Dragon Ball Thread - RIP Akira Toriyama

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MysticMisty said:
Only because Toriyama's editor hated the designs of 19 and 20, and wanted something better, which is how 16, 17, and 18 came about. His editor said it was better, but still boring, so Toriyama threw his hands in the air and created Cell.
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I understand the meta reason why that is. But in story, Trunks is a really shitty time traveller.

Kosher Dill said:
I don't understand why his editors were still able to meddle. By the time Cell rolled around, wasn't Toriyama kind of a big deal? What were they going to do if he said no to their changes, fire him?
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The story is kinda badly told by everybody. He was told by his former editor that he didn't like his current villains. And after changing the villains around, his current editor didn't like Cell which caused him to change forms. Here's an excerpt from a talk between Toriyama and his editors that explains things.

toriyama and his editors.PNG

It's not like his editors put a gun to his head, it's just that they convinced him. As to why Toriyama listens to his editors, it's because he trusts and respects them. In particular Torishima, who was his editor from Dr. Slump (his popular manga before DBZ) all the way through before Raditz shows up. He's the guy who found Toriyama in the first place, and famously made him do 500 drafts before being satisfied with a presentable manga to publish. And for the most part the editorial style in Japan is productive. It's not like American comics where they have a big editorial department looking over your work. It's just one person who works with you and provides lots of productive feedback. If you have the time and patience look up how much was changed in a manga like Naruto thanks to the editor. Many of the changes I would say were instrumental to the success of that manga.

As for the consequences to not listening to your editors, I'm not entirely sure what they are. Presumably it first means that your chapter doesn't get in the magazine. Creators get payed per pages but it's a pittance and the real money is in collected volume sales. Most manga artists are starving artists and every bit counts. And if you cause too many problems you'll likely get dropped. But this probably affects rookie manga creators more than established names than Toriyama.

But if you really dislike Torishima's decisions. Toriyama got the last laugh years ago:

mashirito.PNG
 
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Anyone following Dragon Ball Super's manga? Moved past the Tournament arc and they are now fighting this Baphomet looking guy called Moro. Basically genocides Namek again. Uses the Saiyan trope of power up in stages and need to fight opponent at their peak strength to beat both Vegeta and Goku absorbing their energy while stalling for time. It's moved to the ridiculous level where incomplete Ultra Instinct does nothing.
 
Slimy Time said:
Anyone following Dragon Ball Super's manga? Moved past the Tournament arc and they are now fighting this Baphomet looking guy called Moro. Basically genocides Namek again. Uses the Saiyan trope of power up in stages and need to fight opponent at their peak strength to beat both Vegeta and Goku absorbing their energy while stalling for time. It's moved to the ridiculous level where incomplete Ultra Instinct does nothing.
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Yes and now Vegeta claims to have something even better than UI. I often wonder just how many new super forms they will come up with by the time this series ends.
 
PepsiVanilla said:
Yes and now Vegeta claims to have something even better than UI. I often wonder just how many new super forms they will come up with by the time this series ends.
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I have a friend who is a big fan of Vegeta and I'm currently mocking him that, despite all the set up, Goku still gonna steal that kill.

Overall I think the Moro arc has been fun. It's more of what Super has been doing that I like(the B and C string getting the chance to do stuff, using old lore as solutions) and I'm enjoying the ride.
 
PepsiVanilla said:
Yes and now Vegeta claims to have something even better than UI. I often wonder just how many new super forms they will come up with by the time this series ends.
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Apparently he did. I think it's called "Royal Blue" and it's essentially a stronger form of SSJB.
 
Polyboros2 said:
I have a friend who is a big fan of Vegeta and I'm currently mocking him that, despite all the set up, Goku still gonna steal that kill.

Overall I think the Moro arc has been fun. It's more of what Super has been doing that I like(the B and C string getting the chance to do stuff, using old lore as solutions) and I'm enjoying the ride.
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It's OK, definitely better than the rendition of the Tournament arc. Moro is another one of these energy stealing villains, though watching Goku and Vegeta go "wait, I can't transform... Oh shit" the first time they fought because they stalled and didn't finish him off quickly was nice.
 
