What is the lamest thing to come out of modern DBZ?

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Out of curiosity SupremeKai25 and fadeddreams5, how would you two rank the various arcs/eras of DB ? You can bundle arcs together if you'd like, you don't have to list each one individually.

"Bare bone story notes" is your assumption.

We can argue how much he did or didn't write all day, but fact of the matter is that classic DB and modern DB are not one story.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: the Buu saga is when the series jumped the shark, and most of my complaints of modern DB stem from it.

As much as I love the Buu arc; I have to agree with this statement. Although I believe the good in that arc far outweighs the bad, there's no denying that a lot of the issues in modern DB started in that arc. Toriyama was definitely right to end the story there, as chances are things would've gone downhill further had he continued.

[super michael]

It is factually a bad thing because it allowed Cell to absorb 18 and become Perfect, which then resulted in Perfect Cell nearly destroying the entire Earth, and every human along with it.

Clearly a lot of people don't care about the moral aspect in these discussions, or Goku wouldn't be so hated for giving Moro a chance at redemption instead of outright murdering him - which would be the morally evil path, compared to offering redemption.

The Z fighters are known for giving chances to villains, as for Cell absorbing C18 that was Vegeta fault.
Vegeta could have killed Semi-Perfect Cell, however he just let him go so Cell could absorb C18. Then when Trunks tried to kill Cell, Vegeta attacks his own son. Vegeta even chose to listen to Cell over his son.

Now the Boo Saga Vegeta got possessed on purpose, killed innocent people and threatened to kill more people to get Goku to fight him. Vegeta knocked Goku out to fight alone, assuming he could kill Boo. Vegeta destroyed the Potara two times and even refused to do the fusion dance when they had the chance.

As for Goku not wanting Moro to die, that is within Goku character. He is known for giving chances. Goku didn't know that Moro could get Merus powers and merge with the earth.

"Staying still" is not training, is not hardship, and is not meaningful character writing. It's just a cheap shortcut after he slacked off for 7 years but Toriyama still wanted to put him in the spotlight for the main fight - no different than the criticism that Super/Daima is getting.

If there was no magic or ritual involved, then I would agree with you. Staying still shouldn't grant such a huge power up.
However Gohan wasn't just simply "staying still", someone was doing a magical ritual on Gohan.

After the Cell Saga Kuririn quit training, then by just doing ordinary gym training he performed better than SSJ3 Gotenks. No magic ritual, special training, special rooms, etc, just something ordinary.
Freeza beating Tagoma only shouldn't have granted him a huge power up at all, Freeza is just beating a weakling.
The same applies to Tenshinhan, Master Roshi, C17, C18 and the others who did weak training.

As for Daima they just got adjusted to fighting as a kid. Goku getting SSJ4 falls under as magic.

1) That one episode you keep talking about is an inconsequential Toei gag episode. You might as well complain that Vegeta got himself outsmarted by Arale.

2) Super Hero was written by Toriyama. You might disagree with the way Toriyama presented Goku in his movie, but no one understands Goku better than his creator, Toriyama. That's just a fact.

1) It still shows how Goku didn't have any brains at all. It completely contradicts his knowledge, experience and maturity from the 21st, 22nd and 23rd Martial Art Tournament.
Arale got a huge power boost from the villain, she was able to rival SSB, if I am not mistaken. Vegeta losing to Arale doesn't contradict anything.

2) DBS Super Hero contradicts Goku from the 23rd Martial Art Tournament who did meditation. It contradicts the Namek Saga which Goku was very efficient at using his powers to trick the scouters. It contradicts the Cell Saga, when Goku used meditation to unlock SSJ Grade 2 and SSJ Grade 3 and it contradicts the Boo Saga before the 25th Martial Art Tournament.

If Toei could change DBS Super Hero to include Gohan as the main character, then I am sure Toei could ask Toriyama to make Goku dumb in DBS Super Hero. They didn't understand Goku as a character, they just wanted him dumb.



