With Zuko not getting a power up through the series he actually does, its just not pointed out. He learns from the other elements and bending styles and the best example of this is when Zuko is fighting his sister, and she is sending a line of fire down on him and he takes a earth bending stance and splits the fire down the middle around him. He took his uncles lesson to heart and learned from the other nations.
Also the way to channel chi that the dragons taught him, aang, and iroh is superior to the way that the fire nation as a whole do it. That episode was Gohan going to see guru
Just to fill in the blanks with D&D's magic system: The original explanation is that wizards basically suffer magical memory loss. They memorize all the precise gestures and incantations to cast the spell the night before, and when they cast the spell, the specifics just disappear from their mind (it's implied that the knowledge is the fuel that powers the spell). The reason you need to take a break before casting again is because your mage needs to crack open their textbook to study and commit the knowledge to memory.
I love when magic systems allow for the characters to get creative with their abilities. Stories like Avatar, Brando Sando novels, or The Owl House can pull out abilities that have never been seen before but still make sense based on what we know of the world and magic, which is so much more fun than when Harry Potter introduces a new spell out of nowhere that could have solved dozens of problems before.
Lightbringer by Brent Weeks has an EXCELLENT. Magic system that had REALLY hard rules for the most part that are used to solve situations in really creative ways. There's a few things that get hinky and soft but that's built into the narrative structure and are less about solving problems and more about narrative, but the magic problem-solving is FANTASTIC
Absolutely! Systems that seem very limited at first, until you have a character who can just MacGyver the magic highlights the strengths of both. Avatar has a obviously a paragon of this kind of stuff with water bending innovations alone
The thing I like about the LOTR system is that it's just like, a feel. Example: The ring wraiths have really bad vibes, and that weakens most people. But the elves have really good vibes, so they aren't affected by it
Yep if I were to described the magic system of lord of the rings it's a the vibe system. When gandalf gets mad his mad vibes lower lights and let's his voice be heard. And stuff like that.
Ring Wraiths are men who, by the power of the Nine Rings, basically stopped existing as flesh, entering almost entirely the spiritual world. Funny thing, the spiritual/physical worlds are absolutely a hard magic part of LotR. Ainu are beings almost entirely of the spiritual world. Elves are basically in the middle point, living in both worlds at once. This differentiation between which "realms" each race inhabits is most shown in the process of death. Powerful Ainu basically can't ever die, although their power is finite so they can very much get to a point where they have died so many times that they can never again take the effort of crossing back from the spiritual world to the physical one (this is actually the final fate of Sauron, he doesn't die with the Ring, he just kinda lives forever as a spirit in a world where he'll never again be able to interact with anything). Elves, which basically work as very very very very weak Ainu, in theory should live once, die once, and remain as spirits for the rest of eternity. The Ainu were nice guys for the elves, so they set up a system where they give those elf "ghosts" power when they die so they can be reborn. This is what happens with Glorfindel, he died in the siege of Gondolin but since he went out kicking absolute ass killing a Balrog, the Ainu lifted both the ban on the whole noldor race, allowing him to get a body again, _and_ lifted the everstanding ban of "if you died, you live in Valinor now" for apparently the only time ever, allowing him to go back to the Middle Earth, because I mean, come on, the dude killed a Balrog, let him do whatever the hell he wants, he _killed a fucking Balrog._ Humans are beings almost entirely of the physical world. The cruel trick of the Ring Wraiths is allowing men, who know exactly what kind of thing would break a human's mind, enter the spiritual world. Basically, they are fighting people with a set of skills they have never trained for, most have never even realized existed. Elves are better at facing them than humans, because even the entirely mundane ones that never left Middle Earth have at least been _aware_ of the realm in which the Nazgul exist for their entire life. Unlike humans, they can _at least_ see and understand what the Nazgul are doing, so they aren't as entirely defenseless. A simple way to visualize why the Nazgul are "bad vibes" and elves are "good vibes" for me is imagining it in terms of subsonic waves. You know how, even without hearing anything (because it's subsonic, duh), a subsonic wave still has an impact on a person? Just imagine that this whole spirits versus material deal is just sound above or below what we can hear. Elves can hear that sound, and are basically always singing a nice, comforting, calm melody in those wavelengths. Humans never hear it, but they sure do feel better when elves are around. Nazgul, on the other hand, use the same technique to emit a constant blood curdling shriek that, if we could hear, would terrify us. Humans don't _hear_ it, but they still _feel_ the effect of it deep into themselves. Fun fact, dwarves are the only race even _less_ attuned to the spiritual world than humans, and it's a hilarious case of "they are SO out of tune with it, that it hardly does anything to them at all." Second fun fact, this whole "they exist more in spirit than in flesh" is the whole reason why Merry had to help Eowyn kill the Witch King of Angmar. Though it arrived way too late for it to matter at all, the humans of Arnor eventually understood how the Nazgul worked and created weapons enchanted specifically to fuck them up, most likely helped by people of Eregion (who were the ones who came up with the whole "make a ring to push them into the spiritual realm" thing in the first place). Merry's dagger had the only purpose of "stabbing a Nazgul with it will force it to exist in the physical world for a few seconds." When Merry shanks the Witch King in the leg, it creates a tiny window of time in which Eowyn can stab him in the face and kill him.
Jojo Stands are a phenomenal magic system for the purpose of characterisation. Josuke, who is incredibly compassionate and always tries to put others' needs above his own, can use his Stand to heal injuries but only on others, never on himself. Kakyoin was a very lonely child who always just wanted to have friends, but is also afraid of intimicacy. His Stand can stretch out and possess people from a distance. Mista is very superstitious and always worried about something causing him bad luck, but when he's set on a task his incredibly focused and decisive. His Stand manifests as 6 little creatures that work together manipulate small objects in ways that look like just random good luck, but when they're not called to action the creatures sit around and pointlessly fight with each other.
Timestamps: 7:52 - Avatar: The Last Airbender - A 15:58 - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - S 22:51 - Lord of the Rings - C/D 28:24 - The Force (Star Wars) - C/D 36:39 - She-Ra - B 44:02 - Harry Potter - F 52:14 - Witcher - C 56:19 - D&D - B 1:02:10 - The Dragon Prince - B 1:09:13 - The Inheritance Cycle - C 1:16:07 - JRPGs / Mana Systems - D 1:21:07 - Yu-Gi-Oh! - E 1:28:03 - Magical Girls - C 1:36:39 - The Owl House - A 1:43:11 - Fairy Tail - E 1:47:58 - Slayers - A 1:55:48 - All the Brando Sando stuff - N/A 1:58:07 - Narnia - D 2:02:50 - The Wheel of Time - N/A 2:05:12 - Discworld - A 2:14:45 - Earthsea - A 2:19:40 - Legend of Zelda - C 2:25:14 - Cats (The Musical) - F 2:30:12 - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - D 2:33:14 - One Piece - D 2:36:32 - Arcane (LoL) - C 2:41:57 - Elder Scrolls - B/C 2:46:57 - Percy Jackson - B 2:50:13 - Grishaverse - B 2:52:54 - Aurora (Red's comic) - Cleo
I was really hoping that they'd have included the Fate series' magic system, but understood from the fact that the video was less than 5 hours that it almost certainly hadn't been brought up in any real detail
Or as the inexplicable temporally displaced old lady put it, "The power of friendship was always there, this gun you found just hijacked it." And that was a wild thing to say out of context.
I am leaving a rare comment to make sure anyone who hasn't read Discworld knows that when Red says Discworld is "saturated with magic the way Pripyat is saturated with radiation," this is a very literal comparison. The area behind the wizard university where they've been dumping all their trash for hundreds of years would theoretically be very valuable real estate except that the ground is so saturated with magical waste that whenever they've tried to do landscaping projects the trees get up and walk away.
"Magister, Im afraid theres a protest in the backyard" "Goddamit, I though we already gave those gardeners a raise!" "Sir it not the gardeners that are protesting, its the garden."
I'm just starting to listen to the Discworld series, is there a specific book that talks about magical waste? Cause that is super interesting. My based mom had Discworld audio books on all the time when I was growing up, but I've never listened to/read any of the books from beginning to end until recently
@@Mosstoad It is alluded to in a few places, but it is never a big plot point IIRC. I remember some bits in The Truth, and I shall wear Midnight. (A nice little arc of books to get into Discworld is The Truth, Going Postal, Making Money, Raising Steam). If you search for The Discworld Reading Order Guide 3.0 you can get a really nice map of how the stories relate to each other and you can find the threads that most appeal to you as an entry.
@@miketime4290 A very powerful wizard did something offscreen that you never get to see. It was somehow very magical but also entirely unexplained. And that is the explanation given as to why something is the way it is/ happens the way it does. Yeah no that sounds about right. Especially as Gandalf is essentially an angel that helped build the world so there likely ARE bits of Middle Earth that are the way they are because a wizard, specifically Gandalf, did it.
My favourite thing about discworld being "saturated in magic" is that the presence of magic slows the speed of light. It's such a great and pointless detail
Not to mention that the Disc is SO magical that a simple, sharp, mundane and we'll kept sword in the hands of a True Hero will cleave through a magical weapon like a hot knife through butter. Because narrative belief is a motive force on the Discworld.
The one thing that always stuck with me about Eragon's magic is the "blessing". Quick recap: in book 1 Eragon is asked to bless a young child, so he uses some magic words to give her a protection from misfortune. In the second book, while he is studying magic, he tells his master about this, and the words he used, and his master responds with "Oh, no, you fucked up BIG time! You messed up your grammar, you actually cursed that poor child to BE A PROTECTION from misfortune!" The poor girl is therefore cursed to hear all misfortune of everyone around her, and is given the compulsion to do everything in her power to prevent it, or suffer with whoever is suffering around her. This is the protagonist's biggest mistake, he carries that for a long time until he gets the chance to fix it (at that point the poor girl has lived 3 years of her life in complete misery). Even then, you can't just undo magic, so he needs to add a new magic on top, which results in a mitigation of the compulsion, but does nothing about the "misfortune sense". The girl immediately uses her ability to prey on Eragon's insecurity to stop him from trying again, and then lives on basically as a supernaturally enhanced manipulator.
@@MajikkaniHand They talk about how it would have been much worse for her if he had meant what he said. Basically his intentions being to protect her is the only reason she isnt dead within a month.
Owl House's magic is like if Fullmetal Alchemist was reversed, so everybody on the boiling isles saw the truth beyond the gate and can just make hand circles but she's still having to draw complicated transmutation glyphs.
Its more like everyone got philosopher's stones implanted in them, I am pretty sure the magic gland is going to be plot relevant with witches being descended from magically altered humans or something like that.
@@devforfun5618 Yep, not sure how to stretch the analogy there, but it makes me wonder if luz will figure out tricks with more permanent mediums for her glyphs- considering they seem to burn up, evaporate or otherwise disapear or destroy themselves when used, tatoo versions sound wasteful and painful- unless you want to hurt someone whenever they try to use magic, or power a constant effect by tatooing a living magic user... That got dark, but also leads to the hilarious immage of Belos being subjected to a shock collar like rune that goes off whenever he tries to use magic as a no lethal punishment in the end.
@@timothycarney9652 I mean, I think a fair analogy could be made from the tattoos to the coven system, since the covens block out other magic types (besides the coven's specialty), so it could be a sort of reversed parallel there
Death Note had a hard magic system. The note has a very rigidly defined set of rules, and Light simply plays around with what is possible within those rules.
If you want to see a magic system that has the same trope-filled nature as Discworld magic, I suggest reading the web serial A Practical Guide to Evil. Basically, tropes are the laws of the universe, and individuals who embody a particular character archetype get superhuman powers corresponding to that archetype. These individuals are called Named. A few examples of Names are Black Knight, Lone Swordsman, Wandering Bard, etc. What's cool about the series is that many conflicts between Named come down to who can manipulate tropes the best. It's a blast to read.
I haven’t read it, but I shudder to think how one Named with Plot Armor would be an unstoppable juggernaut (at least until the story arc ends, of course) 🫣
So, in yugioh, the millineum puzzle actually had a power that was removed from the 4 kids censorship when it came to the west. They keep calling it the "heart of the cards" but infact, that is the puzzles power, which just straight up described as "a luck boost that switches a card in his deck to the card he needs when he needs it most"
Love seeing the protagonist just have magic that lets them cheat at the virtue they're supposed to be displaying. That's as funny as Deltona quest, a series where the challenges are primarily puzzle based" where the first magic item the MC gets is a gem that "strengthens and clears the mind." Just whenever he's stumped he just slips his hand over the gem and bam, problem solved.
@@FrostSylph oh boy you'd hate Zexal, where the protagonists power was literally to "create a card that changes the future" with his Shining Draw. It was made by a guy that very obviously would rather be doing typical Shonen anime where the characters actually fight rather than duel with cards. The power was even more hilarious because it was specifically used at times when the bad guys had creatures with abilities so convoluted that the only way for the protag to win was to create and draw a card that had the ability to SPECIFICALLY counter what the enemy was doing. It was insanely bad.
the joke is the luck boost has two conditions that control how strong it is one is how good you are at whatever you are doing, and of course the higher the stakes the greater the buff(and yes this does mean that the main charterer literally get harder to beat the bigger the stakes are) also this does not include yami/atem own power that he forgot that lets him just will any card he wants to his hand(and yes this does mean he had the power but did not know it to pull off a 100% turn 0 wins up until the start of duellist kingdom)
Actually even in the original it's shown as "luck" or "believing in the cards". Ishtar only talks about this power when Yugi and Atem duels each other and people start suspecting something is cheessy after the 10th miracle turn around in 3 turns because both are at maximum Destiny Warping capacity.
Well yeah but is also like the only duel where atem is at full memory and power apart from when he shows up god style in dark side of dimensions to kick ass and take names
The Trails games kind of pull this off: they have a semi-hard "magic" system that's actually technology (you run a special kind of energy through a circuit made with elemental energy-infused quartz, and the kinds of "spells" you can cast depend on the construction of the circuit and the types of elemental material used as much as any kind of affinity), but there's also a very soft magic system that doesn't use technology. Instead, you basically *rip a hole in reality* and cause a dimension with different laws of physics to temporarily overlap with "normal" reality, which allows you to do things that are normally impossible. This is much more powerful but also incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. It's not the best magic system ever but I like the general idea. I just have a thing for universes where "magic" definitely exists and yet there are layers to it, where not all magic is real or there are different magics with varying levels of public awareness. And while I don't know if Zemuria was sung into existence by a lion, orbal (the "magic" technology) guns do exist. The games also get points for using this to give a plausible in-universe explanation for that thing that happens in JRPGs where some of your party members use swords and others use machine guns: a very advanced civilisation that predated the current nations of this world left a lot of technology behind when it collapsed, and as soon as their successors learned the basics of how to power and construct this magic tech, they began to reverse-engineer the advanced technology. Since they had such a massive leg-up, their industrial revolution happened incredibly quickly. Neatly explains the uneven tech levels, and it's also hugely affected the world's politics and infrastructure.
Morgoth: Eru Iluvatar cannons aren’t musical instruments. Eru Iluvatar: Yes they are and I’m using 27 of them. Morgoth: Iluvatar no. Eru Iluvatar: Iluvatar yes. **Fires off cannons** Iluvatar always yes!!! **Cut to Tolkien waking up in sweat after having a WW1 flashback** Tolkien: I know, I’ll make a story about tiny men with hairy feet.
15:30 Couple things about this topic: I found out from hearing someone else talk about Zuko's Agni Kai with Azula, that the way he fights is he uses martial arts from water, earth, and air bending techniques to become whole, like Uncle Iroh taught him. Also, his upgrade I would say was when he became the blue spirit and when he was trying to figure out self-identity, like in the Zuko Alone episode, some of his training time was spent in sword fighting and non-bending fighting. And it came in handy when he was trying to lay low in Ba Sing Se
Yeah Red says he doesn't get appreciatively better at fire bending. But if you look at season 1 Zuko and post dragons season 3 Zuko his animation when fire bending is very different. S1 Zuko is going stiffly through the forms and S4 Zuko is almost dancing in his movements.
@@danielcubias432 I think she said he didn't get a big power up. Like he never went from red fire to blue fire, or figured out the lightning move, etc. He gets more fluid and confident, but that's the gradual process of developing mastery, not the big power leap that a lot of shows do. And the primary Avatar party does to some extent when they come across various teachers - though there it's actually justified because they found a teacher and had some training, not all of which happens on screen. Katara is probably the biggest example of this with Hama's teaching - sure it's a situation where she's under extreme duress, but she figures out bloodbending *very* fast. Zuko doesn't really have a single turning point where he goes from being a student following through forms to a master fluidly chaining moves together - it's a gradual transition. Which is good. Plus, he's far from incompetent at the start - he does beat Zhao in an Agni Kai in like...episode 3 or 4? Zhao's far from a great firebender, but Zuko's ...14? Beating an adult who's completed his training and rose to a position of command and continued to rise all the way to Admiral in a regime that values strength above all other virtues is definitely not the mark of an incompetent. (Yes, Aang handles Zuko easily, but Aang's air bending fighting style is something that hasn't been seen since Iroh's father was young. And just looking at it, it's an incredibly dynamic style of fighting, which would be hard to counter until you've got an idea of what the logic is....and the only one who understands Aang's fighting style at that point is Aang himself.
@@rashkavar In the prison escape episode, he duels Azula to a near stand-still with Sokka's help and it shows how much more control and precision he's garnered over his bending. So yes, he doesn't get any massive leaps in power (excluding dragon fire from the later comics) but he gets a lot better at Fire bending by the end of the show.
The problem I've always had with Harry Potter's magic system is that it feels like the worst of both worlds when it comes to hard and soft magic. You're never 100% sure what anyone us capable of like a soft system, but also lacks the mythical grandeur that a good soft system entails because it's treated so mundanely
Honestly I really used to like Harry Potter but it's so inconsistent outside of like time turner's. I don't even know if I want to support it due to jk Rowling honestly.
@@Elephantsaresupreme Harry Potter magic works as a tool for its story and... Just that. Really, nothing else. The issue with those books is that it's clear that there Is no real worldbuilding
For Lord of the Rings, if you look into the earlier ages, you get into more of the magic. Skilled people (elves and Ainur specifically) can weave magic through singing. The world was literally sung into existence. At one point, the badass elf Finrod Felagund has the equivalent of and epic rap battle of history against Sauron. I feel like that doesn’t get enough attention
This is kinda in the movies as well, when Saruman is basically yelling at the sky to bring down the mountain on the group, him and Gandalf yell at each other for a bit. Gives it a very mystical feel
I really don't understand why they rated it so low. It's important to the world and the characters, and it's actually pretty consistent about who can do what. It may be a soft system, but it still somehow stays in its lane better than most, while supporting the world and maintaining the vibes (pun intended).
Witcher's system is far cooler than you realise. Words spoken have power, especially promises. Literally, making a promise is like casting a spell. If you break that promise, you become cursed. This means that the story is, literally, the magic. It's one of my favourite magic systems. Every single cursed creature has a story of how they became that way, linked to their curse, and a curse is lifted typically only when the cursed keeps the word they broke (sort of Beauty and the Beast, but everywhere). Then there's the Conjunction of the Spheres, the idea that the world is literally crashing into another world, and that's where all the magic came from. The Sorceresses and Witchers are actually created through scientific alchemy, like Frankenstein's Monster. There's lots going on here, and it's very grim dark. Definitely more interesting than the average bog standard magic system.
It's a system that really works in the Shrek-like universe of The Witcher. It's a world of fairy tales run mad where almost anything can happen. Powerful curses can be cast by people who know what they're doing, but they can also be cast by people who in an extreme fit of emotion curses someone to suffer a horrible fate, often with significant consequences for the victim. So magic is both a science that can be studied and applied while also having a strong flavour of rural mysticism, a magic system that allows for the existence of both cultured scholars using strict principles and swamp witches using bones and animal blood. However, because of this it ends up as a very "soft" magic system. It has some internal consistency, but it's more of a basic framework for the world to be built upon rather than a strict system. Which, again, works perfectly for The Witcher universe.
Jojo's main power system, Stands, is a system that is liked almost entirely because of its batshit insane execution. If you only got up to part 3, then you only got some tame stuff. I'd compare it more to a super hero story than a magical system, but it far outstrips most of the basic western comic book powers you see. One guy's ability is to create zippers on anything he touches, and he's one of the most dangerous stands in the series, there's a dude whose power is literally just a fishing rod, and a metal manipulator who manipulates fine iron dust to turn invisible by reflecting light and to create nails inside your body out of YOUR OWN BLOOD! Then you die of oxygen deprivation because without iron your blood can't transfer oxygen! It only gets crazier after every part, there's an ability that once activated prevents you from remembering more than three new pieces of information, one that removes gravity on you and everything you touch, causing you to slowly create an environment where the air itself has lost gravity and is sucked away to form a vacuum around you, causing all blood to be sucked away, an ability that halves your size every time you travel half the distance towards the user, a stand that is literally just a hype man for its user, a dude who can blow nails into balloon animals, a stand that can make you unable to differentiate two different things, which is fucking terrifying when the user made a person unable to tell the difference between people and oncoming buses. To put a long story short, Stands isn't that special in terms of underlying concept, people create spirits that protect and fight for them who have different abilities based on their personality, it's that simple. The true strength is that the author understands the vast array of human variation and decided to put it to story. It's fights are not something you see in most other stories because Araki is doing power creep but for design. Every part comes with more insane abilities that are insane because they are different, not because they are more powerful. Every new encounter is an entirely new combat paradigm, every new part brings forward newer and more interesting abilities. The fights feel more like puzzles to solve rather than fist fights, where every combatant is trying their damdest to use their one special trick to win the battle. It is a story that can convince you that a shit superpower is actually frightening when used intelligently and with the correct circumstance. It's Jojos.
The best part about it is how any weird idea you have could be a standpower. If I told you that someone had a stand which caused everyone in an area to feel really drunk, like they are unbalanced and their reaction time sucks, you could totally believe that it’s a real stand and could be really dangerous in the right hands.
It speaks to Arakis abilities that i remembered each and every one of the characters you described with their abilities. Not their names, but how the encounters with them went, because each one is unique.
Something I've always liked about the witchers magic is that it's actually pretty world permeating, you just kinds forget how all encompassing it really is. Like, that's how alot of ghosts or curse like monsters come to be, cursing somebody with your dying breath is apt to literally place a curse on somebody, and the punishment for breaking a promise can also be very tangible. It's cool because literally anybody can brush shoulders with magic, and they usually do on complete accident.
Honestly, having problems is a good part of what made it last. Endless time can be spent working though all the issues, and volumes of fanfiction written working out solutions to the problems.
Yeah I think I agree that it's the simplicity of it that makes it so potent with kids. The other thing is that the modern fantasy, secret world setting kind of allows the reader to project their own sense of realism into it. I think that's as far as a child really needs to think into it. The point of Harry Potter is more about the struggles of adolescence and the bonds of friendship.
Me learning that Red’s art style was born out of the intersection between Calvin & Hobbes and anime: Yes. This makes perfect sense. I did not guess this, but having heard it, I cannot imagine any other shape for reality to be in.
One thing about One Piece’s Devil Fruit system is that it is incredibly consistent but in a unconventional way. Devil Fruit powers are based on the thing it’s based on (i.e. springs, candles, flowers, bulls) BUT also entirely on the creativity of the user and how THEY believe their abilities can work which adds a huge amount of variance to what you should expect from a system like this. Puns and mythology can come into play (which Oda loves to do) and even in some cases where extinct creatures appear, the users can almost make up wacky abilities because no one in-universe can confirm that it doesn’t work that way.