Guts Gets Some said:
Wait, Broly's a character?
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Soviras said:
And a movie and a legend and an icon of dbz culture. I still don't get why.
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In the first films he's just a Kid Buu that talks some smack. Does some silly stuff while smashing people and he loves being evil. That means he's better than approx every other original movie villain btw. He's fun, he looked cool, his concept was good. That's the level with DB. It's why people still care about SSJ4, even though GT was complete shit.
MAPK phosphatase said:
Team Four Star summed it up.
"He's so cool but he's so god damn dumb."
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TFS(Kaiser and Lani primarily, everyone else end up mostly conforming to their opinions) are the people from 2006 that got so asshurt by people liking Broly they actively started to believe the meme joke about him wanting to get revenge for crying as a baby. Even though they put him getting stabbed while he was next to Goku and that unconsciously unlocking his powers into their parody of it.

When they became the defacto opinion on darganball, it was like watching history get rewritten in real time. Now every retarded nufan is basically a bingo card of comically hyperbolic praise for og DB, shitting on powerlevels, shitting on Goku, shitting on Z, shitting on Broly, while uncritically consooming dogshit like Super and fellating garbage like Beerus cause "Toriyama, canon".

It's not like android saga is the first time plotlines were messy as hell either. The original Red Ribbon Army arc is horribly segmented, disjointed and all over the place. It starts establishing the new side cast for the arc with Android 8, then quickly writes him out in favour of bringing back the old ones. Bulma's reintroduction is this weird perfect loop on a straight line on his way to Roshi's via contrived dragon radar breakage, with the shrink watch being both a really weird solution and really convenient one for why Bulma isn't visible.

Then Bulma tags along with Krillin and Goku on a quest to get diamonds, despite being disgustingly rich due to capsule corps. While there is a character whose sole defining trait is that they want to steal shit is doing nothing, and Launch never ends up doing anything at all at any point. They fight a dude that gets a similar exit as the prior villain, disappearing offscreen, then he comes back and you end up in a few chapter long terrible and shallow brand crossover in Slump, conveniently made at a time when irl Toriyama's bosses really wanted him to make more Slump. Then a boomerang villain shows up for a few chapters that design wise looks like something out of the 2nd arc, aka the popular one, and then the arc very quickly wraps up before going into a canon filler tournament arc with Baba.

That's just red ribbon. There's a lot more messy plotting in DB than just Cell and Buu. And those 2 arcs were arguably better for it.
 
capitalBBustard said:
In the first films he's just a Kid Buu that talks some smack. Does some silly stuff while smashing people and he loves being evil. That means he's better than approx every other original movie villain btw. He's fun, he looked cool, his concept was good. That's the level with DB. It's why people still care about SSJ4, even though GT was complete shit.

TFS(Kaiser and Lani primarily, everyone else end up mostly conforming to their opinions) are the people from 2006 that got so asshurt by people liking Broly they actively started to believe the meme joke about him wanting to get revenge for crying as a baby. Even though they put him getting stabbed while he was next to Goku and that unconsciously unlocking his powers into their parody of it.

When they became the defacto opinion on darganball, it was like watching history get rewritten in real time. Now every exceptional nufan is basically a bingo card of comically hyperbolic praise for og DB, shitting on powerlevels, shitting on Goku, shitting on Z, shitting on Broly, while uncritically consooming dogshit like Super and fellating garbage like Beerus cause "Toriyama, canon".
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Beerus is alright. He was better than most of the movie villains. And I still think hes better most of the villains in the Universal Tournament arc
 
DragoonSierra said:
Beerus is alright. He was better than most of the movie villains. And I still think hes better most of the villains in the Universal Tournament arc
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If he was contained to his own movie, fine, he serves a novel role as the guy Goku doesn't beat at the end. He's still mostly just a Z movie villain in a another Z movie that shows up and then wastes time before he fights Goku in the end. His design sucks for a lead DB villain, it's the type Toriyama's editor would've told him to throw out and make a new one. The design was given a pass by the TFS mentality of DB = weird = great, so him looking like shit means he's actually great Toriyama subversion. It would be fine for a secondary character but, it is horrible as the main opponent. His character is really just dictated by the fact that if he was fully evil villain, then he would kill everyone after he beats Goku, so he has to instead be mostly an asshole. His character is also all over the place in the movie, he's sort of an obstinate lazy dick if he can't eat or fight or mess with people, but he also breakdances while everyone claps like marionettes. It just feels like a bunch of filler. Overall, tepid, but atleast he's more interesting than most Z movies purely on a dynamic level, everything else is just as bad a usual.

