History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.

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NewKakarot
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by NewKakarot » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:22 am

Kinda tempted to watch the whole video just to see what other ridiculous comparisons I'll be able to find

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by jjgp1112 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:32 am

NewKakarot wrote:Kinda tempted to watch the whole video just to see what other ridiculous comparisons I'll be able to find
I skimmed through it and it gets pretty absurd basically after the second or third slide.

While we're at it...I've always found Goodfellas and Dragon Ball to be very similar! After all, you have the temperamental short guys in Vegeta and Tommy, Goku/Henry finds Vegeta/Tommy to be a pretty funny guy, and both Goku and Henry spent a lot of time staring at hovering objects tracking them down in the sky!
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by NewKakarot » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:41 am

jjgp1112 wrote:While we're at it...I've always found Goodfellas and Dragon Ball to be very similar! After all, you have the temperamental short guys in Vegeta and Tommy, Goku/Henry finds Vegeta/Tommy to be a pretty funny guy, and both Goku and Henry spent a lot of time staring at hovering objects tracking them down in the sky!
I've never watched Goodfellas, but if it's anything like Dragon Ball, I guess I have to! :lol:

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Champa The Destroyer » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:49 am

MasenkoHA wrote:
jjgp1112 wrote:
Young-Jah wrote: They do.

https://youtu.be/rcxjpnvMC2Y

Watch this video.
Rouge is smart, Bulma is smart.
Soo...they're connected in a way that you can superficially connect just about any random show to each other? :eh:

In this essay I will explain how Bulma and Batman are basically the same character
I'm surprise nobody has mentioned how Goku and Luke Skywalker are practically interchangeable:

They're both good at flying.
They're brave.
Their dads did some evil stuff.
Their dads' bosses destroyed planets.
They stopped galactic tyrants.
They both only fly in the fastest spaceships.
I'm like 65% sure that Goku's hypothetical nephew would become a mass murderer if he had one.
Luke kicks a rock before staring at the binary sunset, while Goku is hurt by a rock in a filler episode.

Need I say more?

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Kunzait_83 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 1:03 am

jjgp1112 wrote:While we're at it...I've always found Goodfellas and Dragon Ball to be very similar! After all, you have the temperamental short guys in Vegeta and Tommy, Goku/Henry finds Vegeta/Tommy to be a pretty funny guy, and both Goku and Henry spent a lot of time staring at hovering objects tracking them down in the sky!
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
jjgp1112 wrote:and both Goku and Henry spent a lot of time staring at hovering objects tracking them down in the sky!
This bit right here downright destroyed me and made this whole thread's existence more than worth it. Bravo. :clap: :clap: :clap:
http://80s90sdragonballart.tumblr.com/

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Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by The Patrolman » Wed Feb 27, 2019 1:16 am

Young-Jah wrote:
NewKakarot wrote:
Young-Jah wrote: Seriously, what's wrong with it.
They don't have any real history together. Sure, Sonic games have occasionally been inspired by Dragon Ball, but it ends there. Everything else you mentioned is their based on coincidence or tropes. And some parallels you mentioned make little to no sense. Rouge the Bat to Bulma? What?

There's just no relationship
They do.

https://youtu.be/rcxjpnvMC2Y

Watch this video.
Rouge is smart, Bulma is smart.
Rouge is smart on a thief level. Bulma is smart on a tech level. The one Sonic character that could be compared to her is Tails for a lot of reasons
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by RandomGuy96 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 3:05 am

The DB fandom's inexplicable love for Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most confusing pop culture phenomenons in the world to me, right up there with Sonic the Hedgehog being an extant franchise in the first place.
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RandomGuy96 wrote:
dbgtFO wrote: Please elaborate as I do not know what you mean by "pushing Vegeta's destruction"
He's probably referring to the Bardock special. Zarbon was the one who first recommended destroying Planet Vegeta because the saiyans were rapidly growing in strength.
It was actually Beerus disguised as Zarbon #StayWoke
Herms wrote:The fact that the ridiculous power inflation is presented so earnestly makes me just roll my eyes and snicker. Like with Freeza, where he starts off over 10 times stronger than all his henchmen except Ginyu (because...well, just because), then we find out he can transform and get even more powerful, and then he reveals he can transform two more times, before finally coming out with the fact that he hasn't even been using anywhere near 50% of his power. Oh, and he can survive in the vacuum of space. All this stuff is just presented as the way Freeza is, without even an attempt at rationalizing it, yet the tone dictates we're supposed to take all this silly grasping at straws as thrilling danger. So I guess I don't really take the power inflation in the Boo arc seriously, but I don't take the power inflation in earlier arcs seriously either, so there's no net loss of seriousness. I think a silly story presented as serious is harder to accept than a silly story presented as silly.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Shaddy » Wed Feb 27, 2019 3:45 am

