I have started training to be a manager this week, which means I’ve started working those hours. It’s going to be an adjustment to make, for sure. I recently decided to step away from social media to get a break from it. I need to replace my car, and maybe sooner than I was hoping. I’m making steady progress on my current comic and doing prep work for another. I have to start figuring out and buying manager clothes, since I need to look professional now. I also stopped playing Pokemon TCG Pocket because I lost interest in it. I have a couple books left to read from my most recent purchase, which puts me at somewhere around 900 books (I recounted recently). A lot of changes, a stressful time, stuff to think about. So obviously, I also started taking the Spanish course in Duolingo, on top of Japanese. When you don’t drink or do drugs, your vice is even more activities.
Another bit of housekeeping, related: I have three more weeks to post here, so if I am to make a new blog, that is my deadline. I still have some looking around to do. I have noticed that the stats on this site have gone up quite a bit recently, so I would like to make the decision while I have a chance to let you all know where to find me in the future. I do think I would like to continue writing a blog, even if it’s just for me. If you’re newer and haven’t looked around the site much, I made this website to host my practice comics, and I started writing a blog to attract attention to it. This entire website was premature for anything I wanted to do. But I do like writing stuff down.
This week, I think I’ll talk about a fanfiction idea I had and how it relates to the original story. I was thinking the other day about making a Dragon Ball story for Goten to be the lead character. Goten is main hero Goku’s second son, conceived just before Goku died sacrificing himself to save the Earth against Cell. Goten is in an interesting place in the story, and because of how everything has been going, there just hasn’t been an opportunity to put him in the spotlight. He grew up in peaceful times and as an avid martial artist, wanting to emulate the cool fighters around him and the heroic stories of his father. Unlike Goku, who grew up in constant adventure and battle by his own ambition, and unlike Gohan, who has amazing potential but had been forced into battle despite wanting peace, Goten both wants to be part of the adventure and battle but only knew peace. He helped fight Buu, but was too immature to step up at that time; outside of that, the adults were keeping him and Trunks out of the spotlight so those two could have a good childhood. All of which is to say, Goten has done some things, and seems to have kept up his training to be on a serious level even in the present, but we haven’t seen what he’s really capable of because he’s never had a story to showcase it.
Perhaps famously on this blog, I don’t like the Super Hero arc in Dragon Ball Super. I think it’s tone and characterization doesn’t fit the characters, I think it’s mostly a filler story to say, “What if Gohan and Piccolo were ultra super duper muscle strong?” and I think the way they achieved that is insulting. However, I did enjoy the fun action-comedy prequel story that was made for the manga version of events, a prequel story featuring Trunks and Goten as teenage superheroes uncovering the activities of Dr. Hedo. It’s fun, and in the same vein as Gohan’s time as a superhero after Cell. So I figured the easiest entry point in the series to give Goten a spotlight would be to reimagine Super Hero as a way for Goten and Trunks to step up as the main heroes.
The first step to making that a reality is to figure out what Goten could do to get on that level. The entire plot still has to mechanically center on a power up, and I wanted something good. He’s way too young and inexperienced to pop out an Ultra technique. Since Goku and Vegeta are off-world for this story, there’s not enough people to give him the God form. I could have Goten unlock his potential in any number of ways and get his own “Beast,” but I don’t like Beast and don’t think it’s a good fit, anyway. So I came up with what I think is a pretty clever idea that fits into Goten’s story and the larger series in a fun way, and I think it’s the kind of thing fans would like.
Goten would have grown up hearing about the battle against the Androids and Cell. That battle featured the Saiyans of Earth working to master the Super Saiyan form to get the most out of it they can. They made a few different enhanced versions of the form, utilizing their new technical knowledge. He would have later seen Vegeta get his “Quake of Fury,” whatever that was, which made his Super Saiyan 2 way more powerful than it had any right to be. In the manga version of events, he also would have witnessed (or at least could have; Idk if he actually watched) Future Trunks using an enhanced version of Super Saiyan 2 with power that rivaled Super Saiyan 3. All of which is to say, Super Saiyan is a physical change his body can undergo that allows access to a realm of power, and how much more he has to change his body to access a greater amount of that power is a matter of skill and circumstance. Right? It’s an idea they went back to in Super with Goku completing Blue and Vegeta doing Red-Blue, that these transformations require skill and technique to get the most out of them; they are not the end point.
