Collateral damage in fights

[Polyphase Avatron]

Something occurred to me, do the use of the dragonballs to wish back everyone somehow excuse the collateral damage the Z-senshi often cause? I mean, if a stray ki blast hits a city or something... they never seem to give much thought to all of the people they accidentally end up killing. Just by powering up, SSJ3 Goku was creating tsunamis and stuff, a lot of people probably died from that... and no one seems to care.

[dbgtFO]

In the Buu Arc at least, it's specifically pointed out, that the Earth was restored without all that collateral damage from the fights.

[Darkprince410]

Just by powering up, SSJ3 Goku was creating tsunamis and stuff, a lot of people probably died from that... and no one seems to care.

That was a situation pretty exaggerated in the anime. Outside of seeing the Earth shaking a bit around where Tenshinhan and Chaozu are, there was nothing in the original manga showing how significant his transformation was causing. Sure, Tenshinhan does comment that the entire Earth is shaking, but that's pretty much it. We don't see any of the huge tsunamis or buildings being rattled and damaged that the anime depicted.

As for collateral damage, pretty much every time there is some sort of collateral damage, it's addressed in some fashion, and is never just flat out ignored.

Even in some of the movies, when there's city related damage, it gets addressed. For example, while it's omitted in the Funimation version, at the end of movie 13, it's said that they'll gather up the Dragon Balls later to wish everyone back that had died due to Hildegarn and their battle with him.

[Cetra]

I kinda like how in GT the earth was kept destroyed after Goku left. It had some "okay, we have had the final battle but we are still alive, now we have to learn how to deal with it" touch as Final Fantasy VI has after Kefka's death, or FFVII after Sephiroth's Meteor destroyed a great deal of Midgar ... or Final Fantasy XIII ... actually, many RPGs do it.

[Polyphase Avatron]

But my point was that having the dragonballs as an easy out to fix this kind of stuff seems to make them callous about it. Even if someone gets wished back, they still died, and it was probably painful or at least traumatic.

[Tonifranz]

But my point was that having the dragonballs as an easy out to fix this kind of stuff seems to make them callous about it. Even if someone gets wished back, they still died, and it was probably painful or at least traumatic.

Well, you have to remember Goku in several fights opted to have their fights in deserts, wastelands, etc, to keep innocents out of harm's way, or even to preserve the dead bodies of their fallen comrades. And the major fights almost always were in deserted places, or at least ended there.

Raditz - countryside
Nappa - countryside
Vegeta - desert
Freeza - a planet with no intelligent life left alive
Androids 19 and 20 - started in a city, but because of Goku's concern, shifted to a wasteland.
Android 18 and 17 - a mountainside
Imperfect Cell vs Piccolo - an empty city
Piccolo vs Android 17 - Deserted Islands
Android 17, 16, Piccolo, Tenshinhan vs Cell - Deserted Islands
Cell vs Vegeta and Trunks - Deserted Islands
Cell Games - Desert
Buu - Spaceship in the middle of nowhere
Majin Vegeta - started in the middle of a city, at the request of Goku, it was moved to a wasteland
Fat Buu - middle of nowhere
Super Buu - Kami's lookout and Desert Wasteland (not that it matters since all earthlings are dead)
Kid Buu - Kaioshin planet
Beerus - started in a city, but amazingly, there was no collateral damage. It ended in a desert.

[Rocketman]

Uh...most of those places were "deserted" because all the bystanders had already been killed off.

[Tonifranz]

Uh...most of those places were "deserted" because all the bystanders had already been killed off.

The only places that applies to is Namek during the Goku v Freeza fight, when the inhabitants were already all dead through no fault of Goku, the islands where Cell killed the inhabitants before even Vegeta and Trunks arrived at, and of course, the city where Cell absorbed all the inhabitants before facing Piccolo.

The point is that the Z fighters always were concerned about innocent lives and collateral damage, and would generally fight in cities only if its deserted because all the inhabitants were already killed previously.

So it's incorrect to say that they are not concerned at all about collateral damage just because it could easily be fixed by dragon balls. They either deliberately chose uninhabited wastelands to begin the battle, or if it began in a busy place through no fault of their own, they changed the battle location to a more deserted place. Unless the busy place all had their inhabitants evacuate before, or if all the people were previously killed, then there is no need to change the venue of the battle.