Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

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Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:35 am

That other thread...sure was something. LOL. But anyone, VegettoEX's final post in that thread made me realize that this IS a topic worth discussing in Good Faith. So! Do you believe that Dragon Ball got lucky to succeed the way it did? If so why?
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Saikyo no Senshi » Sat Oct 12, 2019 4:20 am

A number of JP fans have said this about the TV anime and I think agree with the point which is one of the primary reasons to DB and many other shows of that time's success. The novelty factor was the excitement of watching it in real time and it was also the time before streaming age and prevalence of internet, so TV was immensely popular and DB aired in Golden Time to boot. Obviously, its not a universal opinion among JP fans, but the story/characters are basic stuff and if one sat down to analyze it, many flaws can be found. But, that didn't matter. The exciting feelings of watching it in prime time was more important than everything else and I respect that. I believe that a number of fans in America have the same feeling towards shows like DB and other titles like Bebop, YYH etc. that aired on Toonami which are still held in very high regard.

So, yes it did get lucky in that regard. Had it aired today, it would have for sure gotten super popular cause almost every WSJ title does, but it would have received much more criticism and with streaming and the internet, popularity is hard to stay for a long period of time. Things get popular and then they are forgotten or see a decline cause the discourse just moves that fast nowadays and also there's more variety in people's entertainment nowadays compared to the past.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:31 am

I'm just gonna quote what I said in the previous thread:
Dragon Ball had Saint Seiya, Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, and Slam Dunk to compete with yet ultimately came up on top.

I couldn't call that luck at all. There is just something fundamentally special about Dragon Ball which makes it the undisputed Father of Modern Shonen.

One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fairy Tail, etc. are its children.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by MasenkoHA » Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:39 am

Any success story requires some degree of luck.

But to suggest Dragon Ball got lucky because it just happened to come out at the right time when we’ve known it had succeeded with different audiences in different decades?

Or that the new popular shonen anime is so much better when we’re talking garbage like My Hero Academia and Fairy Tail? And suggesting Dragon Ball somehow couldn’t compete with that crap?

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by ABED » Sat Oct 12, 2019 8:22 am

Luck are factors outside of someone's control, and while they are always present, there were plenty of factors in Toriyama's control - his talent as a graphic artist, his hard work, his reputation following the success of his previous series, his ability to blend different genres and elements. Luck didn't just come his way. Fortune favors the bold.
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sat Oct 12, 2019 8:34 am

It's like saying is Dragon Ball a kids series. In some respects yes, but it is one of those rare stories that how it was crafted elevates it beyond that.

It has extremely likeable characters that resonate with people of all ages, world building that captivates the imagination, and at the same time Toriyama's weird humour and art style gives Dragon Ball its own charm that is truly distinctive from other shounen action series. There's no debate that luck was all it took for Dragon Ball to become such a popular and beloved series.

I can see Dragon Ball's flaws and see where other series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, One Piece or My Hero Academia succeed where it has fallen short, but they don't have the same kind of magic.
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Cursed Lemon » Sat Oct 12, 2019 10:06 am

You can't call the trope codifier of the entire shonen genre "lucky". You just can't.
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by BlazingFiddlesticks » Sat Oct 12, 2019 8:34 pm

It is easy to downplay a lot of its success if you downplay what can pass as popular in Dragon Ball's pop culture sphere. Say "It's Jump success doesn't matter because a lot of Jump mega hits are puerile" or "Sure it has a long cultural tail, so do Transformers and Pokemon". It was part of a genre doing very well at the time and drawn by an established artist, but the former was no guarantee and the latter speaks to Toriyama himself, and I don't quite buy that the impressionable kids in 90's foreign markets would have made a super smash hit any serialized battle anime if said anime only got to that country early enough.
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Kokonoe » Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:05 am

I think a more interesting topic would be "Is Dragon Ball GT unlucky?".

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Fionordequester » Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:46 am

Kokonoe wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:05 am I think a more interesting topic would be "Is Dragon Ball GT unlucky?".
I mean, among other things, it's a show with bad fight choreography... In a series that's supposed to be all about fight choreography.

DBGT isn't awful, but... It felt like I was watching an average anime, rather than Dragon Ball.
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Vijay » Sun Oct 13, 2019 2:48 am

Fionordequester wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:46 am
Kokonoe wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:05 am I think a more interesting topic would be "Is Dragon Ball GT unlucky?".
I mean, among other things, it's a show with bad fight choreography... In a series that's supposed to be all about fight choreography.

