The Coyote Den

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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CoyoteUnion
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Joined: Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:20 am

The Coyote Den

Post by CoyoteUnion »

I don't see many mainstream battle manga builds (Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, etc) builds here, so I'm doing them myself. I'll link builds as I make them.

Dragon Ball
I meant to do a deep dive into the whole series, which was way too big to pull off. Future builds won't look this way.
Series Overview
Pilaf Saga Overview
Goku (PL 6, 73 PP/PL 7, 59 PP)
Bulma (PL 4, 38 PP)
Oolong (PL 2, 47 PP)
Yamcha (PL 5, 76 PP)
Puar (PL 3, 47 PP)
Ox-King (PL 8, 102 PP)
Chi-Chi (PL 8, 14 PP)
Monster Carrot (PL 9, 71 PP)
Pilaf (PL 2, 46 PP)
Mai (PL 5, 55 PP)
Shu (PL 6, 61 PP)
21st Tournament Overview
Goku (PL 8, 116 PP)
Krillin (pre-training) (PL 5, 66 PP)
Launch (PL 5, 60 PP)

Yu Yu Hakusho
Yusuke Urameshi (PL 11, 159 PP)
Kazuma Kuwabara (PL 10, 140 PP)
Kurama (PL 10/11, 188/244 PP)



House Rules
  • Impervious is like it was in 2e.
  • All firearms do 3 ranks more damage, so do flamethrowers, dynamite, grenades and grenade launchers. You can still be immune to shotguns at +9 Impervious Toughness, which a PL8 brick would probably have, and if you aren't Impervious guns actually hurt you.
  • Melee weapons do a minimum of their damage rank +2, and a maximum of their damage rank +8 so Doomsday can't pick up a sword for +3 damage. If someone tries to make them do more damage, they break. That's only Equipment, of course, so if Doomsday buys his sword, it's Death of Superman 2: Kryptonite Bugaloo.
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Fri Jun 17, 2022 5:58 am, edited 3 times in total.
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CoyoteUnion
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Dragon Ball

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Dragon Ball
I love this show.

Look, I’ve been lurking for years. I know how most of you feel about this series, and you have crap taste and we can't be friends I totally get why. It ignores most of its best characters, the main characters just shoot the same blasts in a slightly different shape, the gods mostly exist to sell “Instant Power-Ups, Just Add Water” like it’s going out of style, Piccolo vs Android 17 is supposed to be one of the best fights in the series just because both fighters actually have a chance, the Dragon Balls are used so often by the end that “nothing ever dies, we will rise again” is literally a lyric in one of the newer theme songs... but I still love it. Blame nostalgia if you want, but I can’t let this thing go.

I don’t think this community’s ever seen Dragon Ball builds from a current fan’s perspective, but somehow I don’t think I’ll actually be much nicer than Jab or Kreuzritter. I know how to hit it where it hurts.

Unlike most people, I wasn’t around for the first run on TV (where my second-gen M&M fans at?), and I still keep up today. So here’s the stuff you might have missed.

21st Century Dragon Man
From 2009-2011, a new cut of DBZ up to the end of Cell’s arc called Dragon Ball Kai (marketed as Dragon Ball Z Kai over here) came out. It’s meant to be more like the original manga. That means trimming the filler and removing every non-canon episode, so it gets through Cell in 98 episodes (there’s still padding, but the original anime took almost 200 episodes!). For the record, this is where the "newer theme song" comes from.

The dub is also much better. Short version is, back in the 90’s there were two dubs: Ocean (the “next dimension” one) and Funimation. Funimation was slightly newer, but they both aired at the same time, and sometimes the networks would swap them out with no warning. The Kai dub is by the same Funimation cast, but by then they’d played these characters for 10+ years and swapped out some of the worse casting choices (no more chain-smoking woman Freeza).

This was the first new DBZ content in years, even if it was just a recut, but it was nothing compared to the hype in 2013 when the movie Battle of Gods came out. It was the first original, canon Dragon Ball story in years. It wasn’t like other DBZ movies either; Toriyama had significant influence over the script, the movie was advertised almost a year out from release, and the art, animation and story were all top-notch. In the movie’s best twist, Goku gets a brand-new Super Saiyan form to beat the bad guy like always... but it doesn’t work and the villain goes free to become a recurring character for the foreseeable future. It grossed $51 million.

The real change, though, was that Battle of Gods wasn’t just a standalone. Again, it was meant to be the canon sequel to Z, displacing the unsuccessful GT (though the video games and some promotional tie-ins still acknowledge GT, more on that later). It introduced fan favorite Beerus, the lazy, food-obsessed God of Destruction even Goku can’t beat. It also mentioned eleven whole universes besides Universe 7, the one we knew.

In 2014, Dragon Ball Kai adapted Majin Buu’s arc to finish Z. Unfortunately it’s slower than the rest of Kai (over 60 episodes to adapt less than a hundred from Z), but at least it exists.

