Shigaraki vs Mahito Death Battle Review

Ok, this is something a bit new for the site. Let me explain. I’m a big fan of the internet show Death Battle, and I’ve been one for a long time. In fact I have followed the series going back to the days where they were Screwattack. It’s one of the few internet shows I ever got into next to the Angry Video Game Nerd and Nostalgia Critic. Yes, I am really that fucking old.

Anyway, for the past few years I’ve been doing reviews of recent Death Battle episodes. But not on the site, the reviews were instead uploaded to the Death Battle Fandom wiki since it made a bit more sense to upload them there. However, the people running that wiki have switched to a new site and are essentially abandoning the old one.

The fandom is still up, but it’s only a matter of time before it shuts down. I could just upload the reviews to the new site, there is a blog function there, but I find the new site to be cumbersome and just an active pain in the ass to use. It just doesn’t seem worth learning it to upload reviews that I only write every couple of weeks.

So fuck it, I’m just going to start uploading this to my own blog. I understand how it works, and I can just post a link to the new sites comment section anyway. It’s easier for me that way. Bit disappointing I have to do this, but I always treat these set backs as a fresh start; a clean state for which to start anew. And I can think of no better place to start than an episode that I had little interest in.

Boy, do I know how to time things poorly. Ok, full disclosure, I wasn’t looking forward to reviewing this even before the site change. These are usually the episodes I look forward to the least, the anime episodes. I am not an anime fan. There’s a few I like, Dragon Ball, Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, but the anime I love tends to be a lot of the older stuff from the 90’s and 2000’s.

A lot of this new stuff just doesn’t appeal to me. Except Jojo but that itself is based on an old manga, so calling it new is a stretch. I just don’t follow modern anime. I don’t know this Jujutsu Academia shit. I recognise these shows have their fans, and I even understand the reasonings behind them, but they just don’t appeal to me. I can’t stand most Shonen outside of Dragon Ball and One Piece, so having to look at an episode featuring those are usually the ones I get the least hyped about.

But I would remiss if I didn’t review it. I’ve reviewed every other episode over the past few years, including ones like this so why stop now. Plus, I usually do at least enjoy the episodes when they come out. They aren’t my favourites, but they are usually a fun time. It’s not like I’m going into this like a bitter old man yelling at clouds; I’m going into this with an open mind.

And I did hear that a lot of people were looking forward to this. Shigaraki and Mahito are very popular villains that have a lot of thematic connections with powers that are very similar. It was a matchup that a lot of people want to see, and I can see why. Although it wasn’t for its debatability. Everyone agreed going in that Mahito was grade a screwed, and spoiler alert but yeah, he got fucked more than a white chick in a black porno. This is not a spoiler; this was an accepted fact going in.

That’s another reason why I wasn’t looking forward to it. I knew the result going in. I usually like episodes with a bit more debate behind them. But I can still enjoy the analysis and animation at the very least. So why don’t we stop waffling and get into this.

Analysis

As someone only vaguely familiar with both series I’m not sure how well the analysis goes over each character. But from where I’m sitting it did good. It covered their abilities, backstories, personalities and world views well enough so that even newbies like me could follow along.

These two have really messed up backstories, well ok Shigaraki does, Mahito was just born an asshole. Which does create an interesting contrast that is brought up much later in the episode. It’s basically a broken kid taught to hate the world by an uncaring society vs a nihilist who hates the world because “nothing matters man, it’s all one big joke”. So basically Joaquim Phoenix Joker vs Heath Ledger Joker.

Death Battle do a good job of covering how screwed up these too are. They don’t make light of them and play them straight. While both characters are pretty dark, they’re also kind of cringy. Intentionally so from what I can gather. It is not hard to make fun of them.

But no, they do take them seriously enough. They still poke fun at how goofy and cringe these two can be, but when they cover the serious moments, they do take them seriously. Even describing the underlying tragedy of each character’s story. The final parts of each analysis were kind of poignant. Showing how deep down these two were just a pair of frightened kids. It actually made me a bit more interested in them. I’m never going to watch their series, but I at least have more respect for them.

But Death Battle is more about the powers and abilities. It’s not a character analysis show. Well, ok it kind of is but more so power scaling and not story analysis. It’s more focused on how hard they hit is what I’m saying. In that respect the analysis was great.

These two have insane power sets and they were able to cover most of it very efficiently. The pacing was tight and it didn’t feel like it wasted time on frivolous things that were unimportant to the matchup. From what I understand they went over pretty much everything. Then again, I’m not a fan of these series so I wouldn’t know if they skipped anything. But as far as I know they did not.

