Why do fans of One Piece and Naruto criticize Dragon Ball a lot?

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Whatever » Tue May 22, 2018 3:02 pm

For its many flaws,not like those series are not flawed but dragonball tends to be the most flawed yet most popular out of those 3.
Zephyr wrote: ...seem to act as "answers" to some of Dragon Ball's perceived shortcomings, flaws, and problems. It doesn't balance its cast well enough, its world and lore aren't consistent or well-thought-out enough, and so on. And I think that view stems, on some level at least, most of the time, from some sort of misunderstanding of what Dragon Ball is. It's a Toriyama comic, and I don't think it's looked at as such often enough. More often, it seems to be looked at as another "battle Shonen" (often as the original one), and it seems to be evaluated and judged and critiqued directly in comparison to those which it inspired.

Not only is this turning a blind eye to authorial touch (one of the most important components of any given work), it's also literally fabricating a genre to act as a point of comparison. Shonen is a demographic, not a genre. Most of the "we have to train and improve and I want to be the strongest fighter" thematic underpinnings rather seem to be derived from Dragon Ball's place in the Wuxia/Martial Arts genre.

As for "deeper themes", I think Dragon Ball has those, they're just subtle, and I think a lot of people also seem to miss this. Time always moves forward, nothing is sacred, Goku develops into a less morally sensible character as the series goes on, etc. Not only do these themes seem to fly under the radar for a lot of folks, they're commonly still detected, but perceived as, once again, critical flaws and blemishes on the narrative.

Toriyama pulling no punches and shitting on anything and everything he wants is commonly derided as "ruining" characters and concepts. His willingness to retire characters and allow them to fade into the background, a clear and distinct indicator of time passing naturally and that having its natural effect on a group of friends, gets criticized as him not giving certain characters their just desserts. Goku and the gang risking the world for a good fight is considered "out of character" when it's absolutely consistent with who they are. Toriyama's distinct style of improvisational storytelling seems to just be tantamount to "asspulls", and other nonsense buzzwords, for a lot of folks.

Likewise, his lack of planning, which creates an organic forward-moving momentum to the narrative, is attacked for resulting in (ultimately very mild) inconsistencies and issues for the poor sods trying to piece together consistent guide book information years after the fact. There seems to be an over-fetishization of "Wiki bait" style storytelling, resulting in less emphasis, or even awareness, of just basic storytelling principles and Toriyama's distinct authorial style and charm. Like, we don't need to be able to extrapolate a 100% fully consistent world out of a story in order for it to have a good and emotive narrative that tracks cleanly.
You know i have interacted with quite a few fanbases of shows i like but one thing that i have noticed is that the dragonball fanbase has something special.
Its one of the very few fanbases that tries to pass of what most people(including those that have this specific opinion)agree that is bad writing as good one,trying to justify it.
And no i am not talking about Super or GT,i am talking about the manga which is treated as the Holy Bible of the fanbase because its the original.

They must try to justify how Gohan becoming OC in the Cell games and getting angry because a robot he knew about 2 minutes died makes total sense,they must explain how zenkais totally fit despite the fact that they appear,change and disappear as the plot dictates them to,how Goku goes from one extreme to another in the same chapter is in character despite how contradictory it is e.t.c

Of course they are those that try to find deeper meaning to something given so straightforward not because they think it is deep but because they want it to be despite Toriyama not being that kind of guy to do that.
Not that i am extempt from this,i have the tendecy to do that too despite knowing most things in dragonball are just how they are presented.

Like how Toriyama throws characters into the trashcan or assasinates their characterization,that must have a deeper meaning to the narrative,it can't be because Toriyama simply does not care about them anymore to the point he will even destroy what he has built with those characters.
Or him pulling thing out of thin air because its an easier way to serve the story he wants to tell including destroying what he was building up to that point for the sake of throwing the readers of,that must also be justified as genious improvising as well.

We are all here because we love/like Dragonball(at the least i hope so)but the majority of the fanbase seems to have this notion that you cannot like what is extremely flawed so they try to present Dragonball's flaws as the opposite instead to justify their love towards this series.

It is 100% okay to like something flawed and Dragonball is just that,a very heavily flawed but entertaining product.
Last edited by Whatever on Tue May 22, 2018 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by VegettoEX » Tue May 22, 2018 3:07 pm

Whatever wrote:You know i have interacted with quite a few fanbases of shows i like but one thing that i have noticed something special about the dragonball fanbase.
Its one of the very few fanbases that tries to pass of what most people(including those that are of this specific opinion)agree that is bad writing as good one,trying to justify it.
And no i am not talking about Super or GT,i am talking about the manga which is treated as the Holy Bible of the fanbase because its the original.

They must try to justify how Gohan becoming OC in the Cell games and getting angry because a robot he knew about 2 minutes died makes total sense,they must explain how zenkais totally fit despite the fact that they appear,change and disappear as the plot dictates them to,how Goku goes from one extreme to another in the same chapter is in character despite how contradictory it is e.t.c

Of course they are those that try to find deeper meaning to something given so straightforward not because they think it is deep but because they want it to be despite Toriyama not being that kind of guy to do that.
Not that i am extempt from this,i have the tendecy to do that too despite knowing most things in dragonball are just how it is presented.

Like how Toriyama throws characters into the trashcan or assasinates their characterization,that must have a deeper meaning to the narrative,it can't be because Toriyama simply does not care about them anymore to the point he will even destroy what he has built with those characters.
Or him pulling thing out of thin air because its an easier way to serve the story he wants to tell including destroying what he was building up to for the sake of throwing the readers of,that must also be justified as genious improvising as well.

We are all here because we love/like Dragonball(at the least i hope so)but the majority of the fanbase seems to have this notion that you cannot like what is extremely flawed so they try to present Dragonball's flaws as the opposite instead to justify their love towards this series.

It is 100% okay to like a flawed product and Dragonball is just that,a very heavily flawed but entertaining piece of media.
Literally every single citation you make here has been for decades, is actively right now, and will continue to be argued for decades both as "good" and "bad" by actual, honest-to-goodness, genuine fans of the franchise.

Please refrain from making these kinds of gross generalizations about what people do or don't think. There is no hivemind in fandom, and plenty of people genuinely do take issue with all sorts of plot points in the original source material. Every fan has their own nuanced opinion on things, regardless of whether or not they choose to opine them to you directly. I'll ask that you please take my word for it if you have not personally come across varying viewpoints about these various subjects; you likely will in due time.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Whatever » Tue May 22, 2018 3:22 pm

VegettoEX wrote:[
Literally every single citation you make here has been for decades, is actively right now, and will continue to be argued for decades both as "good" and "bad" by actual, honest-to-goodness, genuine fans of the franchise.

Please refrain from making these kinds of gross generalizations about what people do or don't think. There is no hivemind in fandom, and plenty of people genuinely do take issue with all sorts of plot points in the original source material. Every fan has their own nuanced opinion on things, regardless of whether or not they choose to opine them to you directly. I'll ask that you please take my word for it if you have not personally come across varying viewpoints about these various subjects; you likely will in due time.
Of course i do not speak for everyone and i am aware that they are many as well who have issue with all sort of plot point in the original source material but what i am talking about is what i have encountered as the majority(if i did not make present that clear enough then its my bad)i am not saying everyone has this opinion,or that i am 100% correct and my word is the truth,what is good and bad differs from person to person.

And as i said in my post, about those things i have mentioned,i am not extempt from them and i am falling into those categories a lot of the time as well.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Zephyr » Tue May 22, 2018 5:27 pm

Whatever wrote:We are all here because we love/like Dragonball(at the least i hope so)but the majority of the fanbase seems to have this notion that you cannot like what is extremely flawed so they try to present Dragonball's flaws as the opposite instead to justify their love towards this series.
I'd never suggest that Dragon Ball is perfect. I'm just saying that a lot of the problems and flaws that people assert are there seem to result from really rigid and confused standards on how a story should be written and on how art should be analyzed. I mean, why don't we talk about those issues you've raised?

Gohan is out of character at the Cell Games:
Yeah, I'll agree that him not wanting to fight isn't presented as well as it should have been. That said, him being set off by seeing someone die tracks perfectly fine. Yes, he barely knew the guy, and his friends were being beaten. But there's a difference between seeing some getting beaten and seeing someone killed. The latter packs a more visceral and emotionally-stimulating punch no matter your familiarity with the people. At least, that's my intuition.

Goku switches between extremes:
The most recent bout of discourse on this matter that I can think of is regarding his actions during the early Cell arc. Where he doesn't want to go out of his way to prevent abstract future deaths, but gets angry and tries to put a stop to actual tangible innocent death right in front of his face. I've already talked at length about this one in Gaffer Tape's thread, and that's actually really truly how real people act and react in the real world. The more abstract and far away something bad is, the less viscerally repulsive it is, and the less action it provokes. And that's not merely my intuition like the above example; that's corroborated strongly by neuroscience (and it's that corroboration which steers my intuition in the above example). There's no insecurity breeding an inability to accept a series' clear flaws, on my part, here. Nobody seemed to want to address this point over there, but you're more than welcome to here.

Another thing that was mentioned in that thread was Bulma not doing anything to stop Gero, even if the martial artists were too busy thinking with their fists. That's certainly something I'd gladly point to as a clear writing mistake. Just because Goku doesn't want to do anything to stop them from being built, nothing's necessarily stopping Bulma from doing it. Sure, there's Vegeta, but he's likely to go train in space (and the anime even depicts this).

Toriyama isn't the kind of guy to deliberately make deep themes:
You don't have to deliberately do something for it to be done. The fact of the matter is, time does constantly move forward in Dragon Ball. Characters do change over time, and move on with their lives. Goku does develop into a more immorally reckless person to satiate his thirst for challenge. Toriyama doesn't have to have intended for these to be regularities in the work he made; they are regularities nonetheless. They are themes of the work. They are reoccurring motifs and ideas. They may be such through happenstance, but they are such all the same.

Trashcanning/assassinating characters and destroying what he built:
For this, you're going to have to bring in specific examples in order for an actual conversation to be had about it. Toriyama absolutely tosses people by the wayside when he doesn't care about using them, and pulls ideas out of thin air when he needs to, and take the piss out of his own ideas. But you mention these like they're inherent storytelling sins, rather than zeroing in on how he botches these kinds of creative decisions in execution. I don't think he generally does, but I'm curious as to what specific examples you might be thinking of.

Irreverence is a common theme in Toriyama's works in general; people pointing out manifestations of this artistic trait in Dragon Ball, and using them as evidence of hacky writing, seems to exemplify a failure to understand the dude's general style. And while, no, stylistic quirks aren't necessarily constitutive or a substitute for good writing, I think they're legitimately overlooked and obfuscated by what a lot of people seem to focus on instead. Acknowledge bad writing when you see it, but if you're just going to double back and praise it regardless, at least go a step above stock descriptions like "it's fun, entertaining, funny, and cool", and try to recognize the distinctive artistic flair that's making it all of those things to begin with. Chances are, the thing you think is bad writing might not actually be such in the first place.

I honestly think that if someone turns a blind eye to Toriyama's artistic style (which mostly seems to happen passively, but I've seen some people advocate for actively turning a blind eye to it), they're likely to see manifestations of it, and mistake that for bad writing; and since that seems to be the dominant way of looking at Dragon Ball (at least from the discourse I've observed and participated in; maybe I'm just unlucky), perfectly fine narrative decisions colored by Toriyama's personality seem egregious and strange and off base. Resulting in Dragon Ball getting more shit than it deserves. And it surely deserves shit, but I think cases of mistaken identity result in too much undue criticism.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by 90sDBZ » Tue May 22, 2018 5:56 pm

I'm not entirely sure why certain fans of One Piece and Naruto tend to dislike Dragonball, but I have followed both of those series to an extent so I'll just give my thoughts.

Naruto I watched years ago as far as him mastering the Rasengan and using it on Kabuto. It wasn't always to my taste as I found the excessive need to give so many characters long flashbacks and melodramatic backstories a bit tiresome. But I did like the title character for being an underdog who you could root for, similar to Goku in a sense I guess, and I really enjoyed the first major arc with the battle on the bridge against Zabuza and Haku. I also quite liked the Forest of Death stuff and the Chunin Exam Tournament and the invasion of Konoha. All in all it's a pretty good series but just takes itself a little too seriously at times. And the character designs are a bit of a mixed bag.

One Piece I first saw through the 4Kids dub which I didn't hate by any means, but I didn't love it like I love the current Funimation dub. I've been very slowly working my way through it for the past few years and am currently early on in the Sabaody Archipelago arc. One Piece feels much closer to the upbeat nature of Dragonball, which is probably why I've followed it this far. But it also suffers from some of the things Naruto does such as overlong flashbacks and over the top melodrama. Maybe the Manga isn't so bad in this respect, but the endless flashbacks of the exact same stuff and constant overreactions does start to wear a little thin. Both the Alabasta and SkyPiea arcs got ridiculous with the flashbacks to the point were it hurt at times.

And then there was the insane amount of filler in Enies Lobby. To me this arc set itself up to be the best of the entire series up to that point but then came to a screeching halt midway through when the Strawhats prepared to battle CP9 and jumped off that bridge. At this crucial point we got about 6 episodes of filler, 5 of which had absolutely nothing to do with the current plot and were mostly just full episode flashbacks of the really early episodes. And when the fight finally does begin it's plagued by constant cutaways and more of the same flashbacks. I know DBZ has some bad filler, but even at its worst it doesn't come close to this.

Another issue that I've already mentioned is characters constantly overreacting to things and all of them having that exact same angry/hurt face where their eyes go all big and their pupils turn white. The first time I saw Luffy get really angry when Buggy damaged his hat it left an impact, and he came across as a really carefree guy who had this one button that you should never press. But as the series went on you see him get like this so often that it loses all meaning. The One Piece character angry face is really effective at making the characters look seriously pissed, but instead of being used sparingly it gets used all the time over stuff that really isn't all that important.

