Dragon Ball/Z/Super TV Show • Page 64

Videl basically just exists in Super. She is involved in one cool moment. Beyond that, I honestly think she is just kind of always in the background. It’s less a change and more being given nothing to do basically.

Goku is dumber overall in Super, for sure. Specifically anything that’s not about fighting.

Overall, I enjoyed Super. I am a huge future Trunks fan, so the season focused on him was great for me. The last season is pretty solid.

The Superhero and Broly movies were pretty good, too.

 

Yea, I think he sees Vegeta and Bulma kiss or something and is confused or something like that. It leads to Vegeta saying something along the lines of, “you have children and you’ve never kissed someone?”

 

Actually really enjoyed season 1 of Super! Better than I expected. Feels like a better balance between OG Dragon Ball silliness and Dragon Ball Z epic fights

 

Nah, I had thought the same thing after watching Super when it had been years since I watched DBZ. But when I rewatched DBZ a couple years ago, the contrast felt extremely stark. DBZ actually does a good job of emphasizing just how much more mature and intelligent Goku became as an adult compared to how he was as a kid. In Super, any semblance of maturity and intelligence is replaced with an insatiable childish desire to fight, with zero regard given to whether it’s to the detriment of everyone he cares about.

Martial arts are obviously his main passion in DBZ, but they’re not even close to being his entire personality the way that they are in Super. Really his main “thing” in DBZ (in the times when he’s not having to focus on the fight going on in front of him) is being a dad lol

 

It’s a funny moment but they even acknowledge within the very scene that it makes absolutely no sense

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/o657BCM3xuE

 

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I seem to remember wasn't this "fighting with zero regard" attitude how he actually is in the original manga? I for some reason remember this being a thing with Goku. I don't have time to look into it right now, but this sounds familiar.

 

I’ve never read the original manga so I don’t know. And do you mean Dragonball or DBZ? Because in Dragonball he’s obviously much more like that because he’s a jungle kid with little regard for anything at all

But in the DBZ anime, there’s the time where he lets Vegeta escape, but he very consciously recognizes that it’s selfish and not the “right” thing to do, so even in that moment his thought process is much more mature than in Super

But I don’t know what else you could be referring to. I guess there’s Vegito playing with Buu, but if anything that seems way more like Vegeta’s personality taking over than Goku

He often gives enemies the benefit of the doubt and it ends up biting him in the ass, Raditz and Frieza being the obvious examples. But if anything, asking them to concede is counter to the idea that he just wants to fight for the sake of it — he’s willing to stop fighting if it means saving everyone

 

Yeah, after watching the first 17 episodes of Super after rewatching the Cell and Buu arcs, Goku is dumber now, but I kind of like it because it feels like his personality from OG Dragon Ball and makes it funnier and more entertaining to me. He gets more serious mid fight.

Sometimes it's a bit much, though. And Super really highlights how much of a terrible husband and father he is lol.

 

I'm talking about DBZ, and very specifically how Toriyama himself views Goku vs how he was adapted. I just read a few bits this morning but I'm at work so I can't go on the prowl right now.

 

Yeah I think the joke that he’s a terrible father is really only applicable to Super. In DBZ he’s simply absent from a lot of Gohan’s life due to being dead or MIA in space. But when he’s actually on earth he does spend a lot of time with him

 

In the interviews I've seen, Toriyama mainly talks about how he doesn't like how Goku was adapted into being this "righteous hero" in the anime. Toriyama's intent was just to make him fighting-obsessed (and that his goal was never to be the savior of the universe).

So in that sense, Super is more closely aligned, but I still don't understand where the dialed up stupidity factors into that. I think that is probably just Toriyama wanting to get back to writing more comedy so Goku's stupidity is played for laughs. It's fun sometimes, but I understand if people don't like how unserious Super is as a whole.

 

As much as I like Toriyama’s work, it is somewhat annoying how much humor he tried to throw at is, even at the cost of continuity or story. He sometimes seemed more concerned with humor than anything else. The sincerity of DBZ was probably accidental on his end, but I think it’s what makes Z so much better than the others.

 

Disagree, Dragon Ball was better than DBZ imo

 

Do Elder Kai, Roshi and Oolong ever meet? They have a lot in common lol

 

DBZ is supreme easily.

 

I liked the adventure aspect of DB more than the constant screaming for a full episode while powering up only to have repetitive battles in DBZ

 

I’ve always appreciated the more layered writing for DBZ though. Finding out Goku belonged to an alien race that were enslaved by a space tyrant. Then the son of Vegeta time traveling to warn the present about a resurrected red ribbon army. Peak DB content for me is the Saiyan saga to Cell saga.

 

Yeah that's fair. And Kai did clean up a lot of the filler. Although the Buu arc still had quite a lot of filler in Kai for some reason

 

For sure. Even with the filler and ridiculous tropes, the connection that multiple generations of kids felt to the vibe and tone of DBZ is undeniable. It's funny thinking that what DBZ sort of inadvertently became is part of why it's resonated for almost 40 years. Not sure the same would have happened if it kept the same tone as the original Dragon Ball.