I've been thinking and honestly One Piece seems superior to Dragon Ball?

[ABED]

Saying the main character would save the world is hardly great foreshadowing.

(If it was a problem at all. Plenty of people seem to have liked the back and forth on Namek. I wasn't one of them but I wasn't really the target audience anyway)

What do you mean by back and forth?

[Toxin45]

Well at least one piece will end in the next two years.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Yeah. It just occurred to me. Once One Piece ends that will be it. No more One Piece. I would like to see something similar for Dragon Ball.

[Jaetinh]

Dragon Ball is easily my favorite manga of all time but yeah, One Piece is superior to Dragon Ball in a lot of aspects.

[ClutchBangstrip]

I tried OP several times. I just couldn't get into it. I think it may be the art style...

[Doctor.]

It's interesting to hear that people couldn't get into One Piece because of the art style, because I find early One Piece to have the most charming and soulful style compared to the ridiculous body proportions and facial expressions that would become much more common later on. It's only around Drum or Alabasta that I feel the art starts to change for the worse, even if, to me, it doesn't become nauseating until Thriller Bark or so.

[DragonBallFoodie]

In some respects, One Piece is superior through world exploration/building and giving enough time to its universe of characters; even if it takes forever, I have to give Oda credit for some interesting characters with curious powers and solid development.

DB in contrast, is shorter, but handles its story somewhat better with its pacing and twists.

[Planetnamek]

One Piece's sheer length has always intimidated me from ever getting into it, I could get through over a dozen shorter anime's in the time it would take me to catch up to where it is now. Plus the setting honestly never really interested me, even as a kid when the show was airing on Saturday mornings I had no real interest in it(And that was before I even knew what a dub was).

Speaking of which i've noticed a fair amount of people have some common misconceptions about why 4Kids dubbed the show in the first place. Turns out 4Kids knew full well how violent it was and had no interest in dubbing it as such, but Toei basically forced them to dub One Piece by holding two other anime's 4Kids was interested in dubbing hostage(Ultimate Muscle and Magical DoReMi),so 4Kids basically had no choice but to go through with it in order to be able to dub the other two shows. Why would Toei do something like this some of you may ask? Well simple really-they desperately wanted One Piece to become a massive hit in the U.S. like DBZ was and they were willing to do ANYTHING to get the show on the air in North America no matter what, all those silly edits in the 4Kids dub that get widely mocked?(I.E. Changing a gun into a hammer, Bellemire's "death") Toei approved of each and every single one, they didn't give a rat's ass how badly the show had to get mutilated in order to be allowed on public broadcast TV(as for why they didn't aim for Toonami from the getgo? i'm guessing Toei thought airing the show on public TV would get even bigger ratings then DBZ was getting since it aired on a cable network)to them it was all worth it. It's no wonder why 4Kids stopped dubbing the show, they aired it for as long as they were contractually obligated to do so(1 year) and then dropped it. So sad that Toei's desperation to get the show on the air pretty much killed any chance of One Piece becoming anywhere near as succesful in the U.S. as it is in Japan.

[Zamasu Black]

One Piece is better in some ways but is overall worse because the series comes across as though it's written by a man child for hyperactive children. Try reading through a volume of the series and see if you can even go a single page without seeing a "!" in someone's dialogue.

The world building is good and the creativity is good but the story is just the same old formula on a loop with the same running jokes constantly. I mean how many times now have they gone to an island and they've had to defeat some evil tyrants that are in charge?

The characters mostly suck because they're given a single gimmick or quirk and that's it. You might get a character who might have a weird manner of speech where he'll say a random word or effect at the end of each sentence...and that's the character.

[emperior]

I am not into One Piece enough to say, but I see some people brought up how it always foreshadows stuff. To the point that even I have seen many times people being hyped for certain reveals which were foreshadowed dozens of chapters before, and even years before.

That’s definitely something which doesn’t happen in Dragon Ball, and which I prefer. With Toriyama we always got “reveals” with hardly any or little foreshadowing. Dragon Ball arcs are generally quite conclusive on their own, with the ending either being a wrap-up of what happened and the aftermath + usual Shenron summoning, or the beginning of a new arc. Which is why many people will argue over singular arcs endings being better endings than the actual ending of the manga, and it’s also the reason why many rumors such as as “Toriyama wanted to end it at X arc” have sparked.