Sonic exists in a weird limbo, constantly caught between occasionally making decisions decent enough to keep itself afloat, and absolutely rock-stupid ones, never staying consistent enough with either to either die off or get back in the public eye. This is also why it's fanbase is a complete fucking draaaaaaaag to talk to these days.

A lot of DB's Sonic fans started with Sonic and got into DB because of the loose connections (and guff like Power of Nazo which goes way beyond merely referencing DB) and wondered about finding more connections than there actually are.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by The Patrolman » Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:04 am

RandomGuy96 wrote:The DB fandom's inexplicable love for Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most confusing pop culture phenomenons in the world to me, right up there with Sonic the Hedgehog being an extant franchise in the first place.
I wouldn't say love its mostly them making fun of Sonic and calling it a straight up ripoff
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Metalwario64 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:09 am

I'm a fan of Sonic, but I don't want to say I'm a "Sonic fan" due to the implications that brings with it. I mostly like the Genesis era titles, and have nostalgia for the Adventure games on the Dreamcast, and I found Generations to be good enough, but a vast majority of the modern stuff is garbage.

I'm not one of its sheltered fans who thinks the world revolves around it. I still greatly enjoy Sonic 3 (especially the Complete hack), and Mania was a wonderful throwback that was also greatly designed in its own right.
Shaddy wrote:Sonic exists in a weird limbo, constantly caught between occasionally making decisions decent enough to keep itself afloat, and absolutely rock-stupid ones, never staying consistent enough with either to either die off or get back in the public eye. This is also why it's fanbase is a complete fucking draaaaaaaag to talk to these days.

A lot of DB's Sonic fans started with Sonic and got into DB because of the loose connections (and guff like Power of Nazo which goes way beyond merely referencing DB) and wondered about finding more connections than there actually are.
At the very least we got Sonic Mania, which is a wonderful tribute to the classics.

Then Forces followed immediately after.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:26 am

For the life of me, I'll NEVER understand why the Sonic fandom is what it is. Why? it's a video game franchise, with only the most basic of storylines. While I don't condone the actions of toxic fans, I get why for instance Star Wars fans are so protective about it. Stories are inherently personal. Some take it too far, but I can understand the logic. I'm at a loss for what is about Sonic that engenders this kind of reaction.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Champa The Destroyer » Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:51 am

ABED wrote:For the life of me, I'll NEVER understand why the Sonic fandom is what it is. Why? it's a video game franchise, with only the most basic of storylines. While I don't condone the actions of toxic fans, I get why for instance Star Wars fans are so protective about it. Stories are inherently personal. Some take it too far, but I can understand the logic. I'm at a loss for what is about Sonic that engenders this kind of reaction.
Honestly, I've never really understood the appeal of Sonic besides the gameplay of some of the games, from what I've seen, especially regarding storyline. And I may be a die-hard Star Wars fan who often takes it way too seriously, but it has larger than life characters in a grand, yet easy to understand story, which is obviously a reason why people are so drawn into the franchise.

....And yet I'll still never understand how a constant argument has been waged over every new Star Wars film since 1983/1999. :lol:

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by GTx10 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 8:44 am

Wait why is it hard to like Sonic games or it's story? It's a simple story of a animal saving his animal friends from Dr. Wily. (Basically) Classic Mega man was no different but that somehow gets respect? I grew up in the era of the Sonic meets Dragon Ball and it was fun fan fiction, could the super fast Sonic beat the powerful Goku or could Tails and Gohan get into wacky hijinks.
The whole Super Sonic and Super Saiyan angle was the driving force of the crossover and frankly it was fun. So much so in fact that we got Death Battle's Vegeta VS Shadow the Hedgehog. Just have fun with it dudes.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Bebi Hatchiyack » Wed Feb 27, 2019 8:48 am

You can just say the similarities about Sonic & Dragon Ball there is no need of a Z.

