Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Jord · Post by **Jord** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:57 am

I believe so.

I'm currently watching Dragonball and I'm enjoying it a lot. Having watched Z first it really seems to me that Toriyama wanted to end the story at the Saiyan Saga or at least lost his inspiratiration after that part of DBZ.

What I like about dragonball is how it keeps itself from getting stale. Goku's traveling party constantly changes, bringing a new dynamic to the team and making sure some characters don't wear out their welcome. The locations also change a lot. When we look at the Red Ribbon part of Dragonball we got to see a Huge tower with distinctly different floors, a snowy village, an indian ground with a huge tower on it, a big army base, the city, Ox-King Village, Penguin Village, a pirate's cave and more. Notice how the characters used in this part varie and stay fresh.

The story also deviates more than DBZ. While collecting the DragonBalls is the main story in this part the author wisely focusses on a lot of side stories during this Dragonball hunt like the pirate treasure in the cafe, the rescue of Jingle Village's chief elder, the battles against characters like Taopaipai and the Gauntlet at Uranai Baba's place.

When watching DBZ the general storyline is that Goku's friends get beaten down, Goku/Gohan arrives, shows of his new strength, has a hard battle and wins. The whole thing with Recoome is an almost exact repeat of the whole Nappa fight. There are almost no side quests, except for the occasional filler episode.

To make matters worse, the enemies become cheaper and cheaper. The Vegeta fight was perfectly staged. It was believable how Vegeta manages to stay alive during the fight and the fact that he got gradually weaker but not less dangerous added a lot to that. The next big fight was against Frieza who used the multiple transformations which made the fight look somewhat cheaper and a easy way to continue the fight. Cell and Buu however were just lazy written. Cell self destructed and survived thanks to one Cell remaining. He could also regenerate any limp that got blasted off. Buu was even worse since he was clearly 'destroyed' several times but found a cheap way to regenerate every time, making every effort seem in vain.

While DB varied the characters used DBZ focussed soly on 3 or four characters, getting worse as the series progressed. While I like Goku it was nice to see Yamcha or Krillin in action during Dragonball. Every non-Saiyan is treated as a joke in DBZ so you'd better like Vegeta. Gohan and Goku since they're basically the flesh and bones of the series.

The time lapse between Cell and Buu seemed like a good chance to redeem this, with the abcense of Goku but characters only got worse. Vegeta was the same angry pride guy he always was, (even though he showed moments of redemption he was quickly turned into his stereotypical role when the series went on.) Goku came back from the dead to once again save the day and Gohan turned into a enormous dud.

For those of you who have seen both series, how would you compare them?

DBZAOTA482 · Post by **DBZAOTA482** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:04 am

I don't think so.

If it ended at the Frieza or Cell Saga, I would say it was as good if not better.

OzzyApu · Post by **OzzyApu** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:12 am

They're such different entities it's hard to compare the two. They have the same characters and universe, but the core of the two shifted greatly. Toriyama screwed himself over in this way by continuously going up in power every single time. Hell, if it wasn't for regeneration, Cell and Boo would have been demolished way sooner than they were.

Dragon Ball was a fun, adventurous show, but something like that can't be replicated when you have adults that overpower anyone on Earth. Taking it to space was a good idea if a character was on a planet without air and stuff and they needed to infiltrate or something (imagine Vegeta destroying the rest of Freeza's empire this way), but mega-explosion battles seemed like the way of the series pretty much by the Piccolo Daimao arc.

There's certainly something to be said about who gets brushed aside, but that's all that can really be done. Could you really see someone like Yamucha outmatching one of the Saiyans through some plot device? I'll agree that Toriyama hammed himself by the Boo saga, and could have written things differently for a more fulfilling arc, but I'm not the creator of the series so my opinion isn't a rule.

Something to me though prefers Z's background activities, but that's mostly from fan imagination.

Jord · Post by **Jord** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:18 am

OzzyApu wrote:They're such different entities it's hard to compare the two. They have the same characters and universe, but the core of the two shifted greatly. Toriyama screwed himself over in this way by continuously going up in power every single time. Hell, if it wasn't for regeneration, Cell and Boo would have been demolished way sooner than they were.

There's certainly something to be said about who gets brushed aside, but that's all that can really be done. Could you really see someone like Yamucha outmatching one of the Saiyans through some plot device? I'll agree that Toriyama hammed himself by the Boo saga, and could have written things differently for a more fulfilling arc, but I'm not the creator of the series so my opinion isn't a rule.

Something to me though prefers Z's background activities, but that's mostly from fan imagination.

