I still say that it's better to have a character fade out of focus than to bog down the story by trying to force them into relevance. DB changed a lot over its run. Not all of the characters were well-suited to the new direction. Would each human getting a lengthy fight against a weaker android actually have improved the story at all?
I always thought it was interesting that Krillin kind of played Mission Control for a bit in the Cell arc. He didn't exactly take charge while Goku was sick, but he did keep everyone together. All things considered, the Cell arc was a nice final arc for Krillin as a main character.
That said, Dragon Ball also has an issue with introducing recurring characters and then not adequately using them in order to make way for the next introduced characters - while still trying to play off the older characters as recurrers even though because of the way the story was written they don't actually have anything to do - which makes that sort of thing more noticeable. I don't think juggling a huge cast is something Toriyama is particularly good at, and it showed as Z went on because (after Freeza) everyone stuck together in times of crisis as apposed to characters dipping in and out of plots like in DB.
Granted, it's not too bad - it's just noticeable. Not like GT (which I always say is basically every flaw that Z had made ten times poorer), not that GT matters any more.
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Depends on how the fight was written, I'd say. Weaker characters aren't inherently less entertaining than stronger ones. If it were, then no shonen series with characters less powerful than DBZ's would be popular, and people wouldn't prefer characters like Spider Man to characters like Superman.
edited 23rd Oct '14 9:48:01 AM by KnownUnknown
The problem is that they're ultimately pointless because the real fighters are OOM more powerful and could easily sweep up the weaker opposition once the big showdown is over. The fights just become story cruft because any androids which Yamcha, Krillian and Tien could threaten would be unable to even hurt Goku or Vegeta.
And even if you close the gap in power, fights that only exist because X character needs a fight still aren't nearly as interesting as fights that are core to the story.
If you're making the assumption that the arc would be written so that this situation could happen:
It would also carry that, if a plot were written so that - say - Krillin were able to have a fight with a major villain, then the rest of the storyline would be written would reflect/accomodate that that. Otherwise there's no point to bringing up the situation in the first place.
Basically, you're assuming that the only way to make the weaker character relevant would be to have the exact same story but with the other characters getting superfluous fights, but if the DBZ were written so that the other characters were still able to fight after Piccolo, then the story would probably end up reflecting that from the beginning.
edited 23rd Oct '14 2:48:18 PM by KnownUnknown
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That's true. Goku and Vegeta are so powerful by comparison to the other protagonists that it's hard to justify throwing them a bone by giving them weaker enemies to fight, because in order to justify that bone, you have to answer one simple question: why can't Goku and Vegeta handle it themselves?
- VILLAIN: My five henchmen and I will defeat your battle team—
- VEGETA: I just killed your henchmen.
- VILLAIN: ...wh...what? You were supposed to be fighting me, while they engage your allies—
- VEGETA: Yeah, that's stupid, and I'm awesome. You're next.
Most other shonen have a protagonist who is the strongest of the group, but it's rare to see the disparity between the top and bottom tiers of the protagonist group be quite this excessive. Fact is, at nearly all times after the human characters dropped out of the spotlight, Vegeta could slaughter the entire human protagonist group simultaneously before his afternoon tea finishes boiling. To make any minion you give the villain strong enough to survive a half-assed backslap by Goku on the way to fighting the Big Bad, you would have to make them so strong that the humans wouldn't be able to fight them anyway.
Ultimately, Dragon Ball just isn't that kind of show. It's the story of Goku and whoever happens to be tagging along with him at a given moment.
edited 23rd Oct '14 4:44:24 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Bloodsquirrel is totally wrong though. Side character fights are often far more dynamic and unique than main character fights in shounen because main characters in shounen pretty much all follow the same rules of "I'm losing until the plot says I'm not losing." You see it with Goku, you see it with Ichigo, you see it with Naruto, you see it with Yusuke....
The main heroes of shounen have this problem most of the time in fact. Main characters in general tend to be the worst parts of their own series. I never fucking watched Naruto for Naruto. His spamming clones and winning by farting never made me like the series, that's for sure. All the best fights iN naruto didn't involve Naruto at all.
What shounen needs is more heroes like Kenshin - legitimately skilled protagonists who win with actual skill as opposed to last second Heroic Willpower Powerup Maximum.
edited 23rd Oct '14 8:19:20 PM by Nikkolas
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No, in the last paragraph he's still making the assumption that the only way to use a large cast is to take time out of other characters - in addition to the assumption that, even if the plot were rewritten such that more of the cast was viable, that those same characters would still be more deserving of that time.
I've seen too many shows more adequately juggle larger casts to think that's anywhere near true.
Like Tobias said, Dragonball just isn't that kind of show. Which is why my main assessment is that Toriyama just isn't that kind of writer. He isn't great at juggling large casts: imo the problem for him isn't that he ought to have brought other characters back into the limelight, but rather that he should've stopped introducing characters at a certain point or been more diligent in writing characters out of the series (Yamcha and Tien, for example, are cool but just kind of there - the series loses little by just saying they went on with their lives and giving them the occasional cameo). I think to an extent he wanted to eat his cake and keep it too: take the show in new directions but keep everything major he made for it as relevant as possible even where it wasn't quite working.
