TGTQVS 2025's Retrospective
Kaiser: Well, there it is. Overall, this year was pretty good for the blog in terms of quality, if very subpar in quantity. I definitely wanted to get more projects out, but couldn’t for several reasons. This post will serve to reflect a bit on that, and a few other things. Looking back, 2025 blogs are so radically different from 2024 blogs, even if it took so much to register the change to me. We got a lot more people to help now and apparently released Blog of the Year category contenders. Hell, if you noticed the opening image, Flip is now an official co-owner too. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I’m writing this intro at 1 AM. Anyway, here are the blogs we released this year and what we have to say about them. Enjoy.
TN by Strunt
Strunt: This is the last time I let someone convince me to do a blog like this. You know who you are.
Anyway, where do I begin? Well for starters, this is currently our most viewed blog. I think a lot of cool art came out of this blog too. I especially like the short animation Electrik made for us. I like to think this blog helped set a standard for how our later blogs would look in terms of graphics and fanart. And while I’ve known Cyber and Cal for years now, I thiiiiiiiiiiiink this is the first time I worked with them on a blog? So that was cool too.
In terms of production…well it’s Sonic vs Pokemon so obviously it was smooth sailing. Totally. Anyway, there was a lot of head butting about how to handle both characters in terms of compositing. I decided that the best way to approach this was to just go ahead and include everything for both characters and votes would be based on what the voter believed should be used for both characters.
I have no idea how the blog was received. I didn’t really pay attention to the reception. I can only hope that the blog was received positively. I don’t think the arguments made for either character reaching Multi+ at their peak is unreasonable and I’m pretty open to them. I was hesitant on including Sonic Speed Simulator at the time of this blog, but now I think I’m ok with it, given that SEGA essentially treats it as canon and it can’t do anything that contradicts canon. Kind of weird that they consider a Roblox tie in to be canon but oh well. Anyway tho, despite the hurdles, the product turned out pretty good I think. It was definitely an interesting way to start the year off.
Also, stop arguing that Crossworlds isn’t canon. It’s obvious people only do that because of the infinite multiverse statement. The game is obviously canon, it was advertised as so, and directors have clarified its canon. And yes, the guest characters are not canon, so please stop arguing that the infinite multiverse statement only applies to the Spongebob multiverse or whatever please.
Kaiser: I have very little to do with the actual production one, but it… kinda changed everything? We got L.A.D. and Aggra to join our art team which significantly upgraded our visual department given Flip was doing everything alone, and this blog had a lot of hype behind its release, leading to the biggest numbers we’ve ever had. In fact, Electrik, another artist that joined to help, did a short animation for the blog that was noticed by Death Battle staff. This blog also has a lot of GIFs, some we got help from Cabbage (because everyone thought that every blog should look like US Agent VS Reaper at the time), so it’s significantly more impressive looking than previous or subsequent blogs.
This is also the first time we got to work with Cyber, whom I now consider a good friend and frequent collaborator. I wish our first interaction was under smoother circumstances, however, lol.
It’s Sonic and Pokémon so you can imagine production wasn’t exactly smooth. I definitely do not agree with how people handle Mewtwo in VS, and agree with the results. It’s interesting how this specific matchup got 3 blogs already, with diverging rundowns and scaling for the characters, yet Shadow won the 3 times. Will the inevitable episode have Mewtwo win? I don’t know, I just work here.
Flip: This was definitely the first and last time I wanna do a Pokémon blog, and I wish I could say the same for Sonic. Well, unless it’s something about whether a character’s scaling chains are completely undeniable and we don’t get a lot of headache with it. I still stand by Shadow winning this one, because I think comping multiple Mewtwos is just the same as doing it for the Predators, or at the very least it should be done for Shadow at the same time with equal leeway. It’s not really just a continuity thing, we know there’s at least 2 Mewtwos in the anime alone, and while a hot topic, it’s very likely for the games to have the same situation, as many fans pointed out and discussed in the past.
