MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 5/19/25!)

[AliTheZombie13]

I mean, the Super 17 arc was written to be a quick solution to the problem of "How do we get them to use the Dragon Balls so we can have them go bad for this Shadow Dragons arc we wanna do?" They treated it with barely any real seriousness, but it IS important to understanding the set-up to the Shadow Dragons.

"Can I make my butt 5cm bigger?"
"Can I cure a fever?"
"Can I get panties?"

Actually, a stupid wish would've driven the point better that the heroes are abusing the Dragon Balls.
Or maybe, if you needed to be serious, have the heroes try to wish Goku back to an adult form.
There, problem solved.

Super #17 didn't need to happen, but that's not even my problem with it, my problem with it is how little logic, rhyme or reason it makes even by GT standards.

I mean, like them all you want. They're not that good. Literally, the writers & producers said that they weren't gonna be interesting no matter how they wrote them. Which is why they decided to pivot away from them & to the Baby arc. That's just a fact.

I have to wonder how much of that rings true when you compare to the final product. In the same interview, the producers also say they had been reading negative comments about their show "ruining the original" and I can't help but feel like the fan backlash was a huge contributor to the show abandoning the Grand Tour premise.

Also, since they technically already had dediced to abandon the idea after Episode 3, does that include Episodes 4-16 in their definition of "these travel episodes aren't interesting"? I mean, by that point, they had to have already decided that the series wasn't going to be like that anymore. And as MistareFusion points out, it might as well be that it wasn't even after the third episode, but rather the third mini-arc (Zunama), which is exactly the point where the plot starts feeling rushed and throwing a million concepts and villain twists at you.

I for one would be very interested in knowing how GT would've turned out like if there was no fan backlash and they were allowed to proceed with the story as they initially planned, but alas, what's done is done and the rest is history.

[Scsigs]

In order for there to have been no fan backlash, the stories would've had to have been more interesting & better-written. While they had some ok premises to work with, from what I've gleamed, the writing & executions of them let them down. What I also think is a major problem is the power scaling & the weird inconsistency of the characters' powers since they seem to forget that they can do certain things, like flying, until they suddenly remember to do so. Then there's Pan, who is, sadly, the worst character in the show. She's inconsistently written & floats between Goku as a kid, but a girl & smarter, a mean bitch to Giru, & a whiny useless character who can't actually do anything. And that's series-wide.
I really don't know how you fix GT without scrapping everything & taking it back to the drawing board, ngl. Not a lot of the series comes off like it'd work & the writing doesn't do it any favors.

[Gaffer Tape]

Attack of the Member Berries - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Super #17 Arc Part 3

Remember Freeza and Cell? Remember when you were a child? Remember when you were happy? Me neither. This is hot garbage. It's hot garbage strung together by logic so flimsy it makes Tullece seem as credible as #16. What does that mean? I don't know! I've lost my mind!

(I also lost my mind so much that I conflated some TFS backstory for a moment. Whoops!)

Anyway, incoming rant! Huge rant!

[FoolsGil]

Attack of the Member Berries - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Super #17 Arc Part 3

Remember Freeza and Cell? Remember when you were a child? Remember when you were happy? Me neither. This is hot garbage. It's hot garbage strung together by logic so flimsy it makes Tullece seem as credible as #16. What does that mean? I don't know! I've lost my mind

We thank you for your sacrifice, you are doing Kami's work, truly.

(I also lost my mind so much that I conflated some TFS backstory for a moment. Whoops!)

A clear example of Toriyama just shooting from the hip long after the fact it was relevant: Just about anyone would connect Gero's son's death to Goku, this being the reason for the animosity and obsession decades later. But not our favorite trailblazing manga-ka: "Yeah he died to a stray bullet in a battle."

[TrunksTrevelyan0064]

That rant was glorious. The funniest Dissection yet. "Did the plane die? DOES THE PLANE HAVE A SOUL?? WAS THE PLANE EVIL???"

[Zephyr]

Regarding Gero's son dying as his motivation for revenge: even if the interview did say that Goku killed Gero's son and that was the reason for his obsession with getting revenge, that interview came out in 2014, so I'm not sure why it's even worth mentioning in a GT review, especially in order to assess Gero's characterization. It didn't exist yet, same as Dragon Ball Super, which is mentioned right after when talking about Trunks not having met #17 before.

As for "#17 and #18 don't have ki": given that they are indeed cyborgs, and thus living organisms, and given that ki is life force, and they're alive......they kinda have to have ki, right? The story can say they don't, but the story could also repeatedly tell us that Goku has no arms, when he's clearly depicted having arms.

Also I'll say that when I went through GT a while back, Nozawa's Goku imitating Wakamoto's Cell was a bright spot in the Hell fight.