Adding to this, the explanation for how a Devil Fruit appears is that a set time after the prior user of a Devil Fruit dies, another fruit somewhere in the world (not specified if the fruit needs to be a specific type or similar in shape to the original) will suddenly transform into the Devil Fruit in question. Once this transformation takes place, the fruit will not expire and will last until consumed. Most of these fruits are documented in terms of appearance by now, so this cycle has existed according to the lore for at least 800+ years, but some specific ones have particular details relating to them hidden, such as Kaido's devil fruit, which requires the user to climb a waterfall while transformed to unlock its full strength (which in and of itself is a mythology reference).
What, your telling me that in ancient times dinosaurs *didn't* hunt by grabbing their own head, pulling it back and using it like a slingshot?! Preposterous! Although my favorite thing about how they can do that because they *think* that's how it works is that there are actual, living dinosaurs in One Piece. It's just that the dino fruit people apparently chose to ignore that and instead made up their own sh*t cause why not XD
I'd argue One Piece has about six different systems stacked up in a trench coat pretending to be one, but the systems are all goblins that are very clearly fighting with each other and so everyone quietly hopes it isn't a magic system at all. 1) Devil fruits, obviously, but with the interesting note that Oda does make it distinct that those who've had their powers a long time, or especially as kids, think of their powers very differently than those who just got their powers or only had them as adults. The most disappointing example of the later is Brook, who technically had his powers a very long time but couldn't use them and when they finally became useful he sat on it for fifty years (trauma, I know, and he was already a pretty good fighter, but...dude...) 2) Haki, exerting the force of your character over...reality? This one only makes sense if the sensory version is somehow distinct (like expand empathy into a full superpower? I don't know, but it has rules and they work). Does the voice of the world thing count as part of Haki or is it separate? The hat...same question. 3) Fishman Karate/Mink electro. They try to explain these away as physicality and stuff but...it's a gentle magic (do the mink transformations count as part of electro? Moon magic?) 4) The transponder snails. Maybe it's not magic exactly, but it's absolutely super natural. (Do the skypia dials count as part of the same or separate?) 5) Whatever the hell is going on with the Grandline and the Calm belts that make magnets not work/ the poses. You can try to explain it with magnets all you want...absolutely not. (Does sea prism stone fit here?) 6) The occasional love ghosts giving protagonists a loving shove off. 7) THE POWER OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!!!
@@meghanhenderson6682 Also Lunarian fire, fortune telling, the voice of all things, Shirohoshi and Momo's powers, and Germa Science is the best in the world!!!!!!!
As a Tolkien fan, I found your assessment of the Lord of the Rings pretty much accurate. I think Indigo's description was spot on. Middle Earth's magic system is nonexistent because there is no "system" to the magic. Magic in Middle Earth works however the story needs it to in any given moment. It seems to me making that work narratively would be helped by the softer approach.
I think that if you really squint you can find some rules that Tolkien followed, like having the ainur be the only ones capable of doing magic in the traditional sense, while the lesser races can usually just enchant items or create illusions, and also that to cast a spell you need some nondescript "power". So a reader can at least be sure that a human will never be able to do magic, and if someone calls themselves a sorcerer they are probably either lying, using magical items or an higher being is giving them powers. Same thing for an elf, they will probably never be able to manipulate the weather and if they do then it must mean that they are a super elf who's been to valinor and maybe they are using a ring of power. So it's not completely random.
Not to mention Middle earth is a world of waning magic. That is part of the reason the people of Middle Earth was split on destroying the One Ring. That doing so would basically break the last dam holding in whatever little magic was left, and there would be now place left to go but west.
I think of magic in lotr more like religious miracles. It's there, helps you when needed but not in a grand way. If you think of gandalf as a guardian angel it makes sense
If anything it's heavily theme-based. Gandalf's theme is fire, Saruman's theme is domination, the Three Rings work on themes of healing, preservation and resistance respectively, etc. There are no hard and fast rules, these things just have whatever effects, according to their theme.
I like all of these comments, and agree. All of you made valid and interesting points. I think, on the whole, we all are speaking on the theme of "it's difficult to think of Middle Earth magic as a full system because of the kind of story being told".
@@aubarlowe I always view magic is how much arcane force you can safely pull from the Weave. Sure there is more magic that you could draw on but it might kill you. (Just not giving the players that option because I know for a fact the Wizard would just be like fuck it I give 0 shits the Cleric can rez me two seconds after I blow up. Going nuts!)
@@crazyscotsman9327 that’s a bit Call of Cthulu. Using HP when you don’t have enough magic points. Maybe someone should come up with homebrew of how much hp corresponds to each level of slot
You know it is called Vancian system since it was inspired Jack Vance dying earth series. Haven't read them myself, but if you want answers for dnd magic, there you go.
Red's mom rearranging the order of the Narnia books because she didn't like the in-universe chronology is actually highly relatable to me because my parents do the EXACT same thing! Their order is publishing order: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Prince Caspian The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (my mom's favorite) The Silver Chair The Horse and his Boy The Magician's Nephew The Last Battle Now, for the order in which I read them: LWW, PC, MN, VDT, SC, HHB, LB.
I'd describe Dragon Prince's magic system as being like a brie: It has a hard outer shell--with the drawing of symbols and speaking of works and specific sources granting specific abilities and whatnot--but underneath that shell it's pretty soft, basically just doing whatever the characters need it to do. And as for Callum and why no human had done that before, I think it's because people use the most easy-to-access method available, especially in a combat context. Dark magic is highly effective and easy to access, and most people don't use magic at all. So between that and the elemental orbs that let them access the sources anyway, people had no reason to meditate on the nature of the sources and their connection to them. I think the implication is that humans are sort of like Eevees, not born into one element but able to choose any of them under the right circumstances.
To add. The magic is quite interesting because to do it requires intuitively understanding the source of magic you're trying to tap into, knowing the complex secret at it's center. Magical beings are born with it, but you can still figure it out with time and focus. Makes it a harder, better system in my thoughts.
I think that it has issues in what’s been established as the world needs to be fleshed out more. We need to see more dark magic users and learn more of the history of the world.
I have to comment on what was said about Lord of the Rings' magic system. It's not just based on Norse myth, but also on a lot of hot debates that were going on at the time in Catholic mysticism, which JRRT was very much keyed into. In effect, LotR's magic system is designed as an argument against the existence of a consistent, hard magic system, that could be used for good. This was an age where is was believed that, since the universe was spoken into existence, the cosmos must in fact be a complex statement is some transcendent mathematical language that we were yet to decode. It seemed to many like the unification of science, magic and religion could be right around the corner. We just had to figure out this quantum mechanics thing, and then we would have certain and absolute knowledge of all things, and become omnicient demigods. As a postwar Romanitic, a Humanitarian, and philosophical moralist, JRRT rejected this ideology long before Heisenberg exploded it. The universe, he felt, could not be a machine spinning in endless cycles, or a cold difference engine reacting to stimuli. He saw the world and it's history as a narrative constructed by a Great Author; not a cold mathematical statement of physical laws, but an epic song of heroes triumphing in the face of evil. Miracles must be hoped for, magic that can be relied upon would only become a tool for evil. The One Ring is itself a reference to Socrates' metaphor of the Ring of Gyges, which granted invisibility, but invariably drive the heroes who wielded it to become tyrants. A man who can act unseen is accountable to no one. A man who is accountable to no one has absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The invisible man is a monster. That worldview is unavoidable woven into his writing, and would lead to his famous falling out with C.S. Lewis, who often took these as deliberate metaphors for their many arguments about the subject. Lewis was the kind of person to take another person's entire belief system personally.
lightly off topic, is there a known source for the weird dualism? Like on first glance it's obviously very Christian in appearance, but in practice it really really reminds me of Slavic mythology or Zoroastrianism. The Christian and Norse elements sort of outshine the dualism but it always stuck out to me whenever I look into the cosmological side of the universe. Like it could just be fantasy christianity taken to extremes but the man was a linguist and historian I believe
@@Ezekiel_Allium The Zoroastrianism reminder is likely due to it influencing Christianity. After all, Sat'an went from "The Accuser", the divine smiter, the title given to the Angel who was serving Yahweh's will at the moment, to Satan, "The Deiciver", the source of all evil, and a specific angel, Lucifer, who rebelled against Yahweh and became the malevolent force of the world. So Zoroastrianism's dual gods definitely influenced Christianity. There is even the apocryphal book of Judus, which depicts Yahweh as the evil, chaotic, bloodthirsty god(something something genocides, human sacrifices(I'm not even referring to Issac as screwed up as that story is), lying to Adam and Eve about the details of the test and locking the knowledge they needed to pass it intentionally behind failure, and then proceeding to sabotage humanity once they started to work around the punishment... It's believable is my point), and Jesus was the good deity opposing him. This obviously was rejected once Cathocism started collecting regional lore to consolidate into a cohesive religion, but an early Christian sect did have it. Also, it's interesting how Jesus and Sa'tan's treatment mirrors the Scapegoat ritual of early Israeli Judaism. In the ritual, two livestock, typically lambs or goats, would be taken. Then, one would have all the sins of the community blamed on it and be driven out into the wilderness, while the other would be sacrificed to absolve the community of those sins. Jesus has the epithet "the lamb who was slain", so there's that. Meanwhile Satan is frequently depicted as having aspects of a goat, is blamed for people's wrongdoings ("the devil made me do it!", as well as being called the serpent in the garden, which isn't consistently in the story nowadays and certainly is not present in older versions), and is encountered in the wilderness (the time Jesus met him out there, the crossroads deal mythology, the fact that whenever witches were accused of meeting him it was always outside of the town away from people)
@@the_last_ballad There's quite a bit to unpack there, but I'll give it ago. I was under the impression the word Satan is literally just a title that means something like adversary or enemy, hence the biblical confusion about how it could be referring to several different individual entities and people in different parts of the bible. Could be wrong though, but that's what I've always read. That apocryphal text is a Christian Gnostic one, it's a whole massive mess of pre Christian Neoplantonism and some other wild stuff all thrown in a blender, it's a fun time, I heartily reccomend reading up on it, it's a fun time. And there's a lot more to dualism than just good God bad God. In dualism the world is literally constructed from the clash between light and dark, every single thing is a clash between opposite forces. Evil isnt an enemy to be defeated but a fundamental component of the physical world to live with (usually) While definitely a real thing, I do think the zoroastrian influence on christianity gets a little overstated sometimes. Gnostics are kinda sorta dualistic in that they think the physical world is bad and the immaterial divine world is good and humans have a divine spark trapped inside them, but it's less like the world is a balance between opposing forces and more like one aeon was a selfish nerd and we need to escape the prison he made for us. Medieval christians were veering towards a sort of dualism but that was mostly just them being weird about animals they dont like. As far as Tolkein goes, his dualism reminds me a lot more of Slavic Mythology than zoroastrianism, though that may be just the fact I know more about slavic mythology talking in that case, but considering Tolkein's linguistic and mythological stuff is Europe focused, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case
Narnia is inspired by Medieval Romance (and the later Victorian take on it through Rosecolored glasses) the same way Tolkien is inspired by older folklore and mythology. At first Narnia seems to be referencing mythology and I've heard people argue that, but imo its actually referencing greco- Roman mythology from a medieval and Victorian perspective. It is thoroughly high medieval with simple good v. bad narratives, bright colors and color symbolism, blatant Christian allegory/symbolism, a grab bag mixture of folklore and mythologies (father Christmas, alongside Merlin-esque wizards and Morgan le fay esque witches, alongside dwarves, alongside satyrs, alongside straight up Macbeth hags, and medieval werewolves), the stars are living beings whose dances predict the future (much like early Jewish Astrology). He references monopods from one of those bizarre "wonders of the world" manuscripts. The whole thing feels like a stained glass window, or arthurian romance, or an illuminated manuscript. But then next minutes it's incredibly down to earth and kids are complaining about how hot and sweaty they feel carrying around swords, or how the ground is swaying bc they've been on a ship, or how Father Xmas isn't jolly all the time and is actually quite serious when you see him in person. It's grounded in a kind of odd realism but I think the heart of Narnia, and its magic, is an attempt to capture the feel of high medieval romance, and the Christian stuff is intrinsic and inevitable, but in much the same way it is in medieval art and story. Tolkien's magic system is that the universe was sung into existence as an epic narrative song and so everything magical happens literally bc it fits into an epic narrative, lol
Middle-earth is also an attempt to fill the void caused by Christianity destroying the mythology that existed in England. But also, in the War of Wrath, the higher 'Angels' or Valar, caused so much damage to the world, that the world was beginning to unravel. That is the excuse for why the wizards and the elves cannot do the same feats of magic as when the world was young.
@@Tom-dg6pg i've heard Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England. But i always assumed the reason for that is bc England, as we know it, came into existence in a post- mythic age. The English are Germanic people who conquered and intermingled with Celtic britons so all the mythology that existed before christianization would either be a variant of Germanic mythology or a variant of Celtic mythology. The two cultures largely didn't mingle to create something new (stuff like the Fisher king, Merlin, king Arthur, Jack the giant killer, medieval tales with dwarves that act likefoey folk but there are also wizards, the wyrd sisters, e.t.c) until after christianization and then all that stuff became folklore instead of belief so it was easier to intermingle. The biggest piece of mythic writing from early England that we have is beowulf, which canonically stars exclusively non-English characters and takes place entirely outside of England. I mean I could be wrong about what Tolkien meant but I'd argue that the reasons I've given are more likely reasons why England, i.e. perspe who identify as "English," lacks a mythology. The only thing would be if Tolkien just wanted more Germanic myths that happened to come out of England? Or wanted us to know more about the Britons? But i feel he liked mixing the two, so its more like he's wishing that mixing happened in a mythic age. At least that's my thought on it.
Objection on the claim that Callum was the first to tap into an Arcanum that they weren't naturally connected to, Aaravos set the precedent on being able to do so since he can use all types of magic.
Jojo technically has THREE magic systems: The Ripple, Stands, and The Spin. I haven't read the stretch of story with The Spin, but the Stand system basically flat-out replaces the Ripple system so that's why people will say to skip the first two series.
The Spin is awesome and could work by itself, even Hamon is neat, Stands obviously are just the best for what Araki wants to do (weird shit, he wants to do weird things). Also, it's interesting how the powers interact, go check out Hamon Beat's video on it.
Im gonna say, about The Dragon Prince, the way they explain magic is “Arcanum”, where if you really grok X concept (the arcanum we know for sure is Moon, and its basically “There is a truth beyond the physical world, however we cannot sense it, so then our senses must then be as false as any lie, so lies are a useful way to explore the world” off memory) you can start to touch the natural energy of that element, and then as a wizard you can write those sky runes
There are also the primal stones, which act as an Arcanum and allow magic to be cast while they are held, which is useful when not surrounded by one's native element (such as a Skywing Elf being underground). The runes and verbal components are for distilling the Arcanum into the specific effect. The Sky Arcanum, for instance, is shown to include basically any atmospheric phenomenon, and grant the ability to fly via shapeshifted bird wings.
You could also say that the creator just took Avatar’s, D&D’s, and the Force from Star Wars and smushed them together. At the end of the day the magic system in TDP isn’t very creative.
@@Grf1556 I definitely agree it is not the most creative and it is kind of a smooch of those together, but I also think they built out in such a way that honestly really makes sense and is understandable.
@@Grf1556 Possibly, but it’s important to note that truly, completely original concepts are both much rarer than most people think, and are very overhyped. I would much rather a magic system be clear and defined than original.
I think the best part of the wheel of time magic is that the male and female sides are two halves of a whole. It's established very early on that the best stuff happens when they work together followed by 8000 pages of men and women not working together
In their defense male mages cant do magic without going insane cause of big bad asshole over yonder, and aptly female mages are rather... "apprehensive" to work with someone with JUST MAYBE a half a buckets worth of screws loose.
My favorite thing about the Dragon Prince magic system is that Dark Magic is actually explicitly contrasted with the other forms of magic in the setting and is justified as being bad rather than assumed. Most of the time in other settings, "dark magic" is bad because bad people use it for bad reasons, or is otherwise some kind of forbidden knowledge. In Dragon Prince, Dark Magic is not depicted as inherently bad but is shown to be bad because one has to literally kill cute animals to use it. Contrast this with the Dark Side of the Force, where seemingly the only difference between the light side and the dark side is that angry people use the Dark side, which isn't really a distinction of the light and dark as much as it is of the characters.
My own headcanon for why the Dark Side of the Force is overwhelming for the user is that when you tap into the Force in anger, you are tapping into the collective hatred of all life in the Galaxy. Darth Bane's analogy of the Dark Side as venom was not wholly inaccurate, though perhaps acid would be a more fitting comparison, since it damages the vessel that contains it as much as what it is used against.
The idea of the dark side is that it’s a literal corrupting power. It’s abilities are much easier to perform and way more powerful, but using them actively twists a person into an evil, hate-filled being.
Honestly, I feel Dark Magic in Dragon Prince is not as dark as the show tries to portray itself. It usually is just used to kill insects to fuel it plus Dark Magic was shown in the show to save two kingdoms from having an outbreak of cannibalism due to the lack of food. Heck its inventor Ziard was shown to be very heroic, sacrificing his life to save people. It comes off more as a designated evil than something truly evil. It only comes off as evil because the main Dark Mage we see is Lord Viren, who quickly went down a greased up slippery slope of evil by episode 4. Now the dark side of the force on the other hand, that has temptation linked to it. It's the shortcut, what seems like the solution when the longer road of the light force doesn't seem to be working, but in the end, makes one forget why they went to the dark side to begin with ultimately making the shift meaningless. Anakin wanted to save Padme by learning about the dark side but in the same pursuit ended up killing her. That is what I felt missing in the Dark Magic of Dragon Prince, it doesn't feel like there's a personal cost.
The canon explanation of the Dark Side of the Force is that the Force is a combined power and will of all living beings in the galaxy. The Light Side is following this will and doing stuff in the interests of life, while the Dark Side is taking this power for yourself and using it how you want
The reason the Stands are named after bands and songs, it because: 1) Araki likes it. 2) Because the songs relates to the characters. Also, the poses are just "cool". Basically, Stands are the physical manifestation of someone's will. Also, Stand's are confusing but not incomprehensible, they all make sense and work thematically for the characters. Most people think Stands are C.R.AZ.Y. just see the memes and think it's Grappler Baki which is C.R.A.Z.Y. Sidenote: Also Haki wasn't added post time-skip, it was seen with Shanks and the Sea King, we see it in Skypeaia (though it's called something else), we see it in Sabaoby and Marineford, we even see it with Garp being able to hit Luffy with his fist. It's just explained post-timeskip. Also, Devil Fruit's haven't been explained, YET. It's very clearly building up to a origin for them.
I think stands are basically just physical manifestations of psychic abilities. Usually if you see a psychic stop time or lift something with their mind in fiction it's like it just floats up. Stands represent that by having a ghost coming out of you and doing the action. And I love it for it. I think the posing is inspired mostly from fashion magazines. I think stands are a cool power system because each one is unique and reflects its user. I believe araki said he typically will design the stand first and then the character off of that.
So fun fact about Shouting in Skyrim, its not the only form of that magic. Its essentially a form of sound based magic that lets you change the fundamental aspects of the world, the Thu'um is just how dragons are able to do it, a few other races have their own forms of it. The Dwarves/Dwemer for instance had something called Tonal Architecture which is all about tones and sounds. The reason their metal never rusts and their machines still exist is because they used Tonal Architecture to kind of of separate it from the normal flow of time. Then there is the debateably more extreme example of Sword Singing, which was used by the Redguard (or at least their ancestors) to literally destroy their home continent of Yokuda by using it to let them *split atoms with their swords* which basically nuked the whole continent into nonexistance. There are other examples but it gets weirder and more esoteric as it goes on. But yeah Dragon Language is just a form of sound based magic in Elder Scrolls
Yeah the elderscrolls is essentially a dream, a song, and a tower all at the same time. Its wild. The reason tonal architecture, the thu'um, and sword singing work is you are just changing the actual structure of the song with your words.
The Nen system in Hunter x Hunter (often considered as one of _the_ best power systems in shonen manga) is really interesting for the soft vs hard conversation, as it's a bit of both, working together. For an explanation: In-universe, it's a secret, and first taught as a meditation exercise. Then those who figure out its deeper meaning can start using it for practical purposes. There's first a progression of stages. Every living being naturally exudes aura. The first step, Ten, is to learn to trap one's own aura around oneself. This forms a defensive shroud of aura around the person, making them more resilient to attacks, and protecting one from the aura pressure of others (which can be mentally damaging). The second step, Zetsu, is the opposite, trapping the aura inside the user. This speeds up recovery from fatigue, and hides one's presence from others as no aura is leaking out. The downside is that it leaves the user even more susceptible to aura attacks than someone who isn't capable of using Nen at all. The third step, Ren, is all about pushing out as much of one's aura as possible, making it a more powerful but also more tiring version of Ten, and one with offensive applications as well. Those three have combination applications too, such as focusing a bit of Ren to the eyes letting one see aura, but where things get interesting is the fourth step, Hatsu. Hatsu seems initially like a very soft system. There are six types of effects under it (Enhancers boost their own or the capabilities of others, Emitters send their aura outside their body for external effects, Transmuters give their aura different properties, Manipulators use their aura to control things, Conjurers create solid objects out of their aura, and Specialists can have just about anything weird and unique - will get back to that), and every individual has a natural inclination towards one. It's possible for each person to come up with their own applications, and in any of the categories - staying within one's own type and creating an ability that matches the user's personality and interests usually yields the best results - and there's a really vast field of possible things that can come out of it. The oddball type being Specialists - those abilities come to be naturally and can't be actively developed, and it's possible for someone to be a specialists with an active ability with zero awareness of what Nen is (for example, being an inhumanely good player of one specific board game can be a Specialist ability - "mundane" and hidden effects like that may well be the most common form of it, in fact), so they are kind of an odd exception group. What adds the interesting hard system part, is in developing one's own Hatsu technique. That is to say, as a Nen user, you use the framework of a soft system that doesn't really do anything on its own, and _create_ your own personal hard system out of it. The harder you make it, such as by putting in usage limits or penalties, the stronger it becomes.
One of my favorite things about the nen system in HxH is how the creativity and uniqueness of each hatsu is directly correlated to the user’s personality. Unlike in JoJo where stands are assigned randomly, each person (with a few exceptions) has the freedom to invent their own superpower from scratch. But because of the guidelines of nen application as a whole as a soft magic system, people are naturally going to move towards what they’re most comfortable with. And so despite having the freedom to come up with whatever power you want theoretically, in reality most options would be far to inefficient to be effective in battle. In the show the most conceptually overpowered abilities require an insane amount of creativity, strategic setup, dedication, and sacrifice; so much so that their users are often shown as crazy or suicidal. By contrast, people can choose relatively simple and straightforward abilities that add to and compliment their fighting style perfectly and instead of refining their ability, they instead refine their battle sense in order to guarantee that they can fight with a constant advantage. And of course, whether a character chooses to keep it simple or make it esoteric and complicated says a lot about what type of person that character is.
