Has Modern Dragon Ball made the Dragon Ball World too small?

[Lord Beerus]

The Dragon Ball universe was already portrayed as quite small before Super provided the "28 planets of life in the Universe" tidbit. Hell, I think Dragon Ball as a whole is bad at world building. And this is something that Toriyama is mostly to blame for. It's one of the pitfalls of Toriyama's writing style. His overall improvisational and somewhat lackadaisical approach to the story is culpable for Dragon Ball sub standard expansion of the baseline narrative.

This is epitomised where Goku goes on a journey to become stronger for three years. And after the three years have past, we get zero indication on what kind of adventures Goku got up to when he was becoming stronger. The entire journey and explorations that Goku went through went travelling the world for three years in his pursuit to become more powerful happen off-screen. And all we have to show for it is Goku wearing a lioncloth. There's so much Toriyama could have done with that. Earth just feels like such a barren wasteland of nothingness most of the time in Dragon Ball.

I mean, GT, for all the shit I give that show, at it least tried to make the universe feel as large and vast as it should be, while also trying to bring back a sense of a wider scope adventure, in the very first arc. The execution wasn't there, but the intent and effort truly was, and I will commend them for that. Even with Super introducing the "28 planets of life in the Universe" tidbit, at the show gave us something to bite on with the universes that are taking part in the Tournament Of Power.

I don't want to give off the implication that I feel that Toriyama doesn't care about expanding the story, because he does that on occasions. It's just that I don't think he's willing to think outside of the box that much when it comes to really branching out the story. Toriyama is the kind of guy who just prefers to play a more safe and confined narrative. Which isn't inherently a bad thing.

[ABED]

This is epitomized where Goku goes on a journey to become stronger for three years.

If that's the epitome of it, then I think he's doing just fine. Yes, he could always fill in those gaps, but given that he didn't, we can safely assume that Goku busted his ass to become stronger but nothing huge or cataclysmic happened during that time. The whole "there's so much they could do with that" is the kind of thing that bugs me. Of course they can do things with it, but the fact that they didn't isn't a negative.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Didn't I explain this already in the previous post? Most readers/viewers/fans - whatever. If you were to make a poll asking whether or not world-building is important to a story I assure you most would answer with YES. Even in this thread seems to be in favor of world-building as an important element.

Could you post quantifiable proof, like said polls you mention?

[Michsi]

Didn't I explain this already in the previous post? Most readers/viewers/fans - whatever. If you were to make a poll asking whether or not world-building is important to a story I assure you most would answer with YES. Even in this thread seems to be in favor of world-building as an important element.

Could you post quantifiable proof, like said polls you mention?

The poll was hypothetical as in "if you were to make a poll". Example would be several web-comic and fantasy genre discussions were both readers and creators alike attributed great importance to this element. The most mentioned were characters and character interactions, but that's natural.

[KBABZ]

I feel like the greatest moment of world-building in the show, aside from the general exploration of the planet that Goku undertakes in the Red Ribbon Arc, is when Goku visits West City in search of Bulma. It's here where we truly learn how futuristic this planet can be, with flying cars, road tubes, spherical buildings, and more that just wasn't present when we briefly saw Papaya Island in the Tournament Arc. With the exception of exploring what little there is of Namek, we never really get moments like that again.

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

I personally think that Dragon Ball have a huge world for me it isn't small.

But where I can agree with some people is how fast sometime this world expanded and it's here where narrative kick in.

I think from the Beginning to the end of the Freeza arc everything went well and more or less smoothly, I always feel after Freeza that the Cyborg/Cell arc where too soon, I would have loved to see for exemple Goku training on Yardrat in addition to see also Vegeta searching for Goku.

Having a three way story focus with one episode with three part (Part A Goku side story, Part B Vegeta story, Part B Gohan story) would have been cool. Why this approach first for giving a send off to the Freeza empire where we would have seen Vegeta exploring more world under Freeza rules, second we would have been able to explore Yardrat culture and thirdly the Garlic Jr arc saga would have been played more longer.

But that's just how I see thing, then the Cyborg/Cell saga would have played as normal. My second niptick would be the Buu Arc saga whilst Gohan and the Highschool part give us more World building, I felt that the vilain part with the whole Madoshi Babidi and Dabra lacked potential, with Babidi we could have seen his homeworld his relation to his father and why he hated the Kaioshins, with Dabra we could have seen for the first time a part of the Makai world. There was missed opportunities on world building here.

