What do you think of the manga's ending?

[emperior]

The ending of the manga has always been quite a controversial one, especially for how abrupt it is.
I personally like it because it fits with Goku's character and with the serie in general, although I wouldn't mind it if Toriyama came up with a more conclusive ending to his story, as there are some parts of the manga which felt more conclusive than the actual ending.
We don't know if Toriyama will ever change it with Super, but if things keep going at this pace it's safe to assume that eventually Super will go past chapter 519, and at that point Toriyama would have to come up with a different ending.
Maybe he actually has something in mind now? It's worth saying that at the time he wrote the manga's ending, Toriyama was incredibly burnt out by Dragon Ball and just wanted to end it. It's safe to assume he came up with the ending on the fly and didn't put too much care into it. In fact it is so open ended that it actually felt like the whole Uub introduction was the beginning of a new arc.
Of course if we get a new ending there's always the risk of it being badly received, even more than the current one. But I expect Toriyama to change his ending only if he comes up with a better one, so I trust his judgement considering he is the author.

Here there are some fan thoughts: http://www.kanzenshuu.com/features/fan- ... ll-ending/
I personally like the idea of Herms, and find it every interesting:

"In a bonus comic Toriyama drew explaining the writing process for Dragon Ball, he has a picture of Goku as an old man, saying it was one of his ideas for how to end the series. I think an interesting alternate ending would have been if instead of being reincarnated right away, Boo is reincarnated after a few centuries (to purify his soul or whatever). So Oob could be born in the distant future, team up with a Bulma analogue to go searching for the dragonballs, and meet geezer Goku just like Goku met Kame-sennin. And then Goku could give Oob the Kintoun like in the kanzenban ending. Just an idea I had."

That could have worked, but maybe the "things end up coming full circle" would be too clichè?

So what do you guys think about the ending? Would you like to see Toriyama coming up with a new one in Super? And if you could, how would you change it?
I know this has probably been discussed to death, but it's always interesting to see other people's thoughts, especially from new users who probably never had the chance to discuss it on the forums, and some of the old ones who discussed it to death may have actually changed their opinion about it.
There's also the possibility of Super giving us a new ending to the story, so speculating about our "perfect ending" isn't pointless talking anymore.

[Ssjcell]

I like the ending of the manga and I think he can easily fit super with the ending. The only thing that has changed is how strong uub is . He went from super strong to super duper strong and it still fits. That is of course unless super just goes on forever.

[OhHiRenan]

I adore it. It’s an ending that captures all the series’ core themes and blends them together into one final character beat for Goku. I honestly could not think of a more fitting end for the series.

I’ll be incredibly disapppinted if it gets a major make over. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like that’ll happen.

[ABED]

Not the biggest fan of Uub, but after reading many of the arguments from those that like it, I've come to appreciate it more, especially what it means thematically for the series and Goku. It's still a tad bittersweet.

[Waluigiman]

I find it too cliffhanging and somewhat sad to be an ending. It's probably why I prefer the episode of Goku protecting pterodactyl eggs as the true ending. The whole family and friends were together and everyone including Vegeta were happy. It is also a nice contrast to the begging of Dragon Ball because Goku killed a pterodactyl and end it with him protecting the unhatched critters of the same species.

[ABED]

How was the ending a cliffhanger? At most, you could say it's open ended, but not remotely a cliffhanger. All the loose ends are tied up and there's closure for the characters.

Interesting pterodactyl parallel. I hadn't thought of that.

[Chuquita]

I used to be fairly neutral on it, but nowadays in this post-Super world...I don't really care for it. Uub's got that typical nice guy personality that is wonderful in real life, but boring in fiction, imo. I don't like the idea of Gokû running off to train someone else when Pan is right there. I didn't like having a tournament interrupted in front of the reader for a second time in a row. Bulma's EoZ hair looks so bad.

All of these contributed to why when the final Dragon Ball Uniqlo shirts were posted earlier this week, I chose the Cell arc shirt instead of the EoZ shirt, even though my Gokû preference normally lies with base Goku with flowy dougi.

Right now the only things I like about EoZ are Pan, a handful of character designs, and the idea of the next tournament.

[Waluigiman]

How was the ending a cliffhanger? At most, you could say it's open ended, but not remotely a cliffhanger. All the loose ends are tied up and there's closure for the characters.

Interesting pterodactyl parallel. I hadn't thought of that.

That was a poor choice of words, my bad.

[ABED]

How was the ending a cliffhanger? At most, you could say it's open ended, but not remotely a cliffhanger. All the loose ends are tied up and there's closure for the characters.

Interesting pterodactyl parallel. I hadn't thought of that.

