Addressing the Single Biggest Flaw of Dragonball Super · 10:59pm Jan 18th, 2018
So I'm binge-watching Dragonball Super on Crunchyroll and I've already read ahead for some spoilers, and I've gotta say...
There's one big, fat problem with Dragonball Super, and it's turned into the ugliest plot tumor in shounen anime history.
For all the overpowered fighters, gods, monsters, demons, Saiyans, and everything the HELL else that exists in the Dragon World, there's one character who never should have existed, ever:
Zen-oh.
Throughout the history of Dragonball, Toriyama has expanded on the heirarchy of the pantheon of gods and demons in this universe, creating a bureaucracy chain that ultimately becomes a thearchy at the upper echelons. And right up to the addition of the Hakaishin and Tenshi, that was all well and good. Everything works. Everything clicks. Everything makes sense.
Individual planets have Gods who are not actual gods, but rather mortal beings with intense spiritual connections to both the living and the dead, capable of functioning as go-betweens between the moral realm and the other world. A planet's God can approach the Lord of the Dead, Enma-daioh, and can communicate with--hell, is aware of--the God who oversees a quadrant of the universe, the Kaiou.
Each universe has four Kaiou who each oversee a quadrant of the universe, or a single galaxy, or however you want to interpret it. Then there's the Daikaiou, who is superior above the Kaiou. Daikaiou's purpose is a bit iffy, as he seems to fade in relevance after his one and only real mention.
Next, we have the God Above All Gods, Kaioushin-sama, or the "Supreme Kai" in English translations. Kaioushin is the highest god of the universe, responsible for overseeing the creation, preservation, and continuation of all mortal life, always observing, never interfering unless a threat so severe that the entire universe is at stake arises.
This is where DBZ left off with the pantheon: the Kaiou are each charged with the oversight and protection of their domain, and have a more direct hand in managing the affairs of mortals. The Kaioushin step back and observe the affairs of their domain, only taking an active hand in the event of a crisis such as Majin Buu.
And that was all well and good, and then we got the movies and, subsequently, Dragonball Super, which introduced a new deity to the balance: the God of Destruction (Hakaishin) and Attendant/Angel (Tenshi). Now, in addition to the Kaioushin, whose job it is to watch, observe, and protect mortal existence, we have the Hakaishin, whose job it is to destroy anything anomalous, dangerous, or potentially catastrophic that appears in the universe. (Which of course creates a MASSIVE plothole--where the hell was Beerus when Majin Buu escaped? But I digress, I'm pretty sure Toriyama offered a half-assed handwave for this and I just forgot.) So now, at the top tier of the thearchy, we have the Kaioushin (Creation and Protection), Hakaishin (Destruction and Judgment), and Tenshi (...basically babysitting the Hakaishin).
And this is actually a well-designed, functional, and balanced system even though Toriyama essentially just kept pulling bigger, tougher gods out of his ass. Up to the point of the triumvirate of Kaioushin, Hakaishin, and Tenshi each universe has, the system works and is easy to understand and follow. You've got two gods who rule over everything in a single universe, one who creates, one who destroys, and all the other lesser gods answer to them and it all works. Right? Right.
And then there's THIS asshole.
Just by existing, Zen-oh fucks everything up. What was previously a well-balanced, easily comprehensible thearchy that gave structure and sanity to the twelve universes is now pointless once you learn that all of reality--EVERY reality--hangs precariously from a frayed tether, at the mercy of a capricious child god-king who has the power to erase everything in existence and is easily bored.
That's right. Any character you've come to know and love, any universe the series spends ANY time developing, anything and everything in the entire Dragonball multiverse can simply disappear in an instant, all the time and care put into its creation and development snuffed out, because an all-powerful blueberry jawbreaker is bored with it.
So naturally, once we introduce this stupid character, what's the next logical step? Oh! I know! Let's have a tournament between the twelve universes, and Zen-oh will erase the universes that are eliminated from the tournament!
Oh! Better idea! Let's make it so there is no possible way to stop this from happening because Zen-oh isn't really a villain, he's a driving force of all creation so teaming up to kill him kind of wouldn't accomplish anything!
And just to put a nice big ripe cherry on top of this steaming pile of fuck-you? Let's make the WHOLE FUCKING THING GOKU'S FAULT! Because we don't already have ENOUGH reasons to hate Goku, let's explicitly make him responsible for the deaths of trillions of innocent beings--and he doesn't even care!!
