#false super saiyan

[tyote]

[tightjacketkidda]

The false super saiyan

[joshthemaker913]

A primordial, raging power lays dormant within, waiting to escape and break the limit!

Redraw of this Dragon Ball manga cover

[th3blackcat2000]

ALL of Goku's Transformations

(Base, Kaioken, False Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan 2, Super Saiyan 3, Super Saiyan 4, Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan God Blue, Super Saiyan God Blue Kaioken)

(excluding ultra instinct because of the post limit)

[instaquarius]

100 DBZ OC ART CHALLENGE

1.) Introduction.  2.) Flight.  3.) Hero.  4.) Full Moon.  5.) Transformation.  6.) Rage. 7.) Fusion (potara, Namekian, or finger fusion) 8.) Great Ape. 9.) Master and Student. 10.) Tournament. (Worlds Strongest Under the Heavens, the afterlife one from that one filler episode/arc, universes 6 v. 7 tournament, or the Tournament of Power) 11.) Fighting. 12.) Destruction. 13.) Ki control 14.) Aura. 15.) Blasts. 16.) Rivals. 17.) Quest. 18.) Family. 19.) Danger Zone. 20.) As a baby. 21.) With the Z sword (or training with the Z Sword) 22.) Victory. 23.) Death. 24.) Loss. 25.) Crisis. 26.) In other world. 27.) Snake way. 28.) Playing Baseball. 29.) At Kaio Samas' place. (In heaven?) 30.) In hell with HFIL ogres. 31.) Kaioshins' planet. 32.) Lovers. 33.) Doing Ginyu Force poses (or actually IN the Ginyu Force if you want XD) 34.) Saiyaman/Saiyagirl poses. 35.) 1st form, 2nd,3rd, 4th, (Golden or 5th form) 36.) Training in Gravity room 37.) Weighted Gi 38.) Wearing Earth clothes; casual 39.) in Dragonball art style (Like, before Z, Super etc.) 40.) Protection. 41.) Powering up. 42.) Fighting Frieza, Cell or Buu (or a movie villain) 43.) Universal Tournament. 44.) In the future. 45.) Immortality. 46.) Clones 47.) Finding the Dragonballs 48.) Meditating 49.) Fighting a God of Destruction 50.) Ritual 51.) Fighting the Legendary Super Saiyan 52.) Fighting in the Tuffle War 53.) Mind Control (by baby, Babidi, Towa/Mira etc.) 54.) As a Time Breaker 55.) As a Time Patroller 56.) Fighting the Z warriors.  57.) On Planet Vegeta. 58.) Getting absorbed (by a Majin?) 59.) False SSJ 60.) Getting turned into candy 61.) Inside the healing tank (like on Friezas spaceship) 62.) In the Hyperbolic Time Chamber (or Room of Spirit and Time) 63.) Eating. 64.) Revenge. 65.) Pride 66.) Sacrifice. 67.) Bloodied.  68.) Fear. 69.) Heart Virus. 70.) Meeting Arale (from Dr. Slump) 71.) Using the Kaioken. 72.) Climbing Korin Tower (like in original dragonball before flight was a thing) 73.) Wearing a Turtle Shell. 74.) Determined. 75.) Getting Married. 76.) Best Friends. 77.) Screams. 78.) Rescued. 79.) Mafuba. 80.) Killing. 81.) Defeat. 82.) Sadness. 83.) Happiness. 84.) In a Saiyan spacepod. 85.) Hatred. 86.) Crushed. 87.) Beam Struggle. 88.) Genki Dama (Spirit Bomb) 89.) Showering 90.) Wearing the pink Badman shirt 91.) Scheming. 92.) Fighting Merged Zamasu (or Regular Zamasu) 93.) Fighting a Black version of your OC (hint: Goku Black) 94.) Unlocked Potential.  95.) Confused. 96.) In highschool. 97.) Tears. 98.) Act of kindness 99.) Tag team 100.) With you (The creator of OC/artist) saying they survived the Challenge

Rules~~~~ 1.) Can go from any order you wish. It doesn't matter the order you do these in. 2.) Be creative. 3.) All writings/drawings must be related to DBZ in some way/the theme you choose to do. 4.) Link if you do do this? I'd love to see :3 5.) Also please leave a mention to this in your submissions~ 6.) You can use both OCs and cannon characters as long as its related to the series. 7.) Can be done whenever you feel like~ (No deadline or each theme has to be done once a day or anything) 8.) (Your also free to copy paste to a journal or something the themes to keep track of them as long as credits back to me)  9.) Have fun~

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[bahnloopi]

Can a Sento achieve a Super saiyan state?

Yes and no. I will explain in a infograph I'm making in better detail but the premise is -

Yes; Pure Sentos can learn "super saiyan properties". This means they can learn the ki elements, (some) movesets, flight, everything in between.

No; Pure Sento Saiyans DO NOT transform PHYSICALLY into the super form they are utilizing. This is intentional. Their eyes will change if they are using forms (1-3). They work similar to Ikari/Wrathful Broly where he utilizes the power of the Oozaru but visually stays in a base-type form.

For Sentos, this is a genetic deception tactic. Since the Oozaru is already a dominant element of their make-up, their hair color WILL NOT change. This makes it harder for an enemy to distinguish a change in power until they Sento deals damage to them directly.

SSJ typically indicates a change in power or boost. It's flashy. With Sentos, its discrete. It's to keep you guessing what form they're utilizing since you can't really see or detect it until they engage you.

This is a different approach I want for them because everyone and their mother makes Super Saiyans. This is me fully playing with the idea of "false super saiyan" (yes, I know it's an animation error but it slaps as a concept)

But super saiyan properties are something that is not natural to Sentos. It must be taught to them by an outside source (ie: Goku or Vegeta)

**We won't touch god ki for Sentos. The requirements and scaling are too inconsistent for me to properly gauge so I leave it to Goku/Vegeta

[lunarsilkscreen]

FF/Nier/PSO/DR. WHO/DRAKEN GUARD/Chrono Trigger--Connection

The ultimate theory of everygame.

I got this idea from watching an FFXIII stream where they were killing shoopuffs from FFX (Tortoises)

Which links those two worlds together via shoopuff.

In FFXIII, the humans are living in/on an artificial planet called cocoon. Which could be thought of as a moon to the inhabitants of Gaia. Which there aren't any until they come down from the moon to escape persecution.

Because life was good in cocoon, why leave. The "Gods here" protect and feed us. (kind of an artificial Eden.)

But what's interesting is that, a second uninhabited planet isn't a foreign concept to the FF series. In FFIX they call it the "Red Moon". And "artificial humans" reside in it. They look like Saiyans, without the super technically they can go super Saiyan, but the regular humans can do it too. So I don't know if there's a difference like in DBZ.

There's a lot of lore connecting the Red Planet and Gaia, non as much as in the movie "Spirits Within" which said that the inhabitants of the red planet (which were monstrous in comparison to humans) were actually human souls from earth. And the whole plot of the movie is a war between the humans and the red planet.

Except for the main character "Aki Ross". Who has constant dreams about the red planet. Except there's a sort of "minority report" thing going on where they monitor your dreams, just in case you're being "mind controlled " by the moon people.

So she understandably erases the records of her dreams, and starts pursuing a "reunification route". Which was just allowing those human souls to return to earth, and to not continue hostilities, which were kind of started by earth as a form of self-defense.

To which she also becomes a villain in her own home, but the real villain is the General Hein. Who ends up trying to blow up the entire red planet. And pursues this with hyperfixation, because he doesn't believe there can be another way with a being he can't communicate with.

In Neir 1, the humans are affected with the "black scrawl" (the flood from Dr. Who on Mars) and humans try to figure out a way to save the affected humans, while also trying to create a kind quarantine for the infected individuals)

In Neir:A we learn that the humans were sent away to the moon. And the Androids believe this to be the actual moon. But the robots, and the Androids continually keep being infected with a kind of virus said to come from the black scrawl itself. Which is why the Android Team keeps creating new Androids as a replacement. Because if they can all be infected, then they'll all infect the human population when they eventually return too.

But it turns out, in the game, the "virus" is built into the Androids core (their black boxes, which they share with the machines)

Here's the Theory; the "Moon" they were sent to was to the "Red Planet". And the humans didn't leave that info behind so that anything left on the planet wouldn't know.

Now I connected Dr. who in here, somehow. (So maybe it's just a coincidence) but what about the other stuff? Well we already know the black scrawl comes from drakenguard. That's the premise of Nier 1.

