[Sunder the Gold]

Originally Posted by Orange Duke

That's one way of interpreting what she said. However, she could also mean that Crow's hard metallic body is simply suited for close combat, but this does not mean that he has to. Silver Crow's main draw is his wings and his speed, not his close combat moves. This is what has been winning him duels ever since he activated them. Even when people found that snipers were a counter, he too countered snipers with his speed by dodging the shots.

That just means he's an extreme lightweight who has poor toughness in general and not much weight to put behind his blows. Even a pure Blue avatar would be a hit-and-run specialist if they were an extreme lightweight with an emphasis on speed and mobility.

That may be exactly what Sky Raker is. I doubt that an avatar which jets around on a rocket pack is built for mass and muscle power.

Furthermore, if anything, Crow is better suited for long-ranged combat, as Dusk Taker found out when he used his wings in conjunction with the Pyro Dealer armament.

And yet, Silver Crow's special move is Headbutt. If the avatar really had any potential for long-range attacks, I think its inherent special move would have been different.

Likewise, it's conspicuous that Silver Crow's arms feature booster jets which consume SP, allowing him to punch (or dive-punch) even faster.

Finally, given how enamoured Haruyuki was with clever victories and First Person Shooting games, and given how effectively he saw Dusk Taker use long-range weapons with his wings, and given his own difficulties with snipers... it's also conspicuous that he hasn't spent any upgrade points on a long-ranged attack at all.

The system may simply not be giving Silver Crow that option. The avatar might not have any potential for long-range attacks at all.

After all, blunt damage usually occurs in melee.

Impact damage can also occur as a result of concussive blast waves, as from exploding ordinance. Indeed, considering Silver's resistance to heat, this may be the one thing about missiles that can hurt Crow.

chromatic avatars, as they do not have any specific vulnerabilities defence-wise, they have to instead be vulnerable to attack types for balance.

But they're not. None of the three primary colors is vulnerable to either of the others. There's no rock-paper-scissors relationship there.

The odds of victory are decided by the particular form of your enemy's abilities, the distance at which you began the fight from each other, and the particular environment that was randomly generated.

If Blue Knight blindly tries to challenge Scarlet Rain to a duel, he has no idea how close she will be when the match starts. It's in his favor if she happened to be nearby, but if she was at the very edge of the Area, he's fighting an uphill battle.

If Scarlet Rain is looking to challenge someone to a duel, blindly or otherwise, she wants to Accelerate from the highest building in the area. Whatever stage is created, she'll have a good chance of standing on higher ground than her opponent, which usually means an easier time spotting them and a clear line of fire.

As for the stage, just see how the odds of Corral Merrow and Lagoon Dolphin versus Sulphur Pot and Nidhoggr changed completely when the environment became "Underwater". Charcoal Smoke would have been completely useless, so that Yellow ability would have been ineffective.

Taking this into consideration, it would make much more sense for metallic avatars to have flexible attack styles. They may prefer one method of attack, but there would be nothing to stop them from switching if they come up against an avatar that can counter that style of attack easily.

Except we have no evidence of this.

Crow's victory against Roller wasn't about advantages, but cleverness. It was a case-in-point that even with the odds stacked against you, fighting smart can win a battle. That flexibility was entirely Haruyuki the gamer and not Silver Crow the speedster.

Silver Crow is built to do nothing but hit-and-run, especially when using flight to dive at the enemy from the sky. His Headbutt is the only move that doesn't fit this fighting style, considering its telegraphed charge-up pose.

As seen with Roller (and later against another opponent), the Headbutt can only be effectively used when Silver Crow is grappling with his opponent. Whichever one is in control, the opponent is unable to dodge.

For the physically weak, ultra-lightweight Silver Crow, a grapple is the worst place to be, because he cannot dodge or escape and the crushing pressure goes right through his toughness. The Headbutt is his last chance desperation attack against someone who manages to get him in that situation.

