Death Battle Retrospective Eps 92-99

 

I think Season 5 marks the start of the modern Death Battle. The research system changed and became more organized.  Essentially one character would be assigned a “lead” researcher each fight. That person would then take notes and construct a “character sheet” that gave a basic rundown of that character's abilities. They would then work together with the other researcher assigned and present an argument to Ben on who wins. This new system resulted in episodes being much more consistent across the board. A lot of the researchers also finally stopped relying on “eyeballing” and learned calculate a lot of the feats that where needed to determine winners more consistently as well.

Episode 92: Sora vs Pit

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/04/death-battle-predictions-sora-vs-pit.html 

This was my first episode as singular character researcher and I was assigned to Sora. This was also the first time I actually went through the trouble of doing mathematical calculations on my own. Personally I think the ep turned out pretty well, though I wish Sora used drive forms or that Pit had the Great Sacred treasure in hindsight. I would also say that Sora is considered A LOT stronger these days, particularly after Kingdom Hearts 3. One thing that’s funny to me is  that a lot of people complained about Sora using the keyblade beam as the kill move, seemingly believing that it wasn’t lethal. I guess not a lot of people beat Kingdom Hearts 2s’ final boss.

Episode 93: Leon vs Frank

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/05/death-battle-predictions-leon-kennedy.html 

A pretty solid episode. Sometimes I wish that it had been in 3D, but I think it worked well enough in 2D. No real comments on the analysis.

Episode 94: Doctor Strange vs Dr. Fate

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/06/death-battle-predictions-doctor-strange.html

Fun fact Nabu was one of the characters Swan originally made a blog on back in his Screwattack days. 

Lswan Blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20150316023046/http://www.screwattack.com/news/death-analysis-planet-tossing-bucket-wearing-lord-balance-and-sorcerer-supreme-doctor-fate 

Anyway I think this was the first time we really started to get into cosmic feats. I feel like this had some of the highest “numbered” feats on the show up until that point. The fight itself was also pretty good, and felt pretty mystical and all that.

Episode 95: Ryu vs Jin

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/06/death-battle-predictions-ryu-vs-jin.html 

I recall the outcome of this fight getting some pushback at the time. Which is ironic because Street Fighter had been on a losing streak since season 2 at this point. Later on people accepted some feats that put Ryu definitely above Jin. Then that sentiment then flip flopped a bit over the years as new games or calcs came out. Anyway I think the ep overall was pretty fun. The biggest thing I remember about it was how the climax took place in a battle ground ripped from a rwby episode.

Episode 96: Samurai Jack vs Afro Samurai

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/07/death-battle-predictions-samurai-jack.html 

Another fight that holds up pretty well. Somehow Luis drew this entire fight himself? That was super impressive! I also remember Lousy calc-ing the light dodge feats for Jack. So that was  another example of us advancing a lot compared to earlier years.

Episode 97:  Carnage vs Lucy

 G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/08/death-battle-predictions-carnage-vs-lucy.html 

So this fight definitely got derailed by favoritism on Carnage’s side. It was the second fight I was assigned, and I did Lucy.

Most people sided with Carnage right away and tbf initially most of those arguments where reasonable. Carnage was considered Town level, MHS and had a good healing factor. Lucy in her anime had these invisible arms called vectors, but she only had 4 of them, and they were only a few feet long. Obviously she would just get overwhelmed. 

The problem is that Lucy was waaaay stronger in the Manga and it was pretty apparent that no one had actually read that.

"It's not like the vectors can make heat or explosions"

In the manga Lucy had done things like sink islands, make magnitude 8 earthquakes, and had significantly more vectors(at least 28). Her vectors could also be kilometers long, had the thickness of buildings and at max could become the size of continents. She was even going to cause planet wide destruction with her vectors during her final appearance. Her vectors could reach space in seconds, erect a circular barrier around her to keep things out and could vibrate to explode with enough force to cause nuclear fission. “Technically” she could overtax herself and “melt”, but she canonically could survive as a barely intact head for several minutes, so it’s not like it mattered much.

Don’t mind me. Just going to navigate this country-sized exploding invisible Maze.

I’ll say right away that this was not “Dark Carnage”. It was just normal street level Carnage, with normal Spider-man level stats. Lucy was clearly far out of Carnage’s weight class, could block him from getting near her, and could realistically one shot him. The explosive vectors could also take advantage of the symbiote weakness to fire. Finally the vectors were also made out of physical particles, so you could apply KE to them. This hypothetically could make Lucy a moon buster, which was way higher than the average Spider-Man character in power. 

But instead people tried really hard to hedge out a win for Carnage regardless. So they

• Ignored that that Lucy had more than 4 vectors in the manga

• Came up with excuses for why the vectors weren't continent level or higher. Particularly nitpicking if they had physical matter or not, even though they’re directly stated to change states based on how their particles vibrate.

• Ignored the fact she could just cover herself with her vectors to make an impenetrable barrier to keep Carnage out and had a ridicules range advantage on him

• Claimed that she wouldn’t be able to use her higher level powers, even just island destroying, without instantly melting and dying.

A big argument people also tried to use was that Carnage would use his “tactical skills” to somehow get in close to Lucy. For example sending tendrils underground. Another argument was that he would just blitz her, even though his speed wasn’t much different and Lucy had him massively outgunned in AOE. People also tried to scale him to all sorts of things he very visibly got wrecked by. Arguing he could survive continents exploding via this gene bomb feat or “fighting” Sentry.

Casually tanked

Anyway the fight got some backlash when it aired, but I don’t think it was as bad as many episodes from prior seasons. I  would even say that I think this episode retroactively became more well liked as time passed, as people calmed down a bit about the victor.

Personally I would say that it has one of my favorite animations in the show, as it makes really good use of the horror vibes of both characters. They really let Lucy tear Carnage apart and utilized his healing factor ALOT.

Episode 98: Optimus Prime vs Gundam

G1 Blog: 

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/09/death-battle-predictions-optimus-prime.html 

This was another fight I worked on. I did Gundam. It was pretty interesting having to watch such an old and influential anime. I would say it was prettttty clear that Optimus should win. At this point it’s probably an even bigger stomp depending on how you composite. I thought the ep was pretty good all around and that Optimus was characterized really well.

Episode 99: Nightwing vs Daredevil

G1 Blog:

https://g1dbteamblogs.blogspot.com/2018/09/death-battle-predictions-nightwing-vs.html 

This was the first live action Death Battle. I think they pulled it off pretty well, though obviously the death was more tame since the actors can’t exactly die on set. I think one of the more interesting aspects of this episode was the debate on the street level stats.

At this point I believe things like street level Marvel characters being relativistic or lightspeed was contested. I remember feats existed, but they were generally considered outliers.  The general sentiment was also that Marvel Street level characters tended to be stronger than DC Street level characters. Because of this I remember there being some debate on Nightwings victory after he won. Most people rolled with it for the most part though.

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Anyway episode 100 is gonna have its own blog, cause I have a lot to say on that one.