In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by DiegoBrando » Sat Jan 20, 2018 8:59 am

Lord Beerus wrote:To be honest, I think as far as a consistent story goes, Dragon Ball peaked in the Saiyan arc. As I said before, the Namek/Freeza starts off great but loses its unique narrative as the story goes on.
I agree. The dragon ball chase is very interesting and unique, in that our heroes are competing not just against Freeza but Vegeta too. It's a 1v1v1 which hasn't really been done in DB before or since. The whole first part is very exciting. When the Ginyu arrive the fight starts out good. But then after Goku arrives the Ginyu feel like fodder. Burter and Jeice don't do enough. Heck even Ginyus only purpose is to put Goku in a healing tank, just so he can arrive at the last moment and save everyone from Frieza. But this just happened when he saved everyone in the last moment from the Ginyu! That's why all in all they feel like padding. You could cut the Ginyu out, have the heroes team up against Frieza and have Goku arrive and save them from Freeza.

Interesting setup and weak resolution. Piccolo is utterly wasted and only brought back because he was popular in the last arc. Even the fight against Frieza isn't as good as the one against the sayians. Where the non-Goku characters played a pivotal role in the fight. And it's the part where power scalings become absurd and everyone but Goku effectively falls on the wayside.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:07 am

DiegoBrando wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote:To be honest, I think as far as a consistent story goes, Dragon Ball peaked in the Saiyan arc. As I said before, the Namek/Freeza starts off great but loses its unique narrative as the story goes on.
I agree. The dragon ball chase is very interesting and unique, in that our heroes are competing not just against Freeza but Vegeta too. It's a 1v1v1 which hasn't really been done in DB before or since. The whole first part is very exciting. When the Ginyu arrive the fight starts out good. But then after Goku arrives the Ginyu feel like fodder. Burter and Jeice don't do enough. Heck even Ginyus only purpose is to put Goku in a healing tank, just so he can arrive at the last moment and save everyone from Frieza. But this just happened when he saved everyone in the last moment from the Ginyu! That's why all in all they feel like padding. Piccolo is utterly wasted and only brought back because he was popular in the last arc.

Interesting setup and weak resolution. Even the fight against Frieza isn't as good as the one against the sayians. Where the non-Goku characters played a pivotal role in the fight. And it's the part where power scalings become absurd and everyone but Goku effectively falls on the wayside.
Of course they don't do enough. Goku has just trained in 100x gravity and we are getting close to the final confrontation with Freeza, do you really want to waste time with them? Given the Ginyu Force had more or less been serving out punishment to our heroes, it was nice to see the tide turn for a while. And what the hell does that even mean that Ginyu's only purpose is to... As opposed to what? Ginyu wasn't as strong as Goku but he still was a threat. It was a great reversal. Good writing requires that your heroes constantly be challenged. In that way, Ginyu succeeds. I think you guys are just looking for ways to knock it.

Piccolo wasn't wasted. He doesn't defeat Freeza, but bringing him back did provide some enjoyable moments and plotwise, it brings back Kami which was necessary for the resolution of the arc.

While I get that other characters being important to a fight can be awesome, the best fights in DB are usually one on one, so I don't know why that is a criterion for you of what constitutes a good fight.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Super_Divine_Genki » Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:29 am

ABED wrote:That's just filler. And it never lacked coherence. You can tell what was going on.
The SSJ Goku VS Freeza fight gets lost in the shuffle often, so then it feels patchy. The coherence does take somewhat of a hit when so many cutaways are happening within a short time, imo. The other big fights are not nearly as affected as this one with the constant stop/start stuff going on, which sucks so much of the momentum away. It does finally get better during the last couple episodes because the other plot-related stuff had been resolved (other than Piccolo and Vegeta's storytime flashbacks).
The Cell arc just flipped that around on our protagonists this time.
Except the good guys wanted to fight. It's not the same thing. They didn't think "I can't lose, so I'll take my sweet time". They wanted a challenge.
But they were still careless, just like Freeza had been. The Z-senshi had been forewarned and still slipped up and let Gero escape. Then Piccolo got careless and Cell escaped him. Both of these instances our protagonists had the clear advantage. When the urgency is not there, that kind of thing tends to happen. However, that's one of the things that I find makes the Cell arc interesting. The good guys aren't ruthless and cold-blooded in the way Freeza was/is.

