Ichigo vs Yusuke Death Battle Review

 Another year, another round of Death Battle episodes to review. After the pretty strong showing last year, the independent era is already looking good, I was pretty excited to see what the Death Battle team had in store for this one. Besides the ones promised in the Kickstarter that we still haven’t gotten yet. What better way to start the new season? Year? Batch of episodes? Whatever you want to call it, then an episode featuring an obvious stomp between two anime franchises I don’t care about. Ok, not the grand start I was hoping for.

I’m kidding of course. This is a great way to start the new season. Ichigo vs Yusuke has been requested for years, and while it is a stomp, it’s too thematically perfect not to do. Plus, Bleach and Yu-Yu-Hakusho have needed run backs for a long time. The previous episodes with those franchises were both pretty good, but there’s still far more of these series to go over.

Obviously people have issues with how the characters were scaled on this show, but I have largely stopped caring about this shit. Once I realised this is all down to personal interpretation it became really easy to just shrug my shoulders and just agree to disagree. All I care about is whether I buy Death Battles arguments internally, and whether or not they do the characters justice. I may not be able to judge the second part, since I haven’t engaged with either series, and in Bleach’s case never plan to, but I can at least enjoy the episode for what it is.

Who knows, maybe it will surprise me. Maybe it’s closer than people say it is, I mean I’ve seen surefire victories turn around on this show before. Granted a lot of those I don’t buy, but it will be fun seeing the fallout if it happens. I’m making an entire room full of popcorn just in case because dear god will the salt overflow from that. But let’s get stuck in shall we.

Analysis

So it’s been a while since I saw Ichigo vs Naruto. Like I haven’t seen it since it first came out. Nothing against it’s just not one I enjoy as much as others. Same goes for Sasuke vs Hiei. If you know me by now, you’ll know I don’t like anime, so I very rarely go back to anime episodes unless JoJo or Dragonball are involved.

But even though I’m not as immediately familiar with these series past analyses, I could still tell the way it was handled was different. For Ichigo it was more focused on his story and providing the context for his various forms and abilities. In the Naruto episode they focused almost exclusively on how many forms and abilities he had because the main hook on that fight was Shonen protagonists with tons of different forms. It felt more like they tried to shove everything in there, while this episode only focuses on the most important parts. It was far less cluttered.

This analysis felt less focused on powers and more so on story and character. The same goes for Yusuke too. We still get all the power scaling related stuff, but it was more about how similar these two are as characters. How they start as rough teenagers, their capacities for growth, how similar the premises are although that one is self-evident, their bonds with their friends. I already knew the connections between the two, but the analysis put a big spotlight on them.

There’s a reason for that. This fight is kind of comically one-sided, and they did not try to hide it. They didn’t play it up like with Super Friends Aquaman, but it was still made very clear who the winner was going to be. Everyone knew that going in. There wasn’t even much of a waiting period because we were all certain of the victor. The only debate was whether Death Battle would buy certain high ends, which would only turn it from a stomp to an absolute slaughter.

People didn’t want this for the debate. They wanted it for the thematic connections and to see two similar characters go at it. Death Battle knew this. They gave us the rundown but they knew we knew going in on who was going to die. So they focused more on the story and the characters which is exactly the right move to take. They understood the assignment for this one.

I definitely found these analyses more engaging than past episodes featuring these series. It was less dense, more interesting and had less emphasis on skits and jokes. Past episodes put me off Bleach, this one helped, well not sell me because I don’t think I’ll ever be into it, but I get the appeal now. And Yu-Yu-Hakusho looks cool too. Honestly based on this it’s easy to tell Yu-Yu-Hakusho is the better series, at least for me. I prefer older Shonen in general though so…

Aside from that, the pacing was good if a little fast paced, black boxes were used effectively, the editing is really good in how they try to emulate each series style. It’s a very good analysis. I don’t want to give too much away since I need to save some stuff for the conclusion. So, good analysis, did its job, moving on.

Fight Animation

Ok I’m going to get my big complaint of this out of the way; a lot of this fight looked a little off. This is the first sprite battle in fifty years and for the most part it does look nice, but the early sections have this pixelated look, like more so than usual for sprites, which was especially evident for the close up shots. The background I think is the main culprit though. That thing looked super pixelated and I can’t tell if it was an art style decision or if it was an issue with brightness, because it did look very oversaturated, but it wasn’t easy on the eyes.

But the thing is the fight only looked off in the opening. It starts with the two in a city and that is the thing that threw me off. That thing looked rough as hell, and not in the usual way. More in the I don’t this was rendered properly way. I don’t know what they were going for with it but I didn’t like it.

They don’t spend to long in there though. after some brief fighting and showcases of their abilities, including the highlight of Yusuke shooting Ichigo in the dick, best part of the episode right there, we get a big Hollow attack. That part was great, it was animated well and it was cool seeing Yusuke one shot the thing. They definitely gave him more hype moments in this which, he honestly kind of needs.

