I’ve been meaning to have a crack at this one for a while, but never really had the time to do it when it was live. So, now, two weeks later, I chuck my tuppence worth in.
Honestly, the real version of this topic should be ‘How to improve Universe 16’, because the further the story goes, the more problems this universe in particular causes – because this universe in particular is where Salagir went full ‘Toriyama’. But what does that mean?
By going full Toriyama, I mean he started with the concept (Vegeto vs Broly fight/Vegeto having a daughter/wouldn’t it be cool if we had a female Super Saiyan/wouldn’t it be cool if Bra & Pan could do something) and the gag (Both Gohans/Videls/Gotenks & his components are completely identical) and then added story in later (I would argue that there wasn’t a definitive plot arc for DBM outside of ‘lets have cool fights between characters who otherwise wouldn’t normally meet’ until the Bardock/Raditz fight and Bardock’s visions which is a good 400 pages in). This is very similar to how the U6 Saiyans in DBS ended up working out. For a more detailed explanation, check
this Plague of Gripes video on said U6 Saiyans as he lays out the concept further.
Because, fun as it may be, changing up U16 as a whole is a MUUUUCH longer reply and I’ve already waffled a bunch anyhow. We’re trying to fix the end of the Rebellion, and preferably with as few major changes as possible. Which is do-able. We need to break things down into Problems & Solutions…
The Problem: Bra’s win feels unearnedHonestly, I don’t mind so much that Bra effectively won the end fight. That doesn’t have to change. But what DOES need to change is her just casually murder-waltzing her way through parts 6 and ESPECIALLY 7, brutally offing one character after another, barely being inconvenienced by anything they try to do in return. Now that I think about this, the Bra-dokai Royale follows the same formula as equally controversial Bra Vs Cold/Ginyu fight, bringing to mind that quote about the definition of insanity.
You can break the fight down, at it’s most simple level into the following stages
Bra gets the early advantage by being faster.Cold Fight:
- Takes some damage in the early exchange, but lands more solid hits on Cold (said hits lack the power to make a difference)
- Beats Cold at Ki tennis despite him having twice the amount of arms. Even able to add extra blasts to the volley without him noticing
Bradokai Royale:
- She speed blitzes the Gohans before they can attack
- blocks U16 Gohan with one hand & smacks him around
- uses a new shield technique to deflect mini SBC spam
- attacks faster than Cell can properly block
- Abuses Instantaneous Movement (Kaioport) to block U18’s & Cell’s attacks on Babidi & port U18 Gohan into space
She gets caught off guard by a big attack and left in a bad wayCold Fight:
- Cold flying through her flashy ki attack and beating her with fists of fury
Bradokai Royale:
- loses an arm to Cell’s sneak attack SBC
- blows up her remaining senzu by blocking Gohan’s attack on Babadi
- gets surprise Teleport Punched square in the temple by U18 Gohan & mini Cell Jr.
- attempt to sucker-punch U16 Gohan blokced by Phipsil’s shiled and eats a bending Kamehameha to the back
She gets a senzu that undoes said attack immediately afterwardCold Fight:
- After being beaten so badly that everyone thinks she’s dead and can only sense her energy by REALLY concentrating, manages to get a senzu, possibly mutliple senzu – that btw weighs the same as ONE THOUSAND senzu because of the gravity – out of her glove & into her mouth, all within… we didn’t get a count but, less than 10 seconds based on the death disc response.
