#anyone who says goku isn’t a hero is wrong because he says he’d do it anyway

[cerastes]

Does Chongyue rate on the Just Some Guy spectrum at all, considering how much work he’s put into not being Sui-related?

Chongyue doesn’t exist in the Just Some Guy spectrum in a way we’ve discussed yet, even though he has some overlap, because ultimately his essence conflicts with Some Guyhood on a fundamental level (of what has been discussed in Just Some Guy academia so far at least).

Just Some Guys all have the desire, and sometimes the expertise, to actually come across as Some Guys. Chongyue is a centuries old famed invincible general, title of Grandmaster, whose upcoming retirement is great news among leaders and figures of the highest authority and caliber. Chongyue is basically a celebrity and national hero. Chongyue is Mister Satan from Dragon Ball Z if Mister Satan had those Goku dukes and was actually able to throw hands with the biggest, meanest threats, and also a whole deal more humble, but the point is, man’s beyond notorious. Chongyue is A Guy, not Just Some Guy.

I understand where this sentiment comes from! He’s sealed the Sui consciousness and his true name into his sword, and this isn’t public knowledge, plus, he insists he only knows a little Kung Fu. The thing is, he is technically not wrong about his statement and he truly means it. He’s not trying to obfuscate, and this is a key part of Some Guyhood, he puts it in very laconic but pristine terms to Ling: He considers himself pretty average comparatively, considering the sheer amount of years he’s had to practice and master the martial arts, and confidently says that, were others to have the same set of tools he had, such as natural power and longevity, then anyone could achieve the level he’s at. He’s truly humble and honest about it in a way that is simply outside the scale of most other creatures in Terra to be able to relate to. Of course, this doesn’t mean he’s any less of a one man triple army able to decimate pretty much any quality or quantity of enemies with his martial prowess, but he’s not really underplaying it as much as he’s saying “no yeah but if you had the amount of time I had to grind out these sick spinkicks, you’d also be able to do this”. He’s the Soul Level 846 Chosen Undead that one-shots Kalameet three times over with one R2, and then doesn’t tell you “Oh, no no, it was an accident, haha! Oops!” the way Mr. Nothing would, Chongyue would instead say “Ok you might have found that impressive, but if YOU were Soul Level 846, you could very much do this as well! :)” and he means it! Just because Chongyue can 1cc Super Monkey Ball 2 doesn’t mean he’s particularly exceptional in his eyes, it simply means that it’s the only game he’s ever had for the last 400 years and, if you also played SMB2 for 400 years, you too could land the selfsame sick bounces into goals.

Now, you might be thinking, “wait, that could make him a Jaye of some sort, right?” Not quite! Jaye is truly convinced he’s unexceptional, hell, being exceptional in any way has not even crossed his mind, Jaye lives day to day acutely unaware that he has direct ties to both men you could consider the leaders of Lungmen. Chongyue is well aware that he’s a Sui fragment, and this, he hides, though less with the sundering desperation of someone who REALLY doesn’t want to be found out (like Nothing), and more like someone who’s got responsibilities to uphold, but if it ends up spilling out that he’s a Sui fragment, simply goes “Oh, it seems you know, alright,” and then take the appropriate action depending on what’s the most sensible road to take. Mr. Nothing and Sesa go out of their way to act like buffoons and charlatans for the express purpose of obfuscating their respective masteries, Chongyue has no qualms publicly showing his immense power and physical abilities to onlookers. 

If we had to put Chongyue in the Just Some Guy spectrum, he’d had to be on his own little space as A Guy That Thinks You Too Can Be A Guy. He’s not Just Some Guy, he’s definitely A Guy and makes no secret about it (without revealing ALL that makes him A Guy), but he also believes that you, with enough effort, time, and support, can also become A Guy of his caliber, and that he’s nothing special, he just has 6521 hours in TF2 and that’s why he can rocket surf and land air shots with the Direct Hit with 100% accuracy, not because he’s exceptional necessarily.

#arknights #chongyue

[sizequeenshield]

37 year old man contemplates fate worse than death

#anyone who says goku isn’t a hero is wrong because he says he’d do it anyway #goku #dbz #dragon ball z #manga caps

[fizzingwizard]

Another Sunday, another episode of Digimon Adventure: (how tf do I do punctuate??). It is a good time to be a fan of Yagami Taichi.

I remember being 11 years old, the last episode of Digimon Adventure made be bawl my eyes out, and although I was excited for 02, really I just wanted more of Adventure. I guess I’m just slow to like new things (well, I am), but I would have super happy if the producers had been like, “02 will be a reboot for Adventure with the same characters and similar storyline.” And then do the same thing for every new Digimon season xD I’m sure I’m pretty damn alone in that opinion and don’t get me wrong, I love 02, and I think Tamers was good. And yet xD

^The screenshot that sums up the episode: Greymon gets his butt kicked while Taichi hangs on for dear life

I know the bond between children and Digimon is what powers them, and I’m kind of wondering if having a physical connection improves that in this show, because these kids are always riding around on their partners. (Not able exception - Togemon, because ouch. But I expect to see Mimi on her boxing glove at least lol) I have to rationalize it that way because otherwise it’s like why would having an elementary school kid on your head while you rush into the line of fire count as a battle strategy

This ep picks up pretty much where we left off, which means it’s probably only been hours since Yamato joined the group at the fortress. Already the atmosphere is completely changed.

I can see them, but they can’t see me... Ishida Yamato’s modus operandi

more below

Here is a very Digimon-esque tableau: everyone gathered around Koushirou and his computer. Yamato still being standoffish. I imagine he jumped at the chance to stand guard at the entrance so he doesn’t have to get too close to anyone.

Agumon’s fight with MetalTyrannomon went... not so great. Yamato coolly tries to explain to Taichi that evacuating was the only way, otherwise they’d risk all being destroyed, and that would be the end of everything.

Taichi’s fist tightens and begins to shake...

... he doesn’t look like he totally agrees with Yamato’s reasoning, but he doesn’t have a better idea. But, being Taichi, he can’t just let it rest.

Yamato talking to Taichi’s back while Taichi frantically starts to sort out his Feelings is just how they communicate. This is a common shonen anime trope for the hero and his foil. Yamato’s pushing, Taichi’s not exactly hiding, but he doesn’t want to face him until he can face him with resolve.

Yamato: Look at me. Look at me!

Taichi: *sweating* It feels like a hole’s burning in the back of my neck, so... I’ll pass

Taichi finally explains out what’s got him so knotted up: he regrets Ogremon’s death. Like we saw last episode, the battle that began as revenge turned into a battle of samurai pride. And Taichi is evidently a samurai. He wanted to see that battle to the finish, out of mutual respect for the opponent (who he’d never met before and who had been trying to kill him previously... but y’know when you’re kindred spirits that’s all water under the bridge)

Yamato doesn’t really get it. This is where these two are fundamentally different. Taichi attac, Yamato protec, then everybody gets a FIGHT!

I mean, not 100% of the time, but the bottom line is Yamato’s not so big on this pride thing, although he does have pride of his own. But he’s definitely not into taking unnecessary risks, especially if it puts his friends in danger. The trouble is, Taichi doesn’t think he takes unneccessary risks either... just necessary ones ;)

The other kids can already feel the tension increasing and Taichi and Yamato haven’t even raised their voices at each other yet. Lol buckle up kiddos

Jou wonders if he should make them stop, and Mimi instantly turns around and begs him to try. My Joumi heart LEAPT.

TBH I was surprised she did anything at all, I was expecting Jou’s “Should I break them up?” to just end there with nothing happening. Instead we got an adorable Joumi moment where Mimi shows that as much as she teases him, she already somewhat relies on Jou (to be fair, I do think Mimi’s the type to rely on anyone who offers when she’s not sure what to do herself). Jou, being Jou, is unprepared aaaaand wigs out.

Jou: Oh no oh no oh no she actually expects me to get between them?!?! But but I flunked Tough Guy school! That’s literally why I’m a nerd! This girl’s trying to throw me to the wolves!

Fortunately for Jou, he has a redheaded savior.

Sora: Stop it. He’ll wet his pants again and I don’t have any more extras.

Sora shows her insight into people’s hearts and understands that Taichi and Yamato need to hash things out. It’s not dangerous... yet. But the way she’s more or less frozen in place along with the others says she’s... maybe a bit on her guard, at least, lol.

Koushirou, being Kousihrou, is completely oblivious to all of this and focused on his computer.

Oh yeah... the real reason Taichi turned his back to Yamato earlier - whenever they look directly at each other, they suck each others souls out. I CALL BODY SWITCH

I mean jogress

I mean marriage

They spend like the entire first half of the episode arguing omg get a room.

Then... Agumon wakes up!

And even though it’s a cartoon, it’s clear to see the way Taichi’s body fills with relief. I wonder if Yamato didn’t realize or didn’t think Taichi was that worried about Agumon. 99 Yamato tended to feel that Taichi was insensitive to others. But while he can be, Taichi also doesn’t express his emotions in the same way as Yamato. They’re both wont to hide how they feel, but while Yamato goes quiet and aloof, Taichi just acts like everything’s normal. So maybe here, Yamato really thought Ogremon and MetalTyrannomon were the only things on Taichi’s mind. Just a guess.

Awwww montage of cute...

a boy and his dinosaur!!

Maybe to Yamato’s surprise, Agumon totally echoes Taichi’s feelings about Ogremon. “I wanted to settle the score with him.” Weird as it sounds, they made a manly bond with Ogremon and running away just doesn’t sit right. Agumon’s raring to go...

... but his stomach isn’t quite ready yet hahaha.

Yamato’s probably used to Gabumon’s appetie but I suspect Agumon’s tummy growl has errr exceptional resonance

Glad to see the return of the Digimon’s bottomless pit aka stomach. I think it was just last week I complained about that not really being a thing so far. This time it was the other Digimon who went gathering, but I hope to see the human kids rushing around in a frenzy to care for their partners’ appetites soon lol

While the others eat, Taichi and Yamato decide they haven’t finished vampiring each other’s souls and sneak out to the mouth of the cave. Sora follows them to see if she can watch any hot yaoi action.

Lol but I do really like the framing heart. All we can see of the boys is their shadows. Sora keeps her distance but she’s watching them intently from a distance. I assumed she was just gathering more data on how short a leash she needs to keep them on.

Turned out that was not quite correct... reluctant to interrupt though she’d been before, once they start talking about what to do next she adds her input. We’ve got Yamato on Taichi’s one side and Sora on his other side. It’s the beginnings of TAIORATOOOOO *more airhorns*

^I can’t see anything but Goku and Vegeta bahahaha. Also why is eleven-year-old Yamato SO broad-shouldered, between that, his deeper voice, and his perfeclty coifed hair Taichi must seem like a toddling infant to him bahahaha. Like come on Yamato is not a child you must be kidding

Already Yamato is getting into the habit of Looking At Taichi while Taichi Looks At Literally Anything Else.

These two don’t need words. They talk with their vampiric eyes.

Koushirou’s hyper focus on his computer finally pays off and they all gather back around. Everyone starts cheering when the hologram appears even though they don’t know what the heck it is. This is Koushirou, so it must be awesome!

It turns out to be a map of much usefulness.

And it turns out Ogremon was telling the truth about the path to the holy Digimon being straight ahead, while fires Taichi up even more.

^Obligatory ‘Gomamon is cutest Digimon’ cap

Koushirou also gives Taichi special data on MetalTyrannomon, including his weak point. Taichi is THRILLED. He’s happier about this than he is about finding the route to the holy Digimon. This is the difference between Taishiro and Taito guys. When Taichi gets a reckless idea, Yamato tries to talk him down, or at least be sensible about it. Koushirou? Koushirou is a FREAKING ENABLER.

They wait with baited breath for Yamato’s reaction. Though he seems underwhelmed, Yamato admits Koushirou’s information “does seem reliable.” That’s all the permission Taichi needs to go back to freaking out over how awesome Koushirou is.

They come up with a plan to lure MetalTyrannomon away so Taichi can fight him while the others take the chance to escape and head towards the path to the holy Digimon.

^Obligatory ‘Sora is best girl’ cap

Yamato waits for the others to get away before following after... he stalls for a minute as if unsure whether it’s really alright to leave Taichi on his own. In the end he joins the group... All things considered, I think he’s pretty thrown off by Taichi, tbh.

Yamato’s group doesn’t make it far before they encounter a very suspicious looking lake.

^More evidence that Yamato is not really an elementar school kids. He’s clearly at least 15. He’s been routinely failing every year in order to get held back until he can be in the same class as Takeru. That’s the extent of his overprotectiveness

It sure is fortunate that Koushirou’s genius extends to fluency in English or they’d have no idea this lake of dark mist is bad friggin news.

Or... maybe they would have:

Mimi sneaks behind Jou and pulls his middle school exam workbook out of his bag.

And immediately chucks it into the lake.

Where it disintegrates.

This is how Mimi’s mind works. She’s smart! They need to know what would happen if they went into the lake without actually going in it. So they need to put something else in first. So far so good. What should she throw? A stick? A rock? One of Sora’s endless towels?

