Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by supersaiyanZero » Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:02 pm

I tried to rewatch some episodes earlier, and unfortunately it's even worse the second time around. The series takes a "paint by the numbers" approach and I'm asking myself - is this a case of:

1) Corporate counting one people eating up anything that is Dragonball and halfassing literally everything
or
2) A sign of the times where the anime industry no longer has the budgets nor manpower to produce a quality series that is ongoing

?

The things that stand out the most are the expressions and stances that used to make each character unique, or rather lack of. Everybody is stiff, their expressions are incredibly muted, their eyes lifeless..it's like watching some sort of weird zombie version of these characters. The majority of fight scenes themselves are dull and fail to convey any sort of impact whatseoever...the constant use of the "zoom out technique" where somebody screams in a generic way and the camera quickly dollies back for the "power up"..The godawful music and script don't help the situation either.

There is no way that the animators themselves do not notice a difference when compared to Z, so I'm wondering what happened here? Isn't anime the biggest it's ever been, worldwide? I don't know anything about the numbers but it's not hard to see that Dragonball isn't the only series affected by what seems to be an industry wide epidemic of cutting every single corner, sometimes obnoxiously so.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Kataphrut » Wed Aug 07, 2019 7:20 pm

There's plenty of quality anime that was being produced around the time of Super, the broader industry isn't to blame. It's problems were much simpler: they rushed it out the door to capitalise on the success of Resurrection F, and it spent its entire three-year run pulling out of a production tailspin.

As for the stiffness of the characters and the dull expressions you're talking about, you can thank Yamamuro's modern character designs for that. Those designs were created for video game intro cutscenes and Heroes cards, they don't work as well for a creative format. They learned their lesson for the movie by getting a new character designer with more modern sensibilities, and that's why DBS Broly looks incredible, and also more up to standard for a contemporary anime film.

But you can't just blame it on not being the "good old days"- a lot of the staff on Super also worked on Z. Yamamuro himself was a star player back in the day. But times have changed since then. For what it's worth, when they managed to pull genuinely good animation out of Super, mainly in the second half, the choreography in those scenes occasionally rivalled or even exceeded the best of Z. That's why everyone was so hopeful for a new series with the Shintani artstyle- those designs with a good production schedule could potentially be the best Dragon Ball has ever looked on TV.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Yuli Ban » Fri Aug 09, 2019 1:07 am

I've noticed all these problems, so let's see if I can take a crack at this.

First and foremost: the anime industry was definitely not in a state of suffering. The cold fact is that cost-cutting measures have become a dire tradition for the industry. This is actually one reason why the "Standard Anime Design" is a thing. It's easy and recognizable and can easily be done as a template so that the cost of making shows is lessened. The Standard Anime Design is honestly no different from the likes of the designs of '60s and '70s cartoons where it seemed every show had the same art style and limited animation. We're in a similar situation today with the "Generic CalArts Style". Japan merely kept that tradition going.
IIRC, it costs a little over $120,000 to make a single episode of an anime series which is surprisingly 3x less than the cost for an episode of a Western cartoon. They don't pay animators anywhere near as well (and Western animators aren't making bank to begin with), and they use whatever means necessary to turn a profit, which usually includes a lot of merchandise they know otaku will buy.

Now that's all explanation of why anime isn't in the doldrums and shouldn't be used as an excuse of why Super felt so cheap. If there was an actual will put behind it, Toei could've brought ToP-quality art and animation to Dragon Ball as far back as episode 1.

I think Super was a victim of Toei rushing it to air, them also thinking that its younger demographic wouldn't mind its sloppier designs, and a misguided idea of Toriyama-style storytelling.

First of all, I don't think Super was actually intended as anything more than an anniversary anime. Dragon Ball had celebrated its 30th anniversary the year prior to its debut. They probably thought it would last 100 episodes and fade away and didn't put any money into it because of this, but then it wound up becoming a sensation and they realized way too late that they should've put in more effort. South Americans still loved it regardless, as evident by the outdoor screens and chanting. And it's consistently one of the top rated shows on Toonami in the USA. Yet I am absolutely certain they genuinely didn't expect this level of success.

