Manga/Dragon Ball

Eh, I don't think I agree - having the Mafuba succeed is too simple. I understand the frustration with having the techniques fail, but it's a little bland to just be like "this technique/macguffin will solve our problem!" and then get to the problem, have it solved as expected, and just have the cast pat themselves on the back and go home.

It's a little annoying because this is the second time the Mafuba has been used for that, but it makes total sense to bring it up and have it be tried. The role isn't for the Mafuba to win, it's to give the heroes something to pin their hopes on so they aren't just going back into combat with no plan whatsoever and looking like dumbasses until some other twist bails them out.

The Mafuba could be made to work if it required a lot of hoops to be jumped through to get it to work - it initially fails for some reason, then there's a twist near the end where they get another, desperate attempt at it. A good example is the Spirit Bomb against Vegeta - it looks like Goku was interrupted and lost his shot at it, but then Kuririn gets to make another attempt, but then Kuririn misses, but Gohan bounces it back and it finally gets to work. It doesn't end the fight, but it severely damages Vegeta and it puts him in a pretty desperate position so Gohan can finish the job (whereas previously, he was just clowning everybody even with the damage he took from Goku's Kamehameha).

Edited by Saiga on Jan 11th 2020 at 11:21:18 PM

Man Goku trapped on Namek thinking he was about to die still gives me chills.

On the Patora fusion thing, couldn't they have just said that Universe 10 Patora earrings work differently than Universe 7 earrings.

That'd be a little contrived, especially when you have Kafla later using U 6 earrings.

Although I think it'd actually be cool if she was a permanent fusion.

I could deal with that. Anything is better than Uh oh! Goku forgot the seals! That didn't just screw them over. It was the beginning of the destruction of that entire universe.

Make them work for it, but don't make it irrelevant.

And now that you bring it up, the way they used the Spirit Bomb in the Vegeta battle is pretty good. I always felt that Goku should have successfully used it on one enemy before it started getting subverted because I feel like Toriyama's problem is he sometimes is so big on doing what his audience won't expect that he fails to at least establish the thing he's subverting first. Look at the destructo disk / Kienzan. We still don't really know it's upper limit (can someone no sell it like Cell does) because we've never seen it actually take someone out. At best, we know it can cut second form Frieza, which is the best it's ever done.

You need to score a few baskets before you start getting bricks, otherwise you look bad.

You could fail to seal Zamasu with the Mafuba the first time, but then do it properly to seal away Wallpaper Zamasu.

But then you gotta find a different target to shoot the Zeno Button Chekhov's Gun at.

Screw that button!

It's a horrible thing....even if I admit they were gonna have to shoot the Zen-O Chekovs Gun eventually. We needed to see what he could do.

when you're so gay for each other you literally fuse.

...wait, no, that's a different show featuring fusions

Edited by EpicBleye on Jan 12th 2020 at 12:57:56 PM

Remember that one time:

Kakarrot called out Freeza's constant slurs against saiya-jins?

You know, Fantastic Racism hits different when it's the main character being the target. Usually it's a side character suffering slurs, maybe one of the secondary characters, and that's well and good to get the audience pissed, but when it's the protagonist, it feels different, more personal.

My the way, the Dragon Ball Super dvd/blu-ray for the final episodes came out in English. If you watched those episodes on Toonami you probably noticed the frame drops in certain scenes, which the home release versions don't have.

Regarding the Fusion debate, I also think that keeping it to the Fusion Dance might have been better in the long run.

In addition to what Saiga said about the time limit, it's easier to justify keeping Fusion out of fights when Toriyama doesn't want to use it. The Fusion Dance has a lot of limitations that the Potara doesn't, which make it more narratively interesting and easier to write around.

It requires prep time. Can't do it if an opponent is right there to gut-punch Vegeta out of the poses. It's easy to imagine a scenario where Goku wants to fuse with Vegeta but Doomslayer the Villaininator is doing too good a job of keeping them apart. They'd need to teleport to a safe location, which itself only works if a) their adversary cannot also teleport like Pure Buu can and b) they aren't confined to an arena like the Tournament of Power.

