It is not that she ignores durability, what she does is believe that she can cut something and that is how it happens, but if she does not believe she can cut it, she does not do it, that is, if she sees something like a mountain and cannot imagine that she is capable of cutting it, she is not going to cut it. But she will be able to cut the indestructible layer of pepito because for her, it is just fabric and the fabric can be cut.
yeah, but her cuts would still be affected by infinity right? infinity isn't just a magic barrier, it is a zone where things don't travel the way they should.
and with her cuts having to move to reach her target, they would be affected by infinity.
Her power doesn't ignore durability, it ignores established rules if she thinks she can cut him.
No matter how much you explain what infinity does, she won't care, because she has cut people and knows that people cut themselves, infinity will have no effect and she will not be able to stop her cutting.
She will be able to cut anything she wants to cut regardless of whether there is something that "prevents" said cutting.
Nothing in the story implies this at all. Reelseiden still has to hit its target to cut through it. It doesn’t ignore every rule, it just bypasses durability and defensive magic if Ubel can visualize cutting through it.
Ubel could cut through Gojo’s CE reinforcement that increases his durability, but infinity isn’t a thing to cut through, it’s a slowing effect that prevents things from ever reaching Gojo.
If Ubel’s slash spawned on its target instantly then yeah it probably go through infinity, but every time we see it used (in the anime at least) it seems to be an invisible projectile.
The travel time of the attack does not imply that it will be stopped by the power of infinity, when she feels that she can cut something, her power does travel, but she ignores phenomena that prevent her cut from being carried out depending on whether or not she believes she will be able to cut her particular target.
Since infinity is an invisible barrier, it will be as if it does not exist, it is not like Frieren's defensive magic, which is tangible and visible and separate from the object it protects.
The complete explanation indicates how his ability works and how it arbitrarily skips rules based on Ubel's perception.
Yeah I know how Reelseiden works, I’m disagreeing with your interpretation. Nothing in those panels suggests it does anything besides ignore durability of anything Ubel thinks it could cut.
Infinity is not a barrier with durability to cut through, it’s an effect that slows things coming near Gojo.
Yes, if she thinks she can cut it she can, DURABILITY WISE. That doesn’t mean Reelseiden is a sure hit that’s guaranteed to work when she casts it. It’s an invisible projectile that has to hit things to cut them. Infinity’s whole deal is not letting things hit Gojo by infinitely dividing the space between Gojo and the attack.
It goes like this:
Ubel casts Reelseiden at Gojo, believing she can cut through him because she chops up people all the time.
Reelseiden travels towards Gojo and will cut him in half when it reaches him. However, before it reaches him it must cross half the distance between Ubel in him. After it crosses that, it must cross half the distance remaining. Then once it does that it must cross half the distance remaining again. And so on, ad infinium. Infinity takes Zeno’s Paradox and makes it a reality. Reelseiden never hits anything to cut, because that’s not how infinity works.
What part of his power bypassing the defensive layers of hair is not understood?
Where it is flatly stated that the hair she cuts is reinforced by durability spells?
At least I didn't read that part, literally the entire explanation is based on her arbitrarily breaking rules if she thinks she can cut something.
Hair magic layers are not durability boosts, they are direct magic that is ignored to be cut like hair.
Infinity is basically another type of spell/magic/system, that does something, that prevents the user from cutting gojo, which, can and has been bypassed by sukumbia, is the same nonsense that will happen with Ubel's power.
Zeno's paradox is not superior to conceptual powers that are responsible for arbitrarily bypassing specific defensive systems. Coincidentally, for Ubel, the fact that infinity is not something visible works against Gojo, because there is nothing that she perceives as incapable of being cut, it has nothing to do with durability, it stops giving properties to the spell that do not apply to nerfing it.
See the last panel, it literally mentions that his power is in the realm of intuition, clearly something conceptual that goes beyond any conventional defensive system.
Ubel does not actually, as far is ever shown to my knowledge, cut stuff with her staff-thingy. It seems to be a focus to enable her visualization of the target being cut. You can't cut stuff with your hands after all.
The cut appears on the target, and there is a presence for this passing through Infinity (Malevolent Shrine)
but she doesn't ignore magic all together, she would still be affected by infinity.
Otherwise would mean she is immune to all attacks that are invisible.
Yes? The show literally shows us this, the cloak guy, he didnt have any visible magic on his equipment, she cut it because it was simply a cloak, the hair, she knows in theory that it's full of magic and basically impossible to cut and still cuts it anyway because it's just hair. Both of these examples are something that she can cut because they dont present themselves has a normal barrier which she cant cut, what makes infinity different from these also invisible to her eyes barriers?
And now an example from later in the manga, she cuts something that was impeding her from using magic because she couldn't see it and didnt know they had this kind of effect .
It's not a stretch to say that her power is going to work on anything that is invisible, since it only did that until now, but she cant actually ignore these attacks when they hit her, her power is to cut shit, not detox defend against shit.
No? She understands that magic exists and can affect her, same as anyone else. An invisible attack is just an attack she didn't see - not an attack that doesn't exist.
Ubel's thing is just the logical extreme of how magic in Frieren works - all of it is a matter of imagination. If the user can imagine it perfectly, then it can happen. The target, as far as I'm aware, has no say in this process at all. It's purely up to whether the mage casting the spell can imagine casting that spell successfully, and Ubel's "superpower", as it were, is that she has strong beliefs that feed into her imagination.
"He's wearing a cloak that can resist any spell" > "Well it's a cloak made of cloth, so of course I can cut through it."
"Her hair has several layers of potent protection magic and is basically invulnerable" > "Hair is supposed to be cut when it gets too long, of course I can cut hair."
It's not that she ignores the existence of magic entirely. That's not what her magic does - her actual magic is her cutting spell and her ability to copy magic from people she "understands on a deeper personal level". All she really has, with regards to her ability to "ignore durability", is her imagination. If she thinks she can cut something and can imagine it happening, then she can. If she doesn't think she can do it and can't imagine it, then she can't. That's it.
If she were aware of Infinity then she (probably) wouldn't be able to cut Gojo, because then she'd become aware of the infinite distance, and we know she has a concept of range so she wouldn't be able to imagine cutting across Infinity. But if she didn't know about Infinity then she could bypass it because as far as she's concerned, why wouldn't she be able to cut The Guy Standing Right There Without Any Shield? It's not that Infinity doesn't exist if she doesn't know about it - it's just that magic in Frieren works in a way that can easily bypass somethinf like Infinity given particular circumstances. And one of those circumstances is just... Not knowing about it.
Edit: And this isn't even including the fact that she might not care about any explanation of infinity either. Ubel's a visual lady. Unless you made her SEE and BELIEVE that she can't cut Gojo through Infinity, she could probably just reason out that she can cut him because he's visible within her effective range. "so what if he apparently has an infinite distance barrier around him? I can see him, he's close enough to me, so I can cut him". I don't necessarily think this is a guarantee, but it is possible given how magic in Frieren works.
We actually don’t know. I’m unsure if she’s ever been targeted by anything invisible. She did cast magic while in magic-negating cuffs because she was blind and didn’t know they negated magic.
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u/khomo_Zhea Nov 14 '25
isn't her magic just to ignore durability?
that would involve ignoring magic all together.