What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

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What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Badman Vegeta » Thu Jan 03, 2019 3:53 am

Mai is among the first and most iconic villains in all of Dragon Ball. Remember that as a part of her first scheme is a villain in the series, Mai helped imprison Goku along with Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha, and Pu'ar? Well, at that point, Mai was portrayed as older than Bulma, the character who ends up bearing Trunks in Dragon Ball Z.

If Mai is older than Bulma, as well as an enemy to her, how is she a good romantic partner for Trunks in Dragon Ball Super?

Note that she is paired with both Present and Future Trunks. To make the Present pairing more palatable, they had Mai (along with the Pilag Gang) accidentally get wished into being kids again. That shouldn't make an adult having feelings for a child any better.

Nothing about this seems right to me and I want to know what you guys think.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Ssjcell » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:09 pm

Badman Vegeta wrote:Mai is among the first and most iconic villains in all of Dragon Ball. Remember that as a part of her first scheme is a villain in the series, Mai helped imprison Goku along with Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha, and Pu'ar? Well, at that point, Mai was portrayed as older than Bulma, the character who ends up bearing Trunks in Dragon Ball Z.

If Mai is older than Bulma, as well as an enemy to her, how is she a good romantic partner for Trunks in Dragon Ball Super?

Note that she is paired with both Present and Future Trunks. To make the Present pairing more palatable, they had Mai (along with the Pilag Gang) accidentally get wished into being kids again. That shouldn't make an adult having feelings for a child any better.

Nothing about this seems right to me and I want to know what you guys think.
To be fair to mai he's rich and she had struggled her entire life working under a dictator

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by sunsetshimmer » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:40 pm

I hate everything about Pilaf's gang in Super.

Are Bulma and others really that dumb they can't even tell that they are the same people from original series? Even knowing Mai's name?
So basically old villains got turned into a children and for no reason got child mentality despite being adult persons and one of them dates Bulma's son who is an actual CHILD while other two try to teach her how to talk with boys. WTF. And people thought Trunks x Pan ship was stupid? That thing at least wasn't official.

And the dumbest thing about that was Mai asking Future Trunks how will adult Mai look like. SERIOUSLY? Did she really forgot that she was once adult?
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Kaboom » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:49 pm

I love the Pilaf Gang, but they're best in small and infrequent doses and they really wore out their welcome in Super. I thought the Trunks/Mai pair-up was nice for a laugh in the Battle of Gods story, but then it culminated in this actual romance between Future Trunks and re-adult Future Mai, which was just... weird, and kind of creepy. Definitely not the direction they should have taken things, if any direction at all.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by RandomGuy96 » Fri Jan 04, 2019 4:09 am

Vaguely gross and far past the point of any amusement.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Gyt Kaliba » Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:59 am

Personally, I don't have a problem with it. Bringing the Pilaf gang back into relevancy again is a good thing IMO as a fan of the trio (though admittedly they really, REALLY need to figure out what it is they want to do with them besides the Trunks/Mai thing), and it was great to see them again after so long. As far as any 'eww' factor with the pairing goes, I can see why people would have an issue with it, but I don't share those issues. For one thing, it's fictional, which is hardly the same thing as reality in any shape or form. For another, the Pilaf gang was always portrayed as super juvenile in the past. They think blowing kisses are both scandalous and a good method of torture just due to how "embarrassing" it is for crying out loud. Them getting de-aged, outside of almost seeming like a callback to GT for their involvement in the same happening to Goku, seems like an opportunity for them to grow up all over again, and end up in different places due to them now being more closely tied with our group of heroes than they were before - if they choose to do that with them anyway.

Again, a bigger issue for me at least is them not really having any idea what they want to do with the trio at all. We don't really need any more background people to comment on fights as they happen, sooo... Personally my biggest fear is that it'll eventually lead to a point where Mai's just used to introduce a child for Trunks, and Pilaf and Shu will be forgotten.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Lord Beerus » Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:20 am

It's a super fucking weird relationship if you think about if for more than 10 seconds.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Cold Skin » Sat Jan 05, 2019 3:38 pm

In the anime and manga, it doesn't rub me the wrong way at all, it feels only natural and cute. Mai never was truly depicted as an adult anyway, she likely grew up for the first time when Trunks grew up alongside her. It's a second chance for her, a reincarnation with memories from a past life.

