Yuji vs Denji Review

Why have there been so many anime battles recently. Seriously it feels like ever since the start of the independent era we’ve had nothing but anime episodes. That’s a bit hyperbolic I will freely admit, but it’s not hard to feel a bit fatigued with the amount of anime episodes the show has had recently. It’s arguably worse than when they overdid Marvel vs DC a few years back.

The sad part is that the poor planning has put this episode in a weird spot. It’s one of the bigger new anime match-ups that’s been highly requested for a while now, but not only is it releasing during a time of anime oversaturation on the show, it’s also debuting not long after another episode featuring a character from one the series represented in it. An episode that nobody wanted, was only done because it was big on twitter for a week, and one that blew up in Death Battles face. Yall better have learned something from that.

But yeah, Yuji vs Denji. Jujitsu Man vs Chainsaw Man. I have to admit even as a guy who doesn’t care for anime this was one I was looking forward to. Even I have to see how perfect a MU it is thematically and debatably, and the last JJK vs CSM episode wound up being pretty good, so I had high hopes for this one.

So yeah, even I was looking forward to this. Which should tell you everything you need to know on how good the MU is. The only question now is whether the execution was on point. But there’s only one way to figure that out so let’s just cut the bullshit, with a chainsaw preferably, and get right into this.

Analysis

So, I find these analyses interesting. See whenever Death Battle covers a new franchise on the show they usually like to start with the main character. Not always mind you, but these days they usually introduce a new series by either covering the protagonist or at the very least a major side character.

They do this largely because it makes it easier to introduce the setting and power systems of those series. Since let’s be honest the protags are usually the most straightforward and, well boring isn’t quite the right word but they aren’t as interesting as other characters let’s just say.

But in this case both series have been on the show before. So a lot of the basics have already been covered. As a result, they don’t really go over the basics of either series because you likely already know them by now. Plus if you were a fan of this MU you probably already know how JJK and CSM work.

That doesn’t mean they don’t go over that. They still need to explain curses and devils for filthy casuals like me who don’t watch anime. It’s just that they don’t dwell on them for long. They say what they are and quickly move on to the next section. It doesn’t go into that much detail on stuff like the story and only focuses on the major abilities and techniques these guys have.

This is honestly fine. It means the analysis cuts, heh, a decent pace and doesn’t feel dull. The problem is it goes by so quickly it can be difficult to keep track of everything. They slow down for the important parts though which meant I was able to follow the logic of the episode. It helps they saved some of the calculations for the results instead of the analysis.

This helps the pacing and does address an issue I have with some episode making it too obvious who the winner was going to be early on. Granted some parts were still obvious, them not showing Denji’s speed was a big giveaway on who was faster, but I like this approach. Cover what these guys can do in the analysis but keep the hard numbers for the end. I think it makes the battles more interesting since you’re left guessing on who wins.

One issue I do have with the analysis, and this also goes for the results section too, is the sheer number of black boxes. Seriously they’re fucking all over the place in this episode and honestly a lot of what they covered probably should have been part of the main analysis. A lot of it is supplementary arguments, going over higher end calcs and stuff like that, but things like Denji resisting the poison blood should have been covered in more detail. That was an argument I saw a lot of people bringing up and it probably should have been given more attention.

I understand the tighter budget they’re working with, but you guys can have longer analyses. Just have some segments with less animated editing so you can fit more stuff in. it would also allow you to slow things down and let things breath. I know I keep saying this shit, but that’s because they never learn. I just want them to get better.

I can’t really comment on how they handle each character’s story, but it seemed fine. They were respectful to both characters while still poking a little fun at them a little, and they do cover the themes of both characters arcs. Obviously there were spoiler abound, but they at least gave a warning about it.

Interestingly though, they mentioned they used a fan translation of JJK because it was closer to the original Japanese text. I have no idea what that’s about, is Viz’ translation bad or something? They’ve never really done this before. I hope they don’t rely on fan translations in the future since a lot of them can be wonky, but I like that they wanted to be more accurate to the original text. Say what you want about some of their conclusions, but you can’t say these guys aren’t passionate about what they do.

This was a great analysis. It was a bit too dense with the black boxes and was a bit too fast, but it was entertaining and respectable to the characters. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I enjoyed myself and at the end of the day that’s all that matter.

Fight Animation

Guys, we finally found it. An anime fight I genuinely loved. Well, ok there’s been a lot of anime fights I’ve loved, but I’ve been a lot more critical recently regarding them. A lot of them, at least to me, don’t really stand out that much. They all feel the same to me. But Yuji vs Denji manages to finally buck that trend by having one thing I find most anime episodes lack, personality.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. I am not an anime so maybe those other anime episodes have tons of personality; I just didn’t pick up on it. That is the problem though. If you need to be a fan of something to fully get into a fight featuring it, that’s a major flaw. Everyone should be able to jump into a fight animation and understand its own unique charm. If an episode fails at that, then it’s less interesting for non-fans to go back to.

This is what separates an All-might vs Might Guy from a Killua vs Misaka, a Ruby vs Maka from Bakugo vs Reze. Simon vs Kyle is probably the former, while Ichigo vs Yusuke is the latter. You may disagree with me, but this is all subjective. It’s hard to pin down this kind of thing objectively. To simplify things, some episodes you vibe with and others you don’t. And I vibe with this a lot.

