"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.
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.
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.