Ki Mechanics

[ABED]

This thread I'm starting because the discussion in "Non Thread Worthy Topics" went entirely too long (sorry) and it actually could be its own topic. Small recap, one poster has issue with the way Ki is dealt with in DB. They claim it's not sufficiently explained. For instance, if Ki is mystical and thus not entirely physical, why the need to train ones muscles. For instance, why train with weighted clothing or turtle shells? If I'm wrong on this, feel free to correct me. Anyway, as best as I understand, Toriyama took a concept that Japanese kids understood almost by cultural osmosis and used it in his story with minimal explanation. I argue it wasn't neccessary because they already understood and it would've just been needless exposition. Not just exposition but exposition about mystical concept which I argue is pure nonsense and a detailed explanation about mysticism and made up science doesn't really matter because at some point fantasy requires some degree of suspension of disbelief. There's always a buy. It also got me thinking about elements in Toriyama's and other stories that use elements or concepts that don't require much in the way of exposition because it's understood culturally.

What say you all?

[KBABZ]

I agree that it is vaguely defined, and in regarded to multiplying factors like Kaio-Ken and Super Saiyan that apparently generates more ki from out of nowhere. Outside of that though I think the vagueness actually helps, because it means fights aren't too bogged down by semantics, as well as giving it flexibility when it needs to. Helps with attack scaling too; Goku performing a Kamehameha as a kid and it taking a lot out of him is put into perspective later when he can use it without as much of a penalty. It's also useful as a general "energy meter" that lets us know a fighter is at the end of their rope even if it might not be immediately obvious.

I do agree though that it would have been nice to have SOME material in Dragon Ball explain ki to the extend that we're on the level of Japanese school kids about it.

[MyVisionity]

How incredibly different are the systems that every shonen manga DB inspired that they can explain themselves just fine but the now globally-marketed Dragon Ball is somehow exempt from that despite it's systems, by your own words, only really being known to Asian audiences?

Dragon Ball is exempt because the author simply did not want to tell the kind of story or write the kind of series that those other authors wrote. Those guys wanted to put their own spin on the traditional Ki concept and make it their own, while also expanding the world and mythos of the series. Toriyama just wanted to tell a simple martial arts story. Dragon Ball isn't the academic undertaking that something like Naruto is.

Okay but they do a shit job showing it too. For example: Super Saiyan. Makes you muscly. Increases physical attack power. How does that work? It functions on ki, something that's seemingly separate from physical bodies in other parts of the story. Otherwise, what does weighted training gear do? What's the point of training the body at all when the magic spirit energy is doing most of the work? How do you actually gain "more" ki? What part of "training" does this? You're saying the answer doesn't matter because "who cares it's not that deep", and you're right! But the fact that you, and really the story itself, don't seem to have any better explanation than "y'know...ki" seems to tell me that it does, infact, not explain this stuff very well.

First, I don't consider Ki to be entirely separate from the physical body. Ki itself is generated and regulated throughout the physical body, otherwise you could never access it in the first place. This is true in the real world as well. Ki works in conjunction with physical strength, which is why the body is amplified via transformations/power-ups, and why weighted training gear is so effective.

Secondly, I don't consider Ki to be "magical" in the least. It is very much a natural and scientific part of the martial arts. Yes, there is a part of the Ki concept that is rooted in Eastern mysticism and religion, but this is only one side of it. What the characters accomplish within Dragon Ball is all a natural byproduct of traditional martial arts training, albeit to exaggerated extremes commonly found in anime/manga and martial arts fiction.

I also disagree with ABED that mysticism is purely BS and nonsense. There can be a science behind mysticism, even when it's not explicitly stated or when it's expressed in non-scientific language. There can be logic found within mysticism, and thus some kind of "rules" that could possibly be applied, particularly within fiction.

[ABED]

I also disagree with ABED that mysticism is purely BS and nonsense. There can be a science behind mysticism, even when it's not explicitly stated or when it's expressed in non-scientific language. There can be logic found within mysticism, and thus some kind of "rules" that could possibly be applied, particularly within fiction.

THis is inherently contradictory. Mysticism is inherently non-causal. If it was causal, it would just be called science. It might be weird science, but still science. While there's some logic in it in stories, at some point, there's ALWAYS a buy on the part of the audience.

I think it's more than fair that Toriyama only felt the need to write to an Asian audience and so didn't feel the need explain a concept to a foreign audience within the story since they would presumably already be familiar with it.

