#this series has so much development for characters like Goku vegeta and Frieza

[bliss-wily]

Now these two side by side. Whilst standard Zarb is nice, his transformation from this company is just utterly gorgeous. I know I’ve posted the figure before but I could gush about him.

I like this because they are from the same manufacturer and it just really shows how much his body changes when he transforms. I’m quite sure there’s an implied height difference as well as the monster boy has his back arched a little as I’m sure it’s based on the scene where he initially transforms.

Also I love that his nails are painted. I know in the anime itself it was inconsistent as his nails would be painted one minute then seconds later they wouldn’t. Once again I’m rambling…anyway! Please enjoy the comparison.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Movie 1: Broly (3/3)

Sounds like there's been enough talk. It's time for the main event!

So I said that I was going to cover this movie in three parts, but this third part is actually half of the film, and it's almost non-stop fighting. DBS: Broly isn't a perfect movie, but it has a lot to offer. Strong character development, tight plotting, exploration of the series lore, and then we come to this absolutely indulgent fight scene that's longer than a lot of the classic DBZ films' entire runtimes. Does this fight need to go this hard? Maybe not. The basic narrative of the battle is pretty simple, and it could probably be accomplished in half the time, with fewer twists and less ambitious choreography. But the fight does go this hard, and it's a visual feast.

I can't do it a lot of justice with words and still images, so if you haven't seen this movie, do yourself a favor and check it out. But I'll still be here, describing this thing with words and still images.

Okay, so the basic narrative is pretty straightforward. Broly's got a ton of power, but this is the first real fight he's ever been in. He struggles at first, but keeps getting better and better as he goes, forcing Vegeta and Goku to raise their own game higher and higher in order to keep up.

We know Broly has the power to win this thing. Frieza could tell just by meeting the guy that he could take down Goku and Vegeta, which is why he offered to help Paragus with his revenge plot. King Vegeta III might be dead and gone, but Prince Vegeta IV is alive and well on Earth, so Broly can kill the son for the sins of his father. But as the fight goes on and Vegeta turns Super Saiyan, Paragus is completely surprised, since he never imagined such a think could happen. And yet, Broly manages to keep up anyway. Then Vegeta turns Super Saiyan God, and seems to shut Broly down.

When this happens, Paragus admits that Broly is outclassed, and Frieza decides to withdraw, but Paragus can't call Broly off, because he doesn't have his remote for the shock collar he uses to control Broly. Cheelai swiped it earlier in the movie.

Broly is so frustrated that he begins to lose control of his power, the way Paragus described before. Normally, this is where Paragus would use the shock collar to de-escalate, but instead Broly powers up with this minty green aura. The funny thing is, this allows Broly to stand up to Super Saiyan God Vegeta.

As they continue fighting, Paragus explains to Frieza that Broly has somehow internalized the power of the Great Ape form, without actually turning into a Great Ape, so he has the power-up without the bulky monkey body to hinder his movements. I'm a little unclear if Paragus is seeing this for the first time or not. I always interpreted this scene as Paragus witnessing some new depth of Broly's power, but on this viewing, it seems more like he's dealt with Wint-o-green Broly before, and this is just the first time he's seen this form play out, since he always cut it short with the shock collar in the past.

So then Goku tags in and fights Broly for a while. It's not that Vegeta was in trouble, exactly, but he wasn't steamrolling Broly like he had been and Goku wanted a turn. He fights for a bit in base form, then in vanilla Super Saiyan, then finally turns it up to Super Saiyan God. I question the wisdom of using the lower forms when they clearly didn't work for Vegeta, but that's just Goku's style. He lasts longer than you'd expect him too, but it's not because Goku's that much stronger than Vegeta. It's the difference in their tactics. Vegeta was toying with Broly at first, then he started powering up to try to overwhelm him. When Goku takes over, he fights defensively, coping with Broly's offense without getting many hits in of his own. It's all intended to probe Broly's power, and take his measure.

Goku finally gets serious and manages to immobilize Broly in his red God aura, but then Broly freaks out some more and cancels it with his green Maniac aura. So Goku's attempt to reason with the big guy end up falling on deaf ears. Broly's too upset to listen.

From Frieza's ship, Cheelai and Leemo watch the battle, and pity Broly. Sure, he's winning, but they're still disgusted with the way Paragus controls Broly and forces him to fight at his command. It doesn't matter if Broly wins or loses, because he's fighting Paragus' battles, not his own.

Goku takes a pounding and then Piccolo contacts him telepathically to ask what's going on down there. Goku tells him he'll teleport to Piccolo if they need support, then he turns it up to Super Saiyan Blue. I think this might be the first time we've seen Goku switch from God to Blue, and for some reason his aura goes green while he does it. Maybe this hints at what sort of power Broly is operating on. Like he's using divine ki but it's sort of a bastardized version of Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue. I dunno.

Then the fight turns into CG for a bit. I've written about this before, but it always irritated me how Battle of Gods, Res F, and this movie worked in some CG actions sequences, not because they look bad, but because they look really conspicuous when they're surrounded by traditional animation. The figures just look a little stiffer and dead-eyed, and I wouldn't mind watching an entire movie in this style, but switching back and forth is just really disruptive. And then they made Super Hero and finally got it right. I'll get into that later, but DBS: Broly's CG walked so DBS: Super Hero could run.

Goku Blue seems to have the upper hand, and Paragus concedes that there's nothing more Broly can do. But he still hasn't turned Super Saiyan, so Frieza things back to when Goku turned Super Saiyan and tries to see if he can make that happen again...

So he Death Beams Paragus and calls out to Broly to tell him that Paragus was killed by a stray ki blast. Oh, and the ground is lava because Broly wrecked the Earth's surface around this area. Paragus was beginning to wonder if maybe King Vegeta had been right all along about Broly being too dangerous, but what he really needed to be worried about was the same treachery he used on Beets forty-odd years ago.

So Broly flips out even more and turns Super Saiyan, which stacks on top of whatever Wint-o-green form he was using before. This is enough to make Vegeta nervous, so he turns Blue and tries to help Goku with a double-team, but it does no good. So instead they lead Broly on a merry chase...

... to Frieza, so Broly attacks him for a while as Goku and Vegeta teleport to safety.

Goku's plan is simple: He asks Piccolo to coach them on the Fusion Technique so that they can become powerful enough to defeat Broly before he kills Frieza and blows up the whole world. Vegeta despises this idea, but he can't offer a better one.

But this takes like.... an hour, and Broly keeps clobbering Frieza the entire time. Frieza turns into Golden Frieza to stand up to Broly, but he doesn't really get very far. Then again, it says a lot about how powerful Frieza's become since he last tussled with Goku and Vegeta in Resurrection F. In that movie, he ran out of gas before he could properly leverage his Golden form, but here, he's getting beaten up for a solid hour and he's really not that badly hurt.

Then Goku and Vegeta finally get it right and return to the battlefield as Gogeta. And from here on, Broly's power begins to level off.

Broly seems to do reasonably okay, but then Gogeta turns Super Saiyan and the tide turns. Then for some reason, the entire background changes during the fight.

Like, where the hell are they? Is this supposed to be another dimension, or is it just an aesthetic choice? Anyway, during this part of the battle, Broly's Super Saiyan hair turns that "Legendary" shade of green-yellow, and Gogeta goes Super Saiyan Blue.

Things get back to normal, but by now it's clear that Broly isn't winning. He's still putting up a fight, but he can't do anything to stop Gogeta Blue.

And then the Dragon appears, because...

Cheelai has decided that the only way to save Broly is to use the Dragon Balls. And this is the part of the movie where it suddenly becomes clear that Gogeta really isn't having any trouble with Broly at all.

This is kind of what makes this fight so special, because it starts out with Broly powering through Goku and Vegeta's best stuff. They use all their transformations and special attacks and it does nothing. They double-team him, and it gets them nowhere. They even trick Frieza into helping them, and it doesn't seem to make a bit of difference. Then they fuse into Gogeta Blue, and while he's doing very well, it says a lot that Broly's been fighting Gogeta Blue for several minutes and he's still in this thing. Broly is a very dangerous threat, and this is a pretty standard formula for Dragon Ball villains.

And yet, by this point in the fight, it's clear that Gogeta has it won. He's just teeing off on Broly at this point, and there's not much he can do except scream and try to fight back. At first, it seemed like the suspense was over whether Broly could be defeated at all, but now it's clearly become a question of whether Broly can survive this. He took on Goku and Vegeta because Paragus forced him to, and now he's completely in over his head and no one can save him. No one, that is, except...

... Cheelai, who asks Shenron to take Broly back to Vampa. Shenron zaps him back home right before Gogeta's Kamehameha can finish him off.

Back on Earth, Leemo pulls up in his ship and picks up Cheelai so they can flee into space. Frieza had been planning to use the Dragon Balls himself, so he's all set to shoot down Cheelai and Leemo. This is one of my favorite shots from the movie. I just like the colors. It has nothing to do with the upskirt angle view of Golden Frieza's ass. That's just a happy coincidence.

But Gogeta spoils his shot and Frieza stands down and withdraws. Gogeta just lets him go because...................... Yeah, I still don't get this. I guess Frieza never actually hurt anybody this time. Well, he killed Paragus, but I'm not sure anyone knows he did it, and besides, Paragus was a jerk. Maybe Gogeta doesn't feel right about killing Frieza since he's not doing anything aggressive.

Bulla update: She's doing just fine with Uncle Beerus. Still don't understand why he was even in this movie, but Bulla's cute, so it's fine.

In space, Cheelai says she wants to meet up with Broly on Vampa, and Leemo decides to stick with them, since he'll be on the run from the Frieza Force no matter what he does. At least this way they'll all be together.

Three days later, Frieza's intelligence agents have confirmed that Cheelai and Leemo are with Broly on Vampa, and this suits him just fine. He believes that they'll help him learn to control his powers, and when that happens, he'll become the strongest fighter on the board. He hopes for this, because even though he's getting stronger, his foes are still Goku and Vegeta, and he'd like to have one other big shot in the game. I think the idea here is that Frieza thinks he can team up with Broly again some day, but this seems like a pipe dream. Oh well.

On Vampa, Cheelai and Leemo aren't exactly thrilled about the living conditions on Vampa, but then Goku suddenly shows up and gives them some extra supplies and provisions. None of them know anything about Goku, so they're confused about how he found them so quickly without a spaceship. They don't trust Goku, but he doesn't care, since all he wants to do is fight with Broly in the future, since he enjoyed their battle on Earth, and he admires a Saiyan opponent with so much power. He also wants to teach him some things to help him improve even further, and Broly seems to find this idea appealing.

Before he leaves, they ask him his name, and he says he's Son Goku, but also... Kakarot. I like this bit a lot, because it shows how much Goku has changed since he first learned he was a Saiyan at the beginning of DBZ. At first he despised his alien heritage, then he started to embrace it, calling himself a "Saiyan raised on Earth". In the 1993 Broly movie he angrily insisted that his name wasn't Kakarot, but here he is introducing himself by that name. By now, he's met a lot of other Saiyans, and he's learned that there's more to them than the despicable evil that Raditz described when he first came to Earth. Goku's embraced his Saiyan identity and expresses it on his own terms. He's always going to be Son Goku, but he doesn't mind Vegeta calling him "Kakarot" and now it seems like he wants Broly to call him that too. It's nice.

And that's the end of the movie. Again, it's good good stuff. Check it out if you haven't seen it, but that's about all I can think of to say. And with Broly out of the way, we just have one last story to cover, and we'll get into that very soon...

[joemcstinky]

Quick Stink: Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO

(2024, Developed by Bandai Namco)

"I'm a lot like Vegeta in a way*..."

All the way back in 2018, I was properly introduced to the Dragon Ball franchise by way of the film 'Dragon Ball Super: Broly'. In that moment, I was introduced to the DB series, and I quickly fell into the franchise in a big way. However, as the years pass, I've found myself a bit disenfranchised with the series, it's overuse of Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and underusage of the other wide and varied cast.

'Sparking! ZERO' has revived my love of Dragon Ball.

From the very start of my time with Dragon Ball, I was in love with the cast, a wide variety of weirdos who have strange, sometimes humorous abilities, yet are still incredibly powerful and deadly. For an example, The Ginyu Force, a team of elite mercenaries tasked by the vile Lord Frieza to eradicate his foes.

They also do this.

'Sparking! ZERO' shows off these and many other of the dangerous eccentrics that spewed from the late, great Akira Toriyama's mind in possibly the best form they've been in in years. with a base roster of 182 playable characters (including the dozens of transformations, who've all been given unique movesets, making it so you do in fact have 19 Gokus that all feel unique from each other), there's truly no stone unturned. You want Cell? Jiren? Kefla? You get them, and... well a lot more.

Personally my favorite is Mr. Satan, the champion of the Budokai Tenkaichi tournament, who may or may not have cheated his way to the top. That is no different here, with him more often than not failing to even harm his opponents, and being surprised when they are. His full meter attack includes his dear friend Majin Buu, one of the strongest characters in the series, who arrives to help you out.

Look, I'll be honest with you, every second I type this out is another second I'm not playing it, and that's just unforgivable, so how's about we cut the formailites, and get the review over with. Play the game if you're a Dragon Ball fan, and if you aren't one... I dunno, go read Dragon Ball then.

6/7

*much like Vegeta, I too am very strong, cool, and have a very pretty romantic partner.

[govindhtech]

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero-The First Spark In October

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero news

“Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” was much awaited as the most recent Dragon Ball game because of its captivating storyline, amazing graphics, and engaging gameplay. Dimps’ game aims to keep both newbies and enthusiasts interested by adding new aspects to the Dragon Ball universe while maintaining its essence.

Dragon Ball’s past

Dragon Ball was originally a manga created in 1984 by Akira Toriyama. It now comprises anime, movies, and video games after decades of development. Goku and his friends defend the universe and Earth from many villains in the programme. Fighting, superpowers, and intricate stories have drawn a global fanbase.

