How Strong Is Yellow - Character Fight Breakdown! (Animation vs Minecraft/Animator vs Animation)

[0:00]In a series filled with strange power sets and the ability to beat someone's face in with as much ferocity as possible, the matter of strength should be pretty straightforward. Just like my other videos dissecting this topic, strength can be easily defined in Alan Becker's series as speed, dexterity, arsenal, and even something akin to magic altogether. But today, we're dissecting a character that challenges a lot of the status quo of the average cool-looking fight scenes by having a completely different style of writing. Yellow is the fifth of Alan Becker's Color Gang that I'll be tackling today, and he's intelligence and mania incarnate. Known for his insane creations and proclivity to maximizing curiosity with a thin line of things not exploding in his face. And today, I want to break down his fighting style and ask the vital question: how strong is he? Because one of the deeper details that make Yellow so interesting is because his strength is so narratively unique. Disclaimer: This isn't your average power scaling style of video, where I'm taking in strength in isolation, and I also won't be putting in numbers for the sake of proving superiority amongst characters. It's a dissection where I'm using the scenes and the context of their personality to better understand why they fight a certain way. Also, it's not completely power that I'm after, either. It's appreciating what a character can do and which aspect of their story is best reflected in their combat arsenal. So, let's begin. Yellow is the group tactician, characterized as the solution maker and problem causer, who will stop at nothing to not only get the results that he wants, but also make sure that his friends are involved in whatever strange contraption he's cooked for today. Yellow is the classic nerd of the group, and what makes him so much more complex to dissect than others is that he usually doesn't get individual moments where he shines in longer sequences. But for someone that doesn't get a lot of individual one-v-ones, Yellow's arsenal is not only vast but extremely unique because it fills in the necessary gaps within the Color Gang's combat archetypes. So, let's begin with his physical capabilities where he's just himself. Yellow, much like the rest of the Color Gang, were created as fighters, meaning he has the basic combat knowledge, physique, and adaptability as all of them. As a stick figures' baseline, he's relatively strong and fast, even if it isn't to the level of the others. Yellow displays different kinds of fight patterns depending on his opponent, but his most prevalent preference is his kicks. As opposed to other strength-based fighters that counter force with force, Yellow tries to break balance. Yellow targets the lower body when he is fighting hand-to-hand, prioritizing low sweeping motions with his feet to target the thighs, feet, and ankles. As opposed to Green's fighting style that's much more movement-centric, Yellow doesn't actually kite the attacker. Instead, he catches their attacks with blocks, then he targets open positions within their stance. The benefit of this kind of fighting style is that it doesn't actually require you to be significantly faster or stronger than your opponent, you just need to hit them where it hurts. Against Red and Blue, we see this best in action. Red took on a more martial arts style while Blue has a head-on fighter style. Yellow keeps his distance and just redirects Blue's punches, but he also breaks Red's kicks before they can register. Yellow grabs him in motion and uses his own force against him to spin him, and then Yellow aims for the ankle to break Blue's attack before shoving him away. He also does this to Green by catching his kicks. Orange versus Yellow in this scene is a great way of showcasing what can counter that style of blocking. It's not by exerting any kind of force greater than necessary to block, which makes Yellow much more prone to being read. This is where he loses control of his own force and punches Red in the face. That lag of realizing that he just knocked Red down is the lag Orange needs to break Yellow's balance, and Yellow is tumbling backwards. Yellow has been depicted to have the weakest resistance to external force, meaning the odds of him losing balance, getting knocked over, or just stopped by external forces in general, are higher. Yellow's upper body strength is also noticeably lower than the other sticks, especially when it comes to grip strength. Yellow's agility and dexterity make up for this, but that's not to say that he isn't physically strong either. It's like 1000 is smaller than 2000, but 1000 is still a big number if they start punching you in the face. Because even though Yellow can get knocked over more often and he gets rather desperate when he has to fight in a battle of pure strength, it's hard to keep him down during a fight. Next, we move on to combat arsenal. Yellow is an entire Pandora's box of weapons and murderous intent. Yellow, as a character, has access to the usual arsenal of swords and fishing rods, all the way up to actual bombs and magic. That's what makes him very special, because his intellect and curiosity has given him the narrative responsibility of handling really broken and world-ending items. As well as the one who usually tests the limitations of Minecraft itself by utilizing redstone or exploring the other fundamental game mechanics. But what about his individual arsenal? Yellow is a jack of all trades when it comes to