Jump to content
Awoo.

Dragon Ball (Warning: Untagged Spoilers)


FourCartridge

Recommended Posts

10 minutes ago, Wraith said:

All their new villains suck, bring back cooler

🤔🤔

If all they did was bring back old villains, we wouldn't have Beerus and Whis.

Also, while we're at it, kill Frieza again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Marcello said:

🤔🤔

 

  Reveal hidden contents

If all they did was bring back old villains, we wouldn't have Beerus and Whis.

 

Also, while we're at it, kill Frieza again.

I agree with this but the situation they created is weird. The Goku of DBZ would never let Frieza terrorize the galaxy freely, but he's let Frieza walk so many times in super that it'd be weird for him to start caring now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have mixed feelings on bringing back Coola only because I really like him don't want to lose something to the character. I know that's a weird statement to make when most of the old movie villains are varying degrees of derivative and shallow to begin with, but he always felt a bit better put together and logical than the others. It's totally a bias thing because I love his design, and in particular his transformation, and some of this is influenced by the dub either emphasizing, if not adding, the whole sibling rivalry to Freeza and making his personality as opposite as possible (which seems to be an influence on the games and stuff).

I think the other thing too is that I'd like to keep a Toei creation actually a villain for a change and not just new flavor of the week rival who's gonna get replaced again next time and Coola is a character they could go that direction with just to offset Freeza being the (amazing) little shit he is and that Frost was basically just Freeza again anyway. I could be down with the idea if Coola turned out to be some intergalactic superhero and his Armored Squad are Ginyu Force rejects/sidekicks who clash with Freeza's army all the time but it's not a direction he should go in (even if the idea is kind of funny to me).

DB Minus and Broli have both kind of just make me wary of that being a pattern, I suppose. I will grant though that Broli was actually a well done retelling but he was also a nothing, creator's pet character Toei kept shoving into the spotlight for years to the point that they created Kale just a couple years before making Toriyama rewrite the actual character anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess Janemba would be a safer option. He's about as popular as Cooler but there's really not much to ruin there. He's Buu with a sword

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think an interesting idea for Cooler could be that he's taken up a huge chunk of the galaxy in Frieza's absence. I think an interesting angle is that he's essentially the son King Cold didn't really give a shit about and he just sent him off to some random back-area of the galaxy while handing Frieza his empire. Where Frieza gained a massive ego problem from his belief that he is owed the position of most powerful in the universe, and he's essentially a pampered prince, Cooler had to work his ass off to get where he is, and thus doesn't have a lot of the issues Frieza runs into with his ego.

Where Frieza trained for four months and fucked off back to Earth to settle a score, Cooler was always training, he had to. From the start, hence why he's always in his final form, and why he has the fifth form. It'd be neat if while Frieza was off doing his petty bullshit against the saiyans, Cooler had known better than to chase after revenge and instead decided to exploit Cold and Frieza's deaths by taking most of the Frieza Empire under his own rule. You could potentially include a war between Frieza and Cooler for chunks of the galaxy, and maybe even ask the question if who's actively the worse ruler out of the two. 

I still personally think Cooler is far and away the best villain who could be reintroduced into canon, even ahead of Broly - who Toriyama did a fantastic job reinventing. The original Cooler already had essentially the groundwork for why he never really 'tangoed' with canon before (Frieza was Cold's favourite child, Frieza was granted power from birth and therefore never trained to up it, Cold always handed Frieza things without little to no effort, etc) - Cooler could really work as a showcase of what Frieza could have been if he had to work his ass off for his power instead of being handed it all by Cold. Less ego problems due to how long he had to work for it, full training from the start, etc. 

That said, I absolutely do not want Cooler to become a good guy either. Absolutely not. We've had more than enough of them. If they really wanted to pull the "Frieza who isn't that bad" angle, they should've done it with Frost. I definitely don't wanna see Cooler degraded into misunderstood rival just to go "look, its good Frieza!!" 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/21/2020 at 8:52 PM, batson said:

I really really really hope that when the Super anime returns, they'll adapt the Galactic Prisoner Saga and leave in the line about Gohan being the strongest being on earth after Goku and Vegeta. That would mean that Gohan, even in the anime canon, is stronger than 17 and probably Future Trunks. Why is that important to me? Well by the end of Z, Gohan was the strongest Z-fighter. Since then, Goku and Vegeta have vastly surpassed him, which I can accept given that they have God ki. However, in the anime canon so far, it appears as if both 17 and Future Trunks have also surpassed Gohan even WITHOUT God ki. And that's just more than I can take. I mean yeah, Gohan will never be the strongest Z-fighter again but being outmatched by 17 and Future Trunks? I just can't accept that. I mean for Gods sake, Gohan is the one that went through Old Kai's unlocking ritual. and yet 17 and Future Trunks manages to become stronger than him just by regular ass training (in 17's case) and getting angry (in Future Trunk's case)? No no no no no, that's just pathetic.

