Those tropes have got a pretty hard ceiling on "the creator died and now it's sad" for a reason. I understand where it comes from, but I don't think it's a good fit here.
Regarding Fan Myopia:
The thing about DBZA's portrayals of characters is that everything they use is, to some extent or another, present in the original series. Characters are exaggerated and flanderized for comedic effect, but it's always traits they originally had that are being flanderized. In particular, the "official" characterization the entry listed for Goku is pretty much an invention of the English dub, where Sean Schemmel's performance goes for much more of a Superman vibe than Nozawa and TFS' "idiot who likes eating and punching and cares for little else" vibe.
To absolutely prove this, you just have to look at Super, which at times feels like it might as well have the TFS crew writing it- it flanderizes the exact same things, almost exactly as much, just not for deliberate parodic effect.
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Nappa isn't a moron, Popo isn't a rapist, Guru isn't a genocidal maniac. The movie villains suffer an exaggeration based on meta-text rather than their original incarnation (Sans Garlick Jr)
Other than that, yeah, you're right.
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
Would the way they handled Goku's perma-death be listed as either Heartwarming in Hindsight or as Harsher in Hindsight after Akira Toriyama's death? I'd argue the healthy approach to grief and understanding of things having to end would place it in the former camp, but if it's too soon then I'm not gonna push the issue.
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