Gaara vs Toph: What Went Wrong 

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Gaara outclasses Toph in almost every relevant area and this fight should have been a landslide victory for him.

The arguments DB has put forward for why Toph would win are very lacking and ignore key aspects of both characters.

Those who've been following the comment sections on Sol vs Ragna, the previews, and the thread in the forums, should know that I've been one of the more prominent posters arguing in Gaara's favor.  With the episode out now, and Toph being victorious, I think it's appropriate that I voice my issues with their reasoning.

Let's start off by examining their claims for why Toph would win.

Toph can sense earth in the air so she can always tell were Gaara's attacks are coming from.

Being able to detect an attack is one thing.  Being able to actually block/avoid it is another.  Having 360 degree vision is definitley advantageous, but it doesn't mean much when your opponents attacks operate at a level of power and speed you've never shown to be able handle.  I'll get to that later.  Additionally, ever since part two, Gaara has fought primarily in the air.  Among other things, this gives him a much better view of the battlefield, meaning he'll also be able to see and intercept any attack Toph can throw at him.  This isn't an advantage for Toph, it's simply a lack of a disadvantage. 

Gaara's sand is still sand, so Toph would be able to control it.

Two problems with this, the second of which I'll elaborate on later.

The first problem is that it assumes that Toph is capable of controlling living sand.  It's made very clear in the avatarverse that bending an element that is "living" is extremely difficult and requires much practice.  There's a reason why bloodbending is only known to a select few, requires training, and can only be done during a full moon(excluding a small number of individuals who can do it without a full moon, but that required large amounts of training on their part), when waterbending is at its strongest.  For those claiming that the difficulty of bloodbending is because of the mixture of water with other impurities, that's never been stated to be the case, and frankly wouldn't make much sense.  Water is water, there's no real reason for why a water benders ability to bend it would be affected by any other substances surrounding it.  In addition, if it was simply a matter of precision, then the full moon wouldn't be necessary in order for most bloodbenders to bloodbend.  The full moon greatly boosts the raw power of water bending, but there's no evidence that it allows waterbenders to bend with more precision than they normally do.  Finally, in Legend of Korra, bending is never presented as an option in dealing with the spirit vines.  Korra was forced to go into the avatar state and use energy bending in order to subdue them. 

The second problem is that this assumes that Toph even has the raw power or speed needed to be able to deflect Gaara's attacks in the first place.  This is not the case. 

This is a bit of an aside, but it's also worth mentioning that Gaara's sand control does not work like bending.  When he sends sand after someone, he maintains control over it.  Meaning, Toph couldn't simply push it to the side to set it off course, as it would be constantly homing in on her.  Raising rock walls to block it would also be futile as the streams of sand could either go around them, or simply bore directly through them.  The way DB depicted Gaara's sand working like simple thrown projectiles was extremely innacurate. 

Gaara's sand contains gold, which gives Toph more "bending options."

F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶s̶o̶l̶i̶d̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶d̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶G̶a̶a̶r̶a̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶s̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶.̶

It's been confirmed in the Gaara Hiden novel that he no longer carries gold in his sand.

Second of all, Toph has never been shown to be able to control such tiny amounts of metal.  Her metal bending works by pushing on small impurities within the metal to force it to bend.  The assumption that she could bend metal the size of a speck of dust is tenuous at best.

Third of all, even if we grant that Gaara's sand has gold in it and she can bend it, how exactly does that provide Toph with an advantage?  There isn't any evidence that she can apply more force to metal than she can to sand.  Not to mention that whether or not she could control his sand in the first place is extremely questionable, as I've mentioned above.

Gaara always keeps himself covered in his sand armor, so Toph can always sense where he is.  His armor uses up large amounts of chakra and Toph could use it to crush him.

1. There isn't any evidence suggesting that he perpetually keeps his sand armor up.  In fact given that it drains his chakra and encumbers him, it seems more reasonable to assume he only puts it up when his automatic defense is in danger of being breached.

2.  Later on in the series Gaara has been shown to have very large chakra reserves and capable of using successive large scale attacks and taking heavy damage without succumbing to exhaustion.  They provided no good evidence to suggest that Gaara would be tired out before Toph, or that Toph even had the means to pierce through Gaara's automatic sand shield.

3. Just because Toph can sense the location of earth in the air doesn't necessaraly mean that she can sense fine details like shape, so she would have no real way to distinguish between Gaara and the sand he's standing on.  Even if we give her the benifit of the doubt, he could still easily throw her off with sand clones.