That was a poor choice of words, my bad.

No biggie. I'm also fond of the party/pterodactyl episode. I'm not sure the parallel was intentional on Toei's part, but if it was, kudos on them for remembering continuity.

[ulisa]

I’ve never been a fan of the manga ending. I’m not a fan of Uub, mainly because I don’t find him interesting and I think his role could have been filled by a character we knew already.

I do like the party filler episode (and I’d be totally fine with that) but honestly, if they wanted to stick with the Goku training someone, it really should have been Pan. The series starts with Goku having achieved his skills by being trained by his grandfather and I think a call back to that with him training Pan would have been great. I always pictured, with the tournament done, Pan approaches Goku, declaring something like “Grandpa! You just wait! I’m gonna be a better fighter than you!” Cue Goku’s giddy excitement

[MyVisionity]

I think it was nice to get a short epilogue for the series, because without it the series would have felt a bit incomplete (even with the party filler ep).

I liked seeing that Gohan had become a scholar, and that Buruma had, according to Goku, become an "oba-san". Those sorts of things brought the characters "full circle" in many respects.

I also like the little touches the anime team made like using the old DB training BGM, and them giving Furuya Tohru a line near the very end. Also appreciated the last few voiceless shots of Kame-Sennin at the end.

The Oob stuff might be my least favorite aspect of the ending, but it doesn't bother me too much. I agree though that Goku fighting and training Pan would have been an interesting choice.

[Desassina]

It didn't feel like an ending to me, but a postponed follow up, whether it was Dragon Ball GT or Super in between. Come to think of it, authors who use the passing of the torch effect return to the series at their most creative, and give it back to their main characters. Yahiko wasn't Kenshin's successor with the reversed blade sword after all, but that's how the series ended with an extra chapter then, and an OVA by the animation studios.

[KBABZ]

In regards to the anime's extra ending, I like the party idea and Goku reflecting on where he started, but the pterodactyl egg subplot came off as incredibly stupid for me. It would have worked if Goku were still a kid, but he isn't and it just comes off as ridiculous to me. I think the JSAT special does a better job as acting like a party-to-celebrate-our-defeat-of-Buu episode.

With the manga's ending, it is a bit weird, but considering the sheer amount of content before it, it's hard to get too upset about it. It's very much meant to be a "and so the adventure continues" ending, so I never saw it as Goku leaving with family with Uub forever sort of deal.

[sunsetshimmer]

I never liked it. It was easily the worst ending in DB franchise until DBS (well, anime at least). Goku just randomly leave everyone to train kid he just met.
That filler episode in Z where Goku was looking for eggs was better ending than what we actually got.
If DB ended after Cell or Frieza, it would also be a lot better ending.

[sintzu]

As it is now I don't like it that much but with Toyotarou confirming things will eventually lead into it I'm hoping it'll be changed up and improved upon. One of the things I didn't like about it is how out of nowhere it came from as I've always felt there could've been more told if Toriyama didn't get burned out, something that's being done now so once we reach it again that feeling won't be there, at least not for me.

[KBABZ]

If I were to make an adjustment to the ending, I'd keep it largely the same but have the departure feel more... temporary? Like have some clues that Goku will at least VISIT every now and again, maybe when he's explaining the situation to Pan, and it's not going to be forever.

[Robo4900]

With something like Dragon Ball, I don't think doing a perfect ending is possible. With the amount the story switches its tone, style, even its genre, bringing everything it's ever done to a perfect conclusion is just an impossible task.
With that in mind, I do think this ending did a good job. One thing that helped greatly is the Boo arc was nearly a hundred chapters long, pretty much the entirety of which is engineered to build up to the ending, and this finalé feeling it evokes even more strongly as it goes on is especially effective in the anime where you have the filler material in episodes 287 and 288, which really help bring this home, and makes everything feel like it's kind of settled down. That filler material probably could have functioned as a good way to end things, really, but the brief epilogue thing set 10 years later was necessary to fully round things off, and give a proper sense of finality to what is otherwise surprisingly a pretty sudden way to bring things to an end, given the fact the Boo arc basically spend most of its runtime building up to a full ending to things, which it for some reason kept seeming to cut off or subvert at the expense of the story, as if to hold the finalé back just a bit more so Toriyama could get things just the way he wants it for the epilogue...

Ultimately, I do still feel like this ending kind of fails in that it doesn't feel satisfying enough. A lot of people say it's a very Toriyama ending that gels perfectly with what he'd want to do, but I think that's more of a criticism of Toriyama's writing than the excuse for the ending leaving you somewhat cold a lot of people parade it around as.

