What not start fresh with Dragon Ball?

[Dr. Casey]

Digimon they change characters in every season.
Yu-Gi-Oh they change characters in the new season, even in continuation such as Yu-Gi-Oh to Yu-Gi-Oh GX.
Yashahime is the continuation of Inuyahsa and we get new generation characters.
Boruto is the continuation of Naruto and we get new generation of characters.
Shaman King got a continuation with new geneneration of characters.
Beyblade, Beyblade V Force and Beyblade G Revolution are continuation. Then Beyblade: Metal Fusion are a whole new set of characters.
The Seven Deadly Sin got new generation of characters in the Four Knights of the Apocalypse. Both the old generation and new generation appears.


For Dragon Ball they can focus on the new generation, while the old characters are still in the story or they can make whole new characters completely.

Boruto was just a next generation story with the original characters still present in important supporting roles, which works perfectly fine. For most stories I don't know if it would be a good idea to act like a JRPG like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest and wipe the character roster completely clean (works for JRPGs, though that's partially due to expectations and it being seen as the norm for most series). Not all stories have to include Goku, the prequel story Kunzait mentioned would be great (I'd particularly enjoy seeing more of Gyuumao and having him become much more of an actual character), but I don't know how interesting I'd find an entirely new cast that completely lacks any returning characters at all. A mostly new cast with a few returning characters, sure.

[jjgp1112]

What are Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon promoting? The former can't be the cards because they were only released in 1999, while the franchise started in 1996. You could say that the latter was initially promoting tamagotchi, but I'd say it managed to evolve past that, I don't see one since my childhood days. Then again, I don't know about its sales today.

Yes, I'm well aware that Yu-Gi-Oh wasn't initially about the card game...but that's what it became and presently is.

Although Pokémon is a younger franchise, it is, however, a much more popular one. So it is a pretty big deal (and a testament) if they can change the protagonist after so long while still maintaining sales and being recognizable.

My dawg, the Pokemon anime is literally the modern godfather of the "thinly disguised merchandise vehicles" that I previously pointed to

It's very distasteful to claim or imply Dragon Ball has nothing to offer without Goku. Not to mention wrong, everyone loves the Bardock special.

And I speak as someone whose favourite is Goku, and I like him so ridiculously much more than all the others.

My point is that most stories are intrinsically tied to their main characters - ultimately, Goku and co. are the people driving the stories. The blasts fights and artwork might be what makes the series entertaining but the characters are ultimately what keeps people engaged and why it's still popular to this day. That doesn't go just for Goku, but all of the cast. If you're gonna make a story without them...you're better off just making something original.

It's not insulting or distateful at all - if anything, it shows just how good of a job Toriyama did at telling his story. Dragon Ball's not a story about mystical orbs with a rotating cast of guys trying to find it; it's a story about Goku, his homies and their adventures in a wacky world.

[Kunzait_83]

The closet wuxia that I can think of that did a new generation was with Street Figther 3. I love Street Fighter 3 (all its versions), even more than Street Fighter 2, but a lot of people didn’t like it because it introduced too many new characters.

Tons and tons and TONS of Wuxia/martial arts stories have done the whole "pass the torch to the next generation of fighters" bit. Its thoroughly baked into the whole genre's history. Everything from Condor Heroes to Romance of the Three Kingdoms to even much of the folklore surrounding Wong Fei-Hung, to briefly name just a few examples, are all multigenerational tales where we follow one set of characters, only for their skills to be passed on to a new generation of fighters after them who's travails we then follow.

It would've been in no way unfitting whatsoever for DB in that sense to have stuck with the notion of following a new generation of characters that the Boo arc introduced.


All that being said though... yeah, the people here who are drawing comparisons with Digimon, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Beyblade, etc's rotating casts of generic middle school kids... all due respect, please stop. No. As has been said, those franchises are blatant toy/card game commercials (more blatant even than is normal for most kids' properties).

They swap out main characters/casts constantly because nobody genuinely cares about any of them, because those franchises are all - regardless of how much you may personally like them - just slop. They're just mascots and self-inserts for the audience of 7 year olds, not actual characters.

No one on the planet other than an INCREDIBLY insular niche of heavily online fanboys is in any way attached to or cares about... *checks Wikipedia*... Tyson Granger from Beyblade. Nor... *checks Wikipedia again*... Tai Kamiya from Digimon. No one. These aren't actual characters with any characteristics that are even remotely relatable to anyone who isn't barely out of Kindergarten: they purely exist to sell toys and merch to Japanese (and later U.S.) 2nd grade boys. That's it. Nothing more to any of them than that.

