Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

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Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Majin Man 101 » Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:09 am

The Dragon World has expanded so much over the past decade since the introduction of the Dragon Ball Super storyline. There is so much that they could do with this expansive and interesting universe. Does anybody think there could ever be a scenario where a new story is crafted that introduces a new main cast? I think there is some untapped potential here and it could help get the series out of the story telling rut it has been in since the end of the original series. Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super have had some interesting ideas and some good moments here and there but they have overall been pretty disappointing in comparison to Toriyama's original story. Please share some great ideas and let me know what you think.

A galactic patrol spinoff for instance could be an incredibly fun and exciting show/manga.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Wrigglything » Sun Jul 31, 2022 11:43 am

I thought about a similar thing also. But I guess in a franchise that more often than not plays it safe, regardless of execution or quality (I certainly did enjoy Super fine enough for what it is), it could be a hard sell.
I personally think an anthology would be a cool idea, exploring different parts of the Dragon World, like seeing how Planet Sadala works or something that has rarely been explored, although with that in mind I haven't seen SDBH so maybe they already explored some aspects unfamiliar to the mainlines?

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Adamant » Sun Jul 31, 2022 3:51 pm

Isn't this pretty much what Jaco was, to the point the story was nearly over by the time it was revealed it was set in the Dragon World?
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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by MasenkoHA » Sun Jul 31, 2022 4:37 pm

Adamant wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 3:51 pm Isn't this pretty much what Jaco was, to the point the story was nearly over by the time it was revealed it was set in the Dragon World?
I think people want it to be a series calledDragon Ball with the martial artist and dragon balls and battle powers and Super Saiyans but with a completely different cast of characters* Jaco was mostly its own thing that ended up taking place in the same universe and end with a pseudo prequel.


*Which no thank you. Just let the franchise die. It doesn't need to do the Yu-gi-oh/Digimon thing.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sun Jul 31, 2022 4:44 pm

MasenkoHA wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 4:37 pmJust let the franchise die. It doesn't need to do the Yu-gi-oh/Digimon thing.
Lots of people say that, but realistically why would TOEI just let it die? Money talks and all that.
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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:47 pm

The franchise isn't dying anytime soon. It's sustained popularity and influence on the industry over the years is proof of that.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
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I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Lord Beerus » Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:30 pm

No.

Goku is the centrepiece for Dragon Ball when it comes to having any kind of ongoing narrative and there hasn't been any need to change that as it is still been profitable for Shueisha, Toei and Bandai.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Jord » Mon Aug 01, 2022 3:17 am

As great as that show can be, at the end of the episode every viewer will ask "Where's Goku?".

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by MasenkoHA » Mon Aug 01, 2022 9:10 am

Lord Beerus wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:30 pm No.

Goku is the centrepiece for Dragon Ball when it comes to having any kind of ongoing narrative and there hasn't been any need to change that as it is still been profitable for Shueisha, Toei and Bandai.
Yeah it's been going off and on for nearly 40 years. Seriously what would be the point of changing the cast now?

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:08 pm

Lots of people say that, but realistically why would TOEI just let it die? Money talks and all that.
Yeah, i mean Toei didn't let the anime die after DBZ ep 291 aired in January 1996 just because that's the equivalent of where the manga ended it's just over 10 year serialized run less than a year earlier. True, GT was an inconsistent product in terms of quality but the show came because they wanted to keep it rolling onward.
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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Mon Aug 01, 2022 2:56 pm

Jord wrote: Mon Aug 01, 2022 3:17 am As great as that show can be, at the end of the episode every viewer will ask "Where's Goku?".
Considering how unlikable Goku is nowadays, I'm sure a lot of people would welcome a new cast.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by ChronoTwigger » Tue Aug 02, 2022 2:23 pm

KAIZEN.
While in many western countries we praise genius strokes and personal initiative, Japanese culture is more attuned to KAIZEN, that you can broadly translate as "perfection thru repetition".
That 'perfection' is not strictly about quality, but 'technical improved', also in the marketing side of the production.
Dragon Ball will not change the tropes that made it a successfull show. By Kaizen principle, they'll make it:
*Wider on release
*Faster to produce
*Cheaper to produce
*Appealing to a larger, active audience
*Easier to access (to understand)
*Multimedia-nic (more videogames, more extra shows, more derivates)

...more and more of this. So, Goku ad Vegeta forever, but "commercially optimized" a bit more each instance.
The story isn't important, by the story alone the franchise had to die 30 years ago.
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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by capsulecorp » Tue Aug 02, 2022 9:30 pm

I hope not, it seems like a risky and, to me at least, unappealing idea! The Dragon World certainly is full of cool locations and fantastic ideas but, for many people, a big part of the appeal is the original Toriyama character designs.

