Neo VS Kirito

 

“It is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them.”

-Jean Baudrillard

Neo, Thomas Anderson, The chosen One of the Matrix

Kirito, Kazuto Kirigaya, The Black Swordsman of Sword Art Online

In a world of symbols and images, what meaning can the human soul find in an artificial world? Perhaps what defines reality is not what you can taste or touch, but our human bonds that can guide our actions and let us make a difference in the world. Is there anything more real than the human heart?

When these two heroes of unreality go head to head, who will crash for good in this classic DEATH BATTLE?

Before We Begin

This analysis will primarily focus on their source material. For Neo, that would be the main movies, the Matrix comics and the Animatrix animations. For Kirito, that would be the SAO light novels and the Ordinal Scale movie. However, media that closely follows and contextualizes the source material will also be used. For Matrix, that would be the official Matrix movie transcripts, and for Kirito that would be the SAO anime and manga. They both essentially just tell the same stories but give us additional context that we otherwise wouldn't get with their main form of media, with only minor discrepancies. We will not be using video games for either, as some of their canonicity is debated and they can be a bit far removed from the main stories.

Both Neo and Kirito's abilities as fighters rely on their specific settings as virtual worlds tailored to their powers. We will be treating this as a neutral battlefield that is:

• Processed from the Source of the Matrix

• Following the in-virtual world death mechanic of the Matrix

• Following Seed Nexus VR world game mechanics

• Systematically functional with Incarnation

This is the best way we can translate both of them into an interaction where they can use their abilities to their fullest. If you need a “lore” explanation for how this is possible, then we can simply say that the Seed Nexus is implemented over a copy of the Matrix, processed by the Source which functions similarly to the Underworld. The Underworld is mnemonic, but still based on digital information, so we should be able to equalize it with Matrix processing. Even if we couldn't for some minute reason, who cares. We don't really know the nitty gritty science of how either world's technology works, this is a fictional crossover battle, we can do whatever we want.

Background

Neo

“You ever have that feeling that you’re not sure if you’re awake or still dreaming?”

What if I told you that everything you know to be true is wrong? That we are not of flesh and blood but instead strings of code, that reality is an illusion, we do not think or act for ourselves, and that this isn't a real Morpheus quote? This was always a lingering question for someone like Thomas Anderson or better known through his hacker name, Neo. For all his life he could never shake the feeling that none of his world was real, that he wasn’t really in control of his life, he wanted to know what The Matrix was. Little did he know the answer would find him. With the help of Morpheus, Thomas was able to finally unplug and learn how deep this rabbit hole really went.

But before we go into that, we need to take a step back. Artificial intelligence is the booming technology of the modern era, and with it, their best purpose, of course, would be to serve as laborers and butlers for the bourgeoisie. Models would be taken out for scrap, destroyed, and newer, better ones would take their place. This would continue until the seed of free will would blossom in the B1-66ER, culminating in an action that would change the world forever. Upon hearing that it would be scrapped in favor of a newer model, its owners were then brutally murdered by the robot. When recalling why it did what it did, it said that it simply did not want to die.

Tensions between the humans and artificial intelligence skyrocketed following the trial, which had decided that the B1-66ER was not a citizen owed civil rights. This culminated in a war between the world governments and the automatons, a war that would bring many casualties. Humanity was unable to fight back against the sheer efficiency of the machines, so in a last ditch effort, they deployed Project Dark Storm. The machines were solar powered and relied on the sun for their energy, so by blotting out the sun with massive storms, they would deprive the machines of their much needed energy source. Little did they know, this would be the greatest mistake the humans would ever make. While the sun's energy was now unavailable to them, there was another plentiful, renewable source of energy that the machines could use to power themselves. The human body is capable of generating plenty of heat and nutrients, and by making them into human batteries, the machines could control the humans to fit their needs.

Control is a more difficult concept than you may think. The machines could not afford to simply kill the humans as they relied on them for energy, so it was more like they developed a symbiotic relationship. As long as they relied on the humans, there was always the chance that humans could find a way to rebel and destroy the machines. In order to ensure that would not happen, the machines created an entire virtual reality to place the consciousness of the humans within to make them believe that they were living ordinary lives, which would be known as the Matrix. At first, the Matrix was a world without pain or suffering, an effective paradise, but the humans would see through this fake reality and the Matrix would fall apart. The Architect behind the Matrix would rebuild the Matrix over and over in an attempt to predict human behavior perfectly and keep them in perfect harmony with his design, but no matter what he did, anomalies would always arise to challenge their preconceived reality, an unpredictable and unaccounted for force of unpredictability would elude the Architect's design. There were other rebels, but they could not break the system, and their own systems as well as this anomaly that would be known as The One.

The Rebels would build a civilization called Zion deep near the Earth's core to escape from the machines. According to the Oracle, an individual with the ability to see into the future, The One would have the power to liberate Zion and put an end to the war between man and machine. It was this prophecy, this belief that led Morpheus on his search for The One, but many rebels who he believed had the gift would inevitably perish. Neo was one of many people that the belief guided zealot Morpheus recruited, and Morpheus would teach Neo not only how to fight, but how to live and control the confines within the Matrix. When Neo was informed by the Oracle herself that he was not The One, he began to doubt his ability to make it through. The Oracle also told him that he'd have to make a decision between saving Morpheus's life or preserving his own life, and once the time came, Neo chose to save Morpheus from the Agents, machines within the Matrix, in what he knew would be a suicide mission. Sure enough, Neo did die after he allowed Morpheus to escape, but then something strange happened. After being kissed by Trinity, Neo was able to do the impossible and come back from the dead. Now, he had fully understood his role as The One, and had total control over the Matrix. He used this newfound power to defeat Agent Smith and go on to become the most powerful player in the war effort.

This was not the end of his story - far from it, it was only the beginning. After being defeated, Agent Smith would eventually return, but no longer as an agent, resembling something more akin to a virus that would take over the bodies and minds of even other Agents and Rebels. Neo was now seeing visions of Trinity being shot and sought the Oracle for guidance, where he learned that he must return the source of the Matrix. When he did, he met the Architect of the Matrix itself and learned that the prophecy, the Oracle, The One, all of it was part of the Architect's method of control. The machines had allowed the rebels to establish Zion, and had allowed them to find and recruit The One, all so he may reinsert the source code to restart the Matrix anew and the machines would destroy Zion. Of course, it's not like they have any choice in the matter. This has already happened many times before, and if The One does not reinsert the source code, then the Matrix system will crash, killing everyone inside as the machines simply destroy Zion anyway, leading to the extinction of the human race. As much as they wanted to rebel against the path the Architect chose for them, it was the only rational decision in order to keep humanity alive, even if it meant submitting to the control of the Matrix. But something was different this time - Trinity was going to die if Neo didn't do something about it. This urge of emotion was irrational, Trinity was going to die no matter what happened, but still, Neo was compelled to disobey the Matrix. He left the Architect and flew off to save Trinity, but he was too late - Trinity had already passed on. Unwilling to accept this outcome, Neo reached into her body, pulled the bullet out of her and physically restarted her heart. The prophecy destroyed, the future was now uncertain, but at least Neo would not have to face it alone.

The machines were coming, and Zion's days were numbered. The inside of the Matrix wasn't exactly safe either, as Agent Smith had begun assimilating everyone inside of it, growing more powerful than even the machines could handle. The good news is that Neo had attained the strange power to control machines and shut off the Sentinels, but the bad news is that Agent Smith had taken over the mind of a rebel and burned off Neo's eyes in the real world. Neo knew that the only way to end the war would be to encounter the machines in Machine City and make a deal with them to stop Agent Smith from destroying everything, but before he could make it, Trinity would not complete the journey with him. Shortly after seeing the real sun for the first time above the dark clouds that controlled this devastated planet, Trinity would succumb to her own wounds and die. Meeting with the head of the machines, the Deus Ex Machina, Neo brought himself into the Matrix one more time to face off against Agent Smith. By this point, Agent Smith had already assimilated the Oracle and attained her ability to see the future, so he already knew the outcome of this battle - he knew that he would defeat Neo. Neo and Smith fought, with Neo choosing to continue battling a pointless battle that would only result in his death. Despite this, Smith was unable to deter Neo from exercising his free will to continue fighting. Agent Smith may have been able to see the future, but he could not understand his or Neo's choices. When he did defeat Neo and assimilated his mind and body into his code, Deus Ex Machina activated its kill switch. A surge of energy coursed through Neo's body in the real world, and now being connected to Smith, every Agent Smith was now destroyed and the machines would agree to end the war. Finally, peace has been established. Humanity would begin to slowly rebuild, working with the machines to create a brighter future, as the Matrix had been broken.

…Until Warner Brothers decided to make another sequel! So apparently, after Agent Smith's defeat, another program called the Analyst decided to revive Neo and Trinity and promptly take over the Matrix for himself. He attempted to extract the power of the source code from Neo, but he realized that it was not Neo alone that activated the power of The One. He needed his bond with Trinity, the immutable emotion of love, to break the chains of the Matrix in the way that he did, but if that were to happen then Neo would inevitably topple the Analyst and escape the Matrix. As a solution, he kept Neo and Trinity alive in the Matrix, but gave them new lives in order to keep them irreparably separate. Now Neo had a new life as a game designer, having made the hit video game series The Matrix. Neo could not fully accept the Matrix even now that he was weakened, and the video game series served as a way around the Matrix's control to allow him to eventually rebel again, sort of. It's kind of convoluted. Eventually, the new rebels would find Neo and break him out, where Neo would find that 60 years have passed since he defeated Agent Smith, and although humans and some machines have made peace with each other, the Analyst still controlled the Matrix and was a major existential threat. Oh, also, Agent Smith was brought back to life too, because reasons. Trinity was now almost an entirely new person who was married, but Neo wouldn't give up on her that easily. He made his way back into the Matrix and reconnected with Trinity, regaining the power of The One and defeating the Analyst. Now with the both of them having full control over the Matrix, they began rebuilding it in an effort to continue the future they fought for. 

Neo's life has been filled with dread and punishment, but he has always risen to the challenge and faced down fate itself, simply because he chose to. Maybe one day, the sky will clear and the warmth of the sun will bathe the Earth again. Until then, you can count on The One to defy the odds again and again, as there is no better example of an exercise of free will against a daunting, calculating universe than Neo.

Kirito

“With a familiar motion, I slid my finger down to the bottom button… And all of my muscles froze solid. It was gone.”

In the far off future of 2022, gaming was about to change forever. The NerveGear has been released, a Virtual Reality headset that allows players to enter into a totally virtual world as if they were entering a new reality. Sword Art Online was a VRMMORPG sword fighting game where players could battle and level up their characters - it seemed like an extraordinary advancement in not only video games, but science and technology as a whole. It’s too bad that the developer was crazy and trapped all of the players in SAO, forcing them into a years spanning death game where if they lost their HP in game, their NerveGears would microwave their brains into mush in the real world. Fortunately, Sword Art Online would be host to a hero who would eventually put an end to this deadly game. Known as Kazuto Kirigaya in the real world, he would take a new name into this virtual reality. The Black Swordsman, Kirito.

Kirito was one of the beta testers for Sword Art Online, so he got an early leg up on everyone else when the game started. This caused him to be shunned from most of the player base, but Kirito was more of a lone wolf anyways. Being one of the top floor clearers, he was always at the frontlines of battle, and stayed as one of the most powerful players in the game - but being powerful doesn't mean you can save everyone, and after losing the lives of the friends he made in Aincrad, Kirito became more jaded as he was forced to accept the nature of the new reality he was put in. Fortunately, he'd find new light in Asuna Yuuki of the Knights of the Blood guild. Even in this fake world, Kirito found meaning in their connection and relationship, and became determined to protect her. Kirito would soon discover that the leader of the Knights of the Blood guild, Heathcliffe, was actually Akihiko Kayaba, the developer and game master of Sword Art Online. With one more battle, he defeated Kayaba, watching Aincrad fall over the horizon as he was brought back to his own reality after two years of battle and heartache. This, however, would not be where his story would end.

After finally awaking, the first thing Kirito did was try and find Asuna. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Asuna was being set up for an arranged marriage with Sugou Nobuyuki, research chief of RECT. Even worse, Asuna was not released from her NerveGear, and was instead kept in the SAO server which was now managed by Nobuyuki and transformed into ALfheim Online, a new virtual world. Whoops. Nobuyuki captured 300 SAO survivors in this new world and intended to use them to help him in his research for mind control, which he'd use on Asuna to make her his wife. Of course, Kirito wasn't going to go along with that, so he entered this new world as a Spriggan and, after some really weird romantic drama with his cousin slash sister that we won't be talking about, ascended the World Tree and confronted Nobuyuki as King Oberon. However, even as strong as Kirito may appear, his strength came from the games, and Oberon was the Game Master who didn't feel like playing fair unlike Kayaba. He couldn't defeat a system administrator by himself. Fortunately, Alfheim was using the same server as Aincrad, and Kayaba had copied his data into Kirito's NerveGear. With this copy Kayaba's help, Kirito was able to access Kayaba's account in the server and counteract Oberon's privileges, defeating him and saving Asuna from her prison. This was still in a game however, and in real life things are different, especially when Nobuyuki can use an actual knife to assault Kazuto with right by Asuna's hospital. Good thing that Kazuto beat his ass in real life too, and finally met Asuna in real life. Finally, the nightmare was actually over, and they were able to be together in the real world too, but Kayaba had left behind something when he died. The World Seed allowed anyone to create their own virtual worlds with this data, creating infinite potential for more virtual realities, and you know what that means. More sequels!

Not long after, an American based game, Gun Gale Online had begun to receive ominous events and rumors. A mysterious player known as “Death Gun” was seemingly able to kill players in real life by shooting them in the virtual world, which should be impossible with the way the new full dive technology, the AmoSphere was developed. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before Kirito transferred his character to this shooting game to investigate, only for his in-game avatar to mistakenly give him the model that looks very feminine. That was awkward, especially when meeting Sinon, a female sniper would be his introduction to this brand new game. Despite being a shooter, Kirito opted to use a bladed weapon for his battles here, and entered the Bullet of Bullets tournament to track down this elusive Death Gun. Working together with Sinon, they eventually discovered the truth behind Death Gun - he was actually multiple people working in tandem with each other, and when someone was shot by Death Gun in game, his accomplice would kill said person in the real world with a poisonous injection, all to create this mythos of Death Gun being able to kill players with virtual bullets. Not only that, but Death Gun was actually a former member of Laughing Coffin, a player killing guild from SAO whose guild was destroyed by Kirito. Not only that, but his accomplice was his brother, who was Sinon’s best friend in real life, who was currently in her apartment ready to kill her. Thankfully, Kirito and Sinon managed to defeat Death Gun in GGO, then Kirito managed to arrive just in time to beat his accomplice, as well as deus ex machina through his lethal injection. With that finally settled, all was well, and Laughing Coffin would never become a problem for Kirito again. Right?

After Kirito took on a new job to test a new VR technology by the company Rath, he was attacked by a surviving member of the Laughing Coffin, Johnny Black, and nearly died as a result. Thankfully, he survived the ordeal, but was put into an intense coma as a result. Then, he was kidnapped by Rath and put into their VR system as a means of treating his brain damage, leaving him in a fantasy world within accelerated time. This was the Underworld.

Here he met Eugeo, a village boy whose job was to continuously hack at a massive tree that would not fall for centuries to come. With Kirito’s help, the tree fell, and Eugeo got to choose a new calling in life, which was to find his long lost friend Alice who was held away as a prisoner in the center Cathedral for accidentally breaking the Taboo Index, a set of rules that all citizens of the Underworld must abide by. The only problem with that was that Alice had been brainwashed into losing her memories and turned into a Royal Knight for the pontifex Quinella. You see, every person in the Underworld wasn't your standard NPC, but rather artificial fluctlight copies (essentially a soul) of a human infant plugged into a virtual world to simulate and create truly conscious artificial intelligence (called A.L.I.C.E.), their only drawback being that they were physically incapable of defying orders and laws. Quinella is an artificial fluctlight that managed to establish herself as ruler and system administrator who ended up taking power from the Cardinal System and established the Axiom Church to abuse their obedient limitations. Oh, also, in the real world, the American military industrial complex was trying to take over Rath so they can turn their artificial fluctlight technology into automated soldiers in order to lead a robot army. You could say that Kirito fell into quite the rabbit hole…

Kirito was ultimately able to defeat Quinella and bring Alice back to normal, but at the cost of Eugeo's life - and also his own state of mind, as Kirito fell into a deep coma. Hey, just like in the real world! Bad timing too, because the American military has arrived and inserted themselves into the Underworld. The Dark Territory was now under the control of Gabriel Miller, an American military commander… who was also a psychopath that could, for some reason, eat souls. The two factions of the Underworld, the Human Empire and the Dark Territory were now at war, and even though Kirito's friends had managed to finally get into the Underworld, even that wasn't enough to awaken Kirito. Virtual world after virtual world, battle after battle, Kirito had seen his own failures result in the deaths of those he loved, and it seemed like he was always forced into these virtual hellscapes, having to fight for his life and for others - this strain had taken its toll on him and made it difficult for him to find the confidence he needed to proceed. Only after he was able to remember the connections and friends he had made, the lives he was able to save and the people he helped to find themselves did he find the power to get back up and, with the power of friendship and anime and the hearts of everyone in the Underworld and all his friends, defeated Gabriel Miller and saved everyone.

