Synecdoche and simile
Scholars.
Not all contiguous renamings are best described as metonymy, and not all discontiguous ones are best described as metaphor. Synecdoche and simile are, depending on who you ask, either subsets of or slight variations on metonymy and metaphor.
When a character is referred to by power level (again, an arbitrary measure of strength used as a stakes-raising device), as when Nappa smugly refers to Goku as “a 5,000,” that’s synechdoche. “A power level of 5,000″ is part of the set of things that are “stuff related to Goku at this point in the story.” But more specifically, it’s one part or aspect of Goku. This becomes increasingly silly and eventually stops — moving away from understanding or referring to people by their power levels — moving away from synechdoche as a mode of comparison, to judge people by more than the sum of their parts — is one of the big idea-driven arcs of the Frieza saga.
All part-to-whole relationships are contiguous, but the mental leap to contiguity is not as illustrative; it doesn’t carry as much information. We have to make a bigger leap of contiguity to understand “The First of the Worlds” than to understand “a 5,000,” so the tropes, while related and perhaps subordinated, have different names.
Simile: Frieza is _like_ the beast at Tanagra.
Simile is the form of comparative renaming that is most frequently taught in schools, because it is the most systematic. The best example of it in Dragonball is when Frieza says to the unlikely team of Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta before the arrival of Piccolo or Goku, in reference to the three minor characters defeating him, that “Sure you can, just like three ants can beat a dinosaur.”
Of course, Frieza has nothing to do with dinosaurs, he is just very strong and imposing. So it’s a relationship of similarity, not contiguity.
And, of course, there aren’t a lot of good examples of this in Dragon Ball, because it’s an English trope and Dragon Ball was written in Japanese — and also because Dragon Ball characters don’t tend to themselves speak in metaphor as much as they tend to represent metaphors.
It’s a very “show, don’t tell” kind of story. Sometimes.
Oh, you’re not going to quit now! You’ll miss the extra-super bonus feature on the next page!
It’s over 9000!!!
My favorite post in a while, I had not realised until now what a truly tragic figure Vegeta is until now. A few random overthought DBZ-related questions (which could probs be entire articles by themselves) that occurred to me while reading this:
1. Does it say something about society, demographics, focus grouping or w/e else that Goku is essentially the world’s first mentally handicapped superhero? (take a look at him in the episodes when he’s not fighting, clearly the knock on the head as a baby’s had some pretty major effect)
2. Is Dragonball Z (android saga onwards) a modern-day version of ancient mythology in the style of the greeks, romans, ejyptians, norse, etc? Think about it, a place above the world full of incredibly powerful people, seeing everything, squabbling amongst themselves. A whole variety of personality flaws and secret agendas and rivalries and such, with noone to regulate them except each other… Actually this could also be the real world version of that parody “Saturday Morning Watchmen”.
3. Beyond the obvious homoerotic undertones to it, I think the whole fusion thing in the Buu saga could be a good topic for overthought. Did anyone notice that Gotenks was essentially an experiment in taking the worst of both Goku and Vegeta? Things like Goku’s playful carelessness, lack of critical thought and naivety with Vegeta’s narcissism, power lust and rage, and representing that peak of immaturity and stupidity by making their fusion be by the proxy of their sons. This is particularly interesting when you consider that Vegeto was a combination of everything that is best about each and he can only be created when each can fully understand and respect the other’s strengths, and that this is the reason why Gotenks fails and Vegeto succeeds.
Also, the video at the end is broken…
Hii!! I am a long time reader from Chile (South America, long and thin country) It was a great reading, thanks a lot. Maybe I am asking too much but, Would it be posible that you could post or send a email of the books that you where using to get those definitions (The dramaticals ones) ???
Thanks again, and thanks for the site.
Your last video broke. What was it?
Dragon Ball Kai, m’dear: http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Kai
Oh my, and you can watch it, too…
http://dbkai.net/episodes