Unpopular DB opinions

[Zephyr]

The "you have to turn your brain off to enjoy it" is rooted in reactions to criticism of some of Dragon Ball's more sloppily-written stories, which does make a certain sort of sense. It's a defensive strategy intended to help one retain enjoyment of something they deeply cherish.

But it's one I find increasingly strange. Because I've come to enjoy, for instance, the Cell and Boo arcs more by having my brain on while re-reading them. Yes, if I'm analyzing the story while reading, more flaws are noticeable and jump out at me. At the same time though, it's only by having my brain on while reading that I've noticed many subtle details that warrant appreciation, even in the arcs where Toriyama was at his most burnt-out and featured the least amount of planning and foresight from him.

So, this defensive strategy for retaining some enjoyment of a cherished work ironically limits the amount of enjoyment one could otherwise get from it. Yes, you risk being unable to un-notice a myriad of imperfections in it, but noticing those is perfectly compatible with having a deeper appreciation for it. I'll take that mixed perception over ignorant bliss.

EDIT:

I have a relatively recent unpopular opinion; I do not care one bit for SS3 Vegeta, and I don’t understand why fans were still clamoring for him to get that form. Super Saiyan 3 is pretty much treated as obsolete these days anyway.

Plus, Vegeta being able to access the form in Daima doesn’t even make sense with the Super timeline. He didn’t seem to be able to use that form in BoG. That might not be a problem if we assume that Daima and Super take place in different timelines, but Daima also mentions that Goku comes from Universe 7, so I doubt that was Toriyama’s intention.

I realize the whole “this form exists to sell merch” discourse is contentious on this forum, but to be blunt, I don’t know how else I’m supposed to describe SS3 Vegeta.

Well, Super's stories were perfectly comfortable having Super Saiyan 2 characters match or surpass Super Saiyan 3 characters. If you could be as strong as (or stronger than) 3 without having 3's drawbacks, wouldn't you not use 3? It would be perfectly in-line with all of this to simply have Vegeta's Super Saiyan 2 in Battle of Gods be stronger than his Super Saiyan 3, somehow for some reason.

Part of me dislikes him getting the form in only 6 months, because it makes him seem way more talented at training than his character arc in the original story would suggest. This is something that SH also does, and I think both are rooted ultimately in the Kanzenban ending having Vegeta reaffirm their rivalry, despite the ending in general basically hinging on that being a thing of the past. However, rivals catching up to Goku in less time than it took him to do the thing is also somewhat of a staple, thinking back to how quickly Piccolo, Tenshinhan, Yamcha, and Chaozu reached Kaio's as a prime example. So maybe Vegeta (Daima) (Mini) (Super Saiyan 3) isn't necessarily a symptom of Kanzenban revisionism.

Part of me also dislikes the way Super Saiyan 3 is depicted in Daima, which is just continuing the trend of post-Boo stories depicting Super Saiyan 3 without any of the interesting side-effects of the form, such as how much of a double-edged sword it is, and just how massive its ki is. People outside of the universe sensed Goku using the form: how is Goku in any way unaware that Vegeta has it?

[WittyUsername]

From my experience, a large chunk of Dragon Ball fans, at least in the West, do seem to care more about flashy transformations and character stats (“How high is x character’s power level?” “Is Broly stronger than Jiren?” “Can Ultra Instinct Goku beat Pre-Crisis Superman in a fight?”) over actual writing and storytelling. That’s why there was a noticeable pushback when Daima was announced.

Fans wanted to see the DBS anime return so they could get stuff like Moro, Ultra Ego and Black Freeza in animated form. It didn't matter to them whether Daima would be a good show in its own right. They just wanted their shiny action figures with big power levels.

[AliTheZombie13]

From my experience, a large chunk of Dragon Ball fans, at least in the West, do seem to care more about flashy transformations and character stats (“How high is x character’s power level?” “Is Broly stronger than Jiren?” “Can Ultra Instinct Goku beat Pre-Crisis Superman in a fight?”) over actual writing and storytelling. That’s why there was a noticeable pushback when Daima was announced.

Fans wanted to see the DBS anime return so they could get stuff like Moro, Ultra Ego and Black Freeza in animated form. It didn't matter to them whether Daima would be a good show in its own right. They just wanted their shiny action figures with big power levels.