One interesting comparison between One Piece and Dragonball is the way they handle death. During the mid 2000s when the 4Kids dub was on the air there were fans of the original online complaining about it and describing the original as this really dark adult show. There were also comparisons to Dragonball with comments about how death is a bigger deal in One Piece because characters stay dead, and even though I've always liked Dragonball more, for a while I did sort of consider that One Piece might have an edge in that regard. But the further I got with One Piece the less I was able to buy into that, as even the weaker characters surviving seemingly mortal wounds time and time again with no lasting affect is way more distracting and outlandish than people being revived with the Dragonballs. At least the Dragonballs are an explainable part of the plot. Characters constantly being stabbed, losing barrels of blood, and walking around right as rain the next episode is never really explained at all, and requires a much greater suspension of disbelief than most of the stuff in Dragonball even if it does make for some cool looking fights.

And really Dragonball just wouldn't be Dragonball if the good guys stayed dead, so in recent years I've come to embrace the idea of revivals over the alternative which I'm sure some will disagree with. I think that ultimately what makes Dragonball better is that it knows it's a story for kids (with some adult elements) and doesn't try too hard to pretend it's anything more than that.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 6:10 pm

Goku does develop into a more immorally reckless person to satiate his thirst for challenge
I'd argue that he doesn't. He stays the same. It's the stakes that increase as his power increases.

Otherwise, I agree with your post, Zephyr.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue May 22, 2018 6:18 pm

Quite honestly, it's because Dragon Ball comes off as the "standard" shonen anime and the one everyone points to and says "I like/grew up on anime."
All of Dragon Ball's many flaws have been overcome by objectively more complete manga over the years since the first issue, but Dragon Ball persists due to its charming simplicity and the fact it's the father of modern shonen.

A good comparison would be the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. They're the fathers of heavy metal as well as one of the foundations of hard rock. Everyone says they know of them. Every casual metal fan likes them. Yet outside of stoner rock and doom metal, their general sound is virtually absent in modern metal's sound and most metal fans can't name another band they like that sounds like them outside Soundgarden because heavy metal grew up and out since 1970. It explored more themes. For a while, it was all "I'm Evil" and "Let's Party" and "Satan Is Evil" and "War Is Destructive" and it was cast off as silly anarchistic children's music until the 90s came along, grunge happened, and inner demons and personal struggles became the in thing. Not to mention that mainstream metal got faster than Sabbath ever went while others decided to slow it down even further. Even 25 years ago, heavy metal was indistinguishable from what Sabbath made it. Yet for whatever reason, the notoriously anti-metal grunge artists loved Black Sabbath. To this day, you can find indie heads, hip-hop heads, punk heads, etc. who spare some time for Black Sabbath yet can't name a single metalcore or melodeath or progressive metal band.
Black Sabbath was very, very far from the first musical group to ever exploit horror themes in their music or reference Satan. They were actually latecomers to an entire wave of now mostly forgotten occult/Satanic-themed acid rock bands, and you can find jazz artists in the 1930s who slowed down their music to invoke dread. Yet we still herald them as the pinnacle because they brought it together.

As I said, everything Sabbath did has been done and better by others over the years. They aren't heaviest. They aren't the fastest. They aren't the slowest. They aren't the darkest. They aren't the most bluesy metal band. They aren't the most jazzy metal band. They aren't the most political metal band. Their lyrics aren't the deepest nor are they the shallowest. They aren't the most leftist or rightist. They aren't the most Christian or Satanic. Yet they're still held up as the defining metal band, moreso than Metallica (who have their own problems).

That's what it's like for Dragon Ball. When Dragon Ball came along, it revolutionized action manga and action cartoons. Despite fiction before then dealing with topics and subject matter doing very much Dragon Ball Z-esque things (including Journey to the West, whose opening chapters still deal with levels of power far greater than anything we've yet seen in the Dragon Ball mythos), we never saw it portrayed in such a way. Usually, it was a bit too flowery and poetic, and it certainly wasn't animated. Movies couldn't pull it off well due to the limited special effects of the era, so all you had were cartoons and all there was was this quirky ultraviolent Japanese cartoon called Dragon Ball Z.


It wasn't very complex from a storytelling perspective, and one of the biggest problems of the series is that there's very little exposition or backstory available— while that works for shorter stories and single novels, that's absolutely unsustainable for an entire mythos for what should be very obvious reasons— but at the time, it was really just this lovingly brutal and wacky story of a humanized Sun Wukong fucking everyone up and getting impossibly strong in the process. Everyone else originally had a story to go along with their arcs, but as the series progressed and Goku became ever stronger, it became necessary to keep him out of the spotlight until the last minute to make sure the entire story didn't fall in on itself. See, Goku's story was essentially complete when he sacrificed himself to save Earth from Raditz and that's why he feels like such a flat character, but we never got that perception because you need to go back and watch/read Z and notice the lengths the story goes to keep Goku as far away from the main action outside of a few points. That's why people feel GT and Super are "Goku Time" but Z felt more well-rounded— in Z, Goku dies, then comes back to save the day, only to be incapacitated twice. When he comes back, he suffers the heart virus, then goes into the RoSaT only to die again shortly after. And then he comes back, returns to the afterlife, and comes back once more only to fuse with Vegeta. Then the series ends with him fighting Boo. Yet all in all, Goku had to struggle just to star in his own show, whereas with Super and GT, it's Goku the whole way through. You're never separated from him. And because Goku's character arc was complete, we never got any real character growth from him during these times anyway. We certainly got power level growth, which Dragon Ball treats as character growth half the time, but that's not satisfying.

Other manga improved on that. They improved on it by making sure their protagonists didn't become overpowered compared to the rest of the cast, or that the narrative gave time to focus on other characters, or that power escalation didn't go completely off the rails and make fights unrelatable. Some didn't, don't get me wrong— I feel Naruto fails at this because I don't really care for the characters due to an excess of "emo backstories as plot" and escalation really kicks in the further you go regardless. But others succeed, especially shows like Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, which manage to have extreme powers yet still have fights feel relatable by scaling back the stakes to more personal matters. All of Dragon Ball, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Toguro's arc in YYH from a storytelling standpoint.

Actually, Yu Yu Hakusho is a great example of "taking Dragon Ball and improving it" thanks to the two shows sharing a ton of common elements. YYH always felt like someone watched Dragon Ball Z and decided to revamp it in their own style, though I now recognize that a lot of the commonalities (tournaments, ki, King Yenma, spirit realm, demon realm, etc.) are actually more elements of Buddhism and Taoism than anything. YYH didn't last anywhere near as long as Dragon Ball— 112 episodes vs. 444 for Dragon Ball (508 if you include GT and 639 if you include Super) but it has its own impact on anime.

Yet we still return to Dragon Ball. Because it was the first, it was in our childhood, and it succeeded in setting out to do what it wanted to do.

