Unpopular DB opinions

[Makaioshin]

Because Heaven is nice and cheerful. The idea of a demon being in a wonderland is pain to them.

Freeza was in a nice and cheerful place but still in hell.

Freeza had his own hell. We don't know if the other villains got their special space or not.

That is more of Toyotaro's decision. In the F script, it is simply called Earth's hell by Toriyama. And maybe Dabura would have liked listening to the little idols and watching the teddy bears march.

[WittyUsername]

Freeza had his own hell. We don't know if the other villains got their special space or not.

That begs the question of why Dabura wasn’t sent to that same kind of Hell though. Enma explicitly said that he decided to send him to Heaven.

Because the King of the Demons going to Heaven is funny and this series has done Hell multiple different ways over the years so it’s just inconsistent. Plus the obvious answer of one was in the 90s and the other was 2015 so things are gonna be different.

Well yeah, the obvious meta explanation is that Toriyama forgot he included that line about Dabura being sent to Heaven. It’s not a big deal by any means, but it is a contradiction nonetheless.

[Yellow Flower King]

I have the opinion that Dragon Ball, if it ever does a TV Production again, should do more episodes rather than a miniseries. NOT the hellish Super era style stuff, but rather a more modern approach like MHA, seasonal but with more than just 26 episodes. 65 seems like a nice number.

[SupremeKai25]

I have the opinion that Dragon Ball, if it ever does a TV Production again, should do more episodes rather than a miniseries. NOT the hellish Super era style stuff, but rather a more modern approach like MHA, seasonal but with more than just 26 episodes. 65 seems like a nice number.

How is this unpopular? Most people agree that Super was ruined by hellish production deadlines and that it would have benefitted massively from a seasonal format so that the artists weren't overworked and the artwork wasn't so inconsistent.

[Yellow Flower King]

I have the opinion that Dragon Ball, if it ever does a TV Production again, should do more episodes rather than a miniseries. NOT the hellish Super era style stuff, but rather a more modern approach like MHA, seasonal but with more than just 26 episodes. 65 seems like a nice number.

How is this unpopular? Most people agree that Super was ruined by hellish production deadlines and that it would have benefitted massively from a seasonal format so that the artists weren't overworked and the artwork wasn't so inconsistent.

People say "100 EPISODES IS TOO BLOATED" but if they were seasonal, sanely paced and so on I would prefer it over a "Mini series."

[SupremeKai25]

I have the opinion that Dragon Ball, if it ever does a TV Production again, should do more episodes rather than a miniseries. NOT the hellish Super era style stuff, but rather a more modern approach like MHA, seasonal but with more than just 26 episodes. 65 seems like a nice number.

How is this unpopular? Most people agree that Super was ruined by hellish production deadlines and that it would have benefitted massively from a seasonal format so that the artists weren't overworked and the artwork wasn't so inconsistent.

People say "100 EPISODES IS TOO BLOATED" but if they were seasonal, sanely paced and so on I would prefer it over a "Mini series."

Well that depends.

100 episodes for one saga? Yes, that's bloated. No story arc should ever require 100 episodes to be told fully, if you seriously need that much you've lost your plot.

100 episodes for like 4 sagas? So one saga averaging 25 episodes? Well, I'd say that's more than fine for me.

Unofficially, the fandom refers to the 131-episodes run of Super as "Season 1", after all. (under the assumption, of course, that there will be Season 2 between 2018 and the Heat Death of the Universe)

[Yellow Flower King]

How is this unpopular? Most people agree that Super was ruined by hellish production deadlines and that it would have benefitted massively from a seasonal format so that the artists weren't overworked and the artwork wasn't so inconsistent.

People say "100 EPISODES IS TOO BLOATED" but if they were seasonal, sanely paced and so on I would prefer it over a "Mini series."

Well that depends.

100 episodes for one saga? Yes, that's bloated. No story arc should ever require 100 episodes to be told fully, if you seriously need that much you've lost your plot.

