The Key Missing Element from Super is... Backstory

[TheMikado]

So I always preface my posts by explaining that I am not a fan of Super. I have been very critical of everything from the lore, to power levels, and characterization.
However I think I have finally quantified it into exactly what bothers me and rubs me the wrong way about the series.

Backstory.

Throughout the series characters had a history. This history emcompassed the strength and skills the obtained, the challenges they've overcome, and what they are fighting for. It's what made the characters and made you care about them. Dragonball was much deeper than a series of fights by a couple of random guys. Its the reason why you couldn't watch a fight in DBZ and get immediately invested without knowing or understanding the journey there or the stakes involved. This history encompassed everything about a character, their skills, their current power, what they care about, motives. Even from the start of Z the first enemy we encounter has an interesting backstory. He is the brother of our protagonist, a space alien, who serves the Prince of Saiyans. But as the story goes on we learn more. The Saiyan race, its extermination by Frieza. We learn minor details about even characters like Zarbon or Ginyu especially as it relates to their unique abilities. We learned more about the Nameks, their physiology and their abilities. We learned about Frieza and even saw his father. With the Androids we have Dr. Gero, a former member of the Red Robin army who creates android 15 in the image of his son who died. We have the 17 and 18 who had previous human lives, even Cell has an interesting if not over complicated backstory and history. Jumping to the Cell games we have Videl, the daughter of the champ and the whole history that goes along with it. We have Kaioshin, the supreme kai who doesnt actually need to have a backstory, yet he is given and extensive one detailing the plot of his other members and the fight against Majin Buu, Bibidi, and Babidi. Even Babidi, the son of Bibidi who wants to release Buu to complete his father's work. It gives him a legitimate motive, and you see his joy when he actually achieves his goal. Even looking at his minions we get some minor details about their abilities and even see their home worlds.

This is a bit of a contrast with modern Dragon Ball characters. You can make the argument for Beerus but its difficult. We know he has a lot of "feats" he's responsible for but we still have no idea where his is from or how he became a God. This makes it even more baffling because we know he was a brother who is also a god and we are even seeing something that looks similar to Beerus's race fight in the tournament. Hopefully this is something that's explored, but who knows. But characters like Cabba are truly frustrating. A saiyan from another universe and to my knowledge we have no idea what's special about him to have him be picked for the tournament above all other saiyans. Why are Vados and Champa even aware of him? Looking at Frost, what ever happened to his empire following the tournament? Even characters like Caulifla and Kale give us no context for why they are the way they are. At least when Broly was introduced they gave him an intricate backstory. We know Toei is capable because we saw them do it in GT with Baby and his backstory. The characters aren't used to their fullest and the stories suffer for it. The best backstory work that's been done was in the anime Future Trunks are for Zamasu and that doesn't even appear to be from Toriyama!

So are the characters being utilized to their full abilities? I'll use Cabba for example. An interesting backstory would be for him to also be the Prince of Saiyans and thus was born with an incredbily high power level relative to other saiyans. He is next in line to assume becoming king but has self doubts. He fights on the front lines in hopes of gaining experience and he was referred to Champa by his father for the original tournament. Cabba fears he lacks the resolution and decision making to take care of his people, thus winning the universe arc tournament is a statement to himself and this subjects that as King he will protect and defend them. Or lets take Kale, lets say she was abandoned as a child due to her mother dying unnaturally during child birth. As a orphan she has a stigma around her and the only one who would take her in was Caulifa, also a street orphan. Together the two had to live on the streets and learn to survive with Caulifa primarily taking care of Kale. Think Oliver Twist type of situation.

Anyway there are literally 101 things they could be doing with these characters but is Super really using them to their full potential. To be honest this may be the reason I'm really struggling with Super. The characters just do not mean anything to me other than a series of fighting and training sequences.

[Akyon]

I'm going to bump this topic because frankly I think it deserves some attention.

Overall, I'd say yes to "would backstory help". But not just for Super.
Dragonball's never been...well, great for backstory frankly.
The Saiyans get a bit of a look thanks to things like the Bardock special and Dragonball Minus and Buu gets some with the Kais, but generally speaking characters pasts don't get brought up much in the show outside the very rare flashback; Why was Krillin raised in a monastry; does he have monk parents or was he abandoned? What made Yamcha turn to a life of crime? Why did Tien want to be an assassin to begin with? What the hell IS Chiaoutzu? None of that is ever touched upon as pre-meeting Goku their existences aren't very important. Through their journey we grow to love the cast, but it feels like a lot of stuff, particularly with the human cast, could be expanded upon a bit. Roshi has decades of untouched potential for stories with him and Shen in Flashback form.

