"Serious Dragon Ball" erasure

[The Monkey King]

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.

You have to be a special kind of pretentious to get genuinely annoyed over fanmade terms. Not to mention the name "Majin Vegeta" is used in a lot of official DB media.

Also I don't see how people making a name for a subsection of shonen manga requires a written manifesto in response, but I guess 99.8% of anime fans are unfortunately not as smart and sophisticated as you

[jjgp1112]

The season 9 booklet also uses Mystic Gohan

[Vegetto95]

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.

You have to be a special kind of pretentious to get genuinely annoyed over fanmade terms. Not to mention the name "Majin Vegeta" is used in a lot of official DB media.

Who, um... who EVER said I was "genuinely annoyed", or even annoyed at ALL? Because I capitalized a measly two words for mere emphasis? You are completely assuming and making things up (which IS something that annoys me, if ever so slightly). And yeah, I'm WELL aware that "Majin Vegeta" is a term used in official DB products (although outside of American dub stuff, it's really only used on the Japanese side of things in the video games, and obviously those are NOOOT the best metric to use when trying to apply names to things in the franchise... see the godawful clusterfuck that is the Dragon Ball Wiki for proof of that lmao)... but it's simply not correct.

Majin refers to the actual Demon Race (which Daima has recently very much solidified), and Bobbidi partially possessing Vegeta's mind with his dark magic did NOT suddenly turn him from a SaiyaJIN into a MaJIN (there is a difference between MaJIN, the Demon RACE, and MaZOKU, the Demon CLAN. Piccolo Daimaō, Garlic, and their kin showed that anyone can become a demon clansman, and Piccolo showed that you can also UNbecome one too- but that is NOT the case for MaJIN. That shit's a matter of nature and NOT nurture). You are of course 1000% allowed to use that term and the others if you want, obviously it is NOT my place to stop you, have at it!! But it's just something that *I* personally don't use because I find it highly inaccurate. Besides, I really don't see why my saying that is such a big deal to you anyway when it was something I barely offhandedly mentioned in passing as a random example that had NOTHING to do with my main point.

The season 9 booklet also uses Mystic Gohan

By "the season 9 booklet", I'm assuming you're referring either to the Orange Brick DVDs or the similarly fucktastical Blu-ray sets, both authored by FUNimation? If so... I rest my case

Also I don't see how people making a name for a subsection of shonen manga requires a written manifesto in response, but I guess 99.8% of anime fans are unfortunately not as smart and sophisticated as you

And again... it's a subsection that is named as such because, according to the people who use that term, it contains many shared tropes involving fighting with superhuman abilities, constantly escalating battles, crazy humor, and emphasis on friendship and the spirit of adventure. But again, 1) that only covers a VERY small subset of UBER popular titles, the vast majority of which are from within the last 20-25 years, and 2) it completely obscures the FACT that, again... shōnen is a DEMOGRAPHIC, NOT A GENRE.

Referring to something by way of its demographic is NOT something we do with anything else. No one refers to American comics or novels or films or TV shows in such a way, and instead we use, you know... actual genre terminology meant for that exact purpose. And guess what? Said terminology applies JUST as well to anime and manga; the fact that they're Japanese and therefore foreign to many of us (so spooky, I know) doesn't mean jackshit.

The "tropes" people allude to being present in most "battle shōnen" are found in a FUCKTON of stuff that isn't manga or anime or even Japanese at all. Again, shōnen just means something targeted towards grade school boys. So in that regard, stuff like He-Man or Transformers or Darkwing Duck or Justice League Unlimited are "battle shōnen" too, right?? ... ... Yeah, starting to see how ridiculous that is?

Like, One Piece is shōnen, yes. Absolutely. That is an absolutely undeniable FACT. HOWEVER, that ONLY describes the group of people it's primarily sold to. In terms of genre... I think "swashbuckling action-adventure comedy" fits perfectly. Hell, One Piece has more in common with Pirates of the Caribbean than it does Dragon Ball or Fullmetal Alchemist or Naruto or Bleach. And for all of the "emphasis on friendship and adventure" that so many of them are described as having... you're not going to find that in things like Fist of the North Star or Guyver or Devilman, despite those series being shōnen that are squarely in the fantasy/sci-fi action genre.

Plus, it blurs the line BETWEEN different demographics when you mistake a demographic for a genre. Know how many times I've seen One Punch Man being referred to as a "battle shōnen" series despite the fact that it has been serialized for its ENTIRE RUN in a seinen magazine? Yeah... WAAAAY too fuckin' often. THAT'S the kind of confusion that that factually incorrect mindset creates, and THAT'S why I have a problem with it.

Because it ALSO creates a vast amount of confusion about what the term GENRE even means as well. For one particularly ridiculous example, I've literally seen someone ON THIS VERY FORUM in the past posit fucking DEATH NOTE of all things as "battle shōnen" because, and I quote (not naming any names): "I'll give you Death Note, though in a slow build kind of way it follows the shonen formula. Light went through a lot of people in his way, beat the final boss, but couldn't beat the final boss' successors."

Like... Death Note is a supernatural-tinged hardboiled detective crime mystery series, but you STILL have people doing mental cartwheels to fit it into the "battle shōnen" "genre" becaaaaause...??????? Seriously, how am I NOT supposed to take at least a LITTLE umbrage with that? Are City Hunter and Doberman Deka and Chameleon Jail suddenly JUST LIKE Demon Slayer and Hunter X Hunter and My Hero Academia because the main characters are detectives that sometimes get into gunfights? Were series like Monk or Law & Order or Hill Street Blues or Pushing Daises "battle shōnen" all along?? Are films like Dressed to Kill, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, or Se7en somehow "battle shōnen" by that "logic"?

On the flip side of that, Fist of the North Star has MUCH more in common with stuff like Riki-Oh or Peacock King or Violence Jack than it does One Piece or Fairy Tail or Black Clover due to sharing a lot of fantasy martial arts and/or post apocalyptic wasteland genre themes, but FotNS is shōnen, and Riki-Oh, Peacock King, and Violence Jack are seinen (though Violence Jack at least started out as shōnen and was moved to a seinen magazine because it was just THAT over-the-top violent, even for 1970s shōnen manga standards).

Allow me to quote the late great George Carlin for a sec to say "At what point does all of this stuff just break down and become just a lotta stupid shit that somebody made up? They fuckin' made it up, folks! It's make believe!"





Also.. you can can it with the attitude, pretty please. It's absolutely uncalled for, and it makes it come across like you're reading into what I wrote whatever it is that YOU WANT it to sound like. Instead, how about let's have an actual CONVERSATION, and not a toxic (and VERY MUCH one-sided on your end) dick measuring contest.

Like, yeah, sure... I wrote a few paragraphs instead of a few sentences. ... ... ... Aaaand? Guess what, that's my right. There's NOTHING in the rules against that whatsoever, and in fact, Mike/VegettoEX has stressed on MANY an occasion (including IN THE FORUM RULES) that he loves it when posts are detailed to create conversation and actively DISCOURAGES shorter posts. Other people have their writing styles, and I have mine. So next time, how about maybe, I dunno... stick to responding to the points I made WITHOUT the crass ad hominem attacks. As it stands, YOU'RE the one coming off as obnoxiously pretentious and arrogant when you behave like that.

Remember:

Be respectful of your peers. While maintained exclusively in English, this is truly a global community with fans from all walks of life. Your opinions must be expressed with civility. Rudeness (including slanderous words) and personal attacks against members — of this community or otherwise — will not be tolerated.

[JulieYBM]

Because it ALSO creates a vast amount of confusion about what the term GENRE even means as well. For one particularly ridiculous example, I've literally seen someone ON THIS VERY FORUM in the past posit fucking DEATH NOTE of all things as "battle shōnen" because, and I quote (not naming any names): "I'll give you Death Note, though in a slow build kind of way it follows the shonen formula. Light went through a lot of people in his way, beat the final boss, but couldn't beat the final boss' successors."

Like... Death Note is a supernatural-tinged hardboiled detective crime mystery series, but you STILL have people doing mental cartwheels to fit it into the "battle shōnen" "genre" becaaaaause...??????? Seriously, how am I NOT supposed to take at least a LITTLE umbrage with that? Are City Hunter and Doberman Deka and Chameleon Jail suddenly JUST LIKE Demon Slayer and Hunter X Hunter and My Hero Academia because the main characters are detectives that sometimes get into gunfights? Were series like Monk or Law & Order or Hill Street Blues or Pushing Daises "battle shōnen" all along?? Are films like Dressed to Kill, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, or Se7en somehow "battle shōnen" by that "logic"?

Of course Death Note is battle shounen: Death Note is about two twinks with terribly repressed bisexuality and casual misogyny duking it out in a battle of wits as opposed to just coming out of the closet and dating one another like normal people. That's Weekly Shounen JUMP battle manga to a tee!

