DB - A Superhero Story?

[ABED]

I didn't start this thread to discuss the issue because of you. It's been a long time coming because far too many people hold the misconception that it's a superhero show. Me ending our conversation, which I should've done a long time ago because I could've gotten more from a wall than this, doesn't mean I'm out of things to discuss on this topic.

[MR.Mark]

Never said you started this thread because of me but ok, still doesn't change your faulty logic though. No need to compare me to a wall because your obviously getting flustterd having your opinions challenged.

Not much more can be added to this topic honestly. Yes, it's not really a superhero story, but it's not a story about 100% assholes that just want a good fight either, there's a obvious grey area.

[ABED]

I think Goku is similar to Dr. Gregory House. He cares about his patients, but for him, he's about the puzzle. His primary goal is to figure out the issue. He wants to save the patient, but the thing that motivates him is figuring out what's wrong, hence his lack of bedside manner and why he's willing to cross the line to figure out the answer.

[MR.Mark]

The final battle with Zamasu also seemed to have little to do with a good fight. Vegeta and Goku both were willing to fuse again, both of them also had family killed by Zamasu.

During parts of the arc Vegeta definitely wanted to avenge Bulma's death and protect Trunk's world as well, he even brought food for survivors at one point.

Just showing more examples were a good fight was not the primary goal. EDIT, good job deleting your post.

[Big Green The Yoshi]

It's difficult for me to explain, but Dragon Ball is a battle power Manga, like Kinnikuman (although that's both about Superheroes and Battle Powers), and Nanatsu No Taizai (which is heavily inspired by Dragon Ball). The concept of Battle Powers originated in Kinnikuman, so it's logical to conclude that Dragon Ball falls under this category, even if it scraped the idea after the Freeza Arc.

[Forte224]

As others have stated it's not a Super Hero story in the general sense. I do think, however, that there is heroism involved being that the characters have moral values and want to rescue and save people from destruction such as wishing the planet back with the Dragon Balls or saving Namek and Namekians. You could akin them really to fighters who defend their territory and people in need when they come in contact, but they aren't actively patrolling because they aren't, well, super heroes. They are fighters with morals and a competitive spirit.

The thread really doesn't need to continue past this post. There's no discussion left to be had. This is the post that answers it all. Anyone who says otherwise in either direction is sorely mistaken.

[RandomGuy96]

Someone pointed to Logan and I do think he falls into the category of a reluctant hero. He still joined the X-Men for years. He doesn't actively let threats arise in order to get a better fight. In fact, he hates fighting and killing. Goku and co. love fighting.

Logan doesn't hate fighting per se, he specifically hates killing. Goku also doesn't like to kill.

[ABED]

They hate it for different reasons. Logan feels he loses a bit of his soul when he kills. Goku doesn't like killing because he feels it's a waste. He also doesn't hate himself for doing it. Logan is a reluctant hero. And I don't know if I would categorize Goku as an unlikely hero. To me, that's more apt for characters like Xander and Spike from Buffy. An unlikely hero is one who you wouldn't think would be a hero, but proves him or herself to be heroic. You could argue that Kuririn often falls into this category.

[MR.Mark]

Goku started his life on earth living in the wild minding his own business until he met Bulma and proceeded to travel the world, fight strong guys, and ultimately save people and the world. He was looked upon as low level trash by Vegeta and by the Buu arc he's one of the strongest beings in existence. A mountain man has basically become a God, pretty unlikely in my book.

[Cipher]

No. It's a(n insane) martial-arts story.

I think there's a certain case to be made for GT and the movies, where the cast take on a much more protector-like attitude, basically being proactive heroes first and martial-artists second (sooooometimes), but it's not an element that's present in the original series, which already fits snugly into another genre.

[Kunzait_83]

No. It's a(n insane) martial-arts story.

I think there's a certain case to be made for GT and the movies, where the cast take on a much more protector-like attitude, basically being proactive heroes first and martial-artists second (sooooometimes), but it's not an element that's present in the original series, which already fits snugly into another genre.

