Kratos vs Asura is the textbook definition of how bad sound design can break an episode.

Say what you will about the episode. Me personally I have mixed feelings, both analysis were amazing, the fight I’ll talk about, and the conclusion although I don’t really agree with the feats they gave Kratos, I at least can understand where they were coming from. I didn’t really like the inclusion of the alt-ending though.

Now about the fight: I see a lot of people not like the animation itself, but imo I can’t get behind the hate. I think DevilArtemis did a fantastic job. Now I could be glazing since he’s my favorite DB animator, but idc, I barely noticed any jank, he did a very good job at balancing the quality between the two fighter’s models. And the scenery although not perfect, was pretty damn good.

Now onto the fight’s issues, before talking about my biggest issue, let me talk about the pacing and choreography. The pacing I didn’t like because of the transitions between scenes, I find it weird that Kratos just gets teleported to the temple, I also find it weird that they just kind of jump into a portal out of nowhere. Some scenes felt too fast or too slow, the beginning of the fight really dragged on for me with how slow it was (and the previous transition complaint), while something like the thousand buddha fist transformation was way too fast, Asura transformed, used basically one attack and then lost it. As for the choreography, it’s alright, most scenes were fine. But the fight was basically “Asura transforms, he attacks, Kratos counters, repeat.”

But the biggest offender, as the title says, is the sound design.

First let me get the obvious out the way. The track in terms of the fight sucked. For the matchup about two very angry dads beating each other to death, the music was so soft. You would expect it to pick up, but it just never did, and there wasn’t any lyrics to help either. The only part where it kind of boosted the fight was the death, that was it, and even then it barely did that.

Now for the sound design of the attacks, nothing. Not a single attack felt powerful to my ears. Visually the attacks looked big and powerful, but the sound did not incorporate any of that.

Finally, the voice acting. It was alright. Dialog speaking both VA’s did really well. But although Asura’s voice felt powerful when he needed to. Kratos just didn’t until the very end of the fight.

Now for a comparison. I saw a post saying that the Asura moment in Scooby Doo vs Courage felt more like Asura’s wrath than Kratos vs Asura itself. While I only kind of agree. Visually speaking, no, the moment in Kratos vs Asura felt more like it. Asura punching and Scooby punching were the same, but Asura’s imo had better visuals and scale of power imo, and Kratos preparing and actually holding off the fist was way more in tone to the moment they’re both referencing. But sound wise? Very much so. When Scooby did it, the camera shook (visual not sound but whatever) while the music was hyping this moment up, and the sound of the fist crashing into the earth was so powerful, while the music cuts off when Courage was breaking Scooby’s fist with his scream, following by the sound of glass breaking as Scooby gets shattered and the sound also making the impact of when he hits the earth again more powerful. MEANWHILE The music never picked up when Asura was punching downwards, the fist made very little noise, and the sound did not really hype up Kratos pushing Asura’s fist backwards. And although Kratos’s VA did pretty well vocally on this part, it did not sound like he was struggling at all either. Then leading up to the kill the music barely increased, and still no good sound design except for the spears falling down

Another quick comparison is Omni-Man vs Bardock, I have generally the same opinions about Devil Artemis’s work in both, good animation, model usage, and visuals. While I guess both kinda have the choreography problem I was talking about previously, albeit I think OmniDock’s had it better. And I actually kind of liked OmniDock’s pacing and overall fighting. But I cannot stress this enough the difference in sound design. Say what you will about the fight, but OmniDock’s sound design was amazing, both VA’s gave it their all. Every attack felt powerful (except the kill), every transformation felt powerful, and the music was both really good and hyped up the action when it needed to. Unlike Kratos vs Asura.

I also want to bring up back to Scooby vs Courage on the fact that both tracks were made by Therewolf and his wife, but while Forever Terror Night hyped up the fight amazingly and became my favorite track of the series before Reqiuem for a Thief and Game Over were created, while Reiði was disappointing.

The fight would be way better if the sound design made it felt intense. But it just didn’t