I Feel Like I Shouldn't Like Dragon Ball Z

[Kakarot88]

Indomitable spirit and a positive attitude toward bettering oneself and ones enemies in order to find a common ground...yeah pretty shallow

mystical orbs that grant any wish
aliens
dragons
space travel
magical creatures
time travel
transformations
FUSIONS!
...pretty bland...oh wait no...

Lack of character development...yeah such as a prince whose entire world was built upon standing on someone's neck to get a better view only to be pressed down under the thumb of tyrant who murdered his father and kinsman only to then murder him, and having to watch a low ranked warrior usurp his spot in glory and then to come to realize all of this is not who he is at least not anymore as he lays down his life for the very family and people he not but roughly 10 years earlier sought to destroy.

Or a demon bent on world domination learning his true past and the love he has for an old nemesis's son causing him to become one of Earth's greatest saviors

oooh oooh or a robot developing true human emotion!


Predictability...good guys win...ok maybe...but Mr. Satan still being the savior that's unique

Dragon Ball Z has more than nostalgia it is the epitome of good story telling without needing to rely on emo hair styles, worthless love stories, and rain..always a sunny day gone to hell when these dudes fight.

Haters gonna hate

[Big Momma]

This small video series (4 parts) shows some of the arrogance of it all in many different aspects. The video is on fan subtitles and what an abomination some of them have become -- and how it should be done. Really interesting if you like subs.

Totally off topic but I can't say I agree with a majority of the points he raises in those videos.

Translating attack names, excluding -san and -sama and compromising line accuracy for the sake of a 100% natural reading at all times is just silly to me.

Take Dragon Ball as an example - I don't think anyone here is honestly going to want to read 'Lord/Master Kaio' or even try to imagine what they'd translate 'Son-kun' too.

I'm kind of caught with things like attack names. But in terms of "kun, san, etc." I feel it's better to add Mr/Mrs, or just leave them out (Just putting "Son" in the subs for "Son-kun"). As these are honorifics are used differently than the way English honorifics are. I imagine a Japanese person watching an English show with subtitles, and just having them say "Smith-san(スミスさん)" as opposed to "Mister Smith(ミスター スミス)" I dunno, I don't know how Japanese people feel about this, but it seems translating things like "san" to "Mr/Mrs" or just leaving honorifics out of subtitles would work better unless there's an important plot-related reason as to why they are referred to with a specific honorific.

[rereboy]

It's a bunch of pretentious anime 'fans' who think anything that isn't super 'underground' and fansubbed is inherently bad.

The "Elitist" Anime fandom just hates anything popular. Back when I first joined message boards in 2004 it was cool to hate DBZ and InuYasha. Now its cool to hate Naruto and Bleach. Whatever becomes big next in the US will be the next target.

Naruto and Bleach are hated nowadays with good reason. They REALLY let themselves go.

[CashmanX]

It's a bunch of pretentious anime 'fans' who think anything that isn't super 'underground' and fansubbed is inherently bad.

The "Elitist" Anime fandom just hates anything popular. Back when I first joined message boards in 2004 it was cool to hate DBZ and InuYasha. Now its cool to hate Naruto and Bleach. Whatever becomes big next in the US will be the next target.

Naruto and Bleach are hated nowadays with good reason. They REALLY let themselves go.

I take it you haven't read anything post-Aizen then. Bleach has been AMAZING since the new arc started.

Which is ironic, given the title of the thread. Most people slam things they haven't read in full, especially when they have only heresay to go off of.

[rereboy]

I'm up to date with both since, no matter how much they have fallen, I still somewhat enjoy some stuff in them and I'm curious to see how they will end. Bleach is better than Naruto nowadays and it did improve compared to some of its previous stuff but it still suffers a lot from logical inconsistency with previous stuff and a constant feeling of "the author just pulled this stuff out of his ass", to name just a few flaws.

One could argue that Dragon Ball also has a feeling of "the author just pulled this stuff out of his ass" but, because of the charm of the world and characters of Dragon Ball, and also because Dragon Ball never feels like it takes itself too seriously (there's a constant goofy element that its just part of how Toriyama works), somehow that never seems to really hurt Dragon Ball all that much. Mangas which have a more "serious business" feeling to them seem to suffer a LOT more from such an aspect, and I think that happens with Bleach.

Also, Bleach's personal style of panel shots gets old really fast. There's often a LOT of white space and a lot of waste of paper space with frequent shots of faces, eyes, mouths and whatnot. Entire chapters are spent in just a few lines of dialog and eye shots of the characters, and the perspective and view point of those shots, even though its original and stylized, feels like its been used and abused to the point of annoyance, like its just purely formulaic at this point. It worked very well when the manga was still not very long and the story was much better than it has been for a very long time. Nowadays, not so much.

All of this and more works against Bleach and the kind of manga that it is or was trying to be. I believe that the kind of manga that Bleach was trying to be needed to be taken in another, much more well thought and planned direction, for it to work and to keep on being as good or better than it was in the beginning. The same could be said for Naruto. Both reek of unfulfilled potential and somewhat consistent decreasing quality in their story and elements after a certain point, like they lost what made them good along the way and just became boring instead.

Again, one could also argue that Dragon Ball decreased in quality after a certain point, but I don't believe it was ever that severe or generalized as these two. Dragon Ball started to have more problems, namely in some plot points of the Cell arc and Buu arc, but the overall plot of those arcs was good and it never stopped being incredibly appealing and fun, like it had always been. Its charm was as strong as ever. The same can not be said regarding Naruto or Bleach.

