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Death Battle has never been that serious and we'd honestly be better off if we stopped treating it like it was.

I could just end the post right here and I'd likely... see one or two comments telling me I'm a dumbass because I'm not big in any capacity but of course I've never been one for the short post so I need to elaborate. What I mean by saying Death Battle has never been that serious is that contrary to what I've seen online in forums, Twitter posts and more? This series despite at one point beginning every match with "Let's end this debate once and for all." has never envisioned itself as being an authority on versus matches and really only at best flirts with the community that has taken to it and over the years I've seen time and time again people continue to miss this fact and considering what I've seen in response to Freeza vs. Megatron? That's not changing any time soon and so I feel like finally just talking about this.

Now right away, we should address what Death Battle is. Death Battle is a web-series created by Ben Singer for ScrewAttack that at the moment is owned by RoosterTeeth. Primarily inspired by Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior which pit historical warriors against each other with research going into their weapons and tactics followed up by a live-action fight and just the "Who will win?" debate in general, Death Battle is a show that pits two characters against one another and analyzes weapon, armor and skill to find out who would win a proper fight to the death and it's from this point onward we need to define some parts of that and also address certain complaints that are thrown at it.

For one thing, Death Battle doesn't really do what we see from a lot of versus debates. Most versus debates tend to pick one version of a character and stick with them. Now there are separate debates that deal in the "composite" category where basically people take multiple versions of a character and clump them together. Death Battle mostly goes for compositing but in a more limited fashion. According to their official rules, any and all official sources will be considered for a character with the only exceptions being outright contradictions. For example, this would mean Spider-Man would likely have his 616 version analyzed along with maybe what-ifs that can be best summed up as "616 but this thing happened differently." which at points has led to interesting factoids. For example, Deadpool got a sword that negates healing factors for his fight against Deathstroke which only appeared in the alternate universe story "Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe". People call foul on this saying it misrepresents characters and often leads to bias.

Now I feel it can be pretty case-by-case with this since at points? Yeah it's a little absurd with what they do. For example, every Star Wars character is their canon counterpart composited with their Legends self which can lead to conflict considering Legends variations are considerably more broken than canon and sometimes that means fights that should otherwise be closer become a bit more one-sided. Me personally? I really like it and it's because of one factor I feel that should be understood about Death Battle and that is it is not made for versus battle obsessives or power scalers. It's made primarily for general audience members. The reason compositing is done in this way is so that they have a more broad pool to pull from for research which not only allows for more fun fights but also an exploration of more obscure factoids people may not be aware of. For instance to use the recent episode as an example, primarily they composited the G1 cartoon take on Megs with the IDW take. Now they could totally have just picked IDW and been done with it or just the cartoon but I think broadening the research to such a degree genuinely helped. For one thing, the cartoon is where most people will know Megatron from and is what the IDW version does pull from for inspiration, the only point where it shifts is their stories which for a series like Death Battle which primarily is about the fight with the analysis portions being about broad strokes in the story really doesn't mean much. I mean this is not fanfiction here, it's not really intended to be a serious crossover.

Now we should also address the point some have brought up in that it feels like with this approach bias shows through and frankly? I really don't see it. See here's the thing about bias in this circumstance, I'm sure some people on the crew do have bias towards other characters but also, of course bias is going to feel like it's present when your favorite loses. I've lived through this many times such as with the original Goku vs. Superman where people cite a genuine writing mistake in Goku's analysis and him using the Nyoibo as a Super Saiyan as being examples of DB being biased, even though they noted in the video that they researched the ever-loving shit out of the whole thing, noted afterwards they were bigger fans of Goku than Superman and pointed out how if they stuck to certain iterations that the fight wouldn't even be fair. Meanwhile, there are better examples of actual bias. For instance, just look at how Garth Ennis writes any superhero other than Superman or how he writes about them. The contempt for them shows through the writing. There's also Batman/Spawn from Frank Miller who despite Todd McFarlane being the artist seems to write Batman as showing nothing but contempt for Spawn and really doesn't the guy well.