Dragon Ball video games are popular because they show epic stories and violent combat. The “Sparking” series, commonly known as “Budokai Tenkaichi” in the West, is notable for its dynamic battle system and realistic interpretations of the anime’s legendary fights.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero PS5

Players were pleased with “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” when it was introduced at the 2023 Tokyo Game Show. Dimps, the project’s developer, has pledged to bring the programme back to life with improved features and an immersive experience. The launch platforms for the game include PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5, aiming to appeal to a wide audience.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero gameplay

The gameplay in “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” is one of its most important features. To improve the experience, the developers have added new mechanisms and kept the greatest parts from earlier games.

Combat System: The combat system in the game is highly developed, enabling smooth and exciting conflicts. Attacks that can be performed by players include special moves, energy bursts, and melee combos. Destructible landscapes allow players to take use of the terrain, which adds another element of strategy.

Story Mode:��One of the best aspects of “Sparking Zero” is the story mode. It covers all of the major Dragon Ball storylines, including the Saiyan Saga and the Tournament of Power. Players may relive the intense battles and poignant moments in the anime thanks to the game’s excellent cutscenes that replicate pivotal events.

Multiplayer: “Sparking Zero”‘s multiplayer mode provides both online and local choices. In addition to cooperative options, players can engage in casual matches, ranking competitions, and team up. Regardless of their preferred gaming platform, players may now combat against a larger community thanks to the addition of cross-platform play.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero Characters

Character List: The Dragon Ball universe is represented in “Sparking Zero” with a large cast of characters. This features lesser-known characters from the manga and films as well as popular ones like Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza. With their own powers and metamorphoses, each character offers a wide variety of playstyles.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero

Sound and Visuals

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” produces breathtaking visuals by utilising the capabilities of contemporary PCs and next-generation consoles. The game’s bright settings, fluid animations, and intricate character models make the Dragon Ball world come to life. Battles seem more intense and visually stunning thanks to the introduction of sophisticated lighting and particle effects, which also improve the overall appearance.

“Sparking Zero” has equally amazing sound design. The game’s soundtrack consists of both original songs and reimagined versions of beloved anime themes. The original cast provides the voice acting, so the characters sound genuine and faithful to the original work. To further enhance the immersion, the sound effects for transformations and attacks are clear and powerful.

Expectations and Reception

Both fans and critics have reacted quite well to the news of “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” and the trailers that followed. Expectations are high because the “Sparking” series is going back to its roots while incorporating contemporary improvements.

The precise replication of the anime’s look and fluid motion in early gameplay samples unveiled at multiple gaming events has won praise. Critics who think the game has what it takes to be among the greatest Dragon Ball titles ever have praised its creative features and painstaking attention to detail.

Together with Modding

The fandom for Dragon Ball video games is well-known, and “Sparking Zero” is anticipated to be no exception. In an attempt to encourage user-generated content, Dimps has indicated that the game would have options or tools for modding. As a result, the game’s lifespan might be increased as participants develop and exchange new stages, characters, and scenarios.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero release date 2024

It will be possible to see Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero on Friday, October 11, 2024. Play the game three days early if you pre-order the Deluxe Edition or higher! Steam, the PlayStation Store, and the Xbox Store are just a few of the places where you can pre-order the game.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero price

This is a breakdown of the prices for the various editions:

Edition Standard: $69.99

Deluxe Edition: $99 (includes Season Pass and Early Access)

The Ultimate Edition, which comes with Early Access, Season Pass, and Ultimate Upgrade Pack, costs $109.99.

Ultimate Edition: $109.99 (Early Access, Season Pass, Ultimate Upgrade Pack)

Season Pass, Ultimate Upgrade Pack, and Early Access are all included in the $109.99 Ultimate Edition.

Regional differences exist in prices as well.

In summary

In the Dragon Ball video game series, “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” is well-positioned to become a legendary title. Dimps hopes to provide an experience that pleases both seasoned gamers and brand-new players by fusing the cherished components of the “Sparking” series with cutting-edge gameplay innovations and breathtaking graphics. As the release day approaches, the Dragon Ball fandom is eagerly anticipating the chance to set out on this amazing adventure.

Any lover of the franchise should not miss “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” because of its extensive character roster, compelling story mode, and well-designed fighting system. Its potential to become a fighting game classic is further cemented by its support for modding and dedication to excellent graphics and sound. Expectations and enthusiasm for “Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero” are rising as we approach its release, signalling the beginning of a new chapter in the Dragon Ball video game series.

FAQ

Will Dragon Ball Sparking Zero be on PS4

Dragon Ball: Sparking, indeed! The PlayStation Store listing and the official Bandai Namco website both state that Zero will be available on the PS4.

Read more on govindhtech.com

[theloganator101]

With how much I ranted about Bakugou, I know some of you are wondering.

“Well if Bakugou is bad, who would you say is a good example?”

And that’s what I’m going to be talking about today. I’m actually going to be explaining why Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z is a better rival character than Bakugou is, let’s get started.

So let’s list off what Vegeta’s personality is: He’s stubborn, prideful, angry most of the time, powerful, and has an ego that’s the size of a planet.

Now with these similar character traits, you would think this would lead to Vegeta being just as bad, if not worse, than Bakugou. But the one thing Vegeta has is very important.

An itsy bitsy thing called…

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!

But before we get to that, let’s look at his life at the beginning.

Vegeta was born into royalty on Planet Vegeta, his father gave him to Frieza when he was a child because the saiyans were under his rule. He was forced to do his bidding or else his father dies. And then later down the line his planet and most of the saiyans die as well, leaving him and a handful of saiyans as the remaining survivors.

From here alone we can see why he acts the way he does later in the series, and it’s a backstory that makes logical sense. He wants to be strong enough and defeat Frieza so he could avenge his people and feel like he earns the title as the Prince of all Saiyans.

But with Bakugou, what does he have? Uhh, he got praised a lot as a kid, especially after he got his quirk. He fell off a log and took Midoriya’s act of kindness as looking down on him?

Already not off to a good start.

Now let’s look at how their character develops throughout the series.

With Vegeta, after the Frieza Saga, resided on earth and started to live with Bulma. He starts training to get stronger and along the way… had a fling with Bulma that ended up creating his son Trunks.

Now this part here is very interesting. You see Vegeta was alone for so long, that he didn’t know he was lonely. He only knew how to hold his own. But as time passes he slowly starts to change, and now he wants to hold Bulma. And their children. And Goku-

The time he spent with her was the starting point of his development, yeah it wasn’t like he changed right away, but it was a starting point.

With Bakugou however, while it seems like his starting point would’ve been either after hanging out with Kiri or after his kidnapping with the villains… Nothing about him changes. He still stays his same annoying self, shouting and saying he’s the best while everyone around him grows.

Hell, it even led to him failing his Provisional License Exam and yet he still learns NOTHING from it!

And now we’re getting to the meat of this post! Which is to see how both act after some time have passed. Let’s look at how Vegeta reacts to Bulma getting slapped by Beerus. Keep in mind, this is after the events of Z and they’re officially a married couple.

Beerus Slaps Bulma English Dub

Now if this was like Z in the Android Saga, he wouldn’t give two shits.

But this is after he’s grown as a character, after he realizes that he now has people worth fighting for, AFTER time has passed and has learned some things! Now THAT is how you do character development.

Wanna see an example of what NOT to do?

Well now let’s take a look at how Bakugou reacts to Izuku feeling proud of learning how to control Black Whip. And keep in mind this is after their big fight in Kamino and a few other major events that happened before this scene.

Just Deku getting stabbed in the head with Bakugou's headpiece 🙃

Wow, real fucking mature brat.

It’s almost like Midoriya feeling proud of himself or anything he does is an insult to you…

OH WAIT! YOU DO TAKE OFFENCE!! Because your fragile ego can’t handle it!

So in conclusion, Vegeta excels as a better hotheaded character who gets character development better than Bakugou ever could.

And that concludes this post, good day

[comicbookuniversity]

Dragon Ball Super and the Future

by Bunnypwn Gold

I am a huge fan of Dragon Ball, as I have stated here before and as I have written about in the past. My love and knowledge of this franchise is deep, and I will always be ready to enjoy what it has in store and wrestle with the ideas in it. And right now, it’s a great time to be a fan, because Dragon Ball Super is going strong. The anime has come to a conclusion and/or could come back in the future, and the manga is approaching the climax of its newest story, the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga. It’s amazing for a lot of reasons that I’ll discuss as I respond to this article by Kofi Outlaw, which praises the saga for going back to DBZ style storytelling as a “course correction.” While I agree with several points in this article, I also disagree with the basic premise and argue that the author is only saying these things about the saga because he has not been paying attention to how consistently better the manga has been than the anime of Super. I am using this response to organize my thoughts on how Super has gone so far, the divide between the anime and manga version of events, and the future of the series as a whole, not as a pro or anti stance against Kofi or his article, to be clear.

At the beginning, Kofi criticizes Super for having low stakes and focusing on making Goku and Vegeta the sole focus, increasing their power levels dramatically and leaving other characters to languish. He also said that there were a lot of gimmick fights. Overall, the story structure had changed to reflect this change in character focus and the villains were weak and unmemorable. This new arc, featuring fan-favorite villain Planet-Eater Moro and a range of great battles with his bandits for the Z Fighters to show their stuff, is a return to the DBZ structure, and it features all the brutality and high stakes of the old days. Best of all, it lays the foundations for a new future focusing on other characters.

I have to say, I agree with much of this. The focus on Goku and Vegeta as “Gods” and their super-special Saiyan-ness in the meta canon is really annoying to me. Elements of this were seen in DBZ, as the humans and Piccolo stop trying to catch up to the Saiyans, and it was all GT was about, making that series a big disappointment for me. The first three stories of the Super era are notably low stakes, as well, and I would have liked a little more tension. There could have been more focus on other characters and a larger cast in general, and that certainly would have been enjoyable. And to finish it out, I am very excited for what the Moro story means for the future. The whole thing has a “last chance to shine” feel for the old guard of characters we’ve known and loved for years, Goku is probably going to master Ultra Instinct and thus complete his journey as a martial artist, and it still opens up a lot more about the history and lore of the series to explore in the future.

Beyond that, I have a lot to disagree with. For starters, if you look at the Tournament of Destroyers and the Tournament of Power and just see a bunch of “gimmicky fights” and no stakes, you’re missing the point. I always loved the tournament stories in Dragon Ball, and both of these Super tournaments deliver on that joy. The manga had a lot of important differences with the anime in how these tournaments went, too. Before the Tournament of Destroyers, the manga went through a condensed version of the Battle of Gods events, only offering one extension in the opening to give an actual benchmark on Goku’s strength so we know where we’re starting as a series, an important gift the anime and movie fail to deliver. It then time skips past the Resurrection ‘F’ story, which I think is sad, but ultimately serves the manga’s purposes. After Goku got his God form, the next thing we see, before the Tournament, is Goku training with a new master, showing that he’s back on the path to martial arts excellence. By skipping the Golden Frieza fight, the manga passed on a story that only shows off how cool Super Saiyan Blue looks (a term, by the way, the manga invented because it’s better); outside of showing off this new form, the Golden Frieza story adds nothing. As Goku and Vegeta enter the Tournament of Destroyers, they build a team entirely focused on power, and lose one of their strongest members because of a test of intelligence. To further drive home the point, Goku’s final battle with Hit ends with him realizing that his strength allows him to outmaneuver an innovative and amazing fighting technique, Time Skip. He then forfeits the match so he can have a real fight with Hit later, where Hit can try to kill Goku and has time to train beforehand, which sounds a lot like a DBZ style story. It’s the first step in Goku relearning that technique matters more than power. In the manga, they also gave more love to Piccolo. In the anime, they had him be effectively useless, barely able to fight Frost, a Frieza parallel. The manga had Piccolo fight evenly with Frost, who later shows that he’s almost an equal with Super Saiyan Goku; Piccolo lost because of poison, not because he “could never hope to beat a strong person.” It’s not as cool as it could have been, but it’s more than Piccolo ever got in the anime.

Now, I have to vehemently disagree that Zamasu was a weak, forgettable villain who existed solely as a gimmick. The Zamasu story carefully builds and delivers on the many themes of the franchise that I identify as atheist. Throughout the series, Toriyama repeatedly introduced gods of varying kinds and levels of divinity for the sole purpose of tearing down the illusion of their importance and special qualities. Gods in this world are a verifiable fact, and not only are they just people with a particular job, but every time Goku and Vegeta meet a god, they treat them like anyone else and show them no special respect or deference. Goku and Vegeta are the best exemplars in the series of treating deities like normal people, something the series itself does regularly. It’s one of my favorite parts of the series, as an atheist myself.

So, here we have Zamasu, a deity who believes that he’s uniquely capable and qualified to rule all of existence and that mortals aren’t worthy of life. In the Bible, on more than one occasion, God decided to wash the world clean of humans because they had become too sinful; similar stories exist in other religions and cultures. In this case, Zamasu is motivated by intense and literal hatred of mortals, who he sees as not simply having “become too sinful,” but fundamentally incapable of being anything else. He extends this hatred to other gods who want mortals to exist and do as they please. His rise in Future Trunks’s time to be the almost-almighty God with a Capital G is the antithesis of what the series has said about gods and divinity on every level, and that’s exactly why he’s such an amazing villain. He also checks a lot of other boxes. He uses the power of a mortal who made himself into a god, Goku, to kill the gods and overpower the mortals. He also relies on a mortal, Trunks, to develop his power and another, Dabura, to create the opening he needed to start his plan. In working to bring the downfall of all mortals, Zamasu in effect worships at the altar of mortals and relies on their miracles to succeed, just as Goku has trained with several deities on his path to success.

