Toyotaro needs to be let go/fired

[Simere]

Does anyone want to feel sad for me that I'm often intimidated away from posting by some of the stauncher manga supporters? Those guys in the Funimation dub thread are pretty scary too.

[Cetra]

Come on now, why do you think nobody actually comes to defend the manga here?

Because the usual suspects still do defend it in the respective manga thread. And whie some user's thinking is over the top - like it always is when people dislike something and they think what they says bears any relevance - it is their right to think Toyble is not the one to continue the manga. Extremely phrased by them as always, but they are allowed to think so. I am when it comes to what he does also not even in the slightest satisfied. I do buy the manga to support him and as it still has some entertainment value but I do not buy it for the same reasons I bought the first 42 vols. or watch the anime.

[Cipher]

Completely contrary to what this hyperbolic thread is laying down, I don't think he has amazing drawing chops, and he really should still answer for that beyond-the-pale tracing incident (though he's absolutely no slouch, when he really gets to show off on stand-alone illustrations or Victory Mission), but the thing he's consistently excelled at--in Super, even more in Victory Mission, and in small bits even in what I've seen of his AF comic--is capturing Toriyama's general tone and characterizations. This has kept him my favorite of the high-profile fan/former-fan artists even through drawing gaffs and his rather bland handling of action (though he can do better than what you see in Super, and does, in his previous series).

In terms of Super, too, he's also paced and structured the stories so that they mostly feel of a piece with the two recent Toriyama films, which goes a long way. I think Kale vs. Gohan is the sole moment in the series, after the end of the Universe 6 arc, where I find the "rushed pacing" argument really holds weight and the story short-changes a beat of its plot taken on its own terms.

But his character-acting, ability to actually handle dry gags, and overall approach to the tone keep me from saying I'd want anyone else on the series, even if Super--for whatever reason, be it the creative pressures or high page count--is often far from his best work. And even if it's at the expense of action and paneling, which I do hope he improves on.

I do buy the manga to support him and as it still has some entertainment value but I do not buy it for the same reasons I bought the first 42 vols. or watch the anime.

While I absolutely think Toyotaro has the right chops to do the kind of spin-off and sequel work he's been put on, I wouldn't suggest anyone buy, watch or read any part of modern Dragon Ball for the same reason they would the original run. I just want to make it clear before people start jumping to conclusions that, while there's plenty to like and enjoy about whatever aspect of the contemporary run we're talking about, Toriyama and the original manga are still on a whole different planet.

When the fandom demands that a mangaka be fired for a chapter they haven't even READ in a language comprehensible by said fandom, this is truly as bottom and embarrassing as the fandom gets.

I have bad news for you.

[Shaddy]

Toyotaro doesn't need to be fired, he needs to be directed. The manga is kind of bad, but it always struck me as being that because something was unclear or misunderstood during it's creation rather than just because he's incompetent. Toriyama either needs to keep a tighter hold on his story or else hire a good editor for the guy.

[Cipher]

Toyotaro doesn't need to be fired, he needs to be directed. The manga is kind of bad, but it always struck me as being that because something was unclear or misunderstood during it's creation rather than just because he's incompetent. Toriyama either needs to keep a tighter hold on his story or else hire a good editor for the guy.

Having recently read the entirety of Victory Mission (all documented on Twitter; you can scroll down here and pretty much catch the whole read-through), where he acquits himself quite well (better than in Super in terms of both character-writing and action ... and art ... and pretty much everything), I'm starting to suspect that the relative pressure and comparative lack of creative control in Super might actually be part of the issue (such as it is; I think it still does its job and is entertaining enough as bonus DB).

Toyotaro's a lot more fun when he's in relative control of the comic (or given only vague directives like including certain elements for promotion, but Victory Mission gets fucking wild).

The page count also probably doesn't help. He's dealing with more than a lot of veteran monthly artists, and only a super rare breed can do weekly.

