PFM18 wrote:.....wait you think the ToP was "just boring"? It included atleast two of the best fights in the entire franchise.
Maybe, just maybe, kinda cool-looking fights aren't the only metric by which to judge a piece of media.
COUGHandroid 13, both coola movies, resurrection fCOUGH
Seriously, I'm actually starting to outright
hate this mentality; if the central fight in Batman V Superman had been the best fight scene ever put on film, it would still be a lame, terrible, boring slog of a movie.
Like most media involving fights that isn't wrestling, Dragon Ball has never just been about the fights, they're just the icing on the cake, a cake made of characterisation, humour, creative designs, fun stories, and in the anime only, a highly-varied soundtrack, including some of the most catchy opening/ending themes and insert songs you'll ever hear. The only one of these Super actually does well is the opening/ending themes, it fails on every other conceivable level. And once you fall that far, it doesn't matter how flashy your fights are; if your characters have become cardboard cutouts, your humour has died, your designs have become lazy, and your music has become repetitive drivel, you're not doing a good show anymore.
lancerman wrote:Every arc of GT was ripping off something.
To save space, I'm not going to encase your point-by-point breakdowns in quotes. And I'm gonna need to; the level to which you're wrong requires some in-depth answers, so strap yourself in for a
long post here.
- Arc one, lets bring back kid Goku and redo the original DragonBall hunt in space
That isn't a ripoff, it's an homage to the setup and formula of the first couple of arcs. But, it plays with it to a heavy degree; all three of them are highly-competent fighters, and instead of it simply being "Let's get those Dragon Balls so Bulma can wish for a boyfriend", it's a high-stakes search for the balls which the continued existence of the earth depends on.
- let’s give Goku and Vegeta new forms and let them fight with the backdrop of the Garlic JR arc and the villains motivation based off a filler story that was already explored in an OVA
I'll go into this in more detail below, but the Garlic Jr. comparison doesn't work in the slighest. The OVA comparison doesn't work either, it's just a surface-level similarity of the setup.
If you want to criticise Goku and Vegeta getting new forms, GT isn't the one to criticise, GT only introduced one new form, while Super has introduced about 5 or 6(It's quite telling that I've actually lost track at this point).
- let’s bring back Androids and have them merge to create a Super Android, where did I see that before.
You have a point there, but one small part of the arc's plot doesn't make the arc a wholesale ripoff of something else.
- every villain of the last arc is associated with an event from the series and the entire final battle rips off all the key moments from the Boo arc.
Oh yeah, because having nods to the history of the franchise in the final arc in an 11-year run is a crime that makes the entire thing not worthwhile, and turns what was otherwise a highly original premise into a pure ripoff of something else... 
And now, your previous post, where the meat of my arguments lie:
- First arc, go back to iconic child Goku
Meanwhile, Super switched to a flanderised, childish portrayal of Goku.
- Bring back Pilaf again.
GT brought him back for a one-episode spot, pretty much just as a little in-joke thing. Super has consistently had him back, and... The Pilaf crew really haven't done anything. Unlike in GT, where they just showed up, did a quick thing, then left, we're kind of stuck with them hanging around, not doing anything of any importance in Super. Aside from what Future Mai has got up to(Which completely ignores all her previous characterisation...), the Pilaf crew actually have done even less than they did in GT...
- Have Goku fight the race King Kai mentioned back in that filler episode with the Tuffles.
Super brought in three Saiyans from a parallel universe.
- Have a new version of Goku (SSJ4) fight a new version of Vegeta (baby Vegeta)
Goku Blue vs Jelly Vegeta Blue
- Bring back the Oozaru only this time he's gold
Bring back Freeza twice, only this time he's gold.
Bring back Super Saiyan, only this time it's red, blue, green, white, or "Rosé".
Bring back Trunks, only this time his hair is blue, but otherwise, he's exactly the same as he was in the Cell arc.
Bring back the Mafuba, only this time it's lame.
Bring back mystic Gohan, only this time, it doesn't really mean anything.
- Oh look let's take our Dr Gero knockoff that we created in the last arc and team him up with Dr Gero in hell.
