My Death Battle Attempts

by LittleZbot

In which I take two fictional characters and pit them against each other in a duel to the death. Rules in the first chapter. NEXT EPISODE: Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender) VS Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson & the Olympians)

23. SEASON 2 - Post-Season Extravaganza!

Episode 0.2: Post-Season Extravaganza #2!

OOOH. AH. *stretching sounds* This season was a trip.

From fifteen episodes to nine. Randomly updated research. The whole "Special Notes" system. Almost every matchup changed. Winners reversed. Lore challenged. Episodes were too long for some folks, too short for others, oddly-paced for all. I completely rewrote Ultron VS Cell's battle sequence months after releasing it. And I went from one episode every few months to one episode every few years. I can't say this is me putting my best foot forward.

But at the same time, man, I got to do some really cool stuff! I LOVED writing for almost every fight, exploring character dynamics, delving into material I normally wouldn't be bothered with, and getting an excuse to talk about Fossil Fighters. Thanks, Shadowjab. And I actually brought in the guy from Chicken Invaders, which was, no joke, the very first character I ever "researched." Of course, all the research was re-done for the episode, but I always, always wanted to include him. And I did!

I got into both Overwatch (until they massacred it, noooooo) and TF2 (right when they started caring again! woooooo), had one of my fights become an AWESOME official episode of the show, and I even did full research and a battle with my favorite fictional character: Nausicaä. Also, I hid, like, thirty sex jokes in Harley Quinn VS Juliet Starling, and nobody noticed any of them.

And no, I haven't forgiven Little Z for stealing my name years later and becoming far more popular than I ever was.

It's been WILD.

And it's going to get wilder.

I've been preparing for Season 3 for a long time. Actually, Special Notes were supposed to premiere in Season 3, so that should give you an idea of how long this has been going on. The main thing I wanted to focus on was fan-requested battles. Almost all of Seasons 1 and 2 were spent on fights that I wanted to see, and because the official show won't do them, I decided that I would.

The list of personal fights has shrunk considerably, but don't think for a second that means I'm out of ideas or inspiration! You all have been amazing, leaving tons of suggestions in reviews, my PMs, even my YouTube channel and my social medias (I have no idea how you found my real name, Grace, and it concerns me). I've kept a list of every single suggestion that has ever been made, as well as who requested it first, and we'll be covering a lot of those this next season. Not all of them; there are three episodes in particular that I've been vying for, but, as it's currently planned, every single episode besides those three will be fan requests! And, if Season 2 has taught me anything, it's that all plans are doomed to fail. So, send in every request you've got; it DOES have a chance of coming out this season.

Speaking of next season, though, I think it's time I introduced you to something.

Or, should I say, someone.

TWO: Actually, I'm just another part of you, so it's not "someone," they already know me. Kinda?

LZ: Wow. You had one sentence to woo them, to show the world that you deserve to exist. And that is what you wasted it on.

TWO: Yeah, hey guys, I'm Two. I exist 'cuz LittleZbot here's number one criticism was bad pacing. Turns out folks don't like huge monotone information walls that are way too hard to remember. Whodathunkit.

LZ: From now on, I will still be the me you know me as, referred to as "LZ." For LittleZbot. And my… friend? Compratriote?

TWO: Split personality!

LZ: Yes, my other self, "Two", will be co-hosting. It turns out that every other Death Battle writer knew what's up from the beginning: it is MUCH easier to write with and bounce jokes off of two people than it is with just one. This, along with the Special Notes, should allow me to impart the same amount of information, but it should be far less miserable to read through.

TWO: And if you don't like it, too bad. We already wrote a bunch of stuff, so we're stuck like this now. Fun fact: He named me "Two" because he was literally too lazy to come up with a better name!

LZ: Just give him a few episodes before judging. The little ones can be rough in their early years.

TWO: You realize that implies you're gonna take years to write every episode, right?

LZ: Okay, bye, back into the recessive gene you go.

TWO: NO! WAIT! I will not be quelllllleeeed…

LZ: Oh, you'll be back. A lot.

*ahem* Well, now that THAT is out of the way, we shall get on to actually talking about everything I did (and didn't) accomplish this season and beyond.

...

REGARDING SEASON #1 FIGHTS:

So, um, these are bad.

I know I promised to shout out if one of these was wrong, or if I made mistakes, and all that. Even in my last Season wrap-up, I had a whole section dedicated to mistakes that were made in previous episodes. If I were to include a segment like that here, I'd have to include, I don't know, EVERYTHING FROM EVERY EPISODE I EVER MADE.

Well, maybe not that extensive. But still, really extensive. Just a very, very few things that are definitively wrong:

Black Beetle's story and powers

The Meta's scaling and power sources

Kamek's magical limits and resistances and comparison to events that are literally in dreams

Twilight's limited arsenal and stats

Basically everything about The Second Coming

Some of the rules of the Death Note

Bowser/Paper Bowser being combined, horrible scaling, feats, and wrong powers

Dedede's comparison to Kirby, non-canon statements, and granted an arsenal he wouldn't normally have

How video game numbers and feats scale and translate in SAO

On that note, SAO is a series of light novels, not manga (I genuinely only read the manga and watched the animes, I know, I'm sorry)

Dust's Parry mechanic

Interpretation of Rainbow Dash's explosions

Every single bit of scaling and feats and everything in general about Red Tornado

Thinking that suicide moves don't count as a win (they absolutely do)

Discounting Ulthoon WAY too much

A chunk of Kirby's origin (even though the one most people these days take as fact is WAY more wrong)

A ton of Superman's scaling and feats, including a few that were discarded but should not have been

Terrarian lore and stats (although most of this got updated way after I made this episode, including the bestiary, so I don't 100% blame myself here)

Counting Link's entire arsenal is a question mark (actually, no, I'll stick by this one because the official Death Battle is fine with it)

Including OG Hyrule Warriors stuff

Too much in Mario VS Sonic to count

Terrible scaling for many Season 2 characters (especially Marvel and RWBY)

This segment isn't really to acknowledge the "few" mistakes I made and then say "but I picked the right winners anyway!" No. I was wrong for so much, and a lot of these fights are still up in the air. I could reasonably remake most of these with updated research and end with a completely different result than before. Especially Rainbow Dash VS Red Tornado, Red Tornado STOMPS that one hard.

I just have to accept that not everything will age well. I can, and will, get things wrong. I had fun writing and researching these fights, but they aren't bulletproof, now or in the future. I can only count myself lucky that my fanbase is both small enough and accepting enough to forgive me and enjoy my fights anyway.

No regrets for making Light VS Lelouch a full-on-fanfiction though. Accurate or not, that was THE best decision I ever made. Love that episode.

...

A LOOK BACK:

So, this is very much a me thing, I kind of wanted to look back on all my Season 2 fights and chat a little about them. Things I liked, things I didn't, general impressions. I won't be addressing most research mistakes, and definitely not updating power levels or changing scaling, because otherwise, you'd be waiting another year. But I think about these episodes a lot, so I just wanted to share a few of those thoughts with you guys.

Ruby Rose vs. Carnage:

So, you'd think this one would age the worst of all that I've written in Season 2, right? But I actually… kind of like it. The pacing of information in the analysis is a bit off, I definitely needed more line breaks, but I actually had a fairly decent balance of information and personality, something I would struggle with a lot during this season. This episode makes me quite happy I decided to allow myself to insert multiple "clips" into an analysis back in Link VS Terrarian. I think I overused it a lot in this season, but it's near-perfect here, from the selection to the placement. I actually pretty much nailed Aura in an era where nobody on the internet seemed able to comprehend what it was and what it could do. Re-reading that gets a nod of approval. The lore inclusions, on the other hand, were 90% unnecessary and just bloat out the bios, specifically as these were hardly the only two characters from their universes I planned on using.

This was also during the period of time I felt the need to spell out connections between characters without trusting the audience to figure it out themselves, leading to entire bios being intentionally structured very similarly and trying to draw mental comparisons between certain story events or powers. It just comes across as heavy-handed nowadays.

And… I did use a lot of stuff from Maximum Carnage, didn't I? Yeah, this episode was inspired by Carnage VS Lucy igniting a passion for 1990s Marvel comic books, and I think I took it a bit too far here. Especially the in-fight moment where Carnage says "What are you? Why can't I hit you?" to someone who is literally just dodging him. I definitely would have made a much subtler reference if I wrote this today. I also would have removed 80% of the "-"s. I used that punctuation as a crutch for so much of this season.

Then we come to the fight itself.

Guys, I kind of really like this fight.

Something I did a lot of (perhaps too much) in Season 2 was hyper-focus on character interactions rather than the actual fight. The concept of these characters being on-screen together was the coolest part of the show, so I narrowed my view to that. The fighting kind of happened around whatever character interactions were occurring. But I think a big part of why I did that is because it worked out so well in Ruby Rose vs. Carnage.

There's a ton of action, most of it (in my humble self-appreciating opinion) well-scripted and easy to visualize, but far more was seeing anime's most pure-hearted heroine who lives in a dark world meeting comic's darkest monster that lives in a bright and beautiful world. It feels so much better as a confrontation of pure good versus pure evil, where both end up understanding the other. Carnage is and was such a hard character to write, especially when you have to see the world from his perspective. But with much shorter sentences carrying one-dimensional thoughts and connections to other thoughts that work, but are atypical of the normal human logic trail, I feel like I really hit the ball. Yeah, sure, Blood Rose is incredibly stupid and childish, but he would absolutely do it.

And with that final speech exchange after showing Ruby his worldview, geez, I was so worried coming back that I would be like "That was way too presumptuous of me! I didn't know the characters that deeply! Everything since then has been nothing but contradictory to this!" But… no. I really, really like it. I still personally find that it hits the core of both characters better than any other such interaction I've written. It could have turned out so, so badly, but, by pure luck and happenstance, I completely nailed who these two are. At least, from my perspective. Some of these lines are good enough that I'm pissed I used them here and not as epic finishing lines for other fights. What the hey, I'll probably steal them to use again anyway. Add to that maybe the most horrifying death I've ever given a character, and it ties up what I think is a pretty darn good fight scene.

