Does anyone else feel that much of the DB fandom enforces low standards?

[Skar]

They do episodes year round often for years on end. Look at Super Sentai. It's inherently cheap. Even with greater lead time, that's still an ambitious schedule.

Sure but we're talking about their anime. Super Sentai is owned by their parent Toei Company so I don't know how involved Toei Animation is. One Piece and Precure are their longest ongoing franchises but most of Toei's individual animes usually only ran for a year or two. One of Toei's animators flat out said they want to take their time to prepare before bringing back DB. Are you saying it's unrealistic to assume Toei might give it the same lead time as all their recent anime or that it wouldn't improve even though it helped all these other shows?

[ABED]

I don't that that matters. Their business plan seems to have a common trait of being cheap to produce and to produce in mass quantities.

I don't think the lead time would improve things that much. Maybe the animation but not the story. The story's issues don't stem from lack of lead time.

[JulieYBM]

Toei produces many projects at one time. Furthermore, the industry is extremely stretched for talent. The reason why studios outsource so much is because within Japan there are only so many animators, especially highly skilled animators. Toei, producing many titles at one time without much in the way lead time eventually begins to see a drop in quality. It's not uncommon to see episodes still being worked on the day before they must broadcast. Tu Yong-ce mentioned before that the frame counts on Toei series are kept low so as to prevent staff from being overwhelmed. I don't know the exactly context of this quote, though, but imagine needing to animate an episode with 20,000 tweens in six fucking weeks!

Studios need to pay better wages to increase the number of in-house talent and make sure that the industry survives. Animators need to unionize and demand better wages and lengthier schedules and it would behoove directors to side with animators on the subject, too. While Toei is a brighter example within an industry full of shitfucker producers its management still needs to be antagonized by workers, just like with any studio.

Finishing two cours worth of episodes before broadcasting the first also helps increase quality a lot. It's a fuck ton better than only have three episodes finished when #1 airs.

[ABED]

Of course you think that and while there are certainly examples of people being stingy to their own detriment, I've had enough experience to state that generally speaking, if people could pay people more to get better work out of them and get a better return, they would.

Not for a second do I believe that things would be a fuckton better if they had more time. The animation, certainly, but the story is always the most important aspect and the issue is one they can't overcome now matter how much they pay their talent or how much time they give them. The story has long since past reached its organic conclusion. What more is there to do with the characters?

[Skar]

I don't that that matters. Their business plan seems to have a common trait of being cheap to produce and to produce in mass quantities.

I don't think the lead time would improve things that much. Maybe the animation but not the story. The story's issues don't stem from lack of lead time.

I said last page that more time wouldn't fix everything since a lot of the issues come from it being a series that had already ended. It also wouldn't change that Toriyama is past his prime and how short his outlines are. Since they're so short, better planning might give Toei more time to go over them and have a more focused adaption. I still believe Toriyama intends for this revival to conclude before EoZ which DBS gets closer and closer to each arc. All I'm hoping is that the last leg of this revival has more effort from Toei at least as much as they give their other anime.

[JulieYBM]

Of course you think that and while there are certainly examples of people being stingy to their own detriment, I've had enough experience to state that generally speaking, if people could pay people more to get better work out of them and get a better return, they would.

Not for a second do I believe that things would be a fuckton better if they had more time. The animation, certainly, but the story is always the most important aspect and the issue is one they can't overcome now matter how much they pay their talent or how much time they give them. The story has long since past reached its organic conclusion. What more is there to do with the characters?

Actually being able to think and plan would literally improve the series. Not producing the series literally on the run with no time to think your decisions through worsens the quality of your project.

'Animation doesn't matter' is bunk as well. Animation and storyboards are no different than dialogue in how we express ideas and the ideas we want to express.

[ABED]

Of course you think that and while there are certainly examples of people being stingy to their own detriment, I've had enough experience to state that generally speaking, if people could pay people more to get better work out of them and get a better return, they would.

Not for a second do I believe that things would be a fuckton better if they had more time. The animation, certainly, but the story is always the most important aspect and the issue is one they can't overcome now matter how much they pay their talent or how much time they give them. The story has long since past reached its organic conclusion. What more is there to do with the characters?

Actually being able to think and plan would literally improve the series. Not producing the series literally on the run with no time to think your decisions through worsens the quality of your project.

'Animation doesn't matter' is bunk as well. Animation and storyboards are no different than dialogue in how we express ideas and the ideas we want to express.

writing on the story on the run works plenty well for artists like Toriyama and TV writers/producers. Some of the best ideas come from going with your first instinct and not overthinking things.

