Is Dragon Ball too closely tied to its own zeitgeist?

[KBABZ]

ASSJ Veggie's Final Flash, FPSSJ Goku's Kamehameha, 100% Perfect Cell's KHH were theorized to be able to inflict significant damage to Earth.

Personally I think people get too hung up on that "shake the Earth apart" thing, which if I recall correctly was a Funi dub line. In all three cases, the shots were fired away from (but still in the direct vicinity of) Earth and nothing happened. They only pose a threat if they actually strike Earth and (presumably) penetrate deep into it like with Frieza's attacks on Namek and planet Vegeta. Vegeta's Final Flash actually glanced across the surface and nothing happened.

That aside, these claims are often said by bystanders who say these things without any actual knowledge to back it up, like science or prior experience. The surge of power from kiai I don't think is meant to be 1:1 to the amount of ki a character actually has within them at that point in time, either. Ultimately these lines of dialogue aren't meant to be warnings that their claims may ACTUALLY happen, but more to serve as a yardstick that puts things into perspective.

And from an artistic standpoint, we've seen many cases of an attack that takes an incredibly long time to charge and have huge explosions later be fired rapidly and not be as impactful. For example, the Makangosappo blows up an entire MOUNTAIN when Raditz deflects it, but when four Perfect Cells fire it at Goku with 100,000x the increase, the explosion doesn't scale up and vaporize a chunk of the planet. It's scaled down to suit the story, namely to show that Cell is copying other people's moves based on inherited memory alone.

[ABED]

While Yuli Ban's post was interesting, the audience's ability to comprehend the power level has little to do with the drop in DB's quality. I think you give the audience too little credit. It's less that it's not relatable (was DB ever relatable?), rather it's an issue of dramatization. How do you dramatize the difference in scale of someone as powerful as Vegeta and someone who's said to be exponentially more powerful like Freeza? DB's issue is mostly a function of it going on too long. DB reached its natural ending point long ago, and I think every story has a shelf life. Most TV shows shouldn't go past 5 or 6 years.

[DragonBallFoodie]

What leads you to believe people are more cynical towards an fun adventure series?

Speaking on my own view, I'd divide the world into pre-2001, and post 2001 (specifically September). That month's event was a game changer which impacted on the world, and one of those impacts were people finding more worth in realistic gritty stories that were cynical, which resounded more than adventurous tales with a balance of fun and humor.

DB's issue is mostly a function of it going on too long. DB reached its natural ending point long ago, and I think every story has a shelf life. Most TV shows shouldn't go past 5 or 6 years.

Or maybe it should be a matter of pacing. One Piece, Fairy Tail, The Seven Deadly Sins made it past 5 years. DB may have shot off all its load and left nothing else for afterwards.

Then again, DB was a pioneer in its own way. Toriyama write the story the way he wanted to and didn't follow anyone else. His work had enough personality that it inspired a new generation of action tales.

[MasenkoHA]

and one of those impacts were people finding more worth in realistic gritty stories that were cynical, which resounded more than adventurous tales with a balance of fun and humor.

You’re realllllly stretching things here. Especially looking at what shonen anime is popular nowadays.

Or maybe it should be a matter of pacing. One Piece, Fairy Tail, The Seven Deadly Sins made it past 5 years. DB may have shot off all its load and left nothing else for afterwards.

Making it past 5 years and warranting still being around past 5 years are two totally different things. Just because those shows made it past 5 years (so did Dragon Ball) doesn’t mean they should.

One Piece certainly doesn’t need 150000 episodes

I agree with Abed for the most part though I generally found most shows having a shelf life of about 3-4 years.Not a hard and fast rule and always exceptions but that’s how it usually feels with me

[ABED]

What leads you to believe people are more cynical towards an fun adventure series?

Speaking on my own view, I'd divide the world into pre-2001, and post 2001 (specifically September). That month's event was a game changer which impacted on the world, and one of those impacts were people finding more worth in realistic gritty stories that were cynical, which resounded more than adventurous tales with a balance of fun and humor.

DB's issue is mostly a function of it going on too long. DB reached its natural ending point long ago, and I think every story has a shelf life. Most TV shows shouldn't go past 5 or 6 years.

Or maybe it should be a matter of pacing. One Piece, Fairy Tail, The Seven Deadly Sins made it past 5 years. DB may have shot off all its load and left nothing else for afterwards.

Then again, DB was a pioneer in its own way. Toriyama write the story the way he wanted to and didn't follow anyone else. His work had enough personality that it inspired a new generation of action tales.

Granted, I wasn't alive during the 1970's but the world did not become more cynical since then and that was a VERY cynical time. There was a real sense that America had long since seen its best days. Cinema reflected that. It's not something recent.

Shows going past 5 years isn't evidence that they should have, nor does it say they are still good. Given how long OP is and apparently far from over, I can't imagine it hasn't long since shot its wad. I still enjoy Supernatural, but the shows best days were a decade ago. DB overall kept getting better over the years and it peaked around the Saiyan arc. The Freeza arc would've been a fitting ending with some minor tinkering.

I generally found most shows having a shelf life of about 3-4 years.

Only three or four? I'd say it's more 4 or 5. It gives shows, especially sci-fi or fantasy, enough time to get a lot out of their premise but not stretch it out.

[Vijay]

ASSJ Veggie's Final Flash, FPSSJ Goku's Kamehameha, 100% Perfect Cell's KHH were theorized to be able to inflict significant damage to Earth.

Personally I think people get too hung up on that "shake the Earth apart" thing, which if I recall correctly was a Funi dub line. In all three cases, the shots were fired away from (but still in the direct vicinity of) Earth and nothing happened. They only pose a threat if they actually strike Earth and (presumably) penetrate deep into it like with Frieza's attacks on Namek and planet Vegeta. Vegeta's Final Flash actually glanced across the surface and nothing happened.

That aside, these claims are often said by bystanders who say these things without any actual knowledge to back it up, like science or prior experience. The surge of power from kiai I don't think is meant to be 1:1 to the amount of ki a character actually has within them at that point in time, either. Ultimately these lines of dialogue aren't meant to be warnings that their claims may ACTUALLY happen, but more to serve as a yardstick that puts things into perspective.

And from an artistic standpoint, we've seen many cases of an attack that takes an incredibly long time to charge and have huge explosions later be fired rapidly and not be as impactful. For example, the Makangosappo blows up an entire MOUNTAIN when Raditz deflects it, but when four Perfect Cells fire it at Goku with 100,000x the increase, the explosion doesn't scale up and vaporize a chunk of the planet. It's scaled down to suit the story, namely to show that Cell is copying other people's moves based on inherited memory alone.

Your confusin fillers way too much & nope they werent Funi dub lines

Veggie narrowed the angle as to not inflict damage to Earth, just as Goku did. Point is...both had sufficient energy flowing thru their bodies to blow-up the planet. And dat was Cell Saga. We're waay past beyond that with Bluper, Golden Frieza & whatnot which should've obliterated planet by mere shockwaves produced by their power-ups

Piccolo's makankossappo blew up mountains after grazing Raditz's armor. True. But Cell's sequence was pure filler, which cannot be brought into arguement as it'll open whole new can of what-if scenarios

[MasenkoHA]

I generally found most shows having a shelf life of about 3-4 years.

