Torishima gives his opinion on Dragon Ball Daima and says he would make a Vegeta story

[kprison]

This pretty much applies to any series that's continued beyond its original ending...

I think late 20th century sci-fi proves this is not true. Star Trek and Battle Star Galactica come to mind. Both were brought back and surpassed all previous incarnations.

There's just a limit to how far you can push any particular form, whether it be stories, or visuals, or music. That limit is in flux, it can change along with culture to some extent, but you will eventually hit it, and once you do it becomes little more than a museum.

Trek also happens to be a good example of this in modern day, it did come back and thrived in the 80's and 90's, but now it's the same thing. They've tried turning it into an epic drama, they've tried the Marvel formula, they've tried imitating the version of it that did work, and none of it hits. It has a good episode here and there but it's not impacting anything culturally on a serious level. Just temporary social media commentary followed by permanent irrelevance.

[Chuquita]

I agree.

You can only loop the same scenario and iterate variations of it so many times before you run out of meaningful things to say. Eventually you'll have your favorite version of it and that's that.

At least, until you yourself change enough where your perspective has shifted and you can come at the same story from your current, more experienced/older point of view. Part of why I think I'm still around this fandom is because the characters age over the course of the story and it changes how I see them as I age.


There's plenty of anime-only DB I enjoy and count in my own head-canon (a shout-out to the anime version of the Goku vs Majin Vegeta fight. And the driving episode.), but with the original author having passed away, it really does feel like--to me anyway--DB is effectively dead.

The current official crew left behind who are in charge of making new official DB works don't inspire confidence in me. I'm not looking forward to Beerus and watching Takahashi, Tate, and Tsuji get their artstyles obliterated in the name of modern Yamamuro. (If Super Kai can prove my doubts misplaced, I'll be impressed.) Super was a roller coaster of good and bad art, but to lose the peaks with the valleys just so the art is uniform across the board--and replaced by Yamamuro's current, stiff artstyle of all things, feels like a disservice. I don't know.

[PhantomSaiyan]

What he probably means is that Dragon Ball is creatively dead, which has been true for a long time. All the new stuff does is imitate the formula of the original run, but the original production and cultural context is gone, so it's all out of touch. It's a corpse that they dress up and dance around like a marionette. It's a Michael Jackson hologram concert.

No, that is not what he meant, what he means is pretty clear and I've explained it already in this thread, and it's not what you said at all.

What he said is that when he and Toriyama worked on the story they didn't care about teaching any lesson to the reader, and conceptualized the manga like the old Tom and Jerry cartoons where the point of them was just to entertain the viewer without caring for being deep or having any morals or thematic message.

That's it, he did not mean that the franchise was creatively dead.

[Kenji]

Even Tom and Jerry had bits of social commentary once in a while.
There's an episode where Jerry leaves Tom's house to go live in the big city, has an awful time, and decides There's No Place Like Home.
Another episode has both of them committing suicide because they lost everything trying to impress a girl who didn't love them back.
Yet another had Tom's owner replacing him with a mechanical cat due to the perceived notion the automation era was perfect, only to call "the old-fashioned method" back when said cat starts malfunctioning.

More infamously, "The Night Before Christmas" was created to oppose World War II, and there's an episode where Jerry spits on Hitler's face. You could only wish modern film & cartoon makers would do a similar gag with Trump's face in it.

[PhantomSaiyan]

Even Tom and Jerry had bits of social commentary once in a while.
There's an episode where Jerry leaves Tom's house to go live in the big city, has an awful time, and decides There's No Place Like Home.
Another episode has both of them committing suicide because they lost everything trying to impress a girl who didn't love them back.
Yet another had Tom's owner replacing him with a mechanical cat due to the perceived notion the automation era was perfect, only to call "the old-fashioned method" back when said cat starts malfunctioning.

More infamously, "The Night Before Christmas" was created to oppose World War II, and there's an episode where Jerry spits on Hitler's face. You could only wish modern film & cartoon makers would do a similar gag with Trump's face in it.