I also want to give some attention to how profitable Dragon Ball was earlier this decade. Its video games, at least, had an IP net worth of about $25 million or so in 2011. For an international property like Dragon Ball, that's just horrendous. Hence why games from around 2009-2013 felt so cheap— they weren't going to put money into a property that wasn't going to make it back. And the fact Dragon Ball wasn't bringing in any money at the time probably gave Toei a false impression that it wouldn't be a moneymaker going forward, even after BoG.

As far as I can tell, Super was rushed to air as soon as Resurrection F left theatres and they made the godawful decision of adapting the movies despite knowing they didn't have the time or budget for it. Cue DBS Episode 5. Then, when that awfulness ended, we got the U6 arc and people immediately liked it just because it wasn't a retelling despite it having animation that was arguably worse than anything seen before— whether it was the Son Goku vs. Botamo, Vegeta vs. Cabba, or the sickeningly bad Super Shenron. Seriously, go watch these sequences of images again. It looks like Bootleg Dragon Ball Z from Taiwan. That's what Super felt like up to the actual start of the ToP: a bootlegged version of Dragon Ball.

The "zoom out" sequences where characters lifted their head, clenched their fists, and screamed generically with the exact same animation for everyone were tiring (Super never would've been able to pull off anything as cool as Future Trunks transforming for Son Goku), and the constant squashing and stretching ki blasts also seriously detracted from their power, and there was the most egregious sin of all— shaky cam in a goddamn cartoon. But all of that, I think, was just Toei making Super into a generic modern shonen series. They even kept doing the latter two in the Broly movie, which tells me that they were bafflingly deliberate design choices.

But there's something more depressing going on here. It's that I think the writers for Super (which includes Toriyama) misinterpreted how old Dragon Ball/old Toriyama told a story. They thought that "doing the most obvious thing" was the same as how Toriyama used to operating. Even if the arc ends in a twist, how they get there is via the most generic possible routes. It's the first thing you guess. You immediately think, "No, there's no way they'd be that lazy. They're going to do something to surprise us." And then they don't. It really was the first thing you could think of. And then when there is a twist, it doesn't make much sense and is poorly explained. Future Trunks winds up saving the day over Vegetto? What a twist! Oh, he did it by creating a Spirit Bomb and going Spirit Saiyan Blue? How? Oh, we're never explaining that? Okay. Oh, Zamasu survived and became the Universe? How? Guess we're letting Zen'o solve all this then. Fuck.

The ToP ending in the most predictable way— with no real consequences and no attempt by Freeza to subvert Son Goku's generosity or anything like that— was a generic happy ending with a load of utterly unanswered questions that fans are still screaming about. Like, "what about the other universes (i.e. the 6 previously erased ones)?" And "Won't Zen'o just do this again?" And "Are they just going to let Freeza run amok?" And "What happened on that island with Goten, Trunks, and Marron?" And "What happens to the Pride Troopers now that Toppo is a GoD? Is he even a GoD anymore?" And "Does any of this retcon the EoZ?" And so on and so on and so on. It's the main reason why so many people say there's a "Super Z" on the way— it makes no sense for there to be so many loose ends. But they still ended it there to focus on the movie and haven't done much since, even in the manga. I said it in another thread that it feels like Dragon Ball's in the preliminary stages of becoming a "Shared Universe" like DC or Marvel Comics or Star Wars. It's the only real way to go forward with a continuity as messed up and garbled as this one.