"Can he beat Goku, though?"
A skinny, defenseless cat can chop Goku's head off and leave him resurrectionless if the artist/writer feels like it.
In fact, I would say that aligns better with Toriyama "subverting expectations" and "prioritizing a gag over everything."
The power fantasy sentiment in this fandom is so annoying.

[SupremeKai25]

The "just watch Super with the brain turned off" crowd is funny, because then they also ask stupid questions that are answered quite clearly in the story like "Why Zamasu stole Goku's body instead of Zeno's?"

From my experience, a large chunk of Dragon Ball fans, at least in the West, do seem to care more about flashy transformations and character stats (“How high is x character’s power level?” “Is Broly stronger than Jiren?” “Can Ultra Instinct Goku beat Pre-Crisis Superman in a fight?”) over actual writing and storytelling. That’s why there was a noticeable pushback when Daima was announced.

Fans wanted to see the DBS anime return so they could get stuff like Moro, Ultra Ego and Black Freeza in animated form. It didn't matter to them whether Daima would be a good show in its own right. They just wanted their shiny action figures with big power levels.

I'm more curious about why all of your examples are with Super characters as if it was Super that started this trend, and not the way Dragon Ball has been since 1990?

[jjgp1112]

From my experience, a large chunk of Dragon Ball fans, at least in the West, do seem to care more about flashy transformations and character stats (“How high is x character’s power level?” “Is Broly stronger than Jiren?” “Can Ultra Instinct Goku beat Pre-Crisis Superman in a fight?”) over actual writing and storytelling. That’s why there was a noticeable pushback when Daima was announced.

Fans wanted to see the DBS anime return so they could get stuff like Moro, Ultra Ego and Black Freeza in animated form. It didn't matter to them whether Daima would be a good show in its own right. They just wanted their shiny action figures with big power levels.

i can't tell younhow annoying it is to see, say, a thread on Reddit asking "How would you rewrite the Buu saga?" and it's just a bunch of chucklefucks talking about power level inconsistencies like some NBA stat geeks, zero about the actual narrative. It's so weird. Shonen fans treat that shit like a card game lmao

[VegettoEX]

I think there's a middle ground and minutia there that's being ignored, because (often? always?) these discussions get reduced down to extremes.

As Number One Moro Stan Mike VegettoEX Kanzenshuu LaBrie, I'd love to see an animated spin on that arc. I absolutely adored all the characters, their designs (well... for the most part), especially their interactions, lots of incredible growth...

And none (well, very little!) of it has to do with "which number bigger". (Not gonna pretend I don't like big punch bad guy go boom stuff, myself, too!)

Meanwhile, I was separately optimistic about Daima.

Two things can be true. People have unique tastes.

[JulieYBM]

Not to sound like a broken record, but I do think that the inflexible fandom obsessed with battle power stat stuff does wind up making the entire process of creating and looking over a story very boring. Fights lose any and all meaning when the character arcs at hand are ignored for dumb shit like, "Whose battle power is 1,000,000,000 points higher than whose?!" A fight is fun because of how the characters are interacting and how engaged the artistic minds involved are with the characters and their stories.

Which is honestly kind of why I enjoyed the Dragon Ball Z version of Gokuu va Majin Vegeta so much. I just wish that it had been a bit more tied into foreknowledge of how the characters' arcs would have played out.

Or heck, the way that Ishitani Megumi tapped so fuckin' hard into Jiren for Super #131. You could really feel that oomph.

[WittyUsername]

I'm more curious about why all of your examples are with Super characters as if it was Super that started this trend, and not the way Dragon Ball has been since 1990?

I never claimed this problem started with Super. I used Super characters in my examples because most of the big power-scaling debates these days happen to involve them.

Ultimately, I think the the introduction of power levels in the Saiyan arc was the big culprit in the Dragon Ball fandom’s obsession with how strong characters are. It turned this stuff into a numbers game.

[MasenkoHA]

Ultimately, I think the the introduction of power levels in the Saiyan arc was the big culprit in the Dragon Ball fandom’s obsession with how strong characters are. It turned this stuff into a numbers game.

Ironically the whole point of battle powers being introduced j. Saiyan and Namek arc is you shouldn't turn strength and combat skills into a numbers game. Those that did got themselves killed.

