Yeah. Tournament characters just tend to be fodder. That doesn't seem to have changed.
I'm thinking Toriyama just isn't good at using large amounts of characters, especially in tournaments.
One Strip! One Strip!The classic tournaments were better because everything being one on one made it easier to highlight the non-protagonist opponents in some way. Making this a Battle Royal just exposed Toriyama's inability to deal with an inherently chaotic format, especially one where the arena is small enough to be observable to the stadium audience.
It also has about 50 times the characters of the old tournaments. Usually he'd only be introducing about 3-5 new contestants. Heck, in the 23rd Tenkaiichi Budokai, every character except Piccolo Jr. (our Piccolo <3) is previously established in one way or another.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"...
THAT. FUCKING. SHIP.
Burn. Burn forever.
Hate it so much. Why did you even do that Toriyama? What possibly made you think that was a good idea? Seriously!? What the hell?!
One Strip! One Strip!How old Trunks is is irrelevant.
Physically, they are the same age since they wished themselves back to youth around the time of the Android saga (when Trunks would have just been born), but chronologically, she's older than Bulma, and she still remembers being an adult.
So Trunks / Mai is dumb.
One Strip! One Strip!I'm okay with Future Trunks/Future Mai. They're both adults physically and mentally so it doesn't matter.
The present pairing should indeed burn though.
This song needs more love.You know what they say, Misery Builds Character which apparently also applies to their height as well.
I could see that happening for a small handful of characters (the U6 Saiyans, for one), and I do expect the next arc to be a multiverse adventures arc, but it's doubtful we'll be getting an extensive amount a lot of exploration of the ones featured in the tournament: this arc mainly establishes the multiverse as being full of fodder, and cuts off a lot of what could've been used in arcs by having it flipped through as backstory (if that).
It's like, they dealt with the opportunity for scores of worldbuilding via a vast multiverse by blowing two thirds of it at the same time, and most of the time not in a particularly creative way. It's relatively safe to say that unless they have completely different perspectives on most of these characters hidden in their notes (doubtful) we'll never see most of them again.
We should be looking more to the unexplored universes not featured in the tournament.
edited 10th Dec '17 12:36:16 PM by KnownUnknown
This is true.
They didn't get completely wiped out by Goku and company despite lacking any of the firepower to challenge Goku during his absolute weakest state, and yet, up until Toriyama got on his Frieza bandwagon, they were the only recurring antagonists in the series.
Well, there was Tao and Crane Hermit, but that was just one single time.
One Strip! One Strip!I actually rather like them as supporting characters. My main issue with their use right now is that they can't seem to decide whether they're going to actually be using them for stuff, or just have them be walking gags, and its starting to get really noticeable that they're just... there.
edited 10th Dec '17 12:42:57 PM by KnownUnknown
@Yakuzu Yeah, but that's not related to making them strong/weak enough. Unless you're arguing that they should make people care by making them stronger instead of developing them which is shallow. Also, I wasn't saying that people should care about them, I meant if you can care about the non-Goku/Vegeta cast members then the weaker universes can serve a purpose by dealing with those characters.
The problem is that they are not willing to have episodes where Goku doesn't do stuff.
Anyway, I expect a Planet Sadala arc or mini arc after this. Vegeta and Cabba will have nice master/student bonding moments and Goku will spar will Caulifla a bunch and she'll get Super Saiyan 3 and maybe a villain will show up and cause huge problems, who knows.
edited 10th Dec '17 12:47:26 PM by Moth13

This arc feels, to me, like the establishing arc of the expanded multiverse's characters. Like, once this arc ends and all the universes are wished back, there will be arcs involving all of these fighters in various combinations. Kind of like how Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu were introduced in a tournament arc, and they joined the main cast of characters once it was over.