Dragon Ball should've ended at Cell

[Cipher]

I'm just echoing sentiments above, but yes—the "twelve universes" line could be a plot hook for future stories—as it ended up being once the series returned to serializarion—or what I took it for at the time, which was simply a thematic note. Not only has Goku, after getting to the top of his universe, been bested by someone in it yet again, but the world is more impossibly large than he could have imagined.

We don't ever necessarily need to see what those universes hold. That line is actually one of the things that lets it work so well as an epilogue.

(I'm also not saying it was necessarily written as an ending/epilogue, but, as there was no guarantee of a sequel at the time and it began life as a stand-alone project, I also don't think Toriyama was adding anything that he felt needed to be justified by a continuation. So I really do think the multiverse revelation was intended to both carve a path for potential follow-ups and, in the event they didn't materialize, function as a thematic beat on its own.)

[Michsi]

It works as both. The best set ups work in the moment and not purely as a plant for a future payoff. We know it wasn't a finale and I don't think anyone here is arguing that it was, just that it works as one. This feels like a good ending and for the same exact reasons as the manga's finale. Also, why are my feelings on the matter my own and the same doesn't apply to everyone else who thought it was setting up something? Assuming it was an ending, why should they care if fans believed it was setting up future stories?

You said you don't care about what other fans thought or felt about it. The reason I brought up fan reaction in the first place was to show the effect of that bit of information being included which mitigates the idea that it feels like a Finale if it incited that much anticipation. I didn't mean some fans here and there, I meant over all reaction.

(I'm also not saying it was necessarily written as an ending/epilogue, but, as there was no guarantee of a sequel at the time and it began life as a stand-alone project, I also don't think Toriyama was adding anything that he felt needed to be justified by a continuation. So I really do think the multiverse revelation was intended to both carve a path for potential follow-ups and, in the event they didn't materialize, function as a thematic beat on its own.)

Well, yes, they first needed to see if BoG would be a financial success . If it hadn't made as much money as they hoped I'm sure it would've been a finale to the series, regardless of that 12 universes line in the movie.

[ABED]

Their feelings don't change whether it could work as a finale. What matters is if it wraps up the themes of the series and it does.

[WittyUsername]

As far as BoG is concerned, these days, I do find myself wishing that the film never spawned sequels, and just stood alone as its own thing. Yeah, the film did have Beerus mentioning that there are 12 universes, but I doubt Toriyama at the time wrote that with the intention of exploring it in the future. I assumed that it was simply there to give the idea that the world is much more vast than Goku thought, and that there will always be strong opponents out there.

With that said, even BoG itself kind of contradicts the epilogue of the manga in a sense. When the end of the manga was written, the idea was that Majin Boo was the last serious threat that Goku and friends had to face, and that for the next 10 years, things were pretty peaceful and uneventful, hence why Goku was so excited at the prospect of fighting Oob. Still, BoG took place over the course of a single day, and the film ended with the implication that Beerus would be going to sleep for a long time, so it wouldn’t have been too jarring when factored in with the end of the manga. At this point, though, Super has completely cheapened the impact of the manga’s epilogue.