Vegeta was one upping Freeza's men BECAUSE he stopped relying on scouters to give him a completely falliable estimation of his opponents abilities.

It makes the power level obsession of the fandom even more infuriating.

[Yuji]

Ultimately, I think the the introduction of power levels in the Saiyan arc was the big culprit in the Dragon Ball fandom’s obsession with how strong characters are. It turned this stuff into a numbers game.

Ironically the whole point of battle powers being introduced j. Saiyan and Namek arc is you shouldn't turn strength and combat skills into a numbers game. Those that did got themselves killed.

Vegeta was one upping Freeza's men BECAUSE he stopped relying on scouters to give him a completely falliable estimation of his opponents abilities.

It makes the power level obsession of the fandom even more infuriating.

But effectively it was a numbers game. The person with the bigger number almost always won, excluding the climax of the arc which was usually a team effort, but in the Namek arc this "my number is bigger than yours so I won" thing was a constant throughout. Vegeta didn't win necessarily because his power was weaker, he defeater Zarbon and Dodoria precisely because he was stronger. Z did a poor job of conveying its idea that battle powers don't matter. For all its faults, Super has conveyed much better that teamwork, skill, technique etc matter just as much.

[AliTheZombie13]

Don't know whether it contributes to the numbers game or whatever, but I was baffled with the deaths in Namek.
Goku was able to survive Vegeta in his Great Ape form despite the power difference being 2000% higher.
Then Vegeta arrives on Namek with a negligible power difference compared to Kui/Dodoria/Zarbon, and he's able to effectively one-hit kill them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Despite the story going "Power levels don't matter", it also consistently shows that "Bigger power level = Faster, stronger, can effortlessly wipe the floor with your enemy." The general impression I got from the whole thing was that if your power is one unit higher than your enemy's, then they're as good as cannon fodder, and some are just better at hiding their true power number than others.

Like, I don't want to care about this stuff, my friends warned me before getting into DBZ that power levels were stupid and I should just turn my brain off and ignore them, but it's impossible... I like my brain.

[Yuji]

I think I realized why some of the Daima retcons irk me and it's because the lore retcons don't feel like they're servicing the story as a reveal or further context. It feels like Toriyama wanted to reuse old devices and concepts (Saibaman seeds, Dragon balls, Glind designs, etc) and rather than come up with new ones or explain how they exist in the demon realm, the easier explanation was just to ascribe their origin to it.

[MasenkoHA]

Ultimately, I think the the introduction of power levels in the Saiyan arc was the big culprit in the Dragon Ball fandom’s obsession with how strong characters are. It turned this stuff into a numbers game.

Ironically the whole point of battle powers being introduced j. Saiyan and Namek arc is you shouldn't turn strength and combat skills into a numbers game. Those that did got themselves killed.

Vegeta was one upping Freeza's men BECAUSE he stopped relying on scouters to give him a completely falliable estimation of his opponents abilities.

It makes the power level obsession of the fandom even more infuriating.

But effectively it was a numbers game. The person with the bigger number almost always won, excluding the climax of the arc which was usually a team effort, but in the Namek arc this "my number is bigger than yours so I won" thing was a constant throughout. Vegeta didn't win necessarily because his power was weaker, he defeater Zarbon and Dodoria precisely because he was stronger. Z did a poor job of conveying its idea that battle powers don't matter. For all its faults, Super has conveyed much better that teamwork, skill, technique etc matter just as much.

By this logic the series has been a numbers game since day 1 way before scouters were introduced back when Goku was beating up pterodactyls and Bear Thieves and Desert Bandits.

If people are gonna complain about the Saiyan and Namek arcs introducing battle powers to the story it should also be acknowledged that every character that relied on those numbers was treated like an idiot and got bested. From the very first fight.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Yuji]

By this logic the series has been a numbers game since day 1 way before scouters were introduced back when Goku was beating up pterodactyls and Bear Thieves and Desert Bandits.

If people are gonna complain about the Saiyan and Namek arcs introducing battle powers to the story it should also be acknowledged that every character that relied on those numbers was treated like an idiot and got bested. From the very first fight.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I agree. I've never been a "Part 1 was about martial arts and skill, and Part 2 is about big beams and power levels!" truther. Martial arts and skill have never been more prevalent in the series than in modern material, actually.