As far as the Z movies go, the main ones that spring to mind where the heroes take on a proactive protector role (to save the world, or at least A world) are 3, 4, 6, 13, and maaaaaaaaaaybe partially 12?

In movies 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 (the vast overwhelming majority of them) they're almost always specifically sought out by enemies (who want to steal or kidnap something or someone from them by force, or otherwise just want revenge for something personal) and the fighting is largely of a personal or self-defensive nature. Be it Garlic Jr. kidnapping Gohan for his Dragon Ball, Dr. Wheelo kidnapping Bulma and Muten Roshi for the latter's strong martial artist body, Coola seeking revenge against Goku for his brother's death, #13-15's seeking out Goku to kill on Gero's behalf, Bojack and his thugs targeting a tournament filled with the strongest martial artists on Earth (which natch includes our heroes), and Paragus and then later Brolli seeking to kill Vegeta and Goku respectively for personal revenge.

Pretty much about ALL of those are fairly clear-cut martial arts action/adventure storylines.

Its only in 3 and 6 where a god (Kaio and Dende/Kami respectively) personally requests of our heroes that they defend a planet (Earth and New Namek respectively) on their behalf, and then in 4 where Earth itself is directly attacked by invading demons (and one deranged Namekian) and our heroes step up to protect it, and then in 13 where the catalyst for everything is Great Saiyaman's actual, literal costumed superheroics (one of the only times we EVER see it taken even remotely seriously at any point in the series).

12's kinda half and half. Its divided between two stories: the main story is Goku and Paikuhan's little do-over of the Anoyoichi Budokai being interrupted by Janemba being accidentally set loose on the afterlife itself. The B story is an army of the undead, brought about by Janemba's release, attacking Earth, and our (living) heroes defending it. The latter probably falls into the proactive protector mold far more snugly than the former.

Bu then once more, even within those movies (3, 4, 6, 12, and 13), for all of their plots' "save the world" nature, those movies are otherwise STILL chock full of the series' usual mystical kung fu/wuxia tropes being thrown about left and right. In case you at any point ever forget for a second what kind of series we're otherwise dealing with there.

Out of 13 movies though that's... not a whole lot much overall where you could try to even begin to make that sort of "these guys are a team of superheroes" case. Not a whole lot much at all.

And of course, none of the 4 original DB movies come even within miles of this argument in any way at all.

[Cipher]

Re: Above: That's all true. I was thinking of specifically 3 and 4. And 5 gets so overshadowed by the "Goku heals a bird" moment that I tend to forget the setup for the action.

I'd certainly never make the argument that it's a superhero series. I just wanted to note that some of the ancillary material might be responsible for people thinking that to the extent that they do. But yeah, not all of it, and I wouldn't call it its principle genre at all.

(I wouldn't actually make the argument for GT either, by the way. Characters head out to save the day in one way or another in all three arcs, but it never really presents itself in that genre and flows pretty naturally on from the end of Z. It's all pretty personal stuff too.)

[Ripper 30]

No. its not really a Superhero Story, it's about a group of Martial Artists who are fighting new enemies and test their strength. they may do heroic shit here and there but still they are not Super heroes.

[DragonBallFoodie]

Technically, there are different kinds of superheroes. Shonen is a superhero genre.

The Z-Fighters are the imperfect kind that are cool and spectacular and well-intentioned but not exactly peace-keeping and reliable.

[Kunzait_83]

Shonen is a superhero genre.

1) For the eleventy billionth time, Shonen is not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, NOT A GENRE. NOT A GENRE AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. AT. ALL. Shonen is a demographic. All Shonen as a manga/anime industry term means is "made for little boys", as in elementary school age (5 to 13 usually). It simply means "children's comic or cartoon". That's it. It is NOT IN ANY WAY a classification of story-type or subject matter. In the least, tiniest bit.

Calling Shonen manga or anime a "genre" would be akin to saying that in America, everything from Sesame Street, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Blues Clues, Rocko's Modern Life, Doug, Dora the Explorer, Justice League, Samurai Jack, The Pirates of Dark Water, Power Rangers, Tiny Toon Adventures, Teen Titans, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and so on and so forth are ALL part of the exact same genre. Which if course isn't just wrong, its downright asinine.

