So... a lot to unpack here.
But before I delve deep into the weeds here, I want to make one VERY important thing clear right off the bat:
Yes, I absolutely agree with Gaffer – at least in part - that the alternative possible means of dealing with the setup of the Cell/Artificial Humans arc that he's presented would've made for a GREAT improvement on how it currently stands. I think that, at a bare minimum, Bulma should've definitely at least TRIED to go out of her way to stop Gero anyway, even against the protests of Goku, Vegeta, and whomever else in the group. And her attempts could have EASILY backfired and possibly made the situation even WORSE, making for excellent drama.
For many of the reasons I'm about to go into though, I still disagree very much that Goku should've been on board with such a plan. I certainly think that the way he acts in this arc IS in character and VERY much in keeping with who he's been more or less fairly consistently up till now.
I think it actually would've been a lot more interesting if this situation sparked some sort of an internal schism amongst the group: maybe with characters like Kuririn and Yamucha (hell, throw in Yajirobe even while you're at it to give him at least a somewhat bigger role here) siding with Bulma and going off to help her try and prevent Gero's plans preemptively, while Goku, Vegeta, and possibly maybe even Tenshinhan or Piccolo (the latter having not yet fused with Kami and developed that strengthened sense of responsibility for the world's safety) opt to take on the challenge of the fight.
Its certainly a huge missed opportunity on Toriyama's end, and I totally agree that while I still think the story as it currently stands MOSTLY works fine enough, its definitely on weaker footing than it easily could've been, and it wouldn't have taken very much here in this case to tighten it up.
So yes,
I absolutely 100% agree that at least SOME form of the idea for an alternative setup that he presents here would've overall worked FAR better for the story, without compromising very much of anything.
That having been said, lets get deeper into each of these points now.
1)
The Pendulum Effect
This is easily one of the most substantive points made in the video, and one that touches on a fairly big topic that I've had a great much to say about myself for a number of years now.
As far as the behind the scenes of it goes, I've generally found it rather curious and odd that Toriyama felt that Toei made Goku more innately heroic throughout the anime. By and large, I generally don't see it, at least not within the actual TV anime itself. In some of the movies, sure.
Some being the operative word here. Movie 3 is probably the most clear-cut case of it, and is the one key instance in the whole franchise that I can think of where the Z Warriors come the closest they ever come to to acting as a full-on superhero-ish team.
As close as the Dragon Ball cast has ever gotten at any point to being the Anime Wuxia Justice League.
A relative smattering of the movies aside though, I'd be curious to hear from people what else there was in the TV anime (Japanese version only obviously: no dub examples) that might've made Toriyama balk as much as he apparently did at Goku's characterization. I genuinely can't think of anything off the top of my head right now.
I mean compared to what FUNimation would later on go and do with these characters (Goku in particular), Toei's percived “hero-ification” of the bunch seems downright
benign and nitpickingly trivial in comparison.
So that's that end of it. Now onto the real meat of this: the fanbase.
Let me get this out of the way up front: I've had a long, long, long history myself now by this point of trying to pierce through an identical Pendulum Effect (as described here) that the Western fanbase has had going on since at least the early/mid-2000s or so (roughly around the time when the Kanzenshuu forums really first came up). Only its not so much to do with the topic of Goku's heroism (or seeming lack thereof) but rather the series' overall tone.
For more than a decade+ now I've staunchly maintained that the tug-of-war within fandom over what Dragon Ball's tone is supposed to be (is it “HARDCORE XTREME 2 THA MAX!!!” or “featherweight whimsical, adorably cute, lighthearted fluff”?) is complete and utter reactionary bullshit on BOTH sides of the divide.
Let me make it clear: this was never, EVER any sort of an issue in the days prior to the dub. What happened over the years was the dub first introduced this notion of Dragon Ball Z being this “heavy metal, rock n roll badass, hard edged” piece of faux-edgy edgelord-ness. Obviously, this entire take on the material is wrong and totally made up by FUNimation, but nonetheless this take has indeed ingrained itself (seemingly irreversibly at this point, which is just ridiculous in itself) fairly deep within a large subsection of English language DB fandom.
However, the way that the sub/Japanese-centric portion of the fanbase (the
later sub-centric portion of the fanbase I should stress: i.e. much younger fans who got into the original Japanese only AFTER they were first exposed via the dub circa the late 90s/early 2000s) had ended up reacting to this “reversioning” of the series' general tone has been, I've always felt for many, many years now, EQUALLY disproportionately incorrect as the dub's take was.
