Dragon Ball (All Series)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, I got to see Broly the other night, and I really enjoyed it. The pacing was surprisingly solid, especially for the action which worked pretty well being condensed into a movie and not spread over multiple episodes. But I think my favorite thing, besides Broly getting more personality than before, is how Frieza is getting some character growth without softening him. He's worked well as a villain before, but I especially enjoyed him in the movie.

Seriously, on paper, bringing Freeza back seemed like one of the worst writing decisions that I could possibly imagine for the franchise. Yet not only did they manage to make it work, but he has consistently been one of the best things about Super since his return in the Tournament of Power, and he is one of the few characters who's role and development in the series has actually improved from his original incarnation in Z. The writers could have easily made a lame attempt to make him a cringe-worthy copy of Piccolo or Vegeta with a half-assed redemption arc, but they thankfully were smart enough to avoid that and gave him developments that made him more nuanced while never betraying the core concept of his character. He's still a scummy ass-hole looking out for his own interests, and I absolutely love it.

And glad to hear that you enjoyed the movie. I really feel that changing the animation director to Shintani really did wonders for his project, not just in terms of looking better but also in terms of capturing a more fluid feel to Dragon Ball than what we got in the television version of Super.

However, I think my biggest problem with it is that it wasn't great with its new female characters. Goku's mom doesn't get a chance to have personality, especially compared to Bardock, but what really bugged me was the member of Frieza's force who had a thing for Broly. She was given a lot of obvious fanservice angles, which didn't need to happen, and she didn't have much going for her character wise to begin with. But whatever, shonen has always had issues with female characters.

I agree about Gine. I was never a fan of the concept of revealing Goku's mom in the first place, as there was no narrative purpose for it in the story and it actually ruins the more interesting aspects of Bardock's character from his original incarnation, IMO. If you can believe it, Dragon Ball Minus's representation of her was even worse.

I have to personally disagree with you about Cheelai, though. She's one of the rare few instances of a well-written female character (at least so far) by Toriyama's standards. On the fan-service front, I don't think simply having that makes a weak female character. I mean, if we're going by that logic, the series is crammed full of male fan-service with all of the half-naked muscle-bound dudes you see throughout most of it's run. But more-so it's made apparent that Cheelai doesn't act like your typical tsundere female heroine and instead doesn't really care about how other guys view her as we see in the cafeteria scene. She's more tomboyish than anything else and seems to own up to her sexuality without ever really exploiting it too much. I can understand being annoyed by some of the more obviously angled shots in which she's showcased in, but that's hardly something new for Dragon Ball, and is fairly tame by the standards of a lot of other anime.

As for her interest in Broly, the impression I got is that she seems a bit infatuated with him, but that's as far as it goes at this point in the story. More than anything, though, she is shown to be more interested in liberating him from being constrained by his abusive relationship with his father. She takes an active role and uses her own decision-making to try and reach out to him and help him out. Her stealing and destroying his shock collar remote may not have been such a good thing for his confrontation with Goku and Vegeta (who I would like to point out are not actually the protagonists of this movie; Broly is), but it's also her quick thinking and call to action that ends up saving him in the end and giving him a second chance. She comes off as a very proactive character and actually helps drive the plot forward. While she's hasn't done enough to necessarily be as interesting as Bulma or Videl (before the epilogue of DBZ for the latter), I found her introduction into the story to be about as solid as the one that Beerus and Whis got (who are easily among the best additions to the franchise since it's revival). She didn't have a lot of screentime, but the movie and script were very ergonomic with the time that she had, and her backstory was basic but did what it needed to set-up her character as not being a villain but working with them out of necessity. She was pretty full of personality as well in a way that made her distinct from any other member of the Freeza Force. It's not something that will establish her as a fully-realized character in and of itself, but in the context of serialized story-telling, it's a more than worthy introduction that makes me personally interested to see her further developments in the series (assuming that they don't botch it, which is entirely possible). So, at the very least, I personally can't agree that she doesn't have much going for her character-wise.

More importantly, though, only since you brought it up, this is something that I have to ask in general: What's with this stigma in modern criticism of gender-representation that just because a female character shows any romantic interest in a male character that it's now considered a sign of weakness or poor characterization? And even at that, it's only ever implied in this movie at best.

