Filler - were people "spoiled" by Kai?

[coola]

One of biggest complains i hear from people on Youtube, in regarding to Super, is amount of filler, and overall pacing, personally, i don't mind slice of life episodes, but there are people, who miss Kai pacing, with had almost no filler. and pacing was much faster.

[RafaelLeon]

Unfortunately the fillers are the only way that the supporting cast can be, in Super, useful again. Power levels have reached an absurd high in the past arcs and everyone except for Goku and Vegeta is bound to become fairly useless in the arcs to come.

[TekTheNinja]

Unfortunately the fillers are the only way that the supporting cast can be, in Super, useful again. Power levels have reached an absurd high in the past arcs and everyone except for Goku and Vegeta is bound to become fairly useless in the arcs to come.

I blame god ki for that. Who had the bright idea of, "Let's take the strongest characters on the show, multiply their power immensely, and COMPLETELY leave everyone else in the dust"?

...Oh yeah, that was Toriyama's idea. -_-

I REALLY don't want Toriyama to be the new George Lucas, but he's really making it hard to like his newer work right now.

More on topic though, I think episodes like 43 are great, because they build on characters, but others are pure filler and have no reason to be there.

[Sodhi]

Honestly the pacing for Super is way faster than Z or kai. Arcs end in 13 episode max and fights are not as long.Plus there are not that many filler episodes. Even kai had filler episodes.

[TekTheNinja]

Honestly the pacing for Super is way faster than Z or kai. Arcs end in 13 episode max and fights are not as long.Plus there are not that many filler episodes. Even kai had filler episodes.

I think that may be the problem though. We have really short arcs and they put filler in between them.

[LuckyCat]

I think so, yes. Considering that the powers that be were able to basically cut the Saiyan - Cell arcs in half. It showed that if Toei really wanted to, it could plot episodes to tell the same story but with less padding. Now with Super, the padding's back, for basically the same reason it existed in the original anime's run (to buy time for Toriyama/Other writers to plot the main arcs). That said, I'm pretty used to it at this point. It helps that the video feeds I watch allow me to jump ahead, and episode previews tell me which episodes are "must see".

Has anyone else considered that 20 years from now, they may release a "Super Kai", with pacing similar to Toyotaro's manga?

[JulieYBM]

What padding? If Hatano, Chioka and King Ryuu were padding Dragon Ball Super we would still be in the middle of the tournament between Universe Six and Universe Seven.

[Makai]

Honestly the pacing for Super is way faster than Z or kai. Arcs end in 13 episode max and fights are not as long.Plus there are not that many filler episodes. Even kai had filler episodes.

I think that may be the problem though. We have really short arcs and they put filler in between them.

Which is something I hate about Super. Why not add filler to make the arcs longer instead of making pointless gag filler episodes in between them(Satan/Monaka episodes). Some of the fights in the tournament seemed rushed(like Botamo), and the next arc doesn't start all the way until June. That's plenty of episodes, so I don't understand why they didn't add stuff to make it longer and have better pacing.

[VegettoEX]

so I don't understand why they didn't add stuff to make it longer and have better pacing.

This doesn't compute. If you add stuff to make it longer, you wind up with the Bulma cutaways on Namek and the Goku vs. Freeza stare-downs. That's the opposite of better pacing.

Personally, I love the to-the-point fights followed by downtime/slice-of-life episodes. This is exactly what I want out of the show.

[Gyt Kaliba]

Agreed. Having a little break in-between arcs is a perfectly fine way to 'pad' or have 'filler', and is much more preferable to fights between just two people taking absurdly long and cutting away to a million other things too often.

That said though, each of our arcs in Super so far have been roughly the same amount of episodes, so I can definitely see how that would get to feeling a little bit...monotonous, I guess. For better or worse, I am sort of hoping the next arc takes a little bit longer to get through.

[Avok]

That's like the least of Super's problems.
I grew up with the fillers, so I don't mind them. In fact, I absolutely love the Memories of Gohan episode, right before the Cell Games.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

That said though, each of our arcs in Super so far have been roughly the same amount of episodes, so I can definitely see how that would get to feeling a little bit...monotonous, I guess. For better or worse, I am sort of hoping the next arc takes a little bit longer to get through.

I wouldn't mind longer arcs at all for the sake of variation, but I don't need or want outright "filler" material added into the story during said arcs for the sole point of achieving that. But if the the regular pacing/adaptation of Toriyama's content happened to end up covering 15, 20, 25 episodes instead of the regular dozen or so? Not a problem.

[Xeztin]

so I don't understand why they didn't add stuff to make it longer and have better pacing.

This doesn't compute. If you add stuff to make it longer, you wind up with the Bulma cutaways on Namek and the Goku vs. Freeza stare-downs. That's the opposite of better pacing.

Personally, I love the to-the-point fights followed by downtime/slice-of-life episodes. This is exactly what I want out of the show.

