Yeah, my stance on Dragon Ball used to be "If you're watching the anime you're doing it wrong." Lately though I've been told Dragon Ball Kai was actually watchable, and I can personally attest that Dragon Ball Super is watchable, but only once you get to episode 28.
So optimally read the manga, if you don't like it you probably won't like anything else. Exposition will still be there, but inaction sequences are much shorter, the manga is fairly fast paced with several outright time skips to get to the next competition or crisis. If you do like that that, then watch Battle Of Gods and Resurrection F, then watch "Super", but make sure to start at episode 28. If you can't read the manga I guess you can substitute the Dragon Ball anime but skip "Z", substitute it with "Kai"...
...but I really wasn't trying to argue the merits of Dragon Ball versus DC comics or whatever movies are based on them, so much as to say why I don't really see anymore than superficial similarities. I get there are reasons why any given fighter from Dragon Ball can dance around on roof tops without collapsing the buildings, reasons that don't exist in Superman stories, but all the same fighters in Dragon Ball generally only level cities deliberately, and it's usually a quick and done deal. Fair comparison or not, they're generally very good about preserving life and property.
Similarly, Dragon Ball fights usually don't look like Superman's, beyond guys being in the air, because the methodology fighter in Dragon Ball use to zip around doesn't exist in Superman stories. By the same token, Dragon Ball doesn't make particularly heavy use of Speed Stripes or Speed Echoes because it doesn't need to. There's more kicking, less head on rams and tackles, because they have multiple ways of achieving momentum, can appear at multiple different angles with little give away and in some cases, teleport. By contrast, Superman doesn't ever have to "gather energy" after exerting it, he will never transform to turn around a fight he's losing or otherwise activate any on command power ups. Sight and sound rather than touch are his primary senses, he'll never be found feeling for his opponent, and doesn't have a nigh universal tracker like "ki" to feel for anyway. Superman also tends to be much less susceptible to broken bones, dislocated joints, bleeding, lost hair and torn clothing than a Dragon Ball fighter, even against opponents stronger than himself.
The point being I couldn't ever picture a Superman fight looking like a Dragon Ball fight because they are fundamentally different works. I know Dragon Ball did become fairly Superman like for two arcs, but Vegeta's insistence on calling Goku "Kakarot" aside, it moved on, and even during those arcs the fights still didn't look like Superman(in fact, those were the arcs where someone other than Piccolo used the "gathering energy" tactic and we were introduced to fighters that could transform at will). Is it because of the way Superman killed Zod? That was fairly odd for the franchise, nothing like the way he killed Zod in the comic. But that alone doesn't convince me.
There were two parts to the argument, one being that in a fight between superpowered combatants the hero should be expected to take the battle to a safe location. That's where the Dragonball Z reference came in, as several times in the series there is a demand to take the fighting away from populated areas. As I said, it only works because of Worthy Opponent reasons and not because it's a viable strategy.
The second part of the argument is whether the hero should be preoccupied with engaging the villain or rescuing the innocents caught in the crossfire. And that is something there is no real precedent for. For a lone police officer dealing with a dangerous individual with civilians nearby their job is to keep them safe until backup arrives. Real life doesn't really account for one person who is the only hope to both defeat the bad guy and protect innocents.
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
...I don't know where this debate even came from, I just mentioned the fighting looked a little bit like something from Dragon Ball. I'm probably the ten millionth person to have even pointed that out in the first place.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Schrodinger's Human
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, Man of Steel (and DCEU in general) is a hot potato of superhero movies. Anything about them will generate a debate.
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
Which is especially weird given the film is, if anything, outright average. Its flaws cancel out its strengths to the point where I can respect the ideas and performances, feel a bit put off by the lesser moments, and just overall walk away thinking "Meh, it was okay I guess". Everyone is so rabid over it, it's quite odd.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
It's in that middle ground where people can think it's a great film or a bad one, depending on how much they liked the ideas and execution. That's the cause of all the debates around it.
Because Men of Steel for good or bad did change some thing superhero do: Super spend a huge chunk wondering what to do, the city are destroy Superman dosent act like hopebring and so own, that is going to cause controversy.
In many ways, Man of Steel and BVS are overshadow by controversy...well, kinda.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
No, that's not why I was arguing that Superman never has and never will be Dragon Ball at all. I thought I made my reasons clear, but to move this stagnant thread forward...
Superhero franchise proposal #2
We begin with a clinical psychologist in debate with a mentally ill but nonetheless accomplished conservationist, who must attend such sessions or similar to avoid more legal responsibility for his actions, on the subject of aliens. The psychologist argues based on inconsistencies in accounts, similar claims from the earliest points in recorded history up to the present day not attributed to aliens and hallucinations that can be produced by sleep paralysis while the conservationist details his trapping, sedating, relocation, treatment and tagging of various species.