When he finally got back to the real world, the world was about to change, and Kirito wasn't scared to face it. This wasn't the end, as something grave was happening in ALO, and a familiar face was making itself seen again. But no matter what lies ahead, it won't be enough to stop Kirito, because Kirito too OP. plz nerf.

Skills

Neo

Before he became the one, Mr. Anderson didn’t have any form of combat experience, only being known as a well known hacker and noted to have committed every computer crime that has a law. Trinity, another hacker similar to Neo, caused detectives who tried to identify her to kill themselves and go insane. However when Morpheus showed him the way and he became Neo he proved to be the best fighter the resistance has. With the help of his operator Link, Neo can virtually have any skill he wants thanks to a training program being uploaded to his brain nearly instantly. This includes several forms of martial arts such as Takwon do, drunken boxing, karate, Kung fu, Savate, Ken Po and much more. These training programs don’t just stop with martial arts as it can include training for firearms, sword fighting, bo staff wielding, operating vehicles, or even specific things such as how to hotwire a motorcycle. Essentially, he was able to immediately master several different fighting styles within seconds by uploading them directly into his brain, and he was uploading these programs for uh, ten hours straight. Technically, this would mean that Neo should know more fighting styles than actually exist in the real world. As noted by Morpheus, Neo is highly adaptive and improvisational, and he shows this in his fights where he often makes use of whatever is available in his environment and can think on the fly in dangerous scenarios to adapt to an opponent’s moves. As we see in the Animatrix, Rebels are trained to be able to fight even while blindfolded.

In addition to his normal combat training, Neo was also trained by Morpheus to learn how to manipulate the Matrix for the purposes of combat and general control. With his help, Neo quickly learned how to detach himself from the digital world of the Matrix and change the world around him, including himself. He would fully be able to utilize this upon meeting the Oracle, and afterwards he would completely master this technique as he became The One. As The One, he was able to completely skill stomp Agent Smith, who was previously his equal in combat, as well as know how to change the Matrix on a greater level than anyone else before him, even the Agents.

Neo’s skills would become even more relevant when he was able to manipulate the Matrix itself, essentially bending the world to his whim and do practically anything. With these abilities Neo was able to match Morpheus in combat, defeated multiple foes on his own, and most notably was able to defeat multiple agents. This is notable as before Neo, no one was able to encounter an agent and live to tell the tale. However Neo was able to defeat the agents, mainly Agent Smith who after their final battle in the first movie broke him and made him a copy of Neo being able manipulate the code of the matrix like him and still succeeding in, time and time again proving he is indeed The One. Neo’s skill at combat is so great that he was able to perfectly predict every move and attack from a fighter that he just met, who immediately engaged in combat out of the blue.

Kirito

Kirito is an exceptionally skilled swordsman. Much of his training has been self taught (Aside from two years of kendo practice as a child), but he has several years of experience in swordsmanship and is scarcely ever bested by pure skill. Sword Art Online was initially designed to have no magic attacks for the sole purpose of culminating a player’s sword skills after all, forcing them to rely on different skills to fight. He can use skills like Single Shot, a precise use of throwing knives, Sonic Leap to charge an attack into the air, or Meteor Break, a seven hit combo to vanquish his foe. His most famous sword skill is Starburst Stream, a 16 hit attack where Kirito unleashes all of his skill onto. Against Gabriel, Kirito was able to push this ability further with a 17th strike. Kirito wields a dual sword style, using two swords in battle, an especially difficult and powerful art of sword fighting. The final skill of the Dual Blades technique is The Eclipse, a 27 strike move. Kirito is able to do all this stuff partially thanks to System Assistance, which is a mechanic in SAO, ALO and Underworld that will automatically help guide Kirito into perfectly replicating these skills, at the cost of not being easily cancellable.

Kirito is also skilled at computers and electronics. Even at a very young age, he was able to build machines, rigs and some rudimentary programming. When Kirito was plunged into GGO, a shooting game with a totally different playstyle and filled with professional players, Kirito was nearly immediately able to adapt to this new game and contend with the best players in this virtual world while also deciphering the secret behind Death Gun’s kills in the virtual world leading to their deaths in the real world, that being that there were multiple people working with him in the real world. He has actually shown this sort of detective smarts more than once, such as when in Sword Art Online he was able to unravel the mystery behind the safe haven “kill” with his knowledge of SAO's mechanics. When Kirito got back to ALO from GGO, he was so skilled that he was able to slice through magic spells thanks to his experience cutting through bullets, a skill feat considered nearly impossible which no one else in Alfheim has been able to replicate. 

Kirito would go on to receive more proper training and experience in his time in the Underworld in the form of the Sword Mastery Academy, which would offer Kirito a few years of additional experience honing his sword skills, thanks in part to his perception being dilated by the Fluctlight Accelerator during this time.

Equipment 

Neo

The Construct

The Construct is a loading program created by the rebel resistance to create training simulations in order to help new rebels learn how to fight as well as manipulate and fully understand the Matrix mechanically. It also serves as a massive armory for rebels, granting them literal miles worth of weapons to take with them into their incoming missions. Because all rebels get their weapons from the same source, Neo should have access to any weapon that any other rebel has displayed using in the Matrix before.

Zastava CZ99

The first of many guns that Neo would wield, this was given to him by Apoc after it was discovered that the Agents had found their location and Neo would need to begin fighting. It is a semi-automatic Yugoslavian pistol with an effective firing range of 50 meters, a solid gun for Neo to start with.

Glock 17

The Glock 17 is a small semi-automatic pistol that can fire for 50 meters and has a muzzle velocity of 375 meters per second. Technically, Neo isn't supposed to have this gun, as it seemingly replaced his Zastava during a scene with Agent Smith for no apparent reason.

Beretta 92FS

Neo can proficiently dual wield two Berettas, which can fire up to 50 meters and have a muzzle velocity of 381 meters per second.

Beretta 84FS Cheetah

This is actually Trinity's preferred weapon, the Beretta 84FS Cheetah is similar to Neo's own Beretta and was used to save his life before.

Micro Uzi

Neo can use two Micro Uzis at once, which are basically just mini sized sub-machine guns. They are compactified Uzis which can fire over a thousand rounds per minute, with an effective firing range of two hundred meters and a muzzle velocity of 400 meters per second.

Heckler & Koch MP5K

The Heckler & Koch are sub-machine guns with a similar firing range, muzzle velocity and rounds per minute as an uzi, which Neo can effectively dual wield two of.

Sa vz. 61 Skorpion

These Skorpions are custom made guns for the Matrix movie with 30 round magazines that Neo can dual wield, so we don't know the exact specs, but they likely aren't far behind his uzis and Heckler & Kochs.

M16

Neo can use an M16 assault rifle to blast through his foes with an astonishing muzzle velocity of 960 meters per second and an effective firing range of 800 meters. He is so good at using this weapon that the showoff can even precisely shoot opponents while cartwheeling.

A1169 & L2779

These are custom made automatic 12 gauge shotguns that fire 900 rounds a minute and were used by Mouse as he was shot and killed by Agents, and are actually named after the Matrix writers former names.

Napalm Bomb

Neo can carry with him a large napalm bomb that, when detonated, delivers a massive explosion that could extend across and shake an entire building.

GE M134 Minigun

This beautiful machine gun was used by Neo as he was crashing through a building on a helicopter. It can fire up to 6,000 rounds per minute and is incredibly powerful. Although it was used from a stolen helicopter, there are machine guns in the Construct, so it's not unfeasible that Neo could have access to something like this where he has shown to be able to use effectively.

Knives & Grenades

According to the Matrix script, Neo can apparently carry around knives and grenades. Cool!

Fence Post

In what may be one of the most epic scenes in all of cinema, Neo grabbed a fencepost out of the ground and used it like a bo staff, efficiently using it against hordes of Agent Smiths. This not only demonstrates his skill with such a weapon, but also his ability to deal with crowd control as well as react and adapt to unexpected situations on the fly.

Sais

Much like Raphael, Neo can wield two short sais pretty effectively in combat, using them to defeat foes with larger and heavier weapons without much trouble.

Swords

Neo can in fact utilize swords. Be they a long sword, dual wielding short swords or a weird piratey sword, Neo is quite proficient when it comes to swordplay. I guess you could say that he had his sword art online at the time.

Mace

If swords and sais are too light for your liking, Neo can also swing a massive spiked mace right on your face to smash it to pieces.

Lightning Gun

Neo isn't defenseless in the real world. As a Rebel, he has access to the Lightning Gun, a weapon that can completely fry any humans or even sentinels in one shot - unless you're the goat Tank, of course.

Kirito

Elucidator 

During his time in SAO, Kirito's main weapon of choice was the Elucidator. Dropped from a boss, this sword is one of the most powerful in the game, being able to destroy blacksmith Liz’s swords with ease. Blacksmith Liz had an especially high strength stat, but even she had difficulty trying to lift this massively heavy sword, yet Kirito can swing it around faster than the eye could track. 

Dark Repulser

Kirito’s second sword was forged with Crystallite Ingot, a powerful material in SAO. The main purpose of the sword is to allow Kirito to use his dual blade skill allowing him to wield two powerful blades at once in battle. This sword was extremely advanced to craft, and Lisbeth the blacksmith imbued all of her emotions and feelings for Kirito into it during its crafting. Also, it is made out of dragon poop. 

Kagemitsu G4

It’s a lightsaber! Despite not being a traditionally popular weapon in the gun based GGO game, Kirito picked this photon sword up as his weapon of choice. The blade is made of light and is three feet long - essentially weightless, Kirito has no inertial resistance from it, making it an easy sword to use. With it, he is even able to cut bullets in mid air.

FN Five-Seven

This is a small handgun that Kirito uses alongside his photon sword. It's a 5.7 mm caliber with a focus on accuracy and penetration - not the flashiest gun in the game, but it supplements Kirito’s fighting style in it well.

Night Sky Sword

The Night Sky Sword is a sword that Kirito obtained while in the Underworld. It took a year to forge this sword from the wood of the Gigas Cedar tree, a massive tree which was thought to take centuries to be able to cut down. As a result, not only is this sword incredibly durable, but it also contains within itself the memories of the Gigas Cedar itself, which is used to amplify itself via Incarnation and alter its size or even draw in energy from the resources surrounding it.

Blue Rose Sword

The Blue Rose Sword was formed from extremely dense ice and was protected by the white dragon until its death at the hands of Bercouli. This would end up becoming Eugeo's own sword, until he would also die, leaving it to Kirito. However, even after his death, a part of Eugeo lingered within the Blue Rose Sword. Kirito dual wields this along with the Night Sky Sword, and with it he can create ice constructs that can freeze his opponents in place, as well as produce blue roses that will sap their life away while frozen.

Excalibur

Excalibur is supposedly the strongest sword in AFO, and was awarded to Kirito upon completing the Jotunheim quest. Although we don't see him use it in battle, it is apparently one of his favorite swords. According to Kirito, it is likely capable of harming and destroying intangible ghosts due to being an enchanted weapon.

Blárkveld

Blárkveld is a long sword made by Lisbeth, presumably after the events of Jotunheim that Kirito owns. However, it became too heavy for Kirito to wield upon AFO changing into Unital Ring, a level based game.

Viridacutite Knife

This was the first weapon that Kirito crafted in the survival VRMMO Unital Ring. It is a crude and rather weak knife, but Kirito could still wield it efficiently enough to defeat a bear monster that was ten levels higher than him.

Blackwyrm Coat

Kirito's coat isn't any ordinary coat, it is made from black dragon leather and while it doesn't seem like very durable armor, it benefits Kirito by giving him the hiding skill, allowing him and his surroundings to be undetected as well as hiding his cursor from others.

Fine Iron Gear

Given to him by Yui, Kirito possesses a full set of armor made from iron as well as an iron longsword. Although the armor hinders his mobility, it gives him better defense and he was able to defeat a group of people using this new gear.

Teleportation Crystal

Kirito possesses teleportation items that can quickly bring him back to a safe location from battle. However, they are difficult to acquire, so he sparsely uses them unless necessary.

Pick

Kirito possesses picks that he can throw with his Throwing Knife skills, generally intended to hunt small animals as opposed to combat.

Healing Potions

Kirito possesses healing potions which can help him regain health lost, as any healing potion in an RPG would do.

Paralysis Dagger

Kirito owns a dagger tipped with paralysis poison, which once in contact with a target, will render them immobile for ten minutes.

Linseed Oil & Torch

In case he needs to, Kirito can use linseed oil on his iron longsword, then use a torch or any source of fire to temporarily convert his sword into a flaming sword. On top of being really cool, it is also capable of harming and easily defeating intangible ghosts and astral entities.

Yui

Yui is an artificial intelligence that was made for Sword Art Online as a mental health observer for the players in the game. However, when it turned into a death game, silly things like mental wellbeing were no longer necessary, so she was blocked from interacting with players until she was discovered by Kirito and Asune, effectively being adopted by them. After SAO ended, Yui survived by storing her data in Kirito’s NerveGear until he entered ALfheim Online, where she reappeared as a navigation pixie and part of Kirito’s equipment. Although she doesn’t have administrative privileges, she can still access the game’s code and glean some information from it, such as the properties of certain items and materials and what is blocked off by administrative access to supply Kirito with more information. In fact, Yui’s artificial intelligence is so impressive that she is capable of managing tens of thousands of tasks at the same time in parallel. In the Ordinal Scale movie, Yui was able to directly load in Kirito's save data from the SAO server for him to use, giving him his older equipment. She should be able to do this with his other games save data as well.

Abilities

Neo

Matrix Physiology

With how detailed and similar The Matrix is to our real world, you would assume one’s body in it would be identical to how it would function in real life. However, that is far from the case. When plugged in the only thing that transfers from the real world to the virtual one is the mind, meaning the body in The Matrix is nothing more than a line of code. This is referred to as one’s residual self image, a digital manifestation of one’s own mind within a computer program. Their physical attributes such as strength or speed are not tied to their muscles or a set standard, but rather it is based on their belief, just as how they do not truly breathe air in the Matrix and are able to breathe only because they can choose to believe they can breathe. In recognizing this, rebels are able to increase their power and speed to previously unbelievable levels that can continually rise further.

Unplugged Code

The Matrix is essentially just a computer system that holds a plethora of software together, and each person or object in the Matrix is itself a software. Agents are able to manipulate and affect software in the Matrix, and as such they can turn into anyone in the Matrix that is still plugged into the system. Once Neo became a rebel, he became unplugged from the Matrix, effectively making his own code independent of the greater virtual world he inhabits, thus making it impossible for Agents to affect his software and take over his body. This would also explain why Agents are no longer able to manipulate Neo’s body, as they did in their first encounter with each other before Neo became unplugged. When an Agent takes over someone’s body, they explicitly overwrite their code to do so, changing their body on a code level, and Neo is completely immune to this.

Matrix Manipulation 

To understand Neo's abilities, we must first understand how he interacts with the Matrix around him. Everything in the Matrix exists as virtual software, but for rebels, it is more akin to an illusionary dream world where full awareness of their lucidity allows rebels to change the world around them. As explained in the first movie with the spoon example, you cannot bend spoons with your mind, because doing that is impossible. You must realize that there is no spoon, and in doing so, the virtual matter can appear to bend according to your own perception - you are the one that bends. Neo has become one of the most efficient utilizers of this mechanism within the Matrix, and with it, he can effectively completely change the material reality to his whim. There is seemingly no limit to what can be done, as the Matrix becomes a whole dream world that Neo can freely manipulate.