4.  Gaara has been shown to be decently smart and tactical throughout the series.  If he were ever facing another opponent with geokinetic abilities, it's really not a stretch to say that the first thing that would pop into his head is the sand armor surrounding his body, especially since he specializes in crushing attacks.  It stands to reason that he would remove it, if he was even wearing it in the first place.

5.  Gaara's gourd sand is literally programmed by his mothers soul to protect him at all costs.  As I previously mentioned, bending spirit possessed elements is very different from bending normal elements. 

6. It assumes that Gaara couldn't simply fly out of Tophs range.  Even granting her the ability to detect earth in the air, there she has never shown to be able to detect to airborne earth from much more than fifty feet away.

I'll try not to nitpick too much because I know that the animations place more emphasis on being entertaining than as serving as a one hundred percent accurate reperesentation of the fight.

Toph being able to easily survive his sand coffin with metal armor is absurd.

In addition to everything I've already said, it's been confirmed in the previously mentioned novel that Gaara possesses "magnet release" which allows him to control metal.  In other words, Gaara can now crush Toph in her own metal amor without even using sand.  Irony's a bitch eh?  Also, he now uses a more heavy metallic sand. 

Early in the series, Gaara fights a character named Kimimaro, who's bones are stronger than tempered steel.

Gaara traps him in a sand coffin, and he admits that if he had not grown an additonal layer of bone of armor to protect himself, then he would have been crushed.  Also worth mentioning that he was also forced to go into stage one of the curse mark transformation, already gives a boost to base durability.

As if this wasn't enough evidence, Gaara proceeds to attack and bury him under a giant sand tsunami, terraforming the forest around them into desert in the process.

He then uses a giant sand burial that spans over the entire area he terraformed.

Kimimaro is again, forced to transform, this time into his final curse mark transformation state.

This makes it clear that Gaara's second attack would have been strong enough to crush him even with the new bone plates he grew under his skin.  After all, Kimimaro was suffering from a crippling illness when fighting Gaara, so it follows that he would want to strain himself as little as possible.  Curse mark transformations place heavy strain on the body, so he wouldn't have used it unless he absolutely needed to.

Also since Death Battle was allowing filler feats, Gaara was also heavily implied to be capable of crushing Mecha Naruto, a murderous robotic version of Naruto(yes, this is real) who had previously been rampaging through the Leaf Village with no one being able to stop him.

Even ignoring this, Gaara's sand could have still easily slipped through any openings in the metal armor and killed her right then and there.  There would have to be openings in order for her to not sufficate.

Now as for why Toph should not be able to deflect Gaara's attacks.  We all know that Gaara is capable of manipulating a massive amount of sand at once.  The amount of energy required to manipulate such a large amounts of earth already places him at a level of power far beyond anything Toph has ever faced.  Since Gaara's sand manipulation is ultimately just chakra control, there's no reason for why he shouldn't be able to place this much force behind his attacks.  This is supported by the fact that with a tiny amount of sand, he is able to physically restrain Sage Mode Madara, the same guy who was easily able to knock all the tailed beasts flat on their asses.  To put this into perspective, here's how much physical strength a much weaker character than SM Madara had. http://www.narutoforums.com/blog.php?b=15539&page=3

  Not to mention Gaara's sand can move(at the absolute least) faster than eye can see, DB even admits this.  Though it really is much much faster than this if we take into account speed calcs(Here's one from the chunin exams that already places his attack speed in the hypersonic range, the result in the blog is around mach 4 but it get reworked to mach 17 in the comments).  If we use power scaling then he becomes even faster than that, as he has been able to intercept some of that fastest characters in the verse, including the third raikage with his lightning chakra cloak, and Madara Uchiha, one of the most powerful shinobi who ever lived.  Toph has no speed feats of her own that are even supersonic.  She has one that may be faster than eye can see from her confrontation with The Boulder, but that's still nowhere close to enough.  I believe Korra had a feat of reacting to an explosion which she could be scaled to, but if we're to include scaling, then Gaara can be scaled to speeds like this http://www.narutoforums.com/blog.php?b=19929

DB never factored in how sealing tags would effect that battle, even though they did acknowlage that Gaara had them.  For those who don't remember, anything a sealing tag is placed on is "sealed" ie. completely immoblized.  Gaara would simply have to throw a sealing tag on Toph or any substance she's incased and she would be completely paralyzed.  Even granting all of DB's assumptions, this is still a game changer.

In "The Last: Naruto the Movie" Gaara include Futon(wind) at the beginning of his jutusu incantation indicating that he's capable of using wind natured chakra in conjunction with his sand.

