Unpopular DB opinions

[ABED]

How did Goku change over the course of the last few arcs of the manga? The stakes changed, but he didn't.

[The Great Saiyaman]

The above post does bring a great point, so I'll clarify. I don't think he's uninteresting or one-dimensional, per se, but rather that his personality, which is in comparison to most of the newer characters in the story from Freeza-onward more sophisticated, can only be present for a while before he reappears. Let's face it, it's far more impactful when Gokus the last to face Cell and Freezas, since as the main character, he's the one whose actions against them would carry the most meaning. And so he doesn't need to be ever-present, at least I think some

It's not the other way around. Even if a character lacks screen time, the interesting ones are still interesting, just underutilized. It's about quality of screen time, not quantity.

Except it's both. Both the manga and the anime have only a limited time each week to develop everything necessary for a story to completely work. So if Toriyama thought that having Goku out of it would help the story... Well, honestly his instincts at the time were right.

Cell's introduction works much better, for instance, if it's the fusion of Kami and Piccoro seeing and fighting him for the first time, as he is established as being the smartest of the Z fighters to comprehend what Cell is on about. It works better for Goku to be out of it when Freezas formally meets Gohan and Kuririn, as they have to rely on themselves and not on their stronger compatriot, and even when they rely on Vegeta it's not built on trust but on survival need. At the end of the day, the question should usually be if it serves the story, what should be the decisions made towards that?

I know, that was my point. The reason the first part of the Freeza arc is far better than the latter half is because the other characters are active. In most of the cases when Goku is taken out of action, it's a lot of buying time until he arrives.

Again, they're not buying time. Having Vegeta fully and steadily humiliated by Freezas awesome power and having Piccoro in the preceeding adds much needed variety and color to the story. If you think the story would've been much improved if we didn't have Vegeta and Piccoro lose to Freezas subsequent transformations, well... That's your opinion. I just don't agree with it, at all.

Not during the 23rd TB. I'm talking about the very first arc through when he won the Tenkaichi Tournament. I'm drawing the distinction because far too many people don't seem to take the first third of the manga into consideration when criticizing Goku being in the spotlight.

I don't think anyone is disputing that. Even I am not. Not by a long shot. What I am saying, though, is that the story has a number of characters (a fairly large number, in fact) that shouldn't be ignored in favour of the Goku n' Vegeta show.

[Scsigs]

How did Goku change over the course of the last few arcs of the manga? The stakes changed, but he didn't.

I mean, he changed slowly. After the introduction of his Saiyan heritage, then his attaining Super Saiyan, he became obsessed with becoming stronger, which was a part of his character by then, but it went up with his wanting to train all the time. Another trait he gained was letting other people take care of problems rather than taking care of it himself when he easily could've just to see their powers. Then there's his overestimation or underestimation of the situations. This became a problem in the Buu Saga, where he had that moment where Buu got depowered because Gotenks defused inside him & he told Gohan that they didn't need to fuse anymore, even though Buu by himself was still very strong.
If you looked at Goku in even the first few arcs of Z, those weren't part of his personality. Granted, he let Vegeta & Frieza go since he defeated them, but didn't want to kill them until he was forced to kill Frieza (until somehow Frieza survived a planet exploding & Goku firing a ki blast at him because of an asspull), but those were early signs of these. However, look at the arcs in DB & those traits weren't to be found. He just adventured around the planet, got stronger, & fought, but he also had reasons for doing so, which at least his keeping up his training & testing himself has an explanation for being part of him & I can accept it. It's just wrong to say he didn't change drastically int he last few arcs of Z.

[ABED]

You're taking my point about "buying time" too literally. Vegeta, Piccolo, Gohan, and Kuririn do nothing to Freeza in the scheme of things. Any damage is superficial. Not one single thing they do makes a bit of difference in the fight against Freeza until Goku arrives beyond buying time. Freeza is screwing with them the entire time.

Goku doesn't need to be in every scene. No one is saying that. What I'm saying is he doesn't have to be constantly sidelined in order to give the other characters time to develop and make them interesting.

Goku was clearly in the driver seat in those early chapters and yet we still got a well developed cast of characters. A single lead or even a two hander isn't antithetical to a well developed cast of characters.

