Death Battle Retrospective eps 111-120

 

This was the season when we first expanded the research team. Up until this point all the previous members had been “grandfathered” in from the volunteers positions. But we had grown close to a lot of people in various communities and felt we could use more help. So we talked amongst ourselves about various candidates we thought would fulfill the role.

Ironically around this same time is when I met DJTiki. He worked on a show called crossover X, and asked us if we had research positions open for any of his friends. At the time he actually didn’t push to get involved with the show himself.

We ultimately settled on several people, one of the most notable being Grand Balzer/Djanger. For the record we kinda had a couple of “unofficial” requirements for who we scouted.

• The people in question had to be well tempered and have fairly good social intelligence.  People who tend to act rude, confrontational or melodramatic tend to be cut out.

• Generally we tended to avoid people with elitist mentalities.  People who think they’re always right or are ego driven tend to not be easy to work with.

• We wanted people who respect the show and don’t take vs too seriously. People who have had meltdowns in the past over outcomes, consistently insult the show, and have started fights over vs stuff where out.

• Generally people who were responsible and could be expected to keep a secret. For obvious reasons.

• And finally obviously we needed people who can actually do the work well. Typically we looked at any calcs or blogs they had made to see the quality of their work.

• Tbh I would also say that knowing us and having a good relationship was also a plus. This is why many members of the research team kinda came from the G1 blog. The G1 blog sprouted from SAs old community, so naturally we knew a lot of them already.

Anyway these new researchers initially started off as “Jr” researchers and got paired with the current researchers on various projects. They were then upgraded to “full researchers” upon their next episodes.

Episode 111: Johnny Cage vs Captain Falcon

G1 Blogs:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/06/death-battle-predictions-johnny-cage-vs.html 

Falcon Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/06/character-analysiscaptain-falcon.html 

This may not be common knowledge, but this is the first fight Lousy and I did any writing for. After Swan had written a couple of fights, a few of the other researchers asked if they could also have writing opportunities. 

Ben decided to use this ep as a “tryout” session of sorts. A few researchers would  write segments of the script and he would take what we had written and mold it into the final version. 

Anyway I was also the researcher for Falcon on this episode. In all honesty he was kind of  challenging because he doesn’t actually fight much in his own series and only has a short anime in terms of extended media. His moveset in smash also “technically” wasn’t canonical. 

If anything the Blue Falcon car was more impressive and had more consistent feats than Falcon himself. The car alone was all he needed to secure the win, as its power source had enough power to affect the entire universe when applied correctly.

Anyway the ep was really good. It particularly made creative use of the terrain. I’m kinda happy Falcon won since he’s honestly pretty cool.

Episode 112: Aang vs Ed

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/07/death-battle-predictions-aang-vs-edward.html 

Ed Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/07/character-analysisedward-elric.html 

Aang Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/07/character-analysis-avatar-aang.html 

A Lot of people don’t like this episode. I would say a big part of that is because of the fight set up and the characterization. It kinda just reduces Ed to the one joke about his height, and misses the depth he has from his own series. Aang is also just REALLY hard to use in a Death Battle. He’s not violent and so synonymous with pacifism, that it’s hard to find a way to make him killing an opponent work. I recall at one point they wanted Ed to tap into the power of his own soul to basically burn himself out to get around that, but it didn’t work out.

The fight itself is fine though personally. Some people say it's one-sided, but both characters just use bending to deflect or rebound each other's attacks for the most part. Then have a short even-ish melee exchange.  The real issue is that the fight ends abruptly the second Aang goes into the avatar state, which gives the impression that he stomped hard. 

On the analysis side I would probably just change the wording of one black box. I remember during the meeting we said that while it was possible Ed’s dad blocked some of the blast, Ed still probably took enough to scale it, but people thought the feat was basically just being discounted. I remember getting really annoyed cause people got confrontational about that back when the fight came out. People also seemed to be annoyed by the exact way the show said Kimblee almost Killed Ed, but I think that was silly in hindsight. I think the old FMA anime being used I would still keep, since it was largely just used for supplementary feats.

Outside of that I would say I was satisfied, as it used most of the feats on both sides that people “knew” about at the time. Though I believe the gundodge thing at the end of Ed’s analysis was intended to be mach 10, but the line specifying that was removed.