And the Gohan "passive" thing is something that we just won't agree on. I think that so many that have that mindset are missing out big-time on the story by ignoring Gohan's character (gentle, peaceful, spends a lot of time with nature,etc.) and that there had been other on-goings and some passage of time since the events of the Freeza arc. I'd rather not discuss that any further when the story provides us with words (and visuals) for why Gohan opted for peaceful resolve with Cell.


@lancerman: I agree with a lot of what you said. I still feel that plot convenience was in heavy favor of our protagonists -- Freeza could've had it all done and over with at any time, whether it be Piccolo, Vegeta, or Goku. His goal of making use of the DB's was no longer an option and there was literally nothing else standing in his way. The carelessness is fine to an extent, but it got pretty ridiculous with how long that it went on for.

I'm completely fine with Vegeta being a jackass and aiding Cell with achieving his goal. The narrative made that clear, and Vegeta was not a "good guy". It was all in-character.

And when I responded to the comment about the arc making use of the characters, that had nothing to do with how plot relevant they were. It was refreshing seeing guys like Tenshinhan and Yamucha interacting amongst everyone else because it had been so long. I don't need for them to have a "race for the DB's" plot -- there was no secondary plot for the "lesser" characters to get involved with during all of the cyborg stuff. I'm satisfied just seeing characters interacting and deliberating on what could be done about the threats. I do have a slight problem with characters like Piccolo and F.Trunks kinda getting taken out from having any real impact on the narrative post-RoSaT training. It's understandable though because Goku had finally been put back into the story after having been out of action for nearly the entire arc.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:50 am

Lacking coherence means it's confusing. The fight was never confusing. The filler just worsens the pacing of an already long fight.
And the Gohan "passive" thing is something that we just won't agree on.
I really don't think this point is arguable at all. Gohan is constantly pushed along in the story. He's in the periphery for the most part. He doesn't impact it in any meaningful way for 4/5 of it. It's not his idea to fight Cell, it wasn't his idea to train with Goku in the RST, and when he fights Cell, it wasn't his idea to try to turn Super Saiyan 2. He lets his emotions get the best of him. At the end, it was Goku's idea to not quit, and it was Goku who told him when to fire at Cell full blast. I wasn't arguing whether Gohan was out of character in asking for a peaceful resolve against Cell. That's a separate issue.
Both of these instances our protagonists had the clear advantage.
Two fundamentally different examples. The Z fighters were out for a fight when the let Gero create the cyborgs. It wasn't careless. They had forewarning, which is why they let it happen. They wanted to fight them. They aren't superheroes. This point can't be stressed enough.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Super_Divine_Genki » Sat Jan 20, 2018 11:06 am

ABED wrote:They wanted to fight them. They aren't superheroes. This point can't be stressed enough.
I never said otherwise, and I completely agree that they are not superheroes.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 11:10 am

Super_Divine_Genki wrote:
ABED wrote:They wanted to fight them. They aren't superheroes. This point can't be stressed enough.
I never said otherwise, and I completely agree that they are not superheroes.
But they aren't careless for doing so. Freeza was in the middle of a fight and was trying to prolong his victims' suffering. It was a tortoise and hare situation where that cost him the fight.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by DiegoBrando » Sat Jan 20, 2018 1:29 pm

ABED wrote:Of course they don't do enough. Goku has just trained in 100x gravity and we are getting close to the final confrontation with Freeza, do you really want to waste time with them?