All in all, with respect to its other characters Dragonball Z might have been better as a main series about a smaller core cast, with the occasional special about some other characters' adventures after they left the series, distinctly separate from the main series. Or better yet as something even more explicitly Goku centric - rather than keep the whole cast together as much as possible, have him receive or swap out a smaller supporting cast every saga or so (like Dragonball did). A decrease in the disparity might have a better effect on accomplishing that (the increased focus on power level caused other issues as well), but the main thing is how the characters are handled.
edited 23rd Oct '14 8:53:30 PM by KnownUnknown
Part of it, too, is that Toriyama originally wanted to end Dragonball with Freiza's defeat. At that point, the humans were outclassed by the Saiyins, but not nearly to the degree they were by the end of the series, and still made significant contributions to the plot. Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu all fought to buy time for Goku to arrive in the Saiyan saga, and Krillin was basically the leader of the team for most of the Namekian saga. It was after Toriyama was pressured to continue the series past Freiza that things really started to fall apart, because obviously he hadn't planned ahead for how guys like Yamcha were going to remain relevant once Freiza was the benchmark the next villain had to surpass, and then it just kept snowballing further and further out of control when he was pressured again to continue the series past Cell.
Isn't that thing about ending it at the Frieza saga just a rumour?
Though considering that we've determined that Frieza's ridiculously high Power Level is where the seeping began, I can almost believe it.
In regards to main characters being the worst parts of their series, that's an unfortunate aspect of Shonen that really needs to be fixed. Though you also need to avoid making them losers who never accomplish anything.
Eren Yeager for instance, has not done anything of significance since the sealing of the Trost wall. In fact, so far, most of the development has been for the side characters, who've had far more effect on the plot. It's been nice, but as I like Eren a bit more than most, it'd be nice to see him start having an effect on things.
Overall, I agree that maybe it would have been better to put some of the other characters to bed rather than continually trotting them out to be useless, along side the arguments that Powers just jumped way too high.
So I have to ask, what do you guys think Frieza's max should have been in order to make him daunting, but not so much that it required Goku, Vegeta and Piccolo to completely leave everyone in the dust?
One Strip! One Strip!
Maybe a flat million for his final form, 1.5 mil at 100%, as opposed to that being the power of his second? Would make his original first form like 250,000 or something, which would still take over two Ginyu's, unchanged, to match. Daunting, but not an overwhelming disparity.
edited 23rd Oct '14 10:13:23 PM by Bouncy
^^ This. Focusing on power levels just turns every fight into a glorified arm wrestling match. I feel like it would have been much better for power levels to have all plateaued at a certain point, and from then on focused more on abilities and techniques than overall strength.
edited 23rd Oct '14 10:25:52 PM by Wryte
For Pete's sake, don't say "because Battle of Gods/Dragonball Online/Jaco the Patrolman supercedes it and makes a lot more sense."
I get that 'no one likes GT' but to say it doesn't matter? When did it "cease" to matter?
Except for the part where it hasn't. Power was always a factor, but up until the Android Saga, ingenuity, cleverness, and tactical prowess also played important roles. If every fight was a glorified arm wrestling match from day 1, Oozaru Goku would have annihilated everyone.
Dragon Ball gets a bum rap as far as "The only thing that matters is charging up energy and transforming to get stronger!" goes because nobody remembers anything but the Android Saga, and the Android Saga exemplified all the worst parts of Dragon Ball.
edited 24th Oct '14 9:00:47 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It's not an assumption, it's experience from seeing how other manga have played out.
The 1v1, fight-centric ethos of Shonen battle manga already lends it self to simple, repetitive plots. Trying to cram in MOAR FIGHTS doesn't help, and winds up destroying your pacing and narrative momentum. I can't think of any fights in DB that would have improved the series by being omitted or made shorter. I can think of tons of them for Bleach and Naruto.
I'm asking, non-rhetorically, what would more androids have added to the Cell saga? What ideas was Toriyama trying to express that weren't being expressed because there weren't enough fights? Where would they have added tension to the overall story arc? What narrative potential went untapped?
Doing that kind of breaks the narrative. Frieza being so powerful that he couldn't be defeated just by teaming up was important. He was this awful bully that did whatever he wanted to because nobody could stop him. He didn't even have to worry about keeping his minions loyal like a real-life dictator would; he was just plain untouchable.
At best, I'd say that you could have skipped 2nd and 3rd form, made Piccolo a match for his first form instead of his 2nd, and made his transformed state scale from his untransformed state the way his 4th form scaled from his 2nd form.
edited 24th Oct '14 9:42:44 AM by Bloodsquirrel

Technically, he's print.
Page toppers: turning responses into non-sequiturs since the forum was invented.
edited 23rd Oct '14 1:52:50 AM by KnownUnknown