Review: RED VS. BLUE: DEATH BATTLE: EPISODE 13: META VS. CAROLINA: DAWN OF AWESOME

That’s one hell of a title.

Spoilers Below

Terminator vs Robocop. Mario vs Sonic. Goku vs Superman. These are just a few of the cross-fiction brawls that many action fans have dreamt of but never saw…until a team banded together to finally show us how these fights would end. That show is Death Battle, a feature on Screw Attack.com that does the research and animation to settle these arguments once and for all. That said, the results are sometimes…disputed, let’s say. Whenever you try to give a decisive answer to how two characters from completely different stories would fight, there’s bound to be someone who says they would go a different way than proposed (For example, I admit that I’ve taken issue with their research on the Toph vs. Gaara fight).

In 2014, Screw Attack was purchased by Fullscreen, a company that had purchased Rooster Teeth around the same time. The following year, it was revealed that Screw Attack had been reorganized as a division of Rooster Teeth, along with Death Battle’s then-newest episode covering a fight between Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII and Yang Xiao Long from RT’s own show, RWBY. Fans thought this was a bit dubious at first, seeing as RWBY had only completed 2 full seasons and it seemed a bit soon to include any character from the show in a battle. This suspicion was not helped by the outcome of the fight, with Yang being the winner against fan-favorite Tifa. All in all, the fight seemed like a glorified ad for RWBY’s then-upcoming third season, set up for Yang to win regardless. Personally, the logic given at the end of the fight (that while both the combatants were known for being heavy hitters, Tifa seemed more of a glass cannon while Yang had shown clearly superior durability) seemed sound enough for me to accept. On top of that, RWBY series creator Monty Oum had tragically died earlier that year in his early 30’s of an allergic reaction, and had also been famous for his elaborate solo-animated fight scenes with not just RWBY, but RVB Seasons 8-10, and his own shorts Haloid (a fight between Halo’s Master Chief and Metroid’s Samus Aran) and Dead Fantasy (which featured a multi-part brawl between characters from the Dead or Alive and Final Fantasy video game franchises, of which Tifa was among them). With that in mind, it seemed more like a tribute to Oum’s work from two different points in his career, as well as a bittersweet acknowledgement that while RWBY would be continuing, it would be without him. He was a man of legendary resolve and talent, and we are all worse off with him gone.

This newest installment almost feels like a spiritual sequel to that, as Oum was also known for the landmark fights between the two combatants for this match: Agent Maine AKA The Meta and Agent Carolina of Project Freelancer. The former being the scariest thing about the Recollection Trilogy, the latter being the star across two time periods worth of story in the Freelancer Saga. The two had been among the most prolific brawlers of the series, but had never properly fought each other before. Luckily, this season of RVB is perfect for a scenario like that to take place, in by far the longest episode this season.

SPOILERS

We begin with using Grif and Simmons shooting the shit as usual for a fitting framing device. The two usual hosts of Death Battle, Wiz and Boomstick, arrive as reps from Command to host the imaginary fight. It kinda reminds me of the early days of the show where they were popular enough to have semi-famous people on in their own custom armor for commercials. Good times.

Of course, after the recap and analysis of their history, equipment, and skills, we have to talk about the fight itself, which is AMAZING. To make sure the fight is the best it could possibly be, we’re given them at their most powerful: Meta at the end of Season 6 when he had control over nearly every AI, and Carolina at the end of Season 13 when she had better tech and full partnership with Epsilon-Church. The fight takes place at the crashed Mother of Invention, the floating base of the Freelancer agents. After a few snarky jabs from her and Church, the fight starts in earnest with a volley of short, intense blows.

Then the weapons and upgrades come out, taking the fight to a whole new level. Every special move on the list flung around in a rush of sparks and gusts. Insurmountable strength, lightning fast speed, flawless camouflage, and everything in between. But who won? Well, watch to find out.

Though no matter who did, this was a great episode of both Death Battle and RVB. It’s the best use of Carolina since the end of Season 10, and great look back to the Freelancer storyline and the amazing work Monty Oum put into it back in the day. If you watch any single part of this season, make it this one.