MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 4/13/26!)

[Soppa Saia People]

DBD: The Saiyan Arc Part 5!

Dragon Ball Dissection December has begun. Hope you like it. This one and Part 6 are already completed, and I'm pretty proud of both of them. But let me know what you think!

Dude you're amazing
(This is the first time I've posted and I've watched DB Dissection since June )

[Kid Buu]

Dude, it's called an INACTION FIGURE.

Yamcha's death is definitely a nice moment for Krillin, but I do wish Toriyama developed their relationship more. My problem with that scene is that, Kami warned Yamcha in his previous fight to remain vigilant, and yet he doesn't in this fight. Learn Yamcha learn!

Longest fight in the series besides Freeza? What about Buu? Pretty much everything from Gotenks to the Genki Dama fight felt like one big fight.

[Gaffer Tape]

Yeah, that actually surprised me too. I thought for sure the stretch between Gotenks and the end of Boo was longer. In fact, when I originally wrote the script, I wrote it under the assumption that all the continuous fights after this were longer. But I decided just to check to be sure. In fact, I counted. The Saiyan fight and the Boo fight are both 28 chapters long, and since chapters in the Boo arc were shorter, that means the Saiyan fight edges it out. (And in case you're curious, the Freeza fight is 33 chapters, and the Cell Game is 20.) I guess the Boo stuff just feels like it's a lot longer...

Anyway, I'm extremely curious what everyone thinks of my new tactic here of not necessarily handling the battles chronologically but categorizing events based on characters or themes.

[JulieYBM]

I don't think chronology is quite so necessarily so long as the narrative structure of the analysis holds a flow. I quite enjoyed this volume without rigidly adhering to prior releases. I also love the analysis of the characters' facing life-and-death for the first time. It had not occurred to me that Yamcha and Kuririn hadn't been under those conditions before. The death of Yamcha clearly changed the mood of the story up to that point from a game to actual combat, something I had never quite thought about until now.

I like the idea of presenting the early deaths as a single 'attack', a quick, tumultuous panic. Toriyama did break up the flow with patches of dialogue, but I think it would be interesting to present everything from Yamcha's death to Tenshinhan's death as a sort of quick panic, like three minutes of good animation in animated form.

[jcogginsa]

It works well for me.

I do wonder if you're gonna analyze Nappa to any real extent. He's not a particularly deep character, but i like the guy. Of the three sayians introduced in this arc, he seems like the least evil (Not by much granted)

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

I too had never considered that half the fighters came into this showdown off of tournaments. Their confidence? Perfect, the gang was all there for the first time in six years, everyone was pumped, and their big gun is coming back from training with a God. But it gives a lot of perspective; you want to disregard the villains gloating, but this really is the enthusiasts from Earth against the galaxy-trotting, professional killers from a freakishly qualified warrior race. Vegeta says "Clear the battlefield, next!", Krillin says "That's not how we do things here, you condescending trash!" Piccolo worked in a similar manner, but the Saiyans being visiting aliens creates a bigger disconnect.

On fight coverage, on principle you are correct that summarizing the flow of battles gains no one anything, and is going to leave you sounding like Kyle Hebert or Dale Kelly with less alteration (bless those script writers). On the other, you've already commented on the art of certain attacks, and there are bits of fights that are bigger than themselves. While Piccolo Jr. and Nappa did it before him, I always think back to Vegeta's "Hurricane Power-Up" as beginning the trend of earth-shaking faux-constipation the series is known form, and that gets a nod. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Doctor.]

I guess the Boo stuff just feels like it's a lot longer...

I blame the anime honestly, it padded out all of the fight scenes which were incredibly short during the Boo arc in the manga.

[Lunatic Fringe]

Great stuff as usual. I'm glad I'm not the only one who appreciates the Nappa fight. It gets pretty underrated but the shift in tone from jovial and optimistic camaraderie to hopelessness and despair makes it really stand out. Plus, there's the fact that because of the fact that it's established that Nappa is weaker than Vegeta and that some of their prior strategies actually make some headway, you could get a sense that okay, we're totally boned once we get to Vegeta but we can at least take Nappa out.

