The Problem with Jiren(?)

[Majin Buu]

(This is primarily referring to the anime version)

Is there a problem with him?

People say he's boring, and yeah, he's not the most interesting guy at first glance, but on paper there's a solid character there: His dour personality is strongly implied to be the result of the two traumatic experiences he faced in his life, the second one teaching him that friendship is a worthless concept and strength is all that matters in life. He's "boring" like that for a reason.

For me personally, he becomes more interesting when viewed as a foil for other characters, particularly Goku (literal superhero vs. martial artist with the reputation of a hero- though neither of them is specifically motivated by doing good).

There's more to the guy than what we see so why do so many fans act like there isn't? I think Super's pacing issues have something to do with it. All of the information that contextualizes his personality is given at damn near the end of the arc, leaving him as this boring strong guy with nothing to him for the majority of his screentime.

Is there more to it than that? Or am I wrong? Honestly, this feels like "Goku is the bad guy of the USS because he put everyone in danger", where it feels like people are just flat out ignoring the information we get later that exonerates Goku in favor of continuing to claim that he's actually the real bad guy here.

[JulieYBM]

I love Jiren. Not only is he hot, but he's a great reflection of Son Gokuu. Jiren is a 'superhero', but he doesn't subscribe to friendship due to his trauma. It is only through learning to enjoy his battle against Son Gokuu—who seeks self-improvement and to test that his strides through battling those more powerful than he—that Jiren is able to overcome the trauma preventing him from forming bonds with his teammates and as a result reach inner peace.

I know that the length of the Tournament of Power arc is cited as a major issue, but I do still think that Jiren's arc comes across very clearly in this story. I think an episode fully dedicated to Jiren's backstory being seen in full would have been nice, but I get the feeling the production staff have their hands tied in that regard. Still, I think you could do a film retelling of the Tournament of Power from Jiren's point-of-view and get a really nice story out of it. Jiren is the main character of the arc. If anything, it feels like Son Gokuu serves as a tool for telling Jiren's story, rather than the other way around. This reminds me a lot of how Satoshi was often just a tool for telling the stories of other characters in the AniPoke/Pocket Monsters franchise, especially his rivals or companions.

Ishitani Megumi's Dragon Ball Super Episode #131 really nailed the culmination of Jiren's arc. I really would love it if she and Tomioka Atsuhiro could team up again for a second adaption of the Tournament of Power just to give a more concise platform for telling Jiren's story in this arc, because I think it would make for a really fun film. It's such a terrible shame that there's really so little flexibility in the types of projects that this franchise is allowed to indulge in.

[Majin Buu]

I know that the length of the Tournament of Power arc is cited as a major issue, but I do still think that Jiren's arc comes across very clearly in this story. I think an episode fully dedicated to Jiren's backstory being seen in full would have been nice, but I get the feeling the production staff have their hands tied in that regard.

I think this would have gone a long way towards erasing the perception of him as a boring brick wall. On the other hand, I can see fans complaining about such a break in the action happening so close to (or during?) the climax.

[SupremeKai25]

No, there isn't. People just need to understand that not every antagonist needs to be some pseudo-intellectual wannabe/complex/morally grey character with 1000 hours of backstory.

The purpose of Jiren was not to make a "complex" antagonist, but to make an unmovable wall, a force of nature, someone built different. This was accomplished quite clearly.

Now when it comes to Jiren, people also complain about his skill-set being boring and lackluster, I don't care because that is the point of the story. He's not going to use some weird clever technique or secret mode, because he is pure strength. He doesn't need anything but his fists and the strength of his ki. When he does break his limits, he literally just burns everything around him. He is pure strength, and so he does not need an elaborate skill-set.

That would in fact contradict the character concept. Someone who relies on pure strength alone does not need weird gimmick techniques. And considering how it's the "tournament of POWER", it makes perfect sense to have a main antagonist whose main "strategy" is just unleashing pure strength, not some weird trickster or magician or whatever fanfic character people would have replaced Jiren with.

Jiren is a well-constructed antagonist who accomplished his purpose of show-casing ultimate strength.






Personally, I think that Jiren is much more interesting than all of the generic pure evil monsters from DBZ. Jiren is a dark mirror of Goku; a glimpse of what Goku would have become if he didn't have friends and Dragon Balls to rely on, but had to overcome threats all by himself. Jiren is actually a fleshed-out antagonist, if people were willing to look at him in good faith.

