Trouble Comes in Threes

I guess those three could technically count as trouble. Like a bug bite. Not one in an impossible to reach spot, just one that's kinda awkward.

I don't remember why, or for that matter where, I bought volume 10 of Dragon Ball last year, but I did, so let's take a look. Volume 10 wraps up the second Dragon Ball hunt, which is probably better known as the Red Ribbon Army Arc.

By this point, Goku's already single-handedly trashed the entire RRA - as far as he knows - and is just trying to gather all seven balls so he can wish his friend Upa's father back. There's one ball to go, and while it was hidden from Bulma's radar, it's not hidden from Fortuneteller Baba's magic. And who's got it?

Yeah, the Pilaf Gang. They think they've got a good shot against Goku, and could almost be forgiven for the over-confidence. They trapped him successfully last time, and he only escaped because he transformed into a giant, berserker ape. They know his tail is his weak point, and they have three mech suits to exploit it! Except his tail is gone, and he's a lot stronger than they remember.

Look, I'm not showing any scans from the fight because the burned off Goku's pants trying to get at his tail, so he's fighting bare-assed most of the time. And a defeat like that just about draws a line under those three as characters of any significance. The only other thing they do in Dragon Ball is somehow find the rice cooker Demon King Piccolo is sealed in at the bottom of the ocean, and open it. Maybe Goku should have hurt them a little worse.

Dragon Ball retrieved, deceased father figure revived, and Goku even managed to catch his 4-star ball before it shot off over the horizon. Nothing left now but to prepare for the next Tenkaichi Budokai! Toriyama skips the intervening 3 years, although I know the anime added some filler episodes of Goku meeting some different martial arts experts and learning stuff.

But in addition to Krillin, Yamcha, and Jackie Chun, there's some new challengers to worry about. Roshi's old rival Master Shen is here with his Crane School students, a porcelain doll-looking twerp and a 3-eyed asshole. Tien talks a lot of shit, to Yamcha and Krillin's annoyance, but Goku's sure the guy can back it up.

And Yamcha finds out quickly that he can, suffering his second consecutive first-round defeat. To make it worse, Tien goes and breaks Yamcha's leg, just to be a dick. Yamcha's down already, there's no need for it. He just does it to prove a point. One thing that annoys me, after the Tournament is over, Yamcha brushes it off. Yeah, Tien apologizes, but I'd be a little pissed about someone doing that. But I tend to hold grudges. Maybe that's not in keeping with the true spirit of martial arts.

Also, Goku vows to avenge Yamcha in a match, then loses to Tien in the finals. Great job, Goku! Of course, years later Goku will promise Krillin that, if he lets Vegeta live, Goku will kick Vegeta's butt if he comes back to cause trouble.

*Looks at Vegeta helping Cell achieve his perfect form.*

*Looks at Vegeta helping Babidi release Majin Buu*

It's possible that, like "marriage", "promise" is a word that Goku doesn't actually know the meaning of. Or, in clickbait sports talk, Goku just isn't clutch. I'm picturing Stephen A. Smith on some show, yelling about how Goku always chokes when the stakes are highest. 'There is no question he's a great fighter. . .when the pressure is off. HOWEVAH. . .'

After a comedy match-up between Jackie Chun and a Man-Wolf angry he can't change back into human because of Jackie blowing up the Moon in the last tournament - pour one out for Boss Rabbit, stranded up there by Goku then blown to HFIL with no warning - we get another Turtle vs. Crane match-up, as Krillin's up against Chiaotzu and his weird bullshit.

But it's Goku blabbing his mouth about killing Master Tao (Shen's brother) that will kick things to another level of hostility. 

Going Back to the Old-School

Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure is a game I'd wanted to play for a while. Just took a while to find a copy for a reasonable price, then find a system to play it (the DS I used for Chrono Trigger was too recent to be able to play Game Boy Advance games.)

Starting from the beginning of Dragon Ball and running through the end of the King Piccolo Saga, you play as Goku as a kid, still with the tail and the Power Pole (or Nyobo.) Most of the game is a combination side-scrolling adventure and beat-em-up.

You run through levels, jumping over chasms, gaps in bridges and pits full of spikes, beating up bandits, dinosaurs, Red Ribbon Army soldiers, and King Piccolo's "children" as you do. There are various power-ups, like those that increase max health, or add another hit onto the end of your combos, along with the old stand-bys like turkey legs and burgers to restore health or make you temporarily invulnerable. Some of the levels have multiple paths you can take, though they all end at the same place. But that means it may be worthwhile to replay levels to unlock power-ups or find more of the "extra" stuff, like little souvenirs meant to represent different characters.

With increasing frequency as you go through the game, those side-scrolling levels are interrupted by flurries of enemies. Basically, you're contained with that part of the screen until you defeat all the generic enemies that come at you. Maybe around 4-6, though it ramps up by the end. Sometimes the side-scrolling is done on the Flying Nimbus, up in the clouds, but it plays basically the same. Except you don't have to worry about falling to your death, since Nimbus will always catch you if you jump off to dodge or do an attack.

Then there's the boss fights, which are split into two types. In one type, such as the fights against Emperor Pilaf and his mechs, Goku and the boss each have health meters, the boss has a couple of specific moves, and there are usually tells or signals the game gives so you can dodge. That's pretty standard for old-school games like this. I mean, Kirby's Adventure has boss fights like that.

Then there are the boss fights that try to replicate the feel of a fight in the Dragon Ball manga (minus some of the sillier elements, like Krillin beating Chiaotzu because Chiaotzu can't do math.) In those, Goku and his opponent have health meters and ki meters, but there's also a green "rush" meter under the health meter. You have to hit your opponent enough to wear that down first, then you can unload on them with several hits that will actually lower their health. Maybe you can kick them into the sky, then follow them up and pummel them back to earth. Or use the time to charge up a more powerful attack.

I think one of the keys to those is countering, which involves pushing back on the d-pad when your opponent attacks. You flash blue, then hit for more damage to the rush meter than you normally do. Basically, it's a stand-in for when a character attacks, misses, and finds themselves wide open to get hammered. The Budokai games had the bit where the two characters exchange dozen of rapid-fire blows and you have to spin the control stick fast enough to make sure you come out ahead, Advanced Adventure has this. I prefer this. All that spinning game me a blister on my hand, and probably wasn't doing the controller any good, either. 

The game has several additional modes. You can replay the story, as Goku or as Krillin. Krillin doesn't have the Power Pole, but he gets a double-jump, which is nice. There's also an "Extra" mode, to replay levels to find some of the additional knick-knacks. Or you can replay the mini-games from the Story mode, like trying to catch Korin, or smashing rocks. There's a versus mode, where you can play as extra characters you unlocked, in fights at the World's Martial Arts Tournament. Although there's no option to knock people out of the ring. It's the rush mode fights, and you've just got to beat them into unconsciousness.

I feel like there's a lot more characters you're supposed to be able to unlock to play as than the 7 or 8 I've got, but I haven't been able to figure out what I'm not doing properly yet to make that happen. Maybe I'm being fooled by internet conjecture.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)

The Red Ribbon Army is back! Sort of. Goku trashed it pretty good when he was a kid, but there's still Red Pharmaceutical, the cover company that funded the Red Ribbon Army, plus Dr. Gero's later work on Androids. They're looking to get some more artificial beings to help take over the world, and they think Gero's grandson, Hedo, is just the super-genius to make it happen.

One problem: Hedo loves superheroes. World conquest isn't a selling point for him. But telling him there are mysterious aliens working with Bulma and Capsule Corp to rule the world from the shadows, and the Red Ribbon Army just wants to stop them? That's a selling point.

I point out here Hedo had been in prison because he dug up corpses to make androids to work in a convenience store to raise money for his experiments. He might want to be a hero, but he's a little confused about appropriate and inappropriate actions.

The movie does a 6-month time skip to Piccolo getting attacked by a powerful android with a cape and an outfit that reminds me of Cyborg 009. Piccolo survives and tracks the android, which is how the heroes find out what's going on.

A lot of the movie is Piccolo trying to hand this problem off to other people, but being forced to deal with it himself. Goku and Vegeta are off-world, training with Broly, and through a contrived circumstance, can't be reached. Which is fine; I could have done with the 10 minutes or so the movie spent on Beerus' world being cut in half. That would have been enough to explain why the usual suspects (plus Vegeta) weren't showing up to save the day this time. I guess they figured most people want to see those guys. I'm clearly not most people, but so it goes.

