Disclaimer: I do not think that Yuji vs Denji flopped views wise, getting 1,8 million views in a month is a by no means a bad performance, however I and many others expected it to do a lot better views because it's such a highly requested legacy matchup.  


Why did Yuji vs Denji "underperform"? 



I genuinely think that Yuji vs Denji is like the only DB episode in existence where more people have watched short form content which tries to debunk the episode instead of actually watching the episode for themselves and deciding on their own terms whether or not they agree with DB's verdict and reasoning. On my YouTube shorts feed alone I've already encountered hundreds of short videos with thousands of views which all try to debunk DB's take on Yuji vs Denji. And the vast majority of these short form debunk videos are extremely negative towards  not only the research of the episode (e.g criticizing the Oregon Sword scaling for Denji) but also the choreography of the animation (e.g Yuji's Black Flashes lacking impact). A lot of the complaints that these short form content creators have are valid and I'm definitely not saying that these creators aren't allowed to criticize DB I'm just saying that Yuji vs Denji received a shit load of negative word of mouth which very likely could have dissuaded many  of the people who watched said short form debunks from watching the episode themselves.

  
Why did Yuji vs Denji specifically get so much negative press in the form of short form content?

  
Yuji and JJK as a whole are generally speaking a more popular than Denji and CSM, which is a claim that's especially true in the power scaling community because speaking from experience JJK fans are just a lot more active in the power scaling community than CSM fans. In the waiting period for Yuji vs Denji most people in this sub agreed that Yuji vs Denji is an insanely debatable matchup but in most casual power scaling circles Yuji was heavily favored to win, so when DB had Denji win it definitely ruffled some feathers with a lot of JJK fans who in turn made video's debunking the episode (which they are completely entitled to do.)

  
Clarification: I actually agree with DB's take that Denji beats Yuji due to his speed advantage (which was DB's closing argument for Denji winning) + out scaling through Gun Goddess scaling however I do not agree with the ludicrous Oregon Sword scaling that they gave Denji and I also think that giving Denji Oregon Sword scaling was complete overkill and that his speed advantage and Gun Goddess scaling was already enough to beat Yuji.

  
I think that many JJK fans saw DB's wonky Oregon Sword scaling for Denji and decided to write off the entire episode as being wrong because of it in their debunk videos without paying attention to DB's more sensible arguments for Denji winning like his speed advantage+ AP advantage through Gun Goddess scaling.

  
Thanks for reading my post and feel free to leave your thoughts on the comments.

Why I think that short form content like YouTube/ TikTok/Instagram Shorts ended up heavily weakening the algorithmic performance of Yuji vs Denji.