Jovial Merryment vs Unarmed (Horse Race Tests vs Weapon Ball) | Abnormally Normal Blogs
Abnormally Normal Blogs Presents…
Jovial Merryment
Horse Race Tests’ GOAT of the Equus Genus
Unarmed
Weapon Ball’s Spherical MVP
“Iron sharpens iron. One person sharpens another. ” - Proverbs 27:17
We’ve got quite the race prepared for this event, folks! Internet competitions are a staple of modern entertainment, and we’ve managed to round up two of the biggest legends of modern web scrimblo fights to compete for your amusement. Will the legendary horse enjoy yet another victory feast, or will their well-rounded challenger score the winning point on the board?
Now, PLACE YOUR BETS on WHO WILL WIN in today’s Abnormally Normal Championship!
Before We Start…
The media for both of our contenders is straightforward enough. I will be covering everything that can be considered official for both, that being stuff that their creators (Blake Andrews and Earclacks respectively) created, were involved with, stated, or anything of the sorts.
For Jovial, this would include the 2 currently out seasons of Horse Race Tests and the OVA season (posted in Blake’s Twitter throughout 2025), creator statements on social media (again, mostly Twitter), the collab with LumpyTouch: Horse Race Tests Tournament: Here Racehorses Transcend (which is the official finale for season 1) and the short video promoting it, creator interviews (yes, these exist), the AO3 yuri fanfic (which is canon), and anything else I forgot to mention.
For Unarmed, it’s a similar story. All Weapon Ball & Block Breaker competitions on Earclacks’ social media will be looked into, alongside any other one-off videos featuring them; additionally, anything that can be found within the official Earclacks Discord server, such as the “Clackédex” cards (an official card game only playable on the Discord), creator statements, and so on will be considered. Earclacks has stated everything, even stuff exclusive to the Discord or Clackédex game, is canon, so it’s all just fair game by this point.
Given the unique nature of both challengers and this event, we’ve decided to set some rules for how this will go down. This won’t only be about which of them is better at direct combat, but also their ability to perform in races (which isn’t particularly out of the ordinary for Unarmed as they’ve participated in Block Breaker races before). Both will start off within an obstacle course, and will be allowed to attack each other by bumping into one another; thus, the two win-conditions will be if either can successfully kill the other in a fight or reach the end first. Whoever’s got the best odds of doing either wins!
Now onto the spectacle, folks!
Background
Jovial Merryment
“Horse noises ”
On April 1st, 2025, a certain Blake Andrews would upload to Twitter a new prototype for a horse racing game they were developing. It was a simple game where vaguely horse-resembling blobs would bounce around the screen and off surfaces, operating on a pixel-perfect physics system to direct where they’d bounce to, all with the purpose of reaching a delicious batch of carrots at the end. A day after its inception, they would add another horse to the next race test, one which would rapidly become the star of the show; a humble, orange horse who, after their win on the 6th race, would receive the name Jovial Merryment.
Jovial would go on to become the most successful horse of the competitions, which rapidly blew up in popularity, and despite their numerous accusations of abusing illicit substances (to be tested), this never hindered their performances on the field. They wouldn’t always win, and they’d certainly face their fair share of failures such as losing against the nightmare horses who tortured Cyan or their untimely defeat against Abomination Nation, but if there’s one thing that Jovial never does, it’s to go down easy; they rose up again after their first major loss and won the official Horse Race Tests tournament, and soon enough, it’s likely they’ll get back up again to do what they do best: race.
Unarmed
“Ball noises ”
On June 28th, 2025, YouTuber Earclacks would upload to their channel the first duel of a new series they’d decided to work on. Like many other videos on their channel, it involved 2D marbles bouncing around an area with fun physics, but these two wielded weapons, a Sword and a Dagger, which they’d use to clash with each other as they bounced around until only one remained. As it started getting traction, they’d begin implementing new balls, and a certain one piqued the viewer’s interest for the simple fact it battled… unarmed. Introduced a little under two weeks after its first episode, Unarmed would quite literally slam onto the scene.
Soon enough, they’d begin racking up an impressive record, taking down many of the strongest Weapon Balls of the time, and becoming one of the most iconic parts of the fandom with its explosive speed, power, and exhilarating fighting style. Of course, a champion wouldn’t be complete without their fair share of failures, losing the very first tournament in season 1 and ultimately fail to defeat the menace that was Duplicator upon their introduction, but if there’s one thing they’re known for, is that they always bounce back, and given their triumph in season 2’s tournament, who’s to say they don’t have one more in them?
Experience, Skill & Intelligence
Jovial Merryment
Jovial has always shown great talent when it comes to horse racing, even as early as their first appearance! Not a shock given the dozens of races they’ve been a part of. Despite all horses having their movement limited to mere bounces off of walls, they’ve been able to precisely adjust themselves on the jagged pixels of the field to precisely launch through courses at great speeds. Jovial’s primary strength is bouncing back-and-forth to get into the perfect position to bounce right through whatever obstacles are in their way, and all things considered, their patience and observance is not to be underestimated. They’ve been able to escape spherical dead-end rooms in seconds via small adjustments, used Bullet’n Board’s [Blue] body as a corner to send themselves to the next room in a straight line and get through the following obstacles, do the reverse and move around a spherical room at such angles that they can avoid direct contact with Superstitional Realism [White] and grab a hold of the carrots first, repeatedly bounced off of a weirdly-curved triangle until it sent them right towards the carrots, and most infamously, after having a… ahem… passionate moment with Lightning Strikes Thrice [Yellow] and being far behind as a result, they simply slid past every other competitor, caught up to Door Knob [Brown] and barely stole the win right from them (for the record, the LumpyTouch video makes this interaction canon, so yes, horse yuri).
