Dragon Ball (Warning: Untagged Spoilers)

[Tani Coyote]

17's attack is perfectly logical. He needed a strong attack to nullify Jiren's, and nothing is as powerful as a self-destruct.

Vegeta was able to survive his self-destruct, so I guess it's only fair they had 17 take the hit.

The surreal thing about this is that this is a fight in which Erasure is on the line, so 17 dying normally shouldn't be as strong as it is.

[Vec]

Wait...didn't Krillin wished to remove both 17 & 18's bombs? Unless he tried to explode the same way Vegeta did...I don't know really

[Tani Coyote]

Yeah, it's presumably just a vanilla self-destruct. Fortunately there is plenty of precedent of a non-Android using it, so it's perfectly reasonable he would still be able to use it without the bomb.

I think the real difference is in activation. The Androids' built-in bombs were clearly meant as a tool to control them. Self-destruct in a case like this is an act of one's own free will.

[Meta77]

Frieza being swatted by nobodie sum which show are you watching

[Waveshocker Sigma]

1 hour ago, The Tenth Doctor said:

Bullshit. Fucking Bullshit. 17 is engulfed in an explosion which kills him, the crowd say he self destructed. Bullshit. What terrible writing to allow Juren away with it. Also, of course he has the "My parents are dead and I can't trust nobody" backstory. Just highlights what an awful asspull he is. Sorry if I sound salty but this is just asinine for our final Super boss.

You do sound super salty, won't lie. But you're not wrong at all. Jiren's pretty lame. lol

That said, gotta give props to 17. It was cool seeing him shine so much in the tournament since I always wanted to see more of him when I was a kid. I'm gonna miss the dude til he comes back. If he does.

Rest in spaghetti. Never forgetti. ALWAYS regretti.

[Tani Coyote]

I will say, the "Frieza betrays Goku" subplot a lot of people are anticipating at least has one thing against it now: Frieza is losing his shit trying to get Jiren, and that might keep him from cooking up any really cunning plan.

[The Tenth Doctor]

3 minutes ago, Bergamo (Ogilvie) said:

I will say, the "Frieza betrays Goku" subplot a lot of people are anticipating at least has one thing against it now: Frieza is losing his shit trying to get Jiren, and that might keep him from cooking up any really cunning plan.

If anything I can see it like this...

Goku - "Yeah, I finally defeated Jiren! We Win!"

SHOT BY LASER

Frieza - "DAMN YOU MONKEY, HE WAS MINE! YOU DRAGGED ME TO THIS HELL OF A TOURNAMENT AND NOW I'LL KILL YOU!"

[Soniman]

Bad episode. Id rather Jiren not even have a generic backstory that did nothing to make me care about him and he just contined being boring strong man because at least the writers would be honest about it lol

Also tired of the 17 glorification, he didnt deserve any of it and the narrative and characters riding his dick all episode got tiresome, this shoudlve been Gohan.

[-Robin-]

It had to be a vanilla self-destruct anyway. The bomb would be considered a weapon and be angel’d out of him if he tried it, leaving him no time to charge a second self-destruct.

 

Also if you thought 17 wouldn’t be in for the long haul and go out with a bang after everyone had been asking for years to see him in the anime then you didn’t actually want 17 at all, you just wanted another non-Goku guy.

[DiamondX]

28 minutes ago, Soniman said:

 

Also tired of the 17 glorification, he didnt deserve any of it and the narrative and characters riding his dick all episode got tiresome, this shoudlve been Gohan.

I don't see what's wrong with people liking 17. They turned a character not very talked about into a great character.

And please don't mention Gohan. He had a great way to get out of the ring. I'm getting tired of "Gohan must've fought Jiren", "Gohan needs to get SSB" and such.

[Soniman]

15 minutes ago, -Robin- said:

It had to be a vanilla self-destruct anyway. The bomb would be considered a weapon and be angel’d out of him if he tried it, leaving him no time to charge a second self-destruct.

 

Also if you thought 17 wouldn’t be in for the long haul and go out with a bang after everyone had been asking for years to see him in the anime then you didn’t actually want 17 at all, you just wanted another non-Goku guy.

Trust me, I like 17, I liked most of the work he put in up until after the U3 Robot. I enjoy seeing non-Goku characters contirbute, thats the whole appeal of this arc, but not all characters are created equallly, some deserve a larger piece of hte pie than others, and while Gohan gets a lack luster, unceremonious ring out, 17 gets this extravagant self indulgent handjob before heroically sacrificing himself. He gives Jiren the first permanent injury of the fight, he causes Jiren to open up when no other character could, Goku sings his praises, its jsut to much, it makes me think someonoe on the writing staff really  REALLY loved 17 and wanted him to get his due, despite how little it makes sense.

