Dragon Ball Super weakness and strengths

[super michael]

I created this topic so we can talk about Dragon Ball Super weakness and strength.

To start I will mention DBS weakness. When it came to character writing, they did a really bad job at it. They made Goku dumb and annoying, even in scenes when he had no business being dumb and annoying, like in DBS Super Hero an example. Other characters were written bad such as Chi Chi, Buu, Goten and Trunks.
When it came to power scale, they didn't do a good job. They gained a lot of power from weak training, such as Kuririn in the gym. In the ToP Berserk Kale is stronger than SSJ1-SSB Goku, but somehow her stronger controlled form is weaker than tired SSJ2 Goku, it is like the anime team didn't communicate with each other. Another example is Gohan he could fight blind in the exbibition match, but somehow can't counter someone using IT.
They introduced SSG Ritual, but for some reason no one does it. No one trained with Whis and Beerus except for Goku, Vegeta and Broly.

Now I will mention DBS strength. They did introduce God Ki and the whole different universe. It does have good sound track and the new villain introduced was good, which was Goku Black and Zamasu. There was some good slice of life episode, such as Vegeta with his family or when Goku was suffering from his Kaioken drawback.

[JulieYBM]

Weaknesses:

♥Not enough production time for the staff to plan better and to schedule staff.
♥Yamamuro Tadayoshi.
♥Not enough committing to its new ideas over cynically regurgitating callback elements to Dragon Ball Z so as to placate the Gen X-ers and Millenials who grew up on it.
♥Not enough going for broke with character arcs.

Strengths:

♥Everything else.
♥Kale and Caulifla.
♥Gokuu Black and Zamasu.
♥The new Destruction Gods and their angels
♥The Future Trunks arc and the Tournament of Power in general.
♥Tomioka Atsuhiro and King Ryuu joining the franchise as writers.
♥Cool new unique transformations for the characters, especially Gokuu, Vegeta, Piccolo, Broli, and Gohan.
♥Jiren the babygirl.
♥Kushida Akira providing vocals for a badass new insert song.
♥Hatano Morio, Nagamine Tatsuya and Nakamura Ryouta being MVPs when taking over as series directors despite the truly awful productions they were handled.
♥I need to go through and rewatch this series at some point to have a more detailed list of shit I both liked and did not like.
♥Dragon Ball Super: Broly, baby!

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Strengths

• Expands the Dragon Ball lore
• Great ambition with the Goku Black arc
• Solid slice-of-life episodes
• Freeza joining Goku's team is an unexpected twist
• When Sumitomo's score is good it is really good
• Fun new characters like Champa, Cabba and Zeno
• Yūya Takahashi's art and animation
• Fantastic performances from the Japanese and English casts, Brian Drummond's cameo in the Funimation dub being a highlight
• The Broly and Super Hero movies
• Some unique new transformations like Ultra Instinct

Weaknesses

• Poor pre-production and planning
• Some of Dragon Ball's worst animation ever
• Plots and storytelling are very basic with little connective tissue
• Refusal to change the status quo and remaining stuck in the "10 years of peace" after the defeat of Kid Boo
• Lack of tension up until the Tournament of Power arc (the Goku Black arc had it at the beginning, but Zeno's button killed it)
• When Sumitomo's score is bad it is really bad
• The Resurrection 'F' arc, particularly Piccolo's meaningless death
• The Potaufeu arc (aside from the aforementioned Brian Drummond performance)
• Goku's being a caricature of his former self
• Over reliance on nostalgia and fan service

[Koitsukai]

Strenghts.

- Probably the best fights of the entire franchise, definitely the best of every other non-DBZ shows, although that's not saying much.
- Great score.
- Unique transformations with crazy preludes for many of them (UI, Beast, SS Rose).
- Well-thought power ups like the God-Blue Switch.
- Moving away from Freeza as a typical evil villain and doing so much more with him.
- Unexpected twists in every turn. The Black arc, the ToP, the movies (Broly being a good guy), the Granola arc.
- BoG, Broly and SH.
- While being mostly a two-man show, it managed (eventually) to give the spotlight to others, even giving them a fucking movie.
- Good slice of life episodes.
- Ambitious character arcs for Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, 17 and even for Freeza.
- Solid new characters that became part of the gang. Whis, Beerus, Jaco, Broly.
- Expansion of the DBverse.
- The stones to have female Super Saiyans.
- Goku's character arc in terms of a fighter moves away from power ups and goes into actual martial artist territory.

