Freeza is a good character now?

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zarmack
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:37 pm

TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
ABED wrote: But what about that makes Vegeta more able to become a good guy?
There difference between Vegeta and Freeza is that while Vegeta for most of his life intentionally fought off any feelings of empathy, remorse and love because he thought they were beneath him (which is a sign of sociopathy), Freeza on the other hand is flat out innately incapable of feeling these things in the first place (which is the defining sign of psychopathy). He even said so about himself in both the Namek and RoF arcs.
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
ABED wrote: But what about that makes Vegeta more able to become a good guy?
There difference between Vegeta and Freeza is that while Vegeta for most of his life intentionally fought off any feelings of empathy, remorse and love because he thought they were beneath him (which is a sign of sociopathy), Freeza on the other hand is flat out innately incapable of feeling these things in the first place (which is the defining sign of psychopathy). He even said so about himself in both the Namek and RoF arcs.
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
Pure bullshit. Did you even read my post?

1. The whole "Freeza made me what I am" thing was NEVER in the Japanese version of Z and is nowhere in Kai. Either way, their backstories are nothing alike.

2. Freeza flat out admits, enjoys and even brags about being an evil bastard in all of his appearances. There is nothing to suggest that King Cold ever forced him into evil (and it would be impossible since Freeza is stronger than him). If anything, both King Cold and Cooler comes across as WAY less evil than Freeza himself.

3. The "irredeemably" of Freeza is pointed out in all of the arcs he appears in. In Namek arc when SSJ Goku beats his ass, humiliates him then shows him mercy only for Freeza to try and backstab Goku. In RoF where it shows that he years in Hell hasn't changed him one bit. And even in the ToP where he flat out states he isn't changing who he is and goes back into trying to take over the multiverse. The spoilers for the Broly movie suggest he's using Broly as a tool to kill Goku & Vegeta.

So comparing a character like Freeza to characters like Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, the Android twins and Fat Buu is not only just a false analogy, but a pretty stupid one too.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:46 pm

ABED wrote:
The fact that he completely lost his mind after Cell killed Future Trunks showed that he did have some fatherly care towards him the whole time, he was just in denial of it back then.
We never see this denial. Losing it after Trunks' death is the first time we see any sort of empathy for him. There's no indication that he's pushing down any feelings. We're told, but we're never SHOWN.

Any time villains are kept around, they have to become something of a good guy or else they loose their luster as they slowly become Saturday morning cartoon villains.
Which is exactly how Freeza was treated by the franchise after Future Trunks fodderized him. According to Toriyama, Revival of F was in part a way to make people take Freeza seriously again.

As for Vegeta, you just contradicted your own argument. By showing him freak out after Future Trunks dies, the series IS showing that he was pushing down his feelings the whole time (which is in part why he is seen as the king of tsunderes in Japan lmao). The Android arc never verbally says it because it didn't have too, Vegeta's actions speak for themselves.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by TheMikado » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:58 pm

zarmack wrote:
TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
There difference between Vegeta and Freeza is that while Vegeta for most of his life intentionally fought off any feelings of empathy, remorse and love because he thought they were beneath him (which is a sign of sociopathy), Freeza on the other hand is flat out innately incapable of feeling these things in the first place (which is the defining sign of psychopathy). He even said so about himself in both the Namek and RoF arcs.
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
There difference between Vegeta and Freeza is that while Vegeta for most of his life intentionally fought off any feelings of empathy, remorse and love because he thought they were beneath him (which is a sign of sociopathy), Freeza on the other hand is flat out innately incapable of feeling these things in the first place (which is the defining sign of psychopathy). He even said so about himself in both the Namek and RoF arcs.
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
Pure bullshit. Did you even read my post?

1. The whole "Freeza made me what I am" thing was NEVER in the Japanese version of Z and is nowhere in Kai. Either way, their backstories are nothing alike.