No, Jou’s workbook. Duhhh.

She probably felt she was killing two birds with one stone here x’D Experiment complete, and Jou prevented from anymore whining about not having time to study. Mimi is chaotic good.

gosh I love Joumi

Jou is lawful neurotic

Greymon shielding Taichi is just soooo cute even if it still feels weird that he has to be up there in the first place

The battle rages between MetalTyrannomon and Greymon, who just won’t quit even though he’s losing... pretty bad... I mean...

He just grabbed a missile with his bare hand...

Taichi: Now I know what it’s like to be a firework

Loop-de-loop! Taichi’s suction cup shoes strike again.

Courage going UP!! Reaching a fever pitch! The evolution that’s been looming for two episodes finally happens!

MetalTyrannomon: Eat my dust!

Woooooooo, MetalGreymon is just as freaky as ever. Always my least favorite evolution in Agumon’s line, but the glowy purple wings are cool.

Also, nipple missiles.

MetalTyrannomon: I can’t believe I was beaten by some meddling kids!

So yeah, we are back to killing Digimon willy-nilly. None of this “but what about their hearts?” shitck. Always found it amazing in 02, a children’s cartoon, that said “Yeah the characters you loved last season were totes murderers but it was justified and sometimes you just have to kill.” And fourteen-year-old Taichi is just like, “Yeah, I’m a murderer, and you should be too.” XD And Miyako hits LadyDevimon with a skateboard. Priceless

This scene is adorable but Taichi’s butt looks so saggy.

I’m kind of wondering how evolution works in this show. They jumped right to jogress in like episode two or something, but we haven’t seen it since (I would sort of expected Taichi to think of it when it was clear MetalTyrannomon was too strong, though I would also expect Yamato to nix that idea both because he doesn’t want to and because to him it’s a pointless fight and not the priority). Since then, the Champion level evolutions went similar to 99 Adventure, with everyone getting their special episode, and I’m sure that’s how it’ll go down with the next level too, but there was no gap at all between going from one level to the next. I’m trying to say, they seem able to reach the next level awfully fast. They didn’t need to meet Gennai and collect the tags and Crests, the Crests appear already uploaded in their Digivices. I’m not complaining, as always I’m glad this show is not just a carbon copy of the old one, but I am curious if evolutions are easier to attain in this series, or if there are going to be more of them and that’s why they come so quick, or if the series just won’t run long enough for there to be significant gaps of time between evolutions.

Episode ends with the group deciding, like I predicted last week, to split up and try the Left and Right routes, since the Straight one is blocked. Gays go right and lesbians go left, of course. :P

This episode was pretty fantabulous, I loved it, Digimon is awesome.

Next week it’s no surprise what we’re gonna get.

WeeeeereGarurumon! Also my least favorite evolution of Gabumon’s line but still cooler than MetalGreymon hahahaha.

I’m also totally stoked for the grouping of Yamato, Jou, and Sora. There’s tons of potential for Yamato and Sora to bond, although my prediction is that while he’ll pretty much like her (even if he won’t admit it to himself), she’s going to find him a little difficult. But she’ll have an easier time talking to him than the others do. I also fully expect Jou to drive Yamato out of his mind lol.

This also means the other group is Taichi, Koushirou, and Mimi. I assume we won’t see too much of them next week, but I hope that means they’ll get their episode the week after, because I am dying for some Taishiro moments. Practically salivating. Also, Koumi fans can probably look forward to Mimi and Koushirou Not Getting each other too, lol

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon psi #digimon adventure reboot #psi spoilers #digimon #fizz watches digimon 2020

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 280

World is fuck, so I’m gonna write about DBZ for a while until the Benadryl kicks in.

Last time, Goku fought Majin Buu, but he wasn’t doing so great, so he upped the ante by going Super Saiyan 3.   

This is where I regret falling behind on the manga way back in the Red Ribbon Army Saga, because the Buu arc is where the anime and the manga really start to get off-track from each other.   I mean, the same plot points are followed, but in the manga, Goku fights Buu as a Super Saiyan 3 the whole time, while in the anime, he starts at SSJ2 and ramps up to SSJ3... twice.    So it’s kind of hard to match up exactly which parts of the anime version are direct adaptations of the manga.   They’re probably all there, but I’d really need to do a side-by-side comparison.    A project for another time.

This has gotta be one of the best damn episodes of the whole shebang.   Goku and Kid Buu are just whalin’ on each other, and this isn’t even the climax of this arc.  

Starting out, Goku deals some pretty heavy damage to Buu, and he has some difficulty reassembling himself.  But that’s about all Goku ever does to the kid.   I mean, if Perfect Cell took a hit like that, he’d just be dead, or so badly wounded that it would take barely any follow-through to finish the job.  But with Majin Buu these kinds of enormous blasts are just chip damage at best. 

Something else I want to do one of these days is go back and try to figure out when they screwed up Dende’s Buu-Saga character model.   I think most of Dragon Ball Super depicts him as a child, as if he never aged after the Cell Games, but I think that only happened because they were screwing him up as far back as 1995.  

Here’s the thing, though: Why was Dende so short in the Cell Games?  He had aged four years from however old he was in the Namek Saga.    Piccolo Junior was fully grown by age three.   Maybe this is the Namekian life cycle.    You grow into an adult when you’re three, then you turn into a kid again, then you grow into an adolescent about 11 years after that, and then you just sort of switch back and forth for a while.   It’s a good thing Piccolo’s off-screen for most of his life.

Yamcha and Krillin are watching this from the Grand Kai Planet, courtesy of King Kai’s telepathic vision.   Why isn’t anyone else grabbing a Kai by the back?  

And they’re even screening this fight in Hell, which seems kind of strange to me.   Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, but we’ve got pay-per-view in the commons.

Hey look it’s Cell!   And Dr. Gero.  You think they talk much at all?   Think about how much it must suck for them.   Gero was maybe the only other person Cell ever respected, because he trusted Gero’s grand design for him as the perfect being.    And Gero must have viewed Cell as his ultimate hope for avenging the Red Ribbon Army.  And then they bump into each other in hell, which proves that they’re both failures.  All Cell really accomplished was to kill Goku, and now he’s not even dead anymore.  I have to figure Cell/Gero interactions in Hell are pretty uncomfortable.  At the same time, who else are they going to hang out with?

Why are all these guys still in their bodies?   Everything that happened to Vegeta in this arc implies that letting Vegeta have his body after death is a big deviation from the norm.   Episode 195 introduced the idea of DBZ’s hell being like this big Arkham Asylum for all the bad guys.   I guess technically all those episodes with the dead Ginyus in the Frieza Saga did the same thing, but you could argue that they hadn’t been dead long enough to lose their bodies.   Here, now, we’re looking at characters that have been dead for over seven years.   I think the premise in Resurrection F was that the damned get to keep their bodies while they suffer, until they finally learn to let go of their past lives and move on.  And I can see why Frieza’s such a bitter fuck that he’d still be holding on for over a decade, but what’s Recoome holding out for?   Just get reincarnated as a cockroach or something and get it over with.

Also, why is Gero a cyborg in this scene?  

And why isn’t Frieza a cyborg?   I mean, he wasn’t a cyborg in Episode 195 either, but that seemed to suggest Gero would be fully human in hell, and he isn’t.    And if Gero does get to keep being a cyborg, then why couldn’t he keep his hat?  

Anyway, Goz and Mez recognize Goku as the guy who messed with them way back in the Saiyans Saga.    Hey, why aren’t Raditz and Nappa in this scene?  I watched an AMV where they edited Bardock into this, which seems like a good idea.   Did they just not go to hell?    I find that a little hard to believe.

Anyway, all the bad guys are salty as fuck to see Goku alive and fighting, and Frieza’s actively rooting against him.  He’s just jealous because Buu’s doing better against Goku that he ever could.

Meanwhile, over on the classy side of the villain crowd, Cell wonders who Goku’s opponent is, since he’s clearly impressed to see anyone give Goku a tougher battle than himself. 

Then Babidi shows up and announces to everyone he used to be tight with Majin Buu.  Actually, he claims Buu was his servant, and that he taught him how to fight, which... yeah.   I guess he did help Buu practice punching people’s faces off.  

This whole moment feels a bit contrived.    Babidi’s been down here for a couple of days already.    I don’t know how long they’ve been watching this fight.  I would imagine the oni switched it on somewhere when Vegito was on deck, so it kind of feels like Babidi was sort of hiding around back, waiting for someone to ask about Buu, so he could jump out and go “Oh, funny you should ask about that!   I was Majin Buu’s master for like six hours, nbd.”    I almost wonder if he paid Cell five bucks just to set this up.   Cell demanded payment in singles, because he wanted to spend it on the vending machine.   He’s a sucker, though, because hell may have a big screen TV, but the bill changer on their vending machine hasn’t worked in 10 million years.

Anyway, everyone’s impressed, probably just because Babidi has the inside track on Buu more than anything.    You gotta figure most of these guys have heard it all before, and at least Babidi has a newer story to tell.   Everyone’s probably sick of hearing how Frieza ate that crab while he killed Vegeta.

But then Babidi wanders off, and in private he cusses out Buu for, you know, killing him, and he roots for Goku to win.   Wait, is Bibidi in hell too?   You’d think they could catch up on old times.

Meanwhile... well, this shot had pink and yellow energy trails moving across the planet, and it looks pretty cool, but this screenshot doesn’t quite do it justice.   

Kibitoshin is worried about their planet, but the Elder Kai insists that it’ll take more than this to wreck it.   I want a woman who believes in me the way the Elder Kai believes in the sturdiness of the Supreme Kai Planet.    That sounds kind of masochistic when I put it that way.    Moving on.

Writing about all those other villains, it starts to come into focus how little I have to say about Majin Buu.    I dig the guy, though.   Critics complain that he doesn’t have much on personality or motivation, and they’re not wrong, but I think that’s part of the point with him.    Godzilla doesn’t give touching speeches in his movies, but he remains a popular character because of the sheer spectacle of him.   He’s a force of nature, a symbol of immense power that the human characters can barely comprehend. 

In Buu’s case, he’s just this stubborn, impossible obstacle to peace in the universe.   So much has gone wrong, and we could wish it all back the way it was, if only someone could beat this pink little turd.  He’s got some personality, but his main purpose in this story is to just be there for the other characters to interact as they deal with the problem.

For example, while all this action is going on, Mr. Satan is basically helpless, but he reassures Bee that he’ll protect him, even though Satan thinks this whole adventure is a dream.   This says a lot about Mr. Satan.    Yeah, Bee had a big part in reforming the Fat Majin Buu, but he means a lot to Mr. Satan as well.   It’s easy to write off Satan as a coward and a fraud, but even when he’s retreating into denial, he still wants to be a hero, even when the rest of the world is dead, even when his only audience is a little puppy.   And you could have a moment like this with Mr. Satan regardless of the villain, but I think it stands out better when the bad guy is Kid Buu, who doesn’t get in the way with any big speeches or characterization moments of his own.

Back to the fight, Buu gets the drop on Goku, so he decides that this is no time to hold back...

So he drops a Super Saiyan 3 Kamehameha on the little creep.  Yeah!

It blows Buu to pieces, but then the pieces just turn into mini-Buus and they all shoot back.

Goku tries to power up for another round, but suddenly he runs out of gas and collapses.

So Vegeta rushes to his side and offers to switch in.   Yeah, this whole part is filler.   In the manga, Vegeta only gets one turn, and this ain’t it.   

However, I think some of Vegeta’s lines during this scene are lifted from the part of the manga where he fights Kid Buu later.    So it’s a little weird here.  I’m curious how Dragon Ball Kai handled these episodes, because when they started that project it seemed like their goal was to edit out most of the filler from the original DBZ anime, but in some cases that just isn’t practical.   Like Pizza and her entourage in the Cell Games.   They weren’t in the manga, but they appear in almost every Mr. Satan scene that was in the manga, so Kai had to leave them in, because the alternative was to painstakingly edit them out of every shot.  Here, you may not even have that option.    You could edit Goku vs. Kid Buu down to just one uninterrupted string of action where he’s fighting at Super Saiyan 3.   Cut out this intermission with Vegeta, cut out the opening bit where Goku fights at SSJ2, but I don’t know if the fight choreography would still make sense.    

Everyone watching is horrified that Vegeta can’t even land a blow, and Buu starts openly mocking his lackluster performance.   What I don’t understand is why Vegeta would even try to fight Majin Buu in his base form.   I mean, the real reason is probably because this fight is filler, and Toei didn’t want it to detract from when he actually fights Buu in the next episode.    But it makes Vegeta look kind of stupid.   He knows better, and we know that he knows better.

So Buu quickly overwhelms him, and he’s all set to fire a ki blast to finish off.   Why doesn’t Vegeta just transform to escape it?  

