Episode of Bardock

[deadguy366]

Just watched it and I'm a little confused. When Freeza blows up planet Vegeta the energy is so great it somehow rips a hole in spacetime and sends Bardock to the past where he defeats Freeza's father(?), Chilled. His last words end up being tell my family to watch out for super saiyans, or "golden saiyans" as he calls them. So does this mean that Bardock defeating Chilled in the past is the whole reason Freeza was afraid of super saiyans and decided to blow up planet Vegeta? The paradox's implicated here are making my head hurt.

[Wibbs]

Just watched it and I'm a little confused. When Freeza blows up planet Vegeta the energy is so great it somehow rips a hole in spacetime and sends Bardock to the past where he defeats Freeza's father(?), Chilled. His last words end up being tell my family to watch out for super saiyans, or "golden saiyans" as he calls them. So does this mean that Bardock defeating Chilled in the past is the whole reason Freeza was afraid of super saiyans and decided to blow up planet Vegeta? The paradox's implicated here are making my head hurt.

To answer your question yes, Bardock defeating Chilled as a Super Saiyan in the past is the reason for Freeza's fear of Super Saiyans. Don't worry about it too much though, they basically cherry picked the parts of the original tv special that they paid attention to so it's no surprise it's filled with confusing plot holes.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

It's debatable. Lets see what I can say without getting into too many spoilers though...

Later in the series, you will see the concept of alternate timelines emerge. These will get confusing, and probably make your head hurt worse than it does now. Anyway, time traveling in any form (the Toriyama advised MMORPG game Dragon Ball Online implies this) seems to causes alternate timelines to split off wherever the time traveler arrives in the past in order to prevent causing paradoxes. So Bardock's fight with Chilled shouldn't be affecting anything with the events of the main series, which you are watching.

Oh, Chilled is his Grandfather at minimum, maybe further back than that. It's never specified beyond "ancestor".

[Wibbs]

it's debatable. Lets see what I can say without getting into too many spoilers though...

Later in the series, you will see the concept of alternate timelines emerge. These will get confusing, and probably make your head hurt worse than it does now. Anyway, time traveling in any form causes alternate timelines to split off wherever the time traveler arrives in the past in order to prevent causing paradoxes. So Bardock's fight with Chilled shouldn't be affecting anything with the events of the main series, which you are watching.

Oh, Chilled is his Grandfather at minimum, maybe further back than that. It's never specified beyond "ancestor".

Does anybody know how exactly Freeza's death ball sent Bardock to a different time to begin with. Does Naho Ooishi ever explain it? To me it all seems like an excuse to have another Super Saiyan, kind of like that GT tv special.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

It really is just an excuse, and my only guess is that they watched a lot of Star Trek before making the special. To be fair though, giant energy source colliding with the energy from a planet exploding or something and ripping a hole in space-time...it's an extremely common occurrence in fiction. Maybe even to the point of being a cliche. But no, none of them ever come out and give any sort of explanation at all to my knowledge. Not even something as simple as the above.

[Wibbs]

It really is just an excuse, and my only guess is that they watched a lot of Star Trek before making the special. To be fair though, giant energy source colliding with the energy from a planet exploding or something and ripping a whole in space-time...it's an extremely common occurrence in fiction. Maybe even to the point of being a cliche. But no, none of them ever come out and give any sort of explanation at all to my knowledge. Not even something as simple as the above.

Ah ok, thanks , I haven't seen a lot of Star Trek to be honest so I'll just have to take your word for that. I just hope next time a Saiyan form is given out it isn't as rushed or convoluted.

[deadguy366]

So Bardock's fight with Chilled shouldn't be affecting anything with the events of the main series, which you are watching.
Oh, Chilled is his Grandfather at minimum, maybe further back than that. It's never specified beyond "ancestor".

But Bardock's fight with Chilled does affect things in the main series' universe. It's implied that this is how Freeza knew about super saiyans. That leaves me with a lot of questions... Planet Vegeta used to be planet Plant then the saiyans just decided to take it over and make it their home planet one day? What happened to their original home planet?

To answer your question yes, Bardock defeating Chilled as a Super Saiyan in the past is the reason for Freeza's fear of Super Saiyans. Don't worry about it too much though, they basically cherry picked the parts of the original tv special that they paid attention to so it's no surprise it's filled with confusing plot holes.

I think you're right about them not worrying too much about the plot holes they were creating when making this episode. It's weird because the episode answers a few good questions, but creates countless more in the process...

