Unpopular DB opinions

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Eh, I can buy that these Dragon Balls were a failed prototype that he kept hidden away for everyone's sake.

If they were a failed prototype why not destroy them? Also, why were they so easy for Pilaf and gang to find? You would think if the black star Dragon Balls were such a danger a bigger effort would have been made to hide them away. And why keep them together? At least if they were separated there would be time to prevent the remaining six from falling into the wrong hands if one was found.

Its also strange Piccolo wasn't terrified about the Dragon Balls being exposed when the heavenly realm was being torn apart during the battle between Gotenks and Super Boo. The only rationale I can think of to defend the fact Piccolo wasn't concerned would be if he forgot about the Black star Dragon Balls, which would be very irresponsible after he merged with Kami and gained all of his knowledge.

[Zinnia]

GT is genuinely such a waste of time, ngl

And I genuinely disagree because I found watching GT to be a a fun use of my time, the late 90s art is great, the characters have nice personalities instead of caricatures of themselves. Super Saiyan 4 as cool as it is, is the most overrated aspect amongs the fandom. Pan's personality and character growth is way more interesting than another new form that just exists to beat up villains and sometimes lose or win.

because she never had much of a reason to be mean to him in the first place.

Giru ate their Dragon Radar and she wasn't in the mood to have another "kid" in the party just right after her grandpa was turned into one. It's an understandable character for a girl of her age, why should she be happy over Giru from get go?

The actual arc is pretty sloggish

And about that I disagree too, the arc is interesting enough and doesn't drag on at all. Fun adventures with climatic battles at the end are better than just battles. And I found the BSDB arc's adventures to be pretty fun.

Why did the Dragon Balls fill with negative energy from overuse when that wasn't established beforehand & Toriyama clearly didn't intend that to be a consequence of overusing them?

Didn't the Elder Kai in the Buu arc mention that overusing the Dragon Balls is a sin? That's why he didn't agree on the idea of using them to help them against Kid Buu from get go? I actually feel that it WAS established, our heroes just had no idea about it. Just like Trunks had no idea that Time Travel is forbidden for mortals, but now decades later we learn that it indeed is.

[AliTheZombie13]

A lot of things in the series are predicated on getting to the next step & they didn't care about it all making sense, being logical, or lining up with past continuity. What they did is A to C storytelling in a lot of cases without caring what B was, or if it was good.

To be honest, yeah. There ARE lapses in logic necessary to make the story in GT work.
But again, we are talking about THIS franchise:

- Cell gets upper torso blown up
- Cell pukes #18 and devolves to Imperfect
- Cell self-destructs
- Cell somehow survives because as long his head isn't blown up, he'll be okay (?)
- Cell still has his Perfect Form despite having devolved before and the lack of #18 (??)
- Cell learned the Teleportation technique instantly with absolutely zero training (???)
- Cell is now even stronger than Gohan because Saiyan Cells (????)

Bulshitting it up to get from Point A to Point B without caring if it made sense has always been Dragon Ball's MO.
I don't know why GT, and only GT specifically, must be subject to a whole different level of scrutiny.

GT is a very mixed bag with its best arc being its second because it was a serialized narrative with clearly a good amount of time & passion for the material they were writing being poured into it. It's not flawless, but it's a lot better than the other 3 arcs surrounding it.

I thought the first half of the Baby arc (Yes, it's ONE arc) had a lot of passion behind it. Toriyama sure praised it as well when they presented him with the drafts.

[Majin Buu]

Giru ate their Dragon Radar and she wasn't in the mood to have another "kid" in the party just right after her grandpa was turned into one. It's an understandable character for a girl of her age, why should she be happy over Giru from get go?

So a minor inconvenience makes it ok for her to physically abuse him?

It's a disproportionate response. He isn't doing anything bad enough to deserve that kind of treatment. An incident that wound up being a minor inconvenience at best isn't it.

[Zephyr]

Why did the Dragon Balls fill with negative energy from overuse when that wasn't established beforehand & Toriyama clearly didn't intend that to be a consequence of overusing them?

