Close to Toriyama but not Toriyama

[GreatSaiyaJeff]

A common thing i hear with the prequal Star Wars trilogy, is that it had good concepts but if someone else directed or polished Lucas's script, they would have been better. I feel that is the opposite of Toriyama. While I do enjoy the anime and Manga of Super, I feel like it is missing something. That distinct Toriyama flavor when you pick up a volume of Dr Slump or the original 42 volume run of DB, it really stands out. The original anime captures that spirit because it would be a pretty faithfun adaptation. Now it seems like they are just interpretating what he may do. I feel some gags may have been better if Toriyama was more directly involved instead of handing over notes. Am I over thinking this?

[Vijay]

A common thing i hear with the prequal Star Wars trilogy, is that it had good concepts but if someone else directed or polished Lucas's script, they would have been better. I feel that is the opposite of Toriyama. While I do enjoy the anime and Manga of Super, I feel like it is missing something. That distinct Toriyama flavor when you pick up a volume of Dr Slump or the original 42 volume run of DB, it really stands out. The original anime captures that spirit because it would be a pretty faithfun adaptation. Now it seems like they are just interpretating what he may do. I feel some gags may have been better if Toriyama was more directly involved instead of handing over notes. Am I over thinking this?

It's simple my friend. Toriyama's heart & soul makes all the difference

Though anime DB & DBZ were merely adaptations of Toriyama's manga,those shows had attention, detail, sincere dedication behind every fights, character interactions, fights, humor even heart-warming moment's. Toriyama's sincerity & heart in his work is translated into anime & it shows...even after 30 years...ppl are still talking abt legacy Toriyama has built.

I don't wanna trash Supa. But all I know...its simple fan-fiction. Like GT. That could never reach heights of it's real mentor/guru. Peace

[Kataphrut]

A common thing i hear with the prequal Star Wars trilogy, is that it had good concepts but if someone else directed or polished Lucas's script, they would have been better. I feel that is the opposite of Toriyama. While I do enjoy the anime and Manga of Super, I feel like it is missing something. That distinct Toriyama flavor when you pick up a volume of Dr Slump or the original 42 volume run of DB, it really stands out. The original anime captures that spirit because it would be a pretty faithfun adaptation. Now it seems like they are just interpretating what he may do. I feel some gags may have been better if Toriyama was more directly involved instead of handing over notes. Am I over thinking this?

It's simple my friend. Toriyama's heart & soul makes all the difference

Though anime DB & DBZ were merely adaptations of Toriyama's manga,those shows had attention, detail, sincere dedication behind every fights, character interactions, fights, humor even heart-warming moment's. Toriyama's sincerity & heart in his work is translated into anime & it shows...even after 30 years...ppl are still talking abt legacy Toriyama has built.

I don't wanna trash Supa. But all I know...its simple fan-fiction. Like GT. That could never reach heights of it's real mentor/guru. Peace

You're talking about the anime that he famously criticised for making Goku too heroic, yeah?

I would liken the Super anime and manga as *an attempt* to be more faithful to the Toriyama spirit, but missing the subtleties. You can see in the difference between the three modern movies and the TV show that he still can't be beat in terms of dialogue and character writing.

[Jord]

The problem is Dragon Ball's story was done 20 years ago. Characters arcs had ended, the story was over and characters grew up. When you add new adventures to an existing story it often feels tacked on, which is exactly what Super is. Characters like Vegeta had to regress for Super in order to let them grow again.

Not to mention, I don't know if Toriyama getting involved is such a good thing since he's obviously in a different mindset. Adding new details to existing lore like the names of 17 and 18 and the existence of super saiyan cells didn't really help either.

[ABED]

The problem is Dragon Ball's story was done 20 years ago. Characters arcs had ended, the story was over and characters grew up. When you add new adventures to an existing story it often feels tacked on, which is exactly what Super is. Characters like Vegeta had to regress for Super in order to let them grow again.

Not to mention, I don't know if Toriyama getting involved is such a good thing since he's obviously in a different mindset. Adding new details to existing lore like the names of 17 and 18 and the existence of super saiyan cells didn't really help either.

That's a bingo. It's a big issue I've had with most of these series revivals, especially ones that had endings. By the end, the characters had reached the end of their arcs and in order to allow them to grow, the characters weren't allowed to change from the last time we saw them or they were regressed to allow for an arc.

[Vijay]

A common thing i hear with the prequal Star Wars trilogy, is that it had good concepts but if someone else directed or polished Lucas's script, they would have been better. I feel that is the opposite of Toriyama. While I do enjoy the anime and Manga of Super, I feel like it is missing something. That distinct Toriyama flavor when you pick up a volume of Dr Slump or the original 42 volume run of DB, it really stands out. The original anime captures that spirit because it would be a pretty faithfun adaptation. Now it seems like they are just interpretating what he may do. I feel some gags may have been better if Toriyama was more directly involved instead of handing over notes. Am I over thinking this?

It's simple my friend. Toriyama's heart & soul makes all the difference

Though anime DB & DBZ were merely adaptations of Toriyama's manga,those shows had attention, detail, sincere dedication behind every fights, character interactions, fights, humor even heart-warming moment's. Toriyama's sincerity & heart in his work is translated into anime & it shows...even after 30 years...ppl are still talking abt legacy Toriyama has built.

I don't wanna trash Supa. But all I know...its simple fan-fiction. Like GT. That could never reach heights of it's real mentor/guru. Peace

You're talking about the anime that he famously criticised for making Goku too heroic, yeah?

I would liken the Super anime and manga as *an attempt* to be more faithful to the Toriyama spirit, but missing the subtleties. You can see in the difference between the three modern movies and the TV show that he still can't be beat in terms of dialogue and character writing.

Did he even said that? Can ya provide links or evidence to support ur statement. Cuz imo, bein heroic is any day better than being dumb (I don't have to elaborate which series made Goku dumbass that risked lives of universal inhabitants)

[KBABZ]

Did he even said that? Can ya provide links or evidence to support ur statement. Cuz imo, bein heroic is any day better than being dumb (I don't have to elaborate which series made Goku dumbass that risked lives of universal inhabitants)

You mean the original manga, right? When Goku spared Piccolo Jr. even though he still had the intent of murdering everyone on the planet? Or when Goku let Vegeta go even though he swore to destroy Earth once he'd recovered? Or when Goku gave Frieza a shot at life despite having killed his best friend and nearly an entire planet's population earlier that day?

[Vijay]

Did he even said that? Can ya provide links or evidence to support ur statement. Cuz imo, bein heroic is any day better than being dumb (I don't have to elaborate which series made Goku dumbass that risked lives of universal inhabitants)

You mean the original manga, right? When Goku spared Piccolo Jr. even though he still had the intent of murdering everyone on the planet? Or when Goku let Vegeta go even though he swore to destroy Earth once he'd recovered? Or when Goku gave Frieza a shot at life despite having killed his best friend and nearly an entire planet's population earlier that day?

Actually I meant OG DB & DBZWhen Kid Goku single-handedly retaliated against Red Ribbon Army that terrorized entire DragonBall. Or Goku risking his life takin on Demon King Daimou,his offsprings & his reincarnation to save his friends, family,earth & it's people? Or turning the tide on Namek against Ginyu force, Frieza when imminent death & destruction was near? Or protecting his loved ones by sacrificing his life @ Cell Games? Or redefining heroism by remainin side-lined, mere spectator watchin next-generation warriors take-up his mantle before being called to help, was ressurected to finish the job once & for all?

[Soppa Saia People]

Did he even said that? Can ya provide links or evidence to support ur statement. Cuz imo, bein heroic is any day better than being dumb (I don't have to elaborate which series made Goku dumbass that risked lives of universal inhabitants)

their probably referring to this :

There’s how, basically, Son Goku from Dragon Ball doesn’t fight for the sake of others, but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once Dragon Ball got animated, at any rate, I’ve always been dissatisfied with the “righteous hero”-type portrayal they gave him.

from here : https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... interview/

i don't really get his point, i don't think the anime made goku that much more heroic then the manga did, even with the obvious stuff like the x20 kaio-ken scene, and some of the more infamous moments in the movies.

[KBABZ]

Actually I meant OG DB & DBZWhen Kid Goku single-handedly retaliated against Red Ribbon Army that terrorized entire DragonBall. Or Goku risking his life takin on Demon King Daimou,his offsprings & his reincarnation to save his friends, family,earth & it's people? Or turning the tide on Namek against Ginyu force, Frieza when imminent death & destruction was near? Or protecting his loved ones by sacrificing his life @ Cell Games? Or redefining heroism by remainin side-lined, mere spectator watchin next-generation warriors take-up his mantle before being called to help, was ressurected to finish the job once & for all?

I was using the manga as my point, that many of Goku's more illogical behaviours come directly from the original source material and are not specific to Super.

their probably referring to this :

There’s how, basically, Son Goku from Dragon Ball doesn’t fight for the sake of others, but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once Dragon Ball got animated, at any rate, I’ve always been dissatisfied with the “righteous hero”-type portrayal they gave him.

from here : https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... interview/

personally i don't really get his point, i don't think the anime made goku more heroic more so then the manga ever did, outside of stuff like the x20 kaio-ken scene, and some of the more infamous moments in the movies.

Personally I do feel that Goku is more heroic in the anime to a certain degree, especially when it pertains to new contributions exclusive to the anime. Even in the ViZ translation, I feel that Goku is overall more "naively rogue-ish" (if that makes sense) in the manga compared to the anime's take on it.

I think two good examples would be the climaxes to the Red Ribbon and Daimao arcs leading up to the final battle. With Red Ribbon we get a montage that really emphasizes the evilness of the RRA and how Goku is the defender of all that is good, and a similar comparison is made when Goku is traveling to Daimao in Central City. Ultimately Goku's motives have almost always been personal to him: both the Red Ribbon and Daimao fights were enacted as acts of vengeance, and saving the world has always come second to that for Goku (third if you include "because it'd be a great fight"). That's not to say that doing the right thing isn't on the list at all, but that Goku's personal motivations take priority.

The ending of the Broly film I think is a good example of this. Priority 1 for Goku is to help Broly recover and train with him so that he has another excitingly powerful opponent to battle in the future. But Priority 2 is being nice: Goku was prescient enough to realize that Broly was not malicious at heart, and it would be a shame and almost cruel to let him perish on Vampa, so he makes sure that he's able to not just survive, but do so comfortably. He has many good reasons to not do that, but he does because he's a good guy.

To channel a bit of Kunzait, Goku's odd, contradictory behaviour is sort of ingrained in Dragon Ball due to its wuxia genre roots: it's not a genre known for heroes seeking out heroic acts to accomplish, but rather for talented individuals given personal reasons to get involved. They don't look for trouble, trouble finds them (or at the very least they bump into it on the road to somewhere else). The confusion with the audience regarding Goku often comes about because of a failure to understand that he isn't just odd, he's capital-D Different with his behaviour and way of thinking, and this has time and again come to the surprise, amusement, confusion and oftentimes pure outrage of his peers.

...anyways, whether or not Goku's slight heroic leanings in the anime is actually a bad thing is up to our own individual opinions of course (I personally think it makes Goku that touch more relatable). But regardless of that, I can understand how as the creator Toriyama would feel that the team at Toei kinda missed the point and some of the subtleties of Goku's character.

[ABED]

I don't know if it's necessarily more relatable, but it's certainly different from the children's cartoons we grew up with. I wouldn't call Goku dumb either. Even if DB was adapted well, I can see audiences easily misinterpreting it as a superhero story.

[KBABZ]

I don't know if it's necessarily more relatable, but it's certainly different from the children's cartoons we grew up with. I wouldn't call Goku dumb either. Even if DB was adapted well, I can see audiences easily misinterpreting it as a superhero story.

Goku definitely isn't dumb! He just is in specific areas: he's got very high wits about him for fighting, and understanding the motivations of others, but socially and educationally he's outclassed even by bone-headed desert bandits. (as someone with Autism, I'm very familiar with this sort of confusion)

[ABED]

I don't know if it's necessarily more relatable, but it's certainly different from the children's cartoons we grew up with. I wouldn't call Goku dumb either. Even if DB was adapted well, I can see audiences easily misinterpreting it as a superhero story.

Goku definitely isn't dumb! He just is in specific areas: he's got very high wits about him for fighting, and understanding the motivations of others, but socially and educationally he's outclassed even by bone-headed desert bandits. (as someone with Autism, I'm very familiar with this sort of confusion)

I should clear my "dumb" comment up. I was referring to when people call him dumb for not being a superhero and letting bad things happen. For instance, he gets called dumb for letting Dr. Gero complete the cyborgs instead of stopping them even though he had advanced warning. It's not dumb because he acknowledges all of that. His goal wasn't to stop them, it's to fight them. I don't think that's a dumb goal. It's reckless and thoughtless and amoral at best, but it's not dumb.

[KBABZ]

I don't know if it's necessarily more relatable, but it's certainly different from the children's cartoons we grew up with. I wouldn't call Goku dumb either. Even if DB was adapted well, I can see audiences easily misinterpreting it as a superhero story.

Goku definitely isn't dumb! He just is in specific areas: he's got very high wits about him for fighting, and understanding the motivations of others, but socially and educationally he's outclassed even by bone-headed desert bandits. (as someone with Autism, I'm very familiar with this sort of confusion)

I should clear my "dumb" comment up. I was referring to when people call him dumb for not being a superhero and letting bad things happen. For instance, he gets called dumb for letting Dr. Gero complete the cyborgs instead of stopping them even though he had advanced warning. It's not dumb because he acknowledges all of that. His goal wasn't to stop them, it's to fight them. I don't think that's a dumb goal. It's reckless and thoughtless and amoral at best, but it's not dumb.

Ah, I see! I think one could argue that it's "dumb" in the sense that he should realize that it outright puts his loved ones at risk, but as explained a moment ago, those are kinda secondary for Goku.

[Vijay]

Did he even said that? Can ya provide links or evidence to support ur statement. Cuz imo, bein heroic is any day better than being dumb (I don't have to elaborate which series made Goku dumbass that risked lives of universal inhabitants)

their probably referring to this :

There’s how, basically, Son Goku from Dragon Ball doesn’t fight for the sake of others, but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once Dragon Ball got animated, at any rate, I’ve always been dissatisfied with the “righteous hero”-type portrayal they gave him.

from here : https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... interview/

i don't really get his point, i don't think the anime made goku that much more heroic then the manga did, even with the obvious stuff like the x20 kaio-ken scene, and some of the more infamous moments in the movies.

Wow. Tq for the reply friend. I guess dude confused "righteous" with "heroic"

I understood what Toriyama exactly meant. I don't know how many of you guys picked this...but in DBZ films....Goku's climatix punch dialogue in Japanese version always have tendency to be "Kisama dake wa....moo..urusenai"....which translates roughly to "I won't forgive you". Dude said it in M5 against Cooler, said it in M8, said it in M13 and pretty sure that's what musta irked Toriyama

I understand where Toriyama is coming. Dude crafted a boy...a simple, featherweight character living somewhere at Mt. Paozu into fighting demons, aliens, cyborgs, outer-space beings...to say heroic would be an understatement...but in the process, TOEI sabotaged his Goku & turned him into Jesus/ God-esque iconic figure saying those lines & with GT's ending, Super's Goddo, Bluper, MUI....oh my Gosh....TOEI literally turned my boi into God Seed was planted back then in 90's...and it's showing it's results now

[Yuli Ban]

A common thing i hear with the prequal Star Wars trilogy, is that it had good concepts but if someone else directed or polished Lucas's script, they would have been better. I feel that is the opposite of Toriyama.

I have to respectfully disagree. Toriyama actually suffers from the same problem as George Lucas, but if you're looking at this through the lens of Super rather than OG DB, it might seem to be the opposite on the surface.

George Lucas did submit some ideas to Disney to give them a general idea of what to do, and he does give basic notes on current ideas they're working on, but it's mostly Disney writers at the helm. It's like an even more hands-off version of what Toriyama does, but it comes at the cost of soul. Disney's writers are normally very good at what they do, especially for new IPs, but for something as established as Star Wars, they're definitely movies that feel like they're "designed by board-room committee" more than merchandise-focused passion projects. George Lucas had soul and very creative ideas. His issue was that his ideas were pretty out there and not very suitable for a major media product like Star Wars. He has an overwrought wannabe-highbrow indie filmmaker mindset and needs editors to actually give his ideas better form to make them appealing. This was the case between 1977 and 1983. By 1999, however, he was George Fucking Lucas, and no one was going to say "No" to the guy who "singlehandedly" crafted a literal space-age modern mythos. As a result, editors were only going to put his ideas in order rather than refine them, reshape them, or otherwise mess with George Goddamn Lucas's creative baby. And it shows. He wasn't told that his idea of making a movie without a clearly identifiable protagonist wasn't a good idea for Star Wars. He wasn't told that focusing on a trade dispute and galactic politics would've been seen as boring. He wasn't told that Jar Jar Binks was annoying (and if Jar Jar Binks was actually intended to be a Sith lord, he wasn't told that the reason why Yoda worked was because he was only an annoying imp for a few minutes and was revealed to be a wise Jedi master in the same movie— no one likes "imp Yoda" and plenty of people don't even remember that was a thing). If there was more brainstorming and back-and-forthing, the prequel trilogy would've been much more refined. He wouldn't gone so far in a few places.
If Lucas wasn't restrained and redirected in 1977, "The Star Wars" would have been a lot closer to a sci-fi B-movie with a slightly higher budget and a more mythological-style to it, and the whole thing would've likely been no more than a middlingly successful movie renowned only for its excess of creative worldbuilding and references to classical myths.

