Saturday, May 2, 2015

Dragon Ball Super: Thoughts & Hopes

They're back baby...

Greetings Ladies in Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back once again! Earlier this week, the minds of the entire Dragon Ball fandom was BLOWN when this piece of news dropped: A new Dragon Ball Series, titled Dragon Ball Super, has been slated for July. To those that don't fully know the significance of this (Although it was trending on all social media sites at one point so I'm sure you all know by now), the last Dragon Ball Series was Dragon Ball GT, which finished airing eighteen years ago. So yeah...this is pretty big news. As for what I think, I'm super excited, I love the world of Dragon Ball and I was just happy that we were in getting new movies in recent years after going two decades without them, so hearing that there is a new series coming is...amazing to put it frankly. Of course with a new series, there comes new hopes for fans and things that they would want to see, and here are some of my hopes for Dragon Ball Super

1) Expansion on the 12 Gods of Destruction
This isn't an official picture of the Gods, just REALLY good fan art

Now when DBS was first announced there was a snippet of information of what the series will entail. Fuji T.V. Producer Osamu Nozaki when asked about the series said that there was going to be a villain in the series stronger Buu or Frieza. Some fans were a little concerned on this issue and they had a right to be. After all, Dragon Ball GT has kind of proven that when you try to go bigger and go on a much larger scale than previously done before, you lose quality; some fans were already calling foul in Dragon Ball 'Resurrection F' when Frieza came back and trained himself to be on par with Goku and Vegeta. But I do believe that the series can go larger than Buu and Frieza. I do recall a certain movie two years ago that revealed that the DB world as we know was it only the seventh in twelve different universes. My suggestion is that if Super is a sequel and it is to have a villain stronger than Buu, then we have to see more of the Gods of Destruction and possibly, the different universes they come from. my pitch for it is that maybe the higher tier Gods caught wind of Beerus not going through with destroying the Earth at the end of Battle of Gods and decided to finish the job he couldn't. So now the Z-Fighters have to get together and possibly team up with Beerus (Beerus joining them because he doesn't want anyone else trying to steal his job) to stop these new gods from destroying their planet.

2) More emphasis on the Next Generation
This one's admittedly more wishful thinking on my part

I remember a line Goku said when he fought Kid Buu near the climax of the Buu Saga in DBZ. That he wanted the kids: Gohan, Goten, and Trunks to be ones that would save the planet and that he wouldn't be around forever when things went South (Of course this was from the old Funimation dub which could have been wrong for all I know...). But that line still speaks out to me. So my pitch for the series is that the first villain of Super that's stated to be stronger than Buu will be the final villain that the current generation of Z-Fighters, that being Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, etc., will take on and beat, and that will serve as sort of a last hurrah for those characters. Then following those events, they will play more background/secondary/mentor roles while you have Goten and Trunks stepping up into the roles that Goku and Vegeta filled. The way I have this pictured in my head is that this takes place shortly after the end of the original manga, where Goku left to train Uub. I think if you do that, you can scale back on the power of the villains and focus more on developing Goten and Trunks into their people and not just clones of their dads. 

3) Delve into the characters' personal lives

Now I know that this is Dragon Ball, a franchise known for its martial arts antics, and I'm also aware that Akira Toriyama is a very simple writer and that he didn't spend too much time on the characters getting together outside of: 'Hey. There's a bad guy, we need to stop him.' But I think Super can do something that DBZ didn't do (I'm talking about the manga, not what the anime added in); and that is to give us more insight on who these characters we know and love are when they AREN'T training or trying to stop 'dangerous threat to the planet Number 626'. One of the reasons why I really enjoyed Gohan in high school and as the great Saiyaman was because for a short amount of time, we got to see Gohan be a normal kid for the most part; it's the same reason I loved Goku and Piccolo learning to drive, because we got to see these powerful people just do everyday stuff, and it was fun. And I really hope we get to see more of that in Super; to play into my number two hope on this list, maybe we can see Goten and Trunks entering school themselves and trying to fit in with all the other kids, or we could see Gohan and his family life with Videl and Pan, or hell, maybe we could see Krillin and him enduring the pain of his daughter going through puberty. Small, personal stuff like this could make the series that match better

And finally 4) NO VISUAL F**K UPS!!!
I can't... take my eyes off of this picture...

Toei Animation, the same company that did the adaptation of the original series all the way back in 1986 are back at the helms of this new series. Why am I making note of this? Because the series was announced to be in the summer of this year, and yeah...Toei has a bad reputation for inconsistent and shoddy art/animation. If by some ungodly miracle that someone at Toei animation is reading this then let me say it: Toei, this is Dragon Ball: a franchise that A LOT of fans hold near and dear to their hearts, myself included. do not, I repeat, DO NOT take shortcuts with Dragon Ball Super like you did with Sailor Moon Crystal.

If I see sh*t like this in DBS, someone's getting a Dragon Fist rammed right down their throat!!!


But that's all I have to say on Dragon Ball Super for now. Will it be good? Will it be bad? Only time will tell. But as for now, expectations are high, and my excitement is through the roof. If there are any things you wish to see from Dragon Ball Super let me know.

Til next time folks, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying: Toei you better not F**K up with Digimon Adventure Tri either.
Yeah, you delaying the series better mean you've learned to not just copy and paste one facial expression on all the characters...

Take care...


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