In the new novel there is more evidence that Gaara now incoperates wind into his attacks.  He has a tecnique called Futon: Yae-Hayate, that basically allows him to create barriers of wind.  He uses these in conjuction with his sand defense.

Finally, let's look at what advantages both combatants have over one another, to really put this into perspective.

Range(can control sand from over a kilometer away)

Manuvarability(even academy ninjas have shown far superior acrobatic skills to anyone in the avatarverse besides maybe Ty Lee, being able to leap dozens of feat in the air.  He also has the body flicker tecnique)

Durability(blocking nukes, city busting meteorites, a slash from Madara's susanoo sword, etc)

Close combat capabilities(which is now relevant given that Gaara uses CQC tecqniques now in the form of the Sand Sword, which was revealed in the new novel"

Control over a wider variety of substances(sand, metal, air)

All in all, I'm disappointed with Death Battle, and can now confidently say that I won't be watching it for anything more than pretty animations and clever dialog.

Wiz and Boomstick, I still love you guys, but you've really dropped the ball with this one.

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Hey man, this is some awesome work! I\'ve seen a lot of people link to this when discussing Gaara vs Toph, particularly when it comes to the Death Battle and why it was ridiculous.

On another topic, I hope you don\'t mind me asking, but how would you interpret this scene from the Gaara Hiden?

"A bolt of lightning burst out of the giant’s body, and struck the area where Kankurou and the other shinobi were gathered."

"He and the other shinobi were fine. They’d only lost their footing from the impact of the thunderclap."

It seems to me that two things could have happened. 1) Kankurou and co. dodged the lightning, or 2) the lightning just missed Kankurou and co. It doesn\'t directly say it, but I think they dodged it. Reason one: they were fine, meaning it didn\'t hit them. Reason two: shinobi have extremely good accuracy and precision, especially the higher level ones (A-Rank in this case), so I highly doubt that the shinobi just missed them whilst they were unable to react.

Also, this isn\'t a lightning jutsu, rather it\'s lightning created through the piezoelectric effect (this would be as fast as natural lightning right?). This could mean that people on the level of Kankurou\'s speed or his subordinates have at least faster-than-lightning reaction speed. What do you think? Am I just misinterpreting this scene or is this even further proof of faster-than-lightning shinobi?

Ah, thanks. On my phone now but I\'ll add that in later today.

sorry for the double comment just thought i\'d show ya this

Don\'t think its worth much, but more Wind techniques to stack onto Great Breakthrough and...Sand based Wind Techniques

Yeah like the tumble weed. its a nice statement that Toph will NEVER win

Literally the one advantage Toph had, gone. Too much.

"“Holding back” is by no means the only factor that could get in the way of a character performing at their full potential. There are countless circumstantial factors at play which are entirely unknowable. Maybe the creation of another clone distracted him and he hesitated for a moment? Maybe it was an awkward angle to swing at and he couldn\'t do it with as much force as he threw the sand shuriken? I don\'t know, and neither do you." Naruto was right in front of him, hardly an "awkward angle." Generally if a character hesitates there would be some sort of visual indication, which there wasn\'t here. With all due respect, it sort of seems like you\'re grasping at straws. Of course since this is a manga there\'s no way to be one hundred percent certain exactly how the scene went down, but given the context of the scene it\'s a perfectly reasonable assumption, especially since there\'s no on panel evidence to suggest otherwise. You could use maybes and what ifs to undermine any feat.

"Yes you can, if you\'re good at reading your opponents\' attacks. There\'s no clear indication that Gaara had already begun to swing his arm (there are some motion lines, but they could be indicating preparatory motions), or that Naruto was already in his range, before Naruto perceived the attack."

I\'ve yet to ever see motion lines for "preparatory motions." Again, you\'re reaching. If his arm was cocked backwards, then you might have some sort of point, but it\'s clearly extending forwards.

"Don\'t get me wrong, I think it\'s a fair way to speculate about a characters\' abilities, but I wouldn\'t consider it a safe way to measure “canonical” character abilities, and neither does Death Battle apparently."

There\'s nothing speculative about powerscaling. It\'s ABC logic. Character X destroyed a skyscraper by punching it. Character Y is stated/portrayed to be stronger than character X. Ergo character X can accomplish the same feat. People tend to grossly abuse it, so it gets kind of a bad reputation, but when applied correctly there is literally nothing wrong with it.

"…Then why would his face appearing “perfectly calm” have made any difference in the first place? You were the one who suggested that he should “appear somewhat shocked” if he saw the Amaterasu, not me."

