Death Battle III Not Even Internally Consistent

[Anteros]

I'm not sure Vergil can overcome Sephiroth's durability. I'm 100% sure Sephiroth shouldn't even be able to hit Vergil. The speed gap is way too much.

DB regularly undervalues speed in these fights though.

[HolyDraconus]

I'm not sure Vergil can overcome Sephiroth's durability. I'm 100% sure Sephiroth shouldn't even be able to hit Vergil. The speed gap is way too much.

DB regularly undervalues speed in these fights though.

They said 'he fought fast opponents before. None with that huge of an advantage, but apparently it's enough to claim victory. It's like.. ffs.. infinite mana?! Are you bloody serious?!

[Dragonus45]

They said 'he fought fast opponents before. None with that huge of an advantage, but apparently it's enough to claim victory. It's like.. ffs.. infinite mana?! Are you bloody serious?!

Well he does have infinite mana during his boss fights. Also he routinely fights people with access to spells like haste so he presumably is capable of handling himself.

[Reddish Mage]

Well he does have infinite mana during his boss fights. Also he routinely fights people with access to spells like haste so he presumably is capable of handling himself.

I get the infinite mana during boss fights. Its also logical he could have it from the theorycrafting we get in the commentary (I believe they say he draws it from the lifestream).

However, his speed is more the issue. Unless Supernova is all they say it is, unless his mental abilities make Vergil useless at the speed of thought, unless Sephiroth's durability is all that insurmountable.

I thought only Cloud becomes useless from Sephiroth's mental powers, otherwise his illusion powers are limited. Cloud is vulnerably because of his special connection to Sephiroth through Jenova, or maybe Cloud is just insane and imagining half that stuff...

I'd like more evidence that Sephiroth can keep up with bullet dodging speed levels (at the very least). Preferably at least bullet blocking levels.

[Dragonus45]

I thought only Cloud becomes useless from Sephiroth's mental powers, otherwise his illusion powers are limited. Cloud is vulnerably because of his special connection to Sephiroth through Jenova, or maybe Cloud is just insane and imagining half that stuff...

I'd like more evidence that Sephiroth can keep up with bullet dodging speed levels (at the very least). Preferably at least bullet blocking levels.

Yea I was also under the impression that his mind control stuff was limited to the clones and Cloud and but he did also fool normal people on a few occasions so it's kinda vague.

As for guns, they have those things all over the setting and generally defies just fine. He is also in the general camp of "faster then the eye can see" in the occasional cutscenes but it's always hard to follow how fast that is actually supposed to be.

[Reddish Mage]

As for guns, they have those things all over the setting and generally defies just fine. He is also in the general camp of "faster then the eye can see" in the occasional cutscenes but it's always hard to follow how fast that is actually supposed to be.

A human-sized person moving faster than the eye can see is actually far far far faster than a speeding bullet but it really depends on such things like the environment in which the person is moving and how good a look the other person is getting.

Under ideal conditions, someone would actually have to break the light speed barrier to be unnoticeable! Otherwise light would still bounce off them and you should be able to see something.

Also note that the effects of such physical absurdities would be highly noticeable, going beyond creating sonic booms and more towards causing huge explosions.

By the way, bullets actually travel faster than sound, so anytime you see someone dodging a bullet they can't see they must have some sort of mystical danger sense or physics-defying hearing power.

Its a real problem that something like flash stepping is so hard to pin down. Characters that can do it are in this opaque range between where they may be literally able to approach the speed of The Flash or maybe its better to analyze their apparent speed as mundane ability to take advantage of battle conditions and distraction to appear to teleport and come out of nowhere.

By the way, I recall even Lina Inverse does flash step once and awhile, she even did a flash step + Ragna Blade, so if that tricks taken seriously maybe she does win against all her wizard opponents.

[Dragonus45]

Flash steps can also be literal blinks where it's not a matter of speed but just miniature teleportation. Now I'm having flashbacks to bleach having several varieties and techniques for flash stepping all of which had different mechanics.

[HolyDraconus]

I get the infinite mana during boss fights. Its also logical he could have it from the theorycrafting we get in the commentary (I believe they say he draws it from the lifestream).

