Top 3 Gripes about DBSuper (Story Aspects)

[ChiefWamsutta]

I'm narrowing this down to only three gripes per user so this doesn't get overwhelming. What would you guys pick as the top three story aspects of DBSuper that you would want to change?

For me:
#1 Kibito Kai defusing randomly with the help of the Namekian Dragon Balls. Why didn't this foreshadow something? What was the point?
#2 Treating Goku like a very dumb person, moreso than usual.
#3 Ginyu coming back, easily acclimating to Tagoma's body, and changing bodies through writing.

[sintzu]

1- Freeza coming back just to get killed off again.
2- Trunks' random power ups and power levels.
3- The tournament just using Goku and Vegeta.

[precita]

1. Animation, although its gotten consistently better since the start of the Zamasu arc.

2. Too heavily focused on Goku/Vegeta. When major characters like Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Trunks/Goten are treated the same way Yamcha/Tenshinhan/Chiaotzu were back in DBZ....you know there's a problem.

[PsionicWarrior]

1. Power levels
2. Power levels
3. Power levels

Did I mention power levels lol

Oh and as a bonus #4, the blood censor is ultra lame lol

[Saikyo no Senshi]

#1 Poor schedule.

#2 Lack of good staff which results in poor storytelling. With Hatano Morio now credited as 2nd series director, I'm worried even more.

#3 Garbage music which is pretty much forgettable as hell. Even the placement is bad and makes some of the good scenes bad. Sound effects barely have any impact and due to it the battle scenes feel lifeless.

There are more problems, but these are my major gripes and sadly I don't see it changing for the good anytime soon. As for the story, nah I have no issues it's alright. Average and fun just like how Dragon Ball always was.

[Alruneia]

What would you guys pick as the top three story aspects of DBSuper that you would want to change?

Alright, I'll try to narrow down. In no particular order:
1. The changes made in Resurrection F (Gotenks, strong Tagoma) were utterly wasted (immediate fission, Ginyu).
2. Future Trunks' power-ups were ridiculous, and they should've found another way to "defeat" Zamasu than an out-of-nowhere Spirit Bomb sword slash.
3. I am so tired of the Age 779/780 timeframe. Move on already!

[SonsOfUlron21]

1. Inconsistent art

2. Goku being dumb for the sake of gags

3. Power levels specially Trunks

[Abra kadabra]

1. God ki and everything pertaining to the gods of destruction
2. Super Saiyan God
3. Super Sayain God Super Saiyan

[Ki Breaker]

1- Freeza coming back just to get killed off again.
2- Trunks' random power ups and power levels.
3- The tournament just using Goku and Vegeta.

I am seconding this for my entry

[Ajay]

1. Narrative cohesion.

I suppose my biggest gripe is that Super's arcs feel totally separate from one another. While Dragon Ball has certainly had plenty of events come from totally out of left field, they generally come after a lengthy time-skip (Radditz and Boo, for example). For the most part, the series' arcs link to one another through a tenuous link, at the very least. The hunt for the Dragon Balls began the journey, meeting Muten Roshi pushed it onwards to tournaments and whatnot. Events feel connected through adventure or the happenstance of the story (new villains appearing at tournaments). In Z, though slightly less cohesive, the group head to Namek as a result of the Saiyan arc's consequences, and Trunks' introduction is underpinned by Freeza's return. There's a sense that this is one big connected event that helps bring the elements of Toriyama's world together.

Super just doesn't have that same cohesiveness for me; its stories feel like little contained arcs with little relevance to one another. Battle of Gods into the Universe 6 tournament would have felt like a natural continuation of the story, but instead we have Freeza return out of nowhere that breaks up the narrative irredeemably. He's defeated, we have a little happy ending, and the story skips onwards straight into the arrival of Champa. Goku and Vegeta are already there training one episode after Freeza's defeat. It's just so disconnected from the events that had just occurred. The same is found with the Future Trunks arc. Regardless of whether you choose to include the Potaufeu arc or not, we're thrust right into this new story arc with zero connection to the prior events. Look at where we are now: Trunks vanishes with one hell of a depressing outcome and we're thrust off again into new episodes that feel totally disconnected.