[DiamondX]

Because Gohan who just started training again while 17 was fighting the whole time would make more sense.

Gohan doesn't need to be the best. He even had his main role shown off at the start of the tournament: He was more of a tactician than a fighter.

He had a great knock out because it was their best solution.

[dbzfan7]

2 hours ago, Soniman said:

Trust me, I like 17, I liked most of the work he put in up until after the U3 Robot. I enjoy seeing non-Goku characters contirbute, thats the whole appeal of this arc, but not all characters are created equallly, some deserve a larger piece of hte pie than others, and while Gohan gets a lack luster, unceremonious ring out, 17 gets this extravagant self indulgent handjob before heroically sacrificing himself. He gives Jiren the first permanent injury of the fight, he causes Jiren to open up when no other character could, Goku sings his praises, its jsut to much, it makes me think someonoe on the writing staff really  REALLY loved 17 and wanted him to get his due, despite how little it makes sense.

At least 17 was part of the whole episode and not like.....thrown in at the last 5 minutes just to drop out.

[DiamondX]

Apparently Vegeta will hear Bulma's voice next episode.

I wonder if we're gonna hear a new VA.

[Kuzu]

7 hours ago, DiamondX the Fighter said:

Because Gohan who just started training again while 17 was fighting the whole time would make more sense.

Gohan doesn't need to be the best. He even had his main role shown off at the start of the tournament: He was more of a tactician than a fighter.

He had a great knock out because it was their best solution.

I like how you just missed the point entirely.

It has nothing to do with Gohan being better and everything to do with how 17, who barely had a role and was overshadowed by his sister for years, suddenly he's the greatest guy ever.

17 has literally looked better than everyone here. It's ridiculous, and I don't even hate him.

[Pawn]

8 hours ago, DiamondX the Fighter said:

Because Gohan who just started training again while 17 was fighting the whole time would make more sense.

Gohan doesn't need to be the best. He even had his main role shown off at the start of the tournament: He was more of a tactician than a fighter.

He had a great knock out because it was their best solution.

Not that I have a problem with Gohan being out, but people forget that he has been training with Piccolo since the end of RoF. And either way, the characters are as strong as the writers want them to be as 17 shouldn't be that impressive after fighting human scrubs.

And Gohan is both a tactician and a fighter - he's like a combo of Piccolo and Goku and has been showing fairly impressive feats of power throughout the tournament. He's just not as strong as Goku and Vegeta. The fact that he was eliminated had zero to do with strength.

While I think they've overdone it a bit with 17 (especially with how Goku praises him), we have to remember that he has been saved from falling out more than any other character. "Wounding" (if you can call it that - I know the cast did) Jiren to me felt like Krillin cutting Freeza's tail off or Tien tri-beaming Semi-Perfect Cell. 17's the underdog with special abilities who gets to overachieve and stall the opponent while others recuperate.

A problem with this arc is that characters keep healing every five bloody seconds. It's hard to take Jiren as seriously at this point.

[Kuzu]

51 minutes ago, Pawn said:

While I think they've overdone it a bit with 17 (especially with how Goku praises him), we have to remember that he has been saved from falling out more than any other character. "Wounding" (if you can call it that - I know the cast did) Jiren to me felt like Krillin cutting Freeza's tail off or Tien tri-beaming Semi-Perfect Cell. 17's the underdog with special abilities who gets to overachieve and stall the opponent while others recuperate.

I don't think those are the same really. Freeza and Cell had suffered some sort of injury by the point those moments occurred. Jiren has been nothing but unstoppable until now. And like, Goku & Vegeta working together at SSJB couldn't do any significant damage to him, but 17 can? Huh? And then he gets a cool self-sacrifice scene and essentially gets to go out on his own terms. He's only the character to not even suffer a real beatdown like the others have.

If that's not favoritism, I don't know what is.

[Pawn]

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I don't think those are the same really. Freeza and Cell had suffered some sort of injury by the point those moments occurred. Jiren has been nothing but unstoppable until now. And like, Goku & Vegeta working together at SSJB couldn't do any significant damage to him, but 17 can? Huh? And then he gets a cool self-sacrifice scene and essentially gets to go out on his own terms. He's only the character to not even suffer a real beatdown like the others have.

If that's not favoritism, I don't know what is.

Gohan had managed to shake or surprise Freeza before Krillin did that, which is what Vegeta did with Jiren in 122. The way Super deals with power levels is different (albeit inconsistent) though. No-one is untouchable, as we saw with SS2 Trunks somehow able to fight a bit against Rose Black. So when Jiren "let his guard down" as the series likes to parrot, 17 was able to sneak up undetected and actually scratch him. I wouldn't call it significant though... even if the cast reacted to it. It may as well have not happened for all the good it did. The writers wanted to give 17 as much as possible since he didn't get an elimination like Gohan and Vegeta, I suppose. I think he's avoided a beatdown because it would be unbelievable for him survive it - after all he's been outmatched in the entire battle with U11. But yeah, I think he should have been tossed aside by GoD Toppo so I'm not exactly on board with the favouritism.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

So, Jiren is someone who had his family/village destroyed and has spent his time training and training in order to seek vengeance for everyone who fell in the wake of an evil villain and doesn't particularly care about the consequences of the other universes harmed by him wanting his companions back.