And the black scrawl infects both humans AND machines. Just like the villain from PSO: Dark Falz (Fals? Falls? False?) (Wait. Does DFV stand for Dark False Value? Like, a null value? Or like a bit that can switch from false? Like viruses and malware tend to do?)

What does that also sound similar too? Demise and The switch Zelda Games Gannon? Are the chosen ones *also* robots?

But here's the thing, The FFXIII earthlings aren't *actually* from Cocoon. They were from earth, they were put into stasis from *before*. Something that happened to a lot of humans left stranded in Nier one. And the waking up of humans to reunite their bodies with their *souls* created replicants. Or cloned humans with their own souls, memories, and consciousness.

A big portion of the ending was accepting that for humanity to continue, was to let the replicants, to continue to exist. Because trying to revive themselves, trying to live forever just meant them fighting against their "replicants" or rather "humanity's children".

But a visitor from Drakenguard, an Android, Accord, undoes the choice Nier made, because Kaine couldn't let him go. (If you get the "good" ending, your save file gets erased. But then you unlock a secret bonus game from the Nier:Replicant remake which undoes that decision.

Because neither could live in a world without the other.)

This is why I'm Nier:A Emil is left alone without anybody. (His head kinda looks like the Moon from Majora's Mask, doesn't it?)

So now there's this cocoon that travels to the dark reaches of the galaxy and isn't always visible to the telescoped eye on earth, and that planets name in the Phantasm Star Series? RykRos.

What other cataclysmic event forces humanity to this moon?

Lavos, deemed an "alien parasite" responsible for all the evil in the world. And responsible for the end of the world, per the future timeline in Chrono cross.

What else exists in Chrono Trigger? Time gates. Where did these time gates come from? They were created by the Goddess Etro which is explained during the events of FFXIII-2, and used by Hope with the "hopes" of reuniting with Lightning (his mentor and mother figure on FFXIII-1.)

What ends up happening is a null timeline is created, which Lighting ends up herding all the leftover souls from that timeline, to a new one which is possibly earth, thanks to Lightning cutting a deal with Louis Vuitton as spokesperson and model. But I'm not so sure about that.

PSO2 is a video game in the Earth that the heros travel to which is supposed to represent the "real world" as well. And in our real world, both PSO2 AND Lightning are not *real* places and people. As far as I know.

So it must be an alternate earth, and who's to say they aren't connected?

Who's to say their souls weren't trapped into some giant computer that simulates earth? The main *not villain* of that particular PSO2 chapter is a being called "Mother". And the only other time we see a "Mother" is the "Mother Brain" both present in PS2 and Super Metroid.

Lightning in "Lightning Returns" was shown to have a personal battle herself, being split into two characters; Her logical side, controlled by Bhunivelze, who wants to scrap humanity, and her emotional side, influenced by the Goddess Etro, who wants to save humanity as it is.

What if; Lightning was separated in twain by the Black scrawl, and that's why her counterpart "Lumina" is distinct. What if, Lumina is a Replicant, and Lightning is what's left of her logical soul.

Just like Nier in Nier 1.

[penguwastaken]

I feel like that the only good Danganronpa game was the first one. There was no brainwashing, the students were relatively realistic, the trials were short and simple, the mastermind didn't force everyone to kill someone else, the atmosphere can perfectly lead to murder, I could go on.

This feeling of the first one being one comes from a feeling that the games went downhill after the first game as there is so much with with the sequels, novels, Mangas, and anime. And I feel alone in this feeling as anyone who I told this to just dismiss it and I feel annoyed with this dismissal. Maybe I will change my mind about it in the future.

While I'd say DR1 is the most grounded, it laid the groundwork for the "unrealistic stuff" you mention. The first game has memory manipulation and the entire cast are all based on anime tropes. A character practically goes super saiyan, the weirdness was always there.

Stuff like virtual reality or brainwashing don't really feel out of place for the series because they feel like a natural evolution of the sci-fi stuff that was already present in the first game. It was really DR0 that furthered it, introducing Izuru and brainwashing.

I don't have an issue with the series getting more "extreme" as it went on, because that stuff's only natural when you expand on a series and get more ambitious. It only makes sense for a series to expand on concepts that were introduced prior, this is pretty apparent in series like Ace Attorney as well.

There are absolutely times where I think the series gets "too weird," but those moments are few and far between and are often reserved for comedic stuff, so I can suspend my disbelief.

Moving on to the other points you mention, even in DR1 motives were introduced to encourage people to kill. I can't really name a single time in DR2 where the blackeneds were forced to kill, I feel like that only really applies to DR3 and V3 but I think the context of those makes it work in those entries.

Also DR2's setting is intentionally supposed to make you feel at ease. Not only to subvert player expectations, but also because it makes it all the more shocking when someone actually does die. It lures you into a false sense of security.

DR3's setting also works really well given what it's trying to accomplish, being a more open facility with tons of objects making it perfect for the thriller action anime it's trying to be, all while maintaining it's dark, creepy vibe.

I don't think it's fair to immediately shut down your opinion, but I think it just comes down to Danganronpa not really being for you. The series was always weird, that weirdness was a huge part of the series' identity and a huge part of what made people fall in love with it. To many, even me, I feel like the series was pretty consistently solid, there's only really one entry I outright dislike.

[galexibrain]

100 DBZ OC art challenge master post

Original post by @instaquarius

Using this to link all the fanarts I made for this challenge.

I don't know how far I'm going to come with this but it'll be great practice and a playground to expand on my favorite OC :3

Not doing them chronologically but however I want. Or drawing lots XD

1.) Introduction. See post 2.) Flight. 3.) Hero. 4.) Full Moon. 5.) Transformation. 6.) Rage. 7.) Fusion (potara, Namekian, or finger fusion) 8.) Great Ape. 9.) Master and Student. 10.) Tournament. (Worlds Strongest Under the Heavens, the afterlife one from that one filler episode/arc, universes 6 v. 7 tournament, or the Tournament of Power) 11.) Fighting. 12.) Destruction. 13.) Ki control 14.) Aura. 15.) Blasts. 16.) Rivals. 17.) Quest. 18.) Family. 19.) Danger Zone. 20.) As a baby. 21.) With the Z sword (or training with the Z Sword) 22.) Victory. 23.) Death. 24.) Loss. 25.) Crisis. 26.) In other world. 27.) Snake way. See post 28.) Playing Baseball. 29.) At Kaio Samas' place. (In heaven?) 30.) In hell with HFIL ogres. 31.) Kaioshins' planet. 32.) Lovers. 33.) Doing Ginyu Force poses (or actually IN the Ginyu Force if you want XD) 34.) Saiyaman/Saiyagirl poses. 35.) 1st form, 2nd,3rd, 4th, (Golden or 5th form) 36.) Training in Gravity room 37.) Weighted Gi 38.) Wearing Earth clothes; casual 39.) in Dragonball art style (Like, before Z, Super etc.) 40.) Protection. 41.) Powering up. 42.) Fighting Frieza, Cell or Buu (or a movie villain) 43.) Universal Tournament. 44.) In the future. 45.) Immortality. 46.) Clones 47.) Finding the Dragonballs 48.) Meditating 49.) Fighting a God of Destruction 50.) Ritual 51.) Fighting the Legendary Super Saiyan 52.) Fighting in the Tuffle War 53.) Mind Control (by baby, Babidi, Towa/Mira etc.) 54.) As a Time Breaker 55.) As a Time Patroller 56.) Fighting the Z warriors. 57.) On Planet Vegeta. 58.) Getting absorbed (by a Majin?) 59.) False SSJ 60.) Getting turned into candy 61.) Inside the healing tank (like on Friezas spaceship) 62.) In the Hyperbolic Time Chamber (or Room of Spirit and Time) 63.) Eating. 64.) Revenge. 65.) Pride 66.) Sacrifice. 67.) Bloodied. 68.) Fear. 69.) Heart Virus. 70.) Meeting Arale (from Dr. Slump) 71.) Using the Kaioken. 72.) Climbing Korin Tower (like in original dragonball before flight was a thing) 73.) Wearing a Turtle Shell. 74.) Determined. 75.) Getting Married. 76.) Best Friends. 77.) Screams. 78.) Rescued. 79.) Mafuba. 80.) Killing. 81.) Defeat. 82.) Sadness. 83.) Happiness. 84.) In a Saiyan spacepod. 85.) Hatred. 86.) Crushed. 87.) Beam Struggle. 88.) Genki Dama (Spirit Bomb) 89.) Showering 90.) Wearing the pink Badman shirt 91.) Scheming. 92.) Fighting Merged Zamasu (or Regular Zamasu) 93.) Fighting a Black version of your OC (hint: Goku Black) 94.) Unlocked Potential. 95.) Confused. 96.) In highschool. 97.) Tears. 98.) Act of kindness 99.) Tag team 100.) With you (The creator of OC/artist) saying they survived the Challenge

