ImmaDeker wrote:bkev wrote:
Whoa there. Before anyone starts seriously condemning you, I'd like to ask for an explanation on this one. Can't just drop a bombshell like that without some explanation if you're serious (and, given how long-winded and well thought-out some of your posts are, I can only assume you are.)
The older I get, the less interesting Dragonball gets on its own merits. It's very charming and very much a fun ride, but frankly, the series just isn't very good. I'm not opposed to utter shlock (I love Power Rangers and Filthy Frank like nobody's fucking business), but Dragonball just doesn't hold the same appeal. I think it's because of the turn for the grander scale taken around Piccolo Daimao and running all through Z. I LOVE gag stuff that turns more serious while keeping its innate comedic charm and with that being one of my favorite things...Dragonball gets less appealing because other stories just do it better. Moral Orel's my second favorite TV show ever and, to be a bit fairer, I always thought Katekyo Hitman Reborn did the "gag into heavier storytelling" schtick better than DB ever did. Partially because Akira Toriyama isn't really the writer people like Dino Stamatopolouos and Akira Amano are. That's perfectly fine of him!
But the thing about Battle of Gods is as much as it rekindled my like for Dragonball after basically forgetting about it for years, I realized it was everything I'd wished Z was. Sitcom tone with cosmic stakes. I can't stand Freeza, Cell, the Saiyans, etc. Dragonball's specific type of genre mashing is just much less interesting to me than others. Maybe it's totally bias as to why I find Trunks as Aryan Messiah Kyle Reese (which, okay, granted? That's potentially hilarious and great) completely boring but find something like Zordon, who by pure accident is maybe one of the better possible takes on the Wizard of Oz as a great conman. Certainly me liking Wizard of Oz more than Terminator helps, though I love both quite a bit. It may help that Dragonball has a much bigger attempt at legitimacy with its incredibly threadbare mythology. I have trouble processing an adult taking it as seriously as people do. By contrast, I love stuff like Super Saiyan God because it's a cosmic ritual to render mortal as a god...but that's only appealing in the context of a rather breezy comedy film that just happens to become a wuxia throwdown in the third act.
Divorced from context, Super Saiyan God is a boring, trite idea. It'd be THE OTHER SUPER SAIYAN FORMS. The mythology of the Saiyan, such as it is, and the weight the story carries it just kills so much for me. As interesting as things can be even when derivative, and there's nothing wrong with being derivative, the idea that EVERY GODDAMN THING tries to be both a big martial arts epic with "stakes" (oh, but they all come back at the end) while also embiggening the rapist space savages who are also intrinsically capable of being holy, golden, and pure is just frustrating. The fact that people genuinely invest in Super Saiyan swagger while being fully functioning adults is absurd to me.
It's very much a story made for dudes who don't believe their actions should have any meaningful consequence and where women really only exist to SPOIL THEIR FUUUUN. Or at least, it eventually is. A lot of the pre-Z fiction is charmingly, boyishly juvenile and harmless. Z's sensibilities are like the assholes I see at the trailer park every time I go to visit a good friend of mine: where men are just unironically in charge and superior when all the logic around them is incredibly simple and emotionally stunted (HOW DO PEOPLE UNIRONICALLY INVEST IN POWER LEVELS?)
And honestly? That's worse than being outright bad. All that's just fucking boring and genuinely frustrating like a tool who refuses to wear more than a wifebeater.
By contrast, I don't think anyone who, like, actually watches and likes movies could ever be upset at Dragonball Evolution. Because...it's a bad movie, but it's unambitiously bad. It's 4 AM on cable bad. It's not raping some grand legacy because Dragonball isn't a legacy, it's just a series of Aryans punching each other in the face because girls are grody and we're constantly told these grand . Dragonball Evolution is just a cheap movie you'd find on TV while barely awake or drunk. It's greatest fault is actually that it's AGGRESSIVELY, FORGETTABLY MEDIOCRE more than it is offensive. Nobody with cognitive, matured functions could ever reasonably be offended by this movie unless they seriously, unironically invest in Toriyama's quest for cigarettes and beer money as masterful literature. The movie's not even bad enough to have shown up on, say, Mystery Science Theatre 3000. There are no Rowsdowers or Princes of Space worthy of real mockery on its own merits.
Also? I just find the characters more interesting. I like Goku as a socially awkward high schooler who's worldly, but not quite worldly enough to understand that fairy tales and fables in science class probably aren't going to go over well. I like that Chi Chi is the kung fu girl next door instead of someone constantly shit on by the universe around her. I like that Bulma is a pulp action gunbitch. I like that Oozaru the Destroyer is a sleeper agent who was sealed inside a teenage boy, creating a weird Peter Parker/Bruce Banner hybrid that's kinda neat even if the actual writing doesn't much sell it at all. I like that the scripting is JUST vague and ill thought enough to reasonably imply Master Roshi is both immortal and the rebellious kid among immortals and THIS guy is your mentor. I like Piccolo as Freeza just because it gives the movie a nice, early synthesis of old legend and science fiction coming together.
I just...like it better? Dragonball gets to a point where it becomes boring and up its own ass in terms of its threadbare, insultingly simple mythology (at least, insulting in its non-Battle of Gods or Buu arc context of SO COOL WARRIOR GUYS). The characters stop being charming, everything becomes a boring slog of Super Cool Aryan Manchildren. It's just a giant bag of boring shit.
Dragonball Evoution is a mediocre movie you watch at four AM that neither inspires passion within you or makes you blind with rage. It's...just a movie. One that is just poorly written enough that it actually fired my imagination a little as I watched it and I will FOREVER be disappointed we never got like nine shitty sequels on the SyFy Channel that'd shove all of Toriyama's ideas into weird holes they don't belong in. I would've watched that shit forever and a day.
I find Dragonball more interesting in retrospect than its own merits. GT? Evolution? Heroes? That kind of stuff is interesting to me. The continued attempt to MAKE something out of Toriyama's work, whether in cold commercialism or narrative merit. How it always kind of fails but ends up being worth the ride anyway. I like that stuff. The spin off material has that fascinating paradox of needing to uphold the legacy of a sbow...that just isn't really deserving of an actual legacy. The limitation of the potential by virtue of its brand is both incredibly frustrating but incredibly fun to watch as certain ideas, notions, and intents try to wrestle out of their straight jacket.
