Do you like Super?

[Grimlock]

But sure no tournaments

Ah, there it is. The response I saw coming from the other Universe. I was expecting someone to randomly try to correct me, but I didn't think it would be you. You barely appear in the Dragon Ball Super section.

Both Z and GT literally ended on a tournament.

We didn't have to see them through.

Z also had the Cell Games, which Cell even said were inspired by the Tenkaichi Budokai

Cell realized how boring it quickly became and so he himself destroyed the arena. Thus quickly leaving the "tournament" aspect aside.

And the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai is what properly kicks off the Boo saga

A clever way to use a tournament. To use it only as a set-up for more interesting scenarios. Also, we didn't have to see it through.

And if we throw in the movies, Z movie 9 is also built around a tournament.

And a good one, if I remember correctly. It's been ages since I saw Movie 9, but I remember it being kinda cool. An actual battle royale where the participants hit each other and were quickly thrown out of the ring because it was overcrowded. Not an organized "battle royale" where characters were careful to not hit other people they weren't directly fighting, as seen in recent memories...

Also, out of thirteen movies, just one doing a tournament? Good. Toei earned it.

There is the Other World Tournament in DBZ, when Goku used Super Saiyan Kaioken.

I forgot all about that one but yes that too

We didn't have to see it through.

And the one tournament episode in GT

One episode? Come on, you're making this too easy for me.

As expected, all tournaments mentioned were quickly left aside, we weren't stuck with them until the very end. So I stand correct, no tournaments. Merely glimpses of them.

And it's not like Super did nothing but tournament arcs. Of the 5 story arcs only two of them were tournament arcs.

And the other two are retellings. Counting them up won't help, on the contrary, it worsens the situation.

[Zephyr]

You won't hate on Dragon Ball for having three tournaments.....because it's from the 80's?

I specifically and explicitly said "I won't be here saying", not "I won't be here hating"... Do I need to explain the difference?

Explain what difference? You specifically and explicitly said "I won't be here saying how crap Dragon Ball is for having three tournaments". Saying something is crap is "hating on" it. But whatever. Re-phrasing the question:

You won't say that Dragon Ball is crap for having three tournaments.....specifically because it's from the 80's? Are tournaments just "an 80's thing"? Do any tournaments held after the 80's indicate a lack of "creativity and effort"? How does a tournament indicate a lack of "creativity and effort"?

Your hatred for martial arts tournaments in a martial arts story always baffles me,

Why? Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, both about martial arts stories, concluded without a single tournament (proving that Dragon Ball has more to offer than tournaments). Shouldn't you instead be baffled by the fact that two series about martial arts story doesn't have tournaments?

In addition to all of the different tournaments that MasenkoHA and super michael pointed out, there was also the tournament right before the Super 17 arc in GT, where Oob enters disguised as Papayaman. Not to mention the many sort of informal "tournaments" that the characters decide to frame the fights as: Vegeta's 'game' of having the Earthlings fight the Saibaimen one-on-one, the Ginyus doing rock-paper-scissors to see who fights who on Namek, the Saiyans doing rock-paper-scissors to see who fights who in Bobbidi's spaceship, and the Saiyans doing rock-paper-scissors to see who fights Boo on Kaioshin's planet.

EDIT:
Okay, I see now you were only pretending to not know about the many tournaments in Z and GT so that you could move goalposts. Disregard the above paragraph then.

But even if those didn't exist, that's not even my point. I'm not saying "a martial arts story has to have martial arts tournaments". I'm saying "it makes sense why a martial arts story would have martial arts tournaments". But, given that those tournaments in Z and GT exist, I can point to them and say "it makes sense that a martial arts story like Dragon Ball would have these martial arts tournaments in it".

Much in the same way that I can point to Super, or Heroes, and say "it makes sense that a martial arts story like Dragon Ball would have these martial arts tournaments in it". It doesn't have to have them, but it's a genre staple, so it's neither surprising nor out of place for them to happen. People complaining about "martial arts tournaments in a martial arts story" is right there at home with people complaining about "conflicts being solved by fighting in a martial arts story". They both elicit the same response from me:


I'll end this post with a further question:
Have you ever actually read/watched the original story, from Pilaf to Boo?