If you ever wanted to see a textbook example of a cancerous growth that completely and mercilessly kills any enjoyment there is to be had in a franchise, you need look no further than Zen-oh.
Funny, until today I never knew terminal cancer looked like a blueberry jawbreaker.
And here I thought it looked like the bastard offspring of a tree, a castle, and a geode. My mistake.
I've had similar thoughts before. Zen-Oh is awful, and Goku is totally to blame for any universes that get erased due to this tournament, whatever type of face-saving excuses they come up to try and justify it after the fact.
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Yep. Goku's gonna win it all, and he'll use his wish on the Super Dragonballs to bring all the erased universes back. Then there'll be some big impassioned shounen speech to Zen-oh and Mirai Zen-oh, and they'll probably erase themselves so the multiverse is never in danger of erasure ever again.
Meh. Also just so you know, Goku is gonna fuck up wording and all the other unknown universes we were told were destroyed before is gonna come back if obvious Dragon Ball stuff is to understand.
The manga does a really nice job of not making literally everyone in every universe hate Goku. It sets up the tournament so much better. In the manga opening to the arc, the Zenos are already debating wiping out a whole bunch of universes and are just about to actually do it until Goku shows up and reminds them about the tournament they're supposed to put on. IIRC, it's the GPs idea to then only wipe out the eliminated universes. So, without Goku, none of the lower level realms would have even had a fighting chance at all. They'd just be gone already.
It's a little ridiculous how much better at almost everything the manga is.
Also, I think Zeno is really more like the Omni Destruction shh don't tell him King, and we just haven't seen his Creative counterpart at his level of the theoarchy yet. The parallels are already there with Zeno, the Grand Priest, and the other Gods of Destruction/Angels combos. MasakoX, of TeamFourStar fame, just did a video on this, and I concur with his conclusion that Zalama, who forged the Super Dragonballs, is probably that big daddy creator deity.
He's probably off napping or something. Gods are lazy.
Just in case you forgot like you said, the reason Beerus didn’t show up to fight Buu was because he’s been sleeping since before Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta. He’s one of the laziest gods of destruction, preferring to sleep and eat and mainly destroying planets that he finds annoying or don’t have tasty food instead of properly doing his duties. That’s why he let Frieza rule the known universe for so long, and half why, as we learn later, universe 7 is the 2nd worst managed universe of all 12, with only universe 9 having a lower mortal level.
Also, while I do admit that Goku has a hand in the tournament and him not really caring about the other universes being erased is a major red flag, it isn’t exactly him who endangered the universes. Zeno was going to erase them anyway because so many had low levels and he felt there were too many anyway, but once Goku reminded him of the tournament he decided to use it as a chance to have one universe save themselves. Everyone pretty much just blames Goku because a universe 9 fighter threw him under the bus by blaming him for the tournament, even though they just learned they would have all been erased anyway, and they use him as a scapegoat for their anger since they can’t get mad at Zeno anyway.
The manga showed that Zeno was about to erase all but 4 of the universes just before Goku showed up to ask about the tournament, so he ended up giving them all a chance for survival. Hell Vados even mentioned in the anime that they should be grateful to him for giving them all a chance to survive.
If anything it's the Kaioshin and Hakaishin fault for doing a lousy job. Especially Beerus, the guy tried to blow up the Earth over pudding and he let Freeza do as he pleased without giving him any restrictions.
In the end though I'm guessing that Goku will either use the Super Dragon Balls to bring back the erased universes or have their populations be revived in the other universes. That or he could convince Zeno to do it.
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But Goku had no knowledge of any of that, he just wanted a good fight, and the more things got out of control, the less he cared about anything but having a good fight. It's coincidental that the Tournament of Power would maybe save a single universe.
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So uh, you guys realize that all of this just backs up the main point of my post, right? Which is that Zen-oh is a character who never needed to exist and everything that comes after the Goku Black/Zamasu saga is pure unmitigated bullshit because of Zen-oh.
Yeah, I figured this is how you'd take the reveal. The fact that there are 2 Zen-O's now is dumb too and they only serve to fill time in episodes repeating what's happening.
I like the Tournament and what's going on with the actual fights but I'm not defending why it's happening since it made Goku even more of a manchild that cares about fighting than usual.
Hopefully this is the end of Zen-O's importance after the hiatus.
Another thing that really sucks and really hate Zeno for: lots pf pointless scenes where one comments this shit in the tournament is the shit, the other repeats, and both shout. Repeat the same pattern for each chapter of the whole saga
Oh. This guy.
