have you seen Alita : Battle Angel???

[Lujin_16]

a great movie and a really good anime adaptation after seeing it I thought wow this is how a Dragonball Red Ribbon Army adaptation would look like as a live
action movie

[MasenkoHA]

Path to Ultimate Power would be a good basis for a live action Dragon Ball movie tbh.

Curse of the Blood Rubies/Legend of Shen long could maybe work as well but that always had an 80s kids fantasy movie you rented at Blockbuster vibe to me.

[KBABZ]

Have I seen it? I worked on it!

[Dr. Casey]

Have I seen it? I worked on it!

What

[Kunzait_83]

Have I seen it? I worked on it!

Buh?!

a great movie and a really good anime adaptation after seeing it I thought wow this is how a Dragonball Red Ribbon Army adaptation would look like as a live
action movie

As someone who has positively adored the Battle Angel/Gunnm franchise since the early 90s (and was more than pleasantly astonished by how overall rock solid the live action movie ended up turning out after more than 25 years stuck in development hell: for context, this movie was originally supposed to have been made in the mid/late 90s, pre-Cartoon Network anime explosion), there really isn't much of a relationship whatsoever between it and Dragon Ball, outside of both being Japanese anime/manga.

Both are aimed at totally different demographics: Dragon Ball's written for grade school children, Battle Angel for adults. Both are completely, wildly, and starkly different genres and tones: Dragon Ball being heavily Chinese-flavored and whimsically demented martial arts fantasy, Battle Angel being grungy and gritty cyberpunk. Both have WILDLY different themes at their cores: Dragon Ball is all about self-improvement and growth through competition and training, Battle Angel is primarily about haves versus have-nots class struggles along with cyberpunk's usual Ship of Theseus-like "How much of your increasingly artificial self is still human?" philosophical questions.

Battle Angel and Dragon Ball are so far removed from one another that they're not even apples and oranges: they're more like vitamin supplements and razor blades. COMPLETELY altogether different categories and uses from one another. Its like trying to draw a comparison between movies like Monkey Goes West or Tai Chi Zero and movies like Blade Runner or Robocop. Or to put it in a Pulp Fiction quote: "It ain't the same fuckin' ballpark! It ain't the same league! It ain't even the same fuckin' sport!"

This seems to be something of yet another backdoor "Can Dragon Ball be done well as a live action movie?" thread, with Battle Angel being held up as a tortuously tenuous connection. And as has been said by myself and a few others in numerous other "live action" threads, yes of course Dragon Ball can be done well in live action, because over the top martial arts fantasy of its exact ilk HAS BEEN done COUNTLESS TIMES in live action since literally almost a hundred years ago. And more broadly speaking, live action anime adaptations can ALSO be done well, because they too have also been done well in plenty of other instances (just not by mainstream Hollywood: up until Battle Angel at least).

The only thing that makes Battle Angel particularly unique is how well it miraculously ended up turning out despite A) being stuck in development hell for longer than most people on this forum have even known of Japanese anime's existence, B) being primarily the product of two once-mighty Hollywood filmmakers (Rodriguez and Cameron) who have been fairly past their primes in more recent years, and most notably C) being put through the present-day Hollywood mega-budget blockbuster tentpole meat grinder that tends to make the vast overwhelming majority of most movies that go through it turn out as absolutely unwatchable garbage, and instead coming out the other end shockingly intact as a genuinely solid and well made reflection of the source material (despite even the usually kiss-of-death PG-13 rating).

The comparison with DB's Red Ribbon arc is particularly baffling and nonsensical: again, Battle Angel (both its anime/manga source material, and its present Hollywood live action adaptation) and Dragon Ball (both overall, and particularly its Red Ribbon arc) are COMPLETELY and utterly divorced from one another on just about every single possible level, outside of both being made by Japanese dudes for Japanese comics/cartoons. There's simply ZERO comparisons to be made between them whatsoever, and anyone who dogpiles on this as "evidence that DB CAN BE DONE in live action!" or as "Oh my god, FINALLY the FIRST EVER well done live action anime film anyone's ever made!" is simply revealing their total and abject ignorance about anything relating to movies (particularly anime adaptations and martial arts fantasy films in general) outside of very recent Hollywood blockbuster tentpoles.

Not to overstate the obvious here, but Japanese anime and manga aren't a monolithic entity and shouldn't be judged or gauged as one: they are INCREDIBLY broad-ranging mediums with a vastly diverse tapestry of genres and tones and styles of works contained within them.

