Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

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jpranevich
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Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:52 am

Which dragonball appeared most often in the original anime? I would have thought the four-star ball (appeared in 21 episodes), but it's actually the five-star ball (25 episodes).

I just finished watching the original Dragonball anime and kept notes on which characters, objects, and attacks appeared in which episode. It's completely useless, but the type of thing that I expect someone here may appreciate. I'm going to slowly work my way through Z next where I think the data will be more interesting for more people. For this, I watched all 153 episodes, 2 safety specials, ands 3 movies.

Allies
  • Son Goku - 158 episodes (100%). Goku is the only character to appear in anywhere near all of the episodes.
  • Bulma - 121 eps (77%)
  • Yamcha - 104 eps (66%)
  • Kamesennin - 101 eps (64%)
  • Puar - 98 eps (62%) - Only one episode (93, during the 22nd Budokai, where Puar appears without Yamcha.
  • Oolong - 91 eps (58%)
  • Kuririn - 91 eps (58%)
  • Lunch - 80 eps (51%)
  • Tenshinhan - 68 eps (43%) - Considering he didn't appear until ep 82, this is amazing. There are only the two specials and five episodes after he first appeared that he was absent for.
  • Umigame - 51 eps (32%)
  • Chaozu - 42 eps (27%)
  • Budokai Announcer - 39 eps (25%)
  • Chichi - 26 eps (16%)
  • Yajirobe - 26 eps (16%)
  • Upa - 22 eps (14%)
  • Suno - 19 eps (12%)
  • Kami - 16 eps (10%)
  • Fortuneteller Baba - 15 eps (9%)
  • Karin - 13 eps (8%)
  • Ox-King - 12 eps (8%)
  • Android 8 - 11 eps (7%)
  • Mr Popo - 9 eps (6%)
Recurring Villains
  • Pilaf/Shu/Mai - 28 (18%) - They always appeared as a triple. No episodes with one without the others.
  • Piccolo Daimao - 21 (13%)
  • Piccolo Jr - 20 (13%)
  • Red - 20 (13%)
  • Black - 19 (12%)
  • Crane Hermit - 19 (12%)
  • Piano - 18 (12%)
  • Blue - 15 (9%)
  • Tao Pai Pai - 11 (7%)
Dragonballs
  • 5-star - 23
  • 2-star / 4-star - 21
  • 6-star - 20
  • 1-star - 18
  • 3-star / 7-star - 17
Objects
  • Nyoibo - 99 (65%), plus nine more if you include when it is visible under Kami's Lookout (68%)
  • Kintoun - 55 (35%)
  • Dragon Radar - 39 (25%) - Only counting the portable Bulma-style
  • Sensu bean - 7 (5%) - Only when visible or eaten
Techniques
  • Kamehameha - 43 (28%) - Any characters doing it
  • Flying (non-Puar) - 36 (23%) - Martial arts flying, not whatever Puar does
  • Afterimage - 21 (14%) - Only when explicitly called out or used with a distracting afterimage. Did not include all of the times that there were quick-moving afterimages.
  • Oolong/Puar transformation - 17 (11%)
  • Rogafufuken - 15 (9%)
  • Dodonpa - 8 (5%)
  • Jan-ken - 7 (5%)
  • Mafuba - 4 (3%)
  • Taiyoken - 3 (2%)
  • Kikouhou - 3 (2%)
All the data for this can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing. It's not really cleaned up for public consumption. In that chart the "Xs" are for actual appearances while the "Ox" are for flashbacks, all not excluding the episode recaps. The Dr. Slump names are best guesses only and are probably partly wrong. I also made a half-asses try at tracking key locations, but I wasn't consistent enough to both listing it here, but at least you can see every episode where Kame House appeared and a few other places. (I should have done the Budokai stake, Mt. Frypan, and others...)

Enjoy!

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MasenkoHA
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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by MasenkoHA » Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:29 am

jpranevich wrote: For this, I watched all 153 episodes, 2 safety specials, ands 3 movies.
I assume you're not counting Path to Power because it's an anniversary movie and not released during Dragon Ball's original run?

And oh my God I can't believe I just now found out Dragon Ball had a traffic safety and fire safety video for primary school students in Japan.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:46 am

Correct! I will watch Path to Power much later, with the GT Stuff.

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Forte224
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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by Forte224 » Sat Apr 21, 2018 2:19 pm

jpranevich wrote:Kamehameha - 43 (28%) - Any characters doing it
Funny, that's how many times it got used in the 34 episodes of the Tournament of Power in Super too. Ok not really but it certainly felt like it :/

Anyway, sorry, great thread! I'm really surprised the 5 star ball is featured the most.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by KBABZ » Sun Apr 22, 2018 5:43 pm

I love stuff like this! Great to hear you finally finished the DB side of it! Any reason why the Two Star Ball appeared more than the others?

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:19 am

The thing that surprised me the most about the balls was that they were all so close to each other. I would have expected whichever balls they collected first in their various fetch-quests to outnumber the others. That's likely the case with the two-star ball which appeared early in the first two dragon ball quests, but I'm not sure now if there was a more specific reason.

