Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 57 in many ways acts as a backdoor pilot for that Dragon Ball Z-Fighters spinoff series, which many fans have wanting. As new villain Moro’s goons attempt to loot key targets all over Earth before destroying it, the Z-Fighters break into teams in order to counterattack. Tien and Chiaotzu find themselves fighting the robotic member of Moro’s “Galactic Bandit Brigade” squad, Bikkura Quoitur. During the fight, Tien is hilariously exposed as being unable to muster the kind of insult that will short-circuit Quoitur’s Metalman brain; however, longtime Dragon Ball fans are calling B.S. on that scene!
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That’s because any Dragon Ball fan who read and/or watched the original series, knows that Tien is perfectly fine with talking trash!
After reading Dragon Ball Super chapter 57, several Dragon Ball fans went digging back through the original manga and pulled out scenes of Tien talking trash and throwing insults, just to show that creator Akira Toriyama certainly used to characterize Tien as something of a jerk and a smart-ass. Take a look at some of those scenes, below:
Am I the only on who thinks it’s out of character for Tenshinhan to not being capable of insulting someone? pic.twitter.com/U7tQsz0XeL
— VLODAX 🌊 / ❗️COMMISIONS OPEN❗️ (@vlodax) February 20, 2020
My Man was
— VLODAX 🌊 / ❗️COMMISIONS OPEN❗️ (@vlodax) February 20, 2020
W I L D pic.twitter.com/qcB1bfTjSo
As you can see above, the Martial Arts tournaments of the original Dragon Ball series made Tien out to be an intimidating and very antagonistic opponent for the Turtle School (Goku, Krillin, Yamcha). Like so many other Dragon Ball foes (see: Piccolo), Tien eventually became allies with Goku and co. So on the one hand, there’s a fair argument to be made that a lot of Dragon Ball foes have evolved over time, and therefore their personalities have done the same. You need point no further than Vegeta‘s evolution from Dragon Ball Z‘s first big bad to Dragon Ball Super‘s bad boy hero, to demonstrate that point.
That said, what a lot of Dragon Ball fans object to in this latest manga scene is not so much the fact that Tien seems to have lost the attitude that first defined him. The problem a lot of fans have is that other longtime Dragon Ball characters like Bulma and Chiaotszu don’t seem to know that Tien could ever even act that way. That just seems like inconsistent storytelling on Toriyama’s part, no?
The Japanese-language and English dub releases of Dragon Ball Super are now complete and available to stream with FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. Viz Media is releasing new chapters of the manga at a monthly rate that can be read entirely for free through the Shonen Jump digital library, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Fans in Japan are also able to enjoy fresh non-canon adventures from the franchise with new episodes of Super Dragon Ball Heroes‘ promotional anime series.
