This episode made it quite clear to me how many more Dragon Ball discussions Mike follows than I do! Of course I'm not on Twitter, so that is not hard milestone to hit.
I would agree that weekly TV series will consistently lack the substance to merit week-by-week review, but whenever I happen to watch a Youtube episode review the speaker seems to take the episode for what it wanted to do, understands that breaking down what is a piece of small story is an incomplete, speculative business, and is not afraid to say "Well, guys, this one was not great." Like they understand the media they're looking at. Half of the package is vanity anyway; you know the story events, you are there for a speaker.
I think the sentiment you two were trying to get at with the hyper-critical is "Why can't I feel
proud of Dragon Ball anymore?"- the antidote for which is, most certainly, to step back and understand what the Dragon Ball Z TV series and the collective franchise was and is. It seems some folks have pigeonholed Dragon Ball into such a specific part of their history that Dragon Ball's "coming back" can
only be seen as a continuation of that older time, those older stories, that previous era in the franchise's development. "I want Super to do this because it is a continuation of
my experiences! Because that is what Dragon Ball is!" Suddenly the backyard brawls and breakfast cereal mornings FUNi used in their promo for the first Blu-Ray Season seem a little more on point.
I mean, I'm Toonami-folk, I take no risks in saying a good number of American posters here are, but thanks to ye olde Kanzenshuu I have more
context than anyone should ever need! But if you watched DBZ on Toonami fourteen years ago, played a video game here or there, and your "reunion" with the series was Battle of Gods? Of course that will confuse you.
MozillaVulpix wrote:But on the other hand...watching the fandom freak out over every episode is really entertaining when you look back with hindsight.
Like, I would totally buy a book of just someone analysing how the internet reacted to Super every week.
If only for the history of it, let alone the actual reactions- this is far and away a new era of fan dialogue for a weekly Dragon Ball series!