ToP Arc: The Worst and most boring Arc of Super so far?

[GodVegetto91]

In my opinion it is. Not only did we already have another tournament (2 arcs prior!) but the entire arc and build up to it was just.... Boring! It didn’t feel like the rest of db super that i fell in love with. The Future Trunks Arc was the very best imo. But after it, everything went downhill. I enjoyed every arc up until this point. But the ToP was just.. meh. I can’t truly explain exactly why. Since this is a higly subjective thing. It just feels so different imo. Ofcourse there are many reasons i could use. Such as the slow build up, the excess amount of fodder side characters with extremely boring and ugly designs. (Another tournament, sigh!) and several other reasons aswell.

Tournaments are overdone in Dragon Ball. And many fans (myself included) are done with it aswell. We want an actual villain for once. Something new, something unique, something mysterious. Something dark. Something ancient. This is exactly what made the Future Trunks Arc so great and why this new Arc by Toyotaro in the manga is looking to be very promising aswell! Just look at all the fans’ reaction to this manga chapter and see how excited they are to finally read the manga! Some people haven’t even read it in MONTHS! It was just boring, rehashing old material we’ve already seen in the Anime. But now (since a long time) people are finally excited again!

What do you guys think?

[Dbzfan94]

Yeah its really boring. It feels so episodic.

[TheRed259]

I don't know if it is the worst but definitely is the most boring one.

I was so bored watching the same thing (fights in the same place) over and over again for almost 1 year. But the worst thing was those 48 minutes that felt like eternity.

I hope they never make something like this in the future.

[Lujin_16]

because it was a really long arc and now dragonball fans can't handle it like back in the days seeing to long fights

of course some episodes were boring but it was overall a good arc with great moments,great animation and some fights in it are the best in the entire

franchise..

[Chuquita]

The ToP's narrative felt like a big step back after the Future Trunks arc. While there are things I like about the ToP, it became overwhelmingly monotonous after a while because of how long it was. It turned me off of ever wanting anymore tournaments any time soon and I welcome that they're doing something else now with both the manga and movie.

[PFM18]

I absolutely loved it. I go back and forth deciding whether it's that arc or the Zamasu arc that is the best in Super. I re-watched it and enjoyed it a lot the second time. I won't get into the details now, but I definitely disagree with the premise of this thread.

[fadeddreams5]

Are we only comparing this to the Goku Black arc? If so, I can understand why it may be considered the worst.

If not, then hell no. The ToP arc is my absolute favorite. The animation quality heavily improved, so many battle sequences rank amongst the best in the entire franchise, the transformations were actually good for a change, and the recruiting episodes (and exhibition tournament) were great. Really cool new character designs too.

How in heavens name can the Battle of Gods, RF, and Champa arcs be considered even remotely close to the ToP arc in any way? All of those were diarrhea quality.

[Kataphrut]

I can't call it either of those things while the movie retellings exist, but even if we just look at the Super arcs that matter, I'd say the ToP stands head and shoulders above them. Part of that is the production values, but I think out of all of them, it's the most creative with the new world-building and introduces a lot of fresh characters and concept, while making pretty good use of most of the established cast.

I think criticising the pacing is absolutely fair, it's about 15 episodes longer than it should've been and the 48 minute time limit was a terrible decision, albeit one that can be pretty easily ignored. It's still better paced than the Freeza fight on Namek in DBZ, but that's a low, low bar to clear. The only complaint I can't get behind is people who dismiss it for being "just another tournament" because apparently Dragon Ball story arcs can only be original when the gang is fighting an evil outside force who wants to blow up the world. I mean, this was the arc that gave us a sequence where super-powered transvestites summon a black hole made of love hearts in a last ditch effort to save their sexually liberated parallel universe from Armageddon, none of which is treated as a joke at their expense by the way, and people dare to say it had no creativity.

And at the end of the day, it had some of the best fights ever produced in this series about fighting. Right now people are jumping up and down for the new movie giving us a beautifully-animated, gorgeously-drawn adaptation of the Budokai 3 intro, why can't I do the same for the ToP which gave us incredible fights while actually doing new things with different characters? Yes, not every fight was a Goku vs Jiren or UI vs Kefla extravaganza, but even the minor fights like Gohan and Piccolo vs the Namekians, Roshi and Vegeta vs Frost or the afore-mentioned transvestite last stand had some cool stuff to offer.

