#pilaf saga | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

duhragonball · 1 year

Text

Dragon Ball Super Manga ch. 21-26

Phew! We’re almost done with the Zamasu Saga.

Last time, we left off with Trunks holding off Goku Black and Zamasu so that Goku and Vegeta could escape in the Time Machine. This is somewhat similar to what Trunks did to save them in Episode 62 of the DBS anime. Except they never bothered to explain how Trunks survived against such hopeless odds. Instead, in Episode 63, he just wakes up in a Resistance Bunker. No one explains how he got away from Black and Zamasu. It’s bullshit.

In the manga version, he gets rescued by the Shin and Gowasu of the “main” timeline. In Trunks’ timeline, all of the Supreme Kais are dead, but the “main” timeline versions can still travel to this world using their Time Rings. They can also teleport to any planet they wish, including this reality’s version of the Sacred World of the Kais in Universe 7. It’s deserted now, but they still know where it is, and it provides refuge for the good guys while they wait for Goku and Vegeta to return.

But why do they even need to wait for Goku and Vegeta? They used the Time Machine, so why don’t they just set the return coordinates for a few seconds after they left? Goku asks this very question, and Bulma tells him that it can’t work that way. I won’t get into the details because later it turns out Bulma was mistaken about this, but in this scene, she tells them that they have to “sync up” with the other timeline. Spending one day here means that they have to return one day later in the other timeline as well.

Tell you what, let’s just jump ahead to the ending, where Emperor Pilaf of all people figures out Bulma’s error. Presumably Future Bulma, the one who actually invented the time machine, understood this, but Present Bulma is still learning as she goes.

Oh, before I get too far ahead of myself, check out this goofy rendition of Trunks’ sword. It looks too wide in a lot of scenes, but in this one it’s like Toyotaro is trying to make it looks stupid on purpose. Aren’t swords easy to draw? Also, why is Mai wrapping her fingers around the blade like that?

One more thing, I appreciate Goku Black in this scene declaring that he doesn’t want to destroy the entire planet. He could wipe out all mortals very efficiently if he just blew up the planets they were standing on, but he wants to keep all the planets in tact. This was heavily implied in the anime, but they never came out and said so, which always frustrated me.

Here’s a scene of Black and Zamasu’s hideout, and it works a lot better than it did in the anime, because this scene shows them discussing their plans instead of just sipping tea and congratulating themselves. Because of Gowasu and Shin’s little rescue earlier, they’re concerned that their plans have been exposed to the gods of the other timelines. They’re worried that Grand Zeno might even catch wind of this, so their best bet is to leave this Earth and move on to a new base of operations. But they still want to finish off the remaining Earthlings before they leave.

See, this is excellent storytelling. The way the information is presented, we learn additional things about their plan. They could have wiped out the Earthlings some time ago. It’s not even hard for them, which is why they’re gonna knock it out in one afternoon before they leave. But like I mentioned in the last post, they’ve been using this Earth as a training ground to get Goku Black powered up and to practice for the more difficult work of invading the other timelines.

It’s also important to show that they’re actually concerned about something going wrong. Their Zero Mortals Plan isn’t foolproof. The only reason they were able to kill all the gods in this reality is because they had the element of surprise on their side, and because of that business where killing a Supreme Kai kills the Destroyer God and deactivates his Angel for free. But now that Gowasu and Shin are onto them, it’ll be a lot harder to get the drop on the other gods from here on out. Black and Zamasu are still confident about their plan, but they’re clearly troubled by this development.

This was something that was sorely lacking in the anime version, where Black and Zamasu were constantly making those smug little grins the entire time. They never worried about anything until Zamasu nearly got trapped by the Mafuba near the end of the arc. And if the villain is never inconvenienced, it makes the story kind of dull. Think about how troubled King Piccolo was when his children were killed, or how frightened he got when he thought Goku’s Kamehameha stance might be a Mafuba. Or how annoyed Frieza would get when he lost the Dragon Balls. Anime Zamasu never gives you any of that.

Anyway, their final push to kill the remaining Earthlings forces Trunks’ group to take action. Gowasu refuses to stand by and wait for Goku and Vegeta. Instead, he goes alone to appeal to Goku Black’s better nature, except Black has already murdered two other versions of Gowasu, so he has no problem doing it again. And there’s a scene like this in the anime, but this time Black actually gets to stab him, and Gowasu falls off a building. It’s pretty cool because:

1) It actually looks like he’s dead, because Black’s attack seriously hurt him, unlike all the times he stabs people in the anime and they’re fine.

2) It gives some karmic payback to Gowasu for failing to recognize the problem with Zamasu before it got this bad.

Gowasu isn’t a bad person, but he made a very grave mistake, and it’s unsatisfying how he never suffers any direct consquences for it. I mean, two other versions of Gowasu get murdered, but that’s a little too clean for my tastes. Those dead Gowasu’s don’t have to live with it. This Gowasu, who gets stabbed but survives, has something painful to remember this by. It’s much more satisfying this way.

So when Gowasu gets hurt, Trunks, Shin, and Mai return to Earth to save him, and not long after that, Goku and Vegeta return to pick up where they left off. This time, Goku has learned the Mafuba Technique to deal with Zamasu, while Vegeta trained in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to counter Goku Black.

Vegeta’s strategy this time is to fight in the Super Saiyan God form, which is weaker than Blue, so Goku Black doesn’t understand the point. But as Goku explains, Vegeta has learned to control his powers more precisely, switching from SSG to Blue at the very instant he attacks. This way he gets the best of both worlds. Super Saiyan God is easier to maintain and a little more agile, so Vegeta can defend himself in that form, and then he only uses Blue in very small doses, getting all the raw power while minimizing the strain on his body.

This is similar to something Goku did against Hit in the previous arc, but he only managed to do it once, at the very end of their fight. Vegeta’s mastered the trick to the point where he can do it repeatedly. Again, this is way better than the anime, where Vegeta didn’t do anything differently after training in the Chamber. It was understood that he would be stronger than before, but there was nothing more to it than that. One fight he lost to Black, and now he’s winning. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the manga is just styling all over the anime here.

I’m not even saying this “Switching Between God and Blue” trick is a cool idea. I seem to remember fans disliking this when these chapters were published. But the point here is that it is an idea. It’s something new Vegeta does that he couldn’t do before, and that’s the in-story reason why he’s winning this time. He doesn’t have to invent a new transformation every time he trains, but he has to come up with something to explain his improvement, and this works.

Meanwhile, Goku actually gets to do the Mafuba, so that’s another win for the manga. Also, the gag with the talisman works a lot better in this version. In the anime, Goku forgot the talisman altogether. Here, he remembered to bring it, but he picked up the wrong piece of paper. The joke is less about Goku screwing up and more about him looking at the talisman and seeing a coupon for “Club Tight & Scanty”.

So this leads up to the Zamasu/Goku Black fusion, which works a lot better here, because Vegeta is handily kicking Black’s ass. Goku may not be able to seal Zamasu away like he planned, but he can definitely keep Zamasu contained long enough for Vegeta to kill Goku Black, and Zamasu won’t be able to carry out his plan alone. The anime borked that up by having Goku Black still have the upper hand, so they really only fused because Zamasu was rattled about the Mafuba.

So Goku and Vegeta fuse, right? Well, not right away. They have the Potara at their disposal, but they don’t want to go through with it. Goku asks Vegeta, but as soon as Vegeta refuses, Goku’s more relieved than anything else. Then while Goku fights alone, Vegeta hears Gowasu explain that Merged Zamasu should unfuse within an hour. See, in the anime he said Potara fusion is permanent only when a Kai is involved. But in the manga, it’s only permanent when a Supreme Kai is involved, and Zamasu never officially achieved that rank. He’s just a usurper, so his fusion has a time limit too. That gets Vegeta’s attention, and so does Trunks when he says he wants to join in the fight because he doesn’t want Vegeta getting hurt over this, because his mom really wanted to go back in time and see him again before she died.

So all of that changes Vegeta’s mind about the fusion, and that’s how we get Vegito in this version. I like that, because Goku and Vegeta have shown a reluctance to fuse in the past, and it’s a lot cooler to have Vegeta motivated by sentimental reasons than just “The bad guy is really strong, so we just gotta.” I like fusion, don’t get me wrong, but they need to sell me on it a little first.

So Vegito starts off by blowing off Zamasu’s right arm, which sets up a nice little homage to Cell getting Final Flashed. I think this is one of those scenes where fans whine about Toyotaro “tracing”, which is dumb as hell, because it’s clearly a callback. Of course he’s gonna do stuff like this. He’s a Dragon Ball fan working on a Dragon Ball comic. Comic book artists do this all the time. There’s probably a few thousand different tributes to the cover of Action Comics #1.

Vegito comes apart pretty quickly, and Zamasu works the boys over with Kachin metal blocks and that portals trick Janemba does. I get the Katchin thing, because Toyotaro probably played Budokai 2 where the Supreme Kai would throw blocks at people, and he wanted to use that move here. The portals thing... I don’t know. He definitely needed to do a new power just to show off Merged Zamasu’s on a different level, and this works for that, but it feels a little out of left field. I’m not sure what he should have used instead though, so I won’t complain too much.

