Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by ABED » Mon May 30, 2016 8:30 pm

no stakes (characters far stronger than anyone are sitting in the stands)
How does this equate to no stakes?
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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by ROCKYIII » Mon May 30, 2016 8:36 pm

ABED wrote:
no stakes (characters far stronger than anyone are sitting in the stands)
How does this equate to no stakes?
Not no stakes, but very little. There is much less of a sense of danger if the kind of "big bad" (I don't even know if you could call hit that), can be defeated in a single shot by 4 characters in the stands if anything really got out of hand.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Mon May 30, 2016 8:45 pm

First of all, even when I'm in no way at all paying any sort of attention to or actively seeking out anything vaguely Dragon Ball related whatsoever (which is fairly often), Super related stuff STILL randomly pops up in my periphery a fairly decent number of times. I'd say given the level of noise its made online overall, its getting a more than fair degree of attention. Certainly not to anything close to the core original series in either its Japanese or U.S. dub heydays, but seriously NO ONE should expect THAT kind of lightning to continually strike repeatedly.

I mean just the fact that the series even had the enormous degree of a dub-motivated resurgence in the late 90s/early 2000s that it did at all was nothing short of miraculous and unique unto itself (all the more so given the crippling level of quality of said-dub), a rarer than rare case of lightning ACTUALLY striking twice. Asking for a third jolt is just being unreasonably greedy.

I think the likely reason for why Super might not be making AS big of a splash as the OP would like (i.e. something akin to either of its original popularity surges) is most likely simply a combination of two of the reasons already put forth at length here: we've already had the "holy shit fantastic newness!!!" honeymoon (again, twice now, ridiculously enough) and as such Dragon Ball is an already well long ago since established entity in pop culture, combined with Super simply being extraordinarily underwhelming by even the most generous of criteria. I don't think its an either or: likely its both of those things together that is accounting for any sort of muted reaction culturally (although honestly considering all of those factors, I'd say its still getting WAY more attention than most anything else of its level of quality would otherwise warrant just by virtue of the Dragon Ball name and its legacy alone).

I've heard tell a fair bit about it improving substantially once it gets past all the BoG and RoF recap stuff (I'm not following it as of yet, so I can't really confirm that for myself), and if it continues to improve going forward then MAYBE it might leave more of a mark overall... but its still WAY too soon to tell for that yet. We've only JUST finished the first post-recap slump storyline: lets actually give it some time in the oven before we declare it an absolute fizzle.

And so far as the "stain" argument goes, if we're going to define a "stain" here as "something that's left a permanent lasting degree of negativity surrounding the series' reputation in a broad sense", then the one and only thing that honestly qualifies is the original FUNimation dub. Despite its enthusiastic fanbase, it HAS permanently ad irrevocably divided the overall broader DB fan community and has indeed alienated roughly about as many viewers as it has brought into the fold. A LOT of the especially shitty stereotypes about the series within mass mainstream U.S. pop culture (certainly not ALL of them by any means, but a good sizable chunk of them) are in actuality inventions of the dub that are unique to it and are nowhere to be found in the original or most any other version of the series. It does, by most metrics, quality as a unique and alternative entity rather than being one and the same as the core series itself or being any sort of "legitimate" representation of it.

GT has its fans and detractors, but overall I would say its generally seen as largely kinda "bleh" and unnecessary at worst. Mediocre and iffy, but nothing that has scarred the series' legacy in any real way (and if anything has contributed a smattering few worthwhile bits to it). Evolution is egregiously awful, but as Mike often notes, it hasn't really left any permanent lasting mark on anything outside of possibly the existence of Super. Its shit, but its mostly forgotten, apocryphal shit, destined to be an answer to trivia questions (and considering how still not-especially-long-ago it was and how quickly it attained that kind of obscurity status, that kinda says a lot about how inconsequential it's ultimately been right there).

