What Bardock do you prefer?

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by KBABZ » Wed Feb 06, 2019 3:19 pm

ABED wrote:
KBABZ wrote:Here's a question: as someone who wasn't familiar with Bardock until a few years ago, why do fans of the old version feel it's so important for Goku to be special (personality-wise) from the rest of the Saiyans?
If he's a chip off the old block, it feels less like choice/free will and more something he was destined for.
Personally, I think Gohan is a clear example of that really not being a pre-destined aspect of a character. Not to mention Goku didn't even start that way, he was a savage before he fell down the cliff. I also think it's odd that you'd say that but are in support of Bardock having visions of the future that makes Goku's future up to Namek completely pre-destined.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 3:39 pm

Edit: accidental double post.
Last edited by Kunzait_83 on Wed Feb 06, 2019 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 3:39 pm

KBABZ wrote:Here's a question: as someone who wasn't familiar with Bardock until a few years ago, why do fans of the old version feel it's so important for Goku to be special (personality-wise) from the rest of the Saiyans?
In the original version of events with the original manga/anime and the Bardock special along with it, the whole point of the Saiya-jin as a culture is to serve as a contrast to Goku: they are everything that Goku isn't. Whereas Goku's drive to fight is defined by a never-ending journey to always challenge and improve himself, the Saiya-jin only fight to bully and to dominate. Goku's fighting spirit is more "pure, noble, and honorable" in that he is constantly seeking to better himself, to find opponents that are capable of bringing out the best in him, of striving "to defeat himself" as it were. And always through (ideally for him at least) friendly, amicable competition and sportsmanship.

The Saiya-jin, meanwhile, have a fighting drive that is the total antithesis to Goku: they are bloodthirsty, brutish, thuggish, and cowardly when a fight isn't going their way. Whereas Goku is a trained and disciplined martial arts master always seeking new mountains to climb and greater challenges to overcome, the Saiya-jin are savage ogres seeking weaker foes to lord their strength over. That kind of sums up the powerful difference between Goku and the rest of the Saiya-jin: Goku is seeking opponents, most of the other Saiya-jin seek victims.

The entire point of the original conception of the Saiya-jin (and the Bardock special alongside it) is that the Goku we know had originally came up from garbage. Despite developing into the single greatest, most talented and "pure" martial arts master in the Dragon Ball universe who trained under (and eventually surpassed) the most legendary fighters and gods in the cosmos, his roots are with a barbaric culture of mass murdering psychos, and everything about his life and where he came from had originally primed him to be just another disposable grunt, like his father.

What made Goku "special" (if that's even the right word to use in this case) in this version of events were two main things: pure, dumb luck (hitting his head, being sent to Earth and being found by Gohan and sent on the series of mystical martial arts training journeys that end up defining his whole life), and beyond that just his simple drive to succeed and better himself as a martial artist.

There isn't any "chosen one" or "special destiny" horsecrap in Goku's backstory: he was just another average, nameless Saiya-jin grunt who was fathered by another nobody, piece of shit annonymous Saiya-jin grunt, who just so happened to get sent to a Toriyama Wuxia-world and thrived into something VASTLY BETTER than what he originally came from wholly on his own tireless dedication and effort. Goku transcended what was SUPPOSED to be his fairly scummy fate all on his own steam, and made himself into something much more special that he was ever intended to be via sheer hard work, discipline, and a tireless, pure passion for self-betterment.

Contrast that now with the current Minus/Super version of events: Goku's parentage is no longer just a nameless, faceless nothing amidst a legion of other likeminded thugs and murderers: now Goku's parents were innately and inexplicably "special" in that they were inherently "softer, more loving" than the rest of their race. Goku's eventual turn of fate as something far, far removed from the rest of his race is no longer an amazing and ironic twist of fate as well as an incredible example of personal will overcoming one's past roots: now its made to be MUCH more of a foregone conclusion that "well of COURSE Goku would OBVIOUSLY develop into something unique and different from the rest of these barbaric assholes: look how unique and different and more relatively kind/gentle his mom and dad were!"

