Zelvin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 3:01 pmSo this story beat has already occurred. What makes this an asspull is the fact there was no indication Moro could just eat people to absorb them.
You're, again, arguing different points than the thing you quoted.
It doesn't matter if it resembles what happened previously. What matters is the training Vegeta was off doing was relevant to the plot point it was meant to be relevant to.
It also doesn't matter if something happens later that justifies Vegeta returning yet again.
No, it absolutely matters. Because arbitrarily taking one issue out of a story arc and then declaring the plot bad because things in that ONE issue don't play out how you expected them to is asinine. I could go back to the Saiyan Arc and take the chapter where Goku's Spirit Bomb fails to kill Vegeta and then do exactly what you're doing. But I won't, because that ignores a lot of context that come in the chapters afterward.
I don't think I need to explain that to any further degree.
You need one of two things to keep audience investment.
1. A well written story and/or likeable character(s).
2. A gimmick or trope that doesn't wear out its welcome. (see fan-service and ecchi series)
Keep that stuff on youtube, bro. I don't need arbitrary story checklists for what constitutes a "good" story thrown at me. Get this "every story needs" shit out of your head and you'll open yourself up to a vast ocean of art. Only the most commercial products tend to religiously adhere to these checklists, like dumb Marvel movies or modern Star Wars films.
But I digress. Even if we ignore that your "checklist" is conceptually complete garbage and antithetical to the very nature of art and just assess each individual point you made on their own merit we still run into issues.
Define "well-written". You can't, because that differs from person to person. Because art isn't science, and isn't objective, nor is it quantifiable. The best we can do in regard to art is come to consensuses, and that is in and of itself a dubious prospect since it was at one point public consensus that the world was flat.
Define "likable". Again, you can't, because depending on your own experiences (be it culture, race, etc), what you think is likable and what I think is likable could be worlds apart. To again use those godawful Marvel movies as an example: in Age of Ultron, Captain America decides he won't sacrifice a city, even though not sacrificing it means all of mankind dies (eventually contrivances happen in the plot to settle things for him such that everyone makes it out). Some people find that likable; I find it reprehensible.
But let's assume everyone likes the same type of people... does that mean a story where every character is designed to be an unlikable asshole should never be told, and can never be good or worthy? Do your characters have to be likable for your story to be meritorious? Those are rhetorical questions.
"Gimmick or trope" is are definable words, but to what degree? If these are needed, to what degree are they needed? Can your gimmick just be that "two people are in love and want to start a life together"? Or does it have to be bombastic and be something like "two robots are in love and want to start a life together"? The variation in suspension of disbelief there is pretty enormous.
If a rule, as claimed by you, is so open to interpretation and is so abstract, then is it even a rule to begin with?
On the matter of tropes—tropes are the tools that you use to tell a story. Every story, by virtue of being a human construct, has tropes. They can be small, or they can be large. A story cannot be told without using some form of trope. So, again, a bad rule because such an abstract and ubiquitous concept.
Open your mind, chico. But none of that has anything to do with dragonball. So let's get back to it.
This arc is giving us neither of these things.
"Us"
There are people in this very thread who like Moro. There are people who like the girls on Moro's squad. There are people who like the android guy. And so on.
Think about your points more.
It actually has been pretty damn predictable. Goku had always had some kind of power up or boost to win the day. Going all the way as far back as the original Dragon Ball. He gets nearly killed by Tao, then recovers with the help of Korrin, gets a power boost from training, comes back and beats Tao's ass. Gets nearly killed by King Piccolo, receives the Super Holy Water, comes back and wins the day.
I'm glad you can recount the plot to me.
Now address what you quoted. Rather than engage in some protracted back and forth about this, I'll get to the point. If you're that reductive about shit, then everything is predictable.
Let's look at the Goku vs Tao Pai Pai example. Goku is told some holy water will make him super strong. He seeks out Korin for that holy water. The twist is then that seeking the water is what makes you strong, and not the water itself. This made him strong enough to beat Tao PP.
The story structure there is predicated on the twist. The twist highlights the journey of the character and the development that journey forced. It also doubled down on the message that there are no shortcuts to power at the time. But you could easily ignore all that and make a reductive statement like "He gets nearly killed by Tao, then recovers with the help of Korrin, gets a power boost from training, comes back and beats Tao's ass."
The twist was the point. That's not predictable. Predictable, in this case, meaning "the plot happens exactly as it tells you it will happen". It told us about super holy water; but the super holy water was just tap water. Similar thing here. The plot told us to expect Vegeta to come in clutch, but things didn't work out exactly like we were supposed to think they'd work out.
There was no indication he was like Majin Buu and could just eat people
There is absolutely no difference between him literally eating androidman or him just draining all of androidman's powers.
He's not writing Shakespeare either.
Shakespeare was considered lowbrow in his time, dawg. His work was considered pedestrian and too palatable to commoners. But his popularity with those commoners made his work endure and we now hold him up to the degree that his name is shorthand for "literary brilliance".
Toriyama penned the most popular manga of all time, that continues to endure to this day, 24 years after he ended it. Dragonball is more popular and more culturally ubiquitous than
King Lear or
Othello, and has inspired 2 generations of mangaka who continue to create derivative works of it.
I'm not here to tell you that Toriyama is the next Shakespeare, but I am telling you that you seriously need to reconsider how you view art.
Noah wrote: ↑Mon Jul 06, 2020 9:30 pmYeah, keep telling yourself that.
Bro, if you're gonna quote me and make me get a notification, have something of substance to say. Don't be a fanboy.