Flyswatting: How to Keep Unfair Fights Interesting

strong winner weak loser fly swatting if we know the strong character is going to win how do we keep a fight interesting I think fly swatting is probably the most common type of fight scene writers love having strong characters and what better way to show off a character strength than by having them make light work of weaker characters unfortunately I see some common issues in these types of fight scenes that make them feel unbelievable unnatural and sometimes just plain boring today I'll analyze good fly squatting fights so we can hopefully learn how to do them

right I'm going to include spoiler levels out of 10 for each fight so you don't have to worry about getting spoiled like I just said writers will show off a character strength by making start contrast to other characters this is pretty much power scaling in my first video I mentioned that power scaling is stupid but I think I left some explanation on the table there's nothing inherently wrong with scaling characters hypothetical power levels against each other in fact it didn't get past me that the fight spectrum that I made up literally does just that my

gripe with power scaling is when it's treated as an absolute answer to a matchup in reality no matchup is absolute this should hold true with all fight scenes No matchup should be determined before it starts even if the chances are just one in a million with that being said when a character has only one in a million chance to lose it can quickly become a predictable snoozefest that's why I have a special requirements for each type of fight so for everyone who watched my first video we know that my requirement for fly swatting fight is

characterization what does that even mean characterization well my definition is honestly pretty loose we obviously know that the strong character is going to win but we don't want the fight to seem pointless it just means that for the fight to have a place in the story we need to learn something new about the strong character that we didn't know before that's what I'm calling characterization this can range from something as simple as a new move all the way to something complex like a character's tragic backstory as long as it's something fresh to the audience it

usually is enough to get my stamp of approval why do I require this as the name suggests these fights are like squatting flies if a fly enters a character's path they need to swat it okay cool but what if another fly comes along and then another and another sometimes they're a lot of dang flies that's just how some stories will pan out what's make or break is how the story handles the swatting after about four swats or so I start to get bored that's why I want to see something fresh some characterization if we've seen

them SWAT one fly at a Time start getting two or three in one blow if we've seen them handle 10 flies at a time then I want to see an even stronger move how many flies can you swat at once how quickly can we exterminate the infestation that gives us insight into their strength better yet give me insight into their psyche how does their strength impact their personality how does it feel to swat flies over and over what kind of monster is capable of this for any given fly swatting scene ask what makes this fight

Worth showing if it's not bringing anything new to the story maybe it's not worth the screen [Music] time if you haven't heard saturo Gojo is is strong the type of strong that contextualizes the entire jjk universe the type of strong that a lazy writer likes to say their character is without really giving explanation as to how or why where I think jjk excels is showing exactly how Gojo's strength impacts him as well as how it works and they use fight scenes to do so the fight kicks off and Joo is wasting no time which in

general is great to see in a fight I said in the first video that fights are best when they're punctual I also said I hate when strong characters are playing with their food yet Gojo seems to be doing just that throughout the fight he's taunting joogo holding his hand taking his sweet time playing with his food but I think it works perfectly in this case because it characterizes Gojo his Carefree joking personality is a big reason fans love him but it also makes sense for his character to be that way a big theme in jjk

is the loneliness that comes with strength and I think a way Gojo combats this feeling of isolation is by being a fun humorous guy even during battle Beyond Gojo's personality I also said this fight helps the audience understand his powers here he explicitly breaks down his technique to joogo there's a bit of a debate regarding showing versus telling Exposition and I definitely agree that in general showing information makes for a better viewing experience however there is Merit to having characters actually explain things I think as long as it's reasonable for the character to actually explain

something in a certain circumstance rather than forcing it for the audience's sake then I'm okay with verbal Exposition and Gojo is a talk itive guy so now we know how Gojo is effectively Immortal but the fight isn't done bringing fresh Concepts to the audience Joo uses a domain expansion which we haven't seen before it's a staple in jjk combat only reserved for the strongest of characters Gojo who I forgot to mentioned grabbed Yuji midf fight to serve as a teaching moment casually counters with his own domain and swiftly decapitates Joo now that there's no fun

left to be had so in recap what did this fight tell the audience that we didn't know prior Gojo is effectively Immortal you can't touch him unless he deliberately turns off his technique he can also share this Infinity with other people he can even shoot these red bombs called reversal Gojo is a clown nothing is a threat to him so basically everything's a joke to him domain expansions are the Pinnacle of sorcery Only the strongest characters can use them they enable all attacks to hit and two domains fight like a tug of war and the

stronger one prevails [Music] in my first video I really wanted to include Kung Fu Panda but I was unsure what seemed worked best I've since realized it is without a doubt the bridge scene taong versus the Furious 5 before the fight fully kicks off we get a bit of characterization through an exchange of dialogue tiger is stanced up and ready to fight but tyong is casually inquiring about the Dragon Warrior he knows that these five are not a threat to him and he's egotistically acting like it as we go on to learn ego and self-acceptance

make up the biggest theme of the movie Once the fight fighting starts Tigers honestly does a fair job of holding her own against him but it's not long until he has her debilitated and Viper needs to sub in to save tigress's life Viper lasts about 5 seconds until monkey needs to come to the rescue now we see all five members of the Furious 5 working in a beautifully synchronized attack perfectly using each other's strengths and their environment to their advantage mantis jolts the entire bridge by himself then monkey uses his speed to be the first

one there to strike Tai long before he's set he then assists Viper who uses her agility to break tyong again and then crane uses his flight to wrap him up with the bridge and assist tigers with the final blow the Furious 5 just showcased a near perfect David vers Goliath fight but this is a fly swatting video and unfortunately for the Furious 5 they are the Flies taong uses his momentum to launch the land behind them and is finally on an even fighting ground after one last egotistical jab of dialogue he reveals the ace up

his sleeve his nerve attack makes Swift work of the Furious 5 and reminds the audience just how strong he is so in recap this fight lets the audience know that taong is an egomaniac and has a seemingly uncounterable ability that puts him as arguably the strongest character in the [Music] show the thing about fly swatting is that it only occurs when the power dynamics of a fight are heavily tilted toward one side it's stories with a lot of magic and fantasy fly swatting is pretty common because strong characters are pretty common in Game of Thrones

by far the most common category of fights is actually the tossup the writers favor the realistic approach which often makes for pretty close fights between a few Knights settled with Superior strategy I plan on revisiting Game of Thrones a lot in future videos however Game of Thrones is still a fantasy show and there are massively powerful characters that power takes the form of dragons when I covered Gojo I mentioned that he was so powerful that he recontextualized the jjk universe this is the level of power that dragons have in Game of Thrones Daenerys having possession

of dragons was like the most significant plot point in the earlier Seasons they were so powerful that their very existence set the story in motion bit by bit we watch the dragons grow up we see them as juveniles hunt goats burn children and we're kind of realizing their dark potential but what about in battle are they really that powerful after waiting for six seasons we finally get to see just how strong they are Daenerys and her three dragons make light work of The Fleets at slavers Bay this is is the level of power we haven't

seen in Game of Thrones yet it brings something new to the table further characterizing the dragons and Daenerys by contextualizing their strength this is real fly swatting now I want to raise the question of how to use fly swatting to continue to characterize someone once we already know their strength Flash Forward a season and we have another fight with Dragons this time it's Daenerys versus the Lannister Army the battle of the gold road we know a dragon can wipe out an entire Army because we've seen it happen before so what's new this time well for

starters they escalate the scale of their destruction which makes for an awesome spectacle however beyond the strength of the Dragons we also see some characterization of Danny despite Tyrion advising her not to go through with this she brings the dragons to battle and ends up paying the cost as one of her dragons is shot down I think this battle is one of the moments in the show we can point to as a time she starts to slip into madness finally in the last time we see her in her Dragon Daenerys decimates King's Landing laying waste

to everyone in her path Soldier or civilian this once again scales the dragon's capacity for Destruction as well as daenerys's Madness and makes for a great example of how to progressively use fly swatting as a way to display character even if the characterization was really dumb screw you season [Music] 8 the hall fight in old boy is definitely a classic fight scene as iconic as it is however I'm not sure how much I like it while I was trying to classify it I was having a hard time deciding where it fell remember the fight spectrum

is used retroactively to analyze a fight after it happened first we ask who wins then we generalize how strong each party is and then that tells us where the fight falls on the Spectrum so first we know that Dau our protagonist wins the fight next let's analyze the strength of the two parties individually each member of the party he's fighting is very weak the party as a whole however is about equal in strength to Dau which would mean this fight is a tossup but they don't really fight as a whole unit unit they do something

that is a Telltale sign of fly swatting fights specifically bad ones before the fight begins Dau asks his opponents if anyone has AB blood type because his previous opponent is bleeding out some pretty good characterization right there we see that he's a good guy not really looking to kill any of them once the fight begins he easily takes out each individual person that fights him classic fly swatting the one Thug at a time strategy that we see so often in I'm just going to say it bad fights these fights annoy me because it ruins the

illusion and you feel like you're watching actors not real characters about 30 seconds into the fight however the group actually works as a team and surrounds him which is about the way we'd expect this fight to go I can definitely appreciate this realistic turn of events then with him down on the ground they stop because they think they killed him however the fight is not over my problem with this fight is not that they didn't finish him off here it's important to recognize that maybe they have some sympathy for him because he spared their friend

at the beginning or maybe they're just a bunch of underpaid novice Thugs who have never really killed anyone I don't have any problem buying the idea that they wouldn't finish him off right there regardless with a knife in his back he jolts back up and proceeds to take them out one by one I guess my main gripe with this fight is that it's more of a display of incompetent opponents than it is DA's abilities that's not to say he doesn't put on an impressive choreography of moves if you like this fight I can totally respect

that ultimately this fight's not really that bad and it makes for a good example of both DA's toughness and strangely enough his kindness I'm curious if you can think of any other examples of fly swatting where they do that stupid one Thug at a time strategy and if you think it ruins a fight or if they handle it well I've got another example of that right here before we get to the next fight I just want to take a moment to pause and thank you all for watching this video uh this channel is about 2

