Weekly Thoughts 9/17/23

Ok, so, guys, ok, so I am really, really dying to finish my book right now. The first part of the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC, the Teal Mask, came out this week, and I HAVEN’T PLAYED IT YET! I have to be good and finish my book first. But like, it’s out! I could be playing it! And like, my brain is really good at convincing me of whatever I want to do anyway, so I’ve had a lot of thoughts about how this book isn’t worth finishing. I had to do a factory reset on my computer due to a screen flicker, and part of me was hoping that there would be some mix-up in regard to the files it would keep. But I can’t be defeated that easily, you here me? I made a decision, and I’ll kill myself abiding by it if that’s what it takes. So, take that, my own short-term desires! I’ll never satisfy you! I’ll go to the grave miserable and antsy and crawling out of my skin if it means achieving basic satisfaction that I can do what I set out to do! And yes, I have considered a third proposal of playing through FireRed with a monotype Normal team. I have covered all my bases. But I am determined, and I cannot be stopped by someone like myself.

I was having trouble putting together an entry for this week, so I apologize for the delay. Let’s try to get into an easy topic for me, Dragon Ball. I had missed the news earlier, so I’m late learning that there has been a shakeup at Shueisha, the publisher of Dragon Ball, that could be pretty big. At the publisher, the management of the DB franchise has been handled by an interdepartmental office called the Dragon Room, and it’s been headed by Akio Iyoku for a long time. Until the end of August, which saw him leaving Shueisha to work full time at his new company, Capsule Corporation Tokyo. He also plans to recruit two of his subordinates from Shueisha. The company was formed back in May to handle the development of various IPs across media; the name of the company is taken from Dragon Ball, making it no surprise that, when he left Shueisha, Iyoku asked for the publisher to give him the rights necessary to develop the DB anime, films, video games, and related projects other than the manga going forward. I did a search for articles on the subject and have not found new news on how negotiations are going there. I personally doubt Shueisha would hand him the rights, because of the money but also because they had previously made a move to remove him from the Dragon Room that Iyoku refused. According to anonymous employees at the publisher, Iyoku was seen as possessive of the franchise to a problematic extent. Given that, his recent moves make a lot of sense, and I tend to think Shueisha wouldn’t hand over their biggest series to a guy who quit them after being told he was too attached. Right?

But I can’t predict the future of business, and I’m sure there are a ton of factors I’m not aware of that affect such deals. Instead, let’s look at what Iyoku has been up to as the head of the Dragon Room. From what I have gathered, Iyoku has been notable in the larger franchise for pushing nostalgia in various projects. He and his team were the ones who suggested bringing back Broly and Future Trunks, and for the development that would become Gohan Beast. Given these things and his allegedly possessive nature, it seems likely to me that his development of the series moving forward would result in a lot of hyped up but largely hollow projects that recreate popular moments from the series and/or bring to life the wish list of fans who think that sounds like a visionary future. I mean, to the extent any of those ideas were successful or good, it was because of the work of others: Bringing back Future Trunks on its own has little merit compared to the larger Zamas story we got; Broly being made canon just because his old movies are popular is pretty silly, and it was the work of Toriyama to give Broly a substantive backstory and personality that makes any of it seem worthwhile; Gohan Beast is just a long-winded recreation of when Gohan went Super Saiyan 2 for hype, with the Gammas and Orange Piccolo potentially being a rewarding windfall. On a similar note, it was the editorial team that suggested and designed Kale, the Universe 6 Legendary Saiyan. They made her because they wanted to capitalize on Broly’s popularity and made her a girl so she’d be different. If she had been introduced individually, she wouldn’t have been very interesting; another mostly silent Saiyan who rages out and becomes a muscle monster. Her success as a character comes from Toriyama designing Caulifla, and the two being paired. Kale’s success is likely what made Iyoku think it would work to make Broly canon, but also, it’s why I maintain we didn’t need Broly to be canon. We already had a Legendary Saiyan!

All of this to say, I am not in favor of a future where Iyoku is given the keys to the anime, movie, and video game kingdom. The best parts of Super have been the new material that has expanded what Dragon Ball means and has to offer. It would hurt the franchise to have what’s ultimately the more visible section of it guided by a man who thinks the best ideas involve indulging in petty fan wishes. For me, this is about more than what’s happening as we move forward. It also has to do with what’s been happening over the course of the series leading up to now, and what these changes Iyoku’s championed do to the series historically. To me, Dragon Ball is about how you can always overcome the odds and arrive at a better version of yourself if you work hard and search for the truth, the meaning, in what you do. The kind of story Iyoku has advanced is about reveling in the shallow aesthetic of achievement and all the glitters that aren’t gold.

