Vampires... How do they work?

Discussion, generally of an in-universe nature, regarding any aspect of the franchise (including movies, spin-offs, etc.) such as: techniques, character relationships, internal back-history, its universe, and more.

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caejones
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Vampires... How do they work?

Post by caejones » Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:05 am

(If only they knew this was secretly part of my plot to make Chaozu suck slightly less! ... You can have inner monologues on the internet, right?)

So, we see roughly three types of Vampires in Dragonball: Draculaman's comical take on the Werebat version, with a weakness to Garlic and Crosses (Draculaman), Kyonshi, with the weird psychic powers and a compulsion to solve any arithmetic problem they hear (Chaozu), and a variant on the Western style, who ignores most of the weird stuff and is just a super strong blood-sucking creature of darkness who can't stand the sun (Lucifer).
Did I miss any? Do you insist that Draculaman and Lucifer are the same type? Do you protest that the Daizenshuu classify Chaozu as a human-type Earthling, but not Draculaman or Lucifer? OK, fair enough.
(But really, did I miss any other possible Vampires?)

I kinda think extending the Vampire lore to overlap makes what little there is to know about Chaozu seem less meaningless, in a way. In the movie continuity, destroying Devil's Castle led to some geopolitical consequences between movies, the Mi Fan army tried to take over the region with Lucifer out of the way, some Vampires attacked the capital, or were refugees and culture clash resulted in violence, whatever; result is Chaozu being turned and rescued by T'en, and trained by Tsuru Sen'nin under the hopes that his Sen'ninly knowledge contains "how not to become a horror movie monster" or some such.
In the Manga continuity... similar deal, with Tsuru Sen'nin using his arts to keep Chaozu from going full Vampire.

Chaozu being a literal Vampire struggling to hold on to his humanity makes sense of why he never ages, why he has such a hard time getting stronger, why Kuririn beat him by shouting math problems, why he's so close to T'en (and possibly why T'en has a thing for life-threatening techniques, if T'en has been feeding Chaozu spare ki or something), why they stay away from civilization more than any other characters, and, Heck, say he was trying to Vampire-drain Nappa, realized he couldn't handle that much power, and that's when he decided to Kamikaze. I mean, did you notice Chaozu is never killed by a non-demon, or at night? :P

Of course, Kyonshi and Western-style Vampires don't have much in common, other than feeding on the living and being creepy pale-skinned creatures of terror, so I suppose trying to tie Chaozu to Lucifer is a bit much. Still, I like the "actions have consequences" element anyway.

So, did I miss anything important? Are there more details about DB's Vampires I missed? Has the fact that it's been several years since I last read about Kyonshi caused me to get something horribly wrong? Is there some evidence in the series that disproves the "Everything about Chaozu can be explained by his being an unwilling Vampire" theory? Is it way stupider than it sounds in my head? ... Maybe don't answer that last one.
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DragonBallFoodie
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Re: Vampires... How do they work?

Post by DragonBallFoodie » Sun Jan 14, 2018 11:55 am

Not all vampires are going to follow the traditional rules. Here's a list of how different vampires can be:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/O ... meAndManga
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mahakaishin1991
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Re: Vampires... How do they work?

Post by mahakaishin1991 » Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:07 am

In the same way we have a variety of demons, I think the types of each one can vary

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Re: Vampires... How do they work?

Post by theherodjl » Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:16 am

I think you forgot about the shenanigans in the Garlic Jr arc where several Earthlings fell under the influence of the black water mist, changing into mindless vampire/zombie slaves that wandered around turning anyone who had not yet been infected. Its the only type of vampirism in DB that actually applies contagion, Draculaman bit Krillin but he didn't become a vampire and Lucifer had his victim's blood drained without turning them into vampires either.
It should be noted though that DB tends to follow Asian religious & mythological tropes being that it is based on Journey To The West, a story that delves into Taoist & Buddhist folklore. Western folklore tends to take more of a backseat role when it comes to the nature of DB's universe.
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Re: Vampires... How do they work?

Post by floofychan333 » Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:58 pm

Chaozu is a Jiangshi who follows some of the traits posed here. Some noteworthy differences are that he is able to move freely and doesn't appear to live in the dark. Check the Wikipedia article out for more info. It's a good source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi
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