Yamcha and the bad taste situation

[ABED]

It's not like it's Goku, it's YAMCHA, and he was not that serious. C'mon, the guy froze around women. That was his earliest gimmick. And it's not a core character. Yamcha long since faded into the background. If he was doing what you say to his core characters like Goku and Vegeta, that's completely different. Not only that, it's ONE character. This sort of comedy still feels of this world because it's never been one to take itself too seriously and the writers realized he had long since became a punching bag. I think even Oolong realized Yamcha had never won a single fight in any tournament he was ever in. This might be meta, but it has nothing to do with playing to a group of fans. Maybe the type of humor is different, but IT'S FRIGGIN YAMCHA and you are taking this way too serious, like it's a slap in the face and an affront to Dragon Ball to acknowledge in universe that yes, Yamcha loses A LOT. At some point, why wouldn't anyone point that out? Pointing that out in universe is no different than pointing out an overused plot device. What is so much worse about poking fun at something bad constantly happening to a character than overused devices? How come pointing one out is worse for getting the audience to care? Sorry for the crudity of my phrasing.

They felt distant from the core series even twenty years ago.

Distant?

[Cipher]

It's not like it's Goku, it's YAMCHA, and he was not that serious. C'mon, the guy froze around women. That was his earliest gimmick.

Right, sure. But then the series asked me to take him seriously as a combatant in martial arts tournaments, earning Tenshinhan's respect after a grueling round. It asked me to believe he could be a last line of defense against Piccolo. To care when he died in the Saiyan arc. The series grew and changed.

Fading into the background is fine with me; changing an approach to a character so that they simply become a punching bag ... doesn't feel right. Again, the series never really did that back in the day. Toriyama's gag series never really did that, except when featuring characters who are constant victims of their own ambitions (and the two biggest examples, Senbei and Mr. Satan, remain plenty fleshed out even while frequently setting themselves up for deserved failure and injury).

By the Boo arc, Yamcha was simply a relaxed friend of the cast who had more or less stepped away from rigorous battles. Now, because staff have cottoned onto his memetic place in the fandom due to a string of prominent defeats in the manga (which are never pointed out in the series, by the way; he's still treated as a competent martial artist), everyone around him has to comment on how much he sucks. There's totally a way to do a Yamcha-in-over-his-head-during-god-level-baseball episode, but this didn't feel organic. And even if it's Yamcha -- who, yes, was a core character until he took a backseat -- it's kind of deflating to think that the series will simply let a character's role and interactions be totally flattened if there's sufficient meme potential. Like, it runs the risk of taking the series from being surprisingly sincere despite its whimsy and weirdness to just deciding anything goes for the sake of a cheap laugh. And I mean anything-goes on a character level, since the universe can already change its rules on a dime.

Distant?

"Removed from," as in, didn't fit with. They were easily identifiable as a "movie-only" thing that the manga and anime adaptation never engaged in.

Now I'm sounding like I care about this a lot more than I do, but it was low-key something that bothered me during the episode.

[RandomGuy96]

Fading into the background is fine with me; changing an approach to a character so that they simply become a punching bag ... doesn't feel right. Again, the series never really did that back in the day. Toriyama's gag series never really did that, except when featuring characters who are constant victims of their own ambitions (and the two biggest examples, Senbei and Mr. Satan, remain plenty fleshed out even while frequently setting themselves up for deserved failure and injury).

By the Boo arc, Yamcha was simply a relaxed friend of the cast who had more or less stepped away from rigorous battles. Now, because staff have cottoned onto his memetic place in the fandom due to a string of prominent defeats in the manga (which are never pointed out in the series, by the way; he's still treated as a competent martial artist), everyone around him has to comment on how much he sucks. There's totally a way to do a Yamcha-in-over-his-head-during-god-level-baseball episode, but this didn't feel organic.

