Dragon Ball Z Abridged

I'd be down for it just to watch Frieza perform the Fusion Dance.

If it's a Potara Fusion, I am no longer sold. I just want Frieza to do the goddamn dance.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 21st 2018 at 4:36:17 AM

Paragus and Broly having a grudge over Frieza still being alive and Goku and co. allowing it, would actually be pretty interesting.

You don't normally see things like that with fictional races/species portrayed like the Saiyans are, but it's not like it would be unwarranted.

Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2018 at 6:27:08 AM

If that's actually the plot then I'm willing to give it a chance. I mean, I probably won't watch it, but I'll entertain the idea that it's not stinking garbage.

That's impossible. I live in this timeline. Therefore, it's the...

<Remembers Donald Trump>

Shit. No. You're right. Damn.

Getting onto more positive concepts, I'm totally down for Broly and Paragus wanting to beat up the idiot who revived Frieza and let him go back to rampaging and ruling the universe. In fact, I think Broly shouldn't even be the only one mad about that.

Not that anyone else will be able to do anything about it because POWER LEVELS, but hey, it's the thought that counts.

Wasn't there something about Freiza being the one reviving him? And about Freiza pushing the blame to Beerus? Shouldn't he be mad about them being friends with Beerus instead?

Edited by Ikedatakeshi on Jul 21st 2018 at 8:12:21 PM

I mean, either would work. It probably isn't going to be like that anyway.

• Goku: Hey, guys! Earth blew up again. Can we use your Dragon Balls?
• Moori: Let's talk about Frieza.

EDIT: ...I was joking but I kinda want that to happen now.

• Vegeta: You're not afraid that we'll just kill you and take the Dragon Balls?
• Goku: VEGETA! We'd never do that! (to Moori) Seriously, we'd never do that.
• Moori: I know. You are a good person, Goku. With a good heart. And that is why I feel comfortable telling you to go to Hell. (turns to Goku's right) Gohan, you may use the Dragon Balls if you wish.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 21st 2018 at 6:50:39 AM

Yes. I was counting GT and Super and the films as being more consistent than other long-running media with multiple reboots, longer periods of production and syndication, and a greater frequency of characters losing and gaining abilities on the whim of multiple writers.

Super is easy to rag on, but it doesn't have three separate events that rewrite the entirety of Dragonball history.

Edited by Soble on Jul 22nd 2018 at 4:19:57 AM

Neither do most long-running media. DC Comics is not the beginning and end of long-running storytelling.

I didn't say it was. I specifically said, "at the end of the day [Toriyama's] decades-old franchise is more tonally and narratively consistent than Detective or Marvel Comics with their army of writers and artists."

And I said that emphasising the number of writers and artists is exactly the wrong thing to do because of course that property is going to be more inconsistent.

Yeah, it's only natural that 50+ year old franchises with hundreds of characters and titles under their banners, with almost as many artists and writers giving their input, is going to lack consistency.

Mind you, I don't think that this is necessarily a negative either. If you don't like how Toriyama writes Dragon Ball, then you're kind of out of luck with Dragon Ball. But if you don't like how one writer writes Batman, there might be another that strikes your fancy.

Honestly, a Series Bible that most people are supposed to follow to the letter would help alleviate a lot of the problems having multiple writers causes.

Sadly, it's very rare that a creator thinks of actually doing that.

• Always build up that Gohan's hidden power will accomplish something massive, then have him either fail or accomplish something small to medium size.

I wouldn't call what he did to Cell small or medium size.

Honestly it's only the B Uu saga that dethrones Gohan. Otherwise I feel like he was used really well in all of Z (except maybe that he disappears too much in the Cell arc till the end).

I mean, Gohan's first rage boost didn't kill Raditz, but it enabled Goku and Piccolo to kill him.

Edited by LSBK on Jul 23rd 2018 at 1:30:19 PM

He did provide for an important opening in that battle, and we shouldn't forget that him turning into an Oozaru ended up being pretty vital in the throwdown against Vegeta.

Did it? Coz all it did is stagger him. There's no indication it weakened Raditz enough so Goku could hold him or anything. You could argue it saved Goku, allowing Goku to do his sacrifice, but there's no reason Piccolo couldn't have done that.

He didn't provide "an opening", Raditz had time to recover and then Karate chop Gohan into unconsciousness.

Edited by Ghilz on Jul 23rd 2018 at 3:29:05 PM

Turning into an Oozaru wasn't a rage boost, though.

Instances of Gohan's rage boost being utterly worthless would be in the fights with Nappa and Frieza, both of whom were powerful enough to shrug off what was for the protagonists an immense amount of power that Gohan was outputting.

That, however, probably shouldn't be held against Gohan. Nappa and Frieza were both instances of a prolonged Chekhov's Armory sequence breaking upon the insurmountable might of the foe. The protagonists pulled out everything in their stops, every power and ability they'd ever been demonstrated to have, just so the villains could wade through it unhindered. Gohan's rage boost is just one of the many, many things that failed against these foes.

A successful instance of a rage boost apart from Raditz would be the one he threw at Dodoria. Gohan lost his temper and smashed Dodoria through a house out of nowhere. This allowed him and Krillin to save Dende from the genocide of his people, an act that would have far-reaching consequences through the rest of the series.

And, of course, there's the Cell battle where his rage boost allowed him to achieve Super Saiyan 2. Somehow. And then Super Saiyan 2 carried the rest of the fight.

Basically, as a weapon, Gohan's rage boosts have never successfully killed an enemy. They're short-lived and only last for one or two good moves before burning out. But as a tool, they've achieved great things.

Raditz was about to kill Goku and end the fight then and there. Gohan not only stopped Raditz from delivering the final blow, he also provided a distraction. The original plan was to take Gohan with him, but after that display of power, Raditz decided to switch targets and kill Gohan before he had a chance to do something like that again.

This gave Goku the opening he needed to come up behind Raditz and put him in a full nelson.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 23rd 2018 at 1:30:23 PM

I'm pretty sure Super Saiyan 2 was originally supposed to be Gohan-only and the equivalent of what eventually became Ultimate Gohan (i.e. Gohan's hidden power unlocked). It's not even referred to as a specific seperate form in-manga until the Buu saga.

From the very beginning it has all the traits of a separate form except for beibg named and is also compared referred to as such in all supplementary material released at the time.

Anyway, there's no way Piccolo could have saved Goku from Raditz. He was far weaker than the rage-empowered Gohan (roughly one third of his strength).

Furthermore, while it isn't explicit that it enabled Goku to hold him, Vegeta does say that Raditz took a lot of damage from that hit so he was injured when Goku was grappling him. Given that he could barely hold on even them it's pretty hard to say Gohan's attack did nothing to help.

Yeah. Rohan's attack both distracted Raditz long enough for Goku to get back up and grab him, and hurt Raditz enough that Goku was able to hold him long enough to give Piccolo time for a second attack.

Yeah. He really loves setting up his character to fail. Nobody subverting Chekhov's Armory like Akira Toriyama does.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jul 23rd 2018 at 5:54:38 AM

It's not particularly different from original Super Saiyan, probably less than the actual grade variants which are only sometimes considered a seperate form. (IIRC, it might have originally been called Grade V in pre-Buu databooks, but I could be wrong.)

It's got a dramatically different hairstyle in kid Gohan and a distintive aura, and he's shown powering down to regular Super Saiyan and back up again.

It mirrors how Goku achieved Super Saiyan and later powered down to base/back up to Super Saiyan against Freeza.

I didn't know that there was a JoJo/Dragon Ball crossover.