Death Battle Retrospective: Eps 131-139

 

This is probably gonna be the most uncomfortable retrospective ngl.

Episode 131: Zuko vs Shoto

G1 Blog:

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

Zuko Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/08/character-analysis-zukofeat-akuma.html 

Shoto Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/08/character-analysis-shoto-tororoki-feat.html 

No super strong feelings. Apparently some people don’t like it, but it’s fairly serviable in terms of animation and analysis. I remember it was nice that the verdict didn’t need to rely on complicated math. 

Funny story Zuko almost won this episode. Around the time it came out Avatar characters were considered Town and MHS. Zuko’s bending was also being scaled to Toph holding a library and Korra freezing large parts of a giant mech. MHA at the time was like MCB/Town, and their speed was still in flux to an extent. Because of this Zuko actually was set to win because his speed was superior.

A G1 who later became a research team member, Speedy, ended up calc-ing a feat on Shoto’s ice creation during the school festival arc. He used the size of the stadium,  which he extrapolated from statements and charts in the manga. This ended up making Shoto waaay stronger than Zuko. I and a few others happened to be in that chat, and we brought it up to the rest of the research team. We debated the calc back and forth a bit, but eventually we agreed it was legit and that we would probably need to change the verdict of the episode. This was unusual because changing the verdict after it's already been decided or the script is being worked on is very very rare. In hindsight it’s probably a good thing, given Shoto has just gotten exponentially stronger since then.

Episode 132: Flash vs Sonic

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/09/death-battle-predictions-wally-west-vs.html

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/09/death-battle-predictions-wally-west-vs_5.html 

Archie Sonic blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/06/character-analysis-archie-sonic-hedgehog.html 

Wally Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/08/character-analysis-wally-westfeat-lswan.html 

This episode learned a lot from Ben vs Hal. Everyone knew about the reputation of Archie Sonic and how losing him was kind of a big deal. So they made a huge point to have additional black boxes, explain the verdict extensively and keep the vs terminology that was needed. Fun fact I actually had like this whole elaborate “debunk blog” for Archie that I had to go rescind when this episode was made.

Old Blog: https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2016/07/ultraguys-thoughts-and-opinions.html 

Anyway debate ultimately came down to the chaos force vs the speed force, as well as Sonic’s reality warping powers.

The chaos force was essentially this higher dimension outside of space/time where the emerald energy in Archie came from.  The argument was that because the Super Genesis wave had destroyed/erased the Chaos Force (along with the rest of Ken Pender’s creations) and Sonic was capable of matching/nullifying that power, he would be able to affect the Speed Force. The counter to this argument was found when Swan realized that the Speed force existed beyond the “Bleed”, a bulk space of infinite dimensions . Thus giving Flash an edge. This was largely just simplified to “DC BIG” in a black box.

The reality warping was gotten around due to one specific comic where Flash vibrated to create reality warping energy, meaning could realistically do the.

Anyway I thought the fight was pretty good. It’s one of the first major animations to use Ultra Sonic and the kill more or less pulled off what Ben vs Hal was trying to accomplish. The final blow shifting Sonic through tons of comic panels has got to be one of the funniest kills.

Turning to a slightly darker note, this is an episode where things got really…….weird community wise. At one point in Death Battle’s history a link or two was shared on 4chan, and that introduced a lot of odd people into the community. There were also some people from kiwi farms lurking in a few communities around the same time. Many of these people were not great people. For example one of them left the community on their own, lied about being banned to drum up drama, and has said things like “Tiananmen Square was justified police action”. Anyway many of these people would make this habit of trying to screenshot researchers. Sometimes to try to embarrass them or they would try to hypothesize on our thoughts on various aspects of the show. Of course since the people on the 4chan threads were not actually on the servers, they would often extrapolate all sorts of weird meanings out of nothing, or jump to odd conclusions. People around this time may even remember that I made it a point to purge all my prior messages in various servers and disengage from the community for a while.

This episode in particular set them off. They believed that the show was going to “rig” a Sonic win and spent the entire waiting period going nuts over literally nothing. They also started to actively try to stalk various members of the Research Team in an attempt to figure out who the winner would be. 

For example several of the current  Research members were in the G1 Blogs server, as they had been part of the server before becoming official members.  A few others of us were also allowed in since we had been friends with them for years.  In fact at the time many people were essentially allowed to just come in and out as they pleased and stay as long as they wanted. Then it turned out somebody specifically in the server was being manipulated by a person from 4chan into trying to spy on the members there. Resulting in the server having to change the rules, limiting the amount of people allowed in and kicking people out if they weren't working on things.