This isn't making the point you think that its making here about changing out casts of characters: and I'm saying all that as someone who is generally OPEN and receptive to the idea of Dragon Ball moving on to shift its focus toward a new generation of characters.

but as far as a whole new cast, I just find myself going, "What's the point?"

Can't speak for anyone else here, but I certainly was never making the argument or case to just switch to COMPLETELY unrelated, random characters in the DB world. The argument I'm making is that I am and have always been open to moving on ahead to the *next generation* of DB characters: as in the kids (and in a few cases, grandkids) of the core cast we'd spent most of the series following.

The Boo arc was basically priming itself to do exactly that: have Gohan be the new main character, and have Goten, Trunks, Videl, and so on be his supporting cast. With appearances still from the original crew, like Kuririn, Piccolo, etc. This sort of similar format/structure is basically what I'm talking about here: a gradual transition that's eased into, with plenty of overlap with the previous cast of main characters.

Again, I'm certainly not making the case for just completely sweeping aside EVERYONE from the original cast of characters and starting fresh with totally different, unrelated randos completely on a dime. I strongly think that IF you're going to go this route, then there should be an organic transition/flow to the original characters' children and whatnot as the original cast grows older and gradually ages/fades out. Not a sudden "Hey, the old cast are all gone for no reason, now here's a bunch of randos you've never met before suddenly" kind of jarring non-sequitur of a shift.

Not to mention wrong, everyone loves the Bardock special.

Everyone indeed loves the Bardock special, since it was hands down one of the single coolest, best executed things to come out of the original DB anime run... and that's partly why it was then thoroughly run into the ground and tarnished by both Toei and even Toriyama himself during the bulk of the revival. Now you kind of have to specify WHICH iteration of Bardock the character and the Bardock special itself you're referring to, which is very annoying. Sometimes well enough should be left alone.

[JulieYBM]

I'm not a big fan of the "it was made to sell merchandise and is therefore not Real Art or comparable to Dragon Ball" since Dragon Ball itself was also created as a commercial product from the onset. Hell, it's arguable a title like Digimon or the Pocket Monsters franchise had more creative vision behind it than Dragon Ball give Toriyama's self-proclaimed desire to not make the series deep. We can—and should—criticize the commercial restraints of needing to shill a new toy every week, but to reduce the artistic contributions of those titles to their use/purpose to a bunch of producers, is more than a little foul.

I also think it's a shame that people in the western geek sphere—which I am singling out because it's where I exist online—aren't talking more about the significant contributions of creators like Tomioka Atsuhiro, Asada Yuuji or Iwane Masaaki to, say, a title like Pokemon. We need to bolster people taking an interest in the real people behind creating these series, especially when they're the ones creating the highlight moments of these titles. I've argued the same about Dragon Ball for years now, too.

Anyway, at the risk of repeating myself: I don't think a long-term BORUTO-esque spin-off is necessary for Dragon Ball lest someone had a really good idea. The static nature of Dragon Ball in recent projects has been more a sign of a lack of confidence in simply doing something firmly to really shake up the perception of the series. I think that's been something pushed for by corporate executives, but also falls on Toriyama's shoulders for playing ball with them, rather than really throwing a curveball and just making broader changes to the types of stories and characterizations he wrote.

Anyway, whatever happens next, I hope whoever winds up writing new Dragon Ball stuff is allowed to tell their story with the ability to just tell executives to fuck off to a greater degree.

[tonysoprano300]

Do people actually say that the Dragon Ball universe is uninteresting? I can't say thats a sentiment I've ever heard before. A big part of what made the original series so unique and special was the world we go explore and interact with through the eyes of Goku.

[Grimlock]

Yes, I'm well aware that Yu-Gi-Oh wasn't initially about the card game...but that's what it became and presently is.

I disagree. As far as I can tell, Yu-Gi-Oh! still is a series first and foremost. Real-life products promote it, not the other way around. But to each their own, I guess.

My dawg, the Pokemon anime is literally the modern godfather of the "thinly disguised merchandise vehicles" that I previously pointed to

Yeah, but that's besides the point I made. I specifically quoted a sentence that mentioned the age of the franchise.

[Hellspawn28]

not to mention stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, and Beyblade are thinly disgusted merchandise vehicles.

What are Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon promoting? The former can't be the cards because they were only released in 1999, while the franchise started in 1996. You could say that the latter was initially promoting tamagotchi, but I'd say it managed to evolve past that, I don't see one since my childhood days. Then again, I don't know about its sales today.

