The False Hype of ToP

[Zagacious]

Now let me start by saying the Tournament of Power started off great, we had a variety of characters going all out showing cool abilities and skirmishes between characters that seemed like a relatively close match. This recent episode with Hit and Dypso was a good fight, but I think this last episode was the nail in the coffin for making other characters interesting and relevant. [spoiler]Sure Dypso and the other guy were very talented, but it's diminished by them ultimately being way too weak to even make a scratch on Goku or Hit.[/spoiler]

To the main point, it feels as if they are creating new ideas and hyping them up, only to decide 'nevermind' and make the episode one of the god level fighters wrecking weaklings to rush it along as quickly as possible. Some writing choices made seem to be based on rushing the tournament as fast as possible, rather than making sense character or plot-wise.

Teamwork - Emphasized strongly before the tournament and at the beginning of the tournament, ultimately to not matter at all. It looked as if Gohan's teamwork was about to matter, we were about to have an interesting battle where Gohan and the others could show off their teamwork, only to have the wolves get bored and go after Goku and Vegeta instead (Why? To quickly erase U9 of course and rush the tournament along)
Then we have the Trio De Dangers actually using a good teamwork strategy only to have it entirely wasted by having them fight Goku and Vegeta.
Same thing happened with the weaker Pride troopers, we finally see people actually using teamwork only to fight someone they have zero chance against, just imagine what could have happened if Toppo or Dyspo interfered in that fight and actually helped their team since this IS a battle royale? The writers don't care because it's more important to rush the tournament along.

NEP and Hyping up Minor Characters - They keep showing things in the NEP that either don't matter at all or pretty much don't even happen in the next episode for more than 2 seconds. Jiren is constantly shown in the NEP even when he doesn't actually do anything that episode. Ribrianne was hyped up for a couple episodes, and then hyped up very much at the episode before she fought, only to find out she is extremely weak compared to the god level characters. Why show Vegeta and Ribrianne sparring in the intro if she's just a weakling? Why are 99% of the minor characters completely useless. The choice of making 17 powerful was a good choice for 17's development, but also made 6+ characters pretty much useless in the tournament and just made U7 seem even more overpowered than usual. [spoiler]This last episode they hyped up Goku's transformation only for it to mean nothing, he went SSB soon after anyways, let's hope it's leading to a new transformation soon or this decision doesn't make any sense and is another incident of false hype.[/spoiler]

Battle Royale Itself - The tournament has not been a battle royale since episode 3 of the tournament. I don't understand this choice when they made everyone but U7, U6 Saiyans, Hit, Toppo, and Jiren completely weak. This is more fitting to small 2v2 or 1v1 matches because that's what it is. In a battle royale weaker characters should be teaming up with the stronger characters to make the weaker ones have some contribution, but even that's not happening. If they're going to have so many characters not even trying to use teamwork and get KO'ed effortlessly it would have been better to make it not a battle royale.

[namekiansaiyan]

Watch out for the 2 Namekians, the 2 big guys that were in the shadows from Universe 2 and maybe the 2 bugs from Universe 4.

[precita]

This isn't false hype, it's just that a lot of people have unreasonable expectations for this tournament. A lot of people also made up fanfiction in their minds as to how they wanted the tournament to go, and then when the eps air and something different happens they act all bothered.

While I would have liked Krillin to last a little longer, what they're doing with the rest of the main cast is fine. You can clearly tell Gohan, Freeza, etc are being saved for the bigger fights at the end. I also like the focus on U6 characters and what we've seen.

The only problem with this tournament is not showing the other universes fighting each other much, it's like everyone is waiting their turn to go after U7 instead. They should have showed U2 and U3 fighting, U10 and U9 fighting, etc. But other than that it's all fine.

[Zagacious]

This isn't false hype, it's just that a lot of people have unreasonable expectations for this tournament. A lot of people also made up fanfiction in their minds as to how they wanted the tournament to go, and then when the eps air and something different happens they act all bothered.

While I would have liked Krillin to last a little longer, what they're doing with the rest of the main cast is fine. You can clearly tell Gohan, Freeza, etc are being saved for the bigger fights at the end. I also like the focus on U6 characters and what we've seen.

The only problem with this tournament is not showing the other universes fighting each other much, it's like everyone is waiting their turn to go after U7 instead. They should have showed U2 and U3 fighting, U10 and U9 fighting, etc. But other than that it's all fine.

