Why is Toei so obsessed in making Goku dumb in DBS and DBS movies

[ClutchBangstrip]

Goku is still arguably Dragon Ball's most popular character, to this day. Likely the most popular character in all of anime and manga. The franchise has reached new heights whilst relying heavily on him. Also something people on this very minute section of the internet constantly complain about. Despite it being cash-money... Largely because of Goku...

These facts clearly outweigh whatever a section of the fandom thinks on the internet.

All I can say is... so? Hiveminds on here, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have different opinions to the majority of the public. This isn't news to anyone, nor is it really relevant. This thread (presumably) isn't about Goku's stupid writing being a serious detriment to the franchise's profits, it's just seen as an annoying quirk by the OP and other likeminded people.

People grin and bare his comical idiocy to continue to prop him up as arguably the greatest anime character of all time, even after several decades?

That sounds like a reach. Most people enjoy the fact that Goku is comically stupid. The creators wouldn't keep doing it if that wasn't the case. It's a joke. That's a far easier assumption.

Again, I see no real evidence that mainstream audiences have a particular attachment to Goku's idiocy, which is mainly used for cheap gags that are completely disposable in the grand scheme of the stories being told. It's like the Wilhelm stock scream effect being used in summer blockbusters, it's a minor running gag among sound designers that most people don't even register while watching and very few would particularly care if they never heard it again.

In short, I believe people keep tuning for better reasons than to hear Goku hyuck-hyuck like Goofy and admit that he doesn't know how to tie his shoelaces or whatever. If that's the main thing you're here for, more power to you.

Idk if people are leaving Dragon Ball and watching/reading other anime/manga and coming back, forgetting what Dragon Ball is/was or what.

Bluntly, yes. Plenty of casual viewers have a skewed view of Dragon Ball for so many reasons: inaccurate regional dubs perverting the original scripts, the tonal differences between the manga and anime, viewing it through nostalgia glasses, lumping Dragon Ball in with other popular shonen franchises, etc etc etc. This is precisely why relying on what (you authoritatively assume) the masses think is a weak position to take.

It's not One Piece or Bleach. Dragon Ball's really silly. Goku and Arale are neck & neck.

It's not One Piece or Bleach, but it's not Dr. Slump either. To say so is just as misleading.

Toriyama has gone on record saying that he disliked how the anime staff initially presented Dragon Ball as Dr. Slump 2.0 because he always viewed the former as a very different beast, even back when the manga still had much of the same irreverent humour.

"Goku being dumb is something people deal with to get to the cookie cutter shonen protagonist stuff that people love."

"I think Goku's stupidity is funny and I can't be the only one, cuz Goku's one of the most popular characters of all time. It's part of who he is. It's integral."

"That's a weak argument."

What else is left to talk about? Apparently, Goku being an impossible airhead is a negative, despite him being GOATed and that "negative" being a main feature since the very 1st chapter.

Or Most people probably just get the joke... It's not Dr. Slump, but it's clearly closer to it than people here are comfortable with.

[LoganForkHands73]

"Goku being dumb is something people deal with to get to the cookie cutter shonen protagonist stuff that people love."

"I think Goku's stupidity is funny and I can't be the only one, cuz Goku's one of the most popular characters of all time. It's part of who he is. It's integral."

"That's a weak argument."

What else is left to talk about? Apparently, Goku being an impossible airhead is a negative, despite him being GOATed and that "negative" being a main feature since the very 1st chapter.

Or Most people probably just get the joke... It's not Dr. Slump, but it's clearly closer to it than people here are comfortable with.

Sigh. Whatever, man. I stand by everything I’ve said here because the majority of audiences have their view of Goku coloured by the later arcs where he barely gets to show off his goofy traits at all, as well as all the other things I mentioned. Everyone knows that the Z era brand is vastly more popular. My entire issue isn’t that Goku is lacking in general knowledge, because he always has been, but that he shouldn’t be portrayed as naive in areas related to fighting and training. That was it.

[dva_raza]

The amount of people who enjoy Goku's comical dumbness far outweighs those that don't. It's just the reality.
No one's dumber than Goku, no cares less than Goku, but no one's more correct than Goku in the end.

First like I said, comedy isn’t excuse to shit on basic things that make the characters who they are.

Goku being socially clueless is his character. Goku being stupid towards training is not. So I don’t know the argument you’re attempting to make with your kiss example and all that.


Second I don’t even understand the whole “humor” thing you’re going on and on about. This wasn’t a humorous scene? It was Goku serving as cue for Vegeta to explain a concept and subsequently win the challenge. That’s literally it.