I'm glad that Hit's likely returning to make good on the promises of the U6 arc, but much like Resurrection F sitting bang in the middle of two partner arcs, we've now got this Future Trunks arc breaking up another story. I don't expect direct continuations as stories of course do need breathing room, but I would appreciate lengthy downtime with a focus on self-improvement than these self-contained arcs. Episodes like #15-18 are great! You've got Vegeta dealing with his own issues, heading off to the train with Whis, and then Goku trying to convince Whis take him, too. You then have those fun snippets of training! They're fantastic. Give them something to work towards like Goku's first visit to Kaio's planet, and you've got yourself a great bridge-arc before the next thing rolls around.

If you'll indulge my little fan-fiction for a second: I'd have loved to have seen Goku frustrated by being forced to use something as desperate as the Kaioken against an opponent gimped by the tournament's rules. He'd then focus on bettering himself through some mini-story before Hit turns up again. Throw in scenes with Hit heading back to his own universe and show us the events that lead to him being hired again, and suddenly there's an imminent threat to prevent the aforementioned training from feeling like pointless self-improvement. Hit's employer can be the big-bad of the arc, but at least there's a real link there without a giant 20+ episode arc in the future involving a rogue Kaioshin from nowhere. Link these stories, damn it!

I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. I do actually enjoy the arcs on their own, and I think they'd make great films, but therein lies the issue. They're written like films and they just don't work when placed after one another in a TV series that's ultimately supposed to be telling a coherent story.

2. Goku's Character.

I feel like it's been totally beaten to death at this point, but Goku's absurdly exaggerated character is embarrassing and hard to stomach, at times. Toriyama shouldn't need to be involved to write the character as the character. Your spin-off promotional manga should not be outshining your main product. It shouldn't work like that.

3. Lack of Explanation.

Unlike some parts of the fandom, I'm not losing my mind seeing Trunks achieving these absurd power-ups out of nowhere. I'm actually totally fine with that, as without them, you significantly limit the character's inclusion in the story. What I'm absolutely not okay with is a total lack of explanation as to what on earth I'm seeing on screen. I don't know what that bizarre yellow and blue aura meant, and I have no idea what Trunks and Vegeta's training really brought about! They're thrown into the story and we're supposed to just accept that that's a thing that's happening. Not okay with me.

I think the most egregious example is Black's scythe slicing through time/space/universes (?!?). I mean, really, what are the chances of that ever being explained? The character outright says he has no idea what it is. Helpful, great, fantastic. Thanks. Terrific writing, there!

--

In spite of that, I'm still watching each week. I'm still moderately enjoying the show from week to week, but man, it's hard to step back and actually look at the show as a whole with anything but disappointment. Its troublesome storytelling, horrific production, and mediocre score are so not what I wanted from the return of such a great series. A few instances of great just don't outweigh all the bad, sadly.

[ekrolo2]

Your spin-off promotional manga should not be outshining your main product. It shouldn't work like that.

The Star Wars problem in a nutshell.

[Lord Beerus]

1) Not taking the time to explain half of the shit that happens.

That is the biggest issue I have with Super. The general vague nature of the of the narrative. Dragon Ball's never had a detailed story, and the world building itself isn't all it's cracked up to be, but with Super the writers seem more than often contempt to just take the option of not bothering to provide any kind of detail or background or tidbit, especially in scenarios where it could desperately need it. Everything they did in Resurrection F retelling (except the ending) reeked of laziness. Vegeta becoming a Super Saiyan Blue is the biggest offender of this. The method in which the form was attained was very intriguing and unique within the universe of Dragon Ball itself. I mean, combining two transformations together to essentially create a unique, and in a way "ultimate" form for your own was quite unprecedented in the franchise itself and could open the door the further possibilities of the Super Saiyan transformations we never knew were possible. It could have also widened the approach for how we view Ki as whole and would have made Whis' training all the mystical. But instead they just choose the cop-out of Vegeta just training to attain the form. No expansion of the Super Saiyan God transformation. No deeper look in the structure of Ki. No further insight in the mechanics of the Super Saiyan form. Nothing. Just Vegeta doing some push ups, sit ups and crunches and he's becomes SSJB.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucckk that.

