Has Toriyama lost his touch?

[DBZAOTA482]

Jaco the Patrolman shows Toriyama can still write a good story just not for Dragon Ball.

[VegettoEX]

Jaco the Patrolman shows Toriyama can still write a good story just not for Dragon Ball.

I feel like I'm repeating this over and over. Does everyone just block my posts? Choose not to read them? I'm not offended; just wanna know!

Anyway, for likely the third or fourth time: Toriyama's role is so drastically different between what he did on Dragon Ball during its original serialization and what he does for either the Super manga or its theatrical films. You cannot directly compare them. His "touch" is on a different state of reality.

The closest direct comparison *IS* Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, an actual story set in the Dragon World that he personally wrote and drew himself for a weekly serialization (even if it was known from the start to be a short series, as opposed to an ongoing, evergreen serial).

So we're just looping back around again. Folks, you gotta gotta gotta actually read the threads and posts you're responding to (even if they're not mine!).

[Lukmendes]

Speaking of Dragon Ball’s storytelling, I wouldn’t say he lost his “touch”, but rather that he currently doesn’t have someone with balls to revise his writing like Torishima used to do. The thing is that he has more liberty now. He doesn’t draw, he merely provides outlined plot and some character designs, and his editors try to stick with his script as faithful as they can.

That could be me dreaming (and probably is), but Toriyama needs someone to tell him “stop overusing clumsy jokes”, “if you are going to make Earthlings play active roles, at least build up something new for them”, “stop sidelining Boo in favor of Krillin or Tenshinhan”, “stop bringing back old villains for nostalgia sake”, “make us feel the young characters are growing to something more than relaxed brats”.

While we are in this subject, I hope the new Dragon Ball Super movie moves in the opposite direction. I feel most of my nitpicks are slowly being resolved.

Yeah, Toriyama seems to be one of those kinds of people who comes up with an idea and needs someone to tell him "no" in case they go too far.

He had 3 editors during the entirety of DB, and in interviews he mentioned that the next editor was less strict than the previous, you can more or less have an idea when an editor left and a less strict one showed up with how the ideas get crazier, with Buu saga being the most obvious one.

As mentioned a few times though, only thing he actually made that is DB related once the manga was done was Jaco's manga, and honestly, for me that story shows his drop of quality, it's really forgettable, I read the manga like two weeks ago and I barely remember what happened in it, even as a gag manga I found it to be unimpressive, 'cause while in DB itself sometimes I found Toriyama's jokes to be bad, at least they were remarkable in some way (Even if it's how bad the joke was), in Jaco's manga I struggle to remember any joke besides him peeing in Tights, and the news getting Jaco's look wrong.

And no, I wasn't expecting Jaco's manga to be a shonen, just a decent enough read for whatever it was, I do try to enjoy stuff if I decide to waste my time with 'em, Jaco's manga was just something I don't find to be interesting.

[Goe]

Jaco the Patrolman shows Toriyama can still write a good story just not for Dragon Ball.

I feel like I'm repeating this over and over. Does everyone just block my posts? Choose not to read them? I'm not offended; just wanna know!

Anyway, for likely the third or fourth time: Toriyama's role is so drastically different between what he did on Dragon Ball during its original serialization and what he does for either the Super manga or its theatrical films. You cannot directly compare them. His "touch" is on a different state of reality.

The closest direct comparison *IS* Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, an actual story set in the Dragon World that he personally wrote and drew himself for a weekly serialization (even if it was known from the start to be a short series, as opposed to an ongoing, evergreen serial).

So we're just looping back around again. Folks, you gotta gotta gotta actually read the threads and posts you're responding to (even if they're not mine!).

It's strange to disagree with the author of the best DB web in the world, but actually I do (I guess I am not understanding your point of view. If so, I apologize). Toriyama's role in XXth century's manga was writting and drawing the story, and he is officially the principal storywritter of DBS, according to your own website:

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/episode/super/

So Toriyama was the storywritter of old DB classic manga and he was the storywritter of Super Anime. About "its theatrical films", he changed almost all the original script of BoG, according to the interview you can read in the 4th and 5th volumes of Freezer's saga in DB Full Color Manga, so at least he is also the storywritter of BoG. So his role as storywritter is the same. The only difference is in XXth century we wrote stories for a manga and in DBS and films, he wrote for an anime, but how that affect his way of creating and telling stories? I guess this may have a little influence, but cannot be the reason because some fans like old DB manga and hate super, like the creator of this thread seems to do.