[Yuji]

A tournament is an easy story format to write for. You can match characters with each other however you like, the plot is concise and tight, scope is narrow and focuses on a few characters. It's no wonder Toriyama - and Shounen authors in general - like writing them. They're also fun for the reader because showcasing character progression is easy and we can see the story advance in real time as we follow each round. I'm not sure why we're acting like tournaments are the bottom barrel of storytelling. They're very hard to screw up.

[Kaboom]

I abso-fuggin'-lutely despise Super.

Not only is it a lousy (pair of) product(s) on its own — copping cliché fanfic concepts for its story arcs, trying to pass off a parade of lazy recolors as new transformations, repeatedly attempting to alter past lore for no good reason, and generally devoid of any real creativity or soul — but the negative effect it's had on the fandom is the most depressing thing I've ever seen in the 20-ish years I've been a DB fan.

Enduring the toxic, extreme, and utterly misplaced obsession over "cAnOn" that's bubbled up in the wake of Super's existence and infests every other facet of the franchise is like being forced to wade through waist-high sewer sludge. If someone had tried to tell me a decade ago that someday Toriyama would do his own original take on Bardock that was worse in every conceivable way than the TV special, but then people would eagerly throw the latter away just because they didn't consider it part of the "mAiN sErIeS cOnTiNuItY" and pretended it never was... I'd have wondered what hard drugs they were currently on. And yet this whole modern-day farce of so-called "cAnOn," and the "that thing from before that you love is now meaningless" attitude that pervades it... is somehow based around a 20-years-removed spinoff that has two separate versions of itself.

Thankfully, that particular downside of Super's existence isn't very prominent here. But in some other DB communities, one can hardly initiate a conversation or ask a question about anything from half of the pre-2015 franchise without some knuckle-dragging chud popping in to say "tHaT's NoT cAnOn" as if that even friggin' means anything anymore.

[ZombieVito]

And the entire series literally ends with a tournament. Tournaments have always been central to Dragon Ball, because it is a story about martial arts.

It is only logical, once you introduce a whole Multiverse, to have a grand tournament involving the other universes.

I still can't believe how the Tournament of Power was able to truly flesh-out all the other universes and give each of them a defining aesthetic, identity, and personality. Sure, some universes might have had fodder fighters (like U9 or U4), but they all stood out and had unique traits (including being weak and having to rely on tricks, like U4). It is truly incredible how much world-building the ToP arc had.

The anime really did a good job making me care about the other universes. Every universe has at least one fighter I liked.

Can't say the same for the manga version.

[MasenkoHA]

A tournament is an easy story format to write for. You can match characters with each other however you like, the plot is concise and tight, scope is narrow and focuses on a few characters. It's no wonder Toriyama - and Shounen authors in general - like writing them. They're also fun for the reader because showcasing character progression is easy and we can see the story advance in real time as we follow each round. I'm not sure why we're acting like tournaments are the bottom barrel of storytelling. They're very hard to screw up.

They also allow for more variance than what seems to be implied by some of the detractors. So far we've had

21st Tenkaichi Budokai- Two promising martial artist play with the big boys for the first time, and their teacher goes undercover to prevent them from winning and getting bored with the sport while they're still young

22nd Tenkaichi Budokai- Classic opposing martial art schools compete culminating in a showdown between each respective school's prize student

23rd Tenkaichi Buodkai- The reincarnation of the Demon King uses the tournament as a set up to get his revenge on the hero and it becomes a battle for the earth

25th Tenkaichi Budokai- Throwback that ends up being a fake out for the real plot

Universe 6 vs Universe 7- Two parallel universes against each other where the Saiyans learn of the universe 6 counterparts

Tournament of Power- Battle Royale to see which Universe will be the surviving universe.


The tournament arcs are never just "the characters fight in a tournament until there is a winner"

[kemuri07]

What matters is not whether or not DB contains genre staples of shounen, what matters is the quality. And a good tournament arc can offer some great storytelling while providing readers with a ton fun and interesting characters to bounce off of the main characters.