Bradokai Royale:
- Manages to rip her glove off her severed arm, and chop the beans inside it all before it hit the ground – not even acknowledging the pain/shock of having has said arm amputated less than seconds ago
- Kaioports out of the Kamehameha to Piccolo, kills him, steals his senzu, teleports out of Gohan’s way as he attempts tos top her from chomping it, undoing her hand, temple and back injuries
Fully healed and energized, she takes advantage of her beaten & exhausted opponent and effortlessly wins the fightCold Fight:
- Pulls out her own version of spirit sword & chops Cold’s death saucers
- speed blitzes him with spirit sword plus kaioport
- oh, he can adapt to kaioport, also pulls the trapping goop clones out of her ass
- spirit axe, lol Bra wins
Bradokai Royale:
- Spirit Swords U16 Gohan in half, plus his baby cell
- Blows surviving Piccolo up with dirty fireworks
- Kills tiny cell, blows up the last bean, blows up Cell
- finds Cell’s nucleus, blows that up as well. Everyone is just standing around doing jack shit as this happens.
- Phipsil’s armour is out of energy because she shot her laser once and then used a shield, but she decides to do something & sets up a carbonite gambit
- it actually hits, which is better than literally anyone else manages. But Bra sees it early and lightly chars her foot. Meaning Bra is the only person to actually hurt Bra.
- Buu tries a candy beam and an absorb but Bra kaioports, then blows him away… somehow taking him out
- Gohan uses this moment of distraction to try a teleport stab in the back. But Bra dodges it effortlessly and punches his head in, kills his Mini Cell as well. Bra wins lol.
- Oh and she also kills the Grand Supreme Kai. Because fuck that guy[/spoiler]
The Problem: U18 Bra’s talk no jutsu feels unearned… and then we have that ending where U18 Bra used talk no jutsu, found that Son Bra’s trigger word is ‘Passive’, Bra has a freudian excuse that her life was so hard you gaiz, breaks the seal. All the tools were there for this to feel justified, and seeing U18 Bra lay a verbal smackdown was nice to see. But the problem was, with the exception of a slight moment after bisecting her older half-brother and arguable father figure where she let her expression turn from ‘I love killing weaklings’ slasher smile to something that’s almost contemplative Bra… didn’t give a shit at anything thrown at her verbally. She’d either ignore it or laugh it off… until she suddenly needed to be affected by it to advance the plot. And has been mentioned, the lack of interaction between the Bras.
The Solutions: Make this feel earnedWell, obviously right. But that’s easier said than done. Except not really. You can fix a lot of this with some fairly simple changes.
Changes Part 1: The Physical FightHonestly, while it’s not perfect I’d keep everything about part 5 – and indeed use it as a baseline for what the rest of the hand-to-hand stuff should be. Because what Part 5 had over the parts thay followed was a back & forth exchange of the advantage between Bra and the slowly growing group opposing her. Bra starts off by punching the freshest Gohan off into the horizon then slaps the injured one around. The Piccolos try to make the save but allows Cell to get the drop on her. Bra uses a senzu and beats down on Cell, but the fresher Gohan is back and tries to take out Babidi, forcing her to sacrifice her remaining senzu. Bra kaioports U18 Gohan into space but Cell targets Babadi. Bra kaioports back and blocks him. The mini juniors are revealed and teleport U16 Gohan over to the Piccolos for a senzu then teleport U18 Gohan back letting him get a blindside strike on Bra, likely concussing her, causing blood to start leaking into her eye. The Heliotes arrive with recharged armours and try to kill Babadi, forcing Bra to just barely save him. Action, consequence, counter action. A back & forth flowing fight of teamwork vs raw power & hax abilities
And then all that goes up in smoke as we just got into, because Bra had to win so everyone had to be dumb – even after lampshading it at the start of part 6.
So what we do instead is continue this back & forth. And ACTUALLY PAY OFF THE CHEKOV’S GUN vis U16 & 18 Gohan (and by rights the Piccolos) being essentially the same person (even though they shouldn’t be) and have them use that team work. Have U19 merge with that with their own military tactics and history of teamwork. Cell & Buu… yeah, they’d probably still do their own thing, but Cell’s savvy enough to pick his spots and Buu is random enough to make openings happen and durable enough to tank any damage from mishaps. Make it clear that Bra can kill them with ease if they make a mistake, and have ALL of part 6 be a game of cat & mouse with both sides teasing a game ending move, but narrowly surviving. Have the heroes blow their senzu here. Keep Cell getting caught out by Bra’s goo clones… but have someone get him free so he can regenerate and tank a senzu of his own. And end the chapter with Bra killing
Fat Buu. No senzus left. No Buu healing magic. And Bra smiling evilly and stating “one down” (and possibly some screed about how Master Babidi doesn’t need trash like him anyway when he has her – but more on this later).