Just for reference about why everyone should Watch/Read Hunter X Hunter, one of the members of the original main cast has a revenge story arc going on, and is very upset about his Nen type not being "Enchantment", as it's traditionally the most straightforward to use in any type and since he already was used to fight in melee it would have been great for him to just develop some crazy attack with his blades. But he can't do it and expect good results, thus he tries to find another solution. The Hatsu he ends up developing is a set of chains he wears all the time on his body (and it is atypical, most Nen users strongly want to hide their type and fighting style) which he seems to manipulate at will. But these chains have also a couple of special powers, like healing injuries, but nothing too incredible. And then there is a chain by which he can stop enemies from using Nen at all and one he can stab in the heart of the targets, condemning then to death if they refuse to accept his conditions. He got such big powers in exchange for the condition of "I am not gonna use it on anyone outside of my revenge, otherwise I die"
Shame the different types of nen users became less important as the story went on. I really hate the specialization typing. Which became the whatever i feel like typing.
Despite how it’s described, The Force seems to be basically the concept of Mind Magic. The two most popular skills for both are Telekinesis and Mind Manipulation, Luke’s Lucky Shot could be completed using both Telekinesis and strengthening his mind to focus on landing his shot, Users can do floaty jumps by raising their bodies telekinetically… _Actually, most of these are just telekinetic now that I think about it…_
I just realized that the emperor using lightning, has a totally different feel when you saw the prequels first. Because if you have seen the prequels first, you know force lightning is a thing before you see the emperor do it in the original movies, which probably takes out a lot of the surprise factor
Can confirm. I was too you ng to see the original trilogy in the theaters by a few years, but thankfully nobody ruined the movies when my family finally got a VCR. Seeing the Emperor use lightning was awe-inspiring, as up to that point, the Force is 50% about enhanced natural abilities like aiming, jumping, intuition, etc., with 25% for telekinesis and 25% for Obi-Wan coming back as a force ghost. There are no hints that force lightning exists, but it's also not an immersion breaker because it is very well scaled (ie, it's not smashing starships). It also explains how the Emperor could have taken out the Jedi, as both Luke and Vader seem to be powerless against it. It's killing Luke (slowly, but only because the Emperor wants to torture Luke) and it _does_ kill Vader. And it fits because it seems to be almost a projection of the Emperor's malice; I mean, the lightning even *looks* evil. All in all, it was a hell of a scene, perfectly done. Seeing it with no foreknowledge was bloody epic.
LotR magic is consistent with Sanderson's Laws of Magic, when you think about it. It is used to solve plot proportionally to the audience's understanding of it, which means almost not at all. Magic creates problems in LotR, usually, it doesn't just solve them. And no, eagles are not magic, they are creatures, folks.
The biggest problem with LotR’s magic system imo is that it feels like Gandalf primarily, but also Saruman, don’t use magic as much as it feels they should
I love that I tuned at the EXACT right time for Red to dunk on Harry Potter. It's like opening a bag of BBQ chips and finding the one with the most seasoning at the very top.
That must have been delightful. Having to watch back due to time zones. My very disgruntled 12 year old self feels so validated. I just couldn't even back then....
LotR might have a soft magic system, but it's internally consistent And the Ring itself is a much harder magic system that is vital to the story. It's magic, it has rules that dont break, and it's clearly explained to the audience. Also Gandalf totally Was off fighting Sauron during the Hobbit and says so during the council of Elrond in the books. It's canon, the Hobbit movies just made it look stupid
The harder magic system suits the ring, which, as part of Sauron is inherently interested in dominance and control. It’s different from the rest of magic in the world.
@@anonymousname5860 well yeah but the ring is the magic system that is prevalent through most of the story literally being the inciting incident and the source for almost every problem in the books. It's a deep well explained well thought out and perfectly integrated magic system in a world of otherwise softer more ambient magic so it goes higher on my list 😁
Yep. Originally the Necromancer was supposed to be Thû from The Book of Lost Tales, which later evolved into The Silmarillion and Thû's character turned into Sauron. As for the magic system, it is a bit more fleshed out than people tend to realise, even though a lot is still left to imagination. It has basically three tiers: 1. Magic as skill. Simply knowledge of how the world works and the ability to make practical use of your knowledge. Galadriel comments at one point that she doesn't quite understand what "magic" means, since to her things that seem supernatural to others are just skills that she has learned over her long life. Subset of this category is simply knowing "supernatural" beings like Elves, Ents or Eagles and being able to ask them for favours. 2. Magic as innate power. All beings in Middle-Earth are born with innate power that they can hone and make use of, overlapping with the previous category. The level of this power depends on one's race, but also varies by individual. It usually manifests fairly subtly, like telepathy, precognition or glamour (illusions, etc.), but more powerful beings like the Istari can command the very elements in a very flashy manner. The use of this power is apparently codified into spells, referenced a few times in the books, but never elaborated much. One can also put their own power into objects, creating enchanted items, but since every person's power is limited, one individual can only create so many regardless of their skill or power. Using an enchanted object can allow one to circumvent their own, inner limits, but only to an extent, the greatest magical items can only be safely used by those who have great power in their own right. 3. Evil magic or sorcery. Exploiting the broken principles that Morgoth left in the world during its creation. Again, this overlaps with the first category, but it's used by individuals who arent' satisfied with their own, innate power (category 2), and want more. Very addictive and corruptive, and usually involves subjugating others to the sorcerer's command in painful and unpleasant ways.
Harry Potter AU where the fact that they only learn very specific effects is a flaw of hogwarts's school system, and because hermione is thirsty for knowledge and was raised and taught by muggles -so has at least a barebones knowledge of physics and chemistry- she figures out the underlying magic and starts making spells left and right.
There were quite a lot of those actually, except most of the time Hermione wasn’t the one doing it and many of them weren’t really all that compelling.
Obvs we have “HPMOR,” the OG rationalist fic. Spoiler: it never really does deliver on that promise, Harry does some experiments but doesn’t make much progress and basically decides that magic is inexplicable, at least for now.
Something really interesting about Yugioh's magic that you didn't touch on: They establish that there is literally nothing Magic can do that Technology cannot, and Kaiba trying to prove that is what propelled the world from being identical to ours to having space elevators and time travel. He invented the solid-light technology only to prove he could do what Yugi can without any "magic", for example. Also: Since its very explicitly dark/occult magic from Ancient Egypt, I think it gets a pass on being kinda wishy washy.
Kinda how I felt about Harry Potter... There is no way the magic system in Yu-Gi-Oh is any better than potter, but because they hate the author so much potter got pushed down an extra level. Either that, or yugi got pushed up a level...
@@Vertraic I think it was also what the author did. not hating her, but all of the retroactive mending/explanation of the magic system changes the magic system. Therefor, harry potter's magic system was constantly in flux with parameters that were swapping and occasionally contradictory. Red may have disliked Rowling, but it wasn't her dislike that put Harry Potter lower than Yogioh, it was *what* Rowling did with/to the magic system outside of the books that made the ranking lower.
Yeah red and indigo don't seem to be as interested in the world building side of magic systems and are instead focused on how they affect the plot. Which lead to a tier list that didn't always rank those systems on their merits unfortunately.
The way The Dragon Prince’s magic system works is interesting and has a reason for why Callum learns to use sky magic. Magic in the dragon prince is based on a fundamental understanding of the sources of magic. Every magical creature is born already having a fundamental understanding of their source of magic. For example Moonshadow elves are born understanding the relationship between appearances and reality, which is what moon magic is about. Humans are born without having any fundamental understanding of the sources of magic but have the potential to gain the fundamental understanding of all sources of magic. This is why Callum is able to learn sky magic when he, “understands that the sky is surrounding you everywhere and that you are within it, as well as part of it, taking it into you with every breath you take.”
Whoever in live chat said "There's never an explanation where new D&D spells come from." There is if you just look at spell names. They are created by the greatest arch mages of the world like Tasha and Otiluke and Tenser.
@@washada in universe wizards uncover thecsecrets of the weave. ( mr rhexx has a good video on this). Essentially the weave is the magical fabric of the universe that holds everything together so spells have a scientific basis in that world. Out of game people just make stuff up and DM decides the mechanics and level.
@@washada as we have the weave as a source, the act pf casting magic is using strands of the weave and knitting, weave, crocheting, etc. It into a spell. It is a craft that requires precize movement, words, ennunciation und materials depending the spell. And every wizard has a different approach, this the multiple ways of using these strands of the weave. Though, this might be something I heard. I don't have an actual source to back this up.
@@washada I think it's something like this: component + hand movement + spoken words/sounds = magic effect Most of the time the effect is going to be nothing or minimal. If you are starting from scratch (no other spell books available), then you might make an X in the air, then you might make an X while speaking the old elvish word for black. Lets say that causes a small ripple in the area around you. Now you do the same and add "night" in ancient dwarvish. Now the area around you seems to grow dim. You try out holding a black dragon scale. Now the area turns pitch black and stays that way for weeks. So now instead you find a black dragon egg and now teh effect goes away after a few hours. You then add a new hand movement while saying "night" and now you go blind forever. If the wizard is worth anything, then he's been writing down the effects of the probably hundreds of experiments that they ran and what the exact movements, components, and words were. This is why spells may many pages to write down. Then the next generation finds this book, only writes down the useful bits when trying to make their own spells. They use scorpion venom instead of the dragon egg and they end up poisoning everyone in their house. And so on and so on until enough knowledge is gained to figure out how certain movements, components, and words affect the weave and a reliable spell is made.
The web serials Pact and Pale by Wildbow have one of the best soft magic systems I've ever come across. In those stories, you become a Practitioner of magic by performing a ritual where you make an oath tell the truth and honor the promises you make. After you Awaken, your words carry weight, and you can gain power by making deals with magical creatures. This can come back to bite you, though - if you break a promise or fail to honor a deal, you can be Forsworn. It's like a magical burn notice - no one will make a deal with you, the spirits will go out of their way to hinder you, and your ability to do magic is stripped away. As a consequence, Practitioners have to learn to speak metaphorically, avoid making clear, definitive statements, and generally act like classic fae (who also exist in this world and are absolutely terrifying). The soft - and really interesting - aspects come into play when the characters try to get the upper hand in a situation by appealing to the spirits, which exist as a just-barely sentient amorphous cloud of intangible magical beings that surround us at all times. The spirits will favor you if you act boldly, put on a good show, or play into certain tropes that carry metaphorical weight. For example, the Rule of Threes is an incredibly powerful force in this world - if you best someone three times, call out a name three times during a summoning, etc etc, the spirits might be inclined to make your victory stick or help compel the being you're summoning. It's a world where the best possible wizard is an English major who went to law school and it's great.
Absolutely concur, the Otherverse is my favorite magic system of all time. It's also worth mentioning the fact that so many styles and brands of magic exist, each with thier own rules, strengths, and limitations - yet every single one makes sense in the context of that baseline animism.
Reminds me of Barthimaeus by Jonathan Stroud. There mages work by summoning demons from another world and making deals with them or just binding them as pretty much slaves. Usually the demons REALLY don't like that and try to do anything in their power to get out of their contracts and return to their own world, screwing the magicians as hard as possible in the process. So if a practicioner bites more than they can chew and summon something too powerful they're REALLY screwed. It also revolves a lot around lawyer speak and almost all wizards are politicians...
Unfortunately, the magic is entirely inconsistent, and despite the main characters relying on the magic, and giving the characters access to explanations for how things work, the author never lets them look through these explanations, because the entire book needs to be non-stop action for some reason. Over the course of the book the main character had to have lost several gallons of blood, but just keeps bleeding to power effects without any real consequences. The book sets up all these interesting ideas, and then completely refuses to follow through with them. It's quite disappointing.
@@faelyn42 The problem, leaving aside the mass cognitive failure in modern audiences where everyone pretends a thing not explained in excruciatingly exact detail is a plot hole, or where they have to think for a moment to connect the dots is the same (see: Harry Potter), Is that if you're rating a *system* you can only go Hard=Good, Soft=Bad. That's how *systems* work. It doesn't matter if they intended to avoid it or not, there was no other possible result. Red falls into these traps now and again, and it's always weird given the sheer level of insight she normally has.
Hilariously the Millennium Puzzle actually does have a power, it's what allows Yugi to draw the right card he needs when he's in a pinch. So it's ungodly luck or as I like to call it "plot armor"
I very much enjoyed the video, I just have one issue; soft magic systems aren't inherently bad or worse than hard magic systems, but they consistently ranked worse on their tier list. Heck, the Discworld magic system was dropped a tier seemingly exclusively because it was a soft magic system.
I will say I don't think they defined their ranking well enough, but as I understand they rated it as follows 1: narrative impact(is magic a major part) 2: immersion(ie, not looking at something and thinking: since when could they do that?) 3: clarity (knowing what can and can't be done, and why) 2 of these 3 criteria heavily favor hard magic, as soft magic has neither clarity nor understanding. Remember this wasn't based on how good the shows were, it was based on whether or not you could look at the system and say "this is an objectively good system I would love to see explored deeper or in more universes"
@@auqanova you make a valid point. I wanna nitpick a point of terminology, but it doesn't really matter. Point is, it's a personal list by two ppl who prefer hard magic systems.
That’s how I felt about One Piece and JoJo. They are both very creative and fit thematically and prompt characters to use their abilities in unconventional ways to solve conflicts. Every ability has a weakness no matter how overpowered it may seem, that’s why I love both of them and would have ranked them much higher.
Discworld even deliberately went out of its way to make fun of hard magic systems by coming up with intentionally silly-sounding units of measurement based on whatever the first thing that came into the head of the wizard studying the phenomenon. I used to heavily prefer hard magic systems, but as I got older I started to appreciate soft magic systems to the point where hard magic just looks like a universe-specific addition to the laws of physics.
Fun Fact: Slayers feels like Dungeons & Dragons because it was based on a tabletop roleplaying game. The light novels were specifically based on the author's Ars Magica campaign, and that influence carried over into the anime (at least in the first season) with each of the protagonists taking on a typical archetype for a TTRPG player - not character, PLAYER. Gourry is a min-maxed fighter that dumped Intelligence hard to be the best swordsman in the world and unfortunately got into a magic-heavy campaign. Lina is the straight up munchkin player who hordes every shiny bit of treasure for herself to the point of literally going "Gimme gimme gimme!" when she sees a strong magic item and exploits as close as possible to breaking every rule possible to get as powerful as possible. Zelgadis should have played Vampire: The Masquerade considering his 26-page long super-emo backstory that's so dark and tragic and woe-is-me.
The thing about Wheel of Time is that the gender binary isn't really inherently that strong once you know about how the power actually works, less so than Dune's system which inspired it, but the original introduction of the idea makes it seem extremely different and very important. The only 'natural' difference between the male and female sources are that men are stronger in fire and earth while women are stronger in water and air, and men are just stronger in the power in general, but women can "link" their power together and overpower everyone else. It has vaguely gender motivated differences but all users of the power can use the flows to do the same things. The problem really comes from the flavoring of the power as being literally divided in half, male and female, rather than one thing that finds different expression in different people, and the male half is a raging torrent you have to wrestle and dominate in order to embrace and the female half is deep river you must surrender yourself to in order to embrace, etc. The power does the same exact things regardless of if you're a man or woman, so why is it SO different to the degree than men and women can't even see each others weaves normally. At the same time having this divide between the two sources of power does add tension to political elements of the story because the men and women don't trust each other to use the power. Women because the male source drives men mad, and men because the female users are inclined to "gentle" the men or just outright murder them rather than allow them to run around free.
And I mean a male Forsaken is reborn as a female, and still uses the Male half of the True Source.... So I am not sure if it is really that binary. It could be that it was just when unnaturally reborn from the Dark One's power or if it was something that could happen naturally we just don't know.
Every time I remember how the Amazon series came *this* close to cleverly recontextualizing the archaic gendered stuff about the Power ( "Trust" instead of "submission" for example) I scream internally.
*usually stronger in fire and earth... Rand has equal power in all, and it's just less common for a man to be stronger in water or wind. The gender binary magic, considering Rand's previous identity having the same gender and gender Identity suggests actually that someone would either always be the correct gender to correlate with their gender identity or that they would have a connection to the right side of the true source based on the identity since it is connected to their soul. Just remember the Archer Brigitte Silverbow, she was always born to marry her beloved and he was always a man and she a woman, she even lists out a bunch of her reincarnations. The power doesn't actually function 100% the same, remember travelling? if a woman performed it in the same exact way she would die. There are actually a whole bunch of things that are different in small ways but they aren't negatives they actually fit together into superior weaves. Since like in reality men are good at some things in general and women at others in general. It's most of the story that to survive men and women and all of the races must learn to work together if not in harmony then at least in tolerance. It's actually a very good message/moral and much better then the woke nonsense that just pretends to be what the wheel of time is.
Y’know, once somebody defended the anime Goblin Slayer using sexual violence as an aesthetic by pointing at the Wheel of Time books and talking about examples of “worse” violence, and in hindsight it makes sense that the books maybe didn’t have great takes on gender
@@sideways5153 That comparison was just badly thought out, a large part of the Wheel of time series is how stupid racism and sexism is and how our differences make us work better together. we aren't all equal and that is to be celebrated. The story handles it amazingly well, much better in fact then most series I have seen with for example that god offal adaptation from Amazon actually being an example of sexism.... But some people have an issue with the idea that a lot of the main characters are racist or sexist at the beginning of the books since that is part of how they grow. The only half of the main cast weren't Lan, Morraine, Perrin and Rand but Lan was containing his emotions stoicly in part and later actually is basically panicked over a situation but that is like book 8 and after that he is more open about liking the person he does. Nynaeve is basically a raging psychopath at the beginning but her experiences make her a really good person and truly heroic.... even if she never manages to actually control her anger XD. Egwene was kind of buying into the Aes sedai's crap and Matt... he's awesome just not so much for a while after the knife and he is a womanizer until a woman dominates him. The multiple wives of one of the characters thing is actually a story of female empowerment since they force it on him and tell him it's all or none. He panics over it for books and tries to not chose anyone to not be what people claim he is IRL. As for the race thing people hate white skinned red haired people due to fear because a desert culture gave their closest neighbors to the west a holy sapling and a few hundred years later then cut it down for a throne so they attacked and murdered the whole aristocracy basically and then left back to the wastes. each and every other group is also heavily stereotyped and hate each other after constant bickering but slowly over the books they are forced to work together and learn to respect each other. these things are seen as controversial because the woke movement is up it's own ass to such a degree that they have become damaging to their own cause and are usually the height of sexist etc they just don't realize it since they aren't against X group that hasn't actually been attacked by the majority for decades.
Also, the fact Harry Potter occurs in a magical school, where the students are there to learn ABOUT magic, and the magic itself is so lazy and slapdash is something Rowling should have been taken to task over DECADES ago.
@@studentt6064 you might be able to use this argument for the first 2 books. Maybe the third at a stretch though relatively older kids. By the time we get to the 4th the content and themes are very much starting to fall into the young adult category of books before solidly ending up there in the later ones. Even if we grant you your premise for the entire series what world is it that children books have no need to even try and be consistent.
I think we might have assumed that it was Like That because we saw the world from Harry's perspective and he wasn't particularly interested in the technicals of how magic worked, but most people are long past giving her the benefit of the doubt by now.
@@SereneAncalime I mean for me the series started rapidly falling apart from the 4th book onwards anyway, that's clearly when she got so big her editor just stopped editing (judging by the massive increase in size of the book) we all just kept going because of all the hype at that point, but the first 3 books were by far the most polished (imho)
I was invested in the characters and themes, the aesthetic and the “potential” of the Wizarding World while going through the series. And in some ways, I still am. I’m interested to see what the video game Hogwarts Legacy does with the setting. But as I moved on, and thought about it more, the less I particularly like about the 7 book series. Very little makes sense, and is “just because”.
In the My Little Pony franchise the three pony species have magic but they each apply it differently, Earth Ponies use their magic to grow fruit and vegetables, Pegasus ponies use their magic to manipulate the weather and Unicorns can use their magic to cast spells and use telekinesis among other things.
The abnormal strength and speed of some Earth Ponies and Pegasi is also part of their magic... I'm not sure if naything can explain Pinkie Pie, though.
Also: chaos magic, dark magic, alicorn magic, changeling magic, cutie mark talents, love magic, the magic of friendship (ding), the magic of various enchanted ancient artifacts, the elements of harmony, potions, Pinkie Pie... It's extremely soft, I think it would not fare well in this tier list. The show never really cared to formalize the magical system(s) in any real way.
Really fits the themes in a way; Without Earth ponies everyone starves, without Pegasus there is no rain or seasons and only wild storms, no Unicorns means no understanding of magic, and Alicorns control the cosmic bodies and protect reality.
My favorite magic system is from Ascendence of a Bookworm. Nobels and sometimes commoners are born with mana, but mana is deadly to the body so you have to use expensive magic tools to drain it from you and keep it from killing you when you're young. Those same magic tools are then used to help the dutchy you live in by doing things like improving crop production, large scale building processes, sewer maintenance and other things. Now if you personally want to use magic you can use it by praying to a specific god. Need to hit hard? Pray to Angriff the god of war. Need to make a shield? Pray to Schutzaria the god wind. Some people will have better affinity to certain gods. The church also handles most of the distribution of mana using magic tools so the author really fleshes out the religion. Anyways Bookworm is one of the best things I've ever read and you should read it too because I can't do it justice in just this TH-cam comment.
While I agree with you that Ascendence of a Bookworm is a great series, from a logical standpoint, the mana system doesn't make a lot of sense. If mana is like, a thing, who invented the magic tools? I assume (haven't read that far in the novel yet) that you need mana to make magic tools, so were there then some people who didn't get hurt from their own mana originally, or how else was the first magic tool invented?
I think Earthsea has the perfect magic system. It's amazing that the rules can be so consistent, well defined, and fun to engage with, while still maintaining the wonder, mystery, and mythology of soft magic systems. More than any other system it feels like MAGIC to me
Brandon sanderson is s tier. Every single magic system in the cosmere is s tier and they way he puts it all together needs its own tier entirely Olympus tier or something.
I was a bit disappointed with awakening (from warbreaker) where it's supposed to be kinda art and color based, but that aspect is vastly underused - I feel there is a world where different colors power different kinds of effects and it becomes S tier everything ties together instead of a solid B tier. Surges from stormlight are vastly unequal in their cool factor, but the overall use of the realms and spren, and shardblades and sharplates are really what sets it apart, especially when you start to figure out how it all ties together and keep having new revelation that deepen and recontextualise previous connections.
In The Witcher its described well in the novels: Magic was introduced to humanity through an event called "conjunction of the spheres". When completely different planes of existence overlapped. (Think like marvel multiverse crossovers.) This is how humans, non-humans and monsters all ended up on the same planet. They essentially got left behind after the conjunction ended. (I think the base world belonged to the elves originally, and humans are actually the aliens in this case.) The chaos magic mentioned in the video also came from the CotS. Humans obtained affinity for magic through the equivalent of like magical radiation poisoning. It's why some people are just born with greater control/power than others. Magic works similarly to alchemy in FML (equivalency). To cast a spell you need to draw energy from something. The greater the spell, the greater the cost. You can supplement/make more efficient these spells through casting. (Using items, spoken/written elder speech, etc.) Magic leylines also exist, much like mako from FF7 where there are pockets of magic dense areas throughout the world. Witcher magic is a very crude system, where it's channeled through hand signs and powered by the individual. Meaning the sign is only as strong as the Witcher has power for it, Witchers cannot draw energy from the world. To put it in perspective: if a Sorceresses can chant a spell like "I draw upon the radiant energy of the sun around me and heat from the world's molten core beneath me to beseech the god of flames to destroy my enemies" to take in energy around them to rain down a firestorm from the heavens; Witchers can, at best, make the word for fire in sign language to create the same amount of fire as a kitchen blowtorch. The tradeoff is, it's usually much faster to cast at the expense of power. And it makes sense, Witchers work in the thick of battle, they have no time to stand and channel a spell. To them magic is used to give that little extra edge in a fight. Aard doesn't need to kill, it just has to knock the enemy away far enough for you to get to your sword. There's more to it, and I'm sure I got some details mixed, but that's the general gist of it.
