Noah wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 9:54 am
Magnificent Ponta wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 8:43 pm
To that end, I think a continuing story will likely be drawn more and more towards the following, the longer it goes on...
You know it would be nice to actually read your thoughts on this rather than asking ChatGPT to generate a response on the matter.
Those
were my own thoughts. But if you mean to say that you would consider it more worthwhile if I commented with my
opinions on whether such conservative/remixing trends would necessarily be a bad thing for Dragon Ball Super's narrative quality in the event of it continuing for an extended period without Akira Toriyama's input, then I can attempt to elucidate, but basically I'm in two minds about it, and the quandary centres around how much, and what kind of, Toriyama input might be required to make Dragon Ball Super (a) good in the execution and (b) "Dragon Ball" enough to feel authentically of a piece with his World, without yet having actually
seen what Super might have to offer in a post-Toriyama world. In such circumstances, each fan would have to answer for themselves on that score.
We're seeing takes from users in this topic saying that Dragon Ball is effectively over for them - and that's fair enough, I respect the take, I'm not going to say it's "wrong" - but when I think about what is known about the story-crafting process and Toriyama's involvement in Super so far, much of his contribution seems to have come at the top of any arc (draft story outlines and specific plot points, character concepts and designs, worldbuilding and background), and a relatively small amount of continuing input as the story is actually executed (seemingly, mostly storyboard checking). At that level of contribution, would a hypothetical Super arc that makes liberal use of Toriyama's published oeuvre (e.g., a hypothetical Neko Majin arc - the published miniseries has fully worked-out designs and characters, worldbuilding concepts and a
very broad basic outline concept for a new story to get plotted out in)
really have a less "authentic" or "meaningful" contribution from him than what we've seen in Super so far? If "yes", then
why would it be less so? What about such an arc would have less Toriyama input than, say, the Moro arc? I struggle to articulate what the
practical, concrete contributory difference would be in those terms, for me, given the restrained nature of Toriyama's involvement in Super when compared with Dragon Ball's original run. They were never the same kind of beast, but that hasn't stopped the creation of basically decent-to-good story content that belongs just as much to his World as the original.
Moreover, adapting and remixing previously established Dragon Ball elements to tell its current stories has kind of been Super's bread-and-butter for a good while now (perhaps always); it has generally been quite effective in doing so in my opinion - overall, the manga has done so skilfully and meaningfully enough that its connection with previous content is a legitimate part of its storytelling craft and its ongoing appeal for me, rather than just being empty nostalgia bait. And there's plenty of other Toriyama material that
could be enjoyably adapted for a new story arc or two if done competently. Being slightly
more conservative and derivative about its story concepts than it has been so far, isn't necessarily going to tank Super's narrative quality on the page. The only real qualm is just how long it could convincingly be maintained - I don't think such a product would have more than a couple of arcs in it. But then again, I didn't think Super had more than a couple of arcs left in it anyway. I feel that there's plenty of raw material around that could be used for Super to have perfectly serviceable - even perfectly serviceable, arguably (for want of a better phrase)
Toriyama-contribution-loaded - stories. On the face of it, then, the
practical challenge doesn't seem totally insuperable and there's no reason it couldn't continue well enough for a while - on the manga's publication schedule, even just 2 arcs would likely be 3 or 4 years of content. Really, it's all in the execution. And for Super, it's always worth remembering that however much input he had at the
conceptual stage, the
execution stage has always been almost entirely in other hands than Toriyama's.
That said, storytelling is more than just the sum of its parts, and - more than designs, or plot ideas, or whatever else - a hypothetical ongoing Super series will fundamentally miss less 'concrete' qualities than these, like Toriyama's particular way of seeing things in his storytelling: his gleefully silly contrarianism and mischievous 'cut-through', for instance, or his knack for taking an idea, building it up and then going a step further and stripping it down to something deceptively simple, visually effective, and packed with amusing and immediately intelligible and relatable foibles, or even the sheer fact of being comfortable enough to just "play" with the established "rules" of his World. It's fair to say that this highly individual "spark" is as much a part of "Dragon Ball" as any amount of raw content that could be enlisted for use in a storyline. Moreover, being actually present to react and give feedback into something concrete is an important part of the process; who can say just how much poorer the Moro arc would be without the suggestion that Merus be an Angel? Just how spare
was the Granolah arc as a pitch, before the Heeters got added as a concept (whether you like them or not)? While it's perfectly possible to replicate and adapt Toriyama's oeuvre, it's much harder to try to mimic his basic storytelling insight. And that's why I sympathise with those who say they're done now and who don't believe that something authentically "Dragon Ball" could be convincingly carried off anymore, even if I'm not ready to say
I feel that way, just yet.
My opinion is that it
could theoretically be done relatively well in sheer craft terms, according to the schema I described in my earlier post, if it's well enough conceived from what's there to be used. It'd probably be quite "safe" and hyper-aware of the legacy on which it's treading, but that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily make it wholly inferior to what Super had done so far. But it would be tricky to carry off, certainly more so the longer it goes on, and the
awareness that Toriyama is no longer there to contribute his insight would be at the forefront of the minds of fans and (critically) the creative team alike. Considering that, I think that there being the
will to continue Super, and a genuine
belief within the creative team that they can continue to do it justice, should be more determinative of whether Super continues rather than whether or not there's enough promising, authentic content that
could be used in order to do so. If the belief's not there anymore, then the project's fundamentally compromised no matter what they use, and they should just pack it in.
Hopefully that articulates my thoughts more fully, for you.
Or alternatively, if you were never really interested in any of that and your intention was simply to dish out drive-by snark for no obvious reason, then you can have the thought that randomly disparaging other members just to rag on them for having the
temerity to post an innocuous comment on a message board is just a
smidgen dickish, and does not look at all as
mad kewl as you apparently think it does.
Whichever response you prefer.
