The Case Against Gwangi the Great

Discuss and analyze various feats!
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Nagoda
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The Case Against Gwangi the Great

Post by Nagoda »

I am pretty new to the Fantasy Matches sure, but all the hype and empowerment behind Gwangi makes no sense to me. What makes this allosaurus so powerful that it can take the likes of Godzilla and other such monsters head on with either minimal or no damage? Watching said feats for myself, I am making a case against why Gwangi is not as Great as people make him out to be, with video links to each feat given.

Here are all the videos I found for Gwangi's feats, including an upload of my own of the Boulder feat people keep bringing up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leLKC7d ... fernoRodan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A6tNff ... fernoRodan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qET9D0M ... ightParker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c472KE ... delaescena


Let's start with his combat.

Feats include:
  • Killing a Styracosaurus
  • Killing an Elephant
  • Straining the Styracosaurus's horn with a bite.
  • Killing several men on horseback
As seen in these videos, Gwangi is a pretty good fighter against quadrupedal herbivores. His fighting tends to consist of circling his opponents and striking them in the back or warning them away while in front. However, I've seen arguments that since he likes to go for the neck and the back, he would be able to tear apart other monsters that are non-quadrupedal, some being bipedal like Gigan, Pacific Rim Jeagers, etc. Sure the durability of these examples are bad, I can admit that much, but they are all still capable of defending themselves from being attacked in the back by an opponent in front of them. Unlike an Elephant or a Styracosaurus, these beings are able to twist their bodies around in a range behind them, plus the whole having hands and arms to hold him back thing. They aren't just going to stand there and let themselves be bit and torn to pieces, they are going to fight back. Going back to a quadrupedal stance, there are still those who would be able to handle Gwangi when scaled up. Where herbivorous animals like the Elephant and the Styracosaurus have more flat feet for walking, predatory quadrupedal animals have much more range in their frontal paws and claws to fend for themselves and to take down prey. A tiger scaled up to Gwangi's size would be able to handle him and protect his back, using his claws and frontal legs to keep him at bay similar to how Gwangi used his snapping jaw to keep his own opponents at bay. More feats that come from this are Gwangi's "incredible" bite force. They use the fact that you can hear the straining of the Styracosaurus's horn when being bit as to how powerful his jaw strength is, but we don't hear the same when he does so with the Elephant or any of the other bony spikey protrusions on the Styracosaurus. One more thing, in the church scene, he can't even tear a spear out of a man's hands. If his jaw strength was truly as strong as they say, why hasn't he torn bigger chunks out of his opponents instead of leaving small rips and bite marks on his opponents, or been able to tear that spear in half with his bite? Also taking into consideration the horn thing, there was no damage left on the horn as far as I can see. Even so, you could even say that the elephant and the styracosaurus were basically the same opponents for Gwangi to face. Both are large, slow-moving, most likely heavy herbivorous animals with flat feet and horns or tusks on their faces for protection. The only difference here being that the Styracosaurus had scales and a horned frill to protect his neck, while the elephant had a trunk to fend Gwangi off with and more leathery skin. Even so, the elephant was much less armored and had more vulnerable places to target with his longer legs and open neck.

Now for Gwangi's Durability.

His feats of durability that people seem to use are as follows.
  • The horns of both the Elephant and the Styracosaurus did not pierce him.
  • Survived having his whole weight on the horn of the Styracosaurus.
  • Survived Boulders falling onto him
  • The Church Fire not hurting him
  • Surviving Marble falling on him and trapping him and not killing him
  • Spears don't pierce his hide
  • And finally, it was not the fire or the marble falling on him, but smoke inhalation that killed Gwangi
Let's go down the list here now, starting with the horns. First off, those horns look really dull. Add in that people aren't quite sure whether or not the horns of a styracosaurus were meant for stabbing, protection, or mating, we can probably assume that the horns would not have been sharp enough to stab into Gwangi, considering every hit with them only knocked him over and pushed him away. As for the Elephant, it was too slow to use its horns against Gwangi, and when it did hit, it was more of the pushing and lifting method of the Styracosaurus with an added trunk uppercut. The Tusks were not used as a goring method for the elephant. As for the having his whole weight on the horn feat, if you slow down the video, you will see that the Styracosaurus hooks under Gwangi's leg and lifts him up. It's more of him lifting Gwangi onto his face and held there by the horn than having his entire weight on a dull horn and not being immediately gored by it. Adding in the spears not piercing his hide except in his earhole, that would make sense when you consider the scales of real life reptiles. Scales are meant to protect the animal better from damage. When your usual prey has a big horn on their head, your flesh is going to be adapted to protect from piercing damage with the exceptions of vital areas. Of course a spear is not going to get through what is basically nature's armor, except through vital unarmored points.

