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Zelenal The Cat Knows Where It's At from Purrgatory Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
The Cat Knows Where It's At
#21501: Nov 29th 2016 at 11:16:49 PM

To be fair, the only human fighters to ever matter even during the original Dragon Ball was whoever fought Goku in the finals at the Budoukai and they'd immediately stop being relevant when it came to fights afterwards.

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Saiga Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
#21502: Nov 30th 2016 at 1:32:10 AM

Goku stuffing his face was, once again, hateful filler.

Gohan doesn't bring up her being a girl when he tells her to give up in the manga, but he does say "that jerk doesn't even care that she's a girl" which is equally stupid.

I think having Videl join the group at the ship and beat up Spopovich would be very silly and, in a way, quite petty. For her to immediately be able to defeat Spopovich without any development after her lost would make the entire ordeal pointless (making both fights a total waste of screentime), and her going to the ship and fighting would show a lot of immaturity rather than realizing she is in over her head.

I definitely think it's a serious problem that Spopovich was her last fight given how it ended, but using it as set up for her to beat him would be very shallow. Without any actual development or improvement for the second match, it'd just feel like throwing her a bone.

If Videl had recovered and showed she has lost none of her enthusiasm for fighting (and not lose her characterization ala Super) I don't think there would be any issue. But necessitating that she beat the same man who assaulted her seems rife with Unfortunate Implications, as though she can't take a loss without "redeeming" herself.

The male characters have plenty of losses and are able to get back up without avenging themselves against the same foe. All she'd need is to be treated the same as that.

Toriyama set her up with an adversary, had her on her way to face said adversary, and then was like, "Mmm...nah," and unceremoniously got rid of both of them.

I am 130% sure this is not the thought process behind it because nothing even hinted toward Spopovich being a recurring adversary for her. "Had her on her way to face [him]" is an outright lie, there was nothing to suggest a continuation of that fight and it was clear that Spopovich was involved the greater plot.

edited 30th Nov '16 1:40:36 AM by Saiga

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#21503: Nov 30th 2016 at 7:27:09 AM

I love how "Filler" for this series is basically used as an excuse to handwave things that don't matter. "Didn't happen in the manga? Screw it, it's just filler that doesn't matter"

Kind of puts into perspective how dragged out the Anime was in comparison to the manga.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Enlong Court Dragon from The Underground Facility Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Court Dragon
#21504: Nov 30th 2016 at 7:38:26 AM

I wouldn't fully agree with a sentiment that filler can't be any good or worth discussing. But yeah, there was a lot of it back in the day.

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Soble Since: Dec, 2013
#21505: Nov 30th 2016 at 7:45:12 AM

Not as much as One Piece or Naruto.

No anime will ever have more filler than One Piece or Naruto.

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BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
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#21506: Nov 30th 2016 at 7:46:28 AM

One Piece has padding, there's a difference.

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Enlong Court Dragon from The Underground Facility Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Court Dragon
#21507: Nov 30th 2016 at 8:02:35 AM

Padding and also filler arcs.

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BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
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#21508: Nov 30th 2016 at 8:13:27 AM

Yea, but Z had filler arcs too so that's nothing new.

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HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#21509: Nov 30th 2016 at 8:51:01 AM

The male characters have plenty of losses and are able to get back up without avenging themselves against the same foe. All she'd need is to be treated the same as that.

Well, the problem is, she has only one on screen fight, where she's utterly destroyed, and then due to Super, never fights again.

Yes, the others had losses and often never got the chance to avenge them (because they guys they fought were so inconsequential that something else would crush them) but they had more then one fight, and didn't quit until many later.

With one exception: Goku was beaten by Tao, Tambourine, and King Piccolo, and he got to re-match and beat all of them and rather handily at that. So it's ok for him to get another crack at anyone he's lost against, but not anyone else, cause they don't matter.

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Cruherrx I say things. from my own little world Since: Apr, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
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#21510: Nov 30th 2016 at 9:40:53 AM

Every moment Tenshinhans has after his beating of Master Roshi is a loss of some kind, even in his moments of "victory".

