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NikkolasKing posted:I grew up with DBZ just like most people my age and I suppose I owe it something for being so popular that Funi could introduce me to Dragon Ball but... It's so terrible in comparison. I can't think of another mangaka in history who could say "my main character was an alien all along and just forgot because he got dropped on his head." Modern manga fans flip their poo poo when Ichigo turns into his Hollow form and kills Ulquiorra out of nowhere. If Toriyama tried to do that poo poo today, people would fly to Japan just for the chance to personally slap him across the face. When you define the genre, you get a pass for weak plot points like this; it's a challenge that others will have to face. At least the Hollow thing was foreshadowed a fair bit: the equivalent of the 'Goku was an alien all along' in modern times would be like if the protagonists of One Piece arrived at their next island, found a mysterious gate, and discovered their world was just a superadvanced MMMORPG.
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Feb 1, 2014 04:50
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Mister Roboto posted:It's a pity that Toriyama never even tried to explain how Krillin won #18 over. I think whatever jokes Team Four Star makes about the situation is the closest answer we're gonna get.
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Feb 3, 2014 05:19
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aers posted:Toriko is ending in March, leaving us with... Is it? Did it drop off in popularity or did the author decide it was time to wrap it up? I should catch up on it, I left off when they beat up the overwhelming villain by summoning Pac-Man.
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Feb 17, 2014 11:36
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:I thought everyone had already gone level 2 with all the awe "level beyond a super sayian?" and then I was like oh a new level when future Trunks went beyond by bulking up, so when Gohan went beyond those levels it was like uh cool so he's a... forth level super sayian... that's sorta underwhelming. It basically went like this -Super Saiyan: The original form. -- 'Ultra Super Saiyan': A further enhancement of the Super Saiyan form, granting more power and muscle mass with no apparent downsides. It gave Vegeta enough power to dominate Semi-Perfect Cell, but was no match for Perfect Cell. --- 'Ultimate Super Saiyan': Trunks used this form, and Goku discovered it but opted not to use it. It supposedly made Trunks the equal of, or maybe even stronger than Perfect Cell, but his muscles bulked up so much that he couldn't even hit Cell, hence all the power was worthless. Why he didn't just try to beam spam Cell to death, who knows: Power Levels and how they related to the beam attacks always worked weird (Remember the original Ocean dub where they gave the Makkankosappo/Special Beam Cannon the properties of a literal laser and Radditz dodging it meant he could move, as a shocked Piccolo said, 'faster than the speed of light'?) - 'Full Power Super Saiyan': Basically the Super Saiyan form studied inside out and backwards and forwards and used to its maximum ability and efficiency. For all we know, this doesn't even grant a power boost, or one that's weaker than Ultra. This is what Goku and Gohan went with. - Super Saiyan 2. A true proper evolution. Doubles the power of the Super Saiyan form without affecting speed, hence making it a true evolution rather than the other 'improved older models'. Basically, Goku figured out the machine gun, Vegeta upgraded it to a belt-fed machine gun, Trunks created a gatling gun, Goku made some kind of fusion of the AK-47 and F-2000, and then Gohan figured out how to make a portable automatic rail launcher. Broly's was apparently a wholly separate state; the 'Legendary Super Saiyan' which basically functioned like a combination of Ultimate Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan 2. For its problems, I rather liked the DBZ Multiverse comic's explanation that the Legendary Super Saiyan's true danger was that it functioned like a perpetual motion machine, and that the longer Broly stayed in it, the stronger he got, with no upper limit.
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Feb 23, 2014 13:51
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Metal Loaf posted:"It's not for kids! Take me seriously, damnit!" "YOU loving BLEW UP MY HOUSE!"
