Random Banter #239 - Now 50% more tangible!

[Fyraltari]

I think the problem with the mutant allegory is baked into the superhero genre. Because superhero comics never end, they never solve the problem. Any headway made will be taken back any villain will be replaced or come back. Rater said there's been two dozens genocide attempts on the mutants so far in fourty-fifty years (or something). That's an absurd amount. We all know that in real life genocide attempts on one group only happen around once a generation. But of you're writing a big X-Man story you kind of need for it to be about prejudice, because that's the core theme of the X-Men. But this is a superhero comic you need a big bad to punch in the face, and one cannot punch systemic racism or the patriarchy in the face, so you have a villain with an evil plan to do a prejudice against the mutants even harder than usual, that is a genocide attempt. And this keeps happening again, and again, and again because more books must be printed and nothing gets better because if it did, there would be no story.

And so the message end up being that it will never get better, because every time you try to make some progress it fails.

It was human lawmakers who decided, more than once, that mutants were not human officially.

After multiple decades of lawmakers and politicians, religious groups of various strips, and roughly two-thirds of the people on the street saying that mutants weren't human unofficially. The mutants just got tired of arguing it.

And when two-thirds of the world population at best thinks you don't deserve rights and at worst wants to outright murder everyone who even remotely resembles you?

World population or U.S. population?

[Rater202]

World population or U.S. population?

Both.

Admittedly on the world stage it's an average. Kenya has almost no anti-mutant sentiment, Canada will build death camps at the drop of a hat.

[Lord Raziere]

really the whole "superhero comic books never end" problem is entirely self-created and has a very easy solution: get rid of continuity. Just have each story be self contained and be example of a possible version of that superhero rather than the full canonical superhero. have a setting bible where a few core canonical traits of a character are kept consistent across incarnations to keep them recognizable, sympathetic and iconic. then you can say that superheroes are just a collection of stories and whatever happens in one doesn't affect any other, which allows for more freedom than not. you can still have a lot of the stories you have now, its just humanity attempting genocide on mutants wouldn't literally happen 21 times or whatever- instead it'd be more like hearing 21 different versions of the same tale, each with their own individual resolution, and thus 21 versions of the tale of how the mutants successfully overcame genocide to make a better world.

to a degree this already happens with different continuities in different mediums of superheroes and in elseworlds, and those have given rise to some of the best storytelling this genre has. people already can't keep up with continuity, so its useless for bringing in new people; continuity-less stories would be no less confusing but at least people could jump into any story without having to understand the entire rest of all the stories ever told about the character. people already treat characters like Superman or Batman as an idea beyond specific incarnations anyways, so really I don't see the problem in just getting of continuity and treating the characters not as people you follow the actual lives of, but the possible tales of that person.

[Rater202]

Changing the subject becuase I think there's something I'm failing to communicate clearly.

An observation someone on another forum made: A number of Naruto fans are upset that the Nine-Tails lived up to the hype.

"Power Creep" is a common criticism but... It was established early on that the Nine-Tails, the monster sealed within the main character's body, was capable of causing natural disasters with casual ease. That should have been a hint.

[Fyraltari]

really the whole "superhero comic books never end" problem is entirely self-created and has a very easy solution: get rid of continuity. Just have each story be self contained and be example of a possible version of that superhero rather than the full canonical superhero. have a setting bible where a few core canonical traits of a character are kept consistent across incarnations to keep them recognizable, sympathetic and iconic. then you can say that superheroes are just a collection of stories and whatever happens in one doesn't affect any other, which allows for more freedom than not. you can still have a lot of the stories you have now, its just humanity attempting genocide on mutants wouldn't literally happen 21 times or whatever- instead it'd be more like hearing 21 different versions of the same tale, each with their own individual resolution, and thus 21 versions of the tale of how the mutants successfully overcame genocide to make a better world.

to a degree this already happens with different continuities in different mediums of superheroes and in elseworlds, and those have given rise to some of the best storytelling this genre has. people already can't keep up with continuity, so its useless for bringing in new people; continuity-less stories would be no less confusing but at least people could jump into any story without having to understand the entire rest of all the stories ever told about the character. people already treat characters like Superman or Batman as an idea beyond specific incarnations anyways, so really I don't see the problem in just getting of continuity and treating the characters not as people you follow the actual lives of, but the possible tales of that person.

