VegettoEX wrote:Yamcha as a somewhat self-aware and playful butt-of-the-joke has been a "thing" that more than predates TeamFourStar. This is
precisely (part of) what makes him such a lovable and endearing character. See: the entire first arc of the series.
Same with Kuririn. See: DBZ movies, specifically 1, 2, 6, 7, and a little 8.
Never like this though. Toriyama never, at any point in the original run (nor in his manga in general) designates any character so wholly to the role of being the butt of jokes--not even those who are regularly complicit in their own come-uppances such as Senbei or Kame-Sennin. Mr. Satan and a few comedic antagonists (a la early
Dragon Ball villains, King Nikochan, etc.) might be as close as he comes. Every main character, including Yamcha, is treated more or less sincerely. Certainly none are seen as the butt of jokes by other characters in the series, and that's the major difference for me.
So there is something different happening with Yamcha in
Super, where in the baseball episode, characters like Bulma begin questioning his usefulness outright. Where he's the constant butt of jokes in the recruitment episodes, where he instantly makes Bra cry, twice serves to nearly exacerbate Beerus, etc. None of the latter examples there are egregious on their own, but his treatment at the hands of other characters in and after the baseball episode certainly does stick out.
Comparing it to Kuririn's treatment in the
Z movies feels apt. This kind of insincere character treatment has always been something Toei is more willing to get into than Toriyama. (And indeed there was an early warning sign for what would come to be some of the worst elements of
Super's character writing early on when a "Why only me?" Kuririn gag slipped into the script of one of its
Battle of Gods adaptation episodes.)
That said, I think people tend to vastly overestimate TFS' international pull. Much like Broli, Yamcha seems to have become something of a meme in Japan in the years between the original run and the post-2013 revival. His writing in
Super is revisionist, it is post-internet, but I wouldn't lay that at the feet of TFS. The fact that some Western fans are convinced he's always been written this way, or that
Dragon Ball itself has ever treated its characters this way, might be another story. (Though even then, that could only be laid upon TFS in a world in which WeeklyTubeShow's "Yamcha: RUINED" doesn't exist; internet, is your memory so short?)
I really want to do away this binary approach to "never remotely goofy" and "constant butt of jokes, even among other members of the cast" though, because I don't think it's one that colors Toriyama's writing in the slightest (and I think not falling into that easy trap is what keeps the bulk of his catalogue so memorable). I'd like it to be able to have more sincere discussions about the series' character writing. When I think of Toriyama, I think of someone who treats his casts sincerely in their worlds, and allows them to be treated sincerely by one another despite all their surface absurdities. What we're getting with Yamcha in
Super may not be the result of TFS' writing, but it isn't the result of Toriyama's either.