I do have to call out some  “weirdness” regarding how Avatar was treated at the time and a bit of railroading for Ed. Back then the idea that the  “lightning” the characters in avatar used being legit was heavily contested. I remember people even tried to argue Iroh redirecting natural lightning wasn’t actually that impressive. People were much more on the idea of the characters being class canons, and at most I think the standard cast was argued to be MCB to small town. Ed also had this very vague lightning feat that was pushed really hard around that time.

I remember a lot of nitpicking over feats of Korra deflecting the spirit canon, and for some reason people not being aware that Aang could use the avatar state at will. There was also this huge reluctance to accept a lot of the feats by other avatars. There was this one feat of a previous avatar causing multiple volcanic eruptions that was island level for example. 

A particular oddity was this idea that Ed would blitz Aang and kill him with destruction alchemy before he could transform into the avatar state. While “destruction” was something Ed could technically do, he’d never used the ability like that in cannon. It also ignored Aang’s entire fighting style being evasive, his ability to fly and his seismic sense make it hard to sneak up on him.

It ended up being one of the first eps the G1 Blog disagreed with, and it looks super odd from a modern context. Not only is the MHS Avatar lighting  stuff universally accepted at this point, but now everyone is saying the standard characters are city, while Aang is argued to be country to moon at his max. In contrast some of the values used for FMA in their recent blogs were made lesser and the lightning feat thing has been completely discounted. 

Just another example of power scaling inconsistencies I guess.

Episode 113:  Ghost Rider vs Lobo

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/08/death-battle-predictions-ghost-rider-vs.html 

I remember the ep being pretty enjoyable. I think that Ghost Rider winning was an upset at the time or at least for some subsets of the fandom. The ep def made good use of Lobo’s healing factor and did a good job of making Nicolas Cage intimidating. 

Episode 114: Dragonzord vs Mechagodzilla

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/08/death-battle-predictions-dragonzord-vs.html 

I feel like I remember the research process of this episode being difficult for some reason? I can’t quite remember why though. Anyway I think this was Grand’s first fight as a Junior researcher. I recall it being relatively good, though I didn’t care much for either character.

Episode 115: Sasuke vs Hiei

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/09/death-battle-predictions-sasuke-vs-hiei.html

Sasuke Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/09/character-analysis-sasuke-uchiha.html 

I actually own all the volumes of Yu Yu Hakusho. That said, I didn’t actually follow the production of this episode much. I remember Hiei winning at the time caused some backlash. I would also say nowadays Naruto has gotten much stronger, so Sasuke probably would have a more definitive edge. I also remember the people on this episode got a lot of personal attacks and mockery across various communities, but they still seemed to enjoy the episode and their time working on it. Ultimately, I consider that more important than the power scaling brain rot aspect of it.

Episode 116: Ganondorf vs Dracula

ODBFB Prediction:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130627194035/http://www.screwattack.com/news/death-battle-predictions-ganondorf-vs-dracula 

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/10/death-battle-predictions-ganondorf-vs.html 

Ganon Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/09/character-analysis-ganondorf.html 

So this is actually an episode all of us wanted to do since the ODBFB days. We made an entire prediction blog for it and even helped this guy named Dark Hyrule lord make a comic for it. It’s actually THE FIRST time I worked with them on any blog. Funny enough we all sided with Ganon lol. Anyway I was pretty ecstatic to be working on this episode, particularly given that Ganon’s first appearance on the show didn’t go over so well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121104220333/http://www.screwattack.com/news/dracula-vs-ganondorf-death-battle-comic-0 

The comic is still up!

In the original ODBFB version of the fight this was an army fight, but in the official episode it had to be reduced to one on one. Still, it was really good. I remember we talked a bit about how we could circumvent Ganon’s immortality. Luckily Dracula had a holy nuke.

Fun fact I recall having long winded conversations about lasers in Zelda and which ones are legit, with several people agreeing on the Beamos ones from Twilight Princess(though apparently now there’s some disagreement on that?). We’ve used that feat a few times since then, but the footage had to be manually taken by the researcher Hero. I’ve actually had to ask Hero for the footage more than once for that footage, cause I couldn’t get it anywhere else.

