What's worse: 5 minutes of Freeza or 48 minutes of TOP?

[ulisa]

I’d say TOP is worse for the simple reasoning of as long and drawn out that the battle against Freeza is—it doesn’t bore me. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m still entertained. I still enjoy seeing Freeza and Goku Act off one another. I enjoy the gradual break down of Namek.

TOP bores me. There are moments of the episodes that I enjoy but the episodes overall just feel long and drawn out. It’s not...fun. That in itself has been my issue with the Universal Survival Arc. It’s not fun, it’s not interesting even though it has all the necessary components to be amazing. Yet somewhere along the line, it falls flat.

[SingleFringe&Sparks]

I've honestly never had such fatigue watching an arc since the TOP. The Freeza fight you could either just read the manga to skip the filler or just skip most of the fight to suit your preference. With the TOP, it was entire episodes that went on for a year with snail-pacing just to get the events rolling. I really couldn't sit through it. With the TOP arc, I really have no incentive to watch most of it outside the Jiren fights, seeing as how most of the in-between stuff was either nonsensically written or dragging. The Freeza fight was just drawn out way too long, but the content within it didn't require you to sit through all of it scene for scene.

Yes, the TOP was a chore to sit through and it bores me as well from how not only it lacking any real plot outside the "match-up game" it generally was, to the slow pace of them dedicating episodes to them struggling to get rid of weaklings. I just can't watch this again.

[ZeroNeonix]

Don't get me wrong. I love the ToP. It has had a lot of good moments. But the time limit thing does bother me. At the beginning, I could buy it. Different episodes focused on different characters, so multiple episodes could be going on simultaneously. But towards the end, it got to be ridiculous, with one episode only being one minute in-universe, despite featuring only one or two fights at a time. It's almost like the time limit doesn't even matter.

[jeffbr92]

What I wouldn't have killed during the ToP to have gotten a scene every once in a while of just Goten and Trunks on the nature preserve. Something. Anything! Just stop making me look at the swirling brown clouds for just a few minutes. Let me see a blue sky! Let me see other characters. Let me see something new! By comparison, there is certainly talking in the ToP. But all it is is the characters explaining what we just saw.

Never though I would see someone bringing this point and I entirely agree with it.

When we had the confirmation that Goten and Trunks would take care of #17's Island I was like "Oh no... They definitely will cut some portions of the tournament to show the kids shenanigans" because all I wanted was the action and I remember how lame was back in Namek when the we're on a battle scene that was cut to show what Bulma was doing or something else.

But I never though this tournament arc would be so unberable to the point that I would actually enjoy seeing how things were going on Earth, I was really surprised they didn't did that not even a single time.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Neither is worse or even bad. It's just a cartoon/comic, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Suspension of disbelief has been happening since the beginning when see Goku with a tail, animal people, gaint fish being cut up by a kid etc, so is time moving slowly in verse really that much of a problem? I don't think so.

[ZeroNeonix]

Neither is worse or even bad. It's just a cartoon/comic, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Suspension of disbelief has been happening since the beginning when see Goku with a tail, animal people, gaint fish being cut up by a kid etc, so is time moving slowly in verse really that much of a problem? I don't think so.

Suspension of disbelief does have its limits. And the time limits in the two examples mentioned go beyond that line for me. It doesn't ruin the show for me, but it does leave me like, "Really? I'm expected to believe that only ONE MINUTE passed after all that?"

[GamerSkull]

Tournament of Power is definitely the worse for me. As much as it was dragged out in the Freeza arc, it at least felt like different things went on at the same time.

Now, you can say that for ToP too but with the announcer showing how much time has passed at the end of each episode, it just feels so slow to me.

[GreatSaiyaJeff]

I could buy the tournament of power surprisingly Until the final fight. The first 40 minutes I can buy multiple things going on at the same time. So it made it easier that things were happening simultaneously. As the final fight with U11, it made it a bit tougher to really buy the whole thing. Overall as much as I like this arc, it does have major pacing issues, while the 5 minutes on Namek is annoying, it doesn't give us a timer, so it made it easier to believe. Also probably Freeza's timing could have been off and only gave a guess. TOP would give us time at the end of an episode, which probably was a mistake. If they didn't give us timing, then it would be a bit more believable or something less to think about.

[lancerman]

The thing was that once Goku went Super Saiyan the fight really only need to last like 5 episodes at that point. One for Freeza to get his butt kicked a bit, one for Freeza to blow up the planet in a last ditch effort, one for Freeza to go 100% and fight Goku, one for them to revive everyone with the Dragon Balls off planet, and one to finish things up.

Even then only 3 of them would have been post Freeza blowing up the planet and having the five minutes thing be invalid.

The TOP at least was to the point where it didn't feel like there were too many just meaningless episodes in it. There were constant we got many major points. It didn't feel like anything was very redundant.

So for that I would say that Freeza's 5 minutes was far more needless for how long it took, while I don't you could trim more than a couple episodes off the TOP, parts of it were rushed as it was.

[jeffbr92]

You know we could have this tournament without time limit and things would go the same way... I mean for what purpose did this time limit served if wasn't used for tension build? Like the Grand Priest making the final countdown or something?

In the end it was just pointless.

[lancerman]

You know we could have this tournament without time limit and things would go the same way... I mean for what purpose did this time limit served if wasn't used for tension build? Like the Grand Priest making the final countdown or something?

In the end it was just pointless.

There was the threat we might not get a decisive winner when U7 had 3 left and only needed to outlast Jiren. Ultimately they beat Jiren but it was in play in the last two episodes

[jeffbr92]

There was the threat we might not get a decisive winner when U7 had 3 left and only needed to outlast Jiren. Ultimately they beat Jiren but it was in play in the last two episodes

I enjoyed the finale, but that just made things go worse. We had three guys from U7 against Jiren, they could even won by stalling time and relying on having more fighters on their side.

Something like Goku vs. Jiren, one-on-one and the Grand Priest making the final countdown to the ToP ends would be even more exciting.