Blade vs Buffy Review?

Alright, I was going to do this review in my usual style. You know go over the episode bit by bit and give my opinion on the whole thing at the end. I cannot do that with this one. For one I’m mentally checked out right now. I just finished a massive review of Dead or Alive 5 and I’m planning the next Videogame Cinema to be for Halloween, so I want to give myself time to recuperate.

Honestly I should probably just skip this one, but I hate being incomplete. Plus I do want to talk about this one because it annoyed the piss out of me. Not because it was bad but because it did a lot of things Death Battle does that piss me off and I need to fucking vent. So fuck it here we go.

First let me get the good stuff out of the way. The fight is great. Easily the best live action fight, at least production wise. Not only was it the longest fight we’ve had in a while at over eight minutes, but it was also the most elaborate of the live action fights with extra’s and everything. I especially loved Ben as the DJ, that was a fun cameo you could tell that he was having fun.

The props and effects were all really well done, the kill was nice and gory which makes a change for the live action fights, and the acting from our two leads, Fik-Shun Stegall and Mair Muloney, were both great. I could nitpick that the costumes weren’t quite right, especially Fik’s hair which just didn’t look like a Blade haircut to me, but I’m not that petty.

They looked the part and acted the part. They got the physical parts down and they delivered their lines well. Although strangely there wasn’t much banter as I thought they would be, although I’m glad because it means we avoided Death Battle’s attempts at Whedon Speak. I can only imagine how cringe that would be.

The whole thing was basically a fan film. It opened just like Blade with a vampire nightclub only Buffy is there instead. Then Blade shows up, they both kill vampires in cool ways, then there’s a mix-up and they start fighting. The reason for the fight is questionable but that’s always the hardest part of these kinds of fights. At least it’s not Mario vs Sonic.

The fight has some cool moments; the music is a great mix of both themes which was really nice. I only have one problem with it, and unfortunately it’s a big one, they make it way too obvious that Buffy was going to win. As soon as I saw her struggling early on, I knew she was going to overcome the odds and get the win.

I mean that’s just basic storytelling right. You want to see the hero struggle and rise to the occasion. But in a vs fight where the audience has to keep guessing on who is going to win, if they catch on to that too early then all the suspense is gone. At that point I’m just wondering when Blade is going to die.

Putting Buffy down temporarily doesn’t mean shit if it’s obviously building up to something. When she got hit with the Breathing Gun I was like “ok we know she wins, can you hurry it up please”.

Honestly because of that I actually still find Red Hood vs Winter Soldier the better fight because that one didn’t make it obvious. It was a great back and forth between the two combatants and the end was so quick it was surprising. Even though this is the better production, the fact it telegraphed the winner as early as it did shot it’s kneecaps off.

But it was entertaining, which is all I could ask for. As for the analysis, it’s fine. Editing is good as usual; the stories are covered well and most of the scaling is fine. Not much to say really. But this is where we get to the result and this is where it pissed me of.

No, not because Buffy won. After looking into this I realised it was so close it could go either way. I was perfectly fine with and even expecting Buffy to take the win. But the way this was handled really got under my skin.

Ok so they gave stats and skill to Buffy and arsenal to Blade. This is fine, this all tracks with what I was told, and I have no notes. The problems come from the final category trump cards which is what gave Buffy the win.

Now this would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that, once again, Death Battle don’t go into detail about certain things. One of the points they made was that The Scythe Buffy had was too much for Blade and could cut through his Adamantium swords. That is a good point, except they forgot to mention Justicar, a sword that was powerful enough to kill archangels, including Zarathos.

You know Zarathos. The demon bonded to Ghost Rider who they said in a previous episode could destroy the Marvel multiverse. Yeah, Blade has a sword that can kill that guy. Based on that and the fact that a big point in Buffy’s favour was The Scythe being able to defeat a multiversal threat. Wouldn’t that make Justicar a match for it.

The funny thing is they bring up Blade defeating Zarathos, but never bring up any of Zarathos’ power scaling, even though they already covered that. This year as a matter of fact. So you bring up him killing a multiversal threat, but then just ignore who that threat was.

This is the kind of shit that irritates me with Death Battle, the inconsistency of how they handle information. You know me, I don’t buy into the Death Battle is biased argument. It’s just a salty response that’s easy to disprove. The problem is this argument keeps cropping up because Death Battle keeps fumbling with details like this.

When you bring up scaling for a character in a previous episode, then ignore it in another, even though it would greatly help the character involved, that makes you look biased. If that’s the case then either don’t bring it up, which would lying by omission in this case but whatever, or explain why it wouldn’t matter.

They don’t do either. They bring up Zarathos and then never go into detail about him. It’s like they’re banking on you not having watched Ghost Rider vs Spawn, because if you did, you’d probably have a lot of good questions.

