And so we have reached the trifecta of bad writing tropes:
— mind control
— and his name is... un-reveal
— read the fine print

There was an opportunity to have South do a heel turn without resorting to mind control. When people are frustrated and see others scheming, it is easy for them to start behaving rash and becoming distrustful which can spiral out of control and cause them to act out of control. A character being irrational is not bad writing, this is how people behave in real life. Mistakes due to character flaws make for fine organic drama.

Yamcha's dialogue being cut the moment he was about to reveal crucial information to South is just silly. He had ample opportunity to share this information if he deemed it important, why do it at the last possible moment? Especially since it was already established that Yamcha believes XXI shouldn't be discriminated against even if he's evil. So was he just grasping at straws at the end?

There was also no need to reveal that terms and condition apply to Raditz's power-up if there's no follow up to it. This could've been handled well but so far it's only been used to artificially write out from the story fights that Raditz would logically have with other characters given his newfound powers. He could've been forced to become a good guy by inverting the trope of good character being drawn to evil by having Raditz be an evil character drawn to good like e.g. Jacen Solo. But instead we get this: how do we solve Raditz not beating South to a bloody pulp? Let's have his power have a convenient technicality that makes him job in these particular circumstances because him putting South down would break the plot.


This is true in the same sense that you can continue driving by having green light. There is nothing to interpret or analyze, it is self-evident. When something is this on-the-nose the natural assumption is that surely it can't be the case in any work of fiction that tries to be subtle. This unfortunately isn't true for those that don't.

It's my mistake for giving the writers so much benefit of the doubt. Surely they wouldn't just bluntly have a brainwashed character's eyes in a weird spiral? lmao they just did
Imagine if Majin Vegeta fought Goku because Babidi mind controlled him instead of having the two fight organically due to character dynamics. I was expecting the latter because good writing is when characters move the plot not when it moves on its own for the sake of it. 3 Replie(s)

In the manga Old Kai says Goku and Vegeta are the two greatest masters in the universe.
Daizenshuu 6 outright calls Goku the strongest hero during his bout with Pure Buu.
In Daizenshuu 7 Goku and Vegeta are called two strongest fighter in the universe.
El Manga Legendario puts Goku and Vegeta as the strongest fighters "in all of space" as no. 1 and 2. in the top 5 it gives.
Chozenshuu 4 calls Goku charging the Genki Dama the strongest guy in the world.
The World of Akira Toriyama exhibit pamphlet calls Goku the strongest warrior.
V-Jump 2018 says Buuhan gained power on par with SS3 Goku, this is actually an upscale for Gohan by equating him to SS3 Goku.
Dragon Ball Super story guide calls Goku the strongest warrior in the universe.
Daima says plainly Goku is the most powerful warrior in the opening sequence. Shin in Daima plainly states there's no one stronger than Goku.
In El Manga Legendario Toriyama is on record saying that he Goku a step ahead of the other Saiyans in terms of power.
In Daizenshuu 4 Toriyama says about Goku *Always of a kind-hearted nature and the strongest person in the universe. Indeed, Goku is number one!*. The expression Toriyama uses for number one always refers to battle power in the manga, guides and AT interviews.
Koyama is on record saying that Goku is the strongest and when asked to clarify if the number one means strength he says says yes.
Toriyama thought the guides are accurate. Daizenshuu 7: *I am ridiculously forgetful, so despite being the author there is lots of stuff even I do not know anymore. It was often quite a nuisance, and I think having this encyclopedia around when the series was still running would have really helped me out. Darn it all. Anyway, my thanks to the staff, and to all Dragon Ball fans.*

I still find it bizarre that we have every guide and extra material agreeing that Goku is stronger with Toriyama saying he's the #1 strongest person in the universe and people still get confused by this. The same goes for Pure Buu who has been consistently described as the strongest Majin making it painfully clear that he's stronger than Super Buu. Buu (Gohan Absorbed) vs Pure Buu is a different beast and very contentious, you can make good arguments for either. Personally, I think Buuhan is above Pure Buu in the manga. But Super Buu? He's toast.

