Why exactly is everyone saying that GT has good ideas all the time?

[SupremeKai25]

Never mind the fact that the premise itself makes 0 sense. The Shadow Dragons are created to "punish" people for "misusing" the Dragon Balls, except that the vast majority of those dragons, except for, like, 1 or 2, were created by selfless and noble wishes that revived innocent lives.

For instance, the strongest dragon, Syn Shenron, was created from the most selfless wish imaginable: the wish that revived all the innocent people (children included) who were slaughtered by Frieza and his men on Namek.

So why exactly does the Universe and mortals need to be punished with extinction for making a selfless wish that revived countless innocent children (including Dende) back to life? Where is the logic in that? How were the Dragon Balls "misused" for that wish?

Meanwhile, Syn Shenron blaming mortals for "Misusing" the DBs makes absolutely 0 sense, considering how he was created from a wish that revived innocent children who were slaughtered by a tyrant. How were the DBs were "misused" when Dende and his friends were brought back to life?

It literally makes 0 sense to blame mortals and wish for their extinction just because some guy wished for a pair of underwear 30 years ago (the only time that the DBs were ACTUALLY misused), especially since 99% of the times the Dragon Balls were used for noble and selfless reasons (like reviving innocent people).

The idea is that even good or selfless wishes unnaturally warp the universe. At the end of the day, death is supposed to be final. Even if someone gets killed unjustly, their natural fate is to go to the Other World and be reincarnated, not be resurrected exactly how they were. Shenron drags their souls from another realm and has to painstakingly remake their bodies. Occasionally, he even has to rebuild entire cities that were destroyed. It's jarring that whenever someone dies, our heroes' first instinct is to reverse the death rather than accept it and grieve healthily.

I can also see the logic in the heroes' wishes being more disruptive to the natural order, on a much larger scale than the villainous or stupid wishes. Piccolo Sr. wishing for youth or Oolong wishing for panties is nothing compared to reviving millions of people at once. While they make a play on the morally upstanding wishes generating the most evil and powerful Shadow Dragons, I think the scale of the wishes is also part of it.

On paper, the Shadow Dragons work reasonably well as an antagonistic force that everyone can unite against because nearly everyone is guilty of abusing the Dragon Balls, including the gods (except Elder Kaioshin, but even he is complicit in their use despite his vocal reservations).

The scale is not the problem because one of the dragons was created by the wish that revived only one person, Bora, this means that the logic of the Dragon Balls frowns upon selfless wishes in general. Reviving even just one person (which should be child's play for an almighty dragon like Shenron) is seen as transgression by the Dragon Balls.

Btw, is this mentioned anywhere in the story? Does any Shadow Dragon attempt to make this point that reviving millions of people upset the natural order? Because if this is not mentioned anywhere, then you're just giving this story more credit than it deserves.

[MasenkoHA]

The scale is not the problem because one of the dragons was created by the wish that revived only one person, Bora, this means that the logic of the Dragon Balls frowns upon selfless wishes in general. Reviving even just one person (which should be child's play for an almighty dragon like Shenron) is seen as transgression by the Dragon Balls.

Well....yeah the point was the dragon balls were being overused. It didn't matter if the wish was selfless or not. They weren't designed to be used as often as they were. Bulma's radar made it a lot easier to gather the dragon balls than it was supposed to be.

Btw, is this mentioned anywhere in the story? Does any Shadow Dragon attempt to make this point that reviving millions of people upset the natural order? Because if this is not mentioned anywhere, then you're just giving this story more credit than it deserves.

In Z, Old Kaioshin raises his objection to using the dragon balls because of upsetting the natural order. It didn't come from nowhere.

[Koitsukai]

I don't think you need the story to spoonfeed you the fact that everything the DBs can do is unnatural (that's why the namekians don't use it freely) and there's a consequence to that.
Specially when you go against nature over and over again, instead of just playing with the cards you were dealt with, selfless or egotistical reasons have no bear in this matter, it doesn't matter why you did X or Y, or who wished for what, thing is it goes against the natural order. Death is death, souls should reincarnate, and the DBs throw a wrench to that order. That's why the punishment takes place.

It's the way the DBs balance their own doing, whether it was a good thing or bad, it will still need to be balanced out.

