Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-27996636-20180129123746/@comment-34548039-20180207135635

Jiren's comment to Toppo made a lot of sense to me, and it was incredibly powerful coming from him. I've seen a lot of fans elsewhere confused about it, or thinking it seems sinister, but given what little we know of Jiren, it makes sense that he'd be disappointed and would have expected more form Toppo. Toppo has done nothing but walk around talking about Justice since he was introduced, and while I like his character, it is unmistable that he's acted as though extremely committed to his ideals.

Yet in this episode, he decided that justice is just worthless because it can't get done what he wants it to get done. So he just throws it away, like it's worthless, and forsakes everything he held sacred just because it didn't do what he wanted it to. That's a weakness in the man more than a failing of the ideal. Something else I see from a lot of fans is complaining about the narrative not being compelling, but this episode's latter half was surprisingly intricate and interesting.

In Z, Vegeta threw away everything to obtain power to match Goku, which proved worthless in the end given that it couldn't stop Mr. Buu, and Goku has surpassed SSJ2 anyway, but Vegeta threw away everything in some vain attempt to fall back into his old ways, as though it actually was enough, as if he could go back. In reality, he was only kidding himself, because he couldn't go back, and it was all vain self-deceit. Here, in this episode of Super, Toppo and Vegeta more or less walk as mirror images of each other, living enantiomorphs casting inverse reflections at one another. Vegeta held only more tightly to what mattered to him, and in those things, in that pride, in that promise, in that internal well, he found strength.

Toppo carelessly tossed aside everything, quite like a child, honestly, throwing a tantrum because his means just couldn't meet his desired ends. Oh, if this doesn't work, forget all that! I'll just destroy my way through. Even with that, he failed, because he mistook the mere act of casting aside all as equivalent to success, as equivalent to stepping through, and Vegeta has learned the hard way that this is nothing more than lies a person tells themselves not only to make it easier to forsake everything, but to to justify the act.

Whatever Jiren is, I perceive him as a greatly honor-bound individual. He seems extremely self-disciplined, and it pervades his very being. That Toppo was so careless - and so deluded - in his handling of his own self-professed ideals, and for little to nothing, quite understandably would disappoint Jiren, who has to do everything himself.

UI is quite a bit like the concept of mushin, and in zen contexts, the idea of letting go of things is prominent. Much of the way I filter and understand UI is through these ideas, where people take the idea of your body moving on its own as being equivalent to a mindless state, but for me, it is quite a bit more complex than that because in those zen contexts, with which martial arts and concepts like mushin are deeply connected (spirituality and those practices as practiced by monks and buddhists had great interconnectivity and converged in many ways with martial arts and even swordsmanship), the mere idea of being in such a state isn't really mindless; it is empty. It is mu. It is a sublime responsivity beyond conscious awareness. There is an idea of letting go of letting go, which would work quite well with that reactivity of UI, and in these contexts Vegeta's approach would be, in some way, a part of the whole more than running its contrary as being too "thinking" or this or that.

My apologies that this has gotten a bit lengthy. There are few things, if any, I love more than Dragon Ball, and once I get going, I find it hard to stop, and then we have a novella chapter.