As is typical for shonen anime characters the powers are kind of nuts. I knew the basics of what they could do, but man do these guys have weird powers. You’ve soul manipulating shit, Shigaraki has like thousands of souls in him, there’s Mahito having the body of a frigging cartoon character, and the hands, oh do they have so many hands. It’s weird. I’m not critiquing Death Battle for that, that’s on the source material. These shows look bonkers.

But what I will critique them on is that, while the episode is great at getting through as much as possible quickly, the pacing is so fast it  hard makes it hard to process everything for people unfamiliar to the franchises. This has been an issue with Death Battle for a few years, and this episode is far from the worst example of this, but I do wish they would make analysis segments longer just to give them more breathing room.

But these were good analyses. They went over the powers and backstories well, the editing is really good, I love how they make the manga panels come alive in this, and the pacing keeps things going without wasting any time. The analyses aren’t mind-blowing, but they’re solid good work with not many flaws.

Fight Animation

This is where the episode starts getting real good. The fight animation in this is a lot of fun. It has a lot of big crazy moments, it captures the characters well, and the animation is damned impressive. Which isn’t too surprising considering it was done by Moro. The same guy who did Bowser vs Eggman which is the beat Death Battle episode ever made.

Shigaraki vs Mahito isn’t as good as that one, it is very hard to top perfection, but it still shows Moro’s sheer skill as an animator. It takes place on a subway, which is a fitting setting for the fight since it fits both characters well and it let’s them use the setting in fun ways. It starts out on the terminal, then they go onto the tracks, then they go into a train and fight inside it, they do pretty much everything they could with it.

And these transitions usually happen when the fight escalates. The terminal part is when they’re just warming up, when they get on the tracks is when some of their more powerful abilities start coming out, and the subway segment involves their super forms and ultimate abilities. So aside from adding variety to the setting they also use it to properly show the increasing stakes of the fight. It’s nice seeing a more grounded depiction of this. Tou know something that doesn’t involve mass levels of destruction.

It also adds to the story telling of the fight. It starts with Mahito killing people on the terminal and Shigaraki trying to get him to join his group. They even frame the fight as an audition. But obviously Mahito is a massive dick so it goes from Shigaraki trying to recruit him to trying to end his cringy ass. Even the ending ties more into them breaking down their characters with Mahito mocking Shigaraki for being a frightened kid and needing to grow, only for Mahito to slap the uno reverse card and do the same to Mahito.

I like Death Battles with some kind of a narrative like this. Where there’s an actual reason why these characters are fighting other than just to fight. Shigaraki vs Mahito is very good at that mainly because it captures both characters very well. Mahito is basically the Joker, he’s constantly smiling and laughing it up, while Shigaraki is acting all dark and mysterious. The personalities contrast each other very well and there’s some very entertaining banter between the two.

The voice acting is great too. Tom Schalk and Sean Chiplock both did fantastic as Shigaraki and Mahito respectively. Especially Chiplock. You can tell he was having a lot of fun with this role, as he should because Mahito is a very over the top character. Those are the most fun characters to play. I don’t mean to undermine Schalk though. He really added a menace to his performance but one that made it feel like an act. Like it felt like Shigaraki was trying to act tough which does fit his character.

There’s a lot to love about the animation. The camera work is exceptional. Moro got some really great angles here, and the lighting was equally as impressive. It had a nice moody ambience to it, and the scene where they enter the train and the lights hit them was just a very cool sequence.

There’s a lot of little touches in this to love. Like when Shigaraki starts talking and Mahito shirks back since he was surprised he could be seen. That was a nice detail that added to the storytelling. I also love that Shigaraki starts the fight on his phone, I don’t know why I just thought that was funny.

Another thing to love was all the stuff going on. This was something Bowser vs Eggman also did really well, throwing as much in as they could. They do the same here though obviously not to the same degree You have Shigarki having his minions fight, there’s all their different powers and abilities, and the hands, oh there are so many hands. The fact they threw in so much and still had so much detail in the animation shows how good an animator Moro is and how much passion was put into the fight.

My favourite part is the subway fight when they enter into their super forms. The choreography of that entire bit was top notch. It felt like something directly out of Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Which is something I have to credit the episode for. It does capture the spirit of both shows.

I think the overall tone leans more toward JJK. The opening with Mahito murdering civilians is something you would see out of that, right down to the gore. But there is some MHA in there too. They throw in enough to make it feel like a proper mashup of each series. At least based on what few things I’ve seen of them. I’m probably not the best one to opine on that.