But then Goku jumps in and ruins Buu’s shot.  He’s still in base form too, but I sort of buy this, because he snuck up on Buu.   Even so, this sort of fast-and-loose attitude with power levels is exactly the sort of nonsense Toei did all through Dragon Ball GT, and one of several reasons why GT sucks.     It’s not as bad in filler scenes like this one, interspersed among stories based on the manga, but once there was no manga to work from, they just decided there were no rules, and Base Form Goku was almost interchangeable with Super Saiyan 4 Goku.   They just used whichever character design they preferred that day.

Vegeta’s astonished, because he thought Goku was down for the count, but he’s already back up and demanding to tag back in.    

But Goku ain’t done yet.  This is probably the other reason Toei had Vegeta fight in base form here, so it would make it look cooler when Goku defiantly powers up to continue his effort.   And yeah, it works.    I really do love this scene, but it’s a pretty egregious example of filler scenes messing with the flow of the story.

Goku ramps up to Super Saiyan 2, then back to 3, and we pick up where we left off.   And that’s awesome, but the main idea of this fight is that Goku’s having a hard time fighting at this level.   To have him drop out of SSJ3 early, then immediately get back up and resume SSJ3 like it’s no big deal... well, that undermines that premise.    I guess you can make an argument that it supports the premise, because having Goku power down twice in this fight only emphasizes how volatile SSJ3 really is, but... I dunno.  

Anyway, Goku goes back to fighting Buu, and you know, that may be the real reason Toei did that whole bit with Vegeta tagging in.    The alternative is to just have SSJ3 Goku fight Buu for two and a half episodes straight, and that would get dull, no matter how well they animated it.   You can have spectators observe the battle, and that’s a great way to break up the action, but a moment where Goku rescues Vegeta adds some drama.    The manga didn’t do this, but it didn’t need to, because this fight was much shorter in print.   

I guess that’s the main defense of filler.  Sometimes, it’s not about padding the anime, or working the studio’s “agenda” into the story, or anything sinister like that.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of pacing.  

Anyway, in either version, Vegeta watches Goku fighting, and quickly recognizes that Goku is the only one who can fight Majin Buu now.   At Vegeta’s level, he’d only get himself killed. 

Then he has this whole flashback of his relationship with Goku up to this point, and unlike most flashbacks in this series, this one features all new art, which is pretty awesome.  Honestly, they could have used old footage from the Saiyans Saga, but they had already done that recently during the Babidi Saga, so maybe Toei figured they couldn’t do that trick again so soon.   Or maybe they knew DBZ wes winding down, so they wanted to do something special while they still could.

Not surprisingly, Vegeta’s main recollection of his first fight with Goku are the parts where Goku beat the shit out of him while using Kaio-ken times three.  That fight had a lot more to it than that, and it’s easy to forget that Vegeta dominated most of the battle, mainly because Vegeta himself doesn’t see it that way.   

Then we get this part where Vegeta has kittens over Goku beating Recoome, and he begins to suspect that Goku is the Legendary Super Saiyan.    Would have been awesome to see another shot of Luffa the Golden Ape from episode 66, but I guess that wouldn’t make a ton of sense in this context, especially now that we know what Super Saiyans actually look like.

For instance...

Vegeta considers that Goku’s secret might be that he’s motivated by a need to protect his loved ones, but even if that’s true, Vegeta has his own loved ones now, so they’d be even if that were all it was.    I love how surly he looks here.   “Dammit, I can’t believe I care about these stupid people!   Now I gotta blow myself up if things get out of hand.”

Also, Vegeta’s observation ties in well with that filler scene from a moment ago.    Goku was exhausted, but as soon as he saw Vegeta in danger, he pulled himself together and found the strength to defend him.    Goku cares as much about Vegeta as the others.

But the real difference, Vegeta observes, is that he always fought for the fun of it, and for the satisfaction of killing his enemies.  Goku, on the other hand, fights primarily to improve himself.  That’s why he keeps pushing himself harder, and why he keeps seeing results.  It’s not about winning, it’s about not losing.    This seems to be a trend with Goku, where he usually says things like “I won’t lose” or “I ain’t lost yet,” instead of “I’m going to win.”    Vegeta’s classic mistake is to assume that he’s already going to win, and then he crumbles when things start to go wrong.

And critically, this is why Goku doesn’t kill people if he can avoid it.   Well, he killed a lot of Red Ribbon guys, but most of them were cowards and no real match for him.   King Piccolo pushed him too far.   After that, Goku’s been pretty light on killing enemies, and that’s probably because he reached a point where he became so strong that it got harder to find worthy adversaries.   Vegeta would kill his enemies just to watch them die, but in doing so, he denied himself the opportunity to face them in rematches.   This was something I read in a Superman comic once, where Superman overpowers an evil-universe version of himself, and he makes the point that his doppleganger kills all his enemies, so he only ever has to fight them once, where Superman has to stay sharp, because he has to mess with those guys over and over again.  Same deal.

And you’d think Goku might have killed Vegeta after he surpassed him, like when he became a Super Saiyan, or when Vegeta went Majin, and no one would have blamed him for putting the bastard down.  But Goku never did.   Not because Vegeta was no longer a threat, but because he knew Vegeta could still catch up to him some day and challenge him again.   Goku believes in Vegeta, even when Vegeta doesn’t believe in himself.

It’s like Goku knew Vegeta woud start to turn into a good guy.   See, this is where I take issue with criticism of the dub, way back in Episode 36, when Goku asked Krillin to spare Vegeta’s life.  The subs focus on Goku’s desire to beat Vegeta on his own, while the dub spends more time on Goku’s hope that Vegeta might see the light if they show him a little mercy.   And you can argue that the dub is cramming their own take into the script, except their take doesn’t exist in a vacuum.   Funimation’s take in Episode 36 is Vegeta’s take in Episode 280.   Call it foreshadowing, or call it putting the cart before the horse, but the line itself isn’t out of bounds, because Goku did hope that Vegeta would learn the value of mercy, and and Vegeta knows it. 

Again, let me pause to note that this big epiphany by Vegeta is much more effective when the bad guy is as flat as Kid Buu.   We’re not missing anything during this fight because they’ve just been hitting each other, and Buu bites Goku for like half a second while Vegeta reflects.

The main point of Vegeta’s monologue here is that he’s always struggled with the idea of Goku as the antithesis of what he thinks Saiyans ought to be.   And yet nothing succeeds like success.    Goku’s stronger right now than any Saiyan in the last thousand years.  Hell, right now, Goku’s the only Saiyan alive.    Vegeta’s dead, and so are all the others.  If his kindness is such a noose around his neck, why is he still breathing?    Why is he the only Saiyan who figured out how to turn Super Saiyan 3?   Why is he the only one who could bite Majin Buu on the head and get away with it?   Because Goku’s metal as fuck, that’s why.  Because kindness isn’t a weakness at all.   It never was.  If anything, it’s the lack of kindness that got all the other Saiyans killed.  

And maybe Vegeta has to think about that a while longer, but he knows this much, Goku’s better than he is.    He’s the best.

But he’s still not beating Buu anytime soon.  

There’s a cool spot here where Goku hits him and his upper body stretchs out from the impact, and he waves hello to Mr. Satan before snapping back.

And by “waving hello” , I mean “fires more of this pink crap out of his hands.”

And this right here is the last shot of Cell, I think?  There’s some more Frieza coming up, but I’m not sure if we see all the villains again or not.   

Babidi’s watching from way back there, because he’s shy.  I think Cell would hang out with Babidi.   He’s pretty sociable, right?

Anyway, this fight rules, not just because of all the great action and fluid animation, but because of all the cool stuff going on around it.    Everyone’s learning an important lesson about friendship today, thanks to Goku punching the crap out of this pink thing.  That... sounds vaguely dirty.    Let’s move on.

Oh, well, the episode’s over.    That’s kind of awkward.   Uh.   Goodbye!

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #kid buu saga #goku #majin buu #vegeta #elder kai #dende #kibitoshin #bee #mr satan #uh... hoo boy i gotta tag everybody else don't i? #cell #perfect cell #babidi #frieza #kind cold #goz #mez #burter #jeice #recoome #guldo was probably there but he was too short to appear on camera #dr gero #bulma #trunks #nappa #piccolo #gohan #krillin

[zdbztumble]

Botching Backwards and Forwards, Or: Today’s KH Ramble, Part I

As I play through KH III, I’ve also been catching up with the series by watching the Let’s Plays of the other games done by Team Four Star. Because they didn’t play through Coded and only watched the cutscenes from 358/2 Days, that means that there’s only one game on their playlist that I haven’t played myself, that game being Dream Drop Distance. From what I can tell, its gameplay operates on a similar mechanic to Birth by Sleep, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I frankly prefer the Command Decks to what we have in the console games. DDD making levels out of some left-field choices in Disney worlds was a pleasant surprise too. For the Fantasia world alone, I’ll have to consider picking DDD up when I’m not facing a month of utter financial ruin.

And yet, between the two of them, BbS and DDD are responsible for nearly everything wrong with the story of Kingdom Hearts up to this point IMO. Coded got the ball rolling by opening back up a story that had already been satisfyingly ended in KH II, but these two titles do the bulk of the damage to a series that, up to that point, had handled its story pretty well.

Starting with BbS, I freely admit that some of my issues with it boil down to a matter of preference. Turning the Keyblade into a (once) fairly common weapon with many wielders, with a history detailing a great Keyblade War and a test for a Mark of Mastery...all of that wasn’t to my taste, but I can’t say that there’s anything in principle wrong with it. It isn’t necessarily out of place for this series, and the one major wrinkle in continuity it causes (Keyblades choosing wielders) could be squared fairly easily. A prequel focusing on hitherto unmentioned characters rather than the series protagonists isn’t an inherently wrong choice either, though I’ll have more to say about that in Part II of this rant. That I don’t find Terra, Ven, or Aqua terribly interesting as characters is mostly a matter of preference as well, though I do think Terra’s descent into the darkness relies too much on sheer idiocy, and I will admit that Aqua is possibly the most fun player character in this series with her plethora of magic spells. But where I more seriously fault BbS (and Coded, for opening this door) is in its changes to Xehanort’s plots and backstory, and in undermining one of the best thematic ideas from the original Kingdom Hearts game.

"Ansem” turning out to be the true villain of KH I after two-thirds of the gameplay pass under the assumption that it’s the confederation of Disney villains was an effective twist that let an original character, more comfortably of the Square Enix half of the crossover, shine. “Ansem” turning out to be Xehanort the renegade apprentice, with his Nobody Xemnas the leader of Organization XIII, was hardly the most organic twist in the world; I don’t think anyone would go back to KH I and say “oh, it was so obvious, how did I not see it before?” But it made for another genuinely surprising twist in KH II. A villain can only have so many twists and secret plans, however, before effective surprises become cheap gimmicks, and any ability to take their current scheme seriously evaporates.

The revelation that Xehanort is in fact a transparently evil old man who, years before any of the events that led to KH I, plotted to synthesize a X-Blade and bring about a second Keyblade War (with less than ten combatants, so it’d be more of a Keyblade Skirmish) in what basically amounts to a mad scientist’s scheme in fantasy genre clothing, was the breaking point for me. This is a common trap of both prequels and conventional sequels; trying to tie too many things into a small group of characters, or in this case, a single character. Making Xehanort into a villain that spans multiple generations, the man who set into motion everything that preceded KH I and is indirectly responsible for Sora, Kairi, and Riku becoming Keyblade Wielders, can seem like an expansion of the universe on paper, but in execution, it’s a contraction. It reduces too many events down to factors in a single character’s actions. The fact that his scheme is no more coherent than those from KH I and II doesn’t help, nor does the fact that the storyline that most directly leads into Xehanort’s role in those games - Terra’s - is so transparently ripped from Revenge of the Sith.

But Xehanort’s abrupt reentry into the story isn’t truly maddening - not in BbS, at least. For me, the worst part of the BbS story is how it retroactively changes Sora’s. I’d go so far as to say that BbS is to Sora what Dragon Ball: Minus is to Bardock and Goku.

Don’t misunderstand me on that point: BbS is nowhere near as bad a game as Dragon Ball: Minus is a comic. What I mean by that is: prior to Dragon Ball: Minus, most people took Bardock: the Father of Goku to be canon. And, in that TV special, the history given to Goku, derived from what was said in the manga at the time, was that he was of no account by the standards of Saiyan society. He was a no-account spawn of a low-class warrior, sent off to a far-flung planet to clear out its worthless inhabitants. That low-class warrior who fathered him was as ruthless and mercenary as any typical Saiyan, and while he was stronger than the average low-class fighter and was given psychic insight into the fate of his people, Bardock was ultimately just another Saiyan doomed to die and be forgotten by time. Nothing in Goku’s origins is special or fated, which makes his accidental amnesia and eventual surpassing of Vegeta, the supposed Saiyan ideal, more remarkable. By transforming Bardock into a more tamed Saiyan with a close familial bond to his mate, who sends his son to Earth for safety in a blatant rip-off of Superman’s origins, Goku and Bardock both become too special, Goku’s turning into a kind-hearted child becomes too telegraphed, and their stories become too beholden to “chosen one” cliches.