I would like to address my claim of Ruby's Semblance not being Speed, but rather, the ability to burst into rose petals. When this episode was released, the nature of Ruby's Semblance was actually fairly debated; it was clear that it gave her a definitive speed boost, but the specifics of the ability were never specified. In canon, her semblance was specifically labeled "Speed" and seems to have the side effect of sometimes making some rose petals if she wants.

However, comments from Qrow in Volume 5 suggest there's more to her semblance, she clearly turns into multiple piles of petals and reforms to dodge attacks in the Volume 4 trailer, and, when this episode was released, the recently-released RWBY: Combat Ready board game had a card referencing her semblance, in which it was titled: Rose Petal Burst.

They then updated the game later, officially naming the Semblance "Speed" and changing its attributes. I was a little miffed.

Then, in Episode 3 of Volume 8, they renamed it again to "Petal Burst" and gave it every exact quality that I did.

All this to say:

I WAS RIGHT! BOOYAH YOU STUPID FANBASE, YOU WERE ALL WRONG, BUT I FIGURED IT OUT WAY EARLY AND ACCURATELY REPRESENTED IT IN A FANFICTION FIGHT TO THE DEATH!

Now, does that make up for me completely misunderstanding the Silver Eyes and exclusively using numbers from the highly-inaccurate Yang VS Tifa? Eh, I'll leave that up to you.

Also, the fight scene contains six specific references to six different RWBY songs. Since RWBY's soundtrack is maybe the most iconic thing about it, I wanted a little something there. See if you can find them all! And, finally, one more fun fact: for about a year, Spider-Man was called "Spiderman" in this episode. You know what got me to change it? Playing the Spider-Man PS4 video game and hearing, in the game's tutorial, "Don't forget the hyphen between Spider and Man!" That hit too close to home, so I rewrote the episode with the change.

Harley Quinn vs. Juliet Starling:

And here we finally hit our first-ever fan-request! And… it's immediately worse than the previous episode.

Let's ignore power levels and all that. The lack of line breaks in these analyses is staggeringly bad. Like, ten walls of text in a row that all have multiple trains of thought and feel awful to read through, levels of bad. It was so bad, I edited the chapter years later to artificially introduce a few more line breaks, and even then, it's still just walls and walls of useless information. Cemented by the lack of proper thought trails connecting feats, weapons, and character information, making it very easy to feel like you're drowning just by reading through half of one analysis. It's awful. I also accidentally used a feat from a fan comic in Harley's bio. I removed it as soon as I found out, of course, but that is one of many reasons I now read entire comic stories instead of looking at Respect Threads. In my defense, the fan comic was scarily well-drawn.

As for the battle itself, it's so weirdly-paced. It can become difficult to judge exactly what is going on reading line-to-line because big events are brushed through in half a sentence and both characters can have perspectives within the same paragraph. And some of it is just cringeworthy. "Every diamond has one scratch"? In what universe did I ever think that was a good line?!

But at least both characters do, more or less, use their full arsenals in lore-accurate and sometimes semi-creative ways. I did, for the record, keep track of every shot fired by the Chainsaw Blaster for the sake of that final scene. If you read it again, you'll notice how specific the numbers are, specifically during the zombie fight. This is a fight that rewards careful readers, in multiple ways, and I can appreciate that, at least.

But for how much character interaction I wrote in, these two characters sure don't feel… right, do they? Juliet also gets nearly twice the dialogue that Harley does, which I feel paints a poor image that I prefer her as a character, or, at minimum, puts the general style of the battle in the perspective of the main character being Juliet, fighting Harley as an in-game boss, which doesn't do me proud. The actual reason for this, and for Harley feeling really odd the whole way through? Because I primarily researched and really liked modern Harley Quinn. Jokerless, multicolored, trying-to-be-good-but-not-understanding-it Harley Quinn. And at the time, long before the TV Show came out that endeared everyone to this side of her, modern Harley Quinn was very poorly received in pop culture. The general public of DC fans saw it as DC trying to become progressive, a sort of company-during-pride-month understanding, or turning an established villain into a way of selling another new line of comics. It didn't help that many of the most popular stories that happened to feature modern Harley were despised. Heroes in Crisis, anyone?

So, modern Harley, which, thank god, is now most people's favorite Harley, was detested by super-fans and looked at with annoyance and dismissiveness by the general public. But that was the version I knew. The version I liked. So I kept the airheadedness that modern Harley was meme-ed for at the time, and then wrote the fight for classic Harley. But I didn't know how to write classic Harley, I didn't like classic Harley. And that came through very strongly in this episode, I feel. It's definitely my greatest regret of the season.

Nick, however, saves this entire aspect of the fight. I am so happy that I liked him so much in the game. Juliet and Harley have no chemistry as combatants, but the two crazy ladies bouncing off the straight-man talking head feels so much better. And since he already has so much chemistry with Juliet, writing exchanges between them was effortless. Hence why there's so much of Juliet and Nick just talking in this fight. It might not fit with Death Battle, but it was so simple and so fun to write for them that I just did it anyway. Which had the side effect of making Harley Quinn feel even more out of place than my writing for her did. But, man…

"Juliet," Nick said, breaking the silence, "there are times I think you are overly compulsive and weird, and suspect you might be slightly psychopathic. I love you, but you should know that this is one of those times."

"Really, Nick?!" Juliet answered. "I LOVE YOU, TOO!"

This made me bust a gut when I re-read it. I very rarely laugh at any of my own jokes, but this one is just so unbelievably in-character that it hits so hard to me. Oh, thanks again to DB-19 for requesting this and getting me to play Lollipop Chainsaw. Nick, if nothing else, makes that game worth every second.

I said earlier that this fight had "like, thirty" sex jokes that nobody noticed. I counted through again, and it's more accurately twenty-four (I think, I might have lost one or two in the folds). Anybody with a solid understanding of Urban Dictionary will have quite a different read of that fight than those without. This felt oddly important to me; both characters and the stories they are in are by no means afraid to get a little risque, especially with the humor, and the more indirect they can make the joke, the better. I'm not sure that stuffing that many in was a good idea, but at least I had the sense to more or less hide most of them. Unlike Ultron vs. Cell, but we'll get to that.

Also, fun fact, the very few sections of this fight where their martial arts come into play all are blow-for-blow stolen from fights in Donnie Yen movies. Why? I dunno, I just thought it'd be funny. Of course, nobody noticed, nor should they. I'm quite glad I chose to write my own choreography after this episode.

As another fun fact, there are five more sex jokes I placed in this little review.

I told you they were subtle.

Shadow vs. Ryuko:

The very first (and, so far, very only) time one of my episodes has been made into something official. Well, one that didn't exist before, anyway. I was both quite ecstatic and quite frightened by the announcement of Episode 141, because it's an amazing matchup with tons of possibilities, and because if they disagreed with me hard enough, it'd be enough to permanently lose my creds. Luckily, that episode turned out awesome, and even though our research and interpretations varied to a degree, we both agreed on a winner for similar reasons. That pumped me up something good.

As for my take on the episode, it still suffers from a lot of the pacing and wall-of-text issues this season as a whole struggles with, but the "clips" make sense, the powers and feats are separated appropriately, the connections between characters are left to understanding by the viewers (although maybe that's because I listed all of them in the intro), and, overall, it's quite poorly written, but I can re-read this and not necessarily hate everything about myself. A solid step up.

This battle sequence was a struggle for me, mainly because of how creatively Ryuko fights. It's very rare to watch two Kill la Kill fight scenes where Ryuko acts the same way and pulls out the same techniques; it's always changing based on her emotional state, the foe she's facing, and her creativity with Senketsu. Against someone with as many powers and as unusual powers as that of Shadow, understanding what she would do in response to anything he brought was a challenge. Kill la Kill would absolutely have her figure out a counter for Chaos Control, but what would that look like? She would have to find a way around his matter manipulation in Super Shadow mode, but how would she do it? The little clashes of power were fun and easy. The big moments? Much, much harder.

This battle does end up having some great personality to it, and, re-reading it now, is everything I would want from a collision of these two worlds. But it also has far too few line breaks, not enough well-defined transitions from strike to counter, and a ton of times where perspective switches in the middle of a paragraph. Yikes.

I like it. Not as much as the official episode, but I like it.

Both me and the official episode having a massive showdown in space between Super Shadow and Kisaragi, where Shadow tried to hold back the extended Rending Scissors and forcing Shadow to remove his rings and resort to a Chaos Blast was amazing. And both attempted final blows had Ryuko say "Sayonara" as a reference to Maria. Great minds think alike. Just wanted to point that one out.

Ultron vs. Cell:

Oookay. This one is a tough one to talk about. There are some research question marks that'll be addressed in the Q&A, but the real doozy is the battle sequence. Because this one was so bad, I literally completely rewrote it and republished it a few months later.

The original was badly-written, poorly-paced, and filled, and I mean filled, with jokes stolen from across the internet. Fan comics, web shows, TFS, I even took a couple from Ultron VS Sigma and threw them in. They occupied time and word count and didn't require me to be creative in any meaningful way. Even worse than that, the fight was… boring.

Things happened for the sake of happening, with no rhyme or flow in any metric. Ultron acted like a typical robot overlord, not the maniacal, wisecracking, slightly-off-kilter guy he is in the comics, because people were still mad that he made jokes in the Age of Ultron movie (and I guess they never read the comics). Cell was an egomaniac, a bland and boring alternative Freeza, whose personality didn't change whatsoever between transformations. And the one-liners were horrendous. Every single "cool" thing either combatant said was ten times more cringeworthy than even the worst lines of Harley VS Juliet. I just could not stand this fight. I regretted almost all of it the day after I released it.

So I re-released it months later. This time, I wrote the fight how I wanted it to be. And it's way better, but not fantastic, mainly because both characters are distinctly out of character. Ultron has always been dismissive and wisecracking, but I took that up to an 11 because that was the only part of him I had a handle on writing. And Cell…

Yeah, so every single Dragon Ball thing written here is straight out of TeamFourStar. This is not Dragon Ball Cell. This is Dragon Ball Z Abridged Cell. Same for 17, 18, and the general world at large.

