Does Dragon Ball have the largest, least toxic, fandom in existence of fictional franchises?

[ClutchBangstrip]

'Might write a paper on this for my final. Is it weird for fandoms in the realm of Star Wars, in terms of size and success to be kinda...chill? Is the Dragon Ball fandom Super horrible and I'm just not seeing it? Any other mega franchises that don't have stuff like staff quitting or the cops being called due to fans? Really curious. Yur thoughts?

[usotsuki]

If you think the DB fandom doesn't get really toxic, I got three words for you: "Broadcast Audio Wars."

[VegettoEX]

Depending on where you go and who you ask, you're sure to get different answers.

That being said, I don't disagree. Other than the standard Internet Bullies™ out there, I haven't witnessed any campaigns based on "hate," for lack of a better word, specifically targeted at production (a la the usual "get someone fired" movements we see out there in other media).

That's not to say there haven't been large swaths of upset fans, even organized at that: Mexican fans in particular got pretty upset over Kai stuffage a number of years back. And though I said the above, I want to say an international voice actress was somewhat forced to abandon/delete her social media presence following fan backlash...? I'm sure there's a thread somewhere about it here if you dig hard enough.

All the piddly nonsense people might bring up (even battle power scaling stuff) is just that: piddly nonsense in the grand scheme of things, easily avoidable/ignorable, and has zero impact on the larger franchise and fandom as a whole and/or its production. Fans arguing over the scaling and writing, no matter how overwhelming it may seen at the time when reading forum threads or video comments, really has zero impact on a goddamn thing.

It certainly "helps"(?) that Dragon Ball's production has a massive language barrier protecting it from a massive portion of its international fanbase.

[Polyphase Avatron]

All the piddly nonsense people might bring up (even battle power scaling stuff) is just that: piddly nonsense in the grand scheme of things, easily avoidable/ignorable, and has zero impact on the larger franchise and fandom as a whole and/or its production. Fans arguing over the scaling and writing, no matter how overwhelming it may seen at the time when reading forum threads or video comments, really has zero impact on a goddamn thing.

I actually heard of a guy who was stalked and harassed IRL because he kept arguing that Goku would lose to Superman.

[Majin Buu]

Aside from some occasional xenophobic vibes from some western fans (for example, the way the Japanese fanbase is sometimes scapegoated by western fans for unpopular story decisions Toriyama made), I don't think the Dragon Ball fandom is any more or less toxic than any other large fandom.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

A large part of the fandom went full misogyny mode when Kale, Caulifla and Ribrainne were introduced. The only difference is that none of their seiyuus were harassed due to the language barrier as mentioned earlier unlike what happened with Star Wars. But, that language barrier certainly didn't prevent fans from being shitty towards Shida and Toshio though. They were asked some real garbage questions on their Twitter. No wonder Shida stopped taking questions.

[ClutchBangstrip]

Thanks for the insight, guys. I didn't even know about the Spanish dub thing.

Recently I've found myself pulling out of a few franchises due to the fandoms, like comics, Rick and Morty, and Star Wars, to name a few. In those examples, fandoms started doing stuff that made the news or at least was talked about in the mainstream. I knew for sure that DB's time would come with the introduction of Kale & Caulifla; but criticisms were pretty "maintained" to an obvious minority and now you got more people asking if they were gonna be in the upcoming film. Then there's the Toyotaro dust ups that lasted for about a 2 days on Twitter. People are pretty hyped about the upcoming chapters, actually. Dragon Ball has its issues but it just seems it has never reached that level, if ya'know what I mean. It just seems the hatred is better contained on the art itself, rather than exploding outwards IRL. Or the Super stupid gross antics are kept in a corner.

I Googled the franchise and it's worth over 5 billion USD, Disney bought Star Wars for 4 billion. It's a huge franchise for a really loud minority not to have stained it, considerably.

-edit-

But, that language barrier certainly didn't prevent fans from being shitty towards Shida and Toshio though. They were asked some real garbage questions on their Twitter. No wonder Shida stopped taking questions.

Man, I didn't know about that one. That sucks, dude. I hope it didn't reach the level of Star Wars, tho. Has anything ever happened with the Funimation dub actors?

