Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
TheGmGoken wrote:^ You must hate Gurren Lagann's main character.
I've never seen it, so no.
Well let's just say Gurren Lagann SHITS on your idea of
Passivity is a HORRIBLE trait. If your main character needs his hand held and isn't pushing forward the story it's just sort of happening to him, it's a terrible idea. It's either die or at least try and save the world, yet Gohan shrinks until he gets a pep talk. That's not behavior fitting a savior. By the end of the arc, that dilemma should've been resolved, but it wasn't.
and proves why and how it can work. Avatar Last Airbender was like that too in first two seasons.
dbzfan7 wrote:
TheGmGoken wrote:^ You must hate Gurren Lagann's main character.
Or Mega Man X who spends a lot of time whining about not wanting to fight (Most of X7) and is like Gohan in robot form. And even then the lead character becomes Zero later with X taking a side role.
I've never played nor watched mega man x, but being the reluctant hero and whining about not wanting to do something doesn't make a character passive.
Well let's just say Gurren Lagann SHITS on your idea of
1 - I can't speak to that. I might not like the show, and
2 - I'm taking your word that is in fact what the main character is - passive.
What exactly is interesting about the idea of a bunch of stuff happening to the main character, but the charater not taking the step to reach one's goal?
Last edited by ABED on Mon Jun 01, 2015 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.
TheGmGoken wrote:^ You must hate Gurren Lagann's main character.
I've never seen it, so no.
Well let's just say Gurren Lagann SHITS on your idea of
Passivity is a HORRIBLE trait. If your main character needs his hand held and isn't pushing forward the story it's just sort of happening to him, it's a terrible idea. It's either die or at least try and save the world, yet Gohan shrinks until he gets a pep talk. That's not behavior fitting a savior. By the end of the arc, that dilemma should've been resolved, but it wasn't.
and proves why and how it can work. Avatar Last Airbender was like that too in first two seasons.
dbzfan7 wrote:
TheGmGoken wrote:^ You must hate Gurren Lagann's main character.
Or Mega Man X who spends a lot of time whining about not wanting to fight (Most of X7) and is like Gohan in robot form. And even then the lead character becomes Zero later with X taking a side role.
This too
Not even the first 2 seasons. Aang was ALWAYS passive. Even at the end he refused to kill and was passive in the final fight itself. He was ready to let his own belief get in the way of saving the world. Aang is a great character, grows more than Goku ever did. X though is a model person who is completely passive, had Sigma mock him for it, and fought not cause he wanted to, but to protect others. I fail to see why Gohan can't just grow to be like X.
Last edited by dbzfan7 on Mon Jun 01, 2015 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Why Dragon Ball Consistency in something such as power levels matter!
Spoiler:
Doctor. wrote:I've explained before, I'll just paraphrase myself.
Power levels establish tension and drama. People who care about them (well, people who care about them in a narrative) don't care about the big numbers or the fancy explosions. If you have character A who's so much above character B, who's the main character, you're gonna be left wondering how in the hell character B, the character we're supposed to care and root for, is going to escape the situation or overcome the odds. It makes us emotionally invested.
If character B doesn't escape the situation in a believable way that's consistent with previous events, then that emotional investment is gone. It was pointless tension, pointless drama made just to suck in the viewer. It has no critical value whatsoever. The audience is left believing that the author can just create whatever scenarios he wants and what happens to the characters is decided by whatever the author wants to happen, regardless of the events that happened in the story. Which, in fairness, is what happens, but the audience wants to be fooled. The audience wants to know that the world they're following has rules. That the world they're invested in isn't going to bend to external factors that are irrelevant to them.
An author can do whatever he wants with the characters, that's not false. But the author should also have the responsibility to make sure it fits in cohesively with the other events in the narrative he has created.
It's also possible to have a show that's good in spite of having a passive uninteresting main character, but it would be better to have him/her actually move forward the story.
Passive characters are fine, but not as the one at the forefront of the story. I love Norm Peterson and Gohan, but I'm glad Sam and Goku were the main characters of their respective series.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.
ABED wrote:But that's not what you want out of a main character. Passivity is a HORRIBLE trait. If your main character needs his hand held and isn't pushing forward the story it's just sort of happening to him, it's a terrible idea. It's either die or at least try and save the world, yet Gohan shrinks until he gets a pep talk. That's not behavior fitting a savior. By the end of the arc, that dilemma should've been resolved, but it wasn't.
As others mentioned, it's worked for other heroes in series that came out after DBZ. He wouldn't need to perpetually be a character that needs his hands held. = P
How was teen Gohan night and day from his younger self?
Okay, maybe not night and day, but his teen self's personality is substantially different. I would have preferred to see his kid self's adventures during that 7 year gap, and seen him further progress into a hero. Instead, we got what feels like a bad replacement, who looks different, is goofier, and doesn't even train. There was no development to his character; we just had to accept this new Gohan after craving more of what we saw of him in the Cell Games. I don't hate him, mind you, but even I can agree he doesn't have main star potential--not the way Toriyama made him.
"Dragon Ball once became a thing of the past to me, but after that, I got angry about the live action movie, re-wrote an entire movie script, and now I'm complaining about the quality of the new TV anime. It seems Dragon Ball has grown on me so much that I can't leave it alone." - Akira Toriyama on Dragon Ball Super
I don't think Aang really fits the mold of what ABED is complaining about, to be perfectly honest. Aang is a reluctant hero at first, to be sure, but he's not a passive character. He's a very active character. There are many moments where he will shirk responsibility, and a few where he'll flat out run away from them (I mean, it sets up the premise for the entire show), but the key is in that parenthetical. Aang having run away from his destiny is his backstory, not the story. His entire arc is getting the hell over that and atoning for his mistakes. And while it does take him a while to get there, he's very active in *trying* to get there.
