Is Dragon Ball too closely tied to its own zeitgeist?

[ABED]

I don't have an issue when DB took itself serious. Like anything else, it all boils down to execution, and I feel like the Freeza arc did a good job of being earnest AND having plenty of levity. Sometimes fantasy stories can take themselves WAY too seriously *cough*BvS*cough* but I don't think it's inherently an issue. You're right about the Buu arc's absurdity being the right call after the story had gotten almost more and more serious over time, but I still don't think it's as well executed as it should've been. That said, if Toriyama didn't end after the 23rd TB or Freeza, the Buu arc was the right ending. Going further feels like it misses the point.

[funrush]

I think sometimes Super seems like it's trying too hard to be fanservicey or just a straight continuation of Z as opposed to making a big style shift like there was with DB to Z, but that's kinda all I've noticed. Toriyama wants to keep everything pre-EOZ so he can use the Z cast and do Z-style action stories. Bring Freeza back, bring Trunks back, do evil Goku, bring Broly back etc.

And I'm not knocking that, I love Super. But it's pretty obvious that they could be doing timeskips and trying out new stylistic ideas and they're choosing not to, instead just focusing on the multiverse idea, which is fine by me I guess.

[Melee_Sovereign]

Xianxia authors have a bad habit of exaggerating things, but they're in a situation where they can't not exaggerate feats: "Legendary martial artist Yuli Ban leapt 500 thousand miles in a single bound and destroyed a planet with a mere flush of his hand". That's unrelatable. It's too far beyond what we can imagine. But it's awesome.

Heck, American comics have characters perform similar feats, and it's with power they generally don't even earn through training, making it even more unrelatable. But people (myself included) eat it up anyway.

[KBABZ]

as opposed to making a big style shift like there was with DB to Z

uhhhhhhh okay?

[Yuli Ban]

I think sometimes Super seems like it's trying too hard to be fanservicey or just a straight continuation of Z as opposed to making a big style shift like there was with DB to Z, but that's kinda all I've noticed. Toriyama wants to keep everything pre-EOZ so he can use the Z cast and do Z-style action stories. Bring Freeza back, bring Trunks back, do evil Goku, bring Broly back etc.

And I'm not knocking that, I love Super. But it's pretty obvious that they could be doing timeskips and trying out new stylistic ideas and they're choosing not to, instead just focusing on the multiverse idea, which is fine by me I guess.

As I mentioned in another thread, this really all comes back to the fact they're continuing Son Goku's story when his arc ended about 300 chapters ago. His whole character was pretty much complete either after Freeza or Cell, depending on whether or not Gohan's arc counted towards it for you. They have the multiverse concept, but they're probably going to explore it by using Goku as the vehicle, basically meaning that whatever stories we get have to involve him as the dominating force even if another character (like, say, Yamcha) would see more growth from the situation.
And going back to what I said about escalation, Son Goku is now so strong that none of his fights really have any stakes we can weigh anymore. He's not really growing as a character and there's not much indication of how different in power Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan Blue, and Ultra Instinct are supposed to be either. He's basically become Superman— a static character used for a simple comic plot— but with the crippling problem that there's no other universe of characters and stories to divide the attention and create new and much fresher stories.
Even Naruto's Masashi Kishimoto managed to get around this by actually letting the titular character's son lead the spin-off series (and hand over the writing job to someone else). Naruto & the characters of his own series are still around and doing things, but it's still Boruto's show.

The only real hold-up there is that Dragon Ball is Son Goku's story at the end of the day, and they might be uneasy about creating a new title around a new character when people are still expecting Goku to lead.

