While I think Super Hero generally pokes fun at fanservice tropes, it still plays the tropes earnestly enough for fans of the thing that's being satirised to be hyped by it. Like Gohan's transformation into Beast is played 100% straight, it's only the design that seems comedically over-the-top from certain angles (it's interesting that Toriyama originally wanted to go for a scarier vibe but dialled it back to look more traditional). Despite what's being said earlier in the thread, Beast Gohan and Orange Piccolo absolutely are hugely popular already - I don't even follow that much Dragon Ball stuff on social media yet I constantly get bombarded with fans squeeing and making artwork of these forms.Zephyr wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 5:41 pmExactly. It took a cool hairstyle and exaggerated it to the point that it looks silly, thus occupying the same aesthetic niche as Super Saiyan 3. They're both microcosms of what makes me love Dragon Ball so much: a funny story that started trying to be cool and badass, succeeded at that, and then finally used the cool and badass shit to be funny again, while still somehow managing to look cool doing it. Each element feeding into and informing the other.
I'm also pro-Toriyama not just taking the piss out of his own relatively-serious tropes and material, but of fans of said material. In this case, as a fan of Gohan's Cell Games transformation, I'm on the receiving end and still loving it.
I mean, fair enough. Speaking as a Dragon Ball fan, though, I was plenty satisfied. I can't speak for the past version of myself who got hooked on Dragon Ball in the first place, or the past version of myself who finished watching/reading it, but I can speak for my current self who continues to come back to it. There are two things that keep me coming back:
1. the funnies, from isolated gags, to elaborate name-pun systems, to parodying other works as well as itself
2. the story of Goku's growth as a martial artist, the "poison" that this growth has unwittingly cultivated, the rivalries that this "poison" has birthed, and the character development that these rivalries provide for said rivals
I couldn't care less about the story of Gohan's growth as a martial artist, so Beast did nothing for me there (and, obviously, had nothing to do with Goku's story). But its design was definitely self-parody, which checks one of my two boxes. Is that box 'substantive'? Is comedy substantive? Parody? Self-parody? I don't know. But being the butt of a joke in this way was satisfying.
When I first heard about Beast Gohan and Orange Piccolo, I assumed they would be a total pisstake and, yeah, they are to an extent. However, I don't think the fans are necessarily meant to be the butt of the joke, it's more likely just another example of Dragon Ball cannibalising itself, similar to what Toriyama started to do around the Buu arc. In this case, the only real subject of parody is "hey, let's name this transformation after a colour, that's original", but the transformations still work in overpowering the villains, so there's not much more to it. I don't often throw around the word "deconstruction" as a badge of honour because it's so overused, but the Buu arc is a great self-parody and deconstruction because it presents a scenario where punching the bad guys isn't the right thing to do, and the Z-Warriors are kinda fucked at that point without help from somebody like Mr. Satan.