DBZ Elsewhere: The Yamcha Side Story That Made Yamcha Cool Before It Was Cool

Comic Panels by RMK writer and artist of DBZ Elsewhere

Yamcha has always gotten a raw deal for as long as I can remember in the Dragon Ball community.  He's the butt of everyone's jokes and it's not difficult to see why with his huge loss record in the series.  You wouldn't believe it, but there is a sect of us who at one point or another thought Yamcha was pretty damn cool.  Most people who watched a ton of the original Dragon Ball series developed a liking for the character after watching him grow along with Goku, Krillin, Tien, and Chiaotzu.  This month, Yamcha's been getting a fair amount of attention with Dragon Ball Super's 70th episode, a fan favorite, giving him ample spotlight and comedic moments.  He even stole the show by winning the baseball game.  Now there's also a Yamcha Side Story series being planned and the 1st chapter is already out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hYoUg8j1IY).  Yamcha has received a brief resurgence in popularity but before Toei and Shueisha put the spotlight on him, a sole fan decided to give us a glimpse into the past and the day to day worries of a man named Yamcha and that fan is RMK.

I stumbled upon DBZ Elsewhere recently, while searching for chapters of the latest Yamcha side story Dragon Ball Gaiden: Tensei-shitara Yamcha Datta Ken.  While I like the scenario of a fan being reincarnated as Yamcha and using his knowledge of Dragon Ball to make Yamcha great again, it's not really a Yamcha story because it's about another character using Yamcha's body.  RMK's DBZ Elsewhere all about Yamcha and brings up questions that many of us Yamcha fans think of such as who trained him and taught him the Wolf Fang Fist?  It also shows us how Yamcha acts when the Z Fighters aren't around.  RMK really goes in depth when it comes to Yamcha's feelings about being super strong yet parodoxically being weak.  RNK also explores what many would develop if placed in Yamcha's shoes, his failure complex.  Let's be honest, he's always had his share of bad luck and the writers simply blow it off or treat it as a gag, but RMK instead delves deeply into it and shows us how Yamcha might use it to better himself.

I was surprised to find that RMK both wrote and drew his fan comic and that he did so way back in 2003.  I found his writing to be well layered, but not so much that it doesn't resemble Dragon Ball and I found his art to be quite good.  It's not exactly professional quality near the beginning but it stays faithful to Toriyama's style throughout the parts that I read.  I noticed that RMK himself expressed disappointment in his earlier work but I thought it was well done, but I did skip ahead to his one of his later chapters to see if he'd improved and saw a drastic improvement in the fluidity of his style.  I stopped at chapter five so far and each chapter I read added something new to Yamcha's backstory which is something I've wanted from him and Tien for a really long time.

I highly recommend RMK's DBZ Elsewhere comic.  I'll be posting my review of the series once I get deeper into it and it looks like I'll have a ton of chapters to read.  If you want to check it out visit RMK's site at (http://dbzelsewhere.thecomicseries.com/comics/first).


Well that's it for me.  If any of you have read either DBZ Elsewhere or Dragon Ball Gaiden: Tensei-shitara Yamcha Datta Ken let me know what you think of both.  Let me also know what part of Yamcha or Tien's backstory you'd like to know about the most.  Have a great week everyone!

A Dragon Ball Fanboy vs Akira Toriyama and Toei: Vegeta Fans, Be Afraid

Unsubtle Metaphor!!!

So after some thinking in the bathroom (the best place to think), it's become apparent to me that Vegeta has inherited Piccolo's former role in Dragon Ball Super, right down to his benevolent relationship with Goku.  Piccolo has inherited Tien's former role, and Tien...well Tien's still Tien. 

Okay, now stay with me on this one.  Before, Vegeta was always the loose cannon, the one who wanted to kill Goku when he got a chance.  He only kept Goku around as motivation to get stronger.  "I won't let you kill that clown cuz I reserve that right for myself" was always something he said to villains who would try to get the better of Goku.  Now he and Goku are best friends in Dragon Ball Super and Vegeta has softened up considerably even compared to the Buu saga.