I don't think Super does particularly either of these things well. Largely because the anime finds way to suck out all of the tension in the room. Not only is the Tournament Power some of the worst paced anime i've ever seen, making the "5 min, lol" gag from DBZ seem reasonable, but hardly any of it mattered because we were all just waiting for Goku to turn Ultra Instinct anyways. For an arc in which the stakes couldn't be higher than literal multiverse genocide, it hardly mattered because just like its central character, the show didn't really care about these things.


If you want to see a tournament arc done right, one only needs to look at Dragon Ball (I don't count Z because Cell games really doesn't count, and by the time the Tenkaichi Budokai tournaments come back, most of the entire cast are so overwhelmingly powerful that the tournament is really just for comedic gags at that point)

Want a low stakes story with some fun characters and cool fighting the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai's got your back. Want to see one of the most intense battles in DB history (and yeah I'm also including Z and Super in that) then Ma Jr. Vs. Goku is some of the best shounen battle action you'll get from the series as a whole.

[JulieYBM]

Re Tournaments: I like tournaments! They're a really convenient and structured storytelling device to get a bunch of conflicting personalities in a room, have them interact in a myriad of ways, and then beat each other up after talking and getting into shenanigans together.

I think that where Dragon Ball Super might have failed in those regards is in not committing to bigger, broader character development so as to stay within a status quo that wouldn't contradict future ideas from Toriyama. That's a key issue with a lot of adapted work in general, though, and I think that it's a terrible shame because I would more than happy to see creative ideas from different creators allowed to flourish without having to worry about some silly comic guy who will ultimately contradict his own prior ideas if it tickles his fancy. Caulifla and Kale were two big examples of this that I really wish were given even more room to grow beyond how they did, but it's my concern that we won't see these two allowed to organically grow as characters so long as every part of the franchise tries to remain under a united, Toriyama or Toyo-tarou (plus their editor) banner.

I abso-fuggin'-lutely despise Super.

Not only is it a lousy (pair of) product(s) on its own — copping cliché fanfic concepts for its story arcs, trying to pass off a parade of lazy recolors as new transformations, repeatedly attempting to alter past lore for no good reason, and generally devoid of any real creativity or soul — but the negative effect it's had on the fandom is the most depressing thing I've ever seen in the 20-ish years I've been a DB fan.

Enduring the toxic, extreme, and utterly misplaced obsession over "cAnOn" that's bubbled up in the wake of Super's existence and infests every other facet of the franchise is like being forced to wade through waist-high sewer sludge. If someone had tried to tell me a decade ago that someday Toriyama would do his own original take on Bardock that was worse in every conceivable way than the TV special, but then people would eagerly throw the latter away just because they didn't consider it part of the "mAiN sErIeS cOnTiNuItY" and pretended it never was... I'd have wondered what hard drugs they were currently on. And yet this whole modern-day farce of so-called "cAnOn," and the "that thing from before that you love is now meaningless" attitude that pervadfes it... is somehow based around a 20-years-removed spinoff that has two separate versions of itself.

Thankfully, that particular downside of Super's existence isn't very prominent here. But in some other DB communities, one can hardly initiate a conversation or ask a question about anything from half of the pre-2015 franchise without some knuckle-dragging chud popping in to say "tHaT's NoT cAnOn" as if that even friggin' means anything anymore.

We had all of these silly little problems long before Dragon Ball Super. Fandom (as a concept) in general has always had loud, toxic elements, and I seem to recall Dragon Ball fans being toxic asswipes back in the pre-Dragon Ball Super days, too. Instead of blaming a pretty big part of the franchise—one with just as many creative pros and cons as prior installments—it makes more sense to blame immature fans for their behaviors.

Although, I suppose we could also blame Dragon Ball as being an inherently toxic series that attracts toxic people who are okay with weirdly sexist, misogynist and homophobic elements as part of its core, initial creation. Surely the toxic folks who don't mind all of those nasty things are also the same ones bashing Joe Kaiou-ken fan for liking the Super Kaiou-ken or whatever (I recently rewatched this scene, so it's stuck in my head lulz).