Even after attempts to purge these people from the community, a lot of them continued to have weird obsessions with the show. They would somehow believe certain members had way more power over specific episodes than they actually did, and even actively got angry with them over stuff they hadn’t worked on. I remember Swan somehow seemed to become a Boogy man of shorts. With them dubbing a term “Swank” as an insult.

Even much later the fact people from those communities knew who we were persisted to be a problem. In particular at one point a group of people decided to target Speedy over MLP fights or other misc matchup they thought he would “ruin” somehow. They actively tried to find “dirt” they could use against him. When they couldn’t find anything they tried to concoct a plan to harass him into saying something stupid. Then when that wouldn’t work, someone tried to impersonate him and messaged another discord user a derogatory message. That person had also been involved in various controversies, and drummed up more drama. The overall intention being to send something to Rooster Teeth to try to get Speedy fired. I unfortunately know this because I saw these “conversations” firsthand, and saw people outright admit what they were doing. I made it a point to report it immediately.

God Imagine deliberately trying to harass and bait a person so you can ruin them in front of an audience. How disgusting and childish.

Anyway recently it hasn’t been an issue, but I'm still more guarded these days than I used to.

Bonus Ep: Sevens Battle Royale

This is a fun animation, but it's kinda a non sequitur episode. Butcher would be great to have in an outright battle at some point. I remember being surprised, as Swan kinda just wrote the episode in secret.

Episode 133: Winter Soldier vs Red Hood

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/09/death-battle-predictions-winter-soldier.html 

Another live action episode. I remember the choreography being pretty good. I can’t remember how the fight ended though. I’d like to take my own crack at Red Hood one day.

Anyway this was when I changed my blog release schedule.

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/09/update-on-blog-releases.html 

I started releasing “suggested media” blogs that detail what media you should watch to get caught up on a character. This was primarily for people who wanted to speculate or make predictions.

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/09/winter-soldier-suggested-media-guide.html 

Episode 134: Venom vs Crona 

Everyone talks about El Cates. But no one talks about El Fire Force 

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/10/death-battle-predictions-venom-vs-crona.html

Venom Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/10/character-analysis-venom.html 

Crona Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/10/character-analysiscrona.html 

This was the second fight I wrote.The episode itself I thought was fine. I liked the analysis, and the animation was ok, albeit a bit slower than what I imagined in my head. I’d give it like a 7 out of 10.  I remember being a little worried about it, given I remembered how defensive people had gotten over Carnage. That said show had actually even given teasers, with Crona being one of them, so people knew Venom was a potential opponent. I made it a point to look at the opinions of people during the lead up to the fight and I even slyly asked a few times how strong people thought the symbiotes were. Obviously I knew there was this ongoing storyline, so I kept an eye on it.

Here’s the general sentiment I saw regarding Venom for basically the entire year. 

Before Crona's opponent was announced to be Venom:  Venom’s town level like most Spider-Man characters, probably scales to the FTL Spider-man feats but not fully since he doesn't have Spider-Sense, his regen is good but nowhere near a Deadpool or Wolverine, let alone Carnage. There’s this ongoing storyline right now where might possibly get upgrades, but it's comics so obviously it wouldn’t stick. Crona is obviously stronger and has his kryptonite weakness via sound attacks.

When the episode was announced this was more or less the sentiment for the first day or so, but the people felt as if they could use the Cates run as an avenue to make Venom win and totally changed their tune.

After Crona’s opponent was announced: Venom is a multiverse buster thanks to the Legion symbiote and through scaling to Knull and the Grendel symbiote which both scale to Thor. He's massively faster than light, can regenerate from anything, he has completely removed his sound weakness, and is not at all associated with villainy anymore. He's not a Spider-Man character.

He is not a Spider-man character

HE IS NOT A SPIDER-MAN CHARACTER?

I can’t believe Venom made a guest appearance in the new Spider-man game

I don’t care about any of the arguments people wanna bring up about this matchup at this point. Do I think people were pushing for Venom cause they liked him? Yeah probably. I remember people scaling symbiotes to getting one shot by Thor. The whole ignoring of the powers given by codices was temporary. A lot of people keep bringing up King in Black for some reason. Yes Eddie became the king in black, but he gave Venom to his son Dylan. Dylan is Venom right now, not Eddit. They clearly still want their street level stories. Plus that comic wasn’t even out when the video came out anyway.

Something clearly went seriously wrong once people legitimately argued that Venom wasn’t a Spider-man character. He’s not only legally under that brand, but constantly shows up in all Spider-man media under various conditions. He’s one of Spidey’s most popular villains. Saying he isn’t a Spider-Man character is like saying Harley Quinn isn’t a Batman character.

