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Ah, made it out of Beerus vs Galaxia with my record intact! I wonder what’s next?

 

Ah damn it…

 

The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 17

 

Prediction 4

 

Todoroki vs Zuko

 

…Really?

 

Damn guys. If you’re hurting this bad for matchups, just talk to people. 

 

There are so many fights this season that rank as throw-aways. This is another.

 

“Scarred teens with daddy issues,” come on. There are better themes.

 

Well. This one should be obvious. It’s the guy with fire and ice powers vs the guy with fire powers that considerably weaken in the cold.

 

Todoroki spams AOE glaciers, how can he lose? 

 

He can create giant, stadium-filling glaciers in an instant. He can do this quickly and nearly effortlessly. In a fight to the death holding nothing back, he’s going to turn the arena around Zuko into a slice of the North Pole. From the word go, Zuko is going to start weakening as Todoroki drops the temperature.

 

How can Todoroki possibly lose?

Well…it’s time to talk about lightning.

 

This is lightning. I present this video to you because the way people in vs battles talk about lightning, I don’t think they’ve ever actually seen it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vr_VTqs1eE

 

Lightning is really fast, yeah? It’s faster than you can blink. It’s faster than you can think. 

 

Just how fast is lightning?

 

About 200,000 mph..

 

That’s about 3,333 miles per minute.

 

That’s about 56 miles per second.

 

Think about what it would mean if you could move as fast as lightning. Really think it through.

 

In one second, you’d be able to cross 986 football fields. You’d be able to travel the length of Manhattan 4 times.

 

Lightning is really, really fast.

 

In real life.

 

In fiction, you can end up with situations like this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfa3kgZfsQY

 

Now, you could say that the lightning summoned and channeled by Emperor Mark Hamill there is moving slower than it would in real life. It follows his hands during his little warmup routine. We can see that it’s not as fast as real lightning. It’s not anywhere in the ballpark of real lightning. Even when he directs it at Zuko and Zuko raises his hand to intercept it you can see it’s not as fast as real lightning.

 

Unfortunately, Death Battle has a nasty habit of giving characters “lightspeed reactions” based on dodging lasers that are in no way as fast as real life lasers. They also like to do this for characters that dodge lightning.

 

They may very well argue that Zuko can move 56 miles in one second.

 

I had a feeling their habit would lead to problems eventually. It hasn’t been a problem for previous fights because typically you can find a case for an action character where some mook shoots a laser at the hero and the hero dodges. This was the case for Jason vs Leo and Danny vs Jake. They all got really stupid speeds.

 

But now we got a fight where it’s super-obvious that the guy that can use the power AND the weakness of his opponent should win but he’s never caught a lightning bolt.

 

It is such a sadness. “Well this CLEARLY was a laser because it made heat, traveled in an unbroken line, and reflected off surfaces.”

 

You want to know what the problem is with using proxy qualities to measure for the quality you want to measure? You aren’t actually measuring the quality you want to measure. It’s why when scientists measure an object’s speed they don’t look at how many flame decals are on the object. They actually measure the speed.

 

Also note, the fact that lasers in action shows make noise is somehow never brought up as a disqualifying characteristic.

 

Real life lasers don’t make a noise. No pew pew, no zttttttt, nothing. It’s a beam of light.

 

“Laser timing” and “lightning timing” are huge examples of special pleading. “No really, Leonardo the ninja turtle can move 56 miles in one second. They uh, slowed down the action for the benefit of the audience. Yeah.”

 

Special pleading example par excellence.

 

So Todoroki is screwed, right? They’re going to make Zuko faster than lightning and thus argue that Zuko can cut off Todoroki’s head with his sword in one faster-than-a-cruise-missile dash?

 

Ultimately, I’m still putting my chips down on Todoroki.

 

Even if Death Battle does go crazy and give Zuko “lightning timer reaction speeds,” they tend to conceive of “reaction speeds” as some sort of bizarre case-specific superpower.

 

Even though it’s absolutely nut-bars (and another example of special pleading!) Death Battle conceives of reaction speeds as:

 

1. Allowing a character to move at insane speeds but only to slightly move their hand or sidestep. Their speed somehow gives out after a few feet.
2. Never allowing a character transfer this insane speed into combat power. Leonardo may be able to move his hand fast enough to block a laser, but he (for some reason) can’t move his hand to strike with the force of an ICMB.
3. Never allowing a character to chain these faster-than-lighting sidesteps to move significant distances at the speed of lightning/light.

 

What I’m getting at here is that Death Battle is typically very specific about what “reaction speed” is allowed to do. Zuko might be able to dodge a couple of attacks, but eventually AOE glaciers are going to get him as he can’t “lightning step” more than a foot or so at a time.

 

Of course, there’s still a good chance we’re going to watch Zuko cut off Todoroki’s head.

 

I mean, after the absolute shitshow that was Gaara vs Toph anything is possible.

 

God, I’m going to be so pisssed if I have to turn in my perfect record card over Avatar characters being ruled to move 56 miles in one second.

 

But what am I worried about?

 

Hey, if I made it out of Beerus vs Galaxia with my record intact, I should be able to survive anything. Right?

 

Right?