is this really a weakness of Super???

[Lujin_16]

i have seen a page saying that one of the weakness of Super is that they introduced less villains i mean is this really a weakness or a good
decision taking their time for the next big villain if super comes back ??...it's a problem with some dbz fans because they want it to be exactly like a
copy of Z and seeing it as a weakness if they do something different..

What do you think???

[SupremeKai25]

It wasn't a weakness. The only major villain they introduced in Super, Zamasu, was a huge success (to the point that ep. 47, which is the advent of Goku Black, had the highest ratings in all of Super!) and he is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise (astonishing, considering that he was introduced recently, I mean he's not an 'historic' villain like Frieza or Cell), so I am fine with that.

Although, thinking about it, it will be difficult to create a villain that will top Zamasu, both in terms of achievements and villainy. I mean, Zamasu wanted to commit genocide on all mortal civilisations and even his fellow Gods were not spared, and he successfully stole Goku's Body, wished for immortality, and merged with the very Universe. How could a future villain possibly beat that?! Unless the Grand Priest or even Zeno are the next villains, then I doubt the producers will come up with a more threatening and successful villain than Zamasu.

Perhaps this is my only gripe with Super. Zamasu should have been the last villain, it would have made much more sense to finish the series (or first season of the series, whatever) with the protagonists facing off against a fallen and twisted Supreme Kai to protect the entire Multiverse.

[PsionicWarrior]

it's a problem with some dbz fans because they want it to be exactly like a
copy of Z

I don't think that this is true, however there is certain expectations in regard of the original series lol

Zamasu should have been the last villain

Not necessarily, but Jiren wasn't exploited correctly in the anime IMO

[Kataphrut]

I don't think the lack of clear-cut DBZ-esque villains is an issue with Super. That archetype was already wearing thin in the original series after Freeza.

Remember, it all began with Beerus, and part of what made him feel so unique at the time was that he was a "villain" but he was also a cool dude doing his job. If you line up the five major arc villains of Super, each one does feel fairly distinct in what they're about. You have Beerus and Freeza, who need no introduction. You have Hit and Champa who are just tournament rivals. You have Zamasu, a classic villain with pretensions of depth. And you have Jiren, who IS a villain despite seeming like Hit 2.0 because he's a bigger threat (due to the higher stakes of the tournament) and the final battle is a war of ideals requiring the heroes to defeat him and "disprove" his negative philosophy to literally save the universe.

Yeah, there was only one "Big Bad" in Super, but that might have been the right decision since it gives the other antagonists more variety, plus given the show is a midquel, it would be pointless to introduce too many "Doomsday Villains" when we know the story has to end with Goku and the gang being sad and old at the end of Z.

[sintzu]

Super and modern DB as a whole aren't over so we'll get more villains and if Black is anything to go by then I think it's a good idea they're taking their time based on how well he turned out.

[JazzMazz]

it's a problem with some dbz fans because they want it to be exactly like a
copy of Z

I don't think that this is true, however there is certain expectations in regard of the original series lol

Zamasu should have been the last villain

Not necessarily, but Jiren wasn't exploited correctly in the anime IMO

I agree with PsionicWarrior here. Zamasu is fantastic villain in terms of escalation, however, I think, considering how Super begun, he was never really a natural end point.

The series started with our heroes fighting a God of Destruction, as well as by introducing the concept of fighters from other universes.(We then had the pointless Golden Freeza arc, which really served no purpose narratively, other than to demonstrate how our characters have progressed since BOG, which is pretty much the bear minimum for progressing a story in Dragonball).

We then had a tournament, which pitted our heroes up against the strongest mortals from another universe, which also served to hype up a bigger tournament.

Our heroes then confronted a mad Kaioshin from another universe, that provided the ultimate challenge for our heroes, by using Goku's body and power against them(which combined with augmented growth, made him an even deadlier foe). By the end of the arc, our heroes have faced and overcome a supreme deity.

The universe survival arc however, still managed to logically escalate the story, by having it be a tournament set up with the strongest mortals from multiple univereses, some of which even capable of being God of Destruction, and Jiren even possessing a power that surpasses that of the Gods, which results in Goku learning an ability that also allows him to step over the state of the Gods that they had achieved way back in BOG.

[AnimeNation101]

I’d say that we had too many Tournaments where nothing really plot-heavy happened and the status quo never changed or the result of the arc didn’t have any repercussions or impact of the world of db. In other words, basically nothing has changed. It would have been a great idea to have U6 win and move U7’s Earth to U6 BUT NOPE. How about how by the end of the T.o.P, everyone was brought back? This basically makes the whole arc kind of skip-able because everything went right back to how it was before it started. You could just tell how many people were dying for a real villain in the T.o.P with all these Zamasu is in Future Zeno theories or the Grand Priest and/or angels are evil theories or how someone will interrupt the tournamnet theories or that Freeza will win and make some crazy wish theories.

