I just watched the Death Battle by ScrewAttack between Ace from One Piece and Natsu from Fairy Tale. If you haven't watched it already, I highly recommend you do so before reading any further as this post will be talking about a number of things that didn't sit right with me.
First and foremost, however, I want to stress that I'm not mad about the outcome by itself. Before I saw the battle, I was thinking it could go either way in terms of what evidence Screw Attack used. Secondly, I don't have any strong feelings toward either character, as I don't read One Piece anymore and I never started on Fairy Tale. However, there are some things about this Death Battle that don't sit right with me and I want to talk about them while they're still relevant.
My first two gripes are with Natsu's moveset as a whole. The first is with devouring Fire, and the second is his ability to use Lightning. Firstly, I read some comments on this and did a little research and, to my understanding, eating Fire for Natsu does to his magic what eating actual foods does for a person's stomach: firstly, that there's a limited amount that someone can eat before it kills them, and secondly having too much can be bad for your health. The latter is more of a long term thing so I'm going to talk more about the former since that has more immediate consequences.
The thing about this eating fire thing, is that Natsu cannot eat fire forever. He can't gain unlimited power by eating fire. He simply eats fire to fill on his magical stomach. This wouldn't be such a problem normally, except for the fact that this was a contributing factor in why Ace lost. They said that Ace had to stop turning into fire so that Natsu wouldn't eat him, which is ignoring the nature of Logia Fruits as a whole.
You see, Devil Fruits are distinct from other power sources in One Piece in the sense that it is the only one that has pretty much no regard for the user's stamina. Depending on the type and ability, the Devil Fruit Power is either constantly active, or can be turned on and off infinitely without using up any energy, and while the former mostly just applies to Paramecia Fruits, the latter pretty much universally applies to Logias.
Logias have two major functions beyond turning into whatever element it is pertinent to: the first is that the intangible durability can make for an almost impenetrable defense. The only way this can be negated is if you're a superior user of Busoshoku Haki so you can bypass it or you simply have an ability that negates the defense entirely, Natsu possesses neither of these in Ace's case.
The second function, is that while the Logia user is in the form of their element, they can generate it infinitely, again with no regard for stamina. That's just how the Logia Fruit type works. What this means is that, since Natsu cannot eat Fire infinitely, all Ace had to do was just keep generating fire until Natsu hit his limit and exploded, or whatever happens with magic overload.
Of course, this factor doesn't stop Natsu from being immune to Fire, though this is somewhat confusing for me because, while some have stated Natsu is immune to fire entirely, many base this argument on the fact that he can eat it, so I'm going to put that to one side for now.
The other issue I have with Natsu's moveset is the lightning. My problem with it isn't so much that it's there to begin with but how he has access to it. The way Wiz and Boomstick described it, it gave me the impression that Natsu can't just use Lightning whenever he wants, he has to actually devour it or a lightning magic stone before he can use it. To me, this seems a little cheap because they gave him a move that, while they talked about it, gave no real way for him to use it in the fight.
Some have brought up that Ace should've used Haki. However, even if Wiz and Boomstick did know about Ace's ability to use Haki, that may not have mattered because Ace didn't rely on it all that much, he preferred to use his Devil Fruit most of the time. If Ace chooses not to use it in regular battle, he probably wouldn't use it here, so it makes sense that it's not a factor.
What was a factor that I felt was misrepresented about Ace, however, was how his intangible durability works. They described it as Ace having to make the choice to use it when he needs it. This is entirely false. Anyone who actually read One Piece up to the point Ace actually fights knows that most Logia Devil Fruit Users train so hard to make the intangible durability useful that it becomes automatic, like muscle memory, you do it in response to some stimuli without thinking.
This was the reason Logia Users were so overpowered for most of the series. Many of them mastered the transformation so well that some ways had to be introduced to negate that ability so they could be harmed. This means that, even if Natsu could attack Ace's body, he would have to negate the defense first since it is, as I said, automatic. For Ace, the active choice would've been to turn it off, not to turn it on.
Finally, I didn't particularly like the animation. While the pixel art style could have worked, they used too many NES style cutscenes that just made it look ugly in some places. Particularly, Ace burning to death didn't look the way it should have, even if we accept that Ace had to lose.
Am I upset? No. Am I biased toward Ace? I don't think so, though this post definitely won't help convince you. Am I happy about this outcome? Not really. As I said, I'm not particularly invested in this Death Battle because of the characters but I'm not invested in Death Battle in general because, when I know what facts they're using, I can point out exactly why they're wrong. Mostly, I'm confused about why they haven't lost any subscribers. I get that the people who agree are going to enjoy it. But if you know the flaws in each Death Battle and can counter them and these problems don't lighten up at all, as they haven't for the most part, I don't see a lot of reason why their viewership wouldn't be dwindling slowly over time.
That's all I have to say. Have a wonderful day.
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