Oh, I see you're one of ''those'' people. I know this might come as a surprise but there are people who don't care about power levels, or judge a character by how strong he is. Goku by this point in the arc has done nothing but travel to the planet. While Vegeta, Gohan and Krillin were right in the midst of the action from the start to finish. For all intents and purposes they were the focal point of the arc when it was at its most interesting and intense. I'm not saying I wanted Gohan to take out Frieza. I'm just saying that compared to the Saiyan arc the minor characters felt useless. Whereas before Yajirobe of all people made a decisive move.
ABED wrote:Given the Ginyu Force had more or less been serving out punishment to our heroes, it was nice to see the tide turn for a while. And what the hell does that even mean that Ginyu's only purpose is to... As opposed to what? Ginyu wasn't as strong as Goku but he still was a threat. It was a great reversal. Good writing requires that your heroes constantly be challenged. In that way, Ginyu succeeds. I think you guys are just looking for ways to knock it.
Your entire point here makes me wonder if you even read or understood what I typed. You say the fight worked because the Ginyu were threatening. Like I said the fight was interesting until Goku showed up and completely trivialized it. At this point everyone becomes deadweight, and the Ginyu themselves look more like a joke than a threat. But I like the Ginyu just fine as characters and parody. The rest of my point was that by introducing them we get the same plot device twice in a row. Where everyone is outclassed and are just stalling until Goku comes by. It would be better if Gohan, Krillin, Nail and Vegeta scraped a win against the Ginyu, and then Goku would arrive in time to square off against Frieza.
ABED wrote:Piccolo wasn't wasted. He doesn't defeat Freeza, but bringing him back did provide some enjoyable moments and plotwise, it brings back Kami which was necessary for the resolution of the arc.
He was wasted because he had nothing to do. Except for fending off one Frieza form, after which Frieza just goes ''nope'' and transforms into a form nobody can touch. Contrast this with the Saiyan arc, where Nappa gets progressively more and more damaged and beaten up by the Z warriors, while here Frieza is just getting stronger and stronger until Goku arrives. And yes he was necessary for the resolution. But it was necessary to bring him to life not to Namek. In fact, bringing Piccolo to Namek is one of the stupidest ideas in all of Dragon ball. Piccolo should have never shown up on Namek. Especially since a Namekian warrior was already available in Nail, who had much more reason to fight here.

You seem to be convinced I'm trying to hate on the arc or the characters, while I like both just fine. I was just argumenting on what I felt were mistakes and bad decisions on Toriyamas part and how the arc could have been made better and more interesting. Especially since the first half was so unique and then it turned into standard fare.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sat Jan 20, 2018 1:39 pm

I did read what you wrote. Goku doesn't treat them like jokes, but he outclasses them and considering how much they outclassed Gohan, Kuririn, and even Vegeta, it was nice for Goku to turn the tables on them for a bit. It wasn't permanent since as we saw, Ginyu might not have been as strong, but he was clearly still a threat due to his other ability and his cleverness. That's good storytelling.

No, I'm not one of "those" people, and anyone who has spent even more than a cup of coffee here would know that. I'm not putting you down, but you completely misjudged my comments. I don't care about the numbers, but given that Goku is going to fight the biggest bad of them all, it would make sense that he was considerably stronger than Freeza's lackies. Kuririn and Gohan contributed a lot, but they aren't the main characters. The ultimate showdown is between Goku and Freeza. Your entire point of comparison is the previous arc, but there are arcs that came well before the Saiyans arrived on Earth.

The damage Nappa took was surface level. It looks like a lot because of the damage to his armor, but he wasn't winded or anything. Nail is wasted, but I prefer Piccolo. We know him, we like him. Nail has good reason to fight, but Piccolo cares about Gohan and he loves a good fight as well. Also, we know him better. That point can't be stressed enough. I get your points, but I don't think they hold up under scrutiny.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by lancerman » Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:33 pm

ABED wrote:
Super_Divine_Genki wrote:
ABED wrote:They wanted to fight them. They aren't superheroes. This point can't be stressed enough.
I never said otherwise, and I completely agree that they are not superheroes.
But they aren't careless for doing so. Freeza was in the middle of a fight and was trying to prolong his victims' suffering. It was a tortoise and hare situation where that cost him the fight.
The thing with Freeza was he was fighting them because they foiled his plans and he wanted them to suffer. Even in his second form he was more than enough to soundly pick apart Vegeta/Gohan/Kuriren. He had no idea that:

1. Dende was there and capable of healing them.
Solution: Once he found out he promptly eliminated Dende from the equation.

