Why do so many Z fans refuse to watch the original Dragon Ball?

[TheGreatness25]

This isn't about which is better or where you start, but if given the option and the ability to go back to the beginning, why not do so?

To use their reasoning, "to get to the cool part"

That reason would be just as valid as anything else, really. If someone asks me why I started watching in the first place, I'd say because it was cool and caught my attention. But I'm the type of person who wants to see everything, some people don't care enough about it to do that.

[ABED]

This isn't about which is better or where you start, but if given the option and the ability to go back to the beginning, why not do so?

To use their reasoning, "to get to the cool part"

Given they don't watch the first series, how do they know there aren't plenty of cool parts there?

And even if Z is the best part, there is so much in DB that's great, some of which gives much needed context to DBZ which only makes that stuff better. I see no benefit in not going back unless they don't actually enjoy it.

If someone asks me why I started watching in the first place, I'd say because it was cool and caught my attention.

But how do they know it's the cool part?

[ekrolo2]

But how do they know it's the cool part?

They watched it as kids, making it the best part by default

[KBABZ]

This isn't about which is better or where you start, but if given the option and the ability to go back to the beginning, why not do so?

To use their reasoning, "to get to the cool part"

Given they don't watch the first series, how do they know there aren't plenty of cool parts there?

Because they watched a few of the first episodes, or maybe the 21st TB, or the RRA, or even the 22nd TB, and wrote it off because it's too kiddy and doesn't have the cool ki blasts and flying and explosions like Z does, and they walk away.

Please note that I do not endorse or agree with this line of thinking; the Kid Goku stuff is my favourite of the whole franchise.

[Kokonoe]

This isn't about which is better or where you start, but if given the option and the ability to go back to the beginning, why not do so?

To use their reasoning, "to get to the cool part"

Given they don't watch the first series, how do they know there aren't plenty of cool parts there?

And even if Z is the best part, there is so much in DB that's great, some of which gives much needed context to DBZ which only makes that stuff better. I see no benefit in not going back unless they don't actually enjoy it.

If someone asks me why I started watching in the first place, I'd say because it was cool and caught my attention.

But how do they know it's the cool part?

The companies themselves and fans aren't doing a good enough job showing off how Dragon Ball is cool. Like the expectation of Z means people want to see fights asap, and that's how the show starts right into Raditz starting fights with people.

What I do when I suggest Dragon Ball to people is I show them how good the animation is with gifs and that usually wins people over.

[KBABZ]

The companies themselves and fans aren't doing a good enough job showing off how Dragon Ball is cool. Like the expectation of Z means people want to see fights asap, and that's how the show starts right into Raditz starting fights with people.

What I do when I suggest Dragon Ball to people is I show them how good the animation is with gifs and that usually wins people over.

One tactic would be to pitch them on the 23rd TB. Say it's a prequel that sets up why Piccolo is considered so evil by the characters in the Raditz episodes, as well as things like Goku and Chi-Chi getting married. Then once that's over, pitch them on the Daimao arc as the prequel to the 23rd TB, which weans them onto the Kid Goku stuff and shows the colossal battle between Goku and the King (as well as explaining the origin of Kami more fully and introducing Mr. Popo, in addition to the first appearance of DBZ staple, Kami's Lookout).

[ABED]

Say it's a prequel

I don't like saying it's a prequel at all. I've grown tired of prequels. It's the story about the characters or world you love before they are the thing you care about. DB isn't that. It's the story you know from the beginning. Have patience and let it unfold.

[TheGreatness25]

I don't know if this plays a role, but I feel like the perception always was that Dragon Ball doesn't matter. Funimation skipped Dragon Ball and went into Z (after doing the first 13 episodes and a couple of movies). But it was never marketed as the "Dragon Ball series" or the "Dragon Ball franchise," it was always "Dragon Ball Z!" To this day, I encounter people who use "Dragon Ball Z" as reference to the entire series. It's become the "Xerox," "Bounty," "Band Aid," and "Pampers" of the franchise.

And even though that's from back in the day and lots of new fans shouldn't be affected, even Toei continued the feel that Dragon Ball was kind of insignificant when it did Kai and even sent out a note that it wanted it to be "Dragon Ball Z Kai" internationally.

