What is the lamest thing to come out of modern DBZ?

[rereboy]

You just summed up... well... Dragon Ball Super as a whole*

Fixed for ya!

You could say that for like all of Dragonball. Against Daimao, Freeza, Cell all of them should have just died but they all had some crazy power boost just to defeat the villian. Gohan in the Cell arc is the worst offender.

Not really. Dragon Ball had better basis and better power consistency. Doesn't really compare to Super.

[Lord Beerus]

Not really. Dragon Ball had better basis and better power consistency. Doesn't really compare to Super.

In the first half of the story, sure. But shit got way out of had once Zenakai's and Super Saiyan became a thing.

[fadeddreams5]

You just summed up... well... Dragon Ball Super as a whole*

Fixed for ya!

You could say that for like all of Dragonball. Against Daimao, Freeza, Cell all of them should have just died but they all had some crazy power boost just to defeat the villian. Gohan in the Cell arc is the worst offender.

How was Gohan the worst offender? He trained with a SSJ to become a SSJ himself, and then used his hidden power, which we always knew about, to reach new heights. It was plausible within the context of the series.

The worst offender was Goku in the namek saga going from PL 120,000 (?) to like 10,000,000 after his zenkai. At the very least, they did explain zenkai was a thing. Cell himself later uses it to catapult in strength too.

There's not a single moment in DBZ where it's hard to tell who's stronger than who, and there was consistency, for the most part, in this area. Super is all over the place. You have fans forced to speculate over two base forms; you have rage boosts allowing characters with no previously established hidden powers ascending two levels above their SSJ states; you have SSJs holding their own against opponents with SSJG power, when the 5th episode showed this simply shouldn't be the case; you have characters training for a few months to become gods in minutes, when it's implied that realm couldn't be reached by mere training; and so on. The power scaling and consistency is a mess. The series has trouble following its own rules.

[Lord Beerus]

There's not a single moment in DBZ where it's hard to tell who's stronger than who, and there was consistency, for the most part, in this area. Super is all over the place. You have fans forced to speculate over two base forms; you have rage boosts allowing characters with no previously established hidden powers ascending two levels above their SSJ states; you have SSJs holding their own against opponents with SSJG power, when the 5th episode showed this simply shouldn't be the case; you have characters training for a few months to become gods in minutes, when it's implied that realm couldn't be reached by mere training; and so on. The power scaling and consistency is a mess. The series has trouble following its own rules.

I certainly agree with that power scaling in Super is a mess and at this stage they're are not even hiding the fact that they making characters as strong as they need to be. Much like what GT pulled. But I do recall an incident in Z when Piccolo was taken down with one eye blast and then when Piccolo recovered he displayed dominance over Dr Gero and treated him like a non-threat. How did Piccolo suddenly turn from fodder for Gero to being suddenly strong enough to potentially curb stomp him in less than few hours off-screen? It was never explained. One thing I will commend Z for is that, despite the insane jumps in power from the Namek arc and beyond, you had a fundamental understanding of where all of the characters were standing on the power hierarchy, most of the time.

[ShadowBardock89]

What Dragon Ball Minus did to Bardock and Goku. At least it made up for Raditz's absence in Bardock: Father of Goku, but Nappa is now missing.

[ekrolo2]

I certainly agree with that power scaling in Super is a mess and at this stage they're are not even hiding the fact that they making characters as strong as they need to be. Much like what GT pulled. But I do recall an incident in Z when Piccolo was taken down with one eye blast and then when Piccolo recovered he displayed dominance over Dr Gero and treated him like a non-threat. How did Piccolo suddenly turn from fodder for Gero to being suddenly strong enough to potentially curb stomp him in less than few hours off-screen? It was never explained. One thing I will commend Z for is that, despite the insane jumps in power from the Namek arc and beyond, you had a fundamental understanding of where all of the characters were standing on the power hierarchy, most of the time.