Dragonball does have a lot of inconsistencies, and I'm not the biggest fan of it so there might be something that I don't know about the series, though even if it was not explained, when Future Trunks became that strong, he was surrounded by a strange blue aura similar to the one of a SSJ Blue (at least in the anime), so maybe he actually started using the God Ki without being aware...

17 becoming a lot stronger was unexplained (or better to say poorly explained) but I like to think that they did it in order to prepare the series for an eventual adaptation of GT's story sometimes in the future (the Super 17 mini arc).

By the way I didn't like the Black Goku saga, I think it was too much random and inconsistent, with forced plot twists and Black/Zamasu was basically a "Coldsteel the Hedgehog" type of character, I really didn't like him at all.

Regarding old characters being surpassed, Krilin became useless after Goku & the other sayans reached the several SSJ forms, but now that the strongest form is Ultra Instinct, and unlike SSJ, it is not bound to a species, there's an idea that reached my mind... I know it makes little sense but a part of me hopes that they some day will let Krilin reach the Ultra Instinct state and be once again on the same level as Goku, fighting side by side with him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lol Heroes is really going to do Super Saiyan Rose 2 XD. Soon we really will have Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Evolution Ultra Instinct Kaio-Ken x20.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bringing back any past villains, movie or otherwise is a terrible idea. Broly was a one-time good decision because he actually had some untapped potential. Cooler, Janemba, all these villains have nothing special or interesting about them. Cooler is just Freeza without any of the things that make Freeza interesting. Janemba rips off Buu in the same manner, but has some cool fights I guess. Neither is a particularly engaging thing to put in a new film and I hope they have the sense to realize that vapid soulless bullshit is the perfect territory for Heroes and that mainline DB should (doesn't, I know, but should) aspire to better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Bringing back any past villains, movie or otherwise is a terrible idea. Broly was a one-time good decision because he actually had some untapped potential. Cooler, Janemba, all these villains have nothing special or interesting about them. Cooler is just Freeza without any of the things that make Freeza interesting. Janemba rips off Buu in the same manner, but has some cool fights I guess. Neither is a particularly engaging thing to put in a new film and I hope they have the sense to realize that vapid soulless bullshit is the perfect territory for Heroes and that mainline DB should (doesn't, I know, but should) aspire to better.

Broly had "untapped potential" that they needed to use which is why they threw out just about everything that made him and Bardock who they were, wrote a new story for both of them and basically only used their names because they were profitable characters. lol.

Dragon Ball has been creatively bankrupt for over 20 years now and people are still wheeling out these tired "soul" arguments. If you want soul crack open Jump + sometime and read some of shonen's rising stars. Akira Toriyama is just chasing the bag here.

Dragon Ball is basically wrestling now, and I want to get some dream matchups in with Broly-tier animation while the getting is still good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Wraith said:

Broly had "untapped potential" that they needed to use which is why they threw out just about everything that made him and Bardock who they were, wrote a new story for both of them and basically used their names because they were profitable characters.

Even disregarding Dragon Ball minus, Bardock doesn't really seem to work outside of his original context no matter what they do with him.

Broly's original person only worked as a dragon...but there wasn't much to him that wasn't dropped in the sequels anyway. His backstory was the only thing of interest and people apparently don't care about that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Wraith said:

Broly had "untapped potential" that they needed to use which is why they threw out just about everything that made him and Bardock who they were, wrote a new story for both of them and basically used their names because they were profitable characters.

Dragon Ball has been creatively bankrupt for over 20 years now and people are still wheeling out these tired "soul" arguments. If you want soul crack open Jump + sometime and read some of shonen's rising stars. Akira Toriyama is just chasing the bag here.

Dragon Ball is basically wrestling now, and I want to get some dream matchups in with Broly-tier animation while the getting is still good.

I didn't say they did anything good with Bardock, but either way, even if you were right about Broly, the next argument should not be to try and soup-up even worse villains for the exact same shit. If you're honestly going to argue that Dragon Ball is "just wrestling" now, why bother with any plot, characterization or story at all? Why even meaningfully distinguish between Heroes and the main series?

