Thoughts on the Granolah the Survivor Arc:
Full disclosure: I will be reiterating points I've made in previous threads along with some new stuff, so if you're averse to that kind of commentary, I'd advise reading no further. I probably won't have a lot to say about it after this. Take heed, lads!
I went back and marathoned everything to make sure I wouldn't take anything out of context, and also because I was curious enough to see if a full binge-read would change my opinion. If there's one thing I've been consistently struck by, it's how carefully and deliberately set up the first volume is. That's not without good reason: Granolah is unusually nuanced for a guest character in Super, his opening chapters taking the time to humanize him with a look into his home life, current relationships, internal trauma and motives, and personal flaws/mistakes (for example, he's almost instantly humiliated by the Heeters after he's told Freeza had been revived) to ensure he's more than just "sniping badass with tragic backstory". He and his goals are pivotal to the arc, while his employer, the Heeters, are almost machiavellian in their own schemes. It's got an ambitious premise that dedicates a lot of its time establishing who and what it's supposed to be about, and clearly wants you to be invested in Granolah's journey.
I also liked Vegeta vs. Granolah, which I'd go so far as to call the arc's pinnacle after a considerably less interesting skirmish between Goku and Granolah. Rather than develop Vegeta further through some specific circumstance like with the previous arc, his prior growth throughout Dragon Ball instead enhances
Granolah's development; if Oatmeel represents Granolah's conscience that he's desperately trying to bury, then Vegeta reflects all the harmful repercussions of burying it. Just about everything these characters grapple with during their conflict — Granolah throwing away Oatmeel, Vegeta's remorse over the actions of the Saiyans, Granolah seeing the terrified Sugarian family and being reminded of his own trauma, Vegeta asking Granolah if there's truly nothing more to his life — really drives home how Granolah had discarded his own life's purpose for the sake of misguided payback. It's not a path that's glorified, but a surprisingly in-depth analysis of revenge along with its psychological impact and consequences.
Sadly, that's where my compliments end, for what little I could muster.
My re-read was an all-too-potent reminder that the plot indeed becomes a total nothingburger from after Vegeta's fight all the way until the end: Granolah stops mattering in his own arc, Gas takes over as the main focus despite effectively being a non-character, Bardock is the K00LEST SAIYAN EVAR!!!1 and his fanfic-y text
really wants you to know it, and Elec turns out to be generic cartoon doomsday villain #567 whose personality amounts to making evil smiley faces or shaking his fist whenever his brother winds up on the losing end. None of these sweeping changes accomplish anything narratively except to retrospectively make all those initial chapters — and what they wanted you, the reader, to be invested in — feel utterly pointless, and fruitless. All characterization is swept under the rug, and all structural coherency is reduced so drastically that to this day I can't believe this was actually drafted in a planned outline. Toriyama might have written by the seat of his pants for the original run, but he was miles better at keeping things more consistent and exciting than this.
Moreover, what really stinks about this padded "climax" that spans over half the arc is actually twofold; it's pure filler, but it also drags on for
ten chapters (that's two and a half volumes) so it's an even more exhausting slog to revisit. That's an awful lot of pages for something that essentially does nothing with the story or characters. A more elaborate kind of progression could have worked back when its plotting felt more scheme-y in the first act; not so much in any subsequent one, which thoroughly amounts to a series of empty, dragged out, repetitive fights with barely any pretext or subtext to accompany them. It's pretty much a textbook example of what
not to do while telling a story, particularly a canonical Dragon Ball one. Just to put into perspective how pointless Gas's whole subplot is, you can skip volumes 18 and 19 entirely and the whole arc would probably improve for it.
Even the action beats are virtually the same every chapter, but with a different coat of paint. Gas constantly sandbags because he's either holding back or isn't experienced with his power, then he starts losing, then he decides he's gonna get serious-for-real now or gets a pep talk from Elec, then he powers up, then it's back to the start of the cycle. Rinse and repeat again, and again, and again, and again. It's all the same shit disguised under different choreography, so turning my brain off for this stretch wouldn't cure the boredom. Chapter 81 was the only time their prolonged battle genuinely had me guessing what could happen next, and it just turned out to be Goku using a diversion to buy time.