[prince212]

I think criticising the pacing is absolutely fair, it's about 15 episodes longer than it should've been

That’s what I think , I tried to rewatch it and I couldn’t once caulifla and kale appeared, go forward to kefla vs goku final move and then forward again to chapter 126 I.i.r.c .
For me it’s a one time thing , not worth to rewatch, just 2-3 fight scenes .
Still is worse-tier with u6 tournament... where the fights can be some level story telled, but execution is way nicer on t.o.p .
Of course I’m not counting the first two arcs , I skipped them for obvious reasons.
Manga talking u6 arc is worse to me

[PFM18]

I found episode 119 to be very boring, but otherwise I found it to be extremely entertaining

[TheRed259]

Are we only comparing this to the Goku Black arc? If so, I can understand why it may be considered the worst.

If not, then hell no. The ToP arc is my absolute favorite. The animation quality heavily improved, so many battle sequences rank amongst the best in the entire franchise, the transformations were actually good for a change, and the recruiting episodes (and exhibition tournament) were great. Really cool new character designs too.

How in heavens name can the Battle of Gods, RF, and Champa arcs be considered even remotely close to the ToP arc in any way? All of those were diarrhea quality.

Just because it has good visuals that means that it's the best? It seems that when it comes to Super, people care only about the animation and not about the story.

[Lord Beerus]

The Tournament Of Power (and the Universal Survival in general) was wonderfully entertaining, albeit the arc that suffered the most in Super from writing in vacuum. I've been watching the FUNi dub of Super and the Universal Survival arc still holds up extremely well with only a handful of episodes that were genuine stinkers.

It really is the kind of arc that is much better consumed in large chunks than watching it once a week, because it's episodic nature become far more apparent when you watch take in the content that arc provides weekly. It's the Majin Boo arc of modern Dragon Ball. And arc that will always be seen as something that lasted longer than it should have, but is vindicated by history because of its overwhelmingly positive attributes.

[fadeddreams5]

Are we only comparing this to the Goku Black arc? If so, I can understand why it may be considered the worst.

If not, then hell no. The ToP arc is my absolute favorite. The animation quality heavily improved, so many battle sequences rank amongst the best in the entire franchise, the transformations were actually good for a change, and the recruiting episodes (and exhibition tournament) were great. Really cool new character designs too.

How in heavens name can the Battle of Gods, RF, and Champa arcs be considered even remotely close to the ToP arc in any way? All of those were diarrhea quality.

Just because it has good visuals that means that it's the best? It seems that when it comes to Super, people care only about the animation and not about the story.

It's a visual medium revolving around fighting, so yes, visuals are one of the most important factors. But even if we look at just story, the ToP arc has a better story than the first three arcs because the first two were retellings and there were no stakes in the Champa arc, which ended up being a Goku and Vegeta fest anyways.

[Spider-Man]

Worst no not really I find this arc very entertaining to watch despite having some issues. The animation was fantastic definitely an improvement compared to the previous arc and it introduced many cool looking character, it also has some of the best battles.

Boring not much but I do gotta admit I find the recruitment episodes, episode 106, 119, 126, 128 and 130 boring.

[Shaddy]

The ToP has the most boring setting (as it's a mostly-unchanging stone platform), but honestly it's so disconnected and separated into so many chunks and pieces that it's only an arc insofar as the setting and a few characters remain the same. It's less of a consistent story and more of an excuse for a celebration of everything that's codified Dragon Ball's fighting and techniques up to this point. Taken individually, I'd say most of what makes it up is pretty good. It's got a ton of fun and cool new characters, a ton of weird and unique fights, focus on some of the more neglected characters of the original cast, and a ton of great moments. It's got arcs and changes all the time for a ton of different characters, and gorgeous animation in a lot of it's episodes.

I'd be inclined to say that it's a better collection of episodes, moments and characters than it is a real story, but taken as that, it's a lot of fun. It's when you try to draw consistent themes and threads between the episodes that it feels disjointed and awkward. I'd use the phrase "less than the sum of it's parts" if I had to choose anything, but it's plenty enjoyable within that. It did bring the awkward setup to Toei's lack of communication between writers to the front, but I'd still say it's the second best arc behind Zamasu/Black. The worst arcs in the series are still Super 17 and Resurrection F though (unless you count Heroes, which I don't).