By the way, I understand how do you feel when people ignore your posts. I have written my opinion about this thread here but anyone considered it.

[Cipher]

I think the behind-the-scenes of Super have put him in positions least likely to make use of his talents, so I don't think it's a good litmus test for whether he's "lost" anything in comparison to the original run or not.

He's an incredible illustrator (and still pulling out all the stops for Dragon Quest) and comic artist, but he isn't personally drawing anything other than character designs and a handful of manga panels, and hasn't handled a full chapter since Jaco (which is great).

He's a great short-story author (see his one-shots and single-volume series), but the movie-scripting for 90-minute timeframes requiring large action set pieces take him out of his element and haven't allowed for the same type of writing. (Though I do think he could do better at divorcing himself from some of the DB movie expectations and go more in line with his short works; Battle of Gods does this best.) I don't necessarily recognize the same Toriyama in Broly that I do in "Pink," but it's not an era-specific thing, because I also don't recognize the one from Jaco in 2015. There are shades though. The character-level scripting is still head and shoulders better than what movie writers have pulled out on their own for the series; it feels right.

Finally, he's a fantastically talented week-to-week, seat-of-his-pants serialized storyteller, which is a creative workflow that can't really be replicated in other ways, and has been replaced by the outline-first approach to Super in serialization. Though I do think he could be more ambitious about trying to mimic the winding and unpredictable structure of original-run storylines if he wanted. But ... it's also fair to not want to. Super doesn't have to act exactly like it, and there's something to be said for its arcs functioning like more compact short stories too.

I think my only major criticism would be that his Super work seems to have put him into a bit of a structural rut with "all setup, then all action" two-act structures, maybe coming off of the movies. "F", the ToP, Broly and Granolah all bear it, and you could make the case for Universe 6 as well. But I still think things would wind up slightly different were he in the kind of role he was in for the original run. (Not that I'd wish its unhealthy workload or schedule on him, or that he'd ever want to do it again anyway.)

But the bottom line is that he's a manga artist who isn't in a manga-artist role. When he's being a manga artist (Jaco), it's still great. I'm unsure how to judge his talents in any comparative way through Super because he isn't using the same ones he was during the original series.

Does a hypothetical Toriyama-drawn/scripted Super live rent free in my head though? It sure does.

If you'll add such limits to the fact the power level is practically out of measure (is too high to have any meaning), writing any story for Dragon Ball is now near impossible.

This is a complete aside, but I really don't think this is true, and it's actually something I wish either version of Super would have/would cut lose with more often. The thrill of visual escalation is a key component of the original run, and it's the easiest thing in the world to imagine higher levels for. Goku and Beerus fighting in the stratosphere; breaking through dimensions in Broly; little bits like Jiren's giant rain of punches in the anime ToP` get it here and there, but heck--just let fighters be blast beams across solar systems and fight on the sun. Let Broly ram a Super Dragon Ball into a villain. Go nuts.

[ChronoTwigger]

I think the behind-the-scenes of Super have put him in positions least likely to make use of his talents, so I don't think it's a good litmus test for whether he's "lost" anything in comparison to the original run or not.

He's an incredible illustrator (and still pulling out all the stops for Dragon Quest) and comic artist, but he isn't personally drawing anything other than character designs and a handful of manga panels, and hasn't handled a full chapter since Jaco (which is great).

He's a great short-story author (see his one-shots and single-volume series), but the movie-scripting for 90-minute timeframes requiring large action set pieces take him out of his element and haven't allowed for the same type of writing. (Though I do think he could do better at divorcing himself from some of the DB movie expectations and go more in line with his short works; Battle of Gods does this best.) I don't necessarily recognize the same Toriyama in Broly that I do in "Pink," but it's not an era-specific thing, because I also don't recognize the one from Jaco in 2015. There are shades though. The character-level scripting is still head and shoulders better than what movie writers have pulled out on their own for the series; it feels right.

Finally, he's a fantastically talented week-to-week, seat-of-his-pants serialized storyteller, which is a creative workflow that can't really be replicated in other ways, and has been replaced by the outline-first approach to Super in serialization. Though I do think he could be more ambitious about trying to mimic the winding and unpredictable structure of original-run storylines if he wanted. But ... it's also fair to not want to. Super doesn't have to act exactly like it, and there's something to be said for its arcs functioning like more compact short stories too.