Your rant here reminds me of the second Avengers movie. Everyone laughed about Hawkeye being useless with his bow to the point where it was pretty much a stock joke to bring up how stupid "arrow man" is and how he totally doesn't matter next to Captain America or Iron Man, much less Thor or Hulk. So rather than, you know, give him a gun, Whedon suddenly has every character commenting on how lame Hawkeye is in AoU, when no one really made comments like that before. Even Black Widow, who's even less useful than him, gets in on it. Which is total bullshit because her role on the front lines can be outdone by any soldier with a M16+M203. Fucking tasers and pistols? Really?

The point to that off-topic rant was that Whedon is a hack.

[ABED]

Right, sure. But then the series asked me to take him seriously as a combatant in martial arts tournaments, earning Tenshinhan's respect after a grueling round. It asked me to believe he could be a last line of defense against Piccolo. To care when he died in the Saiyan arc. The series grew and changed.

Yes, at least a DECADE prior to the events in the current series and at a time well before powers went off the charts and he was left in the dust. This is different than if Tenshinhan took the brunt of the joke considering his nature as a more earnest character. It's completely different than if the series was poking fun at him while simultaneously asking you to take him serious at the same time, and to be fair, even from the start he was the butt of a joke. He couldn't talk to females or he would freeze up. Mr. Satan wasn't the victim of his own ambition. He was a victim because of his personality. He was arrogant and he paid for it. Yamcha lost all the time and now that he's exponentially outclassed, it doesn't seem out of line to point that out. This isn't about memes, even Oolong, Puar, and Bulma pointed out that he never won. Yamcha landing on his groin was humiliating, but pointing out that he's a loser is too much for you?

who, yes, was a core character until he took a backseat

He's not a core character. He was DECADES ago. Not since the original Dragon Ball has he been a focal character.

it's kind of deflating to think that the series will simply let a character's role and interactions be totally flattened if there's sufficient meme potential.

The fact that his role was flattened WELL before meme was ever even a concept shreds your hypothesis.

Like, it runs the risk of taking the series from being surprisingly sincere

It's a story with smiling poop on a stick!

And if anything, not pointing out that Yamcha loses an awful lot feels disingenuous.

So rather than, you know, give him a gun, Whedon suddenly has every character commenting on how lame Hawkeye is in AoU, when no one really made comments like that before. Even Black Widow, who's even less useful than him, gets in on it. Which is total bullshit because her role on the front lines can be outdone by any soldier with a M16+M203. Fucking tasers and pistols? Really?

What!? When do they say Hawkeye was lame? Whedon created Buffy, but sure, he's a hack.

[Soppa Saia People]

To piggyback off of Cipher'spoint, my main problem with this is that the story and characters treat Yamucha like a joke. Yes Toriyama may see him as a joke and the fan base as well, but the story never did.

[ABED]

To piggyback off of Cipher'spoint, my main problem with this is that the story and characters treat Yamucha like a joke. Yes Toriyama may see him as a joke and the fan base as well, but the story never did.

Froze around women, landed on nards, never won a single fight. I think it's more than fine to poke fun at him by simply pointing those things out. It's not like we're talking about Piccolo, Tenshinhan, or even Kuririn.

[Soppa Saia People]

To piggyback off of Cipher'spoint, my main problem with this is that the story and characters treat Yamucha like a joke. Yes Toriyama may see him as a joke and the fan base as well, but the story never did.

Froze around women, landed on nards, never won a single fight. I think it's more than fine to poke fun at him by simply pointing those things out. It's not like we're talking about Piccolo, Tenshinhan, or even Kuririn.

He only froze around women in the first arc. And when he landed on his balls, he was still congratulated for his efforts.

[precita]

I think its because most of the main cast are friends with him. Both Krillin and Tenshihan like Yamcha, Goku remembers him fondly, and Bulma seems to bare no ill-will toward him even after they broke up, they're still friendly together. Piccolo doesn't look down on him either.

Vegeta and Yamcha also barely have any interaction, so its not like there's any jealousy there either. In fact, I don't think any of the main cast ever thought of Yamcha as incompetent.

[ABED]

He only froze around women in the first arc. And when he landed on his balls, he was still congratulated for his efforts.

