Y'all My Dovahkiin Is About To Give Inigo A Flea Bath He Is So Done With This Shit.

Y'all my dovahkiin is about to give Inigo a flea bath he is so done with this shit.

dragon ball super: super hero rambling

i'm just putting everything under the cut since like, 0.2% of my mutuals care about dragon ball and for the rest, spoilers

EDIT: don’t read this omg it’s 5 pages of incredibly disjointed thoughts, ancient hyperfixation UNLOCKED

EDIT 2: this is entirely related to the ENG dub, I have now seen the Japanese version and have a BILLION NEW THOUGHTS

this movie was like, having a fun picnic in the park skipping through the grass holding hands and singing and then banzai bill from mario appears wearing a sash that says PTSD!!!!!!!! and smashes you directly into a cliff

point form because I'm not pretending to make a coherent essay or review I just need to get down some of my Thoughts

random things:

Piccolo training Pan, Piccolo with an actual house filled with plushies (?!) that Gohan's family buys him despite his grouchy insistence he doesn't need or want or like them, Piccolo with a ridiculous cell phone that he holds with two fingers like a grandpa, Piccolo picking Pan up from preschool on the regular, all of these feed my soul

I could have watched an entire movie of Piccolo-Gohan-Videl-Pan family slice-of-life comedy-drama without any world-threatening danger and I would have been absolutely content

Goten & Trunks' designs were CUTE everyone else can SHUT UP also it was so weird seeing tween Trunks around the age when future Gohan died but this Trunks is HAPPY, I couldn't put my finger on what was so weird about it at first

"so does going super saiyan fix your eyesight, or ..."

they didn’t have to make that android gay but they did and I’m glad

I actually have nothing else to say about the Gammas, I love them, suck it haters, pacing-wise I think they should have skipped the prologue and started with Piccolo’s “who ARE these weirdos?!” investigation but this is Dragon Ball, there will ALWAYS be pacing issues, that comes with the territory

orange piccolo is STUPID i'm so sorry it's so dumb. why. we understand he got a glow-up it's OK i'm begging you. "he doesn't have any hair to change so how do we let people know he's more powerful?" "make him orange" "are you sure boss?" "and buff. orange and buff" "I mean, if you say so..." (i am not making this up)

just … cut the entire Goku/Vegeta fight. all of it. POINTLESS. it’s like they were there to fulfill contractual obligations BUT THEY’RE CARTOONS THEY DON’T HAVE CONTRACTS. chop chop chop cut the whole dang scene you CAN make a movie without them BE BRAVE

Krillin I’m sorry for everything they made you do for the first 80%, slander slander you will be hearing from my LAWYERS

OK so. hm. hm. in amid the fun and the family feels and the bonding we also had like ...... a whole lot of YMMV that I'm trying to unpack

Gohan is an academic (good) and an entomologist (CUTE!!) studying potential super saiy-ants (what???? tell me more????) who is spending a lot of time in his office and not with his family

this is an interesting set-up to a conflict about repeating past mistakes (Goku getting caught up in training and letting it affect his relationships, however well-intentioned)

the movie ......... does not go there, Piccolo chews Gohan out for not picking his daughter up from school and asks if his work is more important than his family (eyyy!) but then segues into YOU’RE SLACKING ON YOUR TRAINING which …….

that’s antithetical to the entire arc of their relationship (Piccolo originally kidnapping Gohan to train him / turn him into a child soldier → snapping at Goku for throwing him at Cell because he doesn’t want to be a warrior), Piccolo is the LAST person who would give Gohan grief about wanting to take a well-deserved retirement from fighting to pursue a quiet life

but you know what sure, let’s keep going, plus Gohan keeping the outfit on and writing papers in his weighted Piccolo suit is super cute

Piccolo is mad about Gohan not keeping up with his training. hm. OOC but sure whatever. Piccolo decides to …… pretend … Gohan’s daughter is in peril to ……… force a trauma response ……. and unlock his ……. potential …………….

hm.

