Saturday 21 March 2020

Death Battle Predictions: Gray VS Esdeath

“If you’re skating on thin ice, you might as well dance.”
- Anita Shreve
Ice is an element that is beautiful and deadly and throughout the past seasons, we saw the capability of strong fighters that pushed their limits of this unique ability. From seeing warriors who can shoot beams and instantly freeze their opponents to ice queens fighting for their family name. All combatants have shown their skills and control over the capabilities of mastering ice, yet the power of how far this element can go through remains a mystery. Until now, as these upcoming two combatants have more in common than just being shown to be the most potent ice users. 
Gray Fullbuster, the “cool” headed Ice Mage from the Fairy Tail guild. Esdeath, leader of the Jaegers and sadistic general from Akame ga Kill. Both lost loved ones at a young age, and proved themselves to have essential roles with their teams (Team Natsu and Jaegers). Both have shown their love for their organizations (The Empire that is not Star Wars, and the Fairy Tail Guild). And… both surprisingly like to show their sexy side by showing less clothing with tattoos on their chest. Neat. Jokes aside, these two have proven they are two of the most potent ice users to date, and it is finally time to see which one is truly the strongest. Will the Ice Mage dethrone the general to give Fairy Tail their second win, or will the Ice Queen break a Fullbuster?
A Heads Up from Ya Bois
Akame ga Kill actually has two canonicities: the manga and the anime. While they are primarily similar, aside from the endings, we will mostly be focusing on Esdeath’s feats from the manga due to it being the original source. Any anime feats listed will only be for supporting the manga feats. 
Likewise, we will also be mainly focusing on the Fairy Tail manga as well, for the same reasons. 
This also includes any of the Fairy Tail movies, as long they have been confirmed to take place in the anime timeline, they will be included with the anime as supported material. 
Oh and fair warning. Like with Elfen Lied back in Season 5, Akame ga Kill has… quite a lot of mature themes. We’re not just talking about gore and nudity. Despite the fact that it’s classified under Shonen, Akame ga Kill is well known for being a very dark and bleak series, including themes such as, but not limited to; suicide, rape, pedophilia and a lot more that will not be listed. 
While Gray’s information will be fairly less dark, be warned that Esdeath has done a lot of fucked up shit (though she’s not the worst offender in the series), and some of the links are quite graphic and disturbing.
And to end it off on a lighter note, be prepared to see a lot of partial-to-full nudity on Gray’s part.

Background

Gray Fullbuster
In the world of Fairy Tail, there is a country far up north called Fiore, Gray Fullbuster was once a boy who lived happily with his two beloved parents. Everything changed one day when a kaiju-like demon made of ice called Deliora destroyed his whole village, making Gray the only survivor of the attack. Unlike Erza who became a slave in a similar event (kinda), Gray was found by Ur and Lyon Vastia. Ur was an Ice Mage investigating the destruction alongside with her first pupil Lyon, taking Gray as her second pupil after finding him. Being a second mother to Gray, Ur trained him and Lyon in the ways of Ice Magic in the mountains, which where the training also included stripping your clothes.
Months passed, and then Gray fought Deliora for revenge despite Ur and Lyon warnings of not fighting him. Gray is easily defeated alongside Lyon, and Ur fights the demon herself. 
In the final moment of the battle, Ur sacrificed herself by using the move Iced Shell, killing herself to become the ice itself and sealing Deliora. Before she died, she told Gray to step into the future, and to tell Lyon the same since he was knocked out. Lyon sadly hated Gray, blaming him for Ur’s death, and parted ways. 
Gray went west soon after to find strong wizards and try to bring back Ur. He fails in bringing back Ur. But, he ended joining the Fairy Tail Guild instead. Now one of the strongest members and being a teammate for Team Natsu, Gray found a new family, and one that he will protect no matter what. 

Esdeath
To those who live in villages and remote houses in the Empire of Akame Ga Kill!, life is hard. The threat of bandits, danger beasts, and warring tribes is constant, and survival is never a guarantee. Getting eaten, mugged, murdered, and worse are all very realistic fates one can meet. But some still hold out hope to move to the empire’s capital city and start a new life… one that’s likely to be short lived. Those in power in the Empire are worse monsters than any danger beast could ever hope to be. And standing atop a pile of corpses above them all is none other than the top General, Esdeath, whose name translates quite literally to “Ice death”.
Esdeath grew up in the harsh Northern Frontier, where the law of survival of the fittest ruled the lands and strength mattered more than anything else. Trained by her father, the chief of her village, she quickly learned to become a brutal and merciless killer who hunted dinosaurs for sport even as a young girl. Unfortunately for her and the rest of the country, that all changed when she came home after a hunting mission to find her tribe massacred by bandits, including her father, who passed away in her arms.
Left with nothing but her training and her father’s teachings, Esdeath traveled to the Capital, joining its military and rising through the ranks to become one of its deadliest tacticians and killers. Eventually, she even earned the right to choose a Teigu, one of a set of 48 magic items created hundreds of years ago. Naturally, she went right for the one that killed all who previously attempted to wield it, and instead of succumbing to its immense power, she overcame and mastered it, cementing her spot as the Empire’s deadliest fighter.

Equipment

Gray

(RIP, Wendy’s innocence)
The man forgets to bring a pair of pants most of the time, do you really think this dude would be able to carry any piece of equipment without losing it somehow? Then again, he makes his own weapons out of ice so it’s not like he needs anything else.

Esdeath

Rapier

Esdeath’s main and only weapon of choice is her rapier, a type of sword with a slender and sharply-pointed two-edged blade and is a single-handed weapon. Popular in Western Europe for civilian use (dueling & self-defense) and as a military sidearm, the rapier usually has an average blade length of 41 inches (3.4 feet) but can even reach up to 51 inches (4.25 feet).

Abilities

Gray

Ice-Make Magic

Gray’s signature type of magic, Ice-Make, was taught to him by his mentor Ur. With this Molding Magic, Gray can create ice out of thin air and mold it however he sees fit. There are two variations of Ice-Make Magic, Static, which creates inanimate objects to use as weapons, and Dynamic, which creates living creatures out of solid ice. While Gray specializes in Static Ice-Make, he’s skilled enough to use Dynamic Ice-Make as well. According to Gray himself, Ice-Make Magic allows him to create pretty much anything he wants, and given his insanely versatile arsenal, we’re inclined to agree with him.

Ice-Make: Lance

Gray’s bread-and-butter technique, this attack summons multiple frozen spears to impale the opponent. He also has an enhanced variant known as Ice-Make: Freeze Lancer.

Ice-Make: Wall

Gray creates a large wall to block incoming attacks. He has an enhanced version called Ice-Make: Rampart.

Ice-Make: Floor

With this spell, Gray freezes the ground, slipping up any oncoming opponents and leaving them easy targets.

Ice-Make: Stairs

Wow. All we need is Ice-Make: Ceiling, and we’ll have a whole house. Gray creates a staircase so he can reach higher ground.

Ice-Make: Slide

For all your playground needs.

Ice-Make: Shield
Gray’s go-to whenever he needs to go on the defensive. This technique creates a frozen barrier to block an on coming attack. He has a variation called Ice-Make: Cocoon that surrounds him on all sides.

Ice-Make: Sword
It's exactly what it says on the tin. Gray makes a frozen sword that’s as solid as any real metal. He also has the greatsword, Cold Excalibur, and the twin Scimitars Ice Bringer.

Ice-Make: Battleaxe

Gray creates a battleaxe out of ice. Kinda in the name.

Ice-Make: Hammer

Now stop. Hammer time. With this spell, Gray creates a massive hammer made of solid ice that he drops on the opponent. He has an even bigger version called Ice-Make: Ice Impact.

Ice-Make: Death Scythe
Gray creates a massive scythe made of ice, before slashing at the opponent.

Ice-Make: Cannon

Gray forms a massive amount of artillery that he can load with surrounding rubble or his own ice to blast apart enemies. He has a hand-held variation in the form of a bazooka called Ice-Make: Ice Cannon.

Ice-Make: Arrows

Gray creates a frozen bow out of ice, before firing off a storm of ice shards at the opponent.

Ice-Make: Ice Geyser

Gray punches the earth, before summoning a massive pillar of ice that freezes or impales the opponent. He can also use this to gain higher ground against an opponent if need be. There’s also a variation called Ice-Make: Ice Wall that freezes the opponent instead of impaling them.

Ice-Make: Super Freeze Arrow

A combination of Ice-Make: Arrow and Ice-Make: Ice Geyser, this is a devastating attack fired from a high point. A single shot was able to one-hit KO the time manipulator Racer.

Ice-Make: Prison

Gray creates a jail made of solid ice to entrap the opponent. It was able to hold the likes of Natsu Dragneel for a good amount of time even though that guy’s whole deal is making lots and lots of FIRE.

Ice-Make: Grappling Hook

Take it away, Mabel!

Ice-Make: Clone

Gray pulls a trick outta Sub-Zero’s book and makes a copy of himself out of solid ice that is near-identical to the original. Gray can use this spell to distract an enemy or to avoid an oncoming attack. He can make up to two of these clones.

Ice-Make: Key

Gray creates a key out of ice in order to unlock locks.

Ice-Make: Thieving Hand

Gray’s only shown Dynamic Ice Make spell, he creates a set of grabby hands to sneak items off of an unsuspecting opponent.

Ice-Make: Gungnir
Named after Odin’s spear of legend, Gray erects a massive frozen spear, trapping the opponent within the spear’s tip.

Ice-Make: Knuckle

Gray summons a flurry of fists from underneath the opponent to pummel them relentlessly.

Ice-Make: Vambrace

(FASTBALL SPECIAL!)
Gray creates a massive gauntlet out of ice that greatly increases his punching and throwing power. 

Ice-Make: Saucer

Gray launches a giant spinning chakram/saw-blade to slice into an unsuspecting opponent.

Ice-Make: Fishnet

Not that kinda fishnet, damnit!

Ice-Make: Kite

This spell is Gray’s main method of air transport, granting him a kite that lets him glide through the air. Hell yeah.

Ice-Make: Ocean

Gray freezes an entire body of water. Used to ruin water parks.

Ice-Make: Crescent Blades

Gray shoots forward a massive amount of moon-shaped blades to attack multiple targets at once.

Ice-Make: Seven Slice Dance

Gray forms two blades on his arm, before rushing the opponent and slicing into them. Typically used as a finishing move. He also has an enhanced version made with his own blood.

Ice-Make Unlimited: One-Sided Chaotic Dance

Gray creates a massive amount of Ice-based weapons at an insane speed, all connected by a single icy chain. Gray then charges forward, grinding up the opponent with a blender of swords, axes, spears, and other weapons.

Ice-Make: Silver

Gray freezes a massive area with his ice powers with a single gesture.

Ice Magic

Alongside his signature Ice-Make, Gray has access to several general Ice Spells. Most of the time, this is used to create ice or freeze over things, but he does have two notable spells in this magic family.

Iced Shell

An incredibly risky maneuver, using Iced Shell completely encases the victim in a block of ice. This ice is nearly unmeltable, and has also been shown to gradually wear away the victim’s body until it’s broken into pieces, as shown with the demon Demigra. However, it does have a high cost. Using this spell destroys the user’s spirit and body in order to become the ice itself, meaning that it can only be used once. Gray’s attempted to use this against enemies quite a few times (as the image implies), though someone tends to punch him before he does.

Lost Iced Shell

An even more powerful variation of Iced Shell, this spell has one major difference. It is of the ‘Lost’ Attribute. In other words, after using this spell, Gray’s physical form will not only disappear, but also his very existence from the memories of anyone who knew him. The counterbalance, however, is that it is even more powerful than its previous incarnation. While Natsu punched Gray before he could use it, Gray has been shown he’s at least knowledgeable about the spell.

Ice Devil Slayer Magic
Much like his rival, Natsu Dragneel, Gray is a wielder of a ‘Slayer’ style of magic. In his case, Devil Slayer. Devil Slayer Magic is a form of Caster Magic specifically created to slay demons, and Gray gained this power after his father, Silver Fullbuster, passed it onto him after Gray defeated him. With its power, Gray is not only able to eat ice in order to boost his own power, but also to be immune to ice completely. However, it has the drawback of risking the user to turn into a demon themselves and losing their sanity. Despite this, the raw power Gray gains is not to be trifled with, able to freeze giant tornadoes, and even massive areas of land with his power.