Let’s take a deeper dive into Broly. I’ve stated a few times that I’m not a Broly fan. Part of that is aesthetic; I don’t like generic muscle men whose entire deal is being really strong. I mean, Broly isn’t even a martial artist. He’s a rage-blind brawler. I also didn’t like his movies. The first one had a pretty insane plot that involved tricking Vegeta to come to a planet that was about to be destroyed by a comet and then also trying to kill him? The second one is just “say Broly survived even though there’s no way he could have and then he fights again.” Bio-Broly is a second attempt to do that. He never had a lot going for him in general. The point of Broly is that he’s really strong and tries to kill Goku, the most basic requisites for any story. Despite claims that he’s secretly the strongest character ever, he was first beaten by the second strongest Z Fighter at the time, and then became a punching bag for children, one of whom was stated to be weaker than their first fight. He had no identifiable personality (until the Super era), and the entire premise of his character is “a bad guy that can also go Super Saiyan,” a description that, at the time, also fit Vegeta.

And that gets to the real heart of the matter. The first Broly movie came out during the Cell Saga. That storyline was rooted in the idea that going Super Saiyan, on its own, wasn’t an accomplishment. It’s a pretty common storytelling tool, to have the hero’s new tool or technique that surpassed all that you’ve seen before become the bottom rung of the ladder in the next story. Dragon Ball followed that path by having Goku and the other Saiyans explore what this new power actually means, and where true strength lies. Broly does the opposite. Instead of acknowledging that for the story to move forward, Super Saiyan couldn’t be the ultimate anything, Broly is about how Super Saiyan is the ultimate in everything. Instead of exploring what true strength means and what it takes to overcome impossible odds, Broly is the strongest because of raw power, and they only beat him with greater raw power or, in the first movie, accidentally pushing his magic off-button that all good villains have. If your life changed because you got a sword, and then found yourself in a sword tournament, and you had to level up your game, you would feel cheated by seeing someone else be the absolute best just because they had a sword, even though other people also have swords, right? At the very least, it’s boring.

Broly has less than nothing to offer; in his historical position, he takes away from future progress. This has been my view of Broly for most of my life. Now that he’s canon, we’ll see how he develops and how he’s used. I’m glad to see that, with the new backstory and characterization Toriyama developed for the newer movie, he has a personality. With any luck, his inclusion in the present, in the right hands, can invert his negative effect on the franchise by interrogating the raw power at the core of his premise and coming to an interesting, revolutionary answer. That’s a development I fully expect to come from the manga, especially if Iyoku ends up with control of the anime and films; Iyoku clearly is either one of Broly’s biggest fans or is very on board with giving those fans whatever they want, which would just be more Broly the rage monster for hype and nostalgia.

Gohan Beast is a concept that I am still not on board with, and I’m not happy that my prediction about the events and concepts of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero did not come true. The basic idea of Gohan Beast is that it’s a transformation that acts as an extension of Gohan’s Potential Unleashed form. That “form,” to the extent it can accurately be called that, is a state Gohan achieved after having all of his potential power beyond the natural limits awakened by Old Kai; essentially, he was both brought up to the strongest he could have been at the moment he achieved the form and given access to all the power he would have in the highest possible Super Saiyan form, all without transforming. As he was doing the ritual, Old Kai said that transformations were a lot of flash that come with drawbacks and get too much focus. What Gohan, and any martial artist, really needs is to focus on being a great martial artist, and his ritual was a way to give Gohan access to his full range of power so that he could instead focus on his skill and growth. You’ll notice that, later on in the manga, Gohan says he’s moving forward with that philosophy during his fight with Kefla. This is juxtaposed with the contemporaneous introduction of Super Saiyan 3, a form that perfectly tows the line between a cool continuation of the concept and a savage self-parody, where Toriyama, in his at-the-time final storyline, showed fans that there’s only so far this transformation stuff can go. Ultimately, Super Saiyan 3 failed, because reaching for more and more raw power isn’t the answer. Gohan also failed, due to his immaturity as a martial artist causing him to assume his outclassing of Buu in power meant he could relax.

