refers to that two paragraphs after it starts, which could make one assume things out of context. It first says that at “the beginning of everything” there was pure nothingness. Absolute nothingness. Chaos, just like most universal creation myths. Then , Gurdu created “all elements” and gave them function. Nowhere does it state that it happened exactly at the edge of the universe. It’s as simple as Gurdu was just finishing creation there, and that our universe is simply his territory, and Vigoor came from inside of it. Or else, everything outside of our planet would be primordial nothingness.

In order for the assumption that Gurdu only created Earth to make sense, you have to make multiple ludicrous assumptions about the Ninja Gaiden universe, which again, are tremendous leaps in logic. For starters, you have to assume the sun and the moon randomly appeared at one point without any interference from anyone, or that somehow they were part of the primordial chaos of the universe, despite being perfectly functioning elements of our solar system. You’d have to assume that all the stars in the universe were simply there before, part of “pure nothingness”, or that they showed up randomly. You’d have to assume no planets beyond Earth exist, or that they one day just appeared, and so on. Like it was previously said, Gurdu creating the universe is a simple, logical interpretation that falls in line with real life creation myths and religions, which are what the lore is clearly hinting at.

To recap: The original japanese text for the Book of Genesis in Ninja Gaiden II makes it even clearer that Gurdu is the creator of the universe, Vigoor destroyed it in his fight with Gurdu, and doesn’t change anything about the interpretation of Vigoor’s universal destruction as an immeasurable speed feat. 

This section was expanded upon because of issues people have manifested regarding the lore feats, and we wanted to make it sure to explain our reasons for buying such levels of power for Ryu better, with more answers for potential questions and the original text for the feats. 

Credits to Mige079/Mikhail for the translations.