Jinzoningen MULE wrote:Not sure how I missed this gem before.
I hope you had your fun misrepresenting my sentiment, but why don't we actually talk about...well, the thing that this entire forum is focused on. Yeah, it's good to expand your horizons, literally no one will disagree with you. But tell me... What on God's green Earth does that have to do with new Dragon Ball material? You can read Rules for Radicals or The Innocents Abroad, or whatever you want, and also maintain interest in new Dragon Ball material. Ambitious, I know, but here's another thing; Assuming two things have the capacity to be separate, it's rational assume that you can be open minded in one area, but not in another!
Not that you'd be interested in the far-fetched ideas of a madman like myself, but just in case you feel like not totally ignoring my point in favor of pivoting to an unrelated place where it's easier to get intellectual brownie points, this is here.
Please don't make wild accusations as to my intent. It wasn't my specific intent to intentionally "misrepresent" anything you said, I genuinely took your comment as missing my original point entirely. My original post was focused on the broader point that maybe part of the problem here lies with the fanbase itself and it inability to let go of the franchise and let it be laid to rest as something that did its time before playing out its creative lifespan to its conclusion. Percieving that sentiment of "let go of the past and move on to other things" as "closed-minded" struck me legitimately as comically missing the forest for the trees.
But fine, to your point: is it outright impossible in any way for someone to come up with a halfway decent idea for a Dragon Ball story and execute it with baseline competency? Of course it isn't. The whole "monkeys on typewriters" analogy fits here, as it does with almost any giant, overstuffed franchise. Given enough time, enough people, and enough tries at it, I'm sure that if DB were to continue on in perpetuity from now till doomsday, SOMEONE somewhere is gonna spin something that's even somewhat vaguely worthwhile.
My point though is... why is that even worth it? Instead of tediously dredging through mountains of failed muck to wring out a few interesting gems worth of stories (and I can all but guarantee you that that's exactly what a Toriyama-less, into-perpetuity DB will consist of over the years should that be what the future holds) why not just let sleeping dogs lie? What good does it do to Dragon Ball's legacy to have it be bogged down even further with extraneous fluff that at best will add nothing and at worst will only dilute what made the original series work in the first place? For what, just to get a few moments more of "contact high" from whatever halfway okay-ish material might be squeezed out of it once every so often?
That kind of aching desperation for "another hit" from the fanbase right now is EXACTLY what's putting me off so strongly to all of this. All of this further jonzing for more Dragon Ball seems to stem from primarily two things: A) Toei's quest to make more money, and B) the fans somehow not being satisfied with a decade-long sprawling serial that is covered in a staggeringly dense mountain of manga tankobon and anime episodes/movies, and not being able to let go of that original rush they felt as children. I've seen this exact song and dance play out time after time after time in other nerd media, be it Star Wars or Marvel/DC or whatever else have you. And the whole routine at this point is just utterly sad and futile on the part of all parties involved across the board.
Its not a matter of being "closed-minded", its a matter of watching history repeat itself in virtually the exact same way time after time after time and being flabbergasted as to how so many people haven't yet clued into the fact that the problem is that they themselves are fueling these completely gratuitous recyclings of (sometimes ancient) franchises by dutifully showing up like pigs to the trough over and over again because they're like heroin junkies chasing the dragon of memories with these properties from ages ago. Instead of, I dunno, just demanding and being on the lookout for fresh new ideas and experiences instead.
I get and understand still liking and being fond of something old from earlier on in life and still coming back to it years on. I'm posting here, aren't I? But at the same time, while for example I'm a huge fan of Pulp Fiction and it remains one of my all time favorite movies, I'm not itching or aching for it to suddenly get a sequel or remake or what have you. TONS of other of my favorite media concepts/properties have been belatedly sequalized or revamped long many years after the fact over the past decade now, and in almost NO case was it EVER worth it. Sometimes, oftentimes, things just have their time and place, and then they're done. And you remember it warmly and you go back to it to revisit from time to time, and you even share it with your children (and its all new to them either way); but you move the fuck on ultimately to new things.
And don't misunderstand: if a creator, be it the original or a fresh vibrant voice, comes in to do something new with an old idea coming from primarily a place of genuine creative inspiration, then that's all great and wonderful and I'm all for it. That's certainly happened before as well. But that's not even what something like Super is here. Toriyama is "back" in only the most tenuous manner possible (barely more than what he did for GT even), and I'm not sure how much of his sudden return was inspired by genuine creative inspiration or pure venomous spite towards DB Evolution. I'd understand if it was primarily the former or even some combination of both, but if the latter was the only or main reason he agreed to ok this and do some rough concept work for it, then that's hardly much of an incentive to be optimistic going forward. Motivation and drive are all well and good, and anger is certainly an excellent motivator, but that alone without any ideas or anything new of interest to add don't really amount to much in the end.
Point is, I don't think that most fans have really thought through very well what sudden new DB material after all these many years would entail, apart from "Yay, I get to vicariously relive my childhood all over again!" Most fans I don't think really see how much of what made Dragon Ball distinctive and fresh and unique is tied firmly to Toriyama's voice, sensibilities, and artistry. You aren't left with much beyond just another in a long line of martial arts fantasy serials without that one of a kind distinct creative personality not only holding it all together, but elevating it into something more. Other creators can certainly do competent martial arts fantasy serials well, and surely they will if they get assigned to Dragon Ball: but Dragon Ball was always something more and apart from just a "competent martial arts fantasy story". And that something was a genuine artist's unfiltered (or barely-filtered) creative voice behind it, fueling it forward and giving it a shape and life that set it drastically apart from countless other wuxia serials.