Even when confronted by other horses, they’re not the type to go down easy. In their first encounter with the (at the time) faster Lightning Strikes Thrice and the cunning Door Knob, they could move around and quickly outmaneuver them to get to the following room, then consistently gate kept the former from progressing through sheer precise movements. They’ve fended off both Bullet’n Board and Downtown Skybox [Grey] from the path forward and sent them to a dead-end, used Door Knob as a body shield to block off the other horses, shoved themselves between both Door Knob and Downtown Skybox to send themselves diagonally through the course, stood in Resolute Mind Afternoon’s [Red] way to get pushed by them and boost forward, and many more impressive showings. Hell, if you look into the AO3 fanfic, they and Superstitional Realism could battle with the dangerous nightmare horses, including the blade-wielding Nighttime Knifemare, avoiding their attacks and fending them off with charges and feints while bare-handed.
Even other horses early on could employ surprisingly tenacious maneuvers like ducking out of the way of incoming horses [Blue], using other horses as walls to bounce directly towards the objective [Blue], gatekeep progress from other horses by bouncing back and forth in front of the way forward [Blue], intercept other horses as they lunge towards the goal [White], perform precise 180° bounces to push back incoming competitors [Yellow], bounce off of corners to move in completely straight lines and guarantee they can move forward [Yellow], and make precise pixel-perfect bounces off of shapes as complex as circles to launch directly towards the carrots at the end [Blue].
All their skills came to a head during the final race of the Horse Race Tests tournament, where despite being visibly extremely injured and wasting nearly a minute in the starting area, they’d go on to effortlessly move past the other horses and fight off Nighttime Knifemare [Cyprus] during the latter half of the race, sending them back through the track and claiming victory.
Unfortunately they’re not smart enough to talk or listen to sick beats…
Unarmed
As the most successful Weapon Ball, Unarmed is an absolute powerhouse in combat, something they prove time and time again. Despite being literally unarmed, they’ve defeated dozens of weapon-wielding opponents throughout their history, primarily relying on a simple hit-and-run strategy; building up momentum from the start, then using large bursts of speed to charge at their foe, strike them, then move away to avoid a counter-attack. They’ve been able to expertly avoid sword swings from Sword, Bow’s leagues of arrows, Staff’s large-scale explosions, Boomerang’s wide and unpredictable arcs, Flask’s deadly puddle traps, and many more; they’ve even dodged attacks by killing their own momentum on a dime to deliver a follow-up attack, making their opponent miss or (in the Flask instance) used their opponent as a pogo stick to bounce away from danger. Unarmed is generally extremely aggressive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not astute or adaptable, capable of coming up with plans of attack on the fly to take down different foes, such as when they defeated Scythe, whose ability inflicts foes with deadly poisons that kill them overtime, by focusing on rushing them down regardless of counter-attacks due to their reliance on stalling. Or when they abused Katana’s inability to land consecutive strikes to overwhelm them with attacks every time they got hit, knowing Katana would be unable to retaliate for a couple of seconds and actively weaponizing Katana’s rapid slices to gain absurd momentum for this; this strategy of purposely taking hits is pretty common for Unarmed, as they also pulled a similar trick against Scepter, aiming to overpower its health draining effect through their own superior offense, landing hits every time Scepter did to take it down (and only losing due to getting stuck in a bad bounce loop). They notably defeated Grimoire, whose ability let them create clones of Unarmed with their same attack power, by blasting through them before they could pick up much speed and striking at Grimoire directly.
Unarmed isn’t just proficient at 1v1s though, as they’ve fought in all sorts of different matches, be they battle royales where they bounce around like a mad ball and steal most health packets for themselves while overwhelming the competition, raids against giant bosses where they rush in and out while dealing chip damage against the threat and avoiding being hit, block break races where they prioritize their strength and speed to bash through whatever obstacles stand in their way, team fights where they acted more as a disruptor to isolate balls or deal quick burst damage via their sheer velocity, a wild 1v8 match where they allowed themselves to be swarmed to build up their momentum and quickly steamroll through everybody there, and a large-scale raid with themselves as the raid boss where they mainly aimed to find opportunities to reach the walls and gain some speed.
The balls they’re defeating aren’t pushovers either, as all Weapon Balls are shown to be skilled at fighting from their inception, with balls like Sword being skilled enough from their very first fight to precisely strike through Dagger’s absurdly fast swinging defense, accurately reflect the absurdly fast screen-spanning attacks from Spear, deflect dozens of arrows simultaneously from Bow, and fight them all off in a battle royale. When working together, they’ve pulled off high-stakes rescues on a timer (saving, ironically, Unarmed) and taken down some vastly more powerful raid bosses, even battling against and defeating entirely new opponents like the Block Breaker balls when they first appeared in their world, showing they can certainly handle nearly any kind of situation.
This would all culminate with the season 2 Tournament, where they’d go on to defeat Sword by outmaneuvering them (despite their better range) till they could build up enough speed to outpace Sword and overwhelm them with attacks, take down Hammer by turning the weight of their own blows against them via using them as a way to quickly gain speed and rushing them before they could build up momentum of their own, destroyed Dagger by simply ignoring its defense and tanking it to punch the fuck out of it, and finally secured victory against Wrench through using their defensive turrets as platforms to bounce off from and increase their own energy with, taking every opportunity to catch Wrench out of a defensive position and swarming them with attacks.
Also they might eat rocks or something…
Equipment
Jovial Merryment
Carrots
Yummers.
Cape
Yes Jovial, we see the fit.
Hat
ALRIGHT, WE GET IT!
Ice Cream
So kind…
Musical Album
I don’t know enough about music to really comment on this.
Drugs
Performance enhancing drugs Jovial takes to drastically improve their physical capabilities.
Horse Race Tests Trophy
The ultimate trophy Jovial obtained after winning the official HRT tournament. It holds the unexplained power to levitate, so take that as you will.
Unarmed
Health Packs
Boots
Despite their different name, it’s canonically just Unarmed but with boots for a weapon. They technically come with the benefit of allowing Unarmed to parry attacks, like those from Sword or Giga Bow, though it removes their ability to attack from all parts of their body, and makes their attacks parryable in return (see Abilities), meaning it’s a lot easier for an opponent to fend them off.