[Polyphase Avatron]

The comparison with DB's Red Ribbon arc is particularly baffling and nonsensical: again, Battle Angel (both its anime/manga source material, and its present Hollywood live action adaptation) and Dragon Ball (both overall, and particularly its Red Ribbon arc) are COMPLETELY and utterly divorced from one another on just about every single possible level, outside of both being made by Japanese dudes for Japanese comics/cartoons. There's simply ZERO comparisons to be made between them whatsoever.

Martial arts
Robots and cyborgs
Superhuman powers
Mad scientists

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

Have I seen it? I worked on it!

Tell me more! What exactly did you work on for the film?

I haven't seen the film yet, but its very existence makes me happy. The fact that it was in development hell and the filmmakers just kept on pushing for the film to be made just shows that a lot of dedication went into making it. It looks great from all the promo material I've seen so far.

As for what it could mean for another Dragon Ball film adaptation? I don't really want to see Dragon Ball in live action anymore. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse made me realise that you can capture the look and feel of a comic/manga source material through CG animation in ways that live action could never achieve. I just can't imagine Toriyama's characters and style working in live action. Sooo much of Dragon Ball's charm comes from the character designs alone, so when you try and recreate that with boring real people, all of that charm is stripped away.

It's the same problem I have with these recent Disney "live action" adaptations of cartoon classics. Why the hell would I watch The Lion King again, but this time with photorealistic animals? All of that cartoon charm is gone in favour of bland realism. It completely misses the point of what made the original cartoon so appealing.

I feel like with the recent international success of Broly and these Hollywood anime/manga adaptations releasing and being announced, another Dragon Ball adaptation might be coming sooner than we think. DragonBall: Evolution released 10 years ago. Let that sink in.

[Kunzait_83]

Martial arts
Robots and cyborgs
Superhuman powers
Mad scientists

1) Martial arts plays a fairly minimal role in Battle Angel in comparison to Dragon Ball. In Battle Angel, Panzer Kunst (the fictitious German martial arts style designed for cyborg combat) is merely a basic plot device that allows for Alita/Gally's unique fighting style. That's literally where it begins and ends as an element of the series, whereas in Dragon Ball, martial arts are literally THE central point of the ENTIRE narrative thrust, and what motivates virtually every single character's goals in the story. Martial arts aren't simply a plot device in Dragon Ball: martial arts IS Dragon Ball to its very core identity.

By contrast, Alita/Gally is NOT in ANY way motivated in her journey by a passion and love for martial arts or martial arts training and competition: she seeks mainly justice for the downtrodden underclass living below Zalem, as well as answers regarding her past and her identity. Martial arts/Panzer Kunst is simply a tool, a means to an end in her achieving her goals: martial arts isn't her goal unto itself, the way it is for Goku and most of the DB cast in general. Oftentimes hand to hand fighting tends to jog fragments of her past memories to the fore of her mind (as she was a Berserker warrior before she was scrapped and found by Ido), but that's as close to a "deep connection" to martial arts as she gets.

2) No kidding there's robots and cyborgs: Battle Angel is part of the cyberpunk genre. Cyborgs and robotics are an integral piece of that genre's entire fabric and foundation. By this logic, Ghost in the Shell and Black Magic M66 are also comparable to Dragon Ball: after all, they're both Japanese anime/manga that feature robots and cyborgs! See? TOTALLY the same exact thing! Dragon Ball may feature robots and cyborgs, but they aren't in ANY way an integral part of its core themes and narrative identity the way they are to Battle Angel.

In this way, this is the exact inverse of the martial arts point above: cyborgs and robots are at the very core foundation of Battle Angel's story and characters, whereas in DB they're simply window dressing and part of its surface level "cool factor". Dragon Ball is no more a cyberpunk story than it is a space opera story, simply because it has fragments of these elements dotting its otherwise centrally martial arts fantasy narrative.

3) Battle Angel doesn't really have "superhuman powers" in any supernatural or fantasy sense of the term. It has cyborg characters outfitted for war and combat: all of its "superpowers" (which isn't even the right term for it) are purely technology-based, whereas Dragon Ball is steeped in ancient Chinese/Taoist/Buddhist mysticism and magic. No non-cyborg characters in Battle Angel generally have any special powers or abilities whatsoever.

