Would you say Toei misunderstood Dragon Ball?

[WittyUsername]

If we want to talk about Goku letting Freeza live as an example of his questionable morality, I think the fact that he chose to let Freeza go at the end of the most recent movie, after he and Vegeta flat out attempted to kill Broly, would count as a pretty egregious example.

[Zestanor]

By the way, this fandom, or at least this message board, does something I’ve never heard anywhere else, and that is to assert a “correct” interpretation of a piece of fiction. I suspect this is because the English dub rather missed the mark, so the English speaking fans of the Japanese version are incluned to take bold positions. Such positions are bolstered by the podcast which often asserts them, and the single Japanese fan who is a regular here.

Regardless: who’s to say that one or another interpretation of Goku’s character is incorrect? And even if its author makes a claim outside of the work itself, the person consuming the media is not “bound” by the author’s opinion.

[KBABZ]

Hell, even Goku at the start of the Z portion of the manga was a different person to the Goku that fought Vegeta. It was only after the Vegeta fight that his Saiyan nature began to overpower whatever sense of rationality he had, and every arc thereafter had Goku doing something reckless just to sate his battle lust.

He let Vegeta live because he wanted to fight him again, despite Vegeta saying he'd come back to Earth to destroy it; he refused to kill Space Hitler, despite the very real threat that Space Hitler could come to Earth for revenge and blow it up from space; he let a mad scientist spend three years building a pair of immensely powerful killer robots; and he withheld SSJ3 against Majin Vegeta and was a large reason why Buu was revived.

Right but when he lets Piccolo Jr. go it doesn't count?

I can't help but wonder how Trunks would've reacted if he overheard Goku and pals treat the android threat that ruined his life so lightly, and callously shoot down Bulma's suggestion.

I mean, he DOESN'T. Trunks' parting words to Goku aren't "Go to the lab and kill Gero right now", it's "Well I'll be seeing ya, in three years time". And he certainly shows up expecting to fight the Androids when he eventually does re-appear; he doesn't have a reaction like "WHY ARE THERE STILL ANDROIDS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!", he's "These Androids aren't the ones I was expecting to fight!".

Regardless: who’s to say that one or another interpretation of Goku’s character is incorrect? And even if its author makes a claim outside of the work itself, the person consuming the media is not “bound” by the author’s opinion.

I think me and TheGodfather93's discussion would be a more traditional discussion since we're having different interpretations of the same version of a character.

[TheGodfather93]

Who cares what his first intention was? He ended up changing his mind. Frieza survived regardless, but that wasn't Goku's fault.

It's a common trope in hero-esque stories. Batman and Superman let their villains live all the time, and they're considered intelligent.

He was the lead scientist of RR. That's all. The details beyond that, and his personality were unknown. Being a lead scientist doesn't necessarily indicate that you're making any of the big decisions for the direction of the military organization.

Dr. Flappe was also a scientist for the RR, and he wasn't really a bad person. He just happened to be involved with bad people.

They had no idea who Gero was, or what the details of his involvement with RR were. There was little to go by of how bad of a person he was.

Detain him? They're not law enforcement. They can't just randomly kidnap some old guy because of some time traveler's allegations.

Destroy his lab? Again, they've never met him. They know little about him. What gives them the right to destroy the property of someone they know little about?

My point exactly. They couldn't have known the rather benign nature of present 17 and 18. So kill 17 and 18 because of what they might do? That's morally just to you?

Not to mention these two were kidnapped by Gero, and turned into cyborgs against their will. If Goku and co. would have preemptively destroyed Gero's lab, they would have destroyed two, rather innocent victims of kidnapping.

And guess what? That's another timeline. The plot showed very clearly how two different timelines can converge. Present 17 and 18 aren't guilty of what their future counterparts did.

I'm not too familiar with Batman and Superman, but are you telling me that if they stumbled across Hitler and Josef Mengele at the height of the Nazi regime, they'd let him them instead of doing something to stop them?

Dr Flappe was filler.

Alright. I'll try to devise a perfectly logical, perfectly reasonable scenario in which the "heroes" could've stopped Dr Gero if they weren't being disgustingly selfish about the whole thing.

They get the warning from Trunks, so they use either Baba or the Dragon Balls to find out Dr Gero's location, and figure out exactly where he's at in terms of building the androids.

