UPDATE 3/10/24: Akira Toriyama passed away on March 1, 2024 and it was announced on March 7. May he rest in peace, but my feelings towards him and his work haven't changed. He was still an objectively terrible writer and a perverted degenerate. Being iconic or influential doesn't make someone good at what they did, nor does it make what they created good. The Bible is probably the most iconic and influential book ever made, but any rational person knows it's bullshit like any religion is (which isn't to say that I'm against religion, but logically speaking, it's bullshit). Toriyama was undeniably one of the most iconic and influential Japanese comic creators ever ... but his work still sucked shit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Created by Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball is one of the most successful franchises of all time, reportedly having generated $17.2 billion in revenue since debuting in 1984. Despite its tremendous success, however, it's garbage. Actually, "garbage" would be too generous. It's worse than dog shit. What gives me the right to vilify something so successful, you ask? There's no correlation between something actually being "good" and something simply being "successful". Being "good" is ultimately a subjective matter. But as someone whose tastes have been plenty refined as I've gotten older, I can say, yeah, Dragon Ball is objectively trash. I used to be a big fan of it; as with many other people, watching the English dubs of DB, DBZ and GT on Cartoon Network in the early to mid 2000s was a big part of my childhood. But unlike the man-babies who swear up and down that it's some great masterpiece or well-written work, I'm not blinded by nostalgia. Dragon Ball sucks.
It actually didn't take growing up for me to start realizing how awful it is; I could see the writing flaws even as a young child, although it wasn't until my late teens that I realized it's completely terrible. And it is. There was never a single point when it was good. It was always terrible no matter what any delusional apologist thinks. For the record, though, let me say that I don't genuinely hate the franchise despite the fact I bash it so much. Typing that you think something sucks, no matter how much detail you put in, is a simple activity and very different to verbally or physically expressing it. And I do like aspects of the franchise. Dragon Ball doesn't make my blood pressure rise or keep me up at night in anger despite how bitter and grumpy this article may seem; it's not like I was shouting or punching the air when I typed all this. I just realize that Dragon Ball is objectively trash and I wanted to explain why, so I made this article.
You might ask, "Why not write about something you wholeheartedly enjoy instead?" That's not a bad idea, but I enjoy criticizing stuff I dislike, too. Devoting so much time to discussing something I consider to be trash may make me a loser, but if you're more than a casual fan of Dragon Ball or Shonen in general, you're probably one, too. There's a reason why most anime/manga fans are stereotyped as nerds who don't go outside, because that's exactly what they are. The fanboys you see on Twitter, YouTube, DeviantArt, etc. Most of them don't touch grass. I'd rather be a loser who criticizes bullshit instead of one who likes said bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I probably wasted many years of my life analyzing Dragon Ball and other fictional works (although I'm under 30 as of writing this). I probably wasted more time writing this long ass blog. No, I don't live a very productive life. Instead of arguing with nerds online, I should go outside and do something productive. But after having wasted so many years of my life on this garbage, I may as well write about why it's shit before I do something else. At least I'll get it off my chest. You can call me a loser, but at least I ain't this guy. "At least he's married" When you're such a manchild that you would you name your kid after an anime character and post about it on social media for likes, being married doesn't matter. You're just a clown (gotta feel sorry for his kid, too).
I'm aware that there are some people who claim Dragon Ball
saved them from suicide when they were depressed and I don't intend to offend them. If you stopped
yourself from committing suicide, then that's great. But that doesn't
make Dragon Ball any better. It's still a shitty series. Dragon Ball was never intended to actually save lives. Toriyama never considered himself a savior or even a genius for that matter. His editor acknowledged that Dragon Ball is a work without substance, that it's useless in our lives. It's good that you stopped yourself from committing suicide, but if Dragon Ball is literally your reason for living, you should probably find better reasons while maintaining your resolve so you don't find yourself at your wits' end again. I'd suggest actual professional help, too, because Dragon Ball isn't meant to be therapy. It's just a stupid comic. Should anyone really consider Akira Toriyama, a man who said he wanted to spy on his own daughter bathing and drew a comic where a woman turns to prostitution after repeatedly getting raped for laughs, to be their personal savior? A lot of people say Dragon Ball helped them deal with bullying, and that's fine, but it's still just a stupid comic. You shouldn't owe your happiness to it, because there's a lot more to life than this stupid crap. Don't get me wrong, I know life is hard and we all have our own ways of dealing with it. If Dragon Ball is something that really brings you joy, then keep enjoying it. As for me, I'll keep bashing it.
Before I trash the series itself, I have to discuss the man who created it. Born in 1955 to an ordinary Japanese family, Akira Toriyama drew pictures from a young age, inspired by Walt Disney's One Hundred and One Dalamations and Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy. After failing out of his job as an advertising agent and consequently needing money, he decided to become a professional manga artist in 1978 at the age of 23. His first few works were basically all flops, but he finally found success in 1980 with Dr. Slump. That series centered on the misadventures of Sembei Norimaki, a bumbling scientist, and his super strong but stupid android creation Arale, who is modeled after a young girl to play the role of his daughter (there's some pedophillic undertones here). It was full of unfunny potty humor, perverted gags, and other nonsense, but at the very least, the series knew what it wanted to be. It never took itself too seriously and remained lighthearted from start to finish with every self-contained, procedural event that appeared in the story. Don't get me wrong, Dr. Slump sucks, like all of Toriyama's work, but it's better than Dragon Ball as it's more consistent and cohesive.
Despite the popularity of Dr. Slump, however, Toriyama quickly got bored of working on the series and wanted to end it. Management at Shuiesha would only let him do so and remain with them if he immediately replaced Dr. Slump with another ongoing manga, and so, Toriyama began research for his next major series. Eventually, Dr. Slump ended in 1984 and was followed by Dragon Ball in December that year. The series centered on a young boy named Goku Son, a martial artist who helps a teenage girl named Bulma on her quest to collect seven mystical objects known as Dragon Balls (a concept based on the old Japanese story Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, which translates to the "Story of Eight Dogs from the Satomi Clan in the Southern Fusa"), which will bring forth a dragon known as Shenlong (Chinese for "Godly Dragon" or "Divine Dragon") to grant a wish when brought together. Their initial dynamic is reminiscent of Arale and Sembei's from Dr. Slump, but with the genders swapped; now, the super strong but stupid child is a boy, and the bumbling scientist is a girl.
They face many adversaries in their quest for the Dragon Balls, but end up becoming allies with many of them. As a parody of the old Chinese story Xīyóujì (literally "West Journey Chronicle" but better known in America as Journey to the West), the majority of the characters introduced were based on characters from the source material; Goku was based on Wukong Sun aka the Monkey King, Bulma (who just looks like an aged up Arale without glasses) was based on Tripitaka, the shapeshifting pig Oolong (who just looks like a pig) was based on Zhu Bajie, the bandit Yamcha (who just has a stock design for a bishonen, which means "handsome young male", or ikemen, which means "handsome man"); at first he mainly looks like that one samurai from Dr. Slump, but later on, his features are softened to look more like Tsukutsun Tsun. Oh, and his pet cat Puer looks like the shapeshifter from Dragon Boy) was based on Sha Wujing, the old Turtle Hermit known as Muten Roshi (Heavenly Old Martial Arts Master, who just looks like God from Dr. Slump with sunglasses) was based on Laozi (Chinese for "Old Master") and Subodhi, the tyrant Gyumao (Ox Demon King) was based on Niu Mo Wang (Ox Demon King in Chinese), and his daughter Chichi (who just has a stock design for a young girl, although her outfit is very inappropriate for her age) was based on Tie Shan Gongzhu.
Dragon Ball wasn't just a parody of Journey to the West, though. It was a completely unfunny, garbage parody of it. The jokes were downright tasteless and degenerate potty humor; we had bullshit like a teenage girl trying to seduce a little boy, a teenage girl pissing herself, a little boy stripping a teenage girl in her sleep, a teenage girl flashing an old man and a pig in disguise as a grown man, a teenage girl's likeness getting motorboated by an old man, a pig trying to rape a teenage girl in her sleep, a little boy fondling people to determine their gender, etc. None of this dumb bullshit was funny; it's just perverted and gross, and anyone who enjoys trash like this is a loser. Some especially stupid apologists argue that the perverted gags are meant to be some sort of deep social commentary, like Toriyama is trying to educate his audience on what not to do when he draws women getting sexually harassed or assaulted... but that's bullshit because Toriyama himself ADMITS that it's just meant to be fan-service for perverts (CTRL+F "fan service")! None of this is meant to educate anyone; it's just an excuse to give perverts something to jack off to. This is the same perverted fucker who drew a comic where a woman turns to prostitution after repeatedly getting raped; the same nasty fuck who said he wants to spy on his own daughter bathing. He's a degenerate loser and the anime/manga industry is full of nasty fucks just like him. It's also disgusting how often kid Goku's bare ass and penis gets shown.
Anyway, the characters in Dragon Ball suck. Goku is a cheaply written insert for young boys who fantasize about being strong, bordering on a Gary Stu, and you can read about why he sucks so badly in-depth here. Bulma is a half-assed stereotypical depiction of a teenage girl who only exists to give perverts something to jack off to; you can read about why she sucks so badly in-depth here (or here). Oolong and Roshi are just unfunny perverts. Yamcha is just a stereotypical awkward teenage boy who wants to get laid. Puer is just Yamcha's cheerleader. Chichi is just a half-assed stereotypical depiction of a little girl who believes her only purpose in life is to get married to a man and have his babies. Gyumao is just Roshi's bitch. The turtle is just Roshi's pet turtle. And then, there's the Pilaf gang, who are just an unfunny trio of goofballs. Shenlong is just a plot device. Everyone else introduced isn't worth mentioning because they're all one-off, throwaway characters who are discarded right after appearing.
Again, none of the jokes are funny. This is just a boring, brain-dead adventure story that bastardizes Journey to the West with tasteless, perverted gag after tasteless, perverted gag. Toriyama isn't even putting any effort in it as he's just recycling the same exact scenes from his crappy one-shots that this series was derived from; just because they were the "prototypes" to Dragon Ball doesn't mean he has to copy the same damn scenes and unfunny jokes note-for-note. It's not even like they were rough drafts; these one-shots were literally serialized in magazines before Dragon Ball came out. None of the jokes were ever funny, but even if one were to find them funny the first time ... how could anyone find them funny a second or third time? Just imagine being someone who was literally keeping up with Toriyama's works leading up to Dragon Ball; he basically had an assembly line of unfunny old jokes and story beats to choose from here, which is a testament to how low effort his stories were. They're trash stories that follow the same lazy formula and routine. And as a testament to Dragon Ball being trash, it wasn't even popular at this point in time, as noted by Toriyama. When it was first starting out, it was riding on the popularity of Dr. Slump, so Toriyama's fans eagerly tuned in to see what his newest story was gonna be like and voted for it to stay in the magazine. Once they realized what they were in for, Toriyama's fans lost interest and the votes steadily declined as a result. If the story continued the way it was, the series would have eventually gotten axed, which is why Toriyama's editor pushed for changes.
The Pilaf arc sucked and that shouldn't be up for debate, plain and simple. However, if your story sucks, the solution isn't to turn it into something else. No, the solution would just be to end it and start work on a different story entirely. Turning an existing story into something else only creates an identity crisis, because it loses consistency. And consistency is a critical part of proper storytelling, one that Dragon Ball fails at. After the Pilaf arc, the series is no longer about Journey to the West; now, it's primarily about Goku's quest to become stronger as a martial artist, which clashes with how the story was written before. In fact, in the arc immediately following the Pilaf arc, the story wasn't even about the Dragon Balls at all; it was just about a tournament and the training Goku underwent for it. Why the hell would a story called Dragon Ball ... not be about Dragon Balls? It's utterly redundant. "B-but that's just because the Dragon Balls were inactive!" That's not any excuse when it could have just jumped to when they were active again, although it would have been dumb to do another Dragon Ball quest as we already saw them gather the Dragon Balls before. Making the story not about Dragon Balls wasn't the solution, though; the solution would have just been to end the series after the Dragon Balls were collected the first time, which is what Toriyama had originally intended.
No matter what the dumbass apologists say, Dragon Ball wasn't much of a martial arts story in the beginning. The Pilaf arc had some elements, or sprinkles, of a martial arts story, but it was not primarily one. The majority of the characters introduced (Bulma, Oolong, Puer, Pilaf, Mai, Shu, the Turtle, Chichi, etc) were not martial artists. There were only three actual fights (both rounds of Goku vs. Yamcha, although the second one was just one-sided stomp that only lasted a page, and Goku vs. the tiger ... although that was over in a jiffy as well. Now what actual "martial arts story" would end almost every fight in a flash?). The actual crux of the story was spent only on adventure and gags; martial arts took a backseat. Even Toriyama himself acknowledges that he only brought martial arts to the forefront in the second arc to boost the series' popularity after the Pilaf arc was a flop, so this shouldn't even be an argument. If Dragon Ball were a consistently written story, then it would have remained a Journey to the West parody centering on Goku and co. collecting the Dragon Balls, with martial arts as a secondary focus and nothing more, from start to finish; it didn't, and that's why it's inconsistent.
Once the Pilaf arc ended, there was no reason to continue the story; all of the relevant plot points were tied up as the gang summoned Shenlong and got their wish, which was the main objective of the story to begin with. The only reason why it continued afterwards was because of Toriyama's greed, and if greed is your motivation for continuing a story, then that's a telltale sign that you should just end it. Even Toriyama's first editor has said that Dragon Ball turns into a work without substance after the Pilaf arc. It wasn't meant to be some quality story; it only continued for the sake of making money and nothing more. Of course, there will undoubtedly be some people who misconstrue me and think I'm actually arguing that the Pilaf arc was good, but I'm not. The Pilaf arc sucked ass. It's just that everything that came after the Pilaf arc was contrived and unnecessary to the story of Dragon Ball, which was just supposed to be a Journey to the West parody about collecting Dragon Balls and summoning a dragon. That's all it was meant to be, and there was no reason to make it about other shit.
Star Wars was about Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance fighting Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire. Once Vader and Galactic Empire were defeated, the story ended. The next three Star Wars films were merely prequels and the story didn't continue until 2015, after the original creator George Lucas sold the rights to the franchise to Disney, at which point it finally became a total cash-cow (case in point, Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, three years after the original Star Wars in 1977. Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, three years after Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Attack of the Clones came out in 2002, three years after Phantom Menace in 1999. Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005, three years after Attack of the Clones in 2002. Last Jedi, on the other hand, came out in 2017, only two years after Force Awakens in 2015. Rise of Skywalker came out in 2019, only two years after Last Jedi in 2017. Making matters worse, the spin-off films Rogue One and Solo came out in 2016 and 2018 respectively. This means that from 2015 to 2019, there was literally a new Star Wars film every year. Disney was shamelessly trying to milk the franchise as much as they could during this time. "B-but Rogue One was good!" If anything, it should have only come out after the sequel trilogy was finished). When you continue a story after the point it should have ended for the sake of making money, then you turn it into a cash cow. That's what Toriyama did to Dragon Ball after the Pilaf arc.
It's not only when a story continues after it was originally supposed to end that it can lose sight of itself and turn into a cashcow, though. The original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga is consistently about the Pharoah trying to regain his memories for its entire 343 chapter run, but while it was initially about various games being played (hence the title Yu-Gi-Oh, which means "Game King" or "King of Games"), it eventually became mainly about card games after that concept proved to be so popular. This resulted in an identity crisis for the series, because the later card game-focused premise clashes with when the series was supposed to be about various games. Due to the discrepancy in themes, two completely separate anime adaptations had to be created (the first by Toei in 1998 and the second by Pierrot in 1999, which went on to spawn a whole franchise of subsequent anime series); the first anime covered the story when it was about various games and the second covered it when it was mainly about card games, largely skipping over the previous story arcs that were about other games because the showmakers knew viewers didn't give a shit about them. Today, Yu-Gi-Oh! is mainly known for its card game, so when people see the earlier arcs in the manga or the original Toei anime, they get thrown off by how it's not really about cards. Likewise, Dragon Ball is mainly known for all its action, so when people see the Pilaf arc (as well as most of the other pre-DBZ arcs), they get thrown off by how it isn't really about action.
Another example is Yu-Yu-Hakusho (literally "Hidden Journey White Paper" or "Occult Journey White Paper"). The story was originally about Yusuke's adventures as a ghost; he'd just roam around and fulfill various tasks like helping other spirits pass on. Once Yusuke was brought back to life and made a Spirit Detective in chapter 18 (the start of the manga’s third volume), however, the story primarily became about him fighting various enemies. This clashed with the way the story was written before, and since Yu-Yu-Hakusho is mainly known as a fighting series, people get thrown off when they read the early arcs that were about Yusuke's adventures as a ghost. The anime adaption skips most of those arcs altogether because the showmakers knew viewers didn't give a shit about them. According to Yu-Yu-Hakusho's creator Yoshihiro Togashi, the change in tone and narrative was intentional because he wanted to familiarize viewers with Yusuke by putting him in lighter situations before the intense fights that the series is known for. This, of course, is silly because he could have simply had Yusuke fight less serious battles so viewers would become familiar with him before the bigger fights. Togashi also said that he was copying Kinnikuman (Muscle Man), which originally started off as a comedy before it transitioned to a fighting manga in chapter 28 with the start of the Chojin (Superhuman) Olympics arc. This is also stupid, because Kinnikuman's narrative and genre shift was also bad writing. The only reason Kinnikuman transitioned to a sports fighting manga was because it was ripping off Ring ni Kakero (Put It All in the Ring); desperate to boost the series' popularity, the series' author ripped off Ring ni Kakero, which was a sports manga and the most popular manga in Weekly Jump at the time.
One more example I'd like to bring up is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. That series used to be a more conventional martial arts manga, focusing on a power/energy system called Hamon (Ripple) and mystical items called Stone Masks. For its first two main arcs/parts (Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency), Jojo focused on those things. Starting with Part 3 (Stardust Crusaders), however, the series drops Hamon and the Stone Masks altogether in favor of Stands, which are basically the physical manifestations of one's spirit. The battles are primarily about characters summoning their Stands to fight for them, basically turning the series into a precursor for battle pet anime like Pokemon and Digimon. Not only that, but the plot shifts from a sequential, ongoing narrative to a procedural format where they have many self-contained encounters with enemy Stand users, a routine that is rather infamously known as "Stand of the Week". All of the subsequent Parts take this formula as well, clashing with the first two Parts that revolved around Hamon and Stone Masks in a more sequential narrative. People get thrown off when they compare Jojo pre-Stands to post-Stands, because it doesn't feel like the same series. The fact is, well-written don't have these drastic tonal, narrative, stylistic, genre, etc changes; they're consistently written the whole time and never stray from what they were supposed to be in the beginning. A well-written story would simply end instead of changing. If the author wants to write something else, then they should just make a different story altogether.