The fact is people have been disappearing at slightly higher rates over the last two years, but there have yet to be any meaningful trends found in anyone's data. Furthermore it's only two years removed from war, which was won. Most of the missing are undesirables, criminals, deforestation profiteers, homeless, their absence has not brought down the good mood peace has put most of the nation in. The case of the conservationist's nephew has brought some public attention to the trend but he like most of the others is viewed as hooligan content to cause mayhem while the good boys supported their families while the good men were contributing to victory against foreign aggression. In fact, he is widely blamed for his uncle's poor mental health. More people are glad the nephew is gone or are worrying about what he may be plotting than concerned for his well being and most believe someone just did him in.
But unbeknownst to the general public other wars wage on and one is increasingly coming to their doorstep. The belligerents, while clearly not human, are not so alien in form or in motive. Dissidents backed by rival states seeking to expand their spheres of influence through them, their seemingly impossible means and undetectable channels are what set them apart. The son of a warlord who would be president, believing he has proven his worth to father after a successful ambush, decides he's on a good luck streak and raids a human settlement for specimens to sell on the exotic pet market, or exotic meat market, whoever asks for more tomorrow. On the way back to base his squad is itself ambushed, his catch lost in the struggle...
...the poison is being purged from his system, he is regaining motility, but his awareness isn't catching up quite as quickly. He can see, but only slightly, hear but faintly, almost but not quite smell, his memories a blur, thoughts in his head not his own, he feels okay but not like himself, he tries to visualize through what he can feel but it's all wrong, and so he stands but quite unlike a man. His sense of balance is off, because he hardly needs it. Breathing is awkward, because he doesn't need to inhale so hard. Sight is becoming clearer but more disorienting, his eyes move much more freely than ever before.
He yawns, sleep was terrible, but the voice that comes out isn't his, or rather, it is more than his own. This air, denser than he has ever felt. This ground, oddly damp, firm but soft. It sifts but does not move. Several mineral structures appear to be growing out of it. Why does he think so? More thoughts not his own. A message perhaps? There seems to be a mutual language barrier...
...Venom, similarly after changing the nationality to Angolan, Chilean or Sri Lankan and the ethnicity to Bakongo, Mapuche or Tamil, the nature of the symbiotic alien, removing all links to Spider-man(or The Beyonder, for that matter) and generally making it so In Name Only that the studio or whoever else I have to deal with agrees to call it a name other than Venom.
Yes, this young man is not the shamed reporter Eddie Brock, the private investigator turned criminal Mac Gargan nor the humbled Vietnam veteran Flash but the criminal son of two upstanding citizens murdered along with the rest of his immediate family in a war sparked by greed. A great burden to his uncle, he justifies the grief he causes to his mother's brother and everyone else as justified for letting him down, already hurting him or plotting to hurt him. It's not that he can't feel things like regret, empathy, guilt or the like, it's that he doesn't want to. He's angry at the world and wants to stay that way. It's the only way he knows of fighting off depression. And he'd rather be scorned than depressed.
Now for all he knows he's the sole survivor of his "family" again. The thing in his head, he can tell it knows the feeling. He still can't remember how it got in there, or on here-it seems to permeate through his very being now, but he can remember that other thing on the ceiling, staring down at him while he was unable to move, unable to so much as close his eyes, forced to stare up at its hideous face. How it looked on in indifference as what he can only assume to be its pack lifted up his blanket and assailed him while he willed himself with all he had to move, but remained paralyzed.
That nice bed his uncle had just bought him. He had been planning to sneak out of the house once the man had fallen asleep but it was so comfortable he ended up drifting off. The first good sleep since before the war came, ruined! His hand tightens into a fist! Hand...he doesn't really have them anymore. From his best approximations he's somewhat millipede and somewhat frog. But just then, for a second, something of his familiar self emerged, one of his "extra" limbs shifted to it. The other set of thoughts are equally bemused, it's still figuring out things as well...
...this planet has played host to far more battles in the war than Earth and to a far more extensive degree. Nearly all civilization in this half of the continent is shambles, if not outright ruin. He has a journey to complete, but the road has become much more perilous, with hosts willing to share their strength fewer and further between. But this one, he didn't have much choice. He clearly wasn't adapted to this climate or atmosphere and would have died due to that toxin in his veins ever if he was. But with me he can thrive here, and with this body I can do my job...