The Digimon anime and the video games (at least the early sutff like the Saturn game and Digimon World 1) were made to promote the V-pets. Watching the show and playing the games were one big ad to sell more v-pets to consumers.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'm not a big fan of the "it was made to sell merchandise and is therefore not Real Art or comparable to Dragon Ball" since Dragon Ball itself was also created as a commercial product from the onset. Hell, it's arguable a title like Digimon or the Pocket Monsters franchise had more creative vision behind it than Dragon Ball give Toriyama's self-proclaimed desire to not make the series deep. We can—and should—criticize the commercial restraints of needing to shill a new toy every week, but to reduce the artistic contributions of those titles to their use/purpose to a bunch of producers, is more than a little foul.

All anime, manga and video game properties are art. I'm also not a supporter of the argument bring made to sell merchandise invalidates them as such, because yes, Dragon Ball, Pokémon and Digimon are all works of art. The more important question is do these properties have creative vision that can overshadow the obvious commercial interests? I would argue with Dragon Ball there is far more of the former than with Pokémon and Digimon.

Sure Akira Toriyama said he never intended for Dragon Ball to be all that deep but there's so many references throughout the anime and manga to Journey to the West and all the movies he was a fan of, you can tell Dragon Ball was written by a man driven to tell a story, so much so that Derek Padula can write a load of books on it. I know Satoshi Tajiri said Pokémon was inspired by his childhood, collecting and trading bugs with his friends but is there evidence of a broad range of inspiration for Pokémon throughout the games? As for Digimon I don't know much about it, but I'd be surprised if the creators were as influenced by as large number of works of art as Toriyama was.

[Hellspawn28]

As for Digimon I don't know much about it, but I'd be surprised if the creators were as influenced by as large number of works of art as Toriyama was.

Digimon was inspired by Bandai franchise Pocket Zaurus from the 1980s (which got made into an anime from Saban called "Diplodo") and was design to be "Tamagotchi for boys". Kenji Watanabe mentioned that his artistic inspiration for Digimon comes from American comics, particularly titles like Todd Mcfarlane's Spawn, as well as the works of Simon Bisley (known for Lobo) and Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy). As far I know, Dragon Ball was never mention was an infulence for the series.

[JulieYBM]

I'm not a big fan of the "it was made to sell merchandise and is therefore not Real Art or comparable to Dragon Ball" since Dragon Ball itself was also created as a commercial product from the onset. Hell, it's arguable a title like Digimon or the Pocket Monsters franchise had more creative vision behind it than Dragon Ball give Toriyama's self-proclaimed desire to not make the series deep. We can—and should—criticize the commercial restraints of needing to shill a new toy every week, but to reduce the artistic contributions of those titles to their use/purpose to a bunch of producers, is more than a little foul.

All anime, manga and video game properties are art. I'm also not a supporter of the argument bring made to sell merchandise invalidates them as such, because yes, Dragon Ball, Pokémon and Digimon are all works of art. The more important question is do these properties have creative vision that can overshadow the obvious commercial interests? I would argue with Dragon Ball there is far more of the former than with Pokémon and Digimon.

Sure Akira Toriyama said he never intended for Dragon Ball to be all that deep but there's so many references throughout the anime and manga to Journey to the West and all the movies he was a fan of, you can tell Dragon Ball was written by a man driven to tell a story, so much so that Derek Padula can write a load of books on it. I know Satoshi Tajiri said Pokémon was inspired by his childhood, collecting and trading bugs with his friends but is there evidence of a broad range of inspiration for Pokémon throughout the games? As for Digimon I don't know much about it, but I'd be surprised if the creators were as influenced by as large number of works of art as Toriyama was.

Nakatsuru Katsuyoshi is the character designer for the first four Digimon anime and was involved with the character designs of the initial films and the more recent Taguchi-directed films, too.

The Digimon film series has a more mature storytelling to it. Kakudou was not involved with the films, but as series director for the first two series, he did try to approach the series with his own ideas.

The two Hosoda Mamoru films and the Yamauchi Shigeyasu double-feature are wildly creative and had strong ideas about what their tones and feels would be like.

[Hellspawn28]

People view the idea of something made to sell toys/merch as bad thing because they are manly made for capitalism to sell a product and not anything with artistic value.

[JulieYBM]

I think that moving toward appreciating art for those who make it and not the greed of executives looking to make money helps in that department, but it doesn't address the issue of art being created in a industry that prioritizes the acquisition of profit.

It's a multi-layered issue, so flexibility is a requirement to understand the complexities of everything involved.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

People view the idea of something made to sell toys/merch as bad thing because they are manly made for capitalism to sell a product and not anything with artistic value.

It's not a bad thing as long as there are people an IP appeals to artistically. Dragon Ball is a toy commercial but its a good toy commercial because it combines decades of influence from wuxia and western movies into its characters, story and world. Artistic value is in the the of the beholder though. I'm sure there are people more well versed in Pokémon and Digimon that can explain their creative merits.

