How would you improve DB going forward?

[zekken1]

About point 1, Present Zamasu vs. Goku was basically that. It was very focused on martial arts, each blow had a big impact on the opponent, and there was barely any ki-related ability. Very underrated fight.

Some of that you get from Super Dragon Ball Heroes i'd say. (Havent seen past episode 11 or smt so please keep this spoiler free)
Hearts brings more to the table than raw power, and his plan/ the story is very much original in DB. A sophisticated, planned approach to overthrow the hierarchy. A plan which includes powering up the universe seed making it so characters from the tournamet of power can return. It's genius.

The piccolo thing already happens him joining in on the brawl against Hearts. I mean besides him it's Goku&Vegeta the mains. Fan favorite Mirai Trunks, and winner of the T.O.P, Lapis(17). And he was featured in DBS: Broly promotional material along side Goku and Vegeta. So it is already happening for Piccolo, I don't read the manga so i don't really know his involvement there.

As for the forms i'd say there is only a Super Saiyan version of Ultra Instinct remaining before the story picks up with GT and Super Saiyan 4.

You also get that from normal Super. Zamasu was not a villain who relied solely on raw power, but on his charisma and immortality as well. Also he had the most intricate and well-thought plan to succeed; he basically took care of anyone who could thwart his plan, and was defeated only because another timeline's Goku befriended Zeno (something that was beyond his control and that he couldn't possibly have foreseen).

Yes you are completely correct on Zamasu, but another point of mentioning Super Dragon Ball Heroes is that it is currently on-going, which means the trend of villians like Zamasu and Hearts are continuing.

We'll just have to see if AT also has that kind of enemy in mind, any guesses if he does?

Also yeah i didn't consider that goku V Zamasu fight when i wrote the post, but yes that is exactly the kind of fighting that the series should delve deeper on. Nice catch

[JulieYBM]

Characters fighting in normal clothing and also their underwear. No reason that Gokuu should have still had pants during his fight with Freeza on Namek.

[zekken1]

Normal clothing most definetely, just look at Goten Vs Baby or Vegeta Vs Gohan in GT. That looked cool and different.

As for the underwear thing you're getting into demographic territory, like there is a reason for ki blast mostly destroy upper garments and not lower. If it's not suited for kids it won't be shown. So there probably isn't much hope there

Oh and also i'd like more female presence in DB. It's already improving with powerhouses like Chronoa, Towa and 21. But it would be nice if like Videl became a more active member in the Z team.

[SupremeKai25]

About point 1, Present Zamasu vs. Goku was basically that. It was very focused on martial arts, each blow had a big impact on the opponent, and there was barely any ki-related ability. Very underrated fight.

Some of that you get from Super Dragon Ball Heroes i'd say. (Havent seen past episode 11 or smt so please keep this spoiler free)
Hearts brings more to the table than raw power, and his plan/ the story is very much original in DB. A sophisticated, planned approach to overthrow the hierarchy. A plan which includes powering up the universe seed making it so characters from the tournamet of power can return. It's genius.

The piccolo thing already happens him joining in on the brawl against Hearts. I mean besides him it's Goku&Vegeta the mains. Fan favorite Mirai Trunks, and winner of the T.O.P, Lapis(17). And he was featured in DBS: Broly promotional material along side Goku and Vegeta. So it is already happening for Piccolo, I don't read the manga so i don't really know his involvement there.

As for the forms i'd say there is only a Super Saiyan version of Ultra Instinct remaining before the story picks up with GT and Super Saiyan 4.

You also get that from normal Super. Zamasu was not a villain who relied solely on raw power, but on his charisma and immortality as well. Also he had the most intricate and well-thought plan to succeed; he basically took care of anyone who could thwart his plan, and was defeated only because another timeline's Goku befriended Zeno (something that was beyond his control and that he couldn't possibly have foreseen).

Yes you are completely correct on Zamasu, but another point of mentioning Super Dragon Ball Heroes is that it is currently on-going, which means the trend of villians like Zamasu and Hearts are continuing.

We'll just have to see if AT also has that kind of enemy in mind, any guesses if he does?

Also yeah i didn't consider that goku V Zamasu fight when i wrote the post, but yes that is exactly the kind of fighting that the series should delve deeper on. Nice catch

Well honestly it's pretty hard to have fights like those. These characters have so many ki techniques at their disposal that it'd be stupid not to use them. With that Zamasu vs. Goku fight you had the excuse that they were both holding back because it was just a friendly match, but in general the writers wouldn't be able to write many grounded fights. I mean, the ToP was already a mess of ki blasts in the first 10 seconds, despite the no-killing rule.