2. Freeza flat out admits, enjoys and even brags about being an evil bastard in all of his appearances. There is nothing to suggest that King Cold ever forced him into evil (and it would be impossible since Freeza is stronger than him). If anything, both King Cold and Cooler comes across as WAY less evil than Freeza himself.

3. The "irredeemably" of Freeza is pointed out in all of the arcs he appears in. In Namek arc when SSJ Goku beats his ass, humiliates him then shows him mercy only for Freeza to try and backstab Goku. In RoF where it shows that he years in Hell hasn't changed him one bit. And even in the ToP where he flat out states he isn't changing who he is and goes back into trying to take over the multiverse. The spoilers for the Broly movie suggest he's using Broly as a tool to kill Goku & Vegeta.

So comparing a character like Freeza to characters like Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, the Android twins and Fat Buu is not only just a false analogy, but a pretty stupid one too.

It's unfortunately almost as if you don't know anything about what you're talking about.

Vegeta repeatedly bragged about his own Saiyan ruthlessness and cruelty. Even moreso than Frieza.
He literally kills women and children and jeopardizes the entirety of the universe just so he can settle a fight.
As bad as Frieza is, Vegeta is just as bad even turning on his own kin and Saiyan race whenever it suits him. We've never seen that kind of behavior from Frieza.
Again, we see the same arcs as Vegeta. Vegeta's life is spared and he's literally thinking about how he's going to come back and kill them all. It's the same beat and note over and over again.
Even all the way to the Majin Buu arc over decade later Vegeta hadn't achieved true redemption yet.

As far as the "Frieza made me do it". Obvious its not the case, but the point is they can easily make the back stories pretty much identical.
You're blatant failure to identify the obvious patterns time after time as its thrown in your face is incredibly disappointing.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:08 pm

TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
TheMikado wrote:
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
TheMikado wrote:
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
Pure bullshit. Did you even read my post?

1. The whole "Freeza made me what I am" thing was NEVER in the Japanese version of Z and is nowhere in Kai. Either way, their backstories are nothing alike.

2. Freeza flat out admits, enjoys and even brags about being an evil bastard in all of his appearances. There is nothing to suggest that King Cold ever forced him into evil (and it would be impossible since Freeza is stronger than him). If anything, both King Cold and Cooler comes across as WAY less evil than Freeza himself.

3. The "irredeemably" of Freeza is pointed out in all of the arcs he appears in. In Namek arc when SSJ Goku beats his ass, humiliates him then shows him mercy only for Freeza to try and backstab Goku. In RoF where it shows that he years in Hell hasn't changed him one bit. And even in the ToP where he flat out states he isn't changing who he is and goes back into trying to take over the multiverse. The spoilers for the Broly movie suggest he's using Broly as a tool to kill Goku & Vegeta.

So comparing a character like Freeza to characters like Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, the Android twins and Fat Buu is not only just a false analogy, but a pretty stupid one too.

It's unfortunately almost as if you don't know anything about what you're talking about.

Vegeta repeatedly bragged about his own Saiyan ruthlessness and cruelty. Even moreso than Frieza.
He literally kills women and children and jeopardizes the entirety of the universe just so he can settle a fight.
As bad as Frieza is, Vegeta is just as bad even turning on his own kin and Saiyan race whenever it suits him. We've never seen that kind of behavior from Frieza.
Again, we see the same arcs as Vegeta. Vegeta's life is spared and he's literally thinking about how he's going to come back and kill them all. It's the same beat and note over and over again.
Even all the way to the Majin Buu arc over decade later Vegeta hadn't achieved true redemption yet.

As far as the "Frieza made me do it". Obvious its not the case, but the point is they can easily make the back stories pretty much identical.
You're blatant failure to identify the obvious patterns time after time as its thrown in your face is incredibly disappointing.
"He literally kills women and children and jeopardizes the entirety of the universe just so he can settle a fight."

So does Goku, your point?

