Dante vs Clive Review

Another day, another Death Battle review, another matchup I just do not get. Not gonna lie guys, I was very confused as to why they were even doing this one. I heard almost no rumblings about it prior to the announcement, and everything I can gather seems to indicate they only did this because it’s the Torrian episode and he wanted to do it.

Which, ok I can’t blame them for that. In a show like this where the matchups for yourself every once in a while. After sifting through all the comic book and weeb trash requests you need to do something you want you know.

But I can’t help but think the only reason this was chosen is because of the most surface level connections. It all boils down to “ZOMG, DMC 5 guy worked on FF16, they both the same game, boyz shud fite!!!” I’m being uncharitable I know, and I am well aware there are more connections, but let’s be honest it all started because one guy worked on both games, not even the main guy but the combat designer.

At least with something like Dante vs Bayonetta the two characters have similar personalities and both series are similar enough in terms of tone and gameplay that the comparison is natural. Final Fantasy 16 may have similar combat to DMC on a surface level, but in terms of tone, storytelling, and even the games themselves they’re completely different. So different that the fight itself could be a complete tonal mismatch.

I also can’t help but feel this is a bit of a waste for these franchises, and I hate that I feel this way. I’m glad Devil May Cry is back, but why is it with Dante. He already had an episode, with his best MU in my opinion, and there are other characters in that series that deserve an episode. Nero vs Hellboy and Lady vs Seras are right there guys, come on!

As for Clive… look, I’m glad to finally have a Final Fantasy rep who isn’t from 7, but why did it have to be Clive. Seriously, of all the various Final Fantasy reps that they could have gone with they went with Clive. Not a fan favourite like Kefka or Lightning, or a longstanding mainstay like Bahamut or Chocobo, but Clive?

I mean I know why, it’s because his game is the most recent to come out. Never tell me recency bias doesn’t exist in this show, because that is a fucking lie. We better not get Bakugo vs Reze I swear to god.

Sorry for going on a bit but I need you to know my mindset going into this. I am not that excited for this episode. However, as I usually do, I am going in with an open mind. I should at least be in for some spectacle, and the debate seems close so it should be interesting to see how this plays out.

Analysis

First thing that stood out to me was actually the spoiler warning for Devil may Cry V. The reason for this is likely to synergise with Clive’s analysis and the spoiler warning for Final Fantasy 16. Except that made sense because FF 16 only came out last year and only released on Xbox this year, so a lot of people haven’t played it yet. DMC V was 6 years ago, I think the people who care have played it by now.

All joking aside. The first real thing that stood out to me was how short these analyses were. They’re pretty matter of fact in their approach. They quickly go over all of the characters abilities and their stories, but everything flies by so quickly that it’s hard to take everything in.

Considering how close this fight is, shockingly close as it turned out, it would have been better to slow the analysis down to better cover the information. The black boxes and on-screen info helps, but they’re so quick you may not even pick everything up. Suffice to say the pause button is you’re ally here.

Dante’s analysis is noticeably weaker because of this. For one his analysis felt shorter, not saying it was, just that it felt shorter than Clive’s. I know Dante has been on this show before, but it’s been some time since then and there is more to cover for him. It would have been nice to get a refresher and see more of Dante’s story expanded on because of new material.

Because it also goes by so quickly, the story part felt almost like an afterthought. It’s almost like this episode was done purely for the animator or something. The story covered does at least go over the basic beats, but their handling of them made them feel less impactful.

I am glad they did cover the darker aspects of the Devil May Cry story. Showing Dante is more than flippy dippy anime sword man. But because it went by as fast as it did it made the darker aspects of the character seem unimportant. Which to be fair is accurate to the games. I mean I like Devil May Cry, but the story isn’t the reason why. The story feels like it’s there as a formality. I don’t think Capcom cares about the Devil May Cry narrative.

Clive’s analysis is better but still suffers from some of the same problems. I can forgive them not being too in depth with Clive’s story to avoid being too heavy with spoilers, but I wish they had gone into a bit more detail on his abilities and weapons. I get the gist of what’s going on based on what they said they just didn’t give us much context.

But Clive’s analysis is fine. Not great, not bad, just middle of the road. Dante’s is worse but even his is more disappointing than outright bad. They at least do go over the major stats and arguments for both, though I’ll go over more of that in the results.

