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Dragonball Z Abridged

Vegeta letting Cell nom 18, but Vegeta still wasn't really a "good guy" at that point, so it's fine.

It's be pretty easy for a Buu saga abridged to actually be pretty fucking mean to the characters, actually.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Contrast the Androids/Cell saga, where the only time the heroes had the upper hand and blew it was against Gero himself and then when Goku gave Cell a senzu bean - only one rewrite and one mistake to stretch it out unnecessarily, rather than a half dozen of each.
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Weeeell, there's that time when Vegeta screws up majorly just because he wants a good fight. I mean, it's perfectly in-character for him, but if that was not "having the upper hand and blowing it", I don't know what is. Also Gohan not going for the kill when he could have. Also Goku not taking his medicine. Also #17 and #18 (granted, not the heroes) not bolting when #16 gave them the chance. All in all, there were a few turning points, but the difference with the Buu saga is that they felt a lot more natural - characters aren't perfect and can make mistakes. In the Buu saga, it was often harder to buy it.
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
There were several points where it was only essentially bad luck or author fiat that the heroes lost - Goku trying to pass the torch, Gotenks not taking things seriously enough, Gohan getting one shotted despite being stronger purely because readers and editors wanted Goku back in the main character seat, Vegeto insisting on rescuing the absorbed people despite having access to Namekian dragonballs to bring them back later. Each time the heroes had the upper hand and only lost because the story needed them to or they made a mistake. Hell, they could have easily vaporized Buu's cocoon with no consequences if Vegeta hadn't picked the literal worst time for a midlife crisis, or even if Goku had simply tried to fight Majin Vegeta quickly rather than stretch the fight out.

Contrast the Androids/Cell saga, where the only time the heroes had the upper hand and blew it was against Gero himself and then when Goku gave Cell a senzu bean - only one rewrite and one mistake to stretch it out unnecessarily, rather than a half dozen of each.
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1. Goku coming back was Toriyama's decision, not fan pressure
2. You're forgetting Vegeta letting Cell get percect
3. Goku giving Cell a Senzu bean didn't really effect anything
 
Vegeta wasn't really a good guy when he let Cell get away.

He spent the entire arc basically being an almost but not quite antagonist that no one could really easily deal with while everything else was going on.

He's more third party than good guy or bad guy, grouping wise.

Then again, that's basically Vegeta in all of the arcs.

Frieza arc: Obviously third party. Only really joins up with the group when the Ginyu force shows up... Goes back to doing his own thing after that (the goku betrayal, trying to force in his wish) , and joins back up for Frieza.

Androids / Cell: Helps out for his own reasons. Joins up initilly for the android fight much like the Ginyu force situation / DragonBall stuff in the Frieza saga, breaks off to do his own thing and let's Cell nom 18. Joins back up for the games. Has a psudo redemption thing when Trunks eats it.

Buu Saga: Amusingly, the most straight antagonist role since he was the arc villian with Majin Vegeta. Leads to actual redemption arc that seems to stick this time.
 
DracoDracul said:
Also it's the only arc in all of DBZ where literally every power up is useless. SS3, Fusion, Gohan's full potential unlock, none of them mean anything and they all have multiple episodes dedicated to them.
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One factor is outside of Babidi and his minions (who are weak, Dabura aside, and even Dabura only requires SSJ2 to beat), there's no significant sub villains, there's no progress one can make along the way past the early bits.

Saiyan had Raditz, the Saibamen, and Nappa. Namek had Zarbon & Dedoria and the Ginyus. Android saga had Android 21, beating up 17, and forcing Cell to run a lot. Baby had fighting the various possessed people along the way. There's a number of small wins before hitting the brick walls of the main bosses.


Which from the Abridged point of view, what do you do when 2/3rds the arc has one villain to play off? With three forms, one of which barely talks.
 
Q99 said:
One factor is outside of Babidi and his minions (who are weak, Dabura aside, and even Dabura only requires SSJ2 to beat), there's no significant sub villains, there's no progress one can make along the way past the early bits.

