Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

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jpranevich
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Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by jpranevich » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:22 am

I'm rewatching the Piccolo Daimao arc in the anime and it seems that there's an animation error someplace. Is there a guide to all of the dragon ball quests out there?

In this arc, we have:

1 - Yajirobi's ball (ep 104)
2 - Found in an iceberg (ep 106)
3 - Land pirates (ep 107)
4 - Goku's ball, stolen by Tambourine
5 - Tenshinhan's former rival (ep 107)
6 - Crow's cave (ep 108)
7 - ??

In ep 109, Master Roshi appears to find the three-star ball again instead of the 7-star ball. This isn't just a mistake in ep 107 because a brief scene with Master Roshi on the plane in ep 108 shows the 2-star, 3-star, and 5-star ball. (Note that the DB Wiki says that the Land Pirates had the 7-star ball which makes sense except it clearly is the 3-star ball in both that episode and the next. I assume someone noticed the inconsistency and "fixed" it.)

Am I missing something?

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Thu Sep 07, 2017 3:42 am

I'm guessing it would have to be an animation error. Watching the footage manually, here's where I saw the Dragon Balls found in the order seen on the show:
  1. Four-Star Ball, with Goku and taken by Tambourine from Krillin (since ep78, stolen in ep101)
  2. One-Star Ball, worn by Yajirobe (ep105)
  3. Two-Star Ball, in the iceberg (ep106)
  4. Seven-Star Ball, with the Pirate Bear with Sword (depicted in ep107, shown again in 108, see notes below)
  5. Five-Star Ball, with the Western man's baby (ep107)
  6. Six-Star Ball, in the crow cave (ep108)
  7. Three-Star Ball, under a rock and dropped off a cliff and found in a grassy field below (ep109, then ep110)
So let's deconstruct this. In episode 109, Roshi finds a Dragon Ball with Three Stars, one which is clearly and immediately shown with that number in the very first shot it appears in. The erroneous ball is the ball that appears in episodes 107 and 108. In the shot of the ball being tossed by the Pirate Bear with Sword, the ball might appear to have only three stars, but they are in a slightly curved formation, like with the Five, Six, and Seven-Star Balls, and in the animation frames where the ball is close to the Bear's palm, you can see a few more stars sneaking in around the edge of the ball. You can see this again in the shot where the Bear drops the ball into Roshi's palm. More convincingly we see the ball from below in a low-angle shot of the Bear, and it has seven stars, confirming it as the Seven-Star Ball. The only time we see this ball with three stars in the traditional triangle arrangement, it's in the shot that pans up from Roshi's lap to his reflection in the windshield from episode 108.

How'd this happen? Well my theory is that, considering the depiction of Roshi and co. finding the Dragon Balls is filler and written for the anime, there was no manga reference for the team making episode 108 (Takeuchi) to go off of, so they looked to episode 107 and probably mistook the shot of it being tossed by the Pirate Bear with Sword as being the Three-Star Ball.

I made a little compilation of the Seven-Star Ball's various real and not-real depictions in episodes 107, 108 and 110:

Image


To add further confusion, in the other shot the Seven Star Ball appears in, where Chiaotzu drops all of them into the hole before Piccolo arrives in ep110, he drops a Two-Star Ball, a Three-Star Ball, a Four-Star Ball, and TWO Five-Star Balls! Which makes no sense as Piccolo currently has the "original" Four-Star Ball and it ignores the Six and Seven-Star Balls!

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by jpranevich » Thu Sep 07, 2017 7:38 am

Kudos for taking the time to do those screen-captures! I have to admit that I spent more than a few minutes freeze-framing off the Funimation app but wasn't able to capture nearly as clear a look of the seven-star ball as you did. (There are a few cases, and I no longer remember the episode numbers, where earlier in DB there are scenes with the dragon balls have no stars and I assumed the animators just forgot which balls they were supposed to be drawing so just drew the "back" of them.)

I'm working on a very silly guide while I'm rewatching that (among other things) is counting how many episodes each of the balls appear in. As of ep 108, the four-star ball is in the lead with 22 episodes but it's much closer than I expected it to be. (The two- and five- star balls each have 21 while the lowest is the three-star ball at 16.) I expect we'll get a clear "winner" once we get to Gohan's hat...

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Thu Sep 07, 2017 9:24 am

Ah, that's a cool statistic project! I love that sort of stuff.

I got those screens from Dragon Box footage, however more than halfway into I thought that it was a Three-Star Ball with an incorrect star formation (which is understandable because the Four-Star Ball has an odd cross-like formation rather than the usual square one).

