Toriyama should follow the Harry Potter movies' example and continue DB in a spin off

[Shaddy]

I think Julie was commenting on the quality of the work itself, not merely the politics. There are plenty of works of art that are good but have problematic ideology.

Pretty sure she was talking about both, but I don't think her reasoning for saying it's bad is necessarily less-valid than anyone else's. Obviously it's going to be less detailed, but everyone has some amount of experience with a thing, otherwise they'd have no opinion whatsoever. You can talk about whether that's justification to voice that opinion, but in terms of subjective quality, opinions are self-justifying.

I don't know if I would consider it propaganda

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but the Christian imagery is SO very obvious and prevalent and visible, especially at the end, that it certainly has the same tone as a lot of propaganda, but I admit it's not trying to directly influence people's beliefs on the real world in SPECIFICALLY that department.

I will say this regarding her depiction of goblins. The portrayal is antisemetic but I wouldn't condemn Rowling as antisemetic, nor anyone else who used the trope. There are a lot of tropes with problematic origins that many people including artists don't seem aware of. Rowling borrows heavily from common fantasy tropes.

Only JK knows if she was playing the antisemitic caricature intentionally or not. Given that she seems like a complete fool most of the time when she isn't just being hateful, I'm willing to concede that she drew from a lot of fantasy tropes and happened to not notice a thing that many people pointed out years in advance, but it's pretty impressive how her Goblins manage to hit every branch on the way down the caricature tree.

That's definitely not true for the house elf slavery stuff or the transphobia, though.

[ABED]

If someone is going to claim some other work is bad because of bad politics and racist caricatures, one wonders why they are on a Dragon Ball forum. its portrayal of LGBT characters is f'ed up at best. Then there's Mr. Popo, and his less than flattering depiction of female characters.

Anyway, DB has gone on for so long and we've seen so much that I just don't know what character or part of the world I think is interesting enough to explore on its own beyond a few one shots.

[Shaddy]

I don't think it's that big a leap in logic to say that a story that for example, tries to justify a slave race, is not a well-told story because the premise you have to accept, that slavery of a fictional race is justifiable, is so far beyond anyone's suspension of disbelief that it fails to connect. I also don't think Julie was saying bad politics were the only thing wrong with it, because she said she heard they were awful, to say nothing of the bigotry contained therein.

I also already mentioned how having bad things in a story is not necessarily equal to hating everything about it, but I would also argue that most of Dragon Ball's failings in this department are compartmentalized as immaterial to the broader story being told in a way that they aren't with Harry Potter. Harry Potter is explicitly trying to make points about prejudice and governments, and so when it fucks up and oops Harry accidentally owns Kreacher as a slave for his entire life after the second book, it hits different than in Dragon Ball, where Goku's journey of self-improvement and adventure doesn't necessarily depend on Bulma getting groped. You could cut it out of the entire story with relative ease. It doesn't mean either thing is good, but there are more and less egregious ways for it to manifest that ABSOLUTELY can effect the storytelling.

[ABED]

That's an awful lot of compartmentalizing with Dragon Ball because that misogyny is littered throughout and the story doesn't seem to have much of a problem with genocide. It does until it doesn't because a character became so popular the author decided to keep him around and doesn't even attempt to justify why anyone would trust him. DB's world view is very twisted in inescapable ways.

As I recall, he was willed to Sirius but Harry doesn't take on that role as his master. I can see why some read it the way you say, but then again I see an awful lot of those some people make all sorts of ridiculous claims about the politics of the book that sounds practically Marxist. So much BS talk about class and not enough about the issue of free will. Therefor I take a lot of those criticisms with a grain of salt.

I don't find that big of an issue with the writing in her Potter books as what she does and says outside of them.

[Kinokima]

Any reason why Toriyama and co. "should" do as you say, instead of continuing with the Super format which, needless to say, was incredibly popular and profitable?

The same reason why Toriyama left Dr. Slump behind and tried something new with DB in 1984, because moving on is the only way we can get new products. Had Toriyama not done this, we never would've gotten DB, as Dr. Slump was, as you put it, " incredibly popular and profitable".