After the city section is where the fight picks up. The backdrops become less painful on the eyes, and we start to see more of their abilities and forms. I like the transformations were more informed by they’re characters. Yusuke rejecting help from his dad, and Ichigo welcoming help from the Hollow guy, I don’t care to remember the name sorry. Not only did both look cool, but it was nice to see a contrast in how both reacted to the transformations.

The fight is a tad short so we don’t see all of Ichigo’s transformations like in the Naruto fight, but that’s a good thing. Like with the analyses that fight felt cluttered with too many abilities. That’s an interesting thing with the anime battles. In the early seasons they tried to shove in as much as they could even if it killed the pacing of the fight. In more recent seasons they’re a lot more deliberate and only focus on the main important forms and powers. Is that better or worse? I’ll leave that up to you, it’s just an observation.

One issue I have with this fight in particular is that it’s hard to think of specific things to talk about. Because it feels like a lot of the other anime battles in the show. I’ve already gone on record saying these are the episodes I look forward to the least and part of the reason is that a lot of them kind of feel the same to me. They all look like fast paced brawls with overly flashy effects. Unless you mix them with something like Dio vs Alucard being horror themed they all just kind of blend together for me.

The one part that saves this for me from being indistinct is the personality. I really like how these two work off each other. They’re both rough teenager but in different ways and the contrasts work off each other well. There isn’t too much banter between them, but the dialogue is well done, and they seemed to keep them mostly in character from what I can gather.

The voice acting is fantastic too. Nick Landis, that’s Lanipator from Team Four Star for those unaware, did Yususke. Lani is a huge YYH fan, he even had his own abridged series briefly, and you can tell he was having a blast voicing this. He just brought a ton of energy to the role, and I dare say it might be his best performance. It was great. Ichigo was voiced by a guy named Adam Park. No idea who that is, must be a no name they pulled in off the street, but he sounded great. His Ichigo was spot on. His impression of the official voice actor was near flawless. It’s almost as if they were the same guy. Wonder how he would do as Vash the Stampede.

The fight track is also… actually I gotta complain about this. The song itself is fine, it sounds nice and fits the matchup well, but it’s another fast-paced rock track with vocals. Does anyone miss the instrumental tracks. I do, or at least I miss when we had variety in the music. I know the vocal tracks are the ones people love, but that’s because they used to be rare. We didn’t get them often which made them special. Now there are too fucking many of them. I think every episode last season had one. it certainly felt that way. I just wish they would dial these back a bit because they’ve overused them and they don’t feel special anymore.

It was a decent fight. It had plenty of hype moments, personality, and it had a lot of references to both series for fans. Now I am not a fan of either so I have no idea how people will react to it. I have a very bad track record on that, but I think this will do it for most fans. As long as they don’t expect to see absolutely everything.

Again, it can look off in places. The pixelation is ridiculous and they used some 3D stuff that doesn’t work all that well. They probably should have stuck to hand drawn and sprites since those were more consistent, but I still think it looks ok. It had some cool moments and flashy effects which is what I expect from anime battles. The kill was a little weak, it didn’t even feel like a kill, but the ending was big and felt satisfying enough. The framing for the end shot was cool at least.

Results

Ichigo won. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. it was more predictable than a sunrise. Honestly I don’t even know why they bothered with categories when even they admitted it all came down to power and Ichigo swept that. It reminded of that Simpsons beer contest where the third round had 75% of the points which made the first two a complete waste.

Yusuke only got tactics and even that was shared. You couldn’t give him one pity category. You gave one to Master Chief. As funny as this stomp is, it did feel like this episode was an apology for previous Bleach episodes. A lot of fans of that show weren’t fans of how the show was scaled, and this episode felt a correction for that. They seemed to properly buy into planetary Bleach, and universal? Maybe?

That’s the funny thing. Despite it being clear they were buying Uni Bleach it was still vague enough that it could come across as planet or solar system. Uni bleach is contentious so I don’t blame them for skirting around it, but it’s weird that they were obviously talking about it while still being non-committal about it. Not much more to say, I just thought it was funny.

Conclusion

Ichigo vs Yusuke is a decent start to the season. Personally I prefer matchups with an actual debate to them, but this is a good example of how to make a stomp battle work. If it’s obvious the debate won’t be interesting, at least show why these characters are interesting. Why the match-up works thematically.

It does a good job at that. The fight does look rough at times, and it is weird how they danced around Bleach scaling, but overall, I enjoyed it. It’s not the strongest season opener, but it’s definitely better than the last two we’ve had. Next time though is, a moment I have dreaded for a while. Time to bite the pillow, because it will be rough.

Score 7/10