And so the first movie continues as the bonded pair brave the dangers of the war zone, as well as the pitfalls and fauna native to the planet, climaxing with a battle in one of the few villages still standing, where belligerents of the faction fighting the one that abducted the conservationist's nephew are experimenting with wormhole technology that will make long distance raiding even easier. The mission is to, at all costs, remove it from their possession. The nephew is bonded to the last saboteur to survive and the two have worked out a deal which involves it sending the nephew back to his homeland before the technology is destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable to the enemy. Due to complications in the final battle, which is almost lost until a sudden attack from the opposing faction, the saboteur ends up sent to Earth before it and the nephew can break their bond.
The second movie would deal with the bonded pair being seen as a terrifying monster to the population at large, and thus having to avoid the authorities who try to shoot them and such. Luckily, the police and wildlife managers are very bad at tracking them and the pair are able to hide long enough for the saboteur to "retract" enough of itself not to be immediately visible and remain hidden in such a manner long enough for them to find it suitable hiding places. People aren't exactly happy to see the nephew back still, and he he's ready to get back to mischief making.
But the saboteur, having known his thoughts for months, won't let him. Not having any immediate way back home, and not much look forward to even if it did, it becomes determined to make the nephew fend off his depression in a more constructive manner. Being a jaded veteran with similar problems who has the advantage of knowing exactly what goes on in the nephew's head, it knows exactly how to go about making him a more productive member of society, excepting of course the parts of this society which it hasn't come to terms with yet. Increasingly the saboteur spends more and more time bonded to the nephew, at first to make sure he stays on a good path but then to go on the hunt.
Not just because Earth food doesn't quite satisfy the alien palette without an Earth born host to help digest it, but because it turns out the populace wasn't just scared of their bonded form in all its fully realized glory because it looked fierce. There are other aliens that have already emerged in the area. Some frightened or scared but more with a deliberate and malevolent purpose that the saboteur is determined to figure out. Unfortunately these aliens are only superficially related to it and as it anticipated, when it does figure out their method of wormhole travel it leads to a part of its home planet it's unfamiliar with. Weighing its options between wandering in unfamiliar territory full of hostiles and risking murder and dissection at the hands of humans it decides to stay with its host for the time being. It believes it has done a good job reforming him and wants to help him reunite with his uncle, who they learned is not only still alive, but was never abducted.
The third movie would start with nephew meeting uncle after the latter was finishing one of his therapy sessions only for uncle and nephew to be whisked away by soldiers. They are lead to secure location where they meet one of the alien belligerents who saved the nephew and saboteur in the first movie's climax.
As it turns out, she's somewhat of a Defector from Decadence who lived a simple life as a zookeeper before war broke out. She is the reason the uncle wasn't abducted and is the one who let the team that took the nephew get ambushed in hopes it would get the warlord's son killed. She wants to go back to her zoo life but not before the idiots running her army and her country are displaced of in favor of the more benevolent political and military leaders they have jailed(and not yet executed, as they can't risk the resulting backlash now that war has breached their own borders).
The soldiers in turn all have their own bonds with symbiotic aliens, and only one of these is the same species as the saboteur. The government and military have had extraterrestrial handling branches for decades, but priority and funding were down due to their own war, the same one that claimed the nephew's parents(current international law deems the use of aliens and or alien technology in human wars as criminal acts to be swiftly punished). While it was building back up the nephew and uncle's part of the country was deemed low priority due to relatively little alien activity but now they not only have the funding to operate in the entire region but to hire the nephew. They want him on the mission to depose of the warlord and his children, hopefully ensuring at least one less group of aliens will be intruding their territory and assailing their citizens.
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
Okay I wasn't arguing that Superman was or was not Dragon Ball, I was saying that the action in Man of Steel was similar to Dragon Ball?
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
People get sidetrack with the comparation over the real point: whatever the destrution in man of steel is cool or not or good example of superhero colateral damage.
What I'd like to see is a story where people with powers are generally accepted and most aren't superheroes or supervillains. Like mutants, except if they weren't persecuted.
Some work regular jobs and just use their powers for fun in their off time. Some have jobs using their powers, which changes economies and societies in many ways. A teleporter can put down a few 100k a year teleporting people to their vacation destinations because people prefer that to a 12-hour flight, and might volunteer in disaster response when there's a natural disaster (like regular people volunteer with the Red Cross). Healers have revolutionized medicine, to the point where many now-common diseases and ailments are rare. A powerful telekinetic can build a whole building, maybe multiple buildings, in the space of a day. Someone who can immediately learn any language is in high demand from anthroplogists seeking to prevent rare languages from becoming extinct. Pyrokinetics are well-paid to control forest fires (and regular fires). Those who can control weather are working with meteorologists to determine when it is safe to shift the course of a hurricane so it fizzles out over the Atlantic rather than hitting the Carribean - they can't stop them all, but they can prevent or mitigate some. People who can communicate with animals are working with wildlife conservationists.
