So, this is a little awkward because as of right now Rooster Teeth has been shut down, so the future of Death Battle is uncertain. I will say that whatever happens in the future I will be there to support everyone who've worked so hard on Death Battle.
When it comes to Death Battle there's so many characters I love that have been on the show and have been given the opportunity to show how cool they are. However, there are still a lot of characters that I think would be awesome to see on the show at some point. Sailor Moon is one of the biggest series that has only been used once so far, so for this blog I wanted to look at some matchups that I think would be good to make for Death Battle.
Goku Vs. Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon Vs. Pegasus Seiya
In my personal opinion, this is objectively the best matchup for these two. The dynamic between these two would be through the roof, and the legacy of these two would no doubt get people to watch. One of the best things about Death Battle is introducing new series to people, and I can't think of a better matchup to introduce Saint Seiya than this one.
Sailor Moon Vs. Cardcaptor Sakura
The quintessential magical girl matchup to me, arguably the two most popular magical girls of all time pitted against each other would be a sight to behold. Like with the previous matchup, this would be an excellent way to introduce Sakura to newcomers, however this has more connections and fits more thematically due to both being magical girls. If there has to be one magical girl matchup, I would go with this one.
Sailor Moon Vs. Madoka Kaname
The other big magical girl legacy matchup, Death Battle's Tournament of Champions definitely helped this one get some traction. The only things that would probably keep this matchup from happening is the fact that out of all of Usagi's most popular matchups, this is the most recent one compared to the previous three I posted here, and I think that Usagi simply stomps Madoka overall.
Blaze The Cat Vs. Sailor Mars
This would be a great matchup, there aren't many matchups based on elements. not to mention these two are very popular in their series. For Blaze this would a great opportunity to boost her popularity because she needs more attention, if it worked for Silver the Hedgehog it can work for Blaze. The same goes for Sailor Mars, though she is a lot more popular than Blaze. Overall this is a very popular matchup that I see no downside to.
Queen Beryl Vs. Rita Repulsa
Back in the day having Power Rangers Vs. Sailor Moon matchups was a big thing to do, nowadays with the knowledge on how powerful Sailor Moon characters are, those matchups have pretty much gone away. This is probably the only matchup that I think can still work, and is a very good matchup. It's basically the most iconic villains of both series, which makes Galaxia's inclusion against Beerus all the more surprising. Honestly I can see this one going either way and one of the best parts of matchups like this is seeing what a combatant will bring to the table.
Bit of an odd blog to read and comment on for the reasons you've said. Despite the name of my blog I haven't really watched Death Battle consistently since Season 3. Nonetheless SM is my favorite series so I will give thoughts on each of these matchups
ReplyDeleteSailor Moon vs Goku: To be totally honest, while I understand you want it a lot, I don't find it very interesting. Usagi and Goku's powers are not such that interact very interestingly as Goku is a martial artist and Usagi's a wizard. I also don't think anyone thinks it's a particularly fair or interesting fight to analyze. Neither of the characters personalities would really come across naturally fighting each other as Usagi, at least the canon real version of Usagi is a contemplative and sentimental person who thinks in these deep abstract ways Goku just wouldn't understand due to his simple humble focus and Usagi doesn't understand Goku's love of fighting and adventure at all, as she does so only due to absolute necessity.
Usagi vs Seiya: It's a good matchup, probably the matchup I'd want second most for Usagi. I love both Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya and the two series are very similarly being mythological sentai styled series. Seiya's fighting style also doesn't mesh super well with Usagi's but it's definitely a lot more so and I feel like analyses of this matchup is definitely a lot more interesting as both series have a lot of haxes and resistances. It'd be tricky but I could see something interesting and meaningful happening with their personalities as well.
Usagi vs Sakura: Easily my most wanted fight for Usagi. Usagi and Sakura are two of my favorite characters in fiction. The two both are mages who use a broad arsenal of abilities with a lot of interesting counters between them. How you determine who wins this match is also really interesting and says a lot about your style of debating. I think their fighting styles would mesh well, their abilities interact interestingly, and their personalities and character arcs actually conflict in a really interesting way. I genuinely can't think of a single negative about this fight other than imagining a scenario in which the two would fight is somewhat difficult.
