dragon-ball-meta:

Hoo boy. Got a three-part mini-rant in my inbox.

Aight, here we go, Minus Whiner Masterpost time.

The panel seen in the manga in no way contradicts what’s seen in Minus at all. In point of fact, Bardock sent little Goku off the same night he returned. That same day also saw Freeza say he was waiting “no more than a month” before destroying Planet Vegeta. Meaning the planet went boom almost a month AFTER Goku left.

As for the “Superman’s Backstory” bit… hoo boy. More on that in a second.

“also Bardock only started caring about Hoku when he realized that Goku would avenge him and the Saiyans by confronting Frieza. Bardock was just a typical Saiyan who only cared about power instead of being a complete anomaly because of his wife who’s a complete anomaly for no reason.”

Bardock started mysteriously caring about Goku before even that. Bardock never even saw the vision of Goku facing Freeza until he was caught in the final blast, and yet before even that he cared to “change Kakarot’s fate”. Why? Dunno. Presumably just did because the planet was gonna go boom.

Bardock was not at all a “complete anomaly” on Planet Vegeta. He was still a soldier. He still cared about Battle, thirsted for it, still killed on Freeza’s orders. The only area in which Bardock was truly an anomaly was that he cared for his mate and stayed with her. Most Saiyans never really got attached or formed a romantic familial bond. Bardock was one of the rare who did, and with one of the Outcaste Saiyans who had a distaste for battle or harming others. As such, her life was menial. That’s… actually fleshing out a character. Not anything more or less. No less brutal than his brethren, just simply fell in love with a female as opposed to breeding. It wasn’t common, but it also wasn’t “oh my gosh this is as legendary as the Super Saiyan” either.

And he cared for his sons as an extension of that, which is… pretty simple. And even then, it wasn’t like he gushed over them or played catch. Hell, Gine even notes it’s not like him to actually fret over them when he immediately asks how Kakarot is.

“with the Bardock special, Goku is sent to Earth to destroy it, but ends up being the savior of Earth. in Minus, he’s sent there to prosper which is…exactly what he does. not as satisfying and not worth a retcon.”

Not exactly an accurate assessment. Goku never becomes its “savior” per se. But that actually contains a bit of a flaw in the special that Minus specifically fixes. 

Newborns. Cannot. Defend. Themselves.

Based on the Special, Saiyans literally sent their weakest children as newborn infants to go wipe out a “weak planet”, but… why? And how would they do it? Would turning into an Oozaru magically give them intellect above that of their newborn infant selves? Would they be able to walk, fight, channel energy? And how would they even stay alive until that full moon came to even take that form? What stops him from being attacked and eaten by some predator, or if he landed in a frigid zone or river? What happens if the weather doesn’t allow a view of the moon the night it’s full?

Minus fixes that via a few tweaks. It actually shows that the babies are placed in incubation pods and fed nutrients to allow them to grow strong, and grow rapidly. They learn a bit on how to fight, they come out knowing how to walk, they’re sent with armor to protect them until that full moon presumably comes. It actually makes sense that they could conceivably survive long enough for that to be a thing.

And as for this claim that he’s like Superman in Minus, that he was sent there to prosper… not exactly true either.

In Minus, Goku was sent to Earth to hide him and potentially recover him should Freeza not destroy the planet. It’s actually a fairly common trope in several mythologies and tales. But as for being close to Superman… the Bardock special is actually literally that, just an inverse.
Sent to be a Savior = Sent to be a Destroyer
Sent to thrive and prosper = Sent to pillage and conquer
Sent by his parents in defiance of the rulers of their planet just before a planet was destroyed by a great cataclysm = Sent by the rulers of the planet themselves before the planet was destroyed by an unforeseen attack.

Hell, in both cases, it involves the titular character’s fathers having foreseen their world’s destruction and trying to warn everyone only to be laughed at and dismissed as crazy.

But again, Minus didn’t retcon anything because:
The Bardock Special Was Never Canon.