After that, and Piccolo using the Dragon Balls to get his potential unlocked (and Bulma using them for mystical cosmetic surgery), it's mostly Piccolo trying to get Gohan amped up enough to handle this problem. Because Gohan's not training. Again. Can't blame the guy, honestly. He's been fighting for his life since he was 5. Let the man study bugs! There are some funny bits there, as Piccolo spends much of the movie disguised as a Red Ribbon soldier, and helps abduct Gohan's daughter, Pan. Then Piccolo gets Pan to actively play along that she's in danger.

Him standing behind the Red Ribbon guys, signaling at her to cry or to not beat up the guy who wouldn't let her have cookies, because, 'those aren't for hostages,' or pretending to grab her by the shirt (when she's actually standing on his other hand), cracked me up.

Hedo and his creations, Gamma 1 and 2, have an 11th hour face turn when the Red Ribbon leader stops pretending this is anything other than a power grab and activates the best version of Cell they could create from incomplete notes (because Gero's computer actually completed Cell, decades into the future.) More powerful, but with none of the personality. Essentially a rampaging, instinctual berserker monster.

Which is fine; they already had Hedo, the Gammas and Magenta to act as antagonists with personality and motivations. There wasn't time to get into a whole thing with another villain and their desires and monologues. Sometimes you just need something big and dangerous that requires the heroes to go all-out to win, and "Cell Max" fits the bill. Everyone gets to have a moment to be cool or helpful, the day is saved. Gohan shows he has been doing some training on the side, so Piccolo's fears were unfounded. Pan gets to have a little arc when she figures out how to fly in a critical moment, after struggling with it at the beginning of the film. I wasn't so sure about Hedo, but he does offer to go back to prison at the end, so I think he's gained a better sense of what heroism is about, and Dragon Ball is nothing if not about giving people second chances (or third, fourth, seriously, why has nobody re-killed Frieza yet?)

Royalty in Name Only

Something about Dragon Ball Z that amuses me is how, in between getting his ass kicked, Vegeta will keep talking about being 'Prince of all Saiyans.' By the time he's first introduced, two of the other three Saiyans in the universe have just died fighting each other. He's the prince of one full-blooded Saiyan (Nappa), and one half-blood (Gohan.)

The number increases a little bit over time. Goku comes back to life - twice! - Vegeta's got a couple of kids now (I don't know if we can count the time-traveling grown-up version of his son from another timeline as a 3rd kid), Goku's got another son. Gohan's got a kid if we want to count quarter-Saiyans. Broly's apparently in canon now, and maybe Vegeta's got a long-lost brother (Tarble or something like that, not sure if he's in continuity or that was another movie one-off.) Still, Vegeta's not even prince of enough people to fill a small classroom, even before taking into account that once Nappa dies, none of them defer to him as any sort of ruler, leader, or inspirational figure.

But it's not clear Vegeta really sees that as something a prince* does. When he's first introduced, he's just learned about the Dragon Balls via Raditz's communicator. Nappa asks if they'll use them to bring Raditz back, but Vegeta dismisses this as a waste of a wish. We know, from Raditz telling Goku, the Saiyans' homeworld was destroyed, and so the four of them (plus Gohan) are all that's left of their species.

You'd figure maybe Vegeta thinks it makes more sense to wish for the entire planet back. Give him back the subjects he was deprived of ruling. But no, he plans to wish for immortality for himself, and maybe Nappa (though I wouldn't have been surprised if he excluded his lackey.) You could argue he doesn't have any idea if the Dragon Balls can restore an entire planet. All he knows is the guy who killed Raditz (Piccolo), is certain they can resurrect Goku, a single person. That's fair, but he has no reason whatsoever to think they can make him immortal, yet that's his first thought.

It would be one thing if Vegeta was just a shitty ruler, who sees his subjects as objects that exist to serve him, to be terminated if they fail. That's how Frieza operates, killing loyal fighters and technicians if they make the mistake of delivering an update or communication when Frieza's in a bad mood.

But it's more like Vegeta's concept of being a prince doesn't actually require anyone for him to rule or command at all. He doesn't even need other Saiyans to grovel and tell him how awesome he is. He's not interested in bringing Raditz back once he dies. As soon as Nappa's back is broken, Vegeta kills him. He makes multiple attempts to kill Goku and Gohan, when they're all that's left of his people. Frieza took the Saiyans to the brink and now Vegeta's trying to nudge them over the edge into oblivion.

But a lot of his prince talk comes back to his efforts to surpass Goku. Vegeta figures that, as a descendant of a royal bloodline. Goku's a low-level commoner, descended from Saiyans of no particular note. When Goku opens a can of Triple Kaioken Whup-Ass on him, Vegeta's muttering about how he's an 'elite Saiyan warrior,' while Goku's a 'low-ranked fighter,' that shouldn't be able to deal out this kind of damage. When Goku hits Super Saiyan, Vegeta casts aside his belief about the Super Saiyan being a legendary figure that hadn't occurred for 1,000 years. If Goku can do it, so can Vegeta. And his Super Saiyan will be even super-er because of his bloodline.

With the Saiyans being a species whose existence seems to revolve around combat, prince is something closer to a champion. The prince should be the best Saiyan, meaning the strongest. That's why it doesn't matter if all the other Saiyans are dead or not. He doesn't need to rule them to demonstrate his status. His continued existence proves his superiority. He's alive and they aren't because he's stronger.

* I also wonder why he always calls himself a prince. His dad's dead, doesn't that make him king by default? Especially once Frieza's dead and Vegeta's no longer under his thumb.

Beatdowns Even an Eternal Dragon Can't Undo

Dragon Ball FighterZ - I feel like the "Z" ought to be separate, but the case for the disc insists otherwise - is definitely the best looking DBZ game I've ever played. Damning with faint praise; it's the most recent DBZ game I've played by probably a decade, but it seemed like a good place to start.

It's bright, colorful. The signature attacks are made to look big and dramatic and flashy. The animation and movement is crisp. The fighting looks good, once you get the controls down. I would imagine I'm a middling player at best, and a lot of times I'm just moving the thumbstick in a general direction and hitting a button to see what results, but the game's responsive.

It's a 3 vs. 3 fighting game, ala the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Not my favorite style of fighting game, but it works OK. There are certain super-move combo attacks that get their own animation because you're using two particular characters, which I imagine is designed to make you try a lot of different character combinations.

There's a story mode, with a vague plot about another Red Ribbon Army scientist unleashing a bunch of clones of different fighters, while at the same time a machine is suppressing everyone's powers. I feel like that was to eliminate power level differences between the characters, probably to prevent people bitching about their Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta losing to Yamcha.

It didn't work, of course. Nothing short of death will silence those people.

No one can fight unless they merge with a soul. So really, you're the soul, and the other characters acknowledge you and will sometimes speak to you in brief cut scenes where you can pick between a couple of dialogue options. I don't think which option you choose really changes anything. It's not that kind of game. But it can be fun to annoy Frieza by telling him, no, you're not interested in killing people.

Each level is a map of locations, connected by lines. You have to follow the lines to get from place-to-place, and win the boss fight within a certain number of moves. You can take the most direct route, or meander through, making sure to fight every other battle available if you want. Since the fights provide experience to level up fighters, it pays to use those other fights to grind a bit.

That said, it boils down to round after round of just fighting palette-shifted versions of your characters. There's usually some vague goal - finding and rescuing your other allies, depriving the ultimate threat of a source of power - but it definitely feels like a hamster wheel.

There are sometimes custom scenes before the fight, depending on which characters you're using, or which you're fighting. Cell might be annoyed to see another version of himself, or might goad the Gohan he's fighting alongside. Or Tien gets annoyed at the Ginyu Force and their stupid poses. Or Goku acknowledges that Krillin's too busy to spar because he's got a wife and child of his own.

Look, 18's got infinite energy, Krillin's getting PLENTY of training.

There's actually three versions of the story. Listed in escalating difficulty, one with Goku and his friends as the focus, another where it's Frieza and the other villains, and one focused on the Androids. That last one is where the repetitive nature really drags because for a long time, you only have Androids 18 and 16 to use. Not only are you almost always outnumbered 3-to-2, but you can't even mix and match to find a team that suits your play style. (Big, slow characters like Android 16 or Majin Buu don't work well for me.)

