Why do people take "5 minutes Namek explosion" so seriously?

[Vegard Aune]

Maybe it did take exactly 5 minutes somehow, and Freeza was at least in the ballpark of 5 minutes with his guess. But I don't think we really need to treat his initial statement as precise and accurate, and call it Bad Writing™ when it seems like it probably took a bit longer than 5 minutes.

Thing is though, at least in the anime, that Kaio himself backs up the "five minutes" figure by claiming that "Less than a minute remains" in episode 103. It takes another three episodes for the planet to explode after this. This line does not exist in the manga, but then in the manga the "five minutes" figure doesn't seem too far-fetched. Was it exactly five? Not necessarily, you are right that there is some leeway with how it's presented... But the fact remains that it's preposterously implausible to an outright comical degree the way it's depicted in the anime.

...Though of course, it is less "Bad Writing™", and more just them being stuck between a rock and a hard place. There was no way around this other than, I guess, having ten episodes straight of filler fighting followed by a single unreasonably dense episode covering the entire fight from Freeza's "Hail Mary" and through to the planet's explosion. Which would have avoided the decades of ridicule over the time frame, but... yeah I don't think Toei ever just stopped the story dead in its tracks for that long. At least the way the fight is now, we do technically get developments each week even if the time frame is nonsense. This hypothetical alternative would have been three months of just inconsequential back-and-forths where neither side is gaining any ground at all.

[Zephyr]

Thing is though, at least in the anime, that Kaio himself backs up the "five minutes" figure by claiming that "Less than a minute remains" in episode 103. It takes another three episodes for the planet to explode after this. This line does not exist in the manga, but then in the manga the "five minutes" figure doesn't seem too far-fetched. Was it exactly five? Not necessarily, you are right that there is some leeway with how it's presented... But the fact remains that it's preposterously implausible to an outright comical degree the way it's depicted in the anime.

Been a while since I've watched the anime, so thanks for pointing this out. You're right that they pretty much had no choice but to extend this sequence in the anime, but holy shit, why add a line like this, given the circumstances? That just makes it way worse, in a way that's honestly kind of incredible.

[LoganForkHands73]

And yeah, I TOTALLY agree about the ToP time limit bullshit. I got REAL sick of being told at the end of EVERY EPISODE of that disgustingly overlong arc that only one minute had passed over the course of the entire 20-minute episode.

My explanation for this is that all the different fights show in an episode (and overall in the ToP arc) happen simultaneously, and just as I said before the fights happen MUCH faster for us to be able to see in "real", so the anime slowed it down for us

Except that's clearly not what was shown. Each character participates in multiple consecutive fights, which could not have possibly all been simultaneous, and the narrative makes no attempt to imply to any degree whatsoever that the events that occur do so in any order other than chronologically as shown. I've seen mooore than enough visual media in my life to be able to recognize the things that indicate parallel events, and it's the job of the writers and editors to make those things clear. So if the intention somehow WAS inf fact for most of those fights to be taking place simultaneously, Toei's staff certainly did an absolutely awful job displaying that.

While I agree that the "simultaneous fighting" theory doesn't hold much water for the majority of the arc because Goku and Vegeta get involved in far too many fights for this to be realistically possible, there is a stretch towards the end, after everyone except the five surviving U7 fighters and the three surviving Pride Troopers has been eliminated, where they do heavily insinuate that we're moving between different sides of one multi-man brawl course of several episodes, with a bit of progression in each one. We see Goku and Vegeta whaling on Jiren for a few episodes, meanwhile Dyspo is using Freeza's head as a kitchen sponge and Toppo is giving Gohan and #17 a hard time.

For what it's worth, someone on YouTube did somehow manage to condense most of the tournament's action into the 48 minute timeframe by cutting out the pointless bleacher exposition. Though A LOT of filler and faff had to be cut for this to work.

I'm preeeeetty sure those characters can't talk at the speed of light (especially considering that is legitimately impossible due to the EXTREME difference in the speed of sound vs. the speed of light lol), and let's not forget that Blooma, a regular human with zero Ki superpowers, was sitting right there with them and frequently joined in on the conversations. If the characters fighting really were moving that fast the whole time and the fights were taking place simultaneously, bare fucking minimum five or six fights would have been over in the time it took for Beers, Whis, Blooma, and whatever U7 fighters had been knocked out just to finish explaining the one single move Insert Character Here did that was already completely obvious just by watching the goddamn fight (something that happened probably hundred times over those few dozen episodes...).