No, I brought it up to dispute your claim that he intended to halt his leg mid kick in order to save himself like you suggested. I only bring up the lack of facial expression to demonstrate that he could have very well been planning on continuing the kick and sacrifice his leg in order to kill Sasuke.

It\'s a matter of both. I brought up the moon simply to illustrate the point that the difficulty of bloodbending couldn\'t be a result of physical factors and therefore must be a result of a spiritual ones. AFAIK it\'s never specified exactly how the Bloodbenders that don\'t need the Moon learned to do what they do, so it could very well be their training involved spiritual mumbo jumbo to affect elements connected to living beings. Yeah it\'s speculation, but I think it\'s the most logical hypothesis we\'ve got.

“Well given that Gaara at that point in the story was a raging maniac only focused on killing, it doesn\'t make much sense to argue that he would be holding back.”

“Holding back” is by no means the only factor that could get in the way of a character performing at their full potential. There are countless circumstantial factors at play which are entirely unknowable. Maybe the creation of another clone distracted him and he hesitated for a moment? Maybe it was an awkward angle to swing at and he couldn\'t do it with as much force as he threw the sand shuriken? I don\'t know, and neither do you.

“You can\'t very well dodge the attack at a close range if the attack is moving faster than you can.”

Yes you can, if you\'re good at reading your opponents\' attacks. There\'s no clear indication that Gaara had already begun to swing his arm (there are some motion lines, but they could be indicating preparatory motions), or that Naruto was already in his range, before Naruto perceived the attack.

“There is nothing inherently wrong with powerscaling, when applied correctly of course.”

Don\'t get me wrong, I think it\'s a fair way to speculate about a characters\' abilities, but I wouldn\'t consider it a safe way to measure “canonical” character abilities, and neither does Death Battle apparently.

“Besides Death Battle has used power scaling before. See Tigerzord vs Epyon.”

I assume you\'re referring to how they used the feats of the other rangers to determine the White Ranger\'s abilities? That\'s not really power scaling, since there\'s an actual plot point (the fact that all rangers have their physical abilities boosted by the same Morphing Grid) that suggests that all of the rangers have comparable physical abilities, and so it\'s not just speculation.

“Well yeah, his foot and his leg, the main things that art doing the kicking.”

His face and his left (presumably non-kicking) leg are also shown with motion lines, if you are referring to the motion lines, and the point of the one panel could easily be to highlight the threat to his legs, if you are referring to what\'s in the panel.

“This is the same guy who amputated his arm with the same expression on his face that most people would have when removing a small splinter. He\'s clearly willing to sacrifice limbs if the situation demands it.”

…Then why would his face appearing “perfectly calm” have made any difference in the first place? You were the one who suggested that he should “appear somewhat shocked” if he saw the Amaterasu, not me.

“The fact that it requires training doesn\'t really hurt my point at all. It still makes it unlikely that Toph could bend a "living" element when doing so in her universe requires specialized training.”

The fact that it requires specialized training suggests that it requires precision and that it does not just entail overpowering a spirit. You wrote: “if it was simply a matter of precision, the the full moon wouldn\'t be necessary in order for most bloodbenders to bloodbend. The full moon greatly boosts the raw power of water bending, but there\'s no evidence that it allows waterbenders to bend with more precision than they normally do.” I counter that if it were simply a matter of raw power and not precision, then bloodbending without the full moon would simply require being a stronger waterbender, and not specialized training. My point is that there are details that support other theories about why bloodbending is difficult, just like how there are multiple possible reasons for why the library could have started sinking in the desert.

Well given that Gaara at that point in the story was a raging maniac only focused on killing, it doesn\'t make much sense to argue that he would be holding back. Naruto was right there, and he was trying to grab him.

"that being able to dodge an attack of a given speed does not mean that one is able to move at a similar speed to that attack"

Uh, yes it does? You can\'t very well dodge the attack at a close range if the attack is moving faster than you can.

Likewise for Kimimaro, there\'s no reason to assume that Naruto wouldn\'t be going all out. He was even using Kurama\'s chakra, so if anything he should have been moving faster.

"I think what this essentially boils down to is that we can\'t rely on power scaling for accurate stats on characters. And that seems to be the policy of Death Battle, as explained in the discussion of Power Levels in Goku VS Superman. (“We cannot judge Goku by his Power Levels. Nor can we through power scaling, the theory that he can achieve the same feats as lesser Dragon Ball characters. Goku\'s abilities are tailored to his personal training and experiences, not to mention anatomy.”)"

