Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Zephyr - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Bump because part 2 is up:


Only at 47 minutes in, but I have to disagree with the notion that setting something on Earth necessarily makes it more jarring for fantastical things to happen. Dragon Ball is set on Earth, and all kinds of crazy shit exists there. Just because it's Earth doesn't mean it can't be a fantasy Earth. It's possible he's just about to bring that up though, we'll see.

He also seems mistakenly under the impression that Robotnik was renamed Eggman and that Sonic was relocated to Earth, when in fact (I'm pretty sure) they were merely aspects of the Japanese side of the story that were maintained during the creation of the "international canon" that Sonic Adventure brought us. Unless he's just trying to speak for the way the "canon" was generally portrayed in the west. Disregard, I typed this JUST before he acknowledged all of this.

Other than that, fully agreeable critique to me so far.

I honestly can't hate the game, despite its flaws. Yes, it features several gameplay styles that serve to detract from potential fleshing out and polishing of the core Sonic gameplay, which is why I can't consider it a good Sonic game.

However, count me as another one of those people who came back to it time and time again, essentially because of the Chao Garden. That shit was just comfy as fuck, and it was a blast seeing my friends make their own Chao that would compete and interact with mine. With that becoming the main part of the game, the Action Stages basically became mini games where you could gather Rings, Animals, and Emblems for your Chao. And honestly, when looked at as mini games, those Action Stages are a lot more enjoyable for me. They all suffer from a lack of being polished and fleshed out, and being treated as a side distraction makes that all the more forgivable. The Speed Stages are just that, high octane, linear, platformers, and they're fun for what they are. The Mech Stages were fun for me, as they featured more traditional platforming and simple-minded, arcade styled, button mashing shoot 'em up goodness. The Treasure Hunting Stages were the most cozy to explore, and the music in them helped immensely.

As for the rest of the game itself, the grimdark-story revolving around a blue talking hedgehog, cheesy dialog, and poor voice track overlapping has become somewhat of a guilty pleasure for my friends and I. Certainly penetrates into the "so bad it's good" territory for us.

And that fucking 2 Player mode is great for parties.

To summarize, the game is flawed to hell and back. The fact that I have to laugh at the story, characters, and dialog to enjoy it, and the fact that I have to treat the main game and the side game the way I would treat the other to enjoy it, tells a lot about how "well made" it is. But that aside, I do get much more enjoyment out of it, when playing it this way, than I do out of most other games, regardless of how I play them.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 14 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

You mean they dialed back what your sacred word allows to be considered martial arts. Comedy and adventure were getting dialed back before the Z portion ever started. I don't recall much adventure for the last 3 arcs pre-Raditz.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 14 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

Characters shuffling relevance and some becoming useless was happening well before the Z portion ever started.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 14 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

And I've attempted to give you proof for why they are such. You clearly don't accept them being referred to and depicted as fantasy martial arts. You clearly don't accept somebody with knowledge of Eastern culture very clearly illustrating the mountains of shit that indicate such. Your argument to the contrary has literally amounted to "no, I hath not decreed that this is allowed to be treated as a fantasy based extension of martial arts, therefore it's not fantasy martial arts. Argument over LOL! Let me add a sarcastic little quip, because that's necessary!"

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 14 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

So something is not allowed to be considered fantasy martial arts because fantasy martial arts is not the only viable fictitious explanation for such a thing existing? That's like saying that we can't consider some science fiction form of teleportation to be science fiction, because it could just be magic if the writers wanted to. The fact of the matter is, all of this is, as far as Toriyama and the characters are concerned, martial arts. You clearly don't think that matters, which I find to be preposterous, but whatever, it's apparent that there's no helping that.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 14 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

So you're covering your ears and yelling "nuh uh!", and then proceeding to lob an ad hominem at the guy. Classy.

It's pretty clear you don't understand what I'm trying to say, you don't care, and you're being a jackass about it. That's cool. We don't have to come to a mutual understanding if you don't want to. I do understand your point that other anime are more similar to real world martial arts, but that doesn't make Dragon Ball's crazy shit not justifiably labelled as a fantasy-based extension of martial arts. I'm done here though. Cheers.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

I suppose I'm mostly remembering things like Yamcha's surfer voice, and Vegeta and Piccolo's now mainstay over the top gruff tough guy voices.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

Well, I wasn't meaning to imply that it was a 100% transformation. It still attempts to maintain humorous moments, but the non-humorous moments are embellished the fuck out of.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

The name change means nothing. There's no shift in tone between the "two" stories. Things begin getting more serious in the Red Ribbon Army arc, and gradually continue doing so up through the Cell arc (with the silliness of the Buu arc following it). There's no night and day demarcation point, and the 23rd TB-Saiyan border isn't one no matter how much Funimation has painted it as. Toei didn't drastically change the background music and narration when they slapped a Z on it. They changed the opening and ending themes, recap and NEP music, etc. Inconsequential shit like that, which still maintained the general tone.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

Have you watched DB in the original, immediately followed by Z? It really doesn't feel like a different show at all when you actually watch it in its original production, in the original production order, and what I'm saying regarding the tonal consistency is a lot more intuitive and apparent once you experience it that way. The fact that people have to actually sit down and watch the original in order for a very large chunk to truly understand this speaks wonders, I feel, about the job they did dubbing it.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

You're not doing a very great job at defending this assertion. What you're saying amounts to little more than "it's not and that's all there is to it!"

