(2) They can also care about it too much.
Spaceballs is a great parody but I don't think Mel Brooks came to Twitter talking about how important the relationship between Dark Helmet and Sanderz was, and how playing upon certain cliches was a personal failure of his.
Edited by Soble on Jan 17th 2020 at 10:38:01 AM
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!Ya know, playing up the bad dad joke in Kakarrot's character also added fuel to the fire...which is probably another aspect as to why Kaiser brought it up.
That was all last year anyway, I'm not sure why it was linked now.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.I would argue that Goku is as much of a bad father as anyone who spends long time away from home for his job, like a sailor or soldier. Except he is not doing it for money but in order to protect them. He was a loving father to Gohan after he married and did spend time with them after he returned from Namek, and after they defeated Buu.
I've read (maybe someone can confirm it) that this is also largely a cultural difference. Because in Japan with its' insane working hours, fathers are usually hardly present at home, and this used to be the case even more when Toriyama wrote the manga. You can think of Goku basically doing his job while he trains, with his job being the protector of Earth. Just because he loves his job, doesn't make it less important.
Goku's job isn't protecting the Earth.
He does that from time to time because Earth is where he lives and he'd very much like to not see it be blown up. But as Goku himself observes in the Cell arc, a lot of the threats to the Earth were only ever there because of Goku in the first place. This remains true with threats like Beerus, Frieza Again, Zamasu, Broly, and Moro in Dragon Ball Super, all of whom only go to Earth to get at Goku.
Goku makes a decision to be absent from Gohan's life on three occasions during Gohan's childhood.
- Training for the Saiyans. Goku's friends could have revived him, but he chooses to remain in the afterlife to train with Kaio-sama. This is Absolutely Justified. The Saiyans are coming to murder the planet in a year's time. Goku needs this training.
- Training on Yardrat. Goku's friends wish for Shenron to bring Goku back to Earth, but Goku rejects the wish. He wants to stay on Yardrat and learn this super-cool teleporting move they can teach him. There's no pressing need for him to do this; he has a purely academic interest in Yardrat training, and to Goku, this warrants abandoning his family for months with no input from them.
- Remaining dead after Cell. This one's pretty controversial. Goku asserts that the world's safer if he just stays dead. It's debatable how accurate this statement is; it's followed by seven years of peace, then a threat totally divorced from Goku, and then more threats that are there because of Goku. In any case, still a better reason than "I wanna train on Yardrat".
Goku doesn't train to protect the Earth. He trains to be a great martial artist. His hobby is his complete identity as a person. He has few if any other interests, desires, goals, or wishes for his life. He just wants to keep challenging himself as a martial artist, climbing those mountains and then finding greater mountains to climb when that's done. He's also got a pretty decent moral compass, but that guy who can't go three sentences without inserting something from his hobby? Goku is that guy.
This causes strains on his family, sometimes entirely justified, sometimes less so. Goku doesn't mean any ill will towards his wife or children. He's never malicious and he does love his family. But at the end of the day, being at home with Chi-Chi, raising his sons, and watching the sun go down over the horizon? That's not the life Goku ever wanted to live. His first and truest love is martial arts, and his heart will always wander away from house and home.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2020 at 5:44:31 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Ironically, Buu is the only one to die by Goku's hand while all the others that came to earth because of him weren't. I guess through all DBZ Goku needed to score a big kill and well since Buu was the final boss....
Except for Freeza the second time. He was killed by Goku to show Whis' new neat trick.
Uni cat![]()
Goku did pick up a really crucial skill at Yardrat though, without which the Earth would have been doomed several times. And while his love marial arts will always be his defining character (and to be fair, Chi-Chi did know this whe she married him), he did spend most of the time while he was alive with his family.
Goku is essentially a Cosmic Tier adult version of Ranma Saotome. Just wants to get stronger.
Watch SymphogearOh. Goku is a much more romantic than Ranma.
At least he doesn't insult his wife every five seconds.
....not that Chi-chi would be able to put a dent in him if he did. Which is a difference between her and Akane.
....good god. Their marriage is more functional than Ranma and Akane's. That's something else.
One Strip! One Strip!Specifically, he spent most of the time while he was alive training Gohan. Those 3/4 years are probably Goku's best husband/father time in the whole series, because training Gohan for the Androids gave Goku an opportunity to interpret his husband/father responsibilities in a way that fueled his love of martial arts.
For three years of Chi-Chi's life and four years of Gohan's ('cause RoSaT wonkiness), Gohan was his father's new martial arts project. And it was good.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2020 at 12:16:54 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.They came really close at the end, with Akane actually agreeing to it unlike the start of the last arc when the adults all just forced them into it. And it would have the both of them happily married if the Jusenkyo guide didn't send a wedding gift of a keg of Spring of Drowned Man, causing everyone to fight over it and ruined the whole affair. Usual Ranma plot.
They're pretty close to being a married couple though.
Edited by terumokou on Jan 18th 2020 at 11:58:24 AM
Burning love!Ranma 1/2 is one of those series where pretty much every character is meant to be a dumpster fire of a human being. They are all, every single one of them, a different flavor of f*cked-up asshole who would be totally obnoxious to have in your life as a real person, but makes for a compelling story when smashed against another type of f*cked-up asshole.