Only three or four? I'd say it's more 4 or 5. It gives shows, especially sci-fi or fantasy, enough time to get a lot out of their premise but not stretch it out.

Like I said not a hard and fast rule but I generally found most shows I latch on tend to decline after their third or fourth year. (Not always of course!)

The first two seasons of Orange is the new Black are sublime. Season 3 was rough but decent. Season 4 was good if rocky. Season 5 was unwatchable.

Weeds had a solid three years then became horrible after that.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer peaked in its fantastic third season with season 4 being mediocre to me (still some fantastic episodes like Something Blue and Hush but overall the season was sub par) and season 5 being just okay to me and season 6 being incredibly polarizing (some of the best episodes of the entire series were in season 6 like when Buffy works at a fast food joint but there was a lot of stuff I didn’t like in season 6 like Dawn existing and saying Dawn things and the Trio and Spuffy and Dark Willow and bury your lesbian) and season 7 was...not very good. (I do think Angel, the spin off series)is one of those exceptions as it had a mostly solid 5-year run with the 5th season being my favorite season)

Similar to Buffy I felt like Xena Warrior Princess peaked with season 3. Season 4 was mediocre. But season 5 was one of the worst seasons of television that I have watched and season 6 was dragging a corpse

Shameless (the USA remake at least) was lot of fun but lost me after season 4 where I just stopped caring about the characters or what was happening.

And of course Family Guy is infamous for its post-revival which turned the show into a decent enough adult sitcom with politically incorrect humor (back when that meant anything) to a try hard series that got off on its own reputation of being “edgy and offensive un-PC”

[ABED]

I still think Buffy Season 4 was overall great but just wasn't the sum of its parts. The Adam storyline didn't work, but the individual episodes were great. You didn't love the Trio or Dark Willow? Plenty of shows have bad seasons and then bounce back.

I think this rule mostly applies to serialized shows. As for DB, the end of the Freeza arc was slightly past it's peak, but still a highlight of the original story.

Toriyama said once in an interview he liked to anger his audience by doing what they didn't want. Okay, those weren't his exact words, but you get the point. More stories should risk antagonizing the audience by not giving them what they want. Inorganic fanservice generally bugs me and misses the simple point of why people became fans of things in the first place - good stories.

[KBABZ]

Veggie narrowed the angle as to not inflict damage to Earth, just as Goku did. Point is...both had sufficient energy flowing thru their bodies to blow-up the planet. And dat was Cell Saga. We're waay past beyond that with Bluper, Golden Frieza & whatnot which should've obliterated planet by mere shockwaves produced by their power-ups

Again I feel like you're bringing too many scientific semantics to what are ultimately throwaway lines in a kids show. To draw another comparison, when Vegeta powers up in his first fight against Goku, Goku says that it feels like "a hurricane" (and it certainly looks it). If we extrapolate from that, surely a character with 800,000 times the power like Full Power Frieza would force air away fast enough to cut through and vaporize anything in a 10km radius and create a vacuum, right? Let alone Cell or Buu. But NO FAN ever brings that up when applying science from bystander comments to later events.

To bring more science, during a Cell Saga attack, there's a very clear shot of the Earth with a giant, literal ball of light around where it's happening, easily visible from space. Logically, EVERYONE in that ball should be blinded for life. But it doesn't happen. Neither does it happen whenever a Kamehameha is fired, an attack which is closely associated with lighting like this.

Piccolo's makankossappo blew up mountains after grazing Raditz's armor. True. But Cell's sequence was pure filler, which cannot be brought into arguement as it'll open whole new can of what-if scenarios

It illustrates my point though, and it isn't exclusive to that one attack. Take the Kamehameha for example. In the OG DB days, firing it "normally" created a beam of fair thickness that nonetheless has colossal effects on the environment when contact was made. By the middle of DBZ, firing the really thick beams with magnitudes more amount of energy behind them left destruction that often didn't scale up as much (unless the story wanted it to be more dramatic).

[Yuli Ban]

Another thing worth pointing out is that the "feats" and one-upmanship is limited by the medium. If you compare the top speed of the Frieza fights to that of the Cell, Buu or Super fights, well, there's no discernible difference between them in regards to speed or power because there's only so much you can do at 24fps animation once you hit a certain point. We get spikes of "holy crap he's fast" to demonstrate the increase, but then eventually it drops down into a comfortable space and then repeats the same spike again for next time.

You and Vijay both bring up powers becoming ridiculous in Dragon Ball Z.

I feel it's worth noting that this started with the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai. That's when characters started moving too fast to be seen, when we had attacks that could do incredible damage to the planet. Yamcha vs. the Saibaman also gave us a representation of that. And let's not forget that Muten Roshi blew up the moon in the second arc of the series. True, Dragon Ball was little more than "Dr. Slump: Kung Fu Edition" at the time, but it's still part of the overall series' narrative that this happened. This implies that anyone stronger than Roshi could potentially extreme damage to Earth if they wanted. And we saw Vegeta threaten to blow up Earth as well.

Freeza was already well past the point of "too fast to animate" and "too powerful to comprehend." If you started with Z (as most in the West did), then maybe that would be the case. If you watched or read from the beginning, Dragon Ball was already within the realm of abstract lunacy by Raditz's appearance.
I don't even know what Super is in that regard, and the Heroes anime is just fun Fanfiction-From-God so there's no point in getting worked up about it.

[Vijay]

Another thing worth pointing out is that the "feats" and one-upmanship is limited by the medium. If you compare the top speed of the Frieza fights to that of the Cell, Buu or Super fights, well, there's no discernible difference between them in regards to speed or power because there's only so much you can do at 24fps animation once you hit a certain point. We get spikes of "holy crap he's fast" to demonstrate the increase, but then eventually it drops down into a comfortable space and then repeats the same spike again for next time.

You and Vijay both bring up powers becoming ridiculous in Dragon Ball Z.

I feel it's worth noting that this started with the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai. That's when characters started moving too fast to be seen, when we had attacks that could do incredible damage to the planet. Yamcha vs. the Saibaman also gave us a representation of that. And let's not forget that Muten Roshi blew up the moon in the second arc of the series. True, Dragon Ball was little more than "Dr. Slump: Kung Fu Edition" at the time, but it's still part of the overall series' narrative that this happened. This implies that anyone stronger than Roshi could potentially extreme damage to Earth if they wanted. And we saw Vegeta threaten to blow up Earth as well.

Freeza was already well past the point of "too fast to animate" and "too powerful to comprehend." If you started with Z (as most in the West did), then maybe that would be the case. If you watched or read from the beginning, Dragon Ball was already within the realm of abstract lunacy by Raditz's appearance.
I don't even know what Super is in that regard, and the Heroes anime is just fun Fanfiction-From-God so there's no point in getting worked up about it.

Tbh...moon is 1/6 of Earth. So Roshi blowing it up wasnt that much of a big deal, especially with his 100% Powered-up Buff form

Raditz~Saibaman was a weakling compared to Veggie. Now lets not even talk abt Yamcha shall wetheir feats werent explained nor shown explicitly

As said...Boo Arc was already pushin it with mere SSJ3 transformation causing havoc globally.