Dr Gero and Robotnik are kind of similar their creation Cell and Metal Sonic search both perfection Shadow is the Vegeta of Sonic / Goku, Tails is kind of a mix between Gohan and Kuririn, Silver clearly is the Mirai Trunks of the Sonic Franchise, Chaos is the Majin Buu of this franchise, Knuckles is similar to Piccolo in a way.

Rouge is a Bulma x Android 18 while Amy is a Bulma x Chichi. You have the seven chaos emerald and the seven dragon balls. Interestingly Dragon Ball borrowed from Sonic with Dragon Ball Super, you can argue that the Migatte no Gokui is the Hyper Sonic form Toppo is kind of similar in look of Dr Eggman the Trio de Dangers are obviously borriwing the color scheme of the Sonic The Hedgehog OG Trio (Sonic, Tails & Knuckles)

Goku Black can be kind of a Mephiles, which beg me a question about Blaze that you find in Sonic 06 does she is a Caulifla x Android 18 ? With the Sol Emerald being the equivalent of the Namekian Dragon Ball, also the Super Chaos Emerald are the equivalent of the Super Dragon Balls.

And I think it's about it but clearly IMO Sonic and Dragon Ball are two franchise connected to each other by borrowed elements inspiring each other and as a fan of both Franchise I am happy of this result.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:34 am

These comparisons are absolutely ridiculous and don't make much sense, really.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:42 am

Bebi Hatchiyack wrote:.

Dr Gero and Robotnik are kind of similar their creation Cell and Metal Sonic search both perfection
Evil scientist character totally unique to Dragon Ball
and Sonic


Shadow is the Vegeta of Sonic / Goku,
In that they’re both an incredibly basic archetype especially in Japanese media aimed at young boys and not much else?
Tails is kind of a mix between Gohan and Kuririn
Elaborate without using per minimum character archetypes found throughout fiction.

Rouge is a Bulma x Android 18 while Amy is a Bulma x Chichi.
They do all share a gender.


.
And I think it's about it but clearly IMO Sonic and Dragon Ball are two franchise connected to each other by borrowed elements inspiring each other and as a fan of both Franchise I am happy of this result.
Any two works can be similar even if you reach hard enough.


Allow me to explain how Dragon Ball is similar to the Stephen King work The Shining. Particularly the Stanley Kubrick adaptation.

Goku has a wife and son. Jack Torrance has a wife and son. Gohan at the beginning of the Saiyan arc and Danny are close to the same age 4/5. Both have hidden powers

Dick Holloran bonds with Danny and tells him about his gift. Piccolo trains Gohan to use his gift and bonds with Gohan.

In the Kubrick film Jack Torrance breaks through a door with an axe. In Dragon Ball episode 5 Goku breaks through a door with his fist and takes an axe to the head

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:07 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:In the Kubrick film Jack Torrance breaks through a door with an axe. In Dragon Ball episode 5 Goku breaks through a door with his fist and takes an axe to the head
Goku almost dies in the snow, Jack DOES die in the snow. The similarities are uncanny.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:20 pm

You can point out similarities but they don't necessarily mean influences.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:24 pm

ABED wrote:
MasenkoHA wrote:In the Kubrick film Jack Torrance breaks through a door with an axe. In Dragon Ball episode 5 Goku breaks through a door with his fist and takes an axe to the head
Goku almost dies in the snow, Jack DOES die in the snow. The similarities are uncanny.
Damn how did I miss that?

To think I call myself a fan of both Dragon Ball and Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Zephyr » Wed Feb 27, 2019 1:59 pm

Mark Menza, the man responsible for Dragon Ball GT's beloved American English dub replacement musical score, is the cousin of the father of Nick Menza. Nick Menza is notable as being the drummer of American Thrash Metal band Megadeth, from the years 1989 to 1998. His first recorded album with the band, 1990's Rust in Peace, featured Hangar 18 as its second track, a fan favorite song that describes a government conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens in Area 51. Son Goku, Dragon Ball's protagonist is also an alien. But the connections don't stop there!