And seriously, I don't see how it really matters? Like, when I think what makes a 'battle shounen' whatever the fuck it is, I've always thought about it more so in terms of the qualities that we see Death Note display. Sure, calling out attack names is cool and all, but it's the manner in which the structure of a battle is fleshed out to fit the individual thoughts and processes of the characters that has always stood out and defined 'battle shounen' separately and uniquely from, say, an American action cartoon or what-the-fuck-ever.

Also, the bisexuality. Like, come on, that shit is so baked into the formula at this point that they can all "no homo" until the cows come home, it's still just There. The impassioned bonds between men, the intimate physicality, knowing exactly how one's rival thinks and will act? Sweet baby cuffed jeans, that's queer.

[Vegetto95]

Of course Death Note is battle shounen: Death Note is about two twinks with terribly repressed bisexuality and casual misogyny duking it out in a battle of wits as opposed to just coming out of the closet and dating one another like normal people. That's Weekly Shounen JUMP battle manga to a tee!

Also, the bisexuality. Like, come on, that shit is so baked into the formula at this point that they can all "no homo" until the cows come home, it's still just There. The impassioned bonds between men, the intimate physicality, knowing exactly how one's rival thinks and will act? Sweet baby cuffed jeans, that's queer.

I mean, you CANNOT tell me that Naruto and Sasuke don't wanna bang the absolute NinjaFuck outta each other. Or Deku and Bakugō (as loathe as I am to say so, considering how horrifyingly cringe a LOT of MHA shippers are, especially since I'm no more a fan of it than I am of Naruto, which is to say not at ALL lol). Or like, the ENTIRETY of the Straw Hat Crew (c'mon... those guys don't have daily orgies on their ship with how much they cry about how great friends they all are? PUH-LEEEEZE). Hell, Vegeta's absolute OBSESSION with Son Gokū often gets VEEEERY suggestive (ESPECIALLY in the Super era when it's somehow even MORE prevalent than it was in Z, which is fuckin' SAYING something).

Like, a LOT of these mangaka (who often were young men in their 20s and 30s when writing their respective headline series) have written stuff that makes me think they were/are VERY repressed in at least some way or another, more likely than not in a way that Freud would have quite the field day with lol

Aaaand I'm pretty sure this has all gone WAY off topic at this point, but oh well...

(Also, PLEASE don't get the impression I'm making fun of any of this in any kind of hateful way, I'm about as left-wing politically as they come and have NOTHING but support for the LGBTQ+ communities. It's just that sometimes with some of these series, I have to go "Dude, just pull the fucking trigger and make this shit yaoi already, you're 96% there already for Chrissakes" )

[Kunzait_83]

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).

Not to be too pedantic here, but just a quick reminder of your own words from earlier:

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.

I don't want to get too hung up on this point, as its fairly minor in the grand scheme of things here: I just wanted to quickly note how your own wording here made it seem kind of glaringly apparent that you were taking some kind of issue with me supposedly "having some obsessive hatred for OP" or whatnot.

Just so we both understand here that, while I do believe you when you say that it wasn't your intent, its also kind of nearly impossible to look at that sentence and take any other meaning from it.

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.

As I said numerous times now: the only reason I'm even making that comparison here in the first place is because this whole site spent more than a decade+ making that comparison. Up to and including its owner/founder, and much of the mods and staff here.

Don't pin it on the guy (me) who's simply responding to/countering against that initial comparison. A comparison which, again, was a central part of this whole website/community's whole freaking identity and general stated view of Dragon Ball over more than 10/15 years of its existence (at least).

Moreover, like I said earlier, I saved the One Piece component of this for as late into my original response to Mike as I possibly could: both because I don't relish having to think about or discuss OP anymore than I absolutely have to in order to be a participant in this community... and moreover because the One Piece aspect of all this was only one single component of my much larger point I was trying to raise on this topic, and I didn't want the OP stuff to drown out and overwhelm all the other points I was making.

Which now, since you've decided to pick *that* aspect of my earlier post to focus on and argue about with me, the One Piece stuff has now apparently succeeding in drowning out all my other broader points on the subject I was trying to make. Which is exactly what I didn't want to happen.

So thanks for that I guess.

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.

*Sigh*

Just to be perfectly clear here, that context you mentioned you may have missed WAS actually contained in my post (I'll be re-highlighting some of it shortly here): I don't just write in longform like this just for the hell of it.

Its because there often IS a lot of nuance and context behind a lot of stuff that I talk about on here: again, the stuff I often talk most about on here are things like the history of ancient-ass fantasy genres like Wuxia and the history of Western DB fandom going back often decades and so on (and the topic of this thread touched on the latter: fandom history, particularly centering around this site in its early days).

Stuff that like, kind of REQUIRES a whole fuckton of nuance, context, and just general space to be longform and wordy.

Regardless, easily the single biggest drawback to my longform manner of posting here is that it seems like *way* too often people seem to be just responding to some intangible "vibe" they're getting off my posts, rather than like... what the actual text, substance, and content of the post actually entails.

Because I swear to god, 90% of the times I've said something on here that has righteously angered someone, they're oftentimes getting angry at something that was in fact nowhere to be found in anything I actually wrote. Its just some intangible "bad juju" that I sometimes give off just for being wordy and blunt.

Frustrating, considering that the part of the reason my long posts on here are as long as they are is because I genuinely try my very best to put as much thought and considered nuance as I can into what I say here. My bluntness usually comes with an actual substantive point behind it, I swear.

But if I make them too short, then people will then STILL misinterpret what I'm saying, since if I go too short I then lose a LOT of important context behind what I'm trying to say as well.

There's apparently some magical "Goldilocks" ideal length for a post (not too short, not too long: just right to include all needed context and not wear people down or daunt them with the length to the point where they're just going off of a "general vibe" and not what I'm actually saying in reality/substance) that I'm fundamentally incapable of hitting either way it seems.

That doesn't mean for the record that I expect EVERYONE on here to read through absolutely everything I write obviously. God no. Please don't let that be your takeaway from this point here.

Just that (and I'm saying this bit here broadly, not necessarily to just Shaddy) if you're going to engage with something long that I wrote, just... at least TRY and be sure to actually make sure you're understanding the full context and substance behind what I'm actually saying before you get upset or offended and rage at me.

(Yeah I know, that's not gonna happen. )

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.

Not to belabor this point any more than I already have by now: but while I did admittedly make the mistake myself (and I copped to that) of conflating One Piece's sentimentality with its more "light/non-serious" aspects... even had I NOT made that conflation myself, that wouldn't have changed the fact that most of the broader Dragon Ball fanbase here that overlaps with OP fandom not only ALSO make that same conflation, but they make that conflation CENTRAL to their comparisons of DB and OP.

Again, that's part of the context you likely missed earlier: I included in my initial post a whole TON of old (and not-so-old) posts from across a LONG span of this site's history showing people (from average randos to super notable big-name users to even the site's own staff and founders) making that very same conflation themselves.

If for no other reason than to conclusively prove that this isn't me tilting at windmills here: this represents a VERY legit and quite major (even I would argue central) component of the broader discourse that has gone on in this community going back to its earliest beginnings and spanning literally decades now.

Just for one snippet of an example of me stressing this context (that still didn't seem to land) in my initial post:

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 across 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.

Like... this is pretty ironclad that I'm not just tilting at windmills and making this shit up. This direct conflation between 1) Dragon Ball, 2) One Piece, 3) lightheartedness, and 4) sappy sentimentality about Friendship... this wasn't "obscure, ancient old forum lore" or anything that I'm dredging up: this was a core part of the whole central thesis behind this entire site/community's repeatedly stated views of what the "heart and soul" of Dragon Ball was/is.

There is literally decades worth of posting and writing about this very topic (including from much of this forum's most heavy hitter important users and staff/founders) that can be readily found throughout this entire site. Its not hard to come across. I posted just a mere a sampling of some of it myself here in my initial post.

Which is the whole reason why I even bothered to make that original long-ass post in the first place, as it was a direct response to Mike/EX's claim that downplaying Dragon Ball's "serious/violent" side "does not happen" anywhere or from anyone.

Because the basic-most gist of my point in response to Mike was "Dude, that skewed highlighting of DB's more 'lighthearted' side was (for all the numerous contextual reasons of fandom history I spent so many paragraphs of text enumerating and detailing) literally a LARGE portion of what this site did for more than a solid decade and beyond. You were at the center of it at one time dude! This site was Patient Zero of that whole phenomenon, and proudly so!"

And yeah, One Piece (and its view by so many fans as "spiritually tied to Dragon Ball through their shared lighthearted emphasis on Friendship and Adventure") was a key part of all that. By this site/community's own repeated admission at the time! Was it the only factor at play? Or even the single most important or central factor? Of course not, and I said as much repeatedly in the original post.