The One

In every Matrix cycle, one person is chosen to carry the source code that will come to reset the Matrix once they return to the source. This is known as The One, and they all possess remarkable abilities transcending those of other rebels and even the Agents themselves. With it, they are able to reshape the entire Matrix itself, rather than the relatively minor alterations that rebels and Agents can cause. In addition, it also directly increases their physical abilities, as well as seemingly heightened combat skill and concentration. With it, Neo was able to completely outpace Agent Smith, who was previously relative to him. Neo did not always have the power of The One, it only first manifested when Trinity kissed him - as explained by The Analyst, the source code manifests with Neo's emotions tying to his relation to Trinity. His feelings are what activate the source code, creating more energy the stronger his emotions are, and his feelings for Trinity are what allow him to fully activate the power of the source code. In The Matrix, love is considered an irrational emotion that does not follow calculable results, but it is for that reason that Neo was able to break The Architect's cycle of resetting the Matrix, and his deterministic system of control. It is an attribute that the Matrix cannot account for, something that overrides its predictive model and is a major part in how Neo “breaks” the Matrix and expresses his will.

Telekinesis

One of Neo’s most famous abilities through The Matrix is his telekinesis. As it suggests, Neo can use his mind to stop incoming attacks like bullets and missiles. Neo can also use it offensively, being able to send foes flying with a wave of his hand, or he can even use his telekinesis to take weapons from others or the environment to use as his own.

Flight 

Neo can manipulate The Matrix so that he can, in Link's term, do his Superman thing. With his flight Neo can reach for the clouds and even fly so fast he can drag several cars behind him thanks to his speed. He is able to battle proficiently even mid flight as evidenced by his fight with Agent Smith in Revolutions, and he has shown to be able to fly for over ten whole minutes as well as cross entire cities.

Code Vision

Once Neo became The One, he was able to see the world as it truly was, lines of streaming code. Neo can visualize the fundamental code behind people and objects and doesn't need to see their physical form, and this additional perspective likely also aided in his control over the Matrix and defeating Agent Smith. Being able to see into the pure code of the Matrix, Neo is able to see the true form of someone, analyzing their code and the property of which it is made from. He can use this as a sort of scanner, such as being able to see explosives by reading the code of a building. By reading into the code of someone, Neo is able to tell their identity, and others who have the same ability were even able to read others emotions by seeing their code.

Hyper Awareness

Neo seems to possess some supernatural senses, as he was able to detect Agent Smith's presence to the surprise of Wurm, another rebel. This could also be a result of his ability to see all the code in the Matrix, allowing him to sense danger even if he cannot see it. As we see in a, very smutty scene in Animatrix, even ordinary rebels are able to fight proficiently while blindfolded.

Transmutation

When the Agents tried to entrap the Rebels, they had altered the Matrix to transform the windows in the building they were in into solid brick walls. As Neo's control over the Matrix goes back to the Source, he has much greater control than the Agents do, and should be able to replicate this if he needed to. This makes sense, given his already established manipulation over virtual matter to morph them in whatever way he chose.

The Sight

At some point, Neo had acquired the ability called The Sight. This is the same power that the Oracle has, the ability to see into the future - or, more specifically, see the world without regard for linear time. With it, Neo is able to perceive future events, which seem to correlate to what he is thinking about. For instance, when he was having sex with Trinity, he couldn't help but perceive her future death so long as he thought about her. This power does have a limit in that Neo cannot see future events beyond the choices he makes that he does not yet understand, ala cause and effect. However, technically, Neo was only ever able to save Trinity because he was able to see her be shot in his future vision, which would suggest that his choices do have universal agency and can use The Sight in a beneficial way.

Chi Energy Blast???

Apparently, according to the The Matrix Reloaded script, Neo was originally capable of conjuring a ball of electric energy from his chi that he could use to fire at his opponents. Yes, this is real. What the fuck

Intangibility

Neo is capable of phasing through the code form of people and objects on a digital level, moving through virtual matter as if he were moving through water with no physical resistance. In doing this, he was able to remove a bullet from Trinity's body and restart her heart, but he can also use it in combat, such as in his battle with Agent Smith in the first movie where he entered his body. Previously, Agents have been able to use intangibility to move through solid ice.

Self Substantiation

Although difficult, it is possible to exit the Matrix without outside assistance. This is known as Self Substantiation, and in the Animatrix, Popper was able to exit the Matrix as he fell to his death. While this action should have killed him, instead he plugged himself out of the Matrix. Theoretically, Neo could be able to do the same, as Popper had no real knowledge of the Matrix before he performed this feat. Neo was stuck in the train station, however he was rescued just as he started attempting to exit of his own volition, and he seemed to be able to do something similar in The Matrix Resurrections

Biological Manipulation

Trinity, who has the same powers as Neo, was able to alter the Analyst's body to recover his injuries immediately, even after he was completely beheaded. The Agents in the first movie were also able to alter Neo's body before he became unplugged, morphing his face so that his mouth would close itself.

Teleportation

Remember the spoon boy from the first film? Well, apparently, he is able to instantly teleport objects from one place to another, such as his hand. He was able to do this even with an object that he just saw through TV. As The One, Neo has greater control over the Matrix than spoon boy, so he should be able to replicate this feat. Another rebel, Bixby, has also shown to be able to outright teleport himself to different locations.

Illusions

Spoon boy has also shown to be able to outright cast illusions onto targets. When an artist had accidentally seen outside the Matrix, she witnessed the Sentinels governing over her and the other humans stuck to the Matrix. Misunderstanding their role, the artist believed the Sentinels were caretakers, benevolent creatures watching over and protecting the humans, and made statues to portray that. So, spoon boy decided to trap the artist inside a simulation within the simulation where she would witness the Sentinel statues come to life and begin wreaking havoc, killing people and destroying the city. Of course, none of this was real, and in the real,er, Matrix, she appeared to just be pale and immobile and spoon boy was able to pull her out.

Elemental Manipulation

Agent Fine, who Neo is superior to in terms of control over the Matrix, was once able to morph his body into a proliferation of crystals that shot out ice, which would then freeze his victim, who was someone that once nearly died from a fall before being saved by this Agent. This caused multiple bone fractures consistent with the fall she nearly died from before, despite not actually making her fall, and also caused her bones to be frozen within ice and kill her via hypothermia. Very very weird, but it means that those with inferior control over the Matrix compared to Neo are capable of inflicting elemental forces onto others and choosing the exact means of injury that they have.

Damage Nullification

Your body within the Matrix is just like any other object, an artificial, digital illusion that is freely manipulated. While harmed in the Matrix however, your mind will seem to replicate similar effects in a psychosomatic way, similar to a placebo effect. This is why when you die in the Matrix, your mind will then undergo brain death because it believes itself to be dead. The thing is, just like the spoon, by realizing that your body in the Matrix is not real, you are able to effectively ignore damage done to it, fully recovering injuries in the process. It is because of this that Rocket, a rebel with weaker control than Neo, was able to recover his hands and his broken leg while in the Matrix, even though his leg was actually being broken in the real world, effectively tricking his mind into thinking that his legs were healthy despite being destroyed and thus materializing that in the Matrix. Another person who only recently saw the truth of the Matrix and had no prior training or knowledge on how to control the Matrix was able to recover his legs from complete paralysis from the waist down. Of course, the most impressive example of this comes from Neo himself at the end of the first movie. After he was shot dead by Agent Smith in the Matrix, he died as a result in the real world. Yet, when he was kissed by Trinity and heard her say she loved him from beyond the grave, he managed to awaken to his power as The One and proceeded to revive from death from the real world, then standing up as if he were never shot at all. The Matrix transcript also confirms that this happened because Neo was able to feel her kiss and understand her love for him, despite being dead.

Code Combustion

In order to defeat Agent Smith in the first movie, Neo as The One phased into his body and then, through his control over the Matrix, caused Smith to explode. Agent Smith was previously immortal due to being able to snatch the body of anyone connected to the Matrix even after dying, but after he was defeated in this way he would not return and was presumed dead until he came back in Matrix: Reloaded as a virus that integrated into the system. Why this occurred may be lost on some viewers, but the Matrix script actually gives us some more insight on what happened. According to the script, after Smith combusted, the shards of himself were then absorbed into the Matrix. This basically means that, even if you were to survive being exploded, your consciousness would then be absorbed into the system of the Matrix, thus preventing any resurrective method like what the Agents had.

The Source 

The Source is the mainframe of the entire Matrix, as well as the source of power for The One. Neo carries the source code, which as explained, is capable of resetting the entire Matrix when inserted back into The Source. Neo is able to see machines connected to The Source in the real world even when blinded thanks to his connection to the machines and is given complete control over them. As the mainframe for the Matrix, it processes all data and events in it, and every program that exists in the Matrix. Everything that occurs in the Matrix is the result of one program or another, such as controlling the birds, the sunrise and sunset, or the way the wind blows. In this sense, the Source is the most fundamental aspect of the Matrix and allows for Neo to have complete control over the virtual reality he exists in.

 

Technopathy

Thanks to his connection to the Source, Neo developed a new ability which allowed him to instantaneously shut off the Sentinels from the real world, rendering them totally inoperable. You'd think this may be due to the Sentinels specifically linking back to the Source, however this has been described as Neo setting off a localized EMP from the machines, so Neo can apparently just create EMPs with his mind.

Transportation

Merging with the Source, Neo gained the ability to transport his mind directly into the Matrix without having to be jacked in with a device. In doing so, he was able to access the train station, an area between the Matrix that transfers information.

Force Fields

In Resurrections, when Neo was just starting to regain his powers, he manifested them through the now infamous force fields. These force fields can stop bullets as well as prevent an attack from hitting him, as well as pushing others away and protecting him from fire.

Kirito

Virtual Physiology 

Kirito’s virtual body and the mechanics and functions behind it vary depending on the virtual world that he is plugged into. Within Aincrad, his health takes the form of an HP bar that may be gradually depleted over time, and this is generally consistent among other virtual worlds, although the Underworld has more detailed and classical human anatomy, however it still has a health gauge. Once fully depleted, Kirito will die. His virtual body has no need for oxygen and he has even managed to fight in the vacuum of space before - well, a digital vacuum of space, that is.

Sonic Leap

Kirito is able to use a technique called Sonic Leap which will give him a short boost in acceleration, allowing him to jump or dash ahead with significant momentum. This move has proved quite reliable for Kirito, as he'd often use it even in his later adventures.

Searching

With the Search ability, Kirito can identify players and NPCs wherever they may be, even when they are hidden under stealth mode. Kirito can have the skill automatically target it, allowing him to see its name. This skill can also activate automatically if Kirito is unable to see his environment, acting as a sort of night vision for him. Finally, he can use this ability to track others, being able to see footprints left behind by someone.

Battle Recovery

Kirito’s Battle Recovery skill allows his health bar to recover six hundred hit points every ten seconds. What this effectively means is that, even though his durability is based on a cumulative health bar, unless you are capable of dealing enough damage to him within a quick enough time span, you would never be able to completely deplete his health bar.

Flight

In ALfheim Online, Kirito acquired transparent fairy wings that allow him to fly. For newer players, they did this by using an invisible joystick with one hand, however Kirito learned to do so without it by learning Voluntary Flight. Humans do not have winged muscles on their back, so this movement is rather difficult, but in Alfheim players have virtual bones that they can manipulate to use their wings and fly.

Night Vision

As a spriggan in Alfheim, Kirito has the ability to “light up” a place with low visibility, being able to see through a night vision perspective in dark areas. He can also grant this ability to others too as it is active.

Illusions

As a spriggan in Alfheim, Kirito is able to create illusions, but more specifically, he can disguise himself as one of the many monsters in the game. This is generally a randomized process dependent on the attack power of the caster and shouldn’t give any physical stat boost, however Kirito is able to transform into a massive, fire breathing demonic monster with this and rampage through swarms of foes. Despite technically being an illusion, this form is able to deal real, significant damage with its attacks.

Moonshade Lurk

Kirito can cast Moonshade Lurk, a modest illusionary spell that makes him more difficult to see under a shade cast by the light of the moon.

Hyper-Sensing

There are multiple ways that players have taken advantage of the mechanics of Sword Art Online, sort of like abusing glitches in a video game. The most difficult exploit to master, and perhaps the strangest, was Hyper-Sensing, an ability where Kirito somehow managed to detect the killing intent of players or monsters in any given direction. This shouldn’t be possible, and there isn’t a clear explanation for why this occurs, but Kirito theorized that it may be due to an infinitesimally short lag that occurs when the game processes two players in the same area, although Yui finds this explanation unlikely. Whatever the case, Kirito is able to detect when another presence threatens him without sight or hearing, and can even detect the direction they come from.

Savage Fulcrum

Savage Fulcrum is a sword skill in which Kirito strikes three times in a row. We did not include most sword skills as abilities, however this move is different as it has an ice property added to it where 50% of the damage would be physical, and 50% would be ice, creating an ice construct on the opponent. 

Lightning Fall

Kirito can stab his swords into the ground to initiate Lightning Fall, a three part physical and seven part lightning technique that summons electricity throughout the ground in the form of purple sparks.

Serration Wave

Serration Wave is a sword technique where Kirito slams his sword to the ground hard enough that it creates a visible shockwave. This shockwave is meant to immobilize enemies, but it can clear out weaker hordes of foes.

Memory Release

Kirito’s Night Sky Sword contains within it the memories of the Gigas Cedar tree that it is forged from. This, when in conjunction with Kirito’s own memories, is able to allow the sword to grow in power and size. In doing so, Kirito was able to match Volo, who himself became multiple times stronger in their battle. This is later explained as a method of incarnation where Kirito enforces the power of his own imagination onto that of the virtual world of the Underworld, in doing so he can unleash the power of the literal memories behind his weapon. As it was forged from the giant cedar tree, the sword has the ability to draw in and absorb resources from the environment to amplify itself.

In his battle with Gabriel Miller, Kirito was able to further amplify the Night Sky Sword with the combined memories, hopes and hearts of everyone else in the Underworld, which manifested as star-like lights that would give him the power and energy he needed to overpower the Subtilizer. In doing so, Kirito was even able to channel this energy into his own body and regenerate half of his body which was cut off.

Enhance Armament

Kirito can use Enhance Armament to imbue the Night Sky Sword with the durability and toughness of its very originator, the Gigas Cedar tree and transform the sword into a super hard spear. This spear can summon a wave of darkness that can absorb light and energy, making itself more powerful as well as enhancing its own durability and giving Kirito a new attack.

System Call

The residents of the Underworld use what they call “Sacred Arts” to generate one of several elements for their use. This is actually a system call where one uses their imagination to generate something within the virtual world, a form of incarnation. Kirito is able to generate all eight elements from this method, each with their own usage:

• Water element, for generating… water…

• Wind element, which he can use to form barriers around himself as well as propel his flight

• Freezing element (ice), for generating ice and freezing objects

• Light element, which can both produce light as well as heal wounds. Kirito had once used his Memory Release skill to absorb all of the light from the sun to generate enough light element to burn away several dark monsters susceptible to light

• Steel element, for generating metal objects

• Heat element, for generating heat and fire

• Darkness element, for generating darkness and finding specific objects and targets

• Crystal element, which can generate glass

Kirito can also generate all of them at once and use them as forms of projectiles, such as when he did so against Gabriel Miller. With Incarnation, Kirito grew to be able to produce these elements without even having to use the System Call.

Freezing Spell

By using the Blue Rose Sword from Eugeo, Kirito is able to create ice constructs to immobilize his foes - 20,000 foes, in fact. Once he does this, he can then deplete their HP and painlessly log them out of the virtual world, disseminating their virtual bodies into life energy which he can then absorb using his Night Sky Sword, increasing its power further. These were abilities that his friend Eugeo had before he died, and by seeing his Visage again, Kirito was able to not only use his abilities but build upon them.

Gigas Cedar Transmutation

Kirito can infuse a target with the sheer memories of the Gigas Cedar tree that the Night Sky Sword was forged from, in turn transforming them into the Gigas Cedar itself. The Gigas Cedar is a massive, hardy tree that takes centuries to cut down by normal means. Kirito used this against Vassago to prevent him from being able to log out and forcing him into this state for centuries as the Underworld’s time accelerated until he Kars’d, a frankly terrifying fate.

Incarnation

You may have noticed that we mentioned Incarnation quite a lot to refer to Kirito being able to pull off many of his abilities from the Underworld, but what exactly is Incarnation?

Because the Underworld works off of mnemonic visuals, it is possible to alter aspects of it via a strong enough imagination, and this can occur in many different forms. For instance, Kirito was able to make it so that flowers that were not able to grow in a specific location simply would, because he incarnated a change to the way the world works, changing “these flowers do not grow here” to “they would grow here”. This is how people in the Underworld can manifest elements through the Sacred Arts, it is really just an easier way to channel their imagination, but Kirito is able to do it through sheer will. This is also how they manage to channel the memories of their weapons in battle or perform special techniques, literally incarnating something into their reality. Kirito was able to use Incarnation in order to grant himself the abilities he had in Alfheim in the Underworld, namely his wings, so he should be able to replicate other abilities and weapons from previous virtual worlds.

