"Serious Dragon Ball" erasure

[Mr Baggins]

I'm curious to know who exactly on this forum is espousing "serious Dragon Ball erasure", because I haven't seen anything of the sort.

Maybe you're misinterpreting certain posts. I once made a facetious remark about "gymbros" in the Daima announcement thread a while back, but it wasn't an attack on people that work out or whatever, nor was it referring to fans of Dragon Ball's more serious elements. Just a jokey comment about a particular subset of the fanbase that seems to disdain the lighthearted elements while automatically dismissing everything that has them, if anything. That's a sentiment I've seen all too frequently on the socials, especially with the release of Daima.

I think it's obvious to just about everyone here on Kanzenshuu that Dragon Ball contains both leanings, and that neither one is inherently bad. Shit, DBS Broly is my favorite Dragon Ball movie ever and that's about as "deebeezee" as it gets tonally.

What I tend to see more often is people judging a story based on what it's explicitly not trying to do than what it is, but I digress.

[DragonBallFoodie]

Eh, yeah. I mean, I swear that I can't be the only person on the planet you likes more than one thing, but so often there's these stark contrasts within fandom spaces that split off into the silliest little tribes and I'm like...okay? Whatever?

Give me poop jokes and then give me hot topless guys punching bloody holes into one another's torsos!

I did not disagree with what you said, I was just adding my view to it.

[JulieYBM]

Eh, yeah. I mean, I swear that I can't be the only person on the planet you likes more than one thing, but so often there's these stark contrasts within fandom spaces that split off into the silliest little tribes and I'm like...okay? Whatever?

Give me poop jokes and then give me hot topless guys punching bloody holes into one another's torsos!

I did not disagree with what you said, I was just adding my view to it.

I wasn't disagreeing with you either lol

[Gaffer Tape]

Yeah, I agree with Mike on this one. I think the simple predilection for fans to have a preference in one direction or another is being treated as some form of erasure. And, yeah, I agree that some degree of division was created by the FUNimation reversioning as well as backlash to said product. However, even in the most extreme cases of "HARDCORE FIGHTS FOR SERIOUS ADULTS!" fans and "titty poo poo caca on a stick" fans, I can't imagine anyone claiming or believing that the other half doesn't exist, or at least not outside the most individual, anecdotal cases.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

However, even in the most extreme cases of "HARDCORE FIGHTS FOR SERIOUS ADULTS!" fans and "titty poo poo caca on a stick" fans, I can't imagine anyone claiming or believing that the other half doesn't exist, or at least not outside the most individual, anecdotal cases.

I think in the US there was a not-insignificant portion of fans that were conditioned to believe Dragon Ball was all about the fights, gore and blood, particularly around 2005 when the Ultimate Uncut episodes began airing and Toonami stopped showing original Dragon Ball (which was marketed as being more of a show for anime enthusiasts rather than a necessary prerequisite for what came after).

Just looking at some reactions to when Toonami suddenly switched back to the Saban dub I can only imagine the uproar if there was a Dragon Ball Z episode featuring Arale or any gag-oriented character at that time or if Toonami brought back original Dragon Ball.

Obi wrote on January 21, 2006:

WHAT THE HFIL.

Was this week's episode supposed to be the first one with really "uncut"-worthy content, or did they just make a crazy screwup?

XOMiss_Samantha wrote on January 21, 2006:

Well this is not fun
I'm angry now

Hyper Shadow wrote on January 21, 2006:

Hmm saban version eh? So the great Goku lost to the legion of soccor moms aswell. Tis a sad day....

Anyway I noticed on the bumper titles, that it just says 'DBZ' and no longer 'DBZ Uncut'.

KuwabaraTheMan wrote on January 21, 2006:

Yeah, the rights should have expired years ago.

I can't believe they would actually repurchase the rights, something has to be up here...

[JulieYBM]

Jesus Christ, those are so usernames I haven't seen in a long, long time.

Luckily that thread is from before I joined Toon Zone lol.

Anyway, I'll be honest, I just don't really see the point of observing these things religiously. The world's a vast place, like, yeah, there's going to be a lot of people with different opinions. If I think someone is being sincere with their views, that's fun to read. If someone's just acting like an immature dolt, I'm going to block and move on. I think fandom would be a lot happier off if it did that lol.

Anyway, one thing to bare in mind with that thread is that nearly everyone in it was a teenager or barely into their teens at the time they made those posts. Their views are hardly going to be indicative of anything other than, "Yeah, teenagers certainly said those things."

[Shaddy]

This other, alternate "One Piece in a dogi" version of Dragon Ball where its comprised mainly if not solely of silly lightheartedness and has no other sides to it... in order to spin it that way, you have to basically willfully block-out GIGANTIC swathes of the series that takes its dramatic moments very earnestly, and where characters are largely getting their skulls caved-in in an orgy of violent and bloody martial arts battles which are all right there and are plainly evident.

Okay man, I know you don't like and are not interested in One Piece, but that's definitely the wrong measuring stick if you're looking for a way to describe an imagined "all silly all the time" impression of Dragon Ball, and it's especially not responsible for that impression of Dragon Ball in any way, which is a kind of weird assertion to make in a post where you're already complaining about Dragon Ball fans misrepresenting things.

Like, I could concede that One Piece is not as intense as Dragon Ball, but it's still really violent (and I don't think the nature of that violence being surreal means the blood and dismemberment just doesn't count or something), the main conflict in any given story is still usually taken as seriously as DB, it's always attempting things like drama, social commentary, portrayals of genuine atrocity and violation at key points. I don't need you to feel like it succeeds or anything but it seems inarguable that that's all there, and at least as far as...basically everyone making and consuming it are concerned, it's not being treated as a wacky farce.

It's certainly not the same tone as Dragon Ball, most notably in it holding back on actually killing off most of the people in fights. I can concede that it is lighter in such a respect. But I'd hardly say that on its own represents the idea of everything being a joke like the reactionary DB fans you speak of are claiming.

I guess if you want to argue that the absurdist character designs or the laughs and vocal tics of the characters always being present even in otherwise-serious scenes counts, then maybe? I feel like that can detract from my ability to take the story seriously sometimes, but it doesn't make me think the show/manga doesn't want me to. But it feels like you're either misinformed or just trying to take pot-shots at a property you dislike when using it in this context.

[Kunzait_83]

There's a lot being written here... but it's so generalized and non-specific that, quite frankly, I reject the original question/premise outright.

Who are these people that are saying this, what authority or sway do they hold, and what are their exact statements...?

If we're talking about Joe Schmoe making a response buried under 17 other posts on Reddit, or even here on this very forum... I'm sorry for the crass remark, but think it's necessary to underscore the point to the extreme that I truly intend: but who the fuck cares?

Otherwise, please tell me who these people are? Name and shame. Who are the influential people creating this supposed movement of complete reversal and "erasure" of the "serious" parts of the franchise? What are their verbatim statements?

This doesn't exist. This doesn't happen.

What's actually happening here is that people extrapolate simple comments and observations into wildly larger arguments which aren't being made, and because it's the modern internet, even the best-intentioned people get wrapped up in culture wars and fighting over nothing.

I speak and respond strongly about this because it happens to me all the time. People accuse me of this exact kind of thing ("the Kaizenshuu cabal is trying to change what Dragon Ball IS!!!!!")... but it's nothing I've ever said, and isn't how I feel. People latch on to me simply liking some other element other than blood and guts, and extrapolate that out and accuse me of this exact "SERIOUS CONTENT ERASURE" you're promoting.

This isn't happening*, and I reject this entirely.

Alright, with all due respect possible, I'm going to do my best to sincerely, earnestly, and in the utmost good faith - and in the spirit of vigorous discussion of all things Dragon Ball - attempt to push back a little bit on some of this here.

And bear in mind, I'm doing so as someone who not too long ago went on a tear about how there's no such thing as a "Kanzenshuu Illuminati", or anything of the sort. So I hopefully at least have some shred of credibility that nothing I say here is in any way inherently some kind of silly, paranoid raving at some vague, nebulous, undefinable "they".

But just in case, let me get this out of the way upfront and reiterate this one last time for the cheap seats:

There's no such fucking thing as a Kanzenshuu Cabal, Illuminati, or what have you.

i.e. There is no shadowy, illusive "inner circle" figures from this site who are jointly acting together in some kind of sinister, shadowy, secretive manner to push whatever silly, stupid "agenda" or whatnot about DB or anything else. That's asinine and infantile, and lets all eject that very notion from the premises of any kind of sensible, rational, grown-up discourse.

Cool? Cool.

That all out of the way: there isn't a Kanzenshuu Illuminati/Cabal, but there IS a Kanzenshuu Community. This is a community, and like any community there is a "culture", an atmosphere, a general unifying sense of factors or elements that makes us coalesce into the blob-like entity of voices that we are.

That doesn't mean there can't be or isn't a wide diversity of dissenting/different points of view within that community that goes against the overall grain of the place (indeed, there obviously is and always has been, like in most communities): but there's still a broad, basic-most consensus that tends to bubble up within most any kind of community focused around whatever given subject matter.

For my part anyway, I certainly don't think (and obviously never have thought) of this topic in terms of a "Kanzenshuu Cabal" or whatever such nonsense: I think of it in terms of a general culture and consensus that, while not 100% universal here, is still at the very least prevalent. Most commonly found here.

That's just what tends to naturally happen when you get a lot of like-minded people who have a lot of common interests and similar points of view all gathered into one place together to pool their collective voices: they gel into a prominent consensus about various things that becomes widely accepted within the group by most of it and forms into a kind of widely shared "Conventional Wisdom". Or in more extreme cases and in less savory terms, you maybe even can call it an "Echo Chamber".

Confirmation Bias can be a bitch that way, and everyone is susceptible to it to one extent or another.

Kanzenshuu, as a fan community, is no different whatsoever in this regard from virtually any other community. It isn't special or exempt from these social phenomena. I say that as someone who (god help me) has been hanging around here off and on, in one form or fashion, since pretty much its earliest beginnings now in the early/mid aughts. I've seen and been with this place throughout numerous ups, downs, peaks, valleys, and all across various eras and phases its taken on throughout.

One of my big consistent bailiwicks with this place during my time here has been trying to sort of challenge and call into question some of these bits of "conventional fandom wisdom" that are, in many (but certainly not all) cases, specific and particular to this place. At least the ones that I think don't actually have much weight, merit, or substance behind them and maybe are coming from a misdirected perspective.

And look, unless its something that's actually gravely important regarding an actually serious, life or death topic: then otherwise, I don't generally like to put individual people on the spot and call out specific names. And this very, VERY much is about as polar diametric opposite of a serious, life or death topic, so I'm not going to do that here either.

What I will do though, just to illustrate a basic point here, is use the forum's search bar and post a little mini-collage of sorts, leaving out people's usernames:



Bear in mind here that I grabbed just a random sampling of post here encompassing both a vast array of time (from near the beginning of the forums up to fairly recently), and from a wide breadth of user notoriety: there’s some randos mixed in, but there’s also a lot there from very notable posters, mods, and admin here.

Also keep in mind that this is also a VERY small sampling I collected here: to go deeper into all the examples of this would take me eons to compile, as these kinds of sentiments about Dragon Ball and “Shonen” more broadly are absolutely **countless and endless** in this place.

I’m keeping out specific names here because calling out specific individuals is both A) fruitless and needlessly combative, and moreover B) completely beside the point of this here.

The point I’m making isn’t about any one individual person or persons: its about an overall collective consensus that over time and during a particular stew of factors from the zeitgeist of the 2000s in general, was largely birthed from fans here on forums like this one (or even on THIS forum in particular, to one extent or another).

