Super 17 arc

[BoosterZabi]

.Ah, and Cooler is Toriyama’s design. That doesn't make him “canon” but still this is how the orginal creator visualised the brother of Freeza.

Keep in mind that the movie is primarily entirely a Toei creation rather then an adaption from the manga where Toriyama and his editors have full control. Toriyama has less control over these creations and while he did make the design, he was likely told what specific features that each one should have. Most DBZ movie villains are meathead designs like Garlic Jr, Slug, Cooler, Super Android 13, Broly, and Bojack ect with the later all having the same type of body frame and height. Also bare in mind these 40 min movies came out 6 months apart of each other.

[Zephyr]

I rewatched GT in December and i still don't like it. It's really bad and doesn't feel like Dragon Ball. I cringed the whole way through and 64 episodes felt like eternity. The ending was ok, i'll give em that.

In what ways did it not feel like Dragon Ball to you? It felt enough like it to me. In Japanese, Kid Goku is as entertaining as ever, because he's just a fucking asshole. Reminded me of older DB in a significant way. Baby was a shameless mashup of Freeza, Cell, Majin Vegeta, and Buu. I think reusing concepts by default renders something significantly similar to that from which the reused concepts are pulled.

It wasn't all fun though, that's for sure. A lot of the initial arc felt like the Fake Namek filler. Stuff that could have and should have been condensed far more. There were plenty of 2/3 episode mini-arcs that would have been less laborious as singular episodes.

Though wasn't it the 17's that caused the rift by opening hell?

Yeah, it was the 17s syncing up that opened the portal. Piccolo and Dende did the same thing to open it back up, so that Goku could escape.

I would say perhaps hell has no escape (Kinda like what we saw in the filler with the Ginyu Force), and so the villains accepted there was no way out (til the 17's did there thing). Why bother revolting when there's no victory.

Yeah, that's another way to justify it.

Is hell said in a guidebook or the series said to be that big?

I'm extrapolating from the size it's been given visually in the pictures of the "snowglobes" from the guidebooks. Herms' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the DB Galaxy Thread (http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... =7&t=11596) says that it takes up the entire lower portion of the afterlife (which, in terms of diameter, is as big as the universe).

We could say he thought by going SSJ4, he'd be on a whole other level to overpower 17 (Which he couldn't simply do with 19), and that could be why he tried it. Though I kinda think it would make more sense to at least pummel 17 first, before making such a risky move by giving him more ki.

Yeah, that would make sense. Alternatively, I think GT paints him as pretty consistently bored (to the point where the only explanation for his not using SSj2 at every single point during the Dragon Ball hunt is that he's just 'playing with his food') that he's perhaps giving himself artificial challenges and difficulty.

Except with GT and recently Super, it's practically impossible to make battle powers have any sort of sense . It's why I stopped more or less going to that Super thread. It's just arguing literal nonsense where nothing makes sense entirely. Like a puzzle where we have some of the pieces, some are missing, and the pieces we do have are torn up. It think it's much easier to figure and theorize the plot, then any of the BP's. The BP's may as well be whatever the hell they feel like.

I just stick to vague tiers for that sort of stuff at this point, similar to what Herms is doing with his "Big Picture". I think if you get hung up on strict rules for how gaps, feats, statements, multipliers, and the like work in absolutely every single context, then you're definitely going to be pulling your hair out.

I feel today Toriyama needs an editor, and more people to help him create something. Toriyama himself admits to other people knowing Dragon Ball better than him, as well as other people having good ideas they could use like Toyotaro. I think he should work with other people to create something (Like an editor), and maybe we could get the brain child of Toriyama and some other talent to bring up some new experiences. I feel Toriyama goes uncontested, and so we're in a rut.

On one hand, I do think it's healthy for Toriyama to have some outside influence. On the other hand, he always has (during the manga's run) and he seems to have them still (for Super and the like).

