"Live Action Dragon Ball Z Movie"

[WittyUsername]

Just so we’re clear, I never said Dragon Ball isn’t about martial arts. I said that the martial arts gets mixed in with other things as the series goes on. Dragon Ball has always been a distinctly Eastern story, but there are elements in the Z portion that wouldn’t be out of place in a Western story, which I think helps explain why it’s more popular here than the pre-Z material.

For the record, I’m not big on East Asian stories in general. Kung Fu and Wuxia stories aren’t usually my thing. For what it’s worth, I do think Parasite is a great movie that deserved its Best Picture win, but generally speaking, I’m not really a consumer of Asian media.

[Kunzait_83]

It says something about how absurdly hard-wired things like cultural insulation and over-the-top marketing can be into the human psyche when you have something like a fanbase for one of the single most globally popular children's martial arts fantasy franchises of all time (and we cannot stress the children's aspect of this hard enough: this manga/anime was literally written for the level of a grade school kid) on one specific side of the globe become thoroughly convinced that the story they're reading...

...which throughout, features and focuses squarely on characters who are EXPLICITLY martial artists from an explicitly Chinese/Japanese/Asianic/Buddhist/Daoist culture practicing techniques that are on a broad global sense understood to be martial arts/Daoist rooted in nature, and who's ENTIRE stated and depicted reason for existing and using these techniques at all is to further refine their martial arts skills...

...is in fact somehow NOT a martial arts story at all, or at least it somehow magically *stops* being one the second the author sprinkles in some of the most thinly veiled, shallow, surface level sci fi affectations possible overtop the same exact martial arts fantasy storylines, tropes, character dynamics, and fight sequences.

Where was it stated that in order to manipulate ki you need to be a martial artist??

Apart from strictly religious, philosophical, and medicinal practices? Literally in just about damn near close to EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY work of fiction in which the concept of Ki has EVER appeared in for the last... oh say... four or five thousand years. Give or take.

This cannot be stressed enough for the cheap seats here: the entire CONCEPT of Ki is rooted in Daoistic spiritual beliefs that were largely practiced historically by Eastern holy men, medicine men, and martial artists. Without Daoism, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, and martial arts, Ki as a concept would. Not. Exist. Neither would Dragon Ball AS A WHOLE for that matter, since its rooted to its very bone marrow in Daoist and Buddhist myths and folk tales about martial arts (with whatever other modern wonky pop cultural nonsense sprinkled gingerly overtop by its wacky author).

I know that this fanbase has a nasty habit of treating it like it is, but quick reality check: Ki (or Chi, Qi, etc.) is NOT some vague, sci fi/fantasy concept that was concocted specifically by Akira Toriyama for Dragon Ball in the 1980s to be used with whatever vague, dimly thought out applications he decided to pull from his ass that day. God knows so very much else about this series is exactly that... but Ki, believe it or not, ISN'T one of them.

Yes even in Dragon Ball, its typically martial artists (or characters like Gero and his Artificial Humans who are built and designed to KILL and COMBAT martial artists specifically by using a technological mimicry of their own fighting techniques) who are using Ki or Ki-related techniques. And moreover, just about EVERY single supernatural/fantasy application we see of Ki used throughout DB - from flying and telekinetic levitation, to super speed and strength, to energy blasts, to even healing, body binding, and mind reading, etc. - ALL of it has a specific and explicit basis in a literally millennia-long tradition of Chinese fantasy folk stories about martial arts and Buddhist/Daoist principals and beliefs.

Of all the stuff in DB that was indeed just Toriyama pulling random crap from his anus as he went, Ki in both concept and execution throughout, has literally NEVER, EVER been one of those things, and every stitch of its use in both Dragon Ball and in fiction and art looooooong predating Dragon Ball (in a great many cases by like, countless centuries) has a traceable root in other Southeast Asian martial arts fantasy fiction and folk stories.

To say that Ki as a concept is as wedded to the very concept of martial arts as things like a guy in a Japanese Karate dogi yelling "Hai Ya!" while chopping his hand through a block of wood would be a VAST understatement, as that latter (and very modern day) martial arts/Karate stereotype is of a FAR more recent and contemporary origin than is the idea of Ki, which has a VASTLY longer and more culturally solidified root inside of martial arts than does just about every badly dubbed chop sokey kung fu movie from the 1970s does (which themselves also ALL pull from the exact same pool of Buddhist/Daoist myths and folk stories that Ki is rooted from).