Ice Devil’s Rage

Gray’s counterpart to Natsu’s Fire Dragon’s Roar, Gray fires off a massive storm of purple ice from his mouth, freezing over anything unfortunate enough to be in its path, causing a crapton of destruction.

Ice Devil’s Zeroth Long Sword

Gray creates a massive longsword out of ice, before slashing into the opponent while simultaneously freezing them solid.

Ice Devil’s Zeroth Destruction Bow
Gray creates an intricate bow made out of Devil Slayer ice, before firing off a massive arrow at his opponent, encasing them in jagged and spiky ice.

Ice Devil’s Zeroth Destruction Fist

(BURN, erm, FREEZE KNUCKLE!)
Gray creates a set of incredibly powerful gauntlets made out of ‘unholy’ ice, which can even freeze other kinds of ice and even those who are otherwise immune to ice and cold.

Combat Skill
Due to the nature of Gray’s magic, Gray, much like fellow Fairy Tail combatant Erza Scarlet, is an incredibly skilled warrior, and master of many different types of weaponry. He tends to favor bladed weapons such as swords, but he is also an incredible crack shot, able to snipe targets from hundreds of meters away with his bow skills. Even unarmed, Gray is skilled in hand-to-hand, even defeating the Thunder God Tribe in unarmed combat by himself.

Esdeath

Demon God Manifestation: Demon’s Extract

Esdeath is one of the few people in Akame ga Kill to wield a Teigu (also known as Imperial Arms), which are mysterious and extremely powerful relics. There are 48 in total, and Esdeath’s is an elemental-type Teigu that gives her the ability to manipulate ice. Fully named Demon God Manifestation: Demon’s Extract (or Demon’s Extract for short), it was created using the lifeblood of a super-class beast. Thanks to her ego and immense mental willpower, Esdeath was able to withstand Demon’s Extract’s overwhelming insanity. Speculated to be the strongest of the 48 Teigu, Demon’s Extract allows Esdeath to perform a variety of ice manipulation abilities such as creating ice swords and ice walls even without a nearby water source. (It also allows Esdeath to win all the drinking contests)

Weiss Schnabel
With Demon’s Extract, Esdeath can perform Weiss Schnabel, a technique where she fires a barrage of ice at her opponent. At her strongest though, she can create hundreds of icicles in a single instant.

Grau Horn

Grauhorn is a technique in which Esdeath uses her ice manipulation to cause a large spike of ice to burst out of the ground or any other surface that she chooses.

Hagel Sprung

Pulling a Madara, Esdeath performs the technique Hagel Sprung to summon a massive block of ice in order to crush her enemies below.

Flash Freeze/Freeze Capture

One of Esdeath’s deadliest ice manipulation abilities is Freeze Capture (also known as Flash Freeze), a technique in which she encases her enemy in a block of ice to impede their movement whether by on contact with her skin or just by thinking about it despite not looking. It’s an instant counter move if she ever gets tagged by an enemy. With this ability, Esdeath was able to freeze a large river and even multiple Ultimate-Class Danger Beasts that dwarf multi-story buildings.

Ice Shields

For defensive purposes, Esdeath can create ice shields to protect herself from enemy attacks. She can create separate shields with multiple layers and small armors to cover her blind spots.

Ice Weaponry

Esdeath is skilled enough with her ice manipulation to create additional weapons for herself should she lose her rapier in battle. These weapons include but are not limited to: knives, daggers, swords of various lengths and thicknesses, and a massive morningstar adorned with spikes.

Flight

If she feels like it, Esdeath can create floating ice around her body which gives herself the ability to fly.

Shatter

Esdeath's ice also seems to have a property of making anything it covers weaker. By using her ice, she was able to easily shatter durable characters and weapons as well as herself.

Trump Cards

Only a several of the 48 Teigu possess a “hidden ability”, otherwise known as trump cards. Considering trump cards are a Teigu user’s most powerful techniques, they’re usually meant as a last resort. Originally, Demon’s Extract was one of the Teigu that didn’t have a trump card. With it under her possession though, Esdeath was able to develop 3 trump cards, a feat that many would think to be impossible.

Mahapadma
Mahapadma is Esdeath’s primary trump card with Demon’s Extract. With it, she can literally freeze time and space even if it’s only for a brief moment. Despite the short limit, Esdeath can basically do whatever she wants while time is frozen and will go in for the kill. Due to how taxing this trump card can be, Esdeath can only use Mahapadma once a day. Additionally, opponents that can resist the cold are capable of moving within her stopped time.

Ice Cavalry

Esdeath’s secondary trump card with Demon’s Extract is her Ice Cavalry, which she uses to manipulate the ice to take form and create tens of thousands of soldiers and horses (or she merges them as centuarian knights) as her own personal army. These beings are capable of controlling themselves and are strong enough to be a threat even for Stage 2 Incursio Tatsumi.

Ice Storm Commander-In-Chief

Ice Storm Commander-In Chief is Esdeath’s tertiary trump card as well as her ultimate technique with Demon’s Extract. By absorbing all of her Ice Cavalry soldiers at once, Esdeath’s ice manipulation powers get severely amplified. With this amount of power, she was able to cause a massive snowstorm on a country wide scale and cover everything in ice and snow. It’s her way to “weed out the weak from the strong” while also giving herself an easier time at making ice constructs.

Extreme Mental Fortitude

Throughout her series, Esdeath has displayed immense mental fortitude and strength. Out of everyone who drank Demon’s Extract, she was the only one who didn’t go insane. Additionally, she can resist mental illusions placed upon her. One example was when Spectator used her trump card to place a powerful illusion on Esdeath, who easily maintained control of her psyche and broke free from the illusion thanks to her sheer mental brute strength.

Sharp Senses

Many characters in Akame ga Kill possess an ability that alerts them to the presence of nearby danger or murderous intent coming from an attacker, and Esdeath is no exception. She possesses sharp senses and is very aware of her surroundings. Esdeath is able to detect someone's killing intent at a long distance, identify suspicious characters in a group, and spot hidden individuals even if they weren't directly within her line of sight. She even possesses a strong sense of smell, recognizing people and their presence by their scent.

Feats

Gray

Overall

  • Became one of the strongest members of the Fairy Tail Guild 
  • Rival to Natsu Dragneel, who he defeated a few times
  • Defeated skilled water user (and future girlfriend) Juvia Lockster
  • Is shown to be an equal to Erza Scarlet, who is one of the strongest Fairy Tail Members
  • Defeated several skilled cryomancers, such as his fellow pupil Lyon Vatista
  • Defeated his father, Silver Fullbuster
  • Defeated the Spriggan 12 member, Invel Yura
  • Defeated Rufus Lore
  • Matched the memory of his former mentor, Ur 

Strength

Speed

Durability

Esdeath

Overall

Strength

Speed

Durability


Weaknesses

Gray
Gray is among the strongest in the Fairy Tail guild, but he’s not without weaknesses. While he can replenish it, he still has a limited amount of Mana. Ice-Make magic requires two hands for object stability and mana conservation. While he can use it with one hand, it’s a lot less stable and accelerates fatigue. His two Ice Shell spells are ultimate last resorts that kill him (though he quite often attempts to use them when the situation doesn’t even call for it). Repeated usage of his Devil Slayer Magic causes him to lose sanity with each usage, causing irrational decisions, which isn’t helped by the fact that he is (ironically) quite hot-headed, though not as much compared to Natsu.
And as you may have noticed with several of Gray’s images, he has a habit of stripping. This doesn’t really affect his battle abilities, but this does mean that Gray never uses any type of armor as a defence, and heavily relies on his own abilities to avoid getting damaged.

Esdeath
Esdeath may be one of the strongest characters in her series, but she does have her faults. Mahapadma can be only used once per day and severely drains her stamina. In fact, while it’s unlikely to happen, Esdeath can overtax her cryokinetic abilities, resulting in her being unable to use her ice abilities for a while. But her biggest weakness would be her sadism and lust for battle. If she were to fight against someone she deems worthy, she has a habit of dragging out fights to test their strength as well as make them suffer. This was what led to her defeat and death at Akame’s hands. 
Oh and uh... 

...she’s a little obsessed with Tatsumi, but that won’t be a problem in this fight. (Why did she have to go for a bland MC?)

Summary

Gray Fullbuster
Advantages:
  • Comparable in power to base Esdeath
  • Much faster
  • Ice resistances lessen the damage done to him against Esdeath’s ice attacks
  • Could possibly resist Mahapadma...
  • More experienced in cryomancy as well as fighting cryomancers
  • More versatile with his Ice-Make Magic
  • Can mold Esdeath’s ice attacks and defenses, using her own best weapon against her
  • Can replenish his Mana reserves
  • Sexy (dem abs)
  • Somehow fills out all of Esdeath’s boyfriend requirements
  • In a series where everyone lives
Disadvantages:
  • Much weaker when compared to Commander in Chief
  • Not as experienced in combat
  • Less surefire options to kill Esdeath
  • ...but also might be susceptible to the time freeze 
  • Far more reckless
  • Impulsiveness and sanity loss from Devil Slayer Magic could lead to mistakes
  • Still a virgin as of this writing
  • Somehow fills out all of Esdeath’s boyfriend requirements 

Esdeath
Advantages:
  • Much more powerful than Gray after using Commander in Chief
  • More experienced in battle
  • Far more ruthless in tactics
  • Better tactician and fighter
  • More level-headed
  • Greater range
  • Possesses more surefire methods for ending the fight
  • Sexy (dem tiddies yeyeeeee)
  • Gray fills out all of her boyfriend requirements
Disadvantages:
  • Far slower
  • Not as experienced in cryomancy and has no experience fighting cryomancers
  • Ice attacks will be much less effective against Ice Devil Slayer
  • Gray can manipulate her own ice against her
  • Much less versatile
  • Cannot replenish her cryokinetic energy reserves
  • Bloodlust and personality can result in her dragging out the fight
  • Died a virgin
  • Akame ga Kill's anime sucked (though it did make her a better person)
  • In a series where everyone dies

Verdicts

EpicLinkSam
Jin Kisaragi got fucking robbed.
Yeah, I wanted my boy Jin to fight Esdeath or Gray (or maybe even more left field, I think Esdeath vs Lio Fotia would be pretty neat), but this happened instead. Ah well, I suppose it’s fine. As a Canadian, I love everything cold, and this matchup is no exception.
It’s been a while since I’ve dabbled into both series, but I do recall two things.
  1. Akame ga Kill had horrible writing that makes RWBY look good and Fairy Tail used too much friendship that even Yu-Gi-Oh would be disgusted.
  2. Esdeath and Gray are some of the better characters in their series.
Now that I’ve said my thoughts on the matchup itself, let’s get into the actual debate.
Honestly? This has been one of the better debates of Death Battle so far. Not stupidly stomp obvious, but at the same time, quite arguable. It’s not on the same level of the migraines Carnage vs Lucy, but it’s quite fun. Last time we had a debatable fight it was what, Ghost Rider vs Lobo?
Now, let’s get down to business. No, not to defeat the Huns because fuck the live action Mulan movie.
Esdeath already has the strength and durability advantage in base form, and Commander in Chief just amps that shit up like crazy (and Death Battle is probably going to use her CiC stats). Gray on the other hand, has speed advantage by an absolute landslide.
With this in mind, can Gray somehow blitz hax Esdeath before she kills him? He’ll have plenty of time, considering how much that woman loves to keep a fight ongoing for her battle boner. He also has a wider arsenal of ice techniques, but can he?
The argument can be made. Apparently his demon slaying magic actively damages the soul, BUT, the information is so borderline minimal that it’s hard to make a solid verdict around that. Esdeath on the other hand, does have a lot more surefire ways to win, via brute force or stabbing.
While Gray does resist Maphada (Esdeath’s ZA WARUDO), due to his cold resistance, that’s one of his few advantages. So while he’s still faster, there’s one big bit to mention, which I will bring up next.
Similar to how Natsu was way back in Season 4, the question is this. “Gray eats ice and gets stronger, and is resistant to it. So how can Esdeath kill him?”
To that, I present this. 