Basically the original striking contrast of Goku's heritage with the life and fate he makes for himself on Earth loses almost ALL of its power and resonance, and much of Goku's entire character arc throughout the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs loses a great deal of its weight and meaning. Goku has no longer overcome and evolved past a lowly, scummy origin: he now was ALWAYS inherently "unique", "different", and "special" from the rest of the Saiya-jin via his "special, loving parents".

By making Goku's parents "special", Toriyama has made Goku, by extension, vastly more of a case of yet another protagonist who was "always destined from birth to be something different from the rest of his people", rather than a unique and unusual instance of a simple quirk of fate and his own personal will interceding to make himself "unique" and "different" against all odds.

The original Bardock special succeeds as an excellent story (and in the grand scheme of other prequel stories in general, downright masterful even) for a whole host of reasons, too numerous to recount all at once here: but for purposes of this topic, the Bardock character himself works due to how well the story balances making him an engaging villainous protagonist that the audience doesn't mind following and even in some cases cheering on, while at the same time betraying absolutely NOTHING about the Saiya-jin as a premise or making Bardock in any way "special" or "unique" in any such way that "absolves him" of his crimes. In that way Bardock is an "antihero" in the truest sense of the term: you follow him and, up to a point at least, root for him despite what a sack of shit he is.

Despite being the central protagonist of the special, Bardock remains from start to finish an uncompromising, unapologetic mass murdering thuggish slimebag, just like the rest of Freeza's army and his fellow Saiya-jin, and the narrative makes ZERO apologies or excuses for him and his heinous actions simply because he's Goku's dad. He has a few fleeting humanizing moments (namely via the genuine camaraderie he shares with his unit, particularly with Toma), but overall absolutely nothing about the sadistic barbarism of Bardock's actions, nor those of the rest of the Saiya-jin around him, are whitewashed or glossed over: indeed, there's a STRONG undercurrent throughout the special that what happens to the Saiya-jin is justly deserved comeuppance rather than some grand tragedy: a race of barbaric, murderous thugs who are betrayed and massacred by their even more hideous, monstrous boss... who in turn will someday also be brought down, in an ironic twist, by the son of the same faceless, no-name, low-rent space hood he'd just vaporized with the rest of his fellow goons.

Bardock in the original special is notable for just how far the polar, exact antithesis he is from Goku: the two characters could not be further miles apart from one another, and the starkness of the contrast between Goku and his father (and the rest of the Saiya-jin) is what gives so much of the original Saiya-jin storyline/premise so much of its narrative/dramatic weight and power. Its even hammered on throughout the special that Bardock doesn't give the slightest ounce of damn about Goku/Kakarotto, beyond his future potential to someday payback Freeza for betraying the Saiya-jin: Goku wasn't some special product of love-against-all-odds like he is in Minus/Super: he was an afterthought who was carelessly dismissed and thrown away like trash - by his own dad even - only to one day rise up into the greatest martial artist ever all on his own.

By whitewashing Bardock into a "somewhat more softhearted exception to the rest of the Saiya-jin because he has a caring wife (who once again, stays at home and cooks in a set of fucking skirt-armor like a Saiya-jin June Cleaver: on-the-nose-much?) and a son he loves and cares about", THAT I would argue does FAR more to make Goku into a "special" hero-of-destiny than his original depiction/backstory ever, EVER came close to doing. I would argue that calling the original Bardock special the version of the story that makes Goku "more special" is a very incorrectly framed description: rather, its Minus/Super that goes to extra lengths to make Goku into "something unique and special" by virtue of his unique and special parentage of Saiya-jin who were "softer and kinder than the rest".

No reason is EVER given to justify this change of course: Bardock and Gine in Minus/Super are made to be so special and different from the other Saiya-jin for no other reason than simply because they're Goku's parents and Goku is the main character of Dragon Ball. Its profoundly lazy and cliched "heroic mythmaking" set on autopilot, whereas the original story is basically a nihilistic (by Dragon Ball standards anyway) space gangster story where there are no good guys, everyone is a piece of shit that ends up (deservedly) dying horribly, and somewhere in the thick of all that senseless bloodshed, the son of the faceless, anonymous thug that story happened to follow ends up getting stranded into the middle of a grand and whimsically Dr. Slumpian Wuxia tale on a faraway planet that is basically Jianghu on acid.

