#dbz lore

-siiigh-

Alright so how long has this series been completed? How long has this fanbase been actively educating people on the lore and rules of this world that we love?

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't actually gone out of my way to view every single video by every single Dragon Ball youtuber but this really feels like something that should belong on Geekdom101's channel as it's something that is very easily open-shut “thems the knowledge, kids” information and yet somehow I have seen this misconception go around so often that I now feel compelled to put it on my own channel.

I'm assuming it hasn't been brought up on any of the other channels because of how little I see of this tidbit of correction being spread around as something that Toei kept messing up from what the manga had established.

Perhaps I'm missing something but in all my re-reads and re-watches I haven't found anything so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Toei animations idea of the rules of Other World don't actually line up with the original rules stated by Toriyama in the original manga.

Rest assured that I do have a video that is currently being edited by a very dear and exceptionally talented friend of mine who offered after I made the comment that material would be releasing on my channel much faster had it not been for my crippling imposter-syndrome style perfectionist-procrastination.

So for right now here's a video that I'm writing up at currently 1:25 in the morning the day that I need to be at work to sing at 8:00 in the morning and plan to edit in movie maker as opposed to my usual After Effects style of careful sound-mixing and video editing.

So what do I mean by Toei getting the rules of Other World mixed up when compared to the source manga? Well, it's simple, really.

Villains do not get to keep their body's in Other World.

Getting to keep your body in Other World is a special privilege. I'm quoting Goku from Volume 19, page 134 of Dragon Ball Z when I say “Regular people and bad guys like Cell turn into spirits.” and how “they're going to give [Goku] special treatment [there] 'cuz [he] saved the planet.”

It is not about being a powerful fighter and I don't know why the fanbase believes that that's the rules, unless of course it's just more stuff they've convinced each other of in order to erase the fact that Goku gets to keep his body because he's that good of a guy but that's another pillar of salt for another day.

Granted I'll be the first to admit that originally there were rules about spirits being trapped in limbo when killed by a villain that were sort of forgotten about but that's a very minor mistake in the grand scheme of the story that is very easy to pony-shrug off and say “meh, no story is perfect. Ultra-Divine Water needed more build-up.” Not to say that that isn't a problem but I bring that up because I can already hear the typing of fans trying to argue that because Toriyama forgot that rule we should be allowed to throw out any other rule that was stated on the same topic in the same way as the limbo-rule and no, not really.

See, not only are the rules about who keeps their body or who turns to a spirit largely unaffected by whether or not Toriyama remembered to address that limbo thing, the rules currently on trial right now were backed up later by Piccolo's talk with Vegeta.

Which, for the record, was included in the Anime so even if you're one of the people who chooses to follow the continuity of the Anime as your go-to-source, changes form the manga be damned, this would still be a contradiction to the idea of villains keeping their body.

Lord knows I shant tell this fanbase about Vegeta's development and how beautiful and selfless his sacrifice was but just for my own sanity let me both remind and catch some of you “I only read fanfiction and that's why I love Vegeta even though I've never touched the original source” people up to speed.

See, what makes Vegeta's sacrifice against Buu so powerful is that this is the first time Vegeta has set aside his selfish desires. He's gone through his metamorphosis and fought his inner-demons away. The reason Babidi was able to hypnotize him with his magic is that by that point he was never really good, just tamed and now docile. His sacrifice, however, is where he threw away the very thing that Babidi used to control him in an attempt to kill both Babidi and his creation, Boo.

And so here we are where Vegeta is doing his first real “good-guy” move which just so happens to be the “goodest-guyest” thing you can do, sacrificing one's life for the sake of giving others a chance to live.

Here, Vegeta asks Piccolo – at this point fused with Kami and thus holding Kami's experiences and knowledge as Guardian of the Earth within him - what would become of him in Other World.

Piccolo's response is “You have killed too many innocents. You will lose your body and your soul will be banished to a place quite different from Goku's. There it will be reincarnated into a new form, but only after it is cleansed of memories.”

So if a character who's strength can not be denied and who's last action of sacrifice was not enough to counteract all the pain and suffering he had caused prior will not be keeping his body in Other World (something even brought up in the movie Fusion Reborn and is the reason for the scene that everyone, their mother and myself use in AMVs)