Once they find this out, they bring this critically important information to the king of Earth, and say it came from a trusted source. King Furry already likes Goku and is thankful that Goku saved him, and if Goku is being backed up by Bulma, the heiress of Capsule Corp, he'd have even more reason to trust him. Plus, the Red Ribbon Army is involved, and I don't think King Furry likes those guys very much.

After collaborating with King Furry and coming up with a plan, they could set out for Dr Gero's lab with a squad consisting of several of Earth's mightiest warriors and a few law enforcement officers, storm the place, and finally arrest Dr Gero. While he's being detained, Bulma and a couple of detectives could search through his lab to look for evidence that could convict him. If they happened to come across a pair of kidnap victims being experimented on, they could free them and let them live their lives in peace, while offering counselling should they require it. No killing has to happen.

Now, is this something Toriyama would ever write? Hell no. Dragon Ball is way too simple of a story, and the protagonists at point in the series aren't heroes in the traditional sense. However, if they actually thought like heroes and prioritised saving innocent lives instead of being selfishly motivated, it's just one of the ways they could've stopped Dr Gero before he built the androids.

You speak of morality, but what's moral and just about letting a mad scientist with ties to an evil organisation build killer robots? Is it moral and just to sit on this information for three whole years without alerting any peacekeeping authorities whose first priority is to protect people? As I've just described, there are non-lethal ways to fix this problem without putting innocent lives at risk.

Hell, even Goku at the start of the Z portion of the manga was a different person to the Goku that fought Vegeta. It was only after the Vegeta fight that his Saiyan nature began to overpower whatever sense of rationality he had, and every arc thereafter had Goku doing something reckless just to sate his battle lust.

He let Vegeta live because he wanted to fight him again, despite Vegeta saying he'd come back to Earth to destroy it; he refused to kill Space Hitler, despite the very real threat that Space Hitler could come to Earth for revenge and blow it up from space; he let a mad scientist spend three years building a pair of immensely powerful killer robots; and he withheld SSJ3 against Majin Vegeta and was a large reason why Buu was revived.

Right but when he lets Piccolo Jr. go it doesn't count?

Killing Piccolo would've killed Kami, which by extension would've killed the Dragon Balls. That alone was reason enough to keep him alive, since the positives far outweigh the negatives.

I can't help but wonder how Trunks would've reacted if he overheard Goku and pals treat the android threat that ruined his life so lightly, and callously shoot down Bulma's suggestion.

I mean, he DOESN'T. Trunks' parting words to Goku aren't "Go to the lab and kill Gero right now", it's "Well I'll be seeing ya, in three years time". And he certainly shows up expecting to fight the Androids when he eventually does re-appear; he doesn't have a reaction like "WHY ARE THERE STILL ANDROIDS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!", he's "These Androids aren't the ones I was expecting to fight!".

I'm gonna attribute that more to Toriyama's bad writing than anything. It's one of the reasons why I can't bring myself to enjoy the Android/Cell arc anywhere near as much as I did when I was a kid. There were so many leaps in logic, confusing plot points and inconsistencies, and countless instances of the characters acting like complete muppets. You have to suspend your disbelief several times just to try and make sense of the story.

It's like Toriyama thought up of a cool concept inspired by the Terminator movies, started writing it, and then after publishing a few chapters remembered that the Dragon Balls existed and could've easily fixed the problem before it began, so he scrambled to come up with a way to write them out of the story. What we ended up getting was a haphazard, nonsensical explanation that paints a bunch of characters in an incredibly negative light, and then in a further attempt to sweep it under the rug, it's never brought up by anyone ever again.

[Forte224]

I feel like very few understand Dragon Ball in this day and age, and yes, that includes Toei and FUNi; sometimes it seems like even Toriyama himself doesn't understand Dragon Ball anymore. But you know who else that includes? The fans. And not just the nostalgic dub fans, but even people on this site sometimes. People try to make everything black and white, saying things like Goku doesn't care about saving people at all and only wants to fight strong people, when in reality there are many moments where Goku shows a clear concern for others. Is it his main focus in life to save others? No, not at all. If so, he would be foiling bank robberies and stopping other crimes like Gohan's Great Saiyaman hobby. But on the other hand, is Goku nothing but a nutty fighter that only cares about fighting and nothing else? Of course not. Him agreeing to fuse with Vegeta alone proves that he can swallow that primary aspect of himself in order to win the day if necessary. Hell, he couldn't even turn Super Saiyan until the rage over his best friend dying caused him to do so. Fighting strong people and getting stronger is far and away his primary goal in life, but that doesn’t mean he just doesn’t care about others at all either.