Well, considering Yamcha and co did recieve Kaio training, yes it could have happened. Just make the bad guy appear with a flock of weaker henchmen. Goku/Vegeta could take on the main villain while characters like Ten, Gohan and Yamcha take on the henchmen. Throw in a plot device like the henchmen having collected the Dragonballs and wanting to summon the dragon and you get a sense of urgency for the weaker characters to win their battle.

Gaffer Tape · Post by **Gaffer Tape** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:52 am

You took the words right out of my mouth. I very well could have written most of this myself, so I won't reiterate. So for now I'll just say I agree on most everything, including how good the Vegeta fight was, how the characters needed to be better used, and how much more interesting the locations were earlier, before everything became the same barren, rocky outcropping.

That said, I don't agree that it went downhill when it became DBZ, mostly because it never suddenly became anything. It's all just one series, that a TV adaptation happened to cut in two around a pivotal moment. But I disagree with OzzyApu that they're two separate entities impossible to compare. That's simply not true. Nor is there any one moment where "Dragon Ball" becomes "Dragon Ball Z." All of the problems you mentioned can be traced back to different points in the series, not just some arbitrary seam between series. And a lot of them have their roots right in the earlier parts of the series that you're praising. Conversely, the Vegeta fight you're praising is clearly entrenched in the "Z" section.

The second arc on the series, the 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai, draws a line in the sand. Yes, that early on, it's already there: fighting characters will get screentime, non-fighting characters won't. The first arc was filled with different types of characters, with various personalities and skill sets, coming together to solve problems and go on adventures. But aside from a few points where technology comes into play, there's not a single problem in Dragon Ball from that point on that can't be solved by punching it enough times or being strong enough to survive someone else's punch or a trap or an environmental disaster. And after Red, there's not a single main antagonist who doesn't happen to also be an amazing martial artist, even if he's the aristocratic ruler of an empire.

Also from that seed is the fact that even those martial arts characters were still poised to be shoved into irrelevancy, even in the early parts of the story. Yamucha was constantly used as a barometer to show off some new character's amazing power. By the end of the Red Ribbon Arc, Kuririn, Yamucha, and Kame'sennin feel completely dwarfed in order to show just how amazingly strong Goku has become in comparison to them, and you know they'll never be able to catch up. Oh, yes, it definitely exacerbates as the series goes on, but Toriyama was already writing himself into those kinds of corners. It just took a while before the effects began to show themselves so drastically.

And I do agree with what OzzyApu said about how powerful the characters were. It limits the types of stories you can tell. Could the storming of Muscle Tower have happened at any point later in the series? Of course not. I mean, it's already a bit of stretch that Goku couldn't just Nyoibo up to the top floor, smash in a window, and skip everything else. But later in the series, he could just fly up there, rip out a wall, rescue the headmaster, and sneeze on the tower to get it collapse. Or even later, hell, he could just teleport in, grab the guy, and teleport out as long as he could lock on to someone's ki. So with Toriyama constantly raising the stakes, all you could really do is have big muscle men smash each other with the whole planet shaking. That's why I'm glad the series hasn't continued in any significant way. I mean, our last major villain in the manga was one who could and did annihilate the planet with a flick of his wrist. How do you keep going past that? That was one of GT's problems early on. It tried its damndest to do a story that wasn't that, but then you kept on having these mind-boggling questions of why couldn't they just solve the problems immediately with their strength? And so it went back again to big ol' fights.

So, yeah, if you do call those attributes negative, then Dragon Ball started going slowly downhill in that direction from nearly day one.

Piccolo Daimao · Post by **Piccolo Daimao** » Mon May 14, 2012 12:20 pm

I’d say Toriyama hit his peak in storytelling around the Piccolo Daimaou to 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai arc, and took a definitive drop midway through the Freeza arc. So yeah, about the time Gokuu arrived on Namek. By the Boo arc, Toriyama literally needed to descend into self-referential parody to keep himself entertained, since he’d been doing the same damn series for 10 years straight, under strict deadlines, editorial interference, and fans bugging him to go on after he’d thought about ending it ten times or something. Toriyama had essentially written himself into a corner which he couldn’t back out of then.

I definitely prefer Dragon Ball pre-Saiyan arc to post-Saiyan arc, although I don’t wish it’d ended at the 23rd TB, Freeza or even Cell arc. If that was so, I don’t think many of us, including myself, would be fans writing on this forum today.