36:03 Using the force to open an automatic door and also to try to pull the remote to yourself when its on the other arm of the couch are universal experiences
Interestingly enough, Tolkien fully explained his magic system in a letter to Milton when trying to convince him to publish the Silmarillion along with LoTR. Tolkien explains that his magic system relies on the fact Eru Illuvatar is the creator and all of his created beings are sub-creators. "Magic" is inherently evil as it is the machine and is Melkor's perversion of the will of Eru. The elves' magic is simply the creation of art and beauty in its purest form, unhindered by human limitations. I'd highly suggest reading that letter (in certain copies it is I believe either the foreword or preface to the Silmarillion) as it goes into much deeper detail than this and kind of explains some of the philosophy around the idea for the creation of Middle Earth and its governing forces.
I've overanalyzed FMA and the biggest unexplained thing I see are the circles. This is not needed for the story and the circles fall under the rule of cool, but this is why I love, LOVE the manga Witch Hat Atelier. Its magic system is literally just exploring how the circles work and is so good at exploring magic's boundaries and the societal rules of it.
Witch Hat Atelier has propably my favourite magic system, both from technical and storytelling perpective. The way the runes work and how they're drawn affecting the way they work gives a lot of creative potential, while still giving it drawbacks (needing something to write on and with, actually physically having to draw the runes) which keeps everything tense and interesting. And I love how it ties to themes that there isn't just one rigid, true way to do magic. Magic is basically an art, something you can't truly control or give rules to. That's works so goddamn well with the themes of self-discovery and finding your own way in the world
The circles symbolize the flow of energy. They explain this many times as a matrix. For alchemy to work, a specific matrix must be used to equivalently exchange energy. Performing alchemy without a matrix can only be done with a philosopher's stone as a philosopher's stone is energy itself.
@freedominart I was mostly referring to the specific symbols/runes on the circles, which is how the magic works in Witch Hat Atelier. Only one they tried a little bit to explain in FMA was the one used by Kimblee, because destroying it was how they tried to win a fight against him. Otherwise particular symbols purpose in performing transmutations are not explained, but they limit what transmutations you can perform.
I guess is homework for the audience if you really want to know, since they are based on real life symbols, but the important thing is the effect anyway, like Roy's circle has fire/combustion related symbols but you could already guess that
Completely off topic, but one series that I WISH had magic of any kind is The Rangers Apprentice (written by John Flanagan). It gets *so close* to having magic/mythical creatures without actually crossing that line. Don't get me wrong I absolutely *love* this series, I've re-read it multiple times. But come on Flanagan you could have given us dragons and other crazy mythical beasts and actual warlocks! Anyway I don't care how old you are, if you even slightly like adventure and fantasy books you should TOTALLY READ the Rangers Apprentice.
As a fellow lover of The Rangers Apprentice (and the sequel Brotherband Chronicles) I feel that being able to cast spells would take away from the skills that the characters developed, but I agree it would be cool to see some magic creatures in Flanagan's setting.
There actually are magical creatures and some magic but they’re both very low key and mainly reserved to the events of the first book or two and events before then if I recall
There was the (Implied to be real) wight that spooked Will when he was riding back to the North, but I'm afraid I can't remember which book that was in. As opposed to the (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) alchemist that's was spooking people in the nearby woods in a previous book.
I think Rangers Apprentice is really funny in regards to magic, because it starts off with a heavy focus on it. The first book establishes a dark lord beyond the hills, with an army of mind controlled monsters. The climax is even focused entirely on a couple of super monsters wreaking havoc. Then, it seems like he got some feedback that the most interesting part of the book was the realistic way ordinary people trained to be incredibly skilled, so in the second book he kicks off the war that looked like it was the ultimate end goal of the series, kills off the dark lord and ends the war in that same book, and then supernatural stuff is never mentioned again except for the occasional callback or non-important spooky moment. It's honestly hilarious how quickly it pivots.
Prince Callum is the first, yes. Someone needs to be the first. The ancient Greeks never discovered Newton's Laws even though they could have. The Imperial Chinese never developed cannons. If the story is about a new thing coming into the world, the best answer for "why did nobody do this before" is usually "because that's not how it happened."
I so second this actually, I’m one of those people who if I’m reading a fantasy epic, I prefer to follow the characters most active in the advancing action of the world and its changes. Now when one small group of people collectively revolutionize a magic system in a year and also invent the first internal combustion engine and also flight, it can be a bit much (lol Avatar) but for the most part, I like being where the grits are the thickest!
I feel like there's one element they didn't mention here that could potentially bump The Owl House's system up to S-tier depending on how much you enjoy it: the worldbuilding elements that explain how their magic came to be, why Luz can use it, and some further limitations for her magic beyond what glyphs she knows(admittedly, this other limitation I'll get to isn't one that comes up much, but it's still there). The main setting for the series, the Boiling Isles, was built on the bones of a dead Titan, gargantuan creatures of intense magical power who, at the time of this stream, were not known to still be out there or not. As life evolved on the Isles throughout the centuries, the residual magic that surrounded the Titan's corpse affected it in such a way that witches developed the magic bile sacs attached to their heart, allowing for innate use of magic. Luz's glyphs being found in the surrounding world is another instance of how the Titan affected the development of life, and were heavily implied by one character to have been how magic was cast in the earliest days of wild magic- the "Savage Ages," as Emperor Belos and his institution calls them, since at this point the only way his colonizer vibes could have been any stronger was if he turned out to be an actual colonizer. (...) The glyphs call upon the magic of the Titan itself to create the desired effect as dictated by the combination used- like words being used to form a sentence, as another character described them. Since they use an outside source of magic, they allow Luz and other beings without magic to cast spells; however, that same reliance on an external source means that if they are not close to that source- say, if they're in the human realm- they can't use glyph magic. It's an awesome system imo.
The magic system in HP reminds me of that magical portal behind a cartoon character's back from which they can procure anything. I think it's called Hammerspace. Inside, you can find MacGuffins, zany weapons, Dei Ex Machina, racks full of plot armor...
I'm not really a regular watcher of this channel, so I don't know if this is a trend here or not, but it's really nice to have a tier list where they actually explain what the thing being put on the list actually is. I realize that's why it took 3 hours to do the list, but I enjoy more than one or two sentences on each item, which I've seen other creators do.
As a die-hard Legend of Zelda fan, I can say this: the magic system is based on magical items, even the Triforce, with some exceptions such as Ganon and Zelda. It's not a bad system, it's just whatever the plot needs it to be. That being said, I would have gone high C rather than low, but still reasonable.
Zelda and Ganon can be explained as remnants of Godly power manifesting in them because their are witches but it’s not even comparable to what those two do.
I had the feeling with the dragon prince's magic system that humans tried to find another way to use magic, found dark magic and were basically like "were done!" and just researched that more. Meanwhile the MC doesn't want to be like them so he accidentally found his own path. It also said that it was in part because he had already felt the element through using that imprisoned storm so when he just instinctively tried to use the magic in desperation after knowing the sky intimately it just responded to him. It's very much a pioneer story so we have to take the rules laid out at the beginning as a first draft, like the Mistborn trilogy compared to the second trilogy. the main characters discover a whole bunch of things that were either kept from them or researched in isolation but don't actually break the rules they just didn't know about that exception.
jojo's is a special case, because it takes the "there are multiple magic systems" idea to it's most extreme version and gives most characters their own magic system, with some characters having more strict rules for their system than others. you would have to go character by character to do the many systems of jojo's any justice, but as a fan of the series, I think you gave it a decent place on the list. but to restate what I just said in another way, Jojo's is like if each series represented on this tier list were their own character in a single series, all interacting with eachother and the one who can best take advantage of the rules (or lack-there-of) their system imposes on them is the main thing that decides who wins any given match-up. it's not a very solid system over all, but if you like exploring magic systems, it's like a massive sampler of such. Oh, and no, the poses are almost exclusively unnecessary, it's just that everyone is fabulous.
So as someone who does enjoy HP despite violently disagreeing with the author on who should be treated like a human being, the magic system was a problem I found even before all that. Honestly it was not such a big deal up until it gets to prisoner. It was still a whimsical kids story. After it starts to become a more serious story that has an actual plot it starts to be a real problem that characters don't just use the obvious solutions that worked fine in book one. By the time you get to book 7 Rowling has papered over like four different things that students were able to easily accomplish. When you're having a wizard Nazi takeover of wizard England you have to know what the bad guys and good guys are capable of so you have some idea how much danger people are in beyond just vibes.
HP would’ve been more solid if the Killing Curse was Voldemort’s exclusive, invented spell only he could use. Would’ve tied into his whole “overcome death” theme and make every subsequent duel with his Death Eaters more interesting, because why wouldn’t every fight become Avada Kedavras vs Stupefies-ah wait, that’s what ends up happening.
LOTR magic kinda falls into two main categories. The magic of Eru Ilúvatar, the Ainur, and by extension the Maiar, including Gandalf. The magic that was sung into being along with the world of Middle Earth. This magic is the softest soft magic you could possibly think of. It's "god sang a song and magic was a part of that song so it exists". This magic works because these beings are so integral to the fabric of the world that they can will it to change. It's also the magic by which Melkor/Morgoth can corrupt because that's Morgoth's part in the grand scheme of it all. The second big magic is the magic of making. Some of the Dwarves and Elves can do this, along with some Maiar, namely Sauron. This magic is described as imbuing an emotion or a part of the maker into what they create. Think of it like an extension of the first type of magic, but rather than the beings being strong enough to just influence the world, they have to focus that influence into a physical object. The ring is evil because it contains Sauron's ambitions to rule. The elvish swords glow blue because they contain the elves' hatred of the orcs. The doors of Durin open when you say friend because the Dwarves imbued them with their feelings of friendship to the elves (at least at the time). It's a system that remains remarkably consistent, even if it is loosely explained.
This was really fun to watch and it introduced me to some series I hadn't heard of or didn't know much about. I wish we had gotten to see the ranking of Nen from Hunter x Hunter or Epithets from Epithet Erased, but there were so many good and diverse systems chosen, including from some more obscure media.
nen is one of the best power systems out there period. it reflects the user since the user creates the ability, and since everyone has a unique ability, you see how that character handles that situation. theres so much that can be done with it.
Epithets have the My Hero system where any quirk has the potential to be powerful, compare Indus to Mt Lady, in that they use their powersets for very one note and straight forward usage, or Gio to Mineta, where they put their own spin on their powers limited natures
The grisha verse is a lot more standardized in the book than in the show iirc, that's very much the premise of the first book that she can't just do the magic that would drive the plot forward so they have to find a way to magi-steroid her which i think was a really interesting alternative. Some other magical media I would recommend (mostly books
As someone who has read most of the Cosmere (the Brando Sando books that share universe), and someone who loves Full Metal, I can tell you, Brando stuff would be above Full Metal, at least when it comes to implications and thoughtfulness. I have never come close to a magic system that is so much like real life science as Sanderson's magic. And is not just that they are huge on implications, but they are deeply connected to the stories in a great way. Allomancy (from the Mistborn) is the magic system where they eat metal, is probably the best and most famous magic system that Brandon Sanderson has made, in the way that it is simple, but the way rules can be played with is pretty interesting.
1:08:10 DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE DRAGON PRINCE IT WAS PICKED UP FOR ITS ENTIRE PLANNED SERIES! The just had to halt production due to Covid, they recently started working on season 4 again and it should be around end of 2022 start of 2023.
If you want an example of a D&D wizard with no spells early level being interesting; Raistlin from Dragonlance. Exhaustion from spellcasting is a huge part of his character story, and his power scale later gets intense.
I remember that show! Really enjoyed the ragtag team that’s already more awesome than most of the adult teams, but noone takes them seriously bc they are kids, save for the equally badass kid villains who they keep ruining the plans of!!
Discworld has at least three magic systems. The one used by the wizards is the closest to hard magic: there are rules such as a "conservation of energy" sort of rule (once when a wizard wants to get to the top of a tower quickly, he makes something fall off the top of the tower and links it magically to himself so as it falls he rises). The one used by the witches is part science/common sense (willow is good for curing headaches, because willow bark contains the active ingredient in aspirin) and part "headology" (witches are really good at convincing people to do what the witch wants them to do). And then there's the one used by the plots of the stories as a whole, which runs on narrativium. For example, it's just common in-universe knowledge that "million-to-one chances turn up nine times out of ten," so there's one point in Guards! Guards! when the Night Watch is trying to calculate the PRECISE odds of hitting a dragon in its "voonerables" with a crossbow bolt, so they're adding and subtracting factors ("what if you were to blindfold yourself and stand on one leg in a bucket of water?") to make it come out to be exactly a million-to-one chance and therefore a sure thing.
I'm a brown belt gold tag in Karate and the dragon dance reminds me of some of the stances, blocks and attacks I learned, but seemingly modified to have more finesse... Karate was developed by monks and as such incorporates the Yin-Yang philosophy into the martial art... Yin-Yang meaning, or at least symbolising awareness and aggression, VERY fitting for the inspiration of the bending that would one day become Fire Bending.
I don't wanna bash on the Owl House because it is amazing and I love it, but this is about the one time I get to recommend something that does its same magic system potentially better (or same quality, but you get more of it) on a story of similar quality if not better, I urge people to read Atelier of Witch Hat, it's a beautifully illustrated manga about a young girl who wants to become a witch, but she's a normal girl and witches are born able to use magic... or do they?
Jojos also has like 3 different systems, Hamon, Stands, and the Spin. Hamon being like Chi energy, power of the sun basically. And the spin is like if you spin an object really fast it can mess with the world around it like ripping holes in space/time.
@@sdrawkcab_emanresu Stands are manifestations of the wielder's soul. Sometimes a Stand user's soul can move on its own. Sometimes because it has no choice but to move.
@@thomaschristenson4967 yeah like *notorious BIG* whose user is *DED* but its soul still moves on and well its the only stand that can do that when the user dies that is.
Nah, it's all Stands. Stands are just visual representations of anything supernatural, and that includes occult skills like Feng Shui Kung-Fu, qigong (Ripple) breathing, gambling, palmistry, and Spinning things according to the Golden Spiral. Some of those Stands, namely Hermit Purple (which is the Ripple's Stand) and Ball Breaker (which is the Super Spin's) and the various Modes/vampirism (which come from Kars' mastery of acupuncture) are given a lot more exploration, to the point of being able to be treated as subsystems of their own, but it's all Stands. Actually, that's a lie; it's not *all* Stands. Stands are part of an even more unified magic system, which is Fate (Gravity) itself.
On D&D: An interesting interpretation of vancian magic I've read somewhere is that the reason that only certain spells are allowed and can only be cast once per memorization is that spells are actually a sort of creature. Essencially, a wizard is creating/manifesting some Lesser Old One in their mind and then unleashing it on the world to some effect. Creating spells is then the process of finding new rituals that manifest something stable and useful.
I always liked that Slayers subverts your expectations by having an antagonist who uses white magic... because he cure everyone but himself and went kinda nuts as a result.
In regards to Discworld, the magic system is based on belief. The gods of Discworld are created based on common belief, and this power of belief saturates the entirety of the disc itself. This is the reason why tropes work so well in the books, it's due to the characters believing that the tropes will happen (because they are self-aware played usually for a comedic angle) which causes the world to abide by certain rules. These rules are your basic storybook tropes. Its hard to talk in depth about because, like Red said, each book introduces different concepts to explore and play with. The magic of the Discworld is nothing if not versatile. It is chaos, unpredictable and temperamental. It latches onto the thoughts and feelings of people and it makes the people's thoughts reality. Each different series of the books explores magic differently. Take for example, the power of superstition when seen in The Watch series, or the power of devotion, or lack thereof, in Monstrous Regiment, or how we learned from Death that people experience different afterlifes based on that person's own belief. So belief is the only way to control magic in that world, the only magic system. Although there will always be a surplus of odd events caused by either human interfere (both direct or through a domino of separate incidents) or by some wild or chaotic magic, that is just how the Discworld is meant to work. The world is supposed to feel rickety and held together by strings and wilful ignorance power and stubborn obstenance and clever Patricia's and their local terriers. It is part of the magic of the series. The magic system is basically a pile of clay that is molded by everyone who exists (or has existed in some form) in their world. It's a pretty awesome and well-executed system when you think about it. I'd definitely rank it S tier.
Incidentally, the Lord of the Rings magic system has some rules, but most of those involve the decline of magic over vast periods of time. The story of the Lord of the Rings takes place over too short a period of time for the rules that exist to really impact the story.
How to get your friends into anime Step 1: Make them watch Avatar the last air bender. Not anime, but close enough Step 2: Show them full metal alchemist brotherhood. Step 3: show them an anime specializing in their favorite genre. Step 4: Watch them fall down the rabbit hole.
@@potatogaming7044 Yeah, but anime has a specific exaggeration that it’s known for, just like Mexican food is mostly known for being spicy. Not all of it is but it’s what it’s known for
RE: Dragon Prince. the explanation Callum was given was that besides whatever genetic component there might be (as with the animals connected to various elements) the various sentient beings with direct access to/control of magic grok the concept; there is a fundamental understanding of how that particular element functions baked into their society that they are inundated with from birth, it is so basic and integrated that many can't articulate it to outsiders. Callum's challenge and how he gains power ups is to figure out what those concepts are and gain similar understanding. The runes other human sorcerers use are for channeling elements and spells and can be used without that direct connection to the element so long as the user has access to something that DOES connect directly to the element (animal parts).
The Tales of Earthsea were my bedtime stories. I adore those books and I even pre-ordered the illustrated complete series book for my future children to listen to me read.
I really can't recommend Brandon Sanderson highly enough if you ever have the time to get back into it. Fun fact about Brando Sando, in case you haven't heard: the guy has an incredible passion for writing and it gets to the point where he writes a different story to take a break from writing one story. During the pandemic a lot of his schedule cleared up due to book tours being cancelled, so in addition to the two or three books he was scheduled to write in that time frame, he also wrote five additional books for fun and is publishing them next year thanks to kickstarter funding. He also has great educational videos on worldbuilding and writing for those of you into that stuff.
With Zuko not getting a power up through the series he actually does, its just not pointed out. He learns from the other elements and bending styles and the best example of this is when Zuko is fighting his sister, and she is sending a line of fire down on him and he takes a earth bending stance and splits the fire down the middle around him. He took his uncles lesson to heart and learned from the other nations.
That one is relatively easy to miss, but the water bending one when she finds him in Ba Sing Se is pretty blatant.
I'm pretty sure he deflects fire at some point by doing some air bender type moves
Water bending also ties into the lightning redirect ability he learns iirc.
Also the way to channel chi that the dragons taught him, aang, and iroh is superior to the way that the fire nation as a whole do it. That episode was Gohan going to see guru
He keeps his firebending even in the freezer during the boiling rock by using air bender breath techniques to keep himself warm!
Just to fill in the blanks with D&D's magic system: The original explanation is that wizards basically suffer magical memory loss. They memorize all the precise gestures and incantations to cast the spell the night before, and when they cast the spell, the specifics just disappear from their mind (it's implied that the knowledge is the fuel that powers the spell). The reason you need to take a break before casting again is because your mage needs to crack open their textbook to study and commit the knowledge to memory.
It all came from the Dying Earth book series, the fire and forget method.
That really just sounds like ADHD to me
Which is why it's called Vancian magic
@@dragonboyjgh love Jack Vance
that's stupid
I love when magic systems allow for the characters to get creative with their abilities. Stories like Avatar, Brando Sando novels, or The Owl House can pull out abilities that have never been seen before but still make sense based on what we know of the world and magic, which is so much more fun than when Harry Potter introduces a new spell out of nowhere that could have solved dozens of problems before.
Inheritance cycle is probably the best example of creative magic, if you like that type of magic you should definitely check it out
Same for the Spellslinger series
Lightbringer by Brent Weeks has an EXCELLENT. Magic system that had REALLY hard rules for the most part that are used to solve situations in really creative ways. There's a few things that get hinky and soft but that's built into the narrative structure and are less about solving problems and more about narrative, but the magic problem-solving is FANTASTIC
Hunter x Hunter's magic system is based on the originality and creativity of the user too
Absolutely! Systems that seem very limited at first, until you have a character who can just MacGyver the magic highlights the strengths of both. Avatar has a obviously a paragon of this kind of stuff with water bending innovations alone
The thing I like about the LOTR system is that it's just like, a feel.
Example: The ring wraiths have really bad vibes, and that weakens most people. But the elves have really good vibes, so they aren't affected by it
damn bro, them vibes. they are strong.
@@rainunderscoredot the force is strong with this one, I mean vibes! I mean force! I mean, I mean...
Yep if I were to described the magic system of lord of the rings it's a the vibe system. When gandalf gets mad his mad vibes lower lights and let's his voice be heard. And stuff like that.
makes sense for it to be on a level with the force then
Ring Wraiths are men who, by the power of the Nine Rings, basically stopped existing as flesh, entering almost entirely the spiritual world.
Funny thing, the spiritual/physical worlds are absolutely a hard magic part of LotR. Ainu are beings almost entirely of the spiritual world. Elves are basically in the middle point, living in both worlds at once. This differentiation between which "realms" each race inhabits is most shown in the process of death. Powerful Ainu basically can't ever die, although their power is finite so they can very much get to a point where they have died so many times that they can never again take the effort of crossing back from the spiritual world to the physical one (this is actually the final fate of Sauron, he doesn't die with the Ring, he just kinda lives forever as a spirit in a world where he'll never again be able to interact with anything). Elves, which basically work as very very very very weak Ainu, in theory should live once, die once, and remain as spirits for the rest of eternity. The Ainu were nice guys for the elves, so they set up a system where they give those elf "ghosts" power when they die so they can be reborn. This is what happens with Glorfindel, he died in the siege of Gondolin but since he went out kicking absolute ass killing a Balrog, the Ainu lifted both the ban on the whole noldor race, allowing him to get a body again, _and_ lifted the everstanding ban of "if you died, you live in Valinor now" for apparently the only time ever, allowing him to go back to the Middle Earth, because I mean, come on, the dude killed a Balrog, let him do whatever the hell he wants, he _killed a fucking Balrog._
Humans are beings almost entirely of the physical world. The cruel trick of the Ring Wraiths is allowing men, who know exactly what kind of thing would break a human's mind, enter the spiritual world. Basically, they are fighting people with a set of skills they have never trained for, most have never even realized existed.
Elves are better at facing them than humans, because even the entirely mundane ones that never left Middle Earth have at least been _aware_ of the realm in which the Nazgul exist for their entire life. Unlike humans, they can _at least_ see and understand what the Nazgul are doing, so they aren't as entirely defenseless.
A simple way to visualize why the Nazgul are "bad vibes" and elves are "good vibes" for me is imagining it in terms of subsonic waves. You know how, even without hearing anything (because it's subsonic, duh), a subsonic wave still has an impact on a person? Just imagine that this whole spirits versus material deal is just sound above or below what we can hear. Elves can hear that sound, and are basically always singing a nice, comforting, calm melody in those wavelengths. Humans never hear it, but they sure do feel better when elves are around. Nazgul, on the other hand, use the same technique to emit a constant blood curdling shriek that, if we could hear, would terrify us. Humans don't _hear_ it, but they still _feel_ the effect of it deep into themselves.
Fun fact, dwarves are the only race even _less_ attuned to the spiritual world than humans, and it's a hilarious case of "they are SO out of tune with it, that it hardly does anything to them at all."
Second fun fact, this whole "they exist more in spirit than in flesh" is the whole reason why Merry had to help Eowyn kill the Witch King of Angmar. Though it arrived way too late for it to matter at all, the humans of Arnor eventually understood how the Nazgul worked and created weapons enchanted specifically to fuck them up, most likely helped by people of Eregion (who were the ones who came up with the whole "make a ring to push them into the spiritual realm" thing in the first place). Merry's dagger had the only purpose of "stabbing a Nazgul with it will force it to exist in the physical world for a few seconds." When Merry shanks the Witch King in the leg, it creates a tiny window of time in which Eowyn can stab him in the face and kill him.
Jojo Stands are a phenomenal magic system for the purpose of characterisation.
Josuke, who is incredibly compassionate and always tries to put others' needs above his own, can use his Stand to heal injuries but only on others, never on himself.
Kakyoin was a very lonely child who always just wanted to have friends, but is also afraid of intimicacy. His Stand can stretch out and possess people from a distance.
Mista is very superstitious and always worried about something causing him bad luck, but when he's set on a task his incredibly focused and decisive. His Stand manifests as 6 little creatures that work together manipulate small objects in ways that look like just random good luck, but when they're not called to action the creatures sit around and pointlessly fight with each other.
Jojo stands are an s tier for me
Timestamps:
7:52 - Avatar: The Last Airbender - A
15:58 - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - S
22:51 - Lord of the Rings - C/D
28:24 - The Force (Star Wars) - C/D
36:39 - She-Ra - B
44:02 - Harry Potter - F
52:14 - Witcher - C
56:19 - D&D - B
1:02:10 - The Dragon Prince - B
1:09:13 - The Inheritance Cycle - C
1:16:07 - JRPGs / Mana Systems - D
1:21:07 - Yu-Gi-Oh! - E
1:28:03 - Magical Girls - C
1:36:39 - The Owl House - A
1:43:11 - Fairy Tail - E
1:47:58 - Slayers - A
1:55:48 - All the Brando Sando stuff - N/A
1:58:07 - Narnia - D
2:02:50 - The Wheel of Time - N/A
2:05:12 - Discworld - A
2:14:45 - Earthsea - A
2:19:40 - Legend of Zelda - C
2:25:14 - Cats (The Musical) - F
2:30:12 - Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - D
2:33:14 - One Piece - D
2:36:32 - Arcane (LoL) - C
2:41:57 - Elder Scrolls - B/C
2:46:57 - Percy Jackson - B
2:50:13 - Grishaverse - B
2:52:54 - Aurora (Red's comic) - Cleo
Tha k you!
Love this!
I was really hoping that they'd have included the Fate series' magic system, but understood from the fact that the video was less than 5 hours that it almost certainly hadn't been brought up in any real detail
Oh thank god, I would have been extremely disappointed if they didn't cover Slayers. It's just so unique to everything else I've seen.
Thank you!
Ah She'Ra the only show where "The magic of friendship and this gun I found" are literally one and the same.
Or as the inexplicable temporally displaced old lady put it, "The power of friendship was always there, this gun you found just hijacked it."
And that was a wild thing to say out of context.
kuuga
@@Gormathius😊😊
I can vibe with this, the more people working towards a united goal and use it for good, the luckier your group is in obtaining that goal
"The magic of friendship is how MANY guns we found along the way." Friendship is sharing inventory spots.
I am leaving a rare comment to make sure anyone who hasn't read Discworld knows that when Red says Discworld is "saturated with magic the way Pripyat is saturated with radiation," this is a very literal comparison. The area behind the wizard university where they've been dumping all their trash for hundreds of years would theoretically be very valuable real estate except that the ground is so saturated with magical waste that whenever they've tried to do landscaping projects the trees get up and walk away.
Ah, I love Pratchett 😂
"Magister, Im afraid theres a protest in the backyard"
"Goddamit, I though we already gave those gardeners a raise!"
"Sir it not the gardeners that are protesting, its the garden."
What a thing to read, gets a good chuckle from me😂
I'm just starting to listen to the Discworld series, is there a specific book that talks about magical waste? Cause that is super interesting. My based mom had Discworld audio books on all the time when I was growing up, but I've never listened to/read any of the books from beginning to end until recently
@@Mosstoad It is alluded to in a few places, but it is never a big plot point IIRC. I remember some bits in The Truth, and I shall wear Midnight. (A nice little arc of books to get into Discworld is The Truth, Going Postal, Making Money, Raising Steam). If you search for The Discworld Reading Order Guide 3.0 you can get a really nice map of how the stories relate to each other and you can find the threads that most appeal to you as an entry.
The Lord of the Rings magic system is best summarized by saying “Ya know the phrase ‘a wizard did it’, Gandalf is the wizard”
Did u read the books? Because thus is soooooooooooooo far from the truth. Like the distance from earth to Pluto far
@@miketime4290 A very powerful wizard did something offscreen that you never get to see. It was somehow very magical but also entirely unexplained. And that is the explanation given as to why something is the way it is/ happens the way it does.
Yeah no that sounds about right.
Especially as Gandalf is essentially an angel that helped build the world so there likely ARE bits of Middle Earth that are the way they are because a wizard, specifically Gandalf, did it.
More like "an elf did it," but yeah.
Now all I can think about is Hello Future Me's bopping Gandalf meme
@@Vinemaple *troll saxophone*
My favourite thing about discworld being "saturated in magic" is that the presence of magic slows the speed of light. It's such a great and pointless detail
And over multiple books.
Not to mention that the Disc is SO magical that a simple, sharp, mundane and we'll kept sword in the hands of a True Hero will cleave through a magical weapon like a hot knife through butter. Because narrative belief is a motive force on the Discworld.
I STRONGLY recommend for the next Overly Sarcastic After Dark a Magnificent Bastards tier list.
Didnt they already do this?
They did Himbos and detectives but not magnificent bastards
*Charismaniacs
The Xanatos and the rest
By how that trope work, every magneficent bastard below A doesn't count as a magneficent bastard.
The one thing that always stuck with me about Eragon's magic is the "blessing".
Quick recap: in book 1 Eragon is asked to bless a young child, so he uses some magic words to give her a protection from misfortune.
In the second book, while he is studying magic, he tells his master about this, and the words he used, and his master responds with "Oh, no, you fucked up BIG time! You messed up your grammar, you actually cursed that poor child to BE A PROTECTION from misfortune!"
The poor girl is therefore cursed to hear all misfortune of everyone around her, and is given the compulsion to do everything in her power to prevent it, or suffer with whoever is suffering around her.
This is the protagonist's biggest mistake, he carries that for a long time until he gets the chance to fix it (at that point the poor girl has lived 3 years of her life in complete misery). Even then, you can't just undo magic, so he needs to add a new magic on top, which results in a mitigation of the compulsion, but does nothing about the "misfortune sense". The girl immediately uses her ability to prey on Eragon's insecurity to stop him from trying again, and then lives on basically as a supernaturally enhanced manipulator.
Wow, and I didn't even know those books had magic
Which really doesn't make sense at all with the "intention is key" part, honestly.
@@MajikkaniHand They talk about how it would have been much worse for her if he had meant what he said. Basically his intentions being to protect her is the only reason she isnt dead within a month.
Fuckin dune reference
@@MajikkaniHand Shhhhhhhh. Don't think too hard.
Owl House's magic is like if Fullmetal Alchemist was reversed, so everybody on the boiling isles saw the truth beyond the gate and can just make hand circles but she's still having to draw complicated transmutation glyphs.
Its more like everyone got philosopher's stones implanted in them, I am pretty sure the magic gland is going to be plot relevant with witches being descended from magically altered humans or something like that.
@@timothycarney9652 mm fair
@@timothycarney9652 in full metal there are also alchemists with tattos that can make one kind of transmutation withouth drawing
@@devforfun5618 Yep, not sure how to stretch the analogy there, but it makes me wonder if luz will figure out tricks with more permanent mediums for her glyphs- considering they seem to burn up, evaporate or otherwise disapear or destroy themselves when used, tatoo versions sound wasteful and painful- unless you want to hurt someone whenever they try to use magic, or power a constant effect by tatooing a living magic user... That got dark, but also leads to the hilarious immage of Belos being subjected to a shock collar like rune that goes off whenever he tries to use magic as a no lethal punishment in the end.
@@timothycarney9652 I mean, I think a fair analogy could be made from the tattoos to the coven system, since the covens block out other magic types (besides the coven's specialty), so it could be a sort of reversed parallel there
Death Note had a hard magic system. The note has a very rigidly defined set of rules, and Light simply plays around with what is possible within those rules.
I want to say no, but it checks everything off.
Probably easier to write the plot that way tbh
If you want to see a magic system that has the same trope-filled nature as Discworld magic, I suggest reading the web serial A Practical Guide to Evil. Basically, tropes are the laws of the universe, and individuals who embody a particular character archetype get superhuman powers corresponding to that archetype. These individuals are called Named. A few examples of Names are Black Knight, Lone Swordsman, Wandering Bard, etc. What's cool about the series is that many conflicts between Named come down to who can manipulate tropes the best. It's a blast to read.
a practical guide to evil,,,,, is SOOOOOO GOOOOOODDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I haven’t read it, but I shudder to think how one Named with Plot Armor would be an unstoppable juggernaut (at least until the story arc ends, of course) 🫣
I'll have to check that out sounds fire
I feel very bad for anyone named "Hero's Crotchety Old Mentor"
So, in yugioh, the millineum puzzle actually had a power that was removed from the 4 kids censorship when it came to the west.
They keep calling it the "heart of the cards" but infact, that is the puzzles power, which just straight up described as "a luck boost that switches a card in his deck to the card he needs when he needs it most"
Love seeing the protagonist just have magic that lets them cheat at the virtue they're supposed to be displaying. That's as funny as Deltona quest, a series where the challenges are primarily puzzle based" where the first magic item the MC gets is a gem that "strengthens and clears the mind." Just whenever he's stumped he just slips his hand over the gem and bam, problem solved.
@@FrostSylph oh boy you'd hate Zexal, where the protagonists power was literally to "create a card that changes the future" with his Shining Draw.
It was made by a guy that very obviously would rather be doing typical Shonen anime where the characters actually fight rather than duel with cards. The power was even more hilarious because it was specifically used at times when the bad guys had creatures with abilities so convoluted that the only way for the protag to win was to create and draw a card that had the ability to SPECIFICALLY counter what the enemy was doing.
It was insanely bad.
the joke is the luck boost has two conditions that control how strong it is one is how good you are at whatever you are doing, and of course the higher the stakes the greater the buff(and yes this does mean that the main charterer literally get harder to beat the bigger the stakes are)
also this does not include yami/atem own power that he forgot that lets him just will any card he wants to his hand(and yes this does mean he had the power but did not know it to pull off a 100% turn 0 wins up until the start of duellist kingdom)
Actually even in the original it's shown as "luck" or "believing in the cards".
Ishtar only talks about this power when Yugi and Atem duels each other and people start suspecting something is cheessy after the 10th miracle turn around in 3 turns because both are at maximum Destiny Warping capacity.
Well yeah but is also like the only duel where atem is at full memory and power apart from when he shows up god style in dark side of dimensions to kick ass and take names
"if the world was sung into existence, but there are guns that shoot magic, that's not a good system," Challenge accepted
Powder Mage already did that.
The Trails games kind of pull this off: they have a semi-hard "magic" system that's actually technology (you run a special kind of energy through a circuit made with elemental energy-infused quartz, and the kinds of "spells" you can cast depend on the construction of the circuit and the types of elemental material used as much as any kind of affinity), but there's also a very soft magic system that doesn't use technology. Instead, you basically *rip a hole in reality* and cause a dimension with different laws of physics to temporarily overlap with "normal" reality, which allows you to do things that are normally impossible. This is much more powerful but also incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. It's not the best magic system ever but I like the general idea. I just have a thing for universes where "magic" definitely exists and yet there are layers to it, where not all magic is real or there are different magics with varying levels of public awareness. And while I don't know if Zemuria was sung into existence by a lion, orbal (the "magic" technology) guns do exist.
The games also get points for using this to give a plausible in-universe explanation for that thing that happens in JRPGs where some of your party members use swords and others use machine guns: a very advanced civilisation that predated the current nations of this world left a lot of technology behind when it collapsed, and as soon as their successors learned the basics of how to power and construct this magic tech, they began to reverse-engineer the advanced technology. Since they had such a massive leg-up, their industrial revolution happened incredibly quickly. Neatly explains the uneven tech levels, and it's also hugely affected the world's politics and infrastructure.
Morgoth: Eru Iluvatar cannons aren’t musical instruments.
Eru Iluvatar: Yes they are and I’m using 27 of them.
Morgoth: Iluvatar no.
Eru Iluvatar: Iluvatar yes. **Fires off cannons** Iluvatar always yes!!!
**Cut to Tolkien waking up in sweat after having a WW1 flashback**
Tolkien: I know, I’ll make a story about tiny men with hairy feet.
It can if you have a magic trumpet guns and giant tuning fork swords
Cygnar has entered the chat
15:30 Couple things about this topic: I found out from hearing someone else talk about Zuko's Agni Kai with Azula, that the way he fights is he uses martial arts from water, earth, and air bending techniques to become whole, like Uncle Iroh taught him. Also, his upgrade I would say was when he became the blue spirit and when he was trying to figure out self-identity, like in the Zuko Alone episode, some of his training time was spent in sword fighting and non-bending fighting. And it came in handy when he was trying to lay low in Ba Sing Se
Yeah Red says he doesn't get appreciatively better at fire bending. But if you look at season 1 Zuko and post dragons season 3 Zuko his animation when fire bending is very different. S1 Zuko is going stiffly through the forms and S4 Zuko is almost dancing in his movements.
@@danielcubias432 I think she said he didn't get a big power up. Like he never went from red fire to blue fire, or figured out the lightning move, etc. He gets more fluid and confident, but that's the gradual process of developing mastery, not the big power leap that a lot of shows do. And the primary Avatar party does to some extent when they come across various teachers - though there it's actually justified because they found a teacher and had some training, not all of which happens on screen. Katara is probably the biggest example of this with Hama's teaching - sure it's a situation where she's under extreme duress, but she figures out bloodbending *very* fast.
Zuko doesn't really have a single turning point where he goes from being a student following through forms to a master fluidly chaining moves together - it's a gradual transition. Which is good.
Plus, he's far from incompetent at the start - he does beat Zhao in an Agni Kai in like...episode 3 or 4? Zhao's far from a great firebender, but Zuko's ...14? Beating an adult who's completed his training and rose to a position of command and continued to rise all the way to Admiral in a regime that values strength above all other virtues is definitely not the mark of an incompetent. (Yes, Aang handles Zuko easily, but Aang's air bending fighting style is something that hasn't been seen since Iroh's father was young. And just looking at it, it's an incredibly dynamic style of fighting, which would be hard to counter until you've got an idea of what the logic is....and the only one who understands Aang's fighting style at that point is Aang himself.
I wouldn't describe his swordfighting as an upgrade. It's a skill he's had since the start, he just doesn't use it very often.
What about lightning redirection.
@@rashkavar In the prison escape episode, he duels Azula to a near stand-still with Sokka's help and it shows how much more control and precision he's garnered over his bending. So yes, he doesn't get any massive leaps in power (excluding dragon fire from the later comics) but he gets a lot better at Fire bending by the end of the show.
The problem I've always had with Harry Potter's magic system is that it feels like the worst of both worlds when it comes to hard and soft magic. You're never 100% sure what anyone us capable of like a soft system, but also lacks the mythical grandeur that a good soft system entails because it's treated so mundanely
Honestly I really used to like Harry Potter but it's so inconsistent outside of like time turner's. I don't even know if I want to support it due to jk Rowling honestly.
Jesus Christ is Lord. It is all true. Please take your salvation seriously. Read the Bible and do what it says
@@Elephantsaresupreme 7
@@Elephantsaresupreme Harry Potter magic works as a tool for its story and... Just that. Really, nothing else.
The issue with those books is that it's clear that there Is no real worldbuilding
It is that Harry Potter most of the magic can be replaced by a firearm. Magic rarely seems like magic.
For Lord of the Rings, if you look into the earlier ages, you get into more of the magic. Skilled people (elves and Ainur specifically) can weave magic through singing. The world was literally sung into existence.
At one point, the badass elf Finrod Felagund has the equivalent of and epic rap battle of history against Sauron.
I feel like that doesn’t get enough attention
This is kinda in the movies as well, when Saruman is basically yelling at the sky to bring down the mountain on the group, him and Gandalf yell at each other for a bit. Gives it a very mystical feel
I really don't understand why they rated it so low. It's important to the world and the characters, and it's actually pretty consistent about who can do what. It may be a soft system, but it still somehow stays in its lane better than most, while supporting the world and maintaining the vibes (pun intended).
Witcher's system is far cooler than you realise. Words spoken have power, especially promises. Literally, making a promise is like casting a spell. If you break that promise, you become cursed. This means that the story is, literally, the magic. It's one of my favourite magic systems. Every single cursed creature has a story of how they became that way, linked to their curse, and a curse is lifted typically only when the cursed keeps the word they broke (sort of Beauty and the Beast, but everywhere).
Then there's the Conjunction of the Spheres, the idea that the world is literally crashing into another world, and that's where all the magic came from. The Sorceresses and Witchers are actually created through scientific alchemy, like Frankenstein's Monster. There's lots going on here, and it's very grim dark. Definitely more interesting than the average bog standard magic system.
It's a system that really works in the Shrek-like universe of The Witcher. It's a world of fairy tales run mad where almost anything can happen. Powerful curses can be cast by people who know what they're doing, but they can also be cast by people who in an extreme fit of emotion curses someone to suffer a horrible fate, often with significant consequences for the victim. So magic is both a science that can be studied and applied while also having a strong flavour of rural mysticism, a magic system that allows for the existence of both cultured scholars using strict principles and swamp witches using bones and animal blood.
However, because of this it ends up as a very "soft" magic system. It has some internal consistency, but it's more of a basic framework for the world to be built upon rather than a strict system. Which, again, works perfectly for The Witcher universe.
I always thought it was "box-standard"?
@@Muninnnr Great points! 'Soft' might better be described as 'malleable' I think.
@@TheSchultinator omg you've changed everything
@@stefanlamb1179 Is that good or bad?
Jojo's main power system, Stands, is a system that is liked almost entirely because of its batshit insane execution. If you only got up to part 3, then you only got some tame stuff. I'd compare it more to a super hero story than a magical system, but it far outstrips most of the basic western comic book powers you see.
One guy's ability is to create zippers on anything he touches, and he's one of the most dangerous stands in the series, there's a dude whose power is literally just a fishing rod, and a metal manipulator who manipulates fine iron dust to turn invisible by reflecting light and to create nails inside your body out of YOUR OWN BLOOD! Then you die of oxygen deprivation because without iron your blood can't transfer oxygen!
It only gets crazier after every part, there's an ability that once activated prevents you from remembering more than three new pieces of information, one that removes gravity on you and everything you touch, causing you to slowly create an environment where the air itself has lost gravity and is sucked away to form a vacuum around you, causing all blood to be sucked away, an ability that halves your size every time you travel half the distance towards the user, a stand that is literally just a hype man for its user, a dude who can blow nails into balloon animals, a stand that can make you unable to differentiate two different things, which is fucking terrifying when the user made a person unable to tell the difference between people and oncoming buses.
To put a long story short, Stands isn't that special in terms of underlying concept, people create spirits that protect and fight for them who have different abilities based on their personality, it's that simple. The true strength is that the author understands the vast array of human variation and decided to put it to story. It's fights are not something you see in most other stories because Araki is doing power creep but for design. Every part comes with more insane abilities that are insane because they are different, not because they are more powerful. Every new encounter is an entirely new combat paradigm, every new part brings forward newer and more interesting abilities. The fights feel more like puzzles to solve rather than fist fights, where every combatant is trying their damdest to use their one special trick to win the battle. It is a story that can convince you that a shit superpower is actually frightening when used intelligently and with the correct circumstance.
It's Jojos.
It’s fucking brilliant
I think the best thing about this power system is that “it just works”
The best part about it is how any weird idea you have could be a standpower.
If I told you that someone had a stand which caused everyone in an area to feel really drunk, like they are unbalanced and their reaction time sucks, you could totally believe that it’s a real stand and could be really dangerous in the right hands.
@@TheDeepPix3l that would be a cool stand, it could be called Dazed and Confused
It speaks to Arakis abilities that i remembered each and every one of the characters you described with their abilities. Not their names, but how the encounters with them went, because each one is unique.
Something I've always liked about the witchers magic is that it's actually pretty world permeating, you just kinds forget how all encompassing it really is. Like, that's how alot of ghosts or curse like monsters come to be, cursing somebody with your dying breath is apt to literally place a curse on somebody, and the punishment for breaking a promise can also be very tangible. It's cool because literally anybody can brush shoulders with magic, and they usually do on complete accident.
Its funny how Harry Potter is a famous franchise, but has one of the most ridiculed and plot-hole filled magic systems in modern history.
I feel like that has to be partly why. The magic system is simple enough for kids to understand because there's absolutely zero depth to it.
its also not the kinda of story that is built on its magic system@@_kalia
That's just what the whole franchise is like I'm afraid.
Honestly, having problems is a good part of what made it last. Endless time can be spent working though all the issues, and volumes of fanfiction written working out solutions to the problems.
Yeah I think I agree that it's the simplicity of it that makes it so potent with kids. The other thing is that the modern fantasy, secret world setting kind of allows the reader to project their own sense of realism into it. I think that's as far as a child really needs to think into it. The point of Harry Potter is more about the struggles of adolescence and the bonds of friendship.
Me learning that Red’s art style was born out of the intersection between Calvin & Hobbes and anime: Yes. This makes perfect sense. I did not guess this, but having heard it, I cannot imagine any other shape for reality to be in.
One thing about One Piece’s Devil Fruit system is that it is incredibly consistent but in a unconventional way. Devil Fruit powers are based on the thing it’s based on (i.e. springs, candles, flowers, bulls) BUT also entirely on the creativity of the user and how THEY believe their abilities can work which adds a huge amount of variance to what you should expect from a system like this. Puns and mythology can come into play (which Oda loves to do) and even in some cases where extinct creatures appear, the users can almost make up wacky abilities because no one in-universe can confirm that it doesn’t work that way.
Adding to this, the explanation for how a Devil Fruit appears is that a set time after the prior user of a Devil Fruit dies, another fruit somewhere in the world (not specified if the fruit needs to be a specific type or similar in shape to the original) will suddenly transform into the Devil Fruit in question. Once this transformation takes place, the fruit will not expire and will last until consumed. Most of these fruits are documented in terms of appearance by now, so this cycle has existed according to the lore for at least 800+ years, but some specific ones have particular details relating to them hidden, such as Kaido's devil fruit, which requires the user to climb a waterfall while transformed to unlock its full strength (which in and of itself is a mythology reference).
What, your telling me that in ancient times dinosaurs *didn't* hunt by grabbing their own head, pulling it back and using it like a slingshot?! Preposterous!
Although my favorite thing about how they can do that because they *think* that's how it works is that there are actual, living dinosaurs in One Piece. It's just that the dino fruit people apparently chose to ignore that and instead made up their own sh*t cause why not XD
Are Dinosaurs extinct in the OP world, there were Dinosaurs on Little Garden, endangered yes, extinct no.
I'd argue One Piece has about six different systems stacked up in a trench coat pretending to be one, but the systems are all goblins that are very clearly fighting with each other and so everyone quietly hopes it isn't a magic system at all.