I think the Four-Star Ball's appearances might be a bit more than what you have currently, if you want to count it appearing in Goku's sack during the Pilaf arc and the filler arc before the 22nd Tournament. Although by that logic ANY Dragon Ball appearance in a backpack would count too. Maybe it's because we see the ball's form in the little sack that makes it feel more like an appearance... as for Gohan's hat, remember that Gohan doesn't wear it until he and Goku travel to Kame House, and after that he's stuck in Raditz's space pod and then it flies off when he bursts out of it. And I don't think Piccolo ever took it with him when he kidnapped Gohan! That said, I fully expect ol' Sūshinchū to handily take the win.

As for the moments when it's all "Alalala! No Stars!!", I can easily chalk that up to the balls being very far away. At that size it would be a hassle to draw stars so small, especially back on 1986 televisions where nobody would ever notice. The "printed" appearance of the stars in the anime is something I always didn't prefer compared to the "in the center" formation, simply because that's what I assumed it was. I mean, that would make it more logical for the stars to always be oriented towards the camera like a Coke can in a Transformers movie, right?

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by jpranevich » Thu Sep 07, 2017 2:12 pm

I'll be sharing my guide when I am done with it but it will take a considerable amount of time to get DB+DBZ+GT+DBZ in my counts. I'll probably put out something fun on the board with DB stats when I finish the original anime.

For my count, the ball actually has to be at least partly visible. Little bags and backpacks do not count which certainly reduces the number of appearances.

Some other completely random stupid facts so far:

- 79 episodes with the Nyoibo
- 35 with a dragon radar (any of the portable ones, not counting the Pilaf and RR full room models)
- 43 episodes with kintoun
- Kamehameha (by anyone) in 31 episodes is the most used technique (I do not count Puar's flying as a technique)

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:04 pm

I love stats like this.
jpranevich wrote:- Kamehameha (by anyone) in 31 episodes is the most used technique (I do not count Puar's flying as a technique)
That raises an interesting question: extrapolating from Videl, if Puar can fly, does that mean he/she can use Ki attacks? Or, is it not a ki control thing and instead something their body is able to do naturally, like a flotation bladder in a shark?

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by jpranevich » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:24 pm

To the best of my knowledge, Puar's flying has never been discussed. It obviously stems from DB starting as a gag manga where such details were less important but by the time you introduce real flying characters (Tenshinhan and Chaozu as the first), it starts to seem strange. It's similar to how valuable Puar/Oolong's transformation skill would be in the hands of a martial artist, but of course that never happens.

(And consider that they learned to transform as *kids*. They must have amazing ki control... except that they don't because they are gag characters.)

Speaking of which, Puar/Oolong-style transformation ("BOM!") has been in fifteen episodes so far, about 14%. I'm just watching to see when they stop...

Anyway, it's not all that useful now. I have to keep watching episodes to have the counts mean anything since I'm just up to 108 in the sheet.

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:35 pm

jpranevich wrote:To the best of my knowledge, Puar's flying has never been discussed. It obviously stems from DB starting as a gag manga where such details were less important but by the time you introduce real flying characters (Tenshinhan and Chaozu as the first), it starts to seem strange. It's similar to how valuable Puar/Oolong's transformation skill would be in the hands of a martial artist, but of course that never happens.
There are actually tons of situations where transforming would have been incredibly useful. Chief among which is the "baking room" with the glass cieling in PIlaf's castle; Goku was able to break through it when transforming into a Great Ape, so why didn't Oolong or Puar thing of transforming into something of a similar scale to escape?*

*I remember when doing a "what if Goku never existed?" alternate Timeline and decided to have the Gang die in that room to A) Kill off Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong and Puar early and B) because they couldn't think of it so I had to assume they never did realize that solution.

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by Rubens » Fri Sep 08, 2017 2:48 pm

KBABZ wrote:
jpranevich wrote:To the best of my knowledge, Puar's flying has never been discussed. It obviously stems from DB starting as a gag manga where such details were less important but by the time you introduce real flying characters (Tenshinhan and Chaozu as the first), it starts to seem strange. It's similar to how valuable Puar/Oolong's transformation skill would be in the hands of a martial artist, but of course that never happens.
There are actually tons of situations where transforming would have been incredibly useful. Chief among which is the "baking room" with the glass cieling in PIlaf's castle; Goku was able to break through it when transforming into a Great Ape, so why didn't Oolong or Puar thing of transforming into something of a similar scale to escape?*

*I remember when doing a "what if Goku never existed?" alternate Timeline and decided to have the Gang die in that room to A) Kill off Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong and Puar early and B) because they couldn't think of it so I had to assume they never did realize that solution.
I think Puar's just floating or hovering, rather than flying (like the various ghost-like beings in general, and probably other characters)... Either way, it was never referred to as bukkujutsu or rather, it was never given importance at all, as far as I'm concerned. Now that I think of it though, I think it's not relevant because it's "normal" to find non-human beings capable of flying/floating, unlike the other way around, like Tenshinhan.

