Roah at least wasn't an entitled self-serving asshole for most of the series at least.
I don't feel all rivals are inferior Vegeta clones though, although the only ones I can truly think of that are good characters are guys like Ky Kiske and Jin Kisaragi. Not much else comes to mind...
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Vegeta isn't Raoh clone, not even close. Raoh was a Visionary Villain, there's no one who has more petty and selfcentered motives than Vegeta.
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All rivals aren't Vegeta clones but all Vegeta clones are rivals.
I dunno, most rivals I see in Anime blatantly have the Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic with the main character along with the Im The Only One Allowed To Defeat You as well.
And all of that originated from Vegeta; he pretty much codified The Rival as far as Shonen is concerned.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.edited 26th Jun '15 7:36:21 AM by Zelenal
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!As Vegeta-clones go, Hiei has to be my favorite. He plays the Token Evil Teammate role for all it's worth, and the protagonists never quite lose sight of the fact that he's a remorseless killer that could just as easily turn his increasing power on them.
He doesn't tend to get humiliated like Vegeta does, but that's largely because he doesn't typically earn it. He has enough...not really positive qualities, but likable qualities, being stylish and having his own twisted sense of cold-blooded murderer's honor, but in any case, he's likable enough that he's a character audiences like to watch win, versus Vegeta being a character audiences like to watch fail.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Hajime Saitou is a pretty good Vegeta clone too. He's grounded enough to point out the flaws in The Hero's Technical Pacifist attitude.
But he's more of an aloof mentor than an antagonist and while he wants to settle old scores, he's more concerned about doing his job and upholding his moral code.
It made his fights really stand out.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Ichigo was kind of a Yusuke-clone though.
The best "recent" rival I would say is Diego Brando of Steel Ball Run. Helps that he doesn't become some kind of final boss for the Part and race as often happens because he's dead at that point and instead the Big Bad goes to another dimension to find another version of him that can fight the hero for him after he dies since rival!Diego was a good fighter. The new version is 100% a villain and doesn't really care about winning the race.
Edit: New preview!
edited 26th Jun '15 9:39:05 AM by LordofLore
Yusuke was sort of a deconstructive Goku. His aggressive, single-minded focus on fighting made him an unlikable jerk by human standards and made it impossible for him to get by in a society much less Fantastic than Goku's Earth. He was ultimately able to pursue a life of punching dudes, fulfilling his passion, but at great cost to his humanity - to the point that, eventually, he found he didn't belong in the human world at all and left.
...and then the last five minutes was like, "But some day he got better and came home maybe?" without ever addressing the fact that he will never be able to hold a career after skipping all his educational years.
edited 26th Jun '15 9:53:48 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Ichigo is pretty different from Yusuke, even at the start. Yusuke is an actual delinquent, while people just sorta assumed the worst from Ichigo without ever bothering to even say hi to the guy. Also, Ichigo isn't an idiot, which I feel has become the standard for Shonen protagonists.
"If you weren't so crazy I'd think you were insane."Indeed. He can still do dumb things, but Ichigo is a pretty smart guy, both in a normal sense, and an academic sense. That's something I like about Ichigo.
I can be pretty generous towards some Idiot Hero types, but the problem is, their intelligence is permanently locked in place at a state that should make it impossible for them to function in normal society for the sake of shitty humour.
edited 26th Jun '15 12:01:43 PM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!And again, the fault for the popularization of the Idiot Hero in shonen lies squarely on Goku's shoulders, because he made that kind of Idiot Hero popular.
The typical Shonen Action Idiot Hero is trying to be Goku, but the mangaka has forgotten that Goku is not actually dumb, per se.
Goku is socially stunted, because he lived most of his formative years as an hermit, and even after that, he lived far away from civilized society with only his family for interaction and even after a few years of that he went off to live with only other warriors for seven years. Goku is educationally stunted because he does not have an education to speak of. He only knows the most basic of math because Roshi taught him that, he probably learned how to read and write from Roshi, if he learned how to read and write.
The socially and intellectually stunted hero became super popular after Dragon Ball was such a huge success, but the problem is that a lot of people trying to copy that success forget that Goku wasn't actively dumb, just uneducated, and that Goku's actual moments of genius don't come out of nowhere because he wasn't supremely dense immediately before hand.
The problem with making an Idiot Hero who doesn't have Goku's circumstances of life as a hermit's son and later a hermit himself is that... well, it makes your hero genuinelly dumb. This happens with lots of Idiot Hero candidates, amongst them people like Konoe Touta and Uzumaki Naruto and others. They have access to an education and people to socialize with, they have no excuse other than being genuinelly dumb. This makes the inevitable moment when they're 'revealed to actually be legitimately smart, just carefree/uneducated/whatnot' to be pulled straight from the author's ass, because unlike Goku, this character has actually been legitimately dense.
And it's even worse when you accidentally make your characters into lazy dumbasses, like when you try to make your character an underdog by showing them failing at things only to then have them be proven to be super talented at the exact same thing immediately afterwards, leading one to believe that the former failure was either intentional or due to the character just not putting in any effort into things.
Again, this is a problem with characters who are portrayed as people who 'fail' often but can 'win' easily if they really put their mind into it.
What you're saying isn't that the character is a determined, perseverant hard worker. What you're accidentally saying is that the character is such a lazy ass idiot that they won't put in requisite effort.
edited 26th Jun '15 11:55:32 AM by IAmNotCreativeEnough
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariAnd then the end result, "Naturally gifted but lazy and unmotivated," often winds up being the exact opposite of everything Goku ever represented.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Naruto & Luffy are probably the most blatant "Goku clones" in Jump, the latter especially. Kinda why I like Bleach the characters, for the most part, aren't a blatant attempt at recreating Dragon Ball.
As for Vegeta...he's pretty much baby's first badass(no offense), the character everybody wanted to be and see and blah blah. So its only natural there'd be a million clones of him.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.