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

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

Post by Ripper 30 » Sat May 19, 2018 4:10 pm

something i have noticed among Anime fans is how the fans of other long running shows critisize Dragon Ball. mainly One Piece and Naruto Shippuden since they both have 500+ Episodes, a lot of characters, more deeper themes, more brutal, overarching plot and creative fights. but, because of this the Dragon Ball gets a lot of hate by them mainly because their main protagonist have a goal of becoming a Hokage or pirate King and because of it they shit a lot on Goku's character to be aimless and how both the shows had an overarching type plot where they fight Akatsuki one by one and how after the final conclusion was all the village reuniting, etc., just like that how one piece will end with Luffy becoming the pirate king and all the mysteries being solved. also, Dragon Ball is mainly criticized for only focusing on few changes compared to these two which focuses on many characters. what do you think?
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Zephyr » Sat May 19, 2018 4:46 pm

I've only consumed a very small bit of either series, but what I can gather from all of the discourse on the matter that I've observed is that these qualities (and others):
Ripper 30 wrote:One Piece and Naruto Shippuden since they both have 500+ Episodes, a lot of characters, more deeper themes, more brutal, overarching plot and creative fights.
...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.

That's not to say that these other series are strictly worse, or even bad (again, I've not really consumed any remotely reasonable amount of any of them to the point where I could conclude that), but the praise they tend to get (in stark and direct contrast to the criticism that Dragon Ball gets) in these circles seems to ultimately (from what I can see, at least) stem from them fixing problems that Dragon Ball doesn't actually have.

And, no, I'm not saying "Dragon Ball is just so deep, guys!", so the stock "it's just a kid's show, man, stop thinking and stuff" reply doesn't really address what I'm getting at.
Last edited by Zephyr on Sat May 19, 2018 5:17 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 AnimeNation101 » Sat May 19, 2018 5:07 pm

A lot of it it jealousy that Dragon Ball, the least complex of the 3 shows, ended up the most popular and loved and now it gets all the fame and fortune
I called it that Gogeta, Bardock, and something Broly related would be in the movie before it was even announced that it was a Broly movie. 8)

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

Post by OhHiRenan » Sat May 19, 2018 5:08 pm

Zephyr wrote:I've only consumed a very small bit of either series, but what I can gather from all of the discourse on the matter that I've observed is that these qualities (and others):
Ripper 30 wrote:One Piece and Naruto Shippuden since they both have 500+ Episodes, a lot of characters, more deeper themes, more brutal, overarching plot and creative fights.
...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 to have a good and emotive narrative that tracks cleanly.

That's not to say that these other series are strictly worse, or even bad (again, I've not really consumed any remotely reasonable amount of any of them to the point where I could conclude that), but the praise they tend to get (in stark and direct contrast to the criticism that Dragon Ball gets) in these circles seems to ultimately (from what I can see, at least) stem from them fixing problems that Dragon Ball doesn't actually have.

And, no, I'm not saying "Dragon Ball is just so deep, guys!", so the stock "it's just a kid's show, man, stop thinking and stuff" reply doesn't really address what I'm getting at.
This is a fantastic write-up and touches on a concept I'm very passionate about: Dragon Ball is subtle. It doesn't beat the reader or viewer over the head with motivations, information, or whats it themes and arcs are. They're simply ingrained into the narrative. At the same time, Dragon Ball definitely seems to have this stigma where some people, fans or otherwise, scoff at the notion that there could be anything deeper or layered under the series' surface. Dragon Ball isn't exempt from criticism by any means, but I feel like far too much criticism towards the series in rooted in a misunderstanding of what Dragon Ball is.

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

Post by ABED » Sat May 19, 2018 5:29 pm

I don't think DB is deep, but it's well done and the author clearly has a distinct style and voice.

I don't know when it happened but it seems at some point good storytelling (falsely) became synonymous with complexity. I think blockbuster films these days are being overly complicated. Instead of being complex, they end up convoluted. DB does what it does well and that's all I ask for, even in a dumb movie or TV show.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by kemuri07 » Sat May 19, 2018 5:41 pm

ABED wrote:I don't think DB is deep, but it's well done and the author clearly has a distinct style and voice.

