>>283616113
Its not a dilemma if the author doesn't care and Toriyama didn't. I think only know authors have started caring about side characters and it's probably an answer to a post Bleach/Naruto wave where anyone not the MC was useless.

>>283616145
I think he cared, each arc a bunch of characters are dragged into the story but a bunch is sidelined and take no part in the arc at all. It's not random, he had to make a choice. His method in dbz seems to be to have about four relevant protagonists in each arc and a group of cheerleaders that are there to observe and comment and maybe do a small task occasionnaly, which works for me but he had to cut off some characters that were once relevant and would be cool if they were relevant in the future.

>>283616145
Only in the Pain Arc did everyone not named Naruto or Sasuke become useless. Naruto himself was pretty much sidelined for all of Shippuden up until that point.

it can work, but your plot needs to go beyond "big bad guy shows up and we have to defeat him"

>>283616361
High key that is the point of battle manga

>>283616396
battles are the point yeah, but the plot outline being that lazy is not necessary to achieve that, its just the simplest path possible

>>283616113
It's only a "dilemma" if you're a retarded westoid obsessed with muh character potential muh character got wasted.
Mains are mains. Sides are sides. Learn this fact of life and grow up.

>>283616510
If you put a character in your story, they're expected to contribute something to that story.

>>283616510
An author not realizing a character's potential doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Authors are just people, they aren't perfect.

>>283616113
You just need to grow a pair and be willing to write out characters to make room for new ones.
>Character dies fighting arc villain.
>Character gets critically injured fighting villain and can no longer participate in future battles.
>Character cannot fight because they were trapped and imprisoned by the villain.
>Character decides on their own that they can no longer afford to risk their life in battle and willingly retire. (They have a family, a promise to keep living, are just too cowardly, etc.)
>Character cannot fight because villain is holding something/someone they care about hostage.
>Character cannot act during an arc because of the politics in that specific world. (Them participating would start a war between nations, ruin their chances at election, etc.)
Any of these options are better than keeping a side character around to do nothing except exist and be a cheerleader. Either give their story a conclusion or give them screentime. You can't keep purposeless characters around just because you're attached to them. It's trying to have your cake and eat it too, simply doesn't work well.

Making characters interesting or likable outside of their power level also goes a long way, plenty of characters job all the time but are still liked for their other traits

>>283616546
Correct.
Side characters have their role. They fulfill it. That's their contribution. And after that's done they move out of the way because that was their only purpose on being..
>>283616575
Sorry your scrimbo bimblo with five panels of screentime didn't usurp the actual MC.
Just because your muh potential muh wasted faggot didn't usurp the MC doesn't magically means the story is now shit or the author is "wrong". If they made X character with a finite small role then that's how it is. You aren't God to decide they were "wrong" just because some random background character made your pee pee hard.

Learn to write fanfic if this causes you so much butthurt.

>>283616749
Authors are not God, they can be wrong and make mistakes

>>283616749
The Z Fighters fulfill no purpose at all, all they do is drag out arcs that could be much shorter without wasting time on them getting their asses kicked.

This was solved by comic book writers ages ago. The side characters just don't show up if you don't give a shit.
They can be off doing their on thing. You can give them their own manga later on if people like the character. You can even let someone have the character and do their own thing with it. There's no reason Dragon Ball Z couldn't have been the next Marvel or DC comics.

>>283616113
it depends entirely on the nature of the plot and story. There's almost always something to make people do unless it's nothing but a literal punch em up with the bad guy invalidating everybody who doesn't have protagonist might

>>283616113
>>283616145
>>283616232
Toriyama only cared about side characters insofar as they were useful to the narrative.
Like, here's the main characters of each stretch of the story:
>Pilaf Arc
Goku, Bulma, Oolong, Yamucha, Pu'ar
>21st TB
Goku, Roshi, Kuririn, Yamucha
>Red Ribbon Army
Just Goku (First Third)
Goku, Bulma, Kuririn (General Blue)
Just Goku (Rest of Second Third)
Goku, Yamucha, Kuririn (Baba section)
>22nd TB
Goku, Kuririn, Yamucha, Roshi, Tenshinhan, Chaozu
>Piccolo Daimao
Goku, Yajarobe, Roshi, Tenshinhan
>23rd TB
Goku, Kami, Tenshinhan, Kuririn, Yamucha