2) Because Shonen is a demographic group, it contains NUMEROUS genres within it. So stuff that everyone here knows like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, Toriko, My Hero Academia, etc. are all Shonen. Setting completely aside the fact that, with the sole notable exception of Academia, that NONE of those other titles qualify as "superhero" stories in the first place (DB = martial arts, Naruto = ninjas, = One Piece = pirate adventures, Bleach = supernatural action/adventure, Fullmetal Alchemist = scifi/fantasy/steampunk-ish adventure, Yu Yu = martial arts, Hunter x Hunter = action/adventure, Toriko = action/adventure... with chefs... wtf), there are COUNTLESS other manga and anime under the Shonen banner that are UNMISTAKABLY not in the slightest possible least bit superhero related but instead are blatantly and recognizably other genres entirely.

Area 88 is a Shonen manga/anime that is a fairly grounded war drama about fighter pilots fighting a mercenary's proxy war for a middle eastern kingdom. Rokudenashi Blues is a Shonen manga that is a wistful coming of age story about the lives a group of high school yanki/bosozoku street thugs, one of whom wishes to become a boxer. Ashita no Joe/Tomorrow's Joe is a Shonen boxing drama about a runaway orphan living in poverty on the streets who trains to become a professional boxer and goes against the world's greatest champions and is very much akin to a manga/anime take on Rocky. Venus Wars is a Shonen sci fi/war series about the planet Venus being colonized by humans and a great war between the two biggest government nations on the planet, which then juggles political intrigue between the two sides as well as the story of a group of daredevil competitive hoverbike racers who are arrested for their involvement in anti-war activities and are forcibly conscripted to fight as soldiers.

Drifting Classroom is an out and out balls to the wall Shonen horror series about a 6th grade classroom that gets transported to a supernatural dimension filled with monsters and paranormal entities seeking to either kill all of the children and teachers, or slowly drive them insane. Violence Jack, which was indeed a Shonen series for its first half, is a post-apocalyptic exploitation epic about much of Japan being destroyed and cut off from the rest of the world via a tremendous earthquake that devastates the entire island, leaving only frightened survivors, marauding gangs and wannabe despots, and a mysterious hulking mountain of a giant man called only "Jack" carving a bloody swath through episodic stories focusing on different groups of survivors and their tormentors. Mermaid Saga is a Shonen horror series about various characters who consume the flesh of mermaids and attain from it immortality, and how they handle and use (or abuse) the longevity... often with dire and grotesque consequences.

Wild 7 is a Shonen action/crime series about a motorcycle police unit made up of convicted thugs, Yakuza, bosozoku hoods, etc. who are secretly dispatched by the Japanese National Police Agency to use their underworld knowledge and connections to help take down criminal organizations that are protected from the law by corrupt politicians. Bastard!! is a Shonen dark/gothic sword and sorcery fantasy series along the lines of Conan the Barbarian and D&D, where a group of dark wizards attack a magical kingdom and have their former leader's banished spirit awakened inside a small boy by the kingdom's head mage in order to be used as a weapon against his former comrades. Fist of the North Star is a Shonen post apocalyptic martial arts epic about a wandering martial arts master called Kenshiro who roams a ruined planet Earth that's been rendered into an annihilated wasteland from nuclear war, searching for his long lost lover Yuria who was kidnapped by the leader of a rival martial arts school.

Captain Tsubasa is a famous Shonen sports series about soccer. KochiKame is a Shonen farcical comedy series about a small neighborhood police station on the outskirts of downtown Tokyo and a middle aged cop who's been working the beat there for years and dreams of striking it rich through various absurd money making schemes. Cat's Eye is a Shonen crime/romance series following the exploits of two sisters who are highly skilled cat burglars/art thieves and the complications between the older sister and her fiance, who is a cop that's investigating their burglaries and heists. City Hunter is a Shonen detective noir/comedy following the various hardboiled cases (and farcical romantic hijnks) of a hotshot private investigator named Ryo Saeba and his hapless assistant Kaori.

