"Dragon Ball Super (Manga)" Official Discussion Thread

[AnimeNation101]

You didn't fix anything.

Pretty sure I did.

I'm not entirely convinced that you have an absolute grasp of what constitutes for a plot, but this isn't a thread to have that discussion, so I'll just leave it at that.

Gonna have to second this.

Plot: A fictional(ized) series of events that have some connection.

Something as simple as Goku eating and then wanting to burn off the calories by fighting with Vegeta is a plot as its an event that connects into another event. Sure, Super has weak plots but it also has the Future Trunks arc which i think is a stronger plot arc. Either way, weak plot or strong plot, its still plot.

T.o.P: Goku is getting weaker, he goes to train with Whis, he remembers the T.o.P idea, he goes to the Omnikings, etc. There are a series of events that connect allrhe way to the end of the arc so that means the arc has a plot.

[Noah]

Which characters do you feel were developed better? I'd honestly like to get into this conversation.

Well, Gohan comes to mind first as he starts as a retired fighter that is still has plenty of potential, who had long stopped training/practice because of having new responsibilities like his job and taking care of the family. He suffers the trauma of losing his loved ones due to his lack of strenght and starts training again, has the chance of showing how strong he got on a martial arts competition between the twin universes, but had to decline due a great job opportunity. At some point it's implied he quited training again by the time Future Trunks arrives, then he shows to be upset by hearing the news (later than everybody else) that his old friend was suffering on his timeline. Gohan realizes how pathetic he has become and starts training heavily with Piccolo again, he joins the others to fight on the Tournament of Power and proves to be a realiable fighter until the end with his strategy of defeating Dyspo with Freeza's assist.

Now, I get it that Toriyama/Toyotaro might had no big interest of writting Gohan or something, that's perfectly fine, but his sudden interest on fighting again in the manga was really abrupt, it didn't felt natural considering the events of the past few arcs.

Other character that comes to mind is Zamasu, his development in the manga was decent until the part he starts changing his ways when he saw Goku fighting on the U7 vs. U6 tournament in the GodTube, I think it was way more compelling that his change was motived by meeting Goku for the first time (no matter how this screws the whole timeline debate) also including Black, that was nothing but a thug while in the anime he's almost a different character from present/future Zamasu, denying becoming immortal too, because of his Saiyan body and relying that only his power would be more than enough.

This was one of the worst parts about the anime's ToP. Characters standing around for minutes talking during a "battle royale". People complain about the peanut gallery in the manga, but it's so much worse in the anime. At least you can just glance over a pointless panel while you're reading manga.

Well, I can say I give kudos to the manga for that as in the anime was unberable to the point the audience wondering if this tournament had only 48 minutes duration with a lot of time we saw characters wasting. Previous to that arc, the anime didn't wasted much time explaining every little detail like the manga did it. Which for me was more a plus than a loss as I admit I would like to hear an explanation about what was Trunks new rage transformation, but who would do that? When in the middle of all that conflict? Is not like we couldn't get a Super guide on the future explaining these later.

[mahakaishin1991]

I wonder how a threat that was subdued by just the Galactic Patrol will be able to threaten Goku and Vegeta. Unless the prisoner is millions of years old and was captured with the help of the kaioshin and even Beerus and has been imprisoned at Galactic Patrol HQ or its most guarded prison ever until now.

Perhaps the former Kaioshin's caught him, which is why Daikaioh is here? They were all strong enough to kill Freeza in a single blow before he came back in Super, and most likely would have given everyone trouble had the villains after not been dependant on regeneration.

For all we know these guys may have taken ALL the kais to take down, and thus, been at least around god/blue level

[Chuquita]

I hope the new bad guy has fun powers or an interesting personality. Or both.

[mahakaishin1991]

I hope the new bad guy has fun powers or an interesting personality. Or both.

