Reviews WebAnimation / Death Battle

The Worst Match-Up: Bowser VS Ganon (Spoilers)

And following what I thought was the best Death Battle, Dante VS Bayonetta, we immediately have... well, not the worst Death Battle, but the worst match-up for sure.

With 59 episodes under its belt, it's no surprise that Death Battle have had a few iffy match-ups. Sometimes, you just can't find a good opponent for a character big enough that they demand a turn on the show. And when that happens, you end up with Pikachu VS Blanka (Tiny Electric Mouse VS Gigantic Electric Mutant Powerhouse) and Ryu VS Scorpion (Human Martial Artist VS Teleporting Fire Ninja from Hell. Just sayin', Liu Kang was right there.) But Bowser VS Ganon may be the worst because it's the most obvious result they've ever done. It's literally impossible for one of the combatants to kill the other.

I was tempted to put '(Spoilers?)' with a question mark because I'm not explicitly going to state who won. However, here are two facts about the fighters that are extremely well-known, and used as part of the explanation of the final result.

1) Ganondorf can only be killed by the Master Sword, or Silver Arrows.

2) Bowser does not have the Master Sword, or Silver Arrows.

Can you possibly guess who's going to win this?

Outside of the obviousness of the result, the battle just seems off. It's not like Mario VS Sonic where the combatants have nothing in common, but they at least share a rivalry. There's no connection between them. I mean, they both serve as the traditional Final Boss of their respective series and they both have red hair, but by that logic, it would just as much sense to pair either of them up against Akuma. To be fair, Bowser doesn't exactly match up well against anyone else; he's way too powerful to take on King K. Rool or King Dedede, and Ganondorf is a tough one to analyze too, since he generally spends his time sitting on a throne, waiting for Link to show up and kick his ass.

It's not that there aren't good points. The battle itself is decent - I really liked the nod to Mario Tennis - and while each character's description was shorter than normal, they were still pretty funny and managed to look at both well-established and slightly more obscure facts about the fighters. And the animation is good - not the Visual Effects of Awesome we've come to expect from Death Battle, but still good.

But both the match-up and the battle itself feel very rushed. Bowser and Ganon each get a background explanation of less than 4 minutes, and the battle is over fairly quickly. And that's another thing - we all know that Ganondorf will turn into Ganon at some point in the battle. It's in the name of the fight. But Ganon is only there for maybe 10 seconds before the fight is over, which kind of kills the tension.

But at least it's Ratchet & Clank VS Jak & Daxter next time. Oh, erm, I mean, Ratchet & Clank VS 2 mystery combatants we couldn't possibly know. Right.