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As for Super well the first two Arc here don't suffer anything except for the RoF arc lack of narrative and perhaps more character dev. Then we have the U6vsU7 saga arc who was not so badly introduced and then we have the whole Black/Zamasu arc with the time travel shenanigan. I don't think there was lack of anything there in terms of World Building.

But after this last Arc perhaps with the Univers 6 and Univers 10 introduced to us maybe we should have an arc involving first those two in addition to Univers 7, and while we were watching this arc developping before us maybe introduce other Univers through this arc leading to the tournament of Power.

I think @TheMikado the Dragon Ball World is not too small but rather too much rapidly build. Hope I was being well understood of what I was saying

[ABED]

Babidi we could have seen his homeworld his relation to his father and why he hated the Kaioshins

They were evil and came into conflict with the Kaioshins in their rampage across the universe. There's not some deep rooted hatred beforehand.

too much rapidly build.

There are over 500 chapters in the manga. How is that too rapid?

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

Babidi we could have seen his homeworld his relation to his father and why he hated the Kaioshins

They were evil and came into conflict with the Kaioshins in their rampage across the universe. There's not some deep rooted hatred beforehand.

I mean by seen his homeworld by how the building would look like how the species of Babidi as a whole work if the planet have purple or green sky, world building is there to show us how things look, I wasn't speaking about the narrative but rather the looks of the homeworld.

As for the 500 chapters of the manga well I know peoples who thing like me that between Frieza and Cell the world building was too fast they wouldn't have minded a 50 more chapters.

Just let's say focus on Vegeta and his quest to find Goku and Goku on Yardrat and his training to gain the Instant transmission with why not a little Arc against a local vilain there. And Vegeta could have run into a old foe who worked under Frieza command that would have been a great opportunity to introduce new planet and more depth to Vegeta characterization.

But that's just me.

[ABED]

50 more chapters of what exactly? Just explaining things? What added depth would we have gotten by showing him looking for Goku that we didn't get elsewhere?

[TheMikado]

I feel like the greatest moment of world-building in the show, aside from the general exploration of the planet that Goku undertakes in the Red Ribbon Arc, is when Goku visits West City in search of Bulma. It's here where we truly learn how futuristic this planet can be, with flying cars, road tubes, spherical buildings, and more that just wasn't present when we briefly saw Papaya Island in the Tournament Arc. With the exception of exploring what little there is of Namek, we never really get moments like that again.

Correct this is exactly what I mean. Prior to the Z era we had lots of horizontal exploration around the world with the Dragonballs.

the "Z" era marked a new open world. The saiyan saga opened up space to us. The Trunks saga opened up time to us. And the Buu saga opened up multiple realms to us (Demon, kaioshin) etc.
Exploration into these has happened with secondary media, For instance Jaco & DB minus tackles space. Time Patrol/Heroes/Xenoverse tackle realms and time travel. But in the mainline series, it seems like we've reached the end of the road now. We know the limits of the Dragonball Universe and its reality. We know how many universes there are who the top God is and how many timelines there are. There is nothing beyond those which has been capped. There are no more universes beyond what's been stated, and there is no one above Zen'o.

I personally think that Dragon Ball have a huge world for me it isn't small.

But where I can agree with some people is how fast sometime this world expanded and it's here where narrative kick in.

I think from the Beginning to the end of the Freeza arc everything went well and more or less smoothly, I always feel after Freeza that the Cyborg/Cell arc where too soon, I would have loved to see for exemple Goku training on Yardrat in addition to see also Vegeta searching for Goku.

Having a three way story focus with one episode with three part (Part A Goku side story, Part B Vegeta story, Part B Gohan story) would have been cool. Why this approach first for giving a send off to the Freeza empire where we would have seen Vegeta exploring more world under Freeza rules, second we would have been able to explore Yardrat culture and thirdly the Garlic Jr arc saga would have been played more longer.

But that's just how I see thing, then the Cyborg/Cell saga would have played as normal. My second niptick would be the Buu Arc saga whilst Gohan and the Highschool part give us more World building, I felt that the vilain part with the whole Madoshi Babidi and Dabra lacked potential, with Babidi we could have seen his homeworld his relation to his father and why he hated the Kaioshins, with Dabra we could have seen for the first time a part of the Makai world. There was missed opportunities on world building here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

As for Super well the first two Arc here don't suffer anything except for the RoF arc lack of narrative and perhaps more character dev. Then we have the U6vsU7 saga arc who was not so badly introduced and then we have the whole Black/Zamasu arc with the time travel shenanigan. I don't think there was lack of anything there in terms of World Building.

But after this last Arc perhaps with the Univers 6 and Univers 10 introduced to us maybe we should have an arc involving first those two in addition to Univers 7, and while we were watching this arc developping before us maybe introduce other Univers through this arc leading to the tournament of Power.

I think @TheMikado the Dragon Ball World is not too small but rather too much rapidly build. Hope I was being well understood of what I was saying

That's exactly what I am saying. We've gone to far vertical rather than spending some time on each rung of the ladder and exploring that. We haven't even visiting a bunch of the other timelines before we get one destroyed. We haven't even visited the other 12 universes before they are going to be erased. We aren't exploring horizontally before we start limiting and capping what there is.

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

@TheMikado

In Super destroying Trunks timeline was a mistake in my opinion because Toei could have capitalized on this Timeline for a spinoff leading us to the use of the Super Dragon Ball Heroes storyline with the Makaioshin (Timepatrol against Timebreaker).

And heck even revive a second spin off with the follow up of GT by asking Toyotaro/Toyble to rework his story with Zaiko/Xicor as first vilain reintroduce Broly in there (for marketing reason) and heck with the three Timeline and three Dragon Ball Dimension different pulling a Crisis on infinites earths to then combine the three timeline into one.

50 more chapters of what exactly? Just explaining things? What added depth would we have gotten by showing him looking for Goku that we didn't get elsewhere?

I take again Goku and Yardrat by expending with more chapters on Goku training there we could have learned why not if Guldo and Ginuy power came from this planet, we could have seen a bit more of how Yardrat society looks and work and if Goku encountered threat but mostly how he mastered his Super Saiya-jin newly acquired transformation.

See that kind of world building is nice that give us a little touch who makes the difference like the cherry on the top of a cake.

[ABED]

It didn't say Ginyu and Guldo were from Yardrat or came from there. It was the next planet on their list of targets.

we could have seen a bit more of how Yardrat society looks and work and if Goku encountered threat but mostly how he mastered his Super Saiya-jin newly acquired transformation

That's just exposition that would take up screen time, plus he had more or less mastered Super Saiyan on Namek. He could turn it off and on at will.

We haven't even visiting a bunch of the other timelines before we get one destroyed. We haven't even visited the other 12 universes before they are going to be erased.

It would've been same song different verse.

[Beek King]

This is all why I consider the 12 universes things to be unnecessary. What was the point of it if it's a scale that can never be properly shown, especially when a universe is just treated like a big village? Dragon Ball GT never bothered with expanding the cosmology and the pantheon yet felt larger in just the first arc alone. The 28 planets bullshit was just icing on the cake.

[Trickster]

Yeah, I totally agree with you. That's one of my mainly criticicims to DBS and how it explores NOTHING it introduces. Even GT made a better lore expansion (with a much more limited range, since now we have 12 UNIVERSES). Not even Zeno and the Hakaishin have a concrete reason to exist. They are just there to... destroy planets/universes they don't like. DBS' lore doesn't add anything important to the original one, what is a reason to me do not even think of it as canon (besides the fact Toriyama isn't the real author of it).

[Trickster]

This is all why I consider the 12 universes things to be unnecessary. What was the point of it if it's a scale that can never be properly shown, especially when a universe is just treated like a big village? Dragon Ball GT never bothered with expanding the cosmology and the pantheon yet felt larger in just the first arc alone. The 28 planets bullshit was just icing on the cake.

That's the reason that, in one of my YouTube live streams, me and my friends "corrected" the Bills Saga and changed this expansion.

[ABED]

It would've been same song different verse.

Not to toot my own horn, but this is more clever than I realized if you add "uni-" to the last word of this sentence. It essentially sums up my feelings about all this world expanding. With all the talk of the different universes, it really isn't that different than just going to another location in our universe. Hell, if you take universe to simply mean everything in existence, then those other universes are really just places that are a little harder to get to, and not fundamentally different than a planet that's really far away. I don't think we need to explore all those different universes, but the hierarchy in DB isn't explored. What do they actually do? We don't ever find out what Kami does. They just say he's a diety, but what does that entail?