Everything in DB was predetermined - a good idea?

[MozillaVulpix]

Just putting a random idea out there.

I kind of like stories that, if they're incredibly formulaic, often come up with some kind of justification as to why the world ended up that way. For example...in Monster of the Week stories, sometimes they'll give a reason as to why they're always attacking the same city where the hero just so happens to live. Maybe the villains are looking for something that's in that particular small town, so the hero will generally meet up with them everytime they attack.

I'm sure I could think of more, but I think you know what I mean. Looking at the conventions of the genre and coming up with logical reasons as to why they're being followed.

So I was thinking about that and Dragon Ball. Obviously, Dragon Ball follows its own conventions, but I think the most ridiculous one is that 'the new villain will always be more powerful that the previous villain, but they'll never be too powerful for the heroes to be able to fight against'. Obviously, this was changed a little bit with Beerus, but besides that, it always holds. People often joke that if Bobidi showed up just a little bit earlier, the entire Earth would be screwed. Even if they didn't have enough energy from the weaker characters to revive Boo, Dabura would have still killed them all. Or, I guess a better example is if Raditz decided to show up a few years earlier. Piccolo had created the Makankosappo specifically to kill Goku. They might not have been able to beat Raditz if Piccolo didn't have that trump card.

That's why I was thinking "you could actually give an in-universe explanation for this, because it doesn't actually have one".

If it was revealed that everything that's happened in Dragon Ball was, say, part of some higher beings' master plan to try and make Goku as strong as possible, I would not be surprised. It would kind of make sense. It would explain why the villains always show up in order of strength - as a way to train Goku and always push him to the next level.

You could even justify Goku's sacrifice against Cell saying, "at that point, we realised the only way for Goku to go past his limits was to train with a dead body. But then he had to come back to life once he learnt Super Saiyan 3".

If a plot point like this occurred in the series, would you think it was cool? Would you say it helps justify the world they live in? Or would you hate it? After all, it would be retroactively changing the entire story to revolve around one new character.

[Doctor.]

No, I hate these kinds of stories personally. It undermines the whole concept of effort and determination if everything was predetermined. It also makes Goku unnecessarily more special, his whole appeal is that he works hard to get to where he is despite starting off as an average Joe in the grand scheme of things.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

I'm SUPER annoyed by how much Aizen pulled the strings behind the scenes in Bleach's plot. I certainly don't want to deal with it again in Dragon Ball.

[ekrolo2]

To pull off something like this requires meticulous planning and execution in order for it not to seem like total, random bullshit. Dragon Ball sure as hell doesn't fit the bill for either.

[B]

It's like, 25 years too late for this to be palatable to me. It also just isn't Toriyama's MO. It would take away from the charm that everything is kind of random.

In that instance, motive would be the ultimate key. "I want to fight a strong guy" would be an underwhelming reason for some God to go to all that trouble. The reason it works in something like BLEACH is because the audience is given proper context and character motivation. Dragon Ball has no interest in walking that tight rope and I'm not certain it wouldn't fall on its face if it tried.

[ABED]

I'm not a fan of stories where things are predetermined by god or the universe, etc. It strips the heroism out of it. I get what you're saying about explaining why the bad guys always seem to attack the city or what have you. I don't think much explanation if any is needed. People usually accept it regardless of explanation.

[Lord Beerus]

Hell no. I fucking despise stories like that. Bleach and Naruto are prime examples of what happens when you take the whole "It was all a setup for X and Y to happen to Z person/people" concept and not handle it properly. The story suffers greatly because of that. I don't want any sort of "predetermined by a God or a higher power" bullshit storyline in Dragon Ball ever.

[Vijay]

Hell no. I fucking despise stories like that. Bleach and Naruto are prime examples of what happens when you take the whole "It was all a setup for X and Y to happen to Z person/people" concept and not handle it properly. The story suffers greatly because of that. I don't want any sort of "predetermined by a God or a higher power" bullshit storyline in Dragon Ball ever.

Couldnt have said it better. Besides, it just isnt DragonBall's cup of tea. The whole Monster-of-the-Week routine was absymal in Bleach with Arrancars popping from nowhere. GT only implemented this style in Black Shadow Dragons Arc with Goku & Pan squashing every Shenrons

As with the higher-power & events unfolding, there needs to great sophiscation in story-line for it to unfold seamlessly. Otherwise, the plot suffers horribly just like Bleach & Naruto

[Xeztin]

I don't think it'd work right, I mean like the others have said everything would become basically meaningless and hurt valuable DB lore such as why Freeza killed the Sayians. When you say someone had Freeza kill them, and his Grudge was from someone pulling the strings, it just makes it weird you know? That's why Beerus telling him to do so falls on deaf ears on a lot of the DB fandom. I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to make Goku stronger as he's just going to end up being a pain in the ass when ever he fights the guy pulling the strings. Beerus learned that the hard way I believe as he's always saying Goku and Vegeta are planning to knock him off and now has to deal with them training at his home everyday causing him to loose sleep.

