Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
It did intend to get dark, gory and terrifying. Most of these repulsive kills and beatings had me on the edge of my seat as a kid.
What are the gruesome scenes you remember most when you were watching Dragon Ball? It's kinda scary that Toonami and Cartoon Network let most of this slide. They'd never get away with it nowadays lmao. Makes me glad I was a 1990's kid!
A big one for me was when Badidi used his magic to..obliterate Spopovich into pieces. You can't argue the fact that was gut wrenching just the way he pumped up with his eyes slowly popping out of position. Ew, such a painful death!
In the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai when Piccolo ripped off his useless arm.
In the manga when Dr. Gero squeezed that guy's neck until his head popped off.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.
I never really saw anything that was outright gruesome in the anime, but the manga is completely different story. One particular scene that always sticks out in my mind is when SSJ2 Gohan kills the Cell Jrs and you would see parts of their brain splatter all over the place.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Yikes.
The Videl/Spopovich fight was also quite difficult to watch. Just seeing Videl getting the crap beaten out of her, while no one could really do anything to stop it as Videl didn't want to quit the fight make the whole affair difficult to stomach.
Spoiler:
Akira Toriyama wrote:My policy is to try and forget things once they’re over. Since if I don’t discard the old and focus on what’s new, I’ll overload my brain capacity. I still haven’t lived down going, “Who the heck is Tao Pai-pai?” that one time I was talking with Ei’ichiro Oda-kun. But the fact that there are still people reading the series after all this time… All I can say is; “thank you.” Really, that’s all.
Akira Toriyama wrote:Drawing Dragon Ball again reminded me of two things--how much I love it, and how much I never want to do it again.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And if you're upset because all this new material completely invalidates the tabletop RPG rulebook-sized statistical system and flowchart for the characters' "canonical Power Levels" that you'd been working on painstakingly for the last bunch of years now... well I don't think there's a kind, non-blunt way of saying this, but that's 100% entirely your own misguided fault for buying so deeply into all this nonsensical garbage in the first place. And that you also have IMMENSELY skewed and comically backwards priorities in what you think is most important and needed to make a good Dragon Ball story.
Zephyr wrote:Goodness, they wrote idiotic drivel in a children's cartoon meant to advertise toys!? Again!? For the ninetieth episode in a row!? Somebody stop the presses! We have to voice our concern over these Super important issues!
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Fair enough, I concede. Sean Schemmel probably has some kind of hidden talent. Maybe he is an expert at Minesweeper. You're right; calling him "talentless" wasn't fair.
Michsi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:29 amIn Super Piccolo got yelled off the stage by Vegeta in the U6 Tournament arc and lost to Jiminy Cricket in the ToP , he deserved 15 new transformations with his theme song played by Metallica in the background.
The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime. Apparently you're not allowed to be skeeved out at Videl getting tortured anymore, but that is also up there. There really isn't much in the way of gore here.
Keen Observation of Dragon Ball Z Movie 4's Climax wrote:Slug shits to see the genki
Tao Pai Pai killing Blue with his tongue and Freeza getting chopped in half are the most gruesome moments imo, but Dragonball never was overly gruesome. Besides some moments in the Cell arc, of course.
B wrote:The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime. Apparently you're not allowed to be skeeved out at Videl getting tortured anymore, but that is also up there. There really isn't much in the way of gore here.
That happened? What chapter was that scene in?
Spoiler:
Akira Toriyama wrote:My policy is to try and forget things once they’re over. Since if I don’t discard the old and focus on what’s new, I’ll overload my brain capacity. I still haven’t lived down going, “Who the heck is Tao Pai-pai?” that one time I was talking with Ei’ichiro Oda-kun. But the fact that there are still people reading the series after all this time… All I can say is; “thank you.” Really, that’s all.