Episode 117:  Mob Vs Tatsumaki

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/11/death-battle-predictions-mob-vs.html 

Tatsumaki Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/10/character-analysistatsumaki.html 

This is a beast of a Death Battle. It’s massively destructive, uses the TK of both characters well and has a pretty intense finish. That said, it’s a bit hard to watch at points cause Mob dies ngl lol.

We actually went back and forth on the verdict multiple times when the episode was made. That’s why the ep even says he could win maybe 40% of the time. The G1 blog also had a long debate on the episode. I recall if Mob could possess Tatsumaki being a big one of them.

A few weeks later One Punch man got feats that eclipsed Mob by multiple orders of magnitude. Mob probably won’t ever come close to winning again because of that, particularly given his series is already finished. 

Episode 118: Deadpool vs the Mask

She solos them both tbh

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/11/death-battle-predictions-deadpool-vs.html 

I think this had some people groaning when it was announced. Another Deadpool fight wasn’t on a lot of peoples wish lists given he kinda stole the spotlight of his first fight and his second was more of a memey joke episode. That said, I think the episode approached the idea of 3rd round in a fairly meta and unique way by deliberately stacking the odds against him. 

One thing I can’t help but remember is some of the jokes Swan almost wrote into the script, but were taken out for one reason or another. Even years later I remember this one segment where Deadpool travels back in time, shoves a chunk of kryptonite up Superman’s ass and then assists Goku in killing him. Peak fiction tbh.

Release the extended cut Swan

Episode 119: All Might vs Might Guy

MHA is a little mid not gonna lie

 

My rant on why Deku should have stayed quirkless

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2019/12/death-battle-predictions-all-might-vs.html 

Anyway this was a good fight. It’s surprisingly more of a friendly spar than an antagonistic fight. It also set an important precedent in explaining that even if a character dies, the still win the battle if the opponent dies first.

Episode 120: Miles vs Static

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/01/death-battle-predictions-miles-morales.html

Miles Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/12/character-analysis-miles-morales.html 

Static Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2019/12/character-analysis-static.html 

So this is the first episode I wrote. It’s weird to think about because somehow I still can’t comprehend I wrote something millions of people watched. I loved Static as a kid and watched his cartoons all the time. I didn’t grow up with Miles, but I had exposure to him and loved the first Spider-verse movie. Overall it was a fun fight for me to start out with.

I remember Static was a little tricky. His continuity was all over the place, as he had gone through several reboots. His cartoon was also more or less the main canon people were familiar with, so we couldn’t not give that priority. He also had A LOT of random powers in a lot of random comics. One key detail was in an issue of Hawkman. Who READS  HAWKMAN?

Miles was comparatively a bit easier, but his history was a little convoluted as his original universe blew up more or less. He was living in the main 616 universe, but he had all sorts of weird particular things carry over about his powers from the Ultimate universe. 

Years later they would both get new content and a ton of new powers. Arguably Miles got a little ridicule and basically became a shonen protag.

Miles Morales is Spider-Man

Anyway I think the fight turned out pretty well. I liked the fight on the side of the building and the Spider-Verse effects. The worst part was the thumbnail tbh.

I actually remember being super paranoid that people would side with Miles because they like Spider-man, so I made like a 20 page Q and A doc, along with a cataloged series of appearances of Electro. Q and A docs where like these mini blogs I would make to explain extra details about fights. This blog doesn’t exist anymore because it was only on google docs and I took it down after a certain incident(more on that when we get to Beerus vs Galaxia). Funny enough nobody really contested the fight so my worries were unwarranted. 

Will he ever meet the Teen Titans?

Around the time I joined several new discord servers, including what became the Official server and a Deviant Art server. People in that second one where really fucking mad Miles didn’t fight Deku, but to be honest it’s probably a good thing he hadn’t at the time. Deku was about to get upgrades that would have let him beat Miles by the time the episode came out, so I would say we dodged a bullet.

Oh one other thing that did bother me though. People who just looked at this fight and were like “they’re only fighting each other cause they’re black”. Here’s some connections.

• Electric powers

• Originated from alternate universes and merged into their respective franchises main universes

• Got powers from mutagens

• Science/tech oriented 

• Static was inspired by the original Spider-man, while Miles is Peter’s successor.

Kind of a weird thing to get on the show case for given I and several others who suggested and chose to work on the fight are in fact black. But whatever.