Death Battle III Not Even Internally Consistent

[Lord Raziere]

Umm, yes we do. We can choose to go by what we actually see characters do and achieve. Which is much better because how many times does a character proclaim they are invincible in fiction only to be proven wrong?

Of course doing so dramatically lowers the power level of DBZ since the vast majority of it is just statements like that and very samey sort of fight scenes.

Absurd. that means freeza is more powerful than everyone else except Zen-oh, Kid Buu and Beerus. when this is clearly not the case. and why would you want to lower the power level? whats your problem?

your clearly arguing from an agenda to intentionally try and ruin the canon of DBZ. I for one do not appreciate the show that I like being insulted as nothing but a bunch of liars. stop doing that, or else Jiren is less powerful than Freeza even though he is shown to beat Freeza easily at full power.

[Devonix]

Absurd. that means freeza is more powerful than everyone else except Zen-oh, Kid Buu and Beerus. when this is clearly not the case. and why would you want to lower the power level? whats your problem?

your clearly arguing from an agenda to intentionally try and ruin the canon of DBZ. I for one do not appreciate the show that I like being insulted as nothing but a bunch of liars. stop doing that, or else Jiren is less powerful than Freeza even though he is shown to beat Freeza easily at full power.

Can't tell if serious or joking.

[Lord Raziere]

Can't tell if serious or joking.

I am serious. I'm angry. He keeps harping on this one issue without end and its just annoying and arguing in bad faith. If people really don't like the high power level of the show, thats fine, you don't have to like it, but at least admit it and stop trying to justify it being lower powered when its clearly high powered like that so that you can say your right on a forum through stupid logic I don't care about. Thats the way the show is, thats the spirit of the show and I don't care for the letter people argue from. The letter of anything is bull and only used to abuse things through technicalities and semantics, and the spirit is more important than that. I'm not persuaded, I just get angrier every time is comes up, because its assuming bad faith on the characters, its not in the spirit of the show, and I just want it to stop. if your going to argue DB, don't do the "oh but its actually this lower power level because twisty logic" thing no. SCREW THAT. you can't handle the high power level, thats YOUR problem. Ugh.

[Keltest]

I am serious. I'm angry. He keeps harping on this one issue without end and its just annoying and arguing in bad faith. If people really don't like the high power level of the show, thats fine, you don't have to like it, but at least admit it and stop trying to justify it being lower powered when its clearly high powered like that so that you can say your right on a forum through stupid logic I don't care about. Thats the way the show is, thats the spirit of the show and I don't care for the letter people argue from. The letter of anything is bull and only used to abuse things through technicalities and semantics, and the spirit is more important than that. I'm not persuaded, I just get angrier every time is comes up, because its assuming bad faith on the characters, its not in the spirit of the show, and I just want it to stop. if your going to argue DB, don't do the "oh but its actually this lower power level because twisty logic" thing no. SCREW THAT. you can't handle the high power level, thats YOUR problem. Ugh.

This isn't the Dragonball Fan Thread. If a show has a problem like, in this case, Telling rather than Showing, expect people to point it out. Saying somebody has eleventy bum-tillion power level is absolutely meaningless without actual feats to correlate that to. Dragonball is absolutely terrible about numbers inflation without any practical difference in capabilities. It doesn't matter how many different colors Goku can turn his hair; we don't see any actual indication that characters are any more powerful other than some characters saying it.

Power levels in Dragonball are a meaningless metric. That doesn't mean we hate the series or that you aren't allowed to like it, but if you want to actually conclude anything from it, youre short on luck here.

[Lord Raziere]

This isn't the Dragonball Fan Thread. If a show has a problem like, in this case, Telling rather than Showing, expect people to point it out. Saying somebody has eleventy bum-tillion power level is absolutely meaningless without actual feats to correlate that to. Dragonball is absolutely terrible about numbers inflation without any practical difference in capabilities. It doesn't matter how many different colors Goku can turn his hair; we don't see any actual indication that characters are any more powerful other than some characters saying it.