Now for the Boulders. I've heard people saying he survived boulders the size of his torso falling on him with the only effect being that they knocked him out for a bit. Therefore, his durability is even better for blunt force trauma being used against him. However, as seen from the movie, this boulder shattered as it was falling, breaking into head-sized boulders which then fell onto his body, knocking him out. It did no damage to his hide sure, but a rock hitting scales is not going to have the same effect as a rock hitting flesh. One will bruise and leave bleeding cuts, the other is more sturdy like armor and much better at protecting the fleshy bits beneath. Even so, the fact that these boulders were enough to knock Gwangi out long enough for them to make a cage, and tie him to it by his neck and feet, means that those rocks did a lot to him. People use the fact that these rocks only knocked him out means that he has this unbreakable and untearable scaly hide. You know who else survived having a torso and a head-sized boulder hit them and have no visible damage nor got knocked out in the process?

https://tenor.com/view/godzilla-vs-king ... f-16223659
https://tenor.com/view/volleyball-godzi ... if-5497700

Let's go over to the church stuff now since that also includes rocks in the form of marble. They say the marble collapsing on him only trapped him down and that it was smoke inhalation that finished the beast. However, if you watch the ending, you see that he had already fallen over onto the floor due to being literally cooked alive by the fire surrounding him. Standing near a fire is hot enough, but being surrounded by fire only intensifies that heat, meaning that Gwangi was being cooked alive by the fire, as supported by what InfernoRodan stated before, leaving this whole paragraph moot, but it does go into the marble so keep reading and humor me here. If he truly was being killed by Smoke inhalation, his cries would have been getting shorter, instead of remaining at the panicking screams he was doing due to it being harder to breathe. Sure he had no physical burn marks, but being covered in scales would make the heat more unbearable as it would be trapped beneath those tougher materials, similar to how wearing armor in a hot location makes you more vulnerable to heat stroke. Now for the Marble. He was already on the ground when the marble started falling. The first bout did ensnare his body under hot metal bars and marble, keeping it trapped on the ground yes. Then the second chunk of marble fell onto him, and he then stoped moving and screaming because it has now killed him. It was not the smoke inhalation that killed the beast, but falling debris and broiling fire.

In short, I find all the supposed feats of how Gwangi is this invicible unbeatable dinosaur when scaled up to kaiju size to be a bunch of overhyped BS. Sure it's impressive, but just about every other Toho monster most likely has similar or greater feats compared to Gwangi.
Last edited by Nagoda on Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:38 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Inferno Rodan
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Re: The Case Against Gwangi the Great

Post by Inferno Rodan »

Nagoda wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:18 pm As seen in these videos, Gwangi is a pretty good fighter against quadrupedal herbivores. His fighting tends to consist of circling his opponents and striking them in the back or warning them away while in front. However, I've seen arguments that since he likes to go for the neck and the back, he would be able to tear apart other monsters that are non-quadrupedal, some being bipedal like Gigan, Pacific Rim Jeagers, etc.
Not quite. Specifically, he targets the legs and tries to pull his opponent off their feet, where he then tries to pin them down with his body weight while constantly chewing on them. He targets the neck when the opportunity presents itself (as seen with the elephant), otherwise he just kinda goes for whatever is available. In the case of quadrupedal creatures like what he fought, yes, that often was the back. And that's a perfectly valid strategy, because chewing through something's spine is a really damn good way to incapacitate it.
Sure the durability of these examples are bad, I can admit that much, but they are all still capable of defending themselves from being attacked in the back by an opponent in front of them. Unlike an Elephant or a Styracosaurus, these beings are able to twist their bodies around in a range behind them, plus the whole having hands and arms to hold him back thing. They aren't just going to stand there and let themselves be bit and torn to pieces, they are going to fight back.
I really don't see the point in stating this. Do you think that just because something can fight back that Gwangi won't do anything? Both opponents that he fought did indeed fight back.
Going back to a quadrupedal stance, there are still those who would be able to handle Gwangi when scaled up. Where herbivorous animals like the Elephant and the Styracosaurus have more flat feet for walking, predatory quadrupedal animals have much more range in their frontal paws and claws to fend for themselves and to take down prey. A tiger scaled up to Gwangi's size would be able to handle him and protect his back, using his claws and frontal legs to keep him at bay similar to how Gwangi used his snapping jaw to keep his own opponents at bay.
Again, I don't really see your point here. A tiger would be able to handle most things, kaiju or otherwise, if scaled to comparable size.