Or maybe treat superheroes like every other comic book, and book, is treated across the world, with the intellectual property belonging to the artists and writers and not soulless corporations who will insist on publishing a new issue of superman every month ad vitam aeternam because they care about their bottom line, not the stories.

Changing the subject becuase I think there's something I'm failing to communicate clearly.

An observation someone on another forum made: A number of Naruto fans are upset that the Nine-Tails lived up to the hype.

"Power Creep" is a common criticism but... It was established early on that the Nine-Tails, the monster sealed within the main character's body, was capable of causing natural disasters with casual ease. That should have been a hint.

That such power was said to exist early on does not meant that the story handled it well later on.

Edit: I've only read the beginning of Naruto and in it the Nine-Tails wasn't a character, he was a backstory element explaining why Naruto is a friendless orphan.

[LaZodiac]

An observation someone on another forum made: A number of Naruto fans are upset that the Nine-Tails lived up to the hype.

"Power Creep" is a common criticism but... It was established early on that the Nine-Tails, the monster sealed within the main character's body, was capable of causing natural disasters with casual ease. That should have been a hint.

In Boruto the Kyubi establishes he knows how to perform nuclear fission so he can create atomic bombs.

There's a degree between "the power scale grew to a level that early legends implied was a rare thing" and "a main character is capable of entering atomic half-life so that even if his attacks are dodged they still deal full damage because it's literally just killing him with Elephant Foot level radiation".

[HalfTangible]

Changing the subject becuase I think there's something I'm failing to communicate clearly.

An observation someone on another forum made: A number of Naruto fans are upset that the Nine-Tails lived up to the hype.

"Power Creep" is a common criticism but... It was established early on that the Nine-Tails, the monster sealed within the main character's body, was capable of causing natural disasters with casual ease. That should have been a hint.

The main issue with this is that the Nine Tailed fox was initially a malevolent entity that Naruto had to wrestle with. When he first uses its chakra against Haku, it drives him into a more feral and animalistic state. When he made an active attempt to draw on it to summon the Big Boss frog he essentially had to drag it out of the fox, kicking and screaming because "yo you've been living in my body all my life, pay your rent" (no really that's what he says). Then against Sasuke he draws on so much that it cloaks him, both destroying his body and driving him mad.

It's repeatedly established that the more of the nine-tails chakra Naruto draws on the more feral and monstrous he becomes, to the point that going past 3 tails actively rips off his skin and steals his mind away entirely

And then after Pain (where Naruto almost permanently loses his mind) this just kinda... stops. All of the form's downsides were taken away but almost none of the power involved was.

At some point the tailed beasts stopped being these incredible monsters of near infinite and unknowable power, akin to hurricanes with intelligence, and become just another character that gets Talk No Jutsued into being Naruto's friend.

...

That said, Naruto and the Ninetails are the least of the final arc's problems.

In Boruto the Kyubi establishes he knows how to perform nuclear fission so he can create atomic bombs.

There's a degree between "the power scale grew to a level that early legends implied was a rare thing" and "a main character is capable of entering atomic half-life so that even if his attacks are dodged they still deal full damage because it's literally just killing him with Elephant Foot level radiation".

.................................................. ................

What.

[LaZodiac]

The main issue with this is that the Nine Tailed fox was initially a malevolent entity that Naruto had to wrestle with. When he first uses its chakra against Haku, it drives him into a more feral and animalistic state. When he made an active attempt to draw on it to summon the Big Boss frog he essentially had to drag it out of the fox, kicking and screaming because "yo you've been living in my body all my life, pay your rent" (no really that's what he says). Then against Sasuke he draws on so much that it cloaks him, both destroying his body and driving him mad.

It's repeatedly established that the more of the nine-tails chakra Naruto draws on the more feral and monstrous he becomes, to the point that going past 3 tails actively rips off his skin and steals his mind away entirely

And then after Pain (where Naruto almost permanently loses his mind) this just kinda... stops. All of the form's downsides were taken away but almost none of the power involved was.

