Dragon Ball Thread

On the topic of Vegeta and Bulma, it kinda worked in its favor, that it wasn’t expected by anyone, in a way (Goku himself was surprised)… and at least it spared us from Vegeta suddenly being close to Bulma out of nowhere, the way it was executed.
 
Vegeta in canon was quite the asshole in the Android/Cell Saga, judging by the fact that Future Trunks saved Bulma and Baby Trunks after Gero shot the aircraft down as a diversion, whereas Vegeta didn’t care, so it seems likely that Trunks was conceived off of a one-night stand that became more as time went on.
 
And in any case, it’s bad writing to demonize Yamcha because you like Vegeta/Bulma, like some people have done, and honestly, he might be better off without Bulma, in some ways.
 
A thing I find notable about Vegeta is how in the Saiyan and in most of the Frieza Saga, he really had it together, but after that, for most of DBZ, he let his ego get to him, multiple times, to the point of hindering pragmatism, and he only really slid back to being level-headed towards the end of the Buu Saga (although he did almost kill Perfect Cell with the Final Flash).
 
@Dr_Osaka
 
17 and 18 are great and all, but I really appreciate Gero as a villain. Even after he died, his influence is felt in the entire arc, and it’s interesting just how overkill his Androids and other plans are, considering he didn’t account for Namek, and such.
 
…Also, knowing that 16 is actually based on Gero’s dead son, in hindsight, that makes that saga better: since both are his creations, 16 represents the humanity that Gero had, whereas Cell represents the monster that he became, with the former loving life, and the latter seeking to eradicate it, culminating in the monster he became erasing his humanity from the world.

Considering how slow Cell absorbs someone in the anime I have to wonder how he’s been able to eat entire cities worth of people; I mean at least in the manga you can kinda assume it’s being done more quickly, or was he just taking his time to freak Piccolo out?
 
Seeing how 17 and 18 are twins you assume that they have the same power level, however 17 makes it sound like he is the strongest ever. Then again I think that is pretty much the theme of the Dragon Ball series is that anyone with a high power level will boast about being the strongest and get overly cocky about it.

@Dr_Osaka  
17 is confirmed as being slightly stronger than 18 in the Cell Saga (and beyond). Honestly I think it’s simply because he cares more, I never got the impression 18 really enjoyed fighting that much. She does it simply because she’s good at it, and smacking a bitch occasionally becomes necessary.
 
Speaking of the pair, I appreciated that they had fairly unique styles in the ToP. 17’s pragmatic, patient, highly strategic style and 18’s brute strength were a welcome variation of ‘atttttattatttattta’ fist barrages and interchangeable energy blasts.

@Dr_Osaka
 

 
I think the latter is a good answer, considering Cell’s sadism. He would want to freak Piccolo out by drawing it out, if he could do it.
 
@Philweasel
 
What’s notable about 18 is that considering she married Krillin, he presumably taught her some finesse to her power, allowing her to use a Kienzan to expose “Mighty Mask.”
 
…and in any case, like 17, even if she uses less strategy, 18 doesn’t really play fair either, since one of her most (in)famous moves is a kick to the elbow… to break your arm.

When it comes to Cell’s forms I do enjoy them for individual reasons:  
The first form is one of my favorites just for how monstrous he looks, kinda like something out of a horror movie like Creature From the Black Lagoon. It always looked menacing and the way he lurked through the shadows was always cool, that and his fight with 16 is one of my top favorite fights from the series.  
His second form is the weakest out of the group, I think many will agree with me on that I get what it is going for especially since it’s basically an inbetweener look but sadly it isn’t all that engaging to look at and honestly they do very little with the form as well, at least the first form showed off what it was capable of doing what with it having Saiyan cells and Namekian cells.  
And of course the final form is obviously the best of the group, and honestly it did for Cell what I didn’t think it did for Frieza; My issue there is that each form kept getting more and more monstrous but then the final form just looks really plain, however with Cell I think it works better because he starts off already monstrous but each time he absorbs an android he starts to become more human looking and have a body built more for fighting.
 
