MMM - Kabuki Kanojo Kicks Off Klamour, Komrade Knight Keenly Keeping Keel, Konversely, Koppuri's Killer Kinsmen Kowtows to Kill Kludge (GudaGuda 2021)

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Imagine you’re hearing whatever that sound like hitting wood blocks is.

Ah, Kabuki. One of the many Japanese art forms I know the name of but little about unless I’ve specifically watched the SoL anime about it.

Well, if you’ve seen any historical Japanese art you’ve probably seen depictions of Kabuki actors from the 17th and 18th century, they’re rather famous. Oh, and the suit of armor accompanying Okuni, Zanzaburo, is voiced by Mafia Kajita, aka the bald sunglasses guy who often hosts FGO’s streams.

Okuni may be a member of the very homogenized SSR Caster stat lineup, but thankfully she’s at least somewhat interesting for her base stats - with the tied 2nd best Atk stat and tied 2nd worst HP stat of her class and rarity, she’s offensively-leaned and typically so, having an objectively weaker statline than Sanzang. But hey, she’s an offensive Caster and actually put in effort to have a high Attack stat, which can’t be said for some other women in her class.

Meanwhile on the passives front, Okuni modifies the typical Caster class passives with her own personal flair - Territory Creation (Kagura), named for the stages uses in Kabuki, provides her with a small Arts and Critical Damage boost apiece, Item Construction (Karakuri), named for the mechanical dolls in Japan which historically influenced Kabuki plays, provides a small boost to Debuff success rate and Critical Damage, also, and lastly New Okuni Kabuki EX is a unique passive, granting 2 critical stars each turn automatically, and further boosting her Critical Damage.

Since there’s nowhere else to really put it, and I should probably note it from now on when Servants have decent Append Skill attack bonuses, Okuni gets an attack boost versus Pretender class enemies from her Append Skill, which is pretty neat if you don’t have a good Foreigner around and want to bully Oberon.

As a result, Okuni comes out of the gate with a decent offensive statline and a notable 12% boost to Critical Damage, which probably gives you an idea of what she’s going to focus on.

With a base NP gain of 0.8% and a 3-hit Arts card, you can probably figure that Okuni’s Arts card is very good. Clocking in at 2.496 base Arts gain, she’s bound to get a lot of gauge off it, though you have hopefully noted I said Arts card, singular. Yup, Okuni is the first Caster in the game to have only 1 Arts card in their deck, having a BBAQQ card deck. In addition, she’s the first Caster with a Quick NP.

Frankly, it was long overdue. What this means for her generation stats is that moreso than her Arts card, Okuni’s Quicks are what matter for NP gain. Thankfully, they’re rather good - at 4 hits apiece her Quick cards have 3.2 base gain, more than enough to gain significant gauge off of crits, which Okuni is going to do often. Her Busters’ 3 hits are actually decent for NP gain as well, providing a handful of percent of gauge when critting in Arts chains, and her 5-hit Extra is fairly good considering her reasonably high base NP gain.

On the stargen side of things, Okuni is also doing pretty great. Those Quicks of hers will provide a hefty sum of stars, especially when you consider she’s passively adding 2 stars to the count just for being around. Most of Okuni’s chains will provide a notable amount of stars, though she’s not a star-spewing generator or anything.

So like most Casters, Okuni has very dependable NP gain, but with the added abnormal bonus of being a strong star generator.

So how is Okuni in practice? Well on one hand, she’s set for stardom:

On the other hand, she’s just some shrine maiden dancing barefoot in a river:

While having a Servant that is functionally Nagatoro-san and Mafia Kajita clowning on your opponents mid-battle is a hilarious concept, Okuni sadly doesn’t really do her own niche well enough, then again apply it to a broad enough range of content for her to be of use.

That doesn’t mean she’s dysfunctional, though. Okuni in a double Skadi setup can still lay down some serious punishment in CQ’s, it’s just she’s unlikely to be an optimal choice, even if you’re assuming the owner of said Okuni is in F2P hell and literally only has welfares and sporadic SR’s to work with. Atalante Alter is a strong competitor to her, for example, boasting more versatility and damage output in exchange for a lack of a gauge charger and frailty.