The way that the later, post-dub fanbase for the original Japanese version tends to characterize the series tone is as if it is 100% the polar, diametric opposite from the dub: that its actually as sugary sweet, cute, and whimsically adorable as a Super Mario game or any given volume of the manga Yotsuba. This I think is also,
in part mind you, at least some of where the notion that DB should focus more on “slice of life” material instead of martial arts tends to come from.
I think that anyone who comes at the original Japanese material COMPLETELY divorced from ANY of the nonsensical baggage on EITHER side of the dub/sub divide will find that the take most often presented by the post-dub sub fanbase over the past 15+ someodd years is just as equally ridiculous and incongruous with the reality of what the series is actually like as FUNimation's
G.I. Joe Extreme-inspired take of it is.
The truth of course is somewhere way, way further down the middle (and really divorced entirely from FUNimation's specific take): Dragon Ball slingshots
wildly between whimsical lighthearted comedy AND deadly serious, hyper-violent, and dramatic stories, and then back again, then forth again, and so on. Most Wuxia in general not only does that, but is very much famous and notable FOR doing that (a point I tried to illustrate and explain the cultural history behind as best I could in the Wuxia thread). Hell, as does a ton of Asian media as a collective whole across genre boundaries.
FUNimation's take on the material is wrong both for actively over-fixating on the “serious action” at the expense of the whimsical comedy, as well as
also for its specific tone for the serious action component: that of a dumb U.S. Saturday morning cartoon along the lines of the 80s TMNT cartoon, as opposed to just a straight up Shaw Bros.-esque Kung Fu film writ-large.
This is something that almost NO ONE in this divide EVER takes into consideration: that there isn't merely one flavor or style of “edgy serious” any more than there is one specific variant of “lighthearted”, and that FUNimation, more than just over-highlighting the “edgy” slice of the equation, also gets
totally wrong what specific
kind of “dramatic seriousness” that DB is meant to evoke: the kind you'd find in a vintage Golden Harvest or Shaw Brothers kung fu/Wuxia epic as opposed to a dumpy early 90s kids “Pew! Pew!” crapfest like Power Rangers.
Whereas meanwhile the sub fans of the 2000s and onward have gotten it just as dead wrong by over-fixating on solely the lighthearted whimsy whilst in many cases outright
denying and pretending as if the series somehow DOESN'T contain almost ANY deadly serious dramatic tension, and brutally violent, viscous fighting
whatsoever. Or in some cases, at times even going so far as acting as if even the JAPANESE version of the series is somehow “in the wrong” for its having ever at almost any point contained so much as an OUNCE of that “hard-edged” component in and of itself!
And the reason that the sub modern fanbase has gotten to the point of doing this over the years is... over-reactionary revolt against the dub's take. i.e. the Pendulum Effect in question. Without any knowledge or experience with other Wuxia/martial arts fantasy fiction in general (the vast majority of which has for long many decades if not centuries blended together starkly opposing tones of high stakes visceral drama and quirky lighthearted slapstick comedy) to give them perspective as to what's actually going on here with this series.
This is probably one of my BIGGEST problems with Kanzenshuu's whole community (even among a lot of the “marquee name” individuals behind it and the broader website itself): generally being some of the biggest overarching voices behind fostering and fanning a great deal of this over-reactionary pushback against the dub into another equally wrongheaded extreme about the series' tone.
All of which is to say... yes, I am VERY much aware of the Pendulum Effect, and have always been EXCEEDINGLY self-conscious and wary as hell of it.
(And also as an aside: sure enough the reactionary, un-nuanced nature of the Pendulum Effect is indeed still in full swing in the very youtube comments your video is getting, as there are already a few folks there voicing the general sentiment along the lines of “I knew it! Goku IS supposed to be a superhero and WAS one early on and Toriyama's just getting it totally wrong now!”... despite you yourself Gaffer having
blatantly stated outright in your video that despite everything else, the characters are still obviously “not the Superfriends meeting up in the Hall of Justice”.)
Furthermore for my part, fostering yet another reactionary instance of the Pendulum Effect within this fanbase is by any and all means something that I have
never, ever at ANY point wished or intended to do in ANY way whatsoever. In no way, shape, or form has it ever been remotely my goal or intention with anything I've ever said on this topic to simply push people into yet another wrongheaded reactionary extreme about a franchise that is already rife like hell with wrongheaded reactionary extreme viewpoints.