I don't know when it happened but it seems at some point good storytelling (falsely) became synonymous with complexity. I think blockbuster films these days are being overly complicated. Instead of being complex, they end up convoluted. DB does what it does well and that's all I ask for, even in a dumb movie or TV show.
I've complained about this on this site before and on other sites and you really hit the nail on the head.

One thing. I'd say that DB isn't dumb precisely because it knows exactly what it is and Toriyama never lost sight of that. I've watched way too many anime that are dumb as shit but try to pass as intellectual or "deep" with a veneer of edge and tits. And people fall for it precisely for the reason you state: because we equate complexity with quality.

I blame Evangelion.

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

Post by Kunzait_83 » Sat May 19, 2018 6:26 pm

I think that anime fans who over-focus on these kinds of Shonen shows in general are people who've fallen into a weird "rut" of sorts: where they're VERY overly caught up within one VERY specific facet of an ENTIRE MEDIUM which has such a SPRAWLING and dense-as-hell history and countless, near endless spider-webbing strands of creative rabbit holes to fall into... only to basically keep themselves firmly planted in the same place that many of them began on Cartoon Network roughly 20 years ago now.

"Battle Shonen" along the lines of Naruto, One Piece, et al: they're no more indicative of Shonen as a whole than Shonen is indicative of anime and manga as a whole (which is to say, "not at all"). All those Shonen series basically amount to are series whose ENTIRE creative identities are wrapped up firmly in their (misguided attempts at) following in the footsteps of Dragon Ball (while spectacularly missing much of the point of Dragon Ball in the first place), rather than doing something totally and completely different and original.

A lot of the specific criticisms that fans of those shows hurl at Dragon Ball are ridiculous and dumb unto themselves. First of all, Goku HAS a very clear and stated goal throughout the whole series: to become the best martial artist that he possibly can, and to never stop improving at it and never being satisfied with his "ceiling" or "potential". That's it, and it doesn't need be any more complex or convoluted than that: its a motivation that has served the martial arts fantasy/Wuxia genre for many thousands upon thousands of years worth of myths, fables, legends, and stories spanning ancient China to the modern day. Complexity is not the same thing as "depth": sometimes, in some circumstances, there's VASTLY more elegance to be had in basic simplicity.

Naruto and One Piece attaching a specific "title" onto it is... thoroughly meaningless and doesn't really add or detract from anything. Its effectively almost EXACTLY the same damn thing as Goku's motivation (be recognized as "the best" at something): you just stuck a name onto it. Yes, truly revolutionary narrative crafting. :roll: Its a totally arbitrary and meaningless detail, a distinction without a difference.

For that matter, there's also something nice (and FAR more relateable) about Goku's goal being essentially unobtainable and without a real "definite" ending inherently, as opposed to something that he can eventually fully accomplish, and just go home happy and that's that: real life RARELY ever works out that way or is so cut and dry. There's something that feels a LOT more emotionally honest about having a goal where the point isn't the end goal itself, but the actual PROCESS of WORKING towards getting there.

Its effectively the old cliche about how "it isn't the destination, but the journey", but fuck it: its gotten to become a cliche for a damn good reason. The training with Karin bit (where Goku doesn't get stronger from obtaining the water, but from all that he went through to get it) kinda best encapsulates this whole core theme of the series in a way.

Secondly, I've seen more than my fair share of both One Piece and Naruto. Not in quite some time granted: but back in the day, I'd trudged my way through a TON of both series on the overwhelmingly hyperbolic strength of so many fans' insistent word that they were the single greatest things in the history of all anime and manga - never mind that most of these same fans were only introduced to anime and manga a few short years prior and their main sole point of focus on all anime and manga were nothing but solely Shonen in the vein of DB, OP, and Naruto.

Spoiler alert for those who might not have seen either of them: they in NO WAY have "deeper themes" than Dragon Ball. The "depth" that so many fans go on and on about isn't actually "depth" but "convoluted world building and over-plotting", and their vaunted "characterization" isn't actual characterization, but overly histrionic monologues about the characters' own wallowing in emotional angst.

