Dragon Ball Z Abridged

I liked the implication that the reason Vegeta is the way he is is because Nappa traumatized him when he was a baby. That was both funny and really dark, and it provides a neat twist to the classic set-up of "two guys and a baby" if one of the two guys helped raise the other guy.

I also laughed really hard, not at the laser beam of Trunks pee, but at Vegeta getting owned by it in the exact same position that one of the video games uses (can't remember which one at the moment). Reminded me of how they ended Cell with a "Dramatic Finish!"

I assumed that Nappa was talking from experience of King Vegeta being a terrible father. I guess either way works.

Oh right King Vegeta forgot about him.

Vegeta being horrifically scarred by either party is equally funny.

@pushover the pose Vegeta makes is the one where he is overpowered by Goku's Kaioken Kamehameha in the saiyan saga

Also, i'm pretty sure Nappa was the only one that actually raised Vegeta while King Vegeta was busy ruling the planet and shit.

Very smart of them to start this whole project with Nappa. Who better to convince everyone this thing is worthwhile?

that sounded somewhat like a shade

It's true, though: Nappa remains one of, if not the most, popular character from DBZA.

Lots of people were skeptical of the project, so starting out with him is just good business sense.

Edited by HailMuffins on Nov 14th 2019 at 9:29:57 AM

Yeah, Nappa was talking about his own raising of Vegeta, not about King Vegeta.

It's easy to forget since Nappa's a minion and shit, but Nappa's actually really old. He cut his teeth on the Saiyan-Tuffle War. He then served as a general of the Saiyan Army during the subsequent six years that the Saiyans worked for the Planet Trade Organization.

Nappa is old enough to remember what Saiyan civilization was like before Frieza.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 14th 2019 at 8:06:46 AM

Oh god that Synchro-Vox part

Do we have a trope for how cultures and powers and tech and stuff in setting completely stagnates unless/until the protagonists get involved?

It's really fun how a guy like Nappa can fight and train his whole life and still be a complete weakling compared to the average Freeza soldier (some of whom just use guns rather than fight), whereas Vegeta bumps into a bunch of hicks on a bumfuck planet and - over the course of a very traumatic and painful couple years - eclipses who he was to an exponential degree.

I mean, it's true for everyone in Dragonball, I just never really thought about how it hits the Saiyans too. But over on Earth, you figure everyone was content with the strongest thing ever being Piccolo Daimao's level of strength - pitiful in comparison to pretty much everything else in the galaxy in retrospect - yet thanks to sheer frothing hatred of Goku a scientist from an organization Goku was able to completely wipe out by himself as a kid managed to create machines that are several times more powerful who was the most powerful mortal in the galaxy - a being Gero had no idea even existed when he started the project.

Hell, depending on how strong Shin is in comparison to Dabura (who is around equal to Cell), Gero created a being that rivals or even outright exceeds one of the Top Gods of the universe (albeit the weaker one), without even knowing it.

Our heroes dramatically accelerated things, is what I'm saying.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 14th 2019 at 7:34:46 AM

Yes. That's something I always urge people to keep in mind when talking about how broken Saiyans are. Goku and Vegeta (and their progeny, by extension) are the exception, not the rule.

Vegeta was born a Super-Elite and was just special by right of birth. That happens sometimes. Frieza's battle power of 120 million was obtained entirely by birth specialness. These guys are genetic freaks who embody the principle that Hard Work Hardly Works.

The average Saiyan baseline is actually represented by Raditz and Nappa. Raditz is a low-class Saiyan warrior with a BP of 1500, while Nappa is a battle-hardened Saiyan elite with a BP of 4000. Namek is pegged as a planet with a high baseline of power, and their warriors have a BP of 3000. Earth is a weakling planet for weaklings, and only one of their exceptional super-prodigies (Tenshinhan) even crossed the Raditz line after spending a year being trained by God.

Anyone with a BP of five digits or up has some kind of special circumstance. The Ginyu Force are mutants like Frieza born with exceptionally high power that far outclasses their races. Nail had his full potential awakened by Guru, granting him a huge power boost. The Androids are cybernetic super-soldiers enhanced by infinite energy generators. Dabura is a higher class of Satan than Piccolo ever was. Etc. etc.

So when Krillin comes home from Namek with a BP of 75,000, that means something. Our heroes defeated Frieza and became the most powerful mortal beings in the universe by multiple orders of magnitude. From that point on, they could never be challenged by ordinary fighters again; the series needed to escalate into super-tech WMDs, literal demon lords, and god-killing eldritch horrors to continue providing conflicts.

It's incredibly easy to forget I admit.

I still say Toriyama should have considered toning down said escalation considering how crazy post Frieza enemies have gotten.

Earth is a weakling planet for weaklings, and only one of their exceptional super-prodigies (Tenshinhan) even crossed the Raditz line after spending a year being trained by God.