At some point the tailed beasts stopped being these incredible monsters of near infinite and unknowable power, akin to hurricanes with intelligence, and become just another character that gets Talk No Jutsued into being Naruto's friend.

...

That said, Naruto and the Ninetails are the least of the final arc's problems.

This is also very true; though I'll say that in a vacuum "Naruto learns to live with the angry fox monster inside of him" is a good idea, and the culmination of it being that fist-bumps let you read each other's memories and are the ultimate sign of respect and admiration among true friends and brothers is ****ing outstandingly hilarious.

EDIT: Yeah in order to beat an enemy who has the power to just not get hurt or something Kyubi straight up asks Naruto if he knows what nuclear fission means. He then sets their chakra into nuclear fallout half-life mode which kills them both* and absolutely turbo kills the main antagonist in their first real fight.

*Kyubi initially says it'll kill them both and then Kishimoto took over mid way through this fight and pulled out that rug from us

[Jasdoif]

Or maybe treat superheroes like every other comic book, and book, is treated across the world, with the intellectual property belonging to the artists and writers and not soulless corporations who will insist on publishing a new issue of superman every month ad vitam aeternam because they care about their bottom line, not the stories.

Is that closer in connotation to "ad nauseum" or "ad infinitium"? I hear plenty of complaints about the bloated release schedules of MCU and Star Wars for the past couple/coming years, it might be nice to have a new phrase to apply.

[Rater202]

In Boruto the Kyubi establishes he knows how to perform nuclear fission so he can create atomic bombs.

There's a degree between "the power scale grew to a level that early legends implied was a rare thing" and "a main character is capable of entering atomic half-life so that even if his attacks are dodged they still deal full damage because it's literally just killing him with Elephant Foot level radiation".

I was only talking about the original manga.

"The main character contains within him an entity capable of toppling mountains or causing tsunamis with casual ease" should have been a hint that by the end of the narrative the main character would both possess and need that level of power.

Edit: Also, my understanding is that Baryon mode was nuclear fusion.

[LaZodiac]

I was only talking about the original manga.

"The main character contains within him an entity capable of toppling mountains or causing tsunamis with casual ease" should have been a hint that by the end of the narrative the main character would both possess and need that level of power.

While that's fair, I'll note that there's no assurance that's the case- especially since the presentation is that only something as genuinely large AS the Kyubi could do that, and not even a village of the best ninja out there could really match it for very long. I do think they do the power creep a little better than most, but when Naruto is warping around regenerating everyone's injuries and blowing mountains up casually, it gets away from what I feel was Naruto at its best.

EDIT: I forget if it's fusion or fission but the basic gist is the same- him go nuclear meltdown.

[Lord Raziere]

Changing the subject becuase I think there's something I'm failing to communicate clearly.

An observation someone on another forum made: A number of Naruto fans are upset that the Nine-Tails lived up to the hype.

"Power Creep" is a common criticism but... It was established early on that the Nine-Tails, the monster sealed within the main character's body, was capable of causing natural disasters with casual ease. That should have been a hint.

Yeah, thats a bit weird. I think it boils down to basically: some Naruto fans want this to be a "real" ninja show and now I'll explain at length the problems with this.

1. Ninjas are highly esoteric, romanticized, and their history is obscured, deliberately by the ninjas themselves to sow confusion. there were many different kinds of ninja with their own secrets that didn't share said secrets with other ninja, so what is true of one ninja wasn't true of another. this makes it incredibly hard to define what a ninja really IS in simple terms, because one of the few things we do know about them is that their mindset is flexibility and inventiveness in contrast to the heavily stratified society around them, thus requiring a wide variety of skills for them to do what they do. the closest analogue we can say to them is some guerilla fighter or spy because thats the closest modern equivalent we have.