[shadowfox87]

Having recently read the entirety of Victory Mission (all documented on Twitter; you can scroll down here and pretty much catch the whole read-through), where he acquits himself quite well (better than in Super in terms of both character-writing and action ... and art ... and pretty much everything), I'm starting to suspect that the relative pressure and comparative lack of creative control in Super might actually be part of the issue (such as it is; I think it still does its job and is entertaining enough as bonus DB).

Toyotaro's a lot more fun when he's in relative control of the comic (or given only vague directives like including certain elements for promotion, but Victory Mission gets fucking wild).

The page count also probably doesn't help. He's dealing with more than a lot of veteran monthly artists, and only a super rare breed can do weekly.

Exactly. An author shouldn't be judged for a single chapter or a few instances. He's done much more work. The majority of the people in this forum haven't even read Victory Mission. Toyotaro needs more chapters to add more detail between panels. However, since he's limited to a monthly manga and limited number of pages per chapter, he can only do so much. If this was a weekly manga in Shonen Jump, things would be a lot different.

[Cipher]

Exactly. An author shouldn't be judged for a single chapter or a few instances. He's done much more work. The majority of the people in this forum haven't even read Victory Mission. Toyotaro needs more chapters to add more detail between panels. However, since he's limited to a monthly manga and limited number of pages per chapter, he can only do so much. If this was a weekly manga in Shonen Jump, things would be a lot different.

I think that might kill the poor guy. Weekly is for manga gods.

But yes, I think we'd be seeing better work from him an environment with a more comfortable monthly page count (Super's current chapters are long), and probably without the creative pressures of working under Toriyama and with de-facto pacing deadlines of upcoming Super arcs, movies, etc.

Which is also not me recommending that Toyotaro just run the show on the sequel while Toriyama steps away. I don't know what I'm suggesting other than that Toyotaro is a better comic author and artist than the current chapters in Super would otherwise indicate.

[Avenant]

The amount of people who believe that Toyotaro is calling the shots and that there isn't a hierarchy of approvals, including original story developments and approvals from Toriyama himself, is too damn high!

[precita]

After he finishes the TOP arc, and I assume the manga adaption of the Broly movie, he should be replaced going forward when Super comes back.

Let someone new come onboard to adapt the next Super arc after the movie.

[PFM18]

If Toyotaro deserves to get fired over the manga, he better be joined by everyone involved with Super (minus the animators) because where the writing is concerned nobody should stay.

This is so overdramatic. Super revived the franchise it sure as hell isn't producing writing worth firing everyone over.

Ekrolo is right. Some of the worst writing I've seen in an anime and lets be real - it didn't "revive" the franchise as much as they piggybacked on the previous success of the name and characters and just rushed out a bunch of garbage with Goku and co. in it. And you know what what? It worked, because we are desperate for anything Dragonball.

It did revive the franchise. As it stands now it is by far more popular than it was prior to it's release, to the point where DBS things are making appearances in pop culture. Immediately following the DBS movie's title being announced it was trending worldwide on twitter. That is how popular it is right now. As far as the "bad writing" I'm going to repost something I posted earlier in the thread replying to somebody else...

addressing the Black arc just being "Goku and friends getting beat up, leaving, getting beat up again, etc."

This is a gross oversimplification of that arc. You could literally say something similar about almost every arc. In the Namek Arc "They are just beating up Freeza's henchmen until Freeza shows up." They are fighting his henchman and outside of the Dragon Balls there really isn't that much else going on. Yes, I do consider it to be the best arc in the franchise myself, but I also consider the Zamasu arc to be right up there with it.

addressing Super just being the "Goku and Vegeta show"

I see that as a natural development of the characters. Goku and Vegeta are the pure-blooded Saiyan warriors who devote their life to fighting, they should be by far the strongest and the ones to take on any oncoming threats. Besides, how the "Goku and Vegeta show" was avoided in DBZ is that the cast was literally left waiting for Goku every single time. It became a trope that happened with ridiculous frequency to the point where it became very predictable and boring. The usefulness of the rest of the cast literally stops as soon as Goku shows up. Outside of the fight vs Vegeta in the Saiyan arc, everyone's usefulness constitutes holding down the fort until Goku shows up. I would take a "Goku and Vegeta show" over a "wait for Goku show" any day of the week. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that DBZ is better but they certainly are on the same level and I think it is strange to sit here and say that they aren't in the same league.

