Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

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Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by The Golden God » Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:05 am

This was nightmare fuel. I wish they went all out with Moro and made it an all out horror-themed psychological arc but it ended going down familiar lanes with Moro being overconfident and then losing his cool when things stop going his way. But damn he was creepy before we actually met him.

I really think the monthly release of the manga really chips away at the authors ability to build up tension like in the Z era, because there is no more opportunity to do a more atmospheric chapter with little dialogue as every single chapter needs to move the plot forward at breakneck speed with either battles machine gunned back to back or tons of dialogue bubbles and exposition.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by JulieYBM » Thu Aug 05, 2021 1:00 am

I wish that Moro had more of a personality to him. I basically wasn't invested in him at all and that really helped to drag down the experience. I would have liked to understand him a bit more.
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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by The Golden God » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:30 am

JulieYBM wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 1:00 am I wish that Moro had more of a personality to him. I basically wasn't invested in him at all and that really helped to drag down the experience. I would have liked to understand him a bit more.
Same. It’s hard to not notice the similarities he had to Demon King Piccolo and Cell though, he just didn’t have as much personality as them. He wanted to use the Dragon Balls to regain his youth (DKP), he likes to stab people with his arm (DKP), he has a bunch of funny looking disposable underlings (DKP); He’s cold and calculated in his mission to obtain his complete form (Imperfect Cell), once he does complete it he becomes enormously cocky then absolutely loses his mind when he is humiliated anyway (Perfect Cell). Only difference here is that instead of getting decisively defeated, going crazy, exploding, only to come back even stronger, but get killed again; he gets decisively defeated, comes back stronger, then goes crazy and explodes.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Cipher » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:40 am

While Cell really gets by on his engaging gimmick/origin and design (deservedly iconic), I would ... kind of offer that Moro might actually be more compelling on the page.

Cell really lives and dies on Wakamoto’s gleefully hammy voice work.

Both are probably my least favorite main antagonists of their respective series though.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by SupremeKai25 » Thu Aug 05, 2021 4:27 am

Yes.

Him being an old fossil made him unique, his goal was to regain his prime body and it should have ended at that. He shouldn't have turned into Perfect Cell 2.0 and he shouldn't have turned into Infinite Zamasu 2.0 (without the whole "Zeno Button" urgency).

But this is Dragon Ball and villains always got to have 20 forms and power-ups, so it couldn't just end at an "Old Moro" form and a "Prime Moro" form I guess :think:

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Chuquita » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:12 am

Yes, he is wasted potential. I had high hopes when I first learned he had magical powers and then they dashed them pretty quickly by leaning in on the one energy drain technique, not getting creative (imo) again until Planet Moro, and not bothering to do anything fun with his personality.
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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Koitsukai » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:18 am

He had the potential to be really refreshing, but he ended up being nothing but a brawler whose magic wasn't enough. Eating people up and fusing with androids and planets wasn't really what I expected after that cool ass introduction.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Alruneia » Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:23 am

I definitely thought he was more interesting in the first act of his arc, I'll say that much. He became less unique when he returned to his prime and started fighting physically more than magically.
Another issue is that I think Moro achieved his goals too early in the arc. Moro wanted his full magical powers back, and he got that by draining stuff... but the story clearly wasn't done, there were still several plot points that needed to be resolved, all the third act twists and turns hadn't happened yet. With the logical (i.e previously set up) progression in strength already finished, Moro starts getting arbitrary progression instead, the main thing being him eating 7-3 and transforming because of it. I can't say that that does his character any favours. (With some creative thinking, Moro could have used a series of magic spells to achieve the same general results as eating 7-3. I think it'd fit him much better.)
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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Xeogran » Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:20 pm

In the end, he was just a forever-hungry goat. What's truly wasted is that the Moro arc didn't end with the Z-Fighters eating a grilled piece of him :lol:
Last edited by Xeogran on Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Koitsukai » Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:20 pm

Alruneia wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:23 am I definitely thought he was more interesting in the first act of his arc, I'll say that much. He became less unique when he returned to his prime and started fighting physically more than magically.
Another issue is that I think Moro achieved his goals too early in the arc. Moro wanted his full magical powers back, and he got that by draining stuff... but the story clearly wasn't done, there were still several plot points that needed to be resolved, all the third act twists and turns hadn't happened yet. With the logical (i.e previously set up) progression in strength already finished, Moro starts getting arbitrary progression instead, the main thing being him eating 7-3 and transforming because of it. I can't say that that does his character any favours. (With some creative thinking, Moro could have used a series of magic spells to achieve the same general results as eating 7-3. I think it'd fit him much better.)
Oh yes, he got all he needed in life way too son. Granola as well, but that might be the point.
There was no need to include Namek and the DBs, Vegeta's acknowledgement of what he did to the namekians isn't enought to justify having to go to Namek and having the DBs be a part of the plot.
Moro's journey towards his youth and full magic could've been, well, a journey, travelling the universe seeking particular planets or even stars. Instead, he wished for it, ate some planets and then sat and waited until the heroes caught up to him.