But no, instead let's be black and white and either defend each and every stupid Goku dub change because we grew up with it, or on the other side try to call Goku a completely selfish person that cares about no one at all and only wants to fight and eat and sleep like he's some type of instinctual animal. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's keep doing that. Let's all keep missing the point, because something has to unite this fanbase I guess.

[coola]

What's interesting, Dragon Ball wasn't only "big" adaptation from Toei, that sometimes confused goofiness with downright (pardon the word) retardation, and had character getting more dumb as series go on, if you look at later arcs of Sailor Moon old adaptation, way they portrayed goofiness of Minako/Sailor Venus made you sometimes wonder, if she knew that 2 + 2 = 4

[Zestanor]

What's interesting, Dragon Ball wasn't only "big" adaptation from Toei, that sometimes confused goofiness with downright (pardon the word) retardation, and had character getting more dumb as series go on, if you look at later arcs of Sailor Moon old adaptation, way they portrayed goofiness of Minako/Sailor Venus made you sometimes wonder, if she knew that 2 + 2 = 4

To be fair to Toei, the characterizations in that manga are razor thin. Makoto exists solely to bring the number up to five. Toei was given the impossible task of adapting a short, artwork centric manga into five years straight of animation, without really ever knowing what would happen next.

Granted I haven’t seen the later arcs so I don’t know what happens to anime Minako. Perhaps she’s a casualty of Toei giving character traits to manga adapted characters who originally barely had any. I know when she first shows up in the anime she’s super serious, but then quickly Toei goofs her up because “super serious” is just the default manga personality of the Inners and frankly it’s incompatible with Toei’s (usually brilliant) filler-through-slice-of-life approach to Sailor Moon.

I suppose Dragon Ball Super is somewhat comparable. Though I know almost nothing about it, as my tastes have changed since high school, I’ve heard that its story is done in-house at Toei, and is separate from the manga. But when they were bound to the original manga, I don’t think they made Goku any more stupid than he was.

[coola]

What's interesting, Dragon Ball wasn't only "big" adaptation from Toei, that sometimes confused goofiness with downright (pardon the word) retardation, and had character getting more dumb as series go on, if you look at later arcs of Sailor Moon old adaptation, way they portrayed goofiness of Minako/Sailor Venus made you sometimes wonder, if she knew that 2 + 2 = 4

To be fair to Toei, the characterizations in that manga are razor thin. Makoto exists solely to bring the number up to five. Toei was given the impossible task of adapting a short, artwork centric manga into five years straight of animation, without really ever knowing what would happen next.

Granted I haven’t seen the later arcs so I don’t know what happens to anime Minako. Perhaps she’s a casualty of Toei giving character traits to manga adapted characters who originally barely had any. I know when she first shows up in the anime she’s super serious, but then quickly Toei goofs her up because “super serious” is just the default manga personality of the Inners and frankly it’s incompatible with Toei’s (usually brilliant) filler-through-slice-of-life approach to Sailor Moon.

I suppose Dragon Ball Super is somewhat comparable. Though I know almost nothing about it, as my tastes have changed since high school, I’ve heard that its story is done in-house at Toei, and is separate from the manga. But when they were bound to the original manga, I don’t think they made Goku any more stupid than he was.

What's interesting, when we first meet with Minako and Artemis in old anime, they are both serious veterans, but, as series goes on, they get more cheesy. Overall, flanderizationwas big problem for all characters, and by time Stars came out, it all become Super level of bad, turning every Inner senshi into walking trope.

[Zestanor]

What's interesting, when we first meet with Minako and Artemis in old anime, they are both serious veterans, but, as series goes on, they get more cheesy. Overall, flanderizationwas big problem for all characters, and by time Stars came out, it all become Super level of bad, turning every Inner senshi into walking trope.

Yeah that’s what I meant by the “super serious” comment about Minako. I’ll get to watching SuperS and Stars some day, whilst I have no intentions to watch DB Super. I just don’t like the way anime looks when it’s not cel painted and photographed. I’m a critic of aesthetics much more than plot and characters. Mid to late 90s anime, before they switched to digital, is mesmerizing to me and they were at the height of the craft then in terms of potential.

Regarding Sailor Moon, I don’t think it can be helped the Flanderizations. Toei made up for everyone palpable anime-only character arcs in season 1 and then killed them all off. You can’t top that. Minako was deprived of a character arc because she showed up at the last minute; and after season 1 it was too late. From a literary perspective they had nowhere higher to go after laying down their lives. Toei’s killing them off inadvertently gave them more limelight than they, essentially mandated extras, were ever meant to have by the mangaka.