One Piece is ESPECIALLY fucking brutal in this regard: by the time you're done with just a few volumes of the manga or a dozen or so episodes of the anime, you're going to be SO BEYOND sick to goddamned death of over the top sappy and maudlin wailing and sobbing about "friendship" this and "follow your dreams" that, that you'll be about ready to throw on a pair of jack boots and stomp on a cute little puppy's neck and then mainline dozens of games of Doom and Mortal Kombat while listening to the loudest thrash metal possible just to wipe the taste of schmaltz and sugary diabetes out of your mouth.

There's also a much broader, deeper issue I have with not so much these series in and of themselves (which are really just lesser "me too" clones of Dragon Ball's perceived "winning formula") and more with the entire perspective that a LOT of anime fandom - in the U.S. at least - in the 2000s (and 2010s I suppose as well by extension) have taken with them and what these kinds of shows have sort of come to "represent" in terms of the dead-end path that post-Toonami U.S. anime fandom has taken in following little else but these kinds of shows (and various harem/ecchi slop as well, but that's neither here nor there) all the way down an ever spiraling drain of diminishing returns.

I've touched on this a bit before in a few other threads now, but prior to Cartoon Network and Dragon Ball Z's runaway success there (with a mostly younger and anime-virgin audience) the overall landscape and spectrum of anime fandom in the U.S. was a WHOLE lot broader and denser, with a GREAT DEAL more attention paid to all different unique and wildly varying styles, genres, and demographics worth of anime and manga titles: many of which were so unique that they wouldn't even be immediately visibly recognizable as "Japanese anime or manga" by most of today's fanbase.

What ended up happening in a sense was that when Dragon Ball Z (as well as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and similar such "collect 'em all!" types of Shonen for that matter) broke big, this then-new generation of anime audience (the ones who's gateway into it was generally the Toonami lineup) never really "grew past" their gateway titles.

Prior to this, most Western anime fans, regardless of how they'd first get introduced (be it through Macross, Akira, Shirow or Rumic manga, whatever) there was always generally a MASSIVE "branching out" process where people would fall into countless dozens of wildly different kinds of creative rabbit holes, because the landscape overall back then was SOOOOO infinitely more varied.

This all kinda died a stone-cold death once DBZ and Pokemon broke through to elementary school kids at the cusp of the turn of the millennium though: the broader, wider U.S. fanbase seemed to shortly thereafter devolve and tailspin into this rut of eternal repetitive sameness centering itself all around mostly "Battle Shonen" with "themes of friendship, camaraderie, and adventure!" where anime and manga as a collective whole were no longer really about "exploring this fascinating and wildly diverse medium of art from a faraway foreign country with very unique and different perspectives on what animation and comic book storytelling can achieve".

It instead became about overly-clingy and sentimental young people (who were for whatever reasons, DESPERATELY longing to relive over their elementary school years at as otherwise young an age as 18/19/20-ish) chasing DESPERATELY after that same specific high they first felt when they first saw DBZ being presented to them by Tom as small kids. Doing it through endless consumption of a never-ending series of tiresome post-Dragon Ball knockoff Shonen titles, and accumulating the perception that this sort of Shonen was indeed its own "genre" of sorts, with "tropes" and "themes" that effectively just amount to Dragon Ball's usual martial arts fantasy shtick (which is in NO way unique or original to it, of course) passed through the warped, cracked mirror lens of its later, lesser imitators (that all collectively share the general theme of "Just be exactly like Dragon Ball, but without the martial arts or Chinese kung fu fantasy stuff").