Kimagure Orange Road is a Shonen romantic coming of age dramedy with some light-supernatural elements, following the complex teenage love lives of a young esper and various other normal teenage guys and girls in the high school of the new town that he and his esper family move into. Urusei Yatsura of course is a classic Shonen raunchy sci fi high school comedy about an alien princess named Lum who comes to Earth with her family and gets engaged to a bumbling, horndog doofus of an average high school boy named Ataru and gets involved in the absurd screwups of his eclectic and weird group of friends. Ranma 1/2 meanwhile is a Shonen martial arts/sex comedy about the gender-bending hijinks of a young martial artist who's fallen victim to a Chinese hot spring with a curse put on it where anyone who falls into a spring is cursed to be transformed into and back from whoever or whatever had drowned in each spring hundreds or thousands of years ago with a simple splash of hot or cold water.

Note what ALL of those Shonen series (a bunch of them outright iconic classics) are commonly lacking? Superheroes, or any faintest trace of them. Out of ALL the series I mentioned up top, the ONLY one that is in ANY way superhero-affiliated at all is My Hero Academia. Granted there are other Shonen series that ARE indeed within the superhero genre to one extent or another (Guyver, Devilman, etc.), but Shonen, as a VERY broad demographic, is chock full of a vast, vast, VAST quantity and variety of other different genres. To an incredibly eclectic degree. Far and away beyond even everything I mentioned up above.

The one and only thing that unites all of the above series, and countless others unnamed, under the banner of Shonen is that they're Japanese comics and cartoons aimed at small boys in grade school. Nothing more.

Shonen isn't a genre of any sort, superhero or otherwise, it doesn't contain any "tropes" that are in any which way unique to or uniting it, and "Battle Shonen" isn't a fucking real thing that means anything at all other than "post-Dragon Ball Shonen action series that vaguely try to rip it off to varying degrees". This idea of Shonen meaning "the Japanese manga equivalent to Marvel and DC" is something that is COMPLETELY AND WHOLLY MADE UP IN THE MINDS OF POST-TOONAMI ANIME U.S. ANIME FANS EXCLUSIVELY who have managed to come to this silly conclusion (and thoroughly spread it across the internet like a virus) primarily due to their largely having a RIDICULOUSLY narrow breadth of knowledge and interest in anime and manga as a much broader whole of a medium and art form beyond what they saw on Cartoon Network as kids 17/18 years ago and whatever they've come across or have had aggressively marketed to them in the U.S. throughout all the years since then (largely by FUNimation) that's in any which way at all similar to those shows.

And that's to say nothing of the even YOUNGER fans who are simply piggybacking most of THEIR similarly (mis)conceptions of Shonen from the above misguided and ill-informed views of the now-older late 90s/early 2000s CN kids (who have spent the ensuing decade and a half now spewing all kinds of various incorrect/wrongheaded perspectives on manga and anime on the internet, largely and frustratingly unchallenged), thus contributing to the continued raw inertia of this whole false meme.

[ABED]

I would argue that Yu Yu Hakusho is in the vein of a superhero story. There's martial arts in it, but it is Yusuke's job as the spirit realm detective to stop supernatural threats to the human realm. Splitting hairs, but I just thought I'd throw my two cents in on that issue.

[Kunzait_83]

I would argue that Yu Yu Hakusho is in the vein of a superhero story. There's martial arts in it, but it is Yusuke's job as the spirit realm detective to stop supernatural threats to the human realm. Splitting hairs, but I just thought I'd throw my two cents in on that issue.

I can see how one might think that at first glance, but its also worth pointing out that martial artists who use their supernatural Qigong/Chi/Ki cultivating skills as ghost hunters/exterminators is in itself a very, very well worn and notable Wuxia trope to the point of being an entire subgenre within the broader genre as a whole (horror-wuxia if you will). Stuff like Spooky Encounters and the Mr. Vampire franchise being some immediately noteworthy examples, as well as it cropping up in everything from various Shaw Bros. features like Shaolin Prince to other famous genre mashup Wuxia like A Chinese Ghost Story (where Wu Ma's character Yin Chik Ha is effectively what Yusuke and co. are: a powerful martial arts master who uses his incredible Chi mastery as a roving demon hunter who freely travels between the human and spirit worlds defending the living from the dead).