In real life, it would bring some complicated morale questions about what defines you a kid or not and what kind of things would be okay or still not okay.

There's no easy answer I guess, going back to a kid's body is an ambiguous situation that our rules and our logic are not really meant for.
If you have a soulmate in your current life, a loved one, a boyfriend or girlfriend, imagine you both go back to being kids, but you are the only one of the couple remembering your previous "life" as an adult.
Then, what exactly would be okay and normal to feel and act upon? Would you still be an adult in the end? Or would you be back to being a kid too regardless of the "extra memories" in your brain? What exactly would be right to do and feel at this point given that you could be considered a kid, but you could be considered an adult, and you could FEEL like a kid due to your body, but you could FEEL like an adult due to your memories?

It wouldn't be easy to sort out.
Luckily, it's an unrealistic situation that will NEVER happen in real life, making what's morally correct much clearer to define in our realistic, linear lives.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by DragonBallFoodie » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:25 pm

I like it, I think it's cute.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by FoolsGil » Tue Jan 15, 2019 6:58 pm

I personally find the whole thing a bit creepy. Trunks being with an older woman, even older than his mom, that's no issue. His woman of choice having been wished back as a kid and is growing up with him, and he's none the wiser about her previous life? That's weird.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Son Dragon » Tue Jan 15, 2019 7:25 pm

I think if written well it could end up as quite the cool romantic story. Think Tenchi Muyo & Ryoko. The later of which IIRC while sealed away did watch Tenchi grow up since he was a baby in some sort of spirit form. Although it has been a long time since I've seen the series.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Rubens » Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:05 am

I think it's a bit weird seeing them paired up as kids, but when they grow up they can be written in a way that it can be made less awkward, for example if Mai tries to avoid him, Trunks finds out how old she really is but doesn't mind it because they look the same age... again, when Trunks is older and more aware of the situation. It's like when you try to pair up a 1,000 year old character who looks to be around 20s, with another who's actually around 20s.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Jamtia » Thu Jan 17, 2019 2:53 am

I'm pretty indifferent about it. One hand it didn't bug me in the Battle of Gods arc, but during the Future Trunks arc, I'm like wow they kept this going. I think I'm more amazed on how no one has put two and two together about the Pilaf gang or has said anything about it.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by ankokudaishogun » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:28 pm

Jamtia wrote: I think I'm more amazed on how no one has put two and two together about the Pilaf gang or has said anything about it.
I think Bulma at least put 2 and 2 together, but couldn't care less. I mean, her husband literally tried to blow up Earth as far as reformed villains go, Pilaf&Co were basically innocuous in first place.

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Tai Lung » Fri Jan 18, 2019 12:17 am

Badman Vegeta wrote:Mai is among the first and most iconic villains in all of Dragon Ball. Remember that as a part of her first scheme is a villain in the series, Mai helped imprison Goku along with Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha, and Pu'ar? Well, at that point, Mai was portrayed as older than Bulma, the character who ends up bearing Trunks in Dragon Ball Z.

If Mai is older than Bulma, as well as an enemy to her, how is she a good romantic partner for Trunks in Dragon Ball Super?

Note that she is paired with both Present and Future Trunks. To make the Present pairing more palatable, they had Mai (along with the Pilag Gang) accidentally get wished into being kids again. That shouldn't make an adult having feelings for a child any better.

Nothing about this seems right to me and I want to know what you guys think.
do not like it butI do not hate it
I'm just ok with this we are talking about toriyama the guy to created very rare couples I must say that I like the originality of these as you can not predict and in general are not boring at all.
anyway in the series had several moments together, it is seen that they had a lot in common and at least to say that it works trunks considers itself an earthling so it is attracted by another earthling that fights to save others and move forward your world

the only couple that I consider bad is ironically the one of the protagonist because it is the only one that does not have any advance

sunsetshimmer wrote:I hate everything about Pilaf's gang in Super.

