The sad story of me and Dragonball Multiverse
Despite my efforts to do the opposite, this might become somewhat rant-ish. You have been warned.
Once upon a time, on an average, peaceful day, I was browsing a random Hungarian Dragonball blog, when I came upon a section called "Dragonball Multiverse". I clicked on the link, and my jaw hit the floor.
What I've found was a webcomic drawn in a style that matched that of the series' creator Akira Toriyama almost perfectly. Proclaiming itself as a sequel to Dragonball Z, most of its premise seemed to be about making fights between characters that many fans talked about but could not take place in the original manga/anime happen (which won me over immediately), and what's more it even had a believable story framework to accomplish this: The whole thing took place in a tournament where residents of numerous alternate universes participate, an idea which was already touched upon a bit in the original. The team of the website owner and storyboard creator Salagir, and the actual artist Gogeta Jr. did an amazing job in basicly all aspects - it was like a dream come true.
Needless to say, I was instantly hooked. A new page is added twice a week (an insane pace considering they are doing this in their free time), so there were a lot of things to talk about in the page comment threads. The first "shock", you could say, hit me right there. Fans of Dragonball (and the series itself, for that matter) are often accused of being crude, simple-minded and/or agressive. I vehemently denied/deny this, as I think the series is a complex piece which has a lot more to offer than fights if you manage to look below the surface; and while I did see quite a few bickerings in Dragonball game forums, I did not think this to be applyable to the fan community as a whole. Man, was I in for a disappointment. Most of the people frequenting the site were just as primitive, immature and pardon me, stupid, as the stereotype claimed. Even among the few you could have an intelligent conversation with, arrogance and a condescending attitude seemed to be a requirement. It was disheartening to see - but whatever, I thought, the comic's fantastic, I won't let these people spoil my fun; and I did have a really good time for more than a half year.
Then came chapter 6. The title itself, "Pan's first fight to the death" sent off a few alarms inside my head, especially after it was revealed who her opponent will be; but I was still confident that nothing serious will happen. For those who don't know Dragonball, Pan is the granddaughter of the main protagonist, Goku, and is 13 years old in this comic (although she barely looks ten for some reason), and with that, she is the youngest of the main cast. Her opponent, Bojack the pirate, was a main villain in one of the movies, not a really nice guy to put it lightly - it was also obvious from the start that it will take something close to a miracle for Pan to win.
The fight did start off well though, Pan managed to surprise Bojack and landed a few nice blows, even launching a Kamehameha wave at him - the series' equalent of Slayers' Dragon Slave - roughing up the space pirate a bit. Bojack was not amused of course, and transformed into his stronger form (people often transform in Dragonball to get more powerful), blowing Pan away using his aura alone, signalling the expected turning point in the battle.
Then the nightmare started. Bojack appeared next to Pan, grabbed the 13-year-old girl by her neck, and started to strangle her. She was completely helpless and overpowered, with next to no chance of escape. I stared in horror at the frame in the lower left corner of the page, depicting Pan perfectly in Toriyama's style, but with her eyes bulged, gasping for breath and crying. Still, I said to myself, this page is probably that horrible on purpose; Gohan, Pan's father and Goku's son, who was watching the match with the rest of his family and seemed to be quite close to snapping, will do something to rescue her daughter from certain death. My hopes, however, came to be extremely short-lived as in the next page, Bojack snapped Pan's neck. While I did have the urge to track down Salagir and throw him out of a window at that moment, my previously established trust and appreciation of the authors caused a voice in my head to say: Okay, such a thing would've never occured in Dragonball, but Salagir must be doing this for a reason. The tournament was getting a bit stale with just fights after fights, a change of pace would not be bad - and with her family witnessing Pan's death, all hell is going to break loose here right now.
Well, I was wrong again. There was one member of her family (not even her father) who wanted to get revenge on Bojack, only to be told by the others that doing so would break the tournament rules and would result in all of them getting disqualified, and that she should not throw a tantrum(!). What the freakin' hell??!!
Of course, there is one factor I have not talked about yet: The existence of the Dragonballs. These titular objects can grant any wish if collected, and are often used by various characters in the series to bring their fallen comrades back from death; in fact, all participants are guaranteed to be brought back to life by the organizers at the end of the tournament, which is why killing is allowed in a match. However, that does not mean, and did not ever mean in Dragonball that people just stand idly by while their children are being brutally executed, for crying out loud! (Just thinking about the number of people who reminded me that Pan will be resurrected anyway, so why should we care if she died makes me want to scream.) Even if people died in the original, it was never so damn pointless as this. I might sound spiteful, but I am beginning to think that Salagir simply wanted to include this for shock value, and because nowadays dark=cool, regardless of whether that is appropriate for the series in question.
At times, I don't understand why I am so pissed off about this. This is just fanfiction after all; it's Salagir's own story on his own website, so if he wants to show people's heads on a stick, why should anyone stop him. I just shouldn't be reading it if it angers me... So why? My problem is probably the fact that while fanfiction is all over the place, there won't be another Dragonball Multiverse. Ever. What Salagir and Gogeta Jr. managed to pull off here is unique, and had the potential to be the true successor of Dragonball Z, something that the "official" Dragonball GT (a "filler-season" with minimal involvement from the original creator) never really managed to be. But that chance is now gone; their work became a fancomic which is the sequel of Dragonball Z in name, but not in spirit. And I feel that is something to be really sad about. :(
Once upon a time, on an average, peaceful day, I was browsing a random Hungarian Dragonball blog, when I came upon a section called "Dragonball Multiverse". I clicked on the link, and my jaw hit the floor.
