A Retrospective on Magneto VS Accelerator - Why it's my Most Wanted
Although I’ve been watching Death Battle for almost a decade by now, I only became familiar with the idea of having a “most wanted” list when I became a part of the wider community around 2019. That’s not to say there weren’t ideas I wanted to see, a big example being Ultron VS Sigma as far back as 2015, and seeing it happen in 2018 was a dream come true for me. There was also my beloved, Travis Touchdown VS Jack Cayman, and I’m still holding onto hope for that. Beyond those two though, I didn’t really have a list of ideas I actively wanted. It was only when I saw everyone around me having these huge lists of ideas they had a lot of passion for and wanted to see, that I wanted to “fit in”, in a way, and decided to brainstorm ideas I liked enough to be really passionate for them.
My most wanted list has definitely changed a lot over the years, including my actual #1. It was DIO VS Alucard at first, then eventually Freeza VS G1 Megatron. When Simon the Digger VS Kyle Rayner started getting more popular and when I finished Gurren Lagann, that briefly overtook the top spot of my most wanted, and soon it was Madara Uchiha VS Sosuke Aizen, which did actually happen at the same year it became that. There are of course other ideas that have been on the list, left it, maybe came back, or stayed there for years. I’m generally indecisive with huge lists like that, especially for something as versatile as a matchup. For various reasons, they can enter that list, whether it be for solid connections and theme, an engaging debate, awesome animation potential, great storytelling, or my attachment to the characters and series involved. However, for the last 2 years, there has been one idea that has been standing at the top of my list with an iron fist, for all those five reasons I listed, and even more. One idea that I thought little of at first, then grew interested in, then started liking a lot, then started having in my most wanted, before it finally reached the honorable crown of being my favorite matchup of all time.
That matchup is none other than Marvel’s Master of Magnetism VS ToAru’s One Way Road. That matchup is none other than Magneto VS Accelerator.
Part 1: My history with the characters and matchup
Everyone has a personal history for their number one most wanted matchup, and I’m no different of course. I’m going to start with my personal history on Marvel, X-Men, and Magneto himself, before talking about my history with ToAru and the matchup as a whole, since those two are very connected.
It’s obviously a bit of the Buzz_Lightyear.gif to say “I grew up on Marvel comics”. A lot of kids around my age did, especially with the boosting popularity of the MCU thanks to Iron Man. However, I was quite unfamiliar with the movie series until 2013, and so most of my time growing up on Marvel was with various video games and cartoons. In particular, I had a huge attachment to arguably the most iconic hero team within Marvel, the X-Men. Their stories of these mutants being treated differently and suffering under intolerance and bigotry and how they manage to combat that and fight for equality were always fascinating to me, and in retrospect, now identifying as a Hispanic trans woman, it strikes a big personal connection to me. Even beyond that, I played the old ass X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse on the SNES as one of my first video games ever, and although I was pretty ass at it back then, words can’t describe the childlike wonder I had seeing characters like Beast, Wolverine, and Gambit in awesome sprites like those at the time. I of course also watched some of the X-Men cartoons, in particular the 92 series on YouTube, and while the show has definitely shown a lot of age in areas, it still holds up as an excellent adaptation of the characters in my eyes. And while I don’t hold too fond an opinion of the original X-Men movies nowadays, watching them with my parents as a child is a feeling I can’t forget, those were the coolest things ever to me.
Of course, what makes the X-Men so iconic is their cast of characters and rogues gallery, and my favorites have swapped around a bit. While my favorite members of the main team themselves have been in flux throughout my life, my favorite villain has always been their most iconic, and arguably the most well known villain in Marvel as a whole, Magneto. I think part of the reason Magneto sticks out with me so much, ever since I was a child, is because I think he’s one of the best examples of a tragic and redeemed villain not just in comics, but probably fiction as a whole.
This is a man who’s been suffering his entire life. A Holocaust survivor and someone who saw his family die even when trying to start a new life. His motive is understandable and honestly kind of right to an extent: but his methods are what overall make Charles’ ideal and goal superior. He's not power hungry, no, but he's for sure a terrorist, and at points he’s honestly been hypocritical, a big example being Cullen Bunn’s run. Erik hunted down the Marauders for their hand in the Mutant Massacre and spent his time torturing and killing them one by one, and when confronted by one of the Marauders why he was attacking them, Magneto admitted to carrying out a form of genetic cleansing. The Marauders didn’t fit his image of a mutant, so he chose to erase them permanently, which is horrifyingly not too dissimilar from the tragedy he suffered all those years ago.