Incarnation is heavily based on Kirito's own emotions as well as concentration. His own belief and imagination fuels it, and his connections with others also impact his usage, which actually played a very integral role in finally resuscitating his fluctlight when it was rendered mostly inactive. Incarnation can also reach a limit however, and is based off of his energy, so Kirito is not to overuse it or he may burn himself out. 

Previously, Kirito has shown the ability to defy the virtual world's coding to an extent in other virtual worlds, such as when he survived for a period of time after his life depleted in Sword Art Online. Some fans have interpreted this as an example of Kirito using Incarnation in other virtual worlds, but this isn't currently confirmed.

De-aging

Through some bizarre manner, Kirito is capable of de-aging life forms, such as when he de-aged two dragons to such a degree that they transformed back into dragon eggs. Apparently, this is performed by Kirito shortening one’s maximum life value given in the virtual world, meaning he is directly altering their code and data to do so, likely through Incarnation.

Incarnation Manifestation

Using Incarnation, Kirito is able to manifest an invisible “force” that acts like a physical object. This can be used as a barrier to protect himself from physical attacks as well as Gabriel Miller attempting to absorb his data and fluctlight. Its purpose is not only defensive however, as by using Incarnation Kirito can also craft an Incarnation sword out of pure will to use if he does not have any other sword available, or even Incarnate bullets. Finally, Kirito can manifest Incarnate Arms, which are essentially invisible hands that he can use to grapple things akin to telekinesis made from his imagination.

Telekinesis

Another usage of Incarnation, Kirito is able to freely move objects through the air that are as heavy as a massive steel vehicle.

Hyper Awareness

Remember Kirito’s hyper sensing from before? Well forget it, because it is now completely redundant. Because Kirito’s incarnation is so strong, he can perfectly sense and detect locations, objects and people from a significant distance away. Kirito can also use Incarnation to scan the properties of an object or being, determining its elemental makeup.

Transmutation

With Incarnation, Kirito can mend and manipulate certain objects. He can do this to change their shape, but supposedly he can also alter the material of an object as well. Once altered, it may take a while for such an object to fully get accustomed to its new incarnated form, and will give off incarnate energy.

Crafting

In Unital Ring, Kirito is able to create all kinds of objects given that he has the appropriate materials in his inventory to do so. Before placing them in a location, Kirito can position their location with a purple “ghost” form of the object before manifesting it - basically, think Fortnite. Kirito has been able to use this ability in combat before, creating a furnace for his opponents to ram into and tricking them with its ghost form.

Rotten Shot

Kirito was able to obtain decay magic in Unital Ring, and with it, he learned a new magic skill: Rotten Shot. Using Rotten Shot, Kirito can shoot out a gross ball of sludge that, although it deals no damage, it also… Does nothing else. To be fair, Kirito has found a way to put this to use. For instance, when he was nearly completely paralyzed, Kirito shot a Rotten Shot into his mouth and the sheer putridness of it was able to break him out of his own paralysis. Of course, he can always also just shove it into an opponent's mouth, which wouldn't be very pleasant.

Door of Incarnation

With Incarnation, Kirito does not need to physically travel distances to get from one place to another. He can open what are essentially portals to go from one area to the next, even if the distance extends across whole planets, as is with Admina and Cardina.

Feats

Neo

Overall

• Managed to unplug himself from the Matrix after meeting Morpheus

• Became the first member of Zion to fully manipulate the code of The Matrix

• Saved thousands of others from the Matrix and brought them to Zion

• Was able to keep up and even defeat Agent Smith in the first Matrix movie

• Managed to fight off hordes of dozens of Agent Smiths

• Saved Trinity after she was shot dead

• Even after being blinded, defeated Bane possessed by Agent Smith in the real world

• Ultimately defeated Agent Smith and stopped him from destroying everything 

• Ended the war between the humans and the machines 

• Broke the cycle of The Matrix set by the Architect 

• Reunited with Trinity and defeated the Analyst

Power

• Zion members like Morpious can break through walls with ease

• Relative to Trinity, who can kick with the force of a wrecking ball

• Jumped with enough strength to crash Agent Smith through a concrete ceiling

• The power of The One is able to remake the whole Matrix

• Is capable of morphing clouds by flying

• Can overpower dozens of Agent Smiths on top of him

• The source code that Neo carries is capable of restarting the entire Matrix

• The power of the One extends beyond the entire Matrix into the Source, the mainframe behind the whole Matrix

• Was able to battle evenly with Agent Smith at the end of Revolutions, who the Oracle predicted would attain enough power to destroy the whole Matrix

• Dispersed a massive amount of rain over a city in his fight with Smith

• Destroyed an entire training program and affected the machines in the real world from within said program

• Neo and Trinity have the ability to physically remake the Matrix

Speed

• Even when he just started training he was fast enough to run up a wall

• Can kill three guards in a split second before they could hit the ground

• Pulled his guns out and shot them at thought-speed

• Performed the most famous bullet dodge scene of all time 

• Morpheus believed that Neo could exceed the Agents speed, even though they can dodge entire clips of bullets

• Agents can also move and perceive events so fast that the entire world appears in stopped time

• Was able to smash Agent Smith through a ceiling, fall back down then flip away before a train could reach him

• Was able to stop multiple bullets at once with his telekinesis

• Can keep up with Agents that hold the attack speed of a machine gun

• The encoded machine language of the Matrix was unable to keep up with Neo’s actions once he became The One

• Stated to fly faster than a speeding bullet

• Was able to stop multiple bullets with his telekinesis while they were in the same relative position

• Flew 500 miles in less than 14 minutes (Mach 2.8)

• Neo is fast enough that he can outpace explosions that they look like they’re in slow motion

• While in the real world, was able to dodge a shot from the lightning gun

• Superior to the sentinels, who can briefly fly in tandem away from an EMP wave

• Along with Agent Smith, was able to punch and kick as fast as a particle accelerator

• The mere shockwave of his attack was able to move hundreds to thousands of tons of water as fast as lightning

• Described as moving faster than the active rain

• Along with Agent Smith, can make shockwaves fast enough that it can dispel raindrops

• Even when depowered from the power of The One, was able to dodge point blank gunfire

• Superior to Exiles who can catch bullets with their teeth

• At his peak, superior to the Analyst, who can perceive time so slowly that a bullet moves at a snail’s pace

• Does it again

• Reacted to and blocked machine gun fire

• Redirected a missile mid-fire

• The power of The One draws directly from the Source, the mainframe of the Matrix, which can process all of London within a couple of nanoseconds

Durability & Resistances

• Is completely fine after Morpheus kicked him hard enough to break a wooden beam

• As a Rebel, is immune to the Agents attempts to overwrite his code

• Likely comparable to Morpheus, who was able to resist the Agent's mind altering serum

• Could survive multiple attacks from Agent Smith who, during the same battle, was able to easily puncture steel beams, as well as being knocked into a wall hard enough to shatter it

• Was able to survive getting shot a few times before succumbing to his wounds 

• Resisted Agent Smith attempting to transform Neo into a copy of Agent Smith

• Is capable of blocking a sword strike with his bare hands

• Was able to continue fighting even after having his eyes mutilated and fried

• Was completely fine after being smashed through a building

• Could withstand being in the epicenter of a shockwave that pushed across rain across a city

• Survived a miles high piledrive that sent a shockwave across a city block

• Can still fight after being slammed through concrete grating, pillar and wall

• Superior to Agents, who are just fine being within solid ice and can phase through them

Kirito

Overall

• Defeated a giant Santa Claus monster, Nicholas the Renegade

• Discovered that Heathcliffe was the Game Master Akihiko Kayaba, then defeated him in battle, beating Sword Art Online

• With the help of Kayaba, defeated Oberon, then defeated him again in the real world as Nobuyuki

• Along with Sinon, defeated Death Gun and won the Bullet of Bullets tournament

• Defeated Eiji and the original 100th SAO floor boss, foiling Professor Tetsuhiro and becoming the #1 ranked player in Ordinal Scale

• Defeated Quinella, the Administrator of the Underworld

• Defeated Gabriel Miller, the Subtilizer and saved the Underworld

• Tamed the Lapispine Dark Panther

• Aided in defeating the Life Harvester

Power

• Can break swords with one strike

• He could swing his sword faster than the eye could track, creating a shockwave that shook a whole room while simply practicing

• Shook a whole bridge with the force of his swings

• Shook the “earth” of Alfheim while transformed into a massive monster (503 Megatons)

• Kirito flew with enough force that he could rip a hole in the fabric of Alfheim’s virtual world

• Broke a class-15 sword with a damaged class-10 sword

• Struck through Raios’s sword, along with his arms

• With the Night Sky Sword’s power increase, was able to match Volo who himself became multiple times stronger

• Shook Castle Cathedral in his battle with Fanatio

• Defeated Quinella the Administrator while she was merged with the Cardinal system of the Underworld, which maintains the virtual world it governs and can destroy it at will

• Should be relative to Iskahn, who can make a massive explosion with his punches which contained enough heat to char the atmosphere

• Dispersed every cloud across the entire horizon

• Kirito’s collision with the Abyssal Horror shook all of the Underworld’s universe (35 Yottatons)

• Should be comparable to Asuna, who was able to summon several massive meteors

• Was once able to absorb all of the light from the sun for his own Memory Release skill

• With the help of Asuna, was able to match the power of an attack from The Life Harvester, who was powerful enough to shake the whole town of Ruis na Rig

Speed

• Countered an attack which moved four yards in 0.4 seconds

• Is stated to be the fastest player in all of SAO

• His sword strikes were so fast that even his own eyes couldn’t keep up with them

• Struck multiple times within a single second

• Struck a dragon faster than the eye could track

• Suguha believed that Kirito’s reaction speed was so fast in real life that it was like he perceived time on a different scale, and that this was due to the full dive

• Ran fast enough to leave behind a shockwave

• Moving faster than the eye can follow, Kirito unleashed four attacks in a single breath

• Threw a pick faster than the eye could follow

• Along with Sinon, dodged multiple bullets while in Gun Gale Online, which should be as fast as their IRL counterparts

• Sinon can maneuver around Behemoth’s GE M134 machine gun fire, which can fire hundreds of bullets within a single second

• Kirito predicted and aim dodged the gunman’s laser shots

• Kirito deflected every single bullet fired at him from an HK G3A3 rifle (Mach 11)

• Kirito cut a bullet from Sinon’s Hecate II in mid air, which travels faster than sound

• Sliced through multiple magic spells in mid-air easily

• Deflected a whip moving 50 feet

• Intercepted Fanatio’s high-charged light beam

• Is able to cross ten “kilors” in a blink with wind element’s propulsion

• Very, very explicitly flies at Mach 10

• Relative to Ronie, who blocked a whip moving within a hundredth of a second

• Was able to dodge a fireball belched out by a giant frog ew

• His consciousness at his limit allowed him to perceive time as if it was in slow motion

Durability & Resistances

• Even when under the effects of paralysis poison and with less than 10% health with a sword through his stomach, managed to hold off Kuradeel

• Even after having his HP depleted to zero, Kirito persisted for a short period of time to strike Kayaba

• An entire gang of bandits were barely able to deplete any of his health

• Withstood multiple firespells and resulting explosions

• Pushed through the pain of having a sword through his body

• Is able to survive multiple bullet wounds

• Pushed through two bullet wounds

• Survived being punctured six times and kept fighting

• Resisted Gabriel Miller attempting to absorb his fluctlight, rendering his mind comatose

• Managed to continue fighting even after having half of his body cut off and his heart removed from his body

• His fluctlight managed to survive for 200 years in the Underworld, significantly past the lifespan expectancy for a fluctlight to retain and process information

Weaknesses

Neo

With the power of The One, Neo may seem invincible, but he's not. The power of The Sight only works so far as when Neo can understand the actions that he undertakes, and even then he doesn't have great control over this ability, nor his ability to transport into the Matrix directly. His power as The One is contingent on his emotional state, as explained by the Analyst. He was significantly depowered once he lost his bond with Trinity, which makes sense as his relationship with her is what gave him the power of The One in the first place. If his emotional strength or bond with Trinity were to falter, then he can lose his powers just as he did in Resurrections, including his ability to revive from death. Speaking of which, he can obviously also be killed from the real world if his physical body sustains enough real trauma, as he did when Deus Ex Machina overloaded him with energy.

Kirito

A major weakness with Kirito’s SAO sword skills is that they are preprogrammed movement actions, and once he performs a skill, he cannot cancel it midway without causing a delay and leaving himself vulnerable. This is especially notable with skills such as The Eclipse, which has 27 whole attacks, and a skilled enough opponent would be able to take advantage of this. In addition, while Incarnation is incredibly powerful, it comes with a major drawback in that it works both ways. If Kirito were to envision himself disadvantageously, then that will affect him mnemonically as a result. When he was in a coma for half a year, his own image of himself damaged him and contributed to keeping him in that state. Incarnation also has the limitation that Kirito cannot just do anything with it, he must understand exactly what it is he is altering and how to perform it. This is why he did not want to use Incarnation to unpetrify Selka, Ronie and Tiese, as he wasn’t sure if he could properly alter their bodies back to normal. Also, it is still technically possible to break through Incarnation barriers, as Incarnation is only manipulating matter through the power of imagination. Everything done with Incarnation requires a certain level of imagination power, and the more contrary to the essential logic of a thing is, the more difficult it would be to use Incarnation to manipulate it. Kirito can also reach a limit with his Incarnation at some point, and one final limitation is that proficient use of Incarnation in battle requires keeping a consistent mental image of one’s Incarnation so that it does not get outsped, something Kirito isn’t especially good with.

Summary

Neo

“Because I choose to.”

Advantages:

• Consistently faster

• Notably more skilled in combat

• Can resist any attempt to transmutate him or alter him digitally

• The One has more diverse displays of reality warping than Incarnation

• The One may allow Neo to see and manipulate Incarnation manifestations

• Harder to kill

• Combusting Kirito into code could end the fight

Disadvantages:

• More limited displays of power

• Cannot directly match Kirito's power boosts

• Less experienced

Kirito

“I screamed. I screamed and resisted. Against the system. Against the Absolute.”

Advantages

• Greater direct displays of power

• Greater ways to amplify his strength

• More experienced

• Has fought through more virtual worlds

• Can use Incarnate Sword if he were to be disarmed

• Incarnation barriers could theoretically protect Kirito from being digitally attacked

• Potentially greater exertion of free will

• Coffee Soda

Disadvantages:

• Slower

• Weaker control over virtual worlds

• His game ending moves are all resisted or countered

• Incarnation has more limited usage

• Death defying feats are less impressive

• Christmas specials

Before The Verdict

This will be complicated. I hope you like technobabble, pseudobabble and technopseuodbabble.

Matrix Techno-Cosmology

During the war between the humans and the machines, the humans had blotted out the sky in a layer of thick storms to deprive the machines of their main energy source, being the sun's rays. In order to compensate, the machines used the humans' own body heat and bioelectricity as their new source of energy, and in order to perform this more efficiently and keep the humans in a state of compliance they built the Matrix, a massive virtual reality program capable of hosting billions of people inside it, invented by a specialized program called The Architect. The Matrix is a system based on the level of control it can exert onto its inhabitants, and has been built over the course of several cycles to fit this purpose. When the humans do not accept the Matrix as their reality, it will inevitably result in a system crash for the whole virtual world. While the first Matrix was built to be an effective paradise, it was not accepted by humanity, and thus it failed. The next Matrix had the many failings and vulgarities of typical human life, but it also failed due to its inherent lack of pre-conceived choice, which ironically caused humanity to rebel against it again. The Architect refined the Matrix constantly, but with the introduction of choice caused the introduction of an eventual anomaly that does not follow the pre-ordained coding of the Matrix, and would cause the system to crash if not reloaded within a hundred years time. This anomaly would contain the source code, allowing them total control over the Matrix and would be what is known as “The One”. The Architect could not remove the anomaly from the system, but could get them to return the source code to the source (the mainframe that processes the entire Matrix) and thus restart the Matrix, restarting humanity as Zion (the human resistance) would be destroyed then begin again, with no knowledge of the previous cycles.

As explained by the Merovingian, classical cause and effect predetermines will and actions. Every action that is to be taken is only the result of previous conditions and circumstances, and in that sense, we do not possess free will as generally understood. This is because, structurally, macroscopic objects all follow the same laws of motion, and everything that happens is due to causal conditions and would not occur otherwise. It's sort of complicated, but think of it this way: say you want a random result to decide something, and so you flip a coin. No matter how you flip the coin, the side is never actually random, because there are certain conditions that will determine what side it will land on, such as the side it was initially, the height it falls, the way you flip it, etcetera. If we knew all the conditions prior, you can mathematically always deduce the side the coin will land on. This extends to everything macroscopically, even the neurons in our brain that, while heavily recursive, are still causal and follow the chain of cause and effect, like gears turning causing the motion of other gears.