Still, this isn’t what I would call a top tier analysis. I alluded to this earlier, but this episode really does feel like it was picked as an animation first and a vs debate second. Nothing wrong with that, but as someone who watches this show for both, having one part being weaker than the other is a big notch against an episode.

I wouldn’t call the analysis in this bad, just average. Better than below average but not quite exemplary either. But, if this was done for the animation, let’s actually talk about said animation.

Fight Animation

So, I’m going to break protocol and start with the negatives. Because I don’t want to end this section on a negative note and I do have some faults with this animation. The first is the facial animations. They’re very stiff and don’t emote that much which can make certain close ups awkward.

Admittedly this is something Torrian has always struggled with. His strength as an animator is in spectacle and fight choreography not necessarily in character animation. Which funny enough is the polar opposite of the Blender team like Devil Artemis. Those guys struggle with choreography heavy fights but are great when it comes to story driven fights that need more expressive character animations.

So going in it’s fair to say this isn’t a very story or character focused episode and that’s fine. Better honestly since that was the absolute worst approach to take with this fight. One of the issues I had going into this was the character dynamic between the two characters. Because these two do not go together at all.

Clive is a far more morose kind of character. He’s very no nonsense and direct with his actions. Dante meanwhile is the definition of happy go lucky anime swordfighter. He’s the kind of guy who will do things as hard and as flashy as possible just because he can and has a flippant attitude about anything and everything.

Which is why we love him so much. The problem is that there’s a lot more nuance to it that just isn’t here. The reason why Dante’s attitude works in DMC is because he’s the protagonist of his story, and the people he fights are usually stick in the mud assholes or extremely arrogant dickhead demons. it isn’t just because “ha ha, funny anime sword man does Michael Jackson dances”, it works because he’s clowning on people who deserve it and making them look like chumps.

In a vs match like this that approach only works with characters that can match Dante’s unique style of anime ridiculousness, see Bayonetta, but against anyone else, especially a more serious combatant like Clive, they aren’t allowed to flourish like they should and create something of a tonal mismatch in the fight.

 The more ridiculous Devil May Cry styled moments certainly got a chuckle out of me, but in context of this match they feel out of place. Which should not be the case. I mean it’s Dante doing Dante things, that is exactly what you would expect out of this. but because he’s fighting a guy that can’t match his style of silliness, they just don’t work as well as they should.

Luckily these moments are just that, moments and most are kept to the first half of the fight. I was expecting this issue to be far worse than it wound up being so credit where it’s due they understood the assignment.

The reason I get these flaws out of the way now is to say despite these problems and some other nitpicky issues, like I would have liked to see more reactions from Clive to Dante’s modern weaponry, everything else is fucking peak.

This is what Kratos vs Asura should have been. I know I went easy on that one in the review, but in hindsight it wasn’t great. This is much more akin to what that one attempted. it’s pure unbridled spectacle in the most over the top way possible.

Aside from the fight choreography being absolutely smooth as hell, the particle effects are absolutely gorgeous. This is the best-looking 3D fights we’ve seen in a while on a purely technical level. Unless you count the Moro episodes but those are more a hybrid style, this is pure 3D.

Of course, with the amount of stuff these two have they can’t include everything, but they threw in a lot. Most of their major abilities and weapons got a chance to shine here. While Dr Faust was a bit weird for reasons we covered earlier, the rest of Dante’s kit was shown off in some pretty cool ways. There were some combinations that led to some very cool moments even if they don’t make much sense. Dante can’t use Quicksilver in Devil Trigger but eh, fuck it, rule of cool.

The fight is incredibly fast. It never les up with the action and shows off as much as it can in the time given. But it’s also well-paced enough to allow for brief moments of reprieve so you don’t get exhausted, and to ramp up the tension. Most evident in the final portion of the fight.

Speaking of which, the sense of escalation here is great. it starts out fairly grounded but then gradually gets more and more insane until we get Ifrit and Sin Devil Trigger having a frigging space battle. It becomes fucking DBZ for a moment and it’s amazing.

But it then ends with the two in base form having a final Mexican standoff. The flow reminded me a lot of Simon vs Kyle. Starts grounded, relatively speaking, gets crazy cosmic, ends with a fist fight. I think Dante vs Clive is better at being that though because it never gets too big or esoteric that you can’t fathom what the fuck is going on. It’s grounded just enough to make it an enjoyable for anyone who isn’t hopped up on universal bullshit.