And yet in spite of that, Erik doesn’t like what he’s doing. In spite of these evil methods, it comes from being oppressed for so long, from all the hatred he’s endured. When he thought he had accidentally killed Kitty Pryde, he was horrified by it and stopped fighting immediately, because he realized that he had unwittingly become just like the people he'd always hated. And I think that’s what makes Magneto, ironically, such a human character. He is not perfect, he’s a flawed person, he’s hypocritical at points, and his methods are not right, etc. And it’s been culminating in recent stories where Magneto tries to end up changing his ways and seeing more of Charles’ views, with him in an internal struggle between regressing into old habits and genuinely trying to better himself. It’s been some of the most engaging and consistently writing within comics, and overtime, I eventually began to realize Magneto has become my favorite character in all of Marvel comics, my favorite comic book character ever, and one of my favorite characters…in general.
Now, where does Accelerator play into this? Where does ToAru play into this? Well, if people know me well enough, I actually never heard of ToAru until 2020. I vividly remember first hearing of this series back in the official server before it even became the official server, and getting pinged for the next community death battle idea within the server, where server members can debate a matchup for the next 3 days. On that day, I saw a brand new matchup involving a series I never heard of; Killua Zoldyck VS Mikoto Misaka, submitted by now close friend Anfang. While I didn’t talk too much in the debate due to being unfamiliar with both combatants and series within a VS context at the time, I definitely paid close attention, because the more Anfang explained Misaka’s powerset, the more I became interested in her and the series she came from. A franchise where there’s a balance of power sets between magic and physics sounded fascinating, and Misaka’s abilities and versatility with her electricity and iron sand definitely caught my eye.
Later on, Anfang would post and share a character analysis blog on Misaka, which I still personally hold as one of my favorite blogs I’ve read. There's a clear amount of passion and investment written in every corner, and that only gravitated me to the matchup even more. At the end of the blog, he had a special section dedicated to the reading order of the entire ToAru series, from the LN’s, manga, anime, to even his own personal recommendation of how to get into the series in what order. There was an opportunity for me to get into a new series that’s been holding my interest for quite some time, and so I took the shot and started by watching the original Railgun anime.
From there, it was just going deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole. From the amazing Sisters Arc adaptation in the Railgun manga, to the tension building Battle Royale in the light novel, to the climactic WW3 arc, and so, so much more, ToAru quickly became one of my favorite franchises in recent memory. To say it’s a flawless series wouldn’t be true of course, with especially the fanservice getting a bit egregious at points, but the highs have grabbed me so much that those are all I can focus on. In particular, however, there was one character who grabbed my attention from their first appearance. Of course, I’m talking about Accelerator.
Accelerator’s powerset is naturally unique and cool, with the ability to manipulate any vector quantity of his surroundings or attacks. But obviously that’s not all there is to him. Accelerator’s character arc throughout the Old Testament part of the story is one of my personal favorite arcs of any character. A man who was born too strong for his own good and suffered loneliness as a result, and joined the “Sisters Project” of killing 20000 Misaka Sister clones to make people stop fighting him and becoming the all fabled Level 6 Esper, only to end up being manipulated and jaded as a result. A man who, after losing to a Level 0 nobody named Touma, had his views slowly changed on the world, and managed to save the last 10000 Sisters left from a computer virus. A man who tries to protect Last Order, the final clone of the Misaka Sisters, to prevent her the same suffering all the other Sisters felt, in order to atone for his actions, but with the trauma and suffering he gains from his past actions catching up to him overtime. All of that and Old Testament culminates in Accelerator promising to protect Last Order as a daughter, finally fighting to protect someone precious to him, which is one of the most emotional and satisfying scenes I’ve seen that always gets me choked up. From then on, New Testament and onwards follows Accelerator after his climactic moment, his dynamic with the rest of the cast and especially Touma, how he works to fix Academy City, and more. Accelerator is a compelling character and has been my favorite for the series since I first got into it, and remains tall as one of my favorite characters…in general.
So now, we have two characters and series that I have a strong personal connection to. What about the matchup itself?
Well, before I got into ToAru, Anfang brought up his most wanted match at the time often, that being Magneto VS Accelerator. Naturally, due to no investment at the time, I didn’t think much of it. Seeing his posts being passionate about it and my growing interest in ToAru made me think a bit more positively about it, but nothing more. It was only when I started watching/reading ToAru, seeing Accelerator’s character arc and developing powers, and talking about it more and more with Anfang, that I started liking the matchup a lot. Eventually, it started crawling into my most wanted list as I continued reading the Old Testament light novels. I would bring it up whenever I could in popular servers, private servers, and friend groups to spread it around and maybe get more people to like it, and the more I talked about it and spread the word, the more and more I loved it. It’s fight animation potential, it’s story potential, two characters I love a lot, it basically had everything to me. It was only until late 2021 that, after finishing the Old Testament saga, realizing how much in retrospect Magneto means to me, and how I love Accelerator just as much, that this matchup became my number one most wanted.