Sorry if that came off a bit rambly/ranty. That wasn't really my intention, but I'm also half-asleep right now and lack the proper train of thought to get my points more concise. I can understand your viewpoint, of course, but just wanted to share my take on it. I probably made it sound like a bigger deal than it is, though, and will feel stupid about it in the morning.

[Dr. Insomniac]

This reminds me of that rant Kaiserneko gave about Videl's role in DBZ, and how she gets the fight snuffed out of her early into the Majin Buu arc. Something even Videl's VA agreed with. Cheelai's definitely better executed though, and characters like Caulifla and Future Mai, along with Bulma's continued importance in contrast to Gohan's demotion in relevance, show that Super's a little better at handling female characters than the later parts of DBZ. And especially GT and how it never figured out what to do with Pan.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

One of GT's biggest missteps was in not making Pan an actual fighter and the true protagonist of the show as she should have been. This should have been a Next Generation story, but instead the show utilizes Goku as a crutch and always has him be the one to solve every problem. I personally feel that as a grandfather, he should be a mentor to Pan and take more of a supporting (but still significant) role. I feel as though DBZ should have been the end of his story as the protagonist, and that GT should have had him pass the torch on to Pan (since Z already missed the boat on Gohan). Really big missed opportunity there.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Dragonball becoming a generational saga instead of The Goku Show is something that will never sit well with me. Gohan and Videl had a surprisingly sweet relationship. Seeing him dress up as Saiyaman and figure out his way around civilian life was fun (even the anime filler). And while I liked Majin Buu, his saga hijacking Gohan's character arc in the middle of the tournament wasn't right. It's where Toriyama's "making up the story as he went along" approach to writing reaches its worst excesses. And while it led to some good parts like Mr. Satan's and Buu's friendship and Vegeta's realization that he's grown fond of his Earth life, the possibilities could have been so much more.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I want Son's Bizarre Adventure. Each new series explores a different generational member of the Son line following Goku. Freeza can be the Dio of that series, and "useless" would be replaced with "filthy monkey" as his fighting chant. We can even get the Ginyu Force to come back and rip-off this dance.

It'll be a huge hit, I'm sure.

[Avaitor]

I'll admit that I was harsher on Cheelai than I should have been. I didn't like her as much as you did this time, but she is better than I gave credit for, and hopefully a rewatch can help me warm up to her.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Why is Dragonball Heroes so ridiculous?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So we are getting new remastered Blu-Rays of Dragon Ball Z in the 4:3 aspect ratio with improved audio quality (something people have been asking over a decade for Toei to release), and as someone who missed out on the Dragon Boxes, I'll be all over this new release when it comes out.

[LumRanmaYasha]

If they even get made...they're requiring at least 2500 fans to preorder them before they even begin production. Granted, I'm sure there's 2500 fans out there who'll eagerly preorder this, but it still rubs me the wrong way that they expect fans to do so without even showing a preview of what the remastered footage even looks like. I'm holding out on buying this until I see how it looks, though to be honest, I'd much rather buy a remastered release of Dragon Ball than I am DBZ.

[Avaitor]

I got curious, so I decided to watch Curse of the Blood Rubies. Credit where credit is due, this is a decently paced way to condense the Pilaf saga into a Jump-length feature, and it's decently animated. But the new characters don't really add much of value to the movie, and at the end of the day, this just isn't how I'm used to this story.

It's a cool sidestep, but not something I'll come back to.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, retelling the early story arcs of Dragon Ball is something that Toei did for the first and third movie (the third being a bit better at this from what I remember). These never tend to be nearly as good as what they are based on (the same goes for a few of the One Piece movies that tried the same thing), but for what it's worth Path to Power did a relatively decent job of mixing the Pilaf and Red Ribbon Army arcs into a cohesive, generally entertaining narrative. It's nothing all that special, but it's worth a watch for a Dragon Ball movie, IMO.

[Avaitor]

Cool! Maybe I'll check that out too at some point. If nothing else, these are interesting asterisks in the DB chronology.

[Dr. Insomniac]

goat noises incoming

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Moro is shaping up to be an interesting villain and overall arc, and it does not require anyone to have seen the Broly movie or even the last few arcs of Super, so a recap would be pointless here.

Really glad that Shintani is the new supervising director of this series. He has earned it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, remember those 30th anniversary Dragon Ball remaster sets that FUNimation was hyping up? Yeah....turns out they are trying to pull some shit again that's on par with the "Orange Brick" sets: https://youtu.be/TR8eAfJjNEw