The archetype has its roots in ancient Chinese tales of wandering Buddhist/Taoist monks who made their living as "traveling exorcists", using their martial Chi cultivation and spiritual power for vanquishing evil spirits and demonic entities from the homes of different villages and kingdoms... usually for a fee of some sort.

Yu Yu Hakusho is a Japanese anime/manga take on countless Wuxia/supernatural fantasy martial arts stories which center on powerful fighters whose main focus is using their supernatural martial arts skills for the express purpose of warding off spiritual ghouls and a vast bestiary's worth of Eastern supernatural monsters derived straight from Shinto and Buddhist folklore as the wuxia/fantasy kung fu equivalent of "ghostbusters" of sorts.

They act as protectors for sure, more so than most other Wuxia archetypal figures: but martial arts training and skill mastery still rests at the heart of most of those stories as well, and often the ghost/demon vanquishing is usually depicted as much more of a profession or a trade that some wulin fighters choose to apply their martial arts skills to rather than as a predominantly moralistic crusade (though there are certainly without question elements of that to it as well, its just hardly the key central focus in the same way it would be in most Western superhero fiction).

Think of them as the Chinese kung fu fantasy/Wuxia equivalent to the kinds of European vampire hunters you'd find in gothic horror fiction like Dracula and such (your Van Helsings and the like). Or like the Belmont family in the Castlevania series. There may be a BIT of overlap with some superheroic tropes found there (especially when you factor in stuff like Buffy, which took as much from the aforementioned kinds of gothic horror fiction as it did actual superhero material like X-Men and whatnot, and managed to blend those together fairly seamlessly), but its hardly the kind of thing that is just out and out in lockstep as a part of that exact same genre.

Yu Yu Hakusho certainly is no exception in that regard, which is a large reason as to why the "Eastern afterlife as modern office culture" motif that YYH takes from Dragon Ball (one of really the relatively few concretely Dragon Ball-specific things that YYH takes strictly from it) is expanded upon so much more in YYH and used to a much greater degree there than it is in DB: it fits in a lot more with the theme of "martial artist ghost hunter as a trade skill and profession to be mastered" that lies at the center of most horror-themed wuxia that YYH takes itself from. Though certainly YYH also has more than its share of a straight competitive Wuxia narrative blended into the "ghost hunter" stories as well, making for a really fun, cool mixture.

Fun, cool, unique genre mixtures being, again, what late 80s/early 90s Wuxia/fantasy martial arts media was largely specializing in during that time period.

[ABED]

Thanks. Is there something that differentiates the Wuxia genre from a hero that happens to use martial arts?

[Kunzait_83]

Thanks. Is there something that differentiates the Wuxia genre from a hero that happens to use martial arts?

The element of Chinese fantasy and Taoist supernatural folklore is probably the main, key element. Though that being said, a few major qualifiers have shifted slightly over time as the genre has evolved.

A big example there is the use of/presence of Jianghu, the idealized and fantasy-fied take on ancient feudal/Dynastic China (and also where all manner of Buddhist, Shinto, and Taoist folklore is 100% real) that characterizes the setting of so very, very, very much of the genre as a whole. Time used to be that Jianghu's presence as the story's setting was just as much a key qualifier marking the genre as the presence of supernatural martial arts abilities, mythical creatures and gods, etc.

But over the years, especially as the latter 70s, 80s, and 90s set in, and Wuxia began to be more and more routinely blended with attributes from other genres, there have been more and more examples of Wuxia stories where the setting is transposed to the modern present day, to other historical settings (like Chinese Hero largely taking place in 1930s New York City and Chicago and pitting its super powerful Chinese Youxia kung fu protagonist against tommy gun-wielding prohibition-era mobsters) or even to futuristic sci fi settings, and so forth. Or having more modern/futuristic settings cross over with Jianghu via time or space travel plot devices.