Why didnt subsequent upgraded stages as God, Bluper etc didnt ravage the planet is beyond anyone's guess

[Yuli Ban]

On the subject of how long a show should last: the reason why shows often drop off in quality after about 3 to 4 years actually has little to do with wearing itself out. Or, at least, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a long-running show. It's almost always because the showrunners during the first few seasons quit or because the network executives and/or creators get lazy with writing. The perennial examples everyone uses is the Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants. The fundamental reason why they suffered as time went on is because the original creators left or reduced their involvement in the series.

Here's a great video on how the Simpsons declined. While the show never would have remained totally fresh and classic for 30 years without extreme interventions every now and again, it could have kept up its quality for long past when it did start to seriously slip. The problem can be rooted back to the creators leaving and the series' writers losing sight of what made the show so great in lieu of following trends and taking the easy way out.
In the beginning, there are a lot of possibilities with how you can tell a story, and the characters are still being developed or even introduced. They have clear & layered personalities. The storylines may have a bit of heart or some style you can't find anywhere else. Then the writers start leaving, and you very rarely get new ones who understand what the series was supposed to be, especially when it's early in a show's life time. These writers may not have been fans, or they weren't there during the formative years, or they've been trained to follow more rigid formulas when it comes to script writing. Flanderization can set in eventually— someone who was a multilayered character who acted with their own internal consistency is suddenly a parody of themselves. They are essentially a brand product. It's no longer Son Goku, the morally righteous uneducated bumpkin who is still a violent & reckless xiá who lives for the thrill of fighting though he won't willingly endanger his family and friends, and thus encounters and resolves problems in his own peculiar way. It's now Goku™, Kung Fu Space Jesus. He shouts Kamehameha and turns gold or blue, and he's an Ally to Good, Nightmare to You. Super actually did a little bit of reversal with that for a short while there before it returned to the Flanderization.

After a certain amount of time, Flanderization can become so rigid that there's no longer any possibility for meaningful character development. If there is character development, that threatens the brand. Goku™ can't become Son Goku again, because that might hurt profits. In fact, that little period in Super where we saw some of Goku's old recklessness and desire for battle was received fairly negatively at the time (because everyone grew up with a very different Son Goku for one thing), so I doubt Toei wanted to explore any more of that potential arc.

It's not the same as the expectations for a character. As mentioned in the video, take Homer Simpson's old traits of being stubborn and rather dim as well as wrathful, but also excitable and very loving to his family and generally coming across as an everyman who wants to do the right thing. This is a consistent characterization that can be fleshed out by circumstances, turning him into a more 3D character. Even if status quo is god and he's not allowed to learn anything beyond the confines of a 22-minute block of television, it still feels like he's developing. Compare that to Homer Simpson™ of later seasons, where he's a pure cartoon character in the worst sense. He isn't consistent in his reactions except in that he's supposed to be a jerk of an idiot who does what the plot demands as long as he remains that idiot jerk.

When you have a long-running franchise that gets too popular and has too much of an established brand to the point the protagonist is basically a mascot and the other characters are parodies of what they once were (or have become corrupted into something they weren't originally but were eventually forced to become), the later stuff can definitely become soulless even in the hands of good writers (even if those writers are die-hard fans as well)— in many cases, they know exactly how to fix it, but they may not be allowed to because they have to follow what was long established beforehand, no matter if it's causing the series current harm. Conversely, they may be so desperate to pander to nostalgia that they start locking a franchise into a certain era and refusing to move it any further, spending all their time referencing that era when it was at its peak of creativity. This causes a vicious cycle of the new material never being as memorable as the old material because the new material often IS the old material poorly regurgitated or recycled and given a shinier coat. No more risks are taken, and the characters remained Flanderized shadows of themselves, but the stories are a slight bit more highly rated until people catch on that this is all the new writers have going for them.

Dragon Ball, being what it is, was doomed to eventually run into some problems with power progression and escalation. All shonen & xianxia eventually do if they don't create rigid rules on how the series' magical system works, but Dragon Ball is the trope codifier of how anime escalation can go ridiculously over the top. I'd even say that it's a good example of how not to do it, because as aforementioned, we established as soon as the second arc that a character with a fairly low ki ability (in the long running grand scheme of things) is able to destroy a large celestial body, which retroactive colors many feats that come later. Freeza being able to effortlessly destroy a planet with his 530,000 power level isn't as impressive when you see Muten Roshi obliterate the moon (which is about a fourth the size of the Earth, though 80x less massive) with his ~100 power level.

It's funny how I keep coming back to Muten Roshi as the character that hurts the series' narrative the most. From his moon-busting Kamehameha to his pseudo-Ultra Instinct momentarily flustering Jiren, he just doesn't give a goddamn.

The only way to "salvage" Dragon Ball would be to effectively start it over somehow. Pull a Goku Jr. again, but this time put actual effort into it.

Of course, the Broly movie told me that the alternative is simply get better at storytelling and providing personal stakes. But Dragon Ball will always have trouble with that because it was started as a simplistic gag manga by a guy who repeatedly admits he's not a very good storyteller, so now even the writing style of Dragon Ball has been Flanderized— where all plots have to unfold in the dumbest and most predictable possible way in a misunderstanding of what made DB's stories "simple" but effective.

Seriously, I'm still not over Omega Shenron as the main bad guy in Ultimate Tenkaichi, guys. Especially because "he just wanted to cause trouble". It's bothered me for the better part of a decade. It's laziness on such a profound level that it's beautiful, and I feel bad knowing that's what Toei writers think Dragon Ball-style plots are supposed to be. But I digress.

[KBABZ]

You and Vijay both bring up powers becoming ridiculous in Dragon Ball Z.

I feel it's worth noting that this started with the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai. That's when characters started moving too fast to be seen

Technically the 22nd! Goku's signature move in that tournament was the ability to move faster than... well light I guess, which fooled Krillin and was attempted on Tien. Then both of them did it!

And let's not forget that Muten Roshi blew up the moon in the second arc of the series. True, Dragon Ball was little more than "Dr. Slump: Kung Fu Edition" at the time, but it's still part of the overall series' narrative that this happened.

It was even obliquely referred to! It was a major plot point for the Wolfman fight Roshi had, which was smack in the middle of the mostly serious Tien storyline. And of course Goku refers to it when he appears as a teenager for the 23rd Budokai, saying something like "My tail was removed so Kami could bring back the moon, whatever that means...".

[Yuli Ban]

1/6 of Earth. So Roshi blowing it up wasnt that much of a big deal, especially with his 100% Powered-up Buff form

That's not what I'm saying.
The moon is 1/4th the size of Earth (but 1/8th the mass, IIRC), but it's still a celestial body. It's larger than any mountain or continent. We only think about the Earth in terms of the surface most of the time. Think of things like resource depletion or that "humanity has used 2 Earths' worth of resources in one year". That's just referring to specific industrial consumption utilizing a small percentage of the Earth's usable farmland to satisfy a very tiny percentage of the Earth's total life forms. Earth is far, far bigger than the surface. The crust alone could go a fair bit out to space if turned inside out. I think about a third of the way there, or maybe a bit more than that. The mantle is about 2,000 miles deep, below the crust, and that's in all directions. And then there's the core. So even though the moon is "only" about 1/80th of our mass, that's still a shit ton of mass. Like, you could launch every nuclear weapon ever made at the moon and that still would barely put a dent in it.

I don't know how to communicate how ridiculous "old man blows up moon with his chi" sounds because Dragon Ball spoiled us on this shit. But that's a level of power beyond most shonen characters.