Addressing a comparison between the Zamasu arc and the Cell/Namek arcs

I don't consider it better but I consider it to be pretty damn close. The Cell and Namek arcs are the two best arcs in the franchise to me and the Zamasu arc is right up there with them. If it wasn't for the poor ending and how Trunks's power scaling was handled, I would consider it the best arc in the franchise to be quite frank with you. It gave us a villain with a nuanced character and legitimate motivations for the first time ever rather than a generic evil guy every single damn time. It featured somebody other than Goku or Gohan being integral in the defeat of the main villain(even if Trunks had some strange moments.)

DBS features characters receiving power boosts that are ultimately more interesting and nuanced than "I spent X amount of time training." Three of Vegeta's moments where he gained huge power boosts are a reflection of his improvements in character and actually had meaning further than "yeah I totally punched the air for a year in that chamber." Aside from the two rage-induced transformations, it pretty much always comes down to spending more time training in DBZ. Generally speaking, Super Vegeta as a character is by far my favorite iteration of Vegeta and without it I would have been stuck with the garbage that is Buu arc Vegeta.

The fights are just flat out better and more interesting in Super. They have fights that aren't strictly decided by power, have more fights that aren't complete domination by one side, and feature generally more dynamic fights. Additionally, unlike DBZ, they have fights with interesting clashes in ideals and motivations rather than just being a clash of fists.

Like I said, I consider DBZ to be slightly better, but they are more or less on the same level with DB being significantly above both of them.

[ekrolo2]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

[TajinRice]

I agree with everything Alruneia said, but to give my own opinions:

I like the manga, a lot. I find it better than the anime on nearly every way, except certain hype moments like the final Jiren vs Everyone fight.

This thread is absolutely toxic and ridiculous. Come on now, why do you think nobody actually comes to defend the manga here? Because its the same stuff all the time, a pointless argument that only ends up becoming demoralising if you actually want to discuss a chapter in any other way than 'screw toyo he fanfic writer'. I left other sites because I couldn't talk about the manga positively without being bombarded with negative comments. Now the same is happening here? What happened to life and let life. 70% of the manga megathread is arguments about why the manga sucks / defending the manga why it doesn't suck.

Do you see me calling for toei to just quit making the DBS anime and give it to another animation studio? No, even if I don't like 90% of the damn thing, the powerscaling is thrown out of the window, random transformations make it look like fanfiction and it drags on for way to long, but do you know what? I don't start threads like this, because I know that there are fans, and it would seem incredibly dickish for me to just make a wholly negative thread about how the entire thing sucks and that toei cannot handle dragonball, even if I agree with said statement. Threads like this just become piles of negativity and toxicity.

The only thing I am happy about is that toei/toyo don't read western forums.

Eastern forums are just as upset. And heres where you are wrong. Toei owns DB. So if they put out a bad product you cant call for a different studio. What you can do is call for different directors and show runners. Toyotaro is an employee. And hes doing a terrible job. 90% of the fan base have not been happy with his work since late Zamasu arc. Your problem is you want the world to be all bubble gum and rainbows. No its not like that. And to say someone should be reassigned or let go and maybe someone else should be given a shot to head the manga is not toxic. If something is bad it can be called for what it is or everything everywhere will continue to crank out garbage. I guess we cant criticize the Transformers movies, we cant say it needs a new director so on and so forth right?

[supersaiyanZero]

This is so overdramatic. Super revived the franchise it sure as hell isn't producing writing worth firing everyone over.