Power levels in Dragonball are a meaningless metric. That doesn't mean we hate the series or that you aren't allowed to like it, but if you want to actually conclude anything from it, youre short on luck here.

Well, it ain't your thread either. gravity is invisible and there is no proof that it actually exists, just that we fall, not that gravity is the cause. there are tons of things in real world that are invisible, that we take on faith is true even though we never see it personally, we don't actually know if many of these things are true, we just have sources that we trust are reliable. we don't actually know the state of a distant country or whatever, we take it on faith that the sources that give us information, are showing us the right stuff.

similarly, these are people who blow up planets, using a magical force.it doesn't exist in real life, you can't test whether what they say is true, but it clearly has effects and one thing clearly is less powerful than another thing. super saiyan is clearly more powerful than not super saiyan. otherwise there would be no difference between a Goku with black hair and a Goku with golden hair and he wouldn't need to have transformed to beat Freeza, when clearly he did, and there was a clear difference. and you cannot expect these characters to arbitrarily show their abilities for your obtuse, narrow-minded "I only know what I see" mindset, that would claim that the Earth is flat because you cannot see it in its round glory.

the colors matter, the explanations matter, because if your not trusting them, that your not trusting that universe to tell you, its already an illusion in that its a show, so if you don't even trust that, there is no point to you caring, because you've already thrown out all the dialogue of the show, whats there left to trust? Nothing, therefore its not a show to you. its nothing. for a show like that, you have to take it on faith that these people know what they are talking about, and if your not, then your not engaging with the show, your refusing to engage with it fairly or in good faith, and I cannot accept any interpretation that you or Forum Explorer espouse. EVER. because it comes from a mindset that ignorantly thinks that anything they don't see isn't real and obtusely ignores anything that they do take on faith, because there are a lot of things we take on faith, and acting like there aren't things that we have to take on faith is bull, its nonsense, its an overly literal, obtuse view that has no place in serious discussion, and if your not going to trust anything the characters say, I'm not going to trust anything you say. because I can't be sure anything is truly real, you might be an illusion and lying to me right now, but I'm taking it on faith that you exist, that your a person that is arguing something called logic, and so on, because I can't be sure of that either.

so really, when all of existence is something you have to take on faith that it actually does indeed exist, extending that faith to trust that these characters are actually knowing what they are talking about it, isn't really that much of a stretch.

[Devonix]

Moving onto something actually interesting to discuss. I say that Pit has this one on lock in terms of speed speed but that Sora very much outmatches him in terms of strength.

[Rater202]

Moving onto something actually interesting to discuss. I say that Pit has this one on lock in terms of speed speed but that Sora very much outmatches him in terms of strength.

If They give Sora all his Spells and access to flow-motion, I'd day that Sora has enough speed debuffs, immobilization, AoEs, and auto-hit attacks to neurtaralize the speed advantage... But the Sora introduction video got two minor lore details wrong and only talked about and used clips from the first game, which... Concerns me.

[Forum Explorer]

Normlally yes, however, Death Battles doens't normally care about that--to go back to Goku v Superman, they're entire argument is based on Superman and only superman claiming that the book had infiite pages and that his lifting it thus meant he could lift infiity.

If we're ignoring things that were only said but not demonstrated, the book doesn't have infinite pages. And if we're going by contradcitions, the fact that Superman has struggled to lift the earth would superceded his lifting infinite.

Furthermore, Death Battles regularly cite feats from multiple versions of a character--in the Batman Beyond vs Spider-Man 2099, they use three versions of Miguel from three seperate timelines.

If we're going by what we see, then Goku is at the very least a potnetial universe buster

We also see him noticeably increasing in power in response to threats in SSG and well as in both his initial and mastered Ultra Instinct forms.

Hmm, fair point, though Death Battle is notorious inconsistent about stuff like that. Sometimes they care, and sometimes they don't.

I'll grant that Goku is at least sorta at universe busting levels (I doubt he could do that without Beejus to hit, so it's a partial credit), but that doesn't really have anything to do with Buu now does it?