Oh look let's take our Freeza knockoff that we created two arcs ago, and team him up with Freeza in the TOP. I realise he betrays him. Same goes for Myuu and Gero. Super does a surprising amount of ripping off GT.
- let's bring back 17 and give him this new form in a convoluted non sensical way.
Let's bring back 17, and make him strong enough to fight alongside Goku and co. for literally no reason at all.
- lets use this as an excuse for Goku and friends to fight all their old villains.
Let's use Goku's idiocy as an excuse for Goku to fight alongside all his old friends who have already long-since retired and become irrelevant as far as fighting goes.
- Lets do a crappy Cell and Freeza team up while where at it that adds nothing but fan service to the movie
Let's do a crappy return of Future Trunks in a way that adds nothing but fan service to the arc.
Let's do a crappy re-return of Freeza in a way that adds nothing but fan service to the arc.
Let's do a crappy return of #17 in a way that adds nothing but fan service to the arc.
Crappy return of Roshi adds nothing but fan service to the arc.
Crappy return of Tenshinhan adds nothing but fan service to the arc.
Crappy return Kuririn nothing but fan service.
Crap Gohan return fan service.
Crap Piccolo fan service.
- Remember that cool move from the last DBZ movie? We are going to bring it back to beat the villain.
Remember those last two DBZ movies? Let's literally do those all over again. (Though, let's be real -- how is reusing a technique from a movie that had just recently come out a case of unnecessary fanservice? Much as I am countering each of these with Super doing something that I consider worse, with basically all of these, you do have a point, but here, you're just getting nonsensical)
- Let's fuse Goku and Vegeta like in movie 12 only this time SSJ4.
Let's fuse Goku and Vegeta like in the Boo arc only this time it's SS Blue.
- Lets have him make the same mistake Gotenks made against Boo.
This is also how Vegetto Blue vs Zamasu Black ended, so...
lancerman wrote:Oh it's the final arc, let's tie every single villain in it to a wish from the previous series.
How is that a criticism, like at all? It's the final arc, so what better way to finish off the franchise than to have the objects the entire franchise has revolved around turn against them, and use that as a method of harkening back to the show's history? It's not like they're bringing one classic villain back twice, or having a ton of characters who shouldn't be anywhere near Goku's level start fighting alongside him with no explanation...
Hell, half of the wishes don't tie to the villains at all; Liu Xing Long's wish was Oolong's wish for panties, Liang Xing Long's was the revival of Bora, Wu Xing Long was Goku's revival in the Saiyan arc.
And of the remaining four, three of them came from mass revivals(Qi, Yi, and San), leaving Si Xing Long as the only one whose wish directly ties to any villains, the rest being rather tangential.
The Evil Dragons' wishes aren't cheap ways to tie them to past villains, they're a neat way of tying them into the history of the franchise, that's built into the very premise of the arc. The whole point of the Evil Dragons arc is that the protagonists have to pay for their abuse of these sacred objects; they've taken them far too lightly over the years, and now they have to pay for the massive "Get out of jail free card" the balls consistently acted as. So it's only fitting that each dragon would tie into a specific wish to get this point across more strongly.
Besides, one point you've missed all throughout this is the big, damning thing that actually, fanservice in itself isn't a bad thing. Sure, too much of it can be a little off-putting, but the only time it's a real problem is when the fanservice gets in the way of the rest of the show. The Evil Dragons arc does fanservice to take advantage of its premise, while in Super, the premises are entirely built around fanservice.
lancerman wrote:It was just generic crap that felt like fanfiction to desperately seek an audience.
Well done, you've perfectly described how I feel about Super.
lancerman wrote:Baby was the most original thing it did and even that involved recycling filler from the Saiyan arc
So, GT having a third set of Dragon Balls that scatter over the universe, and blow up the planet they're used on is unoriginal, but Super having a third set of Dragon Balls that scatter over two universes, and are the size of planets isn't?
So, GT can have a highly original villain, but because it harkens back to something mentioned in the past, it's bad, but Super retelling the first two movies on a lower budget, and doing a rehashed tournament arc, and taking the plot and structure of the Piccolo Daimao arc and retrofitting it to the setup of the Cell arc isn't?