2. That Goku and Piccolo were on the planet and had attained far greater power than he imagined.
Solution: He transformed to something Piccolo couldn't handle almost immediately. He went to 50% full power in his final form against Goku where he could safely tank any attacks Goku had.

What Freeza did was in character and he was still logical about it to the point of always making sure there was a substantial enough gap between himself and his opponents that he was never in danger. Super Saiyan which to him might as well have been a deus ex machina (from Freeza's perspective) was what turned the tide. And nobody in the entire series up to that point got a power increase anywhere like that.

Cell on the other hand from the heroes perspective was the culmination of a massive Android threat they spent 3 years training to stop. No I'm not saying they anticipated Cell.. But they spent 3 years getting ready to defeat this dangerous threat to the Earth and then Cell came as a byproduct of that and all of a sudden Vegeta's playing games and risking the planet by letting him get stronger. Vegeta in the Saiyan and Freeza arc would NEVER do that. He went Oozaru the minute Goku showed that he had a chance of beating him, he was terrified of the Ginyu's and Freeza and was largely sneaking around Freeza. He was taking cheap shots on the Ginyu's. And he begged Kuriren to blast a hole in his chest and Dende to heal him to try to power up quickly to defeat Freeza. Vegeta always just cared about winning and maintaining the advantage. He was just being reckless in the Cell arc. Like literally they just started having him act like an idiot after he lost to 18 to justify everything. Vegeta always took fights seriously and had a sense of urgency.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Ozotto » Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:37 pm

Yeah I always felt the story progression was natural from the start of Z to the defeat of Frieza. It was really cool seeing that story unfold, and seeing Vegeta's character develop over time.

The Android/ cell saga is still my favourite though.

I really enjoy all of DBZ but I understand that feeling at the end of Namek.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Gaffer Tape » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:49 pm

Yeah, I have to agree that wishing Piccolo to Namek was one of the stupidest decisions made by Dragon Ball characters, and that's saying something.

Their entire goal in going to Namek was to revive the Dragon Balls and bring their dead friends back to life. So the second they get the Dragon Balls back, rather than keeping them safe, they go out of their way to put them in danger by putting Piccolo in the path of a man who seems to have it out for killing everyone that looks remotely like him. And, hey, Piccolo almost dies on multiple occasions and accomplishes jack and squat. Good plan.

That's the equivalent of, "In order to safeguard all I hold dear, all I need to do is keep this fragile, crystal swan figurine from breaking. Hmm. But I have a wrestling match coming up against a guy whose hobbies include breaking into antique shops and destroying collectibles. What to do? What to do? Eh, I'll just keep the swan in my pocket. What could go wrong?"
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:52 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:Yeah, I have to agree that wishing Piccolo to Namek was one of the stupidest decisions made by Dragon Ball characters, and that's saying something.

Their entire goal in going to Namek was to revive the Dragon Balls and bring their dead friends back to life. So the second they get the Dragon Balls back, rather than keeping them safe, they go out of their way to put them in danger by putting Piccolo in the path of a man who seems to have it out for killing everyone that looks remotely like him. And, hey, Piccolo almost dies on multiple occasions and accomplishes jack and squat. Good plan.

That's the equivalent of, "In order to safeguard all I hold dear, all I need to do is keep this fragile, crystal swan figurine from breaking. Hmm. But I have a wrestling match coming up against a guy whose hobbies include breaking into antique shops and destroying collectibles. What to do? What to do? Eh, I'll just keep the swan in my pocket. What could go wrong?"
But it did end up saving their lives and Piccolo saved Goku's life at one point, so it ended up working out well for everyone.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Gaffer Tape » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:57 pm

ABED wrote:But it did end up saving their lives and Piccolo saved Goku's life at one point, so it ended up working out well for everyone.
How? How did it end up saving their lives? As for the Goku example, he had to take ki from Gohan and Kuririn to do anything. Narratively, it would have made more sense for Gohan and Kuririn to stall Freeza and would have been just as logical.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:03 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:
ABED wrote:But it did end up saving their lives and Piccolo saved Goku's life at one point, so it ended up working out well for everyone.
How? How did it end up saving their lives? As for the Goku example, he had to take ki from Gohan and Kuririn to do anything. Narratively, it would have made more sense for Gohan and Kuririn to stall Freeza and would have been just as logical.
Gohan was about to be killed by Freeza before Piccolo showed up to fight. How do you not remember that?