And that consensus, simply put, boils down ultimately to overly-highlighting and focusing on Dragon Balls gag manga roots, combined with what I would argue is a COMPLETELY fabricated and fandom-invented idea/ideal of what “Shonen” supposedly is and represents.

Never mind the whole tiresome debate over whether or not Shonen is a genre (though to be 100% clear on that, it factually fucking isn’t and never was), but one of the most oft-repeated and important themes you’ll find hammered upon over and over and over and over ad nauseam within this forum – both broadly and particularly in its early-most years – is this idea of a “Shonen Spirit”. Which you’ll note are alluded to in some of my post samples up above, but also is something that runs super deep throughout this forum/community.

Not to play Fandom Historian here, but its kind of crucial also to remember what the overall climate and zeitgeist was like at the time that this site/community – in its current incarnation that is - was first being built (circa early to mid 2000s). Context is everything.

At the time when this site was first being reborn into what its been for much of the last 20 years or so, the Western Dragon Ball fandom was still well within an especially toxic, divisive phase/era. I mean, toxic and divisive even by the tilted standards of Western Dragon Ball fandom.

This was during the absolute height of FUNimation’s “reversioning” of the series, and in the immediate fallout of a whole lot of the earliest post-dub Dragon Ball websites and communities having a ton of collapses and blowups caused by interpersonal drama of varying degrees of stupidity.

Moreover than this, this was still during the height of an – and I cannot possibly stress this enough – an incredibly bro-douchey period in U.S. popculture that defined most of the very late-most 90s and early to mid 2000s. Which is largely the same zeitgeist of U.S. culture that influenced FUNimation to make their DBZ “reversion” into what it was, and also what heavily fed into a large chunk of the toxicity of early post-dub U.S. DB fandom.

This was the, *ahem*, “golden age of Nu Metal, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, Linkin Ball Z AMVs, the WWF Attitude Era, Jerry Springer-esque Trash TV, The Sopranos, etc.

Brittney Spears prancing around in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit several sizes too small for her while she sings “I’m not that innocent” while every single U.S. male aged approximately 8 to 25 or so spoke in almost nothing but a steady, unbroken string of late 90s/early 2000s catchphrases from The Rock while an unholy amalgamation of Linkin Park’s Crawling, Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady, and Stone Cold Steve Austin’s theme music blares omnipresent in the background can, to one extent or another, best sum up what the atmosphere and environment of this time was like, particularly in U.S. Dragon Ball fandom corners (which featured a healthy number of U.S. males ages 8 to 20-something or thereabouts).

In other words, this was a colossally stupid, meatheaded fucking period of time in the mainstream zeitgeist (at least as it pertained to the sorts of people who frequented Dragon Ball fandom at the time), and no small amount of this particular fanbase back then was undergoing critical levels of testosterone poisoning to a deranged magnitude. I was there, so were you Mike: we can both very much attest to this fact.

Enter a newly revived then-Daizenshuu EX, and its not really that difficult to see why, coming off the afterbirth of this hot mess of a cultural stew, there was an inherent, built-in allure for an English-language Dragon Ball fandom atmosphere that Mike himself summarized pretty succinctly in this old post of his from 2008:

I really, honestly, truly, and whole-heartedly want DB fandom to be everything that I see in the series and the shonen style in general... camaraderie, fun, adventures, dreams, etc. It's sappy and stupid, but it's true. I want us all to have fun and be the bestest of friends in the world.

I know, I occasionally have the idealism of a freakin' five year old. Sue me.

I mean, yeah: this is basically THE “brand” (god I’ve always loathed that fucking word) that this site had essentially built itself and made its bones from, and lead directly to what it is today.

And just to get this out of the way, once again for the cheap seats: Obviously there is nothing the least bit fucking wrong with any of these ideals in and of themselves. Whatsoever. Friendship IS good! Adventure IS fun! Camaraderie IS a wonderful thing to treasure! Particularly, you know, in real life with real, flesh and blood people (as opposed to vicariously through a children’s cartoon).

I would NEVER in a million years ever so much as briefly consider trashing on ANYONE (much less this community) who makes these inherently wholesome things paramount in what they stand for. That isn’t what any of this is about, obviously. This should all go without saying of course, but clearly there are a LOT of people out there who need the fucking glaringly obvious spelled out in neon letters for them, so there you go. Consider these two paragraphs the obvious being spelled out.

The question that this whole post of mine is centered around rather is: are these the things that Dragon Ball itself, as a story and as a franchise, is inherently about or embodies? Or for that matter, do they represent and embody “Shonen”, whatever the fuck that word even means to anyone at this point?

And my point basically here is: No. Dragon Ball is not, and never was primarily “about Friendship”, or about the “Shonen spirit” (which isn’t a thing and never was, as this whole premise treats Shonen like it is a genre with tropes, which it is not and never was, as opposed to just an age/gender based target demographic, which it is and only ever was), or even really about “adventure”. Not ever.

I think still to this day of all the people in this community over the years, Rocketman of all people (bless his cynical soul) managed to PERFECTLY encapsulate what Dragon Ball is truly about at its essence more so than anyone here in just a single short blurb of a post all the way back in 2009:



“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Dragon Ball best summed up in a single sentence movie quote (a movie that was, quite ironically and perhaps somewhat unfairly, another bigtime icon of the whole late 90s/early 00s dudebro douchebag golden age in U.S. culture at the time). That infamous “This Is Your Life” AMV nailed it better in one shot all the way back in 2001 far more than most folks on this community (and I’ll include myself in that assessment) ever have across decades worth of text.

That obviously DOESN’T mean that the FUNimation reversion ever “got it” either of course, because there’s a distinctly, crucially important and defining Asian/Japanese/Chinese/martial arts flavor that it completely lost and replaced instead with a whole WWE/G.I. Joe-esque tone: but again, at least that reversion, cringe and awful and ill-fitting to DB as it is, is still indeed a real thing that you can watch, experience, and absorb.

This though?



This is a complete fucking fantasy version of Dragon Ball that has not ever existed in any capacity. You can look for it all you like in the original Japanese anime or manga, and it just isn’t fucking there (outside of like a few small, understated moments here or there maybe: which come seldomly and infrequently in between hours upon hours of bloody, skull-shattering punches to the face). Like, objectively and factually on its face. Its not real, and it never was real.

And its this “Friendship and Shonen Spirit of Adventure” fantasy version of Dragon Ball that this very site (and indeed, its owner Mike) spent a LARGE chunk of its early years promoting as “the real Japanese Dragon Ball”.

Mike, please don’t take this the wrong way here, cause god knows I love, value, and respect the living hell out of you for all that you’ve done for this community over the years and for all the invaluable work you’ve done for Dragon Ball’s English/U.S./Western fanbase. I mean this truly from the bottom of my heart, you’re irreplaceable, and you’re easily on a Mount Rushmore list of “most important people for Dragon Ball’s U.S. fanbase”.

All that being said though: you were smoking some really potent stuff at times during forum’s formative years when you wrote a lot of this crap.

But again, that’s really not meant to be any shade on you: I totally get why and how this happened! That’s why I went into all that late 90s/early 2000s cultural context earlier: its really, *really* important in understanding what the broader historical context was going into this site/community’s earliest beginnings as a forum-based community with an accompanying podcast and whatnot.

Dragon Ball’s then-burgeoning post-dub U.S. fandom/community was just coming out of an INCREDIBLY toxic, tumultuous period of excess among various “webmasters” and online personalities, and the overall vibe of the time period in general was one that can best be summed up as “What if you threw all three Malcolm in the Middle brothers in a Brundlepod with Fred Durst and Stone Cold Steve Austin, and let the hideous creature that comes out the other end control the mainstream popculture of every young suburban white kid throughout the turn of the millennium?”

The post-dub Japanese-centric U.S. Dragon Ball fanbase (how’s that for a mountain of qualifiers?) was at precisely the right age, time, and place at this point to be absolutely ravenously hungry for something else that wasn’t the toxic stew of dudebro testosterone that was both the FUNimation dub and the U.S. popculture of the late 90s/early aughts to grab hold of as defining what this other, original version of DB was all about. Something to separate them collectively from that cesspit of preteen hormones run wild as something more “mature”, more friendly, inviting, and overall more chill.

And for whatever various reasons, it never really occurred to many people in the broader fanbase to look outside of the *very* narrow confines of Japanese children’s media that DB itself occupies at any broader cultural context, and instead narrowly fixate in on solely other material under the Shonen demographic (yes, demographic, not “genre”).

And this is where One Piece also came into things: cause its fundamentally impossible to discuss all this early Daizenshuu EX “Dragon Ball is about Friendship and the Shonen Spirit of Adventure” nonsense without mentioning how INSANELY crucial and critical One Piece was in all of this.

Though to be fair, I’m surprised at just how far into this I made it before I first invoked its name.

At a certain point, I couldn’t begin to tell you how One Piece first came to be so radically and intractably absorbed and roped into this community’s whole genetic makeup.

The obvious point of reference of course is just how much Toei and Shueisha marketed the living fuck out of Eiichiro Oda’s own personal ride or die fanboy worship of Toriyama and Dragon Ball all throughout the turn of the millennium as One Piece rocketed its way to Shonen Superstardom: and to be sure, it makes all the corporate marketing sense in the universe to want to tie-in your two most best-selling, moneymaking properties in with one another as tightly as possible. So that’s obviously what Toei and Shueisha did to the nth degree all throughout the aughts. Corporations are gonna Corporation.

But while that certainly explains a LOT of it for sure, I also think it goes a bit further than just that.

Like I’ve been saying a lot more publicly in recent years, there’s always (for one reason or another, and those reasons are numerous, varied, and complicated, and I certainly don’t pretend that I have them all 100% figured out completely) been a general weird myopic fixation within this community – very broadly speaking here - to zero in primarily on children’s media as its main area of focus (note that I don’t think and never have thought that Mike himself is really guilty of this personally: this is more about the broader whole of the community as a general collective).

Put simply - and you can look to this part right here as you “tldr” summary of my whole thesis here - I think it was the combination of:

1) The toxically masculine “dudebro” nature of both the FUNimation dub and the general U.S. popculture zeitgeist of the late 90s and early 2000s that it was such a big part of.

2) The post-dub Japanese version side of the U.S. fanbase just coming out the other end of an absurdly shitty period of its history that was largely the result of the atmosphere and culture of Point Number 1 up above, and having a deep, desperate (and thoroughly understandable) longing and desire to put as many hundreds or thousands of miles of distance between itself and all that other baggage as humanly possible.

3) One Piece blowing absolutely the fuck up over in Japan and in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump leading to Toei and Shueisha marketing the living fuck out of it as “Dragon Ball’s spiritual successor” based on little more than One Piece’s author being a raving, foaming-at-the-mouth dick-rider of Dragon Ball and Toriyama.

And 4) The broader community here writ-large having such a heavy, stark over-focus on children’s media, often to the exclusion and detriment of much else.

And right off the bat here, no I don't think (nor have I ever thought) that this happened with ANY sort of conscious intent, malicious or otherwise, on anyone's part here, including Mike's or any of this site's mods or major users of course.

I think that this unique and highly specific concoction of various broader fandom-wide cultural factors from that particular place and time lead a whole LOT of people (many of whom were around the same age and coming into the series from more or less the same or very similar cultural standpoints and relationships with the dub prior) into collectively group-thinking this "Shonen Spirit of Friendship and Adventure" crap into becoming a thing completely organically based on a combination of equal parts "gag-reflexing away and purging a whole LOT of toxically masculine testosterone-poisoned popculture and recent fandom history and behaviors out of their collective systems" and "looking for a completely and radically different ideal or tone or theme within the original Japanese work with which to replace all that other late 90s/early 2000's American shit with in all the exact wrong and misguided places" along with a whole ton of ingrained (and incorrect) assumptions about Japanese anime and manga that were prominent within this particular era of U.S. fandom at the time.