What did they try to accomplish by forbidding Goten and Trunks, apart from annoying the fans? Same with Boo always sleeping.

[SupremeKai25]

Out of curiosity SupremeKai25 and fadeddreams5, how would you two rank the various arcs/eras of DB ? You can bundle arcs together if you'd like, you don't have to list each one individually.

Let me just tell you that the "fall-off" era started in the Cell and Buu sagas, not in 2013.

- Protagonists act like idiots and just let Cell become a world-ending threat (Vegeta and Krillin)

- Cell constantly gets new asspulls to stay in the story. He should be dead if his head containing his nucleus is destroyed, no actually he survived because plot. He should be dead after literally trying to self-destruct, no actually his nucleus survived. Apparently Dr. Gero did not understand the definition of "self-destruction". He can learn Instant Transmission, a technique that took Goku extended training to attain, on the spot.

- Asspull forms. Gohan's Super Saiyan is supposed to be the pinnacle of Saiyan power, something that is far beyond Goku's capabilities... no actually Goku got an exponentially stronger form by training off-screen for 7 years. Peak writing. Gohan slacked off for 7 years instead of training in case an even worse threat than Cell appeared, surely now he'll face the consequences of his mistakes, right? No actually he just watched this old dude dance for 1 day and got a new form exponentially stronger than anything he would have ever gotten by actually training.

(so much for old Dragon Ball highly valuing the idea of training and putting in effort into something, right?)

- Goku achieved Super Saiyan after watching his friends die and Gohan achieved Super Saiyan after intense training but Trunks can achieve Super Saiyan because he wants to go to the park in the afternoon with his dad. But sure, it was Caulifla and Kale who bastardized Super Saiyan... sure!

- Android 19 and 20 are the villains that Trunks warned about, no actually they're the wrong androids. 17 and 18 are the true threat Trunks warned about, no actually Cell's the real deal. Cell looks like an insect bug man who eats people, surely he's the final villain, no actually that's just his first of 3 forms. Well, finally Cell obliterated himself after Goku sacrificed himself, surely that's the end of it, no actually he survived and he's Super Duper Perfect-er.

- Well, Goku's dead, but at least Gohan will carry on the torch right? Well, no, Gohan is a dumbass who can't pick up one earring, so he got himself absorbed by Buu and now it's all up to Goku again. Maybe he should have chosen a successor who could at least pick up an earring, huh? The "scholar" doesn't know what he's supposed to do with an earring.

- Well there's a silver lining, Vegeta got an awesome redemption arc by learning to let go of his rivalry with the Son family and going from a conqueror to a defender, oh wait he's evil again and just killed a ton of innocent people at the tournament just so he can have his rematch with Goku.

Sorry, there's nostalgia at work here. There may be things in DBS that are worse, but no way is DBS consistently worse.

I will never understand how people can look at the writing in the Cell and Buu sagas and think that they're so much better than DBS.

[super michael]

- Protagonists act like idiots and just let Cell become a world-ending threat (Vegeta and Krillin)

Kuririn not wanting C18 to die doesn't make him an idiot, Kuririn never thought that he would be with C18, he assumed C17 and C18 were a couple.

Cell constantly gets new asspulls to stay in the story. He should be dead if his head containing his nucleus is destroyed, no actually he survived because plot. He should be dead after literally trying to self-destruct, no actually his nucleus survived. Apparently Dr. Gero did not understand the definition of "self-destruction". He can learn Instant Transmission, a technique that took Goku extended training to attain, on the spot.

Now Vegeta yes he was the king at being an idiot both in the Cell and Boo Saga.

To be fair just because Cell has Namekian DNA doesn't make him Namekian. Cell doesn't have the exact same benefits and drawback like the original DNA. Cell can't transform into a Super Saiyan, but he can turn into a giant and increase his powers.
Saiyans doesn't gain zenkai or their zenkai are small, while Cell zenkai was huge.

