I would say that Jojo fights can be pretty clever, but they typically rely on one or more of the characters being very dumb (especially Polnareff in Part 3) in order to reach that clever moment.
And Jojo always knows just what his opponent is going to say.
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!Jo Jo fights *are* intelligent, for the most part. There are ones which slip up (mainly in part 3 when he was first hammering out stands work), definitely, I'm the first to admit that, but if you look at an overall metric it's astonishing how many are really good, especially in the later parts (part 4 and onwards, for example). But this isn't a Jo Jo thread, and I don't want Dragonball to be Jo Jo so much as I want it to do what it does best more.
Now, I don't hate every Dragonball Z fight. There are plenty of them I like - the battle against Vegeta in the Saiyan saga is one of my personal favourites, for example. But look at how many elements from that aren't repeated in other fights.
1. The power levels go *down* as the fight progresses.
The characters get more and more tired, the fight turns into more and more of a slog. Both Goku and Vegeta show off a super form in this fight, but both are forced out of it by the end, because rather than a simple powerup both forms have strengths and weaknesses
2. Numbers matter
Goku is clearly the driving force, especially early in the fight, but after he's brutally injured the other characters step up and do their part. Now, Krillin doesn't get many good moments in the fight, but aside from him it's a pretty even spread of good moments; Goku overpowers the Galick Gun, Yajirobe slices off Vegeta's tail, and Gohan bounces back the Spirit bomb and turns into the Great Ape himself.
3. It's really long but appropriately
The fight is long and hard and appropriately is a slog for all the combatants; but it isn't long as, say, the Freeza fight or the Buu fight feels even though it's longer than the latter. This is because the circumstances keep changing. Even though Vegeta tanks a 4x Kaioken Kamehameha and a Spirit Bomb in succession he doesn't just walk them off he's clearly feeling the damage. It feels like every attack in the battle was a piece in the puzzle to finally beating him. The health of the various characters goes down, and the situation keeps changing. Notably, characters really stop being able to just spam Ki blasts and it turns into a semi slug fest towards the end.
If the fight was told nowadays, I feel like it would end at the Galick Gun shot or maybe the Spirit Bomb but would be just as long because the intervening time would be packed with action that just dragged it out. Plague of Gripes did a pretty good youtube video (called Power Levels are Dumb) where he says, and I agree, that the majority of the DB battles nowadays have become pretty samey, and despite the skyrocketing levels of power they're not visually distinct.. Goku and his opponent will have a go at each other, power tennis will take place, then Goku will hit them with his Kamehameha or Spirit Bomb and that'll be that.
To be more specific, here's a fight I think wasn't that great: the Freeza fight.
Freeza starts out fighting Gohan, Vegeta and Krillin, with Dende acting as backup. Freeza is clearly toying with them, he's in first form and isn't trying. Piccolo arrives, having absorbed Nail, and forces Freeza into his transformation. Freeza then transforms again,and starts toying with Piccolo. Then Vegeta gets Krillin to pull the whole Zenkai trick on him and Dende heals him. Then Freeza goes into his fourth form, kills Dende, and fights Vegeta and whips him like a rented mule. Then Goku gets there, Freeza kills Vegeta and fights Goku, then while fighting him reveals that he's been using less than half his forth form's power this entire time.
So... that entire giant sequence, was absolutely worthless. It was just Freeza toying with everyone for a huge length of time. Like, I suppose that sort of builds him up but there's a difference between "the villain underestimates the hero" and "if the villain had ever gotten bored in the last 8 episodes we'd be finished". Now, I'm not going to say that the rest of them didn't matter - they were basically jobbing, and for Vegeta and Piccolo that actually means something. In the Saiyan saga they did similarly against Nappa. But let's get real, the only thing they do is either die (Vegeta) or buy time for Goku and his spirit bomb (Piccolo with Gohan and Krillin's energy) - which in itself doesn't matter since it seems to less harm Freeza and more just tick him off to the point that he's decided he's actually going to kill people now. There's a difference between holding the villain ball and having two of them for testes. Heck, Nappa actually killed people. He wrecked half the team and he and Vegeta only spared the rest because they wanted a good fight out of Goku. Whenever actual action was on screen it mattered in the Saiyan saga.
edited 1st Dec '17 2:42:02 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"![]()
That’s only Joseph actually. The rest don't predict what their opponents will say.
And even Polnareff can be surprisingly intelligent at times.
Goku's fight smarts mostly come from figuring out his opponents techniques and then no selling them, or just stealing them. He does occasionally use clever tactics but is more likely to brute force his way through because he doesn't need to do anything else.
edited 1st Dec '17 2:26:08 PM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!Some of the others do pretty much predict what their opponents do next, even if they're not as direct about it as Joseph.
But on the topic of Xenoverse 2, when does Imperfect Cell try to absorb Perfect Cell? I'm trying to find a clip on You Tube.
@PMC: Your paltry Cell/Frieza fusions pale in comparison to this guy
.
Or this
?
edited 1st Dec '17 2:59:09 PM by TyeDyeWildebeest
No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!It doesn't beat World Tournament Anus, but I discovered to true origin of Kale.
Who do you call when you want the fighting to stop?
No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!Whoops.
This is what I was trying to link.
edited 1st Dec '17 3:11:29 PM by LordVatek
This song needs more love.They can be, but like I said before they rely too much on doing things that aren't intuitive for the viewer using the series' established mechanics. Admittedly, I have only read as far as Stone Ocean, but it did not stop there (actually, Stone Ocean had a huge chunk of it). Hamon was particularly bad about this, but stands get this as well.
There's a fair amount of New Powers as the Plot Demands inherent to the series.
Also, fights that hinge on one person's stupidity are not intelligent.
edited 1st Dec '17 3:37:24 PM by Saiga
I mean, portraying "intelligence" in fights in rather difficult to do in fiction because it either relies on information the audience doesn't know about or relies on the opposition carrying the Idiot Ball.
Dragon Ball or Jojo are no strangers to this, so I don't know why we're arguing one is more "intellgent" than the other.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
There are plenty of ways to portray intelligence other than those two. Those are just two common fumbles.
The easiest way is to show the character thinking and going through their options, why they went with certain options and how they predicted the best outcome etc. But most fights want that to be a surprise and trying too hard at that can lead to cock ups.
I've only seen the anime but I'd note that fights in Jojo rely on a things that in a lot of other anime and manga would have people constantly complaining, like the characters loudly and arrogantly explaining their powers or having a Captain Exposition narrating everything in case the audience doesn't understand something.
Not to say that I don't still find it enjoyable but those are definitely the kind of things I notice the same people who complain about too much being determined by strength also tend to hate.
edited 1st Dec '17 4:21:24 PM by LSBK

Imperfect cell meets perfect cell, then imperfect tries to absorb perfect.
¡PONLE QUE DIGA!:"¡HUMONGOSAURIO HASTA LA MUERTE!"