1) Devil fruits, obviously, but with the interesting note that Oda does make it distinct that those who've had their powers a long time, or especially as kids, think of their powers very differently than those who just got their powers or only had them as adults. The most disappointing example of the later is Brook, who technically had his powers a very long time but couldn't use them and when they finally became useful he sat on it for fifty years (trauma, I know, and he was already a pretty good fighter, but...dude...)
2) Haki, exerting the force of your character over...reality? This one only makes sense if the sensory version is somehow distinct (like expand empathy into a full superpower? I don't know, but it has rules and they work). Does the voice of the world thing count as part of Haki or is it separate? The hat...same question.
3) Fishman Karate/Mink electro. They try to explain these away as physicality and stuff but...it's a gentle magic (do the mink transformations count as part of electro? Moon magic?)
4) The transponder snails. Maybe it's not magic exactly, but it's absolutely super natural. (Do the skypia dials count as part of the same or separate?)
5) Whatever the hell is going on with the Grandline and the Calm belts that make magnets not work/ the poses. You can try to explain it with magnets all you want...absolutely not. (Does sea prism stone fit here?)
6) The occasional love ghosts giving protagonists a loving shove off.
7) THE POWER OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!!!
@@meghanhenderson6682 Also Lunarian fire, fortune telling, the voice of all things, Shirohoshi and Momo's powers, and Germa Science is the best in the world!!!!!!!
As a Tolkien fan, I found your assessment of the Lord of the Rings pretty much accurate. I think Indigo's description was spot on. Middle Earth's magic system is nonexistent because there is no "system" to the magic. Magic in Middle Earth works however the story needs it to in any given moment. It seems to me making that work narratively would be helped by the softer approach.
I think that if you really squint you can find some rules that Tolkien followed, like having the ainur be the only ones capable of doing magic in the traditional sense, while the lesser races can usually just enchant items or create illusions, and also that to cast a spell you need some nondescript "power". So a reader can at least be sure that a human will never be able to do magic, and if someone calls themselves a sorcerer they are probably either lying, using magical items or an higher being is giving them powers. Same thing for an elf, they will probably never be able to manipulate the weather and if they do then it must mean that they are a super elf who's been to valinor and maybe they are using a ring of power. So it's not completely random.
Not to mention Middle earth is a world of waning magic. That is part of the reason the people of Middle Earth was split on destroying the One Ring. That doing so would basically break the last dam holding in whatever little magic was left, and there would be now place left to go but west.
I think of magic in lotr more like religious miracles. It's there, helps you when needed but not in a grand way. If you think of gandalf as a guardian angel it makes sense
If anything it's heavily theme-based. Gandalf's theme is fire, Saruman's theme is domination, the Three Rings work on themes of healing, preservation and resistance respectively, etc. There are no hard and fast rules, these things just have whatever effects, according to their theme.
I like all of these comments, and agree. All of you made valid and interesting points. I think, on the whole, we all are speaking on the theme of "it's difficult to think of Middle Earth magic as a full system because of the kind of story being told".
"Why can this wizard only cast three spells a day?" Because they're level 1, Red!
love the joke, but I was always confused about it myself. Still am
@@aubarlowe I always view magic is how much arcane force you can safely pull from the Weave. Sure there is more magic that you could draw on but it might kill you. (Just not giving the players that option because I know for a fact the Wizard would just be like fuck it I give 0 shits the Cleric can rez me two seconds after I blow up. Going nuts!)
@@crazyscotsman9327 yeah, that's fair. Which--I've heard explanations in a lot of different ways. None really actually make sense to me tho.
@@crazyscotsman9327 that’s a bit Call of Cthulu. Using HP when you don’t have enough magic points. Maybe someone should come up with homebrew of how much hp corresponds to each level of slot
You know it is called Vancian system since it was inspired Jack Vance dying earth series. Haven't read them myself, but if you want answers for dnd magic, there you go.
Red's mom rearranging the order of the Narnia books because she didn't like the in-universe chronology is actually highly relatable to me because my parents do the EXACT same thing! Their order is publishing order:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (my mom's favorite)
The Silver Chair
The Horse and his Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle
Now, for the order in which I read them: LWW, PC, MN, VDT, SC, HHB, LB.
I'd describe Dragon Prince's magic system as being like a brie: It has a hard outer shell--with the drawing of symbols and speaking of works and specific sources granting specific abilities and whatnot--but underneath that shell it's pretty soft, basically just doing whatever the characters need it to do.
And as for Callum and why no human had done that before, I think it's because people use the most easy-to-access method available, especially in a combat context. Dark magic is highly effective and easy to access, and most people don't use magic at all. So between that and the elemental orbs that let them access the sources anyway, people had no reason to meditate on the nature of the sources and their connection to them. I think the implication is that humans are sort of like Eevees, not born into one element but able to choose any of them under the right circumstances.
It was confirmed by the creator Callum isn't the first human to use primal magic
The only flaw with the "dark magic is easy to do" is that if it was really that easy there'd be more then just two people in TDP welding Dark Magic.
To add. The magic is quite interesting because to do it requires intuitively understanding the source of magic you're trying to tap into, knowing the complex secret at it's center. Magical beings are born with it, but you can still figure it out with time and focus. Makes it a harder, better system in my thoughts.
I think that it has issues in what’s been established as the world needs to be fleshed out more. We need to see more dark magic users and learn more of the history of the world.
@@Scalesthelizardwizard i was about to mention this
I have to comment on what was said about Lord of the Rings' magic system. It's not just based on Norse myth, but also on a lot of hot debates that were going on at the time in Catholic mysticism, which JRRT was very much keyed into. In effect, LotR's magic system is designed as an argument against the existence of a consistent, hard magic system, that could be used for good.
This was an age where is was believed that, since the universe was spoken into existence, the cosmos must in fact be a complex statement is some transcendent mathematical language that we were yet to decode. It seemed to many like the unification of science, magic and religion could be right around the corner. We just had to figure out this quantum mechanics thing, and then we would have certain and absolute knowledge of all things, and become omnicient demigods.
As a postwar Romanitic, a Humanitarian, and philosophical moralist, JRRT rejected this ideology long before Heisenberg exploded it. The universe, he felt, could not be a machine spinning in endless cycles, or a cold difference engine reacting to stimuli. He saw the world and it's history as a narrative constructed by a Great Author; not a cold mathematical statement of physical laws, but an epic song of heroes triumphing in the face of evil. Miracles must be hoped for, magic that can be relied upon would only become a tool for evil.
The One Ring is itself a reference to Socrates' metaphor of the Ring of Gyges, which granted invisibility, but invariably drive the heroes who wielded it to become tyrants. A man who can act unseen is accountable to no one. A man who is accountable to no one has absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The invisible man is a monster.
That worldview is unavoidable woven into his writing, and would lead to his famous falling out with C.S. Lewis, who often took these as deliberate metaphors for their many arguments about the subject. Lewis was the kind of person to take another person's entire belief system personally.
lightly off topic, is there a known source for the weird dualism? Like on first glance it's obviously very Christian in appearance, but in practice it really really reminds me of Slavic mythology or Zoroastrianism.
The Christian and Norse elements sort of outshine the dualism but it always stuck out to me whenever I look into the cosmological side of the universe. Like it could just be fantasy christianity taken to extremes but the man was a linguist and historian I believe
This is one of the most interesting descriptions of Tolkein's thought processes I've ever encountered. Thank you for that.
@@Ezekiel_Allium The Zoroastrianism reminder is likely due to it influencing Christianity.
After all, Sat'an went from "The Accuser", the divine smiter, the title given to the Angel who was serving Yahweh's will at the moment, to Satan, "The Deiciver", the source of all evil, and a specific angel, Lucifer, who rebelled against Yahweh and became the malevolent force of the world. So Zoroastrianism's dual gods definitely influenced Christianity. There is even the apocryphal book of Judus, which depicts Yahweh as the evil, chaotic, bloodthirsty god(something something genocides, human sacrifices(I'm not even referring to Issac as screwed up as that story is), lying to Adam and Eve about the details of the test and locking the knowledge they needed to pass it intentionally behind failure, and then proceeding to sabotage humanity once they started to work around the punishment... It's believable is my point), and Jesus was the good deity opposing him. This obviously was rejected once Cathocism started collecting regional lore to consolidate into a cohesive religion, but an early Christian sect did have it.
Also, it's interesting how Jesus and Sa'tan's treatment mirrors the Scapegoat ritual of early Israeli Judaism. In the ritual, two livestock, typically lambs or goats, would be taken. Then, one would have all the sins of the community blamed on it and be driven out into the wilderness, while the other would be sacrificed to absolve the community of those sins.
Jesus has the epithet "the lamb who was slain", so there's that. Meanwhile Satan is frequently depicted as having aspects of a goat, is blamed for people's wrongdoings ("the devil made me do it!", as well as being called the serpent in the garden, which isn't consistently in the story nowadays and certainly is not present in older versions), and is encountered in the wilderness (the time Jesus met him out there, the crossroads deal mythology, the fact that whenever witches were accused of meeting him it was always outside of the town away from people)
@@the_last_ballad There's quite a bit to unpack there, but I'll give it ago.
I was under the impression the word Satan is literally just a title that means something like adversary or enemy, hence the biblical confusion about how it could be referring to several different individual entities and people in different parts of the bible. Could be wrong though, but that's what I've always read.
That apocryphal text is a Christian Gnostic one, it's a whole massive mess of pre Christian Neoplantonism and some other wild stuff all thrown in a blender, it's a fun time, I heartily reccomend reading up on it, it's a fun time.
And there's a lot more to dualism than just good God bad God. In dualism the world is literally constructed from the clash between light and dark, every single thing is a clash between opposite forces. Evil isnt an enemy to be defeated but a fundamental component of the physical world to live with (usually)
While definitely a real thing, I do think the zoroastrian influence on christianity gets a little overstated sometimes. Gnostics are kinda sorta dualistic in that they think the physical world is bad and the immaterial divine world is good and humans have a divine spark trapped inside them, but it's less like the world is a balance between opposing forces and more like one aeon was a selfish nerd and we need to escape the prison he made for us. Medieval christians were veering towards a sort of dualism but that was mostly just them being weird about animals they dont like.
As far as Tolkein goes, his dualism reminds me a lot more of Slavic Mythology than zoroastrianism, though that may be just the fact I know more about slavic mythology talking in that case, but considering Tolkein's linguistic and mythological stuff is Europe focused, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case
Narnia is inspired by Medieval Romance (and the later Victorian take on it through Rosecolored glasses) the same way Tolkien is inspired by older folklore and mythology. At first Narnia seems to be referencing mythology and I've heard people argue that, but imo its actually referencing greco- Roman mythology from a medieval and Victorian perspective. It is thoroughly high medieval with simple good v. bad narratives, bright colors and color symbolism, blatant Christian allegory/symbolism, a grab bag mixture of folklore and mythologies (father Christmas, alongside Merlin-esque wizards and Morgan le fay esque witches, alongside dwarves, alongside satyrs, alongside straight up Macbeth hags, and medieval werewolves), the stars are living beings whose dances predict the future (much like early Jewish Astrology). He references monopods from one of those bizarre "wonders of the world" manuscripts. The whole thing feels like a stained glass window, or arthurian romance, or an illuminated manuscript. But then next minutes it's incredibly down to earth and kids are complaining about how hot and sweaty they feel carrying around swords, or how the ground is swaying bc they've been on a ship, or how Father Xmas isn't jolly all the time and is actually quite serious when you see him in person. It's grounded in a kind of odd realism but I think the heart of Narnia, and its magic, is an attempt to capture the feel of high medieval romance, and the Christian stuff is intrinsic and inevitable, but in much the same way it is in medieval art and story.
Tolkien's magic system is that the universe was sung into existence as an epic narrative song and so everything magical happens literally bc it fits into an epic narrative, lol
Middle-earth is also an attempt to fill the void caused by Christianity destroying the mythology that existed in England. But also, in the War of Wrath, the higher 'Angels' or Valar, caused so much damage to the world, that the world was beginning to unravel. That is the excuse for why the wizards and the elves cannot do the same feats of magic as when the world was young.
@@Tom-dg6pg i've heard Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England. But i always assumed the reason for that is bc England, as we know it, came into existence in a post- mythic age. The English are Germanic people who conquered and intermingled with Celtic britons so all the mythology that existed before christianization would either be a variant of Germanic mythology or a variant of Celtic mythology. The two cultures largely didn't mingle to create something new (stuff like the Fisher king, Merlin, king Arthur, Jack the giant killer, medieval tales with dwarves that act likefoey folk but there are also wizards, the wyrd sisters, e.t.c) until after christianization and then all that stuff became folklore instead of belief so it was easier to intermingle. The biggest piece of mythic writing from early England that we have is beowulf, which canonically stars exclusively non-English characters and takes place entirely outside of England. I mean I could be wrong about what Tolkien meant but I'd argue that the reasons I've given are more likely reasons why England, i.e. perspe who identify as "English," lacks a mythology. The only thing would be if Tolkien just wanted more Germanic myths that happened to come out of England? Or wanted us to know more about the Britons? But i feel he liked mixing the two, so its more like he's wishing that mixing happened in a mythic age. At least that's my thought on it.
@@Tom-dg6pg Ainur, not Vanir. Or if you mean the really powerful ones, then it's Valar.
That is a beautiful description. Im putting it in my heart
Objection on the claim that Callum was the first to tap into an Arcanum that they weren't naturally connected to, Aaravos set the precedent on being able to do so since he can use all types of magic.
Red: “oh, my audio is only coming through the left?”
Me: *listening just with my left earbud in*
“Wait, what?”
Me with only the right one in: “Oh, never would’ve known, neato!”
Jojo technically has THREE magic systems: The Ripple, Stands, and The Spin. I haven't read the stretch of story with The Spin, but the Stand system basically flat-out replaces the Ripple system so that's why people will say to skip the first two series.
The Spin is awesome and could work by itself, even Hamon is neat, Stands obviously are just the best for what Araki wants to do (weird shit, he wants to do weird things). Also, it's interesting how the powers interact, go check out Hamon Beat's video on it.
Im gonna say, about The Dragon Prince, the way they explain magic is “Arcanum”, where if you really grok X concept (the arcanum we know for sure is Moon, and its basically “There is a truth beyond the physical world, however we cannot sense it, so then our senses must then be as false as any lie, so lies are a useful way to explore the world” off memory) you can start to touch the natural energy of that element, and then as a wizard you can write those sky runes
Which is odd to see it on B tier. I see it lore constructed in its magic than Owl House personally.
There are also the primal stones, which act as an Arcanum and allow magic to be cast while they are held, which is useful when not surrounded by one's native element (such as a Skywing Elf being underground). The runes and verbal components are for distilling the Arcanum into the specific effect. The Sky Arcanum, for instance, is shown to include basically any atmospheric phenomenon, and grant the ability to fly via shapeshifted bird wings.
You could also say that the creator just took Avatar’s, D&D’s, and the Force from Star Wars and smushed them together. At the end of the day the magic system in TDP isn’t very creative.
@@Grf1556 I definitely agree it is not the most creative and it is kind of a smooch of those together, but I also think they built out in such a way that honestly really makes sense and is understandable.
@@Grf1556 Possibly, but it’s important to note that truly, completely original concepts are both much rarer than most people think, and are very overhyped. I would much rather a magic system be clear and defined than original.
I think the best part of the wheel of time magic is that the male and female sides are two halves of a whole. It's established very early on that the best stuff happens when they work together followed by 8000 pages of men and women not working together
Sounds like I should start reading it.
@@ethanmacleod1721 .
Like Human civilization as a whole
In their defense male mages cant do magic without going insane cause of big bad asshole over yonder, and aptly female mages are rather... "apprehensive" to work with someone with JUST MAYBE a half a buckets worth of screws loose.
god i need to reread that series one day
My favorite thing about the Dragon Prince magic system is that Dark Magic is actually explicitly contrasted with the other forms of magic in the setting and is justified as being bad rather than assumed. Most of the time in other settings, "dark magic" is bad because bad people use it for bad reasons, or is otherwise some kind of forbidden knowledge. In Dragon Prince, Dark Magic is not depicted as inherently bad but is shown to be bad because one has to literally kill cute animals to use it. Contrast this with the Dark Side of the Force, where seemingly the only difference between the light side and the dark side is that angry people use the Dark side, which isn't really a distinction of the light and dark as much as it is of the characters.
My own headcanon for why the Dark Side of the Force is overwhelming for the user is that when you tap into the Force in anger, you are tapping into the collective hatred of all life in the Galaxy. Darth Bane's analogy of the Dark Side as venom was not wholly inaccurate, though perhaps acid would be a more fitting comparison, since it damages the vessel that contains it as much as what it is used against.
The idea of the dark side is that it’s a literal corrupting power. It’s abilities are much easier to perform and way more powerful, but using them actively twists a person into an evil, hate-filled being.
Honestly, I feel Dark Magic in Dragon Prince is not as dark as the show tries to portray itself. It usually is just used to kill insects to fuel it plus Dark Magic was shown in the show to save two kingdoms from having an outbreak of cannibalism due to the lack of food. Heck its inventor Ziard was shown to be very heroic, sacrificing his life to save people. It comes off more as a designated evil than something truly evil. It only comes off as evil because the main Dark Mage we see is Lord Viren, who quickly went down a greased up slippery slope of evil by episode 4.
Now the dark side of the force on the other hand, that has temptation linked to it. It's the shortcut, what seems like the solution when the longer road of the light force doesn't seem to be working, but in the end, makes one forget why they went to the dark side to begin with ultimately making the shift meaningless. Anakin wanted to save Padme by learning about the dark side but in the same pursuit ended up killing her. That is what I felt missing in the Dark Magic of Dragon Prince, it doesn't feel like there's a personal cost.
The canon explanation of the Dark Side of the Force is that the Force is a combined power and will of all living beings in the galaxy. The Light Side is following this will and doing stuff in the interests of life, while the Dark Side is taking this power for yourself and using it how you want
What about killing ugly animals to use it?
The reason the Stands are named after bands and songs, it because:
1) Araki likes it.
2) Because the songs relates to the characters.
Also, the poses are just "cool". Basically, Stands are the physical manifestation of someone's will. Also, Stand's are confusing but not incomprehensible, they all make sense and work thematically for the characters.
Most people think Stands are C.R.AZ.Y. just see the memes and think it's Grappler Baki which is C.R.A.Z.Y.
Sidenote: Also Haki wasn't added post time-skip, it was seen with Shanks and the Sea King, we see it in Skypeaia (though it's called something else), we see it in Sabaoby and Marineford, we even see it with Garp being able to hit Luffy with his fist. It's just explained post-timeskip.
Also, Devil Fruit's haven't been explained, YET. It's very clearly building up to a origin for them.
I think stands are basically just physical manifestations of psychic abilities. Usually if you see a psychic stop time or lift something with their mind in fiction it's like it just floats up. Stands represent that by having a ghost coming out of you and doing the action. And I love it for it. I think the posing is inspired mostly from fashion magazines.
I think stands are a cool power system because each one is unique and reflects its user. I believe araki said he typically will design the stand first and then the character off of that.
@@chickenwinna Yes. Agreed.
“The 80s sure were a thing that happened.”
I think that’s my favorite summation of the 80s ever.
So fun fact about Shouting in Skyrim, its not the only form of that magic.
Its essentially a form of sound based magic that lets you change the fundamental aspects of the world, the Thu'um is just how dragons are able to do it, a few other races have their own forms of it. The Dwarves/Dwemer for instance had something called Tonal Architecture which is all about tones and sounds. The reason their metal never rusts and their machines still exist is because they used Tonal Architecture to kind of of separate it from the normal flow of time. Then there is the debateably more extreme example of Sword Singing, which was used by the Redguard (or at least their ancestors) to literally destroy their home continent of Yokuda by using it to let them *split atoms with their swords* which basically nuked the whole continent into nonexistance.
There are other examples but it gets weirder and more esoteric as it goes on. But yeah Dragon Language is just a form of sound based magic in Elder Scrolls
The Thu’um is fairly similar to the system in Eragon. Special language that takes practice and mastery to use, from an ancient race.
TES is so good in the badckground, if only the devs could match that talent now.
Yeah the elderscrolls is essentially a dream, a song, and a tower all at the same time. Its wild. The reason tonal architecture, the thu'um, and sword singing work is you are just changing the actual structure of the song with your words.
The Nen system in Hunter x Hunter (often considered as one of _the_ best power systems in shonen manga) is really interesting for the soft vs hard conversation, as it's a bit of both, working together. For an explanation:
In-universe, it's a secret, and first taught as a meditation exercise. Then those who figure out its deeper meaning can start using it for practical purposes. There's first a progression of stages.
Every living being naturally exudes aura. The first step, Ten, is to learn to trap one's own aura around oneself. This forms a defensive shroud of aura around the person, making them more resilient to attacks, and protecting one from the aura pressure of others (which can be mentally damaging).
The second step, Zetsu, is the opposite, trapping the aura inside the user. This speeds up recovery from fatigue, and hides one's presence from others as no aura is leaking out. The downside is that it leaves the user even more susceptible to aura attacks than someone who isn't capable of using Nen at all.
The third step, Ren, is all about pushing out as much of one's aura as possible, making it a more powerful but also more tiring version of Ten, and one with offensive applications as well.
Those three have combination applications too, such as focusing a bit of Ren to the eyes letting one see aura, but where things get interesting is the fourth step, Hatsu.
Hatsu seems initially like a very soft system. There are six types of effects under it (Enhancers boost their own or the capabilities of others, Emitters send their aura outside their body for external effects, Transmuters give their aura different properties, Manipulators use their aura to control things, Conjurers create solid objects out of their aura, and Specialists can have just about anything weird and unique - will get back to that), and every individual has a natural inclination towards one.
It's possible for each person to come up with their own applications, and in any of the categories - staying within one's own type and creating an ability that matches the user's personality and interests usually yields the best results - and there's a really vast field of possible things that can come out of it. The oddball type being Specialists - those abilities come to be naturally and can't be actively developed, and it's possible for someone to be a specialists with an active ability with zero awareness of what Nen is (for example, being an inhumanely good player of one specific board game can be a Specialist ability - "mundane" and hidden effects like that may well be the most common form of it, in fact), so they are kind of an odd exception group.
What adds the interesting hard system part, is in developing one's own Hatsu technique. That is to say, as a Nen user, you use the framework of a soft system that doesn't really do anything on its own, and _create_ your own personal hard system out of it. The harder you make it, such as by putting in usage limits or penalties, the stronger it becomes.
I have heard about Hunter x Hunter and its magic system; and appreciate your explanation of the system. I really need to check it out.
One of my favorite things about the nen system in HxH is how the creativity and uniqueness of each hatsu is directly correlated to the user’s personality. Unlike in JoJo where stands are assigned randomly, each person (with a few exceptions) has the freedom to invent their own superpower from scratch.
But because of the guidelines of nen application as a whole as a soft magic system, people are naturally going to move towards what they’re most comfortable with. And so despite having the freedom to come up with whatever power you want theoretically, in reality most options would be far to inefficient to be effective in battle. In the show the most conceptually overpowered abilities require an insane amount of creativity, strategic setup, dedication, and sacrifice; so much so that their users are often shown as crazy or suicidal.
By contrast, people can choose relatively simple and straightforward abilities that add to and compliment their fighting style perfectly and instead of refining their ability, they instead refine their battle sense in order to guarantee that they can fight with a constant advantage. And of course, whether a character chooses to keep it simple or make it esoteric and complicated says a lot about what type of person that character is.