And I think it was a fairly even mixture of all these factors that I listed up above in a cultural blender at the time (circa the early through mid aughts) that lead to this whole “Dragon Ball is a warm and fuzzy Friendship Story that embodies the Shonen Spirit of Adventure and Camaraderie” idea that brain-wormed its way into so much of this community’s formative years and that largely define so much of what this place centered itself around.

To further my point about this community at the time trying to desperately gag-reflex away the toxic shit of the late 90s/early 2000's, I return again to this 2008 post of Mike's that I highlighted earlier:

I really, honestly, truly, and whole-heartedly want DB fandom to be everything that I see in the series and the shonen style in general... camaraderie, fun, adventures, dreams, etc. It's sappy and stupid, but it's true. I want us all to have fun and be the bestest of friends in the world.

I know, I occasionally have the idealism of a freakin' five year old. Sue me.

I look back at this whole period of time, both how I thought of it back then and how I think of it now in retrospect, and what I see now in hindsight is still much the same as what I saw back then at the time. What I see here is a guy (Mike) and a burgeoning community that he's helping to build all together trying VERY hard to shake off a whole LOT of ugly, divisive, hateful bullshit that defined so much of the preceding few years of this whole fanbase before this point.

This right here is indicative of the - again, *incredibly* understandable and all too human and good-intentioned - impulse from which this whole "Dragon Ball is about Friendship and the Shonen Spirit of Adventure" thing organically and collectively wormed its way out of this community.

In no way do I mean to in any way mock, slander, or insult the clearly kindhearted, empathetic, good-natured, well-intentioned, and even genuinely loving impulses that were behind this whole collective online social phenomenon within this community, one that largely defined so much of the core of this community (and I would also argue helped it largely weather some pretty trying times in more recent years).

That all being said though: all my love and admiration for the inherent good-intent and wonderful IRL positivity behind this "Shonen Spirit" sentiment here cannot prevent me from being chained to reality here (and god only knows I feel like the worst kind of pedantic asshole in this case, considering this lovely context that I just outlined) and pointing out that this whole “Dragon Ball is primarily about Friendship and the Shonen Spirit of Adventure” idea, in terms of what's just objectively, matter-of-factly present within Dragon Ball as both a singular creative work and as a broader franchise in general and throughout its larger history as a work, is largely a completely made-up fantasy that was wholly invented in the subconscious of forums like this one as a reflexive, knee-jerk pushback to the entire fandom-wide zeitgeist of the early FUNimation dub years, and against the whole turn of the millennium Golden Age of Dudebro Douchebaggery writ large that defined so much of that whole period.

Its basically just a result of a whole LOT of wild-ass projection of the then-U.S. DB fandom's collective baggage regarding the early toxicity of the early dub years being done all while trying desperately to grasp at something within the original Japanese work that is a stark antithesis of all that: something that is positive, uplifting, and uniting rather than divisive, petty, and ugly, in order for the fandom community itself to better heal and move on from a lot of those old, ridiculous feuds and drama and all the cringing embarrassment that was so much of the late 90s/early 2000s douche age.

It just so happened that what the community ended up doing in order to fill that collective void was basically completely invent a whole non-existent genre (Shonen) with completely imagined "tropes" and "themes" (Friendship, Adventure, Comradery, Never Give Up, Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect ), and further reimagine (or maybe "reversion"? ) Dragon Ball itself in its collective consciousness as a community into being this super wholesome "Friendship Adventure" thing that its not and never was in ANY version of the series, English dub, Japanese original, or otherwise.

And unfortunately, these weird fandom brainworms resulting from this whole phenomenon are still out there to this day and still impact the wider discourse about Dragon Ball and lead to a lot of false and largely imagined/made-up bits of conventional wisdom about the series that many people still to this day discuss as if its fact.

Ironic, considering that this community also built itself around being far more factual and fact-based than most any other Dragon Ball community out there: which to be fair (and I cannot possibly stress this enough), it still very much is of course. I'm just basically pointing out how even this community, for all its many positives, still isn't impervious to falling prey to its own kinds of "misinformation" and mis-assumptions about Dragon Ball that its helped put out into the ether over the years. Nobody's perfect, basically.

Its all COMPLETELY understandable how this all turned out this way, and I’m not really making any negative judgments over it here, especially at this point so many years later after the fact: that doesn’t mean however that this whole thing wasn’t anything other than completely wrong, completely misguided, completely counterfactual, and completely rooted in a collective “fanfiction” of sorts that the community as a whole sort of glommed onto seemingly out of a longing need and desire to separate itself so heavily from a lot of ugly baggage prior.

And all I’m doing here is simply pointing it out and explaining my take on all of it in greater detail. Since “breaking down and explaining shit pertaining to both DB itself and its fan community” is supposed to be, y’know, the whole entire point of this place and why we’re all ostensibly here in the first place.

tldr once again: Y'all got waaaaaaaaaay too carried away with and went waaaaaaaaaaay the fuck overboard for long many years in this place trying to overcorrect on the toxic baggage of the early dub-era during the turn of the millennium, and y'all wound up kind of in fart-sniffing territory for most of the 2000s and 2010s with all this completely made-the-fuck-up "Shonen Spirit" shit, and its lent itself long-term to putting out into the world a distinctly different flavor of misassumptions about Dragon Ball (but no less still counterfactual) relative to all the usual dub-related ones.

(Though once again, cringy "tastes like diabetes" schlockiness notwithstanding, there are obviously far, far worse things to base one's misassumptions around than an inherently positive and loving sentiment like "Friendship is a good thing and should be valued".)

(This did happen once: with the earliest audiences of the series, contemporary with its original serialization [which I can guarantee none of you/us were a part of], when Toriyama transitioned into tournament arcs, and portions of Toriyama's gag audience fanbase weren't on board. Of course it opened up an entirely new audience, so whatever -- everyone ultimately ended up "winning" in the end with content across the board.)

Hey now, I was there and present for when all that first happened! Of course I wasn’t in the older “gag manga” audience, but rather in the “entirely new audience” that was opened up, but still I have living memory of all this from when it was first happening in the early 90s.

Okay man, I know you don't like and are not interested in One Piece, but that's definitely the wrong measuring stick if you're looking for a way to describe an imagined "all silly all the time" impression of Dragon Ball, and it's especially not responsible for that impression of Dragon Ball in any way, which is a kind of weird assertion to make in a post where you're already complaining about Dragon Ball fans misrepresenting things.

Couple of things here:

1) Just because I don’t like and am not interested in One Piece doesn’t mean I haven’t had my share of experience watching and reading some pretty hefty chunks of it over the years. I don’t like One Piece, but my dislike of it is certainly not coming from a place of ignorance toward what its like as a series.

And 2) I’m not the one who spent the better part of more than a decade+ constantly using One Piece as the go-to example of what Dragon Ball’s whole supposed “Shonen Spirit of Friendship and Adventure” shtick is meant to embody.

Just to reiterate this point once again:



Not to repeat myself or state the obvious, but you’ll note that that post doesn’t say “Kunzait_83” in its author heading, nor is that a picture of me in its avatar window. That’s literally the guy who created this whole forum/site in the first place, and note this is only one single example of countless other times acros numerous years (decades) that he, and most of this community’s most notable regular users and mods, have repeated this EXACT sentiment, ad nauseam.

Once again: I’m not the person who first used One Piece as the measuring stick for why “Dragon Ball is truly about Friendship and Adventure” for years upon years upon years upon *years*. Virtually almost this whole community, including the guy who first started it, were the ones who first made this a point of discussion at all in the first place.

Hell, without this community first bludgeoning its readers over the head with this notion for many, many long years, I would’ve never, ever, ever in my life so much as even remotely considered this notion in the absolute slightest, tiniest bit: for the simple reason that I’ve actually read and watched Dragon Ball in Japanese a number of times – free of any baggage pertaining to the FUNimation dub and its assorted late 90s/early 00’s fandom drama - and all I’ve ever seen from day one is a martial arts fantasy serial about Kung Fu Monkey Boy/Man Punches Demons and Spacemen Real Good that is equal parts whimsically wacky and hyper violent (which is literally exactly like most of the other martial arts fantasy films and shows of the time period in which DB was first released).

That’s what’s objectively there on the page/screen. And you can literally throw a fucking rock practically anywhere at random across mainstream Asian media (be it in China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea etc.) circa 1984 to 1995 and hit about several dozen other weird, violently wacky martial arts fantasy movies, shows, comics, and video games at any given point in those years that were all across the board very much in this exact same vein: so its not like this sort of thing was either unheard of or novel at the time. The context for why Dragon Ball is the way it is has always been right there in plainly obvious sight for anyone with an inkling of curiosity and interest to find.

The ONLY thing I’m doing here is dissecting and autopsying this whole fandom-wide phenomenon of “over-focussing on and embellishing Dragon Ball’s wacky, lightly humorous side while downplaying its violent, dramatic side” (which again, is the opposite extreme end of the also equally, if not more prevalent “over-focussing on and embellishing Dragon Ball’s violentm dramatic side at the expense of its wacky, lightly humorous side) in detail and giving my own personal take on it.

And note for the record how I’m doing it all here completely without insulting anyone (other than one obviously playful jab at Mike that was as clearly and blatantly in good natured jest as can be) or making any of this personal or “calling anyone out” or whatnot.

I’m being as coldly clinical, and objectively analytical as I can possibly, possibly be here, while still having some human pulse of informal humor and good-natured ribbing so that this doesn’t get TOO dry or read like a fucking Econ Thesis. Since y’know, this is just fucking Dragon Ball we’re discussing here ultimately at the end of the day.

In any case, as I’ve outlined pretty thoroughly here, this very site we’re posting on right now was one of THE big sites of the 2000s that most heavily pushed the whole “Dragon Ball is a Warm and Fuzzy Friendshippy Adventure story and One Piece is its obvious spiritual successor” narrative.

I didn’t pull this notion out of thin fucking air here: it frankly never would’ve remotely occurred to me to come up with such a ridiculous, assfuck random non-sequitur of a description of Dragon Ball (that ONLY makes any remote kind of sense when you take into account the gigantic blob of cultural context of the early 2000s, which is the entire reason why I delved into that whole side of it at all here in the first place) without my coming to this site and being an on/off regular user for so many years of its history.

And I say all that as someone who’s entire contextual introduction to Dragon Ball in the first place wasn’t even the English dub (or ANY foreign dub) at all, but the original Japanese version.

I’m just reviewing, analyzing, and commenting on it. Nothing more.

Plus I mean god only knows how many times and in how many ways we’ve all collectively, as a community and fandom, have retread over and over and over and OVER again endlessly all the ways in which the converse extreme phenomenon (the “overly highlight the serious and downplay the silly humor” end of the fanbase) is and always has been also a giant load of shit that is totally not at all rooted in factual reality of what the series actually is.

Other than my post about it here (and probably a few others in a couple of other threads), how many other times has anyone here tried to take a similarly critical and thoroughly analytical look at debunking the other, opposing flipside extreme? I’m sure a few people here and there have taken a crack at it a time or two, but you can probably count them all on one or two hands and still have some fingers remaining.

I dunno… I think its been LONG the hell overdue by many, many, many years for a more thorough look at this topic (that of how English-language fans so often misconstrue Dragon Ball’s core “tone”) from the opposite, much less-discussed end of things.

