5 things you dislike in the DB franchise

[PelicanDynasty]

1) The fandom
2) Click bait youtube videos
3) The Video game lore
4) Filler
5) The Cell saga

"Vikings hype train" but Larry Fitz avatar?

Also, I agree with all of those. Especially filler. Can't believe I didn't say filler.

[VDenter]

1. Fukkatsu no F

2. DB GT

3. Filler

4. The Buu arc

5.Mr Satan (Not necessarily the character but ever since he was introduced the inhabitants of planet earth became incredibly dumb)

Other trash like DB Minus and Episode of Bardock is easy to ignore doe me at least so i dont really see the need to put them on the list.

[fadeddreams5]

Listing 5 things is way too hard, given the shit we've gotten in modern years, but if I were to list the things that bug me the most in no particular order...

1. Resurrection F, Minus, and Episode of Bardock are all trash.
2. The SSJG ritual was the lamest and worst concept to ever plague the franchise, and the form itself is undoubtedly the worst SSJ transformation, given its namesake.
3. God ki was a cool concept in BoG, but ever since the introduction of SSJB, it's gone down the shit list and has been handled terribly.
4. The contradictions, power scaling, characterizations, animation, and art present in Super (ha, 5-in-1 right here).
5. Post-Buu Gohan.

[Soppa Saia People]

1) The fandom
2) Click bait youtube videos
3) The Video game lore
4) Filler
5) The Cell saga

"Vikings hype train" but Larry Fitz avatar?

Also, I agree with all of those. Especially filler. Can't believe I didn't say filler.

He was a ball boy for the Vikings, and is from Minnesota (and cheers for them, except when he plays them). Floyd is the same (I even saw him play when he was in HS at BWW).

[Sailor Haumea]

For those who think EoB is making Bardock the original Super Saiyan...

No. Just no.

At that point, Bardock is literally the only Saiyan on Planet Plant. The rest are all on Planet Sadla. EoB takes place (according to Heroes) in 263 Before Age - a thousand years before Frieza destroys Planet Vegeta. Meanwhile, the Original Super Saiyan mentioned in Saiyan legends appeared in 238 Before Age - a thousand years years before Goku goes Super Saiyan and battles Frieza.

The Saiyans come to Planet Plant in Age 550.

Let's do the math.

The amount of time between Bardock defeating Chilled and the Saiyans arriving on Planet Plant is 813 years.

Bardock is the inspiration for the legend passed down through the Frieza Clan.
The Original Super Saiyan is the inspiration for the legend passed down through the Saiyans.

So no, Bardock isn't the Original Super Saiyan...because he's the only fucking Saiyan on Plant at the time that he ascends!

[Steven Bloodriver]

1) Dragon Ball Super.

2) Goku Black.

3) Zamasu.

4) (Canon) Gohan.

5) Vegeta.

[Dbzfan94]

1) Dragon Ball Super.

2) Goku Black.

3) Zamasu.

4) (Canon) Gohan.

5) Vegeta.

What do you dislike about Black and Zamasu?

[Attitudefan]

For those who think EoB is making Bardock the original Super Saiyan...

No. Just no.

At that point, Bardock is literally the only Saiyan on Planet Plant. The rest are all on Planet Sadla. EoB takes place (according to Heroes) in 263 Before Age - a thousand years before Frieza destroys Planet Vegeta. Meanwhile, the Original Super Saiyan mentioned in Saiyan legends appeared in 238 Before Age - a thousand years years before Goku goes Super Saiyan and battles Frieza.

The Saiyans come to Planet Plant in Age 550.

Let's do the math.

The amount of time between Bardock defeating Chilled and the Saiyans arriving on Planet Plant is 813 years.

Bardock is the inspiration for the legend passed down through the Frieza Clan.
The Original Super Saiyan is the inspiration for the legend passed down through the Saiyans.

So no, Bardock isn't the Original Super Saiyan...because he's the only fucking Saiyan on Plant at the time that he ascends!

That's irrelevant to why it is bad. It's bad because it makes Goku elite just like Vegeta. It ruins the whole appeal to Goku and his family.

[Captain Strawberry]

I think lack of magic, I think that's about it.

