Rocketman wrote:It's more that they took away everything unique about a character. When Tenshinhan was outclassed, Goku didn't steal his third eye and arm-growing techniques. When Piccolo fell behind nobody stole his regeneration or magic.
But they stripped everything from Gohan for basically no reason, even violating the manga in their rush to glorify Goku.
Oh, is this about Gohan losing his 'Ultimate' state, specifically? If so, I don't see why this is a problem, as he'd be just as useful (i.e. useless) with or without it at this point. Nor does Goku "steal" it anywhere. It isn't exactly some "special ability", either - it's just him having a super-strong base state. And if all that's unique about Gohan is just that - an insta!power-up he didn't do much to
deserve in the first place - is it something really worth having him keep, especially if he's not even going to feature centrally anymore? Would it have changed anything important?
As for Tenshinhan, arm-growing and third eyes aside, Goku
does steal his taiyoken the minute he needs it; in the same vein, Krillin falls behind and his kienzan gets passed around like bread (Vegeta, Freeza, #18, Goku). Goku may not get Tenshinhan's third eye or Krillin's lack of a nose, but he does more or less appropriate anything and everything that's going to be even remotely useful going forward - with the exception, of course, of anything related to some alien physiology he doesn't happen to share (so nobody's getting Dende's healing, Piccolo's magic or Kaio's antennae, for example). To revert to my original point, the relegating of characters to the background has always been in a certain sense "undignified" in
Dragon Ball; this is nothing new. It's an issue worth addressing, but it's certainly not exclusive to these films.
As for violating the manga, I see your point, and that's a continuity error just like any other. But eh, Gohan was only shown in, like,
one panel of the epilogue anyway - I can deal.
)