[KBABZ]

I think it's more than fair that Toriyama only felt the need to write to an Asian audience and so didn't feel the need explain a concept to a foreign audience within the story since they would presumably already be familiar with it.

So should the onus be on ViZ or Funi to somehow explain it for us? (semi-rhetorical question)

[Kunzait_83]

Dragon Ball isn't the academic undertaking that something like Naruto is.

Naruto is a great many things: an "academic undertaking" (on like, ANY remote level or definition of the phrase whatsoever) is about as quintillions of lightyears removed from one of those things as anything can conceivably get.

This applies not just to Naruto, but also Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fist of the North Star, One Piece, JoJo, and most any/all Shonen series that aren't rooted in WWII or Vietnam-level psychological/political themes and realism like Area 88 or Barefoot Gen.

Once more, for the umpteenth trillionth time: these Shonen stories, by their very nature, are written specifically for 1st through 6th graders. Calling ANY of these works something akin to an "academic undertaking" (even half-jokingly) is almost literally no different than labeling something like G.I. Joe or Transformers or Ben 10 as such.

Words have meaning and critical gauges and spectrums exist for a reason: and they don't generally revolve themselves first and foremost primarily around works that are written at a 6 year old's level of literacy and understanding.

As a brief aside (and I've long, long thought this point is so very, very key and crucial to the whole "What audience is Shonen made for?" non-debate): Japanese media having infinitely better baseline standards for critical thinking and comprehension skills in their general populace of grade school children under 12 doesn't therefore make their fantasy comic books and cartoons for those very young age groups over there somehow innately appropriate for a MUCH older audience in a Western culture like that of North America: it simply means that our Western culture intellectually treats our grade school children like complete and utter fucking halfwits and morons.

And we (as Westerners/Americans) should probably be doing way, WAY better on that front and encouraging our kids to aim their interests and intellectual understandings vastly higher than we traditionally have been: not fuck over any and all semblance of critical standards so that we compensate by instead having our own grown-ass adults simply aim their own interests and intellectual pursuits MUCH LOWER than they should be.

Okay but they do a shit job showing it too. For example: Super Saiyan. Makes you muscly. Increases physical attack power. How does that work? It functions on ki, something that's seemingly separate from physical bodies in other parts of the story. Otherwise, what does weighted training gear do? What's the point of training the body at all when the magic spirit energy is doing most of the work? How do you actually gain "more" ki? What part of "training" does this?

Ki/Chi training, both in pretty much ALL Wuxia/Chinese martial arts myths (DB being no exception whatsoever) and in real life Kung Fu training, are centered a great, great deal around core muscle control.

I outlined all of this in the Wuxia thread, but basically to sum up: the body's core muscle strength is central to tapping into a great deal of reserves of strength and energy that in real world terms allow highly trained athletes to jump higher, move/react faster, and hit harder than the average person (within a fairly sane/sensible realm of reason generally).

Wuxia, being a genre of Asian high fantasy culled from ancient Buddhist and Taoist spiritual/religious beliefs that tied themselves intrinsically into ancient martial arts training regimens, isn't tied in to these real world limitations, and thus tapping into this natural reserve of energy brings with it all sorts of fantastical supernatural/spiritual abilities.

As physically-rooted as Ki training is, there is also still very much a mental and spiritual side of it as well: meditation, and being able to control one's mind and emotions (so as to better control one's body/muscles, since the two are so innately tied together as a bigger whole) coupled with focused breathing (which also exercises the core muscles) all combine to give a fighter not only complete and total control over every muscle fiber in their body, but also control over all its reserves of natural energy and power.

In real life, meditation and controlling one's mental state and emotions is key to developing better muscle control, and thus better control over those extra boosts of energy and strength that a person can bring forth from highly acute core muscle strength (which is further critically tied to deep breathing exercises and control over the diaphragm: aka, one of the most critical core muscles in the human body).

This highly acute and rigorously trained sense of control over one's deepest core body muscles is effectively the "real life, science-based" version of Ki and Ki training, and it is still today a critical concept and practice not just to real world martial arts training (of a wide variety of disciplines) but also a great many athletic training regimens across numerous other sports around the world.