[coola]

1. Power gap between Saiyans and others, it ii ironic, that despite what Goku told Vegeta "Low class can beat elite, after enough training" if you are not Saiyan, you stand no chance, no matter how much you trained.
2. Anime/filler Chi-Chi - I hate soccer mom type of characters in any show, its not funny, never was funny, its never gonna be funny.
3. Reboot rules for plot sake, it was said that Dragon Balls cannot wish someone after person is dead for one year, retconned so Freeza can return.
4. No Dragon Box releases of DB/Movies/GT in US
5. Lack of attention to power levels, Goku needs SSJ3 to fight SSJ Trunks.

[Steven Bloodriver]

1) Dragon Ball Super.

2) Goku Black.

3) Zamasu.

4) (Canon) Gohan.

5) Vegeta.

What do you dislike about Black and Zamasu?

I completely dislike the three incarnations of Zamasu period: the unaltered present (version of Zamasu that stole Goku's body), the altered present (version of Zamasu that was destroyed by Beerus), and the future version of Zamasu (that had wished for immortality) for the three of them being even more ruthless, heartless bastards than even the Emperor of Dread, Frieza himself.

[Lord Beerus]

1) About 80% of GT
2) Resurrection F retelling in Super
3) Episode Of Bardock
4) The power creep that has plagued the franchise since the Saiyan arc
5) Majin Boo Kai

[MathSSJ]

1) Android Arc
2) Post-Freeza Arc Gohan
3) GT, besides Baby as a concept
4) Jokes at the cost of Goku's character.
5) RoF still being in continuity as of Super.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

1. Stupid arguments in the fanbase about voice acting, music from both dub and sub fans
2. Delay of Funimation Kai Buu saga and Super dub
3. Lack of a home release for the Westwood and Blue Water dubs or Ocean Kai even seeing the light of day
4. No affordable 4:3 home releases of DBZ in the western world
5. Missed opportunities in GT and Super so far

[Kunzait_83]

Since the original criteria for the thread was "only from Toriyama & Toei, nothing FUNi or fandom-related allowed"...

1) Dragon Ball Minus - Toriyama writes the single worst, most hackneyed story of his career, while doing creative vandalism to what is arguably the anime's all time highlight shining moment (and one that he himself, ironically, admired a great deal). Completely dismantles and tarnishes what used to be one of DB's best characters. Its both a stain on the anime as well as the manga. Never should've been written.

Also Gine's entire character design/concept is borderline offensive and easily one of the single most tone deaf things I've ever seen come out of Toriyama's pen: A devoted and dotting Saiya-jin housewife whose fucking battle armor is skirt-shaped and cooks at home waiting for hubby bardock to get home from a hard day's work (of mass murder). Seriously Toriyama? DB's had its (in fairness, relatively few) brushes with cringe worthy un-PC bullshit back in that day (Popo's blackface design and Blue's pedophilia most primarily), which I was able to more or less acknowledge for what they were without either excusing them (at all) or letting them ruin my enjoyment of anything.

But this is so far beyond obviously trite and knuckle draggingly stupid that its absolutely impossible to write off as "a product of a different culture/era". This was 2014 and Toriyama actually created with a straight face a fucking June Cleaver Stepford Housewife Saiya-jin to be Goku's mom. Fuck off. I'd much rather just stick with the Selypa fanon. Selypa, in her absurdly brief screentime, came across as genuinely cool and a natural-seeming foil for Badrock who was unfazed by and cut straight though his standoff-ish bullshit. Goku's mom being just another tough as nails, battle hardened Saiya-jin grunt who probably conceived him with Bardock on a pile of freshly slaughtered corpses rings as FAR more closer to the mark in terms of what we've always been shown of the Saiya-jin.

Or hell, even if you wanted to go the direct opposite route of that, and have the Saiya-jin's space barbarian-like culture treat their women less like fellow soldiers and more like subservient slaves and a lesser species, that would work and be perfectly fine (for the story and character conceits at play here that is) as well. But if you're gonna do THAT, you gotta fully commit to it and show Gine and other Saiya-jin women dressed in rags (not armor) scrubbing floors and being fearfully sycophantic to the men, who treat them with dismissive condescension and probably slap them around casually. Life for these women should me fucking degrading misery where they're treated as subhuman.

