Too Many Fodder Characters & Bad Matchups

[Zagacious]

The Tournament deserves some props for making a weaker character extremely relevant in this tournament: Roshi.

Now that we know they are capable of that, why are so many characters just getting KO'ed effortlessly? So many cool moves ultimately to not matter at all because they don't have enough power. The characters are so weak that even Roshi beats many of them in raw power alone. Based on what we've seen so far, Android 17 could probably solo a majority of the 70 fighters by himself. We expected U7 to be overpowered, but making it way too easy that even Roshi can KO so many people by himself that it just makes the other universes appear incredibly weak in hindsight.

Are the writers so desperate to rush to the Goku vs Jiren fight that they don't care about these other interesting characters they created enough to make them relevant at all? it feels like I care more about these characters than the writers do. This was the perfect opportunity to have extremely powerful fighters appear with unique moves that would counter even Goku and Vegeta's power, but it's undermined by the fact that any of the top fighters (even 17) could just solo majority of the fighters alone.
The plot seems to specifically want to rush things as fast as possible, look at what happened to the Trio De Dangers, you have a universe that could probably compete as #3 most powerful universe in the tournament so far, and you have them eliminated immediately by placing them against Goku and Vegeta, when in reality they could have been relevant for a majority of the tournament.

So far we've only gotten two new characters in the ToP that actually amount to anything: Dyspo and Jiren. Everyone else that is important: Hit, Toppo, U6 Saiyans, we've already seen before, and for the most part haven't done that much yet. I mean really 70 new fighters and only 3 or 4 of them even matter? So many characters wasted by placing them against people they have zero chance against seems to be the kind of theme of the ToP.

This isn't just another tournament, it has 80 of the strongest fighters from 8 different universes, it doesn't make sense for them all to be this weak, and the excuse that it's just like the other tournaments isn't a good reason either. The other tournaments were on Earth, Earthlings are not that strong compared to Saiyans so of course majority of the people were fodder, but we're talking about 7 entirely different universes. Due to the style of the tournaments we never really saw the other fighters either, it's not the same as a battle royale where even weaker people should technically be relevant, but they're not. Are you really okay with a majority of these fighters being just as forgettable as generic Earth fighters?

[Boo Machine]

There is too many character in general. There is no way you could have them all be interesting, so they need to choose a few who are going to stand out and a few to challenge those first few. You could spread the time equally among everyone, I suppose, but then you'd either, have a tournament where the more important members don't get the time they need, (Jiren already doesn't get enough despite being the big man to look out for) or you get a vastly longer tournament, which I don't think many people want, we already have a few who think this tournament is already too long and I certainly wouldn't want this tournament to go on for 50 + episodes.

The trio would have been awesome to stay, but the fact is that we already got to know the main players from U 9 in the Exhibition matches and have had time to leave an impression, so unless they were planned to be key players in all this, keeping the focus on them would have just be pointless and taken away time from any new characters that are supposed to have active time to like. Some characters got shafted pretty badly sure, but some fighters were going to be easy knock outs anyway. That was unavoidable in a setting like this. I've said it before, but I'm surprised they bothered to design 80 characters at all. I was expecting some to practically be blobs in the background that get knocked out from an impact from a more important character.

[FortuneSSJ]

So far we've only gotten two new characters in the ToP that actually amount to anything: Dyspo and Jiren. Everyone else that is important: Hit, Toppo, U6 Saiyans, we've already seen before, and for the most part haven't done that much yet. I mean really 70 new fighters and only 3 or 4 of them even matter?

If Dyspo amounted to anything, then the rest of Pride Troopers, Basil, Ribrianne, Jimeze, Maji Kayo, Ganos, Hermila and Prum did too. Not talking about U6 Namekians and the secret 2 U4 fighters, who will most likely amount to anything too. And of course I'm not counting with Universe 7 team and Caulifla, Kale, Hit, Frost and Magetta from U6 ...

[Krillin1994]

I feel like they may have benefited from having fewer members per team, but were probably set on using 10 people from U7 and possibly U6

so perhaps maybe they should've had 7 universes not 8.

7 is a more dragonbally number.

[Zagacious]

So far we've only gotten two new characters in the ToP that actually amount to anything: Dyspo and Jiren. Everyone else that is important: Hit, Toppo, U6 Saiyans, we've already seen before, and for the most part haven't done that much yet. I mean really 70 new fighters and only 3 or 4 of them even matter?

If Dyspo amounted to anything, then the rest of Pride Troopers, Basil, Ribrianne, Jimeze, Maji Kayo, Ganos, Hermila and Prum did too. Not talking about U6 Namekians and the secret 2 U4 fighters, who will most likely amount to anything too. And of course I'm not counting with Universe 7 team and Caulifla, Kale, Hit, Frost and Magetta from U6 ...

