There is one criticism of super I will never agree with

[Master Xar]

If you ever get around to reading Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball (which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 20 November 1984 to 23 May 1995) or watching Dragon Ball Super (a fresh new anime that aired from 05 July 2015 to March of this very year),

I have an avatar of Zamasu, I'd say it's pretty clear that I have watched Super. Although, I admit it was a challenge to get through all those boring filler episodes of the Tournament of Power. How could anyone not fall asleep while watching Universe 7 stomp through the likes of Universe 2/4/9/10?

even tournaments can have real, life or death,

To die in a tournament, you'd have to be matched against a fool, or be a crippled old man. If it's the latter, I would have to wonder what you are doing in a tournament in the first place.

world ending consequences.

Like the Tournament of Power? Right.

You'll also learn that villains participating in such tournaments can, and do, break these "restraining" rules.

And get erased on spot for going that, like in the case of Frost.

These are still martial artists doing martial arts against other martial artists,

But not in a martial tournament. You have this notion that you need to be in a tournament setting to apply your awesome martial arts, which is not the case.

1.) I never saw a problem with them it. I mean it’s Dragonball I come back to watch and understand the series that I like with new insight so I could understand and like it even more. I mean. I wouldn’t just drop in on the series and give criticisms on what the franchise should be rather than what it is. I mean it’s quite rude to just drop in on something without understanding it’s true roots.

2.) are you implying that it wasn’t? I mean it was there... But you gotta like. Watch the show that you watch.

3.) you mean Frost who was already out? I mean Jiren didn’t do anything quite yet, I know that Goku knocked the blast away before it hit. Kinda like any other blast almost hit the stands throughout the whole tournament kinda weird how people constantly overlook the details like that. But they don’t pay attention.

4.) but it doesn’t need to be in any other place too now does it?

[Kokonoe]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

[SupremeKai25]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

Agreed. Perhaps not all tournaments are lazy and boring, but forgive me if after 50 episodes of random fighting with barely any tension (these people were taking the whole situation as if it were a joke, just look at when they let Ribrianne transform "for fun"), I am kind of tired of tournaments.

Besides, every arc usually raises the stakes (Golden Frieza and Hit being the exceptions), but we've already had a multiversal tournament, so how can the next "big" tournament possibly surpass the Tournament of Power in terms of sheer size and awesomeness?

[Master Xar]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

Hm... that’s fair enough I guess, but I would suggest rewatching it just in case you feel like it. There are some interesting tactics and intricacies within the Tournament of Power and the flaws of the other universes were exemplified pretty well.

[Kokonoe]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

Agreed. Perhaps not all tournaments are lazy and boring, but forgive me if after 50 episodes of random fighting with barely any tension (these people were taking the whole situation as if it were a joke, just look at when they let Ribrianne transform "for fun"), I am kind of tired of tournaments.

Besides, every arc usually raises the stakes (Golden Frieza and Hit being the exceptions), but we've already had a multiversal tournament, so how can the next "big" tournament possibly surpass the Tournament of Power in terms of sheer size and awesomeness?

That was certainly an issue I had as well. They brought the best fighters from so many Universes, failed to give them proper spotlight, failed to show them fighting other opponents outside of U7, so in turn we ended up losing a real reason to explore these places in the future because we already know what their best is.

Tournaments work in this series when it's smaller scale, but this Battle Royale style hurt the arc. They hyped up the team work aspect and that ended up being ignored for 90% of the arc. Gohan was hyped as this really smart thinker but in the end that really devolved to just "I punch them more and he falls" and "I sacrifice myself to win" which isn't really thought provoking.

Champa arc worked because it's funny, short, and to the point. It plays on Dragon Ball's strong points, not it's weaknesses.

[Master Xar]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

Agreed. Perhaps not all tournaments are lazy and boring, but forgive me if after 50 episodes of random fighting with barely any tension (these people were taking the whole situation as if it were a joke, just look at when they let Ribrianne transform "for fun"), I am kind of tired of tournaments.

Besides, every arc usually raises the stakes (Golden Frieza and Hit being the exceptions), but we've already had a multiversal tournament, so how can the next "big" tournament possibly surpass the Tournament of Power in terms of sheer size and awesomeness?

