Hiku said:
I agree with most of what you said.
What I liked about the Dragonball manga was mostly the adventure aspect, and how battles had much more focus on abilities. The Budokai Tournaments were especially interesting because of this. Nothing about the Cell Games version was interesting in this regard. Nor the fights we got in the tournament setting during the Buu arc.
I will say that the first tournament in Super seemed to try to correct this to some extent, as most of the fights we saw, aside from Cabbe vs Vegeta, required some additional strategy, or involved an ability/weapon. But I don't think it was executed in an interesting way. Goku throwing out Winnie the Pooh just wasn't choreographed well. And the urgency of Vegeta having to concern himself with spacing during his match was overshadowed by the fact that we know he could have just turned SS Blue and finished the fight in a second. Yeah I know he was saving his power for Hit, but Super has been contradicting itself on whether or not transforming into Blue for a moment exerts more power than staying in regular SSJ form for a long time. (The last few manga chapters seem to suggest the opposite, and has Vegeta turn into Blue for split seconds here and there when fighting Black.)
spemanig said:
Hit does too, but no clever thinking was used in that fight. Just a power boost
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Yes and no. The beginning part of their fight did, where Goku predicted his movements to counter his time leap. The problem is, they didn't explain or show how exactly. Was Hit punching towards an area that Goku had already begun to guard as he stopped time? Or was it that he released his hold on time early enough to allow Goku's movement to reach the desired area he wanted to guard? If so, why didn't Hit simply pause time later than normal, and release only right before his attack was about to make contact with Goku's body? This is why I wanted them to show us exactly what was going on, but they didn't.
That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed the Kaiouken x10 intruduction to this fight. Because I can also appreciate some power level aspects of some fights. And in this case it was backed up by beautiful artwork, (as much as I dislike the look of the SS Blue form, when it has the red aura around it, it looks really good. And especially when he went x10 and it causes a red film overlay on top of everything, changing the color of his hair to appear white), Masako Nozawa was really on point with the voice acting for that scene (with the scream and then Goku sounding very cocky, similar to Goku Black), and I liked how they included an insert theme (the opening intro) to the battle. Up until he fired the Kamehameha, I really enjoyed it. But as the fight dragged on to the next episode, not so much.
I felt that the tournament had more potential, but was excecuted poorly.
As we moved on towards the Trunks arc, we got to see much better choreographed fights, higher artwork and animation quality overall for key scenes, a darker atmosphere, and characters like Mai and Bulma got to be involved more directly, although I don't buy how Mai and her army were able to hold back or escape from Black some times. But I apreciated the thought behind it. It was also nice to see the comeback of the ability Mafuuba, even though the risk vs reward factor had been changed.
From the indications I've seen here and there, I am getting my hopes up for this upcoming tournament a bit. I think they're trying to adhere to what made the original Dragonball good by incorporating it more and more into Super. One thing that immediately struck me as interesting is the rule that flying is disabled for the tournament. I've also felt for a long time that the flying aspect usually does more harm to the choreography of battles than good. So having everyone fight grounded in the tournament will be very interesting, and will probably put some of the weaker characters on more equal footing to the rest.
I expect that rule to be abolished after a certain amount of time has passed though. But I like the idea.
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My thing with the Hit fight is that nothing can really be done with an ability like that when it comes to choreography outside of the obvious. So Hit can time leap. How does Goku trump that? By being faster/being predictive. The end. Nothing else can be done there. Does Goku have to do anything innovative to achieve that? No, because the characters are too powerful for anything clever choreography wise to make sense.
It's why I couldn't get into the Zamasu fights. When I say "it's just skyboxing and ki blasts," the point is that boxing in the air doesn't present anything interesting to look at choreography wise. The reason punches and kicks on the ground are interesting is because the fighters are limited to maneuvers that are physically possible, only being embellished by what's not. Like you can watch the Goku v Krillin fight in DB, and actually teach two stuntmen most of the choreography and it would still be impressive. That doesn't exist in sky battles. Fighter's don't need to shift their weight to gain leverage and give a kick more power, or move in a smooth way, controlling there center of gravity, remaining fluid in motion, etc because none of that exists in the air. They don't even have to obey loose rules of aerodynamics, which would at least create a little bit of tension. The coolest thing that can be done is knocking people through buildings.
I hope the no-fly rule makes the fights more interesting, but that's just the biggest problem, not the only one. Characters still move at teleportation speeds. I also don't want to make it sound like there are no exceptions to these issues in Zuper, or like Dragonball is perfect in this regard. Oolong became irrelevant in Dragonball, not Z. Chiaouzu has the most interesting powers, but was useless in Dragonball. Even Bulma started petering off in later Dragonball. I also don't really mind the Saiyan Arc, even though it's the perfect example of the "barren wasteland" thing. It feels more like a not so great Dragonball arc than an offensively bad DBZ arc.
Also, I don't watch DB for the fights. The reason I focus on them here is because I hate the general understanding that Zuper handles action better than Dragonball. The story is a much bigger issue to me. At least I can see the appeal of Zuper fights. I like powerful dudes hitting each other too, even without the finess of cleverness. Gohan going SSJ2 and completeing his arc hyped me up too. I'm not souless. But the Saiyan dick riding the show did ever since it was introduced then, and how that's connected to literally every issue I have with the series now, is what really gets to me.