Didn't say the animation didn't matter. You're countering a strawman argument. I get the importance of visual storytelling. But what people here are talking about isn't telling a story via visuals, it's purely about how pleasing it is to look at. Broly's a pretty looking movie because it had time and resources but it's an empty film.

[Matches Malone]

Not for a second do I believe that things would be a fuckton better if they had more time. The animation, certainly, but the story is always the most important aspect and the issue is one they can't overcome now matter how much they pay their talent or how much time they give them.

I agree, as DB is long past its end point. With that said, the extra time can also improve the writing in certain aspects. For example, the characters will be written far more consistently due to the writers having time to check on everyone else's work to make sure it lines up with theirs.

[Yuli Ban]

Low standards have been reinforced since the start.

Dragon Ball as a story is a fairly wacky parody of 70s and 80s kung fu movies, using Journey to the West (a Chinese fairy tale not unlike the kind Disney would exploit, one usually told to little kids). Early DB in particular was so ridiculous with blatantly cartoony superdeformation and visual comedy that it was closer to a kung fu Looney Tunes than modern shōnen manga. Even as the manga got more serious, it took a long time for that dense wackiness to fade, and even as late as the Freeza arc, we were seeing kung fu space warriors dressed in 80s jazzercise uniforms with sci-fi chest armor on top— and we learned that Son Goku's species were also jazzercise hair metal monkey space pirates named after vegetables, lorded around by a devil-horned eunuch named "freezer" and his wildly flamboyant henchmen literally named after fruits, like they came out of a grocery closet in the JoJo universe. And this warlord refrigerator was so powerful he could destroy entire planets with a bored flick of his finger— and still had three more transformations beyond that.

Dragon Ball was so ridiculous that it's astounding when you actually explain it to yourself how you ever took it seriously. And the show and manga were indeed meant for elementary schoolers in Japan— that's always been its target audience, and the author of the comic has been ridiculously open about the fact he can't understand why anyone else could like it, even calling the adult fans "manchildren" and just barely acknowledging the women fans as recently as 2017.

The movies have been some of the most bareboned experiences imaginable. Some movies are quite literally 5 minutes of set up (if that) followed by 40+ minutes of fighting, roll credits.

Video games have spent the past 30+ years doing nothing but retelling the story, with scattered attempts at original stories up until the last 5 years. And these original stories are some of the most atrociously written pieces of media ever experienced. I am personally STILL in shock over how stilted Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi's Hero Mode's story was. I've read fanfiction from someone deep on the autistic spectrum that had more emotional depth, more interesting plot twists, and superior cohesiveness than whatever... THAT was supposed to be. And it wasn't even the worst written original story in the games.

But what was I expecting from a series meant for little kids? I'm not this shows target audience.


But there's the rub: the version I grew up with and its evolution is trying to turn Dragon Ball into something for me. Dragon Ball in America is squarely a young adult's franchise. Dragon Ball Super, a series that many felt was overly juvenile even for Dragon Ball, was gritted up for its American release— most notably in its much stronger language.

Its characters are rewritten from their Japanese counterparts, who were already cleaned up from their manga counterparts. The American version is trying to build off the older dub version of the characters as well as take notes from Dragon Ball Z Abridged, when Super was building off the manga rather than the older anime.

Remember those space jazzercise kung fu pirates I mentioned earlier? Many Americans don't even realize that's what they are, instead turning them into space samurai with exaggeratedly brutal seriousness. But that's only because that's the version we received. We find it harder to notice the dense wackiness because so much of it was scrubbed out to remarket the series for an entirely different demographic, many of whom would take an ax to the idea that Dragon Ball is for kids at all.

Many of them want to see Dragon Ball turned into a Japanese MCU, with its games closer to Marvel vs. Capcom and an anime-ized Witcher. What they get are games that often lack polish and feature dumbed down stories with the dialogue and presentation of a show for preschoolers if it was socially acceptable for characters to swear on Nick Jr. and YouTube Kids.


There are essentially two different franchises both going by the name "Dragon Ball" existing concurrently, but the version that takes precedence is the one aimed at Japanese schoolboys. Western fans literally HAVE to accept lower standards because our standards are not in line with the actual direction and nature of the series.
Could that nature be different? Always, but things haven't developed in that direction and the only thing you'd accomplish would be to shift the show to target the other audience, now forcing the first demographic to shift their expectations. You've just started a dance.