It’s basically a downgrade, though the Clackédex card does at least let them do sick as hell drop kicks.
Abilities
Jovial Merryment
Horse Physiology
Despite looking like strange blob/frog creatures, we know Jovial and their fellow competitors are horses (they’re just like, really far away), and they certainly display the tenacity of such. Due to their fascination with carrots (except for Comely), these horses can compete in non-stop competitions against one another where they constantly slam at full speed into walls or each other without rest, with Jovial and Superstitional Realism racing and clashing with the evil horses for over 8 and a half minutes, consistent with Supersitional and Cyan’s duel lasting for nearly 8 minutes of constant action and Door Knob and Bullet’n Board’s duel going for over 28 minutes. They’ve even been shown hanging out and swimming underwater for several minutes at a time (even practicing basketball while at it). This is all before bringing up Nighttime Knifemare going an entire week within a looping room constantly running through it with 0 food, indicating they likely don’t even need to eat or rest for long periods of time if they push themselves hard enough.
Flight
LumpyTouch’s hype video for Jovial depicts them flying in space, so obviously they can fly.
Acceleration
A consistent thing in later races is how the horses will begin accelerating the longer a race goes. The most blatant showing with this is with Knifemare, who could progressively speed up while trapped within their looping room until they got fast enough to escape. Jovial also displays a significant speed boost throughout the entire Vessel 6 race, indicating they can boost their own speed at will if they’re locked-in enough.
Limited Regeneration/Purification
Despite having been turned into Fearsome Fate after their defeat against the nightmare horses (see Forms), Jovial’s next appearance in the OVA season shows them perfectly back to normal, having none of their previous injuries or being disfigured. While we lack an exact timeframe, we see Oob/Cyan and Superstitional slowly recovering from their own nightmarish forms and injuries over the span of a couple of days during season 2, and in the same season, Truck Stop Highway recovers from it in seconds after winning a game, indicating it can vary depending on how well the horse performs.
Petrification & Fusionism Negation
During the OVA season, Cyan and Superstitional would be fused together by the strange fusion apple (this is consistently shown to be the main effect of the apple) and petrified, leaving them as an inanimate statue. Despite this, Jovial would be able to easily free the two with just a touch, meaning they both undid their petrification and separated them by simply bumping into them. [Note: Other horses during this race also bumped into Cyan and Superstitional without freeing them, indicating this is an ability exclusive to Jovial.]
Duplication[?]
I don’t even know, man. Apparently this is what transcendence looks like.
Unarmed
Ball Physiology
As a Weapon Ball, Unarmed is an absolute beast, mainly in regards to how hard they are to properly put down. They can be stabbed and sliced by swords or daggers, pierced by arrows or shurikens, slammed with hammers, blown up by fireballs, afflicted with poison, struck by dozens of cuts simultaneously, having their health directly sapped from their bodies, and so much more without even slowing down or showing any form of physical impairment from it all. While we don’t exactly know what they’re made of, they’re fully elastic, maximizing their ability to bounce while experiencing 0 friction, meaning they’ll never stop moving (though they only weigh about 5 kg).
Using the Clackédex card game for reference, they can even withstand attacks that target their vital organs directly like Lance’s Piercing Heart and Glaives’ Heart Piercer, or fight through Cutlass’ Seaborne Strike which leaves a large gash in their body, essentially meaning that they’re unable to be properly worn down or even be bothered by concepts like blood loss, only stopping until they’re dead. This is certainly shown with their fight against Giga Hammer, which went for nearly 13 minutes with constant battle against a significantly stronger opponent.
Palm Burst
An ability from their Clackédex card which allows them to generate energy to send opponents back.
Omnidirectional Damage
Since Unarmed both lacks a specific weapon AND has no limbs to attack given… it’s a ball, it’s instead capable of doing damage through literally any part of its body; in simple terms, if anything touches Unarmed, it gets hurt. This also means that since Unarmed has no weapons, it’s incapable of being parried, meaning it can bypass normally nigh-impenetrable defenses like Dagger’s rotational speed (which would normally deflect incoming weapons or projectiles and push foes back) by just walking through it and hitting Dagger directly.
Resurrection
At the end of every Weapon Ball fight, one ball has to inevitably die. Upon death, they’re reduced to a bunch of tiny spheres that quickly dissipate into nothing, yet they always come right back for the next fight, good as new, implying some form of resurrection. While we do know there are multiple Unarmed (like with Super Unarmed fighting Giga Unarmed, the Unarmed family, and the 100 Unarmed videos), creator statements confirm that balls simply respawn after death, so we know the main Unarmed we see in fights is the same one. The main issue comes from how long it actually takes them to respawn, consistently taking about 3 hours for Unarmed AT LEAST, meaning it’s unlikely they can get a cheap win through respawning again and again.
In the Clackédex card game, Unarmed can even continue to exist and fight as a ghost incapable of moving onto the afterlife! Though they can only remain in this state during Halloween and will disappear upon its ending, making it pretty useless in most circumstances.
Damage Growth & Acceleration
Every Weapon Ball possesses some form of way to “scale” up during a fight, becoming more and more threatening the more they land hits over the course of a battle, one way or another. In Unarmed’s case, it’s fairly straightforward; every time Unarmed lands a hit, their maximum damage/speed increases, which then allows them to become faster and hit even harder. Should be noted that Unarmed does still need to then build up back their momentum to strike at full power, though they can do this by simply bouncing off surfaces (made easy by their aforementioned 0 friction), and usually hitting an opponent already gives them enough momentum for their next bounce. We never see an expressed limit to how much they can grow, and according to Earclacks’ Weapon Balls/Block Breakers guidelines, they can outright grow for infinity, meaning that there’s no real limit to how much farther they can go.
Flight
While normally affected by gravity, we do see in stuff like their 1-on-1 training session with the Black Immovable Orb that Unarmed is capable of deciding to fly around the map. This is consistent with all the balls being able to fly around in larger maps where gravity would prevent them from fighting like in the Giga Weapon boss fights or the 1v100 duels. Super Unarmed is also able to do this freely (see Forms).
