So before we begin, I want to preface this by stating that even though I don't have the ability or know how to use accents on a keyboard, I will be referencing two words used frequently in the manga and anime series Marchen Awakens Romance. MAR (Pronounced mare) and ARM (pronounced Air-m.). Since I don't have accents on my words, I'll be making the distinction between these words and similar unrelated words by putting these two in all caps so there's less confusion.
Marchent Awakens Romance is a relatively old anime series that I enjoyed when I was younger. It was a series that was created in the early 2000's back when there wasn't a clear way to integrate 2D and 3D animation properly, swapping the Japanese OP and ED for custom English ones was a lot more commonplace, and English Actors who are relatively obscure and seemingly out of work now were still getting relatively frequent jobs.
This particular anime was dubbed and aired on Cartoon Network for the Toonami block, back when anime streaming services were so rare that Toonami had its own online streaming service as one of the only ways to get dubbed or even subbed anime online without just buying DVD's or pirating them.
That said, for as much as all this sounds like criticism, I actually really enjoyed this anime and got back to it recently so I can actually finish the damn thing. Currently, I'm on episode 13, out of 52 in the English dub and 50 or so more than that in Japanese. This anime was also around at a time when it was a lot more acceptable to not finish a dub in the event the TV airings weren't good enough.
To give you a brief rundown, Marchen Awakens Romance is about a young boy named Ginta who frequently dreams of a fairy tale land that he wishes to go to. Though what little we see of his dreams don't seem to have anything to do with the setting, it expects us to believe that he is dreaming about a place called MAR, or MAR Heaven in the Japanese version. He was summoned by Alviss to help defeat the returning Chess Pieces and specifically their Leader, the Phantom, who is so powerful that someone from Earth is required to beat him since people of Earth are generally stronger than the people of MAR, physically anyway. And this is the topic of this blog post.
Specifically, the question I want to answer is "Why are the people of Earth so much stronger than the people of MAR in terms of physicality?" Normally, this would be a relatively easy question to answer due to something Alviss says early on: namely that MAR Heaven has lighter gravity than Earth and the strength of humans on Earth rises when they come to MAR.
On the surface, this sounds like an open and shut case. However, if you really dig into it, there are a number of questions this raises that it doesn't properly answer. First, I want to tackle the issue of gravity because that seems to be where some confusion arises.
Many of us who grew up on Dragon Ball Z or who understand physics knows that humans and other living creatures adapt to harsh circumstances the longer they're exposed to them and that it stands to reason that if you live on a planet with higher gravity than Earth, you'll naturally be stronger than a regular person on this planet because you've been subjected to greater forces your entire life.
However, there's a bit of a problem with this line of thinking. The reason training under high gravity in DBZ works as a training mechanism is because of how much higher the gravity is than Earth. King Kai's planet and Planet Vegeta both have gravitational forces that are 10 times greater than Earth. This means that a human who weighs 200 pounds on Earth would weigh exactly 1 ton on either of those planets. And if you were subjected to this your entire life, it's safe to say you'd be a lot stronger than a regular human. Even factoring out Ki, which is the basis of all the feats of power and destruction in DBZ, if Vegeta, Raditz, and Nappa spent their entire lives on Planet Vegeta, this means they would be 10 times stronger than the humans who live on Earth. A human that could bench press their own weight would likely be crushed under the weight of one punch from one of those three and a car going 30 mph would only be somewhat greater force than what they're subjected to constantly by the planet.
However, MAR Heaven, doesn't have that factor. While Alviss states that MAR has lighter gravity than Earth, Ginta still seems to have the same problem with surface tension that he would on Earth, meaning that the difference in gravity likely isn't all that huge, which may increase his strength somewhat due to lightening the load on his muscles but it certainly wouldn't be enough to allow him to break stone or metal like he's shown he has the ability to do.
That said, everything I've said so far could just be artistic license, since you don't want your protagonist dying if they fall from a great height and you don't want too much blood since this is, by all accounts, a kid's show. My next piece of evidence, though, is a bit less debatable, specifically Ginta's growth rate in terms of physicality and, more importantly, magical power.