The stuff he was watching at the time, and the feedback he was receiving from current and former editors, influenced to a humongous extent what path his stories would take while making the manga. Nowadays, we have things like the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake (and after effects), Maximum the Hormone's music, and now more recently "suggestions from the editorial office". While one could argue that there's a strong contrast in the nature of influences here (closer acquaintances and pop culture in general vs. higher up corporate influence, fanworks, and sensitivity to real world disasters)

But I think a really large part of it is that he's no longer writing by the seat of his pants. From what we know, it's unlikely that he's submitting ideas and having them drawn on a week by week basis. He's allowed to think of the entire plot, narrow down the broad strokes that he wants, and lets the blanks be filled in. When he was drawing the manga? It seemed more like he was filling in the blanks as he went, and then let the broad strokes and overarching plot be the result. I enjoy his current stories for what they are, but I think it's largely possible that we'd be getting better ones if he wasn't allowed to plan things out. As stupid as that sounds, I think it applies to Toriyama.

---

After writing that last part, I think I do now see what Kuririn Fan might mean by GT feeling less "Dragon Ball". It, like Super, isn't likely to have been written on a week by week basis, largely making things up as the story progressed. Again, it sounds really stupid to say, but Dragon Ball stories might be better when they're less planned out. It allows for less predictability and more batshit off the wall stuff. I mean, GT and Super have loads of crazy stuff going on, but I think there's definitely something that they lack, some crucial essence of the manga that has yet to be fully emulated. I'm just rambling at this point. I'll stop now.

[dbzfan7]

I just stick to vague tiers for that sort of stuff at this point, similar to what Herms is doing with his "Big Picture". I think if you get hung up on strict rules for how gaps, feats, statements, multipliers, and the like work in absolutely every single context, then you're definitely going to be pulling your hair out.

True I think tiers are the best way to handle it. No multipliers or numbers. It gets too looney with those. Kinda like the good ol days of Dragon Ball when there wasn't numbers, but tiers. Someone was stronger by some amount we couldn't use math for.

On one hand, I do think it's healthy for Toriyama to have some outside influence. On the other hand, he always has (during the manga's run) and he seems to have them still (for Super and the like).

The stuff he was watching at the time, and the feedback he was receiving from current and former editors, influenced to a humongous extent what path his stories would take while making the manga. Nowadays, we have things like the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake (and after effects), Maximum the Hormone's music, and now more recently "suggestions from the editorial office". While one could argue that there's a strong contrast in the nature of influences here (closer acquaintances and pop culture in general vs. higher up corporate influence, fanworks, and sensitivity to real world disasters)

But I think a really large part of it is that he's no longer writing by the seat of his pants. From what we know, it's unlikely that he's submitting ideas and having them drawn on a week by week basis. He's allowed to think of the entire plot, narrow down the broad strokes that he wants, and lets the blanks be filled in. When he was drawing the manga? It seemed more like he was filling in the blanks as he went, and then let the broad strokes and overarching plot be the result. I enjoy his current stories for what they are, but I think it's largely possible that we'd be getting better ones if he wasn't allowed to plan things out. As stupid as that sounds, I think it applies to Toriyama.

Maybe not having to think up on the fly has caused the series to suffer. Though I still believe in editors. The Cell arc in particular had a crazy story of several antagonist changes. 19 and 20 could have been true villains. 16, 17, and 18 could have been the villains. Then Cell, who had more forms after complaints, etc. Perhaps we shouldn't have that much meddling, but damn that lead to a lot of surprises. The new arc looks like it might be more complicated, so we'll see how that goes.

[Kuririn Fan]

I rewatched GT in December and i still don't like it. It's really bad and doesn't feel like Dragon Ball. I cringed the whole way through and 64 episodes felt like eternity. The ending was ok, i'll give em that.

In what ways did it not feel like Dragon Ball to you? It felt enough like it to me. In Japanese, Kid Goku is as entertaining as ever, because he's just a fucking asshole. Reminded me of older DB in a significant way. Baby was a shameless mashup of Freeza, Cell, Majin Vegeta, and Buu. I think reusing concepts by default renders something significantly similar to that from which the reused concepts are pulled.

It wasn't all fun though, that's for sure. A lot of the initial arc felt like the Fake Namek filler. Stuff that could have and should have been condensed far more. There were plenty of 2/3 episode mini-arcs that would have been less laborious as singular episodes.

It just doesn't feel like Dragon Ball. It's a boring mess that doesn't make sense most of the time. Euerything was forced and weird, it was an obvious cash grab after manga ended, there was absolutely no fucking reason to continue it (the manga), and thankfully it bombed.