Afterimage Creation
Just by passively moving, Unarmed generates a trail of afterimages. While usually not very distracting, videos like Unarmed's solo round with the Black Immovable Orb show that once they pick up enough speed, these afterimages can cover the entire battlefield and make it nigh-impossible to keep track of the real Unarmed (even during moments of stopped time).
Phasing
In the same aforementioned video, Unarmed eventually built up enough velocity to clip through the walls of the arena and go out of bounds, something they also replicated in their fight against 100 Daggers, and which is a pretty consistent ability for characters with similar abilities like Speedy.
Timescale
A common power seen in just about every Weapon Balls video; whenever a ball lands a hit on another or parries a blow, everything on-screen briefly freezes. This is shown to interrupt abilities that operate on time ticks like Scythe’s poisons, indicating it isn’t merely stopping things in place, but is directly affecting time. And yes, this is an officially recognized thing that is meant to freeze everything on the field, including projectiles like Bow’s arrows (seen in videos like Sword vs Bow) and Dagger’s absurd swinging speeds. [Note: While Earclacks has changed the system to one that doesn’t freeze projectiles, this is mostly due to timescale not working well in free-for-all situations where everything is constantly being frozen from across the map, and doesn’t change the fact it’s been directly acknowledged as an actual thing.]
Forms
Jovial Merryment
Humanoid
A humanoid form Jovial sometimes takes. Besides technically allowing them to throw hands, it’s not too noteworthy.
Fearsome Fate
A form achieved after Jovial lost to the nightmare horses and was “banished to the shadows,” this appears to be a highly corrupted version of Jovial, glitched out and deformed from their transformation, and visibly extremely bloody and injured. Despite the damage to their body, it appears this didn’t at all hamper their abilities, as they still won the entire official Horse Race Test tournament. This form even seems to have given them some new powers, as they were able to conjure up a strange green storm that blotted out the sky after winning the tournament. Other nightmare horses have displayed unique abilities of their own, like distorting the camera’s vision to make it all wobbly or make it heavily glitch out to a disorienting degree and even make the camera switch away from an ongoing race to another, which Fearsome Fate could likely replicate (though whether this is done by manipulating perception or just affecting the technological camera itself is unclear).
As of Vessel 6, they have visually reverted back to their original state, making it dubious if they can even achieve this form again, so it’s mostly being brought up for the sake of completionism.
Real Form
Get real.
Unarmed
Super Unarmed
A powered-up state of Unarmed that grants a significant boost to their physical prowess, making them far stronger than the average Weapon Ball (shown with them defeating an entire group of them in a 1v8). Additionally, Super Unarmed is able to freely fly around the field even when other balls are limited by gravity, giving them a big mobility advantage they can use to pin them and land devastating combo strings. Though the main draw of their super form is the, for a lack of a better term, “Super Armor” that makes them impossible to push back or slow down. This isn’t something tied to strength either, as even against the much larger, stronger, and heavier Giga Unarmed, Super Unarmed was physically incapable of being pushed back or slown down when slamming into Giga Unarmed, though it’s worth noting they still ended up losing that fight since Giga Unarmed’s strength advantage meant they ended up doing more damage to themselves, and their inability to bounce off of opponents also means they can’t use them to build up momentum, relying solely on solid surfaces. Speaking of!
Giga Unarmed
Unarmed but big.
There’s not much more to it than that, really. Giga Unarmed gains a massive strength and size edge, far surpassing even Super Unarmed as they could pretty casually defeat them in their duel. Giga Unarmed’s weight combined with how much speed it can pick up lets it steamroll through regular Weapon Balls, shown with its fight with Super Sword where it abused its size to pin Super Sword in a corner and beat the crap out of them, then building up so much speed it was blitzing Sword to the point they were struggling to land a hit despite how big it is. Though its giant size does make it easier to hit when it hasn’t built up momentum yet, and enough balls working together can successfully slow it down by getting in its way (though admittedly this was in a wide arena where they had a lot of room to avoid it and Giga Unarmed struggled to reach the walls).
Unarmed NEO
Gulp
Jovial bros…?
Resistances
Jovial Merryment
Extreme Cold & Radiation: The LumpyTouch hype video depicts them casually standing atop snowy mountains and even the vacuum of space with no issues.
Drugs: They can inject themselves with an UNHEALTHY degree of performance enhancing drugs (to the point the song even states they’re having a heart attack) and be perfectly ok, implying a degree of resistance.
Electricity: Fellow racer Supersitional Realism could survive a barrage of shock attacks from Cyan (a fake one), a single of which is capable of paralyzing a horse for several seconds. Cyan (the real one) also survived this same electricity when facing their evil copy.
Spatial Manipulation/BFR [Limited]: After being trapped in an endlessly looping room, Nighttime Knifemare could continually speed up over the course of a day until they became fast enough to escape.
Unarmed
Pain: As listed in the Ball Physiology section, the Weapon Balls are essentially impervious to pain and can continue to fight through any sort of damage up until they die of it.
Extreme Heat: They can tank hits from Scepter’s fireballs, Splodey’s bombs, and Lazer’s laser (the Clackédex card of which states is burning hot enough to cut through anything in its path) just fine. Additionally, they can survive Pitchfork’s ability, Hell’s Undertaker, that exposes the opposing balls to the fiery heat of The Seven Rings of Hell, and Grimoire’s The Spawn of Flame, which singes opponents with pastel flames whose pain seeps into their skin long after the flame is gone.
Electricity: Able to withstand Magnet’s Mutual Attraction ability, which electrifies a ball’s weapon to deal damage (despite technically not having weapons???).
Acid: Able to tank extensive exposure to Flask’s chemicals, which according to the Clackédex card, are hydrofluoric acid.
Soul Manipulation [Limited]: While not outright immune, can withstand Scythe’s Reaping Soul ability, which reaps some health from the enemy (and obviously targets the soul while doing so). Unarmed can also survive having their soul merged together with other entities.