Id be interested in seeing that Beerus lizard original concept revisisted as a villain

[AnimeNation101]

I hope the new bad guy has fun powers or an interesting personality. Or both.

I hope the guy is moderately powerful but not on Goku or Vegeta’s level.

But his real threatening aspects are his manupulative personality (I'm talking Dio from Jojo levels of devious charisma that can manipulate almost anyone with his charm), and maybe he’s very skilled in magic. Like he can disguise himself, or maybe even possess people Baby style.

Just something creative other than strength. And if he’s an escaped prisoner and it really is a chase arc to capture the guy before he reeks more havoc , make him hard to catch.

What i dont want is for him to be a DBS rebooted Bojack like everyone at the dbz reddit keeps suggesting

[BlueBasilisk]

Just popping in to ask if this DBH thing has been in any way confirmed because I see so much discussion about it. Someone said manga-original, so that could mean it's not related to DBH, right?

So far it's not confirmed to be related to DBH in any way. I suspect what happened is that Bandai took the outlines for the movie and the new arc, threw them into a blender and seasoned with a mix of old characters and donut steels to create the Prison Planet arc.

[TKA]

Well, Gohan comes to mind first as he starts as a retired fighter that is still has plenty of potential, who had long stopped training/practice because of having new responsibilities

See, I can't be invested in Gohan's anime "development".

First, the anime version of Resurrection F retreads a lot of Gohan moments, even making Piccolo die for no reason. Then it painstakingly establishes that Gohan is pathetic now. By the end he swears he'll get stronger. He does nothing for 80 episodes and doesn't follow up on this at all. Then, come the exhibition match, he has a rough time because he didn't follow through with what he said he would do in the Resurrection F arc. Then the episode dedicated to him fighting Goku is simply him returning to how he was in the Buu arc. Finally, to create some kind of "payoff" for all this nonsense, they make him "team leader." We quickly found out that his position didn't really mean anything and it was basically lip service.

Manga Gohan is a more earnest character. When he learns that Trunks came back and didn't come to him for help, he decides he needs to train and spent all that time getting better with Piccolo. Come the Tournament of Power, he's ready to participate right off the bat because he hasn't been slacking off. The one misstep with his character was offscreening his fight with Kafla, simply because it was a chance to show the endpoint of his journey through Super. Still, we got the cliffnotes version of the fight in that he drew with her, as well as his earlier performance through the tournament.

My favorite part of the manga's portrayal of Gohan is it doesn't invent some arbitrary position for him that doesn't even matter.

[Bergamo]

I wonder how a threat that was subdued by just the Galactic Patrol will be able to threaten Goku and Vegeta. Unless the prisoner is millions of years old and was captured with the help of the kaioshin and even Beerus and has been imprisoned at Galactic Patrol HQ or its most guarded prison ever until now.

Perhaps the former Kaioshin's caught him, which is why Daikaioh is here? They were all strong enough to kill Freeza in a single blow before he came back in Super, and most likely would have given everyone trouble had the villains after not been dependant on regeneration.

For all we know these guys may have taken ALL the kais to take down, and thus, been at least around god/blue level

If it took all of the Kais, then that would make him at best SS2 level. Remember that Buu is SS3 level and he mercilessly beat the 5 Kais.

[Kinokima]

I hope the new bad guy has fun powers or an interesting personality. Or both.

I hope the guy is moderately powerful but not on Goku or Vegeta’s level.

But his real threatening aspects are his manupulative personality (I'm talking Dio from Jojo levels of devious charisma that can manipulate almost anyone with his charm), and maybe he’s very skilled in magic. Like he can disguise himself, or maybe even possess people Baby style.

Just something creative other than strength. And if he’s an escaped prisoner and it really is a chase arc to capture the guy before he reeks more havoc , make him hard to catch.

What i dont want is for him to be a DBS rebooted Bojack like everyone at the dbz reddit keeps suggesting

This is my hope too. Just want a villain where pure power isn’t enough to beat them. But as this is Dragon Ball I don’t have too much hope lol.