I suppose there is a certain analog in Dragon Ball: When Krillin dies and Piccolo kills the Dragon, it actually seems like death is permanent. When God fixes the Dragon, from that moment on, what is at stake can never again be the characters thenselves (because they can always be revived) and their aspirations, but the world. And that’s not always as compelling.

[Melee_Sovereign]

I'm not too familiar with Batman and Superman, but are you telling me that if they stumbled across Hitler and Josef Mengele at the height of the Nazi regime, they'd let him them instead of doing something to stop them?

Batman and Superman wouldn't kill him. They would try to find a way to imprison them. Usually in the comics, this results in the villain eventually escaping, and wreaking havok again.

Dr Flappe was filler.

Point still stands, you can be a relatively good person and still be involved in a bad organization.

Also, I believe Bulma mentioned Gero being in a science magazine, so Gero may have had a relatively good public image.

After collaborating with King Furry and coming up with a plan, they could set out for Dr Gero's lab with a squad consisting of several of Earth's mightiest warriors and a few law enforcement officers, storm the place, and finally arrest Dr Gero. While he's being detained, Bulma and a couple of detectives could search through his lab to look for evidence that could convict him.

If law enforcement is anything like real life, they can't just storm the place before finding evidence. The evidence bit has to come first. "Some guy in the future told us." Probably not good enough to warrant storming the place.

And Gero is intelligent. Even if they had probable cause to search (not storm) his place, Gero can just act like he's not doing anything malicious. "Oh these Androids? Just a passion project. I'm going to use them as personal assistants for my other scientific endeavors."

That's the other thing. Even if law enforcement finds his Androids, they have no way of proving what his intentions with them are. And Gero would just likely play off his intentions as being benign.

You speak of morality, but what's moral and just about letting a mad scientist with ties to an evil organisation build killer robots? Is it moral and just to sit on this information for three whole years without alerting any peacekeeping authorities whose first priority is to protect people? As I've just described, there are non-lethal ways to fix this problem without putting innocent lives at risk.

It's probably not worth the effort for them to jump through the hoops of the criminal justice system when they can just wish back anyone who was killed. The "selfish" move of just waiting three years to fight them is probably the smartest move. Anyone dies? Just wish them back.

[WittyUsername]

I feel like very few understand Dragon Ball in this day and age, and yes, that includes Toei and FUNi; sometimes it seems like even Toriyama himself doesn't understand Dragon Ball anymore. But you know who else that includes? The fans. And not just the nostalgic dub fans, but even people on this site sometimes. People try to make everything black and white, saying things like Goku doesn't care about saving people at all and only wants to fight strong people, when in reality there are many moments where Goku shows a clear concern for others. Is it his main focus in life to save others? No, not at all. If so, he would be foiling bank robberies and stopping other crimes like Gohan's Great Saiyaman hobby. But on the other hand, is Goku nothing but a nutty fighter that only cares about fighting and nothing else? Of course not. Him agreeing to fuse with Vegeta alone proves that he can swallow that primary aspect of himself in order to win the day if necessary. Hell, he couldn't even turn Super Saiyan until the rage over his best friend dying caused him to do so. Fighting strong people and getting stronger is far and away his primary goal in life, but that doesn’t mean he just doesn’t care about others at all either.

But no, instead let's be black and white and either defend each and every stupid Goku dub change because we grew up with it, or on the other side try to call Goku a completely selfish person that cares about no one at all and only wants to fight and eat and sleep like he's some type of instinctual animal. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's keep doing that. Let's all keep missing the point, because something has to unite this fanbase I guess.

I was actually about to post something like this the other day. I always found myself scratching my head whenever people on this website would argue that Goku is a despicable person who only cares about fighting, and not about keeping the Earth safe. Hell, even before Super, I remembered seeing comments about how Goku belongs in Hell, and that the only reason he’s considered pure of heart is because he’s too stupid to be held accountable for his actions. I was always under the impression that those people were deliberately exaggerating things as a reactionary response to FUNimation’s characterization of him.

I certainly never had any trouble accepting the fact that Goku isn’t Japanese Superman, but with the way some people have talked about him (including Toriyama himself), you would think that he’s some kind of morally bankrupt psychopath who would willingly sacrifice his friends and family, in exchange for the chance to fight someone strong.