*Shrug* Having been a part of Dragon Ball (and general) fan spaces online for twenty-five (25) years, I've come to learn that all of these spaces are stuffed full of men who don't really know how to be chill over their hobbies, or mindful of their behavior. I think it's really silly to blame Dragon Ball Super for somehow making Dragon Ball fandom worse.

Like, okay, let's assume Dragon Ball Super ruined the world: give up and go home, then. You know what I've tried to do when dumb assholes in fandom spaces piss me off (well, they typically only do that over important shit these days, like the portrayal of oppressed people in media)? Remove myself from those spaces until I feel healthy enough to come back and try to add a positive comment that I think is a good message for the community. Am I perfect at it? No, but I'm getting better at it. I've worked really hard to stop being one of those silly little people that bitch and moan about dubs, because that shit makes my health issues worse, they ultimately don't affect me and I have better things to do with my life than be angry over something I was angry over when I was a 13 girl hiding from my problems on the internet now that I'm about to turn fucking 33 in three days.

The existence of 'recolors' or 'retconning lore' or what-the-fuck-ever isn't real or important.

[Kaboom]

I actually absolutely can, do, and will continue to blame the existence of a large and uniquely rotten addition to the franchise for a very specific and damaging trend of fandom toxicity that specifically revolves around that particular addition, thanks.

[Zephyr]

The horrific fandom toxicity of...

*checks notes*

...not caring about GT as much as you do.

[VegettoEX]

I actually absolutely can, do, and will continue to blame the existence of a large and uniquely rotten addition to the franchise for a very specific and damaging trend of fandom toxicity that specifically revolves around that particular addition, thanks.

I typed up a response earlier that basically said "pot kettle black glass houses stones" with regard to your "toxic" comment, but deleted it because it felt a little too personal and direct.

But my dude c'mon. You've already heard this from me multiple times, but you gotta sit back and reflect on this. Being toxic about toxicity... is itself more toxicity. When you go down this rabbit hole, you're unapproachable and no-one's going to listen to you or care about what you're saying. If you want to be miserable, be miserable -- by yourself. Don't subject other people to it. I don't want to read it elsewhere, and I certainly don't want to read it here.

[MasenkoHA]

If someone had tried to tell me a decade ago that someday Toriyama would do his own original take on Bardock that was worse in every conceivable way than the TV special, but then people would eagerly throw the latter away just because they didn't consider it part of the "mAiN sErIeS cOnTiNuItY" and pretended it never was... I'd have wondered what hard drugs they were currently on. And yet this whole modern-day farce of so-called "cAnOn," and the "that thing from before that you love is now meaningless" attitude that pervades it... is somehow based around a 20-years-removed spinoff that has two separate versions of itself.

1. Is that actually happening? Seems the Bardock tv special is generally preferred over Dragon Ball Minus. .everywhere

2. Does it matter? The only time Toriyama's version of Planet Vegeta's last days is relevant is the Super Broli movie. So what if some fans treat it as more important? The tv special isn't going anywhere. Even Dragon Ball Kai, which a significant portion fandom holds up as the definitive version of Dragon Ball Z, uses the Bardock special as it's prologue

Thankfully, that particular downside of Super's existence isn't very prominent here. But in some other DB communities, one can hardly initiate a conversation or ask a question about anything from half of the pre-2015 franchise without some knuckle-dragging chud popping in to say "tHaT's NoT cAnOn" as if that even friggin' means anything anymore.

Fans have been making statements of that's "non-canon" since at least the early 2000s. I remember the "GT isn't canon" comments being thrown around long before Battle of Gods was even a thing, much less Super.

I agree with you that something being "canon" or "not canon" shouldn't matter as far as one's personal enjoyment of the work. I didn't stop watching Halloween 2 just because the more recent David Gordon Green trilogy decided only the original John Carpenter's Halloween is canon to its timeline.