In 2015, the second new movie, Revival of F (called the infinitely cooler Resurrection ‘F’ in the US) came out, in which Freeza comes back to life. It didn’t quite hold up to Battle of Gods despite making more money ($65 million!), but it proved the series would continue. Just a few months later, we got that in spades.

Dragon Ball Super was an anime that lasted from mid-2015 to early 2018 (twice as long as GT and not much shorter than Kai, even though it feels like way less happened), meant to explore those new universes and the power of the Gods. It was... Let me get to it in the builds, then we’ll talk. There’s some good and bad, and the battle between it and GT in the fanbase has brought out ten times more GT fans than I ever thought existed before Super!

Currently, Dragon Ball’s on hiatus again, unless you count the Super Dragon Ball Heroes “anime” (barely, it’s like ten minutes a month of web video), created to sell the Dragon Ball Heroes card game. I like to call Dragon Ball Heroes and all its products the Promotional Expanded Universe, since it goes pretty far from canon. I won’t be building it. I don’t even think Jab would build it. Jab, tell them you wouldn't build it.

I dare you guys to watch it. I actually dare you. Just make sure you have a straitjacket and a padded basement.

The only exception is the Broly movie. Yeah, turns out when you get Toriyama to make Broly into an actual character and put him in canon, it’s a good time. I’m not as wild about it as some people, but I had fun watching it. At $125 million on an $8.5 mil budget, it’s one of the highest-grossing anime tie-ins of all time, only behind the first two Pokemon movies and a Doraemon adaptation, and it made two-thirds of its money international.

And lastly, the elephant in the room... Dragon Ball Abridged. Started in 2008 by TeamFourStar when the "Abridged Series" craze was at its peak, it lived long past the others as it morphed from a parody to a full-on rewrite up to the end of Cell's arc. It's a little rough in Season 1, but I know a couple people who don't like Dragon Ball and like this. It was extremely successful, turning TFS into a 3.5 million-subscriber YouTube channel and its own business, and almost every episode has over 10 million views despite several copyright strikes. Funimation doesn't really like the series, since it technically violates its copyright, but they also can't do anything about it anymore or their fanbase would implode. Heck, their Dragon Ball Super dub is suspiciously less serious than Kai, and sure, Super is Super, but there's definitely influence there. TFS even had some extras in that dub, and one of the custom voices in the game Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 is their Nappa, who became a meme.

Unfortunately, it also caused what I call the TFS Effect, when Dragon Ball fans think something in the real series is like it was in TeamFourStar. The biggest example is Cell; many fans now think this bland green cut-out is their favorite villain because they forgot he isn't really the magnificent bastard from Abridged (okay, I'm exaggerating, but his fanbase is way bigger than it was five years ago). The second worst case is the "Goku is a terrible dad" meme (sure, they didn't start it, but they made it big) that people think is canon.

Speaking of video games, there are three important ones. I already went over Dragon Ball Heroes. Dragon Ball Xenoverse are two games where you work for the Supreme Kai of Time (video game OC, but everyone in this game is part of the Promotional Expanded Universe) as one of her Time Patrollers, along with Future Trunks. Together, you stop Towa and Mira, villains from the older video game Dragon Ball Online, from messing with time, so you have to play through the canon story with some twists. In the first game, it turns out the real villain is a new character, Demigra, but in the second Towa and Mira are the villains for real.

The last one's Dragon Ball FighterZ, a fighting game that shocked the world (and me) by being an actual competitive fighter on the level of Street Fighter or Tekken. It's not the first licensed anime game to be competitive, but other than JoJo: Heritage for the Future all the way back on the SNES (which isn't nearly as popular, though I think it's underrated), I can't think of a third right now.

A Note on Power Levels
(The Mutants and Masterminds ones, not the Dragon Ball ones. I’ll call those Battle Powers (BP), it’s a pretty common translation of the original term Sentou Ryoku.)

After a few arcs, it’s impractical to build Dragon Ball characters on what their real PLs would be, or else we’d be in triple digits. At a certain point (definitely by Z, but maybe earlier, we’ll see), character PL will be more about how strong someone is in the context of that arc. For example, Android 18 is much stronger than Freeza in the show, but Freeza is the main villain of a major arc, while 18 ends up being the stepping stone to Cell, the real main villain. So Freeza will have a much higher PL.
Jabroniville
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Re: The Coyote Den

Post by Jabroniville »

Cool! Always good to see a new active thread :). I'll be watching this one!
RainOnTheSun
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Re: Dragon Ball

Post by RainOnTheSun »

CoyoteUnion wrote: Mon Oct 12, 2020 8:17 am After a few arcs, it’s impractical to build Dragon Ball characters on what their real PLs would be, or else we’d be in triple digits. At a certain point (definitely by Z, but maybe earlier, we’ll see), character PL will be more about how strong someone is in the context of that arc. For example, Android 18 is much stronger than Freeza in the show, but Freeza is the main villain of a major arc, while 18 ends up being the stepping stone to Cell, the real main villain. So Freeza will have a much higher PL.
There's also the way Freeza's biggest fight destroys a planet and 18's biggest fight destroys... a small part of a highway. The biggest key to my enjoyment of Dragonball Z was probably realizing that 95% of the power ups in it are completely meaningless.
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Ares
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Re: Dragon Ball