At NO point, in any of my writings did I mean to imply that (within the context of the story and its fictional fantasy world) that Goku is some kind of sociopathic anti-hero. Nor conversely (and I
dearly hope that this goes without saying for most, but I'll say it anyway cause I know this is the internet and everything and people online tend to be more prone to reactionary thought in general) did I ever at any point mean to give off the impression that I'm making apologetics for Goku's more morally questionable actions by my efforts at dragging the framing for all this back to martial arts fantasy fiction.
In a very warped and screwed up hypothetical alternate reality where Dragon Ball was literally true and based in reality and we had Goku and co. running around and making these kinds of decisions within our really real for real world (where they actively play with the lives of BILLIONS just for the sake of a good challenge), OF COURSE I'd be condemning them all as a gang of horrific maniacs who are just as much a danger to us all as some of the villains they face. In a vast,v ast chunk of genres of fiction, they would be seen as such.
Dragon Ball though isn't reality (thank god) nor is it a typical Western superhero or otherwise generic action/adventure outting. Dragon Ball is a piece of Chinese-derived martial arts fantasy/wuxia set within an absurdist and irreverent comedic fantasy world brought forth from the same mind that gave us a little robot girl cracking the entire planet in half as a throwaway gag purely for the lulz.
Based on
that specific context, I think its more than fair to (obviously not completely throw out, cause that'd be ridiculous and stupid) but at least ADJUST our critical scales accordingly.
And really, that's primarily what's been at the heart of all my various writings about Dragon Ball and its intrinsic relationship to martial arts fantasy media: to denote that by totally ignoring and bypassing this
incredibly critical ingredient - that I argue functions as one of the two most root-core halves to DB's whole of an identity: the other being Toriyama's specific sensibilities as both a humorist and an aestheticist, which we're all of course on the same page with generally, more or less - the critical perspective and scales by which people have been judging this series for all these years have been deeply,
deeply askew and off focus. At least as it applies to within “serious” critical examinations of it like what folks such as sites like Kanzenshuu, and people like yourself Gaffer, are in the business of engaging in.
I'm far, far less (i.e. not at all remotely) concerned with micromanaging the views, opinions, and thoughts of every last individual fan out there. What has for so long now bothered me wasn't Joe Blow average DBZ fanboy making wildly offbase assumptions about the series: because really, that's like Wednesday for this fanbase.
Rather what helped prompt me to speak out more about this topic for awhile now (against even my own initial instincts, which for a long time were to just “let it go and ignore it: someone FAR
infinitely better suited to talk about this in detail will
surely bring it up at SOME point or other”) is the fact that even places like Kanzenshuu, the #1 Leading Authority on DB from a critical thinking and factual analysis perspective, are also demonstrating wild and colossal ignorance about something as supremely fundamental as the series' root genre, themes, conventions, and cultural/historical precedence.
When even the most unequivocally authoritative voices out there in English language DB circles have
this big of a
gargantuan gaping hole in their ENTIRE CORE FRAMING of the discussion... it may not be how most of the misconceptions of this particular series have started, but its damn sure part of why a whole
ton of them have been continually carried forward even up to this very late in the game here.
So with aaaaaaaall that having been said and dealt with, lets take on the rest of the main points addressed here:
2)
Level of Stakes Facilitating the Audience's Leeway for the Characters' Irresponsibility
One of the key points that Gaffer brings up throughout this video (and indeed even in a few of his others: yes, I've seen a bunch of them) is that in his mind, Dragon Ball can only get away with as much amorality and selfishness on the part of its protagonists as the proportional level of goofy silliness of the plot/overal tone allows it to.
In other words: the sillier the story is, the more the audience should be expected to forgive the characters' moral compass being way off, whereas the more serious it is, the more the characters should be expected to act “responsibly”.
Before I continue on from here deep into the weeds of a thoroughly plot-detailed breakdown, I need to get this out of the way up front: I very much disagree (up to a certain point at least, anyway) with the entire core premise of his that “level of comedic silliness is directly proportional to how seriously we should gauge the stakes”.
Do I think that that kind of rule is generally a good
guideline for a writer to at least take into consideration when setting pen to paper? Sure. Do I think that its some sort of ironclad law of “good and proper storytelling” that should be adhered to in all or even a majority of different contexts (like “don't talk down to the audience” or “show, don't tell”)? No. Absolutely, 100% I do not. And generally speaking, I think that Toriyama largely gets away with breaking that rule more times than not.