>Saiyan
Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Kuririn, Yamucha, Tenshinhan, Chaozu
>Namek
Gohan, Kuririn, Vegeta
>Freeza Fight
Goku, Piccolo, Gohan, Kuririn, Vegeta
>Jinzouningen Arc
Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Trunks, Kuririn
>Cell Arc
Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks
>Boo Arc
Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks, Goten, Piccolo

He discards characters if they aren't useful to the current narrative's flow. Sometimes he has characters around for an arc if he thinks they might play a use as he continues writing, but he'll also tend to drop them (Bulma in Namek comes to mind).

As for Bleach, it and Kinnikuman are the rare examples wherein every character 'matters' and gets a chance to shine in every arc (until Kubo nearly killed himself). This shows WHY this meme is bad because both of those manga are absurdly bogged down and far less successful than their contemporaries, probably because of that.

>>283616232
The Android/Cell arc is the worst about the peanut gallery. You get a few moments, like Piccolo being the strongest dude on the team for a minute or Tien getting his last real moment in the spotlight, but otherwise almost everyone is just gawking. Saiyans and Namek at least had the pretense of holding out for Goku to arrive.
The fact that literally no one but Goku learns the Kaioken feels like a massive missed opportunity.

>>283618095
High effort post. Appreciated.
Yeah I don't think Toriyama's solution is bad. He's obviously attached to the characters but does drop them if he feels he can't find a use for them.

>>283617586
No. Letting every side character wander off and get their own book has long been the fucking bane of the comics industry. It's better for a character to just fuck off instead of clogging up the magazine with offshoots.

>>283618132
Yeah you're right, the z fighters went to train with King Kai but they don't seem to know Kaioken.

>>283618212
I almost wonder if that was the original plan, but somehow he got convinced that the Kaioken should remain a signature technique for Goku for some reason. Except then the Kaioken got replaced with Super Saiyan anyway.

File: image.png (111 KB, 297x300)

111 KB PNG

>-'wow where is Ten or Yamcha or Piccolo?'

I think of the Tree of Might movie; everyone shows up for that and that's why they win. It's the best movie in my view.

>>283618095
Trying too hard with those spellings
>Jinzouningen Arc

>>283618333
I was gonna write out Artificial Humans, but I figured just writing Jinzouningen would have a lower chance of eliciting a reaction from some retarded faggot who grew up on youtube summaries of the arcs.

>>283618208
It's a lot harder to do that with heroic characters. With villains, it makes sense why they're only prominent in one arc; that's when they're out in the open, enacting their plans. Then they're killed off, or go back into the shadows after they're defeated.

Heroic characters are a lot harder to believably write out of the story.

>>283618095
It's funny that you mention Kinnikuman because it tries the opposite and fails. In Nisei, most of the focus goes to Mantaro while everyone else is mostly useless and irrelevant. Old characters making a return? They just appear early on to get their asses kicked to show how strong the new characters are. The new side characters get a chance to shine? Terryman's kid gets one win early on and that's just about it. Fuck Seiuchin, fuck Gazelleman, fuck the rest. Kinnikuman is at its best when everyone gets together and fights, as shown by the revival.

>>283618537
Group fights tend to be a fucking shitshow

>>283616113
Keeping the cast of core characters tight and consistent is almost always a good idea from a writing perspective. However if your core cast is weak (extremely common problem, since it can be hard to nail it on your first shot), then expansion may be a necessity for the survival of the manga. From there, it's easy to lose control.

Where Toriyama went wrong was introducing "power levels" and scouters

Instead of actually showcasing how strong a character is, he can just throw out a big number and say they're stronger or faster without actually needing to show it or actually give them any unique techniques

>>283618483
Depends on the scope of the story. Yeah, in Dragon Ball it's hard to justify anyone not showing up because they can all sense a battle happening from the other side of the planet and fly there at super sonic speeds. In a lower power scale setting, you can just establish some distance and it's usually not an issue.