[Kunzait_83]

I'm not a big fan of the "it was made to sell merchandise and is therefore not Real Art or comparable to Dragon Ball" since Dragon Ball itself was also created as a commercial product from the onset. Hell, it's arguable a title like Digimon or the Pocket Monsters franchise had more creative vision behind it than Dragon Ball give Toriyama's self-proclaimed desire to not make the series deep. We can—and should—criticize the commercial restraints of needing to shill a new toy every week, but to reduce the artistic contributions of those titles to their use/purpose to a bunch of producers, is more than a little foul.

Nobody ever said that Dragon Ball doesn't sell merchandise or isn't itself commercial. Dragon Ball is the furthest thing in the world from some uncommercialized arthouse project, and anyone who'd claim it was those things is clearly delusional and detached from reality.

All that being said though... there is still a significant divide in *degrees* between something like a Dragon Ball or a Yu Yu Hakusho or a Hokuto no Ken or a Rurouni Kenshin, or even a Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia, or Bleach - all of which are across the board heavily mainstream, commercialized children's franchises - versus titles like Digimon, Pokemon, Beyblade, Medabots, etc. which are within a whole different level & layer of commercialized.

Most generic Shonen titles - even abjectly terrible ones that I personally have zero respect for, like Naruto or One Piece - have at bare minimum some genuine spark of personalized authorial creativity at their onset: and to the extent that they're commercialized products, they generally start out their lifespands with the intent of mainly just selling Manga primarily.

If they somehow manage to take-off and become cultural phenomena like Dragon Ball or Naruto and their ilk do, then they eventually move on to also hawking video games, anime, toys, posters, etc. There's a process of stages that they generally go through to get to that point - and not all or even close to all of them ever do. Some actually do become just these tiny cult hits that don't really ever turn into merchandising vehicles.

Hell, look how long it took JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (which was always popular and well respected and liked, but hardly a Mega Merch Juggernaut, even in its prime) to go on being a thankless cult/critical darling for decades and decades before getting a 30+ years belated anime TV series and getting a global/international audience to finally catch up to what the rest of us had always known about that series since circa 1988.

Like it or hate it, nobody can in any way credibly accuse JoJo of existing primarily as a corporate vehicle first and foremost: it exists in no small part largely on the creative whims of Hirohiko Araki's insane, warped mind-palace, and it took more than 30 years for a vast swath of international audiences to finally tag along for the ride.

Dragon Ball, to use as our primary example here (given the site we're all on here), didn't come into existence as a merchandising phenomenon: it came into existence because Toriyama loved cheesy Kung Fu movies and wanted to make a silly, fun Kung Fu manga as his next post-Dr. Slump project. The Dragon Ball Merchandising Commercial Empire grew organically out of that because a whole lot of people fell in love with Toriyama's wholly unique and personalized spin on a ton of incredibly well worn martial arts cliches. The cart did not come before the horse.

The same goes for even Shonen that I don't like and consider to be utter trash, like Naruto: even in instances where they're just trying to be blatant ripoffs of Dragon Ball, there is usually some genuine and sincere creative love and appreciation for DB on the part of the authors that is very evident in the finished result (god knows this is particularly and absurdly self-evident in One Piece especially).

None of this applies to stuff like Pokemon, Digimon, and their ilk: from moment one of their inception, they are created entirely to sell merchandise, and there is often minimal to no authorial personal spark to any of them. They are pure, undiluted Corporate Product, made by committee, and with zero room for anything of any even vague pretense at auteurship whatsoever at ANY stage of their creative inceptions.

Digimon, Beyblade, Medabots, etc. did not come into existence via any kind of personal authorial or creative spark at their inception: they were conceived from the jump by a corporate committee to be purely, 100% commercial products to move sales for toys and video games and nothing else. They are little more than justifications for figures on a company's spreadsheet down to their very-most bone marrow.

Yu-Gi-Oh exists in a weird limbo because it kind of started out as the former/generic kind of Shonen for approximately 5 seconds before it quickly devolved into the latter and remained the latter ever since: but generally speaking, this sort of divide between "Generic Commercial Mainstream Shonen" like DB, OP, Naruto, YYH, etc. and "Stupidly Fucking Cynically Commercial" like Pokemon, Digimon, Beyblade, etc. is unmistakably present and glaringly obvious to anyone with a set of eyeballs and the ability to grasp basic context.

