Manga/Dragon Ball

The spoilers weren't 100% on the mark, though.

They claimed Kale bopped Goku and Freeza, but she kind of ignores them (though she does nearly ring out Toppo and Vegeta).

I will say there's one panel from it that appeals to me a lot, it's Kefla's "u mad bro" pose. Lot of character in that shot.

I did enjoy Magetta's function as a hype stick in this chapter. "Holy crap! Kale lifted him with one hand! He's supposed to be so heavy even Vegeta couldn't budge him!".

Also Kale is the Legendary Super Saiyan confirmed.

Yeah Kefla was great in this chapter. Loved her smack talking the Pride Troopers.

Edited by Moth13 on Jul 21st 2018 at 10:34:55 AM

I wonder if the explanation of the fusion is that Caulifla's presence weakens Kale a bit but it's still an overall improvement because now there's a rational mind in the equation.

Granted, Vegeta only tried lifting Magetta in Super Saiyan 1.

I honestly don't mind Kale just wrecking most of the other universes instantly. If Super followed the usual rules and logic of Dragon Ball at all, that's how it should have gone down. The GoD-tier fighters take everyone else out in an instant since they're not even good enough to be called cannon fodder so that the big boys can play.

There are a couple of ways around that but the anime did exactly none of them and the manga doesn't really care enough to make the attempt so it just pushes out the door which is fine by me. I'd rather have wasted characters than long, drawn out, boring fights focusing on characters I don't care about that make absolutely no goddamn sense.

I do agree that the anime went about how it used the characters in a bad way. it's far too late in the series to pretend that certain characters can stand toe to toe with others. I think we've heard some theories about how they could have set things up so that weaker characters could fight guys at their level while the big boys do their own thing, but that's not what they did.

If they wanted to show off everyone, then a bigger playing field was probably needed. It's not like they wouldn't have come up with a way to see them anyway. Plus, it's a waste of all these cool designs.

I do think that out of all the characters that went down, the only ones I really miss are the two nameks and that's because their fight was one of the few high points of the tournament.

That does happen a lot doesn't it. Although for Saiga I've gotten impression the Super manga is "good" and more "Pushover's complaints are unreasonable" and for Pushover a lot of it is "People loved tearing apart the anime, so I have to do the same to the manga as defense mechanism."

Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2018 at 10:48:30 AM

No, I just really think the manga sucks, and that it's an embarrassment to the anime at this point. I thought last chapter was pretty good, and I was excited to see more, but this chapter was just painful.

I have to definitely disagree about the manga being an embarrassment to the anime. I think its flawed but its handled some stuff better than the anime for sure

And then every month you come in and accuse PMC of being insincere with his complaints. Is it really so hard to believe someone could genuinely dislike the choices being made? If you disagree you can do it without doing this weird passive aggressive thing.

Edited by Moth13 on Jul 21st 2018 at 11:50:16 AM

I didn't say he was being insincere, I said it was a defense mechanism, a thing most people do with at least some things.

Put another way: Saiga could often be overly negative about the anime. Pushover is often overly positive about the anime, and overly negative about the manga.

And I'm sorry, but I can't take complaints of passive aggression seriously coming from you.

Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2018 at 10:53:29 AM

What if they came from me? Nobody is passive aggressive like Handsome Rob!

Just trying to make a joke to lighten the mood... a potentially accurate joke, but still.

We should ultimately agree that both the anime and the manga suck.

And I don't really have a dog in the fight of "Super anime vs. Super manga" because I've already gotten my complaints about the anime out for the most part, and the manga doesn't seem different or interesting enough to bother reading.

Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2018 at 10:59:39 AM

It's not a defense mechanism. It's just my opinion. I don't do or say anything with ulterior motives, it's just not how I communicate. When I think the manga does something worse than the anime, I point it out and very plainly say that the anime handled it better. On the other hand, I have a lot of complaints about the manga that are entirely unrelated to the anime's interpretation, and it's just things that I think are poorly done or sloppily written.

Plainly put, I think the Dragon Ball Super manga is one of the worst mangas I've read in years, while the Dragon Ball Super anime is a good product with moments of greatness. The anime could certainly be better, but the manga really needs to be better.

