Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back once again with something I haven't done in quite a while on this blog: A discussion about Dragon Ball. As of this post, Dragon Ball Super has kicked off the Universal Survival Arc: An arc that gathers all 12 Universes in the Dragon Ball series and puts them all in a tournament where their very universe is on the line. It's a huge arc, probably the biggest the series has done; and while it's only four episodes in, there has been pondering as to where the series, and the franchise in general, goes afterwords. Some have been saying that maybe we should do a timeskip, skipping past the ending of the Dragon Ball Manga (or the final episode of DBZ for those that need to be specific) and doing a timeskip ala Dragon Ball GT. But there is one idea that is swimming in the head of your dear Shaman folks that just won't get out. That is the idea that perhaps instead of Dragon Ball pushing forward with new stories, perhaps it should start from scratch with a reboot.
Before I dive into this discussion, there's a video I want you all to see called 'Dragon Ball Needs a Reboot' by Hail Zeon. whose YouTube channel I'd recommend for anyone that wants a guy who doesn't pull punches and tells it like he sees it in regards to Dragon Ball. This video helped inspire this discussion and a lot of it is kind of piggybacking off of it.
When the word 'reboot' comes up in regards to movies and television, it's met with a lot of resistance by people and it's easy to understand why. A lot of reboots in media fail to capture the magic of the original material and fails to see what made said original material great. Plus there are a lot of people that don't want Dragon Ball to go the way of franchises like DC Comics and Star Wars with all these expansions, multiple continuities and alternate takes on the story. But, the fact of the matter is, Dragon Ball is already that kind of Franchise.
DB isn't just its original manga as it was 30 years ago. It's the anime: GT and Super. It's the movies, it's the video games, all the interviews series creator Akira Toriyama has where he sometimes reveals new information, guidebooks, Funimation's original dub, for Kami's sake even Dragon Ball evolution is apart of the huge legacy of Dragon Ball. And with Dragon Ball Room going to expand even further on the franchise, there's a golden opportunity to take everything that's come in the DB Mythos, put it all in a blender and see where it takes us.
The best example of this I could give is with all the movie villains. Characters like Broly, Cooler, Turles and even Android 13 are interesting enough concepts that if you were to reintroduce them into a brand new canon where you can work on these characters from scratch, you can wring good stories out of them. Like, this is just me spit balling here but what if you introduce Broly into the new canon as not this Super Saiyan of Legend but this warrior with a genetic abnormality (which is his ridiculous power that is maximum) whose source of rage and anger comes not from Goku crying but because King Vegeta tried to kill him and now he wants to kill Vegeta. In the weird fanfiction I'm pitching here, maybe he and Goku could actually be friends and a huge conflict for Goku could be that he can't let Broly kill Vegeta.
But Broly isn't the only character you can do fun stuff as. Cooler, the movie exclusive brother of Frieza. We all know Frieza is the space equivalent of Hitler, he rules the galaxy with an iron fist. But with Cooler, you could add another new angle to Frieza's tyranny. What if Cooler wanted to be the one to rule the galaxy himself, but it was always in Freiza's grasp. So the galaxy becomes a sort of chess game between the two brothers and they're one-upping each other to take the planets the other's conquering. Of course, that plan gets ruined once Goku comes into the equation.
And speaking of Goku, earlier in the post, I brought up Funimation's original dub for Dragon Ball Z. That dub that a lot of people hold dear to it actually gave fans in the West the wrong impression of Son Goku as a character. A lot of fans in the US assumed that Goku is the Japanese Superman in the sense that he's this all good, boyscout character.
Yeah, this? This is Bullllllshiet.
Back in the day, the dialogue to DBZ was heavily changed from the original Japanese dialogue so that Goku wouldn't come across as a horrible person to the younger audience the show was pitched for. Son Goku is actually a selfish, short sighted person. Now, that's not to say he won't fight for his friends and protect the planet, but they come second to him getting a good throw down. But Goku's the guy that has and will put the safety of others below his own desires. He's spared enemies for this sake. He's even thrown his eleven year old son in the line of fire not even putting his kid's personality into consideration. And we've seen Goku's personality come to ahead with the fans thanks to some of his actions in Dragon Ball Super, namely the Universal Survival arc where he puts multiple universes, including his own, at stake all so he could fight strong people.
Fans have been upset with this, calling it out of character for Goku to pull a stunt like this. Now while I wouldn't call it out of character, it does show that fans' interpretations of Goku as a character is different because of what Funimation did back in the day. But to bring this long speech to an end, a reboot to Dragon Ball would be great to start from scratch with Goku and try to appeal to both fans. Have him start out as the selfish, short sighted buffoon we know and love him as, and you can slowly start developing him into the hero that people that watched DBZ on Toonami back in the day remember him as.
To bring this things back to the question at hand. Should Dragon Ball Reboot? I wouldn't say it SHOULD, but I certainly wouldn't complain if it did. As stated earlier, there's so much material from the decades of Dragon Ball from all forms of media that you could make great stories out of them; this post doesn't even scratch the surface for what can be done with this mythos and the characters, someone with much more knowledge than me can work magic.
But that's all I have for this post folks. I'm signing off for now. Stay tuned next week as I have plans to return to the world of RWBY.
Til then, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying Hatchiyack>>>Broly.
That's right, I said it. Fight me bro.
Take Care...
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