In fact, most of the original post if you look back at it... like I said before, One Piece doesn't enter into it until WAY later in. But moreover, the overwhelming majority of my post was tied to the history and context surrounding broader U.S. Dragon Ball fandom and wider mainstream U.S. popculture (or at least as it pertained to primarily young suburban white preteens/teens) at the turn of the millennium, and this site's own deeply tied-in history with all that during that same contextual period of time.

I had to also mention One Piece as well, because its too crucial to the topic to NOT mention it: but this whole derailment with it that you and I have now had makes me still regret having included talking about OP in my writing about this subject regardless, because its now made this convo go from "Actually Mike, 'serious DB erasure' not only DOES happen, but you and this site were kind of at the center of a lot of it for many years now, and here's all the receipts and all the historical context and reasons for why that was (as best as I understand it anyway)." over instead to "Oh my god, Kunzait said something I don't like about One Piece again, how dare he!"

Again: frustrating. Particularly as the role of One Piece in this whole thing is actually I'd say one of the least interesting aspects about it relative to all the other factors and context that I highlighted.

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.

1) For the chunk of the series that I watched through anyway, the schmaltz was like, at least like 40% of the fucking series that I saw. Minimum. And that's me being generous. It was pretty pervasive. Hallmark commercials looked subtle and gritty next to this shit.

If that thins out/calms down any as the series progresses even further in... cool I guess, but this series is also like 90 billion episodes/chapters worth of cringy tedium too long for me to ever give a shit and find out.

2) Worth noting that at the time I was attempting to plow through the series, I was indeed watching it fansubbed. To be fair though, that definition of "Nakama" was also being used by pretty much the entire One Piece fanbase at the time as well, not just the subbers.

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.

Quibbling over whether or not "Battle Shonen" should count as a real genre or not set completely aside, I'd generally agree largely with most of this. But again, I defer over to this site's owner and founder, EX, from back in the day:

I'm very much lately finding myself in a cross-roads of sort with regards to how I view the series, its fanbase(s), how I want to involve myself, what I want to cover, how I want to cover it, etc. At the end of the day, though, what it's all really boiling down to for me is pure shonen. By that, I'm talking about things like friendship, camaraderie, adventures, etc. That's what I want to see, and anything that doesn't fall in line with that is probably not something I really want to be associated with.

That's really why I want *everyone* to be ultra-shonen while you're here .

And for good measure, another one of the myriad, countless other notable posts on this site that I collaged earlier:



To hear it from not just this site, but from a TON of Dragon Ball and Shonen fans in general all across the 2000s and even the 2010s: the things that united Shonen as a "genre" were themes like "Friendship, Camaraderie, Adventure, willpower, honor, etc. etc." (I derisively/snarkily threw in "Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect" at one point in my original post here as a joke).

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.

Again, this isn't "ancient, obscure forum lore" I'm reciting here: this crap about "Shonen as a genre is about primarily Friendship and Adventure and Rainbows and Kittens, etc." was literally this whole website/community's entire fucking central brand and part of its whole mission statement for years and years and years.

This was to the point where at one time (no longer the case now, but back in the day), one of the actual, official "Forum Rules" you would have to read before joining as a member was "Remember to keep things Shonen!" as a way of saying "Remember to keep things civil and friendly" as part of the broad understanding among most of the Dragon Ball community online at the time that Shonen was universally understood to mean "Friendship" and whatnot.

THAT'S how deeply-ingrained "Shonen is about Friendship!" was not only to this particularly site, but to the wider English language/Western Dragon Ball/Shonen Jump community online at the time: it was even part of this site's official fucking Forum Rules at one point. That you literally had to read before joining.

It was omnipresent not only on this site, but it was omnipresent community-wide across a LARGE swath of English language Shonen Jump/Japanese version-centric/subtitled Dragon Ball fandom online for like... pretty much all of the back half of the 2000s and front half of the 2010s at least. I was there, I was active in the community, I have distinct fucking memory of all this. This crap has only died down somewhat in recent years, and even then there's still traces of it still out there today.

And again, I detailed painstakingly all of the historical context for why and how that happened, only to have all of that totally swept aside so we could zero in on and bicker about specifically One Piece instead.

Regardless, if you and I both agree that this "Friendship and Adventure" shit in relation to Shonen is all nonsense, that if "Battle Shonen" as a supposed "genre" is linked by anything, then its linked by long, drawn-out superpowered fights or whatnot... then I don't even know why the fuck we got to arguing against one another in the first place here. Cause if that's the case, then we're on the same page.

(Though again, my whole argument on the "Battle Shonen isn't a real genre" point is that just about ALL of the examples of it already fall into their own distinct, long-established genres - martial arts fantasy, sports, racing, detective mystery, horror/thriller, ninja fantasy, pirate adventures, etc. - and the only thing that relates them all together is also the only real meaning that the term "Shonen" has EVER had historically: and that's just "things made for and aimed at little Japanese children"... which is certainly a target demographic, but isn't a genre.)

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.

(Fuck it, we've already derailed into talking about One Piece to THIS extent)

Other than just the VERY broad way in which both series "mix light humor with violence, drama, and fighting" (which is something you can say about a whole TON of different things, as I've gone on at great lengths on here: from Wuxia, to other Manga properties [including other stuff in Weekly Shonen Jump], to even fucking Indiana Jones)... I have never understood or seen any shred of the supposed similarity between the two. Like, whatsoever.

End of the day, Dragon Ball is primarily about martial arts (with its roots eyeball-deep in Daoist Wuxia/Chinese folklore) and about Goku's never-ending journey to improve as a fighter. And One Piece is a high seas pirate adventure about Luffy's quest to find a hidden treasure horde and make tons of friends along the way. Even their basic-most art/visual styles are almost NOTHING remotely, vaguely alike in the absolute slightest: so there isn't even much to connect them just visually.

One Piece DOES have a lot of fighting: but given its whole Pirate Adventure thing, the fighting in a bunch of cases makes absurdly little thematic sense within OP as a series, comes off as a non-sequitur at times, and seems to solely be there purely because it was a part of Dragon Ball and Oda worships DB and Toriyama to irrational degrees, and not because it in any way belongs in the kind of story that OP is trying to tell.

Unless I'm missing something else here, I've never even begun to come close to understanding how you'd EVER connect these two series otherwise, apart from Oda and Toei/Shueisha's continued "Source: Trust Me Bro" insistence on the two series' being "spiritually linked". Which you can ultimately dismiss as simply little more than the product of 1) Oda obsessively fanboy worshipping Toriyama as his Sempai, and 2) Toei/Shueisha simply liking money an awful lot and not passing up a prime cross-brand marketing opportunity between their two all-time hottest, best-selling properties when they see one.

The whole DBxOP thing ultimately comes across as a nonsensical "connection" that a whole lot of different/disparate people (for various different reasons) just sort of collectively "willed" into existence on sheer mindless enthusiasm, and not based on any substantive commonality the two series actually share on the page beyond just "lots of fight scenes" (not remotely unique to either), "lots of tone shifting" (again, not at all remotely unique to either), and OP's author being an ardent dick-rider of all things Toriyama and DB in real life (which like, good for him and all, but that in and of itself doesn't magically alter the fabric of what he actually put from pen to page).

If you can somehow divorce yourself from all the years of built-up marketing and fanboy hype and just look at both series with a fresh set of objective lenses (hard for a lot of people to do, I grant you)... the points of "commonality" that so many people are most pointing to and hinging their claims on in connecting these two series so strongly together is largely super, super fucking flimsy. Like, comically so.

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).

I mean, at this point what you're describing - fetishizing "power levels"/power scaling, acting like every emotional beat is the hardest that beat has ever been hit by any work of fiction in all of human history, insisting that the franchise in question is somehow both simultaneously "Not a kids' show!" and also "Proof that kids shows are superior to shows for adults anyway!" etc. - this has ALL sadly become pretty much universal across almost EVERY single "nerd property", particularly ones aimed ostensibly at children (but who's fanbases are typically much older). This is hardly unique to either DB or OP.

Every fandom from Power Rangers to Gundam to Sonic the Hedgehog to Naruto (and every other "Battle Shonen" manga property) to Marvel and DC (comics and movies and cartoon shows alike) to Star Wars to Harry Potter to Pokemon to the aforementioned Steven Universe does all this same shit. Fuck, don't some MLP fans even talk about "Power Levels/Power Scaling" in THAT series at this point? I think I've heard that somewhere or other (don't bother to correct me if I'm wrong on that, I honestly do not care).