I like a lot this structure/storytelling way Dragon Ball has. It makes every arc feel much more important, and keeps me engaged all throughout. I don’t know of other shonens which have a similar structure.
People often criticize this saying “Dragon Ball has no story” but that’s not true, as Dragon Ball’s story may be very simple (which is part of the charm) but it’s there and it literally is “growth through struggle” and more specifically Goku’s growth as a martial artist.
Just because it doesn’t have a super complex structure or story it doesn’t make it bad in anyway. Maybe it won’t suit the tastes of some people, but THERE IS a reason as to why this franchise is so big and popular.

[kei17]

Personally I dislike One Piece because everything looks and sounds like something directly coming from scribbles on a notebook of a middle school child. Characters look silly and unpolished and their names have a strong early-teen-tried-hard-coming-up-a-cool-name type of feeling. The character names in DB often have a silly origin, but they're carefully thought out and don't sound embarrassing. The DB characters especially from the early arcs tend to look and act silly, too, but there's often some kind of a consistent theme and sense behind such designs. In contrast, the One Piece characters are designed too randomly and their unnecessary silliness and jokes block me from getting into the story. In short, I don't like Oda's sense of design and humor.

I also dislike how friendship seems to matter the most all the time, and there's so many tear-jerking moments with characters sobbing and crying aloud like a sicko. I do like tearful stories, but those in One Piece just aren't for me. I prefer the more individualistic, less-emotional nature of the Dragon Ball series.

In addition, Oda's paneling sucks, so I have trouble reading his manga. For some reason, this seems to be becoming worse as the series goes on.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I FUCKING LOVE YOU KEI! I hate the paneling in the manga. Its WAY too confusing at times. The anime may suck but I can still understand it much better. I love One Piece though.

[JazzMazz]

One Piece fan. It’s a fun, if fairly basic story that does a decent job of trying to explore basic themes and idea’s, although it’s presentation is often simplified for the target demographic, and is usually extremely straightforward, without really much nuance or subtlety. In saying that, a lack of nuance and subtlety isn’t inherently bad. Oda knows he lacks subtlety, and instead of going around that, makes it a part of his storytelling, making everything as blatant as possible.

In terms of mediums. Oda used to be great in the manga, but the art and panelling has declined with time, just like Toriyama’s did during Dragonball. It’s now really ugly, and hard to read. At least that’s what I found when I tried picking up the manga.

The anime is stupidly slow. Has been for more than a decade, but the pacing varies, considering how dense Oda has made the manga. Right now, it’s never looked better, with a Tatsuya Nagamine, the director for the new Broly movie, revamping the aesthetic of the anime in the latest arc.

In terms of how it compares to DB. They are both fun franchises, both with their own distinct brand of action, art, humour and storytelling. Personally I prefer One Piece’s larger over arching narrative. Despite running for 20 years, the story doesn’t feel like its being forcefully extended, or that the series should have already stopped, with the characters large motivations lending themselves to telling a grand story. In saying that, it does seem to be wrapping up in the next few years. I also prefer One Piece for, although not with particular nuance, trying to engage with large idea’s in its setting. I genuinely feel like there is far more in the text to look at and explore than there is for Dragonball, which while competently put together, doesn’t bog itself down in such things.

[Matches Malone]

Speaking of which i've noticed a fair amount of people have some common misconceptions about why 4Kids dubbed the show in the first place. Turns out 4Kids knew full well how violent it was and had no interest in dubbing it as such, but Toei basically forced them to dub One Piece by holding two other anime's 4Kids was interested in dubbing hostage(Ultimate Muscle and Magical DoReMi),so 4Kids basically had no choice but to go through with it in order to be able to dub the other two shows. Why would Toei do something like this some of you may ask? Well simple really-they desperately wanted One Piece to become a massive hit in the U.S. like DBZ was and they were willing to do ANYTHING to get the show on the air in North America no matter what, all those silly edits in the 4Kids dub that get widely mocked?(I.E. Changing a gun into a hammer, Bellemire's "death") Toei approved of each and every single one, they didn't give a rat's ass how badly the show had to get mutilated in order to be allowed on public broadcast TV(as for why they didn't aim for Toonami from the getgo? i'm guessing Toei thought airing the show on public TV would get even bigger ratings then DBZ was getting since it aired on a cable network)to them it was all worth it. It's no wonder why 4Kids stopped dubbing the show, they aired it for as long as they were contractually obligated to do so(1 year) and then dropped it. So sad that Toei's desperation to get the show on the air pretty much killed any chance of One Piece becoming anywhere near as succesful in the U.S. as it is in Japan.