I can see how you might feel that Dragon Ball is annoying when you like something like Yu Yu Hakusho or Hunter x Hunter, shows that vastly improve the storytelling competency and, in many cases, the fight choreography and yet everyone still heralds Z as the peak of shonen.

"Dude, did you just spend a thousand words trying to write that one sentence?"

Yep, that's my posting brand: rambling on and on about shit until finally getting to the point.


TLDR: Dragon Ball annoys audiences of other anime properties because they (rightly) feel their shows improved on what Dragon Ball pioneered, and yet Dragon Ball remains the most well-known shonen IP in history (it may not have sold as much as One Piece, but it's still more famous— Goku's even going to the Olympics!).

You know, I don't know why I used Black Sabbath as an example in retrospect. I was originally thinking about using the Beatles. Because the Beatles are heralded as some of the finest music ever recorded and they are pretty good, yet if you go back and listen to them nowadays, you can find loads of flaws and things that we'd tear apart modern bands for doing. The Beatles circa 1964 were literally "One Direction with guitars and goofier hair". Like, not even joking. The lyricism was so vapid and cheesy that even Justin Bieber circa 2010 would think it was weak. The Beatles! Yet then they drop "Sgt. Pepper" on you three years later, this OK Computer-ass masterpiece of the 60s. Except even then, by the 70s, various bands had gone much further in themes and experimentation than the Beatles did, and in many more genres. Like De La Soul or Kraftwerk.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 6:30 pm

I think you have a huge misunderstanding of how art works. It doesn't matter if you are the most of anything. All that matters is the package of everything you do well. Good art is good regardless of whatever else is going on or what comes later. DB's not the funniest, best written, most subversive, best drawn, etc. manga or anime ever, but combine all the elements that DB does well and you have something special. That's something I heard from Stone Cold Steve Austin. He said he wasn't the best looking guy, best built, best talker, or best wrestler, but put all the things he did well together and you had one of the biggest stars of all time.
that's absolutely unsustainable for an entire mythos for what should be very obvious reasons
No, it's really not. Backstory is overrated as a storytelling device. What really matters is what characters want and how they go about trying to attain their goals.
The lyricism was so vapid and cheesy
I'd call them upbeat and earnest.
Last edited by ABED on Tue May 22, 2018 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Omniboy » Tue May 22, 2018 6:38 pm

Zephyr wrote: But there's a difference between seeing some getting beaten and seeing someone killed. The latter packs a more visceral and emotionally-stimulating punch no matter your familiarity with the people. At least, that's my intuition.
I think another thing people miss when they argue that Android 16's death should not have had the effect it had on Gohan, is that Android 16, unlike organic lifeforms, can not be wished back like the rest of them. Not to mention that he doesn't have an afterlife. Not unleashing his rage, and the result of it is the non-existence of another being, is going to have a heavy effect of Gohan.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 6:48 pm

16 can't be wished back to life because he's not alive, and unlike Ha-chan, there's no emotional attachment. Even with everything you guys say on that subject, it doesn't feel right as there's no emotional connection between it and Gohan, so why should the audience care?
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Zephyr » Tue May 22, 2018 7:08 pm

I know this is treading into metaphysics, but I don't think being a biological organism is a necessary condition for being a person. A sufficiently-complex artificial intelligence ought to, in theory, be worthy of personhood. If that's a line we can draw, then I think #16 certainly crosses it. He has his own goals, interests, and values, and autonomously makes his own decisions. He chose to fight Cell even though Cell wasn't Goku, and he chose to not attack Goku during the Cell Games. Ergo, #16 is a person.

Gohan just watched a person get snuffed out, mere feet away from him, and that reasonably set him off. Regarding what I'm saying, whether or not someone can be wished back is largely irrelevant. It's all about the direct, surface level experience of someone being singled out and executed. The raw shock value of that is severe enough to push him over the edge, despite his attempts to hold back. When this happens, I care, because I know Gohan is hurting because of it.

And this isn't something I laboriously muse about while reading. It's all fairly self-evident and instantaneous while actually reading. Character sees horrific and traumatizing bad thing, character snaps and reacts with righteous indignation. Makes sense, checks out.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Omniboy » Tue May 22, 2018 7:12 pm

ABED wrote:16 can't be wished back to life because he's not alive, and unlike Ha-chan, there's no emotional attachment. Even with everything you guys say on that subject, it doesn't feel right as there's no emotional connection between it and Gohan, so why should the audience care?
Maybe it could have been set up better I agree. But I was justifying Gohan's reaction to seeing someone die right in front of him. Someone that can't be bought back unlike the rest of his friends and family, and someone who doesn't exist anymore because of his hesitation in releasing his anger. This time actions have irreversible consequences that can't be dealt with, and Gohan has never been faced with something of that scale, where the person completely stops existing. That's going to carry some weight on him considering that he could have saved him, unlike when he was helpless child and couldn't save his life Piccolo sacrificed his own. This time it is actually Gohan's fault.

I guess I what I'm saying is that Gohan has never dealt with something of this scale before, but maybe I'm looking a bit much into it I guess.

Plus, isn't Android 16 sentient? he does have emotions and feelings right?

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 7:21 pm

He may not have a soul, but if Shen Long can resurrect a living being, why couldn't he bring back a cyborg? How is this Gohan's fault?

Cyborgs in DB, going back to Ha-chan have feelings.

Still, I don't think that reasonably set Gohan off. Gohan's seen people he cared for killed before and it didn't set him off, much less trigger a transformation. Making it some being he has no attachment to feels like weak sauce. It's not a terrible scene, but I wish that wasn't the thing that sent him over the edge. I get what you are saying on an intellectual level, but nothing about the set up makes me feel it.
Ergo, #16 is a person.
I agree, but I foresee Shen Long being pedantic about this.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Omniboy » Tue May 22, 2018 7:27 pm

ABED wrote:He may not have a soul, but if Shen Long can resurrect a living being, why couldn't he bring back a cyborg? How is this Gohan's fault?

Cyborgs in DB, going back to Ha-chan have feelings.
But Android 16 isn't a cyborg, he's an Android. As opposed to 17 & 18 who were once human and were created naturally, 16 is made of metal and wires.

Plus I do agree with what you are saying. A relationship between the two could have helped dramatically. I don't know why Toriyama did so much with Gohan without proper setup.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Tue May 22, 2018 7:30 pm

Whatever wrote:For its many flaws,not like those series are not flawed but dragonball tends to be the most flawed yet most popular out of those 3.
Never mind all the other ridiculous generalizations you made throughout the rest of your post, I don't even agree with this basic premise right here. Like, at all.

Obviously Dragon Ball has flaws, and its fair share of them just like anything else. While I do like the general idea of having various characters phase in and out of the plot as time marches on (it does ring very much emotionally true in terms of how relationships among groups of people tend to work out in that regard) I do think that Toriyama gives up on certain characters (like Chaozu or Yajirobe) a bit TOO early in the goings when there's more than can certainly be done with them.

