Around this time is when I started using my blogspot to put up character notes in the form of blogs. It started with just my own characters, but eventually I made it a point to put up the character blogs of almost every character researched on the show. Though there were a few exceptions for various reasons.
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/04/character-analysissora.html
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/09/character-analysisrx-78-2-gundam.html
Episode 101: Ultron vs Sigma
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/11/death-battle-predictions-ultron-vs-sigma.html
Sigma Blog:
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/10/character-analysissigma.html
This was the first fight that Swan got to write and I worked on it with him! I think it honestly turned out perfect. His writing was great, the usage of the Mavericks and Ultronbots was good, and we made a verdict that’s stood pretty solid for several years. I think the most interesting thing I recall finding was this time period Ultron became a depressed drunk.
Episode 102: Roshi vs Jiraiya
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/11/death-battle-predictions-roshi-vs.html
This was a really fun animation and both were pretty in character. Ngl I’d kinda like to use another low level Dragon Ball character, since Super has kinda just been riding on the shockwaves for awhile now.
Oh yeah, fun fact. I remember that Roshi blowing up the moon was contested as an outlier in tons of communities for a really long time. It wasn’t until he suddenly fought Freeza’s soldiers that people lightened up on using it.
Episode 103: Thanos vs Darksied
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/12/death-battle-predictions-thanos-vs.html
Objectively one of the best finales the show has ever done. Probably one of the best animations Torrian has ever done. It’s PRETTY fucking ridicules how long the fight is, when combing all the set changes and scope. It’s also super funny that this fight happened back then, as Thanos got super popular around then due to the MCU.
Episode 104: Aquaman vs Namor
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/02/death-battle-predictions-aquaman-vs.html
Pretty harmless, but tbh I don’t remember this fight much. I recall people mentioning that the angular fish were designed incorrectly or something.
Episode 105: Megaman Battle Royale (The best episode ever!)
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/02/death-battle-predictions-mega-man.html
EXE Blog:
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/07/character-analysis-megamanexelan_4.html
Geo Blog:
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/08/character-analysis-geo-stellar-aka.html
This is my favorite Episode of Death Battle. I love Megaman and I have played every game in the series. Battle Network and Megaman ZX in particular were huge parts of my childhood. I even owned all the volumes of the NT Warrior Manga series.
I believe I proposed the match and I personally put a lot of effort into it. Technically we had 3 researchers (Me, Swan and Lousy), but I would argue that it wouldn't have been possible to pull off without me specifically. I had already researched all of the characters, as I had done my own take on the fight years ago on Screwattack. I remember specifically talking to Protodude and another G1 named Chargeshot about the outcome a lot.
Old Megaman Battle Royal blogs: https://web.archive.org/web/20141226202051/http://www.screwattack.com/news/g1-death-battle-megaman-battle-royale
In my original version it also included Zero, Aile, and Grey from the Megaman Zero and ZX series. In the Death Battles version they chose to cut it down to the characters highlighted in Classic Mega Man's final smash. Believing those were what Capcom considered the core “Mega Men” to be. Also because even 5 characters was kind of a lot for one episode.
This was probably one of the first times I got really nitty gritty about helping with details in the script and even to some extent the animation. The animators, editors and even Ben had a hard time keeping track of which Megaman was who and who could do what. The final sequence when EXE turns into Hub even had to be corrected because they used the wrong transformation. I also remember Geo almost had jetstreams come out of his feet for some reason. I remember Ben pinging us to look over an edit of an episode and having to make several last minute changes as well.
Anyway, surprisingly the verdict was pretty simple. In my original blog Geo Stellar won, but later on people came to believe that EXE was stronger. You could pretty much just tier each of the characters based on AP. EXE also clearly had more variety than everyone else, so that was another point in his favor. The only points of contention were establishing how Geo/EXE could get around the mother Elf, and how EXE could be proven to be able to harm Geo. SOMEHOW we crammed all the info on each character into the fight, though the final ep was like 25 minutes, which is pretty long.
We also made this meme of a number
Fun fact I believe there’s several ideas that didn’t make it into the final episode. I believe at one point the fight went to space, destroyed half the Earth, and Volnutt actually survived until being killed by accident in the ending. Also speaking of Volnutt, man he was outgunned. It’s kinda funny, though I’m surprised he didn’t have fans who got mad at that.
Anyway the animation was great and it somehow managed to cram in all the Megaman best weapons. The only nitpick is that we didn’t have the assets for Geo’s transformations, so he kinda just used his ultimate attack while possessing X.
If we ever get another Battle Network character it should be this guy btw
Episode 106: Black Widow vs Widowmaker
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/03/female-of-species-is-more-deadly-than.html
I think this was a much more well received fight than the first Overwatch fight. I remember the animation being pretty good and no one really contesting the result. Though I feel like the analysis was probably light.
Episode 107: Captain Marvel vs Shazam
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/04/death-battle-predictions-captain-marvel.html
People really don’t seem to like Captain Marvel. I remember a lot of comments being weirdly happy to see her defeat. It was a bit much. Otherwise pretty decent ep. I recall that in this one used Binary, so Marvel was much stronger than in the fight with 18.
Episode 108: Wario vs Dedede
G1 blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/04/death-battle-predictions-wario-vs-king.html
The person who wrote this is named Thac and his script for the fight was super fucking funny. I really enjoyed the setup of Dedede and Wario having a cage match. The ending with the Dedede smash pose was also delightful. It also made good use of Wario’s reactive powers.