4) Yes, there's a mad scientist villain in both Dragon Ball and Battle Angel. And...? In DB, Dr. Gero is but one mad scientist among a slew of largely and overwhelmingly martial arts-based villains, whereas in Gunnm, Desty Nova is THE central villain behind most of the other villains throughout the bulk of the series, and much later on (decades-old spoilers for those who haven't read the manga) his relationship with Alita/Gally gets substantially more complicated and much less black and white adversarial.

For Dragon Ball, Dr. Gero (along with anime-only characters like Dr. Myuu, Dr. Uiro & Kochin, etc.) is just a side/sub-villain amongst a MUCH larger pool of overwhelmingly magical kung fu-based antagonists: in Battle Angel, Nova is one of the principal driving forces of the entire narrative, and one who's relationship with the main protagonist is FAR more nuanced and exceedingly different than that of Gero and Goku's (which is a very stock and straightforwardly simple "revenge" scenario).

Simply because DB has one or two mad scientists in its narrative hardly means that they are central figures in its story: they are, once again, pieces of the "sci fi window dressing" that dots its martial arts-fueled narrative. Is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a suitable comparison to DB simply because DB has a character like Hatchan/#8 in it? This whole point is ridiculous on its face.

[MasenkoHA]

Martial arts
Robots and cyborgs
Superhuman powers
Mad scientists

These notes were at a Funimation board meeting circa 1996 when they decided to turn DBZ into the next Power Rangers

[Polyphase Avatron]

Martial arts
Robots and cyborgs
Superhuman powers
Mad scientists

1) Martial arts plays a fairly minimal role in Battle Angel in comparison to Dragon Ball. In Battle Angel, Panzer Kunst (the fictitious German martial arts style designed for cyborg combat) is merely a basic plot device that allows for Alita/Gally's unique fighting style. That's literally where it begins and ends as an element of the series, whereas in Dragon Ball, martial arts are literally THE central point of the ENTIRE narrative thrust, and what motivates virtually every single character's goals in the story. Martial arts aren't simply a plot device in Dragon Ball: martial arts IS Dragon Ball to its very core identity.

By contrast, Alita/Gally is NOT in ANY way motivated in her journey by a passion and love for martial arts or martial arts training and competition: she seeks mainly justice for the downtrodden underclass living below Zalem, as well as answers regarding her past and her identity. Martial arts/Panzer Kunst is simply a tool, a means to an end in her achieving her goals: martial arts isn't her goal unto itself, the way it is for Goku and most of the DB cast in general. Oftentimes hand to hand fighting tends to jog fragments of her past memories to the fore of her mind (as she was a Berserker warrior before she was scrapped and found by Ido), but that's as close to a "deep connection" to martial arts as she gets.

2) No kidding there's robots and cyborgs: Battle Angel is part of the cyberpunk genre. Cyborgs and robotics are an integral piece of that genre's entire fabric and foundation. By this logic, Ghost in the Shell and Black Magic M66 are also comparable to Dragon Ball: after all, they're both Japanese anime/manga that feature robots and cyborgs! See? TOTALLY the same exact thing! Dragon Ball may feature robots and cyborgs, but they aren't in ANY way an integral part of its core themes and narrative identity the way they are to Battle Angel.

In this way, this is the exact inverse of the martial arts point above: cyborgs and robots are at the very core foundation of Battle Angel's story and characters, whereas in DB they're simply window dressing and part of its surface level "cool factor". Dragon Ball is no more a cyberpunk story than it is a space opera story, simply because it has fragments of these elements dotting its otherwise centrally martial arts fantasy narrative.

3) Battle Angel doesn't really have "superhuman powers" in any supernatural or fantasy sense of the term. It has cyborg characters outfitted for war and combat: all of its "superpowers" (which isn't even the right term for it) are purely technology-based, whereas Dragon Ball is steeped in ancient Chinese/Taoist/Buddhist mysticism and magic. No non-cyborg characters in Battle Angel generally have any special powers or abilities whatsoever.

4) Yes, there's a mad scientist villain in both Dragon Ball and Battle Angel. And...? In DB, Dr. Gero is but one mad scientist among a slew of largely and overwhelmingly martial arts-based villains, whereas in Gunnm, Desty Nova is THE central villain behind most of the other villains throughout the bulk of the series, and much later on (decades-old spoilers for those who haven't read the manga) his relationship with Alita/Gally gets substantially more complicated and much less black and white adversarial.