Super has had a REALLY terrible reception coming out the gate, but its still in the fairly early goings and it HAS seen an improved reception as it progresses (even to someone like me whose not even actively watching it or following anything about it at present), so I'm as of now filing firmly it under "too soon to tell just yet".
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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Protege » Mon May 30, 2016 10:02 pm

Because there is literally no passion in this show, everything was just done for a cheap cash grab and to advertise toy merchandise. Not to say Super is making the same mistake and turning into literal fan fiction nonsense. The story line is lazy, the plot hole is lazy the new characters and villains are lazy and everything in the show is cheap and lazily done that probably took 5 minutes to come up, write and sketch. And if they want to somehow attract future generations to a show that is not only inferior to DBZ but also is inferior to original dragon ball and i would say even GT which atleast done transformations right instead of just some retarded blue saturated(shit hurts my eyes) hair dye, there is no chance its actually gonna pick up for the fact that its not the classics and their ignoring the actual fans along the way.
Last edited by Protege on Mon May 30, 2016 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by JulieYBM » Mon May 30, 2016 10:20 pm

Protege wrote:Because the is literally no passion in this show, everything was just done for a cheap cash grab and to advertise toy merchandise. Not to say Super is making the same mistake and turning into literal fan fiction nonsense. The story line is lazy, the plot hole is lazy the new characters and villains are lazy and everything in the show is cheap and lazily done that probably took 5 minutes to come up, write and sketch. And if they want to somehow attract future generations to a show that is not only inferior to DBZ but also is inferior to original dragon ball and i would say even GT which atleast done transformations right instead of just some retarded blue saturated(shit hurts my eyes) hair dye, there is no chance its actually gonna pick up for the fact that its not the classics and their ignoring the actual fans along the way.
My foot. The staff are constantly breaking their backs trying to work within the limitations of the shitty production schedule dealt to them by Morishita Kouzou and the thinly-stretched industry at large.
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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by SingleFringe&Sparks » Mon May 30, 2016 11:38 pm

JulieYBM wrote:My foot. The staff are constantly breaking their backs trying to work within the limitations of the shitty production schedule dealt to them by Morishita Kouzou and the thinly-stretched industry at large.
Thats the problem with the company's terrible production practices, the motive to why they are cranking out such low quality is for the money. When really the end product being of such sloppy work is the evidence that there was no real passion for the art of the cultural significance, but rather the Super brand was thrown out like it came off an assembly line. You can tell the difference between something that had care put into it and something made to exploit hype or current relevance. Super has been nothing but coat-tailing itself.
Zephyr wrote:The fandom's collective fetishizing of "moments" is also ridiculous to me. No, not everyone needs a fucking "shine" moment. If that's all you want, then all you want is fanservice, rather than an actual coherent story. And of course those aren't mutually exclusive; you could have a coherent story with "shine" moments! But if a story is perfectly coherent (and I'm really not seeing any compelling arguments that this one is anything but, despite constantly recurring, really poorly reasoned, attempts to argue otherwise), and you're bemoaning the lack of "shine" moments as a reason for the story's poor quality, then you're letting your thirst for "shine" moments obfuscate your ability to detect basic storytelling when it's right in front of you.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Bansho64 » Mon May 30, 2016 11:48 pm

JulieYBM wrote: My foot. The staff are constantly breaking their backs trying to work within the limitations of the shitty production schedule dealt to them by Morishita Kouzou and the thinly-stretched industry at large.
While I do feel little sympathy for the staff, I can't always take that into account when I'm watching a product that is utterly soulless. Not everyone can look at it from a production perspective. It's the viewer perspective that matters the most since you're the one watching it in the first place.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Deathbringer » Tue May 31, 2016 3:55 pm

Dragon Ball has already made the biggest cultural impact that it's ever going to make, it made that impact many years ago. Toriyama's classic manga was the cause of that if we're talking in general terms and the DBZ dub was the localised American impact.

Or if by cultural you just mean anime culture, well, lots of people are talking about DBS, this series still has the huge following from back in the day, that isn't going anywhere. It's just that the anime world has moved on from Dragon Ball being the centre of attention, hell, it's even moved on from Naruto and One Piece being the centre of attention but all these series still exist, each with their own huge following.