Where does it say that in order to use Ki you must generally be a martial artist? Literally the ENTIRE root origin of the concept of Ki was in no small part WEDDED to martial arts from the earliest days of its cultural conception as an Eastern religious belief. That MIGHT be seen as somewhat relevant in the context of a fantasy Kung Fu series about a Sun Wukong/Journey to the West-inspired monkey boy who spends his entire life training in obsessive pursuit of martial arts perfection.

I know and understand that cultural insulation is indeed a VERY powerful thing. But things like the inherently intrinsic ties that Ki as a concept has to martial arts as both a concept and practice is something that, on a purely elemental level, most Japanese and Chinese grade school children can wrap their heads around with almost no problems whatsoever.

And contrary to what incredibly racist and idiotic stereotypes about Asian people tend to say to the contrary, the reality is that no, Japanese and Chinese grade school children are not in fact in ANY WAY somehow inherently superhumanly intelligent mega-geniuses and child prodigies compared to Westerners. There's literally NOTHING *whatsoever* that is keeping an average Westerner from grocking this stuff just as easily other than sheer stubbornly clung to ignorance and a refusal to do incredibly basic, barebones amounts of reading and study outside of their own immediate cultural sphere.

And also contrary to what some folks have said about my Wuxia-related warblings on here, NONE of this stuff is meant to make DB seem in ANY WAY whatsoever more "intellectual" and "artsy fartsy" than it actually is.

Even with ALL of this Eastern cultural etymology, Dragon Ball is STILL ultimately a dumb, silly children's fantasy Kung Fu comic. Those two things - Dragon Ball's wuxia/Daoist roots, and its inherent dumb silliness - are in NO way incompatible with one another, as there are a whole metric fucking TON of examples of Wuxia media of an impossibly vast array throughout Chinese/Asian history that are JUST as dumb (if not dumber) than Dragon Ball.

That this incredibly elemental stuff cannot seemingly be grasped by so much of its - fully grown - Western fanbase is NOT in any which way a testament to how "brainy" Dragon Ball is under the surface (it isn't), but rather how INCREDIBLY stubborn and deeply clung to things like cultural ignorance and insulation are to a lot of people.

NONE of what I'm talking about here is remotely obscure or hard to come across information: ALL of this can be more than readily accessed out on the internet and across a VAST, wide assortment of martial arts fantasy media (film, TV, books, etc). Even BEFORE the internet was mainstream, a lot of this stuff was very, VERY findable for an average Westerner, provided they simply cared to actually look for it.

Hell, you can WIKIPEDIA most of this shit if you like (we're going to do exactly that in a moment).

If nothing else, the emphasis on martial arts feels less significant as the series goes on. Obviously, describing Dragon Ball as a superhero story is a stretch, but the Z portion of the series does feel slightly more “Western” than the stuff that came before it. That’s not to say that the Eastern influences aren’t still apparent, but the Cell arc in particular has some pretty obvious similarities to the Terminator franchise.

The Cell arc's similarities to the Terminator are ultimately a VERY small and incredibly surface-level aspect of it. The ONLY reason that Western fans zero in on and fixate on THAT aspect above all the rest of the myriad aspects of that arc is because the Terminator is something that they are VASTLY more familiar with than even the most basic-ass martial arts fantasy tropes.

But Western fans zeroing in their focus on one relatively more minor aspect that they're most familiar with does not therefore mean that ALL the other narrative and storytelling nuts and bolts going on beneath that surface aren't there and aren't WAY more important to what it is that they're reading/watching.

At the end of the day, the Cell arc's overriding trajectory as a narrative as well as its character dynamics, archetypes, and tropes (for the most part) are all STILL that of a martial arts narrative, complete with the Red Ribbon Army standing in for a "rival martial arts school" (with its master harboring an insatiable grudge against our hero) and culminating in a martial arts tournament pitting the rival school's best "student" against the hero.

The only thing that the Z portion does that's in ANY way remotely "different" from what came before (and even then, not really) is go a tiny bit extra harder on adding a Western sci fi sheen overtop the same Eastern martial arts narrative beats. And again, its not like Western sci fi surface elements were in any which way foreign to the pre-Z material anyway, so its not like this aspect is THAT big of a stretch.

This is also part of a BIG reason for why I went so deep into the full history of Wuxia media's modern day evolution across the past hundred years or so now: all throughout 1980s and 1990s, Wuxia media throughout Asia was in the midst of a MASSIVE trend in modernizing itself and adding increasingly weird and left field Western elements to their formula. Dragon Ball, whether by sheer incidental coincidence or not, was but one of COUNTLESS examples of this across an entire WAVE of martial arts fantasy/Wuxia media that was coming up all across Asia (and even certain corners of the West) during that time.