The DBs don't frown upon selfless wishes or wishes in general, because that's what they do: grant wishes. However, they do frown upon constantly using them, doesn't matter what they are used for. Over-reliance on them is what the DBs are not happy with and why the negative energy accrues until the over-use comes back to bite your ass.

[SupremeKai25]

Well....yeah the point was the dragon balls were being overused

And why was this a bad thing? How did overusing the Dragon Balls negatively impact the world in any way? It's literally the Shadow Dragons who did 100% of the damage to the universe.

In Z, Old Kaioshin raises his objection to using the dragon balls because of upsetting the natural order. It didn't come from nowhere.

And it also went nowhere if the Shadow Dragons in DBGT (this thread is about GT after all) never brought up this point.

Last I checked, Syn Shenron never talked about the problem of reviving millions of people or anything like that. A story doesn't get credit for a point it never brought up.

I don't think you need the story to spoonfeed you the fact that everything the DBs can do is unnatural (that's why the namekians don't use it freely) and there's a consequence to that.
Specially when you go against nature over and over again, instead of just playing with the cards you were dealt with, selfless or egotistical reasons have no bear in this matter, it doesn't matter why you did X or Y, or who wished for what, thing is it goes against the natural order. Death is death, souls should reincarnate, and the DBs throw a wrench to that order. That's why the punishment takes place.

It's the way the DBs balance their own doing, whether it was a good thing or bad, it will still need to be balanced out.

The DBs don't frown upon selfless wishes or wishes in general, because that's what they do: grant wishes. However, they do frown upon constantly using them, doesn't matter what they are used for. Over-reliance on them is what the DBs are not happy with and why the negative energy accrues until the over-use comes back to bite your ass.

You're acting like those people were brought back as immortals, all those revived people were still going to die anyway, they would still go to the afterlife and they would still reincarnate.

And again, at no point does Syn Shenron ever bring up this point about the dead people who shouldn't have been revived.

[MasenkoHA]

Well....yeah the point was the dragon balls were being overused

And why was this a bad thing? How did overusing the Dragon Balls negatively impact the world in any way? It's literally the Shadow Dragons who did 100% of the damage to the universe.

Literally the entire thing being argued in this thread is about the notion of GT having good ideas but bad execution or not.
And the Shadow Dragon arcs is an example of this.

The idea of using the dragon balls too much having a negative impact? Good idea

That negative impact amounting to 7 evil dragons who function as Monsters of the Week? Bad execution of that idea.

And it also went nowhere if the Shadow Dragons in DBGT (this thread is about GT after all) never brought up this point.

Last I checked, Syn Shenron never talked about the problem of reviving millions of people or anything like that. A story doesn't get credit for a point it never brought up.

A story doesn't get credit if it doesn't hold my hand!

The Shadow Dragons don't need to be bring up anything. The idea was already put forth by Kaioshin in Z when he was against using the dragon balls even for something as selfless as restoring the earth and reviving the good people on it. Later we see the ramifications of that in GT. Those ramifications are lame since it's just "fight these 7 monsters for the endgame of the series" but it didn't come from nowhere.

[Koitsukai]

You're acting like those people were brought back as immortals, all those revived people were still going to die anyway, they would still go to the afterlife and they would still reincarnate.

And again, at no point does Syn Shenron ever bring up this point about the dead people who shouldn't have been revived.

Wait... you are saying it's natural to be revived?? that's the natural order of things? being revived no matter when you end up dying FOR THE SECOND TIME? it's natural to prevent a soul from being reincarnated WHEN they were supposed to do so? it's natural to have planets come back to life?? The bureaucracy of the afterlife is also something that gets fucked with resurrections. Those things exist for a reason. Enam exists for a reason.

And again, we don't need to be spoonfed the natural order of existence. We kinda learn that by the age of 5. But it seems you are determined to argue against the obvious, so I'm out.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Dragon Ball is not Real Life, if you cant accept Dragon Ball is escapist fantasy and doesnt need to behold to "Natural Order" or whatever it is indeed for the best that you sit this one out.

[SupremeKai25]

Literally the entire thing being argued in this thread is about the notion of GT having good ideas but bad execution or not.

And why do you think the Shadow Dragons are part of the "execution" and not the "idea"?

I can easily argue that the IDEA of the Shadow Dragons as generic pure evil monsters of destruction is terrible.

