Rebooting Dragon Ball as a Whole

[McAvoy]

The relationship thing with Vegeta and Bulma could certainly be explored. But that is just adding episodes during that time skip.

I agree with the treatment of all the Z fighters towards the end including Piccolo. Piccolo had his one shot with his power of Kami merged with him and that's it. He stands to the side doing nothing except fight a Cell Jr or two. In the Manga his fight with them was more in background than in the anime. Fans theorize that Piccolo was powerful even at this point. Probably above Super Vegeta during his fight with Semi Perfect Cell. He didn't even get the moment the anime had during the Kamehameha battle with Super Perfect Cell.

After that? He turns down a friendly fight with Supreme Kai. He is turned to stone by Dabura (which some fans feel even Piccolo might be able fight), then babysitting Goten and Trunk while they train for fusion. And then that's it.

It isn't much better in Super either. But he did have an ass pull transformation to turn himself into a Orange Piccolo.

One idea I have for a more natural progression to make Piccolo more powerful to keep up with the Saiyans is a full merging of original Namekian body. As in he has Kami but Piccolo technically isn't the original evil half of The Nameless Namekian.

So what if, he goes to New Namek to talk to the Elders there to learn more about his people, customs etc. Then they talk about how he isn't quite complete and would attain a new level of power if he accepts his 'father' or predecessor's spirit with in him to fully complete himself. He then goes to Otherworld to locate the spirit of King Piccolo oor what remains of it.

After some adventures including possibly some flashbacks of what King Piccolo did during Dragonball and even before that, he locates King Piccolo. They eventually merge with each other, but initially it looks like King Piccolo takes over Piccolo.

But the entire time is a four way discussion of Kami, King Piccolo, the old guard of sorts, Piccolo the reformed new guard and the outsider Nail. After an agreement, they all merge together once again with Piccolo once again himself.

Humans are harder. They fell so far behind. Their full power isnt even close to a Sayian's base power anymore. Teaching them Kaio-ken wouldn't do much, even a 20x would maybe make them more powerful than Vegeta or Goku at base level. Maybe if that.

I don't know maybe Earth has some unlocked source of power for humans only? Some ancient source that is thousands of years old? I don't know.

[Winter]

One thing I would change is the the whole Power Creep. Ah this point just about everyone is a demigod and even those who are "Normal" can be considered demigods.

Now there's no way around the inclusion of making characters super powerful, Frieza HAS to be so powerful that Goku turning Super Saiyan is the only way to beat him but the series just keeps introducing more and more powerups that it's just silly. It's why I like Avatar's Magic system over Dragon Balls, characters can't get more powerful just more skilled and while their are different tricks and abilities that are OP as fuck those are rare and used sparingly.

Take combustionbending or lavabending, powerful skills but very rare and not easy to learn which assuming they can be learned. I seem to remember that Combustionbending being a result of a mutation, of sorts, within the world of Avatar that it was the result of an overdeveloped third eye so it was a power that you're born with and not something that can be learned. That might have be retconned but the means of gaining this power is to basically be tortured to the brink of madness to use this power.

Lavabending is something that also seems to be genetic as Toph says that this power is very rare so it's likely that it's not something that can be learned but something you're born with.

And what I like about these powers is while their powerful they have several drawbacks. Both Combustionbenders we've seen were killed as a result of their own powers and both over relied on their power. Bloodbending can only be done in a fully moon with only 3 known exceptions, and flight can only be done if one has no Earthly attachments. Lavabending seems to be the only one that has no real downside other then the risk of burning yourself if over used but that seems to be a small risk as Bolin was able to get the hang of it after only having it for half a day.

But with Dragon Ball it just seems to be one OP trick after another and gets very annoying very quickly. Super is perhaps the worst offender with things like Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Blue after introducing Super Saiyan God only with Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Blue getting no real introduction and just kinda appearing. And Super Saiyan God being introduced as a means for Goku to fight Beerus who is an actual God.

I do like how Super Saiyan 3 has a major downside and is not viable in a mortal human body for long but that was pretty much forgotten about in the very arc it was introduced in when Gotenks ended up using it when they (he?) were introduced.

Also I've never been a fan of the Saiyan inherited ability to become stronger after almost dying. It just seems like a cheap means to excuse on why Goku and the other Saiyans get stronger after every fight.

On the whole I've never been a fan of Sequel Escalation as it causes more problems then it solves. In Dragon Ball the world was in danger, then the galaxy, then the multiverse then all of space and time and it just gets boring.