Next chapter, more of the same cat & mouse, but this time its more fatal. People start dropping… but each kill comes with a cost to Bra. She pulls that neck breaking trick on Nedwook but got nicked by his laser. Phipsil pulls her carbonite gambit and Bra only notices it after it’s chewed on her foot, forcing her to amputate it. Stuff like that. Bra is still winning, but each time comes closer and closer to losing… but in the end she’s just too strong. She kills Gohan last after the failed teleport stab… but it’s U16 Gohan (that should have been the most important kill for her so leaving it last)… and it fails because he hesitates at the last moment. We’ll keep Fatoshin’s attempted morality lecture and murder and we’ll keep U18 Bra’s verbal beatdown… but we’ll introduce her into the mix earlier (have Cell live up to his promise to toss her into the mix to motivate the Gohans – and have that lead to what gets him killed), have her have a couple of exchanges with Majin Bra that eventually lead to her snapping and delivering the verbal smackdown. Which moves onto…
Changes Part 2: The Mental FightIf we’re having Majin Bra get beaten by talk no jutsu we have to earn that. This is why we introduce U18 Bra earlier, so they can interact more and build up a relationship – where Majin Bra can start by outlining all of her U18 counterpart’s weaknesses, all while doing her slaughter thing, building up to U18’s rebuttal.
But that’s not all. We need more emphasis on trying to get Bra to fight back against the control, to try and be the hero she’s portrayed herself as, how she’s a slave to a ‘magician and coward’. And have those marks visibly start to affect her more and more as the fight drags on. Have her laugh them off at first, but slowly start to get irritated, get angry, get irrational. Have us see inside her head and her contradictory impulses – the fear and admiration of her father and his power, the contradictory emphasis on prioritizing her strength and the weakness of others, time spent with her family vs time spent fighting as a space cop. We can have the out-of-context ‘
I’ll Kill You’ but it needs a counterballance of Vegeto not being big bad fusion man and actually being an imperfect dad who does indeed care – as he has previously been shown to be – about his family & friends. We need genuine mental anguish over killing her father figures in the Gohans & Piccolos as memories of them helping her with her super saiyan struggles clash with her desire to surpass him – and by surpassing him prove herself to her dad. Yeah it stretches the story out by at least another chapter, but in this case it gives context and weight to what – intended or not – is a big character developing moment (and besides the rebellion was intended to give side characters time to shine and not every fight has to be punch kick blast. I feel like a lot of the verbal/mental shots could well come from the Piccolos, which would give them something to do other than be bean daddy and then die)
Also we fix that frickin’ ‘Passive’ trigger line into something that works better. ‘Weak’. ‘Puppet’. Literally anything else.
So, that fixes everything right?
… oh, right. Fusion Man Bad. Rugsweep No Jutsu. Acting this out of character can only be the work of an enemy stand. *
sigh*, this is already way longer than I intended. Alright, let’s see… more spoilers for ease of future threads ahoy
The Problem: The AftermathHoo boy, this is where things went from bad to worse. Where the ball was not so much dropped as hurled down the marina trench. Vegeto decides to become a card carrying villain, abusive father who hungers to murder his daughter and now nobody likes him. Gotenks acts out of character to defend his half sister who mocks, belittles and is generally an arsehole to him and his components at every turn. The murder of Pan’s father and uncle figure by her half-aunt barely acknowledged. Bra’s brutal and gleeful murder spree basically rug swept by a click of Santa Buu’s fingers and lets not linger any more people we have to go back to happy fun tournament time! There’s way too many threads about this already, I don’t need to go into any more detail.