In an American context, its the difference between something like say... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which started life as a genuinely art-driven underground indie comic (and one that wasn't even aimed at kids to begin with) before eventually growing and transitioning into becoming a kids' merchandising juggernaut, versus something like G.I. Joe or Transformers, which are designed as toy commercials first and foremost, and creativity a distant, distant last, if its even on the docket at all (and often it isn't).

Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hokuto no Ken, Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, Hunter X Hunter... all these franchises start life as something authorial, and if they're made to sell anything on the onset then its just copies of their Manga publications: and then maybe later on down the line, if they're lucky and they take off, they become Merchandising Empires. Doesn't mean that most of them can't (and indeed, often do) suck something awful of course...

...but this is still on a whole separate plane of commercialization from stuff like Digimon, Beyblade, et al. Those are toys and commercials FIRST and on the outset. There is zero pretense whatsoever at creativity as a driver at any stage of their development: these solely exist to move numbers on a quarterly corporate spreadsheet. Nothing more, nothing less.

Arguing for creative integrity for those things is like arguing for the creative integrity of the blurbs on the back of a Masters of the Universe action figure package: its many, many more degrees further removed from any semblance of actual creativity than even something like Dragon Ball, or even Naruto or One Piece are.

And anyone who's in any way familiar with things I've said about those latter franchises in the past on here should know by now how much "love and respect" I have for those series. So take that into consideration when I say that, much as I have zero regard or respect for most generic Shonen Jump-like titles, I would still posit most of those as being at least somewhat closer in line to something vaguely approaching "art" than I would something like the various "Mon" franchises or Beyblade, Medabots, etc. which are 100% thoroughly artless number crunchers for quarterly earnings first, second, and last.

And just to hammer this point even further home: for all the shit I have and will continue to give Shonen Manga writ large as a whole... at the end of the day, it has still over the years managed to from time to time every so often produce things with legit critical and even literary merit like Barefoot Gen, Tomorrow's Joe, Rokudenashi Blues, Stop!! Hibari-kun!, Kimagure Orange Road, and much of the works of Osamu Tezuka and Leiji Matsumoto.

In the highly, laughably unlikely instance that a franchise that was created wholly in a toy or video game company's boardroom manages to produce something even vaguely approaching the level of something like Galaxy Express 999, Hi no Tori, or Apollo's Song, then we can maybe start to have a serious discussion about how Generalized Shonen Manga and Toy Commercial Anime Franchises are in any way comparable with one another in terms of their creative and artistic reach.

Until then though, saying that General Shonen Manga (like Dragon Ball) and Toy Branded Anime franchises (like the various Mons) are in any way whatsoever within the same lane and degree of corporatized commercialism... I'm sorry, but saying that they are is just an absurd and ridiculously asymmetrical comparison to make. On its face.

They are both indeed heavily commercial: they are in no way however within the same level and degree of commercial as one another. I'd consider that comparison unfairly and unduly insulting even to something like One Piece... and I'm the guy around here who's made a sport out of insulting One Piece over the years.

One Piece is unbearably lame and the epitome of unwatchably cringe... but it is 1000% utmost sincere in its lameness and unwatchable cringiness. Toei and Shueisha are certainly guilty of cynically using One Piece's popularity to exploit the lonely, friendless neurosis of Hikikomomri Shut-Ins all throughout Japan and the world over for their own profit... but I also completely believe that Oda is himself, on some underlying emotional level, one of those lonely, neurotic Hikikomori Shut-Ins, and that's the sincere creative vein he's tapped into to create One Piece in the first place.

For as much shit as I give One Piece and as much as I truly do loathe and despise it and moreover what it's popularity represents and says about the anime/manga audience, industry, and culture of the past 20/25 years now... I do not in any remote way believe it to be anywhere near as transparently, commercially cynical, corporate, and artless as something like Pokemon or Digimon or Beyblade and their ilk are to their utmost core. There. After 20 years on this site, I finally at long last found something positive and nice to say about One Piece!

Yes, Shonen Jump, Bandai, Nintendo, etc. are all corporate monoliths that exist primarily to create profit and revenue: but to claim that the output of a company that primarily exists to sell Manga - a medium that is ultimately primarily art and narrative-driven - versus a company that exists primarily to sell toys - a medium that is 100% purely novelty driven - are all working within anything resembling the same degree and level of artless commercialism... yeah, this is just a willfully obtuse comparison to make, since it completely disregards context and degrees. All due respect, sincerely.

I also think it's a shame that people in the western geek sphere—which I am singling out because it's where I exist online—aren't talking more about the significant contributions of creators like Tomioka Atsuhiro, Asada Yuuji or Iwane Masaaki to, say, a title like Pokemon. We need to bolster people taking an interest in the real people behind creating these series, especially when they're the ones creating the highlight moments of these titles. I've argued the same about Dragon Ball for years now, too.

