Ningen's Blog Without a Cause: Aang Vs. Traveler

Death Battle Prediction: Captain Planet's Matchups Go Down to Zero

If Death Battle was based.

(credit to IncinaNeverDies on DeviantArt)

Is the Matchup Good?

My thoughts on this matchup are kinda similar to Ichigo Vs. Yusuke; good in a vaccum, bad with context. 

Like that one, the theme's both unique and solid. Sure, elemental matchups are pretty common, but they almost always center around one compared to many. It also presents more variety for the animation, which could have some really cool usage of the environment. Aside from the obvious 'multi-element main character' connection, both fighters also traveled the world to learn usage of different elements and got the Ash Williams treatment (well, alt-universe Ash, I guess). That adds a bit more depth to already decent theming.

Problem is, aside from that last bit, everything I just said applies to Aang Vs. Edward Elric. You know, that matchup Death Battle already did?

That could be forgiven assuming one or more of the following things were true:

1. Aang was severely underutilized and/or misrepresented in his prior episode

2. Covering him this time would be a lot more interesting

3. His new opponent was more interesting than the old one

As you can probably guess, none of these are the case.

Since I know some of you are thinking it already, yes, Aang saying "You left me no choice" after disintegrating a guy who couldn't fight back was really dumb. Even accounting for him being kind of a psycho in the Avatar State, that just isn't something he'd do. But outside of that, he was written and animated pretty well.

Since then, he's had no material really justifying a return. The Netflix live-action version is a retelling of the original story, with characters obviously less impressive than the originals (both in scaling and quality!). As for that animated movie...well,  an entire film getting leaked months ahead of release is game-changing, but not in the context of DB. 

Just to be transparent, I'm not including it in this prediction for two reasons: I haven't seen it, and it's not officially out yet. It does release a day before this episode, so there's a slim chance I update this with info from it, but don't get your hopes up.

That's points 1 and 2 down, so what about the third? Well, The Traveler is a gacha game protagonist.

Do I really have to say more?

Aang's already not a very complex character, and he certainly isn't Kota Ibushi, so pairing him with a plank of wood after he's already shown up once before ain't compelling.

There's also the matter of this being the last KickStarter matchup (that's not...the other one). It's good we're finally getting to more uncharted territory after this, but couldn't they have gone out on a cooler note? Imagine if this was Ruby Vs. Maka or Blade Vs. Buffy; any matchup with some real history would've been a good send-off.

This matchup's history is just people saying "Yeah, they'll probably do that" for a few years and people not paying for it on the Kickstarter.

What I'd Like to See

Idk, cool element stuff.

...Okay, there's a little more than that.

My main hope is for the fight to revolve around Aang trying to keep his distance and turn Aether's elements against him, versus Traveler trying to close the gap and overwhelm the Avatar up-close. It makes sense for both of their fighting styles, allowing unique usages of their powers and inventive counters to each other.

Things should change once Aang inevitably enters the Avatar State. He'll be getting deathly serious, busting out attacks that rip the whole landscape asunder and turn it against Aether. The Avatar State's either smurfed or been smurfed, so getting to see it really cut loose in 3D would go a long way here.

Who Should Win?

Breaking down the fight was actually the most interesting part here. It helps that we aren't getting another brick-on-brick contest, and I don't think any of the usual categories are entirely irrelevant here. Let's look at Intelligence and Experience, Arsenal and Abilities, and Stats.

Intelligence and Experience

Intuitively, the actual MC should take this over the self-insert, but its actually a tricky call. Aang was prepared to become the Avatar since birth, with about 39 years of confirmed bending under his resume. That's way longer than the Traveler's...well, travels on-screen.

But apparently, they were travelling through space with their sister for milennia prior to Genshin Impact's events. Even accounting for the lack of info on what that journey entailed, total experience is definitely in their favor here.