But then you get to him in the sequel and Super and he is just the dirt fucking worst albatross dragging down everything with him. Freeza is now retconned to have always been his bitch blowing up planets for him, nuking his entire character, as it hinged on him believing he was the strongest in the universe, causing him to go absolutely mental when Goku trounces him to the point where he tries to get at him on Earth only to get killed by Trunks. Beerus interrupts the already half baked rerun of Goku v Frieza to tell him he sucks shit and he'll get involved if he doesn't play nice, doing a great job at keeping the stakes high in the eyes of the viewer. Great tension.

In DB, what's usually done is that the new threat in the new arc is in part established by eventually fighting the (several) previous arcs rival(s) turned good guy(s) that joins the main cast. Escalates stakes, shows the relative strength of the new rival/villain, make the threat credible and dangerous, and finally a sort of passing of the torch between former and the new opposition. Then there's Beerus. Beerus is someone who is not allowed to lose no or even get injured or look like he's facing a challenge matter what, for some damn reason, maybe sparing him for a Goku rematch that will never happen. This creates several giant problems for storytelling, all of which get displayed Super, he actively dissipates tension just by being in the vicinity of the threat, because he would steamroll them (Res F), the threat can't be all that great otherwise he'd get involved (Black, nuBroly), once he does get involved, the arc is immediately going to be concluded via bullshit because he can't lose or look weak(Zamasu), and to bypass this you have to create arbitrary stipulations disqualifying him from doing anything (U6v7, ToP) aka contrived bullshit that limits the type of stories you can tell. He is a giant pain in the ass you have to actively write around because he fucks everything up due to his "I win lol" trait, which also negates him from getting any real development, because if he does something substantial the story is over.

Character wise he's permanently stuck in place doing the same thing without forward movement except filler level platitudes and comedy, which is a one note routine with no novelty at that point, while permahogging the shiny new cast member spot, so nobody else is able to join. It's why outside of the handful of references to events in Super, it feels like jack shit happened between Res F and Broly, nobody from Super is written to be able to stick around because Beerus still hasn't been written to pass the torch. It's also why Broly isn't able to join the main cast after his movie, and instead has to fuck off to a cave in space with his hot green midget, to maybe cameo for a bit when the next movie/series arrives.

There is a lot of "x is everything wrong with DB" takes out there, but almost all of them are in response to fandom surrounding stuff from DB, eg fixation on powerlevels or Broly being popular. Those really had no detrimental effect on the main product itself, just presence in tertiary stuff like games and merch. Beerus is the first time a character in DB has made everything they were involved in worse. That's a level of sucking shit that is rivaled only by Goku turning back into am unlikable retarded kid again in GT.
 
Totally disagree about Beerus. He's a great character because he starts out petty and bored and slowly begins to develop an appreciation for lower life forms, at least the ones on Earth. Not just because of their cuisine, but because they're the only people who pique his interest. Sure, he could just destroy them all and his life would be simpler, but then he'd be stuck alone, with no one but Whis (and his own rival brother) to talk to. His quality of life would take a hit. His whole arc is about him learning to appreciate a life where it's not all about how much power he has, or how much he can bully people into doing his will. By the Universal Tournament arc, he actually finds himself having to depend on the humans for his own existence. Early series Beerus would never lower himself to doing that.

His dynamic with Whis is also one of the best parts of the series. For the most part Whis acts like a butler, but he's one with his own mysterious agenda. You get the feeling he's only humoring Beerus for the most part, and could turn on him if the circumstances were right. It's a great dynamic. It's nice to see villains who don't have "I just wanna be the strongest" or "I just wanna be an asshole" as their entire motivation.
 