Cell was able to survive his self-destruct thanks to his regeneration. Can can perform techniques from the DNA that he has, so getting updated DNA would allow him to perform updated techniques.

- Asspull forms. Gohan's Super Saiyan is supposed to be the pinnacle of Saiyan power, something that is far beyond Goku's capabilities... no actually Goku got an exponentially stronger form by training off-screen for 7 years. Peak writing. Gohan slacked off for 7 years instead of training in case an even worse threat than Cell appeared, surely now he'll face the consequences of his mistakes, right? No actually he just watched this old dude dance for 1 day and got a new form exponentially stronger than anything he would have ever gotten by actually training.

Gohan relied on a magical ritual to gain his powers in the Boo Saga, unlike in DBS anything ordinary gives a huge power up.
It was thanks to Goku that Gohan managed to get that magical ritual, Goku knew just how to deal with someone like Elder Kaioshin.

- Goku achieved Super Saiyan after watching his friends die and Gohan achieved Super Saiyan after intense training but Trunks can achieve Super Saiyan because he wants to go to the park in the afternoon with his dad. But sure, it was Caulifla and Kale who bastardized Super Saiyan... sure!

We don't know how Goten and Trunks gained their SSJ form, at least not in the manga.
However we know that Saiyan Hybrid has more potential than Pure Blooded Saiyans. Plus Goten and Trunks are the first Saiyans in history to be born from Super Saiyan parents. In the entire Saiyan history, no Super Saiyan ever had kids.

Plus with Saiyan kids there are those who are born with high power level and those who are born with low power level.


As for Caulifla and Kale for those that does things like Reiki or Tai chi, then it does make sense why focusing their tingly feeling on the back would unlock SSJ. Normally when one feels tingly, that could mean they are feeling their energy. They can focus their energy on specific parts.

- Android 19 and 20 are the villains that Trunks warned about, no actually they're the wrong androids. 17 and 18 are the true threat Trunks warned about, no actually Cell's the real deal. Cell looks like an insect bug man who eats people, surely he's the final villain, no actually that's just his first of 3 forms. Well, finally Cell obliterated himself after Goku sacrificed himself, surely that's the end of it, no actually he survived and he's Super Duper Perfect-er.

Going into the past changed somethings, plus it isn't like Future Trunks and Future Bulma knew everything. Cell made sure not to be discovered by anyone, that is why no one knew about his existance. We are even told how Cell was even created. Dr Gero even suspected that he wouldn't be alive when Cell is ready.

- Well, Goku's dead, but at least Gohan will carry on the torch right? Well, no, Gohan is a dumbass who can't pick up one earring, so he got himself absorbed by Buu and now it's all up to Goku again. Maybe he should have chosen a successor who could at least pick up an earring, huh? The "scholar" doesn't know what he's supposed to do with an earring.

Gohan wasn't expecting Goku to just throw him the Potara, plus Gohan didn't know what the Potara did.
For the fusion to work Gohan would need to be it on the correct ear. One side fuses, while the other ear doesn't do anything.

- Well there's a silver lining, Vegeta got an awesome redemption arc by learning to let go of his rivalry with the Son family and going from a conqueror to a defender, oh wait he's evil again and just killed a ton of innocent people at the tournament just so he can have his rematch with Goku.

I agree with 100%, plus don't forget knocking Goku out, destroying the potara two times and refusing to do the fusion dance.

Sorry, there's nostalgia at work here. There may be things in DBS that are worse, but no way is DBS consistently worse.

I will never understand how people can look at the writing in the Cell and Buu sagas and think that they're so much better than DBS.

In character writing DBS is worse than DB/DBZ. Saying "Gag" to defend DBS doesn't help. gag and comedy is fine, however if they go overboard then that makes the character dumb. If they do it over and over and over with the same character, then it gets old and makes them look worse than in DB/DBZ.


I prefer anything from DB/DBZ/GT and Daima over dumb Goku in DBS.