Dragon Ball GT and Bardock's Tv Special will always exist, they're not going anywhere. Some fans dismissing them because they didn't come from Toriyama shouldn't impact your enjoyment of them.

[super michael]

True the whole canon thing was around before Yo Son Goku was a idea. People assumed GT would have been better if Toriyama was involved, therefore making GT canon.

However I can see canon or not canon doesn't matter. Those things doesn't affect the quality and enjoyment of the anime. Maybe non canon materials can have contradictions.

I been discussing about Dragon Ball since 2005 or 2006, can't remember when I became a member in a website.

[Kaboom]

The topic simply asked "do you like Super?" I didn't notice an "(only 'yes' answers allowed)" clause attached anywhere.

I gave my honest if somewhat justifiably frustrated answer to the question. I explained exactly why I so vehemently dislike Super — because not only is the product itself lousy, but also because a particular subset of the fandom, which I pointed out was largely not present here, have made Super and its lousiness so much harder to simply ignore by making a concentrated effort to place it on a pedestal above and at the expense of everything else.

So I was just trying to get away from the communities where that's rampant and vent a little elsewhere. Maybe I could have been clearer and more concise about it, but I still expected a little more actual, y'know, understanding. If I was some sort of masochist who wanted "oh you're just salty" answers sprinkled with useless false positivity, then I'd have just stayed in those other communities to get barraged with them there.

Honest to Dende, I'm trying to "stay positive" and just "enjoy what I like," but that gets really, REALLY tough to do when so many other fans are chomping at the bit to tell me "that thing you like isn't real Dragon Ball and never was and is irrelevant." And when that keeps happening incessantly for a decade... well, it gets to you.

Is that actually happening? Seems the Bardock tv special is generally preferred over Dragon Ball Minus... everywhere.

Basically everywhere, yeah. Even in official channels it'd seem, what with the recent Bardock DLC for Kakarot being based almost entirely on the original special with only the slightest sprinklings of anything from Minus. The communities with the insidious "if it's not tied to Super then it's worthless" attitude I'm talking about are fortunately a relatively small minority.

Fans have been throwing the "that's non-canon" thing long before Super existed since at least the early 2000s. I remember the "GT isn't canon" thing being thrown around long before Battle of Gods was even a thing, much less Super.

Yeah, but it was generally just used just as a way to categorize things for different discussions, without any inherent judgment on the quality or worth of the content in question.

Like for example, people would say "Coola is Freeza's brother, but he only shows up in the movies and stuff." But nowadays you're just as likely to instead see "Coola hasn't been featured or mentioned in Super so he isn't real and Freeza doesn't have a brother." Before Super and this virulent mindset it brought with it, I can't recall ever seeing people pretend that "non-canon" meant "non-existent."

Hell, in a lot of cases people even preferred the supposedly "non-canon" version of something, like favoring the animated version of Trunks' backstory over the underwhelming manga version. Good luck trying to do that now in certain places.

People assumed GT would have been better if Toriyama was involved, therefore making GT canon.

Honestly, the longer the modern "Era of Super" goes on, the less convinced I become that Toriyama's involvement actually makes things better.

[Grimlock]

You won't say that Dragon Ball is crap for having three tournaments.....specifically because it's from the 80's? Are tournaments just "an 80's thing"?

Yes. I dare you to find any time I brought up past Dragon Ball to justify any mistakes they do these days. You won't find anything, but please be my guest. I never bring up because, like I said, it's pointless. I'll judge it based on what's current, not based on what has been done in the past (though I will acknowledge them, of course).

But if you want me to say something, then here it is: Dragon Ball is a badly aged series. It did have three sagas with a plot (Pliaf saga, Red Ribbon saga and Piccolo Daimaoh saga), but it also had three tournaments. Not a good balance. In this scenario, it should've been just one tournament max. Also, the fact that Dragon Ball had three tournaments doesn't justify Dragon Ball Super having two in a row, in a total of three sagas. It's the epitome of unbalanced.

Satisfied?

Do any tournaments held after the 80's indicate a lack of "creativity and effort"? How does a tournament indicate a lack of "creativity and effort"?