[ultraericthered]

BEST DRAGON BALL BIG BADS

1. Cell and Freeza - Eternally the greatest villains that the Dragon Ball franchise has ever had and will ever have. They both just work so well, as characters and as villains, but on different levels. Both are completely and utterly evil to their cores, both are uber powerful, both are superbly designed, both have iconic voices, both serves as ultimate enemies to a generation of Saiyan (Freeza to Goku and Vegeta, and Cell to their sons Gohan and Trunks), both have fun and hilarious TFS Abridged Series incarnations that do them justice, and both have the demeanor of charismatic, sophisticated gentleman whose faux affability is used to punctuate their horrible evilness and conceal even uglier evilness within, giving the reader/viewer a strong desire to see them get dealt a comeuppance, but it’s expressed somewhat differently - with Freeza, his superficial politeness is blatantly false, you can read in his tone that it’s a front he puts on to patronize everyone of lesser power than he, even his own minions, and his inner spoiled brat and brutish sadism seeps through with every line��but those lines are normally courteous and gentlemanly. With Cell, his affability seems much more sincere and there’s much less obvious fakeness and condescension to it, but the things he actually says even with that attitude are so cruel, demeaning and dickish (he’s not known as a Savage Roast King for nothing!) and he just excudes confidence in what he is and all that he is capable of achieving. Their places in the story and what they represent is also great. Freeza was literally the instigator of the entire series, the reason Goku was raised on Earth to start with - he is the dark past that must be conquered in the present day where his reign of terror still spreads. Whereas Cell is literally made up of the cells of the greatest fighters seen across the series, including the previous villains, Freeza among them, who traveled back in time from a future timeline - he is the series’ past amalgamated into a grand present day crescendo and is reflective of a dark future that must not come to pass. While Cell's my preference between the two of them in terms of villainy (character-wise, he’s not quite as developed as Freeza has been), Freeza’s easily my second favorite, and both of them are equally the best Big Bads with the best sagas in all of Dragon Ball.

2. Zamasu/Goku Black and Demon God Demigra - Or as I like to call them, the Lucifer-Satan Duo. As I’ve said before, they’re sort of like the Freeza and Cell of the franchise’s new age - not quite as good but still easily the best major villains we've seen since them. Demigra came first and while he’s not much to write home about in terms of characterization, he’s got an awesome design, an incredibly strong malevolent presence, a flamboyant personality and a particularly sick, cruel, creepy style of villainy that makes him unforgettable. He’s a former Shinjin who fell from grace and became a demon who then rose to such a high state of power that he’s deemed a Demon God, and as such he now possesses a proud, smarmy, mightier-than-thou attitude and believes the entire multiverse should revolve entirely around him and his whims, and that all of existence is his to play with in any way he pleases. At first his villainy seems rather typical of a Big Bad Satan figure, but by the time he puts Piccolo under demonic mind control to get him to kill the kids he’s looked after, it gets more personal and you really want to take the smug bastard down. My two quibbles with him would be his original final form was terrible, being just a recolored, redesigned version of Babidi’s henchman Yakon (thankfully, this got amended later on in Dragon Ball Heroes), and that his backstory comes off as a little too generic and JRPG-esque, which is a big no-no for Dragon Ball. Otherwise he’s a great villain, though unfortunately locked out from mainline DB canon beyond the game universes. Zamasu in Super is sort of like a substitution for Demigra, as he’s a similar character (a fallen Shinjin with a massive ego and divine Messiah Complex) with a similar set-up (a saga that heavily involves time travel, Future Trunks, and a threat to the entire multiverse), but he manages to be his own unique character despite this, more youthful than Demigra and even more insufferably pompous and self-important. And unlike the unashamedly evil Demigra, Zamasu is firmly convinced in his own righteousness and that every action he takes is in the name of divine justice and the creation of a pure universe, even though the actions themselves and his frequent behavior towards others, other deities included, show him as anything but - he’s a cruel, petty, and narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur. Think Light Yagami if he actually had become a god! His other self, Goku Black, is even scarier given how he inhabits a god-tier Saiyan’s body and even melds his own divine power into it’s own to create new techniques and even a new Super Saiyan form, and is a complete badass throughout. And the voice actor performances (both Shinichiro Miki and Masako Nozawa in the original, and James Marsters and Sean Schemmel in the dub) are fantastic. My two quibbles with him would be the explanation for Black’s coming into being was a little convoluted and goofy, and that the Black Hole Eldrich Abomination that melds itself into the entire universe that his consciousness becomes after his defeat/death was just complete nonsense, pushing Zamasu firmly into Villain Sue territory and making him a living Diablos Ex Machina to instigate a horribly bleak end to his saga. Oh well. Can’t all be perfect like Cell.

3. Vegeta - Nowadays with Vegeta being a much better person and one of the most heroic characters in the series (which is great) and also the main deuteragonist/Lancer to Goku in all sagas (which is not so great), it could be easy to forget just what a truly, wonderfully evil bastard, and one of the top greatest villains, he used to be. As the surviving prince of the Saiyan race, even sharing the same name as his late father and now obliterated planet, Vegeta’s pride is monumental and he believes he has, from birth, deserved to be most powerful warrior of all time and space, and supreme ruler of the universe despite him being basically enslaved to serve under Freeza, who also has those ambitions. Before we found out that part about Freeza, though, Vegeta was the Big Bad for the prior saga and by being such a sinister, meticulous, cunning warrior who could back up his arrogance with sheer awesome might, he was more imposing a threat than even Piccolo, the so-called Demon King! Despite his short stature, his ability to keep his composure until he lets out his feral rage made him fearsome to his larger and more brutal partner, Nappa. Toriyama hadn’t initially intended to keep him alive past his saga, but he proved so popular with both readers and his editors that he had his life be spared and it cannot be overstated what a terrific move it was to keep him alive for the next saga, as he received some of the best parts of that saga with his magnificent bastardry, even ending up in an unexpected alliance with the good guys in its latter half that lay the seeds for his eventual redemption arc. In retrospect it’s rather odd that Vegeta got as far as he did since his character was originally written to be nothing but a completely evil prick. I think his success is owed to him being the greatest candidate for an archrival to Goku that Toriyama ever came up with, being of the same race as him and even sharing some similar characteristics, yet being his polar opposite based on how and where the two were raised and thus what they value most. Oddly enough, their development courses have gone in reverse too - Vegeta’s grown more human while Goku has grown more detached from humanity and more in touch with his Saiyan nature. I could go on about what an interesting and fun character Vegeta is, but I’ll spare you all and just mention one minor gripe I have with him (aside from his role in the franchise post-Buu Saga, which remains a major gripe): what the heck happened to his personality after he got revived on Namek by the wish on Earth’s Dragon Balls? Piccolo was one thing, but Vegeta’s more grouchy, aggressive, hot-tempered and bombastic characterization is almost downright irreconcilable with his earlier characterization. Did he come back wrong? Did Freeza’s brutal torture of him before his death do permanent mental and emotional damage? I love the character either way, but it's shaky writing.

4. King Piccolo / Piccolo Jr. - Here’s the guy who was the originally intended Ultimate Evil of the Dragon Ball universe. Oh how times have changed. This spot is both for the original King Piccolo, born of all the inner demons that the nameless Namekian who became Kami Sama exorcised from his consciousness, and Piccolo Jr., who was born from an egg like all Namekian offsprings but imbued with his father’s spirit, making him the Demon King reincarnated. With his appealingly alien design, intimidating voice acting, epic theme music and majestic presence whenever he shows up, Piccolo stands as one of Toriyama’s best villains even to this day. He’s also one of the smartest Dragon Ball villains, one of the few who never succumbed to Bond Villain Stupidity, thinking meticulously and acting with competence from start to finish, damn nearly defeating Goku and all his heroic allies who stand against his reign of terror. The guy even make a successful bid for world domination, holding all governments on the planet hostage with the threat of his power, even planning on making a national holiday in which he destroys one major location in the four corners of the Earth annually, just for kicks! Even after his death, his wickedness endured through Piccolo Jr., who went undercover at the 23rd Budokai just to take revenge on Goku and claim the title of world’s strongest warrior in order to assert his supremacy and put the world under his green thumb once again. Piccolo is very much the same case as Vegeta when it comes to how his character development progressed - for someone who was created and written to be nothing but pure evil, he ended up growing a conscience and caring about someone else, the son of his hated enemy no less, and from there he grew more noble and good-hearted until he was finally willing to re-merge with Kami in order to have the power needed to protect the things and people on Earth that he’d grown to cherish, which was unexpected but beautiful development for his character. Also like Vegeta his characterization had a slight shift before his redemption truly started, but this one was more believable since he’d gotten older and more mellow between the end of pre-Z DB and DBZ, having never been the pure evil beast his father had been and still showing signs in the early Vegeta Saga that the devilish, maniacal Piccolo hadn’t fully gone away yet. As a bad guy and as a good guy, Piccolo is just plain awesome, and one of the most endearing and respectable DB characters for that.