When Old Kai unlocked Gohan's potential, he was the strongest character. There's even a guide (Saikyo Jump but I don't remember the issue) claiming as such comparing him directly to Goku! Goku has simply gotten stronger than Gohan by the time of his fight with Pure Buu and there is literally not a single piece of evidence to the contrary with a myriad of evidence in Goku's favour. I kid you not, there's not a reference to Gohan being stronger all the way up until Super Hero promo material where he says Gohan is actually stronger than anyone which is true because Beast Gohan > UI Goku is hardly contentious.

This is almost as bad as the misconception that Goku returned as the MC in Buu Saga because of ratings or pressure from Shueisha when Toriyama just liked Goku more and is on record saying he's his favourite character.

How much more unambiguous can you get over calling the guy the strongest and #1 repeatedly? 1 Replie(s)

Bro committed genocide and him broadcasting Cell Games was a throwback to King Piccolo arc terrorizing the people of Earth for fun. In Dragon Ball Color manga there's a Q&A with Toriyama where he says this and claims it's due to having Piccolo's cells. His quest in space is that of further destruction and genocide.

Cell is cunning, strategic and appears to be polite but he's 100% evil. He's as irredeemable and vile as Freeza and King Piccolo if not worse.

It never stops amusing me that despite Dragon Ball consistently showing that hax doesn't work, Dragon Ball fans are still shocked when hax doesn't work. How many times do we need to see Kienzan, Mafuuba, Time Stop and all other hax abilities fail before Dragon Ball fans finally understand the concept of punching harder? DB fandom has a bad tendency of overthinking things and inventing headcanon for no reason even when the man Toriyama himself goes out of his way to make things as simple as possible. We're still reeling from mass headcanon hysteria regarding SS3 Goku and Ultimate Gohan (and by extension Pure Buu and Super Buu) 30 years later despite the man himself telling us in pretty unambiguous terms that Goku is stronger. Even the excellent DBM comic fell to this misconception. Ironically, the much maligned by the community idea of Broly being an insanely OP Buu Saga+ threat is closer to canon material than the idea that Ultimate Gohan is above SS3 Goku or the idea that hax like Mafuuba or Kienzan can turn the tides of battle against a stronger opponent. 1 Replie(s)

Going from South Kai is angry and under duress, to him being straight up dumb to him being outright evil and corruptible are two big jumps in logic. A character acting irrationally is not a plot hole if a reason is given.
At the same time, characters keep saying contradictory stuff like Old Kai claiming that everyone pure and courageous is on their side when in reality everyone ignored or made fun of him. I think he meant it in a very general way that good and evil are about to clash and XXI at least didn't get anyone good on his side which could be a reference to XXI potentially getting Vegito on his side, or not. If this was DB/Z/S I'd say no way in hell because they always keep things painfully simple but with DBM it's 50/50 as it likes to do these things.
And for all the scheming and fearmongering Old Kai did, he went from 'XXI is about to annihilate all of existence' to 'it is what it is' in one page.

I sometimes don't understand why DBM and DBM adjacent comics have arbitrary rules on techniques. I think the rules established in canon are sufficient. The technique stopped being lethal by the time of 23rd Budokai as Kami explains he wants to use it against Piccolo because it's a way of defeating him without dying. Piccolo was significantly stronger than Kami, to the point that at the end of the arc a badly injured Goku was still considered to be the only person who can stop an injured Piccolo demonstrating the massive gap between Goku, Piccolo and everyone else like Kami. One can say that Mafuba's lethality depends on the user's power level relative to the target's but that's pure speculation without using DBS manga.
The technique doesn't need a set limit to explain why it doesn't work on stronger opponents. A strong foe can just dodge it or reverse it like Piccolo did.

In DBM Ultimate means you have access to all your power in base and transformations do nothing. The official explanation is: "He doesn't need to turn Super Saiyan and fights immediately with his maximum power". So in DBM Ultimate Raditz can go Great Ape but it won't increase his power and will only be a liability. I've seen people say that Ultimate character straight up can't even transform to Super Saiyan (and I assume Great Ape) but the FAQ says "doesn't need to transform to SS" and the minicomic says "doesn't transform to SS". Salagir also said Kaioken wouldn't do anything not that it cannot be used.

In canon DB, Ultimate is a separate transformation but it can't be stacked with Super Saiyan or Great Ape (to the extent of what we've been shown). So in canon DB, Ultimate Raditz could go Great Ape but it would give him a measly 10x boost instead of whatever multiplier Ultimate gives him. In Battle of Gods Z movie, Gohan used Ultimate against Beerus and later transformed to Super Saiyan for the SSG ritual. In Resurrection 'F' Z movie, Gohan transformed to Super Saiyan against Freeza. So even in Z Gohan can transform to Super Saiyan at will regardless of having access to Ultimate or not.