This is why it's so damn difficult to do the "recreating Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z" thing and why both GT and Super didn't do it well. Trying to take Son Goku as he is after the Boo arc and sticking him through early-Dragon Ball style adventures flat out won't work on the principle of it because those stories happened due to his limitations in power (and the ignorance we had to this, since as far as we knew, he was one of the strongest warriors under the heavens). They were comedic in tone and generally more light-hearted (at least most of the time), but they felt the way they did because Son Goku was basically just a superpowered 12-year-old Jackie Chan with a cat-like monkey tail, not a walking mentally deficient nuclear war. He couldn't fly around willy nilly or teleport across space— he had to use the Nimbus, which was also vulnerable to being destroyed. Taking away his powers renders his growth moot and just makes any attempt at recreating Dragon Ball feel frustrating— like how in early GT when he seemed to refuse to go Super Saiyan to resolve any issue, despite it being the most logical path forward.
And Dragon Ball Z felt so epic because there were actual tangible stakes coupled with a sense that the characters were much closer in power to each other, allowing for Goku to feel that much stronger when he did arrive. GT came the closest to this with the Bebi arc, the one arc from the whole show a plurality of people seemed to enjoy because it was the only one that seemed like a proper continuation of Z's sensibilities. For one, Son Goku was still growing himself. He was now being trained by a god and coming across opponents who dwarfed everyone he faced on Earth by absolutely absurd amounts. He had to train his ass off on his way to Namek just to make sure he didn't get clobbered by whoever was there, even though he was told not to go near Freeza (which just excited him too much), and the results of this training felt immediately tangible as well. The events of the first third of Z all had a logical progression that fed into each other, and then the second third called back to the original DB, showing us time and time again the brutal consequences of Goku & the senshi's actions. It was Boo that felt more like Super since it could've stood on its own and felt like it was going to be an entirely different kind of show (which it should've been), but even it had growth and gave us a fitting end to Vegeta's arc.

We don't really have character arcs anymore, just set-ups for fights in what feels like what a layman would think a Dragon Ball Z story should be like.

If there were a spin-off series that wasn't afraid to scale the powers back in order to build more stakes and not keep forcing Goku's arc to go on and on, I think it would do the franchise a lot of good. Give us a 24-episode spin-off about Goten, Trunks, and Marron on 17's island or something!

[Yuli Ban]

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.

And that's the big thing I've been dying to say for years now. I do feel that my rants in this thread might've given off the wrong idea, greatly because I didn't word them correctly and made it sound like I felt pure escalation alone was the problem.

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.

My problem with Dragon Ball here is something I think I said in a later post: it's not that things become "unrelatable" in terms of strength and abilities— that's just an inevitable aspect of wuxia, and actually as you said, it's not meant to be relatable. Immortals who casually work towards a goal for hundreds of thousands of years while bodhisattvas and heavenly Taoist supermen interact with the celestial realm (which, to us, comes across as hopping from the Milky Way to the Andromeda Galaxy casually but the celestial structure of these stories can be much different from scientific reality) is indeed part of a different sort of mindset.
That's not the issue.
It's the series writers constantly trying to return to the zeitgeist of early Dragon Ball and move into Dragon Ball Z repeatedly without understanding it or why that development happened.
You mention it very well: in wuxia, you grow. You become so far beyond what you used to be.
Now look at GT and Super. They both try to redo some aspect of Dragon Ball, moreso GT.
Dragon Ball functioned the way it did for a variety of reasons. Is it wuxia? Of course. But it's also a parody. A parody of wuxia and, occasionally, American action movies after the first arc, but it never really stopped being a parody. Parodies work via exaggeration for comedic effect.