100 episodes for like 4 sagas? So one saga averaging 25 episodes? Well, I'd say that's more than fine for me.

Unofficially, the fandom refers to the 131-episodes run of Super as "Season 1", after all. (under the assumption, of course, that there will be Season 2 between 2018 and the Heat Death of the Universe)

Obviously not! My Hero Academia is made up of smaller arcs spread across 150 plus episodes.

[GurixDr34]

I think its fine to have fun speculating about the continuity of a work of fiction but i dont really like it when some fans take the Canon too seriously as if it were a Religion i dont think even Toei takes the Dragon Ball Canon that seriously i say enjoy the work regardless of whether its Manga Movies Anime OVAs or Doujinshi

[Kenji]

I think its fine to have fun speculating about the continuity of a work of fiction but i dont really like it when some fans take the Canon too seriously as if it were a Religion i dont think even Toei takes the Dragon Ball Canon that seriously i say enjoy the work regardless of whether its Manga Movies Anime OVAs or Doujinshi

I agree.
Continuity very much matters for one to keep a clear, consistent understanding of the story.

However, the only person of authority who ever seemed to care anything about canon/continuity was Toriyama himself, and the only things he ever said about that topic was "The movies take place in another dimension," from which we can infer that some elements are in-fact not part of his original manga's continuity. But at the same time, he liked some elements enough to make them part of it, such as Bardock, parts of the Trunks Special, and the Afterlife Budokai filler arc. So, even if you go "Toriyama's projects are the only ones that matter," that is still a bit unclear.

Everyone else? They don't care and never did. Toyotaro/Toei are always including filler characters and plot points left and right with no care in the world about whether they fit anywhere, and caused the "Super" continuity (if there is one) to become such a tangled mess nobody's even sure it is part of anything, be that the original manga, the DB+Z anime adaptation, or the DB+Kai version of it.

I feel like, rather than over-focusing on "Is this canon/in-continuity?"
Fans should instead be asking the following questions:
1- Did I personally enjoy this story?
2- What message were the creatives behind it trying to send me?
3- How did watching this story affect my mindset about life?

Unfortunately, and forgive me for generalizing, a very large portion of the fanbase seems to never even consider these questions, and have a one-track mindset that Toriyama is the only creative who ever mattered in Dragon Ball, at least in terms of who was writing it, which is incredibly disrespectful to every other person who poured their hard work into this franchise throughout all of these years.

[BernardoCairo]

I think its fine to have fun speculating about the continuity of a work of fiction but i dont really like it when some fans take the Canon too seriously as if it were a Religion i dont think even Toei takes the Dragon Ball Canon that seriously i say enjoy the work regardless of whether its Manga Movies Anime OVAs or Doujinshi

Fair. But I think there's also a lot of people who are way too obsessed with what other people consider canon or not. You can't even use the word "canon" without people coming around and screaming "there is no canon" or "Super isn't canon to DBZ", for example.

[jjgp1112]

Random hot take: "Push ups, sit-ups and plenty of juice" actually isn't a bad dub-ism all things considered. It's tll the same sentiment as the original line: "It's too much trouble to explain in detail; use your imagination." Plus it's become the go-to flippant way to describe asspull powerups in Dragon Ball

[MasenkoHA]

Random hot take: "Push ups, sit-ups and plenty of juice" actually isn't a bad dub-ism all things considered. It's tll the same sentiment as the original line: "It's too much trouble to explain in detail; use your imagination." Plus it's become the go-to flippant way to describe asspull powerups in Dragon Ball

Honestly you could argue a majority of dialogue in the dub could be chalked up to “that’s technically what they they said in the original it’s just been punched up to sound funnier or cooler to middle age men pandering to American children” or “Yeah that’s wrong but looking at the original dialogue I can see where they got from point A to point B”


Actual “they just straight pulled that out of their ass” is pretty rare outside of scenes where they added dialogue where characters weren’t talking

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Random hot take: "Push ups, sit-ups and plenty of juice" actually isn't a bad dub-ism all things considered. It's tll the same sentiment as the original line: "It's too much trouble to explain in detail; use your imagination." Plus it's become the go-to flippant way to describe asspull powerups in Dragon Ball

Yeah, it gets the same general point across. Vegeta is cocky and thinks Cell is not worth explaining to. Fun fact the Westwood dub went with a slightly different variant of that line, which was "I do a lot of pushups and situps, and I drink plenty of milk".