the weapons and tools at his disposal, particularly because he has a much more expanded range of items and item usage than the other stick figures. He prefers long-range combat, but he can deliver on short range if applicable. So, let's start with sword proficiency. His sword skills noticeably swap between two-handed grips and one-handed grips. He's also good at chaining combos through large sweeps rather than smaller strikes like Green. In smaller ways, he's also rather careless with how he uses melee fighting in general, accidentally colliding with others or shoving them. Yellow's one-v-one capabilities when put under stress are best seen in Parkour Realtime, where he has to fight his own piglin. He struggles to outrun them and is thrown down, so speed and outsmarting them wasn't the way. Then he starts trying to push forward with strength, and is horribly kept back. And when that doesn't work, it's time to pull out a weapon. When compared to his other companions, we see that Yellow's strikes are wider but slower. Yellow's best attempts are when he's trying to outrun the piglin, but when faced with an adversary that's faster, he's outmatched, even when he resorts to blocking and piercing on a smaller concentrated area. A lot of Yellow's sword handling techniques here require strength, like the reverse grip block. This is also the case with the fishing rod. Yellow utilizes the fishing rod the most when it comes to displacing, like when we see him in Lucky Block Staff trying to move around, or when he pulls the piglins around in the Ultimate Weapon. While I was making this video, I was wondering why Yellow's fighting style in melee felt a bit weaker than the others. But it actually boils down to technique compatibility. The others who are specialized in melee combat have already made a distinct understanding of what they're strongest at. Green has speed and interweaving attacks, which makes dual wielding lethal, while Orange has the force and strength, which amplifies speed. Even Blue, who normally is an archer, is actually a tank in close quarters. This isn't the case for Yellow, who actually should be adopting sword maneuvers that prioritize dexterity rather than strength. We already know that he's pretty good acrobatically, like attacks and blocking are his best styles. He's also good at parrying like Green. I think this is just the dissonance, and why fighting styles are super important in a series like this. Moving on, though, Yellow is also skilled at aerial combat compared to the other sticks, except Purple. If there's an option to fly or be hoisted into the air, Yellow adapts to flight if he has the tools. Moving on to explosives. Yellow's main weapon are the use of ranged explosives, including but not limited to, fire charges, fireworks, and especially TNT. When in doubt, blow everything up. Yellow prevalently uses explosives offensively to break terrain, propel himself off of platforms, or to create massive AoE effects to clear out enemies. He's also messed around with lasers, just like in the Lucky Block Staff and in League of Legends. Now, the next item in his arsenal is in relation to his understanding of technology, specifically with the Redstone and the Command Block Staff. This is the unique part of Yellow's arsenal because they allow Yellow to support the team and amplify or protect the others in ways that are pretty unconventional. He utilizes Redstone to maximize weaponry and defenses against enemies such as turrets and handheld weapons. Alternatively, he also uses Redstone to enhance processes that keep them alive, like how he optimized the farm for the Titan Ravager, or how he created trapdoors to lock in the Enderman. The Command Block Staff also allows him to take on a support role, and that's just kind of the person that he is. He enjoys making his friends happy by showing them these cool little knickknacks, and rarely does he ever greed on what he has. He takes pride in being trusted to provide and build, even if it can go overboard. He's skilled at using barriers and barrier blocks to keep himself safe or to trap enemies. We see this in League of Legends, where he placed Lux and conjures a barrier for the team, in the raid, where he helps defensively against the King, and the Lucky Block Staff, where he creates a cage for Red and the Amalgamation. He also enhances other's weapons in Lucky Block Staff and Enchanting Table Staff, and he gives Blue a bunch of potions in Hardcore Manhunt. Now it's time to talk about Yellow's most powerful item. The Command Block Staff's potential is insane. Yellow uses the Command Block Staff linearly compared to the different kinds of generation that exist in universe. It's mostly used for terrain generation and block generation. In the raid, he's primarily delegated to supporting the Titan Ravager rather than being the main attacker. We don't actually see the Command Block Staff itself be used in combat until Hardcore Manhunt, where he uses the barrier, he generates lava to bring down the raid, and he knocks cave spiders back with it. Unfortunately, the staff itself is already lost to time, so we've yet to totally see what Yellow could have done with his power in combat. In the Influencer Arc, though, we see that he is proficient with double gripping a staff-like weapon, wielding it like a glaive. Now, the biggest topic to tackle when talking about Yellow's strength is that unlike the other stick figures in terms of combat, he doesn't get the primary role or scene because he's usually in the background. Yellow's role is the conduit of mischief and the access point