Dragon Ball Z Abridged

I think, if TFS had continued into Buu, they could have flipped the script on how Goku interacts with the villains. With Freeza and Vegeta, they got exasperated by interacting with Goku's stupidity. With Cell, he was able to live right on Goku's level and they got along well. With Buu, what if he was SO STUPID that GOKU became exasperated by him?

Like, Goku's trying to have his dumb banter with Fat Buu and Kid Buu but even HE'S getting thrown off by how dumb they are, and Goku has a moment where he's like "oh, so this is how it feels".

Just as an example:

• Goku: "Imma deck you in the shnozz!"

• Fat Buu: "What does shnozz mean?"

• Goku: "It means your nose."

• Fat Buu: "What's a nose?"

And then that sets up for the Vegetto line where he punches Buuhan in the nose and says that he was better off when he didn't have one.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Aug 2nd 2021 at 9:48:49 AM

Goku and Frieza's chemistry is just the best. Goku is simply too stupid for Frieza to get under the skin of. It's so delightfully cathartic.

"Good God, I traded Vegeta for this."

"How do you FUNCTION?"

I'm throughly enjoying HFIL due to how well Freeza and Cell are bouncing off each other. Not gonna lie, the move Fighter Z pulled, with them, rather that being all buddy-buddy, utterly get on each other's nerves, is glorious, and having their abridged selves work on that...

It does make more sense to me that Frieza and Cell would hate each other. I've criticized the "Bash Bros in Hell" thing for Toei fundamentally misunderstanding the afterlife Toriyama created, but it also just doesn't work for me because of the characters involved.

I have trouble believing that Frieza is capable of being friends with someone that is not directly subordinate to him. Someone he can't push around. Frieza's whole persona is built around being the top dog in every interaction. He can neither fathom nor condone the idea that he, Lord Frieza, could have a peer.

Frieza doesn't have friends. He has employees and he has enemies. Which one are you?

And I have trouble believing that Cell would stand by and allow himself to be treated the way Frieza would inevitably treat him. Of course Frieza would be toxic and of course Cell would push back. These two personalities don't mesh.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 3rd 2021 at 6:51:32 AM

I've heard it criticized before how Toei handled the "afterlife that Toriyama created" but like... I don't get it.

Having your villains come back and team up is cool. The afterlife that Toriyama created sucks. Every bad guy just becomes a cloud. Who cares about that. Seeing them team up later and be powerful enough to still have bodies is fun. Even Toriyama decided it was funnier for Freeza to still have a body in his own personal hell and then it was cooler for Freeza to come back to life and get even stronger.

It's not just one person but a lot of fans that dislike the idea.

You're not supposed to care about them being a cloud. Because they're dead. Their presence in the story is over.

Dragon Ball already has enough issues with Death Is Cheap. If bad guys can just power up and leave Hell, then what even is death?

Death is already something you can cheat by making a wish on a magic plot macguffin. It doesn't need to be something you can cheat because the story's crossed the Death Doesn't Matter power level threshold and now nobody, good or evil, can ever die again.

Also, it cheapens the meaning behind Goku keeping his body if, actually, everyone always keeps their bodies.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 3rd 2021 at 7:55:19 AM

Pretty hard to cheapen something that had little value in the first place.

Dragonball has an afterlife that allows visitation if you learn a special technique from aliens. Goku has come back from the dead twice as has Freeza. Being dead doesn't eliminate presence in Dragon Ball's story.

The bad guys never do power up and leave Hell without an outside disturbance initiating it.

The mere idea that Toei decided to have Freeza and Cell not become clouds and have them appear is vastly better than them just turning clouds and that's it.

It's not as if Toriyama wrote in big letters THESE VILLAINS MUST NEVER RETURN AND ALL DEAD PEOPLE BECOME CLOUDS PERIOD. If he did, he quickly ignored that when Super happened because bringing Freeza back seemed cooler to him, and even Super Dragonball Heroes brought Cell back, as did Fighterz. And those are far more interesting choices than those two remaining clouds we're never supposed to think about again.

I don't see it as cheapening because Freeza and Cell are just that powerful/evil to keep their bodies. Granted, I can't say the same about the Ginyu Force but then they are loyal to Space Napohitler. Goku keeps his body because he is supremely good-natured. It's an interesting take on quantum physics/belief systems that beings of concentrated good/evil can withstand the separation of body and soul.

I’ll admit I’m not seeing the reasonable link between “Toriyama never explicitly said his villains couldn’t come back, even if the afterlife he penned doesn’t strictly work that way” and “it’s this better if Toei ignores the spirit of what he wrote and thus rewrite part of the series as though it were a completely different series.”

They only seem to turn into clouds while in that large line, Freeza was given his body back specifically to be tortured in hell because he apparently resists reincarnation.

Presumably that's what happens to everyone who gets sent to hell, but Freeza just takes longer.

But yeah, death is cheap in dragon ball and all that nonsense.

@Pokesamus A. Doesn't exactly make it a good idea to try to "devalue it further".

B. ...You know, this just came to me. I know there's this idea about "death being cheap" and it's not totally unfounded, considering a lot of the cast keep coming back from the dead. But they only keep coming back because they're boggarting the seven magical balls needed to summon a wish-granting dragon that also has it's own limits and is tied to the lifespan of one or two green aliens. The Dragon Balls are the only way, as far as we can see.

I guess I'm saying there's a difference between the narrative making death seem "cheap" with constant resurrections and the in-universe afterlife being modified to lessen the divide between being dead and being alive.

