#muten

[readtilyoudie]

Inuyasha Vol 4

[soleberlandieri]

[aintfornone]

😜

[dragon-ball-meta]

This hits way different now.

[strangemonochromes]

Dragon Ball // Akira Toriyama

[yamcha-thelonewolf]

time may perhaps change things...

...but memories...

...remain forever.

❓Do you believe that one day the "new generation" will forget the ol' Dragon Ball?

I mean, currently many people do not even know who Lunch, Upa and Bora are; they ignore how Goku met Yajirobei or Oolong, or why he had to find Fortuneteller Baba. Others don't even know that if Cell exists, it is because a rather short governor wanted to express his wish to become taller... They also don't know that the only ones who consciously knew Goku's weakness were Yamcha and Puar, that Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu were about to become two professional assassins, or more simply that the first wish was a nice pair of women's panties. I don't know. Sometimes I worry that even the most important characters end up forgotten. I hope this time will never come. It would be such a shame to forget those who made Goku who he is now.

🐉All right!

We'll take care of it, guys!

[upgradewater]

[angele-darliing]

Mr Mutans givin ya the most painful cavities!!! (Two alts)

ah I have fallen to Dentman lore 😔

[nerdreamer]

[tobiasdrake]

Fun Fact: Goku is not the main protagonist of the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai. My favorite thing about this arc is its perspective flip on who Goku is and what he means to the story.

The Muten-Roshi first introduces the idea of the Tenkaichi Budokai at the start of Goku and Krillin's training.

In typical Goku fashion, Goku doesn't understand what they're talking about and yet is probably gonna win 'cause. Y'know. Goku. The arc leading into this made a pretty compelling argument that Goku's all but invincible and unstoppable. He's a strange little monkey boy who breaks everyone that goes against him.

Fitting his role as an adaptation of Sun Wukong.

Going into this, the Muten-Roshi lays out what he wants the boys to learn:

Roshi doesn't want this to be about vanity or self-indulgence. The tournament on the horizon is simply a motivator. The philosophy he wants to instill in these boys is Dragon Ball's core theme: The yearning for self-improvement.

Having something you're improving yourself for can be useful in keeping you on track but the focus is on the journey to get there, not the destination. Goku and Krillin aren't supposed to win the tournament. They're supposed to sharpen themselves into the kinds of people who could win the tournament.

...but it quickly becomes apparent that Roshi's methods will need some adapting to work with Goku's... Goku-ness.

Goku is a beast. Teaching him is going to be an ordeal.

This sets up a significant conflict to come. Not a conflict for the characters, but for the story: How do you even have a tournament arc for a character like this? Goku was created to be a funny little guy who eats challenges for breakfast.

So the day of the tournament comes to pass, and we're introduced to the "enigmatic" Jackie Chun.

It's not hard for the audience to tell who this man is, but the kids are fooled and that's what counts. At this time, we're still primarily in Goku and Krillin's perspective. Hoo-wee, this here tournament sure is gonna be a humdinger!

(That's Goku. That's what Goku sounds like. He's a backwoods hick who speaks informally and irreverently with a rural accent. I genuinely wonder what Goku's reception would have been like if his dub acting had faithfully reproduced his dialect.)

We stay with Goku through Krillin's first match.

While Jackie's first match seems poised to set him up as the archrival to be beaten.

Roshi's first match here seems set up to demonstrate how tough he's going to be to beat. He's the final boss of this tournament. Goku's going to need to take him out in order to overcome.

But Goku's first match, on the other hand, reminds us that Goku's been nerfed ever since the end of the previous arc. Losing his tail messed up his balance and he's been off ever since.

Everything we've seen from him during their training and the preliminaries was Goku fighting at a handicap. As of this moment, the gloves are off. The Monkey King is back in full form.

This is all good tournament stuff. We have a powerful rival, the strongest opponent around that Goku could possibly take on, but we've been given more than enough reason to believe Goku's up to the challenge.

We're inclined to root for Goku because he is our main protagonist. We're experiencing this world through his eyes. He wants to win the tournament. So we want him to win the tournament. We like it when characters we like succeed.

The semifinals are... interesting, through that lens. Four contestants are left: Goku and Krillin, as well as Jackie Chun and Namu. But Jackie's match with Krillin doesn't go by so easily as his fight with Yamcha.

