A Dragon Ball Fanboy vs. Akira Toriyama part 2: Exploring Concepts and Characters More Deeply

Okay, so they say that the devil is in the details (no not Dabura, or King Piccolo or even Spike the Devilman or Mr. Satan or...sigh Broly.)  Details essentially help us understand something better and make sense of the world.  In manga and anime, these details are often vital for understanding complex powers or situations.  People often complain about the exposition in anime and manga, but for shonen anime and manga, I find such exposition to be a part of the spectacle. It's enjoyable to learn the conditions and limitations of someone's abilities and how they cleverly use those abilities versus others.  The reveal is often a huge event worthy of weeks of hype.

So, what's up with the lack of details in Dragon Ball?  If you watch any other shonen anime, you get tons of details but not DB.  I believe that has to do with Toriyama's simplistic style.  He writes his stories on the fly and when you don't work with notes and carefully laid out plans then details simply become inconvenient.  I'm not trashing his style, because it's that same style that kept me glued to my T.V. every week waiting for a new episode.  But that style does have it's flaws.

Take Yu Yu Hakusho for instance.  It's a show very similar to DBZ in terms of action, but YYH takes its time to flesh out its character motivations, powers, and even world.  Overall I find YYH more enjoyable to watch than DBZ even though I'm a bigger DBZ fanboy.  YYH has multiple types of energy or ki for it's warriors to fight with and each warrior specializes in his/her own uses for it.  It's not all beams and fisticuffs there even though there's plenty of that too.  Sub characters are also given ample spotlight thanks to distinct motivations and abilities.  All the top shonen anime/manga nowadays delve fully into concepts that they've introduced and diversify and classify powers and abilities.  It keeps those shows fresh.  Look at One Piece, Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, Fairy Tail, Law of Ueki, and even *shudders* Bleach.

What does Ki do in the Dragon Ball universe? 

After watching the brilliant explanation and applications of Nen in HxH, I find the vagueness of Ki in the Dragon Ball universe more than a little disappointing.  Being a Dragon Ball fanboy, I know what it does.  It makes you stronger if you have more of it, but at this stage I think they should have someone break down ki and its uses in Dragon Ball Super.

Okay, so as I lifelong Dragon Ball fan, I know that ki:

1. Raises your physical strength.
2. Raises your speed.
3. Raises your durability.
4. Allows you to fire beams and other ki based projectiles.
5. Allows you to fly.
6. Allows you to detect other ki signatures.
7. Allows you to feel the depth of a person's ki and positive or evil intent.
8. Improves your vision or ki sensing.
9. Allows you to mask your presence.

I only know this because I've watched every episode of mostly all the english dubs of DB and DBZ and the Japanese Dragon Ball Kai.  Coming in fresh, it's impossible to know that ki is the sole reason for all this.  I used to think that it was simply the characters doing all this because their bodies were strong, like Superman.  Even for us who've seen the show a million times, there's enough vagueness to allow us to interpret all of this how we choose.  In the show nowadays, if a person has more ki, they are simply better than everyone else.  No one specializes anymore, it's all about that vague concept of "strength" in Dragon Ball.  For instance, on Namek after Vegeta gets blasted by Krillin and gets his Zenkai boost, it's implied that he's become a great deal stronger simply because he can see Frieza's movements.  But the Zenkai boost only improved the amount of ki he could generate or did it improve his vision as well.  Did he train his senses as Krillin was blasting that huge hole in his stomach?  No, none of that is true.  The Zenkai boost simply made Vegeta strong, and if you're stronger in Dragon Ball that means you get better at almost all those categories above without any sort of specialization.

Specialization

Super can incorporate fighter stats instead of power levels similar to Xenoverse.

I think having characters specialize in certain aspects of ki application is what can balance the show again.  Instead of having ki granting more of everything, how about we have characters choose to specialize in speed or power, or ki generation, or ki manipulation?  It's probably too late for the guys at the top to be affected by this, but if there's ever a show about a new generation then they should have specializations.  Otherwise the show will simply always be about "I'm stronger than you so I win."  That will get stale after a while unless the action and fight choreography improves in DBS.  If we're watching a straight up combat show then I need the action to match up.