Fans of this whole era (the height of which seemed, from my vantage point, to be from around 2003-ish to maybe 2010/11-ish? Hell, I'm not quite sure we'e even really necessarily OUT of this era entirely, even right now) seemed to get hung up on the impression that they were in fact "evolving" past their gateway drug of DBZ through these other DB-like series... when really, they were effectively just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Nobody (or very, VERY few rather) from this whole era of fandom ever really seemed to ever "branch out" or "grow up into" actually substantive, genuinely unique, and moreover ADULT-centric works from actual artists like Satoshi Kon, Rintaro, Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Kazuo Koike, and so on: again, a tiny few RARE corners did, but overall the broader fandom of this era seemed to generally be constantly circling itself endlessly around a never-ending parade of the latest flavor-of-the-moment "Battle Shonen" sludge from Weekly Shonen Jump... ALL of which were transparent (and no less fluffy) ripoffs of Dragon Ball; and all the while with much of the fandom constantly patting themselves on the back with how much they've all "grown up" past "sentimental but quaint fluff" like Dragon Ball over the years.

The reality is of course that they hadn't, or anything at all close to it: the obsession with constantly declaring how One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail, Hunter X Hunter, or whatever such tiresome drivel from WSJ is "the newer, more improved, and better Dragon Ball" among so many fans is pure psychological projection. Its this fucked up mental gymnastics routine where fandom of the 2000s and onward collectively tries to convince itself desperately of how much its grown over the years to become "so much more deeply informed and appreciative of all facets" of anime and all manner of different manga... while never ACTUALLY in practice separating themselves all that far from the original gateway drug title that roped them in as children in the first place (Dragon Ball Z), or delving very deeply (if at all) into waters of the mediums that are in any way actually, genuinely different from it.

Instead they merely substitute Dragon Ball with a series of transparently obvious stand-ins for it: each of them whose "differences" are hardly all THAT actually different from it when all's ultimately said and done. Thus the constant, echoing refrains of "See how much more DEEP AND GROWN UP THIS IS THAN DRAGON BAWL ZEE?!" carry the desperate tone and tenor of the obvious question "Who exactly are you trying to convince here?" as it remains stunningly apparent - to virtually ANYONE who's stepped foot for even so much as a nanosecond in anime or manga waters that are neither Shonen nor Shojo nor Ecchi/Moe/Harem-related (or really in any SEMBLANCE of adult media not aimed at kids in general, even outside of animation entirely) - that these daisy chaining strings of Weekly Shonen Jump and Toonami-approved Battle Shonen are hardly all THAT particularly more "grown up" or "deep" (and certainly not at all very much very far removed artistically) relative to Dragon Ball.

This has ultimately had the net-effect of contributing to the focus of the overall Western anime market myopically narrowing itself off to the whims and tastes of this audience (because unfortunately its the biggest and rakes in the most money), and closing itself off in many ways to giving much attention or spotlight to anything else that doesn't fall squarely within the realm of "Vaguely DB-esque action Shonen of the kind that you'd find somewhere on Cartoon Network any given day".

It all comes back to the unavoidable issue that's plagued wider anime and manga fandom in the U.S. since the early-ish 2000s: an unwillingness and lack of interest in accepting or exploring the notion that anime and manga also contains a whole TON of works that are in NO WAY similar IN ANY WHICH WAY to the kinds of "action Shonen" shit that this whole era of fandom first got introduced to through DBZ on Toonami way back when and STILL to this day primarily associate with "all or most anime and manga as a collective and entire whole".

Thus this continued obsessive fixation on these "Battle Shonen" serials comes across as the fanbase endlessly spinning its wheels, trying desperately to recreate that same initial "high" of first "discovering anime" through DBZ on Cartoon Network anywhere from 1999 to 2003-ish or what have you. And this in turn is also further tied in with the more broader, overarching problem of this fanbase generally being SEVERELY allergic to exploring or developing any real interest or intellectual curiosity for wider creative media that ISN'T aimed solely and specifically at small children: specifically the kinds of children's media meant to hawk merchandise at little boys via "Pew! Pew!" action 'toons.

Its sad, its gotten BEYOND tiresome since more than a decade/decade and a half back now, and its the kind of endlessly repetitive death spiral of imagination that's going to keep the U.S. fandom for this shit forever stagnant in this pitiful, naval-gazing state of "Gee, wasn't it SO MUCH BETTER back when...?" over largely childish garbage that by and large wasn't all that particularly great or mindblowing back then either, nor was it cared for (rightly and justly so) by anyone who wasn't already a naive and overly sheltered elementary school kid to begin with (see also: the continued adult fanbases for things like Power Rangers, Pokemon, etc).