Akira Toriyama wrote:Drawing Dragon Ball again reminded me of two things--how much I love it, and how much I never want to do it again.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And if you're upset because all this new material completely invalidates the tabletop RPG rulebook-sized statistical system and flowchart for the characters' "canonical Power Levels" that you'd been working on painstakingly for the last bunch of years now... well I don't think there's a kind, non-blunt way of saying this, but that's 100% entirely your own misguided fault for buying so deeply into all this nonsensical garbage in the first place. And that you also have IMMENSELY skewed and comically backwards priorities in what you think is most important and needed to make a good Dragon Ball story.
Zephyr wrote:Goodness, they wrote idiotic drivel in a children's cartoon meant to advertise toys!? Again!? For the ninetieth episode in a row!? Somebody stop the presses! We have to voice our concern over these Super important issues!
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Fair enough, I concede. Sean Schemmel probably has some kind of hidden talent. Maybe he is an expert at Minesweeper. You're right; calling him "talentless" wasn't fair.
Michsi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:29 amIn Super Piccolo got yelled off the stage by Vegeta in the U6 Tournament arc and lost to Jiminy Cricket in the ToP , he deserved 15 new transformations with his theme song played by Metallica in the background.
B wrote:The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime.
They're in the anime. Gohan looks aside and sees their corpses lying in front of their home and winces. Episode 220 I think.
Also how in the hell does Kuririn's impaling against Freeza not come up in a thread like this? That's played up especially in the anime for all the horror that its worth.
DB's no Fist of the North Star or anything like that by any stretch, but its certainly had its moments. Gero's impaling of Yamucha and his squeezing off some poor sap's head, Daimao's egg laying, Piccolo's 23rd Budokai arm tear, Dende's brothers' death, Zarbon's death, Dodoria's killing of the first of the three Namekian warriors, Spopovitch's Videl beat down, Spopovitch's death, the Cell Juniors' death in the manga, Kuririn getting gored by Freeza, Vegeta's disemboweling execution of the first Saibaiman, Goku and Raditz' blood soaked Makankosappo impaling in the anime... this stuff does add up after awhile.
DB's nowhere near the 100% cheery sunshine its been played up as in certain corners of fandom round here, just like its not the "hardcore xtreme" shit that lot of the dub fandom likes to play it up as. The truth was always somewhere in the middle and a mix of the two.
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.
B wrote:The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime. Apparently you're not allowed to be skeeved out at Videl getting tortured anymore, but that is also up there. There really isn't much in the way of gore here.
That happened? What chapter was that scene in?
In the anime Gohan notices their bodies all lying out on the front yard. Though their bodies are still intact. In the manga however the father is missing a hand, and the mother has been either ripped or blasted in half because only her upper half is shown. Her legs are either off panel or have been destroyed.
When Babidi made that guy at the tournament's head explode was pretty gruesome.
The Dragonboxes are like a middle aged woman who still looks good through simply taking good care of her skin and body with maybe a tiny bit of makeup while the Orange Bricks are like a middle aged woman who get's 50 tons of botox, makeup and plastic surgery in order to look younger and as a result looks even worse. ~ ringworm128 Still recording Toonami broadcasts on VHS after all these years! #1 Paikuhan fan!
B wrote:The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime. Apparently you're not allowed to be skeeved out at Videl getting tortured anymore, but that is also up there. There really isn't much in the way of gore here.
That happened? What chapter was that scene in?
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Why Dragon Ball Consistency in something such as power levels matter!
Spoiler:
Doctor. wrote:I've explained before, I'll just paraphrase myself.
Power levels establish tension and drama. People who care about them (well, people who care about them in a narrative) don't care about the big numbers or the fancy explosions. If you have character A who's so much above character B, who's the main character, you're gonna be left wondering how in the hell character B, the character we're supposed to care and root for, is going to escape the situation or overcome the odds. It makes us emotionally invested.
If character B doesn't escape the situation in a believable way that's consistent with previous events, then that emotional investment is gone. It was pointless tension, pointless drama made just to suck in the viewer. It has no critical value whatsoever. The audience is left believing that the author can just create whatever scenarios he wants and what happens to the characters is decided by whatever the author wants to happen, regardless of the events that happened in the story. Which, in fairness, is what happens, but the audience wants to be fooled. The audience wants to know that the world they're following has rules. That the world they're invested in isn't going to bend to external factors that are irrelevant to them.