My take: With Super, I'd introduce specializations into the mix to add strategy to it.  Like advantages and disadvantages.  I'd classify the different fighters.  Goku and Vegeta would be balanced types but you'd have others who specialized in beam attacks, others ball attacks, others fist fighting, others defensive fighting, power, speed, etc.  Certain types would be better at fighting other types.  Even balanced types like Goku and Vegeta would have specialties like Goku's beams or Vegeta's ball or kick attacks.  It would be the same fights DB is known for, but with an added strategic edge.

Kaioken

We need a definite reason for why the humans and Piccolo didn't learn this or we need to know if they did learn it at some point.  I mean, crap, why wouldn't they?  Same goes for the other techniques like instant transmission.  I know we want to keep everyone original, especially Goku, but why wouldn't these career martial artists seek out these powers?  IT I understand, but Kaioken was right at their fingertips.  Kaioken does nothing at this point of the show anyhow (unless you can raise it's level something crazy)

My take: Just give it to the humans.  After hearing of Frieza's imminent return, the Z humans return to Kaio-sama to gain techniques to stave off this pending invasion.  After a quick day long cram session they master the technique, showing that they are still capable fighters despite being so weak in comparison to current threats.  There's really no need to continue shitting on these characters.  Show them being useful and smart for once.  Afterwards have Piccolo train on Namek to learn some ancient Namekian powerup similar to Kaio-ken, but with fewer drawbacks.  Bam, now he and the humans are somewhat relevant again.  All Gohan has to do to keep his relevance is some pushups then he's back at his Buu Saga level which is damn impressive.

The Mystic Powerup

Just what the hell is it?  And why does Gohan keep losing it so often?  What is it in comparison to the god ki?  Can other people have this power drawn out of them?  Does the power have some divine nature to it.  Or is it just a pointless, ineffective plot device?

The Three Eyed Clan

Can we just put this one to rest?  Toei and Toriyama can let us know if they exist in canon or they can make a throwaway joke about it letting the fandom know that they never existed and Tien's power comes from his crazy genius potential for creating new techniques.  Tien has always been very interesting and his potential seemed to be on par with Goku's at the beginning.  What a shame that he suffered such character decay and with so many mysteries about him unanswered.

Dabura's Demon Realm

I would say more about this, but it appears that Xenoverse and (probably to a greater degree) Dragon Ball Online has made mention of and used characters from the demon realm.  Dragon Ball Online is canon as far as I know.  I'll just say that there's infinite potential to be explored here especially if some demons as strong as Dabura, if not stronger, reside here.  It'd be a great test for the non-saiyan Z-fighters.  Hell, even Gohan could possibly find a challenge here, or maybe a new cool ally for Goku and Vegeta or a demonic rival vying to be the Demon God of Destruction.  Ooh, maybe Piccolo trains here, the Makaioshin are direct rivals to the gods (Kais/Kaioshin) after all.

Those are just a few of the questions plaguing the minds of DB fans.  DB is strangely one of those shows with the largest amount of fan theories and speculation.  While this is fun to some degree, it's also painful because many of these curiosities can be easily put to rest with simple explanations.  The frustrating part in all this is when stuff like this is disregarded, thrown away, or simply forgotten about and no explanation was given to why it existed or its applications.  Kaioken, for instance, could've stuck around for a while thanks to its utility for characters without transformations.  It especially fit Tien, a character who already fights with heavy strain life or death techniques.  And considering that he trained with Kaio-sama longer than anyone else, it just doesn't make much sense for him not to know the technique.

Then there's stuff like why did Vegeta never go SSJ3, why his rage power boost as a SSJ2 put him over SSJ3 Goku against Beerus, this new Namekian Book of Legends, what happens to the Nameks absorbed by Piccolo.  There's also curious stuff that has no chance of getting mentioned in Super, like why was Piccolo able to make such crazy gains in the Frieza and Android arcs, but seemingly hit a ceiling in the Cell arc and beyond?  To their credit, Toei and Toriyama did at least go into why Vegeta has been inferior to Goku for so long.  That's important to know as a DBZ fan.  So I hope they continue this and start taking a magnifying glass to other parts of the show that could be easily expanded upon to the show of many lifelong fans.

If you guys have more of these, let me know so I can comment on them in the future.  So let's now move on.


Next post will be about the new transformations and the usefulness and cool factor of them all especially the new ones.  Til next time, peace!