It has a time limit and a cooldown period. So in a scenario like the Tournament of Power, you could say have Goku and Vegeta fuse to try and clear the arena, but the battle royale rages on for too long and they're forced to unfuse before they can take down the heavy-hitters like Jiren. And then they can't do it again.

The Potara is a more powerful and efficient fusion, but for the purposes of writing, that's actually a point against it. Characters needing to work for their cool moments make those moments more interesting while also justifying why they don't come along more frequently.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 15th 2020 at 8:59:42 AM

Potara also requires you actually have the earrings on hand, though. Even if the heroes are smart enough to bring them to every fight, it's far easier for a villain to crush the earrings and be done with it than to consistently keep the fighters from doing the dance.

Both have their issues, but the potara issue seems easiest to get around because the Kaioshin can seemingly spawn new potara whenever they create clothes.

And Kibito/Kibitoshin can teleport, making it very easy to get them to the heroes.

Not only that, but it seems easier to disrupt the dance than to get one of the earrings and break it.

Yeah. The Earrings were a mistake all in all, because now they have to keep coming up with reasons for them to not use them.

The thing that gets me is the Retcon about how they work (only an hour if one of you isn't a Kaioshin) was unnecessary, since they already had a way to work around the permanency issue (outside of deliberately getting swallowed by Buu): Shin and Kibito defused themselves by making a wish on the Namekian Dragonballs. Vegetto can IT to Namek and get them to separate him back into Vegeta and Goku.

Instead they came up with the not only the time limit, but also the bullshit with oh it also gets used up quicker if you use too much energy, thereby making it functionally worthless...even though Dance Fusion should be the same but will probably have more success in the future.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think the "the timer is shortened if you use too much energy" clause isn't based on strength level, but more based on how much stamina you burn fighting. If it was based on strength level, you'd expect fusion to get progressively quicker every time due to Power Creep, but that's clearly not the case. Looking at the various fusion fights, that situation comes up three times: SS3 Gotenks vs Super Buu, SSB Vegetto vs Zamasu, and Kafla vs Goku (not mentioned, but you can do the math with the time limit the TOP had). I think the difference is that all three were fighting opponents close to their own power level, which caused them to burn through stamina quickly. Additionally, Gotenks was using SS3, a gas guzzler of a form, and Kafla had just burned through all of her energy at once in a desperation move.

In contrast, Gogeta didn't have this problem because he curbstomped Broly, once he went SSB, Broly couldn't even land a single hit.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 15th 2020 at 4:35:21 AM

So unnoun had a great idea.

What if

Dragon Ball was Toriyama's "The Producers"? A tax scheme. He was already a millionaire from Doctor Slump. He wanted to retire but his editor said he could only stop writing Doctor Slump, which was still incredibly popular, if he had a new story soon. So he puts together Dragon Ball slapdash real quick, something parodying Journey to the West. It'll end in maybe a year and then he'll be done, he'll never have to write manga again.

And then it's ten and a half years later and he's still writing Dragon Ball and he's got lobster claws where hands used to be.

It'd be funny, but he kept doing new stuff to make Dragonball successful as I understand.

Swapping out characters, switching from comedy to action, etc, etc.

....does he use those Lobster claws to crush the heads of his enemies? Cause if so, I'm down for that.

Yeah he originally wrote the second arc as a tournament to boost the popularity of the manga so he'd been putting effort in from the start

....which is impressive from him considering the numerous claims of laziness.

I still find it hilarious that Toriyama's half-assing it is worth twice as much as most dude's full effort.

The man is something else.

Action is lazier than Adventure?

Hell if I know. Guy calls himself a lazy bum...or called himself one.

I mean, we've read the stories on this very wiki about some of his corner cutting efforts. But it worked for him, and depending on where you stand it probably still works.

Mystic Water.

Super God Water.

Since Kakarot is coming out & it's another Z adaptation I wonder what its like for the VA's of all languages to record the same lines over & over again.

I mean seriously folks like Nozawa & Schemmel have been doing this well over several decades & they've had to do these numerous video-game adaptations of Z that reuses the same dialogue over & over again.

Sabat: "Ok Sean, it's that time again"

Sean: "Super Saiyan 3?"

Sabat: "Super Saiyan 3"