How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

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How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by zarmack » Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:24 am

If Super were to create a saga that was mean't to bring an end to the series for good, what kind of ideas or story would you like for it?

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Thu Nov 22, 2018 4:23 am

Goku and Vegeta die permanently and never come back. Uub becomes the new protector of the Earth (and he's better at it since he cares more about helping people than finding challenging fights). Gohan retires with his family, as does Krillin. Piccolo is the only one of the old Z Senshi who continues fighting, helping train the next generation (Goten, Trunks, Pan, Bra, etc.)
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by RandomGuy96 » Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:57 am

The Buu arc with the Kanzenban ending is still the best finale, in my opinion.
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dbgtFO wrote: Please elaborate as I do not know what you mean by "pushing Vegeta's destruction"
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Dbzfan94 » Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:14 am

Dragon Ball GT Episode 64

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by sunsetshimmer » Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:16 am

I can't think about better idea than Shadow Dragons from GT honestly.

We already had two ending to franchise. One for manga (Goku leaves with Uub) and one for original anime trilogy (Goku leaves with Shenron).
I don't really think we need another. DBS is midquel so trying to make a "grand finale arc" when for more than 20 years we already know that Goku flies off with Uub anyway seems a bit pointless. The only option would be DBS surpassing manga ending and going further.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Kataphrut » Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:21 am

I can think of two. One would be an adaptation of the Dragon Ball Online backstory ending where Goku and Vegeta fly off into space at the end of their lives and settle their rivalry in a big punch up that creates a supernova. The other would be the same, but with Goku and Beerus instead, though that would work better as a Grand Finale to DBS.

Either way, I want it to be like the final battle in MGS4. The fighter/s going through all their iconic powerups and forms, with musical cues and flashbacks tying each one to the era where it debuted, before finally closing with a bit of a melancholy punchup as they start to lose steam. I'm told Naruto apparently ripped the same idea off for it's ending.

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Majin Buu » Thu Nov 22, 2018 8:58 am

sunsetshimmer wrote:I can't think about better idea than Shadow Dragons from GT honestly.

We already had two ending to franchise. One for manga (Goku leaves with Uub) and one for original anime trilogy (Goku leaves with Shenron).
I don't really think we need another. DBS is midquel so trying to make a "grand finale arc" when for more than 20 years we already know that Goku flies off with Uub anyway seems a bit pointless. The only option would be DBS surpassing manga ending and going further.

This. The Shadow Dragons arc was a solid idea that only needed some rewrites to make it a good/great finale arc. As is, it's just ok at best (aside from the final episode).

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by TheBigBoy » Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:19 am

The ToP arc felt like it could have been this. You get all the main fighters together, including many who haven't seen action in a while, put them in a massive rumble with all the strongest fighters of the other universes to determine the fate of the multiverse? On paper, it sounds like it would be hard to top.

It didn't really turn out that way for a lot of reasons. I still enjoy the arc for what it's worth.

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Nov 22, 2018 10:30 am

Goku and Vegeta, right on the cusp of losing their youthful virility to fight, fuse to become Gogeta and fight Beerus at full power and we get a Rocky 3 like ending with both fight throwing a punch at each other, leaving the conclusion of the fight ambiguous. Then have a brief montage of Oob protecting the world from threats, new martial arts schools being opened by Tenshinhan and Krillin, Piccolo training Pan and Bra, and Goten and Trunks dicking around while performing the Fusion Dance.
Last edited by Lord Beerus on Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by ekrolo2 » Thu Nov 22, 2018 10:36 am

Lord Beerus wrote:Goku and Vegeta, right on the cusp of losing their youthful virility to fight, fuse to become Gogeta and fight Beerus at full power and we get a Rocky 3 like ending with both fight throwing a punch at each other, leaving the conclusion of the fight ambiguous. Then have a brief montage of Oob protecting the world from threats, new martial arts schools being opened by Tenshinhan and Krillin, Piccolo training Pan and Bra, and Goten and Trunks dicking around while performing the performing the Fusion Dance.
Well shit, I know what I'm gonna do for the next week as a fic ;)
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:31 am

ekrolo2 wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote:Goku and Vegeta, right on the cusp of losing their youthful virility to fight, fuse to become Gogeta and fight Beerus at full power and we get a Rocky 3 like ending with both fight throwing a punch at each other, leaving the conclusion of the fight ambiguous. Then have a brief montage of Oob protecting the world from threats, new martial arts schools being opened by Tenshinhan and Krillin, Piccolo training Pan and Bra, and Goten and Trunks dicking around while performing the Fusion Dance.
Well shit, I know what I'm gonna do for the next week as a fic ;)
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Grimlock » Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:43 am

