Why 'Battle Against a True Hero' Is Such a Masterpiece

“Battle Against a True Hero” is one of my absolute favorite tracks in Undertale. Here, I’d like to analyze it.

This article contains heavy spoilers for Undertale. If you haven’t played it yet, leave this page immediately, shut out all information from gameplay videos or walkthroughs, and go play Undertale.

Analysis Within Undertale#

Undertale makes relentless use of leitmotifs, and this track is the prime example. Alongside “Bring It In, Guys!” and “Hopes and Dreams,” it stands as the quintessential leitmotif track.

Context#

“Battle Against a True Hero” is the BGM for the mid-game boss fight of the Genocide Route, Undyne the Undying.

This battle is triggered by killing the required quota of monsters across the Ruins, Snowdin, and Waterfall.

Undyne’s Motif#

Undyne’s motif is revealed upon your first encounter with her, in “Undyne” (Tr. 30).

(From here on, all musical examples are notated in C major or A minor. In Undertale, A is not necessarily tuned to 440 Hz, so there doesn’t seem to be much point in obsessing over key signatures.)

This motif is subsequently incorporated into many tracks associated with Undyne.

In “Spear of Justice,” for example, it bursts in with immense energy like this:

In “Battle Against a True Hero,” her other battle theme, it is used in a heavily altered form.

It is pretty hard to notice (or rather, it’s debatable whether you can even call it the same motif), but you can see they share the pattern of descending notes grouped in 2, 3, and 1.

This motif repeats throughout the first half of the song.

Ruins Motif#

In the next section, at first glance, the melody that jumps out is the one heard in the Ruins.

This motif is also used in the subsequent area, Waterfall.

It seems fair to consider it a motif representing the entirety of the first half of the story leading up to the Undyne fight.

The “Giving Up” (Regret) Motif#

However, we can dig one level deeper. A very similar melody also exists in “An Ending” (the track heard during the Neutral Route ending).

And this one is actually even closer to the melody in “Battle Against a True Hero.”

So why does “An Ending” show up here? Sure, Undyne is involved in the ending, but that’s true for every other major character as well. Is there a deeper connection?

In fact, there is. This section of “An Ending” doesn’t just play during the ending—it plays in one other spot as well. Apparently, when you face Undyne on the Neutral Route, this exact section plays when you strike her down to kill her.

Undertale - Undyne Neutral Fight Death

Boss fight in a neutral run that kills Undyne (with Papyrus dead) (pre-patch)music at 5:51 is from the middle of the track "An Ending"If you try to spare her...

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Furthermore, this theme can also be heard in “Don’t Give Up” (near the very climax of the True Pacifist Route).

While this article calls this the “Regret Theme,” I prefer to call it the motif of “giving up.”

It urges players who gave up on a happy ending to return to the Ruins (“An Ending”); it encourages players who have once again fallen into dire crisis (“Don’t Give Up”); and when you finally reach the goal, it grants you rest (“Respite”) with a “well done for not giving up!”

Depending on the relationship between the player and Undyne, it can depict the tragic side where even if you refuse to give up, you still cannot prevail—or, in the direst circumstances, it can embody a “refusal to give up” so fierce that your physical body literally perishes.

This motif isn’t merely there to close out the first half of the story that began in the Ruins.

Waterfall Motif#

In the second half of “Battle Against a True Hero,” the following melody is repeated:

This is an expanded version of the melody heard throughout Waterfall.

Analysis Beyond Undertale#

“Battle Against a True Hero” is widely said to have been heavily influenced by the music of Touhou Project.

The most obvious sign is the use of a ZUNpet-like soundfont (or rather, is it literally a ZUNpet?), but applying music theory lets us dig even deeper.

Chord Progressions#

When it comes to chord progressions that define the Touhou Project, F–G–Am (commonly known as the “ZUN progression”) is the quintessential one.

There are countless examples of its use, but to put it very roughly, “Sakura, Sakura ~ Japanize Dream…” (Perfect Cherry Blossom ending) goes something like this:

Expanding on this yields chord progressions like the following (continuing to assume the key is C major or A minor, and dealing with no more than triads):

F-G-Asus4-A: “Flawless Clothing of the Celestials” (Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, final stage dialogue), etc.
F-G-Em-Am: “Green-Eyed Jealousy” (Subterranean Animism, Stage 2 boss), etc.
- Also known as the royal road progression (oudo shinko). A chord progression that has been used to death in J-pop.

Now, let’s return to Undertale.

“Battle Against a True Hero” is essentially a combination of the chord progressions we just saw.

The first half is nothing more than a repetition of Am–F–G. The second half is a bit more complex, but (again, speaking roughly) it looks like this:

If this isn’t a love letter to Japanese music—or rather, to ZUN himself—then what is?

Undyne the Undying’s attacks also unmistakably evoke the bullet hell (danmaku) of Touhou Project. I swear I remember dodging patterns just like this somewhere in Subterranean Animism.