However, his speed is more the issue. Unless Supernova is all they say it is, unless his mental abilities make Vergil useless at the speed of thought, unless Sephiroth's durability is all that insurmountable.

I thought only Cloud becomes useless from Sephiroth's mental powers, otherwise his illusion powers are limited. Cloud is vulnerably because of his special connection to Sephiroth through Jenova, or maybe Cloud is just insane and imagining half that stuff...

I'd like more evidence that Sephiroth can keep up with bullet dodging speed levels (at the very least). Preferably at least bullet blocking levels.

It's been a long time but I'm fairly certain none of ff7 bosses had infinite mana. Some skills cost zero for them, while a player would have a huge mp cost (shadowflare), but none have infinite. I'm fairly certain, drawing off of 20+years of fuzzy memory, that the whole infinite mp is a movie thing.

[Dragonus45]

It's been a long time but I'm fairly certain none of ff7 bosses had infinite mana. Some skills cost zero for them, while a player would have a huge mp cost (shadowflare), but none have infinite. I'm fairly certain, drawing off of 20+years of fuzzy memory, that the whole infinite mp is a movie thing.

I do wonder if there is any effective difference between all my spells cost zero and I have infinite mana forever.

[Keltest]

I do wonder if there is any effective difference between all my spells cost zero and I have infinite mana forever.

It could be relevant if somebody had some sort of mana burn ability that was stronger the more mana the target had, but other than that I think its an entirely semantic difference.

[Kitten Champion]

It could be relevant if somebody had some sort of mana burn ability that was stronger the more mana the target had, but other than that I think its an entirely semantic difference.

Or a MP-drain ability. I guess.

I've never considered the MP capacities of the monsters/bosses in JRPGs, except for Pokemon. It's rarely a mechanic which you can exploit. If it is, it's usually in the form of some kind of charge-up requirement for a telegraphed attack. Even if you fight a character who you'll later get in your party they probably won't maintain the same statistics between their opponent and ally states... except, again, for the aforementioned Pokemon where every Pokemon functions on the same mechanisms and power economy.

[Celestia]

Or a MP-drain ability. I guess.

I've never considered the MP capacities of the monsters/bosses in JRPGs, except for Pokemon. It's rarely a mechanic which you can exploit. If it is, it's usually in the form of some kind of charge-up requirement for a telegraphed attack. Even if you fight a character who you'll later get in your party they probably won't maintain the same statistics between their opponent and ally states... except, again, for the aforementioned Pokemon where every Pokemon functions on the same mechanisms and power economy.

In Golden Sun, you can exploit mana drain on the enemies, except for some bosses who restore PP every turn. It's not a very efficient strategy, however. It tends to be faster and easier to just kill them. *shrug*

[Reddish Mage]

Whether Sephiroth gets infinite mana, A LOT of it, or some sort of cheese mechanic by which spells don't cost much, the effect on this battle (which doesn't go on that long) is the same.

Anyway I wanted to get at some of the factors that go into these fights that make them hard to call. It seems that fighters all have most of these attributes:

Strength - They are all stronger are weaker to varying degrees. Strength is often variable throughout a character's various stories and various media (and may not even be consistent scene to scene). Nearly all characters are super-strong and their strength violates the laws of physics in various ways.

It is also possible for a character to be strong in very specific ways or to have specific weaknesses. Power may be fueled by magic, comes from weapons, only be available after charging, and be subject to a variety of conditions on its use.

Toughness - Characters can also have varying degrees of toughness (and endurance) that is as variable as in strength above. Sometimes characters are immune to specific sorts of attacks or damage.

Physics may even work differently, often we see attacks that dent solid steel, or character thrown in ways that damage walls, roads, etc. The same character may turn out to be vulnerable from mundane sources later. It is not clear how to calculate a character's toughness is this case.

At the extreme, some characters are canonically immortal or unkillable, although there may be specific things that can kill them. Some characters can also canonically kill immortals. It is entirely unclear what happens in Death Battle.

Endurance may be separable from toughness, how long a character can keep going. This can be important if a Death Battle isn't over quickly. Some attacks also deplete a character's endurance, which can make some attacks a try or die gambit.

