Death Battle Retrospective: Eps 151-160

 

So it was around the time that they created the “Official Death Battle Discord”. For those not aware this discord had actually existed for several years at that point and was composed of various G1s from the remnants of Screwattack. Thanks to its excellent moderation, it managed to stay one of the least toxic vs servers in the Death Battles fandom. Nay, Vs as a whole.

Over time many members of the actual show joined that server and some of them would even talk from time to time. It was pretty fun, though I remember one or two times where we had some cringy-er moments in a voice chat (“Slavery was kind of awkward” Is not a funny joke).

Eventually enough members of the show took interest in the discord to reach out to the mods and creators, proposing an idea to make the discord “official”. All the mods signed NDAs and now they link up for all sorts of events, and exclusive videos for the Death Battles champions service.  In particular one of my favorites mods is Rina. She’s great and has been a friend of ours for several years now. It was nice to be able to talk to her freely about the show once she had an NDA.

Ironically I don’t have a champions account, because I can’t be bothered to change my email and my old one doesn’t work with some of the youtube integrations. 

Anyway I would probably admit that I stopped being as observant about episodes and their reception around this time. I can just read the scripts for any of them any time I want, so the novelty of watching the full ep gradually wore off to an extent. I kinda just skip to the animation part unless it's an ep I worked on these days.

Episode 151: Dio vs Alucard

https://web.archive.org/web/20150711114632/http://www.screwattack.com/news/death-analysis-za-warudoing-steam-roller-droppin-lord-vampires-dio-brando 

The Swan force got nerfed HARD

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2021/10/death-battle-predictions-dio-vs-alucard.html 

Dio Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/10/character-analysis-dio-brandofeat-lousy.html 

Alucard Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/10/character-analysis-alucardfeat-djtiki.html 

This episode was one of Swan’s passion projects. It’s over 4 minutes long, has a fun music track, great dialogue and IIRC was one of the first episodes he personally directed. 

Fun fact he’s wanted to do this fight ever since his Screwattack days. He even had a whole blog on the fight done once. I believe a few people actually even found it during the wait period, which was a little awkward.

Old Swan blog https://web.archive.org/web/20150711092718/http://www.screwattack.com/news/death-prediction-alucard-vs-dio-brando 

Anyway I think he explained his verdict just about as well as I think he could have. He kinda tiered it by going “well if even Alucard did this, he’d have to get past this, and then that, and so on”. Frankly I’m surprised the public reaction was so good given how OP Alucard is considered to be. Though apparently the Jojo reddit got mad because they wanted Dio to die.

Episode 152: Akuma vs Shao Kahn

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2021/11/death-battle-predictions-akuma-vs-shao.html 

Shao Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/11/character-analysis-shao-kahn.html 

Akuma Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/11/character-analysis-akumafeat-akumath.html 

I don’t recall this one particularly well. I feel like it was fine, but the animation was just a bit choppy. I think it’s funny that Shao Kahn won against the same series twice.

Episode 153: Korra vs Storm

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2021/11/death-battle-predictions-korra-vs-storm.html 

Storm Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/11/character-analysis-stormfeat-lousy.html 

Korra Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/11/suggested-media-korra.html 

Another fight that I worked on.

YESSS I know it's a stomp. Everyone knew it was a stomp, even the casual audience. Storm is probably even lowballed in the ep since it’s never explained how strong she could “potentially” be via scaling to other X-men characters.

That said I think they made a pretty good use of both characters abilities and crafted a fun fight despite that. I liked the spirit realm section, the part with the Earth bending and particularly the double redirection of the lightning at the end. I personally consider this to be the best Avatar episode we’ve done on the show.

I’ll also say I’m “pretty” sure this was a passion project of Ben’s if you wonder why she didn’t fight Rey. Granted I don’t exactly think some of the sentiments that Korra vs Rey might have just dissolved into a toxic dunking contest for both series is “entirely” wrong. 

Episode 154: Madara vs Aizen

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2021/12/death-battle-predictions-madara-uchiha.html 

Madara Blog: 

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/12/character-analysis-madara-uchihafeat.html 

Aizen Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/12/character-analysis-sosuke-aizenfeat.html 

I heard this episode was controversial. I def see reddit and various youtube channels constantly ranting about it. 