Regardless, this kind of crap has become unfortunately "the standard way" in which a VAST chunk of online fandoms have chosen to interact with their media almost universally, and this has been the case for like... nearly 20 fucking years at this point. Saying that "DB and OP fandoms both do this stuff" doesn't exactly prove or say much of anything really: this particular kind of incredibly dumb stuff is just largely universal across geek culture/manchildren media at this point.

Maybe the generational gap really is that wide.

No kidding.

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.

Sooner or later, everything finds its way back to either Sonic or Pokemon around here (and places like here). Always. No matter what. Its literally as iron-clad a law as gravity at this point.

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.

Glad to know then that our entire back-and-forth debate here was completely for nothing then, because that was literally the central point I was making throughout. And I was hardly subtle either.

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.

As I noted continuously throughout, this was literally the entire central thesis of this entire site's view of Dragon Ball (and Shonen more broadly) at one point in the not-too-distant past. You're literally posting on a community where you can literally throw a fucking rock and hit several gazillion posts and writeups of people going on about precisely this across any of the 20 years of its entire history.

I mean, just to reiterate (since again, this whole crucial point seems to have gotten lost amidst all the One Piece bullshit):

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.

Like I said, I wasn't exactly being subtle here with any of my points.

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.

Quite a few from this very community right here, believe it or not (not ever going to name any names naturally, but a fair few of them are pretty familiar ones): and I'm saying this as someone who's gotten to personally know a lot of these, ahem, "fucked up sadboys" as you put it, quite extensively off the forums.

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.

You're right, that's all generally/broadly true, and I could've very easily cast the net that wide: but One Piece just happened to be the specific example in question in this particular instance here in this thread.

And moreover I tend to find that OP's whole theme of Friendship within that series being THE main theme that many of its most ride-or-die fans (of the kind who fall into the "fucked up sadboys" pile: your term not mine) gravitate most strongly to to be particularly on-the-nose as an example of this broader phenomenon: so much squarely on-the-nose as to invite highlighting it in and of itself in these kinds of discussions.

That, and like I said, the nature of this subject (and the broader history behind it, particularly as it pertains to this site/community) sort of obligated me to dredge up One Piece: and as also noted, I don't particularly enjoy discussing or thinking about OP any more than I absolutely have to in order to participate on this forum, so whenever OP comes up I look for things about it that actually hold my interest and make talking about it at least semi-tolerable (beyond and apart from just making fun of it anyway: god only knows its a target-rich environment in that respect).

And the positively glaringly obvious connection its big Friendship themes has with so many of the issues surrounding alienated isolation within this particular "troubled" swath of its fanbase is something that DOES provide me with genuine, sincere interest.

And by "interest" here, I mean actual thoughtful interest in it out of both genuine empathy for the people in question and out of actual intellectual curiosity on a broad sociological/psychological level: not "interest" in the sense of like "lolcowing" these poor people, Kiwifarms-style. That kind of shit is fucking disgusting and reprehensible, and I'd frankly rather be dead than ever engage in anything even vaguely approximating that kind of sick, dehumanizing cruelty/internet bullying.

Like I said, while I could never bring myself to actually write any kind of thorough, academic (or at least academic-ish) study/writeup on the subject, its certainly of enough interest to me - in part from all the real life experience I've now racked up among some of these folks in meeting and talking with so many of them to such an extent over the years - that I'd definitely read the hell out of one (if one doesn't already exist out there somewhere anyway).

Again, my making dumb jokes and snarky wisecracks about franchises like One Piece, MLP, Pokemon, etc. in and of themselves as franchises (which again, I do largely for the sake of my own ability to try and discuss them with something that even resembles any kind of "depth") should NEVER be confused or conflated with me mocking or bullying their fanbases (something I have less than zero interest in doing): certainly not to any serious or malicious degree.

People are people, and people actually matter. Shonen though is largely just dumb Japanese kids' schlock (your rare "hey whaddyaknow, this has actual Serious Literary Merit" diamond-in-the-rough outliers like Barefoot Gen notwithstanding). These are obviously not the same thing.

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.

I've made a LOT of friends talking about Dragon Ball myself (both online and IRL). Dragon Ball has some of the broadest crossover appeal of ANY of these other franchises, and it always has even during the years before it came to the U.S. officially under FUNimation.

Other stuff though, like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and even One Piece... that stuff I would say until relatively recent-ish years (as the fans for those franchises have grown up into adulthood) would've all largely qualified under the "too embarrassing to discuss with anyone you know IRL" banner in a way that DB, for whatever reason, never quite completely did.

But that seems like a can of worms that's even more derailed from this thread, so I'll leave that alone.

Regardless, the Venn diagram between "dudes with personality complexes", "dudes into big titty waifubait moe stuff", and "dudes who are into stuff like One Piece in no small part primarily because its a vicarious surrogate for their lack of real life friends offline" is nearly a perfect circle. These are not different, disparate groups, these are largely the same exact kinds of people we're talking about here.

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.

Between Sorry to Bother You and Homestuck, if I had a dollar for every time a work made by someone who identifies as a communist contained uncensored horse penises as a notable recurring visual theme... I'd have two whole dollars.

Which isn't a lot I grant you, but the fact that this has now happened at least TWICE just within the past decade is, in and of itself, kind of amazing.

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.

What do you mean by "intentional to One Piece"? What specifically is that referring to?

If you're talking about the theme of Friendship being so central to it or something: I mean yeah, obviously THAT MUCH is clearly intentional on Oda's part. You don't have umpteen gazillion different tear-filled speeches about Friendship from every other character at the slightest drop of a hat and have the theme of Friendship NOT be an intentional creative/artistic move on the author's end. That's just silly.

If you're talking about "intentional" as in "the series is made this way specifically to appeal to lonely, isolated shut-ins"...

...I mean first of all just to get this much out of the way, its no secret really at this point that a LARGE percentage of the corporate end of the Japanese anime and manga industry is completely, 100% self-aware that a LARGE percentage of their products (a much larger, increased amount in the past 20 years than in decades prior, where it was already high to begin with anyways) are catered to and aimed intentionally at lonely, isolated, Hikikomori/NEET types (specifically by targeting in on their isolated loneliness in particular: see also Moe Big Titty Waifu Bait, there's an economic reason why so much of that shit exists). And that Hikikomori/NEETs act as a large and vital source of revenue for the whole industry.

That much isn't even an "open secret" at this point: its just straight up open and commonly/publicly understood as a straight up fact of reality of the broader anime/manga industry's whole business model for most of the last 20 years and change now. Hell its gotten to the point that Hikikokmori aren't just being used as human cash sponges, they're literally being poached by the anime/manga industry for cheap/free labor.

So that's the broader, industry-wide context here.

Given that context: do I know for a fact of certainty that Eiichiro Oda (or Toei/Shueisha for that matter) are specifically, purposefully utilizing any of One Piece's "Friendship/Nakama" bullshit as a deliberate way of marketing it toward a side-audience of Hikikomori/NEETs for some extra revenue?

No, I don't now nor have I ever even claimed to know that for certain.

When I playfully "accuse" Oda specifically, as an individual creator, of doing this kind of intentional targeting of his work at Hikikomori/NEETs, am I being serious? Not really, no: I'm mostly just mocking the series and its author cause I think his shit sucks, and as noted, its how I amuse myself to make discussing this crap in any way bearable for me.

When I less-playfully wonder-aloud whether or not Toei/Shueisha, as utterly massive media corporations, are leaning into that stuff purposefully, am I just kidding? Kind of, and also kind of not.

As noted, I DON'T know for certain whether or not Toei/Shueisha look at One Piece's (unsubtle and repeatedly harped upon) themes, look at the broader NEET/Hikikomori populace and their particular emotional hangups (which you can be sure, there are corners of the anime/manga industry in Japan that have entire fucking spreadsheets on that shit in their offices), and draw an obvious connection there from which they immediately see more dollar signs and higher sales numbers.

I DO know for a factual certainty however that there's a LOT of the broader anime and manga industry that DOES do that, to the point where its become over the past few decades an intractable and key part of their whole wider business model, without which they wouldn't be able to continue functioning or sustain themselves.

Given that context, would it in any way surprise me in the slightest if it were to one day come out publicly for a factual certainty that Toei/Shueisha IS self-aware about One Piece's Friendship themes having a particular (and marketable) pull on Hikikomori/NEETs, and that they have taken steps in their marketing over the years to lean/play into that (to whatever extent or degree)?

Let me put it this way: I'm someone who believes very strongly that there is both a healthy and an unhealthy level of cynicism that one can have. I certainly believe that you can easily go WAY too far into cynicism to a degree that is unhealthy and self-corrosive, and that one should always keep that in check from ever happening to themselves.