Obviously I'm wholly in complete agreement that the contributions of the actual artists and creators should be vastly more front and center in the eyes of the fanbase. No arguments there whatsoever, naturally.

But just because a Toy/Video Game Commercial franchise like Pokemon uses very talented animators and animation directors to produce its anime, that alone does not give those anime much in the way of creative merit beyond a purely visual and technical level. Technically competent animation alone without anything else behind it is enough to sustain a film or a short: but certainly not NEARLY enough to sustain something that goes on for hundreds and hundreds of episodes for decades on end.

Hell, its not even enough to sustain something that's like 50 or 60 episodes or whatnot. Gundam Wing, for a random example, is one of the most visually lush, gorgeous, handsomely animated Gundam series that was ever made for TV (discounting OVAs and films)... and yet is so unbearably, insufferably, insultingly stupid and shallow in every other respect, that its visual splendor and aesthetics still in no way makes it anything close to remotely watchable for dozens and dozens of episodes at a time.

I've done more than enough of my time on these kinds of anime over the past 20+ years, thanks largely to communities like this one and the broader Western fanbase of the 2000s and onward: brain rot quickly sets in within the first few episodes of these things.

If something as inherently vapid as Pokemon is netting top drawer animation talent and directors, then I'd consider that a sad abject waste of their talents. At least it pays the bills though, so I'm in no way blaming them or throwing them any shade whatsoever for taking the work. A paycheck is a paycheck, and I'm sure it likely helps them get better, more creatively worthwhile jobs elsewhere in the industry.

The static nature of Dragon Ball in recent projects has been more a sign of a lack of confidence in simply doing something firmly to really shake up the perception of the series. I think that's been something pushed for by corporate executives, but also falls on Toriyama's shoulders for playing ball with them, rather than really throwing a curveball and just making broader changes to the types of stories and characterizations he wrote.

Agreed with every word of this 1000%.

Anyway, whatever happens next, I hope whoever winds up writing new Dragon Ball stuff is allowed to tell their story with the ability to just tell executives to fuck off to a greater degree.

I don't have much confidence that this will happen personally, but its always nice to be wrong about these things.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Yu-Gi-Oh exists in a weird limbo because it kind of started out as the former/generic kind of Shonen for approximately 5 seconds before it quickly devolved into the latter and remained the latter ever since

Yu-Gi-Oh started off as a horror manga and featured a range of different games. If I recall correctly when the card game was introduced fans began asking where they could buy the cards, would they be seen more in the manga, etc. The Dark Side of Dimensions movie, which is based on a sequel story Kazuki Takahashi wrote for his original manga is actually a really neat epilogue and takes the story in a different direction than you would have expected (namely focusing a lot more on the rival). So I'd say the original series (both manga and anime), like Dragon Ball started off with some sort of creative spark, and as you say the merchandising empire grew naturally from that.

All the Yu-Gi-Oh spinoffs however have obviously been made to capitalise on the popularity of the existing trading card game. If Dragon Ball were to go down the same route of changing all the main characters a "next generation" series would likewise be more corporately controlled than the original manga when Akira Toriyama began writing it in 1984.

[TechExpert2021]

Unrelated to the point of this thread, but Nintendo's Mario franchise isn't a corporate product like their Pokémon franchise, is it?

[Kunzait_83]

Unrelated, but Nintendo's Mario franchise isn't a corporate product like their Pokémon franchise, is it?

Everything you ever buy in a store or online that is produced and distributed by a major corporation is itself a corporate product. Everything. No exceptions. Hell in Mario's case, he himself is literally a corporate mascot. One of THE most recognizable corporate mascots in the whole world.

We're simply at this juncture picking nits regarding the relative levels and degrees of art vs commercialism which is present across two very distinct variations of Japanese children's cartoons. As you do on a site like this one, which is dedicated entirely to a Japanese children's cartoon.

[LoganForkHands73]

And if you ask me, proposing a Dragon Ball continuation focusing on a new generation of characters really doesn't sound that crazy. It's actually a pretty reasonable suggestion that even Toriyama seriously considered but for some reason, it's always treated with abject disdain.

For whatever its worth, I've always consistently been an ardent defender of the whole "passing the torch to the next generation" theme/throughline that the Boo arc set up and then somewhat/partly aborted. Again, broken record here, but "passing the torch to the next generation" is one of the oldest, most essential Wuxia/martial arts fiction themes out there. Dragon Ball is nothing if not a compendium of of classic martial arts fantasy tropes and themes, and having the series fully commit to the "next generation" theme would be 1000% fitting.

