Dragon Ball: Super Saiyan (A Prophecy Done Right) - Detail Diatribe

"Most people don't remember Nappa, he's not that important." Lies, Nappa was the most fleshed out and fully realized character in all of Dragon Ball. He had a degree in child psychology with a minor in pain, had an interest in entomology and insect reproduction habits, enjoyed playing Pokemon, and after the events of the Namek Saga went on to become a successful movie producer. i may have watched too much DBZA

I am disappointed. I wanted a whole hour of Red talking about DBZ. Now we will forever be 4 seconds short.

Red: "Most people don't remember Nappa, he's not that important." Nappa: "I am hilarious and you will quote everything i say."

Regarding "Everyone is Super Saiyan Now"; I'm reminded of the 4-minute mile. It was long supposed to be impossible. However, once Roger Bannister showed it could be done, it became a realist target for top middle-distance runners.

The "pure heart awakened by fury" is basically "a good man gone to war" trope which sounds like an excellent topic for a trope talk.

The best part is everything weird on DBZ’s earth can easily be explained by the Dragon Balls themselves. Someone wishing real animal people were a thing, someone wishing for dinosaurs to be revived, etc.

"People don't wish for immortality cause that would be game breaking." I can hear Garlic Jr. screaming bullshit in the Dead Zone from here.

Crazy thing is, Goku typically always starts off his fights using only martial arts. He only slowly slides into the Saiyan form of brawling later in most fights or if he needs to change things up. At his core, he is a martial artist, not a Saiyan warrior.

Ironically-- Making Dragon Ball Z into a funny abridged show is more in keeping with the original spirit of Dragonball.

It's intriguing since Akira Toriyama has gone on record that he writes by the seat of his pants yet managed to make a good payoff to Vegeta's posturing about being the legendary warrior. I feel like there's a Trope Talk in this style of writing, the ups and downs.

The thing to understand about Toriyama is that he's a born serial author. He doesn't plan ahead, but what he's very very good at is throwing a whole lot of details out and then picking and choosing which ones he wants to bring together to make the next chapter satisfying. He's dancing, not marching. The android and cell arcs are really interesting to examine for this very reason because when you know what was going on in the background (Toriyama getting playfully bullied by his editors to keep changing villains), you see that there was just no rhyme or reason to that whole set of arcs, and yet what do we get? It starts with the ghosts of Goku's past, things that can at least be loosely attributed to his deeds coming back to haunt the world, fatherhood and passing generations as a theme with Trunks, Gohan (compare and contrast), and all of Dr. Gero's creations (basically brainwashed to carry on his grudges). And so Cell is this melting pot of all the previous generation's abilities, and he wants to get stronger just like them. He's a monster made out of everything that they are, so they can't beat him and Goku becomes cognizant of this leading into Gohan, who doesn't want to fight at all, having to be The One True Foil to Cell. Solid indicator for all of this being intentional too is that Goku stops doing the hurt-yourself training, and basically just says it's self destructive. He knows the old tricks aren't going to work because Cell has them all. All with basically zero planning. Toriyama just throws a ton of stuff at the wall and assembles the pieces he likes chapter by chapter, and it all works out because he has a good instinct for theming. As an aside, I like the fact that Goku doesn't get that Gohan doesn't like fighting because it shows that Goku was really pitching over the horizon. He knew Gohan was the one to do it, sensed a sleeping power, understood that there was something different there, but he didn't know what made Gohan different or why.

the part about Goku's face after he "kills" Frieza, wasn't because he felt bad about killing him, it was that he gave Frieza multiple chances to admit defeat and that he was wrong and should change his ways, just as he essentially done with Yamcha, Tien, even Krillin if you want to get technical, even Piccolo and eventually Vegeta turned good and Frieza chose to try and kill him even after all that. It wasn't that Goku felt bad about killing Frieza it was that he felt bad that there were people like Frieza, Goku's always given almost everyone second chances minus Tambourine and King Piccolo, and after all the second chances he gave Frieza, Frieza still only wanted to kill him and rule the Universe

I appreciate Red's blunt honesty. "Or... Finally an excuse to make a sideshow about DBZ".

"Maybe if we kick Frieza in the nuts we can beat him" The true horror of Frieza's final form: The reveal that he has no nuts.

This moment was immortalized for me by the TFS abridged version. "Im going to break you." "What?!" "Like a kit-kat bar..." "...WHAT?!"

"they were setting [Piccolo] up yo be a Vegeta-type villain, and then they introduced Vegeta." is such a great sentence

Piccolo Jr's backstory actually IS brought up once during the Cell saga (briefly), right before Piccolo and Kame fuse into a super Namekian.

Red talking about Vegeta: "He develops a bit of a complex about this." That's an understatement right there XD

Every time Red says “that’s right... FRIEZA!” I can still picture vegeta’s stupid shit eating grin - the one which precedes existential panic after abject failure. Fucking champion video my dudes.

I want to call attention to something about the Super Saiyan transformation that I hardly see anyone talk about. When Goku becomes a Super Saiyan, his personality becomes far more hostile and belligerent, aka more traditionally Saiyan-like. So, I find it interesting that the same transformation just so happens to change Goku's physical appearance to more closely resemble the character who most represents the Saiyan race as a whole: Vegeta. His hair stands straight up and the the design of his eyes changes from the normal open circles to the closed-off, fully outlined glare that characterizes a lot of villainous Dragon Ball characters, including Vegeta. In short, Super Saiyan Goku more or less looks like a tall, blond Vegeta with bangs. Likewise, it's a funny coincidence that for Vegeta, for whome Super Saiyan is only a slight exaggeration of his default personality, has the least extreme change in appearance out of anyone. He already has the evil eyes and hair that stands straight up, so Super Saiyan is literally just a palette swap. Just an interesting bit of (probably unintentional) thematic, visual story-telling that I don't see discussed very often.