What's so bad about the idea of a recurring villain?

[Nejishiki]

I'm sorry? Wouldn't you want a work to stand the test of time? Who wouldn't want their product to have positive lasting impact, to be memorable beyond its era on its own merit?

[Bullza]

He was referring to its lasting impact on the series story. You're referring to something else.

Resurrection F may have had little impact on the overall story (though still had more than any of the previous movies) but that still didn't stop it from being the best overall movie for several reasons.

[TheGreatness25]

Personally, I'm not sure what it was, but I enjoyed Resurrection F more than Battle of Gods. Battle of Gods felt really empty to me. I know that it's such a highly-acclaimed work, but when I was watching it, I just wasn't enjoying. The stakes felt really low. It felt like nothing was happening in the movie. I can't put a finger on it, but I did enjoy Resurrection F more. Much more. I had a good time watching it and I can't say the same for Battle of Gods.

[FoolsGil]

Like everything else in fiction, no idea is automatically good or bad, it's the the planning that decides that.

Rof Freeza was badly executed because

1) Freeza was resurrected after Goku achieved Godhood. Because of this, he had to make the wildest gains the series ever seen.

2) Freeza was so consumed with revenge, his brain stopped working.

3) King Kold wasn't resurrected.

These factors turned the movie and then the saga into a dragged down knuckle fight where Freeza didn't have the home field advantage, rushing into a battle he couldn't win since he had to deal with 2 Saiyan Gods, a God of Destruction, Whis, and had no control over his new form whose defeat was a repeat of his 100% form. For someone who's supposed to be the greatest villain in the series, you'd want more, expect more, and that's why, in that instance, a recurring villain was a bad idea. But with proper planning, well things would have been different.

[ABED]

Like everything else in fiction, no idea is automatically good or bad, it's the the planning that decides that.

Rof Freeza was badly executed because

1) Freeza was resurrected after Goku achieved Godhood. Because of this, he had to make the wildest gains the series ever seen.

2) Freeza was so consumed with revenge, his brain stopped working.

3) King Kold wasn't resurrected.

These factors turned the movie and then the saga into a dragged down knuckle fight where Freeza didn't have the home field advantage, rushing into a battle he couldn't win since he had to deal with 2 Saiyan Gods, a God of Destruction, Whis, and had no control over his new form whose defeat was a repeat of his 100% form. For someone who's supposed to be the greatest villain in the series, you'd want more, expect more, and that's why, in that instance, a recurring villain was a bad idea. But with proper planning, well things would have been different.

I agree with much of this though I don't know why you think King Cold not being resurrected harmed the execution. He's in the series for a cup of coffee. And it's not about planning or ideas, it's about execution.

Recurring villains in the manner you guys are talking about are tough because the longer they are kept around, it can make the good guys seem impotent and the danger posed by the villains is lessened.

[FoolsGil]

Like everything else in fiction, no idea is automatically good or bad, it's the the planning that decides that.

Rof Freeza was badly executed because

1) Freeza was resurrected after Goku achieved Godhood. Because of this, he had to make the wildest gains the series ever seen.

2) Freeza was so consumed with revenge, his brain stopped working.

3) King Kold wasn't resurrected.

These factors turned the movie and then the saga into a dragged down knuckle fight where Freeza didn't have the home field advantage, rushing into a battle he couldn't win since he had to deal with 2 Saiyan Gods, a God of Destruction, Whis, and had no control over his new form whose defeat was a repeat of his 100% form. For someone who's supposed to be the greatest villain in the series, you'd want more, expect more, and that's why, in that instance, a recurring villain was a bad idea. But with proper planning, well things would have been different.

I agree with much of this though I don't know why you think King Cold not being resurrected harmed the execution. He's in the series for a cup of coffee. And it's not about planning or ideas, it's about execution.

If Kold was resurrected, he could have fought Vegeta while Freeza fought Goku.

[jplaya2023]

Why exactly is it a bad thing for Freeza to have returned? Even if it's three, four, even five or six times now, American comic books have great success with recurring villains dozens upon dozens of times. Why are so many Dragon Ball fans against the idea? I really just don't understand it. Isn't Freeza a great character who we love seeing on-screen?

because this isn't the comics where villians are locked in jail or sent off planet only to come back later.

In DBZ we kill our enemies so they can never come back.

[ABED]

If Kold was resurrected, he could have fought Vegeta while Freeza fought Goku.

That is just an idea which is dependent on on execution. Not having a very minor bad guy as part of the movie is not in any way a knock against it.

