Goku carries the curse of protagonism in a serie in which, hilariously, he is not the real protagonist in past a certain point.
Yeah. DBZ?
It was about Gohan. It was always about Gohan.
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariMy reading of Chi-Chi was that she had this really idealistic view of marriage and family. SHE never had a normal family, so she wanted Gohan to grow up as normal as possible. And then she slowly realised that that was impossible.
The *Legendary* Super Saiyan is motivated by a crying infant! He is a literal giant f***ing baby!Yeah, it was about Gohan until the Buu Saga. At which point it was about...basically nothing.
Seriously, try to think of underlying message of the Buu Saga. There really isn't one. Well, besides "Without Goku, everyone fails."
Even GT realised this, and tried to make Pan take up the spot of Audience Surrogate. And then they decided to forget about that when SSJ 4 was created.
The *Legendary* Super Saiyan is motivated by a crying infant! He is a literal giant f***ing baby!Actually, those drawings are the exact same. It's not the form, it's the way he's drawn.
While the God Form made Goku pretty thin, what little I saw of the new one didn't seem to have that effect on him.
It seems that whoever drew that one forgot that Vegeta, despite being short (comparatively anyway), is incredibly well muscled, enough to be considered to be huge for a human being (though not in the DBZ universe, where height ranges from 'Krillin' to 'Super Huge Badguy Mook'.
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariActually, look closer at the profile/side pics of both Base Vegeta and SSJGSS Vegeta.
It's not noticeable in the first two pics of each reference, but if you were to put both side pics of Vegeta next to each other with the correct proportions, you'd see that SSJGSS Vegeta is noticeably taller and lankier.
Seriously, it's kinda weird looking.
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edited 4th May '15 1:02:27 AM by Rinsankajugin
I think that Goku's fight with Piccolo might've influenced Chichi's protectiveness. Her fiance got a hole through his frickin' shoulder and continued to be attacked while he was down.
The one responsible for that then kidnapped her son for training.
Edit: I don't think 18 can charge energy attacks indefinitely. Infinite capacity doesn't necessitate infinite output. And I'd rather not reveal she had a gamebreaker ability all along and was too stupid to use it.
edited 4th May '15 1:49:49 AM by Saiga
Isn't Chi-Chi behaving like an exaggerated version of a "Tiger Mom"? Like many other characters, it's a stereotype (remember when she was accepting of Videl the moment she mentioned she was rich?). The fact that she goes "studying is more important than saving the world" makes her look short-sighted, though, even though there are now more people understanding her viewpoint.
And yeah, I'm also in the camp that likes Dragon Ball for the character interactions. Sure, there's much fighting, but there's a genuine sense of camaraderie and friendship with those characters. Heck, people might say that C-18 became irrelevant, but I say that blackmailing Hercule makes her the true winner of that tournament, and one of my favourite moments in the series. And it came from throwing a fight.
I just wish Toei would've realised this when writing GT. Uub and Pan deserved to be better written than they were.
I don't think I like that stereotype.
I mean. It's not quite in her DB characterization. Her character could have gone differently.
I wonder if Bulma could give 18 upgrades.
Maybe give her a built-in time travel function. And cappuccino maker. And a stronger power generator, whatever.
I like to imagine Skot breaking down and crying upon the discovery of a timeline where Bulma made a bunch of time machines.
edited 4th May '15 5:33:01 AM by unnoun
Imma steal unnoun's thing.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!Thanks, because I haven't been on that website for ages. I might check it out.
I definitely agree with this post. At first, I didn't like Chi-Chi because she was annoying, but I never had a problem with her freaking out over Gohan fighting against monsters like Frieza, Cell, and Buu.
I do agree with the criticism Chi-Chi gets for her Skewed Priorities. However, there are other fans who dislike her for actually trying to be a good parent, and even when Chi-Chi is right to be protective, fans still see it as a problem. Also, people do exaggerate how selfish Chi-Chi is. While she can be selfish, Chi-Chi was never selfish to the point of causing any Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! moments in the show.
