How To Improve Ep. 123: A Dragon Ball Discussion

Dragon Ball Super Ep. 123 suffered from a number of problems in what could have otherwise been a strong episode. The most glaring problem was the animation. Episode 122 had some of the best animation of the series while episode 123 goes back to some of Super’s most generic. But beyond the superficial there were more serious problems with the writing. I understand that not everyone shares my feelings on this episode, but I think it’s worth exploring how it could have been vastly improved.

Fixing the animation would be a simple manner of putting one of their better animators in charge or giving the team more time to get everything right. Budget is often not as big a concern as the skill level and the time given to the animators involved. Toei should reserve that level of animation for nonaction scenes and comedic episodes. Really it shouldn’t be there at all but there are practical reasons why Toei probably will not improve much.

While fixing the animation is simply a matter of skill and effort, the writing was a bigger problem. The draw of this episode was supposed to be Vegeta’s new transformation, a new power unique to him. Unfortunately this is far from the focus of the episode.  Goku actually dominates most of the episode and it doesn’t foreshadow Vegeta’s transformation all. Once he transforms we are told how much stronger he is, and both he and Goku team up against Jiren, which slightly puts him on the defensive.

A better solution would be to have Vegeta, who Jiren took down in the last episode, watching Goku, from the ground, and reflecting on how he has once again fallen behind. As Jiren beats Goku back he should start to lose hope while remembering his promise to Cabba. It’s only then that his stubbornness should kick back in and he starts his transformation.  The episode should end on his making a decisive blow on Jiren, demonstrating his new power.

This would have been much more satisfying. New transformations in Dragon Ball have often been accompanied by emotional breakdowns. By having Vegeta confront the pending end to his universe and the blow to his honor and pride we would have some foreshadowing for the transformation to follow based on established series tropes. They should have stretched out the transformation scene to put on a show of light and yelling, which doesn’t sound like much but would connect it once again to past transformations. Having Vegeta then strike a powerful blow against Jiren would allow no doubt that he is now is a higher league and would end the episode on a strong note. You could do whatever you wanted next week. Have Goku and Vegeta fight together, have Jiren curb stomp him again but this time actually trying, but Vegeta’s new transformation would still be established as an important spike in his power.

At least in terms of the writing, I don’t think these changes would have been that difficult. There are of course time and budget concerns that can hold back improvements in animation, but given the series popularity I think they are also reasonable.

Review of Ep. 123

-Gedaemon

Dragon Ball Super Ep. 123 Review: Super Saiyan Sparkly Vampire

Transformations are a staple of dragon ball. They reverse the course of fights and sell lots of merchandise. But there is a right way to do them and a wrong way, and if you are about to watch this episode you are about to see the wrong way.

Dragon Ball Super 123: Power and Soul, Full Power Release! Goku and Vegeta!! This is an episode I was personally looking forward to; I should have kept my expectations low. 

Gee, Thanks for spelling it out for me. Heaven forbid I have to figure it out on my own.

 

We rejoin the story with Vegeta down and the animation also seems to have gone down. Back with Freeza, he’s gotten out of Dyspo’s attack with little damage and is gloating like usual. Seventeen and Gohan are still doing nothing against Toppo, who keeps showing “Justice!” and we are about to get another Goku fight, yay. . .

Seventeen explains to Gohan since they never fought before they can’t really work together well, but says they can at least handle simple roles. Seventeen engages Jiren and stops his movements while Gohan blasts him. They nearly ring him out but in this poorly animated universe nothing is so easy.

Meanwhile Goku attacks Jiren but even with instant transmission he can’t get close, but that was not his intention.

Goku planted small balls of ki around Jiren that serve as land minds to confine his movement. Jiren goes to the air and Goku bombards him with kienzan attacks, which of course does not work. Jiren beats Goku to an inch of losing but at the last moment the kienzan circle back around and save Goku by separating the fighters. This gives Goku the opening he needs and he takes Jiren from behind. Jiren is knocked out of the area but he hops back up on stone fragments they fell with him and makes it back.

Jiren seems unstoppable, and while Goku buts on a good show, Jiren actually shocks him into dropping his transformation, with a simple punch.  Jiren is so strong his punches are like ki blasts, which pummel Goku.

But neither Vegeta nor Goku are done. They are determined to win and both power back up. Goku releases super Saiyan Blue kaioken, and Vegeta, remembering his promise to Cabba, starts surpassing his limit and . . . sparkling.