If you mean cultural impact by way of things from the series becoming iconic, lets be honest, the most iconic things that will ever come from the Dragon Ball series are Super Saiyan, Kamehameha and the general art style and character designs.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by lancerman » Tue May 31, 2016 9:25 pm

I like how literally everyone's giving answers as it's lack of impact being some indictment of the quality of the show, when the reality is that most fans of Dragon Ball Z anywhere outside of Japan just simply haven't seen it yet because it isn't officially released in their language and easily accessible.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by exodius33 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 5:03 pm

lancerman wrote:I like how literally everyone's giving answers as it's lack of impact being some indictment of the quality of the show, when the reality is that most fans of Dragon Ball Z anywhere outside of Japan just simply haven't seen it yet because it isn't officially released in their language and easily accessible.
I don't know if you've realized it yet, but most Dragon Ball fans hate Dragon Ball. You'll never see more bitching about how much of a hack Toriyama is and how much of an idiot he is for not making Gohan/Piccolo/Vegeta/Gotenks/Chi-Chi the hero of the Buu Saga or how dumb the entire series is than among hardcore fans.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Lord Beerus » Wed Jun 01, 2016 5:09 pm

exodius33 wrote:I don't know if you've realized it yet, but most Dragon Ball fans hate Dragon Ball.
That is the oxymoron to end all oxymoron's.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by SingleFringe&Sparks » Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:55 pm

ROCKYIII wrote:
ABED wrote:
no stakes (characters far stronger than anyone are sitting in the stands)
How does this equate to no stakes?
Not no stakes, but very little. There is much less of a sense of danger if the kind of "big bad" (I don't even know if you could call hit that), can be defeated in a single shot by 4 characters in the stands if anything really got out of hand.
There were no stakes in the U6 Tournament arc at all. There was nothing said what would happen if the Earth was moved to U6, there were no rules against it, no cautionary side effects, no cultural impact (in-universe), there was no implication that it was really a big deal, considering nobody really cared all that much while knowing that. Nor did nothing prevent someone just wishing the U6 Earth back to normal or like U7's. Not to mention, the U6 fighters were pretty much all weaklings outside of Hit. It really was just a waste of time and will be unless anything negative is later connected to the events of it (which it most likely wont). If this Filler-Quality arc style is going to be what Super is represented by, then most people outside the fanbase have better things to watch. I have friends like this and gave up on the series because it didn't feel like it was going anywhere in comparison with other Anime out there now.
Zephyr wrote:The fandom's collective fetishizing of "moments" is also ridiculous to me. No, not everyone needs a fucking "shine" moment. If that's all you want, then all you want is fanservice, rather than an actual coherent story. And of course those aren't mutually exclusive; you could have a coherent story with "shine" moments! But if a story is perfectly coherent (and I'm really not seeing any compelling arguments that this one is anything but, despite constantly recurring, really poorly reasoned, attempts to argue otherwise), and you're bemoaning the lack of "shine" moments as a reason for the story's poor quality, then you're letting your thirst for "shine" moments obfuscate your ability to detect basic storytelling when it's right in front of you.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by Neo-Makaiōshin » Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:47 pm

SingleFringe&Sparks wrote:
JulieYBM wrote:My foot. The staff are constantly breaking their backs trying to work within the limitations of the shitty production schedule dealt to them by Morishita Kouzou and the thinly-stretched industry at large.
Thats the problem with the company's terrible production practices, the motive to why they are cranking out such low quality is for the money. When really the end product being of such sloppy work is the evidence that there was no real passion for the art of the cultural significance, but rather the Super brand was thrown out like it came off an assembly line. You can tell the difference between something that had care put into it and something made to exploit hype or current relevance. Super has been nothing but coat-tailing itself.
While the end product may be "sloppy" I don´t think we can call it passionless/made without putting care under the circustances that it produced. The people working on the show (key-animators, supervisors, writers, directors, etc) can only do so much under the terrible conditions they were put. Calling the end product passionless/made without putting care would be a valid criticism only ifthe product was exactly that plus made under "proper conditions", which DBSuper lacks both of them. Don´t get me wrong, the show is sloppy overall but not passionless.
Making a product with passion and care does not guarantee a good quality product as well as making a product passionless and with no care does not guarantee a bad quality product.
Dragon Ball was always a kid series and fans should stop being in denial.

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Re: Why hasn't Super had any cultural impact at all?

Post by JulieYBM » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:01 pm

Dragon Ball Super is terribly put together as a whole, there's no question about that. But when you're as talented as a lot of the staff is and they're still willing to not just move to a different series...that is carrying.
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