[fadeddreams5]

Out of curiosity SupremeKai25 and fadeddreams5, how would you two rank the various arcs/eras of DB ? You can bundle arcs together if you'd like, you don't have to list each one individually.

1.Saiyan/Namek saga - I feel they seamlessly transition to each other, so I see it as one big saga. From what I can tell, fans unanimously consider this the best one. It just has everything. Absolutely everything. Immediately at the start, the tone is set when the first villain of the saga is many times stronger than the main character and main antagonist of the previous arc, the MC is killed, and it's revealed this dude was just fodder in comparison to what was to come. And since we know this, there's this sense of anticipation for the arrival of the saiyans. After this arc, you think the Namek one will be an innocent adventure, only for Frieza and minions to create possibly the greatest sense of dread ever shown in this anime. The tone is definitely a serious one, but it never forgets its roots, and the comedy and charm are still there. The dichotomy between the behavior of Ginyu Force and their actual threat level is brilliant. Lastly, it has some of the greatest and most iconic moments/battles in anime history.

2. Android/Cell saga - So yes, the writing is a bit more wonky in this arc compared to the previous ones. You have a human creating machines stronger than the strongest being the universe without even knowing of the existence of these aliens outside Earth. You have what is basically the poster boy of fanfiction characters in Trunks (random guy with powers similar to protagonist who is the son of two unrelated fan favorite characters). You have Gohan being triggered by 16, despite them never interacting beforehand. Hell, Gohan barely did anything until the end, and shouldn't have stayed frozen during the Cell Jr thing--it was out of character. And finally, yes, the characters acted so fucking stupid. Not preemptively stopping Gero, not shutting down android 18 with the remote, letting Cell go perfect, giving Cell a senzu bean, and so on. But you know what? Fuck it. IT WAS COOL! This saga was so effing cool! The very serious tone set by Trunks, the fights, the shocking feeling of seeing SSJ Vegeta get wrecked by a woman after talking all that smack, the transformation sequences, the trash talking, Trunks turning Frieza into mince meat, that father-son kamehameha, ripping the Cell Jrs apart with kicks and punches, the horror sequence with Imperfect Cell, Vegeta being an absolute prick, Piccolo having his moments, Trunks getting his vengeance against the androids at the end, the training scenes, and I could go on.

3. King Piccolo/Piccolo Jr saga - The one that set the stage for DBZ to be a thing. No moment captures the sheer shock of Krillin's death in this entire franchise. Unlike other deaths, where it's hard not to just shrug them off, this one hit hard, and when King Piccolo killed Shenron, it cemented that feeling. All of this has you cheering for Goku to kick Tambourine and Piccolo asses so badly, and boy is it satisfying when he does. Fast forward to the tournament, and it was just amazing because these tournament arcs were fun as they are, but now we have a real villain present. There is more tension compared to the other tournaments, and the fights are absolute peak.

4. Buu saga - I wrote everything I needed to about this saga here already. I blame it for a lot of the bad in modern DB, but the good moments certainly outweighed the bad, and some of them were very iconic.

5. ToP arc - I don't know what happened here, but it feels like they heavily increased their budget for Super. Even the opening was a billion times better than the trash before it. The arc itself was a power scaler's nightmare, the pacing wasn't the best, and I personally disliked the structure of this tournament, which I wish was more like Yu Yu Hakusho's dark tournament, but when I shut my brain off completely, I really enjoyed it. The improved animation made for some of the best fights...ever... in the entire franchise. Ultra Instinct was also really cool, which surprised me considering how every new transformation they made since BoG was dogshit.

6. Otherworld Tournament arc - I like Pikkon, his dub theme is badass, and the visuals of the the other world were so appealing. A lot of fun new characters introduced, some funny moments, and the final battle was pretty good. Honestly, this may be one of the best filler arcs ever made in an anime. I liked it 10x more than the Great Saiyaman arc after it.