The revised Kanzenban ending was better, and the anime's much longer telling of the whole thing was even better than that... But I think it has the same problem as the Cell arc does as an ending; you really want to know what happens next. This isn't a case of "Leave them wanting more", it's a case of the ending just kind of leaving you hanging. This is where the anime truly shines, of course, since GT brought us the best ending Dragon Ball could probably ever have in my view. It's not an ending Toriyama ever could have delivered us, but while many parade that around as a criticism of the ending itself, I consider it a further criticism of Toriyama's writing... He's great at writing the start of a story, and he's really great at building on that, and making things bigger, making things move on, and keeping things moving so you don't lose interest, but he's just not good at doing an ending...
Every time a Dragon Ball arc ends, it's kind of a "To be continued" type thing that's already setting up for the next thing. I think Toriyama found a very clever way of finding a somewhat satisfying ending within this limitation of his writing style, with the next thing at the end of the Boo arc being the 28th(?) Tenkaichi Budoukai and Boo's reincarnation in Oob, and the next thing after that being Goku training Oob for what GT would tell us turned out to be 5 years, which is where Z leaves us hanging, but it still does mean that the end of Z feels like you're kind of waiting for the next thing... What happens after Goku trains Oob?...

It's not a bad ending by any means, it's a perfectly fine ending, but it's deeply flawed, and I'm glad GT, the Dragon Ball Online timeline, and whatever new series follows on after Super and continues past the Z epilogue provide us with some much more satisfying, much more fitting endings. And I suppose that's one retroactive big strength of the original ending we happened upon; we don't just have one ending to the story, at the moment we have about three(Original manga/anime/Kanzenban, GT, Online), with probably more to come, which is actually quite nice; you have a lot of options to choose from for which ending you consider the "True" "Definitive" ending, and we probably have more on the way. That's honestly more fitting than any single ending could ever be for Dragon Ball, in my opinion.

So... Maybe this ending was perfect after all?

[emperior]

I agree so about the ending leaving things hanging off too much. I always wanted to see what’s next. I want to see Uub’s training, the methods Goku uses, Uub’s first battles etcetera. It would also be nice to see Goku teaching Uub to always aim to higher heights as Roshi taught. GT’s ending was very nice, but also a little too sad for what is Dragon Ball.
I think that probably, my ideal ending would be one that wraps up Goku and Vegeta as being the strongest beings ever, with them going out on a last big fight (as in DBO) but leaving behind a legacy of strong warriors, among which there would Uub, Pan, Goha, Goten, Trunks, Bra, Cabba, Caulifla, Kale etcetera. With the Dragon Balls still being there in case of need.
Goku and Vegeta would then go on to another realm, or the otherworld, where they would enjoy their existence fighting and training with their rivals and friends, with the possibility of being brought back to life if the need of their power ever arose.
Maybe it would be a bit too conclusive, but it’s probably for the best... I think? Not that I dislike the current ending, as it was intended to provoke that “I want more” feeling, and it really does it to perfection. But with Super’s new lore, I feel like we will have to go over the ending of the manga, if Toriyama doesn’t intend to wrap up the story in a few years.
Goku has like 4 years in-universe to become the strongest and to surpass the Daishinkan too, assuminge that he is indeed the strongest. That could be feasible, although I hope there will be lots of stories and that it won’t be rushed, which means that eventually they could get over the end of the manga, to also increase the tension and the stakes.

[Gligarman]

Honestly, after a decade and a half of a near constant work schedule between Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, one-shot manga, and freelance illustration including every Dragon Quest game, I'd say Toriyama earned whatever ending he chose.

[RandomGuy96]

I really do think this is probably the best ending for the series, from a narrative point of view. Or, at least, that it's better than any other point where the series could be ended even if the actual climax of the Buu arc was pretty shit. DB was never some grand overarching epic, and this ending acknowledges that.

I like how it ends on the note of "and the adventure goes on...!"; a small, subdued, open-ended conclusion where everything's wrapped up but a small window is still open as a distant finale to the final epic struggle where the universe-threatening, god-eating, ultimate monster was defeated in a long running battle that involved every hero and lasted most of an arc- and ended in said monster becoming a friend. We don't NEED to see what happens with Uub, what new adventures Goku and the gang will get into next (even though the narrator outright tells us that they will), we just need to know that they will happen. The ending is specifically designed for us to use our imaginations while not actually being let unsatisfied by any unresolved plot lines ("From now on, you'll have to see into their world with your own eyes... but maybe that will be even more fun"). And as much as I am annoyed by Goku, his final line ("And now, we'll get even stronger!") is just about the most fitting conclusion to the character possible.

Super and GT both shit on this nigh-perfect ending in their own ways.