Skar wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 9:27 am
I don't think any series that transitioned to a new generation has ever had as much success as their predecessors. Boruto isn't as successful as Naruto. In some stories, Bruce Wayne retires and passes the torch to an older Robin or new, younger Batman but there's new comics, films, video games, etc still about Bruce Wayne as Batman. Digimon has a new generation each season but the first was the most popular which is probably why Toei decided to give a sequel and an upcoming movie.
There are exceptions, though. One example I brought up in a previous thread about Uub was the DC Comics character Wally West, who ended up becoming more popular as the Flash than his predecessor, Barry Allen: so much so that when Barry was brought back as the "main" Flash and DC rebooted its main fictional universe in 2011, Wally's personality was essentially "grafted" onto Barry to make him more popular. In fact, DC Comics has a pretty okay track record with successors: the Silver Age versions of Green Lantern, the Flash and the Atom, for example, definitely had a stronger impact than the Golden Age versions.
But you're right: it's not exactly a common phenomenon. I don't know if you can distill it to a formula, but I think you essentially have to make the successor distinct from the old one, yet just as (or more) compelling. Ditto their adventures: you not only want to largely avoid retreads, but you also want to be able to match or even improve on the original. Picard and TNG, as mentioned earlier, are perfect examples of how all that was successfully done.
emperior wrote: ↑Wed Jun 26, 2019 3:53 pm
The truth is that Super has COMPLETELY dropped one of the main thematics of Dragon Ball (and a very consistent one throughout the whole manga run) of “the new generation is better than the old one” which was first introduced back during the 21st Budokai Tenkaichi, became prominent during the 22nd, paid off during King Piccolo arc and was restarted from the Saiyan arc (Gohan) with the payoff against Cell. Then it was picked up once again when Goku wanted Goten and Trunks “the new generation” to handle Buu — that never got any pay off due to how immature the kids were but the thematic was still there and culminated into the manga’s ending where Goku goes off to train Uub.
With Super, all of this has been lost. Goten and Trunks are treated like idiots who can’t and won’t be able to ever do nothing just because they messed up once when they were respectively 6 and 7.
Krillin has come out of retirement twice, same for Roshi who was the one who kickstarted the whole “the old generation should retire” thing.
I don't entirely agree with that, though, because as long as Super takes place before the End of Z, the idea of passing the baton onto the next generation remains: Goku's still going to train Uub as a successor at the end of it all. Plus, the end of Z already showed us that Goten and Trunks ultimately lost interest in fighting, and Super just might be showing us the genesis of that. So we've already known for years that when it comes to being "the next generation" of fighters/heroes, Goten and Trunks dropped out of the running.