The (lack of) variety of weather and skies in DBZ

[Raven]

Something just came to my mind.. In Dragonball and early DBZ there seems to be a much wider variety in enviroments and skies then later on in the series. For example, In Dragonball there were lots of night scenes, and occasionally there was rain. There were also beautiful sunsets, which in my opinion added some warmth to the show at times, and there was ofcourse the snow in the Red Ribbon arc. In early DBZ we have Gohan transforming at night under the stars, and around the time Vegeta and Nappa arrive the 'feel' of the enviroment changes a lot, the sky varying from pink/purple to red to blue etc..

However, it seems like this really changed from the Namek arc onwards. Now I know that planet Namek doesn't have nights so maybe that part of the show doesn't really count, (and there were some pretty awesome enviromental changes in the SSJ Goku vs Freeza part afterall) But for some reason from the moment everyone gets back on earth, from there on the enviroments are always simply,'' some rocks and a clear blue sky '' and it never even seems to become night anymore. I personally would have loved to see some more daytime / weather variety during the later arcs; Imagine how creepy Imperfect Cell would have been if he sneaked around the city in the shadows of the night Or maybe Gohan vs Cell fighting at night in the heavy rain..

I've never really heard anyone mention this before, so I wonder if I'm the only one who noticed this.. If you think about it, what 'variable weather scene' stands out for you, and what would you like to see different? (rain/night fights for example )

I apoligize if my grammar is not all that good, as English is not my first language.. I tried hard to type properly though

[caejones]

I noticed this as well! XD

Considering how timing worked out in the Buu arc, I'm surprised there wasn't a nighttime sequence there. Hmmf.

Weather has this odd way of working out to convenience in fiction. T.T

I think the environmental changes added to the sense of adventure. Even Fake Namek had a decent variety (the tornado, the ice, the acid lake...). More environmental variation in the later arcs would have added to the epicness, I think.

(I like how Sagas kept in the Future fight in the rain. XD )

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

I can't say I ever noticed it until I just read this and got a flash of 'hey, now that you mention it'...it did however always strike me as a nice, convenient 'shortcut' that Namek has no night. Toriyama spends less time having to ink in night skies, and the animators of the series get to reuse backgrounds to their heart's content. I have to say, the scenery got very old after a while, and I remember way back when I was watching the series for the first time (the dub on CN at that point) that I couldn't wait for them to get off that freakin' planet already.

I guess it was just such a relief to see them back on Earth, with occasional shots of houses and cities and locations that didn't all look exactly the same, that I never even noticed that the sky never changed ^^;

[Drabaz]

Wow I don't think I ever noticed this either up until now. The Kamehameha collision between Cell and Gohan would have been great with some heavy rain coming down! I think the lack of weather variety is what made the Buu arc so bland for me. Didn't most of the Buu arc take place in like 2 or 3 days? I guess that's why we didn't see the night. Everything was dragged out durring the day and then everybody went to sleep at night.

[Ahiru77]

The lack of variety of weather and skies in DBZ.....







.....makes the appearance of them look very special. TV special, that is.

[Bura]

Perhaps they also left it out because of the dramatic setting rain usually creates during a fight. This is still DragonBall, after all.

That's why I liked it when it rained during Gohan's final fight against the cyborgs. You knew something bad was gonna happen!

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

Perhaps they also left it out because of the dramatic setting rain usually creates during a fight. This is still DragonBall, after all.

That's why I liked it when it rained during Gohan's final fight against the cyborgs. You knew something bad was gonna happen!

The Cell arc did get pretty drama-heavy, though, and some rain may have made for a nice backdrop. I always loved that scene in the Trunks Special, and I think the rain is the deciding factor behind that love (the Manga version of the Trunks story just...eh, very flat, and wouldn't you know it, dry). It created a really emotional tenseness that you never really get in the main series. I know that stuff isn't Toriyama-Sensei's style, but I've always liked the idea of working things like that into certain areas of the series, where appropriate (for instance, it'd be totally out of place to develop some dramatic backstory for the Buu arc stuff, but in the Cell era, it would mesh nicely).

