I felt that the Buu saga did Gohan pretty dirty, and the Mystic power up was a bit of a saving throw after diminishing his Saiyen power. With that said, the scene of Vegeta getting his shit very much together and still trying to kill Buu with a suicide attack after Piccolo has told him in no uncertain terms he is going to Hell was awesome. And then they have Buu no sell it and I checked out until Vegito showed up: that was at least gratuitous fan pandering I could enjoy.
You're Favorite Heel/Face Turns
- Thread starter happyninja42
- Start date
All of my hate! I've said before, and I've said it again, the Buu saga was nothing more a worse version of the Android/Cell saga.
Darth Vader for something I never caught until it was pointed out to me: His character is ridiculously consistent. Anakin has always been a hotheaded character who will always prioritize the people he loves over everything else. Duty, personal ambition, dreams, morality, greater picture? If you're asking him to choose between any (or all) of those and a loved one, he will choose the loved one every time with hardly a second thought. And we see him have to make this choice multiple times in the Prequel Trilogy, the Clone Wars series, and at the end of the Original Trilogy. And he always makes the same decision. He redeems himself by making the exact same decision that made him fall in the first place (more or less something to the effect of "Screw duty and everything I've been working towards! My family needs me!"), and the symmetry of it is as beautiful as it is hilarious.
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That's actually a very good point. They do mention in the prequels about how strongly he loved his mother, they could feel it pouring off of him basically. He definitely had fear of loss and abandonment, for good reasons really.
Yeah, and think of that showstopper scene during the closing moments where (won't spoil) belts it out with that huge (although possession plot so not really) heel turn just before the end.
But speaking of heel/face turns. The face turn is kind of a big deal in a lot of anime. I didn't pay a lot of attention to DB or DBZ, but wasn't almost every good guy in DBZ a bad guy that Goku defeated in DB. I bring it up because I'm rewatching A Certain Scientific Railgun and S ahead of finally watching the second half of T. And several of the arc bad guys from Railgun and A Certain Magical Index wind up doing a face turn, most specifically Accelerator who even gets his own spinoff at that point. I just finished the Sisters arc in S, and I do love how Accelerator's first step towards that face turn comes with Touma's fist about a half inch from Accelerator's face. Its kind of surprising how many big moments in the Toaru series comes when some bad guy takes Imagine Breaker right in the face. Like in the Orsola arc which ended with Touma hitting Agnese Sanctis with Imagine Breaker to the face. A moment with which I made my roommate facepalm when out loud I yelled "Oh Yeah! NUN ya bidness!"
Huh, Agnese would face turn later too.
My guess it was a combination of intimidation, and the Dai-Li being sick and tired of running a failing police state/puppet government. As much as I love the original Avatar, it did start the trend of overpowered villains, that only seem to get worse when Legend of Korra arrived. As a teenager, my justifying logic was that someone like Wesker or Vergil would motivate/manipulate these guys to darker path, than Azula could do it too.
I think it was a couple of factors. One, they wanted control, that was the driving force of their faction, and the "bad side" to earthbending. Stagnation, totalitarianism, rigid obedience to the laws that are unchanging and uncaring. The saw in Azula, that she was capable of control on a crazy level, so she would be of use to them. Also, she had clearly shown she could infiltrate their society and break it down from the top down with little to no effort. So trying to stand against her, and by extent, the Fire Nation, when it seemed clear they were about to be an occupied state, just didn't seem prudent to them. They were opportunists, looking out for their own self-interest. Azula was more than happy to let them keep playing their games of control, as long as they understood SHE was the one in control. That was fine with them, as it ultimately meant the same end result, them with a strangle hold on the city, just under a different flag.
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Yeah, but the Dai Li were a cultural police; and that’s the kind of occupation you find the hardline nationalists. And it’s not like Azula snuck an army in; it was her, Ty Lee and Mai. Even with their prodigious skills the Dai Li should have been able to take care of them and leave the Fire Nation stranded outside Ba Sing Se’s walls as it was. The occupying army only entered the city because the Dai Li let them in. On the orders of the foreign usurper no less. Maybe it would have helped if Azula had appealed to lesser ranked members of the organisation who were just opportunistic bullies or even brought some Earthbenders from the Fire Nation territories to usurp both Long Feng and his loyalists.
I mean it’s a small(ish) issue in an otherwise pretty exemplary written show but it always made me go “Huh?”.
That was their public face yes, but I think we've seen recently, that hardline nationalists, are more than happy to ignore their own base and ideals, if it means they get to maintain power.
I don't know, I mean I've seen the commentary from the creators during the episode where Aang and his team "attack" the city to speak to the king, and they described it as basically a group of superheroes storming a castle. That it's just not something the rank and file dudes can handle. And the Dai Li fought Aang and his team, and lost. They are skilled yes, compared to your bog-standard bender, but against S-Tier "hero/villains" complete with plot armor, they will lose. And Azula was established to be powerful enough to hold her own against Aang and his gang, all by herself. So if Aang and his 4 buddies can storm the entire defensive system with little to no effort, I don't see it as too far of a stretch, for another super-team (just villains) to be equally outside the Dai Li's capability to stop. And that they knew it, so they just said "Hail the new boss, same as the old boss" and went about changing the names on the reserved parking signs.
I just came upon this thread and saw some Babylon 5 discourse in the first page and just wanted to say how happy I am that people still remember and talk about that show. It is a personal favorite.
In the spirit of 90's sci-fi space opera character turns then, lemme mention Damar, the Cardassian that was second in command to Dukat and became the "leader" of the Cardassians while allied with the Dominion. He then became an alcoholic while watching the Dominion abuse his planet's resources and in the end helped the Federation and Bajorans turn against them. Quite a journey he went on ending on a hero's death.
In the spirit of 90's sci-fi space opera character turns then, lemme mention Damar, the Cardassian that was second in command to Dukat and became the "leader" of the Cardassians while allied with the Dominion. He then became an alcoholic while watching the Dominion abuse his planet's resources and in the end helped the Federation and Bajorans turn against them. Quite a journey he went on ending on a hero's death.