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.Zephyr wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 11:17 am 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.
...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.