Unpopular DB opinions

[Hawk9211]

Ribrianne was really cool and she deserved better.

What the shit. That Ribrianne character is actually a Dragon Ball character? Just when I thought Jiren was one of the worst looking characters this is a thing.

She is designed by toriyama himself and is actually one of first designs for tournament of power.

[FortuneSSJ]

I don't get your point at all. With the exception of Vegeta, the main cast are young or appear young. What about stories with older characters do you believe
doesn't resonate with younger audiences?

GT stories are okay. We're talking about the importance of a shonen having a main cast that feels young and appealing.
Let's put it this way. Look at this two images:
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]
Now suppose you know nothing about this franchise but you know these two are different shows at least, which one you think your younger self would find more charming and appealing?
(Since we're talking about aging, let's focus on the saiyans and earthlings)

Things change. Different times, different audience. What worked in the past, may not work in a different era.

Such as?

He was talking about how it was okay to have shonens, whose most characters are just adults and then gave me examples like City Hunter, Hokuto no Ken, Space Cobra...Shows that had already ended before DB manga did and GT started.

I can use Toriko here. Toriko is a newer shonen which tried to use an old formula in a different era and didn't work out. Toriko's character design is clearly a combination of these three (Kenshiro, Rei and Goku) and the main cast looks like this.

No matter how much Shueisha and Toei tried to save that series with crossovers with One Piece and Dragon Ball, Toriko was canceled. Of course the characters designs are not the only thing that can doom a series (Death note for example didn't need to rely on this formula to be a success even though it's also a completely different premise) but they play a part. If your audience don't feel interested in your characters, it will make it harder for them to enjoy your story and the rest you have to offer. After all, Shokugeki no Soma is also about food like Toriko was and it's still going.

In Dragon Ball case that's not a problem, because the main cast is introduced as young and we see them grow up. It only becomes a problem when we reach a point where most of them look old and lose their appeal, which happened to most of them in GT and that's where I'm going here.

This is what Shonen Jump is nowadays:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[ABED]

I wouldn't judge the shows based on those drawings. Also, GT comes after Z, so I would want to watch them in order.

most of them look old and lose their appeal

But their age isn't their appeal.

which happened to most of them in GT and that's where I'm going here

That's my point. The main cast is Goku, Trunks, and Pan. You can argue Vegeta, but with the exception of Vegeta (who doesn't look older than he does in Z), they are all young or in Goku's case, are in a younger body.

So because nowdays, Shonen is made up of younger characters, every shonen should be made up of younger characters? Is there no room for difference?

[GamerSkull]

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F, Dragon Ball Super should have never happened and Norihito Sumitomo should have never been hired as the official composer for Dragon Ball.

Agreed. As much as I like Dragon Ball it should have stayed dead and just lived on through video games

Personally, I find it very hard to accept unnecessary sequels. It's the same thing I felt with The Legend of Korra.

There's always the risk of tarnishing the legacy. And I don't think Super does enough to warrant existing in the first place.

[FortuneSSJ]

most of them look old and lose their appeal

But their age isn't their appeal.

Their designs are part of their appeal and I don't like their designs.

which happened to most of them in GT and that's where I'm going here

That's my point. The main cast is Goku, Trunks, and Pan. You can argue Vegeta, but with the exception of Vegeta (who doesn't look older than he does in Z), they are all young or in Goku's case, are in a younger body.

Goku and Pan look great. Trunks is okay. My problem is that Bulma, Chichi, Gohan, Videl, Goten, Krillin, C18 don't look good in their lame casual designs in GT.
It doesn't matter if they aren't on the frontlines again, I don't feel interested in seeing those characters doing anything anymore.

Vegeta is not really an offender, unless we we're talking about this. He gets better later with this outfit.
However, get rid of its classic haircut was still an error. If there are two characters in this franchise that should keep the same haircut until the end, it's Goku and Vegeta.

So because nowdays, Shonen is made up of younger characters, every shonen should be made up of younger characters? Is there no room for difference?

It depends where you're going.

If you want to follow the usual route where your main character wants to be the best in something like the strongest/pirate king/hokage etc..a younger cast is the better option.
If you want to make something that relies more in its writing than anything to grab the audience like Death Note, or something funny like Gintama, then it shouldn't be a problem you use a older cast. But regardless of what you do, nowadays a younger cast will always have a better chance in grabbing the audience than a older cast.

Being different is not always a bad thing, but you have to be self conscious of what you want to do and who is your target audience.

[GamerSkull]

The VizBigs are honestly the worst way to own the manga in the US.

