I promise you I am not trying to write long posts here, there's just a lot to say.
AliTheZombie13 wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2024 4:06 pm
As a result, I made my point clear: Parody isn't exempt from criticism.
This scene largely exists to patch a hole in Toriyama's story: The cast has the means to stop the threat 3 years in advance, meaning the arc would've been pretty much over had they been proactive, so Toriyama decided to joke it out. "Nah, the heroes like to fight lol!"
In the very same scene, Toriyama has to patch yet another hole: He wants Vegeta to have a son, but he also doesn't want to go through the trouble of creating a new female character, so he turns Yamcha into a cheater despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, that Bulma would be the one to cheat on him. And no, this isn't, "Oh, but the fans are completely wrong about Toriyama's genius intentions, notice carefully how this is Trunks' side of the story, and he likely heard those statements from Bulma, who is his mother, so she's likely painting herself as a saint. Certainly, Toriyama carefully thought about the characters and their personalities and-" No, the voice actors actually complained to Toriyama and he joked, "C'mon, man. Yamcha's totally a cheater, go along with me here, ha ha!"
Because of the above, I don't think Toriyama ever really thought with as much insight as you guys want me to believe he did when he wrote "Nah, the heroes like to fight lol" Rather, he saw a big gaping obvious plot-hole in his story, tried to patch it haphazardly, and the result was this. Which brings me again to my initial point: Parody isn't exempt from criticism. I know what Dragon Ball is supposed to be, a wacky kung fu parody, but this didn't exactly stop me from finding that most of this "joke," that exists only to patch an obvious plot-hole in the story, was lazy, unfunny and unengaging.
There, there's the long answer.
See, none of what I wrote was intended to suggest that parody is exempt from criticism. Saying "Dragon Ball is a parody of kung fu tropes" isn't meant to deflect from criticism, it's meant to reorient the criticism. All art is subject to criticism, even parodies. We can critique a parody on how well it parodies the thing it's parodying, for instance. And, frankly, I
do not see that happening when people denigrate the characters' recklessness and gambling the fate of the world for the sake of a good fight. I never get the sense that these folks are big fans of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films, or Fist of the North Star and Yu Yu Hakusho, or random Shaw Bros. kung fu joints. You did mention Yu Yu Hakusho and Ranma in our last exchange, so that's at least something.
You say this scene is there to patch a hole. I say it's one of many watershed moments in Goku's characterization: a man on a quest to avoid boredom, the Olympic gold medalist depression. It's especially fitting that this tendency first rears its head when he's about to finally get the gold himself, while fighting Piccolo in the grand finals. Obviously the man has now passed, so we can't ask Toriyama if these sorts of moments are what he meant when he said that he deliberately put moments of "poison" slipping through the cracks. But if I were a betting man, I'd say that these sorts of moments are precisely what he was referring to. And I don't think he mentioned that as a way to tactfully cover his ass. He's no stranger to self-deprecation. He's mentioned his own laziness so many times over the years, and even had Kuririn call out his re-use of panels during the Boo arc. So I'm left to infer that these were
intended by Toriyama to help us see a very important side of Goku as a person, not merely to move the plot along (they can do both). Goku opting to fight Gero's creations is
not the isolated incident it's often presented as, something I know you're aware of because I've seen you take issue with just about every other similar moment.
When I say "Dragon Ball is a parody, and of more things than just Journey to the West", I am not saying "therefore, we shouldn't criticize Toriyama's writing". We can and we should. I even did in the very post we're talking about. And I'll do it again here: I
agree with you about the "Yamcha is a cheater" take, at least broadly. I think? That Toriyama seems to throw a wrench in the "Trunks just has bad info from his biased mom" read sucks, because it really is the read that tracks the most with what we see of Bulma and Yamcha's relationship: she is
way more likely to be the cheater there. Veering into headcanon territory maybe, but it seems reasonable to me that the truth is somewhere in the middle: that Bulma's unfaithfulness finally got Yamcha to do the same, and that was a step too far for her. Instead, we're left with "the more faithful person in the relationship was a cheater actually". Like, alright Toriyama. Unlike Goku's gold medalist syndrome, there's really no precedent for this. Sloppy as hell writing.
Finally, while I'm framing Dragon Ball as a parody (because it is; the (very long)
Wuxia thread shows just how many tropes and direct references Toriyama threw in during the series' long serialization), I very specifically am not referring to individual 'jokes', in the sense of a setup and a punchline (were I to talk about that, it'd be more in a structural sense, where the Very Serious story arcs are the 'setup' and the Boo arc is the 'punchline', and probably all on accident). Goku's poisonous and reckless thrill seeking is an irreverently comical exaggeration of what I guess I'm now just calling Olympic Gold Medalist Syndrome. Silly monkey man is so good he needs the threat of death to really push him. That's both raw as hell (as the kids say)
and funny to me.
This post from Herms is one of my favorites on the whole forum, because it helps put into perspective just how comical it is that Dragon Ball even tries to play things as straight as it does.
But yeah, whether or not a comedic work makes you laugh is important. If it doesn't make you laugh, then there's something to criticize there, because it's
supposed to make you laugh. Now, if you're not laughing because you don't get the reference, or because you can't relate to the mindset it's exaggerating in the first place? I think the criticism is at least worth taking with a grain of salt.
A more meta thing that really bothers me, and informs the way I've come to approach these discussions, is how some criticisms come across, and the place they appear to come from. So often I see people criticize certain pieces or sections of Dragon Ball media with "ugh, and then they just started
fighting". Like it's not something the person likes in and of itself. Like the very thing the protagonists are all about is something the person
very begrudgingly accepts. I would never call such a person a "fake fan" or any bullshit like that, but it does almost seem that they're a fan of Dragon Ball
in spite of itself, almost like a relative outsider to the kung fu genre. And that criticism tends to also go hand in hand with criticism of Toriyama's exaggeration of Olympic Gold Medalist Syndrome. Something which very strongly, to me at least, comes across as a complete lack of any relating to the mindset being exaggerated, resulting in some people just genuinely not "getting it", for lack of a better phrase.
I know it's extremely condescending to tell someone "oh you just don't get it", and it also makes it seem like the "it" in question is some super high brow cerebral thing that you gotta be super intelligent to understand. I seek to suggest neither in my posts on this topic, so I'd love to find a better alternative. Toriyama wrote a junk food comic for little boys. But like, please, I need to know. Those of you who take issue with Goku's characterization in these "poison" moments: do you think it's cool and badass to watch two people throw hands? Is it something that gives you some intrinsic enjoyment? Or is it the kind of thing that genuinely has to externally justify itself to you? I ask because I want to know how apt, or off base, my meta interpretation is.
"