MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 4/1/24!)

[Gaffer Tape]

Gohan Doesn't Belong Here...? - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Cell Arc Part 16!

Gohan steps into the ring (that isn't there anymore) to fight Cell. I also step into a metaphorical ring to examine Gohan's role in this story up to now, as well as the events over the course of Dragon Ball that have led to this moment. Also, some robot dies.

[Soppa Saia People]

jesus it's been a while since i've read this portion of the arc, i forgot how ugly about to blow up cell is, lmao. anyway loved it was really looking forward too this one, loved your take on the gohan stuff.

[jcogginsa]

Good episode overall, very insightful on all the Gohan stuff.

While I can see why you're not particularly moved about the 16 sutff, one thing that surprised me was that you didn't bing up Mr. Satan's roll in getting the head there.

[Kid Buu]

It took 7 years for Goku to meet Goten and he still hugged him before Vegeta hugged Kid Trunks. Always thought that was funny.

Though Toriyama himself as criticized Goku as a father, so I guess it's just part of his character.

For me, Gohan transforming after someone dying is just a repeat of Goku going Super Saiyan in the previous arc.

P.S I still believe Toriyama brought back 2nd Form Cell to kill the main character as a fuck you to everyone who hated that form.

[Scsigs]

I said this in a quick comment on your video, Lance, but I never really liked how Team Four Star played Gohan's turn into Super Saiyan 2; that it was him being too much of a pansy as opposed to him being pressured into doing something that has never come naturally to him. The whole message also felt weirdly political, to which KaiserNeko was even surprised for some reason when people on Twitter pointed it out after the episode dropped. Your video & your pointing out of the stupidity of the fandom in some places & the intended meaning behind the plot points reminded me of it & I just wanted to say this. Maybe get a conversation with someone else out of it.

[Gaffer Tape]

While I can see why you're not particularly moved about the 16 sutff, one thing that surprised me was that you didn't bing up Mr. Satan's roll in getting the head there.

It is something I plan to bring up later. This script was so tightly focused on Gohan it did not flow at all to shift gears to Mr. Satan's character development, and, as I said in The Making of Dragon Ball Dissection, I never like to bring something up just for the sake of synopsis if I'm going to incorporate it into a more cohesive discussion when it's more relevant.

[Mewzard]

Talking about 16's death in part 16 does feel appropriate.

Also, jeez, I had almost forgotten how long this whole arc is until I noticed that number. I wonder how often inconsistent moments in the arc were just down to Toriyama having forgotten something he did in the nearly two years it took to get through it.

Great video as always! And looking forward to the Movie 8 episode next. A nice little shakeup before the Cell Arc wraps.

[jcogginsa]

While I can see why you're not particularly moved about the 16 sutff, one thing that surprised me was that you didn't bing up Mr. Satan's roll in getting the head there.

It is something I plan to bring up later. This script was so tightly focused on Gohan it did not flow at all to shift gears to Mr. Satan's character development, and, as I said in The Making of Dragon Ball Dissection, I never like to bring something up just for the sake of synopsis if I'm going to incorporate it into a more cohesive discussion when it's more relevant.

Fair enough, that makes a lot of sense

[RandomGuy96]

I always liked the theory that Toriyama made Cell revert to his second form to perform his most plot relevant act (killing Goku) to play a joke on his former editor who said that design looked stupid. Especially since Toriyama then makes Cell look like even more of a moron by bloating him up.

[jjgp1112]

Big thank you for affirming something I've always been saying regarding Gohan being OOC here: there's a huge difference between spontaneously flying off the handle and then being thrown out there and expected to engineer it to save everybody's lives.

[zDBZ]

While I can see why you're not particularly moved about the 16 sutff, one thing that surprised me was that you didn't bing up Mr. Satan's roll in getting the head there.

It is something I plan to bring up later. This script was so tightly focused on Gohan it did not flow at all to shift gears to Mr. Satan's character development, and, as I said in The Making of Dragon Ball Dissection, I never like to bring something up just for the sake of synopsis if I'm going to incorporate it into a more cohesive discussion when it's more relevant.