Piccolo was just faking defeat to have a shot at saving Goku:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Lord Beerus]

I certainly agree with that power scaling in Super is a mess and at this stage they're are not even hiding the fact that they making characters as strong as they need to be. Much like what GT pulled. But I do recall an incident in Z when Piccolo was taken down with one eye blast and then when Piccolo recovered he displayed dominance over Dr Gero and treated him like a non-threat. How did Piccolo suddenly turn from fodder for Gero to being suddenly strong enough to potentially curb stomp him in less than few hours off-screen? It was never explained. One thing I will commend Z for is that, despite the insane jumps in power from the Namek arc and beyond, you had a fundamental understanding of where all of the characters were standing on the power hierarchy, most of the time.

Piccolo was just faking defeat to have a shot at saving Goku:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Wow.

What fucking idiot Piccolo is. Why in God's name would he make a ridiculous gamble like that? If he knew he was that much stronger than Gero that he could literally take a full on attack like that and survive with just a few scratches, why the fuck didn't he just destroy 19 and Gero and save Goku and everyone else all that hassle? And it turned out to be pointless in the end as Vegeta saved Goku any way.

Ugh. This is why I hate the Android/Cell arc. Because of stupid shit like this.

[ekrolo2]

Wow.

What fucking idiot Piccolo is. Why in God's name would he make a ridiculous gamble like that? If he knew he was that much stronger than Gero that he could literally take a full on attack like that and survive with just a few scratches, why the fuck didn't he just destroy 19 and Gero and save Goku and everyone else all that hassle? And it turned out to be pointless in the end as Vegeta saved Goku any way.

Ugh. This is why I hate the Android/Cell arc. Because of stupid shit like this.

Pretty stupid indeed but it pales in comparison to Vegeta's "genius" tactic of scaring Gero off when everyone else knew Gero could kill him easily thanks to most of his power being gone.

[rereboy]

Not really. Dragon Ball had better basis and better power consistency. Doesn't really compare to Super.

In the first half of the story, sure. But shit got way out of had once Zenakai's and Super Saiyan became a thing.

Like I said, not really. Sure, if we want to compare the second half of Dragon Ball with the first, we will find better basis and better power consistency in the first half in most cases... but the difference doesn't really compare to what we see in Super.

The second half of Dragon Ball could have some flimsy excuses for power gains, but they were nicely developed and foreshadowed, and as for power consistency the second half of Dragon Ball is miles better than Super.

[Attitudefan]

It's funny you guys mention the Android/Cell arc because that is where most of the things people dislike about Dragonball in the 2000s and beyond really stem from.

Case in point: the bad art designs are directly linked to the Android/Cell arc, where the anime's team had got a major staff change. This is where Yamamuro gained power and influence after taking over Shinto's lead role. This is also where he became lead designer by the middle of the arc. Toriyama's art style also forced the very talented Maeda and his team to step down from lead designer. So in combined effort, both Yamamuro and Toriyama have caused what we currently see with the bad character designs (the plastic hair and skin for example is a trademark of Yamamuro as far back as this.I had a thread where I even showed the difference between Piccolo's design by Maeda and Yamamuro during the original run, and the plastic colouring style is there by mid Android arc).

Maeda's design in the orignal run:


Yamamuro's design in the original DBZ run (Android arc):



[spoiler]Maeda era:


Yamamuro era:
[/spoiler]

Yamamuo's design's lack depth (drawn by him or not, it's his designs) and has lead to the flat looking Super designs we see today. In contrast, Maeda's era had so much depth to their line work, it's insane. Piccolo's head in the example above looks pasted on top of his clothing while Maeda's design looks three-dimensional.

Also, the Android/Cell arc was also the arc that introduced the idea that anyone can become Super Saiyans and the insane power boosts from not only heroes but even Earth bound enemies that made no sense were introduced here (how could some Earth scientist really be able to create more powerful beings than an intergalactic empire? So Earth went from being the butt of the galaxy to the focal point...) Yet, while Earth bound baddies can be strong, the humans remain weak despite training in 10x Earth gravity LONGER THAN GOKU DID.