The answer is that even though DB's writing isn't good, there is actually still a place in it for themes, context and emotion. If you're pretending those things don't even matter because it's been bad for a long time (note: it's actually always been bad), you're probably good enough at it to smack some action figures together and pretend they're a high-quality animated film.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I didn't say they did anything good with Bardock, but either way, even if you were right about Broly, the next argument should not be to try and soup-up even worse villains for the exact same shit. If you're honestly going to argue that Dragon Ball is "just wrestling" now, why bother with any plot, characterization or story at all? The answer is that even though DB's writing isn't good, there is actually still a place in it for themes, context and emotion. If you're pretending those things don't even matter because it's been bad for a long time (note: it's actually always been bad), you're probably good enough at it to smack some action figures together and pretend they're a high-quality animated film.

I'm not saying they don't matter, I'm saying Broly shows that the franchises is better when it carries itself with an awareness of what it's good at(humor, action scenes and spectacle). I felt the same way about Battle of the Gods(it's actually an even better movie than Broly in a few ways but that's another discussion). Most of the arcs and emotional beats in the Super series are complete duds on the flipside and they lean more on serious moments.

Dragon Ball did have a better grasp on these things a long time ago and no argument from any of the DB eggheads that go on about how it's actually secretly always been shit has has convinced me otherwise yet. There's just no need to force it if they don't have it anymore.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I honestly prefer the 90s Toei material to nearly anything Toei has churned out with Super (I mostly like Beerus and Whis and, to a lesser extent, Jaco), so I'm not really opposed to them just going nuts and recreating some of those characters. It's not really the same approach where Heroes just throws everything together into lengthy commercials to sell cards. Yeah, both approaches are obviously for fanservice but they're done differently enough that I think there's enough value in keeping that stuff around. Broli is hardly the only character or concept with untapped potential--and if anything he was far more illustrative of the problem Dragon Ball had with its image--so it's weird to be selective about it to me.

There's plenty of creative ideas for Coola and Janemba in even the games. I honestly only care about them staying villains because we've added enough new friends to Goku's crew and they're benched half the time except for Vegeta and Freeza (and potentially Broli).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Wraith said:

I'm not saying they don't matter, I'm saying Broly shows that the franchises is better when it carries itself with an awareness of what it's good at(humor, action scenes and spectacle). I felt the same way about Battle of the Gods(it's actually an even better movie than Broly in a few ways but that's another discussion). Most of the arcs and emotional beats in the Super series are complete duds on the flipside and they lean more on serious moments.

Okay, and most of the other movies and villains really don't represent those things. They're mostly boring. Even the best ones like World's Strongest aren't really the best because of their villains.

4 hours ago, Wraith said:

Dragon Ball did have a better grasp on these things a long time ago and no argument from any of the DB eggheads that go on about how it's actually secretly always been shit has has convinced me otherwise yet. There's just no need to force it if they don't have it anymore.

I'm not asking you to be convinced. I'm also not saying it's always been as bad as it currently is, I know it got worse, but it's wrong to take that as a rejection of ways it can be better.

The point of all this is, the movie villains are mostly trash, and I don't think there's any good reason to bring any of them back, much less a reason to want them to. They made Broly work as well as they possibly could and I still don't think it was amazing, so with characters even more derivative, I think it's a setup for failure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dragon Ball is wrestling alright, because the opinions on its current direction vary widely while the older audiences prefer the 90's aesthetic and tone with a few standout examples in the modern incarnations.

 

I honestly don't hate modern Dragon Ball as much as most of the online Dragon Ball community does, and think there's merit in trying to recontextualize older content to fit with modern sensibilities. Yes, it comes with the potential sacrifice of the things people might have liked about that content before, but so what.

Let's not pretend like Broly and Bardock weren't already divisive as hell long before the movie, I don't think keeping their contexts the same would have changed that at all. Its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Dragon Ball could have avoided all of this if it just never came back at all, but it makes too much money for that and Toei and Toriyama are going to milk that cash cow dry, perceived integrity about the series be damned. So if we're at that point, just go fucking crazy.

 

 

I don't subscribe to the idea that Dragon Ball has "always" been like this, but at the same time, I've had a lot of time in my 28 years to reflect on my thoughts and feelings about Dragon Ball, and understand that its writing really isn't anything to write home about. There's so many modern Shonen franchises that are much more emotionally resonant to me, that Dragon Ball feels archaic by comparison and only gets by on its legacy rather than the actual quality of its products.

 

But that's just how I feel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Okay, and most of the other movies and villains really don't represent those things. They're mostly boring. Even the best ones like World's Strongest aren't really the best because of their villains.