Granted I think the former is far better and less problematically dicey, especially since this is ostensibly a kid's show (with several dumptrucks worth of blood and death, but still), but still I'm just saying I'd accept either/or for the type of characters we're dealing with here.

But making Gine goddamned Harriet Nelson in Saiya-jin skirt-armor preparing a nice, cozy dinner for her man (who genuinely loves her in a traditionally romantic way and treats her like a princess) and contradictingly also being seen by him as an equal? That 1) Makes NO goddamn sense and has ZERO internal consistency whatsoever, 2) whitewashes and softens how brutal and gross the Saiya-jin have always been depicted (walking, musclebound ids concerned only with drinking, fighting, killing, and fucking) and 3) is moronically trying to have its cake and eat it too with regards to Saiya-jin gender dynamics.

Either make the women A) fellow battle hardened soldiers down in the muck with the men (ala Vasquez in Aliens) because the Saiya-jin are so bloodthirsty and single minded to fighting and killing that it never occurs to them that the women should be any different, or B) have the women be looked down upon slaves who're treated like utter garbage (as per any other nominally barbaric, thuggish culture): pick one and stick with it, you can't have a fluffy, feel-good combination of both. That's just the epitome of vapid.

Again, I personally like option A better myself, but I'd have been unfazed by B just as well, since either one works for the Saiya-jin as traditionally presented.

But even Gine aside, this story is just inferior to the anime special in every conceivable way. And even as an entity on its own, it makes the manga less cool by association just due to how blatantly a half-assed afterthought it is. Toriyama, even when he's lazily half-assing it, is capable of far, far, far better than this. This is the undisputed nadir of anything in the "Toriyama manga canon".

2) Episode of Bardock - A close runner up to Minus in thoroughly shitting on the Bardock Special. The Gary Stu-ification of Bardock if you will. The entire time travel premise is beyond moronic (and thoroughly wrecks the special's downright perfect ending), and the entire affair feels like someone at Toei plumbed the rock bottom, putrid depths of FanFiction.net for inspiration for the entire thing on a pure conceptual level.

"So Bardock, like, he's so hardcore badass that he DIDN'T die from Freeza's Death Ball. It just like... send him back in time so that he could fight Freeza's great, great, great, great grandfather! And become a Super Saiyan himself! Because Bardock is the SICKEST COOLEST EVAR!!! And he gets to make friends with and save a bunch of cute little aliens, because, y'know, he was NEVER that bad a guy to begin with, just misunderstood! He's a proud, noble Saiyan warrior and Goku's dad! And the first ever Super Saiyan! He's A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!"

Seriously, this has the stink of a 10 year old, sugar-addled fanfic writer who's obsessed with Bardock. But it somehow got okayed and made into an actual anime one shot. Just utterly embarrassing on every possible level. The animation is even ugly to boot (one of the single most glaring examples of shiny, candy-coated, plastified character flesh tones I've ever seen in this series' latter days). And fuck the designs of Chilled and whatever those little alien critters that Bardock makes Ewok-friends with were called. Unwatchable and braindead, even compared to the rock bottom worst Z-era filler. Fake Namek looks like William Faulkner next to this.

3) Dragon Ball Kai - Yeah I know people get mad when you say this, but fuck it its the truth: its basically just the Saban-era FUNimation dub done by Toei (only without the rewritten script). That's more or less essentially what this is. And we hardly let the Saban dub off the hook for doing this same exact shit. Toei should not get a free pass.

Ideally this was supposed to be "DBZ: The Manga Cut". All that pesky filler that everyone hates taken away and the manga-s pacing allowed to shine through. But that's hardly what this is at all, since actual material from the manga also gets cut willy nilly, while random bits of egregious filler are also left in.

Lets just call this what it is: a lazy, hatchetjob cash grab.