I will say this is probably another one of those fights that may come off as odd analysis wise now due to how much stats have changed over the years.
I’ve gone over it before, but Mario was a series in constant flux. I believe that at the time Wario was considered to be at minimum small planet level based on this explosion by the Shake King in Wario Shake it. A big point of contention was this feat with the “Black Jewel” in Wario World, which supposedly created some sort of pocket dimension with a sun in it. I also think people were also starting to lighten up a bit and just scale all the Mario characters to each other and were willing to use spin offs like Mario Party finally. Though fans were unsure if the ep would do that or not, and there was still some debate on its legitimacy.
Kirby on the other hand was a series whose stats were also kinda in flux. Nowadays I think they’re considered uni, with some higher end dimensional arguments. But back then some people thought they were capped like planetary and had weird scrutiny over a lot of the black hole feats in the series. I remember in particular that the Magalor dimension collapse being uni was contested.
I don’t remember if this was in the episode, but at the time I think we compared the size of Magolor and the Black jewels dimensions based on the size of the suns in them as a high end. I think the implications of that were only alluded to in a black box. I also think scaling to Rosalina and Mario characters being uni was alluded to in a black box and compared to vague scaling from Void termina (though an error made it seem like we had more stock in certain Void arguments than we intended).
Anyway I remember a lot of people actually contested Dedede winning at the time. With the current stat opinions it’s probably pretty debatable.
Episode 109: Ben vs Hal
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/05/death-battle-predictions-ben-10-vs.html
I wanna open by saying how strong of a person Swan is. This ep had one of the most negative reactions in the show's history, and is probably another “canon event” that affected its perception for years after. I’ve had backlash to eps I’ve worked on, but it was generally just close knit community people. This was a public widespread meltdown, and it was only Swan’s 3rd written episode. I don’t think I could have dealt with that myself, let alone have gone on a publicly broadcasted podcast to defend myself. If you’re reading this your fucking awesome Swan and I still liked the fight. The music and it’s one of my favorite eps just for the memes it spawned.
Anyway the reasons why this ep got the reactions it did is probably just the “presentation”.
Hal Jordan just isn’t a character most people care about. Most people don’t think of him as OP, and at the time DC heralds just being overpowered wasn’t as consistently known. Most people also weren't aware of how the green lantern weapons work or how a lot of the retcons in DC comics work. This meant people went into the episode with the notion of not really caring about Hal, and were probably more skeptical of giving him feats from other green lanterns or pre-crisis feats, because they didn’t have prior knowledge of the logic behind it.
Ben 10 is very popular. Around the time the fight came out his fanbase was old enough to have grown up with the series and to have had him as their childhood hero. Additionally a TON of videos came out around that time hyping up Alien X as this unbeatable god. People already had it in mind that Ben was OP and DID NOT expect him to lose.
The episode used child Ben in the animation because of the assets available, but this sent the wrong message. People interpreted that as the show limiting Ben to an earlier part of his timeline. The aliens chosen for the fight accidentally emboldened that belief because a lot of them were from the original series.
The kill created an avenue for all sorts of questions and debates that didn’t actually matter. Hal went back in time and killed Ben at the start of the fight. But people thought that he did that to circumvent Alien X. Hal cutting off the Omnitrix also started all kinds of debates about the Omnitrix’s defenses. Realistically Hal could have just beat Alien X conventionally, but most people didn’t get that impression.
I also think the episode tried to tone down the amount of numbers and complicated vs stuff, placing a lot of it in the black boxes. This ended up not being the best move, as a lot of people didn’t read the black boxes. Going over that information verbally might have stopped some detractors.
Finally when the episode came out other popular youtubers reacted to it and contested the outcome, which led to a lot of shit flinging between fanbases over who was the most informed. Kinda sucked for everyone involved.
It essentially made a perfect storm. I remember people accusing the show of being biased towards DC. Ben 10 fans bothering the series creators over it at some point. Tons of doubling down. A lot of people were way too angry at that point to listen to any explanation either. Even years later some people still rage at this episode.
…sigh
We got a cool shirt out of it at least.
Episode 110: Weiss vs Mitsuru
G1 Blog:
https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/06/death-battle-predictions-weiss-schnee.html
Mitsuru Blog:
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/08/character-analysismitsuru-kirijo.html
Weiss Blog:
https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2018/09/character-analysisweiss-schnee.html
I think this episode was pretty important. I remember personally suggesting it, and I was assigned to Mitsuru. I also would say I did a large amount of work on Weiss, including her calcs.
When it was announced I think that literally everyone thought that the show was going to rig the fight for Weiss to win. The assumption was that Rooster Teeth for some reason would interfere, and coming off the last ep a lot of people were antsy. The funny thing is I literally never met anyone from the larger end of Rooster Teeth or Rwby when researching the episode or during the meeting where we determined the victor. I think they checked the script for accuracy, but they did not care about the victor not being the company owned character.
Anyway I think it was a really good fight and integrated the standsonas of both characters pretty well. Mitsuru also obviously won. People only considered Persona to be like town level at the time (and were being weird about scaling to 5), but that was already enough to beat Weiss at the time. I think the show being willing to kill a character they owned helped a lot with the accusations of bias. Though some people would have liked a more gory kill.
Yeah, I can't really blame the Ben 10 fan-base for lashing out the way they did. Even if it was fairly obvious that GL would win to anyone who actually did the research, the actual DB itself did kind of misstep in portraying that research. I do however think the Ben 10 fan-base taking Kuro's word as law was REALLY asinine though.
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