I'm not asking you to be convinced. I'm also not saying it's always been as bad as it currently is, I know it got worse, but it's wrong to take that as a rejection of ways it can be better.

The point of all this is, the movie villains are mostly trash, and I don't think there's any good reason to bring any of them back, much less a reason to want them to. They made Broly work as well as they possibly could and I still don't think it was amazing, so with characters even more derivative, I think it's a setup for failure.

It's just weird to take such a hard stance on this but then frame Broly as some notable exception to the rule. Broly was the untapped goldmine of OG alt canon Dragon Ball? That's a take I never thought I'd see. Broly is popular with Dragon Ball's target audience because he's really strong and screams a lot, but his backstory and character was one of the most derided storylines in the hardcore fanbase when I was coming up. This was before you brought the other two movies into it. Bio Broly might be one of the worst pieces of Dragon Ball media ever.

If "Broly film with clear references/allusions to SSJ4 and Fusion Reborn" proves anything, it's that nothing in this series is unsalvagable. Exploiting Cooler and Janemba's marketability, designs, and fighting styles while making them more distinct characters in the process seems comparatively mild.

If you just don't want to see old characters and would rather them come up with something else, that's fair, but given their track record for new additions in the Super anime/manga thus far I can't really get excited about the prospect.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did Broly even have more potential than any other villain? Like, I admit it might be because I only find the original Broly movie fun, and think Second Coning and Bio Broly get progressively crappier, but I’ve never liked OG Broly as a villain much. He’s got a coolness factor to him and some of his one liners are decent, but he’s basically just a gigantic brick wall who doesn’t take damage from anything until some Deus-Ex Machina pops up to take him out.

And that’s without touching his absolute joke of a backstory. He has a insufferable bloodlust and hatred for Goku because he cried as a baby. That’s it, that’s the plot. Gigantic killing machine, most powerful badass super Saiyan, and he’s literally fuelled by a crying baby. Even the idea of an evil Super Saiyan, everyone points to it as if it’s a big Broly selling point, but like - that’s what Vegeta’s original ascension was supposed to be, wasn’t it? 

Vegeta is a evil bastard, even throughout most of the Cell saga. He literally threatened to kick Gohan’s ass because Gohan was upset over his father’s supposed death. Vegeta ascending to SSJ was supposed to be a big deal because (and I admit, it might just be a dub thing, so take with a grain of salt) - it was assumed by the Z-Fighters one had to be pure of heart to go SSJ, and Vegeta came along and disproved it, showing that the transformation was fuelled by extreme emotion as opposed to purity of heart, so even the whole “evil SSJ” thing falls short for me, not helped by Broly literally being unstoppable just cuz.

And I’m not saying that to act like Broly being redone by Toriyama was a bad thing. I fucking love Super: Broly, I think how they redid Broly’s backstory and cleverly retooled him both made him a more interesting character, and still kept the coolness factor in tact. I just think acting as if Broly had some immense potential that required him to be brought back while others don’t is pretty silly.

Cooler has plenty of coolness factor with his fifth transformation, and there’s plenty you can do with a character who unlike Frieza - never got it easy in life, and instead had to scrape for every win and every victory. Unlike Frieza who thinks he’s entitled to wins and loses it when he starts to fail, Cooler could easily show what Frieza could’ve been if he’d not been so entitled, and actually trained to home his power from the start. 

Janemba meanwhile has one of the most unique fighting styles in the entire series, not only due to his sword, but his usage of portals and teleportation. It’s insanely cool watching him being able to redirect attacks and use them against those who fired them. I do think it’s also interesting how he’s just an embodiment of pure evil. Where Maijn Buu was a force of nature created via magic, Janemba is a embodiment of all of the evil gathered all around the planet. I do admit he basically is another version of Buu, but I do think if they took a swing at it, they could differiate him. 

I also have to disagree with the idea that Dragon Ball has basically lost all narrative value as well though. I’m definitely not the biggest fan of some of the pure bullshit Dragon Ball Super pulls, but I do still think there’s a lot of times where they capture that initial Dragon Ball charm and write the characters in interesting ways. Super: Broly especially IMO. Broly’s new sympathetic backstory, his reaction to Paragus’ death, it becoming more clear that Broly isn’t even a villain, but someone to berserk with rage and grief that he doesn’t understand etc.

