Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

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Lord Frieza
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Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Lord Frieza » Fri Aug 10, 2018 5:22 am

I've decided on one last topic befor I go away for a while.

So title says it all really but to clarify, this is not about any one aspect of DB (GT, Super, whatever) but just in general. That's not to say to don't like the series, 99% would not be here if that was the case but opinions do change.

For me I have to say no, not anymore. Dragon Ball was my faviort for years and even other series I liked like One Piece never quite took it's place for me. However a few years ago something did... Toriko.

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I just genunily find this series more appealing to my taste, pun intended, then pretty much any other series of its type. It's characters, story, worldbuilding and total insanity at time mad for a really good series. It was not perfect of course, its character development for everyone other then the main caste characters got very uneven at time to name it's biggest issue, but it was great for me. I think the best way to explain my liking for the series is to compare it's main character with my second faviort, Goku.

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For starts Toriko is far more mature then not just Goku must pretty much all his contemporaries at the time the series came out. In a genre primarily dominated by child characters or man children, Toriko is an actual mature adult which I find more appealing at my age. He can be a goof ball and a bit dense at times but he's also intelligent, wise and kind with a code of honour against pointless violence and wastefulness ("I only kill what I eat and I always eat what I kill") that shows a healthy respect for nature, life and the natural order. He's also genuinely heroic and generous. That being said he dose suffer from a few trops passed on by Goku down the grape vine such as being enthusiastic primarily towards what interests him and rarely towards what interest others, being relentlessly cheerful and a glutton but this all manifests itself far more naturally. That being said despite his eccentricates he can function in normal society at a far superior level than not just Goku but Luffy and Naruto, and has an actual understanding and wider knowledge of the world he lives in. He also inherited Goku's forgotten powerful sense of smell and made far better and consistence use of it. Toriko also dose odd little things you'd not catch many other shonan characters indulging in, like smoking!

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This is not to bash our beloved fighting obsessed man-child just a quick comparison to show why I prefer Toriko as a character. This also brings me to my next point, Toriko's goal. One of may faviort aspects of Goku's character is that for a guy who is the greatest warrior in the universe he dose not have unreasonable or grand desires, he just wants to train, get strong and fight strong people. Toriko thankfully inherited this more sensible nature towards his goals in life and seeks to simple create an awesome full course menu made from the greatest foods he finds out on his adventures.

Job wise Toriko is a Gourmet Hunter. This means he goes out into the vast and dangerous wilderness of his verse to hunt down dangerous ingredients and animels for clients or himself. Not to dissimilar yo Hunter X Hunter (from what I hear given that I've never read that series) or Monster Hunter. That also means that Toriko has a steady job that he enjoys, unlike the work dodging saiyan.


Thats in brief way Toriko, series and character is my #1.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your faviort Shonen?

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Fri Aug 10, 2018 5:37 am

Awwwwww...I may not know you very well, but I'm going to miss you. This is a very interesting topic that's very much worth discussing.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:50 am

I don't watch much anime, so I'm going to say yes Dragon Ball is still my favourite shonen action series.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by sintzu » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:06 am

Yes as nothing has been able to top for me in terms of excitement it brings to me such as with its action, seeing my favorite characters on screen or simply anticipating a new product from it. I do recognize that it's not the best in everything as One Piece for example has a better world, Naruto has the better characters, etc. but despite that DB is and always will be my favorite Shoen. DB, Naruto and One Piece are my top 3 Shonen but Despite DB being my favorite, I think Naruto is the best one.