I mentioned elsewhere Dragon Ball is essentially "Drunken Master" or "Child of Peach" meets Dr. Slump, and thus the story was that of a prepubescent hyper-strong Jackie Chan going through multiple trials towards becoming a great warrior, with no particular end in mind. However, he wasn't able to destroy worlds or shake planets or anything of that sort. The storylines reflected this. That's what Dragon Ball felt the way it did. When Z made the attempt to bring back comedy, they didn't do it by having Gohan or Goten go on world adventures or anything of the sort. The whole "actual strategy and tactics in battle" coupled with "comedic light-hearted storytelling" isn't enough to make something like Dragon Ball. But Dragon Ball series after Z keep trying to return to that, or at least try to, but GT did it by completely betraying the spirit of wuxia (at least the first arc) while Super became self-parody. It's like a Spaceballs sequel parodying Spaceballs. It's a Spaghetti Western (almost literally, considering we have a Japanese man making a Chinese fantasy story), but as if a British director known for Adam Sandler-tier erotic comedies made a parody movie about Billy the Kid affectionately mocking American Western tropes while also playing them straight and mixing them with bits of Japanese samurai movies here and there. Even though it's still a Western, it's not going to have the absolute best handle on storytelling and design almost by default.

Goku going from an understandable to an abstract level of power does hurt relatability, especially to Western fans (which is why we're the ones who ran with power levels since it restores some level of comprehension), and the lack of Western awareness of wuxia and Taoism & Buddhism to go along with it also limits the ability for Westerners to really get why the series does what it does... but it was always meant as a parody and never meant to be taken seriously. Hell, Toriyama flat out forgot that he had an announcer for the Tenkaichi Budokai half way through that first tournament arc and instead started drawing the now famous Announcer Guy in that role and ran with it. It was spontaneous and energetic, and also meant for little kids who typically aren't as discerning about these things.

Thus, once that escalation really got going, it was inevitable that it wasn't going to be handled well. Super Saiyan was the point at which the series jumped the shark, but it didn't land until the Boo arc firmly established the cold fact that only Saiyans and new opponents would be worth a damn going forward, which undermined the central point of the series more than anything: it doesn't matter how hard you try or how tenacious you are. If you aren't a Saiyan, don't bother.
Goku can flex the universe out of existence? That vulgar display of power isn't the problem. It's that it's only Goku and Vegeta who can really do that which hurts the series. Theoretically, any Saiyan can also do it. And as we saw with Universe 6, new Saiyans can instantly surpass established warriors just because they're Saiyans and must have Super Saiyan.
It was a joke in DBZ Abridged, but it really would've been wondrous if "Super Human" existed in Dragon Ball. Or better yet, that the transformation known as "Super Saiyan" and "Super Saiyan God" was not actually unique to Saiyans, and instead Goku was merely the first mortal to unlock it a thousand years, to be followed by his most dedicated mates.

But alas, Dragon Ball was not planned out or written with this in mind. I keep repeating it but it does bear repeating.

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).

Insert Miyazaki statements here about how otaku (in Japan and the West alike) get so much of their ideas of social interaction and even personalities from anime which themselves were made by people who got all their ideas of social interaction from anime. It's the equivalent of tracing art rather than drawing from life. Except since it's traced, you're actually copying things that might not even have come from life and were instead pure abstractions.
Like how Dragon Ball-wannabe shonen anime absolutely loves the Power of Friendship— a trope Dragon Ball literally never once used and would've been made worse for using.

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.

That's another thing that I wanted to bring up. It's sort of like trying to get a band that's as big as the Beatles by basically just being the Beatles. The Beatles clones of the '60s and 70s simply played jangly and psychedelic love songs with nasally vocals, earned their money, and faded into obscurity. You couldn't unironically play the Beatles in 1996 even though there were loads of bands that cited them as their number one influence all over the place, even and especially in the grunge era. In comes Oasis, who basically took everything about '66-'70 era Beatles and scored it huge by updating that original sound and pushing it forward. Basically for every Oasis, there were fifty Strawberry Alarm Clocks and Plastic Pennies.

Dragon Ball as a franchise is actually pretty raw and definitely of its time, perfect for what it was. You could definitely take its essential elements and tell a better, more mature (and I mean actually mature) story.

