Would anyone want to see shadow dragons return in super?

[yamu]

Some kind of fusion of all the dragons might be an interesting thing, not counting when Omega absorbed the Dragon Balls. Although I would hope the result would be more in tune with how Omega looked, rather than a wierd hybrid of all the looks. Either way I've always been a fan of the shadow dragons, even if I don't think they would work in Super.

[DoomieDoomie911]

To be honest, I really don't want anything from GT appearing in Super; and that's coming from a guy that doesn't even mind GT that much. They should remain two separate entities, in my opinion.

[Ringworm128]

I'm a little on the fence. While I think stuff like the shadow dragons would be a nice nod to GT I also feel that they might not work with the series and are fine as "GT things". A better option IMO would be spin offs, video game "what if's" etc expanding on the shadow dragons and other elements of GT.

[DoomieDoomie911]

A better option IMO would be spin offs, video game "what if's" etc expanding on the shadow dragons and other elements of GT.

100% this. "What ifs" have always been some of my favorite things in Dragon Ball games.

[dae428]

No for three reasons.

1. People are already complaining about Super rehashing Battle of Gods and Resurrection F. It just doesn't make sense to bring back the Shadow Dragons too. Let Super be it's own thing that has new and unique ideas that we haven't seen before. I don't want to see a show that's already rehashed two movies rehash a show that's already notorious for rehashing plots from another show.

2. The Shadow Dragons look dumb. Seriously besides Syn Shenlong (who I still think looks dumb) all the dragons look totally lame.

3. The concept behind them is generally something I'm not all that fond of. I mean sure it's not a bad idea. People always say that the Dragon Balls are always the Deus ex Machina that just fixes everything, so it makes sense to show some repercussions to the whole use of the Dragon Balls. However, I just can't get behind the idea in the end. It just makes no sense in the story and it would ruin the narrative that the Dragon Balls have had throughout the series.

While I could explain it myself, I feel like this other user by the name of Saiga has already explained it far better than I ever could.

Spoiler:

I've heard this argument many many times before, and I feel it's the exact opposite of that. None of it feels like a natural extension of Dragon Ball, and it's just appealing to some fan wish/belief that the Dragon Balls needed to have more consequences, because they were over used.

I have to disagree with this notion. With the advent of the Namekian Dragon Balls, the removal of the one-death limit, and mass resurrection a lot of people feel it takes all the tension out of the series. However the second revival is only really used for Chaozu, until the Boo arc's mass revival of everyone.

The main effect of the limitless and mass revivals to avoid the nasty implications of what would happen to the innocent people killed in these attacks. These are people who died due to the villains' actions, and it'd be a bit too dark for Dragon Ball to keep them dead because of wish limitations. It would also make the heroes much more irresponsible "Gohan, don't hold back for the Earth's sake" / "We need to train for fusion while Boo is wiping out cities". Hell, Piccolo's instruction to Evil Boo would way too fucking dark if those people couldn't be brought back. The Dragon Ball's improved revival capabilities for necessary for Dragon Ball to be able to keep its tone.

But even without that, I do believe there is some merit to the idea of the Dragon Balls backfiring or giving birth to new enemies. But absolutely not in the way GT chose to do it (and I'm not talking about execution, this is still in the idea phase). GT's idea was "The misuse of the Dragon Balls lead to this enemy, and the group will have to learn from their errors for the ending of the series".

That's completely fucking stupid.

Goku and the gang didn't even mis-use the Dragon Balls. They weren't irresponsible with them. In fact, to act in any other way than what they did would be irresponsible. The main purpose of the Dragon Balls was to either to enable them to defeat current threats, or to restore the Earth and its population after a villain laid waste to it. If they were to decide not to revive the innocent victims of Cell's rampage because "oh it's not natural" they would be assholes. Just straight up irresponsible assholes.

This should not constitute misuse of the Dragon Balls. There's no lesson to be learned from that, except to try and minimize damage in the first place. But that's a completely separate lesson that shouldn't be tied to the Dragon Balls, it should be tied to everyone not learning to go along with whatever Earth-endangering whim Goku has. Which is something that never happens.

Hell, if there's any lesson to take from the Shadow Dragons arc, it's that selfish wishes are the way to go - they outright say that positive wishes create negative energy in the balls. Ergo, negative wishes would actually be good for the Universe. That's a pretty fucked up moral right there, and that's what happens when you try and take "yin and yang" and equate it to "good and evil".

From a meta perspective, this decision doesn't make sense. It's trying to add a sense of consequence to using the balls but really it ends up going too far and actively punishing people for using the balls the way they should have. Without knowing some kind of shit like this was going to happen, there's no reason to avoid reviving all the innocent people that keep perishing because of the villains.