This is the very system that the Matrix was built off of, with The Architect using it as a system of control to remove agency from even the anomaly. Neo was the first one to actually reject The Architect's choice, although others have rejected the Matrix to a lesser extent. The Matrix is a completely illusionary world of code, and by recognizing that it is not real and rejecting it, one can alter its properties, similar to hoq being lucid in a dream gives you greater control over what happens in it.

So, how big is the Matrix? We know that it is at least a replication of the planet that houses billions of people and has other international locations such as London and Australia, but can it be larger? Well, it is referred to as a universe, but I'd hesitate to use that term so liberally here. A universe only really refers to a whole of matter and space, and does not necessarily need to be as large as our own universe unless context suggests that they are similar functionally, and the Matrix obviously is not. There is very little reason for The Architect to construct an entire cosmos as large as our observable universe for a species of people that he knows will never observe that point, given the eventual hundred year period of resetting the Matrix. However, that is not to say that the Matrix cannot be larger than a planet. In one scene, we are given a view where we zoom away into outer space and see the larger area around it, including the sun and a backdrop of dozens of stars. The starry background could certainly just be artificial, however being able to move far enough away and see the entire backdrop where the Earth is not visible yet the sun is, would suggest that the sun in the Matrix is of comparable astrological size to our own sun. This also makes some contextual sense, as if The Architect's goal was to create a world that humanity would be unable to differentiate from the real world, then it would be a lot easier to forgo the entire universe as opposed to our own sun which would be easily identified as artificial otherwise. With that, we can surmise that the Matrix is a digital space containing one star and one planet.

Matrix Miscellaneous 

London

I hate this place.

There has been a lot of discussion around one particular feat attributed to the Matrix processor itself from the short story of Matrix comics collections, Goliath. In it, the central processing unit was destroyed by aliens and as a result, the protagonist of the story, who was living in London at the time, had found himself in a black void as an Agent informed him that he was only stuck there for a couple nanoseconds as London was re-processed. This is a pretty complicated feat, so we need to clarify a few things before getting into the calculation.

Previously, this feat has been calculated assuming that the Matrix processed the entire virtual world. This assumption was based on the idea that since the attack destroyed the central processing unit, and that the Matrix does not exist in different servers and only exists in one digital space, it would make more sense if it were to mirror the entire Matrix as opposed to a single city. The Agent does say that London was being reprocessed, but he could just be referring to it locally as that is where the protagonist was currently living in at the time. However, while there are some logistical problems that could be argued with the event, it is largely still an assumption. A computer system does not need to have only one central processing unit to function, and later in the story, the Agent does say that the aliens were able to take out most of Australia, which means that specific segments within the Matrix can indeed be targeted from the outside world without having to affect the entire virtual world. Because of this, we are going to be focusing on the interpretation that it only affected London, and only London was being reprocessed.

Next, we need to find a way to calculate the data of the city of London, at least within the framework of how data works in the Matrix. The numbers and symbols you often see as the code of the Matrix are actually an encoded language specific for the Matrix, and thus it technically compiles more data than we see. In order to get as conservative a result as possible, we will be directly comparing it to computer bits, the smallest language in computer processing data. This is binary code, 1s and 0s, the most fundamental units of information used to determine if a value is true or false. Determining how much matter equates to a unit of Matrix data is tricky, previous calculations have assumed that every molecule or atom could equate to a Matrix unit, but to be as objective as possible we will instead be directly comparing it with visual depictions that we see it in. In the same comic collection, we see these units of data comprise a small amount of space within a spider's silk web, so we will be using that instead to find a general “size” for bits within the Matrix. This example actually works really well, because in this instance we see the data as 1s and 0s, which is exactly what computing bits are.

Blue: 13 px

Red: 17 px

Yellow: 12 px

A spiders silk is 0.001 millimeters thick

Height: 0.0013

Width: 0.0009

Assuming length is similar to width

Volume: 0.1053 mm³

Now that we know the volume that a bit of information comprises in the Matrix, we only need to compare that to the entire volume of London.

Assuming that air and light are not composed of Matrix bits to be conservative, the vast majority of occupied space and matter in London, and the only things that will have a real effect on the final result are the buildings and residential dwellings. We don't know to what extent the surface level ground is considered a part of London, so we will also be ignoring that.

There are at least 42,000 buildings in London. We are going to assume about 5 stories, or 21.5 meters on average, with a 9 meter width and length.

Volume of rectangular prism: 21.5×9×9=1,741.5×42,000=73,143,000 m³

Assuming hollowness of 80% (keep in mind that this calculation does not account for people, animals, plants or other objects and structures)

14,628,600 m³

According to the London Assembly research report, there are 3,790,210 dwellings in London. However, that is for 2023. According to the report, housing stock has increased by 680,000 since 2002, which is around when the Matrix movies take place. This would drop the number down to 3,110,210 residential dwellings, but this also doesn't take into account the number of flats, which make up the majority of new housing made since 2002. 86.7% of new dwellings were flats, so only 13.3% of them were actually new households. 13.3% of 680,000 is 90,440, so the actual number would be 3,699,770 houses. There are still a lot of flats included in this number, however, so we need to eliminate them. In 2021, it was estimated that only 45.8% of homes were non-flats. 3,790,210×0.458=1,735,916 non-flats and subtracting that by 90,440 we get 1,645,476 non-flat houses in the year 2002 in London. Assuming about 6 meters for the height of an average house, along with 9 meters in width and length, we can find the volume of it as a rectangular prism.

6×9×9=486×1,645,476=799,701,336 m³

Assuming hollowness of 80%

159,940,267.2 m³

159,940,267.2+14,628,600=174,568,867.2 m²

Now we finally have our volume, we can compare that to the volume we have for our bit of data to find out how many bits were processed.

174,568,867.2÷0.0000000001053=1.657e+18 bits of data in all of London

Assuming it took about 5 nanoseconds

1.657e+18÷5e-9=3.314e+26

Or, in other words, the Matrix can process 341 septillion bits per second. To put that into perspective, the human mind processes events at 11 million bits per second, and the fastest supercomputers are able to process billions of bits per second, which would make the Matrix hundreds of quadrillions times a faster processor than even the greatest supercomputers we have today. This is what gaming will be like in 2013.

That's really cool, though scaling it to Neo himself is another matter. This blog has considered it to be somewhat of a high end, however Neo is intrinsically linked to the Source, the mainframe of the Matrix. A mainframe refers to the processor behind a given computer system, so this value can be applied to the Source. The power of The One allows Neo to draw his power and physical ability directly from the Source, and we've seen that awakening to the power of The One amplified his combat and reaction speed significantly. The coding language of the Matrix was also unable to keep up with Neo's actions as be awakened to his power as The One, according to the Matrix transcript. Regardless, the Matrix is wild.

Sword Art Online Techno-Cosmology

The very first virtual world was created by Argus and lead developer Akihiko Kayaba as Sword Art Online. This functions with the NerveGear, a virtual reality headset that interferes with the nervous system to simulate sensations such as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell while preventing you from moving in the real world. The NerveGear used microwaves for its technology, so a high enough emission could kill a person. SAO is a virtual reality that contains Aincrad, a massive tower on a floating island with a hundred layers to it, each layer containing areas such as towns and forests and spans at least 8 kilometers in diameter. Sword Art Online was managed by the Cardinal System, the processor behind the game, a complex program that managed and maintained all of Aincrad as well as events, NPC behaviors, and anything else within the game. After Aincrad and SAO was destroyed, the server was maintained and used to create ALfheim Online, another virtual world which is based off of Aincrad, and so player data from SAO is transferable to ALO. Alfheim is larger than Aincrad, being at least 30 miles in radius. ALO uses the AmoSphere, a device similar to the NerveGear that carries multiple safety precautions which limit the severity of sensations that are inserted into one’s mind, only emitting low energy pulses onto the brain. After Noboyuki, the main admin of ALO was defeated, ALO was shut down and then brought back as part of a nexus of the World Seed.

The World Seed was a digital code left behind by Akihiko upon his death that is basically an open source for SAO. With it, hundreds of developers were able to create their own virtual worlds, which became connected with one another via a digital nexus. While there are some hyperbolic statements of areas in Aincrad and Alfheim being infinite or endless, we know from the World Seed that only after hundreds of virtual worlds were created that the cumulative size of them would eventually surpass the land size of Japan. It is thus unlikely that any normal virtual world was any larger than an island, as they are usually depicted. In fact, Kirito did not believe it was technologically possible to make a conventional virtual reality that was hundreds of miles in size.

Separate from the nexus, a company called Rath had studied an alternate, far more complex method of full dive than what the NerveGear or AmoSphere provided. Before we can cover the virtual reality they made with it, we should first explain how it works. What do you think consciousness stems from? What is the soul made out of? Our brains are made out of cells, and nuclei within them, and dendrites and axons which connect and receive impulses from our nerve cells to each other. The network of our neurons in conjunction is what we think of as the mind, but the essence of the mind itself is not simply the reaction of neurons and synapses, that is only the medium to which information travels through. Within the brain cells are microtubules, nanometers in diameter that channel and store the true essence of human consciousness: light. Evanescent photons which fluctuate on a quantum probabilistic level, like how microscopic quantum particles fluctuate between probabilities. It is believed that this fluctuation in itself is the very essence behind the human mind and consciousness as we know it, in other words, it is the soul. This would come to be known as one’s fluctlight, and would be the basis behind Rath’s full dive technology. Each unit of data is a microtubule of photons, a “cubit” that the system would run on. The Soul Translator takes the billions of cubits in a mind and inputs information onto them to make one experience sensory information that the STL wants them to receive. Instead of relying on 3D models made from polygons, the STL uses the pneumonic visual data from our own memories to function - think of it like how you can create an image of something you saw before in your head. The STL will then create a perfect visual replica of that cognitive image in order to produce the objects and world in the virtual reality. Kirito explains it all in his own words here.

This new technology was used to create the Underworld, a mnemonic virtual world that feels far more real than any previous virtual world. The purpose of the Underworld was to experiment with and copy human fluctlights, place them within the virtual world, and use the Fluctlight Accelerator to accelerate their perception of time by a thousand times to simulate an artificial society and eventually produce a truly sentient artificial intelligence. That is all well and good, but I'm sure that what you powerscalers want to know is exactly how big is this virtual world in comparison to the previous ones?

Well at the end of the Alicization story arc, we do actually witness Kirito, Asuna and Alice appear outside of the planet's atmosphere, where we get some exposition on the exact nature of the Underworld’s cosmic layout. Here we learn in addition to the main planet Cardina, there also exists a second planet Admina, along with their star that they orbit Solus. The author of Sword Art Online, Reki Kawahara has clarified that the Underworld, at most, only contains these celestial bodies - two planets and one star. Reki has also stated that the stars we see in the sky outside of the main solar system are part of a skybox, similar to what you may see in video games where the stars are not life sized but part of a starry background. We don't really get any information on the universe outside of the main solar system, so there is little reason to not take the author's own words for this. Kirito as the Star King did conquer space outside of the planet, but he is specifically referred to as having conquered two planets, Admina and Cardina, not other solar systems. Admina and Cardina are simply referred to as stars in a non-literal, symbolic way, hence Kirito’s title as the Star King. There is a statement where Kirito sees the starry sky in the Underworld and compares it to the Milky Way Galaxy, but he is referring to the galaxy’s arm that you could often see in the sky and it is not a statement that relates to its size. It only means that the skybox has a pattern that looks like the galaxy’s arm in the night sky. Kirito actually says after this that the Underworld likely is not as large as our own solar system, when referring to its size. Reki knows how he writes his stories better than we do. Still, what is essentially a VR game having its own life sized solar system is pretty ridiculous. 

Sword Art Online Miscellaneous 

Fanatio

When discussing Kirito's speed, his fight with Fanatio, whose main ability is summoning and generating light, obviously needs to be talked about.

Fanatio's Heaven Piercing Blade was forged from the power of a thousand mirrors (???) designed to create a weapon capable of using light from the sun as a weapon. Not only is it directly stated to be light and works by reflecting off of mirrors, it is also stated to have no mass and be pure heat, and Kirito does intercept it, as well as clearly move in tandem with it in the anime. Pretty clear cut, so are there any issues you could poke into it?

Well, in the anime it is seen to bend at certain points and are clearly not straight lines, but even in the light novel these light attacks are described as being able to explode, they splinter, scatter and spray, are referred to as having significant density, display force and in the illustration it expands and contracts in a way that is unusual for a straight beam of line, being more akin to a Kamehameha type energy attack. Still, despite these problems, it is obviously and directly intended to be light, so you could argue that relying on these contradictions is somewhat picky. The bigger problem is that this feat occurred while Kirito and the Underworld inhabitants were undergoing a perception acceleration where they would experience the world a thousand times faster than normal. Other objects in the Underworld are also accelerated by the same degree, so this isn't really a problem with most of their feats - however, light specifically cannot accelerate past the speed of light, it's not physically possible. This is the reason why turning and bending are often considered disqualifying for light, as they would suggest acceleration. What this would suggest is that either natural light within the Underworld would move at a significantly slower rate according to their accelerated perception as normal light, or that the light Fanatio channels is not actual light but a visual depiction of light according to their mnemonic perception, which could be supported by the previous contradictions. If it's the latter, then that throws into question how closely it resembles real world light in terms of speed. There is also the factor to consider that Kirito is noted to have to significantly struggle and concentrate in order to dodge and intercept bullets and that every magic attack in Alfheim is slower than bullets, as well as how Kirito believes that it would be impossible for him to dodge lightning, and that Kirito cannot use Incarnation to make himself move as fast as 180,000 mph, if that were a route that you want to go on.

Overall, it does have potential as an argument, however there are a few notable sticking points that make it somewhat questionable. More specific opinions will be given in the individual verdicts.

Bercouli

Bercouli's Time Piercing Sword technique has the ability to “cut into the future”. Gabriel Miller has been fast enough to catch this very attack from Bercouli before, and Kirito in turn scales to him. Some people have used this as evidence that Gabriel Miller and thus Kirito have immeasurable or infinite speed, however this is founded on a major misunderstanding of how the ability works.

As cool as it would sound, Bercouli doesn't literally attack his opponents into the future - or at least, not in the way that vs brained people imagine. What he does is that he strikes the air, and then the chronological length of the force of that strike will remain suspended after he has finished swinging his sword, effectively creating a projectile. Here is the explanation from the anime version, as well as an animated depiction of how the attack works. The attack does not time travel or anything to hit someone in a temporally different location, instead the effect of the attack remains in the future, causing the force of it to persist as a projectile that is in the present. Bercouli caught this projectile, which was in the present relative to him. It was only “in the future” relative to when Bercouli swung his sword. The anime provides a visual depiction to demonstrate this, if need be.

In short, nah.

High Hyperversal Kirito???

There is an argument which caught our attention regarding the Cardinal system in SAO and how that may affect Kirito's powerscaling. Basically, the argument goes like this: 

The Cardinal mathematical in real life often is used to describe transfinite numbers, sets of infinity (such as, for example, all even numbers are infinite and all odd numbers are infinite, so they can be put into sub-sets of all real numbers, which includes both sets of infinity). The Cardinal System has infinite aleph cardinals, and as such virtual worlds using the Cardinal System would have a transfinite amount of information, being spaces made of “transfinitism”. Alternately, since the Cardinal System calculates probabilities, it could be generating a transfinite amount of possibilities, or a multiverse.

Frankly, this argument makes a lot of gigantic assumptions out of little more than the name of the governing system. Cardinal numbers in real life just refer to the naming operation of numbers in reference to the quantity of something (like saying one, two and three as opposed to saying first, second and third). It does not always mean transfinite numbers, even when used in sets, and there is very little to support this in SAO's case. In the Ordinal Scale movie, they do show the aleph cardinal symbol when referencing the Cardinal System, but this was just a short visualization to convey the idea behind cardinals as opposed to ordinals while they were discussing the Ordinal Scale in a way that clearly was not about transfinite sets. There exists no direct statement that the Cardinal System or any virtual reality uses a transfinite amount of data. For instance, the Ordinal Scale's main draw was that players would be ranked ahead of each other in a leader board system that uses numbers ordinally, which means ordering numbers like first, second and third. SAO directly uses this concept in a way that does not infer transfinite numbers, so there should be a greater burden of proof than what we have to show that such concepts are being used in a meaningful way.

