Masako's review of the latest episode is up:
I've been following him since I caught up with DBS a couple months ago, and I gotta say, I really enjoy his recaps/reviews. I especially like it when he uses his Goku voice to paraphrase something Goku said in the episode
Yea, I don't think anybody would have reacted as badly toward Videl's fight if she wasn't a girl, because Men Are Generic, Women Are Special. It's an unfortunate mindset a lot of us grow up with and why we're told how "wrong" it is to hit women, but perfectly fine to hit men. :)
I was more disappointed by what happened to her AFTER than the fight itself.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Goku vs Piccolo was written from Goku's point of view, and he ended up winning the fight anyways. Vegeta vs 18's impact is blunted by Vegeta being a raging asshole who we want to see get flattened like a pancake, and we're expecting some level of brutality from the Androids. Videl vs Spopovich is told from the audience's point of view, of a fight where a much smaller and much more likable member of the cast than Vegeta, is mercilessly beaten down by a much larger opponent with previously unknown character and motives, far past the point where it's clear she has no chance of winning whatsoever. It's not just that she's being tortured, but that she's being tortured so suddenly and unexpectedly, and we get to see the audience's and our main character's reactions of horror.
It's like if General Blue had beaten up Krillin while he was paralyzed for way longer than he did, and it kept cutting back to Bulma's horrified reaction at seeing this child get brutalized, except even worse, because we already knew who Blue was and what he wanted before the fight began.
edited 9th Apr '17 9:19:43 AM by PushoverMediaCritic
So, it's somehow more sadistic when we see the reactions of a bunch of people we don't care about to a brutal fight, but not when we see our main character and his friend's (including his best friend, former mentor, and fiance in present) reactions?
I don't understand why you're going through such lengths to explain this. The fact is, everything you listed is rather superfluous to the whole thing. The Vegeta part makes even less sense because even if he was an asshole at the time, the characters never tried to rationalize that he "deserves" it and every time he's beaten down is met with horrified reactions from the cast. Yea sure, we the audience might not care and think he deserves it, but how we feel and how the characters in-universe feel aren't the same.
So to say that and Goku's beatdowns are somehow less horrifying just feels like you're needlessly downplaying those fights to justify not liking Videl's even more.
edited 9th Apr '17 9:32:16 AM by BlackYakuzu94
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Dismissive or not, he's right.
The only reason people react to Videl's beatdown the way they do is because she's a woman, and that is more sexist than her getting the stuffing kicked out of her by a burly gray man.
edited 9th Apr '17 9:44:34 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariPiccolo beating down Goku at the end of their fight was also a lot shorter than Spopovich beating down Videl, and that's part of the horror of it: that he is actively going out of his way to keep her in the arena to drag out the pummeling as long as possible. Piccolo and 18 rubbed it in a little, but then they stopped and decided to end the fight. Spopovich showed no signs of ever intending to stop, and he had to be reigned in by his own evil teammate.
Yes. The issue is that that fight is entirely pointless. As has been said she bounces back from it quickly and its the flight to Babadis that makes her realize shes can't contribute. So her only fight was just her getting beatdown for absolutely no reason. It could have just skipped to her trying to follow the others and nothing would be lost.
edited 9th Apr '17 10:20:54 AM by Jedi1113
![]()
No. I think it's everyone else who's being accused of sexism for thinking it's worse than any other beating because it's happening to a girl.
That's wasn't my intention. I mean, up until I really sat down and thought about it, I never really thought it was that bad beyond the head twisting part.
Yeah, we've seen other beating like that before (though I saw what Jr. did to Goku after I'd watched Z), but somehow, for me, at least at this point, that one is worse. Maybe because outside of Jr. and Frieza, when a character had that huge an advantage, they eventually stopped screwing around and went for the kill (Jr. wrecking Goku's arms and legs and then getting the finisher ready, and Frieza just shooting out Vegeta's heart).
With Spopovitch, there's zero indication he was ever going to stop on his own. He was gonna torture her for as long as possible... and might not have even let her stop. We saw him stop her from falling out; I've no doubt he would have found a way to keep her from giving up had she actually been willing to do so.
I think it also helps that (barring Goku's insistence on following the rules of the Tournament) those other two fights were battles to the death with the fate of the world at stake. This was just supposed to be a normal tourney match, and then it turns into a massacre. I do think the audience might have been just as horrified if it'd been a male character enduring it (though that might be me being generous, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt here).
edited 9th Apr '17 10:31:31 AM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!

I mean, Nappa was crushing the heroes in both mind and body, Vegeta broke every bone in Goku's body by crushing him slowly, Freeza tortured Vegeta until he was both physically and psychologicaly broken, then made Krilling explode and then got the lower half and one of his arms chopped off, Cell was eating people, then he slowly tortured Gohan and the Z fighters, not to mention reducing 16 to just a head that he later crushed by stepping on, Buu turned Chichi into an egg and crushed her, was also eating people, Piccolo got turned into a statue and broken...
Needless to say, Dragon Ball has always been brutal.
I think the overreaction about Videl's beating says something about the people who overreacted, more than it does the manga...
edited 9th Apr '17 6:50:26 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari