I Just Saw the Most Kick Ass Kaiju vs. Samurai Battle in Fate / Grand Order Babylonia!

While running through Fate / Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia a second time, I kicked back to contemplate the best fight I've ever seen in anime ever.  I'd argue it even put the battle between Tetsuo and Kaneda in Akira to shame.

Titled "Ushiwakamaru vs. Tiamat," it was nominated for Best Fight Scene in the 2020 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

To give the uninitiated some background, King Gilgamesh of Uruk summoned servants from various times and places to fight at his side against the Three Goddess Alliance.  Among them are King Leonidas of Sparta, the gender-swapped samurai general Ushiwakamaru and the disgraced ronin Benkei.

When Tiamat, the most powerful of the Three Goddess Alliance makes her advance on the fortress city of Uruk, Ushiwakamaru leads the offensive against the serpentine deity.  She deftly hacks off the heads of one giant serpent after the other and confuses her enemy further by multiplying herself into seven "clones" that ride the tendrils of Tiamat's serpent heads and continue to slash off the ever growing Hydra-like heads of Tiamat.  Ushiwakamaru knows she will most likely not win the battle, but her stoic dedication to driving her enemy back makes her relentless.

Ushiwakamaru, Illustration by Sakamoto Mineji

Alright, enough chit-chat.  Here's the link to the battle, courtesy of Kensoryū Kishima on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/jq2TEqMuluc

-JJB

Comments

  1. SuzeJanuary 25, 2022 at 9:49 AM

    Keep in mind I take your account seriously. But “Crunchyroll Anime Awards” makes me hungry for sushi. 🙂

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lead Me Not into Temptation: The Specter of Conspicuous Consumption.

Image
  Americans love their junk.  It's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love. - George Santayana As a teenager, I prided myself on not buying every fashionable knickknack that appeared on the shelf at a clothing store.  I didn't blow away $60 for a pair of sneakers that would be threadbare in six months.  I purchased a brand of jeans (Levis) passable enough to not be mocked by my fashion conscious classmates.  Sure I was insulted and mocked for not being a proper materialistic drone, but I brushed it off.  I was not a victim of that pernicious bug known as (dreadful pipe organ hit in minor key) CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION. The closest I got to being a conspicuous consumer was as a collector of comic books-- oops, GRAPHIC NOVELS, sorry.  I was a slave to titles such as Grendel; Concrete, the Living Monolith; Area 88... it was an eclectic mix of various genres.  I was immersed in these beautiful pocket universes where I could get away from mundanity....
Read more

Ennui is the Tenth Muse.

Image
There are days when creativity flows from your fingers like a flooded riverbed.  Each finger is a tributary that leads to a snaking body of water that manifests itself in a keyboard (musical or typing), a brush, a chisel, a cello, ballet shoes, or even scanning the skies with a telescope in search for a new star. Then there are the days when that riverbed dries up.  You sit before the implement of your creativity with a blank stare.  Minutes, hours, days go by.  You know you should go for a walk, do some weight training, or at least meditate to clear your mind.  You return to your office or studio, and the riverbed is still barren. Your magnum opus refuses to come to fruition. Melancholia I, by Albrecht Dürer (Public Domain)  I find myself indulging in the least constructive vices to distract my mind from my writing and my art.  My most corrosive vice is YouTube. I will spend hours scrolling from one recommended video to another.  I will sometime...
Read more