YMMV / What If Raditz Turned Good?

• Adorkable: Raditz in R&R, surprisingly enough. He's like a jolly, energetic Vegeta!
• Awesome Music: R&R has its own original soundtrack, and it's great on its own merits, especially the opening theme "For The Thrill". Listen here.
• Base-Breaking Character: The OC of the fic Ranch. Many like her concept as the daughter of Launch and Raditz and like her for being a strong female child character. Others have accused MasakoX of making her a "Mary Sue" and seemingly giving her preferential treatment over Goten and Trunks. Masako knows of the Mary Sue tropes and makes her fail and/or make mistakes several times throughout the series to lessen her Mary Sue tropes.
  • Masako later revealed that he considered adapting Ranch into the What If Gine Went With Goku to Earth? storyline, but decided against it precisely because he worried that it would look like he was giving his OC preferential treatment.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Dragon Ball Z Abridged, due to having a few common cast members (most notably MasakoX as Goku and LittleKuriboh as Frieza).
• Funny Moments: From R&R especially, see here.
• Heartwarming Moments: If Raditz had turned good, then there's a wide range of moments where Bardock's children really work together and share brotherly love. Moments include Raditz settling down with Launch and having three kids by her, Goku going to Namek to revive Raditz because he can't bear to wait out the full year for the Dragon Balls to become active, Raditz and his family living near Goku and Chi-chi, Goku and Raditz fusing to defeat Super Buu, and Raditz and Goku fusing again to kill Goku Black.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the adaptation of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Masako resolves the issue of Vegeta and Raditz fusing while having different branches of the Super Saiyan "tree" by having Radgeta use SS4 but with a godly aura. Dragon Ball Heroes would produce a similar concept some time later with Super Full Power Saiyan 4 Limit Breaker.
• Older Than They Think: The concept of Raditz turning good and having a daughter with Launch was done before in the fanfic Break Through the Limit.
• The Woobie: Raditz, at first he seems to be tricking everyone that he's on the side of the heroes. However, he makes a selfless sacrifice to protect Gohan, his own nephew he kidnapped a year ago, and Goku ultimately forgives his brother. Then he is shocked by the revelation that in one of the Future Timelines, his alternate version died a Dirty Coward.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Masako reasons that his insertion of his Original Character Ranch, the daughter of Raditz and Launch, would have resulted in Goten and Trunks continuing to take their training seriously going into Super, with the trio all learning Super Saiyan 2. Masako then proceeds to exclude both Goten and Trunks from both the Universe 6 Tournament and the Tournament of Power. Like in canon, many viewers saw this as a missed opportunity to show what Goten and Trunks actually could have been capable of, especially since Krillin and Roshi are still included in the Tournament of Power over them. This was rectified in the offshoot series, Dragon Ball R&R that focuses on Ranch, Goten and Trunks, gives them much more Character Development.
  • Fans of Launch would be disheartened to realize that Launch isn't terribly plot important despite being brought back into the narrative, instead she is used in what seems to be an excuse to have Raditz have a child, as outside of one episode (which focuses on the other mothers as well) doesn't really have a lot of characterization than be the Satellite Character to Raditz and Raunch herself.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A rare recognized and addressed form comes from the "What If Ranch Went to the Past?" series, where Masako expressed regret about wasting so much story potential by having the Future Trunks timeline remain the same as in the anime and decided to go back and Retcon it by introducing Raditz and Ranch from the beginning.
• Wangst: Ranch spends the last couple minutes from episode 2 of R&R and most of Episode 3 whining and hiding in the woods after Gohan didn't say "hi" to her when he was having a video chat with Goten about Goten's new hairstyle.

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