Why?

Ironically, it's mostly because of Harley VS Juliet. I really liked modern Harley, but chose to write the version most people thought of instead. I always regretted it and thought she came out quite poorly as a result. When re-writing Ultron VS Cell, I was in a similar situation. I didn't care about the "real" Cell. He was an acceptable villain with a pompous attitude, and I neither found him that interesting to write nor thought he meshed well with the personality I gave Ultron. What I really liked, what I really wanted to write, was TFS's Cell. The slithering, overconfident, insidious, constant sex-joke-cracking, overexuberant version from the fan-made series. He isn't much like the real Cell, but to the me of 2019, he was who I wanted in this episode. So that's what I did. I decided not to replace a regret with another regret, and wrote the version of Cell I wanted to.

Do I regret it?

Oh, yes. Absolutely. It's an insult to everyone who wanted to see Cell fight. It's a ton of repeating jokes and gestures that don't hit home for Dragon Ball fans and feels like less of a celebration of the character of Cell and more like me writing fanfiction for another piece of fanfiction.

But I also kind of think it works. Like, I would release this as an alternate script to high-tier folks on a specific pay-me-money site that FF won't let me name. Because it is a very fun rendition of a slightly off take on Ultron entering the world of Dragon Ball Z Abridged. The references are much more background, and while every other Imperfect Cell line is a sex joke (none of which are hidden in an intentional bid to separate it from Harley VS Juliet), there's also a distinct flow to this fight that the others lack. Character interactions play into fighting styles. New moves seed further dialogue. The final speeches and one-liners aren't just to sound cool, they're direct thematic callbacks conclusions to speeches given earlier in the fight. There are a fair bit too many TFS references (I would have definitely cut the singing bit), but the jokes are generally funny, and the battle feels satisfactory.

If you accept that this is specifically the DBZA-verse, it's a pretty darn good fight.

But you shouldn't have to accept that. I took a major failing, and replaced it with a fundamental disrespect. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to read this one without feeling several layers of shame.

Adam vs Genji:

Now, this is a different story!

I read through this one, and while some of the research is a bit iffy (that Diablo scaling, uhhhhhhh no thanks, and if I accepted that, why didn't I do any Alexstrasza scaling for Hanzo? Oh, right, because that would make Hanzo country-to-universe-level. Maybe I should've taken that as a sign not to count either crossover, but to be- sorry, this train of thought got out of hand), this probably holds up better than any previous Season 2 episode. The lack of line breaks isn't great still, but it's not as atrocious as other episodes, and at least all the information is separated and, mostly, relevant. Adam's mental manipulation and story path is important to understand his actions in the fight. Genji's lack of experience in 1v1s and lack of backup plans pays off big when he tries to save villagers in the fight. This episode actually feels woven.

A lot of the little details are wrapped up in this episode, too. Adam's age is 23, because that was an answer given in one of the RWBY con panels that I watched. Genji's attacks from his Overwatch character options are all used in the fight, and are subtly referenced every time (count how many times the phrase "Genji swiftly struck Adam" is uttered). I'm thrilled that I managed to pick up on Adam's aura-sensing even while blinded. Not very many folks in the fandom back then did, but it was directly acknowledged and explained in the second CFVY novel months after this episode came out. And then there are the sword styles; I really did do my darndest with figuring out their martial arts this time, instead of saying "well, that sounds right" *cough* mario vs sonic *cough*. It works, and following several professionals explaining these arts and how to use them appropriately (especially that Wudang Tao stuff) heightened my written clashes so much. A lot of the smaller swordplay moments in the fight still mentally feel as though they could have come right out of either RWBY or an animated Overwatch short, and that's the perfect feeling for a Death Battle.

Speaking of, my absolute favorite part of this episode: The character interactions. I, on the whole, somewhat regret my decision to make Season 2 all focused on character interaction, but while Ultron VS Cell was fun, Shadow VS Ryuko was acceptable, and Ruby Rose VS Carnage was incredibly twisted and thematic, Adam VS Genji is everything I could have dreamed of. Yes, there were technically more thematic connections between Adam and Doomfist, and I understand a lot of folks gravitating towards that fight, but I wanted to write Adam and Genji in a duel to the death, and I feel like I got to have my cake and eat it, too. Bouncing off each other's moral spectrum, trying to understand the other's moveset based on the rules of their own universes, and bringing in innocent people to highlight the differences and boundaries of both, I'm thrilled with how that aspect of this fight turned out. I still think it holds up under character scrutiny, though maybe that one guy who makes two-hour-videos on why Adam should've turned good might disagree.

Another minor point I liked was how the townsfolk all got out guns the second one of them was killed. They would absolutely be well-armed, because this is the RWBY world, and Grimm invasion is a constant threat. And I would always see all those scenes in movies where somebody is killed and the crowd around them starts screaming and running away and always thinking "What bullcrap, there's no way the town I live in would react like that. We'd jump in and take the guy out, make sure nobody else died!" Now that I think about it, that may be more indicative of the specific culture I grew up in than anything else, but, regardless, it still bothered me when that happened. And, of course, if any world is going to be filled with people that bold, it has to be RWBY. And it just makes what happens next even more of a tragedy. So, yes, I like it.

I know the episode focuses a fair bit on Adam; he's the more popular character, has the more interesting arsenal, and, as the villain of this mini-story, is the driving force of every interaction. But I really did go all-out on Genji, too, I swear. This episode had me playing Overwatch for the first time (playing a ton of Genji, obviously) and ended up with me sinking my teeth hard into the community. The amount of Genji play-by-plays I saw from others that ended up referenced in this fight is in the dozens. And Genji himself really vibed with me; not as a playable character (I ended up playing Lucio a lot more, I know, I'm awful), but as a story character. I genuinely got very into his story and even ordered a custom Genji poster for my bedroom. I hope some of that love came through in the written fight.

But then, there's the worst thing to happen in the history of humanity:

I accidentally made an incredibly stupid mistake. I copy-pasted Genji's phrase he utters when using the Dragonblade from an internet forum (because I wanted the proper Japanese emphasis) and somehow copied HANZO'S quote, not Genji's. To make it worse, I didn't notice until a review was left pointing out the mistake three years later.

Thank you, mysterious Guest account. It has now been fixed.

So, um, yeah. This is a good one.

Alphonse vs. Nightmare:

Of all the episodes this season, Alphonse VS Nightmare was perhaps the most important, and for mostly the wrong reasons.

In a season filled with walls of useless text, this is the worst offender. Just reading through the first couple of paragraphs of Alphonse's bio is enough to give you a headache. I did not have to include anywhere close to the amount of backstory and information that I did. I listed out so many irrelevant feats, powers that had no place in the written battle, and my attempts at breaking up the facts with humor ended up clashing with my writing more than anything else. This was the episode that sold me on introducing Two in Season 3, and had me begin using Special Notes on the very next episode.

Even if I had both of those things here, the actual power system for both is not explained as well as it should be, but is simultaneously overexplained, because I super-focus on the things that don't really matter. I did not need to list all three laws of Alchemy; just the Law of Equivalent Exchange would have more than gotten the point across. And I shouldn't have focused anywhere close to how much I did on every individual that Nightmare can create ghosts of. I could have very easily gotten it down to two sentences, one addressing the majority of folks, and another dedicated to Pyrrha. But I felt as though I needed to, because Nightmare's bio was so short compared to Alphonse's. I cornered myself with my own pacing.

The battle is a bit off. I think I did Nightmare plenty of justice, although it was a very annoying challenge to write from Night Terror's perspective, and I think it shows, but Al ends up feeling like the main character, and not a particularly interesting or complicated one. Alphonse Elric is one of the best-written characters I have ever seen in a manga story, and my approach to writing this season demanded I try to emulate that. I was never going to succeed, and what that results in is some questionable character interactions and dialogue. Like Al being freaked out that he killed Night Terror, then screaming "I will never kill again" at Inferno… while trying to kill him.

Also, that entire exchange with Truth was so fanfic-ey that it makes me uneasy even to this day. It makes sense as a way out of the Astral Chaos, probably the only way Al's got, but if I struggled when writing Alphonse, there was no way I could write a single line of dialogue for one of the most complex concepts for a character in fictional history, and, as expected, it comes out unbelievably shallow in comparison to the original Manga. If I really had to include Truth, I should have spent a week or more solely dedicated to crafting his lines. Instead, I had him spout some cryptic crap and made it into an excuse to get rid of the Philosopher's Stone. Ugh.

But I will give myself some credit. Nightmare's bio isn't… painful. It properly lists a lot of his powers that most other folks never think about. It gets the title of the franchise right, which even the official Death Battle has never done. And the scripting for the battle itself is decent. There's a solid give-and-take, tons of use of powers, and tons of counters. And a ton of Nightmare's combos and clashes are taken from high-level Soulcalibur competitions. There are actually several references in this fight; probably the most subtle is this:

The body clamped its foot down over Nightmare's own and turned, bashing its shoulder forcefully into Nightmare's chest.

This was a direct reference to Alphonse's "Firing Hammer" skill in the GBA game Stray Rondo. As everyone who's played that game knows, this move does crazy damage for the cost, and is arguably the best non-alchemy skill in the game. I felt like I needed to include some small reference to it. Maybe I was too subtle, but I like it. Now, repeat that silliness for every time NIghtmare does any kind of swordplay, but assume it's an EVO moment. For super-fans, this battle is dense with references.

It still has problems. I definitely would not have spent as much time with the ghosts today and would have included more soul-fighting, but overall, it works fine. I will state something else that makes me ashamed: when Al uses Destruction Alchemy on Soul Edge and says "I couldn't do that before because I didn't know what material it was made of. But I'd have to be an idiot if I didn-" only to be interrupted by a laser?

I have no clue how Al was going to finish that sentence. There is no official material that references what Soul Edge's primary form is composed of, and while Al is smart enough to figure it out mid-battle, I am not smart enough to know how he would. So, instead of puzzling over it long enough to come up with a creative solution, like Shadow VS Ryuko, I just took the shortcut of not explaining it at all.

And that leaves the final, obvious question: Do I regret giving Alphonse so much of his bio and moveset dedicated to information from the video games?