This is mind blowing if true. I cannot believe the right holders themselves would destroy their own product like that. I understand wanting it in more countries, but how on earth did someone at Toei not think this was a bad idea ?

[Planetnamek]

Speaking of which i've noticed a fair amount of people have some common misconceptions about why 4Kids dubbed the show in the first place. Turns out 4Kids knew full well how violent it was and had no interest in dubbing it as such, but Toei basically forced them to dub One Piece by holding two other anime's 4Kids was interested in dubbing hostage(Ultimate Muscle and Magical DoReMi),so 4Kids basically had no choice but to go through with it in order to be able to dub the other two shows. Why would Toei do something like this some of you may ask? Well simple really-they desperately wanted One Piece to become a massive hit in the U.S. like DBZ was and they were willing to do ANYTHING to get the show on the air in North America no matter what, all those silly edits in the 4Kids dub that get widely mocked?(I.E. Changing a gun into a hammer, Bellemire's "death") Toei approved of each and every single one, they didn't give a rat's ass how badly the show had to get mutilated in order to be allowed on public broadcast TV(as for why they didn't aim for Toonami from the getgo? i'm guessing Toei thought airing the show on public TV would get even bigger ratings then DBZ was getting since it aired on a cable network)to them it was all worth it. It's no wonder why 4Kids stopped dubbing the show, they aired it for as long as they were contractually obligated to do so(1 year) and then dropped it. So sad that Toei's desperation to get the show on the air pretty much killed any chance of One Piece becoming anywhere near as succesful in the U.S. as it is in Japan.

This is mind blowing if true. I cannot believe the right holders themselves would destroy their own product like that. I understand wanting it in more countries, but how on earth did someone at Toei not think this was a bad idea ?

Considering that Toei has historically not done a great job treating their own properties very well, none of this is remotely surprising to me. With DB it's not preserving the original broadcast audio among other things. The first time I really got an inkling of how little respect Toei had for their own properties was when ADV released those uncut DVDs of subbed Sailor Moon back in 2004 and they were widely derided for being of poor quality. Why were they such poor quality you ask? Because Toei in their infinite wisdom refused to allow ADV to use the original masters, so what we got on the DVDs was second or third-generation copies of the episodes that somehow looked worse then the official dub DVD releases.

This thread here does a good of summing the situation with Toei, 4Kids and One Piece:https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threa ... s.5285251/

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Speaking of which i've noticed a fair amount of people have some common misconceptions about why 4Kids dubbed the show in the first place. Turns out 4Kids knew full well how violent it was and had no interest in dubbing it as such, but Toei basically forced them to dub One Piece by holding two other anime's 4Kids was interested in dubbing hostage(Ultimate Muscle and Magical DoReMi),so 4Kids basically had no choice but to go through with it in order to be able to dub the other two shows. Why would Toei do something like this some of you may ask? Well simple really-they desperately wanted One Piece to become a massive hit in the U.S. like DBZ was and they were willing to do ANYTHING to get the show on the air in North America no matter what, all those silly edits in the 4Kids dub that get widely mocked?(I.E. Changing a gun into a hammer, Bellemire's "death") Toei approved of each and every single one, they didn't give a rat's ass how badly the show had to get mutilated in order to be allowed on public broadcast TV(as for why they didn't aim for Toonami from the getgo? i'm guessing Toei thought airing the show on public TV would get even bigger ratings then DBZ was getting since it aired on a cable network)to them it was all worth it. It's no wonder why 4Kids stopped dubbing the show, they aired it for as long as they were contractually obligated to do so(1 year) and then dropped it. So sad that Toei's desperation to get the show on the air pretty much killed any chance of One Piece becoming anywhere near as succesful in the U.S. as it is in Japan.

This is mind blowing if true. I cannot believe the right holders themselves would destroy their own product like that. I understand wanting it in more countries, but how on earth did someone at Toei not think this was a bad idea ?

Considering that Toei has historically not done a great job treating their own properties very well, none of this is remotely surprising to me. With DB it's not preserving the original broadcast audio among other things. The first time I really got an inkling of how little respect Toei had for their own properties was when ADV released those uncut DVDs of subbed Sailor Moon back in 2004 and they were widely derided for being of poor quality. Why were they such poor quality you ask? Because Toei in their infinite wisdom refused to allow ADV to use the original masters, so what we got on the DVDs was second or third-generation copies of the episodes that somehow looked worse then the official dub DVD releases.