2. people have strange ideas about ninjas being basically stealthy martial artists and nothing else when this is basically bull; ninjas used guns, in fact they were one of the first people japan to adopt them along with explosives and whatnot. far from relying only on their fists, they used a lot of tools to do what they do, much like how Batman does things-Batman is actually one of the best examples of a ninja and how they operate you can point to. so ninjas adopting chakra as a weapon to use in war? Not outside their playbook because their playbook was "be stealthy, be flexible and most of all, do anything to win". sure real ninjas never used magic, but if magic was discovered you bet ninjas would on that new tool as fast as possible and using it to make their lives ten times easier while making everyone elses lives ten times more confusing.

3. people have strange ideas about power creep in action anime/manga like this because uuuuhhhh.....power creeps the entire point mate. to show growth from weak to strong. for some reason some people automatically start hating stuff just because its too powerful. and for the life of me I don't have any idea why, the setting still makes sense, and in Naruto's case it at least is did/is doing things better than some shows I can name. each power up in Naruto/Boruto is significant and has a purpose beyond a simple power up, because they're often tied into the wider setting and how it works. contrast to Dragonball Super or Bleach where they gain a power up because......its cool I guess?

4. now I know Naruto is not a "good" ninja show because arguably the ninjas are treated as magical warriors and soldiers and not guerrilla-spies. But it never claimed to be this. It never set out to do that. its the story of Naruto, the orphan with a demon fox sealed inside him, growing up in a world that has seen a millennia of war in some form or another and how he overcomes the vicious cycle, its just that all things considered ninjas with their ruthlessness and flexibility are the most likely to perpetuate that cycle through the kind of things they do. poisoning the entire enemy camp while a great way to attain victory, ain't exactly something that promotes peace, so ninjas as a result become the soldier because in a cycle of retaliation without anyone taking the time to reign in it, you get an ever-escalating ruthlessness and lack of concern for morality (to the point where someone like Hashirama, hilariously, is considered an idealist). a perfect backdrop and status quo for someone like Naruto to break and fight against.

5. people arbitrarily designate an early arc as the "best" arc and say everything after should be more like it when, sorry, that isn't how it works. people commonly say Chuunin Exams arc for Naruto, but this wouldn't work to base the rest of the show/manga on, because its only one momentous event. most of the Narutoverse take place on y'know, actual missions. you can't just include a bunch of characters on those missions like you can for the chuunin exams. you have to focus on smaller groups and those groups have to show growth from the Chuunin Exam, because the Chuunin Exam is just a sample platter, a starting point, a preview of whats to come for both the ninja in the world and the viewer. you can't just stop things there.

6. now admittedly, Naruto does this weird power leap thing which is the actual problem rather than power creep, and its not the only anime that does this. we're supposed to gradually show the growth of the character but then anime like this has a bad habit of introducing an incredibly powerful person or enemy that just....skips past a few steps or outright is on a tier that breaks the scale and suddenly everything is measured around the broken scale tier. for Naruto this is the concept of the S-rank shinobi. Land of Waves avoids this problem by first having the ninjas defeat two chuunin then face Zabusa and Haku who are both A-rank/jounin. Orochimaru while introducing the S-rank also avoids this problem by having Naruto face minions of his. its when we get into Akatsuki which is made entirely of S-rank legendary one of a kind ninja that we get a problem, because now the scale is focused entirely on facing people that are technically outside of the scale. it leaps from facing enemies within the scale of power to those who are entirely "we don't actually know their power, they're freaks of nature doing things we didn't even know were possible." the problem is not that ninjas can get so powerful, its that they played that card too early, because now all of Shippuden is measured against S-rank legendaries and the expectation is to only go up from there which you don't have to do but are pushed to do, when Naruto could've benefited from more B and A-rank ninja being showed off so it doesn't feel like we leaped from Genin to kage-level ninja.

7. the arc where we see most of Kurama's power shown off is also the war arc everyone dislikes for taking so long, so there is bias in that.

8. Naruto anime has a problem with filler which also turns people off, so bias in that as well especially for the war arc which turned towards the filler the later it got into the arc as it kept producing episodes while it waited for the author to produce the chapters to actually finish everything, unlike MHA which does things in seasons like a sensible show. this and 7 are valid flaws, but they aren't a reason to dislike Kurama living up to his hype.

basically people want Naruto to be something its not and never will be, which we don't really know the full truth of what it was anyways and ninjas would've wanted us to make up whatever want to confuse people even further as to what they could actually do so who really cares, amid other problems.