As for their ability to transform, Oolong stated that when he transforms his power remains exactly the same. I'm not sure if that's the case with Puar, although it proved at least capable or turning into scissor sturdy enough to cut Goku's tail so, at the very least, Puar should be capable of replicating an item's material. Hypothetically speaking, perhaps they could train the ability to increase their strength.

In case of your idea for the alternate timeline, remember that the gang ended up on "baking room" because Goku was able to open a hole through the wall with a kamehameha where they were trapped first, hence permitting Puar and Oolong to prevent Pilaf from getting his wish? At most, they wouldn't be capable of leaving the first room in the first place, thus not being taken into the room with the bullet-proof glass ceiling. If you want the heroes to succeed, I suggest to try to engineer a way of having them stop Pilaf without getting trapped.

Edit: I apologize for going off-topic. By the way, it's an interesting project! Which arc are you on by now?
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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Fri Sep 08, 2017 11:10 pm

Rubens wrote:In case of your idea for the alternate timeline, remember that the gang ended up on "baking room" because Goku was able to open a hole through the wall with a kamehameha where they were trapped first, hence permitting Puar and Oolong to prevent Pilaf from getting his wish? At most, they wouldn't be capable of leaving the first room in the first place, thus not being taken into the room with the bullet-proof glass ceiling. If you want the heroes to succeed, I suggest to try to engineer a way of having them stop Pilaf without getting trapped.
You're right that without Goku Pilaf would have almost certainly got his wish, however it was such a drastic change that I wouldn't have been able to get to alternate versions of later events because they would have been overridden by the fact that Pilaf ruled the world.
Rubens wrote:Edit: I apologize for going off-topic. By the way, it's an interesting project! Which arc are you on by now?
I would imagine he's up to the King Piccolo arc given his question?

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by Rubens » Sat Sep 09, 2017 4:47 am

KBABZ wrote:
Rubens wrote:In case of your idea for the alternate timeline, remember that the gang ended up on "baking room" because Goku was able to open a hole through the wall with a kamehameha where they were trapped first, hence permitting Puar and Oolong to prevent Pilaf from getting his wish? At most, they wouldn't be capable of leaving the first room in the first place, thus not being taken into the room with the bullet-proof glass ceiling. If you want the heroes to succeed, I suggest to try to engineer a way of having them stop Pilaf without getting trapped.
You're right that without Goku Pilaf would have almost certainly got his wish, however it was such a drastic change that I wouldn't have been able to get to alternate versions of later events because they would have been overridden by the fact that Pilaf ruled the world.
Well, depends on how competent Pilaf would be :) , especially handling the Red Ribbon army.
KBABZ wrote:
Rubens wrote:Edit: I apologize for going off-topic. By the way, it's an interesting project! Which arc are you on by now?
I would imagine he's up to the King Piccolo arc given his question?
Probably, but if he's keeping track of these (interesting) statistics, this particular topic could have been made long after he watched this arc. So I'm curious to see how far he's gone at this point.
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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by KBABZ » Sat Sep 09, 2017 12:58 pm

Rubens wrote:
KBABZ wrote:
Rubens wrote:In case of your idea for the alternate timeline, remember that the gang ended up on "baking room" because Goku was able to open a hole through the wall with a kamehameha where they were trapped first, hence permitting Puar and Oolong to prevent Pilaf from getting his wish? At most, they wouldn't be capable of leaving the first room in the first place, thus not being taken into the room with the bullet-proof glass ceiling. If you want the heroes to succeed, I suggest to try to engineer a way of having them stop Pilaf without getting trapped.
You're right that without Goku Pilaf would have almost certainly got his wish, however it was such a drastic change that I wouldn't have been able to get to alternate versions of later events because they would have been overridden by the fact that Pilaf ruled the world.
Well, depends on how competent Pilaf would be :) , especially handling the Red Ribbon army.
Well, best-case scenario is that Pilaf replaces King Furry, but that isn't a clean transition to say the least!
Rubens wrote:
KBABZ wrote:
Rubens wrote:Edit: I apologize for going off-topic. By the way, it's an interesting project! Which arc are you on by now?
I would imagine he's up to the King Piccolo arc given his question?
Probably, but if he's keeping track of these (interesting) statistics, this particular topic could have been made long after he watched this arc. So I'm curious to see how far he's gone at this point.
I dunno, if it were me, I would have asked ASAP after clearing Piccolo's wish in the hopes of having it sorted out.

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Re: Piccolo Daimao Dragon Ball Quest - Inconsistencies?

Post by jpranevich » Sat Sep 30, 2017 12:14 am

Sorry for missing this reply earlier.

I'm actually only up in my tabulation to episode 126, the beginning of the filler before the next tournament. I'll try to find an interesting way to present the data once I'm done with Dragon Ball and before starting into Z. It's slow going because I have a few other projects cooking as well.

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