His great character development is him doing the thing he always did, while saying he developed. What an arc. That's why I described it as filler level platitudes. All talk, a bunch of noise and shuffling in place. It's not good, great or even passable, it's vacant. And it's described why he's like that in what I wrote, Beerus isn't allowed to be an overly active participant because of his shitty instawin writing if he does. He's shit that clogged up the toilet. I wouldn't describe anything that needs a plunger as great.

It's like if Vegeta started out as grouchy dad, fights Goku and gets his win by technicality, did nothing since outside killing Pui Pui, and ends up talking about how he grew to care about Bulma and Trunks. Him admiting Goku is better would carry no weight. That's where Beerus is and always was.

Asshole and his butler. Greatest dynamic in DB. You wot. It's one note, repetitive, and shallow. It doesn't grow beyond that 5 second description. It's got enough juice for the duration of the first film, it's not like DB is deep, but it has run its course and then some. Whis had no motivation on his own, all the mystery is projection, and Beerus' motivation was that he's an asshole.
 
Beerus is the tsundere we didn't know we needed when we already had Vegeta, but I'm glad he and Whis exist. For all the shit we can give Toriyama about how he has handled his characters, he can make some real charming and interesting characters when you catch him in the right mood.
 
Pokemonquistador2 said:
Totally disagree about Beerus. He's a great character because he starts out petty and bored and slowly begins to develop an appreciation for lower life forms, at least the ones on Earth. Not just because of their cuisine, but because they're the only people who pique his interest. Sure, he could just destroy them all and his life would be simpler, but then he'd be stuck alone, with no one but Whis (and his own rival brother) to talk to. His quality of life would take a hit. His whole arc is about him learning to appreciate a life where it's not all about how much power he has, or how much he can bully people into doing his will. By the Universal Tournament arc, he actually finds himself having to depend on the humans for his own existence. Early series Beerus would never lower himself to doing that.

His dynamic with Whis is also one of the best parts of the series. For the most part Whis acts like a butler, but he's one with his own mysterious agenda. You get the feeling he's only humoring Beerus for the most part, and could turn on him if the circumstances were right. It's a great dynamic. It's nice to see villains who don't have "I just wanna be the strongest" or "I just wanna be an asshole" as their entire motivation.
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A reminder that the first person of the cast that Beerus makes a real friend in is Bulma.

Sure it's mostly through Whis and earth food, but Bulma is the first person he tolerates on a personal level to the point that now he plays with her newborn child.

Beerus' character doesn't stay the same. Before he had a near contempt for mortal lives, demonstrated in that Freeza took glee in knowing that Beerus couldn't give two shits about his cruel rule over Universe 7. Even in Resurrection F, Beerus only threatened Freeza because he didn't want him to blow up his planetary snack bar.

But after seeing the impressive performances of the Universe 7 team, you can see that Beerus is starting to grow attached and appreciative of the life forms his universe generated. (Seriously, if Beerus truly never changed he would have never given Master Roshi the praise he did in the Tournament of Power.)
 
Beerus's 'development' is menial fluff relegated to the peanut gallery. Like Vegeta taking Trunks to the park. But that's not the primary contents of satisfying character development. It is for all intents and purposes filler. At best a reaffirmation of the state of the character, a showcase of the result of what is supposed to be a cohesive character arc that actively developed within a dramatic story arc. And when you take the fluff away, can you tell Beerus changed anything from Res F to Broly? Not really, you can tell with Vegeta, Yamcha in the first arc, Tien, etc over the course of their followup arcs. It's why I call it substanceless. You can tally checkmarks of events and say a character arc is present, but in practice, it's worthless and meaningless. Combine this with my point about why he's not allowed to be a bigger participant in an arc besides wasting away in the peanut gallery making comments, to get the full picture.

On the other hand, I don't see any rebuttal to my description of how utterly destructive Beerus is for the narrative of Super. Evidently, it's like it's inarguable how much he shits up Super on that level. It's why people defaulted to arguing that he had a character arc.

