Ah, god.

Really?

One of the longest, most beloved manga characters has his creator die, the future of his series left in question, the possibility of his decades of struggles never being resolved gets raised, and Death Battle sets him up to die against…some Fire Emblem dude.

He’s Lit. Lord Lit Eraly of Who.

God. The coolest match for Guts has always been Jack, because of the Western samurai vs Eastern swordsman theme, because of the chiaroscuro, because of agility vs strength, because Jack losing his armor halfway through the fight while Guts puts on his own would have been so goddamn cool just picture it happening in your head its so soul.

That was the Guts match. That Jack would stomp Guts was never a problem, because the fight would have been cool, and a respectful death for Guts is easy as pie to write into the fight. Just copy from Jack’s viking fight. He sees Guts go berserk in the armor, pities him, tells him his suffering will end, and kills him. Then he makes a little grave out of the dragonslayer and says a prayer over it. WATCH OUT, cut, print.

Everyone goes home happy.

After Guts vs Jack, you got Kirito vs Guts, which is just to troll, and I respect the troll game, I’m something of a salt farmer myself. Speedy is still crying and I got a claim on several of those tears.

After Guts vs Jack and Guts vs Kirito you get the uninspired matches, the matches without soul. You get Guts vs Ike because they both have big swords. You get Guts vs Marvel’s Black Knight because black swordsmen. These are the low energy matches.

Then you get Guts vs…Dimitri.

Ah, god.

If you had to feed Guts to a Fire Emblem character, couldn’t you have made it one that people care about? Couldn’t you have made it a classic lord and not someone from the post-Smash dating sim era?

Lame fight. Super lame. Even if Guts pulls off the upset and wins, it’s still lame that this is what they gave us.

Who Should Win

Guts should rip off Dimitri’s head. It’s a dude in armor that forces the wearer’s body to go on until all blood is drained from the body against a guy that died to spearmen. It’s a dude who struggles against big demon monsters against a guy that struggles against pikemen and archers. It’s a dude that fights solo with marginal assistance from his tagalongs against a guy that, by the fundamentals of his game, is backed by a sizeable army in all his confrontations.

Guts parries crossbow volleys. You know what happens when a bunch of bowmen shoot at Dimitri? He gets hit.

Who Will Win

You know how in CU vs DB they went on a big spiel about how the gameplay doesn’t matter to DA LORE, which was the CNN way of saying “We know what we’re saying is bullshit, but our brainworms prevent us from being honest, so these characters can move faster than starships.”? They made CU, who gets winded after a sprint and a hop, capable of warp 5 fatty rolls because he can shuffle his bulk out of the way of a “light spell.” There are light spells in Fire Emblem. They can miss. You see where this is going?

What’s the most you can Swank Guts speed to? Lightning, maybe? That means he’s fighting a guy several thousand times faster than himself. Fighting someone that’s just twice as fast as yourself is a death sentence. You might as well not be moving relative to them. Lighting vs light means lightning gets hit a bazillion times before the first neuron in lightning’s head goes off.

Sure, we know after Speedy’s meltdown that consistency isn’t a major priority for Death Battle anymore and that they will reevaluate characters and stats at a whim, or more accurately, whenever one of the characters is their waifu, but I don’t see them not making Dimitri light speed, not after CU. That’s too big an inconsistency, even for them.

And then there are other elements at work. Dimitri can heal, because he’s an rpg character, so he’s going to be given a few vulneraries. Guts can’t heal. The best he can do is a quasi-regeneration where his armor smushes his body back together, but that’s not real healing, that’s more his armor acting like a very insistent body cast. Dimitri also has spells, because all modern JRPG characters are bland ciphers that can learn everything and cast everything and they suck and if you play them instead of the classics you are committing self abuse and I pity you. So he can spam spells while Guts is limited to a crossbow and a one-sh0t cannon. Guts isn’t winning at range.

OPS

Guts

4

Casual Advantage (He’s Guts!)

Archive Advantage

Is the older character

Worst preview

Dimitri

3

Midwit Advantage (He scales to the guy that scales to the guy that scales to the dragon in the crossover!)

Is smarter

Is losing in the sneak-peak

In Summation

I hate this match. Guts should win. He won’t. But maybe he will since Speed0 went mask off in his meltdown and revealed Death Battle runs on Who’s Line logic. Read my ghost stories, the recent one has Bass Reeves shoot a chupacabra.