And it also COMPLETELY breaks the overall gauge for people's ability to discern what the overall "actual levels" of storytelling depth or "scary, non-child safe content" for something really is when their ONLY or at least PRIMARY frame of artistic reference for most things is vapid children's fluff on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or the latest Disney blockbuster playing at the multiplex this summer, rather than any one ACTUAL example of a title of genuine, substantive merit made for fully functional, critically thinking adults.

Hence how it is that we arrive at a broader landscape where people are constantly falling all over themselves much of the time to declare the "immense, grown up artistic depth" of shit like everything from Harry Potter, to Hunger Games, to Pixar movies, to the MCU, to One Piece, Naruto, and their assorted Shonen ilk, to Kingdom Hearts, to Transformers, and even to fucking My Little Pony, Yu Gi Oh, and Digimon (Yes, "Digimon is actually super dark and for adults" is actually a thing, even in some corners of this very community here).

Which then of course usually brings us into the awful, self-defeating logical fallacy where people usually defend this shit with stale arguments along the lines of "But children's cartoons and movies/shows have COME SO FAR over the years! It took us SO LONG to finally PROVE to all those fuddy-duddy stick-in-them-mud adults from our childhoods that Beast Wars and Bruce Timm have artistic merit and that Disney's Gargoyles and Power Rangers season whatever are the unsung dramatic masterpieces of our times! Remember what C.S. Lewis said about 'Putting away childish things including the desire to appear very grown up!'"

To which I say yes, but Lewis simply meant that just because you're an adult its still okay to go back and still enjoy a children's tale a time or two once in awhile without embarrassment: not to just forever live in the intellectual and creative equivalent of your soiled infant-hood diapers without EVER challenging yourself and expanding your growing and evolving mind toward more advanced ideas.

Lewis wanted a fully developed, and ever-expanding adult mind that had already healthily taken the plunge into challenging itself with genuinely grown up ideas and works to still not be afraid or too self-conscious to look back with warmness every so often at a favorite childhood bedtime fairy tale... not to COMPLETELY ignore and bypass ANY HINT of healthy engagement with adult works and ideas altogether, and to instead obsessively devote every inkling of your creative being throughout your whole entire life to nothing but all your favorite childhood fantasy fairytales, while making absurd rationalizations and justifications that those childhood bedtimes stories are "Just as good if not better than some silly, stupid, boring grown ups' book about lame shit like actual substance relating to the real world".

The Lewis quote is speaking to not being so overzealous as to throw aside ALL notions of childhood (including some of the more potentially positive ones) as an adult, NOT that adulthood is inherently bad all across the board, so feel free to twist and use his words into some sort of a free pass to forever excuse yourself from never having to do ANY hint of intellectual growing up, ever. Its a call to not completely throw out the baby with the bathwater when growing up, not an argument championing and excusing permanent stagnation into a state of eternal and perpetual juvenilia.
OhHiRenan wrote:
Zephyr wrote:Stuff
This is a fantastic write-up and touches on a concept I'm very passionate about: Dragon Ball is subtle. It doesn't beat the reader or viewer over the head with motivations, information, or whats it themes and arcs are. They're simply ingrained into the narrative. At the same time, Dragon Ball definitely seems to have this stigma where some people, fans or otherwise, scoff at the notion that there could be anything deeper or layered under the series' surface. Dragon Ball isn't exempt from criticism by any means, but I feel like far too much criticism towards the series in rooted in a misunderstanding of what Dragon Ball is.
Just want to co-sign on all of this and every last word of Zeph's post. That was brilliantly nail on the head spot on across the board.
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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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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by sintzu » Sat May 19, 2018 7:25 pm

From what I've seen the people who do this are a vocal minority who mostly just like one and only one show then go around hating on everything else, not just DB. A good amount of naruto and one piece fans like myself like all 3 alongside other anime.

