Dragon Ball Super General (WARNING: Massive spoilers inside)

I’m expecting Crunchyroll to crash tonight what with the two week wait. Might have to watch the episode on YouTube at 4am when I get up before heading in to work. Anyone else think it’ll be a slow upload night?

Well it sure is disappointing. All that hype for nothing. Goku time to Frieza time

At this point, I don't really care. These last few episodes have made me not care and even dislike Universe 7 to an extent with all the excessive power-ups, asspulls, and an overexposed peanut gallery stating the obvious. It's boring and not at all compelling.

So ending with Jiren & U11 taking he W?

Some details on Toriyama's outline for the ToP have been revealed (Via Herms on Twitter). 


- It would seem Kale was indeed a Toei thing. On the flipside, Caulifla was a Tori thing.  

- Ribrianne was very similar; her base being a Toei thing while her form was Tori's thing. 

- I suppose Xenoverse Jiren isn't so awkward after all. It's what Toei wanted originally so they just gave it to Toppo instead. 

- Possible cliffhanger and new show on deck? 

- Ribrianne & 18 thing doesn't surprise me. Frieza not giving the energy? I actually quite liked that inclusion from Toei.  


All of this and more makes me realize that not everything is inherently Toei's fault. Sometimes they're probably just winging this thing as they go due to Tori being extremely vague on his work. It makes me wonder whether or not Toriyama is just losing it, is the luckiest terrible writer, or just simply needs an editor to supervise these things.  

Yup. This is a stance I've been taking more and more as more of the manga has come out, or small tidbits of info like these, and commonalities that I once blamed on Toei were revealed to either be Toriyama or Toyotaro. Many people thought replacing Buu with Frieza was a Toei marketing shenanigan...turns out it was Toriyama. They thought Vegito was blatant Toei fanservice...turns out it WAS fanservice, but by Toyotaro, not Toei. Kale turns out to indeed be the blatant Broly Toei fanservice she always was...but Wonder Girl Caulifla was a Toriyama thing.

It ALSO shows that Toei is also having Toriyama QC their stuff too, as opposed to them having an outline and running with it without looking back while Toriyama consulted more on the manga. Nope. Turns out he's doing the same thing for both. This on top of the facts that Vegito's inclusion was a Toyotaro idea that made it into Toei's anime and that the Toei-created Pride Troopers (not counting Tori characters like Jiren or Toppo) have made it into the manga shows that it really is more of a concerted effort by all three involved parties as opposed to two different creative approaches following the same generic outline with differences. The differences still happen, but they aren't as separated in the creative process as we have believed.

All of these I can come to grips with, but there is one I refuse to do so for. Piccolo losing to Tiny Bug Man that his giant ears couldn't hear also seems to be a Toriyama thing, not a Toei rushing through the tournament thing like I thought they were. It really is just a lame-ass defeat because Toriyama probably forgot Piccolo's hearing is exceptionally better than anyone else's. To think that Toriyama's once-favorite character has been reduced to this. Goku took Piccolo's life, his holiday, his relevance, and then he stole Toriyama's #1 spot from Piccolo too. At this rate I'm surprised he hasn't stolen Piccolo's techniques on top of it all, though I guess Piccolo took Goku's father status as his own so sort of a trade?

Its just that, Akira Toriyama is the epitome of a crap artist this day and age. Really? As the original author of a once kickass series, why create such vague plot scenarios for the continuation of your most famous series? If I was him, even in my 60's, I would invest everything inside me to make Super as badass and on point as possible. Like SSJ2 Teen Gohan badass. Even without a editor, he should try to make it work out since he really isn't doing anything but creating the bare skeleton for Super. Lead the anime staff with as much detail as possible besides sitting at home and creating crap drawings where everyone is super skinny. If you wanted Jiren to be the silent type, pointed that out in your original draft instead of correcting a anime staff member like they are supposed to know what you like. If never brought to his attention, Jiren would be a justice freak that goes on and on about pointless squabbles. And Frieza was brought back thanks to Toriyama. Dude must be having major namek nostalgia to constantly bring back his widely most popular villain. So much for Buu getting any love...



And to think that female Broly and Caulifla, DBM's version of Bra, was never originally scheduled to be created. Whoever came up of the idea of Kale deserves to be fired for such a unoriginal idea. Or worse...



