sintzu wrote:Gaffer Tape brings up a very good point I never thought of which not only applies to DB but a lot of things such as the example he mentioned in Star wars. Ifyou start something in the middle where things are at an all time high then going back isn't going to be easy. Take GTA as another example, if you just started playing it with IV then good luck trying to go back to the older, classic ps2 era games. I never played San Andreas but decided to go back after playing V and could never get into it. Yeah I get why it's so popular cause back then it was the best thing ever but thanks to me playing what came after first I can never experience what everyone else experienced back in 2004.
Yeah, that is an issue. The problem is, you are starting from the beginning of the run with OG Dragon Ball. Watching Z is like skipping to season 5 of Next Gen; you're starting when the show was at its height, and going back to the beginning can make it difficult to get into, but by refusing to give those earlier seasons a chance, you're missing out an all the classic contents of seasons 2-4, and the nuggets of pure gold from season 1.
(Though TNG's first season was actually pretty bad, so... Perhaps it's more like Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Angel...?)
I think a lot of the anti-DB fans would find a much easier time with this if they committed themselves to not giving up until they're well into the Red Ribbon arc. By that time, the show had established its style, was really twisting itself around with clever subversions of your expectations, and had become something that those more familiar with Z could more easily identify as being Dragon Ball.
My general advice to newcomers tends to be "Watch the first 28 episodes before making judgements. If you're on the fence and can't really decide at that point, continue on a bit further." for this reason(Although usually, I phrase it more like "Pick up the Season 1 DVD box set, and don't judge it until you've finished the season", since the UK Season 1 box set is episodes 1-28, and the USA one is 1-31). Ultimately, as much as the 21st Tenkaichi is my favourite arc in the franchise, and the Pilaf arc is a really solid arc full of a lot of really fun moments, it's all very weird and slightly hard to get into if you're not used to it, so you really need to stick with it for some time if you're unsure, or just aren't connecting with it quite yet.
Thing about pre-Red Ribbon Dragon Ball is that the stories are very small-scale; just a few characters getting into some kind of situation involving just a few of them, often with some kind of crazy weird fantasy/sci-fi twist that makes it really goofy and interesting. When Red Ribbon comes along, it goes on a much larger scale, as the Red Ribbon Army is a worldwide organisation running in opposition to Goku, which can gel a lot better if you're used to aliens trying to destroy the planet, distant worlds where alien dictators are seeking to conquer all life in the universe, evil cyborgs trying to destroy the planet, or big genie monsters killing everyone.
A worldwide organisation bent on finding the Dragon Balls is much more in-line with this kind of story than an incompetent idiot and his two cronies trying(And constantly failing) to take over the world with the Dragon Balls, or Roshi giving Kuririn and Goku a Karate Kid-style training regime, leading to a tournament where the only real ongoing story is about the whole "Jackie Chun" situation, which ends up being entirely a character-based thing revolving around the final fight, as much as I love these two arcs, and the more villain-centric style of the stories of the Red Ribbon, 22nd Tenkaichi, Piccolo, and 23rd Tenkaichi arcs are just much more accessible for fans who are more familiar with Z.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.