Long Battles

[ABED]

I like action and I like action movies. However, I can grow bored rather quickly if it goes on for too long. DB's fights often go on for several episodes/chapters than many egregiously long action scenes and yet are much more entertaining than said scenes. Why is it that Toriyama has the ability to craft quality and memorable long fights, whereas I grow bored after a few minutes of most other action set pieces even though their length pales in comparison? What is it that Toriyama understands that others are missing?

[Jord]

*Remembers the "30 seconds untill Namek explodes" battle between Frieza and Goku that went on for ages and the Majin Buu fight that was stretched beyond belief*

[sintzu]

I think the difference between Toriyama and other writers is that he knows how to write action while the others act like they know.

[ABED]

*Remembers the "30 seconds untill Namek explodes" battle between Frieza and Goku that went on for ages and the Majin Buu fight that was stretched beyond belief*

Other than the 30 seconds being stretched out, what about the actual quality of the battle? Is that really what people deem to be a fundamental problem? Five minutes being stretched over numerous chapters and episodes? If Freeza hadn't said that, would your appraisal of the actual fight be any better?

And I get it, there are fights that go on for way too long, but even the great ones go on for a while. Take the battles between Goku and Piccolo. One lasted three episodes and the other lasted around 6, and yet they are among the best in the entire story and infinitely better than any of the fights in the Transformers movies.

[Kamiccolo9]

I think it's more about his panel composition than anything, to be honest. Toriyama's work flows very well, and practically leads your eyes around the page.

The show drags everything out unmercifully, and kills the Manga pacing.

[KBABZ]

For me it's being able to see the "chess battle" of the fights that makes them so interesting. A character was holding back, the other has a special move, one can keep their energy up, stuff like that (not to mention the good ol' "Goku is outmatched, he goes for it anyway, and then has to figure out what to do when he legit runs out of options" like with Vegeta and Frieza). On top of that sub-layer is that it isn't very often that fights use the exact same showpieces, unless there's a good reason for it like Vegeta's desperation beam spam. We haven't seen a character throw a swarm of rocks except for Frieza, only Daimao has flattened a city in desperation, that sort of thing. And if they're not showpieces, they tend to not last too long, in the sense that we don't have rapid punching animation loops for a full minute. Not to mention the character dynamics and motivations that go on all the while.

There's a LOT of layers to Dragon Ball's fights that are often set up in the non-battle scenes that I think are pivotal to the fights being so good. Goku losing the 21st Tournament plays into his goofy outlook on the fight and being taught he has to take this stuff seriously. Him turning Super Saiyan has no weight without us knowing how hard it is to achieve or that it comes to help Goku enact vengeance for both the Saiyans and his close friends.

[Robo4900]

To me, pretty much every fight outside of the 21st and 22nd Tenkaichi arcs stretched out far too long.

[ABED]

To me, pretty much every fight outside of the 21st and 22nd Tenkaichi arcs stretched out far too long.

Including the fight against Vegeta?

[Cipher]

Toriyama structures his fights around distinct beats both taken in and of themselves and as part of a larger story.

The tables are constantly being flipped, characters are striving for different ways to win as the situation changes, and arc-long character development often comes to a head in the middle of the action. All of this makes for very compelling reading/viewing even as what is basically one action set piece drags on.

Look at the longest fight in the series, Goku vs. Freeza (which vies for my favorite, at least in the manga): There's back and forth as the two warm up and establish an unprecedented sense of scale. Freeza decides to not use his hands for a bit until Goku catches him off-guard. There's the revelation as things get more dire that Goku is already utilizing Kaio-Ken. Goku fires the x20 Kamehameha to end the first phrase of the fight, managing to hurt Freeza just a bit. From there, the goal shifts to the desperate bid for the Genki Dama. We get all the side characters involved again and get a fake-out ending. Then there's the Super Saiyan portion, which also has distinct beats and phases (Goku gaining the upper hand, ignoring the warning from Kaio, being temporarily taken out of commission by Freeza, the complex plan involving two sets of Dragon Balls, and finally the final bout on dying Namek), as well as an unexpectedly quiet conclusion. Goku and Freeza's characters are both changing and being further revealed at each point, and it's all launched by substantial character moments involving Goku, Vegeta, and even Piccolo, which continue to see progression during the fight.