Absurd. that means freeza is more powerful than everyone else except Zen-oh, Kid Buu and Beerus. when this is clearly not the case. and why would you want to lower the power level? whats your problem?

your clearly arguing from an agenda to intentionally try and ruin the canon of DBZ. I for one do not appreciate the show that I like being insulted as nothing but a bunch of liars. stop doing that, or else Jiren is less powerful than Freeza even though he is shown to beat Freeza easily at full power.

Not really? I mean they still killed Freeza, so they are at least within spitting distance of him. That's shown on screen so we know it to be true. And sure, the later opponents are more powerful. I'm just calling BS on the characters hyping themselves up to stellar busting levels and above.

And to be fair, I do the same thing to Superman's BS too. Like the whole surviving multiple supernovas to the face feat.

Overall I do like Dragonball, but I do think the fans take it a lot more seriously then they should. Particularly because the show does not really take itself seriously. And when fans take non-serious stuff too seriously, then it makes the show worse as a result. Especially if the producers decide that said seriousness is what people want, and move the show in that direction.

If They give Sora all his Spells and access to flow-motion, I'd day that Sora has enough speed debuffs, immobilization, AoEs, and auto-hit attacks to neurtaralize the speed advantage... But the Sora introduction video got two minor lore details wrong and only talked about and used clips from the first game, which... Concerns me.

What's the range on Sora's debuffs anyways? Also I wouldn't judge too much by the introduction video, those blurbs usually are pretty sketchy.

[Lord Raziere]

Not really? I mean they still killed Freeza, so they are at least within spitting distance of him. That's shown on screen so we know it to be true. And sure, the later opponents are more powerful. I'm just calling BS on the characters hyping themselves up to stellar busting levels and above.

And to be fair, I do the same thing to Superman's BS too. Like the whole surviving multiple supernovas to the face feat.

Overall I do like Dragonball, but I do think the fans take it a lot more seriously then they should. Particularly because the show does not really take itself seriously. And when fans take non-serious stuff too seriously, then it makes the show worse as a result. Especially if the producers decide that said seriousness is what people want, and move the show in that direction.

Well I can't ever accept that viewpoint. Screw that viewpoint. I like the stakes being high, and your viewpoint is just as unreliable as them, because your not in that universe, so your even less reliable than them. Goku can destroy the universe, Beerus can destroy the unvierse and bunch of others can too, those are facts to me that I take on faith are a given. if you don't accept that, there is no conversation between us. Its not up for argument with me, you simply either accept that these are facts, or there is no conversation.

[Kato]

I'll just go the route of "putting my fingers in my ears" now, I think..


I have to admit my interest in the recent DB is severely lacking considering my association with both is either having played one game as a kid and only remembering being terrible and playing the first two hours of the other's game and dropping it. (Yeah, yeah, I guess at some point I'll try again) In so far I neither have any stakes in this nor any idea to what level this could go...
But I guess it could make for a fun to watch fight.

Also, I want another mecha fight in the future. I don't exactly know which one but I would have maybe expected them to do when Pacific Rim 2 came out... sadly nothing happened

[Kitten Champion]

Also, I want another mecha fight in the future. I don't exactly know which one but I would have maybe expected them to do when Pacific Rim 2 came out... sadly nothing happened

I wanna RX-78-2 Gundam (with Amuro as pilot) v. Optimus Prime match-up personally.

I don't think it's a too unbalanced fight, and they're both fairly mortal as far as mecha go.

[Forum Explorer]

Well I can't ever accept that viewpoint. Screw that viewpoint. I like the stakes being high, and your viewpoint is just as unreliable as them, because your not in that universe, so your even less reliable than them. Goku can destroy the universe, Beerus can destroy the unvierse and bunch of others can too, those are facts to me that I take on faith are a given. if you don't accept that, there is no conversation between us. Its not up for argument with me, you simply either accept that these are facts, or there is no conversation.

I find planet busting to be very high stakes, thank you very much. But whatever floats your boat. We can not talk about DBZ to each other if that's what you want. It's no skin off my nose.