For anyone who followed Wuxia/martial arts fantasy media across the 1980s and 90s, this "Westernized/modernized" aspect was absolutely INNESCAPABLE, and its why I took the time to painstakingly trace the origins and evolution of this trend throughout the Wuxia thread on here. The 2000s even saw a MASSIVE backlash against this trend (that had been steadily building for some time throughout the 90s) and a revival of more "traditional" and strictly Easternized Wuxia media coming up (starting off with things like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and whatnot).

Within the context of this time and era of martial arts fantasy media, Dragon Ball's melding of traditional Eastern Kung Fu Daoist folk tales with modern wacky sci fi nonsense was in NO way unique whatsoever, nor does it make it in any which way "less" of a martial arts fantasy story at its core. Nothing about its Kung Fu nature is "lessened" by making the bad guys - who serve all the exact same archetypal roles, functions, and motifs, along with martial arts techniques and fighting styles, as their exact "traditional" wuxia counterparts - into robots, space mutants, and insect men.

To wit: Gero and his Artificial Humans are robots and cyborgs who are designed and built specifically to fight and kill a group of martial artists (and one martial artist in particular above the rest), using a technology-based mimicry of their own martial arts techniques.

Lets put this in much more simpler terms: we have a martial arts fantasy comic of an obviously wacky, silly nature, written and drawn by an author who is of a largely wacky and silly oeuvre of work. He makes a storyline where our martial arts heroes have to face robots and cyborgs (and a mutant bug-man) built by a mad scientist... but those robots and cyborgs are basically kung fu robots and cyborgs, because they are built to use and mimic their same martial arts techniques. LITERALLY the heroes OWN EXACT martial arts techniques in the case of Cell.

Does "Kung Fu guys vs Robot Kung Fu guys" sound like A) a wacky martial arts comic plot from the guy who made Dr. Slump or B) the Dr. Slump guy taking a detour into making his formerly silly martial arts comic into a DC Comics-like grimdark and serious superhero saga?

Do you think that a martial arts story adding in robots who are designed and built to imitate martial arts fighting moves make the story NO LONGER a story about martial arts but rather a story that's about killer robots?

This is like, BASELINE critical thinking and story deconstruction we're using here unwrap what is ultimately an INCREDIBLY silly, silly little kids' kung fu fantasy comic.

Even the fact that the Artificial Humans wield an artificial facsimile of Ki and not actual Ki: obviously the plot detail that its not "real" Ki that they're using is made to highlight their artificial robotic nature. Ki is inherently an organic life force associated with nature and biology, and robots and futuristic sci fi technology are like the EXACT antithesis of this.

So how then do you square the circle of having artificial/inorganic robots made to use the skills of organic/human Ki-wielding martial arts fighters in order to defeat them at their own game? You make up a sci fi concept of "artificial Ki" (here's Toriyama ACTUALLY pulling something related to Ki out of his ass for once). Voila. Now your robots get to even mimic the kung fu heroes' Ki usage.

Basically what you guys in this thread are doing is taking a STUPIDLY throwaway plot excuse of a small detail (the Artificial Humans don't use "real" Ki, but fake sciency Ki) and blowing it up to mean "well I guess Gero and his robots aren't using martial arts, so that means the Cell saga isn't a martial arts story and thus DBZ isn't about martial arts anymore".

Take a second to drink in how completely backwards this line of thinking actually is.

Dr. Gero is a very Westernized concept of a mad scientist who makes mad science robots: but the mad science robots are designed and built to use an artificial sci fi mockup of the main characters' own spiritual Ki abilities, and Gero rebuilds himself into such a Kung Fu robot (literally by sticking his fucking brain into a jar, which is as laughably silly and cliche a sci fi trope as they get). Obviously Gero was never a martial artist before his "rebirth" as an Artificial Human: but now he's literally a fucking Kung Fu robot with his brain in a glass jar controlling it.

With the most shallow, and surface level sci fi coat of paint imaginable, Toriyama just gave you via the Cell saga the most boilerplate, stereotypical Wuxia plotline imaginable. Take away the mad science aspects, and all the Cell Saga amounts to is "Rival martial arts school who's master has a grudge against Goku sends his newest and best students to fight him, with the last one - being an almost evil mirror/counterpart of the main character/hero martial artist - challenging him to a martial arts tournament to settle the score once and for all."