This is an issue that Death Battle has had for a good while now. See, Death Battle treats every episode as a separate production. No shit I know, but what I mean is that they have different researchers for each episode, and it feels like there’s no communication between the teams.

Because of that inconsistencies like this can crop up because there’s no way of knowing what the other teams are going to do. It feels like Death Battle needs to have some kind of head of research to keep things in check, because these kinds of inconsistencies can really hurt them in the long run.

It also makes it feel like I’m being punished as a fan because I keep noticing them. You know how if you watch a show and you pick up on little details that become important later. It’s awesome because it feels like you were rewarded for paying attention. It makes the show better.

But for Death Battle it’s the opposite. It makes the show worse because noticing the details only highlights how inconsistent the show is. You can’t keep getting away with this guys, you need to do better.

Then there’s the arguments that don’t make sense even internally. They bring up that Buffy could resist Blade draining her magical energy like she did Angel, except Angel was targeting her soul, not specifically magical energy. I don’t know, maybe the two are comparable but there does seem to be a distinction between the two in both series, and if they are connected the episode did a poor job of explaining how they are.

Then there’s her resisting blade going down her throat as mist and exploding from the inside like she did the shadow demon. The problem is that wasn’t what was happening. The shadow demon wasn’t trying to kill Buffy; it was trying to possess her.

She wasn’t expelling smoke from her, she was resisting possession and the smoke demon likely just left on its own. Admittedly I haven’t seen Buffy past season 4, so it could be that she was just all “DARKNESS BE GONE” Dennis Reynolds style, but it is still distinctly different from going inside her and blowing her up from the inside.

You see the problem right? They’re trying to compare two things that appear similar at a glance, but when you look at them with even a modicum of thought, you realise they’re completely different situations. So Death Battle using these to explain away some of Blades trump cards isn’t quite the slam dunk they think it is.

Then there’s the Breathing Gun which they didn’t even bother to explain at all. They said it could harm cosmic Ghost Rider but how strong is that guy? You didn’t explain him at all. The only power scaling it gets is a black box, because of course it would be in a black box, that puts it at star level. Ok that makes sense, oh wait, oh wait I just learned Cosmic GR can kill Celestials which are multiversal. Well that would have been nice to know.

Then there’s the nonsense that Buffy could deflect the Breathing Guns bullets. You know the bullet’s that will home in on a target no matter what and eat them from the inside. How would deflecting the bullets do anything then. And that’s not a point I’m bringing into this, Death Battle itself brought it up. What the fuck guys?

This is Ben vs Hal levels of bad. Ok, maybe not that bad, but it’s still bad. They ignore certain details, misinterpret certain scenes and even ignore their own arguments.

And honestly, they didn’t need to do any of that. Really if you wanted to make an argument that Buffy wins all you had to do was say she was more skilled and stronger. That’s it really. Even if you wanted to cover trump cards and say she won that, just say her scythe was even to Justicar but her skill was better, and say the Breathing Gun wouldn’t work because she isn’t a demon. That’s what the argument online was.

It really feels like they botched this one. Again, the result is fine. I can buy Buffy winning based on what I have seen, but the explanation Death Battle provided is not very convincing. It’s like how in school you can fail the question despite getting the right answer because you didn’t show your working or your methodology. Because it isn’t about getting the answer right, it’s how you came to the answer that’s more important.

And what’s frustrating about this is I’ve been talking about these issues for a while now. the inconsistent scaling, use of black boxes for important information, the poorly explained arguments and not explaining the results properly. I’ve talked about all of them and they keep fucking doing them.

Now look, I’m only one guy. I am not important, and I doubt Death Battle knows I exist and probably hasn’t read anything I’ve wrote. I’m not saying this just to brag that I’m right about everything and Death Battle should totally listen to me because I know best. I am nowhere near egotistical enough for that.

I’m just frustrated. Frustrated that Death Battle are still falling into the same issues that plague them time and time again. you’d think at some point they would catch on to them and improve their craft, but they aren’t. It shows a lack of self-reflection, a lack of any ability to self-criticise their work.

Maybe they do that. Maybe the crew do look back on the episodes and criticise where they screwed up. It’s possible, I don’t know them personally. But part of that process is improving on past mistakes. Death Battle, you need to start improving on past mistakes. You’re production is great, but you still have clear problems that need to be addressed.

Anyway, that’s it. Episode was ok, but I really needed to vent for a little bit. I guess I’m just getting tired of power scaling bullshit. I like power scaling and Death Battle but a lot of it frustrates the hell out of me.

So that’s it. sorry it wasn’t a traditional review and if this was rambly and somewhat incoherent I apologise. I am burnt well the fuck out right now. I just wanted to get my thoughts on this out there so I could at least say I covered it. Hopefully next time I’ll be fully recovered, and we can go back to normal. Also, WHO THE FUCK ASKED FOR NEXT TIME?!