Even if it was just one main Mewtwo (not counting alternate universes) in the games, I think RR Mewtwo scaling to be super non-standard. I don’t think there’s enough to point out why this specific alternate universe Mewtwo should be treated as having the same level of AP and speed as all the other Mewtwos, especially when the same isn’t done for RR Giovanni and other Giovannis. I also think RR itself scaling to the CT is less clear than people make it to be, as it’s based on a boss order and RR Lysandre’s Xerneas and Yveltal would similarly affect the CT Scaling for their base Pokémon, the same for Ghetis’ Zekrom and Reshiram as well, given both are fought after RR Cyrus where you fight either Palkia or Dialga. RR Cyrus also doesn’t seem to have fought RR Giovanni either, as he’s confused as to where he even is, and after he’s defeated, he only plans to return to his own world. RR Ghetis even calls Giovanni a pawn to achieve his own goals of ruling all of existence. It’s even more inconsistent when there’s a wild Mewtwo you fight later in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon’s post-game, which isn’t exactly a hard battle and you have the possibility of even one-shooting him. Relying on Masters for scaling is also very weird given how Ash is treated too.
On opinions that changed tho, Anime Mewtwo definitely has stronger arguments to now AP stomp Sonic X’s Shadow, depending on where you have Solgaleo scaling and look it makes him against Game Shadow more fair and have less of a reason to comp, and I do think the more recent Dialga used on Ash VS Yugi definitely makes CT being Multi+ undeniable, so if you’re fine with all the RR avenues then you could definitely argue game Shadow loses to the Frankenstein Mewtwo, depending on where you have Super Sonic tier stats. The Blue Cube shit was probably one of the dumbest things I’ve argued and I regretted it days later to the blog, and I wanna apologize for the blunder.
That all being said, all of this is very subjective and I don’t really mind if Mewtwo wins the inevitable rematch, imagine being “wow I’m so sad the coolest Pokémon of all time won” lol. Got to work with Cyber for the first time as well, which turned out to be an awesome person to hang with, despite this blog being probably the worst experience I ever had (not due to him). The experience with the franchises outside of the blog was really nice tho, Sonic X Shadow, Sonic 3 and the TCG Pocket all at the same time was cool.
Kaiser: Why are you guys doing mini verdicts again bruh
Flip: It was annoying...
Strunton: Yeah...
TN by Kaiser
Kaiser: This blog is a Kaiser Passion Project™ so you know what that means. Exactly, I get depressed and keep delaying the release date because production is slow. This was supposed to get released in April, but we pushed the release to JUNE. Needless to say I wasn’t at my best. Regardless, as the visionary director Zack Snyder once said:
I truly got to become friends with T0m in this project I think, since we both did the heavy lifting of adding stuff to the blog proper. Very reliable person to have on your team, and very pleasant to talk to. He watched the entire first Hokuto anime while Alex took care of part 2. Unexpectedly, there was a lot of neat stuff to be found, especially pertaining to the several, several, SEVERAL abilities Kenshiro had.
Shout out to the art team too: T0m himself, Flip, Aggra and L.A.D. cooked some real cool stuff. Rina was a huge help with calcs as well, and Door bought the Street Fighter updated encyclopedia which was fundamental for SF research. Alex’s purchase was arguably the most important tho: we finally got access to a Hokuto guidebook, which led to several important discoveries and confirmations, like the fact Hokuto users have NPI and that a certain character can kick at FTL speeds. Pretty great.
Research was smooth, if slow, but probably the most impactful we’ve ever done. This blog “nerfed” Street Fighter really hard in the minds of several people, and was the first proper deep dive into the franchise that any blog had ever done. A LOT of stuff argued for the verse simply happened to be misinformation, and the same goes for Hokuto. The infamous Haggar feat, the UDON comics, the multi-continental Hokuto statements… yeah, a lot wasn’t good, and I wanted to be EXTREMELY thorough on explaining the numbers both characters got put at and why frequent incorrect claims were false. By the end this ended up being the Black Cat vs Catwoman of Street Fighter and Hokuto no Ken, with several paragraphs worth of debunks. I do not regret it, however. Kenshiro winning is definitely the correct result even if Hokuto goes through extreme levels of downplay and wank at the same time.
Unsurprisingly enough, the bad part of the production period rested solely on me. I went through a very rough emotional distress period at the time (unrelated to versus), which didn’t help with the motivation to make blogs. I was very close to Quitting Versus™ as a whole, and this would be my last announced blog, followed by… you know the one. Things turned out better with time, but my anxiety didn’t really help. Thanks to the nature of Street Fighter vs Hokuto being very controversial, I was expecting the reception to the blog and the arguments made to be extremely negative. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
I gotta say I was not expecting this blog to be as well received as it was. This has had some people say it was one of the best blogs of the year and praised how much passion it had poured on. In truth, I am still pretty proud of this despite everything. I got to make the definitive Kenshiro blog, and that’s good enough for me. My sincere thanks to everyone that helped work on this, and to everyone that enjoyed it.
