DEATH BATTLE!

DEATH BATTLE! is a very popular web-based video show hosted by "Wizard" (Ben Singer) and "Boomstick" (Chad James) presented by ScrewAttack. The show pits two or more fictional characters from different medias such as movies, comics, manga, television programs, literature, video games, and even PSAs and create a simulated battle to the death. The characters are analyzed with their respective powers, strengths, and weaknesses, to determine a winner.

On February 4, 2019, ScrewAttack announced that they changed the name of the channel to keep up with the YouTube landscape.

Why It Wins A Death Battle

 * 1) The biggest thing that draws people towards the show is the concept of dream crossovers clashes coming to life, not only having the featured combatants duke it out using their full skillsets and arsenal, but also interact and exchange banter with each other.
 * 2) * Some of the show's best battles subvert the "rivalry" gimmick, and instead have the fighters respect and compliment each other's skill, with the killing blow just being an unfortunate consequence of not holding back rather than actual murderous intent. Good examples of episodes like these would be All Might VS Might Guy and Yoda VS King Mickey.
 * 3) * On the flipside, when it's a battle between villains, it can be very entertaining when they are both equally disrespectful, and have absolutely zero concern for any lives that may be lost in the crossfires of their fisticuffs. Good examples of episodes like these would be Goku Black VS Reverse Flash and Omni-Man VS Homelander.
 * 4) Many of the matchups featured can be very interesting, with combatants that share enough similarities and contrasts to make their interactions with each other interesting.
 * 5) When the combatants are given dialogue, their voice actors do a great job impersonating iconic performances. Sometimes, they might even get the original voice actor to reprise their character.
 * 6) *In Ganondorf VS Dracula, Ganondorf is given a voice actor, despite the fact that he has never fully spoken in official media at the time, and yet, his VA, William T. Sopp (who also voiced Ramsey Murdoch in Epithet Erased), does an amazing job at giving him a fitting voice.
 * 7) Regardless of the outcome, both fighters and their respective series are respected, with many fanservice moments and Easter Eggs that those familiar with the combatants will enjoy.
 * 8) Sometimes, battles will feature more than 2 characters, making the interactions even more fun. Great examples of this would be Solid Snake VS Sam Fisher, Dante VS Bayonetta, Ratchet & Clank VS Jak & Daxter, and Power Rangers VS Voltron.
 * 9) The show is versatile, with many different styles, such as sprite animation, 3D animation, hand-drawn animation, and even live action on occasion. Saitama VS Popeye even manages to utilize more than one animation style for its battle, making the fight all the more grand.
 * 10) Battles are also accompanied with original music, usually composed by Brandon Yates and/or Therewolf Media. The battle music is always made to fit the tone of the fight, reference iconic tunes from the featured series, or be entirely original while still sounding true to the series they're representing. Some of the show's best scores include: Wings of Iron, Emerald Heroes, Mighty, and Ikari!.
 * 11) * Both Brandon Yates and Therewolf Media take music commissions, where they make scores for highly requested matchups that haven't happened yet. Two notable commissioned tracks include: This Heartless Empire and RatedAForAwesome, as both of which are over 10 minutes long, the former actually got used in a DBX, and the latter being a match between Death Battle Discord members.
 * 12) The hosts, Wiz and Boomstick, can be pretty entertaining, and their rundowns on the fighters may give people a newfound appreciation in characters they thought they were already familiar with, or even introduce new characters and series to them entirely.
 * 13) The Death Battle Crew are also very interactive with their audience, engaging in Community Death Battles where they debate over highly requested matchups on the Death Battle Cast, and if it has enough potential and a good enough demand, it might even become a full-fledged episode.
 * 14) Ultimately, the show is at its best when everything comes together to feel like a genuine crossover made by fans who truly appreciate the characters and series they're presenting. Here is a list of great episodes:
 * 15) * Solid Snake VS Sam Fisher
 * 16) * Ratchet & Clank VS Jak & Daxter
 * 17) * Power Rangers VS Voltron
 * 18) * Balrog VS TJ Combo
 * 19) * Samurai Jack VS Afro Samurai
 * 20) * Optimus Prime VS Gundam
 * 21) * Ganondorf VS Dracula
 * 22) * All Might VS Might Guy
 * 23) * Goro VS Machamp
 * 24) * Obi-Wan Kenobi VS Kakashi
 * 25) * Hulk VS Broly
 * 26) * Yoda VS King Mickey
 * 27) * Link VS Cloud
 * 28) * Goku Black VS Reverse-Flash
 * 29) * DIO VS Alucard
 * 30) * Saitama VS Popeye
 * 31) * Tanjiro VS Jonathan Joestar
 * 32) * For honorable mentions, here's some more great battles from DEATH BATTLE! 's spin-off show, DBX:
 * 33) ** Bendy VS Cuphead
 * 34) ** Lucario VS Blaziken
 * 35) ** Palpatine VS Xehanort
 * 36) ** Goomba VS Koopa II