Hmm...I wonder who used to always threaten to kill Goku once they were done beating the bad guy to then being his mellowed out close friend?  Well, you can say that about a lot of Goku's friends but Piccolo was in that role not too long ago and look what happened to him.  Vegeta has mellowed out a lot in Dragon Ball Super, just like Piccolo before him, and now that he's been defanged just like the Namek was, I fear that he is destined to follow the same route as Piccolo.  Just look at the facts.

Just before his ultimate combat irrelevance, Piccolo had three massive upgrades in power.  The first was on Namek when he fused with Nail where he briefly became the strongest fighter, the second was after his insane training with Goku that boosted his powers to near Super Saiyan levels apparently, and the third came when he fused with Kami and briefly became the strongest warrior in the show, even stronger than Goku.  That was twice in the show that he surpassed Goku.  Now let's look at Vegeta's trajectory of power.  He had apparently surpassed Goku in power during his fight with Beerus.  Once Beerus slaps Bulma, Vegeta forces him to use 10% of his power or something like that.  Visibly he seemed to give the God of Destruction more trouble than Super Saiyan 3 Goku.

That's a big jump in power from the Buu saga.  Then once Goku attains the god form from the ritual, Vegeta does his own personal training with Whis and once again seems to surpass Goku during his training.  I'm not sure how his power stacks up to Goku now that they've been training together, but so far that's two major power boosts he got over Goku, not counting what he got in the Buu and Cell sagas.  So that follows what Piccolo did, but it doesn't prove anything really, not yet anyway.

Now this is what I fear, for you Vegeta fans.  Taking into account Vegeta's drastic personality change, and his similar powerups over Goku, compared to Piccolo.  I feel that he will soon be replaced by a character that will inhabit the role that he once did.  It will be a character who is bloodthirsty but somewhat reformed like he used to be.  It will be someone who's a fan favorite antihero, like he used to be.  Someone who will be Goku's new rival.  Yes, Vegeta isn't a proper rival for Goku anymore.  Once you train with Goku, that's it, he's done with you as a rival.  It happened with Piccolo.  They lost that element of danger in their relationship, just like Vegeta has now lost.  I mean look at this:

They're sitting on a couch together.  Remember whose character decay came an arc after hanging out at Goku's house and partnering up with him for a driving test?  If you said Piccolo, you'd be right.  Unfortunately, this kills a lot of Vegeta's appeal with many of his fans, I think.  Now I think many of his fans will gravitate towards the new badass on the block.  My prediction is Hit or Frost.  One of them will join the Z-Senshi and Vegeta will be tossed aside while Goku gets new forms and fights stronger baddies.  The current Vegeta has a new sort of appeal with fans, but those other fans who prefer the bloodthristy badass who waxes poetic about battle and killing will flock to the new guy who gives them that.  That's it, unless Vegeta somehow returns to his roots and sharpens his fangs again.  As a Piccolo fan, I'm always hopeful that he'll sharpen his again one day, but my hope has been constantly dying out since the Buu saga.  Now it looks like it'll die completely once he's thoroughly trounced by Frost in the tournament.  For you Vegeta fans, I hope it never reaches that point.

The one thing that can save Vegeta

What can save Vegeta is the fact that he has an easy reason in the story for himself to stay close to Goku's level.  He's a saiyan, so he can easily remain at least one step behind Goku like he's been shown to be so far.  Don't count on that to save him in the end though.  Remember how irrelevant he was in GT until the very end when he used a plot device to gain relevance again.  Sure, when possessed by the current villain he gained a powerup to compete with Goku, but right after he was irrelevant again on his own.  Also look at Gohan.  Being the strongest unfused Saiyan at the end of Dragon Ball Z didn't stop him from being an utter joke in Super did it?  Oh, I'm so afraid for Vegeta and his fans that it's not even funny.  Unless he gets some of his "edge" back, I'm just sure he'll be relegated at best to "Goku's backup".  At worst, he'll be the new Tien along with Piccolo and old Tien.  Let's hope it never comes to that.

As always, thanks for the browse my glorious readers!