Poisons [Limited]: All Weapon Balls can keep fighting through repeated doses of Scythe’s poisons; while it still hurts them, the balls do not slow down or even show any signs of being physically affected until they die of it.
Mind/Empathic Manipulation: Can resist the effects of Soul Guitar for a time, which plays a melody that subliminally convinces a foe to surrender.
Time Manipulation [Limited]: During their solo training session, eventually picked up enough speed to begin moving during the timescale between hits.
Damage/Ability Redirection: In the Weapon Ball DODGEBALL video, was completely unphased by Shield’s damage redirection (though the damage was knocked away from Shield, Unarmed wasn’t harmed at all by it), which normally redirects the damage that hits it back at the attacker, even turning their abilities against them.
Feats
Jovial Merryment
Overall
The first horse to receive their name.
Has defeated nearly every other horse in races.
Power
Shattered the screen with a punch in the LumpyTouch hype video (shown above).
In the AO3 fanfic, slammed Door Knob with their full weight hard enough to send both crashing to the ground.
All the horses can push away pictures of Gold Ship (and some other horse girl) fishing.
Party 6/6 reveals these were Abomination Nation clones, but we see in earlier races that the horses are comparable to these.
Speed
Held the title for fastest course clear throughout nearly all of season 1. [00:32:10]
The LumpyTouch hype video depicts them going at 483 km/h (Mach 0.391)
Moves faster than the eye can track and blitzes past the other horses (Mach 1.912)
Reaches space (seemingly via flight) which would require achieving escape velocity (Mach 32.612)
The A03 fanfic has them move so fast they appear as a blur, too fast for other horses to glimpse.
Durability
Can consistently withstand slamming into things at top speed (0.001 - 7.477 Tons of TNT)
Unarmed
Overall
Defeated a group of Weapon Balls in a 1v8 match as Super Unarmed.
Did all this even after getting nerfed.
Has met the legendary racer Jovial Merryment- hey wait a second.
Power
Speed
Can consistently avoid Bow’s arrows and Staff’s fireballs.
Began blitzing Super Sword in their Giga form despite the size difference.
Killed Lazer before their laser took them down (Potentially Speed of Light)
It could also be that Lazer’s laser lingers some time after death. Note that Duplicator pulls off something similar too.
Built up enough speed to move during the timescale between hits (Mach 869.69 - 7,895.769 to Infinite) [Debatable, see Before the Verdict]
Durability
Takes hits from every Weapon Balls under the Sun, including Giga forms like Giga Spear.
Tanks their own force being redirected back at them by Shield.
Unharmed by being used as a dodgeball in a game of… dodgeball.
Could withstand its own energy as it rammed into the Black Immovable Orb (53.17 Tons of TNT - 4.38 Kilotons of TNT) [See Before the Verdict]
Scaling
Jovial Merryment
Other Horses
As one of the top horses, Jovial has dealt with just about every other horse under the Sun, racing and battling against them. In general, they can compare to every other horse here.
After being broken out of an egg, Superstitional raced through the track in under a minute.
Many horses can react to and pass around a basketball at absurd speeds.
Superstitional survived fake Cyan’s paralyzing electric attacks, and Cyan could similarly withstand these electric shocks from their copy.
Nighttime Knifemare (while in a looping room) accelerated enough to cover it in less than a second (Mach 0.339)
They eventually began going fast enough to outright escape it (Infinite) [Debatable, see Before the Verdict]
Unarmed
Weapon Balls & Block Breakers
Unarmed has fought with just about every notable Weapon Ball, defeating many top tiers in their tournament run, taking on even the absurdly powerful Giga Balls (albeit usually with help), and has even taken on powerful Block Breakers like Duplicator. Their scaling is especially aided by the Clackédex card game, where they can similarly fight and take hits from just about every other card out there, including various of the OC cards, giving them a large range of feats to pull from.
Whip’s Tortorous Constriction can generate sonic booms (Mach 1)
Brass Knuckles’ Uncontrollable Rage blasts opposing balls yards away.
Dagger can spin its dagger fast enough to appear invisible and generate afterimages (Mach 1.412 & 1.206 MegaJoules)
Various Weapon Balls can parry blows from Giga Sword’s giant sword and tank Giga Hammer’s giant hammer.
The average Block Breaker (and Weapon Ball) can, well, break big blocks (0.289 Tons of TNT)
Earclacks claims Lance lunges at the speed of light (Speed of Light) [Potentially Hyperbole]
Goat.
Zameboni’s Heavenly Arrows can swim across “the infinity of space” to attack foes (Infinite) [Potentially Hyperbole]
Grimoire and Shield creating clones of each other led to Earclacks’ computer crashing (Universal???)
This is moreso a chain-reaction caused by their two abilities overloading the simulation, and thus not applicable to conventional power. Still funny though.
Weaknesses
Jovial Merryment
As persistent as they are, Jovial is by no means a perfect horse and does have some failings to their name. A common vulnerability seen as early as their first race and which has continued to plague them throughout their career is their difficulty at the start of races. They tend to struggle maneuvering around other horses in the beginning area and get pushed back until they’re one of the last horses out, if not the last one out. This likely has to do with their more slow-paced, repetitive style, which while making them one of the most consistently accurate horses, can also lead to them getting stuck in the same room repeatedly attempting to get the perfect angle for a bounce while other horses get by through brute force. We particularly see these two issues exemplified during their big loss near the end of season 1, wherein they were repeatedly trapped by the tricky map design and, whenever they started making progress, were quickly pushed back by the evil horses and kept trapped in the same corner till the round’s end. This problem even carries over to the latest OVA season, showing they’ve never quite gotten over it. While Jovial can absolutely make miracles happen, these tend to take some time and an aggressive enough opponent could exploit this. Finally, it’s important to note that Jovial’s specialty is far more focused on racing than direct combat; while they certainly can fight and frequently clash with other racers, they’ve never been in an encounter solely focused around fighting, which does give them some inexperience in that field. Even the AO3 fanfic touches on this, with Jovial and Superstitional being overwhelmed from the constant attacks and losing the race as a result.