...

...

...

"Yes Yes, so original". 

Like alright, there's slight differences between Vegeta and Jiren. Vegeta was obsessed more about being the strongest and having some kind of artificial birthright but they are both villains with some kind of redemption possible who lost their entire homes, families, everything, has allowed their loss to drive them to becoming stronger, wishes to use the Super Dragon Balls for somewhat selfish purposes (Jiren wants to bring back his companions regardless of the other universes, Vegeta of course wanted immortality. Now to be fair, Jiren's wish is a lot more sympathetic but the point still stands). 

But then, Vegeta is a character who has a personality which extends farther than bland angry man who can't be taken down through ordinary means. He had a conflict of interest between redeeming himself and becoming evil again which felt right because he worked under Frieza for so long and believed so deeply in the interests of the Saiyans. Even in his first appearance, Vegeta was arrogant, snarky, spiteful, had a lust of vengeance, especially in the Saiyan and Frieza sagas, and actually took his fair share of licks that made his battle against Goku great because both were on equal grounds and emoted to the circumstances of the battle. Vegeta even losing his cool and getting more and more pissed off as Goku continued to push him back.

Well, Jiren's lost the "mystery" of his character, is it fair to say he's just a shit character at this point?

[DiamondX]

I mean, that's not the entire backstory.

Jiren got annoyed at the fact that no one wanted to help him fight against the evil doer because they were scared of dying.

Then he "realised" that "Strenght is absolute".

But yeah, he's still a terrible character.

[The Tenth Doctor]

Sounds a bit more like a crap version of Future Trunks story. Evil doer shows up, kills family, friends and teacher retaliate, friends and teacher killed, no one has the guts to fight except this guy. Then the Vegeta elements of being the strongest hits home with his reliance on his own stength and using others for his own needs among other traits. Still doesn't explain how many sit ups he did, how many push ups he did and how much juice he drank to become STRONGER THAN THE GOD OF DESTRUCTION but whatever.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

35 minutes ago, DiamondX the Fighter said:

I mean, that's not the entire backstory.

Jiren got annoyed at the fact that no one wanted to help him fight against the evil doer because they were scared of dying.

Then he "realised" that "Strenght is absolute".

Yes, because Vegeta never does this. Not like he valued himself on his strength and nothing else...or got pissed off that people didn't like with the pride of the Saiyans, or allowed himself to be mind controlled and corrupted so he could gain enough strength so he could be "absolute".

[-Robin-]

So what if Vegeta lost more? Vegeta didn't give a damn that his race was gone, originally. He was more pissed off that the Saiyans were offed in a humiliating fashion.

 

For Vegeta, the case was  "Oh my people are gone? Welp, nothing to do now but become a Super Saiyan and prove that the Saiyans were meant to be the strongest warrior race."

Jiren's case is "I have a family? Power can take that away. I have a master and comrades? Be strong enough, and they can go away too. Power is the deciding factor in all life, isn't it?"

 

Vegeta gets stronger to prove himself and give his race justice. Jiren gets stronger as a coping mechanism, believing it to be justice itself. Vegeta uses the past to forge his future, while Jiren remains shackled to the past and wants to relive it, damn anything he met in the time inbetween.

[DiamondX]

Isn't Jiren's wish to get his family back though?

I hoped they would've said what his wish actually was.

[Tani Coyote]

Based on the idea strength can forgive the past, I think it's a safe assumption that his wish is to revive his fallen comrades, yes.

This also serves to set him up as an antagonist more than before. While Vegeta wants to revive Universe 6 and this will likely be expanded into trying to revive all universes (Goku will presumably decide to go for gold with Vegeta's wish, wanting as many strong opponents as possible), Jiren is petty and only cares about a small group of people.

He has been set up as an asshole, and we really want him to get his teeth smashed in.

Jiren's ultimately a victim of narrative: if Jiren wanted to revive all defeated universes or remove beings like Zen-Oh from the equation, where would the tension be in opposing him? He would objectively be trying to better the multiverse, and would deserve victory more than Goku. Never mind Bergamo already played the "better person than Goku" role, so Jiren kind of had to go a different direction.

I'll be interested to see where the manga goes with him. So far it has made hardasses like Roh more sympathetic, and Jiren himself is set up as a far more heroic character in it.