Against Krillin, the Muten-Roshi has to work for it. Krillin's underhanded style brings him a hair's breadth away from victory. To win, "Jackie's" forced not only to reveal his ability to perform the Kamehameha, but also to introduce the Zanzoken/Afterimage technique for the very first time.

Though Goku pierces the illusion instantly. This fight shows us that the Muten-Roshi has his limits. Krillin didn't tax those limits too hard but this was still a harder fight than you might expect. Further, nothing he did here is shown to be truly threatening or ominous for Goku's chances.

Quite the opposite, even for the Zanzoken that clinched the match, we see Goku follow along just fine. He's gonna be alright in the finals.

By contrast, Goku's match with Namu sees him effortlessly dominate. He's invincible, he's unstoppable, and the closest he ever comes to defeat is when he accidentally dizzies himself from spinning around too much.

Goku eats Namu alive. He takes the best Namu has to offer and gets right back up without a care in the world.

It's the end of this match that lays out who the underdog in this upcoming match actually is.

Roshi watches Goku eat Namu for breakfast and he comes away shaken. Rather than wondering if Goku has a chance at winning this, we're left with the impression that he can't possibly lose. Goku is too strong, he's too invincible, to ever possibly lose this.

And it's here, in the wake of Goku's unbelievable shitstomp of a semifinal round, that the switch occurs. Because now that we've laid out that Goku is invulnerable, that Goku is almighty, that Goku's triumph is inevitable... suddenly, Roshi lays out the stakes of this arc.

If Goku wins this tournament, Roshi fears that victory will go to his head. He'll become proud and complacent. An arrogant brat with more power than he knows what to do with and no will to learn. Looking ahead to characters like Tenshinhan or Piccolo or Vegeta, characters who only began to work on themselves once Goku humbled them and gave them mountains to climb, it's easy to understand what he's talking about.

Though Roshi later questions whether this was really necessary, right here in this moment, we feel it. Just like that, the entire perspective of this arc has flipped. We move into the finals not wondering if Goku will win, but staring down the barrel of the invincible and unbeatable protagonist we've known from chapter 1.

The Monkey King Son Goku breaks every opponent that comes before him. He can't be beaten. He can't be stopped. He is all-powerful and invincible and an instant master of any technique you come at him with. He's absolutely favored to win this thing after that semifinal.

And for the sake of his development as a person and as a martial artist, the greatest master that our world has to offer, the man who would seek to educate the impossible, must. Take. Him. Down.

Jackie Chun is not the final boss of this tournament. The final boss is Son Goku.

The final match of the tournament is a Sisyphean ordeal, as Roshi breaks out every tool in his toolbelt only to be stymied at every turn by the sheer impossibility of Son Goku.

You can feel Roshi's growing frustration as Goku matches and overcomes everything in his path, devouring Jackie Chun as he devoured Namu in the preceding match. Whether that means matching his, the old master's Kamehameha:

Or one-upping his Double Zanzoken with a Triple Zanzoken:

With each passing chapter, we are experiencing Goku through the lens of an adversary. Rather than being privy to Goku's private monologue, it's Roshi whose thoughts we sit with as he tries again and again to find an answer to this impossible foe.

Every chapter (but one) ending the same way: Roshi tries. Roshi fails. Goku learns and analyzes and internalizes Roshi's abilities, making himself stronger. And Roshi's back gets closer and closer to that wall.

A fun playtime for Goku and the fight of his master's life.

And when Goku finally, finally goes down, we feel, viscerally, how hard this battle was fought. Roshi pulls this off only by the skin of his teeth; A victory that is, in its own way, as desperate and nail-biting as the battles with Vegeta or Piccolo or Majin Buu, despite the smaller scope.

You can feel Roshi's spirit dying inside as Goku asks that. But the job's done. The lesson has been implanted. The shape of Goku's future has been forged.

And the things he learned here today are values he will carry with him for the rest of his natural life (and beyond). That is the triumph of the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai.

...whether or not it was actually necessary to go this far, on the other hand, is left up in the air.

We can't ever truly know the results of the choices we didn't make. But the choices Roshi did make on this fateful day would become the first step in shaping the greatest martial arts master in the universe.

[wishballs]

@gokutober Day 28 - Friends

[shakingtuna]

i think he loves them both in his own fucked up way but if chiaotzu and tien were falling off a cliff and shen only had one hand he would definitely grab tien

[prnsn001]

Dragon Ball (1986)

[sienfruru]

Redraw DB cover!!

[apocalypse-polakiewicz]

Lorenzo Colangeli

[textfromthelookout]