Personally from an inside perspective I would definitely say that the researchers on the EP put a lot of effort into trying to make the episode as iron clad as possible. My guess is a lot of stuff, particularly on Bleach’s side, comes down to interpretation.

Anyway I think the fight is most notable for its awesome music track and the mind tricks both characters play on each other. The double fake out at the end is particularly cool.

Episode 155: Saitama vs Popeye

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2021/12/death-battle-predictions-saitama-vs.html 

Saitama Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/12/character-analysis-saitama.html 

Popeye Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2021/12/character-analysis-popeye-feat-djtiki.html 

This fight was put together relatively last minute. I researched Saitama and I helped a fair bit with Popeye. Funny enough some of the feats listed for Popeye on various sites outright didn’t exist. They were all sourced from a circular tangle of respect threads originating from Naruto Forums.

One of the more unique aspects of this fight was the animation style changes. It was super awesome to go from 2D, to sprites, to 3D and back(Heck I wanted to do something similar if we could ever use Gwenpool). 

The fight also framed it as Saitama finally getting his wish fulfilled, which was actually pretty enjoyable to watch play out. Personally Popeye was the perfect opponent, given his toon force is just a natural counter to Saitama’s pure strength based abilities.

On another note GOOOD LORDDD we dodged a bullet. Like a month after this fight came out Saitama got a billion times stronger and faster. I would not want to live in the timeline where that happened right before release.

Episode 156: Harley vs Jinx

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2022/03/death-battle-predictions-harley-quinn.html 

Jinx Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/03/character-analysis-jinxfeat-kirbykid.html

Harley Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/03/character-analysis-harley-quinnupdated.html 

This is another fight I wrote, and I considered it to be my best.  Of course I give a lot of that credit to Billy, who directed the episode. As well as Kirby Kid, the researcher on Jinx.

Harley was “pretty easy” to analyze. I had already read all her comics and made an analysis on her before the fight was ever even considered. The only “odd” thing about her was that she was introduced in the Batman animated series, so I felt like we needed to include that incarnation for her analysis. Generally most DC cartoons like that would be discarded.

The more difficult part of this fight was exactly how to analyze Jinx. League had like small “splices” of lore, but most of its material was short disconnected promotional trailers. The gameplay itself was also more tangentially connected to the story of the series, as the series had a soft “reboot” that changed how gameplay fit into the lore.

Additionally this fight was researched in October 2021, so it predated the release of Arcane. Arcane was this massive story based cartoon that more extensively explained Jinx’s backstory (albeit it still took some liberties to distinguish itself from the slight lore the game had supplied).

In the end we kinda had to make this mish mash of the game lore, gameplay, and trailers to determine the victor, then had to wait for Arcane to come out to incorporate that into the host script. Arcane also ended on a cliffhanger, so we needed to fill in the blanks of the story on our own. The cookie cutter nature of League's media also meant we had to use a lot of critical thinking in terms of how to scale Jinx to other characters.

The host script also included Ringmaster as a guest host, which was super fun. I’d like to see him show up in another battle again someday.

Anyway I really have to stress how amazing Billy was as a director. I DID NOT expect them to actually pull off the things written in this script. It has a lot of set piece changes. Starting at a carnival, going to a carousel, a roller coaster, several background transitions and then a tent. I’d also say it’s one of the best animated fights and Billy supposedly did a lot of the touch ups himself.

The characterization was great and so was the humor. I loved the cigar bit. I personally also enjoyed ribbing on the Joker/Sweet Tooth ep by having Jinx flip off Harley when she tried the same thing.

There was a little bit of contesting the sources used for Jinx when the fight came out, but the reception was overall positive. I really look back on it fondly.

Oh yeah I also paid for the guest singer of this fight. The music came out great.

Episode 157:  Scarlet Witch vs Zatanna

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2022/04/death-battle-predictions-scarlet-witch.html 

Witch Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/04/character-analysis-scarlet-witch.html 

Zatanna Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/04/character-analysis-zatanna.html 

I didn’t follow this one much, though I know the victory took some people by surprise. The animation was pretty cool at least and Zattana stole the show.

Random thought but remember the days when people didn’t use the term “outerversal” unironically. I sure do.