Look, comedy is a weird thing: people have all different kinds of senses of humor and some people find humor in places that others will find to be utterly inexplicable. I think that the movie Meet the Feebles for example is one of the most side-splittingly hilarious movies ever made: and it includes fairly lighthearted, ridiculously absurdist jokes about AIDS, heroin addiction, PTSD, and mass shootings. And a broadway-style musical number about sodomy. All using muppets.
Will everyone walk away from that kind of movie laughing like a total mental patient, the way I generally do? Not even remotely. People all have
very different thresholds for how much moral cognitive dissonance (no matter how intentional) within humor that they're willing to tolerate and entertain.
Toriyama very clearly (judging by almost his whole entire body of work as a mangaka) seems to find a trmendous degree of humor in A) people with great power and distinguished authority behaving wildly irresponsibly with it, to almost childlike levels of immature pettiness (which as anyone currently paying attention to real life geopolitics right now is learning is
only funny when its safely within the pages of fiction where no real person can get harmed by the consequences), and B) taking the utter piss out of almost any given dramatic storytelling trope or convention that dares take itself too seriously by cutting the legs out from underneath it.
Point blank: I think that Toriyama indulges in continually testing the limits and boundaries of Goku's rural, naïve, bumpkin sense of a martial artist's desire for never-ending growth within increasingly apocalyptic contexts to some degree because he genuinely finds that notion to be dementedly funny (and also as a consequential byproduct of the ever-escalating scales of power over Taoist mystical arts that the characters continually exhibit the further the story goes: world-threatening demons, galaxy-threatening space tyrants, existence-threatening deities, and so forth).
He could either fully embrace the severity of this trajectory and go full Fist of the North Star, continually delve into further depths of Slumpian nonsense with it... or he could try the most difficult (and ambitious) of all options: try to have his cake and eat it too as much as possible by walking a tightrope between treating it SOMEWHAT dramatically, JUST ENOUGH, while at the same time still keeping one tongue firmly in cheek with his gag manga sensibilities the whole entire time.
Do I think it works 100% of the time? No, I think he falters at times and the seams occasionally start to show. A good example of this is Kuririn's dilemma of destroying #18 during the middle of the Cell arc. This has increasingly over time come to be seen as one of the clunkier moments in the Cell arc's writing, and not without good reason: it doesn't at all play to Toriyama's strengths. Toriyama himself has admitted many times that he simply cannot write credible, dramatic romance or love stories; thus its something that he actively shies away from doing in general.
DB of course is in the tricky position of being Toriyama's stab at a long-form epic Wuxia serial. One of the biggest hallmarks of most Wuxia fiction (which is suspiciously and notably absent from DB) as a whole is its
heavy highlighting of achingly heartfelt melodramatic love stories: something which is SO far out of Toriyama's wheelhouse that he actively AVOIDS it entirely wherever he can.
Nowhere is this more apparent of course than the now infamous pairing of Vegeta and Bulma. By creating Trunks and structuring the Cell arc's setup the way that he did, Toriyama put himself in a position where obviously
some form of a romantic triangle is
clearly going on here. And he, very infamously, avoids tackling it
entirely, leaving much of it merely hinted at or otherwise taking place off-panel.
In almost literally
any other piece of Wuxia media, a storyline like Bulma/Yamucha/Vegeta would've been a MASSIVE subplot given a GREAT deal of focus, dramatic weight, and tension, playing up the soap operatic “love triangle” aspect of it for all that its worth.
Toriyama though, of course, treats it flippantly and barrels right past it: I'd argue that its an area where his weaknesses as a writer get the better of him and he's unable to parlay it as a strength as he does in many other areas. Because this type of development is just way, waaaaaaaaay too story and character shakingly
massive to just shunt off to the side, and no amount of personal stylistic charm on Toriyama's end is ever gonna cover for that. And it furthermore leads to awful shit like the whole “Did Yamucha actually cheat on Bulma?” situation (which Gaffer indeed covered very thoroughly and quite well in a previous video of his).
This issue is even more compounded arguably with the Kuririn/#18 story in the middle of the arc. This plot point obviously has massive repercussions on the story: Kuririn is faced with the choice of killing 18 to prevent Cell from achieving Perfection... or listening to his personal feelings and sparing her, thus risking Cell attaining even greater power.
Now here's the thing: this story could have EASILY worked and worked splendidly well even... had Toriyama dedicated the thought and energy into developing Kuririn's connection to 18 more. If you can get the audience to emotionally accept that Kuririn has indeed fallen hard for this girl in this short space of time, then his indecisiveness (and eventual choice to smash Bulma's detonation controller) would not only work, but would land very, very hard on the audience and be seen as a highlight of the arc.