Dragon Ball Super Insults Your Intelligence, Akira Toriyama Lost It, and Toei Blows: Part 1: Battle of Gods

I think Toriyama and Toei should call everything from the two new movies along with the anime and manga Plot Device Z: Battle of Deus Ex Machina, Plot Device Z: Resurrection of Inconsistency, and Plot Device Super respectively.  With Dragon Ball Super, it now feels that Toei and Toriyama are barely even attempting to create anything remotely coherent anymore.  We have barebones art and animation quality for the anime, a manga that moves too fast, and three different sources of canon for the show.  I'm only considering canon important in this regard because it affects the future of the show and things are now diverse enough (Tagoma, god healing, Ginyu's return) that its inclusion in one canon should affects future storylines in other canons (such as Goku not being able to heal after getting shot in FnF).  That's all just to say that all of this new Dragon Ball content is definitely disjointed and feels poorly planned and executed.

Now Let's Recap starting from Battle of Gods in 2013.

BoG was filled with some awesome ideas, great comedy, and some pretty awesome new characters in Beerus and Whis.  I loved the movie, but that didn't stop me from groaning at the inconsistencies I saw and wishing for just a little more from the movie.  As far as inconsistencies go, it had the least offenses compared to all the new content since "Yo, Son Goku and Friends Return!"  Regardless it did have some pretty big inconsistencies.  There were also a lot of missed opportunities that could've made the experience so much better.

Inconsistency 1: Kaiosama's planet is back without any mention of how it returned.  There was enough padded time in the movie to explain this.  They could've even handwaved it by saying that King Kai remembered that he could restore himself (stupid, I know), but to not address it at all was problematic.

Inconsistency 2: Bulma's Age being 38.  Almost forgivable, as women lie about their age all the time, but the movie never really treated it as a joke or had another character call BS.  Most of us fans know that Bulma is supposed to be much older at this point in the series.  By the time of the Buu Saga, she is definitely pushing 40 already at the bare minimum.  If you consider the timeline she should be in her mid forties.

Inconsistency 3: Vegeta's SSJ2 beyond SSJ3 rage boost.  Nothing ever said that this wasn't possible so it's more of a contrivance than an inconsistency, still it's kinda lame considering how it wasn't even explained properly.  I like what it did for Vegeta's character, but it just breaks much of what we've learned about the show and with no real explanation.  I mean, this sort of thing is what makes these new additions to the series horrid to me.  If you're going to break the show, as in things we know are already established, such as SSJ3 being leaps and bounds ahead of SSJ2 then for the sake of the fans, at least do it with a proper explanation instead of a wink and a nod and we barely get that really.  Casual show breaking is the theme for 2015 Dragon Ball it seems.  Oh and where was a boost of this nature when Trunks from the future died?  Vegeta seemed more angry back then, but he never got such a huge boost, never even went SSJ2.  Seems like a plot boost to me.

Inconsistency 4: This one's mostly for those of us who keep track of Battle Power, but no one else really cares.  But having Gohan having such a low showing against Beerus compared to even Buu was unnecessary.  This was a guy who was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of Vegeta, Buu, and even Goku as an SSJ3.  How did he diminish so quickly?  I rate this one lower than the others because its very possible in-universe that Gohan slacked off a lot and Goku and Vegeta caught up and surpassed him in the years between the end of the Buu Saga and BoG.  It's just so jarring considering how power has worked in the show so far and how far ahead of everyone else he was.

Missed Opportunity 1: Not including Tarble in the movie.  Including Videl's Saiyan fetus in the god ritual was just laughable.  This would have been a great opportunity to include Vegeta's brother into the canon and even as a regular character in the movies.  Why introduce a character that you'll never use again Toei and Toriyama?  Though Tarble's existence is a bit of an inconsistency in itself in many ways.  They could've even had Supreme Kai get Tarble via Instantaneous Movement, since the Earth was in danger.  I guess that when I think of it, I'm fine with no Tarble.  Since all he brings to the series is unneeded questions.  What sucks here is that they mention him in the movie.  If he just wasn't canon to the movie that would be fine, but he's instead mentioned then replaced with an unborn Saiyan baby for no reason at all really.  I had to scratch my head at such a strange decision.

This folks, is a grown ass man in his late 30's :-)

Missed Opportunity 2: Having such a lame and unbelievable way to achieve Super Saiyan God.  So according to this nearly any group of "righteous" Saiyans can achieve this form as long as they have the correct number of people.  And what does "righteous" even mean if an unborn fetus can contribute to the ritual?