Raditz~Saibaman was a weakling compared to Veggie. Now lets not even talk abt Yamcha shall wetheir feats werent explained nor shown explicitly

That's not really the point, though. Okay, throw away everything except the manga up to the fight with Raditz. It's 1989, and we've just been introduced to Raditz. We've been watching since Son Goku lifted a car over his head in the first chapter of the story, and now we're watching this hair-metal monkey man fuck up Goku and Piccolo, who were already shown to be much stronger and faster than Roshi when he blew up the moon, which, you know, would be a terrifyingly powerful move in just about 95% of all other media franchises.
Then we meet the Saibaman, who are all individually as strong as Raditz, and we see Yamcha is capable of matching their speed and power. But Piccolo is stronger still, and that's not even including the two wickedly overpowered Saiyans.
Like, if we take Piccolo to be serious (though it's always possible he was just exaggerating for dramatic effect), then we're dealing with characters who could conceivably bust the Earth already and are allegedly capable of moving at relativistic speeds. This is how Z starts. We haven't gotten to Vegeta yet and already we're at levels of power that would be considered absolutely godlike in most other shonen and wuxia series. And then we get Vegeta shaking the planet with his 18,000 power level. And with all his force, he's able to fire a planet-busting attack. Again, this is how Z starts. In the pre-Super days, even in the pre-BoG days, we considered the power levels of this era to be utterly paltry, but the characters are shown to be able to pretty much do what they will with Earth.

As said...Boo Arc was already pushin it with mere SSJ3 transformation causing havoc globally.

Given what we were, the SS3 transformation if not pared down should have caused the entire solar system to shake. Earth should've been reduced to rubble (and I suppose the anime did portray a bit of that.

Why didnt subsequent upgraded stages as God, Bluper etc didnt ravage the planet is beyond anyone's guess

I keep hearing about godly forms being all about "ki control", meaning that the characters can keep... you know what, I don't know. It's a cartoon.

[ABED]

Once again, I disagree, Yuli. Shows often wear themselves out because they cover a lot of ground and the longer they go on, the greater the risk of them retreading old ground or treading water, and running out of new ideas. New showrunners can affect things, but they can also be a positive since they can bring fresh ideas. The Simpsons did a LOT in the first 10 years. Toriyama never left DB, and it went into decline because he ran out of ideas and fell into the trap of formula.

I think you place WAY too much importance on how much power escalation dramatization affected the series. Sure, even though a good amount of nerds care about that stuff, it's not what made DB a huge success with general audiences. That's not the sort of thing that hurt the narrative the most since that's not the sort of thing the audience really gives a damn about.

[Yuli Ban]

Once again, I disagree, Yuli. Shows often wear themselves out because they cover a lot of ground and the longer they go on, the greater the risk of them retreading old ground or treading water, and running out of new ideas. New showrunners can affect things, but they can also be a positive since they can bring fresh ideas. The Simpsons did a LOT in the first 10 years. Toriyama never left DB, and it went into decline because he ran out of ideas and fell into the trap of formula.

I think you place WAY too much importance on how much power escalation dramatization affected the series. Sure, even though a good amount of nerds care about that stuff, it's not what made DB a huge success with general audiences. That's not the sort of thing that hurt the narrative the most since that's not the sort of thing the audience really gives a damn about.

On the contrary, I believe that power escalation is precisely the reason why Dragon Ball was treading over the same ground. It's a big reason why there was such a "formula" in the first place because again, Dragon Ball is fundamentally rooted in wuxia & xianxia and this is the biggest problem affecting xianxia fiction. It's not unique to Dragon Ball, but the results are always the same. There's only so many times an enemy can be "the strongest we've ever faced!" and "he destroyed an entire city!" and "he's going to destroy the planet!" and "he's going to destroy the universe!" and "the Earth is shaking from his power!" and whatnot you can do before it gets tiring. When Dragon Ball and some other shonen were my only experience with the genre, I thought that Dragon Ball could've been done better in that regard. But ever since reading through the Chinese grandfather of shonen and saw the exact same flaws show themselves over and over again, I realized that it's just an inescapable way stories in the genre play out. Dragon Ball is actually unusual in how long it managed to put it off before we started breaking everything down for the Tournament of Power.

The best example is how we treat new transformations. The very day we got Ultra Instinct, we already had people expecting "Kaioken Ultra Instinct" and "Super Saiyan Ultra Instinct" & so on because further power progression is expected. The strongest thing ever is expected to be surpassed by default, much like how some fairly bad RPGs work when you get the new Infinity Sword with a major battle but then get a new Infinity + 1 Sword with the next battle and then an Infinity + 2 Sword with the next, and so on.
Eventually, it becomes pure implication of a threat with an expected power boost.

I've also mentioned elsewhere that there are no real "weaknesses" in the characters either. Yes, this is a problem with a lot of xianxia too because having a weakness detracts from a person becoming an Immortal & renders their training and cultivation seemingly moot and incomplete— if Superman were a wuxia series, he'd have trained to overcome kryptonite decades ago to make for a flashy & surprising twist that ultimately took away some of the (admittedly now contrived) stakes. Runaway escalation occurs when a character has no weaknesses in how they fight or even act— the only reason why characters lose fights in Dragon Ball & series like it is because they're weaker than another character, and that's that. Weakness is literally being weaker.

See how power escalation can deeply affect the writing and storytelling if it's not reigned in? Plots invariably become the same because the only way to play them is for characters to meet a new foe, get beaten up, some twist occurs, get a power up themselves, only for the enemy to become a One-Winged Angel that requires another power up to beat. The stakes always have to be "the world/universe/multiverse/omniverse is in danger of disappearing". The villain is the most evil creature to ever exist, even more evil than that other most evil character we fought last time. And only the physically/spiritually strongest characters matter, usually with some final push from all the weaker characters. Character interactions and interpersonal stakes— the things that drive the most original storylines— have completely taken a backseat (again, the Broly movie was an exception).

I'm not saying that escalation was a complete detriment to Dragon Ball considering the series only got incredibly popular internationally once the characters could flex away the Moon. Just that it plays a bigger role in the decline of writing quality than you may think. The mechanics of narrative, conflict, and anthropocentric storytelling in general break down after a while. It's why DC comics had to undo the infinite silliness of Superman Prime or Strange Visitor.

[ABED]

Escalation causing the story to become stagnant is a symptom, not the cause. It worked for years but at a certain point, it became formula because the story had reached a natural conclusion. And even there, the stakes in the Saiyan arc were the same as the previous two arcs - the end of the world. What makes those stories still work is because of execution and personal stakes.

[Kunzait_83]

While I completely understand what Yuli is trying to convey in his posts about the perceived formulaic stagnancy of both DB and the broader whole of Wuxia/Xianxia's depictions of overwhelming supernatural martial arts prowess, I simply disagree with, maybe not all, but a lot of it just within its core perspective.

Look, not to continually play the "old man" card here (since I know that gets fairly tiring for a lot of you, and frankly I myself don't like doing it at all either), but I've been absorbed in Wuxia - and by extension, Xianxia - for the better part of over 30 years now. That's the vast overwhelming majority of my lifetime now.