Not taking the opportunity to properly introduce Jaco was also a major sin. The Resurrection F movie gets a pass because they wouldn't have enough time to fill in his entire backstory, but the Super re-telling has no excuse. I really didn't like how he was thrown into the plot without any wider context of how he fits into the story and what his integral role and relation is to the cast in-universe is. And this instance is even more inexcusable when Super has a perfectly well structured and paced manga that could have been turned into a mini-arc while also expanding of the Galactic Patrol to make Jaco seem more in place with the Dragon Ball universe when he debuts rather than just a character who was shoehorned into the plot the make up the numbers for when Freeza's and his army invaded Earth. It's all so jarring that people are supposed to take on face value Jaco's character when, as far as those who haven't read Jaco The Galactic Patrolman, when Super has provided so little and barely goes into more detail of just how he supposedly weaves in the lore of the story other than he works for the Galactic Patrol and knows Bulma's sister. Hell, the fact that Bulma has a sister that seemingly only Jaco, outside of Tight's family, knows about just makes the lack of depth into Jaco's own character all the more disappointing and lazy. There was perfectly good material available to used to expand on that arc, something that arc so desperately needed it at the time, but they just ignored it.

And that's not even taking the plot tumour that is God ki. We still don't know how God ki works or when Goku and Vegeta use God ki outside of Super Saiyan Blue. Hell, the entire utilisation and implementation of God Ki is fucked up in the show. Whis' training in the matter of how to tap into and utilise Godly Ki itself is very vague. All Goku and Vegeta were taught about is not leaking their ki and controlling it to level where they could raise their strength greatly. That's it. Then they were sent into a Whis' staff which seemed to have an environment that simulated God ki and they trained in there. After that, there is no further elaboration or exactly when or how you tap into God ki. Honestly, it's the writers of Super that royally fucked up on this occasion because there is no consistency on how or God ki even works, which lead to the major inconsistency of Super Saiyan Blue is truly attained. Goku's explanation to Freeza of how he obtained Super Saiyan Blue outright contradicts what Vegeta went through. Goku outright states when he became a Super Saiyan Blue, that the form was the result of a “Saiyan who’s a Super Saiyan with the power of Super Saiyan God”. Then when Vegeta attains the form, Goku explains that he just trained to achieve Super Saiyan Blue. Which make no sense because there is no indication he actually attained God ki prior to him transforming into a Super Saiyan Blue. The anime seriously treads on its own toes, something that happens in the narrative of episodes quite frequently, on this regard because you either have to believe that Goku lost his Godly ki after fighting Beerus, which is never implied, and gained it back after training in Whis' staff or that Goku was full of shit when explaining how he achieved Super Saiyan Blue. If they were truly tapping into God ki at any stage prior to to facing Golden Freeza, then they should have had a some kind of different aura when either sparring with each other, fighting Whis together or while they were in Whis' staff. But they didn't on any of those occasions. So it just makes figuring out whether Goku and Vegeta are tapping into God Ki in their base form or any SSJ form that isn't Super Saiyan Blue bloody impossible. God Ki has made things insanely fucking confusing.

There have always been instances in the franchise where events have happened and forms had been achieved off-screen and you think to yourself, "How did that happened?" But would could always look back the manga or anime and in most instances you'd get a throwaway line or flashback or filler moment that could at least provide some form of context to the fill the void of information that was needed to understand the scenario. And if all that fail, there's the guidebooks. In Super, we barely, if at all, get that. And any explanation we do get just makes thing more complicated. And it really frustrates me. Some episodes really make me feel like I'm watching GT again.