But I do want to go on a bit of a tangent about high stakes. See, I don't subscribe to the idea that higher stakes is better, or more interesting. Some of the most compelling stories I've read have had really small stakes, and it's more compelling because the stakes are so small. Because then it's personal. It's not to save some abstract number of people, or to prevent the destruction of the entire universe, (which is a concept so huge it's hard to wrap our own heads around, let alone have a fictional character manage it). No it's to save their friend. Their lover, their family. Something close and very very real. It makes it so much easier to empathize with the characters, and to really feel the impact of their success and/or failure.

[Rater202]

I'll grant that Goku is at least sorta at universe busting levels (I doubt he could do that without Beejus to hit, so it's a partial credit), but that doesn't really have anything to do with Buu now does it?

That was more in response to the claim that going only by shown feats, Dragon Ball was much lower powered.

[Traab]

I'll just go the route of "putting my fingers in my ears" now, I think..


I have to admit my interest in the recent DB is severely lacking considering my association with both is either having played one game as a kid and only remembering being terrible and playing the first two hours of the other's game and dropping it. (Yeah, yeah, I guess at some point I'll try again) In so far I neither have any stakes in this nor any idea to what level this could go...
But I guess it could make for a fun to watch fight.

Also, I want another mecha fight in the future. I don't exactly know which one but I would have maybe expected them to do when Pacific Rim 2 came out... sadly nothing happened

I only remember the first kid icarus game for putting in the cheat code to get to the boss battle with all upgrades lol. As for kingdom hearts, yeah, same mostly. I didnt get very far into it before I either got stuck and wasnt sure what to do or lost interest for some reason.

[Devonix]

Personal Stakes will always be more important to me. Two guys having a fist fight in the snow while someone's child is waiting for the medicine to save their life is far higher stakes to me. Since it's something that the character could lose and have personally affect them

Two guys blasting each other in the skies over a planet with the fate of the world at stake is far less interesting. Because we know that there is no possible way for the hero to lose, and so we're just stuck looking at the pretty lights.

[Lord Raziere]

Personal Stakes will always be more important to me. Two guys having a fist fight in the snow while someone's child is waiting for the medicine to save their life is far higher stakes to me. Since it's something that the character could lose and have personally affect them

Two guys blasting each other in the skies over a planet with the fate of the world at stake is far less interesting. Because we know that there is no possible way for the hero to lose, and so we're just stuck looking at the pretty lights.

Wrong.

The both examples only count if it actually happens. If it doesn't occur, the risk doesn't exist. Its a story. "fate" and "plot" are the same thing. you just want the illusion that it will fail, when both examples lead to inevitable success of the survival of the thing concerned about.

The only possibility of any failure is the writer making it so, and therefore the chances 100% when it happens, because the writer didn't write it any other way. there is no way to write something so that it happens 60% of the time. your not rolling a d100 every time you watch something or flip a page to see if your getting the story that occurs 6/10's of the time or 4/10's of the time. the story is always the same. It is set. you can't write a story so that it branches unless your playing a videogame or a choose your own adventure novel.

We've seen people destroy planets. we've seen those planets cease to exist, and never get returned (Planet vegeta and Old Namek for two) we've seen the genocides successfully happen thrice (sure people were brought back, but that doesn't mean the big bad wasn't successful in doing that thing. when I break someones arm and people heal it, we don't say I failed to break an arm. we say that the arm was broken and that it had to be healed because someone broke it, and therefore someone was successful in breaking it) we've seen the people do this with the same abilities as the protagonists that everyone uses, at the same levels of power. the risk exists. anything other than admitting that these people can do the same thing as Freeza but haven't because they haven't been corrupted by their own power, because the writer didn't write them to be corrupted by it, is doing world class mental gymnastics in order to not admit what is smack dab right in your face. nice try jumping through all those hoops, but I'm not impressed, because it'll never mean anything.

[Keltest]

I'm sorry, did you just tell somebody that their preferences were wrong?

[Lord Raziere]

I'm sorry, did you just tell somebody that their preferences were wrong?