for the narrative to introduce concepts, both mundane and catastrophic. And this is what I'm going to call Narrative Nerfing in power scaling. This is a really common phenomenon for characters that have abilities that are so unique that you need to balance them out in storytelling ways rather than obvious combat ways. For example, you remove their screen time, you tweak their personality to limit their use of that power, or you give that power consequences or limits that they can't control. When you have a character that has narrative access to really broken things, the limitations that you put on them are as integral as the allowances you give them. These limitations are also part of their characterization. Yellow's physical prowess isn't as highlighted because, A, the other Color Gang members are filling up that space, and B, his tools are the spotlight because they represent his core themes: strategy, creativity, and intellect. Furthermore, the narrative nerfing of the staff not being used all the time has to be explained with in-universe reasons that are not only logical based on the character's writing but also don't feel like that big of a cop-out. This balances out the absurd strength of the staff and stops the line of thinking of, 'Why don't they just use the staff to fix their problems?' Well, they do, it's just that it creates more problems because they're inexperienced and frankly, careless. Next, we move on to combat mentality, or how a character thinks during combat. This section is split into three parts: Initiative is how they start combat, Engagement is how they think during combat, and De-escalation is how they usually end combat. This is important because most of the characterizations have something to do with how the character thinks. This influences their decisions, their allowances, and even their moralities. It's the context of why a character fights the way they do. So, let's begin with combat initiative. For a character that's smart, Yellow's combat initiative is highly dependent on his perceived sense of danger. As previously mentioned, Yellow's innate curiosity and wanderlust is a massive factor that sometimes leads him to difficult situations of either naivety or retribution. If Yellow doesn't perceive someone or something as a threat, he tends to go overboard with immersing himself in that environment. One example of this is how he approached the King just because he was curious about the Command Block Staff. He doesn't remember that it was through Command Blocks that they were trapped in the first place by Purple. Instead, he sees someone that saved them from a danger and is really cool, powerful, and shares something that he is very interested in. This leads him to lower his guard horribly and bring both him and Blue in danger. Another one is in Texture Pack and Command Block, because he was messing around too much with his newfound toys almost to the extent of disrupting normalcy. Yellow just doubles down multiple times for his own enjoyment. Yellow's mentality in the beginning of fights that have lower perceived levels of danger is that he's going to learn as much as possible about the environment and deceitful sticks. This is also exacerbated if Yellow follows the status quo already established by someone else. When Red was still trying to Parkour the first time, we can see that he's hesitant and moves much slower. When Yellow sees that it's generally possible and somewhat safe, he's much more confident in his strides until he isn't, and he falls to his doom. Additionally, when he finds out that it's permanent respawn, it's every stick for himself. However, when Yellow sees that his friends are genuinely threatened, he will never hesitate to jump in and defend them. Against Glitch Green, he doesn't hesitate to back up Red when Green's shoved away and has to be stopped by Orange. Logic and rationality be damned, he's not going to let anyone hurt his friends, even for a second. Yellow's engagement is surprisingly much more barbaric than a lot of people give him credit for. He's just as brutish and forceful as the rest of the Color Gang, except he hides it under a veil of intellectualism that is actually just, 'I'm going to hit you harder with a mallet!' Whether he's protecting his friends or fighting them, Yellow is cheeky, and he will do anything to find the most optimal solution to win a fight. When the stakes are low, he's much eager to play to win by utilizing underhanded tactics that could be very unsportsmanlike. He surprises Green with a bonzai kick in Animator versus Animation 9, and he shoves Blue off of the moment he sees an opportunity in Bedwars. But when the stakes are higher, his analysis is his way of calming himself down and supporting others during difficult situations, and his intelligence manifests in how much he pays attention to what he can do to assist others. For example, in Ultimate Weapon, he gives Blue the Fireworks Ammunition. In PvP, Yellow focused his attention on protecting Orange against the others rather than taking them down individually. Against the Glitch Green, he also notices minimizing the tab to keep it from eating everything. Additionally, he adapts to the environment as much as possible by studying the processes and patterns. He utilizes the hunger of the Titan Ravager to steer it away from the village, and even optimizes an entire system to keep it fed and happy. He also tries to manipulate the building battles to benefit him because they hated seeing Green win over and over again. In line of this, he's also someone that adjusts depending on what works