"As bad as Frieza is, Vegeta is just as bad even turning on his own kin and Saiyan race whenever it suits him. We've never seen that kind of behavior from Frieza."

We've seen far worse from Freeza. When did Vegeta turn on Raditz? And killing Nappa was basically an honor kill. Vegeta in Z (post-Saiyan arc) has also help out the Z Fighters in situations where he wouldn't actually benefit.

On the other hand, Freeza is frequently shown torturing and killing his own underlings just for is own amusement. That's far worse than Vegeta killing Nappa because he thought he was disgracing the saiyan race.

When has Vegeta actually even attempted to kill any of the Z-crew after Goku spared him? In contrast, Freeza tries to backstab Goku right after he gave him energy to survive Namek. He even goes straight into invading Earth to kill everyone afterwords until Future Trunks stops him. I don't recall Vegeta or Piccolo doing anything like that to the heroes after getting spared.

And again, nothing in Freeza's backstory even tries to give him any sense of sympathy. There nothing to suggest he had any kind of hard life or forced into any evil. You are making a false analogy again.

The only "obvious patterns" you see are your own projections and biases. Yet you have the nerve to claim that others don't know what they are talking about smh.
Last edited by zarmack on Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by ABED » Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:14 pm

As for Vegeta, you just contradicted your own argument. By showing him freak out after Future Trunks dies, the series IS showing that he was pushing down his feelings the whole time (which is in part why he is seen as the king of tsunderes in Japan lmao). The Android arc never verbally says it because it didn't have too, Vegeta's actions speak for themselves.
I didn't contradict myself. I brought it up before. I said that before that moment, we never see a hint of him pushing down his feelings. That's the only time we're shown anything. Before then, he's callous. Dr. Gero nearly kills Bulma and his son and we see nothing from him. Those actions speak just as loud that he's not struggling with his emotions until later in the arc.

Freeza is however, much more consistent. He's evil through and through. His goals are also evil. Vegeta's goals aren't inherently evil. Up until a certain point, his means of achieving his goals were, but ultimately he just wants to get stronger.
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Toxin45 » Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:20 pm

Doctor. wrote:
TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
There difference between Vegeta and Freeza is that while Vegeta for most of his life intentionally fought off any feelings of empathy, remorse and love because he thought they were beneath him (which is a sign of sociopathy), Freeza on the other hand is flat out innately incapable of feeling these things in the first place (which is the defining sign of psychopathy). He even said so about himself in both the Namek and RoF arcs.
Oh please. Frieza can sing the same exact sad song Vegeta did about how his father (King Cold) forced him to be living weapon against his will to appease Beerus or some other tripe and deep down Frieza's not so bad because he never really wanted to be evil.

This is Tien/Piccolo/Vegeta/Good Buu all over again.
Each time there was a common thread which brought them together as unlikely allies and it was a stronger opponent they both had to face.

Piccolo teams with Goku to fight Raditz.
Vegeta teamed with Z fighters to fight Frieza.
Good Buu teamed with the Z fighters to fight Evil buus.

There's literally no reason Vegeta can get redemption but Frieza can't. Their backstories could be almost identical.
I'm almost sure Freeza will get redeemed at some point if they intend to keep the character around forever, but it would be extremely poor writing after Namek, the start of the Android arc, ResF (especially ResF) and the ToP made it a point that he's nothing more than a self-serving piece of shit. If he were to be redeemed competently, then it should have happened ages ago.
Nah doubt that he would turn good the movie shows us that he is still evil.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Oct 17, 2018 3:24 pm

zarmack wrote:1. Goku and others actually started caring about the saiyan race after Vegeta's dying speech on Namek. That's when Goku started to embrace his racial pride:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aovcg4CgaBI
"Goku and others"

Lets start just with Goku first.