[Michsi]

Just popping in to ask if this DBH thing has been in any way confirmed because I see so much discussion about it. Someone said manga-original, so that could mean it's not related to DBH, right?

So far it's not confirmed to be related to DBH in any way. I suspect what happened is that Bandai took the outlines for the movie and the new arc, threw them into a blender and seasoned with a mix of old characters and donut steels to create the Prison Planet arc.

Thanks for the confirmation.

But isn't the DBH Planet Prison story already based on a arc from that game?

[AnimeNation101]

I wonder how a threat that was subdued by just the Galactic Patrol will be able to threaten Goku and Vegeta. Unless the prisoner is millions of years old and was captured with the help of the kaioshin and even Beerus and has been imprisoned at Galactic Patrol HQ or its most guarded prison ever until now.

Perhaps the former Kaioshin's caught him, which is why Daikaioh is here? They were all strong enough to kill Freeza in a single blow before he came back in Super, and most likely would have given everyone trouble had the villains after not been dependant on regeneration.

For all we know these guys may have taken ALL the kais to take down, and thus, been at least around god/blue level

If it took all of the Kais, then that would make him at best SS2 level. Remember that Buu is SS3 level and he mercilessly beat the 5 Kais.

What would make more sense is if maybe Beerus was sleeping during the time and so Whis saw what was happening and decided to step in

[Miracles]

The Tournament of Power is largely just one big, perpetual fight scene. I strongly disliked it in the anime because it went on for 35 episodes (and to be clear, I'm ignoring all the episodes that were leading up to the tournament, only counting from where everyone arrived in the null world to fight). A typical anime episode adapting a 17 page manga uses 2.5-3 chapters. Dragonball Super manga comes out to about 45 pages every month, or the equivalent of 2.6 chapters of said 17-page manga. If the Super manga was adapted into an anime at the aforementioned 1 chapter:1 episode ratio, it would be 9 episodes long.

That is proper pacing, and remedies the problem inherent in the arc—that of it just being a lengthy fight. It keeps things brisk, characters get to be characters and it's impactful from start to finish instead of long slogs of people firing ki blasts, stopping to talk and legnthy cutaways to the peanut gallery.

Universe Survival saga is just one big, perpetual fight scene without story/plot indeed, and the same goes to Universe 6 saga. Pretty sure I've seen games with a proper story other than "just one big fight".

The thing is a battle royale can have story too. Plot can be exhibited through the fighting; via schemes/tactics.

For example, I thought the writing for Freeza using Frost to waste an entire universe and sacrifice his own people was good story telling.

[Zephyr]

What's not for me to decide?

The role a character has. If I'm told there's gong to be a tournament with 80 contestants and I'm shown a page spread of every team, I'm not going to think that the majority of them won't even do anything. I don't care if they're used to hype others, that doesn't tell me anything about them. Heck, they're named characters but you'd hardly know that going by the manga.

It's indeed not for me to decide, but I wasn't the one who made that decision. Toyotaro ultimately structured the narrative that happens with the backdrop of this 80-man battle royale essentially like that of the Tenkaichi Budokai arcs of yore: a lot of people show up to a big event, but most of them aren't that important to the story. I just....don't see anything inherently wrong with that. On its own terms, it is telling a perfectly fine story.

On one hand, I understand expecting to know more about the characters when they're showcased like that. On the other hand, again, this is supposed to be a relatively quick tournament. You can only showcase so much before it grows monotonous and feels like it's going on way longer than it supposedly is.

I'm not committed to the idea that Toyotaro found the perfect medium between highlighting too much and too little, but I think he's much closer than he is farther.

[theTUN]

I'm intrigued, but honestly I'm just expecting this to be the manga's equivalent of the Copy Vegeta mini-arc.