It's especially desperate, considering that it requires a full Special Meter, which requires a lot of damage to charge up. And that full Meter is spent on a single all-or-nothing attack.

But clearly, the game's idea was that Crow would normally engage in close-range combat, or else he wouldn't get himself into such situations often enough for the Headbutt to be worthwhile.

The second and final time in the anime was with the sniper, which Crow countered by dodging.

Which is just the "run" part of "hit-and-run". Silver Crow is a lightweight, and therefore dodges attacks.

I would attribute that more to his Pound name, rather than his colour.

I'd be surprised if Iron wasn't resistant to all physical damage, and possible invulnerable to one of them (crushing, piercing, or cutting). If I were designeding a system that included such resistances, I'd give that color some direct-close combat potential to back that up.

I mean, the poor guy's got to be paying for it with weaknesses against electricity, heat, cold, and/or corrosion, and those are likely to come from long-range attacks.

But that would mean we would have the who-knows-how-many Kings of Pure Metal, rather than the Seven Kings of Pure Colour.

Metal colors are rare, and the one potential Metal King was destroyed long ago by an alliance of all the other future kings.

I speak of the original Chrome Disaster.

That would be an insult to your own dignity as an author, as it means that your writing lacks proper planning, causing you to contradict yourself. We must trust that Kawahara is accomplished enough of a writer that he would not need to do this. He does have two well-known series under his belt, after all.

I've just felt so burned by authors who didn't give a shit about solid backgrounds. Suzuki and Seven Arcs, who produced the Nanoha franchise.

Furthermore, there is no actual need for Blood Leopard to be a vampiric cat. The characteristic which Pard is known for is not her vamipric abilities. It's her love for speed.

If her love for speed were really so defining, she'd have something like Blue Knight's "Limit Surpass", which I imagine boosts his strength and speed. She could have a hyper-drive which strains her HP in return for greater horsepower.

She does have a transformation which makes her faster, but that form's crushing bite attack just emphasizes the cannibalism of her vampiric abilities. And the vampiric abilities in and of themselves do nothing to make her faster.

Not only that, but both are the ONLY avatars we have seen so far that are on the completely opposite side of the chromatic wheel than they should be and that both are the ONLY avatars we haven seen so far with darker shades. This means that it is completely reasonable for us to assume that there MUST be a connection.

True enough, but I don't see how "fear" is a plausible factor.

I would sooner attribute it to a conflict in the player. For example, some part of Noumi lends itself to Yellow tactics, but another part of Noumi lends itself to direct attacks at variable range.

Maybe the divide was Noumi "as he saw/desired himself" and "as he really was", or Noumi "as he was without trauma" and "as his trauma had shaped him".

For example, I doubt Noumi was born feeling empty and wanting to steal everything to fill his void. He used to be different. But the trauma inflicted by his brother became so deeply ingrained that it became part of who he was, and therefore affected his avatar.

Haruyuki, on the other hand, has a real talent for mental speed as well as a desire to become faster. Rather than his trauma distracting him from his talent, he seems to have used his talent as a shelter. Likewise, Taku stuck with kendo even despite the horrible bullying. He took shelter and strength within his passion.

Noumi took shelter within the trauma itself, and that may be why his avatar was contradictory. Instead of being what he wanted to be, he became a thief.

Perhaps Pard's vampirism and cannibalism don't reflect her real passion, but instead the form of defense she chose against whatever hurt her?

Which might explain why Kawahara introduced such a property of avatars with darker shades.

I dunno. Rust Jigsaw seems to be a dark reddish-orange, but he's a proper Orange.

We'll just have to see.

On a side note, Radio's colour makes him seem even more threatening to other avatars. His nickname is the "Radioactive Disturber", which is where the Radio part of his name comes from, rather than an actual radio (This is why he doesn't use sonics as his main form of attack). His colour has also been described as the colour of a radiation warning sign.

Suddenly, many things become chillingly clear.

Where do you come by this knowledge? The light novel? I'd like to be able to cite it myself, for others.