[sintzu]

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F, Dragon Ball Super should have never happened.

To be honest, all this new DB stuff is what I'd classify as "unnecessary sequel(s)".

As much as I like Dragon Ball it should have stayed dead and just lived on through video games

I can't think of DB without thinking about things such as Beerus and Black. When I look back at DB before BOG, something just feels missing. I'm not saying the original manga is an incomplete work, just that these stories are so well integrated that they feel like they've always been there. I never get why something should end at a certain point when the people behind it still have stories to tell. Toriyama clearly still has stories to tell so why should he stop ? the only reason the manga ended where it did was becuase of the stress it was putting on Toriyama. He's clearly excited about DB again so let's see where DB can truly go and maybe this time we'll get a satisfying ending. From his last interview, I feel like when he's done DB will have finally reached its full potential. With that said, he's made some very odd choices that I was very vocal against so I'm not saying his new stories are perfect but as a DB fan, I think we should all be happy that it's finally continuing under him.

Norihito Sumitomo should have never been hired as the official composer for Dragon Ball.

Sumitomo is alright but I won't miss him if he gets replaced in the future.

[SuperCyan2]

Eh, Goku Black is just another Turles.

[sintzu]

Eh, Goku Black is just another Turles.

The differences between them are night and day.

[GamerSkull]

I can't think of DB without thinking about things such as Beerus and Black. When I look back at DB before BOG, something just feels missing. I'm not saying the original manga is an incomplete work, just that these stories are so well integrated that they feel like they've always been there. I never get why something should end at a certain point when the people behind it still have stories to tell. Toriyama clearly still has stories to tell so why should he stop ? the only reason the manga ended where it did was becuase of the stress it was putting on Toriyama. He's clearly excited about DB again so let's see where DB can truly go and maybe this time we'll get a satisfying ending. From his last interview, I feel like when he's done DB will have finally reached its full potential. With that said, he's made some very odd choices that I was very vocal against so I'm not saying his new stories are perfect but as a DB fan, I think we should all be happy that it's finally continuing under him.

While I can certainly understand your perspective, I wholly disagree.

Sure, the people behind DB might have more stories to tell, but I honestly think everything post-BoG and onwards isn't as good as others might say. There are more stories to tell, sure, but I'm not really enjoying them and often times, they feel too different from the original to me... and that's how I feel about modern Dragon Ball. But that's just me.

I'm not knocking your feelings about them at all. In fact, I'm glad that others have taken something out of Super... but I feel differently.

[sintzu]

I honestly think everything post-BoG and onwards feel too different from the original to me.

That's the price you pay for waiting so long to continue something, the industry has went through major changes since the 90's and we're seeing it in modern DB. I'm hoping some of these changes will be toned down when the anime starts again next year as I feel they're bringing down the quality of these stories.

There's always the risk of tarnishing the legacy. And I don't think Super does enough to warrant existing in the first place.

This is a good point as the view of DB will change as things are added on but also keep in mind the original will always be there as is so this isn't a star wars situation where Toriyama is having the original material pulled down in favore of "modern" versions of it to go with his new stories and mindset.

[ABED]

I think you are dropping context. GT is DB at a later part of the story. The characters didn't start off as old, but after the time jumps, the audience followed along on their journey. I don't think the audience is so superficial that they can't get into stories with older characters.

[Kunzait_83]

Budokai's 1 through 3 in particular are downright unplayable.

I think that's absolutely hyperbole. They're not broken. They're not mechanically confusing. They're not janky. A mindless button mash-fest they may be, but the bar can be much, much, much lower. And no, I'm not saying that in the "see, it could be worse, therefore we need more of this!" sort of way. I'm saying that in a "see, it could be worse, therefore a term like rancid dogshit, which by all connotations sounds like literally the worst thing imaginable in literally every single way, isn't descriptively apt" sort of way.

As shallow button mash fests, these are perfectly fine games. You can easily dismiss that kind of sub-genre as inherently more shallow and less worthwhile, and I'd agree (as there's less for the player to learn and be challenged by, in a gameplay sense). But it's fairly playable, in that it's easy to pick up and play, within that realm itself. Junk food and dogshit are not equivalent, and treating them as such is needlessly black and white thinking. These games can be reasonably faulted and dismissed without hyperbole.

Sagas is more fitting for a label like "rancid dogshit", where not only is it an incredibly shallow button mash fest, but it's also janky and broken as all hell. And I have nostalgia for Sagas just as I do for Budokai, so that's not sufficient for giving something a pass here. There's plenty I'm nostalgic for, but I'm always more than willing and able to recognize the faults and shortcomings of these things.