The original Bardock TV special stands out as both a unique Dragon Ball story (that even further expands on the depth of its overall universe) as well as an excellent "how-to" lesson on what makes an actually effective prequel that enriches and adds to the main story while betraying/detracting nothing. Minus meanwhile is the total antithesis of that: its just a horribly lazy, by-the-numbers, autopilot prequel that not only adds NOTHING of value or substance to the original story, but actively TAKES AWAY whatever ounce of depth the original story might've had; all in the name of pandering fanservice that exists purely for its own sake.

But hey, we now have a name and a face to give to Goku's mom (like it even matters when she's such a pointless and intelligence-insulting non-character), as well as more cheap One Piece/Naruto-esque "tragic backstory" and "heartstring tugging" to act as canonized fodder for hack fanfic writers across the internet. And for certain folks within these sorts of fandoms, that's all that ultimately matters: not what makes for a genuinely effective or engaging story.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by KBABZ » Wed Feb 06, 2019 4:08 pm

Thanks for the breakdown Kunzait. As mentioned I haven't seen the special itself yet, so it's helpful in my understanding of it.

I will say that I think it isn't just Bardock that's been toned down, but the Saiyans as a whole. The ones that Bardock interacts with in the Broly film feel mellow in comparison to your descriptions of them in the original special, for example. And while Broly himself is of course as full of rage as he ever was, he feels calm and more amicable when he isn't fighting, particularly at the end when he appears somewhat friendly towards Goku's proposition (not to mention his friendship with Lemo and Cheelai).

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 06, 2019 4:34 pm

Fair enough about the visions, and I've never been a big fan of that, though I do like that final vision in large part because it doesn't say how it ends.

This reminds me a little of the episode of Justice League Unlimited where we find out Terry is biologically Bruce's son. It's a good episode and I understand their point that Terry's parentage doesn't determine his choices. He chose to become Batman. However, it still comes off as predestined. Whereas before Terry and Bruce used to be bonded through tragedy and loss, they are now bonded by blood.
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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by KBABZ » Wed Feb 06, 2019 5:02 pm

ABED wrote:Fair enough about the visions, and I've never been a big fan of that, though I do like that final vision in large part because it doesn't say how it ends.
That's fair enough, Goku's given a determined expression that doesn't say if he's a "good guy" or a more villainously-oriented fellow. Plus that specific flash-forward is kinda iconic now.
ABED wrote:This reminds me a little of the episode of Justice League Unlimited where we find out Terry is biologically Bruce's son. It's a good episode and I understand their point that Terry's parentage doesn't determine his choices. He chose to become Batman. However, it still comes off as predestined. Whereas before Terry and Bruce used to be bonded through tragedy and loss, they are now bonded by blood.
Yeah, I do agree with the controversy on that example.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Bruma rabu » Wed Feb 06, 2019 5:55 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:
KBABZ wrote:I'm a question: as someone who wasn't familiar with Bardock until a few years ago, why do fans of the old version feel it's so important for Goku to be special (personality-wise) from the rest of the Saiyans?
In the original version of events with the original manga/anime and the Bardock special along with it, the whole point of the Saiya-jin as a culture is to serve as a contrast to Goku: they are everything that Goku isn't. Whereas Goku's drive to fight is defined by a never-ending journey to always challenge and improve himself, the Saiya-jin only fight to bully and to dominate. Goku's fighting spirit is more "pure, noble, and honorable" in that he is constantly seeking to better himself, to find opponents that are capable of bringing out the best in him, of striving "to defeat himself" as it were. And always through (ideally for him at least) friendly, amicable competition and sportsmanship.

The Saiya-jin, meanwhile, have a fighting drive that is the total antithesis to Goku: they are bloodthirsty, brutish, thuggish, and cowardly when a fight isn't going their way. Whereas Goku is a trained and disciplined martial arts master always seeking new mountains to climb and greater challenges to overcome, the Saiya-jin are savage ogres seeking weaker foes to lord their strength over. That kind of sums up the powerful difference between Goku and the rest of the Saiya-jin: Goku is seeking opponents, most of the other Saiya-jin seek victims.

