What is the difference between Toriyama's Dragon Ball, and what other people come up with?

[Koitsukai]

One thing I noticed was how characters, forms and strenght are portrayed.

To me Toriyama knows when to slow things down, when to do less is more. Toei tends to go the other way, have more muscles, more forms, more fusions, more hair. I mean look at Z Broly, or Janemba, or Hirudegan, or Bojack. Even DBS Broly wasn't suppose to be so big, but the director went for the fan-service-y LSS form.
GT had Rildo with 3 forms, one buffer than the other, Vegeta Baby also and he even went ohzaru. Omega Shenron gets it too, he is so ripped and he gets even bigger later. SS4 has so much going on, more muscles, longer hair, fur, red eyeliner, a tail.
Super isn't inmune to this either, Merged Zamasu becomes huge, Jiren becomes much bigger, GoD Toppo too. SSBE has Vegeta's shoulders bigger than Tenshinhan's.

Toriyama on the other hand, when Buu kept becoming stronger, taller and buffer, decided to make Pure Buu look like a kid. Freeza went the other way around, from child to tall, to xenomorph to kid again. Cell too, his perfect form was smaller.
And while the SS forms were getting more stuff like lightning, more hair, for SSG he made it skinnier, younger, even kinder eyes he gave to the form.
And even Beerus is a scrawny cat. I'm betting that if Toei came up with the concept of GoDs, Beerus would've been like The Rock.

[VegettoEX]

Toei DID come up with the idea for Gods of Destruction! Remember, that movie (Battle of Gods) was already in production with a separate scriptwriter (Yusuke Watanabe) and character designer (Tadayoshi Yamamuro) before Toriyama was dragged in at Torishima’s sly insistence, rewriting and redesigning almost in its entirety. Super Saiyan God was going to be bulky with a cape, and Beerus was going to be a lizard that originally infected the Saiyans with evil. That’s... pretty much the epitome of Non-Toriyama vs. Toriyama when you see the final on-screen results.

All the respective citations and translations for what I mentioned are here on our website-

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/movie/battle-of-gods/

[WittyUsername]

To be frank, the idea of the Saiyans being infected into becoming evil actually does seem like something I could picture modern Toriyama doing, at least if Minus is any indication. I’m glad he didn’t go there, but his style does seem to have changed a bit, compared to when the manga was still being written.

[Sadala Elite]

I think the main difference is that Toriyama was telling an original story in the manga. He'd always try to keep things fresh and new. Toei and fans on the other hand rely on nostalgia from that original manga instead of coming up with original ideas that can stand next to it.

I think this goes to a deeper issue: That Toei (the Toei executives specifically) just don't care about Dragon Ball on any artistic level, so there's no artistic drive or creative mind on Toriyama's level behind any of their Dragon Ball material. To them, Dragon Ball is just a product that makes them lots of money. So whenever they attempt to create more Dragon Ball themselves, the result tends to be inferior retreads of characters and story elements Toriyama executed better himself.

How is Toriyama any different? The man himself outright said in an interview that he sees Dragonball as nothing more than pointless fighting.

Besides, Toei has outshined Toriyama numerous times (compare 90's Bardock vs DB Minus, The History of Trunks in general, the entire Buu saga anime vs the original manga version, etc).

[Sadala Elite]

Toei just don't care about Dragon Ball on any artistic level, so there's no artistic drive or creative mind behind any of their Dragon Ball material. To them, Dragon Ball is just a product that makes them lots of money.

The problem is that Toriyama is also doing this. RF and Broly are examples of Toriyama just giving fans what they want, going as far as to admit that he wrote Broly because he was popular.

Kinda makes you miss his old contrarian nature. Maybe raising kids softened him up

Many of the worst aspects of the original series/Z stems from his contrarianism. Doing things a certain way just because its the opposite of want people or expect isn't a basis of good writing. Its no better than pandering to the base.

[Sadala Elite]

One thing I noticed was how characters, forms and strenght are portrayed.

To me Toriyama knows when to slow things down, when to do less is more. Toei tends to go the other way, have more muscles, more forms, more fusions, more hair. I mean look at Z Broly, or Janemba, or Hirudegan, or Bojack. Even DBS Broly wasn't suppose to be so big, but the director went for the fan-service-y LSS form.
GT had Rildo with 3 forms, one buffer than the other, Vegeta Baby also and he even went ohzaru. Omega Shenron gets it too, he is so ripped and he gets even bigger later. SS4 has so much going on, more muscles, longer hair, fur, red eyeliner, a tail.
Super isn't inmune to this either, Merged Zamasu becomes huge, Jiren becomes much bigger, GoD Toppo too. SSBE has Vegeta's shoulders bigger than Tenshinhan's.

Toriyama on the other hand, when Buu kept becoming stronger, taller and buffer, decided to make Pure Buu look like a kid. Freeza went the other way around, from child to tall, to xenomorph to kid again. Cell too, his perfect form was smaller.
And while the SS forms were getting more stuff like lightning, more hair, for SSG he made it skinnier, younger, even kinder eyes he gave to the form.
And even Beerus is a scrawny cat. I'm betting that if Toei came up with the concept of GoDs, Beerus would've been like The Rock.

The bolded are all Toriyama's designs too.

[mute_proxy]

The bolded are all Toriyama's designs too.

Yamamuro designed Janemba, he sent it to Toriyama for corrections, Toriyama approved it and sent it back.

[Matches Malone]

The bolded are all Toriyama's designs too.

He did design them, but the designs were based on what was asked of him from Toei. Toei wanted super strong looking villains, so that's what Toriyama gave them. Although Toriyama's villains also look strong, they don't stand out as such like Toei's villains.

[JustAlex1997]

It's most notable when they try to do his style of comedy. As goofy as it is, there's some restraint to it that others fail to emulate.