[Rater202]

Naruto is about Ninjas becuase Kishimoto didn't want to call them wizards.

[LaZodiac]

Yeah, thats a bit weird. I think it boils down to basically: some Naruto fans want this to be a "real" ninja show and now I'll explain at length the problems with this.

*At length removed for space*

Okay I'll bite.

1 and 2: Entirely fair! The presentation of Ninjas in early Naruto follow this idea of "by any means" spy/agent type guys, with an emphasis on stealth added in, plus their cool varied ninja powers and tools. Marries both the mythical ninja and the reality of ninja together in a way that, early on, feels legit. They do feel like guerilla spy folk who just happen to have a slight focus on stealth, as those sorts of people would.

3: Arguable. "Power Creep" is things like 80% of the main cast of Dragon Ball Z literally being incapable of being more than speed bumps, and is always bad. While threats are always expected to get stronger/more dangerous over time as a series goes on, it requires a lot of effort to prevent the above happening. I'd also argue it's not always true that power creep is "just natural" to shonen battle series. Some series don't do that (World Trigger) and are excellent.

As for why people start hating stuff when it gets "too powerful"... well. Because it's boring. I don't like the Rasengan and it's variants since it's "the big blast that's bigger than all the other blasts", and that's lame. I don't really like Dragon Ball Z's fights past a certain point because it mostly becomes big blasts that are bigger than the previous blasts, and that is boring. Not Exciting. That's why people dislike them.

Brief aside it's really funny you brought up Boruto as having good power ups when Code, the main antagonist, got a big big power up... and proceeded to get his ass beat by a tweenager.

4: Naruto literally starts by presenting the ninja world as being exactly what you're saying it isn't here. It explicitly treats them more like guerilla agents or spies, and is clearly building up themes of "wow using children as child soldiers might be a little ****ed up" which tie into this cycle of vengeance stuff you're bringing up.

5: Chunin Exam is often considered best but my money is still on Zabuza's Arc since it's Naruto at it's best for me. Really thematically relevant writing, with action that is actually tactical and cool and makes use of all the series' major tools, and with a really emotionally moving ending.

6: I don't really have anything to say about this, power scale and in universe "rankings" are very silly to me.

7: It sucked, and lasted for so long! It's absurd!

8: Never watched the anime.

Addendum: Rater is right about Naruto just being wizards. That was the original idea. This is also why Black Clover is the perfect successor to Naruto. It's exactly as bad and also good as you'd expect from what I've just said.

[Lord Raziere]

power ups in Naruto are not good because they make people strong, they're good because they have a place in the world and inform us about why people act the way they do.

The sharingan isn't just some thing to make Uchiha strong, its this bloodline that has a history and place in the world that is important and informs us of how the Uchiha clan acted in the past and thus how they perpetuated the cycle. the Byakugan similarly has a place in the world and lore behind it that informs us how people with it might see themselves as superior and such. the tailed beast power up is appropriate because it informs us just why people decided make jinchuuriki in the first place for military reasons as well as why people hate them because the power up can't be controlled, and the Sage of the Six Paths power up is good because the entire plot of Naruto pretty much revolved around getting and using it. Boruto's kama power up both informs us to the parasitic nature of the Otsutsuki and why its not a straight upgrade but a problem he has to deal with.

with DBZ, the best power up, the first super saiyan is great because of the same logic: it has a place in the world and people acting accordingly to it being a thing. Freeza feared its power, Vegeta wanted to attain the power, Freeza's original genocide of the saiyans was out of that fear, it was only a legend but he feared it nonetheless. it was something known and its arrival proved why Freeza feared it, and why Vegeta wanted to attain it or thought he had become it. Ultra Instinct? also had a place in the world as something known and thus it made sense why people would talk about achieving it when starts fighting Jiren on equal ground. Super Saiyan God has similar lore behind it

SS2, SS3, no one remembers, why? because they have no place, they're just things that get pulled out to be stronger in the moment. because no one knows about them and no one is given any reason to care.