For Dragon Ball, Dr. Gero (along with anime-only characters like Dr. Myuu, Dr. Uiro & Kochin, etc.) is just a side/sub-villain amongst a MUCH larger pool of overwhelmingly magical kung fu-based antagonists: in Battle Angel, Nova is one of the principal driving forces of the entire narrative, and one who's relationship with the main protagonist is FAR more nuanced and exceedingly different than that of Gero and Goku's (which is a very stock and straightforwardly simple "revenge" scenario).

Simply because DB has one or two mad scientists in its narrative hardly means that they are central figures in its story: they are, once again, pieces of the "sci fi window dressing" that dots its martial arts-fueled narrative. Is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a suitable comparison to DB simply because DB has a character like Hatchan/#8 in it? This whole point is ridiculous on its face.

You said it had nothing in common and I was just pointing out that that wasn't true. Also at least in the manga there are non-cyborgs with superhuman powers, like those vampires. (I'm pretty sure you'd go into another rant if I were to point out that vampires also exist in DB... )

[KBABZ]

Have I seen it? I worked on it!

What

Buh?!

Tell me more! What exactly did you work on for the film?

I was a junior animator at Weta Digital, Alita was the last film I worked on there. I did some facial animation stuff on a few shots, placed and animated some Centurions, and attached more CG robo arm elements onto extras than I can count (on of them was used in several trailers, where Alita slams Zapan through the bar table. I did the arm on the guy sitting at the table). My "big" shot was one near the end of the movie, where

Spoiler:

Alita stops pinning Zapan to the wall and walks away towards camera with an emotional look on her face. This is the scene where [boyfriendcharacterwhosenameIforgetit'sbeenawhile] gets stabbed and they both go into the church ruins in the following scene.

I did Alita's facial animation in that one! The scene after the church one mentioned above is also where I placed and animated several Centurions. There was also a scene where they're on the way to the crashed ship in the lake, and Alita is getting some exposition of where the ship comes from. There's a shot where she and the group of teenagers are walking straight towards camera as they go through a rocky shaded section. Did Alita's facial there too! There was also a scene where a guy gets captured outside the bar and he gets this magic-feeling techno rope wrapped around him: I did the shot where he pulls the two guys right off the bike and the next two where rope goes around him.

For those wondering, the other films I worked on at Weta Digital include Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, The BFG, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (ever so briefly) and War for the Planet of the Apes. This was my leaving card from my desk neighbour who knew I liked Dragon Ball even more than she did.

Martial arts
Robots and cyborgs
Superhuman powers
Mad scientists

These notes were at a Funimation board meeting circa 1996 when they decided to turn DBZ into the next Power Rangers

Or they were looking at the Ginyu Force for too long!

[Polyphase Avatron]

Also, regarding your Frankenstein comparison, I think it's pretty much undeniable that #8's character design was heavily based on the Hollywood interpretation of Frankenstein's monster. So yes, there is a connection there. A series doesn't have to be a whole plot reference of another to have something in common with it.

[Super Saiyan Swagger]

I was a junior animator at Weta Digital, Alita was the last film I worked on there. I did some facial animation stuff on a few shots, placed and animated some Centurions, and attached more CG robo arm elements onto extras than I can count (on of them was used in several trailers, where Alita slams Zapan through the bar table. I did the arm on the guy sitting at the table). My "big" shot was one near the end of the movie, where

Spoiler:

Alita stops pinning Zapan to the wall and walks away towards camera with an emotional look on her face. This is the scene where [boyfriendcharacterwhosenameIforgetit'sbeenawhile] gets stabbed and they both go into the church ruins in the following scene.

I did Alita's facial animation in that one! The scene after the church one mentioned above is also where I placed and animated several Centurions. There was also a scene where they're on the way to the crashed ship in the lake, and Alita is getting some exposition of where the ship comes from. There's a shot where she and the group of teenagers are walking straight towards camera as they go through a rocky shaded section. Did Alita's facial there too! There was also a scene where a guy gets captured outside the bar and he gets this magic-feeling techno rope wrapped around him: I did the shot where he pulls the two guys right off the bike and the next two where rope goes around him.

For those wondering, the other films I worked on at Weta Digital include Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, The BFG, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (ever so briefly) and War for the Planet of the Apes. This was my leaving card from my desk neighbour who knew I liked Dragon Ball even more than she did.