Goku made peace with his racial heritage, which is a FAR cry from being "proud" of it. During the Saiya-jin arc and most of the Freeza arc, Goku was in flat out DENIAL of his racial heritage. "I'm NOT one of those guys! I'm from Earth!" etc. In the latter stages of the Freeza arc, he finally accepted that he WAS a Saiya-jin, despite them being complete scum of the universe, but at no point does he go on to make excuses or paint them as if they were somehow these magnificent people. He maintains full well that they were a pack of genocidal lunatics who deserved to be gone.

Image

Image

Its also fun how you throw a dub clip in there (of all things), as if that somehow backs up any of the nonsense that you're claiming to: as you then go on to later in this thread decry the FUNimation dub over not being Japanese accurate.

Goku asks of Vegeta (in the latter's death) to lend him some of his Saiya-jin pride to help fuel his resolve to defeat Freeza. Goku NEVER at ANY point sees the Saiya-jin as somehow these good people whose memory needs to be defended somehow. He calls on Vegeta's Saiya-jin pride just before the fight with Freeza to help give him the strength to overcome Freeza: not to retroactively decide "Yes, I LOVE that these guys were genocidal thugs, and I want to defend their honor!"

There's a HUGE gulf of difference between "I need make peace with the reality of my past and to call on whatever determination and source of emotional strength I can muster to help me defeat this unstoppable madman." and "You know what? These guys whose people I came from may be complete and utter deplorable filth, but they're MY complete and utter deplorable filth, and I'm gonna stand up for them anyhow!" Pretending that there isn't a colossal difference there is being WILDLY disingenuous, at best.

And what's doubly weird is that you didn't just leave it at Goku, but "Goku and others". WHAT others? Gohan? Future Trunks? Present Trunks? Goten? Piccolo? Kuririn? Tenshinhan? Muten Roshi? Who the hell are you even talking about here?

Other than Vegeta of course (whose ALWAYS been hung up on his own racial pride from moment one), there's literally NO ONE else in the ENTIRE series past the Freeza arc who gives a solitary flying fuck about the Saiya-jin as a people, other than Baby if you want to delve into GT (and I guess probably Paragus and Broly in this upcoming Super movie). Gero doesn't, Babidi doesn't, Dabura doesn't, Boo doesn't, the Artificial Humans don't, and Cell doesn't (other than to relish in how much more power their DNA has given him).

The main characters in the series who have ANY real pressing concern for the Saiya-jin as a people are of course Vegeta (because he was the prince and is pathologically hung up on his sense of identity), Freeza (because he's deep down inside utterly terrified of them more than anything else in the universe), and for two story arcs Goku (because he was SO beyond horrified at what kind of monsters they were and that he was one of them, that he spent a chunk of time in abject denial about his heritage before finally eventually accepting it and trying to draw upon it as a source of personal strength for a difficult fight). Past the Freeza arc, Goku hardly dwells upon his Saiya-jin heritage to any significant degree: he's a martial artist of Earth who happens to be of Saiya-jin blood. That's who he is when all's said and done and there's not much more to say beyond that.
zarmack wrote:So your rant is debunked there
I'd hardly call a two short paragraphs a "rant" (especially given my particular posting history on here).
zarmack wrote:Also, Goku seemed pretty interested in them some more after meeting Cabba in the Champa arc.
The Saiya-jin that Cabba comes from are the Saiya-jin of Universe 6: they are a COMPLETELY different race of Saiya-jin with a COMPLETELY different culture and history from those that Goku came from in Universe 7. This is a totally false equivalence: Cabba, Kale, and Caulifla's Universe 6 Saiya-jin have no bearing whatsoever on the despicable actions and bloody history of the Saiya-jin of Universe 7 who slaughtered countless trillions of innocent lives under Freeza's banner (and tons more before that even). Cabba and the Saiya-jin of Universe 6 carry with them NONE of the baggage whatsoever that made the Saiya-jin of Universe 6 so abominable in Goku's (and really, any sane person's) eyes.
zarmack wrote:2. False analogy bro. Freeza is a Complete Monster, Vegeta (even at his worst) never was:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... DragonBall
Image Image

Image

Image

Image

These are just three of like a half a dozen other on-screen/on-panel examples I could've used, and without even of course getting into all the countless innocent people we DON'T see him slaughter on camera (but are told many times about).