One of the worst aspects of the Cell arc is that despite Goku being on the sidelines, the other characters don't do much beyond allow Cell to get stronger. After Trunks gives Goku the heads up about the cyborgs, The only ones to affect the story are Goku, Gohan, and maybe Vegeta when he distracts Cell long enough for Gohan to kill Cell.

he became obsessed with becoming stronger

That was always a part of his character. It's not a trait that was more pronounced after turning Super Saiyan. He lets Vegeta go after their first battle so he can fight a stronger opponent. He lets Piccolo go because he wants someone to keep him motivated. He's explicit about those reasons. He didn't save them out of mercy. That's a dubism. Getting strong is Goku's raison d'etre from day one. It's the reason he leaves Mt. Paoz with Bulma.

Except it's both. Both the manga and the anime have only a limited time each week to develop everything necessary for a story to completely work.

That implies the stories are good or as good as they could be. What I'm arguing is part of what takes away from those stories is the characters not doing much and Goku being sidelined YET AGAIN. The screen time in those stories weren't used to their maximum effect. It often feels like a waste of time because of the repetitive story beats.

[MasenkoHA]

Re: Goku wanting to be stronger.

His call to adventure was literally so he could go out and become stronger. He even asked Bulma if she thinks he would be strong like his grandpa if he went out with her

He went to Roshi after the first Dragon Ball hunt because he wanted to get stronger and was driven by thinking someone much stronger than him destroyed Pilaf’s castle

Pre-Raditz he was motivated either by: 1. Getting Stronger 2. Retrieving his grandpa’s Dragon Ball 3. Avenging fallen friends. The only thing that changed between the Shenron arc and Raditz onward is Goku lost his attachment to the 4 star ball

[Polyphase Avatron]

Cumber has the potential to be a very interesting character. Granted, they're not doing much with him now, but the idea of an ancient evil Saiyan whose ki is so twisted it can corrupt others, and who was responsible for defeating the original Super Saiyan God, is fascinating. It somewhat brings to mind the original concept of Beerus, that of a being who infected the Saiyans with evil. If they delved more into his backstory, he could become as important and influential a villain as Beerus or Freeza.

[Hulk10]

Cumber has the potential to be a very interesting character. Granted, they're not doing much with him now, but the idea of an ancient evil Saiyan whose ki is so twisted it can corrupt others, and who was responsible for defeating the original Super Saiyan God, is fascinating. It somewhat brings to mind the original concept of Beerus, that of a being who infected the Saiyans with evil. If they delved more into his backstory, he could become as important and influential a villain as Beerus or Freeza.

I concur. I believe we need more Saiyan characters.

[WittyUsername]

I don’t know how unpopular this is, but I think Budokai Tenkaichi 3 had one of the better story modes of a Dragon Ball game. I know that people harp on it for being really short for a game with such a large roster, and while I admit that I initially was one of those people, I honestly think having a short story mode was the best way to go. By that point in time, the story of the Dragon Ball franchise had been repeatedly told in video game form (to varying degrees of accuracy), so I think having a game with a streamlined story mode was the best way to go. I do think it’s odd that the fight against Recoome, Jeice and Burter was in the game, but not the fight against Ginyu, but apart from that, I appreciate how it realized that most of the people buying it were already familiar with the story, and having the characters make various commentaries during the gameplay was a nice and creative way of spicing things up.

Personally, I think the game’s story mode was vastly superior to the story mode of BT2. That game’s story was just sort of an awkward mishmash of the story of the first and third Budokai games, but without the dynamic (for its time) cutscenes of the former or the varied exploration of the latter. Plus, a lot of the fights in that game’s story were just plain repetitive. Did we really need to fight Yi Xi Long five times?

As a side note, BT3 is also currently the only Dragon Ball fighting game with a story mode that actually covers OG Dragon Ball (albeit out of order), so that’s a plus in my book.

[Yalos]

I don't mind the Funimation dub edits in Super. I'd say they even improved Super a bit because the original script isn't the cherry on top..

[Scsigs]

I don't mind the Funimation dub edits in Super. I'd say they even improved Super a bit because the original script isn't the cherry on top.

FUNimation's dubbing of Super is something that's been a mixed bag from what I've seen. Some people, like me, like or love a lot of the decisions made. Some people hate the decisions that have been made. And some people are mixed.
Like, for example, Brian Drummond as Copy Vegeta. Good.
Goku saying he wanted to train to protect his loved ones. Bad, even though that IS in-character for him in either dub.
Things that might be fourth wall breaks rather than just general meta humor. Bad.
Castings for most of the characters. Good.