Likewise we know 17 and 18 were runaway kids Gero experimented on and 16 is modelled after his dead son but these things aren't actually shown or explored within the show which is a pity. I actually think the clip TFS did for Android 16's human counterpart was incredibly well done and added some much needed reason for Gero to despise Goku...just a shame Toriyama stated it was an enemy bullet that felled him and not Goku. Missed potential.

Super however has taken it a lot further; Beerus and Champa being brothers would indicate they're from the same universe and as you say Dyspo adds yet more questions. This seems like something that needs explaining.
Why does Hit want to travel from universe to universe really?
Botamo's whole ability needs some exploring; he transfers all the damage he takes to another universe...is his damage destroying other universes? Is Goku wailing on him snubbing out Universe 9's planets for example? Can all his species do this? Are they singularly responsible for the low mortal ratings of other universes or is it a pocket dimension that exists as a sub-universe?

My answer to are characters being used to their full potential in Super is currently "no".

Hit feels like he's there to be KO'd by Jiren and show how big and scary he is and it's a shame to feel that that's all that's left for the guy.

Weird as it may sound, the Trio De Dangers felt like they were characters with a history as unexplored as it was. Why were these three considered champions of Universe 9? For sly guys they seemed to genuinely care about their universe. What were they protecting? More interestingly for me personally; how did they get their individual abilities, especially since being brothers genetically they should have similar capabilities, at least going by Universe 7's examples of everyone basically fighting the same, yet here Lavender can naturally breath deadly poison and Bermago somehow has the power to absorb attacks(not unlike Botamo) and add the power to his own. How did they end up so varied?

It's a shame because a flashback ala One Piece style could do wonders pre-battle for building up characters like the Dangers and making you care more about them. Give the fighters some emotional weight behind their random punch ups in this brawl. Many were pleased when the doggos got wiped out, but I'm just feeling like we missed some story telling potential and universe building narrative.
Gowasu right now is potentially next to die, and despite having spent some time with him to the point we should care about him it's odd his universe isn't getting any emotional weight behind it and is basically being treated as one of the bigger joke universes. Gowasu's death should be a big concern for the audience, but all our time in U10 was taken up exclusively by Zamasu with very little further exploring. Really is a shame.

[Boo Machine]

Akyon pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Super seems to have a habit of picking up interesting concepts and characters but doesn't really go anywhere with them.

I still remember the "Namikian Book of Legends" that was just casually mentioned and never brought up again.

Hit is a cool character, but why DID he want the cube? Bulma still has a time machine, maybe they can do something with th- oh never mind it was destroyed by Beerus. Speaking of Beerus whatever happened to his "I want to be entertained with a challenge" thing he had at the start? The thing that made him comparable to Goku. Did he just have his fill?

Backstory isn't really all that necessary to like the characters, but they do need to flesh out the elements that get introduced a little more.

[TheMikado]

The thing is there are so many throw away lines. So good examples there but even in this last episode the trio de dangers brothers specifically growing up in a dangerous universe like theirs they had to develop special ways to overpower enemies stronger than themselves...and that was it... like it was the setup for a real backstory... but nothing.

Even the question about Krillin is kinda irrelevant because he was trying since he was four. I'm not asking for they're whole life story or family history. Just some context on how and why and enough to get invested in the outcome of what happens other than basically being told we should care.

[The gr]

The thing is there are so many throw away lines. So good examples there but even in this last episode the trio de dangers brothers specifically growing up in a dangerous universe like theirs they had to develop special ways to overpower enemies stronger than themselves...and that was it... like it was the setup for a real backstory... but nothing.

Yeah DBS have a lot of trow away lines like the time traveler from U12 that was mentioned in the Manga and it went nowhere,Akyon pretty much sums my thoughts on the trio and Hit, like why hit needed the cube and why he needed to travel to other Universe and why jiren is not the leader despite being stronger than toppo, super constantly throw interesting things In the table but never do nothing interesting with it, there's potential and the writers are not seeing it,is just sad the closest we get a backstory is from the current episode

The current arc is also missing proper motivation, cauli and #17 are the worst examples

[perucho1990]

The thing is there are so many throw away lines. So good examples there but even in this last episode the trio de dangers brothers specifically growing up in a dangerous universe like theirs they had to develop special ways to overpower enemies stronger than themselves...and that was it... like it was the setup for a real backstory... but nothing.