The point of course being: Vegeta murdered the ever living FUCK out of a LOT of innocent people for his own sick pleasure. He did it both since he was a child under Freeza, and as an adult rebelling AGAINST Freeza. He didn't show the slightest ounce of remorse for any of it until WAY the fuck later on in his life.

Mind you, I'm not even necessarily taking anything away from Vegeta's own character progression or development into something almost resembling a halfway decent human being later on in the series: all things considered, its relatively well done and manages to be halfway kinda believable almost. But its a LOOOOOONG road that Toriyama took to getting him there (4 gigantic long story arcs worth that encompasses the entirety of the Z era front to back), and even at its best it certainly STRAINS the at the moral boundaries of the series (even on its own wonky terms) in a fair number of instances.

Also TV Tropes isn't exactly the Encyclopedia Britannica (to put it mildly), so people need to stop linking to articles from it as if referencing something from it is somehow unto itself some big "Ah ha! Gotcha!" move. The site has individual articles dedicated to everything from thuddingly basic-most character tropes to complete and utter braindead nonsense like this: it catalogs SUCH a wide berth of ridiculous bullshit (often completely free of context or insight to boot) to SUCH pedantic extremes that you can literally find almost ANY kind of vapid nonsense article to "back up" any point you wish to make. And its hardly like what you linked to here (the "Complete Monster" article) bolstered any kind of point you were trying to make.

Did Vegeta kill innocent people? Yes. Did he kill a LOT of innocent people, to the point of repeated mass genocide? Most certainly yes. Did he do so knowingly and intentionally? Yes. Did he spend a microsecond of his life (so far as we know at least) prior to taking up permanent residence on Earth feeling the slightest speck of conflicted emotions or remorse over it? Nope, quite the opposite, he feels immense amounts of PRIDE in what he's and his race have done. Does he take sadistic, maniacal glee in his killings? Yes. Is he 100% self-serving and narcissistic in his actions? 1000% yes.

Vegeta, up until SOME point during the Cell and Boo arcs, is a complete and abject fucking monster. The series bends itself over backwards, almost to the point of cracking itself in half, getting him from THAT point to a point where he's genuinely sympathetic and redeemable to the audience, and it takes almost the ENTIRE span of Z to do it.

There's just NO getting around his horrendous actions and his attitude about said-actions and the context surrounding them: any attempts at justifying it is mostly from fans contorting themselves into knots (and oftentimes with help from the FUNimation dub) trying to rationalize their preconceptions and liking of the character against the gigantic elephant in the room that is his objective actions and his blatant attitude and beliefs about the morality of those actions throughout the vast bulk of his time in the series.

The main thing separating Vegeta from Freeza is that Vegeta had OODLES of screentime and character development throughout all of Z getting him from Genocidal Lunatic point A to Redeemable Anti-Hero point B.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't a defense of the possibility of Super trying to pull the same trick with Freeza. With Freeza, not only would it be one time too many for Dragon Ball as a series, but there's simply almost NO conceivable way it would/could POSSIBLY take NEARLY the amount of care, time, and effort it would take to make that sort of transition as halfway approaching believable for Freeza as it was for Vegeta. Super as it stands now is just WAY too much a written-by-committee commercial vehicle (to VASTLY more degrees than was the original series), and IF it should attempt to go the "redemption" arc with Freeza (which we ultimately don't even know if it will or not), then the likelihood that it'll simply be a lazy, hastily rushed, pandering retread of what was done with Vegeta (because Vegeta's redemption arc is such a nostalgic fan favorite element from the original run) seems highly likely given Super's overall trajectory and track record thus far.