Just for reference about why everyone should Watch/Read Hunter X Hunter, one of the members of the original main cast has a revenge story arc going on, and is very upset about his Nen type not being "Enchantment", as it's traditionally the most straightforward to use in any type and since he already was used to fight in melee it would have been great for him to just develop some crazy attack with his blades.
But he can't do it and expect good results, thus he tries to find another solution.
The Hatsu he ends up developing is a set of chains he wears all the time on his body (and it is atypical, most Nen users strongly want to hide their type and fighting style) which he seems to manipulate at will.
But these chains have also a couple of special powers, like healing injuries, but nothing too incredible.
And then there is a chain by which he can stop enemies from using Nen at all and one he can stab in the heart of the targets, condemning then to death if they refuse to accept his conditions.
He got such big powers in exchange for the condition of "I am not gonna use it on anyone outside of my revenge, otherwise I die"
Hatsu is a soft magic system that pretends to be hard.
And Specialist is just Togashi just needing whatever for the plot.
Shame the different types of nen users became less important as the story went on. I really hate the specialization typing. Which became the whatever i feel like typing.
Despite how it’s described, The Force seems to be basically the concept of Mind Magic. The two most popular skills for both are Telekinesis and Mind Manipulation, Luke’s Lucky Shot could be completed using both Telekinesis and strengthening his mind to focus on landing his shot, Users can do floaty jumps by raising their bodies telekinetically…
_Actually, most of these are just telekinetic now that I think about it…_
Ah yes, my favorite form of telekinesis: Actual lightning shooting from people's fingers
Ah yes my favorite mind power: raising dead Nightsisters to fight for me.
Also some seer shit.
@@jeremiahsnelson5644 i mean, it could be static electicity. Just rub positive and negatively charged molecules together and shock them
@@anonymousname5860 That one’s a bit tougher to explain. Maybe the Force Wielder just coaxes their neurons to begin producing electricity again?
I just realized that the emperor using lightning, has a totally different feel when you saw the prequels first. Because if you have seen the prequels first, you know force lightning is a thing before you see the emperor do it in the original movies, which probably takes out a lot of the surprise factor
Can confirm. I was too you ng to see the original trilogy in the theaters by a few years, but thankfully nobody ruined the movies when my family finally got a VCR.
Seeing the Emperor use lightning was awe-inspiring, as up to that point, the Force is 50% about enhanced natural abilities like aiming, jumping, intuition, etc., with 25% for telekinesis and 25% for Obi-Wan coming back as a force ghost.
There are no hints that force lightning exists, but it's also not an immersion breaker because it is very well scaled (ie, it's not smashing starships). It also explains how the Emperor could have taken out the Jedi, as both Luke and Vader seem to be powerless against it. It's killing Luke (slowly, but only because the Emperor wants to torture Luke) and it _does_ kill Vader.
And it fits because it seems to be almost a projection of the Emperor's malice; I mean, the lightning even *looks* evil.
All in all, it was a hell of a scene, perfectly done. Seeing it with no foreknowledge was bloody epic.
LotR magic is consistent with Sanderson's Laws of Magic, when you think about it. It is used to solve plot proportionally to the audience's understanding of it, which means almost not at all. Magic creates problems in LotR, usually, it doesn't just solve them.
And no, eagles are not magic, they are creatures, folks.
The biggest problem with LotR’s magic system imo is that it feels like Gandalf primarily, but also Saruman, don’t use magic as much as it feels they should
I love that I tuned at the EXACT right time for Red to dunk on Harry Potter. It's like opening a bag of BBQ chips and finding the one with the most seasoning at the very top.
Same lol that was fun
That must have been delightful. Having to watch back due to time zones. My very disgruntled 12 year old self feels so validated. I just couldn't even back then....
LotR might have a soft magic system, but it's internally consistent And the Ring itself is a much harder magic system that is vital to the story. It's magic, it has rules that dont break, and it's clearly explained to the audience. Also Gandalf totally Was off fighting Sauron during the Hobbit and says so during the council of Elrond in the books. It's canon, the Hobbit movies just made it look stupid
@@A2ndVoiceoh of course, my apologies good sir 🤣
The harder magic system suits the ring, which, as part of Sauron is inherently interested in dominance and control. It’s different from the rest of magic in the world.
@@anonymousname5860 well yeah but the ring is the magic system that is prevalent through most of the story literally being the inciting incident and the source for almost every problem in the books. It's a deep well explained well thought out and perfectly integrated magic system in a world of otherwise softer more ambient magic so it goes higher on my list 😁
Yep. Originally the Necromancer was supposed to be Thû from The Book of Lost Tales, which later evolved into The Silmarillion and Thû's character turned into Sauron.
As for the magic system, it is a bit more fleshed out than people tend to realise, even though a lot is still left to imagination. It has basically three tiers:
1. Magic as skill. Simply knowledge of how the world works and the ability to make practical use of your knowledge. Galadriel comments at one point that she doesn't quite understand what "magic" means, since to her things that seem supernatural to others are just skills that she has learned over her long life. Subset of this category is simply knowing "supernatural" beings like Elves, Ents or Eagles and being able to ask them for favours.
2. Magic as innate power. All beings in Middle-Earth are born with innate power that they can hone and make use of, overlapping with the previous category. The level of this power depends on one's race, but also varies by individual. It usually manifests fairly subtly, like telepathy, precognition or glamour (illusions, etc.), but more powerful beings like the Istari can command the very elements in a very flashy manner. The use of this power is apparently codified into spells, referenced a few times in the books, but never elaborated much. One can also put their own power into objects, creating enchanted items, but since every person's power is limited, one individual can only create so many regardless of their skill or power. Using an enchanted object can allow one to circumvent their own, inner limits, but only to an extent, the greatest magical items can only be safely used by those who have great power in their own right.
3. Evil magic or sorcery. Exploiting the broken principles that Morgoth left in the world during its creation. Again, this overlaps with the first category, but it's used by individuals who arent' satisfied with their own, innate power (category 2), and want more. Very addictive and corruptive, and usually involves subjugating others to the sorcerer's command in painful and unpleasant ways.
@@A2ndVoice honestly they could have had the necromancer be an agent of sauron and it work just as well
Harry Potter AU where the fact that they only learn very specific effects is a flaw of hogwarts's school system, and because hermione is thirsty for knowledge and was raised and taught by muggles -so has at least a barebones knowledge of physics and chemistry- she figures out the underlying magic and starts making spells left and right.
There were quite a lot of those actually, except most of the time Hermione wasn’t the one doing it and many of them weren’t really all that compelling.
Obvs we have “HPMOR,” the OG rationalist fic. Spoiler: it never really does deliver on that promise, Harry does some experiments but doesn’t make much progress and basically decides that magic is inexplicable, at least for now.
I actually really love that concept
Harry potter and method of rationality is probably the best fanfic which deals with the concept of magic like tjis
All she’d have to do is learn basic Latin and other similar languages.
"Cats doesn't have a magic system" Cats doesn't have ANY system. It's the magic of live dance and the power of the "I Want" song and that is all.😂
Something really interesting about Yugioh's magic that you didn't touch on: They establish that there is literally nothing Magic can do that Technology cannot, and Kaiba trying to prove that is what propelled the world from being identical to ours to having space elevators and time travel. He invented the solid-light technology only to prove he could do what Yugi can without any "magic", for example.
Also: Since its very explicitly dark/occult magic from Ancient Egypt, I think it gets a pass on being kinda wishy washy.
I mean with Clarke's third law, anything sufficiently advanced will be as if magic.
Tttþþt
Red: "Not going to rank based on series quality"
Also Red: "Place it here because I like the story"
but lord of the rings and star wars are both on a sub par (or just at par) tier,
wait...
Kinda how I felt about Harry Potter... There is no way the magic system in Yu-Gi-Oh is any better than potter, but because they hate the author so much potter got pushed down an extra level. Either that, or yugi got pushed up a level...
@@Vertraic I think it was also what the author did. not hating her, but all of the retroactive mending/explanation of the magic system changes the magic system. Therefor, harry potter's magic system was constantly in flux with parameters that were swapping and occasionally contradictory. Red may have disliked Rowling, but it wasn't her dislike that put Harry Potter lower than Yogioh, it was *what* Rowling did with/to the magic system outside of the books that made the ranking lower.
Yeah red and indigo don't seem to be as interested in the world building side of magic systems and are instead focused on how they affect the plot. Which lead to a tier list that didn't always rank those systems on their merits unfortunately.
The way The Dragon Prince’s magic system works is interesting and has a reason for why Callum learns to use sky magic. Magic in the dragon prince is based on a fundamental understanding of the sources of magic. Every magical creature is born already having a fundamental understanding of their source of magic. For example Moonshadow elves are born understanding the relationship between appearances and reality, which is what moon magic is about. Humans are born without having any fundamental understanding of the sources of magic but have the potential to gain the fundamental understanding of all sources of magic. This is why Callum is able to learn sky magic when he, “understands that the sky is surrounding you everywhere and that you are within it, as well as part of it, taking it into you with every breath you take.”
Whoever in live chat said "There's never an explanation where new D&D spells come from." There is if you just look at spell names. They are created by the greatest arch mages of the world like Tasha and Otiluke and Tenser.
@@washada in universe wizards uncover thecsecrets of the weave. ( mr rhexx has a good video on this). Essentially the weave is the magical fabric of the universe that holds everything together so spells have a scientific basis in that world.
Out of game people just make stuff up and DM decides the mechanics and level.
@@washada as we have the weave as a source, the act pf casting magic is using strands of the weave and knitting, weave, crocheting, etc. It into a spell. It is a craft that requires precize movement, words, ennunciation und materials depending the spell. And every wizard has a different approach, this the multiple ways of using these strands of the weave.
Though, this might be something I heard. I don't have an actual source to back this up.
So is tenser flow a spell?
@@washada
I think it's something like this:
component + hand movement + spoken words/sounds = magic effect
Most of the time the effect is going to be nothing or minimal. If you are starting from scratch (no other spell books available), then you might make an X in the air, then you might make an X while speaking the old elvish word for black. Lets say that causes a small ripple in the area around you. Now you do the same and add "night" in ancient dwarvish. Now the area around you seems to grow dim. You try out holding a black dragon scale. Now the area turns pitch black and stays that way for weeks. So now instead you find a black dragon egg and now teh effect goes away after a few hours. You then add a new hand movement while saying "night" and now you go blind forever. If the wizard is worth anything, then he's been writing down the effects of the probably hundreds of experiments that they ran and what the exact movements, components, and words were. This is why spells may many pages to write down. Then the next generation finds this book, only writes down the useful bits when trying to make their own spells. They use scorpion venom instead of the dragon egg and they end up poisoning everyone in their house. And so on and so on until enough knowledge is gained to figure out how certain movements, components, and words affect the weave and a reliable spell is made.
Hold on, they address that. They say when talking about that “‘this spell was created by whatshisface’, okay but how?” That’s the whole criticism.
The web serials Pact and Pale by Wildbow have one of the best soft magic systems I've ever come across. In those stories, you become a Practitioner of magic by performing a ritual where you make an oath tell the truth and honor the promises you make. After you Awaken, your words carry weight, and you can gain power by making deals with magical creatures. This can come back to bite you, though - if you break a promise or fail to honor a deal, you can be Forsworn. It's like a magical burn notice - no one will make a deal with you, the spirits will go out of their way to hinder you, and your ability to do magic is stripped away. As a consequence, Practitioners have to learn to speak metaphorically, avoid making clear, definitive statements, and generally act like classic fae (who also exist in this world and are absolutely terrifying).
The soft - and really interesting - aspects come into play when the characters try to get the upper hand in a situation by appealing to the spirits, which exist as a just-barely sentient amorphous cloud of intangible magical beings that surround us at all times. The spirits will favor you if you act boldly, put on a good show, or play into certain tropes that carry metaphorical weight. For example, the Rule of Threes is an incredibly powerful force in this world - if you best someone three times, call out a name three times during a summoning, etc etc, the spirits might be inclined to make your victory stick or help compel the being you're summoning.
It's a world where the best possible wizard is an English major who went to law school and it's great.
Absolutely concur, the Otherverse is my favorite magic system of all time.
It's also worth mentioning the fact that so many styles and brands of magic exist, each with thier own rules, strengths, and limitations - yet every single one makes sense in the context of that baseline animism.
Reminds me of Barthimaeus by Jonathan Stroud.
There mages work by summoning demons from another world and making deals with them or just binding them as pretty much slaves. Usually the demons REALLY don't like that and try to do anything in their power to get out of their contracts and return to their own world, screwing the magicians as hard as possible in the process. So if a practicioner bites more than they can chew and summon something too powerful they're REALLY screwed. It also revolves a lot around lawyer speak and almost all wizards are politicians...
This sounds positively fascinating. I love magic based on words and oaths.
Wildbow! that's a name i havent heard in a while, i remember being obsessed with Worm
Unfortunately, the magic is entirely inconsistent, and despite the main characters relying on the magic, and giving the characters access to explanations for how things work, the author never lets them look through these explanations, because the entire book needs to be non-stop action for some reason. Over the course of the book the main character had to have lost several gallons of blood, but just keeps bleeding to power effects without any real consequences. The book sets up all these interesting ideas, and then completely refuses to follow through with them. It's quite disappointing.
I sent this to my friend and he basically said this list is mostly just:
Soft Magic = Bad, Hard Magic = Good.
I noticed the same thing, which is frustrating because they said they were specifically avoiding that at the beginning.
@@faelyn42 The problem, leaving aside the mass cognitive failure in modern audiences where everyone pretends a thing not explained in excruciatingly exact detail is a plot hole, or where they have to think for a moment to connect the dots is the same (see: Harry Potter),
Is that if you're rating a *system* you can only go Hard=Good, Soft=Bad. That's how *systems* work. It doesn't matter if they intended to avoid it or not, there was no other possible result. Red falls into these traps now and again, and it's always weird given the sheer level of insight she normally has.
Yeah I feel after a time they stop rating it on how the system fits into the story and more on how consistent it is
Mama system got D tier and that’s basically as hard as it gets
@@frozenpancakes It's a exception.
Hilariously the Millennium Puzzle actually does have a power, it's what allows Yugi to draw the right card he needs when he's in a pinch. So it's ungodly luck or as I like to call it "plot armor"
Probability manipulation
Is that the item's power or just the heart of the cards?
@@silvermagpie1071 literally the puzzles power
It's at least not Yuma's shining draw.
@@silvermagpie1071 No it's the puzzle's power, but was removed.
I love the part of Yu-Gi-Oh! magic system where Kaiba disbelieves magic into non-existence.
Also he disarms a gun with a card.
Ah yes the thing I don’t remember as a kid cause I’m pretty sure that was cut from the 4kidz dub
I very much enjoyed the video, I just have one issue; soft magic systems aren't inherently bad or worse than hard magic systems, but they consistently ranked worse on their tier list.
Heck, the Discworld magic system was dropped a tier seemingly exclusively because it was a soft magic system.
I will say I don't think they defined their ranking well enough, but as I understand they rated it as follows
1: narrative impact(is magic a major part)
2: immersion(ie, not looking at something and thinking: since when could they do that?)
3: clarity (knowing what can and can't be done, and why)
2 of these 3 criteria heavily favor hard magic, as soft magic has neither clarity nor understanding. Remember this wasn't based on how good the shows were, it was based on whether or not you could look at the system and say "this is an objectively good system I would love to see explored deeper or in more universes"
They're not "worse" but they're certainly less interesting on average
@@auqanova you make a valid point. I wanna nitpick a point of terminology, but it doesn't really matter. Point is, it's a personal list by two ppl who prefer hard magic systems.
That’s how I felt about One Piece and JoJo. They are both very creative and fit thematically and prompt characters to use their abilities in unconventional ways to solve conflicts. Every ability has a weakness no matter how overpowered it may seem, that’s why I love both of them and would have ranked them much higher.
Discworld even deliberately went out of its way to make fun of hard magic systems by coming up with intentionally silly-sounding units of measurement based on whatever the first thing that came into the head of the wizard studying the phenomenon.
I used to heavily prefer hard magic systems, but as I got older I started to appreciate soft magic systems to the point where hard magic just looks like a universe-specific addition to the laws of physics.
Fun Fact: Slayers feels like Dungeons & Dragons because it was based on a tabletop roleplaying game. The light novels were specifically based on the author's Ars Magica campaign, and that influence carried over into the anime (at least in the first season) with each of the protagonists taking on a typical archetype for a TTRPG player - not character, PLAYER. Gourry is a min-maxed fighter that dumped Intelligence hard to be the best swordsman in the world and unfortunately got into a magic-heavy campaign. Lina is the straight up munchkin player who hordes every shiny bit of treasure for herself to the point of literally going "Gimme gimme gimme!" when she sees a strong magic item and exploits as close as possible to breaking every rule possible to get as powerful as possible. Zelgadis should have played Vampire: The Masquerade considering his 26-page long super-emo backstory that's so dark and tragic and woe-is-me.
The thing about Wheel of Time is that the gender binary isn't really inherently that strong once you know about how the power actually works, less so than Dune's system which inspired it, but the original introduction of the idea makes it seem extremely different and very important. The only 'natural' difference between the male and female sources are that men are stronger in fire and earth while women are stronger in water and air, and men are just stronger in the power in general, but women can "link" their power together and overpower everyone else. It has vaguely gender motivated differences but all users of the power can use the flows to do the same things. The problem really comes from the flavoring of the power as being literally divided in half, male and female, rather than one thing that finds different expression in different people, and the male half is a raging torrent you have to wrestle and dominate in order to embrace and the female half is deep river you must surrender yourself to in order to embrace, etc. The power does the same exact things regardless of if you're a man or woman, so why is it SO different to the degree than men and women can't even see each others weaves normally.
At the same time having this divide between the two sources of power does add tension to political elements of the story because the men and women don't trust each other to use the power. Women because the male source drives men mad, and men because the female users are inclined to "gentle" the men or just outright murder them rather than allow them to run around free.
And I mean a male Forsaken is reborn as a female, and still uses the Male half of the True Source.... So I am not sure if it is really that binary. It could be that it was just when unnaturally reborn from the Dark One's power or if it was something that could happen naturally we just don't know.
Every time I remember how the Amazon series came *this* close to cleverly recontextualizing the archaic gendered stuff about the Power ( "Trust" instead of "submission" for example) I scream internally.
*usually stronger in fire and earth... Rand has equal power in all, and it's just less common for a man to be stronger in water or wind.
The gender binary magic, considering Rand's previous identity having the same gender and gender Identity suggests actually that someone would either always be the correct gender to correlate with their gender identity or that they would have a connection to the right side of the true source based on the identity since it is connected to their soul.
Just remember the Archer Brigitte Silverbow, she was always born to marry her beloved and he was always a man and she a woman, she even lists out a bunch of her reincarnations.
The power doesn't actually function 100% the same, remember travelling? if a woman performed it in the same exact way she would die. There are actually a whole bunch of things that are different in small ways but they aren't negatives they actually fit together into superior weaves. Since like in reality men are good at some things in general and women at others in general. It's most of the story that to survive men and women and all of the races must learn to work together if not in harmony then at least in tolerance. It's actually a very good message/moral and much better then the woke nonsense that just pretends to be what the wheel of time is.
Y’know, once somebody defended the anime Goblin Slayer using sexual violence as an aesthetic by pointing at the Wheel of Time books and talking about examples of “worse” violence, and in hindsight it makes sense that the books maybe didn’t have great takes on gender
@@sideways5153 That comparison was just badly thought out, a large part of the Wheel of time series is how stupid racism and sexism is and how our differences make us work better together. we aren't all equal and that is to be celebrated. The story handles it amazingly well, much better in fact then most series I have seen with for example that god offal adaptation from Amazon actually being an example of sexism....
But some people have an issue with the idea that a lot of the main characters are racist or sexist at the beginning of the books since that is part of how they grow.
The only half of the main cast weren't Lan, Morraine, Perrin and Rand but Lan was containing his emotions stoicly in part and later actually is basically panicked over a situation but that is like book 8 and after that he is more open about liking the person he does.
Nynaeve is basically a raging psychopath at the beginning but her experiences make her a really good person and truly heroic.... even if she never manages to actually control her anger XD.
Egwene was kind of buying into the Aes sedai's crap and Matt... he's awesome just not so much for a while after the knife and he is a womanizer until a woman dominates him.
The multiple wives of one of the characters thing is actually a story of female empowerment since they force it on him and tell him it's all or none. He panics over it for books and tries to not chose anyone to not be what people claim he is IRL.
As for the race thing people hate white skinned red haired people due to fear because a desert culture gave their closest neighbors to the west a holy sapling and a few hundred years later then cut it down for a throne so they attacked and murdered the whole aristocracy basically and then left back to the wastes. each and every other group is also heavily stereotyped and hate each other after constant bickering but slowly over the books they are forced to work together and learn to respect each other.
these things are seen as controversial because the woke movement is up it's own ass to such a degree that they have become damaging to their own cause and are usually the height of sexist etc they just don't realize it since they aren't against X group that hasn't actually been attacked by the majority for decades.
Also, the fact Harry Potter occurs in a magical school, where the students are there to learn ABOUT magic, and the magic itself is so lazy and slapdash is something Rowling should have been taken to task over DECADES ago.
Well, it's a kid's book. kids don't usually have the highest of standards out there lol.
@@studentt6064 you might be able to use this argument for the first 2 books. Maybe the third at a stretch though relatively older kids.
By the time we get to the 4th the content and themes are very much starting to fall into the young adult category of books before solidly ending up there in the later ones.
Even if we grant you your premise for the entire series what world is it that children books have no need to even try and be consistent.
I think we might have assumed that it was Like That because we saw the world from Harry's perspective and he wasn't particularly interested in the technicals of how magic worked, but most people are long past giving her the benefit of the doubt by now.
@@SereneAncalime I mean for me the series started rapidly falling apart from the 4th book onwards anyway, that's clearly when she got so big her editor just stopped editing (judging by the massive increase in size of the book) we all just kept going because of all the hype at that point, but the first 3 books were by far the most polished (imho)
I was invested in the characters and themes, the aesthetic and the “potential” of the Wizarding World while going through the series. And in some ways, I still am. I’m interested to see what the video game Hogwarts Legacy does with the setting. But as I moved on, and thought about it more, the less I particularly like about the 7 book series. Very little makes sense, and is “just because”.
In the My Little Pony franchise the three pony species have magic but they each apply it differently, Earth Ponies use their magic to grow fruit and vegetables, Pegasus ponies use their magic to manipulate the weather and Unicorns can use their magic to cast spells and use telekinesis among other things.
The abnormal strength and speed of some Earth Ponies and Pegasi is also part of their magic... I'm not sure if naything can explain Pinkie Pie, though.
Also: chaos magic, dark magic, alicorn magic, changeling magic, cutie mark talents, love magic, the magic of friendship (ding), the magic of various enchanted ancient artifacts, the elements of harmony, potions, Pinkie Pie...
It's extremely soft, I think it would not fare well in this tier list. The show never really cared to formalize the magical system(s) in any real way.
@@Woodclaw LSD explains pinkie pie.
@@ZhilTP911 This list wasn't really measuring hardness, it was measuring understandability and effectiveness and internal consistency.
Really fits the themes in a way; Without Earth ponies everyone starves, without Pegasus there is no rain or seasons and only wild storms, no Unicorns means no understanding of magic, and Alicorns control the cosmic bodies and protect reality.