>>283618636
>Where Toriyama went wrong was introducing "power levels" and scouters
>Instead of actually showcasing how strong a character is, he can just throw out a big number and say they're stronger or faster without actually needing to show it or actually give them any unique techniques
This is the weirdest criticism because it shows how fucking retarded someone is, as well as showing that the person never even read the manga or watched the anime.
Battle Power, as a concept, exists for all of 1.5 arcs, and its introduction shows it as an unreliable tool that only causes the antagonists to underestimate the heroes, as well as depicting them as having less understanding of their own abilities than the Earthlings.

It never actually matters because a character is always as strong as the narrative needs them to be.

>>283618729
That may have been the original intention, but the concept of power levels persists even after they stop being measured numerically, and battles continue to be "higher power level wins" all the way until the end of the series

>>283618799
That shit started all the way back with King Piccolo.

>>283618799
>That may have been the original intention, but the concept of power levels persists even after they stop being measured numerically
That's solely in your retarded fanspiction conceptualization of the series.
>and battles continue to be "higher power level wins" all the way until the end of the series
First of all, that was the whole series. Dragon Ball is not a deep work, the stronger guy always wins. The majority of the first three arcs is Goku running around and curbstomping everyone he sees because he's the stronger guy, and when he meets someone stronger, he just trains for three days and then curbstomps him. You aren't being insightful, you're describing the basic narrative flow of Dragon Ball and then appending a descriptor for an issue you have, but you want to pretend the issue was something that occurred in the middle and it wasn't the impetus for the entire series (which was "Goku is really strong and only gets stronger").

Even then though, there's quite a few fights later on where strategy wins and not power- explicitly in the arcs AFTER battle powers are introduced and RARELY before then.
>Raditz
Won through literally holding him down and doing a kamikaze attack.
>Vegeta
Won through just sheer perseverance, the guy who does the hardest blows to him is a borderline non-combatant obese samurai.
>Ginyu
He had the higher battle power but literally could not use Goku's body right.
That's off the top of my head and there is rarely situations like this prior to the Saiyajin arc.

File: 0052-013.jpg (234 KB, 1066x1600)

234 KB JPG

>>283618799
>but the concept of power levels persists even after they stop being measured numerically, and battles continue to be "higher power level wins" all the way until the end of the series

>>283616113
>they have to keep getting stronger
and stopped reading right there
not, character don't "have" to get stronger.
you don't NEED to increase their power and the fact you think like this shows that you are a shit writer.

File: 1735279456771406.jpg (57 KB, 500x226)

57 KB JPG

>>283616113
>Solves shonen

>>283616113
You can make a case for Yamcha and Krillin being hard-to-impossible to write into the battles as regular humans but Toriyama had no excuses with Tien and Chaotzu given their obvious supernatural origins. He had no excuse and sidelining Goku's first (and best/truest) rival is truly unforgivable in my eyes. Their rivarly wasn't based in blood feuds (Vegeta) or a nemesis archetype (Piccolo) but pure martial arts and it should've been uphelded. Moreover, Tien is clearly an alien or something akin to that and he should absolutely be powered up. I also really like Chaotzu and which he'd be around more.

>>283619405
Stakes have to raise as the series continues, audiences expect the feats of power to get more impressive.

The way Toriyama treated the supporting characters was appalling, especially after you watch the OGDB from start to finish. Tien telling the gang at Cell Saga's end he'll never come to see them again was very disheartening.

>>283616795
>Authors are wrong because Naruto didn't become about muh Rock Lee muh hard work baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw
Grow up.

>>283620269
I found that to be one of the more memorable things about DB. Like they're all friends and war buddies, but it's not like they casually hang out or anything. Goku doesn't track down Tien to invite him to the barbeque.

>>283620302
Whether you like it or not, that WAS a theme of Naruto. Even Naruto himself says that there are no shortcuts to achieving your dreams.