DB of course has its issues which are brought up here but so does Naruto and One Piece, something their fanboys who hate on DB never bring up.
AnimeNation101 wrote:A lot of it it jealousy that Dragon Ball, the least complex of the 3 shows, ended up the most popular and loved and now it gets all the fame and fortune
This. Also, the hate DB gets usually comes form people who've only seen the old funimation Z dub with its Western music so they already have the wrong image of it. Yeah DB isn't as deep and complex as those 2 shows but if they watched DB from the very start then their views may be different.
Last edited by sintzu on Sat May 19, 2018 7:37 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 KBABZ » Sat May 19, 2018 7:28 pm

Feels to me like Naruto/One Piece fans criticizing Dragon Ball comes from a place where because Dragon Ball is older, and in particular that their franchises were directly inspired by Dragon Ball, that it means Dragon Ball is apparently inferior, which is obviously a flawed argument.

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

Post by ABED » Sat May 19, 2018 8:03 pm

I don't watch much anime so I'm not around those fandoms enough to know their viewing habits, but how prevalent is the desire to watch mostly children's shows?
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by sintzu » Sat May 19, 2018 8:08 pm

ABED wrote:How prevalent is the desire to watch mostly children's shows?
Do you mean shows like DB ? If so then I guess it depends on what kind of story it is,the general look of the show (bright, dark, edgy, childish, etc.) and its popularity. With One Piece for example, you've got people who won't watch it cause it doesn't look as "cool" as Naruto.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by ABED » Sat May 19, 2018 8:14 pm

sintzu wrote:
ABED wrote:How prevalent is the desire to watch mostly children's shows?
Do you mean shows like DB ? If so then I guess it depends on what kind of story it is,the general look of the show (bright, dark, edgy, childish, etc.) and its popularity. With One Piece for example, you've got people who won't watch it cause it doesn't look as "cool" as Naruto.
The question came about when I read Kunzait's post. He's made comments about his more than a few times. I gotta wonder why anyone wouldn't venture into more adult or sophisticated stories. I like a healthy mix.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by sintzu » Sat May 19, 2018 8:27 pm

ABED wrote:I gotta wonder why anyone wouldn't venture into more adult or sophisticated stories. I like a healthy mix.
For me it comes down to simply not having enough time to look for other things as the anime industry is huge so it's hard to figure out what's worth watching. I'm mostly familiar with the Shonen battle genre (DB type) so that's where I look when I want something new to get into, which isn't often.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Sat May 19, 2018 9:11 pm

ABED wrote:
sintzu wrote:
ABED wrote:How prevalent is the desire to watch mostly children's shows?
Do you mean shows like DB ? If so then I guess it depends on what kind of story it is,the general look of the show (bright, dark, edgy, childish, etc.) and its popularity. With One Piece for example, you've got people who won't watch it cause it doesn't look as "cool" as Naruto.
The question came about when I read Kunzait's post. He's made comments about his more than a few times. I gotta wonder why anyone wouldn't venture into more adult or sophisticated stories. I like a healthy mix.
Its been a thing in both anime fandom specifically as well as in various areas of broader "geek culture" generally: I wanna say since at least the mid-ish 2000s (which is certainly at least around when I first started really coming across this whole phenomenon myself).

I bring it up here because I think for purposes of this topic, I think that its at the root of why a lot of anime fandom of the past 15/20-ish years now has been so stringently focused on so-called "Battle Shonen": its an equal mix of DBZ being the big gateway title to anime for a lot of today's fans (you'll find an obsessive fixation with the Toonami lineup of circa 1999-2003 or so lurking at the heart of a whole LOT of fan discussion online about anime for the lion's share of the mid/late 2000s and early 2010s), along with a more broader aversion to exploring very much in the way of non-children's centric media as a whole.

The idea that Shonen series like Naruto, One Piece, and that assorted ilk are somehow more "mature", "deep", and "grown up" than DBZ is is a perspective stemming broadly from an entire fanbase that deals VERY exceedingly little in ANY media (both Japanese anime and general animation as well as non-animated media as a whole) that isn't for children primarily, and who thus have very little (or none) in the way of a real proper frame of reference for how to really gauge or accurately judge things like relative degrees of "storytelling depth", character nuance, and what constitutes a "dark tone" and so forth.