That's probably why I really like the Piccolo and Vegeta sidestories...they explore aspects that Toriyama-Sensei wouldn't dare tread on, but make for great development to satiate fans like myself. I've always felt that too much of the series is one-dimensional, and granted it never really tried to be anything else (Dragonball works so well because of its simplicity), it's always an interesting avenue to explore. The occasional nighttime battle, or a duel in a thunderstorm, may have spiced things up in the Anime where there was no...spice...in the Manga - and I love it when adaptations take some creative liberties with stuff like that, beyond just 'needs moar filler'. It's the same scenario as the comic, but with a bit of a different flair in the animated version. Would've been pretty cool.

[caejones]

That somehow reminds me that in Super Butoden 3, one of the arenas is... pretty much just a thunderstorm. Clouds, lightning, the works.
There was variation in sky coloration there, too.

Wasn't there a part in the Gohan Vs. (Gotenks)Buu fight where they went underground or something?

[Gaffer Tape]

That's something that's always bothered me too. And now that I'm watching the Cell arc in succession on my Dragon Box, it's become even more annoying. People are flying all over the world, days are passing... and yet no matter where they go, when they go, it's always blue skies. It has to be night somewhere!

I came to the conclusion long ago that Namek existed the way it did because Toriyama (surprise!) got lazy and didn't want to have to worry about keeping track of time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even come up with the whole three sun thing until they'd already been there. An editor chimes in with, "Um, Toriyama-san? Haven't they been there for a while? Shouldn't it be night?" "Oh? Hmm... Well, I'll just have... what was that character's name again... Little Green? Yeah, I'll have him say the planet has three suns and has no night!" And then, once the story got back to earth, he just figured why bother anymore.

[dbgtFO]

That's something that's always bothered me too. And now that I'm watching the Cell arc in succession on my Dragon Box, it's become even more annoying. People are flying all over the world, days are passing... and yet no matter where they go, when they go, it's always blue skies. It has to be night somewhere!

I came to the conclusion long ago that Namek existed the way it did because Toriyama (surprise!) got lazy and didn't want to have to worry about keeping track of time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even come up with the whole three sun thing until they'd already been there. An editor chimes in with, "Um, Toriyama-san? Haven't they been there for a while? Shouldn't it be night?" "Oh? Hmm... Well, I'll just have... what was that character's name again... Little Green? Yeah, I'll have him say the planet has three suns and has no night!" And then, once the story got back to earth, he just figured why bother anymore.

Actually it was the narrator, that stated that, other than that I agree.

[Gaffer Tape]

Oh, blah, you're right. I forgot about that. I was confusing it with the anime where they did give Dende that line.

[Raithos]

I liked that one time Krillin got a girlfriend, and she was clueless. But he was hung up on her and that ending scene had a beautiful sunset on the Ocean... Her name is incredibly similar to someones else, but I forget who...

[Perfect]

It was night during the days of rest before the Cell Games, other than that, the rest of the saga happened in a day afterwards (besides Trunk's time line). Buu was really all over the place, though it was the end of the universe, so yeah.
Also, Namek's sky was all over the place when it was nearing it's final hour.

[Great Saiyaman I]

So it takes a planet's explosion to make Toriyama to vary the sky? That's pretty funny.

I think that made the intro to the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai more dramatic. It never rained before!

[caejones]

There was some filler in the twenty-first tournament where the fight got rained out (Goku Vs. Giran, I think?).

Was Tsuru-sen'nin attacking Goku in the night filler?

Come to think of it, wasn't the Great Saiyaman's debut at night?

[Perfect]

There was some filler in the twenty-first tournament where the fight got rained out (Goku Vs. Giran, I think?).

Was Tsuru-sen'nin attacking Goku in the night filler?

Come to think of it, wasn't the Great Saiyaman's debut at night?

Yes rain did interrupt, it was an awesome scene.