Unarmed
Unarmed is one hell of a powerhouse, but they have their flaws, mainly with their fighting style. They’re an all-out offensive attacker, meaning that while their ability to bypass parries is very potent at getting through defensive fighting styles, it also means that they themselves can’t parry to defend from attacks, relying on either dodging or tanking it directly. In 1v1s, they can generally get around this, but in longer, drawn out fights like battle royales, they can end up taking way too much damage throughout it and die earlier than their opponents. Additionally, opponents with absurd AoE tools that shut down their usual evasive tactics like Spear can certainly give them a lot of trouble, which is how they lost the season 1 Tournament (though they did get close to winning that, which is a notable showing of their battle prowess). Finally, their entire ability to do damage tends to rely on bouncing first to build up speed, which has lead to quite a few losses before, either via getting a bad bounce and getting stuck bouncing back and forth in place (however, this isn’t an issue if they’re flying), or with weapons that restrict mobility like Wrench, whose turrets did nearly defeat them by blocking them off and trapping them in place. We even see this when Unarmed fought alongside Wrench against Scythe, and when Unarmed fought Duplicator and was swarmed by the clones to prevent them from moving. This isn’t to say Unarmed is helpless in these situations, as they did nearly pull off a win regardless in all of them, but it does show their fighting style is by no means perfect.
Before the Verdict
Cognitive Jovial?
During the latter half of season 1, a new group of horses was introduced with off-putting, disturbing, almost nightmarish appearances, and thus were dubbed “nightmare horses” by the community. Given the timing that they were introduced shortly after the video where Cyan was left trapped by themselves in a room, it became a common theory that these horses were actually some form of abstract nightmares Cyan had regarding the races and inability to win (there’s a lot more to this theory than I have the time to get into, so I’ll leave a post going more into the details surrounding it here). Nearing the end of the season, Jovial and Supersitional faced off against these beings, being seen as them somehow breaching into Cyan’s “purgatory” to save them, which would imply some absurd mental intrusion ability if taken at face value. However, it’s important to note that this is only one interpretation of the events; while the creator is incredibly open to fan content of HRT to the point he considers said content to be “more official” than the original in regards to its community aspect, he has briefly commented that he believed people were reading into the purgatory aspect too much and implied the evil horses were, well, literally just evil horses. He did also say he wasn’t exactly deconfirming it, but them being some kind of literal abstract manifestations of Cyan’s insecurities wouldn’t really add up with stuff like the tournament, where the nightmare horses competed alongside everybody else like completely physical, ordinary contestants.
Basically, no, Jovial can’t enter your mind to fight off your trauma. Sorry.
Infinite Speed Jovial
During the events of season 2, Nighttime Knifemare ended up being the only horse not chosen for a basketball team, and was thus sent to their own personal purgatory, forced to continually run through a room that always looped them back to the opposite side whenever they tried to escape. Given enough time however, Knifemare began getting faster and faster till they eventually just… escaped. Now, what does this mean? Well, it’s hard to fully interpret it; sure, it’s obvious they escaped a looping room by getting fast enough, but the exact implications of what this means are unclear. You could interpret it similarly to traversing an infinite space, since the nature of a looping space would technically create infinite distance for you to have to traverse, and thus could be argued as an infinite speed feat, but the lack of general context surrounding it (outside of a joke Tweet claiming they ended up in China) inherently makes this fairly speculative, since we don’t even really know if this was a literal spatial loop or if they got pulled out by some outside factor.
Additionally, even if used, this took at best a day of building up speed to achieve, meaning it’s not a degree of speed Jovial can really achieve on a whim, and would likely take them a good while before achieving that point, so unless a fight/race lasts for a really long time, it’s unlikely they’d manage to reach this degree of speed mid-confrontation.
Infinite Speed Unarmed [General Speed/AP Arguments]
Unarmed’s most impressive and interesting feat comes from the video “When will Unarmed clip out?” where, through building up speed by constantly slamming into the Black Immovable Orb, they’d begin moving during the momentary time freeze between each attack. As previously covered in the Timescale section, the freeze is directly acknowledged and referred to as freezing everything on-screen such as arrows, with other showings demonstrating it can even make Dagger’s absurdly fast swinging speed completely stop. With this in mind, given it’s referred to as a freeze, operates by altering the timescale of the simulation (so it is, in fact, time based), and Unarmed blatantly only managing to move through it via raw speed and not any sort of specific power (shown with them not being able to move through it from the start and only beginning to do so once enough speed is built up), and we can certainly argue this would qualify as an Infinite speed feat, which wouldn’t be too inconsistent with other statements explaining that balls can grow in stats infinitely.
Now, you could still try to nitpick this by arguing it’s actually only an extreme time slow, and not a full-on time freeze, which, while contradicted by Earclacks referring to it as a freeze, is technically possible. However, that’s where the finite ends for the feat come in; if we were to go with the idea that it’s just a very potent slowing down effect, the fact it can make things like arrows and Dagger’s speed look stone still would, frankly, yield some pretty crazy values. [For simplicity’s sake, here is the full calculation.] By measuring how much Unarmed can move within the timescale and estimating how little the arrows move in the same timeframe, we can find Unarmed would be moving anywhere from Mach 869 to Mach 1063, which when considering how Unarmed can withstand slamming into the Black Immovable Orb at those speeds (and obviously uses their own Kinetic Energy as their main way to attack anyways), could be translated to striking strength/durability at 53 Tons of TNT to 79 Tons of TNT.