A lot of people say, "So what? Jojo got better when it became about Stands! Yu-Gi-Oh got better when it became about cards! Yu-Yu-Hakusho got better when it became about fighting! Dragon Ball got better when it became about fighting!", but that's missing the point. Ask yourself, why couldn't Jojo have just been about Stands from the beginning? Why couldn't Yu-Yu-Hakusho have just been about fighting from the beginning?" Why couldn't Yu-Gi-Oh have just been about cards from the beginning? Why couldn't Dragon Ball have just been about fighting from the beginning? All of these series would have been more popular. Before Stands, Jojo was just a poor man's Fist of the North Star (Phantom Blood) and later a more homoerotic version of Fist of the North Star (Battle Tendency); contrary to revisionist history made after the success of the big budget TV anime adaptions, no one gave a shit about the first two Jojo parts when they were first serialized in Jump, hence the fact the series wasn't popular (granted, however, even with Stands, Jojo was never that popular before the TV anime adaption came out in 2012). Just like Yu-Gi-Oh wasn't popular before it became about cards. Just like Yu-Yu-Hakusho wasn't popular before it became about fighting. Just like Dragon Ball wasn't popular before it became about fighting.
None of these series were actually popular before they changed to other stuff. Instead of starting off with stuff people didn't care about, why couldn't they have just started off with the stuff people liked? Why waste time with other shit? "Because the authors didn't think the other shit would fail"? Expecting not to fail doesn't excuse failing; lack of foresight or planning doesn't excuse flip-flopping. Even Toriyama figured from the start that Dragon Ball would have been more popular if it was about fighting; he simply chose to make it about dumb gags instead because that's what he preferred. Togashi already planned to switch Yu-Yu-Hakusho to fighting, and only made it about other stuff at first to familiarize viewers with the characters, which was stupid as already explained. It's not any surprise that people weren't fucking with a poor man's Fist of the North Star (the first two Jojos), a mishmash of random games (the start of Yu-Gi-Oh), boring ghost adventures where nothing happens (the start of Yu-Yu-Hakusho), and of course, a degenerate bastardization of Journey to the West (the start of Dragon Ball). People weren't fucking with them, because they sucked; foresight wasn't needed to realize that. If a story sucks in the beginning, then the author has only himself to blame for being a shitty writer.
A well-written story doesn't suck in the beginning; it gets to the good stuff right away instead of wasting time on boring shit. There wouldn't be these jarring tonal changes or genre shifts; the series would know what it wants to be right off the bat and stick with it all the way through. If Dragon Ball was always about fighting, if Jojo was always about Stands, if Yu-Gi-Oh was always about cards, if Yu-Yu Hakusho was always about fighting, etc the series would have been better written (they'd still suck ass, though). Not every consistent story is good, but any good story is consistent. When you change a story to be about other shit, you lose consistency and if you're just doing it to make more money, you're not putting any real emotional investment into it. That's why it would be better to just end it altogether and start a new one. Your previous story won't be dragged out as much and your new one would have a smoother start as it wouldn't be bogged down by crap from the previous story. That's not to say it'll have any emotional investment, but at least it'll be written more consistently. If you find yourself in a position where you say, "Damn, my story sucks and no one likes it. I better change it to something else so it'll be more successful" then you already failed as a writer. If your story sucks, changing it won't fix it. Just end that shit and start something else. When you write a story, you should have it planned out. You're not supposed to suddenly change plans as you're writing it; you stick with what you had planned before and see it through. And the only thing Toriyama (roughly) had planned out was the Pilaf arc.
With all that said, though, it's ultimately pointless to say that the series should have ended at the Pilaf arc when the Pilaf arc was terrible to begin with. Dragon Ball is garbage from start to finish; the sooner you end garbage the better, but if all of it is garbage, then it should have never existed in the first place. And indeed, Dragon Ball should have just never existed in the first place because it's absolute trash. But even taking everything after the Pilaf arc on its own, ignoring that it clashes with what was written before, it's still terrible. Martial arts coming to the forefront didn't actually improve the quality of the writing one bit; it's still tasteless drivel. Straight out the gate, when the Jackie Chun arc begins, we get more unfunny perverted gags with Roshi trying to feel up a mermaid's tits before we're introduced to Lunch, a criminal with a split personality. Her only purpose is to give us more perverted gags with Roshi making her wear a nightie in broad daylight outside as a "training exercise" and trying to sexually assault her after Goku knocks her the fuck out. The creepy innuendo in a young, conventionally attractive woman being flown to live with a horny old man is undeniable. Oh, yeah, and we're introduced to Kuckli--ahem, I mean, Krillin who just exists to be a punching bag and a laughing stock, as well as a foil for Goku; whereas Goku is a superhuman prodigy, Krillin's comparatively far less impressive and is ultimately just another one of Goku's cheerleaders who job.
It goes without saying, Kucklin fucking sucks. Of all the "rival" types Toriyama could have come up with, he just gave us this bitch for cheap laughs. Too bad his gags aren't funny at all. He's just another insert for incels and he never really improves as a character, remaining a useless bitch-boy throughout the story. The training arc is utter nonsense and Goku comes close to his old master's level after just 3 chapters (8 months in-universe), surpassing almost everyone in the world even though he's just a 12 year old boy (and when his tail randomly grows back just a few chapters later, he's right about on Roshi's level as we see in their fight). Toriyama just rushed to a tournament because the series was still steadily losing popularity as an aftereffect of the Pilaf arc's failure; a contest event in the story was the simplest way to bring up its ratings. But popularity doesn't equal quality, and the tournament was trash. Held every five years, the Tenkaichi Budokai (Number One Martial Arts Gathering Under the Heavens, or Best-on-Earth Martial Arts Association) is a martial arts tournament to determine who is the strongest person in the world.
But Goku and Kucklin just beat a bunch of worthless fodder until they get to the finals, where we're introduced to a bunch of shitty one-off characters who are discarded after this arc. Goddamn, every one of the characters introduced here suck shit. For an example, this chick right here? "Wow, a woman actually made it to the finals! She must be a really skilled martial artist. I wonder what her fighting style is like"-oh wait, she's just another worthless gag character whose only purpose is to give us more perverted fan-service. The big guy who smells like shit? Another worthless throwaway gag character. The monster guy with the wings? The stereotypical Indian dude? Just more fodder for Goku to beat without any real difficulty; he doesn't use anywhere near his full strength or effort against them. Everyone introduced in the tournament is just a minor throwaway character that doesn't matter in the slightest. You may as well just skip to the very last match with Goku vs. Jackie Chun (Roshi), because there's nothing else worth mentioning. What really is the point of a whole ass tournament arc if only one fight matters?
This arc sucked. The jokes suck. The characters introduced suck. There's a ton of dumb plot convenience, like Goku not being disqualified for using his cloud, his tail growing back, and him seeing a full moon right when he's about to lose the tournament. Fuck this story arc. After it ends, we get another quest for the Dragon Balls in the Red Ribbon arc. It's completely redundant to do another Dragon Ball quest; we already saw Goku and co collect Dragon Balls and get a wish from Shenlong in the Pilaf arc, so we don't need to see them do that all over again as it's unoriginal. Granted, that's not to say another story arc about something other than the Dragon Balls (thereby defeating the entire purpose of a series called "Dragon Ball") would have been any better; it's a telltale sign that a story should have already ended if it must change its purpose and narrative to continue. But it's another telltale sign that it should have already ended if it literally rehashes old plot points. And that's a key issue with the Red Ribbon arc; the whole premise is unoriginal as it's ultimately just a rehash of the Pilaf arc, namely Goku looking for the Dragon Balls and fighting against villains who are also after them (Yamcha and Pilaf). There's no point in a series called "Dragon Ball" not being about Dragon Balls. And there's no point in doing multiple Dragon Ball quests, either. Just end this shitty series.
Anyway, the Red Ribbon arc is just a Goku wankfest. In fact, the earlier portions of it are literally just Goku defeating fodder after fodder, worthless one-off character after worthless one-off character without any involvement from anyone else who had been introduced in the story up to that point. The Muscle Tower chapters are especially bad; we get a shitty parody of Bruce Lee's Game of Death with Goku beating one-off trash after one-off trash. The Terminator parody? The ninja? The Teletubby? The other Red Ribbon flunkies? They all suck. So does the Frankenstein knockoff. Literally none of these shitty characters matter in the slightest after they appear because they're immediately discarded. The jokes suck. This is boring as hell. Then, Goku reunites with his shitty friends who are useless, serving no other purpose than giving us more unfunny gags. Goku continues to do all the heavy lifting, beating all the villains while they just sit back and watch, in awe of how strong he is. Again, the jokes suck; they're mostly just more unfunny perverted gags with Bulma, which is all she's utilized for, and the homophobic ones with the Nazi stereotype guy are just as tasteless. Then, Toriyama proceeds to suck his own dick by having characters from Dr. Slump appear.
Goddamn, the Red Ribbon arc sucks ass. I've actually seen some diehard Dragon Ball fans criticize it for being boring as hell, too; Toriyama was just throwing a bunch of random shit at the wall here. The only time it becomes remotely interesting is when Tao appears; finally, we have someone who utterly defeats Gary Stuku's ass in a fight. However, this is immediately negated by Goku utterly surpassing him and kicking his ass just a few chapters later, which is literally three days in the story. Just by chasing a cat around for 3 days, Goku gets several times stronger, even though it took Roshi 3 whole years. Awful writing. Goku then single-handedly destroys the rest of the Red Ribbon army all by himself. You know the supporting cast is useless when they say they're gonna help out the main character, but only show up after he has already defeated all the villains. It's really dumb how people act like the Goku wanking in the story only started later when it was there right from the beginning. Anyway, you'd think the arc would end there as the namesake group of villains have been defeated, but it needlessly continues so the story can give us another tournament just so Goku can find the very last Dragon Ball (which turns out to be completely pointless as the Pilaf gang, the ones with the last Dragon Ball, would have eventually come after him anyway).
More worthless one-off characters are introduced. The vampire? The invisible dude? Fodder beaten by dumb gags (especially that one last one. Literally Bulma's titties to the rescue. Fucking horrible character). The mummy and the devil? More fodder for Goku to beat. Even the masked guy who turns out to be Goku's dead grandfather is beaten pretty easily, getting overwhelmed by Goku's strength, failing to inflict any damage on Goku and forfeiting after it turns out Goku can keep fighting without his tail. This story is literally nothing but a Goku wankfest. Around this point, Toriyama is burnt out and wants to end the series, but is convinced by his editor and management at Shuiesha to continue it as it had become so popular. So, then, it's randomly revealed that Goku will save the world one day, killing a good deal of the tension in subsequent arcs as we know for sure he's going to pull through in the end. "OMG Goku you're so amazing!" Nah, man, fuck this character. Anyway, Goku revives his Native American stereotype friend's father and leaves to train for the next Tenkaichi Budokai, which will be held in 3 years. Wasn't the Tenkaichi Budokai supposed to be held every 5 years? No problem, it randomly turns out they're being held every 3 years now due to high demand and we just find out. In other words, more awful writing and the story jumps three years so we can have yet another tournament.
While Tenshinhan and Chiaotz are certainly more interesting than anyone introduced in the first tournament arc, being from a rival school to Goku's, it doesn't make up for the fact that it's still just another tournament arc at base; Toriyama is just a talentless hack who rehashes the same old plot points over and over again for his shitty story to continue because he's too lazy to think of anything else. You can also see how badly implemented the Crane School was in the story; if Tao helped the Crane Hermit train Tenshinhan and Chiaotz at the Crane School, then how come they can fly when he couldn't? Isn't flying a trademark of the Crane School? Why would Tao, one of the masters, not be able to do it when his students could? And if Tao was a master of the Crane School, why wouldn't he have noticed Goku was a student of the rival Turtle School? You'd think he'd notice from the Kame 亀 (turtle) symbol on Goku's uniform, not to mention the fact Goku uses the Kamehameha, but he makes zero acknowledgement of it. Why is that? Because of course, Toriyama hadn't even thought up the Crane School when Tao first appeared; when he came up with them later on and decided to connect them to Tao, he made zero attempt to accommodate for Tao not being able to fly or recognizing that Goku was from the rival school.
The idea that there would be a rival school to the Turtle School sounds cool on paper, but the Crane School's entire existence and connection to Tao comes out of nowhere in the story. Toriyama once again proved that he's a hack who can't plan his story out. It's not a surprise when he was burnt out after the Red Ribbon arc and only continued the series because he wanted more money. And he didn't even try at all when he came up with the other new competitors, namely the Muay Thai-ish fighter and the Werewolf dude, as they're just more one-off fodder. Anyway, Yamcha jobs, failing to get past the quarterfinals once again. Kucklin beats Chiaotz with a dumb gag right when he's about to lose. Goku kicks Kucklin's ass; wow, Kucklin's really come far, going from being Goku's bitch when they first fought back in the Jackie Chun arc to still being his bitch when they fight again. But at least Tenshinhan himself feels like an imposing antagonist; he even makes Roshi retire and debuts a technique that would become a series staple.
Oh, but too bad he's overwhelmed by Goku relatively easily when they fight, and after Tenshinhan finds himself beaten in a straight physical battle, the match turns into a predictable mess of spectacle to wank Goku further. Tenshinhan uses the Taiyoken (Sun Fist) against Goku. It fails. Tenshinhan grows arms out of his back against Goku. It fails; Goku even used the same move as a fodder (KEK) character to beat it. Tenshinhan blows up the arena with a giant lazer beam. It fails, and Goku knocks him the fuck out; Tenshinhan only wins the match itself due to a technicality. Ultimately, whatever potential he had to be interesting going forward was squandered by how short his character arc is. When he first appears, he's a member of the Crane School, rival to the Turtle, and aspires to become an assassin. But right after a single conversation with Roshi, he suddenly sees the error of his ways and becomes a good guy. Just like that. And once Goku beats him, he becomes another one of his cheerleaders. What a complete waste of a character. You don't make villains achieve redemption and become good guys as soon as they fucking appear; that's just half-assed.
Anyway, what happens literally as soon as the Tenshinhan arc ends? Kucklin suddenly gets killed by some random monster off-screen. He's literally fine one page and dead in the next. This brings us to the next arc; it randomly turns out there's a "Great Demon King" (Daimao) called Piccolo who was sealed away by Roshi's master long ago. Now that he has been freed by the Pilaf trio, he wants to exact revenge on all martial artists and bring the world to utter chaos. His entire existence is random; there was no indication that such an evil monster existed before. Just because Baba said that Goku will save the world one day back in her miniarc without even elaborating doesn't specifically build up him saving the world from the king of demons, because for all we knew, she could have been referring to any villain. There was no reason to think she was specifically talking about anything like a king of demons. This isn't even the first time Goku was facing a global threat; Pilaf literally was trying to use the Dragon Balls to take control of Earth in the very first arc. For all we knew, Baba could have been referring to another goofy villain like him. The Red Ribbon Army sought world domination, too, and none of its members and associates were without goofiness; even a cold-blooded assassin like Tao looked rather comical when he was getting beaten up by Goku and at the end of the day, he was just a mercenary. We were given no reason to think someone or something bent on wiping out all of humanity was gonna appear in the story later.
So, the Daimao arc starts and old plot points are rehashed again. Not only is Piccolo out for revenge against all martial artists, but he wants to collect all Dragon Balls to restore his youth. This makes him the fourth antagonist who is after the Dragon Balls for his own selfish desires (Yamcha, Pilaf, Red and now Piccolo). You know a story sucks dick when it's rehashing the same tired plot point for the fourth time. The only difference now is that the plot unfolds like a crappy Hong Kong revenge movie, lazily killing off multiple recurring characters in rapid succession so Goku can avenge all of them. First, Kucklin dies. Then, Roshi. Then, Chiaotz. Even the fucking dragon gets killed. Entire cities get wiped out. It's straight-up doomsday in this arc, which just clashes with how relatively lighthearted the previous one was. Gags become few and far between as the story becomes all about Goku having intense, flashy fights against supervillains to save Earth, setting the groundwork for all subsequent arcs. Fights progressively become longer and all the spectacle is raised; characters repeatedly fire gigantic lazer beams (lol @ the reused panels) and fireballs to blow things up and moan as they power up for prolonged periods of time.
Eventually, all of these things would cause the series to be nicknamed "Drag-On Ball", because it drags on with all of these predictable, repetitive battles. At some point later down the line, it becomes hard to remember when the series was just a lighthearted comedy. Contrary to popular Western belief, Dragon Ball did not pioneer or popularize any of these action tropes; flashy, speedy fights in anime/manga date all the way back to when Astro Boy (aka Mighty Atom) was first coming out in the 1950s and they evolved over time with other action series like Cyborg 009, Locke the Superman, Kikaider, Mazinger Z, Devilman, Violence Jack, Ring ni Kakero (Put It All in the Ring), Kinnikuman (Muscle Man), Mobile Suit Gundam, and Cosmo Police Justy, but Fist of the North Star (known as Hokuto no Ken in Japan, literally "Fist of the Big Dipper") really set the standard for the type of intense, destructive battles that would shape later series including Dragon Ball. Fist first came out in 1983 (a year before Dragon Ball in 1984) and quickly became the most popular manga in Weekly Jump before Dragon Ball dethroned it in 1986.
Even Toriyama's first editor admits that when he thought up ways to make Dragon Ball popular, he studied Fist. He also admitted that Saint Seiya, another series influenced by Fist, had a notable impact on Dragon Ball despite technically coming out later (it first came out in 1985. Seiya is also made by the same person who made Ring ni Kakero, which first came out in 1977 and is often said to be the most influential Shonen manga since the 60s). That isn't to say that Dragon Ball wasn't highly successful on its own (more than any of these other series, in fact), but it's simply incorrect to say that it invented or popularized anything when virtually all of its tropes existed and were popular before; all it did was make Shonen more popular than it already was. If the story was eventually gonna take a more action-packed, serious route, then it could have at least built it up beforehand so it'd be a smoother transition, but that would never be the case with a hack like Toriyama writing.
The Pilaf trio would be actual martial artists and the Dragon Team would fight them over the course of the arc, culminating in an intense battle between Goku and Pilaf. Shu would be a legitimate ninja and he can be an opponent for Yamcha. Mai would actually know physical combat; she can be an opponent for Bulma, who would also have physical combat skills of her own (and there'd be no perverted fan-service scenes with her). Give Pilaf a Garlic Junior-esque transformation and have him pummel Goku, who turns the tables by transforming into a giant monkey. In his first appearance, Pilaf would reveal that long ago, his ancestors were permitted by the Great Demon King to rule a portion of the Earth so long as they committed their own heinous crimes (this connection to the Great Demon King would serve to justify Pilaf naively thinking that he'd be treated well for freeing him from the rice cooker later on). And according to Pilaf, the Great Demon King was the one who created the Dragon Balls, not God; who truly made the Dragon Balls would be a subject of debate until we find out later on in the story that long before expelling the evil in his body to create the Great Demon King, the nameless being who became God created multiple sets of Dragon Balls. As God and the Great Demon King are two halves of the same person, it can be said that they both created the Dragon Balls.