[TheDevilsCorpse]

But Bardock's fight with Chilled does affect things in the main series' universe. It's implied that this is how Freeza knew about super saiyans. That leaves me with a lot of questions... Planet Vegeta used to be planet Plant then the saiyans just decided to take it over and make it their home planet one day? What happened to their original home planet?

There are a couple inconsistencies, but the Episode of Bardock manga and anime themselves joke that they don't know if this is how the legend of the Super Saiyans began. Ultimately, it is only implied that is how Chilled's clan knew about Super Saiyans in some universe, but it doesn't really seem to be the main universe. The biggest issue here is that Chilled specifically mentions blonde/golden Saiyans after Bardock, yet Freeza has no idea what happened to Goku when he actually gains that hair color.

You might be getting a bit ahead of yourself with the planet Plant/Vegeta questions. No one knows what happened to their actual original home planet, but as for taking over Plant...I'm not sure if you want answers for that. lol
The topic is returned to in future parts of the series, so before I go crazy with posting content in here, I might suggest waiting till you watch Plan to Eradicate the (Super) Saiyans or GT (if you plan on watching that)?

[Wibbs]

But Bardock's fight with Chilled does affect things in the main series' universe. It's implied that this is how Freeza knew about super saiyans. That leaves me with a lot of questions... Planet Vegeta used to be planet Plant then the saiyans just decided to take it over and make it their home planet one day? What happened to their original home planet?

There are a couple inconsistencies, but the Episode of Bardock manga and anime themselves joke that they don't know if this is how the legend of the Super Saiyans began. Ultimately, it is only implied that is how Chilled's clan knew about Super Saiyans in some universe, but it doesn't really seem to be the main universe. The biggest issue here is that Chilled specifically mentions blonde/golden Saiyans after Bardock, yet Freeza has no idea what happened to Goku when he actually gains that hair color.

You might be getting a bit ahead of yourself with the planet Plant/Vegeta questions. No one knows what happened to their actual original home planet, but as for taking over Plant...I'm not sure if you want answers for that. lol
The topic is returned to in future parts of the series, so before I go crazy with posting content in here, I might suggest waiting till you watch Plan to Eradicate the (Super) Saiyans or GT (if you plan on watching that)?

Don't let you're curiosity get the better of you deadguy366, my post is a little spoiler heavy.

Spoiler:

It wouldn't make really make sense if the Saiyans had taken over Planet Plant, the Tuffles must have taken it first. I can't really see the Saiyans sitting by and watching another race occupy a Planet they had just taken over. You could argue that that is why the Saiyans took the Planet from the Tuffles but even then it wouldn't have made sense either (at least I don't think so).

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Don't let you're curiosity get the better of you deadguy366, my post is a little spoiler heavy.

Spoiler:

It wouldn't make really make sense if the Saiyans had taken over Planet Plant, the Tuffles must have taken it first. I can't really see the Saiyans sitting by and watching another race occupy a Planet they had just taken over. You could argue that that is why the Saiyans took the Planet from the Tuffles but even then it wouldn't have made sense either (at least I don't think so).

Yeah, here too...

Spoiler:

That's another one of the major inconsistencies. The Plantaens are never mentioned outside of Episode of Bardock (understandable since they came fairly recently). The Saiyan Arc filler has both the Tsufruians and Saiyans being native to Plant, but the later Tsufruians stuff has the Saiyans invading their planet. The Saiyans definitely didn't get there first, but there is still no mention about the Tsufruians not being native to the planet either though. So, there are some WTFs going on in that regard.

My personal favorite theory is that Chilled sending Tobi and Cavira to invade Planet was supposed to result in the extinction of the Plantaens, without Bardock there of course. the Tsufruians would then use Freeza's organization (run by one of the family, depending on how long ago it was) to find a new planet, and end up with Plant. After the Saiyans invaded and the wars started, the Tsufruians reached out to the organization for help in exchange for more of their recent technology. By the time they got to them on the job list though, the Tsufruians were dead. Freeza arrived and then went on to annex the monkeys.

[Wibbs]

Don't let you're curiosity get the better of you deadguy366, my post is a little spoiler heavy.

Spoiler:

It wouldn't make really make sense if the Saiyans had taken over Planet Plant, the Tuffles must have taken it first. I can't really see the Saiyans sitting by and watching another race occupy a Planet they had just taken over. You could argue that that is why the Saiyans took the Planet from the Tuffles but even then it wouldn't have made sense either (at least I don't think so).