People will also compare the Super dub to the Z dub. Which, let me say this. This dub is nowhere near the level of Z's. Z's dub was made by an inexperienced team hired by an inexperienced company in the late 90s & early 2000s era of anime dubbing before things started to be done more seriously & faithfully. Though it's not as faithful as Kai's dub, I don't really think this is a bad thing. Anything that's changed keeps the spirit of the show & franchise as opposed to Z's dub, where almost every change flies in the face of not only the show & franchise, but also general common sense. Anyone who claims that is being hyperbolic & is looking for problems as opposed to actually thinking about if the changes actually affect the quality of the show. Like, some of the changes I can see, but not all of them are bad & they don't crop up that often.

[PFM18]

Cumber has the potential to be a very interesting character. Granted, they're not doing much with him now, but the idea of an ancient evil Saiyan whose ki is so twisted it can corrupt others, and who was responsible for defeating the original Super Saiyan God, is fascinating. It somewhat brings to mind the original concept of Beerus, that of a being who infected the Saiyans with evil. If they delved more into his backstory, he could become as important and influential a villain as Beerus or Freeza.

Well he's a Heroes character so I doubt anything like that is going to be done.

[sunsetshimmer]

DBS: Broly would work better as DBGT movie as it has no place in Super lore.
It's a movie about saiyan origins, Frieza's army and wild saiyan with natural talent who can tap Oozaru power into his base form.

How does SSJ Blue have any place in this movie? DBS already nerfed god ki in every next saga, but in this movie it was even more ridiculous. BoG saga made it look like god ki actually makes you superior to non-gods, but here we have a tarzan who never even fought before stomping two gods like trash.

Broly's rage form and SSJ4 have something in common as both forms use Oozaru power so such fight would be more exciting and would actually fit entire story. God forms are completely out of place there.

[Goten_jr]

the Black Star DB arc is GT´s best executed arc and overall the second best arc in GT

[ABED]

the Black Star DB arc is GT´s best executed arc and overall the second best arc in GT

What episodes do you consider the Black Star DB arc to consist of?

[Goten_jr]

the Black Star DB arc is GT´s best executed arc and overall the second best arc in GT

What episodes do you consider the Black Star DB arc to consist of?

episode 1-22(planet m2)

[ABED]

Alright, while it's a somewhat enjoyable batch of episodes, it's not technically an arc. It doesn't have an ending, especially since a number of those episodes are part of the Baby arc. It's more like an extended prologue to the Baby arc.

[sunsetshimmer]

Alright, while it's a somewhat enjoyable batch of episodes, it's not technically an arc. It doesn't have an ending, especially since a number of those episodes are part of the Baby arc. It's more like an extended prologue to the Baby arc.

Technically or not. It's officially an arc and ends at ep 22 (not 16 like dumb dub stated).
All characters from these episodes have "Black Star Dragon Ball saga" or similar note in video games.

the Black Star DB arc is GT´s best executed arc and overall the second best arc in GT

Well honestly this arc has the highest quality of fights in GT and best character development, although i still prefer Baby arc due to awesome and complex villain and perhaps Shadow Dragons due to its very unique and original story. If only some of later fights in next arcs were as good as Goku vs Ledgic or Rildo then it would be awesome, but i still love the first arc, it's very underrated. Only episodes with Luud were a bit boring, but Imecka and M2 episodes are damn awesome.

[ABED]

But it's not in any way an arc, and 22 is well into the Baby arc. Baby is wakes up in episode 22, but Dr. Mu is introduced well before then.

Arcs need beginnings, middles, and ends. That's what makes them arcs. The episodes dealing with Luud is an actual arc.

[Shaddy]

The 25th Tenkaichi Budokai before the Buu saga is basically the same thing. Not a self-contained story in itself, just a long-ass prologue to a bigger saga.

[ABED]

The 25th Tenkaichi Budokai before the Buu saga is basically the same thing. Not a self-contained story in itself, just a long-ass prologue to a bigger saga.

Yes and no. Yes in that the 25th TB doesn't come to a conclusion before the heroes fly off to fight the villains and it is a prologue, but the 25th TB does have a conclusion. 18 throws the tournament to get the prize money from Mr. Satan.

The first 40 episodes of GT have an interesting structure.