The possibility that Dragon Ball Hyper, a continuation of Super may be in the making sickens me. Super as a whole sucks, at least compared to classic Z, the standard I live by. When the final episode is released, I will see what is in store for us in the future. But most likely I think it is time I took a permanent (?) break or hiatus from this franchise and reevaluate everything from the grounds up. The direction Dragon Ball is going is something I have never envisioned in all of my years. Useless transformations, tension less strife, bad plot directions, extended godly affairs, lack of explanations, pointless retcons, insane power scaling, biased cast focusing, and so much more irritates the living Hell out of me. Only Hit, Beerus, and Black (to a certain degree since his concept of being a Evil Goku is good while the rest isn't) are the only original things I truly like from Super at this particular moment. Goku's growing stupidity, Frieza wanking (though his improvised personality is great, but everything else is bad), Super Saiyan Rage, Super Saiyan Blue Evolution, Zamasu's poor ideology, boring U6 tournament, Ultra Instinct mastered form, and atrocious ToP are just some of THE worst things I have ever seen in a body of work in any dragon ball related content. Yes very few good things are intermixed, but they are just that, few and far in between. I think me and Dragon Ball have finally reached a impasse that will never get sorted out. All future content I no longer have any interest in. The passion, fun, entertaining awe that was swirling in Dragon Ball is extinguished, literally. Feel free to disagree, but this is just how I see things. Action, Dragon Ball's greatest strengths, is so lackluster nowadays that I wonder if Toriyama secretly is trying to kill his own franchise. As a kid the action always hooked with me and made me happy to watch this series. Everything else such as plot and whatnot always came second. But Super's fighting choreography is so dull that I cannot even enjoy the core values this fighting shonen used to do best in, fighting. And in addition to the gaping inconsistencies that came to my attention as I got older, it is apparent that Dragon Ball overall is just bad. GT was bad enough is many area's, but in addition to Evolution and Super officially crushed Dragon Ball's image as the impenetrable fortress it used to be [if it even was impenetrable to begin with]. If Dragon Ball was my wife on life support, I would say a prayer before pulling the plug. It is time to let go and allow some things to be left behind in the past.

And Dragon Ball is one of them.

Battle of Gods so far is the best arc in Super (at least the movie adaptation). Beerus and Whis were great introduction villains while Goku was still Goku, the hero I grew to love. Fighting was on point and had a generally good atmosphere and plot direction. Super Saiyan God, despite initially hating it, was a nice additional form for Goku that eventually won me over. But the Resurrection F stuff destroyed Super to the point of no return. At the end of Battle of Gods, I vividly remember Beerus talking to a worn out Goku about there being 11 other universes with warriors stronger than them both. Or that other destroyers were implied to be actually blood thirsty with Whis being stronger than Beerus. Or Vegeta becoming the next Super Saiyan God. Or Beerus has faced someone even stronger than Goku (implying someone else besides Whis). Or the fact that SSJG Goku at 80% was able to match against a 70% Beerus, thus the destroyers are not truly invincible that aligns with a workable power scaling. Statements and facts that got me hyped for Dragon Ball's resurrection.

Please skip to the 13:50 watermark:


Then this image came....



And I became excited for the new movie since all of those unanswered questions can finally be answered. New villains, original storyline, possible rematch against Beerus, and Beerus statement that Goku could possibly solve SSJG's issues were all going to happen. A good direction in a godly plotline I never played around with throughout my years. But did any of this came true? Nope, instead we got Frieza of all villains coming back with the most ridiculous power scale jump in the history of anime. Super Saiyan God was completely omitted for Super Saiyan Blue, a transformation that was never foreshadowed or accomplished much of anything. Literally in the anime Super Saiyan God appears only four more times, and that is when Goku used it to save Hit from Dyspo, test Jiren, smack around both Kale and Caulifla before getting overpowered by Kefla, and briefly against Aniraza. Such a sad fate for Super Saiyan God, the form that helped out Goku in a new era of power. And instead of relying on their own wits, the z-fighters basically became Beerus lapdogs and stopped becoming leaders in handling their own problems. Pitiful character development to say the least, if not straight up bs on all accounts. And sadly even more pitiful trends started to happen that has buried Super head over heels. It a darn shame honestly. At this point on a scale between 1 to 10, Super gets a solid 3. Good start, but everything afterwards falls apart. So please forgive me if I say that Super is a laughable account to Dragon Ball's legacy and that Toriyama should shut the whole thing down. Because like I have said many times before in the past, only the fan-made content gives this series justice anymore. If it wasn't for us, the whole infrastructure would collapse in a heartbeat. 

For a while now I've felt Toriyama's greatest strength is his artwork, namely in character and location design. (He's a big reason why Chrono Trigger is as cool as it is.) Coming up with a character concept and making a story around that concept is what he's good at; if he draws Majin Buu, he can come up with a story on what Majin Buu's like and how you'd fight him. With a few exceptions, almost every character Toriyama has created has looked and acted memorable; there's a reason why Beerus and Whis are the most well-received parts of the new DB media.