Accept he doesn't; because its Toriyama, and as he self-admits, he sucks at writing romance. But he's also writing a long-running comedic Wuxia serial: it was only a matter of time before he'd run into this type of wall. Romance and epic martial arts fantasy as a genre are deeply,
deeply entwined with one another.
In fairness, he does give it the old college try somewhat. He attempts to seed it with moments like 18 kissing Kuririn early on. But of course its nowhere
near enough. There simply isn't at all remotely enough “there” there to sell this as a romance strong enough to conflict Kuririn this badly. So rather than the audience feeling sympathetic to Kuririn's emotional dilemma, they treat him like he's just being an idiot over a girl he barely knows.
So no: obviously Dragon Ball has its glaring flaws as a story. Yes shocker: the batshit Dr. Slumpian Wuxia series that ran for eleven years straight trying to simultaneously balance the comedic sensibilities of Mr. “Poo On a Stick is the deadliest weapon ever” along with the more dramatic and serious aspects of a long-form sprawling martial arts fantasy epic... is hardly at all bulletproof in the writing department. In other news, jumping off a building leads to death. And yes, the Cell arc in particular has its faults.
Buuuuuuut... I DO think that the tonal balance... both of the Cell arc specifically and DB in its original run as a collective whole... still hangs together and coalesces the overwhelming MAJORITY of the time, and that's ultimately why I still consider the whole endeavor to be largely a success, despite its flaws.
And again: this is all still already absolutely in keeping with the Wuxia genre's very,
very long-held general sensibility of “blend silly and ridiculous slapstick humor with grave dramatic tension and whiplash back and forth between them”. Just with Toriyama's specific brand of “Haha, people up on the highest of pedestals are really just as stupid, silly, vulgar, petty, and ridiculous as the rest of us average schlubs!”-flavored whimsy spiking the punchbowl.
For example, I think that you're supposed to
laugh at things like Goku's line to Bulma about her idea to go after Gero early “But he hasn't done anything yet!”
Gaffer seemed to take
immense issue with that line. While I in another thread more than a month or so back had this to say about that line:
Kunzait_83 wrote:The way that Goku's "...but he (Gero) hasn't done anything yet." line comes across in the manga seems more like its an example of Goku's rural/naive dimness as opposed to him trying to actively dig for any sort of flimsy excuse to fight the Jinzoningen. Its basically a joke at his expense: he legitimately, sincerely doesn't understand why they'd go after someone over something they haven't done yet.
He's not the brightest bulb in many instances, particularly when it comes to something as complex and mind bending as a concept like time travel. Its just a throwaway chuckle moment (haha, Goku's so dippy) showing Goku being a dolt with time travel ideas, not a major plot/characterization moment that sheds any insight into his moral compass. He's neither selfishly digging for a rationale nor is he being altruistic in any way: he's just being genuinely dense.
I still stand by that statement: moments like this are being played
for laughs. Quasi-dark laughs, yes (I mean, dark only up to a point here: taking DB seriously as a morality piece is needless to say
highly ill-advised, about as ill-advised as taking seriously even the grimiest of the Evil Dead films), but generally speaking Toriyama is NOT asking the audience to identify with Goku (or much of the rest of his fellow martial artists) from an ethical standpoint. The guy himself is by now quoted as saying many times that Goku is NOT meant to be taken as a full-bore “good person” in a traditional sense.
Its not just that line obviously: everything about the Boo arc's sense of wacky apocalyptic doom is all part of one gigantic cosmic joke (a somewhat meta one at that) about the series' own continuing absurdity. You have a Lovecraftian eldritch horror named after a fucking Disney Cinderella song, made of what's for all intents and purposes cosmic bubblegum... who's sole purpose is to
wipe out all gods, cosmic deities, and existence in its totality (both in the physical as well as spiritual plane). And the only people powerful enough to stop him are of course... our familiar daffy lunkhead of a kung fu master, his son who can't stand fighting at all, and a pair of martial arts prodigies who are 7 and 8 years old respectively and act very much like it the whole entire time.
The ENTIRE joke is HINGED upon Toriyama's by-then familiar theme of “the most powerful people with the gravest of stakes on their shoulders, up to and including the threat itself, are a collection of utter doofuses who don't grasp how serious and horrifically dire any of this shit actually is”.
