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

[Yuli Ban]

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.

Er, that was exactly my point. Did you read something else into it? I even mentioned it with the Black Sabbath example: they weren't the first band to use dark/occult/Satanic themes, nor were they even the heaviest band around, nor did they have the best lyricism and musicianship. But they tied it all together in a novel way. And what's more, they did it in a way that was also innovative. Same way everything major happens. Like with Star Wars. Star Wars wasn't the best at anything it did by a long shot, but it managed to do what it wanted to do in such a compelling way that it's considered a modern myth on par with the great classics, and it spawned many followers and influenced culture far beyond itself. Much like Dragon Ball.

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.

So you're saying backstory is overrated and unimportant and then, in the very next sentence, explain why backstory matters. It doesn't matter if it's simple backstory, as long as it's there. I think you have an erroneous mental image of what backstory is supposed to be, perhaps created by the legions of the aforementioned "emo tragic backstory flashbacks" popular shonen typically uses— backstory is literally just explanation of how past actions affect current motivations/actions. That's it.
If I said "I'm a Dragon Ball fan who grew up with the series" to explain why I'm here on the forum, and never explained anything else, that's still backstory.

Also, you're still thinking in terms of short stories and novellas. I'm talking about a mythos like Dragon Ball, where loads of events have happened that logically should have had some effect on other characters that are about to impact the plot. If they haven't, you wonder why. And if you don't get an answer and no one brings it up, it just comes off as bad writing. This isn't my opinion at all; that's just the general consensus. When you have a complex web of character stories and motivations, having no backstory whatsoever can muddy the plot. When you have a character who decides to do something in the now and their backstory doesn't figure greatly into it (because you can figure it out purely through actions and it doesn't affect the plot), that's fine. But that's not how things work many times, and if you don't have any reason why a character is doing something, you won't understand their motivation and, thus, you won't feel for their arc.

Again, if your only interaction with backstory has been these emotional plot dumps that stop what's going on for twenty minutes to explain why losing their onii-chan deeply affected them to the point of tears and motivation to beat the current bad guy with no nuance or withheld information, that can seem extraneous. This is just a product of shonen being targeted at children, however— in more mature works (usually), backstory can be delivered through character actions and dialogue without explicitly bringing up past events. Going back to Star Wars, did we need really need the god-awful prequels after Darth Vader said "That name no longer has any meaning to me" or saved his son's life?

Saying it's overrated makes no sense to me because that's like saying symbolism or character development is overrated. It's not totally necessary, yes. You can have stories without them. Not seeing why they're useful is one thing, but saying that it's overrated is... odd. You actually started this off by saying I misunderstand what art's supposed to be, but when I read this, I just go "Huh?" And like I said, I'm just thinking that this is because you're referring to shonen anime's typically terrible efforts at backstory always being the same overly emo flashbacks due to having to fit characters into archetypes rather than have them realistically react to new events based on past experiences.

The lyricism was so vapid and cheesy

I'd call them upbeat and earnest.

I'd use the either or descriptions to describe most pop music. It changes little: Justin Bieber could have written "Baby" in 1970 with very few lyrical changes, then given it a bluesy guitar backing, called himself "Robert Plant", and release it as a Led Zeppelin track and we'd be heralding it as a timeless example of classic rock. Pop has never been complex until an artist is comfortable enough with their success to take chances (or has wrestled some level of autonomy away from the label).

[ABED]

in the very next sentence, explain why backstory matters.

No it doesn't because you don't need backstory to understand what a character wants and their means of attaining it. I understand what it is, but ultimately backstory doesn't always explain things because put different people in the same situation and the results are bound to be different. I'm not thinking in terms of novelas, just basic human psychology. The vast majority of your paragraph about the importance of backstory is so vague that I have trouble understanding how this specifically applies to DB. Especially given that there is plenty of backstory in DB. I picked the word "overrated" very specifically. I didn't write "unnecessary". Backstory is a valuable tool if used well, but it's often misused as a way to try to create depth and ends up being boring exposition. You began that paragraph by saying a big problem with DB is it has very little backstory and how that's unsustainable. If we agree that backstory doesn't have to be a whole song and dance, and can be kept to a minimum, what specifically are you referring to when you say there's a lack of backstory?

that's like saying symbolism or character development is overrated.

No, because development and change is the point of a story. Events before a story as a way to explain behavior isn't always necessary, it's just one tool.