This is simply about being 100% honest about what kind of scumfuck Vegeta was during much of the original series and how much in the way of incredibly protracted hoops had to be jumped through to get him to a halfway redeemable place with some SHRED of believability. Z barely pulled that off by the skin of its teeth: no way in FUCK is Super one one-hundredth as deft enough to pull that same trick a second time (as if even wanting to repeat that trick in and of itself is somehow desirable or a net benefit for the series).

And yes, THAT was a rant. :D
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:05 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote: snip
Fair enough lmao

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:35 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote: snip
And for the record, at no point did I say Vegeta wasn't extremely evil before joining the team. All I pointed out was that compared to him (or Piccolo), there's no attempt to humanize Freeza at any point in the franichise's history (and its too late to even try at this point). Just compare their death scenes on Namek. Vegeta's dying speech on Namek was mean't give him some level of sympathy (this is how the Japanese reacted to it). Goku's attitude and opinion of Vegeta even changes positively after that moment (despite him still being a villain until the 2nd half of the Buu arc).

Whereas when Freeza is put a similar situation after he gets cut in half by his own energy-disk, the focus was still on how despicable and corrupt Freeza is, with Goku even treating him with contempt and outright mocking him for being the kind of person he is.

So yes, it is still a false equivalence to put Freeza in the same camp as Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, Androids 17 & 18 and Fat Buu.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by TheMikado » Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:01 pm

zarmack wrote:
Kunzait_83 wrote: snip
And for the record, at no point did I say Vegeta wasn't extremely evil before joining the team. All I pointed out was that compared to him (or Piccolo), there's no attempt to humanize Freeza at any point in the franichise's history (and its too late to even try at this point). Just compare their death scenes on Namek. Vegeta's dying speech on Namek was mean't give him some level of sympathy (this is how the Japanese reacted to it). Goku's attitude and opinion of Vegeta even changes positively after that moment (despite him still being a villain until the 2nd half of the Buu arc).

Whereas when Freeza is put a similar situation after he gets cut in half by his own energy-disk, the focus was still on how despicable and corrupt Freeza is, with Goku even treating him with contempt and outright mocking him for being the kind of person he is.

So yes, it is still a false equivalence to put Freeza in the same camp as Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, Androids 17 & 18 and Fat Buu.
"false equivalence"

I'm not sure that means what you think that means.
As the posters above you pointed out the circumstances and opportunities came about typically due to circumstance and them combining to fight an even larger threat. Sometimes multiple times.
For Piccolo it was Raditz, then the saiyans. For Vegeta it was the Ginyu Force, then Frieza. Androids- Cell. Fat Buu - Other Buu. etc. etc.

Each and every the setup has been the same. Bad guy joins forces with "good guy" to team up against "bigger bad guy".
We already have the first requirements for Frieza. He agreed to fight in the tournament along-side Goku and even assisted him and the crew.
We also see that while he may have initiated the coming Broly fight, he at some point fights against Broly as well. An enemy Goku will also be facing.

There is nothing inherently different from Frieza versus these other enemies which turned good other than he simply has not had the screen-time and opportunity. He just hasn't been written that way.
What we are saying is that based on repeated pattern of having a previous enemy fight the new enemy along side the heroes, Frieza is already on his way to fulfilling that trope based on his Universe Survival Arc performance.
Him teaming up with the Saiyans in order to fight Broly in the upcoming movie would only further that development.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by ABED » Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:54 pm

The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:09 pm

TheMikado wrote:
zarmack wrote:
Kunzait_83 wrote: snip
And for the record, at no point did I say Vegeta wasn't extremely evil before joining the team. All I pointed out was that compared to him (or Piccolo), there's no attempt to humanize Freeza at any point in the franichise's history (and its too late to even try at this point). Just compare their death scenes on Namek. Vegeta's dying speech on Namek was mean't give him some level of sympathy (this is how the Japanese reacted to it). Goku's attitude and opinion of Vegeta even changes positively after that moment (despite him still being a villain until the 2nd half of the Buu arc).