So from the sidelines, Gowasu and Shin watch Goku and Vegeta getting clobbered, and they wish that they could help. Once, when they were apprentice Supreme Kais like Zamasu, they had healing powers of their own, but they had to give that ability up once they assumed the role of Supreme Kai. Then Trunks remembers that he was an Assistant Supreme Kai in a manner of speaking. Back when his own Supreme Kai was training him to fight Babidi and Dabura, there was a ritual Shin did for him, one that he didn’t understand at the time. As it turns out, that ritual was to give him the powers of an Assistant Kai, which included healing powers. Trunks just didn’t know about it until now, which is... kind of goofy, but okay.

So he can heal the others, but it turns out he only has enough power to heal one or the other, so he’ll have to choose. At first, Trunks goes with Vegeta, but Vegeta refuses. While he was fused with Goku, he realized that Goku has the power to win this fight, so that’s who he wants Trunks to heal up.

This part isn’t exactly brilliant, but it sure beats what they did in the anime after Vegito came apart, which was just having Trunks chop Zamasu in half using ki from a handful of ordinary civilians. I mean, if we’re choosing between two different asspulls, I’ll take the asspull that makes a little more sense.

So Goku gets healed and fights alone, and Vegeta explains how Goku managed to perfect the Super Saiyan Blue form, allowing himself to use Blue for sustained periods of time. And that works because this is the first time we’ve really gotten to see Goku fight at this level, but if he had this mastered already, why was he so impressed with Vegeta’s deal where he switched between God and Blue? Because that sounds like a workaround that Goku had already made obsolete.

Goku even manages to use Hakai against Zamasu, but he pulls Mai in the path of the attack so Goku has to back off. Again, a little goofy, but I can like with it.

The main thing here is that Goku didn’t get to do much in the first two-thirds of the arc, and that’s by design. You bring him out at the end so he can show off all his cool powers and everyone talks about how strong he is. Which means you have to do a lot of scenes where Goku is on the sidelines, or absent altogether. And this is nothing new. We’ve seen it in a lot of classic Dragon Ball arcs in the past, but Toei wants to go against that idea and put Goku all over the place. Well, they got their way in GT and they got their way in the anime version of the Zamasu arc, and both of those things sucked. This manga Zamasu arc has some problems, but it’s a lot more sound from a structural standpoint.

Does it make sense for Goku to be able to fight Merged Zamasu alone? Not really, but he doesn’t have to beat him, he just has to hold out long enough for the fusion to wear off, and it does. But it’s all weird because it was two Zamasus.

And that’s when Trunks chops them in half. See, this works so much better because Merged Zamasu was already starting to come apart anyway, so this is just Trunks delivering a final blow instead of inventing some new power from nothing.

But it’s not the end just yet, because each half grows back, and then the Goku Black half gets up from being impaled. How did he become immortal?

Then both of them regenerate into their Merged Zamasu forms, so now we have two Merged Zamasus. Vegeta does a Final Flash variation called “Gamma Burst Flash”, and that rips them both apart, but then the pieces grow into even more Zamasus, so we have this Sorcerer’s Apprentice thing going on.

Retreat isn’t an option either, because the Zamasus reveal that they have their own time machine. Remember that ancient civilization in Universe 12 who invented a time machine? Well, the Destroyer God from U12 kept it, and Zamasu found it . So he can use that device to invade the other timelines. Wait, how would Zamasu know how to operate an alien time machine? I mean, he’s not stupid, but still. For all he knows, it’s not even functional anymore, and there’s no tech support in Universe 12 because he killed everyone in it.

So Goku and Vegeta try to hold off this Zamasu army while the others escape. They have no idea what good it’ll do, but it’s better than nothing. I like Vegeta’s like here when Goku asks him if he has a plan. “Go wild until you die. That’s all.”

I also like how Goku’s only regret is that if he has to go out in a hopeless battle like this, he’d rather do it in Super Saiyan mode. Luffa would be touched.

But then he remembers his button that he got from Grand Zeno, and things pretty much play out like they did in Episode 67 of the anime. The entire timeline is erased, and in the manga, we see the Time Ring that represents this timeline vanish along with it. That kind of bugged me in the anime version, where Gowasu looks at his box of rings one last time at the end of the arc and all the rings are still there.

On the other hand, should the Time Ring vanish? Zeno didn’t erase the timeline, just the multiverse it contained. Is that the same thing? The history of that reality still exists, right? Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter, since the Time Rings can’t go back to the past, and now this timeline only has a past. So even if the history of that timeline remains, the Time Ring that goes with it is useless, so it might as well self-destruct.