Missed Opportunity 3: Not introducing a cooler look for Super Saiyan God (though the form has grown on me and I prefer it waaaaaay over the lazy Blue Super Saiyan God form.  They should've done more with a fire motif IMO even with the hair.  Think of how cool it would be if Goku's hair became more and more like fire as he progressed in power.)

Missed Opportunity 4: Making Gohan so weak.  Would've been much better to have him put up a better fight than at least Buu.    I think Gohan and Vegeta shouldn've had the same showing against Beerus, with both putting up decent fights, but then have Vegeta surpass him with the rage thingy.  That way it shows that they were initially still somewhat close at least, instead of having Gohan be a complete scrub.  Remember, Gohan was way above Vegeta in the Buu arc, like in a whole other ballpark.

Missed Opportunity 5: Not having some other new, cool character introduce what Super Saiyan God is, rather than Shenron Ex Machina.  Maybe an actual "righteous" Saiyan other than the main cast.  Even Old Kai would've made sense here, but then again people would've asked "where was this knowledge during the Buu saga?"  To which you could counter that there weren't enough Saiyans around. They could've even done something cool with Tarble, had him be like an intergalactic archaeologist and find something on the legend to bring to Earth, something to expand the lore.  I personally like the new righteous Saiyan character idea the most.

Missed Opportunity 6: Making the Super Saiyan God transformation so complex yet not taking the time to properly explain it.  So its temporary and you can lose it, but if you're skilled enough, you can absorb it?  And when you absorb it, you can fight in normal form, but still have similar powers?  But are you weaker in the non-red form?  Goku seemed to be putting up a slightly better fight or at least comparable fight even when he looked "base" or just "normal Super Saiyan."  We are told that he absorbed the power, but come on!  We need more than that to understand if his final god form transformation at the end while absorbing Beerus' attack even did anything.  Besides a power up and invisible ki, does the form do anything else?

Missed Opportunity 7: Calling the new Saiyan god form Super Saiyan God instead of simply calling it Saiyan God or just God Form.  Now every dragon ball fan looks stupid saying stuff like Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan Blue.  They're really doing all this with no planning aren't they?  Sloppy.  Super Cyan and Blueper Saiyan is hilarious though.  But seeing as how this is an error really, I like to call it Blooper Saiyan hohohohohohohoho...hu.

Missed Opportunity 8: Super Saiyan God as a concept literally comes out of nowhere.  There has never been any mention of this in the show and it's not even blended into the existing lore smoothly in the movie.  Beerus literally wakes up screaming random nonsense.  Hell, even Vegeta, Saiyan lore master, doesn't know about it.  It would have been cool if they just retconned the Super Saiyan of Legend to be the Super Saiyan God and made all the other forms of Super Saiyan be inferior offshoots, but it seems us fans are far more creative and imaginative than Toriyama and Toei nowadays.

Just retcon this...

...into this.  Not hard considering all the other retcons introduced.

Missed Opportunity 9: Retconning Frieza's destruction of planet Vegeta to an order from Beerus.  It diminishes Frieza's character and does absolutely nothing new for the show.  It doesn't even add to Beerus at all.  We already know Beerus is great at destruction, now he just seems like a conniver which goes against his established character as someone who kinda just likes to blow stuff up, fight, and eat.  He's just kinda like an unrestrained Goku in many ways.

All that said, once I actually sat down to watch the movie, none of it seemed to matter.  I simply put all the inconsistencies and dumb additions to the Dragon Universe out of mind and enjoyed a fairly good movie.  Since I was starved for new Dragon Ball content and the movie had just about everything going for it including action, comedy, good art, great animation, and pure nostalgia; I was easily caught up in the hype and my body was ready for the next installment.  So I'd say in the grand scheme of things, that BoG wasn't that bad.  It seemed to set a new tone for the series, one that I was a little leery about, but way more excited for than anything else.  So if I can overlook inconsistencies and missed opportunities of this nature then I can certainly overlook whatever may come next, right?  Well, what comes next is Resurrection 'F', a movie that could use the tagline "50% of the stuff you love with 50% unnecessary and unexplained world breaking horse shit."  Or even better, "You'll love the action and the colors, but everything else is lazy as hell with no research done by our staff!"