A new series with new characters designed by someone else just makes me think... what's the point?

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by Ashur » Thu Aug 04, 2022 9:30 pm

In official media, i highly doubt it, even if they were to make something more experimental it would still have something to do with some of these characters, also doing so would make it feel like a lame reboot.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by TheGreatness25 » Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:23 am

If the series has a totally separate cast of characters, what would link it to Dragon Ball? What would stop it from being its own thing entirely separate? The Dragon Ball series itself is having to shoehorn Dragon Balls into the story just to try to link it to the name somehow. So, clearly there's no real big desire to write an adventure story searching for the Dragon Ball s. Or would it be focused on fighting? Because in that case, why have the link to Dragon Ball instead of becoming its own separate entity?

I think the idea of the series focusing on different characters is a cute idea that would get stale after a half-dozen episodes, and then how do you correct course after that? The resources it would take to pull this off would not justify the end result, in my opinion. Why not just make a totally separate series if there's any interest in this idea?

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by FoolsGil » Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:28 pm

It's possible. imho, start with a couple OVAs, one of Hit and the other of Cabba, Caulifla and Kale. Then determine from fan reaction if a series could work.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by LoganForkHands73 » Mon Aug 08, 2022 5:53 pm

ChronoTwigger wrote: Tue Aug 02, 2022 2:23 pm KAIZEN.
While in many western countries we praise genius strokes and personal initiative, Japanese culture is more attuned to KAIZEN, that you can broadly translate as "perfection thru repetition".
That 'perfection' is not strictly about quality, but 'technical improved', also in the marketing side of the production.
Dragon Ball will not change the tropes that made it a successfull show. By Kaizen principle, they'll make it:
*Wider on release
*Faster to produce
*Cheaper to produce
*Appealing to a larger, active audience
*Easier to access (to understand)
*Multimedia-nic (more videogames, more extra shows, more derivates)

...more and more of this. So, Goku ad Vegeta forever, but "commercially optimized" a bit more each instance.
The story isn't important, by the story alone the franchise had to die 30 years ago.
Just wanted to say, this is a really cool perspective on the development process. It may not be the most "artistically" optimised process, but it is an extremely well-tuned commercial strategy for the series. It all makes sense when you consider that Dragon Ball was created to have as little substance and as much mass appeal as possible.

Super: Broly might have been the peak on most of those fronts you listed, except maybe the expense of the animation? But then the budget was reaped back several times over at the international box office. It had a wide release, was quickly produced, it appealed to the largest audience, it had the easiest narrative to understand (with a really streamlined structure based on the tried-and-tested Goku/Vegeta formula), many media tie-ins, etc.

I definitely get the same Kaizen sense from Toyotaro's manga, where he repeats many of the same beats and set pieces like he's training and perfecting his craft for the day he'll work independently from Toriyama.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by jjgp1112 » Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:12 pm

If you want Dragon Ball with a different characters bad enough, you could always...watch another show in its genre
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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by MasenkoHA » Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:24 pm

jjgp1112 wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:12 pm If you want Dragon Ball with a different characters bad enough, you could always...watch another show in its genre
Now you're just talking crazy talk.

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Re: Will there ever be a Dragon Ball series with an entirely new cast of characters?

Post by super michael » Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:37 pm

Dragon Ball doesn't need a whole new cast, what it needs is better writing. Right now in Dragon Ball Super the only characters in Universe that trains hard are Goku and Vegeta, they are the only ones that has continued to level up their training.

Everyone else does easy training and stopped leveling up their training. The humans the last time they did hard training was with Kami for some or Kaio, after that they refused to level up their training. They refused to train with Goku and use the ROSAT.

Gohan and Piccolo trains together which is good, howeve they don't level up their training anymore. Gohan doesn't bother learning God Ki or doing SSG Ritual to get a taste for it.

Then Goten and Trunks who gets to do nothing. Just being told no or keeping secrets.

So yes Dragon Ball doesn't need a whole new cast, just better writers.

Another thing they shouldn't exaggerate characters negative traits and make them unlikable.

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