DBGT isn't awful, but... It felt like I was watching an average anime, rather than Dragon Ball.
While it's got it's perks...it's strictly average show. Darn sure wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Despite great sound track & potential...

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Baggie_Saiyan » Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:36 pm

Dragon Ball Ireland wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 8:34 am It's like saying is Dragon Ball a kids series. In some respects yes, but it is one of those rare stories that how it was crafted elevates it beyond that.

It has extremely likeable characters that resonate with people of all ages, world building that captivates the imagination, and at the same time Toriyama's weird humour and art style gives Dragon Ball its own charm that is truly distinctive from other shounen action series. There's no debate that luck was all it took for Dragon Ball to become such a popular and beloved series.

I can see Dragon Ball's flaws and see where other series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, One Piece or My Hero Academia succeed where it has fallen short, but they don't have the same kind of magic.
That is exactly why Kai failed. Their whole goal for Kai was to introduce the franchise to a new generation of kids but those kids had absolutely no interest in merchandise and so Kai just flopped away. But when BoG came along the merch dept had an epiphany and that they should be aiming merch at a much higher target age (15+) & it worked and DB's commercial success kept growing to the point where we are at now where DB doesn't need a new series on the air to more than sustain itself (this December DB is set to break several merch sales records).

Unfortunately Toei still band around the stupid kids excuse which leads to stupid things like censoring BDs and the fact that saying the series is aimed at kids they can get away with lazy writing.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:38 pm

Kids loved Kai, The ratings on Nicktoons, The CW and Toonami (One night got 2 fricking million and half of that was children.) dont lie.
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:37 pm

Cure Dragon 255 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:38 pm Kids loved Kai, The ratings on Nicktoons, The CW and Toonami (One night got 2 fricking million and half of that was children.) dont lie.
The difference is that Japan didn't need Kai. The Z anime was already faithful to the manga bar filler so when viewers learned Kai was literally Dragon Ball Z-lite, they must've been put off by the brand.

Besides, IIRC the anime trilogy still regularly aired reruns on TV Asahi so it's not like they were short on their Dragon Ball fix.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by MasenkoHA » Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:57 pm

DBZAOTA482 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:37 pm
Cure Dragon 255 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:38 pm Kids loved Kai, The ratings on Nicktoons, The CW and Toonami (One night got 2 fricking million and half of that was children.) dont lie.
The difference is that Japan didn't need Kai. The Z anime was already faithful to the manga bar filler so when viewers learned Kai was literally Dragon Ball Z-lite, they must've been put off by the brand.

Besides, IIRC the anime trilogy still regularly aired reruns on TV Asahi so it's not like they were short on their Dragon Ball fix.
Iirc the ratings for Kai in Japan were fine.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:13 pm

MasenkoHA wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:57 pm
DBZAOTA482 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:37 pm
Cure Dragon 255 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:38 pm Kids loved Kai, The ratings on Nicktoons, The CW and Toonami (One night got 2 fricking million and half of that was children.) dont lie.
The difference is that Japan didn't need Kai. The Z anime was already faithful to the manga bar filler so when viewers learned Kai was literally Dragon Ball Z-lite, they must've been put off by the brand.

Besides, IIRC the anime trilogy still regularly aired reruns on TV Asahi so it's not like they were short on their Dragon Ball fix.
Iirc the ratings for Kai in Japan were fine.
Merchandise sells were not.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Yuli Ban » Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:50 pm

Did Star Wars get lucky? What about Harry Potter? In these cases, they were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. What's more, they weren't doing it quite the same as some others. In the mainstream (and we're talking lowest common denominator mainstream), having that extra element helps. Being basic and easy to understand, but also creative goes a long way.

Star Wars is a science fiction story, yes? Until you examine it and realize it's closer to a fantasy story that just happens to be in space, like a Buddhist Lord of the Rings from the future. In a time when science fiction tended to be either very hard & technical, very campy penny dreadful stuff, or esoteric post-psychedelic fare, it was unique even though it wasn't. It's not doing anything crazy with this concept. At least the original trilogy wasn't some geopolitical tale of intrigue and high philosophy; it was sci-fi fantasy. If you were familiar with either, you knew what to expect. Also, it was for kids. Or more accurately, it was made for general audiences but with a kid-focused merchandising line in mind. And it had absolutely stellar special effects for its time (and, to an extent, even today).
Harry Potter's a fantasy story, but it's set in modern times in a British boarding school? We've seen elves, giants, dragons, witches, and wizards before. But in the mainstream, those belong in some pseudomedieval Anglo-European shire where peasants and merchants lived in half-timbered cottages and horses were basically cars and the closest thing to electricity was electrokinetic magical spells. Sure, there had been modern urban fantasy and cyberpunk-fantasy fusions, but they never reached mainstream success. Yet if you're familiar with fantasy, it's the generic fantasy set up: nothing-kid who lives with ignorant peasants turns out to be the chosen one who has to defeat the Dark Lord, encountering a motley crew of generic fantasy races and creatures, witches, wizards, warlocks, and so on. But it's set in 1990s England in a boarding school, essentially in the tradition of a English boarding school novel. It's very simple but readers find great depth within it. But most of the money still comes from merchandise. It's a children's series— the last book is considered quasi-YA, because it's still considered children's literature.