>>283618799
>>283618956
Powerlevels matter surprisingly little throughout the whole series for deciding who wins a fight. From memory:

>Tenshinhan
What decides the fight is a ring out.
>King Piccolo
Lost because he thought Goku was helpless.
>Piccolo Jr.
Another ring out from clever use of a hidden technique from Goku.
>Raditz, Vegita, Ginyu
Already mentioned
>Freeza
Here I do remember it being mostly about power levels but both were evenly matched in power, Freeza lost due to a lack of stamina, I remember Goku saying Freeza burned out all his power trying to keep up.
>Androids
Also about power levels, but also their biggest danger was their stamina.
>Cell
During the final beam struggle he was at the same power level as Gohan, maybe stronger. He lost because Vegeta threw a rock, distracting him long enough for Gohan to go all out as he lost balance. Before the final fight we even got the super muscular forms being mocked for having higher power levels but lower agility. At many points Cell could've lost too, if they either managed to destroy every cell in his body or if they acted smarter instead of, for example, healing him.
>Buu arc
Power levels never mattered less. Powerful forms like SS3 and fusions all have drawbacks and limitations, with SS3 draining too much energy too fast and fusions being time limited. The final fight is against the weakest Buu form and is won with Satan convincing mankind to save themselves by giving Goku energy for the Genki Dama, while Buu is being distracted.

>>283618288
>Toriyama
>plan

I think this only works if the replacements are way more popular than the OG group. Regardless of power levels

DB and Bleach did this very well. Nobody cares about Yamcha/Tien/Krillin and Uryu/Renji/Chad

Gege also did this too but he was not expecting Nobara and especially Megumi to remain ever so popular. Yuta is decently popular but he's an isekai MC. Maki lmao

>>283620302
Rock Lee isn't a wasted character because the story didn't become about him, he's a wasted character because he ends up contributing absolutely jack shit to the story, basically a filler character.

>Sasuke Retrieval Arc: Does nothing that affects the story
>Kazekage Rescue Arc: Does nothing that affects the story
>War Arc: Does nothing that affects the story

Him being a side character is fine, the problem is that you could remove him from the story entirely and pretty much nothing would change. Pretty much the only meaningful thing he does is kick Sasuke's ass once

>>283620382
Yamcha and Krillin are good as side characters but Tien should absolutely be a main Z warrior. The fact that he isn't with the amount of memorable techniques he has and his personality is a fucking crime.

>>283620382
Nobara was never really as popular so she was safe to bench. Megumi is the effectively harder to bench because he's the "marketed" deuteragonist and Sukuna, the main villain, has taken much interest in him. And yeah, he's also a very popular character so Gege couldn't bench him halfway

>>283620382
Gege's mistake is making a very likable trio before he sabotaged them for Yuta and Maki. But even then, Megumi despite being the butt of the fandom is a lot more popular than most characters

>>283620382
In JJK's case it mimicked Naruto's structure with a teacher and 3 students. People expected the same thing, he can't replace them. It's different from Dragon Ball where you had no reason to believe any addition to the cast was permanent after he mostly ditched Bulma and Yamcha. No expectations = freedom.

>>283620382
Gege copied the Naruto formula. It's retarded if he didn't think Megumi would end up being so popular and he's the only other guy in the main four besides Yuji who is still active until Shinjuku.
If he was honest about dumping him because it was clear Megumi would never reach his potential, he would've done so back in Shibuya but he didn't

>>283618729
nah, "Powerlevel doesn't matter/is a subversion" is midwit. Can't believe it still gets said. Although it does get mentioned less often in the next arcs.
The concept is introduced and you instantly have a Saiyaman btfo Yamcha and Raditz/Nappa btfo-ing Krillin and company, etc. You're going to say "oh, but the strong guy can be outsmarted at times in a team effort yadda yadda"-
>>Raditz
>Won through literally holding him down and doing a kamikaze attack.
That's the thing. If you need a team of people to group and do a kamikaze to take down one guy...the power counter was right. That guy really was powerful. The power counter said the guy is powerful and he is, as evidenced by how you needed multiple people doing outsmarting maneuvers to succeed.

>>283620745
I think Gege was planning to do so, Mahoraga literally killed him and Sukuna was right there to take over his body without outside interference. Megumi is effectively dead so it's not like he can fight back and needed Tsumiki for Sukuna to fully take control over him

I firmly believe it's his popularity that's preventing Gege from doing it early.