Now, you might think that the ideal solution would be to split the series in two and let both demographics have their own respective versions— one being the kiddy kung fu cartoon about Carrot Wukong and the other being the Japanese MCU led by the writers for Team Four Star and Dragon Ball Multiverse. And maybe that COULD work. But it also feels like a copout, like a single foreign fandom refuses to accept that the object of their affection isn't actually theirs no matter how many YouTube breakdowns, memes, and vs. battles they create or how many lines from an archaic unfaithful dub they rewatch and thumbs up.

That's what this whole thing really feel like to me, especially the part about so many Dragon Ball fans who don't actually like what Dragon Ball is but rather what they wish it could be (no pun intended).

[Xeogran]

Video games have spent the past 30+ years doing nothing but retelling the story, with scattered attempts at original stories up until the last 5 years.

Plenty of original stories in DB there, but nobody remembers them because they don't come from "mainstream" DB games. Look at Budokai 2 for example, it did unique stuff, incorporate Neko Majin into the plot (JPN version) and when HD collection could finally include it and translate the entire content, they prefer to pretend it doesn't exist and didn't even include the game at all.

DBZ Gaiden (NES/Playdia) is another great example of original story. It's a really long game, and the west only knows it from the super censored Raging Blast 2 cut where there is zero adventure but only the action bits, and even they are shortened.

I blame the bunch of corporate suits who never think about bringing us retro DB games translated for the first time, could be on Nintendo e-Shop, for example.

[Matches Malone]

That's what this whole thing really feel like to me, especially the part about so many Dragon Ball fans who don't actually like what Dragon Ball is but rather what they wish it could be (no pun intended).

We simply want it to have the same quality that the original DB and Z had, and what current anime today has, including ones made by Toei. We're not asking for too much, you're simply satisfied with the bare minimum.

In terms of the rest of your comment, I'll let this video do the talking for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-wD-wMx54

[ABED]

Everyone, please everyone stop posting to obnoxious Youtube videos to do your talking for you. That's not an argument.

[SupremeKai25]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxm_QdQ ... =emb_title

This is what Super could've looked like if the dragon ball community had...I'm not even going to say high standers at this points, just any standards. This anime is from the same studio, Toei, and if I'm not mistaking some of the same people who worked on Super. Unlike DB however, other anime communities (generally speaking of course) don't accept, support, and defend...I want to keep things civil, so I'll just say low quality products. This is why Toei gave the team behind Dragon Quest the time and resources they needed to put out a respectable looking and animated product. With that said, I'm sure there are people here who will say Super looked just as good, if not better than DQ, which will just prove my point about how low our standards have fallen.

That show looks super generic to be honest.

[Matches Malone]

That show looks super generic to be honest.

This isn't about the show's content, but rather its production quality. In the past few years, Toei made some changes due to the difficulties faced by the staff of both Super and the new Sailor moon anime during production, and this is the result. The changes also applied to both the new Digimon anime and One Piece arcs. If the quality of these 3 anime is what we can expect from Super if it returns, alongside Shintani being involved, then we're going to be in for an amazing ride. The reason people are talking about this is because it shows just how much better Super could've been had these changes took place before it aired. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people who worked on Super are currently working on these, so we had a talented team that was basically cheated out of making something special due to the high ups just not caring back in 2015.

Everyone, please everyone stop posting to obnoxious Youtube videos to do your talking for you. That's not an argument.

I personally rarely do this, but I think it's a video worth seeing, as it says so much about modern "fans".

[ABED]

That video is just mildly better than the people it's criticizing. Scratch that, he's just as bad. The annoying cadence, the smugness, etc.

[LoganForkHands73]

That show looks super generic to be honest.

This isn't about the show's content, but rather its production quality. In the past few years, Toei made some changes due to the difficulties faced by the staff of both Super and the new Sailor moon anime during production, and this is the result. The changes also applied to both the new Digimon anime and One Piece arcs. If the quality of these 3 anime is what we can expect from Super if it returns, alongside Shintani being involved, then we're going to be in for an amazing ride. The reason people are talking about this is because it shows just how much better Super could've been had these changes took place before it aired. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people who worked on Super are currently working on these, so we had a talented team that was basically cheated out of making something special due to the high ups just not caring back in 2015.

Everyone, please everyone stop posting to obnoxious Youtube videos to do your talking for you. That's not an argument.

I personally rarely do this, but I think it's a video worth seeing, as it says so much about modern "fans".

I'm pretty sure that Dragon Quest reboot is still upcoming, so who can say if the quality of it will remain consistent all the way through? Even if that trailer shows the best of what it'll offer, it doesn't really look that great to be honest. You can cherrypick the very best material from the latter half of Super which blows this other show out of the water and say how much worse Toei's productions have gotten.