5. Beerus and Whis - After years of the DB franchise recycling ideas, characters and concepts usually from DBZ for all of its content, these two were such a breath of fresh air. Beerus, the God of Destruction for Universe 7, has an immediately appealing design, being clearly inspired by the Egyptian God of death, Anubis, having both canine and feline characteristics in his look and mannerisms. His concept is also great - he’s like a dark counterpart to a universe’s Supreme Kaioshin with destructive power so immense and seemingly limitless that they need a guardian angel to keep them in check, which is where Whis comes in. The personalities of these two and how they play off each other is the best part. Beerus is callous, egocentric, and apathetic to a fault, but also frequently lazy, childish, quirky and eccentric, possessing a strong appetite, and is subject to wild mood swings that effect the way his power is let out. He’s, to put it plainly, an immature psychopath, but being a deity who exists far above mortal beings, he lives by his own code and his thinking is far beyond the morality that mortals or other deities tend to possess, so it's hard to call him truly evil. He’s as great an ally to have on your side as he is as terrifying an enemy to have against you. His growing bond of friendship with Goku and the Z Warriors all while he still stays true to his character but slowly comes to soften up and learn to act in more reasonable ways has been one of the best parts of DBS. Oh, and Whis - he’s cool. And nice. And scary powerful. And both he and Beerus, together or apart, are super hilarious. Some of the best characters to be iconic fixtures of the franchise for years to come.

6. Android 21 - A secret 21st android created by Dr. Gero who got loaded with energy from a super computer that gave her more power than she knew how to handle, driving her batshit insane, spiteful, and destructive as a result, having a very attractive design and an equally sexy Majin form, being pretty much an android version of Launch who ends up going through a literal personality split similar to Majin Buu, is a glutton for delectable treats who has a tragic character arc, a personality like Zero Two from Darling in the Franxx, and the dub voice actress of Riko Sakarauchi from Love Live Sunshine!!? How could you not fall for this bitch? Easily one of the coolest, most creative and most enjoyable DB villains in recent years to be sure.

7. Fu - Another really fun villain to enter the franchise in recent years. The son of Mira and Towa, and the nephew of Demon Lord Dabura, Fu could care less about the ramifactions of his heritage or the dull politics of the demon realm, as he's set his sights on bigger things. Inquisitive and experimental by nature, he's made his M.O messing with the stream of time and intervening in different worlds branched off from different timelines so that he can create any wild and wacky scenario he wants to enjoy. Yeah, he's a DB fanboy surrogate, and it shows in the joyfully eccentric, geeky personality he expresses. Fu goes so meta with his canon-defiling, reality-bending passion projects and with his brand of humor, he's like DB's own Deadpool! But he is absolutely not one to be underestimated just for his silly behavior, for he's one of the most cunning, meticulous and unpredictable adversaries in the franchise. In the Xenoverse canon, he's become the recurring arch nemesis to the Time Patrol who's yet to be brought to justice, and in the Heroes canon, he steals from varying alternate timelines and uses what he attains to devastating effect, gaining more power for himself as he does to the point where he's eventually made the Dark King of the demon realm and seeks to create his own universe that'd play to his ideal rules. Wherever or wherever Fu shows up, disasters are always guaranteed to follow.

8. Emperor Pilaf - Putting this guy up so high seems ridiculous, especially since he wasn’t ever a Big Bad in the original manga, only getting that status from the anime adaptation beefing up his role and giving him more screen time in the series’ first saga. Three things score him this spot - he’s just plain hilarious, he was actually a legit danger to our heroes (and possibly the entire world had his wish been granted) in his earliest appearances despite having no power, and he’s been brought back to the franchise and received a good deal of character growth to the point of becoming a friend/ally to the heroes just as Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, Buu, and Beerus have. His chemistry with his two agents, Mai and Shu, is always a delight to watch, and his VAs tend to make him immensely entertaining, especially Chuck Huber in the Funimation dub, whose voice and delivery for him has not changed in the slightest in all these years.

9. Tao Pai Pai - I'm kind of cheating here as well since he’s technically not a Big Bad in any saga he appeared in, but he was the source of the most tension and peril in the Red Ribbon Saga in how an act of evil committed by him changed the trajectory of Goku's quest for Dragon Balls, and he had a part in the entire drama of the 22nd Budokai Saga’s plot, so he deserves a spot here. Introduced as a mercenary killer hired by Commander Red to kill Goku, Tao became the Heavy for the saga during this period. Up to that point Goku had faced enemies who could nearly take him in a fight before (General Blue, who Tao kills with his tongue) but hadn’t ever seemed in any real danger from an enemy who could kill him. Tao changed that. He was very dangerous, very formidable at fighting, and very murderous, with there being a very real possibility of him actually killing Goku because he's the first character to kill others on-screen. His character was also a notable change of pace in how villains before him were all light-hearted and comical, or at the very least generic., but Tao, by contrast, was a stone cold professional killer with seemingly only two looks to give: serious poker face or psychotic evil smirk. He doesn’t just kill because it’s profitable, he relishes the hunt and the sensation of bringing other living creatures down before he takes their life. He’s a true villain played straight, which makes his eventual ass kicking at Goku’s hands and the comical reactions he starts giving all the more satisfying and hilarious. While he’s nowadays not as notable or cool as other villains and even seems rather dated, one thing to consider is that with his greed, sadism and fondness for killing, pink and purple color scheme, courtesy and formality when speaking and conducting business with others, attempting to kill Goku after being granted the mercy he’d pleaded for only to have Goku knock his attack right back at him so that it blows him up instead, and then coming back as a cyborg, working alongside an evil family member in the name of revenge…yes, Tao seems to have been Toriyama’s prototype for Freeza.

10. Majin Buu - While his saga was notoriously poorly done on the whole, his character and effectiveness got messed up in its last stretch, and he nowadays almost reads like a prototype for what would later be perfected by Beerus, Majin Buu was still a fine villain(s) for what he was, as well as a fairly unique and memorable one even if he didn’t make for the best Big Bad. Brought into Universe 7 by the dark wizard Bibidi to match and even surpass the Kaioshins, Buu got more powerful the more Kaioshins he slayed and devoured the energy of, and by the time he was sealed away he’d become the most powerful mortal being in existence. Which is an asset to him but also a fault: Freeza had declared himself the most powerful mortal being in the universe, but now we learn that there’d once been a being even more powerful (and later learn that Freeza knew that)? Cell being more powerful than Freeza was justifiable because his literal creation happened only after Freeza’s time and he was made to be the most powerful fighter ever from the cells of the most powerful fighters, Freeza included. Pulling out this random ancient demonic djinn as the next most powaful evul threat evah!!! just felt cheap. But back on his character, I like Fat Buu and the initial Super Buu the best out of all his forms, the former for being the most unexpectedly silly and endearing of all the Buus and the one who actually reforms and sticks around after the saga’s over, and the latter for impressively balancing being ridiculous and humorous with being sinister and menacing, and much smarter than his brutish demeanor suggests, plus he got some wicked awesome theme music in the original dub. Kid Buu’s in the middle, as he’s alright and a well done example of a Generic Doomsday Villain with no personality, goal, or motive for living other than to kill and destroy…but he’s still a Generic Doomsday Villain, so he lacks a character and can’t hold my interest for very long. I don’t care for the briefly seen Evil Buu that ate up Fat Buu to make Super Buu, and I completely abhor Super Buucalotenkshan or whatever we call that long headed abomination - yeah, Super Buu is one of my favorites AND my least favorites among the Buu forms! Go figure. All in all, Buu was a good idea for a worthy foe to be faced by Gohan and pals, but horribly marred by poor execution of his character, his powers, and his saga as a whole. So he’s pretty above average to me.