All of this together paints an image of a franchise Toei criminally undervalued going into Super. We were extremely nostalgic and saw Dragon Ball as a series worth only reverence and the highest respect, but they as the businessmen and animators only saw things in raw numbers, and the numbers said "Dragon Ball isn't selling anymore." So why give Super high-quality art and animation? It's going to be made for the 4-9 crowd anyway. They made a big batch of episodes and released them and those episodes got panned by critics and fans, but thanks to solid ratings it kept going on until it finally survived to break on through to the other side. By the time they realized Dragon Ball was well and truly back in full force, the series was already half over. With the Broly movie on the way, they simply let it end when it was probably originally supposed to with a renewed drive to pick it back up. However, we've heard nothing on that front besides rumors that Toei themselves consistently shoot down. So maybe they're going to go with movies rather than a new series just so they can avoid the reaming they got by fans.
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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Jord » Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm

The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by supersaiyanZero » Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:57 pm

Jord wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.
That's simply not true at all. I hear this frequently, and it's just a lazy scapegoat that ignores the fundamental problems of the show. There are a plethora of prequels and mid-quels that do well to establish high stakes and a feeling of tension. It boils down to the writing, the execution of the scenes, music score, etc... The fact that Super takes place before the EoZ has nothing to do with why it failed to convey any sort of danger whatsoever.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by funrush » Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:23 pm

Jord wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.
I would argue the magical wish orbs that bring people back to life already killed the tension way more than EoZ could. We just know by default that Goku's gonna win and everyone's gonna come back at the end of every arc.

In a show where it's impossible for anyone to actually die thanks to the Dragon Balls literally being the title of the show, the tension isn't in the main characters trying to survive, it's in other things like character arcs or outcomes of fights. The tension of the ToP wasn't if Universe 7 was gonna get erased, it was just if Universe 7 could beat Jiren, if Goku could master Ultra Instinct. We already know everyone lives, so the focus is on the smaller things like "Is Goku as strong as Hit?" or "Can Goku and Vegeta save Trunks's timeline?" You just take the drama in parts, it's anime WWE.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by SupremeKai25 » Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:28 pm

Jord wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.
Eh, this can be true for certain arcs, but not for the Future Trunks arc. By the End of Z we did not know what happened to Future Trunks and his timeline, which is why there was a lot more tension and creative freedom in that arc. And indeed at the end of the day that entire multiverse was destroyed along with Zamasu without impacting the End of Z.

I'd argue it's the same thing for the Universe 6 arc, now that I think about it. The End of Z wouldn't change at all if Universe 6 won and U7's Earth had been moved over to U6 (I mean, what would actually change? The earthlings don't even know there are 12 different universes in the first place).

About the Tournament of Power, lots of people thought that Jiren would win and have a change of heart, so he would wish everyone back to life. I myself thought that Universe 7 would end up losing the tournament and someone else would bring it back.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Dbzfan94 » Mon Aug 12, 2019 10:42 pm

its definitely the corporate stuff.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Grimlock » Mon Aug 12, 2019 11:06 pm

SupremeKai25 wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:28 pmI myself thought that Universe 7 would end up losing the tournament and someone else would bring it back.
The least that could have happened, as a matter of fact...
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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Jord » Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:57 am

supersaiyanZero wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:57 pm
Jord wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.
That's simply not true at all. I hear this frequently, and it's just a lazy scapegoat that ignores the fundamental problems of the show. There are a plethora of prequels and mid-quels that do well to establish high stakes and a feeling of tension. It boils down to the writing, the execution of the scenes, music score, etc... The fact that Super takes place before the EoZ has nothing to do with why it failed to convey any sort of danger whatsoever.
When it's about life or death situations it does matter. You know that the EoZ cast lives so they're not in any danger. There is no tension. We know they're not dying. We know the earth is fine.
funrush wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:23 pm I would argue the magical wish orbs that bring people back to life already killed the tension way more than EoZ could. We just know by default that Goku's gonna win and everyone's gonna come back at the end of every arc.

