March 29, 2023

General Blue (S2E5)

48 minutes

Can a mangaka with traditional values from a country as historically conservative as Japan create a good quality LGBTQ character?

Jelli and Bekinney continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon by breaking down episodes 46, 47, 48 and 49, "Bulma's Bad Day," "Kame House - Found!" "Deep Blue Sea," and "Roshi Surprise." We continue discussing the Red Ribbon Army, the walking contradiction that is General Blue, and have a discussion about LGBTQIA+ Representation in Dragon Ball.

In this episode:

Your cohosts return!

We recap the episodes and discuss our favorite moments

More of Toriyama's love of James Bond, with planes inspired by You Only Live Twice, and underwater sequences inspired by Thunderball

We discuss the history of underwater filming in Japan, as innovated by Ishiro Honda

Recommendation to watch the movie King Kong Escapes

We draw some parallels further to the Red Ribbon army being a stand-in for Nazis.

More Journey to the West references

General Blue's not-so-secret sexuality

General Blue as an ubermensch

We talk about the contradictions of having a gay man be the leader of an army that would persecute gays and the real-life inspirations behind this with Hitler having a personal friend, Ernst Rohm, as the leader of the precursor to the SS who was also gay

And then we get into our main topic of the day and whether Dragon Ball has any good representation of the community to be found....NOTE: Sadly some of this discussion, where Jelli and Bekinney discussed the possibility of other characters being queer-coded, got cut due to audio issues

and more, including some general pop culture, trivia, and editorializing, as usual

Join us as we continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise.

https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast

https://twitter.com/finalforumpod

...more