I'm also in this boat, I feel like the downtime episodes keep it from going to Goku fighting Golden Freeza to fighting in a tourney 2 episodes later. It allows me to breathe or to make it feel like it's not nonstop fighting. I think the slice of life episodes could have been just a bit longer between the BOG-ROF-Champa arcs but I think there was only so much they could flesh out and bridge upon because of them being originally movies. Now going to the Future Trunks arc, they have no limits and probably have more to flesh out which is why the "filler" is a bit longer which I enjoy. I like it when Goku basically almost dies in a fight and after pulling off a victory takes a few days to rest up from being beaten to death similar to his side effects of his Kaio-Ken SSJB that's going on in recent episodes. To me that helps the viewer grasp just how dangerous or intense this battle was instead of him winning and recovering over night after having a beating of a life time and the opponent he faced never being mentioned again like it was forgot about.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I wouldn't mind longer arcs at all for the sake of variation, but I don't need or want outright "filler" material added into the story during said arcs for the sole point of achieving that. But if the the regular pacing/adaptation of Toriyama's content happened to end up covering 15, 20, 25 episodes instead of the regular dozen or so? Not a problem.

Oh don't get me wrong - I mean for it to come from a meatier story that takes a longer time to burn through too. A few episodes of downtime 'fluff' in-between arcs is fine, but a story that actually takes a longer time to resolve even ignoring those episodes, that's what I wouldn't mind seeing again eventually. I'd even hedge a bet that might even be what's on the way.

[sailorspazz]

I find the pacing of Super to be just fine. It's done away with the unnecessary padding that plagued the original series (well, most of the time...there were times in the Battle of Gods arc where I was screaming for them to pick it up already), and I don't view the occasional slice-of-life episodes between the arcs as a ridiculous amount of filler. Pretty much any long running series is going to have some breaks in the action, and that's not a bad thing! At least Super has the advantage of not being based on a weekly manga and having to do literally months worth of slowing down the pace like One Piece, Naruto, [insert additional long-running shounen series]. As long as the material is interesting, I'm fine with waiting a few weeks for the next arc to start. Nothing we've seen so far has been on the Fake Namek or Bulma vs. crabs level of bad filler, so I don't get why people would be complaining about it.

[Lord Beerus]

I've found the pacing of Super to best of the four animated DB shows we've had so far. The only gripes about the pacing I've had about Super was for Goku's battle against Beerus which lasted about 1-2 episodes longer than it should have. And the filler of Super has arguably been its greatest quality as it seamlessly ties into the story of Super, doesn't fell shoe horned in and just, well, exceptionally written and directed.

[Ajay]

Weird.

My biggest complaint about Super -- narratively, anyway -- is that it's much too fast. Every plot point is a fleeting moment with little to no build-up. No moment is allowed to build or linger; it's gone in the blink of an eye.

[PsionicWarrior]

IMO so-called fillers are part of the series charm, removing them is like removing the oignons, lettuce and tomatoes from your hamburger.

[Neon Z]

Unfortunately the fillers are the only way that the supporting cast can be, in Super, useful again. Power levels have reached an absurd high in the past arcs and everyone except for Goku and Vegeta is bound to become fairly useless in the arcs to come.

I blame god ki for that. Who had the bright idea of, "Let's take the strongest characters on the show, multiply their power immensely, and COMPLETELY leave everyone else in the dust"?

...Oh yeah, that was Toriyama's idea. -_-

I REALLY don't want Toriyama to be the new George Lucas, but he's really making it hard to like his newer work right now.

More on topic though, I think episodes like 43 are great, because they build on characters, but others are pure filler and have no reason to be there.

Dragonball always introduced new power ups that left everything from before in the dust. God Ki just ended up being ridiculously high since it had to surpass the fusions from the previous saga. The actual issue is that previously Toriyama bothered making up power ups for other characters, while right now every power up seems to be made just for Goku and then recycled for Vegeta.

[TekTheNinja]

Unfortunately the fillers are the only way that the supporting cast can be, in Super, useful again. Power levels have reached an absurd high in the past arcs and everyone except for Goku and Vegeta is bound to become fairly useless in the arcs to come.

I blame god ki for that. Who had the bright idea of, "Let's take the strongest characters on the show, multiply their power immensely, and COMPLETELY leave everyone else in the dust"?

...Oh yeah, that was Toriyama's idea. -_-

I REALLY don't want Toriyama to be the new George Lucas, but he's really making it hard to like his newer work right now.

More on topic though, I think episodes like 43 are great, because they build on characters, but others are pure filler and have no reason to be there.

Dragonball always introduced new power ups that left everything from before in the dust. God Ki just ended up being ridiculously high since it had to surpass the fusions from the previous saga. The actual issue is that previously Toriyama bothered making up power ups for other characters, while right now every power up seems to be made just for Goku and then recycled for Vegeta.

Everyone was always behind, but not THIS far behind. Goku could probably one shot most of the supporting cast right now. Would it really kill them to give the others more power? There's a plethora of ways to come up with power ups even if they're bullshit. (example: "lel I trained for four months and now i'm godly")