MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 4/21/25!)

[Gaffer Tape]

A Boo-tiful Mess - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Majin Boo Arc Part 29!

Wowee, wow wow. Here we are. Ten years and three months in the making, I have reached the end of the Dragon Ball manga. Thanks, everyone, for watching. It's been stressing me out all year, but now that I'm finally here, I do feel excited to have reached this point. I tried to make this an extra-special and extra-long episode, so I hope you like it. Now I really need to start prepping in earnest for the next directions of DBD!

[Kamiccolo9]

A Boo-tiful Mess - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Majin Boo Arc Part 29!

Wowee, wow wow. Here we are. Ten years and three months in the making, I have reached the end of the Dragon Ball manga. Thanks, everyone, for watching. It's been stressing me out all year, but now that I'm finally here, I do feel excited to have reached this point. I tried to make this an extra-special and extra-long episode, so I hope you like it. Now I really need to start prepping in earnest for the next directions of DBD!

Woohoo!

Watching this one tonight, congrats!

[Kid Buu]

I feel like that one poster who suggested the arc could have been better if Gohan died against Fat Buu and we skipped the Mystic portion would have made the pacing.

Uub is kind of uninteresting as he's just Gohan and Nam combined. Character development is a thing though. I would have preferred if he went to space instead of Trunks, but that is a discussion for another day.

Congratulations!

[WittyUsername]

As someone who followed DBD from the very beginning, it feels surreal to see you finished with the manga. I know this isn’t the end of DBD, but since analyzing the manga was always the main component of this series, this sure feels like an ending.

[MisteryOne]

I got into your content by the time you started the Cell arc, but even then it will just feel weird to think you have finished the original manga. Can't wait to see how you handle future content. Hoping DBD still has years to go!

Keep up the good work please. Seriously, I'm not even into Power Rangers yet I really enjoy the comparison videos, so your Dragonball stuff is just peak stuff.

[coola]

I would love Pan to be reincarnation of Majin Buu, if only to see how Gohan and Videl would react to it being Goku wish Althrough, i doubt King Yama would be such jerk...

Also, not sure why, but that bad scan quality part reminded me of how people hoped Sonic 1 GBA terrible framerate was just emulator fault

[Gray Riders]

So even though DBD is continuing the end of the original manga feels like a good time to do a quick recap.

I can't recall quite when I discovered your series but it's been a joy to watch over these years. Dragon Ball had--speaking honestly--sort of fallen out of my mind for a long time up until it's sudden resurrection when Battle of Gods was released, and even though I didn't follow it as closely as it did when the show was airing all that time ago.

I greatly appreciated someone doing a real deep analysis of the series that actually goes into things like theme and use of character. You made me appreciate what was going on with Mr. Satan in the Buu arc more (though I always enjoyed him for the comedy value) and made me realize some of the very real flaws of the Piccolo arc.

As for the final ranking, in my place I'm not sure how I'd sort them.

All in all

[PurestEvil]

Hmmm, maybe I should watch the whole DBD series from beginning to end sometime soon...

[Shorty GZ2]

gg on finishing the manga

Good luck on GT

[Ssj3Engels]

Did the series take as long as the manga took to be published?

[jjgp1112]

Did the series take as long as the manga took to be published?

DB: December 1984-May1995
DBD: February 2012-April 2022

Pretty damn close

[MrGohanks]

About Goku Vs. Vegeta. Just gonna copy and paste this post that sums up my thoughts.

I definitely understand a lot of that. Cipher is one of my favorite people to debate this stuff with, and he presents his thoughts very, very well. Believe me. I totally get where Vegeta is coming from. I understand his frustration. I sympathize with it. I really do. But let's take that analogy to where it actually ends up. We have a guy who wants a black belt. Everyone else blows past him. The universe seems to be against him. The dojo shuts down. He gets his one chance to make things right, but then this new guy shows up and sucks all the oxygen out of the room, making everything about him. So, yeah, guy jumps up on the table to make himself heard. However, and this is really important, the analogy in this case overly euphemizes the reality. The guy makes himself heard... by returning with a gun and shooting up the dojo. Yes, it sucks that all these bad things happened to this hypothetical martial artist. But my sympathy for him dissipates the second he decides his disappointment justifies murdering innocent people. That is ridiculously petty and evil.

I never heard of anyone ever arguing that Vegeta was "justified" or "in the right" about the whole Majin Vegeta situation lol, only that it was inevitable and even predictable because it makes perfect sense for the direction of his character at that point and is therefore good storytelling (which makes sense).

[MrGohanks]

A character's bad or dumb decisions constantly always working out well for them in the end (especially when it makes no logical sense for that to happen) is a major sign that said character is a Mary Sue or Gary Stu. Goku is the major character in the series who never faces any real consequences for his mistakes.

And for the record, I don't consider Goku giving Cell a senzu bean a mistake nor was it a particularly stupid thing to do. This is because Goku knew that Gohan's hidden power was large enough to completely overwhelm Perfect Cell and nothing would have changed about the fight if Cell never eat a senzu bean since Cell never actually lost much power or stamina in his fight with Goku.

[Ssj3Engels]

About Goku Vs. Vegeta. Just gonna copy and paste this post that sums up my thoughts.

That's pretty much it. Vegeta only seems particularly stupid because the story doesn't magically play out in favor of his mistakes as it does with Goku.