Speed - Speed is another trait that tends to be absurdly high. Speed high enough to dodge or block bullets is common, as is the impossible feat of moving faster than the eye can see (as this requires literally moving faster than light or the eye can see something being hit by the light). Some characters can interact with the world at speed as if time is frozen, others may only use speed for travel.

The laws of physics are being abused to the breaking point by speed, and the consequences (in loud sonic booms and explosions) is rarely seen to follow from these character's feats.

Reaction time and consistency tend to be variable. Its not uncommon for super-speed characters to fight normal speed characters as equals.

Narrative - most characters to enter Death Battle have fought and prevailed against other characters that were supposedly superior to them, sometimes characters appear to be endowed with unnatural luck, "plot-armor", or is simply always favored to win as the underdog. Its rare that Screw Attack Death Battle explicitly analyzes the power of the narrative in shaping expectation of outcomes, but it can be difficult to separate what is due to pure skill and what is simply due to plot (i.e. can Luke/Obiwan/Yoda truly not be touched with blaster fire or ambushed by Stormtroopers, when hundreds of other Jedi are canonically killed by such mundane means or were they just favored by the plot). Sometimes separating all plot expectation from these characters would remove something essential from these characters.

Some characters (Deadpool) actually are aware of their narratives and can influence them.

Mental - some characters possess mind control, illusions, mind-blast and other such mental based attacks. Some characters are immune or highly resistant to the same, but many characters are very vulnerable to this style of attack.

Specific Abilities - many characters possess abilities that due very specific things (i.e. can see in the dark, or heat things, or have some form of telekinesis). Evaluating these abilities, and their usefulness in a Death Battle, may require a great deal of finesse.

Telekinesis, as an example of an ability that could have very specific use, seems like it could be an "I win" button" but is usually limited implicitly or explicitly (few characters, if ever, have used telekinesis to kill with a well placed brain aneurism, for instance, and Vader's choking could be resisted and rarely resulted i broken necks).

How abilities like disintegration, death rays, absolute zero cold guns, etc work is also very questionable.

Magic - this is more like the above. However, its important to note magic works differently in different universes and may have multiple "I win" effects built in. Some characters are resistant or vulnerable to magic. Sometimes magic's potential is infinite but is practically

I only got started but this is about everything we've been talking about in the past few battle.

Given all the different abilities above that fighters possess in physics-defying amounts and the tendency for these abilities to enter into the realm of the absurd, I don't see how anyone can say a fight like Sephiroth v. Vergil absolutely must go a certain way.

At best we are limited to saying we think it should go one way or another, or saying that ScrewAttack's analysis was weak or strong in a number of ways.

[Celestia]

Speed ... the impossible feat of moving faster than the eye can see (as this requires literally moving faster than light or the eye can see something being hit by the light).

Let's conduct a fun little experiment. Hold your hand up in front of your face. Now, wave it back and forth as fast as you can. Did it look blurry? Congratulations! You just moved faster than the eye can see. Eyes are remarkable and amazing but also sh*tty and flawed. They cannot see everything that light bounces off of, and it is very easy for them to be tricked or confused. In fact, if you turn your head fast enough, you momentarily become blind.

It doesn't take very high speeds to become untrackable, maybe 80 to 90 m/s. Manga and anime simply takes artistic liberty in portraying this as invisibility. After all, drawing nothing is a lot cheaper and easier than drawing an indistinct blur.

[Frozen_Feet]

What Celestia said. It used to be my oet peeve in regards to the Bleach fandom that some people just didn't get that Shunpo is not teleportation, and you don't need to even move faster than sound to create afterimages. (Another fun experiment: hold a piece of string from both ends, stretch it tight, then make it vibrate. Look! Afterimages!)

"Faster than the eye can see!" is a poetic statement that's better to never take literally. The actual speed required for that is a variable dependent on a huge number of factors, from the observer's sensory ability, to their distance to the observed object, the size of the observed object, the direction of movement, lighting, color of the object etc..