I've had my own share of ups and downs with the genre all during that time. And of all my various issues/criticisms with various works within the genre throughout those years, the increasing escalation - in and of itself, unto itself - in its depictions of supernatural martial arts "feats" (I should note here that I've long gotten to the point in recent years, thanks entirely to the online DB community, where that word has really started to irritate me massively) has almost NEVER been any kind of an issue for me.

The way I've always looked at it is this: if you're (I mean "you" broadly, not necessarily Yuli specifically) fundamentally unable/unwilling to accept more, for lack of a better way of putting this, "abstract" concepts surrounding what are at the end of the day VERY fictional supernatural concepts rooted in very ancient religious folklore in your storytelling, and if you require there to be some sense of "grounding" in every aspect of an action sequence... then Wuxia/Xianxia as a genre simply isn't for you, like at all.

And that's honestly totally fine: both because A) not EVERYTHING in art/fiction is or should be tailored for absolutely everyone of every conceivable taste and sensibility (that would ultimately just make for some incredibly boring-ass art/fiction I think) and B) there's still a whole VAST OCEAN of martial arts fiction out there that is very, very much grounded in realism (or something much greatly closer to realism) in its depictions of fighting. Wuxia takes up a fairly **massive** amount of pop cultural real estate within the broader umbrella of martial arts fiction as a whole, but its still fairly far from the complete end-all, be-all of the whole thing.

Wuxia is, fundamentally and innately, a DEEPLY esoteric genre at its root core. The whole POINT of the genre's vision of martial arts mastery is the elevation of mere man into something that is altogether otherworldly and inhuman via total mastery of mind/body/spirit. Certainly not all, but a great, great, great deal of Wuxia/Xianxia stories very often tend to be stories where the main central theme is transformation and "transcendence" of the characters from the realm of mere mortal human into that of borderline/metaphorical (if not out and out literal) godhood purely through one's own dedication, discipline, and hard work. This is a genre where one of the core conceits and themes is becoming so adept at a skill (in this case, martial arts) that the characters are effectively leaving behind a piece or aspect of their own humanity on some level.

This is no better expressed than through the character archetype of the Xian: one of the defining characteristics of the overwhelming majority of Xian characters is that so many of them become hermetic and withdraw themselves from the broader civilization, very often for the reason that their skill and mastery of their spiritual abilities and martial arts alienates them and detaches them from being able to fully relate to other "regular" people who aren't as enmeshed in their practices and traditions as they are.

The Xian is almost always depicted as the logical endpoint for an overwhelming majority of martial artists in the Wuxia/Xianxia canon: a person taken so far into a level of mastery of the physical and spiritual arts that they are fundamentally something altogether not entirely human anymore, complete with the quasi-immortality and overwhelming might of an actual god. Such individuals become emotionally and mentally "disengaged" from average people on a day-to-day level, and seem to naturally gravitate further and further into self-isolation. That certainly isn't the case 100% of the time with 100% of all Xian characters of course, as there's certainly plenty of room for gradation there: but its certainly without a doubt very much the overall baseline norm with these characters.

I bring that up to illustrate what so much of this genre ultimately embodies: the idea of self-improvement as a kind of dramatic self-transformation into something totally far removed from what the character (and what most people in general) started out as. You simply HAVE to be able to engage with these kinds of stories on that level, on a very abstract level (since obviously in real life, gods aren't an actual thing and people certainly aren't able to become them or like them in any way), to at least SOME significant degree if you hope to get anything out of it: otherwise you're very often just going to be left cold and feeling completely unengaged with one of its most central and defining themes. Which yeah, is kind of a big issue with deriving any kind of long-term enjoyment of this genre and most of its stories as a whole.

And if you can't, if that's just not how you're mentally wired to accept storytelling, then once again THAT'S TOTALLY AND 100% COMPLETELY FINE (since so many people, particularly in this community, seem to take such assertions as if they're meant as some weird kind of personal insult). Its just a genre of fantasy fiction, its not that serious. All it simply means is this type of stuff might not be your bag after all.

That actually kind of leads into what is ultimately the core of my overwhelmingly BIGGEST problem with not just FUNimation's dub of the entire Dragon Ball franchise, but more importantly and broadly speaking, their overall whole treatment and marketing/public depiction of it in the broader Western popular culture. Dragon Ball was badly and grossly mismarketed in no small part by being reinvented (or as FUNi has always bizarrely phrases it, "reversioned") as something ENTIRELY different from what it always originally was at its core, which is the very essence of this core theme of Wuxia/Xianxia, distilled for the level/comprehension of small children (raised in a culture where such stories are deeply baked into the fabric of the regional zeitgeist). This was mutated instead into a much more typical (for Western audiences that is) "superheroic" action show about superpowered characters selflessly trying to save the world and protect humanity on a very, very broad level.

These conceits are WHOLLY at odds and almost COMPLETELY divorced and detached from one another on almost every possible level that actually matters in terms of basic storytelling and conveying of central concepts and ideas. One depiction of the story (the original) is about diligent and total devotion to the continuous and radical evolution of oneself, to the point of transitioning/transforming (on both a literal and metaphorical level) into something altogether fundamentally different in nature from one's beginnings (insert your dimestore, obvious "caterpillar/butterfly" analogy here): its is, at its root core, an inward-focused series. The other is about selflessly sacrificing and giving up on oneself for the altruistic betterment of a faceless mass of others: it is, at its root core, an external-focused series.

Those who've carefully read the original Wuxia thread's breakdown of the nuts and bolts of Wuxia and Taoist mythology's deeper workings of Chi/Ki, should note a certain and very apt irony in that particular contrast between both versions of DB.

Spoiler:

In both Wuxia and real life kung fu, martial arts exercises and techniques can generally be broken down into two main categories: external (Wai, represented by Yang) and internal (Nei, represented by Yin).

External kung fu is about what you'd expect: it focuses primarily on the tangibly physical (building/improving muscles, tendons, reflexes, flexibility, etc) and concerns itself with techniques such as basic punches and kicks, grappling, etc. Things that any martial artist of any school or any skill level is bound to learn about right off the bat. This sort of training builds a fighter's personal power (or Li).

Internal however, is where the real meat lies. Internal martial arts is the training and honing of a fighter's focus, breathing, awareness, and things of that nature. In real life martial arts, internal martial arts training helps improve a fighter's psychology, patience, understanding of their surroundings in the heat of a fight, and can even help with SOME physical attributes (to an extent), particularly stamina and resistance to pain.

In the fantasy genre of Wuxia however, internal martial arts training is something profoundly more spiritual and the key to unlocking the (often literal) power of a god. In Wuxia, internal martial arts training is the primary means (shy of some sort of plot-specific magical ability-granting weapon/artifact/MacGuffin) by which the fighters of the Wulin community build their Ki (spiritual power).

The nature of Ki itself is something you all should already know (to at least SOME extent or another) even just from Dragon Ball alone at this point: Ki is the universal life force/spiritual energy and essence inherent within all living things, harmonious within nature, without which nothing could exist - some of it represents positive energies, some of it negative energies (thus the Yin Yang), blah blah blah, etc etc, a bunch of stuff George Lucas shamelessly ripped off when he created The Force for Star Wars.