Except Whis still has that plan to go back to the timeline before Grand Zeno destroyed everything in it, nip Zamasu in the bud, and drop off Trunks and Mai to live out their lives. This will create a new alternate timeline, but the fact that Whis can do this at all suggests that the Time Ring for that reality still needed to exist. Ah well, this whole business is pretty dumb anyway.

My head canon for all of this is that Whis dropped off this version of Trunks and Mai in the timeline where Xeno Trunks lives, and sometimes he’ll come home from Time Patrol duty and say hello to his blue-haired duplicate, an older, more traumatized version of himself who lives with his wife in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Blunks sees his mom now and again, but he and Mai keep to themselves for the most part, as they can’t quite feel like they truly belong in this world. But they have each other, and that’s enough.

But I can never figure out the timeline logistics to make that provable. It probably isn’t worth the trouble.

Anyway, Pilaf keeps asking Future Mai what happened to the Pilaf and Shu of that timeline, and she seems to know the answer, but she can’t bring herself to tell him the truth. I was sort of hoping Future Mai wouldn’t even know who Pilaf was, since the anime never bothered to establish this, but the manga makes it clear that this is the same Mai who we saw in the first DB arc in 1984. So whatever.

The thing is, Pilaf’s all worried because he doesn’t know what unspeakable fate awaits him, but for all we know, Mai just doesn’t want to tell him he died. I mean, everyone died in that timeline. It’s just a question of who killed Pilaf and when it happened. Maybe something else happened to him before he got killed, and that’s what Mai doesn’t want to talk about, but even if he lived right up to the end, he still would have died in that one shed Goku Black blew up.

Like I said, this arc is pretty damn morbid, and it bothers me how casually Toriyama brought back this alternate timeline just to eradicate it completely. He could have just... not brought it back, and that would have been the same as destroying it, but instead it’s like he went out of his way to do this arc just to burn the whole thing to the ground and piss on the ashes.

And we never really know for sure that Whis succeeds in his plan to relocate Trunks and Mai. This feels very much like when someone says they took your pet dog to a farm where they can run and play all day long. Maybe Whis just killed them in secret to wrap up the last loose ends. Or maybe he made a good faith effort and it just didnt’t work the way he expected. Or maybe it worked just fine, but Trunks couldn’t handle it and flipped out. It’s not fun to think about.

But it’s over now, and I’m pleased to say the manga version is a lot better than the anime, although I guess that’s not saying a whole lot. Good night, and fuck the Zamasu Saga forever.

#dragon ball #dragon ball super manga #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #goku #vegeta #trunks #mai #emperor pilaf #shu #gowasu #zamasu #goku black #beerus #whis #supreme kai #kibito #master roshi #fuck the zamasu saga forever

59 notes · View notes

metamelonisle · 10 months

Text

[slamming my hands against aa table] I HAVE GOT TO DRAW SON KIRBY AGAIN

#paint.txt #son kirby is an AU version of kirby from a story i made called ''Dream Stars!" it's a mashup/inspired AU based on Dragon Ball!#kirby is basically a strange oni-like child who was found in the reaches of yogurt yard by a martial arts master named Son Gohan #and he raised the child like his own! one day a monster attacked (apparently inexplicably drawn to an unconscious kirby)#and gohan defended his child from the monster albeit at the cost of his own life #kirby's kind of similar to goku but he's a lot more agreeable and smarter but only a little bit. he's a big ol goofball and a sweetie : >#he has copy abilities and a belly mouth and horns that are initially based on kooklers but grow over time to resemble galacta knight's #i drew him once for the pilaf saga but i never colored it in or drew him again #i need to. he gets older over time too and his friends have designs as well!#there are both DB and Kirby characters in the universe but within the context of DS they have always shared this universe #for bulma it's not anything out of the ordinary to see a penguin king on another planet or a silly long-tongued blob of goo #i like dream stars i oughtta revisit it #dream stars

7 notes · View notes

bulmaappreciation · 10 months

Text

#bulma #poll #dbz #dragon ball

58 notes · View notes

rayoftruth · 2 months

Text

Those who skip the original Dragon Ball and start with Z or Kai are missing out on so much of the full story.

In the Japanese release of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga, everything from the Pilaf Saga to the Buu Saga is a single 42 volume series. None of the volumes are called ドラゴンボールＺ.

DBZ was only separated by Toei with the 1989 anime. American companies sometimes renumber the manga chapters as Dragon Ball Z for marketing, but in Japan that's always just been the second half of the Dragon Ball manga.

It's like how the post-timeskip Naruto manga was never renamed Naruto Shippuden like the anime was.

If you're a fan who has only seen Z, please give the OG DB a try!