Plus reaction speed is different from sensory speed. An especially observant human (fighter pilots are specially selected from people who test well for these traits, everyone else is worse) can spot a thing that passed their vision for 1/220th of a second, but this is actually an afterimage! It takes 1/20th to 1/10th of a second for the image to actually reach a human's consciousness. It then takes another 1/20th to 1/10th of a second for this to lead to reaction. So the actual speed it takes for a human to react to anything seen is between 1/10th to 1/5th of a second. And that's for pretty fast humans, a more typical reaction time is 250 milliseconds or 1/4th of a second.

That last one is slow enough that an amateur boxer like me can punch the daylights out of a person without them realizing what hit them.

[Traab]

Where it gets fun is when you consider that characters are "faster than the eye can see" IN SETTING. Meaning, in the case of bleach, or naruto. Universes where the characters are quite literally superhuman in every way, are capable of moving faster than THEY can see. So that throws off all the formulas you would normally use. And that applies to everything else as well. Lets take naruto as an example. We know how much pressure it takes to crush a skull (mainly because we have very bored and/or sick scientists) but in naruto verse, they can be hit so hard it smashes them through trees, craters boulders, etc, and they are more or less just fine. So if we see a character get punched hard enough to crush a skull, we cant say it was 2300 newtons of force minimum because these people arent freaking human.

[Lord Raziere]

Where it gets fun is when you consider that characters are "faster than the eye can see" IN SETTING. Meaning, in the case of bleach, or naruto. Universes where the characters are quite literally superhuman in every way, are capable of moving faster than THEY can see. So that throws off all the formulas you would normally use. And that applies to everything else as well. Lets take naruto as an example. We know how much pressure it takes to crush a skull (mainly because we have very bored and/or sick scientists) but in naruto verse, they can be hit so hard it smashes them through trees, craters boulders, etc, and they are more or less just fine. So if we see a character get punched hard enough to crush a skull, we cant say it was 2300 newtons of force minimum because these people arent freaking human.

Maybe.

Do we have any explicit confirmation that the training also enhances their senses as well their strength, speed and durability?

I mean Kiba had to explicitly enhance his sense of smell though specialized training that his clan had, so general Naruto training might not cover their senses.

[Knaight]

That last one is slow enough that an amateur boxer like me can punch the daylights out of a person without them realizing what hit them.

I play foosball occasionally. Anyone actually good at the game can have the ball in front of one of their men, then suddenly there's a clunking noise when it hits the back of your goal (or one of your men, the guarding procedure is a mostly mental and largely probabilistic game). You don't see the ball move.

[Traab]

Maybe.

Do we have any explicit confirmation that the training also enhances their senses as well their strength, speed and durability?

I mean Kiba had to explicitly enhance his sense of smell though specialized training that his clan had, so general Naruto training might not cover their senses.

Its almost certain. i mean, otherwise when they are outrunning explosions, punching so hard it creates slipstreams and moving fast enough to create said slipstreams in multiple directions at once, they HAVE to have the reaction times to match or else every time they sprint they would smash face first into the nearest solid object.

[Reddish Mage]

Please note there is a big difference between faster than the eye can track and faster than the eye can see.

The eye will see a vague afterimage at fairly low speeds, and the eye simply cannot track an object at a certain point. One would still see an afterimage in the peripheral vision at that point.

Enhanced Senses should be up there as one of the superhuman attributes of the Death Battle contenders. Most contenders have superhuman senses and can often react to things they shouldn’t be able to see, hear or otherwise perceive.

Hearing often is enhanced to the mystical realm. Sound moves at the lowly speed of sound, but heroes can often react to the sound of gunfire even though the bullet moves faster. Sound may also be heard in space and in other conditions that may block sound.

Sight enhancement might include the ability to see in total darkness “infrared” and “x-ray” vision that allows sight that is much richer than the names suggest and the ability to track

Reaction time is commonly sped up beyond human possibility, perhaps keeping up with or exceeding possible machine reaction time as well.

Enhancement might be explicitly mystical. As in Jedi who see into the future, or through a more vague “danger sense” that may only work protectively.

Sense Enhancement like all other abilities varies in different universes in how they handle its physics violating potential. It is clear however that sense enhancement is required to survive a death battle against many if not most opponents that have been displayed.