So, how do we fix this?
Well the obvious change is that Majin Bra doesn’t happen, Cell was the ultimate Majin and didn’t break free, he was under mind control, couldn’t fight it, we have Buu snap his fingers, send U11 back home, Bra wakes up and complaisn that she missed the whole thing the end.
But I just wrote 2000 words or so fixing the Majin bra fight, so how do we fix this without making massive changes? We make a few smaller ones
1) When Bra breaks her control the Majin Seal does NOT disappearNot only was this the point that pretty much sealed her Suedom in my mind and was generally an unpopular move certainly in this part of the woods, we need this to have Vegeto’s reaction make sense. In place of the seal cracking we’ll have some different mental break style image and the other main majin signifier – the deep set, sunken evil eyes – go back to normal. She’s broken free… but she still wears her scarlet letter. For now.
2) Ginyu’s DeathWe need Ginyu’s corpse, or part of it anyway, for Gast’s reaction to make sense. So rather than atomize him completely it just blows his head/upper torso off. Still enough to stop the Change beam. But enough that the body is still there. And Bra has her moment of realization and break down very close to said corpse.
3) Han Vegeto shoots firstEveryone returns as before, but Vegeto sees the devastation, sees the corpses of his friends, sees his bloodied and broken daughter… and sees the majin mark. This way he can still have his berserker moment – and based on the way the story is going he does have to become A big bad, and this reactionary attitude can be both further foreshadowing of that – yet also justified because his daughter has a big evil M on her head.
4) Justifying Gast interferingThis why Ginyu’s corpse. Now Gast himself never met Ginyu – in his universe they never made it to Namek & got killed by newly SSJ Vegeta – but he
does have namek hearing, would have heard the ‘Change’ at the end of the Bra/Cold fight and would almost certainly have picked up the conversation in the U16 area – which happens either just before or about the same time his match with Raichi is called (likely before since they need to fix the ring from Bra’s twisty explosion cannon & ginyu’s death saucers before the next match was called). He wouldn’t know everything… but he would know enough to have reason to interfere
We THEN have Buu’s magical storytime experience which leads into…
5) Opinions, Debate & ConsequenceThis is the bit we’ve kinda been over already that we all know. Vegeta should have had an opinion as the only person to have been majinised. U19 should have had an opinion since Bra declared herself their champion only to betray them. U16 Pan in particular should have gotten more than TWO FUCKING PANELS dealing with her parents dying at the hands of her previously beloved ‘big sis’. Hell, this would have been a great point to have her go SSJ2 – she arguably should have after witnessing this carnage. Gotenks should have defused and given his components opinions – his takedown on Vegeto would have felt less out of character coming from Trunks, even hi more playboy DBM character than from walking manchild goofball Gotenks. Hell burnt glorified spectator Goten should have gotten something.
But…
… this should also have continued after Buu brought everyone back. And
not just on the issue of Son Bra – although the Piccolos, Gohans and Heliotes opinions definitely should have been heard. Universe 1 should be trying to cancel the whole thing now. Most of the spectators shouldn’t want to be there anymore. Emperor Vegeta should be pissed at 2 of his followers joining Babidi. There should be an uneasy detente over in Universe 8 as Freeza & Cooler just missed their chance at killing their not-dad. Narub’s got him some ‘splainin’ to do over in U19. There’s probably more plot threads here that I’m forgetting, I’ve been writing this for hours now
… yeah, that’s probably adding a lot (so much for ‘small’ changes, huh?) and after years of rebellion – and special after special – people just want to get back to the tournament. But that’s what happens when you write a good guy turning bad and slaughtering their friends & family. There’s NO simple fix for that. That’s a story-altering massive plot event.
I’ve been
Teh Jammah and thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Assuming you survived this wall of text, tune in next time for my complete rewrite of universe 16 coming sometime never when I have a bored afternoon in 20xx