>>44959255Yeah you didn't really understand what I said, but I didn't make it clear with my examples.
First off Dragon Ball has been tonally fairly consistent since it's...beginning, I'm not sure why you brought it up. The only real outlier is the Goku Black arc which is an absolute dumpster fire of writing on Toei's end regardless of 'edginess' and still isn't even ridiculously out of place with everything else, just noticeably trying too hard to be depressing.
Edginess is deliberately focusing and revolving your world around grimdark principles. I know it's a popular pinata here but Reborn has it with things like building a Type Null by gruesomely fusing two of your Pokemon together and then having it bloodily kill its creator, the Poison gym leader telling you about how reality is cold and worthless in an attempt to say something profound or deep before killing himself, etc. Pair that with Youngster Joey sending out his Jigglypuff, it just doesn't work, it's tonally fucked.
That's not to say you can't have large scope danger, death, or violence in Pokemon, the franchise works around those concepts already, but having them be the absolute forefront and focus of the writing philosophy just feels off.