He's still very much the brunt of gags. The first arc set the precedent, this hardly out bounds for him to be the butt of a joke. Again, context is everything - it's YAMCHA. It's one character who is part of a series that not nearly as earnest as you are trying to make it. Do you think Toriyama would've had Goku or Tenshinhan or Gohan land on his nards? No, he did it to Yamcha because he's the sort of character whom you can undercut like that. You are making it sound like a show that's earnest with a sprinkling of humor.

I would have to see it in context, but friends can still rib each other over things like this and not be any less friends. I don't see how pointing out that he's overmatched makes them any less his friends.

[mecha3000]

Re: VegettoEX's take on this thread: I certainly agree that getting too caught up in defending any one character is an odd, fruitless way to interact with the series, or any fiction, for that matter. I've been flabbergasted by this attitude time and again following Super weekly, with it hitting a nadir during the Universe 6 arc with Piccolo and Gohan's performances, or lack thereof.

However, if I understand this thread correctly, in terms of it not being about Yamcha specifically, I rather agree with its sentiments. It's one thing to simply not use or repurpose characters. It's another to begin writing them solely as jokes due to meta-elements like Yamcha's memetic status. Yes, I chuckled at the episode revealing his death pose (before it was hammered into the ground by the dialogue), but on top of all the other little moments in the episode -- Bulma expressing that Yamcha was useless until proven otherwise, #18 commenting that he's no longer a martial artist -- it just didn't feel like I was watching a rounded character at all, or even a character the series had ever tried to present in a genuine light. When has Bulma ever felt that way? You can too easily sense those attitudes being written in as winks to fans rather than as elements germane to the world, and that's distracting. It doesn't feel like a type of humor Dragon Ball has ever engaged in before. So many of its best moments, and Toriyama's humor in general, rely on treating the characters genuinely, even in their absurdity. This was quite the opposite.

Maybe this gets into my general attitude that Super faces an uphill battle in terms of contributing anything to a story that's been nearly closed for twenty years, but at the point when characters are no longer being handled on the basis of what their personalities are and where their personal stories should go, but instead on how they can best be used to pander to fans in two-dimensional ways, why do we care about what we're watching?

I have absolutely no stake in Yamcha. He's kind of a boring generic martial-artist who's slowly written into the background. But until last episode, he was never a gag character (whimsical characteristics in the first arc notwithstanding). And, as a major difference between the kind of writing the opening post comments on and Toriyama's, Toriyama never, or hardly ever, presented gag characters as two-dimensional targets for the audience to laugh at. They all have their own things going on, the humor tends to be more situational than at any one character's expense, and even Senbei gets to be right twice a day. Yamcha may have stolen home last week, but he was the constant butt of jokes (even in the minds of his friends, which has never happened before), not because it felt like part of the world, but because someone at Toei was aware of his post-internet reputation. Maybe it's not distasteful, but if we're dipping into those waters, maybe it's time to let the story rest.

Have Yamcha sit out sixty-four episodes and only cameo as he's fixing a car in the desert, for all I care. At least that feels genuine. Last week just didn't seem right.

EDIT -- And that's not to say some version of Yamcha playing the straight man to a bunch of cosmically powerful fighters in a baseball game couldn't work. As others have pointed out, it all comes down to execution.

I feel like you're the only one (or one of the only ones) who truly understand the point of this topic. The topic's not meant to evoke feelings of I WANT YAMCHA TO FIGHT AGAIN AND BE AN ABSOLUTE BADASS. It's more meant to be like WHY ARE THEY FORCING THE YAMCHA SUCKS AGENDA? I understand they're aware of the fanbase, but still: "Fake Death". That's all.

[Cipher]

He's not a core character. He was DECADES ago. Not since the original Dragon Ball has he been a focal character.

For as long as he was a relevant character (through the Saiyan arc), he was absolutely in the same tier of seriousness and importance as Kuririn and Tenshinhan. Losing in a comical way once, to God, doesn't diminish that. Kuririn, Tenshinhan, and even Piccolo are thrown some pratfalls and bits of situational comedy over the series' run. After he's a relevant character, he steps back, but is hardly the butt of jokes. Let's take a quick run through the character's role in the manga and original TV adaptation:

First arc: Comical fighting character in a cast of comical fighting characters.

