So, did DBZ Movie 14, and everything after scratched your DB itch?

[Desassina]

I don't think it's a matter of planning as much as time. DB's release schedule and budget aren't conducive to it. Besides I don't care if it were. The quality of the animation isn't the deciding factor for me nor most people I would argue. Great animation can't make up for an uninteresting story. Take Akira for example - awful movie even though the animation was good. I can deal with subpar animation if I'm invested in the characters.

I agree with you for once. I have only watched Akira recently and I can't tell what's with the story hype but its production values instead.

[kemuri07]

yeah nah. Akira is certainly not awful. While I'll always recommend people read the manga since the film is a truncated version of a bigger story, Akira is the goods and there's a reason why it still comes up in conversation nearly 30 years after it's release.

[ABED]

yeah nah. Akira is certainly not awful. While I'll always recommend people read the manga since the film is a truncated version of a bigger story, Akira is the goods and there's a reason why it still comes up in conversation nearly 30 years after it's release.

Yes because the animation was ahead of its time and still holds up and is basically all that film is known for. It's clearly a truncated version of whatever the original story was and thus it's just awful.

Bottom line, the quality of the animation doesn't matter if the story isn't compelling. Is it worth your money just to see a bunch of pretty pictures?

[Matches Malone]

That level of animation is possible in a TV series. You just need a hell of a lot of good planning and preparation for it.

DB's release schedule and budget aren't conducive to it.

Boruto is also a weekly anime with probably a similar budget, and it managed to pull off a movie quality episode in 65. Fans even debate whether or not it's better than its movie counterpart. That's not to say it can be done all the time, but with proper planning, I think it can be every now and then for major fights.

[Cursed Lemon]

To "scratch that itch", so to speak, I feel like Dragon Ball in some way has to make it back into the relevant zeitgeist of anime, because that's what I remember most about being a fan of DBZ - that it was the thing.

Super Broly was awesome though.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

The notion of an "itch" really has two different meanings; what you want in a Dragon Ball follow up from as a story, and the feelings and experiences that that brings, to go with however you remember experiencing the original stuff at the time. For the latter, having brand new Dragon Ball material to look forward to, eventually week to week, was fun in itself, for sure. I got to talk with new and old friends about it, banter about stupid fan theories with a co-worker who loves those, and of course watch the silliness and tournament prediction brackets. Here too, of course! It will never make you feel like a kid again, really, so that's the best I could ask for. And Battle of Gods and Super Broly did new things for Dragon Ball in the movie sphere, and I can certainly forgive the latter for banking so basely on the old when it was done in as "premium" and reasonably successful a way as it was. Strangely enough, you might argue we're in the most simultaneously creative and successful era of home console video games as well, bearing in mind that 7 of the 9 PS2 games are from two subseries and the PS360 era floundered so, but that record is going to crash eventually. So good content has come from it.

But from the story side, the series was so severely tapped out by its original ending that any direct sequel claiming to be the continuing adventures of Goku is going to falter no matter what angle it takes. Goku is done and wanted to pass the torch, this will never happen because the progeny are not interesting enough, and the fights have looked the same since Freeza at the very latest so any new levels of strength are redundant. So that actually set my expectations for Super rather low, and just let it do whatever its thing turned out to be. And Super did do some things I liked. The multiversal god hierarchy and the saiyans breaking their limits to challenge it was a natural continuation of things after Buu, and the character-driven episodes were welcome. And even the series episodic, frozen-in-time nature that some of us rightly bemoan as playing safe is something new for the series, getting to see these characters in actual peacetime, not being jockied from one tournament or calamity to the next. Getting post-Buu Vegeta at last is nice, even if he's now possibly doomed to be Goku's lesser effectively because tradition dictates.

But then I would also agree that all of these things are undercut by Toei being the ones to wing it, rather Toriyama doing it week to week. We have Super's shotgun announcement, Gohan as dangling carrot for most of the series, Resurrection F's being so blah that Freeza was actually better served in Super and Super: Broly than his own self-titled movie, and so on.