That being said, even with the Jianghu setting swapped out for more modern ones, countless tropes and archetypes of the genre are always still recognizable, be it characters acting as Youxia/Xian/Monk/Assassin/etc. analogues, fighting tournaments, the presence of a secretive Wulin community of superpowerful martial arts masters, mystical artifacts, heavenly beings, and creatures from Eastern folklore, etc.

Marvel Comics' Iron Fist for example without a doubt qualifies as a Wuxia-themed Superhero: both because the character's back history, his inner motivations, and his powers are derived from the genre's playbook, and also because K'un-Lun (the Chinese Kung Fu Fantasy setting that is central to both his origins and his various storylines) is effectively the Marvel Universe's own very blatantly obvious rendition of the Jianghu setting/concept.

Dragon Ball stands out for its VERY unique and distinctive take on the Jianghu setting/concept: Toriyama is one of the relatively RARE authors/creators who opted to COMBINE the classical Jianghu setting with modern and sci fi flourishes, creating a hybrid world where elements of both simultaneously exist side by side (as opposed to either just choosing between one or the other, or having the narrative switch and cycle between them while leaving them distinctively separate and apart from one another). VERY few other genre entries have ever attempted anything AT ALL like that, and certainly for sure not to anywhere near the insanely ambitious degree of scope that Toriyama went for (and he may well even be possibly the first to try it at all to boot, though by all means don't quote me on that).

And that's to say nothing of his unique technological design elements and distinctive sense of whimsy lending such a specific and unmistakable personality to the whole thing. I've said this before in the Wuxia thread, but Dragon Ball's setting can best be characterized as a Dr. Slump-ified Jianghu. Its definitely and unmistakably a rendition of classical Jianghu of countless Wuxia myths and tales... but run through the same creative filter that begat a place like Penguin Village. Which makes it both more than eminently familiar to veteran fans of the genre, as well as at the same time and in the same breath incredibly fresh and one of a kind unique. A pretty incredible feat all things considered: I personally consider the realization of DB's distinctive Toriyama-ized Jianghu setting to be something of a minor triumph in and of itself within the broader components of the series.

But back to the main issue of differentiating Wuxia from other martial arts genres: once more, Western medieval fantasy acts as a perfect analogue.

Think of the difference between say... a movie like Braveheart or Gladiator vs Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia. On one end of the spectrum you have just plain old, flat out grounded in realism historical sword and sandal epics. And on the other you have pure, straight up fantasy. As well as works that exist somewhere in the middle, like many versions of Conan the Barbarian or things like The 13th Warrior. While the grounded medieval epics CAN in many cases share some common tropes that overlap with the outright high fantasy stuff (particularly with things like military campaign-heavy plotlines and such), there's ultimately a stark divide in the form of fairytale-like myth and supernatural folklore that separates them into two distinctly different animals.

Chinese (or Chinese-derived) martial arts fiction as a whole has a spectrum (with grounded kung fu on one end, and Wuxia on the other end) that works much the same exact way. On one end you've got grounded, straight up non-Wuxia kung fu fiction: things like 36th Chamber of Shaolin or Drunken Master or Bruce Lee's oeuvre. And on the other end you've got balls to the wall Wuxia, characterized by stuff like Zu Warriors or the Condor Heroes trilogy or Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, and so on (to say nothing of all the Tsui Hark-esque batshit crazy genre-mixing fare from the 80s and 90s).

And then you've got some works that exist somewhere in the middle, like half of the Venoms Mob's classic filmography (stuff like House of Traps and Crippled Avengers) which is somewhat Wuxia-kung fu fantasy, and somewhat grounded. And once more, like with Western fantasy, tropes can overlap plenty between both ends of the spectrum (like many of Bruce Lee's characters heavily exhibiting Youxia-like traits, despite being otherwise in NO way whatsoever Wuxia stories).

