#also I still think it's interesting how the narrative frames Vegeta as a kid

[blueper-saiyan]

#i could go into horrifying details about this and write a long boring essay that no one would read#but from a professional point of view it really is a fascinating subject#ofc toriyama never considered any of these things so i would just be analyzing something that wasn't meant to be

I'd definitely read that essay at least! I agree that we're not supposed to be thinking about this that much but that doesn't necessarily make it less fun to analyze. Viewing all of this in any actually realistic terms does become really horrifying almost immediately though, so I mostly ignore the implications.

I think you're right that Saiyans don't respond to social/emotional neglect in the same way as humans. They seem to either develop much faster or more instinctively than a human would, with less need for contact. But we do still see some occasional glimpses of more normal child behavior if you count smaller instances, like Broly trying to play with Baa or that little panel where Raditz is playing with a beetle. I also think that the half human kids are an interesting in-between, because Gohan clearly likes playing and seems pretty normal before being kidnapped. Goten and Trunks seems like pretty normal human kids too. Despite this, Gohan doesn't seem to suffer the consequences of being left alone for six months as strongly as a real child would. Again, that's because we're not supposed to think about that, but it's another data point about Saiyan psychology. (Or just evidence that no one in this world is affected by traumatic events in a reasonable way, but that's not fun to analyze.) Unfortunately, we don't really have that many examples to look at for how a "normal" Saiyan would be, given that Vegeta, Raditz, and Broly did not grow up under normal circumstances, and we don't have any completely clear cut examples of how they'd be growing up on Earth either, since Goku's head injury confuses things. I'd be very curious if we ever got any more information on Tarble. Even with as little actual examples to go off of as we have though, I do suspect that Saiyans were choosing the least healthy way of raising their kids, even if they can cope with it far better than a human could. They certainly don't seem very emotionally healthy in general.

I was sort of aware that Vegeta's upbringing would be irreversible, but I also choose to not think super strongly about it unless I'm in an overly analytical mood, like now. My personal opinion has always been that he genuinely doesn't really care about other people except his few loved ones, (and even that was an ordeal to realize) but he's able to consciously choose to mirror the others actions. I'm not sure whether it's just because he knows he'd disappoint everyone else (mostly Bulma, Goku, and Trunks) if he didn't, which is pretty cynical. I like to hope that he came to his own conclusion that the philosophy of preserving life and extending mercy has some value to it, even if it's not his instinct and won't ever be. I honestly appreciate it a lot if it's all a personal choice he's consistently making because he reasoned through it intellectually rather than ever feeling it emotionally. Although his actions in Buu do imply he feels some form of guilt about killing the spectators, so make of that what you will. Maybe Saiyans being more physically and emotionally resilient in general gives them more of a second chance on emotional development.

Now that I have posted screenshot evidence I can say it is so fucking funny and also tragic that basically every time we see Vegeta as a kid, he is being an asshole, almost no exception. He was not going to be a decent person even if there was no Freeza, that's for sure. Was there ever any period when he was young where he was not in favor of murder and oppression? idk but we certainly haven't seen it.

Like, it makes sense that he's mirroring the adults around him. They've been modeling violence for him as long as he's been conscious. They've also been teaching him that he's better than everyone else and the only thing that matters is strength. But I've always thought it's an interesting decision to not take any opportunity to show him as legitimately child-like in any way. Is it just, not thinking about the fact that he should be about 5 and that is not how a normal 5 year old acts or is it intentional? He even usually sounds like he's already an adult. The closest we ever get to Vegeta acting like a normal child is when he's upset that Beerus is threatening his dad. And even that is him experiencing distress. I'm sure someone with a better grasp on child psychology and child abuse could write up a much better set of thoughts on it.

[aotopmha]

Dragon Ball Super Chapter 39 Thoughts

So, Dragon Ball is the kind of story that started screwing with my suspension of disbelief fairly early on.

It all started with the King Piccolo stuff, when said villain spit out an egg from a hole in his stomach and it came to another turning point when Shenlong was able to revive Goku to fight the Saiyans.

The former is obvious - Toriyama clearly didn't have any obvious plans how to continue the story and the egg spitting was a last minute choice, if it wasn't, he would've had set this plot point up in advance by showing King Piccolo had another egg stored away somewhere, but that wasn't the case. It's the first really obvious indicator that this story was not planned at all. There were some iffy moments prior to that, but this was the place I kinda got the idea "oh yeah, he's definitely making it up as he goes along."

The latter is a problem because it was basically established that Vegeta and Nappa are so much more powerful than Kami that the dragon has no power to affect them. The problem here is that Goku equally passed Kami in terms of power, especially after his training with King Kai, yet unlike Vegeta and Nappa, he could be effected by the dragon (be revived). It basically said Toriyama could make Shenlong do whatever he wants regardless of previously established rules.

So that shifted my perspective to "whatever happens is fine as long as it does something interesting with the characters and makes a exciting story out of it that keeps me guessing".

Naturally I cared for none of this when I was a kid, but in hindsight I think these aren't very good storytelling choices because of what they signified in terms of how the storytelling would evolve. But they don't bother me so much as to completely not feel the story anymore because I found the results to be interesting enough and especially the second detail can pretty easily slip under the radar considering how there are many different details that are important to consider with the Dragon Balls. Y'know, maybe the dragon only considers some sort of magical potential, maybe the power difference has to be really overwhelming or maybe revival is in a different bracket from actually affecting the target. You can wiggle out of it somewhat.

