A Roller-coaster of Emotions, A Dragon Ball discussion by Luiggi Cavanna

This week while talking to a friend about anime of the year, mainly because of the announcement of the second season of Made in Abyss, we somehow ended up talking about Dragon Ball Super and how Dragon Ball “is bad now”. The past episodes of Dragon Ball Super have caused an uproar in the community. The fans have gone from, “this show is trash!” to “oh my GAH the animation is so great” and finally “what’s going to happen next?!!”. So during my discussion with my friend, I explained how literally the show has been like this for years! So I’ll take this opportunity to have a little conversation with you guys about how nothing has changed in Dragon Ball.

Let me explain that I watch Dragon Ball Super sparingly, so I literally had to go on a small chocolate chip cookies fueled marathon of Dragon Ball episodes to write this. When I reached the episodes that cause the community to go on the rampage, I felt nothing! It was Dragon Ball being Dragon Ball, let me explain in more detail.

Power levels are bullshit!!

Power levels are dumb! They appeared in Dragon Ball Z at the beginning of the Saiyan saga with Raditz to showcase the difference between the Earthling martial artists and this spaceman! Earthlings can control their ki, increasing it or decreasing it at will, and in general they had more refined attacks. Raditz was just strong, like super strong. His attacks weren’t as technical as a real martial artist and he got rekt by a toddler that became stronger than him for a second because anime.

Get rekt son!

The point I’m trying to make is that characters in Dragon Ball just become stronger out of nowhere, for no reason most of the time. That brings us to today and some characters that have cost some grief for the community.

Yep.

The Dragon Ball community has been hating on the female Saiyans for so many reasons! But mainly the fact that they have achieved so much power in such short amount of time, it’s not like anyone has achieved super saiyan without any effort before right?

Oh yeah… But it is Z so it gets a pass right?

Most people categorized them as “Mary Sues”, but Dragon Ball has been doing this for years now! Come on! Goku learned the Kamehameha after watching Master Roshi doing it once when Roshi blew up the Ox King’s mountain. The Saiyans from universe 6 has to become this strong and this fast because the story demanded because Toriyama and TOEI keep writing themselves into a corner. The fact that a Super Saiyan 2 and a female Broly had to fight super saiyan God Goku could’ve been solved many episodes ago with just a few lines, but NO! The situation that our heroes always face is always so final! They fight the strongest in the planet, the strongest in the universe, the strongest God! The show had a problem with the escalation of power since the Tao Pai Pai fight in Dragon Ball, we have just seen the results now because we are older and things are more ridiculous.

Also, all the screaming haven’t change.

To be fair I was watching the episode and it kinda made sense. I mean, Goku was tired and he was fighting two saiyans at once. One of them is the other universe’s Broly, and when he turned Super Saiyan God he was wrecking them. The fact that the universe 6 Saiyans had to fuse to start kicking Goku’s ass also made sense. Fusions are BUSTED! And in this episode, it wasn’t an exception, also take into consideration that one of the parts of this fusion was a Broly type character.

“FEEL THE POWER OF MY BIG BIG BUSTED FUSION NUMBERS!!” 

I understand though, it is annoying and you want a well written compelling story, but let’s face it, Toriyama is not a good writer. Toriyama strong point is gag manga, and he just wants to write fun silly things if you don’t believe me look at universe 2! They just needed a stick with poop on the tip and they would’ve been a Toriyama grade A material.

Toriyama love poop on a stick!

I have to say though that I do have something I hate with a passion in super. Something that undermines everything in past seasons of super that can be considered good. It is something that seems to be loved by most DBS fans, and that is….

Jiren!

Jiren, to me, represents the Dragon Ball problem. Jiren is the next “strongest guy EVER!” and we can’t wait for Goku to beat him and for him to become trash a few seasons after, like every “strong guy EVER!” before him. Do you remember Hit? I remember Hit, I like Hit! Remember how he was sitting with his eyes close not paying attention to the tournament he was participating in until one of the heroes increase his numbers out of nowhere and he opened his eyes and he closes them immediately like the cool guy he was. Guess who’s doing that now?

“Anything you can do I can do better…”

Also, remember the future Trunk’s ark? Remember how everyone loved it, even though the ending was a little wonky? Where was Jiren? No, hear me out. Didn’t Zamasu kill all the Gods and mortals in other universes, how the heck did he deal with Jiren? Where is Launch? That last question has nothing to do with anything it’s just that it’s been bothering me for years now hehe.

I need closure damn it!

But why am I writing this blog? Well because I believe that the hate for the characters is misdirected. I believe that the Saiyans from universe 6 are good ideas. I love the master-student relationship that Vegeta and Cabba have. Caulifla is basically a more spunky female Goku, and female Broly… well, you know. By the way that makes me think, universe 6 have a Broly and it is universe 7 twin universe so where is Broly? I mean the movies are not canon.

No for real, where is he?

Believe or not I love Dragon Ball, but I also understand that I might be out of the targeted demographic. Listen, eating in a fancy restaurant is great but sometimes you just wanna eat some potato chips with some soda. At the end of the day, in Dragon Ball, I just want to see someone launch his most powerful attack and for the bad guy to just shrug it off and right after for them to do it again but harder and then the bad guy dies.

Also, I love how Frieza is just the sassiest passive aggressive

bitch EVER! I LOVE IT!

Many of the problems with Super could’ve been solved with simple additions to the story but to be fair Dragon Ball has many problems that are already deep in its DNA. So maybe you shouldn’t call Super shit because maybe Dragon Ball has always been a little shit, but fun shit, really really good shit! And there’s nothing wrong to have some fun with good shit.

Arale knows it!

Well, I’m sure that all the Dragon Ball experts out there on the internet are ready to educate me on all the topics I touched on this blog and I can’t wait. Also, I can’t wait for Dragon Ball FighterZ, my GAH I love this characters! So what do you think? Enjoying Dragon Ball Super? Are you angry that Piccolo got knockout because he didn’t hear his enemy with his hypersensitive Namekian ears? Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Good-bye, for now, my friends.

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