I didn't drive home just how terrible the Beerus-Frieza retcon is. Dragonball Minus, to this day, is partially hated because it appearantly it ruined the Saiyan Saga, even though it didn't change anything, besides Vegeta&co being wrong about why Goku was sent to Earth. Nothing substantial between the conflict of Vegeta and Goku changed, really anything at all. Yet Minus is the most despised thing ever.

Now look at Beerus. He is now crowbared into being the guy ordering Frieza around to blow up planets, and being a guy even Vegeta knows. When Frieza's entire characterisation hinged on him being, in his mind, the strongest in the universe. Everything about him being an Emperor, conquering planets, is because he believes it's his right to do so because of his natural strength. He wiped out the saiyans because they had the myth about the super saiyan, and the idea of something maybe being able to challenge him hurt his ego. When Goku proved to be stronger than him, he went mad, rejected his mercy and tried to stab Goku in the back. After that he wanted to get revenge at all costs, leading to his doom. Him being second to someone is intolerable for Frieza.

Now it turns out he was always Beerus' bitch, and he was cool with that 'cause Beerus' too stronk, 'pls don't hurt me I'mma blow up planets for you'. Frieza, the most iconic villain in Dragonball, is completely fucking invalidated because of this shitty fucking retcon.

Beerus/Super is to Frieza what the Star Wars Prequels(or Sequels, which ever you think is worse) are to Darth Vader.
 
capitalBBustard said:
I didn't drive home just how terrible the Beerus-Frieza retcon is. Dragonball Minus, to this day, is partially hated because it appearantly it ruined the Saiyan Saga, even though it didn't change anything, besides Vegeta&co being wrong about why Goku was sent to Earth. Nothing substantial between the conflict of Vegeta and Goku changed, really anything at all. Yet Minus is the most despised thing ever.
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Personally I think Dragon Ball Minus is rightfully reviled for retconning the sweet character arc Goku had in the Saiyan saga when you think about it.

Back in the day Goku's backstory was obviously inspired by Superman with one interesting twist: While Superman was sent to Earth by loving parents who wanted to save him, Goku was sent to Earth because his people, and most likely his own parents, regarded him as trash. If memory serves well, the way Raditz back in the day explained it makes it sound as if the Saiyans had a system not unlike the Spartan agoge (or the very first scene in 300). Had Goku been killed by the Earthlings it would have been seen as the gene pool filtering itself out and nothing of value would have been lost. Had Goku not just survived but actually done his job, then maybe he wasn't completely worthless.

Fast-forward 24(?) years to the Vegeta boss fight when Goku learned about his own true nature. His people - his kin, the Saiyans, are horrible genocidal space marauders (including most likely his own parents too for all he knows) that killed God knows how many billions of innocents. Raditz, who's not just Goku's fellow surviving Saiyan, but his brother, kidnapped his son and tried to coerce him into slaughtering a hundred random people and even almost killed Gohan later. Then you have Nappa and Vegeta, who are responsible for the deaths of most of his friends. And finally it dawned upon Goku that he was the one who killed his grandfather in his Great Ape form. With Minus you could argue #NotAllSaiyans, but its absence emphasizes the meaning of Goku diverging from his Saiyan nature and becoming the man he is today, which was beautifully concluded with him going American History X on Nappa, and achieving (with Gohan, Krillin and Yajirobe) a Pyrrhic victory against Vegeta, winning against two elites in spite of being initially designated at birth as weak and worthless. And if you really want to go off the fucking rails with the assburgers, you could even go as far and say that on a metaphorical level the real struggle in the Saiyan saga wasn't Goku vs. Vegeta, but rather Goku vs. Kakarot.

The best thing is the sheer irony of how Goku turned out. The entirety of Goku's successful journey is based on nothing but one happy accident. Had he actually been deemed worthy by his people, he would have either been killed in the Saiyan genocide, or at best been a forgettable filler villain like Tullece. But by being discarded like trash by his fellow Saiyans, Goku not only survived the Saiyan genocide, he became the kind hero we know and love, he trained with literal gods and ended up becoming not just one of the greatest martial autists of his time, but also one of the strongest motherfuckers in the universe.