These threads are always so ambiguous and abstract, you would need to define what you consider "idea" and what you consider "execution".

A story doesn't get credit if it doesn't hold my hand!

The Shadow Dragons don't need to be bring up anything. The idea was already put forth by Kaioshin in Z when he was against using the dragon balls even for something as selfless as restoring the earth and reviving the good people on it. Later we see the ramifications of that in GT. Those ramifications are lame since it's just "fight these 7 monsters for the endgame of the series" but it didn't come from nowhere.

The "Idea" put forth by Kaioshin in DBZ is one forgettable throwaway line, so Yes, it might have been a good move to make the Shadow Dragons elaborate more on their motivations instead of remaining so generic.

You're acting like those people were brought back as immortals, all those revived people were still going to die anyway, they would still go to the afterlife and they would still reincarnate.

And again, at no point does Syn Shenron ever bring up this point about the dead people who shouldn't have been revived.

Wait... you are saying it's natural to be revived?? that's the natural order of things? being revived no matter when you end up dying FOR THE SECOND TIME? it's natural to prevent a soul from being reincarnated WHEN they were supposed to do so? it's natural to have planets come back to life?? The bureaucracy of the afterlife is also something that gets fucked with resurrections. Those things exist for a reason. Enam exists for a reason.

And again, we don't need to be spoonfed the natural order of existence. We kinda learn that by the age of 5. But it seems you are determined to argue against the obvious, so I'm out.

The "natural order" would be preserved anyway since those people are going to die regardless... it will take a few more years/decades depending on the individual, but Old Supreme Kai is millions of years old and Enma is literally immortal so it makes no difference to them.

Besides that, the DBs were always used to affect only the populations of Namek and Earth, they are literally just two planets out of the dozens and dozens of planets that are in U7, so whatever consequences are there for the universe (whatever these consequences are, this is never specified by Old Supreme Kai, obviously the Shadow Dragons were not an idea at the time), they should be minor since only 2 planets are involved. It's not like reviving the population of Earth would be some universale-scale phenomenon, Enma would still be getting souls flowing from every other planet in the universe.

It's not like time travel, which affected the entire multiverse by virtue of splitting time itself and creating alternate multiverses.

And this is why people always bring up how it makes no sense that the Shadow Dragons are Universal threat, it's not just a power level thing. It was the inhabitants of Earth who abused the Dragon Balls and those Dragon Balls were the Earth's, so it makes no sense to involve the entire universe in this.

Besides that, logically what the Shadow Dragons do is also abnormal, since they were trying to literally kill everyone in the universe at the same time, and that would naturally cause an abnormal overflow of souls to the afterlife, surely that's unnatural too.

[JulieYBM]

Literally the entire thing being argued in this thread is about the notion of GT having good ideas but bad execution or not.

And why do you think the Shadow Dragons are part of the "execution" and not the "idea"?

I can easily argue that the IDEA of the Shadow Dragons as generic pure evil monsters of destruction is terrible.

These threads are always so ambiguous and abstract, you would need to define what you consider "idea" and what you consider "execution".

There's nothing inherently bad about the idea of the Evil Dragons. "The negative energy built up in the Dragon Balls from overuse mutates into Evil Dragons seeking the destroy the Earth" is a great opportunity to examine the entire preceeding history and then have the characters own up to that, which also being faced with a powerful new foe who seek to take from them their peaceful life. There's plenty of character stuff to bounce off of the simple premise, especially for Blooma considering she began the whole goddamned thing.

[ABED]

Overuse of the Dragon Balls even if for good reasons is a simple matter of too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Everything has a cost. It's fine for a parent to help their child, but if that's all they do, the child will have a hard time learning to stand on their own two feet.

[WittyUsername]

And this is why people always bring up how it makes no sense that the Shadow Dragons are Universal threat, it's not just a power level thing. It was the inhabitants of Earth who abused the Dragon Balls and those Dragon Balls were the Earth's, so it makes no sense to involve the entire universe in this.

If you want to be technical here, it was mostly Goku and his friends who kept using the Dragon Balls. Not the people of Earth as a whole. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the Earth’s population isn’t even aware the Dragon Balls exist. The idea of large groups of people being forced to pay for the actions of a select few goes back thousands of years in various mythologies and religions.

[SupremeKai25]

Literally the entire thing being argued in this thread is about the notion of GT having good ideas but bad execution or not.