Didn't the Elder Kai in the Buu arc mention that overusing the Dragon Balls is a sin? That's why he didn't agree on the idea of using them to help them against Kid Buu from get go? I actually feel that it WAS established, our heroes just had no idea about it. Just like Trunks had no idea that Time Travel is forbidden for mortals, but now decades later we learn that it indeed is.

The idea that at least one god disapproves of the Dragon Balls is present in the original story, and it does help setup the revelation about Minus Energy. But Minus Energy and its related consequences being the reason for said god's disapproval aren't really established in the original story.

The Elder Kaioshin mentions the Dragon Balls being cheat codes, throwing the cosmic order into chaos, trifling with nature's laws, and says that the Namekians should only use them on their planet and not interfere with other worlds. It makes him come across less like someone making a practical warning about death and destruction, and more like a stuffy old man yelling at clouds. He's even fine with using them in the end, and while that's ultimately to help stop Boo, he also budges earlier when Goku mentions that using them will allow him to acquire a naughty picture of Bulma.

The GT retcon re-contextualizes those complaints as being unconscionably vague if mass death and destruction were the reasons for his being difficult about it. Like, if there was ever a time to mention "hey, using Dragon Balls more than once every hundred years or so will cause them to fill up with Minus Energy and maybe even cause the end of the world", it was probably when they used three wishes in rapid succession. And if they're that dangerous, then it's pretty bad that he was willing to risk that for a naughty picture.

I'm fine with the Elder Kaioshin being shitty in this way. And I do think this is a pretty solid attempt at building on and fleshing out his scruples from the Boo arc. But GT's reason for "don't use the Dragon Balls" is certainly not the same as Toriyama's reason for "don't use the Dragon Balls". And I'm not sure that GT's writers intended for "Elder Kaioshin is actually just really shitty" to be a natural interpretation of their fleshing out of his warning.

[tonysoprano300]

A lot of things in the series are predicated on getting to the next step & they didn't care about it all making sense, being logical, or lining up with past continuity. What they did is A to C storytelling in a lot of cases without caring what B was, or if it was good.

To be honest, yeah. There ARE lapses in logic necessary to make the story in GT work.
But again, we are talking about THIS franchise:

- Cell gets upper torso blown up
- Cell pukes #18 and devolves to Imperfect
- Cell self-destructs
- Cell somehow survives because as long his head isn't blown up, he'll be okay (?)
- Cell still has his Perfect Form despite having devolved before and the lack of #18 (??)
- Cell learned the Teleportation technique instantly with absolutely zero training (???)
- Cell is now even stronger than Gohan because Saiyan Cells (????)

Bulshitting it up to get from Point A to Point B without caring if it made sense has always been Dragon Ball's MO.
I don't know why GT, and only GT specifically, must be subject to a whole different level of scrutiny.

GT is a very mixed bag with its best arc being its second because it was a serialized narrative with clearly a good amount of time & passion for the material they were writing being poured into it. It's not flawless, but it's a lot better than the other 3 arcs surrounding it.

I thought the first half of the Baby arc (Yes, it's ONE arc) had a lot of passion behind it. Toriyama sure praised it as well when they presented him with the drafts.

Also the premise of that Arc had a bunch of absurdities….

-Freeza somehow survives despite the fact that we saw Goku blast him to oblivion on a planet that exploded shortly after

-Vegeta is now living with Bulma and the others at capsule corp

-The Dragon Team doesn’t care about taking precautions regarding Gero

-Dr.Gero is somehow able to produce robots more powerful than the emperor of the universe with no special materials

-Dr.Gero designed Cell in such a way that’s completely ridiculous, forcing him to absorb two other androids more powerful than himself instead of just making those components easily accessible in the lab

-Yamcha is made to be a dirt bag and a cheater in order to facilitate the birth of another saiyan character

I mean there’s probably other things i can think of, its not to say that fans don’t have a right to complain about such things but just that it isn’t unique to GT

[jjgp1112]

I can buy Kami forgetting about the Black Star balls with time...well not forgetting so much as them slipping from his mind after doing away with them since they turned into stone after he cast out Piccolo. After several centuries of them being deactivated and a nonconcern, he naturally doesn't even consider that merging back with Piccolo would reactivate them.

But it makes you wonder how Pilaf even knew about them shits. They clearly had never actually been used.