The one established by Dragon Ball Online, for sure. Nothing tops that ending.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by JohnnyCashKami » Thu Nov 22, 2018 12:20 pm

GT's ending but you just know you can't have Dragon Ball without Goku. It's like Pokémon without Ash and Pikachu.

I know many here want Dragon Ball to move on from revolving around Goku (... ... ... and Vegeta) but he's what made how good the series is today, the heart and soul of it and without it, it's just not the same at all. Dragon Ball Super without Goku probably would have been canceled or not even existed.

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Nov 22, 2018 1:27 pm

GT's ending was perfect.

Yes, the arc leading up to it overall was flawed in various ways... Just as any Dragon Ball arc is. I've never subscribed to the, in my opinion, unfair hate GT gets. At the very least, it serves the purpose of being a short epilogue/more definitive ending to the series perfectly.

It even worked in the "And the adventure goes on..." aspect that Toriyama worked into his original ending, in a far less clunky, and far more final way; the final scene is quite literally Goku watching over the future generation that the torch has been passed onto. The only way GT's ending could have been better would be for it to have been slightly longer, to accomodate more farewell scenes... But even that would arguably be to its detriment, potentially slowing the pace to make it not flow so well.
JohnnyCashKami wrote:GT's ending but you just know you can't have Dragon Ball without Goku. It's like Pokémon without Ash and Pikachu.

I know many here want Dragon Ball to move on from revolving around Goku (... ... ... and Vegeta) but he's what made how good the series is today, the heart and soul of it and without it, it's just not the same at all. Dragon Ball Super without Goku probably would have been canceled or not even existed.
Indeed.
I think there's room for spinoffs like Victory Mission, the Yamcha manga, and other things of that sort of ilk, but doing mainline Dragon Ball without Goku is surely a recipe for disaster. Even everyone's favourite secondary protagonist Gohan would be troublesome; Toei has no idea how to write him, and even his most aggressive fans would have a hard time justifying him fully filling Goku's shoes. At best, you'd have a vastly different spinoff that could work in its own right for a while, but at worst, you'd have a pale imitation of the original that betrays everything we know about Gohan's character.

Really though, I think Dragon Ball shouldn't have been revived with Super or ResF. Battle Of Gods was a good one-off, but I think aside from that, we'd be better off with spinoffs that try new, weird, different things.

At this point, I think the best way to conclude the modern Dragon Ball run would be to work us up to the end of the original storyline, and conclude mainline Dragon Ball. Follow it up with crazy spinoffs like Heroes, a series about Oob, a manga about Goku Jr., whatever Toei can come up with... At this point, as much as fans seem to resist it, I think Dragon Ball already had its definitive ending, and it really needs to stop trying to recapture the old magic, and just move onto new things. Even if this results in a somewhat low-key ending for Super... That is what Toriyama always intended with Dragon Ball. His ending to the manga was very low-key, and his alternate ending in the Online timeline involved Goku and Vegeta getting old and just going into space to have one last fight, the after-effects of which can be seen in supernovas in the sky years in the future. Very low-key story-wise.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Ssjcell » Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:43 pm

Although I'm not a big fan of gt the best part about the ending was that Goku never felt the need to help the next generation they were self sufficient . Well except for Goku Jr that one time...