Gray, getting damaged by ice. And this isn’t early or mid-series. This is late game Gray.
Now, what does this mean? Well, Gray is resistant to ice, but what’s interesting to note is that he doesn’t seem to be resistant to getting stabbed by it. In fact, Gray has gotten up against other ice-users and has not no-sold everything they threw at him. This implies that unlike Natsu, Gray’s resistance is far more limited, due to ice being solid, rather than fire being a more energy-like state. As such, Esdeath can exploit this via several physical ice attacks, or just physical attacks in general. But at the same time, Gray has shown some resistance to such attacks, so it’s possible that the resistance is there, just not as strong as other resistances.
And then we get into- hold up, he’s a Demon Slayer?
Watch Demon Slayer or perish. Anyways, where were we? Ah yes, his Ice Devil Slayer Magic.
There’s also the argument about how Ice Devil Slayers are immune, but like I said, Esdeath can use regular physical attacks too. Also, with Esdeath having such a huge strength advantage, Gray surviving an attack on that level would be a No Limits Fallacy.
BUT.
Gray can actually fuck Esdeath over with her own ice. Any of her biggest options of offense can be turned against her, in one of the biggest Reverse Unos in all of Death Battle.
Oh and by the way, unlike Gray, Esdeath has never shown any sort of immunity to ice. While yes, there are no other cryomancers in Akame ga Kill, assuming that she’s immune or resistant is nothing more than, well, an assumption.
And Esdeath outlasting Gray? Not possible. Gray can replenish his Mana reserves courtesy of her ice. Esdeath can’t really do the same.
While Esdeath’s win conditions are just more understandable and solid and Gray’s are more iffy, Gray simply has a lot more ways to to attempt to end the fight. Are they iffy? Yes. But they outnumber Esdeath’s only options of either brute force or stabbing. That’s what we meant in the Summary area of the fight. Esdeath has more reasonable ways to kill Gray, but Gray has a lot more ways to kill her in general.
So while Esdeath has the strength, durability and battle experience, I feel that Gray’s speed, versatility, abilities and overall superior cryomancy will let him come out on top more often than not. I suppose this means Gray will be winning this frigid battle.
Also, Gray has one more advantage.

Unlike Esdeath, he ain’t no Simp. Gray’s got a loyal lady waiting for him, unlike Esdeath wanting that dragon dick.
Also, I’m not making any ice puns, fuck you. 
...okay, one last joke.

Phantom Falcon

Ice ice baby.
First of all, hot damn, my pick for the next Community Death Battle got chosen, and it’s none other than Freeza vs Megatron, which is also my most wanted fight. Got me all giddy inside. The fact that the cast seemed somewhat interested in it gives me hope that it could happen later this season or next season. Also, preview looked fucking sick. Liking the track and sprite work so far. Anyways, back on with the prediction
Gray vs Esdeath is a pretty cool matchup. Certainly nice to see Fairy Tail return. It’s a series that means a lot to me despite its flaws and Gray is definitely my favorite character from it. Akame ga Kill also seems up my alley so I gotta make sure to check that out. Granted, I’ve heard conflicting opinions on whether or not she’s a good character, but at least she’s hot. We’ve had a lot of debate on this and it was very close. So, who’s the winner of this fight in my eyes?
Well, to start off with skill and experience, this is a pretty even one. Esdeath definitely has more battle experience given her time in the military, but Gray has better training and is more experienced with his ice abilities. Speaking of which, Gray is definitely the more versatile and inventive of the two. He’s pretty much what an ice user from full metal alchemist would be like. By that, I mean he’s got a lot of variety of weapons made of ice, such as his ice wall, shield, battle axe, arrow, gungnir, even a clone of himself for good measure, whereas Esdeath just has a rapier for actual weaponry. That’s not to undersell her, but compared to what Gray has, even with her ice techniques, it’s still a lot less than what Gray can do.
Now, I have heard of potential hax Gray has that could give him the win, such as his ice damaging the soul and his devil slayer allowing him to ignore the durability of demons, and Esdeath has “demon blood”. A few issues with this however. With the exception of Iced Shell, I have yet to see any other soul attacking ice magic from Gray, and using iced shell is kind of a bad move, considering how it kills Gray. Granted, you could argue it kills Esdeath too if she gets trapped in it, similar to what happened with Deliora, but I’m pretty sure Gray will die first before Iced Shell chews away at Esdeath’s soul.
Now for the demon blood thing, the issue is that the Teigu isn’t really demon’s blood, it’s just a name because of how those who drank it went full on Looney-Tunes before committing le dead. It’s far too specific to make a legitimate argument for Gray’s demon negation to work. So Gray’s only useful soul hax pretty much kills him, which is something that he won’t tr-
Okay maybe he’ll use it lol. Jokes aside, he’ll probably only use it as a last resort, which I uh, doubt will happen in the fight tbh.
That said, Gray also does have an advantage in that Ice Devil Slayer makes him highly resistant to most ice based attacks and mold them against the enemy like with his fight with Invel, and it would give him a very solid advantage over Esdeath, especially since he can absorb ice not too far off from his power output to boost his strength and stamina. So to find out if he does have that advantage, we need to get into stats now. I’ll start with Gray, he’s the easiest.
In terms of speed, Gray should scale to Natsu who has dodged Laxus’ lightning multiple times, which would be MHS+. You can also argue he scales to Erza, who can move at around Mach 19,000-93,000, which would be around sub-relativistic.
In terms of power and durability, Gray has his own impressive feats. His ice is powerful enough to freeze flames and he can cause massive explosions with his ice cannon. He even survived a beam from his father, Silver Fullbuster. He can scale to other characters  such as Ultear, who is superior to 2.4 megatons of TNT and being superior to the Celestial Spirit King, who can dish out 224 megatons. However, Gray can reach even higher. Invel was capable of creating a blizzard that covered most of Fiore. Now granted, Fiore was 1/20th of its size at that time, but this calc has Fiore at 5132.8 kilometers wide. That’s bigger than the U.S. 1/20th of that would be around 200 kilometers wide. Assuming it happened at the center and using the 4 second timeframe from the anime, I got around 63.17 teratons of TNT, which is country level. However, the context of this arc matters as well: Invel and his guild were trying to take over the Fairy Tail guild, so it was off center based on the map. This increases the result by a good bit. Assuming the blizzard formed at where Fairy Tail is located and extended up to the coast as the radius, you get around 390 teratons of TNT, which is large country level. Also a weakened Erza destroyed Deus Sama which has a KE of 101-262 teratons of TNT, but details
Now for Esdeath, she has impressive feats such as freezing a river and consistently scales to feats around city level, such as Budo making a storm but by scaling to Shikoutazer, she gets around 463 teratons of TNT, large country level. There’s another thing I can mention that gets her higher, but I’ll get to that later. As for speed, during her battle with Akame, she dodged natural lightning, which has been calculated to be MHS. She’s probably faster than that since she’s shown to be superior to Akame during their battle.
So Esdeath has a small power and durability advantage while Gray blitzes to the point where he can Naruto run around her. What’s the power gap again? Oh yeah, a difference of only barely 2x. Even with the other Shikoutazer feat, she wouldn’t be stronger by an immense amount. Given how Gray would be virtually immune to her ice attacks and even use them against her by molding them like how he did with Invel’s ice, she can only win with physical strikes. Her physical strikes won’t even do much, if she can even land a hit on Gray in the first place given his big speed advantage, whereas Gray can hit her dozens of times and will be able to eventually land a killing blow. So Gray wins right?
Well not yet, because there’s one more thing we need to discuss. The biggest factor of this fight: that’s right, I’m talking about Esdeath’s final trump card, Commander in Chief.
After absorbing her Ice Calvary, Esdeath gains a massive boost in power, so much so that she created a storm that covered part of the planet. The energy to create that storm has been calculated to be around 411 petatons-16 exatons of TNT. Over 1000x more powerful than the best feat Gray scales to. Even with Gray’s ability to absorb and mold ice, that’s only if the ice is weaker/very similar to his max power output. With CiC’s massive power advantage, Gray won’t be able to survive an attack that powerful. The AoE of that attack would also be massive enough that Gray, even with his speed advantage, won’t be able to dodge it. Esdeath is smart enough to not use ice again when using that attack after seeing Gray not be harmed by one of her ice attacks since she usually starts with that. So she’ll clearly use a physical blow powerful enough to create an explosion that covers a large area which, again, Gray can’t dodge. So Esdeath wins. Seems simple enough at first glance
Well, no. If that were it, I wouldn’t have called this a close debate. The main argument is whether or not she’ll even get Commander in Chief
However, I don’t think it matters, since Esdeath would have enough time to make the Ice cavalry to achieve CiC. There were around 10,000 soldiers during the war (they were outnumbered 10-1, and the other army had 100,000 soldiers), and she made them in 3 days. Assuming 12 hours for each day, that gives us...1 soldier every 12 seconds. With her superior mobility, ice defense, and comparable, if not slightly superior power, she can certainly come up with a tactic that can let her stall enough time to make multiple soldiers. Assuming 16 exatons and dividing that by 10,000 (the amount of soldiers), each soldier is around 1.6 petatons in terms of power. This was what I meant for base Esdeath arguably being higher. And it’s somewhat consistent with 463 teratons for base Esdeath. So Gray, while much faster, won’t be able to one shot them. Gray will have a hard time getting through them before getting to Esdeath, and she’ll have enough time to make enough soldiers and absorb them to become stronger than Gray. While she likely won’t get up to high petaton-exaton levels of power, even absorbing 10 ice soldiers and adding that to her base power would make her over 16 petatons, enough of a power boost that will let her one shot Gray. And being honest, I’m unsure if Iced Shell would even work. The fact that Lost Iced Shell is stated to be “hundreds of times stronger” than regular Iced Shell makes me think it's more of a power thing instead of hax. And given how Esdeath is much stronger than anything in FT...I wouldn’t be surprised if she could break out of it.
Gray’s speed, cryomantic training, versatility, and counters as well as being hotter  put up an incredibly tough fight, and there are certainly situations where he takes the win, but the way I see it, Esdeath’s skill, tactics, ice cavalry, and power boosts gives her a ton-dra-of ways to win the fight, which are more reliable than Gray’s arguments to me. 
Next episode is the big 125. As for what I think it is…either Cole vs Alex, Galactus vs Unicron, or Broly vs Asura. Anyways, have a ice day everybody.



