Bardock the Mexican wrote:I don't like them and because of our recently banned troll, I have even less reason to like them. My main bone of contention is how strongly the fans of Dragonball take the Daizenshuu lock, stock, and barrel. Very few fans actually think about what they might say or what they might mean. You end up with translations and scanalations that end up as a game of telephone with nobody knowing what the original was.
I really don’t think it’s a good idea to let how fans treat and regard something affect your view of the thing itself. I mean, if I disliked everything that has been used at one time or another by idiotic fans to start pointless arguments, I wouldn’t be left with much of the series to like. Phenomenol talked about the authority of the Daizenshuu a lot, but he really spent most of his time arguing that the anime was canonical. Do you like the anime less because of this? He also tried to support his views with quotes from Toriyama. Do you take this as a reason to dislike Toriyama?
As for the issue of various different translations and scanslations: while this is a problem, I think you’re exaggerating a bit. It’s
not true that nobody knows what the original Daizenshuu say. The books are rare, but people do own them. There is a lot of misinformation about their contents out there, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way of finding out what they really say, even if you don’t own them. There are reputable sites such as, well, Daizensuu EX that contain plenty of information about their contents. I do freely admit that it can be difficult at times to separate the truth from the crap, but just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
You mention fans who take the Daizenshuu “lock, stock, and barrel”. I’m not arguing that anyone should accept what the Daizenshuu say without question. I don’t think you should do that with
anything . But on the other hand, many fans seem to have this notion that the Daizenshuu are just collections of statements like “Tenshinhan is an alien” or “Raditz’s battle power is 1,500/no wait, it’s 1,200!” and weird stuff like that, when in reality at least 90% of their information is taken directly from the manga or the anime (and they’re
always clear about which it is they’re taking it from).
Most of the remaining 10% is from interviews with Toriyama, the various people involved in making the anime, and other people who presumably know what they’re talking about. There’s only very, very few cases like “Tenshinhan’s an alien” where we really don’t know where the information came from or what we should make of it. But because of endless arguments about the few bits of information like that, many people end up thinking that the Daizenshuu are the Dragon Ball equivalent of the Weekly World News. I find it very sad. They’re great books, and they don’t deserve to have a bad reputation just because of a bunch of idiotic fans.