Come with me, Bella.

The two come at Jiren but the pride trooper is not overwhelmed. However he is discombobulated. The two Saiyans have trouble cooperating, and ironically this makes them hard to read when fighting together. This is actually somewhat interesting, they are not working together but not getting in each other’s way either, making them unpredictable. It’s here that the episode ends.

The choices the Dragon ball made in this episode are incredible. They’re not good choices but they are incredible.  First off the drop in animation quality versus last week isn’t just noticeable, it’s distracting at its best it is flat and uninteresting, at its worst it’s noticeably distorted. It’s an incredibly odd choice to use some of their best animation last week but not this week for Vegeta’s new transformation.  

Jiren's new transformation harnesses the power of budget animation on a tight schedule to make his movements unreadable.

And let’s talk about Vegeta’s new transformation which for now I am referring to as Super Saiyan sparkly vampire.  SSSV appears with about ten seconds of foreshadowing. The only reason we know it made Vegeta stronger is because everyone says so.  We don’t get say a super impressive fight sequence to demonstrate that his power has skyrocketed but he is still beneath Jiren, we are simply told.  Show, don’t tell is basically storytelling 101. It’s especially jarring for a visual medium to make this mistake.

This is where the bad animation comes in. I am somewhat confident last week’s animation would have made this transformation look amazing, but in the hands of this week’s team, SSSV looks flat and off putting. I have no idea if this transformation is sticking around but I find myself not really caring.

I realize I haven’t talked a lot about Jiren in my reviews. There is a reason for that, at this point Jiren isn’t a character, he’s a foil. He is a big mountain that Goku and maybe Vegeta have to overcome. I hope we learn more about him later, but at this point he is not a fully realized character, and being that he is the antagonist of this arc, that speaks poorly of the writing.

Finally, I think they should have ended the episode on the new transformation, or with Vegeta knocking Jiren down, but not out with his new power. Instead it was just Goku and Vegeta fighting evenly and pushing Jiren back a little.

The next episode seems to refocus on Gohan and Freeza. After this episode I am certainly tired of the Vegeta Goku and Jiren three-way, but on the other hand this episode ended at such a transition point I kind of feel they need to do something more with their fight.

We’ll see what they manage.

-Gedaemon

Ep. 122 Review 

Why We Don't Hear From Jack Thompson Anymore: My Thoughts

As someone who grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s and lived through the controversies around violence in video games I had a lot of passion for the Thompson project. I remember rolling my eyes reading about protests of Mortal Kombat in GamePro, and occasionally seeing something on the news. Why did these adults seem so dead set on ruining a good thing? The answer to that is more disappointing than you think.

You might think that the idea was a peculiarity of an older generation or a past decade, and that today’s young adults, even if they didn’t play video games are familiar enough with them not to buy into such sensationalist tripe. I certainly thought so.

While writing the Jack Thompson article over Christmas I tried to explain to my family who he is and what he did. I explained his belief that video games cause violent behavior, and the response I got did not impress me: “Well he’s at least part right”

How could people still think this? It’s an idea that’s time has passed, that has been disproven, so how could people still champion it? The incident reminded me that while Thompson and his ideas are widely rejected by gamers, outside our little enclave Thompson and people like him were wildly successful in spreading the idea that video games are anti-social and dangerous.

Ideas are like a virus and tend to spread whether they are true or not and back in the early 2000’s the idea that videogames make you violent was widely considered true.  Such ideas are mostly considered discredited today, but while gamers are often well informed on this, you can’t expect that the average person has kept up to speed on the issue.

We forget that Thompson’s ideas were highly popular. The bill he helped write in Louisiana passed unanimously, and less you conclude that this was simply the product of southern conservatism, California passed a similar law. Fortunately the courts in the US generally shut down that nonsense. Other countries were not so lucky.  But despite the court’s ruling, I would not be surprised if a majority or at least a sizable minority in the US would still be on board with these sorts of laws.

But though Thompson lost the battle of laws his ideas have germinated in the minds of many.  Those ideas influence how society at large sees video games and gamers. For those who play games this is a less than ideal situation. If your friends or loved ones consider you’re hobby immature or associate it with real world violence the possibility of social blow back is quite real. Ask your loved ones, and see how many of them believe that video games have negative psychological effects, and prepare to be disheartened.