2) The inconsistent animation. This show is such a roller coaster visually. There are some very high points in terms of animation and art style, but the low points are just... woof. Granted, this issue goes back to the fact that show had no real pre-production. The staff basically had half the amount of time to get their shit together for a potential long running series. That's just crazy.

3) The music. Some of the tracks are great, other tracks are just terrible and rest are just... there. The definitive mixed bag.

[Shuby]

1. Narrative cohesion.

I suppose my biggest gripe is that Super's arcs feel totally separate from one another. While Dragon Ball has certainly had plenty of events come from totally out of left field, they generally come after a lengthy time-skip (Radditz and Boo, for example). For the most part, the series' arcs link to one another through a tenuous link, at the very least. The hunt for the Dragon Balls began the journey, meeting Muten Roshi pushed it onwards to tournaments and whatnot. Events feel connected through adventure or the happenstance of the story (new villains appearing at tournaments). In Z, though slightly less cohesive, the group head to Namek as a result of the Saiyan arc's consequences, and Trunks' introduction is underpinned by Freeza's return. There's a sense that this is one big connected event that helps bring the elements of Toriyama's world together.

Super just doesn't have that same cohesiveness for me; its stories feel like little contained arcs with little relevance to one another. Battle of Gods into the Universe 6 tournament would have felt like a natural continuation of the story, but instead we have Freeza return out of nowhere that breaks up the narrative irredeemably. He's defeated, we have a little happy ending, and the story skips onwards straight into the arrival of Champa. Goku and Vegeta are already there training one episode after Freeza's defeat. It's just so disconnected from the events that had just occurred. The same is found with the Future Trunks arc. Regardless of whether you choose to include the Potaufeu arc or not, we're thrust right into this new story arc with zero connection to the prior events. Look at where we are now: Trunks vanishes with one hell of a depressing outcome and we're thrust off again into new episodes that feel totally disconnected.

I'm glad that Hit's likely returning to make good on the promises of the U6 arc, but much like Resurrection F sitting bang in the middle of two partner arcs, we've now got this Future Trunks arc breaking up another story. I don't expect direct continuations as stories of course do need breathing room, but I would appreciate lengthy downtime with a focus on self-improvement than these self-contained arcs. Episodes like #15-18 are great! You've got Vegeta dealing with his own issues, heading off to the train with Whis, and then Goku trying to convince Whis take him, too. You then have those fun snippets of training! They're fantastic. Give them something to work towards like Goku's first visit to Kaio's planet, and you've got yourself a great bridge-arc before the next thing rolls around.

If you'll indulge my little fan-fiction for a second: I'd have loved to have seen Goku frustrated by being forced to use something as desperate as the Kaioken against an opponent gimped by the tournament's rules. He'd then focus on bettering himself through some mini-story before Hit turns up again. Throw in scenes with Hit heading back to his own universe and show us the events that lead to him being hired again, and suddenly there's an imminent threat to prevent the aforementioned training from feeling like pointless self-improvement. Hit's employer can be the big-bad of the arc, but at least there's a real link there without a giant 20+ episode arc in the future involving a rogue Kaioshin from nowhere. Link these stories, damn it!

I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. I do actually enjoy the arcs on their own, and I think they'd make great films, but therein lies the issue. They're written like films and they just don't work when placed after one another in a TV series that's ultimately supposed to be telling a coherent story.

2. Goku's Character.

I feel like it's been totally beaten to death at this point, but Goku's absurdly exaggerated character is embarrassing and hard to stomach, at times. Toriyama shouldn't need to be involved to write the character as the character. Your spin-off promotional manga should not be outshining your main product. It shouldn't work like that.

3. Lack of Explanation.

Unlike some parts of the fandom, I'm not losing my mind seeing Trunks achieving these absurd power-ups out of nowhere. I'm actually totally fine with that, as without them, you significantly limit the character's inclusion in the story. What I'm absolutely not okay with is a total lack of explanation as to what on earth I'm seeing on screen. I don't know what that bizarre yellow and blue aura meant, and I have no idea what Trunks and Vegeta's training really brought about! They're thrown into the story and we're supposed to just accept that that's a thing that's happening. Not okay with me.

