Dragon Ball Discussion Thread - WAIFU WARS: THE DBZ FRONT

[The United Neptumousian Empire]

Several hours behind where I live, evidently xD

Stupid timezones. Still, nostalgia to the max. Late night uncut DBZ was the shit, especially after the years of enduring that goddamn fucking loop in the 90s. All the way up to when Goku arrives on Namek and flattens Recoome, Vegeta spending half an episode wigging about about "OMFG IS HE A SUPER SAIYAJIN?!" and building the hype up... and then Tree of fucking Might and back to the beginning of the series. We waited years to get the rest of the saga and then the later sagas. You don't know the pain, having to track down that friend of a friend of a friend who was able to get dodgy quality VHS fansubs because online fansubbing wasn't a thing yet, having to tolerate the butchered old dub for yeeeears-!
</90s otaku rant>

EDIT TO ADD:

Alright so they referenced three things in this episode.

REFERENCE 1: General Blue, no seriously the guy playing the Great Saiyaman looks identical.

REFERENCE 2: BABY, THERE'S A FUCKING ALIEN PARASITE THAT'S BASICALLY JUST BABY.

REFERENCE 3: Two pricks from DBZ that Great Saiyaman/Gohan beat up.

Also, Gohan becomes a flying nimbus for some bitch that we don't care about.

That and Episode 74's preview screams "PAN SAVES THE DAY".

Eh, I liked it. It seems like this alien parasite is only getting maybe 2 episodes, tops. So, similar to Baby, but thankfully not overstaying its welcome. Kinda enjoying all these goofy between-arc character episodes, and it's nice seeing Gohan get some spotlight. It was just a fun episode, and I do like seeing those screwball situations where the super-powered characters are trying to blend in with the normals.

Also, I got less of a "Pan saves the day" vibe from the preview for 74 and more "Gohan finally fully realizes he has something to fight for and protect and goes all Papa Wolf on the villain of the week." I'm really hoping that this is foreshadowing Gohan finally taking a long overdue level in badass that they've hinted at with him asking Piccolo to help get him back into shape after the Resurrection F stuff. I mean, Super looks like it actually HAS on-screen character arcs and development, and we already got somebody besides Goku getting what was functionally the finishing blow of a major fight what with Trunks vivisecting Zamasu- hopefully that means this is the beginning of Gohan getting some proper spotlight time and not sucking!

Have you seen the promo art for the next upcoming arc?

[Reploid Productions]

Stupid timezones. Still, nostalgia to the max. Late night uncut DBZ was the shit, especially after the years of enduring that goddamn fucking loop in the 90s. All the way up to when Goku arrives on Namek and flattens Recoome, Vegeta spending half an episode wigging about about "OMFG IS HE A SUPER SAIYAJIN?!" and building the hype up... and then Tree of fucking Might and back to the beginning of the series. We waited years to get the rest of the saga and then the later sagas. You don't know the pain, having to track down that friend of a friend of a friend who was able to get dodgy quality VHS fansubs because online fansubbing wasn't a thing yet, having to tolerate the butchered old dub for yeeeears-!
</90s otaku rant>

EDIT TO ADD:

Eh, I liked it. It seems like this alien parasite is only getting maybe 2 episodes, tops. So, similar to Baby, but thankfully not overstaying its welcome. Kinda enjoying all these goofy between-arc character episodes, and it's nice seeing Gohan get some spotlight. It was just a fun episode, and I do like seeing those screwball situations where the super-powered characters are trying to blend in with the normals.

Also, I got less of a "Pan saves the day" vibe from the preview for 74 and more "Gohan finally fully realizes he has something to fight for and protect and goes all Papa Wolf on the villain of the week." I'm really hoping that this is foreshadowing Gohan finally taking a long overdue level in badass that they've hinted at with him asking Piccolo to help get him back into shape after the Resurrection F stuff. I mean, Super looks like it actually HAS on-screen character arcs and development, and we already got somebody besides Goku getting what was functionally the finishing blow of a major fight what with Trunks vivisecting Zamasu- hopefully that means this is the beginning of Gohan getting some proper spotlight time and not sucking!