[Kanassa]

It's not a bad idea, it's just that pulling of the concept of a recurring villain can be quite difficult with proper writing. You really need to have a proper plan of how the story will progress, because if you don't, you run the risk of having the villain showing up in the plot and it feeling forced.

To add to this I would say that the concept of a recurring villain is hard to pull off without the villain in question being diminished as a character, it doesn't help that in RoF, it meant nothing. Nothing impact happened and overall Frieza's return meant nothing. This is even worse for when it became a saga that really has no effect on the show as a whole.

[ekrolo2]

It's not a bad idea, it's just that pulling of the concept of a recurring villain can be quite difficult with proper writing. You really need to have a proper plan of how the story will progress, because if you don't, you run the risk of having the villain showing up in the plot and it feeling forced.

To add to this I would say that the concept of a recurring villain is hard to pull off without the villain in question being diminished as a character, it doesn't help that in RoF, it meant nothing. Nothing impact happened and overall Frieza's return meant nothing. This is even worse for when it became a saga that really has no effect on the show as a whole.

Not diminishing him isn't rocket science, in fact, the way you make Freeza a threat again power and personality wise is so simple that Fs fuck up is especially egregious. You just revive Freeza, have a moment where he actually thinks through where and how things went wrong for him last time and *le gasp!* have a character arc where he goes about NOT repeating the same mistakes again!

It would've made the whole message of F extra poignant by showing just how superior Freeza became once he let go of his old, stupid habits and it could have been used as a launching pad for Goku & Vegeta to do the same. But this is modern Dragon Ball that treats forward progress with the same contempt Japan has for the concept of pacing so clearly this idea is far to radical to get made into an official product.

[nickzambuto]

It's not a bad idea, it's just that pulling of the concept of a recurring villain can be quite difficult with proper writing. You really need to have a proper plan of how the story will progress, because if you don't, you run the risk of having the villain showing up in the plot and it feeling forced.

To add to this I would say that the concept of a recurring villain is hard to pull off without the villain in question being diminished as a character, it doesn't help that in RoF, it meant nothing. Nothing impact happened and overall Frieza's return meant nothing. This is even worse for when it became a saga that really has no effect on the show as a whole.

Freeza came to Earth and literally solo'd Goku and Vegeta one after the other, and also wiped out their planet and all of its inhabitants. He was absolutely cheated out of an earned victory by Whis' time travel plot device, so I wouldn't say the movie reflects badly on the character. Freeza came to Earth, gave it everything he had, and was the one villain who had enough to literally, genuinely win. He was cheated, an impossible scenario was laid before him, but he F'ed things up worse than any villain before.

He did this through his ruthlessness and his pragmatism. Freeza doesn't care about honor or a good fight or any childish things like that; Freeza was pure business. He came to get a job done. And if Goku and Vegeta's pride and immaturities and flaws inhibited them from matching Freeza, and led to Freeza literally defeating them both and succeeding in his mission, and the only way out of it was through the random generosity of a third party omnipotent alien god that Freeza couldn't possibly counter or account for, then I would say Freeza remains a character to be feared and respected.

[ABED]

It's not a bad idea, it's just that pulling of the concept of a recurring villain can be quite difficult with proper writing. You really need to have a proper plan of how the story will progress, because if you don't, you run the risk of having the villain showing up in the plot and it feeling forced.

To add to this I would say that the concept of a recurring villain is hard to pull off without the villain in question being diminished as a character, it doesn't help that in RoF, it meant nothing. Nothing impact happened and overall Frieza's return meant nothing. This is even worse for when it became a saga that really has no effect on the show as a whole.

Not diminishing him isn't rocket science, in fact, the way you make Freeza a threat again power and personality wise is so simple that Fs fuck up is especially egregious. You just revive Freeza, have a moment where he actually thinks through where and how things went wrong for him last time and *le gasp!* have a character arc where he goes about NOT repeating the same mistakes again!

It would've made the whole message of F extra poignant by showing just how superior Freeza became once he let go of his old, stupid habits and it could have been used as a launching pad for Goku & Vegeta to do the same. But this is modern Dragon Ball that treats forward progress with the same contempt Japan has for the concept of pacing so clearly this idea is far to radical to get made into an official product.

Except that everything you mentioned STILL depends on execution. Armchair quarterbacking doesn't make your idea brilliant or Toei's job any easier.

[Toxin45]

If Kold was resurrected, he could have fought Vegeta while Freeza fought Goku.