Trunks is also notable, because growing up, Trunks didn’t have any gods to look to like Goku did. The first “god” in Trunks’s life was Goku, as both his mother and teacher would talk about Goku as their main inspiration for hope. Goku was made into a mythical figure that could have fixed everything, and that’s exactly what Trunks used time travel for, both times he employed the strategy. That’s why Zamasu taking Goku’s body was so impactful, because “hope” came to kill him. Goku’s ultimate failure to defeat Zamasu also tears down the idea of Goku’s “divinity” in the same way as other gods were taken down a notch. This results in Goku calling on Zeno for help. The development of Goku and Zeno’s relationship is interesting and important in setting up the conflict of this story. They become friends because Goku is the only person who treats Zeno like he’s not special, which seems to confirm that Goku’s relationship to divinity is proper. At the same time, Goku doesn’t like Zeno, because he knows Zeno is just a bored shut-in and likely doesn’t understand Zeno’s role. And really, Zeno doesn’t have a role like the Gods of Destruction and the Supreme Kais. He’s in charge because he’s the most powerful and can destroy all of existence with a thought. That’s exactly what Zeno decides to do when he sees Zamasu and the multiverse he had been ignoring, getting rid of everything because he didn’t like how it turned out. Not unlike Zamasu with mortals; in effect, Zeno is the thing that Zamasu wanted to become, and that story ends with his vision of reality being carried out. It was the ingenuity of mortal time travel that made some form of happy ending, because like in every other Dragon Ball story, you can’t rely on the gods for most anything. So yeah, Zamasu is an amazing villain and his saga was brilliant. My main criticism of the manga version was that the setup was rushed, so the death of Future Bulma happened off panel and the death of the rest of the mortals in existence was breezed by. Plenty of brutality and high stakes, if you ask me, though yes, I wanted to see it with my own eyes more.

Then we get into the Tournament of Power, a great tournament story that really drives home the point of the god-centric Super run. The Tournament of Power, if you didn’t guess, isn’t about power. It’s about teamwork, strategy, and skill. In the manga, this is made absolutely clear. The downfall of everyone in the tournament is that they rejected this basic premise or were wiped out by someone who would later meet their downfall for rejecting this basic premise, setting up their incorrect view to be knocked down in the end. Goku brought Frieza onto Team Universe 7 because he feared they would need his raw power, ignoring the possibility they bring in Yamcha or Chaozu for a friendly face that works well with their team. Hit reappears and shows that he has gotten way stronger. However, he loses to Jiren, Goku’s main opponent, in the opening of the tournament because he was relying on that raw power and abdicated the potential of his famed fighting technique. Multiple times, stronger and more arrogant solo fighters regard those fighting as a team as being weak and no threat. The main exception to those relying on teamwork being weak is Gohan, who was very strong and wanted to work as a team. In the anime, Gohan was made inferior to Frieza and ultimately lost trying to beat a lesser opponent. In the manga, Gohan, in his Potential Unleashed state and not as a Super Saiyan of any form, fought evenly with Hybrid Super Saiyan Kefla, who I suspect was the second strongest person on the field, and double-KO’d with her. In the fight, it’s implied that Gohan could go Super Saiyan while using his Potential Unleashed state, but chose not to so he didn’t have to rely on that kind of gimmicky power. It’s incredibly badass and satisfying.

As the fight with Jiren nears its climax, Goku uses a strategy that could kill him in an attempt to overpower the foe who’s stronger than any God of Destruction. This prompts Roshi to step in and admonish Goku with the single most important line in Super. When Goku says he needs more power to beat Jiren, Roshi says, “Hmph…Power, y’say? Plain old fighting strength? Who the heck taught you that? Vegeta? Frieza?” This is a great moment, because not only does it push Goku to go for Ultra Instinct and focus on bettering himself as a martial artist once again, but it pushes back on the worst lessons fans take from the franchise. Goku isn’t cool because of his strength, and he’s not so strong because he can transform. It’s all about that martial artist’s journey, baby. Goku grew up constantly learning new ways to become a better martial artist than he was the previous day, and it was pure passion driving him; he got to where he is because he took every opportunity to better himself, with his transformations just a convenient way for the story to keep upping the stakes. Jiren is the pursuit of raw power incarnate, with indifference and constant dissatisfaction his reward, and all he wants is his dead master to tell him he’s finally a good fighter. He’s everything Goku was becoming, and Goku overcame him by returning to his roots. He was able to fight Jiren evenly with a technique that anyone, theoretically, could learn if they reached the same heights of martial arts mastery, as proven when Roshi uses an imperfect form of Ultra Instinct to trade blows with Jiren. The manga anchors this lesson because it focused on technique the whole time and built towards this moment: Super Saiyan God was just another technique that showed Goku he had a lot left to learn; the Tournament of Destroyers showed how boring life is when you’re so strong you can’t actually test yourself; Zamasu showed how power is corrupting and how the pursuit of it changes you; and the Tournament of Power shows how damaging and literally suicidal pursuing raw power over personal growth is.

And to put the nail on the coffin, Goku doesn’t beat Jiren with Ultra Instinct, but instead beats him by briefly working with Frieza; you can’t master the path of a martial artist in one fight. Android 17 wins the tournament for their universe by playing dead, an age-old strategy, and uses the Super Dragon Balls to wish back all the universes destroyed by Zeno. While that can be seen as lowering the stakes, it’s no more stake-lowering than any other time the Dragon Balls have been used this way in high-stakes stories, and the stakes in this case were the destruction of eight entire universes. That’s pretty darn high. Also, it’s a good time to point out that Zeno was the real villain of the Tournament of Power. He was going to destroy eight universes out of boredom, and then remembered he could instead let one survive by having them Hunger Games for his amusement. There are no stakes, no reason to fight, without Zeno. There’s going to be conflict with Zeno in the future, I’m sure of it.

The anime followed a very different route than the manga, focusing entirely on Goku’s raw power and how cool he is. They added a lot of filler moments to both increase the number of gimmick fights and silly, campy fun, too, which made the whole thing lower stakes and less brutal. As described in regards to Piccolo and Gohan, the anime also made other characters weaker compared to Goku and Vegeta to amplify the impact of their unique transformations. In the Tournament of Destroyers, the anime introduced the idea of Goku using Kaio-ken while Super Saiyan Blue, for no other reason than to let Goku use a bunch more strength after he proved he could win. I won’t get into it, because it’s a tangent, but the entire concept of Blue Kaio-ken is BS, and the DBZ anime is where the proof lies; the Super manga actually touches on that exact thing, since Goku trying something like Blue Kaio-ken against Jiren is what nearly kills him and prompts Roshi to step in. Anyway, the anime also elongated the Zamasu story with a series of gimmick fights meant to show off how cool the three Saiyans were, even though they knew from the start that none of them would beat Zamasu. That story featured a bunch of secretly alive people, too, lowering the stakes and overall brutality of Zamasu as a villain. The time between Zamasu and the Tournament of Power, including the lead-up to the tournament, was spent showcasing filler side stories that make the other characters, ignored for most of Super, look way cooler and stronger than they actually ended up being. For as much as I wanted to see more from Krillin, Tien, and Piccolo in the manga, at least Toyotaro didn’t jerk us around acting like they were going to be way bigger players than they were. And the way the anime presented Goku achieving Ultra Instinct was focused entirely on strength and treating it like a super cool new transformation, which it isn’t. So if you were watching that story, I could see how you come out of Super thinking that it’s less intense, more gimmicky, and glorified one or two characters to the detriment of others. That’s why I think you could only be as impressed with the Moro arc as a “course correction” if you’ve been paying attention to the anime and only just now got into the manga.

This brings and end to what I’ll call Phase 1 of Super and to a time skip past the battle with Broly (which I would argue was for the same reason the Golden Frieza battle was) and into the Moro arc, which I agree is a great story that brings back a lot of things Super wasn’t doing enough of. It even brings back the meta story structure of the Buu Saga, since the first part is a very Phase 1 storyline and the second half, after Goku and Vegeta are defeated, is much more of a DBZ storyline, just as Kofi described. It’s like saying, “Yeah, we want to pivot away from this, we’re done making that point.” Looking at the first part of the Moro arc, you can read it as a way of reinforcing the grand statement of Phase 1, that the constant jockeying for power and strength and the glorifying of a couple people to the detriment of others is a bad way to write a story. The reason that’s important to say is because that’s the way a lot of the meta canon has been going for a while, at least it seems to me; all the fun, original video game stories are about Saiyans and their super special Saiyan-ness and how super cool strong they can get. It’s why GT was such a disappointment to me, and as I said, it stopped several great characters from trying to become better during DBZ. I think Kofi is right to say moving away from that model of storytelling is a good and important shift in the right direction, though I can’t say if it’s for the same reasons. That’s because, if it’s not clear, I think that what Super did along the way in Phase 1, at least in the manga, was better, more important, and more complex than the simple glorification and valorization of Goku and Vegeta, loaded as it was with themes arguing against that model and continual demonstrations of why they need to switch back to a focus on their martial arts journey. The structure of the Moro arc only serves to reinforce and finalize this thematic argument. As it continues, we are undoubtedly in store for some truly amazing fights and a satisfying, climactic battle with Moro for the entire Dragon Gang.

I also want to make a very important point for how the series is moving forward. Kofi says that Toriyama is switching back to this DBZ style story because he “has learned a thing or two from his mistakes.” For one, the massive success of Super doesn’t really seem like a mistake for anyone to learn from. For two, it’s really in poor taste to imply that Toriyama is changing how he’s writing a story because of negative fan reaction. Allegedly, that sort of thing happened with the Buu Saga, which is why Goku came back and we saw Super Saiyan 3, the perfect continuation and parody of the Super Saiyan form, all because the fans didn’t like Gohan’s high school adventures. I don’t think that’s happening again, allegedly, and in my opinion it’s not exactly a good look to say that it is. For three, that almost literally can’t be what’s happening, because Toyotaro has much greater control over the narrative by now. For those who don’t know, the way Super is being created is that Akira Toriyama writes plot summaries, and then lets the different creatives develop it from there, free to add and subtract and move around what they will. The anime team decided to focus on power and how super cool Goku is, and that version of events reflects that. Toyotaro, artist and co-author of the manga, kept his eye on the martial arts journey while executing this long vision of Toriyama’s to introduce new levels of grandeur and warn against getting lost in it, and that version of events reflects that. Over the course of the series, each creative team was given increasingly greater control over the narrative, leading to greater divergences; the two Tournaments of Power might as well be two different stories. By now, in the Moro arc, with no competing anime version of the story, Toyotaro has much more authorial control than when he started, and that will only increase until, as I hope and predict, Toriyama officially hands off the series to Toyotaro’s capable hands so he can write new stories for the foreseeable future. So no, I don’t think it’s very accurate to say that Toriyama learned any lesson because Toyotaro is the one making the important changes in how the story is told, not Toriyama. Keep your eye on the prize, you know; forgetting Toyotaro’s role means forgetting that we can and probably will have new Dragon Ball that isn’t a video game or video game-related story after the passing of Toriyama. I think the long hiatus of the anime reinforces this: Toriyama has said that if the anime team followed Toyotaro’s lead, they wouldn’t make so many art mistakes, and allowing the manga to develop lead time could be a strategy to follow the manga as a source material in the future, rather than continue this confusing dual path.

So yeah, the Dragon Ball Super manga is better than the anime in every way, and judging the series by the anime alone is setting yourself up for disappointment. The Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga showcases an amazing villain for the franchise, and it sets up more to explore in a future that values the contributions of the full cast. It also, to my eyes, foreshadows the end of the road for the Dragon Gang we’ve been following so far, and thus a potential new beginning with their successors; I mean, there’s no more time after this between Beerus and meeting Uub to use, and meeting Uub is the moment Goku passes the baton to a successor. This is a time to look forward to that bright future and reflect on the themes the manga has been developing as we head into it, as well as what the two versions of Super mean for the franchise as a whole.

[dragon-ball-meta]

Ohhh boy... -cracks knuckles- Let’s do this, shall we?