He gave Freeza that huge kick to the face right after Freeza discovered the Genki Dama and was about to kill Goku. These are not obscure moments. Narratively nothing. It doesn't make more sense for Kuririn and Gohan to stall him. Piccolo was far stronger than either of them and had just as much at stake in the outcome of the fight. Piccolo didn't take their power because he lacked his own. He ADDED their power to his own. He wanted to make the kick as powerful as possible.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Michsi » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:10 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:
ABED wrote:But it did end up saving their lives and Piccolo saved Goku's life at one point, so it ended up working out well for everyone.
How? How did it end up saving their lives? As for the Goku example, he had to take ki from Gohan and Kuririn to do anything. Narratively, it would have made more sense for Gohan and Kuririn to stall Freeza and would have been just as logical.
Piccolo was the third strongest fighter from their group in that point in time. Not to mention that he still needed to cement his relationship with them, so him coming to Goku's aid held more significance than had it simply been Krillin or Gohan.

He clearly cared more about fighting and testing his strength against Freeza than protecting anyone (aside from Gohan) when he asked to be wished to Namek, so him choosing his desire over everything else was selfish, reckless, but IC.

Not to mention that Piccolo should've made it to Namek. We see him have a moment of reverence when he first lays eyes on Namek. That was an important character moment.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by ABED » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:17 pm

Yes, exactly, it was selfish of him to go there to protect Gohan.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by sunsetshimmer » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:21 pm

Cell saga was a huge let down.
Buu saga is my favourite saga from Z and it actually made much more sense.

I can believe that a very old magic demon feared by gods is more powerful than Goku and Vegeta
But i will never believe that a simple cyborgs and bugs made with primitive Earth technology were leagues beyond Frieza, galactic tyrant that even North Kai was scared of.
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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by Michsi » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:23 pm

ABED wrote:Yes, exactly, it was selfish of him to go there to protect Gohan.
Well, maybe selfish isn't the right word, but reckless. Again, he did express his desire to fight Freeza first and foremost.

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Re: In my opinion after the namek arc dbz was a let down

Post by Cipher » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:23 pm

Wezenheim wrote:Although I wouldn't completely disagree with anyone who thought that everything after Freeza was unnecessary, I also couldn't bring myself to get rid of Cell and Boo. There's more than enough great, iconic material post-Freeza to justify its own existence. Did the series decline over time? Maybe. Still, thematically, I like the ending we got in the Boo arc, perhaps even more so than any of the other places fans would've liked the story to stop.
This is where I land, particularly in regard to the last sentence. The Boo arc is just as rife with great endgame interactions as the Namek arc is—here combined with the free-wheeling whimsy of a series both collapsing under and enjoying its own decades' worth of length, rather than the comparatively tight narrative trajectory of the latter, so I can definitely see why some would prefer it—but unlike the Namek arc, which I think still leaves a few prominent characters high and dry, all major characters are in a fairly narratively complete place by the end of the Boo arc. They're at least in places where their motivations or potentials have paid off.

Tonally, too, the Namek arc is a a rather straightforwardly series and grim spot to leave the series. The Boo arc's mix of high-stakes horror and levity (and I know that's precisely one of the things that can rub people the wrong way—I get that), serves Dragon Ball better as its climax. It caps off a series that was never too fussed—and I mean this in all the best ways—about adhering to convention in the first place.

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Re: In my opinion, after the Namek arc, DBZ was a let down

Post by DragonBallFoodie » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:35 pm

I consider the Namek/Frieza saga the high point of Dragon Ball, but I thought the Android and Cell arcs to be good too. I felt the Buu arc was stretching things somewhat.
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