Second arc: Serious competitor in the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai used to narrate high-level fights and establish the capability of Jackie Chun.

Third arc: Doesn't show up much for the Red Ribbon portion, but gets a bit of relationship comedy in the anime. Contributes in a relatively serious manner to the fights at Uranai Baba's and ultimately goes to train with Kame-Sennin, who is still a high-level fighter.

Fourth arc: Gets a very serious match against Tenshinhan to establish the latter's ruthlessness. Not a joke.

Fifth arc: Is forced into the sidelines due to an injured leg, but still told by Kame-Sennin he may be one of their last hopes if anything should go wrong.

Sixth arc: Trains at Karin's with Kuririn, Tenshinhan and Chaozu, then loses embarrassingly to Shen in a comedic fight meant to increase the mystery of a weak-looking fighter "accidentally" taking out high-level opponents.

Seventh arc: Trains with everyone else under God and Mr. Popo, then dies against the Saibaimen in a completely serious scene. Kuririn states Yamcha volunteered to go first to save Kuririn and others from falling prey to exactly that kind of sneak attack. Tenshinhan, Chaozu and Piccolo all die in the same battle.

Eighth arc: Out of the main action at Kaiou's, but the anime throws everyone that filler scene against the Ginyu Force; he's at least as serious a character as Tenshinhan, Chaozu and Kuririn, regardless of a more light-hearted personality.

Ninth arc: Has a hole punched through him by #20 in what is absolutely not a comical scene. Later fights Cell Jr.s along with everyone else at the Cell Games. In the anime, he receives a serious scene along with Tenshinhan and everyone else as they reflect on their relationships to Goku.

Tenth arc: No longer interested in fighting against cosmically powerful characters at tournaments, but is part of the larger cast and never treated as a joke or failure in his background role.

GT: He and the rest of the group seem to have gone their separate ways, which is fine, with his ties to the main cast diminishing. Shows up for cameos.

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that the series always treated him as a joke. It's never been part of the fiction before. He's a main character, and then he's not, but he's never a walking punchline.

It's a story with smiling poop on a stick!

With charming and consistently written characters. That goes for both Slump and Dragon Ball. There's a reason we're talking about Toriyama series twenty years after the fact.

Yamcha landing on his groin was humiliating, but pointing out that he's a loser is too much for you?

Nah, it'd be perfectly fine if that had been how the series had always operated. Instead, it only comes out twenty years after the fact due to out-of-universe reasons. That's what makes all the dialogue at Yamcha's expense, and in some ways the episode's overall treatment and tone, feel disingenuous. They're twenty years too late to decide that's everyone's relationship to him.

Again, I have no personal stake in Yamcha as a character. It really confuses me when people seem to only watch or read Dragon Ball to track certain characters' success rates (cannot throw enough shade at the Super forum right now). I just want the series to treat characters sincerely and consistently, because that's one of the areas in which Dragon Ball has always shined. It's a silly, anything-goes world, but the characters all get to grow and grow old in relatively believable ways.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else to say here. If the episode didn't bother you, that's awesome. I'm glad you got to enjoy it. I'm just explaining why one aspect of its writing, brought up by this thread, was moderately distracting for me.

[RisanF]

Fading into the background is fine with me; changing an approach to a character so that they simply become a punching bag ... doesn't feel right. Again, the series never really did that back in the day. Toriyama's gag series never really did that, except when featuring characters who are constant victims of their own ambitions (and the two biggest examples, Senbei and Mr. Satan, remain plenty fleshed out even while frequently setting themselves up for deserved failure and injury).

By the Boo arc, Yamcha was simply a relaxed friend of the cast who had more or less stepped away from rigorous battles. Now, because staff have cottoned onto his memetic place in the fandom due to a string of prominent defeats in the manga (which are never pointed out in the series, by the way; he's still treated as a competent martial artist), everyone around him has to comment on how much he sucks. There's totally a way to do a Yamcha-in-over-his-head-during-god-level-baseball episode, but this didn't feel organic.