#Dragon Ball #Dragon Ball Z #Goku #Akira Toriyama #Anime #Manga #Naruto #Naruto Shippuden #Shonen Jump

17 notes · View notes

alicethenobody · 3 months

Text

I hate his android saga cut

#dragon ball #dragon ball z #db #dbz #yamcha #pilaf saga #android saga #cell saga #shitpost

60 notes · View notes

lammfleisch · 5 months

Text

Decided to reread all of Dragon Ball, Z and Super and rank the Sagas

Let's start with og Dragon Ball:

• Emperor Pilaf Saga

The weakest so far. Imagine this being released in 2023. People would lose their minds over the perv-jokes (and they arent even funny. Mostly dumb and disgusting).

• Tournament Saga

Shit was good. The Great Ape at the end is always such a hype moment.

• Red Ribbon Army Saga, General Blue Saga, Commander Red Saga

General Blue is a Naz! right? Like he is supposed to represent a Naz!. Never noticed that as a kid.

Taopaipai is still creepy af.

Ranking so far

1. Tournament Saga

2. All Three Red Ribbon ones

3. Emperor Pilaf Saga

#dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball super #manga

7 notes · View notes

nell-pointer · 11 months

Text

my ranking for best db sagas i might switch some things around later tho

#dragon ball #i feel bad putting baba so low because the episode where he meets his grandpa is one of the best in the show #BUT #the rest of that arc is actual garbage you could not pay me to suffer through again #also i liked the pilaf saga #bite me

0 notes

fandom-trash-xl · 8 months

Text

The potential comedy in reviving Dragon Ball GT following the after-effects of Dragon Ball Super: The Black Star Dragon Ball Saga

Preface Notes: See my thoughts on nerfing Super's power escalation before the End of Z here. Ideas here follow the DBS anime's canon rather than the manga's.

I know that Dragon Ball GT is a point of mixed feelings for many a Dragon Ball fan and, while it clashes with the modern content that succeeded it, it was honestly just a fun and silly little time at points. Sure we talk about Super Saiyan 4 more than we do the series that spawned it, but GT isn't half bad.

I bounced around the idea of Dragon Ball GT possibly carrying on, but then there's the little quirks to canon that Super made that change things. Of course, we can very reasonably nerf the Saiyans back to the numbered Super Saiyans and that would consequently cut Beerus and Whis out of the picture, but there is one character in the cast that Super squeezed in...

A resurrected Frieza.

Okay, brief recap for those uninitiated: The Pilaf Gang (who would, with Super in play, be looking close to their adult selves again rather than GT's old, feeble, and sunspotted) sneaks onto the Lookout to find the secret Black Star Dragon Balls that reactivated once Piccolo and Kami became one again. Goku walks in on them after his training with Uub once they summon Ultimate Shenron, and Pilaf's poor wording leads to him accidentally wasting the wish on turning Goku back into a child. The Black Star Dragon Balls scatter across the galaxy and, if they are not regathered in a year, the Earth will be destroyed. The crew is meant to be comprised of Goku, Goten, and Trunks, but Goten misses take-off when he takes a phone call from his girlfriend and Pan sneaks aboard and preemptively hits the launch button.

With the journey through space to collect the scattered Dragon Balls, they're bound to eventually cross Frieza's neck of the galaxy. The emperor notices an unauthorized and unidentified spaceship, the Dragon Crew's, in his orbit so he tractor beams them in for interrogation.

"You'd better have a good explanation..."

"Hey Frieza!"

He recognizes that voice over the intercom- a bit more pre-pubescent-sounding than he recalls... He switches on video coms and sees the cam of the inside crew, noticing:

Goku, oddly small, but still, Goku

A purple-haired gentleman with a strong resemblance to the Super Saiyan that killed him

A NEW ONE that he already has a gut feeling he's not going to like AT ALL (and he is correct)

He sighs, grumbling as he rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Oh sweet cripes no..."

Against his better judgement, Frieza allows them aboard, to explain things more than anything else. At this point, the emperor and the Z Team are on iffy terms, a pinch of alliance rather than pure hatred (Vegeta's exempt from this) but not best buddies either. Goku, knowing that Frieza knows the cosmos the best out of all of them, tries to convince the lizard for some space favors and lend them a hand, but honestly he could care less.

"I am not your space GPS..."

Begrudgingly, he agrees to assist, but to keep it a challenging plotline, it's never when he's actually needed or comes with a caveat.

"If it'll help you that much... I can give you the security clearance code to get through that gate." (Cue the Dragon Crew getting absolutely demolished) "Ah, one little tidbit I forgot to mention, I didn't exactly tell them you were coming so you'll still be labelled as an intruder. My bad~!"