[Forte224]

I feel like very few understand Dragon Ball in this day and age, and yes, that includes Toei and FUNi; sometimes it seems like even Toriyama himself doesn't understand Dragon Ball anymore. But you know who else that includes? The fans. And not just the nostalgic dub fans, but even people on this site sometimes. People try to make everything black and white, saying things like Goku doesn't care about saving people at all and only wants to fight strong people, when in reality there are many moments where Goku shows a clear concern for others. Is it his main focus in life to save others? No, not at all. If so, he would be foiling bank robberies and stopping other crimes like Gohan's Great Saiyaman hobby. But on the other hand, is Goku nothing but a nutty fighter that only cares about fighting and nothing else? Of course not. Him agreeing to fuse with Vegeta alone proves that he can swallow that primary aspect of himself in order to win the day if necessary. Hell, he couldn't even turn Super Saiyan until the rage over his best friend dying caused him to do so. Fighting strong people and getting stronger is far and away his primary goal in life, but that doesn’t mean he just doesn’t care about others at all either.

But no, instead let's be black and white and either defend each and every stupid Goku dub change because we grew up with it, or on the other side try to call Goku a completely selfish person that cares about no one at all and only wants to fight and eat and sleep like he's some type of instinctual animal. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's keep doing that. Let's all keep missing the point, because something has to unite this fanbase I guess.

I was actually about to post something like this the other day. I always found myself scratching my head whenever people on this website would argue that Goku is a despicable person who only cares about fighting, and not about keeping the Earth safe. Hell, even before Super, I remembered seeing comments about how Goku belongs in Hell, and that the only reason he’s considered pure of heart is because he’s too stupid to be held accountable for his actions. I was always under the impression that those people were deliberately exaggerating things as a reactionary response to FUNimation’s characterization of him.

I certainly never had any trouble accepting the fact that Goku isn’t Japanese Superman, but with the way some people have talked about him (including Toriyama himself), you would think that he’s some kind of morally bankrupt psychopath who would willingly sacrifice his friends and family, in exchange for the chance to fight someone strong.

Right. I definitely think people overplay that primary side of Goku as a kneejerk reaction to FUNimation's version of him. It's so discouraging that even this site isn't safe from the Internet's "It's either black or it's white" view on things anymore. But that's where we are, unfortunately, and because of it no one on either side will ever see eye-to-eye.

As regards willingly sacrificing his family and friends to fight someone strong, yes, he has never done that blatantly. Did he let Vegeta go so he could fight him again one day, even though he nearly wiped Goku out and would've destroyed earth? Sure, but Goku and his friends know that when Goku comes across an opponent that gets him that excited, he would push himself to even greater heights and be sure to win. Did he take out Gero early to stop the looming threat Trunks mentioned? No, he wanted to fight, but he was confident in his abilities and he even made a decent point that Gero hadn't actually done anything wrong yet. Did he chuck Cell a Senzu so that him and Gohan would have a fair fight? Yes, but only because he was confident Gohan could win. When his confidence in Gohan seemed to be going south (even though he ended up being right anyway) what did he do? He asked for a Senzu and was prepared to either help Gohan or just outright team up on Cell to win.

Goku makes rash and sometimes thoughtless decisions for the sake of getting a good fight, but he does not and would not do so if it meant definite doom for those he's close to.

[KBABZ]

As regards willingly sacrificing his family and friends to fight someone strong, yes, he has never done that blatantly. Did he let Vegeta go so he could fight him again one day, even though he nearly wiped Goku out and would've destroyed earth? Sure, but Goku and his friends know that when Goku comes across an opponent that gets him that excited, he would push himself to even greater heights and be sure to win. Did he take out Gero early to stop the looming threat Trunks mentioned? No, he wanted to fight, but he was confident in his abilities and he even made a decent point that Gero hadn't actually done anything wrong yet. Did he chuck Cell a Senzu so that him and Gohan would have a fair fight? Yes, but only because he was confident Gohan could win. When his confidence in Gohan seemed to be going south (even though he ended up being right anyway) what did he do? He asked for a Senzu and was prepared to either help Gohan or just outright team up on Cell to win.

Goku makes rash and sometimes thoughtless decisions for the sake of getting a good fight, but he does not and would not do so if it meant definite doom for those he's close to.

I always figured that Goku lets them go not just for a good fight later, but also because he figures he can keep them at heel if they cause any trouble, which certainly was the case with Frieza.