Toei Incompetence: Revisiting the "Sword of Hope" Asspull

[Master Xar]

Well this has been boiling under the surface for a while from me, it's one of my biggest frustrations in not only DBS, but the franchise in general, I'm not gonna lie when I say the FT Arc had it's flaws even before episode 66, it felt absolutely FRUSTRATING seeing that asspull, it was cool, yet it was outweighed by the stupidity of it by leaps and bounds.

The Arc itself before that episode at least to me was a 8/10 arc and topped most Dragonball Arcs for me, then that episode came... took it down to a 6/10, hell I even liked the bittersweet end it was an EASILY fixable solution by not gathering the energy and just having Vegito soften up Fused Zamasu. Defuse him before Vegito deals the final blow, have Zamasu nearly kill them like he did in the anime THEN have Trunks go in for the kill WITHOUT the Spirit Bomb rip-off, but the journey to it was just... ugh. I don't even feel like it's Toriyama's fault since it clearly wasn't in the outline revealed yesterday in the manga. It was just Toei being retards...

So the question remains for me here... do you think Toei truly deserves Dragonball? Do you think that they even remotely care about it as much as Toriyama or the fans do? Cuz honestly... the writers' quality varies from Toriyama-level at it's peak and at it's very worse Tite Kubo level...

[emperior]

It seems like Toriyama wrote that Trunks had to slice the Merged Zamasu in half (it happens in both the anime and the manga) though he didn't detail the circumstances (he should definitely have).

I like episode 66 a lot and it was cool as hell to see Trunks slicing Zamasu like that, though I admit Toei rushed the final too much and Trunks managing to beat Zamasu could have used some more explanation (they could have stated Zamasu lost A LOT of energy)

I also like Trunks' power-up but I would have preferred it if it came with an explanation. I hope his transformation will appear again in the future just so that they can explain it.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

First, to address a pet peeve of mine. Toei is not a person. They're a production company where a lot of people work at. The entire company isn't involved with DBS. They have other projects as well. If you can't be bothered to look for the specific staff names of a specific episode, it'd be better to address them as the DBS staff or anime staff instead of blaming the whole studio.

Second, we have no evidence of what is present in Toriyama's outline. Hell, there's a possibility he came up with all of it. But, anyways let's go with the assumption that the staff came up with it.

So, to address the question about incompetence. I don't think Hatano Morio(series director during Trunks arc and episode director/storyboard artist of #66) and Tomioka Atsuhiro(script writer of #66) are incompetent. If you look at their careers they are far from incompetent. Its just they went with a different approach. They didn't prioritize what battle power fans thought they should've. They went with a cool, memorable and bombastic finale approach and I can't blame them for it. They succeeded at it as far as I'm concerned. It is one of the few memorable moments in an otherwise poor show.

And, lastly producers of Toei Animation and Fuji TV came up with the idea of DBS to begin with. DBS wouldn't exist if not for Toei Animation. I'd say they deserve it even if I'm not happy with it. They created it after all. Also, Kubo is awesome by the way.

[JulieYBM]

While I'd argue that Trunks' sword of hope is not something Toriyama would write, it's not a bad idea, especially for a series director and writer of Hatano Morio and Tomioka Atsuhiro's writing talent. It's an emotion-based culmination of an entire storylne filled with suffering's ending. If anything, Hatano should have abandoned the idea of Zamasu surviving the attack and merely had the Zen-Ou of the Future decide to leave his universe out of boredom. Trunks' defeating of Zamasu is about being cathartic, not breaking down the table of elements and discovering how to make gold out of water.

[Timetraveller]

I think Toriyama is half-assing it for the paycheck. He writes really vague outlines hands them to Toei and says "do what ever you want". I'd honestly prefer it if Toyotaro or a creative team of hardcore fans just took over and wrote the entire story from start to finish. The Sword of Hope would have been better thought out.

[Bulma's Foot Masseur]

First, to address a pet peeve of mine. Toei is not a person. They're a production company where a lot of people work at. The entire company isn't involved with DBS. They have other projects as well. If you can't be bothered to look for the specific staff names of a specific episode, it'd be better to address them as the DBS staff or anime staff instead of blaming the whole studio.

Toei deserves the credit and the blame for what their employees do. You're basically saying that no one should blame Nintendo for a bad Mario game just because they have more than one game in development at a time, and that no one should compliment Nintendo for a good game either.

[TheMikado]

First, to address a pet peeve of mine. Toei is not a person. They're a production company where a lot of people work at. The entire company isn't involved with DBS. They have other projects as well. If you can't be bothered to look for the specific staff names of a specific episode, it'd be better to address them as the DBS staff or anime staff instead of blaming the whole studio.