TheNerd-Bot

Alternatively:
R.I.P. Esdeath VS Raoh. Hi everyone! Nerd-Bot here! Ya might remember me from Aquaman VS Namor’s blog. Before I begin my analysis, I have something to say.
Seryu best Akame Ga Kill girl. I refuse to hear any other arguments, that’s just how it is.
Now that I’ve sufficiently angered a good chunk of Akame Ga Kill’s fanbase, Gray Fullbuster VS General Esdeath. Hoo boy. I grew up reading Fairy Tail back in high school, and while post-Grand Magic Games Fairy Tail kinda… sucked, I still have fond memories of the series, especially with badasses like Mirajane, Lucy(I don’t care what people say, I liked her, damnit!) and of course, Gray Fullbuster. As for Akame Ga Kill, the fact that the series heavily abuses shock value, whether it be through violent death, rape, pedophilia, etc., kiiiinda killed my interest in the series, not gonna lie. Not to mention, Esdeath is kind of a generic villain, an issue that several Akame Ga Kill villains have, unfortunately. Like, I expect Honest to spontaneously grow a moustache on top of his moustache and then cackle evilly as he ties Najenda to some train tracks. So naturally, with all this, I’d love to see Gray take a win here. But does he?
First off, let’s go into the respective combatant’s overall abilities, starting with General Esdeath. Before we go into further detail, I’d like to note something. Esdeath, despite popular belief, does not have an ice immunity. Yes, her powers are ice and cold-centric, but there has been no shown outright immunity to ice-based abilities in her arsenal. The closest that we have is the fact that Esdeath grew up in a frigid tundra as a kid, and is largely uncaring of the cold weather she generates. In other words, she’s resistant to cold temperatures. Not ice in general. With that out of the way, what does Esdeath have? Right off the bat, she’s been fighting by herself a hell of a lot longer than Gray has, giving her an overall better experience in battle, and her leadership of entire armies is a testament to her tactical prowess. In comparison, Gray’s not nearly as competent of a commander and strategist. Sure he’s not an idiot, but Esdeath is far and beyond on a whole ‘nother level here, having defeated the prince of a kingdom who was known for being a brilliant strategist in a day, before making him her personal bitch. Esdeath also has a method of fighting that isn’t ice-based in the form of her rapier, something Gray notably lacks, disregarding his talent in hand to hand. It also helps that Esdeath’s aerial mobility is way better than Gray’s, allowing her to keep her distance from him, along with various long-range attacks, making it even hard for the Ice-Make Mage to close the distance between them. It helps that her attacks also cover a much wider area of effect, allowing her to cover much more ground with her attacks than Gray ever has shown in canon. Her various summons like her Ice Cavalry are also definitely going to keep Gray on his toes, and Ice Storm Commander-In-Chief? Well, we’ll talk more about that later. Sure, an argument could be made that Esdeath’s sadistic nature would mean she would toy with Gray a lot before going in for the kill, but as shown as with fights against giant armies or Susanoo, Esdeath knows when to drop the pretenses and go for the throat, meaning that while she probably wouldn‘t go all out from the start, she wouldn’t leave herself easily exposed. Besides, that’s only gonna help Gray if he has a way to capitalize on that. So what does Ur’s Disciple have in his probably-discarded pants?
First off, while it’s true that Esdeath has overall more battle experience, Gray is undeniably the more experienced cryomancer, being trained at a younger age than Esdeath was when she gained her powers, as well as fighting multiple cryomancers in-series, unlike Esdeath, who’s the only cryomancer in-series. As such, he’s definitely a lot more versatile and tricky with his ice-themed powers. I mean, Esdeath’s cryomancy is impressive, but Gray can literally create sentient life. He also has multiple great options for both close and long range, unlike his opponent, who tends to prefer fighting her foes from a distance with massive AOE and long-ranged ice attacks. Either up close or from far away, Gray can keep applying pressure to his opponent. Speaking of powers, I’ve heard people say that his Ice Devil Slayer magic will let him bypass Esdeath’s stats on account of her Teigu being ‘Demon’s Extract’, but here’s the thing. The Teigu isn’t literally demon’s blood. That’s the name they gave it on account of the folks who drank it going insane before dying. It's a lot like how Devil Fruits were said to be 'cursed by sea devils', despite there being no real evidence of actual demons existing in One Piece. In other words, the Ice Devil Slayer Magic won’t be as effective as most folks think. There’s also statements saying that Ice Devil Slayer Magic can let him attack the soul… but evidence we’ve found is kinda scarce, so we’re not really gonna focus on that as a win condition on account of being too vague to really use it as a solid argument. But that’s what the Ice Devil Slayer Magic can’t do. So what can it do? Well… According to a statement from an Ice Devil Slayer… it can do this.
Eyup. Right there in black and white. Gray is immune to ice-based elemental attacks. This is a major boon in this fight, especially since one of Esdeath’s Trump Cards, Mahapadma, can be adapted to by being resistant to cold temperatures. It doesn’t help that Gray can just eat the ice around him to gain more power and refuel, something Esdeath can’t. While yes, saying that Gray could no-sell any ice attack, even if it was way more powerful than anything he’s faced before is obviously a no-limits fallacy, if Esdeath and Gray are close enough in power, this means he has a massive advantage going into this fight. So is he close enough in power that this immunity could be a factor?
As per usual, it’s time to go into their stats. In terms of sheer speed, Gray quite frankly shitblitzes Esdeath, being Sub-Relativistic to her Massively Hypersonic+, meaning that the Empire’s Strongest is definitely gonna be a motherfucker trying to ice skate uphill for this fight. But what about power? Well, by scaling to Shikoutazer(which is highly likely to be taken into account), Esdeath’s highest raw power in base comes out to an impressive 405 Teratons of TNT. Impressive, sure, but what’s Gray got? Well, it took us a while to really get a general agreement, but thanks to Speedy, I think we got a solid number. You can check the math here, but overall, his calcs got 389.93 Teratons of TNT. In other words, a literal 1% difference in their power. Such a minute difference basically makes the AP gap negligible. So with this, Gray should take it with his superior speed, ice immunity, and better cryomancy, yeah? Well… there’s one last thing to cover. Ice Storm Commander-in-Chief.
Esdeath’s third and final Trump Card is what basically makes or breaks this matchup for her. With this ability, the general was able to create a storm that covered a decent chunk of the planet. By running the numbers, Esdeath’s storm comes out to a whopping 12.73 Petatons of TNT. Utterly dwarfing Gray’s best feat of power. So, bada bing bada boom, Esdeath wins, yeah? Well… no. See, Ice Storm Commander-in-Chief is a lot like gathering energy for the Spirit Bomb. It doesn’t take actual prep time, just her absorbing her Ice Cavalry, but it takes time regardless. She’s going to need to be able to create the Ice Cavalry and then absorb it into her. Now, Gray’s not an idiot. If he sees Esdeath charging up something big, he’s not gonna sit still and let her. In other words, trying to enter this state makes it difficult for Esdeath to defend herself at the same time, which could potentially lead to her own demise. And not to mention, Esdeath only reaches this power if she enters this form. If Gray kills her before she does, this argument is rendered null. And with Gray’s much faster speeds and Esdeath… basically being the textbook definition of a dominatrix, it’s highly likely that Gray’s gonna land that killing blow before Esdeath thinks about popping off Commander-in-Chief. But let’s say Esdeath does activate it then, since Death Battle likes to take characters at their strongest. Can Gray possibly be able to take the win, given the sheer power difference? Well… yes, actually.
First off, while the AP gap between Gray and CiC Esdeath is undeniably vast, two things don’t change about this matchup: Gray’s speed advantage and his Ice-Make abilities. Gray still unquestionably blitzes Esdeath, base or otherwise, meaning that Esdeath, despite her massive AP advantage, still is going to struggle to hit such a faster target. And it has been shown before that a weaker opponent can tire out Esdeath even in CiC, meaning that Gray has the option of winning by attrition, especially considering that Esdeath is literally feeding him more things to replenish his mana and overall stamina with with every single attack she has. It doesn’t help that Esdeath’s attacks are all still primarily ice-based, constantly giving Ur’s Disciple more and more ammunition to use against her. Even with her superior AP, Esdeath’s ice is… well, ice. Even if Gray couldn’t eat it or resist it somehow, opponents like Invel, who wielded ‘unholy ice’ that people with ice immunity couldn’t resist, were beaten by Gray using his Ice-Make Magic against them. And Esdeath’s entire arsenal minus her rapier being made of ice would certainly give him an opportunity to land a fatal blow. Hell.

One touch from Gray, and that mech suit becomes an Iron Maiden. Or… Ice Maiden? Whatever, semantics, you get the point. Gray can manipulate Esdeath’s own ice against her, something Esdeath hasn’t been shown to be able to do, given, again, she’s the only cryomancer in her own series. Esdeath has also been shown to be able to be killed by her own power over ice, as shown when she died, shattering her body after freezing it, so it’s not completely out of the question for her to be affected by her own ice powers.
The second thing that could possibly turn the tides for Gray against something as powerful as Ice Storm Commander-in-Chief is going to be the forbidden spell, Iced Shell, and its enhanced variant, Lost Iced Shell. With this spell, Gray can seal away Esdeath in a giant sphere of ice, completely encasing her within said ice for almost an eternity. As mentioned a few paragraphs up, Esdeath lacks an ice resistance of any description, meaning that she will be left completely vulnerable if Gray manages to pop it off in the fight, and will be helpless if he manages to seal her away. So, what’s the catch? Well… this attack kinda… sorta… destroys Gray’s body. Meaning that the question here really is, if Gray uses Iced Shell, will it be considered a win or a draw? Well, there’s two factors that make me feel that this would be more of a Gray win. First of all, Gray was the one who activated the spell and sealed Esdeath away, so like All Might VS Might Guy, Gray may have died in the process, but he was able to take Esdeath with him, so he kinda wins. Secondly, while Esdeath’s going to die having her life force drained away, Iced Shell doesn’t exactly kill Gray. Rather, he’s turned into the ice, living ice to be exact. Because of this, he technically isn’t dead, in other words, by virtue of being alive while Esdeath isn’t, he’s technically the winner by default by Death Battle’s own rules. Oh yeah, and Esdeath has one more thing going against her here.
I refuse to apologize for speaking the truth.
This matchup is far more complex than what it seems to be at first, but with the evidence provided, there’s snow good way Esdeath can put Gray on ice before he gives her the cold shoulder. This time around, cooler heads prevail. The win-ter is Gray Fullbuster. Hah! I saw you freeze up behind your screen! What? You think I should chill out with these puns? Hail no! I kinda wanna see them snowball from here! Ice see you trying to scroll away! Don’t leave me out here in the cold! Snow-man is an island, after all! Wait, hold on, I got a blizzard’s worth to go through-

Bloxxer
Esdeath is definitely getting CiC. There’s pretty much no denying that. DB always takes characters at their peak, and by DB rules, she should be getting it. By then, she has much better attack potency and AoE. She can also regrow limbs as shown in her fight with Akame when she lost her arm, making it hard for Gray to land a fatal blow. Ice Cavalry is also on par with Gray in strength so she can just overwhelm him with sheer numbers. So yeah, Esdeath takes the W. Not much to say here.

VampyreNVRmore
Hello everyone. I’m back for another match-up. This time, it’s for Gray Fullbuster vs Esdeath. Granted, I’m not a Fairy Tail fan, but I do have some knowledge on Akame ga Kill despite it being limited to the anime. And yes, I am aware that events between the manga and the anime are different, especially the story’s ending. However, I’ll also use this as an opportunity to get to know more about the manga version.
Anyway, a lot of other verdicts appear to be long and detailed, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. The main conflict is between Gray’s immense speed and Esdeath’s overwhelming attack potency and durability. While Esdeath’s stats is lower than Gray’s in her base form, she gets the advantage in AP and Durability thanks to Ice Storm Commander in Chief. And in every VS match, we evaluate characters at their strongest in canon.
So how should we solve this little issue? Well it should be noted that Gray has a high resistance against ice, which means Esdeath's usual attacks will have a hard time damaging him. Additionally, this could allow Gray to resist Esdeath's time stop ability momentarily. Furthermore, Gray can even replenish himself with Esdeath's ice. So far, it looks like Gray could win doesn't it? Probably not actually. After all, Gray still has no way of harming CiC Esdeath.
Or does he? Gray's only chance at defeating Esdeath is by using either Ice Shell or Lost Ice Shell. However, performing either move is rather costly. Ice Shell destroys both his body and spirit while Lost Ice Shell destroys his physical body and erases his existence from the memories of people who knew him. While others have said he becomes "living ice" afterwards, his spirit getting destroyed does imply death in my opinion.
However, there are two problems presented. One, Gray has always been interrupted before he could perform either technique. After all, he's still alive in Fairy Tail's ongoing sequel manga. Two, will it be enough to truly defeat Esdeath? While Gray has attempted to use Ice Shell and Lost Ice Shell on opponents stronger than him, Esdeath with Ice Storm Commander in Chief is way stronger than anyone Gray has ever faced. So who do I think will win this fight?
In the end, I believe Esdeath will take the win. In Ice Storm Commander in Chief, she'll be too tough for Gray to take down. Gray's only options are borderline suicide that won't be enough to permanently put the general down for good thanks the wide gap in AP and Durability. Given her strategic mind, I believe Esdeath will use this as an opportunity to take the win. Sorry Fairy Tail fans, but the result of this fight will leave you frostrated.

CEWinick
Wow, it is amazing how college can take a lot of time out of your time. As Season 6 wrapped up, I felt the season was good overall despite some heavy hits. For my life so far in 2020, it’s good. I just got  done with another college semester, seen the Sonic movie with my family (we enjoyed it), discovered an awesome card game called Unstable Unicorns (Truly a fun game), I was the mastermind behind three of the best suggestions for a Community Death Battle which were: Rey Vs. Korra, Madara Vs. Azien, and the recent suggestion of Frieza Vs Megatron (Galavatron, close enough), in production of making a few fan arts for those three, and… now I returned for the 124th prediction of Death Battle. Yeah, been busy. 
Besides all of my life highlights, it is truly an honor to be back as I wanted to see who would win between Gray and Esdeath as this was a fight I truly was curious to see. I am so glad to be a part of this because not only was it fun in trying to decide a hard fight where either fighter could win, but I was given the honor of making the introduction for this prediction. Truly happy because I always wanted to make a killer introduction for a Death Battle, and I did a good job with this one including Gray’s Bio. Hope to do more in the future again like this, but back to my prediction of the fight. The fight itself is SO HARD TO DECIDE due to how close the fighters counter each other in different ways. All of us were mixed on the winner as both Gray and Esdeath have their own advantages towards each other, but I believe I have my prediction of the winner in sight. I will go into as much research for this one as I feel Nerd-Bot, Falcon, and Link Sam did amazing jobs on their views. Without further ado, let’s start. 
My view of the winner will play a major factor in these three categories as they will play a major part in victory with their ice. Here are the three factors I will focus on my winner: Stats, Experience, and Overall Control. 