But Gaffer Tape has a point when he says that even the 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai had drawn a line in the sand for series expectations to come. Oolong and Puer served literally no purpose after their introductory arc, and Blooma's barely relevant even past the Red Ribbon Army arc. On Namek, she's ferried round by Gohan and Kuririn for a while, and then is left behind to moan in a cave. She occasionally jumps in to help Gokuu on his adventures with her Dragon Radar and whatnot, and she's certainly one of the more "present" background characters (such as when she makes the Great Saiyaman costume for Gohan), but even she's reduced to a mere plot device, mashed together with fucking Vegeta (himself reduced to a whiny little bitch who can't stop going on about how Gokuu's stronger than him and he'll beat him someday and how extremely strong Super Saiyans are and how awesome he is because he's the prince...OF AN EXTINCT FUCKING RACE!

) just so we can get another Super Saiyan in the form of Trunks.

Forgetting GT, even the idea of an official series post-Z is a bad idea, because even the Boo arc beforehand had become the epitome of ridiculousness.

Post by **TripleRach** » Mon May 14, 2012 12:23 pm

Jord wrote:For those of you who have seen both series, how would you compare them?

Well, I feel similarly about most of the things you said. I've said in the past that Toriyama seemed to be running out of ideas come the "Z" era. I mean, sure, there are a lot of fresh concepts, and the story is still compelling most of the time. But overall it had gotten fairly formulaic, and I think the biggest issue is not knowing what to do with Gokuu anymore.

There's plenty for Gokuu to do when he's traveling around the world encountering various obstacles that are new to him. But then came Piccolo, who was a centralized threat with really destructive power. The arc was written in a way that Gokuu's journey was instead to recover from his failures (against Tambourine and then Piccolo himself) before heading into the big final battle against a very successful villain. You can't really go back to traveling through villages and beating up tiger people after that (or at least Toriyama couldn't think of a way), so instead we had more instances of Gokuu recovering and/or training while villains wreak havoc. But the seeds for all this actually started much earlier, when Blue was beating the crap out of Kuririn while Gokuu was lost and distracted by the octopus. And then again with Taopaipai (get defeated, go train, save Upa at the last second).

Gokuu had grown to be so big and powerful that Toriyama had to start pulling villains from space, and then leaving Earth entirely. After that... oh hey here's a mad scientist who created powerful enemies by studying Gokuu. Even Piccolo was an ancient threat that had been sealed away, and there can only be so many of those lying around. Hi, Boo.

Though it's also possible Toriyama was just leaning towards what worked, because the series only got more and more popular after the Piccolo arc.

OzzyApu · Post by **OzzyApu** » Mon May 14, 2012 2:16 pm

Jord wrote:Well, considering Yamcha and co did recieve Kaio training, yes it could have happened. Just make the bad guy appear with a flock of weaker henchmen. Goku/Vegeta could take on the main villain while characters like Ten, Gohan and Yamcha take on the henchmen. Throw in a plot device like the henchmen having collected the Dragonballs and wanting to summon the dragon and you get a sense of urgency for the weaker characters to win their battle.

This was done in certain movies, yes, and Toriyama could have wrote better for these characters. Something that'd make sense is Tenshinhan learning the Kaio-ken, for instance, considering how much longer he was at Kaio's place and knowing how devoted he was to training and matching Goku's strength.

I'll concede to Gaffer Tape on dissecting Dragon Ball further than I had in my post. Probably because I was too lazy to connect the dots, but all the points you brought up I agree with. I still consider Z a different style, but that's probably because of the ideas of unimaginable strength and fights explosive fights and such.

Gaffer Tape wrote:there's not a single problem in Dragon Ball from that point on that can't be solved by punching it enough times or being strong enough to survive someone else's punch

So true

DarkPrince_92 · Post by **DarkPrince_92** » Mon May 14, 2012 2:37 pm

I honestly don't think Dragonball would be as popular without the ridiculous intensity DBZ has shown.

Gaffer Tape · Post by **Gaffer Tape** » Mon May 14, 2012 3:22 pm

Yeah, but this isn't about whether or not you think it's popular, but whether you think it's better or worse. I'm sure there are a lot of things that are insanely popular that you think are stupid or completely uninteresting to you. Yes, the later parts of the story are far more popular than what came before it, but do you agree with that popularity?

DarkPrince_92 · Post by **DarkPrince_92** » Mon May 14, 2012 4:02 pm

I guess story-wise, it started to just get too ridiculous when Z started. Maybe I could have done without everything after the Frieza saga, because things just kept moving even after Frieza was dealt with and the transition was weird, and the new Super Saiyans coming in...was just ehhh. (I do love Vegeta being a Super Saiyan none the less.)

