Death Battle Retrospective eps 121-130

 

Episode 121: Black Canary vs Sindel

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/02/death-battle-predictions-black-canary.html 

Canary Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/01/character-analysisblack-canaryfeat-lswan.html 

I really enjoyed the animation of this fight. I didn’t know either character well but the tournament set up was fun and the turn around by Carnary at the end was cool. This was also an episode that made me think about how destructive decibel feats could be since they work on a logarithmic scale. 

I am utterly confused as to why the music track doesn’t spell combat with a K.

Episode 122: Leonardo vs Red Ranger

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/02/death-battle-predictions-leonardo-vs.html 

Leo Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/02/character-analysis-leonardofeat.html 

I didn’t grow up with either of these franchises, but I liked the episode. I remember figuring out how they were going to composite Leo was a problem. Eventually they settled on more or less giving him everything in all his series, minus some of the weird one off abilities. I recall power rangers was on a losing streak before this, so it’s nice to see them get a win.

Episode 123: Genos vs War Machine

G1 Blog: 

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/03/death-battle-predictions-genos-vs-war.html 

Genos Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/02/character-analysisgenos.html 

War Machine Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/02/character-analysiswar-machine.html 

I was the researcher for Genos. I also did a significant amount of work for War Machine, including his calcs. The episode was another 2D fight and I think it turned out pretty well. There’s not a lot of connecting elements between the characters admittedly.

I remember at the time it was a pretty obvious stomp in the favor of War Machine. Though by now One Punch man has gotten a lot more higher end feats, so Genos could potentially put up a struggle. I’m sure War Machine still wins regardless though.

Fun fact I’m probably partially to blame for Genos’ name being mispronounced in the episode. For some reason during the research meeting I pronounced his name “Jee-nos” because his name is written similarly to the character “Geno” from Super Mario RPG(whose name is actually pronounced as Jee-no). I guess me doing  that must have stuck in Ben’s mind or something and they did the same thing when recording for the episode. They were probably only able to change Wiz’s lines when it was caught later on.

Episode 124: Gray vs Esdeath

Ultra’s first ep

Lousy’s first ep

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/03/death-battle-predictions-gray-vs-esdeath.html 

Gray Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/03/character-analysisgray-filibuster.html

Esdeath Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/03/character-analysis-esdeathfeat-kirsche.html 

This was Lousy’s first episode.

…… It did not go as smoothly as my first ep did. 

I was assigned Gray for this episode and the verdict came down to this ability called commander in chief. Esdeath could essentially stockpile her power for 3 days, and release it all at once to create this massive snowstorm that covered most of a continent. That was her best feat. We essentially just cut her AP in 3, and said that was one day's worth of power. She also had this time freezing power, though one character “kinda” resisted it a “little” by having good cold resistance.

Speaking of cold, Gray had cold resistance, so there was a lot of debate on how effective Esdeath’s ice based powers would be. We also scaled Gray to this meteor feat the Erza got not long after her episode had happened. Gray also had a sealing move, but it would kill him if he used it.

The verdict ended up being that one day of Esdeath’s AP was more than enough to beat out Gray’s power. That the amount of ice she could use was probably too much for Gray to do anything about if it hit all at once, even with his resistances. Not to mention Esdeath still had physical strength, as she scaled to these giant mech things. Her time freeze was also determined to  probably still affect Gray well enough to be a better finishing attack than his sealing moves.

One G1, Speedy, actually figured out almost all of this logic in one day. 

Then the discussion kinda just went off the rails. People wanted to compartmentalize how much power Esdeath could have down to the very last “second” (She gets 435 tons of tnt stronger per half second). We couldn’t just measure her power on a daily basis. 

I remember people suddenly arguing that the panels showing the Esdeath snowstorm covering the planet were unreliable and couldn’t be measured properly. Trying to limit it down to a single city of coverage. Even though it’s pretty blatant on panel and in the narrative that it just covers like an entire continent in seconds.

