u/OverallCarry5276

Mechamaru if you consider Ultimate Mechamaru as a part of his arsenal (infinitely more valid than MBA Kashimo) is at least a top 10 character in the series (insane Ryu upscale)

Ryu's ce blasts are able to outspeed Yuta when they fight (especially clear when he's running from the initial barrage)

Ultimate Mechamaru's ce blasts not only are significantly larger, but they also home in on their opponents (as seen when he fights Mahito)

When you consider the speed of these attacks, remember that Mahito increased his speed with wings and that Mahito has insane amounts of aerial flexibility both by flying which is far better than simply running and using idle transfiguration to become a harder opponent to kill. He also becomes a rodent to run through the forest (once again uniquely hard to target)

Pair this with the fact that his injected simple domain implodes the innate domain which is functionally the same as the SSK so duraneg. It literally blitzed Mahito the first time he casts it (once again, lock on targetting)

Before we even scale other metrics his AP and practically unmissable attacks easily end almost anyone in the series.

For reference, while say Kashimo and Hakari struggle to punch through a shipping container, Mechamaru easily walks through the Ebata Tameike Dam.

At the least he should be relative to other special grade combatants. Except that he's a flipping mech. . He has functionally insane durability, and if you think ce reinforcement scales with body mass then well, he's already above most special grade fighters in stats.

In terms of speed, considering that he's max reinforcing himself the entire time, he's relative to special grade opponents who can't easily be outsped. At that he has full camera + puppets to use as eyes so he tracks practically anyone.

Same for his durability for the most part.

The only damage Mahito did to him was cutting the wires on his head (most vulnerable body part, Taking off his arm with his domain (most domains aren't like Mahito's where the barrier formation

is a brutal attack aka his hands are massive asf and literally gonna rip him apart), and drilling into his mouth when he was caught off guard.

At that, if the only way for most top 10 characters to beat him is to catch him in the cockpit before he unleashes an attack (Kashimo, Uraume, Hakari, Jogo, Ryu, any other top 10 contenders who are vulnerable to simply dying of straight blasts). They have to actually make it up the cockpit. They aren't spiderman, most can't even air jump.

Mechamaru statchecks like most of the top 10 contenders, there's probably even an argument to make for him actually being in the top 10.

Atp my top 10 is starting to look so comedic.

Dabura has 4 things that made him strong. Him being "Sukuna level", unlocking rct and ctr, and unlocking his domain.

Mahito has every single one of these things going for him. As a curse he has innate talent in using ce to heal himself, idle-transfiguration reversal wouldn't make sense to exist, he unlocked his domain in the same way Dabura did (life threatening encounter).

You can't even argue it's an expirience diff. Dabura was exposed to the barrier of the space ship and to rct from Mahoraga's sword. The only thing Mahito had over Dabura is proof of concept. Mahito was infinitely more expirimental and confident in his CT unlike Dabura who was scared to even apply light to himself.

Mahito had the better mindset for sorcery. Both Sukuna and Gojo share a near identical mindset which the series consistently shows produces the strongest characters.

Mahito was on track to be top 1 if we gave him 100 more chapters. The only thing he lacked was time to refine his stats. Why am I saying this? Well considering Kashimo fans and Yorozu fans looove glazing their characters with narrative so let's keep going.

Sukuna blatantly tells Jogo that he's one of the stronger opponents he's fought in his life (he doesn't even say this to Yorozu). Mahito is the leader of the disaster curses and designated their leader because of his superior potential which to a large degree is realised in the series.

Mahito => Jogo who Sukuna considers as strong

Let's go even further. Kenjaku (who has an explicit counter to Mahito in the form of CSM) was confirmed by Gege to be an exhausting fight against either Mahito or Jogo in a 1v1. And remember Mahito >= Jogo. So it's incredibly likely that he orchestrated Shibuya to weaken Mahito for CSM.

Kenjaku is often reffered to as the series 3rd strongest character (fine if you disagree) but undeniably the entire cast was wondering if they could take him on at the same time. Based on simple "levels of assurance" Mahito is an incredible threat relative to most the anti-Sukuna squad against Kenjaku.

Note how this was before Kenjaku learnt how strong Mahito had become.

alongside this Sukuna makes it clear that he will not tolerate interacting with the threat Idle transfiguration poses against him. If Sukuna even knowing it's not Mahito's goal to harm him still is weary then it shows his insane attack potency probably literally onetapping every character in the series.

In terms of narrative Mahito has far far more that suggests he's a top tier contender than most characters, which is allowed because he was the main antagonist of early jjk. He's implied to have absurd portential which he partially reaches by the time he unlocks ISBODK.

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On that I'll push it one step further. Mahito is top 6 jjk (top 4 if we're being generous).

Mahito is generally under-rated for being "stat-relative" to Shibuya Yuji which is such an over-exaggeration. Post Shibuya Yuji was stat-relative to Yuta Okkotsu at least in speed (Yuta had no reason to hold back his speed when chasing down Yuji)

Because we know CE reinforcement is relative throughout the entire body in terms of striking force and defence Yuta>= Yuji's stats but likely to be closer rather than further apart.