No. I explained that the only things that happen in a story are things that the writer makes happen. anything else is just kidding yourself that there is any risk at all, while you did mental gymnastics to somehow come up with that conclusion so that you can ask that question so that you don't have to answer mine.

[Devonix]

Raziere I'm Not Talking About DBZ! I'm talking about Fiction in General. And in most stories, DBZ included, the writer isn't going to blow up the planet that the heroes live on without a major use of the reset button. It's why I dislike end of the world stories for Doctor who and prefer the smaller personal ones. Because those ones have actual stakes. Which means that also once again. "FOR ME" There is no tension there. However the second scenario I spoke about has multiple possible outcomes that the writer can pull while so there is tension there.

I don't think of these things as real, Of course they're fiction I was just talking about that earlier. I'm not worried for the characters I'm worried about the continuing story, yet world ending threats take me out of it because I know that the world isn't gonna end because it's a continuing narrative. Yet Killing off one child to affect the hero is something that I see happen countless times so I legit don't know what's going to happen.

The bigger the stakes, the fewer choices the writer has on where they can take the story.

[Ibrinar]

@Raziere If you play texas hold em and know your own cards and the cards on the desc you can calculate probabilities for your opponents having better cards. They either have better cards or they don't and after shuffling is done what additional cards will be revealed is fixed. Yet I assume you do understand that the probabilities you calculate are a meaningful concept anyway? Same for stories, that the outcome is already decided doesn't mean you can't estimate the probabilities for different outcomes while reading before you reach the point where the outcome is revealed and you have certainity.

Or to put it differently your argument does not make sense as answer to that quote since the quote is about not knowing the outcome as reader and doesn't claim the outcome is randomly decided while reading. The outcome being more or less predictable to the reader is in no way changed by the outcome already having been decided by the author.

[Knaight]

Death Battle bias and motives talk is what's toxic. The content itself is derogatory. Its also an attempt to say Death Battle doesn't matter and to do so in the Death Battle thread.

It doesn't matter, and it doesn't have to. It's frivolity, enjoyed as a source of fun, and thus independently not important - though that category existing in some form is very important. Things don't have to matter for discussions about them to have some level of value to their participants.

These snipes against Death Battle injected into every conversation we have is highly toxic. This is the equivalent of someone attacking bronies every topic that comes up in MLP thread, or suggesting Hasbro and MLP authors are writing their episodes to intentionally teach young girls how to misbehave.

It's a thread discussing Death Battle. Detractors are still discussing it, and the whole idea that people should only talk about things they like needs to go away.

The fact that Buu can regenerate from a speck wouldn’t matter upon contact with the Sun, every atom would be torn apart within the giant fusion furnace.

That's not how fusion works. I can't comment on Buu specifically (DBZ is of basically no interest to me), but tearing atoms apart is exactly how fusion doesn't work. A couple electrons would be stripped out at a high rate to make plasma, sure. Beyond that though atoms are either getting pushed together into larger atoms, or just not getting affected at all*, as the sort of immense pressures so helpful for inducing fusion actively push against fission.

*The maximum cutoff line there is iron, except for in supernovas and the like. The sun in particular is big enough to produce oxygen, albeit at an incredibly slow rate and probably only after the hydrogen has been burned down a fair bit, and the helium after it.

[Kato]

I wanna RX-78-2 Gundam (with Amuro as pilot) v. Optimus Prime match-up personally.

I don't think it's a too unbalanced fight, and they're both fairly mortal as far as mecha go.

Hm... sounds pretty fair. I assume the original Optimus (because I know hardly anything about others)
I feel like Prime might be somewhat more powerful if just because Gundam tried to be somewhat realistic. then again, the RX was modular so maybe it could pull a last ditch split and win by sheer mobility.


Another possibility would be Amuro vs Shinji, because... well, two iconic mecha pilots. Too bad it's hard to find someone to fight Gurren Lagann on equal footing.

[Kitten Champion]

Hm... sounds pretty fair. I assume the original Optimus (because I know hardly anything about others)

Yes. There are far too many versions of Optimus across generations of material that you could easily cherry pick among them to low-ball him or have him crush the RX-78-2 like a tin can, The original Prime I think has enough going for him to make it interesting either way.