Movie Corner: Justice League: Throne of Atlantis

Hey new and loyal readers!  I'm here today to share my thoughts on the latest DC animated film, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.  This is my first time doing something like this for a film, animated or otherwise so this is a little different for me.  As with my Video Game and Book reviews, I won't be leaving a numerical, lettered, or star based score but I'll instead list some positive and negative aspects of the film and my thoughts on those.  So let's get right to it!

  

Much improved over Justice League War.

Overall I'd say that I liked Throne of Atlantis but it did a lot of things wrong.  It was a huge improvement over Justice League War and Son of Batman but still carried some of those movies flaws.  I'll do a good point, bad point sandwich to keep this interesting.

Good Point #1: The plot was pretty epic.

We've seen Aquaman's throne story retold many times in the comics and the animated series.  Seems his brother is always trying to usurp him somehow.  But now this one is effectively Aquaman's origin story and it's really good.  Aquaman is now trapped between two worlds.  He's a surface dweller with an Atlantean mother.  There is a shadowy plot brewing in Atlantis and the queen (Aquaman's mother, of course) is trying to keep aggressions between the surface and her kingdom from boiling over while two others are trying to undermine her and start a war on the surface.  In order to keep a lasting peace the queen has sent out her loyal servant Mera to find her son Arthur to rule Atlantis and bridge the gap between the two worlds.  All the while we learn that the Justice League are not team players as Cyborg tries to assemble the crew to investigate what's causing military submersibles to disappear.  Eventually everything comes to a head and Arthur is in the middle of a huge war between the U.S. military, the Justice League, and Atlantis.

Now to counter that we have...

Bad Point #1: Too many events, too many characters, too little time.

How do you make 8 Justice League members look cool and useful in an hour long movie?
Short answer: You don't.

This movie is most likely following events of the comic.  I haven't read this New 52 arc yet but I assume this to be the case, correct me if I'm wrong.  Because of that they are cramming a lot of content into just over an hour.  You don't really grow an overwhelming attachment to anyone because of this.  It just feels like a movie filled with disjointed vignettes.  Aquaman, Orm, and Cyborg come out of this with the strongest characterizations and it looks like they try the same with Superman and Wonder Woman's relationship but that falls flat and feels like wasted footage.  Everyone's kind of just there even in the fight scenes where they'll do an attack and then it cuts to another League member doing an attack and then the next just to give everyone screen time which I applaud.  I just wish that we got more screen time and a purpose for these characters while they were there.  Just one of them could accomplish what it takes all of them to do.  Even Aquaman's story feels abridged here to give the other characters some screen time.  Oh and the ending was way too short.  The way that the villain loses after such a tremendous showing of power will have you rolling your eyes.  It's like they didn't quality test this last part.

Good Point #2: Kickass action scenes and animation.

The bar fight with drunken Aquaman comes to mind here as well as Mera's fight with the Atlantean assassins which reminded me of both Avatar the Last Airbender and Mortal Kombat. They put a lot of work in to make these smooth and it really shows.  DC animation and their overseas team deserves a lot of praise here.

 

Finish Him!

Bad Point #2: Everyone's always posing.

Whenever the characters aren't in action they just look awkward, stiff, and overly muscled.  Everyone's always in a fighting pose especially the guys whenever they're just standing around.

Okay that was a frivolous point so I'll instead go with...

Bad Point #2: Flat Dialogue.

There was very little charm in this script and almost no wit to speak of.  It was very by the numbers and actually pretty juvenile but not even close to as bad as Justice League War.  Because of this I only found a few of the characters likable like Aquaman, Mera, and Cyborg.  Actually Orm was interesting with his over the top haughty way of talking.  I was reminded of Loki from the Marvel movies and that's funny because Aquaman seemed a little like Thor here.

Good Point #3: The women in this movie kick major butt.

Mera steals the show here in terms of action.  She is a highly trained Atlantean soldier or sorceress or something and uses water and some Atlantean martial arts to make quick work of the bad guys.  She is initially even more effective at fighting than Aquaman who fights like a brute, a drunken brute, even when he's sober.  She and Wonder Woman get some really cool scenes to show off in.  **Side note, I can't be the only one that noticed that she borrowed this outfit from Street Fighter Alpha's Chun Li.

Cosplay is the sincerest form of flattery eh, Mera?

Maybe Green can be my Player 2 outfit?

Bad Point #3: Green Lantern, Flash, and Shazam seemed mostly useless here and unnecessary.