[AliTheZombie13]

As for "#17 and #18 don't have ki": given that they are indeed cyborgs, and thus living organisms, and given that ki is life force, and they're alive......they kinda have to have ki, right? The story can say they don't, but the story could also repeatedly tell us that Goku has no arms, when he's clearly depicted having arms.

I always took even in DBZ that they have no Ki when idle. When they're launching Ki Blasts at each other, which is what happened in the limo scene, then it's possible to track it down. Cell did manage to deduce #17 was fighting, after all.

Then again, Goku says he'll use the Teleportation technique to find a hiding Super #17 later on, so.... Eh!

[jcogginsa]

As for "#17 and #18 don't have ki": given that they are indeed cyborgs, and thus living organisms, and given that ki is life force, and they're alive......they kinda have to have ki, right? The story can say they don't, but the story could also repeatedly tell us that Goku has no arms, when he's clearly depicted having arms.

I always took even in DBZ that they have no Ki when idle. When they're launching Ki Blasts at each other, which is what happened in the limo scene, then it's possible to track it down. Cell did manage to deduce #17 was fighting, after all.

Then again, Goku says he'll use the Teleportation technique to find a hiding Super #17 later on, so.... Eh!

IIRC Cell found 17 because he was sensing Piccolo fighting him, not 17 himself

[AliTheZombie13]

IIRC Cell found 17 because he was sensing Piccolo fighting him, not 17 himself

You're right, just re-read it, he couldn't sense #17. My mistake.

[Gaffer Tape]

Regarding Gero's son dying as his motivation for revenge: even if the interview did say that Goku killed Gero's son and that was the reason for his obsession with getting revenge, that interview came out in 2014, so I'm not sure why it's even worth mentioning in a GT review, especially in order to assess Gero's characterization. It didn't exist yet, same as Dragon Ball Super, which is mentioned right after when talking about Trunks not having met #17 before.

It wasn't really meant to be an assessment of Gero's characterization. It was simply a joking aside, no different from the Trunks/#17 observation.

[Koitsukai]

As for "#17 and #18 don't have ki": given that they are indeed cyborgs, and thus living organisms, and given that ki is life force, and they're alive......they kinda have to have ki, right? The story can say they don't, but the story could also repeatedly tell us that Goku has no arms, when he's clearly depicted having arms.

I always took even in DBZ that they have no Ki when idle. When they're launching Ki Blasts at each other, which is what happened in the limo scene, then it's possible to track it down. Cell did manage to deduce #17 was fighting, after all.

Then again, Goku says he'll use the Teleportation technique to find a hiding Super #17 later on, so.... Eh!

But didn't they fail to sense the blast that took down Yajirobe's ship? They couldn't pinpoint where it came from.

[Zephyr]

It wasn't really meant to be an assessment of Gero's characterization. It was simply a joking aside, no different from the Trunks/#17 observation.

Fair enough! I thought it might have been, but I wasn't completely sure.

I always took even in DBZ that they have no Ki when idle. When they're launching Ki Blasts at each other, which is what happened in the limo scene, then it's possible to track it down. Cell did manage to deduce #17 was fighting, after all.

Then again, Goku says he'll use the Teleportation technique to find a hiding Super #17 later on, so.... Eh!

Two more wrenches in that theory:

First, the whole idea of them not having any ki is said by Gohan, after Goku is confused that he didn't sense any ki when Yajirobe got shot down. So the very idea of them not having any is introduced to explain why they couldn't sense them while not idle.

Second, ki is still life force, and it'd be weird for your life force to only come into being when you're fighting. There's also #17 contributing to the Genki Dama in the Boo arc. Then again, dead people also clearly have ki which can be sensed, judging from everyone sensing a dead Goku throughout the Boo arc. At the same time, it's called the afterlife. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As far as I can tell, speed re-reading the Cell arc (up to #18 being absorbed) while writing this post, nobody actually says that #17 and #18 don't have ki. There's still mention of their presence not being detectable, but from what I could tell, Gohan's initial line when Yajirobe's car is destroyed is the only time anyone says that "Androids don't have ki" in the arc, and it's Gohan speculating about what he understands to be two fully mechanical people. I do think it's likely that the initial speculation is meant to be treated as exposition and also applicable to #17 and #18, but it not being spelled out explicitly does give some wiggle room.

Either way, once we learn that #20, #17, and #18 are cyborgs, their inability to be sensed and tracked probably should have been re-contextualized. Something something ki masking cybernetics something something.

That said, I am now wondering where the first explicit mention of #17 and #18 not having any ki comes from. The Z anime? The Boo arc? A guidebook? The franchise as a whole clearly tries to run with that idea, as evidenced by #17 saying he and #18 don't have any life force when fighting Moro. Which is extra silly, because that just lays the whole contradictory nature of it bare. Not "we don't have any ki", but "we don't have any life force". #17, my brother in Christ, you are alive. And even if you died and kept your body, you'd apparently somehow still have life force. Also in a certain sense, the stars and the planet's core are alive, insofar as they're also able to contribute to the Genki Dama. So even a machine has pretty much no reason to be described as "lacking ki".

