The dragons being full of shit and coming about because of an unforeseen design flaw could work.
I mean, the dragon radar probably wasn't a thing Kami was considering when he made them. I don't think it was supposed to be easy to find the balls and make new wishes as soon as the time limit was up.
Edit:
puts it much better than I did.
Edited by HandsomeRob on Sep 20th 2018 at 7:36:26 AM
One Strip! One Strip!There were only seven dragonballs so some wishes had to get shafted. That's how it goes sometimes.
Here's the thing.
The Dragon Balls already have a f*cking cooldown period. For one year after granting a wish, they enter a dormant state and turn into featureless spherical rocks.
Wish energy and Nnnnnnegative Energy having separate cooldowns isn't really illogical, it's just not very neat or cohesive.
Nova Shenron was less of an asshole, but he was still destroying a city.
I admit, I've been in the because I think it's cool club for a long time. I'm coming around to the be fucking consistent club though.
I wish we could have both, or at least could have had them earlier.
One Strip! One Strip!![]()
Or they could've brought up multiple wishes that were of the same level...
Instead of just the ones made during the series.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.I mean, it's true that the idea of the Shadow Dragons as a punishment per se is kinda dumb and lame.
Like, instead of the negative and positive whatever, I'm thinking.
Like, even the "selfless" or "good" wishes are still selfish because of how arbitrary they are?
They only get used to help this certain set of assholes we the audience happen to follow, even though we get told there's other people in this world and setting that suffer and die all the time, sometimes even as a result of these assholes.
I dont think all of King Piccolo's victims got brought back, just Chiaotzu, Roshi and Krillin. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember.
Nappa vaporized a city.
...And, like, Bulma gathered the Dragon Balls just to give a wish or three to whoever of her exclusive friendgroup of assholes won the bingo tournament at her birthday.
I remember one of the Shadow Dragons being basically a good guy because he was born from an evil wish (King Piccolo wishing for his youth, I think?). And then I guess the rest of them were evil because they were born from good wishes? I'm sure they tried to explain that, but does anyone remember why like... that was a thing?
Actually, everyone who was killed by King Piccolo and his minions were brought back. That was a specific condition of the wish.
One Strip! One Strip!I mean, that sounds like a pretty awful way of looking at altruism vs. selfishness. If I save someone from a car wreck tomorrow that doesn't suddenly become selfish just because somewhere else in the world another person actually does die in a car wreck.
I don't know what that fallacy is called, but I don't think it getting an endorsement would actually be an improvement over the GT explanation.
Edited by LSBK on Sep 20th 2018 at 8:46:45 AM
@unnown AFAIK, that wish was made to preemptively waste the balls so that the Red Ribbon Army (or was it the Pilaf gang?) could not finish their Evil Plan.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Sep 20th 2018 at 6:52:40 AM
But the Dragon Balls explicitly aren't omnipotent. That they can't fix everything, everywhere, forever, isn't a reason to not use them to do good things when presented with them.
Edited by LSBK on Sep 20th 2018 at 8:54:05 AM
@Arha The problem is that GT had God know about the need for negative energy, as well as knowing how long it would take (100 years). They say that is the reason he made the dragon balls scatter, ignoring that already had a reason and the massive plot hole it creates.
The Dragon Balls having an unknown cooling off period could work. GT did things in the worst possible way it could think of.
I mean, to bring to this back, ever since the Dragon Radar got made, every year they're presented with a chance to do those good things.
In abridged!16's words:
"You think you're better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing."

Having a cooldown period that doesn't match the dissipation of evil energy or whatever isn't necessarily a plot hole. For example, it could take one year to gather the energy for a year from ~mystic sources~ but five years to get rid of the ~spooky wish mojo~. Kami may not have known about this flaw in the system because he didn't understand it well enough. After all, the Earth dragonballs are kind of a flawed copy of the original system, which is a much weaker form of the original original system, so he may have messed up when making them. With wishes not being made at nearly the pace in the present that they were in the past, this could have easily been overlooked.
I mean, I get that this is fanwank, but it's not a totally unworkable idea.
PS I have never seen GT and have no interest in ever doing so and the whole idea sounds kind of dumb to me, so I'm merely arguing hypotheticals.