In a show where it's impossible for anyone to actually die thanks to the Dragon Balls literally being the title of the show, the tension isn't in the main characters trying to survive, it's in other things like character arcs or outcomes of fights. The tension of the ToP wasn't if Universe 7 was gonna get erased, it was just if Universe 7 could beat Jiren, if Goku could master Ultra Instinct. We already know everyone lives, so the focus is on the smaller things like "Is Goku as strong as Hit?" or "Can Goku and Vegeta save Trunks's timeline?" You just take the drama in parts, it's anime WWE.
I agree on the Dragon balls. The writers should really put some restraints on them. I dislike how you can repeat every wish and get people back to life multiple times. They should not have done that. Before that it created real tension, such as when Yamcha died "instead of Kuririn". It would not only raise the stakes and drama but people really dying would help with thinning out the bloated cast.

Since the dragonballs don't have restraints I actually really liked what GT did with the Black star balls. they couldn't be overwritten by the regular balls and they actually went through with earth blowing up and Piccolo dying for real. Those were real stakes. The scenes were the earth is about to blow up and Goku searching for remaining people are amazing.
SupremeKai25 wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:28 pm Eh, this can be true for certain arcs, but not for the Future Trunks arc. By the End of Z we did not know what happened to Future Trunks and his timeline, which is why there was a lot more tension and creative freedom in that arc. And indeed at the end of the day that entire multiverse was destroyed along with Zamasu without impacting the End of Z.

I'd argue it's the same thing for the Universe 6 arc, now that I think about it. The End of Z wouldn't change at all if Universe 6 won and U7's Earth had been moved over to U6 (I mean, what would actually change? The earthlings don't even know there are 12 different universes in the first place).

About the Tournament of Power, lots of people thought that Jiren would win and have a change of heart, so he would wish everyone back to life. I myself thought that Universe 7 would end up losing the tournament and someone else would bring it back.
I have to agree with you there. That's a great point. Trunks' timeline was very interesting It could even be a separate spin-off as far as I'm concerned. It would be awesome to see Trunks as a leader having to deal with both familiar post Cell-threads as well as the responsibility of leadership. Damn, now I want to see that show instead. Thanks a lot, Supremekai25!

If U6 won and wished back U7...there would still be low stakes. Yes, Goku lost but he still gets back alive so the end result is still the same as you mentioned. What they could have done is let Whis look into the future (why not he can do everything else) and show parts of EoZ and let him say that this ToP is so huge it may alter the current flow of history, teasing that Super could take an alternative path. That would make it way more interesting.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by SupremeKai25 » Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:10 pm

Jord wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:57 am
supersaiyanZero wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:57 pm
Jord wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:02 pm The problems with super mainly lies in it's place in the timeline. Z's story was complete. Character arcs were finished, they beat one of the strongest guys you can imagine. (it's hard to top someone who can easily and quickly blow up planets without getting tired)
There was no story left to tell.There weren't any loose threads.
To make matters worse, since it takes place before the EoZ we know exactly how the main cast ends up. Everyone from Z is alive. That means zero tension. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, we all know Goku is alive at EoZ so of course he's gonna beat them.
Tournament of power. Which universe is getting erased? Certainly not this one since everyone is alive at EoZ.
In Z and especially GT there was genuine tension with characters definitely dying, some for good. In Super...nope.
That's simply not true at all. I hear this frequently, and it's just a lazy scapegoat that ignores the fundamental problems of the show. There are a plethora of prequels and mid-quels that do well to establish high stakes and a feeling of tension. It boils down to the writing, the execution of the scenes, music score, etc... The fact that Super takes place before the EoZ has nothing to do with why it failed to convey any sort of danger whatsoever.
When it's about life or death situations it does matter. You know that the EoZ cast lives so they're not in any danger. There is no tension. We know they're not dying. We know the earth is fine.
funrush wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:23 pm I would argue the magical wish orbs that bring people back to life already killed the tension way more than EoZ could. We just know by default that Goku's gonna win and everyone's gonna come back at the end of every arc.