I saw you make this point the other day and it still doesn't make any sense to me. The fans are not the ones hyping it up when they focus on certain things in the intro and NEP. It's pretty obvious the writers have been hyping up teamwork also, it's not just the fans doing it. 4-5 of the episodes pre-tournament were focused hardcore on teamwork. I don't think it's a hard assumption to believe that we would have more characters who aren't completely useless. What's the point of a battle royale if Goku or other strong characters are just KO'ing weaklings? It'd be more interesting to see some of the weaklings fighting or just make them not so weak in the first place. Why is no one going after the weaker U7 fighters? A lot of the false hype comes down to the last sentence you stated - Not showing the other universes fighting each other, which is implied hype by making it a battle royale. It's expected by the very nature of the tournament, that's not just fans hyping it up.

Compare the variety of fights going on in the early tournament, compared to now, it feels as if they gave up on the battle royale idea entirely and just decided to have the top 5 characters solo everyone as I mentioned.

[TheMikado]

They have 80 new fighters (not just characters) which they can make bank on and star in future video games.
Imagine being about to download each character for 99 cents a piece for the new Dragonball games. It's brilliant, and the best part is that they are all "canon" now! It's gold I tell you, pure gold.

[The_Destroyer]

They have 80 new fighters (not just characters) which they can make bank on and star in future video games.
Imagine being about to download each character for 99 cents a piece for the new Dragonball games. It's brilliant, and the best part is that they are all "canon" now! It's gold I tell you, pure gold.

Majority of those new fighters barely have any moveset potential to be in a game.

[precita]

They have 80 new fighters (not just characters) which they can make bank on and star in future video games.
Imagine being about to download each character for 99 cents a piece for the new Dragonball games. It's brilliant, and the best part is that they are all "canon" now! It's gold I tell you, pure gold.

You'll likely only see 10 of these characters at the most used for videogames, toys, etc....and that's probably pushing it.

Even a lot of the older U6 characters like Botamo and Magetta didn't make it into the games.

[TheMikado]

Dragon Ball Heroes is an extremely popular arcade game, it is the number 1 digital card game in the market, running 5 years straight, and having distributed nearly 400 million cards. It made over 5 billion yen per year starting from 2011, surpassing the total of 40 billion yen. There are more than 3000 individual cards and 1.820.000 players. The 3DS versions of the game, Ultimate Mission 1 and 2 sold over 700k copies, in total.[1]

With over 3000 cards, there's no way there won't be ToP cards for each of those 80 now "canon" characters. Come on let's be serious.

[Totamo]

Dragon Ball Heroes is an extremely popular arcade game, it is the number 1 digital card game in the market, running 5 years straight, and having distributed nearly 400 million cards. It made over 5 billion yen per year starting from 2011, surpassing the total of 40 billion yen. There are more than 3000 individual cards and 1.820.000 players. The 3DS versions of the game, Ultimate Mission 1 and 2 sold over 700k copies, in total.[1]

With over 3000 cards, there's no way there won't be ToP cards for each of those 80 now "canon" characters. Come on let's be serious.

Can you just imagine super saiyan 4 caulifla. haha

[Totamo]

They have 80 new fighters (not just characters) which they can make bank on and star in future video games.
Imagine being about to download each character for 99 cents a piece for the new Dragonball games. It's brilliant, and the best part is that they are all "canon" now! It's gold I tell you, pure gold.

Majority of those new fighters barely have any moveset potential to be in a game.

neither did the ginyu force but we still get them

[KingKaash]

Funny how I brought up this exact argument right before the ToP and people doubted me. Now all the boobirds are out saying what I suspected could occur with this ToP.

Overall though I think the ToP has been pretty good

[dbzfan7]

They have 80 new fighters (not just characters) which they can make bank on and star in future video games.
Imagine being about to download each character for 99 cents a piece for the new Dragonball games. It's brilliant, and the best part is that they are all "canon" now! It's gold I tell you, pure gold.

You'll likely only see 10 of these characters at the most used for videogames, toys, etc....and that's probably pushing it.

Even a lot of the older U6 characters like Botamo and Magetta didn't make it into the games.

Botamo and Magetta are in Dragon Ball Fusions. That's not counting Dragon Ball Heroes which has pretty much everyone, but including that would be 2 games they are in.

[Zagacious]

Funny how I brought up this exact argument right before the ToP and people doubted me. Now all the boobirds are out saying what I suspected could occur with this ToP.

Overall though I think the ToP has been pretty good

The tournament started as if many other characters were actually going to get interesting fights when we see Basil and others going all out, then slowly but surely it came back to just doing 1v1 and 2v2 fights between main characters or between main characters knocking out weaklings. I'm just saying there's really no point in making it a battle royale if only 3 or 4 of the episodes are actually like an open arena battle royale, and if only 5-6 characters are going to be relevant at all it would have been better in a normal tournament style.

