Critical Anime Overview #1: Dragonball franchise (The Namek Saga)
The Namek Saga is both the peak of the franchise, and also the point where it broke its consistency and should have never continued further. The most obvious evidence was the rewrite of what Saiyans were up to that point. Goku used to be a fast learner of new techniques, and every Saiyan had a tail. Saiyans no longer having a tail had no in-series excuse; Toriyama simply got bored of drawing them. Without this simple detail, nothing could visually distinguish Saiyans from humans, and removed what was making them special. And I know that you will probably think Saiyans were still distinguishable by their SSJ transformation, but let me remind you that as of then there was no indication there could be more than one SSJ every 1000 years.
And speaking of said transformation, it was essentially a cop-out for beating Frieza. Yes, it was foreshadowed by a prophecy, which is a cop-out on itself, but there was nothing to justify why Frieza didn’t kill all the Saiyans despite knowing that and having way stronger soldiers at his command, or why Goku unlocked the transformation by seeing Kuririn getting killed the second time, but not the first time. There were some indirect rules made up by fans to explain the unlocking of the transformation, such as having a high enough power level at base form, and seeing one of your friends dying in front of your eyes. They would all be proven wrong in later arcs, but even during its first appearance, it was all too convenient. What could have easily saved it was the excuse of Guru unlocking Goku’s potential with his ability, but this wasn’t meant to be.
Another downgrade was the plot hereon turning into “how to get 5 power ups in the same arc, in the least amount of time” instead of spending some time in meaningful characterization. Up until now, a character would need to train hard with a stronger master for getting a power up. From this arc onwards, this was not necessary, since all it took was getting a zenkai by healing your injuries. Thus another limitation was taken away, since now even defeat in battle was a victory.
And it wasn’t even only limitation taken away. The Dragonballs of Earth could only resurrect someone once. The Dragonballs of Namek could resurrect you as many times as you like, thus making death even less of an issue. As if that wasn’t enough, there was also Guru, who could instantly unlock your potential with a simple touch. What most of us didn’t seem to understand at the time of watching it in the 90s, was the importance of limitations for maintaining tension. Without them, the only way for having tension came through constantly increasing the stakes by making the next villain more and more powerful. And nothing proves this better than Emperor Frieza, who in his initial form alone was eclipsing every mortal in the universe. By the time he got to his final form (for now at least) he was over 200 times stronger, which was completely ridiculous and unnecessary for the fights to remain interesting.
Toriyama stopped trying to find a way for a character to need progressively harder means to get stronger, or spend years in training with a master. He realized the shonentards didn’t give a shit about training that would make a power up feel deserved. They just wanted to see some damn power ups goddammit. Thus, he just skipped the downtime of training, which was a fine way for the teacher and the student to bond, as well as an in-series explanation for what exactly the power up meant on a mental level, aside from having the result of punching the bad guy harder.
This in effect, made power ups to be hollow and a waste of time, despite being instant. Take the Ginyu force. They offered nothing to the plot and could be removed without changing a thing. They were in a sense the evil counterparts of the Z warriors and did help Vegeta to level up, but instant power ups are not plot and the zenkai excuse had no philosophy behind it, unlike the earlier power ups. Nobody was learning something new each time; they were just punching harder than before.
Dodoria and Zarbon shouldn't have been foddered from the very beginning. Frieza's foot soldiers and Cui were more than enough to show what a power house Vegeta was before them. Dodoria and Zarbon should have been Frieza's elite men. They were next to him all the time in flashbacks and had a personal history with Vegeta, unlike the Ginyu force which was retconned and had no past history from flashbacks. This way the arc could have been 20 episodes shorter, with stronger characterization for the villains, and wouldn’t be recycling the constant “get injured and healed” power up nonsense.
The same goes for Nail the Namekian. What a throwaway character. Powerful enough to take out Dodoria and Zarbon, yet did nothing and abandoned his people to get slaughtered, before jobbing to Frieza. He should have done more than becoming an excuse for Piccolo to get a power up. Speaking of Piccolo, the whole plan to waste the wishes on resurrecting him and bringing him on Namek made no sense. What exactly was he supposed to accomplish? How did he assume fusing with Nail would make him strong enough to take on Frieza? The train of thought of the heroes still makes no sense. Nail should be the one doing all that, traveling around the planet, fusing with other Namekians, thus excusing his power.
A last thing I have to mention is the pacing. By now, the anime was very close to the manga, so they had to slow down the pacing with characters yelling while slowly powering up, panning slowly through backgrounds getting destroyed, as well as making five minutes in-series to last five episodes. We didn’t mind it as much when we had nothing better to watch on television, but binge-watching the arc nowadays can be quite frustrating. The Saiyan Saga was at least short in comparison to later ones, which indirectly makes it easier to watch and better as an experience.
As a whole, the Namek Saga was like a second Red Ribbon Saga. Lots of pointless episodes, and meaningless power-ups, leading to an amazing finale. It also broke the consistency of the show forever after and it should have been the ending of the franchise, because everything that followed served only in making it worse as a whole. It was pure hype when watching it without caring about the quality of its writing, but from a critical standpoint, I can’t give it more than a 5/10.