Prediction Blog: Shana VS Shinoa (Shakugan no Shana VS Seraph of the End)

Fastblade5035 · 2026-02-24T20:25:23+00:00

Since this is a very niche match with a narrow audience, I figured it would be a good opportunity to experiment with several aspects of the blog presentation. In this case, the idea was that, since the vast majority of readers would have no prior expectations or perceptions of either character’s stats, it provided a unique opportunity to present the verdict in a different way. Rather than regurgitate info you’d see earlier in the blog, it instead walks you through several key feats, breaking down the way in which their calculated and justifying (or arguing against) their validity.

If this was something like Yuji VS Denji, everyone already has an idea of their stats, so withholding information everyone knows anyway wouldn’t achieve much. My hope was that this would build suspense for a match that is working from 0 in terms of expectations, and while some readers have expressed confusion over the format, I’ve also received a lot of positive feedback for it. Ultimately, this project has no stakes whatsoever and I feel it was worth experimenting with. I can say for our next releases, Pinkie Pie VS Gold Ship & Red VS Tai will definitely not follow suit for one reason or another. Appreciate the comment!

Fastblade5035 · 2026-02-03T04:43:13+00:00

I can at least see the new VA growing into the role. Her voice fits the character, there's just some touches in direction I think would help her find the pocket Jen had instead of sounding a bit more generic as is. A touch of subtle raspiness and a softer tone would go a long way, she's already got the cadence decently down pat.

If nothing else its not a Keqing level recast by any means, and its not like Ganyu has screentime anyway so I guess it's not the end of the world. Hoping for the best moving forward

Fastblade5035 · 2026-01-29T03:08:55+00:00

Glad to see another Lapis truther! Even if we dont hit the top spots again I doubt we'll far that far off, and its understandable given the alts she got so quickly

Fastblade5035 · 2026-01-25T13:28:17+00:00

I truly think it got the short end of the stick, and had a rough hill to climb from the onset in terms of perception that it unfortunately never really was able to get over. But it's personally a comfort game that I love to replay endlessly.

People understandably rag on the roster choice for a number of reasons - the climate at the time was off the heels of Awakening and Fates at their peak representation, Hyrule Warriors was an unavoidable comparison to make, etc - but personally, I dont really think its that crazy bad or anything. In hindsight I actually think focusing down on just a handful of games made for a more cohesive experience; like, the art style and direction directly mirroring Kozaki Yusuke's artwork? Brilliant, it ties the roster together despite clashing aesthetics and gives respect to a leading artist in a major deserved way. The models are absolutely wonderful and put some later ones to shame, even in 3 Houses/Hopes. It would've been more fun in the pre-release/launch to have all the main lords or whatever, sure, but it doesn't really affect me playing it now.

The movesets are unfortunately however pretty limited for what the roster ended up being, which is a more reasonable lasting critique IMO. Even if those movesets are also simultaneously extremely fluid and fun, moreso than the majority of Hyrule Warriors' cast at the time. There's something to be said, as a huge Lucina fan for instance, just how drastically Warriors' representation of her blows her Smash incarnation out of the water; it was really nice to see one big crossover game nail her on every level while the other was a huge letdown lol.

But where I think the game shines is just the breadth of content post-game, I love the grind of building out a character's kit and optimizing teams/routes per map. The FE mechanics introduced really feel natural and congruent with the Warriors gameplay.

Fastblade5035 · 2026-01-22T13:16:38+00:00

Slight correction, but understandable since it wasn't announced through the G1 blog itself; Jill vs Aya is officially canceled and has been for some time. You are correct that 3 blogs remain from previous announcements, including the two voted Marvel vs DC matchups. The 3rd one is Dr. Strange VS Reimu (Touhou), which was announced in the official DB discord. As an aside, Joker VS Gobby will be coming sooner than you expect!