If you’re still iffy on these values being applicable given Earclacks later switched to a system that doesn’t freeze projectiles like arrows (though that was purely for technical reasons, but I digress), then using Dagger for reference instead would actually get even higher. By calculating how fast Dagger would AT MINIMUM be swinging, then applying a similar method as before, one could get Unarmed’s speed in this scene as high as Mach 7,895 hitting with an energy of 4.4 Kilotons of TNT. Even if you argued this was calc-stacking, and instead you used a value as small as the human sword swinging speed (obviously an extreme low-ball given Dagger is evidently far faster than that), the value would still reach Mach 326 & 7.5 Tons of TNT. No matter how you slice it, this feat will always get shockingly high results even without infinite ends, and while obviously Unarmed needed to build up to it, this only really took approximately 2 minutes, so it shouldn’t be all that hard for them to pull it off in a longer fight (though it’s important to note the values for physical strength would only apply for durability until Unarmed reaches said speed).
Verdict
Alright folks, both of our contestants are set and standing ready at the starting line. With all their weapons, armors, and skills set in stone, let’s analyze this match-up to estimate who is the most likely to take the crown. If you instead just wish to enjoy the race, however, then you can skip right to the chase! [Do note that the following script will contain spoilers for the victor.]
The Script
For those interested in the nitty gritty details, let’s get started!
Warm-Up
Starting things off, we can look at these two’s physical capabilities. Looking at them side-by-side, both are absolute powerhouses in their respective worlds, with Jovial tanking hits from fellow horses capable of kicking through walls, and effortlessly no-selling their attacks, even being able to blitz past them at speeds of Mach 1.9 while leaving a notable crater! If you truly want to high-ball things, they can even accelerate to the point they leave Earth’s atmosphere altogether, requiring at minimum speeds around Mach 32.6, and given they can withstand slamming into other horses at top speed, their output could reach as high as 0.001 - 7.5 Tons of TNT. Of course, it’s worth noting the latter speed and power have an unknown timeframe for how long it took Jovial to actually reach those speeds, meaning that while that value could absolutely be applied to their durability, their ability to actually weaponize that degree of energy is dubious and would at best take a decent while before they could build up to those speeds, at least given their other performances. If we wanted to go all out, they’d certainly compare to Nighttime Knifemare given their history together, which is crucial due to Knifemare’s showing of escaping an infinitely looping room through raw speed build-up, possibly putting them all the way up to Infinite speed depending on how it’s interpreted, though this took at minimum a day to get to, meaning it’s not exactly a degree of speed Jovial would pull out on a whim.
On the other hand, Unarmed has more than enough to keep up here, being durable enough to shake off explosions reaching 0.14 Tons of TNT and slam through large blocks, requiring up to 0.29 Tons of TNT. Their initial speed is a bit tricky to pin down, possibly downscaling Dagger’s swinging speed of Mach 1.4 through comparing them to Sword, though if that doesn’t do it for people, the card game would let them cleanly scale to Whip and their Mach 1 showing. This is all before diving into their top speeds, where they could begin moving at such speeds that even the time-freezing effect between their strikes was unable to fully stop them! Values for this can vary, but even the lowest interpretation would still put this at Mach 326.09 and 7.5 Tons of TNT, and higher arguments could get higher speeds ranging from Mach 869.7 & 53.2 Tons of TNT all the way to Mach 7,895.8 & 4.4 Kilotons of TNT; if you were to take this showing at face value however, which is supported by creator statements, then this could even be argued to be an Infinite speed showing as well, and it only took them 2 minutes of fighting to achieve this state.
Now, with all their physical capabilities laid out, let’s tackle how they’d compare in this competition. Everybody take a seat and enjoy the show!
Renders by Sumika
The Fight
In a direct brawl, it’s clear Unarmed has a significant advantage. Sure, Jovial would have a slight speed advantage when comparing their base showings, with them being nearly Mach 2 while Unarmed generally falls within the range of Mach 1, but while both can constantly get faster and hit harder, Unarmed has a HUGE advantage in how quickly they can escalate. Within the span of a short scuffle, they can begin blitzing opponents they were previously comparable to, while Jovial usually takes a couple of minutes just to show a noticeable speed increase, and nowhere near enough to compare to Unarmed’s showings. Given their showings with the Black Immovable Orb, within 2 minutes they could jump up all the way to speeds of BARE MINIMUM Mach 300+, a speed far outclassing anything Jovial has been shown to reproduce themselves, with their best speed showing only reaching Mach 36 at best, and that was something done with an unspecified timeframe. Additionally, Unarmed will always have the edge in raw durability and strength, given with their lowest showings, surviving Giga Staff’s 0.14 Ton explosions would be beyond just about any visual power feat Jovial has ever demonstrated (which tend to be within the wall range), with their only way to surpass this being a moreso theoretical degree of durability (7.5 Tons of TNT) based on the orbit-escaping feat, which in itself gets matched by even the lowest end of the Black Immovable Orb feat that also gets to 7.5 Tons of TNT. In other words, being as generous to Jovial as possible, both would start with comparable durability and Jovial would be ever so slightly faster to start with, but Unarmed could immediately snowball out of control after just a few seconds and far surpass their strength to stomp them into the dirt. If you were to use any of the higher ends for the orb feat, then Unarmed would be surpassing them even faster, making it worse and worse for Jovial. Of course, there’s still the infinite speed elephants in the room, and while you can nitpick aspects of both feats all you want, generally this exchange would always favor Unarmed. If you buy infinite speed for both, Unarmed can achieve it far faster than Jovial can (2 minutes vs at least a day), so they’d end up blitzing; if you don’t buy infinite speed for either, as discussed above, finite speed still favors Unarmed; if you buy infinite speed for Jovial but don’t for Unarmed, recall how Jovial would need a whole-ass day of building up speed to match this, and Jovial would need to do this without being interrupted as their speed resets if they bump into something… meaning that if they touch a single wall or Unarmed simply stands in front of them (or blows them away with Palm), their speed would reset all over again and they’d be back to square one while Unarmed would just be getting faster and faster, meaning again, speed would reasonably still favor Unarmed even in a worst case scenario.