That's the case for Dragon Ball. It's something people were familiar with: kung fu stories. We all know the tropes. Some headstrong young martial artist goes around punching and kicking evildoers, all righteously. Except it's set in this weird fusion era, neither the past or the future, so it had a lot of sci-fi and modern elements and could get away with all of that. It's the barest kung fu fantasy story too, so if you were familiar with the cliches, you knew what was going to happen. It's also starting out ahead of the pack by drawing from a fantasy story that most Japanese kids are familiar with. Except it was an over the top parody of it all, hence why it used those cliches. If you're parodying something, you deliberately invoke those cliches. You didn't have to be familiar with every kung fu or wuxia movie in existence to get what's going on. It's not taking these tropes and doing anything super creative with them. But it is having fun with it and doing zany things with its fundamental concept. Hell, the alien race that the main character is a part of is quite literally a bunch of weremonkeys who have 80s glam metal hair and unironically dress in 80s jazzercise aerobics armor. That's insane, but you go with it. You're not going to see that in Fist of the North Star, Saint Seiya, or Yu Yu Hakusho— and you never could have without them really jumping the shark. Dragon Ball almost literally started with an old man blowing up the moon with his chi alone.
In the West, this was flat out ridiculous. We knew that superheroes did stuff like this, but it was almost never actually shown in animated or live action media. We knew Superman could bench press the universe (and a thousand other universes) at some point in time, but that was in the comics. In the cartoons and '70s movies, he could fly pretty quickly and lift cars and whatnot. Okay. That's certainly superhuman. You had villains who threatened to (and sometimes actually did) erase entire dimensions, but that's so intangible. Here's Muten Roshi, this frail old man getting buff and calling himself Jackie Cha— er, Jackie Chun, literally flexing the moon away on screen. If you're a kid, that's incredible. It's incredible seeing Vegeta casually destroy a planet with his finger, something that cartoons in the past shied away from. Because if you were an LCD viewer in the mainstream, what's the last thing you remember that could blow up a planet? The Death Star. It was a moon-sized space station! And here's this wild-haired man who casually did it with two fingers, as if it was the most unimportant thing in his life. Meanwhile, over in Yu Yu Hakusho, we're watching Yusuke fight Younger Toguro, who is apparently the most powerful damn thing in existence as far as we know. He can carry martial arts rings around and punch those rings to pieces, but beyond that, he can destroy a building with a casual flick of his finger. Wow, that's inte—

Nappa just destroyed an entire city with his finger, and he's immeasurably stronger than the guy who blew up the moon. Oh, and there's an effeminate guy with horns who is apparently so stupidly powerful that both Nappa and Vegeta could pretty much be killed by him blinking, and only an ancient alien prophecy that the MC can fulfill can hope to defeat him. To reach that prophecy, the MC has to bullshit past every conceivable logical wall there is and magically become 1,000x stronger in a few episodes.

It's a kung fu story on crack, if that crack was also on crack. There's nothing difficult to understand (at first). This guy wants to fight people but he's also generally a good guy (or, in the West, he's Kung Fu Space Jesus). Loads of evil people & organizations line up, begging to get smacked down. Good and Evil fight, repeat. You get the formula quickly.

And it helps that it lasts such a long time. Dragon Ball (as in OG and Z) was something like 400+ episodes, which at the time made it the longest running animated program. Without even including GT!