All of Dragon Ball's climactic bouts have these kinds of beats and phases. There are very few points in the series where action is just happening for its own spectacle, or where new developments aren't just around the corner.

This is, conversely, why I've never jived with the fan-favorite fight between Goku and "Majin" Vegeta, as presented in its extended form in the anime. It has impressively choreographed moments, but nothing develops or changes once it starts--it's a flashy stalemate with major character beats confined to the prelude and wrap-up, and that's fun for a scene or two, but absolutely wears thin. Toriyama is always very conscious of avoiding that trap.

This is also why I've sometimes maintained--odddly--that action isn't that important in Dragon Ball. I mean, it absolutely is, and it's to the series' great credit that it managed to practically invent a new kind of visual shorthand for the speed and scale of its fights. But to me the real success of its action is the pacing and way it interacts with the story. I'm willing to overlook pure, flashy visual spectacle so long as the fight has distinct, interesting, and unpredictable beats. Both are, of course, best, and managed by the bulk of its major fights, but if I had to pick one element of the two, it would be the latter every time. (Incidentally, this is one thing GT manages to get really right, even as the choreography and visual spectacle of its fights are diminished; all of its major fights have distinct beats, and multi-episode battles never end a single 20-minute segment in a similar place to where they start.)

[ABED]

I agree with everything you wrote except one point - Goku vs. Majin Vegeta's fight not stopping for a character beat except for the bookends. There's a middle part where Vegeta seems to have Goku on the ropes and he stops to tell him the why of it all. Otherwise, spot on, Cipher.

[KBABZ]

I agree with everything you wrote except one point - Goku vs. Majin Vegeta's fight not stopping for a character beat except for the bookends. There's a middle part where Vegeta seems to have Goku on the ropes and he stops to tell him the why of it all. Otherwise, spot on, Cipher.

It's almost like Toriyama put that fight in to oblige the fans demanding the all-important rematch rather than thinking about what it might contribute to the story!

[ABED]

I agree with everything you wrote except one point - Goku vs. Majin Vegeta's fight not stopping for a character beat except for the bookends. There's a middle part where Vegeta seems to have Goku on the ropes and he stops to tell him the why of it all. Otherwise, spot on, Cipher.

It's almost like Toriyama put that fight in to oblige the fans demanding the all-important rematch rather than thinking about what it might contribute to the story!

It wasn't fanservice. It was a fight that felt innevitable and something Vegeta needed to go through in order to realize how empty it was and he had in fact changed.

[90sDBZ]

To me the Goku vs Frieza fight is great because of how brutal it is. You can see Goku exhausted at several points, he gets covered in cuts and blood, and his clothes get torn up a lot too. The fact that it goes on for so long makes all this seem even more brutal, as it's a test of both physical and mental stamina.

It also helps that there's very distinct sections of the fight. You have them messing about with different techniques, then Frieza straight up torturing Goku at 50%, then Goku almost dying before bursting back with the Kaioken x20, then the suspense of the Spirit Bomb, then the false victory, then Krillin's death and Super Saiyan, then a close and brutal all out fight on a dying planet, then Goku turning the tables completely before Frieza cuts himself in half. It's an emotional roller coaster from start to finish.

The fight with the Saiyans was great too because of how drawn out it was, with hope constantly in the balance. It felt like an actual war, with casualties on both sides, and everyone who survived in hospital in the aftermath. It was also unpredictable how Goku got crippled after his triumphant return, having to let Gohan and Krillin take over.

I think being unpredictable is also one of the great strengths of the Buu saga, which makes the length a non-issue for me. Watching it for the first time I was convinced Mystic Gohan would get the win against Super Buu. I was both taken aback and pleasantly surprised when Goku returned as the hero. So much crazy shit happens from the time Evil Buu arrives that it never really drags for me.

[TrunksTrevelyan0064]

Thank you, Cipher, for posting exactly what I was thinking but couldn't quite put into words.

Most of the fights have a sort of ebb and flow to them, as though they live and breathe. A story is being told while the fight is going on. The characters are going through things, not just punching for the sake of punching. And Goku, of course, is the kind of character who learns while fighting and then uses that new knowledge to (try and) gain the upper hand, which is fascinating to watch.