>>283618288
Kaioken is more trouble than it's worth an crippled Goku for entire fights whenever it was used.

Anyone else feel like the concept of a “side” character is kind of weird with some thought?
Like any given side character could become a main character with their own arc spotlight, similarly someone that’s normally side-by-side with their leading MC can end up falling off to the point of basically being a benchwarmer

>>283620784
Of course strength will always matter somehow. But that doesn't mean
>battles continue to be "higher power level wins" all the way until the end of the series

>>283621075
This was shown in the Buu arc where Gohan got outsmarted by Buu who was in turn outsmarted by Vegetto and reverted to his weaker but unrestrained Kid Buu form, etc.
Hell, the final battle wasn't even the characters in their strongest forms.

>>283616113
>they have to keep getting stronger
This is the flaw. You're assuming the power scaling must get bigger and bigger. If you keep power scaling in check you can have some characters sit out an arc but come back for the next arc in good shape and contribute to it. You don't have to say "well I guess he got 10x stronger off screen" if the next arc doesn't require that everyone be 10x stronger.
For example, FMA characters basically do not get stronger throughout the entire series except 1 time when Al learns how to use alchemy without drawing a transmutation circle. This allows characters to come and go as the plot demands. You don't see Roy, Scar, and the Ling in every arc but whenever they show up they're just as relevant as before. The other thing this series does is have action take place in multiple locations at once. As new characters join the MC they have their own goals and tasks that take them to different parts of the country so they split up, form different teams, and rejoin as necessary.
Jojo is another example where characters are "generally" the same from start to finish. In parts 3, 4, 5, and 6 aside from the very last fight nobody really gets stronger, they just get more accustomed to their powers. This allows every member of the cast to stay as relevant as the author wants. Even if they haven't had a spotlight arc in a while, when they do they will be able to keep up with the protagonist as well as their enemy. Any decisions about which characters get more pagetime than others ends up purely being the author's writing preference and not a case of "character couldn't keep up". Even parts 1 and 2 are technically written like this. Yes, Jonathan and Joseph do have hamon training arcs but after that they don't get any stronger. It was simply the author's choice to give all the fights to the main character. He could have let Zeppeli, Caesar, Lisa Lisa, etc. be relevant, it just wasn't the style at the time. The style was MC must do everything.

File: 1740931923510806.jpg (77 KB, 313x584)

77 KB JPG

>>283620815
it crippled Goku for 1 fight, then he blew past all the limits and was able to keep up with 50% Freiza til SSJ. It's a straight up godly skill for anybody talented and dedicated. Others not learning it was just laziness from toriyama

>>283622015
Kaio-Ken Kamehameha fucked Goku up bad enough he had to rely on the Spirit Bomb and stopped fighting Frieza directly until the SSJ transformation.

The Kinnikuman revival has a jobber that was introduced, attacked, and defeated in a single page come back to fight against a god. It is definitely not impossible to balance your side characters, it’s just about making the fights feel credible. Kinnikuman is strong, but he’s only one person with limited stamina. Make your fights meaningful, make their fighting styles distinct, and give them goals to help them contribute. Plus, a new opponent doesn’t have to be physically stronger to be a threat. Super Phoenix assembled a team of powerful foes with unique abilities, and was backed by the God of Intelligence, but the real threat was that Kinnikuman lost his power boost, forcing him to use technical wrestling and mastering the Muscle Spark. An immense threat for sure, but not purely a matter of powerlevels.

>>283620118
based Tolkien pilled

>>283622124
He had to rely on the spirit bomb because he was still losing even with Kaoiken and made a last ditch move. He suffered no ill effects from Kaoiken itself and just had general battle fatigue. This is obvious by the stark difference from how he was vs Vegeta

>>283618956
you retard again
saying goku training for 3 days but ignore all the training since the beginning then with master roshi
i hate animetard like you so much that can only look at one specific event instead the whole thing

>>283616113
Have the surrounding cast be stronger than the protagonist, and the protagonist spends a bulk of the story trying to surpass them.