That last part isn't quite true. When Nappa scanned Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan as being around 1,200, 1,100, and 1,000, respectively, he was reminded by Vegeta that they have the ability to suppress their Power Levels. According to the Daizenshuu, Tenshinhan's Power Level was 1,830, but Krillin's unsuppressed Power Level was only barely behind at 1,770. Yamcha also beat a Saibaman is 1-on-1 combat, and his Daizenshuu Power Level is 1,480.

Of course, Nappa in the manga says that Saibamen are just as strong as Raditz, but they're only at 1,200, so either Raditz was stronger than Nappa thought, or Word of God is wrong about how strong Raditz is.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Nov 14th 2019 at 10:30:20 AM

I wonder if Bulma's VA wasn't available for that Dragon Short, or if we're going to conspicuously only be hearing from a few characters at a time.

I'm also curious if these are just post-Cell or if they might be doing more Super shorts.

That is fair, but I meant it sincerely. This project is a departure of what they usually did with the "franchise", so it needed a really good proof of concept in the first episode. And using Napa is a great idea because he is hilarious. He is one of, if not the, most popular characters so that enough would be a good reason to use him. But it is more than that. He is also a character they can't use very well in the normal DBZA episodes because, of course, he is dead in the original story. So having him here is a good way of showing one of the strengths of the projects, do dos stuff they usually can't in their original format.

Most of that is anime nonsense, right? I honestly can't remember any of that from the manga. I don't remember it even being implied Freeza's (family's) domain over the Sayans is that recent. I kind always assumed it was an old stuff, that every body concerned was born into.

Definitively. Rereading Dragon Ball with more discerning eyes, it was actually surprising to me how consistent the power level was. Despite everything, they still kept Freeza as the most powerful being in the galaxy, for example, only being surpassed by stuff that was created after him and otherworldly beings like gods and demons. No surprise new alien that always existed and was always more powerful but was just hidden around the corner or something like that (like hte anime did plenty, such as Cooler). The relative power of the cast was consistent and if it varied, it had a plausible explanation (Gohan stopped training, Mutenroshi is old, etc).

But, still, the power level scaled so dramatically post Sayans (really, post Piccolo) that things started getting silly and hard to discern. If every enemy can blow a planet at will, it gets hard to gauge the difference between them.

Word of God here being the guides, right? To be honest, I always find those a bit suspect, for every manga that have them. I am never sure if the author is even the one writing or providing the information. Or even if they care enough to make sure it is actually consistent or just trowed some numbers to make the editors happy.

Still, what Nappa said was that they were about the same power level, right? I mean, 300 is a fair big difference, but considering Nappa was 4000, it make sense for me he would lump 1200 with 1500

Edited by Heatth on Nov 14th 2019 at 4:07:24 PM

In Dragon Balll Super: Broly, it's revealed that King Cold took over the Saiyans while King Vegeta was in charge, and he passed the PTO on to Freeza while Vegeta was still an infant.

Freeza only took over ruling the Saiyans when King Cold retired when King Vegeta was already in charge, according to the Broly movie IIRC.

Edited by doineedaname on Nov 14th 2019 at 1:11:35 PM

Yeah, even during the show's original run, while the numbers themselves were ridiculous, I always appreciated that (other than Frieza being the Man Behind the Man), they justified there being Always Someone Better. Vegeta was just a flunky. Frieza was the strongest in the universe. The Androids were made by a super genius and given half the stuff Bulma can do, that tracks. Cell was designed to absorb them and get stronger. Buu Saga introduced magic and a primordial being that could absorb and grow in power.

It's just that the scaling was ridiculous.

All There in the Manual, actually. Daizenshuu 7, the same guide that a lot of power level calculations not in the manga come from, had an official timeline in it.

The Tuffles have only ever appeared in Toei's stuff; they've never shown up in the manga. But Akira Toriyama has given Word of God not only that the Tuffles existed, but that they were the original inventors for the Scouters.

We even finally got to see Nappa as a grown-ass adult next to adolescent Raditz and Vegeta in the DBS: Broly film

@Heatth ok now I see it, it's just the way you used worthwhile made me think you didn't think highly of this and you thought they where desperate.

Sorry for that assumption BTW.

Doesn't she voice baby Trunks?

I think it was an artistic choice.

Megami 33 is credited as Baby Trunks in that vid.

we need to summon Exodia

This is exactly the kind of wacky hijinx that makes me excited for the Dragon Shortz. Ever since Shenron brought Nappa back to life, his ability to actually interact with the cast has been strictly limited by the fact that there's no post-Namek footage from the show with him in it to work off of.

With Dragon Shortz, Nappa can actually interact with the cast.

Yeah cause, before Shortz, I assumed the closest they could use Nappa in Buu is whatshisname during the Great Saiyaman arc. Where the Nappa looking dude tried to hold up the mayor to draw out Satan, to which Videl and Great Saiyaman!Gohan came to the rescue.