Among the occasional parts here that weren't terrible, like Bardock's first chapter or the planet-swapping portion of Goku's fight, I could only enjoy those if I mentally isolated them from the arc as a whole because their surrounding context is so ass. It's at least clear that the central theme is "accepting one's self/past instead of clinging to the burdens of one's self/past", but when the arc unceremoniously benches its own MC only to replace him with a much less integral one, or haphazardly tries to shift its emotional core to Goku and Bardock (which fails to work
even on its own merits) while miring them with all kinds of thoughtless retcons from dramatic "resolve" boosts to plot armor bestowing wishes, it can't resonate. These things add nothing, and certainly aren't as compelling as the arc's initial storyline. It's uber shallow stuff.
When Granolah finally does return for the conclusion, it's almost as if the manga concedes it was wasting the reader's time. Goku and Vegeta haven't really changed, or to put it more astutely, they regressed and reverted back to normal. Granolah says he's decided to not dwell on revenge anymore, which happened off panel, and offers no explanation for how he arrived at that point other than — hilariously, and you guessed it — putting Bardock on a pedestal. His development is completely skipped over because of all this screentime having been devoted to peripheral nobodies like Gas, so while the arc's stakes are intended to be more personal, they never truly come across that way. There's never a reason to care about the story's conflicts, and said conflicts stopped feeling personal after Vegeta's first fight on Cereal. Gas might have his one-way hang-ups, but Elec's obsession with having two disinterested Saiyans killed at the cost of Gas's own life doesn't track when you consider his own goals. Goku himself alludes to how nonsensical their motivations are.
Lastly, one might notice that I've mentioned nothing about Oil and Macki because there's so little to say about them in general. They're comic relief characters that are rarely used for comic relief, if at all. I think exactly one chapter had gags and they weren't even in it. The Heeters as a group are so bereft of anything narratively worthwhile that Freeza of all people had to swoop in out of nowhere to put the collective out of its misery because nobody else bothered to do it; a very twisty (and very Freeza) resolution not out of the ordinary for DB, to be sure, but one that in this case just re-affirmed how painfully fucking monotonous everything had been up to that point. As was mentioned above, the catharsis here is only that Freeza "saved" the arc by bringing it to an abruptly swift end.
Those are my grievances in a nutshell. I guess my one positive takeaway from the arc (or rather, despite the arc) is that I still like Granolah as a character, ignoring the massive disservice done to him. Were it not for his inclusion, I'd struggle to find anything positive to say about it. He could've been a part of something potentially very compelling, and it sure is a bummer that never came to pass.
Overall:
I called 'Galactic Patrol Prisoner' the worst arc of the manga back when it had just ended, but added that it was nonetheless a moderately enjoyable experience. I stand by the latter part of that statement. What it sometimes lacked in pacing or in being too predictable and derivative, it made up for in dovetailing character throughlines, sufficient levity and funny gags, a competently executed theme (stealing vs. earning/giving), and a formulaic but satisfying climax. It was okay, and could have been even better if it dared to take more risks. While a lot of folks frequently compared the arc to Toei productions from the 90's, I think it felt uniquely Dragon Ball in a way they didn't, albeit not quite Toriyama's Dragon Ball. It's a solid 6/10, which is slightly above average.
This arc, on the other hand, is well below average. This arc is bad. It is the actual nadir of the manga, and is fundamentally at odds with the kind of story it was originally trying to be. What it lacks in structure, it rings just as hollow in every other regard despite its promising start. Its tone, pacing, and flow feel nothing like Toriyama's work. The action sequences in its latter half have absolutely nothing going for them and would rather spend more time indulging in epic choreography or whatever than aspire to be as unpredictably off-the-wall as the conflicts and story beats DB is known for. Due to its meandering focus, its main theme isn't communicated in a way that would actually resonate with readers. Character throughlines constantly fall flat; Granolah's practically disappears. It's a shame that it turned out that way, but I shit you not when I say I enjoyed GT and the majority of the old Z movies more than this. That's something I've never, ever said, or thought I'd say, about a mainline manga arc.
To everyone who mentioned Super is spinning its wheels at this point, I'd agree that it's due for a conclusive ending soon if it's going to continue in this direction. In the meantime, I'm personally okay with the so-called "status quo" as long as these stories can be told in ways that complement their guest characters or at least come across as a focused narrative. That's evidently not always the case. If what transpired is a sign of things to come, I have no interest in DBS going forward. Toyotaro is better than this, and Toriyama is definitely better.
3/10.
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