The general point being: you're meant to
both take somewhat seriously the grave threats that Toriyama introduces,
while at the same time laugh in morbid bemusement at how the character's own innate silly natures keeps escalating the situation. Kinda like how you're meant to watch a movie like Re-Animator (another story where characters are constantly making selfish, morally questionable decisions at nearly every turn) and be both simultaneously horrified at Lovecraft's disturbing concepts while also getting laughs out of the dark 80s humor that's continually injected into the mix.
You're supposed to feel the same awkward mix of emotions that anyone should feel when any kind of serious drama and silly comedy collide into each other: especially the further off on the opposite ends of the spectrum they are from one another. Either the clashing of the two disparate tones gels, or it doesn't.
I think that DB, in its original run and as an individual example at least, manages to have the combo coalesce way more than it doesn't... sometimes despite Toriyama's flippant, callous fickleness, and much more often
because of it. For something made by a dude like Toriyama that criss crosses such a giant swath of the “drama/comedy” divide, the series is (most of the time, mind you) internally consistent with itself to fairly remarkable degrees, however much a happy accident some of it is.
Which is just as good of a dovetail into my tackling some of the more plot-heavy mechanics of it that Gaffer went into here.
By Gaffer's metric it seems, the Cell arc's setup is his Event Horizon where the series' tonal balance between drama and comedy goes too far off the rails: despite the fact that he has, up till now, hand waved and excused a whole
litany of instances where the characters have behaved every bit as irresponsibly.
By all rights, in my estimate he should've been raising this complaint at a minimum back at the 23rd Budokai. I know he directly mentions this issue in the video, but I'm sorry: he and I will violently disagree here.
To remain consistent with your holding these characters firmly to stringent morality, Goku's cavalier attitude toward Ma Junior is
totally inexcusable. Yes, we all know with the benefit of hindsight that Piccolo would end up gradually evolving into a good hearted warrior for peace: but at that point in time, as far as the characters are concerned, this is
Piccolo Daimao reborn. The same Piccolo Daimao who BLEW UP AN ENTIRE CITY without flinching, and is responsible for an absurd level of death, destruction, wholesale slaughter, and anarchic chaos (which we see in much more detail in the anime).
Right off the bat here, by any sane measure of modern real world morality, the way that Goku handles this entire situation from the moment Piccolo reveals his identity to the Budokai audience and onward IS NOT
AT ALL IN ANY WHICH WAY ETHICALLY EXCUSABLE.
PERIOD. By virtue of the characters being literally the
only people on the
entire planet capable of standing up to Piccolo, they are placed within a moral obligation to do anything and everything within their power to at least neutralize him and keep him from attacking humanity once more.
Goku of course, does not, nor does he see it that way: Goku only has a very rudimentary grasp of the severity of the situation, and even then he
still refuses to treat it with the level of gravity that it warrants. To him, this is primarily a contest between martial artists. A contest with firmly defined tournament rules by which they must both abide.
Any conventionally heroic character, by the time Piccolo has cast off his turban and mantle and revealed himself to a now panic-stricken audience that he is indeed The Great Demon King reborn, would've used that very moment to say “to hell with the rules, screw the tournament, time to put an immediate stop this scumbag and save the goddamn world”. And even if Goku wouldn't, the rest of the cast
damn sure would've and could've said “fuck it” and dove into the fray to try and gang up on Piccolo anyway, Goku's protests be damned.
Of course, that ISN'T the route that any of this goes: Dragon Ball of course is NOT that kind of story, has NEVER BEEN that kind of story, nor is it within the nature of most (though certainly not all) of the characters, including Goku to necessarily go that route.
Goku instead remains steadfast in adhering to the tournament's rules (because his contest with Piccolo as a martial artist is of ultimately greater importance to him within that moment than a concept as, from his perspective, relatively abstract as the fate of BILLIONS) and the other fighters, despite their unease and trepidation (they even do at one point make a very brief attempt at trying to intervene as a group, which Piccolo nips in the bud) ultimately relent to Goku's wishes.
Vegeta of course is the other elephant in the room here. Its been discussed to death ad nauseam now, but for purposes of this topic it very much bears repeating: Vegeta is unquestionably a genocidal lunatic, responsible for the deaths of untold billions if not TRILLIONS across COUNTLESS worlds for roughly 20 to 30 someodd years or so.
Letting him go, after he
just tried to lay waste to the entire Earth, after he
just ordered the wholesale
slaughter of all Goku's friends at the hands of his hulking, musclebound behemoth of a partner and their squad of acid spitting, self destructing plant creatures (seriously, when you put it all in context, this series is WAY infinitely nuttier than even most people generally regard it as)...
in and of itself that's be at a bare minimum RIDICULOUSLY questionable. But letting him go
purely for the sake of wanting to fight him again later on? Hoping (downright anxiously so even) that he becomes even more powerful between now and then?