I feel like Prime might be somewhat more powerful if just because Gundam tried to be somewhat realistic. then again, the RX was modular so maybe it could pull a last ditch split and win by sheer mobility.

There's another angle to that though, that because Gundam does favour realism - at least in terms of war and its consequences - Amuro is much, much, much more successful in terms of killing Zeon forces. Whereas it's pretty rare to see Decepticons experience an actual fatality due to Autobot weapons.

I don't know how that would pan out with deeper analysis, though.

Another possibility would be Amuro vs Shinji, because... well, two iconic mecha pilots. Too bad it's hard to find someone to fight Gurren Lagann on equal footing.

My ideal match-up for EVA Unit-01 would be Ultraman. Granted, probably too niche for something like Death Battle to actually do even if I think most people here know of Ultraman even if they've never seen anything in the franchise, but it's a fun, workable one.

I mean, Shinji would literally crush Amuro.

[Kato]

There's another angle to that though, that because Gundam does favour realism - at least in terms of war and its consequences - Amuro is much, much, much more successful in terms of killing Zeon forces. Whereas it's pretty rare to see Decepticons experience an actual fatality due to Autobot weapons.

I don't know how that would pan out with deeper analysis, though.

DB tends to ignore such restrictions, mostly. So I guess Optimus would have no quarrel killing here, even if Amuro is by far the more experienced killer.

My ideal match-up for EVA Unit-01 would be Ultraman. Granted, probably too niche for something like Death Battle to actually do even if I think most people here know of Ultraman even if they've never seen anything in the franchise, but it's a fun, workable one.

I mean, Shinji would literally crush Amuro.

I'm afraid I can't really comment on Ultraman either..

But yeah, I guess EVA is a bit too powerful for the original Gundam. Maybe a more powerful version could take it but that was a poor idea. (Maybe Domon could beat some passion into him. He at least is far more agile)

[Traab]

Chances are they would do the usual, show an optimus prime weapon blast blowing something up, then using bad math to extrapolate how destructive it would be to a gundam. "Well we see in this scene optimus destroying a stone overhang which, assuming its so deep and made out of such and such material, would require this much force to destroy. On the other hand, we see gundam armor requiring y amount of power to be blown apart."

[Seppl]

Chances are they would do the usual, show an optimus prime weapon blast blowing something up, then using bad math to extrapolate how destructive it would be to a gundam. "Well we see in this scene optimus destroying a stone overhang which, assuming its so deep and made out of such and such material, would require this much force to destroy. On the other hand, we see gundam armor requiring y amount of power to be blown apart."

Huh? Of course they would do that. That is the main concept of the show. Would you rather they said "Optimus Prime would win because he's AWESOME!" or "56% of our viewers voted that Optimus Prime would win"?

[Traab]

I was talking to Kitten and the statement that in transformers you donjt often see much robot destruction so the db crew might give gundam the edge automatically since it has more "realism" I was saying they likely would just take some random environmental destruction to assign them a max damage stat instead. Also, I dont think either gundam or transformers are built with rl metal are they? So they would almost have to go for environment damage for their figures.

[Seppl]

I was talking to Kitten and the statement that in transformers you donjt often see much robot destruction so the db crew might give gundam the edge automatically since it has more "realism" I was saying they likely would just take some random environmental destruction to assign them a max damage stat instead. Also, I dont think either gundam or transformers are built with rl metal are they? So they would almost have to go for environment damage for their figures.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

They already covered some Gundam toughness feats in White Ranger vs. Gundam Epyon. Epyon looked quite strong in that fight.

[Devonix]

Going by G1 it's impossible to gauge how damaging the weapons are when attacking each other because of Broadcast standards and practices. You have to go by environmental damage.

[Devonix]

Sorry, I misunderstood.

They already covered some Gundam toughness feats in White Ranger vs. Gundam Epyon. Epyon looked quite strong in that fight.

The Gundams in Wing are completely different machines built with different parts and different metals. You can't lump them in with the Universal Century stuff.