That is just an idea which is dependent on on execution. Not having a very minor bad guy as part of the movie is not in any way a knock against it.

Now Frieza is back in the tournament of power lol.

[Kunzait_83]

Why exactly is it a bad thing for Freeza to have returned? Even if it's three, four, even five or six times now, American comic books have great success with recurring villains dozens upon dozens of times. Why are so many Dragon Ball fans against the idea? I really just don't understand it. Isn't Freeza a great character who we love seeing on-screen?

As a few here have already stated: Dragon Ball ISN'T an American comic book. Nor is it a superhero story (which contain the sort of narrative formula in American comics where the same rogues gallery of villains keeps cropping up time after time after time). Dragon Ball is a Japanese martial arts fantasy manga/anime. As with so many other manga (not ALL manga granted, but MOST overall), there series' structure is hinged upon forward progression and momentum, and things generally being finite, with a beginning, middle, and a conclusion.

In American superhero comics, things run on what fans have come to term "comic book time" or a "sliding timescale". Meaning that while time DOES pass in American superhero comics, it tends to pass VERY slowly. Much, MUCH more slowly in the world of the comic book than in real life. And generally almost ALWAYS with unspecified dates to nail things down (as much as possible anyway: its a lot harder to keep comic stories from "dating" themselves too much via incidental details like clothing styles, street slang, car models, phones/computers/technology, etc).

This way, characters sort of linger in a perpetual limbo of eternal agelessness, while somewhat still KIND OF moving forward (albeit at a snail's pace generally).

Dragon Ball, as with most (but again, not all) Japanese manga, does NOT do that and never has: time is ALWAYS marching forward, the status quo is NEVER eternally set in stone and is always in flux. Never mind just villains, even protagonists rotate in and out of the narrative's focus gradually and organically as time marches forward and characters eventually age and develop.

Furthermore there's (once again) its genre: most martial arts stories, of the classical kind that DB generally aims to be at least, don't often tend to have "recurring villains" who crop up time and time again endlessly as superhero narratives often tend to. Sometimes there's a small handful of returns for a select few of VERY particularly well loved villainous characters (iconic martial arts villains like Silver Fox and Pai Mei have at least a small handful of films and "comebacks" to their credit before they're eventually killed off for good): but this is hardly the norm throughout the history of the genre.

Generally speaking in most martial arts narratives, a great many "serious" fights with heavy stakes are very often firmly "to the death", and then that's it. Villain's gone forever, move along to something else now. There's generally a sense of finality to these things that isn't at all native to a genre like superhero fiction. Lord Godless for example is one of the all time most popular and iconic villains from the Wuxia manhua (Chinese manga/comic) series Fung Wan. To this day, the character is synonymous with that series: and yet, he's still remained dead and gone for keeps since being killed off nearly 20 years ago now (and the series finally concluded relatively recently almost 3 years ago).

Super has, thus far at least, been a MASSIVE break from a lot of these paradigms that were once fairly consistent throughout DB's original run, and I would personally say that its been to its MASSIVE detriment. Freeza is so far our only "repeat" villain (and hopefully it doesn't wear down to a point where he literally does become a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain, like Dragon Ball's equivalent of something like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget or something: "Curse Goku and those infernal Z Warriors for foiling my plans yet again! I'll get them NEXT TIME!"), but its been ESPECIALLY egregious for disrupting the series' sense of constantly forward-moving time.

Super, for its ENTIRE run so far, has kept itself frozen in this eternal post-Boo stasis where everyone and everything in the DB world is EXACTLY as they are circa DB manga chapter 517/DBZ episode 288. This is INCREDIBLY unlike not just Dragon Ball itself, but a VAST hefty chunk of Japanese manga/anime media as well (again, there are some notable exceptions to this of course: but DB has NEVER been one of them).

Compound that with some of its continued recycling of old ideas and concepts (new SSJ forms that generally amount to simple recolors, re-using old villains like Freeza without any new twists or wrinkles aside from his dynamics in the Tournament of Power, Future Trunks being drudged back to combat yet ANOTHER apocalyptic, time traveling threat to his timeline, etc)... and despite some of Super's genuinely good and creative ideas, these things tend to give the series this overall stink of "lazy, nostalgia-pandering cash grab with little freshness to creatively justify its existence".