I think the most egregious example is Black's scythe slicing through time/space/universes (?!?). I mean, really, what are the chances of that ever being explained? The character outright says he has no idea what it is. Helpful, great, fantastic. Thanks. Terrific writing, there!

--

In spite of that, I'm still watching each week. I'm still moderately enjoying the show from week to week, but man, it's hard to step back and actually look at the show as a whole with anything but disappointment. Its troublesome storytelling, horrific production, and mediocre score are so not what I wanted from the return of such a great series. A few instances of great just don't outweigh all the bad, sadly.

Damn Ajay, reading this feels like Super broke you. I think your number 1 has to do with that Super is set between the end of Buu arc and the tournament at the end of Z. They try to compact as much as they can in such a narrow time-slot , you can't even skip times like Z did and already Super and the end of Z can't co-exist unless they retcon the ending. I agree with the lack of explanation. I am tired of fans making headcanon videos or explanation, that by itself should a vadlid point that Super has a shitty writting.

[Shuby]

1. Some scenes are dragged ass, mostly filler episodes or slice of life episodes and the most important episodes are rushed as hell, so there is a inconsistency in the pacing.
2. Art and animation, although greatly improved, it's still not at the same level of consistency as Z was.
3.Almost not explaining jack shit.
4 Not following up the established rules they set, for example: Hit's time-skip yet Goku in his kaioken could moves through time, i guess?? Hit literally stopped time so how?
5 Even if they explain shit, it just raises more questions. Like how could Frieza attain such much power by just beating up Togoma, who would be 1/1000 or something of Frieza's power.

[namekiansaiyan]

1. Tagoma getting a crazy power up which males no sense but other characters for some reason can't

2. Wasting 3 characters slots on universe 7's team

3. Characters not getting involved in the Future Trunks when before even though they could not do much they still went to the battlefield.

1. Animation, although its gotten consistently better since the start of the Zamasu arc.

2. Too heavily focused on Goku/Vegeta. When major characters like Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Trunks/Goten are treated the same way Yamcha/Tenshinhan/Chiaotzu were back in DBZ....you know there's a problem.

Trunks/Goten are not Major characters.

[Nano]

Super is just bad in general. When its over, people will hate it just they hate GT.

1. Inconsistencies everywhere you turn.

2. The entire Trunks/Zamasu Saga.

3. Fillers. So when did that start happening?

[dbs fanboy]

Ok, here's mine.

1.The RoF arc.
I think that is pretty clear that i disliked the arc and also the movie to an extend (despite loving ssgss).
But my issue has nothing to do to the quality of the arc itself, but with how it affects the series overall. I've read a lot of comments about super's lack of organic story telling, and i think that super does have organic storytelling but the RoF arc kinda makes things weird in this aspect. Ok, first we have the BoG arc where both Beerus and Whis are introduced and the db lore/universe is expanded, after that one , we have the tournament that it's connected with BoG. Why?, because in this arc, Beerus visited the Earth, the fact that this happened is what allowed the tournament to even exist in the first place, and what allowed our friends to fight in it and thanks to this we were introduced to Champa (Beerus's brother), and other characters that would play a role in the future, the super dragon balls are also introduced as well. After the tournament, Trunks came back from the future. Why?, because Black was creating Havoc, and as we currently know, Black came from the main timeline, where he stole Goku's body. And how was he able to do that? by taking the super dragon balls, and how did he knew about them? because he watched the tournament via kamitube and at the same time he got even more triggered by seeing a mortal using God ki. But it doesn't end here, if Zamasu took the time ring in the first place, was because the super dragon balls were already used by the time he wanted to borrow their power.