And then again, even if Kami would forget about them wouldn't Mr. Popo at least be vigilant about that? Kami delegated a lot of Dragon Ball related stuff to him after all.

And then AGAIN then again, he knew that merging with Piccolo would deactivate the regular Dragon Balls so surely THAT would be enough for him to realize the dangerous failed prototype Dragon Balls could possibly reactivate

And then again then again then AGAIN, like somebody else mentioned, Big Daddy Piccolo should've already known about the Black Star Dragon Balls if the Nameless Namekian made them.

And then again then again then again then AGAIN, weren't they able to find the Black Star Dragon Balls with the regular ol' Dragon Radar?! So they would've shown up post-merger!

So yeah, it's a major plot hole any way you slice it. Forget this post even existed, this is all ADHD babble

[Koitsukai]

But again, we are talking about THIS franchise:

- Cell gets upper torso blown up
- Cell pukes #18 and devolves to Imperfect
- Cell self-destructs
- Cell somehow survives because as long his head isn't blown up, he'll be okay (?)
- Cell still has his Perfect Form despite having devolved before and the lack of #18 (??)
- Cell learned the Teleportation technique instantly with absolutely zero training (???)
- Cell is now even stronger than Gohan because Saiyan Cells (????)

I don't think all of those qualify as asspulls.

- The torso thing, yeah, no doubt about it. He explicitly said it was in his fucking head... and it got blown away.
- Surviving the Cell-destruction makes no sense, you are right. Specially because not even Cell was expecting it. If it was a bluff it would've been way better.


- The puking makes sense. He got punched so hard he deperfected himself. He ate the twins, they weren't part of him to begin with, he wasn't vomiting his own liver or lungs. He was throwing up his last pizza.

- Coming back perfect does make sense, we don't know how he actually functions. The takeaway is that he never needed to absorb the androids per se, but the huge power they had. Apparently, if he had absorbed Piccolo, he also would've reached his 2nd form level of power. And the zenkai after the fake-destruct made him even stronger than absorbing 18.

- This doesn't seem like a problem either, Buu did the same thing without being a blend of the best fighters in the universe. Cell is just that good. Goku learned stuff at the spot, too, and was hardly as genetically gifted as Cell.

- That's saiyan biology, he is part saiyan. Also, he died to a one-armed Gohan, don't know how that means he was stronger.

[MasenkoHA]

- Coming back perfect does make sense, we don't know how he actually functions. The takeaway is that he never needed to absorb the androids per se, but the huge power they had. Apparently, if he had absorbed Piccolo, he also would've reached his 2nd form level of power. And the zenkai after the fake-destruct made him even stronger than absorbing 18.

Eh he very specifically needed 17 and 18 otherwise he could have and would have absorbed Piccolo.

I assumed it's like how someone can gain muscle mass they lost faster than when they first put it on. Cell's body was already accustomed to his perfect form so his Saiyan cells power boost just got it back for him.

[tonysoprano300]

And somehow self destruction doesn’t kill him but getting blasted by Gohan does, seemingly indestructible until the plot decided he wasn’t.

[Scsigs]

GT is genuinely such a waste of time, ngl

And I genuinely disagree because I found watching GT to be a a fun use of my time, the late 90s art is great, the characters have nice personalities instead of caricatures of themselves. Super Saiyan 4 as cool as it is, is the most overrated aspect amongst the fandom. Pan's personality and character growth is way more interesting than another new form that just exists to beat up villains and sometimes lose or win.

GT has good aspects, but a lot of the storytelling isn't great & I've explained why already. Even the characters aren't great half the time. TFS' reviews of the episodes point out several times Goku's out of character, or inconsistent with his previous portrayal in the manga & previous shows. Pan consistently floats between being a decent character & a bitch, mainly to Giru, often for no reason. She doesn't provide much to the series, unfortunately. She's better in the last arc, but she didn't develop any new powers, get stronger, go Super Saiyan, or anything. Everything is left up to Goku & more often than not, she's either a damsel in distress, a meat shield, or useless. It sucks.
Super Saiyan 4 being "an overrated aspect" as you say should really tell you something about the show. The fact that the 1 aspect most people like & remember about the series being a new transformation rather than the stories being told, the characters, & other aspects is very telling.