And for the record, no, most quadrupedal predators do not have forelimbs that are useful for fighting. That's limited mostly to felines, bears, and mustelids.
More feats that come from this are Gwangi's "incredible" bite force. They use the fact that you can hear the straining of the Styracosaurus's horn when being bit as to how powerful his jaw strength is, but we don't hear the same when he does so with the Elephant or any of the other bony spikey protrusions on the Styracosaurus. One more thing, in the church scene, he can't even tear a spear out of a man's hands. If his jaw strength was truly as strong as they say, why hasn't he torn bigger chunks out of his opponents instead of leaving small rips and bite marks on his opponents, or been able to tear that spear in half with his bite? Also taking into consideration the horn thing, there was no damage left on the horn as far as I can see.
Let me answer these questions with another question: Do you think the average set of kaiju jaws would inflict more damage than Gwangi's did in those situations, and if so what's your evidence for such?
Even so, you could even say that the elephant and the styracosaurus were basically the same opponents for Gwangi to face. Both are large, slow-moving, most likely heavy herbivorous animals with flat feet and horns or tusks on their faces for protection. The only difference here being that the Styracosaurus had scales and a horned frill to protect his neck, while the elephant had a trunk to fend Gwangi off with and more leathery skin. Even so, the elephant was much less armored and had more vulnerable places to target with his longer legs and open neck.
Okay? First of all, those "slow-moving" animals showed more speed and agility than your average kaiju. They also both significantly outweighed Gwangi, which is very much worth mentioning.
Now for Gwangi's Durability.

His feats of durability that people seem to use are as follows.
  • The horns of both the Elephant and the Styracosaurus did not pierce him.
  • Survived having his whole weight on the horn of the Styracosaurus.
  • Survived Boulders falling onto him
  • The Church Fire not hurting him
  • Surviving Marble falling on him and trapping him and not killing him
  • Spears don't pierce his hide
  • And finally, it was not the fire or the marble falling on him, but smoke inhalation that killed Gwangi
You left out being bulletproof. He was shot by a rifle at close range prior to being led into the church, and all it did was get his attention. That's huge for a creature his size.
Let's go down the list here now, starting with the horns. First off, those horns look really dull. Add in that people aren't quite sure whether or not the horns of a styracosaurus were meant for stabbing, protection, or mating, we can probably assume that the horns would not have been sharp enough to stab into Gwangi, considering every hit with them only knocked him over and pushed him away.
Whether or not people think real ceratopsian horns were used as weapons or not is COMPLETELY irrelevant here. The Styracosaurus in the movie was very obviously using them as such, and tried to gore Gwangi multiple times. And do you REALLY want to pull the "they look dull" card? Because virtually every kaiju has dull claws and teeth. Hell, look at Showa Gigan. The teeth on his abdominal saw are almost round in cross section, and his hammer claws aren't sharp in the slightest. But I don't see anyone saying Godzilla and Anguirus are made of tissue paper because those weapons drew blood from them. Or what about the rounded pegs that are Anguirus's teeth? Those made King Ghidorah bleed. So why is it that the horn of a Styracosaurus gets special scrutiny for being "dull" when every other kaiju weapon gets a pass for that?
As for the Elephant, it was too slow to use its horns against Gwangi, and when it did hit, it was more of the pushing and lifting method of the Styracosaurus with an added trunk uppercut. The Tusks were not used as a goring method for the elephant. As for the having his whole weight on the horn feat, if you slow down the video, you will see that the Styracosaurus hooks under Gwangi's leg and lifts him up. It's more of him lifting Gwangi onto his face and held there by the horn than having his entire weight on a dull horn and not being immediately gored by it.
It's funny how everyone that tries to debunk this focuses on the scene where the Styracosaurus lifts Gwangi, and proceeds to completely ignore the part seconds prior where it tries goring him three times while he's laying on the ground. Yes, the horn basically goes into the space between Gwangi's belly and his leg when the Styraco lifts him, so there isn't a huge amount of pressure being put on it there. But when it knocks Gwangi over a few seconds before that, it backs up and then lunges forward, ramming him directly with the point of the horn before raising its head in an attempt to disembowel him. It does this three times. The first time it hits him hard enough to shove him a several feet backwards along the ground. The second time it "only" hits him hard enough to push him another foot or two, and the third time it doesn't seem to fully commit as Gwangi is starting to get back up and snapping his jaws at it. And Gwangi doesn't so much as suffer a scratch from any of this.
Adding in the spears not piercing his hide except in his earhole, that would make sense when you consider the scales of real life reptiles. Scales are meant to protect the animal better from damage. When your usual prey has a big horn on their head, your flesh is going to be adapted to protect from piercing damage with the exceptions of vital areas. Of course a spear is not going to get through what is basically nature's armor, except through vital unarmored points.
So you're literally admitting here that Gwangi has an armored hide.
Now for the Boulders. I've heard people saying he survived boulders the size of his torso falling on him with the only effect being that they knocked him out for a bit. Therefore, his durability is even better for blunt force trauma being used against him. However, as seen from the movie, this boulder shattered as it was falling, breaking into head-sized boulders which then fell onto his body, knocking him out. It did no damage to his hide sure, but a rock hitting scales is not going to have the same effect as a rock hitting flesh. One will bruise and leave bleeding cuts, the other is more sturdy like armor and much better at protecting the fleshy bits beneath. Even so, the fact that these boulders were enough to knock Gwangi out long enough for them to make a cage, and tie him to it by his neck and feet, means that those rocks did a lot to him. People use the fact that these rocks only knocked him out means that he has this unbreakable and untearable scaly hide. You know who else survived having a torso and a head-sized boulder hit them and have no visible damage nor got knocked out in the process?