So, all this to say, giving the form that’s about how transformations are flashy wastes of attention a transformation that only provides more power, all so you have an excuse to recreate popular scenes from the anime, is a regressive move that completely misses the point of the story. If Gohan failed last time because he was immature, then he should succeed because he’s since matured and knows what’s really important. He should develop a new technique in the battle that gives him the advantage. Or, he could easily have developed his own Ultra Instinct separate from Goku because his heart is already calmer. There are so many possibilities to move his story forward other than, “Bring back an old villain to do a bunch of stuff we already saw so Gohan can do stuff we already saw that also backtracks on the themes of the series.”

I mean, I have already thought of a way that Beast/Orange can work without breaking the mechanics – they can temporarily borrow power from the future, a la Granolah and Gas, without sacrificing the years off their lives – but I’d rather not have the forms at all, you know? While giving Piccolo a transformation can help raise his visibility among Saiyan-obsessed fans, I also liked how he was keeping up with Goku on his own, just as Piccolo. In any event, if he is to get one, I’d rather he gets a transformation that doesn’t rely on inverting the concept of Potential Unleashed. But like with Broly, we’ll see how it goes. It’s all canon now, in both the anime and manga version of the story, and there’s no going back. The best version of this development is that Tien and Krillin, the two most likely humans to make a comeback, are able to have their potential unleashed and get their own “awakened forms,” which can have cool names like…Eight-Star Krillin (cuz of his forehead dots) and Ascended Tien (because he’s boring)? Idk, something good. My point is that they can’t all be Beast, since Piccolo already isn’t. Devil Pan would be pretty sweet, right?

Because that’s what this is really all about for me. While I’m a huge Future Trunks fan, bringing him back with a weak story purely for nostalgia would have been a huge waste that only succeeds in wrecking my several Future Trunks-focused fan fictions. The Zamas story still did that, but it also gave us a really interesting and dynamic villain and pushed the series in new ways. Those ideas came from Toriyama and Toyotaro, not Iyoku. Consistently, if you look at the manga and anime differences in Dragon Ball Super, the anime favored raw power and reveling in the shallow coolness of transformations, while the manga advanced a storyline consistent with the larger arc of the series that still had fun with transformations as it brought the heroes back onto the righteous path of self-betterment through martial arts greatness. Iyoku was the one guiding the former, while Toriyama and Toyotaro were doing the latter. Moro and Granolah were two back-to-back all-star stories that continued to push our heroes to be more than a pair of biceps and explored a lot of fascinating themes, all of which shows the true potential and value of the series in the present and future. Those ideas came from Toyotaro and Toriyama. Iyoku hasn’t yet made a move to adapt them to the anime these past few years despite what I can only assume is an open door to restart production. Instead, the manga went on an indefinite hiatus that ultimately ended three months later to adapt Super Hero surprisingly faithfully, in spite of how the manga skipped over Broly and Resurrection ‘F’, which now has me wondering if the hiatus was a negotiation to convince Toyotaro not to skip it.

There’s also a more concrete example of what this future could look like, called Dragon Ball GT. There are actually a lot of things I like from GT, but overall, the series was a disappointment for me. It starts off with a nostalgia trip that is a tonal mismatch for what comes before and after, and then focuses on how Goku is the coolest because he’s strong and gets his super mainly Super Saiyan 4 form. Super Saiyan 4 is so overly-macho that it has no nipples (which are consistently drawn in the rest of the series, in case you’re wondering). While it’s not the worst idea for a form and could be an interesting concept to revive in the right circumstances, it also demonstrates how the anime team, without major leadership from Toriyama, think the best way to move the series forward is to focus on flashy fights and raw power, without delivering substantively on important themes. Baby’s criticism of Saiyan culture went unanswered (see Granolah for the right way to do that story), Super 17 didn’t have anything to say, really, and the Shadow Dragons were met with, “We promise we’ll be good in the future, please ignore our track record of flippancy and callousness.” That’s what I imagine Iyoku’s Super would be, if he were given the rights to continue it as he saw fit. So, while a future with someone who thinks along those lines can still have cool elements and get some deserved praise, it will always fall short of someone working to develop new ideas that further a message and vision consistent with the series as a whole.

We’ll see what happens. I kinda want to talk about Frieza, but this has gone on long enough, and it appears Frieza’s return wasn’t pushed by Iyoku. The new chapter of Super comes out this week, where we’ll see Goten and Trunks fuse again and (I assume) lose to Cell Max, so that’ll be neat for people who don’t like Goten and Trunks. Who knows, maybe they’ll finally realize they need to get serious and train again, and they retire Gotenks permanently as the manga moves forward. It’s a necessary move for them, although I honestly don’t know if they have a serious future in the series. I’ll let you know if I have any other urgent thoughts on the series. Here’s to whatever comes after the death of Cell Max!