To me the way they've made these latest episodes it almost seems like they're regretting making it a battle royale because that aspect is almost entirely gone by now. I'm not saying the episodes aren't good either, I'm just saying it's not really what a battle royale would play out like and it's not taking advantage of making unique characters and moves (enough) that would make a battle royale interesting. Fine they want to rush to the big fights, but then making it a battle royale in the first place was pointless. It's way too centered around U7 (No, I don't care if that's the main casts' universe, it's a battle royale with 80 fighters), people are getting knocked out way too easily, and people are not using teamwork or strategy for the most part but just using raw power to win.

[wolflonnie]

My only problem is that they hyped the return of various Z-Warriors, only to have an overabundance of Goku, of which I'm sick of.
In fact, my favourite episodes of the tournament are the ones in which he isn't involved (or not much).

[namekiansaiyan]

They have wasted too many characters and probably will continue to do so. Too much focus on the Saiyans and does Toei realise they need to focus on other characters so people can like them and eventually sell merchandise. The Saiyans are going to sell no matter.

[KentalSSJ6]

They have wasted too many characters and probably will continue to do so. Too much focus on the Saiyans and does Toei realise they need to focus on other characters so people can like them and eventually sell merchandise. The Saiyans are going to sell no matter.

Why take a risk and try to make another character popular when they already have a handful of massively popular characters that sell everything for them? Its a risk they dont need nor want to take even if some fans or mad about it. They are a minority compared to the majority that eat up the merchandise as is and they arent going to cater to the few and make unnecessary and potentially risky changes that could harm their market.

Do you think fans in Japan are clamoring for a arc about Piccolo, Buu, Goten and Trunks?

[namekiansaiyan]

They have wasted too many characters and probably will continue to do so. Too much focus on the Saiyans and does Toei realise they need to focus on other characters so people can like them and eventually sell merchandise. The Saiyans are going to sell no matter.

Why take a risk and try to make another character popular when they already have a handful of massively popular characters that sell everything for them? Its a risk they dont need nor want to take even if some fans or mad about it. They are a minority compared to the majority that eat up the merchandise as is and they arent going to cater to the few and make unnecessary and potentially risky changes that could harm their market.

Do you think fans in Japan are clamoring for a arc about Piccolo, Buu, Goten and Trunks?

There is no arc about a single character. They focus on 17 who is not popular at all and is definitely the least popular on team Universe 7 but rhey still focus on him. I don't think you realise how popular Piccolo is.

[Michsi]

This isn't false hype, it's just that a lot of people have unreasonable expectations for this tournament. A lot of people also made up fanfiction in their minds as to how they wanted the tournament to go, and then when the eps air and something different happens they act all bothered.
.

It's a common enough problem with serialized shows, and it's become even more apparent with the emergence of large online fan-communities that discuss and build expectations en mass. Fans pick apart any new plot point/concept and start coming up with their own theories and ideas as to how the story will or should progress. Now this can be fun for the most part, but I've seen a particular show suffer a bit because of this; fan ideas/theories were more interesting than what the show ended up delivering so the story was considered underwhelming.

It's a challenging time to be a writer, you need to stay one step ahead of your fan base. Or at least make sure the payoff corresponds with the hype.

Do you think fans in Japan are clamoring for a arc about Piccolo, Buu, Goten and Trunks?

This is a personal opinion, but I don't think you should cater to your fan's demands and preferences too much. Take it into account, sure, but don't let that be the drive behind the creative process. There are examples where they banked on a character's popularity to carry the entire story and it didn't pan out so well.

[snpaa]

They have wasted too many characters and probably will continue to do so. Too much focus on the Saiyans and does Toei realise they need to focus on other characters so people can like them and eventually sell merchandise. The Saiyans are going to sell no matter.

Why take a risk and try to make another character popular when they already have a handful of massively popular characters that sell everything for them? Its a risk they dont need nor want to take even if some fans or mad about it. They are a minority compared to the majority that eat up the merchandise as is and they arent going to cater to the few and make unnecessary and potentially risky changes that could harm their market.

Do you think fans in Japan are clamoring for a arc about Piccolo, Buu, Goten and Trunks?

I would have to then ask what's the point of this series if it's just wanking an already popular established character that's gonna sell merchandise no matter what?

What real risk is toei taking if they try to make other characters popular or interesting?

[Nickolaidas]

Don't know about false hype, but I am disappointed with the way the show handled the battle royale so far. I was expecting to see constant team-ups and partner exchanges left and right, instead of each episode focusing on 2-4 fighters and 1-2 fights.

If the show is unable to handle bigger numbers (because of time and resources) they should just make the tournament work differently - like a tag-team tournament or something, with one character acting as the muscle and another as support.