You mean Wil Wheaton?
And for the record, no, I didn't name myself after him. It's one part Willy Wonka and one part the Keaton from Majora's Mask.
But back to Dragonball. Wasn't there some supplementary material somewhere that suggested Buu was some ancient formless evil that Bibibdi gave physical form?
Now, I'm not 100% on my color theory, but as I understand it, pink has two meanings in Japan. It's primarily associated with cherry blossoms, which creates a bit of a dual meaning. As a feminine color, pink represents innocence and, uh, fertility. It's the color of springtime, of new life blooming over the old.
But as a masculine color, it has a similar but slightly different meaning. Because it's still associated with cherry blossoms, and cherry blossoms have a bit of a history in Japan. The cherry blossom doesn't just represent springtime; it also represents the Buddhist concept of mono no aware. Life is bright, life is glorious, and then life ends as suddenly as it began. Life burns bright and then flickers out in the blink of an eye.
The flower has a complicated history. It's been used as the emblem of kamikaze pilots. The planting of cherry blossom trees has been used as both a sign of imperial conquest and a sign of forged diplomatic relations. And there are spiritual beliefs that say dead samurai/soldiers reincarnate as the trees.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 26th 2019 at 8:17:28 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Well, sadistic apathy...
Ultra Instinct didn't exist when Toriyama was creating Super Saiyan Rose.
I think went with pink because it's a corrupted form of the red from Super Saiyan God. There's a general philosophy with color theory in media that the primary colors are heroic and virtuous while secondary colors are wicked and villainous.
It's why Piccolo and Cell are green and Frieza's got splashes of purple, but the Super Saiyan forms are yellow, red, and blue. It's why Goku's gi is supposed to be a yellower shade of orange, to signify his position as the main hero figure.
Now, it's a bit more complicated than JUST that. The Kame Students have orange gis and Vegeta came to Earth clad in blue. Kaioshin is a very light purple, because white is a heavenly color. Frieza is mostly white with patches of wicked blue, again because white is a heavenly color and Frieza was meant to be the end-all be-all ultimate power in the universe.
But still, the idea is that heroes are supposed to have pure colors while villains have tainted colors, if that makes sense.
Goku Black's Super Saiyan Rose form is, as I noted above, a corrupted form of the red from Super Saiyan God. It's the same color, but splashed with that godly white to create a color that embodies his divinity, but also looks wrong the way villain colors are meant to.
And also captures the solemnity of the cherry blossom as a source of mourning for the dead.
All in all, pink was the right choice for Goku Black. Possibly the only right choice made with Goku Black.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 26th 2019 at 9:48:13 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Plus Green Hair on someone who looked exactly like Goku could potentially be close enough to normal Goku’s Blue to confuse the action in he more frenetic action scenes.
That’s what I figured it was, anyway: they wanted something that very identifiably wasn’t Blue (like Goku or Vegeta) or Yellow (like Trunks) even in motion, so they skewed to the Red side of the spectrum, and picked Pink since SSG was already using starker shades.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 26th 2019 at 8:48:26 AM
Marluxia was also from a Japanese game, had pink hair, carried around a scythe, and was known as "the Graceful Assassin".
Are scythes also part of the association with Death in the same way they are with the image of the Grim Reaper we have here?
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.I mean,they're still farming instruments used for the purpose of culling your crop, so probably. Also, Sailor Saturn is the embodiment of death and she wields a scythe, so there's at minimum one Japanese work that associated scythes with death.
From what I've seen, Japan associates ogres and spiked clubs more with death than the Grim Reaper archetype. That's more of a Western image.
BUT
Japan likes to use Western iconography for its cool exotic symbolism. That's why you see a lot of Christian imagery in anime; in Japan, it's the cool exotic religion. They treat it the same way the West treats Greek and Norse pantheons.
So while the Grim Reaper isn't really part of Japanese mythology, he does crop up in Japanese works as a cool scary death-monster. And given Marluxia's Nobody partner is without question the Angel of Death
◊, it's pretty clear that this is what's going on with him.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 26th 2019 at 10:19:21 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Around the Kyoto Arc, that cool thing Kenshin would do where he verbally dissects the weaknesses of his opponent's style and technique before outsmarting and defeating them vanished, and it just became another "My Proper Noun beats YOUR Proper Noun" show.
... thank you. For some reason whenever I bring up why I lost interest in Kenshin around here, people act like I stepped on their dog. Or my computer was found full of- [[redacted]]
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.It's what people remember when they think about Rurouni Kenshin. Everyone loves Shishio.
Kind of like how the Cell arc is what people remember when they think about Dragon Ball. Everyone loves Trunks.
And both arcs are pretty overrated.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 26th 2019 at 1:14:41 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Man, I’m still of two minds about Kenshin after all this time. On the one hand, it’s one of the best shounen ever and for both it’s writing and - on a more personal level - its mix of folkloric and historical theming makes it one of my favorite anime/manga ever.
On the other hand, even when I was at my most desensitized about sexism in anime, especially shounen, the treatment of women in Kenshin was so bad it straight took me out of the experience sometimes.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 26th 2019 at 12:17:45 PM

I should have said that Buu can't take permanent damage. If 18 sprains her ankle or 17 breaks his arm, that's just going to be something they have to deal with until they heal naturally or they get a Senzu, but they can still keep fighting with their other limbs as long as needed. If Buu gets his arms ripped off and a giant hole blasted in his stomach, he'll just regenerate immediately, no harm done.