And as we know, George Lucas was at his least involved with Empire Strikes Back. He was basically giving ideas, some plot concepts, and characters to the scriptwriters, who were the ones who made a movie consistently ranked as one of the greatest of all time right up there with the Godfather, Gone With The Wind, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, and so on.

This is the same problem Toriyama has, except he's coming at this from the root of an edgy, counter-cultural gag manga creator. Think of the "golden age" of Dragon Ball, commonly considered to start with the King Piccolo arc and end with the Cell arc, with a peak between the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai and the Freeza arc. Then comes the Buu arc, which is hit or miss with loads of people. As it was the arc I watched when I became a major Z fan, I've never understood the dislike for it until I stepped back and saw the entire franchise and how it was handled at any one point in time.

We'd never have gotten that without Toriyama's editors. If it were up to Toriyama, we'd have gotten the zaniness of early DB and the Buu arc the whole way through. Rather than posing a real threat, the Saiyans might have instead been sexual predator comic relief characters who were unceremoniously killed off by Gohan by accident, with Freeza being much more like a sleazy used cars' salesman (perhaps even literally).
Seriously, just read his own words in the interviews in the Kanzenshuu archives. This guy was ultra-laid back about everything and saw Dragon Ball's success as a very lucrative anomaly more than anything.
Toriyama himself didn't even get into drawing comics out of a creative desire to do it. He was in it for the money from day one, and he's always been open and honest about this. He doodled quite a lot as a kid and teen, saw there was a contest in Shonen Jump (at least I think it was Jump?), decided to submit something, one thing led to another over the years, and voila: Dragon Ball. He'd often create chapters at the last minute because he was too busy with making model cars or playing video games, and he'd deliberately do or not do certain things just to piss off fans. If not for his editors, this wacky man would probably have ended Dragon Ball in the middle of a big climactic fight just for a laugh.
His editors whipped him into shape, directing the story to go in the directions fans loved the most. And when Toriyama became successful enough that people trusted him to come up with good storylines on his own (and also because fans were getting tired of their comedy-wuxia comic being so direly serious), Toriyama was given some more free reign. And we got the Buu arc. Fans have a love-hate relationship with the Buu arc, as aforementioned. I personally like it quite a bit, but again, plenty of people dislike it viscerally and would be fine with the series ending with Gohan defeating Cell with the bit of slice of life in the Great Saiyaman arc being good as a spin-off.
Also, we got the 2008 Jump special, which fans think was fine, but kind of lackluster.
Also, we got Battle of Gods, which is still controversial among fans despite being a decent Z movie.
Also, we got Resurrection F, which fans seem to largely hate.
Also, we got Dragon Ball Minus, which fans seem to really hate.

All those are Toriyama directed or written, and it seems to be a near endless series of misses or disappointments, yet fans still hold his own material well above that of Toei's works.

When Toei's own writers do it right like with the History of Trunks and Bardock specials, they're seen as being as good as or even better than Toriyama's own work to the point people believe these specials to be canon to the series (the Bardock special, which is entirely non-Toriyama, is the biggest reason why fans hate Dragon Ball Minus, which was drawn and penned directly by Toriyama— they think Minus ruined Bardock). Kind of like things like Knights of the Old Republic being "on par with the OG Trilogy". But it's mostly seen as inferior for any variety of reasons. Often because they rehash plots that have already happened. Often because they're full of plot holes or inconsistencies. In the case of the first Broly movie, it was because they were trying to be subtle and not explain certain things, but failed in this and wound up misdirecting people about Broly for decades. In the case of GT, they were trying to recapture DB without understanding why DB felt the way it did (I said it in another thread that most of DB's comedy stemmed from Goku being a child-sized monkey-tailed Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan in a world of humans and furry animal martial artists going on a parody of a typical martial artist's path as seen in loads of Hong Kong movies; GT thought that having wacky characters and a kid Goku and a lighthearted tone was good enough, and when that failed, they immediately tried doing the Z thing, which also failed).