And that is what BbS does to Sora, Riku, and to a lesser extent Kairi. That all three of them just happen, in their childhoods, to have had contact with Keyblade Wielders who left a personal mark upon them - and, in Sora’s case, literally took up residence inside him - is just too pat. It makes the three of them ending up with Keyblades too easy, too predestined. This hurts all three of them, but Sora most of all. Ven looking like Roxas and Vanitas looking like Sora, is a massive headache (and yes, I’m aware that there is at least some explanation of that), but the big loss is in the thematic content of the story, and there is where the comparisons to Dragon Ball: Minus really come into play.

Like a pre-Minus Goku, pre-BbS Sora is not special, in any way, at the start of KH I. He’s an ordinary young teen, plucky and affable and just a bit lazy, with a burgeoning quasi-romantic interest in his friend Kairi and an in-all-things rivalry with his best friend Riku. Compared to Riku, Sora comes up short in pretty much every area. Riku, at first glance, is faster, stronger, smarter, more dedicated, more fearless, and more capable. If you were going to choose one of those two to be the fated hero wielding a magic blade to save the worlds from darkness, Riku’s the better candidate by every metric, on paper. And, in fact, the Keyblade does choose Riku. The whole “chosen one” cliche is subverted in KH I in a brilliant way by essentially having destiny make the wrong choice. That Sora only gets the Keyblade by accident, loses it to its intended master, but quickly reclaims it on the strength of his accomplishments and his purity - that he earns it - is one of my favorite things in this entire series, and is a wonderful thematic idea and moral. Giving Sora and Riku both a fated “touched by a master” backstory kills so much of that idea, and it’s enough to make me wish that there was no BbS, as fun as the gameplay can be.

Ironically, DDD tries to have its cake and eat it too by playing up the fact that Sora wasn’t chosen by the Keyblade, but the damage was done by that point. And DDD further undermines that initial concept in the way it writes Sora, and his relationship with Riku. For one thing, Sora in DDD seems so much dumber than he was in previous games. Up to that point, he’d been written as an upbeat young teen, possessed of a certain level of immaturity and naivete, but always determined to help save the day, and more than capable of getting serious when needed. DDD abruptly starts to portray him as more of a doofy shonen hero, without any clear motivation and to no real purpose. It also introduces the idea that the central dynamic in Sora and Riku’s friendship is that Sora lifts Riku’s spirits while Riku takes up the slack from Sora’s sloppiness and carelessness. I have a real problem with that presentation, because it just isn’t true.

If you go back and look at KH I, those early Destiny Islands scenes set Sora up as the underdog to Riku’s Big Man on Campus. Riku jokes that he’s the only one working on the raft, and Kairi remarks that “he’s changed,” but he doesn’t come off as someone needing to perk up. And with one of the first challenges of the game being Sora gathering raft supplies, it doesn’t seem that Riku needs to take up that much slack either. In any event, over the course of KH I, Riku’s the one who drops the slack and falls into darkness, with Sora literally having to stop him from doing horrible things. And it’s Sora who continues on through CoM and KH II, saving the worlds. While Riku does appear here and there to aid Sora, his aid doesn’t come in the form of “taking up slack” or cleaning up after messes Sora leaves; Sora, Donald, and Goofy are still able to save the day by their own skill in each world. This whole notion, and Sora’s more dim-witted persona, seem invented, if not from whole cloth, then from very little that was previously established.

And again, there doesn’t seem to be a clear motive, unless it’s to highlight the differences between Sora and Riku and give more justification to Riku getting the Mark of Mastery when Sora wasn’t. But the writing doesn’t give a coherent through-line to that idea, nor does it sufficiently justify Sora not becoming a Master. Had the game actively told a story of turning the tables, and made a point to stress the idea that Riku’s fully reformed and that Sora was slipping up, then I’d be more forgiving (even if I still wouldn’t like the idea), but the work just isn’t there.

I’ll admit that there’s a certain amount of bias in my assessment; I’ve never liked Riku as a character. As a teen playing KH I for the first time, I found it easy to project my dislike of certain people IRL onto him, and in the years since, I’ve continued to find that the manner of his turn to darkness in KH I makes it very hard to accept him back into the fold with Sora and the others. He’s also a lousy player character in Reverse/Rebirth and in KH III IMO. But I accept that he’s the deuteragonist, and that his story since KH I has been one of redemption. In principle, a game that builds him up as a character and lets him save the day is fine. But the manner in which it was done in DDD was all wrong. And to an extent, the changes made to his and Sora’s friendship, and to Sora’s personality, have all carried over into KH III, which is even more frustrating.

And, speaking of things carried over...DDD is where Xehanort gets completely ridiculous IMO. Having pulled a third twist that he was actually an ancient Keyblade Master seeking to provoke a war, now there’s a fourth twist where his younger self has been traveling through time (by ridiculous means) to ensure that the fifth twist - that all that business about Nobodies having no hearts was a lie, and that the real Organization XIII exists to create thirteen Horcruxes vessels for Xehanort’s heart, so that there can be thirteen darknesses to face the seven lights in the Keyblade War (which still seems short of the numbers you’d need for an actual war, but whatever). The whole business about “recompletion” allowing an original person to revive if their Heartless and Nobody are destroyed is already enough of a contrivance to bring the original Xehanort back, but time travel and heart-splitting is even more absurd. And I still haven’t been able to figure out how “Ansem” and Xemnas can be back in action, even with the time travel aspect.

Recompletion also means that DDD brings back the rest of Organization XIII. I consider nearly all of them to be glorified henchmen, possessed of a gimmick for combat and a single personality trait at best, so their revival - and their cameos in BbS - do nothing for me. A big exception to that is Axel, but if I don’t care much for Riku, I can’t stand Axel. He comes off as what an “edgy” teenage writer would come up with for a “cool” character in a bad first stab at fiction. From his character design to his abused catchphrase, everything about him pisses me off. His one saving grace in KH II was that he sacrifices himself, and nothing undermines a sacrifice like a contrived way around death. That he’s become a Keyblade Wielder, and one of the Seven Guardians of Light, is ridiculous to me, and I’m not sure if I can think of a more blatant example of a writer’s pet character being so inorganically shoved to the forefront of a story that supposedly isn’t about them.

DDD also started to open the door to the possibility of Roxas and Namine being restored. That idea is less annoying to me than any of these others, but it’s still a mistake IMO. That Roxas and Namine both ultimately elect to give up their lives as individuals to return Sora and Kairi to their full selves, accepting their fate so that others can live more fully, is a bittersweet and touching concept, and one that lets “death” have some real consequences and the happy ending of KH II come with a price. I hate seeing that undermined, and I’m frankly frustrated by how much of KH III’s front half involved chatter about Roxas.

And speaking of KH III...that’s where Part II comes in.

ADDENDUM: Another thing about DDD that I feel undermines Sora is that, while writing him dumber, the game also hypes him up more than he ever was in the past. It’s the same problem as Harry Potter; for all that series’ virtues, constantly pointing out how special Harry is can end up taking away from his character by making his unique traits too ubiquitous. Other characters constantly pointing out how kind and loving and easy to bond with Sora is undermines that trait by over-playing it and turning it into an exercise in “tell, don’t show.”

#critique #commentary #kingdom hearts #birth by sleep #dream drop distance #disney #z's crits

[theheavymetalmama]

Top Ten Characters Who Could Kick Saitama’s Ass

Ooh boy. Not going to make any friends with this post.

Full disclosure, I hardly ever watch anime anymore. Seems like everything new these days is either an ecchi, a harem, or both. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with ecchis or harems, but when that’s all anybody wants to produce these days it gets old fast. And all the newest stuff that everyone says I should watch I just can’t get into. Attack on Titan feels like something that was never proof-read before production began, I find Kill la Kill obnoxious, and Monster Musume would actually be enjoyable if it didn’t milk tired roommate and girlfriend tropes for everything they were worth and if the male lead wasn’t such a terminally unlikable dumbass. Seriously, if Kimihito is supposed to represent the typical Japanese every-man then it’s no wonder Japan’s birth rate has dropped like a brick.

Having said all that, I fucking LOVE One Punch Man. It’s funny, action packed, and you can tell that everyone making it is just having the time of their lives. It has good animation, memorable characters, and the majority of the jokes land which is always a plus. The best way I can describe OPM would be if the people behind the Cornetto Trilogy made a superhero thing, and it’s every bit as enjoyable as it sounds. Seriously, check it out if you haven’t already.

What am I building up to? Well, when something gets popular it gains a fanbase, and that fanbase always gets more than its’ share of loudmouth assholes that not only make the rest of the fanbase look bad but also deter new fans from ever wanting to check it out. One Punch Man is no exception, and loudest and most vocal of these fans have decided to constantly get up in other people’s faces about how Saitama beats everyone because...one punch. Others say that Saitama is a parody and ergo typical rules about “Who would win in a fight?” type of discussions don’t apply to him. All the while stating again, again, and again that he’s completely unbeatable and nobody can even scratch him because he’s not meant to lose and one punch. But the most annoying of these fans are those who wave the banner that Saitama’s creator said that his power trumps the Big Bang and would win against characters like Goku or Superman easily.

No. Sorry, but no on all of those points. First of all, Saitama is awesome and a great and fun character, but he’s not unbeatable and he certainly isn’t invincible. In fact, both the anime and the web-comic repeatably make points that Saitama is still only human, and that despite his power he still needs to eat food, drink water, and breathe oxygen in order to survive. Sure, he has no specific weaknesses (other than the fact that he’s not the brightest guy around) but he’s still mortal.

Second, One Punch Man isn’t a parody. No, it really isn’t. Sure, it has plenty of funny bits and there’s plenty of superhero deconstruction to be found, but it’s not a parody. Freakazoid is a parody. Squirrel Girl is a parody. Captain Hero from Drawn Together is a parody. Duck Dodgers is a parody. One Punch Man is not. See, I compared it to the “Blood and Ice Cream” trilogy for a reason. Like those movies OPM is a comedy up-front, sure, but it takes the genre seriously. There are real stakes and risks taken, people do get hurt, and if somebody dies then they stay dead. It doesn’t rely on cartoon physics and real-world physics do still apply, hence there being no shortage of collateral damage.

Third, “The creator said Saitama is stronger than the big bang and can beat *insert powerful character here* so ha!” Yeah, the creator never said such a thing. For a while it was believed that it was a producer of the anime who said that, but while I could be wrong as far as I can tell nobody said such a thing and was something the fanbase made up and said it enough times that people started believing it. But here’s the thing. Even if the creator said so live on every major news outlet that Saitama can beat anyone ever, it doesn’t matter. Why? Because talk is cheap. “Because X said so” is not a valid argument and it damn sure doesn’t hold any water. What does hold water are documented feats of strength and power. Saitama has an impressive record to be sure...but he’s not number one. Hell, he’s probably not even in the top 20.

Now let me be crystal clear here. I’m not making this post as a disparaging or discrediting of Saitama or the anime One Punch Man. I think Saitama’s a great character and the show’s a ton of fun, and I’m not trying to make him look dumb or incompetent or whatever. This also isn’t a list of ‘fights to the death’ or anything like that, hence the title being “Kick his ass” and not “Kill him.” I’m making this post as both a form of catharsis AND a big middle finger from me to all misinformed fanboys about their caped bald godchild.

So, without further adieu, here are the top ten characters who could kick Saitama’s ass.

Sorry baldy. =P

10.) Doomsday

Doomsday is a character that’s every bit as iconic as he is one-note and boring, but while his usefulness never ventures beyond a plot device when the Justice League need a big scary monster to fight nobody can deny his sheer, raw power. The fact that he can go toe-to-toe with the likes of powerhouses like Superman, Wonder Woman, and even Darkseid is nothing to sneeze at, and short of destroying every single cell in his body there’s really no permanent way to keep him down. While I have no doubt in my mind that Saitama would ultimately win the fight, this is a case where it’s going to take WAY more than just one punch. Looking for a challenge? The monster that killed Superman will certainly provide it.

9.) Spawn

Icon or relic? Legend or has-been? The jury is still out on whether or not Spawn earned his popularity and cultural omnipresence in the early to mid 90′s or if the writers and artists at Image simply got lucky, but as far as power goes he’s still a god damned beast. Fueled by sin and Hell itself, Spawn’s powers go from crazy all the way to absurd. I don’t exaggerate in the slightest when I say that Spawn can use his hellish to do pretty much whatever the hell he wants. Slow down time to a crawl while he can move about freely? He can do that. Increase Saitama’s molecular density to such an extent that he becomes so heavy he plummets straight into the center of the Earth or so light he rockets into orbit? He can do that. Alter Saitama’s mind so that he believes he’s a sea urchin? He can do that. Look, the guy defeated both Satan AND God and reshaped the universe in his own image (heh heh...) so there’s really very little Saitama can actually do to hurt him. At best he can punch Spawn’s head off, but doing that would just Spawn back to Hell where he can recharge his batteries and come back with a vengeance. Seriously, Spawn’s literally walked out of Hell so many times it’s comical. Facing off against Spawn would be one hell of a fight for Saitama.

