Manga/Dragon Ball

I thought universe 6 was considered one of the better parts.

I actually finished my rewatch of the black arc on the weekend (as i mentioned, i missed some middle stuff). The anime's time travel is nonsensical and the pacing was really wonky - the earlier parts of the arc dragged out, and then the subsequent trips were rushed through with solidly bad episodes toward the ending.

It's so short that it is hard to compare it to the TOP in quality, though.

While U6 wasn’t bad there were,parts I really didn’t like.

Piccolo & Buu were utterly wasted & there was too much Vegeta for my taste especially with how they missed out on the concept of a good Frieza just to give the former a consolation prize for Goku kill-stealing him Resurrection F.

Which is why I enjoyed Hit kicking his ass, ya can’t go wrong with a good Vegeta jobbing usually.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 16th 2018 at 10:11:10 AM

Im not saying it was good I just thought that it was fairly common consensus that it was the best part of Super. Mostly because it didn't have as many things that really upset people (beyond shafting Boo, which the TOP was much worse about).

What, if any, part of Super would you say was good, and not in the context of "It's Super"?

Most of the between arc So Lish eps.

Super was weird.

While it was running I was in full "This is silly. There are tons of pacing issues. None of this holds a candle to what I felt it was like when I was young. When's the next episode give it to me NOW."

Something about DBZ just hooks you and doesn't let go. I legitimately enjoyed all the arcs (Although not all the parts of all the arcs holy shit guys how can they just laugh off a universe getting erased, why did you give Jiren the most boring backstory possible) because, well, it's DBZ.

Tournament of Power was hype from start to finish and is easily my favorite though.

I’ll tell ya what we need, we need better writers.

How the biggest anime on the planet got shafted with an utterly problematic story & characters I’ll never know.

It’s like how the Bayformers when it used to be profitable beheld us an utterly piss poor plot & characters (Romeo & Juliet law explanation from Age of Extinction for example) despite literally making a billion dollars at the time.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 17th 2018 at 12:35:15 PM

Yeah can Master Roshi die already.

There are probably a million writers that want to do something awesome with Dragon Ball, but it's in a weird position where the obstacles standing in the way of any individual writer includes...

Toei, who see it as a Merchandise-Driven Cash-Cow Franchise and thus want lots of new forms to make toys of and lots of focus on Goku because he's Goku.

Toriyama, who is a wacky old man that everyone reveres too much to say no too who occasionally has great ideas and occasionally just messes up everyone's plans.

Other writers, who are all working on different episodes based on the same outline that's been hammered out ahead of time but probably have a different take than you.

The fanbase, who just constantly yells at people no matter what anyone does.

And a nightmarishly fast weekly schedule that lead to things like Dyspo not even having a personality ironed out until they cast his voice actor.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Jul 17th 2018 at 3:52:56 PM

Forgot to post this, but Toyotaro released another sketch of his Ultra Instinct Goku◊ at the Jump Carnival. Here's the original black and white version◊.

Regarding the Universe Survival Arc and Buu, I think that part couldn't be helped on Toei (or even Toyotaro's) part

According to Nakamura, the arc's director, Toriyama explicitly formulated the twist of Buu getting replaced by Freeza as a major plot point.

Given that the anime decided to throw him a bone with the Universe 9 pre-matches, followed by that sparring match in his "Slim Buu" look, I'd say the staff used him as much as they could before railroading back into the tease.

Alternatively, Toyotaro cut out the middleman and put Buu straight out of commission to streamline things.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jul 17th 2018 at 3:58:46 PM

Master Roshi's immortal, he can't die.

To be honest, Freeza was one of my favorite parts of the ToP. While I'm not necessarily ecstatic about losing, Buu, I also recognize that they story probably would have done away with him sooner than later to get rid of his power-set.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jul 17th 2018 at 5:08:02 AM

They did fine with Buu. While his fans are understandably ruffled that he got cheated out of the Tournament of Power, he still got as much spotlight as the arc could give him while preserving the Frieza twist.