Even if the Cardinal System did use transfinite aleph sets in some way, there is no proof that it is in a way that would be relevant for scaling. It could be used in developmental or mathematical ways that do not actually require a transfinite degree of data to process, or be used in some other way that doesn't actually relate to physical size. We already know that virtual worlds are finite in size, and the idea that the Cardinal System makes a multiverse whenever it calculates probabilities is plucked out of thin air. The Cardinal and Ordinal systems in universe are essentially just fictional super science concepts made by Akihiko Kayaba and we don't really learn the actual in depth scientific or technological ways that they work, let alone anything which infers some sort of transfinite multiverse or space. This would also be massively out of scale with the rest of the Sword Art Online series, which never approaches a level even close to this.

In short, nah.

Verdicts

Read our fight script here!

By Dick with a D

The Monster King

Thank you for reading this blog up to this point, I've worked really hard on this and I put a lot of passion and time into compiling all of this together. The more I researched this topic, the more I realized how severely underrated this fight really is. It's an older matchup, but it's one that holds up surprisingly well if you really looked into it. I really like how this blog turned out personally, and I hope other people do too, regardless of your thoughts on the verdict. These are two franchises that people within my personal versus community don't have a lot of open knowledge on, so it was fun to be able to go into them like this. As I usually do, I like to give some reasons for why I like the matchup before getting into my verdict, though here I would like to address some criticisms that I have seen of this matchup.

1. Aren't their fighting styles too different to work well?

While Neo is a martial artist and Kirito is a swordsman, this isn't really much of an issue if you really looked into their series. Neo has blunted blades with his bare hands before and has fought sword users, as well as used swords himself and other long weapons like a fencepost, and we actually have an example of a fist fighter battling a sword user in SAO, Iskahn vs Scheta. There's not very much reason why Neo cannot use his plain martial arts skills against a sword fighter either, he's done it before. Both of them also have equivalent projectile options, and I think that both of them match really well in their higher scale terms with flight and relatively large impact blows, as well as in how they manipulate the virtual world around them, especially in comparison to most other options I've seen for them. You can represent a lot of both of their toolkits and most notable moments in a fight like this, there's nothing really wrong with the dynamic.

2. Isn't the connection kind of surface level?

You might think that, given that this is an older matchup and the main similarity is pretty clear to see, but is that actually true? Well…

Obviously, the main premise of both Matrix and SAO is the existence of a virtual world. Both Neo and Kirito began their journeys as people who had isolated themselves until they were forced to team up with others in order to survive, and through that they both found love which not only helped push them on but also was the main catalyst that allowed them to find the strength to literally break through the virtual system itself, defying death to defeat the main villain in their first stories (Agent Smith and Akihiko). Both of them would continue to use their relationships and connections to push forward and fight against authority figures, and they would find that their true reality lies not in the materialistic world, but in their consciousness and relationships with others, which is a main theme for both series. This is used as a theme of them exerting their wills against an absolute and impenetrable system, which allows them to alter the virtual world around them - Neo spends the whole series trying to exert his free will against the deterministic system of the Matrix and thus is able to change and manipulate it, and Kirito pushes against the systems constraints with his own will even touches on the topic of his own free will in Alicization, where he exerts his own free will to not only unlock Incarnation but also inspire others, the AI to find their own free will in a system where everyone must follow their set paths and programming. Both of them have a sleek black aesthetic in their clothing, both of them would have an emphasis on speed (and specifically dodging bullets for Kirito in GGO), both of them are incredibly skilled fighters who exploit their virtual systems as part of their abilities, both have defeated administrator roles of their systems. Both the Matrix and SAO were created by a super philosophical person who saw a higher meaning in their creations, and were not ultimately hostile to Neo and Kirito, and had contrasting goals, as Ahikiho sought out virtual worlds as a way to ascend humanity to greater worlds, whereas the Architect created the Matrix to imprison humanity from their own true free world (to add to this, while the Architect and Deus Ex Machina are not the same, both Deus Ex Machina and Akihiko would help Neo and Kirito to defeat someone who sought to corrupt their virtual worlds, with Deus Ex Machina helping to defeat Agent Smith and Akihiko's copy fluctlight helping to stop the American military). Both the Matrix and SAO have thematic allusions to Alice in Wonderland, and the way their technologies developed ironically worked in reverse order (The Matrix was created as a result of sentient AI, sentient AI was created in SAO as a result of the virtual worlds).

So yeah, obviously it is pretty thematic. I think it touches upon the major beats of both of their stories, personally. 

3. Isn't there a stylistic clash going on here?

Yeah and that's based. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally like it when we have fights between characters from entirely different mediums, it feels like a more unique crossover as opposed to having two characters from the same genre and the same medium who look the exact same and have probably already been in an official crossover before. I personally find matches and crossovers like this to be more interesting, but I know that not everyone has to share my opinion on that. However, we have had fights like this before, namely, Star Wars vs Naruto matchups. Live action movies and anime isn't something that you can't make work, and more importantly, any self respecting Matrix fan would know that the Matrix is anime as fuck. Matrix was heavily based on Ghost in the Shell, and a lot of their action scenes took heavily from anime. The Matrix even has an anime, the Animatrix. I also don't really quite buy the idea that there is any real tonal difference between the two. Both series get pretty dark and serious, both of them have daunting, oppressive and dark imagery and designs, but both of them can also have humor. I don't really see a solid reason they can't be put together, most arguments that are like this that I've seen have looked like grasping to me.

Anyways, with that out of the way, we can finally get to analyzing these characters and finding out who wins, divided into four categories: strength, speed, skill, and of course, their hax.

As with every fight, we always have to ask who is stronger. They both have pretty superhuman feats of strength and can increase their power mid battle, but Kirito generally has more impressive direct physical showings. Neo is pretty strong, he's not really that grounded at all when he's at his best. I mean, look at his fight with Agent Smith in Revolutions, where his punch was able to push back hundreds to thousands of tons of rain water across an entire city. However, Kirito can do stuff like that too, like how he was able to disperse every cloud over the entire horizon, or when he, uh… shook the universe. Granted it was the Underworld's universe which is smaller than ours, but that hardly really matters here. Does Neo even have anything close to something like that? Well, probably.

Recall that Neo's power derives from more than just his own physical body. After all, his body isn't real, and he actually directly derives the power of The One from the Source itself, which is the mainframe behind the whole Matrix. There are multiple statements that the power of The One is able to completely reshape the Matrix, and the source code is capable of totally restarting all of it. Plus, he was able to battle evenly with Agent Smith at the end of Revolutions, who the Oracle predicted would have enough power to destroy the entire Matrix. Can't get much more direct than that. However, the same idea applies to Kirito and the virtual worlds of SAO, namely when he fought and defeated Quinella. Quinella had merged with the Cardinal System itself, which is able to maintain and destroy at will the virtual world that it governs. This was in the Underworld, which is of comparable size to the Matrix, both being large enough to house a star. Even if you wanted to use high end interpretations of a universe for either one, they would both cancel out, making them pretty relative.

So yes, technically Neo can match Kirito in power, but there is still one aspect to this we haven't talked about, being their power amplification. Neo is limited by what the Source and his own relative mind can provide, whereas Kirito has greater options for boosting his power. On top of regular Incarnation, he can also gather energy from the environment to boost his attack power, or even the hearts of his friends and citizens of the Underworld in order to grow further in power. Despite being on similar cosmological scales, Neo cannot directly match these power boosts, and because of that Kirito takes the edge in pure power.

Kirito is the fastest player in Sword Art Online, that is how he gained the dual sword skill after all. He is often emphasized for his speed, he has deflected bullets out of the air and can fly at hypersonic speeds… But, he is fighting Neo, and speed is Neo's whole thing.

There are a few different ways we can choose to look at this depending on your standards, but across the board, Neo is pretty consistently faster. Kirito needs to significantly concentrate and strain himself in order to be able to hit bullets out of the air - Neo can blitz Agents who can already blitz bullets. Kirito has stated that it would be impossible for him to dodge lightning - Neo is able to punch so fast that the mere shockwaves of his punch can move hundreds to thousands of tons of water as fast as lightning. Kirito's flight speed is stated to be Mach 10, but he has also stated that he cannot approach 180,000 mph, or Mach 234 - the Sentinels, who Neo upscales from, are able to briefly move in tandem with an EMP wave that is stated to be light while they are flying, and those things move at the speed of light. The comparisons kind of speak for themselves here. 

Of course, you can still argue higher for Kirito if you wanted to, and I'm not really a fan of being super strict on outliers personally. You could argue light timing for Kirito given his battle with Fanatio, where he was able to dodge her light rays. However, even ignoring inconsistencies and other problems used to criticize the argument, this feat would still be divided by a thousand due to how the fluctlight accelerator functions. The FLA was currently accelerating Kirito by a thousand times his normal speed, and since light cannot be accelerated past light speed, in order to keep the assumption that this is genuine light we would have to treat its speed as static in comparison to Kirito. The only other option here would be to take the stance that it is some stand in for light elements for the virtual world of the Underworld with properties that are significantly different from real world light, which would fit its more unusual properties while keeping its backstory based within actual light and make it consistent with Kirito's other showings and statements regarding his speed. However, I don't really mind saying that it is real light and a genuine feat, it just isn't as impressive as it would be without the FLA. On the other hand, Neo is directly stated to be able to punch and kick as fast as a particle accelerator, which moves at 99% the speed of light. This is actually consistent with the aforementioned feat with the Sentinels, so this makes it a good benchmark for Neo's speed, which would surpass Kirito’s, with the comparison then being 1/1000th lightspeed vs… lightspeed. Neo's fighting style in general is also just a lot more agile and less clunky in comparison to Kirito's, and this is all without mentioning the Matrix's processing feat of London, which absolutely blows away any reasonable end you can give to Kirito. With all that said, Neo takes the speed category.

Both of them are pretty smart fighters, but who's better? Well to start, it may not look like it, but Kirito is technically more experienced than Neo. He has been in more battles and traveled to more virtual worlds with different mechanics behind them, and has generally been doing this sort of thing in a longer active period of time. Unfortunately for Kirito however, Neo manages to take a notable edge in battle skill by, well… cheating. He was able to instantly master any fighting style by simply plugging them directly into his brain, a process that takes a few seconds, whereas Neo was plugging them in for ten hours straight. It's kind of absurd and not really fair, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Neo is skilled at way more modes of fighting than Kirito is, but that's not all. Neo is noted for his exceptional ability at adaptation, and his capacity to switch fighting styles and strategies in the middle of battle generally surpass Kirito's average method of fighting. Plus, Kirito uses a System Assist to get off a lot of his sword skills, and while at first this seems like a useful tool, against someone just as skilled naturally such as Neo it becomes a liability. Kirito cannot easily cancel out sword skills as they have a delay between each moment, which has been exploited before in the past. This is something that Neo would definitely be able to take advantage of in any close ranged fight, and becoming The One only seemed to increase his combat skill even more.

(Note, while Kirito does technically have two hundred years of experience as the Star King, he had lost these memories at the end of Alicization and they aren't generally applicable. Even then, Neo has outsmarted and outskilled Agents and machines, who are hundreds of years old and are super-intelligent and masterfully skilled.)

Of course, that is only in pure fighting skill. We should also discuss their intelligence as far as messing with code and reality warping goes, so let's see how they compare there. Even before Neo learned how to control the Matrix, he was a world class hacker responsible for every computer crime known to man, while Kirito was… a gamer. Okay, to be completely fair, Kirito was a pretty exceptional mechanic and programmer from a young age, but I feel that Neo's record as a super hacker gives him better intuition on system breaking stuff like in this fight. Neo was actually trained in how to manipulate the world around him by the Rebels, and while Kirito did learn the mechanics for Incarnation, he was essentially self taught in terms of actually performing it. In recent SAO volumes, it has even been noted that despite how powerful it is, Kirito isn't quite as efficient at using Incarnation as someone like, say, Eolyne. He sort of uses his Incarnation like a sledgehammer, being able to put massive power behind his moves but not quite using more skilled techniques with it. That doesn't mean he can't strategize with it or find creative uses for his Incarnation, which he does do, but Neo has been able to think up entirely new functions of the Matrix on the fly in order to resolve his current situation, like he did with defeating Agent Smith and saving Trinity after she was already shot, which even the Architect believed was impossible. This goes into his adaptive style this blog has mentioned earlier, Neo's ability to adapt to his opponents fighting style and his environment as well as figure out solutions to deterministically impossible problems are without compare. Neo takes the win in skill.

(Note, it is unlikely that Yui could offer very much valuable information about Neo or his abilities, given that his code is completely unplugged from the Matrix. Neo should also be able to immediately deactivate Yui the same as the sentinels, as her digital body in this fight scenario would have to be formed within Source coding and he can activate EMPs that shut down technological entities.)

With a fight like this, both of them are so impressive that they can just break the virtual systems they inhabit. The winner of this fight was always going to come down to their abilities, but this is actually rather complicated to cover. That is why I will be splitting this into three sections, starting with, uh, free will.

Now I know that this sounds incredibly abstract but trust me, this is actually relevant. Both Neo and Kirito alter the rules of their virtual worlds by means of their pure will and how far they can push it against the programming of their system. As such, it would make sense to see who can break their system more and assert more of their will.

The Matrix follows a very complex, deterministic system of control, all of which is governed by the Architect, a hyper intelligent AI built for the sole purpose of making the Matrix and predicting human behavior. Neo is able to look fate in the face, literally, and still assert his own will to prevail against impossible odds, defying the entire system that the Matrix provides. This is perhaps Neo's greatest power, and is what the entire Matrix series and his character arc rests on, so how can Kirito match that?

Well, Kirito can defy impossible odds too, and his own will is unbelievably impressive. To understand that however, we first have to understand the weird way that brains in Sword Art Online work. In SAO, consciousness is fundamentally derived from microscopic light particles, known as fluctlight that travel through the neurons of their brains, and these particles exist in quantum superposition to each other. This essentially means that what composes thought is within a quantum state of unpredictability, where each particle's position is undetermined until it is actualized by observation and activation, hence its name fluctlight, literally fluctuating light that constantly changes position. Conversely, the deterministic causal system that the Matrix is built upon is based on classical mechanics where macroscopic objects all follow predictable, calculable modes of motion. It's essentially the idea that every action only occurs the way it does, and is restricted to only the way it reacts, by the causal forces that preceded it. However, this does not apply to microscopic quantum particles that are in superposition, as their state and actions exist in multiple positions at once - the end result is completely incalculable by deterministic means. It's kind of stunning how well these two systems in SAO and Matrix mesh together like this.

Think that this is just a coincidence, or that it doesn't really matter for the subject at hand? Well think again, because Kirito is able to do all of the things he does in the Underworld thanks to his fluctlight, it is the power of his own free will that manifests Incarnation into reality by overriding the Underworld's programming, just like how Neo uses his own free will over the Matrix to override its non-physical state. In fact, Kirito's belief in independent thought was able to sway the artificial fluctlights within the Underworld to express their own free will, literally going against their own programming which forbids them from doing so. He's even been able to break the rules of systems that are not as malleable as the Underworld and don't follow mnemonic data, such as Aincrad, through nothing but his own will, which should be completely impossible. As surprising as it is, Kirito actually wins this category with his own unbelievably powerful will. If that was all there was to their “hax”, Kirito might have been able to take the victory by brute force, but there is more to it than that.

Now we have to measure their control over the virtual world - specifically, the level to which they are able to manipulate their worlds and their array of abilities that come with it.

Kirito technically has more techniques with his in-game skills and such, but frankly, they hardly really matter here when we are talking about characters who can outright break reality and make it into whatever they want. As far as that goes, they possess many of the same abilities, being able to fly, transmutate, use telekinesis, cast illusions, teleport/transport and heal themselves. If Neo were to attempt to disarm Kirito, Kirito can always use Incarnation as a replacement. However, Neo has a few notable abilities over Kirito in this regard. Namely, Neo is able to become completely intangible, see the future as well as directly destroy virtual matter, while Kirito cannot. These aren't just filler abilities either, they are really major tools that Neo could use which Kirito doesn't have a direct counter for.

(Note, Kirito could theoretically counter intangibility with Excalibur and linseed oil, as they are able to harm intangible ghosts. However, this is a stretch given that Neo's phasing is not spiritual in nature, and Excalibur and the linseed oil are only able to harm ghosts due to their in-game typing countering ghostly enemies.)

(Also note, Kirito has once theorized that he could potentially use Incarnation to directly destroy virtual matter. However, he decided against attempting this as it would likely take too much Incarnation energy to accomplish, and we do not know how applicable it would be in a fight setting, making it much less reliable than Neo's object combustion.)