Neigong (internal exercises) is the Chinese term for the specific training a fighter of the Wulin community undergoes in order to harness control and mastery of their Ki. You see Dragon Ball's own interpretation of this when Goku trains under Popo and Kami (and Mutaito in anime filler) or when Videl trains with Gohan and Goten. It involves metaphysical concepts and exercises such as deep meditation, intense breathing exercises, expanding or narrowing one's focus and concentration within themselves and within specific Dantian areas of the body (more on Dantians soon) to grasp and release their innate Ki within. The trick is to keep one's mind and willpower as flexible and adaptable as they've trained their body to be in external exercises.

Neijing (internal strength) is when a fighter successfully masters and controls their Ki enough to wield it as a weapon, as an extension of their body and will. This unlocks a whole giant HOST of supernatural martial arts abilities and techniques... a number of which we'll run through right now!

Now I think that oftentimes in the past on here when I've made that contrast between both types of stories - Wuxia/martial arts fantasy versus Western superheroics - that I'm somehow trashing on and deligitimizing the latter. Understand: I am in NO WAY doing that, not now and not EVER in any of my other similar posts on this topic in the past. I'm very much a lifelong fan of BOTH Eastern Wuxia/martial arts fantasy stories AND Western superhero stories in very strong measures. For all of my Wuxia/martial arts fiction nerdery growing up, I was also at the same exact time very much a diehard Marvel Zombie: X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk, and The Punisher comics in particular are as deeply baked into my lifelong nerd DNA as anything that Jin Yong and Wang Dulu had ever written on the page or that King Hu and Tsui Hark had ever directed on film.

What I'm simply trying to get across is this: that the underlying core problem with almost EVERYTHING that's EVER been wrong with Dragon Ball's overall Western fanbase has almost ALWAYS been a direct or indirect result of this fundamental disconnect between these two VERY intrinsically different species of storytelling with two DIAMETRICALLY opposing sets of core themes and values. That one is in NO WAY analogous to the other on often even a BASIC level, and that its the massive conflation/confusion of the two, spurred on almost entirely 100% by both FUNimation's dub and moreover its marketing/messaging about the series in the popular consciousness, that has resulted in so many people being brought into the Dragon Ball fanbase under exceedingly false and incorrect pretenses.

Sometimes for some folks (among strictly those who get themselves out of the FUNimation dub bubble and cross over into the original Japanese version that is), that results in the happy accident of them ultimately discovering a whole new flavor and type of storytelling and fiction that they'd never been exposed to before (and might not have at all): other times though, it also results in people who just AREN'T the type of person who is wired to respond to or enjoy these kinds of martial arts stories with these kinds of inward/introspective (or to put it more uncharitably, naval-gazy ) themes. And in BOTH CASES, once again, there's NOTHING at all wrong with either, since EVERYONE is different in how they respond to these things ultimately.

What it DOES mean though - and what its basically the root core central thesis at the heart of all my meanderings about the gigantic differences between both versions - is that there is no shortage of DB fans within the Western audience who were, at the risk of sounding overly melodramatic, were effectively "lied into" the series from the outset. Its like if a dark and disturbing horror movie were somehow aggressively advertised and marketed as a lighthearted romantic comedy and draws in a TOTALLY different (and really, the wrong kind of) audience or whatnot. Not that DB is either of those things obviously, I'm just noting the huge disparity and disconnect between the marketing's projected image of the work and the actual reality of it.

And that faulty messaging, that fundamental disconnect, is ultimately not only why both FUNimation and Japanese versions of the series are innately and intrinsically incompatible with one another, its also why it so often feels like we're all occupying two COMPLETELY different fandoms for two completely different media entities.

Its because we are.

And there's simply NO getting around it, nor is there ANY real way of "bridging" that basic divide. There ARE "two totally different" Dragon Ball franchises here, and they are incompatible on a very baseline thematic level with one another. And in a great many cases (not ALL, as there are certainly no shortage of fans who find that they wind up equally enjoying both: but still in MANY cases) these two different Dragon Ball franchises are NOT made for or playing to the same kinds of audiences on a VERY fundamental level, and there simply IS NO connecting that bridge or squaring that particular circle. At all. Period. And that problem, that disconnect, that fundamental dysfunction within the fanbase is 100% entirely on FUNimation ultimately.

To get back at Yuli's specific criticisms with the "escalation" aspect of both DB and Wuxia/Xianxia: like with anything else in storytelling, I think that there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way of doing it. That its not so much the fact that escalation of power (to even absurd degrees of extremes) exists at all within the genre, even to the ludicrous heights that it often goes to: as I've been trying to convey this whole post now, that escalation and that sense if extreme progression into the realm of otherworldly is indeed VERY much an intrinsic part of the entire point of the genre on a baseline thematic level.

The issue isn't the existence of escalation in the depiction of supernatural power and martial arts skill in Wuxia/Xianxia: its HOW its executed by the author/creator/director. If the issue for you personally (i.e. whomever is reading this, nor specifically Yuli or anyone in particular) is the escalation in and of and unto itself... then that's where I say that, simply put, this genre just isn't made for you and you might simply be better off stepping away from it outright.

That being said though: I totally agree that lesser writers/creators/directors within the genre HAVE indeed struggled with this aspect at times, and it can make for flat, dull, unengaging, and predictable storytelling.

I think its also important to note that some portion of Yuli's specific examples (though certainly not all) tend to be much, much more recent web-based Xianxia novels: and while there's certainly some worthwhile gems that are worth seeking out among that pile, there's also a great, great many of them which tend to be written for the same Chinese demographic approximation as "young adult literature" in the United States. i.e. Drippy tween shit.

Which... yeah, that's NOT really the most solid or apt basis to center one's more broader, overall grasp and understanding of what the genre (which is, once again at the risk of tiresome repetition, is EXTREMELY broad-reaching and insanely diverse in its scope and breadth of styles and levels of quality) is capable of doing at its best executed from authors who have serious and very real literary chops.

I mean, look at horror and romance novels for a more generalized Western example: there's a LOT of trashy supermarket-stand nonsense written for those genres year in and year out. Enough to THOROUGHLY drown out the actual "important" and defining classics that make up the real foundational cornerstones of those genres if you're not very media-savvy at knowing where to look and what to look out for.

Like, in the realm of Sci Fi and Fantasy literature for example... if you're mostly reading stuff like this:



But not really much or any stuff like this:



Then yeah: you're probably going to walk away with a skewed and probably not all that particularly flattering perspective and outlook on the narrative merits of sci fi/fantasy literature. For completely understandable reasons, mind.

Wuxia/Asian martial arts fantasy is no different at all whatsoever in this respect. And that's obviously no to say that I'm like, even REMOTELY some sort of “high brow snob” about this shit: plenty of my personal favorite examples of Wuxia/Xianxia (and other Western pulp fantasy genres overall) tend to be insanely low brow and plenty schlocky. Like... I AM a Dragon Ball fan after all.

My point is more just to have a better understanding and awareness of precisely what it is you're in for and what specific corners of the genre spectrum exactly that you're wandering through when you explore ANY kind of old, long-established, and far-reachingly broad and dense genre like this one: there's a LOT of fucking material out there, and its always important to note and remember that there's a whole, whole goddamn LOT of it out there that is out and out completely disposable mediocre crap that can seemingly overwhelm and drown out the important benchmarks and the notable gems if you aren't adept at navigating and parsing through a large and unfamiliar media landscape.

Getting too drowned and bogged down in the fluff and filler of ANY given genre's media landscape without balancing it out properly with a healthy dose of genuine quality and ground breaking high water mark works of excellence is ultimately just going to corrode and negatively skew one's perception and perspective on the genre as a whole, or even an entire MEDIUM as a whole.