That was also close to the time when Tetsuo was announced to appear in Season 9 of Death Battle and my heart sank a bit. Oopsie!
Part 2: Why do I fuck with this matchup, exactly?
So I explained my history with the matchup and the characters involved. Obviously, a personal connection like that can gravitate someone towards a matchup, but that wouldn’t be the only reason for it to be a most wanted, generally speaking. Of course, Magneto VS Accelerator is no exception in my eyes, and there’s a multitude of reasons it's stuck around as my favorite for both for a while.
The connections are generally pretty solid. There’s a lot of mucho texto fluff you can do, but for the sake of not being a Redditor and to be concise, I can just list the important stuff:
Both represent the peak of their respective kin, Magneto being Omega Level Mutant and Accelerator being a Level 5 Esper. Mutants and Espers also represent the next step forward for humanity, being powered individuals with many unique and amazing abilities
Their powers in particular are focused more on science and bending physics, with Magneto manipulating the magnetic spectrum and the versatility that comes with it, and Accelerator manipulating vectors and anything with magnitude and direction.
Both have a complicated relationship with a far weaker rival (Charles Xavier & Kamijou Touma) who wound up defeating Mags and Accelerator. Their conflicts brought out changes in heart for both Magneto and Accelerator; Magneto in more contemporary times has seen Charles's side of the infamous argument and at times has been working with him, while Accelerator began to idolize Touma's outlook and in recent times, has fought beside him and is trying to be a better person like him.
Both of them have ended up working toward that path of redemption over the years, and while they may have succeeded at points, they ultimately hold a deep hatred in their hearts for themselves for the suffering they’ve caused.
There’s a bit more similarities one can point out, like with how both act as a protector for a large group of people, how Academy City and Krakoa/any Mutant sovereign state share many similarities of being havens to foster their kind but being corrupt and having some skeletons in their closet, etc, but the core theme is essentially the main 4 bullet points I listed. In particular, the last one scratches badly the itch I want for both. Both of these two are men who go to the path of redemption but can’t forgive themselves for their actions beforehand. It’s such a vital point of their character to get right, and while I won’t use this as an opportunity to rag on ideas, it did mean a lot of their other ideas fell short for me. But here, I think it’s the perfect fit and match for the two of them.
But of course connections don’t make up everything, you need a functioning fight dynamic, and this match up has everything I want in a fight featuring these two. Their power sets match up so well and I have dozens of fight scenarios here. I want this fight to take advantage of X-Men/Krakoa Council Magneto and Chair Boardman Accelerator.
Setting up the fight would be easy. Academy City and how it develops Espers would essentially be the equivalent of an “artificial mutant” within Marvel, and that’s something Magneto would absolutely despise. Maybe have a scene of him consulting with Charles and the Council of Krakoa about it, and they deny his requests of doing anything about it, and so he takes matters into his own hands and travels to Academy City to confront its Chair Boardman, who’s currently resting in his comfortable prison cell designed just for him. Magneto makes a speech about mutants and how Espers aren’t fit, and Accelerator, ultimately keeping a cool temper, talks down on Magneto, and so, Erik destroys the prison, Accelerator ultimately unharmed thanks to his vector shield, and the fight begins.
You can have Accelerator defend civilians while fighting Erik like during his fight with Kakine. While Erik has mellowed out his hatred for humans, he’s still overall more violent and destructive in his fights (see his encounter with Red Skull). I don't even think you need to point it out in the dialogue, but just show Magneto dropping like a bunch of buildings and afterwards we see Accelerator standing protectively and some people behind him are alright. You can lead that with Accelerator scoffing at Magneto’s “villainy”, saying that him willing to put innocent people in harm’s way means there is an unsurpassable wall between the both of them, once again similar to his talk to Kakine, but now in a different context. Erik gets enraged by this and continues to push Accelerator back before realizing his attacks aren’t doing much. But he notices the AIM choker around Accelerator and, with his EM abilities, shuts down the choker, nullifying Accelerator’s powers and leaving him crippled. With this opportunity, Magneto decides to read Accelerator’s mind and undercovers his actions and genocide of the Sisters during the Level 6 Shift project. Horrified at this, Magneto calls Accel a hypocrite and how the thousands he’s harmed and even killed will always be his legacy, and the blood on his hands will never be washed. Accelerator’s trauma and memories of his actions cause him to go berserk, and he awakens his Black Wings, sprouting hundreds of sharp jet-like wings from his back. Magneto comments on who between them is the real monster now, before declaring he’ll “match the monster now”, and gets rid of his white attire in favor of his classic red one, now wearing to defend Krakoa from this insane ‘artificial mutant’.