Why did the Dragon Balls fill with negative energy from overuse when that wasn't established beforehand & Toriyama clearly didn't intend that to be a consequence of overusing them?

Spoiler:

Didn't the Elder Kai in the Buu arc mention that overusing the Dragon Balls is a sin? That's why he didn't agree on the idea of using them to help them against Kid Buu from get go? I actually feel that it WAS established, our heroes just had no idea about it. Just like Trunks had no idea that Time Travel is forbidden for mortals, but now decades later we learn that it indeed is.

No, he didn't. In either the manga or the anime. The specific panel you showed is from the Elder Kai hating that Earth has Dragon Balls, as he was talking about the Dragon Balls & being surprised that people other than the Namekians had them. Those lines moreso imply that the process of making Dragon Balls was only entrusted to them, or they figured it out & the information was limited to them, or that the gods never thought that that knowledge would get off Namek because of the lack of the ability for Namekians to get off the planet. That doesn't signal to me that there was a concept of overusing them being a sin & doing that will result in what they did in GT. The writers of GT took what he said there & used it to set up the Shadow Dragons. Toriyama never intended that to happen. This is why in the original manga & Super, Toriyama never wrote a story of them being overused & that happening. In fact, he made it a joke that Bulma uses them every so often to make herself look younger & make her ass more plump because Vegeta ages way slower than she does & she's that vain.
I always took him disagreeing over using them meaning that you shouldn't HAVE to use the Dragon Balls to solve your problems when it comes to things like Buu & they should be more special when used. That arc & the one beforehand are full of examples of pre-empting certain things from happening by being proactive. Goku & co don't take out or confront Gero when they're warned ahead of time about him & what he wants to do, which leads to growing threats & Goku ultimately dying having to take care of the problem he's responsible for. Vegeta ended up sacrificing himself to Buu because of his hubris & need to be better than Goku making him derail them pre-empting Buu's resurrection. These are 2 of the biggest examples. And Toriyama tried to use that to make it so the mortals can solve their own problems. Hell, this is kept a bit in Super where one of the things Whis was trying to teach Goku & Vegeta was to overcome their faults & take care of things as quickly as possible, hence why he reverses time for Goku to take Freeza out to correct the mistake of Vegeta letting Freeza blow up the Earth. That was what I thought Toriyama was trying to make the message of the last bit of the arc, at least.

The thought that time travel was forbidden for mortals is really weird when you actually think about it because, to me, it seems like that should've been addressed in the original arc if it was that big a deal since King Kai was shown to be watching over them, but ok. That was established later because Trunks used his time machine in front of Beerus & Whis instead. Just like it was established later than when the manga came out that Potara fusion requires at least 1 Kai in it to be permanent as the reason why Goku & Vegeta defused when they were inside Buu when the Elder Kai attributed it originally to them being inside Buu cancelling it out.

Also, keep in mind that we're talking about what Toriyama intended, what he kept vague at the time, & what he later put in later DB materials VS the anime writers looking at lines that were kept a bit vague & turning them into something that meant something deeper without his involvement or input. There's a stark difference in the people putting forth ideas by working off of previous materials written by someone else & the original author of the work writing more stuff for it themselves. There's a difference with these.

A lot of things in the series are predicated on getting to the next step & they didn't care about it all making sense, being logical, or lining up with past continuity. What they did is A to C storytelling in a lot of cases without caring what B was, or if it was good.

To be honest, yeah. There ARE lapses in logic necessary to make the story in GT work.
But again, we are talking about THIS franchise:

- Cell gets upper torso blown up
- Cell pukes #18 and devolves to Imperfect
- Cell self-destructs
- Cell somehow survives because as long his head isn't blown up, he'll be okay (?)
- Cell still has his Perfect Form despite having devolved before and the lack of #18 (??)
- Cell learned the Teleportation technique instantly with absolutely zero training (???)
- Cell is now even stronger than Gohan because Saiyan Cells (????)

Bullshitting it up to get from Point A to Point B without caring if it made sense has always been Dragon Ball's MO.
I don't know why GT, and only GT specifically, must be subject to a whole different level of scrutiny.

