Dragon Ball Super Manga Thread (SPOILERS)

I think there are two really obvious answers to that question. Either they countered it with their own magic -OR- Moro was so powerful at the time that he didn't feel the need to drain their energy to defeat them.

I agree it's out of character for the old Freeza but I feel Toriyama is going out of his way to make Freeza less evil. I'm pretty sure immortality is the only wish Shenron is capable of granting that could be useful to Freeza. Since Goku learned Mafuba to seal Zamasu, he would probably use it against an immortal Freeza. If Freeza does get a serious power-up, it would be a repeat of RoF with Goku and Vegeta having to kill him because his newfound power is now a threat to them and the Earth.

I'm assuming Toriyama has something different planned for him. Freeza was one of my favorite villains so I would he die because he's too dangerous to let live than to keep coming back and becoming less and less of the menacing Freeza we once knew. In DBS: Broly, Freeza doesn't even try to fight them. His purpose was mainly to setup the meeting between Broly and the Earth Saiyans and get beat up by Broly so they can learn the Fusion Dance. I just think it's a depressing fate for such an iconic villain.


It's funny that Freeza being alive again might be the only thing that prevented the ToP from being filler. Goku didn't learn how he obtained UI so it seems like he has to figure out how to achieve it some other way. Who knows if we'll ever see the other universe characters outside of Heroes. U7 had the 2nd lowest mortal ranking but I doubt it's going to be brought up again or if anyone's going to try to prevent it from dropping.

I personally think we'll never see Frieza in a hands-on villain role ever again. I doubt Toriyama will forget about him and just let him fade out of the story, but redeeming Frieza would be a terrible idea and I'm not sure Toriyama would have any clue on how to attempt it anyway. Assuming how much longer DBS can hold on, I imagine Frieza getting a sort of Skeletor or G1 Megatron role, where he comes up with a villainous scheme every now and then which needs to be thwarted but he isn't really taken seriously in- or out-of-universe.

Which brings up an interesting point. Many of us are relatively older fans who remember the pre-DBS, pre-DBZ Abridged days, when GT was the only after-the-fact addition to the series. I don't know about you but I remember Frieza being a total joke among the fandom. He gets easily killed by Trunks. He's fodder in the original Plan to Eliminate the Saiyans. He gets one-shotted by Pikkon in filler. He gets one-shotted by Gohan in Fusion Reborn. He is utterly humiliated by a base child Goku in GT. Many DBM readers criticize Salagir for his treatment of the Frost Demons but he was actually extremely fair to them by 2008 standards, where a 6th-form Cold on par with Perfect Cell would've been seen as ridiculous favoritism.

With that as background, I'm wondering if DBS has improved Frieza's lot at all. He's been made stronger, yes, but you and Axalon have both brought up a lot of points about how Frieza's been damaged as a character, either in personality, reputation, or by being mixed-up with terrible writing. Is having him cower before Beerus any better than Gohan one-shotting him? I'm curious to get your opinions on this. (I mean, I personally would've had Goku kill Frieza on Namek and let some other person job to Trunks, but what can ya do.)

So: is post-2014 Frieza a more respectful continuation of Namek Frieza's legacy than 1995-2014 Frieza?

I don't know what Toriyama was like as a kid, but I imagine he was the kind that sees his parents put a present under the Christmas tree on December 1st and runs and opens it right then and there even though he knows he'll get in trouble because he simply can't wait. He definitely wouldn't have passed the marshmallow test when he was 5. I can only imagine what him dating his wife must've looked like.

The point is, the guy's the king of showing his whole hand at once. Dragon Ball is just a long sequence of him opening doors and immediately shutting them on himself and going "Crap, what do I do now?"

Dragon Ball: "Goku is learning how to do martial arts--"
AT: "HE JUST BEAT THE BEST MARTIAL ARTISTS IN THE WORLD."

Dragon Ball Z: "Uh, well, there are guys from space--"
AT: "HE JUST BEAT THE STRONGEST GUYS IN THE UNIVERSE."

Dragon Ball Super: "Um... there are other universes...?"
AT: "GOKU JUST BEAT ALL THE STRONGEST PEOPLE IN ALL OTHER UNIVERSES."