I like Goku as much as the next person, but he was never my number 1 favorite character in the series by any means.

Yeah exactly, it's the natural progression of things for a warrior to grow old and pass on everything he's learned to the next young prodigy. Even when Goku reluctantly returns, Toriyama still tries to maintain the passing the torch theme to the very end, even if it's not very deeply explored.

The tone however... yeah, no. I gotta part ways with you quite heavily on that one. Dragon Ball's tone (not just mixing comedy and martial arts, but particularly mixing sly whimsy and toilet humor and martial arts fantasy, and tonally whiplashing deftly between stark serious drama/violence and silly whimsical nonsense and back again) has been done a LOT of times before, during, and after it.

Unless there's something else more specifically that you're referring to by "tone" here, then I can simply name a LOT of wuxia material out there that has almost all of the ingredients of DB's general tone: in the same and various other combinations with one another. Whimsy, irreverence, toilet humor, drama, endearing characters, violent martial arts, silly martial arts, magic, mysticism, sci fi, gadgets, etc. all of it.

I'm not going to call you Logan out for this in particular, but I will say broadly/generally that for the most part most folks overall in the Western DB fandom simply have just not watched nearly enough Wuxia or explored it all that much deeply to really make that kind of call. Everything from vast gigantic chunks of the Shaw Bros. and Golden Harvest outputs to half the Wuxia to ever come out of Taiwan in the 70s, 80s, and 90s have all done DB's tone, both in the same manner and in countless variances.

You know, fair enough, I can actually say the stuff I've seen has been pretty tonally similar to Dragon Ball so that definitely wasn't the best word to use there.

Even for a pretty low-hanging-fruit example, Jackie Chan's character in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow when he's about to fight the Christian missionary assassin, so a legit murderer, and (at least in the English dub) he calls him something like "You lousy swine". And he beats him by claw-fisting him in the nutsack. That alone is so Goku. Not to mention all the creative training sequences and all that good shit.

Absolutely 1000% agreed on the visuals of course: Toriyama's art style, aesthetic, and overall design sense are completely and utterly unique and one of a kind, and you're NEVER going to see its like anywhere else, period.

Visuals and aesthetics though, you're right on about though: there will never, ever be another Akira Toriyama in that department.

This is why prose fan fiction or proposals for official Dragon Ball light novels never do it for me, because removing the visuals from Dragon Ball is like eating KFC without the skin. Doujinshi comics may be unlicensed imitations, but they retain the most important part of Dragon Ball's language and that automatically makes them superior in my eyes... even if the story itself is pretty dreck like Dragon Ball Multiverse (though of course, I'd rather take a fan comic that accomplishes on all fronts like Dragon Ball Hakai).

I've said this many, many times throughout the years, and will say it again: I've always carried a strong torch for a prequel series starring very young versions of Muten Roshi, Grandpa Gohan, Gyuumao, Tsuru Sennin, Tao Pai Pai, Uranai Baba, Mutaito, and the nameless Namekian/Son of Katatsu, set hundreds and hundreds of years on Earth before Goku was born, much less landed and that explores the Martial Arts community of the Dragon Ball world that Muten Roshi (and later, Grandpa Gohan) grew up within, and from which the nameless Namekian would eventually rise to become Kami (and spawn Daimao) within.

There's my all time number one most desired Goku-free (and Saiya-jin free) Dragon Ball spinoff. Always has been for 30+ years now, and its one of the few concepts for a new DB series that would automatically straight up front from the jump get me incredibly jazzed and hyped up for.

I really hope there's a possibility of this some day. Toyotaro did a neat sketch of young Turtle and Crane Hermit training together, and even if it's just an idle doodle drawn alongside so many others, it somehow makes it seem within reach.

When you look back on the basic cornerstones of the lore, you realise how insanely rich it is. Muten Roshi trained both Grandpa Gohan and Ox-King? He fought a war with Mutaito and the Crane Hermit against Demon King Piccolo? He climbed Karin's Tower and took the Kinto-Un and Nyoibo for himself? What an interesting life this pervy old geezer led. And all this happens decades before aliens and cyborgs start entering the scene.

We still get SOME of that same breathless "throwing everything at the wall" creativity with the Revival/Super... but its hamstrung now because of the fact that Dragon Ball is now a Legacy/Nostalgia franchise. And we're also now even that much further deep into late-stage capitalism globally, and so virtually almost *nothing* can ever be TOO different or TOO risky lest we upset the shareholders and make .00002% less this quarter.