Will there be more commentary on SSJ2 in a future episode then?

I enjoyed this one quite a bit - and agreed with far more of it than I would've guessed from the title But I do think there's one more factor in Gohan's reluctance to get involved beyond the pressure. IIRC, Gohan explicitly tells Cell that, whenever he does let loose his potential, he isn't able to control himself. To me, his attitude when mentioning that is a pretty big tell - Gohan doesn't like snapping, and is afraid to do so deliberately. With reason, going by the aftermath.

[Kid Buu]

What I find funny is Gohan not wanting to fight is the fact that he trained for it. Granted, I don't think he expected to be thrown in a the fight by Goku like that, but I under what what he was expecting.

I always liked the theory that Toriyama made Cell revert to his second form to perform his most plot relevant act (killing Goku) to play a joke on his former editor who said that design looked stupid. Especially since Toriyama then makes Cell look like even more of a moron by bloating him up.

It's just so Toriyama-like that I would be surprised if this wasn't the case.

[Gaffer Tape]

(Broli, the Legendary Marketing Ploy - DBD: Burn Up!! Hot Fight, Fierce Fight, Super Violent Fight)

It's finally Broli time. And, boy, was this a hard one to make, in part because I had no idea it would end up being a nearly half-hour-long video. That's crazy! But I hope you like it.

[Soppa Saia People]

yaaaaay! i've been hyped for this for a while, especially because i saw this movie (and almost all of the movies) for the first time recently. great as always, also was the reason for having the movie poster in the background a aesthetic choice or a way to avoid copyright ?

also on the movie, cell games gohan with his original piccolo outfit is a really cute design lol.

[WittyUsername]

I’ve noticed that there seems to be a newfound appreciation for DBZ Movie 8 in recent years, which I’d have to imagine is partially owed to Toriyama providing his own spin on the character. For a while, it seemed that with the increased stigma against Broly’s popularity and overuse in the franchise, opinions on his initial movie had begun to sour throughout the 2010s.

Even though it certainly isn’t my favorite Dragon Ball movie, I’ve always thought it was one of the better movies of the initial run. Sure, the excessive fighting does overstay its welcome (which, funnily enough, is something that can also be said for the most recent film), but it still always felt like something that’s worth talking about, which can’t be said for a fair amount of these movies.

[coola]

Great video as always, while not having "why it's always me?" Kuririn still serves as gag, with that scene Oolong tries to run away from Broly, while being on top of Kuririn's head I found Roshi dance and differnet expression parts to be pretty hilarious too. For Broly's crying, someone in this forum noticed that Kakarotto was crying when Broly got stabbed, that might be one of reasons Broly got so angry with Kakarotto, as he associate him with that terrible memory.

As for movie itself, it was ok, it wasnt until later when Broly became so overexposed and shoehorned into so many games, that i started to dislike character, but movie that introduced him, and Bio Broly, were pretty good (I have yet to watch DBS: Broly)

[Scsigs]

Thank you, Lance, for finally explaining in an easy way to understand why Broly targets Goku specifically. I believe it was in the Super: Broly movie thread that someone challenged me to rewatch movie 8 to really see what was meant by Broly being bothered Goku made him cry as a baby. They had the idea that Broly was after Goku because of their power levels, but it's clear that it's caused by Broly being mad that Goku made him cry. However, your explanation of what was intended opened my eyes to why people argue it's not as simple as "he made him cry." Granted, the movie's SO poorly executed in any of the attempts they put in to have certain things play out as they did in it, that it took someone explaining what was intended for me to get what the writers were thinking. It's with this that I still don't think the movie was executed well, but there ARE some things to legitimately enjoy about it.

Speaking off, you ever sample the dub of the movie? To me, it's like a proto-Kai dub since it's faithful in its translation, but playful. It's probably one of my favorite pre-Kai DB dubs. If not, I'd at least recommend it out of mild curiosity. Though the acting isn't 100% what these actors would be capable of, it's WAY better than Z's dub by a mile.