Speaking of knowing some kind of shit like this was going to happen, that brings us to the massive in-universe problems with this idea. You could say this is more about execution, but I still feel it needs to be said (and some parts tie into the idea).

Popo, Dende, Kibitoshin and Elder Kaioshin all knew what the Shadow Dragons were. They didn't say a fucking thing. You might bring up Elder Kaioshin's warning from the Boo arc, and GT certainly does, but the problem is that Elder Kaioshin's warning is far too vague to tie into this. What sense does it make for him to understand the true consequences of the balls, and then give a really pathetic warning about natural order? Goku hit the nail on the head when he said Kaioshin just said that because he's old. I feel that's a far better interpretation of the scene than "we better follow this up, and make a huge threat Kaioshin didn't adequately warn anyone about". It's a horrible retcon that shows the whole idea is flawed.

That's just covering Elder Kaioshin. Kibitoshin outright says people were aware of the exact dangers and they simply hadn't decided to tell the people of Earth this. Which is... a shockingly poor excuse. Popo and Dende are actually meant to watch over Earth, and they simply choose not to do anything. Popo even knows of a planet that was destroyed by Shadow Dragons, and... chooses not to do anything.

The fact that Dende and God knew about this means there's a good chance it's knowledge possessed by the Namekian race. Not only do they say nothing, they're pretty liberal with the usage of their balls, and all too happy for the humans to use them as well. There's a possibility God and Dende both just learned from Popo, which is a bit strange for him to possess the knowledge originally, but it absolves the Namekians of their guilt. Just means God's and Dende are assholes for not telling them, especially when God was making them use their balls for his whims. Hell, Bulma even points this out to Dende and he makes no defence, just cringes. But given the danger the Shadow Dragons represent to all of creation, it's extremely difficult to sell that idea. Any person they knew should have been spreading that information as much as possible because the Shadow Dragons spawning is simply not an acceptable result.

And that's another fundamental problem with this idea: to introduce and explain it, someone has got to have the knowledge. However that person is just going to look ridiculously negligent. The whole arc is only possible with the heroes being completely unaware of the problem.

Then there's all the retcons introduced, which make even less sense. We're told that the negative energy needs 100 years to dispel, and that the Dragon Balls scattered after each wish to give them time to release the energy. Which contradicts God's earlier explanation - he chose to make them scatter because he wanted a great journey to bring them together, and in so bring people together. Which means God lied about the explanation, and deliberately covered up the danger.

Furthermore, if he was going to put a fail safe on the balls, what's stopping him from actually making the Dragon Balls only grant wishes once every 100 years? We know the creator of the balls can do some quite extension modifications to the balls and the dragon's wishing power, what exactly stops them from making the Dragon Balls inactive for longer, not summon the Dragon before time is up, or giving the dragon the ability to deny wishes if it's too soon etc.? You could come up with reasons for each of these possible solutions, but GT presents none. And they'd probably require different solutions, which means you're tacking on a lot of errata to make the idea possible.

As an aside, the idea that the Dragon Balls scattered to prevent gathering means Bulma got blamed because she invented the Dragon Rader, making it easier to do so. That is a terrible way to assign blame. "You're the most responsible for the Shadow Dragons because you enabled the gathering of the balls" No, that's ridiculous. That's not really to do with the problems in the idea but just some general GT stupidity I noticed while rewatching the episode to make sure I got this stuff right.

In the end, how do they fix the mess with the Shadow Dragons? They have Shenron do it. Which means their approach to this problem has been absolutely no different to any other threat (threat shows up -> go fight threat -> wish the damage away). Instead they resolve that they'll learn to fix their approach later. They actually procrastinated on the lesson the arc was trying to go for! Now, I think this lesson is really dumb, but that's possibly the worst way to wrap it up.

SO, the idea of adding consequences to the Dragon Balls as a way of teaching everyone a lesson: bad idea. Horrible idea. I'd say it was one of the worst parts of GT, and there are a lot of strong contenders. It feels like something that goes against the spirit of DB, and trying to cover this up by tying it to Kaioshin's vague comment makes it so much worse.

The only Shadow Dragon idea I see working is this: the idea of "The Dragon Balls lead to villains who, being villains, are wrong. They're wrong to think the balls were misused, they're wrong to think they should punish the heroes". GT just gives up the potential for moral discussion after the premise is set up and then it's just punchy punch punchy. They don't even try to argue against the Shadow Dragons, Goku's trying to save the day because he thinks it's his fault (although this is just a clever ploy on his part, by saying he's completely responsible he gets to leave everyone behind where they can't take his screen time). And even in this idea, it still wouldn't be very effective if the Dragon Balls actually create the villains because then their existence and the destruction they cause does happen as a result of using the Dragon Balls correctly.

edit: Wow I'm really glad this didn't break any post limits.