That’s my idea. I would have Goten develop Shin Super Saiyan, a way for him to access as much power as he can control while still a regular Super Saiyan. Visually, I would have his aura and stuff change to resemble higher transformations (lightning, then more fiery, then solid, then glitters, then sparkles), so as to communicate to us the kind of power he’s drawing on. Maybe his pupils would be visible? What’s important is that it’s a new and inventive way of developing his strength that the people around him long abandoned and likely don’t think is worthwhile or possible to pursue. And before anyone says that there isn’t Godly levels of power for Super Saiyan to access, I would like to remind you of Broly and Kale, the Legendary Super Saiyans, who both had power dwarfing Goku’s completed Blue. If they can do it on accident through uncontrollable genetic quirks, why can’t Goten do it on purpose by being really good?
The reason I like this, and why I’m actually writing about it here, is because it gives fans what they wanted out of Super Hero without abandoning the thematic core of stories past. Goten’s first conflict was against Buu, and he participated by learning to fuse with Trunks into Gotenks and then copying Goku’s Super Saiyan 3. I would argue we should have seen more fusion throughout the series, as a way for the humans to step up, but it is like Super Saiyan 3 in being a flashy gimmick thing meant to showcase how ever-escalating raw power is unwieldy, while still looking cool. Gohan was the counter to that trend. Elder Kai said as much while he was unlocking Gohan’s potential: Transformations and power levels and all that are a distraction; what you need is control over your strength. That idea is what makes Potential Unleashed such a cool form for Gohan, and why Super Hero “upgrading” it into a stupid-looking parody transformation for raw power is such an insult. I did justify how it could work as a temporary borrowing of future potential, like a safe version of Granolah’s wish, but mechanical possibility isn’t the issue, you know? (Not that anyone has officially said if I’m right about how it works) Goku spent all of Super learning to abandon a pursuit of power and turn back to technique, and Gohan’s way back is to do the opposite? That’s absurd and regressive.
Shin Super Saiyan addresses all of that. First, Super Saiyan is a much more appropriate base form for the purpose. The entire point of Super Saiyan was to access a legendary realm of power to overcome evil. Goten has been a Super Saiyan since he was a kid, and it was never a struggle for him; it strikes me as very fitting that he would keep finding ways for Super Saiyan to work, as his “only toy” and something he finds far more natural than his father or brother. Second, this isn’t a new transformation for flashy muscles, it’s a new technique for using the strength you already have. It keeps everything in line with the rest of Super, while also acting as a spiritual continuation of Potential Unleashed as introduced in the Buu Saga. In a way, you could describe this as Goten unlocking his own potential. It’s a way for him to move forward, literally and thematically, in his own way. Third, it has the potential to show how Pan (and maybe Bra) could move forward or further invent new kinds of power, which pays dividends for the series. It’s not that Beast can’t do that, but it’s pretty one-note and somehow we aren’t about to see Tien and Krillin and Yamcha come out with their own “Beasts” even though they could in a heartbeat. Pan learning Shin Super Saiyan and further evolving it in some cool way is far more interesting than her also getting six foot tall hair.
Putting all the technical talk aside, this connects to a larger idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. So many stories, in their own ways, turn to the idea of power as a shortcut. American superheroes typically don’t train their powers, they can just do whatever the writer and artist think looks cool in that moment. I like JoJo Part 2 so much because hamon is all technique, Jotaro was cooler before he could stop time, and Stone Free and Gold Experience are so cool because they require so much inventiveness. It’s far more interesting if a character’s victory comes from ingenuity. Even something as simple as this fanfic idea, where it’s about how the character gets strong enough to overcome a wall of power, it’s way better when it has thematic and emotional connections to the past that still paves new ground so that there’s a satisfying narrative to it.
Life in the Gutters 