Yamcha never redeems his losses.

Dragonball isn't big on giving characters "time to shine". I greatly appreciate that fact due to exposure to other series like Bleach, Nardo or One Piece, where the authors feel compelled to get every single character a fight, even though it slows things to a crawl.

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Zelenal The Cat Knows Where It's At from Purrgatory Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
The Cat Knows Where It's At
#21511: Nov 30th 2016 at 9:46:38 AM

Even when Dragon Ball did give weaker characters time to shine (Resurrection "F"), people still complained.

edited 30th Nov '16 9:46:58 AM by Zelenal

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Soble Since: Dec, 2013
#21512: Nov 30th 2016 at 9:48:57 AM

I think people complained because Jaco and Master Roshi got to fight, but Android 18 and Yamcha didn't.

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TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
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#21513: Nov 30th 2016 at 9:57:43 AM

The Videl/Spopovich stuff is still terrible, but even without it, I wouldn't have expected Videl to be particularly helpful in the series. The only reason she even gets brutalised in the first place was to give The Hero (at that point of the story) Gohan a personal motivation for dealing with these guys.

Which was also pointless because Babidi pops them. Neither Gohan nor Videl ever avengers Videl's brutalization, so injuring Videl to give Gohan manpain achieves nothing.

Which is what happens when you don't plan things ahead of time and just write what seems cool in the moment.

I am 130% sure this is not the thought process behind it because nothing even hinted toward Spopovich being a recurring adversary for her. "Had her on her way to face [him]" is an outright lie, there was nothing to suggest a continuation of that fight and it was clear that Spopovich was involved the greater plot.

She was literally in transit to the location where he was, in order to assist in fighting the evil forces that he served.

There's no reason for Videl to even have gone with the others to the ship if Toriyama didn't want her there. If her turning back was meant to be a triumph of maturity via recognizing how outclassed she is, then she could have just stayed at the tournament arena.

Having Videl head out with the others and only realize mid-transit that she's relatively useless is narratively awkward and reeks of Toriyama pressing the abort button. It's hardly the first time he's done that; the arrival of Mecha Frieza and King Cold were abruptly aborted by Trunks going, "Hey guys, f*ck that story, Toriyama thought of a better one and we're doing that now."

Introducing a new villain, building up suspense, only to kill him off five seconds later because you decided you didn't want to do that story after all is precisely what writers who write by the seat of their pants wind up doing sometimes. Awkward, jarring shifts in the narrative just happen when you don't plan things out.

That said, I do agree with you that simply letting her recover and go right back into fighting would have worked just as well.

edited 30th Nov '16 9:59:01 AM by TobiasDrake

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HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#21514: Nov 30th 2016 at 10:33:36 AM

Introducing a new villain, building up suspense, only to kill him off five seconds later because you decided you didn't want to do that story after all is precisely what writers who write by the seat of their pants wind up doing sometimes. Awkward, jarring shifts in the narrative just happen when you don't plan things out.

And to put that in another way, ascending a character to the role of main hero, building him up as the guy who will save the day, only to then toss him under the bus because you decided you liked the old hero better after all is precisely what writers who write by the seat of their pants end up doing.

But, we all love Dragonball anyway, or we wouldn't be here. It's actually a testament to Toriyama's writing that it all worked out despite his haphazard style.

I still wish he'd come up with a more concrete plan for Super, but it seems that just isn't how he does things at all.

One Strip! One Strip!
LordVatek Not really a lord of anything Since: Sep, 2014
Not really a lord of anything
#21515: Nov 30th 2016 at 10:58:12 AM

It's hardly the first time he's done that; the arrival of Mecha Frieza and King Cold were abruptly aborted by Trunks going, "Hey guys, f*ck that story, Toriyama thought of a better one and we're doing that now."