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Feb 23, 2014 22:30
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Going back a few pages, it's kind of funny (in the 'You are over-analyzing the very silly rarely meant to be taken seriously and not like that anime show' way) that Gohan's being set up as having a completely epic freakout at his dad and hence triggering his SS2 state, because really, it's not his dad he should be mad at. It's his MOM. Think about it. Goku never wanted to get married. Goku didn't even know what marriage WAS. Goku didn't see Chi-Chi and go "This woman, I must be be with her forever." Chi-Chi was the one who basically semi-tricked Goku into marriage based on a promised made in childhood, something she clearly didn't do any thinking about either, and Goku went along with it because he's good-natured and simple. They crack a joke about Kami wanting to make Goku the new Kami, but we could probably assume that had this happened, Kami would have TRAINED Goku in his new position (or not, if Toriyama felt it was funnier, as he was a gag manga writer at heart). No one ever trained (or really gave Goku any aid whatsoever) in being a father; in theory since Chi-Chi wanted to marry him so badly that she invoked a childhood promise, SHE should have done so. But Chi-Chi's attention was always on Gohan. Or rather, Chi-Chi's attention was on what SHE wanted Gohan to be. She wanted him to be a scholar type and not have to take on the world with his fists (then maybe you shouldn't have jumped right into marriage with a renowned FIGHTER then, hmmmm?), which is fine, every parent wants good things for her kid...except she was so manically OBSESSED with this that she's lucky that Gohan didn't rebel harder than James Dean when he became a teenager. Now yes, maybe it was a Japanese thing, and yes, maybe it was supposed to be played for comedy, but when you have a woman who in one manga translation says "Oh, what do I care about the Earth?" in regards to the fact Gohan was needed to save the planet (prompting Yajirobe to ask Goku if he could smack her one) and who half the time comes off as absolutely INSANE in regards to getting her son an education (or rather, make her into the kind of man SHE wants him to be), she really comes off as the more likely source for Gohan's issues. Goku never made any excuses for what kind of person he was, and never tried to hide it: he is who he is. Chi-CHi wanted the marriage, and she basically used it to try and make a child in the vein of her dreams, who cares what he thinks. Really, he should be mad at HER. Then again, this is an Abridged series, where everyone is exaggerated all for the sake of jokes, and Toriyama was never a writer who would be examining the DEEP HUMAN ISSUES and all. But it'd be really funny if Gohan used his issues with his dad to trigger his original Super Saiyan transformation during the Room training and has to have a realization like this to go Super Saiyan 2. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 08:06 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 07:57
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BlitzBlast posted:Yes Gohan should be mad at his mom for being a constant (if overbearing) presence in his life when his main stated issue with his dad is how he is never around. Right, and why is he never around? Because he's a manchild who got raised in the wild and had nothing approaching a conventional childhood, he basically got married because he wanted to eat, and then no one (including, you know, his WIFE) really tried to teach him how to grow up. Goku's primary problem is he's Goku and never had a reason to not be Goku, while Chi-Chi seemed to become obsessed with the idea of a perfect brilliant child once DBZ rolled around. They're two ends of the extreme, but Chi-Chi's the one in a far better position to realize it. It's probably a Japanese thing that's not processing, at heart. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 08:15 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 08:10
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BlitzBlast posted:Man you are either projecting really hard or actually think there's something weird (or for that matter, Japanese) about a mom wanting her kid to have a good education. A good education is one thing. Gohan's constant piles of books that he's seen in front of when we see him studying, and the aforementioned 'What do I care about the earth' (which was in a canon, albeit English translation, instead of an Abridged joke) is something else entirely. Yes, this is a comedic dub of an overall very silly series, but they're arranging scenes for a climax (and doing jokes around it) based on the (really not funny if you think about it) fact that Abridged-Gohan has a lot of repressed anger at his father, and the reasons for why he has that anger in the first place really isn't Goku's fault.
