Eh... at least Piccolo had the *right idea*. He was just a bit overconfident. Think he would have been able to kill 17 eventually? It wasn't manifestly dumb in the way that Krillin and Vegeta's actions were, for instance.
In the manga Tien learns it *only not to use it because his pot got damaged*. In the anime Tien at least tries but Drum shields his master. This same Drum who beats the shit out of Tien in the manga and gives him a ton of trouble in the anime Goku one shots.
edited 19th Dec '17 10:07:50 AM 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?"Honestly, outside of perhaps detriment of Goku's character, I've never gotten why "stall until Goku shows up" is supposed to be bad.
It's still those other characters doing something, and you shouldn't go into a story expecting the side characters to defeat the big villain anyway.
edited 19th Dec '17 10:09:05 AM by LSBK
"Honestly, outside of perhaps detriment of Goku's character, I've never gotten why "stall until Goku shows up" is supposed to be bad."
It's massively, massively formulaic.
"It's still those other characters doing something, and you shouldn't go into a story expecting the side characters to defeat the big villain anyway."
Well, it's not that Goku gets the glory of the final kill and more that the side characters don't do *anything*. Barely any of the arcs have mooks, for instance, and a lot of the ones that do have them be killed by Goku. There's a reason a lot of shonen do Counterpart Combat Coordination. Look at the Ginyu force: the weakest one by far is beaten by Vegeta. The rest are beaten by Goku ... and Vegeta cleans them up.
edited 19th Dec '17 10:15:06 AM 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?"Eh, I don't consider formulaic inherently bad.
I'd agree that stuff could have been spread out better when there were mooks, but I actually like that Dragon Ball got to a point where it stopped doing that. They often just feel like filler to give side-characters things to do, instead of actually mattering. At least with stall tactics against the villain you can say "Hey, if they don't do this Frieza will probably just blow up the planet and kill Goku to/go to Earth, so every second does count."
Against Cell it really wasn't "wait for Goku", Goku happened to be out of commission and they went on trying to stop the villains. They didn't succeed, but Goku being awake really wouldn't have changed that.
edited 19th Dec '17 10:20:17 AM by LSBK
I can kind of answer one of these. Mosco's official bio states that he's a really old model of robot, which is why he can't communicate in anything but beeps and boops. This is also the most backstory we have on any of the Gods of Destruction.
x4
Something being formulaic isn't inherently" bad", but it definitely becomes trite and cliche after awhile. Which could lead to fans becoming bored and losing interest. Not that this is a huge problem with Dragon Ball (since the fights themselves are interesting enough), but it is something to keep in mind...
Saying it's not inherently bad doesn't imply it can't be done badly. I'm off the mind it doesn't really matter if a similar pattern is followed as long as the specific circumstances and plot are different and interesting enough. Similar broad strokes aren't something I get upset about.
edited 19th Dec '17 10:48:15 AM by LSBK
Cell and Nappa might have actually killed the majority of them. But I think the big reason was that Namek made Toriyama realize that with all the animal people on earth he had limited options for alien race designs. And he probably phased them out just in case he wanted to make an alien beastman be a villain later. Or Namek made him forget that beastmen were a thing. Honestly I wish one of the games would give us beast men as an available race, it'd be a way to set your character apart from the rest of the playable cast. Maybe we could even get some expansion on Oolong and Puar by having them be the race mentor.
As corny and silly as Rock the Dragon is, I do appreciate the sort of over-the-top nature it has (and the good choice to go for the movie animation over scenes from the show). This coming from a guy who didn't watch it growing up.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"Yeah I remember that. I also remember not seeing any difference between that and "cut" version as a kid.
But yes, DBZ in America was pure 90's.
This song needs more love.

Actually, Piccolo fighting with 17 (and failing to beat him) allowed Cell to find and absorb them, so only Tien didn't make the situation worse. He didn't help, but he didn't add to the shittyness of it.
Heh. That's very true. Although the Demon King Piccolo arc at least pretended that maybe they could do something, first by having the others go after the balls, then by showing Roshi knew the Mafuuba, and then having Tien learn it.
After a while, the series stopped pretending the other characters could do anything but wait for him to save their asses...and then he stopped being able to actually do that, until he did again.
One Strip! One Strip!