The entire point of the original conception of the Saiya-jin (and the Bardock special alongside it) is that the Goku we know had originally came up from garbage. Despite developing into the single greatest, most talented and "pure" martial arts master in the Dragon Ball universe who trained under (and eventually surpassed) the most legendary fighters and gods in the cosmos, his roots are with a barbaric culture of mass murdering psychos, and everything about his life and where he came from had originally primed him to be just another disposable grunt, like his father.

What made Goku "special" (if that's even the right word to use in this case) in this version of events were two main things: pure, dumb luck (hitting his head, being sent to Earth and being found by Gohan and sent on the series of mystical martial arts training journeys that end up defining his whole life), and beyond that just his simple drive to succeed and better himself as a martial artist.

There isn't any "chosen one" or "special destiny" horsecrap in Goku's backstory: he was just another average, nameless Saiya-jin grunt who was fathered by another nobody, piece of shit annonymous Saiya-jin grunt, who just so happened to get sent to a Toriyama Wuxia-world and thrived into something VASTLY BETTER than what he originally came from wholly on his own tireless dedication and effort. Goku transcended what was SUPPOSED to be his fairly scummy fate all on his own steam, and made himself into something much more special that he was ever intended to be via sheer hard work, discipline, and a tireless, pure passion for self-betterment.

Contrast that now with the current Minus/Super version of events: Goku's parentage is no longer just a nameless, faceless nothing amidst a legion of other likeminded thugs and murderers: now Goku's parents were innately and inexplicably "special" in that they were inherently "softer, more loving" than the rest of their race. Goku's eventual turn of fate as something far, far removed from the rest of his race is no longer an amazing and ironic twist of fate as well as an incredible example of personal will overcoming one's past roots: now its made to be MUCH more of a foregone conclusion that "well of COURSE Goku would OBVIOUSLY develop into something unique and different from the rest of these barbaric assholes: look how unique and different and more relatively kind/gentle his mom and dad were!"

Basically the original striking contrast of Goku's heritage with the life and fate he makes for himself on Earth loses almost ALL of its power and resonance, and much of Goku's entire character arc throughout the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs loses a great deal of its weight and meaning. Goku has no longer overcome and evolved past a lowly, scummy origin: he now was ALWAYS inherently "unique", "different", and "special" from the rest of the Saiya-jin via his "special, loving parents".

By making Goku's parents "special", Toriyama has made Goku, by extension, vastly more of a case of yet another protagonist who was "always destined from birth to be something different from the rest of his people", rather than a unique and unusual instance of a simple quirk of fate and his own personal will interceding to make himself "unique" and "different" against all odds.

The original Bardock special succeeds as an excellent story (and in the grand scheme of other prequel stories in general, downright masterful even) for a whole host of reasons, too numerous to recount all at once here: but for purposes of this topic, the Bardock character himself works due to how well the story balances making him an engaging villainous protagonist that the audience doesn't mind following and even in some cases cheering on, while at the same time betraying absolutely NOTHING about the Saiya-jin as a premise or making Bardock in any way "special" or "unique" in any such way that "absolves him" of his crimes. In that way Bardock is an "antihero" in the truest sense of the term: you follow him and, up to a point at least, root for him despite what a sack of shit he is.

Despite being the central protagonist of the special, Bardock remains from start to finish an uncompromising, unapologetic mass murdering thuggish slimebag, just like the rest of Freeza's army and his fellow Saiya-jin, and the narrative makes ZERO apologies or excuses for him and his heinous actions simply because he's Goku's dad. He has a few fleeting humanizing moments (namely via the genuine camaraderie he shares with his unit, particularly with Toma), but overall absolutely nothing about the sadistic barbarism of Bardock's actions, nor those of the rest of the Saiya-jin around him, are whitewashed or glossed over: indeed, there's a STRONG undercurrent throughout the special that what happens to the Saiya-jin is justly deserved comeuppance rather than some grand tragedy: a race of barbaric, murderous thugs who are betrayed and massacred by their even more hideous, monstrous boss... who in turn will someday also be brought down, in an ironic twist, by the son of the same faceless, no-name, low-rent space hood he'd just vaporized with the rest of his fellow goons.