Post by Ares »

RainOnTheSun wrote: Mon Oct 12, 2020 10:24 am
CoyoteUnion wrote: Mon Oct 12, 2020 8:17 am After a few arcs, it’s impractical to build Dragon Ball characters on what their real PLs would be, or else we’d be in triple digits. At a certain point (definitely by Z, but maybe earlier, we’ll see), character PL will be more about how strong someone is in the context of that arc. For example, Android 18 is much stronger than Freeza in the show, but Freeza is the main villain of a major arc, while 18 ends up being the stepping stone to Cell, the real main villain. So Freeza will have a much higher PL.
There's also the way Freeza's biggest fight destroys a planet and 18's biggest fight destroys... a small part of a highway. The biggest key to my enjoyment of Dragonball Z was probably realizing that 95% of the power ups in it are completely meaningless.
Or as Team Four Star so eloquently put it:

Image
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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CoyoteUnion
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Dragon Ball Part 1: The Pilaf Saga

Post by CoyoteUnion »

The Pilaf Saga
Now...our story begins as many stories often do... With a young girl shooting a little boy in the face. --Abridged Cell

Dragon Ball’s first “arc” isn’t, it’s more a series of mini-episodes. They’re all tied together by sixteen-year-old genius Bulma Brief’s* quest for the Dragon Balls, seven orbs that summon Shenron the wish-granting dragon when they’re brought together. Forest boy Son Goku just happens to have the four-star ball, passed down from his dead grandpa Gohan. Goku doesn’t know anything about anything, and Bulma’s the only human he’s seen in four years, but she wants his inhuman strength so she brings her along. Of course, she doesn’t tell him the balls, including his last memory of his grandpa, will scatter all across the world after she makes her wish.

Along the way, they:
  • Help a sea turtle find his way home, and get a Dragon Ball from his owner, the perverted Turtle Hermit. He gives Goku a flying cloud, the Kinto-un or Flying Nimbus, as a reward. Only the pure of heart can ride it, so it's useless to anyone else anyway.
  • Free a town from the fearsome shapeshifter Oolong, who turns out to just be a fourth-grader who talks a good game and got bankrupted by his own harem. Bulma brings him along because of his powers and controls him with a laxative she invented. You ever feel like something’s got to be illegal, you just don’t know what law?
  • Meet teen heartthrob bandit Yamcha and Oolong’s old Shapeshifting Kindergarten (yes, that’s a thing, no, it never comes back) classmate Puar. Yamcha actually matches Goku in his first real fight until he sees Bulma and nopes out; apparently he’s terrified of girls even though Bulma thinks he’s a total hottie. Naturally, he tries to steal the Dragon Balls that night and accidentally steals a look at Bulma’s bewbs, so he decides he should just wait for them to collect all seven. He ends up hav
  • Try stealing a Dragon Ball from the terrifying Ox King, who lives on Fire Mountain. They expect the fight of their lives, but they don’t have to because not only did the Ox King and Gohan learn martial arts together, the Turtle Hermit (aka Muten Roshi) was their insanely powerful teacher the whole time. He’ll give them the Dragon Ball if they only get the Hermit’s Bansho Fan to put out the fire. Also, his twelve-year-old loli daughter Chi-Chi thinks Goku’s just dreamy and goes with him. Roshi tossed the fan a while ago (he forgot what it was and used it as a tablecloth), but he’s so busted he just blows up the mountain with the Kamehameha, the energy wave he spent fifty years creating. Goku, of course, makes a tiny version immediately, and Roshi says he can come train any time, accidentally saving the Earth several times over in about five seconds.
  • Expect Bulma to do her own laundry like a sixteen-year-old should. She has to resort to a Playboy bunny costume Oolong brought for some reason. It’s just a gag at Fire Mountain, but the next town just happens to be controlled by a gang who wears rabbit ears. Their boss is an actual rabbit who can turn anyone he touches into a carrot, but Yamcha bails them out (he needs those Dragon Balls, after all) and Goku yeets him to the moon.
After all that, the group only has one Dragon Ball to go when a third player enters the race. The great Emperor Pilaf, master of two whole minions, intercepts them and steals all but one ball. The gang, including Yamcha and Puar, invade his castle to get them back. That should be easy because Pilaf’s a moron, but sadly they’re even dumber and they get trapped. They can’t escape, but Goku makes a little hole with his Kamehameha and Puar and Oolong turn into bats to fly out as Pilaf summons Shenron. He’s about to wish for world domination, but Oolong infamously wishes for panties. Pilaf recaptures them (somehow), pulls a 180 on the series tone so far and tries to sweatbox them to death.