In Wuxia myths and fantasy stories however, this core energy brought forth from the deepest reserves of the human body can manifest itself not just as biological energy as we know it in real life scientific terms, but as a supernatural/spiritual kind of power that is tied to nature itself, along with other spiritual/philosophical concepts like Yin and Yang (positive and negative energies).

In Wuxia fantasy fiction, when you master control over your body and its Ki/Chi energy, you don't just simply jump higher: you SOAR above the clouds like a god. You don't just move faster: you move faster than any human eye can physically hope to detect. You don't just lift heavy things: you can pick up an entire mountain range the size of a continental divide. And you don't just create bursts of air pressure that can snuff a candle when you throw a punch: you can release your body's very essence as a force of light that can bring down an entire city or village with the wave of a hand.

Basically, the best way to describe Ki/Chi in the mythical sense that its always presented as across most all Asian martial arts fantasy fiction there is is essentially that of old school Tall Tales (in the traditional folkloric "Game of Telephone" sense of the phrase) but built and centered entirely around Chinese Buddhist/Taoist religious interpretations of ancient Kung Fu training practices and skills.

"I was taught by Master Shen: his control over his Chi is so strong, he once brought down an entire battalion of imperial soldiers all by himself! He was so fast, no blade could touch him, and so strong that if one did, the steel would shatter against his muscles! The force of Chi from his palm strikes could kill a dragon in a single blow and send demons back to hell!"

They're Chinese martial arts fairy tale stories (sometimes vaguely or loosely rooted in real life events/happenings to varying degrees) that have been told, retold, re-retold, exaggerated, embellished, and blown up to within an inch of their life by literal centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries of retellings and reinterpretations from person to person to person to person down through the ages: be they over-actively imaginative children, or superstitious rural villagers, or naive imperial nobility, or intelligent academics putting their own clever/artistic spin on a tired old wives tale about a martial arts master (who may or may not have ever really existed in the first place) who supposedly once fought and singlehandedly defeated an all powerful and divine Buddhist deity, or what have you.

You're assuming that everyone is as genre-savvy as you think that you are, and I think that's kind of antithetical to the idea of Dragon Ball as a work being able to stand on it's own. How incredibly different are the systems that every shonen manga DB inspired that they can explain themselves just fine but the now globally-marketed Dragon Ball is somehow exempt from that despite it's systems, by your own words, only really being known to Asian audiences?

First of all: a VAST majority of the most popular Shonen franchises that DB "inspired" are, themselves, NOT centered around martial arts (real world or mythical) almost at all (which is one of the key reasons why I've often begged the question throughout the years "What the fuck does most of this shit have to do with DB again?" but that's neither here nor there).

While Naruto is at least rooted in classic Japanese myths and pop culture surrounding Ninjitsu (which is a form of Asian genre storytelling that's at least a Japanese cousin, a few ticks removed, to that of Chinese Wuxia as they share much the very same Buddhist/Taoist martial arts roots), franchises like One Piece, Toriko, One Punch Man, My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, Hitman Reborn, Full Metal Alchemist, etc. are taking almost everything BUT the martial arts aspect from DB (which generally doesn't really amount to very much without Toriyama's highly distinctive artistic sensibilities there to give it a unique sense of identity and personality), and instead are often largely dealing in their very own original (if highly suspiciously similar to that of DB) magical nonsense that they thus have the freedom and ability to make up their own "rules" for and outline for the audience. Which in the minds of many Shonen fans, gives them the illusion of "depth", but that's a whole side tangent on its own.

Secondly, and more to the point: asking for every piece of Wuxia media or fiction in existence (of which there is an incalculably absurd amount, spanning literally centuries and millennia) to over-explain away these concepts as if EVERY person reading or watching them is a non-Chinese/non-East Asian foreigner/Westerner who's never heard of any of this nor had it so firmly and widely embedded in their culture for countless generations is absurd on a whole host of obvious levels. i.e. Not every work of art or creativity is inherently aimed at the same audience, the world isn't made up of one monolithic culture or cultural frame of reference that we all universally ascribe to collectively, etc.

But more specifically than that even, given the incredibly old fashioned bedtime fairy tale nature of Wuxia/Chinese martial arts myths and folklore as a genre of Asian fantasy in its most general summation... its also sort of like demanding an in depth, scientific explanation for precisely why and how it is that something like say... the magic apple in Snow White can put a person into a deep sleep that they can only ever be woken from by a kiss from their truest love.