(I remember once upon a time, many, many moons ago, Mike had toyed here and there with having me on the Kanz Podcast: originally to discuss the whole Wuxia thing, until I ultimately blew my load there in the big thread on it, and then later to discuss various things about the history of North American/English language Dragon Ball fandom: both obviously fell through and never happened, and I guess a lot of what I'm talking about here in this post I guess would've played a big part in what I would've talked about in the latter instance.)

And my broader point about the “highlight the silly, downplay the violent drama” crowd is that while they may be relatively smaller in number than their “highlight the violent drama, downplay the silly” counterparts, their view of Dragon Ball is A) equally wrongheaded and counter to what the Japanese version actually is and B) is in some ways even MORE objectively divorced from reality than the “dudebro EXTREME!” people are, since at least their version is a version you can actually watch/experience.

That "reversion" is a total bastardization of the original of course, but its a bastardization that's at the very least actually there in existence in objective, observable reality, and it can be consumed as a piece of tangible media. This other “Shonen Spirit of Friendship and Adventure” version of Dragon Ball does not, and never has existed in ANY capacity other than in internet forum posts. Its a total fucking mirage, one that has no basis whatsoever in observable reality.

And again, the Patient Zero non-Dragon Ball example for this “Shonen Spirit of Adventure” garbage that everyone on this forum repeatedly pointed to for years and years endlessly was One Piece.

Whether you personally Shaddy agree with that view and assessment of One Piece and its comparison to Dragon Ball or not is kind of immaterial, since I’m not the one who originally made that claim. I’m just the guy who’s commenting on it (granted, many years belatedly after the fact).

All I’ve simply been asserting here was that the main reason One Piece was made into this exemplar “spiritual successor” of this non-existent, fantasy Friendshippy version of Dragon Ball in the first place was that it just happened to be the right series in the right place at the right time in a very pivotal point in the history of North American/Western/English language DB fandom to act as a whole community’s representational totem of something that was as FAR divorced from the “dudebro” atmosphere of both North American DBZ fandom of the time period and the wider U.S. culture surrounding it writ large that they could all collectively project their collective fandom baggage onto.

Helps immensely of course also that Toei/Shueisha were using Oda's DB fanboyism to shamelessly market the living fuck out of its two biggest moneymakers together as some sort of "spiritually linked" bundled package deal, and that bit of "marketing synergy" also *definitely* played into all this bigtime among U.S./Western DB fans/the Daizenshuu EX community in the early/mid 2000s.

Like, I could concede that One Piece is not as intense as Dragon Ball, but it's still really violent (and I don't think the nature of that violence being surreal means the blood and dismemberment just doesn't count or something), the main conflict in any given story is still usually taken as seriously as DB, it's always attempting things like drama, social commentary, portrayals of genuine atrocity and violation at key points. I don't need you to feel like it succeeds or anything but it seems inarguable that that's all there, and at least as far as...basically everyone making and consuming it are concerned, it's not being treated as a wacky farce.

It's certainly not the same tone as Dragon Ball, most notably in it holding back on actually killing off most of the people in fights. I can concede that it is lighter in such a respect. But I'd hardly say that on its own represents the idea of everything being a joke like the reactionary DB fans you speak of are claiming.

I guess if you want to argue that the absurdist character designs or the laughs and vocal tics of the characters always being present even in otherwise-serious scenes counts, then maybe? I feel like that can detract from my ability to take the story seriously sometimes, but it doesn't make me think the show/manga doesn't want me to. But it feels like you're either misinformed or just trying to take pot-shots at a property you dislike when using it in this context.

Like I said earlier: I have my fair share of actual experience with One Piece, so I’m in no way whatsoever coming at it from anything at all resembling a place of ignorance here. I’ve seen its attempts at being “seriously dramatic and violent”. I know that those aspects are there, or at least that they’re attempted at.

But as you alluded to here, those attempts that One Piece makes at being “seriously dramatic or violent” land with a resounding wet fart because its whole art style, aesthetic, and overall broader tone do not in any way allow for any of it to land properly.

Dragon Ball was obviously FAR more skilled at maintaining this delicate balancing act of being goofily silly and whimsical one moment and then being harshly violent and seriously dramatic the next moment on a dime and without missing a beat.

BOTH could land properly both because Toriyama’s art style was such that it allowed room for both to land, and because Toriyama just generally had a far more balanced, nuanced grip on tone and how characters behave and interact with one another in a way that is just at a baseline much more believable and even dare I say more “grounded”.

And with regards to both points, I would argue, and this is purely my own personal opinion obviously, that this is in no small part because Toriyama is just a plainly better, far more versatile, and just all around superior artist and aestheticist than Oda ever was or could ever hope to be, and he has a far more relatively/comparatively “realistic” grasp on how actual human beings interact with one another.

What I mean by that latter point is, Toriyama, for all his faults as a writer (that we’ve all been over endlessly), doesn’t have his characters devolve into emotional hysterics over friendship at every given turn, or collapsing into fits of crying and sobbing at the drop of a hat.

Its here that I’m going to do an about-face, be an abject shameless fucking hypocrite, and do EXACTLY the thing I chastised this whole community for engaging in WAY too much of throughout the years: take a quick moment to analyze Dragon Ball’s depiction of Friendship.

Goku and Kuririn are broad, silly characters in a broad, silly martial arts comic: neither they nor the comic that they’re in are anything that one could describe as “deep” obviously. But when they interact with one another, they come across and behave like actual real life best friends.

Their rapport is chill, relaxed, and comfortable around one another. They break eachother’s balls (sometimes pretty mercilessly, just like real life friends often do), and they’re also competitive as hell with eachother, and sometimes (again, just like real life friends) they go long, long stretches of time not talking to or hanging out with one another: but once they do reconnect, they always pick up where they last left off, like absolutely no time has passed. Again, just like most real life best friends tend to.

Ultimately they clearly deeply love each other in a way that is as wholesomely brotherly as it is understated and largely unspoken, never having to once ever be loudly or repeatedly spelled out or hammered upon in a tear-filled, pages-long monologue of screaming and sobbing (closest it ever gets to that is Goku flipping out in a fit of rage over Kuririn’s murder at Freeza’s hands and going SSJ, and even THAT never comes close to approaching One Piece’s average crying jag about what great friends the Straw Hats all are).

The average audience member – making the presumption up front that they have a normal grip on interpersonal dynamics from having actual real life friends, even best/close friends, in real life and aren’t lonely, isolated shut-ins who’ve never had any friends – can MUCH more readily relate to Goku and Kuririn’s friendship dynamic because it reads as genuine and real and grounded in the kind of real life friendships that real life people tend to have with one another in actual reality.

It is in this sense that Dragon Ball (of all things) is acting as a great example of how “less is more” is often so much more effective and memorable.

Important to note: absolutely none of that means that Dragon Ball is deeply written, or that Toriyama somehow inherently deeply thought through the deeper dynamics of Goku and Kuririn’s relationship.

All of this nuance in how they interact with one another that I just took the time to outline just comes across naturally and organically without Toriyama ever having to deeply think about it or try hard to depict it. Its inherently effortless, the way it would be for someone who is a halfway decent enough writer who has had normal, actual close friendships in their life would be able to effortlessly depict without needing to think too deeply on it or give it that much effort.

There’s an intuitive naturalism (“intuitive” is a word I would use a LOT to describe the greatest strengths of both Dragon Ball itself and Toriyama as a comics writer/artist) to Dragon Ball that, for all its wacky nonsensical gag manga-ness, is always giving some sort of grounding to things that helps allow for the serious, violent, dramatic Wuxia moments to also land and be just as effective on their own terms as the gag silliness is on its own terms, all while sharing space in the same story among the same characters in the same comic/anime.

One Piece’s depiction of Friendship, by contrast, reads like the warped, foaming-at-the-mouth ravings of a desperately lonely soul who’s never once had a real life close friend in their life, and achingly craves one. Its the personification of what Starved For Real Life Affection and Validation looks like played out as a children’s pirate comic. It is the dictionary definition of “trying WAY too hard”.

Its depictions of Friendship and Camaraderie between the Straw Hats bears absolutely NO resemblance to ANY sort of real life relationships, friend or otherwise. It comes across at times almost like an emotionally damaged stalker’s fantasy approximation of what a close knit group of friends act like. It is fraught with overwrought emotional hysterics which are unintentionally and embarassingly comical at best, and cringe-inducingly sad and worryingly creepy at worst.

I also don’t think its in any way, shape, or form a coincidence that this manga/anime in particular was/is such a massive, massive, culturally seismic hit with a generation of fans who came of age during a time in history that has been increasingly viewed as one of the most alienating, socially ostracized and atomized periods of human history we’ve ever seen.

On a VERY widespread, global scale, loneliness (particularly among young men and boys, prime target demo for One Piece) has been increasingly off the charts in almost every corner of the world: and I think that a manga/anime mega-franchise that reads as desperately lonely and starved for friends as One Piece does being the defining mainstream Shonen mega-hit of this whole era is both sadly fitting, and worryingly unsurprising as a sign of the times.

I definitely think there’s an incredibly strong, rich dissertation/analysis yet to be written (that I’m aware of at least: anyone who knows of one feel free to link me to it) that explores the glaring connection between the phenomenon of global atomization and One Piece’s emotionally hysterical, desperately lonely depiction of friendship being such a culturally-defining smash megahit that has clearly struck a strong emotional chord among so many fans worldwide: many if not most of whom fit very much into the whole “isolated, atomized, overly-online loners” mold that characterizes so much of the “nerd culture” today.

(No, I likely will not ever be the person who writes such a dissertation, as that would require me to spend FAR too much more time rewatching, re-reading, and generally just thinking about One Piece than I would ever, ever be ok with doing unless someone was paying me a boatload of cash to do it for whatever reason: and maybe not even then, frankly. My time spent thinking about and discussing One Piece in any way, shape, or form generally tend to begin and end with my posting on this forum, and I prefer to keep it that way. I'd certainly read the hell out of a well done/well written dissertation/analysis someone else might write on that topic though: like I said, if any One Piece fans here knows of one that's out there somewhere, please send me a link to it!).

I digress: point being, yes obviously I know full well that One Piece HAS serious, even violent moments: its ultimately a swashbuckling pirate adventure comic (or at least an attempt at one) – violence is going to happen obviously.

No however, One Piece’s “serious/violent” moments do not land or are in any way nearly as effective as when Dragon Ball does such moments for all the reasons noted above.

And furthermore, to that same point: the serious/violent moments in One Piece are, by and large, NOT the moments that either the series itself, or its fans seem to most often point to or highlight: certainly not anyway the One Piece fans on this particular forum or the ones that cross over into the Dragon Ball community.

Just like with Dragon Ball, the elements of One Piece that are most often highlighted are its silly, whimsical, and teary-eyed friendshippy heartwarming moments: to the point where this very fucking forum has more than a decade+ worth of posts from a dizzing variety of users (including numerous from the damned *founder* of this place, as well as various mods) opining on this very aspect of One Piece being THE critical, crucial, key-most element that links it so intrinsically to Dragon Ball.

Unlike with Dragon Ball however, One Piece actually IS chalk-full of these moments from one end to the next, ad infinitum: moments which actually DO define it to its core as a series (where they don’t in any way define Dragon Ball, because in Dragon Ball they’re either casually understated in their rare instance, or much more often they’re just plain non-existent in place of martial arts shenanigans), and Friendship (or at least One Piece’s warped, skewed, lonely emo kid ideal of Friendship) is PRECISELY what the series is primarily and overwhelmingly about and spends a LOT of its time blathering on about endlessly.

God knows I’ve plowed through enough of it back in the day to have had that much hammered into my skull by the series.