But because each dumpster fire of a person is flawed in ways that can be relatable to different people, most Ranma fans latch onto a character or a couple of characters that they feel really represents them. And then they enter the fandom war, where they declare all the other characters to be obnoxious horrible monsters that ruin everyone's lives and their characters to be flawless paragons of virtue who never meant any harm.
Like 90% of the discourse surrounding Ranma 1/2 is an argument over which characters are the ones that really suck as people. And the answer is all of them. All of them suck as people. That's the point. Ranma 1/2 is a comedy about horrible people being horrible to each other.
Ranma and Akane often get the brunt of that. There are generally three opinions on Ranma and Akane.
- Ranma is the perfect good person who did nothing wrong, and Akane is a horrible bitch who needs to get off his back.
- Akane is the perfect good person who did nothing wrong, and Ranma is an unlikable asshole who needs to get off her back.
- Ranma/Akane is an unlikable asshole and that's why the other one should hook up with Ryoga/Shampoo/Ukyo/etc., who is the perfect good person who did nothing wrong.
The fandom is also flooded with headcanons to try and "justify" the characters' behavior. Like, a popular one is that Ranma is a super honorable person whose strict definitions of honor demand he never offend or harm anybody, and thus he is unable to resolve the harem-conflict by rejecting any of the girls because to do so would hurt their feelings and thus wound his honor.
This is an actual thing people made up because apparently a hormonal teenage boy not objecting to naked women throwing themselves at him requires explanation.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
It has been a very long time since I last watched Ranma, and I was never a big big fan to begin with, so perhaps my memory betrays me, but was Ranma really that indecisive? I am fairly certain (though again, I might misremember) that he at least made it pretty clear towards Shampoo that he had no interest in her, but she did not care. Neither she nor her grandmother cared, and instead tried to force him to marry her.
Edit: I initially wanted to write that Kasumi was not really a jerkass, then I read the YMMV page.
[[quoteblock] Is Kasumi truly sweet and naive, or does she merely act that way because it's expected of her and she subtly enjoys stirring up trouble through such methods as giving Akane a mallet and planting the idea that Ranma may attempt to rape Akane while she's weak from the flu?[[/quoteblock]
Jesus, did the latter really happen?
Edited by Zarastro on Jan 20th 2020 at 12:37:24 PM
Ranma's not indecisive, really. Indecisiveness implies that he's weighing his options.
Ranma's apathetic towards the harem plot. He treats the harem shenanigans with all the weight of, "Okay, I guess this is happening now." He doesn't really care about all this arranged marriage, romance, and suitors stuff, and he gets really angry whenever he's dragged into it. He's what shonen writers think a teenage boy is; all he really wants to do is study martial arts.
Ranma doesn't care about romance, except when he's having fuzzy romance feelings. And when he's having fuzzy romance feelings, it is exclusively always with Akane because she's the actual Love Interest amid the cacophony of chaos. Everything else is just the madhouse he lives in continuing to be the madhouse.
Ranma 1/2 is an absurd comedy about a bunch of people being way too invested in what a teenage boy plans to do with his dick (and, on occasion, vagina).
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 20th 2020 at 4:43:03 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Because I wanted to correct a mistake, and give these characters the happy ending they deserved. I wanted them to understand each other inherently by the end of it.
I feel like I've heard them over-emphasize just how important/flawed their writing of Goku/the whole show was a few too many times.
Season 1 was Early-Installment Weirdness. Yes, the running gag in the community was "Goku is a bad father." It wasn't some cardinal writing sin that shouldn't have been employed and tainted the series' legacy. It was extremely funny at the time.
Season 2 is where they found their footing and were able to balance the comedy and seriousness.
Season 3 is where things got heavy, and, yes, through character development and solid writing they did a Decon-Recon Switch of Goku and Gohan's relationship, taking the gag of Goku being a bad father and developing it into something more sincere. I knew they were handling Goku differently the moment Goku threatened Semi-Perfect Cell. Goku singing "All I want to do is see you turn into a Super Saiyan?" Goku admitting to Chi-Chi he's not good at saying goodbye when he goes to face Cell? All of that was hilarious and more nuanced than in Season 1.
So... it's great that "the finale was so fucking important" but I can't help but shrug every time it comes up. I think they worried way too much about this. Give yourself a break guys. You're taking premade material and adding tropes and humor to it, not writing an opera to be acted out in the royal court where every scene needs to be done perfectly or it's off with your heads.
In some ways they even gave the story a bit more depth (Goku's approach to training Gohan), and streamlined/emphasized things that might have been rather vague in the original (like the relationships between Trunks, Bulma, and Vegeta, or Krillin and 18).
At no point over the course of watching Abridged did I think "wow, they are doing a terrible job with Goku and it's bringing down the whole thing."
I can still go back and rewatch Season 1 and laugh at how Roshi transmutes his beer into apple juice, to a Nestly crunch bar, to Nappa's head, and back to beer. Or how Goku gets obsessed with a "muffin button."
Now if you want to talk about TFS content that simply failed to deliver let's go over to Final Fantasy VII Machinabridged, which was "ha-hah" funny in the first season then leaned heavily into Cerebus Syndrome in the second and third. I've heard their Let's Plays aren't great either.
Edited by Soble on Jan 17th 2020 at 10:22:51 AM
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!