Anyway have fun watching the Hearts arc of Heroes, there's also a new arc coming out this month if I'm not mistaken so I might check that out. Once Super returns, I hope they borrow a lot of ideas from Heroes (the character of Hearts, Zamasu's return, etc.).

[Quantum-Kakarrotto]

For me personally on how I would improve Dragon Ball going forward is mostly to just bring the franchise back to form with how it was in the original series.

- Stop the emphasis on other characters that don't need to be there. It feels like there are too many characters at this point to keep track of which is hurting the new characters we meet by taking away focus from them to focus on the irrelevant ones.

- Refocus the story back on the main protagonist of Dragon Ball which of course is Son Goku and keep the franchise as the adventures of Son Goku instead of trying to change it something different. DBS suffers because they keep trying to make Goku into Vegeta's sidekick instead of him taking charge as he used to in the original series with forming ideas back in the Buu arc with Piccolo. Whether people like him or not, Goku should always be the main character of Dragon Ball and nothing should change that or the story suffers. And people start saying that Gohan took the lead in the Cell arc, you should also remember that Goku was still emphasized a lot and without Goku, Gohan would have lost against Cell.

- Don't be afraid to give us arcs that last for 40 or more episodes at a time like the original series or in the manga's case, give us story arcs that last more than 10 chapters with a rushed ending. We're 57 chapters into the DBS manga at the time of this post and we're already five arcs deep while in the original DB chapter 57 was only the start of the Red Ribbon Army arc.

- Bring back the martial arts that made DB popular back in the original series with characters learning a lot of new interesting things
instead of just continuing this whole "I can't beat this guy guess I'll have to hit harder" Motif that plagues modern DB.

- I love Sumitomo's music in modern DB but I feel like he's being held back by whoever is in charge. Let the man run loose and make more great music for the series that he's made for other anime. And speaking of music, move on from Cha-La Head Cha-La already, we don't need a new rendition of it every year and make a new main theme for the series like GT had with Dan Dan, Kai with Dragon Soul, etc, etc.

- Finally, the big one for me is to just keep characters consistent and not regress them to retell old character arcs that we already did back in the original series. It's okay to have them grow and learn new things and not the same stuff from 30 years ago. We don't need Vegeta to act the same as he did back in the Cell arc, we don't need Goku to act even more immature and stupid than how he was in the original manga or anime.
Heck at this point I'd rather have Takeo Koyama back as head writer of DB than go through what we did for the first run of Dragon Ball Super with how regressed or changed the characters were.

Anyways that's my two-cents on how I would improve the series, I could get into who I want as character designer or all that jazz, but everyone else has mostly touched on that already.

[ABED]

I like that most of the arcs were relatively short. If anything, DBZ pulled the taffy.

[ekrolo2]

DB is already improved: its back to being dead.

[Dbzfan94]

DB is already improved: its back to being dead.

Pretty much how I feel. I'm happy its gone (the anime at least) and hopefully stays gone.

[emperior]

1. During the fights focus more on martial arts, less on the super massive, beam struggle fights and such. The Tournament of Power, the fact that they couldn't fly was a really good add on. Make the normal fights more like Tien Vs Goku in the 23 budokai, less like Gohan Vs Lavender in expo tournament. The first Hit Vs Vegeta fight was good as well. This may help the budget as well as, making the big fights like Goku Vs Jiren more special. Where in those fights they can add all they flying, beams and such.

2. More like the first point bring in more varieties of martial arts. Some can use wrestling moves, some muy thai. This is a show of martial artist after all. Goku Vs Toppo was good in this regard seeing as it showed grab/lock moves. More of that, it helps make the fighters different and give them more personality.

I completely agree with these 2 points. This is heavily underrated stuff. Even reading the manga Toriyama always saved the flashy stuff for the big moments and that’s how it should be!
Toyotaro mostly follows the same philosophy of having very little Ki moves spam and a focus on hand-to-hand combat, so I wished the anime could have done the same.

And as for point 2, that is something I wish they could do more. Usually in Toriyama’s work everyone fights more or less similarly, as he borrowed choreography from Bruce Lee’s and Jackie Chan’s movies but now that the fights are handled by different people, it would be nice to see some different types of moves borrowed from the various martial arts.