They were all in that mini restaurant, or bar, or whatever. Giran ordered a drink (milk?) and some of the monks made fun of him causing a few small fights to break out, etc.

So it takes a planet's explosion to make Toriyama to vary the sky?

No. http://imageftw.com/uploads/20100923/055.jpg

[Cipher]

This is something Toei really took initiative with every time they had the chance. Nearly every interesting fight setting in the latter portion of the series comes from filler, the movies, or GT.

Toriyama's not really a setting guy. Not that he can't; he just doesn't. Toei, on the other hand, gave us some really visually interesting settings:

• Garlic Jr's palace
• The roots of Tullece's tree
• A neon-lit, realistic city during the fight with Slug
• Fights at sunset and in the rain in the Trunks special
• Like, everything in Movie 9
• The Dai Kaio's arena
• A giant, crowded laboratory
• A really bizarre rendition of Hell
• A night-time fight against Hirudegarn
• Night stealth runs through Imegga's city
• Rilld and Goku crashing through alien movie theaters, etc on M2
• The pink-skied Tsufuru planet
• Sugoroku space wtf
• Super 17 and Goku moving from a sunset city, to the arctic, to a lush forest, etc
• The entire evil dragon arc, which is filled with very realistic, western cities we never see anywhere else, and all under that candy-colored sky

The variety and intricacy of settings was one of the biggest things Toei added to the series.

[Gaffer Tape]

I agree with you, Cipher. Two of my favorite atmospheric fights are the Goku vs. Jackie Chun and the Saiya-jin fight. They're both canon and both times that Toriyama actually put the passage of time into the fight itself.

The latter part of the former (ha, that's a fun phrase) at sunset just looks wonderful. The anime was a bit weird with that, though, as it's perfectly daytime when Goku punches Jackie in the face. Then as soon as Jackie gets up, the sky is completely orange. Hmm. I would have thought there'd be enough room for a ten-count in that amount of time.

But the latter fight is where the anime truly surpasses the manga. I can't really blame the manga, though, since it's in black and white, but it does have some good tone at the beginning of Goku vs. Vegeta in color. And, of course, it's established that night falls when the survivors are picked up. Toei just took that and ran with it in spectacular fashion. Toriyama laid the ground work: that the Saiya-jin landed just before noon, and that the fight ended at nightfall. Toei just filled in the gaps. So you have nice afternoon sky for the first part. After the three hour delay, evening is approaching so you have a pink sky for the second part. Goku and Vegeta is a subdued green dusk. It makes it so that when Kuririn is looking down at the battle ground while being driven away, you really get a sense of weight, a sense of exhaustion, that this fight really took a long time. Sadly, even with the fights later on becoming much, much, MUCH longer, it fails to capture that same sense. And I think that because they're so much longer is the reason that a real sense of time is dropped. The fight with Buu ended up taking, what, a couple of YEARS in real-life time? I can imagine it would be hard for Toriyama to keep his in-universe perspective of time clear when his children are growing up around him, holidays come and go, and yet it's still the same damned day in Dragon Ball.

[Perfect]

Well the Tenkaichi was on May 7th and Pure Buu was destroyed by the Genki Dama on May 9th.
Three days in total, not bad. I don't see really a time problem during the Cell Games, being that it started at Noon, and the turn of events seemed to go by really quickly. For Buu, it looks like night time was pretty much skipped over so the stories pacing didn't slow down. Does anyone know what time exactly the Tenkaichi started?

[Gaffer Tape]

The Cell Games are fine. It's the rest of the arc that's all over the place. Literally. Everything from them meeting up on the island to Piccolo's first encounter with Cell happens at the same time of day, even though they've been bopping around the entire world multiple times and engaging in several prolonged fights. That's not to mention that sometimes we see multiple characters at the same time who are at different places in the world, yet it's still daytime in both of those location.

After that, we see several days pass in succession, what with everyone trying to find Cell, yet it still always happens to be daytime, no matter where they are. The Cell arc is a veritable mess in terms of realistic passage of time.