[Noah]

Don't know how unpopular this is, but every time it’s Christmas or close to the end of the year, I end up thinking about DBGT’s music.

The OPs, EDs, and OST somehow feel really appropriate for this time of the year, nostalgic, and reflective. I don’t have a clear reason for it, it’s just a feeling I always get...

[jjgp1112]

Random hot take: "Push ups, sit-ups and plenty of juice" actually isn't a bad dub-ism all things considered. It's tll the same sentiment as the original line: "It's too much trouble to explain in detail; use your imagination." Plus it's become the go-to flippant way to describe asspull powerups in Dragon Ball

Honestly you could argue a majority of dialogue in the dub could be chalked up to “that’s technically what they they said in the original it’s just been punched up to sound funnier or cooler to middle age men pandering to American children” or “Yeah that’s wrong but looking at the original dialogue I can see where they got from point A to point B”


Actual “they just straight pulled that out of their ass” is pretty rare outside of scenes where they added dialogue where characters weren’t talking

That's why I still enjoy the Yu Yu Hakusho dub, because in all honesty it has almost as much "Funimation shit" as Z post-season 3 but the difference was the punch-ups and jokes they added were actually funny, since they weren't trying to appeal to their dumbed-down idea of children. Is it a 100% ideal dub? No. Is it watchable on its own? Yes, which you can not say about the ol' "More like BURNT toast" show. (see also: the Movie 7 dub, which is the only watchable version of that weak ass movie)

My rule with dubs is I'm always okay with punch-ups and "artistic license" as long as they don't 1) change the original meaning, 2) clash with the tone and/or characterizations, and 3) suck. At the end of the day it's entertainment, not academia, which I think some people forget when they get granular about it.

[MasenkoHA]

. At the end of the day it's entertainment, not academia, which I think some people forget when they get granular about it.

Yeah. Building off that. I do think fans who want to engage in turbo nerdy pseudo-intellectual media criticism discourse are doing a disservice by watching the Funimation dub and only the Funimation dub. But the reality is Dragon Ball is low brow entertainment anyways and the average viewer is just trying to watch buff dudes beat the shit out each other with over the top martial arts and pew pew pew blast, not discuss why the supposedly heroic Goku does selfish things or ask why King Piccolo has different abilities than normal Namekians, or wonder what the hell Vegeta is on about when telling Bulma 3 years isn’t enough time to find the dragon balls to stop Gero.

My biggest problem with Funimation’s Z dub is it’s just….bad without getting into the liberties it takes from the source material. And even then it’s really just the Ginyu to Cell saga that’s horrible. But goddamn that’s a significant portion of the show.

[Kenji]

I will add something that might be controversial here, but:
I have watched the English dub, and 95% of it is the same as Japanese.
The other 5% are cases of obvious censorship, and I feel those who argue otherwise are arguing semantics.

The dialogue never really deterred any of my friends from understanding the story, I know because I was the annoying "I only watch subbed" guy watching it along with them and nagging them about the changes the dub made to the story, and as it turns out, I didn't have to do that a lot.

Even the dub scene where Goku spares Vegeta to show him "What being good is like, so he'll change eventually" (perhaps because the dubbers had the power of watching the whole finalized thing xD) ends up being half the case, as Vegeta explicitly says Goku spared him for sensing some good in him at the end of the Boo arc in Japanese.