That said, there are actually a lot of nice moments for Krillin and Android 18 throughout the story mode. Each of them being protective of the other. Krillin being angry that Cell's hurt 18, or 18 having to beat Krillin up to protect him from Android 21. Then Krillin later reveals he knew 18 must have had some sort of a plan because he could tell she wasn't really trying to hurt him. Some of the conversations each character has with you involve them praising the other, or talking about how lucky they are to have them.

It's all very sweet, and I enjoyed it as a fan of that pairing. Especially given how much undeserved crap the pairing (mostly Krillin) takes among the brainless fuckwits that make up a big chunk of the DBZ fandom.

There are a few other game modes. Online play is of no interest to me. There's a training mode, but that seems to quickly become stringing together 8-10 distinct commands and I either couldn't get the timing right, or wasn't positioning my character properly. But I beat all the story modes, so I don't think that stuff is critical.

There's also an Arcade mode, which is the thing where your team fights a succession of several other trios, from 3 to 7 depending on which course you pick. Thankfully, it's not the type where your characters' health doesn't return after each round. One nice touch, your specific course will vary depending on how well your performance is graded. So if you win your first fight with an A or S grade, you'll fight one trio for your second match. B or C grades send you down a different path, and D or F still another. But if you get a D on the first fight, then an A on the second, you could still jump to a higher path. In that sense, there's at least some potential variety, even though you're probably trying to get the best scores all the time.

Like I said, the game looks very nice. The fighting's very smooth, though probably pushing the limits of what I can be any good at. The cut scenes are often funny or clever. I do prefer the more individualized story mode of Budokai 3, where the playable characters could each have their own story to a certain extent, and you could fly around the world in more of a free-roaming mode. But those were usually just alternate takes on preexisting stories (the Frieza Saga, the Cell Saga), while FighterZ is trying to build on those past stories to create a newer one. Making a unique story for all the playable characters would probably be a lot.

A Curtain Wall

I've not made any particular secret of my dislike for Vegeta. As entertaining as it sometimes is to watch him run his fat yap and then get his ass kicked, the guy is perpetually making things worse by being an idiot, yet has a legion of devoted fans who insist Vegeta's fuck-ups are every other character's fault.

So I think a fair amount about Vegeta's first trip to Earth, when he was ultimately beaten to a pulp and trying to crawl to his spaceship. Krillin had Yajirobe's sword and was ready to run Vegeta through with it, and then. . .he let Goku talk him out of it. Viewed positively, he put his faith in his best friend to handle things if this turned out to be a bad decision. Negatively, he just hot potatoed responsibility to someone else.

(It's more likely Krillin is just not comfortable with killing in cold blood. He wouldn't use the shutdown remote on Android 18 to give himself the chance to destroy her, either. Although she was experimented on against her will by Dr. Gero and hadn't actually killed anyone. As opposed to Vegeta, who committed genocide for Frieza, and was fully ready to kill Gohan - a five-year-old - when he came to Earth, with no compunctions whatsoever.)

I was thinking of an AU where Krillin decides it's too risky, that it wasn't just Goku's call, because all their other friends fought to protect the Earth (and several died). And it isn't as though Goku's unbeatable. He already died once, and he didn't actually win his fight against Vegeta, it was a team effort. So, what if Krillin just went ahead and killed Vegeta?

Someone responded that without Vegeta, everyone else would die during the Cell or Majin Buu sagas, which doesn't seem right at all.

Remove Vegeta from the Buu Saga, it never even gets off the ground. The whole reason things go sideways (besides Supreme Kai being awful at his job) is Vegeta decides to work for Babidi to get a power boost, because he can't wait any longer to fight Goku. Take him out of the equation, Goku and Gohan can handle all Babidi's guys by themselves. Dabura's the only mildly dangerous one, and he couldn't finish a very rusty Gohan. Goku would dust his ass in three minutes.

Cell Saga? OK, no Vegeta means no half-Saiyan kid with Bulma. So what? Bulma built the time machine, she can just use it herself. Goku is apparently the one who originally beat Frieza when he came to Earth, so that's handled. Bulma passes on the warning and the medicine to treat the heart disease that kills Goku. Maybe does a better job describing the androids, or maybe not.

If the illness puts Goku out of commission for a while, Piccolo seemed able to handle Dr. Gero, so between him and the others, they can at least destroy Android 19 and keep Goku from dying. I don't know if everybody gets their asses kicked by 17 & 18 without Vegeta around to instigate, but it's possible if Android 16 vocally insists he must kill Goku. Don't see any reason they'd be any more direct in getting it done than they were in the timeline with Vegeta, though. So Goku has time to recover, he and Gohan train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and then it's really just a matter of how thin you want to cut the margins.

Goku went to save Piccolo and Tien from Halfway-Perfect Cell while Vegeta and Trunks were in the room. But those two used the entire year (24 hours in the outside world), while Goku and Gohan only used 11 months (22 hours) and emerged even stronger.

Best outcome, they emerge early enough Goku can still save Piccolo and Tien, then kill Halfway-Perfect Cell with no trouble. Worse outcome, Goku's too late to save either of them, but still kills Cell before he finds 18. Worst outcome, Goku gets there before Cell even absorbs 17, beats him easily, but 16's programming, recognizing he can't win outright, forces him to kamikaze. He blows up himself, Goku, 17, 18, Piccolo, and maybe Tien if he's gotten close enough. Whichever outcome, Cell's not going to be able to trick Goku into sparing him by promising a better fight if Goku just lets him find and absorb however many artificial humans he needs.

(Feigning remorse and promising to be better might work, but I think Cell's got too much Frieza and Vegeta for that. They both throw tantrums when they find themselves losing, rather than beg. When Cell couldn't beat Gohan, he tried to blow up the whole world. Same as Vegeta, same as Frieza on Namek.)

The one place where Vegeta might actually be useful is the Namek/Frieza Saga. Eventually. He kills a lot of Frieza's guys (but also a village of innocent Namekians), prompting Frieza to activate the Ginyu Force. Which leads to the whole thing with Goku getting his body swiped by Ginyu and beat to hell. The healing from that gave him enough of a boost to at least hold up against Frieza for a while, for the Spirit Bomb/Super Saiyan stretch.

Minus him, the Namekians still wreck all Frieza's scouters, which lets Krillin, Gohan and Bulma stay hidden. Krillin and Gohan still rescue Dende and escape Dodoria (who basically gave up looking for them and flew off, then was killed by Vegeta), get a Dragon Ball from Guru, get their potential unlocked. All without a lot of fighting.

Does Frieza get annoyed enough to call in the Ginyu Force if it's simply a matter of there being pests he can't locate? Does Goku arrive first, try to distract Frieza so his friends can swipe the other Dragon Balls and make their wishes? Or does everyone get wiped out because Frieza decides to stop fucking around? In canon, Vegeta's also a moderately useful punching bag to keep Frieza occupied, so the odds are steeper if he's unavailable and Goku's not as strong. Even there, Vegeta or one of the others might have been able to kill Frieza sooner, if Vegeta hadn't goaded him to really transform, which put Frieza beyond any of their strength levels.

So at best, Vegeta sometimes cleans up messes he made. Sort of.

Sunday Splash Page #273

 

"Self-Promotion," in Jaco The Galactic Patrolman, chapter 10, by Akira Toriyama

Released in 2013, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is about. . .Jaco, the Galactic Patrolman, sent to Earth to try and intercept a dangerous alien believed to be headed there. Being fairly inept, Jaco hits the Moon and crash lands on Earth near an island that was formerly a research lab. Now it's home to a grouchy old widower named Omori. Omori reluctantly agrees to let Jaco stay until he sees if he can repair the ship enough to radio for help.

Several problems quickly arise. Omori learns the government wants the island as a getaway for important officials and so he has to move. Jaco can't resist fighting crime, but also can't keep a low profile, so once he beats up two cops he thinks are part of the gang he just stopped from robbing a young girl named Tights, he's a fugitive.

