Why dropping Gohan as the main protagonist was a bad move

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ChronoTwigger
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Re: Why dropping Gohan as the main protagonist was a bad move

Post by ChronoTwigger » Thu Jul 21, 2022 10:23 pm

Up to Sayan Arc, no one was aware of Goku real origins. That made for a fantasy story.
Gohan is Gohan. He's the son of Goku. No arc to solve.
To give him some reason to exist, you have to attach him what's called "unsolved plot points", to solve and reveal with "plot twists", and Gohan had none.
What's left for Gohan to do, on a narrative evolution sense? You can clearly see they tried whatever to generate a character, from his Piccolo training, the movies aptitude, the super hero stuff, but in the end they were attempts to create "artificially" a starring role for him...
He have no goal, or at least not any exciting goal, no mistery to solve, no role to fullfill.
Gohan was a *typical* second fiddle that Toriyama used to articulate some story, but the context was made to prevent any other possible character than Goku to get the spotlight.

To have Gohan be the new lead, you had to give him an higher goal, something he must fullfill, and some background twist.

It was a good choice to focus on him for a while, but not shifting totally. Contrary, the show could have been way more boring.
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Re: Why dropping Gohan as the main protagonist was a bad move

Post by BWri » Mon Jul 25, 2022 6:37 pm

Zephyr wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 11:28 am The Cell arc indeed has Goku training Gohan, like he's some sort of martial arts master, in order to participate in a tournament. Vegeta and Trunks even act somewhat like a rival martial arts school, as both Goku and Vegeta are attempting to improve the Super Saiyan state in their own respective ways, which their sons adopt and take even farther.
I love this. Never thought of it like that, but that's really cool. I love the additional dynamics of Future Trunks also being a student of a version of Gohan, so he has some of the Piccolo school instilled in him as well.
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Re: Why dropping Gohan as the main protagonist was a bad move

Post by dragonballhero » Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:32 pm

Zephyr wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 11:28 am I can somewhat understand the appeal of "passing the torch to the next generation" as a story development. That's what the Muten Roshi does in the 4th story arc, after all. And in the 5th story arc we learn about the person who had long ago passed the torch to him. Time being what it is, and teacher-student lineages being what they are, it makes all the sense in the world that Goku's generation would likewise eventually pass the torch to a next one.

One key difference, however, is that Dragon Ball didn't begin as Mutaito's story, see Kame-chan introduced part way through, see the torch passed to him, and have him become the new main protagonist. Likewise, Dragon Ball didn't begin as the Kame Sennin's story, see Son Goku introduced part way through, see the torch passed to him, and have him become the new main protagonist. This isn't Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, where the main protagonist is changes as the story goes on.

Dragon Ball was Son Goku's story from the beginning. By the 2nd story arc, that story became clearly about his growth and development as a martial artist. It begins with him as a student, and it will end when he finally becomes a master, and helps to pass the torch to the next generation. However, since this is his story, that story ends once the torch is passed. The story could have ended well enough with the torch being passed to Son Gohan. The Cell arc indeed has Goku training Gohan, like he's some sort of martial arts master, in order to participate in a tournament. Vegeta and Trunks even act somewhat like a rival martial arts school, as both Goku and Vegeta are attempting to improve the Super Saiyan state in their own respective ways, which their sons adopt and take even farther. Some echoes of the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai and Piccolo Daimao arcs, here.

But the story didn't end with the Cell arc. The Boo arc opens with Gohan having slacked off for seven years, after his battle with Cell that he needed his hand held through. Goku didn't need his hand held in the fight against Piccolo Daimao. This shows two things: Gohan isn't as nuts about fighting as Goku was, and it shows that, as a result of this, Gohan isn't as skilled in the ring.

Gohan not being as good at fighting is not to say you couldn't use this to write a compelling story about Gohan's improvement as a martial artist. Quite the contrary, it gives a lot of room for Gohan to grow as a martial artist. However, the fact that he's not as nuts about fighting does prove to be something of a problem. What is his motivation for growing as a martial artist? To protect his loved ones, sure. That's fine. How does an irreverent guy like Toriyama write that in a compelling way? I don't know. I get the sense that Toriyama didn't know, either. Granted, everything surrounding the Elder Kaioshin's power up ritual is pretty funny: the cost is petty, the method is silly, Gohan's impatience is funny, etc.

But that's not really growth for Gohan as a character. It does nothing to address his weaknesses as a fighter to follow in Goku's footsteps. Him getting a free and ostensibly permanent power up solves the issues of him not caring to stay in shape, but it doesn't solve his lack of talent in the ring, relative to his predecessor. He's not as squirrely as Goku is, and there's no underlying "poison" to his relationship with martial arts, which makes him more boring in comparison. Goku's "poison" even comes into play in this arc, with him helping to release Boo, well before Gohan is pushed to the side. For that reason, divorced from Gohan being a weaker protagonist in a story about growth as a martial artist, Goku narratively has more cause to be one of the ones to put Boo away: he's one of the ones who let him out.

In addition to this, Boo himself has a thirst for fighting, as well. Fat Boo is convinced to slow down on killing people, in the hopes that he'll get a good fight later. His Evil self later avoids absorbing Gohan because he wants someone to fight after absorbing Gotenks. And his Pure self is just a fighting machine. After he's killed, he gets reincarnated as a good person, who Goku then takes on as a pupil. While, obviously, Oob isn't exactly going to have the personality of Boo, the notion of taking the final antagonist, who is, at least fairly often, depicted as a fighting junkie similar to Goku, and making him the person Goku passes the torch to, works so much better for me than having it be Gohan, who just isn't as into it.

So, I think it was definitely a good move that Gohan was dropped as the main protagonist. You gotta know when to hold em and when to fold em. The way in which he was dropped wasn't perfect, but the drop itself was the right call, I think. You could abandon the notion of Dragon Ball being a story about the main character's growth as a martial artist, I guess. But at that point, you're expressing interest in a different story. Just end the story about martial artists doing martial arts, and make a new one at that point. Don't try to continue the story about martial arts growth and change what it is. Sure, Dragon Ball changed from a road trip story to that, but it did so extremely early on. Changing it again at the 11th hour would be strange and feel pointless in comparison, as the road trip angle was abandoned because it wasn't popular.
Thank you SO much for this read! I've been a Gohan fan for a long while now, but even I never felt that, in a series all about fighting (for the sake of it, I guess), Gohan would work as the main character. He's already made it clear that he's not into the 'life-and-death' aspect of fighting and that kind of fighting occurs FAR too often for this series.

I'm not saying he shouldn't keep in shape from time to time, but I feel like we need to think about just what kind of a series DB would be in the long run if Gohan took the reigns from Goku. Toriyama has made it clear that he already doesn't like it when Goku is depicted as an outright heroic figure, and he's clearly not going to have Gohan take on his dad's worst personality traits out of nowhere just like that.

Dare I say it, I feel like Toriyama genuinely feels like Gohan's role in DB's story is completed. He finally became a scholar, he has a loving wife and child, etc. Heck, Piccolo was supposed to be THE primary focus of the newest movie (with Pan possibly serving as his sidekick-of-sorts). Again, I'm not saying Gohan shouldn't keep in shape (he IS still one of the strongest beings on Earth right now), but we probably shouldn't keep forcing him into the main protagonist role anymore, since it's clear that's it's just not made for him (at least, not for a series like this).

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