30. HIS DESTRUCTO DISC WAS THE STRONGEST KI ATTACK IN THE SERIES How does that not make sense? You’re starting your list off by not even framing your complaints correctly, as your beef isn’t the attack’s power, but that it’s underused. But even that’s explained. In short, the Kienzan takes up a LOT of energy. To form, to get it spinning fast enough, to throw, takes a bit out of the user. It’s also got several drawbacks, including, but not limited to, being quite loud. People can hear it coming and adjust accordingly. One can make a slightly weaker version they can steer, but that reduces its effectiveness.  Really, the Kienzan is only feasible in certain scenarios, at least until Krillin managed to gain the ability to control it without sacrificing power. 29. HE THOUGHT ANDROID 18 WAS DATING HER TWIN BROTHER Uh... ok? I mean I’m not sure how that ‘makes no sense’ but yeah, he made a mistake. Whoops? 28. HIS BODY MEASUREMENTS Bear in mind a few things here. Namely, that while Toriyama does depict these characters as “muscular”, it’s also lean. So the idea he should be ridiculously jacked is also a bit off. I believe the weight estimate also originally came back when the “Z” arcs started, so there’s that. Otherwise, this is probably one of the only legitimate points on this list. 27. THE REASON WHY HE SHAVES HIS HEAD ...again, how does this make no sense? He shaves his head as a sign of dedication to his practice of the martial arts and because he was taught it aided in the flow of ki in one’s body. That’s explained full well. Just because he ASSUMED Roshi shaved his head doesn’t make this not make sense. 26. HIS ABILITY TO BREAK THE FOURTH WALL It’s a comedy manga at heart. There’s jokes like this throughout. In Goku’s rematch with Yamcha, Goku hits him so hard that he actually breaks one of the borders between the panels and bounces off of it. It’s a thing in the series. Also, Idk why you’re referencing movies when they’re clearly not part of Toriyama’s continuity, but I’m reasonably certain that “lasted a season” was meant in terms of time passed, not “seasons” of a show. Especially as DB never had “seasons”. 25. HE NEVER TRAINED WITH WITH KING KAI Now this is what annoys me about this article. Y’all will take the anime and even movies into account when making this list... and yet with this complaint, you even have a screenshot of where he trained with King Kai in the anime. Yet you say he didn’t do it. Also, “with all the time he spends in the afterlife”? lol really?  24. HIS HEAD DOTS You... you literally explain this in full. How is this something that makes no sense? Literally how? 23. HIS REDUCED FIGHTING PRESENCE IN THE CELL AND BUU SAGAS Again, you explain this in the first paragraph of this entry. Yet you also talk about his activities in both arcs. So... how does this not make sense other than the fact that complaining about it makes no sense? I mean he still has a role, it’s just primarily non-combat. He carried the meat of the story in the Cell arc. 22. HIS BIZARRE CHILDHOOD "A lot of the pasts and families of Dragon Ball’s characters have been shown before (including Frieza's), but Krillin’s remains a mystery.“ Actually, no. They’re not. By and large, we learn very little about the pasts of any of these characters. We have only the vaguest details about anyone not Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, or Bulma, discounting the people we actually see born during the series. Kami’s past, even his name, is a complete mystery. Tien? No one knows his background outside being taken in by the Crane Hermit and training alongside Chiaotzu. This is not uncommon. But we actually do know a bit more about Krillin’s past in that he was raised at Orin, and he was abused. Daily. Frequently. It left him with a complex that lasted well into his adult life. He ran away one day in tears, determined he was gonna prove he wasn’t weak or worthless someday. That’s a good sight more than we’d gotten about most characters til recently. 21. HE NEARLY BECAME AN ANDROID You guys are reaching into arcade path endings from video games. Why am I not surprised? 20. HOW HE DEFEATED GOHAN DURING TOURNAMENT OF POWER PREP This is easily one of the worst offenders on this entire list if only because this is very, very easily explained. Hell, it was the point of them doing it. Gohan was operating with the wrong perspective, that Krillin going one on one vs a powerful opponent would, by necessity, be outclassed and overpowered and thus couldn’t be an asset. He was also under the assumption Krillin had gotten much weaker, unaware he was stronger than ever. Couple these things with both the fact that Gohan himself wasn’t near as strong as he used to be, and Krillin simply out-planning Gohan and beating him by using the rules of the arena against him vs trying to actually overpower him, and Gohan losing there makes perfect sense. Krillin simply overwhelmed all his senses, dropped out of sight and detection, and then simply knocked Gohan off-balance and shoved him out of bounds. Simple. Literally nothing hard to understand about that. 19. HE’S THE FIRST PERSON FROM UNIVERSE 7 TO LOSE IN THE TOURNAMENT OF POWER He’s the first one out because he actually ditched the safety of the group strategy and rushes out to rescue his wife, who was nearly eliminated first herself. He then teamed up with her for a bit and even took out a particularly skilled enemy himself by using his head. Then he was tripped out of bounds because he was distracted by (sadly) rare praise. It happens and it’s not indicative of “strength” or “power” at all. 18. HIS BATTLE STRATEGY AGAINST FRIEZA'S SECOND FORM Lord, here we go. Imma say this again: The Kienzan takes a LOT of energy to form and use. Krillin had just thrown like, twenty of them in a row and then had to run at top speed. The odds of him being able to produce a Kienzan in time are slim to none This is why, upon blinding Freeza, he was yelling for Vegeta (who was still FRESH, mind you) to attack Freeza now. But Vegeta was too paralyzed with shock and fear to act. I’d also like to point out that blinding Freeza wouldn’t have been super effective with an attack that Freeza could easily HEAR coming. He heard it at the last minute even over Gohan’s screams of agony, pretty sure he’d have heard it off to the side where it was just them too. 17. HE LEAVES HIS DAUGHTER IN THE CARE OF KIDS Yes. Apprehensively. At the insistence of his wife, who assured him she’d be ok and could take care of herself. Y’all really tried to use this to imply he’s a bad dad, wow. 16. HIS REGRESSIVE PTSD IN THE FOREST OF TERROR I’m not sure if I’m happy someone finally admitted it’s PTSD (#DragonBallAintDeepBro) or pissed off someone called this “regressive”. Wait no, I know exactly what I am, and frankly... WTF is wrong with you? How on God’s green earth is that Regressive? Are you, by the body of this entry, implying PTSD is a thing that exclusively happens to people who aren’t strong or “strong enough”? Either way, you missed the entire point of the episode, which you simultaneously admit was good character development. A development arc hinted at since the Buu arc really, but really kickstarted back in the BoG arc. The Forest of Terror was never about just strength or ability. Truly, the enemies seen there were only as strong or weak as Krillin empowered them to be by his fear and the ki he poured into them as a result. The point is they were a personification of Krillin’s own fears. His self-doubt and self-loathing. The condition was slowly killing him, his confidence was next to nothing, and it was affecting his life. His job. His family. It’s why 18 gave him the kick in the butt to start training again, to try to regain some of his confidence. It’s why Roshi sent them there; he saw the lack of confidence in the man. He saw his student in anguish, hating himself for not being more than what he was, but also fully believing he never could be. That he just wasn’t good enough. It’s why, even when facing enemies that his rational mind KNEW were weaker than himself, to say nothing of dead, he still panicked. His PTSD was triggered, vivid memories of what they’d done to him, the pain he suffered, came rushing back. And removing it was what finally allowed him to reach into his truest potential, and become even stronger than he’d ever been before. I also love the realistic way the series handled the condition, in that even as he tries to improve himself, he still has moments where it starts to kick in and he has to fight it off, will himself not to lose it. His wife knows it too and takes extra care (for the most part) to not let him slip back into it. But he refuses to allow it to control him anymore. How the hell that’s somehow a negative, let alone something that “doesn’t make sense”, is a mystery to me. 15. HIS "FULL POTENTIAL" THAT THE GRAND ELDER NAMEKIAN GURU UNLOCKED How is this really confusing? It simply allows him to tap into potential, power, that was blocked off. There are many factors that can contribute to it, be it limitations on time, plateaus, mental blocks, etc. The Grand Elder removed those and awaken that potential. It’s why Gohan and Krillin started to make the gains that they did at the rate they did, going from only about as strong as Goku had been on Earth to strong enough to help Vegeta overpower and potentially kill Freeza in his first form. 14. HIS YOUNGER CHARACTER TRAITS Y-you do realize you’re literally complaining about character development... right? Krillin grew up in an abusive environment where he felt he could trust no one, everyone was out for themselves, and that he had to do whatever it took to get ahead and be accepted as one of Roshi’s pupils so he had a chance to be... anybody, really. And yes, over time, between the influences of his friends and general maturing and growing up, he became a very kind, compassionate, and caring individual and a true friend. THAT’S. CHARACTER. DEVELOPMENT. And to present these traits as a “mistake” is to somehow suggest they came later. They were his original traits. 13. HIS BULLET INJURIES DURING HIS POLICE JOB Literally explained in Resurrection F, both the arc and the movie. Emptying one’s body of ki leaves it vulnerable. It should be his instinct to do so right away, but he doesn’t. He’s becoming careless and distracted. It’s part of his PTSD. Hell, Goku’s clearly not getting “that weak” and yet he also  got lightly bruised by a bullet because he didn’t keep his energy up, a sign he was falling out of practice due to his inability to find a training partner, or to leave to a place that would really push him in his training due to work. Also, if one being vulnerable to gunfire means they shouldn’t be a police officer, or any like job where there might be danger... well...  That’s dumb, my friend. 12. HE CAN PERFORM THE SPIRIT BOMB AND KAIO-KEN ATTACK Stop using video games to pad your list! SERIOUSLY! And how does “performing the Spirit Bomb” make no sense? Goku and King Kai both instructed him how to do it, and Krillin’s always been especially gifted at both energy manipulation and learning on the fly. Besides, it’s not as if he knows how to summon said energy himself, just wield and form it. 11. HIS ROMANTIC NATURE NEARLY DESTROYED THE EARTH Hot Take Time: Krillin’s decision not to kill 18 stemmed from general compassion, not just the fact that she kissed him, and his decision would have had NO impact on Cell had Vegeta followed through, done what he was supposed to, and killed Cell. Even if Vegeta, by some bizarre chance, failed? Trunks was there, and just as powerful. There were two people there capable of killing Cell. No, what nearly destroyed the Earth was Vegeta’s VERY conscious decision to actually HELP Cell reach his Perfect Form, something Krillin never imagined Vegeta would be stupid and selfish enough to do. And even then, Krillin told her to get lost and hide, and even offered to help her move 16 so she could. 10. HIS EARLY DISMISSAL IN FORTUNETELLER BABA'S TOURNAMENT ...IT’S A COMEDY AND HE GOT HIS WHOLE HEAD BIT INTO BY A VAMPIRE, WHAT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND? FFS He’s still weaker than even Yamcha at that point. His quick thinking is also all that saved Yamcha’s ass from getting whupped into submission. 9. HE PASSES AWAY THE MOST... EVEN THOUGH HE’S EARTH’S STRONGEST HUMAN Oh lord here we go... a. He wasn’t at the time of his first death. b. That kinda doesn’t mean much when you have to fight an alien lizard or ancient demon who could dust you with their pinky. This only makes no sense if you utterly ignore any and all context. Vegeta, for example, has actually died just as many times as Krillin now (Freeza, Buu, Freeza again)... and he’s the second strongest in the roster. Goku has also technically “died” just as many times now too (Piccolo, Cell, Hit), as well as Piccolo (Nappa, Buu, Freeza).  Mr. Satan and Bulma have died the least of anyone. Hardly an indicator of power. 8. HE LIVED WITH HIS FAMILY AND MASTER ROSHI IN THE KAME HOUSE It’s housed Roshi, Oolong, Krillin, Goku, Yamcha, Umigame AND Launch in the past. Housing Krillin, 18, a baby/toddler, and Roshi is hardly filled to capacity. That said... they move. They move as soon as they can afford their own home, which is shortly after 18 gets her fall money from Mr. Satan. 7. HIS FUSION WITH PICCOLO I’d just like to state for the record that this is literally complaining about a fun drawing Toriyama did of what Krillin and Piccolo would look like Fused. That is all. 6. HE CAN ABSORB SPIRIT BOMBS AND USE THEIR ENERGY Aaand we’re back to video games. 5. HE’S THE STRONGEST HUMAN ON EARTH Ok now this one? This one is utter BS. Krillin outpacing Tien makes perfect sense since it’s been happening since Tien first appeared. When everyone came back for the 23rd Budokai? The gap between those two shrunk. A lot. Krillin had not only taught HIMSELF how to fly, how to steer energy after firing it, and more, but he’d improved to the point of Piccolo not only using his true power to beat him, but he managed to survive a blow Piccolo assumed HAD to have killed him... and made Piccolo question whether or not he was even strong enough to conquer this world even if he DID beat Goku. When the Saiyans came? Even smaller gap with the exact same time to train. And Tien even had the benefit of having Chiaotzu as a partner, Krillin was off finishing his training solo. And the Grand Elder awakening his dormant potential, as well as the combat experience on Namek, finally sealed the deal. After all, Yamcha was still intently training at that time too, and Krillin surpassed him. Why then is it so hard to believe he could surpass Tien? It also doesn’t help that Tien doesn’t actually train nonstop, despite what anime filler would have you believe. He runs a dojo and a farm to boot. Tien is also demonstrably still weaker than Krillin in Super and lasts longer in the Tournament because he and Roshi are taking cover and surprising targets to knock them out while they’re off-guard. So there’s that. 4. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXCITING FOIL TO BORING GOKU He was created as a rival character to play off Goku and give Goku something to measure himself against. That doesn’t exactly mean he’s meant to be “more exciting”, but to bring an element of entertainment to the series that had been missing, as well as give Goku someone his own age to grow with. Nice dig at the character at the end though. Top notch. 3. HE NAMES HIS DAUGHTER AFTER HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND For the last time: Maron. Is. A. Filler. Character. Toriyama did not create her. Toriyama did not name her. Toriyama named Krillin’s daughter “Marron” because it’s French for “Chestnut”, which is a play on the fact that the first syllable in Krillin’s Japanese name, “Kuri”, also means chestnut. It’s not at ALL indicative of “lingering feelings” for a character that Toriyama didn’t even make, let alone doesn’t appear in his manga or continuity at all. 2. HE NEARLY ALLOWS VEGETA TO GAIN IMMORTALITY Well, it was more or less that or let the kid he’d sworn he’d keep safe die. I don’t really blame him for at least entertaining the idea at that point. An ultimately bad idea? Yeah. But one born of desperation. Hardly the first for characters in this series. And finally... 1. HIS MISSING NOSE ...wow. It’s... it’s a physical deformity. I’m not sure what about that doesn’t make sense? This list was even more of a dumpster fire than usual.

[hotstreak2k3]

Things we want for the upcoming Dragon Ball Super movie (2020) and future episodes!

While we are airing some English Dub version on a Adult Swim, there is a fatal announcement that another DBS movie is on development. Even Gohan’s dub actor Kyle Herbert wasn’t happy to know that his character isn’t in that film this time around.

Many fans have been wondering where do we go next since the Galactic PatrolPrisoner Manga Arc is unexpected goes beyond the series. Even though CBR had given some possible storylines in the upcoming movie, I am not certain we can bring back the Red Ribbon Army anytime or any other weird scenario from their list.

So here are the list of possible storylines and changes we fans should expect to see in either the next Dragon Ball movie or saved for the future episodes and manga arcs afterwards:

20.) The return of blood, gore and better animation quality from Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

19.) Gohan and Krillin enjoy their slice of life with their wives and kids in future Episodes... and train for the next threat as well.

18.) Filling up a fan theory of one the Angels sinister plot against Grand Zeno’s... and it could possibly be the Grand Minister.

17.) Bringing back Vic Mignogna as the voice of Broly

16.) Another Future Trunks Saga where we can see our favorite hero and future Mai settle down at since their Original Timeline was obliterated by Zeno

15.) One time story mini arc of Universe 6’s Saiyans (Cabba, Kale and Caulifla) adventures. In addition, explore more on their threesome relationship and the Saiyan society.

14.) Broly and Cheelai’s relationship blossoms (At least that what most fans would see a anime reference of Tarzan and Jane)

13.) Son Goku meet his parents, Bardock and Gine, for the first time!

12.) Piccolo merge with an namekian god to gain the power that rivals Super Saiyan Blue.

13.) Cooler is hint to be canon just like Tarble. But fairly some of us want our favorite badass villain to side with his brother Frieza, not as an anti-hero

12.) for the Dragon Ball Fighterz adaptation, Android 21 is now a beloved character thanks to Akira Toriyama himself. But not everyone wants the revived villains from the game. Plus her good half and the her human link partner would be a great addition to the Z Fighters. Wheras bringing back Android 16 would be a lot of fun. It’ll be cool to see a human fighting soul, his Majin Bio waifu and Goku to take on the Evil Android 21.