And it's for kids! And it really is, even moreso than even Harry Potter (which is explicitly children's literature). In Japan at least, it was made for the 8-12 crowd. It's as much of a children's franchise as, say, Scooby Doo or Spongebob Squarepants. But it attracted an adult audience, especially in the West where we have different standards for kid's media (fully uncensored Dragon Ball would be considered TV-MA here). For the West, it came at the perfect time since anime was just about to really go supernova without being so heavily censored— it came in at the tail end of the "censored" era of anime in the West and was a good bridge from the stuff from the '60s and '70s that we really only got dubbed if they were big Miyazaki movies or if they were Macekred, and the '80s-through-2000s shonen stuff that was treated with some modicum of respect, especially thanks to the rise of the internet. This is a ridiculously simplified version of history, I know, but I don't want to spend 10,000 words on a topic that I know Kunzait and others have already covered.

Kids grow up with it, and those kids become adults who have fond memories of this show that was easy to understand but did have some hidden deeper meanings here and here (except not really, if Toriyama's anything to go by).

And just like Star Wars and Harry Potter, Dragon Ball's being forcibly extended past its natural expiry date to appease those nostalgic fans, except with an even more contrived reason since Goku's still the focus (whereas Star Wars can cycle through new protagonists and Harry Potter, while focused on the titular character, is using his son nowadays).
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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by Saikyo no Senshi » Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:40 am

Baggie_Saiyan wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 5:36 pm Unfortunately Toei still band around the stupid kids excuse which leads to stupid things like censoring BDs and the fact that saying the series is aimed at kids they can get away with lazy writing.
I think Toei does the usual company shtick, y'know the whole "we want all our works to be consumed by everyone and blah blah blah", but in reality they know their main demographic. Their exploitation of nostalgia in this whole revival era is proof of that. That doesn't answer the whole censoring BDs thing tho. Don't know what happened there.

At least Bandai acknowledged like a year or two ago in their report that the core fan layer are adults and that they will continue to please them.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by KBABZ » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:25 am

Saikyo no Senshi wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:40 am I think Toei does the usual company shtick, y'know the whole "we want all our works to be consumed by everyone and blah blah blah", but in reality they know their main demographic. Their exploitation of nostalgia in this whole revival era is proof of that. That doesn't answer the whole censoring BDs thing tho. Don't know what happened there.
Well for me the whole point of Super is to bank on both nostalgia for fans from the original era whilst also appealing to a younger, newer generation who see that "this classic popular anime IS BACK!", with the goal of getting both to buy merch. By that metric, Kai failed because it didn't attract enough "periphery" sales through merchandise and such things. IMO Kai still has some value as being a more consumable way to experience Z's story, but that's blunted in Japan thanks to the tired-by-comparison VO performances.

As for the movie censoring, that to me is Toei trying to adapt the films so that they work with the "softer" angle Dragon Ball has in the modern era. From what I've glanced of Super, it doesn't have the same edge as Z did when the going got tough, where grevious injuries has a justifiable amount of blood and such things (such as Gohan's arm when facing Cell). That's not to say that blood is essential to a DBZ fight, but it's part of the visuals for when a pitched, climactic battle reached its peak and a character took serious damage. Super seems to lack that sort of visual impact, and bratty Kid Trunks has probably never flipped the bird in Super if I were to hazard a guess.

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Re: Did Dragon Ball Get Lucky?-The Good Faith Version.

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:29 am

KBABZ wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:25 am
Saikyo no Senshi wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:40 am I think Toei does the usual company shtick, y'know the whole "we want all our works to be consumed by everyone and blah blah blah", but in reality they know their main demographic. Their exploitation of nostalgia in this whole revival era is proof of that. That doesn't answer the whole censoring BDs thing tho. Don't know what happened there.
Well for me the whole point of Super is to bank on both nostalgia for fans from the original era whilst also appealing to a younger, newer generation who see that "this classic popular anime IS BACK!", with the goal of getting both to buy merch. By that metric, Kai failed because it didn't attract enough "periphery" sales through merchandise and such things. IMO Kai still has some value as being a more consumable way to experience Z's story, but that's blunted in Japan thanks to the tired-by-comparison VO performances.

As for the movie censoring, that to me is Toei trying to adapt the films so that they work with the "softer" angle Dragon Ball has in the modern era. From what I've glanced of Super, it doesn't have the same edge as Z did when the going got tough, where grevious injuries has a justifiable amount of blood and such things (such as Gohan's arm when facing Cell). That's not to say that blood is essential to a DBZ fight, but it's part of the visuals for when a pitched, climactic battle reached its peak and a character took serious damage. Super seems to lack that sort of visual impact, and bratty Kid Trunks has probably never flipped the bird in Super if I were to hazard a guess.
Even then, though Kai's Japanese version may not be quite as great as the original Z i'm sure glad it gave us a way better acted and scripted English dub of the show.
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