He'll just be sipping his wine a few stars away while they deal with Rilldo- we have to retain power scaling somehow. On the basis that we nerfed Goku and Vegeta before we got to GT, the villains would be more on par with this lowered level, but we can't exactly nerf Frieza, who is already decently powerful in base Final Form and is likely not giving up Golden either. So, Frieza can't step into any of these fights- not that he'd care, it's none of his concern and this doesn't affect him at all.

Bonus concept but there is an opening for potential Kuriza in this scenario! I mean, we have Pan and Bulla in this part of the series, why not round out the trio? My "The Small and the Shiny" one-shot wouldn't be canon to this, so this would end up being Pan and Kuriza's first encounter.

As Goku and Frieza make discussion, shy Kuriza (Frieza not even addressing him without prompting) attempts to slink away unnoticed until he accidentally locks eyes with Pan. She gives him a little wave and the little lizard silently panics.

BONUS GAGS:

Frieza's height complex

Frieza takes a silent pride in being the tallest one in the room- at least until Trunks stands up at full extension. He'll at least take the fact that he now towers over Goku height-wise. In fact, he might as well also take the fact that Kuriza is taller than Goku now... albeit only by a few centimeters but it counts!

Frieza becoming the ultimate cutaway gag

Frieza makes appearances as tiny cutaway gags, especially in intense fights where he could be helping but he's not because a.) plot-convenient power scaling retention and b.) he just can't be bothered to care or even notice.

Goku: (being absolutely curb stomped) Man, he's strong! I wish Frieza was here, he'd be a real big help right about now! (Cut to Frieza's ship where he's just trying to enjoy dinner with wine) Frieza: (sneezes) Kuriza: Something wrong, Papa? Frieza: Oh, it's nothing, Kuri. I just thought I heard someone calling my name. Kuriza: I didn't hear anything... Frieza: Ah, very well. I suppose it wouldn't be that important regardless~ (Cut back to the carnage)

#dragon ball #dragon ball gt #dragon ball super #dragon ball gt rewrite #black star dragon ball saga #Frieza #Goku #Trunks #Pan #Kuriza #Let me know if I should try to tackle the other arcs I know Frieza being alive would definitely bring some changes to bits of Super 17

15 notes · View notes

themattress · 13 days

Text

The 13 Worst Moments in Dragon Ball

There are far too many best moments to count, but this makes counting the worst easier.

(Note: Dragon Ball GT and non-canon movies, specials or games are not counted here.)

Goku kills Commander Black.

The end of the Red Ribbon Army has Advisor Black kill Commander Red and usurp his position. He then gets in a mech suit and tries to kill Goku. Goku defeats him, he makes a strategic retreat....only for Goku to mercilessly chase after him and kill him! WTF!? I don't think I need to explain how horrendously OOC for Goku this is. Paired with the already uncomfortable factors surrounding the Black character, it creates a low point to end this lengthy conflict on. The Path to Power movie handled this battle and Black's death better.

The Pilaf Gang returns.

While the Red Ribbon Army is defeated, the story arc goes on with the whole Fortuneteller Baba affair, which to its credit concludes with a touching reunion between Goku and his dead adoptive grandfather. Unfortunately, rather than wrap up after this, we regress to the battle with Black by having another mech suit battle over the final Dragon Ball! And it's against...Emperor Pilaf, Shu and Mai? Look, I know that the anime had made them popular by expanding their roles; in fact they were even added into this very story arc already early in. But they were just a 5 chapter obstacle in the original manga before this! So in that context, it makes zero sense for them to suddenly show up as if they're important recurring characters! All it does is drag out an already dragged out story arc even further and test our patience!

Yajirobe climbs Korin's Tower.

In the super serious King Piccolo saga, the glutenous and cowardly ronin Yajirobe already felt out of place. But I could tolerate him up until he is used to rush Goku up Korin's Tower...the same tower that previously only Master Roshi and Goku had been able to climb. And now this guy climbs up it much faster because he was promised food at the top? Yeah, not buying it.

Yamcha is killed by a Saibaman.

That image right there. It has come to define Yamcha's "Memetic Loser" status, and honestly, it feels unfair. While always something of a Butt Monkey type, Yamcha was one of the earliest main characters in the series. He was Goku's first rival: before Krillin, Tien, Piccolo or Vegeta. He was shown to be a strong fighter. He took part in training for a year before Nappa and Vegeta's arrival on Earth. And yet instead of falling to them in battle, he gets kamikazed to death by one of their underlings, the Saibamen, because he arrogantly turns his back to it after thinking it was defeated. After that, it's been nothing but L after L for poor Yamcha....