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Mon May 14, 2012 4:53 pm

I don't think it did. It's rather arbitrary to say that the Saiyan arc was some sort of automatic super change in the quality of the series. It's a rather natural progression of the story up until that point, so I really feel it's more of the same in terms of over all quality. I'd say the real decline began when Takeda Fuyuto took over as editor of the comic, which was right around the time Perfect Cell appeared.

dprez · Post by **dprez** » Mon May 14, 2012 5:09 pm

I don't think so. It's just different. Just as enjoyable for me as the first part of Dragon Ball. Bigger fights and more epic and dire situations. I really enjoy the "Z" portion.

EDIT: I think one of the recent podcast's can explain why it seams so different.
http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... 13&t=19963

Attitudefan · Post by **Attitudefan** » Mon May 14, 2012 6:47 pm

I agree with many of the OP's points. I personally really like the series from the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai to the mid Namek the best.

I would say plenty more but I don't have the will or the time at the moment.

Saiga · Post by **Saiga** » Mon May 14, 2012 7:29 pm

I think earoy DB is nowhere near as good as the later stuff. The "original DB" is absolutely overrated, and many of the complaints I see about the "Z" portion of the series were always prevalent in the "original" series. As Gaffertape said, DB never becomes Z. It's one entity.

I think the cast got a way worse treatment in Dragon Ball, because before Vegeta showed up it was basically the Goku show with everybody else just being around to show much better Goku is than them. I found early Dragon Ball hard to read because their is only so much I can stand of Goku completely outclassing the rest of the cast. They were lucky to fall into the background so that they couldn't be humiliated any more.

Save for Piccolo, non-Saiyans were pretty much always a joke and that was a much bigger problem when it was only Goku who was a Saiyan.

Their were a few instances when a character wasn't totally useless, like Tenshinhan's debut. Next arc, Goku dacks him.

Wait, I should have read Gaffertape's whole post before starting this. Absolutely hit the nail on the head.

I do agree that the humans could have been relevant by having them fight henchman while Goku and co take on the main baddies, but that should have started before the Saiyan saga.

Pafupafu · Post by **Pafupafu** » Mon May 14, 2012 7:57 pm

Dragon Ball has to be looked at as one complete series to really see where it stalls and where it hits its stride. Toriyama really created a massively appealing format when he created the Tournament aspect of Dragon Ball. Then he used that up and went on to a Major Villain in Piccolo Daimao. Then, in a creative way, he merged them together. From there, he took the series in a semi-new direction. He introduced more science-fiction elements but the plot was still pretty familiar: Goku trains for a scheduled fight. The series eventually became more predictable. A villain or group of villains would gain advantage until it was up to our hero to defeat them. Eventually, Goku became the Deus Ex Machina of the series. He NEVER fought first, so Toriyama pulled a twist, he would bring back his Tournament aspect but instead would make Goku fight FIRST. This was really the last original idea to come from the series. Gohan's ascension to Deus Ex Machina was not as well-received so Toriyama brought Goku back to life for one last fight.

"Dragon Ball" was daring and surprising until the post-Cell era. Toriyama had passed the torch and had to re-light it. Of course, it made for some very exciting stories but eventually when it was all said and done, it was a tad too familiar. The Majin Boo arc had no real surprises in it, save for Fusion. Goku came back to life AGAIN. Vegeta was a villain AGAIN. Goku saved the world AGAIN. It was repetitive but it definitely helped to bookend the series. Unfortunately, the series had hit an identity crisis. Just like we as readers didn't know who would eventually defeat Boo and how, the series seemed to emit its own uncertainty. All of this carried over into the television serie(s). Predictability some times leads to stalling or quick changes that come off as cheap or unimaginative...(Vegetto de-fused because...?)

I will definitely say this: It became much easier to define the Anime once it became "Dragon Ball Z". Whether that is a good thing or not is debateable.

Bussani · Post by **Bussani** » Mon May 14, 2012 8:41 pm

I don't know... I found myself disagreeing with several of the points in the first post.

What I like about dragonball is how it keeps itself from getting stale. Goku's traveling party constantly changes, bringing a new dynamic to the team and making sure some characters don't wear out their welcome. The locations also change a lot. When we look at the Red Ribbon part of Dragonball we got to see a Huge tower with distinctly different floors, a snowy village, an indian ground with a huge tower on it, a big army base, the city, Ox-King Village, Penguin Village, a pirate's cave and more. Notice how the characters used in this part varie and stay fresh.

