Dragon Ball Super - Rage Toward Harmony

Thoughts On: Dragon Ball Super (2015-2018)

Adventures of Son Goku and company.

I always liked the idea of Dragon Ball, but only in recent years have I started actually watching the movies and now some of the anime. I've seen Dragon Ball Z and just completed Super. I felt the movies were better than the first few arcs that are retellings, but was locked all the way through to the tournament of heroes, which I felt was a bit stretched out and silly, and an abrupt end to things. I quite liked the development toward and beyond Super Saiyan Blue as a less serious mirror to the development to Super Saiyan 3. Goku becoming divine and breaking through to the realm of gods and universes feels like a realisation of his self-transcendency that occurs in Z that pushes deeper into the greater mythology of the central narrative. With Dragon Ball being focused on the endless improvement of self, it has a central seed within it: rage. This is the source of Saiyan power, and therefore the theme that clashes with humanity (Earth), enabling a great adventure toward self-transcendence. The ever-echoing lesson within Dragon Ball is then that the growth of a soul that believes and suffers is one that can transcend and overcome the limitations of the material world. Therefore, with rage one can become a God. As Dylan Thomas is famously known to have written: rage against the dying light. There is subtle profundity here if one can begin to recognise that rage is a unique human quality connected to, but not the same as, violence and loss of self. To rage is to, on the one hand, have an emotional outburst and seek destruction. Yet rage is also subsumed in passion and preservation. As Dragon Ball consistently demonstrates, one can rage with and without reason. Rage can be ignited by suffering and threat towards self and that which you are bound to; another bettering you, attempting to destroy your planet or force their will upon you. Rage can also be a seemingly unprovoked dance in the dark: the pursuit of martial arts mastery, love for a family or preservation of pride. Each character in Dragon Ball is forced together by their provoked rage, but bound to one another by their unprovoked rage. They each then go to war and conflict with one another to only then realise their participation in passion.

These are all key themes that manifest again and again throughout Super. Self-transcendence through passionate destruction and preservation. This brings us back to the notion of raging, raging against the dying light. Death and darkness seek us all, and yet greatness and life tease us to chase. Humanity and consciousness are that which can mediate between yin and yang. Rage, Dragon Ball posits, is the greatest motivator of the biological machine in constant motion between dark and light, knowing and unknowing, life and death. Rage is a human reaction to the emergence of yin and yang: that which makes us passionate and emotional. Rage is therefore an act of passion and emotion: human will and sensitivity. It highlights the soul's ability to make contact with the world and yet also shape it. It is like many other human phenomena such as love, sadness and stupidity, but is distinguished in Dragon Ball as a sustainable means of superseding self, transcending ones capacity to balance against yin and yang.

An interesting pattern within the Dragon Ball world: the more one progresses, the harder the journey becomes. The end of progression is the end of life: there will always be the next time to die if it is not today. Understanding this basic principal of the Dragon Ball universe, one can begin to see why rage is so important and powerful within it. The most literal manifestation of the idea that life is constant drama, suffering, progressions, failures and successes is combat. In a world that is imperfect, and refuses perfection, strength is most prize, and there is no more literal and real show of strength than combat: a fight. Rage mediates the human ability to fight; it gives it reason and fuel. Consider the basic notion that Goku must always save the world. The world is always needing saving because of his pursuit of infinite strength: he attracts and chases destruction. He saves the world because he loves it; he fights because this is his passion: his rage wills him to it. Through his rage, Goku finds the meaning to act (love, morality, justice) yet his rage is also a reaction to the suffering he faces in acting on that which means something to him. To rage is to party in combat as to save everything to Goku. And thus we return to an idea of balance again. If life is a fight, rage is a powerful source to derive your life from as it is a mediator of the fighting capacity of the soul. Rage operates through passion, leading one to preserve and destroy: the ultimate purpose of a fight. This complex dichotomy within rage highlights a kind of insanity that is shown throughout Dragon Ball to create balance and harmony.

The insane, never ending fight of passion that is Dragon Ball is used by Super, much like Z, to evoke commentary on trust. Where Z is more about belief - a belief in beginning to accomplish the impossible - Super is more playful and fated. You could say here then that Super is more predictable with less stakes than Z, and I could agree. But the darkness of Z, especially by the Gotenks arc in the Buu saga, was becoming repetitive - as was the general cycle of almost dying to save the world. There's a self-awareness about the clunky parts of Dragon Ball that play with its predictability. But Super avoids meaningless pointing at plot holes and repeating narratives - for the most part - by leaning into Goku's fate to become the strongest. Z played a lot with the notion that Gohan would surpass him, but Super doesn't put much focus there; it instead sees Gohan keep up with his father and Vegeta eventually, succeeding in human life where Goku doesn't. Super rather sees Goku's influence spread through the universe and characters go beyond believing in him, and trust in his inevitable transcendency. In fact, Goku's success is predicted and anticipated much of the time, which strengthens and motivates characters around him - lead example always being Vegeta. But as much a result of the stretching of the infinite story that is Dragon Ball, and therefore the audience and makers of Super being aware of the repeating themes, plots and arcs of the narrative, this sense and focus on trust throughout Super is a powerful extension of the self-belief evoked by Z.

Z is darker and more suspenseful than Super; it commands you to believe. Super allows you to trust in Goku as an archetype of divine passion. It secures, more strongly than Z, his universal presence and therefore his power, seeing him rise from saviour of Earth, as in the beginnings of Z, to saviour of the multi-verse by the end of Super. One can see this with more clarity when they consider Z as a gradual preparation for Buu and Super as a test of Zeno. Buu is an all consuming passion for destruction. Zeno is passionless, divine destruction. Because of this, though similar in principle, there is a subtle difference between Super and Z. Z sees Goku become a transcendent being for the first time; unlocking for the first time a mythology within himself from his ancestors to overcome the destruction of his people (his given people on Earth). Super sees Goku rise up to the level of Gods almost as proof of what he realises in Z, living as a legend as opposed to manifesting a myth. It is Zeno then who tests Goku's insanity in a game only gods could play. Where love trust, belief and justice are key tenants of Dragon Ball, we can't be distracted from the fact that Goku is singular and based entirely in his own foolish rage. It is because he is so purely and naively himself that Goku collects so many friends and gains recognition from gods; it isn't much to do with his capacity to love and manifest justice: he's a stupid guy who wants to be as strong as possible. Super makes this point, especially in the tournament of champions where we see so many characters with motivations distinct from Goku's and the 7th universe's. Where love is the centre of universe 2, justice universe 11, intellect universe 3, etc; driving universe 7 is what you could call a rage into the night. Thanks to Goku, Zeno allows for a test of the strength of these different universes, all judged to be too weak to allow to exist. The test is ultimately one of wishes. Zeno wants to know if, having fought for their very existence, a universe would seek balance and harmony equivalent to their destructive capabilities given ultimate power in the form of a wish through the super dragon balls. This makes sense; a powerful universe without balance and virtue is bound to create chaos. Goku, through his team and battle, fulfil Zeno's prophecy that the winning universe would restore all others, and circumnavigates the alternative fate of total annihilation of the multi-verse. He therefore proves that the universe is in harmony and balanced.

While Goku proves the universe is balanced in becoming a divine creature that people trust in, it all seems fated. After all, Goku pretty much came up with the idea of the Tournament of Power for selfish reasons. This playful circularity has made me fall for Dragon Ball as I felt I always would. There is a great power in this narrative I have not yet quite come to articulating. For now I remain immersed in the world and aim to eventually jump on the original Dragon Ball series to then begin to make sense of the larger Dragon Ball narrative for myself.