[MKCSTEALTH]

Worst? No sir. You've got the RoF arc for that

As for boring, I wasn't bored. But I wasnt super invested either. I mainly watched to see where it was all going. The reintroduction and introduction of characters new and old. Some pay offs were really good, others not so much.

The fact it was set before Goku meets Uub killed any real investment I had. And i mainly found myself coming back to see the next cool fight

[Tai Lung]

In my opinion it is. Not only did we already have another tournament (2 arcs prior!) but the entire arc and build up to it was just.... Boring! It didn’t feel like the rest of db super that i fell in love with. The Future Trunks Arc was the very best imo. But after it, everything went downhill. I enjoyed every arc up untill this point. But the ToP was just.. meh. I can’t truly explain exactly why. Since this is a higly subjective thing. It just feels so different imo. Ofcourse there are many reasons i could use. Such as the slow build up, the excess amount of fodder side characters with extremely boring and ugly designs. (Another tournament, sigh!) and several other reasons aswell.

Tournaments are overdone in dragon ball. And many fans (myself included) are done with it. We want an actual villain for once. Something new, something unique, something mysterious. Something dark. This is exactly what made the Future Trunks Arc so great and why this new Arc by Toyotaro in the manga is looking to be very promising aswell! Just look at all the fans’ reaction to this manga chapter and see how excited they are to finally read the manga! Some people haven’t even read it in MONTHS! It was just boring, rehashing old material we’ve already seen in the Anime. But now (since a long time) people are finally excited again!

What do you guys think?

almost everything you have told me seems subjective ...

and I do not agree with almost anything
I really liked the designs especially the U9, U6, U11 and U3
the point of having 80 fighters in the tournament is that not everyone was "fodder" each showed new skills poison, freezing, black hole, energy absorption, fire, lava, electricity, super speed and atack dimensionals.
they had to take their time due to the fights and interesting interactions that there were among the characters of other universes besides that they had to give time to know them since some appeared recently and they had to have more development

having a villain on duty also sounds repetitive if you put it in that simple way this tournament was something totally new to the previously seen
-Eliminations
-rescue
-strategies
not only victorys o defeats

If you were talking to me about the TOP of the manga, I would give you the reason just because it lacks almost everything that made the anime version
the worst work of Toyotaro.

[PFM18]

It really is the kind of arc that is much better consumed in large chunks than watching it once a week, because it's episodic nature become far more apparent when you watch take in the content that arc provides weekly. It's the Majin Boo arc of modern Dragon Ball. And arc that will always be seen as something that lasted longer than it should have, but is vindicated by history because of its overwhelmingly positive attributes.

It is like the Buu arc in the ways that you mentioned in that the arc becomes better when you binge watch it, and just generally being very long, but the Buu arc at the end of the day is complete trash. I could not wait to be done with the Boo arc in my rewatch. I look forward to finding the time to watch the ToP for the 3rd time. From top to bottom the Buu arc is just not very good and the ToP is leaps and bounds better IMO.

[SupremeKai25]

I wouldn't say that it was the worst arc in Super, because in the end its purpose wasn't to tell a complex and dark story like the Future Trunks arc (which I consider to be the darkest arc in all of Dragon Ball), but to be a fun arc full of wonderful and amazing fights (which accomplished). But it was definitely very boring. The problem is that it was way too long.

Just the introduction saga alone was as long as the entire Future Trunks arc. Think about that. If I had been in charge of Super, I would have prolongued the Future Trunks arc to 25 episodes (many complained that the ending felt too rushed) and would have just made the Recruitment phase of the Tournament much shorter.

[superfan2024]

Definitely not the most boring arc (that goes to either BoG/RoF arc) but there were a lot of dull episodes in between non stop fighting. There was so much fighting, 30 episodes with no breaks and no cutaways, and just episodic nonsense at some points.

But when the exciting episodes arrived, boy were they good! We all know the goodies like eps 103/104, 107, 109/110, 112-118, 125, and 129-131.