I think it's better when a series goes between the two extremes each chapter. Take, for example, the Original Star Wars Trilogy and even the Star Wars Prequels.

A New Hope: The Galactic Empire has a doomsday weapon and are about to destroy the Rebels. We're introduced to the Force, see the first ever lightsaber duel, a planet explodes, we have an epic space battle and the Death Star is destroyed.

The Empire Strikes Back: Rebels have one major battle with the Empire and escape, threats stays focus on a few characters, no doomsday weapons, fate of the galaxy not really in any danger just a tragic reveal on the true nature of the villain and his relationship with the hero.

Return of the Jedi: Final Battle between the Rebellion and The Empire, Emperor is directly confronted, Vader Redeemed, biggest space battle in the series, second Death Star destroyed, Empire destroyed heroes triumphant.

The Phantom Menace: Single Planet in danger, viewed as a minor issues among most of the galaxy, smaller space battle when compared to the rest of the series. More elaborate fight scenes but lower scales on the whole.

Attack of the Clones: Starts out as a mystery with romance, ends in a galactic war.

Revenge of the Sith: Starts with the end of the galactic war, fate of the war resolved before the halfway point. Jedi are all killed, final battle is between two brothers.

While the prequels had more elaborate fight action scenes that was a result of more advance tech in the real world which allowed for the action to be more over the top. But the series bounced between the two extremes. Large stakes, small stakes, large stakes, small stakes.

It wasn't until the Disney Sequel Trilogy that the series began to lean into Sequel Escalation (at least in the films) with the stakes always being large scale with the fate of the rebellion being decided in every entry and repeating a mistake of the Original Trilogy.

The second Death Star is said to be more powerful but we never really see that as it never destroys a planet just 2 ships. Then The Force Awakens introduced Starkiller base which could destroy an entire solar system, The Last Jedi introduced Snoke's oversized ship and the super walkers while Rise of Skywalker had a fleet of Death Star Destroyers and during all of this the Force got more powerful while also somehow getting weaker.

You keep upping the stakes then you make things boring.

It's an issue with the MCU, they keep trying to one up themselves which just makes it less interesting.

And IMO Dragon Ball is the worst offender of this. When your main characters are so powerful that they they can take on and even overpower literal Gods then it's no longer fun.

I give GT credit for not really giving into Power Creep and instead creating new threats that require the heroes to be more clever and fall back on older tricks.

Super Saiyan 4 is really the only time the characters get a power up and it's a lot more earned then most other power ups.

So, with a reboot I would want to tone down the power levels and just make it more about the skills of the characters instead of their powers. Frieza is the sole exception to this as he has to be OP and Super Saiyan is likewise another exception as it's meant to deal with threats that cannot be fought conventionally.

We still need characters to be powerful but there has to be more of a limit to that power and the stakes need to be toned down.

[Nobody700]

Yeah on the Vegeta point, I'd wanna make him less evil at the start and have his growth on Namek, like he doesn't kill the Namekian village when he tricks them with a he's a space cop here to arrest Frieza and protect them, so they get him the dragon ball, than Zarbon kicks his ass, they save him, and Zarbon destroys the village, he fights Zarbon, elder discovers Vegeta is evil via psychic powers... but still heals Vegeta to defeat Zarbon because he saw what Frieza did and feels Vegeta is fighting to avenge his dead race like he wishes too... and Vegeta feels off. He has... empathy for these people, and what the Namekian elder said, and while he plans to use the dragon balls to make himself immortal and revive Nappa... he also plans to maybe revive the village and rule it first. Yes... that's what he wants, that's why he will revive them.

[Winter]

Yeah on the Vegeta point, I'd wanna make him less evil at the start and have his growth on Namek, like he doesn't kill the Namekian village when he tricks them with a he's a space cop here to arrest Frieza and protect them, so they get him the dragon ball, than Zarbon kicks his ass, they save him, and Zarbon destroys the village, he fights Zarbon, elder discovers Vegeta is evil via psychic powers... but still heals Vegeta to defeat Zarbon because he saw what Frieza did and feels Vegeta is fighting to avenge his dead race like he wishes too... and Vegeta feels off. He has... empathy for these people, and what the Namekian elder said, and while he plans to use the dragon balls to make himself immortal and revive Nappa... he also plans to maybe revive the village and rule it first. Yes... that's what he wants, that's why he will revive them.

Nah, I say keep Vegeta as evil as long as possible. One of the things I like about Vegeta is that he is not a good person and only starts to change towards the end of the Cell Arc and even then doesn't really turn his life around until after he sacrifices everything to save those he loves, even Goku.