Have you seen the promo art for the next upcoming arc?

Can't say that I have- besides the "Next time on-" preview at the end of each episode, I'm still trying to avoid spoilers for upcoming material. A LOT easier though now that I am actually up to date on the sub!

[The United Neptumousian Empire]

Have you seen the promo art for the next upcoming arc?

Can't say that I have- besides the "Next time on-" preview at the end of each episode, I'm still trying to avoid spoilers for upcoming material. A LOT easier though now that I am actually up to date on the sub!

I'm not sure if I'd call the official promos spoilers, but I can see why some might prefer to stay dark

I don't really bother to try myself because it's just impossible to avoid with how much Dragon Ball stuff I look at routinely

[Myuostii]

tbh I don't really like DBS. I stuck around for like 30 episodes and kinda gave up on it. I'm not really a DB fan anymore but, no offense to fans of DBS, I think it was kinda responsible for me ignoring the series for now.

But, do tell, what sort of insanity is happening now? I'm quite curious to see what they added to DBS.

[Sichem]

tbh I don't really like DBS. I stuck around for like 30 episodes and kinda gave up on it. I'm not really a DB fan anymore but, no offense to fans of DBS, I think it was kinda responsible for me ignoring the series for now.

But, do tell, what sort of insanity is happening now? I'm quite curious to see what they added to DBS.

They made it good.

How funny that you gave up exactly when the show started becoming good

[Reploid Productions]

tbh I don't really like DBS. I stuck around for like 30 episodes and kinda gave up on it. I'm not really a DB fan anymore but, no offense to fans of DBS, I think it was kinda responsible for me ignoring the series for now.

But, do tell, what sort of insanity is happening now? I'm quite curious to see what they added to DBS.

The first couple of arcs that rehash the storylines of the two most recent movies do drag, especially Battle of Gods. The Resurrection F bits have juuuust enough changes from the movie plot to kinda help keep it a bit fresher, and it does a somewhat better job of upping the tension and feeling of threat compared to the movie iteration. After it gets past those two arcs though, it really starts to pick up the pace, first with a tournament arc that's a lot of fun and doesn't overstay its welcome (Vegeta kicks all kinds of ass in this one!,) followed shortly thereafter by the series' first brand new Big Bad, and that arc is pretty fun and gets pretty nuts. Definitely recommend giving it another go, or just skipping past the BoG and RoF arcs to go straight into the truly new material.

[Finland SSR]

Slightly NSFW

[Gurori]

Full Abridged Broly Movie, Dr Briefs is offensive as always.

[Saiwania]

We waited years to get the rest of the saga and then the later sagas. You don't know the pain, having to track down that friend of a friend of a friend who was able to get dodgy quality VHS fansubs because online fansubbing wasn't a thing yet, having to tolerate the butchered old dub for yeeeears-!

The reason for the long wait was partially because of a precedent set back in the 1980s which really carried into the 1990s and even until the mid 2000s at latest. Back then, American TV executives were paranoid about viewers being able to handle something which wasn't American and the norm was for dubbing companies to butcher animes to hide the fact that it was from Japan and to censor it for a younger audience.

Anime purists might've hated this, but the suits at TV stations couldn't care less, they went ahead with what the standard operating procedure in the editing room was at the time, which was changing the names of the characters, fusing episodes together or cutting some entirely, changing plots or toning it down, censoring any blood/gore, and implementing replacement scores instead of keeping the Japanese music in.

In today's era, it is commonly accepted that anime is from Japan and it is easy for people to watch it in its original format subtitled if they so choose, so you don't see many dubbing companies adhere to the past practices anymore. They are more or less, freer to do voice dubbing without the extra work of heavy censorship with the expectation that the audience would exclusively be little kids.

[Reploid Productions]

We waited years to get the rest of the saga and then the later sagas. You don't know the pain, having to track down that friend of a friend of a friend who was able to get dodgy quality VHS fansubs because online fansubbing wasn't a thing yet, having to tolerate the butchered old dub for yeeeears-!