"How does that even work exactly? By what metric is a person's 'true love' being judged? And judged by who or what? What exact attributes qualifies someone as someone else's 'truest love' and what mechanisms or entities are judging and scaling this process?"

Cue "truest love strength scaling debates" on Snow White into eternity until we all collectively lose every last of our scant few remaining brain cells.

At the end of the day, fantasy is fantasy and magic is magic: it exists because it does and because we make it so. It exists and functions as it does in fiction because of the human imagination and creative spark that gives it life and wills it into being through the mediums of art and narrative and storytelling.

Fantasy Magic can take on many forms and many interpretations across many different world cultures with their own unique, specific framework and contextual basis. Dragon Ball's is rooted intrinsically, innately, and inseparably from that of millennia-old ancient Taoist beliefs and stories of great Chinese martial arts masters who had so thoroughly mastered control over their bodies, over their minds, and over their spirits, that they drew upon hidden, mystical energies inherent to not just humans, but all of organic life, all of nature, and all of the heavens and the gods within them. Energies that ALL of us have the power and the potential to tap into and unlock within any one of us the power of a god: so long as we're disciplined enough, focused enough, and work as hard and tirelessly in training ourselves as we possibly can (stop me if any of those concepts ring familiar).

That those seemingly magical energies began in real life simply as bursts of natural strength culled from years upon years of rigorous deep core muscle training is but the source and the basis for how the stories of these incredible warriors who are capable of such feats of inhuman-seeming martial arts mastery inevitably took on a life of their own into religious myths and legends: religious myths that have evolved over time and millennia into a premier genre of inspirational fantasy fiction and vividly creative art into the modern day, one who's collective history helps to form such a critical piece of the broader history, ideas, and culture from one of the largest and most historically significant regions of the world (no my fellow Americans, it ain't just all about us).

Because of the real life martial arts-derived nature of the initial cultural basis for these stories, of COURSE there's ultimately going to be a tremendously physical component to it. In Wuxia, as in Buddhist and Taoist beliefs, mastery over the body is often one and the same along with mastery over the mind and mastery over the spirit. It isn't at all like a lot of Western fantasy, where magic and gifts can much more often be granted with the snap of a finger or the recitation of a series of magic words: in Wuxia, while there is indeed still SOME of that from time to time, much more often than not, the magic is hard-fought for and earned by those who wield it through tireless, grinding hard work and a literal lifetime (sometimes several) of endless training and discipline.

No, a LOT of this crucial historical/cultural context (much of which yes, is DEEPLY ingrained into a great many East Asian cultures; so much so that most every random school kid is indeed viscerally familiar with it) is sadly still WAY TOO foreign and alien to a great many Westerners, many of whom tend to do way too much talking and far too little reading, listening, or learning. Yes, that is indeed incredibly depressing, given both what a rich history of incredible art and concepts that this genre of storytelling makes up and embodies as well as what a sad indictment of some of the limits of our supposedly/theoretically "connected" internet culture (which in a great many cases can often seem anything BUT connected).

But no, that DOESN'T mean that it must by definition somehow fall onto Dragon Ball - a random and highly irreverent/whimsical Japanese Wuxia comic book and cartoon aimed at Japanese 2nd graders and created fast and loose on the fly by a guy who thinks that talking poo on a stick is the height of comedic inspiration - to take it upon itself to be the global ambassador of all these incredibly rich, nuanced cultural myths and concepts with historical contexts that span well into the B.C. territory of human history for an entire generation of culturally ignorant/gated-off American/Western children/former-children.

Particularly when DB's own author/creator himself is by no means HARDLY some studied historian or researched academic on this genre or these concepts, and is basically just an ordinary Japanese dude with an ordinary Japanese education who just happened to watch a fuckload of Chinese and Japanese movies and TV shows within this fantasy martial arts genre (that is insanely mainstream and prolific over in his neck of the woods) and gets much of his own insight into these concepts and themes as the next average educated Japanese or Chinese pop culture junkie of the modern day tends to.

Hell, a tremendously great many (of not MOST) actual hard, classical literature in the genre (of the kind that actual academic experts on Chinese culture, art, and history actually study seriously as genuinely significant works) oftentimes don't go out of their way to explain much of these finer details: because MOST average Chinese people generally already tends to know this stuff on some level or another.

