Post
by SupremeKai25 » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:12 pm
I don't know how some people can claim this when Zamasu exists. He is pretty much the most original and unique concept for a Dragon Ball villain ever.
First of all, he's a Supreme Kai. That already makes him unique, because DB villains are usually evil monsters/robots, meanwhile Zamasu is member of a species of Gods who are known to be benevolent and kind. That already makes him special. He is not some pre-established warmonger (Vegeta, Frieza, Old Broly), or robot created for mass destruction (Androids, Cell, Baby), or monster created for mass destruction (Majin Buu, Omega Shenron).
Jiren, Broly, and Granolah are also unique main antagonists who cannot even be truly defined as evil. Meanwhile, all of DBZ's main antagonists are very much evil, including Vegeta.
The entire arc of Goku Black gets criticized for "rehashing the Cell saga" but 1) it introduced a new means of time travel in the Time Rings and 2) it connected Super to DBZ in a very creative way, as Trunks' abuse of time travel back in DBZ is brought up and presented as a major justification behind Zamasu's motives.
By the way, I focused on Zamasu and the FT arc because it's clearly my favourite part of Super, but I could also mention how DBS pretty much laid out the hierarchy of the Gods as we know it, introducing Zeno, the Grand Priest, the Destroyers, and the Angels. It also introduced the larger Multiverse, and each Universe has its own unique trait or characteristic (2 is the universe of love, 3 is the universe of science, 4 is the universe of deceit, and so on). So, even on the world-building aspect, DBS expanded the franchise significantly.
Then people simultaneously complain that there are too many tournaments, but 1) tournaments were an integral part of the original DB, so it's nice to see them come back and 2) it's pretty original to have tournaments between entirely different universes, and the ToP was a battle royale of 80 fighters, which is unprecedented in DB.
There's nothing wrong with reintroducing characters and material from the past, but Super is unique because it also does different things with them. Another obvious example is Frieza, who was reintroduced and turned into a protagonist for the first time.
At his core Zamasu is good like Shin, though I guess you could say he was so fastidious that it backfired. But you know, for this "Future Trunks Arc" you had to depict Zamasu and Trunks' inner conflict, right? If this was back when I was drawing the manga myself then I doubt if I could have done it. I mean, I'm not very good at depicting the characters' psychology on the page. So this all came together because now I only have to think up the story. [...] On my own, I doubt I would have been able to express Zamasu's fall to the dark side.
Akira Toriyama, DBS vol.4 joint interview with Toyotaro
She/Her 
