The get out of jail free card has been in Dragon Ball ever since Day 1.Okara wrote:Good:
Ending with Goku and Vegeta as actual rivals.
Goku not having immediate access to Ultra Instinct.
Bad: Everything else.
It rendered the whole premise of the arc pointless. Why not just do a universal tournament without the stupid, meaningless “erasure” threat? The characters took their sweet ass time having fun for 95% of the arc anyway, so what was the point? It’s just more of Super’s artificial drama.
I’ve always had problems with some of Toriyama’s ultimately-meaningless plot developments, such as Krillin’s second death (reviving Krillin made it meaningless). But this just takes “pointless and fake” to a whole new level. The characters didn’t even have to come up with a creative way to get Zeno or GP to undo the erasures. It’s just the typical “get out of jail free” card with the Dragon Balls because “Oh, Zeno was just testing you guys the whole time trolololol,” which his reasoning for conducting the test doesn’t even make sense. It was random chance that 17 ended up surviving to the end and making a selfless wish. What does that prove about mortals in general? That there are good among the bad? That’s called common sense.
And what the hell is going on with Frieza? Why are they letting him live? The deal was that he’d be revived, not that they’d let him go commit more genocide.
Oh no!!! The Indian boy's dad died? No prob. Dragon Balls.
Oh no!!! Chiaotzu, Krillin and Roshi died? No prob. Dragon Balls.
Oh no!!! Goku died? No prob. Dragon Balls.
The ONLY time when the stakes were high was during the Saiyan arc since Piccolo died so death became permanent (even for just a brief time) but then Namek arc happened.
Then, in Namek the stakes were kind of high again since Goku and Krilin only had one shot at life again (due to the resurrection only once rule) but then Porunga appeared and said "your friend died twice? No prob. Dragon Balls".
Ever since, the stakes have gotten lower and lower and lower. The whole Cell arc was a joke since at any point they could have used the Dragon Balls to solve absolutely everything. Then Kid Buu was only killed BECAUSE of the Dragon Balls (wishing back the Earth, restoring Goku's energies and if Vegeta had asked for a resurrected Ultimate Gohan to be transported to the Kaioshin Planet, everything would have been solved way easier way sooner).
Complaining about the lack of high stakes in Dragon Ball is kind of laughable.