Whereas when Freeza is put a similar situation after he gets cut in half by his own energy-disk, the focus was still on how despicable and corrupt Freeza is, with Goku even treating him with contempt and outright mocking him for being the kind of person he is.

So yes, it is still a false equivalence to put Freeza in the same camp as Tien, Piccolo, Vegeta, Androids 17 & 18 and Fat Buu.
"false equivalence"

I'm not sure that means what you think that means.
As the posters above you pointed out the circumstances and opportunities came about typically due to circumstance and them combining to fight an even larger threat. Sometimes multiple times.
For Piccolo it was Raditz, then the saiyans. For Vegeta it was the Ginyu Force, then Frieza. Androids- Cell. Fat Buu - Other Buu. etc. etc.

Each and every the setup has been the same. Bad guy joins forces with "good guy" to team up against "bigger bad guy".
We already have the first requirements for Frieza. He agreed to fight in the tournament along-side Goku and even assisted him and the crew.
We also see that while he may have initiated the coming Broly fight, he at some point fights against Broly as well. An enemy Goku will also be facing.

There is nothing inherently different from Frieza versus these other enemies which turned good other than he simply has not had the screen-time and opportunity. He just hasn't been written that way.
What we are saying is that based on repeated pattern of having a previous enemy fight the new enemy along side the heroes, Frieza is already on his way to fulfilling that trope based on his Universe Survival Arc performance.
Him teaming up with the Saiyans in order to fight Broly in the upcoming movie would only further that development.
The spoilers for the film suggest that the Broly vs Freeza battle we see in the 1st trailer was just a training session early on and that Freeza later unleashes Broly on Goku & Vegeta. There's nothing to suggest with all the info given that he helps take down Broly in the end, making it either a subversion of the pattern or still a false equivalence.

Either way, making a redemption arc for Freeza (at this point) would be extremely awful writing. One would work for Broly, but no way in hell would a redemption for Freeza be anything more than pure tripe that kills all suspension of disbelief.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:12 pm

ABED wrote:The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
I agree that when you set them down under a microscope, there ARE some fairly key differences and nuance that distinguishes Vegeta from Freeza as individual personalities: my main point though was that at the end of the day they're both, on a very baseline level, malignant narcissists and barbaric/fascist/remorseless maniacs who've committed acts of mass genocide on an apocalyptic, Holocaustian scale for purely self-serving/hedonistic reasons. Vegeta managed to eventually get to a sympathetic/redeemable place from that horrific starting point: but it was a DAUNTING road that took up pretty much all 4 main arcs of DBZ before he reached that final finish line. A LOT of development, years and years and YEARS worth, went into making it emotionally credible: and even then, the series just about BARELY pulls it off.

Given how much work and time it took DBZ to convincingly develop just the ONE mass murdering Space Nazi (Vegeta) into someone that was credibly redeemable and sympathetic to the audience, combined with the fact that absolutely ZERO screentime thus far (across more than 25+ years worth of material between the 500+ episode/42 volume original run and the now current 130-ish episode revival) has been lent to developing Freeza in that direction, and FURTHER combined with how generally shoddy, lazy, and "play nothing but the hits!" nostalgia-pandering Super has largely been overall... the odds that Freeza could be developed and molded by the new material into the next in DB's long, long, looooong lineage of "bad guys turned good" with even a SHRED of the credibility of Vegeta's turn (or really, that of ANY of the other such reformed villains throughout DB) are ludicrously low, at best.
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Doctor. » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:18 pm

