DEATH BATTLE

I have a question. Do you like it when Death Battle brings up lesser known characters for Match-ups?

Yes. TBH I prefer them to the obvious ones.

I wouldn't say lesser known because I like Cole vs Alex and Dante vs Bayonetta, but I guess if you're making a VS series the first things I would do are:

• Decide if you're a powerscaling channel or not; I get tired of the videos that go "Why X versus Y ISN'T CLOSE"
• Avoid these characters
  • Satoru Gojo
  • Deku
  • Goku
  • Superman
  • Every One Piece Straw Hat character
  • The Akatsuki from Naruto
  • Any Espada or Soul Reaper from Bleach
  • Pretty much everyone from Dragonball Super

If you can avoid doing some sort of comparison or versus battle with these characters you're already more interesting to me than the bevy of versus/powerscaling videos out there. There are franchises like Rick and Morty, Doctor Who, Dorohedoro, FLCL, Atomic Betty, Inuyasha, Winx, Witch, Tokusatsu, etc that barely get talked about in VS communities.

I might dislike and disagree with powerscaling and it might be a lot of reading, but I can never say it isn't comprehensive. I plan to use them as cheatsheets for when I need to know what bonzo characters like Saber, Bobobo, or Emperor Palpatine are capable of - because frankly I do not have the lifespan to be able to read and understand all of that information.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 27th 2024 at 10:54:29 AM

To be clear, I haven't been on many G1 blogs. Just uh...

- Rick vs. Doctor

- Shovel Knight vs. Shantae

- Luke vs. Saber

- Rengoku vs. Todo

- Garnet vs. Aile

This is a funny thing. Donald Duck vs Vegeta. Why you ask?

From what I'm hearing in the Mickey Mouse cartoons Donald and Goofy have been seen shattering the sun and moon on different occasions, and in Kingdom Hearts Donald is a mage who knows Zettaflare, and weaker versions of the Flare spell have destroyed the planet. That's good enough for Saiyan Saga Vegeta to be in for a fight.

Then there's the connections:

• blue, white, yellow color aesthetic
• anthropomorphic family men who've served in the army
• short tempers and pompous attitudes linked to their incredible resistance to physical damage
• both with progeny who've spun-off from the main series in a big way (Trunks and Ducktales)
• both are sidekicks to a plucky protagonist with a tail and an origin in a black-and-white medium

Fight potential:

• Vegeta has already fought a cartoon character before and lost, so this could be the chance for him to redeem himself
• Vegeta has fought a magician before (twice actually, counting Babidi and Moro)
• Donald is incredibly easy to piss off (much like Vegeta) and speaks in gibberish, so any attempt to verbally descalate would likely fall on deaf ears
• both are rage-a-holics who will throw down if you mess with their family

I'm going to see if I can find Brandon Yates' website and commission this.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 27th 2024 at 12:12:40 PM

I...huh.

Ok you might be cooking a bit actually?

@Rockernator

It’s always fun when lesser known characters get on, but only when they’re lesser known characters that I like.

Joking aside, I always appreciate it, though it’s pretty obvious why they’ll stick to the bigger names. Those are what get the episodes views, and they kinda need those to keep going (which, considering current circumstances… Yeah). I still remember there being so many posts complaining about Killua VS Misaka because “No one knows who Misaka is”, when really I was happy to see them expanding into more new territory. But yeah, getting is lesser known or obscure characters is fun, but they can only really justify doing that a few times a season. And, typically, when they do it’s probably best they pair them with someone more well known to balance that out.

@FOFD

I mean if Vegeta is getting a third go around, this is probably a funny enough fight to justify it. If you’re not pitting Daffy against Donald, this would be a hilarious match to see.

Re: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13104682120A63688200&page=3364#comment-84078

Why just Superman and not the other DC characters and Marvel characters?

The funny thing about Vegeta fighting Donald is that the Doctor Slump crossover in Dragon Ball Super pretty much made it canon that Vegeta is hopelessly outmatched when he has to face a character from a comedy show.

(2)

Superman because, well

That's just a list of the ones I could find on short notice.

I feel that way too many people use Superman as the benchmark/guy to beat/a punching bag for their debating skills. He's arguably the most well-documented superhero with decades of material that have been scrutinized and analyzed and are getting compared to material written by mangaka in the past 10 years - so almost everybody feels the need to use him. Especially in the past 6 months with the amount of "Superman vs Somebody Isn't Close" videos that keep appearing in my Youtube feed, confirmation bias notwithstanding.