The editing is utterly careless, with no thought to pacing and atmosphere (an absolute strong point in the original, say what you will about the worse bits of filler), and the new score, while not outright atrocious (like the Levy and Faulkner stuff) is more often than not beyond thoroughly generic and forgettable (only very seldomly having its moments), and usually just makes formerly enthralling scenes and moments just sit there lifeless. Just an utter nothing of a score for the most part. All the more frustrating especially considering Yamamoto's beyond excellent (bordering on iconic) work in the older Butouden-era DBZ video games.

Dragon Soul however is certainly not generic and lifeless: its just downright godawful and possibly the single worst, most gratingly irritating opening theme in the DB anime's history. Its like someone gave GTs Dan Dan (a pleasant and hummable enough song) a shitload of uppers and mandated that it "BE MORE HAPPY!! MORE UPBEAT!! MORE FRIENDSHIPPY!! MORE SUPER SHONEN!!!" I can't stand even listening to it even in instrumental cues, its just so unrelentingly obnoxious. That song sounds so much like an attempt to One Piece-ify Dragon Ball. Fuuuuuuuuuck that.

And yeah, the censorship just fucking sucks. Period. I get why it was done, that doesn't mean I have to like it or support it. We didn't give FUNi a free pass for it back in the day, neither should anyone give one to Toei.

Also the re-animated scenes are mostly fucking terrible, clash glaringly with the old footage, and in some cases are actually noticeably and markedly worse than the original animation. And its heartbreaking to say it, but the Japanese cast give their worst ever performances here as these characters. Not always mind you, sometimes in some moments they perk back up to their usual standards: but overall, most of the old workhorses sound depressingly tired and unenthused here. Granted, even at their rock bottom worst, they're still LEAGUES more listenable and better than most of the dub cast on their best day... but yeah, its depressing hearing some of these guys either phoning it in, or in a few tragic cases too physically ill to give it their all. This is a textbook case of why sometimes the best idea in reviving an old property is to just not do it at all and leave well enough the hell alone.

And on the flipside, while its nice that the FUNi dub got to finally make itself something resembling a presentable, professional presentation (something that it should've done more than a decade before); but I don't give anywhere near a tenth as much of a shit about the dub's cast or the dub "redeeming itself" as so many other fans here tend to. The dub cast holds utterly zero love in my heart, so if they do a nice enough job in a shitty Dragon Ball recut, that's cool on them for sure; but that doesn't therefore give me a sudden bursting desire and motivation to drag myself through a shitty recut just on their behalf. I don't give a fuck about their work, I'm not at all in that fandom camp who cares or has a dog in that race. Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat are the polar exact opposite of "iconic" to me in those roles and hold no real meaningful association to me with DB, outside of being part of one of its all time most annoying aspects.

And its also a pet peeve of mine when people treat and refer to Kai as if its a "new" Dragon Ball series, when its anything but.

But yeah, Kai overall does exactly what the old FUNi dub(s) did: turn DBZ's tone from "Wuxia on LSD" to "generic, droning Saturday morning action cartoon" (only the Japanese equivalent thereof as opposed to American) with a noxious combination of way too overzealous editing and censorship, glaring computer animated touch ups, and a score who's purpose is to fill dead air rather than be genuinely evocative. If nothing else, at least it avoided the awful script rewrites though, give it that. But that's far from enough to save it from the inevitable (and deserved) Saban comparisons.

4) Dragon Ball Heroes - Oh lord. This may be even MORE of a blatant instance of someone at Toei combing the darkest underbelly of FanFiction.net for ideas than Episode of Bardock. I mean, lets not make it out to be anymore than what it is: its a shitty, dumb, collectible card game meant to siphon money from kids. Japan dumps these out by the gallons (from Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh on down) only this one is a digital arcade affair. Should be utterly ignorable.

But tons of fans actually DO genuinely delve into the "lore" of these games and try to incorporate all of its batshit nonsensical ideas into the main story-proper. Which is where it gets harder to ignore as a side-entity and becomes much more grating.

I mean make no mistake: Dragon Ball is itself inherently a collection of batshit nonsensical ideas. But it has the relative discipline of coming from a singular authorial mind (unhinged though it may be) and has more than tangible tethers to fascinating and cool cultural folklore. Its classic Asian martial arts fantasy fiction run through the dual filter of A) the unique and fascinating creative trends of its day, and B) a very distinctive and talented visual and conceptual filter.

