Well it does kind of make sense... I mean if Goku had all that potential.
Someone pointed out once that Goku is a mutant, far exceeding what the average Saiyan is capable of. So theoretically shouldn't Raditz be just as capable, having come from the same loins?
And the disrespect for Raditz never sat well with me because his introduction to the series was No-Selling an attack from Piccolo, and manhandling two of the Earth's strongest fighters simultaneously.
-twirls mustache-
Well Super Saiyan is clearly a Y chromosome. Besides what good is a transformation sequence if we can't see bulging nipples and a six pack? Note Vegeta failed to lose his shirt and only killed a single opponent before getting his arm broken. Goku didn't lose his shirt against Cell or Majin Buu, or Beerus, and look at how those fights turned out.
Meanwhile Goku and Gohan lost their shirts and immediately wrecked their opponents. And then look at Beerus. Nudity really does make you stronger in Dragonball.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:02:07 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!I love how SSJ 3 Raditz is exactly how I'd imagine him to be. That's great.
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Its not like I can't understand why somebody would prefer how Trunks was handled in his previous arc, but I do disagree that his use in this one is a step-backwards; its very poorly handled, but the idea behind it isn't inherently flawed.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:03:06 AM by BlackYakuzu94
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Except Goku's not a mutant. He's well trained, spiritually and physically(mentally he's lacking a little), has a good work ethic and happened to unlock two super modes that hadn't been used in a thousand years. He's not the first super saiyan or super saiyan god, just the first one in a long time. And someone else with saiyan blood always ends up catching up to him, so yeah, he's getting there faster but nothing he does is exclusive to him.
Raditz was a poorly trained coward who thought he was a well oiled killing machine. That's always a bad combination. He just had a higher power level because he lived on higher gravity worlds.
Buldogue's lawyerRaditz is rather funny because he probably should have been far more important then he ended up being.
He's the brother of the main character. That's a huge thing. And he drops a huge reveal about Goku's heritage that the latter didn't even know about.
And what happens? He's killed within few chapters of his arrival and never shows up again. He's a footnote. And this is in spite of the fact that he also completely flattened the two strongest warriors on Earth at the time (one of whom is his aforementioned brother) and was only beaten by a complete Deus ex Machina named Son Gohan.
Raditz is hilarious in how irrelevant he is. He didn't even need to be Goku's brother, because it made no difference.
One Strip! One Strip!Honestly, I like Raditz because he's not a big deal. In pretty much any other shounen series, the protag's brother would be a super important character who's often antagonist towards the protag throughout most, if not all, of the series.
Then you have Dragon Ball where the exact opposite is true. He shows up, he drops some bombshells, he sets up Vegeta and Nappa, then he dies forever. I love it.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!Well, that's Toriyama.
He probably killed Raditz like that because of exactly what you said. Raditz is the kind of character who would normally be important.
One Strip! One Strip!![]()
Ya know, while that's fine reasoning, I don't really agree with the notion about Dragon Ball of "Subverting expectations = Better writing". Like, something subverting the norm doesn't automatically equate to being good.
In any case, I don't really have much of an opinion on Raditz; he's the embodiment of a Starter Villain and only there to setup Vegeta and Nappa and preview what they're gonna face. Honestly, him being Goku's brother is so superfluous that it's easy to forget that Goku even had a brother to begin with.
Even everything with Bardock focuses more on him and Goku than Raditz lol.
edited 16th Nov '16 9:42:56 AM by BlackYakuzu94
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.You know I never realized how weird it is seeing Raditz without a scouter.
This song needs more love.I like how even as a Super Saiyan 3 Raditz would still be weaker than first form Namek arc Frieza.
His character has regressed in terms of writing quality, is what I think Saiga and Schlugo mean. It's not hard to see why, given that Trunks in the Android Arc was introduced as a Mary Sue (and mind you, these tropes weren't that prevalent back then, so he really wasn't), but then spent the rest of the arc being an anti-Sue, failing at every turn, despite putting in his best effort. And that reinforces why he came to the past for help: he really couldn't save the future on his own. This time he comes back, but then it turned out he had everything to beat Zamas and Black already. This arc turned Trunks into Sasuke.
I used to like Bardock for the same reason. Now it's really hard to reconcile his character. I try to think of him just as the character from the original Bardock special, but with the video games, Super Saiyan Bardock special and Dragonball Minus, it's super hard to keep that one vision of him in my head.
The one mistake in the Bardock special is they had him become way too strong, almost 10,000 like King Vegeta, even. If they kept him as a low-class warrior with a low-class power level, the movie would've been perfect. Even so, it's still better than everyone else's interpretation of the character.
Sadly, that's not how mutations work. A mutant can have a perfectly normal offspring, and a normal person can have mutant offspring. Bardock and Raditz might have been normal low-classes, while Goku wins the jackpot and is a mutant.
