I think A2 especially is guilty of the assumption "characters with safety issues are always bad".
Can you honestly say that this isn't an accurate statement? All of the best characters in this game have extremely safe and reliable ways of creating openings, dealing massive damage and (most of the time) KOing efficiently. The characters that I think are also good in BBrawl have improvements that are consistent with this standard.
There are indeed a few characters that already could fundamentally create openings safely, but were lower tier because their reward was MUCH less on their safe stuff, and they usually had to KO at much higher percents. Giving those characters increased power makes those characters tournament viable competition (Mario, Samus, and Link are the most obvious successes of this game). Bowser is not one of those characters.
It may be the case that no good characters in standard Brawl have particular safety issues, but that is more a case of "it happened to work out that way" morso than anything. Safety issues are just a negative; they're not a guaranteed character ruiner any more than any other negative.
Considering how defensive Brawl is in general (low blockstun, extremely safe dodges, few downsides to retreating and projectile camping, broken edge stalling), being unsafe is pretty crippling.
You might not see it this way, but it is literally possible to take very few hits against an unsafe character and kill them by simply punishing them whenever they do anything. Fundamentally, if your opponent doesn't have a safe strategy (whether it is by character design or by tactical flaw), all you have to do to win against them is to wait them out. It doesn't matter how much reward they have on moves. If you're patient enough and don't take huge risks, your opponent can rarely ever KO you in this game.
It's just something to be taken in light of the positives. The whole idea of a heavyweight in general assumes safety issues. They use their weight to not die until they've taken more hits than a typical character, and they kill early and do lots of damage so the opponent effectively dies in fewer hits than typical. They tend to have above average range and priority as well (at least Bowser does) so they don't suffer in spacing games so much; the safety issues are the main things that just give the opponent more opportunities to land hits than they get... but isn't that how it should be? If the heavyweights had the same number of opportunities, they'd just be broken.
Firstoff, they don't have to have the same number of opportunities. They need to have a few opportunities that aren't ridiculously situational. You give those opportunities low reward to counterbalance the high reward of nearly everything else on a heavyweight.
And then, one of the other flaws to this argument is disregarding that since they have larger character models and more weight, they also get comboed a lot more. Considering how terrible Bowser's recovery is, he's also veeeeeeery limited offstage, and thus easily pressured to the point where taking 60% before getting back onstage is not unrealistic. Or just getting flat out gimped for that matter.
What's also not mentioned is the fact that most of Bowser's stuff has slower than average startup, meaning that it's easier for an opponent to block him on reaction. Which then goes back to the safety argument.
Now, tell me again what safe ways Bowser has to create opportunities. All of them rely on an opponent messing up, I can guarantee that.
His "safest" way of creating openings is through Klaw hopping, which is a pretty solid strategy. The PROBLEM with this is that it is mad predictable, and snuffed by people who don't randomly spotdodge against Bowser know how to anti-air.
Aside from that, he doesn't have anything that comes that close to being safe or reliable, partially due to his large size leaving him open from more angles to be punished.
The same opportunity with a better pay-out would make them flat out better than characters who don't have their combination of bulk and might. When balanced right, their lower number of opportunities and their need for fewer opportunities to accomplish the same result exactly cancel out and they end up equal in worth to the other characters.
You have the right idea, except the statement does not exactly describe the situation at hand.
As I was saying, what opportunities does Bowser even have? It is difficult for him to poke safely due to his large frame and existent ending lag on most stuff, and while he does have one approach that is theoretically safe, it is very predictable and must be spaced carefully.
This is what I've been saying about Ganon all along, but Bowser is a way, way less extreme version of that anyway since Bowser is way harder to lock down and shut out, and he can just ignore the whole idea of safe poking by using that fast unblockable that does 18% whenever he wants. Whirling Fortress also lets him largely ignore the defensive disadvantages of that sort of design; he only has to worry about his safety issues for half of his game (the offensive part) instead of all of his game like Ganon does. DK is fairly close to Bowser design-wise really, but DK takes some extra speed/safety in exchange for some lower damage output (though not really lower direct KO power) and fewer special tricks (DK doesn't have anything as big to him as Whiriling Fortress and Flying Slam are to Bowser). Yeah, there is more to it of course, but I don't think in a simplified and general sense what I'm saying is inaccurate. It's just that Bowser is a heavyweight, and he has the highs and lows that come with it.
And Ganondorf lacks anything that even resembles a safe option. Actually his Up-smash and autocanceled B-air are safe on block. How will you ever poke with those in a real match?
Lucario and G&W still laugh at Ganondorf no matter what he does, and basically anyone else can simply just wait him out or camp him and always be at an advantage. Considering the limits on his out of shield game due to his shieldgrab being TERRIBLE, there is a lot of stuff that Ganondorf can't realistically punish without powershielding into a dashgrab.
Donkey Kong unlike Bowser has three attacks that can be used more reliably as poke moves that are less situational than anything Bowser has. His B-air when fastfalled is safe most of the time. His F-tilt at maximum range is hard to punish. His Down-B is also safe on block and has pretty broken range. Donkey Kong's shieldgrab also has more range, his D-throw has better combo setups, and his B-throw can be a high percent KO move comparable to something like Luigi's B-throw. Yeah, he's not quite as safe as he would like mainly due to his large frame and lack of options for hitting below him, but Donkey Kong is a much better example of a balanced heavyweight. Donkey Kong also has a good out of shield killer in the name of D-smash, while Bowser really doesn't have anything like that unless for some reason his Up-B is fresh.
It's pretty foolish to assume that you can survive in this game without good poke strategies, since Brawl is heavily poke based due to how strong defenses are in this game, and the relative lack of reliable combos and hitconfirms. As much as you may think that raw power can overcome the need for pokes, you are sorely underestimating how limited Bowser and Ganondorf's poke options are. Their poke options are much too situational or not safe enough in general for them to reliably create openings in a defensive metagame, and considering the raw KO power of so many characters in this game in general, killing a meager 20% lower with x random move is not very impressive especially if it's not a safe KO move.
Heck, someone like ROB who gets criticized for his low KO power in general, I just proved that he can consistently D-throw -> U-smash for the kill. Tell me now that those other heavyweights aren't outclassed at this point.
, 
(changed from being dangerous to just annoying...), 
