Whenever I feel like I’m being too tight-fisted when it comes to fanservice in movies and TV - i.e. callback fanservice, nostalgia bait, “check out this link we made to something you liked! » view - I remember Jerry Seinfeld interview 2014. When asked if he thought Seinfeld reunion, he responded, “I know people would like a reunion show: ‘that’s what I want.’ My rule of show business is: “Don’t give the public what they want.” That’s why they’re not in show business.” It was a playful way of underlining the seriousness of what he had already said elsewhere while discussing the script for Seinfeld: If all the writers, showrunners and directors keep repeating what the audience already knows, what they like, nothing new will get support, and everything of value in this series will be destroyed. If you want a textbook example of what it’s like when a series refuses to end (and doesn’t The Simpsons), watch or read the original era Dragon Ball and then check Dragon Ball Super.
But it’s the prequels that seem particularly vulnerable to the temptation to indulge. So many pitfalls are constantly stumbling across franchises that go back in time. Popular characters, objects, and pieces of lore, often with a degree of mystique, are given complex backstories that make them more down to earth. Favorite actors become more important, sometimes in ways that undermine key themes of the original work. All the important questions are related to the main composition, an attempt to increase the scale of conflicts, which almost always leads to a decrease in the fictional world. Action, violence, horror, sexuality, technology and other genre elements are amplified, logic be damned. And then there are callbacks - so many callbacks. There’s a fine line between a funny joke and a hackneyed reference, and the former can easily become the latter.
I wonder if anyone at Toei Animation had these pitfalls in mind when they created Dragon Ball special TV, Bardock: Goku’s Father. By that point in the series, it had been established that the Saiyan race were the loyal foot soldiers of Lord Frieza and his planet-conquering empire. They were so effective that Frieza feared their growing strength and numbers, and the chance that the legendary Super Saiyan would appear and threaten him. Therefore, he destroyed the Saiyans and their home planet, and only four Saiyans, including the series protagonist Goku and his rival Prince Vegeta, managed to escape the genocide.
When will Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - Goku’s Father Pack be released?
AT Bardock: Goku’s Father, set several days before Frieza’s attack, the protagonist is endowed with psychic powers that allow him to see the destruction of his people and his son’s future on Earth. He fights an increasingly desperate battle against Frieza’s forces to change the fate of the Saiyans. In the background, his young son Kakarot (Goku) prepares to travel to Earth, while Frieza shows favor to the young prince Vegeta.
The vulnerability to common prequel traps should be obvious from this description. Of all the Saiyans in the galaxy, was it Goku’s father who gave the doomed last stand to Frieza? And he just has a unique ability that allows him to see the events of the original. Dragon Ball series? Does the special show a young Goku, a young Vegeta, Frieza and his right and left hand? How much cheesy callbacks, borrowed lines, battle re-creations, and unnecessary backstory can there be in this special edition?
As it turned out, hardly.
Bardock: ‘Goku’s father’ is one of the best major franchise prequels ever made
It is devoid of almost all the slight flaws that prequels are subject to. The big trap he dodges is the backstory. We will not know the name of Frieza’s race, nor extra details about his organization of the conquerors of the planets. The Saiyans are not loaded with extraneous schemes and relationships that undermine the nature of Frieza’s betrayal. There is not an iota of pathos in the character of Vegeta, and Goku, as a child, cannot do or be anything more than what Dragon Ball already established: a lower-class child with unremarkable strength, who was thrown onto an insignificant planet that he was supposed to subdue one day, a fate that was avoided by pure chance.
