dbgtFO wrote:There are a lot of these kinds of panels in the Buu Arc and it just shows, that Toriyama has always drawn his characters with small bodies and such. Whether it's more extreme now I don't know for sure.
The Buu arc has some of the worst art in the entire manga especially when you compare it to a page from something like from the 1987-1990 era of Dragonball. I bet if I pulled a random page from the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, it will look more aesthetically better than a page from the Buu arc. However, I still look at those Buu arc images and I still think they look fine. I don't go "eww". It still looks like Dragonball, whether it is drawn in chibi, or minimalistic, or normal. We see that with pages from the whole DB manga, but I never usually start to think it looks bad until pages in the Buu arc (generally with Piccolo) but overall it still looks fine.
Toriyama's style has changed so much, that it looks like another artist completely and it looks like he has LOST his ability to draw as well as he use to. I mean the character's faces look too wide, their bodies too thin, and their heads are too big for their bodies.
Even look at Toriyama's sketches from now and then; the skinniness in characters with overly large heads is prevalent compared to his sketches in the Bardock special (those sketches look awesome).
I noticed his change when he started to make the characters have a very hunched forward head, and Piccolo having an overly long and wide face with the eyes being too far apart and the nose being way too long. It started with Piccolo. Take a look for yourselves.
Anyways, that example of JoeJoe's Bizarre Adventure looks practically the same with slight variations of course. It still looks like it is by the same artist and the integrity and detail in the art is still there with great proportions overall. I cannot say the same for Toriyama. The change in JoeJoe's Bizarre Adventure are very minor and is something you would expect with an artist. It's not like the huge overhaul DB has gotten with Toriyama. I almost wonder if Toriyama does it on purpose since the art had remained very consistent from Doctor Slump through to the Saiyans arrival. Then it starts to change, gradually, but it changed. Vegeta looks different, first, he looked smaller, up until he reads Goku is on his way to Earth. Then he is started to be drawn a little more muscular with the prominent temples being drawn on his forehead a few pages later. And his change continues through the fight with Goku. Lines are added to the characters skin, faces (such as Vegeta's eyes, which stop being drawn rounded), and clothing. Just take your manga and look for the changes through this portion of the series from when Goku is about to arrive to the fight with Vegeta. I was shocked how much change occurs in Toriyama's style in just a few pages.
My favourite art style (and animation) outside Toriyama who worked on Dragon Ball: Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, Masaki Satō, Minoru Maeda, Takeo Ide, Hisashi Eguchi, Katsumi Aoshima, Tomekichi Takeuchi, Masahiro Shimanuki, Kazuya Hisada
Videl looks like a 13 or 14 year old girl here, she looks like Gohan's little sister. Kinda makes her pregnancy in BoG really creepy even by DB/Z standards.
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