MistareFusion's Dragon Ball Dissection! (Updated 4/1/24!)

[Gyt Kaliba]

I do have a scanner, though it's functional ability is low at the moment - it's been sitting in my closet for a year now after I no longer had a use for it, so I need to re-install everything on the computer.

The project isn't something I'd do anytime soon probably, but it'd be something rather similar to your vids and the podcast Manga Reviews of Awesomeness that have been done here in the past, only for the manga series I"s (the link in my signature and all that). As of now I'm doing just text reviews of each chapter and then volume slowly but surely, but I've noticed that a major source of my hits seem to be via the Youtube account connected to the site, so it only seems natural to eventually re-do the reviews in a video format on Youtube, you know?

But yeah, it's a project that's kind of far off in the distance as of now, due to a lot of issues, but learning what kind of programs and tech I might need now definitely helps it along.

[Gaffer Tape]

And the first arc is complete!

DBD: The Hunt for the Dragon Balls Arc Part 3!

So the first arc is rated, ranked, and in the can! All three of these were recorded at the same time, so what changes, if any, would you like to see for the next arc?

[JulieYBM]

I like the quick releases, so I think you should try to keep that from changing. Otherwise, I think you have a good set-up. I assume the next arc will fit into three parts too?

[Akumaito Beam]

I found myself eagerly checking in on Daizex awaiting part 3 since I watched the last two parts and you didn't dissapoint. The end analysis is exactly how I like my reviews and I'm glad to see you really took your time with the final observations. As a kid the Pilaf arc was my favorite part of the story and I must have read it two dozen times, even then you still had pointed out a ton of stuff I've never noticed.Noting that Bulma and Oolong were counters to Yamcha and Puar was a really smart observation. You really hit on the main appeal it had with me when I was younger. Our protaginists are kind of super shitty people. That was totally unheard of to 11 year old Akumaito (and yeah, that fact totally still came through in the edited 13 episode boxset.) To have the story's heros be so blatant about stuff like cowardace, lust, ignorance and greed yet still be perfectly relatable was the epitome of wit to me. Then I grew up and discovered shows like Seinfield and The Venture Brothers so when I came back to DB years later the much more tame assholery eluded me and I was confused as to why I had enjoyed it so much. Not to jump ahead but I do find it funny the theme of "super shitty people" continues but as the humor fades so does the appeal of the characteristic which maybe says something about faults being more understandable so long as there's self aware winking going on.

The Pilaf arc truly does feel like a traditional, well thought out story from beginning to end. You came to bat for this arc and really helped convey that there was a little more there than just poop jokes.


Killer job man, this is going to be a fun ride.

[violadude]

These videos are awesome!! Love the deep analysis while showing screenshots of the manga. Keep it up man. I'll eagerly await every episode until the end.

[Gaffer Tape]

The next installment has finally arrived!

DBD: The 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai Arc Part 1!

Part 1 takes us through the training itself and arrival to the tournament grounds. Tried to incorporate the analysis a little more seamlessly with the plot this time rather than dumping it all at the end.

[JulieYBM]

Ah, I've been waiting for this! One of my favorite aspects of this arc is how Kame-sen'nin so easily slides between his role as the perverted old man and wise old sage. It really shows how strong a comic writer Toriyama is and really goes to show what he can do when he takes his time to develop a character.

[Gaffer Tape]

Agreed. I wish it had been something Toriyama had done more often. I always got the impression that Toriyama used his characters far too much as devices, and, whenever he needed a new function, he just threw in a new character, using it until he didn't need that function anymore or had brought in a new character that served that function better. He really should have found ways to adapt or develop his existing characters, similar to how he did with Kame'sennin here. He could have had an old man who was a sleazy pervert and an old man who was a revered teacher, but it's so much better that he made them both the same person. I think it's one of the reasons he remains such a popular character, even though he wasn't used much past the Piccolo Daimao arc and other mentor figures came along to surpass him. When people complain about the earthlings being shafted in later arcs, they're rarely referring to him, and I don't think it's because people don't care so much as that he had ample time to be a badass, served his function, went out on his own terms, and never really felt like he was just randomly taking up space in order to be given something to do.

[Gaffer Tape]

Well, the next part of the Budoukai arc is finally up, and the actual tournament begins! Let me know what you think!

DBD: The 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai Arc Part 2!

[Insertclevername]

I liked it a lot especially your opinion of Kuririns nose, even though I don't necessarily agree. Can't wait for when you dive into the 23rd TB arc.

[Gaffer Tape]

DBD: The 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai Arc Part 3!

Finally finishing up this arc. Sorry it took so long, but real life got in the way. Where does this stack up in our rankings? Find out! And feedback/constructive criticism is always appreciated!

[JulieYBM]

Great work, the analysis on the story is a lot of fun. I'm surprised you didn't really touch up on the art, though. This is Toriyama's first major battle and while you did show a few of the strongest panels, I think it'd be a good idea to to keep track of the progress of his art. The man pretty much re-defined comic battles, so I think that is something to bring up.