There is nothing inherently wrong with powerscaling, when applied correctly of course. All of the powerscaling that I\'ve applied to Gaara in this blog I would argue makes perfect sense within the context of the story. Besides Death Battle has used power scaling before. See Tigerzord vs Epyon.

I\'ll get back to you on the calc some other time. I\'m too lazy to look through the thread atm.

"But the rest of his body has motion lines too. And it\'s not just his foot that\'s shown in the panel, it\'s the entire lower part of his body that\'s threatened by the Amaterasu." Well yeah, his foot and his leg, the main things that art doing the kicking.

"I don\'t know, he looks pretty distressed in that panel to me. Kind of hard to tell though, since all that we really see is his eye and his brow, conveying feelings of intensity and little else, but I initially saw it as an “Oh shit,” kind of reaction, rather than him being "completely calm"." This is the same guy who amputated his arm with the same expression on his face that most people would have when removing a small splinter. He\'s clearly willing to sacrifice limbs if the situation demands it.

"Good point, although my original intent was to show that Toph would be capable of buying herself enough time to perform her own attack rather than just being blitzed. The only way for her to really defend herself for more than just a few seconds would be to have enough force to actually stop or slow the sand, which I don\'t think is entirely out of the question. You mentioned in the blog post how Gaara could restrain Madara with the sand particles in his blood, and that Naruto, when weaker than Madara, could apply about 300 million tons of force to a rhinoceros in order to throw it up into the air, and that this is how you determined that a tiny amount of Gaara\'s sand has at least 300 million tons of force behind it. But this again relies on power scaling, which, as I explained above, is not accepted by Death Battle, and for good reason."

Well I\'m only addressing this point granting that speed is equal. I\'m still convinced that Gaara is far too fast for her.

"But still, the theory that \'bloodbending is hard because spirits\' is ultimately speculation, and there are other details that instead suggest that its difficulty is due to precision and not a lack of raw power (e.g. the fact that waterbenders such as Tarrlok and Noatok learn the technique by training in it, rather than by just becoming the most powerful waterbenders in existence)"

The fact that it requires training doesn\'t really hurt my point at all. It still makes it unlikely that Toph could bend a "living" element when doing so in her universe requires specialized training.

Hey, sorry for the long delay in response. Here are my thoughts:

“As far as fiction goes, generally if a character is seen moving a certain part of their body at an incredible speed, it\'s usually safe to assume that they can fight that fast. … It doesn\'t really matter either way though because we get a page where Naruto explicitly perceives and reacts to mini shukaku Gaara\'s arm movements.”

Okay, but then we still have the same problems I mentioned earlier: 1. that being able to dodge an attack of a given speed does not mean that one is able to move at a similar speed to that attack; and 2. that we cannot know whether or not a character is moving at their max speed in any given instance. We have no way of knowing that mini-Shukaku Gaara was moving his arm at the same speed when Naruto dodged it as when he threw the sand shuriken, we don\'t know that the clones fighting Kimimaro were moving at Naruto\'s max speed, and we don\'t know that Kimimaro was moving at his max speed in the instances where Gaara\'s sand was able to keep up with him.

I think what this essentially boils down to is that we can\'t rely on power scaling for accurate stats on characters. And that seems to be the policy of Death Battle, as explained in the discussion of Power Levels in Goku VS Superman. (“We cannot judge Goku by his Power Levels. Nor can we through power scaling, the theory that he can achieve the same feats as lesser Dragon Ball characters. Goku\'s abilities are tailored to his personal training and experiences, not to mention anatomy.”)

“That was the distance they used though. It was like 0.07 meters.”

0.07 m (or 7 cm) was the distance used in the calc, but it is never explained how that figure was determined. In any case, it does not appear to be accurate, as the contact between the bases of the spikes and the border of the panel means that the min distance should be 0.00 m and not 0.07 m. For all we know, the sand could have already been in contact with other parts of the Amaterasu, affecting all of the spikes indirectly. To say that the speed of the sand can be reliably calculated using this feat, I think, is a pretty enormous stretch to say the least.

“I find it pretty hard to accept that it’s just gravity, considering we get a panel explicitly focusing on his foot with thick motion lines. Why would it do that if his whole body was moving the same speed.”

But the rest of his body has motion lines too. And it\'s not just his foot that\'s shown in the panel, it\'s the entire lower part of his body that\'s threatened by the Amaterasu.

“Not to mention we also get a close of up Ei’s face, and he’s shown being completely calm. If he had stopped moving his leg mid kick like you suggest, you would think he would appear somewhat shocked.”