8.) The Juggernaut

Nothing can stop the Juggernaut. He’s completely and utterly invulnerable to all forms of both might and magic. Curses? Forget about it. Spells? They bounce right off him. Weapons? Please! You could drop a hundred nukes right on his head and he’d just laugh it off. He’s bested the Hulk multiple times, trashed Thor, manhandled the Sentry AND Hyperion, and let’s not get into the kind of grief and misery he’s brought upon the X-Men over the years. The only thing ol’ Juggy is weak to is telekinetic attacks, which is not only something that Saitama doesn’t possess but even then they can only hinder him, not kill him. The one thing you can do against the Juggernaut is find a way to use his own momentum against him and send him running the other way...but Saitama likes a challenge, so we know he won’t do that even if he does figure it out.

7.) The Flash

Saitama’s speed clocks out at supersonic, right on par with the world’s fastest fighter jets. The Flash’s speed puts the world’s fastest fighter jets to sad shame, capable of moving over a million times faster than the speed of light and can vibrate his molecules to phase through attacks and even turn invisible. Not only does the Flash have the speed advantage, saying nothing of the Speed Force, he can hit plenty hard as well. By vibrating his molecular structure to just under light speed, the Flash can use the Infinite Mass Punch, an attack with the same destructive force as a 100 megaton nuclear bomb. In the time it would take for Saitama to charge and unleash a Special or Serious Punch, the Flash can hit him in the face (and all over the rest of his body) with a thousand Infinite Mass Punches. Defeating someone in one punch is less impressive when you can’t hit your opponent.

6.) Yang Xiao Long

What happens when you pit a guy who can defeat anyone in one punch against a gal who can absorb attacks and kinetic energy and send them back to her opponent tenfold as if she were composed of living vibranium? You get a caped bald guy skipping across the Pacific Ocean like a stone and getting stuck up George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore with a wavy-haired blonde laughing her tits off from the sight.

5.) Lobo

They don’t call him “The Main Man” for nothing. This fucking guy could very well be the most vicious character in comic book history, which is saying something in a medium where characters like Wolverine and Vegeta exist. Not only is Lobo meaner than a horny rattlesnake, he’s strong enough to match blows with Superman and has beaten him twice, he escaped the pull of a black hole, he shrugged off Darkseid’s Omega Beam, he can survive in space, and his healing factor is nothing short of completely absurd. Lobo can regenerate, I shit you not, from a single drop of blood. Basically nothing short of throwing him into the sun is going to stop Lobo for good, and he’s every bit as stubborn as he is ferocious. Remember; he single handedly wiped out his entire race except for himself when he was an infant. More to the point, of all the characters on this list so far, he’s the one who makes the most sense for WHY he’d fight Saitama. You don’t think someone would want Saitama dead and wouldn’t hire Lobo to do it?

4.) The Silver Surfer.

Power. Cosmic. ‘Nuff said.

3.) The Incredible Hulk

Contrary to what Death Battle claimed, if you tore off the Hulk’s head he’d just grow a new body in a matter of minutes with the off-chance of his headless body being taken over by one of Banner’s many, many different Hulks that inhabit his psyche.......comic books are weird, okay? Point is the Hulk is one of the strongest beings in all of fiction. He’s picked up a 150 billion ton mountain, held two tectonic plates together, destroyed a planet while fighting another world breaker, and while his healing factor can be overtaxed what everyone always leaves out is that anybody who does manage to punch the Hulk back into Banner always leaves Banner alone. Why? Well, remember that scene in the Avengers?

That wasn’t just a cool quote, stuff like that actually happened in the comics. You could walk up to an unconscious Bruce Banner and drop a thermite bomb right on his head, and before your brain can register that’s shit’s on fire the Hulk will be standing with his hand around your throat and scotched purple pants. Not only that, but with Banner no longer in the back seat, it’s a Hulk that’s completely unhinged and unrelenting, not to mention no longer vulnerable to puny human factors like fatigue. Loki once employed the Enchantress (no, not that one) to use her magic to separate Banner and the Hulk into two different beings in a petty plan to kill Thor, and in doing so the Hulk not only effortlessly plowed through Asgard and all of its’ armies and defenders, including Thor, he then did the same thing when he was sent to Hell. Yeah, you read that right. Not even Hela, who like Mephisto is basically Satan, could tame the Hulk, and in the end only putting Hulk and Banner back together was what calmed the Hulk down and stopped his rampage.

That’s not even the craziest part. Given enough time, the Hulk can recover from just about anything. One day the Maestro, a possible future version of the Hulk, was sent back in time and vaporized by the very gamma bomb that created the Hulk......and he fully recovered! Yes, the Hulk can fully recover after being turned into fucking ashes! Seriously, look it up! ...did I mention comic books are weird?

2.) Son Goku

I’ve made it no secret over the years that I don’t care for DragonBall anything. Look, I’m 31. I’m a 90′s kid, I was there when DragonBall really blew up in the US and became such a cultural phenomenon that you couldn’t get away from it, and I was sick to death of it long before shows like GT were even a thing. Still, franchise fatigue aside, I can’t deny Goku’s incredible skills and power, especially recently with DragonBall Super. Oh, I still don’t watch it, but this being the Internet you can’t get away from DragonBall anymore than you can get away from cat videos. Lists, paragraphs, and videos of Goku’s feats are easier to find than white bread so me listing them here would be all but redundant.

What I will talk about is that if Saitama wants a challenge then Goku is right up his alley. Who is and isn’t more powerful is a crapshoot because we don’t have a definitive measure of what either of them are fully capable of as far as raw power goes, but we do know that Goku is faster and his skills and finesse outweigh Saitama’s by a wide margin. While Saitama can track people moving at supersonic speeds, Goku can move much faster and the whole “lol, takes forever to charge his power” thing has been vastly improved on. Now it only takes a few seconds to charge up instead of three and a half episodes, spirit bomb not withstanding. Even if we do buy into the narrative of “Saitama beats everyone and anyone in one punch because ONE PUNCH”...well, death never stopped Goku before. He’s bested cosmic entities and gods that make the biggest, baddest villains in One Punch Man look like puny peons and is so tenacious that he always keeps fighting even if the odds are hopelessly against him; that’s kind of his whole thing. He goes up against people he’s clearly no match for, gets the Super Saiyan-snot beaten out of him, yet he still manages to come out on top. And given that Saitama is always seeking a challenge, a clash between these two titans would be inevitable. Maybe Goku will emerge the winner, maybe he won’t. What’s certain is that it’s going to take a lot more than one punch to put down the Super Saiyan.

But as strong, fast, skilled, and tenacious as Goku is, neither he nor Saitama can hold a candle to...

1.) Superman

While the whole “Goku vs Superman” thing is still going strong despite overwhelming evidence the odds are hopelessly against Goku, a new fanboy/fangirl and geek-culture kerfuffle riding shotgun to that is Saitama vs Superman and it’s every been as asinine. Not helped by the fact Superman has been in a bit of a rut on a cultural level whereas OPM is at the height of its’ popularity, meaning that the latter is going to win pretty much every popularity contest by default and thus fuel the fanboy fire on both sides. For whatever reason, anime fans seem to have a big hate-boner for Superman that they just can’t rub off.

So, to each and everyone reading this who think Saitama can beat Superman.

No. No he can’t. Oh sure, Caped Baldy is going to make the Man of Steel work for his victory, but fact of the matter is that anything Saitama can do, Superman can do better. Has done better, in fact. Again, I’m not knocking Saitama or trying to discredit his feats. We’ve seen Saitama destroy a meteor as big as a mountain, crush kaiju-sized monsters and machines, survive being punched to the Moon, and parted a mass of clouds as big as a continent with one punch. All very impressive feats that nobody in his league is going to top any time soon.

And that’s just it. Superman isn’t in Saitama’s league; he’s up, up, and a WAY above it. His feats of strength, speed, and durability put those of Saitama to shame. Seriously, the differences between Saitama and Superman is like the difference between a high school track star and Usain Bolt. Superman has held a black hole, spent a week straight bench-pressing the weight of the planet and only broke a single sweat while out of direct sunlight, cleared 20 light years worth of distance (each single light year consisting of trillions of miles) in a matter of minutes, can survive in space, survived being tossed from orbit to Earth with such force that his impact devastated the planet and caused nuclear winter, flew through a red sun, survived multiple supernovas including one that made Kepler’s Supernova (the only supernova that could be seen from Earth by the naked human eye despite being 25 THOUSAND light years away) look like a sparkler, tanked a Source Wall explosion (basically the Big Bang,) split a moon in half, atomized a planet in a single punch, vaporized another with his heat vision, fought demons in Valhalla alongside Wonder Woman and Thor for a thousand years (yes, I know, this is starting to sound like a story the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future would tell, but bear with me,) lifted both eternity personified and a book of infinite pages, was sandwitched between two colliding planets, and bested the likes of Samson, Atlas, Hercules, and even Zeus himself in strength and power. Superman has a genius-level intellect with a super brain that can process information thousands of times faster than normal humans, having read the entire contents of the Library of Congress within an hour. He’s only just SLIGHTLY slower than the Flash in terms of speed and agility.

And that’s not even the craziest thing.

One day, the forces of nature themselves, Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind personified, decided that they didn’t like humans anymore and sought to exterminate them and every other living thing with hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, and erupting every volcano on the planet, taunting the Man of Steel that not even he could save the human race from such a calamity. Superman threatened that if they did that, he’d vaporize the ocean, burn every plant, freeze the Earth’s core, and finally destroy the Earth utterly and completely so that there wouldn’t be an Earth for nature to rule...and Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind folded.

No, I’m not making that up. Nature was going to destroy the human race and Superman told them to fuck off...and Nature fucked off! Look it up, I’m not kidding! And all that stuff I described? None of it was pre-Crisis. Pre-Crisis/Silver Age Superman would beat Saitama even faster. Not only was he strong enough to effortlessly carry a bunch of planets daisy-chained together, wipe out whole galaxies with a sneeze, blow out the sun like you and me would blow out a candle, travel through time by flying backwards (fucking really) and could make up brand new super powers right on the fly.

A battle between Saitama and Superman would be an epic spectacle without question, but in the end Superman would come out on top. Not only do his feats and accomplishments fly circles around that of Saitama, but even if the “Saitama beats everyone because he’s unbeatable” thing did apply and he truly was impossible to defeat...well, that’s what Superman is all about. He makes the impossible possible. He’s as strong as he needs to be. Superman isn’t meant to lose. Why? Because his story isn’t about being the best, being a hero for fun or profit, or even about whether or not he’ll win or lose a fight. Superman’s story is that he’ll always do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the easy thing, the smart thing, or the popular thing. If doing the right thing means taking on a caped bald guy looking for kicks causing untold amounts property damage because of his reckless if well-intended behavior and then putting him in his place, then Superman will do just that.

One more thing. To all of you arguing “Well Saitama is a parody, so he wins because of that!” Again, he’s not a parody, but even if he was the whole “Well he’s a parody” is exactly why Superman would win. Think about it. Who do you think would win in a fight?

The walking punchline...

...or the real deal?

So that’s my list. Again, not taking anything away from Saitama, I love OPM to pieces, but this whole “He beats everyone ever” is like telling a Chuck Norris joke without even the barest hint of irony. It does nobody any favors, it pisses people off, and it makes the entire OPM fandom look like assholes. Other than that, what did you think of my list? Anyone else you think can take on Caped Baldy? Let me know.

#One Punch Man #saitama #Doomsday #Spawn #Juggernaut #The Flash #Yang Xio Long #Lobo #Silver Surfer #The Hulk #Goku #Superman #DC #Marvel #Image #anime #comic books #Dragon Ball #RWBY #comics are weird #top 10

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 231

It’s the last episode of the Babidi Saga, and I thought I’d take a moment to give Babidi some props as a good villain.    His run isn’t quite over yet, but in these past eleven episodes it’s been up to him to carrry the load as the main antagonist, and you know, I think he’s underrated.  

What I like about this guy is how he’s so clearly designed to solve all these story problems in the Buu arc.    Why hasn’t Buu been a problem all along?   Well, some guy stuck him in a ball and now Babidi’s trying to get him out again.    So if he’s that important, why isn’t he the main antagonist?    Because he’s this scrawny wizard who looks like an otter fetus.   Then how is he a challenge to the heroes?   Because he mind-controlled the devil into working for him.   Okay, but how does all of this work with Goku fighting Vegeta again?   He’s siphoning battle damage from their fight to revive Buu.   Why would they be stupid enough to fall for that?    Well, that’s more about Goku and Vegeta than Babidi, but you get the idea.  

I’m a firm believer that Frieza is vastly overrated.    People talk about him like he’s the ultimate villain, and every Dragon Ball bad guy has fallen short of his example.    Why?     Because he blew up the Saiyan homeworld?   Because he has this lifelong personal history with Vegeta?   Those are good aspects for an archnemesis to have, but they’re hardly requirements.   I think this is where people got it in their heads that Toriyama was going to end Dragon Ball with Frieza and his editors made him keep going.   They were so impressed with the Frieza saga that they couldn’t imagine why anyone would try to top it.    I guess they weren’t personally impressed with the Androids or Buu,so they took this as evidence that Toriyama was coasting creatively, and leaped to the conclusion that he was fully aware of it but was only sticking around under duress.  

