Has Dragonball aged well?

[Hades]

Note, this is NOT a discussion of how Funimation had handled their dub, merely a question on whether or not Dragonball and Z (For the sake of discussion, it is the subbed version) can hold up to new audiences today. I have my doubts, since Dragonball arrived just at the beginning of the Information Age.

I mean, in terms of animation quality alone Anime of today looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZc5WKC411U Compared to Dragonball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaCUfqPxfj8

[Thanos]

Dragon Ball, as a whole, yes. It has stood the test of time. Evidence of this is how new series still take heavy inspiration from it. The only thing that hasn't really aged all that well to me is the anime. Sometimes it's very grainy, jumpy, and the animation is, at times, is barely watchable. It just looks old and dated. Kai and the Dragon Boxes look decent enough, but I think even the Dragon Boxes still look quite old.

If Dragon Ball were done today, exactly as it is but in a high-quality, HD style like Battle of Gods, then yes. In the video games or even the manga, there isn't really any indication to me that it's an old series.

[omegalucas]

The manga undoubtly has.
The anime not so much. Not only the actual film has aged (thus isn't as pristine as it once was, though this can be changed if either Toei does a restoration or Funi continues theirs - it'd undoubtly look better than most of these new digitally made animes) but the inconsistency in artstyle doesn't help the cause.

[Hades]

There's also the outfits and designs. I mean, at least the Saiyan Armour would need a redesign, since it looks more like a throwback to the 50s than what anybody would expect to look like the uniform of a technologically advanced military (as in something approaching 40K/Total Annihilation advanced).

[Thanos]

There's also the outfits and designs. I mean, at least the Saiyan Armour would need a redesign, since it looks more like a throwback to the 50s than what anybody would expect to look like the uniform of a technologically advanced military (as in something approaching 40K/Total Annihilation advanced).

I disagree. Something tells me if Toriyama had drawn Saiyan armor today, it would look very much the same. He doesn't strike me as someone to try to keep up with trends and stuff.

[dbzfan7]

Manga yes, Anime no.

[ABED]

There's also the outfits and designs. I mean, at least the Saiyan Armour would need a redesign, since it looks more like a throwback to the 50s than what anybody would expect to look like the uniform of a technologically advanced military (as in something approaching 40K/Total Annihilation advanced).

Sometimes retro works.

[Insertclevername]

The anime really didn't age all that bad.

[dbzfan7]

The anime really didn't age all that bad.

Not bad, but not well either.

[Pretorious]

I don't have a problem with choppy animation. I mean, even back when it was new, choppy was still choppy. You could compare it to Disney movies, or even Disney TV shows of the 80s and 90s and see that Dragon Ball wasn't as consistent. It's not a big deal to me though, because there are some excellent looking episodes, and they had to crank them out a week at a time, so it's understandable.

As far as the actual content of the show (the story, the look, and the music) the only thing that seems dated to me is some of the music, but then, even that is more the case with some of the soundtrack songs that weren't even in the show. You know, like the stuff off the Hit Collections that are heavily inspired by campy '90s dance music or, well, what I guess you would call "adult contemporary." Like virtually every song on the Never Ending Story CD set featured here:

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/music/sets/

I just relistened to that for the first time in 12 years or so and...whew, it's awful! (Except for a couple of tracks.)

Kageyama's songs are pretty good, but not exactly timeless sounding. I really think Makafushigi Adventure is a more timeless-sounding song than any Kageyama song. Probably because it uses elements of traditional oriental music. Compared to something like We Gotta Power, with it's drum machine and synthy horns...it just doesn't hold up in the same way.

[Bejiita]

Well actually I don't see it as dated, but more rushed here and there.

I say this because the episodes handled by the best studio and animators still look great today, episodes like Videl Vs Spopovitch, where Gohan fights the Cell Jr's, can't be assed to get th proper episode names... the only problem lies where cheaper studios were used, probably to get the job done quicker, those episodes which were done faster and cheaper result in some really shit animation, which doesn't do DBZ any justice.

It would be awesome to get a proper remake with updated bgm, remixed remakes of the original score would be what most hardcore fans want I assume, but even if we do it would probably never happen, if it does it did get redone it'd have some new bgm and a totally different feel and won't feel the same

[Pretorious]

I think animation quality is unrelated to whether or not it has aged well. A lot of earlier animations were very fluid (Disney, Loony Tunes), but a lot of Hanna Barbera shows of the 60s and 70s (like Johnny Quest or Space Ghost) are choppier than Dragon Ball. Then you have Adult Swim original cartoons that are also poorly animated. Animation quality is more a question of budget than timelessness.