I think my only major criticism would be that his Super work seems to have put him into a bit of a structural rut with "all setup, then all action" two-act structures, maybe coming off of the movies. "F", the ToP, Broly and Granolah all bear it, and you could make the case for Universe 6 as well. But I still think things would wind up slightly different were he in the kind of role he was in for the original run. (Not that I'd wish its unhealthy workload or schedule on him, or that he'd ever want to do it again anyway.)

But the bottom line is that he's a manga artist who isn't in a manga-artist role. When he's being a manga artist (Jaco), it's still great. I'm unsure how to judge his talents in any comparative way through Super because he isn't using the same ones he was during the original series.

Does a hypothetical Toriyama-drawn/scripted Super live rent free in my head though? It sure does.

If you'll add such limits to the fact the power level is practically out of measure (is too high to have any meaning), writing any story for Dragon Ball is now near impossible.

This is a complete aside, but I really don't think this is true, and it's actually something I wish either version of Super would have/would cut lose with more often. The thrill of visual escalation is a key component of the original run, and it's the easiest thing in the world to imagine higher levels for. Goku and Beerus fighting in the stratosphere; breaking through dimensions in Broly; little bits like Jiren's giant rain of punches in the anime ToP` get it here and there, but heck--just let fighters be blast beams across solar systems and fight on the sun. Let Broly ram a Super Dragon Ball into a villain. Go nuts.

I practically agree on everything you wrote. But the last point is one that make the story hard to write. Is not about figuring out whatever cosmical explosion, I can do easily - is a way to find any motif and incentives for characters so strong they can shake dimensions without an ongoing context.
Is not about how theatrical the thing is. Is about convincing premise, coherency, clever development, tense situations and deliver a satisfactory ending that also increase the lore and rejoice the premise themes. You can do it with Gods shooting beams, giant robots that destroy universes, or simple kids going school.
But DBS power is too abstract and too high, and force you to do miracles to come with something, as the *character context* don't fit the *setting context*. As a result, roll on a random table and have stuff happening.
Zamasu had to travel in time, steal bodies, double wish, fusion.
Moro had to pop out from nowhere.
Granola had to find the DB that allow him to become *the stronger in the Universe* (how lucky... just in time).
All of such stuff isn't excellent, come rushed, and have poor interaction with the extablished setting. Not 'cause the writer sucks, but the canvas sucks.

Try for. Try to come with the next villain. How you'll justify his presence? Another enemy popping out from nowhere? Wild guess: a power boost again? Why he does appear now, having such strenght and such malevolent intention?
It's hard to come with *good* stuff this way.

To be coherent, you should move the story on an equal scaled context. Goku and Vegeta are moving in the strict void of absolute, abstract power, with only Whis&Beerus to determine a context.

[Cipher]

You don't know what "writing" is, sorry. Is not about how theatrical the thing is (this is the audience perspective, not the author one). Is about convincing premise, coherency, clever development, tense situations and deliver a satisfactory ending that also increase the lore and rejoice the premise themes. You can do it with Gods shooting beams, giant robots that destroy universes, or simple kids going school.
But DBS power is too abstract, and force you to do miracles to come with something.

Try to come with the next villain. How you'll justify his presence? Another enemy popping out from nowhere? Why he does appear now, having such strenght and such malevolent intention?
It's hard to come with *good* stuff this way.

We open on a battered Toppo, in God of Destruction garb, flying over wilderness, until we see him honing in on the Son family home. Goku isn’t there.

A chapter is spent depicting destruction elsewhere in Universe 11 as Toppo runs into Universe 7 Earth residents who point him to Goku’s actual location—Oob’s village. We end on Goku emerging from a hut in clothing that resembles Oob’s. It’s post-epilogue.

#17’s wish to restore the universes erased by Zeno brought back with it numbers 13 through 18, which were had the brink of falling to a domination campaign by a particularly powerful martial artist and his followers. He knows Ultra Instinct; maybe he was a former God of Destruction candidate; maybe not. He’s been amassing power since his return by going planet to planet, universe to universe, transforming denizens into followers. He has it out for Zeno, and now he’s heard about the Super Dragon Balls and is making haste toward Universes 6 and 7 to use them to erase the Omni-King. His name is Melodane or something, and we want a female villain in there so her name is Ruitfunch and she’s actually traditionally stronger than he is but can’t take control due to losing out to UI.