Weaknesses.

- Stuck in a time period, cramming up so many stories that it ended up happening more things now that in the actual story it's based on.
- Some aaaawful filler episodes.
- Animation sucked up until the ToP, that's 70-80 ugly episodes out of 131. Not just the infamous episode 5 or the retellings, for most of the show, characters were greasy, shiny and looked very bad.
- Goku's character flaws to the extreme.
- Married to the status quo so bad that not even their clothes could be changed.
- RoF.
- Unnecessary movie retellings.
- Nostalgia and fan-service were overdone.
- Goten and Trunks were treated as if they were babies and their spot was taken by guys that had retired a long time ago, having nothing to offer anymore.
- Buu being always unavailable was barely a joke, and it kept being told all the fucking time.
- Lack of logic in the anime's powerscaling system.

[MasenkoHA]

Strengths

* The Universe 6 Saiyans were all great

* more “slice of life” stuff than previous series

* Tenshinhan and Roshi got treated better than they did in Z. The series actually remembered Roshi and Goku have a teacher/student bond even if only for one episode

*The series did a pretty decent job bringing Gohan back as a fighter even if the original manga’s ending will render it all moot

*more comedy then the Saiyan-Cell arcs


Weaknesses

The first 29 episodes are pointless and a complete waste of time. The Champa arc is the real start of Super.

Jiren is so so boring.


Crappy and rushed animation early on

Too much memberberry gobbling

Assuming you don’t treat it as its own things that overrides the manga’s end so much of it basically pointless as it the problem with most interquels

[JulieYBM]

Strengths

* The Universe 6 Saiyans were all great

* more “slice of life” stuff than previous series

* Tenshinhan and Roshi got treated better than they did in Z. The series actually remembered Roshi and Goku have a teacher/student bond even if only for one episode

*The series did a pretty decent job bringing Gohan back as a fighter even if the original manga’s ending will render it all moot

*more comedy then the Saiyan-Cell arcs


Weaknesses

The first 29 episodes are pointless and a complete waste of time. The Champa arc is the real start of Super.

Jiren is so so boring.


Crappy and rushed animation early on

Too much memberberry gobbling

Assuming you don’t treat it as its own things that overrides the manga’s end so much of it basically pointless as it the problem with most interquels

The Champa arc began with Episode #28

I don't think there's a point in us getting caught up in the interquel of it all. We all know that it's an interquel made twenty years after the original comic ended in a franchise historically uninterested in keeping minute details anally straight. It's best to just focus on other things, like not spending more time on character stuff.

[The Dark Knight]

I have a love-hate relationship with Super, as for each thing I love about Super, there's something I equally dislike.

+ It gave us longer versions of Battle of Gods and Resurrection F.
- It did absolutely nothing new and wasted everyone's time with them.

+ It introduced the concept of the multiverse into Dragon Ball.
- It did the bare minimum with it and wasted its potential.

+ Hit's abilities were a breath of fresh air and kept things interesting.
- He never got to use them to their full extent due to "tournament rules".

+ The main heroes got unique transformations that fit them personally.
- None of these forms had any real narrative weight behind them.

+ It gave us some of the best looking fights in the franchise.
- It equally gave us some of the worst looking ones.

+ Beerus and Whis were very fun characters when they were introduced.
- They overstayed their welcome and killed a lot of the tension.

+ Freeza was used very well in the tournament of power.
- Freeza was used very badly in Resurrection F

+ We got a tournament made up of 80 fighters.
- The vast majority of them were generic nobodies.

+ Piccolo finally got a movie dedicated to him
- Gohan was in that movie going through the same tired arc of relearning responsibility.