Green Lantern and Shazam were also barely funny.  I like Green Lantern but I'm not the president of his fan club and even I can see that he is handled in a way that makes him completely unlikable in these movies.  He has hardly any redeeming traits and that's a shame considering that Hal Jordan is actually a really cool and interesting character but every chance DC gets they like to crap all over him in these team movies and wonder why his solo stuff doesn't do as well.

Continuing that point, what's up with Green Lantern and Shazam's humor?  It's so immature and tactless.  I can understand this with Shazam I suppose since he's technically a child still but did we really need two of these characters?  Is this a movie for kids or adults?  I think that was forgotten as they were writing it since there's a nice amount of profanity in it.  Oh and Green Lantern's constructs are so lame here only doing further injustice to the character.

Really!?  A giant vacuum cleaner?

Even GL is unimpressed.

Final Thoughts

This was a cool Aquaman movie with some Justice League parts shoehorned in.  All the stuff with Aquaman was really cool and I would've enjoyed seeing more of his training, adjustment to Atlantis, and reluctance to take the throne.  This could've been done better without the League in it but it was cool seeing them there too.  Overall I liked it and I hope that DC's movies continue to improve, if not then I'm signing every petition that I can find to reinstate Bruce Timm at the helm of these projects.  By Zeus' beard that man is a genius!  If for whatever reason you still think Aquaman's a joke (probably because you're a pop culture drone) then this is the movie that proves he's not which I'm sick of saying because Aquaman hasn't been a joke since Super Friends went off the air and let me remind you that everyone was a joke in Super Friends.

Abridged version below:

Likes

+Great Plot.

+Superb animation, except when heroes are just standing in stiff poses.

+Great Action.

+Kickass women especially Mera.

+Some standout voice work like Cyborg.

Dislikes

-Too many characters too little time.

-Superman, Wonder Woman, and Lois Lane situation seemed shoehorned.

-Green Lantern, Flash, and Shazam seemed mostly useless here and unnecessary.

-Lantern's constructs are lame and don't give any sense of his coolness.

-Shazam and Lantern are supposed to be comic relief but neither are very funny in this with their middle school humor.  Is this movie for kids or adults?

-Stiff poses.

-Some poor dialogue and sometimes spotty voice work.

-I still don’t like Batman’s new voice, from Jason O’ Mara.  Bruce Greenwood from Under the Red Hood and Young Justice should’ve inherited the role after Kevin Conroy.  Greenwood provides the intimidation that O’Mara is missing.

-Many moments are rushed such as Aquaman's introduction in Atlantis, the final fight of Arthur and Orm.

Trivial

=Chun-li suit for Mera

Opinions of DC Animation

I'm a huge fan of DC Superheroes, especially animated shows and movies based off of them.  I've been the biggest fan of Batman and his animated showings since I could remember.  Ever since I read a few JLA comics and saw their portrayals on Bruce Timm's animated Justice League series I've grown to really like characters like The Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, and of course Superman.  Then I read more DC comics and watched the fascinating Justice League Unlimited, read character wiki's, and really learned a lot about the DC history and mythos.  To step into the dangerous world of comic book wars I'll venture to say that DC has always held the advantage over Marvel in terms of animation.  The only thing that came close was Spider-Man's 90's cartoon.

Now I say all that because I'm not the biggest fan of the direction that DC animation is going in now.  Instead of original content they've instead settled for making abridged versions of existing comics storylines except with some tweaks both minor and major.  This isn't always a bad thing as many of these adaptations were really good: Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and 2, Batman Year One, Under the Red Hood, Justice League the New Frontier, and Flashpoint Paradox are just a few that come to mind.  I didn't like Justice League War or Son of Batman very much because of the poor characterizations for characters like Deathstroke, Wonder Woman, and Darkseid.  Shortcuts were taken to make these movies short and it shows.  The problem with War was that every single one of the characters was boring or annoying.  The dialogue lacked wit or charm and just felt flat.  The dialogue seemed immature and yet the action was bloody and there was a large body count.  So it was trapped between two worlds not sure who it wanted its target audience to be.  It could've bridged that gap a lot better like Under the Red Hood, Mask of the Phantasm, or Batman Beyond return of the Joker.  Throne of Atlantis suffers from a few of the same problems only it’s mostly a huge improvement.