11. Janemba - The Majin Buu substitute of Movie 12, Fusion Reborn, created when some slacker custodian of Hell got infected with the accidental leak of an unstable dark substance made from dark souls that began tearing at the fabric of life and death, letting the denizens of Hell loose onto Earth. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of him in his initial large, chubby yellow form, when he changed into that smaller, red Satan looking motherf**ker up there, he immediately caught my attention. He’s just so menacing, so psychotic, and so diabolically evil in even the way he fights that I think I like him better than Kid Buu, the canon villain he was emulating. He’s a pretty unique DBZ movie villain, and his big face-off with Gogeta is simply unforgettable.

12. Dr. Wheelo - The main villain of the second movie, The World's Strongest. Two things score him a spot here - his creepiness factor and his motivation. His mind was wished back into the world by his old associate, Dr. Kochin, but his body was not, meaning that the only physical part of him to be seen is his brain, which is placed in a special tube that just happens to connect with a large mechanical body, and he always speaks in a low, calm, sinister voice that’s slightly modulated by a robotic filter. That’s just nightmarish. And unlike many later DBZ movie villains, Wheelo actually has a clearly stated goal and motive - he wants to weed out the world’s strongest fighter so that his brain can be put inside of that fighter’s body, and he can then wield awesome power and test his new body’s fighting capabilities for science in order to become the greatest and the strongest scientist to ever live. It’s sick, weird, and a little bit B-Movie mad science plot, but it works and helps make Wheelo stand out as one of Goku’s most unsettling foes. In fact, it could be argued that he even beat Dr. Gero to it with the whole "mad scientist creating androids to go after Goku" thing. We later got to see Dr. Wheelo's original body when he partnered up with Fu in Dragon Ball Heroes, and he even gained a sleeker metallic form that he could control.

13. Coola - No, I refuse to call him Cooler. That only works if Freeza is named Freezer, but he’s not, so it’s just silly. Anyway, Coola is the older brother of Freeza and the villain of two movies in a row, Movies 5 and 6. If there’s any movie villain who seems like he could fit right into Toriyama’s canon, it’s Coola. He leads his own section of his clan’s Planet Trade business empire and while he’s a notably better boss than his brother, that doesn’t make him any better an individual. Coola is actually a lot more level headed, mature, and pragmatic than Freeza, which is why he’s always been envious of how far ahead Freeza got in terms of power since birth, and how their father blatantly favored Freeza despite all the errors he made that seemed obvious to Coola. But when Freeza seemingly died by Goku’s hand, Coola’s loyalty to the notion of clan supremacy meant that he had to seek vengeance for his brother’s death, which is when he also showed off that he mastered an additional transformation of his final form that makes him even more powerful than Freeza! So let’s see, older brother of the series’ most iconic villain who is smarter and more competent than he, a better boss who inspires the actual loyalty of his minions, and has mastery over a fifth, even more powerful transformation that not even Freeza, the “most powerful being in the universe”, had or knew of? If you’re getting “fanfiction OC Villain Sue” vibes, I wouldn’t blame you, but that actually brings up the most brilliant part of Coola’s character - he’s actually a deconstructive subversion of a Villain Sue. For all his dismissal of Freeza’s overconfidence and being blinded by hatred of his Saiyan enemies, he falls prey to the exact same things during his battle with Goku, and then as he’s dying he realizes that Goku only lived to get as strong as he is because he’d seen his space pod shooting off into space but made the colossally stupid mistake of just letting him go while at the same time he was chiding Freeza for making the stupid mistake of overlooking the escaping pod! Seeing this hit Coola as he burns up in the sun is an immensely satisfying payoff. He kinda-sorta makes a comeback for the following movie, and has appeared in The Plan To Eradicate The Saiyans and a handful of video games, but nothing beats the memorability of his big debut.

14. Turles - The main villain of the third DBZ movie, Tree of Might. If Turles' appearance looks familiar to you, it's because he's sort of the OG Goku Black years before Black was a thing. In the movie he's depicted as a surviving Saiyan who swayed a handful of Freeza forces to defect from the Empire with him and form a competitor business, the Turles Crusher Corps, and there's literally no reason for him to share a face and hairstyle with Goku other than for symoblic purposes, as he represents with Kakarot might've grown up to be like had he never landed on Earth, gotten adopted by Gohan, and got a concussion, as the movie spells out towards the end. This setup seems pretty lazy, but Turles somehow manages to be an interesting, enjoyably fiendish and clever villain with a unique plan for sucking the life out of Earth so that he can lay claim to it and all its resources. My only lament with him is that the thrilling fight between him and Goku is for whatever reason continously interrupted by shots of the Earth as it's being effected by the Tree of Might, which weighs down the pace of the movie. But at least he goes out with a bang!

15. Garlic Jr. - The first DBZ anime movie villain and one of the good ones. The reasons for this is twofold - how he actually succeeds at what both Vegeta and Freeza wanted to do, wishing on the Dragon Balls for eternal life. But rather than making him too broken, this actually became a drawback for him in the end, as he’s stuck with a fate worse than death that he’s unable to escape. And also just how freaking dark and devilishly wicked he is. Seriously, here’s a dialogue sample from him: “The people of the universe better hear my voice now! From this day forward, I, Garlic Jr., will rule over all. I command all evil spirits to come forward and take on their physical forms once again. You are free to walk! A new dark age has finally begun! Let this world be drenched in the blood of the righteous. Now that I’m immortal, I will rule the universe forever! All creatures will obey me or perish. With every power I posses, my reign of terror will be everlasting!” Gives me chills, especially Don Brown’s rendition. Unfortunately, he also has two serious drawbacks. Not only is his entire evil plot that gains him immortality founded upon a massive plot hole (he tries to have Kami and Piccolo killed even though that would erase the Dragon Balls too, and he has Gohan abducted for no reason rather than simply take his Dragon Ball), but he was also recycled as the Big Bad of a godawful filler saga between the Freeza and Cell sagas of the anime that sort of suffered the Return Of Jafar syndrome - he himself wasn’t awful, he just didn’t show us much that we didn’t already see before and done better in his movie, wasn’t well serviced by the plot, and in general it just wasn’t a smart move to bring him into the anime’s narrative, as he and the events of his movie are incompatible with the canon story. His saga’s not quite Noah Kaiba level bad, but it’s close. That might’ve forever tarnished his image with fans, but he was a great villain in his debut movie.

16. Broly and Paragus - The evil Saiyans of Movie 8, The Legendary Super Saiyan. While the concept of two other surviving Saiyans of Planet Vegeta’s destruction seemed hard to swallow at first, they’re given some backstory that actually makes it plausible and even damn interesting, so they’re not merely another Turles situation. Paragus is fascinating due to how you can sympathize with him and understand why he’s bitter and yearns for a world to claim as his own and start up a new Saiyan race. However, he’s not only evil, deceptive, and a cold-blooded bastard, he is wildly, theatrically villainous, always flailing around with excitement and energy that makes him fun to watch. But its his young son Broly who’s the true theat. While he seems timid and quiet at first, it’s revealed that he’s the first known Saiyan to transform into a Super Saiyan outside of legend…and he’s also completely off his rocker. Broly is a psychotic monster, a sadist and a bully who relishes the opportunity to flaunt his power and destroy the lives of others for his own sick pleasure and amusement, and once a rampage starts for him, it will not stop until everyone and everything in his path is dead. His power is also very out of control, which is why Paragus does his best efforts to control his son and contain that power, which proves to be in vain when Goku becomes a factor, as Broly is 100% single-mindedly obsessed with killing Goku, or “KAKAROOOOTT!” as he's known to call him. There’s actually a reason for Broly’s madness, and while it's notoriously petty, it's not entirely nonsensical - when he was a newborn infant, his power rose to an abnormal level, as did that of the baby born on the same day who was right next to him: Kakarott. When Kakarott started crying, Broly eventually started crying too, with both babies shut in tubes unable to budge anywhere….and then King Vegeta ordered for baby Broly to be killed for his abnormal power level. Both he and his father barely survived…and Planet Vegeta got blown up soon after. So Goku isn’t really a reason for any of Broly’s insanity, he’s a trigger for it. His warped mind forever associates Kakarott and his crying with that trauma, so naturally he wants to silence Kakarott for good. Which still doesn’t even begin to excuse the level of cruelty Broly displays, though - as Gohan put it, he’s pure evil. Even Broly himself proudly proclaims to be a freak, a monster, even a DEVIL! He really was a solid villain in his debut movie, who unfortunately became an utterly awful one in his two later comebacks and it turned him into an oversaturated mess of a character, which kills a lot of goodwill that some could have for him. Alas, another victim of his own popularity. Thank Kami for Super!

