How Imp judges Death Battles

Note that when I state what I consider the ideal, that does not mean I suggest it has to be that. Things closer to that are my preference, and the further from it, usually the less I like. That doesn’t mean I don’t like at all, but that the closeness to the ideal demonstrates my personal enjoyment.

Follow these principles religiously, slavishly, and you will see why I feel how I do about every single Death Battle released. There is no exceptions, there is no deviations from the standards outlined here.

There are 4 parts to each Death Battle and I will explain my ideal for each type.

Part 1: Premise:

-The Premise should be even

-The Premise should be interesting (IE if one of them is just immune to 99% of the other’s powers it might be “even” but not very interesting to watch)

-The two should optimally compliment each other and draw out each other’s personalities, showcasing both characters via contrast

-To be honest I don’t really care about it being thematic but I try and match thematics because some people apparently care

-Obviously, if it’s characters I know there is a slight boost there since I am naturally more familiar with them.

Part 2: Pre-Fight Analysis

-Should be informative

-Should spend optimally a well-proportioned time on the fighter’s abilities based on how important they are to the character and fight. Spending a notable amount of time on a one-off ability or weapon is usually a poor sign.

-Should not be leaving deliberate ambiguities to be exploited for later (IE should explain degrees of powers and not giving vague descriptors)

-Should be one of the episodes where they allow scaling. Disregarding scaling is a really big negative to me.

-Should be funny to some extent.

-Information optimally would be conveyed in an efficient manner.

Part 3: Fight Scene

-Fight should display the character’s abilities in interesting creative ways

-Fight should be optimally realistic

-Minor point but I tend to like magic and fantasy fights over science-fiction ones. That’s a really minor point, I just like magic more.

-Characters should be in-character, obviously.

-Ideally should be really fast, like to the point that it becomes difficult to see everything and get what’s going on. Most series in general seem to move way too slow to me and I want it to ideally be fast-paced and constantly changing.

-I like when a fight has a distinctiveness to it, something different from other Death Battles.

-So this might seem strange but this point is the common theme in all my most hated episodes: They should not be presuming who I should root for. I HATE when people presume to speak for me or presume to know what I think. If a Death Battle jut assumes I’m gonna be rooting for or against a certain character I get really annoyed. The worst episodes to me all share the property where they seemed to just want one character to win and assumed the viewing audience would definitely be on their side.

-Related note, I hate when it seems DB seems to specifically wants one character to win or one character to lose. Every character is someone’s favorite and you should be trying to present all the reasons a character is a cool or fun character when you are presenting them, ESPECIALLY if you kill them.

-I really do not like references to outside works. If you are having two characters fight, it should be focused on them specifically, and throwing in outside things is really annoying to me because it’s distracting. My favorite episode is Strange vs Fate and the thing I most disliked about it was the outside references.

-I do not like meaningless repetition.

-I don’t like sort of meaningless explanations. In other words, I don’t like when a series tries to explain something and then gives an explanation that doesn’t really explain it but it’s just assumed you will go along with it because it leads to something you presumably want to see. Not only does it presume again what my mindset is but it’s intellectually lazy.

-To be honest, I don’t care about the music for a fight. Like I don’t have an ear for music so usually it makes absolutely no difference to me. I could watch it silent with subtitles and get pretty much the same experience as I would otherwise.

-Also the animation quality itself is not a huge concern for me. Obviously I prefer it to be better when possible, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me per se, outside of when it detracts from one of the above points (like if it’s really slow or it’s repetitive and doesn’t show their abilities and personalities well). If something doesn’t look right (like water effects or whatever), I probably won’t care.

Part 4: Post-Fight (Verdict):

-I don’t like when the character that would lose is given the victory

-I really don’t like when they display a feat and then completely ignore it for a verdict or handwave it aside with really dumb logic

-I like when their verdict makes sense, and especially if the verdict uses information that was displayed prominently in the Pre-Fight Analysis. IE they’re not hiding information till the end that is crucial to know who would win. They’ve stopped doing that recently and I think it’s all the better for it.

-They’ve also stopped showing only one of the two fighters which I also think is for the best. Certainly didn’t hype me at all to only know one fighter, it was just annoying.

Conclusion:

The ideal Death Battle fight to me is an even matchup between two characters who can draw out each other’s personalities and powers well. The pre-fight analysis in the ideal Death Battle is time efficient and explains their power sets completely adequately and is moderately entertaining and humorous. The ideal Death Battle fight to me is a constantly changing magical fight that involves the forces of nature and reality bending and shifting all around, with constant change, focused exclusively on the two characters and personalities colliding, their personalities and what makes them great characters being demonstrated in all the cool things they are doing, with it clear that the fight writer and animator loves both these characters and wants both to win. It blurs and shifts in ways that are incredibly fast-paced and hard to keep track off but are evocative and powerful using imagery from nature, cosmology, mythology and so forth to create impressions. The ideal Death Battle fight verdict is logical and makes sense, using information already presented to explain their reasoning, and is consistent with the characters and animation.

Again, this is the ideal to strive for. It is not what I need each time though Strange vs Fate was definitely the closest. It is merely what the optimal is. Every deviation makes it feel worse to me.

Also you will notice that my preferred character winning…not a factor. I don’t have room for another factor. I don’t care if my preferred character wins or loses. I can showcase examples of that and with every DB I can showcase exactly what I like and dislike about it using these principles.