I just think Z gets the most flack for it because numerical battle powers put that idea that the strongest guy wins into a visual representation, then claims that no actually the numbers don't really matter, but every fight proves that they do.

[WittyUsername]

Unfortunately, I never really got the impression that the series was trying to suggest that power levels are a bunch of nonsense. The reason scouters are seen as unreliable is because they don’t account for the fact that certain fighters are capable of suppressing their ki at will. It doesn’t mean that the numbers themselves are irrelevant.

When Freeza boasts about how his power level in his second form is over a million, Vegeta is shocked and frightened by it, so evidently, he still believes that power levels do matter.

By all accounts, power levels apparently are a legitimate method of gauging a person’s strength in the Dragon Ball world.

[Zephyr]

I think there's some pedantic wordplay that allows us to have our cake and eat it too. Hear me out:

It's not even just that people can change how much of their ki is detectable, it's also that the best of them don't even need a scouter to detect ki.

The scouters are what are unreliable. Used on a skilled person (who can change the size of their ki on purpose), a scouter only tells you as much information as said person wants you to know. And when used on a strong enough person, the scouter breaks before even getting a complete reading.

Most importantly, "battle power/power level" is what the scouter-users refer to ki as. So, in a certain way, we can think of "battle power/power level" as a scouter-user's understanding of ki size/ki reading. And so it's inherently unreliable.

So: "battle power/power level" is inherently unreliable, because that's scouter talk, and scouters are the actual unreliable component here. The very phrase implies a reading from an unreliable device.* This is different from the actual maximum size of someone's ki, and is different from detecting that ki with your own natural senses, both of which actually are reliable.

*: I regard Vegeta's continued use of "battle power/power level" as a synonym for "ki size" more as a symptom of his difficulty letting go of his old worldview (up there with continuing to deadname Goku), than a mark against this fresh-out-of-bed exercise in reconciliation.

*: Also, yeah, characters are given official and accurate "battle powers/power levels" outside of the actual story, like Super Saiyan Goku's 150,000,000 on Namek. That is rendered in scouter-talk, but it's undoubtedly intended to be accurate.

---

But yes, "bigger ki" does usually win the day. Which can sound boring and predictable, but that often simply shifts the combat challenge/puzzle to "how can I get the bigger ki?" Maybe you need to gather ki from others for a big enough attack, maybe gathering this ki also requires that your allies run interference and distraction, maybe you need to check all the boxes to fulfill the alien prophecy, maybe you need to optimize the alien prophecy, maybe you need to release your inhibitions and stop worrying about collateral damage, maybe you need to master a silly dance, etc. etc.

Finally, the whole "you have to turn your brain off, it doesn't make that much sense" I think is best applied to the futile exercise of trying to extrapolate from a "battle power/power level" reading and figure out what actual destructive feats someone with that number is capable of. Like, sometimes a big gap seems to not matter that much, and sometimes a small gap seems to matter a great deal. It's all complete nonsense and won't make any sense, unless you spend two decades collaborating with others to try and make that square peg fit in the round hole.

[JulieYBM]

This has me thinking that it would have actually been really cool if Vegeta's battle power (30,000 in the Kanzenban) had been confirmed to be a smaller number, than, say, Recoom's battle battle number (he doesn't have an official battle power, but let's pretend that it's 40,000), but Vegeta was absolutely schooling him because he had a tighter grasp on ki, until Recoom began to improve his control mid-battle. That would have been a really nice wrinkle to add to the story and character dynamics, while still playing on the Freeza Force's reliance on technology over martial arts training.

[Hugo Boss]

This has me thinking that it would have actually been really cool if Vegeta's battle power (30,000 in the Kanzenban) had been confirmed to be a smaller number, than, say, Recoom's battle battle number (he doesn't have an official battle power, but let's pretend that it's 40,000), but Vegeta was absolutely schooling him because he had a tighter grasp on ki, until Recoom began to improve his control mid-battle. That would have been a really nice wrinkle to add to the story and character dynamics, while still playing on the Freeza Force's reliance on technology over martial arts training.

This is more or less how Vegeta vs. Granolah and Granolah vs. Gas played out, at least until Gas started to get bigger and bigger battle power as soon as he was overwhelmed.

[Scsigs]

1. Bring Freeza back from the dead for a movie because people loved his original arc? Check.

Toriyama got the idea to bring back Freeza because of the song F by Maximum the Hormone. It wasn't "because fans loved the original arc."