Gohan's hat in the beginning of Z will more than place the four-star ball in the lead. Given the reduced importance of ball-quests after that point, I expect it will stay that way.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by KBABZ » Mon Apr 23, 2018 9:28 am

jpranevich wrote:Gohan's hat in the beginning of Z will more than place the four-star ball in the lead. Given the reduced importance of ball-quests after that point, I expect it will stay that way.
Haha, most likely. I assume you're not going to count the eyecatches? Because in that case it's there for a whopping 199 episodes, plus the two Trunks special eyecatches. Come to think of it, that'd also mean that all seven balls appear in the first 42 episodes, and then Nyoi-Bo for the remaining 110 episodes... LOGISTICS!

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:28 pm

Part of the "obsessiveness" is having complicated rules for what to include and what not to include... :)

In this case, I only counted something if it was in the episode itself. I excluded the intro and end credits as well as the eyecatches. I excluded the "previously on", except for a small handful of cases where DB had new content before the title card. (And I do not believe that those changed anything anyway.)

Flashbacks, either with new animation or reusing old animation, counted but only as a "O" on the sheet. (Not an "X".) That means that I kept those stats if I decide to use them for something later. I was going to separate out new vs old animation so that we would record, for example, Tenshinhan's childhood flashback differently because they were showing new material, but I opted not to as I couldn't guarantee that I'd remember all original animation. This will probably cause me some problems later when I get to the Bardock and Trunks specials, but I plan to treat character appearances there as if they were current. We'll see.

I considered counting speaking-vs-nonspeaking separately and didn't end up doing that. So as it stands, a character that just appears in a momentary aside gets counted for appearing in the episode the same as the leads. It is what it is and the more complicated I made it, the less fun it was for me.

It took me forever to get through DB because I'd get stuck during periods of filler just struggling to watch the episodes and pay attention. We'll see how I do with DBZ. I've never seen more than a handful of those unedited in Japanese up until the old Funimation "Uncut" releases starting with Ginyu.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by Bullza » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:50 pm

Interesting indeed. I would not have thought that Puar would have had more appearances than Oolong or especially Krillin.

I'd have thought the Top 5 would have been Goku, Bulma, Krillin, Master Roshi and Yamcha.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:14 pm

Bullza wrote:Interesting indeed. I would not have thought that Puar would have had more appearances than Oolong or especially Krillin.

I'd have thought the Top 5 would have been Goku, Bulma, Krillin, Master Roshi and Yamcha.
Roshi, Kuririn, and Chaozu had the misfortune of being dead for a while. Kuririn especially was dead for an entire arc.

(And, speaking of "rules", I did not include dead bodies in the "X" count. So even if you see their body littering the battlefield, it doesn't count as an appearance. I labored on that decision for longer than I care to admit.)

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by Gaffer Tape » Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:24 pm

Bullza wrote:Interesting indeed. I would not have thought that Puar would have had more appearances than Oolong or especially Krillin.

I'd have thought the Top 5 would have been Goku, Bulma, Krillin, Master Roshi and Yamcha.
Pu'erh has a higher count than Oolong for two reasons. One is that Pu'erh was present for and fought in the Uranai Baba tournament, which Oolong did not attend. The other is that the anime version of the 22nd Budoukai continues to feature all the main cast after Yamcha's leg is broken. In the manga, all the spectators leave except Umigame and Oolong. So while that probably balanced out the two characters' appearances in the manga, it ensured that in the anime, Pu'erh would have a higher total than Oolong.

Also, this is an awesome list, jpranevich. I love it!
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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:35 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:
Pu'erh has a higher count than Oolong for two reasons. One is that Pu'erh was present for and fought in the Uranai Baba tournament, which Oolong did not attend. The other is that the anime version of the 22nd Budoukai continues to feature all the main cast after Yamcha's leg is broken. In the manga, all the spectators leave except Umigame and Oolong. So while that probably balanced out the two characters' appearances in the manga, it ensured that in the anime, Pu'erh would have a higher total than Oolong.
You make me want to go through the manga and build the identical list and see how the character distributions change between media...

I suddenly have a new project!

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by TrunksTrevelyan0064 » Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:08 pm

A while back I started a similar project, where I would go through the manga counting every time a character appears in a panel, and how many text bubbles they have.
...I got about 20 chapters in, and by now it's been months since I last touched it. I'm insane enough to start projects like this, but finishing them? :shifty:

It would be interesting to see lists like yours for each individual arc; that would probably convey character relevance more accurately.
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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:42 pm

TrunksTrevelyan0064 wrote:It would be interesting to see lists like yours for each individual arc; that would probably convey character relevance more accurately.
The data is in the sheet. We can extract it by arc easily enough... but getting people to agree on sensible arcs is always the hardest problem. Or group the episodes in blocks of 50. Or anything else we might want to do. I like to show my work. ;)

Although "relevance" is such a loaded term. I don't count text bubbles the way you did (or the equivalent) so appearances can be deceiving.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by KBABZ » Mon Apr 23, 2018 11:18 pm

jpranevich wrote:Although "relevance" is such a loaded term. I don't count text bubbles the way you did (or the equivalent) so appearances can be deceiving.
I agree. I mean if you go by that metric, Bulma is one of the most important characters in the Tournaments simply because she has so many scenes of her shoved in as she reacts to the action!