As for the video, the dude's arguing in worse faith than the people he's strawmanning against. Not that his arguments are good to begin with, but he lost me the second he said that people who criticise older media in a franchise are "liars" -- pure arrogance. People who don't like older films in a franchise as much as new ones aren't "lying", they have *gasp* different subjective preferences. In any case, there are tonnes of things to criticise older entries in a popular franchise for, things that people have been saying forever.

"Old Doctor Who had flimsy sets" is as valid as opining that Dragon Ball Super's production values sucked. The production values for the classic era were always crap even by 1960s BBC standards, it was only kept around for so long because nobody wanted to be the one to put it down. "Old Star Wars wasn't exactly Shakespeare" has been a sticking point against it since forever, as its success was the final nail in the coffin for the more cerebral, auteur-driven 'New Hollywood' movement and paved the way for the modern, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood Blockbuster culture that still persists.

[Matches Malone]

That video is just mildly better than the people it's criticizing. Scratch that, he's just as bad. The annoying cadence, the smugness, etc.

I generally prefer people like Ajay who stick to facts and numbers, but I honestly can't blame this guy for taking that tone. I'm constantly seeing people here and elsewhere trying to bring down DB&Z in order to justify what we got with Super, completely ignoring the fact that Toei has taken steps during Super and up until now to prevent another anime from suffering the same issues it had, at least up until halfway through.

I'm pretty sure that Dragon Quest reboot is still upcoming, so who can say if the quality of it will remain consistent all the way through?

Based on its pre-production time, which could be anywhere from 8-10 months, yes. That's not to say there won't be issues, but the consistency will without a doubt be there.

[ABED]

I can because he is just as bad as the people he's criticizing.

its success was the final nail in the coffin for the more cerebral, auteur-driven 'New Hollywood' movement and paved the way for the modern, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood Blockbuster culture that still persists.

To which I will say that auteur theory is horeshit. Filmmaking is an inherently collaborative process and many great films have been made by journeyman directors. The more "cerebral" stuff still exists. Most of it has moved to TV, though. So much of this issue is technological as well. Why go the theater for some quiet 'cerebral' drama when you can stay at home and watch it on a 80" flat UHD smart TV? Go to the theaters for the big spectacle films. The sky is not falling it's just changing the same as it always has.

[LoganForkHands73]

I can because he is just as bad as the people he's criticizing.

its success was the final nail in the coffin for the more cerebral, auteur-driven 'New Hollywood' movement and paved the way for the modern, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood Blockbuster culture that still persists.

To which I will say that auteur theory is horeshit. The more "cerebral" stuff still exists. Most of it has moved to TV, though. So much of this issue is technological as well. Why go the theater for some quiet 'cerebral' drama when you can stay at home and watch it on a 80" flat UHD smart TV? Go to the theaters for the big spectacle films.

I wasn't saying cerebral stuff doesn't still exist? How is auteur theory horseshit? While it wasn't an instantaneous process, Hollywood became less interested in financing the baby boomer generation's weird, risky indie projects after Jaws and Star Wars proved more profitable with wider audiences -- I'm not saying that Jaws and Star Wars didn't deserve success, but historically, some movie-goers were less than happy with the way the industry started heading. The death of New Hollywood didn't mean cerebral films suddenly stopped existing, but new filmmakers became much less likely to gain any recognition or budget from the big studios. In any case, it's not some new criticism for people to hate on classic Star Wars, not that I see many people doing that anyway...

[ABED]

I already state, it's an inherently collaberative process. It's not all one person's singular vision.

The budgets during the "new Hollywood" weren't particularly high to begin with.

but historically, some movie-goers were less than happy with the way the industry started heading.

Which makes them come off as Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man sketch.

I get it, not everyone likes Star Wars, but why do you keep bringing up fans of the "new Hollywood"? Auteur theory is one that went from a 4 year period where out of touch studio execs gave over control to directors when the movie business was on its ass, to "the director is god and must never be questioned".

It's art and nothing is beyond questioning, even the classics.

I keep going back to the pizza analogy. I like pizza, even from most pizza chains. I don't ask for much more than to enjoy it in the moment. It doesn't have to be mind-blowing or even memorable. Toriyama certainly has a unique voice but lets not forget that he had an unimaginably ambitious schedule. He had the artistic skill of an artisan but the work ethic of a journeyman. I think that was part of what made the story great. He focused on things he was good at and enjoyed doing, and didn't overthink the story he was writing.