7. Red Ribbon/Tien saga - The Red Ribbon arc was pretty fun. A lot of funny moments. The highlights were the ones centered around Mercenary Tao though--killing that kid's father, beating Goku, and then losing to Goku after Goku's climb up the tower makes him stronger. Seeing Goku mercilessly kill humans and dismantle the army was unintentionally hilarious too. Now, the Tien arc was great. Dude was cool, and seeing his gradual redemption as the tournament progressed made him my favorite character in OG DB.

8. Pilaf/Jackie Chun saga - The Pilaf arc is like Daima with actual good pacing. In 13 episodes, Goku met Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong, Roshi, Chi Chi, collected 7 dragon balls, and defeated Pilaf. Was it a remarkable arc? No. It was... meh. But short enough to be inoffensive and a nice intro. Now, the arc afterwards was great. Goku's relationship with Krillin was a lot of fun, and that tournament was so wacky and entertaining. Not a saga I get thrilled to rewatch, but it was cute.

9. Daima - I don't think my opinion of this series will change much after 2 episodes. The animation is great and some of the battles have been fun, but it was plagued with awful pacing, consistency issues, and felt like it was made for a younger demographic than DBZ, with little to no tension or real character development. In 10 years, people will forget this show even existed, outside SSJ3 Vegeta, SSJ4 Goku, and the inevitable fusion bug.

10. Goku Black arc - Man, this arc had so much potential. The tone was darker, the villain was initially great. But... so much bothers me. Right off the bat, Future Trunks' design made me want to puke. The inconsistency of Goku's base form having SSJG power or not really stood out when he sparred Trunks and created so much head canons. The Goku Black mystery definitely didn't pay off after they revealed the most obvious person was the main culprit. The repetition of going back and forth between time was so cheap and lazy. Wtf was Rage Trunks? Wtf was that magical sword? How could they possibly end the arc by destroying his universe after everything he went through in the Cell arc? Why does Goku still act like a dimwit, despite the tone this story is trying to put out? But you know what? I would forgive all of it, just like I do with the Cell saga, if the animation was not such effing trash. Visually, this arc was ugly af like the ones before it. None of these battles stand out, and the backgrounds in the future were diarrhea color. The fights all look stiff and unappealing, with the exception of Vegito vs Zamasu. My opinion of this arc may be very different if it had ToP or Daima's budget. idk. Also, Sparking Zero's Gohan Black arc was so much better than the actual arc, and that is embarrassing.

11. Garlic Jr arc - Of all the movie villains they could have brought back, they chose Pilaf's doppleganger. Boring arc. The highlight was seeing Vegeta's looney ass traveling space to find Goku. lol.

12. Champa arc - This arc single-handedly showcased to me how tournament arcs are only fun when the studio behind it has a budget. Ugly, hideous, gross, and put merchandising over story the minute they reintroduced the SSJ forms and confused the entire fandom, who most now believe Base Cabba is SSJG level, despite the context of the story clearly not intending that.

13. Movie Retelling arcs -


And no, I won't do GT because I only ever watched the dub that skipped an entire arc and had the same boring music track playing every scene. It's just not fair. lol.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

1.Saiyan/Namek saga -
2. Android/Cell saga -
3. King Piccolo/Piccolo Jr saga -
4. Buu saga -
5. ToP arc -
6. Otherworld Tournament arc -
7. Red Ribbon/Tien saga -
8. Pilaf/Jackie Chun saga -
9. Daima -
10. Goku Black arc -
11. Garlic Jr arc -
12. Champa arc -
13. Movie Retelling arcs -
And no, I won't do GT because I only ever watched the dub that skipped an entire arc and had the same boring music track playing every scene. It's just not fair. lol.

You can post these here instead, as I don't want to derail the purpose of this topic:

viewtopic.php?t=49387

I should've done this from the start.

[PrinceVegetto]

Excluding the catastrophe that is SDBH, it's Super Saiyan Blue (Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan).
I simply will never like it.

[The Monkey King]

Not necessarily a "thing" but more of a trend.