I think that in a weird sort of way, in their zeal to still have more, to have the ride never truly end and keep going for as long as possible (if not forever outright) that a lot of fans almost unintentionally devalue and play down exactly what DB's real creative strengths are and from where it has achieved its longevity. Unlike so many other works and properties out there, which can have a degree of anonymity and sameness to their creative identity, there was never any mistaking where and from whom DB sprang from. For such a massively mainstream and popular property, there's a real value to that kind of artistic intimacy that gets overlooked and that is generally hard to find in similarly monolithic franchise properties.
I don't think a lot of fans realize how much they're (again unintentionally) belittling DB and underestimating/undervaluing it to treat it as if its just another stock and trade DC Comics-esque property and anyone from anywhere can just hop aboard and give their take on the concept, in an assembly line-like fashion. As Cipher has said, Dragon Ball does not live and die on its concept, as its concept is fairly bog-standard Wuxia fantasy of which there are a gazillion others like it out there. Dragon Ball lives and dies on that bog-standard Wuxia storytelling as being heavily filtered through the mind and pen of not only one of the most singularly distinctive visual stylists to ever come out of manga, but also the kind of irreverently comedic mind that you wouldn't generally expect to take on such a story, but yet does it so well.
I think this is symptomatic not only of DB fandom, but more broadly as a part of a culture that has been increasingly homogenizing and devaluing individual artistic merit and seeing creative works and media less through the prism of the work of individual artists, but instead through the "brand" of the surface work itself. A culture that has been trained over the years to internalize and accept the ever increasingly corporatization of creative media as a whole. Dragon Ball is seen now as good and special to so many not because it was made by a singular creative talent like Akira Toriyama, but purely because its Dragon Ball, as if that in and of itself alone somehow is a seal of quality. The hands that mold it behind the scenes may as well be invisible if not non-existent as far as the audience is concerned.
This sick, twisted internalizing of a corporate view of creative media on the part of average, everyday fans is seen even in countless discussions on this very forum that deal in arguing over profit margins and spreadsheets of Dragon Ball's annual sales figures (both in this thread here, as well as tons more going back to even over a decade ago). There's almost NO reason why we, the general audience, should care one single whit about DB's sales numbers (that stuff ought to be exclusively the concern of Toei and Shueisha's bean counters), particularly when it was an inactive and completed/dead series for so long; and yet the sales numbers for things like merchandise and such have continued to be obsessed over, even on the podcast by Mike, almost with the same degree of obsessive fervor as Battle Powers throughout this forum's entire existence.
Tracking and following Dragon Ball sales numbers has long-since become almost as integral a part of Kanzenshuu's fan culture as obsessing over strength debates, and yet no one ever stops for one second to question just WHY its ingrained in anyone's heads here to give a flying fuck how many units a Raging Blast game has shifted this quarter? I mean really, what the fuck does it ultimately matter to any of us not in Bamco's accounting department? At least its a BIT more relevant now that DB's is on "active" status again, but we've been at this game now as a community since at least the mid-2000s or so.
I bring this up as just one of many examples as to how regular, everyday people in the fan community have over the years unconsciously absorbed and internalized seeing every piece of creative media around them purely and solely through a corporate lens instead of as an audience or from the creator's perspective. And this view I think is hugely symptomatic behind the fanbase seeing DB less as the creative byproduct of a unique artist, and more as just a pure brandname product to be mass marketed by whomever, with the original author's input being a nice, but totally optional and ultimately not needed side-bonus.
Again, Dragon Ball was a work that had already had a MASSIVE glut of content in its original creative heyday, when it was all still largely the singular work of one unique and talented artist. The nature and state of its current and future wellspring of content does not in any way posit any sort of return to those original glory days. Indeed the argument can be (and has been) made that those original glory days were on wobbly, creaking legs towards their end to begin with, thanks to creative burnout and ideas being tapped out. Of course time can indeed recharge any artist's creative batteries: but again, Toriyama hasn't committed to this anywhere close to 100% (and Toriyama IS Dragon Ball), and that's not even getting into the questionably shaky stated primary motivations for why he's jumping back in now all of a sudden.
And of course people can walk & chew bubblegum, i.e. explore new things while still engaging with old/new DB content: though at least in my own experience a lot of fans on this community generally DON'T ever really explore or stray very far from heavily Shonen-centric content as a whole. But that's a whole other bigger, broader issue with the community here. It just doesn't paint a very optimistic or flattering portrait of the community though when that aspect is also paired with the constant outcry for DB to continue on indefinitely. I know that there are people here to whom none of this applies, but they certainly haven't generally been a representative majority in my experience here.
All said and done, there's just no good argument that I can see as to why that original spate of content (in all its absurd density) shouldn't be more than satisfactory for ANYONE. It HAD been for well over 15 years after its endpoint. This yearning for more now and the nature of the more that we're getting, while obviously it hasn't been without its individual bright points, cannot help but be seen as the epitome of gratuitous and needless. And the motivations for both continuing to make it on Toei/Toriyama's end, as well as the motivation for the fans still wanting more of it, despite the insane amount of it already available before, cannot help but come across as dubious and questionable at best.