That being said: if you're paying close enough attention to the broader trends of the anime/manga industry, and to late-stage capitalism broadly worldwide, and you think that at the very least the distinct, realistic possibility that Toei/Shueisha might take some purposeful advantage of the loneliness of Hikikomomri/NEETs, recognizing that a cutesy, hot-selling Shonen mega-franchise who's big, glaring, unsubtle primary theme is "FRIENDSHIP!" in big balloon letters would clearly be catnip to such people and carry an intrinsic pull for them, and use that to sell a few million more copies of One Piece manga, anime DVDs/Blu Rays, video games, toys, and other assorted merchandise to move their quarterly profit margins up a few more points...

...if you think that this is somehow too shockingly, pearl-clutchingly out of hand to even consider, given the broader context... then I would argue that you're still not NEARLY cynical enough just yet.

tldr: No, I don't claim to know for factual certainty whether or not Toei/Shueisha are self-awarely leaning into marketing OP at a NEET/Hikikomori side-audience, but it certainly would not shock me in the absolute least, nor should it shock anyone else, if it turned out to actually be the case.

And speaking for myself as someone who actually DOES take the problems/plight of NEET/Hikikomori-types (be they in Japan, the U.S., or wherever else in the world) sincerely seriously, and does NOT think that they should be mocked or bullied generally... yeah, seeing a whole industry like the anime/manga industry partially sustaining itself financially off of exploiting those people and their (very fucking serious) problems in the grossest, most nakedly callous and cynical possible way kind of pisses me off a fair bit.

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?

You'd think that, but you'd be very surprised at how many lonely-ass fucking people there are in the world today just in general (and have been for many, many years now).

I'm not claiming its anywhere NEAR some kind of vast majority of people or anything. I don't have any raw statistical numbers or anything at my disposal as it pertains to anime and manga broadly or to OP in particular (though statistics like this one can be seen as a much broader signifier: and this specific one I linked here is one of the much more conservative estimates of global loneliness stats)...

...but at this point I DO know for certain that these kinds of people are a LOT bigger in number out there than most "normies" in the mainstream would ever consider or like to think that there are.

Its not a "huge majority" but its much, much more and a bigger number than a lot of people would like to believe it to be.

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

I'm gonna have to agree very much with Julie on this: this is the best possible note you could've ended your post on. Bravo sir.

[JulieYBM]

I mean, you CANNOT tell me that Naruto and Sasuke don't wanna bang the absolute NinjaFuck outta each other.

I will forever maintain that Naruto and Sasuke are literally written like a romantic couple. Like, Jesus Christ, if you factor in the contributions of the anime staff to the franchise, too—especially given how much wider a reach it has internationally—there is no goddamned way this Tsuru Toshiyuki-directed music video isn't a fucking romantic animated music video about Naruto and Sasuke's tortured love story. Like, yeah, they're clearly into their wives, but holy shit, NaruSasu is arguably the more prominent romance within the story of the original comic and the animated franchise.

I mean, I like to point out the cute little moments in Dragon Ball where Gokuu is getting on the nerves of his boyfriends, but damn, NaruSasu really does take the cake there.

(Also, I get to headcanon Naruto as trans, anyway, so depending on how the heck I feel I have my cute little trans girl x emo boy interpretation of the text).

Or Deku and Bakugō (as loathe as I am to say so, considering how horrifyingly cringe a LOT of MHA shippers are, especially since I'm no more a fan of it than I am of Naruto, which is to say not at ALL lol).

Gah, I hate Bakugou so much lol. He's kind of just this random piece of shit with no real reason for being the way he is, so I just find him pretty repulsive. As much as I'm exhausted by Deku as a character, I actually much prefer to ship him with Todoroki Shouto. Deku and Shouto have far better chemistry as a couple, in addition to Shouto having a better character arc on his own (although I think the writing of his father feels really strained when coupled with the neoliberal politics of the series as a whole).

There's this cute Japanese fan comic series called Love Me Tender where Deku and Shouto are a couple, but Deku's a girl instead of a boy, and the cuteness factor mixed with the general melodrama is just so, so, so good. >_<

Hell, Vegeta's absolute OBSESSION with Son Gokū often gets VEEEERY suggestive (ESPECIALLY in the Super era when it's somehow even MORE prevalent than it was in Z, which is fuckin' SAYING something).

Anytime Vegeta shows up to save Gokuu's ass or proclaim how he will be the one to defeat Kakarrotto, I can't help but throw up a limp-wrist. Sir, that is just how The Queers flirt!

Like, a LOT of these mangaka (who often were young men in their 20s and 30s when writing their respective headline series) have written stuff that makes me think they were/are VERY repressed in at least some way or another, more likely than not in a way that Freud would have quite the field day with lol

Aaaand I'm pretty sure this has all gone WAY off topic at this point, but oh well...

(Also, PLEASE don't get the impression I'm making fun of any of this in any kind of hateful way, I'm about as left-wing politically as they come and have NOTHING but support for the LGBTQ+ communities. It's just that sometimes with some of these series, I have to go "Dude, just pull the fucking trigger and make this shit yaoi already, you're 96% there already for Chrissakes" )

It wouldn't be the first time repressed person worked in The Arts lol.

Like, there's a reason why queer-coding exists. There's a reason why there are storytelling techniques that exist that indicate when something is romantic and intimate. These things being used so heavily in how the relationships between male characters operates is just so fucking obvious.


Pictured: Average heterosexual men.

[Vegetto95]

I will forever maintain that Naruto and Sasuke are literally written like a romantic couple. Like, Jesus Christ, if you factor in the contributions of the anime staff to the franchise, too—especially given how much wider a reach it has internationally—there is no goddamned way this Tsuru Toshiyuki-directed music video isn't a fucking romantic animated music video about Naruto and Sasuke's tortured love story. Like, yeah, they're clearly into their wives, but holy shit, NaruSasu is arguably the more prominent romance within the story of the original comic and the animated franchise.

I mean, considering that Naruto marries the woman he spends all of about 16 seconds the entire 700 chapter/episode run talking to, but WOULD NOT shut the fuck up that entire time screaming at Sasuke to "Come back to the village!! WE'RE BEST FRIENDS!!!", if someone were to read/watch the entirety of Naruto (which I personally would recommend pulling teeth before that lmao) and DOESN'T come away realizing how MASSIVE an amount of (HEAVILY repressed) homoerotic subtext is present... they're either ignorant, a bigot, or both

Gah, I hate Bakugou so much lol. He's kind of just this random piece of shit with no real reason for being the way he is, so I just find him pretty repulsive. As much as I'm exhausted by Deku as a character, I actually much prefer to ship him with Todoroki Shouto. Deku and Shouto have far better chemistry as a couple, in addition to Shouto having a better character arc on his own (although I think the writing of his father feels really strained when coupled with the neoliberal politics of the series as a whole).

Oh, god I feel this 1000%. For all of the MASSIVE problems MHA had, the BIGGEST thing that turned me off of the series more than anything else was the fucking spoiled rotten, insufferable little shit Bakugō. Like, he is just SUUUUCH an INCREDIBLY unlikeable ASSHOLE, and him being such an insanely popular character amongst that fandom disturbs the absolute fuck out of me. He spends 97% of his screentime emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes even physically bullying Deku, but Deku (and the entire rest of the cast for that matter) has Stockholm Syndrome HAAARD, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, it's basically treated like "Awww, durr hurr hurr!! That silly Bakugō's being a loveable nutjob again!! LOOOOL". Like, as someone who was 1) bullied a good amount as a kid, even up through high school, and 2) bullied a classmate in middle school myself which I DEEPLY regret... seeing it presented as such SICKENS me to the core.

If Deku and Bakugō were gay for each other, it'd be SUCH a DISGUSTINGLY toxic abusive relationship, and I can't stand the people who ship them together for much the same reason as the morons who claim The Joker and Harley Quinn are "couple goals" *shudder*

Pictured: Average heterosexual men.

I (unfortunately lol) actually read the end of the Naruto manga back when it was first published in 2014 (when I was like 22 or somewhere thereabouts), and even then I was like "Dude... their blood just congealed into a literal fucking heart shape. This is THE most OBVIOUS queercoding POSSIBLE

[RandomGuy96]

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.

Also early MMA, mainly the UFC (especially around the time of TUF's rise) but also other promotions like EliteXC and Affliction in their heydays. It rose to prominence on a target demographic largely composed of this guy:



The whole early-mid 2000s run culminating in the UFC's deal with Spike TV is, in hindsight, a time capsule of the whole era (at least in regards to young men and boys in the USA). Had a ton of crossover, both metaphorical and literal, with the stuff you listed. So much of pop culture around this time can be summed up as "if a Tapout shirt became a real boy." If you want a good encapsulation of the mood at the time go watch the early UFC intros. Alternatively watch anything Spike TV broadcasted in the 2000s.

*Disclaimer, I remember the 2000s fondly and still like MMA as a sport, but the mainstream pop culture around it (again, especially in the USA) is and was... pretty juvenile (it was in Japan too, but at least PRIDE had better presentation).