Unfortunately for him, Goku skipped one tiny little detail: he turns into freaking King Kong when he looks at the full moon. Though, in his mind, he looked at the moon one night when Gohan told him not to, passed out and a giant monkey destroyed their house and killed him while he was asleep. Not only has he not made the connection, he won’t until he’s 24, but that’s a story for another day. For now, Goku destroys the sweatbox, busts up Pilaf’s palace, and keeps going. Fortunately, Yamcha heard Goku tell Chi-Chi that he loses all his strength when you squeeze his tail, so he does just that and has Puar turn into scissors to cut it off (he had a sword, but whatever). The arc ends, Bulma and Yamcha hook up and go back to the city, and Goku flies to Roshi for that training.

This arc is mostly about the gags, and Toriyama's switched from the poop jokes in his older manga to sex jokes. Goku, despite being 14 (retconned to 12), never saw a girl before and has the sex ed of a preschooler (he doesn’t realize private parts are private, for instance, or why it’s not okay to pat people’s crotches to tell their gender). Of course, Bulma, who uses fanservice to get ahead, doesn’t know how to deal with him. Oolong gets #cancelled several times over and Roshi motorboats him in the tackiest scene in the series. And after all that, Goku still asks what “perverted” means at the end of the arc. It’s not my cup of tea, but there are some great scenes in this arc, like the fights with Yamcha and everything with Pilaf.

Overall, this arc is pretty self-contained. Frankly, it could’ve ended there and left Dragon Ball one of Toriyama’s many six-month side manga. That one line about “come train with me” is probably the only reason the series went on, which might make it the most important line in anime history. Crazy to think about.

*Brief comes from her father, Dr. Brief. Most fans say that’s his last name, so Bulma would be Bulma Brief (even Dragon Ball Evolution calls her that!), but barely anyone in this series has a last name, and no one ever actually says Brief is one in-universe. So Brief is probably just Dr. Brief’s first name. I use Bulma Brief anyway because characters with no last names get on my nerves. To make things worse, a lot of people translate his name as Dr. Briefs even though it's spelled Brief in the original, so Bulma Briefs is probably the most common.
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Sun Oct 25, 2020 4:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
Jabroniville
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Re: The Coyote Den

Post by Jabroniville »

Nice- the early Dragon Ball is actually a fantastic Comedy/Adventure series, with wild characters and great comedy. I saw the very early dub of it, which kept the "Bulma's boobs mistaken for Dragon Balls" joke and Roshi going "Aren't I sexy?" when he reveals his muscular body to Bulma), and I thought it was HILARIOUS when I was 14 or so. That the show turned into a "Fighting Manga" after that is kinda funny and odd, because the early going is more "look at the goofy villains and fetch quest stuff we have to do". Finding the Dragon Balls even becomes a casual manner.
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CoyoteUnion
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Goku (Kid)

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Goku (Kid) (PL 6, 73 PP)
Image

Abilities (35 PP)
STR: 6 STA: 4 AGL: 5 (3 ranks don't provide dodge bonus, -1) DEX: 1 FGT: 4
INT: 0 AWA: -1 PRE: 0

Skills (10 PP)
Acrobatics 4 (+9)
Athletics 6 (+12)
Close Combat (Power Pole) 2 (+6)
Perception 8 (+7)

Advantages (3 PP)
Agile Feint
Beginners Luck
Improved Grab
Tracking

Powers (19 PP)
Forest Senses (Accurate Smell) [2]
Kamehameha (Diminished Range III Blast 5) [7]
Monkey Tail (Extra Limbs 1) [1]
Power Pole (Ranged modifier on Strength 6, Easily Removable) [5]
Wild Resilience (Protection 4) [4]

Offense
Initiative +5
Unarmed +4 (DC 21 Damage)
Throw +1 (DC 21 Damage)
Kamehameha +1 (DC 20 Ranged Damage)

Defense (6 PP)
Dodge 3, Parry 4, Fortitude 4, Toughness 8, Will 5

Complications
Monkey... Peasant?: Not only does Goku have a clearly visible tail, if anyone grabs it he goes limp.
Naive: Goku's never even seen a girl before. He has no idea how to function in modern society without someone to help him, and he'll believe anything.

Goku in his younger, cuter days. He isn't much of a martial artist yet; Gohan trained him a little, but he mostly fights off instinct. He also uses the Power Pole way more than he will later (it sticks around a lot longer than you might think, but two of the arcs are about unarmed tournaments so it doesn't show up that much overall).

He's already a pretty dominant fighter. Yamcha only matched him the first time because he was hungry, and no one else even came close. Of course, he never tried to fight the Ox King or Roshi, but compared to everyone else he's unstoppable.

His signature technique this arc is actually Janken (Rock-Paper-Scissors), and he never uses the Kamehameha in a fight. Janken's technically three moves: Rock (punch), Paper (open palm strike) and Scissors (eye-gouge). I tried to put it in the build, but honestly I couldn't think of anything but Agile Feint. He does shout the wrong word to confuse people sometimes, so it works.

As far as we knew at this point, Goku's parents abandoned him in the woods, maybe for having a tail, so retired martial artist Gohan found him and raised him. When Goku was eight, he looked at the moon, turned into a Great Ape and killed Gohan. He doesn't know he killed him, and he seems pretty nonchalant about it in this arc, but as we see later he was hiding a lot of pain.