There's widespread debate over whether it's acceptable to use telepaths in the justice system. Inventions from those with technological genius have changed the world. People who want to use their powers to fight crime join the police force and work alongside non-supers. Ironically, supers with strength and invulnerability are seen as having some of the less useful or desirable powers - if you want to lift heavy things, a machine can do that just as well.
There are still tensions. Nations need the equivalent of the SALT talks to agree on not using supers in their militaries, in order to avoid wars becoming much more destructive. There are some supervillains, but they're relatively rare. There's some resentment from normals whose jobs have become obsolete or less valued (e.g., conventional firefighters and doctors have less prestige and pay in a world where pyrokinetics and healers can do their job faster, better, and with less training), in the same way that globalization in the current day or industrialization in the 1800s provoked mixed feelings.
Basically, a world where superpowers aren't deeply connected with vigilantism, where supers make a wide variety of different life choices, and where the socioeconomic effects of their powers are explored rather than going with Reed Richards Is Useless.
A webcomic I like, called Strong Female Protagonist, explores some of this, but the degree to which it can look at wider society is limited by having one main protagonist.
edited 10th Dec '17 4:22:09 PM by Galadriel
I think we should in this discussion not forget who Superman is and what he stands for. I mean, I am the first one who says that heroes need to make an effort to protect innocents. They can fail, but the movie has to show that they tried and had honestly no other option at all. But in the case of Superman, I am not sure if he should be allowed to fail. Yes, I know, it is more realistic when he does, but, well, Superman was created to be an escapist fantasy. If you remove the escapist aspect, aren't you removing what made Superman so popular in the first place?
It's debatable if the escapist fantasy aspect is actually what makes Superman popular. Especially given their have been stories where he fails to protect people and he's been struggling for relevancy against less blatantly escapist characters like Spider-Man. Saying he should never fail is just putting the character in a box.
Furthermore, saying Superman should never fail basically means his actual altruism ends up taking a back seat to writers just constantly gassing him up while throwing everyone else under the bus. See Superman vs the Elite.
edited 11th Dec '17 1:37:48 AM by windleopard
I'd say the problem with Superman began when he started getting written as an inspirational paragon on top of being an escapist character. By design, there's just so many things going in his favor that trying to play him for drama and pathos looks like a caped version of First World Problems. And on the other hand, playing up his happy-go-lucky escapist aspects easily gets him overshadowed by the often more relatable anti-heroes. I've mentioned recently how one way to address this is how Garth Ennis did, having him be completely self-aware about how privileged he ultimately is and how he refrains from passing judgement on others... basically the opposite of the Elite situation.
On the whole, it's very difficult to write a character who's both escapist and inspirational. You have to show their work, the preparations they've made and the experience they've acquired before they one-shot the villain and save the day with ease. As much as I'm not too fond of Batman, that's definitely something he's got going for him. I just wish the same was emphasized regarding the other gadgeteer heroes, like Blue Beetle, Mr. Terrific and Will Magnus.
I once tried to develop a truly egalitarian superhero-style setting - meaning it still allowed for unconventional fights between physically enhanced individuals - where not only are such enhancements commonplace, but they can be acquired through voluntary initiatives, be it cybernetics, super serums, even mystical teachings. Notably, no single organization, let alone a person, is able to gain the upper hand in global politics. The end result was something close to post-cyberpunk, where virtually the only people consistently getting into spectacular fights are dedicated mercenaries, private detectives, soldiers - professionals, in short. People who tend to get into such fights in real life as well. While it served my purposes, what I wonder is if such a framework would actually count as superheroic in the first place. It's close enough to, say, Marvel's main setting, which is basically like reality with more spandex, the mutant matters notwithstanding. Or like the Defenders of the Earth wherein pulp meets cassette futurism. If it does count, maybe that's a concept to build on in the future.
I don't think that the escapist aspect is the problem with Superman. The problem is that many writers struggling to find stories for a character who theoretically could solve every problem easily. They somehow rarely get the idea to confront him with problems which can't be punched into the earth - like human nature, magic and smart schemes. So they basically let Superman dick around for a little bit (or let Lois do it for him), and then suddenly he swoops in and everything is okay again.
I should add something to the statement that maybe Superman shouldn't fail: He shouldn't fail when it comes to protecting people from outside attacks. He can fail when people fails themselves. Because that underlines how important a figure like Superman who inspires us to do better is.