Also interesting just how much Vegeta knows about his race like that they all have dark hair or that their hair always stays the same which makes Trunks really stand out among the oher Saiyans as well as the half breeds.

You know it’s funny Goku purposely went out of his way to train Gohan to become the next savior of Earth but in the end Goku continues to takes the spotlight later on anyways. Also Goku’s plan to have Gohan beat Cell was pretty ludicrous to begin with, but I suppose that’s just how his brain operates.
 
Is there a chance that 16 blowning himself up would have actually worked had they not taken the bombs out of him I wonder? Sure we see the destructive force in several video games but it does sort of make me question though.

@Dr_Osaka
 
Toriyama made the change in the buu saga, which was already a forced way to continue the story
 
Goku saw gohan transforming in ssj2 during one of their training sessions so it was just gohan being reluctant
 
Also no, 16 would’ve blown up cell and he would have come back like when he blew himself up with goku

i just had a moment of fridge logic. Though this might be easily explained away with “they sensed them.” But…before Bulma’s dragon radar, how could anyone ever find the dragon balls anyway?

@Ranch
 
Through word of mouth and legends. They weren’t supposed to be found more than once every 100 years or so.
 
Kami made them so the world would have hope in times of crisis but won’t become reliant on them.

And then Bulma was like lol nope.

I like that Toriyama included a bit of History of Trunks in the manga, just to give you more of an idea of Trunks’ life when the Androids took over; it also gave us what I consider one of the best versions of Gohan aside from SSJ2 Teen.  
Also Trunks mentions that had the Senzu not died out apparently it would have grown Gohan’s arm back, I don’t know if this is an actual canon fact about the Senzu or not but I suppose it’s a good way of fixing problems like that. (I.E. Tien losing his arm)
 
16’s death to this day is still one of the most heartbreaking deaths for me, he turned out to be a good machine and was willing to sacrifice himself to destroy Cell so when he was destroyed it definitely hit me hard especially since he never got revived by the Dragon Balls; I don’t know if this was because he’s fully machine so it doesn’t count or if Toriyama felt he had nothing more to offer to the series and this was his way to write him out but either way it’s still pretty depressing for me.
 
I find it interesting how Cell spitting out 18 caused him to revert back to his previous form, however after blowing himself up and regenerating his body he went back to his final form. My assumption for this is that once he did reach his final form then his memory would hold onto it and revert him back in case he ever did lose the androids within, which considering that he is technically an android himself would be somewhat plausible; also him reverting to his final form I wondered if his Chi returned to him or not either way considering the Zenkai effect he would have gotten strong enough I suppose.

Okay not gonna lie I actually kinda liked the ending to DBZ Abridged’s Cell Saga more then the actual Cell Saga, what I mean by that is when Krillin saved 18’s life. In the Abridged version Krillin did the noble thing of helping 18 out at first to turn her human again to then removing the bomb inside her, she showed up asking why he did that when he could have wished for anything and Krillin points out how much he cares for 18 to which she says that she will return to see him one day to thank him.  
In the actual version when Gohan blurted out that Krillin has a crush she just straight up leaves him without even a thanks and when she goes back to see what was going on with the giant dragon and such, Krillin made his wish to have both 17 and 18 be human again not to work then wish for the bombs removed and Krillin says he wanted them to be happy together as a couple only for her to show up and tell him he’s her twin brother and pretty much just make fun of him despite the nice thing he was willing to do for her.
 
Now you can say this is part of her personality being to proud to admit she has feelings for him or that she likes to act tough or whatever, but I feel like for them to have a connection to one another, get married and even have a daughter I feel there should have been at least a little vulnerability in her after having her life saved and realizing that despite everything that’s happened Krillin was one of the only people who saw good in her despite what Trunks or anyone else thought (well except Kami maybe).  
Anywho if you like the original ending fine nothing wrong with that, I just thought for a parody of DBZ they handled 18’s feelings for Krillin a lot better that’s all.