I don't know. I thought we were talking about Dragon Ball. For Dragon Ball, a tournament indicates a lack of effort and creativity because it has proven, many times, it can do more than that (hell, even games are proving that too).

Okay, I see now you were only pretending to not know about the many tournaments in Z and GT so that you could move goalposts. Disregard the above paragraph then.

I didn't. You really thought I would say Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT don't have tournaments without thinking that they feature glimpses of them? All of the "examples" they mentioned I had them in mind as I was typing it. Why do you think I still stand by what I said that these two series don't have tournaments? The level of naivety astounds me, but next time I'll leave a hint or something.

I'm saying "it makes sense why a martial arts story would have martial arts tournaments".

And I'm not disputing that. I'm not arguing against the existence of tournaments in Dragon Ball, I'm arguing the way Dragon Ball Super did. If the anime was like this:

Future Trunks saga > Broly saga > Moro saga > Granolah saga > Super Hero saga.

I would have much less complaints if they throw in one tournament somewhere in there. Five original sagas with a plot warrants a tournament. It would be a fine scenario. But that is not the case. Dragon Ball Super had two tournaments for just one saga with a plot. That's crap. It makes sense a martial arts story to have martial arts tournaments, it doesn't make sense for Dragon Ball to be all about tournaments. Dragon Ball is not about tournaments, it is but an aspect of it, not the crux of it. I hope you can tell the difference. Also, all those sagas feature martial arts, so do we really need tournaments? Are we really that desperate just to see fights?

Have you ever actually read/watched the original story, from Pilaf to Boo?

Yes. Naturally, the best part of that series wasn't the tournaments.

A tournament is an easy story format to write for. (...) I'm not sure why we're acting like tournaments are the bottom barrel of storytelling.

Your first sentence answers the second one. All you described in your post can be done in a saga with an actual story. It is more difficult in comparison, yes, but it's much more rewarding and satisfying. "Tournament is an easy way" is the very problem. They don't really require much thought or anything, it's just "a bunch of action figure fighting against each other", as someone else put it. And in the case of Dragon Ball Super, I disagree that there was "character progression". Except for even more transformations, what did those tournament bring to the table? Did we really go from point A to point B by the end? What really changed from the beginning to the end?

They're very hard to screw up.

If they are long and boring, they are already screwed up.

is somehow based around a 20-years-removed spinoff that has two separate versions of itself.

Three. As much as people want it, these recent movies do take place in a different continuity as they feature (or don't feature, depending...) things that don't really match up with either the anime or manga versions.

But in some other DB communities, one can hardly initiate a conversation or ask a question about anything from half of the pre-2015 franchise without some knuckle-dragging chud popping in to say "tHaT's NoT cAnOn" as if that even friggin' means anything anymore.

Do you do what I do? You ask for a source of this "canon"? Either people get mad or they don't reply at all. A lot of idiotic claims are made in the fandom of Dragon Ball so I realized that "asking for a source" to be a great weapon against all that. If they don't provide, it means you're on the right side of the fence.



I have to say, the lengths people go to defend Dragon Ball Super and/or the tournaments is... incredible, I give you all that much. However, these are the same people who scrutinize Dragon Ball Heroes for doing a plot with characters from different Universes to team up against a common enemy. For doing a plot where a certain set of Dragon Balls scatter throughout dimensions and the characters go to find them (search for Dragon Balls shouldn't be a welcoming thing? Isn't this the fucking crux of this franchise?). For doing a Multiversal plot where characters meet and fight each other (isn't the latter what you want? Pitching everyone against everyone? Why the Multiverse setting makes it bad but a tournament makes it good?). And I'm talking about the arcade, not an anime that doesn't give you all the context and that you shouldn't even be watching.

[Kaboom]

Do you do what I do? You ask for a source of this "canon"? Either people get mad or they don't reply at all. A lot of idiotic claims are made in the fandom of Dragon Ball so I realized that "asking for a source" to be a great weapon against all that. If they don't provide, it means you're on the right side of the fence.