This thread here does a good of summing the situation with Toei, 4Kids and One Piece:https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threa ... s.5285251/

It made me wonder for so many years afterwards why in the world they licensed One Piece to 4Kids but the above post answered my question in spades, and it was all because Toei was so desperate for the show to be a success here at all costs that they didn't care who the show was given to as long as someone took it. As mentioned 4K did not want to but they were basically contractually obligated to do so in order to get Do Re Mi and Muscle (A very BS move if you ask me) and thus leading an infamous stain on the show's legacy. Toei basically dropped the ball and screwed the pooch every which way, because they really should have gone with FUNimation or even someone else (Ocean, Viz, Pioneer/Geneon??) from the start because as we can see they did a much better job in accurately dubbing the show and preserving the intention of the source. Even then, it's managed to attain moderate popularity here but not nearly to the extent that Dragon Ball did in the late '90s/early 2000's and this all goes back to them botching the licensing and forcing 4Kids to butcher the show to oblivion just so it could meet the standards for children's television when One Piece is a show definitely not at all aimed toward that demographic.

Just wow is all i can say, i knew that things were screwed up about the fiasco but not to that extent.

[Planetnamek]

This is mind blowing if true. I cannot believe the right holders themselves would destroy their own product like that. I understand wanting it in more countries, but how on earth did someone at Toei not think this was a bad idea ?

Considering that Toei has historically not done a great job treating their own properties very well, none of this is remotely surprising to me. With DB it's not preserving the original broadcast audio among other things. The first time I really got an inkling of how little respect Toei had for their own properties was when ADV released those uncut DVDs of subbed Sailor Moon back in 2004 and they were widely derided for being of poor quality. Why were they such poor quality you ask? Because Toei in their infinite wisdom refused to allow ADV to use the original masters, so what we got on the DVDs was second or third-generation copies of the episodes that somehow looked worse then the official dub DVD releases.

This thread here does a good of summing the situation with Toei, 4Kids and One Piece:https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threa ... s.5285251/

It made me wonder for so many years afterwards why in the world they licensed One Piece to 4Kids but the above post answered my question in spades, and it was all because Toei was so desperate for the show to be a success here at all costs that they didn't care who the show was given to as long as someone took it. As mentioned 4K did not want to but they were basically contractually obligated to do so in order to get Do Re Mi and Muscle (A very BS move if you ask me) and thus leading an infamous stain on the show's legacy. Toei basically dropped the ball and screwed the pooch every which way, because they really should have gone with FUNimation or even someone else (Ocean, Viz, Pioneer/Geneon??) from the start because as we can see they did a much better job in accurately dubbing the show and preserving the intention of the source. Even then, it's managed to attain moderate popularity here but not nearly to the extent that Dragon Ball did in the late '90s/early 2000's and this all goes back to them botching the licensing and forcing 4Kids to butcher the show to oblivion just so it could meet the standards for children's television when One Piece is a show definitely not at all aimed toward that demographic.

Just wow is all i can say, i knew that things were screwed up about the fiasco but not to that extent.

Funimation was actually in talks to dub the show at first, but for whatever reason Toei decided to go with 4Kids instead. I've heard different reasons for this, from Toei not wanting to risk Funimation doing to One Piece what they did to DBZ and from 4Kids being cheaper to use.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Considering that Toei has historically not done a great job treating their own properties very well, none of this is remotely surprising to me. With DB it's not preserving the original broadcast audio among other things. The first time I really got an inkling of how little respect Toei had for their own properties was when ADV released those uncut DVDs of subbed Sailor Moon back in 2004 and they were widely derided for being of poor quality. Why were they such poor quality you ask? Because Toei in their infinite wisdom refused to allow ADV to use the original masters, so what we got on the DVDs was second or third-generation copies of the episodes that somehow looked worse then the official dub DVD releases.

This thread here does a good of summing the situation with Toei, 4Kids and One Piece:https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threa ... s.5285251/

It made me wonder for so many years afterwards why in the world they licensed One Piece to 4Kids but the above post answered my question in spades, and it was all because Toei was so desperate for the show to be a success here at all costs that they didn't care who the show was given to as long as someone took it. As mentioned 4K did not want to but they were basically contractually obligated to do so in order to get Do Re Mi and Muscle (A very BS move if you ask me) and thus leading an infamous stain on the show's legacy. Toei basically dropped the ball and screwed the pooch every which way, because they really should have gone with FUNimation or even someone else (Ocean, Viz, Pioneer/Geneon??) from the start because as we can see they did a much better job in accurately dubbing the show and preserving the intention of the source. Even then, it's managed to attain moderate popularity here but not nearly to the extent that Dragon Ball did in the late '90s/early 2000's and this all goes back to them botching the licensing and forcing 4Kids to butcher the show to oblivion just so it could meet the standards for children's television when One Piece is a show definitely not at all aimed toward that demographic.