Its to the point where the whole fucking main watchword of the whole entire franchise is literally “Nakama” (“Friends/Comrades”) for Christ’s sake.

As opposed to Dragon Ball’s franchise-defining watchword, which is “Fight”.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I wonder if Yu-Gi-Oh had more to do with this conflating of Dragon Ball with "the power of friendship". The original Studio Gallop Yu-Gi-Oh anime came 3 years before One Piece, and as such was airing concurrently with Funimation's dub of Dragon Ball Z (albeit on different channels).

Anyone who has seen the 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh knows the corny lines about friendship in its scripts. At the time Yu-Gi-Oh was massive, maybe even close to Dragon Ball Z's level of popularity, so I can see why some gullible kids (not a knock on anyone as I was one myself) would get the (wrong) impression not only that shows like Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragon Ball Z were part of the same genre (because they involve things like saving the world, have rich world building, etc) but that friendship was a key trope in their storytelling.

Not to mention Yu-Gi-Oh aired on the same TV blocks as other toy centric shows like Pokémon, which have lines like "Oh your my best friend, in a world we must defend" in the dub OP that fans of cartoons in the late 90s and early 2000s could have mistaken as having this "Shonen spirit" feel. I mean, sure, Dragon Ball is positive and upbeat, but not in the same way a show like Pokémon is, or like Yu-Gi-Oh has in its more lighthearted moments.

Hell, Yu-Gi-Oh, like Dragon Ball features antagonists that are redeemed or are freed from their dark halves (Maxamillion Pegasus, Duke Devlin, Marik Ishtar, etc) as was the case with Piccolo, Vegeta, the artificial humans and Majin Boo. The 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh has lines like Yugi saying to Duke "if your truly sorry the best thing to do is be friends", which you don't hear anything as cheesy even in Funimation's reversioning of Dragon Ball Z, but I suspect being a fan of both shows around the same time may have led to some of this confirmation bias you speak of and people looking for things in Dragon Ball that are not there.

[Saiya6Cit]

Oh well, it is like choosing a partner: There is nobody perfect, you just have to overlook a few things and stay with the one that overall matches must of your goals/needs etc.

I love DB because of its characters, their lives, their dramas. I like the music and the fights. The comedy is simply somethig on the top, like the cherry on the top. Besides the poop and fart jokes, I find Toriyama's humor very enjoyable.

Some people might be asking for a DB Erasure version because other anime fans say DB is childish? I don´t care about that. Humor is part of DB. Go watch something dark if you want. For adult shows I recommed Vikings.

PS1. Vegeto EX, Nice description on friendship, you know what an Amigo is, cool, very cool. You might put a warning of foul language before you post that kind of post... some people are sensible.

PS2. I don't care about One piece... like... at all...

PS3 was my favorite console for playing rock band... oh sorry, I could not resist XD

[Vegetto95]

PS1. Vegetto EX, Nice description on friendship, you know what an Amigo is, cool, very cool. You might put a warning of foul language before you post that kind of post... some people are sensible.

PS2. I don't care about One piece... like... at all...

PS3 was my favorite console for playing rock band... oh sorry, I could not resist XD

I'm probably being an incredibly pedantic grammar Nazi here (I did get the joke and loved it, don't worry about that lol), but the proper way to do multiple postscripts (your common P.S.) is post-postscripts, starting with P.P.S., then P.P.P.S., then P.P.P.P.S., and so on, however many are required.

And if you already knew that and were simply forsaking that for the joke... then do ignore me

P.S. I'm right there with both you and Kunzait in regards to One Piece lmao

P.P.S. I SINCERELY do not mean to sound like a dick in saying this... but if people are sensitive to "foul language" on the internet in The Year of Our Dende Two Thousand and Twenty Four... then that is ENTIRELY their problem. We all read the forum rules when we signed up (or at least I would hope so lol), and there's not a damn word on there about simple cursin' and cussin' and swearin'. We're all completely free to say piss, shit, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits as much as we want on here (bonus points if you get that reference ). Obviously the CONTEXT matters greatly, as we can't be directing that kind of language to other users in aggression and should treat everyone on here with dignity and respect... but if someone were to say something along the lines of, oh... "Fuck Furuya Tōru, the prick's a fucking piece of shit wifebeating asshole, and I'm glad his rapist, sexist ass got fired"... yeah, not only is that 100% allowed here on Kanzenshuu, but something to that effect HAS been said about him on here several times a few months back!

Bear in mind here that I grabbed just a random sampling of post here encompassing both a vast array of time (from near the beginning of the forums up to fairly recently), and from a wide breadth of user notoriety: there’s some randos mixed in, but there’s also a lot there from very notable posters, mods, and admin here.

Also keep in mind that this is also a VERY small sampling I collected here: to go deeper into all the examples of this would take me eons to compile, as these kinds of sentiments about Dragon Ball and “Shonen” more broadly are absolutely **countless and endless** in this place.

JEEEESUS, I knew the epidemic of One Piece/Naruto/Fairy Tail/My Hero Academia/etc. fans projecting the insipid overemphasis on "fRiEnDsHiP" onto Dragon Ball was BAD, but GAWDDAMN.

I just... have any of the people who say this ever actually, you know... WATCHED Dragon Ball?? (I was gonna say read too, but let's be real... a HUGE majority of American anime fans, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the ones who focus almost solely on the post-2000s Weekly Shōnen Jump oeuvre, have never read so much as a single damn panel of manga in their lives, which is beyond sad. And I'm not just shooting from the hip when I say that... the amount of real life conversations I've had with fellow anime fans who have admitted to me that they don't care for reading- often not even limited to manga, but plain fucking BOOKS- is quite frankly ASTOUNDING. Granted, I have been responsible for a few converts by getting them into some great titles, but in my overall experience, it tends to be women much more often than not who read on the regular- again, not just manga, but books in general- and while those types of series do have plenty of female fans (I've met lots of 'em!), they do tend to attract far more male fans on the whole. And all that saddens me greatly, because even Muten Rōshi stressed the importance of reading... even if his choice of material to present to a 12 and 13-year old was... questionable )

Seriously, the ONLY time I can recall friendship EVER being brought up at ALL in well over 500 chapters/episodes is when Gokū explained to Kaiō-sama why he wanted to beat Freeza at his best, remarking in abject grief and anger that Kuririn "was a really good guy, and my very best friend!" Like, THAT'S IT. Hardly the kind of constant soap opera-esque wailing about "MUH NAKAMA!!!" that insufferable dolts like Luffy and Naruto and Natsu and Deku and Yugi tend to constantly spew out (more often than not along with a veritable flood of hyper-exaggerated tears).

It's almost like so many of these types of fans POOOOSSIBLY wouldn't have such hideously warped and stunted perceptions of anime and manga if they spent FAR less time obsessing over generic, popular "bAtTlE sHōNeN" fluff like Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, Bleach, Black Clover, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hunter X Hunter, Toriko, Dandadan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tower of God, Solo Leveling, Blue Lock, etc. and more time experiencing much more nuanced stories written for grown adults like Real, Vagabond, Blade of the Immortal, Sunny, Tokyo These Days, Goodnight Punpun, Solanin, Nijigahara Holograph, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Monster, Ghost in the Shell, Crying Freeman, Sanctuary, Gantz, Inuyashiki, Homunculus, Lone Wolf and Cub, Message to Adolf, Black Jack, The Book of Human Insects, MW, Ode to Kirihito, Blame!, Gunm/Battle Angel Alita, Ergo Proxy, Kemonozume, The Tatami Galaxy, Paranoia Agent, My Broken Mariko, Wolf's Rain, Shamo, Me and the Devil Blues, Ninja Scroll, Basilisk, Gangsta, Mardock Scramble, Kite, RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne, etc. (and when it comes to shōnen anime and manga made for children, stuff like Ashita no Joe, Devilman, Phoenix, Dororo, Biobooster Armor Guyver, Fist of the North Star, Yū Yū Hakusho, The Drifting Classroom, Barefoot Gen, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Galaxy Express 999, 3x3 Eyes, Rokudenashi Blues, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, etc. deserve FAR more love and respect than the aforementioned titles.)

[JulieYBM]

This is why I, a morally superior woman, only read mature books for adults, which shine a light on the human condition and the tragedy of existence.

[TechExpert2021]

It's almost like so many of these types of fans POOOOSSIBLY wouldn't have such hideously warped and stunted perceptions of anime and manga if they spent FAR less time obsessing over generic, popular "bAtTlE sHōNeN" fluff like Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, Bleach, Black Clover, Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hunter X Hunter, Toriko, Dandadan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tower of God, Solo Leveling, Blue Lock, etc. and more time experiencing much more nuanced stories written for grown adults like Real, Vagabond, Blade of the Immortal, Sunny, Tokyo These Days, Goodnight Punpun, Solanin, Nijigahara Holograph, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Monster, Ghost in the Shell, Crying Freeman, Sanctuary, Gantz, Inuyashiki, Homunculus, Lone Wolf and Cub, Message to Adolf, Black Jack, The Book of Human Insects, MW, Ode to Kirihito, Blame!, Gunm/Battle Angel Alita, Ergo Proxy, Kemonozume, The Tatami Galaxy, Paranoia Agent, My Broken Mariko, Wolf's Rain, Shamo, Me and the Devil Blues, Ninja Scroll, Basilisk, Gangsta, Mardock Scramble, Kite, RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne, etc. (and when it comes to shōnen anime and manga made for children, stuff like Ashita no Joe, Devilman, Phoenix, Dororo, Biobooster Armor Guyver, Fist of the North Star, Yū Yū Hakusho, The Drifting Classroom, Barefoot Gen, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Galaxy Express 999, 3x3 Eyes, Rokudenashi Blues, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, etc. deserve FAR more love and respect than the aforementioned titles.)

What about Initial D or MF Ghost? They don't fall under the "battle shonen" category.

[Vegetto95]

What about Initial D or MF Ghost? They don't fall under the "battle shonen" category.

Well, there just so happens to be a reason for that, and that reason is that Initial D and MF Ghost, just like every single one of the examples of "nuanced stories written for grown adults" I mentioned (aside from My Broken Mariko, which is josei) are seinen manga.

I fully apologize in advance to Kunzait, because I am about to mime several points that he's made on here about 30,000 times (and I mean ZERO insult to you, Daitouden, in saying this, but the fact that you asked this question kinda shows why, ESPECIALLY since he JUST covered some of those exact points in his post above earlier today... )

First... "battle shōnen" is NOT an actual thing (there's a reason why I previously wrote it in the mocking way that I did). Never has been and never will be. It's a lot like "zenkai boost" or "Majin Vegeta" or "Mystic Gohan": a term WIDELY and WILDLY thrown around by fandoms, but having ZERO real basis whatsoever. "Battle shōnen" is a term entirely invented by the types of people whom I described before, that being those who have largely exposed themselves to little other then Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Bleach, Demon Slayer, Fairy Tail, etc. etc. etc. Those people see several common "tropes" in those shows, and thus they tend to lasso them all into one arbitrary "genre" featuring teenagers with supernatural powers often a part some kind of in-universe system, constantly escalating life and death stakes, wacky humor, and emphasis on friendship, youthful vigor, and never giving up.

But see, those people COMPLETELY miss the larger picture, which is the fact that there are THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of shōnen manga series going back damn near 70 years (if not more), and those above types of series, while typically the most popular, sure, ARE nonetheless squarely in the minority when stacked up against every shōnen series ever made. Because shōnen in and of itself has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with any genres or tropes. There are romance shōnen, slice of life shōnen, crazy gag comedy shōnen, horror shōnen, hardboiled detective shōnen, historical fiction shōnen... seriously, take literally ANY genre or subgenre that has ever existed ever, you name it, there have been dozens, nay HUNDREDS (at LEAST) of shōnen series made of it.