Conversely, I think that Vegeta sorta meanders about without much direction for much of the Cell arc, like Toriyama's scrambling for excuses to keep him involved in the plot (whereas characters like Tenshinhan and even Yamucha could easily have more given for them to do instead which would fit better). I've gone on in another thread in disgustingly great detail about what I think about Muten Roshi's whole "pervert" gag, so I won't re-litigate that here save to say I find its use and execution questionable at best in many (though certainly not all) cases.

I think that the 180 move away from the whole "passing the torch onto the next generation" theme during the course of the Boo arc is pretty clumsily handled in general. The Cell arc's initial setup is riddled with story issues as well (which we've all gone over many times, including quite recently). We all know the problems with the original anime's filler: I do think that the fanbase goes a bit TOO far at times in how much it'd like to see the filler parred back towards the opposite extreme, but nonetheless its definitely a real issue in general for sure. Even in the manga though, there's various missed opportunities for extremely cool plot threads that could've genuinely added to things all throughout the whole series: some of them almost painfully obviously so.

I could go on and on all day here. The point is, no one (certainly not me) is making the argument that Dragon Ball - even in its original manga form - is utterly without ANY flaw and is inherently perfect. Not by ANY stretch of the imagination.

That being said though... there's a reason that I genuinely love Dragon Ball while generally outright detesting both One Piece and Naruto (One Piece in particular) and finding them utterly without very many merits. In NO WAY do I agree with the idea that the other two series somehow "correct" on the problems present within Dragon Ball. In many cases, I think that some of the "problems" that fans have with DB aren't actually problems but strengths in its favor, while what One Piece and Naruto both do in contrast utterly misses the point of why certain things worked in DB and makes them inferior "me too" clones.

One of the biggest ones being their characterization: I'm sorry, but I simply DO NOT agree with the overwhelming majority of the fanbase for Shonen that having various characters monologue endlessly about their deepest feelings constitutes "deep characterization". Its a device that CAN work SOMETIMES, sure: but not when its leaned on SO absurdly heavily throughout a gigantic, long series like these, and even less so when the emotions are laid on so ludicrously fucking thick at all times.

Apart from being emotionally overbearing and beating the audience over the head with a character's personal issues like a fucking cudgel, it treats the audience like simpletons and breaks one of the foremost rules of storytelling: show, don't tell. Rather than having, for example, Sasuke continually DEMONSTRATE his resentments towards Naruto via actual actions and subtle interactions (a wordless glance filled with resentment, an awkward exchange of veiled words, whatever), Naruto instead sees fit to CONSTANTLY have Sasuke break down into these almost Reality TV-esque confessionals where he drones on and on and on and on endlessly about all of his deepest insecurities and issues with Naruto and their rivalry.

Vegeta over in DB, by contrast has, what... I think like three major monologues (at most) about his feelings towards Goku across the ENTIRE stretch of the series that he's in (Saiya-jin through Boo arcs: basically all of DBZ in its entirety)? And they're well placed at appropriate moments, well utilized, and he hardly devolves into over the top histrionics during their course. Its totally organic and natural. Most of the time though, we're actually WATCHING their rivalry play itself out through their training and fight scenes and brief little interactions where their feelings toward one another come through with little to no words.

Just the one quick moment in Goku and Vegeta's first fight where Vegeta realizes that Goku's managed to draw some blood from him and he outright loses it... its a quick 2 second moment, but its powerful and memorable in its succinctness and manages to say SO MUCH MORE about the dynamics between those two characters compared to what Naruto or One Piece would do with a scene like this where they'd have Vegeta likely go on a giant, tear-filled tirade about the in-depth dynamics of Saiya-jin social hierarchy and his own pent up, angst-ridden feelings on them.

Shonen fans today see the absence of scenes like this from Dragon Ball as one of its main PROBLEMS, and their presence in Naruto and One Piece (and Fairy Tail and MHA and so on) as signifiers of their supposed "boundless character depth". Except its not though: despite ALL those Live Journal rants' worth of Emo whining, Sasuke and Naruto are both PAINFULLY one-note characters (Naruto's wildly over-eager and ambitious, Sasuke is sullen and bitter), and neither are remotely likable in the least and both end up coming across 90% of the time as just the most irritating and obnoxious spoiled brats imaginable for vast, VAST stretches of the series.

That's not to say that Dragon Ball, by comparison, is some fountain of immense depth: not in the least. The sticking point in this particular case is less so the depth of the content than the execution/presentation of it. Dragon Ball's characters, in the grand scheme of things, are hardly THAT much more deep than those in a series like Naruto: the difference though is that Dragon Ball doesn't PRETEND as if they are. Dragon Ball understands the basic tenant that when it comes to presenting characterization and drama, especially in a silly little fantasy series like this, much of the time less is more.

These characters aren't without their nuances and small BITS of depth, sure: but they're hardly the cast of a Tennessee Williams play either. They're almost all big, broad, almost cliche Wuxia archetypes (though Toriyama being Toriyama takes time often to turn some of those cliches on their head and take the piss out of them). And Toriyama on some level knows and gets that: so he lets their ACTIONS speak for them much of the time (fittingly enough, as its a martial arts/action-based story), rather than have them pontificate on and on and on at length about these BIG DEEP FEELINGS that they have and which the actual narrative content of the story can in NO WAY actually back up.

Then there's the whole "friendship" thing. Hoooooo boy.

Parts of the U.S. fanbase for Dragon Ball (ESPECIALLY on this community here) going well far back to the mid-2000s now at least, have gotten positively OBSESSED with this idea that Dragon Ball is centered ENTIRELY ALL AROUND friendship and camaraderie. And indeed, the central cast of characters are, lots of the time, almost infectiously likable. And it is indeed rather cool to see all these disparate characters who start out as enemies (some fairly bitterly so) all eventually become almost something of a makeshift family.

Here's the secret though that the 2000s-2010s fanbase DOESN'T often seem to really understand though: Dragon Ball DOESN'T EVER actually DWELL very long on these things. And moreover, the fact that it doesn't dwell on them in excruciating detail is NOT a "flaw" in the series, but is actually one of its STRONG POINTS that later Shonen like One Piece utterly fail miserably at.

The character's friendships, relationships, how close they all come to be over time (and how far off some of them drift apart over time): these things are all THERE, but Dragon Ball NEVER rubs your nose in any of it. Ever. I sometimes struggle to find the right word for it, but a pretty damn good one is casual. Its VERY laid back and chill about how it presents things like Goku and Kuririn's growing friendship (keeping the overly heartfelt emotional moments to a minimum, and planting them only where they'd be most effective and actually have weight) or Tenshinhan's inner turmoil and conflicted loyalties, or Piccolo's growing attachment to Gohan, or even to Freeza's murderous insanity and ego.

There's no big speeches where these characters break down into a crumpled mess of sobbing tears and bare their souls to one another in hamfisted, maudlin soliloquies (something which One Piece is the ABSOLUTE FUCKING UNBEARABLE WORST about): instead you get... little moments. Little moments, but they actually have impact and add up to a LOT over time.