Saiyan had Raditz, the Saibamen, and Nappa. Namek had Zarbon & Dedoria and the Ginyus. Android saga had Android 21, beating up 17, and forcing Cell to run a lot. Baby had fighting the various possessed people along the way. There's a number of small wins before hitting the brick walls of the main bosses.


Which from the Abridged point of view, what do you do when 2/3rds the arc has one villain to play off? With three forms, one of which barely talks.
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To make matters worse, the only viable funny traits for Buu are either shared with Cell (you could play Super Buu as incongruously clever and refined, but they did that with Cell) or just rehashing canon (since Buu, especially Fat Buu, was very much a silly character in canon).

A big part of the problem is that its hard to parody the season that, in and of itself, was in many ways a self-parody - remember that the Buu Saga had a lot of reversion to slapstick and silliness as Toriyama (who prefers lighthearted comedy and is on the record as preferring short-form one-tankobon long stories) chafed under the constraints of genre and narrative, from High School Hijinks to Super Ghost Kamikaze Attack to Everything About Fat Buu to Dabura in Heaven.
 
Also I get the sense from that post that Toei has been leaning on US companies extra hard to keep the TFS folks from getting work.
 
The only real thing left to do that'd be pretty cool would be the movies, but they also already covered their problems with Bojack.
 
A shame, but understandable - after so long doing a single project, anyone'd get burned out.
 
Eleven years is a long time, it's no surprise really - it's impressive they kept it going that long with the grey area of operation of what was a purely fan product.

As others have said, the Buu saga was where things wore thin and what could have been a new start was just more of the same.
 
The Laurent said:
"And yes, we know, there's more story to work with. But in all honesty... there just isn't the emotional attachment and passion for the arc that drove the last three seasons. This is another, very personal reason, but it's unavoidable.

We do not enjoy tearing down and mocking the things we love. We want to celebrate them, expand on them, explore them, and sometimes make light of their shortcomings. That's what gave you the best of DBZA up until now, and ultimately, we find ourselves at odds with that approach and the majority of the Buu Saga."

You know, I haven't seen the Buu saga in a long, long time. So I'm kinda curious about this statement?
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Buu is easily the worst arc in Dragon Ball proper. While the pacing of the Freeza fight is legendarily bad, that's because the anime caught up to the manga. The pacing of the Buu arc is not up to par in the manga. The build up to buu is too drawn out and the narrative spends too much time on downtime when Buu is fucking around doing whatever before events start up again. The characterization is also sometimes wildly inconsistent. Vegeta following up an irredemable moment with redemption is the most note worthy, but Piccolo vacillates between Piccolo and Kami's characterization seemingly at random as well. And Goku with letting the kids fight buu and then deciding to fight buu himself and ugh.

Further, Buu is the arc where death is the cheapest. Previously, other than bringing Goku back from the Raditz fight (which was to build tension) the Dragon Balls were always either the focus of the arc (as on Namek or with the Red Ribbon Arc) or taken out of play in some manner (as in Piccolo Daimao killing the dragon, wishing Goku back and then killing Piccolo in the Saiyan arc, or Piccolo fusing with Kami in the Cell Arc). In the Buu arc Goku and Vegeta pingpong between life and afterlife.

This is just off the top of my head.
 
Katsuragi said:
The movie rehashes in Super were worse than Buu, IMO, but that's an entirely different kinda kettle of fish.
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I have a lot of bones to pick with Super actually. The first two arcs are pretty bleh yes. But the Goku Black Arc is abominable. First, it works off a completely different model of time travel than the Cell Arc, but even if you can turn your brain off for that, there's a lot wrong with it. Narratively speaking, Goku and Vegeta shouldn't be the ones defeating Black and Zamasu, it should be Future Trunks and Future Mai. They are the ones who the narrative stakes are with. And the Mafuba! @)*& me the Mafuba. That has to have been the most frustrating moment for me in all of Toriyama. The Mafuba was fucking perfect. Trunks helps beat down Black, and Zamasu gets sealed, the narrative works. The Mafuba helps bridge the future of Future Trunks time to the long ago days of Muton Roshi's training. Mutaito, trainer Roshi, trainer of Goku, father of Gohan, trainer of Future Trunks. Piccolo Daimao, preincarnate of Piccolo Jr, trainer of Gohan, trainer of Future Trunks. The Mafuba is weaved in and out of that story, and to culminate in Trunks using it to seal away a great evil of his own? That would have been extremely fulfilling, narratively speaking.