This is as bog-standard a Kung Fu plotline as they get: all Toriyama did was add in a few Terminator references and mad scientist coats of paint on top, and THAT'S more than enough to distract you guys from the fact that the nuts and bolts of all this is still the same exact genre of shit we've been seeing from at least the 21st Budokai onward.

And the Freeza saga is hardly any different at all: just replace "mad scientist robots" with "evil space aliens". Evil space alien army stands in for a typical wuxia military with Freeza standing in as a stereotypical martial arts despot (complete with a full on Bubai-like archetype), who are after the SAME exact magical Chinese MacGuffins that acted as our Buddhist text stand-ins during the original Journey to the West parody storyline, and are engaging in much the same exact behavior and storylines you'd typically see from an evil kung fu army or cult in a wuxia tale.

Only instead of something like Dongfang Bubai and the Sun Moon Holy Cult attacking Chinese peasant villagers for their sacred texts, we have Emperor Freeza and his Evil Space Army attacking green space slug peasant villagers (who all utilize much the exact same Chinese/Buddhist/Daoist martial arts techniques and spiritual practices) for their Dragon Balls. Same exact shit, different coat of sci fi paint on top. Even the dynamics between Goku and Freeza are much the same as you'd see in any Shaw Bros. wuxia epic where the focus is on a ragtag lower class underdog against a posh tyrannical warlord villain.

If anthing the show is just as much about general athleticism as it is martial arts, even pre-Z. It's ultimately strength training that makes the biggest difference in fights. Roshi didn't even bother teaching Goku and Krillin fighting technique, and instead gave them insane strength and cardio sessions. Goku's training on the way to Namek was largely bodybuilding.

Guys like Gero and Dodoria may use ki attacks, but they appear pretty inept at hand to hand, lacking finesse in their technique. They get by on brute force.

Much of martial arts training depicted in Wuxia (specifically in the subgenre Xianxia, which Yuli-Ban has spoken more about at this point than even I have) focusses squarely on Ki/Qi cultivation, which is a form of spiritual strength training. Goku isn't simply doing "body building" (though that is one aspect of it), he's cultivating his inner spiritual power via his Ki which is the REAL source of his strength. His body and muscles play into it, but they aren't where it begins and ends. I go into the finer details of this in the Wuxia thread where I deconstructed many, many aspects of Ki, including the difference between "soft" and "hard" Ki techniques and how they play into the body's muscles.

You can even read a VERY succinct description (where the parallels and overlap with DB are immediately obvious) right on Xianxia's own basic-ass Wikipedia article:

Protagonists are usually "cultivators" (修者 xiūzhě, 修士 xiūshì, or 修仙者 xiūxiānzhě) who seek to become immortal beings called xian. Along the way, they attain eternal life, supernatural powers, and incredible levels of strength. The fictional cultivation practiced in xianxia is heavily based on the real-life meditation practice qigong.

The stories usually include elements such as gods, immortals, yaoguai, ghosts, monsters, magical treasures, immortal items, medicinal pills, and the like. They often take place in a "cultivation world" where cultivators engage in fierce and usually deadly struggles to acquire the resources they need to grow stronger. Oftentimes, the initial setting is reminiscent of ancient China, but the stories usually become cosmic in nature, with the protagonists attaining godlike abilities, sometimes creating their own planets, galaxies or universes. While the primary focus is action and adventure, there are also romance-heavy stories.

Similarly, characters like Nappa, Reacoom, Dodoria, Brolli, and the like are not only still using martial arts, but there is an entire sub-category of martial arts characters that are found all across and throughout martial arts/wuxia/xianxia fiction who are much more brutish in nature and in their approach to fighting as well as hulking in their physicality. They are, regardless, STILL martial artists.



Characters like Lu Zhishen from Water Margin, who are incredibly brutal, physically imposing and musclebound martial arts warriors, can be found populating even ancient, classical Wuxia literature. While in the modern context, martial arts actors like Bolo Yeung helped popularized this character-type in the modern day in countless classic 1960s and 70s kung fu/wuxia films (hell, Yeung played this exactly type of fighter in a notable scene in King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death, a scene which Dragon Ball itself straight up ripped off/re-enacted/xeroxed almost note for note in the Red Ribbon arc), but the examples go far beyond that.

They have their cultural roots in things like Shaolin Strongmen, who used a much more brute force approach to fighting, strength training, and even Ki/Qi cultivation, than other more fluid and graceful/agile fighters.