Flip: Pas really hit me with this Omniman GIF a lot asking when would the blog to come out:
Ryu VS Kenshiro was probably the most BtV heavy blog we did, and while some blogs clearly overdo them in length and numbers (27 for one game?), I stand that it should be a case by case thing and was valid for this one. Whether you want it or not, people notice some topics more when they have a separated section instead of cramming all into a verdict. For example, Cat² was a great blog, but some debunks like Scott’s nanosecond statements were only concluded properly in the verdict and a lot of morons thought it was still valid because the BtV just said they had slightly more substance. We wanted to avoid a situation like this, making the blog the most idiot-proof possible, given this community’s lack of attention span and inability to read everything.
I'm also really glad Kaiser is doing better now as well, he's the bro I talk to every day and one of the few motivations to keep going in this hobby.
TN by Kaiser
Kaiser: This was basically a duo blog with me and T0m, with him doing most of the exporting work from Ryu vs Ken. It was almost cancelled but he convinced me we should have finished it. I’m glad, this is an iconic matchup and it definitely deserved a blog makeover from the original G1. Call me a hoarder or whatever but I don’t know if I’d feel right with anyone but me handling this project, as this is one of my favorite matchups and Hokuto is very up there as one of my favorite manga. I do believe this result is definitely correct as well, even though Akuma has always had loud supporters. As with Ryu vs Ken, I expected a very negative reception from this one, but it didn’t come.
After people’s reaction to Dante vs Clive, I definitely don’t want this to be an episode anymore tho, lmao.
Flip: Nah I still want it. Haters gonna cry.
TN by Strunton
Strunton: This is easily my favorite blog I ever worked on. I loved these cartoons as a kid, so finding an excuse to rewatch all of them was a pleasant trip down memory lane…for the most part. It took nearly a year to do this blog, and during that production, I got the opportunity to really bond with Monev and WAIH. Outside of me, these two easily did a lot of heavy lifting, and I greatly appreciate them for it.
As far as research goes, I want to say it went smoothly for the most part. Me and Monev did Spongebob, WAIH did Timmy, Monev did Jimmy, and I did Danny. Don’t get me wrong. There was A LOT to go through, but it was fun finding new feats and abilities people might have not known these characters had. While I did have a lot of fun making this blog, I have to admit that I was a little concerned about how the blog would be received for multiple reasons.
For starters, we used crossovers, which is usually a big no no for Vs fans. Then there was the fact that Danny was coming in last place. From what I gathered, a lot of people thought he would come in 3rd or 2nd place before the blog dropped. No way did people think he was going to lose to Jimmy Neutron of all people. And above all that, my biggest concern was that the winner of the blog was going to be Timmy Turner…which was definitely a surprise to all of us. Like most people, I thought Spongebob was going to take it. So imagine my surprise when researching this and realizing “...oh crap is Timmy actually winning this thing?!” There was also the fact that I was arguing against a lot of somewhat popular metas I know I wasn’t going to agree with, like Multiversal+ and even 5D metas for Spongebob and Danny.
Thankfully, despite all that, the blog was received very well from what I can tell. It is currently our third most viewed blog, and it only came out a few months ago. After the blog, I also noticed that many opinions on these characters started shifting in the community. I started seeing a lot more people cap Spongebob’s AP at universal and started questioning if the universal Danny meta really lived up to the hype. I think the blog also made people realize that Timmy is actually more busted than we give him credit for. I also think it is ironic that the new Nicktoon Dice of Destiny game, which dropped like a month or two after the blog came out, kiiiind of reinforced that Timmy probably would win the battle royale given that ends with Timmy memory wiping Spongebob, Jimmy, and Danny.
Regardless, I sincerely thank you all for reading the blog. I also thank everyone who helped make it. Btw, Jimmy beats Dexter. Don’t @ me.
Kaiser: I barely did anything on this one but shout-outs to Monev and WAIH for carrying HARD. You guys are great.
Flip: I think I’ll never be more sad with a blog verdict than us having to kill Robert in this project. It’s a great one regardless. Monev and WAIH must have had really excruciating back-pain, given they carried this massive load of a blog. The only things me and Kaiser contributed were the inevitable questions regarding opinions on some feats given we were involved on other projects. I think immeasurable Timmy and Bob are fine, but a lot of AP arguments really didn’t make much sense. I hope Dexter still brain-blasts Jimmy. And it's salt, you pretentious jerk. Don’t @ me.
