So, this also occurred to me this afternoon, and I wanted to actually check the numbers.
I was fairly certain this arc represented the longest time, in terms of number of episodes, the series ever spent in the exposition portion of a story. Which is crazy considering it's not even an adaptation.
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For a bit of an English class review: The exposition phase occurs in a five-phase story structure (which, as a simple action narrative,
Dragon Ball universally adheres to) before the rising action. It establishes the foundation for the world, the characters, and may introduce a source of conflict or potential for change to be executed on, with increasing tension, as the story continues. Essentially, you're getting the basic situation, setting everything up for conflict and change, but none of it has actually occurred yet. Needless to say, you don't generally want the exposition to be one of the longest phases of your story because — well — nothing new is happening. You don't, in fact, want it to be very that long at all. In
Dragon Ball, at least by my reading, the exposition phase is fairly easy to measure by looking at the space between the first mention of the conflict/plot the story line will focus on, and the first new wrinkle or development — often a realization of that promised conflict/threat — signaling the rising action.
Long story short, it turns out the Universal Survival arc does indeed, in terms of number of episodes, represent the greatest amount of time spent in the exposition phase of the story of any TV arc in the series. This would include the exhibition matches, and I think it's fair to, as other than further hinting at a few of the threats to come, little is offered on top of what episodes 77-78 establish as the thrust of the arc; the main conflict is yet to begin.
To clarify, I'm looking at how long the plot takes from establishing its basic direction/conflict to delivering the next wrinkle/realization of that conflict—this basically just serves to discount the episodic Saiyaman episodes and inter-arc filler, but I do want to note that up front.
Son Goku arc — <1 episode (Goku and Bulma are off adventuring together under the twenty-minute mark)
21st Tenkaichi Budokai arc — 4 episodes (14-18)
Red Ribbon Army arc — 1 episode (29-34; 6 episodes, if you consider everything up to the defeat of Silver to be exposition)
22nd Tenkaichi Budokai arc — 6 episodes (79-83), only if you consider the solo-training filler part of the arc, as the tournament is teased beforehand
Piccolo Daimao arc — <1 episode (Begins with Kuririn's death and immediately lets things spiral from there)
23rd Tenkaichi Budokai arc — 10 episodes (123-132), if you consider the entirety of Goku's interactions with God and Popo part of the arc
Saiyan arc — 1 episode (Gohan is kidnapped at the end of episode 2, from which the stakes of the arc continue to climb)
Namek arc — 8 episodes (36-43) from the first mention of the plan to go to Namek to the gang being stranded with Freeza
Cell arc — 8 episodes (118-125) from the return of Freeza to the arrival of the androids
Boo arc — 9 episodes (205-213) from the first mention of the tournament to the appearance of Kaioshin and Kibito, along with the mystery/rising action
Baby arc — 3 episodes until the gang is stranded in space
Super 17 arc — 1 episode
Evil Dragons arc — 1 episode
Battle of Gods adaptation arc — 4 episodes
Resurrection "F" adaptation arc — 5 episodes (15-19) even counting inter-arc filler
Universe 6 arc — 4 episodes (28-31) from the arrival of Champa to the start of the tournament
Future Trunks arc — 2 episodes until the arrival of Goku Black, but I'd more fairly say 9 episodes (47-55) from the arrival of Future Trunks to the first full battle with Black
Universal Survival arc —
14 episodes (77-90) from the first mention of the tournament/setup of the arc to the tournament beginning
The main conflict is established in 77-78 and we've yet to see any real development of it; even if one is more generous than I am, we're still at 8 episodes between the end of the exhibition matches and the beginning of the tournament, an episode count as high as the entirety of the setup for the Namek arc including its canon portions.
Hopefully this addresses, on top of all the episodic content misgivings laid out earlier, some people's feelings of restlessness with the arc. This may also address some of those "I don't know how people could tolerate the original anime if ..." comments. While the older anime,
Z especially, sometimes padded plots to untenable degrees (though at least during its weekly airings in Japan, it was always presented as an adaptation/secondary product to the briskly paced manga), that padding nearly universally occurred during the rising action and climax. And while that's unfortunate, in certain ways it's fair to say that's not quite as noticeably deflating. At least something new and substantive is happening in regards to the main conflict, even if it's coming five minutes of real content at a time.
The only other portion of the series that gives it a run for its money would be considering the
Z version of the Saiyan arc, at 20 episodes, if one considers its exposition phase as lasting until the arrival against Nappa and Vegeta. But considering the constantly rising stakes from the moment of Raditz's kidnapping Gohan, after
which new developments and angles to the approach conflict continue to be added, that feels somewhat disingenuous. Regardless, even with that approach, this would be second in line.