Toppo recruits Goku and Oob (training in fledgling UI) to go help him, Goku recruits Broly and Freeza (now forced into shady peacekeeping operations), and Pan is a stowaway, and the stage is set for a multiverses road trip to stop the villains. Toppo is swapped out along the way for other guests. At some point during all of this, they fight on top of a Super Dragon Ball, with lots of UI dodgy-martial-artsness in a team attack against Melodane, and Broly tries to ram a Super Dragon Ball into him because that’s fun and cool, and we can have fun and cool things. He runs along its surface instead because that’s also fun and cool. Lots of blasts are flying everywhere and blowing up planets, but Goku is also learning to cede future adventures to the next generation and Oob is learning to enjoy them.

Want a fun, tense moment? Villain heads to the Omni-King world just after having made his wish, and the Grand Priest is ready to stop him. He's finally about to throw a punch when there's a line about knowing he couldn't stand up to him, so he took a roundabout approach. Grand Priest freezes as the two Zenos have been erased; it just took Super Shenlong a little time to perform the wish. I don't know what happens when the Omni-King dies, but you can get super crazy from there. We're looking for memorable moments and cliffhangers, because it's DB.

Ruitfunch and the rest end up attacking Earth so we get a good Vegeta-Gohan mutual respect team-up against her. She has ribbon-like ki attacks that carve off whole chunks of the planet or something, and the rest of the Dragon Team is giving the minions one last hurrah, so they're there too. Spectacle is easy to come up with. Maybe she tries to throw the sun at them only to have it blasted back at her in the end. It's the last arc so we're going really big and stupid.

In the end Goku fights Melodane on some jungle planet in a space between universes and kicks him into the ground looking like he’s having the time of his life, but is tossed aside and has to leave it to Oob to luck into a win. Melodane seals himself in the null space so to repent and so that there’s still the promise of strong rivals, but Oob and co. will probably be the ones to face them instead of Goku. We find out there are multiverses upon multiverses in an ending cutaway with the Zenos, who have to answer to someone higher. Turtles all the way down; always more stuff to see.

I can fanfic at you all day. It’s easy to justify new villains within the confines the story has cooked up, though I think we’re also at a point to be looking for endings. You seem to have mistaken my interest in increasing visual spectacle—one part of DB’s lasting appeal and fun—as an interest in it alone.

By the way, I hold an MFA in fiction and you can find my short work in small presses and online.

To be coherent, you should move the story on an equal scaled context. Goku and Vegeta are moving in the strict void of absolute, abstract power, with only Whis&Beerus to determine a context.

Were we ever to see it though... By and large Super has kept the visual presentation of its action feeling pretty small scale.

Which is fine. It's a cheat, but I do understand as a reader what it means if someone can knock out a Blue Goku, a UI Goku, etc. The characters and forms are used in place of the sheer visual escalation, and I understand and accept readily that a solid punch against one Blue Goku means they could have punched through 50 base-form ones, and the stakes and scale then in play. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a visceral sense of fun and awe to seeing Goku and Tenshinhan first cut loose in either of their tournament matches (both very visceral increases in sense of speed and power for the series), or Goku and Freeza carving up the planet during their first fight. That could return with a willingness to be just a bit more out there. I'm told things are bigger and wilder than ever before, but it'd be nice to see it, or to be able to tell without having to be intimately familiar with existing relative strengths.

[BWri]

Yeah, Toriyama seems to be one of those kinds of people who comes up with an idea and needs someone to tell him "no" in case they go too far.

He had 3 editors during the entirety of DB, and in interviews he mentioned that the next editor was less strict than the previous, you can more or less have an idea when an editor left and a less strict one showed up with how the ideas get crazier, with Buu saga being the most obvious one.

Not just "no", Torishima-san proposed a lot of ideas that helped turn Dragon Ball into the juggernaut that it is today. Without his influence, DB would be something completely different. My personal opinion is that it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it ended up being.

As mentioned a few times though, only thing he actually made that is DB related once the manga was done was Jaco's manga, and honestly, for me that story shows his drop of quality, it's really forgettable, I read the manga like two weeks ago and I barely remember what happened in it, even as a gag manga I found it to be unimpressive, 'cause while in DB itself sometimes I found Toriyama's jokes to be bad, at least they were remarkable in some way (Even if it's how bad the joke was), in Jaco's manga I struggle to remember any joke besides him peeing in Tights, and the news getting Jaco's look wrong.

And no, I wasn't expecting Jaco's manga to be a shonen, just a decent enough read for whatever it was, I do try to enjoy stuff if I decide to waste my time with 'em, Jaco's manga was just something I don't find to be interesting.