11.) Warriors from the Tournament of Power teamed with Son Goku and the Z Fighters to save the Multiverse from a much greater threat... like Frieza or Hearts [A villain from the Super Dragon Ball Heroes mini series]

10.) The return of Tien Shinhan and a long forgotten character Good/Bad Launch.

9.) King Kai teaches Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu the Kaioken technique!

8.) The development on Goten and Trunks; Goku trains Broly on Planet Vampa to control his inner power!

7.) Don’t add anymore Super Saiyan forms! Give the Z Fighters time to get caught up with their own strength, and the classic aspect from the original Dragon Ball series needs to come back!

6.) When Jiren was shown up in the Tournament of Power arc, he has poven to be the strongest warrior in the Multiverse. His potential story would be interesting to explore more of his tragic past while Goku’s for another round for this broken hero of Universe 11.

5.) Universe 7’s Saiyans (Goku, Gohan, Vegeta and Broly) visit Planet Sadala Of Universe 6. Also had a friendly spar with Cabba, Kale and Caulifla.

4.) In the Universal Survival arc, Gohan made a promise to Frieza that he will finish him up himself if Earth is threaten. Hell yeah! I wanna see our boy beat that galactic tyrant in his own hands. Sorry Goku!

3.) Make the Z Fighters become more prominent characters then being on the sideline. I mean for real Toriyama! Why is Super so focus on Son Goku and Vegeta? They already had their moments. So now it’s their turn take on the baddies much or similarly like DBZ.

-Krillin has decided to go back as a martial artist so that’ll be something for fans of the Dragon Ball.

-Tien’s new take as a role ofSensai would interesting enough to see how he teaches his pupils while taming Yurin and had another rematch with Mercenary Tao.

- Android 17 is surprisingly strong in the Tournament of Power. So would it be easy enough to had him aid Goku and friends in future battles? You damn right!

-Master Roshi is has been heavenly underestimated by his opponents, and he has overcome his pervert behavior in the TOP. Plus he can use Mafūba more then once despite how dangerous the sealing technique is. This Turtle hermit need some more comeback after a long absent.

-Videl is being treated like a housewife for her daughter Pan in Super. But many fans had forgotten that this gal is martial arts fighter in her own right in the Majin Buu Saga. When she hold on her own against Spopovich in a bloody fight, I was amazed how determined and inner strength the daughter of Satan has proven. Dont care what people are saying, she deserves more. So why can’t her husband Gohan teach her the Kamahamaha wave? Why haven’t he reason her training? This problem needs to be fixed!

2.) While Japanese fans were all looked up to Son Goku as their favorites, many westerners like me like Gohan more. He may not into fighting, but he’s willing to do it in order to keep his friends and family safe. Plus he did state that he is searching for a power beyond his Mystic form. So I hope Toriyama can hear this own out.... MAKE GOHAN GREAT AGAIN!!!

1.) Had Goku mastered his Ultra Instinct!

So here is my list I hope Toriyama and @toei-animation-official should consider take some advices. For the most part, I am not only speaking for myself, but to many Dragon Ball fans who grew up with the show since childhood. So don’t let all of us down! 🙂👍

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 023

tfw you’re in Dragon Ball Super Episode 23.

So for the last few episodes, Goku and Vegeta have been training on Beerus’ planet, and then Beerus ordered Whis to send them to some other dimension where they could supposedly improve faster.   But for Whis to do that, he had to send his staff to the other dimension as well.  This backfires on Beerus when he starts eating all the pizza Whis brought back from Earth, and Whis can’t bring him more because he needs his staff to do it.  So Whis has to bring back Goku and Vegeta to get his staff.  This whole thing is just a pointless waste of time.

I think the idea was that the writers on DBS wanted to show Goku and Vegeta training to achieve their Super Saiyan Blue forms, which they revealed in the Resurrection F movie.  In the movie, it was established that they reached that level off-screen, but this anime expands on the story.  So you would think this would give Toei a chance to tell some story about how they reached Super Saiyan Blue.  Except.... there is no story.  None at all. 

Part of the problem is that they probably didn’t want to show them transforming until the fight with Frieza, which is sensible enough.  That’s how the movie played it, after all.  But then we still have these scenes of Goku and Vegeta training with no apparent point.  Beerus just tells them their time in the other dimension did them a lot of good, even if they weren’t in there for very long. 

I guess it was like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, at least in the sense that they were stuck there longer than the amount of time that passed in the outside world.  Anyway, they had to eat all of Beerus’ extra pizza in order to avoid starvation, so yeah. 

So now that they’re back and Whis has his staff, they can finally find out about Frieza’s invasion, and Goku can try to teleport back to Earth.  Only it’s too far away, so Gohan powers up as high as he can go, and this gives Goku something to lock on to.  Wait, was Frieza’s power level not enough?  Everyone’s been talking about how amazingly strong he is, to say nothing of Tagoma’s body, now inhabited by Captain Ginyu.  You’d think there’d be plenty of strong ki powers for Goku to sense. 

Anyway, Frieza tries to finish Gohan off, but then Goku appears in the nick of time and blocks the shot with his crappily-drawn arm.  This episode sucks ass.

I tend to focus on the misshapen faces in this series, but there’s a lot of poorly-drawn fingers and hands.   Parts of this show look like fan art drawn by a talented-but-inexperienced teenager.  Like these should be the before shots next to a much better drawing in a social media post where the artist shows off their skill development over several years. 

Anyway, Vegeta quickly polishes off Captain Ginyu, thus bringing an end to the decades-long running gag of that frog showing up in different scenes.  I’m not sure what happened to Tagoma-in-the-frog’s-body, but it doesn’t really matter, since no one cared enough about Tagoma to care if he keeps the gag alive. 

Also, I’d just like to say that this series keeps using shots like this of characters in the mid-ground, even though the artists seem to really, really suck at drawing figures on this scale.  Like, what is the point of storyboarding for this sort of thing when you know your staff can’t execute it without making it look pathetic?  This isn’t a new problem, either.  This is Episode 23.  By now, everyone at Toei should be fully aware of the limitations of this production.

Anyway, Frieza pisses and moans about his revenge and goes to his fourth form to avoid the mistakes he made during his first encounter with Goku.... Except this is exactly what he got wrong on Namek.  He took forever to use his full power against Goku and the others, and kept giving them chances to put up a fight.  Now, he’s doing it again, because his fourth form is no longer his strongest form.  He’s holding Golden Frieza in reserve, and for no good reason. 

And you know, if that’s how Frieza wants to play it, fine.  But don’t tell me he’s correcting his past mistakes this way, because he’s not. 

If this seems kind of brief, it’s because I skipped over countless reaction shots from other characters, and this annoying thing where the “camera” would rush from one set of characters to another.  Also, Jaco did a lot of whining about wanting to run away, and none of it matters.  This episode bites.

[suncannon]

Thoughts On Dragonball Z and How People Spend Their Time

So, I’m not going to pretend that I’m a Dragonball Expert, but I’ve followed and enjoyed the series for a significant portion of my life. I’ve also, like I’m sure many people who used to be teenage boys did, spent a lot of time thinking about that world and the people in it.

There is an opinion I’ve seen voiced in many ways and in many places that says something along the lines of “It’s just a show/game/movie/whatever, just consume it and have fun, why are you thinking about it so much.” To that, I’ve taken an idea from Lindsay Ellis to heart. It goes something along the lines of “These properties make ungodly amounts of money, and influence the thinking of countless people. To pretend that they aren’t worth thinking about seriously because they’re silly/made for children is shortsighted, and ignores what we can learn from those things”. She was talking about the Michael Bay Transformers movies at the time, but that kind of thinking can be applied to most things.

This is a long-winded way to say that I have Thoughts about Dragonball, and the way both the narrative and the characters within it discuss things like hard work, training, and the decision of how to spend your time.

I’ve always liked the human characters in Dragonball more than the others. Don’t get me wrong, I like Goku as much as the next guy, and I, like many others, went through a phase where I realized that Vegeta is both Incredibly Cool, and also A Pretty Good Dad. But it was always the human characters(Krillin, Yamcha, and to a lesser extent the half-human Gohan I suppose) that I really identified with. I guess it’s because I am a human? But I think even then, I identified with the feeling of other people outpacing me, getting better at things while I’m just trying to catch up.

Krillin and Yamcha are frequent fandom punching bags. Yamcha more than Krillin, and for good reason. Yamcha is kind of a dirtbag, so he deserves most of what he gets. But a lot of what I see when I see people talking about the human characters of Dragonball, is that they aren’t worthy of fandom because they’re weaker than the Saiyans, and that’s why they’re lame. I don’t agree with that line of thinking.

Sure, the human characters in Dragonball are probably always going to be weaker than the Saiyans, because Saiyans Cheat At Kung Fu Magic. They, as a species, are basically designed to always win in dramatic ways, and it’s hard to impossible for a human to catch up with that. They’re also the Designated Protagonists, so they always have to be the strongest. But the reasons I like the human characters aren’t because they’re good fighters, but because they’re more interesting characters, and their existence says interesting things about the setting.

Okay, before we keep going, I feel like it’ll be helpful to state what my sort of thesis is. Dragonball is a setting where hard work and determination can allow a person to transcend their normal limits, and become a being on the level of gods. But in order to attain that level of power, a person has to let everything else in their life fall away, and devote themselves solely to Getting Better At Punchwizarding. Saiyans have a natural disposition towards this singleminded focus, but Goku in particular, because he’s A Moron(and, like, brain damaged, I guess? Yikes), will always be best at this. The fact that other characters in the show, from Vegeta to Gohan down to Krillin and Yamcha, don’t reach that level isn’t an indictment of their skill or dedication, but a sign that they value other things in their lives. This makes me like those characters more, but that contrast wouldn’t exist without Goku doing what he does.

So, lets talk about Yamcha. Yamcha is a dingus. He dumped Bulma because he’s an idiot, and then effed off to use his Punchwizardry to become a famous baseball player. And while he’s an unenviable person(in a lot of ways, he has manufactured his own misery), he is a good example of what I’m talking about.

During Original Dragonball, Yamcha was a respectable martial artist. He wasn’t as good as the Designated Protagonist, but he could hold his own, and was likely one of the strongest humans on the planet by the end of that series.

Then, Dragonball Z happened. Raditz was a sign that things were climbing to a new level of power, and Yamcha managed to hang for a little while. He trained with the other Z Fighters for a while, preparing for the fight with Vegeta and Nappa. He also got immediately smoked my the Saibamen, getting brutally killed.

It’s around this point that I feel like Yamcha begins seeing the writing on the wall. He trains with King Kai alongside the others, and by the end of the Frieza saga he’s respectable, but not exemplary. Once the Android saga starts, and he challenges Android 20, he also immediately gets smoked, this time literally, with a massive hole blown in his chest. 

After this point, he is basically not a factor in any of the major battles of the series. He sits out most, if not all, major battles in the rest of the series, and during the timeskip between Cell and Buu, has completely stopped his training. He coasts by on his residual physical skill to make money. And while there’s something to be said for him abandoning the fight to protect Earth, to some extent, I get it? Like, he saw what was coming. Goku is doing sit-ups in 1000x Earth’s gravity or some nonsense, and lives for nothing but the fight. That was never Yamcha’s goal, so he got out while the getting was good. While he regrets this decision by the time Dragonball Super is going on, I understand the motivation.

So, lets take a quick detour to talk about Krillin. He’s probably my favorite character in the series. He looks like a weird gremlin and literally doesn’t have a nose. He’s great and perfect. A lot of his story is similar to Yamcha’s so we won’t have to talk about him long.

Krillin managed to avoid most of the pitfalls that Yamcha blunders into, but based on the person he is, he was always going to. Yamcha was a bandit who stumbled into World Shaking Nonsense, so his lack of dedication to back-breaking training is expected. Krillin was a monk who devoted himself to training when he was in Original Dragonball, and he stuck with that training for much longer. Accordingly, he stays relevant for much longer. By the time of the fight with the Saiyans, he survives when most of the others don’t, and he manages to hang during the fighting on Namek. Hell, his chops are still decent by the time of the Android saga, and he holds his own when he needs to. 

But he still makes the cardinal sin when it comes to Keeping Up With Goku: he cares about things besides training. He gets married, has a kid, settles down. Lets his hair grow back. Becomes a good dad and has a wife who loves him. He still does some training to keep himself in fighting trim, but by the time of the Buu saga, he’s basically no one of consequence. And that bites him in the ass when he gets taken out basically immediately.

I find this arc incredibly relatable. Who among us hasn’t devoted their lives to protecting Earth, but then fallen in love with an incredibly cool android woman and had a precocious kid, and then decided to skip leg day once or twice? Krillin manages to avoid falling as far as Yamcha did because Android 18 is another Z Fighter, and I’m sure they keep each other in shape. But they’re retired by the time of the Buu saga.

However, in Super, you can see how far a human can go when sufficiently motivated. Krillin makes it all the way to the Tournament of Power, while Yamcha is looking like a scruffy piece of trash, sad that all of his friends are going off and fighting without him. Like, of course they are, Yamcha. You haven’t lifted a weight in longer than Goten has been alive. Damn, even Master Roshi hit the gym when the chips were down, and he busts out some OG Dragonball moves. You see him in Resurrection of F, and the Tournament? Damn.

Y’know, I think I might’ve been wrong before. I said Krillin was my favorite character, but really, I think it has to be Gohan. He’s just the best.

So, a lot of the impetus of writing this piece has been because I’ve been vicariously reliving Dragonball Z through the All Systems Goku podcast. Seeing the series through fresh eyes has been neat, and it’s made me think about a lot of this for the first time in a long time. 

There’s a part at the beginning of the Buu saga where Vegeta drags Gohan for his decline in power level, and while I understand that frustration from Angry Saiyan Dad, like, I get it. Even by the time of Dragonball Super, Gohan has not, and likely will not, develop into the fighter he Could Have Been. But like, that’s fine. Vegeta didn’t, either.