What I've found was a webcomic drawn in a style that matched that of the series' creator Akira Toriyama almost perfectly. Proclaiming itself as a sequel to Dragonball Z, most of its premise seemed to be about making fights between characters that many fans talked about but could not take place in the original manga/anime happen (which won me over immediately), and what's more it even had a believable story framework to accomplish this: The whole thing took place in a tournament where residents of numerous alternate universes participate, an idea which was already touched upon a bit in the original. The team of the website owner and storyboard creator Salagir, and the actual artist Gogeta Jr. did an amazing job in basicly all aspects - it was like a dream come true.
Needless to say, I was instantly hooked. A new page is added twice a week (an insane pace considering they are doing this in their free time), so there were a lot of things to talk about in the page comment threads. The first "shock", you could say, hit me right there. Fans of Dragonball (and the series itself, for that matter) are often accused of being crude, simple-minded and/or agressive. I vehemently denied/deny this, as I think the series is a complex piece which has a lot more to offer than fights if you manage to look below the surface; and while I did see quite a few bickerings in Dragonball game forums, I did not think this to be applyable to the fan community as a whole. Man, was I in for a disappointment. Most of the people frequenting the site were just as primitive, immature and pardon me, stupid, as the stereotype claimed. Even among the few you could have an intelligent conversation with, arrogance and a condescending attitude seemed to be a requirement. It was disheartening to see - but whatever, I thought, the comic's fantastic, I won't let these people spoil my fun; and I did have a really good time for more than a half year.
Then came chapter 6. The title itself, "Pan's first fight to the death" sent off a few alarms inside my head, especially after it was revealed who her opponent will be; but I was still confident that nothing serious will happen. For those who don't know Dragonball, Pan is the granddaughter of the main protagonist, Goku, and is 13 years old in this comic (although she barely looks ten for some reason), and with that, she is the youngest of the main cast. Her opponent, Bojack the pirate, was a main villain in one of the movies, not a really nice guy to put it lightly - it was also obvious from the start that it will take something close to a miracle for Pan to win.
The fight did start off well though, Pan managed to surprise Bojack and landed a few nice blows, even launching a Kamehameha wave at him - the series' equalent of Slayers' Dragon Slave - roughing up the space pirate a bit. Bojack was not amused of course, and transformed into his stronger form (people often transform in Dragonball to get more powerful), blowing Pan away using his aura alone, signalling the expected turning point in the battle.
Then the nightmare started. Bojack appeared next to Pan, grabbed the 13-year-old girl by her neck, and started to strangle her. She was completely helpless and overpowered, with next to no chance of escape. I stared in horror at the frame in the lower left corner of the page, depicting Pan perfectly in Toriyama's style, but with her eyes bulged, gasping for breath and crying. Still, I said to myself, this page is probably that horrible on purpose; Gohan, Pan's father and Goku's son, who was watching the match with the rest of his family and seemed to be quite close to snapping, will do something to rescue her daughter from certain death. My hopes, however, came to be extremely short-lived as in the next page, Bojack snapped Pan's neck. While I did have the urge to track down Salagir and throw him out of a window at that moment, my previously established trust and appreciation of the authors caused a voice in my head to say: Okay, such a thing would've never occured in Dragonball, but Salagir must be doing this for a reason. The tournament was getting a bit stale with just fights after fights, a change of pace would not be bad - and with her family witnessing Pan's death, all hell is going to break loose here right now.
Well, I was wrong again. There was one member of her family (not even her father) who wanted to get revenge on Bojack, only to be told by the others that doing so would break the tournament rules and would result in all of them getting disqualified, and that she should not throw a tantrum(!). What the freakin' hell??!!
Of course, there is one factor I have not talked about yet: The existence of the Dragonballs. These titular objects can grant any wish if collected, and are often used by various characters in the series to bring their fallen comrades back from death; in fact, all participants are guaranteed to be brought back to life by the organizers at the end of the tournament, which is why killing is allowed in a match. However, that does not mean, and did not ever mean in Dragonball that people just stand idly by while their children are being brutally executed, for crying out loud! (Just thinking about the number of people who reminded me that Pan will be resurrected anyway, so why should we care if she died makes me want to scream.) Even if people died in the original, it was never so damn pointless as this. I might sound spiteful, but I am beginning to think that Salagir simply wanted to include this for shock value, and because nowadays dark=cool, regardless of whether that is appropriate for the series in question.
At times, I don't understand why I am so pissed off about this. This is just fanfiction after all; it's Salagir's own story on his own website, so if he wants to show people's heads on a stick, why should anyone stop him. I just shouldn't be reading it if it angers me... So why? My problem is probably the fact that while fanfiction is all over the place, there won't be another Dragonball Multiverse. Ever. What Salagir and Gogeta Jr. managed to pull off here is unique, and had the potential to be the true successor of Dragonball Z, something that the "official" Dragonball GT (a "filler-season" with minimal involvement from the original creator) never really managed to be. But that chance is now gone; their work became a fancomic which is the sequel of Dragonball Z in name, but not in spirit. And I feel that is something to be really sad about. :(