Helios518 wrote:JulieYBM wrote:I'm not finished writing it, but
here's what I'd do if I had only 50% control over the series. I had to toss out my original idea for an ending to the Tournament of Power after watching Episode #131 so I'm still working on how I'd incorporate that ending here. If you have the time give it a read. It's way too many characters to post in a single forum post. >_<
Wow, I like this a lot
especially how Geran's fight, UI, USarc, and the Saiyan's god base are done. Two questions: By 50% control over the series do you mean as much as Toyotaro or Toei has? And what was your original ending for ToP?
I call it 50% control because I try to work within the idea that I still have to work under Toriyama's command and within certain set rules of the story. Obviously, I'd make an argument for other changes if I could, but yeah. My original ending would see #17 casually defeated by Jiren instead of just being nearly knocked out of bounds while Freeza would've waited until Gokuu and Jiren were unable to recover from their beam struggle before destroying the shards of the arena they were standing on to be the last one standing. I didn't finish writing because I didn't know how Toriyama was going to finish the arc. I essentially wrote everything after the Genki-dama around the time that #116 was airing, I think?
I'm of two minds of my plan. On one hand, I really put a lot of effort into doing new things for Dragon Ball, especially in the structure. On the other hand, I wish I had managed to compress the Tournament of Power into fewer episodes. Certainly, I'm happy that it's not a full fucking year...but even twenty-six episodes seems too long. On the other hand, I really felt like the Tournament of Power that I planned really made use of just about everyone as well as I could make use of them. Tenshinhan was a fucking pain in the ass to write because I couldn't really think of a compelling way to incorporate him into the story. Writing his flashback scene was really hard but ultimately I think I redeemed myself a little with the combination plays he was involved in.
Speaking of the flashbacks, I really wanted to make each arc feature different kinds of storytelling. For the Beers arc I wrote it to be very casual Dragon Ball, with the sort of lackadaisical feel of the 2008 JUMP Super Anime Tour Special. For the Golden Freeza arc I wanted to tell the story as much as possible from the point of Sorbet and those left behind after Freeza's death. I also wanted to make sure I did things not done in the film version, the television version and the comic version. As a result, I kept my boy Shisami and Tagoma in the game and also brought in Cold for Vegeta to fight. I also decided to have Gokuu and Vegeta present from the beginning of the fight as an homage to Dragon Ball Z Movie #3, which did something most arcs don't do by actually having Gokuu at the battle from the beginning. Because Gokuu had just "arrived at the last second" in the previous arc I felt it especially important to not repeat that.
For the Champa and Future Trunks arcs I specifically structured those arcs to work both as eight episode arcs and 160 minute movies. I didn't want the exhibition match with the Sixth Universe to be simple and straight forward like normal tournaments are. Oddly enough it's one field where it feels like Toriyama is lacking in surprises. For the battle with the Sixth Universe I wanted to focus on breaking another rule of Dragon Ball by having strength not play the overriding factor in deciding the fights. I like Majin Buu not qualifying for several reasons: he's not really interesting to watch in serious fights nor do you really root for him as a character. I also like putting the Seventh Universe at an immediate disadvantage. From there, I wanted Gokuu and the others to fight in poor condition. Gokuu rarely fights with really solid disadvantages, so I wanted to break his hand early on and force his fights to become more cruel like the Dark Tournament of Yuu Yuu Hakusho. Speaking of which, I had Champa and Beers constantly cheating and changing the rules on one another to keep the stakes unclear for the audience as another nod to the Dark Tournament. I also removed the Kaiou-ken, of course. I hate the Kaiou-ken at this point in the story because not only does it have no limits it places Vegeta below Gokuu. Gokuu and Vegeta because so close that it's unclear who has the advantage is keeps their rivalry going and adds an extra layer of mystery to the story. If we knew for sure that one was stronger was the other it'd be really boring.
You also touched up on my use of base. I love how the Golden Freeza arc had Gokuu and Vegeta basically appear to be Super Saiyan God-level in their normal forms. All a fight needs is one transformation. Very seldom you can pull off a new transformation but only if it takes over the role as the only transformation, as I had occur with the Mastery of Selfishness. Only one transformation is the answer to keeping the structure of fights feel taut. Of course, what good is a transformation if you can use it from the beginning? As a result, I set out to make Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan a one-time transformation initially. Gokuu and Vegeta having to properly scope out the flow of a battle and break out their only use of Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan at just the right time keeps the fights from feeling like they're entirely in Gokuu's favor. Since I knew there would be a new form in the Tournament of Power I knew I would have to phase out Blue so I began weaving the story of how Blue would evolve. As a result, I borrowed from the comic the using of Blue like it was Kaiou-ken. I love Super Saiyan God but because Blue was introduced so quickly I felt like I never had a chance to use it. As a result, I included it in the first two episodes of the Golden Freeza arc to give it a slightly longer life. I liked the idea of seeing a well animated image training scene between Super Saiyan God Gokuu and his old foes, too, so I wanted to include that. I also wanted to show Super Saiyan God Vegeta so I decided that it would be a good idea to show a flashback during the Tournament of Power.
If the Champa arc was about keeping Gokuu and Vegeta constantly fighting against the odds I wanted the Future Trunks arc continue that a little. The Future Trunks arc is one I struggled with a lot to cut it down to eight episodes from the original nine. I'm still sad I couldn't include much of Present Trunks meeting the Future Trunks but stuff had to be cut to keep the story focused. Maybe I can find a way to remove the fight with Gokuu Black in the present? Speaking of things lost, I'm sad I had to lose Gokuu forfeiting the fight with Hit, but it seemed more fitting for Piccolo and Gokuu to fight Hit together and then for Piccolo to make use of Vegeta's wounding of Hit.
In one of my initial drafts I didn't introduce Zamasu during the Champa arc but I found that it would be more interesting to see Zamasu and Gowasu as more established characters before having the following arc focus on them. I wanted to see how Gokuu Black experienced the timeline a little more clearly than the cartoon or comic provided, so merging the two arcs a little seemed like a great idea.
One thing I've struggled with is the use of Vegetto. I really, really hate fusion and Potara merging. It doesn't fit our protagonists' personalities and I feel like it makes them too powerful too easily. I'm still considering ways to remove Vegetto and be more in line with Toriyama's original outline but it also feels sad to see Vegetto not fight Merged Zamasu. Kefla is my one favorite fusion because it really feels like a culmination of Caulifla and Kale's relationship. Their personalities really compliment one another and I don't feel like it clashes with their personalities to use merging. Gokuu just doesn't feel like the kind of guy to be okay with merging and Goten and Trunks just have no place in fighting anymore.
With the Tournament of Power I really, really wanted to pare it down, hence the flashbacks. I initially wanted to structure the episodes in a way that would show everything out of chronological order. I think doing that would have allowed for the viewer to experience the chaos from the perspective of the focus characters and allowed us to see some fights from more than one point of view. I initially tried to write the tournament so that none of the Seventh Universe characters would be removed from the tournament until what I guess would be my Episode #62 or #63 but the more I wrote the episodes the more I found that I was writing toward a natural conclusion for each character's arc in the tournament earlier than I had planned. While I really like the idea of keeping everyone in the tournament until the last second it would hurt the overall arc because episodes would run for a full exciting half hour without actual conclusions! Nevertheless, I'm very happy that I managed to avoid knocking anyone out from the main cast so soon in the tournament.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