[JulieYBM]

I know that the length of the Tournament of Power arc is cited as a major issue, but I do still think that Jiren's arc comes across very clearly in this story. I think an episode fully dedicated to Jiren's backstory being seen in full would have been nice, but I get the feeling the production staff have their hands tied in that regard.

I think this would have gone a long way towards erasing the perception of him as a boring brick wall. On the other hand, I can see fans complaining about such a break in the action happening so close to (or during?) the climax.

I imagine that the logic driving the staff's handling was precisely that. "We can't break up the action that much because the audience won't like it!" or "We only have so many time slots left to work with!" or "We don't have the animation staff to dedicate to such an episode without harming the action episodes!" I think that's a major shame.

[LoganForkHands73]

I'll expand on everyone's great points above by saying that a big reason the Universe Survival arc resonated for me is that everyone involved in the Tournament of Power is the main character of their own story. They're all there to fight for survival, though some are more ruthless in achieving that than others. Ironically, the biggest outright villain, Freeza, is on Universe 7's side. In terms of how he parallels Goku, Jiren might be the pinnacle of the theme, though there are plenty of others, most notably the Universe 6 Saiyans who you could find yourself rooting for almost as much as our actual heroes (the anime conveys this theme a bit more clearly than the manga, but I've come to appreciate that the authors being more judicious in who they focused on worked out for the best for pacing purposes).

Jiren's personality, backstory, motivations etc. are all big talking points, but people argue that he has a boring moveset, which I also disagree with. Jiren has swag. There's something instantly identifiable about the way Jiren moves, which I think is aided by his simplistic design which must be much easier to animate than a spotty carapace like Cell. At first, he seems stiff and almost robotic, moving with only absolute precision or not at all, but when he loosens up against a worthy opponent, he shows he has the agility, flexibility and dexterity of a true martial artist.

[JulieYBM]

I think that the coolest thing about the Tournament of Power is that you could do a special or film set through the eyes of a lot of—if not all of—the characters and track their journies before, during and after the Tournament of Power and it would make for a fun story. Like, obviously the Jiren example works, but you could also flesh out the Kale and Caulifla perspective with a Kale-narrated POV piece that shows us her past with Caulifla, joining the Tournament of Power, finding herself and her resolve during the Tournament of Power, and the aftermath of her new resolve afterward. That same can be done for Jiren, too.

It's honestly such a rich arc, I wish the staff had had more time and better conditions to work under.

[ankokudaishogun]

I'll add a few points about Anime Jiren.

First, he's a _COMPLETELY_ different character from Manga Jiren.
Different backstory, different motivation, the whole package.

Second, Anime Jiren has been portrayed as enjoying a good fight the whole time once Goku&Co manage to actually interest him.

Third, Jiren is a very TECHNICAL fighter. He's not an esoteric fighter like Muten, but the anime staff made a point of him never getting hit cleanly until Ultra Instinct enters the scene always dodging or parrying.
He's a Basic Are Everything kind of fighter which in turn is a great contrast with the U7 esoteric fighters with all their weird-ass, flashing techniques- not to say he cannot do them: he has his utility Glare Attack because he's portrayed as a utterly COMPLETE fighter.

Fourth, again in the Goku mirroring... one of DB's trademarks is "Death Is Meaningless" for all purposes and intents(unless you are Future Trunks).
But Anime Jiren is branded by having to deal with death being something final in his world.

[kemuri07]

Personally, I think that Jiren is much more interesting than all of the generic pure evil monsters from DBZ. Jiren is a dark mirror of Goku; a glimpse of what Goku would have become if he didn't have friends and Dragon Balls to rely on, but had to overcome threats all by himself. Jiren is actually a fleshed-out antagonist, if people were willing to look at him in good faith.

heh. of course you do.

I just liked Jiren better when we called him Freeza.



Anyways..it's not like the manga version is any more complicated than his anime counterpart. It just makes a number of smart choices in regards of presentation that make him far more interesting than I DON'T BELIEVE IN FRIENDS anime! Jiren. I think OP gets at why many people, including myself, found Jiren boring. And that's mostly because the arc itself is a boring slog that really is just an excuse to get Goku to Ultra Instinct and nothing more. The fact that you have to wait till near the end the arc to even get a semblance of a personality from Jiren speaks volumes as to why people don't really Jiren.

Basically people think he is a boring character because he is a boring character.

[SupremeKai25]

Personally, I think that Jiren is much more interesting than all of the generic pure evil monsters from DBZ. Jiren is a dark mirror of Goku; a glimpse of what Goku would have become if he didn't have friends and Dragon Balls to rely on, but had to overcome threats all by himself. Jiren is actually a fleshed-out antagonist, if people were willing to look at him in good faith.

heh. of course you do.

