I really want to like this series, but its not easy. The animation and fight choreography in this series just isn't good. I mean, it has its moments, but its mostly subpar. I was pretty forgiving of that for the first two arcs. I figured they were just saving the good stuff for when they actually started doing new content.
But here we are, in the U6 arc, and neither the animation or the fights seem to be improving much. Like, the ideas are interesting. Botamo's ability was a neat idea, and Piccolo relying on strategy to fight a much stronger opponent is something dragonball doesn't do as often as I'd like, but the actual fights are really lackluster compared to previous series.
Vegeta vs Magetta looks like it might be good, so we'll see.
I'm also having an issue with the way power levels are being handled. How strong are Goku and Vegeta supposed to be now? Previous stories implied they were starting to approach Beerus' level, but now I'm less certain. Goku was somewhat below Beerus when they fought at the end of the BoG arc. Since then, he trained under Whis for a few months, got the Blue Super Saiyan form, fought Frieza, trained under Whis some more, then did three years of training with Vegeta in the time chamber. One would suppose that he should have surpassed Beerus by a wide margin by now, but instead the show seems to imply that Goku is still below Beerus.
I'm also not sure how strong Goku and Vegeta are supposed to be relative to everyone else right now.
See, back in the Rof arc Piccolo got absolutely destroyed by Tagoma/Ginyu, and SS Gohan easily overpowered Tagoma/Ginyu. Therefore we know that SSGohan>Tagoma>Piccolo.
After that Frieza blows Gohan full of holes like its nothing. Sure, the first one was a sneak attack, but the fact that Gohan made no move to defend himself from the follow up implies that Frieza was a lot stronger. That was First Form Frieza.
Then Goku comes along, and Frieza goes to his far superior fourth form, which Goku is easily overpowering in his base form.
So we get this: Base Goku>Fourth Form Frieza>First Form Frieza>SS Gohan>Tagoma/Ginyu>Piccolo.
In other words Base Goku should be enormously superior to Piccolo.
But here in the current arc we see that Piccolo is almost able to beat Frost, only losing because Frost cheats. Goku, on the other hand, needed to turn into a Super Saiyan (I have a bit of a rant about this as well here in a moment) to overpower Frost in his final form.
Now granted, Goku was wrecking Frost's shit hard, so we can safely assume Frost had been significantly weakened by the time Piccolo fought him. But still, Frost's third form was already enough to pressure Base Goku, so one can assume even a weakened Frost should still be stronger than him. This is supported by the fact that Vegeta immediately turned into a Super Saiyan as well when it was time for him to fight Frost.
What I get from this is that Piccolo is currently at or near Goku's base power. Granted, Piccolo has been training with Gohan, so its only natural that he's gotten stronger, but Goku has also been training, including a three day stay in the time chamber, so he should be a lot stronger than he was in the RoF arc. It seems unlikely that Piccolo could close such a massive gap in power when Goku himself is also getting stronger.
Besides that, Piccolo only seemed about even with Gohan's base power when they were training, and Gohan's base should be below Goku's base. This one can be justified though, if we assume that Gohan has managed to regain his Ultimate power that he had in the Buu arc.
The point remains that the way these power levels are working just seems really inconsistent to me. I suppose some folks don't really care about that, and prefer to focus on the story. I can't help but focus on these things. Power levels are a big part of Dragonball, including how they relate to each other. In DBZ, no matter how ridiculous the power inflation got, you still pretty much knew who was stronger than who, and roughly by how much. When somebodies relative strength suddenly changed, there was generally a reason for it. There was some degree of consistency and logic to it.
I think all the power level stuff would actually work out just fine if it weren't for the RoF storyline. In hindsight I think everything would work a lot better if Super had omitted that particular arc, and gone right to the U6 arc instead.
Alright, one more thing to rant a bit about, and then I'm done.
Why are Goku and Vegeta not using the Blue Super Saiyan form right now? Back in RoF we were told that that form is the result of turning into a Super Saiyan with god ki. This led me to believe that, seeing as how both Goku and Vegeta have god ki now, Blue Super Saiyan was going to replace the original transformation for these two characters. Apparently that is not the case.
Now, I'll say straight up that if the writers prefer to ignore the whole blue thing in favor of the normal Super Saiyan look, then that is fine. I thought turning super saiyan blue was a poor idea from the start. But if thats the case I'd want the change to be acknowledged and justified inside the story. Maybe have somebody ask Goku about it and he can say the Blue Super Saiyan was just a transitional thing while their god ki was integrating with their normal ki. Something like that would be good enough for me.
But no comment has been made in the story at all so far, so whats the deal? Do Goku and Vegeta still have the ability to turn blue? If so, why aren't they? Are they somehow able to turn Super Saiyan without using god ki? Can god ki be turned on and off (if this is the case, then the whole thing with Piccolo would actually make a lot more sense)?
I know the arc has only been going a little while so far, so most likely an answer to this particular question will be coming along soon.
Ok, done ranting now. I do want to say that although this post probably comes off as being very negative, I do not hate DBS. There are things I like about it, and I think there is some real potential to it. Overall I am enjoying it. Its just that there are some things, like what I've discussed in this post, that are really holding it back. Still, if rumors are anything to go by then this show is only about a third of the way through, so there's plenty of time for it to improve.
Really the only things that need to be done is for the animation to be bumped up a level or two, along with the fight choreography, and for the characters power levels relative to each other to be more clear and consistent.
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