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May 15, 2014 08:28
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Really, this all makes perfect sense considering Goku's life. 1) Spends first ten years of his life being raised by an old martial arts master in the middle of nowhere. Is taught how to fight and survive, and nothing else considering he had no idea what a woman was when Bulma showed up. 2) Goes on first adventure. Experiences nowhere near enough to figure out the world, and keeps running into situations where fighting is the best solution. This is where he actually meets Chi-Chi, who gets the marriage promise out of him with him having no idea what marriage is. 3) Spends months being trained by another old martial arts master, who teaches some stuff about relaxation and thinking, but nowhere near enough. Enters a tournament. Loses. 4) His teacher basically tells him to seek to get stronger. Goes off on another adventure where he fights the Red Ribbon Army. Violence is again the best solution. 5) Goes off on a three year journey around the world to get stronger, by himself. Enters another tournament. Loses. Demon King Piccolo is unleashed. Violence is again the best solution. 6) Spends another few years being trained by God himself to face DKP's son. Enters a third tournament. Wins. Chi-Chi says "Hey, let's get married!" Goku goes along because he doesn't know any better. Start of DBZ. Goku hasn't changed at all, hence it's clear no one tried to give him help in that regard, and Chi-Chi's entirely focused on Gohan. Now take all this and add the fact that Goku fell off a cliff and more or less suffered brain damage before it all started. Add in the Dragon Balls, and no wonder he always wants a good fight, and is willing to let the world burn, put his friends and family in the crosshairs, wish evil demons back to life as good reincarnations, not talk to his family after he died or his friends for years on end. It's all he knows, the kind of ingrained behavior that even his innate nobility and paternal love can't overcome.
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May 15, 2014 10:47
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TheKingofSprings posted:I don't get why everyone's calling SSJ2 Gohan crazy when he was just really, really pissed off. "Really, really pissed off" is when he's kicking Cell Jrs in half. "I'm not going to kill him because I want him to suffer more" is where it tips over into psychosis and sadism.
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May 17, 2014 11:41
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Blue Star posted:What does Toriyama think of his international fans? Does he even know how popular Dragon Ball is around the world? I'm reminded of the first Dragon Ball manga volumes released by Viz, which at the back had old letters from when the original series was being published back in the 80's. Among them was this rather strange letter. "Help! I'm running out of air! Please gather up some air and send it under water via Kamehameha! Thank you!" Toriyama's reply. "Huh? What are you talking about? I don't think you were drowning when you sent me this letter...um...please continue to support my work." I suspect that'd be his reaction to it. "Um...please continue to support my work."
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May 24, 2014 11:15
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WickedHate posted:I hope the "Just punch harder" joke comes back if they do Broly. That's literally how they defeat him. After they spend the entire movie not being able to phase him Goku just decides to punch him harder and kill him in one shot. I always read that as 'Goku used every single bit of power he and all the others had all in one shot and slammed it into Brolly's sole weak point: where he got stabbed as a baby'. So it was an all or nothing shot. That, or Goku actually gave Brolly all the power and between that and Brolly's Legendary Super Saiyan form even HIS body couldn't handle it all and more or less suffered a bad case of explosion, or considering he found a pod and ended up on Earth anyway in Movie 10, at least burned his powers out for a bit.
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Jun 8, 2014 11:24
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I remember once reading this series of essays that theorized what would happen if you removed various characters from Dragon Ball and how events would play out. The problem was, they all ended in 'Eventually Babadi wakes Buu up and kills the universe.'
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Sep 10, 2014 08:50
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I always got the impression that Supreme Kai/Kaioshin was new at his job when Buu originally attacked, and then Buu went and killed all his co-workers and his boss, so now he had to do all their work and had no one to teach him the tricks of the trade. It's probably telling that you can replace Kais (Old Supreme Kai), but Kaioshin/Supreme Kai never did. Maybe he just wasn't qualified. Then again, this works better with the dub's timeline that Buu was sealed hundreds of years ago, while the original writing had him sealed five MILLION years ago. Maybe that's why Bills didn't remember him: it was so drat long ago and by the series canon Freiza was the strongest thing to come along since (since the movies don't count and hence Bojack and Hildegarn don't technically exist, as well as any possible Legendary Super Saiyans).