Just for the fucking sport of it?!
There's only a very, very select group of
exceedingly specific genre-works in which that rationality makes even the
slightest bit of sense from a purely ethical/moral standpoint. One of them is the Predator series. Another of course being martial arts fiction, especially of the fantasy/Wuxia persuasion.
The same exact point applies to Freeza, word for word but times infinity. Freeza is not only
every bit as murderously and genocidally insane as Vegeta was at that point, he was of a near
limitless degree stronger and with an entire goddamned army of fanatically loyal space Nazis at his beck and call.
Once again: Goku treats most of the fight like a contest of skills between warriors rather than a battle for the fate of literally
countless worlds that would be future victims of this tyrant's bottomless greed and lunacy. Complete with not just one, but
several attempts to let the maniac go free (and even to finish gathering his strength to its absolute fullest), hoping that he might get even STRONGER later on and challenge him
yet again. Even AFTER he just
murdered his best friend right directly the fuck in front of him.
The point here is: this has been an
ongoing thread throughout the entire series for waaaaaaaay longer than just
now at the dawn of the Cell arc's opening chapters. This is a nigh-
consistent and ever
escalating pattern in Goku's behavior and characterization throughout the bulk of the entire series, and one that WELL predates even the Z era of the series and the introduction of the Saiya-jin (more on the whole “Goku's Saiya-jin heritage” bit later on).
Either you're cool with and on board with this not at all being a “save the world” series that's filled with and focused on “defenders of the innocent” kinds of characters, or your not. You
cannot just arbitrarily pick and choose which instances of the characters (sometimes cavalierly) tossing aside moral responsibility for the lives of BILLIONS that you're OK with and which ones your not, when ultimately at the end of the day.... the main characters aren't almost
ever prioritizing the lives of billions first and foremost at almost
any point in the series.
Either you're invested in these characters as being innately responsible for
the whole world and all of humanity's safety (or indeed later on,
the whole goddamn universe and every living thing in it) the MOMENT that stakes of that magnitude first come into play in any serious fashion (which is right around Daimao more or less), or you recognize and are on board with this being A) a screwy fantasy world populated with wacky characters who are often painted in the most morally crass and comedically irreverent light possible whilst also happening to embody some very ancient Chinese martial arts codes of antiquated warrior's chivalry and competitiveness.
Whichever way you choose to go though, DON'T throw up your hands and wail over THIS PARTICULAR one instance over here as being somehow outside the boundaries of upstanding moral decency on the characters' part, while also in the same breath letting slide all those OTHER instances that were JUST AS crazy and suspect and in gross endangerment over just as many (sometimes even MORE) lives over there.
When you make this much hay over “this isn't a joke: all of humanity hangs in the balance!”, then you don't from there get to pick and choose which examples are more egregiously over some imaginary line than the others. Either they
all matter and are somehow a “betrayal” of the series' general direction and the characters' depictions, or they don't and aren't. In this “the character's morality and ethics matters” context, you only get to pick
one of those options.
This isn't like I'm being pedantically nitpicky here: the moral consequences of the characters' actions (or inactions) within this set of chapters (the beginning setup for the Cell/Artificial Humans arc) are THE ENTIRE crux of a lot of your issues here. The whole point of a vast swath of this video was to demonstrate some sort of moral contrast or inconsistency between how the characters (Goku in particular) had behaved before the arrival of Future Trunks, and their decisions made after, within these now-infamously contentious chapters that you're now covering here.
And my counterargument is that
its not or even
close to it, and to act like it is is to simply pick and choose when its convenient to hold the “morally irresponsible” card over Toriyama's handling of Goku and co. Why stop here with the group's decision to ignore Bulma's idea to take more active advantage of Trunks' warnings?
Why not harp on the shitty ethics behind Goku's decision to convince Kurirn to spare Vegeta, or to prioritize the 23rd Budokai Championship over Piccolo's (then-VERY real and credible) threat to humanity, or anything and everything to do with Goku's handling of Freeza during the course of their fight?
ALL OF THOSE INSTANCES WERE
JUST AS EASILY AND EQUALLY AVOIDABLE AND PREVENTABLE BY GOKU AND THE OTHERS AS WAS THIS INCIDENT WITH GERO AND THE JINZONINGEN, WITH STAKES THAT ARE EVERY BIT AS DIRE.
