Sailors and Dragons

The Legacy Anime Rivalry of the 90s

So I’ve been a Death Battle fan since the ScrewAttack days from the very beginning, watched every episode and make my own thumbnails from time to time. So many fictional characters I like have been on the show, so I have a very small list of characters I’d like to come back or debut on the show like Captain Underpants, Banjo-Kazooie and Metal Sonic. The biggest and most obvious choices from that list are easily Goku and Sailor Moon, who are the focus of this blog.

I’ve stated plenty of times that this is my remaining most wanted matchup, I would say I’m the biggest supporter of this matchup. But then I asked myself why do I do so much for this matchup? Well I’m gonna explain my personal history on this matchup and how it’s changed over the years.

And why the obvious choice is sometimes the best.

Let’s start with the fact that I first saw both Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon on Toonami. Like many kids at the time, Toonami is the reason why I got into these two shows and anime in general. Obviously both shows had very different audiences, not many watched and enjoyed both like I did. Even back then there were debates on whether or not Goku or Sailor Moon would win in a fight. Now as a kid I thought it was an obvious answer, of course the big, strong guy beats the lanky teenage girl, what kind of stupid question is that? And that was pretty much the end of that.

But wait! Don't change that channel!

As the years went on Dragon Ball continued to be a significant part of my life, meanwhile Sailor Moon eventually faded into the background for me until my college years. I started to find Youtube videos of clips of the anime that I’d never seen, turns out it was the final season of the anime that didn’t originally release back then. And when I bought the Kodansha version of the Sailor Moon manga it reignited my passion for the series again. But it wasn’t until I started to see people on the internet doing research on the manga that I personally started to take a look at the series in a different way. To say I was shocked at how powerful she was is an understatement, it completely changed how I looked at both Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. These days I’ve stayed invested in both series, with the Sailor Moon movies and Dragon Ball’s 40th Anniversary projects giving me plenty of content to keep me satisfied.

So the question is why do I think this matchup is still worth it? The most obvious answer is the legacy Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon, alongside Pokemon, created coming to the west and making a generation of kids become anime fans. Not to mention both are still among the most popular and beloved anime in the entire world, so getting people to see a Death Battle episode pitting the two iconic protagonists would be an easy sell. The other thing is that it’s still very intensely debating today. There were so many reddit threads last year just based on this matchup alone, I honestly can’t find another matchup that had countless threads of fans trying to figure out who wins. Speaking of the fans, holy shit do the fans of these two HATE each other. For as legendary as these two are, the fanbases absolutely despise one another and I’m sure it’s been like this since the 90s, well the fans that care about the debate aspect anyway. Given that I watched both I was shocked to find how fans just always go at each other, it’s actually crazy. Also it's probably the biggest Boy Vs Girl debate out there, and considering how much I despise the Battle of the Sexes trope, that shows how much I like this matchup.

Straight Outta Manga

So in conclusion, this is a matchup that’s been a long time coming with literal decades of debates under its belt. If you thought Ash Vs Yugi did so well, just imagine how this would do. As for who wins? Well time changes a man, and while I thought Goku kicked her ass years ago as a child, nowadays I’m pretty confident in saying Sailor Moon wins this. And also like Ash Vs Yugi, it’s one hell of a love letter to us 90s kids. And also I just want Goku to stop fighting Superman, you’ve been through this three times Goku! It’s okay to fight somebody else!