The reason for the long wait was partially because of a precedent set back in the 1980s which really carried into the 1990s and even until the mid 2000s at latest. Back then, American TV executives were paranoid about viewers being able to handle something which wasn't American and the norm was for dubbing companies to butcher animes to hide the fact that it was from Japan and to censor it for a younger audience.

Anime purists might've hated this, but the suits at TV stations couldn't care less, they went ahead with what the standard operating procedure in the editing room was at the time, which was changing the names of the characters, fusing episodes together or cutting some entirely, changing plots or toning it down, censoring any blood/gore, and implementing replacement scores instead of keeping the Japanese music in.

In today's era, it is commonly accepted that anime is from Japan and it is easy for people to watch it in its original format subtitled if they so choose, so you don't see many dubbing companies adhere to the past practices anymore. They are more or less, freer to do voice dubbing without the extra work of heavy censorship with the expectation that the audience would exclusively be little kids.

Yup, and it sucked. The advent of dual-language DVDs and later online distribution thankfully destroyed the cultural stranglehold the networks had on it, and thanks in large part to Toonami, anime got mainstream enough to finish the job. It's soooo much better now.

[Reploid Productions]

Full Abridged Broly Movie, Dr Briefs is offensive as always.

Oh my god, the Abridged version is honestly better than the actual movie. I loved how they used Vegeta to hang a massive lampshade on how the DBZ fandom is about Broly. (Put me in the "BUT HE'S SO DUMB!" camp. ) Also, if you haven't already, watch it with the captions turned on. There's even more gags/commentary in the captions. Including characters being labeled in the captions with their newly-issued royal titles... poor Trunks.

[Gurori]

General Blue Wannabe gets infected by the parasite, becomes Harambe and then Hirudegarn only for Super Saiyan Saiyaman to kill him.

My only problem with it is that logically, Goku should have felt it's energy, come to the scene and wrecked it's ass but It's not too big of a problem, it WAS Gohan's episode after all.

^{Also Gohan unwillingly cheated on Videl lmao.}


Next episode, Goku fights the Great Saiyaman and trains with Krillin like old times.

[Czechanada]

Y'know, the most significant aspect of Dragon Ball is how it highlighted how studying world religions can give people a greater appreciation and understanding of cultures and fiction, particularly through the presence of Chinese traditional religion as well as Chinese Buddhism in the story of Dragon Ball and it's structure, which is obvious through Dragon Ball's origin as an adaptation of the Chinese Buddhist novel ofJourney to the West.

The basic structure of Dragon Ball, where Goku and his friends fight increasingly powerful enemies is an allegory of ascension of the complex divine hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion(basically, each enemy represents a god of a certain rank on the hierarchy, and surpassing them in power means a achieving higher place in the podium of divinity). The divine hierarchy is itself present in the anime: It's why there's the seemingly convoluted ladder of gods in Dragon Ball; You have Kami of Earth (who delegates some work to Korin), who defers to King Yenma, who is ruled over King Kai, who is managed by the Grand Kai, overseen by the Supreme Kai, and so forth, similar to how the hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion, as depicted in Journey to the West works. In the original Journey the West, Sun Wukong (who Goku is based off of) and his friends become gods of various rank in the hierarchy, with Sun Wukong himself acheiving Buddhahood. In the end of the original Dragon Ball, this is instead displayed as Goku becoming stronger than the God of Earth.

The emphasis on battling gods in Dragon Ball Super essentially is a return to thematic form; Goku's transformation to a Super Saiyan God could also be argued to be allegory of Sun Wukong's divine ascension.

One could even argue that Goku is meant to represent the bodhisattva in Buddhism, who is one who strives towards achievement of great compassion and enlightenment which a step on the path towards Buddhahood. Goku's pure heart and continual strive to improve himself could represent this.

