alakazam^ wrote:
No Tenkaichi Budoukai had high stakes so how does that compare? And, in those, every fight had at least a chapter so Xeogran's arguments are indeed good.
I think you misunderstood my extrapolation. Let me do another one for you so you can better understand.
TKA wrote:
"Except this is a once-every-three-years tournament that is comprised of the best martial artists from all around the world, not just some bumbling desert bandits trying to get the dragonballs, so your argument falls flat.
Since the stakes are so high, we should be seeing more from everyone than just being food for Yamcha/Goku/Krillin."
"Except this is a world-ending tournament that is comprised of the very best martial artists from all around the world, not just some grey evil alien space emperor trying to get the dragonballs, so your argument falls flat.
Since the stakes are so high, we should be seeing more from everyone than just the main characters."
Do you understand now? You can literally repurpose this same complaint for every subsequent arc in the series. Realistically, lots of people would go to fight Cell, since the alternative is total annihilation. They didn't because that's unnecessary for the story being told. Realistically, we should see all the preliminary fighters in the original Tenkaichi Budokais, but we don't because that's not necessary for the story being told. Likewise, regardless of circumstance, we're not going to be told the backstory and see the intricate details around Longshoreman X from Universe 3 here because, and say it with me, that's not necessary for the story being told.
A battle royal isn't chaotic just because... they all have different strategies concerning the tournament.
Except if you devote time to showing the strategies of every (non-main) character, or even most (non-main) characters, or even some (non-main) characters, you're inherently making things less chaotic. You're wasting time explaining what irrelevant characters are doing—and it is 100% wasting time since they won't have character arcs or play any key roles. Using these characters to enhance the select characters that you
do care about and want to portray in your story is BASIC-level competency in writing.
What you guys don't seem to fully grasp is that Chekhov's theory that "if there's a gun, it has to be important later" doesn't apply as is to film and television. He was speaking about plays, where you can't direct the viewer's eyeballs—where a viewer can look at anything on stage, any prop on stage or anything in the background. A good play would, then, only have things on stage that are important. When you apply Chekhov's theory to film, television or video games, it becomes more like "if the camera focuses on a gun, it has to play a role later on," because in these medias, the creator control's what the viewer's attention is supposed to be on.
Toyotaro, wisely, did not ask us to pay attention to random fodder characters. He never treated them as anything but salad dressing. The characters he asked us to focus on are Universes 6, 7 and 11. No, not all members of each team have equal, or even nominal importance, but each member will play a role in the tournament. He has not gone back on that promise as far as his writing of this tournament goes.