Take that "Dragon Ball-inspired" story mentioned in my sig, which was actually triggered entirely because of questions I had about Saiyans and how they'd function in Human society. Saiyans are supposed to be a people of war, right? So how do they really function? How different are they from Earthlings? If they were raised detached entirely from their home culture and in the loving care of Humans, would they still be so violent and destructive? Would Saiyan women actually function like Human women or would they be overcome by a basic lust for violence that overrides Human gender roles? How can Son Goku follow a Taoist or Buddhist path if he's an alien and, thus, possesses a completely different mindset and spiritual make-up from us? Is the Saiyan mindset naturally fascistic and prone to self-destruction? Are Saiyans essentially stuck in a permanent jianghu mindset beyond which they can't evolve? How do Humans relate to Saiyans spiritually? Is it possible that a story with a Saiyan lead is forever stuck juggling trying to tell a story about the Human condition and the Human spirit with a creature that is not a Human and has very inhuman ways of thinking and behaving? Does that make their story any less meaningful? Do those few commonalities actually enhance the connections Humans and Saiyans have? And so on. Fairly deep questions that can actually come back and reflect on the very spiritual principles behind wuxia— these fantastical stories fundamentally about mortals overcoming our limitations, but now with truly alien entities in the mix. Like trying to write a high fantasy story with an orc lead.

Dragon Ball itself could never really explore that because, again, that's not what it was about.

Shonen inspired by Dragon Ball will never even attempt to ask such questions about similar races beyond a surface level "thrill of fighting" hat to wear, instead giving us some Philosophy 101 rambling speeches and overly emotional flashbacks and stock Power of Friendship themes. Reminiscent of how fantasy writers aped Tolkien for such a long time without really understanding what he was trying to create or why it was the way it was.

[Nokra]

The spirit bomb is literally the "power of friendship" lol

[ABED]

The spirit bomb is literally the "power of friendship" lol

No because Goku doesn't get the power from just his friends, nor does he need their consent. It's only the final one against Buu that did and it wasn't relegated to only his friends. He gets energy from not just people, but all forms of energy.

[KBABZ]

The spirit bomb is literally the "power of friendship" lol

No because Goku doesn't get the power from just his friends, nor does he need their consent. It's only the final one against Buu that did and it wasn't relegated to only his friends. He gets energy from not just people, but all forms of energy.

He still kinda has to ask though in his opening Genki-Dama speech, although I'm not sure if the plants hear and respond to this. But regardless the mentality behind the Genki-Dama IS that it's the collective energy of many things, rather than from a single powerful source.

[ABED]

The spirit bomb is literally the "power of friendship" lol

No because Goku doesn't get the power from just his friends, nor does he need their consent. It's only the final one against Buu that did and it wasn't relegated to only his friends. He gets energy from not just people, but all forms of energy.

He still kinda has to ask though in his opening Genki-Dama speech, although I'm not sure if the plants hear and respond to this. But regardless the mentality behind the Genki-Dama IS that it's the collective energy of many things, rather than from a single powerful source.

I've always taken his asking for Genki as something more poetic (for lack of a better word) than him literally asking.

[KBABZ]

No because Goku doesn't get the power from just his friends, nor does he need their consent. It's only the final one against Buu that did and it wasn't relegated to only his friends. He gets energy from not just people, but all forms of energy.

He still kinda has to ask though in his opening Genki-Dama speech, although I'm not sure if the plants hear and respond to this. But regardless the mentality behind the Genki-Dama IS that it's the collective energy of many things, rather than from a single powerful source.

I've always taken his asking for Genki as something more poetic (for lack of a better word) than him literally asking.

Normally I would agree with you there, but the Genki-Dama is the only attack in the franchise (that I know of anyway) that has an entire speech done for it rather than just calling out the name of the attack like the Kamehameha or Final Flash.

[ABED]

But as even you pointed out, he gets energy from non-sentient life as well.

[KBABZ]

But as even you pointed out, he gets energy from non-sentient life as well.

What can I say, I'm a big proponent of boulder consensuality.