In Dragon Ball GT Gohan can stack Super Saiyan on top of Ultimate. What is the evidence for this? There is a guide saying Gohan kept training going into GT and Vegeta says a line about Gohan training. He also has Ultimate eyes outline in GT. GT power scaling is crazy.

I really hope the story doesn't pivot into mind control. I think Vegito's eyes on page 418 being indicative of mind control is a big stretch and there is no way to tell because the res is too low. There are other pages where SS characters appear to have grey eyes but in HD versions they are clearly white circles. As far as South Kaioshin goes, it's hard to tell if he's under control or just angry. Page 2482 is really suspicious but on the other hand nobody including Old Kai is questioning South's behaviour. You'd think the Old Kai could tell if something was amiss. I also don't think XXI had a chance to charm South as all he did was tip off South about Old Kai's plot with Bra standing next to them while commenting how easy South is to manipulate. Is that a reasonable thing to say about someone under your mind control? The Varga on page 2485 is very clearly evil and he doesn't have gray eyes either. XXI could have asked his dragon for control over South or a way to influence him but I don't know if he'd waste a wish on removing Old Kai as if he posed any danger to him. If XXI decides to crash the tournament I don't think Ultimate Raditz would pose a threat to XXI.

There is also the fact that nobody, not even Yamcha and Gast are taking XXI being evil seriously so it's not like South needs to be stupid or mind controlled to ignore Old Kai yapping. Nobody but Old Kai is afraid of XXI. IKL wanted to kill all threats, even heroes like Vegito, and his "at least XXI" was just him bargaining with Yamcha. Half the participants in the tournament either want to enslave or destroy the universe, to the heroes XXI being evil and hellbent on universal destruction is another Tuesday. At least XXI has the common decency to follow the rules and not be an annoyance outside of his fights.

I might be wrong since I can't read Salagir's mind but to me Vegito getting mind controlled because he ate an evil senzu bean is just too obvious for the authors to play it straight while him being evil because his eyes are gray in a low res image two thousand pages ago is too big of a stretch. I think if that was a clever foreshadowing we'd have an HD version of that page to clear any doubts.

You as a reader have heard that but all that organizers know is that Gast declared forfeit. The moment XXI's victory was announced, XXI immediately stopped the fight. From their point of view nothing he did was against the rules and XXI immediately complied with the referee's decision. The rules state that you must communicate your forfeit in a clear manner and Gast didn't due to the circumstances. We don't even know if anyone but Gast have heard what XXI said in the smoke, for all we know only Gast's forfeit went through. You can't quite quote the Nappa vs Freeza fight because the forfeit was communicated clearly and they haven't exchanged any blows yet. Better yet, you have Freeza explicitly breaking a rule by killing Burter and the organizers didn't care showing that there's a reasonable wiggle room in the rules as long as it doesn't affect the tournament. And the final nail in the coffin for this argument is Cell Jr breaking a rule and being DQed only for him to be allowed to fight again because the infringement was minor and Gast agreed to fight again. So even if we steelman this argument and say XXI broke a rule due to a technicality and the organizers acknowledged it (they didn't), neither Gast nor Goku objected to it and nobody would agree to rob the tournament of the title match like that. Another instance is Vegito interfering in the fight between Bardock and Cold and yet his universe wasn't DQed because Vegito was clearly under duress and conceded after calming down.

As far as the organizers saw it, it went like this: XXI and Gast fight, XXI puts Gast in a smoke, they can't hear or see anything, the other Namekian tells them Gast forfeited the fight, they announce XXI's victory and XXI immediately stops the fight with neither Gast or anyone else having any objections. XXI breaking the rules and the organizers being aware of it is pure headcanon and even if it weren't, it wouldn't change much outside of casting some doubt on XXI implying he's evil, which isn't against the rules either.

The last interaction between XXI and South is XXI calmly complying with Bra's request and acting benevolent. Meanwhile Old Kai is plotting to murder XXI without any good reason or evidence, a tournament participant that has caused no issues throughout the entire tournament. Then Raditz, Old Kai's accomplice, assaults South. South is jumping to conclusions because he's under duress and XXI is cleverly manipulating him but if we're being honest, can you blame him? Everyone told Old Kai to piss off and thinks he's overreacting, including Gast.