Toriyama's writing ability, however, is not that good. My roommates have been showing me Naruto and let me tell ya, there is a MAJOR gap in writing quality between Naruto and DB. Complexity of fights, plots, character interactions...Naruto isn't even the pinnacle of manga/anime storytelling and I'm hard pressed to find any category where Toriyama's writing matches it, let alone surpasses it. The original Super Mario Bros game was innovative at the time and is still perfectly playable nowadays, but it's really not up to par with games released 10 years later, let alone today. In the same way, though Dragon Ball was a game-changer and an inspiration for many anime, more and more I feel Toriyama was actually just a normal guy who stumbled across one really good idea. Some ideas are good enough that any hack writer can make them work for a while, but not forever. It's kind of like inbreeding: you might be able to get away with it for a generation or two, but the longer it goes on, the more apparent the inherent problems get oh my gosh what I am saying weirdest analogy ever

In short, Toriyama's not a good writer. This is pretty clear throughout all Dragon Ball, though it gets most obvious in the Buu saga, and once I saw Battle of Gods (heck, the second I saw the SSG transformation) I never had any hope that any future DB products with his involvement would actually be good. They might be fun, but not good. Giving Toriyama a free pass for bad writing (like recolored forms, bringing back Frieza, retcons) frustrates me, because it's not like the original series was the culmination of some grand, carefully-considered plan. The dude just lucked into it--and quite frankly, other people with the same idea could've written it a lot better.

Namikaze
As for the info you posted...
1. Toriyama wanted "80 people fighting in a jumble." Which means neither Toyotaro or Toei had the imagination to make that happen. Great premise, totally wasted because nobody had the guts to divert attention away from U7 and more specifically Goku. (Though Toyotaro's done better, as far as I know.)
2. The reveal that Toriyama had not come up with Jiren's personality/backstory when he first sent the designs might explain Jiren's sudden disappearance from the exhibition match and replacement with Toppo.
3. I had previously guessed that Ribrianne was some Toei person's fetish. After learning that the idea of having her be a normal girl transforming into her was a Toei idea, I have gone up from 74% certainty on this to 98%.
4. Why, oh why did Toei create Kale? Ugh! Caulifla is actually a pretty decent design (though they squeezed as much fanservice out of her as they could), but the fact both were basically afterthoughts to the story explains a lot about why their characters were so terrible. As with everything else, there was no plan. Just "whatever, let's have a female Broly and I guess another lady." Ladies and gentlemen, the first official female Super Saiyans. 
5. Small wonder Toriyama picked Frieza over Buu. His memory is terrible; he likely forgot what Buu could do outside of being Hercule's henchman and went for the safer Frieza option instead.
6. Ultra Instinct is like god ki: decent enough idea, totally stupid in execution. Having Goku unlock not one but two transformations within 48 minutes is a new level of stupid in a show that's already pretty stupid.

DBS reminds me a lot of The Hobbit trilogy: a high-profile show on tight deadlines which they were basically making up as they went along, with the result that there's an awful lot of "huh?" in the finished product. DBS will be fascinating to dissect in future years because I don't think anyone--even the creators themselves--had any idea what the crap we were going to end up with. For example, who would've guessed when DBS started that 17 of all people would be the character DBS treated best? In a way, there is no one person who is at fault; everyone is to blame for why DBS turned out as strangely as it did. This might be a good example of Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen or perhaps Just Because Toriyama Sensei Says So Doesn't Mean It's A Good Idea or maybe even No, A Female Broly Would Actually Be Really Stupid.

Xeno Black
That Home Alone/Terminator gif is awesome.

You know guys, I was just thinking about this late last night before I fell asleep.




I thought it looked familiar to me. Almost as if I had seen it somewhere before in Dragon Ball. Like before Super there were these strange...pictures of Goku with white hair somewhere...And then it hit me. I HAVE seen something like this somewhere before. In the ancient days, far before modern times. In the Dark Ages of Dragon Ball in between 1998-2013 when we had no 'fresh' Dragon Ball content, besides the games that came out and of course TFS. Out of the darkness came a rumor of power far greater than this red furry jackass.



Whispers of a new transformation that Vegeta vaguely mentioned to Bulma back in the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball GT when she was making the machine to pump Vegeta full of Blutz Waves. A transformation that made our protagonist an even more powerful jackass in a brand new series that was going to start up after GT. The fabled Dragon Ball AF where we were shown this. The 'mystical' Super Saiyan 5!

Dragon Ball has now come full circle where a joke transformation has subtly made it into the series. Truly this is the greatest era of Dragon Ball ever! Recolored transformations, a fan artist making the official manga and not even trying to hide he put his own character from his fan-manga by calling him Goku black and hatred for mortals, and plot holes as far as the eye can see? These last two episodes are going to be pure bliss.