And, with these unoriginal plots of Super in mind, how is GT having the Dragon Balls turn evil and spawn seven monsters formed as a consequence to the overuse of the Dragon Balls over the run not original?
lancerman wrote:1 and sort of doing the Black Water Mist thing 2 and having Goku and Vegeta fight 3 oh and a Dr. Gero copycat was there.
1. That isn't what happened in the slightest. The Black Water Mist turned everyone and everything feral, causing all the people and animals affected to go mad and attack each-other. Baby possessed everyone, making them go along with his plans, and generally bend to his will.
2. Which Super did, except without building up any real stakes or weight for it, and the fight itself sucked.
3. He looks kinda like him, but their characters are entirely different, and their plans are entirely different -- one is a bitter old man out for revenge who goes too far, and his creations end up turning on him, the other is a maniac who thinks he's the ultimate mastermind of his plans of conquest, when he's actually just a pawn created by Baby to allow him to reach his fullest potential; one wants to make something strong enough to kill Goku, the other wants to conquer the universe, and give life to Baby.
Meanwhile, Super had a Freeza copycat(Frost), two Baby copycats(Watagash, the jelly thing), and a Ginyu Force copycat(IIRC, the pride troopers), none of which were remotely interesting. Even if you're one of the "fights are all tht matter" fans, the fights with most of these guys in Super sucked.
lancerman wrote:And as far as Goku, people keep saying he was mature? He wasn't mature. He wasn't naive like Goku was in the last series, but that was more because he had no character at all and was like every other generic shonen character. There was no difference between him and Ash Ketchum when he was in kid form, and when he was an adult as SSJ4 he was just "badass anime Goku who was all serious all the time and looked like he was doing a Batman impression".
Maybe if all you ever saw was the Funimation dub, or you went in deliberately looking for that perception, but honestly, I don't see how anyone can say he's any more immature than he was in the "End of Z" epilogue thing, or the Boo arc in general. If anything, I'd say he's more mature.
If Super Goku was turned into a kid, he'd spend the entire time complaining about it, and how it's getting in the way of his training, fighting, etc., because that's all Super Goku does; he complains and whines until he can get a strong fight, and even when he gets his way, he's the ultimate bearer of the idiot ball in Super, so he'll do something stupid and only barely scrape through, while causing problems for everyone else along the way. Beerus told Goku that if he bothered the Omni-King, bad things would happen, and yet Goku did it anyway, and endagered everyone and everything he knows and cares about.
In the Saiyan arc, Roshi thought Goku's power might have diminished once he'd settled down with Gohan and Chichi, which isn't hard to imagine, given what we see of his private family life. Super Goku would never be like this, he'd be complaining every step of the way that being Gohan's father and Chichi's husband is getting in the way of his training, and this family life stuff doesn't involve him fighting powerful opponents. Hell, Super Goku hired Hit to take a hit out on his life so they could fight, which very nearly got Goku killed, and would have been dreadful for his family, friends, etc.
Super Goku is such a petulent child, he'll risk absolutely anything to get a decent fight, to the point where he'll put the entirety of existence on the line against Beerus's warnings. Super Goku is a horrible person, and a shallow caricature of who Goku had always been previously.
GT Goku goes with the flow, takes it easy, and even outright accepts "Y'know, this Evil Dragons thing probably is my fault. So, I'm going to go deal with all this myself." This is exactly the character we'd always seen in Goku's shoes up to this point. Sure, fighting is ultimately what he loves, but it's not like he's an incomplete wreck without it, like some kind of horrible addict... He's a pretty chill guy, and he's perfectly willing to accept the consequences of his actions, whatever they may be, partially because he doesn't think there's a challenge out there he can't overcome. Until Super, this is exactly how Goku had always been portrayed.
lancerman wrote:Videl was barely in each show. Gohan actually had some meaningful moments in Super, he had none in GT. Goten I'll give you I guess but I don't think one fight in the Baby arc really meant all that much. Piccolo had a bigger moment in the Baby arc, but that was his only major moment in the show. He actually was a far more active character in Super. And Trunks depends on if you are counting Future or not. Because anything Future did in Super was better than anything GT Trunks did by about 100 miles. [...] Gohan got more development, 17 and Freeza got infinitley more development. Future Trunks got more development than GT Trunks. Kuriren got more character focus and development as did 18. Roshi actually did things even if his development was a gag.