Whether Goku is or isn't is up to speculation, but what's obvious is in a few months with King Kai, Goku ended up with a Power Level of "over 8000", more than 6 times as powerful as Raditz, who spent far longer under the same gravitational conditions (both Planet Vegeta and King Kai's planet are 10x the Earth's).
This rapid growth is only present in Goku and Vegeta, as far as pureblood saiyans go. With this in mind, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet to say Goku is genetically gifted.
edited 16th Nov '16 10:10:19 AM by Cruherrx
"If you weren't so crazy I'd think you were insane."Yea, but his abilities came right the fuck out of nowhere, with the only explanation given is that "he got angry, therefore stronger". Like, taken at face value, everything about Trunks was fine, but it's really hard not see how flawed his use was overall.
Its like, they wanted him to be The Hero and save the day but couldn't figure out a satisfying way to do it, in addition to capitalizing his popularity from the Android Saga.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Well we'll have to wait to hear exactly what Saiga says, but I can get the dissatisfaction.
I mean, you could say the problem isn't that Trunks manages to save the day, but how he did it. If this was something that had been set up before hand (as in, maybe mentioning he learned about something like that during his time training with the supreme kai, and tried to do it, but never got a chance to really figure it out due to being forced to go against Babidi), it would have been ok.
It's the same with his weird mutant super saiyan form. They could have said that he briefly tapped it during the fight with Babidi and it helped him win in the end (and that he sort of awoke it during his training but didn't know it) or that it has something to do with his hybrid nature (perhaps he has the same hidden power that Gohan has and he just had a much tougher time tapping into it because he only ever personally lost his version of Gohan, as opposed to the future one).
It's all about fucking set-up. Him beating Zamasu isn't much of an issue because Fused Zamasu had been getting fucked up badly for a bit now (his no longer being immortal, his body and mind degenerating, etc) and that along with the fight with Vegetto weakened him enough for Trunks to save the day.
Absorbing energy from others does seem to give a boost (though we've only ever seen it in the movies, not the series) so that works. It's just....where the fuck did this come from? It comes from nowhere.
Now, some would argue it's strange for Trunks to strike the final blow because that's never been a thing in Dragonball. Vegeta had more personal beef with Frieza in both the Namek arc and Resurrection F, and he was pushed aside so Goku could win the day (though he came close in the latter, but he had to die to make a point). Gohan never actually met Cell until he was perfect, but he was the one who killed him in the end.
It's not about who the story centres on, it's just the guy who's the strongest doing the job. However, as others have pointed out, this arc was about Trunks. He was the crux of it on many levels (coming back in time to get help, being told that his time travel is the reason Zamasu is even there in the first place, etc, etc). Plus, he was constantly being told he needed to become a bad enough dude to rescue the president strong enough to protect his world. In a sense he needed this, but at the same time, it does just seem like cheap fan service too.
Wow. I feel like I argued myself into not liking it now. I blame all of you.
One Strip! One Strip!Oh man, SSJ 3 Raditz's hair stretches on to infinity.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!The problem with how Trunks was handled was that he was handled in the opposite way than he was in the Android Saga. He went from an Anti Sue that got one-hit-killed by the antagonist to having the plot bend over backwards to hand him the kill.
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariAlthough, really, if you look at this from Trunks's timeline's perspective, it looks just as gratuitous. The first time, he can't beat the Androids, he goes to the past, and when he comes back he easily beats the Androids. In Super, he can't beat Goku Black, he goes to the past, and when he comes back he ends up beating Goku Black. Or at least playing a major role, if the synopses of next episode are to believed.
I'm not saying it doesn't cheapen the idea that after such an awesome introduction on killing Freeza, it was really unique that Trunks was so consistently useless in the Cell arc, whereas he's really important in Super. It does. It's almost a disservice to how the Cell arc was written. But a big difference is Cell wasn't really Trunks's fight. It wasn't his world. He was just sticking around to see if he could figure out a weakness to the Androids, and then helping fight Cell because he's not going to ignore this other world in peril. In Super, it's his own world that they're all fighting for. It makes more sense that he's actually doing something important in the grand scheme of things.
Also, at the very least, Trunks in this arc is initially presented as basically useless and too weak to do anything. Whereas Trunks in Z was initially presented as this badass with a sword who can take out Freeza and King Cold effortlessly.
(Trunks in Super is still all fanfiction-y nonsense, though).
edited 16th Nov '16 1:48:50 PM by LOLypop1224
The *Legendary* Super Saiyan is motivated by a crying infant! He is a literal giant f***ing baby!

So we're getting a SSJ Raditz before a SSJ Pan?
edited 16th Nov '16 6:55:14 AM by Cortez