What exactly the hell makes the cheesy little children's mystical kung fu fairy tale comic book from the 1980s starring one of the umpteen trillionth knockoffs of Sun Wukong - that features the Wukong character patting down the genitals of random strangers as one of its chief sources of comedy, to give an idea of the level of intellectual depth and ambition that we're dealing with here - somehow ANY more beholden to outlining and over-explaining every last nuance and detail of the exact basic mechanics of how Ki/Chi works (which are generally speaking UNIVERSAL across 98% of most Wuxia stories in general, unless otherwise noted when one decides to do something unique or different with the concept) when even the great Chinese poets, artisans, and scholars of history like Li Bai, Pei Xing, Wu Cheng'en, Shi Nai'an, etc. often have never even bothered to. Because WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY when literally almost EVERYONE reading their stories within their region of the world already learned this stuff as small children as much of it was incredibly common Buddhist and Taoist teachings in that part of the world?

In Western terms, it doesn't take a college educated historian with a doctorate in European mythology to understand that generally speaking (unless otherwise noted) Werewolves transform at the full moon and are susceptible to silver bullets. Or that Vampires need to be invited into a stranger's home first, are allergic to garlic, are terrified of crucifixes, holy water, and other Catholic symbols, sleep in coffins, transform into bats and mist, burn up in the sunlight, must be staked through the heart, etc.

We ALL here in the West know all of these beyond old, superstitious tidbits of fairy tale nonsense. HOW do many of us even know it in the first place? Fuck if most of us can even REMEMBER its been so long ingrained into our collective cultural brains: THAT'S EXACTLY what these concepts of Chi/Ki and other tropes of Wuxia fiction are to many Asian cultures. Its literally NO DIFFERENT in terms of mass cultural osmosis.

Just because we as Westerners do not share in that osmosis, does not mean that when a work of Wuxia/martial arts fantasy fiction from East Asia suddenly crosses over and becomes mainstream over here, that single work is suddenly and arbitrarily obligated JUST FOR US to do its due diligence to specifically cater to the ignorance and perspectives of this new foreign audience who don't share in this particular cultural baseline knowledge.

Toriyama wrote Dragon Ball for the average Japanese 1st grader, for little Toshio over in Okinawa: not for little Timothy over in rural Nebraska. Its unbelievably and immensely wonderful and genuinely enriching that Dragon Ball has such incredible legs as a story that the little Timothy's of the Western world get to share in the little Toshio's cool, kickass little martial arts fantasy comic/cartoon and become exposed to such fascinating foreign artistic concepts they otherwise would never be exposed to: that doesn't however therefore mean that now Toriyama is suddenly a shitty comic artist/storyteller because he never took little Timothy into account back in 1984.

Pei Xing, one of the great Chinese writers of the 9th century, doesn't go into absurd detail explaining the exact spiritual mechanics of how the character Mo-Le can move, fly, and zip around at such blindingly supersonic speeds like a human jet engine. The character is simply described in the narrative as a powerful Xian master: that alone carries with it ALL the built-in cultural connotations and context that an average Chinese reader (who likely was taught at least BASIC Taoist and Buddhist traditions and superstitions when he or she was a small child and could barely talk themselves) needs to grasp why the character can do the insane, magical things that he can do.

Its the same reason why a story written in the West today can tell a story about a world overrun with legions of undead corpses that feast on human flesh and can only be killed by damaging the head and never ONCE utter or allude to the word "zombie" or go into ANY details whatsoever about why these things are the way they are. EVERYONE in the intended cultural audience damn well knows what they are and doesn't need to be told in any way: explaining it in gross detail out of the blue for no real reason (unless its doing something VERY different and against the grain and needs to add a layer of comparison for context)) would be, probably rightly, seen by most as not just time-wasting, but probably even belittling, patronizing, and intelligence-insulting.

With Dragon Ball and with the concept of Ki as a means of "magical/mystical martial arts training", DB's Western audience is simply taking that lack of cultural context and osmosis for granted: even in many cases where some people here will staunchly claim that they aren't denying that lack of context as being a factor, they often times STILL are even without consciously realizing themselves that they're dismissing and taking for granted this HUGE elephant in the room here, and one of the real key sources for the reason why there's so much bizarre disconnect among so many fully grown/educated people around what is ultimately an INCREDIBLY simple, silly fantasy story meant and written for children as young as barely above toddler age.