OK listen I 100% thing Piccolo would be like DUDE why am I picking up your daughter from school every day, why am I the one training her every morning when she’s your kid, sparring with a 3-year-old is not serious martial arts, you used to do that with Goten, what gives, this is your famil what is the DEAL, chewing out Gohan for disappearing into academia absolutely makes sense

there is ALSO (my wife pointed out) if they did want to go the route of “hey you know your dad is gone, again, if someone does attack you won’t be able to help, you’re sure you are OK with that,” there could be a very, very fascinating story hiding here about like … duty, and exceptionalism, and what do you owe the world if you ARE exceptional, but you are also tired, you have been a soldier since you were 4 years old, and you never asked for this, and you saved the world when you were 10 and also suffered a complete mental breakdown and decided you never wanted to go through that again. and so for the next 15 years you do what makes you happy and ignore the jokes at every group barbecue about how you COULD be super strong if you WANTED to but that’s OK, it’s cool, you’re into studying now, or whatever, ha ha ha.

you ignore it because you can make it through the night without screaming, finally

but. Piccolo says, and he’s serious where the others aren’t, because he knows, but, if someone comes to hurt your family – not garden-variety villains, but a real one, the kind you haven’t seen in a long time ... you can't stop them, not like this

and listen. LISTEN. Gohan’s daughter is 3 years old and she idolizes him. but she’s a fighter, she’s the daughter of fighters, the granddaughter of a fighter, and she wants to learn to fight. and you did that! you trained your brother, just for fun, because he begged you, and then he died! along with you and your mother and everyone else and they tell you – they don’t mean it, not like that, but they do, they do – that if you hadn’t stopped training, if you hadn’t tried to go to high school, if you hadn’t pretended to be normal – you could have stopped Buu before it happened

and now your daughter wants to train with you, and she wants to see you fight, and you can’t. not again.

your health. your happiness. your healing. it COULD mean the death of everyone you love. and it’s not fair. it’s not. and no one seems to understand, because to them it’s not even a question, but you have to make that gamble

no. never again.

so Piccolo trains her, and you work, and your work is fascinating and you are top of your field and you get caught up in it, genuinely! and before you know it it’s been a week and you’ve barely left your room until Piccolo shows up at your window, arms crossed, and asks you if you’re doing this on purpose

SEE IT COULD BE COMPELLING BUT THEY DON’T GO THERE NOW DO THEY. HURR HURR GOHAN’S GONE SOFT PICCOLO SAYS HURR HURR WHY AREN’T YOU TRAINING HE SAYS STOP BEING LAZY, LET’S PRETEND PAN IS IN DANGER SO GOHAN WILL FINALLY GET HIS ASS IN GEAR

ANYWAY

I actually thought Piccolo was going to bring Gohan in on the scheme the same as Pan (because it’s easier to fight your way out than in!) but then “hey maybe this is a chance to scare Gohan straight” and – eh? what? pardon????

I could accept, maybe, Piccolo deciding to do the fake-kidnapping thing as a way to snap Gohan out of his intense work-mode and not realizing that the 15-year-old trauma is still relevant because Gohan hasn’t talked about it in forever and Piccolo assumes he’s OK now because they don’t, you know, talk about things, they just sort of fight in silence until Gohan stops crying and Piccolo says “you good?” “yeah I’m good” and then they stare up at the stars and Gohan falls asleep, or whatever, and they haven’t done that in a while! but then Gohan does his trauma-snap and Piccolo goes WHOOPS MY BAD and realizes he done a mistake

going through with it and being like YEAH IT WORKED FISTBUMP THE BABY from the same character who watched Gohan’s breakdown against Cell in abject horror just felt ……… uh not good boss

like on the one hand, from the outside that was a super cute scene, Piccolo secretly supporting Pan’s feet while she “struggles” and her being like HEY! FISTBUMP ME! and the two of them obviously being super-duper close! but then you look at it and like ……… Gohan only gets power-ups when he’s triggered and you did that … on purpose?

IT COULD WORK IF YOU WENT THE ‘YOU ARE SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME LOOKING AT BUGS’ ROUTE IT DOES NOT WORK FOR THE ‘LOL GOHAN NEEDS TO TRAIN MORE’ ROUTE BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THE REAL PROBLEM IS TRAUMA NOT PUSH-UPS

my wife pointed out that they are unsuccessfully conflating “gohan is ignoring his family to focus on work” and “gohan is not training and this could, potentially, put his family in danger” and those are two separate issues with very different storylines and also different means of resolution but pretending they’re the same thing means that neither really gets dealt with in a satisfying way