Meanwhile Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Cyborg (seriously you hear anybody talking about Cyborg fighting Android 17?), and Aquaman just feel less discussed. Wonder Woman usually in relation to Superman and Batman even less so.

...so its a wee bit expensive. I'm still looking into it though. I found his March commission sheet.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 27th 2024 at 1:22:41 PM

Yeah, the tracks don’t come cheap, though the quality is usually worth it from what I hear from friends that HAVE commissioned him. If I had the money there’d be plenty of tracks I’d have tried to commission by now. Ben Tennyson VS Jaden Yuki being the one I would probably spring for right away (“It’s Elemental HERO Time!” is too good of a track name not to be used, except I fear that if the episode ever actually did get made they wouldn’t be able to use this name).

Wait, why?

Edited by FOFD on Mar 27th 2024 at 1:40:17 PM

For what I assume are legal reasons (or personal preference to differentiate tracks), no match that had a track done by Therewolf or Brandon Yates prior has had the name re-used for the official track for the actual episode.

If I had the chance I absolutely ask for Archer vs. Hakumen as a track (Track Name: Oath in the Snow)

A blend of EMIYA with Susano'oh instruments would go insanely hard.

Can Hakumen body Archer?

Pretty easily, yeah.

Archer doesn't benefit from GO scaling like a lot of others, and Extra Archer is a different enough character that he can't really mesh with FSN Archer.

So while FSN Archer can still put up a good fight due to range and the variety of swords in his possession, Hakumen trumps him in strength and speed, on top of his ability to cut space time being able to make Unlimited Blade Works worthless as a wincon for Archer.

I support this matchup

Well, seems Reed Richards got himself a very disturbing power boost in the new Fantastic Four issue.

He can literally spawn multi-arms now with his powers (and can apparently spawn hands out of them) which he uses to beat Lady Octopus.

Not sure how big of a boost this gives him, but yeah Elastigirl's chances of winning a one on one fight against Mr. Fantastic is now shot and in a team vs team setting just made Incredibles vs Fantastic Four an even bigger curbstomp.

Edited by VioletParrfan1989 on Mar 27th 2024 at 11:20:21 AM

Somehow, I don’t think she had much of a shot even before he got his multi-arm powers. It certainly seems neat and gives him more capabilities for offensive and defense with those limbs, though I’m not sure if it’d affect most of his current matches too much.

For Superman, he doesn't really have many popular matches, surprisingly.

Like, he has Goku, obviously, but besides that, uh... Optimus, Sentry, maybe Thor...? That's... kinda it, and even then the only one with a real following besides Goku is Optimus.

I feel like that's because all of his thematic opponents are all obviously weaker than him.

I'd argue Optimus is his most thematically interesting anyways, tbh.

Definently my preferred for both.

Thor would probably be the most popular among a very general audience, but really that one only really has “they’re the strong guy on their side of The Avengers/Justice League” going for it connections wise, and even then there’s just as much reason to pit the Hulk against Superman if that’s what you’re shooting for.

For being one of the top superheroes, he’s got surprisingly few matches that stick out as “perfect picks”, barring the obvious Goku. I’d honestly compare him to Mario in that way, where he’s “Mr. Video Game”, but his opponent spreadsheet honestly isn’t super interesting beyond the obvious Sonic, which even then is mostly due to their classic rivalry rather than a long list of strong connections.

I always thought it might be fun to have an Evil Superman Battle Royale, Ultraman, Cyborg Superman, Bizarro, Injustice!Superman - I'm sure there's an evil Marvel Superman, the Void aspect of Sentry? - the kid from Brightburn, the Plutonian, even bring Omni-Man and Homelander back and have Homelander spend the entire fight running away scared from Omni-Man, who is eventually killed by Bizarro and Homelander sighs in relief "Oh, thank God, I-" and he's then easily killed by Ultraman.

And then at the end of the fight, the real Superman drops by and whoever the winner is overconfidently charges at them and he knocks them out in a single punch. It would be a nice antithesis to the legion of edgy grimdark Beware the Superman stories around these days.

Superman vs Thor is one that Marvel and DC have explicitly done before, and the result was "Superman wins, but it was extremely close and Superman isn't sure if he could do it a second time."