That’s dumb.   The post-Frieza segment of DBZ rules.    By all rights, Toriyama could have ended it with Piccolo, or Vegeta, or Frieza, but instead he went even harder and produced some truly brilliant storytelling.    Babidi doesn’t need to have known Vegeta from childhood.    He doesn’t need to have killed Goku’s parents.    All he has to do is just show up with an audacious scheme, and mess with the heroes’ heads a little.    Just like Cell, Babidi used Vegeta’s selfishness against him.   As with Cell, Goku thought he had this whole case under control, but there were gaps in his strategy that Babidi could use to create an opening.   The bad guy doesn’t have to have a history with the good guys.   Sometimes you can just develop the grudge as the story unfolds. 

And Babidi has a ton of personality.   He’s so damn giddy about being evil, like when he cheers for the deaths of the fans at the Budokai stadium, or when he enjoys the sound Spopovitch makes when he pops.   He treats Dabura like a good buddy, even while congratulating himself for mind-controlling the guy to be his servant.    One really nice touch that I like is how absent-minded he is, like when he struggled to remember Vegeta’s name right before he started giving him orders.   

Anyway, this episode represents the culmination of his quest to revive Majin Buu.    Babidi’s been feeding Buu energy this whole time, so that he’ll be at full strength when he’s ready to break out of his ball.   He has Goku and Vegeta tied up fighting each other, and every time Vegeta lands a blow it brings Buu one step closer to restoration.   Only Gohan and the Supreme Kai are left to stop Babidi, but he has time on his side, and Dabura, who fought Gohan to a standstill a short time ago.    To keep his spaceship from getting wrecked in the battle, Babidi teleports them all up to the surface.    

Meanwhile, FUCK YEAH!

I haven’t checked in a while, but I think these particular scenes are from the manga version of this fight.    The dirty little secret about Goku-Vegeta II is that it’s pretty brief in the manga, and many of the best parts are actually filler scenes.   

But I feel like these shots of them flashing every time they hit each other were based on the manga.    Maybe this is meant to illustrate the energy leaving their bodies as they hit each other.    Goku’s is being magically transferred to Buu.   Vegeta’s is just sort of going nowhere I guess.   

Back at Buu’s ball, Gohan recalls Goku’s advice that he should get angry, like he did against Cell.   Only Gohan can’t just will himself to that frame of mind.   He’s plenty angry at Babidi and Dabura, but it’s not the same.   Regardless, he powers up for battle, when suddenly...

It’s too late.   Babidi checks the gauge on Buu’s ball and it’s already full.    As he cheers over and over again: Majin Buu is at full power!

The Supreme Kai is horrified.    He knew he wouldn’t have much time, but he didn’t expect to run out this quickly.    That’s when Gohan realizes that Vegeta and his father have been fighting their entire battle at Super Saiyan 2.   At that level of intensity, it wouldn’t take long at all for that much energy to get sent to Buu’s ball.

At this point, the Supreme Kai just has a nervous breakdown.    Literally everything has gone wrong since he came to the World Tournament.   I mean, Puipui and Yakon are dead, so maybe that’s a positive, but he doesn’t seem to take much solace in it. 

Meanwhile, FUCK!

Vegeta beats the ever-loving crap out of Goku, but he’s still far from beaten.    He just crosses his arms and says he’s getting excited.    Goku’s a monster, y’all.  Like a good monster, the kind that loves his wife and kids and all that, but that actually makes him scarier when you hit him with everything you have and he it just makes him happy.   

Back at the stadium, Mr. Satan is holding some sort of press conference.   

What I don’t understand is how the stadium is still packed, even after Vegeta’s attack on it.    I’m pretty sure the fans fled in a panic two episodes ago, but even if they hadn’t, why would they stick around for this?

At first, I thought this was just a flub, and Toei was reusing the stadium backgrounds from past episodes, without considering the people painted into the seats.    But no, here’s a close-up of the fans watching Satan being interviewed.  

And 18′s still glaring at him from a distance.    This really doesn’t work too well, at least when you’re marathoning these episodes like I’m doing now.    I guess if you only saw one every week, you’d have a harder time picking up on continuity issues like this.   On the other hand, it’s still bizarre how Vegeta blew giant holes in the stadium and everyone’s still cheering like nothing’s wrong.

Meanwhile, Goten and Trunks are still heading for Babidi’s spaceship, hoping to see their fathers in action against Majin Buu.   The only trouble is that Babidi keeps teleporting the players around, so they don’t know which way to go.    Right now, they sense big ki signals in two locations: The Goku-Vegeta fight, and Gohan and Dabura with Buu’s ball.  

When I first watched these episodes, I sort of expected Goten and Trunks to reach their dads first, and maybe they would get them to stop fighting somehow, but it seems like they have no idea who’s ki is whose.    It’s a standard thing in this show that characters who can sense ki can recognize people just by sensing their energy.   When Cell first showed up, they were confused, because his energy resembled all the people he was cloned from.    When Future Trunks turned Super Saiyan, Yamcha knew it wasn’t Goku, because he would have recognized Goku’s energy no matter how powerful he had become.  

Of course, Goten and Trunks only met Goku today, but you’d think they’d be very familiar with Vegeta and Gohan’s ki, and yet they never say “Okay, my dad is there, and your brother is over this way.”    Maybe they just lack the experience to distinguish these things.

Back at the fight, Goku refuses to lose to Vegeta here.   Just throwing this out for anyone who might think Goku was sandbagging in this fight.

Goku is surprised that he and Geets are so evenly matched, and he figures Vegeta must have trained harder over the past seven years.    Remember, Goku was stronger when they last met, so he had some catching up to do.     But Vegeta doesn’t think so.    He believes that there was still a gap between them, and he realized it when Goku briefly used Super Saiyan 2 to kill Yakon.   Once he got an idea of Goku’s full strength, he knew he couldn’t beat him, and so he made up his mind...

Remember, when Spopovitch appeared at the tournament, everyone who knew him remarked on how much stronger he was since the last time they saw him.    Vegeta deduced that Babidi’s mind control gives you a power boost, and he decided that it might work for him as well.   And apparently it really did close the gap between himself and Goku, though he’s not exactly happy about the method.

And this is the part Goku doesn’t understand.    Before, he thought Vegeta only allowed himself to be controlled so that he could have an excuse to fight Goku without remorse.   Now, he’s saying he did it to get a power boost.    Except the whole reason he wanted to have this fight was to satisfy his pride.   Where’s the pride in any of this?    Vegeta had to take magic steroids just to hang at this level.   Even if he beats Goku here, how can he be satisfied with any of it?

And that’s just it.  This wasn’t just about beatng Goku, or proving his superiority, or even getting stronger.   Vegeta knew this was all pointless.   He couldn’t beat Goku on his own, and the only way to have the fight he wanted to have was to become one of Babidi’s lackeys, which he finds revolting.    But he did it anyway, because he couldn’t handle the truth.     

Not the truth that Goku was still too strong for him after all these years, but the truth that Vegeta might have finally become mature enough to accept this.   In that moment, he saw what he had become over the years, compared to what he had once been, and he couldn’t handle that he’d changed.    So he saw in Babidi a chance to change himself back.   

The irony is that “““classic”““ Vegeta wasn’t exactly better off.   He was Frieza’s bootlick instead of Babidi’s, and not nearly as powerful as he became after living on Earth.   Oh, and the “brutal, cold-blooded Saiyan” Vegeta used to be?   Yeah, that guy couldn’t beat Goku either.   So at best, this is a lateral move, but Vegeta’s too wrapped up in nostalgia to realize it.   He just remembers those days as being simpler times.

What Vegeta can’t--or won’t-- understand is that living on Earth and becoming “influenced” by Goku and his friends was the best thing that ever happened to him.    He probably knew this on some level, but he never really had to face that until Goku came back and reminded him of his old rivalry.    At some point during the past dozen episodes, Vegeta realized he probably still couldn’t beat the guy, and that it wasn’t as big a deal to him as it used to be.   That realizaton frightened him.    Instead of appreciating his personal growth, he panicked and ran to Babidi to undo it all.  

What I love about this is how Goku doesn’t believe it, not even for a second.    Because Goku knows life is change, and that the whole point of his discipline is self-improvement.   His greatest opponent has been, and always will be, himself.    Vegeta’s trouble is that his ego keeps blinding him to that truth.   He thinks he was born great, so he resists change and struggles to reconcile his present self with his past self.   

And maybe that’s what this fight has been all about.   It’s not just Vegeta wanting to beat Goku today.    Vegeta wants to prove that he could have beaten Goku back in Episode 31.   That this:

Was a fluke.    Vegeta wants to regress into the man he was back then, just to prove that that man was right, that that man was always good enough to beat Goku.    But his dream is just too brittle.   He can’t be Saiyans Saga Vegeta and Babidi Saga Vegeta and Majin Vegeta all at the same time.   I think that’s why Goku’s so flustered over this.    Vegeta’s like his greatest rival, and yet he can’t figure out something that Goku takes as a given.

Meanwhile, Buu is about to hatch out of that testicle-thing he’s been in all this time.    Yeah, someone might want to take a look into that.

And yeah, that’s the Babidi Saga.   It’s pretty damn good.   It tends to get overlooked among the Buu arcs that follow, but it holds up well on its own.   

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #goku #vegeta #gohan #babidi #dabura #mr satan #supreme kai #android 18 #goten #trunks #babidi saga

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 201

Last episode, Gohan started attending high school in Satan City, but Satan City is riddled with crime, and Gohan’s afraid if he beats up too many criminals with his super powers, it’ll make his social life awkward.   I really don’t understand why he’s so worried.    Everyone thinks Mr. Satan has super powers, and he seems to do all right.  

Anyway, he goes to Capsule Corp. to consult Bulma on the problem, and she mulls it over while smoking a cigarette.    This is one of those little details that you don’t really think about much, but it’s something that you just don’t see in modern anime.    I’m pretty sure Bulma’s only smoking here as a callback to her father, Dr. Brief, who often smoked and had a similar hairstyle back in the day.    I mean, he still does, it’s not like he died or anything.   My point is that you never see Bulma smoking in the 2010′s, even though those episodes and movies are set only a few years after this one. 

I’m pretty sure that’s because Japanese television adopted stricter rules between 1993 and 2010.  Did this scene make it into Dragon Ball Kai?   I bet it didn’t.   The only recent example of a smoking anime character is Jotaro Kujo from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and they obscured it with shadow every time he lit up.   Then again, Lisa Lisa smoked in full view, so maybe it’s just because Jotaro was a minor?    Nonetheless, I feel like smoking has been heavily de-emphasized in media throughout my lifetime.   It used to be commonplace, and now it seems like creators will avoid smoking altogether.    I don’t know if it’s because they just don’t want to use it, or if there’s external pressure to avoid it.    It’s a good thing, either way.     I remember watching an “I Love Lucy” episode once where the four main characters all just sort of stopped talking so they could light up and get their cigarettes started, like that was a perfectly acceptable use of airtime.  

Bulma’s solution is to make Gohan a disguise that he can change into at the push of a button.    Gohan is amazed that such a thing is even possible, but she says she can knock it out in two hours.  

While she works on that, Gohan goes to hang out with Trunks.   Not the one from the future, but the baby we last saw in Episode 193.

Trunks just started training with Vegeta, who feels he’s old enough to learn from him.  So naturally he puts in an appearance and chastises Gohan for losing his edge in peacetime.   

This episode was a big deal to me when I first watched it in 2001.   By then, I was invested enough in DBZ that I couldn’t wait for Cartoon Network to air the post-Cell Games stuff, so I started buying the tapes.   I think this episode would have been on the third one I got, and it serves as our first look at the cast seven years after the Cell Games.   Until now, all we’ve seen are Chi-Chi, Gohan, and Mr. Satan.   

Also, I was genuinely fascinated to see what Vegeta would say or do in a scene like this.    He and Gohan never interacted much in the first place, and he was a huge dick during most of that time, and the last time we saw Vegeta, he seemed to be at a crossroads.    He declared that he’d never fight again, but what would he do instead?  In this episode, we finally get a semblance of an answer.    He’s been living here, with Bulma, training the whole time, and now he���s planning to train Trunks.    As far as Gohan is concerned, he seems to regard him with a certain degree of respect, warning him that he can’t afford to get flabby.   

Later, Bulma finishes Gohan’s super-suit, which includes gloves and boots from Vegeta’s wardrobe. 

Gohan’s thrilled with it, but Trunks isn’t.   Earlier, he asked if Bulma could make him a costume, but now he’s taking it back.   

On his way home, Gohan passes through Satan City again and decides to give the outfit a test run when he spots a reckless driver.     Look, if I had a muscle-car that was bright yellow and the number 69 on it, I’d drive like a madman too.    This is why I’m not cut out to be a judge.   