And of course in many cases in both Western Medieval Fantasy and Eastern Wuxia Martial Arts Fantasy, you've got plenty of works that blend actual historical figures and events (of their respective cultures) with the mythical folklore and supernatural fantasy tropes/settings (once again, of their respective cultures): another commonality that they share among the zillions of others.

And obviously of course, and this should be thuddingly apparent, modern action stuff by folks like Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme and the like aren't even remotely within the same genre playing field as actual classical martial arts fiction of ANY sort, either on the grounded end or the fantasy Wuxia end. Same even goes for a decent chunk of Jackie Chan's output (though certainly not ALL of it of course) when it comes to stuff like the Police Story series and Rumble in the Bronx and so forth. Those are basically just standard Western crime/cop/action thrillers in every which way that just so happen to heavily feature protagonists who know martial arts.

Basically to sum up: Wuxia is primarily characterized by the presence, to whatever degree or another, of classical martial arts fiction tropes and character archetypes combined with healthy doses of supernatural fantasy from various Eastern religious folklore. They are ultimately Chinese Kung Fu Fairy Tales (even when the Japanese and the Koreans are doing it), which should generally in most cases be self-evidently distinctive from just plain old fashioned grounded Kung Fu narratives.

And Dragon Ball itself is ultimately nothing if not a Chinese Kung Fu Fairy Tale itself. Done by a wonky Japanese dude with a fondness for stupid dick & fart jokes and model airplanes.

[Ripper 30]

Thanks. Is there something that differentiates the Wuxia genre from a hero that happens to use martial arts?

The element of Chinese fantasy and Taoist supernatural folklore is probably the main, key element. Though that being said, a few major qualifiers have shifted slightly over time as the genre has evolved.

A big example there is the use of/presence of Jianghu, the idealized and fantasy-fied take on ancient feudal/Dynastic China (and also where all manner of Buddhist, Shinto, and Taoist folklore is 100% real) that characterizes the setting of so very, very, very much of the genre as a whole. Time used to be that Jianghu's presence as the story's setting was just as much a key qualifier marking the genre as the presence of supernatural martial arts abilities, mythical creatures and gods, etc.

But over the years, especially as the latter 70s, 80s, and 90s set in, and Wuxia began to be more and more routinely blended with attributes from other genres, there have been more and more examples of Wuxia stories where the setting is transposed to the modern present day, to other historical settings (like Chinese Hero largely taking place in 1930s New York City and Chicago and pitting its super powerful Chinese Youxia kung fu protagonist against tommy gun-wielding prohibition-era mobsters) or even to futuristic sci fi settings, and so forth. Or having more modern/futuristic settings cross over with Jianghu via time or space travel plot devices.

That being said, even with the Jianghu setting swapped out for more modern ones, countless tropes and archetypes of the genre are always still recognizable, be it characters acting as Youxia/Xian/Monk/Assassin/etc. analogues, fighting tournaments, the presence of a secretive Wulin community of superpowerful martial arts masters, mystical artifacts, heavenly beings, and creatures from Eastern folklore, etc.

Marvel Comics' Iron Fist for example without a doubt qualifies as a Wuxia-themed Superhero: both because the character's back history, his inner motivations, and his powers are derived from the genre's playbook, and also because K'un-Lun (the Chinese Kung Fu Fantasy setting that is central to both his origins and his various storylines) is effectively the Marvel Universe's own very blatantly obvious rendition of the Jianghu setting/concept.

Dragon Ball stands out for its VERY unique and distinctive take on the Jianghu setting/concept: Toriyama is one of the relatively RARE authors/creators who opted to COMBINE the classical Jianghu setting with modern and sci fi flourishes, creating a hybrid world where elements of both simultaneously exist side by side (as opposed to either just choosing between one or the other, or having the narrative switch and cycle between them while leaving them distinctively separate and apart from one another). VERY few other genre entries have ever attempted anything AT ALL like that, and certainly for sure not to anywhere near the insanely ambitious degree of scope that Toriyama went for (and he may well even be possibly the first to try it at all to boot, though by all means don't quote me on that).