1.) but you said you didn’t pay attention did you? Why not rewatch it with Dragonball . I mean maybe it would relieve your stress? It did it for me and I grew up with DBZ but Dragonball is a “show, don’t tell” lightly taken series that you gotta like... watch from the beginning to truly understand .

2.) and who says everything about Dragonball has to be about tension? the Dragonball series has never quite been this sort of heavily depressing and overly serious series.

3.) who says it’s gotta be raised? Sometimes the simpler and more contained things can be just as gripping with slightly less stakes. If it keeps going up, eventually there will be a point of no return

4.) I mean maybe the tournament has shown them fighting the U7 team. Because, maybe that’s our team maybe? It would be kind of disorienting if we suddenly shifted POV’s from literally every fighter all over the place. And it’s not like every fighter should be incredibly strong or special like the stronger universes. Because if everyone is special no one truly is.

[supersaiyanZero]

Tournament of Power is honestly the worst arc of the entire franchise, including GT.

Champa tournament was great, but ToP way overstayed it's welcome in the anime incarnation.

Agreed. Perhaps not all tournaments are lazy and boring, but forgive me if after 50 episodes of random fighting with barely any tension (these people were taking the whole situation as if it were a joke, just look at when they let Ribrianne transform "for fun"), I am kind of tired of tournaments.

Besides, every arc usually raises the stakes (Golden Frieza and Hit being the exceptions), but we've already had a multiversal tournament, so how can the next "big" tournament possibly surpass the Tournament of Power in terms of sheer size and awesomeness?

1.) but you said you didn’t pay attention did you? Why not rewatch it with Dragonball . I mean maybe it would relieve your stress? It did it for me and I grew up with DBZ but Dragonball is a “show, don’t tell” lightly taken series that you gotta like... watch from the beginning to truly understand .

2.) and who says everything about Dragonball has to be about tension? the Dragonball series has never quite been this sort of heavily depressing and overly serious series.

3.) who says it’s gotta be raised? Sometimes the simpler and more contained things can be just as gripping with slightly less stakes. If it keeps going up, eventually there will be a point of no return

4.) I mean maybe the tournament has shown them fighting the U7 team. Because, maybe that’s our team maybe? It would be kind of disorienting if we suddenly shifted POV’s from literally every fighter all over the place. And it’s not like every fighter should be incredibly strong or special like the stronger universes. Because if everyone is special no one truly is.

You going around insinuating that anybody who didn't enjoy the generic, dramaless, exposition filled mess of the ToP arc because people simply didn't "understand it" is very annoying, quite frankly. There's not much to understand in a very bland and poorly executed arc and even less so when trying to figure out why people didn't enjoy it.

[sunsetshimmer]

We already had enough of full tournaments in franchise and those in Super take too long (especially ToP with mini tournament and all the boring team gathering although it's only in case of anime)
In DBZ we had Cell games but it wasn't really a tournament since it turned out into regular battle very quickly.
Buu saga tournament was interrupted. In GT, tournament was just single episode between main story.

Besides, the main problem here isn't just a fact that DBS has 3 (including U7 vs U9) tournaments in 131 episodes.

DBS has 5 arcs, with 2 of them being tournaments and 2 of them being movie retellings.
So DBS has only ONE real arc focused on real villain. Talking about Zamasu of course.

That's the main problem.

[PFM18]

Db was build on tournaments, and the traditional tournament style with 8 combatants fighting in a single elimination bracket has been done to death. A Battle Royale was the first of it's kind and resulted in a slew of amazing fights and interesting character moments. As far as the overarching story and plot, it didn't have much going on since it was just a tournament, but it is still a top 3 arc in the franchise IMO

[Zephyr]

My avatar is Zamasu's face, I'd say it's pretty clear that I have watched Super.

Okay, but have you read or watched the actual series? Because your posts are genuinely reading like "the only martial arts tournaments I've ever seen in my life took place in Dragon Ball Super". And even then, the Tournament of Power is a strong counterpoint to just about everything you're saying.

To die in a tournament, you'd have to be matched against a fool, or be a crippled old man.