Toriyama writes Jaco as vain and more than a little incompetent, but not necessarily a bad guy. He doesn't get flustered about most things, unless it jabs at his pride. He gets angry about the extremely inaccurate sketch the police circulate of him, and also that they refer to him as "Mask Man," but the fact he's a fugitive doesn't bother him (partially because he's strong enough humans don't seem like a threat.) He did legitimately want to help Tights when she was in danger. At the same time, he admits that if the alien he's supposed to stop is an adult, he won't be able to stop it and then he'll just run away. He's here for his job, but he's not going to get killed over it.

Which makes for contrast with Omori, who has isolated himself for years and scoffs and sneers at what he sees of the larger world on TV. Yet when Jaco takes him at his word about humanity being awful and offers to use his "extinction bomb" capsule, Omori changes his tune and pleads that there are still many good people out there. Hanging around Jaco brings more people into Omori's orbit and forces him to open up and starting caring again.

(Also, when Omori pleads with Jaco to be careful with his extinction bomb, Jaco replies he only accidentally triggered one once. Like I said, more than a little incompetent.)

Toriyama fills the panels with lots of little details and visually interesting characters. The gang that menaces Tights is comprised of four guys each dressed as a different type of warrior (samurai, Roman legion, barbarian). Why? Because they thought they look cool, probably. Omori's island is circled by a giant shark with spikes sticking out of its back and multiple rows of visible teeth. It's freaking awesome.

He also uses Jaco's deadpan reactions for good comedic effect. When Tights helps he and Omori escape onto the top of an apartment building, Jaco gets on the railing to loudly introduce himself as a Galactic Patrolman. Which draws the attention of the police searching the streets. When Omori asks what's wrong, Jaco very simply replies that the police saw him, which leads to a panel of Omori freaking out. Toriyama knows how to draw action, but he's always been good at comedy, and Jaco lets him get back to that a little more.

Sunday Splash Page #172

 

"Welcome to Earth, Dipshit," in Dragon Ball Z vol. 4, chapter 36, by Akira Toriyama

Yeah, I know, in Japan the Dragon Ball Z manga isn't a separate thing from the Dragon Ball manga, but it is in the collected volumes they released here in the States. Besides, like hell I was going to pass up an opportunity to post a picture of Vegeta getting punched in his stupid face.

Toriyama does the old Five Years Later maneuver between Goku beating Piccolo and marrying Chi-Chi and the start of this. At which point he reveals that Goku's not just a weird kid who had a monkey tail, he's a weird alien kid who had a monkey tail. Oh, and he was sent here as a baby to subjugate this world so it could be sold to someone else, killing all the present inhabitants if necessary.

The story still has a lot of Goku going to some new place to fight new people and learn new tricks, but the periodic tournaments are largely abandoned. So are a lot of the comedy elements, especially during the Androids and Cell Sagas. There are brief bouts of it here and there, though. The brief stretch on Namek with the Ginyu Force, basically a bad guy version of Power Rangers, complete with choreographed poses and what not. Captain Ginyu asking Frieza if he should perform the Dance of Joy (although that was probably anime filler). 

Then the Buu Saga brings some of the humor back. First with Gohan trying to fit in at a regular school, then his trying to be a masked superhero, complete with his own ridiculous poses. After that, there's the brief stretch where Goten and Trunks are the ones on the front lines, and since they're little kids, they come up with stupid attacks. Poor Piccolo gets reduced to playing the straight man for them. Even Buu himself, in his initial form alternates between terrifying and silly. The way he sort of dances around or puffs pink steam out of his skull when he gets annoyed, but then he turns people into cookies and eats them. Yikes.

But most of the series is still fighting, people getting punched in the face or shot with energy blasts. The antagonists are stronger, but at the end of the day I'm not sure that changes much really. Is there a functional difference between Vegeta coming to Earth and being able to destroy and entire planet, and Frieza or Cell showing up and being able to do the same, but even more easily? Motivations, I guess. Vegeta trying to find a way to reach the top of the heap, Frieza for revenge, Cell because he's been designed to be perfect, and he wants to know that he is. And the best way is to beat everyone else.

I admittedly prefer the earlier arcs, the Saiyan and Frieza Sagas. I read a post recently that said Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z could be divided into two halves, at the point where Vegeta first mentions the Legendary Super Saiyan. Before that, the series is all about Dragon Balls. After that, it's all about Super Saiyans, and I think that was part of my issue. Anyone that wasn't at least part Saiyan got sidelined more and more. Maybe if the character that benefited the most in terms of focus wasn't friggin' Vegeta I wouldn't have minded so much, but it was, so I did. Vegeta is the equivalent of the dumbshit police chief in Die Hard, always there to be wrong or make things worse.

Like a lot of people I got into Dragon Ball Z through the anime first, on Cartoon Network late in my high school years. I think a friend of mine mentioned it to me first, and Cartoon Network had finally been added to my family's basic cable package, so I watched it when I could after school. I don't think it was the first anime I'd seen - I know I watched Voltron as a kid, and I remember Sailor Moon being on another network before it was on Toonami, even if it wasn't really my jam - but it was the first one where I understood this was from a different country, and where the series really interested me and made me want to watch more. Granted, that's been more branching into other styles of anime and manga; none of the shonen series that owe something to DBZ have ever come close to interesting me as much as it does (One Piece comes closest, but I feel like that's still more in concept, or maybe the fictional setting in general, than the actual story Oda is telling.)

Sunday Splash Page #171

 

Blink and You'll Miss It," in Dragon Ball vol. 11, chapter 122, by Akira Toriyama

I don't know, what do you say about Dragon Ball? That Akria Toriyama came up with a story, based on Journey to the West, that became the template for a a huge chunk of shonen manga? The cheerful protagonist who loves to eat and fight, who loves a challenge and makes friends wherever he goes has been duplicated or riffed on in so many other series or video games or whatever. The repeated tournament structure, the steady escalation of threats. I mean, Goku starts out having trouble rescuing Bulma from a single pterosaur, and by the end of this stretch of the manga, he's fighting the offspring of a demon who forced the entire world to surrender to him and vowed to destroy a country every year on that day, just for a celebration.

I don't think Toriyama was the first to use those elements, although perhaps using them altogether was a novel idea. But it was the way he did it that seems to have resonated with an entire generation of artists, in Japan and the States.

The series has its issues. Master Roshi is a warning all his own, the archetypical perverted old master, groping girls and trying to get them to flash him. Oolong the shapeshifting pig is the same, although he's at least sort of an antagonist at the start (a pathetic one, but still.) The Mr. Popo character looks like a Sambo caricature or something. So there's things that aren't great, and it's things that could be eliminated at no real cost. The series has plenty of humor without peeping tom shit gone awry, and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a less offensive design for Mr. Popo.

I've read somewhere the initial World Martial Arts Tournament arc sort of saved the series from being canceled. Which is odd to think of, because up to that point, it had been about hunting the Dragon Balls and running into various semi-comic threats. An evil rabbit that turns people into carrots. A desert bandit who gets social anxiety around pretty girls. Emperor Pilaf and his two beleaguered henchmen. Goku's complete ignorance of almost anything. 

And the series still revolves around that for a time. Goku or someone else seeking the Dragon Balls for one reason or another, and Goku getting stronger in the process. The tournaments are really just a way to showcase the improvements in a series of well-illustrated fights. Toriyama knows how to draw for comedy, exaggerated looks when someone arrogant gets shown up. But he also knows how to draw someone taking a punch and make it look like it hurt.

When They All Agree He's a Moron

There's this relatively early Family Guy episode - hang on, don't leave already, I'm just setting the stage - where Peter concludes he's a genius and takes a test to prove it. He finds instead that he is, Forrest Gump, basically. The hidden menu item for this is apparently, no one holds him responsible for anything he does. If he runs into the street causing a car to swerve and it's driver to be badly injured, well, he just doesn't know any better. I think this wildly overstates people's forgiving nature.

I've seen other characters in stories where it seems like all the other characters have come to a similar conclusion about them. Where there's just no point in being frustrated when they do inexplicable things. Michelangelo with the Ninja Turtles is one, but my go-to is probably Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Even when he was summoning a demon that made people sing and dance until they spontaneously combusted, ultimately killing a half-dozen people, at a point (Season 6) when he couldn't claim ignorance of the dangers inherit to fucking around with magic, no one ever called him on it. He never faced any consequences for his actions. It was as though Buffy, Willow and the rest all just sort of threw up their hands and said, "It's Xander, what do you expect?"