https://tenor.com/view/godzilla-vs-king ... f-16223659
https://tenor.com/view/volleyball-godzi ... if-5497700
Convenient how those examples are singular boulders. Gwangi was bludgeoned my multiple boulders simultaneously. What happened to Gwangi is much more akin to the multiple times Godzilla has been KOed by buildings falling on him.
Let's go over to the church stuff now since that also includes rocks in the form of marble. They say the marble collapsing on him only trapped him down and that it was smoke inhalation that finished the beast. However, if you watch the ending, you see that he had already fallen over onto the floor due to being literally cooked alive by the fire surrounding him. Standing near a fire is hot enough, but being surrounded by fire only intensifies that heat, meaning that Gwangi was being cooked alive by the fire, as supported by what InfernoRodan stated before, leaving this whole paragraph moot, but it does go into the marble so keep reading and humor me here. If he truly was being killed by Smoke inhalation, his cries would have been getting shorter, instead of remaining at the panicking screams he was doing due to it being harder to breathe.
No disagreement here, obviously.
Sure he had no physical burn marks, but being covered in scales would make the heat more unbearable as it would be trapped beneath those tougher materials, similar to how wearing armor in a hot location makes you more vulnerable to heat stroke.
This isn't how scales work in the slightest. And trust me, I know from personal experience of having an iguana that once suffered burns from a malfunctioning heat rock that scales get burn damage just like bare skin does.
Now for the Marble. He was already on the ground when the marble started falling. The first bout did ensnare his body under hot metal bars and marble, keeping it trapped on the ground yes. Then the second chunk of marble fell onto him, and he then stoped moving and screaming because it has now killed him. It was not the smoke inhalation that killed the beast, but falling debris and broiling fire.
Again, no disagreement here, but I feel the need to emphasize how stupidly large that first chunk of rubble was. It was roughly 7 times his own mass. And it fell from like 100 feet up. That's a hell of an impact, and he survived it. The second chunk of rubble was even larger, and that's what finished him off.
In short, I find all the supposed feats of how Gwangi is this invicible unbeatable dinosaur when scaled up to kaiju size to be a bunch of overhyped BS. Sure it's impressive, but just about every other Toho monster most likely has similar or greater feats compared to Gwangi.
...No one thinks Gwangi is unbeatable though. At most, people like me just fight against the ones that blatantly disregard him as a legitimate threat to any "real" kaiju because "hurr durr just a st00pid regular dinosaur" and whatnot. He unquestionably has kaiju-tier durability, and his fighting style is a hard counter to how most kaiju typically fight. Could he beat someone like Spacegodzilla? Hell no. But he would absolutely body someone like Showa Anguirus, and give the likes of Showa Gigan and such a hell of a fight.
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Re: The Case Against Gwangi the Great

Post by LamangoKaijura »

He could totally beat Space Godzilla stfu.
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