Honorable mentions: Pilaf and crew seeming to only get one wish from Shenron (I don't really care.)  Same with Shenron simply leaving after it answered the question about SSJG.  I think it was done for simple comedy affect and it doesn't even seem to count as a wish really, but who knows since it was also unexplained.  Beerus being tender enough with his slap not to splatter Bulma's whole existence over her party guests.  I mean, why would he care?  You know how much holding back he would have to do to not kill her with just a touch?  I just chalk it up to BoG Beerus being a fairly amicable guy, despite Bulma's actions being highly disrespectful.  All in all, it just doesn't bother me that much.  There's probably more inconsistencies, but I can't currently remember them.

A DBZ Fanboy vs. Akira Toriyama part 1: Spirit Ki vs Godly Ki

In my opinion, Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods was an awesome movie because it introduced something new into the series.  Resurrection 'F' was also awesome, but this time because it added a ton of action, most of it from fan favorite sub characters.  I find Dragon Ball Super to be a mixed bag with some awesome episodes featuring new content, good animation, and fresh fight choreography while others are the complete opposite and horribly dragged out filler filled affairs.  But all of this new Dragon Ball content has a set of glaring flaws in common and they share these flaws with...gasp!  Dragon Ball GT.

So first I'll share my vision of what I thought Akira Toriyama could have done to improve a series that I thought was on a downward spiral.  These ideas are from before BoG was even a thing.  I came up with these improvements in 2010.  So this will be a list of what I thought made DBZ so great and how to get them in the show again.

1. Ensemble Cast.

So the first thing that stood out to me about DBZ, as a kid was this cool looking and strange cast of powerful characters.  Remember how exciting that 90's intro was with everyone fighting and doing signature techniques?  The new DBZ series should have gotten back to using these characters, these fan favorites.  What made the original cast of DBZ so appealing was the diversity of them all in how they fought and how different and colorful they looked.  Tien fought like a martial arts technician, Krillin flipped around like a nimble monkey, Chiaotzu did weird stuff, Goku was balanced, Gohan would snap, Piccolo was a beast and Vegeta used dirty tricks and powerful finishing blows.  Now everybody that matters is a Saiyan and they all have golden hair and fight very similarly.  We didn't even need to see the original Z fighters win to be fans of them.  The fact that they all pitched in, gave it a try, and looked cool doing it was enough.  I always thought Tien and Yamcha were really cool even though they've never actually defeated anyone in DBZ (unless you count the filler Ginyus and Otherworld guys which I often do).  The only thing Toriyama and Toei need to do for characters other than Goku and Vegeta is give them someone to fight on their own level.  Why can there only be one fight at a time in DBZ?  Even in 2010 and before I saw this simple fix.  But if Toei and Toriyama think there's no value to be found in the old characters then they can at least make some really cool new characters to take their place.  We just need more diversity than two protagonists with the same abilities and transformations.  The reason for the decay in the initial ensemble cast of Z is due to the next thing that needs to be fixed...

2. Power Level Scaling.

I'm specifically referring to power level inflation.  It was already pretty broken by the time the Buu Saga rolled around.  Though it started to get really busted in the Frieza arc when characters like Vegeta were making instant 10x jumps, Piccolo making between 10x -- 286x jump, Krillin's potential 16x -- 70x jump, etc.  At least everyone was competitive here, and I like how the anime made the humans on Kaio's planet keep up too.  It made more sense seeing as how Piccolo made such incredible gains there (or not if you choose not to believe).

I actually liked the power levels during the Cell arc when everyone was relatively near one another.  I wished we got a more extended Android arc with the levels as they were when Vegeta fought #19 and Piccolo fought #20.  I wished Toriyama had created the movie cyborgs here so the others got a chance to fight in an arc without Goku.  That would've been rad!  The power level inflation got super busted once Super Saiyan 2 entered the picture during the Cell Games, well even before that with the Mastered Super Saiyan form or rather Full Power Super Saiyan.  By the time the Buu saga rolled around, I could clearly see how badly the unbalanced power level scaling ruined the show.