What I love most about Naruto which makes or breaks a story is its characters. Each character is completely different from the other and thanks to those differences each one is able to bring something to the table even if they're not the strongest in the group. Naruto and Sasuke are by far the strongest characters but they still need Shikamaru's mind to help put plans together or Kiba's sense of smell to find clues if need be. Sasuke is an actual 2nd main character, he doesn't just follow in Naruto's footsteps or is always trying to catch up to him. Instead, he goes on his own adventures, fights his own villains, has his own team and when he did eventually cross paths with Naruto during the war he was Naruto's equal. Sasuke is always what I've wanted to see Vegeta eventually become but he's yet to become that. I like how the villains aren't black and white but each one has a complicated backstory that makes us not only understand why they do what they do but also justify it like Pain trying to bring peace to the world. I like how it takes Naruto so long to be the actual hero (all the way up to pain) as the vast majority of the time it's his elders who deal with the main threat while he gets the side dish, something that made his eventual victory against pain very satisfying as it was built up to from the very start. In terms of Naruto's world, it has history behind it as at the very start we find out there were THREE major wars, 4 hokages and all kinds of complicated history between characters and villages that make the world alive in its own right, not something that was just created to revolve around one character.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Robo4900 » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:15 am

Outside of Dragon Ball, I'm about as casual as casual anime fans get. Aside from various dubbed TV airings I used to watch as a kid, pretty much my only anime viewing is watching Attack On Titan and Death Note with a few friends, and currently working my way through Cowboy Bebop and Gundam '79.

So... I guess Dragon Ball is my favourite shounen, kind of by default. :lol:
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by ABED » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:23 am

Also not much of an anime watcher, but YYH comes a very close second.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Super Saiyan Swagger » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:54 am

Hmm... I guess it is. The only other shonen series I've watched/read are One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter and My Hero Academia.

I am a very casual One Piece fan, so I can't say that's my favourite shonen series. I have such mixed feelings towards Naruto so there's no way that's my favourite. I stopped watching Bleach after the Soul Society arc, so that's definitely not up there. Yu Yu Hakusho is pretty great, but I like Dragon Ball more. I loved season 1 and the first half of season 2 of My Hero Academia, but after that the show slowly started losing its charm for me. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was something that was missing from that series once the Sports Festival arc wrapped up. Either that, or I just wasn't invested as much anymore.

Now, Hunter x Hunter? Here's the thing with that series. I watched the 2011 anime and was loving it. It was slowly becoming my favourite shonen series. Each arc felt so different from the last. I loved the main cast. Gon, Killua, Leorio and Kurapika are all great. The Yorknew City arc might just be my favourite shonen arc ever. But then... that fucking Chimera Ant arc happened. It completely sucked out all the enjoyment I was having with the show. I could write a god damn essay about why this arc just didn't do it for me. There was a lot of cool stuff that happened during it, some great character moments and a fantastic antagonist. But holy shit dude, it's so dragged out and boring most of the time. Most of the new side characters introduced were so lame. I don't want to rant about it here, so I'll just stop by saying that the arc pretty much prevented Hunter x Hunter from becoming my favourite shonen series.

I obviously have a lot of bias towards Dragon Ball, growing up with it and everything. So nostalgia is definitely a factor for it being my favourite shonen series. But there's also just something about Toriyama's quirky writing that just does it for me that no other series could give me the same kinda feeling. Hunter x Hunter almost did it for me. Almost.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Gligarman » Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:36 pm

Well I've yet to come across a shounen with more likable characters so, yes.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Bajosexto » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:36 pm

It is. In fact Dragon Ball Z is my all time favorite show. I know that sounds silly. My favorite show is a silly Japanese cartoon. But I just love Dragon Ball. I've grew up watching it over and over and over and over. I'd say I've watched it at least ten times. So yes Dragon Ball is still my favorite anime.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by PFM18 » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:46 pm

Oh hell yeah. I will never waiver on that. Especially with how much I enjoyed the latter half of DBS I don't think another shonen could give me the same levell of enjoyment as DB has.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Thanos » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:30 pm

I don't like anime, so yeah. Dragon Ball is anime, but I don't view it through that filter. I see it as a great series that happens to originate from Japan.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Shiyonasan » Sat Aug 11, 2018 1:03 am

Dragon Ball was my favorite for years. From the time I watched bits and pieces of the show in 1998 and then actively started watching the show in September 1999, I loved Dragon Ball to death. In the 2000s it was my go to anime show; I'd watch Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball religiously on Toonami in the early 2000s and even watched a bit of GT when that aired (my cable company cut Cartoon Network for about a year around 2004 or so when GT was still airing). I bought the Budokai games and played those A LOT with friends and on my own.

