u/Honest_Caramel_3793

ill keep this grounded, hopefully it makes as much sense to yall as it does in my head!

1. this explanation in picture one is actually a decent way of understanding how a sonic boom works. usually if you move around in the air, the air just moves. HOWEVER, if you move fast enough, the air can't get out of the way and compresses like a spring. gege sorta explains this here so he clearly thinks about this(in other words, im not doing a "gege didn't think of that")

2. picture two is evidence hakari didn't have acceleration assisting him, this is to say, hakari IS IN FACT "suspended" in air with nothing helping him to accelerate down

3. hakari grabs uruame by the face and launches them down fast enough to break 8(?) concrete balconies, which act as crumple zones (reduce his final impact on the ground dramatically), despite this he still causes tremendous damage to the concrete floor as well. needless to say, this is a crap ton of force

now, i will say breaking concrete isn't unique at all in jjk, no, that's not what makes this impressive, what makes it impressive is that he did this by accelerating off air. lets talk about why:

every action has an equal and opposite reaction. this is fundamentally how we move through the world. you walk not so much because you push, but because the earth pushes you back. keeping this in mind, this helps explain why you can't change your trajectory much mid air, you simple have nothing to push you back. you cannot accelerate yourself, so you don't move very much. NOW, there are ways to get around this.

in hakaris case, the method he takes is something i already showed. if you move fast enough, air can't move out of the way in time, compressing. in this moment, air behaves *kind of* like a solid, allowing you to finally "push" off of it. when this happens, the compressed air explode outwards, creating what you know as a sonic boom. again, thinking of it like a spring is helpful.

now, what am i getting at exactly? simply, hakaris feat here isn't so much the damage he did to the enviroment. its the fact that he can accelerate his arm so fast it can force air to compress enough that he is able to push off against it meaningfully. this is to say, hakari is certianly in the ballpark of mach speeds, which based on statements we have about speed puts him in the top 3 fastest sorcerers alive. I think this furthers the general scaling we see with base hakari/kashimo etc that often is talked down on as impossible.

I think people often fall into the "show don't tell" mindset when talking about certain characters, but sometimes miss whats being shown. This is one of the better examples of something powerscalers tend to overlook, which is flashy vs effective

skinning someones face is a pretty nasty injury, looks really bad. in actuality though, this blow likely isn't even "fatal" assuming no infection. it looks awful, but truthfully damage wise this is actually pretty survivable. this is where "show don't tell" is a real problem, people don't actually know what they are looking at. its gruesome but largely superficial damage.

in our second fighting image we see what is significantly more dangerous strike. it doesn't look as bad on the surface, there is very little blood being shown after all. HOWEVER, as is the case with internal trauma, the main danger is what you can't see. puking blood from a blow to the ribs is a sign of extreme internal trauma. kashimos eyes additionally turn white, which is generally used to signal a knockout or CNS failure in manga.

knockout combined with vomiting blood from a hit to the ribs (so not even the stomach) is almost certainly a fatal blow, the amount of internal trauma we are being signaled to here is incompatible with life. multiple organ systems are potentially severely damaged, massive internal bleeding, AND nervous system issues from a single blow.

i used this example because i think it does a wonderful job showing why the mindset of "show don't tell" doesn't work well, because people genuinely don't know what they are looking at, show don't tell is often a fancy way of saying "vibe scaling". Show dont tell is fine, but its easily misused and shouldn't be seen as the ultimate way of scaling, statements are far more objective than trying to guess severity of injury based on vague appearances from a guy who isnt a doctor.

just a reminder for you folks, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean its not there. a large part of what makes internal injuries so dangerous is that people don't realize the extent to which they are hurt, and die from a very saveable injury. its especially problematic because sometimes "its the bullet you dont feel that kills you", these injuries are not only hard to see, but easy to not feel.