Yeah DBS have a lot of trow away lines like the time traveler from U12 that was mentioned in the Manga and it went nowhere,Akyon pretty much sums my thoughts on the trio and Hit, like why hit needed the cube and why he needed to travel to other Universe and why jiren is not the leader despite being stronger than toppo, super constantly throw interesting things In the table but never do nothing interesting with it, there's potential and the writers are not seeing it,is just sad the closest we get a backstory is from the current episode

The current arc is also missing proper motivation, cauli and #17 are the worst examples

The closest we have got of a backstory is Yurin, who was a very minor character

[TheMikado]

Yeah DBS have a lot of trow away lines like the time traveler from U12 that was mentioned in the Manga and it went nowhere,

To be fair that wasn't even mentioned in the anime if I remember correctly or how the time rings actually got created or why there were so many. I don't think it was even attempted and it would be difficult to go into a full back story on that when it dedicated an entire release to Trunks backstory during the Buu arc and another to Zamasus back story.

[TheOne]

I like and agree with pretty much everything you guys have hit on. Things still just feel rushed to me and I wish they'd take their time to explore individual backgrounds.

People complain about One Pieces pacing but I think if Super was to take at least half the amount of time they do on exploring everyone's thoughts and background, this show would be 10x better. Right now it just seems like a 12/24 episode anime where they have to cram everything into a certain amount of time.

[Asura]

why jiren is not the leader despite being stronger than toppo.

Strength doesn't necessarily make for a good leader. From what we've seen so far Jiren is pretty cold whereas Toppo gives off a more prideful appearance and is probably just a better leader.

[The gr]

why jiren is not the leader despite being stronger than toppo.

Strength doesn't necessarily make for a good leader. From what we've seen so far Jiren is pretty cold whereas Toppo gives off a more prideful appearance and is probably just a better leader.

Touche, still I want to know more about jiren and how he was chosen,they will probably give us an exposition why jiren join the pride trooper because he's different compared to the others

[Akyon]

Speaking of Jiren; why doesn't he pose as the other Pride Troopers do? He just stands in the middle looking mildly awkward.



Toppo is kind hearted and warm, and judging by the recruitment part of the ToP, enjoys a social drink. Dyspo and Kahseral seem similar. Meanwhile Jiren cuts himself off from everyone to meditate all day, doesn't pose and unlike the others was not involved with heroics during the build up.

With that in mind, what made Jiren, seemingly a no nonsense individual become a Pride Trooper? How did the friendship with Toppo form? Ignoring him not being Pride Troopers leader despite being front and center in the above lineup and the most powerful member(as Asura points out power=/=leadership), why was Toppo chosen over him as Belmond's GoD candidate? What makes a good GoD candidate? Everyone from Goku and Toppo to Frieza has been suggested to be good candidates in universe but what qualities is a GoD supposed to have as those warm hearted and Justice loving Toppo could not be further from the psychopathic mass murdering Frieza...

Lots of questions and I doubt we'll even get the basic explaination of why characters are picked as GoDs.

[Lord Beerus]

I certainly think Super could do will more backstory. But Dragon Ball has been historically underwhelming in the backstory and world building department within the original story. I think it's just more aggravating with Super because they introduce characters with such unique perks and/or gimmicks (Hit) and intriguing narrative concepts (Namekian Book Of Legends) that that you really want to know more about them but Super doesn't both to go into more depth. To be fair, the show have give some context to a backstory for newly introduced characters like Frost, Goku Black and the Pride Troopers. I think supplementary material, much like the Daizenshuu, would greatly aid in providing better context for some characters, much like it did for several characters in the original manga. I'm really expecting Dragon Ball Super related encyclopedia to be released in the future that will help fill in the blanks for some characters in the backstory department.

Yeah DBS have a lot of trow away lines like the time traveler from U12 that was mentioned in the Manga and it went nowhere,

To be fair that wasn't even mentioned in the anime if I remember correctly or how the time rings actually got created or why there were so many. I don't think it was even attempted and it would be difficult to go into a full back story on that when it dedicated an entire release to Trunks backstory during the Buu arc and another to Zamasus back story.

