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.