There better not be anymore Buu twists.

I get not wanting to use him but don’t constantly tease us with something that will never happen.

It’s just mean.

They absolutely did not do fine with Boo. That was an utter joke, deliberately building up his return knowing that they were going to get rid of him for the third time in favour of a far less logical plot development.

There are much better characters to drop for room, and the method of getting rid of Boo was stale the first time it happened. That's just a textbook case of being unwilling or unable to manage the cast.

If they didn't want to use Boo (which is already a really lame idea), they should have come up with a reason for him to retire and stay that way. It'd be piss easy too, just have the characters decide to avoid pulling him into fights in case he gets mad and spawns another Grey Boo (a possibility that Vegeta was distinctly concerned with).

BOOM you're actually complying with continuity to get what you want. Not that hard.

Huh that would have been a good reason actually.

Don’t want Buu to go crazy & possibly generate another Evil Buu since an Evil Buu would most certainly kill someone after all.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 17th 2018 at 2:47:04 AM

Toriyama is as Toriyama does. I think hes not really aware how repetitive and tiring some of his tropes are nowadays.

Oh well, Freeza was entertaining at least even if it came at the expense of Buu again.

As for Super's high points...oh, flaws aside, I'd say the Black arc. It's the only arc to actually build on the world of the gods started by Bo G and I give it points for not being a tournament arc or a retread of a previous villain.

Out of the five super arcs (counting the movies) the best is easily Beerus, followed by Universe 6. (and I would actually consider the first good and the second okay by overall DB standards). The other three are all trash by DB standards, though I'll give Goku Black a pass for being really ambitious which Resurrection 'F' and TOP were not, and if Goku Black had ended in a way that wasn't complete crap it might actually stand as okay as well.

Resurrection 'F' is probably the least good in my eyes, both for having a jump from Super Saiyan God that was really, really unneeded (SSB is by far the least interesting of any of the forms in the series) and for basically being there for lazy fanservice.

TOP suffers from a serious boredom problem. A lot of people point out Jiren as a major problematic factor, but for me he's compounded by how uninteresting the tournament leading up to him is. There are a few good spots (Master Roshi and the Piccolo/Gohan V Namek Brothers, Ultra Instinct Omen) but not enough variety. Honestly trimming down the fighters to five or six a side and making more of the other universes tougher would have been far better.

Compared to that U6 is a tournament arc done right, short enough so that it doesn't drag and with enough variety that it doesn't get stale, and Beerus is a breath of fresh air with his goofy (but still intimidating) personality and how he maintained his place as the strongest member of the cast for so long.

But if there's anything to be gleaned from Super... it's that they should have moved on to a new generation. Goten, Trunks, Pan and Maron (with Dende serving as Mission Control a la King Kai) would be a solid main cast, resembling the old one enough to not be jarring but still distinct enough to not be a retread.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 17th 2018 at 12:19:25 PM

Kind of hard to do so that way, and not just in a 'Super sucks' kind of way, it means you have to ignore macro issues that are present in many scenes to call something legitimately good. With that said...

• Hit's a good character, nice design and abilities (not counting the extra anime ones) that make him memorable. Champa's also a good character to a lesser extent, I like his relationship with Beerus.
• Zamasu is a decent villain (although I think he got too ridiculous later in the arc) and unique by DB standards. His fused form is a really nice design and combines both halves quite well.
• The manga manages to make Blue feel really powerful and gives God further use in helping manage Blue's energy drain, making it feel like both forms had a point.
• Certain fights are pretty good, like Gohan v Lavendar.

I'm struggling to think of more than that to be honest.