To vastly simplify this point in a single, well known example, lets put it this way: for anyone who's seen the classic Van Damme movie Bloodsport, is Chong Li, the main villain of that movie (played by none other than the aforementioned Bolo Yeung himself) somehow NOT a martial artist due to his more brute force, direct, and pulverizing method of fighting, and the degree to which he relies on his sheer size and muscle mass to overwhelm his opponents?

Martial arts is in NO WAY restricted to purely graceful, acrobatic fighting styles: there are COUNTLESS martial arts fighting styles (Vale Tudo, Muay Thai, Krav Maga, Silat, modern MMA, etc) who's approach to fighting is unrelentingly vicious, brutal, and inelegant. Even certain forms of Shaolin Kung Fu rely on INCREDIBLY fucking bone breaking, face-smashing direct methods of defeating an opponent rather than fancy, circular, and backflipy acrobatics.


These guys, Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz, are both martial artists fighting in a modern day martial arts match.

Again, there was (and still is even in today's Shaolin training) an entire class of Shaolin Strongmen who rely on sheer brute physicality and muscle mass for their fighting style, which is a large part of where the cultural roots for a lot of modern day martial arts fantasy media depictions of this type of fighting tend to stem from.

[WittyUsername]

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t understand why these long and passionate essays are necessary at this point. Again, I never said that Dragon Ball isn’t a martial arts story. I just said that it gets mixed in with other elements as the series progresses that could maybe help explain why Western audiences find the second half of the series more appealing than the first half. As I’ve already acknowledged, Dragon Ball is still very much an Eastern influenced story at heart. I never tried to dispute that. I specifically said that Dragon Ball can’t be considered a superhero story. It’s not. I’m aware of that.

I’m also not entirely sure why it’s necessary to keep emphasizing the fact that Dragon Ball is geared towards kids. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in this thread who has tried to dispute that. Yes, Dragon Ball is geared towards kids. I’m not sure what purpose pointing that out is meant to serve, unless someone just wants to give off the impression that they’re inherently smarter than everyone else for being aware of that.

Edit: Just to make things as clear as possible, I’m not trying to attack Kunzait with this. Kunzait is clearly someone who is extremely well-versed in what they are talking about, and I have learned a few things from their long rants over the years. There are just times when I don’t feel they’re entirely warranted.

[Kunzait_83]

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t understand why these long and passionate essays are necessary at this point.

1) Length and punctuation use don't actually equal my emotional state while posting. I really CANNOT state this more clearly at this point.

With VERY minimally few exceptions, 99.9% of the overwhelming majority of my writing on this forum is done while I'm perfectly calm and doing other stuff. The closest to a strong emotion I generally feel in these sorts of discussions is "frustration"... but even that's of a more "...really? We're STILL doing this?" nature, as opposed to the "GODDAMNFUCKINGKILLYOUALL!!!" rage spasms that I get the distinct sense a lot of folks here are often projecting onto me from their computer screens.

Even Yuli Ban's earlier description of me on the last page as "bitter" is WAY overstating how I actually feel about all this. Annoyed and mildly frustrated are closer to accurate, which is a far, FAR cry from the "Angry Video Game Nerd"-like caricature I sometimes see being bandied about when my posts sometimes come up on here.

The things that ACTUALLY get me for-real mad are generally WAY far afield of Dragon Ball (and they've only come up on a few occasions in threads that go well far offtopic of DB).

But generally speaking, people really need to stop associating a post's length with a user's emotional or mental state. Those two things are in NO way connected whatsoever.

2) Part of this site's original mission statement was to generally encourage A) length and B) depth. Mike/EX has remarked on this plenty of times in the past, but part of the goal of this forum has always been to encourage more in the way of deep dive, substantive analysis, and not just one or two paragraph blurbs about "WUT POWER LVL DU U THUNK GOHAN WUZ WHEN FIGHTIN DABURA??"

3) As for why I'm posting this?

Where was it stated that in order to manipulate ki you need to be a martial artist??

If nothing else, the emphasis on martial arts feels less significant as the series goes on.

If anthing the show is just as much about general athleticism as it is martial arts, even pre-Z. It's ultimately strength training that makes the biggest difference in fights. Roshi didn't even bother teaching Goku and Krillin fighting technique, and instead gave them insane strength and cardio sessions. Goku's training on the way to Namek was largely bodybuilding.

Guys like Gero and Dodoria may use ki attacks, but they appear pretty inept at hand to hand, lacking finesse in their technique. They get by on brute force.