Heck to the no, those games are sick, and every future FMA character will have just as much, if not more, stuff taken from the games, so, hah. I don't care, I like 'em!

Huge shoutout to everyone who translated the Japan-only games, by the way. Especially PinoyRecca, who manually translated everything from The Girl Who Succeeds God. That's where everything with Sophie and Velzanian Alchemy comes from. The game itself rocks in its own way, but I wouldn't have been able to make this episode even half as good as it is without this dude. Go Subscribe to them, if you can; they deserve so much more than the 300 subs they have.

The Kestrel vs. The Hero:

Ah, ha ha, so, you thought that Ultron VS Cell was a little "fanfiction of a fanfiction"-ey? How about whole-hog ripping off FTL: Kestrel Adventures for the entire style of the Kestrel portions of the written battle? Right down to including the three main characters as the humans in the Kestrel? I'm not sure if Andrew Colunga would appreciate this or hate it.

Honestly, if I had a long-term vision of the future, I might have just saved the Kestrel for later and gone all in on Kestrel Adventures, having that be the version of the ship and crew I use. But this was released during Death Battle Season 6, remember, before the official show was in any way comfortable with bringing one non-original interpretation of a character in as a combatant. So there was little chance of me doing it. For at least one more episode, anyway.

Also, I really needed a good opponent for Hero, and Kestrel was about as good as it got. Lots of thematic ties, a large arsenal and pool of feats, and extremely similar fighting styles despite the vast differences in gameplay loops, and both were impulse-ship-battlers who had to charge up a Warp Drive before launching to the next waypoint of their mission. A lot of this actually works very specifically for these two ships. It's kind of a shame that it ends up as such a mismatch.

Here's the deal with Hero: he was the very first character I ever did research for.

I loved the Chicken Invaders games as a kid (actually, they hold up very well as an adult, too), and always wanted him in a spaceship battle in an official episode of the show. Obviously, that was never going to happen, and that's when I started to take an interest in doing something similar myself. That interest shot way up thanks to DAM's Death Battle fanfic (all of you, go read that), but it started with the Hero, the main character of these tiny indie games I liked. In fact, Hero absolutely would have been in a fight in Season 1 if I had been able to find a good opponent for him. Season 2 rolled around, and I started to line up a few options. The Kestrel, obviously, as well as Kingdom Hearts' Gummi Ship, and Galak-S from GALAK-Z.

Then Alphonse VS Nightmare happened, and I decided that Two HAD to be a thing for Season 3, and that meant I needed an opponent for Hero, now. Kestrel was the one I had the most attachment to, so he's who I picked. I knew I wanted to have Hero in a fight, but I couldn't do it with Two. One of the main gimmicks of Hero's character is his ability to communicate with the story's narrator. My entire narration style, from Episode 1, was built with this in mind; to be the kind of narrator that would be fun to see Hero bounce off of. I'm not kidding; the reason I didn't have a co-host, used to have far fewer jokes, and measured actions from the changing perspectives of individuals, all of it was because I wanted to have an episode with the guy from Chicken Invaders. But now I was going to change it all, so it was now or never.

Kestrel VS Hero was a rushed product, and while many edges are smoother than in other episodes, it still shows at times. The numbers are a big one; using numbers to dictate feats is one thing, but using in-gameplay counters and expecting the reader to remember everything is patently ridiculous. I could have easily summed up the weapons of the Kestrel the same way I did their Augmentations, but I wanted the numbers there. Same deal for the Hero. And why did I want the numbers there?

Because the bios were short. Because they were just spaceships, with only a few feats worth measuring out, and even including full details and some good story and "clips" to boot, we were still left with bios around 2500 words in total, shorter than any other in Season 2. And, to a me that still believed "bigger = better" that was far too short. So, the paragraphs of numbers were kept. And this episode suffers for it.

The written fight is good in very unexpected ways. It's so unapologetically contrasting. Whenever the Kestrel is the viewpoint, it's an intense, strategic, Star Trek-space battle as they deal with an impossible foe. Crew members die in tragic ways, systems break down, and they have to do everything within their power just to keep up. And then we switch to the Hero, gleefully tearing them into pieces as he would any end-of-stage boss, using any one of a dozen crazy-strong weapons and joking with the story's narration the whole way.

It should come off as jolting and unpleasant, but, against all odds, I think it works. The drama of the Kestrel just makes the Hero funnier, and when real tragedy strikes, it's turned into something rather horrific when we see their opponent just isn't taking this seriously at all. It's a very unique dynamic, and it actually works. Of course, it comes with the downside that it never feels like the Hero has a shot of losing, but, to be fair, he doesn't, and it's enormously hard to write a fight that sounds even when one of the fighters cannot be hit a single time without the fight ending. It had to be overwhelming on one side, and I think the approach I took isn't the worst.

I have regrets here, but, overall, solid time.

Also, getting an actual response from InterAction Studios with exclusive, official measurements for Fighter is still the coolest thing to happen in my life. I own a signed poster from Reggie Fils-Aimé and once had an author of a popular novel tell me directly that he wished I wrote for the New York Times, but this is still the coolest thing that's happened to me.

Hiccup vs. Nausicaä:

*gasp* Have we done it? Have we reached an episode where I don't have any major regrets? I don't believe it! Like, maybe there should be a few more line breaks and some of the analysis writing isn't perfect, but it's so much better here! Every thought is properly connected, every detail annotated and separated appropriately, the usage of Special Notes finally proved itself as a very effective and arguably necessary part of the structure of these episodes, and we get a full, good impression of these people as both feat-performing machines and story characters. It works. It's fun to read today. The fight fulfills every psychological promise made within the analysis. And the conclusion makes perfect sense and addresses all the big arguments. I would still prefer it in my modern format with Two, but it works just fine as-is. It's, unbelievably, a good episode!

Even the calc stuff isn't that bad; I still mention the higher feats for HTTYD that reach into the Megaton or even Gigaton range (like the blast that made it daylight, Hookfang setting off a volcano, and the Submaripper who affected all the water across the isles) but intentionally didn't display their numbers so the battle would seem fairer. The only thing that feels straight-up wrong to me now is reducing Hiccup to 8000 MPH reaction speed when the show makes it pretty explicit that he's a lightning-dodger. Nausicaä's psychic powers not working on Hiccup is maybe a bit of a question mark, but it does have a fair amount of support in the manga, and putting her against a psychic opponent would become so difficult to quantify that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

So, speaking of Nausicaä… meet my favorite fictional character. Not the movie version. But Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, the manga, is a powerful war epic that hits and surpasses every high of Akira and never dips into a low. It has meat in everything, especially for those who love 10-Hour video essays on themes. It's not my favorite story, but likely in the Top 10, and Nausicaä herself has planted herself firmly at Number 1 in fictional characters. I adore every single thing about her story, arc, and personality.

Maybe that played a bit into the episode; I really went out of my way to make her as interesting and badass as I could while still having her make mistakes and be generally outmatched. I don't think you would have caught me pulling the "sleep while instinctually dodging attacks" card for anybody before this, even the characters that can canonically do it. A fair few people read this episode, and I know at least one person had my Nausicaä make an impression on them, so, even if it hits a bit wince-y at times (maybe I didn't have to say the battlefield illusion was worse than Stoick's death), I'm ultimately thrilled with how it turned out.

In general, this battle might be my favorite I've ever done. It's unmistakably a Death Battle, but it leans very hard into fanfiction territory. Complete with worldbuilding (that little detail of the grimora in the water is something only a fan of both franchises will immediately pick up on). I've always liked the How To Train Your Dragon TV Shows (I think my love for Race to the Edge also may have bled into the episode a bit), and rewatching those gave way to a slightly different judgment of Hiccup's character than most folks who watch the movies have. So Hiccup here doesn't feel out of character, but he's differently defined, allowing me just enough freedom to have him interact with Nausicaä how I wished without seeming unusual.

Meanwhile, this battle has multiple acts and levels of intensity. Bringing in the dragons and the daikaisho is a huge rise in tension, yeah, but it's nowhere close to the first rise we have, and it's not the ultimate climax. We have an entire battle atop Mehve. We have Hiccup using his big-brain tactics and inventiveness in the final blow. We have Nausicaä's indomitable will and battle experience with unique skills, like her wind-reading to use Hiccup's moves against him. We have a full-on philosophical discussion marred by both's stories, experiences, and current emotional state.

Also, this is the only good matchup for either character. Fight me.

Stars above and lights aligned, this is actually a really good episode of the show. I'd be proud if I ever matched it in Season 3.

I also got the opportunity to roast the crap out of TV Show Hiccup for being fiction's most gullible character.

That was nice.

Groudon vs. Ignosaurus:

Actually, this one was fine.

I got a great translation of the Fossil Fighters manga, which has since been taken offline, so that sucks. I had the fight reference the commentary every Fossil Fighters battle has, and switched out P.A. Johnson for Gabby from Gen 3. I picked Garcia as her last name just because it sounded good. Maybe, if I did this today, I would have made her last name something more referential, like Marie (to reference the original Japanese name) or Maryanne (referencing the comics), but, eh, it's fine.

Aside from that, yeah, this one's still good. Don't have much else to say. Eff Gunash.

...

LITTLEZBOT'S DEATH BATTLE SEASON #2 Q&A:

WOAH! I actually got, like, three whole questions this time around! I'm thrilled! To be honest, I expected this to turn out like last time, so I might have thrown in a few dozen I wish you all would ask.

Well, here are all those, plus the three you guys actually asked me (slightly edited to be easier to understand and/or more generalized)!

Non-Battle Related Questions:

Q: Why did you suddenly start using footnotes mid-season? Why not wait for Season 3 to begin before introducing them, or why not start using them much earlier?

A: So, footnotes, or "Special Notes," have always been something in the back of my mind. I even did research into if I could use some sort of script to make FFdotNet have wiki-style notations that you could hover over to get more text. But that couldn't happen, and I couldn't figure out a good way of including them. Until about three episodes into Season 2, when I came up with the solution I have now: a bolded number reflecting when to reach for a note (and to easily Ctrl+F your way into the note and back up to where you were), and a collection of notes at the bottom of every stage of the episode. It works, in my opinion, decently well. But this would be a mid-season change, and I wasn't a fan of that, so I scheduled it for Season 3 and the fights I had planned there.