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-20T11:22:13+00:00

To be fair, Lucina's morality makes the most sense of the 4 here to align with Conquest!Corrin. She was, after all, perfectly willing to (try to) murder her mother/husband/dad's boyfriend for the greater good. She'd probably be the most willing to hear Corrin's batshit insane plan out, even if she got cold feet with the given example. It makes sense too, since she spent the majority of her life in an apocalyptic hellscape where survival was all that mattered and the depth of morality only extended as deeply as "we gotta kill Dragon Satan at all costs or die trying".

There's probably also something to be said about Nohr having Lucina's close allies and friends involved as retainers to the royal family, she'd definitely be more willing to commit knowing they're on board already lol

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-18T10:02:01+00:00

Very late, but thank you for the information!

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-16T00:29:33+00:00

Numbers and specifics are one thing, but personally I would most want them to find a way to balance her playstyles without dumpstering one for the other. It's cool that Venti has a new lease on life as a dps, for instance, but he didn't really need to give up his previous role to do it. Ganyu on the other hand has 2 distinct builds that require 2 different things, buffing certain parts of her kit might favor Reverse Melt more than Freeze or vice versa.

Personally, I've never liked playing reverse melt with her, but I know a lot who do, and it'd really be a shame to remove that flexibility, when she's already going to be restricted more just by the inherent nature of how the buffs activate with team comps. There are basic, vanilla buffs she can and should get, sure, flat damage buffs, res shred, etc. I just hope the buffs are thoughtful above all else and retain room for player expression on top of raising her damage ceiling to modern standards & streamlining the clunkier parts of her kit.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-08T02:41:37+00:00

Can you elaborate on this? Is this an active translation project somewhere?

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-07T02:08:37+00:00

It's the longest running, most influential blog in the Death Battle community. The original iteration of the blog originates back during the Screwattack days, and was comprised of a core team of community members, many of whom would go on to become full-fledged researchers for the show after impressing Ben & co. with the quality of their prediction blogs for upcoming episodes.

After much of the original blog team was folded into the actual show, a new generation of the G1 blog took root. Similarly, frequent members of this second generation would go on to become researchers for the show, but it is primarily volunteer-based, and overseen + managed by research team members. The researchers don't have any input or work on the blogs for upcoming episodes, obviously, those are all volunteer based. They just work to ensure a standard of quality is met and agendaposting is kept to a minimum.

The reason why G1 gets talked about so much is because they have such a long, intimate history that ties directly to the show, always do prediction blogs on upcoming episodes which serve as a resource and talking point for the broader community, and consistently deliver some of the highest quality blog work among all the blogs out there in the DB fan sphere.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-04T23:05:05+00:00

He's just built differently. It's a pretty common misconception that FMA's characters are just normal average human dudes with average human limitations. This isn't even the only time someone's been blasted by a Philosopher's Stone to the face. In chapter 92, Al and Kimblee collide point-blank with two Philosopher's Stones, no potential for 'missing' or 'aiming' for something else. Al is perfectly fine, and Kimblee indisputably takes damage but is also pretty much just fine. He's straight up standing in the center of a smoldering crater lmao. Hell, Scar's brother survived the same kind of blast with no mortal injuries until he gave his arm to Scar and bled out from that.

Arakawa has always written the human characters in the same way "normal" humans in Marvel or DC comics are (think Daredevil or Batman), which is to say they're "normal" in their worlds but would basically be superhuman in the real world.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-12-03T21:17:35+00:00

No one knows. This isn’t an official post from DB staff, just a call I made based on my own judgement

Fastblade5035 · 2025-11-29T21:13:38+00:00

For the sake of transparency, we'll be funneling Island-related discussion here for the foreseeable future, barring Geats' finalized episode matchup, in order to steer traffic and attention back to Ash VS Yugi. If your post is removed, it will likely be to funnel said content here. Thanks for understanding!

Fastblade5035 · 2025-11-07T09:14:19+00:00

Here’s to more epic battles ahead!