This arc also completely forced anyone not Saiyan out of the lime light, and made Vegeta a good guy (which really seems out of character). I feel the anime staff actually made filler that was more in character for Vegeta than what the manga had (see the filler where Gohan gets smashed by Vegeta around the time Freeza 'dies'). I'm sure the anime staff included this filler because they felt, too, that Vegeta was acting really out of character.

Plus, the many stupid decisions by the protagonists start here, as stated in the posts above mine. I mean, even Bulma had sense to use the Dragon Balls to figure out where Gero is and defeat him.

The multiverse canon begins here as well, which has lead to Super's anime plot.

Multiple Super Saiyan levels begin here too, which has lead to the ridiculous transformations we see in Super (Blue SSJ and SJJ God etc... just too much).

When people say the Freeza arc would have been the best ending, allowing all characters to come full circle, it really was.

[nite_jay]

It's funny you guys mention the Android/Cell arc because that is where most of the things people dislike about Dragonball in the 2000s and beyond really stem from.

Case in point: the bad art designs are directly linked to the Android/Cell arc, where the anime's team had got a major staff change. This is where Yamamuro gained power and influence after taking over Shinto's lead role. This is also where he became lead designer by the middle of the arc. Toriyama's art style also forced the very talented Maeda and his team to step down from lead designer. So in combined effort, both Yamamuro and Toriyama have caused what we currently see with the bad character designs (the plastic hair and skin for example is a trademark of Yamamuro as far back as this.I had a thread where I even showed the difference between Piccolo's design by Maeda and Yamamuro during the original run, and the plastic colouring style is there by mid Android arc).

Maeda's design in the orignal run:


Yamamuro's design in the original DBZ run (Android arc):



[spoiler]Maeda era:


Yamamuro era:
[/spoiler]

Yamamuo's design's lack depth (drawn by him or not, it's his designs) and has lead to the flat looking Super designs we see today. In contrast, Maeda's era had so much depth to their line work, it's insane. Piccolo's head in the example above looks pasted on top of his clothing while Maeda's design looks three-dimensional.

Also, the Android/Cell arc was also the arc that introduced the idea that anyone can become Super Saiyans and the insane power boosts from not only heroes but even Earth bound enemies that made no sense were introduced here (how could some Earth scientist really be able to create more powerful beings than an intergalactic empire? So Earth went from being the butt of the galaxy to the focal point...) Yet, while Earth bound baddies can be strong, the humans remain weak despite training in 10x Earth gravity LONGER THAN GOKU DID.

This arc also completely forced anyone not Saiyan out of the lime light, and made Vegeta a good guy (which really seems out of character). I feel the anime staff actually made filler that was more in character for Vegeta than what the manga had (see the filler where Gohan gets smashed by Vegeta around the time Freeza 'dies'). I'm sure the anime staff included this filler because they felt, too, that Vegeta was acting really out of character.

Plus, the many stupid decisions by the protagonists start here, as stated in the posts above mine. I mean, even Bulma had sense to use the Dragon Balls to figure out where Gero is and defeat him.

The multiverse canon begins here as well, which has lead to Super's anime plot.

Multiple Super Saiyan levels begin here too, which has lead to the ridiculous transformations we see in Super (Blue SSJ and SJJ God etc... just too much).

When people say the Freeza arc would have been the best ending, allowing all characters to come full circle, it really was.

It's weird how much more depth and personality Maeda's and Toriyama's earlier designs have compared to both old and new Yamamuro.

[fadeddreams5]

It's funny you guys mention the Android/Cell arc because that is where most of the things people dislike about Dragonball in the 2000s and beyond really stem from.

Case in point: the bad art designs are directly linked to the Android/Cell arc, where the anime's team had got a major staff change. This is where Yamamuro gained power and influence after taking over Shinto's lead role. This is also where he became lead designer by the middle of the arc. Toriyama's art style also forced the very talented Maeda and his team to step down from lead designer. So in combined effort, both Yamamuro and Toriyama have caused what we currently see with the bad character designs (the plastic hair and skin for example is a trademark of Yamamuro as far back as this.I had a thread where I even showed the difference between Piccolo's design by Maeda and Yamamuro during the original run, and the plastic colouring style is there by mid Android arc).