[Kid Buu]

Bio Broli is the better film.

[Scsigs]

Bio Broli is the better film.

You're funny.

[Gaffer Tape]

yaaaaay! i've been hyped for this for a while, especially because i saw this movie (and almost all of the movies) for the first time recently. great as always, also was the reason for having the movie poster in the background a aesthetic choice or a way to avoid copyright ?

I've been doing the poster in the background for the movies since Z movie 5, as well as putting the intro image as the background for DBD TV for the past couple of years. Primarily, especially since I was mostly working with 4:3 images in a 16:9 window, I felt it was more visually interesting. Now that I'm using Dragon Box movie footage for the first time... well, I still thought it looked more visually interesting.

Thank you, Lance, for finally explaining in an easy way to understand why Broly targets Goku specifically.

I'm glad you liked it, but please keep in mind that that is my interpretation ("as I see it" as I said in the video). I have no insight as to whether or not any of that was the intentions of the powers that be. I do feel very strongly that the intent couldn't have been as transparently shallow as taking it on its face value. Granted, I don't think that necessarily invalidates it, because "Death of the Author" is a common philosophy in literary criticism. If it appears to be present in the text, then it's valid, whether or not the creator necessarily intended it that way. Then again, when I was 13 and saw Phantom Menace for the first time, and Shmi Skywalker said "there was no father" for Anakin, I assumed she meant it figuratively. That she was simply saying she had been a single parent for his entire life. It never occurred to me that I was supposed to take that literally because I didn't think the movie could be that stupid. So make of that what you will.

To piggyback off what I just said, for Dragon Ball Dissection I typically take a more constructionist approach to my analysis. Lest anyone think I'm being hypocritical, that I'll pooh-pooh deeper meaning when it's not my interpretation but spin a huge yarn of subtext when it suits me, allow me to explain. In general, I wouldn't call myself a full proponent of "Death of the Author." I feel it is important to take the intention of the author in mind as an interpretation. However, I am also not blind to the fact that valid messages and themes can reveal themselves, whether or not the author ever noticed or intended them. They could have been applied subconsciously. It could be due to incompetence that the intended meaning doesn't come through in the text but a completely different or even opposite meaning does instead.

Why I typically go for a more hardline constructionist approach for Dragon Ball is because, while I am open to seeing unintended meaning, I don't want to give credence to the idea of the reader writing the story for the author. I think there's a distinct difference. There's reading between the lines (or speculating on the ambiguous), and then there's just filling in necessary gaps in order for the story to work. With Dragon Ball, nine times out of ten, what you see is what you get, so I find it's become prevalent in online discourse for fans to do the latter while they think they're doing the former (in my opinion, obviously). After I put out Part 16, for example, I got so many comments complaining about my example of Gohan killing the Freeza soldiers. They all said the same thing: "He was five then. He obviously changed. He grew. Stop being so surface-level and needing everything spelled out for you." But again, I think there's a marked difference between extrapolating from subtlety and building your own span in order to bridge a gap between inconsistent character actions. And I don't feel it's fair to give the story or the author credit for that.

Without being able to dig into an author's brain, it's all interpretive and subjective. I personally see the threads existing in the Goku/Broli dynamic enough to think there's something there that's intended to be explored. I don't see it with Gohan in that example. I could be wrong on both counts. I could be chasing my own shadow in the former example, and, well, Toriyama could have intended the latter but did a very poor job of conveying it. Or I just missed the clues. Who knows? Was there a point to all this? Who knows?

Speaking off, you ever sample the dub of the movie? To me, it's like a proto-Kai dub since it's faithful in its translation, but playful. It's probably one of my favorite pre-Kai DB dubs. If not, I'd at least recommend it out of mild curiosity. Though the acting isn't 100% what these actors would be capable of, it's WAY better than Z's dub by a mile.

Nope. I've never watched it. I certainly got several new people in my comments yesterday surprised that I didn't mention anything about Pantera, though. =P