Majin Buu screams the time-space continuum apart.

This fucking sequence of events drives me crazy. While fighting Majin Buu in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, Gotenks starts acting as if he's being put on the ropes...not to fool Buu, but to fool Piccolo (the only other one there) so that it can shock and impress him when he turns the tables. Gotenks is a dumbass so this checks out. But Piccolo actually believes it, and he destroys the entrance/exit to the chamber so that Buu will be trapped in there forever even after destroying them. Gotenks comes clean and he and Piccolo have a comedic shouting match until Buu, distraught at the idea of being trapped without food, screams at the top of his lungs and somehow rips open a portal in space-time that allows him to escape. While he is then massacring damn near everyone on Kami's Lookout (off panel in the original manga!), Gotenks and Piccolo also try screaming to open a portal, to no avail. And so in the end, Gotenks reveals he can turn Super Saiyan 3, a form that it took Goku years of training alongside powerful warriors in the afterlife to achieve, and that's enough to open a portal for him and Piccolo to exit through....too late to save anyone, of course! This is the precise moment when the final stretch of the original manga and Z anime started going to shit. The burnt out Toriyama clearly just did not give a fuck what he was writing and drawing anymore.

Majin Buu absorbs Gotenks, Piccolo and Gohan.

Buu screaming a portal open through time and space was Strike 1. Strike 2 is when Buu, fresh off of receiving a satisfying beatdown from Gohan, is able to turn the tables by absorbing Gotenks and Piccolo, an ability he was never shown to have before...and something that was only possible because Toriyama regresses Gohan back to the same overconfident stupidity that cost him greatly in the Cell Saga. Gohan then faces a humiliating beatdown from Buu, as if to punish him for thinking he could be the main character who saves the day instead of Goku despite that being the most logical, organic route for the series to take. Speaking of which, Goku himself shows up to help with a plan to fuse with his son...a plan that fails when Gohan also gets absorbed by Buu. The result is Goku having to fuse with a returning Vegeta instead, which started the tiresome trend of Goku and Vegeta being the co-leads of the franchise and the only ones who are capable of accomplishing anything.

"End of Z".

This epilogue - 2 chapters in the manga and 3 episodes in the anime - ended the original Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z on an incredibly weak note. It's 10 years since the main events of the Buu Saga, and at the latest Tenkaichi Budokai we are introduced to Uub, the human reincarnation of Kid Buu. After bringing out Uub's power by acting like a schoolyard bully to provoke his anger, Goku just up and decides to go off with Uub to his village so that he can train him, abandoning his friends and family on the spur of the moment. Not only does this make Goku look far worse than I think Toriyama intended, but his intent to leave the story open to be picked up with a passing of the torch to Uub, as if that makes up for botching it with Gohan, would be laughable were it not so offensive. We spent chapters upon chapters, episodes upon episodes, watching Gohan develop. We cared about him, we were invested in him taking the torch from Goku. Backtracking on that in the last saga isn't something that can ever be recovered from, and especially not with some rando kid we just met who is the reincarnation of the latest villain that we barely spent any time with and was ultimately just a mindless psychopath. This was Strike 3. Dragon Ball was out; never quite the same again.

Goku is sniped by a ray gun.

Resurrection F is great as a largely standalone action film, not so great as a full-fledged saga in the anime, but there is one moment in both iterations that just does not work. Goku has defeated Freeza and lets his guard down....and gets shot through the chest with a ray gun beam from Freeza's henchman Sorbet, which almost kills him. I'm sorry, what!? At the time, Goku is still in his Super Saiyan Blue form, which is the Super Saiyan form harnessing the energy of a Super Saiyan God. No matter how much his guard was let down, I highly doubt that a mere ray gun beam would do that much damage. If Sorbet had done something to distract Goku so that Freeza could shoot a beam through him, that would work. But as it stands, we have Goku almost done in by Sorbet. He's lucky he managed to survive and redeem himself by killing Freeza once more, or else he'd officially be our new Yamcha.

Future Trunks' universe is erased.