I don't know if that's the general consensus, but that's at least my sentiment on how Dragon Ball Minus undermined that and I hope it puts things a bit into perspective. Apologies with the 'tism post.
 
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Fougaro said:
I don't know if that's the general consensus, but that's at least my sentiment on how Dragon Ball Minus undermined that and I hope it puts things a bit into perspective. Apologies with the 'tism post.
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Oh, the general consensus is that it's terrible. A mix of hating because retcon affecting Saiyan Saga, hating because retcon overwriting Bardock special, hating because saiyans come across less like Klingons and more just 9-5 mercenaries, hating because Goku's mom sucks shit and makes food, hating because Superman parallels and finally, hating it because the word 'Fate' is in the chapter's title, and that somehow takes away the agency of Goku, despite Minus being a prequel that came out 164 years after the original manga so you know what's going to happen already and the original Bardock special revolved around his dad seeing the future. So yeah, your sentiment is pretty popular last I checked. Oh also, a complaint I saw, it devalues Grandpa Gohan, even though his interactions with Goku as an infant are approx 1 page exposition/45 seconds of flashback retcon by Roshi when Raditz shows up.

Here's the thing, only the underlying justification for why Goku was sent to Earth changed. His parents didn't really seem to give a fuck about humans. Like, they didn't set him up not to be a stereotypical murderous saiyan who is going to eat the native population, as they do. They just sent him there because it's remote and there was nobody strong there, cus he's weak and Bardock wanted him to survive, instead of a mission 'cus he's weak. And he was violent prior to him hitting his head, the divergence happened because he fell off a cliff and hit a rock. He still killed Grandpa Gohan. Nothing changed as far as events and motivations go, that's the thing.

The complaint about the class stuff being neutered is one I always disagreed with. Goku is still a low born weak shit, that didn't change. Neither did their conflict, which the elite vs low class framing aside, is really just raw natural talent, vs hard work and dedicated training. Takes the bite out "oh your parents/saiyans thought you suck shit" on a 4th wall level, but that's it. Neither Goku or Vegeta would know better, nor is it important at that point. Toriyama does that a lot, make an arbitrary category just to put Goku and the rival on the opposite sides of it. Did it with Tien and Crane School, which both mirrors and is opposite to Goku and Turtle School.

You seem to have, and this seems to be the originator of a lot of the initial distaste to me, more attached to the whole Saiyan warrior culture idea they had going on, and Goku being cast out for being weak, and then as you said, the tidy, full circle irony of him growing to be the strongest. That irony though is not what I'd call his character arc though, a character's arc is their active role, what you're talking about is the twist of fate description of events. Don't know if I explained that well, I'm hardly Billiam Shakespeare. I'd also say that that idea was more instilled by the Bardock special than the source material. I think you did showcase the several strands of logic that combine into the uniform dislike of Minus.

I in general don't mind Minus at all, because as I said, it doesn't change anything in my eyes. It's a weirdly faithful adaptation of the Bardock Special, I think all the story beats included match up linearly, but I haven't had the autistic impetus to compare. It's rushed, but that also makes it kind charming, when you realise the entire "I can see the future" subplot is just truncated to Bardock having a bad feeling about this bro. That level of simple straightforwardness is particular to Toriyama when he's not trying to write himself out of the holes he dug himself into.
 
I disagree with the assessment that Beerus is a bland character, but I do agree that they should've found a better way to write him out of the story. He does destroy tension whenever he shows up in the scene, RoF's tension was utterly obliterated the moment he showed up in that film to eat strawberry sundae. I think Toriyama knows this and that's why he keeps Beerus far away from any action or drama. Beerus literally filled in to baby sit fucking Bra in the Broly movie and in the current Moro arc they had to establish him having no interest in Moro whatsoever.

It is somewhat annoying too because they established a great way to write him out of the story early on, just have him go back to sleep. You can keep him as the almighty godlike being who'll be one of the endgame opponents for Goku, but now he isn't hanging out on Earth.
 
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