Now I'm not that into Dragon Ball like my half-brother is, but I know a filler character when I see it.
I mean, yeah, Goku could use the Super Dragon Balls to bring the erased universes back, but who's to say Zen-Oh couldn't just erase them again for no reason?
I like the way the picture you added seems to just scream "Yeah, I'm canon. Fuck you."
Zen-Oh is a good idea in theory. The supreme deity of the mutliverse is basiclly a small child? It has so much potential. The execution, on the other hand...
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He didn't need to exist, maybe, but he's consistent with the escalating hierarchy, at least. Dragonball is notorious for expanding its roster of divinity. Mostly though, I think he serves as a device to add some humility to Beerus and Champa. Whis and Vados (even the Grand Priest, if he still existed without Zeno for some reason) don't do it, despite being objectively stronger, because Angels are just servants. He's poorly utilized outside of that context, I agree, and having two of him doesn't do anyone any favors given his general reception thus far.
But, the Tournament of Power did give us this beautiful moment, so partial credit.
Also the Black Arc was a huge clusterfuck. There's like 15 timelines now.
Another annoyance is that it's the same voice actress using the same speech inflections for Chi in Chi's Sweet Home. I try to watch Super, and all I can see in my mind is a kitten.
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This. In between wiping out billions upon billions of lives while smiling like idiots. And nobody says anything because I guess it's okay when a stupid child does it, unlike with Zamasu.
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. Really, they don't even try to justify the reason for such thing to happen, "There are too many universes" 
. About my previous comment, it reminded me of this Moth's blog 
Yeah, a genocidal god doing it is evil, and it's okay if Zeno does it because he's just a kid
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/759701/one-dimensional-characters-are-bad
Yeah, I feel the Zenos' existence is awful, and don't even try to justify their actions (if they do later, it'd be pretty late for that as well), but I feel they fall in the above link category as well
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It's his job though, yeah it sucks but you can't really stand against the guy with the power to erase you in an instant. It's not that everyone is okay with it they just literally can't do anything about it. Like someone else mentioned Zeno's job is to destroy and most likely there is some other guy who's job it is create. I refuse to believe that Zeno is at the top of the godly hierarchy.
Not to mention I totally expect the other shoe to drop when the tournament comes to an end. The whole situation has seemed suspicious from the start.
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Okay I forgot about Tori-bot. That's fair, too. I think Akira gets his own designation as Meta God, or something, so as not to wonk the ladder too much. Though Masako did bring him up in another video I recall, so who knows what the future holds.
I'm assuming you didn't get to Jiren yet? Oh boy, if there ever was a "what's even the point of the story" character, it's Jiren in a nutshell. I'm so tired of him and his "oh I'm the best there is but I won't do shit cause I don't feel like it" schtick. I don't wish for many characters to disappear from the story, but this is one of them.
He was asleep. That’s literally the explanation: Beerus is just a slacker that happens to have phenomenal, godlike powers. If Whis weren’t there to remind him to actually do his job, it’s likely the events of Battle of Gods wouldn’t have happened at all.
4776752 Was he though? They never mention this before the head priest wants to calm down all the other fighters who are looking to gang up on Goku, so it really comes off as an excuse they made up to shift the blame from Goku.
The other thing is, even if Zen-Oh really was going to erase a bunch of universes someday, it could be in a year, or a billion years, there didn't seem to be any urgency to it until Goku started hanging around Zen-Oh, even though his own God of Destruction warned him that was too dangerous, and got him interested in fighting tournaments.
What's worse than an all-powerful blueberry jawbreaker that erases universes out of boredom? Using an all-powerful blueberry jawbreaker that acts like a bastardised amalgamation of Galactus and Cartoon Network's Clarence in order to beat people over the head with the fact that Kakarott is a show-off who likes punching people no matter what the cost.
Anyone here heard of MasakoX’s theory that Zen-Oh might be a representation of the Dragonball fan base? Also Super ending, or going on break after this arc, with a new movie coming in December?
so they finally went and made Goku's "who's next?" attitude the cause of all problems in the series?
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Eeyup.
So you're saying the whole structural hierarchy is entirely uprooted by the all powerful Zen-oh? I can agree with that. Just one more question: doesn't Discord do the same thing in MLP, or other characters like him in their respective franchises? I think I can also agree with your point of if you've got this all powerful entity, why bother with all of the other stuff? I never really though that much into Zen-oh uprooting it all until this blog brought it up. And I do think Goku's craving for battle does cloud his moral judgement a bit, but most of the time, he does care.