And that's to say nothing of his unique technological design elements and distinctive sense of whimsy lending such a specific and unmistakable personality to the whole thing. I've said this before in the Wuxia thread, but Dragon Ball's setting can best be characterized as a Dr. Slump-ified Jianghu. Its definitely and unmistakably a rendition of classical Jianghu of countless Wuxia myths and tales... but run through the same creative filter that begat a place like Penguin Village. Which makes it both more than eminently familiar to veteran fans of the genre, as well as at the same time and in the same breath incredibly fresh and one of a kind unique. A pretty incredible feat all things considered: I personally consider the realization of DB's distinctive Toriyama-ized Jianghu setting to be something of a minor triumph in and of itself within the broader components of the series.

But back to the main issue of differentiating Wuxia from other martial arts genres: once more, Western medieval fantasy acts as a perfect analogue.

Think of the difference between say... a movie like Braveheart or Gladiator vs Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia. On one end of the spectrum you have just plain old, flat out grounded in realism historical sword and sandal epics. And on the other you have pure, straight up fantasy. As well as works that exist somewhere in the middle, like many versions of Conan the Barbarian or things like The 13th Warrior. While the grounded medieval epics CAN in many cases share some common tropes that overlap with the outright high fantasy stuff (particularly with things like military campaign-heavy plotlines and such), there's ultimately a stark divide in the form of fairytale-like myth and supernatural folklore that separates them into two distinctly different animals.

Chinese (or Chinese-derived) martial arts fiction as a whole has a spectrum (with grounded kung fu on one end, and Wuxia on the other end) that works much the same exact way. On one end you've got grounded, straight up non-Wuxia kung fu fiction: things like 36th Chamber of Shaolin or Drunken Master or Bruce Lee's oeuvre. And on the other end you've got balls to the wall Wuxia, characterized by stuff like Zu Warriors or the Condor Heroes trilogy or Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, and so on (to say nothing of all the Tsui Hark-esque batshit crazy genre-mixing fare from the 80s and 90s).

And then you've got some works that exist somewhere in the middle, like half of the Venoms Mob's classic filmography (stuff like House of Traps and Crippled Avengers) which is somewhat Wuxia-kung fu fantasy, and somewhat grounded. And once more, like with Western fantasy, tropes can overlap plenty between both ends of the spectrum (like many of Bruce Lee's characters heavily exhibiting Youxia-like traits, despite being otherwise in NO way whatsoever Wuxia stories).

And of course in many cases in both Western Medieval Fantasy and Eastern Wuxia Martial Arts Fantasy, you've got plenty of works that blend actual historical figures and events (of their respective cultures) with the mythical folklore and supernatural fantasy tropes/settings (once again, of their respective cultures): another commonality that they share among the zillions of others.

And obviously of course, and this should be thuddingly apparent, modern action stuff by folks like Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme and the like aren't even remotely within the same genre playing field as actual classical martial arts fiction of ANY sort, either on the grounded end or the fantasy Wuxia end. Same even goes for a decent chunk of Jackie Chan's output (though certainly not ALL of it of course) when it comes to stuff like the Police Story series and Rumble in the Bronx and so forth. Those are basically just standard Western crime/cop/action thrillers in every which way that just so happen to heavily feature protagonists who know martial arts.

Basically to sum up: Wuxia is primarily characterized by the presence, to whatever degree or another, of classical martial arts fiction tropes and character archetypes combined with healthy doses of supernatural fantasy from various Eastern religious folklore. They are ultimately Chinese Kung Fu Fairy Tales (even when the Japanese and the Koreans are doing it), which should generally in most cases be self-evidently distinctive from just plain old fashioned grounded Kung Fu narratives.

And Dragon Ball itself is ultimately nothing if not a Chinese Kung Fu Fairy Tale itself. Done by a wonky Japanese dude with a fondness for stupid dick & fart jokes and model airplanes.

So both Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho had wuxia in it still yyh had an upbeat modern music and Dragon Ball had an Old Classical Type of music, do you think the music has got anything to do with Wuxia?
Because if it does Then why do Other animes which have influence of Wuxia like Yu Yu Hakusho and Naruto have more upbeat and Modern sounding music?