[JulieYBM]

I prefer well directed and animated battles first and foremost but I am also not opposed to simply long battles. Satoshi fought Shinji several times in Pocket Monster: Diamond & Pearl, the latter two times being two and three episodes long each. Through a dense use of BANK animation and new animation from Iwane Masa'aki those fights were able to be very exciting despite being 40-60 minutes long. Exciting directing and animation are key to keeping the fights feeling fresh.

As for the length of the battles in Dragon Ball: let me post some excerpts from Beautiful Fighting Girl by Saitou Tamaki that I think will help explain the 'five minutes until Namek explodes' thread.

The Atemporality of Manga and Anime
Every form of visual media functions according to its own temporality. In the
case of popular culture most of these temporalities are a matter of movement?
All forms of visual expression are marked by a form of movement
particular to their medium. Manga, anime, and film each have their own
"grammar" of movement. Lining up photographs of real people like frames in
a manga, for example, would not produce the same effects as a manga. On
the contrary, it would lack reality (riariti), and the only effect it could produce
would be of kitsch. This is because the kind of movement specific to the
photographic medium clashes with the manga form.
These techniques for expressing movement include everything from the
macro-level of montage in film to the micro-level of speed lines in manga.
Used effectively, they produce the effect of realistic movement. Reality
(riariti) in anime is produced not by naturalistic backgrounds or by imitating
cinematic techniques but only by realizing the kind of movement that is
unique to anime. Under these conditions even a character drawn with a single
line can seem just as real or even more real than a person in a photograph or a
film.' Now let us consider the question of temporality in manga and anime
while paying attention to how they express movement.
A comparison of the work of Ishinomori Shotaro and Nagai Go is useful in
thinking about temporality in manga. Ishinomori and Nagai use very different
methods for representing time. Simply put, one uses "cinematic time" and the other "gekiga time."

As Kato Mikiro has also argued, Ishinomori's work brought the
representation of time in manga to an extremely sophisticated level.' His
techniques were then adopted as a kind of grammar unique to manga and
eventually rendered even more sophisticated in the hands of artists like
Otomo Katsuhiro. One can certainly see the influence of film in these
techniques (Ishinomori himself was also a great fan of Western films). Even
more than someone like Tezuka Osamu, Ishinomori intended his manga to be
like films. In contrast to this, Nagai's techniques are more specific to manga,
almost as if he were taking a position against cinema. Because this point is
very closely related to the emergence of the beautiful fighting girls, let us
look into it in greater detail.

In Ishinomori's work, time "flows," as it were, at a mostly consistent speed.
It is his well-known techniques for describing intervals in dialogue-for
example, the kind of time produced by the contrast between the dialogue
within speech bubbles and the handwritten dialogue outside the speech
bubbles-that maintain the objectivity or intersubjectivity of time in
Ishinomori's works. It is a more chronological, measured time that flows
straight and even, without slowing or faltering.

In Nagai's work, on the other hand, time no longer flows. It contracts and
expands along with the reader's subjective viewpoint. Action-packed, highimpact
moments are drawn with large frames and take up many pages. This
way of representing time, hardly used by Ishinomori at all, has become the
trademark of Japanese manga in general. Ishinomori's Masked Rider (Kamen
raidaa) and other works in the squadron genre have been more often adapted
as live-action dramas than as anime. This is in stark contrast to Nagai's
works, which have almost always been adapted as anime. There are no doubt
reasons internal to the industry for this, but that does not explain everything.
It seems clear that Nagai's work itself has a greater affinity for being adapted
as anime. And one of the things that anime have adopted from manga is the
kind of atemporality represented in Nagai's work.

[...]

As Miyazaki himself points out, anime starts out as the stepchild of manga.
Anime often borrow techniques directly from manga. The best known
example of this is the use of so-called manpu (©Takekuma Kentaro), but the
atemporality of anime is also derived from manga. Miyazaki compares
anime's atemporality to a traditional Japanese form of storytelling known as
kodan storytelling, in which time and space are grossly distorted and
exaggerated according to the passion and expressivity of the characters. The
kodan "Kan'ei sanbajutsu" (Horse riding in the Kan'ei era), for example, is a
long and extremely detailed description of how Magaki Heikuro climbs up a
stone staircase on a horse. This kind of unlimited extension of a single
privileged moment is typical of the atemporality of kodan storytelling, and
Miyazaki is extremely critical of it.