[Forum Explorer]

Or a MP-drain ability. I guess.

I've never considered the MP capacities of the monsters/bosses in JRPGs, except for Pokemon. It's rarely a mechanic which you can exploit. If it is, it's usually in the form of some kind of charge-up requirement for a telegraphed attack. Even if you fight a character who you'll later get in your party they probably won't maintain the same statistics between their opponent and ally states... except, again, for the aforementioned Pokemon where every Pokemon functions on the same mechanisms and power economy.

I can't remember the game, but in something or another, I beat a boss via MP-drain. They had some really nasty spells that would always wipe me. But by removing their mana, I was able to keep healing, while they had to auto-attack or use a few much weaker abilities, so I was able to keep up.

Or was that Baldur's gate? Not MP-drain, but sending in wave after wave of summoned minions to use up their spells so it would be an easy fight afterwards.


On the 'faster then the eye can see' thing, the problem is artistic license, particularly in mangas. They'll sometimes just have the character 'cross' the entire intervening distance in a single panel, but that obviously means they aren't showing the character blur, or are they actually going faster then can be seen?

[Mikemical]

Well, having watched the Death Battle, I can properly say this:

Spoiler

Show

I expected Sephiroth to win because Death Battle tends to favor those who perform outlandish displays of their abilities.

For example, Sephiroth's Super Nova attack, is much more flashy than Vergil's Ultimate Judgement Cut(DMC3 and DMC4) or Dark Angel(UMVC3).

Sephiroth isn't faster than Vergil. Sephiroth can perform plenty of attacks quickly, but he is seen swinging his Masamune very quickly still. Vergil goes full Kenshiro and by the time he sheathes his sword the next second, you were already cut into a dozen pieces.

Their swords don't even compare. Masamune is sharp and a monster of a sword. Yamato can cut through space as seen when Dante uses it to destroy the hellgate from afar in DMC4. Vergil not cutting Lady's rocket launcher was more him just wanting to say "no u" and less 'maybe the sword isn't as strong as people say'.

That being said, Super Nova softening Vergil up for a killing blow is completely possible, since Vergil's regen factor is crazy fast, but not when he's healing up from 4th degree burns, as well as confused, lowered defenses and stats, etc. In DMC3, Mission 20 DMD-difficulty Vergil can regen health using his Devil Trigger faster than you can kill him unless you are dealing insane amounts of damage with Royalguard, but even then, he can still be 'killed' even while using his Devil Trigger.

Also, not giving Vergil access to Force Edge, when he was at his prime in terms of power, but giving Seph all his end-game powers was a cheap shot.

[Anteros]

I expected Seph to "win" based soley on the fact that they've always ruled against Final Fantasy characters before and probably wanted a fight to go the other way as evidence against their bias.

[Reddish Mage]

I can't remember the game, but in something or another, I beat a boss via MP-drain.

On the 'faster then the eye can see' thing, the problem is artistic license, particularly in mangas. They'll sometimes just have the character 'cross' the entire intervening distance in a single panel, but that obviously means they aren't showing the character blur, or are they actually going faster then can be seen?

Just marking time, but infinite mana and boss spell abilities doesn't really bear on this fight. There's a question as to whether there's anything to Sephiroth's character that can make one think he has infinite mana, or whether Death Battle was blowing smoke, but the battle wouldn't change one way or the other regardless since it resolves itself relatively quickly.

I agree with you that the problem with deriving speed from the disappearing trick is that how that trick works is hopelessly vague. Human sight also doesn't see things disappearing and reappearing under ideal conditions. For example,someone is casually overlooking the entire scene under well-lit conditions would only see someone disappear and reappearing if they moved faster than light, but someone whose eyes are following something might be tricked by a variety of ways.

Blinking is meant to show speed though, not optical tricks.

Well, having watched the Death Battle, I can properly say this:

Spoiler

Show

That being said, Super Nova softening Vergil up for a killing blow is completely possible, since Vergil's regen factor is crazy fast, but not when he's healing up from 4th degree burns, as well as confused, lowered defenses and stats, etc. In DMC3, Mission 20 DMD-difficulty Vergil can regen health using his Devil Trigger faster than you can kill him unless you are dealing insane amounts of damage with Royalguard, but even then, he can still be 'killed' even while using his Devil Trigger.