And why do you think the Shadow Dragons are part of the "execution" and not the "idea"?

I can easily argue that the IDEA of the Shadow Dragons as generic pure evil monsters of destruction is terrible.

These threads are always so ambiguous and abstract, you would need to define what you consider "idea" and what you consider "execution".

There's nothing inherently bad about the idea of the Evil Dragons.

Yes there is... the fact that they are not the consequence to a problem, they are the problem itself. There is no evidence that the overuse of Dragon Balls was hurting the planet and no further elaboration was made on that throw-away line from the Old Kai in Z. The Shadow Dragons were the only ones who were destroying the planet. So the very premise of the arc is stupid; the Shadow Dragons complain that the humans were ruining the world, but they are literally the only ones causing damage to the planet.

Overuse of the Dragon Balls even if for good reasons is a simple matter of too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Everything has a cost. It's fine for a parent to help their child, but if that's all they do, the child will have a hard time learning to stand on their own two feet.

In the case of the Shadow Dragon arc, the parent decided to straight-up dump the child in the middle of a war-zone as some kind of "lesson". The mortals just barely avoided getting exterminated at a universal scale by Omega Shenron, clearly none of them stood a chance against Omega and they're just lucky that Base Kid Goku had Plot armour and power levels are BS.

And this is why people always bring up how it makes no sense that the Shadow Dragons are Universal threat, it's not just a power level thing. It was the inhabitants of Earth who abused the Dragon Balls and those Dragon Balls were the Earth's, so it makes no sense to involve the entire universe in this.

If you want to be technical here, it was mostly Goku and his friends who kept using the Dragon Balls. Not the people of Earth as a whole. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the Earth’s population isn’t even aware the Dragon Balls exist. The idea of large groups of people being forced to pay for the actions of a select few goes back thousands of years in various mythologies and religions.

The Dragon Balls belonged to the people of Earth and Goku and co. were inhabitants of Earth, it makes sense to punish all the earthlings.

It doesn't make sense to punish every other planet in the Universe, which had nothing to do with those Dragon Balls.

Why do the Namekians deserve to get their planet destroyed by Omega? They never misused their Dragon Balls.

[PurestEvil]

snip

Since I don’t really have any strong feelings on this subject, I am just gonna play devils advocate:

Although the concept of the Shadow Dragons in GT and the illegality of time travel explained by Beerus in Super are clearly different, they both imply that actions done for good intentions will lead to bad consequences if the means cause too much universal disturbance. What do you think makes the latter work in a way that the former fails to achieve?

I am not trying to demean you or anything, I just wanna hear your out.

[SupremeKai25]

snip

Since I don’t really have any strong feelings on this subject, I am just gonna play devils advocate:

Although the concept of the Shadow Dragons in GT and the illegality of time travel explained by Beerus in Super are clearly different, they both imply that actions done for good intentions will lead to bad consequences if the means cause too much universal disturbance. What do you think makes the latter work in a way that the former fails to achieve?

I am not trying to demean you or anything, I just wanna hear your out.

They are completely incomparable scenarios with one (time travel) being much more serious in its consequences.

Time travel literally split history and resulted in the creation of entire parallel multiverses, represented by the existence of new Time Rings in the time box. The multiverse was literally split and replicated into an alternate timeline, the entire Multiverse was affected.

Meanwhile, overusing the Earth DBs to revive the Earthlings only affects the EARTH, so the Shadow Dragons should not be a punishment for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, that makes no sense and is illogical and clearly defies any "natural order".

Furthermore, reviving the earthlings didn't cause any significant "universal disturbance" in the grand scheme of things, because Enma still has souls flowing from every other planet in the universe, and the revived earthlings are going to die again anyway.

If anything, it's not Goku and co. who defied the "natural order" by reviving the earthlings, it's Kid Buu who ruined it by exterminating an entire planet in 10 seconds for fun. Surely that can't align with the "natural order" of things.

Never mind the fact that no one here has yet explained what "natural order" even means, not even Old Kai explains this and he is the only one who ever alludes to this idea. This discussion is full of headcanon, but it's alright, because the Shadow Dragons didn't elaborate on anything, so we can only rely on headcanon on whatever this "natural order" is. Clearly what the dragons were doing was not respecting any kind of order, since they literally tried to exterminate the entire universe and cover it in eternal darkness.

