Gag Characters: what makes Arale and others like her incompatible when comparing Dragon Ball power levels?

[sebubibinman]

Dragon Ball fans like to talk about power levels between characters but then will omit someone like Arale saying she has "gag force" and "toon power."

Online definitions for a gag character say it's a character that is the comic relief, basically. By that definition, a third of the characters introduced before the tone of the show shifted around the King Piccolo era are gag characters, including Roshi and Krillin.

So what draws the line for Arale? Is it that she's from Slump, which could be considered a different Earth? Is it that her character style is too silly to be taken seriously? And can other more straight characters from Slump like Tsukutsun be taken seriously enough to compare power levels?

Thoughts?

[NeoZ Duwang]

Arale and other gag characters are as incompatible as the people having these discussions thinks they are. Power scalling is already heavily dependent on both participants trying to insert logic and reasoning where there's none. Gag characters can do whatever the writer thinks it's funny, but that's really only one step further from what most fictional characters already do. Everyone in fiction, no exception, is as strong as the plot demands.

From a storytelling perspective, power scalling will have no aplication other than avoiding stuff that's too absurd and disapointing for your narrative, like Pilaf sneezing and killing Goku Black on accident or something. It's when we get to the "Can Goku beat X" questions, that the answer becomes "I can draw X beating the shit out of Goku if I want, so I don't care".

I'm not saying that I'm against power scalling discussions... I really don't get what's so fun about making lists of arbitrary feats and imaginary power levels, but that's fine. It's a totally valid way of having fun and engaging with a series you like, however, it's important to remember that the so called "Cartoon logic" applies to some extent to any fictional character, you can't have any exceptions by definition. Maybe someone thinks Arale is too gag oriented, even for Dragon Ball standards. Maybe someone out there is having some really heated arguments on wheter or not Kuririn could inflate his body like a ballon to avoid being destroyed by the Terrible Doctor World Destroyer IX who has the powers of destroying anything that's not a balloon

[Saiya6Cit]

Power levels give me a headache so I am not one of those fans. I enjoy talking abouy the character's psychology more.

My thoughts are: Toriyama never wanted to create a series about fights, he only responded to job demands, he likes comedy and adventure. So Arale's power is his way of saying F* you to all. He did it with Zeno sama and he will do it as many times as he wants, as he is the creator.

Arale's world is not a different Earth, it is the same one as in DB, that has been established.

[sebubibinman]

I have a little nostalgia when it comes to "power scaling," I enjoyed the DBZ table top RPG off and on when I first got into the fandom and it has a lot of that sort of thing in it. Plus Toriyama's use of scouters really fired my imagination back then. (A meter to check a person's power! Cool!)

So I enjoy those kind of convos but take them with a glacier of salt, because I agree with what was said above, "Toriyama never wanted to create a series about fights, he only responded to job demands, he likes comedy and adventure." But him creating the scouter certainly didn't help things when it became obvious he wasn't interested in keeping up with the power levels idea in such a finite way.

In my personal opinion about Slump and its relation to Dragon Ball, I think DB doesn't just take place in the same world, it's an extension of the Slump show, because as Slump entered its final section, it began to implement more fighting elements like a tournament and the "Adventures of Youth" storyline and the characters' power levels were shown to have progressed to a logical end point. Then once that series ended and Dragon Ball premiered (airing the next Wednesday without a break), we found that Toriyama had picked the perfect character in Kid Goku to show an even more extreme progression of strength that would go to greater heights.

[Tian]

Dragon Ball fans like to talk about power levels between characters but then will omit someone like Arale saying she has "gag force" and "toon power."

In that case, let's scale characters through fun levels with Arale being the definition of fun and Vegeta being a party pooper.

At least, it's more consistent than the actual power scaling.

[DragonBallFoodie]

Gag characters work on Rule of Funny. If something makes people laugh, it's a go.

The Mask, Deadpool, Roger Rabbit, they all operate on rule of funny. I think Arale goes by the same route.