This particularly happens a goddamned LOT with anime and manga among Western fans, because anime and manga fandom in the West for much of the past nearly 20 years now has had less and less and less of a sane or reasonable sense of communal curation and baseline quality standards within the broader fanbase (that an ever shrinking few within the crowd have tired, seemingly in vain, over the years to try and fight against, to little avail).

Historical context often goes COMPLETELY out the window, works are often knee-jerk judged based on how old or recent they are (anything that's more than five minutes old is ancient trash, while anything that's the hot new flavor of the moment is instantly and automatically worthy of over-reactive praise and an absurd degree of over-analysis and over-exposure: often all regardless of the actual content and substantive quality of any given work), and any sense of critical standards or spectrum for gauging anything becomes quickly lost in a blurry collective haze of emotionally lurching blindly from one “fad of the moment” title to the next with little to no regard for history or precedent or basic critical engagement.

This is commonplace in Western anime and manga fandom enough to where this mindset basically largely DEFINES it at this point: but other fandoms for anything from Western superhero comics to video games to even Wuxia and Xianxia are certainly in no way immune to this type of reactive “forever in the moment” thinking: and getting too wrapped up in that, getting to the point where one over-focuses on mostly complete and utter vapid trash and shelf-filler simply and solely because its the current-most hot item of focus that the crowd is zeroing in on, while not really delving too deep (if at all) into the real meat and substance within the broader overall backlog of a given genre, medium or what have you... that shit takes its toll after awhile, and pretty soon everything eventually starts to look and feel exactly the same and nothing is particularly satisfying or engaging anymore. Which yeah: that's what happens when you don't have a properly honed filter for thins (even one's own media intake). Mostly crap gets in.

In other words: its not only ok, its VERY much encouraged and wise in the long run to develop and maintain a set of critical standards, principals, and sensibilities to help better filter out all the nonsense and bullshit within any given artistic/creative landscape so as to better utilize one's time on stuff that's actually worth your focus & attention and is actually enriching or enjoyable in some way. Wuxia/Xianxia is NO different in this regard than video games, anime and manga, superheroes, horror & monster movies, etc.

Basically, as much as a seasoned genre veteran can rattle off all the notable classics and cool, interesting hidden gems and diamonds in the rough within any particular genre or medium, there's also a TON of worthless garbage that is a TOTAL waste of anyone's time that most old-timers are VERY much inclined to filter out for most everyone's collective benefit.

And like with anything else, when you spend enough time in the “teenage/young adult/light novel” subset of a given genre or set of works (and Wuxia VERY much has such subsets, particularly within the “web-novel” end of things), then yeah, that shit's eventually going to VERY negatively color one's experience and perspective of said genre or set of works.

Even with that all being said though: I also still further disagree with Yuli in the sense that I also don't think that Dragon Ball is in any way particularly unique within Wuxia/Xianxia in terms of how long and how well it executes its sense of escalating progression in the characters' fighting abilities during its early through middle stretches. Plenty of better writers/creators have handled it perfectly fine in the past: just as plenty of lesser writers/creators have thoroughly dropped the ball there. Again, this isn't an issue of the concept itself as much as it is how its executed from one work/author to the next.

To be sure, DB hits some definite snags in this realm in its last two arcs (Cell and Boo), which Yuli outlined well enough: but I don't think it hits those problems SO much so that it as cripplingly severe of an issue as so many folks (including Yuli) see it as, and by that point we're hitting the tail-end of the series (in its original run at least: I'm not talking about Super here, which is a whole can of worms by itself) anyway, and that was certainly one of a good few telltale signs that the Boo arc was probably as good a place as any for Toriyama to pack it in.

And of course I'd be remiss if I also didn't point out the INCREDIBLY skewed as all hell degree to which so many Western fans even look at this aspect of DB in the first place, due in no small part to the whole “Power Level” nonsense – which itself is also another by-product of FUNimation and its handling of the series in the U.S.

Most Wuxia fans (at least back in the day anyway) DON'T typically have quite as much of a hyper-literal, Pen & Paper RPG, stats and numbers-obsessive read on the material: most sane, functional people understand that fantasy fiction is just fantasy fiction and magic isn't real and thus can't in any way be scientifically broken down and deconstructed.

Outside of a more or less internally consistent baseline logic and basic “rules” that the narrative might set out and try to adhere to, there otherwise isn't any kind of actual “hard science” to fictional fantasy magic: and trying to be as hyper-analytic and pedantically literalist as so many online folks in today's nerd space try to be about this stuff - across everything from DB and other Shonen action franchises to Star Wars and Harry Potter and so forth – is just a MASSIVELY fucking dumb, idiotic waste of mental energy and a total fool's errand that ultimately just results in people enjoying this stuff LESS and generally sucking much of the fun and imagination out of it for everyone else.

I have to also make the qualifier of “at least way back when” regarding how Wuxia fandom was once immune to a lot of this dumb, dumb pedantry because I've seen this whole “Power Levels” mindset spread itself out from Dragon Ball fandom into OTHER fanbases for other franchises, and (to a MUCH lesser degree) into even a few corners of much more recent Wuxia fandom from the past several years or so. Sadly this has over the years metastasized and grown like a mind-fungus to become not just a Dragon Ball fandom thing, but just a general nerd fantasy fiction thing more broadly overall.

But I think that its that very “Can a Z Warrior survive a nuke? How could Muten Roshi have blown up the moon?” type of over-literalization and over-thinking/obsessing about pedantic pseudo-scientific nonsense surrounding what is ultimately at the end of the day little more than fantasy mysticism (albeit of a kind in Wuxia that has a pretty dense and fascinating cultural history to it) is largely incredibly reductive not only to just the basic enjoyability of fantasy media at large, but also even more so to just a healthy, holistic, and intelligent parsing of narrative storytelling across media as a collective whole.

And lastly, more to the initial impetus for the thread topic itself: I've long been arguing that yes, Dragon Ball is VERY much tied intrinsically and inseparably to the zeitgeist of its time (the 1980s and 90s): but that's largely due to the irreverent, modernized, and genre-blending way in which it approaches Wuxia, which is VERY much a hallmark of the Wuxia genre during those particular decades, and which it was **violently** yanked away from for much of the 2000s.

Wuxia that is relentlessly self-parodying, self-effacing, self-aware, post-modern, and that dabbles more than heavily in blending itself with modern and Western genres (horror and slasher films, Romero-esque zombie films, sci fi and space opera, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, steampunk etc.) is about as indispensable to Asian pop culture in the 1980s and 1990s as Grunge music, arcades, breakdancing, endless Friday the 13th sequels, Image Comics, and horrifically baggy pants are to American pop culture of the same time period.

Dragon Ball in most respects is the EPITOME of where the Wuxia genre was during the 1980s and 1990s, and there is literally NO real way to discuss it without taking that into account right up front. In THAT respect, it is MORE than inarguably directly and permanently tied to the zeitgeist of the time in which it was made.

I've said this before in other threads, but Toriyama really was the exact right artist with the exact right creative instincts & sensibilities (combined with insane levels of raw talent) to have concocted such a blockbuster smash hit martial arts fantasy manga/anime within THAT specific point in time in the 80s & 90s for the broader Wuxia genre as a whole and where it was within the popular consciousness in Southeast Asian territories.