THE RIDICULOUS THING IS “gohan is ignoring his family to focus on work” and “gohan is not training” CAN stem from the same thing VERY EASILY: training is connected to trauma for Gohan so he gave up fighting seriously years ago, Pan wants to train / has been asking Gohan about his time as a fighter, Gohan doesn’t know how to explain any of that to a 3-year-old, also he doesn’t know how else to bond with her since the only thing she asks him to do is fight and isn’t interested in bugs or “normal” toddler games, so he winds up accidentally withdrawing from her and burying himself in work

but like I said. they don’t do that. recycle lol gohan lazy plot for like the 4th time

BUT THEN THAT ISN’T ALL????????? like fine we had one traumatic event to unlock mystic ultimate whatever Gohan (again), but he’s got his feet back under him, he’s OK, and then the worst case scenario: what Piccolo warned him about has happened. an enemy they can’t fight, and Dad’s not here – and even if Dad was here, it might not even be enough – and it’s up to him, again. and if he can’t, everyone dies. again.

and so Piccolo tells him to wait, let his energy build up while Piccolo takes on Cell as long as he can, and says, “You have the potential to become the most powerful being on Earth! You need to believe in yourself and unleash that power!”

EXCEPT HE KNOWS. SELF-BELIEF IS NOT THE PROBLEM

and so Piccolo’s strategy is to get the ever-loving crapsack kicked out of him while telling Gohan no, not yet, stay there, you haven’t tapped into your full potential yet I can hold it, knowing that the more danger he’s in the stronger Gohan will get, until he’s finally (almost) killed in front of him and Gohan’s full power unlocks in a horrifying callback to the original Cell Games

this is where I’m – the theatre cheered when he transformed but I just sat there all look how they traumatized my boy like, we all understand the visual references to SSJ2, the stare, the red line, the complete and total mental breakdown leading to an unleashing of power, this is all on purpose, but it’s not – it’s not triumphant, it’s heartbreaking! people were shouting and I just sat there like D:

and OK if you wanted to do that and make something of it you still could! in my head Piccolo sees the panic on Gohan’s face when he realizes the worst has happened and tells him it’s OK, stay back, he’ll take on Cell Max and Gohan does at first, because he’s frozen, but then Cell kills Piccolo (he thinks) and it happens all over again

Gohan’s “beast” transformation is, according to Toriyama, a manifestation of all the times he had a “wild beast unleashed” inside him (see: LEAVE MY DADDY ALONE!), but these are – again – traumatic experiences! the reason Gohan doesn’t like doing this is because the whole experience is, emotionally, terrible!

THAT BEING SAID FOR 5 SECONDS I FORGOT EVERYTHING BECAUSE GOHAN SPECIAL BEAM CANNON

GOHAN SPECIAL BEAM CANNON

GOHAN SPECIAL BEAM CANNON THAT DESPITE EVERYTHING HE’S PRACTICED IN SECRET AAAAAAAH

I literally clutched my wife’s shoulder while the dudebros behind us who were here to ~~~watch ironically~~~ or whatever tf they were here for made fun of the people who cheered and clapped and I did not, heroically, murder them, so I deserve a reward

and then they ………… did not mention any of this again? I guess? he un-transforms because it scares Pan, they have a cute family moment, and …… the whole thing with ignoring family / work-training tensions is not resolved? because I guess he just needed a good trauma-scare and a power-up??? hwehhh???????

HE NEEDS THERAPY NOW MORE THAN EVER ACTUALLY

like if this is really is Gohan's life, if he can't sit back when his family is in trouble no matter how much he wants to, he also can't suffer a complete mental break every time. which .... is going to hurt, because it isn't the freedom he wants, but maybe it doesn't need to be what he fears, either

NOT THAT THE MOVIE WENT THERE BUT Y'KNOW. IN MY HEAD

oh I DID FORGET that the pointless Vegeta & Goku scene DID have Vegeta doing meditation and talking about its importance and I thought that might actually have some relevance to trauma!Gohan (it did not) BUT IT DOES NOW, IN MY HEART

oh lord I’ve rambled in point form for 5 pages but like. I could fix it. I could tweak it, just a little, and keep most of the main plot and keep the movie the same but with consistent emotional beats and characterization, but you need a denouement. you need to deal with it. the real question is do I want to open that box

so uhhhhhh. bye!

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bastiion

2 years ago

this is what the autism spectrum looks like