The entire scene is simply incoherent. Vegeta acting like he’s making some grand observation, when every word he’s saying is the exact thing Whis had already explained to them that time he introduced them to UI is ...huh? Then Whis saying Goku “didn’t get” something for which he had previously set Goku as example of (he literally said Goku knowing when and how to rest to maximize his potential is what keeps him ahead of Vegeta) is double huh.
Goku’s brain glitching because he apparently forgot Mr. Popo’s explanation of that same thing and the fact that he unlocked SS2 by doing what Vegeta is doing is merely the cherry on top.

[dva_raza]

Comedy doesn't work when the comedy is just retcons and contradictions.

Does this situation count as a "Tori forgot" or "Tori don't care"?

It’s both, I’m so glad people are finally coming around to Toriyama being fallible as a writer. That’s not to say he hasn’t done great work, but just because his name is slapped on something or even directly involved doesn’t make everything he produced good by default.

The willingness to blame Toei all the time is completely unfair. Especially when they gave us great character concepts like Broly, Cooler, and SSJ4.

He is fallible and I disagree with Toriyama purism in general, but this case feels more like something resulting from a growing neediness of Vegeta’s fans than just Toriyama making a creative bad choice.

Consdering there’s an obsession from a huge part of the fan base to have Vegeta defeat a main villain, defeat Goku, etc, it’s hard to imagine this wasn’t a corporate "request".

[Peril]

No matter the reason, it just cringe no matter what. A scene written this poorly featuring characters this iconic and old. I still hold to my guess that they are keen on soft rebooting Goku in some respects to appeal more to the younger audience. Younger audience = ignorant protagonist.

But honestly the scene...never needed to exist since the movie isn't even about Vegeta and Goku. Could have just had them fighting from scene 1. Or have Goku meditating with Broly while Broly is impatient and constantly distracted. Or for laughs, have Vegeta try to explain meditation to Broly and just fail at it miserably.

[WittyUsername]

Count me as someone who thinks Toriyama is likely the one to blame for Goku’s exaggerated stupidity in modern Dragon Ball. As I recall, people on these forums initially assumed that Toei were the ones to blame for the infamous “Goku does not know what kissing is” scene, only for that same joke to show up in the manga version, which means it was apparently part of Toriyama’s outlines.

As much as Toei has historically had a bad habit of exaggerating the traits of characters like Roshi, Chi-Chi and Bulma for comedy, Toriyama is apparently the one who thinks that Goku being completely oblivious to everything is peak comedy. The meditation thing is especially bad though, because Goku’s entire life revolves around fighting and training. That’s pretty much his only passion in life. If he doesn’t understand the concept of meditation, then you might as well have him forget how to breathe while you’re at it.

[dva_raza]

No matter the reason, it just cringe no matter what. A scene written this poorly featuring characters this iconic and old. I still hold to my guess that they are keen on soft rebooting Goku in some respects to appeal more to the younger audience. Younger audience = ignorant protagonist.

But honestly the scene...never needed to exist since the movie isn't even about Vegeta and Goku. Could have just had them fighting from scene 1. Or have Goku meditating with Broly while Broly is impatient and constantly distracted. Or for laughs, have Vegeta try to explain meditation to Broly and just fail at it miserably.

The scene existed to pander to Vegeta's fans. And the reason matters when people here are actually attempting to reach for logical sense or claim that it's some sort of common DB "comedy trope", when no. It's neither sensical in universe nor did it have any comedic purpose. It was to shove a little fanservice.

Chris Stuckman's review of this mentioned how his entire theatre clapped when Vegeta "won".

That's exactly what was intended. They needed to make Vegeta look good, and they simply did it at the expense of Goku and overall logic.
I just really hope people aren't defending this for the sake of some devil's advocate thing cause being fine with it is an invitation for more lame writing in the future.

And yeah I was in fact disappointed that they didn't use Broly whatsoever, when that would've given them so many options to write an actually funny or more dynamic scene, which is honestly what I had imagined from the trailer.

[UpFromTheSkies]

Goku has always been naive, but it does seem they've played it up a bit lately. It's probably because it's part of a winning formula for successful shonen protagonists, the most popular ones (Luffy, Goku, Naruto) are all naive, reckless, good hearted, and relentlessly optimistic.

[super michael]

Goku has always been naive, but it does seem they've played it up a bit lately. It's probably because it's part of a winning formula for successful shonen protagonists, the most popular ones (Luffy, Goku, Naruto) are all naive, reckless, good hearted, and relentlessly optimistic.

Naruto isn't dumb anymore. Just because Naruto isn't smart like Shikamaru, that doesn't make him dumb.