Goku and Kuririn's quick little "bro fist" before their match at the 22nd Budokai. Piccolo giving Gohan an apple when he's stuck on the mountain top and going hungry. Tenshinhan's manner of speech slowly drifting from arrogantly dismissive to humble and revering toward Muten Roshi as the latter's advice starts to slowly resonate with Ten. Freeza masking his vile ugliness, contempt for others, and even insecurities about his own power behind a false wall of aristocratic class, manners, and even magnanimity (that's also dripping with snide irony).

These characters and plot points are neither brilliant nor original in ANY which way, and many if not most are in fact tired, well worn fodder across COUNTLESS martial arts stories and narratives: but they're deftly and elegantly conveyed via Toriyama's blunt and economic simplicity. There's room left for actual SUBTLETY in other words.

And that doesn't mean that these things are the deepest bits of storytelling to ever grace manga: it just means that they're deftly handled for exactly what they are and treat the audience with actual respect for their intelligence. Dragon Ball doesn't lead you by the hand through this whole rainbow of BIG LOUD BOMBASTIC EMOTIONS: it trusts that its audience is emotionally mature enough to follow along through its story and character arcs as they hum along organically and smoothly without constantly needing gigantic neon-flashing prompts to alert you "THIS IS WHAT I AM FEELING RIGHT NOW, THIS IS WHAT I THINK ABOUT THAT CHARACTER IN ALL THE DETAIL I CAN SPARE".

No big speeches, no grand outpourings of emotions where everyone lays out their entire life stories in gross detail from the crib to now (because if THAT'S the kind of lengths that you need to go to in order to get across the sense that your characters have depth... then its probably fair to say your characters just don't have that much depth period): just the characters naturally and organically acting like themselves, and conveying a lot with minimal mannerisms and gestures.

One Piece and Naruto, by contrast (One Piece again ESPECIALLY) are NOT content in ANY which way to let you just follow along and feel whatever emotions you're to feel of your own volition. One Piece in particular is CONSTANTLY all by DRAGGING the emotions out of you with a fucking tow truck, almost trying to pry the tears loose from your eye sockets with a crow bar whilst screaming "CRY GODDAMMIT CRY!!" in your face.

With all the constant, never-ending scenes of characters devolving into a blubbering pile of eye-snot as they recount their entire tragedy and pathos-laden lives in all the detail of a Lifetime channel biopic, One Piece often times comes across less like some kind of high seas adventure yarn or even like much of an attempt at copying Dragon Ball, and instead like a protracted manga adaptation of Oprah or Dr. Phil (re-enacted by obnoxiously drawn pirates).

Basically, I think the key issue here is that Shonen fans seem to often be mistaking a certain kind of trying-MUCH-too-hard Hallmark sentimentality for depth, and an effortlessly casual spinning of a simple fantasy story for a lack of it.

And I think that this burning NEED for these simple children's manga to come across to others as soooooo overflowing with emotional depth stems from, as so many things wrong with nerd culture these days often does, this insecure, over-compensating desire to somehow "prove" to others that the silly, ridiculous children's fluff of their childhood has grown up merit to them and thus receive validation for their dedication to them (possibly from some deeply buried, gut-instinctive general sense deep down that they're NOT actually "growing up" into becoming engaged with any genuinely mature, sophisticated works of art or storytelling, but instead are still wallowing exclusively and solely in an inherently limited and limiting pool that's largely meant as a developmental stepping-stone towards better/smarter things).

I know that a lot of folks around these parts make a lot of hay that they understand and acknowledge that "Dragon Ball's JUST FOR KIDS! Its lighthearted and not supposed to be 'hardcore xtreme' like FUNimation says!" But I think that a lot of that supposed "understanding and acknowledgement" of Dragon Ball's status as for being something for children is oftentimes (even, and hell especially at times, with most fans in this community) INCREDIBLY contradictory, laced with double standards, and existing in large part primarily as something with which to counter against the FUNimation dub and its fanbase who still buy into the whole "faux-hardcore edgy" shit rather than as something they genuinely seem to accept in full about both DB as well as Shonen in general.

Look no further than many of the same folks who after going on and on about how whimsically lighthearted and for children DB is supposed to be (contrasted against how FUNimation portrays it) then go on to immediately claim out the other side of their mouths that Shonen "really means for teens rather than little kids" (it doesn't, it pretty much means for grade school kids), and that other Shonen works aimed at the EXACT SAME age demographic as DB such as the aforementioned One Piece and Naruto, or even stuff like Yu Gi Oh and Digimon (as I mentioned earlier) are genuinely deep, mature, dark, cerebral, and really more for adults and older audiences than little kids.

I think that for all the lip-service that a lot of the more Kanzenshuu-esque end of the Western DB fandom pays towards Dragon Ball being a children's series that has its lighthearted side, there's also still a LOT of willful denial of both its darker edges (again, as a knee-jerk pushback against the FUNimation version and its fanbase) as well as how most of the entire Shonen demographic is ALL ACROSS THE BOARD UNIVERSALLY similarly geared towards small children, and few to none of them are any more inherently "deeper" and more geared to an adult mind/intellect than the others (with maybe the TINIEST few rare/odd and certainly arguable exceptions possible, most of which are hardly even remotely known to most modern Shonen fans in the first place).

My general point however being that a children's fantasy story (like Dragon Ball and most of its later Shonen imitators) overly-spelling out its emotional contents and intentions does NOT make that story at all inherently "more denser and mature": in point of fact, I'd argue that it makes it THE OPPOSITE, because that kind of storytelling presupposes up front that the audience is somehow INCAPABLE of discerning emotions or character intentions without having them spelled out for them in crayon.

Dragon Ball, while still ultimately being very much geared for children and being fairly light fantasy, is nonetheless able to at least CARRY ITSELF with more maturity: at least relative to its later imitators, which carry themselves as if they're being written by and for emotionally unstable and neurotic basket-cases who are off their meds and use these stories more to cope with their own IRL issues (perhaps vicariously living in a fantasy world focused on a group of friends and their friendships to make up for a lack of having many real friends or an active social life in their own personal lives, or having complex emotions spelled out in detailed obviousness having an appeal due to social awkwardness and a real difficulty with understanding the subtleties of regular, day-to-day adult emotions, or things to that effect) rather than as just a cool, well told genre romp with an engaging hook to sink their teeth into.

Ultimately, I think that due to all sorts of misconceptions about Dragon Ball (stemming from everything from the FUNimation dub's vast changes and its misleading marketing, to the target audience failing for so long to really branch themselves and their experiences outside of post-DB "Battle Shonen" or other children's works in general, widespread online geek community voices like TV Tropes and Channel Awesome popularizing a whole ton of egregiously stupid and wrongheaded ideas about critically engaging with art or media, and a general unfamiliarity with martial arts fiction/fantasy as a partial consequence of all those things), fans who started into anime through Dragon Ball way back when - and have largely stuck to similar "Battle Shonen" ever since - have over time grown to mischaracterize a whole ton of aspects of Dragon Ball (that are either wholly incidental or stemming from its martial arts genre roots) as being either "tropes" of a non-existent Battle Shonen genre, or "flaws" in Toriyama's writing that were later "corrected on" by other Shonen manga artists.