[voltlunok]

I think to a degree, Beerus kind of does this. He starts the domino effect that ultimately leads to him battling Goku by ordering Freeza to blow up Planet Vegeta. Without that...I don't think Dragon Ball would have played out the way it did. So in a way the show has already kinda completed that mission. But overall I would greatly dislike if some great revelation was unveiled and everything that has happened, played out was exactly according to someone's grand master plan to...idk steal the power of gods? It just doesn't really work for dragon ball.

[SilverPlaqueVII]

Just to keep the ball rolling from what the OP said, its much basically similar to pro wrestling, which is predetermined by the bookers.

How is this plot line even a consistent thing?

[Man-Child]

Please, no more retcons. This series has had WAY too many already.

[Gorou]

Prophecies, predestined, are narrative solutions I hate with all my being.
Stories where the hero moves only because predestined to do so, or worse, because it is maneuvered by someone else, I always find too tedious, and fictitious (also in this context)

The stories that I love are those where the protagonist writes the story, with his strength, his choices (not always objectively right) and his will.

[ABED]

Hell no. I fucking despise stories like that. Bleach and Naruto are prime examples of what happens when you take the whole "It was all a setup for X and Y to happen to Z person/people" concept and not handle it properly. The story suffers greatly because of that. I don't want any sort of "predetermined by a God or a higher power" bullshit storyline in Dragon Ball ever.

It's possible, Supernatural did it brilliantly, but the difference is the writers had an idea of where they were going from the beginning. That's clearly not the case here.

[Draconic]

This type of destiny stories are a plague affecting otherwise good or decent stories. The Amazing Spiderman movies and the new TMNT movie lose a lot by just turning thwir otherwise interesting characters whose existance is happenstance and they have to learn to live trough it and throws away all that beautiful characterization by having it all be part of a greater/preconcieved plan. These kind of stories only work when the prophecy fails or when other characters cling to a so called One, to the point where they are blind to his/hers actions. Something like that is put to good use in the Star Wars prequels (however it's not executed very well due to being... Well, part of the prequels).

Back to Dragon Ball, though, having everything about Goku be an intricate scheme to turn him into the strongest fighter sucks mostly because it doesn't fit at all with the themes of the series: training to get stronger and being the best based on your hard work. All themes embodied by Goku, which is also why characters like Gohan and Vegeta wouldn't work as THE protagonist. They don't hold the same values.

[Saiga]

This particular scenario is definitely very similar to one introduced in Bleach - Aizen had declared that he had had a hand in all of Ichigo's previous battles, which involved making sure Ichigo's opponents were at an appropriate level for him so that he developed his powers as he went. Well, that's exactly what you're describing.

The difference is, Bleach made it work because the details were already there. One of the earliest villains was shown dealing with Aizen's subordinates (before we learned who they were), the spy bugs Aizen used were seen in advance, he commented on the level he expected Ichigo to be at while watching his fights and even before he made this claim we knew he had been influencing things behind the scenes and directly bringing people into conflict with Ichigo. It wasn't necessarily planned that far back, but the groundwork was there. It was used to explain why Ichigo's opponents had all been at an appropriate level of strength for him to win or gain a new power, but that wasn't the only thing to support it.

It also helps that this entire period covered less than a year.

With Dragon Ball, it doesn't have anything beyond the idea of opponents increasing in strength in a convenient way for the story. And you're talking about a 30+ year period, which makes it even more contrived to try and justify someone having control over those events. There is too much of Dragon Ball's plot that is effected by circumstance or very minor details for it to be believable that someone was orchestrating the entire thing. How would this person even accounted for the time travel shenanigans, to start with? How did they plan the Boo arc to benefit Goku, with how complicated that was to get Goku into a position where he was actually evenly matched? They'd have to be nearly omnipotent, affecting things as we're watching them without any visible involvement. And I don't think that's an appropriate villain for this franchise.

The individual story arcs of Dragon Ball are typically completely unconnected, to boot. Trying to tie them together would be rather messy.

I think the logical problem of each threat being at a conveniently appropriate level for Goku's progression is much smaller than the problem you'd create if you tried to tie it all into some grand scheme. It's just not set up to work that way.

[zDBZ]

I think to a degree, Beerus kind of does this. He starts the domino effect that ultimately leads to him battling Goku by ordering Freeza to blow up Planet Vegeta. Without that...I don't think Dragon Ball would have played out the way it did. So in a way the show has already kinda completed that mission. But overall I would greatly dislike if some great revelation was unveiled and everything that has happened, played out was exactly according to someone's grand master plan to...idk steal the power of gods? It just doesn't really work for dragon ball.

Even that bit of retconning ran hollow IMO. Agreed on Part 2 of your post.