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Sun Jun 24, 2018 10:32 am

I just hit the 200th episode that I have recorded basic stats on while rewatching, taking me up to DB Ep 40 during the transition from the Saiyan arc to the Freeza arc. (153 DB episodes, 3 DB movies, 2 DB specials, 40 DBZ episodes, 2 DBZ movies) This was the first episode to mention Freeza (and have a flashback to Cui!), something that I completely missed the last time around, if it was in there at all. (Prior to this pass through, I had only seen the first DBZ episodes in their original butchered form and in English.)

A couple of observations:
  • Every episode has still had Goku in it, even if just momentarily. There was almost a Gohan-training filler episode that didn't have him in it, but he appeared 30 seconds before the close running on Snake Way with no lines. I expect the next Goku-free episode is likely not until Garlic Jr. Since I haven't seen these in so long, I could be mistaken.
  • Gohan has appeared in every episode of DBZ so far except #31 when he and Kuririn were flying away from the Vegeta fight. That episode DOES cut away to Kuririn for a reaction shot, but Gohan isn't in frame. Oh well.
  • I was keeping track of most common dragon ball appearances and, thanks to the magic of Gohan's hat, 4-star ball has taken its prized place as #1 with 30 episode appearances. I expect this to stand for the remainder of the series as most of the remaining appearances will be in sets rather than individually. (I'm going to group the Namek, Black-star, and Super balls separately.)
  • DBZ really has moved Chichi and Gyumao front-and-center. They appeared in only 16% and 8% of DB episodes respectively, but have been in 67% and 48% of DBZ episodes. Lots of concerned-Chichi reaction shots are getting a bit annoying.
  • During the Vegeta battle, they kept coming back to Kamehouse for reactions. Some of the animators must have forgotten that Turtle was there because he would randomly appear and disappear for entire episodes. Typical, really. He gets no respect.
  • Dr. Brief (and Tama!) should win some award for longest gap between appearances. He was absent from DB 119 to DBZ 38, a gap of 70+ episodes. That is longer than Blue's death in DB 59 to his appearance in DB Movie #3, if that counts. I expect that Android 8/Suno will eventually take the prize on that, or Arale if you count her.
  • With all of the random ki blasts, it is more difficult to track Kamehamehas and other attacks since the are often ambiguous or not named in the series. Just because a character launches a blast with "ha!", I'm not counting it. Plus we have Gohan's famous "Kamehameha" in DBZ #34 where he's clearing launching a Masenko, but calling it a Kamehameha. My guess is a script/animation mismatch, but head canon could be that he was trying to honor his father even though he hadn't learned his attack yet. (I don't think we see a Gohan-powered kamehameha for a while yet.)
Although I'm not keeping track of speaking lines, scenes, or anything like that (in retrospect, there is a lot I wish I had captured), I forgot just how much early DBZ was Gohan's show. He's the plot-driver in far more of the episodes, excluding the battle scenes. It's hard to even call it a shared protagonist series when so many of the (admittedly filler) episodes are Gohan-centric with Goku just getting a "still training"/"still running"/"still in hospital" cutover shot.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by KBABZ » Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:53 am

jpranevich wrote:[*]Every episode has still had Goku in it, even if just momentarily. There was almost a Gohan-training filler episode that didn't have him in it, but he appeared 30 seconds before the close running on Snake Way with no lines. I expect the next Goku-free episode is likely not until Garlic Jr. Since I haven't seen these in so long, I could be mistaken.
I think for those, you could do a slight down-grade for mentions of Goku, see if that also breaks the streak.
jpranevich wrote:DBZ really has moved Chichi and Gyumao front-and-center. They appeared in only 16% and 8% of DB episodes respectively, but have been in 67% and 48% of DBZ episodes. Lots of concerned-Chichi reaction shots are getting a bit annoying.
I know how you feel. When editing the Tournament episodes for T1C, there was a LOT of padding done by cutting to Bulma in the crowd reacting or having some shenanigans with Oolong, particularly when Tsuru Sen'nin shown up.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by jpranevich » Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:02 pm

I think for those, you could do a slight down-grade for mentions of Goku, see if that also breaks the streak.
Perhaps! If I have one regret, it is that I didn't separate out characters seen from characters that had lines. That would have been a better metric for tracking the importance of a character and would have done more to dispel the endless reaction shots in each episode making secondary characters seem more important.

If and when I ever get to Kai, I'll be curious how these stats change from arc to arc. But that is a LONG way from where I am and I'm really only doing an episode a day or so.

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Re: Obsessive but fun Dragonball stats

Post by TenshinFan » Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:43 am

This is a fantastic thread that should not slip through the cracks. This info should be added to the wiki!

Biggest surprise to me was Lunch being so prominent

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