Michsi wrote:See, this is exactly the sort convenient interpretation I was afraid would gain more traction than necessary. The statement about Vegeta's genius had little to do with his stunt with 19 and almost everything with managing to turn the situation in his favor despite being at a disadvantage. Vegeta is considere a battle genius (isn't it actually stated exactly like that?) so he was referring to him winning through bluffing, which is a battle tactic.
I think we are largely at the point where we're going to have to agree to disagree. However, I find myself puzzled why you keep emphasizing the phrase "battle genius" while simultaneously
ignoring the actions he took in battle and focusing solely on the actions he took in between moments of combat. I'm not denying that bluffing his way out of a fight was smart. I even say as much. But again, you can't take one half of that statement and ignore the other because they are intertwined. One is the result of the other. It's beginning to feel like you're purposely dismissing the evidence that doesn't fit in line with your interpretation, a supposition I feel rather awkward having to point out in light of:
This particular part of the story has two important examples of why Piccolo is considered the smarter guy, meaning that he takes note of their surroundings and he figures out Dr. Gero's identity, but these get glossed over in favor of sticking to they tone/ joke the title was all about, I guess.
I find all of the above mentioned examples extremely, let's say, nitpicky for the sake of supporting a certain character/story related bias.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but it does seem like you're being especially protective of Piccolo here. And, hey, why not? I love passionate debates. And I love seeing other people's opinions. I do take slight issue with you assuming that, rather than me just calling it as I see it, I'm pushing some kind of anti-Piccolo agenda here. I mean, why would I be? What would I have to gain by that? And as for the title, coming up with one is literally the last thing I do in the making of a DBD episode. There is never a time when I come up with a catchy title and bend my script to fit it. On the contrary, I'm usually struggling to come up with a title that fits the script, and this has been one of the trickiest ones so far. I certainly gave credit to Piccolo for the things you mentioned, so I don't see how I'm "glossing over" his good moments in the slightest. And I say in the video that the moments I'm calling out are things I had never noticed before, but they stuck out to me on this readthrough. So unless you think I'm lying about that statement, there is no possible way I could have come into this video with the intention to give Piccolo an unfair shake. It's simply what I noticed and what I believe, so I said it. That's really all there is to it.
When you start complaining about scenes like Piccolo calling for help when he is being drained (I'm still trying to understand why this was a bad narrative and character choice ?????) because of what happened with Yamcha, I have to ask if one is not more concerned with finding faults than objectively analyzing the story. I mean, I'm pretty sure Yamcha would've liked to call for help too (didn't he try?) in the chance someone would've reached him sooner, maybe before he got impaled? Maybe Piccolo was trying to avoid just that, getting impaled/out right killed, since it was something Dr. Gero seemed to like doing after he drains his victims? Same as the telepathy complaint. GafferTape already said we see King Piccolo use it, too, and Piccolo himself uses it again in the Buu arc when he contacts Trunks and Goten while they were training to warn then that Buu was coming. Yes, it's an ability he has.
I think the problem here is that you're still assuming I'm coming at this plot point with an intentional agenda to dress down Piccolo, and that's distracting you from what the actual point is. Because this isn't a Piccolo problem. It's a storytelling problem. If it's any character's problem, it's Dr. Gero's. I'm faulting him for a bad strategy, not Piccolo. Dr. Gero knows the heroes can sense ki. Dr. Gero has firsthand experience with allies being alerted to him draining ki. There is no way this plan should work, telepathy or not. The narrative tries to spin this as some unable to account for twist that Dr. Gero could never have predicted. If he had gone for someone who wasn't telepathic, then he wouldn't have had any interference. But the story has already shown us that that is not the case. It shouldn't have mattered. If he had grabbed any one of them, the others should have come running immediately, whether the victim could talk inside their brains or not.
As I've already reiterated, Piccolo is a character established to have telepathy, and I don't think it's a stretch to assume that Namekians in general have it. I'm fine with that. But it ties into the bigger problem of how haphazardly telepathy is used in this series. I say it's treated as bad luck that Dr. Gero happened to pick the guy who has telepathy, but given how telepathy is typically used in this series (which I point out every time it happens), it probably wouldn't have mattered. Characters are typically telepathic whenever the plot requires them to be. So if Dr. Gero had grabbed Kuririn, chances are he would have been suddenly telepathic. And I do feel the need to point out that, just a couple of chapters later, Kuririn, Tenshinhan, and Piccolo decide on a ki-raising communication method to alert each other, despite the fact that two out of the three present are already established to be telepathic. That's what I'm getting at. Telepathy is always handled very sloppily in this series. So I bought it up here, like I always do, only to say, hey, it's okay that Piccolo does it because he was introduced already having that skill. However, its implementation, as always, is still sloppy.