Everything is basically judged against nothing else apart from other forms of children's media: Shonen shows like Naruto SEEM to be more relatively "grown up" to this fanbase based on either shallow or basic criteria like their being serialized, having continuity, and a basic sense of narrative progression or consequences, or characters being capable of being killed off or even just showing a splash of blood here or there, etc. All because the general relative frame of reference for most of this audience is almost purely just that of other kids' cartoon shows (namely U.S. ones) as opposed to an ACTUAL work that's genuinely aimed at a mature audience (a Sidney Lumet film for example, or an Arthur C. Clarke novel, etc.)

In other words, the entire "geek cultural" spectrum of today is (with VERY few exceptions) mostly a creative vacuum containing little to nothing else beyond children's genre works, generally in the "action cartoon"-esque realm, and almost NO room whatsoever for anything with anything even vaguely resembling actual literary or critical merit of ANY sort.

A better read, smarter individual than myself once memorably referred to the phenomenon as "inverted snobbery": basically having an almost snobbish dismissal, mistrust, apathy, or disdain for ANY sort of work that can even vaguely be taken for "high brow", "arty", or "intellectual" or relevant/focused on actual real world matters or that embraces any hint of subtlety, whilst hyperbolically elevating, intellectualizing, and lionizing solely bombastic genre fluff: the more juvenile and skewing towards the tastes and interests of little adolescent boys circa elementary or middle school age, the better.

Basically its the EXACT REVERSE of what "hoity toity media snobbery" once USED to stereotypically entail (looking down one's nose upon any and all forms of seemingly fluffy genre works while solely carrying a torch for things that are more high minded and literary): hence "inverted snobbery".

A lot of it seems to stem from over the top pushback against the whole so-called "animation age ghetto" (i.e. "cartoons are just for kids and are thus all worthless junk") taken to WAY too far of an extreme: we're now at the point where rather than kids cartoons being looked down upon, they're now in many corners revered WAY too much, and its genuinely smart, adult works that are being looked at with more scorn as almost a weird sort of over-compensation or some such. Its an extreme viewpoint that I personally have long found to be FAR worse and much, MUCH more inherently damaging that the original (and still very much wrong mind you) extreme viewpoint that its pushing back against.

It sometimes gets taken so ridiculously far to a point where a lot of people within these fanbases often genuinely DON'T EVEN SEEM TO REALLY KNOW to ANY real degree that works made for a non-children's audience are things that even exist: the disinterest and lack of exposure or curiosity can sometimes just get SO palpable that there now exist whole swathes of people across fandom to whom ALL of art, pop culture, and creative works of media can be solely boiled down mainly to superheroes, giant robots, wizards, Pokemon-esque critters, and the like, with NOTHING else that really matters or is of any consequence to them whatsoever.

Within anime fandom specifically, this sort of mindset takes the form of ALL anime as a broader medium being distilled down solely to Dragon Ball-like "Battle Shonen", or generally speaking any sort of anime that would fit in or be at home on Cartoon Network in the early 2000s in whatever block (Toonami or what have you) or silly harem/ecchi sex sitcoms, with almost NO room for variation or "third options" of ANY sort (despite there being countless legions of them, just in the realm of Japanese anime alone, much less everything else outside of it).

This is thus how you arrive at the modern anime fanbase effectively treating and acting as if these various Dragon Ball wannabe shows are the creative and intellectual pinnacle of all Japanese anime and of the whole animation medium altogether, as well as works of genuinely "serious, and high brow" art: because as far as many fans are concerned, there's the Weekly Shonen Jump oeuvre, there's Pokemon and its various knockoffs, there's Shojo, there's Moe/ecchi, there's the odd Cowboy Bebop acting as "rare outliers" (they're not, or anything close to it) for anime, and for everything else, there's the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network lineups and whatever happens to show in mainstream movie theaters every summer, there's some sitcoms and young adult novels, and with few other exceptions THAT'S IT FOR EVERYTHING THAT EVER EXISTS OR IS RELEVANT IN ALL THE REALMS OF ART OR MEDIA. The rest is just background noise or the Simpsons/Family Guy/South Park/Futurama/King of the Hill and their similar kind.