Bringing their abilities into the fray doesn’t help Jovial much either, as Unarmed can counter or benefit from anything Jovial can do. Jovial’s duplicates achieved through “transcendence” have never been used for combat-purposes before, but assuming Jovial tried to do so, Unarmed has a ton of experience outmaneuvering all sorts of foes and has defeated opponents with cloning powers before, meaning they could easily use the clones as platforms to bounce off from and build up speed even faster before one-shotting them once they’re strong enough; even if they cornered and tried to pin Unarmed in place, Super Unarmed’s super armor would make this strategy moot and, in fact, would only help them grow at an even faster rate, similar to how Super Unarmed won its 1v8 duel. Besides this, Unarmed could also counter the clones through Palm Burst to push them all away, overwhelming them with afterimages to make itself essentially impossible to hit, or just rushing down the original Jovial since we see in the same video that the clones need to fuse back into the first Jovial. All this is before mentioning Unarmed’s better survivability and healing; while the horses are tough and technically have better endurance showings (being able to run for a week straight), their ability to heal is much more dubious considering it took Cyan and Superstitional Realism multiple days to heal from their nightmare horse forms (and while Garbage Bin healed from their injuries in seconds, this was only after successfully winning the race, implying Jovial would need to win first before they could heal themselves). On the other hand, Unarmed has health packs for immediate healing to fall back on, and their resurrection is much more potent than anything Jovial has been shown to heal from and has a MUCH shorter timeframe, only taking about 3 hours (while neither form of healing/resurrection is fast enough to bring them back into a fight if they were to be taken down, Unarmed inherently still holds the edge of being able to bounce back faster if it came down to it, such as in the instance of a Double KO), not to mention the balls being physically unaffected by severe injuries like being stabbed, having massive gashes carved into their bodies, and receiving attacks directly to their hearts, simply continuing to fight like nothing happened, meaning that even with better general endurance, Jovial will be worn down far faster here.
Besides that, Jovial’s ability to negate petrification and fusions is useless here given that, while a lot of balls within Unarmed’s verse do actually rely on fusion, Unarmed is not one of them simply because they are built different, and their flight can easily be matched by either base Unarmed simply deciding they want to fly or Super Unarmed, not to mention Unarmed has instant win options with stuff like using Giga Unarmed’s size or Super Unarmed’s super armor to pin Jovial into a corner and beat their ass till they go down. Jovial isn’t incompetent at fighting as established earlier, but they do consistently need time to begin speeding up and get into the swing of things, and it’s been shown a hyper-aggressive opponent constantly attacking them will overwhelm them and leave them wide open, while Unarmed has faced and exploited this EXACT kind of weakness before, giving them everything they need to win a direct scuffle.
The winner of this category is Unarmed!
The Race
Of course, a fight is only one side of the coin, but unfortunately for Jovial, even with their superior experience in this category, Unarmed still has everything they need to take the edge.
For starters, Jovial doesn’t really have showings of opting to use their stranger abilities in races (such as flight or duplication), even in serious situations where horses are in genuine danger. This doesn’t mean they won’t resort to them, but their general lack of experience means it’d likely take some time for them to go for it. If they took this race seriously, it’s likely they’d start the race with a big burst of speed like in their race against Abomination Nation, which would give them some distance between Unarmed, but even in the context of that race, Jovial still needed time to really lock-in, and since the speed gap isn’t that big to begin with, there’s a good chance they’d end up bumping into Unarmed a couple of times at the start, giving them all they need to catch up. After all, Jovial is many things, but they aren’t a coward; their go-to strategy is usually to try and push away opponents from the course or use them as surfaces to redirect themselves, which would be a great strategy against most opponents, but against Unarmed, who can attack omnidirectionally from any part of their body, and has vastly superior growth, all this would do is screw themselves over.
Even assuming they started off with something like flight, Unarmed could just as likely start off with Giga Unarmed and pinning them to a corner to prevent them from progressing until they’re too injured to race, or you know, just use their own flight to keep up with them, and if Jovial tries to hold Unarmed back with their clones, as mentioned earlier, Unarmed could just use them as fuel to become faster and faster until they can simply phase through the obstacle course altogether and reach the end. It’s a pretty bullshit power, but hey, that’s Unarmed for you. Simply put, most things Jovial could try to do to win the race would realistically just end with Unarmed getting the few hits they need to surpass their speed and either beat them till they’re unable to keep running and take an easy win, or just use that as an opportunity to build up more speed till they can phase right through the course and get a win for free.
The winner of this category is Unarmed!
Conclusion
Advantages:
Slightly faster at a base level.
More experienced racer.
Better showings of stamina.
Clones could theoretically slow down Unarmed…
Being generous, matches in base durability…
Ties:
Matching flight.
Gold Ship fodder.
Disadvantages:
…but they’ve never been used like this and Unarmed can easily counter them.
Much slower growth.
Vastly weaker both from the start and over time.
…though gets stomped with higher-ends.
Always slower over time.
Struggles significantly against hyper-aggressive opponents.
Fighting & racing style get completely flipped on them by Unarmed.
Technically worse recovery tools.
Advantages:
Better and more experienced fighter, with their fighting style countering Jovial.
Significantly faster growth.
Speed reasonably always leans them over time.
Always stronger at any level.
Better healing tools and resurrection (though the resurrection is mostly useless anyways).
Counters or benefits from all of Jovial’s options.
Far harder to kill or wear down.
Doesn’t fumble in lore moments.
Ties:
Matching flight.
Gold Ship fodder.
Disadvantages:
Initially slower.
Less experienced at racing.
Worse stamina showings overall.
It was a close race, but the votes are in, and with that your winner for tonight is…
Jovial Merryment (0)
Unarmed (2): NormallyNormal, WeirdlyWeird
Shampoo (1): Sumika [She asked to be here.]
Unarmed!
Before We Go…
Yes, I am working on the upcoming blogs. Why did I do this? I was mad bored.
Oh also while researching this, I got jumpscared by my bestie Girlkisser. So since I know she’s reading this, hi!!!
Nooo!!!!!!!!!!!! Now that this is created every other blog will look bad by comparison :(((((((
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