What aspects do you think tarnished the Dragonball brand?

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Vegetto is right to ask the question "If "everyone" is disappointed, then who is buying?" You need a legion of fanatics so mechanical in their support that they readily throw green even after a ten, fifteen, twenty year burn out. No, clearly the lion's share of that comes from people who would never think to ask this question in a serious manner, children or otherwise, even if they might agree.

[Overlord78]

The Goku/Superman battle and debate that spiralled out of control from 2012 to 2015.

We saw the absolute worst of the Dragon Ball fandom during that period, that I don't think we'll ever live it down.

I'd say the fandom was at it's absolute worst between 2011 and 2012. Thankfully it's nowhere near as bad now as it was a couple of years ago.

[floofychan333]

Here's my list:

1) GT (obviously)
2) The few annoying fans who flood everything with their butthurtedness and give the franchise and the fandom a bad name
3) Super's terrible animation in certain episodes
4) Akira Toriyama forgetting about characters and contradicting everything
5) The fact that almost every anime fan I know hates DB and thinks it's stupid
6) Annoyingly long fights
7) Power level obsession
This one only tarnishes it for me: Lack of action taken or even simple acknowledgement of the social issues present in the franchise.

[Cipher]

Nothing more so than what FUNimation's entire approach to marketing the series was from '96 until around 2009. And in some ways what their approach to marketing the series still is.

Also, Super--not for Toriyama's take-it-or-leave-it plot, but for Toei's presentation.

All comments coming from a place of that said "tarnishing" refers to its acceptance as a work of merit as an all-ages series, which I mostly think it is.

[TheGreatness25]

Did FUNimation really "tarnish" Dragon Ball? If FUNimation didn't grab hold of it, most people in the United States would never see the series and there's an argument to be made that the anime genre would never take off in the U.S. at all. So did FUNimation "tarnish" Toei's Dragon Ball? Of course; they completely destroyed it. But did FUNimation tarnish the series in terms of allowing Dragon Ball to reach success? Not at all; in fact, FUNimation contributed a great deal to the series. Let's not forget that FUNimation gave everyone the choice to watch the dub and the original Japanese version. Had it not been for FUNimation, the only way to purchase the Japanese version of the series was through bootleggers and the Japanese Dragon Boxes/singles, which most people (I think I can make that statement safely) do not own. So whenever I see people complaining about what FUNimation did to the series, I kind of find it funny that ironically, while they did such an awful job of translating and adapting the series for an English-speaking fanbase, they have treated the series very well. I mean, yeah, it could've been done a lot better (especially for poor Z, which finally had ONE great release after years and years of bastardization), but again, if you're English-speaking and you are not going to illegal websites, chances are that you're watching DB through FUNimation one way or another.

[VegettoEX]

If FUNimation didn't grab hold of it, most people in the United States would never see the series

This operates under the false assumption that no-one else would have grabbed Dragon Ball... which clearly isn't the case. It's not like one of the biggest franchises, currently seeing international success basically everywhere else in the world, would somehow not have been picked up by anyone else. It wasn't going to just sit there. It was already gaining traction by the time FUNimation even thought about forming; mainstream gaming magazines were giving it multi-page spreads for years despite it not even being available here beyond fansubs. Giving FUNimation credit simply for getting the license courtesy of nepotism isn't something that should be praised.

[TheGreatness25]

Sure someone would've grabbed up Dragon Ball. But there's no guarantee that it would be done better. The standards and practices for anime back then was to "Americanize" it. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, "Ultimate Muscle," Sonic X, Sailor Moon. That's how anime was done back in the day. So sure, someone would grab it up, but there's no guarantee that anything would be done better with it.

I'm simply saying that FUNimation didn't tarnish Dragon Ball, it helped it by introducing it to a much broader audience and giving that audience a choice to watch it in Japanese starting from 1999. Is there a U.S. release with Japanese audio for Pokemon on DVD from the early 2000s out there? How about Yu-Gi-Oh? How about Sailor Moon? No.

I'm simply saying that FUNimation didn't "tarnish" the series. It screwed the hell out of adapting it for an English-speaking audience, but it did a lot of positives for DB. In fact, FUNimation contributed a lot to DBZ's mystique. Had FUNimaton never made its own version of it, I'm sure many people wouldn't get into the business of exploring the series and comparing the original to FUNimaton's version. Legendary old school DB fan websites such as "DBZ Uncensored" would've never existed. I don't want to speak for you, VegettoEX, so I'm not going to say that Kanzenshuu wouldn't exist, but I'm sure many of the old sites wouldn't. Much of their focus was to find out what they can about the Japanese version because it was so different than the U.S. one.