Indeed, very true.

I think Torishima just brought up that example in conversation to make a point quickly without much nuance since the majority of Tom and Jerry was typical cat chases the mouse cartoon gags, or he might not have remembered those instances, it can happen when you're referencing something you watched long ago, maybe even before you were able to pick up on bits of social commentary.

But yeah Tom and Jerry absolutely had instances where concrete social messages were conveyed

[kiarasuraru]

Both things can be true at the same time.
Did Torishima and Toriyama created the work first and foremost with the purpose of simply entertaining and nothing else? Yes. Nonetheless, DB also has many overarching themes, accidental or not, but the story never really spent its time dwelling on them much nor spent entire chapters lecturing the reader about them nor having wall of texts all the time explaining every little detail happening to the reader.
And honestly, what's so wrong or bad if it was made just to entertain first and foremost? Why do people act like if that's a capital sin? Must everything be 2deep4u to be good nowadays or something? Sometimes less is more, and if anything, this simplicity is one of Dragon Ball's greatest strengths and one of the primary reasons why it has become such an universal work.

[JulieYBM]

Are we really calling it 'wrong' and 'bad' in some sort of way that actually harms anyone or anything when we criticize Dragon Ball for its poor writing and Toriyama's carelessness as a writer and Shueisha's carelessness as a publisher? Are we not justified when we do do? Okay, that's rhetorical on my part because I do think I'm justifed lol

Like, I'm a grown woman, I have grown woman's tastes and standards and thoughts and sometimes that means being a bit critical of a multimedia franchise aimed at kids and how it depicts Serious Subjects that it willingly delves into. I think that the way that fandom not only just shrugs these things off, but will also actively make excuses for it with nonsense like "it was a different time" as opposed to "wow, yeah, that was bad for reasons X, Y and Z! I sure how future projects learn from that mistake!" Is a pretty important thing for fandom to self-reflect on and why being critical of art is important.

Wow, those were some run-on sentences lol

[Kenji]

In the same vein, if your series' primary objective is to be a braindead story made to entertain a 10-year-old's concept of cool... Then don't complain when grown-ass adults call it a braindead story made to entertain a 10-year-old's concept of cool.

Isn't that right, Mr. Tori-"Daima is trash anime"-shima? (I agree with him on that one, btw)
Granted, I still think Dragon Ball has far better substance than the likes of, say, Americanized Super Sentai/Power Rangers.

[super michael]

In the same vein, if your series' primary objective is to be a braindead story made to entertain a 10-year-old's concept of cool... Then don't complain when grown-ass adults call it a braindead story made to entertain a 10-year-old's concept of cool.

Isn't that right, Mr. Tori-"Daima is trash anime"-shima? (I agree with him on that one, btw)
Granted, I still think Dragon Ball has far better substance than the likes of, say, Americanized Super Sentai/Power Rangers.

How different is Power Rangers/Super Sentai Japanese and American version? I am not really a fan of Power Rangers, never was a fan back in the day when I watched the English version. The only Power Ranger that I tried to watch was Power Rangers Jungle Fury.

I found the whole ship getting destroyed multiple times boring in Daima. The Gendarmerie Force were a huge let down, lot of hype but they were nothing.

[Kenji]

Simple: Japanese Super Sentai actually has stories, characters and arcs. Americanized Power Rangers, especially the early seasons, often throws it all under the bus for cool factor and replaces complex characters for generic hero types and sanitizes complex themes such as death. Not to mention how horrendously incoherent the story and the footage mixing gets as Mighty Morphin phases out Zyuranger for newer seasons and actors who choose to leave the set for new characters.

Zyuranger's story in Mighty Morphin became a generic good vs. evil story where no characters have arcs or motivations of their own except stock good or evil morals like "save the environment" or "destroy the world" or "help organize a school fair" or "be a foster child's sister for a day." And it's all executed with extreme insincerity, as evidenced by how the actors and especially David Yost were seen as disposable and treated like garbage by the production crew.

In short: American Power Rangers is the living definition of a "work without substance."