Bardock in the original special is notable for just how far the polar, exact antithesis he is from Goku: the two characters could not be further miles apart from one another, and the starkness of the contrast between Goku and his father (and the rest of the Saiya-jin) is what gives so much of the original Saiya-jin storyline/premise so much of its narrative/dramatic weight and power. Its even hammered on throughout the special that Bardock doesn't give the slightest ounce of damn about Goku/Kakarotto, beyond his future potential to someday payback Freeza for betraying the Saiya-jin: Goku wasn't some special product of love-against-all-odds like he is in Minus/Super: he was an afterthought who was carelessly dismissed and thrown away like trash - by his own dad even - only to one day rise up into the greatest martial artist ever all on his own.

By whitewashing Bardock into a "somewhat more softhearted exception to the rest of the Saiya-jin because he has a caring wife (who once again, stays at home and cooks in a set of fucking skirt-armor like a Saiya-jin June Cleaver: on-the-nose-much?) and a son he loves and cares about", THAT I would argue does FAR more to make Goku into a "special" hero-of-destiny than his original depiction/backstory ever, EVER came close to doing. I would argue that calling the original Bardock special the version of the story that makes Goku "more special" is a very incorrectly framed description: rather, its Minus/Super that goes to extra lengths to make Goku into "something unique and special" by virtue of his unique and special parentage of Saiya-jin who were "softer and kinder than the rest".

No reason is EVER given to justify this change of course: Bardock and Gine in Minus/Super are made to be so special and different from the other Saiya-jin for no other reason than simply because they're Goku's parents and Goku is the main character of Dragon Ball. Its profoundly lazy and cliched "heroic mythmaking" set on autopilot, whereas the original story is basically a nihilistic (by Dragon Ball standards anyway) space gangster story where there are no good guys, everyone is a piece of shit that ends up (deservedly) dying horribly, and somewhere in the thick of all that senseless bloodshed, the son of the faceless, anonymous thug that story happened to follow ends up getting stranded into the middle of a grand and whimsically Dr. Slumpian Wuxia tale on a faraway planet that is basically Jianghu on acid.

The original Bardock TV special stands out as both a unique Dragon Ball story (that even further expands on the depth of its overall universe) as well as an excellent "how-to" lesson on what makes an actually effective prequel that enriches and adds to the main story while betraying/detracting nothing. Minus meanwhile is the total antithesis of that: its just a horribly lazy, by-the-numbers, autopilot prequel that not only adds NOTHING of value or substance to the original story, but actively TAKES AWAY whatever ounce of depth the original story might've had; all in the name of pandering fanservice that exists purely for its own sake.

But hey, we now have a name and a face to give to Goku's mom (like it even matters when she's such a pointless and intelligence-insulting non-character), as well as more cheap One Piece/Naruto-esque "tragic backstory" and "heartstring tugging" to act as canonized fodder for hack fanfic writers across the internet. And for certain folks within these sorts of fandoms, that's all that ultimately matters: not what makes for a genuinely effective or engaging story.
It's like your in a constant state of butt hurt. To me it didn't seem like Bardock and Gine were ment to be seen as special. They did 2 things out of the norm for saiyans and are touted as being loving and caring? Gine flat out says it odd for him to care for his kids. Also how do you know Goku would have ended up the way he did if it wasn't for hit on head? Raditz didn't seem to inherit any of this "loving" and "caring" traits that his parents apperatly had. Hell he didn't even care that they died. Apperatly saiyans are ment to be one way only and can't deviate from that.
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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:00 pm

KBABZ wrote:Personally, I think Gohan is a clear example of that really not being a pre-destined aspect of a character. Not to mention Goku didn't even start that way, he was a savage before he fell down the cliff. I also think it's odd that you'd say that but are in support of Bardock having visions of the future that makes Goku's future up to Namek completely pre-destined.
ABED wrote:Fair enough about the visions, and I've never been a big fan of that, though I do like that final vision in large part because it doesn't say how it ends.
Not to sound like a broken record with the Wuxia shit once again: but its worth noting that Bardock's visions and the manner in which he gets them ARE indeed also a type of Wuxia plot device (a mystical ability brought out in a fighter by a pressure point on his body that is struck during a fight).