Great work as usual, though!

[coola]

When you look at it, its funny how characters are able to break rules without disqualification, only Budokai that went without clearly bending rules, was 28.

[Insertclevername]

Just a quick question, are you always going to keep the sagas in 3 separate videos or are you eventually going to introduce 4 or 5 part videos per saga, especially when you get to the big "Z" era arcs?

Also, great job on the finishing the 21st BT arc, very entertaining stuff and its really funny how I never noticed how the rules were abused in Dragon ball tournaments until I saw your vid. Makes me want to buy all the Viz bigs and just run through the series!

[Michsi]

I finally caught up! My inital plan was to buy the first volumes of DB, the only ones I'm still missing from my collection (aside from the Freeza Saga) and to follow the reviews as I read my way through them. Alas, things didn't go as planned so I decided to check the reviews without them. I know the story well so it's not like I get spoiled..

I enjoyed them and I think you doing a great job at presenting the series, plus adding some not-so-well-known information or trivia.

There are some points that you brought up that I wanted to discuss, but I'll just mention those that came during the last review.

Goku's age
Regarding the author retconning Goku's age. I don't quite agree with the possible explanantions you mentioned in the review. For instance, Goku looking way to young to be 14, simply because the author doesn't change his appearance much in the 22nd TB when he is 15. He does seem a little different, but not significantly enough for this to be a reason to change his age now. About the problem with adult nudity, well, if he planned to end the story with the first quest for the dragon balls, then the character would remain 14 and the author had no problem with such things then. I could assume there might have been some push from his editors or something, though.

Now, I have my own oppion regarding this, though it's admittedly not much better: a member here once posted a comment from Toriyama that was published in a Dr. Slump volume (?) regarding his approach to writing romance, something that he dislikes. He had just started working on DB and he was complaining about how his editor was pushing for a BulmaxGoku couple. Unfortunately, I can't give the exact source and I forgot which thread this was in, but I'll try to look it up and add a link later. This had me thinking however, since finding out that these two as a couple had actually been considered once was quite a revelation for me. So I'm guessing, Goku being closer to her age would make sense, if we keep this new information in mind. Of course, it never gets so much as hinted at in the actual story during that part and it's obvious Toriyama chose against it in the end, but it might offer some explanation why he stopped being 14.


Keeping the Moon

You mentioned that Toriyama might have opted for removing the moon in favor of keeping the tail and not having to worry about keeping track of moon phases and so on. Here is why I don't agree with this: First of all, I don't see this as being something tedious or something he would have spent too much time worrying over. Take another series that also has a subplot revolving around the phases of the moon, Inuyasha. The effect of the moon is only ever introduced in the story whenever the author feels like it . The cast was never shown to keep track of time or the phases of the moon and you could even forget about until it was brought up again for a specific arc where it was meant to be important. So basically, the moon was just ignored until it was needed.
Admittedly, it would have been harder to write around Goku not transforming while he was out in the wild , looking for the dragon balls, but again , he could have easily found alternative explanation that didn't necessarily have to be airtight. See Gohan and Goku's line about how they all go to sleep pretty early, depsite the fact that it doesn't have to be late, or even dark for that matter, for there to be a full moon. Like the story even showed in the 21 tournament.
It might me true though, that he might have wanted to avoid to have to use the Great Ape again. Having both the tail and the moon there might create the expectation for another transformation to happen at any time and he might have wanted to do away with that.



Lunch

I get that her character was a one trick pony, but I doubt people say they whished she had stuck around only due to sympathy. At least, that's not the case with me. I'll admit that her role and presence in the manga is a lot less significant than what the anime did with her ,where she is given a more substantial part and it was where I first met the character, but I still think she was interesting enough, even only as a source of humour, to be kept arount. Oolong still sticks around and has a few lines here and there, so it still feels like the author is somewhat mindful of his existence. Not to mention that he had been given some extra screen time in the movies, as some sort of friend to Gohan, despite the fact that they never even spoke to one another in the manga as far as I remember. So just drawing her would have made people aware of her and the anime might have added some extra filler scenes, (like they did the beginning of DBZ but never attempted it again once she just stopped appearing in the manga) which would have simply helped her character for the franchise as a whole.


Well these were the main points that caught my attention.

There was also something I wanted to say regarding Bulma (I just can't get used to Blooma, it's like I'm talking about a different character) and that your bias towards this character because of Yamcha tends to shine through, but that's not necessarily a bad thing and I might have only noticed it because I know you from this forum. Even if I were not to agree with some of your oppions, I prefer more subjective reviews to those that try to appear too neutral or strictly analytical.

As for suggestions for improvement, depending how serious you are about this review business, I would recommend to try to develope "a broadcast voice". I'm not sure if this is an actual term, but I think you get the idea. Now I'm not saying that there is something wrong with the way you speak, far from it, but after listening to other online reviewers you tend to note the difference in performance between them. I thought it might help if you would ever consider joining a review site and doing this as a semi or fully professional thing. Again, only if you think it's worth to invest time in, it's certainly doesn't bother or is something that MUST be imporved.
Anyway, just a thought and my two cents.