A game like Budokai is nothing admirable, gameplay wise, but it's also nothing whose existence should offend to the degree that something like Sagas should. At least not in the context of the games proper. I suppose the disproportional negative reaction to them is understandable, given the disproportional positive reaction that they've garnered in this community for so long. A pendulum effect, if you will.

Touche.

I think that your points definitely apply to games like Infinite Worlds, Burst Limit, and Shin Budokai. Maybe, possibly even Budokai 2 at the very most. Budokai 3 is in a weird spot where your points LARGELY apply to it, if not for stuff like Dragon Rush, which breaks up the gameplay SO often and so stupidly frequently that it genuinely disrupts the game's general flow into a staccato mess. It can be turned off thankfully, but even then you're still ultimately left with a game every bit as shallow and hollow as the others.

Budokai 1 though I will ABSOLUTELY argue for as being effectively broken and unplayable. Go back and play it now: the controls are clunky, cumbersome, and stilted in the extreme. It BARELY passes muster above a game like Sagas in terms of basic-most playability. Barely.

He was talking about how it was okay to have shonens, whose most characters are just adults and then gave me examples like City Hunter, Hokuto no Ken, Space Cobra...Shows that had already ended before DB manga did and GT started.

I love how this just completely bypasses the overall point I was making:

The predisposition for Shonen to fixate on largely and predominantly child or teenage characters is without question much, MUCH more of a millennial thing.

I was talking about Shonen in the context of its ENTIRE history, not just recent years, and I was very clear on that throughout.

Your entire series of posts here continues to prove a point that myself and others have been making for many years now: anime fandom throughout the 2000s to now has been very obsessively over-fixated on the present, what's happening RIGHT NOW this very second, to the exclusion and detriment of almost anything else (sometimes even the more RECENT past).

The problem with that (well, one of many problems with it at least) is that it means that any and all critical thinking on gauging how various anime and manga titles are executed will almost ALWAYS be lacking in proper context for things like the medium's general history, art/creative evolution (or in some cases, de-evolution), etc. Everything ends up getting judged in an eternal contextless vacuum, where anime and manga are treated as things that have only ever existed within the last 15 to 20 years, at most (and sometimes for some people, not even THAT long), and where the sole value of ANY given series begins and ends with how closely it adheres to recent trends and how much money it makes for a bunch of Shueisha and Toei shareholders.

This kind of thinking fosters an INCREDIBLY shallow outlook on the worth of anime and manga as genuine art forms is my point, and reduces everything down to purely disposable product like the creative media-equivalent of fast food.

I don't think the audience is so superficial that they can't get into stories with older characters.

You might be vastly over-estimating a certain swath of hardcore Shonen fandom there.

But yes, I very much agree that less emphasis on this kind of superficiality would generally go a LONG way for Shonen.

[t0ffe3m4n]

Vegeta should have stayed dead on Namek.

Yikes. Now THAT is unpopular!

[GamerSkull]

Vegeta should have stayed dead on Namek.

Yikes. Now THAT is unpopular!

Not surprising. I just found him so boring afterwards.

[t0ffe3m4n]

Vegeta should have stayed dead on Namek.

Yikes. Now THAT is unpopular!

Not surprising. I just found him so boring afterwards.

I've never particularly been a huge Vegeta fan myself really. His first appearance against Cell following the year in the HTT ('Super Vegeta') and him becoming Majin Vegeta were his highlights for me.

Baby Vegeta in GT was also great, although I suppose that doesn't really count as it technically wasn't even him.

[FortuneSSJ]

Your entire series of posts here continues to prove a point that myself and others have been making for many years now: anime fandom throughout the 2000s to now has been very obsessively over-fixated on the present, what's happening RIGHT NOW this very second, to the exclusion and detriment of almost anything else (sometimes even the more RECENT past).

With "RIGHT NOW" you mean 20+ years ago, right?!

Because before I talked about what's happening RIGHT NOW, I gave you examples of sucessful shonens from the same era than DB, which I will repeat one last time - Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Slam Dunk, Hajime no Ippo and Captain Tsubasa - to help explain my point of view.

You don't need go much further than this, because we're talking about GT and GT didn't air around the same time than City Hunter, Hokuto no Ken, Space Cobra...
I could have talked about the colossus that is Astro Boy, which stomps all the shonens you mentioned one by one, but I didn't.

No offense here, but with that comment you came out as an old man that refuses to believe that times have changed. For better or for worse, that happens and we are again in a different era now.