Your rant here reminds me of the second Avengers movie. Everyone laughed about Hawkeye being useless with his bow to the point where it was pretty much a stock joke to bring up how stupid "arrow man" is and how he totally doesn't matter next to Captain America or Iron Man, much less Thor or Hulk. So rather than, you know, give him a gun, Whedon suddenly has every character commenting on how lame Hawkeye is in AoU, when no one really made comments like that before. Even Black Widow, who's even less useful than him, gets in on it. Which is total bullshit because her role on the front lines can be outdone by any soldier with a M16+M203. Fucking tasers and pistols? Really?

The point to that off-topic rant was that Whedon is a hack.

I did feel that "Age of Ultron" was all-together too impressed with how meta and ironic it was, so much so that it left me feeling rather detached from it all. The characters kept on riffing on themselves, like they were somehow self-consciousness about being superheroes and didn't want to commit fully. Conversely, I am pleased with the Russo brothers take on the Avengers in CIvil War, because they are treated more like people than kitschy novelties. While still featuring spouts sarcastic levity, characters like Cap and Tony have real conversations, and the Avengers seemed to fill their costumes this time around.

To tie this in with Dragon Ball Super, I'm guessing this postmodern take on Yamcha is part of the frustration people have with this episode. Dragon Ball is a light-hearted franchise, but it really doesn't delve into the kind of self-aware, hipster meta-humor of acknowledging memes and fan fervor (Dr. Slump does, but it's actually designed with this in mind). Even with all the random characterization and bizarre gags of Dragon Ball, it's confident in itself and takes its wacky world at face value. Of course, part of the issue is that Yamcha has been written so thinly over the course of Dragon Ball, that the meta-humor is more vibrant than the actual character. But now it's like he's a parody of himself, something more fit for comedic Abridged version than the series proper. It's like if Goku suddenly started talking in an episode to Chi-Chi about how he couldn't make any money from fighting in tournaments because internet forum users were calling him a cold-hearted fight-addict and refusing to go to tournaments featuring him.

[ABED]

For as long as he was a relevant character (through the Saiyan arc), he was absolutely in the same tier of seriousness and importance as Kuririn and Tenshinhan.

We clearly see this series VERY differently. Kuririn is Goku's best friend and Tenshinhan was Goku's rival. Yamcha was neither. He was a good friend, but never his best, nor was he nearly as earnest as Tenshinhan. And even if we include the Saiyan arc, it was still over a decade since Yamcha was that important. Even in the Saiyan arc, he's little more than fodder. He's the first to die and he is killed by a lackey.

Contributes in a relatively serious manner

Even in the Uranai Baba Tournament, he doesn't win on his own. Kuririn's strategy of using Roshi's massive nose bleed after seeing Bulma's breasts does he win the match. No he's not a gag character, but it's certainly not over the line to make a few jokes pointing out that he loses quite a bit. I never said he was always treated as a joke, but he's not nearly as serious as you are claiming. If ever there was a character you could make fun of, it's him. I don't think it ruins the integrity of his character, depending on the context, and he's not a main character. He's a supporting character.

it only comes out twenty years after the fact due to out-of-universe reasons

Sure, because you know exactly what the reasons were through osmosis. This isn't inconsistent as jokes have been made at Yamcha's expense before. The distinctions you've made in your head are artificial. The story has changed and Yamcha was left in the dust DECADES prior. Why wouldn't anyone point that out? One believable consequence of the disparity of powers and Yamcha's history of losing is pointing out the fact that he constantly loses.

While still featuring spouts sarcastic levity, characters like Cap and Tony have real conversations,

To be fair, Cap was always treated seriously. His and Tony's conversation at Clint's home was very serious.

[Gaffer Tape]

He only froze around women in the first arc. And when he landed on his balls, he was still congratulated for his efforts.

He's still very much the brunt of gags. The first arc set the precedent, this hardly out bounds for him to be the butt of a joke. Again, context is everything - it's YAMCHA. It's one character who is part of a series that not nearly as earnest as you are trying to make it. Do you think Toriyama would've had Goku or Tenshinhan or Gohan land on his nards? No, he did it to Yamcha because he's the sort of character whom you can undercut like that.