And they waste it for a fucking joke.

Tournament of Power was just poorly paced. All fight all the time gives no chance to catch ones breath and recharge for the next awesome bit. Jiren is also a cardboard cut out of a personality, and isn't really able to carry the weight of the arc like Toppo would have been.
 
Good on them for having the integrity to end it when they realized they couldn't do justice to what was left.
 
I mean, there were things I really liked about the Buu saga, but when I look at the number of episodes and those moments, it's kinda comical how spaced out they are. Like, the end of the Buu Saga managed to be as epic as the end of the Cell Saga, with all the people of Earth giving their energy to Goku's Spirit Bomb. But it took a *long* time to get there.
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, there were things I really liked about the Buu saga, but when I look at the number of episodes and those moments, it's kinda comical how spaced out they are. Like, the end of the Buu Saga managed to be as epic as the end of the Cell Saga, with all the people of Earth giving their energy to Goku's Spirit Bomb. But it took a *long* time to get there.
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that's one of the very strange oddities of the Buu arc. I love Goku getting the energy of Erath to destroy Buu; in hindsight, it makes the spirit bomb seem like a long-running Chekov's Gun, considering how every other instance of it's usage failed. Goku finally getting to use the most powerful attack taught to him by a god to destroy a demon is actually pretty perfect, doubly do for the Spirit Bomb being so out of focus for so long as super saiyan took the stage.

... but. That story should have been Gohan's; it should have been Gohan stepping up as Earth's protector, and having Goku score the kill is frustrating.

Same with Gotenks. Fusion is sort of a theme in the Buu Saga, from Buu himself absorbing his opponents, to Gohan being the heir of Goku and Piccolo, to the growing number of human/saiyan hybrids in the form of Goten and Trunks. Fusion is kind of a cool concept, and it would have been nice to see it get paid off... except Gotenks doesn't achieve anything, and Vegetto let's himself be absorbed to save the other's.

It's just... it's such a weird arc. It's high points are so of the highest in the series, I think, but the overall construction of it is... just so bizarre to me.
 
The Buu saga, for me, was really where things hit home that they were never going to let Goku go, and once I had that realization I didn't really want to watch anymore. I never did see the conclusion.

It's the same issue I had with the latest instalments. I watched Resurrection F, the first Dragonball thing I'd seen in years, largely because it showed a lot of sidelined characters getting involved. I was ok with a Goku/Freiza rematch. I thought it was nice when Vegeta got his chance to beat Freiza.

Then they ruined it by having him mess up and having Goku literally swoop in to save everyone. Nothing had changed. Didn't bother with Super because I could already tell you the chain of events without even seeing it.
 
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Honestly, Gohan never jived with me as a main character, so I didn't mind him not being the one to be the main hero, but I feel like the way the world is portrayed and how it mindlessly revolves around Mr Satan and how painfully irrelevant everyone not a Sayian is sort of leading it to embody a lot of the tropes that became more and more prevalent in the setting I disliked.
 
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The sheer length of the buu Saga cannot be overstated. It's as long as the two arcs before it combined and the Frieza Saga was already pretty damn long on it's own.
 
Teen Spirit said:
The sheer length of the buu Saga cannot be overstated. It's as long as the two arcs before it combined and the Frieza Saga was already pretty damn long on it's own.
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And a lot of the Freeza Saga was the big fight, too. Still long in DBZA, but easy to skip bits as needed.

Buu Saga has a lot of things happen... just none of them really matter.
 
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