No, but I'll have to remember that.

I have presented my own twist on that before though. When people get uppity about Super being the "one true cAnOn sequel" I've often asked them, "when did Goku first use the Blue Kaio-Ken in the one, true, singular, nothing-else-is-real 'canon' storyline? Was it against Hit during the Champa arc, or against Geran during the Tournament of Power?"

The obvious point to the question being that two wildly different versions and placements of the same key event can't both be "canon" at the same time. It's like if the original DBZ anime rewrote the Saiyan arc to completely exclude the Spirit Bomb, and then later (re)introduced it by having Goku use it against Cell. So like you said, it usually just results in the other person stubbornly doubling down and insisting "both" anyway, ignoring how self-contradictory the notion is.

[Vegard Aune]

I have presented my own twist on that before though. When people get uppity about Super being the "one true cAnOn sequel" I've often asked them, "when did Goku first use the Blue Kaio-Ken in the one, true, singular, nothing-else-is-real 'canon' storyline? Was it against Hit during the Champa arc, or against Geran during the Tournament of Power?"

The obvious point to the question being that two wildly different versions and placements of the same key event can't both be "canon" at the same time. It's like if the original DBZ anime rewrote the Saiyan arc to completely exclude the Spirit Bomb, and then introduced it later by having Goku use it against Cell. So like you said, it usually just results in the other person stubbornly doubling down and insisting "both" anyway, ignoring how self-contradictory the notion is.

That has been a point of frustration for me with a lot of Super and is also a big part of why, personally, I am more than okay with Toyotaro doing a largely word-for-word adaptation of Super Hero that hits all the same major beats and only really differs in smaller details. Of course this could still get totally undermined if the anime ever returns and Toei decides to 1: not adapt Moro and Granolah, or 2: repeat what they did with Battle of Gods and (to a much lesser extent) Resurrection F and substantially rewrite the movies and manga arcs for the show. Which I've already seen plenty of indications that there are folks who would be totally happy about but me? Nah, having multiple "official" versions of the same story that overtly contradict one another is just a headache.

[MasenkoHA]

But if you want me to say something, then here it is: Dragon Ball is a badly aged series. It did have three sagas with a plot (Pliaf saga, Red Ribbon saga and Piccolo Daimaoh saga), but it also had three tournaments. Not a good balance. In this scenario, it should've been just one tournament max. Also, the fact that Dragon Ball had three tournaments doesn't justify Dragon Ball Super having two in a row, in a total of three sagas. It's the epitome of unbalanced.

And Z had 4 "evil villain wants to conquer the earth/universe " plots in a row. So? Dragon Ball has pretty much always had 3 plots

1. Find the dragon balls 2. Stop the evilest of evil and most powerful foe yet from destroying the world/universe/multiverse 3. Tournaments. Often with a mixing of at least 2 of these.

I don't know why you think "there is a tournament so there is no plot" they all have plots. Really simple plots but all of Dragon Ball is pretty simple plots. The 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai arc is ultimately just the "Evil villain wants to conquer the earth" story that you seem to think is the only valid kind of plot, Piccolo is just using the tournament setting as an excuse because pre-redemption Piccolo is an unnecessarily extra and theatrical mofo.

There is no reason to only do one tournament arc in pre-Saiyan Dragon Ball, especially when the tournaments exist to show Goku's progress and give him a tangible goal for his broader goal of "becoming stronger"

There's a lot of things about pre-Saiyan Dragon Ball that haven't aged well (namely how it treats minorities) but " oh my god it had 3 tournament arcs" is far from one of them.

I don't know. I thought we were talking about Dragon Ball. For Dragon Ball, a tournament indicates a lack of effort and creativity because it has proven, many times, it can do more than that (hell, even games are proving that too).

Why does a tournament indicate a lack of effort? Does Z doing the Daimao plot four times indicate a lack of effort? (I don't think it does but if we're using your logic)

It's like your aversed to the fact that Dragon Ball is *gasp* a martial arts series.