[Rater202]

People remember SS2 in Dragon Ball... Because it was part of Gohan's big moment.

From the Raditz fight onward it was established that Gohan had this massive hidden potential in him just yearning to burst free but that he could only draw on when in danger or when extremely angry which, considering that he doens't like to fight, was kind of a problem.

Not even having his potential drawn out by a giant fat magic mage did more than scratch the surface of the limitless depths of his potential.

That is his thing: While it's been said that other fighters have limitless potential, Gohan's is truly infinite: Toriyama said in an interview after the recent movie that Gohan will just never stop "evolving" no matter how much of his hidden potential is drawn out.

His narrative in the franchise, from his introduction, is him being put into situations where he has to fight and overcome his fear becuase he's the only one who can: Everyone lse is either too weak, or not there, or unreliable, or just got killed fight in fornt of him. And yeah, the last two tiems Goku showed up at the last minute to save the day, but...

And it comes to a head with Cell: Goku says, flat out, that he is not strong enough to defeat Cell. He tried, realized he couldn't win, and tagged out. Gohan was the only one strong enough to do what needed to be done, but he was reluctant to do it. The'res not gonna be a last second save this time, Gohan has to do it himself but... He can't bring himself to. It takes Android 16 flat out telling Gohan that some people can't be negotiated with and that sometimes you have ti fight.

And then Cell casually and callously murders 16.

And Gohan explodes. This isn't the first time his rage has shown a hint at his massive latent power, but this is the first time it's done so sustainably, and it's a power beyond a Super Saiyan. So much further beyond what anyone else has that Cell quite literally has no chance. Gohan is toying with him and letting out five years of repressed negativity from the constant life-or-death situations.

The music in the orignal Japanese anime hammers the point home: It's not triumphant, it's sad. This is the final death of Gohan's innocence, he can't just be a kid anymore, he has responsibilities that he must uphold simply because he's the only one who can. And he's canonically nin at the time(the dub makes it 11) which makes the whole thing extra tragic, Goku at least was a teen when he was in this situation.

...And then Torimya was pressured into bringing Goku back as the main character for the next arc which required putting Goku on a higher tier of power just so things would work out and to do that he just handed Gohan's special unique transformation out to others and then added a level beyond it.

SS2 is important for Gohan but... Not for anyone or anthing else.

[Peelee]

Changing the subject becuase I think there's something I'm failing to communicate clearly.

You say this not infrequently, and I've got to say, I'm not sure it's correct. You seem to be able to communicate your views pretty well for the most part. I think the issue is more that you interpret some things vastly differently than other people and when confronted with disagreement, instead of thinking that people disagree with you on the subjects own merits, you think that the issue is they would agree if you communicated better.

Specifically, this tends to pop up more when considering bullying/oppression. Remember how you were upset about that Bob's Burgers episode about the bully, and I watched the episode and pointed out how many of the things you took issue with didn't actually happen in the show? I think it might be like that with the theme in general. You've been bullied before in your formative years and now when you see bullying or oppression in general you view it differently than it is actually depicted due to things being colored by an emotional lens (again, that BB episode is an excellent example point). You've talked before in Random Banter about seeking revenge on the people who bullied you - not justice, flat-out revenge. I think you take your experiences and how you would like to deal with them and then take media that depicts oppression and frame it to work within the way that you cope with it. Which isn't bad, but it is different than how other people frame such narratives, and the source of disagreement is likely to not be in your communication of your interpretation but in your interpretation itself. It's not that people disagree with you because you aren't saying how you view it or feel about it properly enough. I think you do convey that well. And that people disagree with you because they simply view it or feel about it differently.

[Rater202]

You say this not infrequently, and I've got to say, I'm not sure it's correct.

There's always a degree of context or nuance that I have trouble expressing and that tends to lead to misunderstandings when I'm trying to talk about something complex.

Case in point: It took me three times to explain "mutants stopped considering themselves human mostly because they got tired of arguing about it when other people said they weren't."