Episode 158: Tanjiro vs Jonathan

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2022/04/death-battle-predictions-tanjiro-kamado.html 

Tanjiro Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/04/character-alalysis-tanjirofeat-felicia.html 

Jonathan Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/04/character-analysis-jonathan-joestarfeat.html 

I really enjoyed this fight. Both characters brought a lot of valor to the table and the ending where Jonathan shifts his lungs to avoid impalement felt like an actual Jojo episode. The ending was also pretty heartfelt, and I lowkey hope they can one day do a stealth sequel to it. I’m surprised how creative Swan got with Jonathan scaling despite him only appearing in Jojo part one.

Fun fact I believe they tossed around Deku fighting Tanjiro at one point, though I don’t think that would have been a very even fight.

Episode 159: Thor vs Vegeta

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2022/05/death-battle-predictions-thor-vs-vegeta.html 

Vegeta Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/05/character-analysis-vegeta.html 

Thor Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/05/character-analysis-thor-feat-akuma.html 

I Feel like Ultra Ego is a dumb transformation tbh. I think not getting hit is the better strategy for winning fights, but that’s just me. Regardless it was cool this was one of the  first animations to use it on the internet. Though that story was still ongoing at the time, so there was only like one chapter to go off of. 

Anyway, the fight was pretty good. The instant transmission final flash, followed by the fakeout kill and then Thor performing the hammer head smash was pretty awesome. I remember Vegeta also used the one time cufflink thing Vegeta uses on Goku in the Z filler.

The episode did get some heat for not putting Vegeta high enough on the “totem pole”. Though ironically I did toy with placing Vegeta higher than most people are aware of. Personally I would say this episode was challenging. Ultimately the question came down to whether you would need the Thorforce for victory, as some people may argue that won't be permanent. I think we would have used the Thorforce if we had too, but I think that it would have been more complicated to justify. At least at the time.

Broly was also something people talked about a lot at the time. The manga editor, Akira, the SuperHero Movie and the manga had said some conflicting things regarding his power. Later on I said something along the lines of “ well that’s implied, but they’ve been a bit inconsistent, probably because the manga/movies are in development at the same time. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point they establish Broly’s power is erratic or not fully under his control yet, to give them a backdoor to do whatever they want in the moment. I don’t think it would matter to the outcome either way”. 

Anway I think about Goku vs Superman, and how having done all the research for Superman and reading literally “all” of his comics personally helped a lot when constructing the argument and putting Goku as high as possible. I imagine I probably would have done the same here if I could have approached the ep on a similar all encompassing scope. Granted people took it more seriously than I expected. Perhaps I could have reworded a black box to say Thorforce would just supersede any highballing.

It was around then I decided that maybe just bumping up the universe size was the better way to go for determining Dragon Ball fights in the recap. I realized that a segment on scaling in this episode took up full minutes of time and invited debate over factors that wouldn’t affect the outcome anyway. Making the universe size larger would be enough for DragonBall to win most of its fights, and something like DC was so large it hardly mattered anyway(as seen with Goku vs Superman). Of course I would still say the characters upscale from the feat, similar to how Goku was upscaled against Superman.

On another note some of the Dragon Ball fans got a little “weird” around this time. In particular there was this guy named Spongboboy who kept bothering me about the outcome. He would come into my PMs, and when I blocked him he would make alternate accounts to message me again. One time he literally tried to pretend he was somebody else and then dropped the act mid conversation. He did it about 3-5 times I think.

Then he tried to make this video where he said he’d attack multiple members of the community and then tried to impersonate me on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/UltraguyE 

He’s got good taste in Gwenpool avatars at least

One more Fun fact after the Freeza fight I said he was nonillion universal or something. But to be honest I just made up a random number that sounded “plausible” and never came up with an actual method for getting it. People seemed happy though lol.

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Episode 160: Omni-Man vs Homelander

  

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2022/05/death-battle-predictions-omni-man-vs.html 

Omni-Man Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/05/character-analysis-omniman.html 

Homelander Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2022/05/character-analysis-homelander-feat.html 

This is a fight that I think a lot of people didn’t want, but man did it feel good to watch. Homelander is just a huge prick in his series and him being so untouchable kinda gets tiring.  Obviously Omni-man stomped, but it was a glorious stomp to watch. Even the Amazon and Boys Twitter accounts got in on it. This finishing blow has got to be one of the most gory deaths on the show up until this point.

Oh also no Amazon did not force us to do the episode. Similar to the rwby tin foil, I don’t think any of the researchers particularly talked to anyone from that company.