An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective Side Quest, Part 3

 

If there’s one truth about YouTube, it’s that there will always be people trying to do what brought success to others.  There are plenty of YouTube channels that upload rap battles because of how popular the Epic Rap Battles of History became.  Not all of these efforts are good, but the cream will usually rise to the top.  Here are a few interesting rap battle channels that I think deserve mention, the “best of the rest”, you could say.

 

Video Game Rap Battles

Spotlight: Princess Peach vs. Amy Rose

This series of rap battles was created by Cam Steady, a frequent collaborator of Freshly Kanal, and although the quality does vary a bit, there’s one sub-series in particular that was done quite well.  The Sonic vs. Mario battles are rather well done and covers the main stars in one video (the original and still the best out of all of them), the sidekicks (Luigi and Tails) in another, as well as the main villains (Bowser and Robotnik), the dark versions of the main characters (Wario and Shadow) and the love interests (Peach and Amy).  It’s funny to think about how Sega was trying to dethrone Nintendo all these years, and they ended up with a cast of characters that somewhat fill the same roles, right down to the dark, edgy version of the main character.  Arguably, though, Shadow is definitely much more of an edgelord than Wario.

The Sonic vs. Mario battles in particular are helped along by the fact that they’re all fully animated using a style similar to the games, offering an authenticity that live action battles can sometimes lack (just look at the bad Hulk Hogan costume from season one of the Epic Rap Battles) and are voiced by fans who nonetheless were able to give very authentic performances.  I enjoy this version of Mario a lot better than the one from the Epic Rap Battles, but to be fair, they were trying to emulate the old live action version from before the video game version’s iconic voice was set in stone.

It’s a shame they’ve run out of iconic duos because it would be nice if we could receive more of these.  The Sonic series has a ton of side characters in both the comics and the video games who do show up a lot, but who definitely don’t matter as much as the main cast.  The only main character left is Knuckles and I don’t think the Mario series has an equivalent.

Meanwhile, if you want a rap battle series that mainly focuses on animation…

 

Animation vs. Anything

Spotlight: Derpy Hooves vs. Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way

Freshly Kanal has his hands in this series, too.  Created by Eddiefrb, this series covers animated characters that the Epic Rap Battles likely would never be able to feature since they tend to focus on characters that can be portrayed by live actors.  Freshly Kanal has also released rap battles featuring animated characters, and the best Video Game Rap Battles are animated, but this series is designed to specifically focus on animation, featuring characters such as Toothless, Yakko Warner, Light Yagami (although as a human, he can in theory be portrayed by a live actor; this is called foreshadowing), Mr. Peanutbutter and Jack Skellington.

Given how much I love animation, this series is definitely right up my alley.  Aside from the spotlighted episode above (which itself is better than all three of the Epic Pony Rap Battles of Equestria), one of my favourite battles is between Blue from Blue’s Clues and Monokuma from Danganronpa.  I said last week that Snakebite126 was coming back this week and he plays Monokuma very well.  I think Monokuma still loses to Blue (I admit to a bit of bias, as I kind of like Blue a lot), but both characters are written and performed very well.  In fact, most of these episodes are good.  I might not like every series represented in the videos (sorry, Angela, I’m not a fan of Rick & Morty so I skipped the Rick vs. GLaDOS battle), but I think it’s safe to say that even the ones that feature characters I don’t like are great.

And speaking of Snakebite126…

 

Snakebite Rap Battles

Spotlight: Artemis Fowl vs. Light Yagami

Snakebite126 has his own rap battle series?  Yes, please!

Well… he has two.  The Snakebite Rap Battles are his more serious efforts, and the Terrible Rap Battles of Comic Sans are purposely written and performed to be terrible.  There’s an impression that no effort is made to make them any good, and it’s pretty obvious that this is done entirely on purpose.  In both series, he portrays most of the characters.  This is a bit of a weakness since his voice is rather distinctive and rather than being cast in roles appropriate for him in other peoples’ battles, this series is basically two characters with similar voices battling one another.