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Sep 15, 2014 12:06
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Tae posted:Gotenks does a LOT of messing around, I think at his first successful transformation he flew around the world multiple times before fighting Buu. That was the second time. The first time he fused as normal Trunks and Goten, immediately declared he could fight Buu, and then in the manga he's back with comical injuries saying 'He beat the crap out of me.' literally two panels later. (The anime, of course, actually showed this fight). The second time, they fuse as Super Saiyans, do the world flying thing, find Buu, call him out, immediately defuse, and then get the gently caress out of dodge just before Buu comes out of his house to see who's insulting him.
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Sep 18, 2014 10:58
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WickedHate posted:It is a DBZ joke, the punchline being that Naruto and Luffy are both very derivative of Goku. Which isn't to say they are rip offs exactly, but Dragon Ball Z is one of the most influential manga of all time, and Goku is the archtypical shonen protagonist. Heck, so's Ichigo. And Toriko. And Natsu. Basically, if you're doing a shonen manga, the main character is very likely to closely mirror Goku, Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star, or both. Those two basically defined the whole medium when it comes to what main characters are like. Even if there's no combat involved at all. I think that's why Death Note blew up so huge for it's time, in that Light and L were so DIFFERENT from that archtype.
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Sep 30, 2014 11:09
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Was poking through some of my old DBZ stuff as I prepared to move. A few observations... 1) Forget Freiza, the person who really got chumped by DBZ's out of control power creep was RADITZ. One of the translations of the second Japanese DBZ episode's title was 'History's Greatest Warrior is Goku's Older Brother.' History's Greatest Warrior. And in context, why not? Both Goku (who barely beat Piccolo, who defeated GOD at the end of Dragon Ball) and Piccolo teamed up against him and they couldn't match him: they had to use trickery, a Gohan ex Machina, and a sacrifice to do him in. It's also fun to see Nappa do his first blast attack and make an incredibly deep hole and Piccolo flipping out that the blast was so intense he can't even see the bottom of the hole it made and how strong that makes Nappa. 2) Interesting note on when we first meet Nappa and Vegeta: Vegeta suggests using the Dragon Balls for immortality ("No death! No age!") as we all know, but not a single mention or hint of Freiza and how this could be used against him. Makes one wonder just when Toriyama came up with the Freiza idea and how seat of his pants the writing of Dragon Ball was. You'd think maybe they'd drop a hint in re-releases considering the whole story is now told. (Freiza does, however, muse on Super Saiyans early in his incredibly long arc) 3) When Vegeta tries and fails to steal the third wish just before the actual Freiza fight starts, the translation says "You won't be able to kill me now, Freiza! I'll wear you down! Sooner or later, some day, I will defeat you!" Which indicates 1) Immortality seems to come with safeguards that would prevent issues like being cut in half, or buried alive, and so on, or 2) Vegeta THINKS it does and might have gotten a very rude surprise. It also seems that Vegeta basically planned to play The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon against Freiza.