There is no “yeah, but
this example right here is
sooooo much worse than the others!” escape hatch that you can use here.
All of these incidences are EQUALLY morally and ethically REPREHENSIBLE, be it in a specifically superheroic or just a more generically conventional action/adventure standpoint. And for
damn sure of course within a real world one (obviously).
The (wholly fictional and fantasy land mind you) lives endangered by Gero and his creations are no less precious and valid than those endangered by Vegeta, Freeza, or Piccolo Ma Junior; and Goku and the other Z Warriors played fast and loose with those lives (in the name of a good challenge to their martial arts mastery) every bit just as much as they're doing in the current chapters you're on right now in your video series.
And all of this of course gets
monumentally worse by the Boo arc natch, when its not just one world (Earth) or an entire universe worth of planets, but literally ALL OF REALITY AND EXISTENCE in both a physical and metaphysical sense that's hanging in the balance.
And no, the Pilaf arc doesn't really work
at all as a counter example to stack against any of this: even in the anime, where Pilaf is introduced much earlier on, at almost no point throughout the arc is the characters' primary aim to protect the world from the (hopelessly inept) scourge of the little blue imp; even by the very end where they're mainly just trying to escape from his castle in one piece (either from his silly traps, or Goku's Oozaru rampage) saving the world from Pilaf's wish crops up only as a point of tension RIGHT AT THE ASS-END of things for approximately two seconds, when they're just trying to keep him from having his wish granted (and presumably perhaps, have one of their own wishes granted instead).
And you also neglected to mention another very important point in all that: stopping Pilaf from having his wish granted was in
no way at direct odds with Goku attempting to challenge his martial arts skills in a fight.
There's really nothing else for any of the characters to gain (least of all Goku) by
not trying to stop him. There's utterly zero conflict of interest between stopping Pilaf from gag-manga global conquest and their own individual selfish desires; all the more so when there's still a chance that one of them can have their wish granted instead.
Hell, Goku arguably doesn't even truly and “properly” begin his full-on endless quest for ever increasingly greater mystical kung fu skills (which from then on comes to define his ENTIRE character's direction forevermore) until he starts his training under Muten Roshi the following arc.
Once Pilaf's wish is granted, its all from there a matter of the characters' simply trying to escape his castle (and then Oozaru Goku) alive. There's really no more “threat” against the world for them to stop by that point.
Same applies to the Red Ribbon arc. Whether Goku decides to get the rest of the Dragon Balls and wish Bora back or just keep his Grandfather's 4 Star Ball and be off on his merry way, there's NOTHING inherent to this conflict that impedes his progress as a martial artist. If anything, pursuing the remaining Dragon Balls to wish Bora back would offer him MORE opportunity to use and test his skills since he very well realizes at that point that he obviously has to go through the whole damn Red Ribbon Army to do it. Apart from sacrificing his beloved Grandfather's sentimental keepsake, its a win/win for him.
Does any of that mean that I'm arguing that Goku doesn't or never cared about Bora and Upa?
Absolutely not: just that the very nature of that dilemma (either keep his Grandpa's beloved heirloom that he just traveled halfway around the world and went through utter hell to retrieve, or sacrifice it to help this poor, grieving little kid get his dead father back) is in NO WAY one in the same as the later situations in the following story arcs: where Goku is choosing between the literal fate of mankind (and possibly the whole universe) and his developing martial arts abilities.
I think that THAT'S one of the key things that you're missing in your whole entire analysis Gaffer: Goku IS generally selfless with regards to MOST things and most circumstances. He'll give up a great deal, without question (especially if its just worldly possessions which, 4 Star Ball aside, generally mean less than nothing to him in the first place), to help most people with just about any issue they're having. The
sole exception to all this being... if it somehow interferes with his ever increasing need for a challenge to his (by the series' end, very much literal god-level) martial arts abilities.
THAT'S the
real clincher where the true limits of all of Goku's selflessness is
really pushed at and prodded, and its what your earlier pre-Piccolo counter-examples completely miss: none of those scenarios factored against Goku's training or desire for competition and tests of his abilities. He had nothing in the way of challenging and growing his abilities to lose (and plenty to gain in some instances) in helping many of these people, be it Umigame, Bora and Upa, Sno and the denizens of Jingle Village, or whomever.
I don't just think that Cipher's “warriors' ennui” analysis of Goku is merely a well thought out fan interpretation: I think that he spot on nails the
entire core of Goku's characterization across the broader breadth of the series.
Which then brings me to: