Is it me, or does everything else DB related have better character design?

[Bardo117]

I was definitely more excited to see all the concept art for Dragonball AF back in the day than I am of seeing all the dumb "designs" they're coming up with for Dragonball Super.....

Sheesh, I'm sure this is a beaten horse but I absolutely hate the hair color changes as transformations.

[KBABZ]

I think they're pretty good so far. I mean when you think about it Super Saiyan itself is a "lazy" transformation in the face of Oozaru or Zarbon or Frieza; it's the hair pointed up with no inking in the hair or the eyes, and a recolour when it isn't in the manga. It wasn't really until SSJ3 and SSJ4 where radical physical transformations actually occurred, and as I recall those fell very much into love it or hate it, at least amongst the people I knew.

SSJ5 or whatever it was in AF seems overcomplicated to me, the white hair doesn't inspire the idea of huge power, and kilt is just weird.

[OhHiRenan]

I'd rather recolors than AF's over designed nonsense. There's beauty in simplicity.

[KBABZ]

I'd rather recolors than AF's over designed nonsense. There's beauty in simplicity.

One of the defining things about Toriyama's designs is that he knew he'd have to draw some of them on nearly every single panel for weeks at a time. Goku dropped the bow on his belt early on, and come the Buu saga it was replaced with a Sash and the symbols on the front and back were taken away. Something like the AF design wouldn't last very long outside of maybe a Chapter cover.

[Trickster]

Super's designs are really poor. Not just about the characters, but the scenarios also. Compare, for example, Namek or Kaioh's Planet with Zeno's temple, which is just a japanese common one with nothing inside. Everyone in that tournament, robots, mahou shoujo, the wolves, the hakaishins, they are all variations of animals/beings we have on Earth, different from namekians or even Freeza's minions. Jiren, Toppo and their friends use only a red collant, and their faces are extremely generic (c'mon, a gray bald guy with big eyes?).

[Bardo117]

It just seems, like they've introduced various rather powerful forms and all they're doing is changing the hair color. With SSJ4, we felt the radical and intense transformation process that Goku had to go through to become SSJ4. In Super, all we see is hair color changes, and minimal changes in GI. I feel a sense of 'don't stray too far from the original look or else people won't recognize who the character is'

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I'd rather recolors than AF's over designed nonsense. There's beauty in simplicity.

Completely agree. AF designs were too unappealing. It's funny people love to criticising Super and it's "re-colours" of the Saiyan transformations when for decades that's all people have been doing with SS4 not to mention also ignore the subtle changes these new forms have: SSG raising Goku's bang, eye's change, body gets skinnier and clothes change colour. SSGSS Goku has a bang raised plus completely new ki and redesigned gi for introduction of the form seems to be a lot of effort gone in their for a "lazy re-colour"... Or Rosé Black's sticking out hair strand and the pink colour off setting against his black colour scheme and the great looking aura.

Take Freeza in Z for example each form he had was wackier than the last and then his super mega form that was hyped up ended up being simple compared to rest and it was effective and later became iconic. Just look at all the shitty over designed fan art we had for Freeza's new form when Resurrection "F" was announced just bleugh, yes Toriyama opted to change his colour but there were also quite a few subtle changes like the SS forms not just "re-colour" and it's actually probably harder to come up with subtle changes instead of just doing something over the top.

[DragonBallKing]

I actually like Golden Freeza, not so much from a design standpoint but that it's kind of symbolic. He's taking on the same look as the Super Saiyan's that terrified him all those years ago.

[KBABZ]

Completely agree. AF designs were too unappealing. It's funny people love to criticising Super and it's "re-colours" of the Saiyan transformations when for decades that's all people have been doing with SS4 not to mention also ignore the subtle changes these new forms have: SSG raising Goku's bang, eye's change, body gets skinnier and clothes change colour. SSGSS Goku has a bang raised plus completely new ki and redesigned gi for introduction of the form seems to be a lot of effort gone in their for a "lazy re-colour"... Or Rosé Black's sticking out hair strand and the pink colour off setting against his black colour scheme and the great looking aura.

Super Saiyan is just a Kaio Ken recolour anyway!

As I mentioned earlier, the only Super Saiyan forms with radical changes are SSJ3 with the hair and brows and SSJ4 with the fur and black. SSJ2 is incredibly similar to 1. So with SSJ3 and 4 being the exceptions to the rule, it makes sense to use colours to differentiate them, especially since that makes the combatants easier to tell apart during the action and wide shots. If we used the Goku Black example, if he were to get a "mostly lightning" SSJ form that surpasses 3 but was still yellow (and use the logic that Goku's SSG and SSB were also still yellow), then he really wouldn't look that different from Goku, right? When multiple Super Saiyans are in a scene together it becomes a fun game where you have to check the shape of the hair and what the clothes are to figure out who's who, because the changes of the Super Saiyan transformation has a habit of overriding distinguishing features like Trunk's hair colour or the shape of Goku's hair.

Take Freeza in Z for example each form he had was wackier than the last and then his super mega form that was hyped up ended up being simple compared to rest and it was effective and later became iconic. Just look at all the shitty over designed fan art we had for Freeza's new form when Resurrection "F" was announced just bleugh, yes Toriyama opted to change his colour but there were also quite a few subtle changes like the SS forms not just "re-colour" and it's actually probably harder to come up with subtle changes instead of just doing something over the top.

I thought Frieza's Golden form was an ugly recolour, but in a way that's actually the point: RoF is basically Frieza's conga-line of shame and an introspective into why he fails against Goku, so his cheap knock-off of Super Saiyan being a crappy design is actually quite appropriate; he has no idea what he's doing and doesn't bother to learn or train or develop.

As for the final form as seen on Namek, I always liked it because it was scary in its simplicity; instead of having the power be shown with a crazy and wild design like the Xenomorph Stage 3, the pure undetailed white to me implied that the power was super-focused like a laser beam, and therefore more chilling.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Completely agree. AF designs were too unappealing. It's funny people love to criticising Super and it's "re-colours" of the Saiyan transformations when for decades that's all people have been doing with SS4 not to mention also ignore the subtle changes these new forms have: SSG raising Goku's bang, eye's change, body gets skinnier and clothes change colour. SSGSS Goku has a bang raised plus completely new ki and redesigned gi for introduction of the form seems to be a lot of effort gone in their for a "lazy re-colour"... Or Rosé Black's sticking out hair strand and the pink colour off setting against his black colour scheme and the great looking aura.

Super Saiyan is just a Kaio Ken recolour anyway!

As I mentioned earlier, the only Super Saiyan forms with radical changes are SSJ3 with the hair and brows and SSJ4 with the fur and black. SSJ2 is incredibly similar to 1. So with SSJ3 and 4 being the exceptions to the rule, it makes sense to use colours to differentiate them, especially since that makes the combatants easier to tell apart during the action and wide shots. If we used the Goku Black example, if he were to get a "mostly lightning" SSJ form that surpasses 3 but was still yellow (and use the logic that Goku's SSG and SSB were also still yellow), then he really wouldn't look that different from Goku, right? When multiple Super Saiyans are in a scene together it becomes a fun game where you have to check the shape of the hair and what the clothes are to figure out who's who, because the changes of the Super Saiyan transformation has a habit of overriding distinguishing features like Trunk's hair colour or the shape of Goku's hair.

While on the topic of SS3 it seems that it is fan theory that Toriyama was parodying himself with it (and the majority of the Buu arc) and why it looks so wacky, and I think modern DB sort lends credibly to it as we have hardly seen SS3 since the BoG film in 2013. It also explains why Toriyama wrote the form to be so hindering, SS3 doesn't seem like Toriyama at all but if he was parodying his work then it sort of make sense, especially since in his mind when he came up with it he probably knew the Buu arc was gonna be the last, but I don't think it is a coincidence that we've hardly SS3 since the Buu arc.