[Lord Frieza]

While I'm no GT fanboy I have to say I like the Shadow Dragons even though they look goofy. Hell my favorite is the seven star dragon. I liked him to the point I came up with a what if form and commissioned art of it.



Theirs nothing wrong with the dragons concepts or their designs (thats an subjective issue) the only real problem with them is how they were utilized in the story. I would not mind them or a idea based on them turning up but I prefer that Super dose its own thing.

[GTX]

@ dae
I think he was missing the point. And the wish being mostly selfless was purely just coincidence because the wisher of dragonball is a good people.
Saega was wrong because both of it produce negative energy. Wishing for good and bad thing will result the same damage to the dragonball.
The reason it has the opposite effect probably just coincident if not, It's natural punishment like kaio say. The ball try to punish the good people that overused the dragonball. It's not thinking about good or evil. It's punishment because they were destroying the wheel of fate and the order of nature. The dragonball punish the wisher by being opposite faction with the wisher. still there no proof to support the universe would not be doomed if all the wish are evil but at least we know for certain they will never be able to use the dragonball again because shenron and porunga is a kind dragon. The gods letit slip they can't do nothing they're weak. dragonball is their only saviour when the universe was destroyed. the dragon god is far stronger than them. even kaioshin or god of creation cannot revive 1 people.

[buutenks]

I disliked the shadow dragon saga allot.So nah not me.

[successoroffate]

Some kind of fusion of all the dragons might be an interesting thing, not counting when Omega absorbed the Dragon Balls. Although I would hope the result would be more in tune with how Omega looked, rather than a wierd hybrid of all the looks. Either way I've always been a fan of the shadow dragons, even if I don't think they would work in Super.

Yes, I would love for the Dragon's to be apart of Super. In fact, anything brought from GT would be a Win-Win for me.

[Ssgvegito30]

Some kind of fusion of all the dragons might be an interesting thing, not counting when Omega absorbed the Dragon Balls. Although I would hope the result would be more in tune with how Omega looked, rather than a wierd hybrid of all the looks. Either way I've always been a fan of the shadow dragons, even if I don't think they would work in Super.

Yes, I would love for the Dragon's to be apart of Super. In fact, anything brought from GT would be a Win-Win for me.

There's a reason gt was cancelled the only few good things they've done in gt was ssj4 design, baby saga and super 17 saga the rest was lame especially dragon saga except for 3 dragons the design was childish and weird looking most of the story concept were not gr8 even though super 17 saga was good but what's the point on bringing him back I just hope db super once it goes in to the new territory the story concept is good

[successoroffate]

Some kind of fusion of all the dragons might be an interesting thing, not counting when Omega absorbed the Dragon Balls. Although I would hope the result would be more in tune with how Omega looked, rather than a wierd hybrid of all the looks. Either way I've always been a fan of the shadow dragons, even if I don't think they would work in Super.

Yes, I would love for the Dragon's to be apart of Super. In fact, anything brought from GT would be a Win-Win for me.

There's a reason gt was cancelled the only few good things they've done in gt was ssj4 design, baby saga and super 17 saga the rest was lame especially dragon saga except for 3 dragons the design was childish and weird looking most of the story concept were not gr8 even though super 17 saga was good but what's the point on bringing him back I just hope db super once it goes in to the new territory the story concept is good

If anything, the Shadow Dragons saga is refreshing and it ties in with DBZ, as the concept of misuse of the DragonBalls (As stated by Supreme Kai) came from DBZ.

[Sodhi]

It's a great idea guys but the only problem is that Gt already did it. It would not happen in Super because it would be considered lazy, in a sense of taking arcs from gt.

[fadeddreams5]

Some kind of fusion of all the dragons might be an interesting thing, not counting when Omega absorbed the Dragon Balls. Although I would hope the result would be more in tune with how Omega looked, rather than a wierd hybrid of all the looks. Either way I've always been a fan of the shadow dragons, even if I don't think they would work in Super.

Yes, I would love for the Dragon's to be apart of Super. In fact, anything brought from GT would be a Win-Win for me.

There's a reason gt was cancelled the only few good things they've done in gt was ssj4 design, baby saga and super 17 saga the rest was lame especially dragon saga except for 3 dragons the design was childish and weird looking most of the story concept were not gr8 even though super 17 saga was good but what's the point on bringing him back I just hope db super once it goes in to the new territory the story concept is good

As far as I can tell, the shadow dragon saga is regarded the best one in GT, while the Super 17 is almost universally panned for having a nonsensical story that seems made by someone with a hard-on for Android 17.