In a show where it's impossible for anyone to actually die thanks to the Dragon Balls literally being the title of the show, the tension isn't in the main characters trying to survive, it's in other things like character arcs or outcomes of fights. The tension of the ToP wasn't if Universe 7 was gonna get erased, it was just if Universe 7 could beat Jiren, if Goku could master Ultra Instinct. We already know everyone lives, so the focus is on the smaller things like "Is Goku as strong as Hit?" or "Can Goku and Vegeta save Trunks's timeline?" You just take the drama in parts, it's anime WWE.
I agree on the Dragon balls. The writers should really put some restraints on them. I dislike how you can repeat every wish and get people back to life multiple times. They should not have done that. Before that it created real tension, such as when Yamcha died "instead of Kuririn". It would not only raise the stakes and drama but people really dying would help with thinning out the bloated cast.

Since the dragonballs don't have restraints I actually really liked what GT did with the Black star balls. they couldn't be overwritten by the regular balls and they actually went through with earth blowing up and Piccolo dying for real. Those were real stakes. The scenes were the earth is about to blow up and Goku searching for remaining people are amazing.
SupremeKai25 wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:28 pm Eh, this can be true for certain arcs, but not for the Future Trunks arc. By the End of Z we did not know what happened to Future Trunks and his timeline, which is why there was a lot more tension and creative freedom in that arc. And indeed at the end of the day that entire multiverse was destroyed along with Zamasu without impacting the End of Z.

I'd argue it's the same thing for the Universe 6 arc, now that I think about it. The End of Z wouldn't change at all if Universe 6 won and U7's Earth had been moved over to U6 (I mean, what would actually change? The earthlings don't even know there are 12 different universes in the first place).

About the Tournament of Power, lots of people thought that Jiren would win and have a change of heart, so he would wish everyone back to life. I myself thought that Universe 7 would end up losing the tournament and someone else would bring it back.
I have to agree with you there. That's a great point. Trunks' timeline was very interesting It could even be a separate spin-off as far as I'm concerned. It would be awesome to see Trunks as a leader having to deal with both familiar post Cell-threads as well as the responsibility of leadership. Damn, now I want to see that show instead. Thanks a lot, Supremekai25!

If U6 won and wished back U7...there would still be low stakes. Yes, Goku lost but he still gets back alive so the end result is still the same as you mentioned. What they could have done is let Whis look into the future (why not he can do everything else) and show parts of EoZ and let him say that this ToP is so huge it may alter the current flow of history, teasing that Super could take an alternative path. That would make it way more interesting.
I think that the journey is more interesting than the destination, that's why I was not bothered that much by the fact that the End of Z spoils what happens to the main characters. I mean, I find it boring, but not that terrible. That's why I was kind of interested in seeing how the ToP would end, because even if I knew the main universe would not be erased one way or another, it was still very intriguing to see how they would avoid erasure or be brought back.

The fact that the Tournament ended in a lame way is sad, but otherwise I aknowledged wild possibilities like Jiren winning or Freeza betraying U7, and from there it would have been interesting to see how that would have linked to the End of Z.

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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by Lord Beerus » Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:58 pm

The situation is nowhere near as complicated as people want to make it out to be. It's simply a case of six things:

1. Demand: The unexpected resurgence of demand in new Dragon Ball content following Resurrection F led to hasty decision from Toei and Fuji TV to slot a new Dragon Ball TV series once the Sunday 09:00AM (July 5th) slot was available. That is prime slot for a show like Dragon Ball to air in this day and age. If it doesn't air then, it doesn't air at all and they lose that slot for the foreseeable future as another TV show will take it in a heartbeat

2. Tadayoshi Yamamuro: The Chief Animation Direction, Tadayoshi Yamamuro, was past his prime and had been so for the best part of a decade. What also didn't help matters was the success of Resurrection F, a film Tadayoshi Yamamuro directed, storyboarded, and served as Chief Animation Director and Animation Character Design for. It most likely influenced the higher ups at Toei as they presumed that Yamamuro's banal aesthetic direction was not only acceptable but the visual direction Dragon Ball should continue in.