In 2004, when I started to actively use the internet, I started to look up stuff about Dragon Ball actively (I seem to remember it started when I had to look up things about Budokai 3). By the late 2000s I started to get interested in the Japanese version of the show which is what led me to Daizenshuu EX in 2007. I lurked on the forums and listened to the podcast for about a year/year and a half before finally joining the forums on November 2, 2008 (great Zeno, has it really been almost 10 years already?! :o ). Stayed active and posted a lot from the time I joined until the end of 2010 when I gradually started to slow down the amount of posts I made on here. Was semi-active until about 2013/2014 and since a couple years ago I'm basically a lurker who occasionally logs in to check how things are going here.

Anyway, Dragon Ball I'd say is now my #2. I still love the series, but the magic I got from watching the series, enjoying it's music, and following the community here isn't what it used to be 7-10 years ago. Super was great (particularly the Future Trunks arc and the Universe Survival Arc), but overall it didn't really revive that magical feeling I got from watching Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z as a kid.

What replaced Dragon Ball for me?

Astro Boy.

In January 2011, a friend of mine brought over the live-action Scott Pilgrim movie to watch together. In the movie, Michael Cera wears a t-shirt with Astro Boy's face on it. For some reason, this spurred me on to look up Astro Boy online to see if I'd be able to watch any of the series for it (I watched the English dub of the 2003 Astro Boy series in 2004 when it aired on Toonami; didn't like it that much). I decide to watch the 2003 Astro Boy series, but this time in Japanese with English subs and I get hooked.

A month later, in February 2011, I decided to see if there's a forum similar to Daizenshuu EX (the site hadn't become Kanzenshuu yet) online. Lo and behold, I discover AstroBoy Online Forums and lurk there for about a month to see what the forum is like. It was pretty active at the time due to popularity gained from the 2009 CGI movie. I wasn't, and am still not, one to join many forums (to this day I've only ever joined 4 forums), but I decided to give this forum a shot. I decided to join in March 2011.

It was the beginning of a journey I never knew I'd take.

Over the course of the last 7 and a half years, I've gotten to know several great people in the Astro Boy fandom from various age groups, ranging from youngsters just entering the fandom to old timers who watched the original 1963 Astro Boy anime when it first aired in America. In 2013 I become a moderator on AstroBoy Online Forums, and then just last year I gain administrator status. I've created and now run an Astro Boy online art gallery. I now run a fairly large Astro Boy Discord server. Also last year, I go to Japan for the first time and visit the Osamu Tezuka museum, a place I once thought I'd never get to go to.

I've ingrained myself into the Astro Boy fandom well to the point of almost becoming somewhat of a celebrity in the Astro Boy fandom. Fans of the series on other social media sites will sometimes bring me up as if I'm some sort of mythical figure. XD I report on news about Astro Boy and now post Astro Boy artwork on Tumblr as another way to interact with fans of the series. I love the Astro Boy series and it's fandom now. Sure, it has it's weird and bad folks in it like all fandoms do, but the vast majority of people you'll meet in the Astro Boy fandom are nice people.

Astro Boy itself is great, as it's a shonen series that offers a lot of great morals and lessons and makes you think about certain things in life. It offers a wide cast of characters that each have their own quirks, but all manage to be entertaining to read/watch. It's a great manga series that sometimes gets pretty wild but always manages to keep it's identity. The three original anime series are great as well.

And the crazy thing is that the series is still going even after it's inception in 1952 (1951 if you include the Captain Atom manga). There was a short anime for Astro Boy that was released back in 2014. A prequel manga began in December 2014 and is still running. Now, there's not 1, not 2, but 3 new Astro Boy related TV series in the works, one of which is an anime based on the Pluto manga. Not much is known about all 3 just yet, but they all look to offer something unique to the world of Astro Boy.

Looking back, I never thought I'd get so deep into the Astro Boy fandom, let alone become a fan of the series in the first place, but here I am now. It's been a fun journey and I look forward to continuing my time in that fandom.