The anime actually does go into detail about Time Rings. Who can use them, why they are used, what the Time Rings represent and why more of them are created.

[Dragon Ball Gus]

I certainly think Super could do will more backstory. But Dragon Ball has been historically underwhelming in the backstory and world building department within the original story. I think it's just more aggravating with Super because they introduce characters with such unique perks and/or gimmicks (Hit) and intriguing narrative concepts (Namekian Book Of Legends) that that you really want to know more about them but Super doesn't both to go into more depth. To be fair, the show have give some context to a backstory for newly introduced characters like Frost, Goku Black and the Pride Troopers. I think supplementary material, much like the Daizenshuu, would greatly aid in providing better context for some characters, much like it did for several characters in the original manga. I'm really expecting Dragon Ball Super related encyclopedia to be released in the future that will help fill in the blanks for some characters in the backstory department.

Yeah DBS have a lot of trow away lines like the time traveler from U12 that was mentioned in the Manga and it went nowhere,

To be fair that wasn't even mentioned in the anime if I remember correctly or how the time rings actually got created or why there were so many. I don't think it was even attempted and it would be difficult to go into a full back story on that when it dedicated an entire release to Trunks backstory during the Buu arc and another to Zamasus back story.

The anime actually does go into detail about Time Rings. Who can use them, why they are used, what the Time Rings represent and why more of them are created.

You forgot to mention Beerus, your favorite character. We don't know his backstory on how he became the God of Destruction and how he met Whis.

[ChaosLordBrandon]

I certainly think Super could do will more backstory. But Dragon Ball has been historically underwhelming in the backstory and world building department within the original story. I think it's just more aggravating with Super because they introduce characters with such unique perks and/or gimmicks (Hit) and intriguing narrative concepts (Namekian Book Of Legends) that that you really want to know more about them but Super doesn't both to go into more depth. To be fair, the show have give some context to a backstory for newly introduced characters like Frost, Goku Black and the Pride Troopers. I think supplementary material, much like the Daizenshuu, would greatly aid in providing better context for some characters, much like it did for several characters in the original manga. I'm really expecting Dragon Ball Super related encyclopedia to be released in the future that will help fill in the blanks for some characters in the backstory department.

To be fair that wasn't even mentioned in the anime if I remember correctly or how the time rings actually got created or why there were so many. I don't think it was even attempted and it would be difficult to go into a full back story on that when it dedicated an entire release to Trunks backstory during the Buu arc and another to Zamasus back story.

The anime actually does go into detail about Time Rings. Who can use them, why they are used, what the Time Rings represent and why more of them are created.

You forgot to mention Beerus, your favorite character. We don't know his backstory on how he became the God of Destruction and how he met Whis.

I'm surprised nobody here mention Freeza and how we even not know a single about his past or King Cold.

Like Lord Beerus said past db never focused on characters back story and world building at all. Most people like the Trio anyways and your crazy if you think all Hit will do this arc is job to Jiren. He already did something in the the first episode of this arc.

And Kale looks like she is the one who will job to jiren not hit. And she will give off a great showing anyways before that happened. Also these characters will be brought back and be part of future stories any ways, Super actually uses the characters it created a lot and you can't expect them to devout a lot time to small side characters in arc that includes over 70 new characters.

The most surprising part of this thread to me is nobody brought up how this arc has over legit over 70 new characters. They can't go out and start giving out backstories to every new character and people would lose their mind if that happened, lol it happened with One Piece in Dressarosa and even Naruto where I see even the biggest fans complain about flashblacks.

[TheMikado]

I certainly think Super could do will more backstory. But Dragon Ball has been historically underwhelming in the backstory and world building department within the original story. I think it's just more aggravating with Super because they introduce characters with such unique perks and/or gimmicks (Hit) and intriguing narrative concepts (Namekian Book Of Legends) that that you really want to know more about them but Super doesn't both to go into more depth. To be fair, the show have give some context to a backstory for newly introduced characters like Frost, Goku Black and the Pride Troopers. I think supplementary material, much like the Daizenshuu, would greatly aid in providing better context for some characters, much like it did for several characters in the original manga. I'm really expecting Dragon Ball Super related encyclopedia to be released in the future that will help fill in the blanks for some characters in the backstory department.