He is the most hyperbolic writer of all time; one of the premier cases of Tell, Don't Show. His fights are all straightforward because he simply doesn't have the patience to write stuff like strategy; he just gets to the moment of curbstomp as quick as he can and hopes exposition can fill the gaps. I'm 90% convinced Frieza only has multiple forms because Toriyama hyped up the Ginyus as the best of the best, had Goku beat them all easily, and had to figure out how to fill 20 more chapters. To Toriyama, it's not enough to just have a bad guy be strong; he must be the strongest everywhere. The ToP is the worst example of this because he shut the door on eight entire universes, all so he could...what? I'm not really sure why Toriyama felt the need to do this. If we know 65 of the 70 enemies are just fodder, what good does it do to try and hype them up?

I suppose this is all a long-winded way of saying I agree with you: Toriyama should've kept his cards closer to his chest. Gone a little smaller in scope. Surely in 11 other universes there would be opponents strong enough to give Goku the fight of his life? Unfortunately, Toriyama doesn't think that far ahead. The existence of the other universes was a hype machine and now that they've served their purpose, we will never hear of them again. Maybe one arc at best.

Yeah, I agree he should've held off on introducing so many at once. I'm not sure what Toriyama's intent was behind making the DB universe part of a greater multiverse. It seems that it was just to make it easier to introduce stronger opponents for tournaments since the only non-tournament saga involving other universes was originally Toei or Shuiesha's idea. I guess he figured it give the final opponents like Hit and Jiren more "clout" to say they're the strongest in their entire universe than merely the strongest on some far off planet or solar system.

Based on what happened with tournament contestants in Dragonball, we probably won't be seeing any of the other universe characters outside of filler and cameos. In DB, the only contestants who weren't already Goku's friends that were seen again were Tien, Choatzu, and Piccolo Jr. Tien and Piccolo were an exception since they only entered to avenge someone that Goku killed. In Heroes, there's a saga about a multi-universe threat with all these heroes from different universes teaming up. I'm not sure if that's a preview of what's to come in DBS or if that was one of the ideas suggested to Toriyama that he declined to use. We honestly only know of what he ideas he liked enough to use like Zamasu and Broly but not how many he rejected.


The mortal ranking is an interesting concept but it's pointless if Beerus doesn't care about his universe's ranking getting lower. If Freeza is allowed to rebuild his empire then I'm pretty sure the only life that remains is his army, workers, and whoever he's selling these planets to. I think he may have lost interest in having an empire at least for now like how Piccolo Jr and Vegeta focused on defeating Goku after losing to him. DBS: Broly is supposed to take place "shortly after" the ToP and I think within the same month and Freeza was already heading to Earth.


I also would've preferred if Freeza was killed on Namek. Maybe have King Cold goes to Earth on his own and loses after a more serious battle. In DBM, Freeza is a joke because he has been long surpassed and not because he's a recurring villain who keeps failing. In almost every universe, the strongest there had to face Freeza at some point and he was deemed enough of a threat to kill. He forced Nail to fuse with all the Nameks, Heloites to improve their tech, Bardock to challenge the king and bring the Saiyans together, Vegeta to become a SSJ, etc.

I think some villains inevitably suffered from "villain decay" the more times they appear and fail. It's a little different for comic book villains because most superheroes have a strict moral code against killing. In Dragonball, the heroes aren't against killing bad guys so villains only get spared if they reform or not a threat. In the original series, the only non-reformed villains who were still alive by the end were...the Pilaf gang. Even Boss Rabbit was killed when Roshi destroyed the moon! Technically, that changed in DBS since the Pilaf gang hang out with the Z fighters now so Freeza now holds the distinction of being the only non-reformed villain who keeps coming back and getting spared. Freeza's role in DBS: Broly is almost the same as Pilaf's in the King Piccolo saga which is being responsible for unleashing a much more powerful threat on the Earth.

I think he may have gotten worse at planning ahead. In the original series, he never went back and retconned a character's power. BoG has SSJG at 60% of Beerus. In RoF, Whis says Goku and Vegeta working together could defeat Beerus which fits with the previous movie since they have to be at least half as strong as Beerus individually.

In DBS, Beerus was a constantly moving goalpost. SSJG was retconned to be such a tiny percentage of his power that a Blue Kaioken x10 and then x20 was still weaker than Beerus. Goku apparently surpassed him with MUI but hasn't learned how to use it after again. If he kept the same power scaling from BoG, a Blue Kaioken x2 would've been enough to surpass Beerus. Now a Blue Gogeta is barely enough to surpass someone at Beerus's level even with the huge fusion power-up.