Accelerator starts speaking in a haunting angelic language, and gathers the wind in his direction to form a gigantic plasma storm over the city. Magneto counters it by creating his own electromagnetic storm, which results in two city sized storms colliding with each other, causing plasma rays and lightning strikes around the city while Magneto and Accelerator do battle. They crash into multiple buildings, and ultimately, Accel’s plasma storm overpowers Erik’s EM storm, and he prepares a 100 meter wide plasma ball to finish the master of magnetism. However, Erik realizes how to stop it, and with his weather manipulation abilities, reverses the flow of the wind in order to glitch Accelerator’s calculations, diffusing the plasma ball and the storm as a whole. Accelerator continues on fighting, and slams his hundreds of Black Wings onto the ground, uplifting a large amount of debris and shattering buildings. Magneto uses this as an opportunity to exploit a potential weakness in Accelerator’s shield that he discovered, and summons hundreds of thousands of shards from the ground and buildings to attack, essentially acting as a power struggle between Magneto’s magnetokinesis and the vector redirection. Although he gets heavily injured in the process, he successfully replicates the Kihara method and pulls back a large shard the instant it hits Accelerator’s shield, and thus the shard makes direct contact with Accelerator and nearly splits him clean in half. However, Accelerator controls the flow of his blood to prevent it from spilling out, and, remembering his promise to keep Last Order safe, transforms into the White Wings, now in a calm state, healed from his wounds, and stronger than ever.
Magneto, seeing this new found power, drops the remnants of a destroyed satellite (Tree Diagram) above Accelerator. Among the wreckage however, Accelerator calmly walks out and charges towards Magneto, both moving faster than the eye can track. Magneto summons a hurricane of near absolute zero temperature around Accelerator, but the latter disperses it with a flap of his wings and gets close to Magneto, attempting to manipulate his blood and bio-electricity before Erik puts up a barrier to defend himself. After multiple failed attempts at break through, Accelerator busts out the Platinum Wings and forces Magneto’s spirit out of his body. However, Erik, due to his experience with Astral Projection, sends his spirit back to his body and rams Accelerator with enough force to send them into space. For the final climax, I want Magneto to absorb the magnetic energy of the Earth and surrounding celestial bodies, while Accelerator absorbs their kinetic energy, both gathering so much energy that the entire galaxy trembles at their might, before unleashing massive blasts of energy, with the energy clashing fucking up their bodies.
Now normally I would lead that into an ending for the winner and loser, but funnily enough, I’m not going to post it. Not because I don’t have any ideas, but because this matchup is so close and debatable that I often go back and forth on who wins. In a rare twist, the cosmic level Marvel character has a close and debatable fight. Magneto may be a lot faster on average, but Accelerator’s vector manipulation in potency can match his strength, and his passive barrier makes landing direct hits on him a lot easier said than done. And Magneto’s huge list of hax and abilities thanks to his control of magnetism is equally matched by Accelerator’s knowledge and application of vectors. It’s a super interesting debate that I can yap about a lot, but I don’t think that’s what most people reading this blog came for, so we can leave it at that.
Music potential is also quite good. You have classic X-Men themes to pull from the cartoon, game, and even from MvC, and ToAru’s soundtrack is super unique with its EDM style and techno beat, so there’s a really good pairing you can do. I’m especially a big fan of Magneto’s MVC3 theme and Introducing the Strongest paired together, they fit like a glove.
I could go on and on about all of my ideas, but I think you all get the point. This fight has a lot of potential with their power sets making up for a practically perfect fight dynamic that I can sum up in a single sentence: This is a battle between two insanely versatile and scientific geniuses with nearly impenetrable defenses (to one another at least) trying to get past the other not by raw power, but by tactics, intelligence, skill, and their tools and abilities. That’s a cool as fuck fight dynamic, and whenever Death Battle have fights focused on intelligence and strategy, they’re always some of my favorites. This fight has so much potential to be a great episode.
…which I guess leads into the next part.
Part 3: Is it likely? Is there a point in pushing it?
This will probably end up being the shorter section of the three, and yet it’s probably the one I have the most investment in talking about, to be frank.
