I just watched last night's
Dragon Ball Super, featuring the conclusion of the (endless-seeming) Tournament of Power arc, and I have to say, it's the most satisfying episode I've seen of the multi-series adventures of Goku since the very clever English dub of the first season of
Dragon Ball that first caught my interest in the mid-90s.
-Unlike most American fans, I gather, I actually
started w/ stubby little boy-Goku. My first impulse was to just post a commentary on the Super episode and the entire Goku corpus in my personal thread, and see if anyone bit - but it deserves a thread in case anyone has any interest and anything interesting to say. It's of a piece with my love of simplistic superhero comics that I've always wished there was
anyone here shared enough to generate good conversation. Siigh - if ONLY Vishniac hadn't foolishly engineered a falling-out with me over his poor taste in fake "Star Trek".
Dragon Ball, in it's many incarnations, is the story of Goku, a magic boy in a rather fantasy(/SF fusion) setting, inspired by Son Wukong of the ancient Chinese classic
Journey to the West. He's hopelessly naïve, being metaphorically raised by wolves, and awesomely superhuman even as a child, and faces a big world and the adventure to be had in it with charming laughter and enthusiasm.
All iterations of his story are, like Goku himself, profoundly simplistic/moronic, and everyone familiar enough with the show(s) to have an inkling of what I'm talking about and dismiss it as for kids and 'tards certainly ain't wrong. Oh, you could literally write a
whole series of books focusing on all the pathetic story-telling of the shows with character personalities and reactions stupid by even
children's anime standards. -And inept, mistaken, plot structural decisions, most notably the shows turning into mostly fights that last, not just an episode, but more than one, and several that notoriously lasted much longer. The big single showdown fight with Freeza in
Dragon Ball Z lasted
an entire season, fer christsakes. I've noticed that other fans, in those places around the nets they gather,
prefer the apocalyptic forever-fights, and write fanfic with freakin'
power-level tables at the bottom of each chapter - emotional/aesthetic 'tards, indeed.
However, there are jewels in the pile of crap that is the
Dragon Ball/Goku canon.
-See,
Dragon Ball, et. al., is the story of Goku, the magic boy w/ monkey tail as mentioned above, who grows up and loses the tail -and, unfortunately, the fantasy overtones in his world- to be very much he same person as a man, dumb and laughing, never read a book in his life, and amiable/charming, always enthused for adventure, an athlete whose sport is whoopin' butt, eager for a challenge and a spar - who happens to save the entire world a lot doing it.
He is
full of win and charm and
charisma, and the show's frequently
funny, starring a dummy as it does, and the vast majority of net fans who hate the comedy and 'filler' are IDIOTS, tasteless emotionally-crippled children of all ages, and
nothing but.
And the Superman v. Goku arguments hard to miss heavily polluting the nets invariably miss some
essential points, like
why are they fighting?
Which version of Superman?
What's at stake? Superman is his max power
all the time, and retarded about just putting an enemy down fast and not taking chances, but everyone on all incarnations of
Dragon Ball -
especially Goku- is profoundly
even more retarded about giving some super-turd out to kill his wife and child and friends
and the entire world a chance to recover and make it an interesting fight. -Not exactly the guy I want on call when Galactus shows up to eat Earth (though Goku would eventually win and the Earth would get wished back if destroyed during).
So anyway, people's web analysis/portrayals of Supes v. Goku only serve to reveal their bias for
which one they like better. Mine is for Superman, sure, I've known him a lot longer and think moving planets takes more strength than blowing them up -and Goku loses
all the time when
nothing's at stake, while top-power-version Superman stories tend to be about not
whether he'll win, but
how- and while that's my bias at work, doggonit, the logic scans. Fact is, those two guys would like each other just fine, and absent a something-at-stake setup, would only fight because Goku might totally sock Superman for fun and the challenge when he saw all teh Kryptonian Awesome.
Assume highest-power versions for both, and no setup/stakes to bias the outcome, throw away personal preference - and that there's anybody's fight, both being capable of getting beaten up when nothing else is at stake. (Out of character to have Superman go into an arena or something
just to fight some guy, but I already covered that Goku might get carried away -it's in character- and go at him
hard w/o obtaining consent for a spar first.) -But Supeman
sleeps at his max power, and Goku shouldn't have
a chance to power up enough to even keep up, and that ain't bias talking, that's I know both guys really well, and Goku has a chance at all only
if the story needs him to.
It's a basic futility of who'dwins; Hawkeye might have the best day of his life (and/or luck) v. Batman (needs of the story, etc.), Bats might take mildly super-human best-fighter-in-his-world Captain America, Cap could very plausibly stomp Spider-Man, (who can lift (press) 15 tons to Cap's 800 pounds, and has five other superpowers including being faster) Spidey once notoriously defeated Firelord, and Firelord is cosmic enough to not be a joke if he managed to whip Superman good. -Or if the story needs it, skip all the intermediaries and have powerless (assume no Goliath powers) human athlete Hawkeye -or Green Arrow if the casual crossovers bother you- have a Kryptonite gas arrow at hand. -Hawkeye once punked cosmic-powered Elder of the Universe, The Collector.
Who'dwins are
great fun, but you need to own that it's
stupid going in and live with that, or else
you're stupid...
Go watch the episode before reading the rest,
if you care, or don't
dare say SPOILERS to me after.
EDIT: Wait; I'll spare you a search. Even if you can't see the videos anymore like me, the line underneath is a hyperlink.
SO -
Dragon Ball Super excelled itself last night. It was
obvious which team would win before it even started, with
the universe at stake. I figured out the eventual wish literally
middle of last year, and
all doubt was removed when Universe 6 was deleted - the show plainly loves Hit and the alt. Sayians way too much to throw away. I'd surmised about the beginning of this calendar year that Freeza's low level of involvement was going to carry him to the end of the battle royal tournament, and win it for Universe 7, and they jiggered almost exactly that
well to avoid the problem of Freeza coming out of hiding to be last being standing w/o his wish on the Super Dragon Balls making the entire multiverse a Hell Forever.
It's a stupid show, and I'm not stupid and saw all the key points coming - but
they made it work anyway. The musical score was very effective during the sequence of the heroes of the restored universes looking to the sky - it had grandeur, actual I-bought-it
grandeur, in how it all came together perfectly.
BU gives it an
A+, the first one a Goku show episode has ever earned. BU sez check it out, but only if you know Goku, or watch everything from
Dragon Ball on first...
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