17. Mira and Towa - A demonic duo known as the Time Breakers. Mira is the muscle of the team, preferring to take on enemies with his special powers and enhanced physical capabilities, whereas Towa is both the brains and the true power behind things, possessing both powerful sorcery skills and advanced scientific knowledge that she uses for her sick little experiments. It turns out that Towa is actually the sister of Dabura himself, and Mira is a warrior that she created through alchemy. First appearing in the MMORPG, Dragon Ball Online, and reappearing in the Xenoverse games, Heroes, Fusions, Kakarot and more, these two fiends have been relentless, formidable, and devious in all of their appearances to date.

18. Sealas and Aeos - Two of the most notable exclusive villains to come out of Super Dragon Ball Heroes, owing a lot to their designs and how they're both fallen heroes connected to time and space. Sealas is the founding operative of the Time Patrol and a strict believer in cosmic justice and in the greater good of necessary evils, wishing to do what's righteous even if he has to break natural laws and alter history to do so. Taking "with great power there must come great responsibility" to its most extreme, unhealthy level, Sealas broke with the Time Patrol and concluded that evil itself must be eradicated, and that this can only be truly done if history is rewritten to exclude all evil. It's a bit familiar and akin to Zamasu's motives, but much more "puritan" and semi-heroic in style and substance. Aeos, meanwhile, is the former Supreme Kai of Time who predates the Time Patrol and she cares nothing for any moralistic ideals such as justice: she is concerned only with balance and natural order, believing the existence of multiple timelines to be a threat to that. Personality-wise, she's one of the most fascinating antagonists in the franchise, seeming haughty, cold, and disdainful towards mortal beings and dismissive of her successor, yet she also showcases softer, kinder qualities, does deeds that seem good and fair, and isn't always so above it all when it comes to tactful reactions and behavior. She's hard to peg down, but after joining up with Chronoa and the rest for the final battle with Demigra, she has a change of heart regarding the multiverse and makes peace with her successor.

19. Hearts - Also hailing from the Dragon Ball Heroes canon is this dude. Hearts is a pale elven man who leads the Core Area Warriors and is known as the God Hater for his acts of revolt against the cosmic divine pantheon of the multiverse, as he seeks to liberate all mortal beings from the gods' grip. In this sense, he's like a Reverse Zamasu, cursing the existence of deities and wanting to kill them all in order to achieve a truly "free" multiverse. While arrogant, brash, hypocritical and self-righteous, Hearts is one of the more principled and values-believing baddies. He believes strongly in the multiverse's "nourishment" but has no qualms with launching terrorist attacks on planets and killing countless people in order to free only the surviving remainers, and it's a hypocritical contradiction he openly admits to and welcomes with grace. He's a rare good boss for this franchise who values his mortal comrades, and he appreciates a good fight with strong opponents just as much as the likes of Goku. Fittingly, he makes a Heel Turn later on and becomes as cool an ally as he was an enemy. My one huge issue with him is in his design - I think the hair he had during his initial appearance as a villain is way too similar to that of Fu, which makes looking at him a bit confusing. Thankfully he got a longer, more spiked out, better hair style later on.

20. Jiren the Gray - In what’s almost a reverse of Majin Buu, I didn’t care for this guy at all when he first came on the scene but he had a fairly strong finish to his run. He was this cookie cutter big, strong, silent, uber powerful warrior whose character was flat, archetype was done to death, and he just there to be what you were made to think Hit was going to be back in the Universe 6 Saga. In fact, I wouldn’t have classified him as a villain and put him here at all had the final round of the Tournament of Power not gone the way it did. We gradually came to learn that Jiren did have a single belief he followed in addition to his conviction to being the strongest fighter for the sake of his universe - that trust in others only ends in pain and disappointment, and that friendship need not exist among allies and teammates. He’s here for alliances, never for bonds. We even get his dark and troubled backstory that informs why he thinks and acts the way he does, which made him a lot more interesting in retrospect. And finally there’s his show of power in the final battle of the tournament. Holy crap, this is like what Majin Buu should have been in terms of how his full power was expressed. Jiren just feels like a nigh unstoppable engine of raw power and destructive fury. He exudes pure stamina, and for fighters with the power that the likes of Goku, Vegeta, Freeza, and even Android 17 have, there could be no worthier opponent. And if his “villain” status was in doubt, he fucking throws an attack straight at Goku’s friends in a spiteful act that forces Goku to jump in the way and ultimately de-powers him, which does effectively ensure that it was then impossible to root for Jiren and we wanted to see him get his ass handed to him even more! But despite this, he also displayed some honor and displeasure in having to take Goku out in a dirty way as suggested by Belmond, making him hard to outright hate either. The final leg of the fight with him is nothing short of amazing and the way he goes down is incredibly satisfying to see. He even gets a very touching sendoff with his teammates and then when brought back into existence, shows signs of possibly rethinking things and starting to grow and change for the better, and his hope to have a rematch with Goku and the rest of Universe 7′s fighters might be a sign of more things in times yet to come.

21. Lord Slug - The main villain of Movie 4. While he's a flat character with little motivation beyond warfare and conquest of worlds, Slug mainly works for the twist that was pulled with his character, as well known as it is now. Him blatantly ripping off King Piccolo's shtick of being old and wishing for his youth restored should give it away, but the fact that Slug is Namekian is a big reveal in the film, because he actually went to lengths to hide that about himself, wearing a helmet that covers his antennaes and ears, and coverings around his arms and legs. This is what makes him stand out, the fact that he is an actual, genuinely, by choice evil Namekian, who in a brazen act of betrayal of his people has become an invading warlord who makes conflicts and kills others, going directly against the Namekian's peace-loving ways. He also happens to be a Super Namekian, one who can expand his size to even larger heights than even Piccolo could! His big fight with Goku was overall nothing to write home about save for that and the moment Goku becomes a False Super Saiyan, but how he gets defeated, I could never forget.

22. Bojack - The main villain of Movie 9, Bojack Unbound. As hard as it is to hear his name and not think of a certain Horse Man, Bojack was quite the credible threat with a slick design and a charismatic presence. The strongest, most ruthless and fearsome space pirate in the universe, he rought havock across all four galaxies before getting imprisoned by the Kais. He's also a flat character who just exists to provide this movie with a villain, and how he and his crew come into the plot is absolutely ludicrous - turns out he was imprisoned inside of King Kai's planet, somehow even surviving what Beerus did to it, but got released when it got blown up by self-destructing Cell. And then they go on to partake in a beat by beat repeat of the Cell Games. In a movie where the Cell Games were established to have occurred. That's the one thing that takes me out about him, but otherwise he gets the job done well enough and was badass enough to make repeat appearances in Fusion Reborn and games, most notably Dragon Ball Heroes, which fleshed out his character better.

23. Dr. Lychee/Hatchiyack - Technically Dr. Lychee is an old alien scientist and Hatchiyack is his creation that carries on his hateful mind and spirit after he's passed away, but they’re connected in that way so they’ve both got this spot here. Originating from The Plan To Erradicate The Saiyans, the first DBZ video game to actually have a plot and two different OVA adaptations to accompany it, Lychee actually has understandable reason to hate the Saiyans and want them wiped out because, well, the Saiyans when working under the Freeza Planet Trade Empire were horrible and he’s one of their many victims. Thus Hatchiyack was created to be the ultimate anti-Saiyan weapon. And clearly the idea behind this caught on with fans and creators alike, as both Dr. Myuu with Baby in GT and Dr. Paparoni with Aniraza in Super were clearly inspired by Dr. Lychee and Hatchiyack. In that way, this mad space doctor’s spirit still lives on.