So, to wrap this up and not write another thousand words, lets talk about the Saiyans as a group.

Goku is a Committed Idiot, who will always be the best at fighting because it’s all he cares about. Because of this, he is a negligent father and husband, and also not a very good person or friend.

Vegeta can hang on Goku’s level because he’s a Saiyan and has a very understanding wife that will build him weird gravity chambers, but he also takes an active role in parenting his children, and actually wants to be present at the birth of his daughter instead of going to train with an angel. Like, for real. Goku tries to convince Vegeta to miss the birth of his daughter to go train, because Goku missed the birth of Goten because he was dead, so it’s fine. Whis ends up making it a non-issue by using Angel Magic to just poof the baby out of Bulma, which is kind of horrifying, but Bulma was pretty alright with missing those arduous hours and having the work just done for her.

Vegeta compromises his training by being a person with a life, and watching Goku keep pulling ahead of him was the impetus for the Majin Vegeta stuff. He had his mid life crisis, but realized what he was doing, and I guess eventually got over it. He knows he’s not as strong as Goku, but he takes his son to Disneyland sometimes and he’s mostly cool with it.

Gohan could have been the greatest martial artist the Earth has ever produced. When he beat Cell, he was far and away the most powerful being that had ever set foot on the planet. But between then and the Buu saga, he just started to care about other things. He was a teenager, and went to school, made friends, fell in love. Between then and Super he got married, had a kid. People talk like they’re disappointed that Gohan has “gotten lame”, especially after the glimpse of him we get in Future Trunk’s Bad Future. But they don’t get it. 

Gohan won. That’s his happy ending. He can still hang with his dad and Vegeta; he’s probably the third strongest person on the planet. Piccolo might have him beat some days, but probably not. And he also has a wife and daughter and a life outside of lifting weights and screaming. That’s what Future Trunks would’ve wanted for him. 

At the end of the day, the Earth needs someone like Goku, who is willing to forsake everything else and keep doing push-ups until he can punch out God. It’s a good thing that he relishes the opportunity, because a more self-aware person would probably be pissed that the weight of the world/galaxy/universe/Creation keeps getting put on his shoulders. 

But to say that other characters are less interesting, or somehow “bad” because they don’t have that single-minded devotion to Punchwizardry is foolish, because that dichotomy and contrast between Goku and everyone else in his life is what gives texture and weight to the choices the characters make. Krillin sees Goku punching out deities and probably feels bad that he can’t help. But his family makes him happy, and that’s worthwhile, too. It’s what makes the fighting worth doing.

Okay, so that’s it. Feels good to get these thoughts out of my head. Been percolating them for a while. Not gonna do any more passes on this for editing because I’ve already been writing this for like an hour and I wanna be done. Happy to hear thoughts or comments. Be excellent to each other.

[tigerlover16-uk]

I have my problems with how anti climactic the whole thing was and the reused animation in a lot of the episode, but thinking about it I do at least appreciate that Gohan’s sacrifice to take down Dyspo does still feel like a logical resolution to the lesson Piccolo taught him in episode 88.

As Piccolo explained, Gohan has a recurring problem with getting drunk on power or otherwise overconfident when it’s looking like he has the edge over an opponent. We saw this with Cell when Gohan first went super Saiyan 2 (Though to be fair he also wasn’t fully in the best state of mind at the time), and we saw it with Super Buu where Gohan got a bit too sure of himself and let his guard down. Probably comes from the fact that he isn’t someone who fights as often as Goku or Vegeta do, and doesn’t quite have a warriors mindset.

When fighting Dyspo, Gohan and Frieza were careful and used tactics to turn his own speed against him, and at the last minute, even when it looked like Gohan had that fight just about wrapped up before Frieza got exhausted and dropped the energy cage, letting Dyspo escape and dodge Gohan’s attack, Gohan reacted pretty much immediately to grab Dyspo right as he was going back into super speed mode.

He didn’t let his guard down, seeing how quickly he reacted to the change in situation. He didn’t get overconfident and slip up at the last minute, Gohan played things smart and considered what needed to be done for every step of that fight.

Sure, it’s frustrating how he got eliminated too, but stop and think about it and the alternative was that Dyspo could have super speeded Frieza off the edge of the arena while he was out of breath, which would have been a disaster as we saw with how things played out later. And then who’s to say Gohan could have beaten Dyspo on his own? How much worse would it have been for team universe 7, and how likely would their chances of winning actually have been, if he didn’t take the fall?

It wasn’t the most dignified way to go out, and it wasn’t the epic last stand we all would have wanted for Gohan and just naturally expected he would get. But at the end of the day, Gohan took the lesson he’d learned to heart and applied himself, doing what needed to be done to save the day. And ultimately, while he might not have gotten to do anything as flashy as the other remaining fighters, he played a big part in ensuring not only universe 7′s survival, but all the other universes aswell. So let it never be said his contributions to the tournament didn’t matter, or that the development he got throughout the saga didn’t go anywhere.

It could have been better executed and certainly better animated, and I wish he’d gotten to have a few more epic moments, but now that I’ve had a chance to step back and look at it clearly, I’m not really angry or all that upset over how he went out. At the end of the day, Gohan not being one of the key players in eliminating Jiren or Toppo or whatever doesn’t invalidate his development throughout Super.

He can still go on to keep getting stronger and continue to be useful in future series. He’s still grown to the point he actually wants to get stronger for the sake of it, while still being the same loveable dork outside of the battlefield that we all know and love. We know Super almost certainly is going to get a continuation beyond the movie, so there’s still time for Gohan to become a major character again, acquire that new form he was on about, and just generally be relevant again. Which, honestly, that’s all I really wanted.

So... yeah. Still an anti-climax, but nothing to really worry about, is it?

[thehotwingking]

Dragon Ball Super Episode 131

Talkin bout it (it’s my diary, I have no where else to write my deep and secretive thoughts on DBS)

First I'd like to say that I'm really happy this isn't the end. Even if Super isn't the best anime out there it is still fun watching the story grow and continue.

Second, shout out to 17 for saving the entire universe by wishing for all the universes to come back. We all basically saw the wish coming if U7 won, but Zeno basically saying that if 17 wished for anything selfish then he would have erased everything gave the wish more merit.

Okay, so this episode was really awesome. With Frieza going at it with Jiren to the awesome tag team work of 17 and Frieza. Frieza really hates all these guys, and he's a mad shit talker. He is so evil, man. It's ridiculous. Dude is ice cold. (intended) I still don't understand how 17 is that strong. I like 17, i really do. I just wish GOHAN had 17's role in this arc. Give us MOAR fan service PLEASE. At least I know Gohan won't go back to being weak. He'll still train some more, right? .... RIGHT?????

Goku coming back and teaming up with Frieza was incredible. Frieza really is the greatest villain in the entire series after this arc. Those two fighting together was crazy. Only thing crazier would be Vegeta and Frieza teaming up together. Goku and Frieza basically sacrificing themselves for the win was awesome. Jiren is unstoppable otherwise. They're lucky this wasn't a death match or Jiren probably would have won the entire thing. Dude is broken as fuck and OP. That's the main reason why i thought he could have won. He's way stronger than anyone else.

The ending was cool. Vegeta and Goku fighting where it all started, and with the same poses. Nostalgia hit hard. So awesome.

This is my favorite arc in the entire Super series. It was a spectacle to watch. Anyone hating this is weird. Sure, it may not be as deep as other animes and shit, but if you're a long time Dragon Ball fan and you're watching these last two episodes you're giddy as fuck. This was dope. Everything about it was cool.

I can't wait for the movie. Vegeta has his Super Saiyan Blue 2 and Goku has his Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken x 20 or whatever. Both will eventually master Ultra Instinct. Frieza is out here getting stronger. the Universe 6 Saiyans are going to get stronger. Hit still probably wants a rematch with Goku. Toppo and Jiren are still the biggest enemies. Gohan might keep training. It's all going to be cool. So many things that can happen, so many different directions. Gowasu out there happy. Champa out here reluctant to say thank you. Beerus probably HUNGRY and also HUNGRY TO BOX GOKU.

I.... GUESS... I should talk a little about Jiren since he is obviously the main villain of this arc. Man, I thought he was cool at first. Powerful guy and stuff. Cool! I thought it was incredible how he handled Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken Goku. Episode 115 or whatever was fun. I remember that shit. Then after a while... it became repetitive. Like, okay. We get it Jiren, we not fucking with you lmao. You on another level. IT'S OK WE GET IT. Big ass buff boy. So yeah, I wanted him to catch the fade. It didn't help that I didn't like his backstory, but after finishing this episode I get it.

He can't trust anyone. Or he refused to. People can't be trusted if you want to accomplish something. That's the way he sees shit. I get it. He trusted Toppo to beat Vegeta, and Toppo caught the L lmao loser ass boy. Them other pride troopers didn't do shit either. Can't trust them unreliable ass dude lmao. Jiren basically LeBron James in the NBA Finals. Gotta do all this shit by himself got fucking damn it. So, when he was fighting Goku, Frieza, and 17 at the end he realized the reason he lost is because they trusted each other. He doesn't know the backstory between Frieza and Goku, but it's kind of obvious Frieza is evil in universe 7. Still, the two trusted each other and by helping each other they beat Jiren.

And Jiren's conversation with Toppo at the end is enough character development for me. Enough for him the pass the character test. He's aight now.

Prediction: The Dragon Ball Super movie will be about them going to the beach universe 6 and fighting with the Saiyans and learning the origins of the saiyans. I remember hearing something about it having to do with the Saiyans and stuff, so this makes sense.  After that we may get a new series hopefully. I love the universe 6 saiyans so much. Caulifla punched the shit out of Cabba lmfao 

CAN'T WAIT. I probably missed talking about a bunch of stuff, but it's fine.

[lucyinbookland]

This image comes from a reddit thread by xXShatter_ForceXx.

Why Does Everyone Like Vegeta?

I’ve run into this question a lot, both in trying to explain my love of DBZ to non-fans, and in commiserating with fellow fans. Vegeta is a very popular character. It’s rare to see promotional material without him, and he’s one of the characters that is most recognized by people who aren’t familiar with the show—even among those who don’t watch anime. And there are good reasons for this.

Of course, he has his haters. There are people who legitimately don’t like the character, and those that have been pushed into hating him by his sheer popularity. And they have their reasons. Despite being one of “the good guys” for most of the show at this point, it wasn’t until the later part of Z that he really showed any regard for human life, or even the life of his family and friends. He can get kind of one-note (“defeat Kakarrot!” “My pride!”). Although he’s softened a bit by Super, many feel like that’s been a bit out-of-character. But his popularity definitely isn’t an accident, and if you’re a Vegeta fan, you’re in good company.

First off, if you’re attracted to men, Vegeta checks a lot of boxes as a male character. He has a dark, tortured past. He’s full of machismo surliness, and gives absolutely no fucks (until he does, when your heart breaks). He definitely fits into a type that I myself am guilty of enjoying: reformed baddy who still walks that grey line between good and evil.

I assume these are also the reasons your “typical” Dragon Ball fan (heterosexual boys/men) like him; he’s badass, gives no fucks, and is just generally pretty cool. He’s also written with a lot of snarky one-liners, which always makes for good tv.

These are all perfectly good reasons to like him, whether or not you consider yourself a “fan.” But I don’t think they’re the most interesting reasons, so lets dive right in.

1. American Release

Dragon Ball is one of those series that had an odd release in America, but it weirdly worked. Instead of starting from the beginning with Goku’s childhood adventures, they went straight to Dragon Ball Z, beginning with the appearance of Raditz and the kidnapping of Gohan. Why this worked is a conversation for another time, but basically it got us very quickly to Vegeta as a compelling villain–small of stature, and yet stronger than anything previously seen on the show, including Goku at his strongest yet. He also represented this fascinating new, alien culture.

This way of presenting the show also kept the focus off of Goku. He was around, training in Other World, but mostly the show followed Gohan. When the focus shifted to Namek and the search for the other Dragon Balls–and, subsequently, Frieza–this distance grew and grew. Through most of the time on Namek, you don’t follow Goku; you follow Gohan, Krillin, and Vegeta (incidentally, I realized as I typed this that those three happen to be my favorite characters…hmmmm…). The pattern continues through most of Z; Goku is less of a POV character as he is a trump card, and that leaves a bulk of the narrative following Gohan or Vegeta.

(To be clear though, he’s also very popular in Japan…but I can only really speak to my own experiences with the American version of the franchise)

2. The Underdog

Everyone loves to root for the underdog. It’s hard to think of Vegeta as an underdog when you know he’s one of the strongest characters in the series, but for the arcs on Namek, that’s exactly what he was. Once Frieza enters the scene, all of our heroes–which, thanks to a tentative truce, includes Vegeta–are horribly outclassed. Vegeta is fighting for what is essentially the losing side, and since it also happens to be the righteous one, he gets bundled up as a sympathetic character pretty quickly. He is also one of the few characters who has any idea of what’s going on. There’s a good part of those early episodes on Namek where Krillan, Gohan, and Bulma are just wandering around with no real sense of the danger they face, while you see Vegeta getting increasingly desperate about the approach of Frieza and the Ginyu Force.

By the way, this is also one of the reasons Goku works as a main character; despite being ridiculously powerful, he’s often pitted against villains that are even stronger. So his wins usually come after a great deal of trial, injury, and near-defeats, and they end up feeling like they are not only hard-earned, but partially tied into his righteousness and purity of heart (this is played up in the dub, since Goku is much less righteous and pure of heart in the Japanese version).

3. Sheer Character Development

Despite having a large cast of characters, many of which are very recognizable and memorable, Dragon Ball isn’t so great on the character development. Goku himself has had very little development over the coarse of the show. It has happened, but mostly the show focuses on the development of his power level rather than his personality.

Vegeta, however, get globs and globs of character development. He begins as a pretty standard villain–incredibly powerful, and heartless enough to kill his own underling once he is no longer of use. We get to see him feel real fear and remorse through the events on Namek, culminating in his death at the hands of the very person responsible for the death of his father and the annihilation of his entire race. Through the Android and Cell sagas, we see him go from blatant disregard for his son, to actual sadness and anger over his death. And in the Buu saga we see him willingly give himself over to his evil side, sacrifice himself to atone for his ego and hubris, and ultimately work with his rival to save the universe. We get silly moments with him, and serious moments of sadness and regret.