The guys ask Gohan who he is, since his ridiculous outfit doesn’t tell them anything, and he pauses to consider what his superhero name should be.   At last he settles on “The Great Saiyaman,” and he does this elaborate pose to emphasize it.    

Hearing this, the two men laugh hysterically, until Gohan gets upset and stomps the roadhard enough to break the pavement.    They quickly apologize and promise to drive safely.  Score one for justice.    

Gohan returns home and Chi-Chi hates his outfit.    Is it really that much different from what anyone else in this show has worn so far?   I mean, Chi-Chi used to wear a cape and a helmet herself.    Does she just think Gohan’s suit doesn’t show enough bare skin?

But Goten loves the Great Saiyaman outfit, so that’s something.    Wait, who?

As Gohan flies to school the next day, the narrator fills us in.    Basically Goku got Chi-Chi pregnant right before he went off to fight Cell, so nine months later she gave birth to this kid and named him Goten.    Of course, if you’re only watching the anime, you would have already seen the boy by now, because he’s all over the new opening credits.  

With his new costume, Gohan can just fly to school under his own power, land on the roof, and  change back to his normal outfit with the touch of a button on his watch.   He says this will save him from having to use Kinto’un to make his commute, but why was he ever using it in the first place?  It’s not like he could let people see that either, right?   Or did Gohan think Kinto’un wouldn’t be that big a deal?

In class, a couple of students are already talking about the new superhero, although they get his name wrong.   I guess “Tireman” does sound a lot like “Saiyaman” if you pronounce it “SIGH-a-man”, like they do in Japanese.    I don’t know why the dub changed it from “SIGH-an” to “SAY-an,” but whatever.   

Anyway, Gohan angrily corrects them on the proper name, and then he has to make up some story to explain how he would know this.    The story here is that Gohan’s so wrapped up in playing a superhero that he keeps forgetting why he wanted the secret identity in the first place.    What does he care if people get the name wrong?     As long as they’re not calling him “Son Gohan”, it works.  

Later, Videl gets a call on her wristwatch, because everyone has a magic watch, apparently.     There’s a hostage situation on a tour bus, so she has to excuse herself from class to go deal with it.   

Gohan doesn’t understand, so Sharpner explains that Videl assists the authorities in crises like these.    She’s basically following in the footsteps of her father, Mr. Satan, and Sharpner assures Gohan that she’s about as strong as her dad is, so she’s more than capable of handling these situations.  

But Gohan doesn’t buy that, because the last time he saw Mr. Satan, he got beat by Cell in one hit.   Okay, yeah, but Perfect Cell is a long way from a gang of busjackers, you know.   I’m not sure Gohan fully appreciates that distinction, though the irony still shines through.   It seemed harmless at the time to allow Mr. Satan to take credit for defeating Cell.   Gohan clearly never waned the accolade.   He’s worried about people finding out he foiled that bank robbery in the last episode.  But Mr. Satan’s faux heroism has now inspired Videl to try to become an actual hero, and she might not be as lucky as her father.   

So Gohan excuses himself to go to the restroom and decides to back up Videl as Great Saiyaman........ except he doesn’t know where the bus terminal is.   

Meanwhile, at the bus terminal... HAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT IS WITH THIS GUY?    Why is he covering his entire face with his bandit mask?    How does he see what he’s doing?    What’s with the chicken hat?   This is insane, and it’s great.  

The bus they’ve taken over is full of old people, who seem unconcerned about being used as hostages.    I think the deal here is that these guys just got done robbing a bank, then fled to this bus when the cops came after them, and now they’re hoping to use the bus to escape.   

I feel like this is some sort of anime trope, with senior citizen tourists being completely unworried about what’s going on around them.    I’m mostly thinking of that episode of Hellsing Ultmate where Alucard and Father Anderson were about to throw down in a museum until Seras led a tour group between them to defuse the situation.    

Anyway, this lackadaisical attitude irritates the crooks, but they still pose for a photo when asked.   

Then Videl arrives in the air vehicle she uses for these situations.  

So basically, Videl doesn’t have super powers OR a costume, and she just flies into a situation and starts whooping ass whenever she gets a call on her watch.  What exactly is she doing that the cops couldn’t have done?    I mean, at least they had guns.   

So Videl jumps on the bus and crashes through the wndow and starts opening up a can of whoop-ass on these guys.    She’s basically Batman without the suit, which is pretty awesome.   

Then one of the old people takes a photo of her, and she blushes.    Awwww. 

Unfortunately, Videl was so busy kicking butt that she failed to notice no one was driving the bus as it rolled off a cliff.     But Gohan’s here in time to catch it, and everything’s okay.   

And I guess this puts Videl’s character into perspective.    A lot of critics point out that she never really got any development as a fighter.   When she appears in video games, they usually have Gohan or Great Saiyaman show up to help her as part of her finishing move.   I think a lot of fans, especially female ones, wanted to see Videl train until she got strong enough to hang with the Z-Fighters, and it just never happened.  

But, I mean, this is her second appearance, and the debut of the idea of Videl as a crimefighting heroine, and she’s already gotten in over her head.    She’s not nearly as goofy as Mr. Satan, but she’s more like him than the audience might care to admit.    As impressive as she was on that bus, she nearly got herself killed.

Gohan introduces himself as the Great Saiyaman and she’s as put off by his costume and poses as everyone else so far.    Then Gohan addresses her by name and flies off.   

Videl’s all like “How does he know my name?”    But doesn’t everyone in town know Videl?    The people on the bus recognized her.   The crooks recognized her, which was why they opened fire as soon as she landed on the bus.   Why wouldn’t a new superhero know her?  

So Gohan’s pretty pleased with himself, and the narrator assures us that Gohan’s secret won’t be exposed, right?     Right?    You’re shaking your head, why is that?

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #great saiyaman saga #gohan #videl #vegeta #bulma #trunks #chi chi #goten #erasa #sharpner #mr satan #cell #perfect cell

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 184

Last time, Cell wanted Gohan to get angry so he’d power up and be a more challenging opponent, so when beating him up didn’t work, he pooped out a bunch of blue clones of himself and sent them to attack the other Z-Fighters.   That is a real sentence that is an accurate description of what happened, astonishingly enough.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the Cell Juniors’ beatdown, but to cover the highlights... Goku never ate that senzu bean after his match with Cell, so he’s too worn out to defend himself properly.

Piccolo notices this and he helps out Tien and Yamcha so they can run interference for Goku.     

This is a pretty cool scene, although it’s kind of hard to square with the Cell Juniors beating them up later.  

Case in point, Vegeta’s fresh, and probably the strongest guy in this group, but a Cell Junior repels his ki blast like it’s nothing, and works him over pretty good.    I don’t think they ever take him or Trunks down, but it’s hard to understand how the others could put up much of a fight when Vegeta and Trunks are having this much trouble.

At this point, Gohan’s horrified, because they’re all going to die, and Trunks is the only one who could be wished back with the Dragon Balls.    And he can’t stop it, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t know how.   

Meanwhile, Mr. Satan’s group convinces him to withdraw from this battle, but before they go, Android 16′s head speaks, and asks Satan to take him over to Gohan.   

Jimmy Firecracker insists that this would be madness, since these people are clearly monsters, and Mr. Satan has nothing to prove to the likes of them, but 16 appeals to Satan’s pride, and he agrees to help.

As he puts it, all these guys we’ve never heard of are laying it all on the line to fight Cell, including a child, so if he--the champion-- ran away now he’d be a laughingstock.   Would he, though?   It’s pretty clear that Jimmy wouldn’t think that, and he’s maybe the biggest Mr. Satan mark around.

The truth is that Mr. Satan would be disappointed in himself if he failed to act now.   16 isn’t asking for much, but he seems to think it’ll make a difference, and that’s why Mr. Satan came here.   Beneath all the gloryhounding and shameless self-promotion, he really does care about being the world’s hero.  

So Satan tosses him over to Gohan, just as Cell is ordering his kids to finish off the Z-Figthers.  

16 appeals to Gohan’s morality, telling him that it’s not wrong to fight in the service of good, because some opponents can’t be reached with words.    I don’t know if this was really Gohan’s problem here or not, but it makes sense.   Gohan doesn’t enjoy fighting the way the other Saiyans do, and maybe his gentle nature is holding him back.  

As 16 begs Gohan to defend the nature he so loved, Cell walks up and stomps on his head, destroying him for good.

Okay, here’s my favorite shot in this episode.    We see pieces of 16′s head land on the ground, including this microchip with an LED light, and it flickers a few times before fading out.   I assume this is supposed to be his brain or something, or maybe it’s just meant to symbolize it, but it’s clear that he’s gone for good this time.

And then....

Aw, snap!

No one was entirely sure what would happen if and when Gohan lost control, but this definitely seems to qualify.

As he cries out, everyone stops what they’re doing and looks at him, because they can feel the awesome ki he’s putting out.  

The insert song for this scene is “Unmei no Hi - Tamashii VS Tamashii”, or “Day of Fate - Spirit vs Spirit”    Take a listen.

I didn’t hear the song myself until I was downloading music off the internet in 2004, and came across a “Japanese Super Saiyan 2 Gohan Theme”.   Later, I found out it was an insert song actually used in the show, and when I bought a DVD containing this episode I was able to see how it was used in the Japanese version.   

Funnily enough, on the Orange Brick DVDs, you can watch the Funimation Dub with the original Japanese score, but the music is cut out of that version.    From what I understand Funimation never got the rights to use the song that way, which is weird because they apparently had the rights to put it in the original version on the same disc.   

For my part, the most chiling part of this is when the music is playing, and no one is speaking, and we see Cell wondering just what he’s unleashed, and the narrator finally says “At last...”  Well, he says it in Japanese, but it still works.    It’s really all he needs to say, because we all knew it would end up like this.    It was just a matter of time.  

Even Goku looks amazed, and he was the one who expected this to happen.   So where do we go from here?

Oh, yeah, and the last shot is on Gohan’s face, as his tears evaporate away in the winds kicked up by his enormous aura.    You can cry and still kick his ass.

So what was it exactly that pushed Gohan over the edge?    Personally, I think he needed to see something as shocking as 16′s death.     The sight of a defenseless robot head, selflessly asking Gohan to defend birds and trees, and then he gets snuffed out by some heartless monster who had already taken everything else away from him.    Well, maybe that was the last straw.  

I sort of wonder if 16 realized that it would take someone’s actual death to put Gohan in the mood, and he decided that his life was a better sacrifice than anyone else’s.   Or maybe it was blind chance.   The problem with Gohan’s outbursts in the past was that there was no real way of knowing when they’d come or how long they’d last.    Maybe if 16 had waited this would have happened anyway.    

In any event, it has happened, and now the game has changed.     Z stands for the end, but not yet.

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #cell games saga #gohan #cell #perfect cell #goku #piccolo #yamcha #tien #vegeta #mr satan #jimmy firecracker #android 16

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 168

The announcement of the Cell Games has sent the entire world into a panic.    Even these giant dinosaurs are fleeing in terror.    What I don’t understand is where everyone thinks they can run to.   Cell said he was going to kill them all.

Oolong proposes they use the spaceship at Bulma’s house to flee into outer space.   Fuck you, Oolong. 

Downstairs, Krillin flips out and tries to rush out to fight Cell right now, because he feels so guilty about allowing Cell to become perfect.    Yeah!  We don’t need to wait nine days!   Let’s have the Cell Games TONIGHT.    

But Master Roshi forbids him to throw his life away on a battle he can’t win.  Instead, he tells him to wait for the Cell Games if he intends to fight at all.   I like the way this scene is written.   We all know Krillin doesn’t have a chance, because he already fought Perfect Cell and couldn’t do anything to him.    But Krilin feels like he has to die trying because this is the only way for him to atone for his mistake.      And Roshi gets that, even if he doesn’t agree, so his compromise is to ask Krillin to wait ten days before restoring his honor, when he’ll have the best possible chance of surviving the effort.

By contrast, I think Yamcha’s already accepted that he just can’t participate in this battle.  He’s gonna go, and maybe help if he can, but after he saw Cell blow up that town after his announcement, Yamcha knows he’s out of his league.    Krilln knows it too, but for him, not fighting Cell isn’t an option.    He can’t live in this world knowing he has to share it with the monster who swallowed 18.  

Up on Kami’s Lookout, everyone is waiting in line for the next turn in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.   Well, not Tien, since he doesn’t think a year in the chamber will do him enough good to beat Cell.  I think he just hasn’t left this place since Goku brought him here the day before.    But Piccolo plans to use the HTC, and Vegeta and Trunks plan to go in again.  

Vegeta agrees to let Piccolo have the next turn, but then he wants the remaining eight days for himself.   That sounds like a pretty good idea.    One day in the chamber was enough for Vegeta to leapfrog the androids and Semiperfect Cell, so imagine how much stronger he’d be if he trained for eight more years.    The problem is that you can’t spend that much time in the chamber.    After 48 hours, the door vanishes, and you can never return to Earth.   