Maeda's design in the orignal run:


Yamamuro's design in the original DBZ run (Android arc):



[spoiler]Maeda era:


Yamamuro era:
[/spoiler]

Yamamuo's design's lack depth (drawn by him or not, it's his designs) and has lead to the flat looking Super designs we see today. In contrast, Maeda's era had so much depth to their line work, it's insane. Piccolo's head in the example above looks pasted on top of his clothing while Maeda's design looks three-dimensional.

Also, the Android/Cell arc was also the arc that introduced the idea that anyone can become Super Saiyans and the insane power boosts from not only heroes but even Earth bound enemies that made no sense were introduced here (how could some Earth scientist really be able to create more powerful beings than an intergalactic empire? So Earth went from being the butt of the galaxy to the focal point...) Yet, while Earth bound baddies can be strong, the humans remain weak despite training in 10x Earth gravity LONGER THAN GOKU DID.

This arc also completely forced anyone not Saiyan out of the lime light, and made Vegeta a good guy (which really seems out of character). I feel the anime staff actually made filler that was more in character for Vegeta than what the manga had (see the filler where Gohan gets smashed by Vegeta around the time Freeza 'dies'). I'm sure the anime staff included this filler because they felt, too, that Vegeta was acting really out of character.

Plus, the many stupid decisions by the protagonists start here, as stated in the posts above mine. I mean, even Bulma had sense to use the Dragon Balls to figure out where Gero is and defeat him.

The multiverse canon begins here as well, which has lead to Super's anime plot.

Multiple Super Saiyan levels begin here too, which has lead to the ridiculous transformations we see in Super (Blue SSJ and SJJ God etc... just too much).

When people say the Freeza arc would have been the best ending, allowing all characters to come full circle, it really was.

<.< >.> I sort of like the Yamamuro pics you chose more. Not by much, mind you. I love both.

And I disagree that the Cell saga is where the things people dislike about the series stem from. I mean, I agree with a lot of the flaws you mentioned, but the Buu saga is really where all the filth stems from. Every saiyan was inevitably going to reach SSJ, no matter how the series would have continued. They trained beyond SSJ, but they were still SSJ, just trained ones. Gohan used his hidden power we always knew about to reach a special form. Ultimately, Goku proved all those grade forms were useless too.

How did the multiverse canon start here? The whole saga takes place on Earth.

[Attitudefan]

Multiverse canon started here based on the way time travel worked with Trunks. Despite Trunks fixing the past, it did not change his future because he is from another timeline string (essentially another dimension/universe).

[Saikyo no Senshi]

1) Yamamuro character designs. They are plain ugly and awful to look at. The guy needs to leave his time is up.

2) Dragon Ball Kai: Crappy editing, dreadful character designs, little to no effort put in by the staff, music fiasco, bad Kikuchi placement. All in all a horrible mess.

3) Fukkatsu no F/DB Minus: The worst things to come out of Toriyama. I never thought something as horrendous as the Cell stuff by him will be topped, but boy I was wrong.

- Travis

[Rubens]

Incredible, I haven't really paid attention to how detailed the original designs were.

Pardon my ignorance, but I wonder if Toriyama's change of style was due to him being tired of working on Dragon Ball and decided to go with a simpler style, or was he asked to change to make the animators' job easier back in the day?

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Incredible, I haven't really paid attention to how detailed the original designs were.

Pardon my ignorance, but I wonder if Toriyama's change of style was due to him being tired of working on Dragon Ball and decided to go with a simpler style, or was he asked to change to make the animators' job easier back in the day?

Toriyama's first-hand drawings have nothing to do with the final version of the show. We do know that the farther he went, the sharper his drawings were to properly convey action sequences. However, his art became sloppy around the Boo Arc, which we can safely assume was from burnout.

As for the show, the "plastic" look that came as time went on can be blamed almost entirely on Yamamuro.

