Damage Control 101

Eh, I think that is too harsh. This was always a gag manga that spiraled into something huge. Toriyama isn’t the type of author that spends hours and hours writing down notes and creating a huge tome to make a vast world. He has always been up front on his bad memory and how he wrote and came up with ideas on week by week basis. Every flaw in Super can be traced back to his original manga. I don’t say this to excuse Super’s weaknesses, but to point out Toriyama’s biggest fault in Super IMO is continuing to do what he did in the past only now making things up the spot is harder to do with a series over 500 chapters and already broken and fragile power scale.

S cell’s is exactly the kind of thing he would have come up with in the old days if he thought it up then. Or he may have just put that info in a guide book if asked about it. Big Shonen do put extra information out on databooks and guide books from time to time. It is information fans might enjoy aloe things they may want to learn more about. I don’t think it is fair to attack the man for doing that. Not every author or artist puts everything or thinks everything out to put their in their main work. Fans ask questions and questions for people because it is not explained in detail in the story, which has increasingly led to the culture of author’s word or as tv tropes calls it word of god where they make stupid statements in interviews to explain something further not written in their work. This point is both authors and fans faults to be honest. Fans want to know everything or more than what is told in the given story so authors/creators give them more info sometimes out respect or gratitude to fans for loving their work so much to ask them for more info. It is not perfect, but it feels too harsh to write it off as something real authors wouldn’t do. That might have been true decades ago, but as times change so do the way people things change.

Dragon Ball was being brought back regardless. BoG was in the works. Toriyama’s ideas did seem to improve the story, which spurred them to asking him to write more ideas for them and we get the situation we are in now.

But does Mr. Super Perfect Cell have S-Cells? Dun dun dun.

At any rate, this seems like a decades-late revised/retconned explanation for why Goten and Trunks were able to get SS1 so easily. While this could in fact be used to explain Goten/Trunks, and even Cabba, it just doesn't work at all when compared to Saiyan Wonder Girls Caulifla and Kale.

According to this, one needs enough battle power AND be gentle to accumulate enough S-Cells.

- Caulifla is a Saiyan punk leading a bunch of West Side Story reject thugs who didn't even give a damn that the universe was going to be erased until she was lured in by her own lust for greater power after Cabba showed off SS1. When learning SS1 she snapped at Cabba at virtually every opportunity, dismissed Goku as weak initially and called him a wimp, and offered to beat Goku up later in exchange for learning the secret to SSB. While she may have had the battle power, I certainly wouldn't call her spirit "gentle".

- Kale is the opposite. She's MORE than gentle enough to have accumulated S-Cells, but she couldn't even put up a decent fight against this guy in her base form:



Of course, she's a bit different since she has a unique transformation, so maybe she just has MAXIMUM S-Cells. Or something.

TL;DR, I'm going to ignore this like I ignore most of Toriyama's interview stuff unless it finds its way into the anime/manga. Remember when SSG was a 6 to Beerus' 10 to Whis' 15? Yeah, it doesn't matter and neither should this.

I admit, I was too harsh. And I respect your opinion.
You point out exactly what I despise about storytelling or rather the lack of storytelling. You mentioned tv tropes called "word of god". I hate this so much.
When Ridley Scott gave in and tried to give an explanation whether Deckard was a replicant or not in the Blade Runner movie, I was really disappointed with Ridley Scott.
When the creators of Avatar: The last Airbender made a new series with Legend of Korra I had mixed feelings. The show itself has flaws but when they decided to explain many unsolved things afterwards just a few months after the series ended, I was infuriated.
If an author want to explain something further, then explain it within a story. Here I'm mentioning my author friend again. "Show us don't tell us!" I can tolerate if you really want to explain something important you couldn't within the story or simply forgot to explain. But like Negan says.

If an author is making a habit out of it, man, I would pay Negan to shut his mouth.
My friend always says. Either you don't give any explanation in your story at all and make a Kafkaesque situation out of it. This way you signalize the audience "there will be no explanation, never, just accept it this way". Or, what the majority is trying to do, give information within the story. There are so many ways to do it good and bad. A bad example would be the back tingle thing. It was just there for the sake of of being there, there was no actual story told about back tingle.

You can implement this information within the story, Dragonball Super is momentarily produced and aired. Why aren't those things in the show but in an interview? It's beyond my understanding especially because this show is produced right now. What is hindering him to put it in the show?
And I don't like how AT and people trying to hide behind the curtain of "It's just a kid's show, so, whatever the author does, it is forgiven". There is actually depth in Dragonball, why are people giving themselves the right to ignore those scenes with depth for the sake of the new series, just so it can make sense with the new theme.

I can't stand it when authors/movie directors are flip-flopping with the theme, once serious and another time funny with no real common sense.


Let's be honest, we all know why we get all those shady explanations all of a sudden in interviews and not in the show itself. Toei had to come up quickly with an excuse for the female Saiyans hate. They didn't implemented it in the show (yet) because it wasn't planned. The show got so much criticism about two characters that Toei had to get AT himself to come up with a bs excuse why Caulifla & Kale are so strong. It came out of nowhere. It would have been better if Toei didn't say anything at all. Those don't seem like explanations at all rather excuses for the sh**y storytelling. A good story shouldn't need any additional out-of-universe information to explain something.

I guarantee you Toriyama just makes it up on the spot. To be fair, S-cells are still a quirk of saiyan biology and still fits with most of what we already figured (hit a certain threshold of power and get super mad).

The problem I have with it is that the core of Dragonball, at least in part, is martial arts. He had ALL of eastern martial arts and philosophy to draw on to explain SSJ, and he used none of it.

I'm sure he does make things up on the spot. He doesn't seem to do much in studying eastern philosophy or martial arts to add to his manga, which is fair. Not every manga research or study to add to their manga. I wouldn't mind Toriyama making things up, if he was consistent about it. Fake science and martial arts would be fine if Toriyama made his own rules to it to explain it.

Actually, S-Cell could definitely fit into DB, but the way everything is presented is so compulsive. Nothing really flows in a storytelling prespective.
He makes things up on the spot? Not such a big problem, particularly when you look at DBZ, there we got it a couple of times.

For example, in the first arc of DBS they tried to fill some plotholes (btw, those clarifications are really embarrassing) from DBZ but for some reason decided not to give real explanations on Saiyan mythology, biology, etc. in an arc about Beerus the god of destruction & .... what was the second big plot in the first arc? let me check real quick .... oh, yeah, about Saiyan mythology and biology. At this point I not really surprised about Toei's and AT's missed opportunities throughout the series anymore. And now about 100 episode later we still have no explanation other than an interview. Wow, just wow. (Unless I missed something in DBS. It's pretty difficult to be enthusiastic & follow all details in such a weak show.)

Skar said it very well. They should have include that in the Buu-Arc. Or at least include it at the beginning of the new series or at the very least give some real good foreshadowing why you want to explain it in 100+ episodes and not in the first arc. I had no problem with a "no explanation at all" concept, but they already started to do so and decided on the very unimportant things first instead of the more crucial points. Urgh.

Not a fan about S-Cell, but if they had included it into the lore in a plausible way, man very much could have gone right from that point onwards. This way I have the following to say to AT.