That's the thing with presenting challenges to Superman - either the problem is beyond his power-level, necessitating all but a deus ex machina to resolve, or it's simply outside his competence, rendering his abilities useless. Contrast that with how, say, Spider-Man is well-known for creatively using his actually pretty limited skill-set. It simply takes a lot more effort to plot a challenge for Superman that enables such creativity. And that's not going into how most writers nowadays take for granted that he's gonna win any conventional fight easily, and so rarely bother writing one to begin with. Escapist or dramatic, Superman is first and foremost an action character, so it might be worthwhile to focus on the action aspect of his stories. Have him succeed, but show him having to work at it.
These types of conflicts have been done plenty and he's as likely to win them as anyone where physical force is required. Or fail, if the writers are at all reaslistic. The former solution outcome just means he's even more of an OP mary sue, the latter solution just highlights the futility of the character.
An escapist character by definition is not an inspirational figure because people cannot be inspired by something they can never hope to achieve. For all his flaws, Sherlock Holmes is more inspirational than Superman because theoretically anyone could do what Holmes can if they trained well enough. "Eyes and ears" and all that.
The current Sherlock series in the U.S, Elementary, actually does this pretty well by showing Holmes having successfully trained two detectives, Watson and Kitty, who are, if not his equals, at least close enough in intellect so that you don't end up feeling like Holmes is the only person with more than two brain cells.
edited 11th Dec '17 4:45:38 AM by windleopard
Not in the newer Superman movies. Which is imho part of the reason why they failed.
What's not in the newer Superman movies?
The story of writers who understand that the appealing part about the character is not the ability to punch the world into smithereens but how he uses said power for good while struggling with fitting in between humans.
Especially the "fitting in" part somehow got lost along the way.
Actually they didn't lose it so much as not forget the "struggling" part.
But I think it's best to just agree to disagree lest we dredge up another tired argument.
" If you remove the escapist aspect, aren't you removing what made Superman so popular in the first place?"
I find this weird because it asume that OTHER chararter aren escapist fantasy: from spiderman being everyman(which is why he suffer so much, the moment peter make sucess he cant be everyman and we cant have that, can we?) to Wonder woman, to Tony stark(who not only is allow to fail, his pretty much what he does this days).
Actually something I have note is the versality of batman: fro campy bats in brave and the bold, to superman-lite in nolan trilogy and injustice to the broken mess of BVS, people have enjoy diferent takes, while superman from most part since stuck in hopebringer aspect, everything else con as lessing the chararter.
if we talk about men of steel and BVS I think it focus more on clark falling and how he not worry about saving the world like some kind of messiah, it make him more relatable as a person....but I get that not what people want.
Not that your idea isn't interesting Galadriel, it's just, for the topic of this thread, at least one film in your series would still have to be a superhero film.
It kind of reminds me too, how optimistic I was about future Marvel movies following Ironman II. While the nerds of the Block Buster Buster crowd were talking about how great it was that the comic universe was coming to film my response was "I don't want to see the comic book universe! It's why I stopped reading comics!"(to clarify, Marvel's comics). But then there was that scene with Tony's dad giving his son instructions on how to make a better arc reactor, having no way of knowing his son already had built a better one without daddy's ideas. Other people were making this new arc reactor now, Tony had the the design to make an even better one than anyone had previously imagined! This wasn't going to be like the comic book universe. Ironman is actually going to change the world. A world with cleaner energy fueling very disruptive technologies? Yes, let's see which direction this goes in!
And, uh, what happened? How did they follow up on that? Disney didn't. They've basically made a watered down comics universe. Marvel/Disney's so determined not to follow up that they're already talking about reboots when the actor's contracts are up. If they actually did some world building they wouldn't need to worry about actor contracts, because the new world, unlike any other in live action film right now, could be a selling point in of itself, like Star Trek or something. Oh wait, Paramount somehow ran that seemingly self writing concept into the ground then decided to sell a reboot as something "new", so maybe I should have seen it coming.
Now is a prime time to do something like an Everyone Is a Super world, even if it does go beyond technical constraints of this thread by not being a superhero story. There's an entire audience that's about to realize they've been robbed of a similar concept, if they haven't realized it already. I'd be willing to wager they would take the bait.
Disney is talking about reboots? That is news to me...the only ones talking about reboots are strange fans who expect the infinity stones working as some sort of reset....
Also, anime tend to have Inaction Sequence dialogue to pad out time if they don't want to Overtake The Manga.
edited 19th Nov '17 3:05:09 PM by RAlexa21th
Where there's life, there's hope.