I don't think U 6 did the tournament very well. It was a good/fresh set up with the 5 v 5, but immediately reducing it to 5 v Goku/Vegeta was a bad move, as most of their fights were pretty bad. Getting Goku knocked out early was an obvious twist that felt almost obligatory, and for getting four fights none of Vegeta's were any good. He pointlessly stomps Frost, then it's impossible to take Magetta's threat seriously when Vegeta won't even use Super Saiyan 2, his fight with Cabba isn't much of a fight, but it'd have a nice character moment... if it wasn't copied from Goku vs Oob. And then he gets stomped by Hit.

Hit v Goku and Hit's character in general are the better parts of the arc. That's the main thing that puts it above the other Super arcs, that and the fact that it avoided doing some ridiculously stupid stuff that they did.

If we count BOG then that's the best Super entry yet. And that's kind of sad that they haven't done better than that in the past five years.

I've really enjoyed most of Super. Jiren was fairly flat until the final few episodes, which pulled his character out by giving him depth and a character arc. Zamasu is a really interesting villain in his development, and Goku Black is so smoothly cruel. Hit is also really good. Honestly, I can't think of many fights in the Tournament of Power which I disliked, which I guess makes it my favorite arc. It just had so much more than the other two arcs that it also had so much more good. The music also got much better over time. I even liked the recap arcs, when they added new stuff like having Goku adapt to Super Saiyan God over time. This all said, though, Super's far from perfect, and its production schedule means that it can stumble a bit in the storytelling department.

Maybe he was conserving his energy for later fights...?

Okay, maybe that's bullshit, but if you can look past that, I think it was a really interesting and well-choreographed fight. I love Magetta's design and power set, and the part at the beginning with him starting out slow but quickly picking up steam was pretty neat.

This. So much this. That's where I stop, since I've made my feelings on Buu's treatment very clear.

This too. It's very odd for Toriyama to play favourites like this: he's never really cared much about the human characters beyond I'd say Bulma and Krillin, so him suddenly wanting to use Roshi and Tien out of nowhere is rather odd (and none of them were used well, with the manga not even bothering to pretend they were going to be relevant). I've argued against using Trunks and Goten because I don't think they're trustworthy (considering how much they dicked around during the Buu saga even when all their friends and family were dead) but they probably would have fared better than the humans. The reason they weren't used is because plot.

...That is a good one. This would also make him something of a Godzilla Threshold: when a situation is so bad, they are willing to risk throwing Buu (or to be more exact, his candy beam at it in the hopes of taking them out without out powering them.

Yeah, you gotta appreciate Zamasu for having motivations unique to the series (being a (not so) Well-Intentioned Extremist du jour in a series where most characters are just assholes for the sake of being assholes.

I mean, why set up that idea if you aren't even going to use it properly. Listen Toriyama, you can't just subvert for the sake of subverting. More to the point, you need something to subvert first: actually do a thing before you throw it out

....yup.

Pretty much this. There's a whole new potential cast waiting in the wings that Toei and Toriyama refuse to actually use. It's rather disappointing. It's about time he realized there's nothing more he can do with goku and follow through on his original plan to phase him out, but this idea seems foreign to him.

I'll give you that U6 wasn't spectacular and it was too dominated by Goku and Vegeta. Piccolo should have had one of the weaker opponents. I mainly, however, like how it felt more like an old school TB. Each of the opponents had a fairly memorable gimmick, for instance.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 17th 2018 at 1:32:40 PM

The fights themselves weren't very interesting though aside from Hit's. Botamo is a fairly straightforward fight, Frost cheating was fine but then he essentially becomes Freeza lite, Magetta was a cool concept, but it relies on Vegeta holding back more power than needed and outside interference to preserve the drama, and Cabba is just another saiyan.

Given how Super rolled it was most certainly bullshit, because the excuse of "wanting to conserve energy" was thrown around for any inconsistency all the time, even when it made no sense for the character to be doing so.

With Magetta at least, though, it's acknowledged that Vegeta could have ended things sooner, he just wanted to make the fight more challenge. Which is whatever.

Universe 6 arc had some good parts but I enjoyed the Goku Black and Tournament of Power arcs more overall.