I only included Dyspo because he is working with Toppo and Jiren now. If he hadn't started working with them I would pretty much consider him fodder because he was defeated easily despite having incredibly fast speed. Ribrianne hasn't done anything yet to show she is important, Maji Kayo was beginning to look important but was wasted by placing him against someone who he has no chance against (kind of the theme of the ToP), so ultimately his cool ability doesn't mean anything. The rest are self-explanatory as to why they don't amount to anything, because they haven't done anything. When I say amount to anything I mean actually contributing to their team's success in some way. Most people have not at all and just got KO'ed for stupid reasons or because they're just that weak that anyone from U7 could KO them.

[Doctor.]

This is one of my main complaints too. The fight match-ups just suck. A lot of the fighters eliminated had interesting gimmicks. One of the fighters had an ice power. Cool! Why not put him against someone with a fire power, like Magetta? One of the characters had a super durable iron body. Nice! Why not put him against someone like Piccolo or Kuririn who have attacks like the Kienzan and Makankosappo that can counter that? Lavenda drew with Gohan, so they could have had a rematch, and Basil fought with Boo so he could have fought his replacement Freeza (or Kuririn, to make the image training in recruitment episodes mean something). Instead, they're matched up with Goku and Vegeta.

It's just not interesting. Goku and Vegeta don't need to overcome anything since they can just go Super Saiyan Blue and deal with the threat immediately.

[MyNiggaGoku]

IMO this arc is all about 7 characters:Goku,Vegeta,Gohan,Freeza,Hit,Kale,Jiren.(If I were to add someone to this list it would be Toppo,Caulifla,17 and maybe Ribrianne.)

I know this is a small amount of fighters but hear me out.The 7 characters I mentioned are the ones that I think will get the major spotlight of the arc.Yes the other fighters fight a lot too but do they contribute anything important to the grander scale of things.I don't think so.The biggest fights of the arc will be between these 7 characters(and maybe the ones I mentioned after them.

In the Super original arcs that's how I am considering the main characters:
U6 arc:Goku,Vegeta,Frost,Cabba,Hit
Goku Black arc:Goku,Vegeta,Trunks,Goku Black,Zamasu(and the fusions as well)

The rest of the combatants in these arcs didn't contribute to something fighting wise.Piccolo,Botamo,Magetta,Monaka,Shin(he tried to fight Zamasu in the manga) all fought but the plot would move forward even without them fighting(well Monaka's "victory" is very important but we can't call this an actual fight).

I hope you get my point and I also hope that we'll get some awesome fights in the remainder of the ToP arc (both manga and anime).

[BWri]

"Too Many Fodder Characters & Bad Matchups"
Blame Goku and Vegeta. They keep hogging all the good fighters, turning those fights into short tensionless bouts that do nothing for themselves or those they're fighting, robbing us of better matchups. Just look at how many eliminations Vegeta has racked up.

[Jigurashi]

"Too Many Fodder Characters & Bad Matchups"
Blame Goku and Vegeta. They keep hogging all the good fighters, turning those fights into short tensionless bouts that do nothing for themselves or those they're fighting, robbing us of better matchups. Just look at how many eliminations Vegeta has racked up.

Hogging implies they deliberately take it from others. It is a problem that they give many of the fighters to Goku and Vegeta, but they're not hogging when these opponents attack them first.

[BWri]

"Too Many Fodder Characters & Bad Matchups"
Blame Goku and Vegeta. They keep hogging all the good fighters, turning those fights into short tensionless bouts that do nothing for themselves or those they're fighting, robbing us of better matchups. Just look at how many eliminations Vegeta has racked up.

Hogging implies they deliberately take it from others. It is a problem that they give many of the fighters to Goku and Vegeta, but they're not hogging when these opponents attack them first.

Goku's definitely hogging in his attempts to get punched in the face by every fighter. I should rewrite it to say that the writers are shuffling all the fights towards Goku and Vegeta for reasons that make little sense.

[Saturnine]

There is too many character in general. There is no way you could have them all be interesting, so they need to choose a few who are going to stand out and a few to challenge those first few.

Oh, how ironic. Remember when people bitched like crazy that we were only getting 80 new chars rather than 120?

[JazzMazz]

I definitely agree a lot of the match-ups in this tournament have been terrible, with characters like Goku fighting way to much fodder.

I'd say the best match-up thats happened thus far was Hit vs Dyspo, both characters were similarly powerful and had unique abilities and strategies that could be used to counter one another. As a result of this, their fight had a great deal of tension, as both characters needed to rely on cunning on outside help to gain the upper-hand.

Thats not to say that these are necessarily all thats required to have an interesting match-up for a fight. However, the main thing I believe all the fights should have is some kind of real tangible tension that allows the audience to be engaged by whats going on.

