MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 5/11/26!)

[jcogginsa]

wtching your video made me realize that the stuff that happens after the Tagoma Battle would be a lot more compelling if Tagoma were still around.

After all, Tagoma has just gone through a significant amount of pain as a result of his life being "Spared". That moment could trigger him as much as it does Frieza.

And then Gohan starts getting tortured by frieza, like Tagoma himself was before he became Frieza's training partner.

What if they tied those elements more directly into Tagoma's character, and had him take the killshot instead of Piccolo. Maybe he does it so that he can be spared punishment after Frieza's victory. Maybe he does it it because his trauma makes him think getting hurt more will make him stronger.

The Pieces aren't all there but I think there's something to this

[The Dark Knight]

This is the kind of story that can't be fixed no matter how many changes you make to it; it needs a page 1 re-write. I honestly wish the Super remake skipped it entirely and just introduced Freeza's Golden form in the tournament of power instead, while introducing Blue in the U6 arc. Sparking Zero removing Goku and Vegeta completely in favor of Gohan was a step in the right direction, as Freeza at this point in the story (like Cell and the Gammas in Superhero) should not require Goku and Vegeta's attention.

[Yuli Ban]

wtching your video made me realize that the stuff that happens after the Tagoma Battle would be a lot more compelling if Tagoma were still around.

After all, Tagoma has just gone through a significant amount of pain as a result of his life being "Spared". That moment could trigger him as much as it does Frieza.

And then Gohan starts getting tortured by frieza, like Tagoma himself was before he became Frieza's training partner.

What if they tied those elements more directly into Tagoma's character, and had him take the killshot instead of Piccolo. Maybe he does it so that he can be spared punishment after Frieza's victory. Maybe he does it it because his trauma makes him think getting hurt more will make him stronger.

The Pieces aren't all there but I think there's something to this

Indeed not only that but the question insists upon itself: did the same thing happen to Freeza? Did Cold inflict the same sort of pain on him and he never thought of it as training? Or was it simply something Freeza assumed and never questioned, and doing it to Tagoma actually validates his life philosophy of sadistic power over all? If Tagoma still has some level of rational empathy left in him that his torture either agitated or couldn't burn away, would him choosing to sacrifice for Gohan bother Freeza, who is so far gone he doesn't even entertain the thought? Or does it make him think "Why does this keep happening?" What if Tagoma sacrificing himself is literally what leads directly to Freeza's defeat somehow? In which case you could build a better movie there because then Freeza is literally ruined by someone rejecting his life philosophy. You could even accidentally set up something for the Tournament of Power, like him warping the "put aside yourself and sacrifice yourself for another" in a delightfully still-evil Freeza way.

There's a lot you could do with this
Hell you could even use it as villain backstory for Freeza and do it threading the needle of something that explains his temperament without falling into shmaltzy shōnen sentimentality overused by Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, etc. onwards ("flashbacks to trauma and loneliness or grief to explain why mustache twirling villain is actually deep and arguably sympathetic but must be defeated by Power of Friendship and the heroes' own will to power over life's struggles, except laid on thick and with lots of characters looking pensive)

But nope, Milkman needs his second coming, right down Tagoma's throat.

And also fast forward to Broly, Frigidaire was just born evil.
I mean... I don't mind...? I'm the first to argue that Writers' Workshop 101/Tumblr "villain tier list" that it feels writers ride or die by nowadays is dogshit advice and I'll gladly take "I'm evil for the evulz" if it's fun way more than dour forced-sentimentality didn't-think-it-through "villain is really the hero if you think about it" in escapist action media.
It's just when the story itself teases an actual story and reason, I just wind up thinking "You could have done this better. You even KNOW you could have done this better. In this case, you chose not to, and no, I didn't laugh at the subversive gag because you didn't actually subvert anything, you just set up a possible satisfying thread and cut it."
A Toriyama gag version would be if Togama sapped to Freeza about the pain of his life before joining his army and it's every Naruto villain backstory you've ever heard and it bores Freeza so badly he decides to torture Tagoma to give him something to “really” cry about and then uses him to train
If Tagoma was supposed to be that sort of gag, there's the better version of it. If not, then... Yeah, it's just Namekian-sized blue balls.

"But Bejita needs to kill all of the Ginyu Tokusentai!!"

Hey look it's the Ginyu frog. Oops, he stepped on it. Anyway, Freeza...

[Koitsukai]

See, I just don't understand wanting to bring back Ginyu in the first place. Regardless of Tagoma getting character development, it's also a retcon to make Ginyu be on Earth, which I don't believe was established in the DB manga or Z. And, even if we assume he WAS brought to Earth by Porunga, he most certainly died at some point during the Buu Arc by Majin Buu, assuming Namekian frog bodies live that long in the first place. I very much doubt Porunga brought him back because they asked for only good people to be revived. It's genuinely so stupid & FULL of plot holes, I hate it.

Wait, I could swear I've seen Ginyu moving like a frog on Earth while Goku and Freeza were duking it out on Namek, meaning they both were transported to Earth. Frog-ginyu and every other frog and fish on Namek, I suppose.
But yeah, he should've died at the hands of Buu and not return.

The only explanation could be that after so many years living as a frog he became good... and as soon as he stopped being a frog he went back to his old ways. Making Porunga look like an idiot that got punked by a frog.