So now DB can't just do wild new surprising things anymore: it now had to also Replay The Old Hits. The Classics. i.e. Shit we've already seen and done before. So we get Super Saiya-jin but BLUE! And PINK! We get RETURNING CLASSIC VILLAINS! An ORANGE Piccolo! And the characters can't age or change too much anymore, because we're a Brand now, and Brands need to stay consistent and familiar.

It's more baffling to me when fans increasingly act like shareholders, pooh-poohing every single idea. And yeah, at this point, "what if Dragon Ball focused on the next generation" is hardly an original idea worth applauding, but it's like come on, would a little creative renewal of some kind really go amiss?

It sadly says a lot that Daima seems to be the project with the least executive/editorial interference and the least desire to pander to fans. "HERE COMES A NEW STORY" being a part of the intro almost feels like a tacit admission that they haven't been too bothered about anything "new" until now. After more than a full decade of this revival era, it took this long for Toriyama to write a story completely from scratch that he was passionate about, without some suit in his ear telling him "Hey, you should put Cooler in there, he's popular." And even then, the core premise owes much to GT, albeit much better executed so far. The Majin Buu arc flashbacks also feel aptly integrated into the plot rather than distracting fanservice.

That's really been my sole/main gripe with the Nu Dragon Ball: its great anytime its allowed to get breaths of the old "just making up weird, wild shit as we go along because its fun and cool" energy... but those come in between bouts of tedious "Hey, here's this thing you liked from the old series! You remember this, don't you?"

I will say this about the revival, even though Toriyama can no longer emulate the "write by the seat of his pants" conditions that made Dragon Ball so free-flowing during the original publication, he's surprisingly good at mimicking it even when he's planned storylines years in advance. As vapid as Resurrection 'F' generally is, that climax with Goku and Vegeta fucking up due to sheer arrogance and incompetence, then having to have their friendly neighbourhood Deus ex Machina rewind time so they can unfuck their fuck up, is all 100% Toriyama. It may not be especially good, but no hired gun from Toei Animation would write that shit.

[jjgp1112]

Yu-Gi-Oh exists in a weird limbo because it kind of started out as the former/generic kind of Shonen for approximately 5 seconds before it quickly devolved into the latter and remained the latter ever since

Yu-Gi-Oh started off as a horror manga and featured a range of different games. If I recall correctly when the card game was introduced fans began asking where they could buy the cards, would they be seen more in the manga, etc. The Dark Side of Dimensions movie, which is based on a sequel story Kazuki Takahashi wrote for his original manga is actually a really neat epilogue and takes the story in a different direction than you would have expected (namely focusing a lot more on the rival). So I'd say the original series (both manga and anime), like Dragon Ball started off with some sort of creative spark, and as you say the merchandising empire grew naturally from that.

All the Yu-Gi-Oh spinoffs however have obviously been made to capitalise on the popularity of the existing trading card game. If Dragon Ball were to go down the same route of changing all the main characters a "next generation" series would likewise be more corporately controlled than the original manga when Akira Toriyama began writing it in 1984.

Yeah the card game was fairly plainly a riff on Magic: The Gathering, right down to the name and the fact that it originated from America. It was getting popular at the time so Takahashi wanted to make it the subject of his next "villain of the week."

It's funny, because the major subtext of the card game in the manga was that this was just supposed to be a fun, silly card game for Yugi and the gang to goof off with but then all these weirdos who take the game way too seriously pull them into life or death scenarios around it . And then all of the spinoffs unironically take it that seriously all around, right on its face. I think in that first Duel Monsters chapter Yugi even says something to the effect of "Dude, it's just a card game it's not that serious."

[GhostEmperorX]

All that being said though... there is still a significant divide in *degrees* between something like a Dragon Ball or a Yu Yu Hakusho or a Hokuto no Ken or a Rurouni Kenshin, or even a Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia, or Bleach - all of which are across the board heavily mainstream, commercialized children's franchises - versus titles like Digimon, Pokemon, Beyblade, Medabots, etc. which are within a whole different level & layer of commercialized.

Question, would you throw in Slam Dunk or the other two Takehiko Inoue works made after in with the bolded? He achieved a slam dunk pun totally not intended but also intended with the former becoming one of Shueisha's best-selling manga alongside Dragon Ball in the 90's, but from what little I've seen he was genuinely driven by pursuit of an artistic goal and didn't even sign off on cash grabs made later.

As far as a lot of the commercialized IP's, would it be correct to say that not having their origin with one creative mind or a small group (like CLAMP), but with a bunch of executives in a corporation where almost no one could even name a single individual off the top of their heads as being the main creator, is a strong indication of the difference?
(Wait, my bad, you mentioned this already.)

[Italicized portion]A small aside though, I only know this series as being a thing pre-Y2K and not after, but isn't the name actually "Medarot" instead?