I just liked Jiren better when we called him Freeza.



Anyways..it's not like the manga version is any more complicated than his anime counterpart. It just makes a number of smart choices in regards of presentation that make him far more interesting than I DON'T BELIEVE IN FRIENDS anime! Jiren. I think OP gets at why many people, including myself, found Jiren boring. And that's mostly because the arc itself is a boring slog that really is just an excuse to get Goku to Ultra Instinct and nothing more. The fact that you have to wait till near the end the arc to even get a semblance of a personality from Jiren speaks volumes as to why people don't really Jiren.

Basically people think he is a boring character because he is a boring character.

This post must be made in jest, Yes?

Frieza and Jiren have literally NOTHING in common besides being an obstacle for Goku.

Frieza is a pure evil/genocidal tyrant who conquers planets, enslaves their people, and sells them to the highest bidder. Jiren is a loner who relies entirely on strength and has youth trauma blocking him from opening up and trusting others.

There's pretty much nothing that Frieza and Jiren have in common.

[The Monkey King]

He's "boring" like that for a reason.

"Uhhhh he's boring because he's supposed to be boring!"

Okay...? He's still boring then.

Jiren's motivations aren't even consistent, one episode he says "I seek what lies beyond strength" the next he's like "Strength is absolute!"

The writers actually had some interesting things to say about Jiren's mindset throughout the tournament, it's a shame that stuff wasn't in the actual show.

His backstory was dogshit, his temper tantrum made me roll my eyes and made him look super pathetic and not in a good way.

Then in Super Hero it's revealed that all this time Toriyama had envisioned him as this super zen, super calm fighter who's not even all that strong in the first place.

Yeah, no he really does suck and is an absolute mess of a character

Though I will say I do like the little smile he does before the final clash with Freeza, Goku and 17

[Majin Buu]

"Uhhhh he's boring because he's supposed to be boring!"

You're oversimplifying and somewhat misrepresenting what I said.

I put "boring" in quotes to indicate that that's a word commonly used for him by people whose perspective I don't share but understand. I don't actually think he's as boring as detractors say.

A more accurate representation of what I said would be "The story establishes that the character is overly dour and stoic as a result of his past experiences."

[SupremeKai25]

He's "boring" like that for a reason.

"Uhhhh he's boring because he's supposed to be boring!"

Correct. Now we should all answer these questions:

"What's wrong with one character being boring? Does every character need to some pseudo-intellectual/machiavellian character?"

[GreatSaiyaman123]

There's gotta be some extra flavour. Dragon Ball is full of stoic characters: Tenshinhan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Hit, just to name a few among Goku's rivals. They're all rather stoic but got something, no matter how small, to make them different (Tenshinhan is an underdog, Piccolo and Vegeta have more personality and story besides "stoic", Hit is a time-manipulating assassin) and thus loved by the fandom.

You could say Jiren also had this something in the form of his heroic persona, but that's just a piece of backstory dropped to contextualize him. It's how Tenshinhan used to study under Crane School: That contextualizes his presence at the tournament, but doesn't serve his story.

The DBS Manga, as horrendous as it was, tries to execute a theme about masters and lessons (Goku surpassed Jiren by admitting he hasn't learned enough, while Jiren lost because he refused his master's main lesson), and I dare to say it only fails because of Goku's side of the plot. It's a bit like SupremeKai25 (even though he's just making shit up to hype the anime): Jiren shuts himself from the outside world, Goku embraces it.

There's also the theme of teamwork, which is what Toriyama had in mind as the overarching theme of the saga. It's not something that makes Jiren particularly interesting though, just a dick. The anime ignores this altogether: He doesn't shun away his friends, asks for Toppo's help once, gets a resolve boost from their speeches, and 17 and Freeza surviving was just a coincidence instead of a plan (Though the last one has nothing to do with Jiren, but it sucks anyway. Having Goku and Vegeta get beaten up together isn't the point of teamwork, Toei!!!).

[ankokudaishogun]

Vegeta and Tenshinhan STOIC? Where? Surely not while they were the antagonists.

Piccolo, perhaps, but even him I would have hard time to define "stoic" during his Antagonist phase.

The ONE other antagonist character I could call "stoic" is Hit, who, pardon the pun, hits various of the same notes as Jiren though with a completely different trajectory.