Are Bulma and others really that dumb they can't even tell that they are the same people from original series? Even knowing Mai's name?
So basically old villains got turned into a children and for no reason got child mentality despite being adult persons and one of them dates Bulma's son who is an actual CHILD while other two try to teach her how to talk with boys. WTF. And people thought Trunks x Pan ship was stupid? That thing at least wasn't official.

And the dumbest thing about that was Mai asking Future Trunks how will adult Mai look like. SERIOUSLY? Did she really forgot that she was once adult?
you're overthinking things. it's like I told you that Goku in GT is 7-year-old boy (physically) married to an old woman of almost 70, which is worse?

maybe she just can not remember to this 3 for almost 20 years that you have not seen them, in the tenkaichi 23 goku and bulma had forgotten to chichi even though they only spent 6 years

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by sunsetshimmer » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:31 am

Tai Lung wrote:
you're overthinking things. it's like I told you that Goku in GT is 7-year-old boy (physically) married to an old woman of almost 70, which is worse?

maybe she just can not remember to this 3 for almost 20 years that you have not seen them, in the tenkaichi 23 goku and bulma had forgotten to chichi even though they only spent 6 years
Goku got married to ChiChi as an adult and they were married for many years before he got turned into a child. It's a bit different. They both know Goku is actually an adult and no one pretends he is not, ChiChi even laughs at this situation later in series saying something like "Goku is Goku no matter if he is little or adult" and she's right, because it didn't really change anything about him except for his appearance. Mai actually became childish and interested into child boys. For most of series she doesn't behave like adult person turned into a child but like a person that got her mentality reversed in time while only keeping memories of being an adult once.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Tai Lung » Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:03 pm

sunsetshimmer wrote:
Tai Lung wrote:
you're overthinking things. it's like I told you that Goku in GT is 7-year-old boy (physically) married to an old woman of almost 70, which is worse?

maybe she just can not remember to this 3 for almost 20 years that you have not seen them, in the tenkaichi 23 goku and bulma had forgotten to chichi even though they only spent 6 years
Goku got married to ChiChi as an adult and they were married for many years before he got turned into a child. It's a bit different. They both know Goku is actually an adult and no one pretends he is not, ChiChi even laughs at this situation later in series saying something like "Goku is Goku no matter if he is little or adult" and she's right, because it didn't really change anything about him except for his appearance. Mai actually became childish and interested into child boys. For most of series she doesn't behave like adult person turned into a child but like a person that got her mentality reversed in time while only keeping memories of being an adult once.
necessarily not, because It is no Mai who was a minor villain although she has previous memories in general it is taken as if mai was only reborn and you can see a big difference between future mai and mai of present, she works for resistance, gives food to others and helps children, but if the psychological aspect is questionable.

and although we know that goku is goku anyway he would continue to look bad in the visual aspect physically is a child

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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Thanos6 » Sat Jan 19, 2019 1:30 am

I completely agree that it's weird as all hell and I despise it. Regular timeline Trunks should, IMO, end up with Goten. As for Mirai Trunks, I'm not sure who he should end up with, but he deserves better than her.
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Dragon Ball Gus » Mon Sep 23, 2019 5:49 pm

Future Trunks x Future Mai? I ship it! I totally wouldn't mind them becoming an actual couple and maybe even have children. I know a lot of people don't like it, but hey, at least it's a lot better than a certain other Trunks-related ship...
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Re: What do you guys think of Mai being paired up with Trunks?

Post by Yuli Ban » Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:09 pm

I remember my thoughts in Battle of Gods.
"I dunno, man, it's gettin' pretty hokey."