Because here's the thing- here's the real truth, buckaroos, fellas, boys n' girls, guys n' gals, gentlemen n' dames, freaks n' geeks: ALL shōnen is is an age and gender demographic. THAT'S IT. Nothing more, nothing less. Shōnen denotes manga (and by extension, anime, but it is primarily used in regards to manga publications) that are aimed towards grade school-aged boys. And by grade school, I mean elementary and middle school, so roughly between 5 or 6 to 12 or 13 (despite the completely false allegations I CONSTANTLY see thrown around that "Shōnen is actually for teenagers!!", usually due to the fact they often feature *GASP!!!* a little bit of blood here and there, and acknowledge that humans 1) can die, and 2) DO IN FACT possess sex organs as well as sex drives *THE HORROR!!!*, in complete contrast to roughly 99.9% of American children's cartoons that the people who say that are used to that tend MUCH more often than not be FAR more dumbed down than Japanese children's stories).

(Also, side note just to avoid any confusion: the word shōnen also simply means a young adolescent boy in general, and is the more common usage of it in the Japanese language and culture, but we are talking here specifically about its usage as manga demographic nomenclature, which is used as such precisely for that reason).

In contrast, seinen denotes manga that are targeted towards older teen and adult men. There's also shōjo, which is shōnen's opposite sex counterpart targeted towards elementary and middle school-aged girls, and josei, seinen's opposite sex counterpart targeted towards older teen and adult women.

Now, obviously seinen and josei being aimed at grown adults does NOT automatically mean that they'll be good or even really mature, there have been plenty that are decidedly not (for one particularly egregious example, do NOT look up Mysterious Girlfriend X... it's 100% seinen, and it is... eeeww... just no), and vice versa there are PLENTY of shōnen and shōjo works that are VERY much worth checking out even if you're well outside their target demographics (I mentioned a few lol). But by and large, yeah... seinen and josei are just by their very nature going to be far, FAR more mature and intellectually rewarding on average than shōnen and shōjo, as works intended for children are simply inherently limited by their very nature.



Again, my deepest, most sincere apologies to Kunzait, as I am TOTALLY parroting the EXACT same shit that he's said on here countless times, including less than 24 hours ago lmao. But hey... gotta fight the good fight, yeah?

[Shaddy]

*everything*

First off, I don't care if you point out other people have (mis)used One Piece as a measuring stick of Dragon Ball's tone, it's still a bad comparison. "Other people were wrong before me" isn't an excuse just because you drew a different conclusion from the same starting point. In fact, I believe the commonalities between One Piece and Dragon Ball that makes their fandoms overlap has nothing to do with friendship. If someone said that, I'd disagree with them the same way.

Secondly, this is not what we're talking about. I'm not talking about the sentimentality of One Piece. In fact, I really really don't want to discuss the sentimentality of One Piece with you. Frankly, whenever the subject is broached you become a complete dickhead with absolutely no valuable opinions, essentially diagnosing people who made or enjoyed a cartoon you didn't with some kind of antisocial personality disorder, and that's not behavior anyone should take seriously, including you. And I know you know this because you felt the need to signal how not-insulting you were supposedly being earlier in this post. Apparently when the population of the fandom is large and nonspecific enough, Kunzait Side B comes out to show us all the truth, how it's totally rad to tell someone they're actually just experiencing a delusional fantasy for emotionally-damaged lonely emo stalker freaks. That version of you should go fuck himself. I'm not interested in talking to him.

Finally, the thing I was actually commenting on was your description of this perception of Dragon Ball, as "comprised mainly if not solely of silly lightheartedness and has no other sides to it". The thing I was responding to was the claim that this somehow fits One Piece any better, which it doesn't. It's equally-wrong both times, and I covered this in my original post. All of this waffle about you not liking the emotions or attempts at drama does not contradict my point (and in some ways corroborates it), which was that the attempts at mature storytelling are inarguably obviously there and present, regardless of whether they personally worked for you. Both of these series are more tonally-complex than the perception you're talking about espouses.

Moreover, "serious" and "sentiment" are not antonyms, and they're not even what this thread is about! Look at just about every other post before mine, and how none of them are talking about this "power of friendship" version you are? Everyone was talking about Dragon Ball having its seriousness erased in favor of its more casual comedic origins, not this Steven-Universe-but-a-crackhead thing you're going on about.

This is why I said it felt like you're just looking for an excuse to take potshots at the show you don't like as much, as you have...a fucking lot of times before, holy shit. Now I see how you fill your posts with so many words, it's a lot of the same words.

[Kunzait_83]

Finally, the thing I was actually commenting on was your description of this perception of Dragon Ball, as "comprised mainly if not solely of silly lightheartedness and has no other sides to it". The thing I was responding to was the claim that this somehow fits One Piece any better, which it doesn't. It's equally-wrong both times, and I covered this in my original post. All of this waffle about you not liking the emotions or attempts at drama does not contradict my point (and in some ways corroborates it), which was that the attempts at mature storytelling are inarguably obviously there and present, regardless of whether they personally worked for you. Both of these series are more tonally-complex than the perception you're talking about espouses.

Fine then, forget entirely about what "worked for me" or not. Lets get down to brass tacks: does both Dragon Ball and One Piece attempt to balance "mature" storytelling with "silly lighthearted" fluff? Whether those attempts succeed or not, are they there? Obviously yes. We all know this.

Between the two however, and again *completely* irrespective of quality, does One Piece lean WAY more into sentimentality and friendship themes specifically than Dragon Ball ever has?

I think on its face objectively the answer to that is a resounding yes.

My deeper point therefore was: between Dragon Ball and One Piece, it makes VASTLY more sense for fans of both to latch onto the sentimentality and "friendship" themes in One Piece than it does for them to project those things onto Dragon Ball when they generally are not present in Dragon Ball like they are in One Piece.

It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike the Friendship stuff, or whether or not you think the attempts as "serious, mature" storytelling in One Piece land well and resonate or not. Forget ALL of that right now.

Does One Piece lean WAY more heavily into sentimentality and themes of Friendship than Dragon Ball does, or doesn't it? If we both agree that it does, then my point stands that it makes a LOT more sense for the fanbase to latch onto those things in One Piece (since they are core elements of it) than it does for them to project them onto Dragon Ball where they (largely) do not exist and where they aren't part of DB's core elements. THAT'S the primary crux of my whole fucking point here.

And if you don't agree that One Piece leans heavily into sentiment or themes of Friendship at all in the first place (I guess I just hallucinated all the Nakama stuff?) then we're at an impasse, because we clearly then saw two VERY different versions of OP.

Is that concise enough?

First off, I don't care if you point out other people have (mis)used One Piece as a measuring stick of Dragon Ball's tone, it's still a bad comparison. "Other people were wrong before me" isn't an excuse just because you drew a different conclusion from the same starting point. In fact, I believe the commonalities between One Piece and Dragon Ball that makes their fandoms overlap has nothing to do with friendship. If someone said that, I'd disagree with them the same way.

This is frankly a completely different conversation entirely from the main point I was focusing in on: my point of focus was on a mistaken/misguided/mis-whatever view of Dragon Ball that fans have, not however they mistakenly view One Piece.

If you want to say that fans who look to One Piece as being primarily about Friendship and sentimentality are ALSO mistaken in their view of that series... I mean sure, we could have that conversation of you like, but its a completely, entirely separate one from the one I was engaging in here (which was centered more on Dragon Ball and contrasting it with OP).

As I said before though, the fact that One Piece DOES (I would say inarguably, but I guess you're free to argue this point) lean heavily enough into sentiment and having its characters incessantly going on and on about Friendship enough, that to me it at the very least makes far more sense for fans to draw from it that those are what it is primarily all about (certainly FAR more sense than it does for them to take those things away from Dragon Ball).

Whether or not you think its still correct (within the confines of One Piece itself) for fans to draw so much focus onto the Friendship and sentimentality angles of One Piece, or whether or not you think that those elements in One Piece are still secondary to its attempts at being "dramatic/violent/serious" is a whole separate can of worms entirely from anything that I'm discussing here. Like seriously, I cannot begin to stress enough how much that is all entirely beside the fucking point I was making here.

You want to take a firm stance that One Piece fans are also "missing the forest for the trees" on One Piece's own terms as a series by overly-highlighting its sentimentality and Friendship themes and that its serious moments deserve more highlighting as well? Ok, totally fine by me. Have at it.

But when you directly compare Dragon Ball to One Piece (which again, I'm only making that comparison here at all because this fanbase has made a repeated point of doing so for DECADES now, and their continued comparison of the two has been made kind of important to the broader topic at play here), One Piece CLEARLY leans heavily, heavily more into sentimentality and Friendship than Dragon Ball ever does or comes close to doing. I would argue that THAT much is just blindingly objective on its face, irrespective of subjective arguments of "is this good or bad that it does so?"

Again though, if you want to go further and say "No, One Piece does not lean more heavily on Friendship and sentiment than Dragon Ball does, or does not lean heavily on those things in and of itself", then you can I guess make that case... but I'd say then we're just at an impasse, because we clearly saw two VERY different representations of One Piece.

Moreover, "serious" and "sentiment" are not antonyms,

That's true, and generally speaking I agree completely with this point. And even within the context of OP itself, it clearly views its sentimentality as deeply serious much of the time (again, whether or not that resonates is a whole other matter). So yeah, if I at any point in my earlier post had framed "sentimental" and "serious" as if they're at odds with one another, then that was definitely a (unintentional) mistake/oversight on my part.

And I think now in retrospect, its easy for me to see how I fell into that weird framing: because the sentimentality aspect of both One Piece and (supposedly) DB is often framed both on this site and throughout the parts of fandom that engage in this view as being somehow synonymous with "lighthearted". You can see that conflation to some degree even in the collage of posts on this subject from throughout the years that I posted earlier ("Dragon Ball is a lighthearted adventure about Friendship and Camaraderie", etc).

You're absolutely right though in that that very conflation itself is inherently wrong even (to some extent at least) on One Piece's own terms. So, without meaning to, I did actually fall into that same weird, wrong framing of pitting sentiment and lighthearted as at odds, simply by nature of seeing it framed that way so much across so many discussions about both series over the years.

And as you also alluded to here:

you not liking the emotions or attempts at drama does not contradict my point (and in some ways corroborates it),

It didn't help matters on my end by the fact that all the sentiment/attempts at serious drama clearly did not land with me whatsoever, so it made it that much easier for me to dismiss the Friendship sentimentality as "not serious".

That's actually a damn good point in itself, and its a fallacy I'll make sure to try and avoid going forward as best I can.

That said, it still doesn't detract too much ultimately from the much bigger, over-arching point here: even taking into account that the Friendship sentiment is part and parcel of One Piece's attempts at being "seriously dramatic" much of the time, that still isn't how much of the fanbase here seems to view it or frame it.

The general fandom-wide consensus, at least among all the One Piece fans I've ever engaged with over the years (and certainly all the ones who are found on here), seems to be that One Piece's Friendship-laden sentimentality (which in their argument, Dragon Ball supposedly shares with it) is a key factor that puts it directly at odds against the view of DB as being "serious". That sentimentality, however wrongly, is part and parcel of so many fans' views of both OP and DB being "more lighthearted". By their very own constant admission.

There's again the deeper fallacy within that framing (i.e. sentiment isn't necessarily the same as "lighthearted" both broadly and even within OP itself) that I neglected to point out and fell into somewhat myself: but regardless, however wrongly its framed, that poor framing is still nonetheless a part of the broader fandom "narrative" throughout the years that "Dragon Ball is a Lighthearted Friendship Adventure, and to prove that let's compare it with this other Lighthearted Friendship Adventure that is One Piece".