An author can do whatever he wants with the characters, that's not false. But the author should also have the responsibility to make sure it fits in cohesively with the other events in the narrative he has created.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Oh God. I wasn't quite sure what was the most gruesome thing in the series, but now I'm positive that this page is by far the most disturbing. Geez, and to think this started out as a gag manga...
You know what, I'll throw in Cargo, Dende's brother, getting burned alive by Dodoria/Freeza as also pretty damn bad. Ignoring the fact it's a kid, it's one of, if not the only time, you really see the heat-based effects of ki blasts, outside of obviously destroying buildings/scenery.
Keen Observation of Dragon Ball Z Movie 4's Climax wrote:Slug shits to see the genki
TheQuazz wrote:[spoiler][/spoiler]
Oh God. I wasn't quite sure what was the most gruesome thing in the series, but now I'm positive that this page is by far the most disturbing. Geez, and to think this started out as a gag manga...
Wow that's pretty awesome. Is it in the coloured version of the Manga?
For the Anime, I think Yamcha getting impaled during the Android saga was brutal. Not sure if the sound effect is on the original, but in the 'Murican edition you hear all the bones cracking before his hand pops out the back.
Oh another obvious one: the gunmen's rampage in the Boo arc. The scene where they murder the elderly couple is one of the single sickest, grisly things in the whole series (a moment like that wouldn't be out of place in a grindhouse movie), the anime has additional scenes of them mass shooting their way through a town or two, all culminating with their shooting a puppy. Gotta love their nihilistic motivation for the killing spree too.
We can then add to the tally Super Boo's killing of the short, fat gunman via pouring himself down the guy's gullet until his entire torso grotesquely expands and bursts like a scene out of Monty Python's Meaning of Life.
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.
B wrote:The only thing I can think of that came closest to unsettling is the slaughtered family near Babidi's ship from the manga, who are omitted from the anime. Apparently you're not allowed to be skeeved out at Videl getting tortured anymore, but that is also up there. There really isn't much in the way of gore here.
That happened? What chapter was that scene in?
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Damn. That is... Damn.
Spoiler:
Akira Toriyama wrote:My policy is to try and forget things once they’re over. Since if I don’t discard the old and focus on what’s new, I’ll overload my brain capacity. I still haven’t lived down going, “Who the heck is Tao Pai-pai?” that one time I was talking with Ei’ichiro Oda-kun. But the fact that there are still people reading the series after all this time… All I can say is; “thank you.” Really, that’s all.
Akira Toriyama wrote:Drawing Dragon Ball again reminded me of two things--how much I love it, and how much I never want to do it again.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And if you're upset because all this new material completely invalidates the tabletop RPG rulebook-sized statistical system and flowchart for the characters' "canonical Power Levels" that you'd been working on painstakingly for the last bunch of years now... well I don't think there's a kind, non-blunt way of saying this, but that's 100% entirely your own misguided fault for buying so deeply into all this nonsensical garbage in the first place. And that you also have IMMENSELY skewed and comically backwards priorities in what you think is most important and needed to make a good Dragon Ball story.
Zephyr wrote:Goodness, they wrote idiotic drivel in a children's cartoon meant to advertise toys!? Again!? For the ninetieth episode in a row!? Somebody stop the presses! We have to voice our concern over these Super important issues!
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Fair enough, I concede. Sean Schemmel probably has some kind of hidden talent. Maybe he is an expert at Minesweeper. You're right; calling him "talentless" wasn't fair.
Michsi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:29 amIn Super Piccolo got yelled off the stage by Vegeta in the U6 Tournament arc and lost to Jiminy Cricket in the ToP , he deserved 15 new transformations with his theme song played by Metallica in the background.
The most gruesome moment I can remember that hasn't been mentioned yet is the filler nightmare scene Goku has in the Cell arc. Either 17 or 18 grabbed Chi-Chi and broke her neck, and the show just goes silent with no music. It was a very chilling scene.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]