The best arc in the Dragon Ball Super anime had come to a highly cathartic conclusion where Future Trunks cuts Merged Zamasu in half. There was just one more episode left where everything could be wrapped up in a satisfying...wait, WTF? Zamasu's spirit is taking over the multiverse!? How!? Why!? And because of this utter Ass-Pull, Zeno has to be brought in as a literal Deus Ex Machina, destroying Zamasu once and for all by erasing Future Trunks' entire universe from existence. The wrap-up afterwards is a somber affair, with Whis creating a new timeline for Future Trunks and Future Mai to inhabit, and Future Trunks' last scene has him crying over his failure. I am flabbergasted to this day at how anyone thought this ending was a good idea. It takes a beloved character and gives him the mother of all Happy Ending Overrides, while denying viewers the catharsis that should come at the defeat of one of the series' most loathsome villains. I've heard fans dislike the manga version too where it's multiple copies of Zamasu rather than his spirit merging with the multiverse and where Future Trunks and Future Mai are totally nonchalant about their timeline's fate and just jump to another earlier timeline (pre-existing rather than created by Whis), but as a fan of the Xenoverse games I feel that version makes more sense. Time is flexible, the people and places in an earlier timeline before the one that was pruned should still be considered theirs by Trunks and Mai so tears would be an overblown reaction. Plus at least in this version Zamasu goes out in a cathartic way, fully aware and terrified at his impending doom via Zeno.

Master Roshi goes too far.

While Master Roshi's perverted shtick has always been hit and miss, to put it lightly, he somehow sunk to a new low during the Super anime's final arc. When fighting in the Tournament of Power, he is faced with Caway, a beautiful female fighter who uses a seduction technique on him. Roshi's response is bulking up and going on about all the repressed urges he has, finishing with "don't blame me for what I might do next" as he reaches out for Caway. Poor Caway is terrified and disqualifies herself by fleeing the arena. So basically, a rape threat played as a joke. How utterly disgusting. Kudos to the English dub, which fixes it by instead having Roshi just threaten to beat Caway up because he's pissed that she tried a seduction technique on him when he's been trying to repress his perverted side as of late; essentially he's like an alcoholic in rehab threatening to knock the crap out of someone who just tried to offer them a bottle. That's funnier and keeps Roshi more likable.

Kakarot becomes Kal-El.

Why, Toriyama? You yourself said you loved the Bardock: The Father of Goku anime special, to the point where you canonized Bardock a few months after it aired. So why completely go against that special by changing Bardock into a decent man who, alongside his wife, lovingly sends Kakarot off to Earth in order to protect him from their home planet's impending destruction? Goku's story was great because it was a twist on the Superman story: he was sent to Earth as a baby with the intent of destroying it, not for his own protection. His father was largely apathetic toward him, was not there for him getting sent away, and never had any change of heart about his ruthless warrior lifestyle...he just went crazy and got killed. But now he's just Jor-El, getting an emotional moment alongside his wife as they sent their child into space for his own good. Way to take away everything unique and interesting, Toriyama.

Moro reveals his last wish.

The Super manga's first exclusive story arc started out with great potential, with Moro being a mysterious villain who did something no-one else had done before: make three wishes on the Namekian Dragon Balls but conceal what his third wish was, leaving the heroes and the reader in suspense as to what he wished for and how it would factor into his master plan. But then it ended up being revealed pretty quickly: he wished for every criminal in the Galactic Patrol's prison to be released in order to serve as his army. That's it!? This reveal is not only not worth the suspense, but the whole arc ends up going downhill from there, as Toyotaro begins filling it with cliches and blatant Author Appeal that drags on longer than it needs to.

Gohan awakens the beast within.

Originally, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero was going to just be Piccolo's movie. Toriyama didn't want Gohan as a major player at all, but was convinced to have him be the co-star by the movie's producer. However, I am pretty damn sure the producer requested this with the Great Saiyaman in mind. It's called Super Hero and features two dramatically posing superheroes as antagonists. This is a situation tailor-made for the Great Saiyaman! And yet Gohan's superhero alter-ego is not seen nor referenced once throughout the entire movie. Instead, Toriyama ignores the Super anime and manga by starting up another "Gohan has been slacking off and stupidly believes he doesn't need to be prepared for a crisis and thus must be urged by Piccolo to start training and fighting and re-awakening his inner power" arc, which culminates in Gohan Beast vs. Cell Max, one of the most depressingly unoriginal things Toriyama has ever written. It's literally just Super Saiyan 2 Gohan from the Cell Saga combined with the "Gohan Blanco" internet meme. He acts exactly like his edgy Super Saiyan 2 self, even to a literal copy of Semi-Pefect Cell, as if he has completely forgotten how badly that whole thing went down and what it cost him! Gohan is finally afforded the spotlight and a major victory again.....and it's this!? This rotten bunch of Memberberries!? Credit to Toyotaro and the Super manga for doing its best to salvage this plot point. While I continue to be saddened by Toriyama's untimely passing, I'm glad that we still have someone capable to carry the torch going forward....something that Gohan may also at last be allowed to do now.

#Dragon Ball #Dragon Ball Z #Dragon Ball Super #Opinion #Analysis #Bad Writing

3 notes · View notes