Pilaf's ancestors formed their own empire that would maintain some power even after the Great Demon King's defeat, but they gradually lose dominance and by the start of the series, it's been all but wiped out by the Red Ribbon Army. Mai and Shu are the only ones who still serve Pilaf, who's hiding as the Red Ribbon has hired the feared assassin Tao to kill him. This builds up Tao, who would also be the one who killed Yamcha's master before the start of the series; he spared Yamcha as he felt he wasn't worth killing and this tragic event is what led to Yamcha becoming an infamous desert bandit. It also turns out that the day Tao killed Yamcha's master, he had brought his disciple Tenshinhan with him. This would be before Tenshinhan shaved his head and awakened his third eye (I know supposedly Tenshinhan descended from a clan of triclops people or some shit, but that's never brought up, so forget that part of his backstory). Yamcha defeated Tenshinhan, who vowed to get revenge someday, giving their fight in the Tenshinhan arc more emotional stakes. Anyway, after the giant monkey Goku defeats Pilaf, he leaves to train with Roshi.
Roshi initially refuses to take Goku and Krillin as his disciples because he doesn't want them to go through the same hardships and tragedies he did when he trained under his master with his former friend the Crane Hermit; he only accepts them after seeing their courage (not because they brought an attractive young woman to live with him. Drop Lunch altogether). As he trains them, he stresses that they must be prepared for the day someone or something evil wrecks total havoc on Earth, as they'll be the ones who will have to defeat them. During one of their educational lessons, Roshi teaches them some history about various things related to martial arts, including the cat hermit Karin and and the Great Demon King. He tells them of Karin's tower, the supposed magical water and the Senzu resting there; he also reveals the nimbus cloud was a gift from Karin to him. He also reveals that the Great Demon King was sealed away by his master in a rice cooker that went to the Crane Hermit, who also trained under Muitato. When Roshi mentions the Crane Hermit, Krillin reveals that the temple he trained at was crushed by the Crane School; while Tenshinhan and Chiaotz didn't kill anyone, everyone at the temple was defeated and the Crane Hermit killed his master. Krillin fought Chiaotz back then, but was easily defeated and humiliated by him.
This gives their match in the Tenshinhan arc more emotional stakes. Anyway, remove Lanfan, Giran, Bacterian, and Nam from the tournament as they're all worthless one-off characters. First round, Krillin beats Shu, Jackie Chun (Roshi) beats Yamcha, Staff Officer Black beats Mai (Black participates in the tournament to win the prize money so he can increase the Red Ribbon's funds. I'd like to give Black more of a role in the story; by making him the first Red Ribbon member to appear in the story before the others, his eventual coup feels more impactful), and Goku beats Pilaf (this time, Goku defeats the transformed Pilaf in his base form to show his gains from training under Roshi). Next round, Jackie beats Krillin and Goku beats Black (and so, their fight in the Red Ribbon arc would be a rematch). While Goku and Jackie fight in the final match, Black steals the prize money and escapes while expressing awe at how strong Goku is. Black hopes to never see Goku again, and when he sees that Goku is fighting against his army, he realizes that he will have to fight him again.
Then, the Red Ribbon arc starts and Goku goes to Muscle Tower. Remove Murasaki because he's a worthless gag character. Remove Sergeant Metallic because he's pointless, too. I would make Buyon a scientific clone of one of Great Demon King Piccolo's children (Buyon does have an antenna like Piccolo, so it wouldn't be a stretch) to build up Piccolo up more; of course, Buyon wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as the real thing. Remove No.8 because he's another worthless one-off. No point in giving Goku a new ally just to immediately discard him. It would have been better to just have Yamcha and/or Krillin help Goku out at Muscle Tower (or since Bulma's more of a fighter in this rewrite, she could come help out). Also, remove General Blue from the story altogether and give his role to Colonel Silver, who would be General Silver. There doesn't need to be any gay Nazi stereotypes like Blue. Silver would be the one with psychic powers and he'd have a more ruthless personality. Of course, he ultimately gets killed by Tao.
When Tao is called by the Red Ribbon to be given the task of killing Goku, he's in the middle of fighting Pilaf, who they still want dead. Tao blows up Pilaf's mech suit, but not before revealing he's the brother of the Crane Hermit, who entrusted him with the Great Demon King's container. He reports Pilaf as dead to the Red Ribbon Army, but Pilaf's shown to survive and go into hiding (I also wouldn't have Pilaf fight Goku at the end of the Baba mini-arc; it's pointless to extend the arc just so Goku can have a short fight with Pilaf. Instead the last Dragon Ball would be at Baba's place, sealed up in a special container that prevents the radar from detecting it. When Goku wins her tournament, he is given the ball). Tao goes to find Goku and upon seeing his outfit, he recognizes that he is a student of the Turtle School. He'd declare that the Crane School will eventually wipe out the Turtle School one day. Goku is defeated by Tao in their first fight, so he climbs the tower and trains under Karin. Remove Upa and Bora from the story altogether; they're half-assed stereotypes who serve no real purpose in this story. There was nothing to even be felt from Bora's death when he got killed off right after we were introduced to him. Just make the four star ball the very last Dragon Ball Goku gets at the very end of the arc (when he goes to Baba). Karin would save Goku's life with a Senzu after he is nearly killed by Tao, quickly climbing the tower before Goku can wake up. When Goku wakes up, he remembers what Roshi said about Karin's tower and climbs it. Once Goku reaches the top, Karin trains him.
After Goku completes his training and leaves to fight Tao again (this time at the Red Ribbon HQ instead of below Karin's tower), Karin mentions to himself that he's been feeling a premonition that a great evil will soon rise. Having trained Goku and seen his potential, Karin wonders if Goku will be able to save the world from this evil, but is uncertain. Goku wrecks havoc on the Red Ribbon's base and fights Tao again. He pummels Tao, who attempts to kill him with a bomb; Goku kicks it back at him. While Tao is presumed to have been killed in the explosion when Goku kicks his bomb back at him, he would be shown to barely be alive far away, vowing to get revenge someday (it actually makes no sense that Tao survived the bomb explosion close-up, but I wouldn't mind it as much if he came back during the Tenshinhan arc. He was out of place in the Piccolo Junior arc, but he'd be right at home in the Tenshinhan arc as the Turtle vs. Crane rivalry was the whole focus of that arc; it wasn't a pointless subplot like it was in the Piccolo Junior arc. Just show Tao putting up a guard right before the bomb goes off). After seeing Tao get defeated and learning of Red's silly purpose for collecting the Dragon Balls, Black kills Red and takes control of the army. Black is defeated by Goku once again and dies when Goku blows up his mech suit. With that, the Red Ribbon army is defeated. Upon learning Goku beat them, Roshi wonders just how strong Goku will become and if he could soon surpass even his master Muitato who defeated the Great Demon King. By this point, Goku has collected 6 Dragon Balls and goes to Baba's place to learn the location of the last one: his treasured Four Star Ball, bringing Yamcha, Krilin, and Roshi along with him.
Remove Ackman, the invisible guy, the mummy, and the vampire at Baba's place as they're all minor one-off trash. Aside from Grandpa Gohan, I would make Baba's fighters the dead masters of Yamcha and Krillin; like Gohan, they're wearing masks to hide their identities and only reveal themselves after being beaten. After they defeat Krillin and Yamcha, these dead masters are defeated by Goku. Finally, Goku fights Gohan and defeats him. Seeing Goku's strength, the dead masters wonder if he'll surpass Muitato one day. as a reward, he is given the Four Star Ball (Gohan would be the one to hand it to Goku as a nod to how the Four Star Ball was a gift Gohan gave Goku before he died). After Gohan and the other dead masters poof away, Goku leaves with the Four Star Ball to train for the next Budokai; Baba would seal up the other six Dragon Balls in her radar-blocking container to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Once everyone else has headed home, Baba mentions to herself that she's been feeling a grim premonition that a great evil will rise in the near future. She wonders if Goku will be able to save the world from this evil, but she's uncertain (instead of just telling everyone that Goku will save the world one day. That way, tension in the story wouldn't be ruined) and hopes he won't fight someone as dangerous as the Great Demon King. She also mentions that some of Goku's friends are fated to die without specifying who.
In addition, she would make it clear that despite being a fortuneteller, she can't see everything in the future, acknowledging that her reputation as an all-seeing crone is ultimately a hoax just as her brother Roshi's reputation as an immortal martial artist is a hoax, revealing that he isn't immortal (instead of this randomly being revealed in the Daimao arc. Ideally, though, Roshi should have never been said to be immortal in the first place). Meanwhile, the disgraced Pilaf vows to take over the world "by any means necessary, even if it means doing something really terrible" in a rather sinister manner (not that he would become a serious, totally straight villain, but just for this moment in the story, he'd get serious. I should stress, though, that Pilaf would never merely be a gag character at any point; he'd still have some playful quirkiness, but as I said before, Pilaf and his men would be legitimate fighters who'd face Goku and co a la Garlic Junior and his men from the Dead Zone movie. Check out this fancomic by Dragon Garrow Lee to get an idea of what I mean; just don't make Goku OP like Vegeeta here so he'd actually be challenged by Pilaf and his men, and the story would be better) while his lackeys Mai and Shu look at him in concern.
When the Tenshinhan arc starts three years later, Roshi would mention to himself that he's been feeling a premonition that disaster is looming. The Crane Hermit, Tao, Tenshinhan and Chiaotz show up at the Budokai. They want revenge on the Turtle School, particularly Goku, for nearly killing Tao, who is crippled and weakened. Roshi wonders if they're the ones who will throw the world into chaos, but eventually rules them out over the course of the arc, which would focus more on the difference in ideology between the Turtle and Crane Schools; while the Turtle School focuses on practicing martial arts for sport and bettering oneself, the Crane School focuses on practicing martial arts for the sake of brutality and killing others. In addition to Tenshinhan and Chiaotz, the Crane Hermit, and Tao participate in the Budokai (replacing the Muay Thai-ish dude and the werewolf, both pointless characters, as contestants); the Crane School's plan is to weaken Goku over the course of the tournament, so that Tao will kill him in the final match.
The first round of matches consists of Yamcha vs. Tenshinhan, Jackie Chun vs. Tao, Krillin vs. Chiaotz, and Goku vs. the Crane Hermit; their plan is for Tenshinhan to defeat Yamcha, Tao to defeat Jackie (who they believe is just a regular martial artist, unaware that he's Roshi), Chiaotz to defeat Krillin, and the Crane Hermit to forfeit to Goku only after beating him to a pulp. Their plan in the next round would be for Tenshinhan to forfeit to Tao right away and Chiaotz to forfeit to Goku only after beating him further to a pulp, so in the final round, Tao would have no problem killing Goku. Tenshinhan defeats Yamcha, but Jackie defeats Tao and knocks him out. Crane Hermit realizes that Jackie is Roshi and reveals it to everyone. Angered over Tao's defeat, the Crane Hermit tells Chiaotz to kill Krillin. Not only is Krillin much stronger than they anticipated, he provokes Chiaotz by pointing out that he doesn't have the resolve to kill someone; as a result, Chiaotz loses focus and Krillin defeats him (nothing to do with a stupid math gag).
After winning the match, Krillin would be asked by Jackie what he would have done if Chiaotz had been willing to kill him. Proudly, Krillin would state that he'd have kept fighting even if it meant losing his life. Jackie then asks him if he would stick to his convictions against someone far stronger than Chiaotz who wanted to kill him and there was no way out; would Krillin want to keep practicing martial arts if it meant being killed by someone far stronger than him? In response, Krillin remarks that while he initially started practicing martial arts to become popular with girls, he now fights to prove his worth as a warrior and see how strong he can become; he'd proudly fight to the end even if it meant dying tragically. This would serve up to build up Krillin's death later on. Goku defeats the Crane Hermit in their match and knocks him out. In the semifinals, Jackie fights Tenshinhan and forfeits, revealing to everyone that he's Roshi. Finally, upon seeing Goku and Krillin's bond during their match against each other, Roshi remarks that he and the Crane Hermit used to be close like that when they trained under their master Muitato during their youth; Roshi prays to himself that a tragedy won't break Goku and Krillin's bond in the future.
The Crane Hermit wakes up in time for Goku and Tenshinhan's match. When Tenshinhan begins to lose, he makes Chiaotz paralyze Goku so he can kill him, but Tenshinhan tells them to stop. The Crane Hermit attempts to kill Chiaotz for listening to Tenshinhan, prompting Roshi to blast him away. He lands in a spot where he's found by a mysterious being. The Crane Hermit fearfully recognizes what the mysterious being is before being killed by it (Crane Hermit would be revived at the end of the Daimao arc when the Dragon Balls are used to revive everyone who was killed). This "mysterious being" would be Tambourine, one of Piccolo's demon children; at this point, we would only see his silhouette and hear him mention that he's heading for the Budokai. As a result, the readers would feel for themselves that danger is right on the horizon and thus, they'd look forward to the moment shit does hit the fan. Tenshinhan wins his match against Goku on a technicality and Krillin gets killed by Tambourine.
It's revealed that the Great Demon King Piccolo has been freed from his container by Pilaf, who stole it from Tao's house sometime during the three years he was recuperating from his fight with Goku. Recalling the memory of making Dragon Balls in the past, Piccolo would be able to sense their location, even when they're inside of Baba's radar blocking container; God would have the ability to sense where the balls are, and being his other half, so would Piccolo (alternatively, members of their race have the ability to sense Dragon Balls in general). Tambourine kills Krilin and takes Goku's ball. Having brought a Senzu with him to the tournament, Goku heals himself with it and heads to fight Tambourine. Goku kills Tambourine on Piccolo's ship, but is defeated by Piccolo, who knocks him off the ship and assumes he's dead. Piccolo then heads to Baba's place to take her balls; sensing Piccolo approaching, Baba calls over Roshi to help her. Bringing Tenshinhan and Chiaotz with him, Roshi faces Piccolo at Baba's. He fails to seal Piccolo away with the Mafuba and dies. Piccolo kills Baba and summons Shenlong. Chiaotz tries to stop Piccolo from making his wish, but is killed as well. Piccolo wishes for eternal youth, kills Shenlong, and wrecks havoc on Earth. Tenshinhan, who was hidden away by Roshi, trains to learn the Mafuba on his own. Barely surviving his fight with Piccolo, Goku uses his nimbus cloud to head over to Karin, who trains him to use his Ozaru power at will without transforming, and this would be how Goku becomes strong enough to fight Piccolo (no magic water BS). Remove Yajirobei from the story altogether; it's too convenient that Goku just stumbled upon another strong fighter right after being defeated by Tambourine.
Take everything I said in the last fifteen paragraphs, and you'd have a fair bit of foreshadowing and build-up for the Daimao arc. I could see plenty of speculation from the readers about just what sort of villain was gonna wreck havoc upon Earth if things went as I described; would it be Pilaf, who vowed revenge on Goku at the end of the Baba miniarc? Would it be the Crane School that Tao said will crush the Turtle School in the Red Ribbon arc? Is the Crane Hermit the one who will bring disaster to the world? Would it be someone connected to the legendary demon king that Roshi had mentioned multiple times throughout the story? Or will it be the legendary demon king himself? Who of Goku's friends will die? Will Goku even succeed in saving the world? There would be a ton of suspense and anticipation as to just what would happen in the story. Unfortunately, this would never be the case with someone as talentless as Toriyama writing. He's just a hack who wings everything.
Just stop and think, the Daimao arc doesn't start until chapter 135; Toriyama had more than enough time in the story to build it up. All that time he wasted on writing unfunny perverted jokes and other nonsense in the Pilaf, Jackie Chun, Red Ribbon, and Tenshinhan arcs could have easily gone to developing major plot points that would be brought up in the Daimao arc and even later down the line. Who gives a shit about countless perverted sex jokes or seeing Goku and co beat up worthless fodder? It's really not any surprise that the original Dragon Ball anime isn't as popular as Dragon Ball Z; to this day, new fans often just skip straight to DBZ and the original DB series doesn't get anywhere near as much representation in videogames. The Pilaf arc is a half-assed adventure full of degeneracy and stupidity. The Jackie Chun arc is a half-assed tournament/training arc full of degeneracy and stupidity. The Red Ribbon arc is another half-assed adventure full of degeneracy and stupidity. While the Tenshinhan arc is less degenerate and silly than the previous arcs, it still doesn't set up later plot points in the story and it still has its share of stupid shit. With arcs as silly as these, of course the original DB is so often ignored. DBZ is trash, too, but its emphasis on fighting makes it more memorable than the original DB. No one but Toriyama fanboys give a shit about the sillier stuff and Toriyama's sense of humor is awful. His works aren't funny at all.
Of course, it's not even like Dragon Ball needed to start off as a pure fighting series to be popular. Toriyama is silly when he claims that the reason the very first arc was unpopular was because it was a road adventure story, which wasn't what readers wanted at the time according to him. This is bullshit, because a road adventure story could have definitely worked. The reason the Pilaf arc didn't work was because it was a shitty adventure story! Compare Dragon Ball to another Chinese-esque adventure series like Avatar: The Last Air Bender, or even Shonen manga like Dragon Quest: The Great Adventure of Dai and One Piece. They're not perfect, but those stories have a lot more foreshadowing, consistency, and world-building than Dragon Ball ever did. They do a far better job at balancing action, adventure, and comedy, too. If Dragon Ball was written like that instead of aiming to be a half-assed bastardization of Journey to the West for degenerates, then it would have been popular from the jump. Toriyama was just too much of a hack to write a story like this; he can't plan or balance anything to save his life.
Instead of Goku and co tediously gathering the balls over and over again, the plot would have been better if it was basically just one big quest for the balls, just as One Piece is basically one big quest to find One Piece. Only at the very end of the story would the dragon be summoned. Along the way, Goku would fight plenty of strong opponents (who wouldn't be crappy gag characters or fodder, but relevant fighters with actual ties to the lore) and train to become stronger. There'd be plenty of world-building and foreshadowing of major plot points from the get-go, so nothing would feel random. Action, adventure, and comedy would be balanced. And most importantly, the story would be totally consistent from start to finish without changing genre or suddenly changing tone. When the stakes would be raised in the plot, it would feel like a totally organic progression of events, not a jarring last-minute change. But in all honesty, the Dragon Balls themselves aren't even necessary; people would be tuning in for a grand adventure full of action, but an adventure like that can be about anything and it's arbitrary to make it about collecting balls.
The Dragon Balls are inspired by the balls in the old Hakkenden story, but there were eight balls in that story. The only reason Toriyama made there be only seven Dragon Balls was because he didn't want the number to be exactly the same, which goes to show that the number of balls is arbitrary. There could have just been a single ball and the whole plot would revolve around finding it. But you don't need any balls at all when at the end of the day, the only thing people care about is Goku kicking ass. The story is better off primarily being about Goku becoming the strongest in the universe; he'd only go on grand adventures as part of his quest to become the strongest. You could have something like the Dragon Balls appear for one arc, but it's not necessary. The fact that the series first became popular during the Jackie Chun arc, when the Dragon Balls were completely absent from the plot, further goes to show that they're not necessary. All that's needed for the franchise to succeed is action, so the plot would have been best if it was just about Goku becoming the strongest from the start. It'd be better to just name the series Dragon Fist or simply Goku. Granted, coming up with all these ways that the story could have been better is pointless, because it's better to just come up with a completely different story altogether. Dragon Ball just should have never existed, because it sucks shit, period.