That's so awesome! I'll try and keep those scenes in mind when I go and watch the film sometime soon. It's really cool to see people on this forum getting to work in the film industry.

[KBABZ]

That's so awesome! I'll try and keep those scenes in mind when I go and watch the film sometime soon. It's really cool to see people on this forum getting to work in the film industry.

If you decide to stick around in the credits, look in the Weta Digital animators section for some idiot called Tim van der Meij.

[ABED]

I know films of these types require a lot of manpower, but I don't know what individuals do day to day. Like, if there are 10,000 VFX shots in a movie, do they break them up into units and give a few shots to each artist? In all the BTS material on DVDs and Blu Rays, I can't remember one going that in depth into the process.

[Kunzait_83]

I was a junior animator at Weta Digital, Alita was the last film I worked on there. I did some facial animation stuff on a few shots, placed and animated some Centurions, and attached more CG robo arm elements onto extras than I can count (on of them was used in several trailers, where Alita slams Zapan through the bar table. I did the arm on the guy sitting at the table). My "big" shot was one near the end of the movie, where

Spoiler:

Alita stops pinning Zapan to the wall and walks away towards camera with an emotional look on her face. This is the scene where [boyfriendcharacterwhosenameIforgetit'sbeenawhile] gets stabbed and they both go into the church ruins in the following scene.

I did Alita's facial animation in that one! The scene after the church one mentioned above is also where I placed and animated several Centurions. There was also a scene where they're on the way to the crashed ship in the lake, and Alita is getting some exposition of where the ship comes from. There's a shot where she and the group of teenagers are walking straight towards camera as they go through a rocky shaded section. Did Alita's facial there too! There was also a scene where a guy gets captured outside the bar and he gets this magic-feeling techno rope wrapped around him: I did the shot where he pulls the two guys right off the bike and the next two where rope goes around him.

Badass! All the CG "facial acting" on the part of Alita was largely outstanding (and of course Rosa Salazar deserves a ton of the credit there as well), and I remember all the scenes you mentioned. They turned out pretty great!

You said it had nothing in common and I was just pointing out that that wasn't true. Also at least in the manga there are non-cyborgs with superhuman powers, like those vampires. (I'm pretty sure you'd go into another rant if I were to point out that vampires also exist in DB... )

I forgot about the Type-V mutants (they're from Last Order, which I'm not quite as intimately familiar with as I am the original series). They too however are of the "sci fi/genetically mutated" type of "vampire", not at all the "magic/mysticism/supernatural" type of traditional vampire, and don't factor at all into Battle Angel until well into its sequel series.

And Dragon Ball has... one lone vampire in it (Dracula Man) who was a very brief throwaway character in one short sub-arc.

Tying either series together on this basis is... a spectacularly tenuous stretch, to put it mildly.

Also, regarding your Frankenstein comparison, I think it's pretty much undeniable that #8's character design was heavily based on the Hollywood interpretation of Frankenstein's monster. So yes, there is a connection there. A series doesn't have to be a whole plot reference of another to have something in common with it.

Obviously Hatchan is a direct visual reference to Frankenstein (which is why I brought him up in the first place as a point of reference). My point however was that having a throwaway visual reference does in no way make Dragon Ball and Frankenstein as stories even REMOTELY comparable in the slightest. Frankenstein is a VERY grim and morbidly gothic horror story that deals in heavily cerebral themes of obsession, life after death, and the limitations of science versus nature. Dragon Ball is a whimsically bent children's martial arts fantasy rooted mainly in Chinese fairy tales and myths, but also cribs minor little details from damn near EVERYTHING from The Terminator to Disney movies to, yes, Frankenstein, among countless others.

However, just because Dragon Ball steals a few names from Cinderella or a character design from Frankenstein or has some robots and a mad scientist or two here or there... that hardly makes it a direct, one to one comparison with ANY of those things, as these are simply surface-level details, and not ingrained, deeply-rooted themes and concepts that drive the characters and meat of the story.

This isn't even me saying that DB needs a "whole plot reference" (or whatever) from these elements to make them a suitable connection: just that it needs basically ANYTHING more of a substantive narrative or thematic connection than just the pure "surface level cool" of them, which is all that DB ultimately has of these things.