The best I can do is island level

Gray’s ice resistance was also treated as NLF, basically saying he'd be immune to any ice attack now matter how powerful. Despite the fact that the series had implied that his resistance could be overcome or circumvented a few times by that point. This logic looked even sillier in battles that happened after the episode came out.

If someone freezes the entire universe, Gray can walk it off

One of the more amusing things was the meteor feat. Back when the feat first happened people tried really hard to lower its value by saying it got to Earth in 10 minutes. They seemed reluctant to let Erza have a feat that put her above Zoro.  Then in this ep there was a lot of effort put into bumping that number up as much as possible. In the end the G1 blog had one of its only draws with the verdict.

Anyway the fight itself was pretty good, and it had a rap battle. Esdeath also got an intense close win by cutting off Gray from using his sealing move at the last second.

Episode 125: Goro vs Machamp

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/04/death-battle-predictions-goro-vs-machamp.html 

Goro Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/03/character-analysis-gorofeat-lousy.html 

Another good episode. I remember not feeling like they’d get a lot out of a basic fist fight, but the arm ripping, and so on was pretty intense. The analysis is a little light though.

Episode 126: Cable vs Booster Gold

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/04/death-battle-predictions-cable-vs.html 

Booster Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/04/character-analysis-booster-gold-feat.html

Cable Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/04/character-analysiscablefeat-hero.html 

I recall there being some worry about this episode after it was determined that Booster won. I guess cable is pretty popular and Marvel had lost a decent amount of fights to DC at that point? Either way Swan’s writing was on point. I really enjoyed Booster being a lovable jackass and turning the tables on Cable in the end. 

Another note. People might not remember this, but I used to release blogs for characters before the episode came out.  People more or less flipped their shit on Booster the second his blog was released, due to the implications of the herald scaling he had on it. Eventually I had to stop releasing blogs early(The “last” time I did this was for Wally and Archie Sonic), as it kinda became this concern that it was spoiling the fights.

Episode 127: Obi-Wan vs Kakashi

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/05/death-battle-predictions-obi-wan-kenobi.html 

Obi-Wan Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/04/character-analysis-obi-wanfeat-hero.html 

Kakashi:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/04/character-analysis-kakashi-feat-grand.html 

Probably one of Swan’s best written fights. Made good use of the Vader flashbacks and high ground memes.  I also recall he got hired full time for RT full time sometime this time. 

Anyway I think this ep was notable because it was the first Star Wars episode after the “Disney Cannon nuke”. Star Wars Legends continued usage wasn’t as clear cut at that point. Personally I think Swan made the right call by continuing to utilize it. There’s just far too much of Star Wars history that would be ignored otherwise.

Episode 128: Danny Phantom vs Jake Long

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/05/death-battle-predictions-danny-phantom.html 

Danny Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/05/character-analysis-danny-phantom-feat.html

Jake Long Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/05/character-analysis-jake-long.html 

I was a little jealous I didn’t get to work on this ep not gonna lie. I loved Danny Phantom as a kid, and watched all the episodes of his cartoon. I really wanted to research him. Oh well.

Anyway Lousy’s second ep went much better than his first. The animation came out well and more or less everyone agreed with the verdict. One of the more interesting things was that the series creator watched the episode and then had a talk with Ben and Chad on a cast. It was probably one of the more notable series recognitions we’ve had up until that point.

His live reaction to the ep being “yeah I could agree with that” and “huh, we just drew it that way cause we thought it looked cool”, sums up a lot about power scaling imo.  Fans take it way more seriously than creators.

Episode 129: She-Ra vs Wonder Woman

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/05/death-battle-prediction-she-ra-vs.html 

She-Ra Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/05/character-analysisshe-rafeat-swan.html 

I recall this ep getting backlash over the verdict, but I doubt that would happen nowadays. At the time DC heralds still weren't considered unga bunga versal, but now I think Wonder Women would have enough dimensional tiers or whatever to beat the arguments She-Ra fans were pushing at the time (Multiversal I think).