Now here's the thing: for SOME people (a rather distressing amount I'd say) this is not only not a problem for them, but its downright DESIRABLE and seen as almost an IMPROVEMENT. This in itself is probably something that almost deserves its own topic: but there's a fairly LARGE contingent of Dragon Ball's Western/U.S. fanbase who think of the series more in the lens of a Western action cartoon show anyway (rather than a Japanese anime/manga and certainly rather than a martial arts fantasy serial): so to them, the series taking on more of the feel of a constantly stale, self-recycling Saturday Morning Superhero Action Cartoon is not only TOTALLY fine, its downright a NATURAL FIT for them.

Of course I generally pin the origins of this notion and this whole strain of U.S. fandom squarely on FUNimation and not just their dub, but also its marketing: which DID genuinely go WELL FAR out of its way to repackage and re-market DB as more of a general Western Superhero show rather than a Japanese martial arts fantasy series (because that's what they perceived their target audience to be more familiar and welcoming of).

This though has had the effect of roping in a segment of the post-dub U.S. fanbase who are, even as adults, still genuine holdout fans of these kinds of shows and story formulas: and because they were roped into Dragon Ball under the pretense that it WAS that kind of series, there's an ingrained desire to see any newer DB material even further conform itself to them. This is further intensified by an overall Western fan culture that is generally obsessed with Western superhero media (cartoons, movies, etc) as well as things like Wrestling and such, and is ALWAYS conflating DB (through the prism of the radically revised and reinterpreted old FUNimation dub) with these sorts of things, without any real knowledge or interest in martial arts fantasy media (or in many cases, no knowledge or interest in other anime and manga that isn't Shonen material that models itself closely to Dragon Ball's formula to whatever extent).

Obviously I don't think that the way that Super has (thus far) turned out is in ANY way any kind of direct response to those kinds of people: most Japanese media (by and large, with VERY few exceptions) generally only cares about its own domestic audience with very little care usually for international markets. I think that Super's current stale execution is just genuinely the way its been turning out due to the overall more increasingly corporatized and less risk-incentive nature of the modern anime/Shonen landscape of the last 15/20-ish years now (i.e. "Do more of the same of what worked and made us money as before without changing TOO much, if anything!").

And that end result for Super just coincidentally happens to line itself up with the sensibilities of an audience who themselves were weaned on a HEAVILY modified import version of the series that was itself ALSO a direct result of a risk-adverse and heavily corporate mindset (i.e. "Make this unique thing that our audience isn't used to and has never seen before feel more familiar and samey with stuff that they DO know and are used to so we don't risk alienating anyone, rocking the boat too much, and not make any money!".

Of course the question I always ask for fans who seriously DO want DB to more resemble things like Western superhero comics and Western Saturday morning cartoons and the like: why not just go and stick with reading ACTUAL Western superhero comics or watching ACTUAL Western Saturday morning cartoons? Why continually pine for a fantasy martial arts manga/anime from Japan (and modeled on Chinese myths) to re-contextualize and conform itself to a marketing image of the series that was wholly invented by a company with ZERO dies and affiliations with DB's original creators and was never actually exemplary of what the series originally always was to begin with?

In other words, if you're someone who's always asking the question "Why can't Dragon Ball just be more like The Avengers or Batman or Justice League or Spider-Man?" or whatever, then why not just... go read or watch comics and shows based on THOSE properties instead of a Japanese pastiche on ancient Chinese kung fu folklore myths culled from everything from Journey to the West to old Shaw Bros. and Golden Harvest movies with the occasional/odd sprinkling of random shit like The Terminator in there every so often?

Because contrary to what some people here may think or insist... Freeza ISN'T The Joker or Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom, and never was. He's Toriyama's space alien re-skinning of a classic Wuxia villain archetype (that of the androgynous/albino mad warlord emperor in the vein of classic Wuxia staples like Dongfang Bubai and such): the kinds of characters from the kinds of stories where once they die, then generally speaking that's usually IT for them... they're done and gone and the story moves on.

Obviously now with Super, this is no longer the case for Freeza (stuff like the late-Z filler, movie 12, and GT were more just glorified cameos than a full-on proper return in the same way that Rof/Super has been). But barring Super justifying it by doing something mind-blowingly SUPERB with the character's return (which it obviously has not: like most of us here, I'd be totally fine with it obviously were that the case), then this is precisely the sort of cynical mining of the series' past for cheap nostalgia feels that ought to NOT be celebrated and encouraged by the fanbase: regardless of the degree to which much of that fanbase was marketed into thinking of Dragon Ball in the same context as The Justice League (by way of WWE) all the way back in the late 90s/early 2000s.