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Dec 2, 2014 00:05
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I guess the fact that Toriyama never planned for any of his canon villains to succeed meant he never had to actually nail down what 'immortality' was. Consulting the Dragon ball wiki suggests that there are several forms of immortality that function under 'never age', but it being granted by the Dragon Balls solely based on Garlic Jr suggests someone who gains that kind of immortality cannot die at all, in any way. Since Jr was never cut in half or buried under something heavy, we'll never know if that meant 'never die and suffer forever' or 'your body will simply not let itself be cut and will render itself able to function without air'.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:10
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Freiza's the go-to villain because he's the source of everything that happens in the whole series. He recruited the Saiyans as soldiers (hence giving them spacefaring tech) and then blew up their planet, ensuring that no one could, or would, go out to check on the planet that Kakarotto had been sent to until Raditz did years and years later, giving Goku time to grow up and form the moral connections and the 'networking contacts' that allowed him access to training methods that let him beat Vegeta and Freiza. Goku being on Earth results in Gero hating him and making Cell, and while Freiza has no connection to Buu it was his actions that started Goku and co onto the path of the godlike amounts of power and tricks that would be needed to beat something like that. Freiza's actions created the whole series. Then again, he needed to act in tandem with numerous other characters: I once read this series that theorized what would happen without a variety of characters, and they all ended up as "Buu wakes up eventually and kills everyone". But Freiza is always the source of the first turns of the gears.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:16
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Webbeh posted:Exactly. When was the last time we saw Roshi in a fight? The Broly DBZ movie? The last time he seriously fought was Movie 2. In Movie 8 he just made faces. RZApublican posted:This actually sounds kind of interesting, ending aside, do you have a link? Unfortunately, this was years and years ago and it's long vanished into the depths of the internet. I remember one setup had Goku actually replacing Kami and when Raditz showed up he went "Huh, god of a planet huh? That's actually pretty sweet." and he left Freiza to run the world with Goku. Then Buu eventually woke up and killed everyone.
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Dec 6, 2014 00:26
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RZApublican posted:He didn't get over. Which gave birth to the minor meme 'Rebboj is...'
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Jan 15, 2015 10:28
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New Leaf posted:I am curious how powerful Bardock really was as a Super Saiyan. He didn't even kill Frieza's ancestor, and he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near as strong as Goku was when he turned. He may well be the weakest Super Saiyan ever. Bardock's power level is given to be 'around 10,000' in his OVA; depending on if he got a Zenkai after recovering from his death slash time travel trip, and considering the Super Saiyan state multiplies your power 50x, it could be anywhere from 500,000 to, according to older data I recall that says you need at least a power level of 100,000 before you can trigger the Super Saiyan state, over 5 million.
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Feb 19, 2015 10:20
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projecthalaxy posted:I wish they had kept up with power levels, at least in Daizenshuu or something, until the end. I want to know how many quadrillions Super Vegito had. It's always funny when you get little so-called 'official later Power Levels' which at the very least lack access to Daizenshuu, and hence they end up not making sense, like when I puzzled out according to 'the official numbers', Super Saiyan 3 Goku was stronger than Super Saiyan Gogeta in Movie 12, yet Goku got his rear end kicked and the whole point of the film was the fusion, which easily destroyed the film's villain. (Cooler's 5th form power level was given at 480 million and Gogeta's 2.5 billion. Goku going Super Saiyan in Film 5 utterly dominated Cooler, so that power must exceed 480 million. Daizenshuu's official stats say Super Saiyan 2 multiplies SS1 by a factor of 2, and Super Saiyan 3 multiplies SS2 by a factor of 4, ergo 480 million to 960 million to 3.8 billion. Boy I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder.)
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Feb 27, 2015 19:56
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Considering Freiza's mortal fear of the Super Saiyan and what two of them did to him, it makes sense that he might subconsciously implement aspects of it when he trained himself to actually try and maximize his potential. Also, I can't help but love the simplicity of this movie. Freiza was so built up during his original run and then once the Freiza arc was over the power creep and filler turned him into a joke, and now twenty years later he gets brought back and just goes 'Oh I never trained' and suddenly he's leapfrogging back over Cell and Buu. Well, maybe not Buu considering his dad warned him to avoid him, but still. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 12:24
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:What is it with Goku that brings out he weirdest One of the big things Dragon Ball Z really introduced to shonen manga was NUMBERS. Like someone said a few pages back, these kind of fandoms tend to attract a certain subset of people whose brains don't work well on some levels. They don't like subtlety, they like binary stuff, and they especially like NUMBERS, because numbers are set and definitive, instead of all the complicated vague poo poo like emotions they have trouble grasping for one reason or another. As far as I can tell, Toriyama didn't just redefine shonen manga, he introduced NUMBERS to it (The only possible earlier example I can think of was 'horsepower engines' used in Astro Boy's Pluto arc, and back then manga was still being created and was nowhere near as extensive), so a lot of DBZ fans just ignore the actual point of power levels (they're a crutch that can't accurately measure fighters, ie they're bullshit), because that makes things 'vague' and 'requiring understanding' again, while NUMBERS doesn't. It's basically the exact same thing that happened when Neon Genesis Evangelion came out and its showrunner wanted to take the concept of 'a proper Japanese woman should be respectful and submissive' and decided to make a point by going 'Okay, here's that desire taken to its logical end point, a woman with absolutely no will whatsoever, she'll do whatever you want without question'. What he WANTED to show was that something like this would be incredibly disturbing, but he fundamentally misunderstood that the people he was trying to make a point to did not have, in classic Dunning/Krueger fashion, the capacity to understand this, and instead more or less just created a whole new concept for otaku to jack off to. So despite the whole point of Power Levels, a lot of DBZ fans just keep going back to them, because they're NUMBERS, and NUMBERS are solid, unchanging, and easily understood. Who cares about the confusing things like 'author intent'? Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Mar 6, 2015 |
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Mar 6, 2015 17:20
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about poo poo in this thread?
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Endorph posted:also frankly i'd rather read a thousand power level debates before a death of the author circlejerk fest where fate/zero is clearly about the war in iraq That's just a fundamental issue of fandom, rooted in the same issues that spawns NUMBERS. Instead of debating, people get it into their heads that if they try and wield their assessment and opinions like a weapon, they'll 'get some sort of real life Xbox achievement', as another thread on this forum put it. It's often tied to the fact that these people don't have anything else to define their lives by, so they define it by the entertainment they consume and hence treat anything that isn't worshipful dick sucking as a personal attack on them (See: Gamergate).
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Mar 6, 2015 17:34
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:One thing I actually like from GT is Vegeta's Final Shine attack. I wish that move was canon. I never got what was so special about it. Big Bang was a sort of expanding energy sphere, Final Flash was a two handed blast that took forever to charge...Final Shine was just "I'm throwing this blast one handed BUT IT HAS A NAME". It didn't seem to be anything special.
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Mar 7, 2015 12:01
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So, poking around the Dragon Ball wiki, and I was amused to see that (via a movie pamphlet, but still), Pilaf's power level is given at 40. Yes, the shrimpy emperor who never fought without using a giant robot and has his minions do everything is four times stronger than series-starting Goku and eight times stronger than a man with a shotgun. Sadly, Yamcha doesn't get any power level in any material until the start of DBZ, so I can't tell if he's stronger than Yamcha too.
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Mar 12, 2015 01:10
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e X posted:Is Freeza actually that popular in Japan? My personal favorite is Buu, which I know is quite uncommon, and at least in the English speaking world, Cell often seems to dominate everything. Speaking of Cell and the earlier Super Hell Fighter 17 debate, that brings me to my favorite part of the whole thing. So evil doctor from the first GT arc is wandering around Hell and runs into Dr. Gero, and they start talking and go "Hey, you know Android 17? Well yeah, he's incomplete! Let's build another 17, and when they merge he'll be complete and he'll be like 50x stronger than Perfect Cell!' It's just so delightfully LAZY.
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Apr 6, 2015 14:30
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Covok posted:Holy poo poo, Yamcha is wining a fight. It's filler, but, still, it's unprecedented. This was always a favorite little bit of filler, because going by its logic, it means Yamcha magically became stronger than Cell despite having canonically stopped training as a fighter after the Cell Games, on the basis of 1) In filler, villains are causing trouble in hell, Goku and Pikkon go down and Pikkon trashes Cell (in Perfect form, maybe even Super Perfect form) in like six attacks. 2) Further filler has Pikkon fight Olibu (the blonde) in a tournament. Obliu loses, but it's even for a bit, at least. 3) And then that bit of filler where Yamcha effortlessly beats Obliu and another guy. Ergo, by the logic of filler, Yamcha is now stronger than Cell.
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Apr 17, 2015 09:20
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