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

You say that with the implication that there is a sole, objective, quantifiable notion of what "logical fantasy-based extension of actual martial arts abilities" entails, without actually expressing what that is supposed to be.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 11 April 2015 - 07:10 PM, said:

You're either confused as to what I'm trying to say, or you're being unnecessarily stubborn. I'm going to assume the former, and attempt to clarify.

There's a reason that ki blasts and flying around are logically considered fantasy-based extensions of martial arts. The Kamehameha is introduced initially as a technique developed by a martial arts master. He later uses this at a martial arts tournament. The announcer for this martial arts tournament comments on the technique, and yet does not note any peculiarities about it being "not martial arts", or anything like that. He never does that for any of Ten's bullshit, or later, Piccolo's bullshit. It's all acceptable shit to be doing in a martial arts tournament, in stark contrast to weapons. If all of that wasn't martial arts, I imagine the people running the show would be disqualifying everyone for not using....whatever you want to call it at this point, to win at a martial arts tournament. Or they'd at least make a comment about it or something. The crazy things we see in Z are logical extensions of what we'd seen before. Bigger ki blasts, more sophisticated control over bukujutsu, being able to track someone by their ki rather than with your vision, etc. are all literally extensions of what everyone was doing up until that point, which was for all intents and purposes fantasy martial arts. Aliens and space travel don't undermine that, robots and time travel don't undermine that; rather they make it more fantastically retarded than it already was.

Now I'll grant you that it's not all directly played up as martial artists once the tournaments drop off, but that means very little in regard to what I'm actually arguing here. Just because they're not being referred to 24/7 as being martial artists performing martial arts techniques, it does not logically follow that they aren't martial artists performing martial arts techniques. When we see that they in fact logically have evolved from what we had been calling martial arts up that point, there is no sense in referring to all of this crazy shit as anything more than absurdly over the top martial arts taken to its extreme. Not having things 100% spelled out for us does not automatically preclude this from being a logical extrapolation. Superman doing similar things as an extension of other concepts does not erase what these things have logically extended from, as depicted in the story.

I'm sure you're aware that ki is just the Japanese equivalent of "chi", and I'm sure you're aware how principle chi is as a concept in Eastern martial arts, mythology, philosophy, medicine, etc. These all blend together in regard to inspiring Dragon Ball. The characters at the most early points are very clearly martial artists, there's no denying that. They learn to hone their skills, which are martial arts skills, by various masters as the story progresses. Well, a lot of the things being taught by these masters pulls a lot of inspiration from Eastern martial arts, mythology, philosophy, etc., which as I said before, are all interconnected schools of thought.

Derek Padula's written some really insghtful stuff on the matter if you're interested:
http://thedaoofdrago...kaichi-budokai/
http://thedaoofdrago...goku-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...utsu-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...dama-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...agon-ball-kiai/
http://thedaoofdrago...-ken-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...-ken-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...time-explained/
http://thedaoofdrago...ble-axe-handle/
http://thedaoofdrago...scissor-in-dbz/
http://thedaoofdrago...on-anime-manga/

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Now, my point with all of this, is that overall the change in narration voice, narration style, and general tone of the plethora of musical scores that were given in the adaptation absolutely do not reflect this basic notion. The original Japanese score greatly fits a crazy sci-fi fantasy wuxia martial arts inspired action adventure. It fit with "classic" Dragon Ball, and "Z" changed far too little to justify the huge change in musical score and narration style, and that is very much so evidenced by the way Toei handled it initially. The music has the same kind of feel, and the narrator is exactly the same.

Kai is an interesting beast, as that does take Z and treat it like its own series. That's a tad more justifiable, I feel. While with the original version of the anime, Funimation did that to Z, but kept Dragon Ball the same. Shit just doesn't jive as one single story like that once you start thinking about it enough, which seems to be why so many people in the western fandom seem to treat them like two totally distinct things.

Granted, I don't think what they did with Z is necessary as bad as some of the shit that 4Kids has done. I would say that if 4Kids-ish-ness is a 10, and a perfect dub is a 1, that the old Funimation dub is much closer to that 10 than to that 1, somewhere between a 6 and an 8, if that makes sense.

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Now, this conversation has fuckall to do with Sonic X, and is thus grossly off topic. If you're not convinced, or don't at least understand my viewpoint here, there's not much else I can say, and we'll have to agree to disagree.

Kiddo Cabbusses, on 10 April 2015 - 04:41 PM, said:

All of that flying around you see people doing? Bukujutsu. All of those energy blasts? Ki. That's martial arts through and through. Goku dies and gets trained by a god of the gods, a martial arts master. Oh, and he answers to another martial arts master. Everyone's able to move so fast, have such quick reflexes, etc. because they're adept at using ki, a martial arts concept. Martial arts fighting with aliens, robots, and bubblegum monsters is still martial arts. Also, the bulk of the main characters are wearing martial arts outfits all the time. The power growth seen after the 23rd TB is just the same song and dance of what came before, only on steroids. And please, please stop pretending "Z" is some isolated series, and proceeding to use that as support. It wasn't.

As for your second paragraph, my point is that the voices were very evidently cast in a way to make them seem "HARDCORE BADASS FUCK YEAH" which goes along with the musical score, and a lot of the dialog alterations.

I'm not sure if you've watched the Funimation dub and the original Japanese version of the anime in their entirety. I have, several times, and that shit is like night and day. Toei didn't make "Z" feel like a "separate show". They made it feel like exactly what it was, simply the next part of the single story that Toriyama was coming with. Funimation? That shit definitely feels like a different show.