Nick's first songwriting credits with the band come into the fold with 1992's Countdown to Extinction. One year later, Dragon Ball Z Side Story: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans was released. Its plot is a riveting tale, wherein the Tsufruian scientist, Dr. Lychee, wants to eradicate the Saiyans, out of revenge for what their people did to his. Extinction. Eradication. It's like pottery: it rhymes! Now, this plot point would later be repurposed in Dragon Ball's own 1996 television anime sequel, Dragon Ball GT, where Baby, an artificial lifeform created by the Tsufruians, has the same bitter vengeance that Lychee did before him. And who composed the iconic soundtrack to Dragon Ball GT's American musical score? Mark Menza, of course!
RandomGuy96 wrote:The DB fandom's inexplicable love for Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most confusing pop culture phenomenons in the world to me, right up there with Sonic the Hedgehog being an extant franchise in the first place.
ABED wrote:For the life of me, I'll NEVER understand why the Sonic fandom is what it is. Why? it's a video game franchise, with only the most basic of storylines. While I don't condone the actions of toxic fans, I get why for instance Star Wars fans are so protective about it. Stories are inherently personal. Some take it too far, but I can understand the logic. I'm at a loss for what is about Sonic that engenders this kind of reaction.
Sonic has had cartoons and comic books since the early 90's. Starting with Sonic Adventure in 1998, the games started to put more emphasis on the story, with full cutscenes, voice acting, etc. The characters are largely all one dimensional, and the stories are lowest common denominator "Saturday Morning Cartoon"/"Shonen manga/anime" type junkfood, but a lot of people (particularly children) have next to no standards for this kind of stuff. Furry fandom, as well as people on the autism spectrum (neither of which are being invoked here disparagingly), also play an important role. As does general nostalgia, from those not already fitting any of the aforementioned descriptions.

Moreover, brand loyalty is a thing, and people will continue to purchase the games on the "merit" of everything besides the gameplay (which itself continues to drift farther and farther away from the core tenants that made the original games novel and innovative platformers in the first place), essentially rewarding the blind and thoughtless experimentation and backwards priorities held by the studios working on the IP (and incentivizing more of it), simply because, well, "it's the next entry!" The irony is that, despite the constant blind experimentation, Sonic Team has also been making explicit efforts to "return to the series' roots", regularly, since at least as far back as 2003, making the last decade and a half feel like a hilarious "worst of both worlds" scenario. Sonic Mania, the first actual successful attempt at returning to said roots (helmed largely by fans who'd been collectively reverse engineering the original games since as far back as Sonic Adventure's release in the late 90's), only just came out in 2017.

It's particularly amusing with the new live action Hollywood Sonic film that is coming out later this year. It's shaping up to be trash (shocker), and the Sonic fandom has been having a collective meltdown over it, worrying that this will be the thing that destroys the brand. Not only is that practically demonstrably impossible at this point, but it would be a well deserved comeuppance for those who have been unconditionally supporting a fucking corporate brand, even at its lowest. The chickens have come home to roost. The bed has been made, and it's time to sleep in it. Not that it'll actually happen; the film will come out, be panned, and the brand will resume its regularly scheduled program of "industry punching bag". There's no "reputation" left to tarnish. Mania, "the first good one since forever", is constantly described in every review and discussion as "...a thing made by the fans", so any and all goodwill it fosters is directed at the reputation of the specific team behind it, rather than the IP proper.

As far as being "protective", a lot of that comes from the fracturing that embodies the fandom. Due to Sonic Team's constant experimentation, they've made a bunch of different styles of games, and each one was somebody's first. A lot of peoples' first. So, people largely bicker about which approach is the best. In the gameplay department, the original games were pinball platformers that had some nice spectacle held together by a lot of substance; the 00's approach was largely a failure to approximate said platforming substance into the third dimension and punching up the spectacle as a crutch; the 10's approach has largely been a potentially solid racing game being held back by frequent, intrusive, bland and sloppy platforming. In the story department, the 90's had the approach of "hey, it's a video game, this shit belongs in the background and as a footnote"; the 00's largely had a lot of faux "deep and dark" pretensions; the 10's have largely actively made fun of the 00's approach (much to the chagrin of fans of said approach). Exceptions exist for all of these, but they're are the broad strokes. Disagreement about this stuff can get really hostile sometimes.

As far as being "protective" of the brand in general? I honestly don't see too much of that, outside of fans who take issue with the official Sonic social media accounts actively making fun of the brand's countless blunders. Between the piss takes, and the outrage over it, I'm not sure which makes me laugh more.

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