One example of this bias argument and how it's shown up recently is how people have expressed that they should've covered certain points like Galvatron and the Japanese G1 continuity which led to the Gold Megatron form they mentioned in a tiny blurb. Thing is, there are good reasons to omit this. Firstly, Galvatron is not Megatron and that goes for tons of continuities. In the toy blurb and commercial, he's the counterpart to Ultra Magnus as the Decepticon City Commander, in the cartoon, he's a character that Megatron was reformatted into by Unicron and not a form Megatron can assume on his own, he also is known for the fact that his sanity is completely shot in season 3, meaning for a variety of reasons he really can't be factored in. Next, setting aside how the Japanese G1 timeline is a big ol' fustercluck? The series of events that leads to Gold Megatron doesn't even involve Megatron, it involves Galvatron after he was turned into Super Megatron due to getting energy from a being called Dark Hold which in a series of manga led to a chain of events where he absorbed the energy of multiple Matrices and even stole energy from other characters to become Gold Megatron. it's not a transformation he assumes like say a Dragon Ball form. With that in mind? It makes sense why they chose to exclude it from this composite because it's two big problems rolled into one. It's inconsistent and incompatible and also a lot of the abilities just would not necessarily be usable. The fact it was mentioned likely means it was incorporated into the research for the sake of completion but its exclusion was decided on pretty early. They gave Megatron what they could to give him a fighting chance and the thing is? They did this while keeping Freeza down to the primary sources of the anime and manga. They easily could've gone so ridiculous by giving Freeza stuff from the games, what-if material and DBH which would've made him so ludicrous that Megatron wouldn't even put up a fight in any reasonable capacity.

And for the record, this is why a video like Archie Silver vs. DBH Trunks happened. It's not just variety it's also the fact that if they just used game Silver who is completely separate from Archie? It would've barely been a fight against canon Trunks (And before any of you rush to a wiki to try and correct me, please stop, I do not care.) and if they used Archie Silver against canon Trunks it was probably not gonna go well for the latter so they chose to use both and it works because people know Silver and Trunks and thus they'd be enticed by the idea of learning about alternate versions which leads me to another point. Unlike a lot of versus series you might find on YouTube? Death Battle is made for general audiences first and foremost. You wonder why there are a lot of Marvel vs. DC fights or why they tend to stick to popular characters? There you go. Sometimes they're able to branch out with those fights being glorious which is why I'm glad they're finding ways to incorporate more of those match-ups with the idea of sectioning off three fights to a vote but otherwise that's what they go for and if they incorporate versions people aren't aware of? They'll often still present it in a way that's understandable to general audiences. Take for example Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla or technically Dragonzord vs. Kiryu. Nerddom generally knows who the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers are and the Dragonzord. They also generally know Mechagodzilla but maybe not Kiryu necessarily. That's why the title is like that. Why do they have Jason Voorhees fight Michael Myers instead of someone more fitting for his insane durability? Simple, it's the iconic matchup with legacy to it. You want more unique fights? Then when battles are unique, they gotta get a good amount of viewership to motivate them to keep doing more. Other versus series can generally get away with more unique fights because a good deal of them are made by people who are more about appealing to a specific niche over general audiences. Death Battle does not have that same luxury.

Now before anybody tries to jump in and say anything, let me be clear that I am not saying they shouldn't have constructive criticism as in actual constructive criticism brought to them when they mess up because sometimes, screw-ups happen, especially when it comes to the realm of examining the science of fictional characters and analyzing several pieces of story. Research is subjective, you can research a franchise any number of ways and get different results and sometimes when you have a team of researchers? One forgets to check the work of everybody and as a result you get mistakes. However, by this point, they are nine seasons in and have shown very clearly this is how they do things and I think it's important to take that into account. You can still prefer that they don't do this since hey that's a fair opinion to have but maybe instead of continuously saying it's stupid they did this? Shrug and move on at this point, you're not changing their mind just because you uttered for the hundredth time you don't like the compositing. There's also the matter of research times and other elements that go into the video's creation.