Goku doesn't always have his Flying Nimbus, but when he does it gives him [Flight 9, not during combat] (9). I picked Flight 9 because apparently some databook says its top speed is Mach 1.5, which seems reasonable.

Goku (Great Ape) (PL 7, 59 PP)
Abilities (4 PP)
STR: 12 STA: 10 AGL: 2 DEX: -1 FGT: 0
INT: -4 AWA: -3 PRE: 0

Skills (9 PP)
Athletics 6 (+18)
Close Combat (Unarmed) 2 (+2)
Perception 8 (+5)

Advantages (2 PP)
Improved Hold
Throwing Mastery

Powers (34 PP)
Forest Senses (Accurate Smell) [2]
Giant Size (Permanent Growth 8) [16]
Ground Crash (Line Area on 8 Strength) [8]
Monkey Legs (Leaping 5) [5]
Monkey Tail (Extra Limbs 1) [1]
Wild Resilience (Protection 4) [4]

Offense
Initiative +2
Unarmed +2 (DC 27 Damage)
Throw +2 (DC 27 Damage)

Defense (12 PP)
Dodge 0, Parry 0, Fortitude 12, Toughness 14, Will -3

Complications
Monkey... Peasant?: Goku still has his tail, and he's not smart enough to protect it anymore.

As a Great Ape, Goku's technically PL 7, but his tradeoffs are as big as his Power Pole. This let Gohan survive this form at least once (I'm assuming he did if he told Goku not to look at the moon), but he got him eventually (for the record, his Improved Hold represents him pinning someone underfoot). I considered giving regular Goku the Holding Back feat, but he doesn't know about the form and he couldn't activate it at will if he did, so what's the point?

Goku has no technique in this form. I gave him Throwing Mastery because some of the video games give the Great Apes a rock-throwing special move. His bonuses might be a little high for some people, but no one even considers taking him in a fight whenever he shows up. It's implied Roshi's strongest Kamehameha could've killed him, though, so I reined it in a little from the PL 8 I had him at before.
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Sun Oct 25, 2020 4:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CoyoteUnion
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Bulma (Teen)

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Bulma Brief (PL 4, 38 PP)
Image
Abilities (16 PP)
STR -1 STA -1 AGL 0 DEX 2 FGT 0
INT 7 AWA -1 PRE 2

Skills (6 PP)
Expertise (Science) 4 (+11)
Insight 4 (+3)
Persuasion 4 (+6)

Advantages (4 PP)
Benefit 2 (Independently Wealthy)
Disarming
Inventor

Powers (10 PP)
Capsule Case (Removable Variable 1, Equipment and Headquarters Only) [5]
Dragon Radar (Extended 7x Ranged Detect Dragon Balls (anywhere on Earth)) [5]

Offense
Initiative +0
Unarmed +0 (DC 14 Damage)
Throw +0 (DC 14 Damage)

Defense (2 PP)
Dodge 0, Parry 0, Fortitude -1, Toughness -1, Will 1

Complications
Vain: Bulma is very concerned about her looks and comfort, and has a hard time doing things that threaten either.

No, it's not because she's a girl, it's because she's lazy and spoiled. I mean, with her money she could've had any guy she wanted, and she'd still rather use the Dragon Balls to wish for the perfect boyfriend. Also she complains the whole first arc.

Bulma's an interesting character in shonen, because even though she can't fight, she stays important from chapter 1 all the way to GT and Super. She hasn't quite come into her own yet in this arc; her vanity gets in the way more than it will later, and her voice-activated laxative, while disgusting, isn't exactly a time machine. Her best invention right now is the Dragon Radar, which is also one of the funnier gags in the first arc: instead of having to find hidden lore and wander the world for the Dragon Balls like most adventure tales, their locations just pop up on a screen! Of course, they still have to get there, so the drama's intact, it just speeds things up.

Her Disarming feat is a little less innocent than the regular feat. It represents her trying to use fanservice to get her way. She's an interesting case, because she acts like this sexy slut, but she's barely more experienced with boys than Goku (she thinks they all might have tails when she sees his!), and she isn't portrayed as hot. She's just a teen trying to act grown-up. By the 22nd Tournament, she's 19 and she's grown out of it (though she's still vain about her looks the rest of the series).

Her Capsule Case represents her capsules, little containers you can hold in your hand that contain much bigger items on the inside, even a house. She uses this a lot this arc to make vehicles and places to stay for the group. Anyone can buy these in the Dragon Ball world, but as we find out later, her dad, Dr. Brief, owns the producers. She only has Wealthy 2 right now because it's all her dad's money, not hers.

Side note: An interesting thing about Dragon Ball is no one's design is permanent, no matter how important they are. Even Goku goes through a couple outfits! Bulma is this in spades, sporting about twenty designs throughout the series, most with different hairstyles. Her hair color's another biggie, because it's purple in the manga but teal in the anime. Future Trunks's hair is purple in both, or it was until Super, when they changed it to teal for the anime so they matched. Confusingly, present anime Trunks's hair is still purple.