Perfect example to this is Rumiko Takahashi

While her latest series haven’t been the biggest hits after her first hit Urusei Yatsura she wrote one big hit after another

Urusei/Maison Ikkoku/Ranma 1/2/Inuyasha 4 major hit series

Now they are doing a sequel to Inuyasha and quite honestly it’s a major disappointment. I think sometimes fans would like more stories set in the same Universe they love but arguably it is probably better to go the Rumiko Takahashi route.

[Matches Malone]

I think sometimes fans would like more stories set in the same Universe they love but arguably it is probably better to go the Rumiko Takahashi route.

Fans don't know what they want until you give it to them, as if it were up to them, everything would be the same safe projects they're familiar with.

[ABED]

I think sometimes fans would like more stories set in the same Universe they love but arguably it is probably better to go the Rumiko Takahashi route.

Fans don't know what they want until you give it to them, as if it were up to them, everything would be the same safe projects they're familiar with.

I think there's a lot of truth to this but I also think people are just often bad at understanding what they are responding to and why something either works or doesn't. It's often why you end up with fanservice-y continuations

[Planetnamek]

The first few Harry Potter books are decent enough children's fantasy fare. The last couple range from really boring to Christian propaganda, complete with antisemitic goblin caricatures (well, okay, those are there from the start, but it's definitely worse in the last one).

The first Fantastic Beasts movie has a couple fun moments in a mostly boring plot, and the second one is hot fucking garbage.

I wholeheartedly support Dragon Ball getting more spinoffs in the same universe, I love Jaco the Galactic Patrolman for example, but if your example is JK Rowling, then I'd rather the series stay dead forever.

Also, if you want a nice recap of Harry Potter with a real-time view of JK's descent into batshit lunacy, I highly recommend The Shrieking Shack podcast, a critical reread of the series that also clowns on various aspects of the franchise and its fandom.

I'm definitely gonna disagree on the HP books being Christian propaganda, i'm really not seeing any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim. Religious overtones are not something that was ever really present in that franchise and Rowling never really brought up religion that I can tell(in general brits are WAY less religious then Americans are, they don't try to aggressively shove religion in your face so christian symbolism in a British-fantasy series would look a bit out of place).

As for the house-elf slavery stuff, I always just saw that as Rowling making fun of self-proclaimed activists that insert themselves into social issues without having any real understanding of them.

[Kinokima]

The first few Harry Potter books are decent enough children's fantasy fare. The last couple range from really boring to Christian propaganda, complete with antisemitic goblin caricatures (well, okay, those are there from the start, but it's definitely worse in the last one).

The first Fantastic Beasts movie has a couple fun moments in a mostly boring plot, and the second one is hot fucking garbage.

I wholeheartedly support Dragon Ball getting more spinoffs in the same universe, I love Jaco the Galactic Patrolman for example, but if your example is JK Rowling, then I'd rather the series stay dead forever.

Also, if you want a nice recap of Harry Potter with a real-time view of JK's descent into batshit lunacy, I highly recommend The Shrieking Shack podcast, a critical reread of the series that also clowns on various aspects of the franchise and its fandom.

I'm definitely gonna disagree on the HP books being Christian propaganda, i'm really not seeing any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim. Religious overtones are not something that was ever really present in that franchise and Rowling never really brought up religion that I can tell(in general brits are WAY less religious then Americans are, they don't try to aggressively shove religion in your face so christian symbolism in a British-fantasy series would look a bit out of place).

As for the house-elf slavery stuff, I always just saw that as Rowling making fun of self-proclaimed activists that insert themselves into social issues without having any real understanding of them.

I also think it’s funny to say Harry Potter was Christian propaganda when back in the day very religious Christian groups wanted the book banned for promoting witchcraft

I won’t defend most things about JK Rowling but I will defend that.


That being said as for a British author that DID put Christian propaganda in his books look no further than CS Lewis. His stories were ripe with it.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but the Christian imagery is SO very obvious and prevalent and visible, especially at the end, that it certainly has the same tone as a lot of propaganda, but I admit it's not trying to directly influence people's beliefs on the real world in SPECIFICALLY that department.

I thought the reason she did that was because a lot of fundamentalist Christians were saying the books were Satanic and she wanted to prove them wrong.

[Planetnamek]

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but the Christian imagery is SO very obvious and prevalent and visible, especially at the end, that it certainly has the same tone as a lot of propaganda, but I admit it's not trying to directly influence people's beliefs on the real world in SPECIFICALLY that department.