An average video consists of analysis of two fighters, sponsor segments at the end of each rundown and the animation which these days includes actual voice acting and original music composed for it along with the fight which can be done in all manner of styles each with their own challenges. Sprites are easy enough considering thanks to the community sprites for several characters across multiple different universes exist. The problem is that fights are not animated like say high-octane fighting game matches. There's often dialogue exchanges, more subtle animations for expressions and character acting, various digital effects, choreography and there's the matter of sprites for characters that may not have a proper sheet which then requires additional custom work to be done which takes precious time. 3D animation presents various challenges. For one thing depending on the software used to animate it, it's a matter of making sure one has all the resources for it. Next, there's the process of animating itself which involves lighting, shot composition and more and let me tell you, even as someone doing the bare minimum for poses in XNALara? That can all be a pain in the dick, especially when it comes to the matter of needing custom assets. For instance, one complaint I've seen people make about the recent fight was that it didn't use an armored form Megatron used in the IDW comics for one of his major battles that they covered.

Two problems with that, first is the armored form was made by Megatron merging with a whole bunch of guns on the shuttle that was a part of Omega Supreme which means there wouldn't be an easy means to incorporate it but mainly? That form has no 3D model and really, just look through this link to see what this thing looks like.

sta.sh/01c4gg8rm5n

Now, just imagine how much time and painstaking effort it would take to model, texture and rig that behemoth. Hell, imagine the extra time that would need to be spent if one wants to use it with other programs depending on the needs of the animation and also getting it match up stylistically with the previous model. Then there's 2D animation which can once again be quite time-consuming. While one can make efforts to simplify the style to allow for more fluid movement? There are still a lot of challenging factors to making it work and finally there's live-action which so far has only had two showings and aside from a lack of interest? I feel part of it is also just in general the challenges associated with live-action such as costuming, location scouting, choreography, casting, make-up and a lot more. As for the research? That takes an assload of time. Let's take for example a character like Batman. With what they do, they have to look over thousands of comics and various other media, often needing likely to recheck their work multiple times to ensure they got things right. It doesn't help that by the law of just how life works, not everyone will be fans of the same thing meaning that tons of people needing to take extra care to research this stuff and on their own because other people's research while a good source can also vary wildly depending on who's writing it. One of the reasons why Death Battle has multiple animation teams is because genuinely it's what they need to handle the workload and it was why back in the ScrewAttack days there could be quite a hefty delay between episodes since it would have to be scheduled around ScrewAttack's other content. So as you can imagine, whenever I see people noting that something was "forgotten" or whatever? I can't help but roll my eyes considering the amount of effort on display already. Now there are instances where it's fair to criticize the animation whether it doesn't properly showcase an element of the research or the death is kind of weak like the moments where a character, as some people describe it, disconnects their controller and just stand completely still waiting for the kill, bad sound design or in the case of fights like Batgirl vs. Spider-Gwen, incredibly jank choreography and animation. But when it's stuff like this? Bear in mind, a good chunk of you are not animators or at least are not on the level of the people working on a project like this which has a schedule and deadlines to meet. Moreover when it comes to pacing a fight? Including everything is not always the best solution since it can cause fights to balloon out to absurd lengths and the pacing can suck since there always to be a moment where an ability is just shown because it exists so unless something feels actually rushed? I'm not about to complain when fights don't bother showing every single thing a character can do.

Now people cite another problem with DB and them getting stuff wrong is that fans will parrot wrong info or they'll be super irritating in regards to the victor and thing is... this is not an argument. In fact, let's just kind of be blunt about this, if your argument for anything is that fans are annoying about it? You're missing the fact that the fans are not the product and that this goes for a shitload of fandoms. Speaking for myself, I'm in the Dragon Ball and Transformers fandoms and let me tell you, it's hell to be the kind of fan I am. I'm someone who cares about story and character so it brings me no joy to see people goin' off on Twitter yelling "DRAGON BALL DIAPERS!" in response to Daima just because they think somehow them doing this side-story actually means we will never get the Moro Saga or whatever and some point down the line or this recent wave we've gotten of some Transformers fans refusing to watch a cartoon because god forbid there's a non-binary robot which doesn't make sense... in a franchise where robots speak English, have a functional society where we see children exist, gender and romantic connections. Annoying fans are just gonna be annoying. Granted they can have an effect on media in the sense that either you feel uncomfortable showing your love because some tools are the loudest representation of the fandom which means inevitably you have to go utter some variation of "I'm a Rick and Morty fan but I absolutely do not condone the poor behavior shown by my fellow fans." while replacing "Rick and Morty" with whatever franchise you enjoy or they can be so overwhelming about it that they push you away. That being said? Here's what I say...