Vegeta also carries the weight of the whole Saiyan culture, which is fascinating and mysterious even hundreds of episodes later. We only ever get glimpses into his early life, when Planet Vegeta was still around and kicking, and that keeps this level of fascination among fans high.

No, You’re Not Crazy

Vegeta’s character has been built up gradually from the first moment he appeared on screen, and his shades-of-grey morals and obsession with power make him a perfect foil for Goku, who has both those tendencies in a different flavor. His development has been slow and rewarding, and even when he’s more of a background character, he’s hard to overlook. His popularity isn’t an accident, and it doesn’t mean his fans are overlooking his murderous past—far from it, in fact. Good for good’s sake is kind of boring, but good that started bad and passed through various stages and hundreds of episodes to come out on the other side? That makes for a compelling character.*

*also why Piccolo and Tien are interesting, though they don’t get as much love or screen time.

[tr4shythoughts]

Alright, so with the actual ending of Dragon Ball Super coming, I wanted to get something like this out there before hand. The show as a whole has many fans split, and I just wanna talk about some of the things that the show did right and did wrong. 5 things to be exact for each. Now, why would I do it now and not wait till the end? Because I’d rather talk about the ending in its own capacity and not let that sway my opinion on the rest of the show yet. So yeah, here’s five things I think Dragon Ball Super did right, and five things I think it did wrong.

NOTE: I’m going to alternate between one good thing and one bad thing, so it’s gonna go every other number. Good? Good.

1. Tournament of Power

If you ask me what the best arc is in Dragon Ball as a whole, I’m going to tell you that it’s the Cell Saga, specifically the Cell Games. But if you’re going to ask me what the most enjoyable arc was, I’m going to tell you right off the bat it’s the Tournament of Power. Bold move having someone say that a Super Arc was more enjoyable than any Z arc. While the Sayian, Frieza and Cell Saga’s might have been some of the most tightly written arcs in the series with some of the most memorable scenes, the Universal Survival Arc has been all about sheer enjoyment and fun of the original Dragon Ball, with a nice mix of the urgency and threats of Z. We’ve gotten character moments up the wazoo, including but not limited to: the best Kamehameha in the series courtesy of Ultra Instinct Goku (which we’ll get more on later), Master Roshi earning the respect of the gods after putting in work, the culmination of Vegeta’s character arc and his beatdown of Toppo, Gohan’s return to the spotlight, the Android’s back in action and much more. Add along the fact that you’ve gotten some great characters from it such as the Universe 6 Saiyans, Jiren and Toppo, Universe 9 and more, and you set the stage for just one of, if not the most fun arc in the Dragon Ball Franchise

1. Recapping the Movies

It’s no secret at this point that Dragon Ball Super went through a lot of development hell. When the show was first conceived, half the crew was working on the One Piece movie Gold at the time, so they were left with little time to make anything unique and special. They had basically no animation team on top of it, so what did they do? They spent the first 27 episodes recapping Battle of Gods and Resurrection F with bad pacing and terrible animation. We all know about the infamous Episode 5 and how bad the F Arc was handled, so I don’t need to go too in depth with that. Basically, these first 27 episodes were a shame, because it was a chance to get this series off on the right foot. It was the first Dragon Ball series in almost 20 years, and they needed to make a splash in order to really get people on board and supporting this series. Sadly, they didn’t do it, and a lot of fans dropped off before Super could even truly get started. If you’re starting from the beginning, my suggestion is watching the two movies I listed first and skipping the first 27 episodes. You’ll be better off for it.

2. The Return of Fan Favorites

I want to bring up first that I’m not a fan of shows bringing back old characters for nostalgic purposes with no reason for them to be involved (despite being super hypocritical and wanting both Raditz and Cell back in some fashion). However, Dragon Ball Super managed to do it right with two different characters. While Frieza’s first go around was a cash grab, his reappearance in the Universal Survival Arc was godly. At first, like most fans, I was very skeptical of this. I didn’t know what else they could possibly do with this character and was really unsure as to why they brought him back again. I felt like they were doing it just to make another quick buck since, you know, Frieza. But, in the Tournament of Power I’m not gonna lie... he’s been my favorite character alongside the next one I’m going to talk about. Whenever he’s on screen, he’s been the most entertaining character in Universe 7. He’s still cunning, he’s still eating shit, and he’s just being a dick, but a lovable one. He’s the Frieza we all know and love, the one from Namek but with a new twist to him. His interactions with Goku and Gohan have been great, and I’m so glad that he’s been a major player in the finale like I predicted. Next we have Android 17, who once again, I was skeptical about after his introduction. The fact that he was on SSJ Blue’s level was a bit ridiculous, but my worries faded in the Tournament. He was easily the MVP with his durability, versatility, and character as a whole. The scene were he interrupts Ribrianne’s transformation is still one of the funniest gags in the show to me. The Tournament really made me love the Androids a lot more, especially 17. To keep this a bit shorter, Roshi, Krillin and Tien also getting good stuff as well was amazing, and finally seeing Gohan back was a treat too. All in all, Super handled it’s reintroduction of character’s really damn well and has me excited to see more of them.

2. The Ending of the Goku Black Arc

The Goku Black Arc as a whole was actually really damn good. While Zamasu and Goku Black might not have had the best of motives for their characters (since their archetypes have been done so much and better in other places), they were threatening, enjoyable and in all honesty felt like real Dragon Ball villains. With great moments sprinkled into the arc as well as the return of Future Trunks, it had the makings of the best arc in Super by far by the time it was wrapping up. That was until the ending... To keep things brief and logical, Merged Zamasu basically wrecked the timeline, so Goku called in Zeno to help them. Seeing this, Zeno destroyed the timeline as a whole and Future Trunks’ world now no longer exists. He lives in the regular timeline now, but far ahead in the future. Basically the arc ended by destroying the thing they were fighting for the whole time, and it came across as unfulfilling and just a bad cop out. It left a sour taste in my mouth as well as a lot of other peoples, and that was furthered by the fact that they simply could’ve had Future Trunks live in their time period right after. Sending him away felt stupid to me in all honesty, and those feelings amplified after seeing the Tournament of Power. The arc itself is still good and fun, but the ending really makes it a disappointing arc as a whole.

3. Goku and Vegeta becoming the teachers

While most people are really split on them, I adore the Universe 6 Saiyans, especially Caulifla. Call it waifu bait or whatever, but she’s great and I’m glad we got her. Some of my favorite interactions with the Universe 6 Saiyans is how they play off of Goku and Vegeta, and how they’ve basically both taken up new students. We started to see it with Vegeta and Cabba in the U6 vs U7 Arc with how Getes managed to get the other young Saiyan Prince to go Super Saiyan, and that carried over to the Tournament of Power with his wish to see Planet Salada and meet Cabba’s father. With Goku and Caulifla, it was exclusively in the ToP, but the two played off of eachother so incredibly. They were two peas in a pod with their love for fighting and growing stronger, so seeing them just get all giddy when they fight was super fun. We probably won’t see too much more of them in the future, but in all honesty I would love more of this. Hopefully we get a Planet Salada Arc in the future should the show return in some way, shape or form. I’d love for a Caulifla vs Goku rematch for fun and just to see them spend more time with eachother.

3. The Goku and Vegeta Show

Does it make sense that Goku and Vegeta are the two main characters at this point and are the main focus of Super? Yes, 100%. Does that mean it’s a good thing? Not so much... See, the Piccolo effect hit the main cast hard in Z once Goku, Vegeta and Gohan could go Super Saiyan, and once Goten and Trunks could do it that got worse. However, the rest of the Z Fighters still had a chance to get in on the fun and carve out some moments for themselves in some capacity. In Super, that’s not the case at all. The rest of the Z Fighters, and even Gohan, were shunned from getting anything major this go around aside from in the ToP, and even then they were outshined by the stronger, more efficient Saiyans, Frieza Clan and Androids. Goku and Vegeta are great and all, but I would’ve liked to have seen more with everyone else, especially as the show felt like it was transitioning back to skill over power.

4. Whis

I wanted to try and avoid brining up just one specific character for one of these, because using a spot to talk about one character instead of what the show does as a whole felt like a cheap cop out. But, the more I thought about it, the more I knew Whis needed that solo spot. The importance of his character cannot be understated, and how he’s presented, written and executed as a whole is fantastic. He’s the perfect teacher for both Goku and Vegeta, and the joy that he gets out of training them is really the best. He’s insightful, smart, funny, and plays off the rest of the cast extremely well. I can’t think of a lot to say about him other than the fact that he’s a real joy who added a ton of new lore to the franchise, and that in itself is awesome if you ask me. I hope in future iterations he plays just as prominent a role as he’s been playing now.

4. Lackluster Antagonists

I use the word “antagonist” here because aside from Frieza and Goku Black/Zamasu, everyone else has really been just an antagonist and not a bad guy. They’re an opponent for our heroes to fight, but not bad. That being said, I want to talk about how they’ve been a bit underwhelming. Jiren’s backstort was weak compared to the buildup to it, however as of late we’ve seen a more charismatic side to him that does improve his character. However, as a whole for the longest time we knew him as the silent strong type who was going to come in and wreck everyone’s shit. That’s not enough, especially when you have a backstory that makes him Jiren Uchiha. The charisma was needed earlier like in the manga, so what we end up getting here is an antagonist that’s just bland and boring in the eyes of many. With Zamasu, I touched on how his archetype was done better elsewhere before, and that’s still true. While the arc itself is enjoyable and I myself like him, he’s still not the best of villains and comes off as really icky at times with his motives. Like, to me at least he  feels like a whiny brat revolting against the world because he’s going through some phase. To top it off, the lack of a proper villain for most of the arcs does really add to that need to have one. Super missed an opportunity to really make one that could’ve been special. I think the closest we got was Goku Black in all honesty.

5. Ultra Instinct

Ultra Instinct is by far in my opinion the best form/mode the series has come out with, and I’m not talking in terms of strength. In terms of appearance, style and just use, it’s hands down the best next to the Kaio Ken. It was foreshadowed almost 80 episodes before it appeared in canon, and its payoff has been godly. We’ve gotten some of the best fights in the series from it, and it does something that no form since the Kaio Ken has done: focused solely on martial arts. While you do get a power boost, that’s not where it’s main focus comes from. It’s all about letting your body move on its own and react naturally to its surroundings, the most martial artsy thing I can think of. It has a cool design (although I prefer it more than the Goku Blanco edition) and just is amazing to watch. It’s by far one of the best Shonen power ups I’ve seen, and that’s pitting it up against Full Cowling and Gon’s Rage

5. It doesn’t feel like Dragon Ball at times

This is probably the hardest thing to explain without completely undermining my point. Dragon Ball Super in itself is very enjoyable if you ask me. It’s not spectacularly written or has the best fights in the series, but it does go back to its roots in a way Z never did, and I think it’s a great blend between what the original and Z did best. That being said, it takes a while to get there. Between the development hell I talked about and the other factors, it just feels like at times it’s missing the thing that makes it feel like Dragon Ball. We’ll never get the original feeling of setting out on the journey with Goku for the first time, or the intense, life or death fights of Z again, but what we need is a series that was handled properly from the get go and gives fans as a whole what makes the series so good. The fights lack at times, and the first three almost four arcs don’t feel very Dragon Ball-esque to me. Aside from a couple of things, it felt like it was trying to emulate it instead of executing its own ideas while retaining what made the other series so great. All in all, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing Super is ending, because now it allows them to start fresh and build off of this series with hopefully a continuation once the movie comes out under the same name or a different one. All I know is if it happens, I’ll be there to support it.

[xb-squaredx]

Dragon Ball Super Fans Deserve Better

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball series is one of the most influential, beloved and important pieces of popular culture ever made. The manga, and the anime that followed, formed the foundation of the modern shonen action show as we know it and inspired countless authors that followed in Toriyama’s footsteps. And after nearly 20 years, Akira Toriyama returned to the Dragon Ball series with a new anime continuation, Dragon Ball Super. Continuing the adventure of Son Goku and his many allies, it’s safe to say that Super is a pretty big deal…but in reality, it’s been nothing but a disappointment.

Right off the bat, I want to say that, taken by itself Dragon Ball Super is not a bad show. People love to harp on its animation and writing, and while there are legitimate flaws found within the show itself, the fact is that many of these issues were also in the original series. The pacing, the endless powerups, deux ex machinas aplenty…they can be found multiple times throughout the series. Those are not something I take particular issues with, but rather…my problem is that Dragon Ball Super, for all of the time that’s passed between the ending of Z, is still having the same problems. It is a continuation that is, quite literally, more of the same. Super feels as if it started airing a week after the finale of Dragon Ball Z, and in some respects I can applaud Toriyama and Toei Animation for being consistent…but with such a large gap in time between the series, the stagnation on display is nothing short of maddening.

“Stagnant” is really the word I would use to describe Dragon Ball Super. It takes no meaningful steps forward, and is content to continue pulling from the same bag of tricks Toriyama pioneered two decades ago. And in those two decades, the manga/anime industry has seen some major steps forward, and at this point, I think it’s fair to expect more out of the genre. As influential as Dragon Ball was, it has been surpassed in many ways by a variety of series. From world building, to writing, to characterization, Dragon Ball has been blown out of the water by the likes of Eiichiro Oda, Masahashi Kishimoto, Tite Kubo, Kohei Horikoshi, ONE, Yoshihiro Togashi and so many more.

Now, to be fair…Toriyama was a pioneer who never really intended to get into action-heavy stories. He’s a comedy writer, first-and-foremost, as the likes of Dr. Slump and his various other one-offs and side-stories can attest to. Dragon Ball started as a parody of Journey to the West, as well. It’s no secret that Toriyama often wrote by the seat of his pants, and really it’s kind of incredible that things often ended with all plot threads tied up neatly in the end. Sure, he forgot Launch existed, and it’s often said that Goku getting blond hair for his Super Saiyan form was to save on inking, but Toriyama and Dragon Ball on the whole gets a LOT of slack because of its pioneer status. It stands to reason that later series would go on to avoid a lot of the mistakes Dragon Ball made because they had a chance to learn from those mistakes. So it’s all the more frustrating to see that Dragon Ball Super hasn’t learned all that much.