First, the banter is great. These two have great chemistry in their clashing personalities that makes the character interactions really fun. Yuji is more the straight-laced guy, the straight man who keeps things serious, while Denji is the wild card who runs around screaming like a fucking maniac. Michael Malconian and Corey Holland both capture these personalities perfectly in their performances, and the fight just has this really fun and kinetic energy to it.

It’s fittingly over the top, but also a lot more grounded than most anime battles get. It actually reminded me a lot of Mahito vs Shigaraki and Miles vs Deku. It’s an anime fight with the kind of fast paced action you want but keeps things grounded just enough to give what happens more impact and weight.

The fight never felt too short either. It’s not a long fight, but it was paced so well that it didn’t feel short in the slightest. It was just right. It packs so much into it that it never felt like anything was missing.

The animation also had some incredible camera work. They took advantage of it being 3D and had a bunch of dynamic angles, camera movements and just some awesome shots. The highlight being Denji walking through Shrine, man was an aura farming demon with that shot. Holy crap.

The animation style is awesome too. It’s in 3D but it uses cel-shading to gift it a 2D look. A very scratchy 2D look that makes it feel stylistically similar to both series own art styles. The animate in two’s thing I don’t always like, but it really works for this specific fight.

Plus it’s nice to have an anime fight that’s a little more violent. We see them get apart and there’s a decent amount of blood. Compared to most other anime fights where things are kept pretty clean it was a nice change of pace.

It was also nice to have an anime fight be kept nice and straightforward without too many super forms or transformations. They still include all of Chainsaw Man’s forms, and the way they contextualised both was clever and made perfect sense. Adding to the escalation of the fight without relying on tired transformation tropes.

I don’t have many issues with the animation. I know there are criticisms that JJK fans are giving it based on how domain expansion is depicted and Yuji being out of character, but I can’t opine on these. Plus this is coming from Reddit and is following a very toxic waiting period of wall-to-wall slander, so take these with a grain of salt.

Then there’s the fight track. Infernal Combustion is a death metal style track and it’s awesome. Not only does it fit these two perfectly, but it’s a great high intensity track that adds to the chaos of the fight. We need more metal tracks on this show. Both because metal is awesome, and also because it really works in this kind of thing. Not for every fight obviously, but still.

I loved this fight. It had a great personality, it was stylish, it was intense, it kept you guessing on who would win, it had a great fight track, and it had two nut shots. Which is one more than most fights. If that doesn’t make it a top tier episode, I don’t know what will.

Results

So Denji was the ultimate winner here. This was what I was expecting based on the rumblings I heard, but this is one of those fights that has strong arguments for both winning. Which inevitably means there was no right answer and people would be pissed no matter who won. The best kind of Death Battle.

In short, Yuji fans are likely to be pissed. Fortunately for you, I am a complete neutral on this. So I can judge Death Battles argument simply for what it is, and it’s honestly fine. The categories were, Speed, Skill, Cut-Ability, and Power. Denji took speed and power, while Yuji took skill. No notes here since this is what most were expecting. I know some are questioning the Oregon sword feat but based on the information provided it seems legit. I don’t know, maybe it’s an extreme outlier or something, but it’s also one of those feats that’s so awesomely dumb that I can understand why they used it. you cannot have a character turn the entire state of Oregon into a sword and just ignore that for power-scaling. I know it makes no sense, but when has this ever-made sense.

The one category I will question is Cut-Ability. This is technically the Abilities category, but rather than just cover both characters abilities, they instead used it to go over how each of their powersets worked on each other. Basically, it came down to them saying Denji had a better healing factor, but Yuji had more range and options making it somewhat even.

it makes a little sense to discuss it this way. With Denji having the insane healing factor he had, it was more important to cover whether Yuji could actually do any lasting damage to him. But I feel doing it this specific way wasn’t the best way to go about it.

One of the major advantages Yuji has in this debate is his abilities and versatility. Not giving him those feels a bit unfair. It wouldn’t change the result, people like the G1 blog still had Denji winning with that, so I don’t know why they didn’t give him it. I think it would have been better to have an abilities category and a resistance category. Split this part up to make things clearer.

I could understand it well enough but doing it that way would have made it a lot more legible. I get they likely did it the way they did for pacing reasons, but it’s the weakest part of the argument. The argument itself is sound; it just could have been delivered a little better.

But it is internally consistent which for Death Battle is really all that matters. Ut’s a fine enough explanation. It was never going to please everyone with how close the debate was, and at least based on their s

Conclusion

I greatly enjoyed this episode. For me this is an example of a near perfect episode. I say near perfect because it obviously had drawbacks in it’s pacing and some of its argumentation, but it gets so much else right it’s easy to ignore the few flaws it does have.

The analysis covered everything it needed too, the animation was a ton of fun with great style and personality, the music and voice acting were top notch, the result was perfectly reasonable without too many gaping flaws, it did almost everything it needed to and did with flair. I am not a fan of these shows, but even I loved this episode. That’s how good it is.

It feels good to have an anime episode I got super into again. At least for anime I’m unfamiliar with. But luckily we got a change for next time as we finally get another Marvel vs DC fight. It’s been a while since the last one so this should be exciting. Or it would be if it wasn’t one of the most convoluted and insane MU’s they could have done. I’m going to need to bring a note pad for that one. I think I’ll need it.

Score: 9/10