Gyt Kaliba wrote:Saiga wrote:No, I don't want the nonsensical as fuck Shadow Dragons to be a thing. etcetera, etcetera.
How exactly are they nonsensical? To me, they're the only thing in GT that feel like a natural extension of where Z left us. The Old Kai warned them about misusing the Dragon Balls, and not only that, but an arc bringing the Dragon Balls back into focus only this time as a
problem themselves, is pretty much the perfect way to end the series, IMO...at least, if it'd been handled better.
That said though, I'm a big proponent of the 'great ideas, horrid execution' idea - though some ideas are better than others - so we're probably set to disagree on this regardless.
I've heard this argument many many times before, and I feel it's the exact opposite of that. None of it feels like a natural extension of Dragon Ball, and it's just appealing to some fan wish/belief that the Dragon Balls needed to have more consequences, because they were over used.
I have to disagree with this notion. With the advent of the Namekian Dragon Balls, the removal of the one-death limit, and mass resurrection a lot of people feel it takes all the tension out of the series. However the second revival is only really used for Chaozu, until the Boo arc's mass revival of everyone.
The main effect of the limitless and mass revivals to avoid the nasty implications of what would happen to the innocent people killed in these attacks. These are people who died due to the
villains' actions, and it'd be a bit too dark for Dragon Ball to keep them dead because of wish limitations. It would also make the heroes much more irresponsible "Gohan, don't hold back for the Earth's sake" / "We need to train for fusion while Boo is wiping out cities". Hell, Piccolo's instruction to Evil Boo would way too fucking dark if those people couldn't be brought back. The Dragon Ball's improved revival capabilities for necessary for Dragon Ball to be able to keep its tone.
But even without that, I do believe there is some merit to the idea of the Dragon Balls backfiring or giving birth to new enemies. But absolutely not in the way GT chose to do it (and I'm not talking about execution, this is still in the idea phase). GT's idea was "The misuse of the Dragon Balls lead to this enemy, and the group will have to learn from their errors for the ending of the series".
That's completely fucking stupid.
Goku and the gang didn't even mis-use the Dragon Balls. They weren't irresponsible with them. In fact, to act in any other way than what they did would be irresponsible. The main purpose of the Dragon Balls was to either to enable them to defeat current threats, or to restore the Earth and its population after a villain laid waste to it. If they were to decide not to revive the innocent victims of Cell's rampage because "oh it's not natural" they would be
assholes. Just straight up irresponsible assholes.
This should not constitute misuse of the Dragon Balls. There's no lesson to be learned from that, except to try and minimize damage in the first place. But that's a completely separate lesson that shouldn't be tied to the Dragon Balls, it should be tied to everyone not learning to go along with whatever Earth-endangering whim Goku has. Which is something that never happens.
Hell, if there's any lesson to take from the Shadow Dragons arc, it's that selfish wishes are the way to go - they outright say that positive wishes create negative energy in the balls. Ergo, negative wishes would actually be good for the Universe. That's a pretty fucked up moral right there, and that's what happens when you try and take "yin and yang" and equate it to "good and evil".
From a meta perspective, this decision doesn't make sense. It's trying to add a sense of consequence to using the balls but really it ends up going too far and actively punishing people for using the balls the way they should have. Without knowing some kind of shit like this was going to happen, there's no reason to avoid reviving all the innocent people that keep perishing because of the villains.
Speaking of knowing some kind of shit like this was going to happen, that brings us to the massive in-universe problems with this idea. You could say this is more about execution, but I still feel it needs to be said (and some parts tie into the idea).
Popo, Dende, Kibitoshin and Elder Kaioshin all knew what the Shadow Dragons were. They didn't say a fucking thing. You might bring up Elder Kaioshin's warning from the Boo arc, and GT certainly does, but the problem is that Elder Kaioshin's warning is far too vague to tie into this. What sense does it make for him to understand the true consequences of the balls, and then give a really pathetic warning about natural order? Goku hit the nail on the head when he said Kaioshin just said that because he's old. I feel that's a far better interpretation of the scene than "we better follow this up, and make a huge threat Kaioshin didn't adequately warn anyone about". It's a horrible retcon that shows the whole idea is flawed.