The Android arc is a terrible example of this because it was subject to massive rewrites as it went along from what Toriyama was planning to do because his editor kept rejecting the characters he was designing to be the villains & that impacted the arc a lot because of that. And in regards to those things listed, the only thing that doesn't make sense to any extent is why Cell would still be alive if he needs the nucleus in his head to regenerate. I really wish Toriyama hadn't included that line about his head because it led to a plot hole when Goku blew up most of his upper half with the Warp Kamehameha. Just let him regenerate because he has Piccolo's DNA in him.
Look at any Dragon Ball arc before then & a lot of the storytelling has an A-B-C structure where pretty much everything lines up & makes enough sense to enjoy it without noticing plot holes. When you don't have plot holes, or structural problems, more people tend to enjoy the stories you're trying to tell. Unfortunately, the Android & the Buu arcs have a lot of bad storytelling, plot holes, & lapses in logic & they're some of the more contentious parts of the original series. Particularly Buu.

GT is a very mixed bag with its best arc being its second because it was a serialized narrative with clearly a good amount of time & passion for the material they were writing being poured into it. It's not flawless, but it's a lot better than the other 3 arcs surrounding it.

I thought the first half of the Baby arc (Yes, it's ONE arc) had a lot of passion behind it. Toriyama sure praised it as well when they presented him with the drafts.

I mean, technically, it's 1 arc, but I'm talking about the actual half with Baby in it as opposed to the first half where it's a throwback to the early arcs of DB that even the writers stopped doing partway through because even they thought the scripts weren't turning out very good, so they pivoted to doing a more serialized arc in the style of later Dragon Ball instead & the quality shot way up on the whole. Then they shit the bed with the Super 17 arc & the last one because they had to end the show & probably didn't have a ton of time to plan better stuff. There's a reason most people remember Baby. He's actually a good idea & most of his time is spent pretty well in regards to his plans & how he executes them. Unfortunately, his end isn't great for what was established beforehand, but a lot of what happened before that I like enough.

[AliTheZombie13]

GT has good aspects, but a lot of the storytelling isn't great & I've explained why already.

A lot of the storytelling in Dragon Ball isn't great either. Didn't stop me from enjoying it when Toriyama was writing it, doesn't stop me in GT.

TFS' reviews of the episodes point out several times Goku's out of character, or inconsistent with his previous portrayal in the manga & previous shows.

TFS isn't some kind of Dragon Ball authority and I could care less about their opinion. And given that I had several issues with Goku's characterization during the "Z era" of the original manga's run, I really don't mind GT toning him down. Goku's portrayal in GT is fine for the most part (The one part where it isn't being during Super #17).

Pan consistently floats between being a decent character & a bitch, mainly to Giru, often for no reason. She doesn't provide much to the series, unfortunately.

Heavy disagree, I'll take her over Vegeta any day of the week.

Super Saiyan 4 being "an overrated aspect" as you say should really tell you something about the show. The fact that the 1 aspect most people like & remember about the series being a new transformation rather than the stories being told, the characters, & other aspects is very telling.

You're right, the original Dragon Ball for example, was a terrible show, even Japan likes to pretend it doesn't exist in favor of Z. Westerners constantly call it "Mid" and "a waste of time." And every single attempt to import it before Z resulted in an utter complete failure of poor ratings where it winded up being cancelled after only a few episodes, that's very telling. Shame on Toriyama for ever writing such atrocity.

...and in case somebody didn't notice, that was sarcasm.

[MasenkoHA]

[. TFS' reviews of the episodes point out several times Goku's out of character, or inconsistent with his previous portrayal in the manga & previous shows.

I hope one day online fans discourse evolves past needing to cite some YouTube reviewer(s) has to say. I do not and will never care what TFS/Linkara/Mr.Enter/ Random dude with cartoon avatar has to say. Their opinions are no more credible than anybody else's.

Super Saiyan 4 being "an overrated aspect" as you say should really tell you something about the show. The fact that the 1 aspect most people like & remember about the series being a new transformation rather than the stories being told, the characters, & other aspects is very telling.

Is that any different than Dragon Ball Z...where most people remember the transformations?