Wow, this ended up being waaaay longer than I planned.......

[Gaffer Tape]

Oh, wow. A lot of feedback to cover. This is what I get for letting myself get behind.

@JulieYBM:

You're right. I did notice that, albeit too late to do anything about it. Granted, my main emphasis is on character and story over art, but I did always intend to keep up with that. But, hey, I did talk about Kuririn's eyes! That counts, right?

@Insertclevername:

They will certainly be more than three parts in the future. In fact, I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to do it in the future. At the moment, I basically do the entire arc all at the same time (write one script, record one script, and then cut it into three parts for editing), which allows me to put them out fairly quickly in succession. But I probably won't be able to do it this way from now on, especially in regards to the 4 super long arcs (RR, Freeza, Cell, and Boo). So in those cases, I'll probably have to split up the arcs further, just so my channel doesn't become too DB-choked. For example, I've been doing an arc, then taking a break from DBD to do other videos, then coming back for the next arc. But in the future, I'll probably be doing two or three videos of an arc, stopping, doing some other stuff, then coming back to the arc with a couple more videos, etc. At any rate, since the RR arc is about as long as the first two put together, I assume it will end up being at least six parts long, unless I want to start making much longer videos, which I'd rather not, as I want them to be easily digestible, and I felt the most recent one was quite a bit longer than I'd wanted.

@Mischi

The tail thing. Yeah, but think about it this way. Say some Japanese equivalent of a watchdog group happened to catch DB for the first time when Goku is swimming across the lake with Kuririn, and they see him naked. Then they found out he's supposed to be 14 and make a stink of it. This is the first time Jump hears something like this, but it's strong enough that they don't want it to be a problem, so they tell Toriyama no more. That Goku's too old for this. But Toriyama decides he wants to do it again, so they agree as long as Goku is made younger. It's just a theory, but the timing seems far too fortuitous to completely dismiss it. Goku reveals he's 12 immediately after he gets his tail back, and not long before he is in a position where he must be naked again. And it comes up in an exposition segment that's entirely unique to this situation (there is never a mid-tournament interview at any other point in the series). And also, the last time we see Goku as a 12 year old is also the last time we ever see him naked. When he's 15, only one year older than he originally was, we never see him naked again. Anyway, that's just my idea. Assuming you're correct, I could see the romance angle being a plausible solution as well.

As for the Blooma/Yamucha bias, I wouldn't necessarily call it that, but it's not so much that it's slipping through. I'm doing it entirely on purpose, but it's more of a setup for my eventual discussion of the Cell arc. There are certain pieces of "evidence" I want to already have on hand when I get there. Don't worry. I'm certainly not planning on showering Yamucha with affection in these videos. He'll be analyzed just like everyone else.

And, yes, at the end of the day, this is subjective. I mean, it's my review. It has to be. I certainly try to back up my opinions with facts, but, yeah, that's what it is.

I'd certainly love to do something like this professionally. What reviewers did you have in mind? Or sites? What kind of voice? I don't know if you watch any of my non-DB vids, but I do have different voices for different types of projects (see in particular my newsreel parody videos), so while a certain professionalism is attempted here in regards to my more comedically-inclined reviews, I also don't want to sound like I'm anchoring the 11 o'clock news. So, yes, I'd love to know what you had in mind.

@coola

You didn't really have a question, but I didn't want to respond to everyone but you, so just wanted to say thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Piccolo Daimao]

Would Japan really care about a 14-year-old prepubescent body being naked in some scenes, when they pull that kind of shit all the time in other manga and anime (even stuff as far as a 100-year-old witch being trapped in the body of an 11-year-old girl and forming sexual relationships with men)? I mean, even in DB itself, they had no problem with Muten Roushi’s sexual harrassment of an underage girl, yet a little boy with his knob out who just happens to be 14 is somehow cause for outrage now?

And I think the reason he didn’t appear in any more naked scenes post-RRA arc is because the series had shifted towards a more serious tone, and perhaps even Toriyama realized that “innocence gag” would get old after long.

I think the explanation for “retconning” him from 14 to 12 was basically to delay his growth once he’d decided that he was going to continue the series past the first arc.

[theawesomepossum777]

This is such an awesome thing you're doing Gaffer! I always look foward to every video that is uploaded for the "dissection." Good luck on dissecting the hefty arc that is the Red Ribbon Arc. I guess it will be about 4-6 parts? I wonder what your opinion on the Freeza Arc will be once you get to that point...

[The Time Traveller]

DBD: The Hunt for the Dragon Balls Arc Part 2!

Is Sherman's last name "Priest" or is that his occupation...? In the Viz translation I think he's named Sherman the Shaman which is just overbearingly explaining the pun.

[ThunderPX]

... Holy shit I never noticed that pun before.

(Then again I'm not a native English speaker so whatever)