It's a damned epic brawl with too many cool moments to count. It does start off a bit weak, but once it gets it’s footing it is one hell of a show. It’s a true love letter to both series. Not only capturing the spectacle the two are known for but throwing in various prompts like you see in the games. the Super Sexy Style was the best way of ending that space fight.

The technical aspects are all good. Visuals are clean and the voice acting is great from Luca Xavier and Will de Renzy-Martin both did a great job and sound a lot like the official voice actors, so both sounded in character. there isn’t much banter between the two, probably another issue with the clashing personality types, but what we do get is good and in character for both.

Then there’s the fight track, The Devil Inside. It’s amazing, nuff said. It’s epic and it matches the style and tone of both series perfectly. Go give it a listen it’s an incredible track.

So yeah, the animation, despite my gripes, is amazing. It’s the best part of the episode by far and given this was made likely for the animation it more than justifies the episodes existence. But now, for the result.

Result

So in a shock for me, Clive ended up winning. I thought Dante had it in the bag, but the fight was really damn close so I could see it going either way. And Death Battle did indeed make it appear close.

They boiled it down to three categories, stats, abilities and endurance. Both were tied in stats and in abilities, but Clive took endurance due to having a longer super form and Dante needing demon energy to heal which is tied to his Devil Trigger form, meaning he’d likely wear out faster.

This is a result that is naturally going to be contested, and it already is if the YouTube comment section is anything to go by. Not that I care what the YouTube comments think because, I mean it’s YouTube for god’s sake. The site that makes Reddit look sane by comparison. Which is really sad when you think about it.

But I don’t care because the episode is internally consistent. There are no major holes or flubs I can poke at or questionable reasoning they gave, it’s a consistent well-constructed argument that has things in it to back it up.

If I had to critique it for something it would be they didn’t cover all of the major lore scaling for both. I know lore scaling is incredibly contentious, I don’t particularly like it myself, but that’s a genie they already let out of its bottle and you can’t just ignore it now.

There’s a few elements of the DMC lore they didn’t bring up. Granted most of that isn’t too important and only really cements Dante being at universal anyway, so it’s whatever. There were also higher end arguments to be made for Dante being low multi, but not only is that very much based on personal interpretation, but Clive has similar arguments for being low multi himself.

There could have been a black box covering that, but I didn’t expect it to be in the main argument. One  of the things people need to realise about Death Battle is it very rarely if ever uses high end feats for characters. Not unless they absolutely have to. Partly because high end arguments are incredibly generous, but also because most normal viewers would be fucking confused.

If you went to a normal person and told them Dante was a multiversal threat, they would give you the same look I give when I see Dragon Maid. I don’t know what that is, but I don’t like it. Power scaling is already niche, and the higher ends often feel like you’re putting characters at a level that is far beyond what they should be realistically capable of. It’s best to go for the middle because it’s much easier to buy for most, and it makes more logical sense.

Plus, I don’t buy into the high ends for DMC anyway. Universal is about where I would put Dante, and if Dante had won it would have been largely because of DMC 2. And that fact sickens me so yeah, I’m glad Dante lost. Fuck DMC 2.

All jokes aside, this is a good verdict. It’s internally consistent which is all I ask for. It was nice to have a verdict I don’t have any major issues with after last time.

Conclusion

This was a very pleasant surprise for me. I went in expecting to not like it very much due to not liking the MU and wound up really enjoying it. Never let it be said that I am not an open-minded person.

That said, I still think it’s not a great MU and that does hold it back for me. I just think these two don’t really work together that well, and there are moments where the tonal clash definitely shines through in a bad way. I think the episode is good in spite of it being a bad MU, not because the MU is actually solid.

There’s also the analysis which is only ok. It’s not as in depth or as well paced as other episodes and the weak link in the episodes chain. It’s not bad, but this is an episode where I can see myself skipping the analysis portion and just going straight to the fight animation.

That said that animation was a lot of fun, and the verdict had a solid enough argument that I can’t find much fault in internally. They maybe could have worded Dante’s section better, felt like they hyped up some things a bit too much, but it’s not too big a deal.

This was a solid episode. definitely one of the better independent era episodes. Next time though, it’s time to duel to see who the real master is. Cannot fucking wait for next time, it’s my childhood fight.

Score: 8/10