5. Reboot Bardock in Minus, then put him in the movie? Check.

Also not fan related.Toriyama liked Burdock enough to incorporate him into the manga all the way back in 1991. When he decided to do an origin story it made sense to include him

7. Do a story with Gohan & Piccolo as the primary protagonists who rarely get the spotlight rather than Goku & Vegeta? Check.

Toriyama wanted to do a Piccolo story because Piccolo was his favorite character. He got persuaded by a producer to include Gohan as a co-lead but this is another case of Toriyama doing something he wanted to do (at least as far as Piccolo is concerned) and not because the fans wanted it.

Either way on most of these things, they at least have that feel. I mean, the Broly movie was directly because of Broly being popular overseas & combines elements of the original Z movie with Fusion Reborn (Goku & Vegeta facing an extremely powerful foe & having to fuse to beat them) & the original Bardock special, though that was moreso adapting the Minus version of Bardock & not necessarily putting him in because fans love the character. And, yes, I know he liked Bardock enough to reference the original special in the manga. However, the decision to reboot him entirely seems like maybe a mix of that & a way to get more people to read the Jaco manga since a short bonus chapter rebooted him into the proper DB canon (though he didn't need to since nothing in later stuff contradicts the special still, but I digress).

Frieza also came back to life in the Fusion Reborn movie.
He also had a rematch in GT, although he was technically dead.

Bringing back such a character is usually a nostalgia boost, and easier than coming up with a new character.

Freeza did not "come back to life" in that movie. He was still dead just like the other warriors from Hell & other undead. They just weren't able to be held in Hell because of the dimensional barriers being broken down by Janemba. That was the whole point of those characters getting those cameos in that movie.
GT, yes, he was also still dead because GT just had to rip off Fusion Reborn & attach its B-Plot to the Super 17 arc.

[TheSaiyanGod]

I think there's a middle ground and minutia there that's being ignored, because (often? always?) these discussions get reduced down to extremes.

As Number One Moro Stan Mike VegettoEX Kanzenshuu LaBrie, I'd love to see an animated spin on that arc. I absolutely adored all the characters, their designs (well... for the most part), especially their interactions, lots of incredible growth...

And none (well, very little!) of it has to do with "which number bigger". (Not gonna pretend I don't like big punch bad guy go boom stuff, myself, too!)

Meanwhile, I was separately optimistic about Daima.

Two things can be true. People have unique tastes.

Yes. And on top of that (both agreeing with you and kind of responding to WittyUsername), the people who were skeptical about Daima weren't necessarily just the power level enthusiasts either. I'm sure there were people who probably looked down on Daima for seemingly being more adventure-driven and not really featuring the characters' most recent transformations and power levels, but folks who weren't on board with Daima weren't just those types of people. Several of them just weren't interested in the premise (which, on the surface, seems to retread old ground by turning the characters into kids again) and due to its nature, being a prequel to a prequel (something that was already annoying fans who can't stand so many pre-End of Z stories with Super).

And at the same time, although tons of people talk about transformations when they say they want to see Moro and Granolah animated, it doesn't mean these people (and I'm sure others too) aren't interested in seeing other aspects of these arcs (story, character arcs, the new antagonists, interactions).

As for the Super Saiyan 3 discussion, I obviously would've liked to see his transformation tying into any kind of character arc for Vegeta in Daima (after all, anything would be better than nothing, and I can't say I would rather have nothing in regards to the story), but the very foundation on why people even wanted Vegeta to get this form in the first place is basically fan service, seeing him with it just for the sake of it. Power-level wise, he already have better stuff and higher level forms, so it doesn't matter for the PL enthusiasts (since people are arguing that's one of the reasons people care about it). Even if the writers came up with ways to tie it into Vegeta's arc, we also know in which stage of his life Vegeta is after Daima. They could do things with him, but it they don't...then whatever (kinda). In short, the form doesn't matter at this point, which is why I'm not bothered by him just kind of getting out of knowhere. The reason it's even here is just to show its existence, but it wasn't necessary at all. And since that's the case, people that like it probably just like to see their favorite character gets a new things that was not in the story before, even if doesn't have in-universe meaning behind it. I woud say it's not just about power levels either.