TN by Flip
Flip: I'm really proud of this one. Maybe it's a bit of an underrated gem, given we knew the community at large isn't so involved with these series, but it wouldn’t stop us from making it anyway. I had a more extensive commentary on the end of the blog itself and thanking all who helped, but idk if I ever talked about everything. It's hard, it's my favorite MU and idk how to convey my feelings into words that well.
While everyone else was under Nicktoons, I was with Kaiser, me focusing on Viland while Kaiser on Vagabond, and we had Lunge and Alex for support on this, and for the first time, I was finally spearheading the production of a blog. Admittedly, it took a bit longer to come out than it should, but life and mental health happens (not really exclusive to Kaiser). Though, to be honest, I think it only affected the release date alone, it's a simple yet really well done blog.
Due to the two series being relatively really grounded, it involved way more attention and nuance to take note of feats and small details, given they were extremely more crucial for the verdict than a series like Sonic where you just need to take more care about major hax, resistances and cosmology arguments. I also wanted to debunk some wrong notions from Vinland Saga scaling (which I also sinned on perpetuating them), so I was surprised for Musashi to end up not winning here (on a versus lens, ofc). The Rock™ feat not being applicable made sense and it completely shook the verdict, giving the final advantage for Thorfinn to take the W.
I believe everyone involved did the best to make it the most complete blog versus wise to both series, and most importantly a love letter to the characters, their mangas and most importantly their themes.
Kaiser: I took care of all the calcs and basically put and linked everything for Vagabond on the blog. It was a good time, I really like both series. The reception was pretty nice, even if I had to argue with someone about calcs. I was fully expecting Musashi to win but losing the rock feat made it really hard for him. From an outsider perspective, it’s pretty obvious that Thorfinn wins, given how much more exaggerated Vinland Saga is in presentation. It’s good that it was close and Musashi could still win in some cases, I like him more.
Unrelated but this has my favorite trailer Flip has ever made, even if the internet apparently decided Deftones is uncool now (fuck you, Koi no Yokan is a timeless masterpiece).
Strunton: I didn’t really contribute much here. I’m glad Thorfinn won tho.
In production: Asuka VS Anemone
TN by Flip
Kaiser: Glad to be doing a blog on Asuka against her (easily, imo) best opponent. Researching Evangelion has been pretty fun and I’m glad to be covering Eureka Seven. This was once “the mecha blog” and it has been over a year since we posted Mazinger Z vs Getter Robo, so it’s nice to be back to my home genre. Also, holy shit, Eva research was so barebones this entire time, it’s kinda crazy how guidebooks can give a whole new perspective on a series.
Flip: This one is way more buckwild than we initially thought it would. I hope y'all enjoy when it comes out. I've been enjoying my time on this, and glad we're helping Evangelion research get updated from the earlier and very dated search from the Obama administration era, as well as a proper introduction to Eureka Seven stats and powers as a verse.
Strunton: Watch Eureka Seven. Actually, watch a mecha series in general. How are you an anime fan but never watched a mecha? What’s wrong with you people? Smh.
In production: ???
Kaiser: Yeah, officially announcing this one now. Major passion project and my second most wanted MU. This isn’t supposed to be just a blog, but a general tribute of sorts. I wanna make people understand what makes me think this MU is so great. It helps that it’s definitely very debatable, and I get to talk about EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) for Eva. If you wanna join, just DM Kaiser or Flip at your nearest Discord server.
Conclusion and what’s to come in ‘26
Kaiser: That was a year.
Once again, thanks for everyone that participated or collaborated in TGTQVS projects this year including: Rina Antiqua, therealcalhoward, Cyber, door-kun, Ed, Electrik, Flip, ishi_yuki, T0m, Why am I here, Br3ndan5, Lunge, IbukiFanboy, Tony, Alex, L.A.D., Aggra, Cabbage, Yuix, Monev, Garf, Landon1195, Normal, Mikhael and many others. Your help and support keep this project going. If you want to contribute directly, consider joining our patre-
I hope to finish all the currently teased projects by 2026, at least to the best of my capabilities. Adult life isn’t easy. Considering that a lot of blog people are quitting or planning to quit, you would think I’d be negative about it in the conclusion. Speaking for myself here but I think I still have at least 3 years of blogs in me. Until I am the guy that quit VS, you guys will have to keep reading my legacy sections for a while. Happy New Year!
Flip: Thank you, father. Goodbye, mother. And to all the children... Congratulations!
Happy New Year to all of you GOATS.
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