Technically MHA did this, but:
>There's basically no synergy or character dynamics outside of Deku and Bakugo
>Deku already reaches near the top of the relative power scale before the halfway point
So it didn't work, but the concept was solid.

>>283616113
This isn't really a problem at all. Training arcs are great. You can also have characters perpetually in a state of training and then just unveil their upgrade, like One Piece. Or have them discover the upgrade mid-fight. Only training sideplots are really cumbersome. It's probably best to just make it the mainline plot for a few episodes or keep it at like two minutes.

>>283616113
Authors always have only the current major arc in mind, so what the characters will be doing in future story arcs will always be an afterthought.

They should do it like Jojo. Replace the whole cast each time.

>>283620784
>The concept is introduced and you instantly have a Saiyaman btfo Yamcha
That's an example of Battle Powers being irrelevant, since Yamucha was shown to be significantly more powerful than the Saibaiman.
Also, again this is irrelevant as a criticism since this isn't something that randomly begins midway through the series, the majority of DB is just "The stronger guy wins". Because it's a battle manga. About strong guys.
>>283622619
Your broken English is saying nothing retard.

>>283618799
>>283618636
This is the problem with faggots who started with Z on toonormi and think the saiyans were laying down the rules of the setting with their scouters.

>>283620382
Bleach didn't do it well, it lost its best character dynamics and the notion of actually fixing its messed-up setting. Dragon Ball did it well by never going too grandiose in the day-to-day things for Goku, and Krillin still mattered a lot on Namek and had some moments in the Androids arc, while Tien at least had a moment of glory against Cell.

>>283626408
It doesn't help that Toei decided to call post-timeskip Dragon Ball "Dragon Ball Z" as if it were a different thing.

>>283620382
MHA also dropped its original trio

>>283618385
Just say Android

>>283627909
Nah

>>283617586
Multi-author franchises inevitably implode because every author perceives the characters and point of the story differently and tug in too many directions.
Dragon Ball has spin offs like the Yamcha Isekai that have a fundamentally different perspective on the story than Toriyama did.
I can name doujin that I liked that are the same. There's this real old Korean one I have saved called "Flow Into Space", dealing with a small tragedy of Goku saving Android 18 from some thugs, back when she was a human and he was traveling to the Tenkaichi Budokai, and then leaving her as he continues his journey. It is quite poignant and well executed, but has nothing in common with actual Dragon Ball as a story.

In a Marvel world, that doujin could have gotten itself published as an official one-shot, and that would have permanently colored the franchise forever onwards, even if Toriyama would never have wrote it.

>>283616113
Anime and manga also by extension books and tv shows have more of an issue of it being noticeable when side characters don’t show up. It’s also the issue of how battle shonen are presented in which the most of these shows like Naruto, bleach, My Hero, Demon slayer, JJK etc (you get the point) all introduce giant originations with tons of characters that we are all supposed to care about. When it’s presented like this is more noticeable when certain side characters never do anything. Introducing new characters that replace old ones too is healthy because as the series goes on the person writing it understands better how to write characters that fit into the story better. Something like video games has an easier time with giant cast because you can play as main characters and it makes you feel more connected to them even if they don’t have as much screen time.

>>283620415
>he does is kick Sasuke's ass once

Which wasn't necessary since Sasuke is supposed to be the prominent ace rival character and supposed to be the best of the genin and cunning. Sasuke getting his ass kick was just Kishi liking him getting humiliated as a low key Sasuke hater.

>>283618132
>The fact that literally no one but Goku learns the Kaioken feels like a massive missed opportunity.
People always bring this up but Kaioken was already massively powercrept by that point anyway, the humans having it wouldn't change anything. That's also taking x20 into account, humans are less durable than Saiyans so they probably wouldn't come anywhere close to that, so they'd only have a small power boost in exchange for absolutely wrecking their bodies which would make them a liability.