I don't have a lot of time to contribute to this because I have to run to work. But for the moment, I do just want to point out that you are basing these particular claims without putting them into the broader context. Yeah, it's easy to say that Yamucha was always treated as joke by pointing out certain examples. Out of context, it really makes it sound like he always got the short end of the stick. But you can't bring up examples from the first arc without adding that EVERY character was treated that way. Blooma's selfishness, Oolong's duplicity, Goku's stupidity... those were all played up to make them look bad and get them into trouble. Yamucha was treated no better or worse than any of them. But it's because of that mindset of taking just one character's actions out of context that allows you to be able to make the bolded statement above. Because you ask this question while seemingly forgetting it's the exact same arc in which Tenshinhan gets humiliated by having his pants fall down in public! So... yes, I do think Toriyama could have had any other character be humiliated in a tournament.

[ABED]

EVERY character was treated that way. Blooma's selfishness, Oolong's duplicity, Goku's stupidity... those were all played up to make them look bad and get them into trouble.

Other than Goku the characters you mentioned are not fighters. Goku's stupid, but he's always been shown to be a fighting savant. I'm not taking these actions out of context at all. Goku is the protagonist, so he's rightfully not the butt of the joke and losing all the time. He's not the guy who lands on his balls, he's the guy that sticks nyoibo up a ninja's ass. Sure, Tenshinhan does have his pants fall down in public, but that's not the norm and you can get away with that on occasion with the more earnest characters like him or Piccolo. It was also a gesture done in good humor. And let's be clear, being pantsed is far less humiliating than landing on one's nards mid battle.

[Kid Buu]

I always thought it was odd that people constantly bring up the fact that Krillin interfered with Yamcha's victory against the Invisible Man, but ignore that it was only to counter Baba's interference.

Either way though Goku later one-shots tthe much stronger The Mummy so it just made the whole Dracula/Invisible Man fights feel redundant.

Oh, and while I did like the early seasons of Buffy/Angel, I can understand not liking Whedon. My main problem is that it feels like everyone in his works talks just like him.

[ABED]

Oh, and while I did like the early seasons of Buffy/Angel, I can understand not liking Whedon. My main problem is that it feels like everyone in his works talks just like him.

Maybe, but they all don't sound alike. This isn't something particular to Whedon's work.

I always thought it was odd that people constantly bring up the fact that Krillin interfered with Yamcha's victory against the Invisible Man,

Baba just sang loud so Yamcha couldn't hear the Invisible Man. Kuririn covered him in blood.

[Akyon]

Oh, and while I did like the early seasons of Buffy/Angel, I can understand not liking Whedon. My main problem is that it feels like everyone in his works talks just like him.

Maybe, but they all don't sound alike. This isn't something particular to Whedon's work.

I always thought it was odd that people constantly bring up the fact that Krillin interfered with Yamcha's victory against the Invisible Man,

Baba just sang loud so Yamcha couldn't hear the Invisible Man. Kuririn covered him in blood.

She removed Yamcha's advantage, Krillin removed the Invisible Man's advantage. In a straight fight Yamcha could, and does easily outpower him. There's no "Just" here, both equally dick over the other's combatant. Krillin's plan being more elaborate doesn't make it more unfair than Baba's plan of using an invisible fighter and removing any ability to trace him.

[ABED]

She didn't physically touch him. Kuririn might as well have gotten in the ring and thrown a punch. Baba's "interference" was akin to cheering really loud. Who cares who can beat whom in a straight up fight? Invisibility was a legitimate advantage, much like Guldo's time freeze.

[Akyon]

She didn't physically touch him. Kuririn might as well have gotten in the ring and thrown a punch. Baba's "interference" was akin to cheering really loud. Who cares who can beat whom in a straight up fight? Invisibility was a legitimate advantage, much like Guldo's time freeze.

Krillin didn't touch the Invisible man either. Not even a little bit.

Some of Roshi's blood happens to fall onto the Invisible Man? Too bad, so sad.
Again it's as interfering as the cheating old hag was which is why she has to accept it as Yamcha's win.