Who fucking cares?

People being annoying by parroting talking points are just annoying people, it's not the show's fault, it's the fault of people being cringe which don't lie, you once were as a fan. We all had that one obsession that we were just bundles of unbridled cringe about. Also, DB ain't real. I mean it's a real show that you can watch but what I mean is that at the end of the day? It's still ultimately fan-content. The thing about versus debates is that you can argue until the heat death of the universe how you believe a certain character beats another but it's all over factors that are subjective. Power scaling itself is not even something that's used by authors and writers most of the time and the people that say it can be fail to note what they're talking about is not power scaling but rather basic consistency management, the thing you do to make sure that Batman in one page doesn't go from being a normal human to punching apart a skyscraper and back again with no explanation or story reason. Just look at how much these discussions have to bend so far backwards you can hear the spine cracking to account for this such as the existence of anti-feats which exist to try and account for the times a character despite being absurdly powerful has basically been beaten or limited by certain scenarios like say a character needing to be limited due to game mechanics which opens up its own can of worms of what is or isn't considered one which from my perspective really just comes off as people who are fighting tooth and nail to try and prove that the hours of research they spent on a character was worthwhile which to be fair, it can be. Speaking as someone who used to look deep into stuff for their writing on fanfiction, it's a very rewarding experience to just learn a shitload about your favorite characters and media or hell to see that kind of time effort and spent by others on your favorite media and so yes when it feels like someone got something wrong or someone basically looks at the work you did and goes "This really doesn't matter?", it's hard not to take at least some offense to it and it's also hard to turn off. It's like when you read stories about critics who note that because they spent the better half of a whole week just watching and reviewing movies that it's hard for them to even think about watching a film for entertainment and when they do? They find themselves just on a whim picking the thing apart.

However, despite that? This is still ultimately speculation and fanmade media. Unless a company just stated the next day that the fan calcs made for their pantheon of characters on VS Battles wiki are canon? It's not, it's just overall a way for someone to research fictional characters and how they might be in the real world and that's really where one needs to take the time to step back and relax. It's also where I feel DB really has their focus because to be more lighthearted but still just as blunt? It's fucking hilarious to see fictional characters turn out to be unholy gods when judged with real world science. Since the original creators never really think about this stuff beyond what's cool and works for the logic of the story, it is hilarious figuring out how even those considered to be regular humans like Batman are still absurdly broken by human standards and also how sometimes a company really doesn't think about the implications of certain lines like when it was written in a comic that Flash can perceive events that last for less than an attosecond or how with some deduction one can figure out that Wakanda's worth more than the GDP of every country on the planet. The fact you're getting this info at the same time as some cool fight makes it worth it to me to keep watching Death Battle. If you watch it because you want to seriously know who would win in a fight? Honestly there are better places to try debating those points but really that's all you can do because again, this is subjective. You are never going to exactly learn who would win objectively in a fight all the time since simply put that's not really how this works and that's not what the show is about. I mean the show even features the analysis being conducted by a mad scientist with a robot arm and a beer-loving redneck with a shotgun leg. This is not about dry calculations, it's about fun. Can they mess up? Of course, everybody does but the more you try to apply the kinds of judgments and factors to them that they've probably never considered the less fun you are going to have. When media is made to appeal to a certain audience? I feel it's important to break that down and then judge it for what it is, not what it isn't. If it's not serving the purpose you want it to then by all means quit watching, it's clearly never going to appeal to you and you shouldn't force yourself through something that keeps upsetting you but maybe not before watching it with a different mindset so that you can see if you might've missed something.

That's all I got for now, I hope you liked reading this and until next time, stay gold.