The Android arc is a terrible example of this because it was subject to massive rewrites as it went along from what Toriyama was planning to do because his editor kept rejecting the characters he was designing to be the villains & that impacted the arc a lot because of that.

What rewrites? Toriyama was making it up as he went along and working out his story per feedback from his former editor and then current editor. All of those examples from Ali are well after it was decided by Toriyama that Cell would be the big bad.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I like Team Four Star but some fans tend to pedestalize them and their work, and worse even consider it a substitute for the show itself rather than a fun little parody on the side.

MasakoX has a great voice for Goku, but it's very much purely a comedic take. It doesn't compare to Sean Schemmel or Peter Kelamis at their best where they're giving their all with a serious performance as both have also shown they can do goofy Goku as well but they don't depend on it.

[JulieYBM]

I stopped watching TFS DBZA at the beginning of the Artificial Humans arc. The humor stopped being my kind of thing, and I think I don't really enjoy the way that it has permeated the general pop culture of it all. Fandom likes their hah-hah funny parody that doesn't take itself seriously, but the best part of art is that it does and should be sincere.

Also, the best joke was the Super Friends joke and when that never got touched up on again there just wasn't any reason to go back.

I did really enjoy their Let's Plays of Left 4 Dead 2, though. The camaraderie there was much more natural. Heck, I enjoyed them enough to buy Left 4 Dead 2 and pour over a thousand hours into the game over the years. I think the sort of humor they employ fits original work a lot more naturally, since it's so much more...American adult animation.

It's honestly really funny to think back on it now. The internet and internet media were both hugely different when DBZA became a thing in 2008. Like, that was the era of There Will Be Brawl.

Jesus, 2008 was a long time ago already.

[WittyUsername]

But again, we are talking about THIS franchise:

- Cell gets upper torso blown up
- Cell pukes #18 and devolves to Imperfect
- Cell self-destructs
- Cell somehow survives because as long his head isn't blown up, he'll be okay (?)
- Cell still has his Perfect Form despite having devolved before and the lack of #18 (??)
- Cell learned the Teleportation technique instantly with absolutely zero training (???)
- Cell is now even stronger than Gohan because Saiyan Cells (????)

I don't think all of those qualify as asspulls.

- The torso thing, yeah, no doubt about it. He explicitly said it was in his fucking head... and it got blown away.
- Surviving the Cell-destruction makes no sense, you are right. Specially because not even Cell was expecting it. If it was a bluff it would've been way better.


- The puking makes sense. He got punched so hard he deperfected himself. He ate the twins, they weren't part of him to begin with, he wasn't vomiting his own liver or lungs. He was throwing up his last pizza.

- Coming back perfect does make sense, we don't know how he actually functions. The takeaway is that he never needed to absorb the androids per se, but the huge power they had. Apparently, if he had absorbed Piccolo, he also would've reached his 2nd form level of power. And the zenkai after the fake-destruct made him even stronger than absorbing 18.

- This doesn't seem like a problem either, Buu did the same thing without being a blend of the best fighters in the universe. Cell is just that good. Goku learned stuff at the spot, too, and was hardly as genetically gifted as Cell.

- That's saiyan biology, he is part saiyan. Also, he died to a one-armed Gohan, don't know how that means he was stronger.

Regarding a couple of your points:

-Cell puking up #18 doesn’t really make sense, because it suggests that she was just sitting in him the whole time without being broken down or anything, even though Cell logistically shouldn’t have even been big enough to just store a whole adult human being in his body. Then there’s the aforementioned fact that he got his upper body destroyed by Goku earlier, so if 18 was just sitting inside him the whole time, shouldn’t she have been blown up too?

-I don’t recall it ever being suggested that Cell would’ve been able to transform without absorbing 17 and 18. He specifically targeted them because he seemingly needed their components to reach his perfect form.

[tonysoprano300]

Also worth noting that while SSJ4 was a transformation, its integration into the story was done in a way that was unlike anything we’ve seen in DB before. It wasn’t just Goku powering up or getting angry, it was him tapping into the savagery of the Oozaru and finding himself within that state. It was complete mastery of mind, body and soul. The design looks cool and all but the episode where Goku ascends to SSJ4 is arguably the best transformation in the series

[ABED]

In the case of the SSJ4 transformation, it's one of the more interesting transformations. Instead of Goku transforming due to rage, it's the serenity of remembering his family that triggers the transformation.