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Early seasons' animation is sub-par when compared to later ones.
 * 2) Jokes delivered by the hosts can be very hit or miss, such as the overused Boomstick dad and beer jokes. At their absolute worst, they can be extremely mean-spirted towards the character they're covering, like the time they called Michelangelo a r*tard in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Battle Royale.
 * 3) The character rundowns can sometimes misrepresent a character. A few examples would be making Knuckles look like a total dumbass in Donkey Kong VS Knuckles, using the backstory and feats of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! instead of the actual games for Kirby in Kirby VS Majin Buu, and characterizing King Dedede as some goofy anti-hero in Wario VS King Dedede despite him being a true wholesome hero with a genuinely great early redemption.
 * 4) *There are also some factual/lore errors for the characters featured in the episodes. For example, in Godzilla vs. Gamera, they claimed that Godzilla died 4 times, when in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, his was still alive as his dismembered heart was still beating, and in Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla II, Godzilla wasn't dead -- he was paralyzed after Super MechaGodzilla destroyed his secondary brain located in his torso. He has only died in the original 1954 Gojira and Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. There are also several errors in Hercules VS Sun Wukong that were pointed out in an article written by an expert of Journey to the West.
 * 5) *Keep in mind this has nothing to do with powerscaling, just the way characters are represented. As DEATH BATTLE! has many viewers who get introduced to characters and their respective media of origin through the show, it's very likely many have gotten the wrong idea about the characters mentioned above (and more) purely off of what they have been shown.
 * 6) Fighters can be portrayed annoyingly out of character at times. Many of the battle scenarios start over petty reasons because of this, such as Character A stealing and/or ruining Character B's food. Sometimes, there isn't even any context given for the fight, such as Weiss VS Mitsuru, Miles Morales VS Static, and Flash VS Sonic. Having these iconic heroes become bloodlusted for petty or no reasons for the sake of a battle can feel disrespectful. One of the worst examples would be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Battle Royale, where the iconic brothers remorselessly kill each other in cold blood for no reason.
 * 7) The show has budgetary constraints on episode length and animation style, so some episodes may not do popularly requested matchups justice, such as Danny Phantom VS Jake Long and Steven Universe VS Star Butterfly being sprite animated rather than hand-drawn, and Macho Man VS Kool-Aid Man being extremely short, with the actual fight taking a backseat to the "Boomstick's Dad" storyline.
 * 8) *Actually, what the show deems worthy of which animation style can be baffling at times, for example: Blake VS Mikasa was intentionally animated on 2s to imitate the style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (source), however Miles Morales VS Static, the battle that actually features the protagonist of Into the Spider-Verse himself, was done in sprite animation instead! And Batgirl VS Spider-Gwen, which actually WAS done in 3D, wasn't animated on 2s and isn't stylized at all!
 * 9) *While this is a minor nitpick that may not be an issue for casual viewers, it's lame how the sprite animation never fully commits to the way sprites are actually animated in games, having the sprites rotate, sometimes being rigged like puppets, and sometimes having inconsistent pixel sizes. While this is excusable in earlier seasons, now most of the sprites they use are custom made specifically for the show, which raises the question: what's the point anymore? Danny VS Jake and Steven VS Star both used sprites, but they were animated as puppet rigs and the sprites were custom made to imitate the style of the shows, so why not go all the way? It wouldn't cost more to have the assets be hand-drawn, in fact, it would likely take less time than doing it pixel by pixel, only to be animated using the same techniques as animating a hand-drawn show!
 * 10) Sometimes, they use fan-made sprites and renders without giving proper credit. A few examples of this are Godzilla VS Gamera and Bowser VS Ganon.