PowerRankings

Graded by its own standard

Evidence

1,732 citations across 229 works. This page grades them by kind and by how checkable they are, and names the placements that rest on assertion.

Every page here argues that a ranking is worth what its sources are worth. That is a claim about this site, and it is checkable, so this page checks it — the whole corpus sorted by how strong the evidence is, including the pages that come out of it badly.

By kind

shown
973
56%
stated
757
43%
scaled
2
under 1% — the build does not let a top-two-tier placement rest on scaled citations alone

How checkable

opens in a click
27
has a locator, but no link
1,465
names only the work
240
total
1,732

shown is depicted on page or screen. stated is asserted by a character or a narrator, which is marketing. scaled is inferred by comparison, which is the weakest thing a ranking can stand on.

The striking number is the last one. 2 of 1,732 citations on this site are scaled — and that is not a boast. The schema prices it out: §2.2 forbids a top-two-tier placement resting on scaled citations alone, and the build enforces it, so labelling an inference honestly creates work for whoever is writing and labelling it stated does not. A rule the build has never once had cause to fire is worth saying out loud, in either direction it turns out to mean.

Checkable is a different question, and a harder one to excuse. It is the share of a page's citations carrying a locator or a link — a chapter, an episode, a room — rather than a work name alone. Depicted asks how strong the evidence is; this asks whether you can go and find it. Every ranking now carries one on at least one citation and 7 carry one on every citation, with the rest spread across the range. Mostly this is habit rather than source material — a manga chapter and a Pokédex entry are equally numbered, and the pages that cite them consistently do so because whoever wrote the first entry set a convention nobody revisited, which is why it clusters per ranking instead of varying per claim. The exception is film. A chapter number can be copied from the page it is on; a timestamp has to be watched for, so a ranking argued out of films carries a real floor here that a ranking argued out of an indexed source does not. That is a reason those rows are low, and not an excuse for leaving them there.

By franchise

Sort by name, or by either share with the weakest first. A low share is not automatically a fault — a franchise documented in sourcebooks has less to show than one animated weekly — but it is the thing a reader is entitled to know before believing a ladder.

FranchiseshownstatedscaledDepictedCheckableOn assertion
Berserk724—94%100%—
Bleach5412—81%100%—
Dark Souls & Demon’s Souls2523—52%68%14/39
Digimon2212162%45%2/17
Dragon Ball255—83%76%—
Dungeons & Dragons641—12%34%28/33
Elden Ring2114—60%48%10/30
Final Fantasy2510—71%62%3/16
Godzilla174—80%14%1/11
Jujutsu Kaisen115110150%100%—
Marvel3816—70%44%1/20
Monster Hunter3024—55%100%—
Naruto268—76%88%—
One Piece3012—71%100%—
One Punch Man7651—59%99%—
Pokémon1931—38%68%5/22
SCP Foundation324—11%100%17/20
Solo Leveling125132—48%95%—
Star Wars3810—79%31%—
Warhammer 40,0001637—30%56%25/35
Westeros190177—51%100%—

Depicted is shown citations over all citations. Checkable is the share carrying a locator or a link. Totals include armoury citations.

On assertion

On assertion is the only measure here counting entries rather than citations, and it is the one a reader standing on a placement wants. A ranking can be 60% depicted and still rank a character on nothing shown, because one entry carrying forty depicted citations hides ten carrying none. Across the site 106 of 487 ranked entries cite nothing depicted at all, and 30 of those sit in their ranking's top ten. It is published rather than forbidden: on a text-primary ranking a rule demanding a depicted citation would be demanding evidence that does not exist.

Each is named below under its ranking; a top-ten rank is set in gold.

Most-cited works

229 distinct works carry 1,732 claims. The twenty most leaned-on are below. 27 of 1,732 citations open the source in a click — every one of them on the SCP ranking, whose material is on the web and whose licence obliges the attribution anyway. Another 1,465 name a work and a locator, so checking one means finding the book. The remaining 240 name a work and stop there, which leaves the reader the job of locating the passage as well as reading it. That is the honest ceiling on a claim of checkability: 86% of this corpus can be checked from what the citation itself carries, and the rest only by someone willing to search the work it names.

  1. Solo Leveling (webtoon)228
  2. Jujutsu Kaisen209
  3. One Punch Man126
  4. Berserk76
  5. Game of Thrones75
  6. A Game of Thrones71
  7. A Storm of Swords70
  8. Bleach66
  9. Fire & Blood61
  10. One Piece42
  11. Monster Hunter World — Iceborne30
  12. Elden Ring28
  13. SCP Foundation27
  14. Naruto25
  15. A Feast for Crows24
  16. Solo Leveling (web novel)24
  17. A Dance with Dragons20
  18. House of the Dragon19
  19. Monster Hunter: World19
  20. A Clash of Kings17

Check any of it.

1,492 of these citations tell you where to look. The other 240 tell you what to read.