Totally fine to debate how well its used in the special's story of course: as it stands, I think that as executed it ranges anywhere from perfectly harmless most times and even downright effective at certain points, like the earlier-mentioned final vision Bardock has right at the moment of his death.

It also helps a LOT I think that the visions ultimately don't really do dick to help Bardock or change his or the other Saiya-jin's fate. They simply render him an impotent Cassandra-like figure: able to see what's coming, and totally powerless to do anything to stop it. And of course, Bardock doesn't have these visions because he's a "special chosen one" or whatnot: they're merely a 100% dickish final "fuck you" from one of the many innocent victims of his murderous excursions for Freeza's army. Which again, falls perfectly in line with the theme of the special that "everything that happens to the Saiya-jin is total and absolute comeuppance that they richly deserve for being such brutish, barbaric shit-mongers".

I just figured I'd chime in to note that the visions' inclusion isn't at all as much of a non-sequitur as some might think and that it does have some genre-precedence.

I do think that the visions are yet another example of how the Bardock special took what could've EASILY on paper been an excruciatingly by-the-numbers, tiresomely trite, redundant and needless prequel - its more than easy to see how on its face the raw concept of a "prequel story of the main character's doomed father who has prophetic visions of his son's grand, eventful future in the main series" could've EASILY devolved into totally predictable, hackneyed, cliched, dull slog presenting itself as "We're establishing a grand, epic mythos and backstory for our special chosen hero!" - and instead, against all odds, spun these seemingly godawful elements into something that is so downright inspired and cool (and so TOTALLY the antithesis of what most prequels are usually like) that it has for long many years now in the minds of most fans cemented itself as canonized lore that's a perfect fit with the main series, despite largely being anime-only Toei material rather than a Toriyama storyline from the manga (two panel cameo/shout out notwithstanding).

Toriyama REALLY should've just left well enough the fuck alone here: I remain mystified as to what the hell possessed him to dredge up THIS particular storyline - that NOBODY anywhere, no matter how normally down on the anime-only material they are, has ever had the SLIGHTEST problem with at all and in fact was downright beloved among most fans - and run it thoroughly into the ground as EXACTLY the sort of "What the fuck is even the point of this?" bit of extraneous prequilization that the original special normally gets justly deserved credit for NOT being.
Bruma rabu wrote:It's like your in a constant state of butt hurt.
Totally uncalled for, given both the topic and the fact that I never said anything to you whatsoever to incite that.
Bruma rabu wrote:To me it didn't seem like Bardock and Gine were ment to be seen as special. They did 2 things out of the norm for saiyans and are touted as being loving and caring? Gine flat out says it odd for him to care for his kids.
Gine does a LOT more than just "two things" that makes her "outside the norm" for Saiya-jin. Everything about Gine's character (a dotting, docile housewife and concerned mom who just waits for her husband to come home and cooks for him) is an embodiment of non-Saiyan-like traits. She is SO diametrically opposed to everything we've ever been shown and told about Saiya-jin culture, and she just so happens to also be Goku's mom? That kind of takes a LOT away from Goku's "generic Saiya-jin grunt" lineage: now he's also the child of the first/only Saiya-jin we've met so far who is apparently the Harriet Nelson of their race.

Bardock at least is still, more or less, just a generic Saiya-jin soldier: but again, giving him a warm, caring relationship with his son does a LOT to soften what was originally such a marked, stark, and powerfully effective contrast between what Goku and Bardock represent as characters: all the more so when, as Gine herself says, its considered VERY unusual for Saiya-jin to care for their kids in general.