Ekrolo is right. Some of the worst writing I've seen in an anime and lets be real - it didn't "revive" the franchise as much as they piggybacked on the previous success of the name and characters and just rushed out a bunch of garbage with Goku and co. in it. And you know what what? It worked, because we are desperate for anything Dragonball.

It did revive the franchise. As it stands now it is by far more popular than it was prior to it's release, to the point where DBS things are making appearances in pop culture. Immediately following the DBS movie's title being announced it was trending worldwide on twitter. That is how popular it is right now. As far as the "bad writing" I'm going to repost something I posted earlier in the thread replying to somebody else...

addressing the Black arc just being "Goku and friends getting beat up, leaving, getting beat up again, etc."

This is a gross oversimplification of that arc. You could literally say something similar about almost every arc. In the Namek Arc "They are just beating up Freeza's henchmen until Freeza shows up." They are fighting his henchman and outside of the Dragon Balls there really isn't that much else going on. Yes, I do consider it to be the best arc in the franchise myself, but I also consider the Zamasu arc to be right up there with it.

addressing Super just being the "Goku and Vegeta show"

I see that as a natural development of the characters. Goku and Vegeta are the pure-blooded Saiyan warriors who devote their life to fighting, they should be by far the strongest and the ones to take on any oncoming threats. Besides, how the "Goku and Vegeta show" was avoided in DBZ is that the cast was literally left waiting for Goku every single time. It became a trope that happened with ridiculous frequency to the point where it became very predictable and boring. The usefulness of the rest of the cast literally stops as soon as Goku shows up. Outside of the fight vs Vegeta in the Saiyan arc, everyone's usefulness constitutes holding down the fort until Goku shows up. I would take a "Goku and Vegeta show" over a "wait for Goku show" any day of the week. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that DBZ is better but they certainly are on the same level and I think it is strange to sit here and say that they aren't in the same league.

Addressing a comparison between the Zamasu arc and the Cell/Namek arcs

I don't consider it better but I consider it to be pretty damn close. The Cell and Namek arcs are the two best arcs in the franchise to me and the Zamasu arc is right up there with them. If it wasn't for the poor ending and how Trunks's power scaling was handled, I would consider it the best arc in the franchise to be quite frank with you. It gave us a villain with a nuanced character and legitimate motivations for the first time ever rather than a generic evil guy every single damn time. It featured somebody other than Goku or Gohan being integral in the defeat of the main villain(even if Trunks had some strange moments.)

DBS features characters receiving power boosts that are ultimately more interesting and nuanced than "I spent X amount of time training." Three of Vegeta's moments where he gained huge power boosts are a reflection of his improvements in character and actually had meaning further than "yeah I totally punched the air for a year in that chamber." Aside from the two rage-induced transformations, it pretty much always comes down to spending more time training in DBZ. Generally speaking, Super Vegeta as a character is by far my favorite iteration of Vegeta and without it I would have been stuck with the garbage that is Buu arc Vegeta.

The fights are just flat out better and more interesting in Super. They have fights that aren't strictly decided by power, have more fights that aren't complete domination by one side, and feature generally more dynamic fights. Additionally, unlike DBZ, they have fights with interesting clashes in ideals and motivations rather than just being a clash of fists.

Like I said, I consider DBZ to be slightly better, but they are more or less on the same level with DB being significantly above both of them.

Let's put it this way - if DBS didn't have characters that looked like Goku and Vegeta, it would be more bottom of the barrel than it already is. We could have gotten almost anything at this point and it would have "revived" the franchise. We started seeing this with the video games and in 2008 with the Dbz special that people wanted more dragonball, end of story. In fact such was the sentiment that Toei rushed the entire preproduction schedule just to spit out another Dragonball series for all of us to eat up and the majority of us did.

Black/Zamasu was an interesting villain, I will give you that, even though I think the execution was butchered beyond belief. But hey, at least they tried and as a result the Black Arc is the only insufferable arc in all of Super. And I'm not even going to address the "ideals and motivations" argument from you because anybody who tries to tell me there was some deeper nuanced multi-layered clash of ideals in Goku vs Jiren is just not fit to form an opinion. Period. There might have been trace elements of it via exposition but it's execution was so abysmal that everything about that clash fell absolutely flat.