But that's a bit misleading, since their time spent practicing the elements was during the actual game; that timeframe is way shorter than Aang's bending journey, which never really ended until he died. Even being generous and accounting for optional annual events that hardly fit into the story proper, Genshin Impact's main story can't be more than about half a decade. Even accounting for their fights against generally more varied opponents and martial training, Aang's resume is simply more applicable and extensive in the ways that matter most.

But that's only looking at experience. Intelligence is another story, and not one singing Aang's praises.

Despite being a clever combatant and extremely talented bender, Aang loses points here for the compararive lack of screentime he has as an adult. It's clear he matured a lot after the original series, but there's no reason to think his attitude would completely shift. Meanwhile, Aether's both a hardened veteran and master of traditional combat. Considering his age, its hard to say he wouldn't outclass Aang in knowledge.

So Aang takes Experience, Aether takes Intelligence, and neither has a clear edge on the mental front.

Intelligence and Experience

With the X-Factors split, we've got to start looking at what you're really here to see: earth, water, fire and air...plus electricity...plants too...a whole lot of stuff, really.

Arsenal and Abilities

Comparing weapons first, it's an easy call. Don't get me wrong, staves really don't deserve their reputation of being oversized sticks. Yeah, its techincally true, but compared to most non-lethal self-defense tools, they're pretty effective. You've got practical range and defensive viability without totally sacrificing offense. Seriously, it really should have been compared to the Stingray Spear instead of the Taiaha. That would've been a way closer and more fitting comparison.

Sadly, there's no Twin Hooks to bail the Shaolin Monk out this time, and the staff's even more outclassed. Replace jade spear with superpowered sword; and its pretty clear that Aether has the better weapon. Sure, Aang can glide with his staff, but Aether's got his own glider too, so that doesn't really matter.

Luckily for Aang, that's hardly the biggest factor here. As you'd expect, its the elements and how well our combatants use them that take center stage.

Let's start with how the two power systems work on a mechanical level. Aang's bending is reliant on his supply of inner chi (life energy tied to the soul), the surroundings and martial movements. His energy can't really run out under normal circumstances, but fatigue and elemental availability are notable concerns. The Traveler doesn't have to worry about any of that stuff; their powers are all natural. Ontop of that, their elements can be combined for extra effects, channeled through equipment, and grant the stat buffs and minor healing you'd expect from an RPG magic system.

Both can use all their elements at once, though they prefer using one at a time in most cases. Aang's got earth, water, fire, air, and heart energy (more on that one in a bit). Aether's repertoire includes all of those plus electricity, plants, and ice.

Do I even need to say more?

Turns out, yes. 

For one, Aang largely has the extra elements covered. Waterbending can control the H2O inside plants and all manner of ice, even shifting the latter into its other states of matter (except plasma, I guess). Aang can't project electricity, but he can redirect it, albeit with difficulty.

In truth, it's more accurate to say that Traveler has half an element over Aang instead of three. 

That wouldn't mean much if the abilities here were comparable...but they just aren't.

All of Aether's elements can generally be boiled down to the same thing: projecting bursts of the element in-question. Very straight-forward. By comparison, Aang can continously manipulate his so long as they exist. That might sound like just one advantage compared to Aether's many, and on-paper it is. But once you see how that difference manifests...it's another story.

Aang can use either fire or air to basically fly and even walk with no normal footholds; that alone lets him dominate the vertical axis (bolstered by airbending's focus on acrobatics). With earthbending's Seismic Sense, he can sense vibrations dozens of feet away, from huge tremors to the footsteps of ants. He can shift the state of water at will and constantly, combining mist with airbending and vice-versa.

Perhaps Aang's biggest fundamental advantage is having remote control over the elements. He can blindside opponents with air from his body or...you know, everywhere around them. The same usually goes for earth, and water with only a little set-up. You might think fire would be tough to pull that with, but he can convert his chi into the stuff. Most importantly, Aang can turn the Descender's own attacks against them, whereas the reverse isn't true.

