Longevity of the franchise and fandom

[GohanRez]

What is it about Dragonball Z that has kept it alive for so long? Here we are 20 years later and it shows no sign of dying out, new DBZ sites are sprouting up everywere, Kai is bringing back a lot of old fans, and Dragonball Online will hopefully be a massive release in North America.

[Ultimate_DB_Fan]

It's da jump off, baby.

[B]

How about America getting it so late in comparison to the rest of the world?

[Chuquita]

The characters, the battles, and the storyline. :3

[Xyex]

How about America getting it so late in comparison to the rest of the world?

And yet it's Asia that's the source of the latest revival, which I think is part of the OP's point.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Aliens and men with colorful hair shooting laser beams at each other.

[Rocketman]

It's big dumb fun rather than being stuck up its own ass with half-baked philosophy and retarded navelgazing.

[laserkid]

The emotions of the show. The characters, and especially the plot are pretty damn cookie cutter. But there's a reason things are cliche - they're overused because they WORK.

Akira Toriyama took a very basic idea and artfully produced an extremely well made story that hits all the heart strings it needs to in the right way at the right time. It's the implimention, in short, that makes the series work so well.

[SylentEcho]

I think it's because it was so unique for it's time. Nothing like Dragonball Z had been made before. Cartoons showing so much power that they could destroy planets and at the same time showing so much emotion. Also, I don't think any other Anime before Dragonball Z except Gundam continued for so many episodes at a stretch. Some arcs in Dragonball Z would take more than 60 episodes.

Being so unique, anyone who tried to copy it would be immediately accused of ripping off it, because everyone knows what Dragonball Z is. There's only one anime having people with pointy blonde hair shooting blue light beams at each other. Hence it's lasted so long, it can't be copied and it's always been so famous, that even if any latest anime has a better storyline, better character development, it's still not considered to be better than Dragonball Z and that's because Dragonball Z put Anime on the map.

[The Time Traveller]

What kept my interest was how much we were teased with it, they showed it on TV for like 6 years then never again, the dub kept switching over, and when the movies aired they were the AB Groupe English Dub and it never came out on DVD here...

And then when the DVDs did come out, there were ways to watch it better than before, it was so goddammed teasing and kinda pathetic, we should have been happy with the crappiest crap, but we ended up fighting about the terrible picture and finally got the Dragon Boxes.

[LilKokuLink]

Aside from being 'the greatest action-adventure-fantasy-comedy manga series of all time'? Don't know

[SHINOBI-03]

What kept my interest was how much we were teased with it, they showed it on TV for like 6 years then never again, the dub kept switching over, and when the movies aired they were the AB Groupe English Dub and it never came out on DVD here...

And then when the DVDs did come out, there were ways to watch it better than before, it was so goddammed teasing and kinda pathetic, we should have been happy with the crappiest crap, but we ended up fighting about the terrible picture and finally got the Dragon Boxes.

Yet, I don't see this kind of bashing to other anime releases. Why Dragon Ball is the only one getting complaints about having "The Perfect Picture Quality" and not any other show?

I mean... I heard nothing about the quality of Viz's releases being low in quality and fans demanded another release that matches the Japanese quality. The same goes to FUNimation's other releases... what's with Dragon ball... that makes it so demanding... ?!

[VegettoEX]

Yet, I don't see this kind of bashing to other anime releases. Why Dragon Ball is the only one getting complaints about having "The Perfect Picture Quality" and not any other show?

I mean... I heard nothing about the quality of Viz's releases being low in quality and fans demanded another release that matches the Japanese quality. The same goes to FUNimation's other releases... what's with Dragon ball... that makes it so demanding... ?!

Oh, no... many other series have plenty of fandom complaints regarding video quality, language availability, etc.

One of the biggest differences was how long it took for DBZ to actually just be released. It started coming out in 1996, but we never had a complete, chronological release of the darn thing until 2007 when the orange bricks were done. It was all piecemeal, haphazard, canceled, re-released, canceled again, new casts, etc.

Ranma may have taken over a decade to see its release, too... but at least it started with the beginning and ended with the end.

[linkdude20002001]

...I don't see this kind of bashing to other anime releases. Why Dragon Ball is the only one getting complaints about having "The Perfect Picture Quality" and not any other show?

I mean... I heard nothing about the quality of Viz's releases being low in quality and fans demanded another release that matches the Japanese quality. The same goes to FUNimation's other releases... what's with Dragon ball... that makes it so demanding... ?!

Well for one: FUNi and Viz didn't try "the way it was meant to be seen" on the other shows. No, every other show got the show without cropping and terrible "re-mastering".
And two: the other shows do get a lot of flak for the quality. Not for the quality of the video, but the quality of the dub (despite the dubs actually being wonderful compared to DBZ's dub).
Everywhere you look, you'll find fans complaining regardless.

[goku the krump dancer]

Because it's just that damn good!!!!

[Daimo-Rukiri]

How about America getting it so late in comparison to the rest of the world?

I beg to differ, Germany got it later than us.

[Dr. Casey]

And, of course, it's worth mentioning that even if Dragon Ball started more than twenty (Actually, it's closer to thirty now) years ago, it ended just a little over twelve (I'm including Dragon Ball GT here because canon or otherwise, it did keep Dragon Ball in the public consciousness as an active series for that much longer).

[Piccolo Daimao]

Because it was awesome. It was a unique idea. There had been nothing like it before. It invented the "spiky-haired-musclebound-dudes-firing-energy-blasts-at-aliens" concept that inspired a number of mangas after its time.

[Rory]

It's Dragon Ball, what's not to love?

[SHINOBI-03]

It's Dragon Ball, what's not to love?

01- Outdated.
02- Japanese voices are silly.
03- Boring music.
04- Bunch of guys keep staring at each other for episodes.
05- Bunch of guys keep screaming like they want to take a mountain full of shit for episodes.
06- Superficial and not so deep plot.
07- Five minutes takes a 100 episodes.
08- The sky is green instead of blue.
09- Stupid inappropriate name puns.
10- Gets tons of never ending re-releases.
11- It's called "Dragon ball", but there's no mention of "Dragon Balls" in the plot.
13- Crappy animation.
14- No CGI effects.

............................................ Or so I heard from whiners and assholes.