Anyway, not only does the Daimao arc rehash plot points from the Pilaf and Red Ribbon arcs, but it even rips off the Tao chapters from the latter note-for-note. Old guy kicks Goku's ass, tanking even the Kamehameha (Kamehame Wave) and seemingly kills him with a lazer beam? Check, and check, and check. Goku is believed to have died, but miraculously turns out to still be alive after all? Check and check. Goku has to go up Karin's tower to drink a water that is said to make you stronger? Check and check. Goku gets stronger and shows up to save his friend before kicking the old guy's ass? Check, and check and check. Just look at this bullshit; unoriginal as fuck. The only difference is that the water this time actually does make you stronger; Goku becoming many times stronger just by training with Karin for only three days was bad enough, but that he literally just needs to drink water to get stronger this time is even worse. And this water has killed everyone else who has tried to drink it, but Goku is magically able to survive only because he's lucky enough to be able to transform into a giant monkey. Ridiculous plot armor. Senzu (Sage Beans) also randomly heal you now; all they did before was stuff you up so much that you wouldn't have to eat for a week, but now they suddenly heal. It randomly turns out that Karin is the one who gave Roshi his magic cloud, even though God was established as the one who gave him it, which was even reiterated by Toriyama himself.
Oh, and gotta love how Tenshinhan trains to master the Mafuba (Demon Seal Wave) and seal Piccolo away, but the moment he's about to do it, he realizes that the container is cracked and thus he can't seal him away. He conveniently didn't notice until the very moment he approaches Piccolo. This writing is straight fucking awful. Even Toriyama basically admits he was half-assing the story at this time, blaming it on a cold he had been dealing with. Then, Goku defeats Piccolo with his deus ex machina monkey power (why didn't he bring that shit out earlier in the fight?) and saves the day. Honestly, the story could have easily just ended here; Goku has basically beaten the devil and become the strongest person on Earth. Yeah, his friends are still dead, but nothing in the story up to now suggested he couldn't have just visited their undead bodies at Baba's place, and if the story ends, there's no point in bringing back Shenlong, anyway.
But the story is contrived to go on even longer, with more things being pulled out of Toriyama's ass without any foreshadowing, or just dumb shit that doesn't make any sense. For starters, Piccolo is somehow able to spit out another egg even though he has an entire hole in his stomach; this does not make any sense. Then, when Goku returns to Karin's tower, it randomly turns out that those who are killed by demons are damned to suffer in limbo, and when it seems there's nothing that can be done to help them, Karin randomly remembers something that has never been alluded once before in the story, that they just can ask God, who randomly turns out to be the one who created the Dragon Balls and is conveniently right above the tower. All of this comes out of nowhere without any prior foreshadowing or build-up because Toriyama is a talentless hack.
So, then, Goku meets Blackface and God, who randomly turns out to be the good counterpart of Piccolo; it turns out they used to be one person before splitting. After restoring the Dragon Balls to revive Goku's dead friends, God and his boyfriend Blackface begin training Goku to fight ... Piccolo all over again! Toriyama proves himself to be even more of a hack by making the next antagonist literally a clone of the last one. Story also jumps another three years just so we can get yet another tournament arc because again, he's too much of a hack to think of anything else. "B-but Goku hadn't yet won a Budokai" Who fucking cares? He already came close enough the first time, losing only by a hair's breadth. The second time, he only lost by a small technicality once again; some car randomly popped up out of nowhere to hit him. That doesn't negate the fact that as far as the actual fight went, Goku had Tenshinhan beaten in every single way and was the superior fighter. And he already won Baba's tournament. For fuck's sake, who even gives a shit about winning some random tournament when you've already beaten Satan and become the strongest person on Earth; that's a far more significant accomplishment than winning some stupid tournament. There's no point in continuing the story just to asspull a bunch of random shit that was never hinted at before. "B-but Goku still needed to grow up!" No point when he's already stronger than all the adults as a mere child (sans God and Blackface, of course, who were literally asspulled in after Goku beat Daimao).
The Piccolo Junior arc sucked. Not the first, not the second but the third tournament arc, and the fourth tournament in general counting Baba's miniarc. The main antagonist is literally a clone of the last one. Chiaotz gets thrown under the bus just for a pointless subplot (and he doesn't even grow up, remaining Tenshinhan's useless midget boyfriend for the whole story), with Tao being retconned to still be alive after all this time (even though there was literally no way he could have survived the bomb explosion back in the Red Ribbon arc; the bomb exploded right in his fucking face). Tenshinhan's character arc already concluded back in his debut; we already saw him turn on his master and become one of the good guys, so having him beat Goku's sloppy seconds adds to nothing. This fight was an utter waste of time. Chichi randomly coming back just to become Goku's wife was also garbage writing, and you can read more about why here. Yamcha jobs in the quarterfinals for the third time (to an old man for the second time, too). Piccolo kicks Kucklin's ass with no real difficulty whatsoever, but everyone else pretends he did well just because he, what, landed one hit? LMAO @ how the fight was adapted in the anime. Goku pointlessly has a rematch with Tenshinhan just so he can beat him with no real difficulty. God tries to seal Piccolo away with Mafuba, but Piccolo is randomly able to reverse it in a blatant asspull; more specifically, a diabolus ex machina. And so, the final fight between Goku and Piccolo starts.
While it starts off promising enough, the fight quickly devolves into a predictable show of pointless spectacle after pointless spectacle. Piccolo tries to kill Goku along with everyone else in the whole arena with a giant lazer beam, but fails because Goku deflects it. Piccolo tries to kill Goku along with everyone else in the whole arena with another giant lazer beam, but it fails because Goku answers with his own giant lazer beam. Piccolo tries to kill Goku by turning himself giant, but fails because Goku is strong enough to kick his ass anyway despite the size difference. Piccolo tries to kill Goku with a homing lazer beam, but fails because Goku makes him hit himself with it. Piccolo tries to kill Goku by blowing up the entire island they're on, but fails because Goku is strong enough to block it. Piccolo tries to kill Goku by blasting him through the chest, but fails because it misses Goku's vitals. Piccolo tries to kill Goku by blowing him to smithereens with one last lazer beam after disabling all his limbs, but fails because Goku dodges it at the last second by flying and defeats Piccolo with one last headbutt, just like he did on Tenshinhan in the last tournament. So original, right? Not. In the end, despite the fact Piccolo literally tried to kill him and everyone else ... Goku heals him with a magic bean and lets him go just because he wants to fight him again (no, it wasn't to save Kami aka God because Piccolo would have eventually woken up, anyway). Goku just let a fucking homicidal maniac walk free and Bulma's bimbo ass is in admiration. This writing is awful.
The series could have easily ended here; after all, not only has Goku defeated Satan 2.0 ... but he's literally surpassed God. Everything points to an ending here; anyone reading would assume that the series is ending, which is why the narrator breaks the fourth wall (this time through Roshi) to let the reader know it's not, just like he did back in the Pilaf arc. It's simply contrived writing for a story to continue after being built up to an ending multiple times; if something feels like it's ending, then it should just fucking end. Of course, the weebs will argue that it was necessary to show Goku's origin, but we're nearly 200 chapters in the manga at this point; his background hadn't been relevant for all this time, so it's unnecessary to only get into it now. The story would have been better off if Goku was just a regular human, anyway, because his cheap ass monkey powers only ever amounted to bullshit deus ex machinas, right from the very first time he turned into a giant monkey.
It seemed his friends had no way of escaping Pilaf's prison; Goku randomly becomes a giant monkey by looking at the moon to break them out. It seemed Goku was going to be eliminated by Giran; his tail randomly grows back and makes him strong enough to win. It seemed Goku was going to be eliminated by Jackie Chun; he randomly sees a moon to turn into a giant monkey and keep fighting. Karin's poisonous water killed everyone else who tried it, but Goku survives it just because he can suddenly tap into his giant monkey powers without even seeing a moon now. Goku lost a ton of strength from being crippled by Daimao, but he suddenly taps into his giant monkey powers right only at the very end of the fight when Daimao was about to kill him and at no point before. His mysterious monkey powers were easily the worst, cheapest part of his character, and to only explain them now after all this time is just random.
Anyway, so now he's suddenly an alien named Kal-El *ahem* Kakarot who was sent to Earth as a baby. His race is nearly extinct, and the other survivors attack Earth. Goku being an alien from another planet doesn't even make sense; there's no reason for beings who come from totally different planets to Earth to look virtually identical to humans. It's just a dumb cliche trope and the only purpose it serves here is to rip off Superman, particularly the 1980 Superman 2 movie, but with Space Asians instead of white people. You even got a big, brawny henchman in both (Nappa = Non). General Zod gets broken into two characters (who even look similar to each other because Toriyama was too lazy to think of a more original design for Vegeeta. Both he and Raditz have the same face and the same widow's peak; the only difference is their height and the length of their hair. Isn't Raditz supposed to be Goku's brother? Why does Vegeeta look like him? Lazy character design to a T); the first is Raditz, Goku's brother who wants to recruit him (just like Zod wanted to recruit Superman), and the second is Vegeeta, the prideful Saiyan leader who has a climactic fight with Goku in the end (just like Zod is the prideful Kryptonian leader who has a climactic fight with Superman at the end of Superman 2).
Oh, yeah, and Vegeeta is also after the Dragon Balls for immortality, making him not the first (Yamcha), not the second (Pilaf), not the third (Red), not the fourth antagonist (Daimao) but the fifth antagonist who's after the Dragon Balls for his own selfish desire. Leave it to Toriyama to recycle the same tired plot point five times instead of smartly ending the series when it was done the first time. The only difference now is that the series begins to feel like a Western superhero comic as a result of ripping of Superman. Wasn't Goku based on Wukong Sun before? Now he's Superman because Toriyama is a hack. With the start of this arc, the anime also renames itself as Dragon Ball Z, which is what the series is best remembered as. The change in title was to signify that the series would be ending soon, but as the popularity increased, Toriyama kept it going longer because that sweet Yen is too good. From here on out, the plot gets even sillier with all the contrived plot devices that make absolutely no sense.
For starters, we're introduced to Goku's son Gohan, and he's written even more cheaply than his father; he's basically born the most powerful being on Earth and gets significantly stronger just by getting angry. At the age of 4, his power far exceeds Goku as a grown man and for what reason? "Half Saiyan, half human hybrids are born with a lot of potential" ... how? How does being half Saiyan and half human somehow gift you with so much potential? "Uhhhhh, they just do!" So, no reason. It's totally arbitrary and random, which is garbage writing; Gohan sucks and doesn't earn one bit of his power (read more about his failings as a character here). Suddenly we have pointless crap like numbered power levels (ripping off Kinnikuman) and multipliers; these numbers are completely arbitrary and serve no purpose whatsoever. You don't need to assign random numbers onto characters for the reader to understand how strong they are, and this gave way to one of the most cancerous parts of the fandom; namely, nerds fighting tooth-and-nail with each other over whose power level list is better.
It's downright toxic and any sane person should stay away from weirdos who argue about this stupid shit. Granted, obnoxious "VS" debates about who's the strongest plague just about any fandom of action series, but numbered power levels only added to the problem. There's no point in having someone multiply their own strength, either; you don't even need to be twice as strong as someone to kick their ass in a fight. It gets especially ridiculous when we see characters multiply their power ten, twenty, fifty, etc times later; there's absolutely no reason they should be multiplying their power anywhere near that much. And it's not even consistent how the multipliers or power levels work; ultimately, characters are only as strong as the plot wants them to be. There was never any point in throwing out random numbers. The fact none of the aliens are able to sense energy and have to use devices to detect living things is also arbitrary, and I love how these aliens are implied to be unable to change their power levels even though we clearly see them power up to make themselves stronger. What the fuck do you call this shit? Powering up. This writing is balls.
Speaking of bad writing, it was dumb to literally go as far as introducing a brother for the main protagonist only to immediately kill him off; it's baffling how insignificant Raditz turns out when he's supposed to be Goku's brother, and he and Nappa may as well have not even existed when Vegeeta is the only antagonist who actually matters in this arc. The arc starts off with an alien invading Earth. He dies just nine chapters later to make way for two more aliens invading Earth, and the only thing that really sets them apart from him is that they're stronger. Ultimately, they all serve the same role in the story ... which is to just be more opponents for Goku to fight. There's no need for three alien invaders when two of them are just bottom bitches for one; you should have just had the main one appear from the start and not waste time with any worthless hench-cucks.
"But then Vegeeta would have killed everyone right from the start!" LOL, Raditz was almost triple Goku's strength at bare minimum (at least 1,200, and at most, slightly higher whereas Goku was only 416), so he should have just killed him, too; the only reason Goku and Piccolo lived was because Raditz fucked around, and in that case, there's no reason that Vegeeta couldn't have also fucked around. "But Gohan's rage boost wouldn't have been big enough to hurt Vegeeta" Completely arbitrary; if a rage boost can take Gohan all the way to 1,307 from a base power level of 1, then there's no reason why it couldn't have taken him to 18k or any number for that matter. By having a small child literally become over 1,000 times stronger just by getting mad, you destroyed any modicum of logic the story has.
And who fucking cares if Vegeeta would kill everyone if he attacked in the beginning? The side characters are all fodder who just job; in fact, the story explicitly established them all as trash by this point as recently as the Piccolo Junior arc when we saw that none of them would be able to beat a heavily weakened Piccolo, even if they worked together. Fuck this shitty excuse for a "motley crew"; why even keep them alive if they're just gonna get rekt and killed by fucking henchmen later? Piccolo is fodder now, too; all of a sudden, the king of demons is suddenly a good guy just because he developed Lima syndrome for his abductee, who develops Stockholm syndrome for him? Fuck Piccolo and Gohan's relationship altogether; the series pretends it's something beautiful when it's literally glorified child abuse.
Should have just sealed
Piccolo away for good in the last arc like he absolutely should have been for being an evil fuck instead of turning him into another one of Goku's
enemies-turned-cheerleaders; we already saw this shit with 1) Bulma. 2)
Oolong. 3 and 4) Yamcha and Puer. 5 and 6) Tenshinhan and Chiaotz. 7) Yajirobei. 8) And now it's
Piccolo's turn. Fuck this predictable "friendship is power" nonsense. Goku sucks and his cheerleaders are even worse. Gohan sucks, too; he's just a poor man's Goku who should have never even
existed in the first place; Goku never needed a son. Only Goku ever mattered in this story, and
he dies at the beginning of this arc; if he dies, then you may as well just kill
everyone else. It's way too late in the story to even pretend anyone else has any real purpose when they've always existed for the sole purpose of making Goku look better. Only Kami is needed to stay alive for everyone to come back with the Dragon Balls, anyway.
And there's more contrived shit in this arc. For an example, why the hell doesn't anyone bother sealing the Saiyans away with the Mafuba? They'd have no way of blocking against it, and Kami and Piccolo don't even die when they use it. But for some reason, everyone forgets that move exists for the sake of artificial tension. Why doesn't anyone bother wishing to destroy the Saiyans' ships in space so they'd die of suffocation? There's no reason why Shenlong wouldn't be able to grant that wish when he's not directly harming the Saiyans just by destroying their ships. Fortuneteller Baba is supposed to be able to see the future, but for absolutely no reason whatsoever, she can no longer do so in the Saiyan arc at all for the sake of artificial tension. The side Z Fighters suck so badly that they can't even get past the henchmen. It's especially pathetic how Yamcha dies to one of the Saibaimen (Cultivated Men), who exist for no reason other than to be filler to pad the arc. He's really come a long way from jobbing to Goku back in the Pilaf arc, jobbing to Roshi in the Jackie Chun arc, jobbing to the mummy in the Baba mini-arc, jobbing to Tenshinhan in the Tenshinhan arc, and jobbing to Kami in the Piccolo Junior arc, huh? Not.
Then, Chiaotz dies (again) to Nappa. Then, Tenshinhan dies to Nappa. Then, Vegeeta and Nappa conveniently decide to stop fighting for a few hours so Goku can arrive because they want him to see his friends die; this serves to be a bullshit deus ex machina to draw out the plot long enough for Goku to arrive. Then, Piccolo dies to Nappa. Goku ends up arriving at the last minute, right when Gohan's about to die, and kicks Nappa's ass. Then, Vegeeta kills Nappa for jobbing, and he fights Goku. Their fight is a predictable game of back-and-forth. Vegeeta kicks Goku's ass. Then, Goku kicks Vegeeta's ass. Vegeeta kicks Goku's ass by turning into a monkey and Goku loses. Didn't Piccolo destroy the moon earlier? No problem, Vegeeta can just randomly pull a new one out of his ass. Gohan and Kucklin now have to come back to save Goku; there was no point in Goku sending them away in the first place if they were just going to come back to him later. Goku left them behind because they were too weak to do anything; Gohan and Kucklin couldn't even get past Nappa, and now they're gonna save Goku from Vegeeta?
As a reader, you can tell that Toriyama only decided to have Vegeeta beat Goku at the last minute just by looking at how contrived everything after the Kamehameha vs. Galick Gun beam struggle is; he was originally going to have Goku kill Vegeeta all by himself, but due to Vegeeta's popularity, he decided to have Vegeeta live and beat Goku instead. Even though the story had been building up Goku to defeat him, just like he had defeated the final antagonist or opponent in every arc since Red Ribbon (Staff Officer Black in the Red Ribbon arc, Tenshinhan in the Tenshinhan arc, Daimao in the Daimao arc, and Piccolo in the Piccolo Junior arc). Having Goku win all final fights is undoubtedly predictable, but more than 200 chapters into the story, it's way too late for him to lose at the climax of an arc and need his friends to fight in his place; he's always been the one to save them in the end, so flipping the script after all this time is contrived.
At this point, it's just a forced change of narrative, and if the story can only continue by having one of those, then it should have already ended. The final fight with Vegeeta is just one drawn out, convoluted mess. For one, Vegeeta being able to keep fighting after taking a 3x Kaioken (World King Fist) beatdown and a 4x Kaioken Kamehameha back-to-back was silly; the power difference should have been enough to at least incapacitate him, if not outright kill him. And him being able to create a moon was a blatant asspull; there was absolutely zero build-up or foreshadowing to him having such a convenient ability, and it only turns out he has it the moment it seems like he can't transform as Earth's moon is gone, so it's a literal diabolus ex machina. And asspulling a moon made Vegeeta even weaker, and having his tail cut off should have further weakened him when he turned back to normal.