There's always something that seems obvious to me but that I can't quite put into words. Sometimes it just takes me a few tries, sometimes I can explain it a dozen times and it still doesn't quite get through and people insist that they understand me and then react to what I said as if it was something completly differant from what I intended and it just ends with a huge argument that ends with me giving up on making myself understood.

Edit: And I don't recall bringing up my issue with clear communication with the Bobs burgers discussion. As I recall it, that was a pair straight-up disagreements.

Thouh your talks about revenge here is a great example: I have never expressed a desire for revenge. I want justice, deterrence, and closure.

I have never expressed the desire to inflict violence on my bullies... tHough I did admit to having a dream of beating the crap out of one of them in a professional wrestling match... Bu that hasn't stopped some people here from interpreting my desire to be a dragon as such, despite my repeated insistence contrary.

[LaZodiac]

power ups in Naruto are not good because they make people strong, they're good because they have a place in the world and inform us about why people act the way they do.

The sharingan isn't just some thing to make Uchiha strong, its this bloodline that has a history and place in the world that is important and informs us of how the Uchiha clan acted in the past and thus how they perpetuated the cycle. the Byakugan similarly has a place in the world and lore behind it that informs us how people with it might see themselves as superior and such. the tailed beast power up is appropriate because it informs us just why people decided make jinchuuriki in the first place for military reasons as well as why people hate them because the power up can't be controlled, and the Sage of the Six Paths power up is good because the entire plot of Naruto pretty much revolved around getting and using it. Boruto's kama power up both informs us to the parasitic nature of the Otsutsuki and why its not a straight upgrade but a problem he has to deal with.

with DBZ, the best power up, the first super saiyan is great because of the same logic: it has a place in the world and people acting accordingly to it being a thing. Freeza feared its power, Vegeta wanted to attain the power, Freeza's original genocide of the saiyans was out of that fear, it was only a legend but he feared it nonetheless. it was something known and its arrival proved why Freeza feared it, and why Vegeta wanted to attain it or thought he had become it. Ultra Instinct? also had a place in the world as something known and thus it made sense why people would talk about achieving it when starts fighting Jiren on equal ground. Super Saiyan God has similar lore behind it

SS2, SS3, no one remembers, why? because they have no place, they're just things that get pulled out to be stronger in the moment. because no one knows about them and no one is given any reason to care.

The writing surrounding the eyeballs beyond the basic Sharingan stuff and the Byakugan is also intolerable nonsense. If the Uchiha feel any grief their brains exude a chakra that contaminates their eyes and makes them go insane. It's hilariously absurd.

Super Saiyen 3 has that really really really long scene of it first being introduced that was very cool and everyone remembers that. Otherwise you're correct all of the various forms in Dragonball Z are so ****in' bad. Hell, I'd argue the first time SS1 and SS2 are used (alongside the beforementioned first time SS3 is used) are the only time each of them are good (the idea being that Gohan's usage of it is the first time it's used, pretty sure).

[Mystic Muse]

The concept and design of Super Saiyan 4 are reasonably solid.

I'm also okay with Broly having his own Super Saiyan form.

[enderlord99]

The concept and design of Super Saiyan 4 are reasonably solid.

I'm also okay with Broly having his own Super Saiyan form.

4 isn't from Z and, arguably, Broly isn't either.

You probably already knew that, but I figured I'd point it out.

[Peelee]

4 isn't from Z and, arguably, Broly isn't either.

You probably already knew that, but I figured I'd point it out.

But they were both in one of the greatest fighting games ever made, DBZ Budokai 3 on PS2.


.... Dang, now I really want to play that again. And 2.

[Rater202]

The concept and design of Super Saiyan 4 are reasonably solid.

IT really should have had a differant name though. It's not a level after 3, it's a mid-stage of a seperate branch of transformations.

I also like the concept of ultra Instinct, Ultra Ego, and...

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Gohan Beast.

becuase in the case of each character who gets it kind of means something.

Ultra Instinct, in Goku's case, is the culmination of a lifetime of training in martial arts under many differant talented masters who each taught him differant things. It also took him two whole arcs to be able to use it reliably, he still hasn't mastered it and implicitly won't for a while, and Whis flat out says that he can't help Goku achieve full mastery of it becuase everyone has their own unique form of Ultra Instinct.