The "Super" era of Dragon Ball has introduced so much shitty writing that now it's becoming a common sentiment that "Dragon Ball always had bad writing" I've seen people say Super Saiyan was an asspull on par with Beast Gohan and downplay the effort Toriyama put in for 10 years straight during Dragon Ball's serialisation. All so modern Dragon Ball can look less embarrassing in comparison.

[super michael]

Not necessarily a "thing" but more of a trend.

The "Super" era of Dragon Ball has introduced so much shitty writing that now it's becoming a common sentiment that "Dragon Ball always had bad writing" I've seen people say Super Saiyan was an asspull on par with Beast Gohan and downplay the effort Toriyama put in for 10 years straight during Dragon Ball's serialisation. All so modern Dragon Ball can look less embarrassing in comparison.

Exactly thanks to DBS, now people believe how the characters act like in DBS is how they acted like in DB/DBZ, ignoring every character growth and maturity.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The "Super" era of Dragon Ball has introduced so much shitty writing that now it's becoming a common sentiment that "Dragon Ball always had bad writing".

Modern DB has been going on for so long that it's basically the face of the franchise now. Younger people who didn't grow up on the original DB & Z have no idea just how good Dragon Ball truly was. We just found out through an interview with Toriyama's editors that he was not enthusiastic about getting involved with the franchise following the release of Battle of Gods, going as far as to say he didn't find it fun anymore. It wasn't until Daima was pitched to him that he was fully involved again like he was in 2011 during the production of Battle of Gods. During that same interview, they talked about how passionate he was during the original's serialization, always ensuring that everything was as best it could be. That passion is nowhere to be found in the material we got between Battle of Gods and Daima. Nothing says "I don't care" more than Resurrection F and Super's anime.

I've seen people downplay the effort Toriyama put in for 10 years straight during Dragon Ball's serialisation. All so modern Dragon Ball can look less embarrassing in comparison.

I don't know why these Super fanboys won't just admit they like a bad product, instead of trying to make everything else look bad to justify their love for it.

[JulieYBM]

It's quite possible to look back on older Dragon Ball works and recognize that they are not particularly great as a whole, especially now that one is no longer a literal child. It's actually quite healthy to do so!

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super both kinda suck? Yeah, duh, I've got a deeper pallette of taste now to look at art from.

[super michael]

It's quite possible to look back on older Dragon Ball works and recognize that they are not particularly great as a whole, especially now that one is no longer a literal child. It's actually quite healthy to do so!

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super both kinda suck? Yeah, duh, I've got a deeper pallette of taste now to look at art from.

Which other anime would you recommend me to watch? Oshi No Ko is a great anime, I found out thanks to your avatar at one point. I like everything about it.
That is why I like to hear anime that other people likes, maybe I might find great anime that I normally wouldn't think of looking.

I can recognise that the story for Future Trunks in Dragon Ball doesn't make sense, I am fully aware Dragon Ball isn't perfect. But I can recognise that in many ways DBS is inferior, such as character writing.

I didn't like how Goku, Chi Chi, Boo, Goten and Trunks were written in DBS.

I am watching Dr.Stone, I almost forgot to mention. I need to watch season 4. It is about science and restoring humanity, I would recommend to check it out.

[fadeddreams5]

Modern DB has been going on for so long that it's basically the face of the franchise now.

Speaking of which, this thread became 10 years old a week and change ago.

[capsulecorp]

It's quite possible to look back on older Dragon Ball works and recognize that they are not particularly great as a whole, especially now that one is no longer a literal child. It's actually quite healthy to do so!

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super both kinda suck? Yeah, duh, I've got a deeper pallette of taste now to look at art from.

It's fine for you to have this opinion, but I have to wonder why you feel the need to express it here of all places. If you don't care for any of the works, if you feel you've outgrown them... perhaps you've also outgrown spaces like this.

This is not to suggest criticism about the original run, or Super for that matter, isn't welcome, of course! But it seems like a peculiar form of masochism, to spend so much time discussing a topic that you have little affection for (although, at the same time, "it kinda sucks" is barely criticism).