[JulieYBM]

I will forever maintain that Naruto and Sasuke are literally written like a romantic couple. Like, Jesus Christ, if you factor in the contributions of the anime staff to the franchise, too—especially given how much wider a reach it has internationally—there is no goddamned way this Tsuru Toshiyuki-directed music video isn't a fucking romantic animated music video about Naruto and Sasuke's tortured love story. Like, yeah, they're clearly into their wives, but holy shit, NaruSasu is arguably the more prominent romance within the story of the original comic and the animated franchise.

I mean, considering that Naruto marries the woman he spends all of about 16 seconds the entire 700 chapter/episode run talking to, but WOULD NOT shut the fuck up that entire time screaming at Sasuke to "Come back to the village!! WE'RE BEST FRIENDS!!!", if someone were to read/watch the entirety of Naruto (which I personally would recommend pulling teeth before that lmao) and DOESN'T come away realizing how MASSIVE an amount of (HEAVILY repressed) homoerotic subtext is present... they're either ignorant, a bigot, or both

Hey now, Naruto very clearly is looking for Hinata after he defeat Neji to see her reactions lol. Still, I wish Kishimoto and his editors had pushed him to actually write that shit a lot better. Like. Jesus Christ, it's not that fucking hard. I really liked The Last: NARUTO the Movie and how it brought their romance together, it just should've been more obvious. Like, Sasuke and Sakura's relationship got more scenes together where it was obvious that Sasuke liked her as early as the Land of Waves arc.

Gah, I hate Bakugou so much lol. He's kind of just this random piece of shit with no real reason for being the way he is, so I just find him pretty repulsive. As much as I'm exhausted by Deku as a character, I actually much prefer to ship him with Todoroki Shouto. Deku and Shouto have far better chemistry as a couple, in addition to Shouto having a better character arc on his own (although I think the writing of his father feels really strained when coupled with the neoliberal politics of the series as a whole).

Oh, god I feel this 1000%. For all of the MASSIVE problems MHA had, the BIGGEST thing that turned me off of the series more than anything else was the fucking spoiled rotten, insufferable little shit Bakugō. Like, he is just SUUUUCH an INCREDIBLY unlikeable ASSHOLE, and him being such an insanely popular character amongst that fandom disturbs the absolute fuck out of me. He spends 97% of his screentime emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes even physically bullying Deku, but Deku (and the entire rest of the cast for that matter) has Stockholm Syndrome HAAARD, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, it's basically treated like "Awww, durr hurr hurr!! That silly Bakugō's being a loveable nutjob again!! LOOOOL". Like, as someone who was 1) bullied a good amount as a kid, even up through high school, and 2) bullied a classmate in middle school myself which I DEEPLY regret... seeing it presented as such SICKENS me to the core.

If Deku and Bakugō were gay for each other, it'd be SUCH a DISGUSTINGLY toxic abusive relationship, and I can't stand the people who ship them together for much the same reason as the morons who claim The Joker and Harley Quinn are "couple goals" *shudder*

Yeah, there's just nothing to grab on to with Bakugou. Vegeta? Eh, he's just a bastard, but he's still pretty charming about it in those first two arcs. Bakugou isn't charming. There's nothing in the text to make you go, "I want to see him do [x]!"

Oh God, I fucking hate The Joker x Harley stuff. It's so hard to enjoy The Joker as a character because of how realistic his abuse is of Harley. I really hope DC solidifies Harley x Ivy as the true ship for Harley, it's so much better.

I (unfortunately lol) actually read the end of the Naruto manga back when it was first published in 2014 (when I was like 22 or somewhere thereabouts), and even then I was like "Dude... their blood just congealed into a literal fucking heart shape. This is THE most OBVIOUS queercoding POSSIBLE

Yeah, that blood stain is so fucking queer. It's their arms! Doing the 'unison sign'! It's heart-fucking-shaped. It would make sense to see them sending out wedding invitations in the next chapter!

I remember reading when NARUTO ended in 2014. God, that was an insane time. This reveal was so, so, good, too. As many problems as Kishimoto has as a writer, I've always loved how he has no problem with just making permanent changes that make NARUTO 'weaker'. BORUTO: NARUTO NEXT GENERATIONS is so flaws as a series, but I feel like nobody else would be bold enough to make the sweeping changes and put the adult characters through the ringer like Kishimoto has there. Something that I wish Dragon Ball would learn from is having the same attitude for older characters. In that respect, I think Dragon Ball has been a bit too sentimental by trying to hold on to old characters, even during the Aritificial Human and Majin Buu arcs.

[Shaddy]

okay I think I can actually multiquote this one haha

I don't want to get too hung up on this point, as its fairly minor in the grand scheme of things here: I just wanted to quickly note how your own wording here made it seem kind of glaringly apparent that you were taking some kind of issue with me supposedly "having some obsessive hatred for OP" or whatnot.

Just so we both understand here that, while I do believe you when you say that it wasn't your intent, its also kind of nearly impossible to look at that sentence and take any other meaning from it.

Fair enough, my bad.

As I said numerous times now: the only reason I'm even making that comparison here in the first place is because this whole site spent more than a decade+ making that comparison. Up to and including its owner/founder, and much of the mods and staff here.

Don't pin it on the guy (me) who's simply responding to/countering against that initial comparison. A comparison which, again, was a central part of this whole website/community's whole freaking identity and general stated view of Dragon Ball over more than 10/15 years of its existence (at least).

even had I NOT made that conflation myself, that wouldn't have changed the fact that most of the broader Dragon Ball fanbase here that overlaps with OP fandom not only ALSO make that same conflation, but they make that conflation CENTRAL to their comparisons of DB and OP.

If for no other reason than to conclusively prove that this isn't me tilting at windmills here: this represents a VERY legit and quite major (even I would argue central) component of the broader discourse that has gone on in this community going back to its earliest beginnings and spanning literally decades now.

There is literally decades worth of posting and writing about this very topic (including from much of this forum's most heavy hitter important users and staff/founders) that can be readily found throughout this entire site. Its not hard to come across. I posted just a mere a sampling of some of it myself here in my initial post.

It was omnipresent not only on this site, but it was omnipresent community-wide across a LARGE swath of English language Shonen Jump/Japanese version-centric/subtitled Dragon Ball fandom online for like... pretty much all of the back half of the 2000s and front half of the 2010s at least. I was there, I was active in the community, I have distinct fucking memory of all this. This crap has only died down somewhat in recent years, and even then there's still traces of it still out there today.

No again see I get that, I'm not discounting that you backed it up with a lot of examples from here. I didn't even miss that part of it the first time. "Context" might not even have been the right word from me. I absolutely understand that this characterizes the way people talk about a cluster of adolescent anime and manga that took influence from Dragon Ball, but that this group should not necessarily contain Dragon Ball as a matter of course. I'm not saying I've never seen the idea that this stuff is all related or indeed take issue with it to some extent. It's just that this specific version, relative to these series on this website with this tone, is a thing you've experienced, which I'm looking at through the window of your posts, not so much my own time spent here. And that's on top of Kanzenshuu just being one more website for me. It's more in-depth than what I get from DB discussion on Reddit or god-forbid Twitter, but I'm not viewing it as foundational to my understanding of the fandom. I can't say "this never happens" but I don't feel from the world of the fandom that has been built in my memory that saying "this is a really common issue" is a thing I'm comfortable with on the face of it. I think this just comes down to the two of us just having skewed ideas on what counts as an actual mainstream perspective here.

Regardless, easily the single biggest drawback to my longform manner of posting here is that it seems like *way* too often people seem to be just responding to some intangible "vibe" they're getting off my posts, rather than like... what the actual text, substance, and content of the post actually entails.

Just that (and I'm saying this bit here broadly, not necessarily to just Shaddy) if you're going to engage with something long that I wrote, just... at least TRY and be sure to actually make sure you're understanding the full context and substance behind what I'm actually saying before you get upset or offended and rage at me.

I am genuinely always trying so hard at everything, to be clear. It really was just a case of not making the connections I needed to, or at least not properly elaborating on where I felt there was a disconnect.

1) For the chunk of the series that I watched through anyway, the schmaltz was like, at least like 40% of the fucking series that I saw. Minimum. And that's me being generous. It was pretty pervasive. Hallmark commercials looked subtle and gritty next to this shit.

If that thins out/calms down any as the series progresses even further in... cool I guess, but this series is also like 90 billion episodes/chapters worth of cringy tedium too long for me to ever give a shit and find out.

2) Worth noting that at the time I was attempting to plow through the series, I was indeed watching it fansubbed. To be fair though, that definition of "Nakama" was also being used by pretty much the entire One Piece fanbase at the time as well, not just the subbers.

