Anonymous Friend wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:31 pm
Would Jiren being gay change his character or anything? Would this make him a better character? Would knowing he's gay make you like him more?
Personally, it wouldn't affect me beyond wondering if this ploy to appeal to certain demos and such. Because that what a lot of this sort of thing is today. Very few media can have a character be a thing without it becoming a large defining part of their character. If adding a black character means they have to act "black", just make them white and boring so we don't have to be bothered with that.
Jiren being gay--like for most characters in the Dragon Ball universe--wouldn't change a thing. I don't seem to recall a huge emphasis on his sexual preference. It's not like he was trying to develop a relationship with any female characters. He mentioned his family... so, that would look different in his little flashback. Otherwise, totally unaffected.
This stuff is very trivial in a series like Dragon Ball. Romantic relationships aren't fleshed out and aren't a focal point of the story. The only real romance that we've seen were Yamucha and Bulma, a hint of Vegeta and Bulma (basically as a vehicle to get to Trunks, to be honest), and Gohan and Videl. And none of those are exactly Jack and Rose having a whirlwind on the Titanic.
The romance that got the most emphasis was Gohan and Videl, but even that was presented more like, "Oh, yeah, and Gohan likes this girl." That certainly wasn't the focus of the story. Nor was it this long, drawn out masterpiece. It just kind of happened.
So, in this series, it doesn't really matter who's gay, heterosexual, bisexual, etc. So instead of trying to grab a girl's butt, Roshi would try to grab a guy's butt. So instead of being shy around girls, Yamucha would be shy around guys. So instead of getting friendly with Mr. Satan's daughter, Gohan would get friendly with Mr. Satan's son. So instead of Bulma rolling her eyes any Vegeta's training, it would be a guy doing it.
There are no deep romantic connections presented to us between any characters. If anything, it seems like many relationships are vehicles to produce some next of kin. And sure, while we can go into the science of how that could be done without a heterosexual relationship, I think it would be a little out of character for Goku and Vegeta to go to a fertility clinic to have a kid. It's more plausible to imagine for the earthlings (the Saiyan kids included).
And honestly, I'm not mad at Dragon Ball for being so void of romantic relationships. I don't mind it at all. There is so much other media out there that puts so much focus on these things, that it's kind of refreshing to me. And to be honest, 1) I don't think that I'd enjoy a Toriyama love story, and 2) the lack of these stories opens the door for head-canon (if you're into that).
So, if you want to believe that Goten and Trunks had a thing going on, then go for it.
But ultimately, this means that there's nearly no impact on the story if any of the characters were non-heterosexual.