Goku gives the demon king a senzu bean, and he ends up becoming good and defending the Earth.
Goku spares Vegeta, and he saves everyone's life on Namek.
Goku lets Freeza power up, and he fully crushes his ego and gets to learn wacky techniques in space afterward.
Goku lets Majin Buu go and ... well, honestly, this doesn't go so well, but he gets to come back in at the end of the arc for a full redemption.

Vegeta, on the other hand, lets Cell become complete and immediately gets his ass kicked.

And just to add to my discussion of post-Namek Vegeta, use this analogy. You've been training your entire life to get a black belt in karate. Just before you're finally so, so close, two nameless nobodies come in and get it like it's nothing. Then when you finally obtain it, after all that work, everyone comes in and says, "Black belt? Eh, that's not really so great anymore. We really need black belt 2 now." Hell, even Piccolo in the Cell arc comes right up to Vegeta and is all like, "Oh, you became a Super Saiyan? Yeah, I merged with Kami and did better than that like it ain't no thang." So you work your ass off and get your black belt 2 or whatever, only you find out that yours is frayed at the ends and your rival's nine-year-old son just made a perfect one out of nowhere. Then the school closes down, denying you a chance to ever catch up to them. And on the one day it re-opens years later, someone you've never met before starts stealing everyone's attention for his personal, over-dramaticized business. Can you help it if you just have to get up on a table and shout "Can we please get back to what we came here for?"

You'd be pretty angry too. It's like God just woke up one morning and decided it would be funny to mess with Vegeta. Considering that he's a personal friend of Goku, that's actually not unlikely.

In the end, Vegeta's character arc is the most soberingly realistic of the entire series. He doesn't get the typical shonen message of "Try hard and you can do anything." Instead, at the end of the Buu arc, his redemption is realizing that sometimes hard work's just not good enough, and that life isn't fair. The best bet is just to focus on being the best you can be and not comparing yourself to others. It's easy to see why he did spend so much time comparing himself to others though.

How do you even remember that post from 2010?!?!?

[Shorty GZ2]

About Goku Vs. Vegeta. Just gonna copy and paste this post that sums up my thoughts.

How do you even remember that post from 2010?!?!?

Hey, I admire his hustle in remembering such a potent post from like 12 years ago lmao

[Kid Buu]

I tend to have good memory on these things.

It's kinda surreal that I remember reading that for the first time, but never realised I'd get the chance to hang out with that poster in two different sides of the world!

[Ssj3Engels]

I tend to have good memory on these things.

It's kinda surreal that I remember reading that for the first time, but never realised I'd get the chance to hang out with that poster in two different sides of the world!

So you do know Cipher IRL?

[Lukmendes]

A character's bad or dumb decisions constantly always working out well for them in the end (especially when it makes no logical sense for that to happen) is a major sign that said character is a Mary Sue or Gary Stu. Goku is the major character in the series who never faces any real consequences for his mistakes.

I do consider Goku to be a character who has Mary Sue traits with how his bad decisions are excused or ignored lol.

Not saying he is one, just that he has some traits, but reaching Mary Sue levels of bullshit would mean other characters see him as doing no wrong (Which they may point out he fucks up) and going too far to excuse whatever bad actions the character made, Goku has these issues but he's only mildly annoying at worst while Mary Sues are actively obnoxious.

And for the record, I don't consider Goku giving Cell a senzu bean a mistake nor was it a particularly stupid thing to do. This is because Goku knew that Gohan's hidden power was large enough to completely overwhelm Perfect Cell and nothing would have changed about the fight if Cell never eat a senzu bean since Cell never actually lost much power or stamina in his fight with Goku.

He still shouldn't have given a senzu to the guy who's gonna try to kill his kid, plus it let Cell know they're carrying a bunch of senzu which's made him go and steal 'em when he decided to summon Cell Jrs.

Even if there wasn't this consequence, if someone is about to shoot your son, you don't give the shooter more ammo just because you think your son can maybe tank the bullets lol.

[Noah]

A Boo-tiful Mess - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Majin Boo Arc Part 29!

Wowee, wow wow. Here we are. Ten years and three months in the making, I have reached the end of the Dragon Ball manga. Thanks, everyone, for watching. It's been stressing me out all year, but now that I'm finally here, I do feel excited to have reached this point. I tried to make this an extra-special and extra-long episode, so I hope you like it. Now I really need to start prepping in earnest for the next directions of DBD!

Wow, after watching that I'll gonna quote a YouTube comment:

Now I want a series where Pan turned out to be the reincarnation of Boo. It would lend to some fun fights, the Boo powers would make the girl being in dangerous fights less unsettling because she'd probably be able to shrug most things off, and there's potential for drama: what if the evil parts of that reincarnation are still in there, waiting to be released alongside her Super Saiyan rage?

This has indeed so much more potential!

But anyway I can only thank you for all the amount of effort in these ten years you had to truly dissect the original serialization, to bring thoughts many fans didn't had in the first or the second read. It is now a closed chapter, but still there is pretty much content to cover and I glad you're not done with this series, yet.

Did the series take as long as the manga took to be published?

DB: December 1984-May1995
DBD: February 2012-April 2022

Pretty damn close

He could have waited more 3 monts, just to have the time perfectly match lol

[Gaffer Tape]

The DBZ Movie With a Plot! - DBD: Dragon Fist Explosion!! If Goku Won't Do It, Who Will?

I really have loved covering DBZ movies, and we're now at the final one of the original 13. Trunks gets a big brother figure. Videl becomes a superhero! It's a bit more ambitious and story-focused than most of these. I hope you like my thoughts on it!