Get2daChoppa

It’s incredible what fans can inspire each other to create.

I had found MasakoX’s channel around the time of the end of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and quickly became invested in his ‘What-If?’ scenarios. I count myself lucky to see the one that changed it all, ‘What if Raditz turned good?’, from the day of its very first episode, and now it’s grown into its own fan webseries, Dragon Ball R&R. The format’s success and leaning towards storytelling, as opposed to clinical analysis, have gradually turned these what-if tales into fanfiction in their own right. I find it fascinating that the storyline of Dragon Ball can be told in so many different ways, depending on the slightest of changes in the timeline. Not all of these have been successful, but all have been, to one degree or another, interesting, and some have passed into legend.

I recall that one of the golden rules of the what-if tale was that Freeza (yes, that is how I will spell his name from here on out) could never turn good, as that would betray the quintessential evil of his character. But on the 17th of December 2019, as the world unknowingly pivoted toward one of the gravest crises in its long history, the unthinkable occurred. 268 days too late for April Fool’s Day (or 106 days too early, if you prefer), MasakoX assured his audience that he and Havarok had come up with a redemption arc for Freeza that could work. The result, as it turned out, was one that almost eclipsed Raditz’s own tale, and indeed spawned its own spinoff audio drama series, Revelation F. However, I believe the thing that made it so successful wasn’t down to the masterful characterisation of Freeza, Cheelai, and new characters Trogen and Cuit, though they certainly helped. It was its shifting of the whole Dragon Ball dynamic from that of a Shonen Anime/Manga into a space opera, actually fulfilling the potential of the whole galactic setting that Toriyama had laid the foundations for, only to promptly abandon it in typical Toriyama fickleness. The setting of Revalation F is so much bigger than that of Dragon Ball, with emperors, planets, civilisations, spaceships, mind-boggling destruction, and the unending quest to find one’s place in a vast, populous and dangerous cosmos. But MasakoX was not the only one thinking about the lost potential of the galaxy Freeza left behind.

My own creative steak within Dragon Ball began with meeting MasakoX himself at the 2017 Yorkshire Cosplay Con in Sheffield, where I had many great memories and even met some people I have since come to know as good friends. Dressed as a Red Ribbon Army guard of Muscle Tower, I got MasakoX’s autograph, still proudly displayed in my room to this day, and proposed what I called a ‘What-If’ story to him: a single Freeza minion survives the events of the Namek saga via a technicality of the wishes on the Namekian Dragon Balls (“Bring back all those killed by Freeza!” and “Bring them to Earth!”), then insidiously sets up a successor to the Red Ribbon army to emerge after the events of Dragon Ball Super’s Tournament of Power Arc, with ambitions to steal the Earth dragon balls and forge his own galactic empire. He wasn’t impressed, advising not to make it “too fan-ficcy”, and I can’t blame him. After I bade him thanks and farewell, I realised just how bad my story concept really was. I wanted to apologise to him, but was too overcome by embarrassment and anxiety to go back to his booth to do so, especially at such short notice.

Thankfully, I found the inspiration to make the genesis of something better after Masako posted his ‘How to make a Dragon Ball Villain’ series. I took to a nearby set of stationary for inspiration, coming up with ‘Meija’ (inspired by a ruler and re-typing ‘measure’) of the Meija empire. I even came up with a whole stationary-inspired elite mook team for him to boss around, but I have since forgotten their names. Sometime later, I came to wonder what happened to Freeza’s empire after he and his father were slain by Trunks as the Android saga began, going back to my earlier point about the fickle Toriyama leaving unfulfilled potential wherever he goes. Resurrection F proposes that the Freeza force just sort of meandered and loitered around the galaxy without guidance or leadership, until Sorbet decided to resurrect him and kick of the events of the movie. Then Super comes along, and Weis just resurrects him again, re-establishing the galactic status quo like nothing had happened. His return to his old seat of power is depicted as epic, but it is hollow with no context as to what his remnants were up to. Not to mention that the power vacuum left behind by two supreme rulers utterly convinced of their immortality would be catastrophic, potentially resulting in a galactic civil war the likes of which no mortal had seen since the rise of the Saiyans thousands of years ago. Enter another one of my great inspirations: Warhammer 40,000’s ‘The Horus Heresy’, an epic and tragic tale spanning a whole galaxy, where the scion of a group of demigods commanding armies of superhumans revolts against a father and emperor so assured and arrogant that he thinks he can guide an entire species to eternal dominion of the galaxy. Recalling Meija, an idea began to form in my mind, speculating the hidden, violent tale of the fall of Freeza’s empire over 18 years, and the conquest of its fractured systems and remnants at the hands of one of Freeza’s most devoted generals, before he too found his annihilation at the hands of a returned emperor. This ‘Meija Heresy’ will not be quite as grimdark as its tabletop-wargaming-lore inspiration, and I have been careful to hide it in the background of the Earth, Kai-planet, and celestial-based action going on in Z and Super, but it – The Galacticlysm – is a sprawling tale years in the making, which I am eager to tell someday, and it has been a motivating factor in the adaption I have written, seeing as though the events of Revalation F have led to a vast galactic setting and post-Freeza civil war of its own.

However, another one of MasakoX’s uploads have more directly spurred me to make the decision to write this adaption. ‘What if Gine went with Goku to Earth?” was a wonderful tale, unfortunately overshadowed by other, bigger What-Ifs, but still a captivating tale of Dragon Ball’s strongest momma surviving Planet Vegeta’s destruction and shaping the setting in her own way. It inspired a fanfic novel adaption by meganechan720, which MasakoX read in three livestreamed volumes, covering 20 chapters of the novel. As the third volume was livestreamed, I decided this needed to be done for ‘What if Freeza Turned Good?’. ‘Revelation of F’ would be the appropriate title, but that’s already the name of the audio drama, so ‘Redemption’ will have to do.

I hope whoever comes across this enjoys it. I must warn you going in that I am a big fan of worldbuilding, and if you find my descriptions of settings and backgrounds overly intensive or ramble-y, then I can only apologise. If MasakoX is reading this, then I hope this adaption of one of your greatest works is worthy of your standards. Hell, I hope it’s at least better than the cringeworthy fanfic I pitched at YCC 2017. If you wish to livestream this story, too, then I would be honoured, though I do not demand or expect it in any way. Whatever happens, I wish you a good day.

Sparking!

- Major Bunk