Also, not giving Vergil access to Force Edge, when he was at his prime in terms of power, but giving Seph all his end-game powers was a cheap shot.

I agree the outcome seems possible to me. It depends on Sephiroth having mental ability and decent superspeed though.

I think Sephiroth virtually HAS to be given all his end game abilities. We don't see him in action too much outside the final boss scene (except in supplemental material). The final boss match is clearly the IT moment for Sephiroth.

Vergil is a much more complex that way. I can see him not getting many abilities. Also, I think there are two reasons why Death Battle (inconsistently) doesn't go into an ability:

1) It was temporary, externally granted, used once and forgot, contradicts other things about a character, or may simply be something (like Superman's Fortress hi-tech) that is rarely brought out in a fight and we do not associate with the character.

2) It wouldn't make any difference in the fight and they want to spend their run time on other stuff.

I like it when they pile on with the opponent's crazy overpowered moves only to get cut off and killed anyway. I think the problem is that this fight really can be analyzed in many, many ways, and the shows format is not conducive to in depth analysis of each opponents potential analyzed in many different ways.

The show lays down as definitive that one would defeat the other and that requires they make massive assumptions on how these things would go down.

[Celestia]

The show lays down as definitive that one would defeat the other and that requires they make massive assumptions on how these things would go down.

Do you go into a coffee shop with a sign saying "World's Best Coffee" and then complain that there's no way that can ever be objectively and definitively determined? Death Battle's claim of deciding a winner "once and for all" is just a meaningless tagline. I'm sure they've probably already said something to that effect before.

[Forum Explorer]

Just marking time, but infinite mana and boss spell abilities doesn't really bear on this fight. There's a question as to whether there's anything to Sephiroth's character that can make one think he has infinite mana, or whether Death Battle was blowing smoke, but the battle wouldn't change one way or the other regardless since it resolves itself relatively quickly.

I agree with you that the problem with deriving speed from the disappearing trick is that how that trick works is hopelessly vague. Human sight also doesn't see things disappearing and reappearing under ideal conditions. For example,someone is casually overlooking the entire scene under well-lit conditions would only see someone disappear and reappearing if they moved faster than light, but someone whose eyes are following something might be tricked by a variety of ways.

Blinking is meant to show speed though, not optical tricks.

It's a totally irreverent comment to this discussion.,

I'm more thinking along the lines of we only see them start to move, and the end of the move. That doesn't mean that their opponents didn't see them move at all (unless that's explicitly stated later). The character might have just been a blur to them, but still visible, but the artist didn't bother to show that.

[Anteros]

Do you go into a coffee shop with a sign saying "World's Best Coffee" and then complain that there's no way that can ever be objectively and definitively determined? Death Battle's claim of deciding a winner "once and for all" is just a meaningless tagline. I'm sure they've probably already said something to that effect before.

It's a bit more like going to a place that advertises "world's best coffee" and finding out that all they serve is tea.

Death Battle doesn't even make an effort to do what they claim in good faith.

[Celestia]

It's a bit more like going to a place that advertises "world's best coffee" and finding out that all they serve is tea.

Are you meaning that Death Battle does not, in fact, have characters battle to the death? Because that's what you're saying. And that is obviously wrong.

Death Battle doesn't even make an effort to do what they claim in good faith.

Pit characters against one another and determine a winner? Yeah, they do that. They may not do it to your satisfaction, but they do it.

[Anteros]

Are you meaning that Death Battle does not, in fact, have characters battle to the death? Because that's what you're saying. And that is obviously wrong.


Pit characters against one another and determine a winner? Yeah, they do that. They may not do it to your satisfaction, but they do it.

I'm meaning that they make no actual effort to be unbiased or to scientifically analyze things.

[Celestia]

I'm meaning that they make no actual effort to be unbiased or to scientifically analyze things.

Okay? No where do they claim to do that. You just wish they did and then get pissed off when they don't. It's like you took some aspirin for your headache and then wrote a scathing review about it online because it didn't cure your foot fungus.