Second, we have no evidence of what is present in Toriyama's outline. Hell, there's a possibility he came up with all of it. But, anyways let's go with the assumption that the staff came up with it.

So, to address the question about incompetence. I don't think Hatano Morio(series director during Trunks arc and episode director/storyboard artist of #66) and Tomioka Atsuhiro(script writer of #66) are incompetent. If you look at their careers they are far from incompetent. Its just they went with a different approach. They didn't prioritize what battle power fans thought they should've. They went with a cool, memorable and bombastic finale approach and I can't blame them for it. They succeeded at it as far as I'm concerned. It is one of the few memorable moments in an otherwise poor show.

And, lastly producers of Toei Animation and Fuji TV came up with the idea of DBS to begin with. DBS wouldn't exist if not for Toei Animation. I'd say they deserve it even if I'm not happy with it. They created it after all. Also, Kubo is awesome by the way.

Yes, exactly. People forget that DBS is first and foremost a TOEI production. Toei owns it and Toei will do whatever they please with it. The myth that Toriyama somehow has more creative control than either Toei or Toriyama himself has stated is just fan wishful thinking. Fans like it because its "from Toriyama", but the first time fans start to see things they don't like suddenly " This is clearly Toei's work". The reality is this has been Toei's property all along, for better or worse, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

Toei deserves the credit and the blame for what their employees do. You're basically saying that no one should blame Nintendo for a bad Mario game just because they have more than one game in development at a time, and that no one should compliment Nintendo for a good game either.

Except the writer being blamed is a freelance worker and doesn't work for Toei so... and I'm saying blame/praise the specific person instead of the company they work at. All the resources are at your disposal. Kanzenshuu covers every staff detail. Its not that hard. It gets annoying after a while seeing everyone shout "Toei this/Toei that" for everything.

[TheMikado]

Toei deserves the credit and the blame for what their employees do. You're basically saying that no one should blame Nintendo for a bad Mario game just because they have more than one game in development at a time, and that no one should compliment Nintendo for a good game either.

Except the writer being blamed is a freelance worker and doesn't work for Toei so... and I'm saying blame/praise the specific person instead of the company they work at. All the resources are at your disposal. Kanzenshuu covers every staff detail. Its not that hard. It gets annoying after a while seeing everyone shout "Toei this/Toei that" for everything.

I blame Toei and their directors. The choice of a rumored short pre-production phase in particular has nothing to do with the freelance writers.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

"Toei being retards"

Real mature calling them retarded over a silly children's cartoon.

And no we still don't know whether it was in the outline or not. We don't have access to the outline. The Manga is NOT the outline...

[Master Xar]

"Toei being retards"

Real mature calling them retarded over a silly children's cartoon.

And no we still don't know whether it was in the outline or not. We don't have access to the outline. The Manga is NOT the outline...

I never said they were retards, I said that they are acting/being retards, Toei is filled with very talented and experienced worker both for the animation and production... but then they turn around and proceed to shoot them selves in the foot for absolutely no reason, but we've had this franchise going and even after GT and certain fillers they put in that the storytelling and powerscaling is completely dumped. All they had to do was explain a few things in the Future Trunks arc and the Sword of Hope could have been done just as epic without detrimenting consistency and storytelling.

I like Caulifla as a character, but the tingly feeling was once again, poorly explained and lazy, there was no story to tell about how they got as strong they were just given that, and after plenty of complaints from Goten and Trunks Super Saiyan forms, and how Akira lampshaded how STUPID it was, a big theme of the franchise is how you have to work HARD for your happy ending and after all the 30-40+ years of hard work Goku and Vegeta went to EARN and achieve their SSJ forms we come across Caulifla who gets it in less than a day, it's bad storytelling. And it's still going to be as stupid if not far more if she gets SSJB.

You see all these anime and new shonen nowadays that just outmatch Super in terms of writing (Hunter X Hunter, My Hero Academia, JJBA) and Toei could easily match it if they bothered to care more, the internet has opened people up far more to objectively good writing like Character Development/Depth/Nuance etc. and they seem to be just a bit out of touch, is all I'm saying, even in their own country there are examples of what NOT to do (I.e Fairy Tail, Bleach Ending) and yet... they gave us a Fairy Tail level asspull...

They were being incompetent, Akira gave them the Mona Lisa (Future Trunks Arc) and had us all invested in it and then they turn around and just proceed to scribble all over it and ruin the face to make it look cooler when it's just tacky, cheesy, and stupid. I appreciate that Trunks came into his own and killed Zamasu, they could have done it just as good if not better if this was all planned better. And I hope whoever was behind that got chewed out for making that decision.

[Basako]

For this I blame the writer of that episode, the director of the series in that moment and Toriyama if he approved it, which I don't know.

