Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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Seekeroftruth
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Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Seekeroftruth » Tue Jul 05, 2022 3:26 pm

Not to spoil too much but the series keeps pulling material from DBZ and adding minor twist to them. Hell just look at the latest movie which borrows a lot of material from the Android saga. Even most of the transformations are lazy. A lot of them are just colour swapping of the character's hair with nothing else distinct of them.

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Anyone feel like their trying to pull too much on nostalgia bate and there is very little creativity in the series? I wish just once we can get a new movie that doesn't revive a past villain from DBZ. Hell, I bet the next movie big bad will be kid buu brought back as golden buu.

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Last edited by Seekeroftruth on Tue Jul 05, 2022 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Xeno Goku Black » Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:30 pm

Not really. The transformations in DBZ for the Saiyans weren't that creative. For Super Saiyan his hair stood up and turned blonde. Then after that Super Saiyan Grade 2, Super Saiyan Grade 3, Super Saiyan 2 and Super Saiyan 3 were all pretty much the same thing.

People have to argue whether it's Super Saiyan 1 or 2 being used because there's hardly any difference between them.

The nostalgia and bringing old villains back creates interest which leads to money being made. Resurrection F and Broly made a vast amount more than Super Hero because of it. Yeah it brought back Cell but mainly new villains were advertised.

They brought back Trunks and it was the most successful in terms of TV rating.

It has nothing to with not having ideas. The most successful movies and successful anime arc happened to be ones where old characters were brought back. It's what fans like so naturally it's why they do it.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by ChronoTwigger » Tue Jul 05, 2022 5:03 pm

It's hard to near impossible at this stage to write something different.
You risk to:
A] break the toy
B] kill the mood
C] generate terrible fanfictions
D] write something old again, just with different outfits

It's Dragon Ball: Goku become stronger, get a new form, kick asses, big laughters. It will be like this until the end of Time.
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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Shorty GZ2 » Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:34 am

You/We already know the answer to this question

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Trouser » Wed Jul 06, 2022 4:39 am

Yes. Everything after Battle of Gods relies on nostalgia and old concepts. Dragon Ball Super was creatively bankrupt from the start.
Now, using old concepts is not a bad thing. Nostalgia factor isn't bad either. The execution matters, and if it comes to it, Super falls apart.
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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by SouthoftheForest » Wed Jul 06, 2022 7:59 am

I agree. I do think however that Super added a few nice things to the lore:
- Beerus, Whis
- Super Saiyan God / Super Saiyan Blue
- Universe 6 vs 7
- Bringing back Freeza as a recurring antagonist
- A new interpretation of Broly, as a potential third character in the Goku/Vegeta rivalry.
- Future Trunks and Zamasu

From the Tournament of Power onwards, things started going downhill. I thought ToP could have been great, but to me it didn't feel fresh anymore after the earlier tournament between U6 and U7. The Moro and Granollah Arc are not that interesting to me. It's just non stop battling, with little plot progression.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by MasenkoHA » Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:34 pm

While Dragon Ball Super does bank on nostalgia a lot some of you are really overselling it. The universe 6 tournament and Tournament of Power arc pretty much do their own thing (Kale being a deliberate callback to Broly not withstanding). The Zamasu arc mostly does its own thing even if its relying heavily on nostalgia for certain elements like Future Trunks and Vegetto and bringing the mafuba back. But its not a remake of the Android saga or anything.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by PurestEvil » Mon Jul 11, 2022 8:50 pm

the problem isn't that the ideas of DBS are unoriginal original or "not creative", it's that their executions were flawed (can't comment on the latest film because I have not seen it yet)
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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Geraldo » Fri Jul 15, 2022 7:28 pm

YES. We could have gone outside of Universe 7 with Super Saiyan God being utilized more rather than jumping to Super Saiyan Blue by the time which Resurrection 'F' happened, but instead we have gotten Frieza Saga 2.0 and the rest is a sad and untapped history.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Majin Man 101 » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:19 am

Dragon Ball Super may be creatively bankrupt, but there is definitely some potential to be had here.

I don’t think anyone would argue if Cooler was brought into the story to interact with Freeza. It would be such an amazing exchange and the sibling rivalry could be a lot of fun.

Also, there is also some potential to have another go at some of the ideas presented in Dragon Ball GT such as the shadow dragons and Super Saiyan 4.

There are some great movie villains that would
Be nice to revisit, such as Lucifer, Janemba, and Bojack.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by SupremeKai25 » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:12 pm

I don't know how some people can claim this when Zamasu exists. He is pretty much the most original and unique concept for a Dragon Ball villain ever.