[SupremeKai25]

There's gotta be some extra flavour. Dragon Ball is full of stoic characters: Tenshinhan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Hit, just to name a few among Goku's rivals. They're all rather stoic but got something, no matter how small, to make them different (Tenshinhan is an underdog, Piccolo and Vegeta have more personality and story besides "stoic", Hit is a time-manipulating assassin) and thus loved by the fandom.

You could say Jiren also had this something in the form of his heroic persona, but that's just a piece of backstory dropped to contextualize him. It's how Tenshinhan used to study under Crane School: That contextualizes his presence at the tournament, but doesn't serve his story.

The DBS Manga, as horrendous as it was, tries to execute a theme about masters and lessons (Goku surpassed Jiren by admitting he hasn't learned enough, while Jiren lost because he refused his master's main lesson), and I dare to say it only fails because of Goku's side of the plot. It's a bit like SupremeKai25 (even though he's just making shit up to hype the anime): Jiren shuts himself from the outside world, Goku embraces it.

There's also the theme of teamwork, which is what Toriyama had in mind as the overarching theme of the saga. It's not something that makes Jiren particularly interesting though, just a dick. The anime ignores this altogether: He doesn't shun away his friends, asks for Toppo's help once, gets a resolve boost from their speeches, and 17 and Freeza surviving was just a coincidence instead of a plan (Though the last one has nothing to do with Jiren, but it sucks anyway. Having Goku and Vegeta get beaten up together isn't the point of teamwork, Toei!!!).

I'd love if you could explain the "shit" I "made up". Rest assured that I do not need to "hype" the Anime, Toei did it themselves, as shown by literally any reaction video to the final episodes of the TOP.

Oh wait, was it because I said that Jiren is better than all of the DBZ antagonists? Ah, I forgot that you can't say that a Super antagonist is better than a 1990s antagonist. My mistake!

[JulieYBM]

I think the appeal of Jiren is his pathetic side. He's petulant and a child and taking the wrong lessons from his experiences. Sure, Jiren might work with his team to accomplish his goal, but I think that to him that bond was entirely utilitarian, whereas for Universe 7 it was a strong belief in Son Gokuu as the pillar of the team and someone who had changed the course of #17 and Freeza's lives.

[ankokudaishogun]

Manga Jiren just never learned about teamwork.

Anime Jiren did learn the correct lesson: if you are not strong enough people die or leave you, thus is better to be strong and alone in first place.

[WittyUsername]

He’s a pretty standard “might makes right” and “friendship is for the weak” stoic anime rival. He doesn’t have any real personality beyond that, and as I recall, it’s incredibly vague what he even wants the Super Dragon Balls for. The fact that his traumatic backstory is about as generic and cliche as it gets certainly doesn’t help. I’d say he’s slightly better in the manga, where he’s more aloof and standoffish than outright antagonistic, and it’s established that his reason for wanting the Super Dragon Balls is to obtain the approval he always wanted from his deceased master.

I will say this though, the final episode of the anime did provide a much more satisfying conclusion for the Tournament of Power.

[Hulk10]

No, there isn't. People just need to understand that not every antagonist needs to be some pseudo-intellectual wannabe/complex/morally grey character with 1000 hours of backstory.

The purpose of Jiren was not to make a "complex" antagonist, but to make an unmovable wall, a force of nature, someone built different. This was accomplished quite clearly.

Now when it comes to Jiren, people also complain about his skill-set being boring and lackluster, I don't care because that is the point of the story. He's not going to use some weird clever technique or secret mode, because he is pure strength. He doesn't need anything but his fists and the strength of his ki. When he does break his limits, he literally just burns everything around him. He is pure strength, and so he does not need an elaborate skill-set.

That would in fact contradict the character concept. Someone who relies on pure strength alone does not need weird gimmick techniques. And considering how it's the "tournament of POWER", it makes perfect sense to have a main antagonist whose main "strategy" is just unleashing pure strength, not some weird trickster or magician or whatever fanfic character people would have replaced Jiren with.

Jiren is a well-constructed antagonist who accomplished his purpose of show-casing ultimate strength.






Personally, I think that Jiren is much more interesting than all of the generic pure evil monsters from DBZ. Jiren is a dark mirror of Goku; a glimpse of what Goku would have become if he didn't have friends and Dragon Balls to rely on, but had to overcome threats all by himself. Jiren is actually a fleshed-out antagonist, if people were willing to look at him in good faith.

I agree with that. Jiren a well fleshed out character, complete with foibles and a drive.