There’s also the novelty factor for what it’s worth - until now there’s been no “ideal” Caster to take for a quest if you wanted to support them with Skadi, which is an issue I’m pretty sure nobody has ever had. But with that in mind, Okuni’s performance as a Servant is ultimately just that - a Performance.

Ah, Servantverse. How you never fail to amuse me in your absurd setups for characters. Ordinary Mori Ranmaru too boring? Just make them a chuuni with inherent laser beam powers and their background a battle royale between other Ranmarus where the winner gains the composite souls of all the others and becomes Mysterious Ranmaru X.

And people say normal Nasuverse lore is complex.

Considering the age of the class, it’s weird that there’s only been 2 SR Avengers until this point, 3 with Ranmaru’s inclusion. As such, comparing the base stats can be a little rough.

Anyway, in terms of base stats Ranmaru has the worst Attack and best HP of their class and rarity, clearly designating them as a more defensively oriented Avenger in statline. In actuality, it just means they’re worse than the others - the difference in HP between them and Lobos / Gorgon is only 100-200 points, but the Attack gap is a more significant 800-900 points, which is exacerbated by the Avenger attack stat modifier of 1.1x.

So while I will make the disclaimer that Avenger statlines are inherently good anyway since they get a large sum of attack for their rarity in exchange for a mostly negligible loss in HP compared to other classes, Ranmaru definitely gets a worse deal than the others.

Like most Avengers, however, they do have a cracked passive lineup. Avenger and Oblivion Correction are both present as usual, providing Ranmaru with even more defensive NP gain and a minute boost to their Critical Damage, meanwhile Ranmaru packs another four passives:

• Ranmanium EX acts as a replacement for Self-Replenishment (Magical Energy), granting them 3% NP gauge each turn and a tiny 3% Arts booster passively.
• Entity of the Outer Realm is here because...aliens? In any case, extra debuff resistance and 2 stars per turn is neat.
• Magic Resistance at C rank provides Ranmaru with another contribution to their debuff resistance, making them fairly durable to debuffs on the whole.
• And lastly, Demon King’s Affection provides them an immunity to Burn, effectively stealing a niche from Summer BB. How dastardly.

And just quickly touching on Append Skills, Ranmaru only has anti-Caster attack bonus for their Append Skill, so nothing too exceptional to note there.

So Ranmaru may be gimped on their base Attack, they compensate for it quite nicely with a packed Passive lineup.

Moving on to generation stats, we have...an interesting one. Taking a note from the book of Kiritsugu, Ranmaru’s base NP gain is 0.45%, a low base NP gain that you would hope is compensated by a hit Arts card hitcount.

Spoiler - it isn’t. With a BBAAQ card deck and 2-hit Arts cards, Ranmaru’s base Arts gain comes in at 0.927 after their passive Arts booster is factored in. Not even breaking past 1...that’s pretty dire. Likewise, Ranmaru’s other cards suffer for this low base NP gain - their Buster is laughable, their Quick is essentially a launch Servant Quick with better stargen, and the less said of their Extra, even with 5 hits, the better.

Having low base NP gain just makes everything worse, folks.

For the stargen front, however, Ranmaru isn’t the worst. BBAAQ card deck isn’t exactly built for star generation, but their Quick is a solid 4 hits, and likewise their Extra will provide a decent sum of stars. And naturally, remember Ranmaru has a passive providing 2 more critical stars each turn just for being around.

But still...oof. When I said I wished DW would stop giving every Servant 3-hit Arts cards with average NP gain, I’m guessing the monkey’s paw curled.

So how good is Ranmaru in practice? On one hand, they’re a true champion to Ranmaru-kind:

However, they’re also wrapped up in their own delusions, don’t let that eyepatch fool you:

As much as I might curse the heavens when a Servant with goddawful regular card NP gain is added, I am forced to admit that it doesn’t matter much at all.

Ranmaru has a kit that is cleanly focused on being a competent farmer with some bonus fun tools to use in CQ’s or Story, and they manage that role pretty superbly. While they don’t have anything truly absurd or unique to stand out even when compared to some other welfare farming options out there, Ranmaru is a true universal farmer, and has enough performance and versatility to go with it that you won’t really be disappointed with them. It’s just that, in most cases, Ranmaru isn’t going to offer you more than what Habetrot does, while both are practically identically story-locked.

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