Manga/Dragon Ball

Looking back on it the Saiyan girls were somewhat pointless in the end.

Toonami’s currently in the middle of their fight with Goku & I know despite Goku training them 5ey are gonna get immediately knocked out in the next handful of episodes by him.

It’s weird, they got this hype then took help take out most of Universe 11 at the start but afterwards they don’t do much till fighting Goku & ended up fodder for him to master Ultra Instinct.

It’s weird you expect them to have some achievements after Goku helps them practice & make it a bit far but they don’t. And this is without getting into how extremly isolated their fight is from the whole tournament.

The whole thing is just weird.

Eh. Most of their hype came from being the first female Super Saiyans (which to be fair is a big deal: due to Toriyama's I don't know how to draw female Super Saiyans excuse, finally getting some drew in a lot of people).

But considering they were Toei's idea mainly, it's not a shock they were ultimately irrelevant.

The vast majority of the characters in the ToP were irrelevant. Caulifla and Kale actually got off way better than most of them.

Edited by LordVatek on Jun 3rd 2019 at 3:58:59 PM

Then again, that's how it is in tournaments.

Nobody but the main characters tend to matter.

Especially DB tournaments where I can only recall one instance where two people who weren't either main characters or about to become main characters fought each other (Nam vs Lanfan).

Basically. The whole roster were just there to show how superior Universe 7 was, with 11 providing the only real challenge.

Kale and Caulifa are lucky they were able to push Goku as far as he did before they went out.

That's not true, but I don't have the energy to deal with this pessimistic attitude of yours about this series.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 4:16:38 AM

That there's the problem really.

Most of the characters are built to be in service to U7 the protagonists, not to themselves.

Eh. If it makes you feel better, I'll probably prove myself wrong eventually. I have before.

You can't introduce 60+ characters and expect anything out of most of them with only 30 or so episodes. It was always going to be pure Dragon Ball; lots of flash and hype moments with little else.

Eh, that probably describes the anime a bit more wouldn't you say?

And even then, the Super Anime.

I think the original manga and even the original Z anime were a bit better with that.

Not by much despite what some people argue.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 6:55:22 AM

Dragon Ball was never deep, but something doesn't have to be deep to have more substance than Super.

What Very Melon is saying is that the substance that's there isn't much better than Super.

Completely. Nothing we saw in Super was really out of character for Dragon Ball, most of the fanbase just put the Z anime on a pedestal.

Except Goku

Yeah Vegeta got that.

It’s funny ya think the franchise would undergo something of an evolution or change in the modern age but hey it’s still the same old, same old.

So who do we blame for that?

Toei for wanting to keep things marketable?

Toriyama for not caring to change things in the first place?

HandsomeRob for being awesome?

Nah, that's totally wrong. Super has drifted incredibly far from even the Z anime, let alone the manga.

I can't believe anyone could look at the human episodes and think this is something that could happen in the original series. It's never done anything as on the nose and fanservicey as that. Ditto for a lot of the TOP's highlight episodes like Anilaza or giant Ribrianne.

This isn't saying that Z was great - it was a pretty poor adaptation with horrible pacing - but the fact that it adapted from a complete work from a single writer gives it a much more consistent tone.

Not saying the manga is perfect or deep either. But that consistent 'voice' is a really key difference between the products.

This is why I keep saying they should have gone with one version first, and then let the other one adapt that.

They needed some guidelines to keep everything in line.

Manga first, then the anime comes next, with a few Adaptation Expansion filler (provided they clear it with Toriyama and Toyotarou so they don't contradict themselves later) to cover the points that the manga can't or won't.

But instead, everyone wanted their hands in the cookie jar...or just made their own cookie jar without regard for the first one.

Would it have been perfect? Maybe, and maybe not, but it would have been consistent.

Wasn't there an episode where the human characters beat the Ginyu Force in Z, as well as things like Garlic Jr saga and fake names arcs and the like.

Like it was said, Franchise Original Sin. It's ok to prefer the Z anime and Manga, but a lot of Super's problems originated from them.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 7:30:05 AM

I think of it like this: if OG Dragon Ball is a very lightly filled bathtub, then Super is a rain puddle on a hot day. Acknowledging that the former has more to it than the latter isn't the same thing as putting the former on a pedestal.

And I don't think Dragon Ball really has that issue anyway, it's very much a series that is popular to complain about how its popularity was never deserved in the first place.

No, its not that it's popularity wasn't deserved; I fucking love Dragon Ball. Just that it's an incredibly flawed work despite it's popularity and I feel that merits addressing.

Dragon Ball is no literature masterpiece; where it succeeded was just being a thoroughly entertaining piece of media, like most Shonen around that time.

Or comic books in general.

Why else did superheroes become popular in the first place?

Edited by slimcoder on Jun 3rd 2019 at 5:04:19 AM

I'm not saying it wasn't very flawed. I'm saying that even with that, Super's flaws are both greater in number, and worse.

Obviously a certain level of subjectivity is inherent in discussions like this, but I don't like the implication that "Super is worse than the original" = "the original was a masterpiece".

And part of why I think it's worse is that even on the base, turn your brain off entertainment level, it fails harder more often.

Edited by LSBK on Jun 3rd 2019 at 7:07:31 AM

x5 No, that's a bad comparison. It's not as simple as 'the humans got to do a thing, therefore they're exactly the same' but the way that the Super episodes directly acknowledge the fans perception of the humans and try to defy it.

Moments like the humans beating the Ginyus were bullshit, but they were trying to ape the idea of the weaker characters staying a step behind and being able to beat weaker enemies. It was silly that they'd done this after 6 days of training, but that's an in-universe issue.

Whereas in the TOP, it's not only more ridiculous in in-universe logic (as the power scale has left them even further behind) but they're also trying to push new ideas like saying that their presence is crucial to U 7's success alongside Goku and Vegeta. That's a level of pandering that the Z anime didn't have.

We even have Roshi directly call bullshit on his original character arc for the sake of fanservice.

Also I don't think Franchise Original Sin applies to things that aren't the original.

Edited by Saiga on Jun 3rd 2019 at 10:15:26 PM

I mean, I don't know why he's suddenly going back on using these guys after making it clear they were massively out of their league (which they always have been)?

He had Buu, he had Goten and Trunks (who I still don't trust to be responsible enough but whatever) he could have used Future Trunks etc.

There was definitely some favouritism. I wanted the humans to have some real time to shine, but not in a way that insults the power scale which had been in place for years and thus could not be ignored.

You wanted to give them time to shine (after using them as stepping stones for years) there were better ways to do so.

Hell, even the tournament would have worked if it had been more spread out, instead of having all the strongest dudes and the weakest dudes all in one spot.

But we got what we got.