I thought the reason she did that was because a lot of fundamentalist Christians were saying the books were Satanic and she wanted to prove them wrong.

Considering how much money she made from those books, I doubt she gave a rat's ass what a group of religious wackjobs thought about them so I highly doubt she was pandering to them. Hell she wasn't happy when WB tried to Americanize the characters and setting in their film adaptation of the first book and fought for the film to be authentically British with filming locations and the cast, so there's no chance she put in religious stuff in the later books to appeal to American fundamentalists.

[JulieYBM]

Like Shaddy was saying, I was referring both to her shitty politics but also her bad writing. I'm digging back into the memory banks on this one but I seem to recall hearing about the really misogynistic writing of women in that title. Obviously I didn't have more to say than my single comment on the subject.


Also, like, we're not going to learn anything new from a woman who thinks you need a vagina to be a woman and a penis to be a man, lolz.

[jjgp1112]

I don't think there is anything of value to learn from Rowling. Bare in mind I have no read her works but I hear they are really awful (to say nothing of being full of really nasty bigotry and shit). There are plenty of other, not-horrible creators to take examples from.

So you have no way to form your own opinion on her works and base your judgement on that. Gotcha.

I mean...a spin-off isn't inherently a bad idea. You picked a bad example because those movies were garbage, and so is JK Rowling.

But, you know...Jaco was a good example. It was also pretty original despite being set in the DB universe- I wouldn't want some lame obvious spin-off like, I dunno, the advetures of Bardock.

Jaco was a great example. It didn't detract from the story and gave us new and interesting characters. I was actually hoping that that was the way DB was headed.

Given your history I'm pretty convinced you made this thread with the exact hopes an argument about JK Rowling's politics would spark up. Cut this shit out.

[Shaddy]

That's an awful lot of compartmentalizing with Dragon Ball because that misogyny is littered throughout and the story doesn't seem to have much of a problem with genocide. It does until it doesn't because a character became so popular the author decided to keep him around and doesn't even attempt to justify why anyone would trust him. DB's world view is very twisted in inescapable ways.

It doesn't matter exactly how we get into the details of the way Toriyama and Rowling's politics intersect with their writing so long as we acknowledge that they do so differently. Once you have that, it's only natural that maybe Julie would have perceived things more strongly with one than the other, and so would have something to say about Rowling specifically in a thread about Rowling. That doesn't take anything away from talk about Toriyama, so saying "what about this other person" doesn't really work when nobody is condoning his bad stuff either.

As I recall, he was willed to Sirius but Harry doesn't take on that role as his master. I can see why some read it the way you say, but then again I see an awful lot of those some people make all sorts of ridiculous claims about the politics of the book that sounds practically Marxist. So much BS talk about class and not enough about the issue of free will. Therefor I take a lot of those criticisms with a grain of salt.

Well, if you're just going to ignore certain readings as you see fit, there's not much room for me to say much of anything you don't already agree with. I just thought you were characterizing Julie's post unfairly.

Also, Marxist critique of Harry Potter is good, actually. That's a thing more people should do.

I'm definitely gonna disagree on the HP books being Christian propaganda, i'm really not seeing any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim. Religious overtones are not something that was ever really present in that franchise and Rowling never really brought up religion that I can tell(in general brits are WAY less religious then Americans are, they don't try to aggressively shove religion in your face so christian symbolism in a British-fantasy series would look a bit out of place).

Well, uh...dunno what to tell ya. Have you read the last book? The first few are more subtle, which I did say before, but it's pretty obvious in the last book. Maybe I'm more keen on this due to growing up in a Christian household, but I feel like the Jesus parallels at the very end should be pretty clear to most people.

As for the house-elf slavery stuff, I always just saw that as Rowling making fun of self-proclaimed activists that insert themselves into social issues without having any real understanding of them.

That would require a couple things of Rowling though. She'd first need to be smarter about social issues than whatever this caricature of political activism is, and then create a story where Hermione is convincingly wrong about the issue at-hand.

Neither of these things happened. Hermione says "slavery bad", other characters say "no", and then she's forced to back down, despite being very obviously right.

Given that Goblet of Fire was supposedly heavily edited late in development and some plot points were outright written out of the story, I will grant that it's entirely possible that this wasn't the course JK intended for the story to take, but it's not like she didn't have three more books to correct it, and, well, she didn't do that.