[TheMikado]

I certainly agree with that power scaling in Super is a mess and at this stage they're are not even hiding the fact that they making characters as strong as they need to be. Much like what GT pulled. But I do recall an incident in Z when Piccolo was taken down with one eye blast and then when Piccolo recovered he displayed dominance over Dr Gero and treated him like a non-threat. How did Piccolo suddenly turn from fodder for Gero to being suddenly strong enough to potentially curb stomp him in less than few hours off-screen? It was never explained. One thing I will commend Z for is that, despite the insane jumps in power from the Namek arc and beyond, you had a fundamental understanding of where all of the characters were standing on the power hierarchy, most of the time.

Piccolo was just faking defeat to have a shot at saving Goku:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Wow.

What fucking idiot Piccolo is. Why in God's name would he make a ridiculous gamble like that? If he knew he was that much stronger than Gero that he could literally take a full on attack like that and survive with just a few scratches, why the fuck didn't he just destroy 19 and Gero and save Goku and everyone else all that hassle? And it turned out to be pointless in the end as Vegeta saved Goku any way.

Ugh. This is why I hate the Android/Cell arc. Because of stupid shit like this.

Whether the action the character takes is stupid or not, at least it's explained. The thing this comment does is it prevents a debate on whether the events before and after are nonsensical which is valuable as it doesn't take us out of universe. In-universe, we as the audience are thinking "Man, Piccolo, that wasn't a good idea at all." Rather than "I must have missed something in the story because I don't understand how these events unfolded." This is the key difference in what is causing the issues with Super. Small comments help to link the in-universe events, whether or not we agree on the reasoning, the reasoning is still being made by an in-universe character and not an out of universe audience.

[DBZAOTA482]

I certainly agree with that power scaling in Super is a mess and at this stage they're are not even hiding the fact that they making characters as strong as they need to be. Much like what GT pulled. But I do recall an incident in Z when Piccolo was taken down with one eye blast and then when Piccolo recovered he displayed dominance over Dr Gero and treated him like a non-threat. How did Piccolo suddenly turn from fodder for Gero to being suddenly strong enough to potentially curb stomp him in less than few hours off-screen? It was never explained. One thing I will commend Z for is that, despite the insane jumps in power from the Namek arc and beyond, you had a fundamental understanding of where all of the characters were standing on the power hierarchy, most of the time.

Piccolo was just faking defeat to have a shot at saving Goku:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Wow.

What fucking idiot Piccolo is. Why in God's name would he make a ridiculous gamble like that? If he knew he was that much stronger than Gero that he could literally take a full on attack like that and survive with just a few scratches, why the fuck didn't he just destroy 19 and Gero and save Goku and everyone else all that hassle? And it turned out to be pointless in the end as Vegeta saved Goku any way.

Ugh. This is why I hate the Android/Cell arc. Because of stupid shit like this.

Because he can't.

It's funny you guys mention the Android/Cell arc because that is where most of the things people dislike about Dragonball in the 2000s and beyond really stem from.

Case in point: the bad art designs are directly linked to the Android/Cell arc, where the anime's team had got a major staff change. This is where Yamamuro gained power and influence after taking over Shinto's lead role. This is also where he became lead designer by the middle of the arc. Toriyama's art style also forced the very talented Maeda and his team to step down from lead designer. So in combined effort, both Yamamuro and Toriyama have caused what we currently see with the bad character designs (the plastic hair and skin for example is a trademark of Yamamuro as far back as this.I had a thread where I even showed the difference between Piccolo's design by Maeda and Yamamuro during the original run, and the plastic colouring style is there by mid Android arc).

Maeda's design in the orignal run:


Yamamuro's design in the original DBZ run (Android arc):



[spoiler]Maeda era:


Yamamuro era:
[/spoiler]

Yamamuo's design's lack depth (drawn by him or not, it's his designs) and has lead to the flat looking Super designs we see today. In contrast, Maeda's era had so much depth to their line work, it's insane. Piccolo's head in the example above looks pasted on top of his clothing while Maeda's design looks three-dimensional.