[Grimlock]

it's a problem with some dbz fans because they want it to be exactly like a
copy of Z and seeing it as a weakness if they do something different..

Well, if in order to have a plot, to have something going on, it has to be "a copy of Z" then so be it. It's better than tournaments after tournaments, where in Dragon Ball they don't have anything going on besides fights (and the fact that Goku and his team will always win if the stakes seem high). Universe Survival saga was the perfect chance to hold a tournament and end it with something really serious afterwards, but nope...

[Lord Beerus]

No.

I think a story should be defined by how well written an antagonist/villain is, as supposed to just how many they have to offer.

[KinguKurimuzon]

On the contrary, they actually introduced a lot of new potential villains/antagonists, they just blew them all on two different tournament arcs (out of Super's three non-movie retelling arcs). Characters like Hit, the U6 Saiyans, the Pride Troopers, etc, could've had their own full stories, but instead the writers tried condensing all of them into just two arcs. Hell, even the Zamasu arc was such a clusterfuck of ideas that you probably could've split Black and Zamasu into separate characters with their own arcs. I think the lack of villains, or rather the lack of traditional Dragon Ball arcs, is a weakness of Super because they could've gotten so much more mileage out of these new characters. There's so much potential for stories with these new ideas, but they wasted them all on absolutely nothing. Maybe they'll do more with them when/if Super comes back on TV after the movie, but I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch.

[sunsetshimmer]

The weakness is that it simply had only one original arc - Zamasu arc.
2 movie retellings and 2 tournaments in 131 ep long series.

Of course having less villains is connected with it in some way, because the only real villain was Zamasu. It's hard to call Hit or Jiren a villains when they were simply final opponents in tournaments. They are the same kind of villain Tien was.
And since Beerus and Golden Frieza were movie retellings then we can't count them as something DBS introduced.

And probably no one take Watagash or Copy-Vegeta seriously.

[namekiansaiyan]

I think Black is a bad antagonist and he is was the only new villain so I don't think it is a weakness.

[Forte224]

The weakness is that it simply had only one original arc - Zamasu arc.
2 movie retellings and 2 tournaments in 131 ep long series.

How are the 2 tournament arcs not considered original? They both introduced new characters we'd never seen before and new abilities for the main cast, as well as a new story. They weren't retellings like the movie arcs.

[sunsetshimmer]

The weakness is that it simply had only one original arc - Zamasu arc.
2 movie retellings and 2 tournaments in 131 ep long series.

How are the 2 tournament arcs not considered original? They both introduced new characters we'd never seen before and new abilities for the main cast, as well as a new story. They weren't retellings like the movie arcs.

They were still just a torunaments.
And U7 vs U6 was regular tournament.
Tournament of Power had fresh rules and that's it.
It's still just a long arc about everyone fighting each other. There is no real plot there. You watch fights on the same scenery for 30 or more episodes.
We already had enough of tournaments in DB.
Actually, DBS had 3 tournaments, because there was short U7 vs U9 tournament. So yeah, Universe Survival arc looked like this:
Short tourament -> Goku fight every friend he meet -> Long tournament

[Forte224]

The weakness is that it simply had only one original arc - Zamasu arc.
2 movie retellings and 2 tournaments in 131 ep long series.

How are the 2 tournament arcs not considered original? They both introduced new characters we'd never seen before and new abilities for the main cast, as well as a new story. They weren't retellings like the movie arcs.

They were still just a torunaments.
And U7 vs U6 was regular tournament.
Tournament of Power had fresh rules and that's it.
It's still just a long arc about everyone fighting each other. There is no real plot there. You watch fights on the same scenery for 30 or more episodes.
We already had enough of tournaments in DB.
Actually, DBS had 3 tournaments, because there was short U7 vs U9 tournament. So yeah, Universe Survival arc looked like this:
Short tourament -> Goku fight every friend he meet -> Long tournament

They were still original arcs with original stories that never existed before. I'm failing to see your logic here. And if seeing enough tournaments in Dragon Ball is a legitimate complaint, then I could complain that I've seen enough new villains in DB and DBZ, and therefore the Zamasu arc is not original. No real plot, just another bad guy that our heroes have to fight and get a new level of Super Saiyan to fight him.