Side note 2: Even though she never officially takes over Capsule Corp (Trunks takes over straight from Dr. Brief in GT even though Bulma's way smarter because it was written in the 90's), she seems to have more access to its resources as an adult, and the series treats the Brief's house like it's hers by the end of Z. Besides, Dr. Brief is clearly around sixty when he first shows up a year after the series starts, and Dragon Ball Online says he founded Capsule Corp almost 40 years ago. He never seems to age, but he'd have to be in his eighties by the Buu Arc. No way he's still CEO when Bulma's right there, and also no way he's letting Vegeta live in his house if he still owns it independently.

She's PL 4 to let her pull out her machine pistol with her Variable, since she uses it a couple times this arc (remember, I houserule firearms up +3 damage).
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Sun Oct 25, 2020 3:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CoyoteUnion
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Re: The Coyote Den

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Jabroniville wrote: Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:23 pm Nice- the early Dragon Ball is actually a fantastic Comedy/Adventure series, with wild characters and great comedy. I saw the very early dub of it, which kept the "Bulma's boobs mistaken for Dragon Balls" joke and Roshi going "Aren't I sexy?" when he reveals his muscular body to Bulma), and I thought it was HILARIOUS when I was 14 or so. That the show turned into a "Fighting Manga" after that is kinda funny and odd, because the early going is more "look at the goofy villains and fetch quest stuff we have to do". Finding the Dragon Balls even becomes a casual manner.
Yeah, there are a couple pretty good ones in there. They get old fast reading the whole arc in one sitting, but they're better one at a time.
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CoyoteUnion
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Oolong

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Oolong (PL 2, 47 PP)
Image

Abilities (-2 PP)
STR -1 STA -1 AGL 0 DEX 1 FGT 0
INT 0 AWA -1 PRE 0

Skills (8 PP)
Deception 6 (+6/+12, +32 to Disguise)
Perception 2 (+1)
Persuasion 4 (+4/+10)
Sleight of Hand 4 (+5)

Advantages
None

Powers (48 PP)
Little Piggy (Permanent Shrinking 4) [8]
Monster Morph (Growth 8, Size Increase Only, must rest 1 minute every 5) [6]
Shapeshifting Kindergarten Dropout (Linked Enhanced Presence 6 and Morph 4, must rest 1 minute every 5) [27]

Offense
Unarmed +0 (DC 14 Damage)
Throw +0 (DC 14 Damage)

Defense
Dodge 2, Parry 2, Fortitude -1, Toughness -1, Will -1

Complications
Minor: Oolong hasn't even hit puberty (could've fooled me) with all the associated drawbacks.
Pervert: Oolong doesn't hesitate to peep on any woman and steal any panties, even if it's obviously a trap. Occasionally he'll do worse. Gross.

Oolong, we hardly knew... yong?

When Goku and Bulma meet him he's using his powers to pose as a terrifying monster and extort girls from the local village. The villagers know he's a shapeshifter, but they'd never take him seriously if they knew his strength didn't change when he transformed, or that he could only use his powers five minutes at a time, or that his real form is a little pig. Oolong's forms are so scary none of the villagers risked calling his bluff, but Goku would've fought his monster forms anyway, so he has to escape and return all the girls. Of course, he was happy to, because every last one was a golddigger and his life was like that "Simp House" Sims 4 video.

I'm not sure he knows the two saved his life. When Goku gets in town, an old father hits him with an axe because he thinks he's Oolong, and if it really was it definitely would've killed him.

Oolong's completely hopeless. He tries to escape as a fish, but Bulma fishes him back with panties and he takes the bait. When Roshi wants to feel Bulma up, she gets him to turn into her and take the fall. Near the end of the arc, he drugs Goku and plots to feel Bulma up while she's sleeping (I've seen anime pervs in my day, but that's actually messed up). I haven't seen this arc English dubbed, but whoever had to censor that didn't get paid enough.

Seems like your typical anime perma-virgin, right? Well, not quite. See, he's only nine. Now read everything up there again, especially the Roshi bit, and realize every Dragon Ball fan's getting at least five years for possession.

And after all that, he comes through in the eleventh hour and wishes for panties before Pilaf can wish for world domination, wasting the Dragon Balls for a full year and saving the world.

Dragon Ball has a long, long list of dropped characters, but Oolong is the first. He's always in the background, enough that TFS coined "and for some unknown reason, Oolong was there", but he never does anything after the first arc. The weird thing is, he somehow lives with Roshi after the 21st Tournament, but we never learn how that arrangement happened, or why he keeps living there into his thirties (though it's hard to tell, he looks exactly the same). He drops his Communist outfit immediately, and I don't really know why he had it in the first place. Maybe he was an edgelord?