I realise now that every DBS arc had a heavy involvment of the DBs, unlike Z.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by BWri » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:35 pm

Yes. His whole premise just kind of devolved halfway through. By the end of it, he was the least interesting part in his own arc despite a strong setup. That said, I'm not disappointed. I didn't expect much and he provided a vehicle for others to have more interesting character development.

I just wish his characteristics, the things that made him unique, weren't thrown away.
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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Magnificent Ponta » Thu Aug 05, 2021 3:55 pm

No, I wouldn't say Moro's potential is wasted. As an arc instrument, Moro is effective, and he relies a lot on his cribbing from Piccolo Daimao to work in that sense and to intersect effectively with Goku's character arc in particular (and the OP later rightly notes his reliance on Piccolo - I don't agree so much with equal claim being made for Cell; I think the comparisons are generally overdrawn). But as a character, Moro is "about" two main things - namely, predation and theft. I think the conflicted sense the OP has of Moro is at least partially down to the interaction between these two distinct character features.

As a predator, Moro is ominous, insatiable, and relentlessly focused. These character features run through the arc so prevalently that he doesn't appear to be interested in anything else, and it also sits at the root of a sense of malevolent grandiosity that he projects: he's supreme, because he predates on everything; he's top of the cosmic food chain. On the one hand, these aspects make him a consistently menacing and sinister presence, but they also make him a little bit 'one-note' at times.

But as a thief, Moro's grandiosity is undercut and he is revealed as a petty, incorrigible pretender who's just using the real power of others to make himself a threat. On the one hand, this interferes with his consistent sense of menace because it shows him to be much less than he appears to be when compared with Goku and Vegeta, but on the other hand, that is the whole point of him: strip away the predatory instinct and the superior bluster, and Moro is "just a sneaky coward" (as Goku puts it), using the stolen power of others to achieve what he can't do on his own (as Vegeta notes). He doesn't put in the work, and what he has isn't his own.

Moro, like many of Dragon Ball Super's antagonists, comes a cropper because of the flaws in his character, and his incorrigible thievery is the 'true face' of what appears to be intimidating predation, and it catches up with him once Goku surpasses him, as he compulsively relies on the character flaw that has served him so well in the earlier points of the arc - only 'thieving bigger', which is what causes his downfall. I think it works well, and I also think that those who wish his magical power was about something other than taking other people's ki miss this crucial point: this ability is both predation and mere theft in a single action, and as such stems fundamentally from, and is a key vehicle of, his characterisation overall.

So, I think the fanbase generally could stand to look a little more kindly on Moro as a character; he's got more going on than first appears, and I think his character is mostly well-used. However, the potential of the Saganbo Bandit Brigade definitely is wasted, and this necessarily has a knock-on effect for Moro, as he takes a backseat to them for the middle chunk of his own arc, only to really re-emerge as a presence and a force in the Third Act, after a pretty effective First Act - and for me, that really is a problem.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by ZombieVito » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:47 pm

Of course he is.

Hopefully Toei can salvage the arc and him. I'm sure Toei will give him badass magic attacks at least. Just look at all the crazy shit they gave Goku Black.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Cipher » Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:03 pm

It’s a little weird to me that people don’t consider eating Seven-Three or merging with the Earth to be among his magic powers...

That said, for being sold on his fearsome wizard-ing, he certainly is no Boo. I don’t particularly mind him getting stupid about DB-style fighting near the end though, because this is DB and getting stupid about martial arts is the way of its universe. Focusing on the stealing and eating of power also might do more for the arc and his character than a continued hodge-podge of magical gimmicks might.

