UI Peter wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:49 pm
To all those people defending Goku's actions in the current DBS manga chapter by naming examples of Goku making similar decisions in the original manga: you guys are reaching
First, not only are you completely missing the context of those acts in the OG manga,
you are missing the point of the criticism smh.
Goku giving the clearly still dangerous Moro a senzu bean when the fight is far from over is easily the dumbest thing Goku has ever done, dumber than anything he ever did in 80s/90s DB. Not only is he shooting himself (and others) in the foot, he's making a complete mockery of Merus' sacrifice. Its just the newest example of how Goku is dumbed down in Modern DB.
I can already hear the excuses and bad defenses: "but Goku gave mercy to past villains too" and "tHiS iS GoKu'S ChArAcTeR". I'm going to go through all of those past examples just to debunk this argument.
In the OG manga/Z, Goku would only offer mercy AFTER the fight is 100% over and the villain was shown to no longer be a threat. And most importantly, when he did it would never lead to negative consequences.
Piccolo Jr & Vegeta: neither character ever attempted to attack the z-fighters again after Goku let them go and they both joined the heroes in the following arc.
Freeza: This was after Freeza was cut in half and lost all of his energy and elite minions. Goku wanted him to live in fear and humiliation for the rest of his life (which for Freeza is worse than death) after the Namek fight. Freeza was no longer a threat to him at that point, further proven by how Goku easily kills him and King Cold in the Trunks timeline. This isn't even a case of "I want to fight you again someday", as Goku warned him to never see him again or else.
Cell: 1st of all, Goku had no mercy for Cell, he wanted him dead. 2nd, the only reason he gave Cell a Senzu bean was because he knew that Gohan's hidden power would be enough to overwhelm Cell anyway and that nothing would be different if Cell never got the bean. Goku planned out all of his decisions in the Cell games 10 days on advance, it wasn't naive acts of recklessness.
Buu: He had no mercy for Buu either, and only decided not to kill Fat Buu with SSJ3 because he wanted the new kids to save the day for once (because you shouldn't rely on a dead man to solve your problems). Goku saw Buu as a test for Gohan, Kid Trunks & Goten to see if they can be counted on to protect the world without him. When he saw that he they couldn't, he immediately requested to jump back into the to fray. Again, this is an example of Goku making premeditated decisions and not naive recklessness.
Throughout the OG manga/Z, we never saw Goku make the same mistake twice (you don't need character development to learn from past mistakes) and whenever Goku makes a big risk he would plan it out before hand. This is in complete contrast to the pure stupidity of DBS Goku, who constantly drops his guard in the middle of a major battle (something he never did in Z and even GT), hardly ever takes serious situations seriously, is so incompetent that he forgets to bring Senzu beans to battle and important items like the Mafuba seal, and in the DBS manga even regresses as a martial artist (Toyotaro has Goku learning things he already mastered as a Kid lol).
So no, this isn't Goku's character, this is a dumbed down, badly written flanderization of Goku's character.
Being a static, flat-character arc type character is no excuse for failing to learn from your mistakes, especially when you charcater is supposed to be a combat/martial art genius that the people count on to save the day.
Classic Goku (OG,Z,GT) actually did learn from experience and didn't repeat mistakes, and when he did make mistakes he would express genuine regret and a desire not to do it again.
Modern Goku (Super) is the exact opposite smh. He's a badly written caricature.