If Dragon Ball is going to continue on (egregiously pointless and belabored as that exercise in itself may be) then the fanbase should be encouraging it to stick with the stuff that made it so unique, vital, and interesting from the stuff that they were used to as kids prior to discovering it (superheroes, action cartoons with eternally static status quos, etc): one of the BIGGEST being how much it had always kept itself fresh and constantly changing and evolving over time and never staying frozen or boxed into one place for too long.

I don't really quite grasp what exactly is to be seen as a positive gain with Dragon Ball simply becoming effectively "Japanese anime Avengers wearing dogis"... all the more so when you can simply just go and read/watch The Avengers (or any of a bazillion other Marvel/DC-type of franchises) if that's the kind of thing that you're more in the market for. Then again, I don't really grasp what exactly is to be gained by dragging this series back out from its 20 years-long coffin either: and barring the occasional odd well done moment, idea, or visual design here or there, Super has yet to really educate me much on that front.

[ABED]

Kunzait, I agree, though I'm unsure how wrestling factors into your point. I understand the superhero comics parallel, but not how wrestling ties in.

Freeza came to Earth and literally solo'd Goku and Vegeta one after the other, and also wiped out their planet and all of its inhabitants. He was absolutely cheated out of an earned victory by Whis' time travel plot device, so I wouldn't say the movie reflects badly on the character. Freeza came to Earth, gave it everything he had, and was the one villain who had enough to literally, genuinely win. He was cheated, an impossible scenario was laid before him, but he F'ed things up worse than any villain before.

He did this through his ruthlessness and his pragmatism. Freeza doesn't care about honor or a good fight or any childish things like that; Freeza was pure business. He came to get a job done. And if Goku and Vegeta's pride and immaturities and flaws inhibited them from matching Freeza, and led to Freeza literally defeating them both and succeeding in his mission, and the only way out of it was through the random generosity of a third party omnipotent alien god that Freeza couldn't possibly counter or account for, then I would say Freeza remains a character to be feared and respected.

Yes, he's physically dangerous, but defeating him means less and less each time it occurs.

[emperior]

Kunzait, I actually agree with a lot of your points about DB being confined to the same period and how it has deviated a little from the standard formula of the old material and the Shonen genre, but I don’t see Freeza being brought back as a bad thing, and neither was Trunks coming back, as well as it is executed well. Dragon Ball’s own nature allows for these stuff to happen, and don’t forget it sort of also happened in the original manga with Piccolo and Vegeta, and Majin Buu too was allowed to keep living under his reincarnation and with Fat Buu sticking around.
In fact the only major villains who are dead for good are Cell and now Black/Zamasu. Everyone else has been kept around so I can understand why Toriyama wanted such a good and iconic villain as Freeza back, and he has been handled so well in the Tournament that I feel his resurrection has been justified, and I can’t wait to see what his role in the movie will be.

[ABED]

Piccolo and Vegeta changed and Majin Buu literally expelled the evil from himself. One of the reasons Freeza was so good is because of the aura of invincibility he had surrounding him.

[Toxin45]

Kunzait, I agree, though I'm unsure how wrestling factors into your point. I understand the superhero comics parallel, but not how wrestling ties in.

Freeza came to Earth and literally solo'd Goku and Vegeta one after the other, and also wiped out their planet and all of its inhabitants. He was absolutely cheated out of an earned victory by Whis' time travel plot device, so I wouldn't say the movie reflects badly on the character. Freeza came to Earth, gave it everything he had, and was the one villain who had enough to literally, genuinely win. He was cheated, an impossible scenario was laid before him, but he F'ed things up worse than any villain before.

He did this through his ruthlessness and his pragmatism. Freeza doesn't care about honor or a good fight or any childish things like that; Freeza was pure business. He came to get a job done. And if Goku and Vegeta's pride and immaturities and flaws inhibited them from matching Freeza, and led to Freeza literally defeating them both and succeeding in his mission, and the only way out of it was through the random generosity of a third party omnipotent alien god that Freeza couldn't possibly counter or account for, then I would say Freeza remains a character to be feared and respected.

Yes, he's physically dangerous, but defeating him means less and less each time it occurs.

Meh sometimes the rules were ment to be broken

[Toxin45]

Piccolo and Vegeta changed and Majin Buu literally expelled the evil from himself. One of the reasons Freeza was so good is because of the aura of invincibility he had surrounding him.

Your just being cynical like always look at the popularity all across the world not just in japan and besides he did got some fixing in the tournament of power. I am sure that toriyama will continue to develop him some more.

[ABED]

You are literally just quoting me. What's your point?