[VegettoEX]

That was A practice. It wasn't the ONLY practice. You name drop certain series, but fail to name drop others. You can't just pick and choose your battles without assessing the entire playing field.

Other anime companies at the time were not only dubbing anime accurately, but were also doing so for other long-running series. Ranma is Dragon Ball's contemporary in many ways, and in Universe 6 it's likely that DB was just another Viz production that took years to come out and had a well-regarded dub the whole time through.

With a female actress playing its male lead character, no less. Strange > Cox. Yeah, I equation-ed it!

So again, I'm very steadfast in my pushback on praising FUNimation for simply getting the license.

[Kamiccolo9]

I find it a bit odd to praise Funimation for inspiring people to take a stand against it by delving into the original version. That's like giving credit to the train robbers in Western movies for being a chance for the hero to do their thing. I mean, we don't go "Ya know, it's a good thing that Scar was around. If it weren't for him, Simba wouldn't have learned all those lessons with Timon and Pumba."

[TheGreatness25]

Well my stance is not to praise FUNimation for getting the license, but for its marketing, its decisions to move the series to Cartoon Network, its decisions to release the series on DVD containing both the dub and Japanese version of it. DBZ the dub was a huge commercial hit in the U.S. Surely, it would've been a hit regardless and others might have done as well, if not better with the series, but FUNimation did all of those things. So regardless, my position is that FUNimaton certainly did not tarnish the success of the series.

[ABED]

If the bad quality of the dub can't hurt the show, I don't think anything can knock the show down for a 10 count.

[TheGreatness25]

If the bad quality of the dub can't hurt the show, I don't think anything can knock the show down for a 10 count.

Well, fortunately young kids don't give a rat's ass about a dub's bad quality.

And yeah, nothing ever did knock down DB; that's why it's still massively successful today. So my whole point is that DB was never tarnished at all. If this thread is subjective, then yeah, obviously for the people who feel FUNimation tarnished it for them, it's impossible for them to be wrong.

[Cure Dragon 255]

If the bad quality of the dub can't hurt the show, I don't think anything can knock the show down for a 10 count.

Well, fortunately young kids don't give a rat's ass about a dub's bad quality.

And yeah, nothing ever did knock down DB; that's why it's still massively successful today. So my whole point is that DB was never tarnished at all. If this thread is subjective, then yeah, obviously for the people who feel FUNimation tarnished it for them, it's impossible for them to be wrong.

Say that to all the horribly dubbed anime that has flopped with kids like Mew Mew Power, One Piece, Doraemon, All the non-classic Yu Gi Oh shows,Digimon Fusion and many more.

[TheGreatness25]

Truth, truth. Though that might have had to do with the actual shows maybe? Lots of kids used to watch the Super Friends and it most certainly wasn't for the amazing audio quality lol

But yeah, DB definitely survived that.

[MCDaveG]

How is a complete return to domestic and international financial success, with projections for yet another solid fiscal year ahead, proof of the latest material hurting the franchise?

You can try to spin it all you want with dismissive terminology, but the numbers don't lie.

You can't seriously make a case that creative/artistic quality (which I think is what's being ultimately discussed here: though then again, the word "brand" was flogged out, so I could be wrong on that) is entirely dependent on financial returns and units of merchandise sold. Creative merit is not even remotely something you can just attach a hard number to point to and say "See?" That's almost the same kind of overly-literalized, rigid thinking that leads to stuff like Power Level debates being a thing.

If quality = money made and money made = quality, then things like Michael Bay's oeuvre or Justin Bieber's discography would be hailed as some of the most important, visionary works to ever happen to the mediums of film and music respectively, while the works of people like Alejandro Jodorowsky or Ian MacKaye would be dismissed as utterly worthless and without the slightest hint of merit or impact on anything or anyone.