As for the person who said the Cell saga was rewritten because of Toriyama's editor, that's not what a rewrite is. Also, every writer needs a good editor. And lastly, Toriyama did a great job of making the shifts in the narrative feel organic. If you knew nothing of the behind the scenes stories, you'd think it was all intentional, which is the ideal.

-The Dragon Team doesn’t care about taking precautions regarding Gero

-Dr.Gero is somehow able to produce robots more powerful than the emperor of the universe with no special materials

-Dr.Gero designed Cell in such a way that’s completely ridiculous, forcing him to absorb two other androids more powerful than himself instead of just making those components easily accessible in the lab

That's not bad writing. It's always who they were.

Sure, but lots of this stuff requires a big buy from the audience.

My thought is that he designed Cell to absorb 17 and 18 as a failsafe after they proved difficult to control.

[MasenkoHA]

In the case of the SSJ4 transformation, it's one of the more interesting transformations. Instead of Goku transforming due to rage, it's the serenity of remembering his family that triggers the transformation.

As for the person who said the Cell saga was rewritten because of Toriyama's editor, that's not what a rewrite is. Also, every writer needs a good editor. And lastly, Toriyama did a great job of making the shifts in the narrative feel organic. If you knew nothing of the behind the scenes stories, you'd think it was all intentional, which is the ideal.

Co-signed

Aside from Trunks explicitly mentioning 19 and 20 in the manga (fixed in the anime) the whole thing feels organic. Going back in time altering the timeline in ways the protagonist didn't expect is like the most basic time traveling story trope. Same thing with Cell. "Oh you thought this guy was bad? But this guy he's so much worse!" is one of the most commonly used tropes in good vs evil fiction.

And yes Dragon Ball, like most long term fiction, is nothing but taking feedback from editors and looking at what works and what doesn't when engaging with the audience

Road stories aren't popular? More focus on martial arts

Goku isn't a strong enough character to solo lead a training arc? Give him a foil in Kuririn to play off of

Dragon Ball is starting to lose popularity? Fist of the North Star is a hit. Be more like that. Muscle Men and more good vs evil conflicts and more pew pews


Women like pretty men and bad boys more Vegeta and Trunks to increase female readership

19 and 20 are a joke. Do better.

17 and 18 don't have the oomph to be big bads. Do better

-

My thought is that he designed Cell to absorb 17 and 18 as a failsafe after they proved difficult to control.

Even as like an 8 year old I assumed Cell needing to absorb 17 and 18 was Gero's petty revenge for the latter two being disobedient punks.

[tonysoprano300]

In the case of the SSJ4 transformation, it's one of the more interesting transformations. Instead of Goku transforming due to rage, it's the serenity of remembering his family that triggers the transformation.

As for the person who said the Cell saga was rewritten because of Toriyama's editor, that's not what a rewrite is. Also, every writer needs a good editor. And lastly, Toriyama did a great job of making the shifts in the narrative feel organic. If you knew nothing of the behind the scenes stories, you'd think it was all intentional, which is the ideal.

-The Dragon Team doesn’t care about taking precautions regarding Gero

-Dr.Gero is somehow able to produce robots more powerful than the emperor of the universe with no special materials

-Dr.Gero designed Cell in such a way that’s completely ridiculous, forcing him to absorb two other androids more powerful than himself instead of just making those components easily accessible in the lab

That's not bad writing. It's always who they were.

Sure, but lots of this stuff requires a big buy from the audience.

My thought is that he designed Cell to absorb 17 and 18 as a failsafe after they proved difficult to control.

When I say precautions I mean that the Dragon team made zero effort in terms of gathering intel to prepare for the battle, they didn’t try to find Gero’s lab, learn what he looks like, figure out what types of things the Androids could do etc. Its certainly debatable as to whether its in character for them to allow Gero to make these machines but even if we grant that it is, they still made sure to put themselves in the worst position possible going into that fight. They didn’t even scout the area Trunks mentioned ahead of time once in the entirety of the 3 year time skip. All things that probably happened because the plot required them to

Gero already had a failsafe IIRC