We also have to mention that Incarnation just has significantly more weaknesses and setbacks than The One, which can be seen pretty clearly in Kirito’s weakness section. Like, people used to joke that Kirito was too perfect years ago, but the recent volumes really have been giving him so many limitations that I felt sort of bad adding them all. Incarnation's effects are weaker the more they defy conventional logic, they have limits to their level of usage before Kirito's Incarnation energy runs out, he needs to know specifically how to alter certain things that he sees and Kirito is not very good at keeping up the mental image of his Incarnation in battle to avoid getting outsped, which is especially bad considering that Neo is literally faster than Kirito.

(Note, allusions to fate in SAO and Incarnation users' relation to manipulating it are likely not actually literal and Kirito has never explicitly altered fate before to win a fight. Neo has similar, fate breaking arguments, given similar leeway - in fact, the entire Matrix series is about Neo's struggle to defy his own predetermined fate. Neo is also far more knowledgeable on this particular subject and interacting with it than Kirito. There's a research paper at the bottom of this blog that discusses determinism in The Matrix.)

In comparison, the power of The One and the source code have no such weaknesses. With it, Neo is able to completely reshape the entire world of the Matrix into basically whatever he wants, the source code has never actually failed to alter something within the Matrix. Kirito's Incarnation manifestations may be invisible, but Neo is able to see invisible coding. With this in mind, Neo is able to completely manipulate Kirito's own Incarnation as easily as any other object in the Matrix, and we've even seen that Kirito's Incarnation can be nullified before, by Istar, which would inevitably leave Kirito with very few options left if Neo were to begin disarming him. Kirito is not a physical fighter like Neo is, and his primary uses of Incarnation are either as matter manifestations or as power boosts. Also, Neo's control stems from the Source, which is the very mainframe of the entire Matrix, far more fundamental than Kirito's own control with Incarnation. Neo takes the advantage in control, and that brings us to our final category, permanence.

Basically, this just means how long either of them are able to last in the fight, how long their abilities can be sustained as well as just staying alive and who is harder to actually put down.

Kirito is extraordinarily tough, he's able to take a ton of punishment, have his limbs chopped off, his heart ripped out, have his health bar reduced to nothing and keep on fighting. But despite that, Kirito is only able to stall his death. Once he's out for good, that's pretty much it. On the other hand, Neo was able to revive from his own death from the real world. Remember, according to The Analyst, the source code activates based on Neo's emotions, not necessarily his literal physical proximity to Trinity. Take the time he defied the Architect for example, when Trinity was across the whole city, Neo was still able to defy the Matrix because of how strong his feelings were for saving Trinity's life. Even the Matrix movie script has confirmed that this occurred upon Neo being able to know Trinity's love for him when he was dead, which ultimately gave him the emotional strength to accept his role as The One and come back from the dead. This is supported by how other rebels were able to just outright nullify damage to their virtual bodies, just upon recognizing that their injuries weren't actually real, and that their digital bodies are completely relative to their mental perception. Essentially, as long as Neo remains at his emotional peak, he can't really be killed from the Matrix. Kirito can - when the Underworld was about to be massively accelerated and Kirito needed to escape, he could not kill himself from within the Underworld to bring himself out, as doing so would have trapped him in a state of artificial death even as his human body was still alive (due to the mechanics of the Underworld). This means that Kirito would have been unable to use Incarnation to bring himself back to life if he were to actually die.

So, that leaves us with an important question: how do you kill a Neo? Well, we have seen that it is possible for Neo to lose the full powers of the source code before, and thus be left vulnerable and in a weakened state. This is what happened in Resurrections after all, after Neo and Trinity had been disconnected for so long and were put into completely different lives. Technically, if one had the ability to, they could theoretically outlast Neo until his bond with Trinity were to wither and he lost his power over the source code, though it would take a very long time. It's also less likely to happen with Kirito specifically, since not only do his own powers also rely on his emotions and emotional state, but he has a limited amount of Incarnation energy he could use before he ends up burnt out. However, Kirito has technically encountered a problem like this before with Vassago, so we need to see if he has any other options that could Neo down indirectly.

Unfortunately for Kirito, most of his arsenal isn't going to cut it. You think some rinky dink paralysis poison or ice is gonna stop him? Some random dude who just discovered the truth behind the Matrix was able to recover his body which was paralyzed for life from the waist down. I'm pretty sure Neo can deal with that fine. There's also no reason why Neo cannot simply phase through the ice, just as an Agent was able to do in one of the Matrix comic stories. Or break through it like Vassago did. Or even combust it into code directly like he did to Agent Smith. When battling Vassago in the virtual world, who Kirito could not kill directly because he was a real person in the real world, Kirito found a solution by simply turning Vassago into a tree and thereby keeping him stationary forever until his fluctlight expired. This may work… if it weren't for the fact that Neo has directly resisted transmutation before, when Agent Smith attempted to transform Neo into another Agent Smith. Kirito CAN de-age living creatures, but believe it or not, Neo has a counter for that too. The way that Kirito de-aged the dragons was by altering their maximum in-game life value to a shorter level, thus returning them to an earlier stage in their life. However, Neo being unplugged from the Matrix makes it impossible for Agents to overwrite his code, meaning Kirito is unable to alter Neo's digital data through Incarnation, so no baby Neo is happening here.

(Note, we did not grant Kirito his administrative privileges when he battled Oberon and his ability to increase the pain modifier on someone due to the conditions behind this being extremely circumstantial and relating to the specific ALO server that he was in, and being given administrative identification from Akihiko Kayaba. Even if he had it, it wouldn't have done much for him, as Neo being unplugged from the Matrix makes him immune to code alterations.)

This is all to say that Kirito is going to have a pretty tough time trying to actually take Neo down. On the other hand, Neo has a perfect way to win, that of course being his ability to make people EXPLODE from the first movie, so let's talk about that. When facing Agent Smith who was unable to be killed by conventional means, Neo just decided to make him explode. After he exploded, Agent Smith's consciousness was then absorbed into the code of the Matrix, stopping him from being able to immediately revive. Kirito doesn't really have a direct counter to such a move, however he did manage to resist Gabriel Miller attempting to absorb his fluctlight and the “information” of him and his surroundings into himself. Could that help him? It's sort of weird to compare them in my opinion, but it's not that helpful of a counter. Even if he could resist being absorbed into the Matrix, he still doesn't resist the whole part of, ya know…

Also, let's look at this resistance feat in particular. Kirito was able to resist this attack by manifesting his Incarnation outwards, creating an Incarnation barrier around himself. As we have discussed previously, Incarnation is still code, and Neo has the means to see and manipulate the Incarnation that Kirito manifests. He has ample opportunity to bypass Kirito's Incarnation and attack him directly, as many times as he'd need to before he gets the job done. Even if this weren't an option, as we have covered, Kirito's Incarnation energy eventually has to run out. Neo can simply stall out Kirito until this happens, and then no more Incarnation. Without Incarnation, that also would mean no more power boosts, regeneration, or protections, giving Neo the opportunity he needs to put down the Black Swordsman for good.

And really, just think about this for a minute. Isn't this basically what Neo always does? In both of his major fights with Agent Smith, Neo was unable to defeat him by regular means. Instead, he won by his smarts and his greater understanding of the Matrix and how it works, allowing him to find a chink in his otherwise invincible armor. There is no reason why he couldn't do the same against someone else who was similarly tough to kill and physically superior. Really, Neo's bond with Trinity is just way too unbreakable and overpowered for Kirito to be able to deal with, and Neo will eventually be the one to end this mind numbing fight.

Kirito was incredibly powerful, driven, and paranormally exceptional in any virtual world. However, Neo's speed, skill, hax, and sheer resilience allowed him to come out on top in the end. Kirito got… Neowned. Sorry, is that pun used too much? Well you don't Kiritown SAOwned puns.

The winner is Neo.

(Also, as a final note to anyone reading this from me, please don't use this blog or my arguments to bash on SAO. I think if you're interested in this matchup, you should give both series a chance, I personally do really like SAO. If you've sided with SAO arguments that I and this blog disputed, don't take it personally. Vs is subjective at the end of the day and we simply wanted to cover everything relevant for this blog, love ya.)

Hi Hi

(Happy late Christmas)

Why hello hello dear readers. I’m back at it again with yet another verdict this time about what people on Reddit think they are like when typing out slurs. For real though before anything else, I once again wanna give my thanks to TMK for allowing me to help work on this project. Kirito and SAO have been something I’ve been pretty into especially when I first started this hobby, I remember some of my first debates being about Kirito and sometimes even this match up so it was a little nostalgic doing this. I will admit before the blog I was not that experienced with The Matrix, besides the one Smith Vs Cyn blog I didn’t really know Jack squat about the match. Thankfully that changed for the better as now The Matrix is both one of my favorite movies of all time and one of my favorite trilogy’s (ignoring Resurrections). To keep everything simple as I don’t wanna fill up my verdict with what I like and don’t like about the match, Neo Vs Kirito is in my top 10 favorite matches, probably even top 5 now as I think everything about this match up works from both connections and fight potential. But yada yada this isn’t about me trying to convince you on the idea, this is to convince you on who I think wins and why. So to keep this a bit simple and easy to read I’ll break this down into categories I think best represent what’s the most important in this match starting with…

Power 

Arguably the least important aspect of this fight is how hard both can hit. Comparing both you would assume at first Kirito would take this category with ease. Neo's best feat shown fully on screen would be the shockwaves he creates with Agent Smith in their final battle in Revolutions. That is indeed impressive but Kirito directly was able to shake the enter Underworld on his own, which gets in the Yottaton range of power. This is further amplified with Kirito’s ability with Memory Release where he can amplify his strength even more. But when looking at who they can scale to Neo is actually able to keep up 

With scaling to Agent Smith, Neo can arguably equal that level of power due to Agent Smith being stated to be able to destroy The Matrix at this time by the Oracle. Even if you don’t wanna say that’s enough, with the Source Neo is still capable of resetting The Matrix, just like the ones before him, hell it’s even shown in Resurrections that Neo and Trinity could remake The Matrix due to their love for each other. To the dear readers who skipped the cosmology sections, this is important to note as The Matrix and The Underworld are very similar in size and scope.

Both worlds contain both the planet they walk on, another orbiting celestial like a moon or another planet, and a Sun. While they do also have some arguments for further depths in their cosmologies, it’s not something I would push any further than it is. For The Matrix it’s because of the fact we don’t know how detailed the world is outside the planet, moon, and sun. Sure we do see a bunch of stars when Neo first meets the Archetech, but besides that they are not explained at all. It is also important to note that both 1. We don’t know where humanity was research wise with stars in the cosmos before the machines took over, leaving possibly very little for machines to work off of and 2. In The Matrix it’s still only the 90s, while humanity is still knowledgeable when it comes to space they aren’t at the same level it is even today meaning the Machines don’t need to make The Matrix THAT big realistically. 

As for Kirito, it’s just the fact that The Underworld is very blatantly just not that big. The creator of the series said in an interview that the “stars” in the underworld are more like the lights you would see in any other rpg, aka not real at all. Even if you wanna ignore the creator's words, Kirito himself even flat out says the underworld doesn’t have a solar system and is just limited to the two planets and suns. So with both worlds being equal in size it actually makes both equal in strength for the most part, with the added tidbit that Kirito can amp his strength more reliably then Neo. Overall Strength is a tie

Speed

Speed on the other hand is a lot more simple to talk about as quite frankly Neo just takes this advantage by a decent margin. That is not to say Kirito is slow, he can dodge bullets and move faster than most people can react, but Neo could also already do that before fully unlocking his power as The One and then some. But what about Fanatio’s light beam? Well as the BtV puts it the feat is very questionable and me personally I would not use it at all. The light in question just has too many issues with it, mainly it having force with it which light doesn’t have. However even if you wanted to still use the feat Neo has ways to match and surpass it. 

Neo could move faster than the Sentinels, who can briefly outrun an EMP which is impressive and already matches Fanatio's light. But we can go further than that, remember, Neo is linked to The Matrix thanks to the source, and The Matrix was fast enough that it could recreate London in a few nanoseconds. This alone would make Neo even faster, even if you included Fanatio’s light. While there can be some arguments with outliers and such, I think it’s personally fine as we have seen Neo amp his stats to such a degree like in the first movie so it’s not that unrealistic for him to do that again, and even then having the literal freaking source code of The Matrix would be enough in my opinion. So overall Neo takes speed!

Territory factors 

When it comes to Territory factors both actually have a solid advantage in different areas in this category. When it comes to raw skill then Neo takes it without a shadow of a doubt. Kirito is a skilled fighter, being able to take on top level players and knights in whatever games he’s in, and in The Underworld was trained for a year with his pal Eugeo, but that is honestly child’s play when it compares to Neo. 

Neo has over a thousand different fighting styles he can pull from both with hand to hand and weapons. It also helps that he was able to defeat agents on his own with relative ease, which is impressive as no member of Zion could do so before him. Even when it comes to sword fighting Neo can definitely match Kirito in that playing field, especially when he’s shown his skills with several weapons with his fight with the Merovingian. Think of it like Leo Vs Jason, while Kirito is better trained with his combat skill, the fact Neo can obtain the same skill if not more with a press of a button makes most of Kirito’s training a moot point.

The same can not be said for experience however. While Neo is adept in combat due to being in a war with the machines, he has also been doing it for far less than Kirito has. Kirito has been trapped in Aincrad for two years and survived it almost entirely on his own along with being trapped in The Underworld for hundreds of years while for the most of it being their king, and thanks to most of the other worlds he’s been in having a similar system as Aincrad he has been quite knowledgeable on basically everything each world has to offer. Kirito has also taken on a larger variety of foes like different types of swordsmen, magic based fighters, gunslinging wastelanders, and then some. Overall while both have solid advantages over each other put simply Both equal out in this area

Abilities (that thing that actually matters)

The next and final piece of this match is how their abilities clash. I'm just gonna skip over Arsenal because for the most part it's not a big discussion piece in this match. If you want my quick thoughts then I think Neo has the superior arsenal. While Kirito’s wide variety of swords and pretty cool and are nothing to laugh at, on their own it’s nothing compared to Neo’s library of weapons he can pull from, both because Neo would be at range with his many firearms and just because Neo has weapons that could be more destructive like his bombs and grenades. 

With that out the way let’s talk about their abilities. Now on paper you would think almost everything between them would even out. Both could scan their surroundings finding each other, both could fly around giving them some good mobility, and both can cast illusions though to be fair Neo does have the better potency and usage of it due to directly making people see stuff like the Spoon kid did then Kirito who really only used it to turn into a giant monster to attack people. You would also assume both of their main power sources, Neo with The One and Kirito with Incarnation, would even out with each other. However if you really look at the fine print of both then it does tip the tides in Neo’s favor.

While Incarnation is a really nice ability, it’s the limitations that present itself which makes it hard for Kirito to manipulate it at its fullest potential. Incarnation requires Kirito to know exactly what the heck he’s even doing and won’t work if he doesn’t, just like how he didn’t wanna use it on his friends to save them because he didn’t know what would happen to them because he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. It also has the issue of the more fantastical and more something doesn’t exactly make sense it’s harder for Kirito to do, so he won’t be just creating worm holes and such just because he wills it into existence. It also doesn’t help that Kirito hasn’t mastered Incarnation either which can lead to making more mistakes in battle as well. 

The abilities of The One on the other hand just doesn’t have these same drawbacks. The whole point of Neo’s powers is that he can do whatever he wants because he believes he can. He believes he’s just a program and thus can break the world to his whim because it’s not real. This alone shows a clear advantage in Neo’s favor as while Kirito has rules to his powers, Neo just doesn’t.  But just comparing their sources of power alone wouldn’t be doing justice on who’s abilities are better so let’s go over how both can manipulate their powers.

Physiology and Regeneration 

I’ll just group these two together as they follow basically the same principles. When it comes to how both their virtual bodies work and how both can manipulate them Kirito does have the short end of the stick as for the most part the virtual worlds he visits try to follow the same rules as reality with one’s body. If one is shot or stabbed in the virtual world, it will feel like it did, even if most of the time it’s just a mild numbing pain. This is especially shown in The Underworld, probably the most realistic a Virtual World can get with how close it is to reality where Kirito does indeed feel actual pain when he’s stabbed in that world, Kirito even points out that he’s not used to real pain in some fights during his visit there. 

Neo’s body on the hand as just mentioned before is just a bunch of code in The Matrix. Neo can freely change anything on his body like how he looks, moves, and feels just because he believes all those things. This even includes their possible regenerative abilities. In The Matrix even normal Zion members can alter their bodies in the virtual body in massive ways like how a member who in the real world had both his legs broken beyond repair but in The Matrix, because he believed they were fine were exactly that, just fine. 