All this is dialed up to eleven with the Avatar State. This form grants Aang the combined knowledge and power of all previous Avatars, of which there are at least 95. Still a lower collective lifespan than the Traveler, but even more bending skills to draw from. This includes a ton of brutal strategies, like inducing heatstroke with firebending, freezing people inside and out with a touch, or sucking the air out their lungs. Sure, that last one won't work on Aether given he can breathe in space, but the other two don't have clear counters.

There's also the matter of energybending. With it, Aang taps into the source of bending to remove it from his target, with the potential to destroy one's life and spirit entirely. Whether this would work on Aether is a bit tricky to say. They have a degree of protection for their soul, and their elements aren't specifically tied to either aspect energybending affects. I'm going to say the move won't work, but that doesn't prevent Aang from gaining a huge lead overall.

Arsenal and Abilities

Still, all of Aang's bending talent won't mean much if he comes up short on the fundamentals, leading us into

Stats

There isn't much point in solely comparing direct feats this time. It's an unfair comparison for the Traveler, who is largely constrained by gameplay mechanics for the most part (like only being able to use one Element at a time). We'll be skipping straight to the real stuff.

Let's start with Aang's strength and durability, no Avatar State included. Physically, he's lifted a boulder and survived falling from a tornado, which are low-level superhuman (yeah, we're crazier irl than you'd think). This doesn't matter too much given he's taken bending attacks and hurt others who can too. Avatar characters are definitely glass cannons - well-placed shots from comparable characters do a lot - but their physical AP and durability would likely downscale to some extent.

With bending, Aang and other benders have launched massive amounts of earth through the air at high speeds on several occasions. This consistently places them in the range of several dozen Tons of TNT and thousands of Tons for lifting strength (the most impressive feat being this one).

Compared to the Traveler...these numbers aren't cutting it. Aether doesn't have many personal feats for lifting strength, but we know they're comparable to Venti, who split mountains and moved at least one into the sea. I really shouldn't have to explain how moving mountains beats moving rocks and sand. Even more impressive is when they and a comparable ally blocked an energy blast which would've destroyed an entire research facility.

Doesn't sound stronger at first, but consider this facility was made of steel and stone...and larger than mountains. Even accounting for Traveler only doing half the work, this would be just about 1.15 Teratons of TNT*.

*I substituted fragmentation values for rock and steel into the calc; there's no evidence this blast would have been enough to melt all of that in one shot.

Paired with Venti being able to lift Trillions of Tons for lifting strength, Aang's laughably outclassed here.

Of course, there's still the Avatar State to cover. Can it shake things up?

With it, Aang's raised the sea level and carved a ravine around an entire city. Impressive, but still within the Kiloton range at most. Luckily for him, past Avatars have done way more. That includes moving large clouds, creating volcanic eruptions, and most importantly, pushing an entire island out to sea. Believe it or not, that sits at 3.07 Teratons of TNT, double the power of Traveler's best and slightly more weight to push than Venti's feat.

So at his full power, Aang actually takes the lead here! The gap isn't massive or anything, and it'd certainly close with Aether's stat-buffs, but it's an edge nonetheless.

That just leaves us with one final factor: speed.

Avatar characters have dodged and intercepted lightning on numerous occasions. This has and will continue to be a controversial topic regarding stats, since lightningbending is formed from chi, and not entirely natural. I'd be inclined to say it wasn't the speed of real lightning...if not for Iroh intercepting a lightning bolt to first demonstrate the ability. That marks a clear narrative intent for the skill to work on real lightning.

Aang himself has by far the most impressive lightning redirection feat in the series, completing a leap and turning on a dime to stick his hand in the way. That comes out to a whopping Mach 2,458, though its important to note that characters similar in speed to Aang have struggled with lightning's speed. You could argue Aang being several times faster than a lightning bolt makes this calc an outlier

How does The Traveler compare? Well, they've also dodged lightning and canonically boost their speed with it, so like Aang, they're most consistently around its speed. The highest you can calculate them moving in-tandem with lightning is Mach 2,108, giving Aang a slight speed advantage with more favorable interpretations.

