An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 6 (Day Two)

 

The end of season one of the Epic Rap Battles of History was a fun, non-canon battle between Nice Peter and EpicLLOYD, and featured all of the past characters they played somewhere in the background.  Season two ended with the Russian five-way, a more ambitious battle because both Peter and Lloyd played multiple characters and had to adopt different Russian-accented voices in order to play them all.

Season three’s finale would prove to be more ambitious than any rap battle that had come before it, with eight participants instead of five.  It’s easily the most complex of season three, and although it’s not perfect, it’s a great way to end the season.  Participating in the battle:

Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael

vs.

Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael

 

Unlike the Russian five-way, this battle puts two teams against one another for the first time ever in the series.  Although this wouldn’t happen too often, the concept of a team battle would occasionally be used in later seasons, most notably to start out season four, somehow becoming even more of an epic battle than this one is.

But I’m not here to talk about season four this week, I still haven’t finished talking about season three.

Best line: “Uhh… Dona-tell me who you are again dude?  Cause I don’t Gattamelata clue what you do.”
Runner up: “You guys draw more dicks than New York Pride.”
Curse watch: Of course the Renaissance artists have all passed away long before the debut of this battle, which means the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are protected from the ERB curse.

I think it’s a little premature to say that this battle could’ve been longer, since the Eastern Philosophers vs. Western Philosophers battle didn’t happen until season four and that would’ve been my go to example for a nice long, epic battle between two teams.  The big issue here is that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are often written as a team with maybe one or two defining characteristics between them.  For example, Raphael introduces himself as a “cool but rude guy” and that’s about all we know about him from this battle, other than his choice of weapon.  At least we learn more about him than we do about Leonardo.  We get none of his personality and only find out about his katana blades.

It’s possible there was too much research to do about the Turtles, since at the time the battle was written, there were three completed television shows and a fourth one was airing, there were decades of comic books and there were four movies with a fifth one on its way to theatres later that month (the first of the two Michael Bay films).  We learn a lot more about the Renaissance artists than we do about the Turtles in this battle.

The Behind The Scenes video doesn’t go into the process of writing this battle, and I don’t know how much research went into the Turtles’ verses.  It doesn’t help that the Turtles have a slightly different backstory depending on which version you pay attention to.  All versions of the Turtles have the Ooze to thank for making them who they are, of course, but depending on the version, they could be ordinary turtles who just happened to be oozed or reincarnated ninja warriors whose souls are present in the turtles that were mutated.  In some versions, Hamato Yoshi is their father and is reincarnated as a rat named Splinter.  In other versions, Splinter is Yoshi’s pet rat who learns how to be a ninja from copying Yoshi’s actions.

Most famously, Michael Bay was going to turn the Turtles into aliens, removing their backstory entirely, but enough fan backlash to his idea caused him to revert to a more traditional backstory for them.

It’s entirely possible that most of the research that went into the battle came from the 1987 television series, which is the origin of Raphael’s “cool, but rude” status, but that series has 196 episodes, I don’t think even I watched all of them, and I was a big fan of the Turtles.  Still am, or I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about this battle.  I do seem to recall hearing that Peter watched all of Dragon Ball in order to write the Goku vs. Superman battle (I don’t remember if that’s true, but if it is, it shows great dedication), and I don’t know if he wanted to binge another lengthy series within the same production cycle in order to write this rap battle, too.  I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to.  You can only watch so many episodes of something in a day, and after a while, especially if you’re doing it for work, they’ll start to blend together unless you really like the show.

I can certainly sympathize with Peter and Lloyd, since they need to act like they have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter when writing each rap battle, and that’s not always practical.  I can’t imagine trying to write a battle about a character from a television show that lasted a decade, let alone comics that lasted for over half a century, but season three was full of characters who required either that level of dedication, or access to a sufficiently updated wiki.  The second half of the season contained a main character from Breaking Bad (62 episodes), The Walking Dead (51 episodes as of 2014; well over a hundred issues of the comic book as well), the Dragon Ball and Superman franchises (don’t get me started on how many episodes and issues and chapters there are of each), as well as the authors Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe.  Is it any wonder that the King vs. Poe battle mainly mentioned book titles and not the actual subject matter of those books?  There was a little less than five months between the end of the first half of the season and the start of the second half.  Even if I had a full five months to myself with no social or work obligations, I doubt I could’ve done all of that research, watched all of those television shows, read all of King’s and Poe’s books, read all of the Dragon Ball manga or watched all of the anime (probably wouldn’t need to do both), watched everything put to film in the Superman franchise as well as read all of the comic books, plus experienced the entirety of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise up to that point.  There would just be no way, even knowing that I could skip everything that was published after May 2014.

There is one thing I think might’ve influenced the way the battle was written.  Instead of focusing on each Turtle separately, they’re typically such a tightly knit team that they really do operate as one unit, as opposed to the Renaissance artists, who are usually known for their own separate contributions to culture.  So the artists each get a bit more individual focus while the Turtles are four characters that are treated like one.

Plus, I get the feeling this is a similar situation as the Wright Brothers vs. Mario Brothers fight, where Peter and Lloyd tried to keep the knowledge more general as opposed to getting into the fine details that most casual viewers would not only not care about, but would also not even be aware of.

So in the end, this season finale is a pretty decent one, even if the details on the Turtles are very superficial.  But that’s okay, season four is going to be even better.  The Epic Rap Battles are always evolving, and from here, they start growing longer and longer…

 

 

Next week: Hitler can fly…