Super has had some very good hand-to-hand grounded combat stuff, like Goku vs Present Zamasu, Vegeta vs Hit, Goku vs Hit, Goku throwing Broly to the ground in the last movie and a few others.
I wish these fights’ nice choreography could be the standard and not the exception.

As for other improvements I wish to see:
1. Storylines set after the end of the manga;
2. Stop with the nostalgia pandering and pointless fanservice: focus on new stuff, without being held back by the series’ past and its popularity;
3. Stop using characters who have no place in the story just because of their popularity;
4. More risky storylines that shake the status quo;
5. Change up the characters’ looks more between the arcs, ex. their outfit, hairstyle etcetera,
6. Handle new forms and transformations like the manga did: Trunks didn’t get a new form, Toppo didn’t transform and most importantly all of the new transformations of Goku and Vegeta were simple while the anime went with over the top effects.

[Planetnamek]

DB is already improved: its back to being dead.

Pretty much how I feel. I'm happy its gone (the anime at least) and hopefully stays gone.

Considering how much money it made last year that's highly unlikely, i'll bet you another series of Super will get announced later this year along with the next movie.

[emperior]

I haven’t seen Super, but I disagree with the OP’s implication that beam struggles are not an improvement over hand to hand combat. It was a natural progression which was latent since Goku’s first Kamehameha. If characters went back to using classical martial arts, it would not be believable, unless there were some reason to be severely powered down.

The OP was speaking about the choreography. Classical martial arts are still the basis for hand-to-hand combat in Dragon Ball. And many of us prefer the fights to be mainly fought like that, instead of being a spam of ki blasts.
The beam struggles, the iconic moves should be only used during pivotal moments of the battle.

[Dbzfan94]

DB is already improved: its back to being dead.

Pretty much how I feel. I'm happy its gone (the anime at least) and hopefully stays gone.

Considering how much money it made last year that's highly unlikely, i'll bet you another series of Super will get announced later this year along with the next movie.

Considering how times I heard "Super will be announced at (this point)" across 2019, random speculation means jack fucking squat.

[Planetnamek]

Pretty much how I feel. I'm happy its gone (the anime at least) and hopefully stays gone.

Considering how much money it made last year that's highly unlikely, i'll bet you another series of Super will get announced later this year along with the next movie.

Considering how times I heard "Super will be announced at (this point)" across 2019, random speculation means jack fucking squat.

Having watched some videos on that, i've found some info which gave me good reason to believe that some last minute behind the scenes issues prevented another Super series from being announced in 2019 as originally planned.

[Michsi]

Considering how much money it made last year that's highly unlikely, i'll bet you another series of Super will get announced later this year along with the next movie.

Considering how times I heard "Super will be announced at (this point)" across 2019, random speculation means jack fucking squat.

Having watched some videos on that, i've found some info which gave me good reason to believe that some last minute behind the scenes issues prevented another Super series from being announced in 2019 as originally planned.

Assuming that's true, there's a high chance those behind the scenes issues might still persist to this day.

[Lord Beerus]

Have a new cast of characters, with a series director and lead writer that has an understanding of Dragon Ball's charm and whimsy, while also having a grasp of the physiology and mentality behind martial arts.

[GhostEmperorX]

Get Sunrise to do the adaptation.

[Planetnamek]

Give Gohan more to do, I was annoyed when he got pushed aside in the Buu arc so Goku could do his thing again.

[ABED]

Give Gohan more to do, I was annoyed when he got pushed aside in the Buu arc so Goku could do his thing again.

Gohan was given plenty in Super. Why would you want someone else in the lead role? Has it ever worked out well to change a show's lead after an extended period?

[Dbzfan94]

Give Gohan more to do, I was annoyed when he got pushed aside in the Buu arc so Goku could do his thing again.

Gohan was given plenty in Super. Why would you want someone else in the lead role? Has it ever worked out well to change a show's lead after an extended period?

The Boruto series seems to be doing just fine going down that route. Naruto, Saskue and Sakura appear but they're far from main characters.

[ABED]

Give Gohan more to do, I was annoyed when he got pushed aside in the Buu arc so Goku could do his thing again.

Gohan was given plenty in Super. Why would you want someone else in the lead role? Has it ever worked out well to change a show's lead after an extended period?

The Boruto series seems to be doing just fine going down that route. Naruto, Saskue and Sakura appear but they're far from main characters.

That's a spin off. I've never even seen Naruto so I can't comment on this specific example other than to say after seeing show after show switch main characters after an extended period, usually about 3 or more years, the series is never as good as it once was when the show tries to keep going without the main character or even just reducing their role.