Just when I think I might be growing up a little, the eight year old in me jumps up and starts making demands. I've always had this habit of comparing and contrasting characters on the basis of... well... how powerful they are! It's kinda silly and immature, but I have fun with it. Heck, it was one of the driving forces behind the creation of my old Dsplash role playing game. So, in this post, I want to try and break Toothless down and gauge just how powerful he is. Obviously he's not on tier with many protagonists from many series... or is he?
Toothless is an incredibly deadly dragon. In his world, just the name of his species would instill the greatest warriors with terror. When I did my Strike Class comparison (which was probably pretty biased) Toothless came out on top of most of those categories. I'm gonna try and detail some of his abilities and see how he compares with other kick-butt characters from other genres.
Let's just hit his most notable aspects. Toothless is a really, really fast dragon. Like, anatomically speaking, he should probably outpace almost any dragon in current media (unless they use magic or something to pump up their speed). I'd guess that Toothless probably reaches max speeds around 240 mph. That's stupid fast for an animal. Let's put this in perspective. The fastest military helicopter tops out at 195 mph. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The average top speed of a fighter jet is 1,550 mph. This would leave Toothless in the dust. So... if he found himself in a fight with a modern military, let's hope they don't have any jets. Even though Toothless is very fast for a dragon (easily faster than characters like Smaug of Saphira), he's actually kinda slow on the scale of flying fictional characters. Characters like Ironman would easily out speed and out maneuver him. So, against other fantasy dragons: Toothless wins. Against sci-fi or super hero characters: Toothless is most likely gonna get left in the dust.
Toothless is a brilliantly designed dragon. The concept artists were told to try and create "the ultimate dragon", and in a lot of ways they delivered. His head is designed to give him great binocular vision, he has multiple sets of wings that perform different tasks, allowing for tremendous power, speed, balance, and maneuverability. His dark skin makes him basically invisible at night. So, when you boil all this down, he is a perfectly designed animal stealth bomber. If put up against characters like Link or Aragorn, he would in all likelyhood be able to kill them in the dark without too much risk of harm. Even modern military soldiers or lower end sci-fi grunts might have a hard time detecting him, though the dive would be very risky given he'd be going up against rapid-fire projectiles. Now, up against hi-end sci-fi characters, Toothless finds himself in a world of trouble. Characters like Samus Aran or Starfighter Pilots would be able to detect him using radar, infrared, or some other means of advanced surveillance. I should also note that stealth bombing doesn't work well against characters with a sort of sixth sense (Jedi, Spiderman, psychics). Still, as far as things go, Toothless is usually able to avoid detection if he has the advantage of a dark sky. He's certainly not invisible, but he's more difficult to detect than most of your typical fire breathing reptiles.
A dive bomber is only as good as his bomb... and when you boil it down, Toothless's blast might just be the most deadly part of his whole design. Sure, he flies really fast, has great senses, is very smart for an animal, and can be practically invisible in the dark, but just LOOK at what he can send rocketing out of his mouth. Toothless's acetylene-oxygen bolts are completely lethal. I'll be judging their strength off of the movies and a little science, not off of the series (in which they are total rubbish). Toothless's bolt is concentrated and extremely fast. This keeps enemies from being able to trace them back to him in the unlikely event that they survive a hit. We've seen them knock a mountain sized Red Death to the ground (creating a mushroom cloud in the process), we've seen them easily power straight through a large stone tower. We know they can melt iron in an instant... and all of this makes sense when you look at how hot acetylene burns. The gas mixture can burn at 3480 ºC (6,296 ºF), which is just mind blowingly hot. It is the only gas mixture to-date that can effortlessly melt steel... so what does that mean for us? It means that other than blasting the horns off of giant dragons, Toothless could melt tanks and airplanes into slag. Now, I can't speak for things like Ironman's suit... and I'm pretty sure Captain America's shield would survive... but the sheer force of the blast might incapacitate either of those characters! It's not just hot, it penetrates into its target and then bursts, creating a powerful shockwave of pressure and the iconic purple ring. While some characters (like Aang from Avatar or Natsu from Fairy Tail) don't have any problems with fire, most do. Unless the enemy Toothless is facing has ridiculous indestructibility, they may very well die from his first pop-shot into them. We've never seen Toothless shoot another small dragon, and because the films are PG, it's not like they would be able to show what his blast would realistically do if it hit another dragon, but as far as I can tell, even a grazing shot would rip the other animal open and burn most of their tissue into powder.
