If mammon has a chance to fight again with mukuro and use her/his ability to control others mind (viper mirage R - chapter 373) does this technique succeed defeating mukuro?
I don’t really think so. I mean, first of all Mukuro beat them once before, and that was when he was fifteen and most of his life had been spent either as a fugitive or shut up in a lab (though it amuses me to think that Mukuro had been repeatedly jailbreaking like the Vindice was some twisted baby illusionist bootcamp).
You can argue that Mammon didn’t have their full powers in the Ring Battle, but to me Mammon’s main problem isn’t their raw power, but their fragile mental and emotional state, as well as their lack of clarity. They get over-emotional about things very easily, and they tend to have an all-or-nothing mindset, and that can be pretty fatal when you’re engaged in a battle of the wills. It results in the kind of crash-losing we see happening repeatedly with Mammon.
By lack of clarity I mean that I don’t think Mammon has a very clear sense of who they are, and what they want out of the world. At one point they were going on about money, but I think that’s mainly just a defense mechanism to cover up the fact that Mammon really doesn’t know what they want, that’s what they think a sly, self-serving illusionist should want. They clearly demonstrate some kind of loyalty to Xanxus, but then flip-flops on that either due to cowardice or some self-defeating, insecure impulse.
I mean, it’s pretty obvious that Mammon has a massive self-worth problem. It’s fine to have an egomaniacal little trip when they’re faced against a far less experienced and powerful opponent, but it’s a lot less fine to swing to the other extreme and start having an emotional breakdown at the first sign of someone overpowering them. That’s a recipe for disaster.
In stark contrast to this is Mukuro’s utter calm, confidence, and cunning in all combat situations - at all times, really. As insane as he might seem to certain others who’ve led very different lives, Mukuro is self-consistent. (”Method in the madness”, as the saying goes.) He knows who he is, he knows what he wants, he knows how to achieve it. He knows what his strengths and weaknesses are, and that sense of self is unshakable by external wins or losses. He does not doubt himself when it comes to battle. He does not second-guess. He trusts his own judgement, and he doesn’t dwell on miscalculations or failures. He moves on from things. All that are invaluable skills that many will never learn even after they’ve been through many trials, and that is what makes Mukuro a terrifying opponent and scarily competent leader.
I mean, compare their battle strategies. Mukuro has backup plan upon backup plan, and he literally only stops fighting when he’s out cold, and he never, even once, panics. Everything, including failure, is already in his calculations, and death is always a possibility, treated as equally likely as winning. As much as we like to call him an egomaniac, he’s not, not really. He’s confident because he has reason to be - in most situations, he can expect to win. And then there’s Mammon, who pulls out the all-or-nothing plan at the first opportunity, basically betting their victory on chance, and not even having enough self-awareness to factor in their own wavering will and emotional instability. They never even considered the possibility that Fon might have better faith in himself than they do.
Given equal battle capabilities, no matter who his opponent is, Mukuro can almost always come out on top, and that has more to do with will than skill. Look at the ruthlessness and decisiveness with which Mukuro dispatched Spade’s iilusions. He thrust the Khakkhara through the clones of his loved ones without hesitation, even when his senses have been completely taken over. That level of faith in his own judgement and clarity of thought can be a deciding factor in an illusionist fight. (Unfortunately for him, Spade is even more convicted, far more experienced and powerful, and was never going to fight him properly to begin with.)
You know what I’d like to see? A fight between TYL!Fran and Spade. Or better yet, TYL!Fran and Mukuro against Spade. Spade has reached that level of powerful, desperate, and depraved where he’s barely even human anymore. He’s whittled himself down to little more than a spectre. Like a comically evil version of Mukuro, how Mukuro presented himself in the beginning, except for real. Talk about the power of obsession. (But then, hilariously enough, he’s the one who’s utterly devoted to the Vongola. Ironic, indeed.) (Also, talk about inversions. Spade went from a fully functioning human to a single-minded shade; Mukuro went from a vengeful spirit to a fully mostly functioning human.)
Another thing I’ve always wondered is: who exactly are the “three illusionists capable of deceiving the Vindice”? Fran and Mukuro are canonically stated to be two of them, but there appears to be a limit to how many times one can fool them, and that limit has been revealed for Mukuro, but not for Fran. So can Fran always consistently fool the Vindice? Does Mukuro even count anymore when he seems to have lost that ability? (I think he’s just had one too many run-ins with them. They can learn from their mistakes, after all. Too bad!) And then for the third one, we have several candidates: my bet is on either Kawahira or Spade, and they both have been shown canonically to to be able to overpower the Arcobalenos. I mean, Spade practically waltzed out of the deepest level of the Vindice like it was nothing - but then, he didn’t try to deceive them, did he? He just bulldozed his way out of there. And Kawahira isn’t even human. So that leaves things pretty ambiguous. At this point, I think the “three illusionists” is nothing more than an empty title. In any case, Mammon doesn’t look like they were ever one of them, so there’s that.
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