Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-5780397-20151222190152/@comment-26871105-20160613043859

Pigzillion wrote: As Dino has clarified before, the statue is much faster than Netero, as seen by the fact that it appears to complete their movements at the same time; the statue has to move a larger distance in order to do this, meaning it travels faster than Netero himself. In short, no, Netero is not faster than The Bodhisattva. Untrue.

If the anime is to be gone by, the statue is significantly slower than Netero.

Example 1: When Netero stroke Pitou, the statue only started attacking after Netero finished his swipe move.

Example 2: During "First Hand", it is only after Netero performed a chop and several after images caught up to him, that the statue initiated the attack.

Example 3: During the heat of the battle, Netero in defence of Meruem's continuous attacks, he used combination attacks to keep him out of range. The statue is seen using multiple arms to achieve the rate of attacking Netero could do with 2 arms, again pointing towards the notion that it is slower than Netero.

Example 4: When Netero stroke Meruem with a downward palm strike, pushing the latter into a pillar, there is a slow motion shot where the statue's palm only went past Netero after he'd completed the motion.

There IS a lag between Netero and the statue, it's just that both of them are godly fast as such the 20% speed lag means nothing. Meruem did not pick up the lag because he was never able to fully see what was really going on, as in the entire fight he was just chasing after Netero's after images (at first he could not even see what hit him). Meruem throughout the fight got used to Netero's pattern and was able to anticipate his next move, which got him his first hit, but that is not because he could really keep up with Netero with his eyes. In fact the sole reason to why he successflly got through the statue after predicting Netero's strike was all thanks to the lag between Netero and the statue, so he barely could dodge it barely, giving him the edge.

The anime adaptation is valid for a few reasons: 1. It is a faithful adaptation and they consulted Togashi on many things during the production. 2. Extremely minor details such as the speed difference is next to impossibility to illustrate in still images of the manga, as such we shouldn't expect manga to show us that. 3. Togashi was EXTREMELY lazy when he was drawing the Chimera Ant arc, so Togashi wouldn't even portray the speed difference in the manga even if he could.

That's why I used anime as my reference. And yes, the statue is slower than Netero. Again, Netero does not mind the delay because 20% speed handicap from his light speed strikes really mounts up to very negligible differences as a whole.

Netero lost to Meruem because he got read by someone he almost could not damage whatsoever, not because he lost in speed.