Description
Death Battle has never been that serious and we'd honestly be better off if we stopped treating it like it was.

I could just end the post right here and I'd likely... see one or two comments telling me I'm a dumbass because I'm not big in any capacity but of course I've never been one for the short post so I need to elaborate. What I mean by saying Death Battle has never been that serious is that contrary to what I've seen online in forums, Twitter posts and more? This series despite at one point beginning every match with "Let's end this debate once and for all." has never envisioned itself as being an authority on versus matches and really only at best flirts with the community that has taken to it and over the years I've seen time and time again people continue to miss this fact and considering what I've seen in response to Freeza vs. Megatron? That's not changing any time soon and so I feel like finally just talking about this.

Now right away, we should address what Death Battle is. Death Battle is a web-series created by Ben Singer for ScrewAttack that at the moment is owned by RoosterTeeth. Primarily inspired by Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior which pit historical warriors against each other with research going into their weapons and tactics followed up by a live-action fight and just the "Who will win?" debate in general, Death Battle is a show that pits two characters against one another and analyzes weapon, armor and skill to find out who would win a proper fight to the death and it's from this point onward we need to define some parts of that and also address certain complaints that are thrown at it.

For one thing, Death Battle doesn't really do what we see from a lot of versus debates. Most versus debates tend to pick one version of a character and stick with them. Now there are separate debates that deal in the "composite" category where basically people take multiple versions of a character and clump them together. Death Battle mostly goes for compositing but in a more limited fashion. According to their official rules, any and all official sources will be considered for a character with the only exceptions being outright contradictions. For example, this would mean Spider-Man would likely have his 616 version analyzed along with maybe what-ifs that can be best summed up as "616 but this thing happened differently." which at points has led to interesting factoids. For example, Deadpool got a sword that negates healing factors for his fight against Deathstroke which only appeared in the alternate universe story "Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe". People call foul on this saying it misrepresents characters and often leads to bias.

Now I feel it can be pretty case-by-case with this since at points? Yeah it's a little absurd with what they do. For example, every Star Wars character is their canon counterpart composited with their Legends self which can lead to conflict considering Legends variations are considerably more broken than canon and sometimes that means fights that should otherwise be closer become a bit more one-sided. Me personally? I really like it and it's because of one factor I feel that should be understood about Death Battle and that is it is not made for versus battle obsessives or power scalers. It's made primarily for general audience members. The reason compositing is done in this way is so that they have a more broad pool to pull from for research which not only allows for more fun fights but also an exploration of more obscure factoids people may not be aware of. For instance to use the recent episode as an example, primarily they composited the G1 cartoon take on Megs with the IDW take. Now they could totally have just picked IDW and been done with it or just the cartoon but I think broadening the research to such a degree genuinely helped. For one thing, the cartoon is where most people will know Megatron from and is what the IDW version does pull from for inspiration, the only point where it shifts is their stories which for a series like Death Battle which primarily is about the fight with the analysis portions being about broad strokes in the story really doesn't mean much. I mean this is not fanfiction here, it's not really intended to be a serious crossover.

Now we should also address the point some have brought up in that it feels like with this approach bias shows through and frankly? I really don't see it. See here's the thing about bias in this circumstance, I'm sure some people on the crew do have bias towards other characters but also, of course bias is going to feel like it's present when your favorite loses. I've lived through this many times such as with the original Goku vs. Superman where people cite a genuine writing mistake in Goku's analysis and him using the Nyoibo as a Super Saiyan as being examples of DB being biased, even though they noted in the video that they researched the ever-loving shit out of the whole thing, noted afterwards they were bigger fans of Goku than Superman and pointed out how if they stuck to certain iterations that the fight wouldn't even be fair. Meanwhile, there are better examples of actual bias. For instance, just look at how Garth Ennis writes any superhero other than Superman or how he writes about them. The contempt for them shows through the writing. There's also Batman/Spawn from Frank Miller who despite Todd McFarlane being the artist seems to write Batman as showing nothing but contempt for Spawn and really doesn't the guy well.