Dragon Ball has always been consistent with the fact that training the same way for years has diminishing returns and you plateau quickly. It makes perfect sense for Earthlings to only be barely stronger than they were in canon.

I know guidebooks give Nappa's power level as 4000 but you need to look at the events in the manga. Vegeta gives Goku's PL as 8000 and rising, Goku then thrashes Nappa, Vegeta has internal monologue that Goku is still holding back, Vegeta then tells Nappa to calm down which gives him a big power up. This is consistent with AT interview about the components of Ki where he says that a lack of right mind significantly decreases your Shoki and thus Ki. Goku is then impressed with the powered-up Nappa tanking the Kamehameha with little to no damage and says the fight might take forever. Composed Nappa is much closer to 8000 than he is to 4000.

To be fair, XII never did anything to tick off the tournament organizers. We as readers know that Old Kai has good intentions but as far as South is concerned what they're doing with Raditz is another Buu or Babidi type of thing brewing up. South told them to knock it off but what does he see when he comes back? Old Kai talking about taking out XII, again.
We as readers know that XII is evil and was trying to eat Gast but from everyone else's perspective they were just fighting and the fights are to death. There is nothing Gast can say that that XII can't easily counter by saying that he lost himself in the heat of battle. Would Gast even object to that? He is well aware these aren't friendly sparring matches.

I don't think South's behaviour is inconsistent or a plot hole. It's disappointing to see the gang written out as far as narrative goes but in-universe nothing weird or out of character is happening. 1 Replie(s)

I think the point was to show what would happen if Krillin landed a Kienzan on someone, which is not much if the opponent is in another dimension of strength like Nappa is.

As much as I like DBM I don't think it stays true to what most people like about Dragon Ball and shonens in general, it reads more like a seinen. The highlight of most shonens is that characters triumph by becoming stronger than the antagonist or outsmarting them, both of which boil down to outscaling your opponent in some metric be it power level or battle IQ. Even OG Dragon Ball does that despite some people alleging it's not as power level focused as DBZ despite the fact that all villains are defeated because Goku was either stronger or had outsmarted them and tricks like Devil Beam or Mafuba never work or in the case of latter can backfire, punishing the character who tried to cheese the fight. I genuinely feel bad for Vegito because he was moved from a series where power level nullifies hax to a series centered around hax.
I don't like Raditz having some arbitrary limit on his power because it doesn't fit Dragon Ball and confuses the reader. The problem isn't that DBM audience is too dumb to understand it but that the information we're given about it is too vague to have a concise idea of when will this limit apply or not, as evidenced by the comments. People will be trying to fill in the gaps to make sense of it and when the story later reveals that their prediction was wrong, they'll be annoyed as they had no way of predicting it correctly.
I think it would've been wiser to just make Raditz weaker than the South Kaioshin. While the ritual made Gohan very strong, Gohan was always noted to be an extraordinary prodigy. It would still make sense for Raditz to be weaker than SSJ3 Goku and Vegeta since one is a prodigy and the other is a super-elite while Raditz is just a guy without any hype lore behind it.
I think as a whole power scaling in DBM is iffy because when it started the Dragon Ball community as a whole, including me, was fed too much headcanon from people on Neoseeker and other forums because we didn't have access to translated guides and other material from Japan so a lot of bizarre ideas were crystalized like Ultimate Gohan being significantly above SSJ3 Goku (nowadays it's pretty clear he's not even as strong by the time of Kid Buu fight) or Vegito being this thousands of times stronger unsurpassable being (despite the trend in DB that last arc's top dog is always surpassed). I do commend DBM to sticking to its original power hierarchy and not retconning anything.
These are just my thoughts on DBM from reading it over the years and I'm not trying to say it's bad because of these choices. It's good that DBM is its own thing and not just a carbon copy of DBZ. I don't think DBM would be as popular as it is if Salagir just caved in to what the readers want, after all we all come here every week to see his vision of DBM and not someone else's. So even though Raditz's "power-up" is somewhat of an antithesis of what Dragon Ball fans expect, maybe we'll see something interesting done with it that fits DBM. Basically, let them cook.