If the last dozen to 30 some-odd years of pop culture has taught us anything at all, its that something can be utterly reviled, hated, and ultimately completely forgotten and dismissed by the public and culture at large and yet STILL rake in a heap ton of cash in its immediate present regardless. The patron saint example of this being without question James Cameron's Avatar, a movie that for a few months in late 2009 and early 2010 ruled the entire fucking world, had critics and various internet talking heads (and marketing execs) hailing it as an immediate classic and cinematic milestone, and remains to date the single highest grossing film of all time: and yet just a few short years after its release, you'd be hard pressed to find very many people (outside of ultra hardcore special effects nerds) who can be bothered to care one whit about it or who'd be able to recite or remember so much as a single line of dialogue from it or call to mind any detail more specific than "Pocahontas/Dances With Wolves with blue people" (if that even: it might boil down to just "there were blue people in it") if you held their entire family at knifepoint in front of them. Its the quintessential "all time blockbuster that no one really likes or gives a damn about".

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is within the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time, and yet somehow I don't quite foresee that ending up being an especially well remembered or beloved cinematic icon in the years to come. Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies are within the top 30 highest grossing films of all time, and those tend to be roundly hated by and large. Hell, I can't even begin to count the number of Billboard Hot 100 pop songs from even relatively recent years that almost NO ONE would recognize if you put a gun to their heads. Someone name any given David Guetta song right now from raw, instinctive memory. Hell, try and HUM one.

Money made can SOMETIMES occasionally be an indicator of quality MAYBE, but that's by NO means anywhere even CLOSE to a hardline, universally trustworthy barometer to point towards to end an argument.

There simply is no hard and fast "formula" in existence for working out what has creative or cultural merit and what doesn't. No universal signs that dictate what will or won't "click" with the public on a long term basis. That's an INFINITELY more complex issue of pure alchemy that requires a colossal degree of more nuance and thought than simply just pouring over a spreadsheet of profit margins and comparing figures. Art isn't a numbers game: much as just about anyone involved in marketing wishes it were otherwise.

In the case of something like Dragon Ball (and this same concept can apply for just about nearly anything else really), a new series or entry or whatever can just as well make a ton of money in merchandise sales while at the same time leaving a horrible taste in the mouths of fans that, in the long run, might have a negative influence in the future going forward.

And I'm not even saying that that's what's happening here with Super in the first place (I just said in another thread a minute ago that I think its WAY too early to call in what Super's ultimate legacy for DB as an entity will ultimately be): but if you want to make the case that Super's reception isn't so bad to the point that it WON'T lead to more fans being soured on the series further and further on down the road, pointing at immediate sales figures is among the least convincing arguments you can make.

We are talking about money making franchise and business, period, it doesn't have anything to do with broken heart fans, unless so much of them toss the series aside and won't buy anything, that it actually hurts the business.
Dragon Ball is not an art, it's a product and it was conceived as a product from beginning.

[B]

If you are strictly talking about financial gains, then obviously there is no other answer beyond Dragon Ball Kai; maybe you can throw the Sparking! and Raging Blast games in there(they are the main reason video game output slowed the hell down, right?)

Creatively, it's got to be the English localization of Z. Butchering aside, it affects how many English-speakers view the series. I wonder how many people "hate" Dragon Ball, but are maintaining that thought due to exposure to the dub? How many have even know there is an original version, or a manga? I would guess a lot. The dub amplified the show's worst qualities(of course some of the tropes commonly associated with Z are still in the original), and is widely available.

[kei17]

Pretty much everything what Toei have done since the late 2000s except for BoG. Crappy cheap-ass Kai with rip-off music, Resurrection F with an extremely amateurish direction, and the shitty sequel we have now. They all hurt the brand badly.

[sintzu]

Pretty much everything what Toei have done since the late 2000s except for BoG. Crappy cheap-ass Kai with rip-off music, Resurrection F with an extremely amateurish direction, and the shitty sequel we have now. They all hurt the brand badly.

You don't think GT hurt it ? I'm not saying you're wrong for thinking that but I'd like to know why.

[kei17]

Pretty much everything what Toei have done since the late 2000s except for BoG. Crappy cheap-ass Kai with rip-off music, Resurrection F with an extremely amateurish direction, and the shitty sequel we have now. They all hurt the brand badly.

You don't think GT hurt it ? I'm not saying you're wrong for thinking that but I'd like to know why.

I'm just referring to Toei's recent creations as a whole. GT was a huge, probably the biggest disaster, but they had done nothing for a decade since then and the JSAT special wasn't half bad. It's a different story.

[pacz360]

Let's see
1.super
2.Gt
3.sub Vs dub.
Probably other ones but these are the main ones.