ABED wrote:The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
I don't think he does. All the examples provided as to how Vegeta was supposedly different from Freeza were retroactively added in. In the Saiyan arc, he was an irredeemable genocidal asshole; our perception of him now is different because post-Boo Vegeta is now the most familiar version of the character and Saiyan arc Vegeta is long gone. Some sprinkles of humanity here and there were eventually enough to build up to a redemption story, but if that was possible for Vegeta, then it can be done with any character. As TheMikado said, we're seeing the seeds right now. Though I agree with Kunzait that it would require a hell of a lot of skill and, more importantly, patience to pull off a Freeza redemption; it's not just something you can or should rush in an arc or two. So unfortunately, they're gonna fuck it up if they attempt it.
Last edited by Doctor. on Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:19 pm

ABED wrote:The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
That's exactly the point I'm trying to get across. Just because a redemption arc would work for some types of villains don't mean it work for everyone. Not all evil is equal, and not all villains are the same type of people. Hell, Piccolo's and Vegeta's redemption arcs were barely plausible as it is and it took A Lot of good writing and character development just to make the latter's justifiable.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by zarmack » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:27 pm

Doctor. wrote:
ABED wrote:The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
I don't think he does.
Yes he does. The former is merely a sociopath (even in the Saiyan arc) while the latter is a full blown psychopath with zero ethical standards of any kind. Just because 2 characters perform the same kinds of actions don't mean they are interchangeable. Goku, Vegeta and Broly are all battle-junkies, but that doesn't mean they're all clones of each other.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Doctor. » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:35 pm

zarmack wrote:
Doctor. wrote:
ABED wrote:The set up is the same but the characters are completely different. Vegeta is the closest to Freeza, but he has a different psychology.
I don't think he does.
Yes he does. The former is merely a sociopath (even in the Saiyan arc) while the latter is a full blown psychopath with zero ethical standards of any kind. Just because 2 characters perform the same kinds of actions don't mean they are interchangeable. Goku, Vegeta and Broly are all battle-junkies, but that doesn't mean they're all clones of each other.
No, their actions in those arcs, taken in isolation, are exactly the same. Just because we retroactively got added context for Vegeta's actions and motivations in later arcs doesn't mean the same can't or won't happen to Freeza.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by ABED » Thu Oct 18, 2018 7:47 pm

They're different as their goals are different. Vegeta is a fighter through and through. His goal when wanted the DB's was to gain immortaility in order to fight forever. Freeza wanted to rule forever. He looks down on battle hungry Saiyans. Freeza wants control and he likes the wealth that comes with it. Vegeta wants to be the strongest. In Vegeta's case, it's far easier to see how that could be channeled more constructively. Freeza just wants to hurt and control people.

Vegeta's actions are very reflective of a culture that puts strength above all else. Goku is also a battle junky but he was raised in a world with romantic love, friendship, and loyalty.

In the case of Piccolo, unlike Freeza or even Vegeta, he is a reincarnation of a demon. So it's not the same thing as either.
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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by Toxin45 » Fri Oct 19, 2018 12:39 am

Doctor. wrote:
zarmack wrote:
Doctor. wrote: I don't think he does.
Yes he does. The former is merely a sociopath (even in the Saiyan arc) while the latter is a full blown psychopath with zero ethical standards of any kind. Just because 2 characters perform the same kinds of actions don't mean they are interchangeable. Goku, Vegeta and Broly are all battle-junkies, but that doesn't mean they're all clones of each other.
No, their actions in those arcs, taken in isolation, are exactly the same. Just because we retroactively got added context for Vegeta's actions and motivations in later arcs doesn't mean the same can't or won't happen to Freeza.
Nah that won't happen dude the Broly movie states that Frieza still holds a grudge against goku.

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Re: Freeza is a good character now?

Post by coola » Fri Oct 19, 2018 6:40 am

It might be interesting if he is kept as eternal rival, i dont think it is good idea to make him good, he is like Joker, half of his charm is being ruthless tyrant :) I know one thing for sure, if he is kept alive, there is no way GT can fit story without complete rewriting.
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