So Aang takes the edge, right?

Well, not quite. Until Aang realizes he needs the Avatar State to even do damage, the slightest graze would be enough to kill him. With the Traveler only being slightly slower initially and having a huge advantage elsewhere, it really just comes down to if they can nab an early win or not. That's more than enough to leave our final category a tie.

Stats

With brawn and brain too close to call, it should be elementary to see who wins. Aang may have more limitations on access to his powers, but his control over the elements is simply far too varied, deadly, and able to turn the Descender's own abilities against them. He'll be cutting it close before using the Avatar State, but with his superior agility, versatility and clear advantage in powers, Aang will reach his full power in most cases; that's plenty enough for him to take the win.

Unless they're, like, 2 feet apart. Yeah, it's one of those "how far apart do they start" battles. Assuming they start the furthest range both can hit each other (a few dozen feet or so), Aang probably takes it.

"But Ningen, What About insert higher Genshin Impact arguments here?"

You might be surprised to see that Venti's feat wasn't much higher; the most recent calc I've seen places it far above Kyoshi's best. I actually don't have any issues with the math, but it assumes Venti lifted all the mountains at once, something never stated.

Regarding speed, Aether and those they scale to are consistently in the lightning-timing range. After all, the series' Temu Vergil relies on lightning, and they're very much on that part of the totem pole. If anything, you could argue the calc I gave Aether is too generous, but this also goes for Aang. The creators obviously didn't intend both to be several times faster in those scenes; I used the calcs since a general comparison was too close to call. Kinda cool it still ended up that way.

Lastly, there's this calc for a character below Aether making a rainstorm. Certainly impressive, but like with Venti, the numbers given are very much a high-end. There's no proof the storm covered an entire region; you'd think if it did, we'd actually see that on-screen.

"Aren't You Forgetting the Traveler's Light-timing Feat?"

That facility-levelling blast was stated to be a beam of light. Intercepting it would be far above Aang's speed...if not for the attack contradicting the properties of real-world light. It isn't a straight line even when firing, let alone when blocked. Add in the narrative consistency of Aether being a light-timer, and you get the picture.

But Who Will Win?

As you should know by now, modern Death Battle will take some...creative liberties with the stats here.

At bare minimum, expect them to assume Venti did move all those mountains at once. Since they don't care about Lifting Strength, all you need to know is that Aether's minimum will be about 25.7 Teratons of TNT. That's thousands of times stronger than Aang's realistic best...again.

Given how often this show treats any light-based attack as real world lightspeed, they could definitely argue Aether at roughly 10.88% lightspeed. But after Yuji Vs. Denji, this isn't definite anymore. They didn't seem to buy Jujutsu Kaisen characters being light-timers aside from the series' top-speedster and his sole opponent. But that was also because said speedster was directly stated to cap the cast below such a tier. Genshin Impact has no such statement, just clear implication, and we all know Death Battle's ability to read the room is horrendous.

As for Aang, figuring out where they'll place him is trickier. It doesn't seem like that at first, given we've had 4 Avatar episodes to Genshin Impact's 0, but context is key. Two of these episodes had zero calcs, and by its own admission, Aang's last episode lowballed him. They focused on a Kiloton level feat when a blackbox scaled him to Gigatons.

Our best point of reference is Korra Vs. Storm and its G1 Blog. Death Battle claimed the Avatars were comparable to each other in stats (this was never stated) so we can slap Korra's stats onto Aang's. In all fairness, that particular comparison makes sense; both are comparable to Toph without the Avatar State. Yeah, Toph had about 2 extra decades of training after Aang died, but she was very old when fighting Korra.

Korra was scaled to Amon dodging lightning at Mach 214.65 and Kyoshi's island feat. The latter was calced as weighing 423,149,806,300 Tons, leading to a kinetic energy of 21.25 Gigatons of TNT.