The anime actually does go into detail about Time Rings. Who can use them, why they are used, what the Time Rings represent and why more of them are created.

You forgot to mention Beerus, your favorite character. We don't know his backstory on how he became the God of Destruction and how he met Whis.

I'm surprised nobody here mention Freeza and how we even not know a single about his past or King Cold.

Like Lord Beerus said past db never focused on characters back story and world building at all. Most people like the Trio anyways and your crazy if you think all Hit will do this arc is job to Jiren. He already did something in the the first episode of this arc.

And Kale looks like she is the one who will job to jiren not hit. And she will give off a great showing anyways before that happened. Also these characters will be brought back and be part of future stories any ways, Super actually uses the characters it created a lot and you can't expect them to devout a lot time to small side characters in arc that includes over 70 new characters.

The most surprising part of this thread to me is nobody brought up how this arc has over legit over 70 new characters. They can't go out and start giving out backstories to every new character and people would lose their mind if that happened, lol it happened with One Piece in Dressarosa and even Naruto where I see even the biggest fans complain about flashblacks.

I would say stating the franchise as being historically bad at back story and world building is categorically false. I'm not saying all questions about characters are answered and no one is expecting a character's life story but either some exposition or something that can be assumed should come into play. Take Frieza for example. What back story do we need? He is the strongest in the universe, has an empire, and his father is King Cold. Yes we will always have questions but not about how he came to his current position. Likely his Father who is also very strong when compare to everything else in the universe by a wide margin was the previous/current ruler and Frieza was literally born into the family business. We even know the family business is the practice of wiping out a planet and reselling it. Further we know he has advanced scientist and even the armor is of Freeza's army design.

No one is that expecting something for all these new throw a way characters. But characters with significant emphasis and screen time like the two female Saiyans or recurring characters like Cabba A SAIYAN FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE should definitely be explored. I've gave examples above how they could take 30 secs to give the characters some depth. It was done for other enemies such as Dr. Gero and Cell and Babidi. I don't see a reason why they couldn't do it now. Making a compelling story by explaining why we should care about either the enemy or new characters is just good story telling. It's part of the world building, part of the lore, part of everything. It gave meaning much of the fighting where as much of this feels like a series of cool fights for the sake of fighting but having little invested in it and why it's meaningful to them characters.

[Yomi]

Wow, so many interesting ideas here; and you guys are only talking about Toppo/Jiren and The Trio De Dangers.
These would make wonderful flashbacks, and I don't think anyone would really mind. It's a better way to pace the
animators than "let the gods talk for 3 minutes between every 30 second fighting scene"

There's a lot of potential here. I hope it is explored, but knowing super. It probably won't be. If we had a nice universe 9
flash back, the erasure would have been all the more sad. Right now the scene is just, creepy/demented, but not really "sad".

[ChaosLordBrandon]

jesus you people want every character to havea 2+ plus episode backstory now don't you? I saw that when one piece did that in dressarosa and every body lost their minds and got pissed to all the side character focus which nobody cared about like the dwarves.

[Miracles]

It isn't missing Backstory...It's missing the consistency of quality character interactions and high paced fights.

No one comes to Dragonball for backstory.

[TheOne]

jesus you people want every character to havea 2+ plus episode backstory now don't you? I saw that when one piece did that in dressarosa and every body lost their minds and got pissed to all the focus character nobody cared about like the dwarves.

There's a fine line between dressrosa pace and doing a little backstory on people. I admit I was getting really annoyed with what one piece was doing to draw things out, even though I'm a huge fan. Super seems to treat everything rushed. I was one of the few people who enjoyed the recruitment episodes (aside from Tiens and roshi).

Get off your high horse and making it seem like everyone is crazy for wanting the series to go more in depth with the characters.

[Grimlock]

The lack of backstory is not a Dragon Ball Super's exclusive problem. Although we do have some in Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and even Dragon Ball GT (specially about Baby and with an extra content from Hatchiyack's OVA), they're really superficial. I mean, they're like "oh, and there's this but that's it". I'm always complaining about characters not having a proper character development and one of the major reason is because they lack a backstory. Not everyone need it, of course, and too much flashback is boring, but in Dragon Ball lore, the lack of backstory for almost everything is constant and unforgivable.