In fact, not only did modern DB not scratch my itch, it managed to accomplish the opposite at least once. RoF was such a disappointment to me. Following a movie that I thought was fun, that took its time, and explored the characters, this felt shallow, pandering, and, as Robo said, nothing but an excuse to have strong bois fight. I remember sitting in the theatre watching it, realizing exactly how early anything resembling a story was already, feeling my spirits drop at exactly that moment, and being extraordinarily bored the rest of the run. In the aftermath, it might have been the first time I heard the pejorative, "Lolz, you watch Dragon Ball for the story?!" That people seemed to be not only eating this up but indicating that such shallow nostalgia trips were exactly what they were looking for, really disheartened me. It disheartened me to the point that I found myself really down on Dragon Ball as a whole for the next several months.

I can sympathize with that. For the brief time we had only those two movies to go on, it was telling how people compared the two. "F" was more straightforward, but was it better for it?" etc.

[SupremeKai25]

And even the series episodic, frozen-in-time nature that some of us rightly bemoan as playing safe is something new for the series, getting to see these characters in actual peacetime, not being jockied from one tournament or calamity to the next.

Should it really be bemoaned? I don't see a problem with that. As there is war, there is also peace, it is natural. Super is similar to Boruto, some people complain that it is too light-hearted and peaceful, but both series happen after all major threats to the protagonists were dealt with, so what are people expecting?

Granted, it would be incorrect to say Super is 100% a time of peace, since it had the Golden Freeza and Zamasu arcs (though the latter took place in an alternate timeline), and most recently Moro was released and is causing havoc across the universe. But since Beerus has awakened and can hopefully do his job, there should never be another destructive threat to U7 like Majin Buu.

[Rory]

Broly was a one off and that level of animation (which is already overpraised) isn't possible in a TV series.

I'm not even talking about frames per scene animation, I'm talking not overly saturated colours, top tier character design (having the characters look good moving isn't just about more frames, as I'm sure you know, your show can feel like far more elegant with good character design), inspired score, just the presentation as a whole.
It's was nice to see Dragon Ball not look like a walking plastic wrapped corpse again.

[Grimlock]

Well, just the way they market the franchise. The way transformations get treated as pure action figure fuel, like SDBH: UM introduces a new transformation for a character with little fanfare almost every episode.

At least people are getting different action figures, though. It's more problematic with Dragon Ball Super, also a blatant cash cow. And generally the only action figures it generates are Goku and Vegeta with their new and ugly transformations and oh you want something different? Here's Android 17 with other clothes. But mostly what the series do is to sell the same thing, when they could sell a lot more with different variations and stuff.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Well, just the way they market the franchise. The way transformations get treated as pure action figure fuel, like SDBH: UM introduces a new transformation for a character with little fanfare almost every episode.

At least people are getting different action figures, though. It's more problematic with Dragon Ball Super, also a blatant cash cow. And generally the only action figures it generates are Goku and Vegeta with their new and ugly transformations and oh you want something different? Here's Android 17 with other clothes. But mostly what the series do is to sell the same thing, when they could sell a lot more with different variations and stuff.

Your post is confusing you call DBS a cash cow and then criticise it for not introducing more marketable aspects make up your mind.

If DBS was such a blatant cash cow then it wouldn't be in state of hiatus now would it?

Oh and SSGSS is still the main mascot form and the most popular Super Saiyan form so I don't know why you are putting ugly like it's a unanimous opinion...

Also you can dislike DBS all you like but there is a reason why Bandai keep shoving the DBS characters and their "new and ugly" forms in DBH...

[Grimlock]

Your post is confusing you call DBS a cash cow and then criticise it for not introducing more marketable aspects make up your mind.

Then allow me to explain, the difference is that while Dragon Ball Heroes provides action figures of different characters with their different transformations, Dragon Ball Super provides the same action figures basically (with the exception of Goku and Vegeta). What's so different about Dragon Ball Z's Piccolo and Dragon Ball Super's Piccolo, for example? They sell the same thing. We still continue (?) to get "kid" Goten and Trunks stuff, when they should market their teenagers versions by now.

Also you can dislike DBS all you like but there is a reason why Bandai keep shoving the DBS characters and their "new and ugly" forms in DBH...

And the reason is because Dragon Ball Heroes is a game first and foremost. Games will get content from the series (anime more specifically) as it has always been.

[kemuri07]

I mean..DBS is absolutely a cashcow meant to profit off of our collective nostalgia of a far better show (Dragon Ball and Z). Within that context, sure there's some fun to be had (mostly with the manga), but that's all it is.