Now that was a good point with shigan being a finisher. However that was was the straw hats themselves didn't level up. The moment each of them did they were taking multitude of shigan.
If Rankyaku was really more lethal than Shigan then it would be more lethal regardless if they are "leveled up" or not.
And about the not using geppo more often that was due to him being longer and thus not having room . The moment a whole in the roof was made and he needed his swords he casually Skywalks to retrieve his swords.
This is a valid point, however I would say Kaku is slower just by the very nature of his fighting style.
He fights with Rankyaku, a ranged attack thus he does not need high movement-speed to close distance.
I'm not saying he CAN'T use Geppo obviously he can but even in the example you gave it was only to retrieve swords, wasn't used for combat.
Also based on panels it does seem that kaku uses blades offensively.
Yes but that was mostly to parry with Zolo. In terms of actual moves, it's his legs, neck and nose that comprise Kaku's arsenal and all of his strongest attacks.
In the fight there was only 1 time Zolo actually got hit by Kaku's swords, and even then it was alongside his legs.
Whereas Zolo gets hit far more often from Kaku's neck, nose and leg rankyakus.
Even Kaku's strongest move, the Sky Slicer, uses
his legs and his neck only, not his swords.
His leg & neck use purely physical strength to mimic swords, as well as his nose which also uses just physical force.
Thus, the Doriki of 2200 given to Kaku was more-or-less accurate because the bulk of Kaku's arsenal requires his own physical strength. Adding in his swords wouldn't change this much whatsoever because he doesn't use his swords to attack so much as he uses them to defend/parry, compared to his legs/neck/nose to attack.
And to add the panel you showed again was when kaku had decreased his neck size and increased his arms and legs thus giving him more reach, speed and ferocity.
Yes, he can change form but then he loses the range advantage that his neck provided him. This also means his Rankyaku are weakened since he can no longer use his neck.
Not to add that this makes his more versatile since he can literally immediate changes from speed and reach to immediately attack with his long neck increases its size mid fight.
Sure but then he just becomes a worse version of Jyabura. He loses the extra range that his neck provided him, and is left with lankier arms and legs that make it harder to move around compared to Jyabura's, who's legs were more compressed and fit for geppo and movement.
The fact that Jyabura can spam Geppo in his hybrid form:
And the fact that Jyabura's strongest move utelizes Geppou...
Proves Jyabura's clear superiority to Kaku in movement, speed and geppo.
Added with the fact that he can also flex his body mass into a cube further increasing his defense while shooting down smaller versions of storm leg that actually bounce from the rough back down to the opponent. When it pertains to overall versatility jyubra doesnt even see kaku
Sure but in his cubed state, he can't move whatsoever and is completely immobilized. He's much more versatile than Jyabura but that doesn't really matter when that versatility comes at a disadvantage that doesn't really solve the issue that Kaku's DF presents.
And how does being able to use a defensive technique only because you are using a particular fighting style that you yourself confirmed is the only fighting style in which you can simultaneously use your defense while offensively attacking a sign of better defensive capabilities?
It demonstrates better defensive capabilities because it allows his durability to be used far more regularly, while removing the weakness of being immobilized while using Tekkai.
It's just like comparing a guy holding a shield v a guy in a suit of armor.
The guy holding a shield can only defend from strikes when his shield is up, meaning there is a window where he will not be able to defend.
The guy with the suit of armor, however, will always be able to defend thus your attacks have to deal more damage each time they strike if they want to get through the defense.
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That's actually still not true though. Vergo couldn't even finish off tashigi with shigan.
He was about to finish her off using Shigan before Sanji arrived.
After zoro luffy and sanji leveled up in water 7 they were getting by a plethora of shigan and still wasn't enough to finish either of them off. Kaku had to end up relying on a powerful version of storm leg while lucci had to rely on ryokogun
Kaku had to rely on rankyaku because he specializes in rankyaku, meaning his storm leg is more powerful than his shigan (if he is even able to shigan with his giraffe hoofs)
Lucci had to rely on ryokugun because he specializes in ryokugan, meaning his ryokugan is more powerful than his shigan.
Jyabura had to rely on his shigan because he specializes in shigan, meaning his shigan is more powerful than his rankyaku.
But all 3 had to rely on Shigan to finish off opponents, not rankyaku.
Shigan, in terms of lethality, > Rankyaku.