After coming into contact with Allan, Ginta and Princess Snow are sent into a different dimension to train to get stronger. Dorothy and Jack are sent to a different though similar dimension as well. While Jack and Dorothy are not really the same characters as Ginta and Snow respectively, Jack's experience with the training and Ginta's can be compared relatively thoroughly since they start at the same place in terms of magic power.
Inside the training gate, they train in accelerated time for 180 days, or about 3 real world days. And, in that time, we get a few clues on where these characters have come to: firstly, when Ginta gets out of the training gate and fights against Ian, Ian comments on the fact that Ginta is likely at the level of a Bishop, while he himself was a Rook at the time. Bearing in mind, prior to the training, Ginta only broke Ian's arm based on sheer reckless abandon, and Ian was also using an inferior ARM at the time.
We also know that Ginta eclipsed Snow in terms of power, which likely means that she herself is probably comparable to a Rook. While that doesn't mean much on its own, we also learn from Gido at around the same time that Jack has the smallest amount of magical power of anyone they were fighting, suggesting that he was probably at the level of a Rook as well, considering how easily he beat Gido, who was a Pawn.
A counter argument may be the ARM each respective boy was using. Ginta was using Babbo, an ARM that's so much more powerful than everything else that it could have any ability Ginta wanted, even a form toward the end of the series that's the reverse of the Gatekeeper Clown, which was by far the most powerful Dimension ARM in the series. Meanwhile, Jack was using just a regular shovel, a shovel that was customized for magic stones prior to the series but a shovel nonetheless. Not only that but Babbo, as an ARM, has the mind and soul of a human, making him autonomous and likely improving Ginta's growth.
However, my counter argument to that is Babbo Version 3: Gargoyle. Gargoyle is the strongest form Babbo has for a good majority of both the anime and manga but is also quite taxing on Ginta. It is so taxing, in fact, that Snow warned him not to use Gargoyle unless absolutely necessary and, even then, not for more than about a few minutes. This suggests that the magic power used by Babbo's forms are, in fact Ginta's. Babbo may have sped it up slightly but, since no one comments on it, it's likely just Ginta's raw ability to develop quickly.
Since Ginta is physically and mentally impaired compared to other humans from Earth, I find it unlikely that his strength and growth rate are properties unique to him. So, what's the deal?
Well, in MAR Heaven, the world seems to serve as a modifier for base abilities rather than a flat upgrade. And what I mean by that is that a flat upgrade would increase his power by a set amount and then have training add to that amount, whereas the modifier amplifies all of his traits. Let me represent it with an equation.
Flat Increase:
- Power = Base * Increase + Training
Modifier:
- Power = (Base + Training) * Increase
In the first example, the base power would be increased but the training added to it would only add to the final number, adding at the rate of regular physical conditioning. With the modifier, however, any increase to power Ginta gains through training is added to what it would be on Earth and then is amplified after that, increasing his growth rate and his overall power output by the same amount.
But why is this? Earth humans and MAR humans don't seem to be different physiologically, Earth humans just gain a power boost on MAR. Gravity also likely isn't the problem since it is possible for someone like Alviss to be physically stronger than Ginta even with the power boost.
My theory is the existence of magic. MAR Heaven has magic in the form of ARM but Ginta's world doesn't have that. Many who are able to use magic like Allan and Alviss are stronger with Magic than Ginta and his father are without magic but the presence of magic lightens the load of what their world presents, making someone artificially resistant to the pressures the world offers.
And when I say artificially resistant, I mean resistant in the same way a biological enhancement works in a lot of games and science fiction. Yes, it makes you resistant to outside forces on a surface level but, since the upgrade is entirely separate from yourself, your physiology will grow weaker over time due to less pressure from the world.
Ginta and his father grew up in a world that didn't have magic to lighten the load so they were naturally able to deal with the world itself, so when they were presented with a world that provided them with magic, they grew faster due to inherent evolutionary capability that people of Earth would have.
That's all for now. Tell me in the comments if I'm completely off base or if you liked my post. And, as always, have a wonderful day.