So let’s talk about that for a minute, because Dragon Ball Super really ignored that rule.  I think Goku and Vegeta used the HTC on at least three separate occasions in that show, even though Vegeta used up all of his 48 hours in this arc.    To be fair, the Fusion Saga demonstrated that it was possible to escape the HTC dimension without a door, so maybe that was how Vegeta got around it.   Still, I think it kind of sucks a lot of value out of the concept when you can just re-use it as often as you please.   As much as Vegeta used the chamber in DBS, he never seemed to get that much stronger.  Also, it’s just kind of shitty to have the main characters cheat an extra year of training in whenever they get in over their heads.      I’m pretty sure that’s why Toriyama invented this 48 hour limit in the first place.

So why did he introduce the chamber at all then?    I feel like it works in the Cell Sagas because it serves as a secret weapon the Z-Fighters can use to counter all of Cell’s secret advantages.   This whole conflict has been about superior intel.   Gero spied on Goku for years, hoping to collect enough data to design a superior warrior.    To that end, his plan depended upon his ability to project how strong Goku would be at a certain point in the future.  But Goku turned Super Saiyan on Namek, and Gero had no idea.    Goku also got a warning from Future Trunks, so Gero’s projections were further thrown out of whack.    But Gero had reinforcements, and that surprised Goku’s team.   So Goku busts out the Time Chamber as a way to close the gap.    By training in there, where time moves at a different pace, they could power up beyond what Dr. Gero could have anticipated.    That’s why it works in this story.    It levels the playing field.  

In the Buu Sagas, they only reintroduce the Time Chamber to illustrate that it won’t be very helpful this time around.  But Dragon Ball Super never worried about whether a gimmick actually helps a story.    They just used the Time Chamber so they could reference the DBZ episodes that used the Time Chamber.    It was never about telling a story there, it was about reminding fans of something they already knew about.  

The bigger question I have is how the 48-hour rule works.    Let’s say Piccolo and Vegeta go in the Time Chamber together.    Vegeta’s already used it for 25 hours, while I assume Piccolo has never been in there before.   So after 23 hours, are they both trapped inside?    Is there some magic where Piccolo can use the door but Vegeta can’t?   And how is that reflected in the outside world?   Could Goku not enter the chamber after Vegeta maxed out his alotted time?   

Anyway, Goku and Gohan finally come out, and they’re actually a few hours early.    They sense Cell, Vegeta, and Trunks are all still alive, so they wonder what’s been going on.    But before they get a recap, Goku needs to take care of something important first............................................

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Goku really needs to eat something first, you guys!    BWAH?   The whole world’s in danger and all he can think about is foooooood?    What’s with this guy?    What a hilarious and unexpected thing for a hero to say, it’s very clever.   No, this gag hasn’t been run into the ground.   

It’s not that I have a problem with Goku eating a bunch.   It’s actually very relaxing to watch him eat.   The sound effects are just very, very soothing.    All the dishes clinking, the piles of rice, the stacks of bowls.   I just don’t like how they keep making a joke of this.    As Goku explains, they had food in the chamber, but Mr. Popo’s a better cook than either of them, so this is a better experience.    Is that so wrong?  

Oh, incidentally, they’ve been in Super Saiyan mode the entire time, and Vegeta wonders how and why they managed to do this.    Up to now, it would be very taxing for a Super Saiyan to just hold the form for long periods of time, and they’d be too restless to sit down for a leisurely meal. 

Meanwhile, more panicky Earthlings are trying to flee the cities.    The one little girl is on a train, and she starts getting excited about something she sees out the window.   Her mom wonders what it is...

It’s Cell.

Yeah, me too, kid.   Cell’s awesome.

Fortunately for the train passengers, Cell doesn’t bother with them, but the line of cars waiting at the railroad crossing.    He chucks a car into the traffic just to be a dick.  

And it explodes, because anime.   This episode actually has two exploding cars in it, which is kind of nuts when you think about it.   

This is from earlier in the episode, but this guy just drove into an alley and hit another driver who had the same idea.     I guess they both had a crate of dynamite in their back seats?

Back at Capsule Corp, Bulma’s taking a look at Android 16′s programming, and the code documentation has an awesome picture of Super Saiyan Goku punching Frieza.    Pretty sure that shouldn’t be in 16′s memory banks, seeing as how Gero never had any spy robots on Namek to record that moment.

The big irony is that 16 has no human parts at all, so he was created with nothing else but a program that boils down to “10 Kill Son Goku, 20 Goto 10″, and yet somehow he made the leap to defending the other androids from Cell, and befriending small animals like birds and Krillin.    The best thing is that DBZ still has a long way to go, so we’ll have plenty of episodes to explore the emergence of 16′s soul, and what that says about the nature of artificial intelligence.    Right?   You’re shaking your head, why are you doing that?

Back at the Lookout, Goku seems interested in the Cell Games idea.   I mean, he was expecting to fight Cell anyway, or possibly Vegeta if he ended up winning, so all Cell has really done is set a date for the battle.   

  Popo gives Goku his classic outfit, and Trunks is all “You don’t have to wear that.” and Goku’s like “I get to wear this, Trunks.”

As for Gohan, he asks Piccolo to give him new clothes resembling Piccolo’s outfit, since he first trained under him.    One Clothes Beam later...

Fuck yeah.    It’s time for the Cell Games Saga, dammit.   No more of this bowl cut Gohan.   No more cosplaying as Vegeta.    It’s time to rock and roll.

Vegeta ask Goku if he thinks he can beat Cell, but Goku hasn’t seen him in Perfect Form yet, so he decides to check him out.   So he just teleports straight to him and they have a talk.  

Goku’s not too impressed with the ring, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that he doesn’t find it all that impressive that Cell believes it will decide the fate of the world.   For as much as Goku enjoys battle, he doesn’t see it as something more than what it is.   He just wants to mix it up with Cell.   If that’s a friendly match or a fight to the death, or the lynchpin to the safety of the cosmos, that’s beside the point.  

Goku asks him about his perfect form, and there’s this cool black and white montage of Cell’s life story.    It’s pretty sweet. 

Anyway, Goku tells him not to kill anyone until the fight.   Cell doesn’t actually agree to that, but what’s Goku going to do about it?  

So Goku teleports back, and he freely admits that Cell’s a lot stronger than he expected, and that Celll would probably win if they fought.    Well, that’s no big deal, because they still have several days to prepare, so Goku can just go back in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for another year.

But Goku declines.    As far as he’s concerned, he and Gohan are all finished training in the chamber.   I guess that figures, since they came out early.   

And that sets up the big question for this arc.    If Goku believes Cell is stronger than himself, why is he so relaxed about this upcoming battle?   Why won’t he train to close the gap?   What does he know that no one else does?  

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #cell games saga #goku #gohan #vegeta #trunks #cell #perfect cell #oolong #puar #chiaotzu #piccolo #tien #android 16 #yamcha #master roshi #mr popo #android 18 #frieza #well in flashbacks anyway

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 122

Goku’s back on Earth, but he’s surprised to see all his friends waiting for him.    When he finds out this mysterious second Super Saiyan knew when he would arrive, he’s even more confused, because he’s never seen the guy before.  The stranger asks to speak with Goku in private, but before he answers any questions, he asks Goku to turn into a Super Saiyan so he can test his powers.

A couple of things I want to point out here.   First, Goku doesn’t bother blocking at first, because he can just sense the absence of malice in Trunk’s initial strike.    When Trunks warns him that he’s going to follow through, Goku uses his finger to defend himself.  This just goes to show that King Cold was way off when he thought Trunks’ sword had some special power that helped him beat Frieza.    But it’s kind of weird that Goku can just read people’s intention just by sensing their ki.   I guess it’s not exactly new.   We’ve seen other characters show this sort of intuition before, but I feel like this is more profound.    The last few episodes have been very coy about just what this Trunks guy is all about, and the story has definitely been leaving open the possibility that he’s a new villain, or at least someone not to be trusted.    And yet Goku sizes up the guy just by the feel of his energy.  

Likewise, Trunks seems to trust Goku more now that they’ve done this little sparring session.   He introduces himself, and explains that he’s Vegeta’s son from twenty years in the future.    He traveled back in time to warn Goku about two new enemies who first show up three years from now.   The subtitles refer to them as “Artificial Humans”, which I’m pretty sure is a literal translation of “Jinzoningen”, and Trunks says they’re “also called Cyborgs”.    The dub calls them “Androids”, and I’m probably going to stick with that term, even though it’s wrong.    We’ll go over all of that later.   

Mostly, I just want to talk about Toei’s vague images of the Android menace.    They just look like two clouds with red eyes.   Also, they fight each other, I guess because Toei didn’t know what else to have them doing.  

Trunks explains that the Androids were the product of Dr. Gero, formerly of the Red Ribbon Army.   No one in the future knows what he was trying to accomplish, because the Androids turned on him and killed him shortly after they were created.   Since then, they’ve been roaming the earth, killing people and destroying things without anyone to stop them.

This is impressive to Goku, because Trunks killed Frieza very quickly, and yet even he thinks of the Androids as monsters.    He’s done his best against them, but there’s two of them and one of him.    Even in one-on-one situations, it’s all he can do to escape.    Goku asks if he has any allies, and the answer is no.    After the initial Android attack, most of the Z-Fighters were wiped out.   Only Gohan escaped, and he went on to teach Trunks how to fight, only to die about twelve years later.   So in the future, Trunks is the only warrior left, and he just isn’t enough.   

Goku asks about his own fate, and Trunks reveals that Goku will never even get to fight the Androids, because he’ll die of an illness before their initial strike.    Goku is disappointed, until Trunks tosses him a bottle of medicine.   He tells him to take it when he begins to experience symptoms.    The illness has no cure in the present day, but in Trunks’ future, it’s easily treated.  

Trunks admits that by doing all of this, he’s changed history, but he feels that this is the only choice he has.   The Androids have ruined the future, and there’s no way to stop them, so he’s gone back to try to rig the game in Earth’s favor.    Strictly speaking, he’s already changed history by traveling back in time at all, and he killed Frieza and met all of Goku’s friends, even if he didnt’ tell them anything.   The irony is that he didn’t actually need to fight Frieza.    In his own timeline, Goku arrived in the nick of time and killed Frieza himself.    But since Trunks saw that Goku was still three hours away in space, he decided to step in.    What he didn’t know was that Goku knows how to teleport, so he could have intercepted Frieza without any trouble. 

This is an important theme with this leg of the story.    Trunks thought he was completely prepared for this trip into the past.    He had resolved to warn Goku about the androids and the heart virus, but that was it.    He didn’t plan to fight Frieza or talk to anyone else.   But there were just enough details that he didn’t know about that things didn’t go as planned.   

Trunks also reveals that Bulma is his mother, and she’s the one who invented the time machine that brought him here.    Goku is shocked to hear that Vegeta and Bulma ended up together, and Trunks explains that she fell out with Yamcha and never actually married Vegeta.   He also pleads with Goku not to tell anyone about this, because he’s worried that he might cease to exist if Bulma and Vegeta don’t hook up.  

Goku asks if he’ll see Trunks again, and he explains that the time machine takes a while to power up.   Assuming he survives that long, Trunks plans to return to the past three years later, so that he can join Goku and the others in the fight against the Androids.  

After Trunks leaves, Goku isn’t sure how to explain this to the others, but Piccolo overheard the whole thing with his enhanced Namekian hearing, so he explains the Android threat, taking care not to say anything about Trunks being Bulma and Vegeta’s love child.   No one’s entirely sure they buy all of this, until they see Trunks take off in his time machine, and watch it blink out of reality.  

This situation is very similar to the plot of the Saiyans Saga, where a Saiyan arrives on Earth, and ends up warning the heroes about a bigger threat that they have to prepare for.    Only this time, instead of Raditz, it’s Trunks, and he’s another good guy.  More importantly, Trunks is from a future where the Z-Fighters already fought this enemy and lost.    This time, they’re even more doomed than they were against the Saiyan threat.   The Saiyans were merely invincible.   The Androids are inevitable.   We already know they can kill the Z-Fighters because, from Trunks’ perspective, they already have.  

Sure, if Goku takes his medicine, that might tip the odds in their favor, and Trunks said he’d help out too, but if Super Saiyans were enough to beat the Androids then Trunks wouldn’t have needed to go back in time.   There’s no guarantee that Trunks’ efforts to change history will actually succeed.    Maybe Goku will die some other way.    If you’re Vegeta or Tien, you can’t assume that things will turn out any differently.    All you can do is try to use the next three years to prepare as much as you can.  

And that’s what makes this crisis so perfect for DBZ.    The end is fast approaching.   And this really is the end.   Trunks has seen it; he knows how this turns out.   And yet he’s refused to accept it.   He’s gone back in time to try to cheat fate.   Now it’s up to the Z-Fighters to do the same.   All they have to do is be better than themselves.   When Vegeta says he’ll survive, he’s defying the future version of himself who didn’t.   He’s got to surpass that Vegeta just to stand a chance.    It’s a tall order, but that’s what this crew is all about.    

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #goku #trunks #trunks saga #vegeta #bulma #piccolo #dr gero #gohan #yamcha #tien #chiaotzu #krillin #puar