Why did the anime get so many of the colours wrong?

[Xagani]

So why did the anime get it wrong so many times compared to the manga? Thoughts?

[andrewtuell1991]

Only around 10% of the manga was in color during its original run and most of the time when it was in color it was that weird red-and-gray scale stuff. So by the time Toriyama had colored a certain character in the manga, Toei had probably already colored them in with their own color scheme a few weeks/months back.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

Well if we go buy the "complete illustrations" it should give us the indication of the color pallet intended.
I kinda want to know what Goku was tan in the series, but instead had a white flesh tone?

[Herms]

Toriyama's pretty open about not bothering with too much consistency when it comes to the colors, so I'm not sure how proper it is to talk about "right" and "wrong" colors.

[dbboxkaifan]

Kid Gohan comparison:

Dragon Ball: The Complete Illustrations



Dragon Ball: Full Colour - Volume One



Dragon Ball Kai



So much for consistency.

[thekingfallsdown]

Kid Gohan comparison:

Dragon Ball: The Complete Illustrations



Dragon Ball: Full Colour - Volume One



Dragon Ball Kai



So much for consistency.

Well your last picture isn't KAI specific They just kept what was in the original Funi dub. (The one when they redubbed/made the original ocean dub into the funi dub)

[dbboxkaifan]

Dragon Ball Kai was supposed to have the corrected colours but obviously failed to do so as even their book editions aren't consistent anyway.

P.S.: What do the FUNimation dubs have anything to do with this?

[SaiyaJedi]

Dragon Ball Kai was supposed to have the corrected colours but obviously failed to do so as even their book editions aren't consistent anyway.

"Corrected colors" just means that Toei Animation altered it digitally to adjust the tint and brightness. (I think they also did some digital filtering, which wasn't as destructive as FUNimation's on the Orange Bricks, but still made Kai a bit "softer"-looking overall.) They did not, to my knowledge, selectively replace colors for things on a frame-by-frame basis. There is also no such thing as a Kai "book edition". There are the Dragon Ball Z "Anime Comics", and the Dragon Ball "Full Color Comics" (or the digital color edition, which differs only very slightly), neither of which uses the Dragon Ball Kai branding.

What you're also forgetting is that, among the images you're using for comparison, the anime's came first. Gohan did appear in color in that outfit in Chapter 205 (in December 1988), but the color scheme there is much closer to what was used in the anime than in the illustration you use, which comes from the Cell arc, almost precisely four years later (in real-world time).

The correct chronological order for the illustrations you posted is:

1. Dragon Ball Z (April 1989)
2. Chapter 404 title page (December 1992)
3. Full-Color Comics (April 2013) However, this may have previously been released on the JUMPLAND website before it was retired in 2006.

[jjgp1112]

Well, the manga is primarily black and white and most authors seem to not give a shit about whatever creative choices the anime makes, hence all of the retroactive filler plotholes and what have you. Because so many characters probably take quite a while to finally appear in a fully colored chapters, the anime producers more often than not just make the color scheme up.

However, Dragon Ball seems to have the most egregiously blatant color contrast between the anime and manga. I mean, Gohan wearing green in the Saiyan saga?

[Cipher]

For the most part, it was actually that the anime either used color directions as given by Toriyama, or the first color appearances of things in the manga, only for the manga to switch later.

Examples: Goku's purple gi and Bulma's blue hair come from the first full-color chapter of the comic, only for Toriyama to later switch to purple hair for Bulma and an orange gi for Goku (even pre-Kame Sennin training). By and large, Toriyama doesn't seem to care about being very consistent with colors anyway. Several of his Kanzenshuu Kanzenban (?) illustrations show characters with radically different colors from both the anime and the original manga run.

[Ninja Murasaki]

a lot of Toei anime adaptations seem to change the hair colors of characters.

[doomydoomydoom]

Yes, happens a lot in Toei anime. Fist of the North Star is the biggest example I can think of aside from DB. In the manga, Rei's hair is quite obviously black. In the anime it was changed to a very light blue, something like turquoise. It's kind of odd because Rei's hair turns white a little later on (IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHY STOP READING THIS AND GO READ FOTNS), thus he doesn't look terribly different than he did before in the anime. Raoh's hair, in the manga, is blonde-ish. Toei altered it to black in the anime. So yeah, on and on like that. Just the designers devising their own color scheme according to what they think is best aesthetically. (And they can revise it, as per Vegeta in his first appearance in DBZ)

[DarkPrince_92]

I like how they handled Super Saiyan colors (in the original run). I don't know exactly what Toei's goal was with the color choices but its aesthetically pleasing to me.

[Metalwario64]

In the manga, Rei's hair is quite obviously black. In the anime it was changed to a very light blue, something like turquoise. It's kind of odd because Rei's hair turns white a little later on (IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHY STOP READING THIS AND GO READ FOTNS), thus he doesn't look terribly different than he did before in the anime.

Yep, I remember bringing that up as an example in a thread that was similar to this one a few years ago (though I'd say it's green in the TV series):

Manga Rei:


Anime Rei:

Interestingly, in the movie, it's white from the start (or a very light blue), so that's yet another inconsistency within itself.

[TheGmGoken]

I like how they handled Super Saiyan colors (in the original run). I don't know exactly what Toei's goal was with the color choices but its aesthetically pleasing to me.

What's so different about SSJ's colors in the manga compared to Anime?

[Duo]

I like how they handled Super Saiyan colors (in the original run). I don't know exactly what Toei's goal was with the color choices but its aesthetically pleasing to me.

What's so different about SSJ's colors in the manga compared to Anime?

The hair is more golden in the manga, and the aura is a white flame instead of golden waves.

[Super Sonic]

Colors change from comic to animation quite a bit. For example, in the comics, Catwoman has black hair, but in Batman: the Animated Series, she was blond. Yeah, it was to match Batman Returns, but still. And Negima, well this speaks for itself:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/D ... nseiNegima

[DarkPrince_92]

Watch out, image heavy post. (kinda)

I like how they handled Super Saiyan colors (in the original run). I don't know exactly what Toei's goal was with the color choices but its aesthetically pleasing to me.

What's so different about SSJ's colors in the manga compared to Anime?

I was talking about the entire pallete for SSJ from the hair, to the clothes, to the skin tones. I just like all of it. I think it's better than just a change with hair and lighting like in the manga.

Here's Normal...


Then SSJ... the pallete is the same for SSJ and SSJ2... I think.


And SSJ3 makes his Gi looks all gold and stuff, I love it.



In the manga his clothes will still be a yellow/orange color... which is kinda boring imo.

Here's Vegeta as well.




This is what I mean.