I don\'t know, he looks pretty distressed in that panel to me. Kind of hard to tell though, since all that we really see is his eye and his brow, conveying feelings of intensity and little else, but I initially saw it as an “Oh shit,” kind of reaction, rather than him being "completely calm".

“Still though, the fact that his attacks actively home in on their targets makes this strategy pretty ineffective. All he has to do is slightly adjust the trajectory of his attack. Not to mention that attacking her from all angles is also an option.”

Good point, although my original intent was to show that Toph would be capable of buying herself enough time to perform her own attack rather than just being blitzed. The only way for her to really defend herself for more than just a few seconds would be to have enough force to actually stop or slow the sand, which I don\'t think is entirely out of the question. You mentioned in the blog post how Gaara could restrain Madara with the sand particles in his blood, and that Naruto, when weaker than Madara, could apply about 300 million tons of force to a rhinoceros in order to throw it up into the air, and that this is how you determined that a tiny amount of Gaara\'s sand has at least 300 million tons of force behind it. But this again relies on power scaling, which, as I explained above, is not accepted by Death Battle, and for good reason.

As for the whole library thing, I think you\'re right, my interpretation is not the necessarily the most parsimonious one. But still, the theory that \'bloodbending is hard because spirits\' is ultimately speculation, and there are other details that instead suggest that its difficulty is due to precision and not a lack of raw power (e.g. the fact that waterbenders such as Tarrlok and Noatok learn the technique by training in it, rather than by just becoming the most powerful waterbenders in existence), so we can\'t really say that it\'s knowable, and again, I don\'t think this would be considered valid for a Death Battle analysis. But those are their standards, and not necessarily everyone\'s.

tl;dr Accepting power scaling and some speculation, Gaara would win, but ScrewAttack don\'t play like that.

Hey GordoThrower, if you\'re still around I\'d be interested to hear your thoughts on my response.

"vibrations travel really fast even though that has no bearing on how quickly she actually able to react to them"

"Toph\'s "bending speed" is different from her "movement speed."

Fucking hell man, thanks for reminding me why arguing with you was such a waste of time.

The Speed difference would also be irrelevant... we\'d be comparing Gaara\'s travel/jutsu speed to Toph bending speed not her own movement speed... Gaara and/or his projectiles still have to move from point A to point B while Toph\'s ammunition is already at the target location... Toph would be able to slow, immobilize or simply kill Gaara before he can close the distance... and this is of course Ignoring that there is no way to actually determine the speed difference between the two in the first place because We don\'t know how fast Toph actually is (or Gaara for that matter)... We only know that her SS relies on sound/vibrations, that sound can travel well over 14 times faster through solids than through the air and that simply bending maneuvers are virtually instantaneous.

I don\'t want to have the same discussion with two people at once but- "All of their other skills and abilities are kind of irrelevant." No, even if everything you\'re saying was true, the speed difference would still seal the deal.

The fact of the matter is the fight comes down to whether or Not we Agree that Toph would have been able to control the sand that was already in close proximity to Gaara... For instance: The sand in the Gourd, around his feet, that he uses to fly or any that might have already been touching his body...

The idea that she wouldn\'t/shouldn\'t have been able to control any of those despite Never having any trouble bending any degree of earth before just isn\'t proven. Even if we ignore that she WAS in fact able to overpower a spirits bending ability before, saying the Sand would be able to "resist" her even though it\'s never displayed anything similar to that ability before, is like Saying Tony Stark with his Endo Sym or Wolverine with his Adamantium skeleton should be immune to or able to resist Magneto\'s power... It Doesn\'t matter that its "alive" or that Wolverine already has control of it... It\'s still Metal.. Just as Gaara\'s sand Is Still Earth

They Got a lot of things wrong during the Death Battle but that part, which would more or less decide the outcome of the Battle, was spot on. I mean in my opinion of course people are going to disagree but Agree or disagree it\'s really the only argument that needs to be considered here. All of their other skills and abilities are kind of irrelevant.

"The world record for the fastest baseball pitch is 105.1 mph, but the record for fastest human footspeed is only about 27.8 mph. Major League pitchers can typically throw a fastball around 90 mph, but they obviously can\'t run that fast. It stands to reason, then, that Gaara throwing mach 17 sand shuriken does not translate to Gaara himself being mach 17." As far as fiction goes, generally if a character is seen moving a certain part of their body at an incredible speed, it\'s usually safe to assume that they can fight that fast. At least, I can think of very few instances where a character can move their arms fast and only their arms. It doesn\'t really matter either way though because we get a page where Naruto explicitly perceives and reacts to mini shukaku Gaara\'s arm movements.