The robots and cyborgs in Dragon Ball aren't used in any way that even VAGUELY calls to mind cyberpunk stories of Battle Angel's (or even The Terminator's) general ilk: or hell, of ANY type of cyberpunk story period. There's literally almost NOTHING that is particularly "cyberpunk" about the Jinzoningen/Cell arc, apart from a few visual elements and very vague/broad concepts: they're simply interesting and varied aesthetic choices that spices up what is still, fundamentally, a martial arts fantasy narrative.

Same goes for the space opera stuff in the Freeza arc, and the vaguely Persian fantasy visuals of the Boo arc, and stuff like Dracula Man's, Hatchan's, and the rest of Baba's warrior's whole "Universal Monster Movie" designs: all of these things are just pure surface visuals that are only used to vary up and flavor what are still basically just rudimentary standard, basic Wuxia plotlines, character archetypes, and concepts/themes.

The problem with this whole approach of "this thing has robots, that thing has robots, ergo they're the same thing and can be directly compared" is that its WAY too thuddingly over-literal and ultimately reductive. By this metric, you can basically make ANYTHING and EVERYTHING a direct-one-to-one comparison of one another simply because they share at least one VERY basic element that's used in TONS of other works across a dizzying array of genres.

For instance, the movie Se7en and Friday the 13th can then be considered "the same exact type of story" because they both center on a serial killer that gruesomely murders his victims: disregarding Se7en's detective/mystery and hardboiled film noir elements and its overall introspective and cerebral tone, which both HUGELY define it and are absolutely nowhere to be found in the pulpy, exploitative, crowd-pleasingly light Friday the 13th franchise.

Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey both have spaceships traveling through outer space, ergo they must be the same thing: despite Star Wars' glaringly overwhelming Fantasy, Samurai, and Western elements (blended together with about a million other things in a giant stew) and action/adventure nature, contrasted with 2001's intellectually ambitious and meditative ruminations on the history, evolution, and nature of mankind itself, and its VERY hard-sci fi and explicitly non-fantasy and non-action oriented nature.

The Terminator and Short Circuit are both centered on robots with advanced A.I. so they're the same type of story: despite The Terminator (the original anyway) being basically a grungy, nasty slasher film that happens to feature robots from the future as its killers, and Short Circuit being just a dippy family comedy where no one ever gets hurt or dies.

And so on and so forth.

The point is, stories and narratives are WAY more than just a few VERY broad shared visual elements and exceedingly broad components: context and core concepts/themes are what ultimately matters the most fundamentally.

Like Masenko earlier noted: something like Power Rangers ALSO has "martial arts, robots, superpowers, and mad scientists" in it (as do about a BILLION other things in a TON of other genre categories). That HARDLY makes Dragon Ball in ANY WAY some type of Power Rangers equivalent in the absolute slightest.

[KBABZ]

Badass! All the CG "facial acting" on the part of Alita was largely outstanding (and of course Rosa Salazar deserves a ton of the credit there as well), and I remember all the scenes you mentioned. They turned out pretty great!

Thanks! Yeah it's definitely a collaborative process. A lot of the body performance is replicated by the Motion team (they clean up mo-cap and stuff like that) with the exception of the fingers and toes, while the facial, for Alita at least (like on BFG and Apes) had to be animated from scratch 90% of the time. But, we were always basing it off of Rosa's performance and the director (plus Cameron) would always scrutinize how much it captured what Rosa was doing on set. One of the big secondary challenges with Alita's face wasn't just nailing the anime look like Cameron wanted, but ALSO to capture everything Rosa was doing. Over time the producers felt that the best way to do this was to make Alita look a bit like Rosa, which is much like how Gollum from LOTR evolved to have many of Andy Serkis' facial features (and Caeser from Apes has a lot of tweakers to match Andy in those films too). So yeah, it's not just the animators overwriting the actor or the actor doing 100% of what's on-screen: it's a combination of both.

[Polyphase Avatron]

And Dragon Ball has... one lone vampire in it (Dracula Man) who was a very brief throwaway character in one short sub-arc.

Actually there was another one in the Fusion Reborn movie, IIRC. Also one in Dr. Slump, though I'm not sure if that character appeared in any of the crossovers.

Obviously Hatchan is a direct visual reference to Frankenstein (which is why I brought him up in the first place as a point of reference). My point however was that having a throwaway visual reference does in no way make Dragon Ball and Frankenstein as stories even REMOTELY comparable in the slightest. Frankenstein is a VERY grim and morbidly gothic horror story that deals in heavily cerebral themes of obsession, life after death, and the limitations of science versus nature. Dragon Ball is a whimsically bent children's martial arts fantasy rooted mainly in Chinese fairy tales and myths, but also cribs minor little details from damn near EVERYTHING from The Terminator to Disney movies to, yes, Frankenstein, among countless others.