This is why. It should be self-evident from posts/statements like these why more posts about Dragon Ball's martial arts genre elements are still "necessary" (I mean technically this ENTIRE FORUM isn't strictly "necessary", nor is Dragon Ball's existence itself), as there is still a LOT of deeply wedded to ignorance about even incredibly basic aspects of martial arts fantasy as a baseline genre of media (even in a modern context).

I’m also not entirely sure why it’s necessary to keep emphasizing the fact that Dragon Ball is geared towards kids. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in this thread who has tried to dispute that. Yes, Dragon Ball is geared towards kids. I’m not sure what purpose pointing that out is meant to serve, unless someone just wants to give off the impression that they’re inherently smarter than everyone else for being aware of that.

First of all, the last bolded sentence here is a GIANT fucking reach.

Even setting this one offhand remark aside, broadly speaking across this entire forum, there has always (like since going back to circa 2006 or so) been WAY too much of a defensive, instinctual, emotional impulse to retract immediately and at the drop of a hat into a "You trying to say you're better/smarter than me? Huh? Is THAT what you're saying?! You're not smarter or better than me!" mindset. Its been the default setting for a LOT of users and across a LOT of threads and convos around here for literally almost decades now, and it has always long really, REALLY needed to calm the fuck down in general.

No one, least of all myself, is saying that anyone is outright or inherently stupid or lesser-than for not grappling onto a given aspect of a kids' manga/anime: at most, that aspect DOES sometimes make the frustration a bit more tinged, but that's the extent of it. People need to REALLY cool it with the defensiveness in general towards any perceived assaults on their intelligence.

Secondly... the ACTUAL reason that I often highlight it particularly in martial arts/wuxia related discussions is simple and I even highlighted it explicitly in my last post: because for awhile now, I've been long getting (particularly in Kanz related discussions off the forums via PM, Discord, social media, etc.) that one of the main motives of my deep dive discussions into Dragon Ball's Eastern/martial arts fantasy roots is to make this silly kids' series seem far more "weighty" and "intellectual" than it actually is.

This notion is itself rooted in the presupposition that Wuxia as a genre is somehow inherently some artsy, brainy, academic, and esoterically arcane genre that only scholars would know or care about. This is generally rooted largely in A) its unfamiliar Chinese name and B) its unfamiliarity to a lot of folks on here in general.

Basically anything that is seemingly "new" and "exotic" to a lot of folks (particularly in the West it seems, but I think its is probably a pretty universal/human quirk globally) is often extrapolated to somehow be therefore inherently intellectually weighty, regardless of whether or not it actually is. Hell, Japanese anime and manga were as a broad medium themselves VERY much a victim of a lot of that both before and after the big Cartoon Network explosion at the turn of the millennium.

My continued highlighting DB's nature as a dumb kids' show is me basically trying to disabuse people of all this. While there's plenty that is academic and intellectually meaty about analyzing Wuxia from a VERY broad cultural and historic lens (which is territory that I've only intermittently dabbled into off and on, and primarily when giving people a more over-arching and deeper explanation into what it actually is and how far back and deep its roots go), there are PLENTY of individual examples of Wuxia (and DB is certainly one of them) that are the farthest fucking thing in the world from being hyper-intellectual brain food, and are exceedingly dumb and goofy to their core.

Secondarily to and by extension of that, its also to highlight that something like Wuxia is SO inherently universal as to even be kid-friendly that its accessible to ANYONE, not just people who grew up in China, Japan, or other parts of Southeast Asia. That is to say "If even tiny, small kids in THIS part of the world can glom onto it with no problem, then so can ANYONE anywhere".

I mean... all of you here have gotten this deeply into and have spent the better part of years/decades analyzing and talking abut THIS particular Wuxia series right here (which most Western television executives of the 1980s would've dismissed as being FAR too "exotic" and "foreign" for average American kids to get into): so what's then to stop any of you from going further into OTHER ones that are out there like this one?

There's a LOT of resistance and hesitance among this community towards exploring media that's outside of their comfort zone even GENERALLY and apart from just DB and anime/manga. More Western DB fans would benefit FAR more greatly in exploring more stuff that's outside their comfort zone in general... but particularly as it relates to DB, they'd benefit from exploring far more into stuff like Wuxia instead of constantly retreating back into the same exact familiar Shonen territory.

I mean, what's more important to DB's nuts and bolts as a story and as a creative entity: its genre roots, or what aged audience it was aimed at? Generally speaking, most Western Dragon Ball fans throughout the last 20 or so years made the mistake of taking their love of Dragon Ball into exploring more Japanese children's anime/manga, rather than exploring more martial arts fantasy, and assuming that the FORMER was Dragon Ball's genre pedigree rather than the latter.

