There should be studies (or 3 hour long YouTube essays) on how susceptible Dragon Ball is to What-Ifs compared to other franchises. There’s quite a few YouTubers like MasakoX, Smugstick, and Salad Saiyan, that make content based around how drastically the story of Dragon Ball can be changed by alter even the smallest detail, and I think it’s because of how perfectly segmented the series is.
Dragon Ball’s Sagas are chunked into perfect little blocks of story that influence the next, like Saiyan Saga leading directly into the Namek Saga which leads into Cell Saga, unlike series with mostly disconnected events that lead into a massive finish, Dragon Ball arcs are largely self contained, which makes it easier to go Plot point by Plot point to see how the What-if's premise effects the story.
Sure some What-ifs are more… absurd for lack of a better word, which tends to give the entire idea a What-ifs a bad name, being more about making characters overpowered and out of character than telling an interesting story with Dragon Ball characters. But with the examples I listed earlier, you get a compelling story with the DB characters you love.
I just think What-ifs are Cool