[sunsetshimmer]

They were still original arcs with original stories that never existed before. I'm failing to see your logic here. And if seeing enough tournaments in Dragon Ball is a legitimate complaint, then I could complain that I've seen enough new villains in DB and DBZ, and therefore the Zamasu arc is not original. No real plot, just another bad guy that our heroes have to fight and get a new level of Super Saiyan to fight him.

Except Zamasu arc had more than fighting. The same goes for other arcs from previous series.
Cell saga had tournament. But before that we had many other things, like 19&Gero, then 16,17 and 18, then all the episodes with chasing or evading Cell. And i still think it's the worst Z saga overall.

Buu saga also had tournament, but it wasn't major point in plot and resulted in many different stories that happened later.
Even that stupid theory about evil Daishinkan stopping tournament would be better honestly.

Just ask yourself.
Would you watch entire series with different sagas?
And would you watch entire series with only tournaments?

You simply can do more interesting things in arcs with actual evolving plot. Zamasu arc had travelling in time, planning, trying to prove that Zamasu is evil, there was even episode about Trunks visiting Gohan (best DBS episode to me).

You can't even remember what was in which episode of tournament of power.
And the worst part is that you exactly know where it leads. Everyone knew that Jiren is final boss and that Goku will fight him. Watching all the previous episodes was completely pointless because it didn't change anything. You could pretty much skip entire arc and watch 2-3 last episodes + the special episode where Goku achieved UI Omen for the first time. You wouldn't lose anything from plot.

There is no reason to watch other episodes unless you are big fan of TATATATATA and just want to see some fights.

[Forte224]

They were still original arcs with original stories that never existed before. I'm failing to see your logic here. And if seeing enough tournaments in Dragon Ball is a legitimate complaint, then I could complain that I've seen enough new villains in DB and DBZ, and therefore the Zamasu arc is not original. No real plot, just another bad guy that our heroes have to fight and get a new level of Super Saiyan to fight him.

Except Zamasu arc had more than fighting. The same goes for other arcs from previous series.
Cell saga had tournament. But before that we had many other things, like 19&Gero, then 16,17 and 18, then all the episodes with chasing or evading Cell. And i still think it's the worst Z saga overall.

Buu saga also had tournament, but it wasn't major point in plot and resulted in many different stories that happened later.
Even that stupid theory about evil Daishinkan stopping tournament would be better honestly.

Just ask yourself.
Would you watch entire series with different sagas?
And would you watch entire series with only tournaments?

You simply can do more interesting things in arcs with actual evolving plot. Zamasu arc had travelling in time, planning, trying to prove that Zamasu is evil, there was even episode about Trunks visiting Gohan (best DBS episode to me).

You can't even remember what was in which episode of tournament of power.
And the worst part is that you exactly know where it leads. Everyone knew that Jiren is final boss and that Goku will fight him. Watching all the previous episodes was completely pointless because it didn't change anything. You could pretty much skip entire arc and watch 2-3 last episodes + the special episode where Goku achieved UI Omen for the first time. You wouldn't lose anything from plot.

That's all fine and dandy. But they still fit the definition of an original arc, because they hadn't been done before and they introduced a lot of new characters and lore and forms and techniques. Whether you find them interesting or not is irrelevant. They are, by definition, original arcs. This isn't even an argument.

[MyNiggaGoku]

In my point of view, BoG, RoF and the U6 Tournament played the part of a tutorial to the audience. An action packed and sometimes story driven tutorial to be exact, but a tutorial nonetheless. These 3 arcs establisbed new lore, characters and brand new powers for our protagonists. We were being teached about godly levels of power, the hierarchy of the gods and ofc the Super Dragon Balls. These arcs acted as a set up for the big things that were about to come.

The Goku Black & Tournament of Power arcs are what I consider the true part of Super, arcs with stories and battles that used the aforementioned things that the previous arcs establisbed. That's my personal opinion of course, but that's the way I've seen things since ToP finished.

On another note, when it comes to originality, I can't really see the problem. DB & DBZ had stories where either a big bad with secondary antagonists opposed the heroes or tournaments that saved the new strong guy for last. Super uses the same formula that its predecessors did, and you can't really blame them, since GT tried to do things completely original and completely failed to meet the fans' expectations. Super though, took the formats we were familiar with and added some original twists. It gave us a villain with an established motivation and goals from start to finish [ Zamasu] and a multi universal tournament that diverted from the usual DB tournament formats and was organised as a battle royale.

So if you ask me "do you find Super's arcs to be completely original?", my answer would be no, but I don't find them to be completely unoriginal either.