My favorite magic system is from Ascendence of a Bookworm. Nobels and sometimes commoners are born with mana, but mana is deadly to the body so you have to use expensive magic tools to drain it from you and keep it from killing you when you're young. Those same magic tools are then used to help the dutchy you live in by doing things like improving crop production, large scale building processes, sewer maintenance and other things.
Now if you personally want to use magic you can use it by praying to a specific god. Need to hit hard? Pray to Angriff the god of war. Need to make a shield? Pray to Schutzaria the god wind. Some people will have better affinity to certain gods. The church also handles most of the distribution of mana using magic tools so the author really fleshes out the religion.
Anyways Bookworm is one of the best things I've ever read and you should read it too because I can't do it justice in just this TH-cam comment.
While I agree with you that Ascendence of a Bookworm is a great series, from a logical standpoint, the mana system doesn't make a lot of sense. If mana is like, a thing, who invented the magic tools? I assume (haven't read that far in the novel yet) that you need mana to make magic tools, so were there then some people who didn't get hurt from their own mana originally, or how else was the first magic tool invented?
I so much love that in Yu-Gi-Oh the "heart of the cards" is actually the millennium puzzle manipulating probability
Obligatory shout-out to Togashi for writing one of the greatest magic systems ever.
I think Earthsea has the perfect magic system. It's amazing that the rules can be so consistent, well defined, and fun to engage with, while still maintaining the wonder, mystery, and mythology of soft magic systems. More than any other system it feels like MAGIC to me
Brandon sanderson is s tier. Every single magic system in the cosmere is s tier and they way he puts it all together needs its own tier entirely Olympus tier or something.
Absolutely True!
Brando tier
I was a bit disappointed with awakening (from warbreaker) where it's supposed to be kinda art and color based, but that aspect is vastly underused - I feel there is a world where different colors power different kinds of effects and it becomes S tier everything ties together instead of a solid B tier.
Surges from stormlight are vastly unequal in their cool factor, but the overall use of the realms and spren, and shardblades and sharplates are really what sets it apart, especially when you start to figure out how it all ties together and keep having new revelation that deepen and recontextualise previous connections.
In The Witcher its described well in the novels:
Magic was introduced to humanity through an event called "conjunction of the spheres". When completely different planes of existence overlapped. (Think like marvel multiverse crossovers.)
This is how humans, non-humans and monsters all ended up on the same planet. They essentially got left behind after the conjunction ended. (I think the base world belonged to the elves originally, and humans are actually the aliens in this case.)
The chaos magic mentioned in the video also came from the CotS. Humans obtained affinity for magic through the equivalent of like magical radiation poisoning. It's why some people are just born with greater control/power than others.
Magic works similarly to alchemy in FML (equivalency). To cast a spell you need to draw energy from something. The greater the spell, the greater the cost. You can supplement/make more efficient these spells through casting. (Using items, spoken/written elder speech, etc.) Magic leylines also exist, much like mako from FF7 where there are pockets of magic dense areas throughout the world.
Witcher magic is a very crude system, where it's channeled through hand signs and powered by the individual. Meaning the sign is only as strong as the Witcher has power for it, Witchers cannot draw energy from the world.
To put it in perspective: if a Sorceresses can chant a spell like "I draw upon the radiant energy of the sun around me and heat from the world's molten core beneath me to beseech the god of flames to destroy my enemies" to take in energy around them to rain down a firestorm from the heavens; Witchers can, at best, make the word for fire in sign language to create the same amount of fire as a kitchen blowtorch.
The tradeoff is, it's usually much faster to cast at the expense of power. And it makes sense, Witchers work in the thick of battle, they have no time to stand and channel a spell. To them magic is used to give that little extra edge in a fight. Aard doesn't need to kill, it just has to knock the enemy away far enough for you to get to your sword.
There's more to it, and I'm sure I got some details mixed, but that's the general gist of it.
36:03 Using the force to open an automatic door and also to try to pull the remote to yourself when its on the other arm of the couch are universal experiences
Interestingly enough, Tolkien fully explained his magic system in a letter to Milton when trying to convince him to publish the Silmarillion along with LoTR. Tolkien explains that his magic system relies on the fact Eru Illuvatar is the creator and all of his created beings are sub-creators. "Magic" is inherently evil as it is the machine and is Melkor's perversion of the will of Eru. The elves' magic is simply the creation of art and beauty in its purest form, unhindered by human limitations. I'd highly suggest reading that letter (in certain copies it is I believe either the foreword or preface to the Silmarillion) as it goes into much deeper detail than this and kind of explains some of the philosophy around the idea for the creation of Middle Earth and its governing forces.
I've overanalyzed FMA and the biggest unexplained thing I see are the circles. This is not needed for the story and the circles fall under the rule of cool, but this is why I love, LOVE the manga Witch Hat Atelier. Its magic system is literally just exploring how the circles work and is so good at exploring magic's boundaries and the societal rules of it.
Witch Hat Atelier has propably my favourite magic system, both from technical and storytelling perpective.
The way the runes work and how they're drawn affecting the way they work gives a lot of creative potential, while still giving it drawbacks (needing something to write on and with, actually physically having to draw the runes) which keeps everything tense and interesting.
And I love how it ties to themes that there isn't just one rigid, true way to do magic. Magic is basically an art, something you can't truly control or give rules to. That's works so goddamn well with the themes of self-discovery and finding your own way in the world
The circles symbolize the flow of energy. They explain this many times as a matrix. For alchemy to work, a specific matrix must be used to equivalently exchange energy. Performing alchemy without a matrix can only be done with a philosopher's stone as a philosopher's stone is energy itself.
@freedominart I was mostly referring to the specific symbols/runes on the circles, which is how the magic works in Witch Hat Atelier.
Only one they tried a little bit to explain in FMA was the one used by Kimblee, because destroying it was how they tried to win a fight against him. Otherwise particular symbols purpose in performing transmutations are not explained, but they limit what transmutations you can perform.
I guess is homework for the audience if you really want to know, since they are based on real life symbols, but the important thing is the effect anyway, like Roy's circle has fire/combustion related symbols but you could already guess that
Completely off topic, but one series that I WISH had magic of any kind is The Rangers Apprentice (written by John Flanagan). It gets *so close* to having magic/mythical creatures without actually crossing that line. Don't get me wrong I absolutely *love* this series, I've re-read it multiple times. But come on Flanagan you could have given us dragons and other crazy mythical beasts and actual warlocks! Anyway I don't care how old you are, if you even slightly like adventure and fantasy books you should TOTALLY READ the Rangers Apprentice.
As a fellow lover of The Rangers Apprentice (and the sequel Brotherband Chronicles) I feel that being able to cast spells would take away from the skills that the characters developed, but I agree it would be cool to see some magic creatures in Flanagan's setting.
There actually are magical creatures and some magic but they’re both very low key and mainly reserved to the events of the first book or two and events before then if I recall
There was the (Implied to be real) wight that spooked Will when he was riding back to the North, but I'm afraid I can't remember which book that was in. As opposed to the (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)
alchemist that's was spooking people in the nearby woods in a previous book.
I think Rangers Apprentice is really funny in regards to magic, because it starts off with a heavy focus on it. The first book establishes a dark lord beyond the hills, with an army of mind controlled monsters. The climax is even focused entirely on a couple of super monsters wreaking havoc. Then, it seems like he got some feedback that the most interesting part of the book was the realistic way ordinary people trained to be incredibly skilled, so in the second book he kicks off the war that looked like it was the ultimate end goal of the series, kills off the dark lord and ends the war in that same book, and then supernatural stuff is never mentioned again except for the occasional callback or non-important spooky moment. It's honestly hilarious how quickly it pivots.
Prince Callum is the first, yes. Someone needs to be the first. The ancient Greeks never discovered Newton's Laws even though they could have. The Imperial Chinese never developed cannons. If the story is about a new thing coming into the world, the best answer for "why did nobody do this before" is usually "because that's not how it happened."
I so second this actually, I’m one of those people who if I’m reading a fantasy epic, I prefer to follow the characters most active in the advancing action of the world and its changes. Now when one small group of people collectively revolutionize a magic system in a year and also invent the first internal combustion engine and also flight, it can be a bit much (lol Avatar) but for the most part, I like being where the grits are the thickest!
It was confirmed by the creator Callum isn't the first human to use primal magic
@@Scalesthelizardwizard where does he say that do you have a link?
@@Vandalieu It was in an article and I don't have a link
I feel like there's one element they didn't mention here that could potentially bump The Owl House's system up to S-tier depending on how much you enjoy it: the worldbuilding elements that explain how their magic came to be, why Luz can use it, and some further limitations for her magic beyond what glyphs she knows(admittedly, this other limitation I'll get to isn't one that comes up much, but it's still there). The main setting for the series, the Boiling Isles, was built on the bones of a dead Titan, gargantuan creatures of intense magical power who, at the time of this stream, were not known to still be out there or not. As life evolved on the Isles throughout the centuries, the residual magic that surrounded the Titan's corpse affected it in such a way that witches developed the magic bile sacs attached to their heart, allowing for innate use of magic. Luz's glyphs being found in the surrounding world is another instance of how the Titan affected the development of life, and were heavily implied by one character to have been how magic was cast in the earliest days of wild magic- the "Savage Ages," as Emperor Belos and his institution calls them, since at this point the only way his colonizer vibes could have been any stronger was if he turned out to be an actual colonizer. (...) The glyphs call upon the magic of the Titan itself to create the desired effect as dictated by the combination used- like words being used to form a sentence, as another character described them. Since they use an outside source of magic, they allow Luz and other beings without magic to cast spells; however, that same reliance on an external source means that if they are not close to that source- say, if they're in the human realm- they can't use glyph magic. It's an awesome system imo.
When you’re so magical that even your fossilized remains make those nearby more badass 🧐
The magic system in HP reminds me of that magical portal behind a cartoon character's back from which they can procure anything. I think it's called Hammerspace. Inside, you can find MacGuffins, zany weapons, Dei Ex Machina, racks full of plot armor...
I would absolutely call Devil Fruits a magic system. If magitek counts then Devil Fruits count
Devil fruit got rules. Got pros and cons, continuity. Yep, magic system.
Do titans from attack on titans count ?
They have rules , pros cons and allows to do many things
@@davidegaruti2582 Yeah I'd say transformations count
And there's also Haki🤷🏼
@@davidegaruti2582 What is a Titan if not a Magical Girl transformation on steroids.
I'm not really a regular watcher of this channel, so I don't know if this is a trend here or not, but it's really nice to have a tier list where they actually explain what the thing being put on the list actually is. I realize that's why it took 3 hours to do the list, but I enjoy more than one or two sentences on each item, which I've seen other creators do.
As a die-hard Legend of Zelda fan, I can say this: the magic system is based on magical items, even the Triforce, with some exceptions such as Ganon and Zelda. It's not a bad system, it's just whatever the plot needs it to be. That being said, I would have gone high C rather than low, but still reasonable.
Zelda and Ganon can be explained as remnants of Godly power manifesting in them because their are witches but it’s not even comparable to what those two do.
I had the feeling with the dragon prince's magic system that humans tried to find another way to use magic, found dark magic and were basically like "were done!" and just researched that more.
Meanwhile the MC doesn't want to be like them so he accidentally found his own path. It also said that it was in part because he had already felt the element through using that imprisoned storm so when he just instinctively tried to use the magic in desperation after knowing the sky intimately it just responded to him.
It's very much a pioneer story so we have to take the rules laid out at the beginning as a first draft, like the Mistborn trilogy compared to the second trilogy. the main characters discover a whole bunch of things that were either kept from them or researched in isolation but don't actually break the rules they just didn't know about that exception.
jojo's is a special case, because it takes the "there are multiple magic systems" idea to it's most extreme version and gives most characters their own magic system, with some characters having more strict rules for their system than others. you would have to go character by character to do the many systems of jojo's any justice, but as a fan of the series, I think you gave it a decent place on the list.
but to restate what I just said in another way, Jojo's is like if each series represented on this tier list were their own character in a single series, all interacting with eachother and the one who can best take advantage of the rules (or lack-there-of) their system imposes on them is the main thing that decides who wins any given match-up.
it's not a very solid system over all, but if you like exploring magic systems, it's like a massive sampler of such.
Oh, and no, the poses are almost exclusively unnecessary, it's just that everyone is fabulous.
I don't think the poses ever actually had any connection to the magic. They just do them because it's... flashy?
@@zachrabaznaz7687 they do the poses because they really tie the room together. it's like a nice throw pillow in with the rest of the weirdness.
So as someone who does enjoy HP despite violently disagreeing with the author on who should be treated like a human being, the magic system was a problem I found even before all that.
Honestly it was not such a big deal up until it gets to prisoner. It was still a whimsical kids story. After it starts to become a more serious story that has an actual plot it starts to be a real problem that characters don't just use the obvious solutions that worked fine in book one. By the time you get to book 7 Rowling has papered over like four different things that students were able to easily accomplish. When you're having a wizard Nazi takeover of wizard England you have to know what the bad guys and good guys are capable of so you have some idea how much danger people are in beyond just vibes.
And this is all before we get to the problems that time turners create
"with the author who should be treated like a human being" ??
@@ussinussinongawd516 'on' who should be treated like a human being. That’s the point of disagreement with Rowling, not a defense of her.
@@rock21611 Yeah. Rowling doesn't think trans people should be treated like people. Disagree is really not a strong enough word for it.
HP would’ve been more solid if the Killing Curse was Voldemort’s exclusive, invented spell only he could use. Would’ve tied into his whole “overcome death” theme and make every subsequent duel with his Death Eaters more interesting, because why wouldn’t every fight become Avada Kedavras vs Stupefies-ah wait, that’s what ends up happening.
LOTR magic kinda falls into two main categories.
The magic of Eru Ilúvatar, the Ainur, and by extension the Maiar, including Gandalf. The magic that was sung into being along with the world of Middle Earth. This magic is the softest soft magic you could possibly think of. It's "god sang a song and magic was a part of that song so it exists". This magic works because these beings are so integral to the fabric of the world that they can will it to change. It's also the magic by which Melkor/Morgoth can corrupt because that's Morgoth's part in the grand scheme of it all.
The second big magic is the magic of making. Some of the Dwarves and Elves can do this, along with some Maiar, namely Sauron. This magic is described as imbuing an emotion or a part of the maker into what they create. Think of it like an extension of the first type of magic, but rather than the beings being strong enough to just influence the world, they have to focus that influence into a physical object. The ring is evil because it contains Sauron's ambitions to rule. The elvish swords glow blue because they contain the elves' hatred of the orcs. The doors of Durin open when you say friend because the Dwarves imbued them with their feelings of friendship to the elves (at least at the time). It's a system that remains remarkably consistent, even if it is loosely explained.
This was really fun to watch and it introduced me to some series I hadn't heard of or didn't know much about. I wish we had gotten to see the ranking of Nen from Hunter x Hunter or Epithets from Epithet Erased, but there were so many good and diverse systems chosen, including from some more obscure media.
nen is one of the best power systems out there period. it reflects the user since the user creates the ability, and since everyone has a unique ability, you see how that character handles that situation. theres so much that can be done with it.
Oooo love the Epithets, they’re so varied and weird
Epithets have the My Hero system where any quirk has the potential to be powerful, compare Indus to Mt Lady, in that they use their powersets for very one note and straight forward usage, or Gio to Mineta, where they put their own spin on their powers limited natures
The grisha verse is a lot more standardized in the book than in the show iirc, that's very much the premise of the first book that she can't just do the magic that would drive the plot forward so they have to find a way to magi-steroid her which i think was a really interesting alternative.
Some other magical media I would recommend (mostly books
As someone who has read most of the Cosmere (the Brando Sando books that share universe), and someone who loves Full Metal, I can tell you, Brando stuff would be above Full Metal, at least when it comes to implications and thoughtfulness. I have never come close to a magic system that is so much like real life science as Sanderson's magic. And is not just that they are huge on implications, but they are deeply connected to the stories in a great way. Allomancy (from the Mistborn) is the magic system where they eat metal, is probably the best and most famous magic system that Brandon Sanderson has made, in the way that it is simple, but the way rules can be played with is pretty interesting.
1:08:10 DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE DRAGON PRINCE IT WAS PICKED UP FOR ITS ENTIRE PLANNED SERIES! The just had to halt production due to Covid, they recently started working on season 4 again and it should be around end of 2022 start of 2023.
If you want an example of a D&D wizard with no spells early level being interesting; Raistlin from Dragonlance. Exhaustion from spellcasting is a huge part of his character story, and his power scale later gets intense.
Well this video dug up an old memory of the show Storm Hawks, which I didn’t even remember existed so thanks for that!
I remember that show! Really enjoyed the ragtag team that’s already more awesome than most of the adult teams, but noone takes them seriously bc they are kids, save for the equally badass kid villains who they keep ruining the plans of!!
Discworld has at least three magic systems. The one used by the wizards is the closest to hard magic: there are rules such as a "conservation of energy" sort of rule (once when a wizard wants to get to the top of a tower quickly, he makes something fall off the top of the tower and links it magically to himself so as it falls he rises). The one used by the witches is part science/common sense (willow is good for curing headaches, because willow bark contains the active ingredient in aspirin) and part "headology" (witches are really good at convincing people to do what the witch wants them to do). And then there's the one used by the plots of the stories as a whole, which runs on narrativium. For example, it's just common in-universe knowledge that "million-to-one chances turn up nine times out of ten," so there's one point in Guards! Guards! when the Night Watch is trying to calculate the PRECISE odds of hitting a dragon in its "voonerables" with a crossbow bolt, so they're adding and subtracting factors ("what if you were to blindfold yourself and stand on one leg in a bucket of water?") to make it come out to be exactly a million-to-one chance and therefore a sure thing.
I'm a brown belt gold tag in Karate and the dragon dance reminds me of some of the stances, blocks and attacks I learned, but seemingly modified to have more finesse... Karate was developed by monks and as such incorporates the Yin-Yang philosophy into the martial art... Yin-Yang meaning, or at least symbolising awareness and aggression, VERY fitting for the inspiration of the bending that would one day become Fire Bending.
I don't wanna bash on the Owl House because it is amazing and I love it, but this is about the one time I get to recommend something that does its same magic system potentially better (or same quality, but you get more of it) on a story of similar quality if not better, I urge people to read Atelier of Witch Hat, it's a beautifully illustrated manga about a young girl who wants to become a witch, but she's a normal girl and witches are born able to use magic... or do they?
Jojos also has like 3 different systems, Hamon, Stands, and the Spin. Hamon being like Chi energy, power of the sun basically. And the spin is like if you spin an object really fast it can mess with the world around it like ripping holes in space/time.
And what ate stands?
@@sdrawkcab_emanresu Stands are manifestations of the wielder's soul. Sometimes a Stand user's soul can move on its own. Sometimes because it has no choice but to move.
@@thomaschristenson4967 yeah like *notorious BIG* whose user is *DED* but its soul still moves on and well its the only stand that can do that when the user dies that is.
@@akatsukigajou1639 That's how Carne manifests his stand, by dying. But really I was talking about Iggy.
Nah, it's all Stands. Stands are just visual representations of anything supernatural, and that includes occult skills like Feng Shui Kung-Fu, qigong (Ripple) breathing, gambling, palmistry, and Spinning things according to the Golden Spiral. Some of those Stands, namely Hermit Purple (which is the Ripple's Stand) and Ball Breaker (which is the Super Spin's) and the various Modes/vampirism (which come from Kars' mastery of acupuncture) are given a lot more exploration, to the point of being able to be treated as subsystems of their own, but it's all Stands.
Actually, that's a lie; it's not *all* Stands. Stands are part of an even more unified magic system, which is Fate (Gravity) itself.
On D&D: An interesting interpretation of vancian magic I've read somewhere is that the reason that only certain spells are allowed and can only be cast once per memorization is that spells are actually a sort of creature. Essencially, a wizard is creating/manifesting some Lesser Old One in their mind and then unleashing it on the world to some effect. Creating spells is then the process of finding new rituals that manifest something stable and useful.
I always liked that Slayers subverts your expectations by having an antagonist who uses white magic... because he cure everyone but himself and went kinda nuts as a result.
I've got a villain like that in my original story. It makes her armies unstoppable.
In regards to Discworld, the magic system is based on belief. The gods of Discworld are created based on common belief, and this power of belief saturates the entirety of the disc itself. This is the reason why tropes work so well in the books, it's due to the characters believing that the tropes will happen (because they are self-aware played usually for a comedic angle) which causes the world to abide by certain rules. These rules are your basic storybook tropes. Its hard to talk in depth about because, like Red said, each book introduces different concepts to explore and play with. The magic of the Discworld is nothing if not versatile. It is chaos, unpredictable and temperamental. It latches onto the thoughts and feelings of people and it makes the people's thoughts reality. Each different series of the books explores magic differently. Take for example, the power of superstition when seen in The Watch series, or the power of devotion, or lack thereof, in Monstrous Regiment, or how we learned from Death that people experience different afterlifes based on that person's own belief. So belief is the only way to control magic in that world, the only magic system. Although there will always be a surplus of odd events caused by either human interfere (both direct or through a domino of separate incidents) or by some wild or chaotic magic, that is just how the Discworld is meant to work. The world is supposed to feel rickety and held together by strings and wilful ignorance power and stubborn obstenance and clever Patricia's and their local terriers. It is part of the magic of the series. The magic system is basically a pile of clay that is molded by everyone who exists (or has existed in some form) in their world. It's a pretty awesome and well-executed system when you think about it. I'd definitely rank it S tier.
Incidentally, the Lord of the Rings magic system has some rules, but most of those involve the decline of magic over vast periods of time. The story of the Lord of the Rings takes place over too short a period of time for the rules that exist to really impact the story.
How to get your friends into anime
Step 1: Make them watch Avatar the last air bender. Not anime, but close enough
Step 2: Show them full metal alchemist brotherhood.
Step 3: show them an anime specializing in their favorite genre.
Step 4: Watch them fall down the rabbit hole.
Anime is drawing style ,
It’s like taco’s, it’s a food, not because it comes from Mexico, but because it’s the same food.
@@potatogaming7044
Yeah, but anime has a specific exaggeration that it’s known for, just like Mexican food is mostly known for being spicy. Not all of it is but it’s what it’s known for
Step 5: when the times comes, make them watch jojo and making you friend be a filthy weeb is complete
@@thebaldcat6708 no
It’s known for beans
@@potatogaming7044
My point still stands
RE: Dragon Prince. the explanation Callum was given was that besides whatever genetic component there might be (as with the animals connected to various elements) the various sentient beings with direct access to/control of magic grok the concept; there is a fundamental understanding of how that particular element functions baked into their society that they are inundated with from birth, it is so basic and integrated that many can't articulate it to outsiders. Callum's challenge and how he gains power ups is to figure out what those concepts are and gain similar understanding. The runes other human sorcerers use are for channeling elements and spells and can be used without that direct connection to the element so long as the user has access to something that DOES connect directly to the element (animal parts).
The Tales of Earthsea were my bedtime stories. I adore those books and I even pre-ordered the illustrated complete series book for my future children to listen to me read.
I really can't recommend Brandon Sanderson highly enough if you ever have the time to get back into it.
Fun fact about Brando Sando, in case you haven't heard: the guy has an incredible passion for writing and it gets to the point where he writes a different story to take a break from writing one story. During the pandemic a lot of his schedule cleared up due to book tours being cancelled, so in addition to the two or three books he was scheduled to write in that time frame, he also wrote five additional books for fun and is publishing them next year thanks to kickstarter funding.
He also has great educational videos on worldbuilding and writing for those of you into that stuff.