Then Alphonse VS Nightmare happened.

One of my most complicated, unique matchups where a ton of seemingly important information doesn't actually contribute to the overall winner, and where several story beats and magic system details should be laid out for the sake of those who are into the matchup, but don't have great relevance in the script. I had to include it all anyway. Everything was treated with equal importance. As a result, the analysis for both was bloated, there was a ton of incredibly specific information and counters labeled out, and I received multiple PMs complaining about how long and in-depth I was getting instead of making the episode fun to read. To make things worse, my next episode, Kestrel VS Hero, had similar amounts of unimportant information that could be very important to the right people and felt like I would be doing a disservice to the games if I left unacknowledged.

So, I decided to cut my losses and just start using Special Notes early. Similar to how I decided to just end Season 2 early, although the Notes decision was much easier. And I think it worked out. Every episode after the Note system was introduced has been paced much better in terms of information and allowed me to talk about things I would otherwise hesitate to include. Hopefully, with the introduction of Two in Season 3, the pacing will finally be at a level where you readers can actually somewhat enjoy learning about the characters!

Hopefully.

Q: Have you ever thought one character was going to win going into a battle, and left with totally different results? (REAL QUESTION!)

A: Absolutely. This season, especially. Harley Quinn VS Juliet Starling, Kestrel VS Hero, and Hiccup VS Nausicaä all were ones where I had a solid enough inkling of the winner that I questioned doing the matchup at all, but when the research shook out, the other guy ended up winning. Alphonse VS Nightmare was a fun one, where preliminary research showed them on basically even ground, then further research revealed it to be almost a complete stomp in Alphonse's favor, yet Nightmare still won the fight because of unique details that countered everything that would allow Alphonse to win. This sort of thing happens all the time, hence one reason why episodes are so rare.

Q: What's your favorite episode of the real Death Battle? (REAL QUESTION!)

A: I've been asked a few times what my favorite episode of the real show is, and so I thought I'd put it to rest (for now) here. I kind of swoon over every episode, actually, at some point, I'd love to review every individual episode of the show, but in terms of my own personal enjoyment, this is it:

Episode 175: Killua VS Misaka.

Kind of a weird pick, maybe a letdown, right?

I know that Killua VS Misaka is nowhere near the best the series has done, objectively. The animation is stiff and slow at times, the analysis isn't the most well-edited or engaging to those who don't have a horse in the race, and for most folks, this is a super-standard episode, filling time between two far more beloved episodes. But this was MY episode. The one I most wanted to see; well, second-place, anyway (one day, Susumu Hori VS Jill Dozer, one day). Naturally, it uses a great HunterXHunter character, and I'm sure I would be thrilled if I had properly read that series (I promise I will someday), but for me, the biggest thing on the planet was the inclusion of Misaka Mikoto.

I read the first few of the Magical Index novels a few years back, after buying them from a garage sale (yes, I'm an odd one) and fell in love. I mean, they aren't anywhere close to perfect, but the world, the stories, the single best magic system I have ever encountered, how it manages to successfully philosophically pose and answer many of humanity's hardest questions by breaking them down to their base components, just, if you haven't read these books, give them a go.

I ate through every released book in less than a month, and have had every further release since on constant pre-order. It never even occurred to me that there might be a manga or anime or anything of the kind; to me, who was already a fantasy novel nerd, these were definitive modern-fantasy books, nothing more, nothing less. I was actually planning on bringing Mikoto into my Season 3, as the character I most liked that fit the format of a Death Battle combatant best. And the matchup? Killua VS Misaka Mikoto.

I researched Killua enough to know it was a decent matchup with fair connections and (unlike every other electricity user) wouldn't be an insane stomp on either side. I planned on reading through HunterXHunter later in the season in proper preparation for the episode, but, for now, I dove HARD into Mikoto research with the books. Calcs and all. Killua VS Misaka Mikoto (a novel character, I thought smugly, which Death Battle would never use) was set to be Episode 27 in the event that I ever returned to writing these things.

When Death Battle announced this at the end of Chosen Undead VS Dragonborne, I went ballistic. I wish I had been recording my reaction. I saw the preview character animation, and was like "Oh, hey, Killua! Wow, that's cool! Fighting Akame, right?" Then Mikoto's face appeared and I was like "Huh, wait, I don't recognize that. She kind of looks like-" then I saw the uniform she wore on Book 3's cover and literally SCREAMED. It took me several minutes to process that Index was getting a representative, that my big champion matchup was going to be an official episode, and then, like, an hour later, I suddenly had a thought: "Wait, what was that animation she was in?"

Then I found out a great many things. That Index was not nearly as niche as I thought it was. That it had a manga and an anime adaptation. That these adaptations were not nearly as good as the books. And Mikoto had her own entire series, with her own canonical stories and arcs, and was probably the most popular character of the franchise. And that the rest of the internet called her by her family name: Misaka.

I watched a chunk of the Index anime, felt a little sad that this was what most people thought of when thinking about these stories, then watched all of Railgun. And while the first season leaned a little too far into the worse parts of the books (although I still liked it and was thrilled to have new stories that fit perfectly into the world and a good expansion on the magic system), Season 2 blew me away. It took a story that already helped shape some of my ethical standards and transformed it into one of the most powerful stories I have ever seen. Season 3 was excellent; everything Season 1 wanted to be, but I still stay awake at night thinking about the first half of Season 2. Especially in English; Mikoto's scream when she sees Little Misaka's dead body in the English Dub may be the single best piece of voice acting I've ever heard.

Then the episode comes out, and Killua's section is solid for someone who is unfamiliar with the character, very fun, hypes him up a lot, and really makes the viewer (me) rethink putting off the manga/anime. But then we hit Mikoto, and Wiz is ALSO in love with Index's magic system. They go across the entire series, heavily rely on the books, scale her to Saints, and instead of feeling like they grabbed a popular anime character, it feels like a love letter to the Index novels. They give her stories their due, properly understand her and Kamijou's relationship (which the internet generally does not seem to do), and all my research was right. I think I said "Yes! Exactly!" around fifty times during that brief analysis. Every other time a character or matchup I did was turned into an official episode, they heavily disagreed with me in some regard. But here, I was on the exact same wavelength. It was incredible, and actually one of the biggest reasons I jumped back into making my own Death Battles.

But because Death Battle has the resources and will to translate from original Japanese, they could use feats from New Testament, which is currently completely unavailable in English (except through maybe some fan translations that I never checked out). And, the biggest thing I was worried about because of how it's so emphasized in the books but ignored in the popular media, the intelligence and strategy. Figuring out and manipulating both magic and esper powers mid-combat is the main thing of those books; it's hard to think of a single fight Kamijou wins by being strong.

One of the strongest points in favor of the stories for me has always been seeing new powers and items and spells, being blown away by how cool it is and how well it works with the lore, and then detective-ing my way into figuring out how to circumvent it before the characters do. Mikoto is a brilliant strategist, and that is barely emphasized even in Season 2 (except that brilliant two-episode stretch against Meltdowner, I loved that), and everything I saw of the VS Community talking about this matchup never really addressed that anybody even considered strategy. Just power output. But the episode acknowledges it, and I'm happy.

But then the animation has Mikoto counteract Killua's Rhythm Echo (which worked on her AIM and magnetic senses because it works on other superpowers in his series) by altering the metal in the ground so the echoes are different for each individual location, and that is exactly the kind of thing she would do in a fight in the books. And the final attack, where she used electricity to not just make a double of herself, but to completely simulate the electrical impulses of her brain and heart so that Killua, who was using his electrical interference to discern her location within the iron sand, would receive a mental imprint of her body, that's absolutely in line with her powers, style of fighting, and would be the big "OH CRAP" moment of the final battle of one of her stories.

And her then using that to infect his body with metal, not to kill him, but to alter his density so she could track his falling speed accurately and line up for a railgun, there are some portions of the fight that are a bit odd (characters receiving no damage after being hit by heavy attacks, Mikoto taking the fight into a close swordfight on the side of the building, etc.), but this was brilliant. It felt like they truly understood the character and franchise, instead of just using them for funsies.

Of course, I'm also happy that Mikoto won, but this would probably still be my favorite episode even if there was a sudden twist at the end and Killua took home the victory. Who wins doesn't really matter to me nearly as much as it seems to for some others. Maybe the fact that I had my favorite fictional character lose her own Death Battle already told you that. But the whole experience I had surrounding Killua VS Misaka was unlike any other episode.

I've absorbed entire series in preparation for watching a Death Battle episode. I've been introduced to new franchises that I quite liked. I've had some of my favorite characters show up with great representation (Sanji, my man!). I've had characters I loved but never thought would get an episode, get an episode (Rick Wheeler, mah dude!). I've had episodes I made for this show become official episodes that I was grinning all throughout (Shadow VS Ryuko, woot woot!).

But this one hit every note. It's not that it's a great episode everyone should watch. It's that it hit me exactly how I needed it to, and led to a whirlwind of memories before, during, and after. I actually have trouble watching reactions to it; because I have to watch as they pleasantly smile and say "that's neat" and then get ten times as excited for Rocket VS Stitch, meanwhile I'm still freaking out the whole way. And I know it's only going to get better when I finally experience HunterXHunter and also very likely fall in love with that, too. Also, it was released just a few days before my birthday, so… yeah.

So, much more of a personal thing than you were probably expecting. Don't get me wrong, I also love Balrog VS TJ Combo and Saitama VS Popeye (actually, I kind of love every episode of this show), but Killua VS Misaka hit notes unlike every other episode so far, and probably for a long time to come. Maybe if they bring in Coco from Witch Hat Atelier. Or if they ever do a Red vs Blue or TF2 episode that doesn't suck. Or if my sweet prince (that I VERY much do not want to write myself) Susumu Hori VS Jill Dozer ends up being a thing (it won't).

So, yeah, I hope that answers that.

Q: Are there any episodes you want to see, but not write? (REAL QUESTION!)

