Could this be the reason they don't continue DB Super series yet?

[MasenkoHA]

Ten episodes is way too many episodes.

I'd say at least 5 or 6 episodes

Episode 1- Showdown begins. Frieza makes it clear he's out of Son Goku's league

Episode 2- Goku attempts to put Frieza down with the spirit bomb. Frieza survives and wounds Piccolo and kills Krillin. Goku becomes Super Saiyan of legend.


Episode 3- Super Saiyan Son Goku orders Gohan to take Piccolo and find Bulma and get off Namek. He then shows Frieza the tables have turned. Frieza plays into Goku's pride as a warrior to allow him to power up. When Goku still has aan advantage, Frieza blast Namek's core, announcing the whole planet will blow up

Episode 4- On earth Mr.Popo summons Shen Long who revives the Namekians, which brings Grand Elder back, which in turn gets Porunga restored. Kaio communicates to Dende to wish everyone but Goku and Frieza off Namek.

Episode 5- Characters back on earth discuss what is going on, back on Namek Frieza resorts to using his flying razor disk of death which ends up cutting him in half

Episode 6- Conclusion; Goku leaves Namek, Porunga brings dead characters back to life. Everyone's happy yadda yadda

[Zephyr]

Ten episodes is way too many episodes. I understand wanting to be faithful to the comic, but it's really not necessarily to try and mimic its pacing—especially for inconsequential things.

Some of my suggested "episodes" adapted four entire chapters, while others adapted merely one. Not sure how that mimics the comic's pacing. Unless by "pacing" you mean the way I adhered to the sequence of events? Fair enough, then.

The only order of events I'd be compelled to deviate on would be having everybody off of Namek and Freeza reach 100% at the same time. That way there's not an additional step in the fight of Goku stalling after Freeza's already powered up. Beyond that? I like the order things play out in.

If I was really pressed to condense things into less than 10 episodes, I think it could be reasonably done in 5?

1: Beginning of the fight, both warming up. Ends with Freeza offering Goku some ground-based combat. (308-311)

2: Freeza toying with Goku, and Goku getting desperate enough to use a Kaio-ken that wrecks his body and a multi-planet Genki Dama. (311-316)

3: Freeza is alive, kills Kuririn. Goku becomes a Super Saiyan and turns the tables on Freeza. Freeza throws a blast at the planet, seemingly destroying it. (317-319)

4: Namek is still around. Both sets of Dragon Balls are used to move everyone from Namek to Earth, save Goku and Freeza. Freeza powers up to 100% and the pair land for their final bout. (321-324)

5: After some fighting, Freeza can't keep going. Goku is satisfied and tries to leave, and after several attempts by Freeza to keep the fight going, Goku eventually has to put him down. (324-327)

I think any more condensed than this is really pushing it. Like, you can condense it into 1 episode if you really wanted to, but this is all ultimately a question of how many character beats and plot threads you want to scrub. I understand wanting to radically re-imagine things, but after a fresh re-read I think there's decidedly a lot more worth preserving that isn't inconsequential than many seem to give credit.

[JulieYBM]

Ten episodes is way too many episodes.

I'd say at least 5 or 6 episodes

Episode 1- Showdown begins. Frieza makes it clear he's out of Son Goku's league

Episode 2- Goku attempts to put Frieza down with the spirit bomb. Frieza survives and wounds Piccolo and kills Krillin. Goku becomes Super Saiyan of legend.


Episode 3- Super Saiyan Son Goku orders Gohan to take Piccolo and find Bulma and get off Namek. He then shows Frieza the tables have turned. Frieza plays into Goku's pride as a warrior to allow him to power up. When Goku still has aan advantage, Frieza blast Namek's core, announcing the whole planet will blow up

Episode 4- On earth Mr.Popo summons Shen Long who revives the Namekians, which brings Grand Elder back, which in turn gets Porunga restored. Kaio communicates to Dende to wish everyone but Goku and Frieza off Namek.

Episode 5- Characters back on earth discuss what is going on, back on Namek Frieza resorts to using his flying razor disk of death which ends up cutting him in half

Episode 6- Conclusion; Goku leaves Namek, Porunga brings dead characters back to life. Everyone's happy yadda yadda

I think that Episode #4 has too little plot to really fill a full episode's runtime—especially if you're getting creative with the structuring. Like, following the cliffhanger of Episode #3 it would be wiser to begin Episode #4 in medias res, I thnk. Begin with Dende waking up on Namek and hearing the voice of the Grand Elder telling him to make that final wish with Polunga. Dende is the closest thing to an audience surrogate as it is, and is a character that the audience has already been following the development of up to that point. Cutting from the planet's flase explosion at the end of the previous episode to Dende waking up on a planet now looking like Hell is an exciting move that cuts down on unnecessary panels and begins an episode in both an exciting and disorienting way. In the one or two minutes before the Opening credits roll the audience—through Dende—can learn everything we need to know via the Grand Elder saying lines as simple as "Dende, hurry! There's no time to explain, but the Earth's Dragon Balls revived us, and if we don't ask Polunga to teleport us away from Namaek we'll be destroyed immediately!" Dende, already knowing about Piccolo, doesn't even need to speak here. A clear flash of memories to his interactions with the Earthlings across the arc insofar is enough to tell the audience that Dende understands what needs to happen.

That's just two minutes tops—leaving time for atmosphere to build with Dende taking in the sight of his dying planets, et cetera. Inserting the Opening after a shot of Dende in the foreground flying toward Polunga in the background then gives a perfect excuse for a transitional break to the segment after the Opening and before the title card (assuming this adaption uses title cards) where we come back to Gokuu pounding the shit out of 100% Freeza as Kaiou scolds Gokuu via telepathy for continuing to play around with Freeza.

This pre-title card scene can establish numerous things: 1) Freeza is now fighting at his full strength and still losing 2) Gokuu callously allowed Freeza to achieve his full power, 3) Gokuu taunting Freeza for miscalculating his ki use in attempting to destroy the planet 4) Freeza noticing the revived Polunga and then dashing off after him as a cliffhanger just before the title card.

At that point we're only 5 and a half minutes into the episode at most. I don't think the wish scene itself needs to take a long time, either. Use the break provided by the title card sequence to come right back in just as Dende has finished his wish, and Freeza is disoriented by the dragon god and Dende suddenly disappearing. That's, what, a minute of time at most? From there the rest of the A-Part can be a heavy dose of well animated action that relies less on dialogue and more on visually showing Freeza's breakdown (and beatdown), and eventually ending on Freeza being sliced in half by his own Kienzan. The B-Part of the episode can catch up with the characters on Earth before cutting to the Ending after a cliffhanger of a reveal from Kaiou-sama: Gokuu is dead.

In the post-Ending scene we see Gokuu give Freeza some of his ki, only for Freeza to spit it back in his face, and Gokuu have to deflect it, and then his failure to get Freeza's ship to work. Boom, end of episode.

Okay, I put more thought into this than I meant to. I have a book to be writing, lol!

[WittyUsername]

I’m a bit late to the discussion, but on the subject of filler in Dragon Ball, I’d say most of the Freeza arc filler is pretty bad and only serves to make a long drawn out story feel even more tedious, but I do have a soft spot for that whole thing with the alien orphans. That was a nice way of setting up Freeza, and giving you an idea of how the kind of damage his empire has inflicted on countless worlds. I couldn’t care less for the fake Namek episodes, though.