If you couldn't tell, those numbers are lower than mine. Not a great sign.

But wait a minute: they scaled base Korra to Avatar State Kyoshi...for some reason. That suggests a way higher ceiling for the Avatar State. But do we have any idea of what they might buy for the form?

Turns out, yes. G1 (really, fans joking about how badly Korra was going to lose) proposed that her Avatar State battling Vaatu - one of the strongest spirits - placed her above the Moon Spirit. They themselves acknowledged this was "dubious at best", but that was before brainrot even became a common term. Don't be surprised if Death Battle places Avatar State Aang at moon level, which obviously beats continent level.

Extra Brainrot Arguments

I know what some of you are about to say; hold that thought for a little longer. I still have to talk about Aang's speed. That seems to be what most people are focusing on; more specifically, the idea that he can't even come close to Aether's "light-timing". But being similarly lenient, he can match and even surpass it.

G1 doesn't have anything above what I gave Aang in this regard, but other arguments have been proposed elsewhere. Aang and Vaatu have created auroras with their energy, which would place it at 6-11% lightspeed (depending on if you're talking about the particles or waves carrying them, I ain't getting into the technobabble rn). The previously mentioned Moon Spirit scaling also matters here; some have argued they flew to the moon, which gets 22% lightspeed.

Considering Death Battle has ignored far larger speed gaps allowing characters to "blitz the base form" - as the young folk say - even using the end that favors Aether, it won't mean much against a huge power gap.

Okay, now for what you've been waiting for.

In Genshin Impact, there's a character who controls 3 moons, moving them with telekinesis. Obviously, 3 moons beat 1. Even assuming the Moon Spirit could just destroy the moon with a snap, applying KE wank to Genshin's moon feat gets to Large Planet level.

Aether...doesn't scale to this normally. They explicitly needed outside help to reach that level of power.

But fuck it, go ahead and throw this in for the hell of it. At that point, base Aang is Star level because some Firebenders could "move the sun". Is that dumb? Yeah, but at least there's some actual backing behind it. That includes other statements claiming firebenders can make fireballs as bright as the sun or, in the case of Roku, generate one of the same size. With the Avatar State, Aang obviously upscales that. There's also a statement implying every spirit embodies a star; the "logic" of the Avatar State being moon level would also get them to star level.

Checkmate, gachaites.

"Hold on, Weren't People Saying Genshin Impact is Multi-Solar System Level?"

Like, a year ago. It was one of those "dimension gets created with a starry sky" feats. Already dubious, but then people remembered said dimension is just part of a book. Unless you think books are multi-soalr system level, Traveler isn't either.

Final Thoughts

For the most part, we're looking at a snooze fest here, but breaking down the debate was still fun. As I've stressed before, that's kind of baked-in. Still, more than most episodes this season, I think a real breakdown of this matchup was needed.

Everywhere you look, DB fans are saying Aang is going to get stomped. Like with Cell Vs. Metal Sonic, I know I'm going against the grain here. Will I eat shit again? Maybe, but I'd much rather be earnest and risk a loss then just lie about my opinion. Frankly, it seems like the majority are just going with the crowd, and I get why. 

This matchup got announced nearly 2 years ago, and had traction before then. That was back when "laser" feats were given barely any pushback (still not enough), and since Avatar's most impressive speed feats revolve around lightning, the consensus was that Aether speedblitzed. Back then, you also had things like multi-solar system Genshin seriously considered, whereas Aang even being moon level was considered a joke (which it is, but it's far more reliable than Aether being moon level or higher).

Adding in the prevalence of miHoYo powerscaling - including far stronger series under its banner, which have limited crossovers with Genshin - since 2024 only fueled the fire.

I went into this thinking the fight was closer than people were saying, but thought Death Battle would pick Aether in a heartbeat. But unless they cap Aang below moon level, I think he's got it.