In that sense, Dragon Ball was truly lightning in a bottle, and you're just NOT going to get something exactly like that ever again (or at least anytime remotely soon), given what a tenuous and fickle thing the popular zeitgeist can be and how its always and forever shifting and changing: which makes the overall Shonen fandom's constant chasing of that particular dragon via all the myriad of DB knockoffs like One Piece, Naruto, etc. seem all the more sad and futile.

And yes, this in some ways also extends to Dragon Ball itself with regards to Super and all the revival material: not even DB or Toriyama can EXACTLY recapture the same exact magic from 30 years ago: this isn't the 80s or 90s anymore for one, and secondly Toriyama isn't the same person working with the same methods that he did back then: indeed, he's really not working AT ALL on Super, contrary to what so many fans desperately want to believe. Bullet-pointed story outlines is in NO WAY an equivalent to singlehandedly writing/drawing a manga totally from scratch oneself week in and week out for 11 years straight.

What many fans seem to want is a DB series that acts like a time machine to take them back to EXACTLY what the series was in the late 80s and early 90s (a time from well before when many of today's current fans were even born in the first place), and that's just NOT ever going to happen and is a frankly impossible and ridiculous ask in the first place.

What Shonen media and DB fans OUGHT to be doing is moving the fuck on to genuinely new and altogether different things. That doesn't mean forgetting about Dragon Ball (or really ANY older work in general) and no longer looking back fondly at it and still enjoying it for exactly what it was and even learning from it: it simply means that we (in the royal, general sense) stop endlessly chasing after trying to exactly replicate highs from the past that we've all already experienced and instead put more emphasis on actually creating a brand new and original creative identity for anime & manga (Shonen or otherwise) going forward.

For all the love and fixation that DB constantly gets, very few of its fans ever seem to actually take the series' own core piece of advice to heart: to always move forward, to reinvent & innovate, and to never stop exploring and reaching outward for the new and the unknown.

As I said before: both Dragon Ball and its genre are rooted foundationally in the concept of constant and never-ending self-improving, evolving, and transformation: the complete and constant wholesale reinvention and continued growth of oneself time after time after time. Its all the more disheartening that that core theme of constant change, growth, and personal transformation has been at this point almost completely overlooked and given way to stubborn stagnancy.

Stagnancy within most of the fanbase overall that refuses to move on from exploring mostly other Shonen anime & manga that try their hardest to be as similar to Dragon Ball as they can. Stagnancy amongst many Shonen anime & manga creators who seem to be completely unwilling to let go of DB's storytelling formula and cling to it rigidly for dear life. And certainly stagnancy within Toei's "Dragon Room" toiling away at the current crop of safe, middling, and water-treading Dragon Ball Super material.

[ABED]

Most Wuxia fans (at least back in the day anyway) DON'T typically have quite as much of a hyper-literal, Pen & Paper RPG, stats and numbers-obsessive read on the material: most sane, functional people understand that fantasy fiction is just fantasy fiction and magic isn't real and thus can't in any way be scientifically broken down and deconstructed.

Outside of a more or less internally consistent baseline logic and basic “rules” that the narrative might set out and try to adhere to, there otherwise isn't any kind of actual “hard science” to fictional fantasy magic: and trying to be as hyper-analytic and pedantically literalist as so many online folks in today's nerd space try to be about this stuff - across everything from DB and other Shonen action franchises to Star Wars and Harry Potter and so forth – is just a MASSIVELY fucking dumb, idiotic waste of mental energy and a total fool's errand that ultimately just results in people enjoying this stuff LESS and generally sucking much of the fun and imagination out of it for everyone else.

I'm paraphrasing Moviebob... nerds do what nerds do - they turn everything into a damn math problem.

That's also one of the problems I have with Rotten Tomatoes, but that's a whole different discussion.

[Zephyr]

There's a particular irony with works like Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and so on, which try to replicate what Dragon Ball did....but in a more well-thought-out, planned, and internally-consistent manner.

The problem is that what Dragon Ball did was the result of not being terribly well thought-out, planned, or internally consistent. It's a window into a sort of weekly improvisational performance art, of bullshitting and telling jokes, in such an effective manner as to string the audience along for the better part of a decade into taking it all deathly-seriously. That's fucking art, and it's the kind of art that's squarely a product of its process. Would jazz without improvisation still be jazz? Maybe, but it certainly wouldn't have the same spirit (music scholars, feel free to correct).

People inspired by that art are more than welcome and entitled to iterate on it, so I don't think "trying to do what Dragon Ball did, but better" is necessarily a fool's errand or anything like that. With the aforementioned manga, however, there seems to be an attempt to improve upon the dish without paying nearly enough careful attention to the recipe.

I think the Boo arc is among the most misunderstood components of Dragon Ball. In a sense, the Cell arc is Dragon Ball at its most "Dragon Ball", when Toriyama is trying his hardest to make it the best and most popular he can, taking all of the advice he can and changing the story on a dime to incorporate it, and a great many people are understandably bored of how unaware of itself it seems to be, until the Boo arc comes along and makes effective use of that otherwise (and in a vacuum) arguably-dull and flimsy storytelling, for great comedic effect. Its flippantly comic nature, serving as a sort of "post-Dragon Ball" self-aware punchline (in the same way something is "post-Modern"), reveals the work's larger structure to be a long-form joke, and decisively grounds the larger work as intrinsically comedic, before anything else (if its author's trade wasn't alone already indicative of this), even when playing itself entirely straight.

The afore-discussed issue of "escalation", and how much of it exactly a story of this scope can really carry before buckling, is further indicative of the arc being the most appropriate stopping point, which speaks volumes as to how poor of a decision it was to pick up from where that ending left off in the first place. I believe that the inherently comedic nature of the work, and its ontology as a longform joke, not only excuses, but renders absolutely essential, the more meandering and inconsistent areas in the latter third of the story.

I think taking this role that the Boo arc plays in the larger story for granted is possibly why as many people take issue with the arc's escalation, inconsistencies, and plot threads as they do. I'm not trying to seize some default position of "no I understand what the work actually is!", but I do think there's at least some genuine misunderstanding of what heavy lifting the Boo arc actually is actually doing for the original story as a distinct piece of comedy martial arts performance cartooning.

I think misunderstanding that is another part of misunderstanding the recipe of what Toriyama did: its a misunderstanding of the last step. Without understanding why Toriyama ended his performance the way he did, you can't hope to cleverly iterate on that ending. I'm also not saying that you have to understand something thoroughly, or even at all, to iterate on it in aesthetically beautiful ways; but you do if you want to replicate it.

---

tl;dr
- While "Dragon Ball" is a fantasy kung-fu story, it is also a decade-long improvisational stand-up routine
- the Boo arc ties up the necessary kung-fu story character arcs and plot-threads, before ending
- the Boo arc pokes fun at Dragon Ball's own absurd self-seriousness, repetitiveness, and endless fantasy escalation before ending
- the Boo arc is the best punchline that such a decade-long improvisational stand-up routine about some fantasy kung-fu dudes, could have asked for

- taking the improvisation out of an improvised story cheapens it (the cavalcade of "Dragon Ball-likes" seem to make this mistake)
- extending a joke past its punchline cheapens it (Super seems to make this mistake)