Not gonna try and litigate what does and doesn't count as schmaltz here for the sake of an arbitrary percentage I just made on vibes alone. But since I'm obviously not trying to sell you on the series anyway, I wouldn't say the amount changes much, for the record.

And yeah, the fanbase of the time was using "nakama" that way...probably because the fansubs were largely what they had to go off of, right? Anime adaptations usually get the lion's share of the attention compared to the manga, and nobody who knew better wanted to go to 4kids for their shit localization, some of the DNA of which was even in ViZ's manga if I recall correctly.

Either way, it pissed me off that some of that crap made it into the Netflix show.

Regardless, if you and I both agree that this "Friendship and Adventure" shit in relation to Shonen is all nonsense, that if "Battle Shonen" as a supposed "genre" is linked by anything, then its linked by long, drawn-out superpowered fights or whatnot... then I don't even know why the fuck we got to arguing against one another in the first place here. Cause if that's the case, then we're on the same page.

(Though again, my whole argument on the "Battle Shonen isn't a real genre" point is that just about ALL of the examples of it already fall into their own distinct, long-established genres - martial arts fantasy, sports, racing, detective mystery, horror/thriller, ninja fantasy, pirate adventures, etc. - and the only thing that relates them all together is also the only real meaning that the term "Shonen" has EVER had historically: and that's just "things made for and aimed at little Japanese children"... which is certainly a target demographic, but isn't a genre.)

Other than just the VERY broad way in which both series "mix light humor with violence, drama, and fighting" (which is something you can say about a whole TON of different things, as I've gone on at great lengths on here: from Wuxia, to other Manga properties [including other stuff in Weekly Shonen Jump], to even fucking Indiana Jones)... I have never understood or seen any shred of the supposed similarity between the two. Like, whatsoever.

I mean I think this ultimately spirals into a conversation about what we think genre is for, how we think it's "supposed" to be defined. I think genre is just kinda whatever enough people say it is. Doctor Who and Star Trek are both location-of-the-week, villain-of-the-week sci-fi adventure series that regularly rotate out their primary casts every few years and maintain a loose and extremely messy continuity. There's probably more similarities I could point out, but those are massively outweighed by the fact that they don't feel similar to watch at all. And that's on top of the fact that "sci fi" is being used to describe two shows that may as well be using fucking magic, and indeed at times have used fucking magic, to explain away fantasy concepts that just happen to have a space, time or technology theme.

I'm not gonna try and convince you of the ways these series are related, because it's a tricky and subjective and debatable thing to nail down that I'm not sure I fully do believe in entirely. So irrespective of history, if someone says that Dragon Ball and One Piece are in the same "genre" because they feel like they are, I can't meaningfully make an objective critique of that on the face of it without getting way too deep in the weeds about how genre...uh, generalizes everything. But it's also just, like, not that big a deal to me. If someone groups a thing I like with a thing I don't think fits, my bigger issue would be if they try to oppose values I don't agree with upon that thing, and that's not a necessary outcome of that situation.

this kind of crap has become unfortunately "the standard way" in which a VAST chunk of online fandoms have chosen to interact with their media almost universally, and this has been the case for like... nearly 20 fucking years at this point. Saying that "DB and OP fandoms both do this stuff" doesn't exactly prove or say much of anything really: this particular kind of incredibly dumb stuff is just largely universal across geek culture/manchildren media at this point.

I'm just saying it's hard to judge One Piece fans or their crossover with Dragon Ball fans in specific for these traits or any particular others, because like you say, they are so pervasive.

Sooner or later, everything finds its way back to either Sonic or Pokemon around here (and places like here). Always. No matter what. Its literally as iron-clad a law as gravity at this point.

Listen, I am the aspie hobbyist Sonic reviewer. If anyone is going to be the guy on this forum who arbitrarily brings up Sonic the hedgehog, I am going to make it my fucking mission to be that guy. I am going to be more of that guy than any other guy.

Glad to know then that our entire back-and-forth debate here was completely for nothing then, because that was literally the central point I was making throughout. And I was hardly subtle either.

Yeah sure eventually, but again my impression was that you thought the "warm fuzzies the whole way down" opinion was being applied unfairly to one and fairly to the other, not that it was a bad way to talk about media in general.

Quite a few from this very community right here, believe it or not (not ever going to name any names naturally, but a fair few of them are pretty familiar ones): and I'm saying this as someone who's gotten to personally know a lot of these, ahem, "fucked up sadboys" as you put it, quite extensively off the forums.

And the positively glaringly obvious connection its big Friendship themes has with so many of the issues surrounding alienated isolation within this particular "troubled" swath of its fanbase is something that DOES provide me with genuine, sincere interest.

Again, my making dumb jokes and snarky wisecracks about franchises like One Piece, MLP, Pokemon, etc. in and of themselves as franchises (which again, I do largely for the sake of my own ability to try and discuss them with something that even resembles any kind of "depth") should NEVER be confused or conflated with me mocking or bullying their fanbases (something I have less than zero interest in doing): certainly not to any serious or malicious degree.

See, and this is my thing, I won't deny your impression or experience of loneliness and lonely persons as they relate to any particular series, but I don't know that I can connect the theme to the interest on anything below a surface level. I feel like the right circumstance can make people latch onto a lot of things for a lot of reasons. Did you know that South Park has gained, like, a really big audience of, like, young tiktok queers? I have absolutely no idea how the hell that happened, and stuff like that makes me real skeptical and doubtful of any explicit connections between theme and audience in a ton of other scenarios.

Smacks a bit of all the "why do right-wingers like Fight Club? They must have missed the satire" attitude. Like at a certain point I think it's just cause people like Fight Club.

tldr: No, I don't claim to know for factual certainty whether or not Toei/Shueisha are self-awarely leaning into marketing OP at a NEET/Hikikomori side-audience, but it certainly would not shock me in the absolute least, nor should it shock anyone else, if it turned out to actually be the case.

And speaking for myself as someone who actually DOES take the problems/plight of NEET/Hikikomori-types (be they in Japan, the U.S., or wherever else in the world) sincerely seriously, and does NOT think that they should be mocked or bullied generally... yeah, seeing a whole industry like the anime/manga industry partially sustaining itself financially off of exploiting those people and their (very fucking serious) problems in the grossest, most nakedly callous and cynical possible way kind of pisses me off a fair bit.

Regardless, the Venn diagram between "dudes with personality complexes", "dudes into big titty waifubait moe stuff", and "dudes who are into stuff like One Piece in no small part primarily because its a vicarious surrogate for their lack of real life friends offline" is nearly a perfect circle. These are not different, disparate groups, these are largely the same exact kinds of people we're talking about here.

Maybe it's a couple of smaller circles inside one really big one.

I dunno, just feels like "friendship" is such a normie theme that the cup runneth over for options you could pick out, and you'd have to go back for decades and decades looking for the source. But maybe.

Between Sorry to Bother You and Homestuck, if I had a dollar for every time a work made by someone who identifies as a communist contained uncensored horse penises as a notable recurring visual theme... I'd have two whole dollars.

Which isn't a lot I grant you, but the fact that this has now happened at least TWICE just within the past decade is, in and of itself, kind of amazing.

Bad news: Homestuck's not from the past decade, it turned fifteen this year. All those dumb teens smearing body paint on people at conventions have to pay rent now. Andrew

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

I'm gonna have to agree very much with Julie on this: this is the best possible note you could've ended your post on. Bravo sir.

Anyway I apologize for my part in utterly fucking demolishing the rail this thread was on

[Cursed Lemon]

Dragon Ball can be serious, but it's not Game of Thrones or The Sopranos

This is hilarious because The Sopranos is basically a comedy lol

[MasenkoHA]

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.

You have to be a special kind of pretentious to get genuinely annoyed over fanmade terms. Not to mention the name "Majin Vegeta" is used in a lot of official DB media.

Who, um... who EVER said I was "genuinely annoyed", or even annoyed at ALL? Because I capitalized a measly two words for mere emphasis? You are completely assuming and making things up (which IS something that annoys me, if ever so slightly). And yeah, I'm WELL aware that "Majin Vegeta" is a term used in official DB products (although outside of American dub stuff, it's really only used on the Japanese side of things in the video games, and obviously those are NOOOT the best metric to use when trying to apply names to things in the franchise... see the godawful clusterfuck that is the Dragon Ball Wiki for proof of that lmao)... but it's simply not correct.

