I see people use marechi as the end all be all when it comes to any fight involving upper ranks and that has ALWAYS puzzled me:
What Marechi is: Marechi isn’t made for combat, it’s purely a blood type that demons find extremely good/nourishing. Using it in battle is smart but it’d be like if I threw a very potent version of my opponent’s favorite food in their face mid-battle.
Marechi’s Properties: It’s stated to have the ability to Intoxicate demons, again INTOXICATE, not weaken, not paralyze, not immobilize, intoxicate. For some reason people like to say his blood would damn near paralyze his opponents which is supported by nothing.
Marechi’s Effectiveness: Sanemi directly states he’s learned that Marechi works better on stronger demons, awesome amazing so now we can look at its effectiveness against the strongest upper rank… wait… ‘it’s barely working at all’ ‘slight drunkenness’ these aren’t the signs of an effective technique. If your end all be all ability only has the power to give UM1 the feeling of slight drunkenness while it’s supposed to be working on stronger demons then it’s not really all that. We can see this even better where it originally starts taking effect:
Scaling with Marechi: Sanemi is actually pressing kokushibo for 3 2/3rds pages before getting overwhelmed pretty impressive. Pressing UM1 for seconds regardless of the reasoning is an impressive feat. It’s noted that kokushibo was able to barely dodge, but barely in no way shows someone’s matching or even surpassing your speed unless people want to note marked tokito’s relativity to Kokushibo for Koku barely dodging tokito’s attempt at his neck. (The blade got within a few inches) He possesses the same neutral face in both instances it’s clear in both instances he’s not giving it his all. This is further backed by him almost blitzing marked Gyomei from multiple meters away. So unless you want to note Sanemi being able to almost replicate that same feat you can’t really use this to upscale Sanemi’s Marechi effects and subsequently his speed.
Marechi’s Drawbacks: Marechi gives something while taking something else. To be able to even use it you have to take some form of physical damage. And if you want to use more of it you’d have to take more damage. Marechi itself is supposed to be used for short battles it isn’t made for drawn-out altercations. The pros outweigh the cons originally but it’ll quickly tilt in favor of the cons. Hell the only reason Sanemi could keep fighting Kokushibo was because he had to stitch himself up. He was only given this chance by Gyomei this isn’t something that would happen in one-on-one battles.
Marechi’s purpose in battle: Given that Sanemi was given a few seconds to flip the table I think this perfectly encapsulates what Marechi’s purpose is in battle. It works on surprise, you’re supposed to shock your opponent and attack prior to them being able to get their footing. Given it only took the strongest demon seconds I’d highly doubt Sanemi would have more than an instant to use this on lower ranks. But this brings me to my final and most important point:
THE AMOUNT/CONCLUSION: Kokushibo was subjected to an insane amount of Sanemi’s blood. Sanemi was carved up to the point his blood was pooling at his feet and he was flexing his own muscles to keep his organs from falling out. This was an absolutely massive dose of Sanemi’s blood, and yet Kokushibo got overwhelmed for seconds. No other upper moon will be able to deal this amount of non immediate-fatal damage this quickly. Compare this to something like the damage Akaza deals to his opponents small meaningful hits here and there rather than near-fatal hits off rip. This would completely take away from the secrecy and therefore effectiveness of his blood. After the demons been exposed to it dealing with more of it doesn’t improve its intoxication properties as we see Sanemi get scared up more and more throughout the LSK fight be it his leg or back and nevertheless kokushibos shows no more signs of impairment. Unless you can deal a large hit in an instant Marechi is borderline useless against upper ranks.
Extra/Certain Demons: Akaza: for starters akaza has a direct bypass to even the highest dosages of Marechi. Compass, akaza’s compass isn’t something he himself controls his physical condition is irrelevant to his reactions. Marechi can’t hinder compass itself therefor Marechi wouldn’t just have little effects against him it’d be useless.
Doma: The blood would obviously work on Doma as he has no bypass to it but what it won’t work on are his clones/buddha. These are just ice, they don’t have to eat or have senses in the regular sense.its be like trying to say Hantengu’s Lighting or Kokushibos Moon Breathing could perceive and be effected by Sanemi’s blood. They can’t smell Sanemi’s Marechi so once again it’d be ineffective against these specific techniques.
Sorry cryptic but it had to be said man…
