Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Curb Stomps are good when you want to make good use of The Worf Effect.

Gonna admit I didn't expect to see the Recoome fight at all, but it makes sense with their explanation.

It also spoils the Nappa fight is gonna be on this list.

I do feel like they were a little too hard on it for something that made the Top 10? Especially compared to the previous two, which seemed like they were a lot more well-received.

I wouldn't put it on the list at all, and I think they shouldn't have.

Like, the round table they mentioned, sure, sounds neat.

If you're going to call it "best" instead of "iconic" and have an actual grading system, don't throw in garbage you know is garbage.

Edited by unnoun on Dec 15th 2018 at 5:45:29 AM

They didn't say anything about it being garbage though. They just seemed to think it had some cons they felt were worth acknowledging, that nevertheless didn't outweigh the pros.

I do think they could have at least made a harder sell for it at the end - as it stands, I don’t think their praise of it quite outweighs their criticisms.

So they said there's going to be another movie moment, any guess for it? I haven't seen all of the movies, and I don't really remember any fight scenes well from the ones I have.

World's Strongest, Dead Zone, Battle of Gods are my guesses. Or maaaaaaybe Cooler

The other curbstomp fight that has a decent chance to make the list is Trunks versus Cyborg Frieza, where the curbstomp has a fairly clear purpose and the curbstomp is slow-played enough that the first time viewer doesn't realize it's going to be a curbstomp until the killing blow.

Vegeta vs Recoome is probably the peak of Toriyama's skills as an artist and choreographer. So much power and weight is conveyed so efficiently.

I wouldn't really call it a curb-stomp either, at least not by this series' standards. Recoome gets messed up pretty dang badly in the fight. A normal person would need to go to the emergency room. But to him, a bloody gash in the head, developing bruises around his body, several scratches, his armor being destroyed, blood leaking out of his mouth since the first hit, most of his hair being burnt off, and half of his teeth being knocked out are all just business as usual.

Edited by Kamiccolo on Dec 15th 2018 at 6:43:47 AM

Well, when you have healing pods...

Vegeta was also tired as hell. But he gave Recoome a better fight than he did Zarbon round 1.

Yeah, the fact that Recoome gets pretty f*cked up in the course of the fight is why I wouldn't define it as a curbstomp either. He's disciplined enough not to make too big a thing of it - which makes sense, as he is one of Frieza's elites, the best of the best warriors in the galaxy - but Vegeta, Krillin, and Gohan do some damage.

Recoome wins, but not without a fight.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 15th 2018 at 6:00:18 AM

Does Gohan explicitly get his NECK broken? Like, he got hurt, but a broken neck is really pushing it.

Actually, one thing I'm really surprised TFS didn't do is have Gohan say that the Ginyus were cool, or comment on their poses, or anything, considering Saiyaman and all.

You know what I'm really surprised isn't filler? The whole Ginyu takes over Bulma's body segment. I thought for certain that was something added in to pad out some episodes, but lo and behold, it's still in Kai.

It's filler. It's just filler that they kept in Kai, because Toei really likes Captain Ginyu. They inserted him into the anime version of "Resurrection of F" too.

It's not in the manga.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 15th 2018 at 6:26:41 AM

I don't recall if it was in the manga, even if Kai ended up using it.

No, that's filler. There's still filler in Kai, it's just not super painful to ge through.

Yeah, no, Gohan's neck is broken, even in canon. Goku shows up, realizes that Gohan's neck is broken and he can't even respond, much less eat a Senzu, so he very gently force-feeds Gohan the Senzu to help him recover.

Recoome does get messed up (far more than Nappa, who's earlier fight has a lot of beats stolen from it, including two of the combatants on the good guys side), but it's all cosmetic really. There's no sign he's weakened in any way shape or form, which makes sense. The reason the heroes are completely failing to do anything is because when Goku shows up and mops the floor with the other guy it will show just how strong he is. After all, if the villain is weakened even a tiny bit, Goku won't look as cool because they weren't at their best.

But yeah, they did manage to at least make Recoome look less pretty, which is more than can be said for the Nappa fight.

It's kinda what happens int the SS Goku/Super Goku VS Full Power Freeza fight

Freeza manages to land a couple of hits during it...but the best he manages his destroy what's left of Goku's gi, that's the best he manages

Nappa got a big gash in his head from Gohan kicking him, a bloody lip from Piccolo punching him in the face, first-degree burns on his back from Piccolo's ki blast, a numb hand from blocking Gohan's Masenko, was stunned and knocked away by Krillin's surprise kick, and got a cut on his face from the near-miss of Krillin's Kienzan. He didn't get out of that fight without any scratches and had a couple of close calls where he nearly lost.

Yeah, but I don't think it really did much damage.

There seems to be at least a bit of a distinction between physical damage and loss of energy (in that you can experience the former while still not suffering much of the latter).

Nappa and Recolle both took a aesthetic licking, but were still more than ticking.

It is true that Nappa took a beating, but if you look at both of them, no one can say Recoome didn't look worse, even if the overall result of the beatings was the same: fuck all.

They didn't do literally no damage to Nappa but he still dominated the fight aside from a few times he got taken by surprise.

Same with Recoome. He wasn't totally pristine, but it's not like it felt like anything they did to him actually mattered before Goku showed up.

Edited by LSBK on Dec 15th 2018 at 9:55:29 AM

I suppose the fact that they at least did surface damage is something.

When you can't even dirty their clothes, that's when you know you're fucked.

Although Krillin and Gohan didn't do that much to Recoome. He only lost his teeth due to his own blast getting trapped in his mouth (even if Krillin caused that to happen). Gohan accomplished even less, not even landing one decent hit.

So when I think about it, Vegeta did most of the heavy lifting for that fight.