JazzMazz wrote:
I have to disagree with you about episode 97, it was an absolutely horrendous start to the tournament. None of the action felt at all connected, there was ridiculous amount of re-used animation, the storyboarding was pretty abysmal, and direction was equally as awful. For me and a lot of others, it was an absolutely horrendously dull way to begin the tournament. To its benefit though, it at least gave the arena some of scale which the manga has struggled to capture. Otherwise, the manga just thrashes it out and no, I don't think seeing someone I don't particularly care for like Basil kicking peoples asses is at all interesting, especially considering the actual direction for the fight just makes me completely unable to care about any of the conflicts in the episode.
While i agree with those criticisms on the episode,what this episode did despite those problems is managing to capture the feeling of a battle royale really well.
Chaos,lots of battles(it even had Hit and Basil tag teaming the Narirama who went on the offense) and skirimishes happening on screen and most importantly make it feel balanced on the eliminations which made it a non U7/U6 wanking fest(sadly that stops after the first episode).
You may not care about Basil and thats understandable but Basil on this episode had a role and action of what people were expecting from a battle royale of this scale.
Maybe in the anime defeating opponents is a clear progression of the plot, but the manga has shown that it doesn't really care about the eliminations of useless competitors, with character being eliminated off-panel. My question to you is, should the screen panel devoted to these characters have been greater than their overall importance or participation in the story? I would say no, especially for the manga, which has less time and space to tell a fulfilling narrative, so having characters whose inevitable contributions are negligible to the main plot isn't necessary the best idea, especially if its distracting from something more interesting. With that said, I don't necessarily agree with how suddenly they were both swept under the rug, I would have at least preferred to see them just stick around and fight for a bit instead of being ceremoniously eliminated, which isn't ideal.
Their importance in the story depens on the writer,if Krillin/Tien does not ring out anyone or assist their teamates then yeah they are useless competitors,we already wasted more than enough screen panel for Frost who only defeated fodders only get ringed out like a fodder as well,so clearly screen time is not the issue here but rather the apathy of using the humans.
The advantage of a battle royale like this is that you have characters of different tiers of strength and due to the chaos of a setting like this you can have the main cast fight people in their league and have them contribute to the plot of the tournament,which again is eliminating others.
If in a setting like this,the main cast still manages to have no bearing to the plot,then yes the writer is using the characters wrong and thats a bad thing itself,using the excuse 'we need to rush the fodder battles' is just an excuse for writer's shortcomings since even Yamcha vs Saibamen of all things had a proper battle.
Also lets not forget the point is the battles,1 shotting people is not much of an one and is not interesting to see.
Let me ask you this,would it really hurt for Tien and Krillin to eliminate a few of the fodder Frost eliminated?
No extra screen panel needed,Frost is still fodder to Freeza regardless of how much stamina he wastes 1 shotting characters who are fodder to him.
Contrary to this, I actually find Frost in the anime to be the more stupid of the two, because they actually bothered to establish his creativity,manipulativeness, cunningness and lethality in the stellar 107. In the anime, we never really get any of that from Frost, and while it does diminish his character in my opinion, it certainly makes far more sense for Frost to be duped by Freeza, who is shown to be extremely charismatic in the manga, in comparison to his anime counter-part, where he was just psychotic.
Freeza plan in the anime, is also extremely convoluted, and the most offensive thing about it, is that there really isn't a clear point to all this scheming besides eliminating a single fighter, who would pose no trouble for him what-so-ever.
Freeza went as far as personally attacking his own teamate and even tempted Frost with a new power up,in the anime they made it logical how Frost fell for it without making him too much of an idiot.
Same for Freeza since he eliminated Frost with just as much ease as his manga counterpart and without sacrificing his own teamates while still following his own agenda.
Gohan proved himself smarter and more usefull than Frost so Freeza choosed Gohan.
In the manga, you can at least rationalize why Freeza is going to such lengths. Tien and Kuririn are complete lightweights and are also completely expendable in the grand scheme of things, at one point or another, they are bound to be fodderized by a stronger warrior. They were negligible losses, considering the amount of damage he was able to inflict on other universes by earning Frosts trust far outweighs what they themselves could as fighters. Also, though Freeza is indeed far more powerful than Frost, they actually make a good point that facing decently powerful warriors in quick succession can still be extremely tiring, so facing Frost, a decently powerful warrior that would cost some stamina to beat, especially this early on where the field still has lots of top-guns like Hit, Jiren, Toppo and Dypso, isn't a particularly good idea. Freeza actually bothers to show some ingenuity by manipulating Frost into being his battering ram in defeating the warriors of the 9th universe, with him doing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, and being completely spent, that was perfect opportunity to knock him out. In contrast, Freeza's is far more convoluted and situational, and his convincing of Frost that his all fine and dandy particularly convincing, especially since Freeza doesn't make it explicitly clear that he just wants revenge on the Saiyans like he does in the anime.
Tien and Kuririn are lightweights and expendable but so are the U9 warriors Frost eliminated,you would make a point if Frost eliminated someone worthwhile or even if he was someone worthwhile himself or heck even if Tien and Krillin were at their last legs(meaning they could not contribute anymore)at the very least.
But no both the U9 members and Frost himself are fodder to Freeza.
This is a numbers game and Freeza was willing to sacrifice 3 members of his team(close to 1/3 of it)to eliminate a team that never posed any threat to him.
In the anime he contributed to his team without every slowing it or hindering it in any way.