[WittyUsername]

Ginyu was shown ending up on Earth during the DBZ anime. That doesn’t mean he needed to pop back up during the RF arc. Even taking anime filler into account, we could’ve simply assumed that he either wasn’t brought back by Porunga due to his evil nature or that he died of natural causes because his frog body had a shorter lifespan. Besides, him just happening to be in the same vicinity as Freeza on Earth is pretty contrived anyway and as MistareFusion’s video points out, him being able to swap bodies without having to yell out the name of his technique raises some questions.

[Scsigs]

Ginyu was shown ending up on Earth during the DBZ anime. That doesn’t mean he needed to pop back up during the RF arc. Even taking anime filler into account, we could’ve simply assumed that he either wasn’t brought back by Porunga due to his evil nature or that he died of natural causes because his frog body had a shorter lifespan. Besides, him just happening to be in the same vicinity as Freeza on Earth is pretty contrived anyway and as MistareFusion’s video points out, him being able to swap bodies without having to yell out the name of his technique raises some questions.

For the most part, Super is supposed to be a sequel to the manga, not Z (even if it uses the Z anime's version of how Trunks became Super Saiyan instead of the manga's & maybe some other things I don't remember), so even taking Z filler into account, that shouldn't matter, even if Dragon Ball's continuity is a bit fluid because Toei don't wanna make any official stances on anything. That was part of the mission statement of Super from the outset.

[WittyUsername]

Ginyu was shown ending up on Earth during the DBZ anime. That doesn’t mean he needed to pop back up during the RF arc. Even taking anime filler into account, we could’ve simply assumed that he either wasn’t brought back by Porunga due to his evil nature or that he died of natural causes because his frog body had a shorter lifespan. Besides, him just happening to be in the same vicinity as Freeza on Earth is pretty contrived anyway and as MistareFusion’s video points out, him being able to swap bodies without having to yell out the name of his technique raises some questions.

For the most part, Super is supposed to be a sequel to the manga, not Z (even if it uses the Z anime's version of how Trunks became Super Saiyan instead of the manga's & maybe some other things I don't remember), so even taking Z filler into account, that shouldn't matter, even if Dragon Ball's continuity is a bit fluid because Toei don't wanna make any official stances on anything. That was part of the mission statement of Super from the outset.

Neither version of Super nor the movies align perfectly with the manga anyway. That’s the least of my problems with Ginyu’s inclusion. The problem is that Ginyu has no reason to be there, which would be annoying enough on its own, but it also has the added caveat of completely destroying the potentially interesting direction they took with Tagoma’s character.

At most, if they really wanted to call back to the old anime filler, they could’ve simply had Frog Ginyu cameo throughout the Resurrection ‘F’ arc.

[Koitsukai]

I guess I cared so little about the retelling that I never paid much attention to what they did with Tagoma, shit, I didn't even remember that Piccolo dies... and then de-dies. The dissection is spot on, somehow, they made RoF even worse.
There were so many things Toei chose to ignore about how Ginyu works (his technique, his ability to exploit someone's potential...)

All in all, I feel Vegeta killing Ginyu works because he is a stand in for the audience, in the sense of wanting to get rid of Ginyu immediately.

I wonder if the remake will correct this whole Tagoma-Ginyu thing.

[Zephyr]

This is the kind of story that can't be fixed no matter how many changes you make to it; it needs a page 1 re-write. I honestly wish the Super remake skipped it entirely and just introduced Freeza's Golden form in the tournament of power instead, while introducing Blue in the U6 arc. Sparking Zero removing Goku and Vegeta completely in favor of Gohan was a step in the right direction, as Freeza at this point in the story (like Cell and the Gammas in Superhero) should not require Goku and Vegeta's attention.

I think on the whole it works pretty well as a part of Super's larger story. When the film begins, Goku and Vegeta are training with Whis. While fighting Freeza, they try out their new transformation. By the end, Whis has had to intervene and the climax is treated as a lesson. The following arc is a tournament. So, Resurrection F is basically a glorified training arc. It is structurally akin to Goku and Kuririn's training with Roshi before the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai. But since it is a more serious conflict, it is also kind of like if Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle was actually a part of their training in Toriyama's story.

I also think recruiting Freeza for the Tournament of Power only makes sense the way it does if this story has already happened, where Freeza was still a recent and unexpectedly-powerful foe. If they haven't seen Freeza in almost 20 years and he was already outclassed a dozen times over, he's not going to be the fairly sensible desperate pick that he was in Super proper, and so we probably wouldn't be seeing him with a new form, or at all. On the other hand, revival era Toriyama loved to bring Roshi back for no good reason, so maybe that wouldn't have mattered at all lol.

[Scsigs]

If I'm being honest, I don't mind Vegeta killing Ginyu. Even if it was fanservice. I actually much prefer how TeamFourStar did it where they had Vegeta initially kowtow to Goku's demands that he leave Ginyu alone, then go "psych" & squish him to kill him. Even if Ginyu wasn't a threat anymore, that's what Vegeta should've done in that moment in canon. Absolutely no one would've cared or blamed him.

Also, doesn't Z show Ginyu dead in Hell after that arc with the rest of his squad? I think I remember something about that.