I also think it’s funny to say Harry Potter was Christian propaganda when back in the day very religious Christian groups wanted the book banned for promoting witchcraft

Does that preclude it from being a Christian narrative? A certain sect of people getting up-in-arms about the iconography of witchcraft does not an atheist tale make. Rowling herself certainly seems to believe it's Christian, especially the last book.

I already said I was probably exaggerating a bit by calling it "propaganda", but from where I'm sitting, the influence of religion on the text is undeniable.

Considering how much money she made from those books, I doubt she gave a rat's ass what a group of religious wackjobs thought about them so I highly doubt she was pandering to them. Hell she wasn't happy when WB tried to Americanize the characters and setting in their film adaptation of the first book and fought for the film to be authentically British with filming locations and the cast, so there's no chance she put in religious stuff in the later books to appeal to American fundamentalists.

I thought the reason she did that was because a lot of fundamentalist Christians were saying the books were Satanic and she wanted to prove them wrong.

JK Rowling is ABSOLUTELY petty enough to make changes to her novels just because of one group of people, especially one she hates. But I think it doesn't make sense to consider it this way. The symbolism in Deathly Hallows is played completely straight, which isn't what MOST writers do when they resent a group of critics, but ESPECIALLY not Rowling. Her style is more to represent those people as unlikable strawmen that get EPIC OWNED by Hermione or Dumbledore. Think Rita Skeeter or Cornelius Fudge. Those characters aren't exactly subtle in how they represent media or governments (and the former a transphobic metaphor, depending on how you read into Goblet of Fire).

[Jord]

I don't think there is anything of value to learn from Rowling. Bare in mind I have no read her works but I hear they are really awful (to say nothing of being full of really nasty bigotry and shit). There are plenty of other, not-horrible creators to take examples from.

So you have no way to form your own opinion on her works and base your judgement on that. Gotcha.

I mean...a spin-off isn't inherently a bad idea. You picked a bad example because those movies were garbage, and so is JK Rowling.

But, you know...Jaco was a good example. It was also pretty original despite being set in the DB universe- I wouldn't want some lame obvious spin-off like, I dunno, the advetures of Bardock.

Jaco was a great example. It didn't detract from the story and gave us new and interesting characters. I was actually hoping that that was the way DB was headed.

Given your history I'm pretty convinced you made this thread with the exact hopes an argument about JK Rowling's politics would spark up. Cut this shit out.

I don't care about politics. I recently watched both the Harry Potter movies and the first Fantastic Beasts movie and while the the first FB could have been better the world building in the whole HP franchise so to speak is amazing. I love how JK took existing conventions and made a whole new world with it, something that reminded me of how Toriyama took existing stories and conventions and put his spin on it and also made a world of his own. It's almost a shame how such worlds are created and 'only' used for a select group of characters.

[ABED]

That's an awful lot of compartmentalizing with Dragon Ball because that misogyny is littered throughout and the story doesn't seem to have much of a problem with genocide. It does until it doesn't because a character became so popular the author decided to keep him around and doesn't even attempt to justify why anyone would trust him. DB's world view is very twisted in inescapable ways.

It doesn't matter exactly how we get into the details of the way Toriyama and Rowling's politics intersect with their writing so long as we acknowledge that they do so differently. Once you have that, it's only natural that maybe Julie would have perceived things more strongly with one than the other, and so would have something to say about Rowling specifically in a thread about Rowling. That doesn't take anything away from talk about Toriyama, so saying "what about this other person" doesn't really work when nobody is condoning his bad stuff either.

As I recall, he was willed to Sirius but Harry doesn't take on that role as his master. I can see why some read it the way you say, but then again I see an awful lot of those some people make all sorts of ridiculous claims about the politics of the book that sounds practically Marxist. So much BS talk about class and not enough about the issue of free will. Therefor I take a lot of those criticisms with a grain of salt.

Well, if you're just going to ignore certain readings as you see fit, there's not much room for me to say much of anything you don't already agree with. I just thought you were characterizing Julie's post unfairly.

Also, Marxist critique of Harry Potter is good, actually. That's a thing more people should do.