When Mahito fought Yuji he:

Can't use his CT (The literal oneshot on Yuji), After transfiguring 1000 humans and tanking unlimited void, Fighting a 1v2 vs Yuji and Todo, Gets hit by Nobara's Resonance, can't use his CT on Yuji or domain

So when we see Mahito, his ce reserves have been exhausted and he's gotten hit by resonance which damages CE output (he couldn't heal himself as much and couldn't reinforce himself as much) AND his h2h seems worse because he's also fighting Todo.

I'd also like to remind you that Mahito is clearly weary of losing and getting killed in his fight with Yuji which initially is thought to be because he's fearing Yuji but later shown because he suspected Kenjaku to betray him.

This is highly likely to suggest he was holding back his ce usage whilst fighting Yuji (shown by him not max reinforcing himself the entire fight, missing an opportunity to kill Yuji)

For all intents and purposes Mahito is significantly superior in every single stat than what's shown in the series.

all this scaling pre-ISBODK Mahito, which shows he's at least 3x tankier (even more but we're not shown), the anime also shows is a speed boost whilst he jumps around Yuji. And no Yuji being able to predict the strikes against Mahito is not an antifeat, Yuji was incredibly locked in and we see characters predicting attacks from faster opponents all the time (like Megumi vs Toji in the alleyway and Maki vs cursed spirit Naoya)

So (stat wise) Mahito >>>> shibuya Yuta = Yuji

in terms of defense and endurance Mahito >>>>>>>>> shibuya Yuta >= Yuji . Yuta has rct wheras Yuji doesn't.

"Okay sure but the cast get's stronger after switch training right?" Well yes and no. Firstly, the HH are almost at their peak strength already. Nothing implies stat-wise Maki gets stronger, Yuta and Hakkari in jackpot are almost always max reinforcing themseles (so they're reaching their ce output limit. The best Yuta / Hakkari could've done is by improving their efficiency which is such a short time is a jump to say they got meaningfully better (it's shown that efficiency improvements take years which is shown especially though Gojo who even owning the 6 eyes had to spend his life refinining hit ct)

Sukuna even notes their durability increase (useless vs Mahito) but not really their speed, which would only really put them somewhat relative to Mahito.

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Another major thing we need to value is Mahito's matchup spread. Mahito simply has a more efficient form of construction. He consistently makes souls take the form of objects with various properties, he makes a blaster with his arm, turns Todo's hand into exploding metal shards.

Considering that objects have souls, Mahito has shown an ability to manipulate objects made with ce, that being the soul world environment thing in modulo, the outer shell of ISBODK, and his general ability to manipulate souls into objects and vice versa

This is important for 2 of the matchups in the top 10

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Okay so we ultimately need to determine who'd go before him in the series if we were to see where he is in the top 10

The top 10 contenders are: Sukuna, Gojo, Kenjaku, Yuta, Yuki, Hakkari, Yuji, Yorozu, Kashimo, Maki, Toji, and Jogo.

Not even gonna touch Gojo / Sukuna so at most top 3.

We're pretty much told Mahito > Jogo, he definitely wins the 1v1 because Jogo can't percieve the soul.

Mahito rubber diffs Kashimo, as a character with an electric based CT Mahito hard counters him by imbuing himself with rubber based properties, and when (not if) he domains, Kashimo is dead. Kashimo does not have any way to debilitate Mahito because Mahito is a curse and doesn't have vital organs alongside idle transfiguration removing any form damage. he furthermore has raw ce to heal himself. Considering Kashimo fans or some unknown reason like to scale MBA Kashimo, there's nothing suggesting the EMW blasts can fully onetap Mahito, in which case Kashimo is put on a 5 minute time limit to win against the single best stalling character in the verse against him (maybe besides Gojo). So if we take most ridiculous Kashimo scaling and assume he "blitzes" most the verse and is top 3, there's highly likely no chance Kashimo can kill him.

You can't heal Idle transfiguration because it permanently alters the soul so Hakkari is dead. Hakkari could've only increased his efficiency through switch training and we know Hakkari's base stats are at best relative to post Shibuya Yuji considering his punches barely affected a Yuji that was just tanking them. So considering that Mahito >>>> Shibuya Yuji stats = Base Hakkari, Mahito just outlasts jackpot (making the ridiculous assumption jackpot hakkari blitzes) and just kills him. Mahito will eventually touch Hakkari, it's a matter of time.

Yorozu is the second character that the matchup spread is incredibly relevant to. Yorozu's stats are scaled circularly to Sukuna even though he makes it clear he wasn't trying. He never aknowledges her strength whilst he aknowledges Jogo's, that alone generally implies Jogo >= Yorozu. So it's highly unlikely she stat-checks Mahito. Either way she's the first character here that gets beaten by Mahito's domain because it's explicitly faster than other domain expansions.

Secondly to that, Mahito should just be able to undo the bug armor considering he functionally has construction sorcery. True sphere doesn't work because Mahito can make his own (he's shown consistently the only limitation is proof of concept). This second arguement is more expiremental but it's made clear that innanimate objects have souls.

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I'll get into the Yuji / Yuki / Kenjaku / Maki & Toji matchups another day, they probably deserve their own posts

I'm doing this just to collect counter-arguements I can sort out for part 2.

As for the part 1 conclusion:

Mahito narratively, stat wise, and matchup wise is stronger than the overwhelming majority of characters in the verse. His potential, character statements, and role in the story all imply his strength. His stats are clearly relative if not higher than most of the verse, especially defense and endurance. He simply matchup diffs most the top 10, only 5 of them can even see the soul.