So once again: Goku's parents ARE indeed portrayed as "unique" and "special" among average Saiya-jin (in that they both love and care for their son, and Gine is basically a 1950s housewife): and by extension, this also makes Goku "special" since he came from two "special" Saiya-jin parents, rather than have him basically be just another generic expendable grunt fathered by another generic expendable grunt (who doesn't give a fuck about him either way, like most of the rest of their race regard their offspring).
Bruma rabu wrote:Also how do you know Goku would have ended up the way he did if it wasn't for hit on head? Raditz didn't seem to inherit any of this "loving" and "caring" traits that his parents apperatly had. Hell he didn't even care that they died.
Raditz seems that much more like a total afterthought within Minus, with a completely and awkwardly shoehorned cameo and whatnot. I don't think Toriyama thought through Raditz's place in the family dynamics in any way whatsoever obviously: I think Toriyama's reasons for characterizing Gine and Bardock the way he did in Minus boil down purely to the fact that they're Goku's parents, and they must therefore be different/special because Goku is the main hero of the series. Which again, and unlike a LOT of bullshit example a lot of people around here like to carelessly throw this term at, is an ACTUAL example of "lazy writing".
Bruma rabu wrote: saiyans are ment to be one way only and can't deviate from that.
In theory, I have absolutely ZERO problems whatsoever with there existing some Saiya-jin characters who are unusual and different from the norm and are softer, more caring and compassionate, etc. From a "world building" perspective (which is something that I know a LOT of people around here are entirely too obsessed with and overly-fixated on) it makes total sense, and lends much more shading and dimension to the Saiya-jin as a race: NO race of people, no matter HOW ingrained their culture, are a monolith and are of course going to have gradation and exceptions that go against their usual norms.

The problem with Minus' Gine and Bardock though is one that has NOTHING to do with "world building" and rather to do with something that is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than "world building": the problem with Minus' Gine and Bardock is entirely to do with the (negative) impact that they have on Goku's story and overall character arc in the original series, and what Gine and Bardock (as portrayed in Minus) mean to the central themes therein.

Goku is the original conduit through which we learn all about the Saiya-jin race in the first place in the original story: through him and his family, we learn all the basic fundamentals that we need to know about Saiya-jin culture: they're a race of nomadic space barbarians, they work within a broader intergalactic planet sharking ring wherein they exterminate whole entire planets of their populaces in a genocidal purge to make them ready for sale to all sorts of unscrupulous criminal interests.

Broadly speaking, the Saiya-jin are introduced (and characterized throughout the original series) as mercenary, cutthroat, sadistic, deceitful, remorseless, brutish, and cruel to a fault, caring nothing whatsoever for the lives they exterminate with impunity and relishing/delighting in the suffering and torment of weaker people beneath their boot heels, while they often end up being plunged into an existential terror at the very notion of EVER being perceived as or worse, outright shown to be weaker than anyone or anything else. And they often care nothing for their own kind, having no qualms with sending even their own newborn infants out into battle as disposable grunts against weaker targets.

Goku is once more is the means by which we're first shown these characters, and its VERY exceedingly important - from a storytelling standpoint mind - that Goku simply be just another generic, anonymous example of an average, typical Saiya-jin: because then Goku's life that he's made on Earth for himself stands as a marked contrast with where he originally came from and what his original people embody. This is what lends the Saiya-jin, as a concept, ALL of their narrative power, weight, and meaning as it pertains to Goku's story.

Prior to Raditz's landing, we've always known Goku, for over a dozen volumes of manga and over 150+ episodes of anime, to be a cheerful, innocent, upbeat, rural, naive, rough 'n tumble kung fu wild boy from the mountains of a Toriyama-ified Jianghu world. He has up till now been the pure embodiment of naive, youthful innocence, a martial artists purity for friendly competition and self-improvement. The arrival of Raditz and the reveal of Goku's Saiya-jin heritage and what their race embodies, throws a GIGANTIC wrench into ALL of that and RADICALLY re-contextualizes everything we THOUGHT we knew about Goku, while also bringing into focus how DRAMATICALLY different of a life and fate he has carved out for himself, compared to what he was "supposed" to have become.

Again, this ALL works wonderfully well and effectively: when Goku is simply just another generic, nobody low-level Saiya-jin soldier whose family were all just another bunch generic, nobody, expendable Saiya-jun grunts. As it stand through Minus now though, ONLY Raditz stands as a "typical, ordinary Saiya-jin" within Goku's immediate family, as now both the parents have been made "unusually caring and good natured" compared to the rest of the race. Fans obsessed with "building a universe" may shrug this off as "So what? It makes the Saiya-jin more believable as a race to have exceptions like this". But from a core storytelling standpoint (of the main, central character's ENTIRE core character arc throughout much of the Z-portion itself) this all TOTALLY guts Goku's own story and robs it of so much of its power and narrative weight.