I think one movie actually gave her more focus. That movie was boring, but 18 stole the show for me. Android 18 is my favorite female character, hands down, but I wish there was another special that gave 18 more focus. I enjoyed 18's interactions with other characters.
edited 4th May '15 6:48:47 AM by MsCC93
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To me they're extremely different. I'm not saying 18 would run out of energy trying to do that, I'm saying she couldn't just hold onto an attack indefinitely while it charges to whatever power she wants. We don't see energy attacks working like that, such as people putting everything they can into an attack without using up all their stamina. There's an upper limit on how much you can put into a single technique, and ki control is probably what determines that.
Even if 18 could put an infinite amount of energy into an attack...
What's the guarantee that she can control it?
Remember, 18 is not a martial artist who's been training all of her life to be able to handle that. She was just some punk kid that Gero gave power to.
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariI think that's symptomatic of the same problem that results in dismissing Bulma's contributions and complaining that everyone became "irrelevant": the Dragon Ball fandom is very much a shonen fandom, where anything beyond being the best fighter there ever was is devoid of value.
Chi-Chi wanted her son to grow up to be a well-adjusted and functioning member of society rather than a jobless obsessive hobbyist like Goku and nearly everyone in his social group. That's inconceivable by Saiyan standards, but it's good human parenting. However, because this is a shonen series, it has a fanbase whose priorities are as skewed as its protagonists.
- GOKU: Chi-Chi won't let him train. She wants him to be a, what do you call it...
- KRILLIN: A responsible and productive member of society?
- GOKU: Yeah, LAME, that's it!
That's my take on her too. Chi-Chi is not without her own issues, and a large part of it is that she's overly concerned with having her idealistic fairy tale of a husband and children and white picket fence to the extent of not caring overmuch who it's with. She marries Goku based entirely on the fact that he molested her once six years ago and she thinks that means True Love; there but for the grace of God and a chronic fear of women, she might have been Yamcha's wife.
Chi-Chi has had an unhealthy fixation on getting married and having the perfect family from an early age, and it should be no surprise that she grew up to be increasingly frustrated with the substantial differences between her idyllic dream family and reality.
It was always about Gohan
It was never about Gohan.
It's hard to say Dragon Ball was ever about anything, given Toriyama's tendency to write by the seat of his pants. The Cell Saga was the culmination of a long-running subplot about Gohan's Hidden Power, but saying it was about Gohan before that is a stretch.
The Saiyan Saga was about Goku. Gohan and Piccolo had a great subplot together, but the plot came for Goku, revolved around Goku, and resolved through Goku. Raditz was here for Goku. Vegeta and Nappa were here for the Dragon Balls, which Piccolo had spilled the existence of because they were going to revive Goku. Goku trained in the afterlife to gain the power to defeat Vegeta and Nappa, and even after Krillin and Gohan had to pick up the slack from him, it was Goku's Genki-Dama that Krillin used, and Goku's idea for Gohan to become the Oozaru - which Goku guided.
The Namek arc was about Vegeta. Vegeta brought this entire plot to our doorstep. He told the protagonists about Namek. He accidentally revealed the Dragon Balls to Frieza during his fight on Earth. The villain was Vegeta's greatest adversary, and while Gohan and Krillin were present for most of it, the conflict revolved around Vegeta vs. Frieza's Forces up until Goku arrived to take over - and even then, Goku was more "the muscle", finishing what Vegeta couldn't, than someone with any actual investment in this story.
Gohan, and Krillin stumbled into the conflict between Vegeta and Frieza and had to pick a side for survival, while Goku just picked up the Saiyan Pride torch where Vegeta dropped it - at one point even asking Vegeta's corpse to lend him some of his Saiyan Pride. Because this is HIS fight. Goku's just finishing it.
Gohan was a long-running subplot, but the story was only ever about him in the Cell arc, when Toriyama decided to have him become the new Goku - a decision he later recanted. Saying the post-Raditz series was always about Gohan is ascribing more long-term planning to the series than Toriyama typically does.
edited 4th May '15 8:43:35 AM by TobiasDrake
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Maybe she thought settling down with Goku was an opportunity for them to have calmer, less full-of-life-threatenng-events lives.
Sadly, Goku carries the Curse of Protagonism. A mark which has followed him to his grave. And back. Twice.
I have a message from another time...