Dragonball franchise (Tournament of Power - part 3)

At this point, the writers decided to get rid of universe 6, so they were making up excuses for taking them out in the dumbest ways imaginable. The first bigshot was Frost who was all about trolling since day one. He had the twist of being a good Frieza, only for a second twist to undo the first twist and he was just like Frieza all along. In the tournament of power he teamed up with Frieza and everybody was theory crafting a million nonsense regarding who they will double-cross and how powerful they will be as a duo, only for the whole thing being yet another troll. They never teamed up to do anything and Frieza eventually double-crossed him in a most anti-climactic way. Why did he even need to fool Frost into lowering his guard by kicking the crap out of Gohan, when he was a thousand times stronger than him? What happened to the whole “we need to save up our energy” when they wasted their energy and time on this completely pointless trolling? That’s what happens when you create a character whose only defining feature is trolling. The writers didn’t know what to do with him, so they destroyed the credibility of anyone else who was interacting with him as well. Gohan was once again shown to be incapable to deal with someone way weaker than him, and Frieza was wasting energy and time when they were supposed to be fighting for survival. Also, it was proven once again how the rules make no sense and everyone can break them whenever he feels like it. Frost was erased for attacking someone from the bench, when everyone else was constantly throwing weapons and giving their energy from the bench without ever being punished.

The second bigshot was Hit, who in the classic tradition of this horrible series, was completely nerfed compared to his previous appearance. He didn’t defeat almost everyone with his time skip ability, and he didn’t constantly power up just by looking at stronger opponents. In fact, he was defeated so easily to the point many shonentards refused to believe he was out of the ring and were making up bullshit theories about him still being on the stage by using clones or some shit.

The next ones were Kale and Caulifla, who sum up everything that is wrong with listening to your fans. Creating gender swapped imitations of non-canon characters, who can power up with no training or effort, from normal form all the way to SSJ2 in less than an hour. Somehow getting no damage from a SSG kamehame but one minute later having trouble with a SSJ2. Not getting disqualified for using the Potara, or not using the Potara right away to defeat everyone in one minute, and instead assume neither of them is going to get knocked out by the time they decide to use the earrings. Something which happened almost twice before the fusion, by the way. And of course Goku and Vegeta really want to save up their energy which is why they trained their enemies in the middle of the battle by wasting their energy in making them stronger and harder to defeat. And Kefla really wanted to save her universe by taking out the strongest enemies, which is why she was playing with the other saiyans the whole time instead of teaming up with them for taking out Jiren. Top notch writing.

And finally there were the two Namekians, the definition of mishandled characters. They were super powerful, they had perfect teamwork, they used tactics, they didn’t limit their attacks to one technique, they never dropped their guard just because, they never held back for having a fun battle, they didn’t become villains the moment they went up against universe 7, they didn’t do something ridiculous such as powering up in the middle of the fight or heal instantly when they were out of stamina, and they did not break the rules by using weapons. Despite all these assets, they were hiding throughout the tournament for no reason. They didn’t even bother to take out a few nobodies while in stealth mode. And on top of all that, the rest of their team acted like they didn’t matter until they were the last remaining on stage. It’s almost like the writers didn’t have a clue about what they will be like up until the episode they introduced them. It’s almost like instead of fleshing out these infinitely better written than even the main heroes characters, they wasted their time in gender bending fan service saiyans. These Namekians should have been the main focus of universe 6 and they only appeared for a single episode.

But why should anyone pay attention to those nobodies when you have excellently written characters like Ribrianne, a parody of magical girls whose only defining feature is making the exact same joke about love? She repeated it in almost every goddamn episode despite getting old after a few times. Not even her powers were interesting; she had the most generic attacks with the word love in the name to further make her more obnoxious. She didn’t even use teamwork with the other members of her team despite never shutting up about love and compassion. Everybody hated her for all the screen time she was getting and cheered when they finally took her out. But again, why would you give focus on the well-written Namekians where you have characters such as her?

After all this mess, most of the remaining known heroes were taken out in a hurry and in very anti-climactic ways because the writers were suddenly told they only have a dozen episodes to wrap up this travesty. This begins with Piccolo, who was once again nothing more than a surrogate father for Gohan, even after decades had passed and he had become a family man. Because why would you do something new with a character when you can rehash the same shit that sell based on nostalgia? After being nothing but support the whole time, he gets pushed out of the ring by a bug, because we can’t have an established hero losing fairly by a nobody.

Then No.18 gets kicked out after doing nothing but supporting others and never standing out on her own. And she does a pretty crappy job at it, since she fails to protect Kuririn’s back, and her heroic sacrifice to let her brother stay on the stage was fake feels, since just like it happened with Tien, Goku forgot how to teleport, thus he didn’t know he could save anyone he wanted at any time.

Then Dyspo and Gohan are taken out in lame ways, since for some reason being the fastest in all the universes is not fast enough to avoid getting trapped by a bunch of beams, and being promised to get a power up throughout the arc means nothing. Also, Gohan, what happened to your reliant self? You were supposed to no longer be a crybaby after you became SSJ2. Now you went back into a scared manchild who refuses to take part in a fight because of a business meeting and constantly needs Piccolo to give you courage. Where did your character development go to? Also, Goku forgot how to teleport again, so he couldn’t save you.