Mary Sues are not fun or interesting unless ironic or satirical, which means Cauliflower and Broccoli are absolute cancer to every episode in which they appear. And the shoehorned speeches about "Girl Power" whenever they appear are trite and beyond cringe.
"Hurr durr - but what about Goten and Trunks?"
What a stupid argument.
Goten and Trunks are NOT throw-away ancillary characters who lack all but the most rudimentary personalities cribbed directly from a dull 12-year-old girl's mopey fan fiction. And, yes, Trunks has a reasonably complex personality: he alternates between the bravado his father has attempted to instill in him and the soft-spoken introspection of his natural personality in realistic ways, depending on his familiarity with his current situation. See Trunks when approaching a novel situation trying to get Mai's attention or meeting his baby sister versus something more familiar like fighting or showing something he finds cool to Goten. And the differences in behavior between Future Trunks and Kid Trunks serve to illuminate the impact of having his father in his life. I could go on.
Moreover, Goten and Trunks trained intensely under Super Saiyans for years, were born of Saiyans who already possessed the ability to turn Super Saiyan when their sons were conceived, and (most importantly) provided needed character development and comic relief, where there was always an element of irony and humor to the ease of their transformations. Those early-age transformations served to show off Chi-Chi and Vegeta's character development as more flexible/realistic and attentive/devoted parents, respectively, while also poking ironic fun at (1) Gohan, who questioned why his mother treated Goten differently and why the boys were handed something he had to work and suffer for years to achieve, and (2) Piccolo, who was constantly frustrated by their lack of seriousness. That lack of experience and seriousness even led to their families being killed, a major plot point in the Buu arc. It helps to highlight the different worlds Gohan and Goten grew up in, which improves the audience's understanding of the passage of time and various characters' psychology. And if I'm going to spend the time to watch a full 600-episode series, I want to understand and care about the characters.
TL;DR: There is poetic and artistic merit to the boys' transformations, and they serve to further several different plot points and character developments in a series (DBZ) that could be (IMO) a bit too heavy on battle and suspense at the expense of the lighthearted humor that made Dragon Ball so enjoyable.
(Speaking of Dragon Ball - if someone's going to deliberately make it a point to insert more strong female characters, just bring back Launch. There's a strong, rude, and totally insane female character who actually is humorous and enjoyable to watch, and even fits into the general tenor of the series without shoehorning in this awkward tween drama Mary Sue garbage, which is both cringe and dissonant to the entire aesthetic of the series.)
Cauliflower and Broccoli not only take themselves seriously (i.e., no super ghost bombs, etc.), but every other character treats them seriously, as well, failing to question their farcical strength or neurotic/aggressive behavior in the slightest. They're just accepted by everyone else as they see themselves [*cough* Mary Sue *cough*]. For reference, this would be like everyone suddenly seeing Yamcha as a top martial-artist, lady-killer, and baseball-player like he sees himself and loving him as much as Puar does. (Instead, the other characters have their own perspectives, which diverge sharply from Yamcha's self-perception.) When one character is allowed to dictate how the other characters perceive her, that's being a Mary Sue, and the writer is probably a 12-year-old who hasn't developed the requisite empathy and frame of reference to see through the eyes of other characters, or a millennial who's a beneficiary of nepotism (same thing, tbh).
On top of everything else, these two idiots are allowed to have bad attitudes and be obnoxious and rude to everyone and other characters inexplicably still like them. I don't know who paid who to insert their fan-fic characters into the series, but I'm sick of these two.
"Hurr durr - but what about Goten and Trunks?"
What a stupid argument.
Goten and Trunks are NOT throw-away ancillary characters who lack all but the most rudimentary personalities cribbed directly from a dull 12-year-old girl's mopey fan fiction. And, yes, Trunks has a reasonably complex personality: he alternates between the bravado his father has attempted to instill in him and the soft-spoken introspection of his natural personality in realistic ways, depending on his familiarity with his current situation. See Trunks when approaching a novel situation trying to get Mai's attention or meeting his baby sister versus something more familiar like fighting or showing something he finds cool to Goten. And the differences in behavior between Future Trunks and Kid Trunks serve to illuminate the impact of having his father in his life. I could go on.
Moreover, Goten and Trunks trained intensely under Super Saiyans for years, were born of Saiyans who already possessed the ability to turn Super Saiyan when their sons were conceived, and (most importantly) provided needed character development and comic relief, where there was always an element of irony and humor to the ease of their transformations. Those early-age transformations served to show off Chi-Chi and Vegeta's character development as more flexible/realistic and attentive/devoted parents, respectively, while also poking ironic fun at (1) Gohan, who questioned why his mother treated Goten differently and why the boys were handed something he had to work and suffer for years to achieve, and (2) Piccolo, who was constantly frustrated by their lack of seriousness. That lack of experience and seriousness even led to their families being killed, a major plot point in the Buu arc. It helps to highlight the different worlds Gohan and Goten grew up in, which improves the audience's understanding of the passage of time and various characters' psychology. And if I'm going to spend the time to watch a full 600-episode series, I want to understand and care about the characters.
TL;DR: There is poetic and artistic merit to the boys' transformations, and they serve to further several different plot points and character developments in a series (DBZ) that could be (IMO) a bit too heavy on battle and suspense at the expense of the lighthearted humor that made Dragon Ball so enjoyable.
(Speaking of Dragon Ball - if someone's going to deliberately make it a point to insert more strong female characters, just bring back Launch. There's a strong, rude, and totally insane female character who actually is humorous and enjoyable to watch, and even fits into the general tenor of the series without shoehorning in this awkward tween drama Mary Sue garbage, which is both cringe and dissonant to the entire aesthetic of the series.)
Cauliflower and Broccoli not only take themselves seriously (i.e., no super ghost bombs, etc.), but every other character treats them seriously, as well, failing to question their farcical strength or neurotic/aggressive behavior in the slightest. They're just accepted by everyone else as they see themselves [*cough* Mary Sue *cough*]. For reference, this would be like everyone suddenly seeing Yamcha as a top martial-artist, lady-killer, and baseball-player like he sees himself and loving him as much as Puar does. (Instead, the other characters have their own perspectives, which diverge sharply from Yamcha's self-perception.) When one character is allowed to dictate how the other characters perceive her, that's being a Mary Sue, and the writer is probably a 12-year-old who hasn't developed the requisite empathy and frame of reference to see through the eyes of other characters, or a millennial who's a beneficiary of nepotism (same thing, tbh).
On top of everything else, these two idiots are allowed to have bad attitudes and be obnoxious and rude to everyone and other characters inexplicably still like them. I don't know who paid who to insert their fan-fic characters into the series, but I'm sick of these two.
