@Dustcan
It doesn’t help that the others just stood idly by while she was
casually singing to herself and let it freaking happen.
Only U18 Bra heard the spiel about “nucleus training,” and he never boasted to U16 Gohan wondering how he came back, after returning, in earshot of U16 Bra, or some such. It’s
bullshit.
The Piccolos could’ve destroyed the Senzu Beans as a
calculated risk to take the Reset Button of “back to full HP” off the table, after she took injuries at certain points, but no, they just get slaughtered, and anything that happened to her was just CTRL + Z’d, because
fuck tension, am I right? Or is “oh, I wonder which one gets
eviscerated this page” supposed to be “tension?”
Buu amounted to fucking
nothing except for a failed plan by U18 Gohan, which by the way, established that whichever Gohan teleport-punched Bra could’ve
theoretically killed her back then with a Ki Blade (pull a Sauza) in an earlier chapter, where the game was “Defend Babidi,” and if it was U16 Gohan it wouldn’t have mattered, because he thought the Mini Cell Jr would’ve TP’d to Babidi.
Salagir just doesn’t get it, if he thought that it would be so much fun to see U16 Bra end that arc with
superficial injuries to one leg. If U16 Bra achieved victory in combat, but had a more desperate attitude throughout, because she was actually being worn down and injured, that would’ve been more fun at least, but because she’s the
Creator’s Pet, she doesn’t have to actually be
challenged, she gets to repeatedly outsmart them.
Part of what made Frieza and Vegeta (also applies to him when he’s not an antagonist)
fun as villains is how they
kept fighting despite sustaining injuries, multiple times.
As for another example of how Salagir’s biases
heavily influence his writing, well, just
look at how ungodly powerful Broly is in that webcomic (DBM happened long before Battle of Gods was a thing, so bear with me) is… yet just look at how Frieza, Cooler, and Cold are handled.
It took Cold a
Sixth fucking Form to be on par with Perfect Cell (as of the Cell Games, before Super Perfect), and it took
that to even put up a challenge to U16 Bra
in her base form (and fuck that fight, with the “moved Senzu to mouth offscreen/off-panel” stuff)… and on top of that, it wasn’t even
Cold in the driver’s seat to go out of his way to attain such power, it was
Ginyu.
And as for Cooler, his fight with Future Trunks was kinda pitiful, the stakes too low, because of how outclassed he was (despite the fact that he strikes you as the type to train, but whatever).
I
know Golden Frieza wasn’t a thing back then, and it’s not like it’s an inherent problem for multiple universes to outclass them overall, but… still. They were just the butt of jokes, as opposed to doing something more interesting, a lot of the time.
Just look no further than this old page, regarding an example of how
badly Salagir can contrive things in the plot,
as per his own words, which the gist of them were basically “he couldn’t win if this didn’t happen, and
so it did happen.”
It’s obvious that Salagir takes a view of “the characters should
serve the plot,” as opposed to the other way around, or a more balanced approach, considering how contrived things get, multiple times.
I’ve learned from comments on the DBM forums that Salagir also doesn’t thoroughly plan things out all that well (yeah, I know
Toriyama doesn’t either, but still). He didn’t go into writing this comic with a good idea of what was gonna happen, beyond some things like “Broly fights Vegito,” and some other things. The Majin Rebellion wasn’t originally planned to have happened.
The portrayal of U16 has changed over the years, he’s, in comments years ago, called U16 Bra “spoiled,” which shifted to
”oh, Vegito was abusive, said he was gonna kill her before she got stronger than him, in a flashback,“ out of the blue. (even if there’s missing context… just why?)
It’s kind of a shame, that it’s a mess in multiple areas… the Majin Arc had a lot of cool moments, but damn, the bad really sucks, with it devolving into a hellish
Idiot Plot gorefest (figuratively and literally), and it’s sad how a lot of it boils down to how much of a failure
one character is. She’s just… favored by the author (her being contrived to be undefeated, not struggling due to how powerful she is, her unlikable smug personality), he dedicates a load of attention to her, and she just isn’t handled well
at all.
A lot of this probably comes down to the fact that he just doesn’t have enough people questioning his decisions, editors.
The Android Saga in DBZ would’ve been
very different if it weren’t for Toriyama’s editors, with
19 and 20 being the main villains.