 1. Stats: The stats were a little bit easy to decide since power and speed were easy to tell. Getting this out of the way, Gray hands down has the speed advantage due to him keeping up with Natsu and Erza at her weakened state. Power was the tricky part of deciding because of how Esdeath’s Commander-In-Chief truly felt 50/50. Gray does tie with Esdeath in power and could be stronger when he scales to weaken Erza’s meteor feat. Even with Devil Slayer which boosts his power and makes him “immune” to ice it should be a win for Gray and takes the round. But…. Esdeath’s Commander-In-Chief does not disappoint in how her ace is in the hole. By absorbing her ice soldiers, she basically gets a power up so big, she literally creates a storm that covers the WHOLE country, and a Part of the Planet. Gray did create a storm related to Esdeath’s country feat which Nerd-Bot did a great job on, but Esdeath’s feat covering a part of the planet is truly one of the best ice feats I have ever seen so far. While the math is not confirmed and guessed to be around (411 petatons-16 exatons) from multiple sources, this is still higher than Gray’s power level than what he has ever shown. And there is no doubt Esdeath can activitate Commander-In-Chief in time to use it, so strength will go to her. Now, durability will decide who will win this round. Gray has shown to take beatings, from getting shot by four lightning attacks after getting back up from his injuries to tanking several energy blasts from Bickslow’s dolls, he can truly take a beating. There is a reason why Gray is Natsu’s rival, who can lift 135 tons of a stone slab he showed time and time again. Yet, Esdeath has shown to be durable both physically and mentally. Sure, she is sadistic, but her mental state of drinking the Demon Extract shows how strong her mind is strong. Not only that, she is shown to also take a better beating than Gray. Surviving both Blaze Ball and Heavy Pressure who both could vaporize your body instantly and/or shatter your bones on point shows she is no pushover. Even with one arm, Esdeath will still fight. Gray is faster and ties in power with Esdeath, but Esdeath’s Commander-In-Chief and her strong will to fight gives her the win in stats. Round 1 goes to Esdeath. 

 2. Experience: Experience comes in handy when you have powers, and both have shown to have many years for themselves of training. Both fighters have shown to have a great amount of experience given their abilities and techniques. The major difference is how one focuses on their cryomancy while the other is a genius of strategy. Gray spends most of his time adapting to his ability by making unique ice forms that helps him in tough situations. He is more creative with his magic that helps him in keeping up with other experienced fighters. Esdeath is different with her experience as she was literally a general for her Empire. Despite her sadistic personality getting the best of her, she has proven for many years to be the best tactician in her series (if not in anime). Even with her abilities limited than Gray, her power and trump cards alone show why her “Only The Strong Survives” is shown through mind and body. When you have given multiple wins and victories of wars in your belt, you know your title is a fact. This one is hard to choose as both have shown respectively to have shown lots of practices in life for me to call it a tie; however, the difference is that Gray’s ice abilities literally makes Esdeath give her a problem in the fight. Gray Dragon Slayer form (despite losing some emotions), iced shell, etc, Gray cryomancy and magic abilities truly puts Esdeath in a corner. Let’s not forget that Gray has trained to only but “immune” and “resistance”, yet he can also absorb ice to keep his stamina steady. Esdeath’s  ice abilities are powerful, but she has yet to master as most of her abilities drain her and can take a while to charge back up. My point is that both are truly experienced fighters in their own rights, but Gray’s crocmancy abilities, his Dragon form, and magic staima shows how Esdeath is limited with her own abilities. Gray Wins Round

3. The Most Important Round Factor: Control
Brains Vs. Brawns is a serious battle that depends on this special place that decides the winning majority of most fights, especially for a Death Battle. Gray Vs. Esdeath to my eyes will decide the true winner based on who can control the battlefield until the end. THIS IS THE Fight changes the tide for the winner. Gray hands down has a strong start thanks to his abilities having a better offense. It also helps that he has speed in making his cryomancy experience truly take the upper hand and have better control over the battle at the start. But… again, at the start. See, this is where my view and understanding of Esdeath comes into play. Battles like these are what she drives for, and despite her sadistic side she will study her opponent to the fullest. That is where I think Esdeath will play the long game once she decides Gray is a worthy opponent and gets her emotions in check as her strategy was already planned out. She would know right away to not use her trump cards that drains her like Mahapadma to make the fight go in her favor. This is where her stats and experience will play a big factor as she will be one step ahead of Gray from the very end. I think her abilities will be greatly effective in her defense that will slowly build up to her endgame. She will then use her trump cards the moment Gray's offense is exposed and will call in Commander-In-Chief thanks to all of the snow and ice made in the battle. Keep in mind that while the Cavalry Soldiers are what Esdeath mostly absorb to activate, we stated that her Soldiers are made up of ice coming from the Demon Extract, meaning to me, that she could just absorb the element itself and not only be limited to her soldiers. The moment Commander-In-Chief is active, it should be an instant win for Esdeath. Even worse, Esdeath has strong senses that will keep her aware of Gray’s intentions at all times. Gray is faster that could affect this, but her senses will still be in effect due to how her depth of analysis is truly on another level to keep up where Gray can not get a sneak attack on her. 

Gray’s Dragon slayer and ice powers do give him both “resistance” and “immunity” to ice, but see here is what I have to say about that problem. Ice… is a solid object of frozen water, meaning that it has mass. While Gray is not affected by the cold or freezing part of the ice, he IS NOT immune to the mass from the ice’s gravity. LinkSam’s example of Gray getting stabbed by an ice sword proves my point. Straight to the point now: Gray’s ice abilities and speed do truly help in making this fight his win, but to me Esdeath’s power and leadership will help her expose Gray’s abilities and overpower him and his magic. That is when she will finish him off with how she wants it to be, whether it is to shatter him piece by piece that weakens him, or just go all out Dio Brando with her Mahapadma. In the end of a dramatic round 3, Esdeath wins in control of the battle, making her win my final verdict. 

I know I am probably wrong in my verdict as my view does have some flaws like Gray’s speed and creative varistialty should give him better control, especially against another crocanmancy fighter. But, to me Esdeath makes up with her sadistic weaknesses thanks to her strong leadership and brutal tatics that would outwit once she gets serious. I feel that she will plan ahead overall to give herself a bigger chance in overpowering Gray and overtax his magic. Gray made this fight very close in this battle of the storngest Ice Users, but Esdeath’s Powerful Stats, Brutal Tatcics, and Stragtic Control Given this Ice Queen the crown. Yelp, Hell Indeed Freeze when a Fillbuster was broken by Ice Death. 
(Thanks agian everyone for being on this predicition for the 124th episode of Death Battle. I had a blast and enjoyed all of the disucssions in this fight, I can not wait for what 125th is going to be. Until Then, all of you STAY SAFE & STAY AWESEOME!!!!)

Imortal

(Jin wasn’t robbed, Iris Heart was)


Boy howdy, here I am, making my grand appearance on one of these things and wouldn’t you know it, it’s gonna be the most underwhelming thing imaginable.

Let’s just get into things, I believe that Esdeath will win based on some points others have brought up, and I personally do believe Gray wouldn’t have a real way to deal with the Maphada, and Esdeath, at least to me, has a more fluent control over her powerset, and battlefield for that matter, while Gray has more versatility. Gray could manipulate Esdeath’s ice, but Esdeath could just as easily manipulate his as well.

Gray may be resistant/immune to Esdeath’s Cryomancy, but what is there suggesting that Esdeath isn't also resistant/immune too? Their powers are similar in nature after all. On the trend of immunities/resistances actually, Esdeath’s CiC is far higher than Gray’s level, And given how Death Battle USUALLY Does things, I fully expect them to give her it, and if anything would fall under a No Limits Fallacy.

Also nothing’s stopping the Piercing aspect of boths abilities from taking full effect for either combatants. Gray is faster, but again, Esdeath could just pop a time-stop and end things.

There are others who can go more in depth about this, but yeah, I believe Esdeath will win.

It’s too bad that Esdeath had to fight Gray, I would have loved her to fight Iris Heart instead, so the Dominatrix Goddess could pick up a free W, but oh well. Also I don’t like Jin either so there’s that.

Clockboxxer


“Don’t talk to me.”
            -Genos, 2020
Wow, these ice puns are out of hand, you guys should ch-

SIKE. YOU THOUGHT.
Anyway uhhhh I’ll give my thoughts on Leonardo vs Red Ranger Jason, Genos vs War Machine, and Gray vs Esdeath on the 125 milestone blog (btw I bet Rhodey). Just know that TMNP is an absolute banger.
Man I regret not doing the Genos vs WM blog dude, especially since it had my boy James
I was totally considering skipping this one too, since I’m not emotionally invested or all that familiar with either of the combatants' franchises. But the debate on this one is actually pretty solid, and it’s easily the closest fight so far this season. Last 4 were pretty easy to predict, but this one I fear might bamboozle me. 
I knew jack about these two, and absolutely didn’t help with the analyses here, so give the other blog peeps their due credit. I did read up quite a bit, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea on the winner.
Just gonna get something out of the way, per both DB’s rules and just general fairness, Esdeath should absolutely be given Commander-In-Chief, at least to an extent. Whether or not her full power will be embraced I’m unsure. She doesn’t even really need to summon the Ice Cavalry to use it, she just needs them not to be there.
Anyway, let’s get it started. So just considering base forms, Gray should absolutely clean Esdeath’s clock. He’s hundreds of times faster, she cannot catch him. His cryomancy is far more versatile and his ability to fuck with anything she throws at him is a huge factor. And his power is also pretty comparable, even if she probably has the raw strength advantage. All this leads me to believe that Esdeath doesn’t have the stuff to take him on without her Trump Cards.

First, there’s something vital to discuss. Mahapadma, Esdeath’s time freeze. Would it work on Gray, and if it does, would it give Esdeath surefire victory? Well, we know that Mahapadma takes a lot of energy, and thus can only be used once a day. Es has one shot at this. Thanks to different translations, the ability to counter Mahapadma is a bit unclear. It’s debated on whether or not Incursio simply resisted the cold of it or just evolved to resist the specific magic used to do it.
Well. given the fact that Tatsumi was rendered frozen by Mahapadma multiple times, it’s likely not extreme frostbite, since the area’s pretty much the same afterwards. Freezing time itself is impossible anyway, but let’s just go and call this a ZA WARUDO that may or may not be cold based magic. Gray has yet to fight this kind of weird (and frankly under-explained) kind of magic.

I think that either interpretation of Gray resisting the Mahapadma is plausible. If Gray can resist it, the argument is out the window, wrap that one up, Gray has a nice little advantage. If he can’t he still has a chance of surviving. Esdeath doesn’t use Mahapadma very often for pure offense, and she has been duped before. It doesn’t last too long, probably in the range of 10 seconds. 
Gray can make Ice Clones that are exactly identical to him, not just blue. So she still has a chance of killing a clone without realizing it and not having enough time to correct her mistake. Boom. her one Mahapadma chance gone. (SIDE NOTE: Um...just realized that Esdeath’s sharp senses suggest she could pinpoint which Gray was the real one. So there’s that.)
This is all chance and stuff though, lemme just forget about Mahapadma.
(Y’know, I had a whole joke where I kept misspelling Mahapadma in increasingly dumber ways but it was just tacky tbh)
Let’s get to the meat of this debate. The bread and butter. The center of the Tootsie Pop. The cream filling in the Twinkie. Yup, Commander-In-Chief. The make or break of this entire matchup.
Since it’s likely that Esdeath doesn’t have to take days of preparation to make Ice Cavalry for CiC, she should totally get it. And doing so gives her an absolutely massive power gap over the stripper. Like, at least a thousand times more powerful. Oh, and “Gray kills her before CiC” isn’t a valid argument here, since DB doesn’t use killing before super forms as a win condition. She’d probably survive long enough to get there, anyway.
So, Esdeath wins effortlessly once she enters this state, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.
First of all, Esdeath’s well...death was pretty unfortunately timed, since we were left with a good amount of questions on how CiC affects her. Is it a spell? Does it amp her physically? Is it just an elemental boost?
Well, I don’t believe it’s a spell of some kind, but I’m not completely sure if it makes her physically stronger. We didn’t see any increased ferocity from her in this state, so I think it’s fair to say it gives her elemental powers a gigantic boost.
So...can she beat Gray? Gray’s still faster no matter what she does, so she still has that hurdle. With her more powerful elemental abilities, though, wouldn’t that just feed Gray? Well, it should be clear that this ice is far more powerful than Gray’s power output, so it’s dubious if he could absorb it and not overtax himself. Gray’s high cold tolerance does help him against the storm, however.
But let’s look at the win conditions. Gray can chip away at Esdeath till she dies, use Iced Shell (which by DB rules would be a victory), or use her ice against her. Esdeath can pretty much one-shot him given the chance, but she’ll have to hit him first.