For a Genki ball to be created, Goku had to raise his hands and gather the energy in whatever way Kaio taught him. As far as we know, Kaio and Goku are the only ones who know how to do it and future Trunks hasn't been with them in years. Well, with Kaio never. Anyway, he didn't use the technique, the ball appeared there and he took it. Sorry, but that I can't buy it.

Maybe Goku could have done the Genkidama, for whatever reason, like against Vegeta, transfer it to Trunks and him put it in the sword. That could have been. Or no Genki at all, he could have created an energy ball himself, stick it to the sword and attack. There were ways to do that, but what we got, didn't make sense. People raise hands and an energy ball appears next to Trunks, a big no.

[Li'l Lemmy]

... and after plenty of complaints from Goten and Trunks Super Saiyan forms, and how Akira lampshaded how STUPID it was...

I'm sorry, where was this lampshaded? Curious.

[Bullza]

Still better than the manga ass pull where Trunks could randomly heal people all of a sudden and didn't even know about it.

[Lord Beerus]

The "Sword Of Hope" is certainly nonsensical, but in a thematic sense, it works extremely well. For the extreme misanthrope that Zamasu/Goku Black was, having being slain by the hands of Saiyans fueled with the energy that remained of Future Trunks world felt extremely cathartic. From the beginning of the end to the end of it Future Trunks was fighting valiantly for what remain of humanity in his world, every step of the way, the humans that remained on Earth supported him every time things looked grim and he was looked up as the hope bringer for the world. So I find the idea of the humans that were left urging Future Trunks on so much so that they innately gave him their power to slain Merged Zamasu very satisfying.

[Zagacious]

I don'tthink the Spirit Sword itself was an asspull for existing, just the fact that it wasn't explained at all and he had no prior experience with Spirit bomb or similar technique, but definitely the way everything was all just 'Super' rushed and unexplained at the end, like they ran into a time limit or something. The episode with the Spirit Sword and then Zamasu in the sky seemed to be some of the most half-effort episodes in the entire series. I agree that before that point it was a very good arc like 7-9/10.

Honestly all it would have taken for me to accept the Sword was to have King Kai hinting at him telepathically or one of the other kais saying something like 'gather the energy from all the earthlings into your weapon to focus it on Zamasu' but instead he just automatically knew how to use it without ever seeing it or possibly even hearing about it at all. He never spent time at King Kais, it's unlikely anyone told him about the Spirit bomb except maybe Future Gohan told him, but if so then a flashback to Future Gohan telling him about Goku using it during Frieza saga or something would be enough too. I think Goku may have attempted spirit bomb on Cell but I can't really remember. If he did then a flashback to that would be acceptable, but we got NOTHING, no explanation at all.

[PeanutSaiyan]

Still better than the manga ass pull where Trunks could randomly heal people all of a sudden and didn't even know about it.

Not even close, and I wasn't even a fan of the concept in the manga. One was a supporting event which helped the plot move forward while the other was a no explanation, arc-ending finale that completely ended the fight. Keep your trivial bias out if the thread because you are clearly unable to give an objective opinion, thanks.

[Master Xar]

... and after plenty of complaints from Goten and Trunks Super Saiyan forms, and how Akira lampshaded how STUPID it was...

I'm sorry, where was this lampshaded? Curious.

Literally everyone and their mother not named Goten and Trunks being surprised how quickly Goten and Trunks got SSJ. How they went on about how it took them years to become SSJs and now it's in Vegeta's words of it being a once prophetic legendary warrior being "a child's plaything"

[GodKaio-Ken]

Still better than the manga ass pull where Trunks could randomly heal people all of a sudden and didn't even know about it.

Not even close, and I wasn't even a fan of the concept in the manga. One was a supporting event which helped the plot move forward while the other was a no explanation, arc-ending finale that completely ended the fight. Keep your trivial bias out if the thread because you are clearly unable to give an objective opinion, thanks.

They were both bad. We dont get to decide who can post.....which is worse is subjective.

[TheMikado]

The "Sword Of Hope" is certainly nonsensical, but in a thematic sense, it works extremely well. For the extreme misanthrope that Zamasu/Goku Black was, having being slain by the hands of Saiyans fueled with the energy that remained of Future Trunks world felt extremely cathartic. From the beginning of the end to the end of it Future Trunks was fighting valiantly for what remain of humanity in his world, every step of the way, the humans that remained on Earth supported him every time things looked grim and he was looked up as the hope bringer for the world. So I find the idea of the humans that were left urging Future Trunks on so much so that they innately gave him their power to slain Merged Zamasu very satisfying.

It really was and was perfect symbolism for Trunk representing and carrying the hope of everyone he was protecting. And then Zeno showed up and erased them all...