And DBS characters reveiving power boosts that are more interesting and nuanced? LOL, are you serious? I can't even take this seriously. There is not one transformation or power boost in that entire series that felt like it had any weight or "nuance" as you put it whatsoever. And the fights, sigh, were abysmal for the most part. I still think Recoome vs Vegeta shits on almost any fight in Super - and ironically enough Recoome in that regard was everything that Jiren was supposed to be in terms of an opponent.

[Lord Beerus]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

But... Battle Of Gods... and Jaco The Galactic Patrolman... they're really good.

[ekrolo2]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

But... Battle Of Gods... and Jaco The Galactic Patrolman... they're really good.

I don't consider either or the various bits and pieces from post-Freeza stuff like SS4, Baby, Vegeta & Majin Boo's character arcs in the Boo arc, Goku Black (anime) worthwhile enough to justify a lot of the dreck that followed. Now, if the Black arc took the direction Terez recently talked about on Twitter, it would've made both it and the ToP storyline justify the existence of more DB content.

[ricky84]

I'm glad not the only person who realizes this. Toyotaro is a terrible writer (worse than the folks who wrote GT) and a mediocre artist. Every story arc in the Super manga is worse than the anime versions (especially the Black arc) in nearly every objective category and the nearly all of Toyotaro's best drawings are traced and/or referenced from other sources.

And just because Toriyama allegedly prefers the manga version doesn't make it better. Since when is Toriyama's approval a measure of quality? That's like saying DB Minus is better than the 90's Bardock special because just because he wrote the former.

[Lord Beerus]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

But... Battle Of Gods... and Jaco The Galactic Patrolman... they're really good.

I don't consider either or the various bits and pieces from post-Freeza stuff like SS4, Baby, Vegeta & Majin Boo's character arcs in the Boo arc, Goku Black (anime) worthwhile enough to justify a lot of the dreck that followed. Now, if the Black arc took the direction Terez recently talked about on Twitter, it would've made both it and the ToP storyline justify the existence of more DB content.

What direction was Terez talking about?

[ricky84]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

But... Battle Of Gods... and Jaco The Galactic Patrolman... they're really good.

I don't consider either or the various bits and pieces from post-Freeza stuff like SS4, Baby, Vegeta & Majin Boo's character arcs in the Boo arc, Goku Black (anime) worthwhile enough to justify a lot of the dreck that followed. Now, if the Black arc took the direction Terez recently talked about on Twitter, it would've made both it and the ToP storyline justify the existence of more DB content.

The Buu saga, the Baby arc and anime version of the Black arc are all superior to Pre-King Piccolo arcs and the Android/Cell arc. Early DB before King Piccolo is nothing noteworthy outside of the Crane School storyline. And the Buu saga looking back is highly underrated.

[ekrolo2]

The Buu saga, the Baby arc and anime version of the Black arc are all superior to Pre-King Piccolo arcs and the Android/Cell arc. Early DB before King Piccolo is nothing noteworthy outside of the Crane School storyline. And the Buu saga looking back is highly underrated.

The Baby arc is severely underrated along with the character himself and I'd even say the Shadow Dragon arc, especially the last part has lots of strong points. Earlier DB didn't blow my socks off but I didn't find it offensively shit the way most of the modern content is or the horrendous Cell arc. The Majin Boo one is a mixed bag for me, there's a lot to like about it but it goes on for far too long and a lot of the big players in it like Gotenks, Super Boo, Vegetto and Ultimate Gohan are beyond boring.

[Hawk9211]

Gonna be even more of a "radical" here than PFM18 and say everything after Namek was a mistake.

But... Battle Of Gods... and Jaco The Galactic Patrolman... they're really good.

I am skewing more and more towards namek argument.I dislike both the direction and execution of cell and buu and later material.Bog pointed to a new direction,but it was dropped.