As dumb as all the Saiyaman stuff is I do like Gohan’s interaction with Ginyu about his poses just cause he’s pretty much become what you think he wouldn’t.
 
There are things that I prefer from the manga as suppose to the anime and one of those things is Videl finding out who Saiyaman is and it’s simply because Gohan was new to the superhero identity thing thus was why it was easy for him to get tricked, meanwhile the anime had Gohan doing his superhero shtick for several days and then in the dumbest way imaginable Videl revealed his identity simply just from a bandage on his face. I get they wanted to add more episodes of him being Saiyaman but this just doesn’t work unfortunately.
 
Also kinda odd that Videl asked Gohan to teach her how to fly, I mean what made her assume that she could learn to fly from watching Gohan do it? That’s like if Lois Lane asked Superman to teach her to fly, she’d assume he was an alien or something so it’s only something he can do.

I waited quite a long time to finally talk about Goten:  
I’m obviously not the first person to bring up how ridiculous it was that Goten was able to become a Super Saiyan automatically without any training of any kind and apparently no real struggles and unlocking of rage; even Gohan is baffled by how hard it took him and Goku to go Super yet Goten could do it just cus.  
I’m sure Toriyama did this to save time in having to spend days with Gohan training to unlock his SSJ form, but considering that the Super Saiyan was a legendary form that no Saiyan knew about before it’s a little ridiculous for both Goten and Trunks to just unlock it as children you know something that even Goku with all his adventures couldn’t even do.  
Now I have heard from some people that because Goku was trying to make SSJ a part of his natural state in time for the Cell Games that when him and Chi Chi made another child his Super Saiyan energy went into her thus giving Goten the ability to unlock it at a much younger age which is not a bad theory though I kinda wish the show could have said something about that being possible, also that doesn’t really explain how Trunks managed to unlock it at such a young age considering Vegeta was technically not a Super Saiyan when him and Bulma got together. My only assumption is that Trunks hangs out with his dad in the training room a lot so he had been practicing trying to become Super Saiyan and considering Future Trunks could go SSJ it’s not unlikely to see it happen to this current timeline even if it’s just as fast as Goten was.  
Now I suppose I should give the Anime credit that they at least showed Chi Chi training in martial arts so that would explain a little how he managed to unlock it meanwile the manga does the injustice of just having him say he doesn’t remember, also that apparently he can shoot out energy beams but doesn’t know how to fly it’s almost like Toriyama was to fixated on getting him Super Saiyan before focusing on literally everything else that is important about martial arts, I mean something that took Goku and Krillin years to master is now just being wielded like a play toy to these kids.
 
I guess in the end if thus hadn’t been done we wouldn’t have gotten the awesomeness that is SSJ3 Gotenks and their battle against Buu which is certainly on of the biggest highlights of the saga, I just feel in order to get to that greatness it needed to be earned properly.

@Background Pony #53E1
 
Heh

So I noticed Phelous put out a review for The Big Green Dub of Tree of Might and it is just as entertaining as I thought it would be, plus Phelan does bring up a good point about how Turles should have been an evil Goku from another dimension crossing over to plant the tree and grow it’s fruit because his version of Earth was already dried up, it would be a great way to show people what Goku would have been like had he not hit his head as a child.  
I suppose we have Goku Black for that, but even then that’s just Zamasu in Goku’s body so it’s not really the same thing.

@Dr_Osaka
 
Turles is already a mirror Goku
 
-He wants to become stronger for power sake  
-Wants said power to come to him without working for it and at the expense of everyone else  
-He avoids facing stronger opponents unless he can take them out using underhanded tacticts  
-Doesn’t care about his friends unless they serve him and are easily discarded when he becomes stronger
 
Honestly, he could be the evil twin like 8 year old me thought when they went to see the movie and still would’ve made sense given the context of what he does

@QuasarNova
 
Also, there’s another aspect of that: Turles apparently recruited at least one of his men (Daiz) after defeating them, if secondary material is to be believed, and tried to get Gohan on his side, which mirrors something Goku has done multiple times.
 