Here's how Super gets so many people on board; it gives the illusion that it's doing things with all these characters, but it's not in fact doing anything. Character involvement isn't a volume thing -- more isn't better, it's all about the actual quality of it, and what they actually do.
What does Gohan do in GT? Well, while it's never centre-stage, it's pretty evident from what he does in the show that he mainly concentrates on his family life and his career these days, but if he ever needs to, he's open to donning his gi, and getting his hands dirty. This shows that in the years since the Boo arc, he's finally struck the balance that he'd always struggled to find, implying a lot of personal growth.
What does Gohan do in Super? Well, somehow he's completely lost all his power in the few months since kid Boo's defeat, and even after vowing to do something about this in the RF arc, he doesn't actually start training under Piccolo again until the TOP, which had been so long since the RF arc, they had to put a filler episode before it to actually remind people what Gohan considers important in his life. Granted, it was a pretty decent filler episode, but despite him getting a couple of episodes to himself, a couple of big moments in the RF arc, and a massive amount of screentime around the TOP, his character development doesn't take him any further than his really limited screentime in GT took him.
So, GT told Gohan's story without having to take up tons of screentime that would be better served on characters who need some focus to get their character arcs done. It's yet another example of Super failing the "Show don't tell" principle; GT implies character growth by showing you everything you need to know, while Super shoves it in your face and has everyone constantly talking about how they feel, and what they feel motivated by... It just artificially drags things out, and gives a lot of faux-big moments that really don't mean anything.
More examples in here:
[spoiler]Videl is in Super a lot more than she is in GT, but she doesn't do anything in either series, really. Aside from the Gohan filler episode, all she does is sit around as a piece of scenary, and occasionally pop up and go "by the way i'm still gohan's wife and pan's mother". Even the Gohan filler didn't do anything with her; they did actually characterise her, with the scene where she tells Barry Khan to piss off showing her being as feisty, smart, and caring as ever, but there's no development here, it's all just to aid Gohan's story, which also itself doesn't have any development behind it other than "Maybe I should actually do that thing I said I was going to do back in RF but I haven't done, with no explanation at all"
Piccolo has done nothing in Super other than agree to train Gohan again. Just like Videl, all he's done is hang around and be furnature, who occasionally pops up and goes "by the way i'm still friends with goku and gohan". Meanwhile, in GT, he comes to a meaningful decision, takes responsibility for forgetting about the black-star balls(I don't consider his forgetting about them a flaw in the series, since it would have happened before he and God split from each-other, a time so long ago, neither of them seem to remember well at all anymore, but since it is ultimately his fault, he does have a certain amount of responsibility to take for it), says his final goodbyes. You could argue the self-sacrifice aspect of it is somewhat undercut by just how long he's lived, and how incredibly many times he's cheated death, but he cements the self-sacrifice element when he chooses to descend to hell to send Goku back to the world of the living.
So, in Super, Piccolo does nothing except train Gohan again.
In GT, Piccolo comes to terms with his mortality, and makes the ultimate sacrifice of not only dying, but choosing to spend his afterlife in hell.
Future Trunks basically just rehashed what he'd done back in the Cell arc; mopes about his bad future, hangs out with the alive people in the present, then leaves to be the protector of his future world, now saved thanks to what he's done in the prime timeline.
I will grant you that GT Trunks doesn't get a whole ton of development, but at least his whole characterisation isn't just "let's do that thing we did in the early '90s again"
A lot of people give GT Trunks crap because he's not as interesting as Future Trunks, but he's a fundamentally different character; he's not the guy who's struggled against cyborgs and Cell for years of his life, leading him to be one of the people rebuilding his world in the wake of disaster; GT Trunks is the son of one of the strongest fighters in the universe, and one of the richest people in the world. He's a privileged guy, though it's pretty clear he's just a little bored with his life as an exec. for Capsule Corp.
