“There is nothing to learn from Dragon Ball,” says Akira Toriyama’s editor, Kazuhiko Torishima

[Yuli Ban]

i'm like a week late to this, and to be honest he's not wrong, but i will say i do think it's kinda ironic to hear torishima just think it's a dumb manga, when in his Forbes interview he said he was displeased with the dragon ball anime because they weren't taking it seriously enough. obviously there's some difference, and having people recall their exact feelings on things 30+ years ago is bound to result in some contradictions (part of why i don't really put a ton of stock in toriyama interviews as fun and interesting as they are to read), but just thought it was funny.

You can think of something as silly shallow crowdpleasing prolefeed and still be angry that someone adapts it wrong.

I mean, hell, think of all the people who are outraged that virtually every piece of Dragon Ball media made in the past two decades, up to the literal last couple of years, felt like cheap shovelware trash or borderline a bootleg. Dragon Ball being the same serious these types usually claim they only watch for the fights (& otherwise stick to DBZA). And that's when they aren't watching YouTube videos that seriously and almost hilariously make Dragon Ball out to be this modern epic with characters of such profound depth that they're on par with a Dostoevsky or Tolstoy novel.

"How could they they do this to Dragon Ball?" is a common refrain. Because the people making it don't seem to take it anywhere near as seriously as the fans do. To them, it's just a silly elementary schoolkid's kung fu cartoon in an era where kung fu movies are well past the point of parody and past their prime, and it's going to make money anyway. So naturally you're going to see some shitty art and animation, gimmicky games with no depth, corners cut until they're round, unrealized potential, and a general air of "We love the series, but not for the same reason you do."

[Mister_Popo]

The fact it has no deeper philosophical message or hidden meaning that requires effort from a dozen
literary experts to analyze, does not exactly equal it's unsubstantial either. Good entertainment as such can be meaningful and make a difference to peoples lifes. It btw has some form of message from which people definitely can learn: never give up in difficult situations, you can always always improve yourself if you believe you have the strength to do so.

[Locust]

No I don't agree with this

I find Toriyama to have a fairly nonchalant attitude in relation to his work in interviews I've read, it would not surprise me if that attitude spread to other members of his team

Dragon Ball isn't a particular "deep" series, but - I don't think there's a single piece of media that has absolutely nothing to learn from

I could easily talk about all the impacts Dragon Ball has had on my life, how it made me want to learn about/read Journey To The West - but it's neither here nor there
Even if the author/editor believes something about their creation, as soon as you release it into the wild, it takes on something of a life of its own, and fans will always have various ways of enjoying it - including learning from it

I did find it interesting that Toriyama took inspiration from Fist Of The North Star - that was actually more intriguing to me than anything else in that interview

[MyVisionity]

It sounds like Torishima was speaking with comparison to Hokuto no Ken when he made those comments. He mentioned how he found it "preachy" and that he decided he would make Dragon Ball a "work without substance".

A big part of Hokuto no Ken is its messages about morality and life and so on. Dragon Ball isn't particularly concerned with any of those things, so I can see what he was getting at when he said he just wanted to make Dragon Ball fun.

[Anonymous Friend]

If you've watched the series and was able to take something away from it that help you, so be it. Toriyama's just saying he never tried to do any of that, and not only is that fine, but greatly welcomed.

No need to get your feelings hurt over this. And no need to be bothered enough to reach a stance of having to say "I disagree with you". The intent was not to teach any leasons. Nothing in the plot or story is particularly new or innovative per se. What ever "leason" or motivation you gleamed, is readily available in multiple other works.

[LoganForkHands73]

If you've watched the series and was able to take something away from it that help you, so be it. Toriyama's just saying he never tried to do any of that, and not only is that fine, but greatly welcomed.

No need to get your feelings hurt over this. And no need to be bothered enough to reach a stance of having to say "I disagree with you". The intent was not to teach any leasons. Nothing in the plot or story is particularly new or innovative per se. What ever "leason" or motivation you gleamed, is readily available in multiple other works.

Yeah... I don't get the insecure defensiveness from the blogger especially. Like I get he's obviously heavily invested in the series, enough to write several analysis books on it, but part of individual analysis is not taking the creators' words at absolute face value - Death of the Author and all that. It may be offensive to him that the creators say these things, but they genuinely weren't out to create a deep work of art. And that's okay.