[Sodhi]

As far as I can tell, the shadow dragon saga is regarded the best one in GT, while the Super 17 is almost universally panned for having a nonsensical story that seems made by someone with a hard-on for Android 17.

I heard that super 17 was just a set up to Shadow dragons arc. In a sense of filling the balls with negative energy.

[irreality]

Thinking about it, the other reason I dislike the idea of the shadow dragons is that the more noble a wish is the worse a dragon they have to fight. Which seems to encourage people to make lots of evil or pointless wishes instead of a very few noble and really important wishes. That is a stupid way for "good" magical items to work (or if it is a universal restriction, a poor way for a good universe to work).

Although the fights in this saga are some of the best in GT, the idea always irked me.

[Sodhi]

Thinking about it, the other reason I dislike the idea of the shadow dragons is that the more noble a wish is the worse a dragon they have to fight. Which seems to encourage people to make lots of evil or pointless wishes instead of a very few noble and really important wishes. That is a stupid way for "good" magical items to work (or if it is a universal restriction, a poor way for a good universe to work).

Although the fights in this saga are some of the best in GT, the idea always irked me.

I agree. There should be a limit not a consequence to use dragon balls for a good cause. Even though gt's idea sounds good but it kinda happened from nowhere.

[Lord Frieza]

Thinking about it, the other reason I dislike the idea of the shadow dragons is that the more noble a wish is the worse a dragon they have to fight. Which seems to encourage people to make lots of evil or pointless wishes instead of a very few noble and really important wishes. That is a stupid way for "good" magical items to work (or if it is a universal restriction, a poor way for a good universe to work).

Although the fights in this saga are some of the best in GT, the idea always irked me.

I have to disagree with you their. It not really that simple, the idea (as I understand it) is that when ever a wish is made on the dragon ball they use positive energy regardless of what that wish entails. While the wish and the intent/situation behind it will effect the personality of dragon it spawns they are still created from negative energy and they will be inherently evil. While he as a moral code the 4 star dragon doesn't seem to have a problem with killing the men he fights. A dragon born from a truly evil wish would likely appear noble but in truth they would actually be a zealot who would to destroy anything he views evil at any cost, even if it meant destroying an entire planet.

The idea is that using the dragon balls in any situation goes against the natural order of the universe and there is a price for that not matter what your wishes are.

[irreality]

The idea is that using the dragon balls in any situation goes against the natural order of the universe and there is a price for that not matter what your wishes are.

And that is essentially the main problem I have with them: In a story called "Dragon Ball" using the dragon balls should *not* be against the order of the universe. Good wishes shouldn't create negative energy -- I don't like things in the story that try to convince the heroes to be more "normal" or avoid the magic inherent in the world they inhabit. The fact that important and good wishes are "more" detrimental to the universe than Piccolo Daimao's wish just exacerbates that problem.

[Lord Frieza]

The dragon balls already have limitations imposed on them by their creators and they are scatter all over the world after every use. This was done to prevent them from being over used. Even without the concept of the shadow dragons the dragon balls were never meant to be used as a "get out of jail free card" for every situation by their original creators. Hell even without these limitations the dragon balls can bring misfortune. Just the mere mention of their power is enough to entice wicked beings to come to earth and namek. Just because they people who were murdered by the saiyans and Freeza's men get wished back doesn't take away the pain they suffered during their death. Or they can be used for evil, if not for luck on the heroes part Frieza could have brought more suffering to the universe then Yī Xīng Lóng ever could. The dragon only wanted to destroy the universe, Freeza would grind it beneath his heel for all eternity.

[irreality]

The dragon balls already have limitations imposed on them by their creators and they are scatter all over the world after every use. This was done to prevent them from being over used. Even without the concept of the shadow dragons the dragon balls were never meant to be used as a "get out of jail free card" for every situation by their original creators. Hell even without these limitations the dragon balls can bring misfortune. Just the mere mention of their power is enough to entice wicked beings to come to earth and namek.

I don't mind limitations: limitations are part of "magic a being magic a". All fairy universes have rules and consequences to encourage correct use and discourage incorrect use --all magic attracts both good and bad people. The Shadow dragons punish the very existence of the dragon balls and disproportionately discourage even the most correct use of the Dragon balls. That is my problem with them.

The rest of what you said is not relevant to the argument I'm making: I'm not denying whether there are better or worse enemies than the Shadow dragons (debatable). I'm arguing on a meta story-telling level: Shadow Dragons are a bad storytelling element if you like the Dragon Universe being a magical universe where that magic can be good. They are a story tellling element *designed* to wrap up the story in a neat little bow by removing Goku and removing the Dragon Balls from the story.