All of the video games were "Dragon Ball Z." All of the posters sold in stores were "Dragon Ball Z" (I never saw a Dragon Ball poster). The series that was relentlessly re-re-re-released in the US was Dragon Ball Z.

So maybe it's possible that such an aggressive promotion of "Z" with disregard to Dragon Ball created the perception that Dragon Ball wasn't really all that important and "Z" is where it's at.

Just throwing that idea out there.

[KBABZ]

Say it's a prequel

I don't like saying it's a prequel at all. I've grown tired of prequels. It's the story about the characters or world you love before they are the thing you care about. DB isn't that. It's the story you know from the beginning. Have patience and let it unfold.

Unfortunately that's not gonna sell most stuck Z fans on Dragon Ball. Because of the way the story evolves in tone, it'd be too much of a jump to sell most of them on the early stuff. Thus, my suggestion to ease them in by working backwards.

[Robo4900]

Say it's a prequel

I don't like saying it's a prequel at all. I've grown tired of prequels. It's the story about the characters or world you love before they are the thing you care about. DB isn't that. It's the story you know from the beginning. Have patience and let it unfold.

It pointedly isn't a prequel. Prequels are stories told afterwards that are set before a work they follow. OG Dragon Ball isn't a prequel, because Z is the sequel to DB. Similarly, Z isn't a prequel, it's just that GT and Super are sequels to it(Well... Super is an interquel, but that's kind of semantics).

But how do they know it's the cool part?

They watched it as kids, making it the best part by default

And with this, you've hit the nail on the head. This question with this answer perfectly sums up exactly why people skip the first third of the story.

One tactic would be to pitch them on the 23rd TB. Say it's a prequel that sets up why Piccolo is considered so evil by the characters in the Raditz episodes, as well as things like Goku and Chi-Chi getting married. Then once that's over, pitch them on the Daimao arc as the prequel to the 23rd TB, which weans them onto the Kid Goku stuff and shows the colossal battle between Goku and the King (as well as explaining the origin of Kami more fully and introducing Mr. Popo, in addition to the first appearance of DBZ staple, Kami's Lookout).

That seems overly complex. If the person in question is so aggressively convinced that the part of the franchise they've never watched is the one part they shouldn't watch that you have to force them to agree to only see this tiny bit to get you off their back, I doubt they'd give it the time of day to actually get through even the 23rd Tenkaichi, and even then, you're dropping them head-first into the situation of the 23rd Tenkaichi, where they're all carrying serious baggage that's only alluded to in this arc because anyone with a lick of sense watching this would have already seen the Piccolo Daimao arc, and all the stuff before that... This is a monumentally terrible idea for so many reasons, especially if you go in deliberately framing it as a prequel...

If someone is open-minded enough to actually give it a fair shake, suggest watching it through with them, and ask for them to commit to sticking with it until the end of the Fortuneteller Baba material, finishing the Red Ribbon storyline. Pitch it to them pointing out that if they're not into it by then, this is actually a pretty decent point to stop at in terms of story flow, but if they are into it, then the next story is set up immediately anyway, so continuing on is equally easy. Thing is, most TV takes time for you to get into it; you probably won't get into Next Gen until season 3, Buffy until the middle of season 2, Community until the tail end of season 1, Parks And Rec until season 2 starts, or Agents Of SHIELD until half-way through season 1. Even some of the best shows out there with the strongest starts there are take time for you to actually get into them; I consider Rick And Morty's early episodes to be phenomenal, but it took me half of season 1 to actually get into the show. Ditto with Heroes!

And ultimately, much as I love the first two arcs, the show ultimately didn't really find its style until the Red Ribbon arc, and while it continued to push boundaries from there, Red Ribbon kind of established the centrepoint that all the future arcs would work from.