[ABED]

No offense here, but with that comment you came out as an old man that refuses to believe that times have changed. For better or for worse, that happens and we are again in a different era now.

And they can change again.

[GamerSkull]

Yikes. Now THAT is unpopular!

Not surprising. I just found him so boring afterwards.

I've never particularly been a huge Vegeta fan myself really. His first appearance against Cell following the year in the HTT ('Super Vegeta') and him becoming Majin Vegeta were his highlights for me.

Baby Vegeta in GT was also great, although I suppose that doesn't really count as it technically wasn't even him.

I guess Baby Vegeta was okay... but Super Vegeta makes a dumb mistake that I have a hard time taking him seriously and the stuff with Majin Vegeta only made me dislike him more.

He was cool during the Saiyan and Namek arcs though.

[Kunzait_83]

With "RIGHT NOW" you mean 20+ years ago, right?!

Because before I talked about what's happening RIGHT NOW, I gave you examples of sucessful shonens from the same era than DB, which I will repeat one last time - Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Slam Dunk, Hajime no Ippo and Captain Tsubasa - to help explain my point of view.

And most all of those examples were also from the same exact era that most of MY examples were from as well (HnK, City Hunter, JoJo, etc). Soooooo... I don't really see what the point you're trying to make here is. Clearly within that timeframe (80s and 90s), there was room for BOTH of these different "types" of Shonen to be popular and successful.

Here's my point: Shonen pre-late 90s was almost unarguably WAY more diversified in terms of "acceptable" styles and subject matter (it could still do very much similar kinds of stuff that it does now AND a whole shitload of OTHER different kinds of things as well), whereas from the late 90s onward its narrowed and narrowed ever increasingly more and more towards just embracing pure infantilism around 95% of the time (fleetingly rare exceptions aside).

I'd argue it be nice if the overton window within Shonen's spectrum of styles, tones, and subject matter were far more broad-ranging once more (since that fosters not only more creativity and originality, but also a more wider-reaching appeal), whereas you seem to be locked into the "all kids all the time" narrative simply because "This is the way it is now, this is the ONLY way I remember it, so this is the ONLY way its ever gonna be!" and are actively supporting it and cheering it on, variation be damned.

No offense here, but with that comment you came out as an old man that refuses to believe that times have changed. For better or for worse, that happens and we are again in a different era now.

Well sorry, but offense taken anyways, since I've had the "old man" chestnut thrown my way in conversations like this one (both within this community and elsewhere) since I was the ripe old age of goddamned 24, and its long since gotten beyond tired and played out as all hell. Not to mention the fact that its also an obvious and cheap-ass dodge away from actually engaging with the substance of what my criticisms against "modern" Shonen actually are. Its a LOT easier and more convenient to just glibly dismiss someone who has a dissenting point of view with something like "Bah! Old man!" rather than actually seriously engage with any real points being made.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm only MARGINALLY older than a lot of the typical regulars here. In terms of anime fandom I go back a bit longer due to how early on in life I got into it, but honestly, all it ultimately means is that my perception of what constitutes the "history" of the medium encompasses a larger breadth of time than most folks here, due to my having actually LIVED THROUGH these earlier eras in question here whilst actively following this shit the whole way. So yes, clearly I am VERY much accutely aware that things have changed from one decade into the next seeing as how I was fucking present and watching it change throughout.

YOU however don't seem to be willing to accept that they could still change YET AGAIN, and seem all too willing and able to just ignore and brush aside history that you aren't aware of or interested in in order to better paint a narrative of the post-Dragon Ball Shonen landscape as being this permanently static and unchanging entity.

End of the day though, my point ultimately boils down to the fact that Shonen IN ITS TOTALITY across its ENTIRE history has oscillated between taking on a WIDE range of different forms beyond what most younger fans know of and are used to, and that fact shouldn't be ignored or discounted just because things have been a certain way throughout the current era.

Furthermore I'd say that you're perception of what should be deemed as "acceptable" for popular Shonen to depict is STIFLINGLY limited and is clearly informed solely by what you are personally used to and are familiar with rather than what might make for more interesting, unique, or god forbid possibly even CHALLENGING material.

To be fair though, you are indeed right about one thing: its been roughly 20 years now that we've been living under this Naruto/One Piece-ified paradigm, and that is indeed a LONG-ass time any way you slice it. And yet I find it funny how almost NO ONE in Shonen fandom seems to think things might be even so much as a hair bit stale by this point, and that it might be time for the winds of trends to perhaps finally blow in a different direction altogether now.