[The Republic of Atria]

Y'know, the most significant aspect of Dragon Ball is how it highlighted how studying world religions can give people a greater appreciation and understanding of cultures and fiction, particularly through the presence of Chinese traditional religion as well as Chinese Buddhism in the story of Dragon Ball and it's structure, which is obvious through Dragon Ball's origin as an adaptation of the Chinese Buddhist novel ofJourney to the West.

The basic structure of Dragon Ball, where Goku and his friends fight increasingly powerful enemies is an allegory of ascension of the complex divine hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion(basically, each enemy represents a god of a certain rank on the hierarchy, and surpassing them in power means a achieving higher place in the podium of divinity). The divine hierarchy is itself present in the anime: It's why there's the seemingly convoluted ladder of gods in Dragon Ball; You have Kami of Earth (who delegates some work to Korin), who defers to King Yenma, who is ruled over King Kai, who is managed by the Grand Kai, overseen by the Supreme Kai, and so forth, similar to how the hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion, as depicted in Journey to the West works. In the original Journey the West, Sun Wukong (who Goku is based off of) and his friends become gods of various rank in the hierarchy, with Sun Wukong himself acheiving Buddhahood. In the end of the original Dragon Ball, this is instead displayed as Goku becoming stronger than the God of Earth.

The emphasis on battling gods in Dragon Ball Super essentially is a return to thematic form; Goku's transformation to a Super Saiyan God could also be argued to be allegory of Sun Wukong's divine ascension.

One could even argue that Goku is meant to represent the bodhisattva in Buddhism, who is one who strives towards achievement of great compassion and enlightenment which a step on the path towards Buddhahood. Goku's pure heart and continual strive to improve himself could represent this.

I think you're vastly overestimating Akira Toriyama's writing skill.

[Reploid Productions]

Y'know, the most significant aspect of Dragon Ball is how it highlighted how studying world religions can give people a greater appreciation and understanding of cultures and fiction, particularly through the presence of Chinese traditional religion as well as Chinese Buddhism in the story of Dragon Ball and it's structure, which is obvious through Dragon Ball's origin as an adaptation of the Chinese Buddhist novel ofJourney to the West.

The basic structure of Dragon Ball, where Goku and his friends fight increasingly powerful enemies is an allegory of ascension of the complex divine hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion(basically, each enemy represents a god of a certain rank on the hierarchy, and surpassing them in power means a achieving higher place in the podium of divinity). The divine hierarchy is itself present in the anime: It's why there's the seemingly convoluted ladder of gods in Dragon Ball; You have Kami of Earth (who delegates some work to Korin), who defers to King Yenma, who is ruled over King Kai, who is managed by the Grand Kai, overseen by the Supreme Kai, and so forth, similar to how the hierarchy of gods in Chinese religion, as depicted in Journey to the West works. In the original Journey the West, Sun Wukong (who Goku is based off of) and his friends become gods of various rank in the hierarchy, with Sun Wukong himself acheiving Buddhahood. In the end of the original Dragon Ball, this is instead displayed as Goku becoming stronger than the God of Earth.

The emphasis on battling gods in Dragon Ball Super essentially is a return to thematic form; Goku's transformation to a Super Saiyan God could also be argued to be allegory of Sun Wukong's divine ascension.

One could even argue that Goku is meant to represent the bodhisattva in Buddhism, who is one who strives towards achievement of great compassion and enlightenment which a step on the path towards Buddhahood. Goku's pure heart and continual strive to improve himself could represent this.

I think you're vastly overestimating Akira Toriyama's writing skill.

Well, it is true that Dragon Ball is (very, very loosely) inspired by Journey to the West... but while the rest does conveniently slot into that sort of interpretation, given Toriyama's trouble with narrative consistency and continuity and stuff I'd be more inclined to chalk that up to a happy accident rather than intentional design. ^^;

[Britanania]

I think you're vastly overestimating Akira Toriyama's writing skill.