All those flaws from before remain; redundant transformations and power ups, glacial pacing, plot holes you can drive a truck through—they’re back and just as annoying. Any hope of flaws being acknowledged and avoided was crushed when the series BEGINS with Goku acquiring another power up. From there, it’s business as usual. Goku is the strongest around until a NEW threat appears, where upon he must then train and become even stronger than before, and all’s well that ends well. Any REAL breaks to the status quo are usually remedied with the Dragon Balls and if THOSE fail, there are new, STRONGER Super Dragon Balls to do that. And then the next arc begins anew and the process repeats. While the Goku Black arc IS an admitted step up from the norm, the story itself is one of the most clichéd fanfic-level scenarios I can think of. I don’t expect Dragon Ball to be Shakespeare, but when something like Naruto or BLEACH is putting more effort into their narratives and characters (well, sometimes), you’re doing something wrong.

But writing was never the series’ strong suit. While I’d love for the writing of the series to be better, if it could deliver on the action I’d overlook it. However, Super is left in the dust by more modern action shows, and I find myself outright bored by a lot of the battles in Super more often than not. A lot of this comes from a lack of stakes or tension. Considering this takes place before the epilogue at the end of the Majin Buu arc of the original series, we can be assured that events aren’t going to directly contradict it. Frieza destroyed the Earth? Well of course Whis is going to undo that. Piccolo died? They don’t even wait for his body to get cold before shouting “We can just bring him back later with the Dragon Balls!” We can be assured that no matter what, Goku will win, or events will bend over backwards to get rid of the danger if he somehow can’t. It helps that he’s pals with SEVERAL deities by now.

For a while now, Dragon Ball confused scale for excitement. The power scaling went out of control years before Dragon Ball finished proper, and after a certain point, it was less about a fighter’s strategy or technique and more about pure force. And then the next fighter had another zero attached to their power level. Fundamentally speaking, just how different was Frieza from Cell or Majin Buu? They all still did the same things: they flew, they punched and kicked, and then shot an energy blast of varying colors. Sure, Frieza can survive in a vacuum, Cell could regenerate and use a variety of skills gained from having fighter’s DNA in him, and Buu could turn you into candy…but now think about how they’re beaten. Pure force. For all their formidable abilities, it’s nothing that can’t be beaten by punching harder than before or shooting off a bigger energy blast. On that same note, what’s so different about Super Saiyan 1, to 2, to 3, aside from looks? They just make the character in question “stronger.” We’re now at the point in Super where Goku is using Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Kaioken X 20, and no that is NOT a joke. With his freshly unveiled (as of the time of writing) “Ultra Instinct” power, these power up amalgams are going to be even worse mouthfuls soon enough. Fights are decided not by tactics or any real skill, but by moving goalposts.

(That’s a lotta goalposts)

Compare this to the ninja trickery regularly employed in Naruto (at the start, anyway) or the various odd Nen techniques in Hunter X Hunter. No two fights are ever solved the same way and legitimate tension is formed when characters have to figure out how to advance past this next obstacle. And with One Piece’s author being a big Toriyama fanboy, it’s especially notable that One Piece is probably the best at learning from Dragon Ball’s mistakes. Luffy’s various Gear techniques are power ups, yes, and are even numbered, but unlike the Super Saiyan forms, there’s not as much of a clear hierarchy. Third Gear IS technically more powerful than Second Gear, but it’s also FAR slower and has nasty recoil, so Luffy has to pick the best form for the current situation. Each form has drawbacks AND strengths, and there’s no point where one technique is eclipsed and replaced by another. Things are constantly kept interesting with each fighter displaying their own unique power, weapons, and fighting styles. But fights don’t even require that to be compelling; as long as there is emotional weight, that can carry you far. Dragon Ball Super could get by just as well with Goku and the current villain of the week punching each other over and over, as long as the fight itself had some kind of emotional hook.

Refer to Naruto and compare the fights between the two main rivals, Naruto and Sasuke. The series spends a LONG time building up the tension and inevitable fight between the two and when the tension is at its peak, the fight explodes off the page (or screen). The fights become more than just fists flying; the fights tell us the stories of the characters and their struggles up until that point. The loneliness Naruto felt in life and the connection he felt with Sasuke is threatened when he breaks from the Leaf Village. The fight is then more than just two rivals trying to come out on top: Naruto wants his friend back, and Sasuke wants so desperately to prove he’s gotten strong enough to avenge his clan, all the while tempted to kill Naruto in order to gain forbidden power. These fights have deeper meaning to each other, in addition to eye-catching art and choreography. The audience engagement is magnified here, and it’s all done without either fighter having the power to destroy multiple planets in one shot.

So far in Super, with the exception of the two movie-adaptations and the Goku Black arc, it’s been a collection of tournament arcs. Sure, there are high stakes in both tournaments, but by and large the fights in these things pit the main cast against a plethora of forgettable, disposable characters that barely get any development, all of course building up to Goku’s fight with his new rival of the month, be it Hit or later Jiren. Most of these fights lack punch, and the rivalries themselves feel rather shallow. Consider when Goku finally fought Frieza. Frieza slaughtered countless planets in his galactic conquest, and just got done killing most of Goku’s friends when he arrives to fight. Vegeta swallows his pride and asks for Goku to defeat Frieza as retribution for exterminating his people, and then Frieza toys with Krillin, Goku’s best friend, before killing him. Just because he can. There’s weight to Goku’s showdown with him. Now compare that to Hit or Jiren. 

(This is the extent of their interaction prior to fighting. Two words.)

People that Goku has no prior contact with before their fight, they exist to give Goku someone to punch. His motivation is to fight them….just to fight, just to become stronger. They aren’t villains, and while losing the tournament has certain consequences, the overall tones of the arcs are still fairly light-hearted and losses don’t feel all that monumental. Tournament arcs are usually considered the highlight of certain shonen series, but here it’s Dragon Ball at its most dull.

Yet again, compare a more recent show. My Hero Academia’s Sports Festival is, after a point, a tournament arc meant to showcase the personalities and powers of not only the main cast, but a variety of secondary characters, some of which go on to be more important later on. The pacing stands out to me especially, with many matches over in an instant. In the anime, one episode is dedicated to showcasing a large amount of fights at once, while the fights that have more weight to them are usually given an entire episode. My Hero Academia knows where focus is most required, and it results in an arc filled with action with very little fluff. The tone is mostly light-hearted, as it IS a school-event after all, but there are still several fights with more emotional stakes behind them. Midoriya and Todoroki’s conflicting ideologies on what it means to be “number one” come to a head in their fight as Midoriya tries to help Todoroki come to terms with his family issues, while Uraraka’s fight with Bakugo is a lesson in how grit and determination doesn’t always win the day. 

It’s an arc wherein there are no inherent stakes, but every victory is still important and every loss is absolutely crushing for the cast. Compare how the losses Uraraka and Yaoyorozu affect them and instill a desire to improve to Tien being knocked out of the Tournament of Power. No one cares. While the Universe Survival Arc DOES have some standout moments to allow certain characters to get a bit more limelight, it’s remarkably unfocused and ultimately it’s all going to come down to Goku vs. Jiren, more likely than not. Whereas My Hero Academia is bold enough to NOT have its main protagonist win the tournament, or even get to the final round, and was a lot more even in its focus of the cast.

That’s not to say that Dragon Ball Super doesn’t have some good moments. I’ve been dancing around it, but the Goku Black arc felt like a step in the right direction. It had better established emotional stakes and spent time developing its main villain, with a climax that felt quite a bit more earned than arcs before or after it. On top of that, there are a number of one-off episodes that are often either hilarious, or heartwarming in their own way. There are some fighters introduced in the tournament arcs that DO make for some interesting fights, and it is clear that Toei Animation IS trying. But with over 111 episodes under its belt at the time of writing, I feel that’s come too little too late. At least for me.

It having so many episodes is a testament to the fact that, despite what I think, there are clearly people out there that like what they see. And I understand that. I grew up on Dragon Ball Z, same as any ‘90s kid. My friends and I would shout “Kamehameha!” at each other in the playground. We’d buy up the games, rent the movies, and practice the Fusion Dance. I’m sure a large portion of Super’s fanbase grew up on Dragon Ball and carry a great deal of nostalgia for it, and in a lot of ways, Super scratches that itch for more. It can make fans “feel like a kid again!” I can understand the idea of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The fear that any sort of “update” or “change” from the original can shatter that which fans held so dear. But with so much time in-between the series, and so many glaring flaws that could be addressed, I’m reminded of a similar revival that happened earlier in 2017.

Samurai Jack was a Cartoon Network original show with plenty of flashy action and stylish animation. It was rather popular for a time, running for four seasons. A show in which Jack traveled the word, helping people, making friends and enemies, all with the goal of defeating the villain Aku and returning to his own time, preventing the bad future Aku had created. It ended before it ever got a true conclusion and for 13 years fans were left wondering what an ending would be like. And then we got it. A ten episode “miniseries” of sorts, this fifth season gave a definitive end to Jack’s tale and I can’t help but compare this miniseries to Super as a whole. For the issues I might have with the final ten episodes of Samurai Jack, I respect it as a series far more than Super. Genndy Tartakovsky and Cartoon Network realized after 13 years, that the series would have to update a few things and step up their game. It could not afford to fall behind all that had happened in that gap in time.

They realized their audience had grown up, and the show matured as well. Not in the “bloody, sexy and vulgar” way, but it did have noticeably darker themes in its narrative. After four seasons of episodic stories, it evolved to have a more serialized structure in order to give us a definitive end. It offered us insight into Jack’s inner struggles, and continued to show us this wonderful fantastical world that had been created. There is value to this show’s continuation. We gain closure, development for Jack, a new protagonist in Ashi, and action and style that keeps the spirit of the original show. I was disappointed by some aspects of it, sure, but I came away happy to have watched it. Happy to have that closure and feeling I had gotten something out of it.

As I look at Dragon Ball Super, I feel remarkably empty about it. I don’t care about Beerus, I don’t care about Goku finding a way to add Kaioken X 20 to Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, and I don’t care about the Tournament of Power. I feel as indifferent to it as I did to the later movies, to GT and the countless video games that came out after the series finally “ended.” While it’s more of a rumor than it is a proven fact, people often say that Toriyama tried to end the series multiple times after a while, and really, Dragon Ball does seem like it could have ended anywhere. The infamous power creep the series underwent assures us that eventually there’s nowhere else to go. Goku started the series fighting goofy carrot monsters and shapeshifting pigs, before fighting the equivalent of Satan with Demon King Piccolo, and then his son after that. Then, after growing up and getting married, it all could have ended….except Raditz showed up. Then Vegeta and Nappa, and then Frieza. Goku could have ended the series in space, defeating the strongest being in the universe and becoming a legendary Super Saiyan in the process. But there were these Androids, you see, and a boy from the future. And then, Goku’s son seemed fit to take over the throne as the world’s strongest by defeating Cell, but we had to have another timeskip to fight Majin Buu and give Goku one last time to shine. The series had plenty of opportunities to end, and for a time it did after the Majin Buu arc. But for it to come back now, it better have a good reason to. It needs to give viewers some kind of value, and I have to ultimately question…what does Super actually give us? Another palette swap for Goku? I think I’ll pass.

Dragon Ball Super can have its moments and really, if you liked the original show, there’s plenty to like here as well. The series feels like it’s resting on the laurels of its legacy, not content to continue to take risks or at least address its flaws. Toriyama can do better than this, Toei animation can do better than this, and ultimately, its fans deserve better than this.

Until next time,

-B

[kaboomcookie]

Unpopular DBZ/GT/S Opinions

•Gohan has always been my favorite character and always will be, and I love the Great Saiyaman. I'm glad he's able to be a dork. •Bulma is not a good wife. She regularly yells at Vegeta, never even tries to understand his feelings, and even embarrasses him. I fail to understand their relationship to any capacity. •Android 18 and Krillin is one of the only couples I can actually stand. Well, Bardock and Gine too, but they're both dead. •I miss Tarble and I sorta hope he comes back. •It sort of pissed me off how easily Trunks and Goten were able to go Super Saiyan. The same goes for Caulifla and Kale, since neither of them even really tried. •Trunks and Mai's relationship is creepy. I don't care that she's in a child's body, she's still in her 40's. It's gross. •I hated Pan and Bulla in GT. They were both spoiled brats and they mouthed off way too much. I really hope that their characters are fixed in whatever series they show up in, because I'd really like to appreciate the two of them. •I am SO GLAD Android 17 is back. I love it. I think that's sick as hell and I hope he stays. •I'm really sick of Frieza, and I hate that they replaced Buu with him in the Tournament of Power. He's not even threatening anymore; just overplayed. •Gine is still my favorite full-blooded female Saiyan. And honestly I like Fasha more than Caulifla or Kale. •I didn't mind Valese. She's not an outstanding character or anything, but she wasn't a rich bitch and I appreciated that. She seemed genuinely curious and nice, and this series could really use more females like that. •I really, really, really don't like Videl. She was rude, selfish, and stalked Gohan for absolutely no good reason, then blackmailed him into teaching her how to fly and acted like a total asshole to his mother. I don't care that she's rich, she was only nice to him when she gained something from him. She didn't even want Saiyaman to save people because it's "her job" and went out of her way to stop him, when all he was doing was helping others. And to top it off, they KNEW she was a bitch, so they just erased her entire character in Super and made her Mother Teresa. I also hated the scene where she found out Cocoa kissed Gohan, because that's such BS. Nobody would just accept it that quickly and move on. She had EVIDENCE that her husband had kissed another woman and she didn't even care. That's not trust, that's denial. Rant over. •I love that there are other characters getting actual development in Super, like Master Roshi and Krillin. I wish there was more for Piccolo, though. •I'm so sick of Goku getting all the forms and all the spotlight. I like Goku but he's really annoying me these days.