A Dragon Ball Fanboy vs. Akira Toriyama: Missed Opportunities

Here's just a few:

Losing Buu just for the sake of a lame comedy bit.

By anjoicaros

 

Having Buu in this saga wouldn't done three huge and much needed things for this tournament.  A good writer would easily see the opportunities.

1.) Buu Could Bring Some Comic Relief.
Having Buu do stupid shit in the tournament would have been infinitely better than having him in a one off and highly predictable bit that eliminates his entire presents from the tournament.  The reactions of all the U6 fighters after seeing Buu fight would be priceless.

2.) His Strange Powers Could Liven Up the Tournament.
Candy beams, broken regeneration, angry steam, and the attitude of a child.  Buu would make for a great opponent for many U6 fighters.  Imagine Frost going against him next, instead of Vegeta and discovering that he can't poison him thanks to Buu's gummy body.

3.) His presence could've helped with the power scaling.
Since Buu doesn't train, we more or less know his power level.  He's somewhere between a Buu saga SSJ2 and SSJ3.  Now if you put him against, say Frost, and he wrecks Frost then we know that Frost is weaker than SSJ3 and possibly SSJ2 thanks to Buu being a sort of measuring stick for us.  As it stands, we don't know anything about anyone's power in this tournament.  It's all guess work, but even the smartest, most observant among us can't call anything definitively thanks to the slipshod way this new series is patched together.  Power levels aren't everything, but we should roughly know who measures up to who and in what way.  We don't and that's a problem.

Not using ample chances to explain and show how Piccolo got so much stronger (if he did at all).

Okay, so Piccolo is now powerful enough to dodge Frost's attacks, tank many of his blows with very little damage, block his punches one handed while backstepping and charging an attack, and can bind him with one arm.  Even being able to do this to a weakened opponent of this caliber is significant.

In the manga, it's worse from what I see.  They fight on even ground, with Frost having taken even less damage from his fight with Goku and Piccolo still seemingly having an edge in their fight.  To top it off, Piccolo's beam is strong enough to pierce Vado's godly barrier.  So, if he's made these types of gains again, why not explain it?  Why not have him train with Goku and Vegeta in the RoSaT?  Why not have him train in the afterlife while he was dead?  Why not have him give a random thowaway line, handwaving his boost?  Why couldn't we even get that?  Why is this show so damn badly written and poorly animated?  I digress...dammit.

Anyways, we don't even have enough evidence to definitively know if Frost is stronger than base level Goku.  We don't even know if base level Goku has god powers.  There's evidence that he doesn't since Krillin could sense his and Frost's power.  Then again Golden Frieza had regular ki too and was still stronger than both SSJGs.

Using normal Super Saiyan in the tournament without explaining how strong it is compared to Blue God.

Doesn't this just feel unnecessary and confusing for no reason?  We already have no idea how much more powerful SSJGB makes Goku or Vegeta.  Having them use the golden form to hold back just seems pointless right now, especially from a storytelling perspective.  Toriyama and Toei seem to be keeping power growth vague, so I can't for the life of me figure out why they'd add this complication to the story. We've already established that the god level Saiyan's base powers are unbelievably strong since Goku dominated Final Form Frieza in base.  That same Frieza that tortured a SSJ Gohan in his very first form.  Having Goku and Vegeta use SSJ just muddies up what was already established with the base forms.

Now people are questioning if the base forms are even strong at all, now comparing them to Frieza arc characters.  I don't fall into that camp but the horrendous power scaling gives them plenty of evidence.  Obviously no one at Toei or even Toriyama himself cares about making this show make sense any more.  Having at least a vague sense of how characters compare to one another would be nice.  Horrid power scaling makes this impossible though.

Other Notable Mentions:
-Not explaining Vegeta's rage boost.
-Not using the red haired God form again
-Not showing Frieza's training (shooting Togoma over and over again doesn't count)
-Not showing more of Piccolo and Gohan's training or showing how strong they got.

Indie Book Corner: Moirae, by Mehreen Ahmed

A Well Written and Thought Provoking Tale With a Unique Writing Style

  

Moirae is a story with many themes running through its narrative.  There's the story of a young woman longing for her beloved, the tale of an imprisoned man longing for a better life, and the story of a woman and her child.  There are also other stories present and they all connect at various points as the characters all have a connection to the village of their childhoods.  Along the way each of the characters is met with the rigorous struggles of their harsh lives.

The story takes place in what I believe is a fictional place, though it at times feels real enough.  The conflicts definitely have real world connotations including the rift between the two fictional religions that drives much of the story's conflict.  What's strange though, is that there is mention of real world places in the story so it does share some geography and events with our world.  Much of Moirae reads like a commentary on real world issues so those without much knowledge in real geography may even mistake the Dravilands as a real place.

The story is written in a unique and strange style called "stream of consciousness."  Britannica.com says of the style "Stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts"  I am not at all familiar with the style.  Moirae is my first foray into it.  There were two particular chapters near the beginning that featured no punctuation.  What seemed to separate one sentence from the next was capital letters.  It was confusing to say the least, but the brain is adaptable so after a while it did become easier to read.  I did not find much enjoyment from this sort of thing nor did it enhance the story in any way, for me at least.  It is an artistic choice though and so I respect the bold commitment to it.

Much of the content in the story was featured around this large extended family and it was a story that I enjoyed.  There was a lot of food for thought when it came to the topics of poverty, immigration, religious warfare, civil strife, crime, violence against women, and quite a few other topics.  I would say that Moirae is a tragedy.  Throughout there is a big look at the very human condition.  What does it mean to be poor in a place filled with strife and warring ideologies?  What does it mean to be thought of as a second class citizen?  All of this is handled in a fairly natural way and what stands out about many of these stories is the effect of hope.  For even when a situation seems at its most desperate and hopeless, these people persevere to face the next challenge.  There is also a strong tale about tortured motherhood and madness.  It adds an almost supernatural aspect to the story.  I found that to be my favorite POV of them all, though it makes the most use of the stream of consciousness style.

Now I'll express my criticisms for the story.  To me, it didn't feel personal enough.  I was never completely immersed in the story.  The narration style felt very distant and matter of fact.  It had the effect of reading like a much older book.  It didn't manage to reach at anything deep inside of me to truly connect me with characters like MD, Pontu, Tahu, and Nalia.  The characters and even many of the events fell flat to me because of plain narration and dialogue.  I think I could've enjoyed the style more if those aspects were more engaging.  I also found the timeline and POV jumping to be very distracting.  Most likely it's another aspect of the stream of consciousness writing style, but I didn't much care for it.  There was also some confusion on my part regarding the timeline and setting of the story.  I wasn't sure if it were modern day or if it had taken place in the past.  And since it was a fictional setting, I was always taken out of the story whenever a place in the real world was mentioned.  I had to google Dravilands just to make sure it wasn't a real place.

Regardless, once you give the story some time, it does start to make its point and the characters did grow on me, even those introduced later.  So I did have a good reading experience with Moirae.  For fans of the stream of consciousness style and those interested in books about the human condition, I think this one is a good read.  Try it out and let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

Belart Wright

Author of 2 Books, Worker of Minimum Wage, Avid Gamer, Thinker of Things, and Wannabe Warrior

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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!