This should mean that if the Genkidama aka Yuanqi Ball (Energy Ball/Sphere in English) hits him, he'll die, or at least be incapacitated; even though the Genkidama was weakened, the amount of damage Vegeeta took from Goku combined with the amount of energy he lost from making a moon and losing his tail should more than make up for that. But in an utter shock to everyone, Vegeeta not only survives the Genkidama, but can keep on fighting. This only serves to needlessly extend the arc for a bit longer just to have him be defeated when Gohan falls on him as a giant monkey; conveniently, Gohan's tail just happened to grow back the very moment Vegeeta was going to kill him. And even after getting cut by Yajirobei's sword and crushed by the giant monkey Gohan back to back, he's still alive.
There was no reason to drag the fight out this long; the amount of durability and plot armor Vegeeta had was simply over the top. But the final nail in the coffin for this arc, though, is that when Kucklin is about to kill the defeated Vegeeta with Yajirobei's sword, Goku tells Kucklin to let Vegeeta live just because he wants to fight him again, and Kucklin listens. Even though Vegeeta tried to kill all of them, led the invasion that resulted in their friends dying, and they have no reason to think he won't come back for revenge if they let him go. Absolutely terrible writing. The final act of this arc is just a trainwreck, even rehashing so many of the same story beats and scenes from the Piccolo Junior arc. Giant beam struggle? Check and check. Goku wins the beam struggle? Check and check. Villain turns giant? Check and check. Villain tries to kill everyone with a big explosion? Check and check. Ends with the villain being spared and declaring "I'll kill you all next time!"? Check and check. This whole arc sucked.
But as bad as the Saiyan arc was, the next one would be even worse. After deeming Vegeeta to be too popular to kill off, Toriyama decided to come up with a new villain to kill off in his place. This villain would turn out to be Freeza, Vegeeta's boss and the strongest being in the universe. What? Wasn't Vegeeta supposed to be the strongest person in the universe? Retconned, now the strongest is Freeza, who Vegeeta has known of the whole time and is also the one who destroyed the Saiyans' home planet, killing most of their race. Weren't they wiped out by an asteroid? Retconned, now it was because of Freeza. And just like Vegeeta before him, Freeza is also after the Dragon Balls to become immortal. This makes him not the first (Yamcha), not the second (Pilaf), not the third (Red), not the fourth (Daimao), not the fifth (Vegeeta) but the sixth antagonist who's after the Dragon Balls for his own selfish desire. Leave it Toriyama's hack ass to recycle the same tired plot point six whole times. Now it's a different set of Dragon Balls; in-universe, these are the original Dragon Balls (they look exactly the same as the ones we've seen so far, except bigger) on a planet called Namek, which is where the arc takes place. You'd think traveling to a brand new planet would be exciting, but the entire planet is just a fucking wasteland where everything looks the fucking same. It's never even nighttime on this shitty planet because there are three suns. For this entire arc, the scenery never fucking changes until the very end when the planet's about to blow up.
The majority of this arc is just a boring ass game of hide-and-seek, or cat-and-mouse, where nothing important happens. Vegeeta just kills minor one-off henchman after minor one-off henchman (first Kewi, then Dodoria and then Zarbon) while Gohan and Kucklin just hide from him and Freeza. Bulma's also there, but she does absolutely nothing but get left behind to bitch and complain by herself. Old story beats from the Red Ribbon arc are even recycled. That scene with the Namekians fighting Freeza soldiers was also a waste of time; wow, we get to see nameless fodder fighting nameless fodder. The hell was the point of having three nameless Namekians show up to protect Dende's village if they were just going to end up getting killed by Dodoria? They're not even the ones who destroy Freeza's scouters; the fatass who was already there destroys them. In that case, why couldn't fat boy have also been the one to kill the nameless Freeza soldiers before getting killed by Dododiarrhea? These three nameless Namekian stooges were worthless. Oh, wow, fatass vs. fatass; why should you give a shit about them fighting when you've only just been introduced to them? The amount of padding in this arc is absurd. For an example, when Kucklin goes with Dende to the Grand Elder's lookout, he conveniently decides not to take Gohan with him for absolutely no reason at all; as a result, Gohan isn't there to get his potential unlocked with him, so Kucklin has to go back and pick him up later, which leads to him getting found out by Vegeeta, who takes his Dragon Ball.
When Kucklin does pick up Gohan to bring him to the Grand Elder's place, they have to mask their energy to avoid detection by Vegeeta, which means they have to move very slowly; this ends up taking days, and by the time they do make it to Grand Elder's, the Ginyu Force is about to land on Namek. Now why the fuck couldn't he have just taken Gohan with him the first time? Because he felt there was no reason to? Now why wouldn't there be a reason to bring his strongest ally with him to meet who's basically the planet's god and the one who created the Dragon Balls? Gohan, the one who rushed to save Dende when Kucklin opted to just let him die? Gohan, the one who could back him up in case he gets attacked by one of Freeza's men or Vegeeta? If there was no reason to bring Gohan to meet the Grand Elder, then by that logic, there was no reason to bring Gohan with him to check out the Namekian village being attacked, but he still brought him, anyway. There was no fucking reason not to bring Gohan with him to Grand Elder. The only purpose not bringing him served was to pad the arc out by artificially extending the time they'd have to stay on Namek.
It gets worse, too. When Gohan bumps into Vegeeta right after taking the ball he hid underwater, Vegeeta conveniently doesn't find anything fishy about the fact Gohan is separated from his friends, directly in the path to the village where the ball was hidden. He already knew that Gohan and his friends came to Namek looking for the Dragon Balls, so if Gohan was alone by himself, he was obviously in the middle of looking for the balls. Factor in how not only was he directly in the path leading to the ball, but he was literally flying straight to Vegeeta (and there's no reason why Vegeeta wouldn't have sensed him flying straight to him when he was literally able to sense Kucklin and Dende when they were flying to Grand Elder, despite the fact Kucklin was suppressed. Even if he somehow didn't sense Gohan flying straight to him, though, just the fact he was in the path leading to where the ball was away from his friends should have rose his suspicions), as if he was just leaving the place where the ball was, and there's no reason why it shouldn't have crossed Vegeeta's mind that Gohan might have taken his ball. Gohan's nervousness when Vegeeta asked him what the big round thing in his hand was should have arose his suspicions further; it's dumb to think Gohan would cling so protectively to a clock, especially when he knew it made no sense for Gohan not to have brought a smaller clock with him to Namek. But Vegeeta just assumes nothing's amiss like an idiot and lets Gohan leave, losing his ball.
There wasn't even any point narrative-wise to Gohan taking Vegeeta's ball. Even if Vegeeta had gathered all 7 Dragon Balls, he still wouldn't have been able to summon the dragon as you need to be able to speak Namekian. Speaking of, that was a completely random deus ex machina, coming out of absolutely nowhere when it seemed like Freeza was gonna get his wish and all hope was lost. It makes absolutely no sense that Nail, the Grand Elder, and Dende never bothered to tell Gohan and Kucklin that you can't summon the dragon without speaking Namekian. "They didn't think there was any point because they didn't think the Earthlings would get their wish?" ... even though the Grand Elder literally went as far as unlocking their hidden potential and Nail literally went out of his way to tell them that the Namekian Dragon Balls grant not one but three wishes? They had enough faith in the Earthlings to do this, but not simply mention, "By the way, you can't summon the dragon without speaking Namekian"? Bullshit. "They thought that Freeza might get the Dragon Balls and beat this information out of them"? That's also bullshit as the Grand Elder had no reason to think Gohan and Kucklin were cowards, especially when he was already convinced of their courage after reading Kucklin's mind. This writing is just awful; you can easily tell Toriyama was pulling these bullshit excuses out of his ass. By revealing that you can't summon the dragon without speaking Namekian, the story destroyed any and all purpose to Gohan stealing Vegeeta's ball. It was just pointless padding.
The stretch of events immediately following Zarbon bringing Vegeeta to Freeza's spaceship to be interrogated after kicking his ass is also absurd. For some reason, they thought it was fit to heal Vegeeta to full health just to get him to spit out where the Dragon Ball he hid was. He doesn't need to be at full health just to spill the beans; if they really had to heal him, they could have just healed him to 10% or some shit. Why the fuck would they be stupid enough to bring him back up to 100? "Because Freeza was there and they didn't think they had anything to worry about?" In that case, why the hell wouldn't Freeza have been watching Vegeeta when he was healing in the tank to make sure he wouldn't try any sneaky moves? Furthermore, when Vegeeta yells to let Freeza and Zarbon know that he's still in the ship, why the fuck wouldn't Freeza have immediately rushed in to beat his ass? Freeza has a power level of 530,000 in his first form, so blitzing an under 30,000 Vegeeta should be nothing. What, he's afraid of a little fire and smoke in his spaceship ... even though it shouldn't hurt him at all and he can easily use his power to blow it away? Goddamn, this writing sucks.
The Zenkai (Full Throttle) asspull/retcon is also stupid. It randomly turns out that Saiyans get stronger when they return from the brink of death, even though that literally never happened for Goku before. You would have thought he'd get a Zenkai from nearly dying to Daimao when they fought the first time, but he didn't. This dumb shit just comes out of nowhere as a lazy plot device to enable the Saiyans to quickly get stronger on Namek, and it's totally inconsistent how it works. Vegeeta's Zenkai from nearly dying to Zarbon wasn't drastic; it only brought him from 24,000 to almost 30,000 and he couldn't beat Zarbon through sheer force alone, which is why he had to resort to sneaky tactics like throwing dirt in his eyes (how creative. Not). But his Zenkai from nearly dying to Reac'm brings him from almost 30,000 to 250,000 (or nearly 530,000 based on how he held his own with Freeza, depending on who you ask. Either way, it's a ridiculous increase). And his Zenkai from nearly dying to Kucklin brings him from 250k (or 530k) to the fucking multi-millions. Goku's multiple Zenkai from his gravity training only took his base from under 18k (even if he got a Zenkai from his fight with Vegeeta in the Saiyan arc, he clearly wasn't stronger than Vegeeta was, so we know he can't be above 18k. Furthermore, 20x gravity affected him just as much as 10x did before he started his training with Kaio (World King); if Goku needed to reach 8k to master 10x gravity, then he can't be any higher than 16k since he's struggling with double the amount of gravity he was used to before) to 90k. But his Zenkai from Vegeeta fucking up his body brings him from 90k to the multi-millions?
Fuck this shitty plot device that Toriyama pulled straight out of his ass. The power jumps in this arc are downright absurd. Goku, Gohan, and Vegeeta all start the arc no higher than 24k. By the end of it, they're in the multi-millions; ask yourself how many times stronger that is. Even Kucklin gets bullshit boosts despite the fact he's only human. After getting his potential unlocked by the Grand Elder, he's 10k; Gohan has that same number when they fight the green Ginyu dude (and that wasn't even actually a fight when all they did was just chase him around). After recovering from their fight with the orange Ginyu dude (who Kucklin didn't even really fight; he landed one cheap shot before getting offed by one kick), they're above 23k given how easily they handle Ginyu-Goku but under 60k, which was about the power level Goku used to flex on Ginyu's men while they watched in awe. Gohan would have gotten a Zenkai, but there's no way Kucklin could have gotten one when he's fully human. By the time they're gonna fight Freeza, Vegeeta says Kucklin and Gohan's powers are both growing, enough that they'll be able to help him against Freeza's first form; officially, Kucklin was 75k and Gohan was 200k. Just how the hell did they shoot up that much when all they did was beat up on Ginyu-Goku's weak ass? "The Grand Elder caused their powers to grow over time" That's never even suggested in the story. Kucklin's power didn't grow the whole time he was taking Gohan to the Grand Elder's place. Neither of their powers were growing against Ghurd or Reac'm. The "gradual powerup" cheat code conveniently only kicks in after Goku gives them a Senzu? It doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, the Ginyu Force's arrival only served to pad this arc some more; they're more worthless henchmen. It's pathetic to see the side characters struggle to get past the B-villains once again. There's no reason why there had to be five of these losers. You could do without the green one entirely, and it's stupid that none of his teammates intervened to stop Vegeeta from intervening with his fight against Gohan and Kucklin. And the rest of Ginyu's men only exist to job to Goku. They suck. The blue one's speed gimmick makes no fucking sense, either; didn't Vegeeta establish that one's speed is proportional to their power level? How the hell can the blue one be "the fastest being in the universe" when he's not even the strongest person on his team? With a power level of 120k, Ginyu should literally be flying circles around blue boy, who's much less than 60k. What the hell is the red one's specialty, anyway? It's actually funny how spot-on this scene from TeamFourStar's "Dragon
Ball Z Kai Abridged" Episode 2 is (but fuck TFS); you could literally just have Goku kill the entire Ginyu Force by crashing his spaceship on them and nothing would change. The only purpose Goku's fight with Ginyu even serves is to give Goku another bullshit Zenkai, as well as put him out of the plot once again so they can repeat the predictable "Goku arrives at the last instant to show off how strong he is" trope.
This lazy story trick first made its debut in the Red Ribbon arc, and it gets recycled multiple times over the course of the series. Here's how it goes. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Again. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Again. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Again. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Again. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Bad guy is about to kill someone. Goku appears at the last second. Goku shows off his power. Someone is in awe of how strong Goku is. Over and over again. This is lazy as fuck, low effort, formulaic nonsense. Why continue a series if you're just gonna rehash the same cycle over and over again? Oh, right, because you're a hack author. In this very arc, it gets recycled twice; against Ginyu's men and against Freeza. Hack ass writing. Really, this arc stands as the most popular and iconic arc in the whole franchise, but no, it's fucking trash.
There's some really bad plot convenience, too, like when a whale conveniently pops up to save Gohan, Kucklin and Dende from being found by Vegeeta and when a frog conveniently hops by Goku, so he can throw it in the path of Ginyu's Body Change beam. Freeza literally letting Dende fly right past him for no reason when he was on the way to the Grand Elder's was also pretty fucking stupid. And it's also pretty fucking stupid how Vegeeta, Gohan and Kucklin didn't bother masking their energy as soon as they sensed that the Ginyu Force had arrived on Namek; instead, they keep flying to the Dragon Balls at full speed, which just leads to the Ginyu Force finding them and taking the Dragon Balls. Oh, yeah, and it's also really stupid how Vegeeta conveniently decides to fall asleep when Kucklin leaves to learn the Namekian words needed to summon the dragon, literally leaving the Dragon Balls out in the open for anyone to steal them, which of course leads to Gohan, Kucklin, and Dende swiping them from right under his nose. He sure picked a laughably stupid time to fall asleep, knowing full well that Freeza would be coming back at any second to kill them. Fuck, this writing is balls. And that entire scene with Vegeeta giving Gohan and Kucklin new clothes was pointless; why the hell would he care how they're dressed up? They don't need to wear any armor when they fight, and Kucklin's outfit wasn't even damaged. So what if Gohan's was banged up? Characters can literally be all the way down to their underwear; it won't actually decrease their chances to win a fight. Putting them in armor feels like a pointless excuse to give them new designs for selling merchandise; same thing when Vegeeta switches to a new type of armor after his fight with Reac'm.
The arc is just a nonstop mess of contrivance after contrivance. When they summon the dragon, it randomly turns out that the Namekian dragon can arbitrarily only summon one person at a time, which is just a convenient excuse for Piccolo to be the only one who gets revived and sent to Namek. Furthermore, this also begs the question of why Nail and the Grand Elder didn't tell them this before. And Piccolo somehow has gotten much stronger from just 5 days of training with Kaio, so much that Nail is in awe of his power. Nail has a power level of 42k himself and he's impressed with Piccolo who was only a measly 3.5k back in the Saiyan arc. After just a few days of training, his power level is now apparently far beyond 42k just because plot. Oh, and just by absorbing Toe Nail, it randomly shoots up to more than a million. Just because plot. This writing is straight garbage. So many asspulls, like Dende randomly having healing powers. No one bothers telling him to go heal Goku in Freeza's spaceship, though, because, you guessed it, plot.
Freeza can randomly transform multiple times. Right when it seems like Piccolo might win, he's just like, "This isn't even my final form" in a blatant diabolus ex machina and transforms twice more, first into a Xenomorph and then into his final form. Vegeeta needs Kucklin to wound him for another Zenkai because he won't get one from just wounding himself, even though we literally saw Goku get a Zenkai from wounding himself during his 100x training, as the narrator said. Vegeeta gets his Zenkai, but still isn't strong enough to beat Freeza. Goku fully recovers from the injuries Vegeeta put on his body when Ginyu was controlling it; his Zenkai is so much bigger than Vegeeta's because plot. Freeza kills Vegeeta and fights Goku. When Goku realizes he's not strong enough to beat Freeza, he uses the Genkidama. Of course, it fails, just like it failed against Vegeeta. How original. Not. Then, Freeza kills Kucklin and Goku turns into a Aryan-*ahem* Super Saiyan, another asspull.
Yes, that shit was a fucking asspull. No, it wasn't built up. In the Saiyan arc, a "super Saiyan" only referred to half-Saiyan, half-human hybrids like Gohan because of how strong they were. It was not supposed to be any sort of legend, much less one about an extraordinarily powerful Saiyan that only appears once every 1,000 years; you're not building up anything when you just take what was mentioned earlier in the story and retcon it into something completely different, because what it's being retconned into has nothing to do with what it was before. Even looking at the Freeza arc itself, Super Saiyan doesn't receive any actual build-up. It's not mentioned by anyone until right after Vegeeta's first fight with Zarbon by Freeza. It's also retconned to be the reason why Freeza killed the Saiyans; before, the reason he killed them was because he just feared a rebellion of Saiyans. Then, when Goku arrives on Namek, we find out it's supposedly a really strong Saiyan that only appears once every 1,000 years and Vegeeta won't shut the fuck up about it. This is literally what the supposed build-up for Super Saiyan amounts to.
Freeza: Damn I hope there's not a Super Saiyan out there
Later
Grand Elder: Did you fight a Super Saiyan
Kucklin: wats a Super Saiyan
Later
Vegeeta: OMG what if Kakarot is a Super Saiyan. NO NO I wanna be a Super Saiyan
Goku: wats a Super Saiyan
Later
Ginyu: Are you a Super Saiyan
Goku: wats a Super Saiyan
Ginyu: Wait you're not a Super Saiyan
Goku: wats a Super Saiyan
Later
Vegeeta: I'm gonna be a Super Saiyan!
Red Ginyu dude: Shut the fuck up
Later
Vegeeta: I'm gonna be a Super Saiyan!