. But that is not the case. Dragon Ball Super had two tournaments for just one saga with a plot. That's crap

Universe 6 saga- Universe 6 and 7 have a tournament to see who gets to use the Super Dragon Balls

ToP saga- The universes compete in a battle royale to be the last universe standing


Those are the plots. Saying if it's a tournament it doesn't have a plot is completely asinine.

, it doesn't make sense for Dragon Ball to be all about tournaments. Dragon Ball is not about tournaments, it is but an aspect of it, not the crux of it. I hope you can tell the difference. Also, all those sagas feature martial arts, so do we really need tournaments? Are we really that desperate just to see fights?

It's not that we need tournaments, its that your whole stance that their existence represents some sort of failure in the material is complete nonsense. Also let's break it down, for simplicity sake I'm ignoring GT and the retellings and the filler arcs and just focusing on the original Dragon Ball manga and the original Super plots

Pilaf- Find all the Dragon Balls

21st Tenkaichi Budokai- Tournament

Red Ribbon- Find all the Dragon Balls

Tenshinhan- Tournament

Daimao- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Piccolo Jr- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever/tournament

Saiyan- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Freeza- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Androids/Cell- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Majin Buu- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Universe 6- Tournament

Zamasu- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Tournament of Power- tournament

Moro- Stop the most powerful evil foe ever

Granaloh- I have no fucking clue, but I know it's not a tournament arc

So out of 15 arcs only 5 of them use a tournament as a backdrop. At least 7 of them are "stop the most powerful evil foe" and that's being extremely courteous in not counting the Piccolo Jr arc, assuming Granaloh isn't one of them, and not counting the Beerus or Golden Freeza arcs.

[Vegard Aune]

Universe 6 saga- Universe 6 and 7 have a tournament to see who gets to use the Super Dragon Balls

ToP saga- The universes compete in a battle royale to be the last universe standing


Those are the plots. Saying if it's a tournament it doesn't have a plot is completely asinine.

I think if anything you're underselling them a bit. Like, there was more going on beneath the surface, character-wise, in both of those. The Universe 6 tournament gives us a pretty major Vegeta moment, introduces the Omni-King, shows that despite his rough and selfish exterior Beerus does have a kind side, in addition to just presenting some interesting battle scenarios the likes of which couldn't be done outside of a tournament setting. Like, were it not for the rules, they would not have been able to defeat Botamo or Magetta. While one can certainly nitpick the execution of those fights (Anime suffered from poor scheduling still at this point, and in the manga they kinda went by too fast), I would argue that they are conceptually really interesting and a fine example of the advantage of a tournament arc format.

And then while Universe Survival was extremely bloated, the stuff it did with Freeza throughout was genuinely fascinating. Remember when people were predicting in all earnesty that he would be the one to win? And ultimately the plot turned out to be "The Omni-King is testing the remaining universes to see if they are worth keeping" with it being outright stated, iirc, that if 17 hadn't wished to restore the erased universes then Universe 7 would also have been erased.

[MCDaveG]

I have actually missed the tournaments from OG Dragon Ball in Z (I don't like Cell Games and tournament in Buu arc was fun plot twist), hence I don't have any problem with tournaments in Super.
My only complaint would be, that while the TOP was at least interesting and there was inclusion of many characters besides the main duo and even some interesting techniques, like in OG DB, Universe 6 Tournament is incredible and bland borefest.
Tournaments in shonen were always these best ofs, and coming up or overcoming various fighting techniques which of course gets harder as the show progress like DB did, from martial arts fantasy to Power and muscle fantasy on superhero level – how would such tournament with overpowered individuals look like? Probably like TOP. But the truth is, that I really miss the martial arts element in Super, mostly in choreography and other current stories and it being more like One Punch Man and focusing more on powerful ki attacks.

I am just finishing slowly my rewatch of DB and DBZ after 5 years
And now I am toying with the idea, to follow up with the "intended sequel" Super (altho it creates a problem, the movies are superior, but there is some fun filler inbetween those horrid retellings) and watch the EOZ afterwards, or as per the anime production and design, go with the zeitgeist and watch GT. Dilema!