One example of this bias argument and how it's shown up recently is how people have expressed that they should've covered certain points like Galvatron and the Japanese G1 continuity which led to the Gold Megatron form they mentioned in a tiny blurb. Thing is, there are good reasons to omit this. Firstly, Galvatron is not Megatron and that goes for tons of continuities. In the toy blurb and commercial, he's the counterpart to Ultra Magnus as the Decepticon City Commander, in the cartoon, he's a character that Megatron was reformatted into by Unicron and not a form Megatron can assume on his own, he also is known for the fact that his sanity is completely shot in season 3, meaning for a variety of reasons he really can't be factored in. Next, setting aside how the Japanese G1 timeline is a big ol' fustercluck? The series of events that leads to Gold Megatron doesn't even involve Megatron, it involves Galvatron after he was turned into Super Megatron due to getting energy from a being called Dark Hold which in a series of manga led to a chain of events where he absorbed the energy of multiple Matrices and even stole energy from other characters to become Gold Megatron. it's not a transformation he assumes like say a Dragon Ball form. With that in mind? It makes sense why they chose to exclude it from this composite because it's two big problems rolled into one. It's inconsistent and incompatible and also a lot of the abilities just would not necessarily be usable. The fact it was mentioned likely means it was incorporated into the research for the sake of completion but its exclusion was decided on pretty early. They gave Megatron what they could to give him a fighting chance and the thing is? They did this while keeping Freeza down to the primary sources of the anime and manga. They easily could've gone so ridiculous by giving Freeza stuff from the games, what-if material and DBH which would've made him so ludicrous that Megatron wouldn't even put up a fight in any reasonable capacity.

And for the record, this is why a video like Archie Silver vs. DBH Trunks happened. It's not just variety it's also the fact that if they just used game Silver who is completely separate from Archie? It would've barely been a fight against canon Trunks (And before any of you rush to a wiki to try and correct me, please stop, I do not care.) and if they used Archie Silver against canon Trunks it was probably not gonna go well for the latter so they chose to use both and it works because people know Silver and Trunks and thus they'd be enticed by the idea of learning about alternate versions which leads me to another point. Unlike a lot of versus series you might find on YouTube? Death Battle is made for general audiences first and foremost. You wonder why there are a lot of Marvel vs. DC fights or why they tend to stick to popular characters? There you go. Sometimes they're able to branch out with those fights being glorious which is why I'm glad they're finding ways to incorporate more of those match-ups with the idea of sectioning off three fights to a vote but otherwise that's what they go for and if they incorporate versions people aren't aware of? They'll often still present it in a way that's understandable to general audiences. Take for example Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla or technically Dragonzord vs. Kiryu. Nerddom generally knows who the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers are and the Dragonzord. They also generally know Mechagodzilla but maybe not Kiryu necessarily. That's why the title is like that. Why do they have Jason Voorhees fight Michael Myers instead of someone more fitting for his insane durability? Simple, it's the iconic matchup with legacy to it. You want more unique fights? Then when battles are unique, they gotta get a good amount of viewership to motivate them to keep doing more. Other versus series can generally get away with more unique fights because a good deal of them are made by people who are more about appealing to a specific niche over general audiences. Death Battle does not have that same luxury.

Now before anybody tries to jump in and say anything, let me be clear that I am not saying they shouldn't have constructive criticism as in actual constructive criticism brought to them when they mess up because sometimes, screw-ups happen, especially when it comes to the realm of examining the science of fictional characters and analyzing several pieces of story. Research is subjective, you can research a franchise any number of ways and get different results and sometimes when you have a team of researchers? One forgets to check the work of everybody and as a result you get mistakes. However, by this point, they are nine seasons in and have shown very clearly this is how they do things and I think it's important to take that into account. You can still prefer that they don't do this since hey that's a fair opinion to have but maybe instead of continuously saying it's stupid they did this? Shrug and move on at this point, you're not changing their mind just because you uttered for the hundredth time you don't like the compositing. There's also the matter of research times and other elements that go into the video's creation.