Goku was smart in the 23rd Martial Art Tournament, even if he didn't know what marriage was or what a hug was.

[JulieYBM]

Goku has always been naive, but it does seem they've played it up a bit lately. It's probably because it's part of a winning formula for successful shonen protagonists, the most popular ones (Luffy, Goku, Naruto) are all naive, reckless, good hearted, and relentlessly optimistic.

I'm not quite sure how Naruto falls under 'naive' in this context because the character grows and develops so much across the 700 chapters of the original comic and the various spin-off stories.

[UpFromTheSkies]

Goku has always been naive, but it does seem they've played it up a bit lately. It's probably because it's part of a winning formula for successful shonen protagonists, the most popular ones (Luffy, Goku, Naruto) are all naive, reckless, good hearted, and relentlessly optimistic.

I'm not quite sure how Naruto falls under 'naive' in this context because the character grows and develops so much across the 700 chapters of the original comic and the various spin-off stories.

He did grow a lot, but was always naive and reckless, that never really changed. Just because things often worked out for him doesn't mean many of his decisions weren't naive.

[JulieYBM]

Goku has always been naive, but it does seem they've played it up a bit lately. It's probably because it's part of a winning formula for successful shonen protagonists, the most popular ones (Luffy, Goku, Naruto) are all naive, reckless, good hearted, and relentlessly optimistic.

I'm not quite sure how Naruto falls under 'naive' in this context because the character grows and develops so much across the 700 chapters of the original comic and the various spin-off stories.

He did grow a lot, but was always naive and reckless, that never really changed. Just because things often worked out for him doesn't mean many of his decisions weren't naive.

What, though? Like, by the halfway point of the original comic it was pretty clear he knew exactly how fucked the situations were, he simply decided to do what he wanted anyway. That's the opposite of naive.

I just don't see the comparison to, say, Gokuu, who I wouldn't even necessarily call naive, either.

[Peril]

I agree. I don't think the philosophy of "YOLO" counts as naive. Knowing the situation is bad but going all out and such, desperation moves, goes to show the person is very aware of their possible impending doom.

These characters are never naive within combat. I think the naive part happens almost always outside of a fight. Like Goku not knowing wtf a kiss is. Or Naruto ...doing whatever Naruto does. Honestly Naruto was always pretty clever. I don't even think he was socially awkward. Just initially a brat for understandable reasons.

But it would be like Naruto saying he doesn't get the concept of using shadow clones in training. Its absurd.

[UpFromTheSkies]

I don't want to derail this thread and turn it into a debate about Naruto, if you want examples of Naruto being naive and reckless, just google it, there's plenty of discussions about it out there.

[super michael]

I don't want to derail this thread and turn it into a debate about Naruto, if you want examples of Naruto being naive and reckless, just google it, there's plenty of discussions about it out there.

I can give examples of when Naruto did some dumb things, although I will keep it short:

Naruto using Rasengan on Nagato, knowing full well Nagato can absorb.

Naruto forgetting that only Senjutsu works on Ten Tails Obito.

Although Naruto is smart in Boruto.

[Alkiser]

I don't want to derail this thread and turn it into a debate about Naruto, if you want examples of Naruto being naive and reckless, just google it, there's plenty of discussions about it out there.

I can give examples of when Naruto did some dumb things, although I will keep it short:

Naruto using Rasengan on Nagato, knowing full well Nagato can absorb.

Naruto forgetting that only Senjutsu works on Ten Tails Obito.

Although Naruto is smart in Boruto.

Everything is consistent with this character, Naruto is portrayed as not smart enough to repeat the simplest things to him several times, which Kishimoto used repeatedly for jokes.

[Peril]

I don't remember Naruto being dumb. Or at least not repeatably doing dumb things. But I stand corrected. But I've horrible things about him in Boruto lol.

[JulieYBM]

I don't remember Naruto being dumb. Or at least not repeatably doing dumb things. But I stand corrected. But I've horrible things about him in Boruto lol.

He's not dumb for the entire comic. He changes as a character.

In Boruto he begins the series buried too deeply in his job as Hokage and struggles with being a good dad at first but improves as the series goes on. It's a nice display of making your main character flawed without glorifying those flaws.

[Peril]

He lets Orochimaru live which makes me go

[super michael]

He lets Orochimaru live which makes me go

Orochimaru was a huge help in saving the world. He saved the 5 Kages life and brought the past Hokage back with Edo Tensei. He also cursed Zetsu, that was possessing Yamato.

Orochimaru is one of the good guys now. Plus it isn't like Orochimaru is free, he is being watched by Yamato.