One sees this kind of temporality most often in gekiga comics like those of
Kajiwara Ikki. The most extreme example is perhaps Nakajima Norihiro's
Astro kyudan (Asutoro kyudan), the climax of which is a single baseball
match between the Astros and the Victories, the description of which took
three years in serialization and more than two thousand pages. Astro kyudan
was a groundbreaking work, but it was neither minor nor avant-garde. It was
published in Shonen jampu (jump), a leading manga magazine, and, with the
exception of a few raised eyebrows here and there, readers had no trouble
accepting it.

The media space of manga and anime clearly tends toward atemporality.
Manga about sports inevitably favor these descriptive techniques. The time
between the moment the ball leaves the pitcher's hand to the time it is
swallowed up in the catcher's mitt, the moment when a longdistance runner
speeds up just before the finish line, the time of a round of boxing: all of
these extremely short periods of time are extended and rendered in elaborate
detail. The impact of a particular scene is heightened in direct proportion to
the time spent describing it and the density of the narrative. Such techniques have been used most effectively in manga and anime. There is nothing in
films or even novels capable of rendering this sense of atemporality quite as
naturally. This point may have to do with the particularity of "Japanese
space" that I discuss later.

Of course, the imaginaire, the realm of the imagination and fantasy, is
atemporal to begin with. Dead people, for example, do not age in this realm.
This is very different, however, from Sigmund Freud's notion of the
atemporality of the unconscious. The unconscious is atemporal by its very
nature, while the Imaginary can accurately be said only to strive for
atemporality. In the imagination there is often a striving toward unlimited
experience, which leads to a frantic gathering together of privileged
moments.

The technique of the tournament form that anime
borrowed from manga magazines like Shonen Jump is another example of
an atemporal form, like an infinite musical scale. The way the ranks of the
enemy grow infinitely stronger is nothing if not a technique for introducing
cyclical atemporality even as it disguises the passage of time.

In this sense we can say that the time of manga and anime is kairological.
The credit for inventing this technique goes, not surprisingly, to Tezuka
Osamu. It was Tezuka's introduction of kairological time that made manga
after Tezuka so utterly different from manga before Tezuka. One can already
see that kairological time has taken over in those instances where he uses
only the division of the frames rather than words or narration to express a
character's emotional turmoil.

We can thus identify a particular grammar of kairological time in Japanese
popular culture that extends from kodan storytelling all the way through to
manga and anime. The extraordinary popularity of manga and anime in Japan
would be inconceivable without this technique.

For example, even cutting-edge American comics are quite slow-paced
compared with Japanese manga. This slowness is what limits American
comics and keeps them from ever being able to surpass the popularity of film.
So why are American comics so "slow?"

Is it because the drawings are so detailed and intricate? It is true that a
comic like Heavy Metal has extremely detailed, almost lifelike drawings,
which makes it difficult to skim them. But even in Japan there are some
manga artists, like Araki Hirohiko and Hara Tetsuo, whose heavy
illustrations overpower everything else-yet their works are much more
fastpaced than American comics. Why is this?

American comics are fundamentally loyal to the techniques of cinema. In
other words, they use chronological time in every respect. The flow of time
from frame to frame is always even, and emotional prolongation and
exaggeration is minimized. The characters' subjective viewpoints are
rendered through their monologues, and they do not demand readerly
identification any more than necessary. In Japanese manga, on the other
hand, particularly since kairological time was introduced by Tezuka, there
has been a proliferation of techniques for rendering brief moments with high
density and a very light touch. As these techniques were developed and
further refined, they forced readers to identify with the characters even as
they made it possible for them to read at a very fast pace. There is nothing
else like this in the history of representational culture. It is very different from
the way short time periods are represented in long novels such as the four
days of the Brothers Karamazov or the single day of Joyce's Ulysses. The
high temporal density of these literary works derives from their indexical and
polyphonic narrative structures. What they lack, moreover, is speed. The
paradoxical combination of high-density and high-speed forms of expression
is the unique quality of the media space of manga and anime.

The atemporality of manga derives from the screen effect whereby
something looks as if it were stopped because it is moving so fast.
Atemporality is not the only effect made possible by this copious description
of instantaneous moments. I have pointed out that it also makes speedreading
possible. What does the copious description of instantaneous
moments have to do with speed-reading? Here it would be useful to explain
one of the most conspicuous codes that characterizes manga and anime.

In other words, don't take things literally, examine the emotions of the moment and thread.