If you really must go with a route that skips material, 21st Tenkaichi, Red Ribbon, and 22nd Tenkaichi are the only ones I think would work as starting points, though the 22nd Tenkaichi is still a massive stretch for this, for a very specific reason, and the thing is, if you're going to start from the 23rd Tenkaichi, I don't think it's worth even trying this at all...
I'm going into spoiler territory for those who haven't seen OG DB, so I'm going to put this in spoiler tags. If you have not seen OG DB, do not open this spoiler. There is an essential story beat that this will ruin for you.

[spoiler]The Piccolo arc's beginning would fall totally flat if you haven't spent the time getting used to the cast, and to Goku's friendship with Kuririn(22nd Tenkaichi would still be problematic in this sense, but not totally void the moment of meaning), and thus the earth-shaking and ominous vibes that accompany the dawn of the Piccolo arc would be totally lost on you, meaning that the fairly slow buildup of who Piccolo is across the beginning of the arc wouldn't be tense and horrifying, it would just be kind of slow and weird. As far as someone not used to OG DB is concerned, reviving people is a perfectly normal thing that happens at least once or twice an arc, so really even starting any later than Red Ribbon will screw this whole thing up, because unless you've seen just how monumentally difficult a time they had reviving Bora, it won't even occur to you that Kuririn's death would have any meaning. Starting at the 22nd Tenkaichi at least addresses the problem that you have to know Goku and Kuririn are close friends and such an occurance would drive Goku to such extremes as we see in the Piccolo Daimao arc, but starting any later than Red Ribbon ruins the fact that Bora was the first time anyone was revived, Kuririn was the first time a major character died, and the end of the Piccolo arc after Goku goes up to God's lookout is the second time the Dragon Balls were ever used to revive anyone. Even something as basic as Goku being a kid would seem off to people jumping in at the Piccolo Daimao arc, since by this point he'd matured quite a bit over the show's run, and was going through a particularly dark time, so it'd feel weird, jarring, and unnecessary to newcomers, and probably give them "GT vibes". Given this is probably mostly Americans were talking about here, "GT vibes" could very easily end up meaning "i hate this show with a passion. why are you showing me this trash?"

Even putting aside issues of preconceived ideas from having watched the later shows, skipping material in Dragon Ball will always do a massive disservice to whichever arc you start from, even if all you skip is the Pilaf arc; it's a solid arc that gets you used to the characters, the style of the show, and the situation of things(Remember what I said about Rick And Morty and Heroes!). Skipping the 21st Tenkaichi will mean you never see how Goku and Kuririn met, you'll never see how those two and Roshi grew so close, you'll never get the introduction and exploration of Lunch's whole deal, you'll have no context on the Jackie Chun situation, skipping Red Ribbon will mean you don't understand who Tao Pai-Pai is, you won't understand the fact that they've only even considered reviving someone with the Dragon Balls once, and it took a monumentous effort, you won't have seen the various ups and downs of Bulma and Yamcha's romance, you'll have no clue who Suno is, or anyone else in that village for that matter, you won't have seen the entire group's concern for Goku taking on the Red Ribbon army, and then their complete amazement as his toppling of the army made everyone realise just how insanely strong Goku has become, if you skip the 22nd Tenkaichi, you miss pretty much the entirety of Tenshinhan's character arc, a lot about the Turtle and Crane schools and their masters, the significance of Roshi and Crane fighting alongside each-other against Piccolo, the last shreds of stuff showing Goku and Kuririn's friendship(As I mentioned above), skipping the Piccolo Daimao arc robs you of all the impact and setup of the 23rd Tenkaichi, removes almost all the meaning of the entire first episode and will probably make that episode a total drag/bore to get through, and basically it'll probably make the whole thing feel like a rushed little tag on the beginning of the Saiyan arc; I mean, think about it -- if you don't have any context for all the events leading up to it, it feels like you just threw all the characters that would show up for the Saiyan arc, ticking off all the boxes of the questions people would have(How did Goku and Chichi get together? Why do Goku and Piccolo hate each-other? What even is a "Kami" anyway? etc., etc.), and throwing it out as a kind of "Chapter zero". It won't feel like a plot so much as it'll feel like a checklist of things the fans might have wondered about, much like many bad prequels...[/spoiler]

In other words, if you start from the 23rd Tenkaichi, it'll feel like a prequel. A BAD prequel.