The one exception is Battle of Gods, which funny enough, happened twenty-nine years after the Pilaf Arc both in-universe and in real life. After three-fourths of his life sitting back at Kame House, Beerus suddenly makes him play rock-paper-scissors for the fate of Earth. They tie twice, but Oolong picks scissors for the third time in a row (Awareness -1, baby) and loses. If Goku teleported in ten seconds later, Beerus would've destroyed the Earth. I think Oolong was happy to get back to doing nothing after that.
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Sun Oct 25, 2020 3:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
Jabroniville
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Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:05 pm

Re: The Coyote Den

Post by Jabroniville »

Nice. Oolong was one of the best sources for comedy in the original, but I hadn’t realized how quickly Toriyama was done with him. The guy truly had a short attention span for characters, though- it’s part of why the #1 pastime of DBZ fans is complaining about which side character should have been pushed more instead of going back to Goku for the 950th time (the correct answer is Yaumcha).
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CoyoteUnion
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Re: The Coyote Den

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Jabroniville wrote: Wed Oct 14, 2020 12:18 am Nice. Oolong was one of the best sources for comedy in the original, but I hadn’t realized how quickly Toriyama was done with him. The guy truly had a short attention span for characters, though- it’s part of why the #1 pastime of DBZ fans is complaining about which side character should have been pushed more instead of going back to Goku for the 950th time (the correct answer is Yaumcha).
I'm so glad we agree on that, because I'm all set to talk about how Yamcha's the best human fighter next build.

Unfortunately, my computer charger just had to die right as I started a build thread. No builds till the new charger gets here Sunday. :cry:
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CoyoteUnion
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Yamcha (Teen)

Post by CoyoteUnion »

Yamcha (PL 5, 76 PP)
Image
Abilities (32 PP)
STR 4 STA 3 AGL 3 DEX 2 FGT 2
INT 0 AWA -1 PRE 3

Skills (14 PP)
Athletics 2 (+6)
Close Combat [Unarmed] 4 (+6)
Deception 4 (+7)
Intimidation 4 (+7)
Persuasion 4 (+7)
Sleight of Hand 6 (+8)
Stealth 4 (+7)

Advantages (19 PP)
Benefit (Cipher)
Cool (Deception)
Defensive Roll 2
Equipment 1 [Sword, +3 Strength damage and
Evasion
Great Endurance
Sidekick 10 (Puar)
Tracking
Well-Informed

Powers (3 PP)
Wolf Fang Fist (Multiattack on Strength, Unarmed Only, cannot trade-off damage upward) [3]

Offense
Unarmed +6 (DC 19 Damage)
Throw +2 (DC 19 Damage)
Sword +2 (DC 22 Damage, Crit 19)
Wolf Fang Fist +6 (DC 19 Multiattack Damage)

Defense (8 PP)
Dodge 5, Parry 4, Fortitude 3, Toughness 5/3, Will 3

Complications
Desert Bandit: Yamcha steals everything he needs. He may have problems with the law, and bad habits are hard to break.
Fear of Women: Yamcha is terrified of any woman even moderately attractive.

Oh god, I wasted like three hours on this. (Also how is Multiattack only 1 PP/rank)

"Look at you. You were once so great. I can't believe Goku's former rival has become nothing more than a simp." -Admiral Zhao (paraphrased)

Yamcha's great in this arc. The Diablo Desert Bandit looks cool, he talks tough, he gives Goku his first real fight, and when things get rough he has a freaking rocket launcher! But he's also hilarious, because he can't even look at a girl without running away. Like, that actually stops him finishing Goku off. I know the original four are parodies of Journey to the West characters, but I've never read it. From where I'm sitting, he's a great riff on all those old bad boy action heroes (though I guess they were just action heroes back then). Even his Japanese voice actor, Toru Furuya mostly did serious heroes for twenty years before, including Ray from Gundam, Saint Seiya, and, slightly later, Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon.

Puar's his sidekick, and a girl (not sure how that works but okay). He can shapeshift like Oolong, but here's the kicker. I assumed they were born shapeshifters or something and didn't think about it, but apparently they learned together at Shapeshifting Kindergarten. SHAPESHIFTING. KINDERGARTEN. Best gag of the entire arc, fight me, and the cherry on top is Oolong's a KINDERGARTEN DROPOUT. Puar can transform as long as she wants, because she did the whole class. Sadly, she's a background character after this, though she sticks around a little longer than Oolong. She just doesn't have much of a personality besides being Yamcha's cheering squad, though can you really blame her? Dude needs more love.

Yamcha agrees. He just wanted to rob Goku and co at first, but when he learns about the Dragon Balls he wants to steal them to be confident with women. The big Yamcha scene I didn't mention is how he comes back for a car chase the day after he tries to steal the Dragon Balls, with a machine gun and a ROCKET LAUNCHER. I know I'm using all caps a lot, but this stuff is nuts. When he realizes he can't beat Goku (he doesn't even try to shoot him though), he instantly changes plans and gives them his car so they can collect the balls faster. He also meets Chi-Chi when he follows them to Fire Mountain and has to knock her out.

And now, we get to the sad part. You're about to see the raw, extended cut of the worst fictional character assassination I've ever seen, and all by his own creators.