This can, as you might have guessed, annoy the hell out of me. Whether I'm just not a fan of that particular blessed character, or I'm a fan of another character who isn't getting the benefit of this generosity, it grates on the nerves. Especially when there's no reason for it given. I'm left to assume it's either lazy writing (the writers didn't want to deal with Xander being responsible for six deaths in their fun musical episode, so just sweep that under the rug), or they expect me to tacitly agree this is OK.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide if it's worse when the story does it, or when the fans of the character do it. Tony Stark is probably a good example of a character with fans just dying to excuse his every fuck-up, but my go-to for that phenomenon has to be Vegeta fans. When Vegeta not only decides to let Cell so they can become more powerful and give him a better fight, but then actively helps Cell by attacking other people who tried to kill it. 

His legion of defenders will insist it's everyone else's fault Cell achieved his perfect form, but not Vegeta's. Krillin should have killed Android 18, who hadn't killed anyone yet and was a victim of Dr. Gero, so Cell couldn't absorb her. Or she should have self-destructed. Goku shouldn't have agreed to let Vegeta train in the Time Chamber first (even though Vegeta insisted and there wasn't time for them to waste arguing about that). Trunks should have just killed Cell himself (except when he tried, Vegeta prevented it). 

And the reason they should have done all these things is because they should have known Vegeta is a fucking idiot who would mess everything up by actively helping the bad guy, to the extent of attacking his own son.

They don't frame it that way, of course. It's that the other characters should have known his "pride" or "Saiyan love of battle" would push him to do it. It comes down to the same thing. According to them, Vegeta is too stupid to be held responsible for his actions.

I'm really not sure which is more annoying. It happening in-story is harder to deal with, because that's the actual text, such as it is. Even if I come up with an alternative take, it's still a reaction to the original, which affirms its existence. The fans are ultimately irrelevant, but they can be all over the place, or extremely obnoxious about pushing their opinions into my face. I can avoid a particular episode or issue of a show or comic I don't like, and maybe that lets me avoid its impact, but avoiding obnoxious fans can be kind of tricky if I actually want to interact with, you know, other fans of that thing.

Addition by Saiyan Subtraction

As someone who doesn't care for Vegeta (or his fanbase) at all, I spend more time than I should thinking about how things could have gone in DragonBall Z if Krillin had ignored Goku's request at the end of the big fight on Earth, and run Vegeta through with Yajirobe's sword, as opposed to letting the guy leave the planet. Obviously it's an irrelevant thought exercise, unless I decide to write a fanfic about it some day, but it seemed worth exploring.

I mean, Vegeta seems to exist mostly to do stupid shit out of ego that makes all situations worse. Basically Batman during that stretch where, every time you turned around, someone stole his secret "kill the Justice League" plans or his secret "spy on all the other heroes" satellite. Like that time Vegeta decided to actively help Cell absorb Android 18 to achieve his "perfect" form, because Cell's current form just wasn't strong enough to be interesting. Then Perfect Cell beat Vegeta into the ground with contemptuous ease. Which, while satisfying to watch, doesn't change the fact he made things worse for everyone else by being a moron.

OK, so one of the arguments against him being killed I've seen before is the Earthlings - Bulma, Krillin, Gohan - wouldn't have survived on Namek if they didn't have Vegeta to eventually team up with. Yeah, I don't think that holds up.

Yes, the situation escalates the longer everyone is running around Namek trying to get Dragon Balls, but no small amount of that escalation is due to Vegeta. Vegeta shows up on Namek and starts laying waste to Frieza' strongest guys. His (for that point in the series) dramatic increases in power worry Frieza enough he calls in the Ginyu Force. Once they get there, even Vegeta is completely overwhelmed by just one of them. He saves Gohan and Krillin from Guldo, true, but again, he's the reason Guldo's there in the first place. Most of their battle with Frieza is Vegeta bragging about how this time for sure he's become a Super Saiyan, then Frieza upping his power yet again and Vegeta basically crapping himself at how outmatched he is.

(There's at least three occasions in that fight Vegeta gets cocky and each time, Frieza makes him eat his words almost immediately. Again, satisfying to watch, but it's dampened slightly because characters who aren't complete assholes are also going to suffer for it.)

Once they arrived, Gohan and Krillin tried to maintain low profiles. Keep their power levels as low as possible, stay off everyone's radar. That doesn't last terribly long. Frieza is vaguely aware of them - in the sense he knows someone else landed on the planet - even before Gohan jumps in and saves the last Namekian kid in a village Frieza and his guys were slaughtering.

But their powers are so relatively low they're barely a nuisance. Frieza could have killed both of them with zero effort when Krillin blindsided Dodoria. Just eye-beamed both of them through their backs, but he couldn't be bothered. Just threatened Dodoria for being made to look like a chump. Zarbon could have done it, too, and didn't. Nobody in Frieza's army really looks out for each other. Which comes from Frieza himself, since he never takes any steps to help his subordinates, so they don't help each other, either.

I had thought that one point in Vegeta's favor was him finding Dodoria unwittingly saves them, but no. Dodoria couldn't sense them (because one of the Namekians destroyed his scouter), fired one attack at the ocean after Krillin temporarily blinded him, and assumed he got them. Then he flew off, met Vegeta, and died. Worst case with no Vegeta, Dodoria flies back and reports he killed them, eventually is proven wrong. And then is probably killed by Frieza. But since all Frieza's scouters were destroyed, the only way they're going to know that's the case is by physically seeing Krillin or Gohan. Those two can sense power levels without technological help, so they can avoid Frieza' schmucks all day long.

Frieza was finding Dragon Balls by using scouters to find Namekians. Now that's out of the question, while the good guys have a handy dandy device that senses Dragon Balls they can use. Plus, they saved the kid, Dende, which earns them some good credit with the Elder of Namek. Gets him on their side. They get one ball from him, which as long as they have it, Frieza can't make any wishes.

(In reality, he can't make a wish anyway because he doesn't know he has to make the wish in Namekian. The last "fuck you" from Namek to him, since he doesn't have to be killing them to get these balls. He's strong enough to immobilize them, but chooses to let his men kill them, just because.)

The Elder also boosts Krillin's power, and later Gohan's (and eventually Dende's, and he's a healer). Not enough to fight Frieza, or even to challenge the Ginyu Force if they showed up. But working together, Krillin and Gohan could definitely take Dodoria, who's a complete moron, and probably Zarbon (especially if they could get him before he transformed). The odds of either of those two finding them is slim, because again, Krillin and Gohan can sense their location, but Zarbon and Dodoria can't do the same. When Zarbon did catch up to Krillin, he was really following Vegeta, who he spotted after Vegeta sensed Krillin and started following him. Again, Frieza won't have any way of knowing they got that strong, short of seeing them fight. Because that's not their plan.

Their plan is to get at least one ball, then wait for Goku to show up and they'll make their play to swipe the others, wish their friends back to life. Goku's not near strong enough to fight Frieza, which is admittedly bad since he'll certainly want to fight Frieza. But there's the possibility that, if they head for Frieza's ship where has his all the ones he collected, the three of them can keep Frieza distracted long enough for Dende to make the wishes.

There's always the possibility that even if Dodoria and Zarbon don't get killed, Frieza gets impatient and calls the Ginyu Force anyway. But they didn't seem to arrive that long before Goku as it was, and if things aren't going bad as quickly, because Vegeta's not causing problems, they might be called late enough to not get there until after Goku. Granted, then you have to hope Goku doesn't fuck around and just plants Ginyu so he can't body swap, but if Goku knows they have to go through these guys to even have a shot at getting the chance to swipe Frieza's Dragon Balls, he might just do that. Just lay waste to those five dumbasses and get on with his day.

Because that's really the main positive thing Vegeta accomplishes on Namek. When Ginyu swipes Goku's body, he can't use it properly, and Vegeta beats the hell out of it. Which pushes Ginyu to try and steal Vegeta's body, giving Goku the chance to jump in the way and get his body back. Then Goku gets to heal up from that, and gets the resulting power boost from that weird Saiyan "whatever doesn't kill me, makes me stronger" thing. But if you have Dende around during the Frieza fight, there's a chance he can heal Goku up from an ass-kicking there to give you basically the same result. Dende did that for Krillin, Gohan, Piccolo, and Vegeta during the actual, in-canon fight, so it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Replace Lots of Screaming with Lots of Talking

I've only gotten around to picking up two games for my Nintendo DS since I bought it in the fall, and Chrono Trigger was a Christmas gift I haven't actually started playing yet. Which leaves DragonBall Z: Attack of the Saiyans.