[SpiritBombTriumphant]

I actually thought we were one of the more toxic fanbases, especially on our subreddit r/dbz. I've seen a ton of people say shitty things over non-issues. I once made fun of someone for saying "Cell (Seru)" in a topic because we all know who he is--we didn't need his Japanese pronunciation there. And people agreed with me when I made fun of the poor guy. I try not to be like that, but there are plenty of terrible people everywhere in every anime fanbase. I think we're on par with the rest to be honest.

A large part of the fandom went full misogyny mode when Kale, Caulifla and Ribrainne were introduced.

If you're referring to how people reacted to Caulifla farting her way through SSJ transformations, that wasn't misogyny. I remember someone on the dbz subreddit cried sexism when everyone bitched because we thought Caulifla was going to hit Super Saiyan Blue in the Tournament of Power. We don't care about her gender. We care for what we thought would be her skipping 500+ episodes (franchise, excluding GT), 42 manga volumes, and decades of work that Goku went through to get to where he is as of Super before mastering Ultra Instinct. It was the pure BS of being able to jump through all of them simply because she wanted to that we disliked. Again, no one cares that she's a girl. The only reason that people didn't react this way to Goten or Trunks is that they had a reason stated since the beginning of Z for Gohan: for whatever reason, half-Saiyan half-human hybrids seem to possess power potential that normal Saiyans or normal humans cannot gain nearly as easily. Then fusion went and made it reasonable enough for them to reach SSJ.

Of course, now that we know about S-cells, I'm perfectly fine with Caulifla if she hit SSJ 3 without a problem. Getting to God or above would be a bit iffy for me, but it's nowhere near as bad as we thought when we first thought she'd just magically reach Goku's level without any training whatsoever.

If you think the DB fandom doesn't get really toxic, I got three words for you: "Broadcast Audio Wars."

I'm unfamiliar with this. What's going on? If I have to guess, I would base it on the Japan vs the Western world fight I hear about in other fandoms (e.x. only Japanese people should read VNs as they aren't made in English so Western people shouldn't be allowed). I'm guessing that the Japanese have pride and don't want to share anything with us. I remember AnimeAjay made a video about broadcast audio and how the Japanese side "went dark" for no reason after Toei rejected the media and we were going to to the trade. I hear a lot of things about Japan not liking us (like my above comment on VNs). I heard on these forums that we never got the Son Goku Returns OVA because the Japanese simply don't want us to have it (although I'm sure there are other issues involved). A sort of "we have it, you don't" attitude. I just hear a lot of crap coming from Japan and how they regard us. I know not everyone is like this, but usually people with power (e.x. broadcast audio) don't want to share it with us.

Again, that's a guess and it's based on things I've heard on here and elsewhere on the internet in other fandoms. The issues I see within our fandom are things like "Kai vs Z." People always go like "BUT KAI HAD A BLUE MR. POPO!" and I have to explain how that was a Nicktoons edit. Then there's Faulconer vs Kikuchi.

[ClutchBangstrip]

Just so we're clear, when I mean "toxic", I mean stuff gets so bad you read about it in places that have nothing to do with Dragon Ball. Like today, I'm reading Yahoo News and they're talking about the irrational anger for the She-Ra cartoon. I'm like, "WTF?!"

You Google DB news and as it pertains to fans, the top stories are people excited about how good Caulifla's Eng VA is (you almost forget people hated her at 1st) and how fans think Ms.Marvel went UI on a poster. When DB appears on mainstream news sites, as it pertains to its fans, it's usually for positive coverage. Am I wrong?

[Lord Beerus]

Your mileage will always vary with this topic.

There are some who think that most of the Western Dragon Ball fandom who think Dragon Ball are very obnoxious with their obsession of power levels, "canon" and whether Goku could beat Superman. While other don't really pay much attention to them and treat their opinions as more of white noise.

I personally think that, at least within the realm of fandom based in anime and manga, Dragon Ball is one of the worst. Like, up there with the Bleach and Naruto fandom -- in the sense of arguing over the stupidest shit you can think of.