Usagi vs Madoka: By far my least liked matchup for Usagi. It's genuinely hard for me to think of good things to say about it. The characters powers don't interact all that interestingly even if you assume they can interact, nobody thinks it's a fair matchup, the two don't really have personality differences that would conflict in any interesting ways, etc. The only reason I've seen for it is that Usagi is supposedly the example of a classic MG and Madoka of a "deconstruction" MG except that perpetues the biggest myths of SM and PMMM as SM was actually itself a major subversion and break from Magical Girl tropes and concepts prior to itself and Madoka isn't actually a deconstruction and fits into the genre much more than people realize.
Sailor Mars vs Blaze the Cat: Truth be told I don't know anything about Blaze so I can't really comment here.
Queen Beryl vs Rita Repulsa: It's a fine matchup. Both are pop culture witches against a sentai team and I don't think it would be a stomp either way. I do think for Queen Beryl you do need to composite and/or you have to scale abilities from the Shitennou to her otherwise you can't really do much with her in animation but this is a good matchup, I definitely approve of it!
To rank my interest it would be Usagi vs Sakura > Usagi vs Seiya > Queen Beryl vs Rita Repulsa > Usagi vs Goku ~ Sailor Mars vs Blaze > Usagi vs Madoka.
Some other potential matchups for SM characters
DeleteGuardian Senshi Battle Royale (Mercury vs Mars vs Jupiter vs Venus): Surprised they didn't do this one. This seems a relatively easy one to do if you wanted to just do an SM one that's one of the most wanted SM matchups and assuming you don't including Moon would be both pretty fair, easy enough to research the canon material, and where pretty much any result feels fair enough
Sailor Pluto vs Yuuko Ichihara: Unfortunately just not enough people know xxxHolic but Setsuna vs Yuuko would be amazing. It's thematic, they have a lot of interesting interactions both powerwise and personality-wise, there's a lot of potential for what to use with them.
Also if they hadn't used Raven twice I would have thought Sailor Saturn vs Raven would have been a good matchup. Hotaru's one of the most popular and well known characters from SM with she and Raven having a lot of similarities yadda yadda.
I can see why Goku Vs. Sailor Moon wouldn't be appealing to some people, as getting their personalities would be the biggest problem. For me this was one of the big playground debates of my childhood, next to Pokemon Vs. Digimon, and Mario Vs. Sonic. My only counterpoint is that I look how they did Goku Vs. Superman 1 and basically set up a story, while in Goku Vs. Superman 3 it's like a friendly brawl, no I'm sure nobody died, ignore the screams lol.
DeleteTo me if they can make Goku Vs. Superman work, then Goku Vs. Sailor Moon wouldn't be impossible. Also did you hear that they planned to do it after Goku Vs. Superman but scrapped it due to fear of backlash if Sailor Moon won? XD That gets me everytime.
For me the biggest problem is how to get them to fight, it was moreso I don't think their powers intersect in any really interesting ways and I don't think it would be easy to showcase what makes either a cool character. If that doesn't bother you, that's totally cool.
DeleteI hadn't heard that. TBTH it does kinda weird me out how much people care about just the verdict of who wins when to me it's a lot more interesting thinking about how characters' abilities and personalities and character arcs intersect.
Sorry, made a typo, meant to say the biggest problem isn't how to get them to fight.
DeleteI am glad neither of us likes Usagi vs Madoka. I would prefer really any matchup for Usagi compared to that as it would just be hearing people saying "Lol Madoka stomps" and "it makes sense because Madoka is totally a deconstruction and SM is just normal magical girls" I would support Usagi vs Goku over Usagi vs Madoka in a heartbeat
Not gonna lie, I think about this matchup in two ways. The first is, I love this matchup and want to give it the respect it deserves. The second is, I just want to watch the world burn if Usagi wins XD.
DeleteWith Usagi Vs. Madoka, half of my dislike is the matchup itself isn't that interesting, the other half is the fanboys being insufferable.
DeleteI wouldn't want to make people dislike Usagi or Sailor Moon though over something trivial like a vs matchup.
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