The story starts after Goku's loss to Tien in the World's Martial Arts Tournament, and runs through the end of the fight against Vegeta on Earth. Which, due to the nature of that last fight, does mean that the game ends with a thud, due to a lot of dialogue boxes. Since I already knew how that fight went, I kept skipping them and then, whoops, the game is over.

On the positive side, they added a bunch of small chapters that aren't in the canon story, focusing on the non-Goku characters, to give you a chance to level them up a bit before everybody starts working together. And it's just nice to have the story mode not focus exclusively on Goku. I leveled Krillin up more than anyone, for two reasons. One, he's my favorite. Two, he's involved in the fight against Vegeta all the way up to the end, so I figured it'd be important for him to be strong enough to hold up. It didn't end up being as critical as I thought/hoped, but no regrets.

The gameplay is the standard turn-based RPG model. Roam various locations, looking for various objects. Randomly fight enemies and gain experience. Level up and stuff. This is one of those RPGs were you can't see the enemies as you wander the map, you simply walk until the game decides you've had an encounter and the fight begins. Once in a fight, you decide what you want all of your characters to do in a turn, then see how it plays out. Using items, blocking, standard attacks, special attacks, that kind of thing. There's a meter that builds over the course of the fights, and when it's full, you can unleash the super-special attacks, or combos if two of your characters have their meters filled.

Because it's an RPG, there's a lot of backtracking through locations. Especially late in the game when you have the option to put off the final battle to go hunt down fake Dragon Balls that will let you choose from a limited set of wishes. Like getting a lot of money, or a lot of experience. That kind of thing. After a certain point in the game, money really wasn't much of an issue, because I seemed to be picking up enough items after fights there wasn't a need to buy stuff.

You can collect them as many times as you want and keep making wishes. I think four was my limit before I decided I'd roll the dice and see if I was strong enough to win. Even before that, though, there are locations or treasure chests that are blocked off behind rocks that you can't break through until you reach a certain level. I didn't see and rhyme or reason for when the game decides you're strong enough to break through, and I'd forget where some of them were, but that just makes for a pleasant surprise when I stumble across one again.

It's an enjoyable enough game, if not one that reinvents the wheel. Save points are plentiful, so it's easy to play for just a short while if that's what you want. Or play for a few hours if you're in a groove. I definitely lost track of time more than once while playing.

I Should Have Posted This On Valentine's Day

I really love this couple, individually or together.

Krillin's my favorite character in the Dragon Ball universe, as I've mentioned a few times befores. Tries hard, even when he's getting his guts kicked out. Clever, kind. Android (really, she's a cyborg) 18*, the first time we got to see her fight, she broke both Vegeta's arms with almost casual ease. That earns a character a lot of points with me.

I think they're a good couple. I know a lot of folks don't. Because Krillin is shorter, or because they think he's ugly. Or because he's physically weaker than she is. Or because he ended up getting a job, and she stays home and looks after their daughter, and they think she should be out fighting and kicking ass. Which I wouldn't mind if they both got to do more of that, preferably at the expense of screen time for Vegeta.

I can sort of see the argument. It does remind me of the marriages you see in a lot of sitcoms here in the U.S., with the attractive wife married to some sloppy moron. Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, The Honeymooners, about 1,000 others. Though Krillin's in much better shape than Ray Romano or Jackie Gleason, and he's a lot nicer. I'm pretty sure he doesn't forget their anniversary until the last minute.

There are a lot of fans that insist Eighteen doesn't even like Krillin, which is bizarre. Not that there aren't couples who stay together when they don't like each other, but it seems entirely against her character. Eighteen is reserved, but she's also blunt. If she thinks something's dumb, she'll say so. When her brother insisted they turn hunting down Goku into a road trip, rather than just getting it over with, she told him she thought it was dumb. When Vegeta tried talking shit, she didn't hesitate to humiliate him, mock his so-called power. When she believed Krillin had tried saving her because he thought she'd be so grateful to him she'd just swoon, she let him have it. Verbally. If she'd let him have it physically, he'd have been dead again.

Point being, if she wanted to be somewhere else, she would be. If she wanted to be sleeping with someone who looked like Captain America, she'd go find that guy. If she wanted to fight all the time, she could go do that. If all she wanted was money, she could find a wealthy person and wrap them around her finger, figuratively or literally. Or just rob banks. After the Cell Games, there are three people alive stronger than her, and none of them could sense her to figure out where she was (assuming Vegeta, Piccolo, or Gohan would try to stop bank robberies). Even if Krillin wanted to try and stop her, and that isn't his style, he couldn't.

But she stays with Krillin. Even when that meant living in Master Roshi's (a notoriously dirty old man) home, when I'm not sure if Krillin even had a job. They live in a decent two-story home later, they have a daughter, he's a cop. It pays the bills, but she's mentioned they'd like to go on a vacation as a family, only the money isn't there. They're solidly middle-class. But she doesn't leave, or go on a vacation alone. She once planned to use a wish from the Eternal Dragon, which could give her anything she wanted, specifically to get something for Krillin, because she appreciated how much he does for her and their daughter, and wanted to do something nice for him to show him. Because she was worried she hadn't done that. She got angry when someone she was fighting called him an ugly midget and said that the two of them being together was an insult to love. Eighteen kicked their ass, too.

She found someone that was simply a decent person, who even after she and her brother beat up his friends, even when they were planning to kill his best friend, still wouldn't destroy her when he could have. Because he saw there was no need (Goku was in the process of getting far stronger), and he didn't think either of the siblings were truly evil. If they were they'd have killed him and the others the first time they fought. A conclusion the Guardian of the Earth had come to as well. Yeah, Krillin had fallen for her, but it turned out he thought her brother was actually her boyfriend the whole time, he wasn't putting conditions on his help or concern, didn't really expect anything. He just thought she was a person who deserved a chance at a life. I think she was suspicious initially, suspecting an ulterior motive she hadn't figured out yet, probably curious, kept an eye on him, and things went from there.

As for Krillin, he said back when he was a kid he hoped being a martial artist would help him to meet and eventually marry a beautiful girl. Well, Eighteen loves him, has even said she finds him "cool". She appreciates his kind nature, but doesn't take advantage of it, as a previous girlfriend did. She isn't the most demonstrative in public, but she does little things to show she cares, that she appreciates him. Krillin can get down on himself, and Eighteen will support him, try to raise his spirits, but if that fails, she'll give him a verbal kick to the butt. She won't enjoy doing it, and she'll worry she's hurt him, but she'll do it.

They try to look after each other, pick one another up. She offers to go with him to face Frieza - who'd already killed him once -  when that tyrant comes back to Earth. He appreciates the offer, but points out if something goes wrong, she's better able to keep their daughter safe. She's stronger, she has no ki signature to track, Frieza wouldn't even know she exists to come looking for her. (Granting that none of that does any good if Frieza just blows the planet up out of boredom waiting for Goku to show up, but in that event, everyone is screwed either way).

I didn't have any larger point to this post. Just wanted to talk a little bit about a favorite pairing.

* Apparently her original name was Lazuli, and her brother was Lapis, but neither of them remembers that now. The first time I saw that was in a story I read online, and I thought the writer just made it up, and they'd been watching a lot of Steven Universe. But Toriyama named a lot of characters after food, so why not rocks?

Havin' A Dust-Up

It's never a bad time to see Krillin punching Vegeta right in his stupid face. I actually drew this three weeks ago, so this piece wasn't done in response to Monday's post, although parts of it come from the same place, distaste for Vegeta/his fans. My posting it is at least in part related to Monday's post. Also, I didn't have a better idea in mind.

Mostly I just wanted to draw Krillin doing something cool, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. All the usual nagging inner voices are mostly silent. 

Livin' That Spite Life

No, not "Sprite" life. Spite Life. This is not a soda commercial.

Question for the day: Has there ever been something - a movie, book, food, sports team, whatever - that you were fairly neutral or indifferent to on its own, but you ended up hating it because its fans were such annoyances?