A: Yes. Susumu Hori VS Jill Dozer.

Fine, if you must insist, someone recently suggested Luz VS Sunset Shimmer, and that sounds like the best matchup for both and involves two characters I adore, but I do not envy whoever decides to attempt to interpret Equestria Girls feats or the power level of Luz's Titan form. And I definitely do not want to be that person.

But first is always Susumu Hori VS Jill Dozer.

Ruby Rose vs. Carnage:

Q: Why isn't this called "Carnage vs. Ruby Rose?" That flows off the tongue WAY better!

A: Aha, but Ruby Rose vs. Carnage looks better when written! And since nobody talks about my fanfiction physically (and I didn't switch everything to all-caps VS until the end of the season, in which "Carnage VS Ruby Rose" definitely looks better) this one won out.

Q: Why didn't you wait until the end of RWBY before using Ruby? Even the official Death Battle has said that they're going to wait until then because of how she's clearly going to get something crazy later on!

A: Death Battle is waiting because the one and only matchup they want for Ruby is Ruby Rose VS Maka Albarn. That fight was requested by Monty Oum himself. They have to wait until the end of her story, because otherwise Ruby will not be fully represented, and could get enough power-ups to win a fight that she currently very much loses. Death Battle has shown no hesitancy about using other RWBY characters well before their own arcs and training finished, and, frankly, I just really wanted to do Ruby VS Carnage. It was the fight I was mentally super into at the time. A huge part of this is for me, you know. Death Battle is a business. Death Battle Attempts is a hobby.

Q: You said Ruby's aura broke, but then she still used her semblance! I've caught you! You're a fraud!

A: Okay, wait, hold on. Yes, a semblance cannot be used without aura; it is the power source of all Ruby's abilities, after all. However, remember that "aura" and "aura shield" are not the same thing. "Aura shield" often gets shortened down to "aura" but it is still just an individual power the character's aura gives them: the ability to manifest part of their soul as a skintight forcefield. This does take a lot of aura to maintain, and when it breaks, there clearly isn't enough aura left to be used for much else. But there is still aura left, just not enough to make a new forcefield. Characters later in the series do show aura-enhanced strength and speed even after their aura shield is broken, at least for a short time, so a character using aura obviously doesn't just turn into a normal human as soon as their shield breaks. And since I specifically stated that Ruby "used her semblance to her fullest, calling on the scraps of power and energy she had left," I think this can be forgiven.

Harley Quinn vs. Juliet Starling:

Q: You said Harley won because of her speed, but Juliet is faster! She dodged Vikke's lightning bolts, so has to be able to react to lightning! Doesn't that make her almost sixty times faster than Harley?

A: A couple of things: first, Harley is faster than Batman, who has dodged artificial lightning and likely scales to people who can definitely react to that. Second, every lightning bolt launched by Vikke was preceded by specific actions and patterns that Juliet saw beforehand, and the spots where said lightning would strike were clearly marked. In actual gameplay, she can't dodge one of these bolts after they've begun (or, at least, I couldn't! Could be a skill issue, but I swear I tried like 20 times). And even after all that, these lightning bolts are magical in nature and actually come from a totally different universe, so it's questionable even without any of the extra problems, since she has no other speed feats to support being that fast. Even though my research is not the best it could be here, I firmly believe that Harley is still faster.

Shadow vs. Ryuko:

Q: Ryuko's slashes that hit things from far away aren't sword beams; they're windshears from how hard she was swinging. Why are you so wrong about everything?

A: They're color-coded, visible by others, nothing they don't touch is hurt, and Ryuko can choose whether to launch them or not at will. If they aren't sword beams, they definitely act just like them.

Q: Why didn't you count Ryuko blasting that giant hole in the atmosphere in the finale?

A: Because a few minutes later she shows off the ability to control the life threads directly without the need for force, suggesting this was probably an ability and not power output. In a fight that was so (for my own research at the time) close, it would feel wrong to give the win to Ryuko based on something as eyebrow-raising as that.

Q: Sonic and Shadow are equal rivals who have stalemated a bunch of times. Why did you limit Shadow so much? Shouldn't he be able to do anything Sonic can?

A: It's true that Sonic and Shadow have matched blows, but never when Modern Sonic was acting completely seriously. There's little question that Sonic and Shadow consider each other rivals, but not on equal footing. Shadow has only ever beaten Sonic through tricks or surprise attacks, which is Sonic's biggest weakness anyway. He has never beaten Sonic when both were going all-out and none of his shown canonical feats, except in Super Shadow form, approaches star-level capabilities. There are a few non-canon ones that approach this level, but until it's backed up by the main games, I'd be hesitant to use them. Well, actually, there is some new scaling from Forces and Frontiers and arguably Prime, but that stuff either didn't exist or was generally interpreted differently back when I wrote this.

Q: Why didn't you count anything from Kill la Kill IF?

A: Because it was a dream. Kindly do yourself a favor and play games before making assumptions and read entire comic stories instead of the few panels shown off in imgur.

Ultron vs. Cell:

Q: Cell is equivalent to a SSJ2, and a SSJ3, which has 4x the power of a SSJ2, could match Majin Buu, who can shatter dimensions by screaming! This obviously makes Cell universal in power!

A: First, assuming SSJ2 Teen Gohan is equivalent in power to Buu Saga SSJ2 Goku is generous at best. Second, assuming Super Perfect Cell is equivalent in power to SSJ2 Teen Gohan is generous at best. Third, Buu's dimensional-screaming was a specific rage-based ki technique. A confusing one, but since the Kais are shocked when Beerus and SSJG Goku almost destroy the universe in their battle much later at MUCH higher power levels, it definitely wasn't from pure power output alone. Plus, other characters, once they see the technique performed, are able to repeat it themselves. Even if it was based on pure power, the Room of Spirit and Time leads to a very small pocket dimension within the Dragon Ball universe (which contains many such "realms") that was specifically the size of the Earth, and the hole was a simple pathway back to Earth. Not quite comparable to some of the opponents Ultron has fought. I'd like to point out just how much higher Solar System-level is than Planet-level. A lot of folks kind of get it locked in their head that blowing up a solar system is like blowing up a few planets, but the number I put Cell at was well over a trillion times more powerful than you'd have to be to blow up Earth. So even accounting for 1st-Form Freeza blowing up planets with one attack, Super Perfect Cell's scaling still holds tight. It is, admittedly, possible to scale him up further heavily depending on interpretation of certain Buu Saga statements, but those are questionable enough and the gap in power between Buu and Cell is debatable enough that it didn't seem worth investing time in, at least at the time.

Q: Why did you give Cell all the powers and techniques of all the main characters? In the manga, the only ones he took DNA from were Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, Freeza, and King Cold!

A: Yes, but in the video games, Cell talks about DNA from Krillin and Tien Shinhan, and uses a bunch of techniques that are exclusive to non-Saiyans. If this fight really came down to the wire of who would and wouldn't win, I probably would've cut those as non-canon and not included them. But because Ultron took this one pretty handily, I wanted it to be more fun and auto-answer the question of "why didn't you include X." Besides, there's no reason he wouldn't be able to learn these techniques anyway, since he has memories of them being performed and has shown to be a natural when it comes to copying techniques.

Q: Why did you lowball Ultron so hard?!

A: Um, because I was one guy who wasn't that into comics doing basic research and was a lot more hesitant about stated feats and interpretations. To be fair, Solar System was actually higher than the generally-accepted level of power for most cosmic Marvel characters back when I wrote that. Even today, if you look at their wiki pages, most of these guys are listed at being able to arguably destroy a planet. Ultron VS Sigma came out very shortly before my Ultron VS Cell, and they scaled Ultron much lower than I did. I was actually pretty nervous that folks would call me biased for making him as powerful as I did. Turns out, this fanfic isn't NEARLY popular enough for that, so, yay! But yeah, if I re-did the fight today, Ultron, Thor, and a ton of other stuff would be scaled VERY differently.

Note to anyone who recently started reading these: every single episode of Season 2 was released literal years apart. The structure and opinions of the greater VS Community became fundamentally different between Ruby Rose VS Carnage and Groudon VS Ignosaurus. Hopefully, Season 3 won't have as big of gaps.

Q: Why do you call Frieza "Freeza" and use the Japanese names for techniques instead of the ones I know?

A: Because I like TeamFourStar. Far too much. And because those names are way cooler. And because the old Dragon Ball forums I was perusing for a long time in the research ALL called him "Freeza" and I was hoping to score some points with the community while murdering a popular character. Also, "Freeza" just feels so much more natural and is actually the correct romanization; "Frieza" came about via typo. I'll probably stick with some of this lingo moving forward, but not all of it. This whole thing is, after all, for my own enjoyment first and foremost.

Alphonse vs. Nightmare:

Q: Wasn't Alphonse's alchemic power enhanced because Scar broke the seal around the country? Shouldn't it outmatch Nightmare's magic?

A: Possibly? Here's the thing: this seal, created by Father, served two purposes: the first was to reduce the natural connection between transmutations and their energy source, the world's vibrational energy. The second is to sort of "infect" that connection, allowing him to alter or turn it off if needed. Once this seal was broken, the main point was that Father suddenly couldn't remove the alchemists' powers whenever he wanted. The boost in efficiency was just a bonus. No, Father wasn't providing power to all alchemy in the country; that's just a misconception thanks to a mildly confusing plotline that wasn't helped at all by the 2003 anime featuring a twist in that vein.

Anyway, you'll notice that I said "efficiency," not "power." And the characters in the story say the same. What changes after the seal breaks isn't so much that they can affect things more than they could before, but that they can affect them more EASILY. Edward specifies this at one point where he makes a transmutation that would have previously taken a great deal of time to work out and study with a simple thought and clap. They were always capable of that level of transmuting power, but now they reach it without a ton of extra stress on their minds or bodies. No character shows the ability to make things they couldn't before, or anything like that, anyway.