Him being an outright evil twin works easily for me as an idea, and I think has been done well in fanfics (he’s basically the King Piccolo to Goku’s Kami, as a good way to think of it).
 
Turles also comes across as more refined, more sophisticated than Goku does, as a contrast.
 
(And interestingly enough, aside from Cooler, Turles is the next best thing in terms of “you’d want to work for him,” amongst DBZ movie villains, because he’ll allow you to grow strong next to him by giving you some fruit, and he seemingly won’t kill you at the drop of a hat, even if he presumably doesn’t care about you beyond pragmatic concerns)

…pro-tip for your aspiring fanfiction authors and such: Shenron cannot erase you from existence if you’re stronger than his creator, or affect you against your will if you’re stronger, you’d need Super Shenron for that one. It was likewise never considered to be an option for Porunga to erase Frieza for presumably the same reason, since he couldn’t teleport Goku to Earth against his will for the same reason.
 
And furthermore on the same subject, I’m pretty sure that there’s no such thing as a “retroactive change” in the world of Dragon Ball, seeing as it’s never been done before to my memory, so that doesn’t fly as an explanation either. We have no proof Shenron can do something like that, alter the fabric of reality to such an extent.
 
Context: MasakoX went with such a titanic plot hole as a way to further the story of a What-If video, as in “erase post-Broly Goku and Vegeta and every other Saiyan” levels of nonsensical.

@AC97  
I’m also a little suspicious of this theory that the Dragonballs can grant you immortality capable of shrugging off offensive actions by someone more powerful than the Dragon in question.
 
I note Zamasu went straight to the Super Dragonballs for that one.

@Philweasel
 
That is also a good point. The only things we got to go off of in favor of that was Garlic Jr, and he was well… a complete idiot that caused himself to lose the exact same way twice (and he is of course a movie/filler arc villain in the first place), well, that and the plan to give Vegeta immortality to fight Frieza, which Dende was of course, a child acting out of possible ignorance and it might not have actually worked.
 
Maybe at best it would give you a constant healing factor, but destroying every molecule of you would quite possibly just overpower the kind of immortality Shenron/Porunga would give you, and your stamina wouldn’t be infinite per se. Invincibility probably just wouldn’t work without Super Shenron (and even then, I’m not sure it would stop Zeno from erasing you).

@AC97  
I think I’m inclined to go with Frieza’s assumption in the Broly movie, where he seems to feel that immortality means you could still get yourself permanently crippled, but not die.
 
…frankly Frieza already has that. It’s always required straight out vaporization to kill Frieza, he’s shockingly durable.

@Philweasel
 
Frieza had survived a Spirit Bomb, being beaten by Super Saiyan Goku, being cut in half by himself (he had entrails in the manga), getting blasted by Goku in retaliation for the attempted backstab, and then the planet blew up with him still on it, floated in space for an unknown period of time, and Future Trunks of course saw it fit to cut him into many pieces, then vaporize him.
 
He also survived an entire hour fighting Broly in good shape all things considered, and was just more impressed with his power than anything by the end of it, and he just kept getting back up in the Tournament of Power, no matter how many times he got beaten, survived a Hakai and got back up.
 
He certainly has the general durability advantage over the Saiyans (who aren’t slouches at all there) and especially normal humans, hands down. Piccolo seems to be a runner up to Frieza’s durability, since he survived the same thing that killed Vegeta (a Death Beam), in the Namek Saga, he got his neck snapped and a giant hole blasted through his torso by Imperfect Cell, and if you’re counting the Cooler movie he got blown up and survived still, and of course, dismemberment isn’t an issue for him in the long run.
 
_{I wish Piccolo got to keep up somehow; you’d think he’d be a good candidate for learning Kaio-Ken, considering just how large his unaugumented base power is, and his general survivability regarding “strain on body.”}

@AC97
 
Frieza survived at least 2-3 hours against Broly in the Super movie, since IIRC there was a 30 minute wait time for the fusion to end and then a 30 minute wait to try again.