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Acetona » Thu Nov 22, 2018 3:13 pm

RandomGuy96 wrote:The Buu arc with the Kanzenban ending is still the best finale, in my opinion.
I came here to say this. I probably would delete Super from existence since because Goku is getting so strong and there are many stronger rivals for him to even bother training and fighting Oob.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by zarmack » Thu Nov 22, 2018 8:43 pm

I was personally thinking something more grandiose, probably something like this but with better writing:
Image

All the warriors, GoDs and Angels from all 12 (or 18) universes to take on a threat stronger than Zeno and Zalama. Have it take place at a much later period like age 790 (when the Shadow Dragon arc in GT takes place), feature lots of permanent deaths and shed some more light on the DB World (in a way that ties it all back to the beginning like the Shadow Dragon arc did).

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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by ABED » Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:09 pm

I think GT's ending is damn near perfect, but you can't ring that bell again. If they retcon anything, I wish it would be Uub. While Z's a fitting ending, I've never cared about Uub and no amount of focus would change that fact.

Any ending should be small and focused on Goku and his desire to become better.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:51 pm

I'm of course going to simply echo everyone here who has stated the obvious: GT's ending was pretty much flawless and definitive. We don't need to do again what had already been done perfectly well more than 20 years ago. I still find it unbelievably bizarre how so many fans still act, often with total nonchalant offhandedness, like this series wasn't already long-since over with since way before most of its present day U.S. fans had even heard of it.

The series getting revived wasn't exactly a foregone conclusion for all this time: but it seems like the attitude among fandom is that DB's post-Z/GT continuation was somehow throughout all these years an inevitability, that the "real" ending had yet to be written, and that Z had somehow ended on some kind of a cliffhanger that left the series unresolved for all this time.

And as far as Super goes... contrary to how many of my posts about it might make it sound, I don't even think that Super is necessarily the worst thing to ever bear the DB name on it (there's Minus, Episode of Bardock, Heroes, Evolution, and the FUNi dub to all fight among themselves over that honor): it genuinely does have its moments from time to time. Its just that its damn near the textbook definition of superfluous and unnecessary, adding nothing of particular importance to the story (and thus far squandering some cool ideas its had that easily COULD have added something and justified Super's existence).

At this point, any "definitive" ending it can come up with is likely only going to come off about as redundant and unneeded as most anything else throughout Super has largely been. We already GOT a definitive ending to this franchise, and there wasn't a damn thing wrong with it as is. The manner in which this fandom will just blithely rewrite and retcon this series' history in their minds as this Marvel/DC-like entity that was always meant to be forever ongoing without end, and that somehow a more than 20 year period of complete and total dead and buried finality for it was somehow just a brief "hiccup" in the road or something... its oftentimes just stunningly, impenetrably weird and totally lacking in any kind of perspective whatsoever.
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Re: How would you write a Grand Finale arc for the franchise?

Post by KBABZ » Thu Nov 22, 2018 10:44 pm

It's funny how the series has provided two really good options. The first is a "And the Adventure Continues" execution, while the other deconstructs a core aspect of the series, whose solution is to peacefully remove the main character.

Actually come to think of it, both are surprisingly similar. Both end with Goku departing in a manner that confuses the heck out of all the people who know him (classic Goku), yet leave a few threads in there to say that obviously events still go on even after we've departed from the story. The only real difference is that Goku takes the time to say goodbye in GT.
Kunzait_83 wrote:The manner in which this fandom will just blithely rewrite and retcon this series' history in their minds as this Marvel/DC-like entity that was always meant to be forever ongoing without end, and that somehow a more than 20 year period of complete and total dead and buried finality for it was somehow just a brief "hiccup" in the road or something... its oftentimes just stunningly, impenetrably weird and totally lacking in any kind of perspective whatsoever.
It did go on for an incredibly long period of time, but the main differentiating factor between Dragon Ball and western comics is that, with rare exception, the only stories that matter were the ones done by the original writer, Toriyama. The franchise will be at a very interesting cross-roads once it finds itself with the core writer in the grave (plus Nozawa): does Toei hang up the franchise? Or does it double-down and make a Chou-Super series? Marvel/DC doesn't have that problem because fans are far more accepting of new writers for those stories.

More than that though, the original series ended because the main writer was just so sick and tired of writing that story and decided to conclude it, which again is less of a problem for Marvel/DC with many writers coming in and out.

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