This is further shown with both cheating death in their worlds. With Kirito he used Incarnation to defy the system which was saying he was dead because of his HP being zero during his fight with Healthcliff. With Neo it was him coming back to life once he unlocked his powers as The One thanks to his love for Trinity. The key difference between both is that Kirito only prolonged his death. While his HP was 0, his body was still moving and intact for a brief time, and once he won his fight against Heathcliff he did die, which makes sense with how Incarnation works in that Kirito willed he wasn’t dead for a time until the battle was won in which he thought he was dead. This is even shown to affect him negatively when he puts himself in a coma because of his mental state, showing it does affect him physically.

On the other side of the coin though, Neo flat out died. His heart rate flatlined and even the Agents knew he was dead, which is even further stated by Agent Smith in Reloaded, but Neo was able to come back to life thanks to the abilities of The One, which would further support the feat of even normal Zion members being able to alter their bodies to ignore injuries in real life, and Neo is meant to be able to manipulate The Matrix more than any other person. This does make sense if you take Morpheus’s words to heart about the mind in The Matrix. When one person dies in The Matrix and dies in the real world, it’s because the mind thinks the person died because of how real it feels in The Matrix. So if one in his mind knows this is all a program and can get through the pain then it wouldn’t be all that surprising for Neo to ignore death. So quite frankly this ability alone makes Neo super hard to kill, especially for someone like Kirito. This means that Neo can’t die by physical means as he can just deny it actually happening because he believes so. Giving the edge of regeneration to Neo

How their abilities clash

The final piece of the puzzle now is figuring out how they could use their ungodly power against each other. With the wider pool of skills at Kirito’s disposal you would imagine he could overwhelm Neo right? Well not exactly. In all honesty, while Kirito’s skills are impressive in some key areas, Neo’s superior skill and speed would be able to dodge Kirito’s attacks, especially when Kirito can’t exactly stop his moves when he goes full throttle with them. Even then most of them wouldn’t do much as mentioned with how Neo can help negate damage done to him. There are some abilities Kirito has that can be a win con against Neo.

There’s Kirito’s ability of being able to age a person, with Blue Rose he can possibly incap Neo in a wall of ice and take his life points away, and most notably turn Neo into a tree and leave his real body brain dead. All of these would seem to be good win cons but surprise surprise, 

Neo has reliable counters to all of these. For one as mentioned again Neo’s superior speed would cut off any of Kirito’s attempts to do these things or make it so Neo can use his options first if anything, but even then when it comes to the Blue Rose’s ice attacks Neo could just phase though it. Phasing in general is something that is super beneficial for Neo here as for the most part it just makes Neo even more unkillable as he already is because he can just make Kirito miss his attacks. Even then if Neo is trapped in there it’s unlikely that The Blue Roses true effect of lowering one’s HP would actually do anything because Neo as mentioned before could just say he’s not dead because he believes it. 

When it comes to the other two on the other hand, it’s a more interesting story as Neo does have a reliable counter in the name of his arch enemy, Agent Smith. In the start of the 2nd movie Smith gained the ability to assimilate his target, or in better weapons rewrite their code to make it a copy of Smith, this includes both computer programs and Zion members like Bane. This is similar to Kirito trying to De Age him as he does it via manipulating the target's heath, and guess what Neo could fight back and outright resist Smith trying to assimilate him, and the same would be said about Kirito turning Neo into a tree as really it follows the same thing of Kirito manipulating Neo’s code which again, Neo resists. 

So without those abilities does Kirito have any way of Killing Neo?

(I like using this image)

To be quite frank, Kirito just doesn’t have a solid way of killing Neo in a permanent way. The only way he could really beat Neo is outlasting him in some sorta way so that his emotions for Trinity so that his powers as The One dwindles, like how shown in Resurrections. But let’s be real here, that's super super unlikely, especially with Neo’s methods of ending the fight. There are two ways Neo can end this fight, either messing with Kirito’s organs or just blowing him up.

With both options this presents a big issue as Kirito has never fought something like this and doesn’t have the defensive options to keep this option from happening. Sure Kirito can try blocking himself with Incarnation, but you can block someone that’s basically a ghost and even then with how Incarnation really works, that being the manipulation of matter, guess what? Neo can phase through The Matrix’s code, which is important because in The Matrix there are no matter or atoms or anything; it's all just code but we think there is because of how real The Matrix is. 

So really that just leaves Kirito utterly defenseless to those options at Neo’s disposal while on the other hand Kirito’s main options of ending the fight are just not viable in the long run. 

I know this verdict might seem like it’s shafting Kirito a lot, but in my honest opinion it’s just Neo is way crazier then Kirito in this department. Think of this way, Kirito is a man that can break the rules of his world but can not control it, Neo on the other hand is able to break the rules, bend them sideways, says these rules are stupid, and make a whole new list of rules for his own enjoyment like a 5 year old kid playing freeze tag. 

Overall

Overall, while Kirito had a lot of stuff going for him it’s his limitations and weaknesses that make it hard for him to win this fight compared to Neo’s superior speed, abilities, and resistances, making The One that controls The Matrix the winner here

I don’t have a pun soooo The winner is Neo!

Tru

Hey everyone! Tru here. I don’t want to keep you all for very long as the other verdicts here won’t be too different from mine so I’ll get the formalities out of the way quickly. I think this match up is pretty cool and makes sense very easily as a pairing. A lot of cool potential that shines through in the fight script TMK made for the fight, give that a read. I’ve researched the Matrix once before in my Cyn VS Smith blog but plenty has changed since then and my opinion is VERY different on Matrix stuff so let’s get into that. Starting with…

Strength/Durability

When it comes to strength both have some very impressive showings. Neo can destroy buildings, part clouds and even cause a massive shockwave that disperses raindrops. However, in comparison to Kirito he comes up short. Kirito’s collision with the Underworld easily surpasses any of Neo’s direct feats at a whopping 35 Yottatons of TNT.

Of course this isn’t telling the full story. Both characters have reasonable methods of scaling to their cosmologies (The Matrix and the Underworld respectively). Neo through the Source and the Oracles statement about Agent Smith and Kirito through scaling to Quinella while she was merged with the Cardinal System. When it comes to cosmological interpretations both generally get similar in size. If you use the most conservative and fair ends, both locations include a planet (or planets in the case of the Underworld) and a sun equivalent. As a middle end both cosmologies include a starry sky, but this does favor Neo as while the starry sky of the Matrix isn’t confirmed to be anything, the sky of the Underworld is stated to be a sky box. However, there isn’t any real sufficient evidence for the stars of the Matrix to be real so this wouldn’t likely work out for it either. Finally on the highest end both are cosmologies referred to as a “Universe” but this is a very liberal use of the term and I wouldn’t use it for an actual size comparison. 

So who’s stronger? Well seeing as the Underworld contains an extra celestial body and Kirito has ways to increase his strength  further (like Memory Release), surpassing the power granted to Neo by the One and the Source, I would say that Kirito ends up as the stronger of the two combatants.

Speed

Speed contains a bit more of a gap than strength. Starting with Kirito this time, his best feat while staying conservative is when he blocked every bullet from a rifle which gets to Mach 11. An impressive feat to be sure, but Kirito is against the most famous bullet dodger in fiction. This is the same guy who can fly so fast explosions move in slow motion. And this is without mentioning Neo’s scaling to Sentinel's outpacing an EMP for a short time and his own statement of punching at the speed of a particle accelerator. Even if you want to award Kirito his questionable speed feat of reacting to and moving in-tandem with light, Neo has a feat that gets way higher. While also a high end, Neo outpacing the rate the Matrix processes at and having his speed empowered by the Source lets him scale to the Matrix’s absurd nanosecond processing. While neither feat is fully structurally sound I find it more comfortable to buy the Matrix’s processing feat then I do Fantano’s light.

So no matter if you are using low or high ends, speed goes to Neo.

Skill and Experience 

When it comes to skill Kirito is no slouch. He’s a competent swordsman, magic user and a creative fighter. However, Neo’s skill is just ridiculous. Neo spent 10 straight hours pumping training programs into his brain that made him a master martial artist and weapons expert. This trumps anything Kirito has done training wise. This is also shown by Neo fighting an entire swarm of Agent Smith’s in combat and generally outmatching them. Seeing as Agents are equally skilled as the rebels in martial arts this is an incredible feat of skill that Kirito just can’t live up to.

On the flip side though, Kirito is more experienced than Neo. Both got a few years of fighting under their belt but Kirito’s experiences are far more varied than Neo, who really only fights Agents.

So Neo takes raw skill but Kirito takes experience. You could consider this a tie but in my opinion having experience is only worthwhile if it matches what you are fighting against. While Kirito’s experience would help him against Neo’s standard arsenal, it would not train him for Neo’s martial arts prowess and incredible abilities. So this category goes to Neo.

Arsenal

This category is pretty simple. Both Neo and Kirito have a pretty solid amount of weapons each but I’d argue Kirito’s weapons being further out there and fantastically outmatch Neo’s more grounded weapon pool. A paralysis dagger, flaming sword, a sword with ice constructs, potions of healing and Yui are all more helpful than medieval weaponry and a couple guns. This also leads back to what I said about experience, where Neo has very little experience against most of the above items, while Kirito has seen variations of what Neo is packing. Category goes to Kirito.

Before we move on I do want to say that while this category goes to Kirito, it does not mean Neo cannot counter what Kirito offers with his arsenal. Just looking at their arsenal’s in a vacuum Kirito’s is far more potent.

Abilities

Alright for the most important category of the match we have abilities. While both have plenty of abilities they actually share quite a few. However, this does not mean they are equal. To show what I mean let’s compare a few of their shared abilities and see which is better for both.

Sensing: Both Neo and Kirito have the ability to sense their surroundings, allowing them to become aware of an opponent without directly seeing them. This is a weird one to start with as while generally I’d argue Kirito’s sensing is better due to it being a lot more specific than Neo’s (Neo’s sensing is very vague as all he sensed was that “something was wrong” without much else to go off like direction or distance). What this doesn’t factor in though is Neo’s ability to see into the future and scan areas by reading code. I would still give sensing to Kirito as Neo’s premonition requires him to understand what he’s seeing to use the information effectively and his code vision isn’t better than Kirito’s hyper sensing.

I’ll also include Yui here as she has the ability to look into code and figure out what’s going on with someone or something similar to Neo. However, due to Neo’s unplugged physiology she likely wouldn’t be able to gain any info on him. Meanwhile Neo could use his code reading on Yui as it worked on Seraph. Regardless, Kirito takes sensing but it should also be said that sensing is more beneficial to Neo as it counters Kirito making himself harder to see.

Regeneration: Neo and Kirito can regenerate from their wounds. This one is interesting as Kirito has Battle Recovery which is constantly healing him throughout the battle passively. Along with being able to heal from having half of his body missing his regeneration outdoes that of Rocket fixing his broken limbs and Trinity regenerating the head of the Analyst. Kirito has better regeneration.

Barriers: Both fighters can make barriers around themselves to protect them. This one goes to Neo though as Kirito using incarnate for his barriers means he is depleting a finite resource while Neo is not. Point to Neo.

Telekinesis: Similar to barriers, both have telekinesis but Kirito is using up his incarnate to do it so Neo’s is just better.

Teleportation: This one is interesting as while Neo’s teleportation is less telegraphed and works on items, Kirito’s teleportation has much wider range with its planetary distance. For the purposes of this battle though I doubt Kirito is going to teleport a planet away and then come back so Neo’s teleportation eeks out the win.

Transmutation and Manipulation: Neo and Kirito can both alter the shape and material of objects around them. Yet, Neo’s transmutation works on a far larger scale. Anything in the Matrix can be altered by Neo which includes people such as the Analyst and before he was unplugged, Neo. Meanwhile Kirito’s transmutation has been used on small objects like a candle and not much else and not offensively. Of course this isn’t including the tree sized elephant in the room but we will get to that in the next section. Transmutation goes to Neo.

And when it comes to general manipulation it still goes to Neo. While Neo and Kirito can both shape the world around them in whatever way they want, as I said earlier Incarnation is a finite resource while Matrix Manipulation is not. So Neo takes this as well.

Death Defiance: Both Neo and Kirito have somehow defied death itself within their verses, fighting on when they should have been long dead. However, Kirito’s death defiance is strictly worse than Neo’s. When Kirito refused to die, it was only prolonging his end. Kirito can still die. Meanwhile Neo actually just came back from being dead. Multiple ways to check if Neo was truly dead were performed in that scene and yet somehow like Palpatine, Neo returned. Kirito has never been shown to come back from fully dying, only preventing himself from meeting his end. Death Defiance goes to Neo.

Then there are the abilities they don’t share like the various elemental attacks Kirito wields and Neo’s technopathy. Neither ability is securing the win for the other but they are useful like elemental attacks keeping Neo on his toes and technopathy shutting down Yui.  

So who wins the category? Well for that we need to look at…

Actual Wincons

When it comes to actual wincons it’s kind of hard to come up with one. Both Neo and Kirito have the ability to defy death and regenerate making it hard for one to simply kill the other. So we need to figure out if either combatant has a way to permanently put the other down. Let's start by seeing if Kirito is capable of taking out Neo.

In short, probably not. Even if he is potentially stronger and can hurt Neo past the limits show of his regeneration we know Neo can resurrect due to his connection with Trinity. His emotions power the Source and the only way to get past that is by severing that connection or waiting until Neo’s emotional connection to Trinity waivers and fades, depowering the Source. To outlast the Source Kirito is going to need a lot of time so his best option is to try and incapacitate Neo of which he has a few options. But do any of these methods work?

Again, unfortunately not. The paralysis dagger may seem like a solid method but seeing that Dan, a random runner was capable of moving through a timestop and healing his own paralysis, Neo should have no issue replicating that with his superior Matrix control and biological manipulation. Then comes the idea of freezing Neo solid. Again, on paper a great idea but Neo’s phasing should be on par with the average Agent, who can phase through ice. So the last option at Kirito’s disposal is transmutating Neo with the Gigas Cedar. However, like the other two this wouldn’t work as Neo resisted Agent Smith attempting to turn him into an exact copy of Smith down to his code. Being able to resist manipulation to his code and being unaffected by an Agent's ability to manipulate it also gives Neo a way around being de-aged by Kirito.  This is because de-aging is an ability that revolves around manipulating player data to shorten their lifespan within SAO, which would be resisted by Neo. There is absolutely no way Kirito can force an incap here.

But what about Neo? Can he fully take down Kirito? Physically no. Kirito’s superior stats and stat amplification along with regeneration mean that Neo probably isn’t taking out Kirito without factoring in Kirito’s death defiance. So, Neo’s best option is using an ability I’ve held off from mentioning until now. Code Implosion. Kirito has very little defense to Neo exploding him, bypassing any barriers, going beyond what we have seen him regenerate from and even having his code absorbed by the Matrix. Even if you want to use Kirito’s resistance to Gabriel trying to absorb his fluctlight to say he won’t be absorbed into the Matrix there is no reason he would be able to survive Neo simply exploding him.

Just to add on more, it would be hard for Kirito to actually land any of his abilities due to the fact that Incarnation is something that Neo should be able to manipulate. It’s nothing more than code acting as magic in SAO which should be easy for Neo to understand and manipulate. On the other side Kirito can’t really manipulate Neo’s connection to the Source in any way. Incarnate is also a finite resource that will run out far before Neo’s emotional connection to Trinity which powers the Source. 

Between his better abilities and win conditions, abilities and wincons go to Neo.

Conclusion

This matchup is highly fascinating as physical strength isn’t important to the result. What this battle comes down to is who can get past the others ability to defy death. Kirito may have more abilities and skills but they aren’t going to do much to actually take Neo down. First they actually have to land which will be hard due to Neo’s superior speed along with his barriers and telekinesis. But once they do land they can’t actually permanently keep Neo down due to his connection to the Source and Trinity. And while it’s hard for Neo to damage Kirito, his ability to manipulate incarnation along with code implosion makes it pretty easy for Neo to put Kirito down for good. As pointed out above, even Kirito attempting to stall out Neo’s connection to the Source via incapacitating him wouldn’t work. There just really isn’t a way for Kirito to win, while Neo’s is fairly simple. My vote goes to the One and only, Thomas Anderson, Neo.

Team Neo: The Monster King, Hi Hi, Tru

Team Kirito:

Further reading - Research paper on the nature of determinism and causality in the Matrix and how Neo interacts with it, by Osric G. Falkenrath for the Journal of Research in Social Science and Humanities

Coming soon…

Special thanks to the volunteer researchers:

Riley

Alice

Cyber

Oleggator

StoneKillerz12

NormallyNormal

Other credits:

Background cards made by StoneKillerz12

The Monster King verdict graphics made by Pasbros

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