[mahakaishin1991]

I wonder how a threat that was subdued by just the Galactic Patrol will be able to threaten Goku and Vegeta. Unless the prisoner is millions of years old and was captured with the help of the kaioshin and even Beerus and has been imprisoned at Galactic Patrol HQ or its most guarded prison ever until now.

Perhaps the former Kaioshin's caught him, which is why Daikaioh is here? They were all strong enough to kill Freeza in a single blow before he came back in Super, and most likely would have given everyone trouble had the villains after not been dependant on regeneration.

For all we know these guys may have taken ALL the kais to take down, and thus, been at least around god/blue level

If it took all of the Kais, then that would make him at best SS2 level. Remember that Buu is SS3 level and he mercilessly beat the 5 Kais.

I dont know if I'd agree completely. The anime filler makes t quite apparent Buu only became a serious threat to them aftr he absorbed their strongest member, becoming huge buu. After that he turned into fat buu and becomes tamer. Huge Buu was stronger than Super Bu and Kid Buu as proved by comments from Goku and Vegeta, who then proceed to struggle against a lesser for. Goku as a super saiyan 3 and Vegeta as a super saiyan 2 struggling makes it look likely a strong enough foe to need all the kai's at once means they would need to be stronger than the kid buu fight versions of Goku and Vegeta , or have to have something so utterly overpowered that he cant be beaten by raw strength alone.

makes me kind of wish this was Majin Ozotto, using his BS shapeshifting to copy enemy strength but say he can only do it one person at a time and thus loses when he's ganged up on

Id also like to point out Majin Buu was hacked into pieces by Daikaioh and continuously recieved serious injuries in on screen fights he only survives because of his regeneration. He wins a lot of his fights not because of raw power, but because he can BS his way out of dying and just absorb people the moment he is torn to ribbons. He's literally everything I despise about this kind of a villain.

Other than the anime stuff though, we dont see anything in the manga as far as I recall, so its hard to say

[Miracles]

I'm intrigued, but honestly I'm just expecting this to be the manga's equivalent of the Copy Vegeta mini-arc.

Highly doubt, the manga, which Toriyama straight up supervises is going to shuffle out in between filler arcs [By that I mean not Toriyama outlined].

[TKA]

For example, I thought the writing for Freeza using Frost to waste an entire universe and sacrifice his own people was good story telling.

You're absolutely right.

While the Tournament of Power is nowhere near as good as the Saiyan arc, it is somewhat similar in execution. The Nappa to Vegeta fight told one large story with 3 acts: before Goku, Goku arrives, after Goku. I think Toyotaro handled this arc about as well as you possibly could while staying true to the premise. I don't think the anime even comes close to being in the realm of "good".

[prince212]

I'm intrigued, but honestly I'm just expecting this to be the manga's equivalent of the Copy Vegeta mini-arc.

Was it stated to be a mini-arc ?

[WittyUsername]

For example, I thought the writing for Freeza using Frost to waste an entire universe and sacrifice his own people was good story telling.

You're absolutely right.

While the Tournament of Power is nowhere near as good as the Saiyan arc, it is somewhat similar in execution. The Nappa to Vegeta fight told one large story with 3 acts: before Goku, Goku arrives, after Goku. I think Toyotaro handled this arc about as well as you possibly could while staying true to the premise. I don't think the anime even comes close to being in the realm of "good".

I think the anime and the manga have the opposite problem when it comes to the ToP arc. The anime version dragged on to the point where things felt downright tedious, whereas the manga version just feels rushed and underwhelming. I’m not asking for time to be devoted to each and every fighter in the tournament, but not only does the manga have a number of fighters getting eliminated offscreen, but it also had Kale eliminate a good chunk of fighters within a single chapter, which just comes across as laziness.

The earlier assumption was that the reason the manga version of the Tournament of Power went by so quickly was because Toyatoro was in a hurry to get to Broly, but since that’s apparently not the case, it just makes it even more difficult to give it a pass.