months old now and I've just had so much fun making these videos and seeing all the support that you guys have to share uh if you want to continue to support a simple like And subscribe is all I'm asking for anyways let's keep [Music] going let's head to the Planet Titan for one of Marvel's better fight scenes Thanos versus The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy I pick on Marvel a lot on this channel and I'm going to do that some more here but I'll also acknowledge what this fight does right I feel like this

fight plays out in a very similar fashion to the fight from old booy firstly it could appear like a tossup when you look at the two parties holistically then for whatever stupid reason the Avengers basic basically start the fight with that one at a time strategy this is because the writers are lazy and they want to pan the fight out and give each hero their own special moment and I think it makes for bad fly swatting once the Avengers finally start working together and implementing some strategy the fight starts working out in their favor what

makes Thanos so strong is that Gauntlet so what they should have done right off the bat is try to remove it from him it's actually super satisfying to watch them all work together to remove it using each other's strengths to their advantage then of course Star-Lord ruins it I think we all know that was just stupid and I'm not going to waste my breath complaining about it at least it characterizes quill I guess anyway once the anals his back awake the real fly swatting takes place he handles all six of them swiftly using his Gauntlet

to his Advantage so here's a real problem I have with this fight check out this random purple wave he uses why on Earth did he not use his power from the get-go this is another problem with a lot of bad fly swatting fights I hate when characters wait to use their best abilities it's just not realistic doesn't he want to win I get that I'm being very critical but I'm a firm believer that realism greatly enhances storytelling and conversely unrealistic moments ruin stories sure if Thanos immediately wiped out all six of them with some magic

Gauntlet move it would not be entertaining however I think they could have done a better job recognizing that his natural realistic reaction would be to finish them off as fast as possible with this being said I think the writers could have better emphasized a surprise attack where all the heroes work together to get the gauntlet off from the get-go rather than wasting time with those 1 V one moments speaking of 1 V one moments let's just move on to the final bit of this fight finally with everyone else taking care of we see Iron Man

vers Thanos this is probably my favorite part of the entire fight some true power discrepancy put on full display at the start I think Thanos actually tries to use that purple wave of immobility but Iron Man actually blocks it with his suit Shield Iron Man puts on a beautiful combo of moves that use full advantage of his suit yet all it draws is a single drop of blood even when he dedicates his entire suits power to this yellow laser beam it's not enough to Hal her Thanos that is power but at this point we know

Thanos is strong so what does this last fight do that's new when Thanos delivers the finishing blow he commends Tony this shows that he's a nuanced almost respectable villain that is not doing things out of pure evil he even spares him when strange offers the time Stone even though Thanos could have easily won if he just took the stone and then finish them off but he's all about trade-offs so I guess it would make sense that he would respect the deal overall this fight had a ton of problems but it also had some pretty good

moments and I'm curious what your thoughts are on it at the end of the day it's not really Marvel's priority to be realistic but I can't help but imagine how good the franchise would be if the writers simply challenged themselves [Music] more I want to conclude this video with the fly swatting to end all fly swatting it had to be one punch man if you haven't watched the show I still think it's worth staying tuned for the section because I'm going to talk about some Core Concepts of fly squatting as far as I'm concerned the

entire point of one punch man is to mock anime fans and the power scaling Community it's meant to get the last laugh in those conversations of constantly one-upping each other's favorite character no matter how strong his opponent is one punch man AKA Sait will always win that's his whole shtick of course this means that the writer runs into the challenge of keeping things interesting because the fights virtually have no stakes and while I'm not the biggest fan of the show it undoubtedly has a lot of fans so why do they keep coming back if every

fight is decided before it starts if you've been watching this video you know that it's the characterization Sait is a funny character one punch man is a funny show it's a satire let's break down his fight with boros a villain that could probably annihilate all of Earth if it weren't for one punch man having a character as strong as boros would almost always mean the fight would be a World Cup but with the presence of saitama it's a fly swatting fight that's not even close in a visually pleasing fight boros Flash is all of his

abilities his strength and spectacular moves but all it does is dirty up sa a little who in a very anti-an anime fashion shuts up boros mid monologue I particularly like this scene where we see Sait get flown into the ground just for us to find out he's actually on the moon what other show do we get a character using consecutive normal punches it's such a comically mundane name and yet the move absolutely destroys boros finally boros is about to use his last Gambit move which you don't really get to see because Sait also decides to

use his last Gambit which is felt across the world buros puts it best this wasn't even a fight one punch man was holding back the entire time which reveals that maybe he's just bored with all his strength I haven't read the Manga and to be truthful I haven't watched the show in quite some time but I believe that besides the comedic side this is the characterization that one punch man wants to explore similar to Gojo and jjk they use fly swatting to talk about how it's Lonely at the Top so that's fly swatting I think

I've said everything I have to say about it but I'm sure I missed out on some iconic fights my next video will be about David vers Goliath fights so if you have any favorites that fit please drop them in the comments and as always if you enjoyed this video I'd appreciate if you'd like And subscribe see you guys next time