Edit: Just to make things as clear as possible, I’m not trying to attack Kunzait with this. Kunzait is clearly someone who is extremely well-versed in what they are talking about, and I have learned a few things from their long rants over the years. There are just times when I don’t feel they’re entirely warranted.

That last highlighted sentence is true only if you perceive my longer posts as being inherently intended as "an attack" themselves in the first place. Which they aren't. So what this basically then ends up coming to mean is that my posting longer, more substantive posts in general isn't entirely warranted. Even though longer, more substantive discourse was part of the whole initial point of this forum's existence in the first place.

[jjgp1112]

I mean, honestly, I took Frieza/the Androids as still being part of the whole martial arts motif, but that it was a conflict of the "pure" martial artists like Goku and co. vs. the brutes corrupting it with a rudimentary understanding of what it actually is. In my mind, I said that the Androids aren't real martial artists from a purist standpoint, like how say (this is the only example I can think of at 2 am), the ragtag crew in Twister are the REAL storm chasers, and those other guys with their big budget and their fancy technology are just in it for the money, man!

So I viewed the conflict as MARTIAL ARTISTS vs. Some Guys Who Use Martial Arts.

[LoganForkHands73]

I mean, honestly, I took Frieza/the Androids as still being part of the whole martial arts motif, but that it was a conflict of the "pure" martial artists like Goku and co. vs. the brutes corrupting it with a rudimentary understanding of what it actually is. In my mind, I said that the Androids aren't real martial artists from a purist standpoint, like how say (this is the only example I can think of at 2 am), the ragtag crew in Twister are the REAL storm chasers, and those other guys with their big budget and their fancy technology are just in it for the money, man!

So I viewed the conflict as MARTIAL ARTISTS vs. Some Guys Who Use Martial Arts.

That's my exact position as well. I think it's valid enough. I guess you could broadly say that any two martial arts styles going against each other is a contest to see which is "more valid", but in this case it feels more like a philosophical conflict of true martial artists who treat combat as a permanent lifestyle vs. these robot guys who are just using ki and hand-to-hand combat as a strategic means to an end but have no deeper understanding or motivation beyond that.

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t understand why these long and passionate essays are necessary at this point.

1) Length and punctuation use don't actually equal my emotional state while posting. I really CANNOT state this more clearly at this point.

With VERY minimally few exceptions, 99.9% of the overwhelming majority of my writing on this forum is done while I'm perfectly calm and doing other stuff. The closest to a strong emotion I generally feel in these sorts of discussions is "frustration"... but even that's of a more "...really? We're STILL doing this?" nature, as opposed to the "GODDAMNFUCKINGKILLYOUALL!!!" rage spasms that I get the distinct sense a lot of folks here are often projecting onto me from their computer screens.

Even Yuli Ban's earlier description of me on the last page as "bitter" is WAY overstating how I actually feel about all this. Annoyed and mildly frustrated are closer to accurate, which is a far, FAR cry from the "Angry Video Game Nerd"-like caricature I sometimes see being bandied about when my posts sometimes come up on here.

The things that ACTUALLY get me for-real mad are generally WAY far afield of Dragon Ball (and they've only come up on a few occasions in threads that go well far offtopic of DB).

But generally speaking, people really need to stop associating a post's length with a user's emotional or mental state. Those two things are in NO way connected whatsoever.

I agree that dissing a post's length is a silly criticism to make on a discussion forum but, with genuine all due respect, I think it's more down to the tone and particular emphasis of your posts that leads people to assume your emotional state. Like, most of your posts are littered with EMPHATIC CAPITALISED ADVERBS, gratuitous f-bombs, and repeatedly, repeatedly overstressing the same points, that naturally indicates that you're very angry/passionate about whatever topic at hand. It's not much of a reach to infer that. If it frustrates you that people here misinterpret you as an AVGN-type ranter, it would make more sense to keep the rhetorical devices you use to a minimum. I must admit, when I first encountered you here as a naïve chickpea with no idea who most people were, that was the impression I got as well and I didn't quite know what to make of you. I believe that, only when combined with the length that people immediately latch onto, sometimes creates a slightly... oppressive atmosphere to your comments.

Conveying tone through text isn't as hard as people make out, so long as every word, device and punctuation mark is used appositely. If, for a random example, I'm a serious, sombre guy yet everyone assumes my inputs into conversations are jokes, that's down to a failure of my own prose to convey the correct tone of my character and emotional state.