I think using her ice against her is the weakest argument. Yeah, he could hypothetically pincushion her if she uses the Ice Mech, but not only is it likely she could react to the ice moving (since Gray’s own speed shouldn’t translate to ice manipulation speed) and put a stop to it since it’s her ice, but this also relies on her doing that in the first place. This win condition just seems too reliant on what Esdeath does to give Gray an advantage.
Then there’s also just hitting Esdeath a bunch before he dies. Well, this is gonna be a bit hard for the Fullbuster. Esdeath’s insane AoE would mean he’s hardly ever safe on the battlefield. And getting in close to Esdeath is also a pretty dangerous tactic. 
Iced Shell. Well, even with her immense power advantage, this could totally kill Esdeath, right? Well, I personally think not. First of all, given how Natsu’s done it twice, I doubt Es would just stand there and let him pull this move off. But, even if she did, this move has been implied to be AP based. Esdeath’s superior elemental power means that she could be the first ever person to escape this inescapable attack. And at that point, Gray’s gone.
Let’s look at Esdeath, shall we? So with her crazy strong elemental abilities, she could totally one-shot Gray, and his best options are probably dependent on her own actions. Well, the main problem is hitting him. He can deal with her smaller moves pretty easily, but the big time? Nah. One good blast and he’s over. The power would be too much for him to absorb, and molding it into a weapon for him to use is equally fatal. And if Mahapadma does indeed work on him, he’s screwed even more.
But hey, that’s just me. In the end, I think Gray’s advantages in speed, versatility, and training are great, but they’ll be falling second to this general’s power, tactics, and ruthlessness. Gray just got Full-busted, and he suffered a painful Es-death. Man, that felt way better than saying an ice pun.
There are a lot of variables and personal interpretations to this fight, so Gray winning this is entirely plausible, and I’m totally fine to get this one wrong.
That wraps up my thoughts. I’m more excited to see what 125 is, to be honest. I know damn well it won’t be Cole vs Alex but I’m still hanging on to hope lmao
Betting it’s Link vs Cloud 2 or some milestone worthy episode that’s been slept on as an option, like Duke Nukem vs Serious Sam or Broly vs Asura
See ya


The Draconic Hero

Wow, can I start by saying it is truly an honor to be a part of this community for the first time? I've wanted to contribute to this blog since Ichigo Vs Naruto was announced, but just didn't know the right people. EpicLinkSam, you are the man. I’ve been a fan of Death Battle itself since Peach Vs Zelda was announced but still hadn’t been released and now I’m finally here to lend my voice to the masses. Anyway, onto the verdict. 
Now, I'm not a calculation person. I prefer to leave calculations to the experts and make my verdict based on logistics. On paper, this fight sounds like a slam dunk for Gray given that he's completely immune to ice while Esdeath is just heavily resistant to it at best. Gray can also absorb ice and replenish his stamina while Esdeath cannot. That is to say that if the stat trinity was dead even across the board, that’s how the fight looks. How does it hold up under scrutiny? Well...
As Sam mentioned, Gray is not immune to the pointy stabbyness of sharp ice, or at least that's how that image makes it seem. You could argue that since Gray was stabbing himself he deliberately lowered his own defenses so that he could be affected by something like that. It's a stretch, but no less a valid argument. Still, Esdeath carries a very sharp steel rapier that she uses to slice danger beasts like they're made of pudding so the point is that Gray is not immune to death by stabbing and slicing. 
I do however want to draw everyone's attention to the no-limits fallacy of Gray being immune to ice. Slayer mages in Fairy Tail are by their nature unable to be harmed by their element. It's never been a question of "feed them in excess". Ever. Even if they can't absorb the element, they still can't be harmed by it. Gray doubly so. When he battled Invel, Invel used special ice that was harmful to people that were even immune to ice. Gray, knowing that this was a thing, manipulated the ice with his Ice-Make and the Ice-Make he made retained the special properties of the ice. And then he physically bludgeoned Invel into the pavement with it. So even if it were possible that Esdeath had ice that could harm Gray, Gray being faster could just mold it and use it against her. Like Nerd-Bot said: Ice Maiden.
And this brings us back to the good ol' stat trinity. Ugh. Okay, so it's like this, shortly after Erza Vs Zoro came out, Erza smashed a giant meteor to pieces. That damn meteor feat has actually been scalable to Gray at his best. Erza was heavily injured at the time so it's unlikely that that was her best. However, in the sequel series, Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest, Gray was able to fight off and hold his own against an injured Mirajane Strauss, a woman that's undoubtedly Erza's equal. Injured Mirajane. Injured Erza. There you go. So the meteor feat holds up. 
AND HOLY CRAP this meteor feat. This feat alone ends up turning this from an L to a W for Gray all by itself. It makes him faster than Esdeath by a country mile and lets him keep up with her in physical strength and durability--she has a 2x advantage at most. Sure, Esdeath does get stronger with Commander-in-Chief, but it does not increase her speed. And if she's only absurdly stronger than Gray while CiC is active--a move that literally covers the entire battlefield in FREEZING SNOW--then she has essentially armed Gray with an infinite supply of ice as long as she keeps up the storm, thereby meaning that his stamina and magic reserves will ALWAYS be at their peak. Esdeath, meanwhile, has no such means of restoring her energy and therefore will outright LOSE a battle of attrition.
I've sliced this battle every way I've thought possible and when I factor in the likelihood of certain scenarios, who wins those scenarios and how much the total amount of likelihood totals up, I feel that Gray wins the majority of fights given the stat trinity as we the Death Battle Fan Blog know it. Death Battle itself might come up with different numbers, who knows?
Anyway, Gray has just as many pointy objects to stab Esdeath with. And, given his massive speed advantage, could probably turn her into a pincushion if he had to if she gets stabbed once and then stubbornly refuses to die.
And that's not even getting into the elephant in the room: Iced Shell. A technique that would be the most hilarious finish to a Death Battle yet. Most people probably don't get that Iced Shell leaves the user alive after its use. It is a case of "And I Must Scream", but they are still alive AS THE ICE. I am picturing the confused look on Boomstick's face if that's how Gray kills Esdeath and laughing my ass off. Technically it's an “And I Must Scream” for Esdeath too, but she'll die eventually, Gray won't. Ur, the only mage to use Iced Shell, had her prison eventually melted by Gray’s fellow cryomancer Lyon. Later on in the manga, Ultear, her daughter, falls into the ocean and is able to hear Ur’s consciousness. This means that even after becoming solid ice, Ur’s consciousness remained for nearly a decade. And by that point, the demon she sealed with her had died. Yeah, Iced Shell = Gray’s victory.
But let's also address Mahapadma as well. One of the biggest hurdles I have confidently saying “Gray wins” is this technique. As was frequently pointed out during our discussion, “freezing time” does not work the way it’s presented in the manga and is, physically, impossible. If Esdeath literally froze time as she so claims, there should be frostbite everywhere or at least signs of drastic temperature reduction. Therefore, it’s far more likely that Esdeath’s technique is more akin to Dio’s ZA WARUDO than it is a literal time freeze. So does that mean that all of this debate is meaningless and one good use of Mahapadma from Esdeath is the knockout blow? Well...in theory, yes. But not in practice. Let me explain. 
Unlike a character like Dio, Jotaro, or even Weiss Schnee, Esdeath only gets to use her hax time stop power once per day due to the “energy required to use it”. I have my doubts that a battle like this could last more than 24 hours so I’m going to safely suggest that Esdeath will only be able to use the technique one time during any given potential outcome of this battle. And, just like Dio, Esdeath has a very narrow window under which Mahapadma seems to allow her to keep time frozen. Otherwise, when she used it the second time in the manga, she would’ve undoubtedly been able to kill Mine, even after Tatsumi proved resilient to its effects--more on that in a moment. But she didn’t have enough time, so clearly her trump card only lasts so long. And it’s not like Esdeath hasn’t stabbed anyone while the technique is active, either. So it’s clear that Mahapadma can be used as both an escape tool and guaranteed kill blow. And, as Esdeath is a master of human anatomy, it’s not like she’ll waste her shot.
So, in any given battle, Esdeath will either use the technique to avoid certain death once, guarantee a kill on Gray, or be able to do both. That turns this once a battle technique into a 66.6667% chance of actually being able to kill Gray. Pretty good odds, right? Well...there’s still more to it than that. Because Gray. Has. Ice Clones!
Now, I know what you’re thinking, wouldn’t Esdeath use Mahapadma before Gray even uses a clone? And my answer to that is, well, no. Tactically, Mahapadma is a trump card. It’s not just something Esdeath would pull out at the start of the battle to win. Death Battle does its best to perfectly replicate every character’s battle tactics with the only exception being not going for a killing blow when a character rightfully should. So, not using certain techniques out the gate unless a character is known for ending a battle as quickly as they possibly can.
Gray’s ice clones, in the manga, have been used as a sort of Get out of Death Free card for Gray. And he can make up to two at a time. And the Ice Clones look virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. So, let’s assume Gray has even one Ice Clone up when Esdeath uses Mahapadma. This means that the Gray she stabs might actually be a clone and there goes her guaranteed victory chance. So her 66.6667% chance gets reduced to 33.3333%. And what if Gray has two up, since that’s his limit. That means Esdeath would only have a 22.2222% chance of successfully killing Gray. I don’t know about any of you, but if I was a betting man, I would not like to be hedging my bets solely on Mahapadma. It’ll be too inconsistent across all potential fights for her to actually be stabbing Gray. 
It doesn’t help that Esdeath has a repeated history of using Mahapadma as an escape tool primarily and a lethal option second. And this is all without applying the possibility that ice resistance can block Mahapadma. I have seen two very different translations talk about Tatsumi’s ability to resist the technique. One draws correlation to ice resistance. The other does not. If ice resistance can be applied to the technique, it’s nothing to worry about, but if it can’t, well...see the previous few paragraphs one more time.
So while on paper, Mahapadma sounds like big trouble for Gray, I find the fact that Esdeath can only use it once combined with all possible factors hinging on it being a guaranteed KO blow, reduce it down to simply another factor in her win--albeit one that’s unreliable--so while “Esdeath can win in certain situations with this technique”, I wouldn’t say it allows her to win virtually all of them, or the simple majority. 
Phew. That was a headache. (looks down at rest of explanation) Aw, come on!
Anyway, I also find it interesting that Gray brings far more versatility to the table than Esdeath. Their approach to combat is actually pretty contrasting, what with Esdeath concentrating on making big, impressive attacks and Gray making weapons and smaller objects and not really doing something like an ice meteor.
And even though Esdeath can somehow make herself float, Gray has an ice bow and that thing was NOT friendly to Mard Geer. Plus when he shot the dark mage Racer from hundreds of feet away, he got him pretty handedly. So even if Esdeath puts distance between herself and Gray, Gray still has the means to actually harm her. 
If Gray can be harmed by the physical stabbyness of ice while being ice immune, Esdeath being merely ice resistant is going to have issues just the same. 
And you can certainly argue a case for Esdeath. Her overpowering Gray outright by being too tanky and too strong are certainly points in her favor, but that only seems to be after Commander-in-Chief is active and strength and durability is great and all, but if you can’t hit your opponent, it’s absolutely meaningless. Unlike with Ichigo Vs Naruto, Gray holds other advantages so his blazing speed might actually help him win.
Also, the argument that Gray will make mistakes due to being utterly insane and driven to the point of madness doesn’t hold water to me. Gray has managed to get his Ice Devil Slayer shenanigans under control thanks to the help of Polyusica. He even maintained the black skin change thing for a long time as a ruse while infiltrating the dark guild avatar. Even then, Gray was only ever at his utter angriest when he fought Natsu because he thought Juvia was dead and he was still doing a pretty decent job keeping up with the famous Salamander, even froze four pillars of fire during the fight itself. With the speed advantage, any mistakes Gray could potentially make, he has more than enough time to correct when it counts. Like, again, it’s not that Gray has the speed advantage, but just the sheer scale by which he has one. If not for the sizable gap, he’d be more likely to lose.
It also occurs to me that Gray is the only one of the two of them accustomed to fighting enemy cryomancers and he’s actually won every time. (At the very least, he has long since surpassed Lyon). It’s a huge boon that cannot be ignored and probably helps counterbalance Esdeath’s experience advantage. Really, among Esdeath’s entire arsenal, only Mahapadma is something Gray hasn’t already dealt with. While CiC is powerful and its stat boost is a god send, Gray has seen a similar snow storm in the hands of Invel. Not to mention, it’s much easier for us, and subsequently Death Battle, to determine how Gray interacts with ice that isn’t his, as opposed to Esdeath who is the only ice-user in her entire series.
It also doesn’t help that Esdeath’s death was caused by someone with 0 cold tolerance, superior speed and unpredictability. Granted, this was after Esdeath ran herself ragged, but as I just finished saying, Gray has enough speed to do precisely that and he’s even faster than Akame. And even if Esdeath used the ice armor that she can give herself while CiC is active, nothing stops Gray from turning it into an Ice Maiden and skewering her from every direction. Heck, any physical defense Esdeath puts up is prone to that issue. Even if you could argue her stronger willpower would make it possible for her to resist Gray turning her own ice against her, Gray is so blazingly fast that I think it’s possible he could turn Esdeath’s own techniques against her and stab her with them before she even knew that that’s what was happening.
In short: while Esdeath can physically stab Gray to death, the likelihood of her getting the chance isn’t as likely, to me, as Gray either outlasting her entirely so that she’s exhausted or having a prime opportunity to use Iced Shell, or using some of her own ice against her for the win. While Esdeath does have a physical advantage even without Commander-in-Chief, unless it’s ridiculous enough that she wouldn’t even need Commander-in-Chief to win, I can’t see her winning enough of all the possible ways this battle would play out to say that she would win it more often.
So, no matter how you slice or ice it, Gray is the stone cold victor and Esdeath is going to frostbite the dust.
Honestly, for me it doesn't really matter. I love both series. So, as long as the fight is awesome, and the episode itself doesn’t misrepresent or fudge the numbers we found, I win regardless. But I've had so much fun helping out with the arguments and debating the end result that I'm hoping my logic isn't failing me. Guess I'll know on Sunday.