On one hand, I agree that Future Trunks is a more interesting character than GT Trunks. On the other, I think Super's handling of Future Trunks was incredibly dull.[/spoiler]
lancerman wrote:And then Vegeta got far more development
As I said in a previous post, GT Vegeta actually had quite a bit of development. Meanwhile, Super Vegeta regressed massively, and completely ignored the events of the kid Boo fight.
Here's the full quote:[spoiler]
Robo4900 wrote:As far as Vegeta goes, what you are describing is technically "development" in the sense that Vegeta changed in GT. I see it more specifically as character regression. Suddenly Vegeta is a stay at home dad who trains sometimes as a hobby instead of being a prideful warrior that he was in every other iteration of the character. He didn't progress as a character and further himself, he just changed altogether. Now he doesn't care about surpassing Goku, he isn't a warrior anymore he is just a glorified "stay at home dad", where that is all he does: stay at home. As far as giving up on his quest to surpass Goku and just accepting that he is inferior, that is just downright ridiculous to me. Vegeta has always been somebody who never gives up and takes pride in his strength. Now he is a pathetic little bitch who just gives up on being strong and accepts that he will always be inferior to Goku. Vegeta is portrayed as not a Saiyan warrior who loves his family, but a generic dad who likes fighting sometimes. I guess it is development but a poor one.
I'm beginning to wonder if all you've watched of GT is the Funimation dub, and that that dub was even worse than I remember.
Vegeta gave up on his petty squabble with Goku during his big internal monologue in the kid Boo fight. If you want to throw that criticism around, you're throwing it at Z; GT simply carried on what had already been established. I see it as massive character growth on Vegeta's part. Vegeta had gone as far as to let an evil wizard corrupt his soul so he could perhaps beat Goku. And even then, Goku was holding back his Super Saiyan 3 transformation, which he could have used to completely destroy Vegeta. Vegeta very clearly had a big change of heart when he realised this, culminating in his inner monologue during the kid Boo fight. It's not as if he's lost his pride, or become a lazy slob, or anything, he's grown older, he's matured, and he's learned some humility. He doesn't obsess over his inferiority complex against Goku anymore, he trains to find out and reach his own limits, a much more reasonable goal. And while Goku and he will always be rivals, at this point in their lives, they're much older, much more mature, and it's evolved into a respectful, actually fairly friendly rivalry.
Think about it for a moment, you're saying that it would be better if Vegeta was still pursuing something which drove him to murder a crowd(At the tournament, as Majin Vegeta) and potentially risk the destruction of the entire planet by unleashing a monster that he had to kill himself to attempt to destroy, and yet he didn't make any headway.
He was incredibly self-destructive throughout Z, and his journey into the end of the Boo arc, the end of Z epilogue, and the material that GT begins to cover, is him learning to not be a self-destructive, selfish moron who'll quite literally get himself, crowds of other people, the planet, maybe even the entire universe destroyed just so he can have one fight with someone who's
slightly stronger than him. Part of growing up is learning to let things go, to accept that -- while you can and should always try your best -- sometimes someone is just better than you, and it's better to just accept that than to spend years destroying yourself trying to achieve a goal that you'll die failing to achieve, destroying everyone around you as you do it.
Vegeta is very clearly still training, still trying to push his own limits in GT; he gets the Super Saiyan 4 transformation, etc., but he's not going to do another Majin Vegeta situation, and maybe he never will surpass Goku. He can still try, and he always will, and he'll never stop fighting, but he's not going to obsessively take absolutely every chance he can to become stronger, to the point where it's like an addiction.
[/spoiler]
This post is long enough as it is without me writing up a whole new character analysis on Vegeta in GT and Super, so you'll have to just deal with me quoting myself on this.
lancerman wrote:Then new characters. Did GT introduce anyone as notable as Beerus or Whis?
Well, actually BOG introduced Beerus and Whis.
This is the problem with Super's retelling arcs; it takes all the same criticisms as those two movies got(Even moreso, in fact, since they didn't fix any of those two movies' narrative issues), but none of the cool stuff it does is really carried over, since most of that came from it being fresh, which is very much not the case for the rehash versions.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.
) And i hated when character was supposed to be out of steam, yet was perfectly fine next episode.
