How did Dragon Ball change manga/anime?

[medama_oyaji]

You know, I've heard it said a lot that Dragon Ball had a huge impact on shonen manga and that Japanese comics and animation were never the same after, but I've always been curious to see some evidence. I'm not questioning whether or not the series was great - I'd just like to see some specific comparisons of the difference between shonen manga/anime before DB and afterwards.

When I think of popular shonen manga from around DB's run I think of stuff like Fist of the North Star, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and Yuyu Hakusho. Did DB introduce these ideas of super strong characters, and maybe ki attacks? When I try to think of popular shonen manga pre-DB it's a little harder to come up with titles right away... Ashita no Joe? I can think of stuff that's way older like Astro Boy, Cyborg 009 and Gegege no Kitaro I guess... but it's hard to compare when I'm not sure what was running in the 70's and early 80's leading up to DB. I guess a lot of space stuff like Leiji Matsumoto's work and Gundam comes to mind when I think of that era of anime.

Anyway, I just thought I'd start this thread and hopefully get some interesting discussion about DB's impact on the history of manga and anime!

[DBZAOTA482]

Look no further than One Piece.

[soulnova]

And Naruto too.

Chakra is used for techniques much like Ki. Kishimoto had very good explanations as to how characters used that power... but recently he just threw all of that through the window.


Besides that... Well, I'm not an expert on old anime/manga and I mostly only know those series that came to Mexico on the 80/90's. I don't remember one that used energy beams or some other inner power like DB.

[DBZAOTA482]

And Naruto too.

Chakra is used for techniques much like Ki. Kishimoto had very good explanations as to how characters used that power... but recently he just threw all of that through the window.


Besides that... Well, I'm not an expert on old anime/manga and I mostly only know those series that came to Mexico on the 80/90's. I don't remember one that used energy beams or some other inner power like DB.

I don't know, Naruto definitely took some cues from Dragon Ball but it's main influence was from Japanese mythology and Hunter X Hunter.

[Fizzer]

I've heard that Bleach and possibly Yu Yu Hakusho took some inspiration from DB/Z. I've also heard that ki-based attacks seen as balls/beams of light originate with DB. I know it was unheard of for a main character to grow up over the course of a manga series, but I don't know if that's become more common since. The biggest example is the creator of One Piece citing Dragon Ball as his biggest inspiration.

Dragon Ball has certainly influenced the culture surrounding anime and manga. It's obviously a huge thing in Japan, but it's very much thanks to DBZ that anime is now almost mainstream in the West, with so many being dubbed and released on DVD, so much merchandising, so many conventions etc. I feel like if I asked people at random on my degree course "Are you a fan of anime, even a little bit?" most of them would say yes. Without DBZ in the '90s, this probably wouldn't have become the case at all.

[Kingdom Heartless]

I'm not sure how much it kicked off the trend, but I'm sure it made it more popular:

Many series have a big dramatic scene where a character's friend is taken out and they receive a huge power boost from the anguish. Now in Dragon Ball, this was easy for them to do, since they could just bring back any character with the Dragon Balls. Issue is, most others do not have plot devices like the Dragon Balls, and generally avoid killing off characters, so they give them a big dramatic "death" only to have them pop up later and say "hey, imma live lol."

Seen this done multiple times on the likes of Naruto and Yu Yu Hakusho.