I think this really highlights the big flaws in the writing. There seems to be very little foresight and very little discipline. I'm not talking about "Why didn't ABC from two sagas later get involved into XYZ"- or "the officially stated multipliers don't add up"-level flaws, even though, those annoy me as well. I'm talking about stuff, like: Why does Dyspo seem so threatened by SSG Goku/Hit/Maji Kayo/Final Freeza standing on a hill shooting death beams, when he shows a few episodes later, that he can activate a speed mode at will, that is so fast, that it forces Golden Freeza + Ultimate Gohan into desperate measures? How can Gohan get back into shape in a matter of days and give this foreshadowing that leads nowhere? What's up with those spoilers that amount to nothing but throw-away lines? What's up with the awe displayed in the presence of transformations that have literally been seen like three in-universe minutes ago?OverHeaven wrote:Tbh if it wasn't for the "new form" line that Gohan had mentioned, I think people wouldn't be half upset about his elimination. He actually did pretty well if you ignore these stupid foreshadowings and useless build-ups that lead to nowhere. Maybe it'd have been much better if they went straight to the tournament without them.
I'm actually more curious to see people's reactions when Frieza gets humiliated or eliminated without going anywhere with his "plans".
In my opinion, this is just laziness and here is my formula to interpret and assess these tendencies:
- every episode needs some tension, some drama or something that makes people want more episode
- we have some points, that we want to convey with whatever tool we happen to have at hand
- we don't want to actually do the work of planning this stuff out, so we can do it in a fashion that makes sense
Examples of those principles in action:
- Let's do a kick-ass recruitment arc, so what drama/conflict could we have here? People don't want to enter. Why wouldn't one of the 13 strongest known beings in his universe (Whis, Beerus, and Shin may not enter), like #17, not want to enter a tournament that is about protecting everything he lives for? This makes no sense at all, so I guess we just make all characters, that refuse to enter at first, total nihilists, even though they are all clearly investing their time in some earthly project.
- We want people to care about 10 fighters and end recruitment episodes on a high point, even though just 3 of them got significant attention recently, so what do we do? Let's give some of them total surprise powerups (sure, #17 improved orders of magnitude fighting poachers) and some foreshadowing, like Gohan will reach a form nobody has ever seen before, or #17 might or might not be on SSB level, or whatever, during recruitment (btw., #17 is great, just give a better explanation for his power-up, like him fearing the advent of another monster like Cell and wanting to protect nature, therefore he trains hard every day or sth. like that). Their fans interpret that as build-up and foreshadowing and expect a big payoff for those characters and expect little of Vegeta, but it was probably just done to have strong endings for the Gohan-recruitment episode or the #17-recruitment episode.
- We want the Ribrianne attack to be a joke or minor annoyance this time? Ok, a base Saiyan can handle it. Little more tension? Ok, we need Super Saiyan. We want some super-hype moment? Ok, time for 2 SSBs,1 Golden Freeza, 1 Gohan and 1 super-crit, delivered by #17. I doubt there is much of a plan regarding the strength of most of the characters in the ToP, they just have whatever strength they need to serve their purpose and generate the desired level of tension during that specific episode and it may very well change dramatically a few episodes later.
- We want to hype people for episodes? Let's spoil some drama or twist that doesn't exist in the spoilers.
It's not all bad and I focused on the bad stuff here. They seem to have a rough outline and many concepts are really cool. It's just the cheap sensationalism they often put into single episodes, that are definitely just meant to spice up the specific episodes but make no sense in the overall context and lead people to weird discussions about throw-away lines (that shouldn't be said at all if they won't mean anything). I didn't expect grandiose things from Gohan, but I understood where those people were coming from, Toei lead them astray. The last thing, that had me worried/puzzled was that thing about Beerus proposing to wish for the annihilation of all in ep. 29 minute 17-18 accompanied by creepy music and a scary smirk. Of course, nothing came of that either.
I wish they'd make a somewhat detailed plan in advance, so they can have some consistency and drop foreshadowing, that is meaningful. During his last fight, Gohan had to work together with Freeza and go out, leaving Freeza, who can't be trusted, in. Freeza killed his two best friends, was responsible for almost all of the pain, Gohan suffered on Namek (as a child) and Freeza getting a SDB-wish could be disastrous. There is a perfect recipe for character conflicts right there. Don't foreshadow going getting an unseen ultimate form, if you have no plans to do that, foreshadow him doing whatever strategic move necessary to win and let that overcome his distrust for Freeza. Perfect character-moment, no empty promises in advance.
This would make the discussions on the forums much more fun as well. You know what's the most discouraging result of a discussion on whether hint X means A, B or C is? If hint X turns out to mean nothing at all.
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