Honestly, as painful as it is I say keep Vegeta dead after his gives his life at least for longer then what we got. Same with Goku, keep him out of the series for at least a year to give his sacrifice some weight.

A major advantage of rebooting a series is that you're not bound to how the story originally played out, you can cherry pick the best parts and leave everything else to the side.

For this part of the series I would take elements from Dragon Ball Super: Superhero with a focus on Gohan and Piccolo after Vegeta and Goku give their lives to slow down the villain though this time it's not Buu but Janemba. Buu I would save for later for the Goku and Vegeta reborn arc but keep focus on the next generation as they deal with Janemba.

[McAvoy]

One thing I would change is the the whole Power Creep. Ah this point just about everyone is a demigod and even those who are "Normal" can be considered demigods.

Now there's no way around the inclusion of making characters super powerful, Frieza HAS to be so powerful that Goku turning Super Saiyan is the only way to beat him but the series just keeps introducing more and more powerups that it's just silly.

But with Dragon Ball it just seems to be one OP trick after another and gets very annoying very quickly. Super is perhaps the worst offender with things like Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Blue after introducing Super Saiyan God only with Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Blue getting no real introduction and just kinda appearing. And Super Saiyan God being introduced as a means for Goku to fight Beerus who is an actual God.

I do like how Super Saiyan 3 has a major downside and is not viable in a mortal human body for long but that was pretty much forgotten about in the very arc it was introduced in when Gotenks ended up using it when they (he?) were introduced.

Also I've never been a fan of the Saiyan inherited ability to become stronger after almost dying. It just seems like a cheap means to excuse on why Goku and the other Saiyans get stronger after every fight.

On the whole I've never been a fan of Sequel Escalation as it causes more problems then it solves. In Dragon Ball the world was in danger, then the galaxy, then the multiverse then all of space and time and it just gets boring.

And IMO Dragon Ball is the worst offender of this. When your main characters are so powerful that they they can take on and even overpower literal Gods then it's no longer fun.

I give GT credit for not really giving into Power Creep and instead creating new threats that require the heroes to be more clever and fall back on older tricks.

Super Saiyan 4 is really the only time the characters get a power up and it's a lot more earned then most other power ups.

So, with a reboot I would want to tone down the power levels and just make it more about the skills of the characters instead of their powers. Frieza is the sole exception to this as he has to be OP and Super Saiyan is likewise another exception as it's meant to deal with threats that cannot be fought conventionally.

We still need characters to be powerful but there has to be more of a limit to that power and the stakes need to be toned down.

Starting with SSJ3. In it's first appearance Goku was using borrowed time where he could be on Earth for one day. SSJ3 used up alot of that. We could assume Goku's fight as a SSJ2 against Vegeta did use up some time.

Then he used it against Pure Buu (though for a short time against Super Buuhan). That's where the stamina drain kicked in. There is a running theory with a couple of remarks from Goku that suggests it's a very new form. Something he just acquired and wouldn't know about the stamina drain. There is an idea where Goku was doing mind training up in a mountain in Otherworld that some like to point where he discovered it. The idea is that he discovered the form while image training which is a thing in Dragonball. But never performed it. There is a scene while in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber where Goku was doing this exact thing while SSJ Gohan trained. Goku discovers the Grade 2 (Super Vegeta) and then pushed it even further beyond to Grade 3 (Ultra Trunks). He did it for the first time and saw all the flaws that time.

Now going back to the Saiyan Zenkai. That was Toriyama's way to get Vegeta at first to match up with more powerful foes. It then just got ridiculous due to Freiza. He just made Freiza way too powerful.

The thing this all started at the beginning of Z with Power Levels. The moment he brought this in, then we got a number for how powerful each person was. And it started out small. All of OG Dragonball and Goku managed to go up to 416 where his brothers pops up and has 1200-1500. Then that number is surpassed by Vegeta at 18,000. Then that number is small when much of the Ginyu Force was between 45-50k. Then Freiza having 530k and official max number being 120 million.

The great thing the show did was replace this with transformations and dump power levels. Now we got SSJ Grade 1. Androids appear and eventually Cell. So they go through the grades, until Goku and Gohan reaches Grade 4, the mastered SSJ form. Think about it, no surpasses each subsequent grade even when they trained.

Grade 4 Goku and Gohan was still superior to Vegeta and Trunks. Then Gohan goes Grade 5 which is SSJ2 in common terms. That can't be surpassed by the previous versions. SSJ3 isn't Grade 6 but again now other form surpasses it until Ultimate Gohan.