Almost EVERY average East Asian kid knows on a visceral, primal level what it means when a hermetic, weird-seeming martial arts guy in a dogi or Chinese changshan (often, though not always, living alone up in the mountains or wilderness) can fly freely through the sky or can wave their hand around and make entire mountains move: and that the source of that power is intrinsically tied to their physical/mental/spiritual training and prowess as a martial artist.

That innate, primal understanding of something that is also so universally understood and grasped by all those around them is EXACTLY what's lacking here in many parts of the Western world when it comes to a story like Dragon Ball, and THAT'S where I wanna say close to maybe 70-80% of the stupidest shit said about Dragon Ball among the English-language/Western fanbase often tends to stem from when you trace it back far enough to the root of the misunderstanding.

The other 20-30% is usually from a critical lack of understanding or comprehending basic storytelling and narrative devices as a result from watching far too much children's cartoons and mistakenly thinking that simply reading TV Tropes religiously enough can somehow grant someone an "academic understanding" of narrative writing, and not nearly enough engaging with actual adult-aimed works that demand vastly more of their audience or studying actual, substantive academic literature on the subject of writing or crafting a narrative. But that's a whole other can of worms unto itself.

In summation: Dragon Ball's core creative roots are that of ancient Chinese martial arts fairy tales, not Star Wars or Star Trek-ified "modern geek blockbuster fiction" or Marvel/DC comic books, all which often come bundled together with their own convoluted D&D rulebook of statistics, numbers, and other assorted apocryphal bullshit specifically tailored for the most absurdly pedantic and over-literal people imaginable.

That there now exists, several decades after the fact, a whole swath of Western/foreign fans of DB who are desperately, hungrily chomping at the bit for DB to now be retroactively remolded into that type of "fictional universe" does very little to alter the reality of what's already long-been on the page and on the screen of the finished original foundational work since back in the 1980s and 90s, long before many of these fans were either born or had heard of the series in the first place.

[ABED]

To take a very simple but different example, I see a lot of anime use the old Japanese superstition of someone talking about a person behind their back causing them to sneeze. Should the writer have to explain that in the story?

[MyVisionity]

Dragon Ball isn't the academic undertaking that something like Naruto is.

Naruto is a great many things: an "academic undertaking" (on like, ANY remote level or definition of the phrase whatsoever) is about as quintillions of lightyears removed from one of those things as anything can conceivably get.

I meant in comparison to a series like Dragon Ball. Maybe "academic undertaking" isn't the best description, but there are times in Naruto where one might feel the need to press pause and take notes with the way the show presents its system of Qi or "Chakra" and all of the related mythology. It's always felt like the characters are giving PowerPoint presentations in science or math. Although perhaps it's intentional, as a means of recreating an instructional atmosphere for schoolchildren so that they take the plot more seriously or something.

[KBABZ]

To take a very simple but different example, I see a lot of anime use the old Japanese superstition of someone talking about a person behind their back causing them to sneeze. Should the writer have to explain that in the story?

Considering how unimportant it is to the story structure, I personally say no. Outside of that, sometimes all it takes is a bit of additional dialogue in the dub, which is what Kai did when Chi-Chi did the sneeze in the Cell Games.

Ki however I feel is a bit more important to the story and it's machinations. I'm certainly not the only one who thought, as a kid, that "energy" (because the dubs certainly weren't using the right words in the 90s) was basically a way for you to fire your own superlasers. Not ki, literal LASERS because that's what they looked like on the screen. And while the Japanese version uses the right words, it's a shame to me that such an important facet of the story goes unexplained because we're just expected to know about it and how it works (especially with how international Toei knows Dragon Ball is nowadays).

[ABED]

To take a very simple but different example, I see a lot of anime use the old Japanese superstition of someone talking about a person behind their back causing them to sneeze. Should the writer have to explain that in the story?

Considering how unimportant it is to the story structure, I personally say no. Outside of that, sometimes all it takes is a bit of additional dialogue in the dub, which is what Kai did when Chi-Chi did the sneeze in the Cell Games.

Ki however I feel is a bit more important to the story and it's machinations. I'm certainly not the only one who thought, as a kid, that "energy" (because the dubs certainly weren't using the right words in the 90s) was basically a way for you to fire your own superlasers. Not ki, literal LASERS because that's what they looked like on the screen. And while the Japanese version uses the right words, it's a shame to me that such an important facet of the story goes unexplained because we're just expected to know about it and how it works (especially with how international Toei knows Dragon Ball is nowadays).