Oooooh, that relationship doesn't work. Ask me who Trunks ought to go with, or at least what type he'd work with, and Mai is not the person I'd ever suggest. I don't particularly ship Trunks and Goten because I've always seen their relationship as being more rooted in that old platonic "blood brothers" ideal, but those gay legs of Adult Trunks are a superior fit for Goten and the equivalent of ramming a triangle into a tesseract for Mai.
Even by Toriyama standards, that pairing was bizarre at best. Vegeta and Bulma? I could understand— Vegeta's a Saiyan and wants a very strong-willed, high-born woman who can stand up to him. Bulma fits so godfuckingly well that it's almost like she's part Saiyan herself, but it was still strange to see them together. And Bulma would've gone with him or Yamcha because they're both technically outlaw bad boys. Chi Chi was a bit of a tougher fit and that relationship was played as a bit of a gag, to the chagrin of people who genuinely are Goku x Chi Chi. Either way, Chi Chi's got that Saiyan-friendly personality.
Krillin getting 18 wasn't particularly set up with the kiss— that could've just been 18 mocking him. It only became foreshadowing over time, and I'm still not 100% sure about their relationship, but at least 18 seems to enjoy that Krillin actually treated her like a person and not just a tool.
And Yamcha & Puar are just perfect.
Toriyama, as bad as he was and still is with romance, still understood basic chemistry. You can see why and how these characters ended up with each other once you understood their stories and reasoning. It was both shockingly backwards at first and then entirely understandable later.

What chemistry is there between Trunks and Mai?? In both iterations, it was like an afterthought, like Toriyama parodying his own bad romance writing by going out of his way to pair two utterly unlike characters.

"Child" Mai and Child Trunks? Do you remember when Toriyama once said he'd like to be that old pervert who peeps on his daughter in the washroom? I'm not entirely convinced he was joking because of plotlines like this one. We're talking aggressively awkward romance. And it's implied Kid (i.e. adult in the body of a child) Mai is smitten by both Kid and Future Trunks (who is already a decade older than he was when we last saw him), so we're talkin' double-blind pedophilia— an adult in the body of a kid falling for a kid who also is an adult. You've never seen the FBI raid a foreign studio at these speeds before.

Future Mai and Future Trunks— I just need to state this now: Mai was the most irrelevant part of that entire arc. Take her out and little changes. Trunks didn't need a love interest. Him being motivated by fighting for his future and to avenge his slain mother would've been more than enough of a motivation for him. Actually, him being motivated to avenge Future Bulma would've made for a far better motivation for the plot. Show us the other surviving humans and then have him be scarred by the loss of his mother— the person who survived even the Artificial Humans, now killed by someone with the face of her old friend, the face of the man who saved the world many times. I don't think it was even brought up again after she was killed and he told everyone in the past that it happened.
And perhaps best communicating how pointless Future Mai was, she never even meets her past self to reflect on who she used to be, so we never hear how she changed, whether she regrets that life, or anything of the sort. Mai was a generic goon who just happened to be female, willingly working for an evil goof. She deliberately assisted with Pilaf's attempts at murder and totalitarian domination as well as the resurrection of (what they thought was) a demon who was going to destroy the world. Even when she's turned into a child, she's still an agent of Pilaf who desires world domination— that plot thread never gets resolved. I get that Future Mai grew up in a world devastated by the Artificial Humans, but why Trunks? Other than that the series was already pairing their child selves. I mean, it makes more sense than their child romance because I can at least see a battle-scarred Pilaf gang abandoning their plans for world domination once they realize they're probably doomed, but I still don't get why them? It was just so unnecessary and I never felt anything for it. It was forced, plain and simple.

In the end, my biggest complaint is: why Mai?? Why not just create a new character for Trunks? It retroactively makes watching Dragon Ball just that much squickier knowing this woman, who's probably in her 40s even at that time, is going to fall in love with a prepubescent boy. And this romance is apparently fated because even when she doesn't meet that boy in some timelines, she still falls in love with him when he's a man.

Did Toriyama just really like Mai for some reason? Or did Dragonball: Evolution put that meme in his head that Americans liked Mai so he decided to run with it?
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