Skipping material is stupid, bad, and to be a bit blunt and harsh, idiotic. If you want to skip over the entire first third of the story, go ahead, your loss. If you actually care about the story progression and flow, the character arcs, and the story the show is trying to tell, start from the beginning like everyone does with every other series on the planet. And stick with it past the first 13 episodes, because most shows take far more than that to get down to business. This is not a hard concept to comprehend.

(Drops mic. walks off stage soapbox)

[BWri]

The only guy I can see coming back and it not being absolutely dreadful is Daimao, you could probably do something with him and Piccolo but that would mean Piccolo being more than Gohan's Robin.

Yeah, Daimao could be fun to bring back. Seeing how Roshi, the humans, and Piccolo fared in the ToP, I think that nearly any of the DB era fighters could get massively boosted with proper training (or an offscreen power up from Toriyama). I wish DB wasn't so power level based nowadays, so that bringing a character like Daimao back was threatening from jump.

I think that would depend on how the modern team would interpret the relationship between Daimao and Jr, because it's rather wishy-washy even in the original manga. Is Jr. a reincarnation of Daimao and thus the same character? Or is Jr. more like a son who has long since stepped away from the legacy and goals of his father? If it's the former then I can't see Daimao being considered to re-appear, outside of Piccolo expelling his evil like he did as the Nameless Namekian.

I've always thought it was a bit of both. He has all of Piccolo Daimao's essence and memories but they are still distinct beings, like father and son.

[ABED]

Piccolo Daimao and Piccolo Jr. are like the God / Jesus thing. Piccolo Jr. is simultaneously both Daimao AND the son.

I agree with Robo4900's point about some shows taking time to finding their footing, but even then I think the beginnings should have something that keeps you invested until it finds its footing. I'm not willing to give Star Trek TNG a full season on the off chance that it gets better. I can usually tell if a series is something I will enjoy from the jump. A series may still be finding itself, but I need something to pull me in. DB had that with its quirky world and enjoyable characters. Clearly the series got better than the initial chapters/episodes, but it showed promise. Same with Buffy, Community, Parks and Rec, etc.. Those series got better, but I liked those characters right off the bat.

[Robo4900]

I agree with Robo4900's point about some shows taking time to finding their footing, but even then I think the beginnings should have something that keeps you invested until it finds its footing. I'm not willing to give Star Trek TNG a full season on the off chance that it gets better. I can usually tell if a series is something I will enjoy from the jump. A series may still be finding itself, but I need something to pull me in. DB had that with its quirky world and enjoyable characters. Clearly the series got better than the initial chapters/episodes, but it showed promise. Same with Buffy, Community, Parks and Rec, etc.. Those series got better, but I liked those characters right off the bat.

Yeah, that's the thing.
DB has a lot of early installment weirdness in the first arc, but it's not bad by any stretch, it's just a bit odd. Combine that with the fact you're just getting to grips with the series at the beginning, and it'll be very jarring to people who are more used to the post-Piccolo stuff. Especially if they're used to the Bruce Faulconer hardcore dub with the Mark Menza movie intro or the weird Bruce Faulconer intro, or perhaps Rock The Dragon, depending on the age of the fan...

[KBABZ]

I agree with Robo4900's point about some shows taking time to finding their footing, but even then I think the beginnings should have something that keeps you invested until it finds its footing. I'm not willing to give Star Trek TNG a full season on the off chance that it gets better. I can usually tell if a series is something I will enjoy from the jump. A series may still be finding itself, but I need something to pull me in. DB had that with its quirky world and enjoyable characters. Clearly the series got better than the initial chapters/episodes, but it showed promise. Same with Buffy, Community, Parks and Rec, etc.. Those series got better, but I liked those characters right off the bat.

Yeah, that's the thing.
DB has a lot of early installment weirdness in the first arc, but it's not bad by any stretch, it's just a bit odd. Combine that with the fact you're just getting to grips with the series at the beginning, and it'll be very jarring to people who are more used to the post-Piccolo stuff. Especially if they're used to the Bruce Faulconer hardcore dub with the Mark Menza movie intro or the weird Bruce Faulconer intro, or perhaps Rock The Dragon, depending on the age of the fan...