You guys here at Kanzenshuu are great, and I enjoy what you offer for the Dragon Ball fandom. I'll always cherish this website for what it's done for documenting the authentic Japanese version of Dragon Ball. I'll come back every now and then to see what's happening here and what's new in the world of Dragon Ball. I'll always have nostalgia and a love for the Dragon Ball series, as it's the anime I grew up watching avidly, but for now my heart and soul lie with the Astro Boy community. However, both series are a big part of who I am now and I'll always appreciate both Astro Boy and Dragon Ball.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Saikyo no Senshi » Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:07 am

It never was. I'm not much of a shounen geek though. My anime preferences lie elsewhere. But, out of the 20 or so shounen battle anime I have seen, Dragon Ball is outclassed by most of them.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by fadeddreams5 » Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:40 am

There have been a lot of shonen anime over the years that I start watching and make me tell myself "this is my new favorite thing," resulting in me forgetting about DB and other shonens altogether. However, when I finish the series... that's it. It's over. I hardly ever revisit any series I've finished, and they all seem to fade into passing memories.

Dragon Ball is special because, since I was a little kid, this franchise has always been a part of me. I always find myself going back to it, be it in the form of video games (<3 Fighterz and Legends), movies, manga (which I hadn't even read until recently), or the show itself, and I always enjoy it. This series is just so rewatchable because of its fights scenes and characters. No shonen compares to this. Sure, there may be many with better stories, more mature themes, and incredible world building, but when all is said and done... it's done. Not with DB...it never ends, even when it does.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by DragonBallFoodie » Sat Aug 11, 2018 5:34 am

Yes, Dragon Ball is still my favourite shonen. And it's both faithful and a parody of shonen, which enhances its appeal.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by AnzuMazaki » Sat Aug 11, 2018 5:47 am

Dragon Ball is always going to be my favourite Shonen series, even with certain faults (The Yamcha Meme transformation in recent media and the earthlings (full and hybrid) becoming extras).

I love the first series the most but Z, Super and GT entertain me as well. :D
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Kokonoe » Sat Aug 11, 2018 8:54 am

My man. Toriko is awesome as hell, and I love the anime despite some of the manga fans not liking some of the censorship. (Though the final arc being changed was WTF)

Toriko is great because it's very imaginative with the effects of the food and the places that they get to explore. The humor is top notch stuff but at the same time, the character's sense of morality is great too.

He considers himself no better or worse than the "prey" he eats. Though his philosophy is that you must eat if you kill, and to not do so is a disgraceful thing. I really liked this aspect about him.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Lord Beerus » Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:30 am

No.

I like Dragon Ball a lot, but there are many, many, many other Shonen manga and anime out there that kill Dragon Ball either in terms of art quality or general storytelling.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Chuquita » Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:22 am

Gokû's still my favorite shounen protagonist, but I've seen better world building in One Piece. I've seen more creative battles and powers in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

That said, I really don't have much interest in shounen series nowadays. I enjoyed YYH and FMA back in the day, but most anime I currently watch are 12 to 24 episode series because I don't have it in me for anything longer. I really like Umakoshi's art, but I'm not big on superhero stuff so I don't follow MHA even though I hear it's good. Naruto I fell off of pretty early, but it's got some amazing OP/ED themes. I read Bleach's first arc long ago, but that was it. I've seen a handful of Soul Eater episodes back when Funi had a cable TV channel. Also long ago I watched most of Inuyasha via Adult Swim. I have a handful of Ranma 1/2 and Detective Conan volumes.

Point is most of the other shounen I've experienced are a good number of years in the past. I guess that's a testament to how much I enjoy Dragon Ball. Only other shounen I currently follow is One Piece, and that's only the manga and movies and only because it's grandfathered in since I've been following it for a long while by this point and like I've mentioned in the opening, I enjoy Oda's world building.
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Re: Is Dragon Ball still your favorite shonen?

Post by Jackalope89 » Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:42 pm

I've watched/dabbled in numerous shonen series since I first came across Dragon Ball/DBZ. But the Dragon Ball franchise is still #1 for me. It has a certain simple charm to it that I enjoy.

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