Yeah, the Jaco manga and the added Bardock chapters really made me look at AT's modern work a little differently since I found them both to be fairly mundane. Jaco was somewhat fun at least and added some interesting wrinkles to the story and lore but I found the Bardock chapters to be completely lacking in imagination and content that actively made Dragon Ball less fun and interesting.

**I enjoyed Sandland quite a lot, mostly due to the art

[BWri]

After the mess that is DragonBall Super you have to wonder if and when Toriyama lost his touch. Flanderization of characters, no sense of stakes or progression and weak cop-out endings (Resurrection F) are just a handful of the problems the current product has. I get why TOEI want his name involved with projects, since it makes it more "authentic" but it seems that it isn't synonymous with quality.
When did he lose his touch? Looking back, the Son Goku returns special was entertaining and felt like DragonBall but Battle of Gods was when quality started to dip. While still an entertaining movie, it felt like a step back.
Resurrection F was....well....a mess and from then on we saw sporadic highlights, mostly infused with nostalgia.

BoG was a pretty nice touch imo, I think the atmosphere ruins it, the designs, etc.

BoG was largely a slam dunk for me with only a few logic holes (pure hearted Saiyans nonsense, Vegeta's rage form), inconsistencies, and missed opportunities (lack of Tarble) sullying it a little. Buuuuut, wasn't this a script that AT reworked? If not, I know that he was at least saddled with some sort of proposal for the movie which already included variations of Beerus and Whis that AT heavily altered. Is it possible that the strength of BoG is based on that original treatment + AT's edits?

I suppose the structure for BoG is similar to RoF and Broly, but BoG feels like it has much more meat on the bones and comes across as more cohesive to me. RoF feels incomplete and flat, while Broly feels like two separate movies jammed into one for how little the first half matters once we get to the fight.

I have a feeling he would have retconned the SSG becoming the base, but maybe he wouldn’t have. Getting rid of all the SS forms and only have SSGSS is appealing to me. Not a fan of 8 different transformations when we could have had “God-like Saiyan - SSGSS” instead of “Base - SS - SS2 - SS3 - SSG - SSGSS - SSGSS (Kaioken or complete or evolution) - UI Omen - UI Mastered (or Ultra Ego)”, it’s just really stupid and overkill now.

I still want this. If we had this from the start, it would have made U6 feel a little more special since they'd be the only ones using the nostalgia forms (outside of Trunks).

[Lukmendes]

Not just "no", Torishima-san proposed a lot of ideas that helped turn Dragon Ball into the juggernaut that it is today. Without his influence, DB would be something completely different. My personal opinion is that it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it ended up being.

I see, I'll assume Torishima is the first one, and if so, what I know about him is that he suggested the creation of Krillin, and I think he was against letting Goku grow up (That one I'm not sure if it was him or other higher ups).

Yeah, the Jaco manga and the added Bardock chapters really made me look at AT's modern work a little differently since I found them both to be fairly mundane. Jaco was somewhat fun at least and added some interesting wrinkles to the story and lore but I found the Bardock chapters to be completely lacking in imagination and content that actively made Dragon Ball less fun and interesting.

**I enjoyed Sandland quite a lot, mostly due to the art

One of the details I find the most boring about Jaco was line that there isn't a lot of intelligent life in the universe, while a number wasn't given there, it does make the universe smaller by saying there isn't much.

Then again, I guess maybe that was done so the idea of the multiverse looks bigger, but it is questionable how the hell Freeza could run his business if there isn't a lot of planets to conquer lol.

[Majin Man 101]

After the mess that is DragonBall Super you have to wonder if and when Toriyama lost his touch. Flanderization of characters, no sense of stakes or progression and weak cop-out endings (Resurrection F) are just a handful of the problems the current product has. I get why TOEI want his name involved with projects, since it makes it more "authentic" but it seems that it isn't synonymous with quality.
When did he lose his touch? Looking back, the Son Goku returns special was entertaining and felt like DragonBall but Battle of Gods was when quality started to dip. While still an entertaining movie, it felt like a step back.
Resurrection F was....well....a mess and from then on we saw sporadic highlights, mostly infused with nostalgia.

I would say yes. The Majin boo arc was the last story that we got out of this franchise that was 100% quality. That was Toriyama's last hurrah and I do believe even then he was struggling with the story, and thats why it ended there. Everything BOG-onwards has been pretty poor story telling.