[coola]

Great video as always Sad thing is, Super did same thing with rehash. We had Golden Freeza arc, and right after that we got Frost, back then i even made topic about why the hell we need another Freeza? Times like this really make me wish Toei to lost rights for Dragon Ball.

[AliTheZombie13]

Maybe they do have Ki, but as opposed to other villains who have natural super-strong Ki like Freeza, #17 and #18's are those of regular weak impossible to distinguish human Ki? Just a stretch.

[Zephyr]

Maybe they do have Ki, but as opposed to other villains who have natural super-strong Ki like Freeza, #17 and #18's are those of regular weak impossible to distinguish human Ki? Just a stretch.

That's pretty much how I see it. They're able to go toe-to-toe with Goku and co. because of their cybernetic enhancements, not because of the size of their ki, which is the size of a normal human's.

[dragonballhero]

Attack of the Member Berries - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Super #17 Arc Part 3

Remember Freeza and Cell? Remember when you were a child? Remember when you were happy? Me neither. This is hot garbage. It's hot garbage strung together by logic so flimsy it makes Tullece seem as credible as #16. What does that mean? I don't know! I've lost my mind!

(I also lost my mind so much that I conflated some TFS backstory for a moment. Whoops!)

Anyway, incoming rant! Huge rant!

It is SO cathartic to see you break this mess of an arc apart, honestly. Ngl, I'm someone who STILL wonder why in God's name #17 of all people was used as the antagonist. I honestly would have taken Janemba (or some retread) instead of using someone who normally has... nothing to do with DB's "occult", so to speak.

Semi-unrelated, but if Super #17 broke you THIS much? I can't wait to see Lanipator and ESPECIALLY KaiserNeko watch this confounding parade of nonsense during their GT rewatch.

[DanielSSJ]

I always took even in DBZ that they have no Ki when idle. When they're launching Ki Blasts at each other, which is what happened in the limo scene, then it's possible to track it down. Cell did manage to deduce #17 was fighting, after all.

Then again, Goku says he'll use the Teleportation technique to find a hiding Super #17 later on, so.... Eh!

Cell deduced where the Androids were because he could tell that Piccolo was fighting someone, and that it could only be the Androids. As far as the original series goes, even the cyborg twins don't have ki to sense. Best I can figure is that either their artificial energy overpowers and cloaks their natural ki, or that Gero specifically outfitted them with a device to hide their ki from Goku and co.

[coola]

Attack of the Member Berries - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Super #17 Arc Part 3

Remember Freeza and Cell? Remember when you were a child? Remember when you were happy? Me neither. This is hot garbage. It's hot garbage strung together by logic so flimsy it makes Tullece seem as credible as #16. What does that mean? I don't know! I've lost my mind!

(I also lost my mind so much that I conflated some TFS backstory for a moment. Whoops!)

Anyway, incoming rant! Huge rant!

Semi-unrelated, but if Super #17 broke you THIS much? I can't wait to see Lanipator and ESPECIALLY KaiserNeko watch this confounding parade of nonsense during their GT rewatch.

If DBZ Movie 6 broke Kaiser, I'm so looking forward for Super 17

[Koitsukai]

This arc is amazing from an Everything-is-awful POV. If you'd try to miss every single turn, you are bound to at least once get something right, just by chance, which doesn't happen here, it's incredible, the perfect storm of bad decisions.
Even the artstyle for Freeza and Cell looks sooo off, their fight, how they beat Goku with ice, how he beats them back with ice. There's not a single fight that is interesting or makes you want to rewatch it. What happens in hell is so boring, what happens on Earth is the same thing over and over, and when Goku shows up he is dumber than Dwight.

Also, why Freeza and Cell chose to stay in hell instead of fighting Goku on Earth? even if they killed Goku, the portal was closed, they'd be doomed to stay in hell.

About androids having ki, yeah, I guess they do have ki because they've contributed to the genki dama in 3 different series, but they cannot be sensed, probably due to being cyborgs. In practice, it's the same as not having ki, and for the scene in question, it's a big fumble from Toei. Trunks shouldn't be able to overcome whatever cloaks their ki. One explanation could be that after the bombs were removed, their ki became noticeable.

[AliTheZombie13]

This arc is amazing from an Everything-is-awful POV. If you'd try to miss every single turn, you are bound to at least once get something right, just by chance, which doesn't happen here, it's incredible, the perfect storm of bad decisions.

I'd say the "something right once" in this case would be the scenes with #18 and the quick gags with Videl and Chichi.