It started with him becoming a joke. I mean, he was already a joke, no one was as cool as they thought they were in the first arc, but after reading what he did back then, doesn't it sound like he'd do cool stuff sometimes? Well, instead he started jobbing an 80-hour work week, culminating in his infamous loss to a Saibaman in his first fight of Z. It wasn't his usual curbstomp either, he actually had it beat for the first time in years. Then he took his eyes off it, it grabbed him and self-destructed, and we got the Yamcha Dies meme, which ironically will probably never die. I wouldn't be surprised if that picture's the only thing some of you know about him. It's just over for the poor guy after that, and he may as well never throw another punch in the series, including GT and Super, because when he does the enemies don't even feel it. I'm not exaggerating.

That would be bad enough, but no, we have the cheating thing. See, at the start of Z, Bulma's mad about something unknown Yamcha did. They change topics the panel after she says it, and the only response is Roshi's "you two sure do fight a lot". Sure, they're a little old for high school drama, but that's all this is and the other characters know it. Roshi and Krillin know they'll make up in a couple weeks. I mean, they've been together eleven years by then. How many relationships last eleven years?

But something strange happened. Toriyama decided he wanted Bulma with Vegeta of all people for the Cell Arc (about two years later IRL) so Vegeta had a reason to stay on Earth and Trunks could exist. But Bulma's with Yamcha, so how can this happen? Why, by making it so that random fight from ages ago was him cheating, of course!

Suddenly, all Dragon Ball media says Yamcha's a womanizer and always has been. Yamcha, the guy who couldn't look at a girl before he met Bulma. And I mean all media. Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, a video game from 2019, has a sidequest where you have to save him from his two girlfriends who found out about each other. Even Funimation gets in on it, pointing out a filler dartboard with his face on it and asking if each number is one of his affairs! So we've gone from "Bulma's a drama queen" to "Yamcha cheated" to "Yamcha cheated twenty times"! Dragon Ball Abridged actually calls this out in episode 1: they still have Yamcha cheat on her, but Krillin says "Wow, that is so out-of-charact-so you're single then?". Of course, this is the ONE Abridged line people don't spam everywhere.

Meanwhile, Bulma doesn't stop her fanservicey ways for a couple arcs after she starts dating Yamcha, and there are a couple times in her twenties where she wishes she'd gone for Goku. Goku! The guy she met when he was twelve! But Yamcha's the unfaithful one.

If you think I'm crazy, I'm not the only one. Here's part of an official interview with the cast (Goku, Piccolo, Krillin and Tenshinhan's actors were there too).
Tsuru (Bulma) : One day, all of a sudden, she married Vegeta and gave birth to Trunks… “Huh? What just happened here?” is how it felt. (laughs)

Horikawa (Vegeta) : There wasn’t even any sort of foreshadowing.

Furuya (Yamcha) : At that time, I just wanted to leave the studio and go home. (laughs)

Tsuru (Bulma) : However, after that, I tried to bring myself to love Vegeta, but… it was a struggle. (laughs)
In case you didn't catch that, that is all three characters' voice actors, who'd been playing their roles for years by then, agreeing it was BS in an interview for an official product.

Furuya flat-out said in interviews he was disappointed with how he developed, and when one asked "was it said when Yamcha lost Bulma to Vegeta?" he said "of course, I HATE Vegeta". Yes, the interviewer put it in all caps. Sure, he was playing it up for laughs, but as you saw before, he makes that joke every time someone brings it up. Might be some truth to it.

Look, I agree Vegeta and Bulma are the only decent couple in Dragon Ball, and they have great chemistry (Gohan and Videl can be written that way, but canon kinda dropped them), but Toriyama had to retcon a six-year (in real life) relationship and take the best part of Yamcha's life away from him after he'd already lost so much of his role in the series. I mean, Bulma chose her boyfriend's killer over him! Sure, it's just sex until the Buu Arc, but she's still clearly not with Yamcha anymore. And even if you think it's a necessary sacrifice for Vegebul (yes, that's the ship name), they didn't need to make him cheat more than once, let alone constantly.

The Tournament of Power, the final arc of Super, couldn't sum this up better. When Goku wants a third human for Universe 7's ten-person team, he picks... Roshi. Roshi, who hasn't fought anyone but random Freeza soldiers since before Z, and even fighting them was a big twist, like "hey, he's training again". It's not over for him, though, because Majin Buu falls asleep for the second tournament in a row, so Yamcha fills his slot, but still. Roshi.

Except I lied. Freeza filled that slot. Goku could've picked anyone and he personally chose Freeza. There's no audience outside the fighters and the gods, IIRC, so I'm not even sure he gets to watch.

#YamchaDidNothingWrong, now go listen to Wolf Hurricane.
Last edited by CoyoteUnion on Sun Oct 25, 2020 3:51 am, edited 3 times in total.
Jabroniville
Posts: 24689
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:05 pm

Re: The Coyote Den

Post by Jabroniville »

Haha, glorious. Full props to poor Yamcha, the greatest sacrifice of Toriyama just going “meh, I dunno” and dumping an old character for a new toy.
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