But the reason I like them so much is because of this one battle in particular.  He acts out the roles of both Light Yagami and Artemis Fowl so well, it’s clear he did his homework and studied both characters closely.  He would’ve had to, he also wrote the lyrics, too.  He refrains from his trademark smirk for most of the video and portrays both Light and Artemis with a lot of restraint until Light goes off the deep end at the end of the battle.  This is easily his best effort, especially since in contrast to his series of terrible battles, it’s clear a lot of effort went into his costumes, acting and visuals.  I earlier said that Light Yagami could be portrayed by a live actor in a rap battle, and here is probably the definitive version of that.

His portrayal of Artemis in particular caught the attention of Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl series, who praised his efforts by telling him, “You make a great Artemis.”  And he really does.  I’ve not seen the movie (and because of its disappearance from Disney+, I doubt I will any time soon), but I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job than Snakebite.

Speaking of battles inspired by young adult fiction…

 

Epic Rap Battles of Pyrrhia

Spotlight: Glory vs. Deathbringer

A couple weeks ago, I brought up the My Little Pony fandom when briefly discussing the Epic Pony Rap Battles of Equestria.  So much creativity came from the fandom, and many content creators that began covering the show on YouTube have since branched out into other content.  Musicians, game designers, writers, the fandom birthed them all.

In the years since, other fandoms have come and gone, all of them leaving indelible marks on the Internet, and one of the biggest marks was left by the Warriors series, sometimes called Warrior Cats.  The success of Warriors led to an explosion of other series starring other animals, like the bears of Seekers, the various African animals of Bravelands and the dogs of Survivors, all by Erin Hunter, the pseudonymous author of Warriors.  Other authors have picked up the slack and covered animals like the foxes of Foxcraft by Inbali Iserles, the lions and tigers of Pride Wars by Matt Laney, the frogs of the Kulipari novels by Trevor Pryce and Joel Naftali, and the owls of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky.  While Warriors gets the credit for making this kind of story popular, it should be noted that it’s always been popular.  Before Warriors, books like Redwall and Duncton Wood existed and can be considered inspiration for more modern series like The Green Ember by S.D. Smith and The Mistmantle Chronicles by M.I. McAllister.  If this is the kind of story you like, now is a great time to pick up some books.  Libraries and bookstores are chock full of them.  My absolute favourite is the Around About Ottersgate series by Michael H. Payne, especially the novel The Blood Jaguar.

Another series which might not have ever existed if not for Warriors is called Wings of Fire, and is written by Tui T. Sutherland.  The series takes place in a world of dragons and so far consists of three arcs of five books each, along with a couple supplementary volumes and graphic novel retellings of the books.  The series has proven so popular that Netflix was going to adapt the series until they pulled a Netflix and cancelled the series before they even made it.  You know you’ve made it big when you get cancelled by Netflix.  Fortunately, just last month, the series was picked up instead by Amazon Prime and hopefully this time it’ll make it past the planning phase.

Wings of Fire in particular has inspired a lot of animation memes (including one that might sound familiar to anyone who read last week’s article and listened to the spotlighted rap battles) among other creative outlets.  What’s especially interesting is that, for a while at least, a series of rap battles between various dragons in the series were being released.  Five battles (and one silly parody of one) were written and produced alongside other content on the same channel and then the creator of these took a break to focus on his education and career for a while.  I’m well aware that this rap battle series might only really be interesting to those who have read the books, just like the My Little Pony battles are only interesting to those who have watched My Little Pony, but I wanted to put a spotlight on the creativity of the Wings of Fire fandom, for I honestly believe that when it comes to volume and quality of output, they’re the next Bronies.  There are no doubt several members of the Wings of Fire fandom who will go on to publish novels, create video games, make music and otherwise find careers in creative endeavors that they might not have pursued if not for this series of books about dragons.

And with that, I can finally say that this series of articles has been put to bed.  Until several more episodes of the Epic Rap Battles of History are released, I can concentrate on other pursuits.  This has hopefully been distracting my readers from realizing that my promised Retrospective articles have been delayed for months.

Oh, oops.  I guess now I have to start releasing them.