And in terms of the latter of those, I don't think its fair to say that Toriyama failing to over-emphasize characters' emotional outpourings is any real kind of merited criticism towards Dragon Ball (or really, almost ANY given work of fiction in general) nor is other later Shonen works over-indulging and wallowing in emotional porn a signifier of and kind of inherent "storytelling superiority" in them: the reality I would say here, is quite the reverse.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 7:37 pm

Omniboy wrote:
ABED wrote:He may not have a soul, but if Shen Long can resurrect a living being, why couldn't he bring back a cyborg? How is this Gohan's fault?

Cyborgs in DB, going back to Ha-chan have feelings.
But Android 16 isn't a cyborg, he's an Android. As opposed to 17 & 18 who were once human and were created naturally, 16 is made of metal and wires.
Fair point about him being an android, but that doesn't mean Shen Long couldn't bring him back. Is bringing back metal, wires, and code more difficult than a living person? The only thing that would be different is the wording of the wish, but I digress.

There are far better plotted stories, even simple ones, than DB, but seeing as how any story has a lot of aspects to them, it's impossible to quantify entire works as better. I love great plots as much as the next person, but I love DB's quirkiness and likable characters. This isn't simply because of nostalgia.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Omniboy » Tue May 22, 2018 7:49 pm

ABED wrote:
Omniboy wrote:
ABED wrote:He may not have a soul, but if Shen Long can resurrect a living being, why couldn't he bring back a cyborg? How is this Gohan's fault?

Cyborgs in DB, going back to Ha-chan have feelings.
But Android 16 isn't a cyborg, he's an Android. As opposed to 17 & 18 who were once human and were created naturally, 16 is made of metal and wires.
Fair point about him being an android, but that doesn't mean Shen Long couldn't bring him back. Is bringing back metal, wires, and code more difficult than a living person? The only thing that would be different is the wording of the wish, but I digress.

There are far better plotted stories, even simple ones, than DB, but seeing as how any story has a lot of aspects to them, it's impossible to quantify entire works as better. I love great plots as much as the next person, but I love DB's quirkiness and likable characters. This isn't simply because of nostalgia.
If I recall there is a rule where if you are killed while you are a soul, at least by a living being, you are completely gone. You did mention that he doesn't have a soul, and I think that that would be the first requirement of being bought back. Since he was created artificially he likely doesn't have one. I guess it's one thing to bring back a soul, but to recreate that exact same sentience is a another level. Given that the dragon balls do have limits, it wouldn't surprise me if that was another setback.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Tue May 22, 2018 8:02 pm

I get that, I'm saying that it's absurd to think he couldn't bring 16 back online. Yes, the DB's do have limits, but somehow that's more difficult for Shen Long than bringing someone back from the dead. That's a fairly arbitrary line. It's like in Buffy when Xander's eyeball is poked out. Somehow Willow can bring a soul back from the dead and can SPOILERS make every potential Slayer into an actual Slayer, but regenerating an eyeball is too much for her? This all feels very arbitrary. At least with 16, no one was clamoring for 16 to be brought back.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Omniboy » Tue May 22, 2018 8:09 pm

ABED wrote:I get that, I'm saying that it's absurd to think he couldn't bring 16 back online. Yes, the DB's do have limits, but somehow that's more difficult for Shen Long than bringing someone back from the dead. That's a fairly arbitrary line. It's like in Buffy when Xander's eyeball is poked out. Somehow Willow can bring a soul back from the dead and can SPOILERS make every potential Slayer into an actual Slayer, but regenerating an eyeball is too much for her? This all feels very arbitrary. At least with 16, no one was clamoring for 16 to be brought back.

I get what you are saying now. The dragonballs should be able to recreate a sentient body of metal, circuits, and wire to it's original form, the same way it can recreate a car back it's original state or some other thing. It guess in that sense, he could be bought back.

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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Tue May 22, 2018 10:10 pm

Yuli Ban wrote:Other manga improved on that. They improved on it by making sure their protagonists didn't become overpowered compared to the rest of the cast, or that the narrative gave time to focus on other characters, or that power escalation didn't go completely off the rails and make fights unrelatable. Some didn't, don't get me wrong— I feel Naruto fails at this because I don't really care for the characters due to an excess of "emo backstories as plot" and escalation really kicks in the further you go regardless. But others succeed, especially shows like Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, which manage to have extreme powers yet still have fights feel relatable by scaling back the stakes to more personal matters. All of Dragon Ball, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Toguro's arc in YYH from a storytelling standpoint.

Actually, Yu Yu Hakusho is a great example of "taking Dragon Ball and improving it" thanks to the two shows sharing a ton of common elements. YYH always felt like someone watched Dragon Ball Z and decided to revamp it in their own style, though I now recognize that a lot of the commonalities (tournaments, ki, King Yenma, spirit realm, demon realm, etc.) are actually more elements of Buddhism and Taoism than anything. YYH didn't last anywhere near as long as Dragon Ball— 112 episodes vs. 444 for Dragon Ball (508 if you include GT and 639 if you include Super) but it has its own impact on anime.
Just want to agree fully that if what you're in the market for is "A Weekly Shonen Jump fighting series that's like Dragon Ball but done even better" then Yu Yu Hakusho is absolutely the best possible answer to that question hands down, for all the reasons noted (and plenty more not noted). I'd only disagree that within the realm of "long running Shonen series attempting to follow in DB's footsteps" that there's very much (if any) that have genuinely improved upon it since then. Most of them fall prey to many of the same "Emo backstories as plot" pitfalls that both you and I just detailed among other gross excesses that DB never indulged in.

Its not to say that DB has no flaws obviously, its got a bunch of them like anything else: I just don't think that most of the attempts to riff on it throughout Shonen anime/manga have yielded much of anything that's particularly worthwhile (to put it kindly: I've made the case many times that the overwhelming majority of "Battle Shonen" following in the wake of DB is downright unbearable putrid garbage). Yu Yu Hakusho is a MASSIVE exception for sure, and indeed I would agree is very much superior to DB overall: but at the same time, YYH's less of a "successor" to Dragon Ball than it is a contemporary, with both being written and published/aired during their respective primes side by side.

Hunter X Hunter set aside (since its both from Togashi as well as just a general can of worms unto itself) what else is there really - within this VERY exceedingly specific realm of anime/manga that is - after Dragon Ball that's genuinely vital? Soul Eater? Toriko? Bleach (and really, who the fuck would bother with this when YYH exists)? My Hero Academia? Fairy Tail? The aforementioned Naruto and One Piece?

Overall generally speaking I would argue that most of these various post-Dragon Ball "Battle Shonen" series collectively fail at both being "successors" to Dragon Ball as well as particularly compelling genre works in their own right.