That said, I think a certain level of passivity is tolerable in a protagonist. In general, the rule is that villains are the agents of action. They're the ones who have to be active. Heroes have to be *re*active. They react to threats around them. So I don't think that a heroic-type protagonist necessarily has to be going around creating all the plots of his/her story. But the protagonist does need to do something about the ones that come up.
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In general, the rule is that villains are the agents of action. They're the ones who have to be active. Heroes have to be *re*active. They react to threats around them. So I don't think that a heroic-type protagonist necessarily has to be going around creating all the plots of his/her story. But the protagonist does need to do something about the ones that come up.
Sure, they create the problem, but heroes need to choose how they react, even if they don't start out that way.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.
Singh is King wrote:DB Super is better than most people are making it out to be so far online.
I always preferred the adventure feeling on DB to the fighting.
I find the entire first half of the Artificial Humans Arc (up to Cell's appearance) to be completely horrible and poor storytelling. A human creating beings stronger than the "strongest in the Universe" (Freeza) makes no sense whatsoever. And I really dislike the time travel, though I find the character of Trunks interesting (but would gladly remove him from the series completely if that meant no time travel).
Muten Roshi and Mr. Satan are annoying, boring and forced comic relief characters. Same for the Pilaf gang.
Doctor. wrote:Future Trunks is an underdeveloped and poorly utilized character.
I thought he was more of a plot device than an actual character.
An angry Final Fantasy fan wrote: And after all the outrage, when I'm ready, I'll go out on to GameStop and buy a Persona 5 copy. And when my mother finds me investing my precious time trying to bond with this hot anime girl, I'll look straight into her eyes and say "but have you looked at the menu screen? have you actually seen the menu screen? In that very moment, she knows. She fucking knows. As she handles me the nugget pieces she previously cooked for me, she leaves my room with these words: "Persona 5 is the true savior of the JRPG".
VegettoEX wrote:
In a blunt nutshell, no-one wants to read bullshit. Don't post bullshit. Be a cool person that posts cool things that other people would actually want to read. Don't be Zamasu from episode 63 talking to himself.
Avery wrote:Muten Roshi and Mr. Satan are annoying, boring and forced comic relief characters. Same for the Pilaf gang.
I like Mr. Satan, but definitely throw in Chi Chi there. Her entire joke seems to be bitching or getting upset about something now. Muten Roshi's entire character now is just do something perverted, and then get bitched at by Chi Chi or Bulma.
Why Dragon Ball Consistency in something such as power levels matter!
Spoiler:
Doctor. wrote:I've explained before, I'll just paraphrase myself.
Power levels establish tension and drama. People who care about them (well, people who care about them in a narrative) don't care about the big numbers or the fancy explosions. If you have character A who's so much above character B, who's the main character, you're gonna be left wondering how in the hell character B, the character we're supposed to care and root for, is going to escape the situation or overcome the odds. It makes us emotionally invested.
If character B doesn't escape the situation in a believable way that's consistent with previous events, then that emotional investment is gone. It was pointless tension, pointless drama made just to suck in the viewer. It has no critical value whatsoever. The audience is left believing that the author can just create whatever scenarios he wants and what happens to the characters is decided by whatever the author wants to happen, regardless of the events that happened in the story. Which, in fairness, is what happens, but the audience wants to be fooled. The audience wants to know that the world they're following has rules. That the world they're invested in isn't going to bend to external factors that are irrelevant to them.
An author can do whatever he wants with the characters, that's not false. But the author should also have the responsibility to make sure it fits in cohesively with the other events in the narrative he has created.
Singh is King wrote:DB Super is better than most people are making it out to be so far online.
I always preferred the adventure feeling on DB to the fighting.
Avery wrote:Muten Roshi and Mr. Satan are annoying, boring and forced comic relief characters. Same for the Pilaf gang.
Though I do LOVE Muten Roshi because of his early DB role, I think he should have remained dead after Piccolo Daimao. Everything he could've done was already over by then, and his character arc was complete. There was no need to have him back, and it shows; he does nothing else during the rest of the series, except for the said forced perverted jokes.
Avery wrote:Muten Roshi and Mr. Satan are annoying, boring and forced comic relief characters. Same for the Pilaf gang.
Don't diss the champ... but it's true for Muten Roshi nowadays (unfortunately). He was the bomb in DB though.
dbzfan7 wrote:I like Mr. Satan, but definitely throw in Chi Chi there. Her entire joke seems to be bitching or getting upset about something now. Muten Roshi's entire character now is just do something perverted, and then get bitched at by Chi Chi or Bulma.
That raven-haired woman in Super is not really Chi-Chi. It's a cartoon character who calls herself Chi-Chi not the tough girl with a slightly short temper like in 2008 OVA.
funrush wrote:I hate that the heroes don't change or develop like the "anti-heroes" do. (Piccolo, Vegeta, and Tenshinhan)
*cough*Gohan*cough* *cough*Freeza*cough*
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am
I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.
I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.
Avery wrote:
I like Mr. Satan, but definitely throw in Chi Chi there. Her entire joke seems to be bitching or getting upset about something now. Muten Roshi's entire character now is just do something perverted, and then get bitched at by Chi Chi or Bulma.
Yeah, I have to admit I don't like this either: I feel Chi Chi and Roshi have been flanderized nowadays. I remember when Chi Chi was infatuated with Goku and wanted to do anything to please her fiance, and now...it's just money, school books, etc.
Roshi has been hit the hardest: he was always perverted, yes, but he also had a very wise and kind side to him. Now it's just boobs this and puffu puffu that all the time.