Funnily enough, Dragon Ball attracted me because of how unlike Z was, or at leas the FUNi version presented at the time. It charmed me with the light-hearted angle focusing on fun and adventure as well as the fights, and the music played an enormous part in that.

[Robo4900]

I agree with Robo4900's point about some shows taking time to finding their footing, but even then I think the beginnings should have something that keeps you invested until it finds its footing. I'm not willing to give Star Trek TNG a full season on the off chance that it gets better. I can usually tell if a series is something I will enjoy from the jump. A series may still be finding itself, but I need something to pull me in. DB had that with its quirky world and enjoyable characters. Clearly the series got better than the initial chapters/episodes, but it showed promise. Same with Buffy, Community, Parks and Rec, etc.. Those series got better, but I liked those characters right off the bat.

Yeah, that's the thing.
DB has a lot of early installment weirdness in the first arc, but it's not bad by any stretch, it's just a bit odd. Combine that with the fact you're just getting to grips with the series at the beginning, and it'll be very jarring to people who are more used to the post-Piccolo stuff. Especially if they're used to the Bruce Faulconer hardcore dub with the Mark Menza movie intro or the weird Bruce Faulconer intro, or perhaps Rock The Dragon, depending on the age of the fan...

Funnily enough, Dragon Ball attracted me because of how unlike Z was, or at leas the FUNi version presented at the time. It charmed me with the light-hearted angle focusing on fun and adventure as well as the fights, and the music played an enormous part in that.

And this is the thing... If you're open-minded to it being different, you'll probably enjoy it very much, but if you're expecting something more like you're used to from Funimation's Z, you may very well end up super-disappointed.

[GT_Goten10]

because most DragonBall fans (especially the new ones) want to see a lot of fights, action, attacks & transformation. Many are not interested in story creativity & character devolpment

[ABED]

because most DragonBall fans (especially the new ones) want to see a lot of fights, action, attacks & transformation. Many are not interested in story creativity & character devolpment

With the exception of transformations, there's plenty of the other things you mentioned. You make it sound like DB is a bunch of people talking to each other about their feelings while throwing an occassional punch.

[omaro34]

Because they're idiots. I hate to sound like an asshole, but that's the truth. Who in their right mind would voluntarily decide to skip out on nearly HALF of story? And on top of that, debatably, the better half of the story?

I agree. Dragonball is better than Z and definitely better than Super. But the problem is a lot of people who began with the series started with Z first because that's what was on TV on Cartoon network or Toonami. They didn't get around to watching Z because the super saiyans aren't there yet.

A lot of my friends are Vegeta fans and will never watch Dragonball because he isn't in it. It's crazy. And there's nothing I can do to change their minds.

Dragonball has some amazing fights. The hand to hand is awesome, the story flows relatively well, and it has an adventure theme to it prior to the arrival of King Piccolo and not including the tournaments.

[Kokonoe]

I was reading up on some of Toriyama's comments on this site and found this.

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations/ ... interview/

Interviewer
"But there was a positive response to that one-shot, so it led to Dragon Ball. However, it ended up as an adventure story, rather based around fights like in a kung-fu movie…"

Toriyama
"I liked adventure more, but it seemed at the time a road manga just wasn’t what people wanted. The setting changes with each chapter. At first I thought it’d be good to continue it for about a year, but it wasn’t very popular."

Interviewer
"After that, due to the Tenka’ichi Budōkai the focus of the series shifted towards battles."

Toriyama
"What happened was, it just kept getting less and less popular. Torishima-san was really on my case about it, saying “nobody likes it!” and mean stuff like that. (laughs) From the start I had thought in the back of my mind that since it was a shōnen manga it would be better received if I drew battles, but because I’m perverse I kept sticking with Journey to the West. But he really did keep nagging me."

I think this is honestly pretty telling if even in the original run the "slow" start with adventuring was causing the manga to get less popular overtime. Then when it became more about fights, it skyrocketed in popularity. So I think this is one of the main reasons why.

[ABED]

It's a pretty quick turn around given the 21st TB was the second arc.