"My problem with the Raikage calc was that the sand could be literally just outside of the frame in the bottom left panel, and would need only to bridge the gap between the border and the bases of the spikes, not the tips. And since the minimum of that distance is effectively 0 m, then we can\'t really get any meaningful calc on the sand\'s minimum speed the way they\'re trying to do." That was the distance they used though. It was like 0.07 meters.

“Gravity would cause the Raikage to continue moving downward, even if he halted his kick, so the motion lines don’t necessarily mean that he’s still kicking.” I find it pretty hard to accept that it’s just gravity, considering we get a panel explicitly focusing on his foot with thick motion lines. Why would it do that if his whole body was moving the same speed. Not to mention we also get a close of up Ei’s face, and he’s shown being completely calm. If he had stopped moving his leg mid kick like you suggest, you would think he would appear somewhat shocked.

"Not if she\'s influencing it in a direction perpendicular to the angle at which that force is being directed. It would go past her instead of hitting her, but it would be moving in the same direction just as quickly and just as powerfully, meaning that she wouldn\'t have to counteract the force at all." I see what you\'re saying now. Still though, the fact that his attacks actively home in on their targets makes this strategy pretty ineffective. All he has to do is slightly adjust the trajectory of his attack. Not to mention that attacking her from all angles is also an option.

"(To comment on the explanations you suggested earlier: involving forces from within the Spirit World to call the library back is a bit more complex than Wan Shi Tong simply ordering the building to move, and having the library sink through a portal by gravity does not explain how it ended up upside down when it got there http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/avatar/images/a/a2/Wan_Shi_Tong\'s_Library_in_the_Spirit_World.png/revision/latest?cb=20131109212010 or why the sand in the desert did not continue sinking after the top spire disappeared underground.)" Good point on the lack of sand sinking. That really makes zero sense to be honest. Regardless of the method the spirit using to move it, there\'s still empty space being created, there\'s no reason for why the sand shouldn\'t move. Seems like just an oversight on the artists/animators part tbh. As for it being upside down, maybe the portal itself was upside down for whatever reason? Who knows, doesn\'t really seem all that relevant here.

“If Gaara in mini shukaku mode could physically move his arms that fast, then why would the rest of his body be different?”

The world record for the fastest baseball pitch is 105.1 mph, but the record for fastest human footspeed is only about 27.8 mph. Major League pitchers can typically throw a fastball around 90 mph, but they obviously can\'t run that fast. It stands to reason, then, that Gaara throwing mach 17 sand shuriken does not translate to Gaara himself being mach 17.

My problem with the Raikage calc was that the sand could be literally just outside of the frame in the bottom left panel, and would need only to bridge the gap between the border and the bases of the spikes, not the tips. And since the minimum of that distance is effectively 0 m, then we can\'t really get any meaningful calc on the sand\'s minimum speed the way they\'re trying to do.

Gravity would cause the Raikage to continue moving downward, even if he halted his kick, so the motion lines don\'t necessarily mean that he\'s still kicking.

“In order for her to "move it to the side" enough for it to not hit hor she would still need to at least partially overcome the hundreds of millions of tons of force that are behind it.”

Not if she\'s influencing it in a direction perpendicular to the angle at which that force is being directed. It would go past her instead of hitting her, but it would be moving in the same direction just as quickly and just as powerfully, meaning that she wouldn\'t have to counteract the force at all.

I\'m sure a creative mind could come up with a number of plausible explanations for bloodbending\'s exceptional difficulty, but I think yours, being the simplest, is the most reasonable to accept. The only additional assumption that you make is that organic life would be functionally equivalent, for the purposes of bending, to will materialization. I don\'t think my interpretation of the library\'s submersion is much less reasonable of an assumption, since I believe it is also the simplest explanation.

(To comment on the explanations you suggested earlier: involving forces from within the Spirit World to call the library back is a bit more complex than Wan Shi Tong simply ordering the building to move, and having the library sink through a portal by gravity does not explain how it ended up upside down when it got there http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/avatar/images/a/a2/Wan_Shi_Tong\'s_Library_in_the_Spirit_World.png/revision/latest?cb=20131109212010 or why the sand in the desert did not continue sinking after the top spire disappeared underground.)

"Being able to outmaneuver someone who can throw hypersonic attacks does not necessarily mean that one also travels at hypersonic speeds" If Gaara in mini shukaku mode could physically move his arms that fast, then why would the rest of his body be different? I see no reason for why that wouldn\'t apply to his overall combat speed.