3. TV Slot: Remember that Sunday 09:00AM slot I talked about? Dragon Ball Super was announced the moment Toei knew that slot would be made available for a new program (April), and it shows. The fact Toei released the first PV (Promotional Video) for Dragon Ball Super less than a month before it was set to debut on TV and didn't even have a finalised logo ready to promote the new Dragon Ball series the moment they announced it should have had alarm bells ringing. Funny enough, some of the footage that was shown in the second PV for Super was footage that was never used in the show (the Beerus/Whis/Champa/Vados scene). So it was literally footage cobbled together just so that there was something to promote the show in time. This was a rushed decision. And on the subject of rushing things...

4. Scheduling: There was simply no time for anybody of any talent to work with when the show went into production. Toei had to hastily put together a rotation of staff for an on-going series of unknown length and had less than half the time they would usually have to work with, which was less than 3 months as supposed to 6-7 months. This is further confirmed with Natoshi Shida stating on Twitter that he had began storyboarding an episode for an upcoming project; which would later turned out to be Dragon Ball Super, in the same month Dragon Ball Super was announced. So yes, production on Dragon Ball Super only started the moment they announced the show in April, for it's release in July. They had less than three months to put a long running show together. And with how the show fell apart visually after just five episodes, it just proves that it is nowhere near enough preparation time. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't give them enough time to work at their best, you're either not going to get good results from them or you're not going to get anything at all. And, no. No amount of money thrown at that problem will alleviate that. Money can't buy extra time for animators. Speaking of animators...

5. Resources: What made the rushed production of Dragon Ball Super even more problematic was the fact that Toei resources were incredibly stretched thin as they had several projects were either in production (Digimon Adventure tri and Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo R) or were on-going TV series (One Piece and Go! Princess PreCure) at the time they decided to make Dragon Ball Super a thing. The situation made even more stressful as Toei would put a One Piece film (One Piece Film Gold) into production around the same time that when Dragon Ball Super desperately need more staff. Hence why large chunks of the Resurrection retelling and several parts of the Universe 6 arc looked as poor as it did and why there were so many episode being outsourced to other studios for 2/3 of Super's run and why there were many unknown names in the production staff for certain episodes in those arcs. Toei were looking for any animators to help them, even if it was for one time deals.

6. Series Director: This is where practically all of Dragon Ball Super's storytelling problems ultimately stem from. With the frenzied and rushed production, series directors would be rotated as Toei looked to find the best person to helm the series creatively. But with this rotation in series directors came different visions for how Dragon Ball Super would move forward as a story. And because of this, scripts would be inconsistent as different series directors would mean different plot outlines given to the scriptwriters and this would lead to different character and narrative beats. Of course, the quality of the scriptwriter itself would also be in question for something like this, but the main point still stands -- Dragon Ball Super's lack of narrative consistency is rooted in the fact that there wasn't a consistent choice in the series director. To hammer home this point, Dragon Ball Super over the course of 131 episode had FIVE different series directors. Dragon Ball Z, in comparison, over the course of 291 episodes, had two.

TLDR: Not enough time, not enough good talent, and too many cooks spoiled broth.

SpiritBombTriumphant
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Re: Was Dragonball Super a victim of the declining anime industry?

Post by SpiritBombTriumphant » Sun Sep 01, 2019 12:56 am

Yuli Ban wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 1:07 amThey probably thought it would last 100 episodes and fade away and didn't put any money into it because of this, but then it wound up becoming a sensation and they realized way too late that they should've put in more effort. South Americans still loved it regardless, as evident by the outdoor screens and chanting. And it's consistently one of the top rated shows on Toonami in the USA. Yet I am absolutely certain they genuinely didn't expect this level of success.
That sounds exactly like Toei. Only a company that puts a green tint on a movie and is too lazy to fix it would be stupid enough to not realize this.

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