[kemuri07]

I mean, I"m in my 30s right now. I"m no longer the 10 year old kid rushing to DBZ fansites or downloading amvs or having power level debates. .

And yet, I'd still argue, and often do, that Dragon Ball and DBZ are among the best that Shonen have to offer, and there is a reason why they are seen as the progenitors for so many of the Shonen that we enjoy right now. And I say that after I have done my own reckoning with the show and what it means to me now, and also having watched plenty of other anime as well. Yes, Dragon Ball is not perfect, and yes it can often be problematic. But I don't think that takes away how much artistic talent is on display here.

[JulieYBM]

It's quite possible to look back on older Dragon Ball works and recognize that they are not particularly great as a whole, especially now that one is no longer a literal child. It's actually quite healthy to do so!

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super both kinda suck? Yeah, duh, I've got a deeper pallette of taste now to look at art from.

It's fine for you to have this opinion, but I have to wonder why you feel the need to express it here of all places. If you don't care for any of the works, if you feel you've outgrown them... perhaps you've also outgrown spaces like this.

This is not to suggest criticism about the original run, or Super for that matter, isn't welcome, of course! But it seems like a peculiar form of masochism, to spend so much time discussing a topic that you have little affection for (although, at the same time, "it kinda sucks" is barely criticism).

I mean, I literally made a thread the other day gushing over how cool I thought two episodes of Super were. I also highlighted the fun I had during the initial viewings of many of Daima's episodes, and I'm sure that if the original comic's arc were fresher in my mind I'd be making threads to gush over weird little tidbits.

There's a reason why I used softer language like 'not particularly great' and 'kinda sucks'. There's fun in Dragon Ball, but also a lot of really easily fixable things that I think should be criticized.

I tried doing a re-read of the original 1984 series a year ago and could not get past the first four chapters because that shit is pretty uncomfortable and bad. Skipping ahead fell by the wayside because I had other stuff to do.

Series like Dragon Ball are a series of compromises, when, yeah, I could probably just give up and do something else. Instead, I compromise and sometimes get some good shit from that. I stick around for the franchise because I like the contributions of people other than Toriyama to the works created within and hope for the best.

[MasenkoHA]

Not necessarily a "thing" but more of a trend.

The "Super" era of Dragon Ball has introduced so much shitty writing that now it's becoming a common sentiment that "Dragon Ball always had bad writing" I've seen people say Super Saiyan was an asspull on par with Beast Gohan and downplay the effort Toriyama put in for 10 years straight during Dragon Ball's serialisation. All so modern Dragon Ball can look less embarrassing in comparison.

This also just seems emblematic of a larger problem of media criticism going down the shitter since the rise of bad faith criticism online from websites and creators like Tv Tropes, Channel Awesome, and Cinema Sins where everything has been about nitpicking (and often failing at even that) and trying to find flaws without actually engaging with the work.

People will learn terms like plot contrivance, plot armor, deus ex machina, asspull, Mary Sue etc and then decide they need to blindly use as many of these words as possible in their discourse like there's a quota to meet.

It's not exactly groundbreaking to point out Dragon Ball isn't very good. But, it's not very good because its junk food entertainment written for 9 year old boys so Toriyama could buy cigarettes, not because it clocked 5000 points on your own personal Cinema Sins scorecard.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Yeah, there is a reason Dragon Ball is one of, if not the most beloved anime and manga series of all time, because, the original run, at least is a genuinely timeless, fun and endearing story.

Conversely, as with anything else it's immense popularity inspired a hipster mindset that its cool, in some circles to say Dragon Ball is bad, or always has been. Couldn't disagree more with either though.

We seen it with Star Wars, which was considered near perfect from 1977-1982, come 1983 Return of the Jedi (actually my favourite movie in the franchise) rolls around and was a letdown to some but still considered decent, although being the redheaded stepchild of the original trilogy became pointed to decades after when the prequels or Last Jedi got criticism to make a point that "Star Wars was always bad".