In other words, power creeps we saw leading up to Goku going SSJ was replaced by transformations. Which obviously left even Piccolo in the dust not to mention the humans. Even the gifted one like Tien.

Gotenks should have never went SSJ3. Doesn't make sense in the context of the show at the time. Goku was sure the Fusion Dance between Goten and Trunks would be powerful enough to take on Buu. He meant Fat Buu at the time but Goku wasn't taking into account SSJ3 either. That a SSJ or SSJ2 Gotenks would be able to handle Fat Buu. Granted Super Buu was more powerful than Fat Buu and SSJ3 Gotenks was equal if not a little more powerful to him.

Dragonball Super screwed up all of the power scaling and that should be it's own thread.

But OG Dragonball always had that power creep going. First it was Goku being below Master Roshi. Then he surpasses General Tao, then matches Tien and then shortly surpassing him. Then matching King Piccolo and then defeating a supposed more powerful Piccolo Jr three years later. That's the nature of the show.

Its in the Manga and Anime's DNA.

[Thebestoftherest]

My problem with Gotenks is that he desperately needs an arc, he has access to a perfectly good one and they never did anything, that he and his fusionee are stuck in their ignoring kids version forever.

[McAvoy]

My problem with Gotenks is that he desperately needs an arc, he has access to a perfectly good one and they never did anything, that he and his fusionee are stuck in their ignoring kids version forever.

That could have been done in Super. But Super decided to keep everyone in their Buu Saga size. It's hard to peg the timeframes but we know at least two years happened since the start of Super and Tournament of Power. Going by Pan's gestation to birth and eventual birth of Bulla.

Even Gohan during DBZ showed literal physical growth but they got Goten and Trunks kept as kids.

They also made them into comedy characters. From what I can remember, Gotenks appeared three times in the anime. First against Beerus who spanked him. Fair enough. Second against Freiza who in famously head rammed some meaningless minion of Freiza in the crotch. And I might be wrong but they became Gotenks against those purple goo people on some planet.

But in DBZ, the Gotenks thing is why I think the Buu Saga is a mess. One of them at least.

[Thebestoftherest]

I wouldn't mind if they gave them (Kid Trunks or Gotenks) some any personality other than cocky brat.

[McAvoy]

I wouldn't mind if they gave them (Kid Trunks or Gotenks) some any personality other than cocky brat.

Makes sens for me for Trunks to be a brat. He is Vegeta's kid. He grew up during peace time and he is in the richest family in the world.

Makes sense to me.

Also Gotens taking on Trunks personality more than Goten makes sense to me due to Goten being that younger friend that follows Trunks in whatever he does or says. Goten being more naive than Trunks works for me.

I know in the fan community they don't really like Gotenks that much. Cool design and all. But annoying.

[clearspira]

I think that there is something very important to bring up here: Toriyama infamously wanted to finish this show multiple times but was continuously enticed back (probably by money - I have no judgement of that though). Depending on the source, one ending point appears to be the end of Namek with Goku becoming the legendary warrior of myth and actually dying on that planet to hand over the reins to Gohan. The next appears to be the end of Cell - again with Goku dying and handing over the reins to Gohan.

This is WHY so much of Dragonball appears to be an asspull because it was. The Vegeta and Bulma relationship? Not intended which is why it comes out of nowhere.The whole Buu saga? Not intended, which is why it comes off as being so different in tone. Multiple Super Saiyan transformations? Not intended.

This is also why there is such a gap between DBZ and DBS. He was done with it. Rumour has it that he came back only because he was so annoyed by GT and DB Evolution mucking up his legacy (which btw does prove what Winter was saying earlier about how there will be a reboot of DBZ eventually because it has already kind of happened).

But there is even more to this story than that. Because not only did he really not want to be there, but there was huge executive meddling. The Androids were originally going to be Dr Gero and Android 20. They were the androids that wiped out the Z fighters. But the editor hated the idea saying ''who wants to follow some old guy'' and so it was changed to Android 17 and 18. Cell was going to be different too and in fact it seems as if he wasn't even going to be a thing originally.

Basically what I am saying is, with the benefit of hindsight as we do, I think that we could reboot the show better than Toriyama originally made it. Not because we are better writers than Toriyama but because Toriyama was faced with so many problems when making it.

I think that this story would have been better served by making Super Saiyan exactly what was originally intended: the end point of the story. By removing transformations and keeping what we had before: incremental power ups thanks to Kaioken or training arcs or divine water, we could have kept the human characters relevant and massively cut down the power creep.