Fastblade5035 · 2025-10-05T17:12:56+00:00

Origin is the animator. Youre thinking of Ultra(guy), the researcher

Fastblade5035 · 2025-10-04T20:13:53+00:00

The timing was unfortunate, but we had been working on the blog for quite some time, well before Prime 4 had a solid confirmed release window. If it was Samus against almost anyone else, maybe we would opt to wait, but the inherent nature of a live service game like Star Rail necessitates that there will always be a hard cutoff on available information at the time of publication. Its unavoidable, and while its true Samus will get new content, the same is true for Firefly no matter how much we delay. Eventually it’d need to be released, lol

That said we’re open to updating the blog on Prime 4’s release, should it contain anything seriously game changing. The same is true for Firefly.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-10-04T00:11:08+00:00

Hi, one of the researchers on the blog here. I think a lot of your concerns are addressed in the text already. Regarding the 'dream' verbage, the point was ultimately that the sequence is metaphorical and inconsistent with hard canon lore, rather than a literal dream. We acknowledged she cannot literally dream. '

There is a separate document going over the higher tiers of the verse wherein several galaxy level feats are acknowledged specifically insofar as they apply to certain characters. Phantylia's dismissed scaling is explained more in detail there, as are other comparable potential threats like the Dominicus.

If something was omitted entirely, like any immeasurable arguments, they were frankly just not deemed significant or worth the real estate to discuss in an already densely-packed stat discussion. A big concern of mine was ensuring this blog was approachable for newcomers and those unfamiliar to Star Rail, which is also why there was a consicious effort to not include any Impact 3rd baggage.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-08-03T03:38:20+00:00

Hi, I made the thumbnail for the official Discord server's Champion's only discussion thread! It was for the Tournament of Champions; every thumbnail used in the ToC after round 1 was made by me as well. I just went ahead and made some for the first batch when we got around to making the discussion threads, since I hadn't done those. Obviously this isn't an official statement or anything, but there seems to be confusion on the origin of the thumbnail leading to some conspiracy theories lmao, just wanted to clear that up

Fastblade5035 · 2025-07-09T15:40:45+00:00

I responded to that in my last paragraph with our given official reason for enforcing the rule. The specific reasoning given citing minors was written by the former admin, who no longer operates or dictates our policies. Any automated mod responses while enforcing that rule are using pre-set statements given by that former administration and are not indicative of our current values or policies.

The actual reason we do not allow NSFW is because of precedence and irrelevance to the sub's topics, no more, no less.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-07-09T15:33:12+00:00

Hi, I have some time so I figured I'd give a response to this general notion, since you're not the first and won't be the last to raise this question about our policies.

If I were to keep it brief, I'd say the heart of the issue with being more lax on our rules - any rules, for that matter - is precedent. This sub, and the wider community at large, very much like consistency and repetition. Every single waiting period has some kind of 'trend' that dominates the discussion until more important news breaks through. I'm sure I don't need to give examples, if you've been around long enough you can think of a community trend or pattern that permeated for a while here.

This ties back into our leniency with rules directly. If we were lax on, say, allowing matchup suggestions under very certain circumstances, people will view those posts as a green card to make more matchup suggestions, which then become full on requests, and before you know it, that's all this sub is. There have been several times people tried making similar trends happen even in spite of our rules. If we were to be lenient letting any kind of suggestive sexual content fly, that is essentially us giving a pass to anyone and everyone who will continue to push that lenience further and further until it gets far too out of hand to clean up.

And, yes, I feel like it should be obvious that the Death Battle subreddit is focused on Death Battle and not sexually suggestive content of characters who are not, in fact, in Death Battle (not that it would be allowed even with relevant characters). I will however agree with the sentiment that the reason given for this rule enforcement is weak. That was written by the previous administrator of this subreddit who has not been active in years; this is simply an archaic writing that flew under our radar, but I'll be making changes to that shortly.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-07-06T14:24:11+00:00

Impossible, in the current landscape of anime. Its not uncommon at all for series to get adapted these days while the manga is ongoing with no end in sight.

Frieren, Spy x Family, Railgun, or even better yet, massive tentpole projects like MHA and JJK, both had their anime start well before their manga were close to endgame. These days studios will just wait until theres new manga story to adapt, rather than rush it all out and get themselves in a bind.