Speedy
So I was going to start off with a joke, but I couldn’t think of a good ice breaker
So. Gray vs Esdeath.
In terms of AP, Esdeath should easily have the advantage. Let’s get this outta the way: she's getting CiC lol. It's basically the same situation as with Mob's 100% form, where both take days to charge, and nobody had a problem with him getting that. Characters in DB are portrayed at their greatest potential, and I don’t really get why people are being super strict about that all of a sudden when it hasn’t come up in other, similar situations.
“Um, actually, Esdeath doesn’t scale to the full energy output of the storm”
Gonna be honest, this is one of the more baffling counter-arguments I’ve seen against Esdeath having the AP advantage. The calc isn't for the "energy output" of the storm, it's for the energy required for her to make it. People saying this are literally arguing that she doesn't scale to her own feat. 
“But she didn’t use it to kill anybody”
She used the energy to create the storm for tactical reasons that wouldn’t apply in a DB. If she can channel her energy into making a storm, she can channel her energy into killing peeps. Gonna be honest, I find it very odd that people have a problem with storm feats applying to AP all of a sudden. This literally is never argued for any other character. Once again, people were totally fine with this kind of thing for Mob lol. Hell, we’re rating Gray as being large country level partly because of a storm feat, and people haven’t expressed issues with using that. I don’t wanna call double-standard, but...this is a double-standard.
Anyway, estimates for CiC’s level range from 411 petatons to 16 exatons, depending on how you approach the storm’s thickness. There is a 12 petaton version, but it’s miscalculated; dude forgot to square the velocity. With this in mind, once she busts it out, she just straight-up has the AP advantage no matter what calc you use, since like I said, Gray is only large country level. To give some details on Gray’s numbers, the Invel storm uses the highest size possible for the storm and KE as the method, when CAPE would probably be more appropriate. The Erza meteor feat being large country level is fine though as far as I know, unless you wanna be super strict about not using the anime timeframe for some reason.
Speed-wise, Gray should have the edge easily (sub-relativistic vs massively hypersonic), but time-stop counters it. Assuming the best for Gray and saying that the time-stop is tied to cold resistance, he would still need cold resistance on the same level of Esdeath's AP in order to resist it, because it would be an energy thing at that point. As already mentioned, he doesn't come anywhere close to her AP. And that's assuming that time-stop and cold resistance are even tied in that manner, which they might not be. It depends on the translation you use and how you interpret Esdeath’s words.
Beyond that, uh. Gray has more experience against other cryomancers, while Esdeath has more experience in general. Esdeath has much greater range with CiC, and her AoE also helps with Gray’s speed advantage. Gray has cold resistance, but Esdeath's AP exceeds it. Gray can absorb ice, but he can't absorb it on the scale that Esdeath can dish out. Esdeath can also arguably absorb his ice, though it's uncertain. Ice Cavalry gives Esdeath a massive numbers advantage while she still has them. Gray probably technically has better stamina since he can replenish his reserves, but the fight probably wouldn't last long enough for it to matter. Iced Shell coooooould allow Gray to seal Esdeath for the W, but given her AP advantage she could probably bust out of it tbh, and besides, it’s one specific win-con as opposed to Esdeath just one-shotting him once CiC is up. There are probably more side details, but those are a lot of the main ones.
So yeah, Esdeath’s got this IMO. Gray’s about to get iced.

KirbyKid

If you couldn’t already tell, this is the most split on the team we’ve ever been for a verdict in a while, and probably will be the most split match for the show ever.
This is a close fight.
This is probably going to be one of the few fights where speedblitzing will actually matter, as Gray holds a significant speed advantage thanks to scaling and matchups he’s won.
Esdeath may be a bit stronger without popping CiC, but not enough to matter when Gray will be hitting her with more attacks than she can handle at speeds she has no chance of countering. It won’t be until she pops it that she’ll be stronger, but gauging how strong she is based off an attack that required days of prep, which will now have to be downscaled because of the spontaneity of a one on one chance in DB will probably shoot her in the foot.
Gray will be given the chance to feed himself and build stamina off of her ice attacks ensuring he can be in the fight longer. Even her ice time stop (that I refuse to try and spell) has conditions to it that may be moot against Gray’s ice resistances, which will catch Es completely off guard. 
Iced shell will be an interesting win condition for DB, as Gray isn’t technically dead when he does it, but will remain as a block of ice with a blue haired chick forever immortalized inside it. Whether or not Es can be broken out of it with her own strength is up for debate, but seeing as it’s always been used as an extreme win condition to shutting down anyone who it’s used against, including Zeref who has powers that rival that of Acnologia, I don’t think Es will be getting out of it anytime soon, especially since Gray has the speed to pull it off.
She’s named Esdeath for a reason. Gray Fullbuster is gonna stop Es cold.

Ramen=Noodles

(ice)
Gonna try and keep this short and sweet, especially as someone who doesn’t really have a horse in this here race (i ain’t losing sleep regardless of whoever gets iced here but close fights are fun).
At its core, you’re either pulling for Gray to win via superior speed and his abilities having more counters to what his opponent can do, or Esdeath via the massive power boost she gets through Commander-in-Chief and the time stop that’ll give her the few seconds she needs to land the big fatal hit. Tempting as it may be to focus on that one really big win condition staring Esdeath in the face, I’m running with Gray here.
It’s all the smaller advantages that pile up for him. He isn’t hitting as hard as Esdeath, but the speed gap is far wider than the difference in DC/dura such that he can make it without being tagged too much. All the ice she’ll be tossing around is stuff Gray can def work around considering his Ice Devil Slayer shenanigans and prior experience in fighting against cryomancers. Also, there’s something about him resisting the time stop? 
IDK. Just from what the others have outlined here, it seems like the blue-haired stripper lad has more options in winning this fight. Here’s to a good animation and a good ep 125 i’d really want to know what that fight could be pretty please let me be invested in it

Minininja/Sgrigger03
Well, I’ve managed to be right for every fight so far, but I am prepared to be wrong for the first time.  This is probably the closest match-up since Nightwing vs Daredevil and it’s uncomfortably close - like the photo finish at the races “close.”  So let’s review what I’ve found:
No matter what anyone can claim about these two cryokinetics, they both have what they need to hurt each other because both of them like to turn ice into big sharp objects to slice things up, ginormous blunt objects to smash things, or ice armies to do their fighting for them.  No amount of ice resistance or immunity is going to protect you from any of that.
So this goes down to who is the bigger better deal.  In terms of power, Esdeath is 10 times more powerful than Gray from what we’ve found...wait, that’s it?  (Checks notes) I guess that’s it then. To put that in perspective, ANY carnivore that we humans have ever hunted since the bow and arrow was the pinnacle of human technology is that exact same ratio if not smaller, so I’m not impressed so far.  In the Speed Category, Gray Fullbuster is 500 times faster than Esdeath….I’m going to circle back to that.  In Durability, I haven’t seen the numbers, but I have seen both animes from start to finish and there are absolute-ly zero (pun intended) good and relevant durability feats in Esdeath’s corner compared to literally anyone in Fairy Tail because Esdeath is never the underdog in any of the fights she’s been in and her opponent is the reigning champion of that.  Then finally Gray, from what I remember, takes this SLIGHTLY in the experience category, but Esdeath is probably smarter than him.
For this reason, I am kind of torn between the two for this fight and let me explain this fully.  The only opponent to ever truly have what it takes to kill Esdeath was Akame because Akame was far faster in her final form than Esdeath to the point of making their battle look like a ninja speedster fight, and by the numbers alone; Gray is substantially FASTER than Akame or anyone from Akame Ga Kill for that matter.  The problem is that Akame was actually depicted as fast enough to make after images, vanish from her speed, have already slashed you to death by the time you see her, etc.; and Gray is not. Gray is all of the speed here and none of the speed hax that Akame sorely needed in order to not get hit by Esdeath and keep Esdeath on her toes pushing her to her limit.  I will also point at that in creating defense and attempting counter attack, Esdeath actually reliably kept pace with Akame to the point that Akame had to use Esdeath’s own trump card of freezing time against her to take the kill. Gray cannot pull off the same feat. Even though he’s fast enough to do the same things, he’s not a speedster character and has no counters to this time freezing ability where Esdeath can walk right up to him and stab him in the heart...Twice.  I’m also going to point out that Esdeath is a far more lethally oriented character than anything Gray or anyone from Fairy Tail has ever fought due to Fairy Tail being a shonen anime style.  If Esdeath hits someone or something in any way, they're dead!  
This is why I am torn.  By the numbers, Gray takes this.  He has what he needs to win, has the speed, power, and skill, to close the gap on what little disadvantage the numbers show he has, and Esdeath has been killed before by what he brings to the table.  Therefore, Gray will walk right up to that cold-hearted bitch and ice her…, and that’s what I think should happen, but Esdeath might actually kill him with her trump card before he ever gets the chance and it would be equally legitimate as a win.  We’ll just have to wait and see what our pals in the Death Battle research team put out.

Birb

Genos would’ve lived if he hadn’t opened his smart mouth and told Rhodey to fuck off, change my mind.