Isn't that true for "Z", too? We start with Goku teaming up with Piccolo for the first time, which is pretty cool. In the fight with the Saiyans, everyone gets to do something, even if they don't have much success, and the way Piccolo, Kuririn, and Gohan work together is great. After that it's Gohan, Kuririn, Bulma, and Vegeta who really become the stars, and the entire Namek arc, with everyone running around, trying to get the dragon balls and keep them out of the hands of everyone else, was something that hadn't really been done before; the closest thing was trying to keep King Piccolo from getting the balls, but he got them very easily in the end, so we never got anything like this cat and mouse game that Namek sets up. I think it's one of the more interesting and unique parts of the story, and there it is, somewhere in the middle of "Z".

As for locations, they're probably my favorite thing about the "Z" portion. I'm fascinated by the structure of the Dragon Ball universe as a whole. Enma's place, Serpent Road, Kaio's little planet with its massive gravity, and even planet Namek--are you telling me these aren't interesting and different places? The Cell saga introduces the Room of Spirit and Time, which is pretty interesting and unique if you ask me. The Buu saga gives us the Kaioshin realm, which doesn't do much, but I like it for some reason.

Finally, I don't think I have as much of a problem with regenerative powers as other people seem to. You're supposed to feel like an attack was a massive waste when it doesn't do anything. Frankly, is it really any different from, say, when Kuririn released a massive ki attack and Vegeta and Nappa remained completely unharmed? Regeneration is just an alternative to being an invulnerable tank, something that had been used throughout the story already and could also be said to be getting stale.

All of that said, I think the latter parts of the story could have done with some more fights where the two combatants were equally matched, rather than one just dominating the other with ease.

Post by **TripleRach** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:40 pm

Bussani wrote:After that it's Gohan, Kuririn, Bulma, and Vegeta who really become the stars, and the entire Namek arc, with everyone running around, trying to get the dragon balls and keep them out of the hands of everyone else, was something that hadn't really been done before; the closest thing was trying to keep King Piccolo from getting the balls, but he got them very easily in the end, so we never got anything like this cat and mouse game that Namek sets up. I think it's one of the more interesting and unique parts of the story, and there it is, somewhere in the middle of "Z".

That was something I meant to mention in my post, but somehow it didn't get typed. I love that portion of the story, and it proved that there was still some room for adventure in the series. It's one of the main reasons I usually mark the decline as happening after the Freeza arc, rather than the entire "Z" portion specifically.

Gaffer Tape · Post by **Gaffer Tape** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:10 pm

I mark the decline in the middle of the Freeza arc. The first half is great, some of my favorite stuff. Gohan, Kuririn, and Vegeta (not Blooma, though, as they just leave her sorry ass in a cave for the entire arc) really get to shine. Vegeta is cunning, and it's not about fighting but about hiding and strategizing. Even the size of the dragon balls themselves is an obstacle! And every side is hindered in some way so that, even with battle powers out of whack, everything feels very balanced. But when the fighting starts, that's when every terrible DB fighting cliche gets started. Transformations that mean nothing when you realize Freeza could just jump to his fourth form at will. Piccolo showing up with much hype and fanfare to contribute absolutely nothing. Goku getting knocked out of battle twice just so he could jump in and save the day. The focus shifting to Goku who has absolutely nothing to do with the story of this arc, and the characters who actually do have something to do with the plot have nothing to do but stare slack-jawed. I said earlier that the elements that the original poster is complaining about were gradually introduced over the course of the series, and I do stand behind that statement. But if I had to pick an exact moment, it would be when Goku landed on Namek.

Saiga · Post by **Saiga** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:18 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:I mark the decline in the middle of the Freeza arc. The first half is great, some of my favorite stuff. Gohan, Kuririn, and Vegeta (not Blooma, though, as they just leave her sorry ass in a cave for the entire arc) really get to shine. Vegeta is cunning, and it's not about fighting but about hiding and strategizing. Even the size of the dragon balls themselves is an obstacle! And every side is hindered in some way so that, even with battle powers out of whack, everything feels very balanced. But when the fighting starts, that's when every terrible DB fighting cliche gets started. Transformations that mean nothing when you realize Freeza could just jump to his fourth form at will. Piccolo showing up with much hype and fanfare to contribute absolutely nothing. Goku getting knocked out of battle twice just so he could jump in and save the day. The focus shifting to Goku who has absolutely nothing to do with the story of this arc, and the characters who actually do have something to do with the plot have nothing to do but stare slack-jawed. I said earlier that the elements that the original poster is complaining about were gradually introduced over the course of the series, and I do stand behind that statement. But if I had to pick an exact moment, it would be when Goku landed on Namek.

Do you mean that's the decline with the series as a whole or the decline of that arc?

Kanzenshuu

Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Re: Did Dragonball go downhill when it became DBZ?

Who is online