Sorry if I'm just restating what I already said, but I wasn't sure if i was as clear as I wanted to be.

[B]

It's probably not fair to compare FMA to DB/Z/GT. FMA's based on a monthly series; it was probably planned to end with ~50 episodes, because there was no humanly way possible to craft a filler arc and get ahead of a manga that puts out 11 chapters a year. Dragon Ball's anime just ran indefinitely until the manga ended, and they had the luxury of doing that because the manga ran weekly. And that's not even getting into how BONES is just, in general, a better animation studio than Toei.

A more apt comparison would probably be One Piece or Konjiki no Gash Bell!... both of which do not look that great, even compared to old DBZ. I'd honestly say the latter has aged better than the former two will/has.

[Kid Buu]

Well, in terms of manga, I'd say it has. Now that I'm older I can see its flaws (i.e the million plotholes in Cell and Buu arcs), but the series just has a charm to it. The Story, The Adventures, The Characters, The Fights, etc.

The Anime DBZ doesn't look too outdated to me, DB does though.

[DinoChow]

It's hard to say, given personal attachment/blind love for the series, but as others have said, the manga definitely has (I think the recent 'colored' versions have proven this; they may 'spruce up' the artwork with color, but the artistic foundations are still identical, and they absolutely floor me revisiting them for the first time in years), and I would actually strongly argue that the DBZ anime has as well. The DB anime is a tad harder to argue for given that it is older and the animation is not always on par with DBZ, but even given all the 'bad-day-good-day' inconsistencies in the DBZ animation, I still think it looks substantially better than most TV animation produced today. I personally feel the shortcuts animators take now, where most anime is produced digitally, is much more obvious than it was back in the 'hand-drawn' era. Yes, there are clear imperfections in how DBZ looks and was produced on a week-to-week basis, but there is still a constant sense that this work was 'hand-crafted,' and that alone gives it a greater visual punch in my book. Everything, especially the beautiful backgrounds and landscapes, just looks so much more detailed than any 'digital' TV anime I have seen, and I think there is a pleasing, tactile quality to the animation you just don't get in modern works. These qualities do 'date' DBZ to a certain time and period, but I do not think they 'age' it, at least not poorly. It has aged spectacularly.

Another thing to consider: DBZ, because it was produced on physical film stock, can be effectively preserved through many generations of technology. The Dragon Boxes proved this at 480p, and Funimation themselves proved it on their Level sets at 1080p. That kind of proves it has aged admirably, given that something produced decades ago can be brought back out, dusted off, cleaned up, and re-released looking pristine (if not 'brand new'). This is another problem modern 'digital' animation has: it is immediately dated, because it is locked in at its production resolution. "Death Note" is one of my favorite anime, but even just a few years later, it looks kind of horrible, in large part because technology has shot so far past what it was produced at. But it can never be 'remastered,' because it was created as a 480p television show, and that is a shame. We are seeing this in live-action filmmaking too, with movies from the early 2000s or late 90s looking substantially poorer aged now than films from the pre-CGI age.

[DinoChow]

And I probably should have noted that from a storytelling standpoint, Dragon Ball hasn't aged a day. Narratively, it is as good (and sometimes messy) as it ever was. The story is timeless, and that's probably the most important thing to note, production issues aside.

[Bussani]

There's also the outfits and designs. I mean, at least the Saiyan Armour would need a redesign, since it looks more like a throwback to the 50s than what anybody would expect to look like the uniform of a technologically advanced military (as in something approaching 40K/Total Annihilation advanced).

But Dragon Ball wasn't trying to be realistic. Frankly, I like it better that way.

[Hades]

I find that Dragonball's plot (good for its time) is somewhat (frankly speaking) puerile, and wouldn't really hold up in today's environment, with shows like Evangelion, Madoka Magica and Berserk all taking very critical looks at their genre in varying ways partially accounting for their success.

[rereboy]

I find that Dragonball's plot (good for its time) is somewhat (frankly speaking) puerile, and wouldn't really hold up in today's environment, with shows like Evangelion, Madoka Magica and Berserk all taking very critical looks at their genre in varying ways partially accounting for their success.

For a show to work nowadays it has to be "serious business" (in its plot) like the ones you mentioned...?

Dragon Ball works and it will always work because it never thought of itself as "serious business" and doesn't really try to be "serious business", unlike various other series which try and fail.

Its very nature is different from the series you mentioned. Its, basically, good old fun and its great at that.

[ABED]

I don't see why it's automatically a positive that things look contemporary, nor is looking of your time neccessarily a bad thing. Digital animation isn't neccessarily better looking.