Heroes is purely a "by committee" corporate merch-driven affair, that lacks even the shred of artistic integrity that the original manga and anime did. If the Toriyama's DB manga is the Mirage TMNT comics, then Heroes is the entire TMNT toy line in video card game form. Just random dumbfuckery thrown together by suits to cynically peddle garbage to children.

All the ideas and character concepts of Heroes aren't just dumb, they're palpably overwhelming and suffocating in their stupidity. It really is like a deep, thorough gazing into the abyss-like mind of a typical obnoxious 8 year old fanfic writer with heaptons of enthusiasm and energy, and not a single, solitary brain cell whatsoever.

Heroes is pure corporate excess and the debasing of an already-thoroughly debased property of any hint of unique vibrancy that it once had.

Normally I'd have never given it or anything like it an ounce of attention or one nanosecond's worth of thought: but its become so monolithic in fandom and online in the last several years (thanks largely to its "original animation" and current DB fandom's inexplicable STARVING for new DB content: as if the original run of manga/anime material doesn't offer endless amounts already) that it keeps forcibly shoving its way into my attention and periphery. Anytime I do a cursory looksee for anything vaguely DB related, I now have to sift through mountains of dogshit relating to Heroes, as well as fan discussions where its treated as if its some "proper" continuation of anything in the original series.

If certain elements of Kai (mainly musical) were the partial One Piece-ification of DB, then Heroes as a whole is the more complete Pokemon-ification of DB. The whole "gotta collect em all!" mentality combined with sheer, overwhelming corporate excess and vapidity.

5) Dragon Ball Super - I'm still tentative on this one since 1) its still ongoing and 2) it HAS gotten somewhat less crappy in certain respects as its gone on. But yeah, overall thus far, I'm not at all a fan of Super. The two "movie recap" story arcs were beyond unnecessary and were badly executed on every possible front, with some of the rock bottom worst animation and filler the ENTIRE franchise has EVER seen.

Terrible music score (far worse than Yamamoto's tepid Kai offering), poor direction across the board, and even beyond all that.... yeah, the whole thing mostly feels like an exercise in formulaic wheel spinning and a concerted effort to NOT push the series' characters and storytelling forward in any meaningful way in the same way that the original run (up to and even including GT) always did. So much of the concepts feel like warmed over retreads of past glory, giving this the stink of a nostalgia pander-fest.

There's some genuinely cool concepts and character designs (everyone justifiably loves Beerus and Whis, and the 12 Universes concept is beyond cool in itself): but so far they seem mostly wasted in an effort to just recycle and rehash old motifs and ideas with an only vaguely different coat of paint. Oh look, Freeza's back with a new transformation (that's an unimaginative recolor of his previous one)! But wait, there's a new SSJ form... that's exactly the same but with BLUE hair this time! And oh look, Future Trunks returns to seek help from the present day characters to assist in averting another dark, post-apocalyptic fate for his future! And another Kaioshin (although I'll admit, the idea of an Evil Kaioshin is pretty damn cool). And pink haired SSJ? Okay seriously... stop that now.

And say goodbye to aging characters apparently. DB's apparently going the way of the Simpsons it seems like, with everything trapped in an eternal post-Boo era.

Again... I'm still waiting to see how this all plays out (albeit with palpable disinterest) before I give it a final-final verdict. But just based on what's there so far... even when its at its best, Super does nowhere NEAR enough to justify its existence. Its INFINITELY more superfluous than the Cell and Boo arcs EVER came within lightyears of being. As extraneous and disconnected as those arcs were from the series before then, those still constantly pushed the series forward and came up with tons of cool new concepts and ideas to play around with in fun, innovative ways. They did far, far more to justify their existence than Super has come even vaguely close to doing so far.

Its teased around the edges at some potentially cool new stuff... but its never once yet really committed to any of them in a really meaningful way and is FAR too deeply obsessed with and mired in the past. And for a series that was, for all its flaws, if nothing else as constantly evolving and changing as DB always was in its original run, this is just totally inexcusable.