What does this even mean? You could theoretically face a strong opponent in a tournament, and be killed by them. Nothing about a tournament setting inherently precludes the chance for death.

world ending consequences.

Like the Tournament of Power? Right.

Yes, like the Tournament of Power. The entire tournament was presented, up until the very end, as a fight for survival. Had #17 not personally chosen to bring everyone back, everyone would have stayed dead. Those are bad consequences, and the fact that they didn't come about doesn't mean that they didn't have a very real chance of doing so.

And you're clearly forgetting the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, hence my tongue in cheek supposition that you actually haven't watched or read Dragon Ball. The tournament was the setting of Goku and Piccolo's rematch, which, had Goku lost, would have resulted in Piccolo plunging the world into chaos. You can have a tournament as the setting for something much larger and dire.

You'll also learn that villains participating in such tournaments can, and do, break these "restraining" rules.

And get erased on spot for doing that, like in the case of Frost.

That was Zeno's doing, that has nothing to do with it being a tournament. Just because one tournament was held by someone stronger than all of the participants doesn't man that tournaments in general are inherently necessarily held by someone stronger than all of the participants. Every Tenkaichi Budokai we've ever seen has featured fighters stronger than those running the events.

Jiren also attacked the stands, and the blast was only stopped by Goku. There's also Piccolo, who vaporized everything on the island where the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, which I'm still convinced you may not have even heard of, took place.

These are still martial artists doing martial arts against other martial artists,

But not in a martial tournament. You have this notion that you need to be in a tournament setting to apply your awesome martial arts, which is not the case.

No, you obviously don't have to be in a tournament setting in order to be a martial artist. Your assertion that DBZ "moved away from being a martial arts story" is incorrect regardless. And since it's still a martial arts story, throughout the entire story front to back, tournaments are still genre appropriate settings for stories.

Not a single one of your complaints applies to tournaments in and of themselves. Every single thing you want out of a Dragon Ball story could take place in a tournament. That they aren't happening in a tournament setting isn't because tournament settings render them impossible. You could have Zamasu holding a tournament to see if any mortals are worth keeping alive, have him kill everyone who loses, and not bring the losers back at the end, and it would still be a tournament. Yu Yu Hakusho's Dark Tournament is another noteworthy example of a martial arts tournament with incredibly dire consequences.

[prince212]

Tournaments will be always a valid option for future arcs , but the problem at t.o.p came when the people around the tournament is stronger than the participants.. that way the tension decreases because there’s limits into what may happen ... , yes t.o.p arc had the tension of universes erased , but for some reason everybody new that they will come back and if not , we knew that u7 couldn’t be erased for ever . Rules and Zeno-angels around didn’t allow many possibilities to happen .
Angels war-plotting agains Zeno or an enemy more powerful than these is the only option to make a tournament enjoyable in the future .. either that or non of them involved

[Zephyr]

I mean, I certainly expected everyone to come back in some way, but nothing about the set up of the tournament in and of itself necessitated that. And despite there being a bunch of stronger people on the sidelines ready to intervene if shit got too out of control, you could have had clever plays involving killing and death, both despite and because of the rules. The writers definitely didn't capitalize on it, but the pieces were there for something like Hit going out of his way to kill Jiren using some assassination technique, and allow himself to get disqualified. There was also plenty of room for someone weaker to deliberately get themselves killed, in order to eliminate a really tough opponent.

As for knowing that Universe 7 wouldn't be dead at the end, that's true for non-Tournament arcs as well. We know how Dragon Ball ends.

[Nickolaidas]

Because tournaments are lazy and boring. Tournaments are just an excuse to avoid writing a gripping and elaborate plot and introduce a well-written and captivating villain. How could anyone find tournaments entertaining? There is hardly any tension, everyone knows that the -antagonist- cannot kill the protagonists, everyone knows that there are rules made to restrain the -antagonist-, and so I fail to see how there is any tension in such a storyline. Sure, I won't lie that there are awesome moments like Goku going Ultra Instinct and all of that, but from a story perspective, a tournament is just the most basic and generic idea possible.

Pretty sure that if Zamasu was the 10th fighter in the ToP you would be singing a very, very different tune.