And ultimately, that bigger overarching point was what I was talking about.

and they're not even what this thread is about! Look at just about every other post before mine, and how none of them are talking about this "power of friendship" version you are? Everyone was talking about Dragon Ball having its seriousness erased in favor of its more casual comedic origins, not this Steven-Universe-but-a-crackhead thing you're going on about.

First of all, right up front: I was originally responding to a post Mike had made about how "nobody is trying to downplay Dragon Ball's serious side" ("This doesn't exist. This doesn't happen." were his literal exact words on the matter) with my counter-point that both he and much of this forum in general DID kind of (unintentionally, unconsciously) do a fair bit of that throughout much of its history with all the "Shonen Spirit of Adventure and Friendship" stuff: all of which, I'm sorry to say, are things that are all intractably and unavoidably tied-in with this site's own constant comparisons of Dragon Ball directly with One Piece (by even Mike's own admission in his earlier posts from back in the day, much less so many others).

Hell, it'd be weird of me to not mention or comment on OP whatsoever if I'm going to delve into that topic any. And indeed, I actually put off mentioning One Piece even once until much later deeper into my original response post. Contrary to what you seem to think, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to discuss that series that much if I can help it. Its just that this site (along with most of the wider fanbase as a whole to be fair, with no small amount of help from Toei/Shueisha themselves) has MADE it a gigantic point over the years to tie these two franchises in together as much as possible.

So unfortunately, if I'm going to be on a Dragon Ball forum, particularly one that has made comparing DB with OP a large part of its thing over the years, and I'm going to delve into the topic of "the parts of DB fandom that try and over-emphasize its lighthearted elements at the expense of its serious elements"... then its kind of unavoidable for me to HAVE to also delve into the OP comparisons.

Even when taking into account that OP's sentimentality is actually part of its attempts at "seriousness" and NOT necessarily a part of its "lightheartedness"... that still isn't the framing that the fanbase, including and especially the most ride-or-die One Piece segment of it, has used and ran so hard with for so long.

The framing has been, consistently from day one, "One Piece and Dragon Ball are both spiritually-linked Lighthearted Friendship Adventures". That's ultimately the framing I was pushing back against, because that's the framing that this site (including its creator) had posited forth so heavily for so many years.

Which runs starkly counter to Mike's earlier claim in this very thread that "nobody does 'serious' Dragon Ball erasure". I literally responded to his point there with reams and reams of screencaps of various people's posts throughout the years on this site (including some of his very own) doing exactly the thing he was denying was done.

So even when I concede (as I have zero problems conceding this, since its on its face objectively and logically correct and sound) that the "Friendshippy sentimentality" is more objectively a part of One Piece's attempts at "seriousness" than it is its attempts at levity... that's not how its been framed by this fanbase for so many years.

Even again conceding (as I again have no problem doing) that the fanbase is WRONG for framing it this way even with regards to One Piece itself, and not just in regards DB... that's STILL the wrongheaded framing that I'm trying to push back against here.

If anything, you've now demonstrated to me and made me realize that this framing is even MORE absurdly wrongheaded than even I had considered for all these years. You've shown me a whole new other layer in which this framing is silly and dumb.

In other words, even though One Piece's Friendship sentimentality itself does not work on its face as a case for why OP (and by extension, DB as its supposed "spiritually linked counterpart") is a more lighthearted series... the argument that this community has put forth for so long is still rooted in the false premise that "OP and DB are both more lighthearted because they are about Friendship".

Objectively speaking, by your own criteria you've laid forth: neither franchise is nearly as "lighthearted" as this framing denotes. And by at least my criteria, OP is indeed about Friendship and is very sentimental, but DB is clearly not.

Those two takeaways are not necessarily at odds with one another.

And its still ultimately relevant to this thread topic, because once again the original oft-repeated claim made by this community for so many fucking years now has been that "Dragon Ball is actually mainly a super lighthearted Friendship Adventure story, and One Piece being its 'spiritual successor' is further proof of this".

Even when I concede to you that fine, however well either series pulls it off completely set aside, neither DB nor OP are all that especially consistent in their lighthearted: this community has still been making the case that for many years now that both series are overtly and especially lighthearted: due primarily to their being sentimental "Stories of Friendship and Adventure in the Shonen Spirit" (whatever the fuck the latter is even supposed to mean).

Even when I agree with you to disentangle "sentimentality" with "lightheartedness", that conflation IS STILL RIGHT THERE PRESENT within this community's broader assertion/narrative/whatever you want to call it that these two franchises are so inextricably linked due to their shared overt-sentimentality being part and parcel of their shared overt-lightheartedness.

This is why I said it felt like you're just looking for an excuse to take potshots at the show you don't like as much, as you have...a fucking lot of times before, holy shit.

Dude, One Piece has been made a central fixture of SO much of this community's Dragon Ball analysis over the years. If you're going to try and deny that this is the case, then I'm sorry but that's just being frankly dishonest.

That OP has been made such a major fixture of DB analysis certainly wasn't my choosing obviously: if I've said a lot of shit about OP on this site over the years, its because it was in response to a LOT of shit this site/community has said about OP in relation to DB over the years.

And in the case of this very thread here: the thread topic is "Serious DB erasure". As in "parts of the fanbase who downplay the 'serious' aspects of DB (whatever those might mean to you) in favor of its more lighthearted elements".

As all the various decade+ worth of Kanzenshuu posts I collaged earlier will attest: One Piece comparisons with DB have always been a huge, massive part of this. Denying that is just denying basic, observable reality. So if I'm going to post in this thread about this kind of topic, then yeah, OP is gonna obviously have to come up in at least some fashion. And as I said several times now, I even put off mentioning the fucking series until as late into my post as I conceivably could manage.

If it were up to me, I'd never mention or think about that fucking series ever again. As I said before, I generally DON'T think about it or mention it almost EVER outside of my times posting on this site when the subject comes up, and ONLY within the confines of my times posting on this site when the subject comes up. (And you'll note also that my times posting on this site are pretty damned rare to begin with).

Even within the grander scheme of my posting history here: on its face objectively, I've talked about OP significantly less than I have things like martial arts fantasy/wuxia, the FUNimation dub, the history of North American DB fandom, or hell in recent years even IRL issues (like in things like all the various Vic Mignogna threads) and any number of other topics.

One Piece takes a HUGE backseat to any number of other topics that are much more my regular bread and butter topics of discussion when I engage with this community. Again, just on the face of things here. Most of the times where I do mention OP, its in a topic that is in some way connected to it (like this one). The times where I've mentioned OP out of nowhere in a totally unrelated discussion on here are even fewer and farther between (if ever).

If you're going to try and seriously make the case that any significant portion of my time spent here consists of me looking for excuses to trash-talk OP, then the actual reality of my posting history is going to make that case exceedingly difficult to make: especially considering at numerous times, whole multiple YEARS have fallen away from the calendar in between my mentions of OP on here.

Frankly, whenever the subject is broached you become a complete dickhead with absolutely no valuable opinions, essentially diagnosing people who made or enjoyed a cartoon you didn't with some kind of antisocial personality disorder, and that's not behavior anyone should take seriously, including you. And I know you know this because you felt the need to signal how not-insulting you were supposedly being earlier in this post. Apparently when the population of the fandom is large and nonspecific enough, Kunzait Side B comes out to show us all the truth, how it's totally rad to tell someone they're actually just experiencing a delusional fantasy for emotionally-damaged lonely emo stalker freaks. That version of you should go fuck himself. I'm not interested in talking to him.

I'll do my best to make this as abundantly clear as I possibly can to try and disentangle a lot of this:

Are there just regular, average people with no personal issues who just like and are fans of One Piece because its just a fun good time for them? Yes. Of course. Absoltuely.

Are there a LOT of those people? Yes. Of course. Absolutely.

Do I have any remote problems with any of those people whatsoever? No. I do not. (Hell, I'm actually close friends with quite a few people like this.)

Are there ALSO some amount of people out there who are incredibly lonely, alienated people with a lot of personal baggage relating to their loneliness who also like One Piece? Yes, there are. I know because I've also met some of them as well.

Are some of those people in that latter camp primarily fans of One Piece because the series' oft-repeated Friendship themes and constant depictions of Friendship fills a gaping, empty, lonely-ass void in their lives? Yes, again I've met my fair share of those people personally.

Do I have any remote problems with any of THOSE people whatsoever. No. No I fucking do not. At all. Do I think those people should be made fun of? Abso-fucking-lutely NO. I do not. Quite the contrary, I'd sooner throw actual, physical hands with anyone who would want to go out of their way to kick those kinds of vulnerable people while they're down and make them feel even WORSE than they already do.

I generally just feel fucking BAD for those people. Like on a deep, sincerely heartfelt level that I cannot begin to express into words. Its beyond shitty what their situation is, and its frankly just one of countless examples of society at large simply fucking utterly failing a whooooooole LOT of people.

In a lot of ways, this specific "category" (for want of a better word) of OP fans who use the series as a vicarious substitute for real friends in their lives is not all that dissimilar in many ways to all the countless people out there who are adult My Little Pony fans who use THAT series to work out their own tangled-up/confused sexuality, and in some cases (by those people's OWN admission even) to be taught and learn how people interact with one another interpersonally.

In BOTH cases - be it OP fans who find solace in that series due to their own lack of friends in their real lives, or MLP fans who use that series to understand their own sexuality - I do not think those people should EVER be mocked or made fun of, nor would I personally EVER wish to condone or engage in making fun of them.

The situations of people like this are NOT a joke, obviously. And its beyond stupid that I should even need to say this, but just to make myself even MORE blatantly, abundantly clear here: obviously I don't think that these people being fans of something like OP (or MLP, or whatever) is in and of itself the central root of their problem. These specific kinds of fandoms in question here are obviously symptoms of MUCH deeper and gravely serious societal problems.

And yes, I DO think its a genuinely, deeply worrying societal problem where reams and reams of young people out there (largely young men) are SO bereft of real life friends and real life guidance in their lives that they need to turn to fucking children's cartoons of all things in order to get those incredibly basic things that EVERYONE should have in their real lives.

All that being said and out of the way: yes, I DO still make fun of and crack snarky jokes about One Piece itself. Because (and again, I cannot believe I need to spell this out) One Piece is not a flesh and blood human being with a life and feelings. One Piece is a fucking children's pirate comic/cartoon. Making stupid jokes and cracks about a children's pirate comic/cartoon SHOULD be fair fucking game.

And as I said, I actually DON'T enjoy talking or even thinking about One Piece. Which is why I do it as minimally as I possibly can generally (again, you can consult my posting history here if you don't believe me).

When it DOES come up and when I DO talk about it, I mostly make the jokes and cracks about it as a way of amusing/entertaining myself to make talking/thinking about OP more bearable. In actuality, the popularity of OP among the latter "camp" of fans I outlined (again, I couldn't give two craps less about the former camp either way) frankly just depresses me and makes me feel like shit in general about the state of things in nerd culture writ-large.

Obviously not to NEARLY the same degree as y'know, all the Nazi shit out there. But even that stuff is also to some degree part and parcel of the same underlying issue that undergirds ALL of this stuff: a whole LOT of young men out there COMPLETELY lacking in real life friends and real life basic guidance in their lives.

