Was Mr. Satan more useful than Yamucha in DBZ?

[Piccolo Daimao]

For what it's worth, Gohan is consistently shown to be the one sweating and trying to keep up with Dabra, not the other way around, and the dialogue places more emphasis on how much trouble Gohan is having; how Dabra is doing is only brought up once by Babidi, and even then he says Dabra needs to do more damage, which could be interpreted as less that they're evenly matched and more that Gohan is evading him too well. So it's not a curb-stomp, but it's not really equal either; it seems Gohan has the disadvantage, but he's good enough at defending so that Babidi's getting impatient.

You're really analyzing sweat? And the dialogue only places more emphasis on Gohan's performance because Gokuu, Gohan and Vegeta are the protagonists, therefore they'd command more focus than the antagonist. And, again, we don't see that much of their fight to make such a definitive statement other than "both of them were keeping up well".

Anyway, I didn't say they were completely even. Whether you want it to take it as typical villain arrogance or otherwise, when Bobbodi asks Dabra if he's sure he can defeat Gohan, Dabra says he can, since he fought him before. But by no means was Gohan losing in their battle.

[caejones]

When I got to the end of this topic and looked back up at the title, I was surprised by how far it strayed.
Back into good ol' Gohan Vs Dabra territory, natch.
Why doesn't Firefox tell me that natch is misspelled?
Is that a real word?
!!!!!

To the OP: Yamcha's problem is that what he brought to the series was easily replaced. As a secondary fighter to Goku he was swiftly replaced by Kuririn and eventually T'en. At least Oolong and Puar were the only shapeshifters in the main cast, but they were rendered useless about as quickly (The last use I can remember was Puar becoming a stretcher after Yamcha's fight with T'en...).

I suspect this is one reason so many people died in the fight with Nappa: Most of them were very hard to use. In a series where it always comes down to one-on-one fights (Excluding the fight with Vegeta), having secondary characters whose abilities are "the main character, only weaker" becomes pretty hard to write.

Yamcha effectively stops being useful after Pilaf: he is swiftly replaced by stronger fighters, his character issues are pretty much resolved, and the bits of world-building he provided were taken up by KameSen'nin and later masters. He's still a badass, but an overall useless one. His one useful moment in Z--revealing #19 and #20's absorbtion ability and taking Goku home--is something that anyone could have done, and Yamcha handled simply because he was the most useless person that could fly and fight.
So in a sense, he was useful because of how useless he was.

I get the feeling that Toriyama went into the fight with Nappa planning to kill off half the cast, though it's also possible that he had Nappa break Chaozu's Telekinesis just so that Chaozu couldn't make it easy for everyone to make a beat-down.
Which is simply silly, since he dealt with the exact same issue with Ghuldo very easily.
(Come to think of it, why didn't Chaozu try paralyzing Daimao while making his wish to Shenron? Or did doing both of those simultaneously require too much brain-power at that point in his "don't lease control because of not knowing math" studies?)

So what I'm saying is, it's hard to write a fighting manga with an overpowered main character with gag-roots going serious.


On Vegeta: I don't think Vegeta was going to attack Dabra at all. I think he was just getting impatient, and since he saw that Goku had hidden depths when he overpowered Yakon, he decided to start showing out to get Babidi's attention.
If it was looking bad enough for Gohan, or if there was reason to believe that Buu was gaining too much power, Goku probably would have stepped in, but not before he absolutely needed to. (Kinda like how Gotenks Vs Aka went in the 2008 special).

[Piccolo Daimao]

he decided to start showing out to get Babidi's attention.

Vegeta didn't seem to know that Bobbodi would be planning to possess him until Kaioushin actually told him what was happening. That might be why he looked so shocked, and partly why he brushed off Kaioushin's advice to clear his mind and resist Bobbodi's control. It just seemed more like he'd become frustrated and impatient with Gohan's inability to defeat Dabra and having not fought Gokuu yet, and he looked as surprised as everyone else when Dabra abruptly stopped the fight. Of course, it may be a bit of a stretch to claim that Vegeta had just thought up his plan (and remembered Spopovich and Yamu's abnormal strengths too) in that small space of time.

But it could be like one of those things where time slows down for dramatic effect (like when Gokuu apparently had time to say his farewell to Gohan & co. and apologize to Kaiou before Cell blew up, when in real-time, he could've just teleported Cell away to Kaiou's planet and return to Earth without having to tell anyone his plan first, and surviving, to boot. Unless he actually planned to die just so he could train with the greatest masters in the afterlife, but that'd be even more of a stretch, especially for someone as dumb as Gokuu.

[roidrage]

For what it's worth, Gohan is consistently shown to be the one sweating and trying to keep up with Dabra, not the other way around, and the dialogue places more emphasis on how much trouble Gohan is having; how Dabra is doing is only brought up once by Babidi, and even then he says Dabra needs to do more damage, which could be interpreted as less that they're evenly matched and more that Gohan is evading him too well. So it's not a curb-stomp, but it's not really equal either; it seems Gohan has the disadvantage, but he's good enough at defending so that Babidi's getting impatient.

You're really analyzing sweat? And the dialogue only places more emphasis on Gohan's performance because Gokuu, Gohan and Vegeta are the protagonists, therefore they'd command more focus than the antagonist. And, again, we don't see that much of their fight to make such a definitive statement other than "both of them were keeping up well".

Anyway, I didn't say they were completely even. Whether you want it to take it as typical villain arrogance or otherwise, when Bobbodi asks Dabra if he's sure he can defeat Gohan, Dabra says he can, since he fought him before. But by no means was Gohan losing in their battle.

Yeah, why wouldn't I? Sweat's a sign of fatigue and tension. When one character has it in a fight and the other doesn't, that's generally a sign that the first character is at the disadvantage (although Dabra might be panting at the end; it's hard to tell from the way the panel's drawn). Gohan may not have been losing at that time, but if the fight had gone on a lot longer odds are he would have been the first one to falter. I kind of agree with Saiga's point, is what I'm getting it. Other than that though I'm not going to argue about it any more than I already have.

[Piccolo Daimao]

For what it's worth, Gohan is consistently shown to be the one sweating and trying to keep up with Dabra, not the other way around, and the dialogue places more emphasis on how much trouble Gohan is having; how Dabra is doing is only brought up once by Babidi, and even then he says Dabra needs to do more damage, which could be interpreted as less that they're evenly matched and more that Gohan is evading him too well. So it's not a curb-stomp, but it's not really equal either; it seems Gohan has the disadvantage, but he's good enough at defending so that Babidi's getting impatient.

You're really analyzing sweat? And the dialogue only places more emphasis on Gohan's performance because Gokuu, Gohan and Vegeta are the protagonists, therefore they'd command more focus than the antagonist. And, again, we don't see that much of their fight to make such a definitive statement other than "both of them were keeping up well".

Anyway, I didn't say they were completely even. Whether you want it to take it as typical villain arrogance or otherwise, when Bobbodi asks Dabra if he's sure he can defeat Gohan, Dabra says he can, since he fought him before. But by no means was Gohan losing in their battle.

Yeah, why wouldn't I? Sweat's a sign of fatigue and tension. When one character has it in a fight and the other doesn't, that's generally a sign that the first character is at the disadvantage (although Dabra might be panting at the end; it's hard to tell from the way the panel's drawn). Gohan may not have been losing at that time, but if the fight had gone on a lot longer odds are he would have been the first one to falter. I kind of agree with Saiga's point, is what I'm getting it. Other than that though I'm not going to argue about it any more than I already have.

OK then, fair enough. We should probably get back to discussing the original topic.