[KBABZ]

While on the topic of SS3 it seems that it is fan theory that Toriyama was parodying himself with it (and the majority of the Buu arc) and why it looks so wacky, and I think modern DB sort lends credibly to it as we have hardly seen SS3 since the BoG film in 2013. It also explains why Toriyama wrote the form to be so hindering, SS3 doesn't seem like Toriyama at all but if he was parodying his work then it sort of make sense, especially since in his mind when he came up with it he probably knew the Buu arc was gonna be the last, but I don't think it is a coincidence that we've hardly SS3 since the Buu arc.

I think it and the "ascended" forms seen in the Cell arc are critiques, although SSJ3 is probably meant to be more on-the-nose. With it, I think Toriyama was trying to say that while the "next big powerup"s are cool and helpful in a pinch (like with Frieza and Cell), they aren't to be relied on 100% of the time and are no match for out-and-out training and fighting prowess, and tend to come with downsides such as draining your energy quickly (something Frieza didn't learn despite losing specifically because of that twice). SSG's treatment in BoG got this sort of angle as well; despite picking up the form, Goku still gets beaten, and the solution just so happens to be training with Beerus, not going SSB. If anything powerups in Dragon Ball are treated more as a way to keep up with the next villain (first demonstrated with the Ultra Divine Water to deal with King Piccolo), rather than a surefire way to win against any villain.

You can see it with Vegeta as well; instead of trying to train "in general", his mode of thinking is more the destination, the next form of Super Saiyan, and not the journey of training associated with it. Fusion, the Next Big Thing from SSJ3, couldn't be relied on (and neither could Ultra Gohan or whatever it was called, both with Buu and on Namek), and instead it was a fighting technique, not a transformation, that won the day with Buu. In fact there isn't an instance in Dragon Ball or Z (not familiar with Super) where the villain is defeated soley because of the power-up. King Piccolo left Goku a limb, Vegeta was defeated with the help of Goku's friends, Frieza cut himself in half after draining his energy, and Gohan defeated Cell with the help of his dad and Vegeta providing a distraction. The transformation obviously helped make it possible and get competitive, but it wasn't a "okay I'm at the next power up now so I've got this in the bag" situation.

[lancerman]

No everything I've ever seen from AF is just a fanboy version of generic anime tropes on top of GT and other transformations. Toriyama is usually very simple

[Zephyr]

The new Super Saiyan forms are very minimalist in their changes, but they're more than just hair recolors.

Super Saiyan God/Super Saiyan Red:
Gives Goku Super Saiyan bangs, bigger pupils, and a slimmer physique. Also a unique aura.

Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan/Super Saiyan Blue:
A unique aura is all this one gets. It's understandable to dislike how minimal the change is, but calling it nothing more than a recolor is disingenuous.

Super Saiyan Rose doesn't warrant its own category. It is literally just Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan/Super Saiyan Blue when used by an actual God. So like with Blue, there's an aura change, so it's more than a recolor, but there isn't anything else, so it's understandable to be wanting more.

[Xeztin]

Some of the designs in Super are very detailed and others are just flat out generic and strange. I wouldn't even describe it as simple since Toriyama is usually very good at that. I think the designs with Toyotaro alone or Toyotaro+Toriyama are better than Toriyama by himself. Toriyama will always be legend but I feel like age and money, not to mention being thrown 80 some characters to design at this point, has got the best of him. He's never introduced that many in one saga and if he did, they usually shared very similar designs.

[Bardo117]

ORiginally, simple changes in design were fine because it was the first time of them doing so. But now that method is too tired and tried imo

[Zephyr]

Keep in mind that these simple changes happened after more exaggerated changes had become the norm, and - arguably - tired and tried. There's a reason that fans expected new forms to just keep getting more and more exaggerated, before seeing Super Saiyan God.