However, just because Dragon Ball steals a few names from Cinderella or a character design from Frankenstein or has some robots and a mad scientist or two here or there... that hardly makes it a direct, one to one comparison with ANY of those things, as these are simply surface-level details, and not ingrained, deeply-rooted themes and concepts that drive the characters and meat of the story.

This isn't even me saying that DB needs a "whole plot reference" (or whatever) from these elements to make them a suitable connection: just that it needs basically ANYTHING more of a substantive narrative or thematic connection than just the pure "surface level cool" of them, which is all that DB ultimately has of these things.

The robots and cyborgs in Dragon Ball aren't used in any way that even VAGUELY calls to mind cyberpunk stories of Battle Angel's (or even The Terminator's) general ilk: or hell, of ANY type of cyberpunk story period. There's literally almost NOTHING that is particularly "cyberpunk" about the Jinzoningen/Cell arc, apart from a few visual elements and very vague/broad concepts: they're simply interesting and varied aesthetic choices that spices up what is still, fundamentally, a martial arts fantasy narrative.

Same goes for the space opera stuff in the Freeza arc, and the vaguely Persian fantasy visuals of the Boo arc, and stuff like Dracula Man's, Hatchan's, and the rest of Baba's warrior's whole "Universal Monster Movie" designs: all of these things are just pure surface visuals that are only used to vary up and flavor what are still basically just rudimentary standard, basic Wuxia plotlines, character archetypes, and concepts/themes.

The problem with this whole approach of "this thing has robots, that thing has robots, ergo they're the same thing and can be directly compared" is that its WAY too thuddingly over-literal and ultimately reductive. By this metric, you can basically make ANYTHING and EVERYTHING a direct-one-to-one comparison of one another simply because they share at least one VERY basic element that's used in TONS of other works across a dizzying array of genres.

For instance, the movie Se7en and Friday the 13th can then be considered "the same exact type of story" because they both center on a serial killer that gruesomely murders his victims: disregarding Se7en's detective/mystery and hardboiled film noir elements and its overall introspective and cerebral tone, which both HUGELY define it and are absolutely nowhere to be found in the pulpy, exploitative, crowd-pleasingly light Friday the 13th franchise.

Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey both have spaceships traveling through outer space, ergo they must be the same thing: despite Star Wars' glaringly overwhelming Fantasy, Samurai, and Western elements (blended together with about a million other things in a giant stew) and action/adventure nature, contrasted with 2001's intellectually ambitious and meditative ruminations on the history, evolution, and nature of mankind itself, and its VERY hard-sci fi and explicitly non-fantasy and non-action oriented nature.

The Terminator and Short Circuit are both centered on robots with advanced A.I. so they're the same type of story: despite The Terminator (the original anyway) being basically a grungy, nasty slasher film that happens to feature robots from the future as its killers, and Short Circuit being just a dippy family comedy where no one ever gets hurt or dies.

And so on and so forth.

The point is, stories and narratives are WAY more than just a few VERY broad shared visual elements and exceedingly broad components: context and core concepts/themes are what ultimately matters the most fundamentally.

Like Masenko earlier noted: something like Power Rangers ALSO has "martial arts, robots, superpowers, and mad scientists" in it (as do about a BILLION other things in a TON of other genre categories). That HARDLY makes Dragon Ball in ANY WAY some type of Power Rangers equivalent in the absolute slightest.

I'm not saying that they are overall the same type of story or even the same genre (although you can make an argument that the Android/Cell arc has a similar plot to the Terminator movies, like you mentioned). I'm just objecting to your claim that they have absolutely nothing in common and can't be compared in any way. When I mention things that they do have in common, or even things that were directly influenced by another work, you just dismiss them as inconsequential. Why can't #8 be compared to Frankenstein's monster? Aside from the visual resemblance, they are both creatures who were created by mad scientists, were treated abusively by their creators, and feared and misunderstood despite possessing a gentle nature, although they can be very fierce and dangerous when provoked. Granted, one of them had a much happier ending.

You can say that without saying that 'Dragonball and Frankenstein are the same kind of stories with the same main themes', which no one is saying.

[KBABZ]

How did I get quoted in that??