Though Toothless is small, he can take his fair share of punishment. We've not seen him be directly stabbed or shot before, but we have seen other dragons try to maul him, and he didn't even bleed. He's a big animal compared to a person, so I for one would be very afraid of trying to face him hand to hand. I think it's safe to say his reaction time and ability to sense his surroundings are far superior to normal people. However, that's not to say he would be particularly fast compared to the many over-the-top swordsmen and martial artists of fiction! Still, he's no pushover when it comes to the beatings he can give and take in close combat. I'd say we can assume that a single blow from his claws might not cut you very deeply, but they would break any bone they hit. If he swiped the side of your head, it would probably kill you. Also, though his teeth don't look all that pointed, they are clearly sharp. His head is also blunt, allowing for ideal jaw-strength. I can't give you any solid numbers, but considering sharks can easily bite off limbs, I think we can safely assume that Toothless could do that as well.
Up to this point, Toothless has shown that he's certainly very kick butt. Against characters from "realistic" genres, he'd probably have a real advantage. However, compared to characters from Marvel, One Punch Man, DC, Metroid, Avatar, or many other universes... he looks kinda low tier. Here's where the real kicker is.
Post HTTYD2 Toothless is a super-weapon.
There's a really, really good reason for Drago trying to posses the Alpha. Toothless now wields terrifying authority over the dragons of his universe. We aren't sure what all he's capable of, but in The Serpent's Heir, he was able to command tremendous, Titan class Foreverwings. So, what does this mean? This means, given the correct circumstances, Toothless might could take out even some of the stronger opponents from some of the more outrageously powerful universes. Granted, he's probably not gonna stand a chance against Saitama or other planet busting level characters, but against Ironman? Heck yeah! If Toothless were to gather a substantial army of HTTYD dragons, he would be a total nightmare to try and defeat. He's dangerous on his own, but can you imagine him wielding a swarm? HTTYD dragons are incredibly diverse. Say you are immune to fire? You might think "Haha, what's this little, black dragon gonna do?". Suddenly you find yourself against dragons who can chew through stone, dragons who spit extremely corrosive acid, dragons who can ride lighting, and dragons who can kill you simply by roaring! I mean, seriously, Toothless can muster a force that could easily defeat anything on his planet. The dragons can be small enough to climb under doors, or big enough to topple skyscrapers. Sure. he'd have to be somewhat strategic in how he used his fellow dragons, and I highly doubt Toothless would resort to creating an army unless there was a really, really good reason for it. That being said, Alpha Toothless is stupidly dangerous. I'm not sure if he could beat Aang, but he'd give him quite a hard time. Characters like Link or Corrin would be completely doomed. Captain America would be toast. Basically, even "higher tier" characters would have a very, very hard time defeating Toothless if he happened to bring a hoard with him. You guys remember when I drew Toothless versus the I-Rex? That's honestly just funny in hindsight. Even if the I-Rex had some raptors with her, she wouldn't stand a chance against the ridiculous force that Toothless could amass. Smaug from the Hobbit? I'm not saying he'd be a pushover, but I imagine repeated blasts of ice or lightning would end his reign of terror (not to mention that I think Toothless's fire blasts might could knock off scales). Baymax and Hiro... along with their friends? I doubt you'd be able to recognize their remains (was that a stab at BH6? Maybe).
Toothless has become powerful enough to devastate his own world... which is both scary and awesome! The question is... how will this play into the third film? I'm really eager to learn more about the Alpha system and to see how this authority affects Toothless.
So, what do you think? Am I off my rocker with total-fave-character-bias, or do you think Toothless might just be able to stand amongst the crazy strong characters from other stories?
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