My one misgiving with Moro that I haven’t seen brought up in this thread is that the story has him lose his coherence prior to defeat. To his credit, he’s well-characterized enough to at least be genuinely dislikable and for the reader to want to see him get his comeuppance. And while we do get that with his loss to UI Goku, it feels like a slight shame he isn’t mentally present at the end to really process his defeat. It works well enough though.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by WittyUsername » Fri Aug 06, 2021 4:31 pm

I don’t think Moro ever had much potential to begin with.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by theherodjl » Sat Aug 07, 2021 4:44 am

WittyUsername wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 4:31 pm I don’t think Moro ever had much potential to begin with.
Moro had plenty of potential in the beginning, most new characters usually do. The issue was that his character became firmly established & completed after he regained his youth and got his wishes, which is to say that Moro became just another "destroyer of worlds"-type villain like Galactus or Unicron. His only motivation from then on was to consume the life of worlds and bait strong fighters into battling him so that he could also take their energy for himself.
Moro was initially built up as being this hellish-sorcerer who was to be feared by all; DB's(possible) journey into eldritch horror. Unfortunately, what we got descended back down into typical DB fashion by being just another strong guy who fought with his fists.
Very much so-wasted potential.
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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Lord Beerus » Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:47 am

Absolutely.

Toyotaro should have stuck with the whole old goat wizard gimmick Moro initially and should have just gone all out with it. Like... full-blown psychedelic Dr Strange/John Constantine-esque cosmic horror shit. Or have a unique and quirky twist to his magic abilities, like Majin Boo. But beyond even Moro's gimmick, he was just boring to watch. He had no interesting dynamic or personal chemistry with anybody he interacted with. He's Dragon Ball Generic Doomsday Villain #371. A character that feels like he was ripped right our of the Toei Dragon Ball Z movies in the 90s. Been there, done that, seen better.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Magnificent Ponta » Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:52 am

theherodjl wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 4:44 amMoro was initially built up as being this hellish-sorcerer who was to be feared by all; DB's(possible) journey into eldritch horror. Unfortunately, what we got descended back down into typical DB fashion by being just another strong guy who fought with his fists.
Very much so-wasted potential.
The Eldritch Horror stylings of, say, Lovecraft, is fine for what it is. But I must confess I can hardly think of a type of fiction less suited to Dragon Ball's tone and ethos than that brand of deranged nihilism, so I find it mystifying that it can count as a mark against Moro's depiction that it doesn't follow this route.

Dragon Ball Super is, for all its arc-specific trappings, a relatively straightforward battle comic in the style of its predecessor; it should be allowed to be true to itself without incurring negative judgements for not trying to be something else, in my opinion.
Cipher wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:03 pmMy one misgiving with Moro that I haven’t seen brought up in this thread is that the story has him lose his coherence prior to defeat. To his credit, he’s well-characterized enough to at least be genuinely dislikable and for the reader to want to see him get his comeuppance. And while we do get that with his loss to UI Goku, it feels like a slight shame he isn’t mentally present at the end to really process his defeat.
Quite aside from the Buu-inspired meta elements I believe are going on at that point in the arc, I think Dragon Ball Super is much more into the idea of the bad guy's flaws being what ruins them than original Dragon Ball was. So Moro tries obsessively to hold on to his ill-gotten gains, beyond his personal capacity to do so (and having 'eyes bigger than his stomach', continues to use it to try to gorge himself), and in so doing it robs him of even the things that are legitimately his own, like his own intellect and cunning. Just as much as Goku overcomes Moro by his virtues, Moro defeats himself by his own vices.

I think that the route chosen gives the reader a little more than we might lose from not having seen a point where the reality of defeat truly hits home for Moro.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Peach » Sat Aug 07, 2021 11:47 am

Yes. Moro was wasted potential.

I would have personally liked to have seen a backstory. Maybe he knew Babidi or Bididi, and Moro and Babidi were disciples of an even more powerful wizard who taught them everything they know.

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Re: Was Moro wasted potential? His introduction was really ominous.

Post by Magnificent Ponta » Sat Aug 07, 2021 12:03 pm

Peach wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 11:47 amI would have personally liked to have seen a backstory.
But Moro does have a backstory that we see: we see it in Chapter 43. He's an evil wizard from 10 million years ago who destroyed hundreds of planets to feed himself, and was eventually stopped by Dai Kaioshin and imprisoned.

It's a fairly spare backstory, and it might not be the backstory you wanted to see (which would be fair enough if you mean to say you would have liked to see a different backstory), but it is nevertheless clearly a backstory, and moreover, it's not really any less of a backstory than Majin Buu got.

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