In light of all the convinient rises of power and powerups in later story arcs (looking at you, Buu), this seems relatively minor and in the most tl;dr way to put it, they didn’t really bother me enough to ruin the enjoyment of the story. Choose a story and if you think hard enough you can find plot holes in it, plotting is just one part of a story and I’d argue even one of the least important parts in some ways.

Anyway, what I want to say with this long preface is that the manga version of Dragon Ball Super finally broke my suspension of disbelief for the story.

Yes, the anime stretches it, too and the whole original series stretches it a whole lot, but the appropriate explanations and assumed narrative reasons still helped to keep the whole thing at bay for me.

So, the big thing in this chapter is obviously Roshi pulling a Ultra Instinct look-a-like technique out of nowhere and even dodging and affecting Jiren in some way. The story doesn't give any explanations of how he learned to do this - nothing like him mentioning that he had been secretly training more now, which you could even potentially tie into Roshi feeling helpless at the end of the Saiyan saga, it just happens.

The idea it wants to convey does tie into some of Roshi teachings of technique trumping power and learning to move insinctively, something I actually really like, but because Ultra Instinct was established to be a technique of the gods, the difference between the levels of training ruins the whole thing. I think it's a stretch that this time around is too big.

But okay, you could still kinda wiggle around it if you really wanted to; I really do think the idea of technique trumping power is great and I give no crap about power levels.

What truly annoys me is how Goku's character is handled here. Roshi chides Goku for forgetting the very basics of his training. This would be alright drama if it had sufficent tension and setup to it. I think the intention is clearly for Roshi to be a reminder to him in a tough situation, to call him back to his senses so to say, but it just doesn't make sense because of Goku's characterization so far.

He learned that technique/smarts is better than power a long time ago and he has been using it constantly since he did - the cool Kamehameha he did with his feet against Piccolo Jr, the strategy against Raditz, his fight with Freeza, all the technique usage against Cell and Buu.

(This makes no sense to fall back to at this point, especially since the Freeza and Vegeta fights did not just ultimately involve power ONLY, either. The fights had plenty of technique usage.)

You could argue that the intention is again, to be a reminder to him, with the implication that he’s been focusing too much on just training his strength up and not much else, but even in the context of Super, his fight with Botamo and Hit were about figuring their abilities out, he easily picked up the Hakai technique and mastered SSJB by appropriate Ki control. Putting him through this lesson again here feels really forced, just some way to get Goku into Ultra Instinct.

Speaking of which, I think Ultra Instinct sucks, too. It feels just like a random powerup with no impact whatsoever. Goku sort of just gets it after thinking for a second. He isn't pushed in any way shape or form and the buildup is minimal.

The point here is supposed to be that he just briefly tapped into it and that it’s above all a technique, not a powerup, but even a new technique should have at least some impact or special framing when it's first used. The hints should be exciting and make people curious, but I feel like this achieved none of that.

Next, backtracking a little, I feel like Gohan vs Kefla isn’t all that good of a fight.

Firstly, Gohan's power jump, even with his established potential seems really nonsensical. A Potara fusion is established to be incredibly powerful, something far above unfused characters and Kale, only one part of the fusion, faced a Super Saiyan Blue in the previous chapters. The only hint we have of training for Gohan is him training by himself and training a little bit with Piccolo. The former is such a footnote it appears in a extra mini chapter.

Again, I can look past the wierd power stuff (power levels have been nonsense for a long time if you think about them even a little bit), but Gohan has had very minimal characterization, his training has had no buildup whatsoever and this fight itself is barely a few pages long on it's own. There is no impact to any of this whatsoever, and I think it’s a pretty good example of the problem with telling more, rather than actually showing.

In addition to that, while I like Gohan relying on his "human strength" with the Ultimate ability, he still does it with the same arrogant shtick as in the Buu arc, something I don't really care about unless it's done to build a character arc, something the manga hasn't really done.

The erasure of U6 is also weightless despite having the side characters we most care about. Like most stuff in this chapter, it just happens.

I initially also didn't really like how Kefla and Beerus were handled and I still don't for different reasons now, but they are at least consistent in terms of their portrayal.

Caulifla was willing to give up pretty easily in the manga when facing Cabba, which is where Kefla giving up came from.

Beerus doesn't have as much of his serious side at display in the manga - he doesn’t have all that many moments of intimidation or thoughfulness. So, they are consistent, but not all that interesting characters to me.

This is one of my least favorite manga chapters in recent memory among all the stuff I follow, which is why I had to make a longer post picking it apart.

I think it has a few interesting ideas going for it, but it doesn't execute anything it sets out to do right to me.

Nothing stews or builds, characterization isn't interesting and my suspension of disbelief is gone. Maybe some explanations can and will be given in hindsight in the next chapter, but I feel like how everything is executed, it wouldn't help much.

On the other hand, I did pick up the manga again. Not for good reasons, but I did and I am genuinely curious to where this goes as the increasingly nonsensical mess it is at this point.