Funnily enough the nearest comparison for Dragon Ball would probably be the Boo arc or GT, but rather than being looked on as examples of Dragon Ball always being bad they seem to have become more respected with time, probably because most people that trash Dragon Ball never truly seen it as some immaculate piece of art to begin with, and always saw it as just enjoyable junk.

[SupremeKai25]

Not necessarily a "thing" but more of a trend.

The "Super" era of Dragon Ball has introduced so much shitty writing that now it's becoming a common sentiment that "Dragon Ball always had bad writing" I've seen people say Super Saiyan was an asspull on par with Beast Gohan and downplay the effort Toriyama put in for 10 years straight during Dragon Ball's serialisation. All so modern Dragon Ball can look less embarrassing in comparison.

Uhm, Dragon Ball always had bad writing. There might be slightly more bad writing in Super, but are we seriously going to act like there was no bad writing in the Cell and Buu sagas?

If people want to talk about asspulls in DBZ, they bring up SSJ3, not SSJ1. You intentionally chose a bad example from the last saga of Dragon Ball that is generally agreed upon to be immaculate.

Step into the Cell and Buu sagas and you'll soon discover that people back in 2004-2010, before Super was the shining new punching bag, were far, far less compassionate to DBZ's writing faults.

How can this be a new trend when the Cell and Buu sagas were already getting criticized for their bad writing (rightfully so) long before Super? This is historical revisionism, plain and simple. I'm just going to post old threads from this forum

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I must thank Majin Buu for making two of these threads that you probably don't even remember. Those threads helped enlighten me about how fandoms work. There's so much nostalgia and rose-tinted goggles today when it comes to the Cell and Buu saga.

How enlightening it has been to reread these old threads. How thankful I am that the forum archived them, I suggest everyone read them. They contain everything: accusations that Buu is a lame villain for stealing his precessor's shtick of absorbing people, accusations that the Buu saga was just lazily thrown together because Toriyama lost his passion, accusations that the Buu saga was formulaic with people just getting new forms and fusing to make new toys, accusations of contradicting plot twists like Goku knowing a new form and yet never using it when he could've,

I mean, surely all these takes I reported ring a bell, yes? Times and takes never change, only punching bags do.

If people back in the 2000s were allowed to criticize the Cell and Buu sagas and say they had bad writing... why can't I? Why can't I say that Dragon Ball always had bad writing? Why must this position be mocked and ridiculed today as some kind of reactionary trend or whatever?

I don't understand why people in the 2000s could say that Dragon Ball has bad writing, but I can't in 2025.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Yeah, there is a reason Dragon Ball is one of, if not the most beloved anime and manga series of all time, because, the original run, at least is a genuinely timeless, fun and endearing story. Conversely, as with anything else it's immense popularity inspired a hipster mindset that its cool, in some circles to say Dragon Ball is bad, or always has been. Couldn't disagree more with either though.

There are two groups of people who say "Dragon Ball was always bad":

1- Fans of other anime who can only justify their love for (insert series here) by trashing more popular shows like Dragon Ball. This was especially common in the early 2000s when Naruto, Bleach, & One Piece were getting started. More recently, fans of more "prestige" anime like Attack on Titan also trash popular Shonen, be it Dragon Ball or the "big 3" I mentioned above.

2- Fanboys of Dragon Ball Super. These people in particular make it their mission to downplay everything good about the original series' run in order to convince themselves that Super isn't that bad, or that it's not doing anything worse than the original. If the only way you can enjoy a show is by trashing what came before it, then maybe it's not as good as you want to believe.

Despite this however, Dragon Ball & Dragon Ball Z have remained some of the most iconic and beloved series in the entire history of anime, while many would be successors faded into obscurity. DB & Z may not be perfect, but they've definitely done something right to continue to remain relevant 30 years after their conclusion. Anyone remember Naruto ? me neither. How's that 2nd season of Super coming along ? exactly.