[WittyUsername]

I wasn’t trying to suggest that length specifically was an indication of any kind of emotional state. My point about length was more that I don’t think it’s necessary to continuously post these kinds of long essays that, more often than not, are repeating the same thing.

[MasenkoHA]

So i think the problem is people are trying to say the Artificial Humans and the non-Goku Saiyans and Freeza and his clan aren’t martial artist because


1. They’re part robot or aliens

2. They didn’t go to a school for a martial arts and don’t follow any sort of philosophy



To the former I say if not being 100 percent earth human disqualifies you for being a martial artist than I guess Goku isn’t a real martial artist either.


To the latter I say Yamucha was self taught all the way until Bulma persuaded Roshi to take him in. Was Yamucha not a martial artist until then? Despite fighting Goku and other martial artist in combat, participating in a martial arts tournament, and having own signature technique. But it’s not until he trained under the Turtle School only then is he a martial artist I guess.



Dragon Ball never stops being a martial arts story or downplays the martial arts aspect even when it went to Z.

[WittyUsername]

If I recall, this discussion about whether or not Dr. Gero is a martial artist started because MyVisionity suggested that Gero’s actions aren’t inherently evil, because he has the mindset of a martial artist. Even if you want to say that he uses martial arts, it seems like a big reach to claim that he follows any of the philosophies you’d associate with martial artists.

[MasenkoHA]

If I recall, this discussion about whether or not Dr. Gero is a martial artist started because MyVisionity suggested that Gero’s actions aren’t inherently evil, because he has the mindset of a martial artist. Even if you want to say that he uses martial arts, it seems like a big reach to claim that he follows any of the philosophies you’d associate with martial artists.

What philosophies are you supposed to associate though?


My disagreement, and it is a moral disagreement, with MyVisionity is that Artificial Human 20 gets a pass for being a blood thirsty killer simply because he is a martial artist. He is correct that #20 is a martial artist though.

And really the argument started because another member zeroed in on MyVisionity calling Gero a martial artist and, incorrectly, saying he wasn’t.

[WittyUsername]

What philosophies are you supposed to associate though?

Dragon Ball does place a big emphasis on the importance of training to better oneself. That doesn’t seem like something Dr. Gero would follow.

[ABED]

Even though I would consider Dr. Gero a martial artist, he uses it as a means to some other end, whereas for Goku and the others, being martial artists is an end in itself.

[MasenkoHA]

Even though I would consider Dr. Gero a martial artist, he uses it as a means to some other end, whereas for Goku and the others, being martial artists is an end in itself.

I agree with that but it applies to a lot of characters Ranfan, Giran, Nam, Mr. Satan, probably most Tenkaichi Budokai participants really

[PurestEvil]

Dr. Gero and all his androids used martial arts, ESPECIALLY Cell. To say that this saga was not a martial arts story is pretty DAFT...

[ABED]

I wouldn't put Mr. Satan in that boat. I think he is a martial artist at his core, the fame is a byproduct that he loves.

[JulieYBM]

I hope a live action Dragon Ball movie isn't afraid of sets. I was looking at sets for films like Batman and Hook the other day and was blown away by the scale of what is possible in a studio. Physical sets are a craft being quickly replaced by non-union CG and that sucks badly.

[ABED]

Of course you're making this political. The problem with CG in Hollywood has little to nothing to do with Union vs. non-union. It has way more to do with the lead time. Studios set release dates before they have a script and often don't give artists nearly enough time to deliver top quality work.

The sets for Batman are great, but they also look like sets and so there's very little sense of scale in Gotham. It all looks incredibly small. In the first Batman, Gotham is supposed to be sprawling and instead looks like it has 3 streets.

[PurestEvil]

Let me pose this question:
If you are open to a Live Action DB/Z film, who would be suitable for the role of Goku?

[JulieYBM]

Let me pose this question:
If you are open to a Live Action DB/Z film, who would be suitable for the role of Goku?

I think agender actor Nakayama Satsuki would be an interesting choice! They gave a really good performance as Naki in Kamen Rider Zero-One and I think they would match Gokuu really well.

[WittyUsername]

I’m increasingly convinced that another live action Dragon Ball movie will never happen. My official stance at this point is that with the exception of Sonic the Hedgehog (which was never very popular in Japan anyway) and Godzilla, Hollywood adaptations of Japanese properties are unlikely to catch on.