24. Dr. Myuu - Speaking of ol’ Dr. Myuu, he’s one of the beter villains from the poorly done turd pile that was Dragon Ball GT. Being one part alien and one part machine, possessing a keen scientific mind and a feverish passion for his experiments, and having ambitions to control the universe and convert all of its denizens into his machines, Myuu was a cruel and treacherous villain who raised the stakes and darkened up the scene in a show that had begun as a stupid wacky throwback to DB’s roots but Recycled IN SPACE! From his very design, you can tell he's essentially Dr. Gero Recycled IN SPACE! He masterminded much of what went on in that initial saga by directing the Cult of Ludd from behind the curtian, had many intimidating robotic and cyborg henchman like General Rilldo (himself a decent antagonist too), even had Giru working with Goku, Pan and Trunks as a spy for him (or so he’d hoped), and the set of episodes on Planet M-2 where the heroes faced him down really was the high point of the GT series, especially when it reached it’s downright terrifying finale. Myuu himself was also the best part of the otherwise abysmal Super 17 saga, where he got to work with his counterpart Dr. Gero, and stab him in the back to try and rule Hell and Earth,

25. Baby - OK, his character is uninspired and derived from other, better villains, his arrival on Earth marked when GT took a turn for the increasingly worse and more boring, and his name is Baby: there is no fucking way I can take that as a serious villain. Yet despite all that, he's objectively the strongest GT-exclusive Big Bad. The idea behind his character arc is actually brimming with potential, how he's a living conduit of wrath against the Saiyans for all the victims they'd claimed as well as seeking a new planet to settle and populate, but in his fervor to achieve his goals he ends up becoming every bit as cruel, self-interested and power-mad as the Saiyans. He's also the source of some genuine horror and Paranoia Fuel with how he can extend his mind and possess anyone he chooses. The execution just fails him like it failed many others, including a needless extended takeover of Vegeta's body, a transformation into a giant golden gorilla, and getting killed while trying to flee rather than engaging in one final fight. Good for him that he's not the worst, but he still could've been much better than a weird pale Hatchiyack imitation.

Honorable Mentions:

Dr. Gero - This guy played Greater Scope Villain for the Red Ribbon Saga, the Androids/Cell Saga, and Dragon Ball Super: Superhero, not to mention had a part in other stuff like (ugh) the Super 17 Saga in GT and the storyline of FighterZ. Gero is unique in that he never really got to play the Big Bad role at any point despite having been the originally intended Big Bad for the Androids Saga, yet stands responsible for as much widespread damage as any Big Bad all due to the bitterness, hatred, malice and stubborn pride within him that refused to die even as he aged and lost all the family he had. While he thus couldn't make the list, it is commendable all the same.

Tienshinhan - Tien played the role of Big Bad for the 22nd Budokai Saga, fighting in the tournament under the guidance of his mentor, Master Shen the Hermit Crane. A good old fashioned martial arts antagonist in the vein of the Cobra Kai jerks in The Karate Kid, Tien played the role with exquisite disdain, cockiness, and cold blooded cruelty while also being the most interesting character who recieves great character development before his explosive bout with Goku and embarking on a compelling redemption arc for the next Sagas. Far from the franchise's best baddie, but servicable for what he was.

Babidi - Initially the primary antagonist of the Majin Buu arc before Buu himself killed him and went rouge to do his own shit, the dark wizard Babidi is completely vile and reprehensible, not to mention absolutely hideous, but managed to retain a certain charm and whimsy about him that is typical in Toriyama antagonists. The terror of Buu would not have been possible without him and his deceased father Bibidi, nor would the good stuff that came with it like the sacrificial redemption of Vegeta, the fusions of Goten and Trunks, and the character development of Mr. Satan! Oh, and the debut of...

Dabura - While introduced to the franchise as a cultist working with Babidi to revive Majin Buu, Dabura was also stated to be among the most powerful of lords from the demon realm, someone who even the Supreme Kai feared, and carried about him quite the fiendish, sinister presence, making how he got done in by Buu to feel like quite a waste. Thankfully, he's made a resurgance in video game canons like Xenoverse and Heroes, expanding upon him as a Big Bad devil!

Black Smoke Shenron - I actually don’t like this one - I just like the idea behind him. The concept that the great dragon diety of the Dragon Balls turns into a dark, evil creature as consequence of the Dragon Balls being overused for selfish wishes was a very inspired one, and that’s…actually an even better idea for a franchise final boss than Freeza, Cell, Buu, or Beerus, as it hearkens back to the very start of the story. So it's a damn shame that this concept had to be utterly wasted with the underwhelming, unitelligable usage of the 7 Shadow Dragons, even the cool looking Omega Shenron! Just give me the initial cigar chomping evil smoke dragon and I’m good!

[rwac96]

My Beau's Stronger than Me! (Arkos & Ancient Snow)

Weiss: Jaune...how do you do it?

Jaune: *blinks in confusion* Um, do what, Weiss?

Weiss: Cope with the fact that Pyrrha's well, stronger than you.

Jaune: *exhales* Okay, no doubt that she trained me, got me to understand fighting and whatnot.

Weiss: *smirks* Obviously, you're the dolt who got into Beacon through false transcripts, but...you've gotten better over time.

Jaune: *nods his head lightly* Yeah. *blinks, turning to the middle Schnee* Is this about Shallot?

Weiss: *sighs* Am I that obvious?

Jaune: I'm not the only one watching those two spar.

*The Knight gestures to The Gladiator and the Saiyan in Blue fighting, through what seemed like a mismatch, but a friendly spar nonetheless*

Weiss: Right. That dolt can't resist a challenge, even if it's a detrimental impulse.

Jaune: *nods his head* Maybe. Ever since Pyr nearly died against Cinder, I get worried about her. She's my partner, the one who believed in me, and... *blushes, remembering the impulsive kiss she did back at Beacon* Well... *rubs the back of his neck*

Weiss: Jaune, everyone can notice.

Jaune: Says the prim & proper Weiss Schnee sporting a hickey on her neck.

Weiss: *blushes* H-HEY!

---

*Pyrrha Nikos skids away from Shallot, who doesn't seem to be breaking a sweat*

Pyrrha: You're holding back. *tightens her grip on Milo 2.0*

Shallot: *rolls his right arm* I can say the same thing about you.

Pyrrha: I'm not...entirely confident with using this power. Ozpin or Ozma aimed for me to have its full power.

Shallot: It's better than nothin'.

Pyrrha: *one of her eyes glows bright, flaming emerald* If you insist.

Shallot: Alright! *ascends to Super Saiyan*

---

Weiss: Um...we should take a few steps back.

Jaune: Yup.

[sweetescapeartist]

DOES TENSHINHAN REALLY TRAIN ALL THE TIME?

The short answer... "NO." The long answer...

DRAGON BALL Z:

In the Cell Saga, Tenshinhan had expressed multiple times that he felt useless. In fact, the guy who many in the DB fandom inaccurately claim trains non-stop actually lost confidence in himself so much so that Tien even REJECTED training in the RoSaT.

Tien could've gotten 1 year's worth of training in 1 day, yet he straight up refused. That alone proves that Tien DOES NOT train all the time like a Saiyan as so many people suggest. They are misinformed or willfully ignorant.

After Goku died, Tien felt depressed & lost some motovation to train (others felt depressed as well). He told his friends that they would probably never see him again. Then, he disappeared for 7 years & only reappeared briefly during the Buu Saga.

Why was Tien absent during majority of the Buu Saga?

Why did Tien choose to stay out of the 3 day battle until the very last moment while being fully aware of the situation from day 1 due to Babidi's telepathy?

TENSHINHAN WAS DEPRESSED & many fans fail to realize this. Tien even calls himself "USELESS" again in the Buu Saga. Tien did not want to join the fight because he had lost his fighting spirit. So, what exactly was Tenshinhan doing during the 7 year time-skip? Well, Toriyama actually tells us what Tenshinhan was doing...

TORIYAMA INTERVIEW:

Toriyama explains in an interview that in addition to Tenshinhan's training, he mostly farms & Chaozu helps him. (Even Yamcha occasionally stops by to help out when he isn't being a freelance bodyguard.)

Read the full article for yourself here.

And when you examine Toriyama's words closely, he says that "[Lunch] wasn't cut out for farming, and Tenshinhan has no interest in romance, so she left after a few days." Lunch was last mentioned to be chasing after Tenshinhan at the begining of the Saiyan Saga. This implies that Tien had actually been farming at some point soon after the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai if not sooner.

Not to mention that "mostly farms" means that Tien does other things too.

Tenshinhan DOES NOT constantly train as many fans falsely claim. The only ones who Toriyama said train all the time are Goku, Vegeta, & Piccolo. And the series supports this statement.

DRAGON BALL SUPER:

The Resurrection F manga & the 7th ending for DBS reaffirm Toriyama's statements that Tenshinhan & Chaozu are indeed farmers.

Furthermore, we are shown in DBS EP 89 that Tenshinhan has also opened his own dojo & is teaching advanced martial arts to 12 students (+ Yurin later).

CONCLUSION

The notion that Tenshinhan trains all the time is purely fan conjecture that is taken as gospel.

Tien has been farming for at the least since the begining of DBZ.

Tien started a martial arts school at some point after the Universe 6 vs Universe 7 Tournament.