[Bansho64]

Dang, Kunzait destoryed everything on that list!

[Cipher]

Dragon Soul however is certainly not generic and lifeless: its just downright godawful and possibly the single worst, most gratingly irritating opening theme in the DB anime's history. Its like someone gave GTs Dan Dan (a pleasant and hummable enough song) a shitload of uppers and mandated that it "BE MORE HAPPY!! MORE UPBEAT!! MORE FRIENDSHIPPY!! MORE SUPER SHONEN!!!"

Yeeeeeees.

Limiting this topic solely to the realm of official Japanese Dragon Ball content, I can't really argue with anything Kunzait_83's laid out, though I feel more strongly about some, and less about others. If pushed, I probably find "Episode of Bardock" the single worst entry into the franchise, slightly eclipsing "Minus," which is the worst Toriyama output (and yeah, Gine has always bothered me; that may actually be the worst female character Toriyama has ever done). Kai is ... disappointing, but harmless. Super is frustrating in both concept and execution, but I'm in deep enough to see where it ends up, and there are weeks where I even enjoy it.

That said, it's certainly my least favorite of the four original anime series, and there are times (most of the time, even) when I might even argue it's harmful to the story as a whole, in a way one-off movies would not have been. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see classically weird, irreverent Toriyama ideas wasted on a series that feels so safe in both concept, per its apparently having no aspirations beyond slotting more adventures into an existing timeskip, and episodic execution under Toei. Plot-wise, it's all stuff I can imagine playing well under Toriyama's pen in an alternate universe in which this content immediately succeeded the Boo arc, and the characters had more room to change and grow (though even before the 28th Tenkaichi Budokai, the Boo arc would probably have to feel less final in this scenario), but that isn't the world we live in. Again, that's what makes it particularly frustrating. I have no idea how the "good concept, bad execution" meme is still something connected to GT when a product like Super exists. I don't have a problem with its superficial elements -- the "recolors," etc., which feel like typical Toriyama fuckery to me -- but with its conception and episodic writing, I certainly do.

Heroes I really have no ill-will toward. Mostly because I'd rather the series not keep adding fiction to its core story, and a Japanese arcade game that lets kids play around in its universe was a completely inoffensive way to keep the franchise going and promote manga sales that really didn't affect me at all. The more it gives us spin-off content like "Episode of Bardock," the more I may feel otherwise, but as a self-contained, spin-off game series, I couldn't care less.

But tons of fans actually DO genuinely delve into the "lore" of these games and try to incorporate all of its batshit nonsensical ideas into the main story-proper. Which is where it gets harder to ignore as a side-entity and becomes much more grating.

So I guess we do part ways here. I have no trouble forgetting Heroes even exists most of the time.

[Kunzait_83]

But tons of fans actually DO genuinely delve into the "lore" of these games and try to incorporate all of its batshit nonsensical ideas into the main story-proper. Which is where it gets harder to ignore as a side-entity and becomes much more grating.

So I guess we do part ways here. I have no trouble forgetting Heroes even exists most of the time.

Normally I'd be right there with you. I spent a long time completely letting it bypass my attention in any way. But its been more of a slow, ebbing, gradual, little by little, over a long-ish period of time sort of thing where its kept popping up and popping up and popping up incessantly into my radar anytime I'd try to delve through anything at all vaguely DB related online. Maybe its different experiences talking, but on my end in the last couple of years Heroes has gotten... not quite IMPOSSIBLE to avoid, but certainly fairly damn difficult and is WAY more ubiquitous in online DB searches and discussions than it in any way ought to be.

It doesn't drive me nails on a chalkboard insane or anything, but its forced its way into my attention enough that I had to say SOMETHING about it. Plus, yeah, looking at it objectively, its WITHOUT A DOUBT one of the single dumbest things to come out of Japanese DB media.

Certainly not as damaging as Minus, Episode of Bardock, or Super... but still a gaudy, tacky blot on the series just the same.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

Kunzait you destroyed Kai in a way I could never ever do. It was spot on and I couldn't agree more.

- Travis

[NitroEX]

Kunzait_83 you really outdid yourself with that list. A whole lotta truth bombs were fired there.