That's just covering Elder Kaioshin. Kibitoshin outright says people were aware of the exact dangers and they simply hadn't decided to tell the people of Earth this. Which is... a shockingly poor excuse. Popo and Dende are actually meant to watch over Earth, and they simply choose not to do anything. Popo even knows of a planet that was destroyed by Shadow Dragons, and... chooses not to do anything.
The fact that Dende and God knew about this means there's a good chance it's knowledge possessed by the Namekian race. Not only do they say nothing, they're pretty liberal with the usage of their balls, and all too happy for the humans to use them as well. There's a possibility God and Dende both just learned from Popo, which is a bit strange for him to possess the knowledge originally, but it absolves the Namekians of their guilt. Just means God's and Dende are assholes for not telling them, especially when God was making them use their balls for his whims. Hell, Bulma even points this out to Dende and he makes no defence, just cringes. But given the danger the Shadow Dragons represent to all of creation, it's extremely difficult to sell that idea. Any person they knew should have been spreading that information as much as possible because the Shadow Dragons spawning is simply not an acceptable result.
And that's another fundamental problem with this idea: to introduce and explain it, someone has got to have the knowledge. However that person is just going to look ridiculously negligent. The whole arc is only possible with the heroes being completely unaware of the problem.
Then there's all the retcons introduced, which make even less sense. We're told that the negative energy needs 100 years to dispel, and that the Dragon Balls scattered after each wish to give them time to release the energy. Which contradicts God's earlier explanation - he chose to make them scatter because he wanted a great journey to bring them together, and in so bring people together. Which means God lied about the explanation, and deliberately covered up the danger.
Furthermore, if he was going to put a fail safe on the balls, what's stopping him from actually making the Dragon Balls only grant wishes once every 100 years? We know the creator of the balls can do some quite extension modifications to the balls and the dragon's wishing power, what exactly stops them from making the Dragon Balls inactive for longer, not summon the Dragon before time is up, or giving the dragon the ability to deny wishes if it's too soon etc.? You could come up with reasons for each of these possible solutions, but GT presents none. And they'd probably require different solutions, which means you're tacking on a lot of errata to make the idea possible.
As an aside, the idea that the Dragon Balls scattered to prevent gathering means Bulma got blamed because she invented the Dragon Rader, making it easier to do so. That is a terrible way to assign blame. "You're the most responsible for the Shadow Dragons because you enabled the gathering of the balls" No, that's ridiculous. That's not really to do with the problems in the idea but just some general GT stupidity I noticed while rewatching the episode to make sure I got this stuff right.
In the end, how do they fix the mess with the Shadow Dragons? They have Shenron do it. Which means their approach to this problem has been absolutely no different to any other threat (threat shows up -> go fight threat -> wish the damage away). Instead they resolve that they'll learn to fix their approach
later. They actually procrastinated on the lesson the arc was trying to go for! Now, I think this lesson is really dumb, but that's possibly the worst way to wrap it up.
SO, the idea of adding consequences to the Dragon Balls as a way of teaching everyone a lesson: bad idea.
Horrible idea. I'd say it was one of the worst parts of GT, and there are a lot of strong contenders. It feels like something that goes against the spirit of DB, and trying to cover this up by tying it to Kaioshin's vague comment makes it so much worse.
The only Shadow Dragon idea I see working is this: the idea of "The Dragon Balls lead to villains who, being villains, are
wrong. They're wrong to think the balls were misused, they're wrong to think they should punish the heroes". GT just gives up the potential for moral discussion after the premise is set up and then it's just punchy punch punchy. They don't even try to argue against the Shadow Dragons, Goku's trying to save the day because he thinks it's his fault (although this is just a clever ploy on his part, by saying he's completely responsible he gets to leave everyone behind where they can't take his screen time). And even in this idea, it still wouldn't be very effective if the Dragon Balls actually create the villains because then their existence and the destruction they cause does happen as a result of using the Dragon Balls correctly.
edit: Wow I'm really glad this didn't break any post limits.
Well said Saiga. You deserve a medal for that post.