Even if it did increase alchemical power itself, 1: This whole thing happened less than an hour before Al became a human again and his story as a Death Battle Combatant ended, so including it would be kind of a gray area, #2: The transmutation feat that we compared Al's power to (Edward's dike in the fourth novel) was already intentionally overestimated, and, far more importantly, #3: It would change nothing about the fight. Al's problem wasn't that his material-based alchemic ability didn't have as much power as Nightmare's magic. It was that his material-based alchemic ability didn't have the capability to harm Nightmare at all. Nightmare's magic being more powerful was just a little extra icing on the victory cake. Whether or not it's true is, like much of my research this season, up for debate.

Q: You had Alphonse use his alchemy on himself to fix his body, but he can't! The manga says only Edward can alchemically change Alphonse's body!

A: This is another misconception. Alphonse CAN affect his own body with his alchemy; he has done so in non-canon material a decent amount of times, and even made a transmutation on himself near the end of the manga. This misconception is born out of an early chapter of the manga where Al is damaged but tells everyone that he has to wait for Edward to repair him because it's his blood in the blood seal. The point isn't that Al can't repair his body, but that Ed's the one who made the seal and understands it the most. Al doesn't, so every time he alchemically changes his body, he runs a big risk of ruining that seal. Think of it like the world's greatest surgeon performing surgery on one of his own legs. Theoretically possible, but you definitely would rather wait for another surgeon instead of taking that much of a risk. Anyway, I gave him this ability because he can do it and would in case of an emergency situation. Either way, it doesn't change the result, so that's a detail that doesn't really do anything anyway.

Q: Why didn't you give Nightmare a real body? Isn't that his full power? Even the official Death Battle did that!

A: This was a surprisingly difficult decision. So, Rule #3 of Death Battle states the following: "A character's maximum potential is examined unless otherwise specified." The "unless otherwise specified" allows for certain characters to come into play as they are most well-known. People want to see Deadpool fight, not Captain Universe. 80-90% of the time, Nightmare has a human body. Why didn't I give him one here?

Well, the first thing to realize is who the actual combatant is. Nightmare is a name given to the armor-clad monster that fought his way through Europe. But the actual character who possesses and inhabits every version of that monster is the demon Inferno. And INFERNO is the character we're really studying. His magical abilities, soul-rending power, and physical form. And even though Seigfried is mainly famous for his body being inhabited by Inferno and becoming Nightmare, it's still JUST Inferno in that body. Since his stats are all the same in his armorbourne form, there's no real difference in physical ability. In fact, a bodyless Nightmare is more powerful than one tied to Seigfried, because it allows him to fight on through heavy mutilation and not be slowed down through physical means. Once Inferno gained the ability to form Nightmare without Seigfried, he certainly didn't want to go back to the way things were. Nightmare in Seigfried's body is the most well-known version of the character, but it's virtually no different from his more powerful alternate bodyless version.

So, if we're only concerned about power, why not give Inferno over to Pyrrha, the perfect host for him? Infected Pyrrha is definitely more powerful than bodyless Nightmare. And yes, that's true to an extent, but we're not just looking at the most powerful version of the character. We want to strike a balance with what the reader knows. Giving Ultron his Final Form isn't a problem; it's still Ultron, and a lot of people know of and would want that form to be included. But forcing him into the robot body of a nanobot exclusively might be a guaranteed win against Cell, but that's not the form everyone knows and wants to see. And here, few people cared for or even knew about Pyrrha being Inferno's ideal host. So, in striking that balance, it's a little difficult to justify her inclusion.

A difficulty that is made WAY easier by the addition of one detail: giving Nightmare a human body would induce a major drawback, ESPECIALLY for Pyrrha. The soul of the body still lives, is a lot more prevalent than the others, and is fully able to take back their body if Inferno is suitably distracted. Alphonse may have a little more trouble in dealing with Pyrrha's speed and agility, but he puts any real pressure on the demon and boom, Pyrrha's the one in the body, not Nightmare. That's not fair. That's not what people want to see. And the downside of the armorbourne form is minor at best in a fight like this. Otherwise, it wouldn't be Alphonse vs. Nightmare in any real regard.

It should be noted that I didn't give Al his human form because he only has it for a couple of manga chapters, his armor body was way better physically, and it's not the form people would want to read fight. His soul might have been a little tougher to absorb, but it really wouldn't matter if Nightmare ended up with a big physical advantage, which, if we forced Al to be his normal, human self, he totally would.

Kestrel vs. Hero:

Q: So, why did you take so much for The Kestrel from the fan-made series?

A: Whew. Alright, here's the thing: do you have any idea how little content there is for FTL: Faster Than Light out there?! I picked that ENTIRE game to pieces, and was still left with a lot of unanswered questions! Normally, this is where officially-released non-canon material would be helpful, but FTL doesn't have that, aside from the little pieces found in Into the Breach. Kestrel Adventures was, in fact, helpful in this regard; it was acknowledged by the game's creators and is effectively an animated idea of how one possible storyline could form from a game of FTL. Using its base human characters (since the Kestrel starts out with three unnamed humans anyway) and using it to answer a few extremely unclear questions wasn't a brilliant line of play, but it was really the only one available. Obviously, the game took 99% of the research and always, always, ALWAYS, took priority over the piece of fan content.

Q: The Kestrel's Bombs are teleportation-based, which is instantaneous. The only reason they miss sometimes is because of a wrong calculation. Fighter should be destroyed the first time they throw a bomb into it, shouldn't it?

A: Dude, if the only reason they miss was because of bad calculations, the Kestrel would lose A LOT more people in its boarding missions. The bombs also have a "dodge" chance, not a fail chance. And Kestrel has never teleported anything into something that fast. And the chickens, who make planet-destroying weaponry on a weekly basis, still can't make something that tracks Fighter well enough to do anything like this. And bombs are relatively weak compared to the Kestrel's normal weapons. They might actually be the only weapon that Fighter has a good chance of surviving a solid hit from.

Q: Why did you give the Kestrel a Medbay instead of a Clone Bay?

A: For the record, in gameplay, a Clone Bay is way better than a Medbay. In terms of a singular battle to the death against another ship, though, being able to heal all wounds of crew members in an instant is going to be more helpful than trying to get away long enough to revive dead crew. Also, there's the whole debate of "did they really win if they all died and later come back, it is a DEATH Battle and I mean it doesn't count for Ganon and all that" so it seemed best to just have a Medbay and leave that can of worms unopened for now.

Q: The Riddler is specifically stated to be pieces of shrapnel that are just blasted at the Speed of Light. This means that Fighter doesn't actually move anywhere near as fast as you said, because he's slower than this shrapnel!

A: This is definitely a case of Word of God not being reliable. Just because the game's files or developer says something doesn't mean it's necessarily the case IF the game contradicts it. And the Chicken Invaders games definitely contradict this. That gun matches speeds with ones that can shoot down comets directly stated to be moving at least ten times the speed of light. So, yeah. This actually isn't an uncommon thing to find; you ever hear of that feat where Wally West saved half a million people from a nuclear bomb in 0.00001 microseconds? The whole thing together puts him over 13 Trillion times the Speed of Light. But the comic panel states that he was moving "a hair's breadth short of the speed of light." Just because the author wrote it doesn't mean it's entirely true without question.

Q: Why is the Hero allowed to talk to the Narrator? That's no fair!

A: Simply put, it's a long-standing part of his character and story, and having him appear without a fourth-wall break in this style would have been a bit of an insult to the character and his fans. The narrator's presence would only affect the battle minimally, if at all, so it doesn't mean much, anyway.

Hiccup vs. Nausicaä:

Q: Why didn't you give Toothless his Gronckle Iron Armor and alternative tails?

A: Long story short: they really didn't matter that much and would have taken up a lot of room to explain in an already lengthy rundown. Basically: Hiccup made Toothless a set of super durable Gronckle Iron armor that he used a few times, but ultimately decided to abandon because it was messing up his flight patterns. Toothless' scales are already tough enough where he doesn't have to worry about too much, so throwing in a set of armor that was never seen again and Hiccup almost definitely doesn't still have on him would have just been a bit too questionable for me to feel comfortable. Toothless does have a bunch of extra tails that give him different kinds of flight capabilities, but every one of them requires Hiccup to be riding on top of his dragon or else Toothless will literally plummet out of the sky. And that's just too big of a downside to be worth taking up that much room for something so minor.

Q: Gronckle Iron is tougher than Screaming Death scales, which are tougher than Night Fury scales, right? So, then, if Nausicaä's Ceramic can cut through Gronckle Iron, can't she cut through the Dragon Armor?

A: She would indeed be able to… except that that's wrong. Here's the thing: it's stated in a one-off phrase in Race to the Edge that the dragon's Gronckle Iron armor is tougher than the Screaming Death scale armor they'd made earlier, and earlier than that there's another one-off mention of Screaming Death scales being the toughest scales of all dragons. But both of these are sort of inaccurate. Yes, it's likely that the Gronckle Iron armor that took weeks to plan out and make was stronger than the random bunch of Screaming Death scales they found and cobbled armor out of in an hour or less. But Dragon Root arrows bounced off those Screaming Death scales and have stabbed INTO Gronckle Iron a few times. Plus, if we're going by one-off statements, supposedly a Scauldron's water blast can rip the scales off a Screaming Death, and Toothless has tanked plenty of those. Toothless's scales in general are known for being light and tough, and we've actually seen them deflect Dragon Root arrows. Also, Hiccup had years to make his Dragon Armor, so it's going to be as tough as he can get it. Gronckle Iron is light and easy to fight in, so if it was tougher, there's not much of a reason Hiccup wouldn't have just made an armor set out of that instead.

Q: You said Toothless' scales were hard to pierce, but he did once get shot by a Dragon Root arrow, and guess what, it pierced his scales and grounded him for hours!

A: Right, but that was a surprise attack by what was assumedly one of Viggo's best archers, since they were supposed to be hunting the Night Fury. And the arrow struck Toothless in the tail, where he's a lot weaker than in other areas. I mean, a net, just a regular net, once tore off part of his tail, but later Toothless's whole body tanks massive nuclear explosions and he's fine. When it's the tail, he's clearly not quite as tough. But there's no way Nausicaä would know that or figure it out unless she was given a crazy amount of time with the dragon, so it's not really a weakness, either.

