While I liked this arc, it sure had some obvious retcons or convenient plot points brought here:
*If the Kaiohshin dies, so the God of Destruction who are superior to Zamazu
*The Potara fusion only lasts 1 hour if mortals use the earrings.
*Trunks' power ups are quite an asspull considering he reaches the Super Saiyan Blue level.
Then, there is really forced comedy including Pilaf's guys and Roshi's Mafuba (the manga tried to make the latter one less dumb). I'm completely confused how a new world is created in the finale but it feels like a cheap way to force Future Trunks out of the main story.
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The Potara retcon was super lame, but admittedly I feel that way largely because I wanted a "Stuck as Vegetto until they get the Dragon Balls comedy arc".
The ending kinda made this storyline for me, as it was much gutsier and darker than I was expecting, with an ominous resolution that isn't quite a happy ending. Because of the way it ended up, I'm still wondering if Future Trunks might drop by again for another reason.
And, you know, maybe see how he reacts when finding out his girlfriend is an older-than-he-thinks ex-gangster.
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I'm not exactly a fan of the franchise as a whole (besides the original Dragon Ball, maybe), and the only reason I'm watching Super is because it's on Toonami, but the conclusion of the Future Trunks arc feels incredibly incongruous to its overall tone. As it progressed, DB just about made a running gag out of the fact that there were no real long-term consequences to anything bad that happened, because the franchise is named after a literal deus ex machina. And when that came up short, there was always an even bigger deus ex machina waiting in the wings. Up to this point, Super continued that trend with the likes of the Super Dragon Balls and Whis's time-rewinding abilities. But then all of a sudden here's this apocalyptic event with completely-irreversible consequences, because...reasons? It's a hideously-jarring tonal shift over thirty years into a franchise that has never had a sniff of it before that point. Hell, we see two cute little kids built up as the symbol of the future hope that Trunks is fighting for...and then they're snuffed out in the blink of an eye with the rest of existence, and no one seems to give a damn about it. What makes it even more absurd is what follows in the grand finale of Super, in which we have the ultimate irreversible consequence of complete multiverse destruction...which gets immediately reversed afterwards because this is Dragon Ball and that's how things are supposed to work. Like, where in the world did this come from?
The worst part of all is that it completely negates what's arguably the best arc of DBZ, the Cell Games. Remember that long, hard struggle spanning time and dimensions that Future Trunks went through? Remember him and Future Bulma putting all of their hopes on a beyond-long shot? Remember that incredibly-satisfying moment when Trunks returned to the future and one-shot the androids and Cell and secured a future of peace? Guess what, none of that mattered! But it's okay, because let's pluck these two characters to yet another timeline, giving no thought to the crippling survivors' guilt and existential trauma they'd definitely be suffering! This is fantastically-bad writing, even for a franchise where "writing" was always the 12th or 13th priority down the list.
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