Freeza: Shut the fuck up
Later
Vegeeta: Oh shit what if he's a Super Saiyan
Later
Freeza: Man fuck that "Super Saiyan" shit
Later
Vegeeta: I'm a Super Saiyan
Piccolo: wats a Super Saiyan
Freeza: No you're not bitch
Vegeeta: *crying*
Later
Vegeeta: He's a Super Saiyan
Freeza: Shut the fuck up *kills Vegeeta*
Goku: wats a Super Saiyan
LMAO, that's not fucking build-up. Literally for every mention that the Super Saiyan gets, we learn nothing about it other than that it's supposedly a really strong Saiyan who is ruthless. We didn't know how it works or how you become one. We didn't even know if it's supposed to be an actual transformation and not just a mere status or title. It's only when Goku's hair randomly turns blonde after he gets mad over Kucklin's death that we find out it's a transformation. And there was absolutely zero build-up to rage being what triggers it; literally the last time Goku got what might have been a rage boost was when he killed Daimao, and that was only because he was tapping into his Ozaru (Giant Monkey) power through his tail. Super Saiyan as a transformation has nothing to do with Ozaru, and after losing his tail, Goku never had anything even resembling a rage boost. From that point, rage boosts were only ever Gohan's thing, so you'd think he'd be the one turning into a Super Saiyan if rage was supposed to be the trigger to it. Yet for some stupid reason, Gohan doesn't get any rage boost whatsoever when he literally sees Freeza shoot Piccolo to what he thinks is death. The one character with rage as his whole shtick doesn't get any boost from seeing the apparent death of someone he cares about, but Goku does just because the plot said so. Turning into a Super Saiyan also magically heals Goku of all his injuries and he can suddenly handle a 50x boost to his power, even though a 20x boost fucked up his body before. Garbage writing.
You would have thought Goku would have turned into a Super Saiyan when he was angry over Kucklin being killed the first time if rage were the trigger to it. "But he still thought he could revive Kucklin back then; this time his death seemed permanent!" Yeah, and he thought Piccolo, Tenshinhan ... (checks list), Yamcha, Chiaotz, and Kami were all dead for good in the Saiyan arc, but he didn't transform then. He didn't even get a rage boost. "He wasn't as close to them as he is to Kucklin" Please. When not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE of the people you care about get killed back to back, that should more than be enough to make up for not being as close to any one of them individually. "But he didn't see them die in front of him" You don't need to see people die in front of you to turn Super Saiyan; Gohan was only imagining Goku dying when he transformed in the Time Chamber. In the manga, Trunks didn't have to see anyone die or even find a corpse to grieve over like he did in the anime special to turn Super Saiyan. In DBS, Broly doesn't turn Super Saiyan from actually seeing his father get killed; he only transforms from seeing his father's corpse, after he was already killed. Kale transformed just from seeing her waifu Caulifla get smacked around. Cabbeh transformed just from hearing Vegeeta make empty threats to kill his family. So, fuck this stupid head canon that actually seeing the moment someone dies is a requirement when it's not; the only requirement is plot and nothing more. The fact is, there's no actual build-up to Super Saiyan at all; it's just another stupid idea Toriyama pulled out of his ass like the trash author he'll always be. Frankly, none of these flashy transformations serve any purpose other than selling toys.
Speaking of flashy appearances, Super Saiyan's design is stupid, too; literally nothing about someone's hair changing makes them look strong or legendary, because there's not any correlation between hair and strength or mystique. Changing your fucking hair doesn't make you look like you've entered some higher state of being. You just look like a regular person all the same. This is just some dumb cliche that Toriyama already used in Dr. Slump; a rage-triggered transformation that spikes your hair up and makes you stronger was stupid then, and it's stupid now. The only difference now is that it also changes Goku's hair color, which was just a convenient excuse to save ink. Changing your hair to transform is one of the stupidest aspects about Dragon Ball; read this for more information on why. Astro Boy was actually the first to do it, too, which is a little known fact, so contrary to what some fanboys think, Dragon Ball didn't invent this trope. Hair changes were also part of the transformations in Cutie Honey, too, which pioneered the magical girl trope and probably also hair changes being transformations. Speaking of people transforming by changing their hair, that's what Lunch did whenever she'd sneeze. So, this is yet another example of Toriyama rehashing old ideas he already used in this series.
Anyway, the Freeza arc was an absolute trainwreck. It begins boring as hell and only gets more convoluted the longer it goes on; by the time you reach the climax, the story has completely gone off rails. Goku can quickly kill Freeza when he first becomes a Super Saiyan, but he wastes time just to flex on him and talk shit. How many times does this bitch say something to the effect of, "I'm tired of you, Freeza", "It's over, Freeza", "It's your turn to die, Freeza", "I won't show you any mercy, Freeza", and "You're finished, Freeza" ... and then proceed to not kill Freeza? A one. A two. A three. A four. A five. A six. And how did this stupid fuck not immediately realize here that Freeza was insinuating that he was gonna blow up the planet? Dumbass bitch. The final fight between Goku and Freeza is also infamous for how it supposedly takes place over the course of 5 minutes before the planet blows up, even though there's far too much going on in it for that to make any sense. It's especially bad in the anime.
What's the first thing that Goku actually does when Freeza says there are only 5 minutes left? Wait for him to power up to max just because he wants to fight him instead of just killing him like a smart person. Cringe. They fight for a bit and Freeza says there are 2 or 3 minutes left. They fight some more and Goku gets knocked down for a moment. Then, they see the dragon and proceed to race each other. After everyone else on Namek gets sent to Earth, what does Freeza say? That there are 2 minutes left even though he said that before. The fuck? If there was any reason to still take the fight seriously, though, it disappears entirely when Goku deliberately spares Freeza just because he's bored of fighting him; he even has the gall to turn off his Super Saiyan form and turn his back to Freeza before flying off, which of course immediately results in Freeza nearly slicing him to death. Wow, who could have seen that coming, huh? /sarcasm
This dumb motherfucker really thought Freeza would just let him walk away, when it was blatantly obvious that a completely unrepentant monster like Freeza would never stop trying to kill him. Goku wastes more time fighting Freeza some more and talking more shit instead of just killing him. Even after Freeza cuts himself with his own attack (which Goku didn't even intend to happen; he actually wanted Freeza to dodge it, which would have undoubtedly resulted in him trying to kill Goku again and Goku wasting even more time to fuck with him), Goku saves him by lending some of his energy ... which just results in Freeza trying to kill him once again. Wow, no one could have seen that coming, right? And even after all of this, Goku still doesn't kill him as it turns out Freeza is still alive at the start of the next arc a few chapters later.
This writing is absolutely dog shit. There's nothing to be felt when it seems like Goku is going to die on Namek, because the dumb fucker brought it all on himself. It being possible to revive Grand Elder for a short amount of time when he had died of natural causes is also way too convenient, serving as no more than a thinly-veiled, last-minute excuse to bring Vegeeta back to life because he was too popular to keep dead. He was always a shitty character, but he becomes even worse from here on out as he loses what little redeeming qualities he may have had before to turn into Goku's obsessive stalker. Now his whole character revolves around surpassing Goku, and he never shuts the fuck up about it. The revelation that Polunga can revive people an infinite number of times also makes death absolutely meaningless in this series; now, no matter how many times someone gets killed, they can always be revived.
Most of the tension in the story had already been killed by now, but with this deus ex machina, any that was left over is gone. What even is the point of repeatedly reviving a bunch of fodder characters who do nothing but job like Kucklin, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chiaotz, etc? They'd all be better off dead, because they are useless. The story always made it a point to show how inferior they were to Goku, right from their debut appearances, and it didn't take long for them to turn into his cheerleaders, either. Some fanboys whine about useless the human fighters are in DBZ, but that's silly when they were basically always trash. There's no point in bringing them back to life. Fuck, this writing is awful. Anyway, now that Goku has officially become the strongest person in the universe, defeating Freeza and avenging his entire race, there's even less of a reason to continue the story than there was before.
I'd also like bring up how by this point, it's very difficult to remember when the series used to be a comedy; back in the Pilaf arc, it didn't take itself seriously at all, but now Goku is literally giving speeches about why genocide is bad and how he's a "legendary warrior awakened by rage". He also used to be an innocent little boy with a monkey tail who would wield a staff and ride a cloud as a tribute to Wukong Sun, but by now, he is a stern buff man with no tail or staff and his cloud rarely ever shows up, so the Wukong imagery is all gone. His hairstyle is different. His hair color is different. His eye color is different. He sort of looks like He-Man, or Dolph Lundgren, as a Super Saiyan; he could pass as a different character. The Daimao arc is when the story tone first became serious and by now, it doesn't feel anything like it did in the beginning. It's pretty much completely lost sight of what it used to be.
But the series has become insanely popular, and being as greedy as always, Toriyama continues it. This brings us to the Android/Cell arc, which is on another level of ass-suckery. It kicks off with Freeza randomly being revealed to still be alive, which is simply ridiculous considering not only did he get cut in half after draining himself before getting blasted by Goku right after receiving just a tiny bit of his energy, but he had a whole ass planet explode on him; him surviving all of that is utterly stupid. Now he comes back as a cyborg (ripping off Tao) with his father ... only for them both to be one-shotted by some random kid who suddenly turns out to be another Super Saiyan. Remember how much of a big deal Goku turning into a Super Saiyan was? Now just a few chapters after Goku defeated Freeza for what seemed to be for good, some random kid effortlessly does it and succeeds where Goku failed by singlehandedly killing Freeza himself, completely devaluing everything Goku accomplished on Namek. He also uses a sword and makes flashy hand signs for no fucking reason other than "it looks cool". Too bad it doesn't look cool at all.
Then, it turns out his name is Kyle Reese--*ahem* Trunks and he is the son of Vegeeta and Bulma, two characters who have never even been showing having a real conversation with each other up to this point, who came from a dystopian future on a Time Machine to warn everyone of androids created by Dr. Gero, the surviving scientist of the Red Ribbon Army (remember them, that one army Goku defeated alllllllll the way back in chapter 96? Now, 239 chapters later, it suddenly turns out their legacy lives on) who was never even alluded to existing before; these androids will kill everyone and terrorize the Earth for decades to come. Oh, and Goku dies of some random heart virus that Trunks gives him the meds for; how does he get it? How does the virus work? How was a cure created? We never find out because this is just another bullshit plot device that the author put no thought into. "Goku gets heart disease for no reason and dies" Very compelling. Not.
All of this is beyond convoluted; the story throws all of these crazy revelations at you at once and you're just expected to accept all of them. It reads just like a 13 year old's edgy fanfiction. You can see exactly how burnt out Toriyama was after Freeza; out of ideas for how to continue the story, he just ripped off the Terminator movies (which he actually already ripped off in the Red Ribbon arc, the same arc in the series that the Android/Cell arc is derived from) without putting any thought into the logic of what he was writing. For one, a surviving scientist from the Red Ribbon army who we had never even seen before making androids stronger than Super Saiyans is too random; it would have been better if Freeza's army made the androids as that would show a logical progression of antagonists and we already knew they were high tech. But this isn't even scratching the surface of the arc's many problems. There are so many plotholes and inconistencies that make zero sense in this arc, and all of the head canon theories people make up to explain them are worthless.
Let's start with one of the most glaring issues pertaining to the arc's premise. What happened to all of the Z Fighters in Trunks's timeline after they died? Lord knows how many times the fandom has asked this. Surely all of them sans Vegeeta would have kept their bodies in the afterlife, so they would have kept training. Why didn't Kaio ask New Namek to revive them? Goku wouldn't have been able to come back to life as he died of a heart virus, but he could always visit Earth for one day. Why didn't he do that? We never get an answer for any of this. Everyone who died in this timeline just stays dead and gone, and the story expects us to accept it without asking questions. How the hell was Gohan so weak after training for 13 years? Surely 13 whole fucking years of training, combined with his trademark rage boosts from knowing that the bastards who killed all his friends are still out there, killing the rest of humankind, along with Zenkai should have made him strong enough to destroy the androids.
But for some reason, Zenkai is no longer a thing, his rage boosts are completely worthless (even though Present Gohan can literally get rage boosts just from imagining his friends being killed by villains who are already dead. Yet Future Gohan can't just get a rage boost from knowing that the same bastards who killed all his friends are still out there, killing more people, even when they do it right in front of him. Rage boosts are really just a bullshit concept all around; they only work as well as the plot wants them to) and he sucks so bad at training by himself that he's still trash after 13 whole years. "Future Gohan didn't train with Goku in the deus ex machina chamber!" Stop the cap. Gohan was already established as a prodigy; that was how he learned to use energy all by himself after living in the wilderness for 6 months before Piccolo actually began training him. When Piccolo trained him for about 6 months, he learned how to properly control his energy and after training with Kucklin for about a month, his control was so good that he could completely suppress himself.
And he had literally 13 years to train; that should be more than enough time for him to get strong and make up for any lack of fighting experience, especially considering he should have been getting constant rage boosts and Zenkai for that entire period. Future Trunks at 14 years old was so fucking weak as a Super Saiyan that Future Gohan could handle him with one arm at base. We can see for ourselves that 14 year old SS1 Future Trunks is not any stronger than base Future Gohan, so this means point-blank that SS1 Future Gohan is at least 50x stronger than 14 year old SS1 Future Trunks because SS1 is officially a 50x boost. Just by training alone for three years after Gohan's death, SS1 Trunks becomes as strong as or stronger than SS1 Gohan was; this means Trunks got at least 50x stronger after three years all by himself. So if Trunks can get 50x stronger after training by himself for three years, then Gohan should have gotten crazy strong after 13. Nothing in this story makes any sense.
There are also plenty of other questions in regards to Trunks coming back in time with his shitty plot device machine. Why didn't he just look for the Dragon Balls to find out where Gero was (or better yet, why didn't Future Bulma just tell him) and hunt him down before the androids were created? If he needs the blueprints to shut them down, he can wait for Gero to make them and then kill him before the androids are actually activated. Hell, why didn't he just train his ass off with the Z Fighters in the past, destroy Gero before the androids are made and then take the Z Fighters with him to his own timeline, so they can destroy the androids there? And if he was just gonna deliver a warning to the Z Fighters in the past ... why the hell didn't he bother describing how the androids look and how their powers work? Oh, yeah, and it also doesn't make any sense for Trunks to end up being born in the main timeline when the lives of his parents were altered before he was born (logically, the "Present" Trunks and "Future" Trunks shouldn't biologically be the same person, but brothers). Anyway, it's not just Trunks's decisions that are stupid. Bulma smartly suggests that they hunt down Gero before he makes the androids, but Goku shoots her down because he wants to fight them. This literally kills all the tension in this story arc; you can't take any of it seriously when the heroes are deliberately letting things go bad.
"There was no reason to kill Gero when he hadn't made the androids yet!" Bullshit, he had already been researching to make androids to kill Goku for decades now, and the fact he served the Red Ribbon Army of all organizations is enough to determine he's a fucking scumbag. You don't let someone go on to make androids that will kill everyone, especially when you know it's a given that they're gonna make them, and they don't even have to kill Gero to stop him from making them; just destroy his lab and throw his evil ass in prison for life. If a story can only occur by having everyone act like a fucking idiot, then it's a garbage story and the author should have written something else. And this story is fucking garbage. Amazingly, though, it gets even worse! Initially, the androids are named Nineteen and Twenty; the former is a fat mime and the latter is an old man who is actually Dr. Gero himself. They are not very strong themselves, but what makes them deadly is that they absorb energy to get stronger. It makes sense and is a logical way for Earth-made androids to be able to stand up to Super Saiyans, right? They would absorb energy from the Super Saiyans to surpass them.
But then it suddenly turns out these aren't the androids Trunks spoke about; the ones he spoke about are actually a pair of trailer trash twins named Seventeen and Eighteen. Wut? Didn't Trunks say the androids who terrorized his future were Nineteen and Twenty? Why are they now Seventeen and Eighteen? We know how the story goes; Toriyama originally intended for just Nineteen and Twenty to be the villains, but his friend who was his editor before the Saiyan arc called him up to criticize their designs. Even though this friend was no longer Toriyama's editor at that point, Toriyama scrambled to please him by randomly making new androids to replace the previous ones as the villains. Actually, they're not even androids; they're humans enhanced with bioorganic components and a few cybernetic implants. The accurate term to describe them wouldn't be androids, but "modified humans" (or "remodeled humans" or "converted humans"). In Japanese, that would be Kaizoningen. No, they're not androids or artificial humans (which is just a synonym for "android". In Japanese, it's Jinzoningen); they are just modified humans. You're not creating "artificial humans" when all you do is modify biological humans. Even Japanese people are smart enough to tell that it makes no sense for Seventeen and Eighteen to be considered androids or artificial humans. Toriyama is just a dumbass fucking hack who doesn't even know proper terminology.
The arc has already spiraled out of Toriyama's control by this point. Just by using data from the Saiyan arc, some random scientist was able to make two random humans stronger than Super Saiyans. It's an absolute joke. But Toriyama's ex-editor still isn't satisfied with Seventeen and Eighteen's designs, dismissing them as brats, so Toriyama suddenly comes up with a synthetic life form (bioroid) named Cell, who technically wasn't created by Gero, but his own computer from the DNA of Goku, Vegeeta, Piccolo, Freeza and Freeza's father; only then does Toriyama's ex-editor apparently stop complaining. Why did Toriyama's ex-editor complain in the first place? Because he didn't like how the villains looked like; couldn't Toriyama have just made Nineteen and Twenty transform instead of needlessly changing the villains twice? Of course, then Toriyama's current editor at the time complains about Cell's design; thankfully, Toriyama doesn't come up with new villains this time as he simply decides to have Cell transform by absorbing Seventeen and Eighteen (he always looks like a ripoff of Freeza regardless of what form he's in, though. Freeza's first form. Freeza's second form. Freeza's third form. Freeza's fourth form. Cell's first form. Cell's second form. Cell's third form. Similar bodies and, in the case of Cell's third form, faces). By this point, the plot has gone lower than Hell. Now there are no longer two timelines ... but four.
None of this it makes sense. The original timeline had Goku dying of a heart virus and the androids killing everyone else. Bulma created her time machine to send Trunks back in time, creating a second timeline. When Trunks returns to the first timeline, he defeats the androids through some unconfirmed means but is killed by Cell, who uses his time machine to go back in time a year before Freeza came back to Earth, creating a third timeline; it turns out this is the main timeline that the story occurs in. Cell is ultimately defeated, of course, and the Trunks who was fighting with the Z Fighters in this timeline ends up much stronger than the first one who was killed by Cell; this stronger Trunks easily kills the androids and Cell when he returns to his own timeline, which is the fourth one. Why the FUCK did there need to be not one, not two, not even three but FOUR timelines? And there's a glaring plothole with Future Trunks somehow being the one to kill Freeza in the first timeline when logically it should have been Goku. And there are plenty of other questions you can ask, like why the hell did Cell end up traveling back in time all the way to a year before Freeza and Cold came to Earth? He says Trunks had already set the Time Machine to go to that period, but ... why? If he was going to tell everyone that he beat the androids in his timeline, then why would he travel back to a year before Freeza and Cold came to Earth, when literally no one is going to recognize him?
It's a fucking disaster of a story. Even Toriyama himself acknowledges how incoherent the story became in this arc. At this point, it's harder than ever before to remember when the series was just supposed to be a simple Journey to the West parody; not only is the story tone all serious, but nothing even remotely makes sense anymore. The Android/Cell arc was a nightmare. There are so many other dumb asspulls; for one, Vegeeta can turn into a Super Saiyan even though it was established that you need a pure heart to do it, which was why he couldn't turn into one back in the Freeza arc. Now he can suddenly become one even though he's still evil as fuck because herp derp Toriyama gotta make the story all about the Super Saiyans. By the end of the arc, we have not one, not two, not three but FOUR Super Saiyans even though it was supposed to be something that only appeared once every thousand of years before.