>>283620118
a divided group on a joint mission out doing their own tasks to bring victory to the collective but also one dies

>>283616113
HxH doesn't have this problem and it's a battle manga/seinen

In fact I would argue the MC is weaker than his friends

File: saint seiya.png (142 KB, 750x618)

142 KB PNG

>>283616113
Five is the max

>>283618095
funny how you forgot Tien in boo saga. Never understood why Toriyama even bothered to give him that minuscule amount of screentime

>>283629199
Saint Seiya isn't good and I'd say every arc always has at least one useless character in the main five.
It gets worse when they do more than five in the spinoffs.

>>283629236
He's not a main character.
He fights at one point but he's not actually a present character, he's barely even a background character for 90% of the arc.

>>283616113
Wrong. You can make the story as long and as many chapters as you want. You are thinking in anime terms where everything needs to happen in 11 to 22 minute chunks, within a certain episode count and within a budget.

File: GH6miRWXMAEXrF5.jpg (491 KB, 967x2127)

491 KB JPG

>>283622015
>laziness from Toriyama
More like forgetfulness. He just forgot it existed.

>>283618095
The reason why Kinnikuman revival works is because Kinnikuman himself already had enough screentime in the classic series so there's no problem keeping him on the sideline to showing fucking Springman or Junkman being badass at least once

File: tumblr_4b21f033efa737ef38(...).jpg (239 KB, 839x1292)

239 KB JPG

>>283628066
Goku and Krillin saving Android 18 as a child is actually kind of canon.
So did Vegeta come to Earth before but got btfo by Bulma's super blaster canon and he left to get stronger and come back.

>>283626816
Ida and Uraraka were never relevant outside anime marketing. The original trio was always going to be Deku, Bakugo and Shoto.

>>283629975
Then they should stop marketing characters that weren't meant to be important

>>283629975
>>283630084
Kaminari gets to be in merch for some reason despite doing fuck all. Like even Aoyama and Invisible Girl are more relevant

>>283630084
That would imply that the companies actually understand the IPs they market.

File: FT_cast_fashion_ch263_notext.jpg (700 KB, 1600x1130)

700 KB JPG

>>283616113
Possible options:
>don't raise powerlevels too quickly
>keep your fights relatively short
>have them team up on stronger foes
>rotate them so there's a natural timegap for offscreen training that you don't have to explain
>kill them off (heroically), or what >>283616607 said

>>283624004
That helps too. I think most shounen start out that way, to be fair.

>>283616113
Toriyama never struggled with making side characters relevant, he just didn't care. Dragon Ball was Goku's story, so in his point of view Goku & to a lesser extent, Gohan were the only ones that matter. The other characters just exist for the fans & the narrative.

>>283620488
>Tien should absolutely be a main Z warrior. The fact that he isn't with the amount of memorable techniques he has and his personality is a fucking crime.
Tenshinhan isn't a popular character, especially in Japan, so what reason would they have to make him a main Z fighter?

>>283630084
>>283630608
Author creates a character with an interesting power, visuals and maybe personality. Character does something once and never again. Why would the author do that? Well, now a marketing company can use that character to bait you into watching/reading. The anime company has more material for fillers, when those were a thing, and for original movies. They have more merchandising to sell. Video games can have larger rosters of playable characters and NPCs without having to make OCs. You get more engagement from cosplayers and fan art. I think they understand well what they're doing.

File: StrawHats.jpg (232 KB, 1280x721)

232 KB JPG

>>283616113
One Piece tends to give every single crew member their own fight each arc, but some people would argue that it's a detriment to the series because it slows the pacing down.

>>283630942
That's what OP said in the fourth line, yeah.

>>283630847
People don't want some dogshit filler. If you include a character in your story, they're expected to pkay SOME role in the plot, no matter how small.

If you could remove them and still reach the same conclusion, they aren't a character, they're padding.

>>283630942
one piece gets bogged down, particularly post-time skip, because Oda loves to spend time on stupid shit nobody cares about or just straight up stalling for whatever reason

>>283631011
From a "good writing" perspective you're right. From a "making money" perspective though, I knew people who were fans of minor Naruto characters like the bug guy and the dog guy back in the day because of what they did in fillers and from playing them in the PS2 games. If that guy read the manga he would be disappointed.

>>283630942
Not true for years
Wano was only exception since Fishman Island
Instead he ignores most of them, they're background paper