If you have complaints about my past behavior I'd prefer you'd take it to PMs instead of constantly taking jabs at me in threads.

Edited by Moth13 on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:06:42 PM

Anyway, I feel like Kale wrecking a bunch of people makes more sense than what happened in the anime, where it seemed like she'd do that and just didn't.

I might be misremembering but weren't people upset that she didn't end up eliminating a lot of people (or rather, first they were pissed off when the spoilers made it sound like she would, then annoyed when she didn't)?

Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2018 at 11:09:41 AM

There's just no getting around that Toyotaro's approach to the To P is like rearranging the furniture in a room when the roof is on FIRE. The narrative of the To P had serious structural issues from the beginning, mainly that there was no narrative at all. The anime could cover for the lack of story with pure spectacle, but only a truly outstanding artist can pull that off in a manga. And Toyotaro is not that artist. This debate about how the fodder should have been eliminated is missing the point. There should be no fodder. Period. Almost every character who appeared should have contributed to the plot in some way besides filling up time.

If Toyotaro truly wanted to improve the To P, he should have argued for a complete restructuring of the plot or to reduce the number of characters. What the manga is doing right now is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Well, that's because Jiren put a stop to her pretty quickly and then she later gained control.

Here, they waste less time and jump to Kefla right away.

I gotta say, I do like that the Pride Troopers were doing so much better here, using team work to manage her.

With the anime, despite ironically promoting team work, Kale's sheer berserker power was all that mattered. Here, because she lacks control they figure her out pretty quick and use strategy to keep her in check.

This would either indicate that either her power level isn't that much higher than theirs, or that her technique is just that bad in her berserker state.

I don't think you can have a tournament arc entirely without fodder, but yeah, basically the problem is that the actual individual encounters aren't interesting.

I was talking to a guy on discord about it and he brought up that the common complaint about Jiren - that he is clearly the most powerful guy and so everything else is a waste of time - is true of basically any tournament arc. Master Roshi was clearly the man to beat in 21,ditto for Tien in 22, and ditto again for Piccolo Jr. in 23.

But the difference between those (aside from each being basically half as long at most as the TOP) is that the individual encounters tended to have some spice, either a joke or a character moment or a gimmick. But not for the TOP, really, aside from some half-assed attempts at special powers that tended to not be super entertaining.

They just introduced too many characters to develop any of them.

From the looks of it whichever one has her attention focuses solely on dodging and the rest attack her. She struggles to maintain a proper attack in that state and they slowly wear her down. You couldn't pull that on most people in DB but it works on a berserker.

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 21st 2018 at 4:16:02 PM

How is the manga doing with making it seem like stuff is still going on other places besides what's currently in focus? Because the anime was pretty terrible about that.

Calling the Super manga "one of the worst manga ever" feels like such an exaggerated hyperbole that I actually have to wonder if you've read a lot of manga to begin with. Because phew.

And yea yea, opinions and all that jazz, but you can question somebody's opinion if you feel its not really logically sound, and I feel that particular complaint isn't really logically sound lol.

I do not read much manga, which is why I specifically called it "one of the worst I've read in years", which is true. Of the manga I have read in recent years, the Dragon Ball Super manga is one of the worst. You can call it an Overly Narrow Superlative if you want, but I try not to read bad manga, and I'm just reading this partially out of obligation and partially out of hope that it'll get better.

The side characters brought me fun battles in the anime more often than not. I struggle to think of a single really good fight in this arc in the manga. Maybe... Freeza vs Caulifla and Kale. Yeah, the one chapter this arc I have really enjoyed also probably had the best fight, for me.

• shrug*

I still maintain those Anime fights weren't that special aside from a select few, but obviously somebody is bound to feel differently. So...meh.

Having read the chapter itself though, yea the choreography is pretty boring. Kale simply dropping people out so casually isn't very dynamic, she should have literally be ragdolling and tossing people out left and right. It's also rather obvious Toyotaro is rushing through so he can start adapting the new Broly movie. And like I said, this chapter just reinforced how pointless this whole 80 man battle royal was. Four universes gone without any real gravitas to it.

I did like how her power actually has a bit of a drawback though, and I feel like that's going to come into play when Kefla fights Gohan.

Yeah. It usually only the heroes who suffer huge drawbacks for their techniques or powers.