After Tetsuo was teased to show up at the end of Saitama VS Popeye, a lot of people naturally concluded he’d be fighting his most requested opponent at the time, Magneto. Like I said, I won’t turn this into a whole session dogging on other matches, but I wasn’t a big fan of the matchup, and to have a matchup I grew to love as much as Magneto VS Accelerator basically get shot down like that definitely stung a bit. Didn’t really stop me from talking about the match, and my love for it only grew, but there was definitely a sinking feeling of “is there a point talking about it when it’s not going to happen?”
Cue Magneto VS Tetsuo getting revealed, and there was simultaneously a new spark of passion, and a candle that fizzled out a bit. Magneto being more relevant than ever made me really think more and more of ideas for a fight with Accelerator, especially with various abilities and story moments people discovered during the 2 week wait period. On the other hand, Magneto getting on basically meant all chances talking about it felt…pointless, in a sense. Like, what’s the point in talking about this match I love so much if I know Magneto is just fighting someone else eventually? The episode came out, and despite some problems I have, it turned out spectacularly, and became a hit in the community! One of my favorite characters got a great episode that a lot of people were satisfied with and that fucking rules!
…except eventually I became less satisfied. Not because of any objective problems in the fight, but always just that nagging feeling of “Damn this episode was so good, imagine what Magneto VS Accelerator could have been!” That always persisted in my mind ever since the episode came out, and even nowadays it still pops in occasionally. The community itself also began to somewhat turn on the idea a bit; not necessarily calling it bad, but a good amount of people found it unnecessary after Magneto got an episode that a lot consider one of the best of the season. Which is absolutely fair and I’m not going to fault people for feeling that way, but it did leave some sort of disappointing feeling whenever I saw comments like that.
Cue a year later with Killua VS Misaka being revealed as episode 3 for Season 10, the matchup that got me into ToAru in the first place. I loved waiting the two weeks for that waiting period and the episode especially (maybe I’ll make a similar blog talking about it in depth, who knows), but the community hasn’t treated that episode the best. Similar to Magneto VS Accelerator as a matchup, not many outright consider it bad, but due to their lack of investment in ToAru, it gets severely overlooked or under discussed compared to almost every other episode in Season 10. It especially didn’t help that the episode, to be frank, performed very poorly, taking around a month to reach 1 million views, and it definitely caused a lot of worry on me and other ToAru fans on whether the series would come back.
To say my love for Magneto VS Accelerator as a matchup diminished over the last two years would be false, but it would also be false to say I wasn’t contemplating on whether to keep pushing for it or even having it in my most wanted list. A lot of stuff was really going against it in the community; Magneto getting a modern and well received episode, Killua VS Misaka being one of the least popular episodes of last year in terms of discussion and it tanking in views, a lot of “ToAru who?” jokes, etc. It ultimately felt like a fruitless endeavor at points, and recently I was just ready to hang up the towel and move to something else as my most wanted for the show, even if this remained as my favorite matchup…
…until last night, at the time of writing and posting this blog, where a close friend of mine shared something early with me; their retrospective on their favorite episode of all time, Scooby-Doo VS Courage the Cowardly Dog. It was a super enjoyable read, getting to hear about their experiences and history towards the idea, what it felt like waiting for it, their dreams coming true for it, etc. However, one paragraph towards the tailor end of it struck a personal chord with me.
In a period where I really didn’t feel there was any point in continuing discussion for it, this specific paragraph I think was exactly what I needed to hear, and that whole blog honestly. Magneto VS Accelerator doesn’t necessarily have the best chances. It’s possible that the community wouldn’t be enthusiastic about it. It’s likely that a lot of the casual fanbase don’t think of it or request that much. And it’s most certainly possible that an episode wouldn’t perform the best views wise.
But I’m not going to stop pushing for it.
Even with all those challenges in mind, Magneto VS Accelerator has remained my favorite matchup for over two years, regardless of if it’s in the context of Death Battle or VS crossovers in general. Death Battle is one of my favorite shows of all time and something that has impacted my life for the better, and where I met so many people that I would consider my best friends nowadays. A lot of my previous most wanted episodes have turned out exactly as I had hoped, and especially a lot of my friends have gotten exactly what they wanted just by being vocal and pushing for their favorite ideas no matter what.
So I’m not gonna stop sharing my love, passion, and ideas for this matchup and both characters, even if there’s a 1% chance it’ll happen and a 1% chance it’ll be everything I hoped for and wanted.
I will not stop pushing for Magneto VS Accelerator, my most wanted Death Battle match of all time.
(Thanks to DekHead for the art. Give him your money 🫵)
A wonderful read
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