The bigger point here being:

DO NOT FOR A FUCKING SECOND CONFLATE OR CONFUSE MY CRACKING SOME STUPID JOKES AND SNARK AT SOMETHING LIKE ONE PIECE AS A FRANCHISE ITSELF TO BE IN ANY WHICH WAY ONE AND THE SAME THING AS ME CRACKING STUPID JOKES AND SNARK AT THE ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO LOVE IT BECAUSE THEY ARE GENUINELY LONELY AND BEREFT OF FRIENDS IRL.

These two things are NOT overlapped for me, and are VERY separate, distinct things for me.

And frankly speaking, if it comes down to it and my cracking dumb jokes about OP for whatever reason IS too easy to conflate or confuse with me ragging on the portion (yes, PORTION, not entirety) of its fans who are genuinely alone and starving for friends IRL, then frankly in that case I'd sooner just stop cracking the jokes about OP entirely, and should I ever have to broach the subject on here going forward, just talk about it in the most dry, clinical terms that I possibly can.

[JulieYBM]

Series—especially long-running series like Dragon Ball—get so boring when they remain one thing for too long. I think I'd like to see something that's more, like, "weird, edgy and melodramatic" for 90% of the arc, just to so something that contrasts against Super Hero and Daima, as relatively lighthearted stories.

[Shaddy]

*more stuff*

So what I'm getting from all this is that it seems like I've kind of wandered into a load of baggage here, maybe that I wasn't fully aware of. Like when I said "oh you've done this a lot" I was really just referring to you having a lot of your trademark way-too-long posts show up when I keyword-searched your profile, I don't mean to imply that you have some obsessive hatred of the series (although this would be funnier).

But moreover I just don't think that makes for a good conversational throughline? Like I'm in here, I'm seeing this thread and thinking "oh, it's about how people have leaned too hard into DB's comedy origins and forgotten how actually fucked-up it could be", and I see your post which compares the "comprised mainly if not solely of silly lightheartedness and has no other sides to it" impression, accurate to my understanding of this discussion, to a series that also gets pretty fucked-up at points, and it strikes me as weird. I didn't watch Whitebeard get his head burnt in half for that. I admit I might have gotten a different impression if I paid more attention to the full text of the post and considered what that contextually meant, but that was why I responded initially.

So for the response to then be overtaken by the sentimental nature of One Piece just set off a bunch of red flags, because I know I'm not winning that war. I don't have a way of retroactively convincing you you were emotionally effected by something you weren't, believe me. My point was only ever that tone is a spectrum, and both Dragon Ball and One Piece flicker back and forth between different parts of it, and boiling either series down to one thing or another is reductive.

And I'm not ignoring OP's schmaltzy stuff, believe you me. I mean, as a fan I've necessarily seen way the fuck more of it than you. It's just, y'know, there's the other 90% of the series too. Fans aren't wrong to fixate on that, although I will say that yes, the "nakama" thing is partially hallucinated, it doesn't mean anything more special than "crewmate" and any other significance was literally made the fuck up by fansubbers.

But if anything unites the "shonen battle genre" (whether or not we say it's real, personally I don't give a shit) it's largely-infallible heroes having superpowered fights with weird assholes that go on way too long. If I open a chapter of One Piece, or Dragon Ball, or Naruto, Hunter X Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, JoJo, or any of the ninety squillion other series clustered together like this, I'm probably going to see a largely-infallible hero guy having a superpower fight with a weird asshole, part 17 of 30. I don't think anything in particular unites One Piece and Dragon Ball more than that, other than their manga and anime being owned and animated by a bunch of the same people. I mean, One Piece itself was coupled with Naruto and Bleach to make "the big 3", but Bleach is more trying to be YuYu Hakusho than anything else.

My issue with the way you brought this up is, again, not related to your personal judgment of it all.

I'm somewhere in the middle on One Piece. It mostly gives me an easy way to hang out with my family without a "what should we all do together" discussion. It gives me something to shoot the shit about with my friends, and indeed, both Dragon Ball and One Piece serve as riffing material between me and my dad. Because they are indeed children's stories with often very stupid plotting. The appeal One Piece has for me outside of that is mostly just that it's fun and imaginative, the Character Having Big Feelings moments only work on me some of the time. Just' yknow. I didn't really feel that was a natural outgrowth of this thread.

And indeed, I don't think it's wrong to critique the way people talk about either of these things. But I would say the question is not "is One Piece fluffy and Dragon Ball hardcore", and it's definitely not "is Dragon Ball fluffy and One Piece hardcore". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying One Piece isn't fluffier than Dragon Ball. It's just that they're two mixes of similar-feeling ingredients. Or if you want to make the historical argument with regards to their influences, two convergent species that both underwent carcinization into distinct, but not wholly alien, crabs. I just didn't have a good way of knowing that by talking about all this, I was apparently stepping knee-deep into ancient forum discourse surrounding the two series.

But my experience with One Piece fandom has not been demonstrably different from Dragon Ball fandom, at least with people my own age. I'm admittedly not on any dedicated One Piece forums the way I am with DB. But the reddit and twitter kids for these properties could not be more alike. They fetishize power levels the same, they act like the emotional beats hit harder than they do, they say "this is NOT a kid's show!!!!" eight million times whenever something fucked-up happens (which, let's remember, is quite often in both series).

Maybe the generational gap really is that wide. I know that Sonic fans on reddit and twitter act completely different from those on Retro or Stadium, and I'm right on the line between the "Sonic should just be fun and colorful" and the "Sonic should have real narratives with stakes and tension and consequence" generations, enough to love and hate examples of both attempts with that series. So I apologize for not having considered the full breadth of the situation if that is the case. I certainly would hate to be lumped in with the "actually Sonic 06 wasn't all that bad you guys" crowd.

And yes, I will also add that yes, if your premise is that "Dragon Ball and One Piece are both similar lighthearted easygoing adventures" is a stupid thing to say, I have absolutely no disagreement. I'm just not sure that I've seen anywhere near as widespread and pervasive an impression of either of these series as you're implying. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, again.

Finally, with regards to the whole "lonely people" subject...I mean, I guess? But I still think you should be casting way more broad a net with all that. Yeah, maybe people with problems like the show cause of that...or maybe there are a lot of reasons to like a lot of things? I don't really know where you're sourcing your fucked-up sadboys from. There's definitely a point to be made that sentiment is popular with people lacking it in real life, but that feels so nonspecific to One Piece. You could just write "western anime fans" in general and it'd make a lot more sense to me.

I mean like, if I were to guess, I'd pin the dudes with personality complexes as being into all the big titty waifubait moe stuff, right? I view a lot of art as a discussion piece between me and my own friends, and I'd rather wager that the stuff that's more embarrassing to discuss with anyone you know IRL is more popular with the people who don't have anyone to discuss it with, much more than broad-appeal serviceable stuff like One Piece, and indeed, Dragon Ball. I've made friends talking about those, because it's something popular enough for an easy connection point in a conversation.

That's why Homestuck is such a struggle for me, because it poked my "narratively engaging autistic dream story" button that makes me want to talk to my friends about it, but it's also a spiteful 1.2 million word post-ironic metanarrative made by an independently wealthy furry communist clown cosplayer that contains a non-zero number of uncensored horse dicks.

It's just a weird thing to make about One Piece, and weirder still to claim it as, on some level, intentional to One Piece. Like I mean, the majority of the fandom of...everything I've mentioned in this post (other than series that ended and didn't become franchise zombies) are just gonna be kids and teens, right? Or just, people who think it's cool when the fast strong guy hits the weird asshole villain really hard. It's not hard to see the cross-franchise appeal of that. Dragon Ball fans heavily overlap with professional wrestling and Superhero comic fandoms too, and that makes sense to me, even though I would never claim it's the same as those. But other people have, and I don't think they're meaningfully different from claiming DB and OP are the same.

I suppose if you were to claim that people who say things like "this series changed my life. it saved my life. it taught me what true friendship is" and really meant it were suffering from a dearth of meaningful outside connections, then yeah, I'd believe you. I saw a lot of those guys when I was deeper in the Steven Universe discourse. But like, it seems like that's not that many people? And they would probably tell you that themselves, and also they probably could have gotten that from almost any series whose sensibilities resonated with them? Friendship is a pretty fucking universal theme. Just seems weird to make that the focal point of only that series.

Eh. I've gotten to a point of rambling here. I see what you're saying on some level, and I do think I misjudged the "appeal to loneliness" thing as more of a jab at OP fans than any kind of sincere analysis of a real person. But we all relate to stories, so maybe. As a teen, I did indeed confront my own bisexuality, in part based on Dave Strider's bisexual teenage character arc in Homestuck, Dave himself being inspired by finally meeting his long-lost, out-and-proud gay brother Dirk.

...The horse dicks were only part of one of these dude's sexual development, to be clear.

[JulieYBM]

*more stuff*

I mean like, if I were to guess, I'd pin the dudes with personality complexes as being into all the big titty waifubait moe stuff, right? I view a lot of art as a discussion piece between me and my own friends, and I'd rather wager that the stuff that's more embarrassing to discuss with anyone you know IRL is more popular with the people who don't have anyone to discuss it with, much more than broad-appeal serviceable stuff like One Piece, and indeed, Dragon Ball. I've made friends talking about those, because it's something popular enough for an easy connection point in a conversation.

Chiming in to add that I think you're making a pretty good point.

Obviously, my story is a little different since I'm not, y'know, a guy—or straight—but something pretty similar was my experience at one point. I made friends through Weird Horny Shit™. A lot of those friendships didn't last, because all they ever wanted was being horny weirdos. :\ I think the issue is definitely moreso rooted in whatever is driving them towards their big titty waifubait moe stuff, though.

Like you said, though, One Piece and Dragon Ball—lest you find someone obsessed with One Piece women and their big ol' tiddies—isn't this sort of weird thing that only online weirdos like to talk about. Are people on internet forums who discuss The Arts more likely to fit the stereotype? I mean, yeah. Not a ton of people come to the internet to memorize shit about a comic book or cartoon and then accumulate 17,000 posts on the internet talking about those things as if the worldbuilding and power levels and the Power of Friendship matters. I don't know, I don't really think I need to take survey of One Piece or Dragon Ball fans that way, mostly because it just does me no good unless I need to specifically point out when a nerd on an internet forum doesn't understand how their weird outlooks

Eh. I've gotten to a point of rambling here. I see what you're saying on some level, and I do think I misjudged the "appeal to loneliness" thing as more of a jab at OP fans than any kind of sincere analysis of a real person. But we all relate to stories, so maybe. As a teen, I did indeed confront my own bisexuality, in part based on Dave Strider's bisexual teenage character arc in Homestuck, Dave himself being inspired by finally meeting his long-lost, out-and-proud gay brother Dirk.

I think media helping you come to terms with your bisexuality is actually really cool and it totally isn't also because the same thing happened to me, nuh-uh.

...The horse dicks were only part of one of these dude's sexual development, to be clear.

This is a hell of a sentence to end on and I applaud you for it.

[jjgp1112]

Random sidebar: as somebody who's watched unhealthily extensive amounts of both things, Dragon Ball and Pro Wrestling are remarkably similar. They both revolve around functionally the same thing and tackle the subject with equal amounts of absurdity and insanity. They exist in these bizarre realities where combat sports is the law of the land for every function and instution in life in increasingly ridiculous premise-justifying ways. They're both heavily dependent on style and craft, as it does a lot of heavy lifting for the narratives. And narratively, their structures are damn near identical if only because they're both written in the same slapdash, week-by-week manner. Like, right down to the constantly evolving cast.

After obvious changes to accommodate the mediums, you can adapt pretty much any Dragon Ball storyline to wrestling and vice versa. The Buu saga in particular plays out like one of those disastrous wrestling storylines that got derailed by injuries and politics.

(Japanese wrestling in particular is pretty much live action battle anime)