I'm not ignoring them. I have a different interpretation of them (good lord), and while I think it's valuable to read the Marxist critique, Marxism has been proven to be a horseshit destructive ideology. It's very determinist in its outlook and choice never plays in anything. It ultimately amounts to "X comes from money, ergo privileged and thus bad". Choice and free will don't come into play.

I can only take someone's view of something so seriously when they haven't actually engaged with it. As we see in this very thread, some people claim her work is too christian, some say it's not christian enough. The issue is also not whether anyone condones Toriyama's problematic writings, it's whether someone can look past its incredibly problematic elements because it has enough virtues.

I already said I was probably exaggerating a bit by calling it "propaganda", but from where I'm sitting, the influence of religion on the text is undeniable.

All this tells me is that her beliefs influenced her writing which is the case for all art but in this case it's more implicit.

It's almost a shame how such worlds are created and 'only' used for a select group of characters.

I don't think it's a shame at all. The worlds exist to support the characters' stories, not the other way around. I don't think people care that much for worldbuilding as an end in itself.

[Kinokima]

I also think it’s funny to say Harry Potter was Christian propaganda when back in the day very religious Christian groups wanted the book banned for promoting witchcraft

Does that preclude it from being a Christian narrative? A certain sect of people getting up-in-arms about the iconography of witchcraft does not an atheist tale make. Rowling herself certainly seems to believe it's Christian, especially the last book.

I already said I was probably exaggerating a bit by calling it "propaganda", but from where I'm sitting, the influence of religion on the text is undeniable.

Because I said they are not Christian propaganda books doesn’t mean I think they are atheist books. I never thought when writing a book you have to choose between it being an atheist book or a religious propaganda book

I brought up CS Lewis as comparison because his Christianity is very apparent in the text of his writings. You can’t analyze his works without understanding it.

[Shaddy]

I'm not ignoring them. I have a different interpretation of them (good lord),

Your "interpretation" has mostly been finding ways to direct the conversation away from engaging with anything I've said. I would call that ignoring them. Here, see if you do it again in this next one:

while I think it's valuable to read the Marxist critique, Marxism has been proven to be a horseshit destructive ideology. It's very determinist in its outlook and choice never plays in anything. It ultimately amounts to "X comes from money, ergo privileged and thus bad". Choice and free will don't come into play.

That's somewhere between "overly simplified" and "Ben Shapiro soundbyte", but what's important is that your actual rhetorical device was just comparing a reading you didn't like to some other thing you consider invalid.

I can only take someone's view of something so seriously when they haven't actually engaged with it.

But again, I don't give a shit with what you "take seriously", I'm just not a fan of you twisting people's words.

As we see in this very thread, some people claim her work is too christian, some say it's not christian enough. The issue is also not whether anyone condones Toriyama's problematic writings, it's whether someone can look past its incredibly problematic elements because it has enough virtues.

Do you think people aren't doing that? For either of these??? Do you need your hand held to know that everyone saying JK's bad beliefs influenced the bad beliefs in her story ALSO treat Toriyama in the exact same way, or else Joe Pedantic over here is gonna call them a hypocrite?

All this tells me is that her beliefs influenced her writing which is the case for all art but in this case it's more implicit.

Well, at this point, I'm obviously not making myself much clearer than you anyway, so maybe we should just leave it off here.

Because I said they are not Christian propaganda books doesn’t mean I think they are atheist books. I never thought when writing a book you have to choose between it being an atheist book or a religious propaganda book

I brought up CS Lewis as comparison because his Christianity is very apparent in the text of his writings. You can’t analyze his works without understanding it.

I never said those were the only two options, but you said religion was not present in the books, which is just wrong. Again, 'propaganda' was obviously the wrong word for me to use, but frankly I don't think Deathly Hallows is much less-explicit than Narnia, if at all.

[Kinokima]

I never said those were the only two options, but you said religion was not present in the books, which is just wrong. Again, 'propaganda' was obviously the wrong word for me to use, but frankly I don't think Deathly Hallows is much less-explicit than Narnia, if at all.

I didn't say anything of the kind. I said specifically it wasn't a Christian propaganda book.

But yeah CS Lewis works are way more explicit than anything in Harry Potter

[WittyUsername]

This is the first time I’ve ever heard Harry Potter referred to as “Christian propaganda”, which is frankly an absurd notion. I’m sorry, but I can only assume that anyone who claims such a thing is blinded by their personal disdain for J.K. Rowling as a person.