Also, the Android/Cell arc was also the arc that introduced the idea that anyone can become Super Saiyans and the insane power boosts from not only heroes but even Earth bound enemies that made no sense were introduced here (how could some Earth scientist really be able to create more powerful beings than an intergalactic empire? So Earth went from being the butt of the galaxy to the focal point...) Yet, while Earth bound baddies can be strong, the humans remain weak despite training in 10x Earth gravity LONGER THAN GOKU DID.

This arc also completely forced anyone not Saiyan out of the lime light, and made Vegeta a good guy (which really seems out of character). I feel the anime staff actually made filler that was more in character for Vegeta than what the manga had (see the filler where Gohan gets smashed by Vegeta around the time Freeza 'dies'). I'm sure the anime staff included this filler because they felt, too, that Vegeta was acting really out of character.

Plus, the many stupid decisions by the protagonists start here, as stated in the posts above mine. I mean, even Bulma had sense to use the Dragon Balls to figure out where Gero is and defeat him.

The multiverse canon begins here as well, which has lead to Super's anime plot.

Multiple Super Saiyan levels begin here too, which has lead to the ridiculous transformations we see in Super (Blue SSJ and SJJ God etc... just too much).

When people say the Freeza arc would have been the best ending, allowing all characters to come full circle, it really was.

1. The humans only trained in 10x gravity for like 2 months at most while Goku was on it for a year and was naturally used to it because he was a Saiyan.

2. Vegeta was never treated as a good guy or was one. Krillin even said that they couldn't trust him without a common enemy.

3. If the series ended on the Freeza Saga then Gohan never realizes his potential, Krillin never meets Mrs. Right, and Piccolo never becomes one with Kami.... for starters.

[Pantalones]

Yet, while Earth bound baddies can be strong, the humans remain weak despite training in 10x Earth gravity LONGER THAN GOKU DID.

To be fair, this is mostly because Goku (...and later every other Saiyan) has the power to become 50 times stronger at will by this point in the story.

If Super Saiyan transformations had never been introduced, I could see Goku only being much stronger than the humans thanks to Kaio-ken (which he can only use in bursts and is worn out by, so that power is kind of a double-edged sword best saved as a last resort), with Tenshinhan and Krillin actually managing to stay within a short distance of his base power (like how back in Dragonball, they were always at least strong enough to give him a decent fight when he was using his "tournament level" power and only fell short when he went all-out in a serious fight) -- especially since Goku wouldn't have the massive leap in base power that his "stay in Super Saiyan all the time" training with Gohan seems to have given him.

The humans could very well be keeping up with the base Saiyans (or at least not lagging that far behind, like they're still in the millions just not as high into the millions as the Saiyans) up until the start of the Android Saga... but there's not much they can do to bridge an additional 50x gap short of some massive boost like fusion (which has been said to make you "tens/dozens of times" stronger) or the old Kaioshin's potential unlock. And when the main Saiyans all start being able to boost their power even further beyond that initial 50x boost? Yeah, that'd be why the humans stopped really even trying to keep up after the Cell Games -- even if they train hard and catch up to the base Saiyans again, they're still 100x weaker than the Saiyans at full power thanks to SSj2 (and 400x weaker than Goku at his maximum thanks to SSj3...)

[Lord Beerus]

Whether the action the character takes is stupid or not, at least it's explained. The thing this comment does is it prevents a debate on whether the events before and after are nonsensical which is valuable as it doesn't take us out of universe. In-universe, we as the audience are thinking "Man, Piccolo, that wasn't a good idea at all." Rather than "I must have missed something in the story because I don't understand how these events unfolded." This is the key difference in what is causing the issues with Super. Small comments help to link the in-universe events, whether or not we agree on the reasoning, the reasoning is still being made by an in-universe character and not an out of universe audience.

Explaining why you did something reckless and stupid, doesn't negate the fact that is was still reckless and stupid.

Because he can't.

Why not?