And I suppose that is something that holds the fight back for me. While the fight animation is great on a technical level, because I’m not a fan of either series I was also not super invested in it either. I admit this is the most subjective thing, but it is hard to get that into something when you have no interest in the source material. It’s like a guy who hates comic books watching Batman 89. They can still enjoy it because it’s an awesome movie, but they’re not going to be as invested in it as a fan of the Batman comic.

That’s how I feel about this. The fight is great on a purely technical level, it’s honestly one of the best animations the show has ever had, but I’m not as into it as others because I’m just not a fan of either series. Let me put it like this, Martian Manhunter vs Silver Surfer has a much worse animation, but I enjoy that one more because I enjoy those characters more. I vibe with that fight better despite acknowledging that it’s worse.

Again, very subjective. I know plenty are going to disagree on that, but those people were probably fans of JJK or MHA in the first place so that kind of proves my point. And really if my only complaint is that I’m not as invested in it as other fights, then I don’t really have much to complain about do I.

But if I had to critique something, I guess I’d say the ending is a little abrupt. Not the kill, that’s great. Seeing Mahito run away like a bitch was a perfect encapsulation of this matchup and a great reference to his final fight in the manga, and him running as the little head was just funny. That legit got a laugh out of me.

But I felt like it could have lingered on the final shot to give it a bit more of an impact. It’s a cool shot, but it ends too soon to appreciate it. I’m also not really sure what was going on with the All For One scene. I get it’s supposed to show Shigaraki’s defence for his soul being targeted but it was a little confusing. Maybe it makes more sense if I watched the show.

Also, I did not care for the fight track. It’s not a bad track, it fit both characters well and it sounded nice, it just didn’t stand out much to me. With all the bangers we’ve had in recent episodes this one was a little weak. I may need to listen to it again, but I don’t think my opinion will change much.

That’s all I have for complaints though. This fight doesn’t get much wrong. Even its weaker elements are still good, hell at its worst it’s better than some episodes at their best. I don’t know how fans of these characters felt about it, but if I really enjoyed it I’m sure they will too. Even Mahito fans should despite him losing, which leads me too…

Result

I’m not going to linger on this because, what is there to linger about? Shigaraki took this handily, pun very much included. He stat stomped so hard it’s like Omni Man vs Homelander all over again and he had counters for pretty much everything Mahito had. Everyone agreed he won so unanimously I was actually hoping Mahito would win just to see the reaction it would get.

But no, not even Death Battle could bullshit a Mahito win. They tried to give him some advantages like survivability and said the powers made for an interesting debate, but no. No this victory was more clear cut than Gojo’s corpse. Even the analysis made it clear that Shigaraki was the nuke against a coughing baby. It was such an obvious stomp even the thumbnail gave the winner away. Seriously you have Shigaraki laughing while Mahito is in pain, how much more obvious could it be.

There really isn’t much to question here. They covered pretty much all the bases they could here, at least as far as I’m aware, and left no room for doubt. It’s internally consistent, most people agree with it, I don’t have much to say on it. Let’s just wrap things up.

Conclusion

Shigaraki vs Mahito is a very good episode of Death Battle. It’s got a solid analysis, the fight animation is damn spectacular, and it has a conclusion that’s pretty on the ball. There really isn’t much the episode gets wrong, and it does some things extremely well.

But I didn’t love it. I like it quite a bit, but I wouldn’t call it a personal favourite. Again, it’s purely because I’m just not an anime fan. I can only enjoy something so much when it’s about a medium I’m not too keen on.

You may think that’s unfair, but it’s not. Sometimes part of reviewing something is acknowledging something is well made but also that it didn’t connect with you. It’s easy to say something sucks just because you don’t like it, but that’s not always true. Sometimes a piece of media just isn’t made for you and that’s ok.

Hell there are probably Death Battle episodes I personally love that you feel the same way about. I love Black Adam vs Apocalypse, and most people would just call that ok at best. Why? Because the matchup didn’t interest them as much as it did me. Just as Shigaraki vs Mahito didn’t interest me.

All that being said, yeah this is still a great episode. The fight animation alone makes it worth a watch, and I really hope they keep Moro around because he is one of the best animators they have. If he doesn’t do Ash vs Yugi, I’ll be pissed.

Next time is Master Chief vs Doomslayer. And I am very interested in that matchup. It’s a rematch that’s been long overdue and I can’t wait to see what this is like with better scaling and animation. Especially with all the new stuff they’ve had.

And since these reviews are new to the site, I might start uploading my old reviews from Fandom onto here. Although my older reviews are much worse, so I might re-review those episodes. Maybe I’ll even review the older episodes I haven’t talked about yet. I haven’t decided yet. But if you’re interested in that let me know.

Score: 8/10