Everything about Super Saiyan is a poorly written mess. Originally, only the powerful hybrids like Gohan were considered "super Saiyans". Then, it was retconned to be a powerful Saiyan that only appears once every 1,000 years. Then, it was retconned to be a transformation so Toriyama could save ink and sell toys. Now, it's something that literally any Saiyan can turn into. And the Room of Spirit and Time randomly being a thing when it was never even alluded to before (and begging the question of why no one knew about it in Future Trunks's timeline)? It's one of the dumbest deus ex machinas in the series. Suddenly there's a place on Kami's lookout where one day outside equals one year inside; it comes straight out of fucking nowhere. All the way back when Goku trained under Popo as a kid so many chapters ago, he was introduced to a room where time passes differently and we just now find out. Shit writing all over.
And suddenly there are different levels to Super Saiyan because the franchise needs to sell more toys; we get a roided Super Saiyan and an even more roided Super Saiyan before Goku decides that it's best for him and Gohan to just naturalize the regular form so it has less strain. Oh, but then Gohan pulls out a new Super Saiyan form out of his ass against Cell when he sees some random robot got stepped on (he was actually already on the verge of transforming before this happens, which makes Sixteen's sacrifice pointless. And that in turn makes Sixteen completely pointless in the story as he does absolutely nothing else). Gohan is now also suddenly a pacifist who doesn't like fighting and he can't make himself get angry at will, even though we literally saw him instantly make himself mad in the Time Chamber by merely visualizing his friends being killed, because artificial tension.
He also doesn't just kill Cell when he has the chance because he wants to torture him, which leads to Cell nearly blowing up Earth and killing everyone; granted, Gohan's a child, so it's understandable if he doesn't have the best judgment ... but there's no excuse for him dumbly shielding Vegeeta from Cell's blast, which crippled his arm. Even ignoring the fact that Vegeeta's a piece of shit who deserves to die, Gohan could have pushed him away from Cell's blast with a Kiai/Qihe (gathered air) cannon or shockwave (illustrated by this fanart), or fired his own blast to hit the ground right next to Vegeeta, so the impact of the explosion would blow Vegeeta away from Cell's blast. Actually, why the fuck didn't he just fire his own blast to intercept Cell's (like we see Vegeeta intercept Pure Boo's blast at Earth's surface in the Boo arc)? Fuck all of this stupid artificial tension and plot induced stupidity. This arc is worse than diarrhea.
Logic is thrown out the window at every turn in this story arc because nothing makes sense. Like how Cell survived blowing himself up; he says it was because the nucleus inside of his head was still intact, but how can that be when he could still regenerate even after Goku blew off his entire upper half? How the fuck is Cell not only able to keep his Perfect form, but return far stronger even after losing the androids? He had a Zenkai, suddenly those things are relevant again? Then how come Goku, Gohan, Vegeeta and Trunks don't get any Zenkai in this arc? How the fuck is Cell suddenly able to teleport? Why couldn't Goku combine Kaioken with Super Saiyan after mastering Super Saiyan to have no strain so it was like his base form? Why does everyone on Earth think Mr. Satan is the strongest, completely forgetting all about Goku and co's battles at the Tenkaichi Budokai? Why didn't Piccolo, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Kucklin, Chichi, Roshi, etc all go into hiding while the Saiyans were training in the Time Chamber instead of letting the androids easily track them down at Roshi's island, which results in Cell tracking down the androids and absorbing them?
How did Piccolo survive getting blasted through the stomach point-blank after getting his neck broken? How did he have enough energy left to regenerate when he was already noted to be losing energy before Cell showed up and would have lost even more after firing his last blast ... not to mention, getting his neck broken and blasted through the stomach? Goku noted that his energy was gone and, but it turns out he regenerated, fixed the hole in his shirt, and swam back to shore later? And how the fuck could Tenshinhan's weak ass be able to push back Cell and stop him from moving? Why didn't he just kill the androids and stop Cell's
merge if he had a blast that strong? And why did Piccolo pretend to be hurt by Gero's attack to "distract the androids away from Goku" ... if the whole time, Piccolo was far stronger than Gero and
could have easily killed him at any time? After recovering from his heart virus, why didn't Goku teleport Piccolo to wherever Cell was absorbing people, so Piccolo would kill him? And speaking of teleportation, why the fuck doesn't Goku ever bother teaching anyone else that technique? Or Kaioken? Or the Genkidama?
There is simply no end to all the plotholes and plot induced stupidity in this arc; everyone is a dumbass throughout the whole affair. Here are some more examples. Piccolo doesn't kill Gero when he easily has the chance to in their battle, wasting time just to flex, which leads to Gero escaping because of Bulma's stupid ass. Piccolo doesn't kill Cell when he has the chance to easily do so in their first battle, wasting time to have a conversation with him, which leads to Cell escaping and surpassing him. If he wanted to find out what Cell was, he could have asked questions after immobilizing him by beating him to a pulp. Or better yet, fuck the questions entirely and just kill him; they can just bring someone from New Namek over to revive Shenlong, so Piccolo could ask him what Cell was. Vegeeta lets Cell become Perfect instead of killing him when he has the chance like the dumb Napeoleon-complexed motherfucker he is. Trunks doesn't bother attacking Cell at all after Vegeeta lets him go; he just blocks his path like the dumb Nickelback looking motherfucker he is.
And instead of smartly firing a blast at Cell to kill him after blasting Vegeeta, he just lunges at him and lets himself get hit by a Taiyoken for a second time, which leads to Cell absorbing Eighteen. Dumb motherfucker can't do anything right. Speaking of Eighteen, she doesn't bother escaping the whole time Vegeeta and Semiperfect Cell are busy fighting each other, just like she didn't bother escaping when Sixteen was fighting Imperfect Cell; she stays put both times like the dumb blonde she is. Kucklin breaks the shutdown switch because he wants to fuck Eighteen, even though simply deactivating her with the switch wouldn't kill her; he could have just deactivated her, flew her away someplace and reactivated her once they're far away from Cell or when someone has destroyed Cell. Instead he wastes time gawking at her beauty like the dumb incel he is, which leads to Cell spotting them and absorbing Eighteen. Major cringe. Literally everyone is brain-dead for the sake of plot. Sixteen should have just blown himself up when Semiperfect Cell was about to absorb Eighteen and taken all of these stupid fucks out with him.
Kucklin also kills fetus Cell who hasn't harmed anyone, even though he spared an all around piece of shit like Vegeeta back in the Saiyan arc. "Goku told him to spare Vegeeta!" Fuck outta here, Kucklin is a grown man who can think for himself and Goku never forced him to do anything as he was incapacitated. Cell pointlessly decides to throw a tacky tournament instead of destroying Earth after becoming Perfect in a thinly veiled deus ex machina to bail the good guys out of trouble. He also asspulls the ability to shit out seven miniature clones of himself that add to absolutely nothing in the story. Goku has an entire minute to teleport Cell away to Kaio's planet and come back with Kaio and Bubbles, but he stupidly doesn't act until there are only a few SECONDS left. If the shitty character wanted to die so badly, then he could have just brought Kaio and Bubbles to Earth and return to Kaio's planet to die with Cell all by himself. And even then, there was literally no reason for him to die or stay dead; he attracts villains, so he needs to stay dead to keep Earth safe? Earth would be safe if he were proactive enough to nip threats in the bud ahead of time instead of allowing them to escalate. The entire arc is his fault for not just stopping Gero before the androids and Cell were made in the first place! Goddamn, this arc was a straight-up nightmare. It's arguably the worst arc in the entire original manga. But surely Toriyama will end the series now that he's more burnt out than an overcooked Hot Pocket, right? Nope, being the greedy fuck he is, he continues it because he wants more money.
He was never "forced" to continue it, not at any point during its serialization. While he may have been encouraged by his editor and publisher to continue it, the decision ultimately fell on him and him only. If he really wanted to end it, he could have done so at any point he wanted. He chose to continue it, because in the end, he just wanted more money. So, no, he doesn't deserve any sympathy or pity for burning himself out when he brought it all on himself. If he can't handle producing a weekly manga, then he should have just picked a different career. However, the next arc would indeed be the final story arc of the original manga. It's the Boo arc, and it's on par with the Cell arc in shittiness, if not worse. Now Gohan is the protagonist, a plot development that the story pulled out of its ass towards the end of the Cell arc; Gohan was never intended to be the main character before, but feeling that Goku was getting old, Toriyama randomly decided to have him take over. Anyone and their grandma could have guessed that this was never going to work out long-term when Goku was so iconic; just because Gohan briefly surpassed him in popularity at one point in time doesn't mean people were ever going to accept Goku being gone.
But even considering this, Toriyama did a horrible job writing Gohan as the lead. Wanting a breather from the intense nonsense that was the Cell arc, Toriyama kicks the next story arc off with totally boring slice of life chapters about Gohan going to high school. It's a totally bland miniarc that really just served to bide time for Toriyama to figure out what he wanted the real story arc to be about. He was so lazy that he even reused old story beats from Dr. Slump. The series returns to its gag roots just a little bit, which is just forced after all this time; the series switched to a more serious tone long ago and now it suddenly decides it wants to be comedic again? Worst of all, Gohan is now turned into an unfunny Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) parody who makes stupid poses. Named the "Great Saiyaman", it sucked and killed Gohan's popularity. What did anyone expect? These dumb tokusatsu-style poses were stupid when the Ginyu Force did them and they're stupid when Gohan does them. Toriyama also reused that gag for the Cashman manga in 1990-1991, too. He really has a whole assembly line of dumb, unfunny gags to reuse at his disposal.
We're also introduced to some stuck-up brat whose only purpose is to be Gohan's waifu (and later on, get her ass kicked to give Ryona fans something to jack off to; these two characters were completely worthless. "B-but they were needed to set up the--" No, they weren't needed for shit. There's no reason to introduce two fodder henchmen who quickly get killed off by the real villains; you could have easily just had Dabra be the one who goes to the Budokai, but you don't even need henchmen in the first place. You could just have Bobbidi himself go to the Budokai. Fewer worthless characters, the better); Gohan seriously just happened to end up in the same city, school and classroom as the daughter of the guy who stole the credit for his biggest accomplishment? Then, just a few chapters later, Toriyama changes his mind about Gohan being the main character and decides to bring Goku back in the story. Now what the fuck was the point of retiring Goku just to bring him back so soon? This is just what happens when you're a dumb fuck hack who doesn't plan his story out.
So, the Tenkaichi Budokai comes back, but it only serves to be a lazy plot device to set up the real storyline. There was no reason to make readers sit through a boring high school miniarc and a worthless tournament just to get to the meat of the story; it's like if we wasted time with a slice of life miniarc about Goku getting a job after beating Piccolo at the 23rd Budokai that leads to him briefly participating in another one of Baba's tournaments before it's interrupted by Raditz. It's redundant and a waste of time; a competent writer would have known what he wanted the arc to be about right away. And what is this arc about, anyway? Just some random Arabian Nights-esque genie being revived. Who was the previous main antagonist? A synthetic life form created from the DNA of multiple characters, including the main protagonist. Who was the main antagonist before that? The galactic emperor who was responsible for the destruction of the main protagonist's race. Before that? The ruler and strongest member of the main protagonist's race. Before that? The king of demons who the main protagonist's master fought long ago. All of these characters would have been more fitting as final villains to the series than some random genie with absolute no ties to anyone in the established cast. His only connection is with some random new god we didn't know existed until now; all this time, it turns out there's a god who stands above even Kaio in the series and we just figure this out. Half-assed writing. Toriyama's artwork is getting sloppier as a result of rushing chapters out, too; just look at these reused panels here and here.
Anyway, the Z Fighters leave the tournament and go to the villains' lair. Now the important stuff will start, right? Nope, instead we just get a lazy rehash of Muscle Tower where the characters just fight a series of worthless one-off fodder. And by characters, I just mean Goku, Vegeeta, and Gohan while Kaioshin watches in awe; Piccolo and Kucklin came along only to immediately be written off as they just get turned into stone. Kucklin jobbing so hard is no surprise, but there was no reason for him to have come in the first place as we already knew he was weak as shit; he was even about to leave before he got turned into stone. Should have just left his bitch ass at the tournament. But Piccolo jobbing this hard is definitely a surprise, considering he was still relatively strong just one arc ago. Now he's so weak that you could make the case Goku, Gohan, and Vegeeta have all surpassed him in their base forms, which is ridiculous. "Piccolo is Toriyama's favorite character", they say (he actually flip-flops to Goku and Mr. Satan).
Anyway anyway, the first one of Bobbidi's jobbers? Base Vegeeta one-shots. The second? Goku defeats by pointlessly turning into a Super Saiyan 2 when he could have easily just beaten him in base; there was no reason for him to transform just to put up a fucking light when he could have used his base aura to do that (Goku's aura is made out of his energy, Qi in Chinese and Ki in Japanese, and Qi/Ki produces light by its very nature). Even if he needed to transform to put up light (which is a bullshit retcon that makes no sense), there's no reason why he didn't just speed-blitz Yakon and punch his brains out or whatever instead of flexing by overstuffing him with light. Shit writing. Anyway, the third of Bobbidi's men, the one with the half-assed Satan-esque design? Gohan only struggles with him because he's become much weaker after slacking off for 7 years; Goku and Vegeeta would have defeated him easily, but it's conveniently just the weakest of the Saiyan trio who fights him. It's just an excuse to have Vegeeta get mad and give Dabra the idea to have Bobbidi brainwash him. Vegeeta could have easily resisted Bobbidi's magic, but he gives in just because he wants to surpass Goku. He even kills hundreds of innocent people to force Goku into fighting him, and his fight with Goku causes Boo to come out.
And so, Vegeeta ruins everything by helping the new villains. Just like he did in the Cell arc. Unoriginal as hell. Christ, Vegeeta is an awful person, isn't he? But the story makes him out to be some martyr we should feel sorry for just because he cares about his family. No, he's a fucking scumbag who deserves to die and burn in Hell for eternity. Frankly, he should have died for good back in the Saiyan arc like he was originally intended to; the only reason he's stayed in the story for so long was because of his popularity. There's nothing deep or rich about his character arc; he's always been a piece of shit and the story is just glorifying mass murderers when it tries to absolve him of his past sins. There's no absolving someone who's committed literal genocide multiple times. Not even his fight with Goku is good; it's only a few pages, for fuck's sake. Wow, it was so cool seeing Goku and Vegeeta fight again for a grand total of six pages, right? Honestly, the fights in this arc as a whole are pretty lacking. And you know what Gohan lacks in all of his fights in this arc? Electricity. But isn't he supposed to be Super Saiyan 2 like Goku and Vegeeta? We saw him with electricity as Super Saiyan 2 at the tournament. Why not here and here? Did Toriyama just forget? Or was Gohan actually an SS1 like he's clearly drawn to be, even though that makes no sense in the context of the story? Is it a plothole or an inconsistency? Was Gohan having SS2 before retconned? Believe me, you don't want to enter this debate.
Anyway, Gohan jobs and Vegeeta kills himself to save the day only to fail miserably. We now enter the phase of the arc where the good guys go into hiding so they can find a way to resolve the conflict. From this point on, the arc becomes even more contrived than it was before. For starters, just as Goku is discussing with his jobber friends what to do now that Boo is on the loose, the useless background characters who do nothing randomly decide to use the Dragon Balls to revive everyone who was killed by Vegeeta at the tournament. It really doesn't occur to any of these idiots that they might need the Dragon Balls for later, even when they already suspected that something dangerous was lurking on Earth? It's just a lazy excuse for Kibit to come back to life, which begs the question of what the fuck was the point of killing him off at all if he was gonna come back so soon. It's just lazy, overly convenient storytelling.
Then there's how everyone just assumes Gohan is dead even though they had just used the Dragon Balls to revive everyone who died that day; logically, Gohan would come back to life as he's never been brought back to life before, but no one bothers to mention this. They just assume he's dead like a bunch of fucking idiots. Boo could easily just destroy Earth anytime he pleases, but Bobbidi conveniently wants to see the Z Fighters die with his own eyes, so he just has Boo take his time genociding humanity. Also, this is literally the third time the series has pulled the "villain broadcasts himself killing people and announcing his plans to terrorize humanity" trope. Look at this hack ass writing. Anyway, even when Boo gets fed up with Bobbidi and kills him, he still doesn't destroy Earth because Goku had told him that someone strong will fight him in a few days. Just more and more conveniences to keep the villain from instantly ending the plot by killing everyone.
Anyway, so what's the plan to beat Boo? Have Goten and Trunks fuse. Oh, who's Goten? Goku's other son who just randomly popped up at the start of the arc; turns out Goku knocked up Chichi right before dying to Cell. He has absolutely no personality or depth, and he lazily looks exactly like Goku did as a kid; he just exists to be Trunks's sidekick. They both fucking suck; just more dumb overpowered brats for little boys to self-insert as. They're able to easily turn Super Saiyan for no reason (over 20 years later, the reason is randomly revealed to be because of some stupid shit ripping off Midichlorians from Star Wars). Their only purpose in this arc is to just fuse into an even bigger brat. But making matters worse, it turns out that the whole time, there was never any reason to rely on these stupid kids as Goku could have easily defeated Boo as a Super Saiyan 3 (a transformation that ends up accomplishing nothing). What? Super Saiyan 3? Wasn't Goku only a Super Saiyan 2 and no stronger than Vegeeta after Bobbidi powered him up? Turns out the whole time, he had a brand new Super Saiyan form right up his ass. Then, why didn't he just pull that out to quickly defeat Vegeeta and stop Boo from being released? Because, gasp, it's a fucking asspull with absolutely zero build-up or foreshadowing. So, it's largely Goku's fault that Boo came out as he literally let Vegeeta beat up on him, which led to Boo coming out. He doesn't even bother trying to rectify this mistake by beating Boo as a Super Saiyan 3; he deliberately lets Boo slaughter humankind just because he wants two stupid little kids to do his dirty work for him.
"He was dead! It's not his business to interfere with mortal affairs!" No, he doesn't have any right playing that card when the reason Boo came out in the first place was because he let himself get beaten up by Vegeeta. He's responsible for this mess, so it only falls on him to clean it up. Humankind shouldn't be sacrificed just because he wants other people to do his job for him; he's a total piece of shit and it's disgusting how this story makes him out to be some remarkable, noble hero. Oh, yeah, and he could have just had Goten and Trunks quickly master fusion in the Time Chamber and beat Boo right away, but he refuses to let them because "they might need it later", even though them taking just a few hours to master fusion in the Time Chamber would hardly be using up their available time. There's no logic or reasoning for Goku's actions; this is just more and more artificial tension to pad out this stupid story arc. Anyway, what's Gohan doing when all of this is going down? He's swinging some random sword with Kaioshin. He pulled it out of some rock in a lazy homage to the story of King Arthur and it's supposedly some special sword. But he breaks it, freeing Roshi aka Grand Elder 2.0 who unlocks Gohan's hidden potential (old man who is a pervert like Roshi, old man who gives Gohan a free power boost like the Grand Elder). Just by sitting on his ass, Gohan will get a free power-up. Such lazy, uncreative writing. So, who's going to beat Boo? Will it be Gohan, or will it be Gotenks?