Characters who once helped drive the show forward suddenly became useless because they weren't in league with the new super strong baddie or because they didn't have another transformation to grant them more power.  Even characters that had gotten new forms and power levels in the current arc became instantly useless once the villain reached a new level of power and that just kept compounding making lesser characters even more useless.  Look at all the Buu Saga powerups as an example: Majin Vegeta, Gotenks Fusion, Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks Fusion, Mystic/Ultimate/Full Potential Gohan.  All of those powered up characters were cool for about 5 minutes then instantly became useless once Buu powered up or got a new form.  All the development (especially Gohan's) thrown out the window in favor of more powering up.

Spirit Ki (my fanboy concept)

So that brings me to my first improvement for the show.  The introduction of god ki.  That's right, I thought of it waaaaay before it was revealed in BoG.  Only I called it holy ki, or spirit ki.  It's not the most original idea and I actually may have gotten the idea from Yu Yu Hakusho, the sacred ki.  Anyways Tien really inspired me with this one, cuz how broken is the Kikoho?  Answer: ridiculously broken.  No matter where you put Tien's PL, there's no way he should have been able to hold down an enemy that was exponentially stronger than a Super Saiyan.

So spirit ki was born in my head and Tien had learned a way to use it to attack through normal ki.  It allowed him to compete with the top level fighters again.  Actually, I had made a villain come into play who has this spirit ki to wreck the strongest Z warriors because spirit ki could bypass normal ki, causing more damage than normal.  In my concept, it didn't even take a lot of spirit ki to defeat an opponent of even SSJ3 Goku's level, just a concentrated dose of it.  You can think of it like Pokemon, spirit ki is "super effective" against normal ki while normal ki is "not very effective" against spirit ki.  So it was up to Tien to teach his fellow Z warriors the basics of spirit ki to defeat this new villain and now all the Z fighters are on equal footing again and we can introduce new concepts into the show to keep it fresh, like possibly infusing spirit ki with elements or something.  This also fixes the inflated power level scaling since new villains can simply be really good at this spirit ki.  Not all villains have to be gods now.  I was even toying with the idea of spirit ki originating on earth as something that allowed humans to fight devil gods from the demon realm.  Maybe Tien's alien ancestors came to earth to teach it.  Who knows, but the idea can go anywhere.  How did Tien learn the Kikiho anyway?

But...

Instead Toriyama uses a variant of this concept called god ki and it seemed to do very similar things to my own spirit ki concept.  So I was super excited to see that and it looked like Toriyama was onto something interesting.  I didn't have super high hopes since I saw a lot of things in BoG that were indicative of the show's worst traits like the simplistic (and horribly convenient) Super Saiyan God ritual (pure hearted saiyans, really!?)  But the god ki concept held strong.  Only gods could do battle with gods and godly ki is on a whole other level than normal ki.  That all worked out nicely, until...

Frieza's intergalactic training gains (aka, damn he's strong!)

Resurrection 'F' threw that whole concept out the window.  In four months of training, Frieza not only surpassed all of DBZ's major villains, who were eons ahead of him in strength.  It flies in the face of all the ridiculous gains made by all the other characters over the years.  He also surpassed the new gods of universe 7, Goku and Vegeta who are both in the same realm of strength as Beerus the god of destruction (though Beerus is considerably stronger still.)  Why Toriyama didn't have him train for a little longer than that and with some other godly being is beyond explanation.

So as it stands now, even someone with a bunch of regular ki can trounce all over someone with godly ki as Frieza did for a good portion of RoF.  So that previous theory of god ki nullifying normal ki goes out the window.  I'll tell you BoG and RoF were great movies, but they were filled with so many sloppy plot holes, errors, and missed opportunities.  I still love them though, but only when I turn my brain off.  And hey, Toriyama and Toei at least got #1 right in RoF.  The ensemble cast looked so amazing in that fight along with the newcomer Jaco who was even weaker than most of the Z fighters, but still fought admirably and stylishly.

Next time we'll go over the ways the Dragon Ball series can be improved with a simple exploration of its existing backstory, powers, and techniques.  Think Tien's true alien race, Frieza's home planet, the Namekian book of legends, the planet of the Metamorans, Dabura's demon realm, the different ways ki can boost abilities, the applications of kaioken for the rest of the cast, etc.