In both cases, you still had the creators' creativity on display, and they were the ones who ultimately had the final say in these things, but you also had editors keeping them focused and giving their ideas some amount of structure or coherency. Without those editors, their best work would've been severely crippled. And when these creators became larger than life, their editors stepped back— and fans often say that the material they created afterwards was far less compelling than what came before.

[WittyUsername]

I don’t think I buy into the idea that Super would be better if it had been directly written by Toriyama. Toriyama gave us Dragon Ball Minus, which is a pretty bad retcon of Goku’s backstory that’s only real accomplishment is telling us who Goku’s mother is, and even then, she has virtually no personality beyond being a housewife who loves her kids.

Sure, Toriyama’s work does have a distinct vibe to it that’s difficult to truly replicate, but the same can be said for George Lucas’ work.

[ABED]

1) Most people work better when they run their ideas through people they trust to tell them the truth.
2) The Prequels feel like they shot from a script that only wen through 1 or 2 drafts.
3) Much like how JJ is good at making films that seem like Star Wars but aren't actually Star Wars, Toei's DB seem like DB but miss what makes DB what it is.
4) It doesn't matter how much creative freedom the people involved are given or how many really talented people they get or hell even if they Toriyama back fulltime. The final ingredient in anything successful is lightning in a bottle, which only lasts for a while.

no one likes "imp Yoda" and plenty of people don't even remember that was a thing.

Huh? Where did you get THAT idea?

[emperior]

The problem is Dragon Ball's story was done 20 years ago. Characters arcs had ended, the story was over and characters grew up. When you add new adventures to an existing story it often feels tacked on, which is exactly what Super is. Characters like Vegeta had to regress for Super in order to let them grow again.

Not to mention, I don't know if Toriyama getting involved is such a good thing since he's obviously in a different mindset. Adding new details to existing lore like the names of 17 and 18 and the existence of super saiyan cells didn't really help either.

I think this “character arcs were already over” is overblown by the fandom. Only Vegeta kind of regressed, or kinda does at times when certain writers/Toyotaro write him.
Other than that they tried to have Krillin go back to being a martial artist, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and Roshi also had the chance to get back to fighting with the reasoning being he got inspired by his pupils. Gohan was allowed to fix his arrogance flaw and grow as a martial artist.
The others like Tenshinan, Piccolo, Yamcha are largely unchanged from Buu arc.
Even then, most of these characters already completed their arcs before the manga was over, with Tenshinan’s arc being wrapped up in the 23rd Tenkaichi, for example, and Krillin in the Cell Games aftermath.
Yet that didn’t stop Toriyama from using those characters again even though their personal story was over.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

I think this “character arcs were already over” is overblown by the fandom. Only Vegeta kind of regressed, or kinda does at times when certain writers/Toyotaro write him.
Other than that they tried to have Krillin go back to being a martial artist, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and Roshi also had the chance to get back to fighting with the reasoning being he got inspired by his pupils. Gohan was allowed to fix his arrogance flaw and grow as a martial artist.
The others like Tenshinan, Piccolo, Yamcha are largely unchanged from Buu arc.
Even then, most of these characters already completed their arcs before the manga was over, with Tenshinan’s arc being wrapped up in the 23rd Tenkaichi, for example, and Krillin in the Cell Games aftermath.
Yet that didn’t stop Toriyama from using those characters again even though their personal story was over.

And that lead to Toriyama not doing anything with said characters other than being punching bags, having them doing stuff (like fighting) is not the same thing as characters being used for meaningful purpose like developing other characters or themes within the story, i.e: how Tenshihan and Yamcha being used in the Cell/Buu arc helped develop other characters or themes of said arcs?

Plus, "Toriyama did it before" is not a strong jusfication (even more so when he did jack shit with them) as to why characters with completed arcs should be brough back into the story.