Yeah, here too...

Spoiler:

That's another one of the major inconsistencies. The Plantaens are never mentioned outside of Episode of Bardock (understandable since they came fairly recently). The Saiyan Arc filler has both the Tsufruians and Saiyans being native to Plant, but the later Tsufruians stuff has the Saiyans invading their planet. The Saiyans definitely didn't get there first, but there is still no mention about the Tsufruians not being native to the planet either though. So, there are some WTFs going on in that regard.

My personal favorite theory is that Chilled sending Tobi and Cavira to invade Planet was supposed to result in the extinction of the Plantaens, without Bardock there of course. the Tsufruians would then use Freeza's organization (run by one of the family, depending on how long ago it was) to find a new planet, and end up with Plant. After the Saiyans invaded and the wars started, the Tsufruians reached out to the organization for help in exchange for more of their recent technology. By the time they got to them on the job list though, the Tsufruians were dead. Freeza arrived and then went on to annex the monkeys.

Spoiler:

It certainly is a confusing subject, but then I suppose if it was perfect it wouldn't be much fun to talk about it.

That theory's definitely plausible, in fact it sounds like it came right out of the show. This whole thing's kind of a mess really, they could do with explaining it in detail sort of like what they did in the Hyrule Historia just DBZ instead.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Episode of Bardock implies that Super Saiyan Bardock probably is the Super Saiyan of the legend, the movies imply that a Legendary Super Saiyan like Broli was the Super Saiyan of the legend, and the GT Perfect Files imply that a Golden Oozaru could be the Super Saiyan of the legend. So, we can't be sure about that.

[SSDBZGOD]

If Bardock truly was sent back in time and became the legendary Super Saiyan, that would imply that Bardock is his own ancestor. For this, I tossed aside of the Episode Of Bardock being apart of the story line.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

If Bardock truly was sent back in time and became the legendary Super Saiyan, that would imply that Bardock is his own ancestor.

Not necessarily. We don't know if Bardock had any more kids, and even if he had, that doesn't mean that his family line reached present day, and even if it did, it doesn't mean that Bardock is an ancestor of himself, the ancestor could be a random Saiyan.

[SSDBZGOD]

Not necessarily. We don't know if Bardock had any more kids, and even if he had, that doesn't mean that his family line reached present day, and even if it did, it doesn't mean that Bardock is an ancestor of himself, the ancestor could be a random Saiyan.

Regardless, Bardock would still be reborn in the future. It is unknown if there was any more Saiyans during the time period Bardock was sent to. We know that the Tuffles were inhabiting Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans took over. But in this special, we can see that these unknown creatures are inhabiting the planet. It could be possible that the Tuffles migrated to that planet, but it is unlikely.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Regardless, Bardock would still be reborn in the future. It is unknown if there was any more Saiyans during the time period Bardock was sent to. We know that the Tuffles were inhabiting Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans took over. But in this special, we can see that these unknown creatures are inhabiting the planet. It could be possible that the Tuffles migrated to that planet, but it is unlikely.

We only saw a small village of a huge planet. There could be Tsufruians in other places of Planet Plant.

As for Bardock, his ancestor could be a Saiyan that still lives in Planet Saiya, while Bardock that came to the past died without having any more children. And even if he did have children, and he had living descendants before the extinction of the Saiyans, Bardock doesn't have to be one of his descendants.

[deadguy366]

Thanks guys. I definitely plan on watching GT and the rest of the movies. Hopefully things become a bit more clear after I do.

[deadguy366]

I have another question. Why is the OAV drawn so differently from DBZ?

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Hmm, why is Episode of Bardock drawn so differently? Because it just came out a couple of years ago, as opposed to everything else, which is like two decades old. It's the sad progression of art style from traditional cel animation into the digital age. Plus, the lead character designer hasn't really been drawing for the franchise all that much since GT ended, so he doesn't seem to have as good of a grasp on Toriyama's style as he used to.

[JulieYBM]

This has nothing to do with the digital age. Nothing. Yamamuro Tadayoshi has prepared new character designs intentionally different from the ones he and Nakatsuru Katsuyoshi were using in the mid-1990s. That's all there is to it. Dragon Ball animation is all still hand drawn on paper. Episode of Bardock looks different from previous works because Yamamuro Tadayoshi corrects animators' work to keep them on model with his character designs.

The digital era has meant wonderful things for animation. Watch other Japanese cartoons. Toei Animation has barely scratched the surface of what is possible with the talents of today's animators and directors.