I mostly agree with the rest of your post but I think the whole point of those two even existing was to show how serious things were in a kind of "Oh crap, that guy just wasted Frieza and these androids are too strong for him?"

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Larkmarn Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#21516: Nov 30th 2016 at 11:54:50 AM

[up] Agreed. Their appearance wasn't as part of an Aborted Arc so much as The Worf Effect to show how rough the new bad guys are going to be.

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unnoun Since: Jan, 2012
#21517: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:14:37 PM

Honestly, Videl might have given up on fighting when she realized how pointless it was.

I mean, other physicists don't give up because of Stephen Hawking.

Frankly that's a pretty toxic attitude.

Nobody is saying that Videl needs to go super Saiyan maximum god cubed times infinity and one-shot zeno-beerus-whis-goku-rainbow

...I mean, okay, I sorta say that sometimes as a joke, but mainly because I like goofy what-ifs, and, frankly, the Super Saiyan God ritual is vague enough that I could imagine it. Like, they say to focus your light/positive energy or whatever into another Saiyan. I could easily see them accidentally focusing on Videl/Pan instead of Goku and she/they would get the power-up.

But that works more as a one-off au than it would the main series for me. It only works because of the context of the "real" story where Goku gets a power with such poorly-explained and vague mechanics.

But all that is besides the point. Don't talk about it, I'll just ignore it.

The point is that Resurrection F had a scene of Krillin beating up some guys and arresting them. Super also has scenes of Krillin doing his job in the police. To provide context. Small establishing shots.

They could easily do that with Videl in a dojo flipping a guy while all the other students watch, and then she instructs them on their technique.

If the writers cared.

edited 30th Nov '16 12:19:11 PM by unnoun

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#21518: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:21:53 PM

Videl can train just because she enjoys it. That seemed to be the kind of person she is, or at least was. Not everything has to be about defending the planet from the inevitable next evil.

edited 30th Nov '16 12:25:25 PM by LSBK

HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#21520: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:22:49 PM

More like if Toriyama cared.

I think he has characters he does care about, and characters who have served their purpose, and are now just there.

Video is one of them.

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unnoun Since: Jan, 2012
#21521: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:27:48 PM

Like. In a lot of ways the difference between Goku and Vegeta is that Vegeta mainly trains to surpass Goku, while Goku mainly trains to surpass himself.

Thinking of training being pointless because they can't match someone else is maybe exactly the wrong attitude for the weaker characters to take.

edited 30th Nov '16 12:28:57 PM by unnoun

HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#21522: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:31:23 PM

[up]

Well there's nothing we can do about it.

They've all given up on training. Most of them are as strong as they will ever get (or they'll ever need to be) it's just that it's far below the highest level of Goku and Vegeta.

Serial Escalation. What can you do about it?

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TyeDyeWildebeest Unreasonably Quirky from Big Rock Candy Mountain Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: How does it feel to treat me like you do?
Unreasonably Quirky
#21523: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:32:00 PM

More like if Toriyama cared. I think he has characters he does care about, and characters who have served their purpose, and are now just there.

Yeah, I've noticed.

If you ever see Yamcha doing anything even remotely awesome in the anime, it's almost definitely a filler scene that never happened in the manga. Beating Recoome? Filler. Surviving 300x gravity? Filler. Using his skills to kick ass at baseball? Filler. Taking on Olibu in the afterlife? Filler.

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TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
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#21524: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:34:38 PM

IIRC, that second one wasn't even intended by the filler to be a feat. Yamcha's fans have taken that scene and been like, "He survived 300x gravity! It didn't immediately kill him! That's amazing! He's so tough!" when the scene itself was just playing him for laughs and going, "LOL, look at how the 300x floored him, he can't even stand up 'cause Yamcha's so lame."

edited 30th Nov '16 12:35:07 PM by TobiasDrake

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Thebrawlbro Since: Aug, 2013
#21525: Nov 30th 2016 at 12:35:11 PM

At the very least Yamcha will be doing something soon in Super, once they get to the baseball episode.


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