@FOFD ...What's actually supposed to be "cool" about it? If you're arguing that it's O.K to let internal consistency slide to give a cool moment, what is so cool about Cell and Freiza getting bodies and fighting in the bloody afterlife, where we're going to be around and the cast mostly tries to stay away from?

Frieza doesn't have his body back in Resurrection F/Super. Coccoon Frieza is a visual shorthand to convey the idea that Frieza's soul is imprisoned and undergoing its cleansing.

Keeping your body in Dragon Ball is a laundry list of specific metaphysics.

1. It is your actual physical body. Your body disintegrates from the human world and is transported into the afterlife. The lethal damage dealt to it is patched up. You are allowed to wear the body in the afterlife and do all the stuff a body does like eating and training.
2. If you are resurrected, you would ordinarily return to life in your body, wherever that is, with the lethal damage restored but otherwise in the same condition as just before you died. But because the body is with you and already healed, you simply lose the halo that marks you as dead and remain right where you are in the afterlife.
3. Your body is what contains your ki and power level. Instead of being a harmless wisp, you retain the strength you had in life because you have your body.

All of that nonsense is significantly different from "Frieza's powerless little soul is being purged of its evil. Let's put Frieza's face on a cocoon to immediately convey to the audience who it's supposed to be and what's going on there."

No that’s pretty blatantly him with a physical body in hell.

Exhibit A being...

The fact that the body in hell changes to match his physical state when he died, and when Goku talked to Frieza in hell and Goku put himself on guard when Frieza went gold.

Yeah, if it wasn't for Goku actually talking to Freeza I would've been less sure about him having his body.

Freeza's definitely physically there by the time Super has him appear. Whether he was intended to be physically there in Revival F is another story, and I'd be willing to believe originally it was supposed to be a visual representation, and then they just shrugged and went "sure, whatever" when they finally needed Goku to actually talk to him while dead in Super.

My issue is still with how Freeza and Cell coming back is apparently an issue for most, but it seems like I mistook people disliking how Toei handled them in those filler episodes for people disliking them coming back at all.

It is very cool that Freeza and Cell team up in the bloody afterlife because

• that's the inverse of what Goku did - being so good throughout his life and rewarded by being sent to Japanese anime Valhalla to be among deceased warriors for the rest of eternity. In a place where even Goku's greatest enemies were small potatoes to fighters like Pikkon.
• It's also cool seeing how the two of them grapple with their defeats and interact when they never had a chance to during life. It's not a lot but it's more than we had prior to Fighterz and Resurrection F. At best there were some fanfics on Fanficnet and AO 3 about Freeza coming back with an all-new 5th form, or Cell turning into a Super Saiyan 3.
• despite what I said dying usually does mean the end of a character's agency. Dragonball is a rare exception, so seeing these once-unstoppable villains subjected to imprisonment and eternal damnation - and getting a quick fight with their archnemesis too? That's fun.

Edited by FOFD on Aug 3rd 2021 at 10:39:22 AM

1. “Inverse”, what?

2. So...seeing a fanfiction concept come to life? Actually, that’s a question: what was the interesting things they “grappled with”?

3. As opposed to the other fights he’s already had with them?

...Eh.

Edited by fredhot16 on Aug 3rd 2021 at 8:53:36 AM

People don't like them coming back at all because Freeza, which is less a problem with toei filler and just that it keeps happening.

Edited by randomness4 on Aug 3rd 2021 at 1:43:38 PM

I'm sure you thought that was amusing. Allow me to disabuse you of that idea.

Edited by fredhot16 on Aug 3rd 2021 at 11:06:03 AM

No Cell Jrs. in that clip either. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put them in the Neonatal division….

Or do neonates not have souls in the Dragon world?

Clearly the Jrs aren’t evil then.

Frieza and Cell being bash bros in Hell undermines the entire function of Hell. If it's just a lawless free-for-all where the most powerful villains ever to have died get to reign supreme as top dogs, then it doesn't really feel like Frieza/Cell's karmic penalty for his actions in life is any different from his actual life.

If anything, their lives have improved since dying because they now have a best friend by their side helping them kill fools and take names.

One could argue, "Well, it's still meaningful because Frieza and Cell can't threaten other people. It's like exiling all the bad people to their own little pocket of the universe and just letting them be each other's consequence." But that isn't true. Because power levels are still a thing in the Toei Afterlife, Frieza and Cell can just power up, slaughter the afterlife's attendants, and punch their way back into existence.

Toei products have featured three separate instances of Frieza and Cell, without being resurrected, breaking free of Hell and threatening people some more. The Pikkon introduction for the Afterlife Tournament filler arc, the movie Fusion Reborn, and the Super Android 17 arc of Dragon Ball GT.

At least in Super, Frieza had to be resurrected (first by the Dragon Balls, then by Whis) in order to resume his reign of carnage. Toei's Frieza can just punch his way out of the afterlife whenever he pleases because he's so powerful.

And if he can do it, why can't Goku?

EDIT: Note that this could be mitigated by the fact that if a dead person dies again, they suffer Cessation of Existence and can never be brought back. But that plot point wasn't introduced until near the end of the manga so it didn't factor into Toei's writing, and even after the manga ended they still elected to ignore it. GT even features a plot point that Goku cannot defeat Frieza and Cell in Hell because, within the afterlife, a dead person is totally unkillable.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 6th 2021 at 12:46:46 PM

I agree with Tobias. Hell is Hell.