An average video consists of analysis of two fighters, sponsor segments at the end of each rundown and the animation which these days includes actual voice acting and original music composed for it along with the fight which can be done in all manner of styles each with their own challenges. Sprites are easy enough considering thanks to the community sprites for several characters across multiple different universes exist. The problem is that fights are not animated like say high-octane fighting game matches. There's often dialogue exchanges, more subtle animations for expressions and character acting, various digital effects, choreography and there's the matter of sprites for characters that may not have a proper sheet which then requires additional custom work to be done which takes precious time. 3D animation presents various challenges. For one thing depending on the software used to animate it, it's a matter of making sure one has all the resources for it. Next, there's the process of animating itself which involves lighting, shot composition and more and let me tell you, even as someone doing the bare minimum for poses in XNALara? That can all be a pain in the dick, especially when it comes to the matter of needing custom assets. For instance, one complaint I've seen people make about the recent fight was that it didn't use an armored form Megatron used in the IDW comics for one of his major battles that they covered.

Two problems with that, first is the armored form was made by Megatron merging with a whole bunch of guns on the shuttle that was a part of Omega Supreme which means there wouldn't be an easy means to incorporate it but mainly? That form has no 3D model and really, just look through this link to see what this thing looks like.

sta.sh/01c4gg8rm5n

Now, just imagine how much time and painstaking effort it would take to model, texture and rig that behemoth. Hell, imagine the extra time that would need to be spent if one wants to use it with other programs depending on the needs of the animation and also getting it match up stylistically with the previous model. Then there's 2D animation which can once again be quite time-consuming. While one can make efforts to simplify the style to allow for more fluid movement? There are still a lot of challenging factors to making it work and finally there's live-action which so far has only had two showings and aside from a lack of interest? I feel part of it is also just in general the challenges associated with live-action such as costuming, location scouting, choreography, casting, make-up and a lot more. As for the research? That takes an assload of time. Let's take for example a character like Batman. With what they do, they have to look over thousands of comics and various other media, often needing likely to recheck their work multiple times to ensure they got things right. It doesn't help that by the law of just how life works, not everyone will be fans of the same thing meaning that tons of people needing to take extra care to research this stuff and on their own because other people's research while a good source can also vary wildly depending on who's writing it. One of the reasons why Death Battle has multiple animation teams is because genuinely it's what they need to handle the workload and it was why back in the ScrewAttack days there could be quite a hefty delay between episodes since it would have to be scheduled around ScrewAttack's other content. So as you can imagine, whenever I see people noting that something was "forgotten" or whatever? I can't help but roll my eyes considering the amount of effort on display already. Now there are instances where it's fair to criticize the animation whether it doesn't properly showcase an element of the research or the death is kind of weak like the moments where a character, as some people describe it, disconnects their controller and just stand completely still waiting for the kill, bad sound design or in the case of fights like Batgirl vs. Spider-Gwen, incredibly jank choreography and animation. But when it's stuff like this? Bear in mind, a good chunk of you are not animators or at least are not on the level of the people working on a project like this which has a schedule and deadlines to meet. Moreover when it comes to pacing a fight? Including everything is not always the best solution since it can cause fights to balloon out to absurd lengths and the pacing can suck since there always to be a moment where an ability is just shown because it exists so unless something feels actually rushed? I'm not about to complain when fights don't bother showing every single thing a character can do.

Now people cite another problem with DB and them getting stuff wrong is that fans will parrot wrong info or they'll be super irritating in regards to the victor and thing is... this is not an argument. In fact, let's just kind of be blunt about this, if your argument for anything is that fans are annoying about it? You're missing the fact that the fans are not the product and that this goes for a shitload of fandoms. Speaking for myself, I'm in the Dragon Ball and Transformers fandoms and let me tell you, it's hell to be the kind of fan I am. I'm someone who cares about story and character so it brings me no joy to see people goin' off on Twitter yelling "DRAGON BALL DIAPERS!" in response to Daima just because they think somehow them doing this side-story actually means we will never get the Moro Saga or whatever and some point down the line or this recent wave we've gotten of some Transformers fans refusing to watch a cartoon because god forbid there's a non-binary robot which doesn't make sense... in a franchise where robots speak English, have a functional society where we see children exist, gender and romantic connections. Annoying fans are just gonna be annoying. Granted they can have an effect on media in the sense that either you feel uncomfortable showing your love because some tools are the loudest representation of the fandom which means inevitably you have to go utter some variation of "I'm a Rick and Morty fan but I absolutely do not condone the poor behavior shown by my fellow fans." while replacing "Rick and Morty" with whatever franchise you enjoy or they can be so overwhelming about it that they push you away. That being said? Here's what I say...