[coola]

I also think this new narration works very well. I really like Nappa fight, it shows how dreadful situation is, and how one sided fight is, so many sacrifices, and Nappa isn't even wounded, it is why i give F/Super such hard time, when you are much weaker, attack shouldn't do anything to you, surprise or not

[Gaffer Tape]

I blame the anime honestly, it padded out all of the fight scenes which were incredibly short during the Boo arc in the manga.

Maybe that's the case for some people, but I've only ever seen the Boo arc's anime version in its entirety once. My memories of it are from the manga, and it feels interminably long there.

[jcogginsa]

Honestly, The Boo arc doesn't seem like a really long fight to me, more like a string of fights

[Gaffer Tape]

Honestly, The Boo arc doesn't seem like a really long fight to me, more like a string of fights

I wouldn't say it's any more or less a string of fights than this one or the Freeza fight. It's all continuous or near-continuous action featuring a large amount of fighters that rotate in and out as the battle goes on.

[jcogginsa]

Honestly, The Boo arc doesn't seem like a really long fight to me, more like a string of fights

I wouldn't say it's any more or less a string of fights than this one or the Freeza fight. It's all continuous or near-continuous action featuring a large amount of fighters that rotate in and out as the battle goes on.

Well, i would actually consider the fight against Vegeta as separate from the battles with nappa as well

[RandomGuy96]

I agree that the Cultivar/Nappa fight builds up tension really well and makes things feel desperate. It's one of the reasons why I think the Saiyan arc is the best written one. Oh, and Yamcha was used perfectly. I do find it questionable, though, that you called his fight with the Cultivar "impressive"; if anything the whole scene is specifically written to show that fight as extremely unimpressive. Yamcha gets a clean Kamehameha to an off-guard enemy, and not only does it fail to defeat them, but Krillin proceeds to destroy three of the same enemies with no trouble using generic energy blasts a few minutes later.

Nitpick: you said Chaozu shouldn't have immediately blown himself up, because they'd only been fighting Nappa for a little while. The thing about that is, it's not like fighting Nappa more would've given him information he didn't already have. He saw Krillin's blast do nothing to Nappa, he saw Nappa cripple Tenshinhan with one punch, and he personally felt his psychic powers being ineffective against the brute. At that point, there was no reason to think he himself could make any difference without a suicide attack.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

I blame the anime honestly, it padded out all of the fight scenes which were incredibly short during the Boo arc in the manga.

Maybe that's the case for some people, but I've only ever seen the Boo arc's anime version in its entirety once. My memories of it are from the manga, and it feels interminably long there.

Maybe because you dont like so much the Bu arc and thus everything feels dragged to you ?

Like in real life, everything you like goes in a blink and everything you dont, feels like an eternity.

[Geekdom101]

It's not DBD, but me, Lance, Qaaman and Blackenfist chop it up about filler in the series.

https://youtu.be/UfEk-GtDsuQ

Sorry if the audio is a tiny bit choppy.

[Kid Buu]

Yamcha was used perfectly. I do find it questionable, though, that you called his fight with the Cultivar "impressive"; if anything the whole scene is specifically written to show that fight as extremely unimpressive. Yamcha gets a clean Kamehameha to an off-guard enemy, and not only does it fail to defeat them, but Krillin proceeds to destroy three of the same enemies with no trouble using generic energy blasts a few minutes later.

My problem with the execution is that he just makes the same mistake he did in the previous fight. I do wonder if that was intentional or if Toriyama had simply forgot

[Gaffer Tape]

DBD: The Saiyan Arc Part 6!

DBD December continues. Spoiler: Piccolo dies. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, I talk about what drives me especially crazy about Dragon Ball Minus.

[Doctor.]

Completely agree with your criticism about DB Minus, same reason (among others) why Episode of Bardock was such trash, too.

[coola]

Like it was said in one of topics i created, while DB Minus/Episode of Bardock does completley change Goku/Bardock story, it is still kinda ironic, Vegeta believe himself to be super elite, best of best, only worthy of becoming Super Saiyan, but in reality, it was Goku who was superior being all along, him being descendant of first legendary SSJ, and neither of Goku or Vegeta knows that. like in MGS and Snake/Liquid case, where Liquid believed that Snake had dominate genes.