I compare Super to DB/Z, here's my straight face....Gochu wrote:I expected opinions on super to be similar to mine for long time fans, but I'm seeing that many see Super as comparable to DB/DBZ, and most say it's better than GT.
I took a break from it last year after starting the champa saga, but over the past few days I've watched up until the end of future trunks arc.
Here are some of my thoughts/opinions on what I dislike about Super overall:
Comedy: Many say that super tries to be funnier like dragonball, except it goes about it in the wrong way imo. Dragonball accentuated the humorous traits in characters to make it funnier. For example, Roshi was much more perverted in DB compared to DBZ. And goku was more naive and often did funny things because he didn't know any better. But they kept everything believable for the characters. You would never see someone serious like Tien or King piccolo do something that was really out of character in order to be funny. In contrast, DBS does this all the time. We have piccolo acting as a babysitter/martha stewart, vegeta wimpering and cowering in subservience during the first appearance of Beerus, Goku acting unbelievably stupid even for him, etc. Also, many of the jokes are remedial and sort of damage the reputation of certain characters. For example, calling upon the divine dragon by saying "lemon pleasy" at the end of the summoning speech, as well as the king of all saiyans being asked to get a fluffy pillow for Freeza. This stuff happens all of the time in Super.
Animation: The animation quality is still just absolutely terrible. There isn't much to be said here because it obvious. It's just sad that the animation from 30 years ago was much better. Some things that really bug me, though, are how they don't even put in effort to maintain consistency. For example, Krillin's height fluctuates a 1-2 feet given the episode or scene he's in. Sometimes his eye level is at 18's crotch (meaning he'd be about 3'6") and others he's a bit taller. In some scenes where he sits in a chair, his feet don't extend past the seat, which would mean he is about the size of a 4 year old. This happens with other characters too, such as Supreme Kai.
The other thing is the character design. There just isn't much creativity or effort going on anymore. The champa tournament roster consisted of characters that any of us at 10 years old could have drawn on a whim. Such as generic childish robot man, mean winnie the pooh, and weird looking vegeta jr guy. It was also sad that after all these years we now know the strongest guy in the entire reality -- the god of everything -- is little more than a football turned sideways with a smiley face on it.
Power Level Problems: The powerlevel problems are worse than ever this time around. Characters like Master Roshi taking on Raditz-level Frieza minions and characters base forms being overpowered, etc. If you haven't seen the trunks arc yet then ignore this next part: spoilers: [spoiler]For example, Trunks manages to keep up with Goku black in SSJ2 form despite Goku and Vegeta at SSJG having tons of trouble. No matter how much strength Trunks has, it's just simply impossible for him to match black goku in SSJ2 (absent maybe something like Tiens special move against Imperfect Cell). We all saw the difference between SSJ3 Goku and Beerus, then the improvement when Goku went SSJG against Beerus. The point is, the difference between SSJ2 - Black is too enormous.[/spoiler] They really should just alter the story and circumstances to make it believable, instead it's like they choose what they want to happen, and with what characters first, and then force them to fit into that role even if it doesn't make any sense.
Another thing is techniques being used without sticking to any of the rules. Again, spoilers in the trunks saga: [spoiler]We're supposed to believe that the evil containment wave created by master roshi's master (power level <200) will be able to contain not only a super powerful being, but a god? And then trunks learns it perfectly in 3-4 minutes while Bulma distracts Zamasu, when it just took goku assumably much, much longer with master roshi watching and commenting along the way? Furthermore, that the containment wave is supposed to kill the user after it works, which was overlooked here. And even if dying is from significant ki drain, surely the difference between SSJ2 and a god would warrant enough of a ki drain for death? Also, trunk's spirit sword not only came out of nowhere, but it gathered energy way too fast. It also wouldn't have even had enough energy given that the entire planet was pretty much devoid of life.[/spoiler]
Lackluster Battles: The battles don't really pump you up anymore. Considering how powerful the character now are, having battles comparable to DBZ only makes sense. Instead, everything feels rushed and underwhelming; very 1-dimensional. The ki blasts all kind of look the same; large beam or scatter shot. There's very little use of planning, charging, or manipulating the beam to get an edge on the enemy like in DBZ. The punches and kicks are underwhelming, mostly. A lot of the movements and animation on the battles are poor. There was a scene in particular where trunks was fighting Deborah in a flash back that really got to me; he literally did a slow left slash, right slash, and 360 degree spin that looked like something from the puppet show interpretation of the Cell games we got of how hercule beat cell in DBZ. Also, transformations are underwhelming now, often rushed and don't really have that powerful feel to them anymore.
These next points might be more subjective, but some other things that bug me are the lack of creativity for transformations. Like just adding blue hair or red hair (super saiyan rose, terrible name). Also, the fact that all the characters are significantly smaller now; I really liked how muscular the characters looked in DBZ. Furthermore, the women are all flat and boyish looking, and bulmas mother went from seemingly never ending busty milf to generic depends underwear commercial grandma. Growing up with roided looking monkey men and fertile female characters in a cartoon is healthy for young boys, imo.
Anyway, IMO the show doesn't really do anything at all right. When one thing gets a little better something else gets a little worse. The only way this show makes sense to me is to see it as a spin-off of DBZ or a parody, almost like a really good fan-made attempt that can't figure out what it's really going for. Someone mentioned to me once that his theory is that Toriyama is just trolling all of us at this point, and to me, it certainly seems like it.
Besides the fact that this is Dragonball (so we instantly like it to some extent), and comparing it to DB, DBZ, and even GT based on what those shows did well for the series, what is there to like about this show? And how can anyone with a straight face, in any way, compare it to the previous shows?
....and you can deal with it, its my opinion and I don't need to justify it to you or anyone else.
I mean, the entire point of the technique is to get the person into the pot, you can't just be like "Oh well he didn't get him in the pot yet, but he got the rest of it down so clearly he's mastered the Mafuba on the first try!"