As for the calc, the low end of mach 5.7 made later in the comments seems pretty reasonable. Couldn\'t really see any valid reasoning against it. But I don\'t think it\'s really all that important given the shuriken feat. I don\'t think the objection about not knowing starting distance stacks up because Guillotine drop is clearly one of the Raikage\'s more powerful attacks, and lightning jutsu\'s are effective against earth based jutsus. Seems most likely that Gaara would need to use the enhanced sand in his gourd rather than some random sand nearby. There was also no indication that his foot was stopping. Here it seems to show that his foot in the bottom panel is moving. Note the motion lines. http://i16.mangapanda.com/naruto/464/naruto-783132.jpg

"True, but Gaara would have to be deliberately focused on holding the sand in place at a given time to counter this. If he were sending the sand directly at Toph, no force would be stopping her from shifting it to the side, unless he knew beforehand to counter it, and from which direction to do so."

In order for her to "move it to the side" enough for it to not hit hor she would still need to at least partially overcome the hundreds of millions of tons of force that are behind it. I\'m really not convinced she can do that.

"Also true, but then again we also don\'t know exactly why bloodbending is difficult for waterbenders. Parsimony suggests that we accept the explanation requiring the least extraordinary assumptions, but this point is ultimately a subjective one and requires a fair bit of speculation to resolve." This is true, but considering my point with the full moon I don\'t really see any other feasible explanation besides what I propose in my blog. We know more about bloodbending than we do how the library spirit moved the libary.

"He appears to have protected himself from this using his sand, look at the third panel: http://www.mangastream.to/naruto-chapter-561-page-7.html This is another testament to the sand\'s durability and not to that of Gaara\'s body."

Oops my bad. Still though, stronger Ninja\'s in Naruto are pretty consistently superhuman. It wouldn\'t be to say that Gaara should be at least small building level as far as durablity is concerned. Not that Toph doesn\'t have that kind of power, but it\'s worth noting.

“Base Naruto was able to outmaneuver mini Shukaku Gaara just fine.”

Being able to outmaneuver someone who can throw hypersonic attacks does not necessarily mean that one also travels at hypersonic speeds, unless the character is simply outrunning the attack in the same direction that it is being fired. We can\'t determine a minimum speed for (non-Shukaku) Gaara\'s sand simply by saying it can keep up with characters who have dodged hypersonic attacks (not to mention the speculation regarding what percentage of a given character\'s maximum speed said character is moving at at a given time, which can obviously vary depending on a number of circumstances). Objective measurability is important here.

“IIRC the Raikage had already started moving his leg when in the air.”

It\'s likely, though, that he would have at least tried to stop moving his leg the moment he saw the Amaterasu beneath him. There\'s a narutoforums post that examines this feat, if you\'re interested in digging into this in more detail: http://www.narutoforums.com/showthread.php?t=675710 Personally, I don\'t find the calc convincing because it relies on some sketchy assumptions about perspective in the panels it uses, as pointed out in the comments.

“Earthbending isn\'t hax, she\'s just pushing/pulling the sand.”

True, but Gaara would have to be deliberately focused on holding the sand in place at a given time to counter this. If he were sending the sand directly at Toph, no force would be stopping her from shifting it to the side, unless he knew beforehand to counter it, and from which direction to do so.

“As for Wan Shi Tong, we have no idea exactly how the library was being pulled down.”

Also true, but then again we also don\'t know exactly why bloodbending is difficult for waterbenders. Parsimony suggests that we accept the explanation requiring the least extraordinary assumptions, but this point is ultimately a subjective one and requires a fair bit of speculation to resolve.

“Gaara himself is also pretty physically durable even without his automatic defense. He was able to survive being pretty close to the center of Madara\'s meteor impact, when all the weaker shinobi around him were killed.”

He appears to have protected himself from this using his sand, look at the third panel: http://www.mangastream.to/naruto-chapter-561-page-7.html This is another testament to the sand\'s durability and not to that of Gaara\'s body.

Well for one thing, Gaara\'s sand is programmed to protect him at all costs. In order for her to use his own sand against him, whether it\'s in his gourd or on his body, she would need to over power the will of his mother protecting him. Given the things that his automatic defense has managed to protect him against(the Mizukage\'s oil clone, A slash from Madara Uchiha\'s Susanoo) that\'s pretty questionable.

Not to mention? Gaara himself is also pretty physically durable even without his automatic defense. He was able to survive being pretty close to the center of Madara\'s meteor impact, when all the weaker shinobi around him were killed. Oonoki even survived being in its epicenter.

There\'s also the whole issue over whether or not she can control sentient sand in the first place.

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