I'm not annoyed the revival happened. Honestly, when I heard about the 2008 OVA and later Battle of Gods, I was pretty pleased. Dragon Ball is something I've always enjoyed, and more Dragon Ball sounds good to me.
I am annoyed that revived Dragon Ball has pretty much been "That 2008 OVA's reliance on being a disposable little nugget of nostalgia worked pretty well, huh? I wonder how far we can take that same approach..."
It's very easy to say a Dragon Ball revival wasn't necessary (as is the case with any revival, arguably any mass media at all), but I don't resent it happening, and I don't think "it wasn't necessary" holds water as an argument. The problem isn't that reviving Dragon Ball is inherently a bad idea, the problem is that Dragon Ball's revival era has been about the safest, most soulless approach to new Dragon Ball anyone could have possibly imagined, and on the whole it's just not been very good (primarily just because the majority of it was the Super anime, which was clearly extremely rushed in the writing department and hampered by inconsistent quality of animation, resulting in a poor end product).
DB Super Broly was very good though, and I hope the next movie continues where it left off in terms of feeling fresh and being... good.
If I was to give a quick list of things I'd change about the revival era:
- Resurrection F should have been scrapped immediately after it was first proposed, and retooled into a new, wholly original sequel to BoG, ideally set after the end of the original manga. Also, no new transformation needed to be introduced here, that was dumb.
- The Super anime should have been given about 6 months of further pre-production time, it should have been seasonal rather than continuous (26 episodes a year instead of 52), and it should have been set after the end of the original manga.
- Vegeta's evolution at the end of the original manga should have been paid attention to, Goku shouldn't be so immature, various characters who have no reason to be around anymore (Tenshinhan, Yamucha, Roshi) should be discarded entirely.
- In fact, on a similar note, the cast of new Dragon Ball should stop being so bloated. Focus your stories! Super Broly and GT both did this right...
- Dragon Ball needs to move forward. Have old characters move on, have new characters come in, change the situation in a significant way in the course of every arc so it doesn't feel like there's a status quo. One of Super's big problems is everything's stagnated. There hasn't been a significant change of dynamic or situation since Battle of Gods. One of the core tenets of Super is it's a nostalgia product that refuses to change anything, and sadly this is also one of its biggest flaws; but it's not so essential that you couldn't fix it, or course-correct away from it. (In fact, Broly and Super Hero have both figured this out it seems; Super Hero in particular appears to have advanced time forward by several years and is introducing Pan as a main character)
- Toei's writers should be unafraid of saying "No" to Toriyama. No one has made as much good Dragon Ball as Toriyama, but no one's made as much bad Dragon Ball as him either. His editors and such in the '80s and '90s helped him stay straight during the original run, Toei's current writers should do the same; if he has an idea the writers don't have any faith in, they shouldn't be afraid to tell him that and work with him to turn out something more workable. Toriyama still has good Dragon Ball stories in him, but just blindly saying yes to his first idea every time is not how you get that. The manga constantly changed story directions when Toriyama realised a story wasn't working out, so why would anyone think Toriyama's first idea will always be a winner from start to finish without any changes?
- Have other Toei writers pitch storylines as well. Toriyama can and should advise, give feedback, even rewrite if he feels like it, but even though Toriyama is the voice of Dragon Ball in a lot of ways, he's far from the only person who's ever written good Dragon Ball. The driving episode, Z movie 13, Gohan and the robot, Sleeping Princess in Devil Castle, and various other classic pieces of the anime were written by other people with his sign-off. Sure, if you can get Toriyama storylines that's good, but the way Dragon Ball worked back in the '80s and '90s is it kept things fresh and new. One easy way to keep things fresh and new is to invite the ideas of new writers.
Okay, that list turned out way bigger than I thought it would. Still, it ends things on a positive note, I think.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.