Ultra Ego is basically, Vegeta learning how to turn his biggest weaknesses, his arrogance and sadism, into an advantage... And he's shown having trouble with it because true mastery of the state requires complete amorality and Vegeta can't bring himself to go back to that becuase he learned his lesson in the Buu saga and spent all of Super reinforcing it.

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Gohan Beast, meanwhile, works for the same reasons that Super Saiyan 2 worked for Gohan(and only Gohan) with the caveat that it is explicitly unique to Gohan. It is an evolution of the Potential Unleashed state that he gained from Elder Kai but is derived from his nature as someone whose potential is truly infinite and the many and various ways portions of that potential have been drawn out over time since he was a young boy. Even if someone else were to have their potential unlocked by Elder Kai and then evolve that state it would be a unique form, not a copy of Gohan's.

[Peelee]

There's always a degree of context or nuance that I have trouble expressing and that tends to lead to misunderstandings when I'm trying to talk about something complex.

Case in point: It took me three times to explain "mutants stopped considering themselves human mostly because they got tired of arguing about it when other people said they weren't."

And I, for one, got that right away. Further explanations shed zero additional light. It's like if people in general said" Austrians aren't actually human, they're subhuman" and Austrians got tired of arguing about it and eventually said, "alright, fine, we're subhuman". Do you see how that is a horrifically bad thing to happen? And how that is absolutely abhorrent messaging in the comics (yes, I know they don't use the term "subhuman", but that doesn't really matter. "inhuman" isnt any better).

Thouh your talks about revenge here is a great example: I have never expressed a desire for revenge. I want justice, deterrence, and closure.

it is a great example but not for the reasons you think. You've said exactly what you want to do to such people. Which was not justice. It was revenge. I see it as revenge. You don't. It's not an issue of things not being explained enough, its simply pure disagreement.

[Rater202]

Unrelated: Last week my blood sugar was skewing high and I was just assuming it was because I was getting up late and my meds were starting to wear off.

...Nope, turns out I'd been grabbing the wrong jar of strawberry preserves. I wasn't aware that there were two and my sugar-free preserves got shoved behind some stuff to the back of the fridge.

[HalfTangible]

The problem with DBZ's various forms is rarely, if ever, the form itself or how it's introduced.

The problem is by the time the next arc starts it gets handed out like candy with little regard to any limits or problems that were established on its introduction. Super Saiyan was originally this ultimate power-up that made Goku behave like a barely in-control monster that he needed to defeat Frieza and had to not only fight nearly to his death (multiple times) but fulfill an ancient alien prophecy and witness his best friend getting blown up. Then Trunks shows up and it's implied he comes from the future, so it's still kind of a unique thing in this timeline. Then Vegeta gets it because he realizes he's a little bitch. Then Gohan gets it...

... but Gohan then proceeds to break the limit of the super saiyan form and tap into even more ridiculous levels of power. And that was built up throughout the entire show up until that point. We're also shown that Gohan becomes an absolute sociopath, toying with Cell specifically to make sure he suffers. Then Vegeta gets it via the Majin power boost... then Goku gets it, presumably because of Otherworld training...

...and then he goes even further BEYOND, but we're told SS3 sucks out your life force. Then Goten and Trunks do it in their fused form... which is itself a power-up that Goku and Vegeta then do with the Potara-

Do you see the problem here?

[enderlord99]

I'm trying to remember a song. It sounded somewhere between Sburban Jungle by Toby Fox, Roundabout by Yes, and Holy Diver by DIO, but not exactly like any of them.

I think it had lyrics, but I'm not sure, and I definitely don't know what they were.

[Rater202]

If anyone is interested, TeamFourStar has started posting DBZA with creator commentary on one of their side channels.

[Peelee]

If anyone is interested, TeamFourStar has started posting DBZA with creator commentary on one of their side channels.

I am! Thanks for that, I wouldn't have known otherwise.

[HalfTangible]

If anyone is interested, TeamFourStar has started posting DBZA with creator commentary on one of their side channels.

Oh neat.