First of all, he's a Supreme Kai. That already makes him unique, because DB villains are usually evil monsters/robots, meanwhile Zamasu is member of a species of Gods who are known to be benevolent and kind. That already makes him special. He is not some pre-established warmonger (Vegeta, Frieza, Old Broly), or robot created for mass destruction (Androids, Cell, Baby), or monster created for mass destruction (Majin Buu, Omega Shenron).

Jiren, Broly, and Granolah are also unique main antagonists who cannot even be truly defined as evil. Meanwhile, all of DBZ's main antagonists are very much evil, including Vegeta.

The entire arc of Goku Black gets criticized for "rehashing the Cell saga" but 1) it introduced a new means of time travel in the Time Rings and 2) it connected Super to DBZ in a very creative way, as Trunks' abuse of time travel back in DBZ is brought up and presented as a major justification behind Zamasu's motives.

By the way, I focused on Zamasu and the FT arc because it's clearly my favourite part of Super, but I could also mention how DBS pretty much laid out the hierarchy of the Gods as we know it, introducing Zeno, the Grand Priest, the Destroyers, and the Angels. It also introduced the larger Multiverse, and each Universe has its own unique trait or characteristic (2 is the universe of love, 3 is the universe of science, 4 is the universe of deceit, and so on). So, even on the world-building aspect, DBS expanded the franchise significantly.

Then people simultaneously complain that there are too many tournaments, but 1) tournaments were an integral part of the original DB, so it's nice to see them come back and 2) it's pretty original to have tournaments between entirely different universes, and the ToP was a battle royale of 80 fighters, which is unprecedented in DB.

There's nothing wrong with reintroducing characters and material from the past, but Super is unique because it also does different things with them. Another obvious example is Frieza, who was reintroduced and turned into a protagonist for the first time.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Koitsukai » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:22 pm

I'd say the movies do rely on nostalgia and old concepts that are reimagined or expanded upon. The anime, specially during the ToP, did the same thing, which isn't bad but it was done too many times, perhaps.

Toriyama brought Freeza and Cell back, and embraced Broly and Gogeta, basically retold Z and its most popular movie characters. DBS brought a few characters as well, but also did interesting things with them.

Wouldn't say it's bankrupt, but Toriyama sure isn't coming up with new ideas for antagonists, just rehashing his old ones, playing it safe, I guess, not trying new stuff when it comes to who's on the other side. He sure gets out of his confort zone when it comes to the protagonists, with new forms and techniques.
Even though he is just bringing back old villains, and that is kinda boring, at least with Broly it was well executed, and apparently that's also the case for SH.

The manga does try new stuff, but the execution is not as good as one would expect. Most of the arcs of the anime and the manga are quite original and good, I'd say all of them are original ideas, but not all of them are good.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by JulieYBM » Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:25 pm

I don't like the term 'creatively bankrupt' because I feel like it's only ever applied to surface layer things like transformations or homages and such. Ultimately, I feel like criticism like that gets lost in the weeds of declaring the entire premise unsalvageable rather than a unique opportunity to create an exciting work using elements both familiar and not.
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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Geraldo » Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:35 am

The fact that moro was hyped and promoted as some kind of an "extremely skillful wizard", yet his only shtick was to do exactly what Androids 19 and 20 have done 27 years prior (energy absorption), should tell you that DBS has nothing to offer creatively.

Why couldn't Toyotaro and Toriyama think of something like having him a powerful anxiety trigger attack against his enemies? Like locking their mindsets on their most inner fears and letting them weaken while fighting horrible imaginations which lowers their stamina and make them easier to confront?
Why couldn't they write him a "surface manipulation" technique which causes his rivals to feel sick to their stomachs and throw up while he takes advantage of the situation and stomps them?
Why couldn't they write a spell that causes characters' muscles to inflate and crush the bones of his target?

The answer is written at the end of my first paragraph. :/

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Mac
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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Mac » Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:01 pm

I think it has potential still to do some original things with the series, but it's eternally locked into Goku/Vegeta punch a guy time. So I know it'll never deliver on 99% of the more interesting lore it established.

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Re: Is DB: Super creatively bankrupt

Post by Helios518 » Sat Aug 20, 2022 12:19 am

Yeah, I agree that DBS has huge potential but it seems to never deliver on even a quarter of it. No expansion on the Freeza Race. No elaboration on the Namekian Book of Legends. The other universes are barely known besides their strongest fighters. Seriously, BoG brought the interesting premises of other universes and yet, DBS is somehow shoehorning ways to make the big bad be from U7.
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