Q: Why did you give Hiccup his Gronckle Iron shield? We don't see it in the second or third movie, so he clearly doesn't have it anymore!

A: Yeah, the only reason it's not in those movies is because it was invented in the TV Shows, and guess who didn't watch said TV Shows before writing those movies? Yup. Anyway, he uses the thing in the canonical comics that take place in between those two movies and talks about it in kid's books and stuff that take place after the two films, so he definitely still has it and brings it places.

Q: Could Nausicaä use her wormflute to mess with Toothless? It controls insects and Toothless's senses have been messed with like this before, like with the Screaming Death and Death Song.

A: Maybe? Dragons and insects are honestly so different it's difficult to argue for anything like this to reasonably be the case. Insects are guided through psychic power and are spiritually centered and all that. But even if it did work on him, Toothless actually resisted the Screaming Death and Death Song, so the wormflute probably wouldn't be anything he couldn't handle. At the very least, he's experienced and fought through that kind of thing before.

Q: Nausicaä is ridiculously adept at reading the slightest shifts in the wind. Wouldn't this help her against surprise attacks or dodging Hiccup's arrows?

A: Actually, that's a good possibility. But it doesn't matter, because her psychic senses already gave her the read on surprise attacks and the arrows Hiccup fires have hit dragons moving way faster than Nausicaä has ever reacted.

Q: All the gun tech in Nausicaä's world is from the future, so bullets should be even faster. Our fastest bullet currently travels around 5,600 MPH. Is that extra boost in speed enough to give Nausicaä the edge in close-quarters combat?

A: Since all of this stuff is styled after the gun tech we have right now (and was written in the 80s, so who knows when the author thought this would all go down), it seems fairest for us to consider it as we have it. However, if we did give our fastest bullet's speed to Nausicaä, that combined with her wind-reading, higher skill levels, and psychic senses would be enough to grant the edge in close-quarters combat… if we're talking exclusively the feats we listed. Hiccup does have more that put him much faster, potentially at the same lightning-dodging speeds Toothless is capable of. Either way, he was dodging Nadder breath at 15 and scrawny, with no training, so he's definitely become way faster now. Under those same conditions, he was repeatedly physically humiliated by Snotlout, the same guy he one-hit-KOd post-timeskip. And that was an even stronger version of Snotlout with three years of extra training. So, he's certainly faster than Nausicaä even if we were to grant her this highball.

Q: Nausicaä has at least three Kabura shells, and each deafened an entire line of hardened warriors. If she just threw these out, wouldn't she be able to stun Hiccup long enough for the kill?

A: That might be one of the worlds in which she wins. But that alone isn't enough to tip the scales. Also, Hiccup tanked a lot of blasts from Thunderdrums, and THOSE sound bursts are supposed to be loud enough to rattle the skies and kill on contact. So the chances of Kabura shells being a deciding factor aren't that great.

Q: Why include Toothless, Ohma, the Dragon Army, and the daikaisho at all? Whatever happened to the no outside help rule?

A: Technically, there is no "no outside help" rule. There is a rule that states "factors unrelated to the battle cannot end the fight." I did actually consider Toothless, Ohma, and the rest their own separate characters and was going to force the two title characters to duke it out alone… and then I found out that Nausicaä can psychically call Ohma and all those ohmu to come fight for her whenever the crap she wants, and Hiccup has a special call for many different kinds of dragons that can be heard for miles, including Toothless, who has heard it from entire islands away. So that kind of threw all my ideas for a straight-up fight out the window (well, until it turned out the two armies were relatively evenly matched, which I wasn't expecting at all). There's absolutely no reason both characters wouldn't use these abilities and take advantage of their allies, and with this in mind, the dragons and insects don't really appear as unrelated fighters anymore. They're more like summons, you could say, like a trainer throwing out pokémon or Cloud using summoning materia. From that perspective, there's not much trouble allowing these characters to effectively use their full arsenals on each other.

...

CHARACTERS I WANT TO USE BUT HAVE NO GOOD OPPONENTS FOR:

Thanks to you guys, I have a ton of fantastic battles lined up and have found great matchups for characters I thought were doomed to never appear in the series. But, I still need your help. There are many characters out there that I would love to put in an episode of My Death Battle Attempts, but haven't been able to find proper opponents for. So, if any matchup strikes your mind while reading this list, leave a review or PM me! I'm happy to hear all of your suggestions.

Garou (One Punch Man)

Mii (Nintendo)

Voltron (Voltron: Legendary Defender)

Eragon & Saphira (Inheritance Cycle)

Madeline (Ranger's Apprentice)

Robbie Reyes (Marvel)

Mob (Mob Psycho 100)

Estelle (Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)

Yuuki (Sword Art Online)

Maple (Bofuri)

Meta Knight (Kirby)

Valkyrie (Marvel) [you probably know this gal as Jane Foster Thor]

Shortfuse (Sonic the Comic)

Greed (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Greed specifically is a great one to leave suggestions for because… dun dun dun… all my research for him is already done! I was planning on kicking off Season 3 with Greed VS Agent Venom (a very fun highly-connective matchup using two underappreciated characters I really like) and did all the research and scripting for Greed.

Then I read Agent Venom's Guardians of the Galaxy run.

Agent Venom is no longer fighting Greed.

Also, every Red vs. Blue character! rvbVSRvB took so much time and energy to research and I'd hate for it to be wasted. TF2 characters are very… problematic in terms of scaling, feats, and what we can and can't include (immortality being just one example), but I could MAYBE make it work. Red vs. Blue characters, though? I'm all in. Chances are pretty great at least one of these guys is making it into Season 3, and who knows, maybe it'll be YOUR matchup that makes it happen!

So, suggest away, and hopefully I can fill up these slots comfortably while also making at least one other person out there happy.

...

SEASON 3 – UPCOMING BATTLES:

And we continue with Season 3! As awesome as these first two seasons were to write, I really feel like Season 3 is going to be my favorite so far. I've got so many fun matchups to get to. But what battles are going to appear? Well, here's the thing: last time I did this, everything ended up going… not at all according to plan. New battles were written in and took precedence, the order was off, some battles were straight-up cancelled, it was a mess.

So, take every inch of this with a grain of salt.

SEASON PREMIERE: Episode 20: Machine hunters of the apocalypse reincarnate to fight!

Episode 21: Little Bone VS Little Ghost

Episode 22: DC and Marvel characters of horribly inconsistent power have their most powerful showings go up against each other!

Episode 23: God VS Mortal

Episode 24: Eldritch Dreamer VS Royal Homunculus

Episode 25: Fire

Episode 26: Well-dressed CEO VS High-strung King

Episode 27: Ultimate lifeform VS Ultimate machine

Episode 28: Water

Episode 29: Blood, Death, and Monsters

SEASON FINALE: Episode 30: A rematch of Season #1's worst episode (at least, the one I think is the worst)

So guess away at the combatants, and let your mouths froth with excitement! Or salt. Whichever, really.

...

SEASON #2 STATS:

And now, for the end of it all. Season 2 has come to a close, so let's take a look back at the fights, who won, and why. And see how many words long each chapter was, because why not?

11. Ruby Rose VS Carnage

Winner: Carnage

Reasoning: Similar speed, greater strength, far superior regeneration and durability, held a psychological advantage, and was significantly more versatile.

Word Count: 15,031

12. Harley Quinn VS Juliet Starling:

Winner: Harley Quinn

Reasoning: Superior fighting style and speed made her almost impossible to hit, while she evened out in other areas and had trouble getting around Juliet's incredible durability, Harley had experience defeating far greater and tougher foes and pulling wins out of the air.

Word Count: 13,719

13. Shadow VS Ryuko

Winner: Shadow

Reasoning: Superior speed, more experience, more training, more versatility, better weapons, better transformations, better powers in general, and Super Shadow was well beyond even Ryuko's strongest form.

Word Count: 17,259

14. Ultron VS Cell

Winner: Ultron

Reasoning: Better speed, strength, and durability, switching bodies gave him more capabilities and versatility than Cell could ever have, incredibly superior intelligence, Final Form Ultron has dealt with characters of a similar power level as Cell like they're a mild annoyance.

Word Count: 16,988

15. Adam VS Genji

Winner: Adam

Reasoning: Greater strength, speed, skill, and durability. Has dealt with characters similar to Genji. Faunus traits countered stealth.

Word Count: 13,833

16. Alphonse VS Nightmare

Winner: Nightmare

Reasoning: Alphonse takes every physical advantage, and even versatility thanks to alchemy, but was simply unable to end Nightmare's life without severe risk to his own. Nightmare's control over souls meant he could easily wipe Alphonse's from existence, as it was unprotected, and his magic had greater destructive potential than alchemy.

Word Count: 19,864

17. Kestrel VS Hero:

Winner: Hero

Reasoning: Far, far superior speed and agility, countered most of Kestrel's out-of-the-box options, superior firepower, superior warp capabilities, superior sensors, has faced much worse opponents and prevailed.

Word Count: 15,919

18. Hiccup VS Nausicaä:

Winner: Hiccup

Reasoning: Superior physical abilities, Dragon Army + Toothless matched Daikaisho + Ohma evenly, Better and faster strategies and tactics, more varied weapons, Nausicaä could willpower her way to his level, but Hiccup could adapt his way above that

Word Count: 25,872

19. Groudon VS Ignosaurus:

Winner: Groudon

Reasoning: Superior strength, firepower, abilities, and far superior durability. Ignosaurus's top scaling and calcs were also incredibly questionable for story reasons, and didn't match up to Groudon's scaling and calcs anyway. Gunash was discounted for a large variety of reasons.

Word Count: 14,021

Avg. Word Count Season 1: 15,411

Avg. Word Count Season 2: 16,945

...

TO BE CONTINUED…

Well, with Season 2 out of the way, it's time to get to work on Season 3. When will the first episode be premiering? Well…

I'm happy to announce that Episode 20 of LittleZbot's Death Battles, and the Season 3 premiere, will be out for everyone to read on September 7th, 2023! Exactly one week from today. No more year-long delays here! At least, I hope.

As always, leave any and all questions down below, and review this story, please!

See you guys in a week.

- LittleZbot