In terms of "following up on Dragon Ball", rather than trying to be their own distinctive takes on a genre-hopping mythical martial arts fantasy series, they simply take odd character and emotional beats from DB: the Goku/Vegeta rivalry gets transplanted onto Naruto and Sasuke, the "makeshift family who link up during a globe-trotting journey" dynamics onto the Straw Hats, Kid Goku's "overly excited and cheerful dimwit airhead who's obsessed with food" shtick onto the vast overwhelming majority of every other "Battle Shonen" protagonist ever (Naruto and Luffy most transparently), etc.

These things are trace, individual vestiges and scraps of Dragon Ball's story beats and narrative formula, singular elements scattered about haphazardly... but all of it divorced from either DB's actual genre (Chinese-bent martial arts fantasy with some sci fi elements spiked on) or Toriyama's unique visual touch or particular sense of humor (the things that helped make DB stand out among other manga/anime as well as other martial arts fantasy). Or they take Dragon Ball's Wuxia elements (intense training, secret mystical fighting techniques, rivalries to be the greatest fighter, etc) and strip them away from the genre entirely whilst awkwardly stapling them onto totally random, almost non-sequitur subject matter without really making them organically fit.

Naruto at least makes sense here and works fine in this capacity, since its ninja-themed fantasy which is its own genre entirely (with Chinese cultural/mythological overlaps due to Japan's weird history with stealing cultural ideas and traditions from China), so I give that one a pass in this regard: but why the fuck are there mystical fighting techniques and training sequences in a high seas swashbuckling pirate adventure series? Or in a series that's apparently about chefs (though I guess if Stephen Chow can make it work with God of Cookery)?

Why do these stories, that otherwise should have NOTHING to do even remotely with martial arts, feature extended and protracted fight scenes that for some strange reason are all heavily driven by over the top supernatural fantasy martial arts? Why are characters from these kinds of stories engaging and behaving in character dynamics and story ideas that, when stripped down to their basics, seem suspiciously like they'd be more at home in a Shaw Brothers' kung fu film than in a story about treasure hunting pirates or grim reapers or giant robots or whatever?

The issue of course is that the MAIN if not SOLE reason that these other series are indulging in these things, regardless of how ill-fitting they are into their genre or how much they simply don't work or make any kind of sense within the narrative of their own internal world, is because Dragon Ball did them, and Dragon Ball was popular and made a lot of money. Now obviously trying to copy something because its popular and made money doesn't necessarily HAVE to always inevitably lead to total crap and can (and indeed has at times) possibly still yield something genuinely cool: but it doesn't exactly help when the results are so confused and lost and feel like misplaced scraps from something else unrelated entirely (because they are).

Whereas Dragon Ball had managed to toss in some sci fi elements on top of its Wuxia story and make it all gel and feel cohesively of a piece, most of DB's "successors'" attempts at throwing DB's Wuxia elements on top of their own individual stories almost always come across as awkwardly forced and painfully, transparently obvious that the ONLY reason that these things are part of a story that they otherwise would NEVER be a part of is solely because of Dragon Ball.

And in terms of being compelling genre works on their own: that's where things like the earlier discussed "emotional porn" issues really, really get in the way: because maybe its a "you're mileage may vary" thing, but holy GOD does this make most of these series downright unwatchable/unreadable. For all the comparisons drawn between Dragon Ball and all these various purported "follow-ups", Dragon Ball NEVER had ANYTHING resembling these sorts of tonal issues that I find almost impossible to see as anything less that downright crippling.

With Dragon Ball, you go to it for Toriyama's distinctive authorial charms, and for its ability to do this type of crazed, over the top frenetic martial arts fantasy as a long running manga/anime as well as it does and managing to use so many familiar, almost cliched tropes of that genre while still managing to feel like its something genuinely unique of its own.

With most of the other Shonen that followed in its wake, you have... basically just a whole bunch of standard, boiler-plate children's action shows. Except they're Japanese. And the main character is usually a goof who likes food a lot (because Goku did, and he in turn because a ton of other martial arts protagonists of a certain bent acted similarly). And they tend to feature characters who often devolve at the drop of a hat into absurdly overwrought emotional histrionics (something Dragon Ball NEVER did, once again).

Not to mention with cases like Naruto, where its simply a ninja fantasy series: and within the realm of anime and manga as a whole you already have sooooooooooo very much in the way of other options and alternatives within that particular genre that are just ludicrously superior (while being tremendously shorter in the process) in terms of storytelling, characterization, action/fighting, cool ninja techniques and weapons, use of Japanese lore and mythology, etc. that there's almost no reason to even bother with Naruto at all. Why suffer through hours upon hours upon hours and countless hundreds of chapters/episodes of The Tedious Adventures of Boy Ninja Honey Boo Boo when you can just throw on Dagger of Kamui or Ninja Scroll and get something several thousands of times more visceral and emotionally impactful in a small fraction of the time?

Yu Yu Hakusho I agree is better than DB overall: but the gulf of disparity in quality between them is nowhere even remotely NEAR as jarring, immense, and stark as it is between Naruto and virtually almost ANY other ninja-themed anime/manga out there that's even mildly worthy of note. Its to the point where you don't even have to be even TRYING to find a ninja anime or manga that's overwhelmingly vastly better done than Naruto: throw a rock and you'll likely hit one.

I dunno. I guess I see DB more as a lot of familiar ingredients mixed and filtered through a very singularly specific creative prism and thus having a "lightning in a bottle" type of effect: whereas most of the others that followed in its wake often come across as just... generic Japanese children's cartoons with no real creative voice behind them (or in cases like Oda's, one that's abrasively obnoxious and overbearing) that happen to feature a few random character or story quirks that Dragon Ball happened to use. But those individual strands are now so divorced from much of the same influences and creative juices that gave them their vitality and overall charm in the first place, that they now come across as hollow, empty, and exhausted shtick.

Like a joke retold by someone who had it retold it to them from someone else, who in turn had it retold to them through someone else, who had it retold to them through someone else, etc. After a certain point, you get a few too many layers removed from what originally made the gag work in the first place and just end up with a whole lot of disconnected, barely-coherent nonsense.

Yu Yu Hakusho is fucking killer though. And yes, certainly way better overall than Dragon Ball when all's said and done: but Dragon Ball at least has enough individual distinctiveness of its own to still earn its keep. Something like Bleach meanwhile is... basically Yu Yu Hakusho. But WAY uglier visually. And way less intelligent. And with a MUCH less charismatic or memorable cast of characters. And with far more boring, dull fights. And just generally far more sloppy storytelling. Basically its Yu Yu Hakusho, except it sucks. Hell, even Treasure went as far as to basically just copy and paste their old Sega Genesis YYH fighting game almost verbatim - just with Bleach character sprites subbed in - for their Bleach Nintendo DS video games.

And while it mostly predates DB (and was only concurrent with it towards its end), I'll also throw some love towards Fist of the North Star: another long-form martial arts fantasy Shonen manga/anime series that I'd probably recommend much more enthusiastically than Dragon Ball (and damn sure almost anything else Shonen-wise after it) as well.
http://80s90sdragonballart.tumblr.com/

Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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