[Yuji]

SupremeKai25, did you even like Dragon Ball before the Zamasu arc aired?

[Cure Dragon 255]

As much as he overgushes over Zamasu, that's a low blow meant to detract from the point he's making. What he is saying makes sense. If you went by Natural Order or whatever you'd have an incredibly boring and insipid series. And if Natural Order or whatever was a thing There would not even be a way to bring people back from the dead in the fucking first place.

[Yuji]

As much as he overgushes over Zamasu, that's a low blow meant to detract from the point he's making. What he is saying makes sense. If you went by Natural Order or whatever you'd have an incredibly boring and insipid series. And if Natural Order or whatever was a thing There would not even be a way to bring people back from the dead in the fucking first place.

It's not a low blow. I'm sure I've read him say he got into Dragon Ball because of the Zamasu arc.

[Zephyr]

If you went by Natural Order or whatever you'd have an incredibly boring and insipid series. And if Natural Order or whatever was a thing There would not even be a way to bring people back from the dead in the fucking first place.

The first sentence quoted here is something that would make sense for the audience to think. The second sentence quoted here is something that would make sense for the protagonists to think.

And, yet, neither of those would contradict the idea that "using the Dragon Balls violates the natural order", a claim made by a stuffy deity, which is obviously because they involve altering reality on a large scale with magic.

The concept of there indeed being consequences for violating that natural order, even if said violations excite the audience out of universe and help people in universe, would be a good source of narrative tension. This thing is good, but it is also bad; you can't have one without the other; yin and yang; duality; is the good that comes from it worth the bad that it brings? Make the audience and the characters think, and wrestle with questions and dilemmas. That could have been interesting!

Obviously you'd have them win the day and be able to conclude that, yes, the good that came from it was worth the bad that it brought; but will this always be the case? GT seems to want to earn this payoff by having characters remark that they'll have to rebuild society the hard way, or something, but I don't think it ultimately did much to earn it.

I also don't really care if this contradicts the original's ending where it says that things will always be okay if they still have the Dragon Balls; GT's a different work, one that adds more story content and a new ending, it's perfectly allowed to recontextualize things.

[Scientist Fu]

The idea of the Evil Dragons is pretty neat because it sets a limit on the use of the DBs. So, it will force them to think twice before doing a big mistake again and not always rely on the DBs to rewind and fix their mistakes because they have been acting selfishly or recklessly. You reap what you sow. They need to learn to accept their fate. If Goku and co' weren't abusing the DBs whenever they got the chance (and some of the wishes are brainless) then the universe wouldn't be in danger. And this idea is incredibly good for the future of DB knowing that there's a consequence when you abuse things. It's the best thing that GT has offered imo, with the SSJ4. And the relation between Goku and the four-star DB is sooo heartwarming, probably one of the best moments in the entire franchise in my book.

[Cure Dragon 255]

If you went by Natural Order or whatever you'd have an incredibly boring and insipid series. And if Natural Order or whatever was a thing There would not even be a way to bring people back from the dead in the fucking first place.

The first sentence quoted here is something that would make sense for the audience to think. The second sentence quoted here is something that would make sense for the protagonists to think.

And, yet, neither of those would contradict the idea that "using the Dragon Balls violates the natural order", a claim made by a stuffy deity, which is obviously because they involve altering reality on a large scale with magic.

The concept of there indeed being consequences for violating that natural order, even if said violations excite the audience out of universe and help people in universe, would be a good source of narrative tension. This thing is good, but it is also bad; you can't have one without the other; yin and yang; duality; is the good that comes from it worth the bad that it brings? Make the audience and the characters think, and wrestle with questions and dilemmas. That could have been interesting!

Obviously you'd have them win the day and be able to conclude that, yes, the good that came from it was worth the bad that it brought; but will this always be the case? GT seems to want to earn this payoff by having characters remark that they'll have to rebuild society the hard way, or something, but I don't think it ultimately did much to earn it.

I also don't really care if this contradicts the original's ending where it says that things will always be okay if they still have the Dragon Balls; GT's a different work, one that adds more story content and a new ending, it's perfectly allowed to recontextualize things.

Well at least you explained your position unlike the other guy who just went "Neener Neener screw you guys I am going home." Now I agree a bit.