Well, it is true that Dragon Ball is (very, very loosely) inspired by Journey to the West... but while the rest does conveniently slot into that sort of interpretation, given Toriyama's trouble with narrative consistency and continuity and stuff I'd be more inclined to chalk that up to a happy accident rather than intentional design. ^^;

Agreed.

Some of the best parts of DBZ were actually the work of his editors.

[Sichem]

Well, it is true that Dragon Ball is (very, very loosely) inspired by Journey to the West... but while the rest does conveniently slot into that sort of interpretation, given Toriyama's trouble with narrative consistency and continuity and stuff I'd be more inclined to chalk that up to a happy accident rather than intentional design. ^^;

Agreed.

Some of the best parts of DBZ were actually the work of his editors.

And some of the worst parts, too, like the mess that was the beginning of the Android saga

[Britanania]

Agreed.

Some of the best parts of DBZ were actually the work of his editors.

And some of the worst parts, too, like the mess that was the beginning of the Android saga

What are you talking about?

[Sichem]

And some of the worst parts, too, like the mess that was the beginning of the Android saga

What are you talking about?

The editors constantly forced Toriyama to shelve and remake the primary villains of the arc, thus he shelved 19, 20, 17 and 18 from that role and turned the plot of the arc into a complete mess

[Britanania]

What are you talking about?

The editors constantly forced Toriyama to shelve and remake the primary villains of the arc, thus he shelved 19, 20, 17 and 18 from that role and turned the plot of the arc into a complete mess

I know they made him make two sets of Androids because 18 and 20 had stupid designs, so I don't fault the editors as much as I do him. If he gave them good designs than the editors wouldn't have suggested he made 17 and 18.

[Sichem]

The editors constantly forced Toriyama to shelve and remake the primary villains of the arc, thus he shelved 19, 20, 17 and 18 from that role and turned the plot of the arc into a complete mess

I know they made him make two sets of Androids because 18 and 20 had stupid designs, so I don't fault the editors as much as I do him. If he gave them good designs than the editors wouldn't have suggested he made 17 and 18.

It's not that they saw them as bad designs, they saw them as unfitting.

19 and 20 are clowns. 17 and 18 are teenagers. Cell is disgusting. That's what they said.

[Britanania]

I know they made him make two sets of Androids because 18 and 20 had stupid designs, so I don't fault the editors as much as I do him. If he gave them good designs than the editors wouldn't have suggested he made 17 and 18.

It's not that they saw them as bad designs, they saw them as unfitting.

19 and 20 are clowns. 17 and 18 are teenagers. Cell is disgusting. That's what they said.

I'd like to ask for some sources, because I've read differently. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious.

Obviously I think all the post Frieza stuff is poorly written, so it's not like I'm defending the Android Saga

[Sichem]

It's not that they saw them as bad designs, they saw them as unfitting.

19 and 20 are clowns. 17 and 18 are teenagers. Cell is disgusting. That's what they said.

I'd like to ask for some sources, because I've read differently. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious.

Obviously I think all the post Frieza stuff is poorly written, so it's not like I'm defending the Android Saga

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/intended-end/cell

First section.

The fact that the Android Saga is a mess is mostly my opinion, though. Characters and concepts get introduced and immediately forgotten, there's too many fake ends and fake primary villains (i.e. numerous villains get introduced and hyped up, then instantly demoted to side characters), and there are plot holes from start to finish.

It does get better once the Androids are dealt with and we're left with Cell, much better.

[Reploid Productions]

Sadly yeah, one of the series' biggest flaws is the narrative inconsistencies, whether resulting from Toriyama's shortcomings or due to executive meddling. There's some really cool ideas, they just get clumsy or lackluster execution, especially in the Android and Buu sagas. =/

[Britanania]

Sadly yeah, one of the series' biggest flaws is the narrative inconsistencies, whether resulting from Toriyama's shortcomings or due to executive meddling. There's some really cool ideas, they just get clumsy or lackluster execution, especially in the Android and Buu sagas. =/

Buu (for me) is unwatchable after the main villain is unveiled, ironically. It collapses under its own weight, pun intended.