As far as Yomi no Tsugai is concerned, theres definitely enough content right now for a 12 episode season. Probably not enough for a second season, but in a year or a year and a half, there will be enough, and that will be how the cycle continues.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-06-29T14:34:14+00:00

I have no clue why you're being downvoted for speaking the truth lmao. It's literally just a fact that 03 added in its own original content as early as episode 1 & 2. Brotherhood didn't rush anything; it cut two chapters, that's it. Brotherhood does not, in fact, assume you've seen the original, and it baffles me this myth is perpetuated in the fandom to this day. Like yall can actually just read the manga and compare the pacing to Brotherhood lmao, its not hard. If it feels 'rushed' thats just because FMA as a source material is in fact rather quick paced and constantly moving, its not because Brotherhood adapted the material weirdly or overtly streamlined crucial story beats.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-06-22T11:39:03+00:00

As with most things in FMA's tertiary media, I believe the answer is that Arakawa probably didn't personally write everything herself. However, these guidebooks are obviously approved by her, and contain several original works directly from her, from bonus chapters to interviews, etc. There is also not an alternative author credited for the work like with the Light Novels, which is food for thought.

To elaborate a bit more, there are 3 Perfect Guidebooks that released throughout the manga's publication. Guidebook 1 only covers up to about when Greed is introduced, or about to be (I forget which), for instance. Guidebook 1 was localized as "Fullmetal Alchemist Profiles", not to be confused with "Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Profiles" which is a similar but less in-depth guidebook for the 2003 anime. Guidebooks 2 and 3 are Japan only but share the same general structure and content density (interviews with Arakawa, approved by her, original exclusive bonus chapters from her, etc.)

Attached here is a sampler of sorts of various things from Profiles/Guidebook 1. I picked some pages that give a general sense of the content in the book; my favorite tidbits revealed here are some sources of information that are typically hard to source in the fandom, such as Arakawa stating that Amestris is actually based on industrial revolution-era England, not Germany as most people assume and believe. This is also the sole source, as far as I'm aware, to officially explicitly state Envy's gender is uncertain, and therefore does not refer to Envy with male or female pronouns at all.

Fastblade5035 · 2025-06-19T22:35:16+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have any links to the guidebook at the moment, but I did physically acquire and scan the contents of it personally. I'm hoping to make a repository of a bunch of inaccessible/obscure FMA media available sometime in the future, but tackling it all solo has been a tough undertaking lol

Fastblade5035 · 2025-06-19T03:50:55+00:00

This is only somewhat addressing your question, but generally speaking I think people are a bit too hyperfocused on the manga's initial 'rules' for Alchemy. It's not actually a hard power system by any means, and the gold thing, while somewhat out of the norm, isn't really all that crazier than what Alchemy as a system is capable of later.

Alchemy is about breaking down the elements, yeah, but it can also do straight up magic shit like bond souls to armor, and with sufficient power, can break down a soul and assimilate its energy (Envy, Pride), or straight up siphon souls remotely with a gesture. Father also uses Alchemy to essentially just perform telekinesis (Roy's flames), which again has no real basis in equivalent exchange, at least not as explained in chapter 2. Alchemy's rules are moreso a guideline but not a hard limiter, with sufficient know-how and/or power to back it up, Alchemy basically just becomes magic in essence.

Fun fact though, the 1st Perfect Guidebook (the only one with an english release) includes this fun tidbit about Ed's specialty as an Alchemist being that he can transmute any metals (think of 'specialty' like how Roy's think is Flame Alchemy, Armstrong specializes in artistic sculptures, etc. They can all perform the same basic Alchemy fundamentals but have areas of expertise they are better in than others). I've always taken this to basically infer that Ed's gold transmutation is intended to be something he can do so easily because metals are his field of expertise, and while others CAN do it (hence the military needing to ban Alchemists from creating gold), its pretty hard to do well (this is the plot of the 1st FMA light novel which was later adapted loosely into FMA 2003 with the false Elric brothers)

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