But when it comes down to it I think my problem is more how the researchers of this ep were treated. This episode had one of the worst backlashes of any episode I worked on(something made frustrating by the sudden switch up on opinions). The way they were insulted and mocked over the outcome was legitimately appalling. I would say that many people, even some people in the G1 blog, seemingly cared more about Venom losing than the people who were supposedly their friends. The researcher for Venom even left all public servers, and more or less decided to stop interacting with the community permanently because of it. 

I know I’ll have people who will want to write up long winded explanations on Venom scaling or whatever, but think for a second. If that’s what your priority is then you’re missing the point. 

Maybe if the fight had come out earlier that year that backlash could have been avoided. Or heck had I known how people would have acted, I would have just specified nothing from that run to avoid having to bother with it. Oh well. All I have left to say is

Wow Miles Morales is getting those billion universal MFTL phat scaling stacks from Venom

Episode 135: Saburwolf vs John Tailbane

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/10/death-battle-predictions-sabrewulf-vs.html

Saburwolf Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/10/character-analysis-sabrewulffeat-lousy.html 

John Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/10/character-analysis-jon-talbainfeat.html 

Lol I barely remember this one, though I remember it being pretty bloody. Tbh I’m surprised Darkstalkers is still popular enough to get an episode. I do recall this ep being a surprise victory. 

Episode 136: Red vs Blue

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/11/death-battle-predictions-red-team-vs.html

Blue Team:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/11/character-analysis-blue-team.html 

Red Team:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/11/character-analysis-red-teamfeat-akuma.html 

I feel like this RVB crossover went over much better than Meta vs Caronlina did. Probably because it was sandwiched between a much stronger season tbh. Anyway I think I enjoyed it, though I can’t remember much outside the implication that Sarge is Boomstick’s dad.

Episode 137:Batgirl vs Spider-Gwen

Cassandra Cain is best Batgirl tbh

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/11/death-battle-predictions-batgirl-vs.html 

Batgirl Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/11/character-analysis-batgirl.html 

Spider-Gwen:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/11/character-analysis-spider-gwen.html 

This episode is all right. Some people think it’s a bad fight, but there really isn’t anything in the ep I disliked. The analysis is good, the verdict is correct and the animation is decent. I think detractors mostly just think it's derivative of previous Spider-man vs Batman Episodes. That's not unfair. I’d like to See Spider-Gwen come back one day. If we have another Batgirl it should be Cassnadra Cain.

Episode 138: Sanji vs Rock Lee

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/12/death-battle-predictions-sanji-vs-rock.html 

Sanji Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/12/character-analysis-sanjifeat-lswan.html

Rock Lee Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/12/character-analysis-rock-leefeat-lousy.html 

I remember whether Rock Lee could use the 8th gate was a big part of this fight's discussion. Him using it in the fight is actually pretty interesting, cause he had never done so in canon at that point. Anyway I remember enjoying this fight well enough. Rock Lee’s voice felt like it had a very “specific” accent to it though.

Episode 139: Broly vs Hulk

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2020/12/death-battle-predictions-hulk-vs-broly.html 

Broly Blog:

https://ulltraguy.blogspot.com/2020/12/character-analysis-brolyfeat-lswan.html 

I remember hearing that the G1 blog for this fight had “issues”. Apparently Hulk’s side got carried away and really pushy about his feats. I know that the word “infinite” was thrown around alot. I also def remember the outcome of this fight resulting in a rage, as Hulk was the expected winner at the time. 

Anyway the episode had a “lasting effect” on the fandom. 

I would say that Hulk was probably the last comic character to get “relatively” conservative stats by herald standards. After he won I think some of the resentment manifested in people trying to upgrade comics as much as possible due to contesting the episode's results. Since then things like Marvel and DC characters getting volume scaling for the universes, incalculable speeds, DT, etc has gone way up. It’s telling that Superman now is unironically considered outer, where he might have been considered uni by the same community a few years ago.

In contrast I think Broly's victory also started an arms race within Dragon Ball. In particular up until that point people had put much less stock in multipliers, but his fight being so reliant on them caused multiple power scaling sites to push their usage much more. I would also say that a lot of arguments fans pushed really hard today were basically seen as “hail marys” to get Broly to win back at the time. There was actually a whole document on it.

Who knows what could happen if the fight was revisited. I think the research on both would look a lot different for a “multitude” of reasons. 

Anyway power scaling debates aside I think this is a good episode. Ikari is one of my favorite songs for the show. I also would say I’m more invested in Broly as a character after his reboot. The headbutt scene was also pretty rad. Same with the part where they go to space.