The Deadliest Type of Ability in Anime

In this video, I talk about One Shot abilities, those that have the capabilities to end another character with as little as a single touch; I go over my favourite examples, how they were used in their show, as well as what makes them interesting.

Thank you for watching!

▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

0:00 - Explaining One Shots
2:43 - Decay
5:34 - Idle Transfiguration
8:06 - Killer Queen

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You & I by Soyb & Amine Maxwell
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
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Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
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When I Was A Boy by Tokyo Music Walker
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
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[ice_wallow_come]

are we forgetting kira has killed the entire main cast and would have won if he just kept his mouth shut for literally 10 seconds

[shu-rd]

Killer Queen is honestly the most OP due to how lowkey it is. Bites the dust is just the cherry on top. Kira is a top 10 anime villain for sure.

[Venom_]

Idle Transfiguration is definitely one of my favorite one shot abilities because of how much Mahito can and does do with it. It feels like he's pulling out a new trick every few seconds. I love Overhaul too but it definitely felt like the quirk had wayy more potential than what Chisaki actually used it like.

[rattled]

Mahito is definitely the worst, at least the others will just kill you in like a few seconds. Meanwhile Mahito will probably turn you into a sentient fleshlight or smth

[alibeknorbekov]

"I'm going to touch you" Ahh abilities

[riverbandit]

I think Killer Queen’s bomb transfiguration is easily the best designed. He can only turn what he touches into a bomb and he can only have one bomb at a time, not to mention he can detonate it no matter where he is. Properly balancing a strong ability while also adding lots of great potential for strategy

[Kyerie]

To add to the killer queen part, part 8’s Yoshikage Kira isn’t a murderer but a marine surgeon with no want for murder and that shows through his ability. Instead of silent bombs that “erase” people, it’s a literal explosion that can be seen by anyone as he doesn’t have a need to hide.

[FreakyNationLife]

JoJo's is so polarizing. Some stands just punch hard, and others have some bullshit ability like "If its raining at exactly 2:01pm on a Thursday, I am able to give you gallbladder cancer with my stand, Poker Face!"

[amimuscaria]

The problem that arises from a touch of death villain is that it's inherently a all or nothing thing. Either the villain touches the protagonist and wins or they don't and can't really fight back.

[Miraihi]

It's curious to see how many of "touch of death" users are villains, huh.

I understand that it's your personal list, but weird to see no passing mention of the Fist of the North star, one of the more iconic examples of "Touch of death" technique in anime.

[raiguy]

Scar from full metal alchemist: brotherhood also fits this archetype

[ultronerik]

Jojo has technically two one shot abilities in it. Kira’s killer Queen bombs, and Funny Valentines’ victim cloning. He has increased range because of D4C’s clause of needing them to be between two objects. But works fundamentally different due to timeline clashing. Diego died because despite the death of Valentine, his universe counterpart’s head (I believe?) was in the possession of someone, leading to Diego being destroyed.

[lethargiccultist]

Another example I love is Zora Salazar from Epithet Erased. Her ability, Sundial, lets her dial things forwards or backwards in any process. From falling off a building, to getting from point A to point B, even to someone's lifespan. Either by touch or by imbuing her ability into an object, like a bullet, then hitting a target with said object.

[ShurikanBlade]

I think AFO should be mentioned too. I know it's not exactly a "touch of death" but if he touches you then it essentially means you're dead because you are suddenly rendered so powerless and defenseless that you're useless from that point onward. It's an interesting twist on the concept of "touch of death".

I also really like MHA and how it handles touch of death due to Aizawa. Most of the time it just feels like it's just a contest to see how long the MC can dodge before finding an opening. Due to Aizawa, the touch of death is inactive unless he goes for Aizawa or Shigeraki has to be creative on the spot to actually defeat his opponents. Very interesting imo.

[arkyshi]

My favourite representation of this is Julius Novachrono from Black Clover. He just drastically increases the age of anyones body to instantly kill them, ageing them to the point of decomposing.

[nortemark]

The transfiguration curse technique are op. If you can help your depressed friend by going to the street and find some girl that willing to do the deed on your friend for some cash, then turn her into catgirl. Ur Homie will be thankful for life im sure of that.

[bevere]

The Tsukhime visual novel (same verse as the Fate Series) has a protagonist with this kind of ability: Shiki Tohno with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception can see lines on any object or person, and tracing those lines even with a finger will force the immediate death of that object or person: basically he can cut through anything. To be more specific, anything with the Concept of Death (basically anything that can die in the Nasuverse) has these lines, so Shiki could theoretically kill any character in his verse (yes that includes Gilgamesh, tho good luck with that Shiki) besides the Ultimate Ones and a few others, all of which don't have the Concept of Death, and even then Shiki is one of the only people that can damage them. He does have to concentrate to clearly see the lines of more complex things, for example he has a easier time killing other living beings than inanimate objects. He could even kill concepts, but if he tried to even visualize the lines of death of a concept, his brain would probably explode or something. The protagonist of Kara no Kyoukai, Shiki Ryougi (no correlation with that name) has the same ability, tho she's different since she can turn them off, they consume WAY less stamina and cause WAY less mental stress, and she has actually killed concepts before, like Fujino's Psychic attacks and the future predicted by Mitsuru's Precognition

[LightpandaOG]

Fun fact: in ch. 419 of my hero, it was revealed (I think indirectly???) that decay is a modified version of overhaul where Dr. Garaki (all for one's doctor) removed overhaul's ability to reverse it's effects.

[NyanTheFurry]

You know, something odd about Shigaraki’s quirk is that it was revealed his version of it is only HALF of the quirk, since the other half was able to revert the effects

[BlackWater-pk]

I love idle transfiguration cause of how wicked it is, if the bastard turns you into barney, your soul turns into barney, like damn, you're meeting the gates looking like that? Might as well erase my existence like damn