[Lord Beerus]

I certainly think that the match ups could be better than what we have. But the combination of the amount characters, as well as the specific format of the tournament, with it being a battle royal, having a time limit which is quite short in-universe, have a no killing rule and even the size of the arena, contribute to how skewered the match-ups can be. Especially since how there is always a hierarchy of power in every tournament in Dragon Ball, so there is bound to be several characters who are ultimately going to be disposable in the grand scheme of the plot of the arc, given they are bound to run into characters who are just must stronger than that negate any kind special techniques and abilities they may have. A scenario like that is all the more possible in the Tournament of Power given the format of it, as I previously stated.

If there have been many "fodder" characters in tournaments in the past where there have been less than 20 competitors in total, then in a battle royal that specifically doesn't follow the standards of previous world martial art tournament with 1v1 fights where character fight each other at the same time, have a limited time to do it and have 80 competitors in total, there are bound to many more characters who are ultimately there just make up the numbers. Finding a unique gimmick for 80 characters to make all match-ups unique and interesting in one setting in one story arc like a tournament is impossible. You're eventually going to either run out of gimmicks or duplicate them, and by virtue, make nearly all the match-ups identical and eventually uninteresting.

But then comes the biggest issue comes with what Toriyama intends for the climax of the Tournament Of Power to be. If the climax is intended to be Goku and Jiren or some variation of Goku/Vegeta/Jiren/Hit/Toppo/Freeza, you're going to have to find a way to either keep the interactions between them very limited or keep them separate from each other for almost the entire tournament until the very end, while also at the same time limiting what Jiren, as well the other high ranking characters in the strength department, do in combat to create more intrigue in what the final battle(s) will be. Doing that in consistent structure within the narrative given the context of the format of the Tournament Of Power can't work if you don't have characters like Goku, Vegeta, Jiren, Hit, Toppo and Freeza either fighting other noticeably weaker characters and/or holding back in process of fighting somewhat stronger opponent to preserve their power for the fights that will truly matter latter (Goku and Vegeta), just not doing nothing much at all (Toppo and Freeza) or have their contributions to the number of competitors in the tournament being thinned out being as minimal as possible to preserve their mystique in their true strength (Jiren) and make the final battle(s) all the more enticing.

Even if you have the fodder characters fighting other fodder characters, as many people have suggested multiple time in the past with the previous complaints about the mismatches in fights, you're still going to have to find a way to keep the characters who are going to planned to be involved in the climatic battle of the Tournament Of Power separate from each other. And how would you be able to that in fashion which doesn't bring about the notion that guys like Goku, Vegeta, Jiren, Hit, Toppo and Freeza are basically doing nothing while the weaker fighter are scrapping among themselves. The only way you could really remedy this is make to at least half of the competitors as strong as SSJB Goku/Vegeta, Toppo, Golden Freeza, Jiren, Ulimate Gohan etc. But that in itself would bring about another issue with making the climatic battle feel less of an "main event" and more like another battle. If the likes Goku, Vegeta, Freeza and Jiren already fighting people as strong as them before they go up against each other in the closing stages of the tournament, then what would make the climatic battle between Goku and Jiren feel special and not just another fight?

It's a very complicated scenario that the Tournament Of Power is facing.

[The gr]

This is one of my main complaints too. The fight match-ups just suck. A lot of the fighters eliminated had interesting gimmicks. One of the fighters had an ice power. Cool! Why not put him against someone with a fire power, like Magetta? One of the characters had a super durable iron body. Nice! Why not put him against someone like Piccolo or Kuririn who have attacks like the Kienzan and Makankosappo that can counter that? Lavenda drew with Gohan, so they could have had a rematch, and Basil fought with Boo so he could have fought his replacement Freeza (or Kuririn, to make the image training in recruitment episodes mean something). Instead, they're matched up with Goku and Vegeta.

It's just not interesting. Goku and Vegeta don't need to overcome anything since they can just go Super Saiyan Blue and deal with the threat immediately.

I Also share this sentiment, this is one of the most stupidest decision in super, pairing weak character, base saiyan level to two SSB tier character is just bad writing, Goku & Vegeta just ruin this saga, their elemination did nothing to me because their constantly pair with weakling & like you mention the match up just sucks

[Jigurashi]

"Too Many Fodder Characters & Bad Matchups"
Blame Goku and Vegeta. They keep hogging all the good fighters, turning those fights into short tensionless bouts that do nothing for themselves or those they're fighting, robbing us of better matchups. Just look at how many eliminations Vegeta has racked up.

Hogging implies they deliberately take it from others. It is a problem that they give many of the fighters to Goku and Vegeta, but they're not hogging when these opponents attack them first.