and what doesn't. I already covered his fight with the piglin, but we see in Bedwars this phenomenon. He gears up to do a melee one-v-one, but realizes that the opponent is sketchy, so he runs backwards and distances himself. Yellow's ability to stay calm in combat is directly correlated to two factors. First, does he have other allies that help him process that emotion so that he himself doesn't have to panic? Because if he's immediately targeted by the threat, he loses that composure and just tries to make the problem go away. Second, does he have any materials that he can study, or anything that can help him find a way out? When in doubt, and if not faced by immediate combat, Yellow resorts to rationalization, even when things are already bleak. He's almost always convinced that there's a way out of every situation. However, this level of comfort is immediately stripped away if there isn't. If he genuinely feels trapped, he becomes more desperate and loses that composure. The best way to actually beat Yellow is to rattle him. Last but not the least, Yellow's combat de-escalation mentality is similar to the others. If you show that you're backing down or you're no longer a threat, and for as long as you don't show active hostility, he's willing to negotiate. Now, normally I would have a part here that talks about their individual combat fight scenes, but unfortunately, I couldn't find one of Yellow where he was the main star. Only smaller moments that bleed with other characters. I find it really unfortunate, actually, that Yellow has been constantly shoved in the background in terms of power, even if I do say that it balances out everything else that the series has given him. Yellow not having the spotlight feels somewhat criminal sometimes because he's genuinely a fun character. There's two fights in particular that I really think showcase his sword fighting technique. The first one is in Chef, where Yellow's sword skills are most prevalent. This is a team battle, but we're going to be focusing on Yellow. Combat proper starts with Yellow charging the chef. He tries for a wide upper strike, but before he can get the second strike in, he's smacked in the back of the neck. He recovers with a slide, so he charges again, aiming low. Yellow tries to keep the swings consistent, and he keeps his stance somewhat balanced before he tries to aim for the chef's feet. Yellow is still on the charge before ducking from a straight decapitation. The camera pans to Green getting murdered on the side, rest in peace, but Yellow then reacts fast enough to parry incoming five knives to the face. He and Red notice the chef, and he launches Red all the way up to grab it, except when he dives, the chef launches the cookbook into the back of Orange's head, which ricochets and knocks him right down. This small scene in Texture Pack, where Orange and Yellow have a sword fight shows the style of melee that Yellow is proficient in, and we can contrast this with Orange's. Yellow blocks the first attack with a downward swing, then he pushes against Orange, who's recovering from the dive. Yellow uses Orange's momentum and lack of balance to bring the sword down with a double grip, and before Orange can stand up, Yellow spins around to build momentum and strike at Orange's fishing rod. When Orange retaliates, this is a similar tactic he does with the others where he catches the force with his hands, but he distances the rest of his body so that he can pivot for a smaller block. This movement is completed when he breaks Orange's balance again to shove him backwards. Yellow then adopts a sequence that has more footwork. He collides with one attack and dodges for the next one, then he breaks the fishing rod once and for all. When they share Blue's next with Orange actually having a real weapon, Yellow's attacks have less contact time. Orange is on the offensive, and Yellow does smaller blocks. Yellow catches the momentum of Orange's upward swing, then he spins again to try and go for the legs. This doesn't work with Orange jumping, but Yellow's able to goad Orange into piercing the wall behind him. He makes a run for it and does what the Cursor Lords intended, and starts bombing everyone. Yellow is one of the characters that I think is underappreciated when it comes to strength because he's not in the spotlight, but I do think that his merit on the field is being the jack of all trades that the group needs. He's the perfect balance of defense, offense, and tool utilizations that the others require. Overall, I'm here to advocate for more Yellow fight scenes, and here's to AVM and EVA in the upcoming months. I'm Mushi, and that has been, How strong is Yellow? Hi, editing Mushi here, sorry that this video took a very long while. I'm actually just sorting out the other parts of my life that need to be paid attention to. I'm quitting to become another paid employee at another company. Yeah, um, I'm considering like streaming in the future for gaming. I want to go back to that, but I had a really long, like, March was very important for a lot of projects that we had to do. So, I was spearheading a bunch of projects. This is why this video took, um, pretty long. I had to prioritize my day job, so I hope that you guys understand, and thank you all so much for supporting this series. Anyway, the next character is going to be, um, hm. I'm not sure if I'm going to be tackling Orange soon because I feel like that's also a very big video, so let's see what happens with the other things that I have planned in mind. Also, uh, yeah, thank you all so much for watching.