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Anime/Manga Dragon Ball Super

machomuu

machomuu

Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
10,507
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16
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    • Oh hey, a bump and a revive. machomuu you mischievous devil.

    Reason I'm doing this is because I just watched the latest episode and...goddamn...this show got really good. I was two ways about the Battle of Gods arc (and really, I'd easily take the movie over the show's long and unnecessarily drawn out interpretation- though the fighting outdid the movie), but the post BoG stuff in the show has been nothing but fun. I was expecting things to get mediocre again once they got into Resurrection F content, but it turns out that not only is the adaptation here leagues better than the movie, but it's also some of the best stuff I've seen in the show.

    There's character development left and right, old characters are making their Super debut, they finally explain (or imply, rather) why Gohan doesn't turn Super Saiyan against Super Buu (yeah, surprisingly he does get a significant boost in power when he goes SSJ, even after the whole Mystic ordeal), and they lengthened the role of one of the characters from the movie to the point that, in the show, he's so enjoyably insane. And Vegeta...I mean, it's like Toriyama actually cares about him now or something. Seriously, I've been enjoying the hell out of this show lately. I know some people are waiting for this to get dubbed, which I completely understand, but I'll still say that the show has become a definite recommend from me.
     

    User Anon 1848

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    Granted I haven't watched GT since I was 12 but from memory I'd still rank it ahead of what we've seen from Super so far. They actually share a lot of the same problems but I never recall GT being as bad as Super.

    For starters the animation in Super is terrible for the most part, especially during a lot of the fight scenes. The pacing feels worse than it ever was in DB/Z/GT but that could just be my lack of interest in the plot speaking. Super relies on a lot of nostalgia from fans in order to get away with using rehashed plot points;
    Spoiler:


    Beerus is overly childish and temperamental. I get that he's intentionally characterized this way but it doesn't make for an interesting character or antagonist at all. My biggest issue is with the SSG transformation itself though. Apparently all it takes to become an omnipotent being is to stand in a circle of pure hearted Saiyans while they hold hands. That's a lamer cop out than Gohan unlocking his full potential by sitting still or any of the fusion nonsense we saw in the Buu saga.

    "But it's a shounen and DB always had silly power ups!"

    Well I'm of the belief that Toriyama generally handled power ups well until the Buu saga. Most of the major power ups were earned through hard training or foreshadowed enough that it rarely felt like a complete ass-pull.

    There have been some genuinely funny and enjoyable moments but Super as a whole so far has failed to capture the charm and comedy found in the original series, which is what Toriyama was supposedly going for.
     
    machomuu

    machomuu

    Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
    10,507
    Posts
    16
    Years
    • BlackSwordsman93 said:
    For starters the animation in Super is terrible for the most part, especially during a lot of the fight scenes. The pacing feels worse than it ever was in DB/Z/GT but that could just be my lack of interest in the plot speaking. Super relies on a lot of nostalgia from fans in order to get away with using rehashed plot points;
    Spoiler:
    Click to expand...
    Eh, the animation can be pretty bad (but that's Toei- it comes with the territory), but the pacing post-BoG isn't bad at all. In that multiple things are actually happening per episode. Resurrection F's moving along quite nicely.
     
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    User Anon 1848

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    You're right. The RoF arc does seem to have much smoother pacing even if I don't like what's going on. If nothing else I'm excited to see how the manga spoilers I came across will play out in the anime.
     
    machomuu

    machomuu

    Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
    10,507
    Posts
    16
    Years
    • I've been enjoying RoF a good deal. Partially because the movie wasn't particularly good, but also because Tagoma turned into a legitimately fun villain. That and what's based on nostalgia so far, save for the many flashbacks last episode, I didn't have a problem with. Two things in particular'd been on my mind since Z. Thought they'd forgotten. Probably did, but nice to see them come full circle.

    ---

    Can't much see GT being anywhere close to as good as Super, though, regardless of Super's shortcomings. Or, I guess more accurately, Super is nowhere near as bad as GT. And I was thinking about this, recently, and I realized that if GT took any cues from Super, it could've been a pretty damn good show. GT has nothing in the way of character development (which Super has in spades) and all of the characters are static, which makes it feel something like a Saturday morning cartoon. The villains weren't particularly colorful (or, in some cases (ie the top of the page) were uber silly without being given any endearing traits.) and worked a lot better as concepts than enemies.

    Also, the power creep. Super's doing a pretty damn good job of making characters that had become irrelevant from Dragon Ball to Z relevant, if not in battles, in plot or the show in general. One problem I had with GT was that they did whatever the **** they want, and it was so easy to become SSJ4 it was really a wonder all the Super Saiyans didn't do it. And Oozaru because that was a thing. And the final Spirit Bomb that...somehow...collects energy from the entire universe...somehow...

    And yeah, Super does it, too (really, as far as we know, there's nothing stopping everyone from going SSG-it's only slightly less inconvenient than the SSJ4 process). Difference is, Super, so far, has handled powerups better than GT and even post-Buu Z. Mainly because the forms themselves aren't really a focus. The movies boasted new forms but the show shows them sparingly, because Super's about the characters moreso than power ping-pong. Forms here seem a lot closer to means to an end than watch-bait (which is what SSJ4 and Gogeta were, as well as SSG/SS for the movies, both sanctioned by Toei rather than Toriyama). And I'm fine with that. If Super can maintain this balance that its created with its characters without just throwing everyone in the background, they can do whatever they want with forms. Honestly, I like Dragon Ball most when it's not trying to show off.

    And really, GT did play on nostalgia a lot. A loooot, often for novelty cases. The most incriminating example that comes to mind is Goku's fight against Frieza and Cell. And that whole Super Android 13 saga, really. Show had a lot of "Death Ball" type attacks, too.
     
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