|
Stallion Cabana posted:Wasn't it also the last time his tail grew back? Like after that he apparently just passed the time where his tail could regrow and it never happened again. Kami specifically used his divine powers to make sure his tail never grew back, like a laser on a pube at a depilation salon.
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 07:28 |
|
|
What about when Piccolo destroyed it after Gohan's rampage post-Radditz? Or was that filler
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:12
|
|
|
So do we have any indication on what exactly Kami's powers are? Not his Power Level...but just what he is and isn't capable of? I know that the dragon can't grant wishes that exceed his creator's power...but does that mean Kami could have brought everyone killed by Freeza back to life on his own? And if so...why did we need the dragon at all?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:16
|
|
|
Because Japanese culture is bathed in religious animism the way that western culture is bathed in Christianity (such that even atheists approach philosophical thought with those concepts as a foundation) the audience does not associate gods with power the way western audiences do. The closest western analog would be the animism of Hellenistic cultures and those they influenced. The Romans believed that every tree and road had a spirit, which was why forests were spooky and crossroads powerful. Kami is more the spirit which inhabits earth than a shepherd who guards the earth, how in Greek mythology a wood nymph is a spirit who inhabits a forest rather than a being with "forest powers." The English dub muddies the issue by calling him the guardian of earth, but I suppose there isn't a better way to communicate his role since "spirit of earth" would imply he's the personification of Earth, which is not at all true.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:26
|
|
|
And even the source material makes it weird since, on the one hand, being 'God' has nothing to do with the Dragonballs, and actual cosmic forces exist separately of him, yet the position apparently means something since he tried so hard at it in the first place, and others do defer to him. Admittedly, the (vague) logic worked well enough prior to the saiyan stuff, since you could have reasoned that whilst Kami could theoretically do those things, he didn't so as not to actively screw up nature or make people reliant on him. But, so that there was a vague hope, and the ability to give them at least something should things go horribly awry, he created the dragonballs so that people could call upon the miracles themselves. The concept of being able to call upon the power of the gods separately of the gods themselves (or whatever other cosmic force you want) is something that does come up a few times in Japanese media (at least of what I can tell from my limited experience of it), so it makes sense to see that idea crop up in the series. It just gets trickier when its made into a pseudo-biological capacity, and one where you can potentially substitute the guy with someone who has visibly been shown to have otherwise nothing going for them beyond some small degrees of flight and healing magic.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:39
|
|
|
I think the best way for us to grasp it is by drawing parallels to Princess Mononoke (and that we get because the forest setting evokes similar stuff from Western ideas.) The big boar guy and the giant wolf mother are both gods, but they get killed. The chief God of the forest appears to be killed but it was just weakened and forced to manifest a limited aspect of itself. There's a clear hierarchy of power among gods, even if they all owe their existence to the forest. So kami is a god and shenlong is a god, but one is clearly more powerful than another. Shenlong can't really be killed, just temporarily put out of commission, just like the main forest God in Mononoke can be restored. The afterlife stuff we see in the Saiyan arc then goes and makes a mess of this by introducing Buddhist traditions but not discarding the animist ones. I'll have to meditate on that and see if I can say anything intelligent about it.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 19:55
|
|
|
Xibanya posted:I think the best way for us to grasp it is by drawing parallels to Princess Mononoke (and that we get because the forest setting evokes similar stuff from Western ideas.) Didn't Kami have to create a new Shenlong after Piccolo Daimyo destroyed him in Dragonball?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 20:23
|
|
|
Drowning Rabbit posted:Didn't Kami have to create a new Shenlong after Piccolo Daimyo destroyed him in Dragonball? Yes.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 20:41
|
|
|
Drowning Rabbit posted:Didn't Kami have to create a new Shenlong after Piccolo Daimyo destroyed him in Dragonball? Yeah but he's basically the same Shenlong. It's not like he's some new dragon we've never seen before.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 20:43
|
|
|
Captain Q posted:What about when Piccolo destroyed it after Gohan's rampage post-Radditz? Or was that filler That still happened even in Kai so I think that happened in the manga as well. Vegeta does mention the moon being gone too, as he planned their visit to the full moon so he wouldn't have to use the Power Ball.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
Captain Q posted:What about when Piccolo destroyed it after Gohan's rampage post-Radditz? Or was that filler Not filler. The Earth moon gets blown up twice in Dragon Ball. First Goku goes Ape during WMAT. Roshi blows up moon to turn Goku back to normal. Sometime between the death of King Piccolo and the third WMAT we see, Goku's tail is permanently removed by Kami and he restores the moon. During Piccolo's training of Gohan, he blows up the moon again.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 21:07
|
|
|
Drowning Rabbit posted:Didn't Kami have to create a new Shenlong after Piccolo Daimyo destroyed him in Dragonball? Naw, Popo just super glued him back together and Kami performed the ritual to restore the dragonballs. tbp posted:the first two arent in dbz so im not counting it, raditz was definitely not iompossible considering they beat him, nappa is the other guy i was thinking of tbh, vegeta and goku fought evenly, and freeza and buu were after recoome.. First off, you suck, second, Raditz was unstoppable in terms of pure strength, the only way they beat him was by essentially using a completely unfeasible trick that amounted to the same effect as a railgun. Thirdly, Vegeta beat the crap out of Goku and only just ran out of strength beating the crap out of the rest. And we met Freeza before we met Recoome, but I figured I'd throw in Buu for regards to every one who was like that in the entire series.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Xibanya posted:Kami specifically used his divine powers to make sure his tail never grew back, like a laser on a pube at a depilation salon. I was talking about Gohan, whose tail was sliced off by Vegeta's Destruco Disk- but not entirely-, then it never came back after that.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 21:29
|
|
|
Goku doesn't actually win a fight in DBZ until Recoome. He then gets tricked by Ginyu, gets beat up by Freeza until Krillin eats it. He then has a heart attack, gets beat up by a clown bot and then loses to Cell. Goku is a failure.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Goku doesn't actually win a fight in DBZ until Recoome. He then gets tricked by Ginyu, gets beat up by Freeza until Krillin eats it. He then has a heart attack, gets beat up by a clown bot and then loses to Cell. ... Nappa?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 21:41
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:... Nappa? Vegeta won that fight.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:15
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Vegeta won that fight. By that stupid fuckin' metric, Goku wins exactly two fights in DBZ. Yakon and Kid Buu. Vegeta on the other hand is apparently the best at winning with that metric, because he beats Nappa, Guldo, Burter, Recoome, Jeice, 19 and Pui Pui.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Vegeta won that fight. Goku won. Nappa's purpose was to strike fear into the heart of the characters and damage them. When he was no longer capable of doing that, he was already dead, story-wise. Vegeta was allowed to kill him in order to show what an rear end in a top hat he was. Similarly, Blue was dead story-wise after Arale beat him up since he lost all of his credibility as a fearsome threat because he had been humiliated despite the fact that he could probably still have killed Goku at that point. The only reason why he stays in the story after that is to show what an rear end in a top hat Red is and how scary Tao is.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
Xibanya posted:Goku won. Nappa's purpose was to strike fear into the heart of the characters and damage them. When he was no longer capable of doing that, he was already dead, story-wise. Vegeta was allowed to kill him in order to show what an rear end in a top hat he was. And yeah, that. You kind of need to look at what Goku's objective is in each fight to see if he "won" or not. Goku dies against Raditz, but his death is much different from, say, Tien's death or Chiaotzu's death. Goku chooses death because that's the only path he sees to victory in that fight, and he succeeds. In comparison, Tien and Chiaotzu also choose death to kill Nappa, but are wholly unsuccesful. Against Nappa he straight up just beats the crap out of him. His objective is to beat the poo poo out of Nappa and he does. Against Vegeta he certainly doesn't win. His objective is to stop Vegeta, and he absolutely fails at that.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:29
|
|
|
The Red Ribbon Army is like a proto-Planet Trade Corp. army. General Blue is like a proto-Vegeta. (hmm, deliberate Nazi allusion vs. a proponent of good breeding) Oh yeah and Bulma wants to gently caress both of them, and actually succeeds with the latter. Hey also Goku and Vegeta are often coded red and blue in merch (although weirdly the kamehameha is blue and galic gun is red...) I don't know what it means but I'm putting that all out there.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:42
|
|
|
It's like poetry. It rhymes.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 22:53
|
|
|
Krillin killed more Saibamen and Frieza mooks than Goku killed of anyone.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 23:10
|
|
|
I didn't like that General Blue was stronger than Goku at all. In my opinion, even Krillin should have been able to take that loser.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 23:12
|
|
|
mabels big day posted:I didn't like that General Blue was stronger than Goku at all. In my opinion, even Krillin should have been able to take that loser. Don't forget General Blue had his telepathy abilities that let him stun people. Speaking of which, there was surprising few enemies with those abilities beyond him and weak Guldo.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 23:15
|
|
|
Rirse posted:Don't forget General Blue had his telepathy abilities that let him stun people. Speaking of which, there was surprising few enemies with those abilities beyond him and weak Guldo.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 23:38
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I thought Chaotzu had psi powers. I guess they just don't scale up with training. His powers only work when his hands are outstetched. As long as the plot demands it. Um. Watch this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Zvquhww80
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2015 23:49
|
|
|
New Leaf posted:Krillin killed more Saibamen and Frieza mooks than Goku killed of anyone. And, of course, Cell.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:08
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I thought Chaotzu had psi powers. I guess they just don't scale up with training. I always forget Chaotzu has those powers too. Probably didn't help he never really used his moves outside of the Krillin fight and his one attempt to try to disable Nappa that ended in failure and him blowing himself up.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:22
|
|
|
Xibanya posted:The Red Ribbon Army is like a proto-Planet Trade Corp. army. General Blue is like a proto-Vegeta. (hmm, deliberate Nazi allusion vs. a proponent of good breeding) I thought the Galic gun was purple? 
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:32
|
|
|
Dragon Ball wiki has a page on telekinesis. Basically a surprising amount of characters have it at almost complete random, to the point where Cell could have gotten it from like four people.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:33
|
|
|
Didn't Goku once randomly read Krillin's mind? As did Piccolo and Kami?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:38
|
|
|
Covok posted:Didn't Goku once randomly read Krillin's mind? As did Piccolo and Kami? Definitely Goku, after he touched down on Namek, probably the other two too although it escapes me when. Hjalmar posted:It's like poetry. It rhymes. This thread is getting dangerously close to the Star Wars thread already.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 00:59
|
|
|
Covok posted:Didn't Goku once randomly read Krillin's mind? As did Piccolo and Kami? That's telepathy.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:09
|
|
|
Stairmaster posted:That's telepathy. It's still fall under the purview of psychic powers, though.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:19
|
|
|
Stairmaster posted:That's telepathy. Rirse posted:Don't forget General Blue had his telepathy abilities that let him stun people. Speaking of which, there was surprising few enemies with those abilities beyond him and weak Guldo. 
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:25
|
|
|
How 'bout the power...to move you?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:27
|
|
|
Couldn't Goku talk telepathically with Krillin and Gohan when Goku was beaten down by Vegeta?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:36
|
|
|
Basically being a good enough punchman gives you psychic powers. This is basically the reasoning for Goku to have psychic powers, even. He outright states that he just "knew" he could read Krillin's mind, and before that he sent mind-messages to Gohan and Krillin somehow. Freeza also has psychic powers, only he uses them offensively to throw rocks at people and trap them in balls which, in his own words, "might kill them".
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 01:51
|
|
|
Blaze Dragon posted:Basically being a good enough punchman gives you psychic powers. This is basically the reasoning for Goku to have psychic powers, even. He outright states that he just "knew" he could read Krillin's mind, and before that he sent mind-messages to Gohan and Krillin somehow. Of course. After all, everything in DBZ is decided by who either punches the strongest or knows some techniques that allow them to punch harder than they normally would. Why would psychic powers be different?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 02:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 07:28 |
|
|
I imagine the reason behind Goku doing that was to A. explain why Son Goku, noted ignoramous, now knew the story so far without having to do a whole chapter where Krillin recaps to him B. show that Goku was like on a whole new level now (again).
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 02:08
|
|