I have no solutions for changing public option, other than pointing to the evidence and hoping that logic and reason win out in the long run. There was a time when people though comic books turned boys into criminals and people got over that but not before damaging the industry for decades. We can only hope that in time these attitudes will disappear sooner rather than later.

-Gedaemon

Dragon Ball Super Ep. 122 Review: Vegeta Gets the Jobbing Done

From Freeza, to Cell, to Buu, Beerus and Hit there is a tradition. Before Goku can fight them Vegeta has to job, hard. As I write this I have not seen Vegeta’s fight with Jiren yet, but I think we all know what will happen.

Dragon Ball super episode 122 is now available I say now because I was not able to see it until Sunday morning. The title this time is “for one’s own pride! Vegeta’s challenge to be the strongest!!  And at first I thought it disappointing but as I watched on I found it somewhat impressive.

If you like long dramatic shots with nothing happening, you’ll love the opening minutes of this episode. The spare no expense when it comes to still shots with dramatic music behind them. Well done or not, the amount of filler they stuff into each episode is criminal. 

Standing still is a great way to save money on animation. Gohan is very considerate of the needs of others

Finally fighting begins, but while we know this episode is all about Vegeta Goku goes against Jiren first. Superma- I mean Jiren asks Goku why he want to be strong, and Goku like child says he simply wants to be stronger, which seems not to satisfy Jiren, who says he wants to see what lies beyond strength, whatever that means if that makes sense to you let me know on twitter because to me it sounds like nonsense.

However Vegeta just flies in and interrupts their fight; rude.

Meanwhile Freeza is taking pot shots at Dyspo who is dodging them, and Seventeen and seventeen are double teaming Toppo.

Jiren easily beats Vegeta so Goku steps in, and gets easily beaten. The Saiyans attack to no avail however, Vegeta sees something. Jiren attacks in a pattern and he uses that to dodge his fists and launch a counter attack.

However Vegeta notes Jiren was stronger against Goku, and he’s right, Jiren turns it up a notch and nearly blasts him out of the ring.

Meanwhile Dyspo uses his speed to try sneaking up on Freeza who catches him with his tale, but this works for Dyspo who starts dragging Freeza around with his great speed.

Back with Vegeta, he’s lost his transformation, and Jiren calls him arrogant, and declares that he can’t win. This fires the prince up and he charges his final flash pushing his ki to its limits and shocking the audience, in the tournament, not in real life.

Jiren however doesn’t care he just stands there and challenges Vegeta to do it. To Vegeta’s credit Jiren actually blocks and the blast actually knocks him down, but not for very long. Vegeta actually chocks on his words as Jiren appears right in front of him and blasts him point blank. Vegeta collapses into near unconscious.

I called it! But wait! Vegeta is still in the next episode and it says he gets even stronger as he fights with Goku? It seems they saved the surprise for next week. I was sure Vegeta would get tossed out this episode, and I thought Jiren’s attack would take him out of the fight.

This was not a bad episode by any means but it was . . . strange. It followed the normal arc of Vegeta getting beaten down for his arrogance, but it keeps him in the fight. It also changed art styles about half way through which felt, disconcerting as the two styles did not mesh well. The second style isn’t bad by at all, in fact it’s a bit of a relief from the rather generic art style that has dominated the series, but it is different, and it’s a bit distracting. 

Note the detail in the musculature

I would also point out this episode reminded by a lot of Vegeta’s battle with perfect, cell. They both end with a final flash that looks like it did major damage but it the end proved futile. I can’t imagine this was an accident. Most likely it was a subtle call back to the Z era.

I actually appreciated this episode a lot more on the second watch through, it’s dramatic, and it knows what it’s trying to do. Even though the episode is centered on Vegeta and his vanity, both he and Goku are fighting to no avail.

The episode also demonstrates Vegeta’s strength as a character. Yes, even after everything he has been through is pride demands he be the best and even though he realizes it makes him arrogant, he also realizes that its part of his character and in that respect he has learned to moderate it with love for his family and just a little more common sense than Goku has.

And if I am reading the preview right, his crushing loss this weak sets Vegeta up for a major comeback next week. That’s the way you do it, honoring old series tropes while changing up the formula a little.

So I am really looking forward to the next episode to see if they pull this off. I would really love to see something other than a pure Goku victory, even a Goku victory with a lot of help would be better, but I don’t know what will happen at this point and that’s a good feeling.

-Gedaemon