Many in the DB fandom don't fact check most statements made in the fandom. Then, they end up believing and regurgitating misinformation. So, HERE ARE THE FACTS! For those of us who know that Tien DOES NOT constantly train, this post/images/links can be used as evidence during disputes & discussions.

I'm tired of this fandom spewing inaccuracies as truth without getting checked. And many falsely claim that Tien trains all the time in order to make the argument that Tien deserved to be the strongest Earthling instead of Krillin & so that others believe the misinformation. They attempt to use Krillin as some sort of stepping stone with false information, but these fans do so at the expense of Tien's character development that they conveniently overlook.

If your feelings aren't validated by facts, then you are wrong. Once you are corrected, you are now right. If you want to be right, often times you have to be corrected.

[EXTRA]

It appears that Toriyama revealed that Tenshinhan was a farmer soon after the Freeza Saga when Freeza came to Earth. Tenshinhan & Chaozu were shown in a mountainous area while wearing clothing that resembles a Chinese winter farmer's attire along with some sort of carrying bag tied around their torso that they store their winter crops in. Not to mention that Trunks arrived in the past during a winter month, so them wearing winter farming attire makes sense given we know they are farmers. {I'm open to being corrected on this nugget of info if needed because I don't have extensive knowledge of historical Chinese attire.}

TENSHINHAN, CHAOZU, YAMCHA, & KRILLIN: They are still marital artists at heart, but there was 7 yrs of peace. If there was no enemy to fight, doesn't retiring from fighting make sense? Although, their retirement was only temporary as we saw in DBS. People hate on Krillin & Yamcha for retiring, yet forget that Tien and Chaozu retired too. All had good reasons to retire, but they all still did some form of martial arts during their retirement even if it wasn't anything too extreme; Krillin training with his wife & being a legal crime fighter without using weapons against armed criminals. Tien & Chaozu training & farming & later starting a martial arts school. Yamcha being a freelance bodyguard & occasionally helping Tien and Chaozu farm (possibly training with them occasionally too).

With Tien being depressed after the Cell Games, it makes sense why Launch still visited him from time to time even if he didn't want a romantic relationship with her. She was another friend to help him out.

[flickcore]

Bean!!!

I'm no good at creating comics, but I sure do love drawing them. I did this as a visual for a hypothetical of Bean in false super saiyan when he believed someone killed Saibon. I'm actually genuinely proud of this, it makes me feel happy to see a page of a window into the universe where I was able to create my own comics c:

I'd like to someday create an actual small comic set of Bean's transition from accepting his fate to fighting for his life. I didn't mean to give him such Bardock vibes, his story was originally that he just accepted his fate and died without a fuss. But then I started to explore alternate storylines...

As a part of my figuring out if I have it in me to make a small comic out of the most important moment of Bean's life, I quickly sketched out this! The confrontation with one of the fellas sent after Bean. I'm still mulling this over, I think I need a little more momentum before I can get this ball rolling.

But I'd be absurdly happy to create a comic for myself to be proud of. Emulating dragon ball has made me so much happier with my work, I wanna keep that going!! I will TRYYYY!!!

[regulus-regent]

Vegeta lay in his cot, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep eluded him as his thoughts replayed endlessly in his mind. Frieza had made it abundantly clear that this was his home now, that his father had no more use for him. That he had been sold. Vegeta didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t fathom his father despising him so much.

He tried to banish the memory of his father’s cold eyes, the way the king barely acknowledged him. He'd hardly ever seen the man, always too busy, always too distant. At a young age he had been taught to accept this as normal, it was the way of a king, his duties would always come first. But now, lying alone in the dark room, the young prince couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling of abandonment. Did he truly mean so little? Was he so unworthy? So disposable?

To be so deplorable as to not just hand him over, but to sell him to their most hated tyrant... The thought made Vegeta's blood boil. He had thought he was doing well, believed he was the up-and-coming prince who would make his people proud. His mentors praised him for his remarkable potential. With the princes power level being the highest of those of his age, the rumors of him being the next legendary super saiyan did not go unheard.

Had those compliments been just empty false promises? Hollow words from servants that were desperate to stay on the royal families good side? With each passing second his doubt began to fester, began to grow stronger. Vegeta needed to see it for himself. Knowing fully well he would be unable to rest with the uncertainty gnawing away at him.

He inwardly cursed at himself. Frieza had given him the opportunity, offered him the information when he'd been brought aboard. But he had been too stubborn too in denail to look. A part of him too scared to confront it. The tyrants smug grin certainly didn't help the uneasiness.

Unable to take much more, he rose from his cot. Leaving the room as he made his way towards Frieza's quarters. Each step he took echoed the empty corridors, he could practically feel his heart pounding. Sweat accumulating in his hands, his mind swirling with thoughts that he could not quell. He'd stop just short of the metallic door that would lead straight to the answers he was looking for. He paused, hesitating for a split second and before he could even make a move, the doors slid open.

"Frieza has not requested for your audience. Did you need something, monkey prince?" the voice laced with the all knowing arrogance that grated on Vegeta's nerves.

Vegeta's jaw tensed, his fists clenching at his sides as he glared up at Zarbon. "I came here to see Frieza."

Zarbon chuckled, shaking his head. "Always so eager to serve, aren't you? Just like a good little pet. Though I suppose it runs in the family, doesn't it?"

Vegeta's eye's narrowed, his blood boiling as his patience was beginning to waver. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Oh don't be so dense Vegeta. Use that primitive brain." Zarbon sneered, looking down on the prince with a gleaming malice. "You know exactly what I mean. As I have said before, Frieza will not see you unless he requests your audience. However, he has been gracious enough to instruct me to give this to you, knowing full well you would come crawling back to him."

He pulled out the data pad from his belt and threw it at his feet before shoving his way past Vegeta.

His pride bruised from the humiliation of being disregarded, pushed aside as his he were nothing. But it was nothing compared to the turmoil raging inside of him. Grabbing the data pad he quickly made his way back into the quiet dark confines of his room.

---

The prince paced as he stared down at the data pad. His heart raced as he hesitated. Opting to sit down in his cot as his thumb hovered over the screen. Did he really want to see this? Could he handle the truth?

With a deep breath he activated the device. It stayed on the loading screen with what felt like an eternity as the princes leg axiously bounced. Suddenly he paused, body tense as the information displayed on the screen. His stomach churned, the details of his sale were laid out in cold, clinical terms.

A wave of nausea swept over him, unable to read the rest as his hands shook. With a snarl he hurled the device across the room with all his strength, shattering it instantly as it left a dent against the wall where it had connected. But the act did not bring catharsis.

Vegeta's vision began to blur as tears welled up in his eyes, spilling down onto his cheeks despite his best efforts to stop them. His tail lashing angrily behind him. The betryal cutting deeper than any wound could ever. He felt abandoned, discarded like a worthless pawn in some twisted game.

Bitterness and resentment began to settle in his heart as his tears flowed freely. He was alone. Truly alone. And in that moment, the young prince made a silent vow. He would never allow himself to be weak. He would become the strongest and most ruthless warrior this universe had ever seen. And one day, he would make them all pay.

[krimsonkatt]

Zed (Awakened)

A part of a CG I made for Noel and the Tower of Doom where Zed, one of the party members, unlocks her full potential. In the game Zed starts out completely amnesiac unaware of her past. Well, it turns out that she is a remnant of a previously destroyed universe, and within that universe she was a REALLY BAD person. As the player explores the first half of the game's main dungeon, the eponimous "Tower of Doom", after defeating each both you're given a flashback showing a brief glimpse into Zed's past as Zed begins to recover her memories. In the end Zed learns that she is not actually real, and rather the seraphim Kairos' fears manifested into a physical form, given life by the False One. (the game's greater scope villain) Upon learning this information she unwillingly falls into the false one's control and attacks the group. In this boss fight you must break Zed's guard and NOT kill her, or else you get a bad ending. After the battle everyone reassures her that who she is in the past is not her anymore and that she is a new person now, able to get a second chance. Zed accepts these regards and rejoins the team, but deam down she is still unsure of herself.

Throughout the game, Zed wears a mask because she is deeply scarred below it, a result of her past universe self mutilating herself as part of a demonic ritual to gain power. She is never brave enough to take off the mask throughout the adventure, that is until she is challenged by the revived Delusionary Beasts Punchy and Angelica and decides to take off her mask, revealing that her scars have healed. She then unlocks her true potential, gaining a new all-powerful talent art and stat boosts across the board.

Her pose is based off Super Saiyan Goku from Dragon Ball Z.