Finding out more about the characters’ past can be the joy of prequels if they’re done well, and can feel like a missed opportunity to do nothing more than illustrate what a manga creator Akira Toriyama By now it’s already installed. But what he established was enough for Frieza’s fear of the Saiyans, Vegeta’s mixture of pride and bitterness, and Goku’s relationship with both of them to work. As a side story of this main conflict, bardock nothing more could be added without upsetting the pieces already in play, and he took no chances.
bardock no goku
Where it really was risqué was its main character, whose story also doesn’t require much from the established cast. Bardock himself may be the star of the special, but he’s not Goku. He is a willing and eager participant in the planetary trade, gleefully destroying entire races without a second thought. In the original Japanese, he and his team praise Frieza at the start of the special for their assignments. He treats his own child with contempt when he sees Kakarot’s combat power. Bardock shows some affection for his crew and displays pride and patriotism towards the Saiyans and their homeworld, but the race he values and tries to save is a pack of ruthless conquerors. He never repents of his many sins or comes to the conclusion that his people are doing evil, and he rebels against Frieza only because he knows that Frieza intends to reward his faithful service with genocide.
And those psychic powers that Bardock gets at the start of the special? They are of no real use to him. He learns what Frieza intends and sees what Goku will do on Earth, but the psychic powers never defeat him in battles or help him convince anyone else of what Frieza is up to. The rest of the Saiyans (again, speaking of the original language track here) are confident that their master and benefactor will never harm them. Bardock, in fact, is Cassandra in her special form, aware of death, but not believing.
In his pride, malice and immorality, Bardock has more in common with Vegeta and Frieza than with his own son. But he and Goku have one thing in common: neither is destined to be extraordinary, and the special one doesn’t try to make them that way. Goku could easily end up like his older brother Raditz, a low-class Saiyan who survived under Frieza’s heel. By chance, he hit his head, developed a pure and kind personality, and through this purity of heart, he proved himself worthy of the highest power. Likewise, Bardock could have just been another Saiyan caught off guard when a giant energy blast tore apart the core of the planet Vegeta, except he had a chance encounter with an alien race that gave him psychic powers to torment him. in his last days. Bardock decided to act on the visions he was given and give the last stand.
However, unlike Goku, Bardock’s random encounters mean nothing. He is unusually strong for a low-class Saiyan, and there are cool moments in his battles with Frieza’s soldiers, but they become more pathetic as the release progresses. The fights do not return to the series and do not try to raise the stakes; they tire Bardock, leave him on the brink of death, and culminate in an attempt on Frieza’s life, which the evil lord deflects with a snap of his finger. The success of Bardock’s team is presented as the key news that prompted Frieza to destroy the Saiyan race, but Frieza was already troubled by the Saiyans and would never know Bardock’s name and has no reason to fear him as a person. Bardock: Goku’s Father is unique among major franchise prequels in that it has no bearing on the main plot. It’s a tense and gripping tragedy, wonderful in its own right and briefly mentioned in the series, but a key part of its tragedy is how little Bardock ultimately mattered.
There’s unnecessary fanservice in the special
Bardock’s visions of Goku’s future are repeated several times more than necessary. One of Bardock’s visions is not about the future, but about a fantastic meeting with his adult son that seems to exist only in the moment. Both Toriyama and Toei eventually succumbed to the traps of the prequels in the 21st century. Dragon Ball Minus, a special manga published in 2014, reintroduced Bardock as an unusually thoughtful and considerate Saiyan parent with some remorse for his people’s trade who sent a kakarot old enough to know what’s going on on Earth for his own safety against orders la Superman. This makes Bardock a more unique and important Saiyan in the dragon world, turns Goku’s life on Earth into a preordained act of love, and the notion of a Super Saiyan God is mentioned to try and tie the manga to Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Godswhich only makes the dragon world a more isolated place. Minus is one of the poorest Dragon Ball materials, and it has supplanted Bardock: Goku’s Father in canon through Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
So, Dragon Ball the prequels offer yin and yang using the same protagonist. The TV special got almost everything right; Minus as well as Broly did almost everything wrong. However, if the latter was adopted as a continuation of the series, the former is still widely available. And if you prefer the prequel to take the less beaten path and offer a unique story, tone, and star, Bardock: Goku’s Father it’s not just fun for Dragon Ball fans, but for any series that goes back to the past.
Source: Collider