Everything is connected here, both the Black Goku arc and the tournament couldn't have taken place without the BoG arc.
And now i ask, where does RoF fit in here? This arc is the odd one out, it's the only "self contained arc" (without counting filler) it's existence has no relevance with the rest of Super's plot, and it's an arc that could have easily taken place in any moment in the original series or even in GT.

This hurts super's consitence overall, and the fact, that the quality of the arc/movie itself wasn't "spectacular" doesn't really help.

2.Wasted potential

There are plenty of times where super could have easily done something great by following one determined route, but instead doing this, it fucks things up in a way i end up facepalming for an hour.

Lets took a look at RoF (again). In this arc Tagoma was kept alive (while he died in the movie), this made things interesting because Tagoma was a good character, having some development during the short amount of time we saw him. But what did Toei decided to do?, change Tagoma for boring Ginyu, choosing nostalgia over good writing. But hold on, RoF isn't the only arc with this issue, the same thing happened for example in the Champa arc (which i loved a lot) with the order of the fights. Piccolo could have been the first one iinstead of Goku or much better, instead making Buu fail the test, he could have passed it and fought, being the first time we saw him acting like a Z fighter in super. But oh well, i think that it's much better to have Goku be the first one to fight and make a gag with Buu not passing the test. Sigh

The same thing happened with the filler of the Copy Vegeta arc. At first i was excited because i thought that Trunks and Goten would be in the spotlight, taking care of the problem themselves trying to defeat the "water thing". This could have been interesting and it could have served as foreshadowing for Trunks future development by making him a little bit more mature in those episodes. But oh shit, it's much better to suddenly make Goku fight a copy of Vegeta so this could be like a reference to Z, so the fans would praise it because nostalgia is totally cool and much better than good writing. YAY!!!!!!

And this is another problem of super, until the unexpected ending of the Black Goku arc, it didn't felt like it had the balls to do something new, to give us an incredible twist, trying to not leave the comfort zone. And even after being broken (in a good way) by 67, i still have doubts about if super has finally overcome this issue or not.

3.No esplanations

Things such as Trunks new transformation are left unexplained like if they weren't important (when they are), and when something is explained it's usually done in the most vague/basic way possible (ssgss transformation/Black Goku's time travel).

And this is god damn annoying, and it hurts a lot, seeing things like this happen in a show that i like from the franchise that i've been following since i was a little kid.

[Rubens]

So far, I agree with what has been pointed out. Personally, I find the most painful:

1) The entire RoF arc. Only the first episodes are truly worth watching and the only ones I enjoy in this arc since they're a rather successfull attempt to tie up the previous arc with this one, except it fails miserably when the story kicks in, up until its conclusion. Freeza didn't deserve this, it was worse than his stay in hell. Or Ginyu, Vegeta should have squashed him back on Namek.

2) Lack of explanations. Starting with the whole introduction to godly ki and the ssj god/ssj blue transformations, which were only given very vague notions of it, up to Trunks's transformations, aswell as his already great power - but this is even worse, considering they weren't explained at all. In DB/DBZ the transformations/forms, power-ups and strength differences were very clear (or the very least, somewhat clear).

3) Inconssistent plot points. As an example, the future trunks arc/Zamasu arc was amazing but the final episodes were completly all over the place, which ruined its conclusion (starting from the several time travelling retreats and retrys, up until the very end on how Trunks defeats Zamasu). Its clearly visible that they're directed by different people, who seemed to not bother to try to follow the lead left by the latter. I know I'm not the one to judge their work, but it looked amateurish. And the conclusion of Trunks's arc was incredibly depressive. I'm mostly referring to the most recent arc because the ending was a big letdown for me, so I apologize for not bringind up better arguments.

As final note, I don't hate Goku's character but I agree he should behave a bit more maturely, or at least not coming out so different from the previous series. It's probably the fact the he reminds me the Goku from the early Dragon Ball that makes me feel empathy with the character. I'm not sure if this is the Goku Toriyama envisioned in DBZ, but even in the 23rd TB arc Goku was much more mature than he is in Super. Goku could very well still be a naive knucklehead without being portrayed this childishly.