There are certain things we're gonna dislike on their own merits, or lack thereof. My distaste for the Dallas Cowboys had nothing to do with their fans, and everything to do with a) them kicking the Cardinals' asses twice a year back in the '90s, and b) the media's insistence on referring to them as America's Team. My dislike for Batman stems from him being written as a total ass for twenty years. So on and so on.

But sometimes, the thing itself is OK, but the people who really like it are what kills it. It isn't the fans' enthusiasm. I've said this before, but reading or watching people discuss something that interests them, even if it's not necessarily something I'm into, can be fun. It's when the fans decide they have to seek out people who are fans of other, related things, and badmouth those while trying to prop up what they like. Convert or die, basically. It's so aggressively obnoxious I end up despising the thing they like since it apparently produces such idiocy in them.

I don't like Cyclops, but I don't go find people talking about how much they like him so I can butt in yammering how, actually, Cyclops is garbage and Nightcrawler is so much better.

The Chicago Cubs would probably be an earlier example of this for me, but the reason it came up is I think I hit my limit last week with Vegeta fans. I don't particularly like the character. He's an asshole. He talks a lot of shit he rarely manages to back up. His arrogance makes situations worse for everyone else repeatedly. He takes time away from any number of other characters I'd rather see get some shine. But, on occasions, he will do something cool, and it's fun to watch him freak out when things don't go his way. I could do without him, but on his own, he isn't a deal-breaker.

But a lot of Vegeta fans - or perhaps just a few, very persistent ones - like to spend their time interjecting themselves into discussions that had nothing to do with him to talk him up, and put down whichever characters were actually being discussed. Usually this involves making a lot of excuses for the character, or inventing things out of thin air to explain why he's "better" than the character they're dismissing. Generally just being obnoxious.

I know, people behaving poorly on the Internet? What is the world coming to? Anyway, I've reached the point the character's own irritating behavior is now conflated with that of his fanboys, and seeing him or hearing about him is unwelcome.

That's my current target of loathing, so what's yours?

Fighting Games Are A Mixed Bag, Always

I bought Super DragonBall Z for the PS2 a long time back. At whatever point I was buying tons of games for the PS2, 2010? I only played it sporadically until the last few months. I think I picked it up because it played somewhat differently from the Budokai games, and because it had Chichi as an option for a playable character, which is not typical.

So it's a fighting game - surprise - but more old-school. I think it may have originally been an arcade game they ported to consoles. It feels like something some friends would pump a bunch of quarters into. Virtua Fighter, Tekken, that kind of thing. The fighting is a lot of special moves that involve moving the joystick this way, then that way, then hit some buttons. Rotate joystick quarter turn from bottom to the right, then one-eighth of a turn from bottom to the right, then hit the light attack button and viola! Some sort of super move. I forget which one that is, maybe the Destructo Disc. I could see myself trying repeatedly, unsuccessfully, to pull off that move.

That's the issue, of course. I've never been any good at those sort of fighting games. Even if I can remember the sequence - or hit pause and look it up, which is handy - I probably can't calm myself down and do things deliberately enough to pull it off, except by total fluke.

On the low difficulty levels, it isn't strictly necessary. You can win a fair amount of fights against the CPU without super moves. One shoulder button does a flying charge that ends with a light attack, and another ends the charge with a heavy attack. Difference between the two is the heavy attack sends your opponent flying backwards, leaving them unable to attack for a few moments, the light attack leaves them right there where you can immediately segue into some sort of combo. I opt for the heavy attack, because I'm trying to drive them into a wall, where they'll be stunned and I can use a throw combo. Sometimes it works, sometimes they just keep blocking. The charges use up bars on your Action gauge, which needs time to recharge, so it isn't something you can do indefinitely.

There's a sort-of story mode, that involves fighting a bunch of other characters on your way to facing Cell and saving the world. But it isn't as though the game spends any time explaining why you might be fighting some of these characters, especially the ones who would be your friends. There's no specific order, other than Cell's the last boss. There's also a Survivor mode, where you keep fighting opponents, but your health doesn't automatically replenish between fights. However, after each fight you win, there is a roulette where you can try to choose between various bonuses, one of which is to regain a percentage of your health (somewhere between 20% and 100%). Or a defense boost, or more experience.

The experience and leveling up idea is one of the cleverer bits. When you level up, you can add a skill to your character. Might be an extra bar for the Action gauge, or to unlock a special attack, or the ability to make non-homing attacks home in on enemies. But the skills are presented as a kind of chart or tree, and so selecting one skill may send you down a path that precludes you from getting another one later. And typically when you level up, you're picking from two or three skills. The nice thing is, if you collect all the Dragon Balls (which you can do in story mode or Survivor mode), one of the options for your wish to is essentially reset back to the start, but with all that experience you earned available again. So if you don't like the set of abilities you have with Vegeta, you can try again. Mix and match. The game also lets you create character cards, up to 30 as part of this process. So you could have multiple Vegetas, and try different approaches to building each of them up. Which is kind of cool, even if I'm too limited of a player to take full advantage.

So there are a couple of nice features to the game, but the actual fighting is not my favorite.

Brave Isn't Necessarily The Same As Fearless

It's not much of a surprise I wound up a Krillin fan. The extremely powerful characters are rarely my favorites. I tend to favor characters with more limited abilities, who supplement that with fast thinking or sheer willpower. Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Tim Drake as Robin. Krillin, relative to the other characters in his universe, is fairly similar. Never the fastest or strongest, but being clever and picking his spots can buy carry him a little further than you might expect. It's a bit like if all Spider-Man's fights were against Juggernaut or Firelord.

Of course, Peter Parker is the star of his story, so he gets to triumph. Krillin, as a supporting character, has to settle for hopefully surviving, and maybe getting a few good hits in. Possibly the beating he absorbs buys someone else much-needed time.

It could be worse. Even if he does frequently end up as the butt of a joke (or dead), at least he still gets to show up regularly. Sometimes he even gets storylines or entire episodes focused on him. There are some episodes of Dragon Ball Super that focused on the idea Krillin was dealing with emotional trauma from his history of being stuck fighting beings who are vastly more powerful than him. The beatings, the losses, the feeling of all his efforts being useless, the actual dying, the fear, was all wearing him down inside, making him lose heart. It wasn't a happy story, but he did ultimately face it and work to overcome it, which was nice. Compared to a Yamcha fan, I've got it OK.

He gets a lot of hate from certain segments of the fanbase, though. Mostly Vegeta fans it seems like, which, imagine the most dismissive, derisive sound you can, that's what I'm making right now. Vegeta has two settings on the show.

Setting 1: Bragging about his new power and talking shit to his opponent.
Setting 2: That opponent beating his ass.

Vegeta's the character for people who like Wolverine, but think he needs to lose a lot more fights. Like 90% of his fights.

I digress. One of the frequent charges against Krillin is he's a coward. He gets scared during the big fights. Because realizing you're up against an opponent who is not only a sadistic killer (which is most of their Big Bads), but is also several times stronger than you (maybe dozens, or even hundreds of times stronger), shouldn't provoke any kind of fear whatsoever. Why should he be scared about that? Sure, every other character on the show has gotten freaked out when realizing they're thoroughly outclassed at some point. Including Goku - who admitted to Krillin after the first time they faced Vegeta that it had scared him when he realized how much stronger his opponent was than him - and Vegeta, who only wet himself in terror like three times during the fight with Frieza. But Krillin is different because, I guess he gets played as more visibly, comically nervous.

So he gets scared. Being scared, by itself, isn't cowardice. Cowardice would be if the fear prevents him from taking any action. If, confronted with evil, someone out to kill his friends or all life on Earth, he ran away. That isn't the case. He fights for as long as he's able. It isn't always very long, true. Recoome took him out with one kick. Cell, in his perfect form, barely noticed him and nearly killed him with one kick. (He really needs to stop letting people kick him in the head.) But he is trying. Frieza nearly killed him once, and he came back swinging, drew Frieza into chasing him to give Gohan a chance to get healed up. Meanwhile, Krillin's trying his best on his own, buying time.

Now, there is the initial fight with Androids (actually cyborgs) 17 and 18. Vegeta has talked some shit, and has thus progressed to Setting 2, getting his ass beat. His time-traveling son tries to help him, gets his head kicked in, Piccolo and Tien jump in to no avail, and Krillin stands there watching in horror. Even acknowledging that if he had jumped in, it wouldn't have changed the outcome (a point Piccolo makes when Krillin apologizes), that was rough to watch as a Krillin fan for a long time, until I started thinking about it differently recently.