Who fucking cares?

People being annoying by parroting talking points are just annoying people, it's not the show's fault, it's the fault of people being cringe which don't lie, you once were as a fan. We all had that one obsession that we were just bundles of unbridled cringe about. Also, DB ain't real. I mean it's a real show that you can watch but what I mean is that at the end of the day? It's still ultimately fan-content. The thing about versus debates is that you can argue until the heat death of the universe how you believe a certain character beats another but it's all over factors that are subjective. Power scaling itself is not even something that's used by authors and writers most of the time and the people that say it can be fail to note what they're talking about is not power scaling but rather basic consistency management, the thing you do to make sure that Batman in one page doesn't go from being a normal human to punching apart a skyscraper and back again with no explanation or story reason. Just look at how much these discussions have to bend so far backwards you can hear the spine cracking to account for this such as the existence of anti-feats which exist to try and account for the times a character despite being absurdly powerful has basically been beaten or limited by certain scenarios like say a character needing to be limited due to game mechanics which opens up its own can of worms of what is or isn't considered one which from my perspective really just comes off as people who are fighting tooth and nail to try and prove that the hours of research they spent on a character was worthwhile which to be fair, it can be. Speaking as someone who used to look deep into stuff for their writing on fanfiction, it's a very rewarding experience to just learn a shitload about your favorite characters and media or hell to see that kind of time effort and spent by others on your favorite media and so yes when it feels like someone got something wrong or someone basically looks at the work you did and goes "This really doesn't matter?", it's hard not to take at least some offense to it and it's also hard to turn off. It's like when you read stories about critics who note that because they spent the better half of a whole week just watching and reviewing movies that it's hard for them to even think about watching a film for entertainment and when they do? They find themselves just on a whim picking the thing apart.

However, despite that? This is still ultimately speculation and fanmade media. Unless a company just stated the next day that the fan calcs made for their pantheon of characters on VS Battles wiki are canon? It's not, it's just overall a way for someone to research fictional characters and how they might be in the real world and that's really where one needs to take the time to step back and relax. It's also where I feel DB really has their focus because to be more lighthearted but still just as blunt? It's fucking hilarious to see fictional characters turn out to be unholy gods when judged with real world science. Since the original creators never really think about this stuff beyond what's cool and works for the logic of the story, it is hilarious figuring out how even those considered to be regular humans like Batman are still absurdly broken by human standards and also how sometimes a company really doesn't think about the implications of certain lines like when it was written in a comic that Flash can perceive events that last for less than an attosecond or how with some deduction one can figure out that Wakanda's worth more than the GDP of every country on the planet. The fact you're getting this info at the same time as some cool fight makes it worth it to me to keep watching Death Battle. If you watch it because you want to seriously know who would win in a fight? Honestly there are better places to try debating those points but really that's all you can do because again, this is subjective. You are never going to exactly learn who would win objectively in a fight all the time since simply put that's not really how this works and that's not what the show is about. I mean the show even features the analysis being conducted by a mad scientist with a robot arm and a beer-loving redneck with a shotgun leg. This is not about dry calculations, it's about fun. Can they mess up? Of course, everybody does but the more you try to apply the kinds of judgments and factors to them that they've probably never considered the less fun you are going to have. When media is made to appeal to a certain audience? I feel it's important to break that down and then judge it for what it is, not what it isn't. If it's not serving the purpose you want it to then by all means quit watching, it's clearly never going to appeal to you and you shouldn't force yourself through something that keeps upsetting you but maybe not before watching it with a different mindset so that you can see if you might've missed something.

That's all I got for now, I hope you liked reading this and until next time, stay gold.