Goku's definitely hogging in his attempts to get punched in the face by every fighter. I should rewrite it to say that the writers are shuffling all the fights towards Goku and Vegeta for reasons that make little sense.

He's really only been trying to fight Jiren, but people keep attacking Goku first which is my point. They are giving too many fights to Goku and Vegeta, but I don't see how they "hog" or "steal" fights from others when the reality is their opponents attack them first.

[Bullza]

Why can't we have fodder characters?

Even the Tournaments in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z had fodder. Characters like Panput or Pintar for example.

Outside of Dragon Ball, One Piece had a similar kind of Tournament in the Dressrosa saga where a whole bunch of the fighters were fodder.

Naruto had the Chunnin Exams in the Forest of Death which was similar in that teams were being eliminated and a bunch of those were fodder. Same with the Chunnin Preliminaries afterward.

[KingKaash]

It's all about matchups to me. The Trio de Danger could've gone against some of the Pride Troopers, like that would be interesting. The Kamikaze Fireballs should fight the U6 Saiyan trio. I'm sure the eliminations would be a lot more varied and less predictable. I think they did ok with Caulifla and Kale fighting Kahseral and the Pride Troopers but that's about it. I'll always say that the ToP had so much potential. But of course my expectations were greater than what the writers were capable of

[Zagacious]

Why can't we have fodder characters?

Even the Tournaments in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z had fodder. Characters like Panput or Pintar for example.

Outside of Dragon Ball, One Piece had a similar kind of Tournament in the Dressrosa saga where a whole bunch of the fighters were fodder.

Naruto had the Chunnin Exams in the Forest of Death which was similar in that teams were being eliminated and a bunch of those were fodder. Same with the Chunnin Preliminaries afterward.

It's not surprising that at least half of the fighters are fodder, but it's way more than half. When I say fodder I mean a character who lacks the skill and power to ever potentially compete with people who are relevant to the main plot, example if there were more fighters that could at least keep up SOMEWHAT with Android 17 or Gohan, I wouldn't consider them fodder, but 90% of these fighters are too weak to even make a scratch on them.

Previous tournaments and tournaments in other show being mostly fodder isn't a good reason to do it again. Tournaments on Earth having a ton of weaklings is not surprising at all, they're mostly humans. However, a tournament spanning 8 different universes and probably 50+ planets at a minimum and a majority of the fighters so far are not that much stronger than top tier humans? Doesn't really make sense to me and eliminates a huge opportunity to make new characters really strong to compete with some of the stronger U7 characters.

If this was realistic, and things like Saiyans and transformations naturally evolving were real, I would expect there to be at least one character at SSG or SSB level from each universe, whether it's through raw power or uniquely powerful abilities that go beyond just power. Not necessarily able to compete with Goku or Vegeta, but within close range of power. Simply by the fact of how many universes there are.

For example when I saw Maji Kayo being able to shift his body mass around I started thinking this guy could have super regeneration like Buu, only maybe stronger. A skill like that could potentially compete with SSB with enough power behind it. But of course he's eliminated after not even getting a real fight getting one shotted by Jiren. Just imagine how interesting of a fight he could have had if he was placed against someone slightly weaker like Android 17 or Gohan.

It doesn't help that they keep placing these relatively weak characters against people like Hit, Goku, and Vegeta which makes for a fight that is not interesting because it's only prolonged by them holding back when really they could one shot most of them. Which also wouldn't happen if they didn't make so many fodder.

[Asura]

It's disappointing for sure how some characters were treated. Anyone remember Murichim? Yeah, I don't either. The match-ups could be a lot more interesting too, but I'd say that as the tournament has been progressing, the match ups have been getting a lot better. From 103 and beyond I would say every match up there was pretty damn good, well except 106, that episode was trash.

103 had Gohan vs Obuni, both of which were fighting for their families. While the delivery felt kinda short and hamfisted, at least it was a sensical match up. 104 had Hit vs Dyspo which is easily the greatest match-up in the tournament because Hit fights someone who can actually counter his time skip. 105 had Roshi fight a plethora of enemies, all of which he used his different techniques to attempt to defeat instead of just wiping out fodder with nothing but brute force. 107 had Vegeta and Roshi vs Frost and Magetta which is actually a REALLY interesting match-up to be pairing Vegeta and Roshi together, and it makes sense that both Magetta and Frost want revenge on Vegeta.

They botched the beginning of the tournament for sure in terms of interesting match-ups/dealing with characters who weren't nameless fodder, but I think now that the numbers are dwindling to an amount they can handle, the fights will be a lot better as we already saw with the quality spike in 104, 105, and 107.

[GodKaio-Ken]

Why doesn't it make sense the bottoms of other rosters would be similar to U7?