But it's a story that was aimed at Japanese kids. Every story takes things for granted. Why should a writer bother explaining things that the target audience understands? You don't understand ki? You have the internet at your fingertips.

The problem you have regarding ki vs. lasers is a dub issue, not Toriyama's writing.

[KBABZ]

But it's a story that was aimed at Japanese kids. Every story takes things for granted. Why should a writer bother explaining things that the target audience understands? You don't understand ki? You have the internet at your fingertips.

The problem you have regarding ki vs. lasers is a dub issue, not Toriyama's writing.

When I say "unexplained", I mean "unexplained by the dub". Not even in marketing materials do they bother trying to at least vaguely elaborate on this stuff.

[ABED]

But it's a story that was aimed at Japanese kids. Every story takes things for granted. Why should a writer bother explaining things that the target audience understands? You don't understand ki? You have the internet at your fingertips.

The problem you have regarding ki vs. lasers is a dub issue, not Toriyama's writing.

When I say "unexplained", I mean "unexplained by the dub". Not even in marketing materials do they bother trying to at least vaguely elaborate on this stuff.

You have the internet at your literal fingertips. Why don't you do some research on your own?

[KBABZ]

You have the internet at your literal fingertips. Why don't you do some research on your own?

Great help for a twelve year old in 2001. For today, I'm waiting for the Kanzenshuu wiki to explain it as I don't trust the DB Wiki to do it, and can't really expect anyone outside of Kunzait if I ask them.

[ABED]

You have the internet at your literal fingertips. Why don't you do some research on your own?

Great help for a twelve year old in 2001. For today, I'm waiting for the Kanzenshuu wiki to explain it as I don't trust the DB Wiki to do it, and can't really expect anyone outside of Kunzait if I ask them.

Certainly there were articles about ki/chi you could find online in the early aughts. What confuses you so much about how it applies to DB in particular?

[MyVisionity]

I think the issue that is being stated regarding the dub is that they don't even acknowledge the concept of Ki in the first place, so the audience might be even more confused than they would with the original Japanese. They wouldn't even know what to research in the first place.

[ABED]

I think the issue that is being stated regarding the dub is that they don't even acknowledge the concept of Ki in the first place, so the audience might be even more confused than they would with the original Japanese. They wouldn't even know what to research in the first place.

I get your point, but I don't think the number of people who have an issue with this are few and far between.

[Desassina]

Ki is like communication. You can master the use of words in a sentence by following its rules, copy the authors who concerned themselves with style, but move people only when you stop thinking about those (after having gone through them), to show that you have content, delivery and awareness.

Presence is not tangible even though the person is. Conviction is not about performing well in a speech, but believing in what it has to say, because you'll find strength to say it in one way or another. None of that is without having gone through the experience of writing and reading, attempting your own masterpiece by dismantling others', although it is the situation that defines what needs to be said.

[ABED]

Ki is like communication. You can master the use of words in a sentence by following its rules, copy the authors who concerned themselves with style, but move people only when you stop thinking about those (after having gone through them), to show that you have content, delivery and awareness.

Presence is not tangible even though the person is. Conviction is not about performing well in a speech, but believing in what it has to say, because you'll find strength to say it in one way or another. None of that is without having gone through the experience of writing and reading, attempting your own masterpiece by dismantling others', although it is the situation that defines what needs to be said.

I have NO clue what you said or how it applies to this topic.

[KBABZ]

Ki is like communication. You can master the use of words in a sentence by following its rules, copy the authors who concerned themselves with style, but move people only when you stop thinking about those (after having gone through them), to show that you have content, delivery and awareness.

Presence is not tangible even though the person is. Conviction is not about performing well in a speech, but believing in what it has to say, because you'll find strength to say it in one way or another. None of that is without having gone through the experience of writing and reading, attempting your own masterpiece by dismantling others', although it is the situation that defines what needs to be said.

I have NO clue what you said or how it applies to this topic.

To put it short, he means that you can know all the rules and mechanics and stuff, but you're not a master of it unless you really have an understanding of it all, and just because your attacks/words are big doesn't mean they'll do/mean anything.

[ABED]

Again, doesn't explain what that has to do with this topic. It has little to do with it beyond also dealing with ki. The topic is about whether ki should be explained in excruciating detail to the audience or if Toriyama was justified in believing his audience was familiar enough with the concept he could take it as a given.