After the fighting is over, Krillin rushes up before they fly off. And he tries to reason with them. They plan to kill Goku, but that was their creator/tormentor's obsession, and they killed that guy. Why do they need to kill Goku, who never did anything to them? Couldn't they live in peace? They tell him no, they need a purpose, this is it and leave*.

Krillin didn't know what would happen when he did that. They hadn't killed any of his friends, but they sure beat the hell out of them. Vegeta has two broken arms by the end of that fight. Krillin knows, for a certainty, they can do the same to him, with ease. And he couldn't do a thing to stop them. If he tried to fight, it would end badly. If he tried to run, same thing. Still he approached them alone, and tried to argue for his friend's life, when fists clearly weren't going to work.

A lot things don't work out for him, and that can be rough to watch. But he keeps trying, and so I keep rooting for him.

* Not before 18 gives him a peck on the cheek, which sets off a whole chain of events that ends with those two happily married as an adorable couple, which I need to discuss in greater detail at a later date.

I'm Confident I Put Together Better Teams Than Tony Stark

After much deliberation and time-wasting, I might as well post one of those League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style teams I said I might do. I've actually got about 5 in progress, but nobody wants to deal with all that one after another, so the plan is one every so often. I'll admit I don't know precisely what the original goal was with these. Put together the best team possible? Most entertaining? Are they together for one job, or permanently? What's their goal? I tend to opt for characters I like I hope will bring something interesting to the mix. You get to judge whether I manage it or not.

The Leader: Tetra/Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker) - I chose her less for the fact she's a princess, more for the fact she was a pirate captain. Don't get me wrong, the experience in diplomacy is going to come in handy. No one else on this team has much going there. She can probably deal with snooty nobles more easily than anyone else in this crew (assuming not going the violent route). But her time spent leading a crew of smelly, rowdy pirates is probably going to give her more guidelines for keeping this bunch together. She's definitely keeping the Light Arrows.

This is some time after the events of Windwaker. We're going to assume Ganondorf is out of action, if not permanently, at least for a few decades. But there's other threats, and one has emerged. Link is either missing, or already been dealt with. Zelda's the one who usually has the Triforce of Wisdom, so she's smart enough to recognize a direct attack on her own is a bad idea. And she decides being a very visible ruler makes her and her kingdom a very visible target. So she goes lowkey, back to being Tetra, back to her old crew, while she tries to find some people to lend a hand. This time it's her turn to travel far and wide gathering what, or rather who, she needs. It's going to be a tightrope, because she has to convince this group to help her, someone they don't know, but she also needs them to work together effectively. The former probably requires her skills in diplomacy, the latter may require her willingness to thump skulls and speak bluntly.

The Rogue: Ada Wong (Resident Evil 4) - There is something to be said for the lady who sneaks around a zombie-filled European countryside with a grappling gun in an opera dress. That something is probably, "What the hell are you thinking?" but Ada makes it work.

The problem for everyone else with Ada is that she's helpful just so long as she needs their help. Once that's over, she'll probably turn on them. This doesn't mean she'd try to kill them - that's going to prove difficult for her anyway - but it's something a hypothetical reader/viewer might keep in mind that the team wouldn't necessarily recognize right off. She's fully capable of presenting herself as either a sympathetic figure, or simply as someone willing to help.

Still, she might surprise everyone. In Resident Evil 2, there was no real reason for her to save Leon from Annette Birkin, but she did. Being able to convince even the people you're working with you've betrayed them can have its advantages. It makes you the one the bad guys approach to sway to their side. It opens doors, provides information. It can be very profitable, and a clever person can recognize when it's paid out all it can, and that it's time to switch back. Ada may well be more outgunned than normal, but she's the sort to trust in being clever enough to mitigate that. Whether she's right or not. . .

Also, having Ada around means I can have Wesker show up and get annihilated, because I really hate that character.

The Muscle: Krillin (DragonBall Z: Budokai) - Technically my theme was "Gamecube games", and I did own that game for 'Cube. But it's a licensed game, which isn't quite the same thing, but hell, every time I do one of these, it has someone who doesn't quite fit the theme. Johnny Smith was originally a book character, not a TV character, and Earthworm Jim was originally a video game character, not a non-Marvel/DC comic character.

So Krillin. I'm picking him from sometime after Vegeta came to Earth. Maybe Tetra finds him recovering in the hospital after that fight, or she winds up on Namek while he's there. I'm not clear on the order these five are going to get together. Krillin would probably jump at the chance to help a princess free her kingdom, though. At any rate, Krillin's probably the strongest character on the team, but not to an overwhelming degree. It's unlikely the battles this group will face adhere to DBZ traditions of occurring in isolated locations, and Krillin isn't the sort to just blow up five square blocks, especially if it would put innocent people at risk. However, I did like the idea of him getting to be the "big gun" for once, rather than the hopelessly outmatched one who is just stalling for time. There will be times that's what he'll have to do, because there are going to be some threats that blowing up with energy blasts may not work on.

He's not really a take-charge guy, and has managed to work successfully with noted grouch Piccolo, so I think he can get along with the more volatile personalities on the team. I think he's going to spend at least some of the time trying to play peacemaker when members of the team start to wear on each others' nerves. He may not be successful, but he'll try. And at some point, the Destructo Disc is actually going to work and finish a battle, goddamnit. Just once, that's all I'm asking.

The Woman of Mystery: BloodRayne (Bloodrayne) - I could switch her and Ada, but I figured with Ada being the most likely to betray them, the Rogue fit her best. Rayne does have a fair share of mystery in her life, if only because she's lived so long (being half-vampire has its perks). Odds are, though, most of those decades were spent in traveling the globe, fighting and killing various supernatural threats. Her response to most problems is going to be to cut it to ribbons, or shoot it. But she has some ocular abilities associated with her heritage which could come in handy for assessing situations, if she's willing to slow down and use them.

It's unclear how her teammates will react to her. I have to think Zelda is going to be at least a little wary of someone who drinks blood, just given her own experiences with supernatural and mystical threats. If Rayne gets wind of the fact Ada has helped get material to create monsters through science, she's certainly not going to be pleased with that.

I'm not sure when exactly in her life Rayne would be at. Probably anywhere between the end of the first game and start of the second, which offers about 60 years (roughly 1945-2005). There was a gap of a few years in the first game, mostly in the '30s we could draw her from. She'd be less used to operating on her own, which might make her more willing to be a team player. But she'd also have just recently lost her mentor, which might make her more reluctant to work with others. Or she could have both impulses, and the confusion that might create could be a problem for her and the team, which wouldn't understand what was going on.

The Lady with a Boat: Samus Aran (Metroid Prime) - I also considered swapping Samus and Tetra. Let Samus try being a leader, instead of a lone wolf, and just use the pirate ship. A spaceship is cooler, so here we are.

As it is, Samus is still going to have to work on being a team player, which could prove challenging (I never played Metroid: Other M, so I'm ignoring whatever history that gave her as dutifully following some dolt commander's orders to not use better forms of her armor until he said so). By pulling her into this after the first Metroid Prime, it leaves the threat of Dark Samus out there unresolved, to appear at the time most inconvenient, either for Samus specifically, or the group in general, depending on how powerful it's gotten.

Samus will probably want to abandon the team at different points if she gets wind of the Space Pirates getting up to something (let's hope she doesn't have some general bias against pirates, or Tetra and her crew are in for a real bad time). But it's unlikely she'd do that in a moment of need, because Samus doesn't really seem the type. But it's hard to say. I've never seen her talk much in games, so it's hard to get a feel for her personality. The Pirates are terrified, seeing her as a relentless engine of destruction directed at them. But they took two families (her birth parents and the Chozo who found her and raised her), so it's unlikely she's that way with everyone. Probably not very outgoing or open. I don't know how long it would be before she actually removed the helmet in their presence, to even let them see her face. But with Rayne's outbursts, and Ada trying to be oh-so-helpful, but still not seeming entirely trustworthy, Samus could prove to be a calm center for the team. The one who doesn't get rattled outwardly, and has enough physical presence people are going to notice and respect her. If the group has a deputy leader, it's her.