Anyway the fight was solid enough. I don’t recall  anything super unusual about it.

Episode 130: Beerus vs Galaxia

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/08/death-battle-predictions-beerus-vs.html 

Galaxia Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/07/character-analysis-big-catfeat-djtiki.html 

This was the first episode that DJTIKi worked on. Fun fact he had messaged me again asking about research positions, and we got him on the team shortly after his inquiry. 

Anyway this is one of my favorite episodes. I personally proposed this fight, as I wanted to use Beerus, and I felt like a lot of his opponents kinda sucked(Thanos, Darksied,etc). This specific fight seemed like it was fairly debatable and had a decent amount of actual connections. Plus a friend of mine really liked Sailor Moon, and I wanted to get a character from that series on the show because of it. I even read her vs blogs on Sailor Moon and got her name put in the episode.

Friendly Neighborhood Imp: Imperator100 Reacts to Death Battle: Beerus vs Galaxia (Spoilers) (realdeathbattleimp.blogspot.com) 

Fun fact: Dragon Ball characters being universal and MFTL via shockwaves was still kinda being debated back then. Whether the shockwave punch punch was “all at once destruction” was a matter of contention, and I remember having to back up Beerus being able to destroy a universe with statements from Toei’s website and statements from the anime by Vados. I also had to find footage of Beerus moving in tandem with the shockwaves to get people to believe it scaled to speed.  The universe size calc in particular was something no one was expecting at the time, or at the very least had not been taken seriously. I remember initially a lot of people were kinda put off by it.

 

This is ironic of course given nowadays people watch the episode and question why Beerus isn’t a billion times stronger or whatever, but yeah it wasn’t a given back at the time.

Anyway this episode is really notable for just how little people actually know about Sailor Moon. I want to say no one involved in the debate had actually watched the show, or read the manga. They essentially just made up powers for Galaxia, conflated all the series characters abilities with each other, and took flowery language as vague hax. Off of the top of my head I recall

• Thinking Galaxia could regen from a “concept”

• Believing Galaxia could erase the “concept” of Hakai from reality

• Her having passive death hax that would kill anything everywhere she went

• Her being above the concept of time/space and unbound by cause and effect

• Her being able to steal a person's “star seed” with a mear thought

• Her having Multi+ 5D power

A lot of stuff that just doesn’t happen? Even her profile on vs wiki was just filled with weird embellishments. 

The only real debate was whether Beerus could resist his star seed from being taken, and we concluded that he “probably” could. Though this was based a bit on conjecture of his relationship with the Grand Supreme Kai, who was resistant to Moro.

Anyway, the fight itself was awesome. It was this huge space battle and the sun blew up, and Beerus used Ultra instinct. His turn around on Galaxia must have been jaw dropping at the time. A lot of people didn’t think he’d win.

UNFORTUNATELY Toei took down the video so you can’t watch it on youtube anymore. Fun fact the only blogs I’ve made that have ever been copyright struck were by Toei.

Tbf I’ll admit I do pirate stuff, but it’s telling to me that no company has ever cared about this small blog except Toei. A company that has a long history of screwing people over on multiple platforms.

Anyway the episode's reception was really good….for the most part. See I used to put Q and A blogs on google docs, and we uploaded one for this fight. But then somebody used that as an avenue to send DJ a lot of disgusting videos. I took it down and re-uploaded it on my blog site. This is the same reason why I took the Miles vs Static google doc Q and A down.

I also heard the Deviant Art community had a meltdown over the results of this fight?  That said, I've heard a lot of negative things about them over the years and the community seemingly imploded after a while, so who really cares what they think. 

Only other thing to add is that after the fight people told me that they wanted Beerus to fight “Hades” not Galaxia. Awkwardly I had to tell them I had no idea who that character was.

Who are you?

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Man Archie, Crona, Hulk and the Spider fight are def gonna be fun to go over all at once