Again, what may be good for "world building" in the eyes of some can sometimes be REALLY bad for just baseline, economic, and emotionally effective storytelling and characterization for central figures in the story (such as say... the main principal fucking character of the whole enterprise from start to finish). And again, I get that there are fans out there who just want Dragon Ball to be Star Wars (or rather, Star Wars' Expanded Universe), to have it be less focused on any one particular character or even set of characters, and to instead be focused on the universe itself and its further development.

But Dragon Ball ISN'T Star Wars (certainly not its Expanded Universe for sure). While it makes some effective use of world building throughout, world building is NOT the main purpose of DB. DB uses world building merely as a storytelling tool, a plot device, a means to an end to tell what ultimately amounts to the story of Goku first and foremost, as well as Goku's immediate family and friends.

The Saiya-jin, as a concept, have ALWAYS mainly existed primarily to give Goku's (and later Vegeta's) backstory some pathos, and his characterization some drive and forward momentum: Goku spends much of the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs wrestling with his own palpable disgust at the horrible reality of what he is and where he came from, before eventually making peace with it in his own way and coming to a reluctant acceptance of it. Later in the Cell and Boo arcs, the Saiya-jin concept are then trotted out to further develop and flesh out Vegeta's whole "redemption" story arc. And of course throughout all four of these arcs, they're also used to facilitate all the various SSJ transformations and whatnot.

By defanging Goku's parentage, by making them "special, unique" Saiya-jin who love and care for their kid and send him away to Earth to protect him rather than generic, nameless, nobody Saiya-jin who thought as little of Goku as the rest of the Saiya-jin and Freeza armies who sent Goku away as a forgotten afterthought because he was considered expendable trash: ALL of the power of Goku's ENTIRE characterization and trajectory throughout much of Z is thoroughly weakened. Goku's entire "Anyone can be beat if you work hard enough!" speech to Vegeta, one of the most singularly defining moments in the whole series for both DB in general as well as Goku specifically, loses a LOT of its punch and its meaning if Goku isn't just some generic nobody amongst his people whom even his own father had thrown away and written off.

Now Goku is "a rare product of love among an otherwise uncaring race" who's trip to Earth was for his specific protection rather than a careless oversight. The idea is meant to lend more "tragedy" and heartstring-tugging "feels" to Goku's backstory (as that particular formula has been the commonplace way of things for much of Weekly Shonen Jump's later mega-hits in the 2000s and 2010s): but the entire point of what made Goku's original backstory so powerful and work so well was how DEVOID of love and compassion it was, how utterly unlike anything we know of in Goku's character his people and his heritage (and his father by extension) were, and how utterly much of a total accidental fluke of a "mistake" Goku's entire life on Earth and path as a martial artist ended up ultimately being.
Last edited by Kunzait_83 on Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:27 pm

I wouldn't call visions of the future a wuxia plot device since it's a fairly common plot device and not limited to that genre. I understand your point about them being a form of punishment, but I'm saying I've never been a fan of visions of the future being used as a plot device regardless of how it's used. I'm a big believer in free will, even in narratives. I understand the purpose it serves in the story, it's just not my taste.
Last edited by ABED on Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:29 pm

ABED wrote:I wouldn't call visions of the future a wuxia plot device since it's a fairly common plot device and not limited to that genre.
I'm not so much talking about "visions of the future" in itself I suppose, so much as I am the manner and means in which Bardock acquires them. Obviously "prophetic visions of the future" are indeed a fairly standard general storytelling trope, as old as narrative fiction and general mythology itself. However the means in which they are introduced into the story (via a kung fu pressure point strike) are indeed VERY much a Wuxia trope.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Yuli Ban » Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:08 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote: Wed Feb 06, 2019 9:00 pm Not to sound like a broken record with the Wuxia shit once again
Sounding like a "broken record" talking about Dragon Ball's literal genre could only happen on an American Dragon Ball forum. It's like people getting upset that you keep bringing up the term "fantasy" on a Lord of the Rings forum. It's Dragon Ball's genre; keep playing that record.
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Re: What Bardock do you prefer?

Post by Yalos » Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:15 pm

I prefer the old one.

I don't have a problem with the new one.. but he just feels like he was written by a 14 years old fangirl

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