Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

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Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by jamiljamtheman » Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:58 am

Hi all! Here to talk about a very specific genre of fan made Dragon Ball manga/animation that I will call “Speculative”.

Basically, it’s when a fan animation or fan manga chapter shows up and “predicts” what’s going to happen in the next entry in the series. I usually see them on YouTube when I do.

Anyone else have experience watching these kind of stuff? What are your thoughts, and do any stand out to you?

I personally like them because even though the predictions are outlandish, they’re just the right amount of outlandish to be entertaining and satisfy my hype while I wait for the official next entry to come out. Some of them also have pretty good production value.

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FoolsGil
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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by FoolsGil » Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:03 pm

You have any examples? Is Absalon a Speculative fan animation?

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by LoganForkHands73 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:53 pm

I've always wondered what the incentive is. If you put a tonne of effort into a speculative animation, it must be disheartening to see the official anime production immediately overtake and invalidate your work in the eyes of fans. But then, the fan animator knows that going in. Before it was revealed that Broly would be the main antagonist, there were many fan animations of the Dragon Ball Super movie depicting other Saiyan characters in that role, including Yamoshi.

I guess it's a good way to express excitement and passion as any kind of fan project, but most of these types of videos get totally ignored the moment the official product comes out. The ones that have really high effort and quality like that recent animation of Goku vs. Moro from the Super manga will probably have a longer shelf life, not least because there's no confirmation that the anime will cover that arc yet (or even return at all).

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by jamiljamtheman » Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:58 pm

FoolsGil wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:03 pm You have any examples? Is Absalon a Speculative fan animation?
Oh! Absalon I would not consider speculative, I think a different word like “sequel” or something would be better suited towards full-blown stories like it, the AFs, Super Kai, etc.

One infamous example of what I call Speculative is MaStar media’s “Dragon Ball Super Movie Fan Animation” that was quickly renamed “Akumo, the Father of all Saiyans”. It came out at a very specific time, when all we knew about the DBS movie was that first trailer, and we didn’t know the antagonist was Broly. So it’s got a story about this guy Akumo (who, in supremely humorous circumstance, is heavily traced from Z’s Broly) being the “villain of the movie” and Goku starting a fight with him.

It’s a bit tricky to explain, but by speculative I mean this type of content. Very time-specific, immediately “de-bunked” by official releases, they’re just fan theories brought to life. In that way I find them unique as windows into specific points of time in the fandom, and entertaining to watch when the official release has yet to reveal actual “answers”.

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by jamiljamtheman » Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:03 pm

LoganForkHands73 wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:53 pm I've always wondered what the incentive is. If you put a tonne of effort into a speculative animation, it must be disheartening to see the official anime production immediately overtake and invalidate your work in the eyes of fans. But then, the fan animator knows that going in. Before it was revealed that Broly would be the main antagonist, there were many fan animations of the Dragon Ball Super movie depicting other Saiyan characters in that role, including Yamoshi.

I guess it's a good way to express excitement and passion as any kind of fan project, but most of these types of videos get totally ignored the moment the official product comes out. The ones that have really high effort and quality like that recent animation of Goku vs. Moro from the Super manga will probably have a longer shelf life, not least because there's no confirmation that the anime will cover that arc yet (or even return at all).
That’s very true that they are often immediately obsoleted—they are truly products of very, very specific times. I think it’s most fun to watch them IN that time and moment, but I do have to say that after the fact it’s entertaining to look back and see what *didn’t* happen in the official story.

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by Yuli Ban » Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:14 pm

jamiljamtheman wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:58 pm
FoolsGil wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:03 pm You have any examples? Is Absalon a Speculative fan animation?
Oh! Absalon I would not consider speculative, I think a different word like “sequel” or something would be better suited towards full-blown stories like it, the AFs, Super Kai, etc.

One infamous example of what I call Speculative is MaStar media’s “Dragon Ball Super Movie Fan Animation” that was quickly renamed “Akumo, the Father of all Saiyans”. It came out at a very specific time, when all we knew about the DBS movie was that first trailer, and we didn’t know the antagonist was Broly. So it’s got a story about this guy Akumo (who, in supremely humorous circumstance, is heavily traced from Z’s Broly) being the “villain of the movie” and Goku starting a fight with him.

It’s a bit tricky to explain, but by speculative I mean this type of content. Very time-specific, immediately “de-bunked” by official releases, they’re just fan theories brought to life. In that way I find them unique as windows into specific points of time in the fandom, and entertaining to watch when the official release has yet to reveal actual “answers”.
I had written a good chunk of words replying to FoolsGil directly mentioning Akumo, the Father of All Saiyans as exactly what you're referencing.
More to the point, there's Gohan Blanco, which nearly scene-for-scene predicted Ultra Instinct's debut.
Image

Dragon Ball Multiverse is probably the single most famous example considering it was intended as a fan follow-up and even features a multiversal tournament and there was a lot of care put into making it fit with canon subtracting GT, and yet the story as it is cannot work according to how Super has developed. It just doesn't feel quite like the MaSTAR animations because we had a nearly 20-year break between the EoZ and BoS where Multiverse had its shot to develop without any expectation of new canonical material outside Online.

The existence of these Speculative videos is intriguing to me even though I've not watched a single one just because it does represent a snapshot of a particular moment in the fandom, with people hyped for what's coming next with their own ideas. And sometimes these ideas are better than what we actually get, even if they aren't made with the same level of charm.
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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by jamiljamtheman » Fri Feb 26, 2021 1:27 am

Yuli Ban wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:14 pm More to the point, there's Gohan Blanco, which nearly scene-for-scene predicted Ultra Instinct's debut.
Yeah, it’s even more crazy/surprising when anything is predicted close to right! I remember Gohan Blanco, as well as a bunch of other fan animations and fan works during the ToP. That was one of the times where we saw a lot of that!

Your point about DB Multiverse is on the dot—even though I haven’t read it, the fact that it’s not some very-short-term hype thing, but an attempt at a genuine sequel to Dragon Ball at a time when the shows were finished makes it stand out from the more speculative DBS fan works. It’s kind of amazing that official DB coincidentally went with the “multiverse” concept and even culminated in tournaments against universes! (Side note—I definitely harbor a little salt towards those stories which sought to ignore/overwrite GT, as a person who will forever defend that show as perfectly ok and fun at many times. :lol: Though I respect the care and following DBM seems to have.)

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by jamiljamtheman » Fri Feb 26, 2021 1:56 am

A more recent example, and kind of the inspiration for this thread, is the reason that I subscribed back to UnrealEntGaming. Several days before DBS Chapter 68 would actually start the current arc, he posted fan mini-chapters that faux-started the arc instead:
And there seems to be a trend where the channel will have a fan-speculative chapter or two in between official DBS chapters. This is also actually helping keep my interest in the official manga, since it’s easy for me to not bother when waiting an entire month. It doesn’t matter to me that the predictions are inaccurate and usually outlandish, it’s just fun to see the story continued early and to see what probably is not going to happen, but is entertaining anyway!

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Re: Thoughts on: Speculative Fan Animation/Manga?

Post by FoolsGil » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:53 am

I'm going to have to agree with LoganForkHands73. It seems like a lot of work wasted once the official work comes out, unless that speculative fan animation/manga continues on and develops into a fan series, with its own story.

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