But it's never gotten so bad to the point where it would be newsworthy in a negative fashion for the image of the fans of Dragon Ball in a general image. It's certainly nowhere near as bad as Star Wars, Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, My Little Pony or Sonic The Hedgehog.

[PFM18]

Oh, we are definitely better than the Naruto fanbase, they are toxic and hostile constantly.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

If you're referring to how people reacted to Caulifla farting her way through SSJ transformations, that wasn't misogyny. I remember someone on the dbz subreddit cried sexism when everyone bitched because we thought Caulifla was going to hit Super Saiyan Blue in the Tournament of Power. We don't care about her gender.

No, I'm referring to how people criticized these characters. Calling them bitches and whores and sharing their disturbing fantasies of how they would love to see Freeza torture them are some of the few shitty things people said. This site was a bit better compared to other places, but it happened here as well.

[Polyphase Avatron]

We care for what we thought would be her skipping 500+ episodes (franchise, excluding GT), 42 manga volumes, and decades of work that Goku went through to get to where he is as of Super before mastering Ultra Instinct. It was the pure BS of being able to jump through all of them simply because she wanted to that we disliked.

Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about Broly going from below base Vegeta to above SSJB Goku + Vegeta combined in a few hours?

[MajinMan]

I’d say that the fandom is more divided than it is toxic. Sub vs dub, Kikuchi vs Faulconer, power levels vs story writing, etc. A lot of this is mostly only in the English fanbase, but this division is what can lead to a lot of the toxic behavior fans have toward each other.

[sixingqiu]

It's better than a lot of fandoms I suppose, but it still has its fair share of division and useless arguing imo.

[Soppa Saia People]

i use to like really think that the db fan base was like, extremely toxic, and kinda hated the whole fanbase lol. but now, ehh, i think it's up there for being one of the less toxic huge fan bases. there's still issues, and stuff like power level debates will get weirdly aggressive, but there's stuff like that in every fanbase, and it mostly stays in its own bubble. probably the grossest stuff is how some people talk about the jpn voice actors, and vice versa for the English voice actors. but as far as i know, that stuff hasn't really reached full on harrasment level (though feel free to correct me).

[ClutchBangstrip]

I personally don't like comparing DB's fanbase to other anime/manga, because IMO, DB kinda transcends the anime realm in terms of reach. There a probably more DB fans than Star Trek fans, the sheer size and diversity of the base genuinely does rival stuff like Marvel and DC. I mean, besides Pokemon and Gundam, there's really nothing else in the "anime" realm.

It shocks me that one of those crazy power-scale arguments never went so far it made the news. Like one fan did something insane, irl, because of it.

[zarmack]

A large part of the fandom went full misogyny mode when Kale, Caulifla and Ribrainne were introduced. The only difference is that none of their seiyuus were harassed due to the language barrier as mentioned earlier unlike what happened with Star Wars. But, that language barrier certainly didn't prevent fans from being shitty towards Shida and Toshio though. They were asked some real garbage questions on their Twitter. No wonder Shida stopped taking questions.

Criticizing female characters doesn't equal misogyny, only PC people/SJWs think it does smh. Most criticism of those characters centers around their writing, not that they are women.

This basically sums up the gripes people have with Caulifla and Kale. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2CPRB5J_9o

As for Ribrainne, many simply thinks she's an annoying, one-dimensional, pointless gag-character with a terrible design.

[zarmack]

In my opinion, the absolute worst type of DB fans tend to be the pseudo-intellectual contrarian types that only seem to like anything in DB when it's not being itself (Hail Zeon, PlagueofGripes, Mozilla Vupix, and their followers), the folks who worship Team4Star (I have no problems with them), the folks who uncritically put Pre-Raditz DB on a sacred pedestal (while using the worst arguments for why), the folks who hypocritically hate on certain characters yet defend others for doing the same things, Mastar Media and his hardcore followers, etc.

[Hulk10]

I'd say it has one of the most toxic fandoms. People just don't agree on a lot of things and they get rather vociferous and rude about it. Like how people just shoot me down for believing that SSJ4 is not weaker than SSJB. But I'm sure that there are other more toxic fandoms.