For the record, I've only read the manga for the Buu Saga. That was still my reaction.
Also, no, it is a lot more brutal than the Vegeta V Final Form Freeza fight (compounded by the people around the ring going "oh my god we can't help her" and having to hold Gohan back from going in there, something that is unique as far as I'm aware aside from Tien breaking Yamcha's leg, and even then that was at the end of their fight and it was back and forth until then.)
And you know what else? Even if that fight - Vegeta V FF Freeza - was as brutal? (I'm picking that one because it was mentioned and stuck out to me). It would still merit it a lot more than Videl V Spop. That was where Vegeta's arc in the Freeza saga was leading to; it's the moment that Vegeta's games of Russian Roulette finally blow his brains out. It matters. The Spopovich fight, doesn't matter. It's unpleasant but also completely inconsequential.
Let's go over some of the other ones:
"Goku V Piccolo" - I'm assuming this is Piccolo Jr? That is a pretty brutal fight, but it's not one side stomping the other (until Piccolo gets Goku on the ground), it's a back and forth throughout.
"Nappa V everyone" - this is brutal as well, but it isn't prolonged - Tien gets his hand chopped off, but otherwise most of the characters die to ki blasts, and since most of the cast are pretty powerful this is actually building up Nappa pretty effectively as a threat. Not to mention that it's a pretty consequential fight, not only plot wise (it's why the next arc even takes place) but also character wise (since it's Piccolo's most iconic moment, when he takes the bullet for Gohan).
"Gohan V Recoome" - okay, this one is actually pretty violent and it's also one sided, but it's also not super prolonged from what I remember. But I will give this one credit, it's almost as violent. If this was Gohan's only fight in the series I might have a problem with that too. But he's had multiple fights before and since, like, a lot.
Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:01:26 AM
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"Like, Spopovich is the equivalent of Appule for Babidi - heck, Appule is almost certainly over ten times stronger. Heck, you could make a solid argument for Taopaipai or Master Roshi when we first met them being able to kill him.
So him getting this focus, which serves no real purpose, is kind of wierd, especially as it's this upgrade that Vegeta will seek out to try and one-up Goku.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"-Goku watching his son get beaten to death by Super Buu and being unable to intervene because of the rules of the afterlife.
-Piccolo watching Kaioshin getting beaten to death by Fat Buu (also a lot more brutal than Spopovich vs Videl), trying to jump in, and being stopped by Krillin, who points out that he's powerless.
-Vegeta getting beaten to death by Fat Buu and the others being powerless to intervene, even his son, who is told to leave immediately before he dies the one time he does try to do so.
Edited by Kamiccolo on Sep 19th 2018 at 1:21:20 AM
To clarify, I think the critiques of what happened to Videl after Gohan are good ones.
What I meant was her and Gohan are the one couple who aren't really creepy and questionable ab initio. (Krillin and 18? "Here's your reward for being so NICE). Goku and Chichi is, like I said, a running joke at this point. Vegeta and Bulma? "Let me hook up with the genocidal child killer who killed all our friends." Videl and Gohan at least had some development and felt less forced....even if Videl should've stayed an action girl throughout it.
I can't help but question the validity of a complaint about a couple based on an author comment alone. Like...nobody in-universe treats 18 as a reward for Krillin, and she was the one who initiated the relationship by openly flirting with him...but it's skeevy because of a comment Toriyama made?
What?
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
Forgot about one. There is also that dude that Super Buu killed by inflating him and blowing him up, which was awful the first time i watched it.
And to me, Krillin being killed by Frieza was pretty chilling when i saw as a kid. And it was never censored unlike in the north american dubs
Edited by fasoman1996 on Sep 19th 2018 at 5:19:23 AM
Uni catI still don't get why you think that's an ethical concern for "let me shoot this 8-year-old-looking kid in the face and also trick him into being my muscle because's he's dumb and strong" Bulma.
Or that Bulma even has ethical concerns, honestly. Bigger problem.
"Vegeta got a fucking hole in the chest. No, it wasn't. Not even a little bit close."
Just because Vegeta dies does not make it more brutal. It isn't even a giant hole like with Goku and Piccolo Jr. It's a neat little hole. (Probably one of the cleanest deaths in the entire series, honestly.)
It isn't getting picked up and slammed around like a meat puppet.
Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:21:45 AM
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"Edited by Kamiccolo on Sep 19th 2018 at 1:26:42 AM
I haven't seen Super and I'm hazy on the Buu saga but frin what I remember and for what it's worth as a consolation prize 18 gets a hell of a lot more interesting material than Krillin for the rest of Z
It's a low bar but it's something. She gets her own stuff separate from being Krillin's love interest.
Blackmail
Forever liveblogging the AvengersWhat?
Yes, yes it is. When the author openly admits she's Krillen's reward and then chickifies the living hell out of her to the point where in the Freeza movie her role is standing around gushing how awesome Krillen is as her role is to stay back and protect their daughter under the most ridiculous of reasoning (because if Freeza isn't stopped at the source, there's no protecting anyone at all) and their relationship is based on "Krillen decides the world can burn because the woman who wanted to hunt his best friend for sport kissed his cheek once" paints him in a terrible light.
As for Bulma? Well, one would've hoped she'd have grown up in the decade or so since. Like she does display a moral compass at points ever since DBZ began.
For brutal deaths? Yeah, Spopo's was nasty. Vegeta's taken as the full on Rasputinian Death that it was earns some props too, though. Freiza spent how long just systematically ripping him apart there?
Edited by Lightysnake on Sep 19th 2018 at 1:48:15 AM
Capsule Corp. seems to basically be a monopoly, almost all technology on Earth seemingly has the Capsule Corp. logo on it.
That or the Red Ribbon logo, which honestly, given they were a terrorist army, says something, I think.
The fact that there are multiple villages, like Nam's and Uub's, facing famines and droughts, when even Roshi points out to Nam how you could just fill a capsule with water, makes me think there's a lot of socio-economic disparity in the Dragon World, and Bulma and her family seem to mostly just profit off of it.
Her role in the plot isn't any more reduced than almost any other non-Saiyan character who gets relegated to background noise, so this complaint doesn't hold much water. This also ignores how she had her own subplot of getting money out of Mr. Satan, and all materials establish that between her and Krillin, she's the one who wears the pants in the relationship. Don't get how that qualifies as "chickifying"
The ROF scene is bad, but that whole movie is bad and saying their entire relationship is bad because of that and a one-off comment feels overblown to me.
And that's all I'm really going to say on this piece because I've seen how stubborn and vehement you get in these types of debates in other threads and I have no intentions of getting into a three page debate about this.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

Videl would have killed Spopo if he wasn’t a zombie-demon, and in fact everyone thought that she did kill him. Without his weird body, Videl's opponent would simply have lost against her. And she would have been the one in the wrong, ironically enough. It wasn’t a curb-stomp.
Basically, Videl's opponent wasn't much stronger than her, if he was even actually stronger than her at all, it was just a matter of him being able to suffer no real consequences from things like broken necks, while Videl didn't have that advantage. Kind of like Cell vs Goku. Yes, Videl got badly hurt but there are lots of times where people got worse than that in Dragon Ball, and were more helpless and were facing opponents much stronger than them; like when Super Buu beat Gohan to the point where he couldn’t even move, mocked him for letting his mentor get absorbed, and then just kept hitting him while he was helpless. Or when Recoome gave him a beatdown that ended with a broken neck, while he was only 5 years old. Meaning that on all of these three counts, Videl's fight isn't impressive or unique.
Edited by Kamiccolo on Sep 19th 2018 at 12:43:45 PM