Even the visual storytelling is on point, I will always love how when Gogeta turns the tables on Broly, it’s not like Fusion Reborn where it’s a huge moment, with Gogeta having this big one liner to deliver to the villain. No, as Gogeta starts to get more and more of an upper hand, the animation visually changes to start showing Gogeta as looking slightly off, and even a bit deranged at points, while making Broly look more and more terrified, empathising that Gogeta’s going full ham on somebody who doesn’t fully realise what’re they doing, and how he doesn’t even fully have control over his actions, showcasing that no one is really the good or bad guy here, and Gogeta might be taking it too extreme on Broly, to the point where that Final Kamehameha probably would’ve killed him if he hadn’t been teleported out of there.

If the movie was simply going for money and no story telling value, I don’t think they would’ve done that. They would’ve just did a Broly: the Legendary Super Saiyan, or Fusion Reborn where the big game-changer moment happens that causes the villain to become completely powerless, and it would’ve been treated as a gigantic heroic moment for Gogeta. Instead, they felt the need to ask the question of if Broly was really a villain worthy of death in that moment, and if Gogeta’s combined lust for battle is making him take extreme action against Broly.

Even Goku has that moment towards the end too where despite having fought Broly and nearly dying by his hand, he still offers Broly supplies, food and housing on a random backwater planet so they can survive there, with the only condition being he and Broly occasionally sparring. It’s one of the few times during Super that I genuinely thought Goku was perfectly written in character, and it’s probably my favourite “redemption” of the series. Goku helping a guy out because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, befriending him, asking him for sparring matches, and even giving permission to call him Kakarot, which is what Vegeta calls him. It’s not only a neat twist on the Goku/Broly dynamic, but that moment perfectly embodies a lot of Goku’s positive character traits to me. So idk. Personally I can’t really act as if DB is just utterly vapid and has no meaning when stuff like this is present.

Can’t really comment on the manga since I’ve only read the beginning chapters of the Moro arc (I hear Moro gets pretty crap towards the end though). 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There seems to be a divide over what people think should be preserved from before, versus just changing everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Wraith said:

It's just weird to take such a hard stance on this but then frame Broly as some notable exception to the rule. Broly was the untapped goldmine of OG alt canon Dragon Ball? That's a take I never thought I'd see. Broly is popular with Dragon Ball's target audience because he's really strong and screams a lot, but his backstory and character was one of the most derided storylines in the hardcore fanbase when I was coming up. This was before you brought the other two movies into it. Bio Broly might be one of the worst pieces of Dragon Ball media ever.

If "Broly film with clear references/allusions to SSJ4 and Fusion Reborn" proves anything, it's that nothing in this series is unsalvagable. Exploiting Cooler and Janemba's marketability, designs, and fighting styles while making them more distinct characters in the process seems comparatively mild.

If you just don't want to see old characters and would rather them come up with something else, that's fair, but given their track record for new additions in the Super anime/manga thus far I can't really get excited about the prospect.

 

 

I suppose it's more that it was lightning in a bottle that they'd ever be able to make a movie villain tolerable, but what I meant by "potential" was specifically the prospect of Broly and Paragus as saiyans with a grudge against the royal family, and Broly's uncontrollable power being leashed by Paragus with an extremely painful control device, are some of the only cool ideas the movies ever came up with. The original movie failed in part because they didn't paint Broly as the victim he probably should have been, and I was ecstatic to see they actually took that opportunity in the new one. But I also don't see an opportunity like that for the other movies the way specifically this new film had. You might be able to extract something from Wrath of the Dragon at best, but not a lot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Janemba meanwhile has one of the most unique fighting styles in the entire series, not only due to his sword, but his usage of portals and teleportation. It’s insanely cool watching him being able to redirect attacks and use them against those who fired them. I do think it’s also interesting how he’s just an embodiment of pure evil. Where Maijn Buu was a force of nature created via magic, Janemba is a embodiment of all of the evil gathered all around the planet. I do admit he basically is another version of Buu, but I do think if they took a swing at it, they could differiate him. 

Something that I thought was actually kind of fun/interesting about Janemba was the idea that his spirit was actually of an organized crime kingpin in the Demon World that ended up in Hell that was in Buu's Fury. I've never played the game but I thought that was a unique twist to his background and I think combining that with the dimensional shifting powers would make for a hell of a spectacle if put into a proper story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

*sees discussion*

Yeeeaaah... I'm just gonna sit in the corner and keep thinking that an Android 21 movie might be kinda cool.

  • Fist Bump 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Not to make waves, but I prefer the golden yellow glow and hair of Super Saiyan in DBZ over the Blue Super Saiyan. I understand blue flames are hotter in a fire than yellow or red, but I prefer the aesthetic of the Suped Saiyan (1-3) in DBZ.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

You must read and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue using this website. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.