Things like non-summer tentpole or family films, books/literature outside of the Young Adult realm, non-superhero comic books or non-children's manga, or art house animation, what have you: these are all just total and utter non-factors that are categorically ignored or treated as if they don't exist or matter or that no one has ever heard of or cared about them.

This leads to an UNBELIEVABLY and hopelessly skewed and grotesquely ignorant and warped general overview of what various forms and mediums of art actually encompass in their totality (film, music, literature, graphic novels, animation, etc.) and what they've all variously achieved and accomplished in realms outside of shit made to sell toys and merchandise to small kids.

And to an anime fanbase where few have moved on from looking at all of Japanese animation beyond the, again horribly skewed, filter of Cartoon Network at the turn of the millennium. Hence the "Battle Shonen" obsession. Because this is a fanbase that, despite their protests to the contrary via pointing at how much more "mature" and "evolved" other anime kids' fluff like My Hero Academia, Naruto, One Piece, and so on are, has really NEVER "grown past" DBZ and Pokemon in ANY way, to a point of total and utterly hopeless myopia of zeroing in on mainly DBZ and Pokemon's assorted collection of various knockoffs and clones and overpraising their every little minor wrinkle as far, far more "brilliant" and "revolutionary" than they in any which way are; and doing so generally at the expense of exploring or venturing into anything genuinely different or legitimately mature across the medium (of which there's beyond plenty that's largely been just sitting there, gathering dust, unloved for far too many years now).
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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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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Sun May 20, 2018 2:42 pm

Dragon Ball fans criticize One Piece and Naruto a lot. The communities between all three series' (despite the minor DB fans vs Naruto fans rivalry) are close like PB & J.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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

Post by emperior » Sun May 20, 2018 3:56 pm

I will never get why one has to like One Piece and shit on Dragon Ball, and viceversa. Can't people recognize that, even if they share some similarities, those are different shows with their positive and negative aspects? You know, one can be a fan of OP, DB and Naruto at the same time.
I have also read the criticisms aimed towards Dragon Ball from those particular fandoms, and I find them quite ridiculous and probably coming off jealousy that Dragon Ball is the bigger and more popular franchise, which is something those fans can't seem to accept. It may be more generic, simpler etcera but it's still a very good serie which has influenced lots of works, including One Piece and Naruto. There are also many people who love Dragon Ball exactly because of its simplicity, and I am among those people. I'm not here for the overly complex stories, characters and all the kind of drama other animes have. I'm not here to see the characters constantly crying or feeling depressed.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Sun May 20, 2018 6:17 pm

I love One Piece but hate Naruto.
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Re: why do fans of One Piece and Naruto Shippuden critisize Dragon Ball a lot?

Post by Lord Beerus » Mon May 21, 2018 7:16 am

Okay, I'm going to blunt here... why should ANY Dragon Ball fan give a damn about what a very small certain group of fans from other anime think about Dragon Ball? It shouldn't be your concern to begin. If you like Dragon Ball, you like it despite any of the issues it may have.

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

Post by Bullza » Mon May 21, 2018 8:02 am

Probably because they're annoyed that Dragon Ball isn't bogged down with boring back stories, forced romances, overly sappy drivel, constant childish gags and gimmicks, shoe horned in female characters all with big boobs and villains being beaten after having a sentimental heart to heart conversation.

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

Post by VegettoEX » Mon May 21, 2018 11:30 am

Bullza wrote:Probably because they're annoyed that Dragon Ball isn't bogged down with boring back stories, forced romances, overly sappy drivel, constant childish gags and gimmicks, shoe horned in female characters all with big boobs and villains being beaten after having a sentimental heart to heart conversation.
This seems just as reductive as the very sentiments being expressed "against" Dragon Ball.

It's not a worthwhile discussion tactic in either direction, and is not something we'll entertain here. There are no "sides" necessary here, and if you're going to have a legitimate "take" on something, let's hear that actual "take".
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