Aight, my first blog, and a doozy it be. Gray vs Esdeath, battle of the hot ice users. Ironic as hell but fuck it. From what I’m seeing this is surprisingly the closest fight we’ve seen in a long while. There’s a TON of factors at play here, more than any other, and both hold clear advantages over the other. So who wins? Well let’s look at each one’s best tools first.
At base Esdeath really doesn't have that much going for her outside of just being kind of a psychopath. Like Jesus, this woman fights DIRTY. But that doesn’t really matter in DB, see, Sindel getting her shit kicked in by Canary. Her best tools at base is her time stop which I'm not gonna even try to spell. From what I can gather it lasts around 12 seconds at most and Esdeath uses it to get out of dangerous situations. However, base Esdeath isn't the dangerous part and the crux of her victory condition. THAT honor goes to Commander-in-Chief, which bolsters her AP to insane levels. Its debatable whether she can pull it out, yes, but if she does get it, then Gray is outclassed AP wise by a HUGE margin.
Gray, meanwhile, has speed. A lot of speed. Enough to possibly blitz before CiC can even come out, and physically is superior than Base Esdeath. But his specialty here is in his hax. Natural resistances to ice means that yes, he’s still getting hit by it, but it’s not gonna be as effective and he can easily turn Esdeath’s ice against her, in more creative ways too. Ice clones and such is his bread and butter. Hell, its possible Esdeath’s timestop might not even work due to it being ice based. And then there’s Iced Shell, which can end the fight pretty much instantly should it land. 
So who takes it? Well, in my opinion, I think Gray is the one who’s coming home with the gold here. Speed-wise, again, it’s possible Gray could get a kill off before Commander-in-Chief can factor in and even still using CiC is debatable. He’s also FAR more adept at using ice in creative ways whereas Esdeath is more of a ‘fuck you have a giant ass meteor’ type deal. It also helps that he’s faced plenty of cryomancers, giving him an experienced edge against people like Esdeath, while the amount of ice wielders she’s faced is a whopping zero. Plus his resistance to ice compared to Esdeath not really having that is an extreme bonus in his favor.  
But the real key here is, assuming CiC is used to its fullest potential, will it work? In essence, I don’t think so. Commander-in-Chief isn’t so much a super form as it is a hugeass attack, a storm. In context it wasn't even used as an attack, more like a slow death for those who could not adapt to the storm. It doesn’t seem to really boost her stats at all, she fought no differently when it was active compared to when it wasn't in the show. And the thing that seals her fate is Iced Shell. Simply put, Iced Shell is probably only gonna come out AFTER CiC is activated, if at all, and since it's not so much a stat boost as it is a huge attack that requires prep, Esdeath is likely only breaking out of it if she pops the blizzard while Iced Shell is hitting her. Gray only uses it as a last ditch effort for a kill, and CiC coming out is CERTAINLY something that ups the stakes. Hell, in the manga itself, Esdeath’s, well, death, was caused by someone who didn't have a resistance to ice outlasting her. Something which Gray, given his speed advantage and better hax when it comes to manipulating ice, can more than easily do. 


Simply put, no matter which way you slice it All the queen’s horses, men, and horsemen aren’t gonna be enough to put Esdeath’s shattered corpse back together again. She has snow chance in the shell of putting Gray on ice.

Kingsly
This match ended up getting a lot more discussion than I was expecting, if the rest of the blog hasn’t made that obvious.
To start, in “base”, Esdeath does lose pretty solidly. She scales to a country-level calc, but Gray matches that with the Erza meteor feat, which is in the teratons as well. At that point, Gray is faster, has better abilities, and is generally a lot more versatile, so he takes it in that regard. Note that there’s several arguments against the Erza meteor feat being country level due to timeframes and such, but I’d rather not get into that for the sake of not overcomplicating things. The real debate comes with Esdeath’s strongest trump-card in CIC. Essentially, Esdeath spent three days creating a cavalry of ice soldiers, at which point, she absorbed them all and used this energy to summon a massive snowstorm that covered a notable portion of the planet. The storm alone gets values ranging from over 400 petatons to low into the exatons, far greater than anywhere you can place Gray. The trouble then comes with determining exactly how CIC works in a DB scenario.
Esdeath did need a few days to build up the army of 10,000 ice soldiers, and the fact that she then needed to absorb them all indicates that she can’t reach this sort of power output on her lonesome and in the middle of a fight. Despite that though, I still feel it has to be considered for Esdeath here to some capacity. Given that she made 10,000 soldiers in three days, and it’s unlikely that she spent every waking moment making the soldiers, you can arguably just divide 10,000 by three days to determine how many soldiers she could make in a second or a minute or some-such. Admittedly I do find it a pretty dubious method of working things out, but I can see DB going with it. If you do apply it, then within the span of the fight she can likely make up to hundreds of soldiers. That alone is pretty overwhelming for Gray, but on top of that she can absorb the cavalry she’s created to amp herself up to a degree of power Gray really can’t match anymore. Could he just kill her before she does this? Potentially, but with the way DB handles things, it’s likely that they’ll allow Esdeath to receive such a boost mid-battle, so I feel it has to be considered against Gray here.
With the power of CIC, the match quickly turns in favour of Esdeath. As said above, the storm she created with this energy is already thousands to nearly a million times stronger than Gray, making her more than capable of one-shotting him with any attack. It’s unlikely Gray’s cold resistance would help much either. He’s been affected by ice attacks too strong for him to handle before, and he’s directly stated that he can be frozen by ice cold enough once. Given that, and the fact that Esdeath’s power is thousands of times above him at this point, I’d cast doubt on the idea that his ice resistance could hold up. Gray still retains a solid speed edge though, enough of one where it’s unlikely Esdeath could even hit him in CQC, however, Esdeath has some large AOE attacks to compensate. She’s frozen entire villages in one attack before, and has created ice constructs relative in size to monsters which tower above islands. Given that, Gray feasibly can’t dodge Esdeath’s attacks for long enough to tire her out, while she can kill him with a single blow. That’s also not factoring in one of her most notable abilities: the Mahapadma. This technique allows her to freeze time for what seems like 10 to 20 seconds once per day, allowing her to easily get a hit in on Gray. With that comes the argument that Gray can resist the time stop due to his cold resistance, similar to how Tatsumi seemingly resisted it thanks to Incursio granting him protection against the cold. While I’d personally lean towards the interpretation that Incursio was just allowing him to resist the time stop specifically and not a general cold resistance, even assuming this would defend her power, it’s unlikely to benefit Gray much in the long-run. Esdeath’s ice magic is still leagues above Gray’s ice resistance, and Incursio’s adaption only allowed Tatsumi to make one attack in the stopped-time at that. Esdeath has already countered moves like this before, and it’s improbable that Gray could do anything meaningful in the stopped-time to prevent getting killed. Even with a weakened CIC from absorbing less soldiers, it should still put Esdeath above Gray by enough of a degree for everything I just said to essentially still apply.
We also need to make mention of Gray’s own trump card though. Lost Iced Shell allows him to give up his body and encase an opponent in ice fueled by his soul that slowly erodes away at them, effectively killing both him and his opponent. Something like this is specifically designed to be used against opponents too strong for Gray to handle, and he’s shown numerous times that he is willing to use this technique if he must. Despite that though, it still might not be enough. It’s the only ability in Gray’s arsenal that can really put a stop to CIC Esdeath, and he’d have to realise how big a threat Esdeath is before considering it, which I find unlikely to happen before Esdeath just one-shots him. Even the sealing itself might not actually work. There’s a line about how Lost Iced Shell is “more powerful” than the standard Iced Shell technique, which arguably suggests that it too is power-based. If you use that interpretation, Esdeath is likely just powerful enough to break out of the seal before it kills her overtime, essentially instantly killing Gray, which is appealingly ironic. As I said before, even a weaker power boost from her soldiers should still make Esdeath powerful enough for this to still be applicable.
Note that there are plenty of arguments here that I still haven’t covered. Things such as Invel’s ice magic potentially just bypassing ice resistance, Esdeath having the energy of CIC in her standard form as it was all her energy in the first place, Gray being completely immune to Esdeath’s time-stop, Gray being able to manipulate Esdeath’s own ice to kill her, etc. These are all still up for debate and can very well change the verdict depending on interpretation. There’s a lot of different elements going into this fight, many of which are unclear just due to how these two series are written. I don’t have time to cover all of them in-detail, if that wasn’t already obvious. I will say though that even taking all of these arguments into account, I feel that Esdeath’s methods of winning in CIC are just more reliable and likely than Gray’s options for victory. It seems more feasible to me that she can land a single hit in before Gray tries using Iced Shell or something similar to win.
There’s certainly a solid argument to be made for Gray, as a lot of what I just said is up for interpretation or debate. I’ve seen quite a few strong cases made for him winning, and he has a notable versatility and speed edge here. Despite that, I personally feel that once Esdeath amps herself up, she enters a league which Gray just can’t keep up with enough for me to say he wins more often than not. No I’m not going to make any fucking ice puns.


Malcolm Belmont
Hey guys, Malcolm Belmont here. Sorry i didn’t giving a Genos vs War Machine Verdict - i had University Work that i had to get down and i had to prioritise that over the G1DBFB but due to a certain coronavirus which may or may not have delayed my uni work - it gives me slightly more time in order to work on a verdict and hooo boy what a fight this is. People are not exaggerating when they say that this fight is one of the closest by far (honestly Nightwing vs Daredevil being the closest fight before this one). Due to the many,many verdicts on this fight I am going to try to keep this short and sweet but you know how things go when it comes to my verdicts - I make them way too rambly and long but I promise this time I am going to keep this short and sweet. 
Anyway let’s talk about who i think would win this fight, honestly i am immensely torn on this fight - just like everyone else due to how Gray and Esdeath definitely outclass each other in certain areas. With Gray being much faster (having to scale to much faster characters to Esdeath as well having speed feats that just eclipse Esdeaths) but Esdeath should at least be considerably stronger if we take Commander in Chief into account here (since Base Esdeath would definitely lose to Gray). Gray is the much more versatile fighter and has hax that could put Esdeath down while Esdeath herself has some very haxy things - like Commander in Chief as mentioned previously as well as of course her Time Stop. 
The issue when it comes to this fight is will Gray’s Speed Advantage give him the win against Esdeath’s superior Destructive Capability and Durability and the answer is in my personal opinion..

Allow me to explain, while i definitely think Esdeath is more powerful - as seen with one of my Top 5 Most Wanted DEATH BATTLEs - Goku Black vs Reverse Flash, Destructive Capability and Durability are definitely important factors and who would win in this fight but at the same time - if you have enough Speed and Hax on your side that you can reasonably win against someone who is stronger and more durable. If the Speed Difference was very small then i would say Esdeath’s Destructive Capability and Durability would take out Gray quite easily but as demonstrated in the analysis section of the blog - Gray should be much faster meaning it’s going to be extremely difficult for Esdeath to land a hit on him and i know what you are thinking, what about Time Stop? Well yes Time Stop is a great way of dealing with speed based characters but Gray should have some resistance due to the fact that it is explicitly mentioned in the Akame Ga Kill Series that those who are resistant to the cold are actually able to move in the Time Skip to some extent. Plus the fact that unlike the lord and savior - Dio Brando, Esdeath can only use one in the manga canon (which is the main canon source as such for abilities i feel it should stick to it) a day before having to wait 24 Hours in order to use it again. Plus the length of time stopped is 10-20 sections and considering Gray is a ranged fighter that generally prefers long distance attacks to close range attacks - Esdeath should find it extremely difficult to get in close for the kill within those 10-20 seconds. Gray on the other hand has no issues keeping Esdeath at a distance with his attacks and despite his lower Destructive Capability should gradually be able to wear Esdeath down before he goes into the kill. Down get me wrong, this is an extremely close fight and I could see DB going either way as mentioned previously but i think Gray has the means to take Esdeath out before she takes Gray out. Ultimately this matchup is an extremely close one but Gray’s Superior Speed,Ranged Capabilities and Resistance to the Time Stop score him the win in my Eyes. Looks like Gray will give Esdeath an Ice Shell of a Bad Time. 

 

One Last Thing to Note

So, after reading all the way up to this part, those of you who have been keeping count may be thinking
“Wait so 8 Verdicts for Gray and 8 for Esdeath, that means a tie right? Surely you don’t think this fight will end in a tie!”

Everyone who worked on this blog had their own thoughts and opinions on who would win this fight, but ultimately this match is so close that we at the G1DBFB as well as the many many guests that worked on this fight were completely split down the middle as to who won. 
Due to this being one of the closer debates in Death Battle history, we feel that it’s far more appropriate to not say who the solid victor is, as there is no solid victor. The fact that this ultimately came to a tie, which is very rare to see on these blogs, shows just how close this matchup really is, especially considering the number of verdicts we have. 
One final thing from us in this blog is a huge thank you to all the people that worked on this blog. This is by far one of the biggest ones, with a whopping total of 16 verdicts (that is a lot of horny for Gray and Esdeath). This was the biggest blog to date in terms of verdicts, and we at the G1DBFB would like to say, thank you for reading and hope you enjoy DEATH BATTLE’s episode when it comes out tomorrow. 
Nobody solidly won, so how about you have a picture of them being smooshy with their love interests?
Well, the girls at least.
P.S: remember to stay safe, stay healthy, stay inside, and stay happy during these… interesting times. See you next time for Episode 125!
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