Rocketman wrote:I'm talking about it's not "losing" if the opponent verbally fellates you afterwards and then does what you wanted him to do.
Though Beerus does praise Goku for being able to retain the power of Super Saiyan God, it's made abundantly clear that he spares Earth for Goku's spirit as the planet's protector rather than for his fighting ability. Beerus even later indicates to Whis that the so-named "Super Saiyan God" was really nothing special after all (contrast Watanabe's wild-haired, cape-cloaked version of Super Saiyan God from the original, pre-Toriyama draft, who by the end of
that movie would most certainly have triumphed over "Virus", the God of Destruction who supposedly had infected the Saiyans with evil, and seems indeed a lot closer to the mythical "Godku" you appear so adamant on reading into the protagonist of
BoG and
RoF - I mention this because there are few better ways of knowing what message Toriyama wished to transmit than looking at the differences between the original he found and his revised version).
I do not understand on what grounds you can insist that there's any kind of Goku-worship going on (beyond a superficial reading of the term "Super Saiyan
God") when the story does nearly everything to convey precisely the opposite. Goku repeatedly stresses his dissatisfaction with himself, his frustration that he wasn't able to do it on his own - and that even an artificial "God", he still can't measure up to the top dogs of the Universe (if anyone is being "verbally fellated" from A to Z here, it's Beerus - by Kaio, Vegeta, Goku and the rest).
BoG especially, and to a lesser extent
RoF, is about reconciling being Earth's hero with being a pride-puffed, honor-bound warrior, when these two essential dimensions of Goku's personality, one given by nurture and the other by nature, seem so often at odds with one another. To take Goku's power-up as undue exaltation of his character, in abstraction from this necessary context and characterization, is to woefully miss the point here.
It is difficult to argue that the modern stuff glorifies Goku beyond his merit when the main theme of
BoG is that our hero, even as a "God",
even wielding the borrowed power of others (a major plot point of the film is Goku and Vegeta having to overcome their battle pride to save the Earth, Goku with powers he
knowingly does not deserve), still has quite a ways to go, while
RoF chastises him again and again for his recklessness. You may say that both films in concluding without lasting damage or consequence appear to give these flaws a pass, but I suspect this has more to do with their limiting format than anything else, and that a series will surely (or at least hopefully) take up these hanging threads of development to give them the fuller treatment they deserve.