Blooma wasn't involved in that arc. Though there are definitely far too many scenes of Kuririn, Beerus and Whis yammering about obvious shit going on in front of everyone (those three also get the lion's share of battle commentary in the manga too, despite how condensed that version is). Kuririn is the definition of an annoyingly over-invested sports fan, or that one film bro who won't shut the fuck up when you're trying to watch Gladiator at 1am.

[Vegetto95]

While I agree that the "simultaneous fighting" theory doesn't hold much water for the majority of the arc because Goku and Vegeta get involved in far too many fights for this to be realistically possible, there is a stretch towards the end, after everyone except the five surviving U7 fighters and the three surviving Pride Troopers has been eliminated, where they do heavily insinuate that we're moving between different sides of one multi-man brawl course of several episodes, with a bit of progression in each one. We see Goku and Vegeta whaling on Jiren for a few episodes, meanwhile Dyspo is using Freeza's head as a kitchen sponge and Toppo is giving Gohan and #17 a hard time.

For what it's worth, someone on YouTube did somehow manage to condense most of the tournament's action into the 48 minute timeframe by cutting out the pointless bleacher exposition. Though A LOT of filler and faff had to be cut for this to work.

I mean, I can believe that all of the fighting maaaaaaaaaybe was able to barely take place in the span of 48 minutes, but as you said, a loooot of stuff has to get cut out, and that means that to make that work, it has to decidedly be very different than what was actually presented to us in the show. At least with the five minutes on Namek, it's fully rational to make the anime-manga-filler argument because that literally IS the excuse/reason, as in the manga it's not much of a stretch at all to fit those mere six and a half fourteen-page chapters into five minutes (as Freeza detonates Namek's core halfway through chapter 320, and the planet explodes halfway through chapter 328). The Super anime doesn't have that excuse with the ToP as it wasn't an adaptation of the manga the way the DB/Z anime were.

I'm preeeeetty sure those characters can't talk at the speed of light (especially considering that is legitimately impossible due to the EXTREME difference in the speed of sound vs. the speed of light lol), and let's not forget that Blooma, a regular human with zero Ki superpowers, was sitting right there with them and frequently joined in on the conversations. If the characters fighting really were moving that fast the whole time and the fights were taking place simultaneously, bare fucking minimum five or six fights would have been over in the time it took for Beers, Whis, Blooma, and whatever U7 fighters had been knocked out just to finish explaining the one single move Insert Character Here did that was already completely obvious just by watching the goddamn fight (something that happened probably hundred times over those few dozen episodes...).

Blooma wasn't involved in that arc. Though there are definitely far too many scenes of Kuririn, Beerus and Whis yammering about obvious shit going on in front of everyone (those three also get the lion's share of battle commentary in the manga too, despite how condensed that version is). Kuririn is the definition of an annoyingly over-invested sports fan, or that one film bro who won't shut the fuck up when you're trying to watch Gladiator at 1am.

Yeah, that was my bad. Another previous reply reminded me of that, and I was like "Oh wait, right... she had just given birth" lol (prematurely, because of magic Angel plot convenience bullshit... like, Whis has a limit of reversing time three minutes but can speed up the natural growth cycle of a fetus several weeks, if not months? Suuure, Toei...). I had honestly forgotten that off the top of my head, and I think perhaps I was confusing that with the Universe 6 Tournament arc where her and the majority of the supporting cast came to spectate (plus just the fact that the Super anime seemed to want to CONSTANTLY bring Blooma along for EVERYTHING...), and then there's the fact that I haven't watched any of Super since it originally finished airing over half a decade ago in March of 2018 (and have no future plans to ever revisit that horribly written, horribly drawn/animated garbage), so while I still remember most of what happened, a good few details haven't permanently stuck themselves in my brain the way the vast majority of the original series has.

[aleksandrored]

I believe that people don't take it that seriously, it ends up being just another meme, like the ones that say that Captain Tsuaba's characters run infinitely on the football field or that Ash from Pokemon never ages.

[Cursed Lemon]

Guys you are massively overthinking this lol

The reason Freeza said "five minutes" is because it's a device to inspire tension in the audience.

When it turns out to be fifteen episodes instead of five minutes, that tension gets lost. Hence people making fun of it.

[kemuri07]

There's no reason to make it more than it actually is: Face it Jack, It's Anime town.