[jjgp1112]

I will add something that might be controversial here, but:
I have watched the English dub, and 95% of it is the same as Japanese.
The other 5% are cases of obvious censorship, and I feel those who argue otherwise are arguing semantics.

The dialogue never really deterred any of my friends from understanding the story, I know because I was the annoying "I only watch subbed" guy watching it along with them and nagging them about the changes the dub made to the story, and as it turns out, I didn't have to do that a lot.

Even the dub scene where Goku spares Vegeta to show him "What being good is like, so he'll change eventually" (perhaps because the dubbers had the power of watching the whole finalized thing xD) ends up being half the case, as Vegeta explicitly says Goku spared him for sensing some good in him at the end of the Boo arc in Japanese.

Ehh this is not the case and the censorship argument is always pretty dishonest past the Saban episodes. What censorship needs warranted the crappy jokes that sometimes came at the expense of story beats, outright rewrites, Goku superhero speeches and off screen doalogue where there's originally silence.

To this day American fans and only American fans get critical information wrong about the show because all they watch is the dub...like literally go on Reddit; at least half the questions on r/dbz and r/dragonball on a given day can be answered with "Dub bullshit."

And I figure youre joking but I can assure you nobody at Funimation knew anything about later plot developments in 1996

Like yeah the dub even at its worst post-Saban was never as bad as the average 4Kids dub but that bar is in Mordor

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I have no interest in being that annoying "watch the sub, it's better" guy, and while I do have nostalgia for the English dub (specifically the Westwood dub, which has near identical dialogue as Funimation's dub), but it is a different product albeit with a similar story.

I grew up looking up to Goku as a symbol of heroism and pure selflessness, but learned years after the fact that was not who he was. Yes, he has good intentions and loves his family and friends, but his priority is always having a good fight and pushing himself to his limits and beyond, saving lives is secondary to that and not the driving factor.

Even the original Dragon Ball dub, which is praised for being more accurate still has its share of librrties that are not influenced by censorship like the reveal Kami is an alien, Krillin condemning marriage and Goku's romantic lines of dialogue to Chi-Chi.

[Kenji]

I will add something that might be controversial here, but:
I have watched the English dub, and 95% of it is the same as Japanese.
The other 5% are cases of obvious censorship, and I feel those who argue otherwise are arguing semantics.

The dialogue never really deterred any of my friends from understanding the story, I know because I was the annoying "I only watch subbed" guy watching it along with them and nagging them about the changes the dub made to the story, and as it turns out, I didn't have to do that a lot.

Even the dub scene where Goku spares Vegeta to show him "What being good is like, so he'll change eventually" (perhaps because the dubbers had the power of watching the whole finalized thing xD) ends up being half the case, as Vegeta explicitly says Goku spared him for sensing some good in him at the end of the Boo arc in Japanese.

Ehh this is not the case and the censorship argument is always pretty dishonest past the Saban episodes. What censorship needs warranted the crappy jokes that sometimes came at the expense of story beats, outright rewrites, Goku superhero speeches and off screen doalogue where there's originally silence.

To this day American fans and only American fans get critical information wrong about the show because all they watch is the dub...like literally go on Reddit; at least half the questions on r/dbz and r/dragonball on a given day can be answered with "Dub bullshit."

And I figure youre joking but I can assure you nobody at Funimation knew anything about later plot developments in 1996

Like yeah the dub even at its worst post-Saban was never as bad as the average 4Kids dub but that bar is in Mordor

I did not mention censorship as an excuse for bad dialogue, but for explicit character motivation rewrites.
Goku saying he's sparing Vegeta for sensing good in him rather than a selfish desire to fight him again.
Vegeta saying three years is not enough to find the Dragon Balls rather than threatening to murder the heroes.
Or the aforementioned superhero speeches.

We all know this was done to censor Goku and Vegeta into being more heroic and less kill/battle-prone.
I mentioned censorship an excuse for only those specifically, not the other 95% of the dub.
That's just bad dialogue and bad taste on part of the dubbers lol