Have you... read... anything?... on this website and community? This is the most verbose and passionate English-speaking community that exists for this franchise. Expecting anything less would be pretty naive. What do you want to read? "Cool scene, bro!" That... doesn't make for much in the way of conversation, does it?
Well, when you put it that way, I suppose what you say makes sense, but still.
Honestly, I was a little hasty when I said this, as there were some legitimate, reasonable complaints that I totally disregarded, which I'm sorry for. That was incorrect. What I'm more speaking of is statements like this...
No you aren't, I thought it was abominable. They weren't even trying, the beginning of the new song they composed sounded like shit you would hear playing while a woman gave birth. They should have used the best track in Kai and my personal favorite Dragon Ball track ever, Heroic Faceoff. Super Dragon Soul would have been fine too even though I'm not a fan of the vocals. They didn't even need to compose a new track...
Congratulations Toei! It's really, really hard to ruin a scene as great as Gohan's first SSJ2 transformation, but you've managed to overcome all odds and do the impossible. Even Gohan Angers from the Faulconer dub was leagues more appropriate. I really hope Colleen Clinkenbeard saves this scene with an amazing, jaw dropping scream. I seriously have my doubts though...
I was praying for Toei to produce the Buu portion of the series, but now that they no longer have the opportunity to ruin even more scenes like Vegeta being possessed by Babidi or Goku going SSJ3 with god awful music like this, I'm so happy they aren't.
That and some of the complaining about how bad the eye-catches were. As well as how Gohan's SSJ2 song wasn't the correct "style" for Dragon Ball (my theory on music has pretty much always been that I could care less about the exact style a scene is composed in. As long as it contains all the appropriate emotions, and is composed well, and fits the scene in question, it's good music, whether it's techno, orchestrated, or classical, whatever).
However, as I said, I've overlooked all of the more reasonable complaints, which again, is wrong of me. Those are complaints I like debating.
The scene has absolutely nothing to do what-so-ever with what Gohan's going to do, but about what he's going through.
Yeah...and he's going through extreme rage after his mind just snapped, right? Like all of the anger he's been trying to hold back is now suddenly overflowing, and driving him into a murderous rampage that causes him to kill all the Cell Jr.'s in extremely violent ways. I mean, that's what happens almost immediately after he transforms...
I mean, I know he's hurting emotionally to, but again, I don't know how Spirit vs. Spirit emphasizes that. But, I suppose I'd have to tell you the lens that I look at this scene through...
Ok, so Gohan has spent the entire tournament trying to be pure and noble, or at least trying extremely hard not to hurt people. However, he knows that when he gets really mad, he loses all control of himself, and he's frightened of that, because he knows he's can be capable of extremely horrible things when he's that angry, as a lot of men are,
especially emotionally immature teenagers (I mean, he is a teenager, right? Or was that a dub mistake?). That's why he pleads Cell not to make him mad, not because he actually cares about Cell (for he acknowledges that Cell is a horrible person, unless that was
also a dub thing), but because he's scared of what he'll do once he's mad.
As he's transforming, he's filled with sadness, because circumstances beyond his control have made it so that he can't keep his gentleness, guilt, because that same gentleness has caused the death of 16#, a bit of confusion, because everyone like Goku and 16# are telling him to do things that go against the ideals he's built up, and sheer unspeakable rage at both his situation and Cell, that he doesn't know how to express in any other way other than killing the Cell Jr.'s in the most violent manner possible, and torturing Cell to death, even if that means disobeying his own father.
That's what
I get out of the whole situation anyways. So my question is, how on Earth is all of that emphasized by a triumphant sounding J-Pop song? Every time I listen to it, I think of songs like the ones composed by abolitionists in their efforts to help slaves escape from their masters in America, like "Wade in the Water".