Well, for a moment, the story flirts with the idea that Mr. Satan might be the one to save the day; not by besting him in a battle, but through simply befriending him and asking him to stop killing people. That's right, this shitty gag character who was forced in the story during the Cell arc suddenly has a bigger role now, even though he should have never existed in the first place. The gag that almost everyone on Earth thinks this obvious fraud is the strongest person, even after seeing Cell clearly kick his ass, is utterly stupid; it was never funny, and it only raises the question of how everyone suddenly forgot Goku and co's battles at the previous Budokai tournaments. To suddenly give this unfunny gag character who should have never existed any semblance of importance is pretentious, and only makes this arc even worse. There's nothing touching about his stupid friendship with Boo, who is literally the worst mass murderer and terrorist humankind has ever seen.
By the time Mr. Satan convinces Boo to stop killing, he has already killed almost everyone on Earth. He should be forgiven for his utterly atrocious crimes just because he supposedly has the mental capacity of a child? Would you forgive a mass murderer who killed your whole family just because he was mentally immature? No, you fucking wouldn't. Boo isn't even like a real child. He's just a manchild; a fat dumb manbaby. He was in control of his actions the whole time, and he took glee in killing people. A monster like this deserves nothing short of execution; we're supposed to feel sorry for him just because some criminal shot his dog, even though he killed almost everyone on Earth? Fuck this stupid ass writing. The only purpose Boo and Mr. Satan's friendship really serves is to set up Boo turning into an eviler version of himself when some random criminal shot his dog and Mr. Satan; the story really brought out some shitty minor antagonist for the sole purpose of having Boo transform.
More specifically, he expels the evil from his body and it takes the form of a skinny, gray Boo. The fat one is the "good" Boo (even though he's still the one who killed almost all of humanity), and the skinny one is the "evil" Boo. Basically, it's a ripoff of Kami and Daimao. Anyway, when the skinny Boo eats the fat one, he becomes lean, muscular and stronger than ever before up to this point in the story. Right? Super Boo is stronger than Fat Boo ever was, right? Trust me, you don't want to get into that debate, either. Anyway anyway, Super Boo can now conveniently sense energy, so he flies to Kami's lookout as it was the place with the strongest people on Earth. After killing all of the remaining humans down below save for a few, Piccolo leads Boo into the Time Chamber where he fights Gotenks, planning to trap him there in case Gotenks can't beat him.
After a completely stupid and unfunny gag fight, Boo ends up escaping through an asspull; it suddenly turns out he can just make a wormhole. It comes out of nowhere and is a blatant diabolus ex machina. Boo then kills all the worthless background characters who do nothing before Gotenks turns into a Super Saiyan 3 and pummels him, but the transformation runs out before he can deliver the killing blow. Gohan then comes to the rescue and displays his new powerup by kicking Boo's ass. This is supposed to be "Ultimate" Gohan, who looks exactly the same as regular Gohan, except now he has a full outline around his eyes. It's such a miniscule change that may as well not even be there, and it's easily overlooked; the series isn't even consistent on it later. Anyway anyway anyway, right when it looks like Gohan will win, he wastes time to talk shit, which leads to Boo escaping before he comes back to absorb Piccolo and Gotenks. The newly powered-up Boo kicks Gohan's ass, and it's decided that Goku will come back to fight Boo; Roshi/Guru 2.0 pulls out the ability to revive dead people straight out of his ass.
After all that talk Goku made about wanting the next generation to beat Boo ... now he's the one who's going to save the day in the end. He caused Boo to come out by letting Vegeeta beat him up. He refused to beat Boo as a Super Saiyan 3 just because he wanted other people to do his dirty work for him. Now that everyone else has failed and basically everyone on Earth is dead, Goku's going to have to beat Boo himself, making literally all of his previous actions in this arc completely pointless. He caused a whole planet to be wiped out for literally no reason. There is no excusing or defending him. He's a fucking dog shit person and a dog shit character. So, anyway, Roshi/Guru 2.0 randomly pulls a new type of fusion out of his ass; you know those earrings he wears? They conveniently can be used to fuse. After Gohan gets absorbed, Vegeeta returns; it conveniently turned out that Enma kept his body around instead of sending him to Hell and we don't find this out until just one page before Goku came back to life. Lazy writing upon lazy writing.
And so, Goku and Vegeeta fuse using the earrings, becoming Gogeta Vegito Vegetto Vegerot Vegeku Vegett Veget (yes, that's the proper translation of his name, although his name was originally announced as Gogeeta when he debuted in Weeky Jump). But didn't we
already have a type of fusion in the story? What the fuck is the point
of there being two types of fusions? "Toriyama didn't wanna spoil Gogeeta in
Fusion Reborn" No, that's not any excuse; other than the fact it's
bullshit that Fusion Reborn's success in theaters would have been hurt by
Gogeeta appearing in a magazine most people wouldn't have read just a
few weeks before the movie's release (and Toriyama could have just drawn the story out like he always does so Gogeeta would end up appearing in the manga after Fusion Reborn's release; it wouldn't even need to be long after, as Super Saiyan Goku appeared in the manga less than two weeks after the original Super Saiyan design was featured in the Lord Slug movie, which was even called Super Saiyan, Son Goku in Japan. And that movie still ended up being a success), if he didn't want to spoil the
movie, then he shouldn't have had Goku and Vegeeta fuse at all.
There is no point in asspulling a second type of fusion, especially this
late in the story. Making matters worst, Super Vegetarrottogokuble doesn't do jack shit.
He beats up on Boo for a bit, but refrains from killing him because he
wants to free his friends. He can also somehow keep fighting as a piece of candy just because unfunny gags. He then splits inside of Boo for no real reason (later retconned to be some stupid shit that doesn't make any actual sense) and his friends all get killed, anyway. Oh, and Vegeeta disconnecting Fat Boo from Super Boo's body
doesn't turn him back into the Skinny Boo. Somehow, it randomly turns
him into a smaller, childlike version of Boo (actually, he first
randomly turns into a roided Boo before randomly settling
into the smaller one. BTW, why didn't Dende bother healing Gohan, Goten, Trunks, and Piccolo here? He had an easy opportunity the whole time Boo was busy transforming. Oh, that's right, because the plot demanded they'd all be killed off for the arc's final act, which is why Goku doesn't save them here; he just happened to see Dende and Mr. Satan first, which caused him to act in the spur of the moment because PLOT. Fuck this stupid writing. And speaking of Dende, him not healing Tenshinhan after Boo knocked him out was a pretty dick move considering Tenshinhan saved his life shortly before. He really just left him there like a dick. This isn't Tenshinhan fanboyism; it's unusually out of character for Dende to leave someone knocked out when they had just saved his life. The fact it leads to Tenshinhan dying when Boo blows up the planet while Dende survives is the icing on the cake; Tenshinhan saved his life and Dende left his ass for dead)
Wasn't Super Boo supposed to be Skinny Boo with Fat Boo absorbed? Shouldn't removing Fat Boo turn him back into Skinny Boo? Suddenly we find out that the small Boo is the original. He absorbed one buff Kaioshin to become a roided Boo. Then, he absorbed a fat Kaioshin to turn into the Fat Boo before being sealed away. But when Fat Boo expelled the evil from his body, why didn't it produce the small Boo instead of the skinny one? And why does that roided Boo only appear for like two seconds before turning into the small Boo? Why didn't that buff Kaioshin pull out the Z Sword; he's much stronger than the rusty Gohan who could pull it out, right? Why didn't Kaioshin warn anyone about Boo's absorption if he was familiar with it this whole time? Who's stronger between Super Boo and the small Boo? If the small Boo is stronger, and SS3 Goku is stronger than the small Boo, then why did Goku admit to being weaker than Super Boo earlier? Isn't Goku weaker than Gohan, who pummeled Super Boo? Do yourself a favor and don't enter any of these debates.
There are so many plotholes because NONE of this shit makes any sense. And remember how the Namekian Dragon Balls could only bring back one person per wish? It conveniently turns out they were upgraded and we only now find out, as soon as the plot called for it. Beating Boo comes down to a Genkidama, a move that was last used all the way back in the Freeza arc and had a success rate of 0%. Vegeeta's randomly the one to suggest it (despite having never been shown to have been told about the technique before) because he thinks the humans on Earth should be responsible for saving their planet. Even though he was the one who set Boo loose by beating up Goku. And you know those hundreds of humans Vegeeta killed at the tournament? Yeah, he's literally asking THEM for help, too. "First, I killed all of you. Then, I freed the monster who went on to kill all of you after you were revived the first time. Now I have the audacity to demand anything of you and call you idiots when you say no, even though it's my fault you died twice". Fuck this story arc altogether.
Mr. Satan then asks the humans for help and they all immediately listen to him because they're all dumb fucks; goddamn, wow, this stupid ass gag plot device is basically the key to saving the whole universe! Cringe. How come Goten and Trunks don't fuse into Gotenks, so they can donate more energy than they're capable of donating separately? Why can't Seventeen and Eighteen donate an infinite amount of energy considering the fact they never tire as they run on "infinite energy" generators? Why does Seventeen care about hearing Goku's voice when they never actually met before (even taking into account the decades-later retcon that he heard Goku while inside of Cell, they never actually met each other and Seventeen has no reason to like him. It really would have been better if Lunch appeared instead like Toriyama originally planned; Seventeen was completely out of place on this page that had the likes of Upa, Bora, Suno, and Eighter, all characters from long before DBZ, returning)? How are Seventeen and Eighteen even able to donate to the Genkidama/Yuanqi Ball when they lack Ki/Qi, which the series defines as "life energy"? If they're not donating "life energy" to the Genkidama, then what the hell are they donating? (actually, if they don't have any life energy at all, then shouldn't that mean they're dead?)
How the hell is Vegeeta able to survive a prolonged beating from Boo in his base form? Boo just conveniently decided to take his sweet time torturing him the whole time Goku was charging a giant energy ball, even though Boo already felt threatened by it? How is a stamina-depleted Goku able to dodge a blast from a fresh Boo? He conveniently had enough energy to teleport? Just where did he think of teleporting to in that brief instant? Why the fuck doesn't Boo teleport out of the way to dodge the Genkidama? Why didn't it occur to Dende that he could have healed Kibitshin, so he could teleport him to heal Goku? This writing is garbage. Even Japanese audiences were getting bored of Dragon Ball at this point, as the ratings were declining and fewer people were voting in the popularity polls. It almost feels as though Toriyama deliberately padded this arc out to kill interest in the manga, so it would be easier for him to end it. Anyway, Boo dies and the original manga ends by jumping forward 10 years to give us a half-assed epilogue of Goku abandoning his family to live with some random boy on a tropical island, even though he never even had to go as far as living with him as he can literally teleport. He just looks like a fucking pedophile.
As I pointed out at the start of this article, there are a lot of these pedophillic undertones in Toriyama's work. And just look at the characters introduced here; two more generic "pretty boys", another generic wrestler, a generic Western-style superhero, an islander stereotype, and another gay stereotype. "Captain Chicken", really? This guy "Knock" is literally named after the fact he just gets knocked out. And you see "Butch" right there? His name in the Japanese version is "Otoko Suki", which literally means "I Like Men". This grown ass shirtless hairy man in a police cap with a mustache who looks like Freddie Mercury (a gay celebrity who died of AIDS) and wants to have sex with a barely legal teenage boy (actually, Trunks is only 18 here, which was still underage in Japan in 1995) ... is literally named after the fact he's gay. That's the joke; he's a completely stereotypical gay man. And people actually think Toriyama is a good writer? "I'm about to end the manga, so here's more stereotypical gay jokes!"
The Boo arc was an absolute trainwreck; the very worst arc in the entire original manga. Not only is it equally or more nonsensical than the Android/Cell arc, but it's even more half-assed; it has even more reused ideas from previous arcs (Vegeeta screws everything up again, more Super Saiyan forms, Gohan gets his potential unlocked again, the villain is an ancient evil freed from years of containment, splits into a good and bad form, the villain absorbs people, etc) and the writing feels even lazier due to the increased number of stupid gags (Great Saiyaman, Fat Boo, Mr. Satan, Gotenks, Elder Kaioshin, etc). So many plot points are brought up, but they go nowhere and it all randomly comes down to an old technique of Goku's to save the day. The original 1995 ending especially falls flat; it was supposed to be the ending to the series, yet there's nothing to be felt from Goku flying off with some random kid, which is why Toriyama modified it to be more sentimental for the 2004 Kanzenban (Perfect Edition) release (while also adding an unnecessary scene of Vegeeta still being a bitter loser. So much for "Kakarot, you are number one", huh? No, nothing wrong with him still wanting to surpass Goku; it's that after all this time, he's still obsessed like a bitter ex-girlfriend. In any case, it's a dumb note to end the series on). No amount of forced sentimentality makes up for how awful the Boo arc was as a whole, though. Overall, it amounts to nothing more than a rushed, incoherent conclusion to a series that was garbage from day one. There was no reason this shitty manga should have lasted over 10 years. It should have never even started because it's garbage from start to finish, only getting worse and worse the longer it was forced to continue for the sake of money.
There is really is not one iota of substance to be found in this trainwreck of a series; it's just mindless garbage written worse than diarrhea. Of course, the greedy hacks at Toei couldn't keep the franchise dead, so they continued the anime with Dragon Ball GT, which starts off like a forced callback to Dragon Ball's lighthearted adventure roots; once the ratings tanked, though, it became about fighting until Toei realized there was no saving the franchise as most people had moved on, so they pretty much cancelled it. There was never even any reason for GT to have existed when franchise burnout was obvious midway through the Boo arc. It's quite pathetic that those dumb fucks at Toei actually thought the solution to the burnout would be toning down all the fighting that had made the franchise so popular to begin with instead of just ending it entirely. Granted, it's true that the TV ratings were at their highest during the Red Ribbon arc (episode 47 had an impressive 29.5% viewership share, the highest of the whole franchise), which was when Goku was still a kid and the tone of the story was still mostly lighthearted.
But we can see for ourselves that ratings for the original Dragon Ball anime began to decline even before the Great Demon King Piccolo arc (the point where focus on dramatic battles increased) started. It was right around the tail-end of the Baba miniarc or the start of the Tenshinhan arc that decline was evident. DBZ's average episode rating was 20.5%, just slightly worse than DB's average rating of 21.2%; the highest rating DBZ got was 27.5%, slightly worse than DB's peak of 29.5%. Even with its increased focus on fighting, DBZ had remarkably good ratings overall; in fact, this increased focus on fighting was what brought ratings for the franchise back on track after they declined during the production of the original Dragon Ball anime. Ratings did begin to noticeably fall off during the Boo arc, but that was simply because people were getting tired of the series as it had aired for so long. There was no reason to think turning Goku back into a kid and toning down the action would revive any interest. Indeed, Dragon Ball GT was awful. Nonetheless, though, Dragon Ball was always terrible.
Well, I could bash the newer stuff that's come out since this soulless cash cow of a franchise was revived in 2013, but there's really no need (I will say, though, that the fact Toriyama unironically named a transformation "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" is perhaps the single most embarassing moment in the whole franchise. Him being an awful writer is a given, but the fact he actually thought "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" was fine as an official name shows a severe lack of self-awareness). It's dumb how anyone pretends Dragon Ball only got bad with the newer stuff when it was always garbage. Well, if you made it all the way to the end of this article, congrats. And if you still unironically think Dragon Ball is good, then more power to you. But you objectively have poor taste. As I've just proven with this article, the plot's complete bullshit. It's utterly nonsensical and directionless, full of inconsistencies (both in-universe and out-of-universe) and holes that can only be chalked up to awful writing. All of it is improvised because the author has no real sense of planning. There's zero substance or depth to it; it just amounts to mindless, flashy entertainment that only appeals to children (and emotionally regressed adults). That's the only reason it became so popular. Kids and stunted adults love this crap. No one watches or reads the series for any quality storytelling or plot, because the plot is completely nonsensical. None of it is thought-out or coherent. It's just braindead. This sums up all the main story arcs in the original manga:
"I wanna make a parody of Journey to the West for degenerate perverts!"
"Damn, no one likes it. Guess I'll do a tournament with more unfunny jokes and shitty gag characters!"
"OK, the tournament's over and the ratings are up. What now? Guess I'll come up with an evil army ran by an incel manlet, blackface, and a gay stereotype!"
"OK, the evil terrorist army is defeated. What now? Guess I'll do another tournament, this time with a triclops and his midget boyfriend!"
"OK, that tournament's over. What now? Guess I'll come up with another evil army, this time with demons!"
"OK, that evil army is defeated. What now? Guess I'll do another tournament with another demon who's exactly like the last one! Jk, I changed my mind, so he's actually an alien!"
"OK, that tournament's over. What now? Guess I'll rip off Superman and make Gokek an alien!"
"OK, that one alien with the fucked hairline is really popular. Guess I'll come up with more aliens!"
"OK, the other aliens got defeated. What now? Guess I'll rip off Terminator and come up with a bullshit time travel plot that makes zero sense!"
"OK, I'm really tired of this series. What now? Guess I'll rip off Arabian Nights and make Gokek Junior the main character! Nah, fuck Junior, I'll just bring Gokek back to life at the last minute! Gokek saves the day again and 10 years later, he leaves his family to live with some random little boy for no reason. THE END!"
Nothing is foreshadowed or built up. There is no planning. Whenever an arc ends, or is about to end, Toriyama finds himself at a wall and comes up with random shit to keep the story going. He just writes as he goes along with no real vision of where he wants to take the story, all while rehashing the same tired plot points and story beats repeatedly. But of course, his fans don't care. They don't care that the plot is objectively directionless and nonsensical. Why? Because they find it entertaining. That's all there is to the franchise's success. The quality of the storytelling doesn't matter; as long as it's flashy and action-packed, people (namely children and childlike adults aka manbabies and other weirdos) eat it up. Most, if not all, Shonen is garbage. They're just the products of perverted social misfits who want to make a quick, easy buck by making bullshit that appeals to dumb kids who don't know any better. These hacks end up becoming worshiped by the dumb kids they're exploiting, which creates a generation of more perverted social misfits, many of whom go on to make their own garbage series to exploit more dumb kids and the cycle continues. As for the geeks who don't make their own series? They usually just continue wasting their lives worshiping the trash that "defined" their childhood, doing nothing productive themselves. This franchise is objectively trash and Akira Toriyama was objectively a nasty, perverted and talentless writer.
"I'd like to be the sort of geezer who pretends to be senile so they can peep on their daughter in the bath." - Akira Toriyama, creator of Lady Red
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