Majin refers to the actual Demon Race (which Daima has recently very much solidified), and Bobbidi partially possessing Vegeta's mind with his dark magic did NOT suddenly turn him from a SaiyaJIN into a MaJIN (there is a difference between MaJIN, the Demon RACE, and MaZOKU, the Demon CLAN. Piccolo Daimaō, Garlic, and their kin showed that anyone can become a demon clansman, and Piccolo showed that you can also UNbecome one too- but that is NOT the case for MaJIN. That shit's a matter of nature and NOT nurture). You are of course 1000% allowed to use that term and the others if you want, obviously it is NOT my place to stop you, have at it!! But it's just something that *I* personally don't use because I find it highly inaccurate. Besides, I really don't see why my saying that is such a big deal to you anyway when it was something I barely offhandedly mentioned in passing as a random example that had NOTHING to do with my main point.

Meh unless Daima has stated otherwise (still haven't watched any of it) I assumed there is a difference between the Majin (Demon person) that reside in the demon realm and Majin (Magical Being) like Majin Boo who isn't a demon from the demon realm but a genie. Obviously Vegeta didn't become a demon or a genie but I can work with the idea he's been "enslaved" by Bobbodi's magic and that makes him a Majin somehow since he carries the crest on his forehead.

This fandom had always been hyper obsessed with monikers. Base Goku. Kid Goku. Teen Gohan. Mystic Gohan. Majin Vegeta. Semi Perfect Cell. Perfect Cell. Etc etc etc etc and I find Majin Vegeta to be one of the least obnoxious use of this fandom eccentricity. Where it will be always be fucking stupid to refer to Goku as Kid Goku when talking about pre-23rd Budokai Dragon Ball instead of just Goku.

The season 9 booklet also uses Mystic Gohan

By "the season 9 booklet", I'm assuming you're referring either to the Orange Brick DVDs or the similarly fucktastical Blu-ray sets, both authored by FUNimation? If so... I rest my case

Well I mean since 2018 Toei has pretty much declared all of Funimation's localization choices official and valid. So it's only a matter of time before Mystic Gohan shows up somewhere on the Japanese side. Is it dumb "Power Pole" is the official Toei approved translation of Nyoi Bo? Yes, but here we are.

Dragon Ball can be serious, but it's not Game of Thrones or The Sopranos

This is hilarious because The Sopranos is basically a comedy lol

Sacre Bleu where's mi mama!

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Dragon Ball can be serious, but it's not Game of Thrones or The Sopranos

This is hilarious because The Sopranos is basically a comedy lol

Pardon my ignorance, I haven't seen the show but from what I gather having heard people talk about it over the years and judging by the aesthetics I'd assume its a black comedy? Drastically different from Dragon Ball, which is much more lighthearted (not that that's a bad thing).

[Cursed Lemon]

Pardon my ignorance, I haven't seen the show but from what I gather having heard people talk about it over the years and judging by the aesthetics I'd assume its a black comedy? Drastically different from Dragon Ball, which is much more lighthearted (not that that's a bad thing).

More or less yeah

Almost every serious scene in the show (that isn't one of Tony's weird fever dreams) has a comedic/ironic undertone or delivery.

EDIT: As an example, there's a scene where the character Vito is murdered by his crew for being gay. They surprise him in a motel room and his murderer literally comes out of the closet.

[JulieYBM]

Dang, I had no idea The Sopranos was a comedy. I guess that makes all those memes make a bit more sense lol.

[Kunzait_83]

More or less yeah

Almost every serious scene in the show (that isn't one of Tony's weird fever dreams) has a comedic undertone or delivery.

1) A bunch of Tony's weird fever dreams also have their share of comedic undertones: the one that springs most readily to mind is his prophetic dream where a fish at a fish market literally speaks to him in Big Pussy's voice. The visual itself is already innately comedic, but also as an added layer of humor, its a direct invoking of "sleeps with the fishes" in the most thuddingly literal visual metaphor possible.

The one with him fucking Charmaine Bucco while Artie awkwardly watches at bedside, enthusiastically cheers him on, and provides running commentary throughout ("WhatdidItellya, she's the best right?") is also pretty damned funny.

Generally speaking, I'd go so far as to say that Tony's weird fever dreams are easily the single best executed (and most realistic, true-to-real-life accurate in terms of what real life dreams are actually like: this series fundamentally understands actual "dream logic" in a way that most other movies and shows do not), most memorable, and psychologically fascinating and rich singular aspect of the entire Sopranos series, by far.

2) I think its a bit of an exaggeration to say that EVERY serious scene in the show has a comedic undertone. A fucking LOT of them do, don't get me wrong (easily over 80 or 90% of them, no question). But there's certainly a fair share of serious moments in the series that there just is no possible comedic interpretation for whatsoever. Unless you're like, a genuine psychopath IRL.

Just off the top of my head really quick: Melfi's horrific stairwell rape scene, Ralphie literally beating a pregnant woman to death (complete with his stomping on her stomach while she's down on the pavement for good measure), and I'd argue even Furio's assault on the brothel during his first job for Tony's crew: all of these scenes are played pretty starkly straight for shock/brutality without any vague hint of comedy.

And like don't get me wrong, I'll go out on a limb and go so far as to say I likely have maybe one of the darkest, most pitch-blackest senses of humor of almost anyone you'll come across in this entire forum: but some of the scenes along the lines of the ones I mentioned you kind of have to REALLY stretch credulity to find the "dark comedic" undercurrent within them.

Most of the most grotesque and horrifically brutal/violent examples of raw, naked, ugly-ass misogyny in the show specifically are played pretty straight and without much of a comedic undercurrent (but tellingly, not the show's most blatant instance of homophobia re: Vito's death, that you just outlined: telling that violence against women is usually treated by the show as "serious business", but violence against a gay man is fair game to be a bit more jokey about).

Those are the outliers though: generally speaking, your assessment of the series' overall dark comedic tone is spot on. Just wanted to add a bit more nuance to it.

[Cursed Lemon]

(but tellingly, not the show's most blatant instance of homophobia re: Vito's death, that you just outlined: telling that violence against women is treated by the show as "serious business", but violence against a gay man is fair game to be a bit more jokey about)

I appended "ironic" to my post because obviously someone getting killed for their sexuality isn't comedic, more of an "I see what they did there" moment.

[Kunzait_83]

I appended "ironic" to my post because obviously someone getting killed for their sexuality isn't comedic, more of an "I see what they did there" moment.

Yeah, I get that. And essentially the scene of Vito's murder plays out more-or-less as straightforwardly horrible within the show.

I just find it interesting how the show is willing to throw in oddball sight-gags like that for what is easily its single most disgusting example of homophobia among the characters, but is generally NOT willing to be that visually or tonally "cutesy" with things like Melfi getting raped or Ralphie's pregnant mistress (and her unborn baby) being kicked and stomped to death against a cement curb.

There's definitely a little of David Chase's Italian-American double-standards subtly seeping through this series at times is all I'm saying (I say that as an Italian-American myself who was raised in a VERY heavily Italian-American family: I know these subtle - and not-so-subtle - little "tells" about these things quite well).

[Majin Buu]

While I'm confident that I've never spoken about Dragon Ball in terms of "shonen spirit of friendship", I can't be bothered to comb my 62-page posting history to be sure (And I'm someone who's traditionally gone years at a time without posting, more consistently active users have at least double that amount), so I acknowledge the possibility that some of my past statements may have gestured in that direction without using those terms.

That being said: To the extent that I myself am personally guilty of this "erasure" in any respect, it's a byproduct of my priorities changing in terms of what I come to Dragon Ball for.

Kunzait said this "erasure" of serious Dragon Ball is a byproduct of backlash to the Funimation dub from the western sub community, specifically backlash to the dub's amped up hypermasculine vibe. Speaking for me personally, my dislike for the dub has always been less "it's overly macho and I hate that" and more "the Japanese original had a different vibe that just works better for the material". And more to the point, the stuff I'm referring to by "the material" has always been the drama- The serious stuff that the premise of this thread says is being erased by the types of fans this community represents. The main reason I became a sub fan and rejected the dub all those years ago was because the dramatic moments felt far more effective in the Japanese original than they did in either the Funi/Saban dub or Funi's own in-house efforts.

(That being said, I've also always thought the Funi dub was bad at doing humor too, worse at that than drama in fact, so in the end I don't think it represents either side of Dragon Ball as well as the Japanese original)

So my modern-day preference for the more light-hearted side of the franchise isn't attached to my dislike of the dub. It's more my priorities shifting in terms of what I come to Dragon Ball for. When I was a kid watching this stuff for the very first time, it very much was about the action and nothing else. It was only as I got older and my tastes become more refined that I started to appreciate Dragon Ball for the stuff that wasn't the action- The characters, the world, and the story.

I acknowledge that the action has always been the main selling point for the franchise and have never claimed otherwise, it's just that there's things to like about Dragon Ball other than the fighting, and the "who watches Dragon Ball for the story?" crowd acting like the fights are the only thing Dragon Ball has to offer is a very reductive perspective, especially when those aforementioned other things tend to be what makes the fights engaging (for various reasons).