+ The Broly movie is one of the best looking movies this franchise has produced.
- It was yet another Broly movie.

+ The cast of characters were used really well (for the most part).
- The cast of characters regressed in their development.

+ New characters such as Black were amazing.
- Rebooted characters such as Bardock were terrible.

+ We finally got female Saiyans after GT dropped the ball with Pan.
- They were handed the transformation with 0 build up or effort.

+ Weaker characters like Roshi and Krillin got to shine again.
- They were used in ways that broke the logic of Dragon Ball.

+ The manga gave us the Moro arc, which was a step in the right direction.
- The manga also gave us the Granola arc, which was a step in the wrong direction.

As you can see, it seems like every time it takes a step forward, there's another step taking it backwards. Super has gotten a lot of hate in certain parts of the fandom, which I believe to be unjustified as a result of the positives I (and others) mentioned here. However, there are also many negatives that kept it from being a truly great addition to the series.

[GokuHater]

For me Super is kind of what people say about GT... Great ideas, not always good execution. I certainly think it has weaknessess but has also it's pros'.

+:
- More DB world-building - after Z there wasn't any set idea, on which area to explore, Super managed to surprise us and go a completely seperate way than GT
- World-building - ties in with the former but thinking of 12 Universes, making more of the god chierarchy is actually awesome
- Generally giving some characters stuff to do - sometimes it's better to release a character free but Super at least tried to write for Kuririn, 18, Yajirobe, Ten Shinhan, Yamcha, Trunks, Piccolo, Gohan...
- 2 new cool openings
- Once the animation hit ToP time, it became the best DB offered up to date
- Music - even if many tracks are recycled from Kai Buu saga
- Some transformations kicked ass and really made a difference - like SSJ God and UI
- Zamasu arc - even if I despise Zamas, the whole arc did give excitement and delivered some plot twists
- Manga in general - I feel it did better in Universe 6, Zamasu and ToP arcs and the story flown better then - also Moro and Granolah are very okay DB stories for me
- Goku and Vegeta seperate ways - not really touched before Moro but I think it's a lot better story beat than to watch them going only one path trying to outrun one another
- The movies - and I count BoG and RoF, the movies from that era are really my favourite with Broly being the best of the best

-:
- Wasted potential - I can't help but feel that with the idea and creativity we got, Super underdelivered. We had 12 Universes, 12 competely different worlds, even universe 6 Sayians and Sadara, the lost universes... And it didn't really go anywhere. Sure, we had the Gods, the Angels but mainly as exposition and the universes in ToP... Felt more like just other planets tbh
- Animation - early animation is just really bad and Toei really dropped the (dragon) balls
- Movie retellings - It was a bad idea from the start...
- Inconsistent pacing - I feel like Universe 6 and Zamas arcs were over before they really started while when we got to ToP, the whole show started having more of a "Z pace"
- The ending - I always felt the ending was too abrupt, even for ToP there somewhere was more of a story to be told. However when it turned out it was the ending of the whole anime for a few years, I thought something was off.
- Lack of planning - I think with more communication and dedication to the story, they could flesh out a lot (looking at you Zamasu arc with your going back and forth and at you, evildoer who killed Jiren's parents
- Goku and Vegeta character - compared to Z they somehow do feel off. Goku especially is portrayed as a lot dummer than at the end of Z (even being a bit like Team Four Star Abridged Goku) while Vegeta at the beginning seems to regress from his Buu Arc development. On the other hand, I really like what they do with Vegeta in the manga
- Yamcha - they really didn't need to turn him into a joke, was sad to watch tbh
- Transformations - other than the ones I mentioned really didn't seem that special, or explained enough... Blue, Rage, Blue Evolution
- Nostalgia grabs - whenever they made a scene, which point was to awake nostalgia, it always felt so forced and unnatural I barely could watch it - Vegeta sacrifice, Gohan turning into Beast, Piccolo saving Gohan in RoF arc

Overall, even with these critic in mind, recently I had a rewatch of Super with my son and actually found much good stuff I forgot about (or dismissed), so I felt some new positive light.