Just wow is all i can say, i knew that things were screwed up about the fiasco but not to that extent.

Funimation was actually in talks to dub the show at first, but for whatever reason Toei decided to go with 4Kids instead. I've heard different reasons for this, from Toei not wanting to risk Funimation doing to One Piece what they did to DBZ and from 4Kids being cheaper to use.

It's really an ironic thing that FUNi was passed for acquiring the show at first then ended up getting it later after 4Kids dropped the license.

[Planetnamek]

It made me wonder for so many years afterwards why in the world they licensed One Piece to 4Kids but the above post answered my question in spades, and it was all because Toei was so desperate for the show to be a success here at all costs that they didn't care who the show was given to as long as someone took it. As mentioned 4K did not want to but they were basically contractually obligated to do so in order to get Do Re Mi and Muscle (A very BS move if you ask me) and thus leading an infamous stain on the show's legacy. Toei basically dropped the ball and screwed the pooch every which way, because they really should have gone with FUNimation or even someone else (Ocean, Viz, Pioneer/Geneon??) from the start because as we can see they did a much better job in accurately dubbing the show and preserving the intention of the source. Even then, it's managed to attain moderate popularity here but not nearly to the extent that Dragon Ball did in the late '90s/early 2000's and this all goes back to them botching the licensing and forcing 4Kids to butcher the show to oblivion just so it could meet the standards for children's television when One Piece is a show definitely not at all aimed toward that demographic.

Just wow is all i can say, i knew that things were screwed up about the fiasco but not to that extent.

Funimation was actually in talks to dub the show at first, but for whatever reason Toei decided to go with 4Kids instead. I've heard different reasons for this, from Toei not wanting to risk Funimation doing to One Piece what they did to DBZ and from 4Kids being cheaper to use.

It's really an ironic thing that FUNi was passed for acquiring the show at first then ended up getting it later after 4Kids dropped the license.

Yes it is, Couldn't have put it better myself, it really is a shame that for so long 4Kids took all the blame from angry OP fans for something that wasn't even their fault really. What makes it even worse is apparently 4Kids did want to be more faithful to the original(to the point where they recorded an English verision of We Are:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrHO6DtFJ-Y and that was actually shown off at conventions) but Toei were the ones that were insisting they go in a different direction for the dub.

[funrush]

I like Dragon Ball more, but I will concede that as of the Fish-Man arc, (I'm on Volume 63, which is only 2/3 of what's out!!! And I've been reading for months!!!) One Piece has better writing than Dragon Ball does. Oda cares more about the side characters, tries to give everyone in the cast something to do each arc, keeps building the world in interesting ways and introducing new powers and abilities for our heroes that don't feel like asspulls, etc. Each of the Straw hats have their own distinct personalities and traits and obstacles to overcome, the cast has better chemistry. It's much better at being an ensemble show than Dragon Ball is.

Dragon Ball does have better character arcs sometimes. DB is much worse at balancing its side characters (our bench of useless human fighters), but the character arcs of Gohan and Vegeta are much more compelling character-wise than anything in One Piece that I've seen so far, although there's a couple diamonds in there like Robin learning to trust the pirates and feel like she has a home.

One Piece is better at pulling on your heartstrings. Stuff like the dueling brothers of Elbaph, or the story of Brook and Laboon, Robin's mom working to figure out the 100 year gap, Luffy and his brothers, Whitebeard building his family, the characters of One Piece have much better backstories than most of the ones in DB.

I can't say anything about declining animation quality or bad pacing because I've been reading the manga, as is my go-to with these long-running shonens that are prone to fucktons of anime filler. I do agree with Kei that Oda's paneling is confusing at times, the story is dialogue-heavy and when that's combined with the action, the pages can feel cramped sometimes.

Funi passing on the show is a huge missed opportunity. One Piece's anime never got an actual chance here in the states, there was either the neutered 4kids version or Funi's dub which airs one day a week at like 2 in the morning. If it got an actual primetime slot 5 days a week or something, it might've blown up here to a similar degree that DBZ and Naruto did.