Toriko, for example, which is another shonen manga in the same magazine as those two, manages to blow those two out of the water and unless it also really lets itself go (which is always possible) I don't see that changing.

Hunter X Hunter is also much better than any of those two. This one is especially relevant since its very noticeable that Naruto "borrowed" some ideas from this manga for early Naruto. The similarities between the character Kurapika and Sasuke are especially revealing.

Finally, I don't see why you just assumed that I don't follow Bleach just because of what I said. You may think differently than me regarding Bleach, but that doesn't mean I'm talking without knowing Bleach.

[thatdbzguy]

Sometimes I actually regret getting back into Dragon Ball. Between all of the hate it gets and a fandom consisting mostly of people who only like DBZ for nostalgic reasons and not because they actually believe it's genuinely good, it just makes me feel more and more like I shouldn't love the series as much as I do.

I know I shouldn't give a crap about other people's opinions, but this is really getting to me for some reason. And it's just DBZ. People can bash any other show I like, I won't care, but bash DBZ, and I get like this.

[DonZ]

Sometimes I actually regret getting back into Dragon Ball. Between all of the hate it gets and a fandom consisting mostly of people who only like DBZ for nostalgic reasons and not because they actually believe it's genuinely good, it just makes me feel more and more like I shouldn't love the series as much as I do.

I know I shouldn't give a crap about other people's opinions, but this is really getting to me for some reason. And it's just DBZ. People can bash any other show I like, I won't care, but bash DBZ, and I get like this.

I understand you, i had this feeling in me back than. but now, i learned how to not give a crap. plus i learned that DragonBall is actually a good series. yeah it's not the best and there's a better Shonen animes out there like FMA, One Piece or Hunter x Hunter but that doesn't mean it's not good. plus you should be proud to be a DragonBall fan, it's one of the mangas that helped developing the Battle Shonen genre to what we're seeing now back in the 80s and early 90s, One Piece and Naruto are both inspired by Dragonball. in Japan Dragonball and Akira Toriyama are respected by a lot of mangakas. sorry haters, but DragonBall is a LEGEND and that's not an opinion, it's a fact

[Big Momma]

I don't understand how anyone could feel like they "shouldn't like something" just because a they're in a minority who happens to like it (Which isn't the case with DB. It's loved all around the world by millions).

[TheMightyOzaru]

I take it you haven't read anything post-Aizen then. Bleach has been AMAZING since the new arc started.

Which is ironic, given the title of the thread. Most people slam things they haven't read in full, especially when they have only heresay to go off of.

Naruto stopped being good after Naruto fought Sasuke in the Final Valley or whatever.

[DonZ]

I take it you haven't read anything post-Aizen then. Bleach has been AMAZING since the new arc started.

Which is ironic, given the title of the thread. Most people slam things they haven't read in full, especially when they have only heresay to go off of.

Naruto stopped being good after Naruto fought Sasuke in the Final Valley or whatever.

You mean since Shippuden kicked in. it was still good. not as good as the previous arcs, but still.. it's not bad. i think it started to get bad since the 4th Shinobi War started. things started to get pretty boring with nothing happening for like 20 chapters -_- i can't believe this show is the same show i enjoyed before. i miss the old Naruto.

[sintzu]

Sometimes I actually regret getting back into Dragon Ball. Between all of the hate it gets.

evry anime/manga gets hate

[sintzu]

Naruto stopped being good after Naruto fought Sasuke in the Final Valley or whatever.

You mean since Shippuden kicked in. it was still good. not as good as the previous arcs, but still.. it's not bad. i think it started to get bad since the 4th Shinobi War started. things started to get pretty boring with nothing happening for like 20 chapters -_- i can't believe this show is the same show i enjoyed before. i miss the old Naruto.

shippuden should have ended after the pain arc but insted it's being milked to death wich is something thank god toriyama didn't do with dragon ball

[DonZ]

shippuden should have ended after the pain arc but insted it's being milked to death wich is something thank god toriyama didn't do with dragon ball

[/quote][/quote]

Back in the 80s and 90s there wasn't long series like we see today, DragonBall was the longest one and it's only 42 volumes. now you see series like One Piece and Naruto which is way longer, One Piece is 71 volume and still ongoing and it doesn't look like it will finish anytime soon. Naruto is 66 volumes and still ongoing at it's final arc, which is suppose to be the end but the damn war is being milked and taking forever.

[TheMightyOzaru]

I take it you haven't read anything post-Aizen then. Bleach has been AMAZING since the new arc started.

Which is ironic, given the title of the thread. Most people slam things they haven't read in full, especially when they have only heresay to go off of.

Naruto stopped being good after Naruto fought Sasuke in the Final Valley or whatever.

You mean since Shippuden kicked in. it was still good. not as good as the previous arcs, but still.. it's not bad. i think it started to get bad since the 4th Shinobi War started. things started to get pretty boring with nothing happening for like 20 chapters -_- i can't believe this show is the same show i enjoyed before. i miss the old Naruto.

I don't like it. It also doesn't help that I find the characters to be completely dull. Rock Lee and Might Guy are my favorite characters, and they are nothing like the other characters.

[DonZ]

I don't like it. It also doesn't help that I find the characters to be completely dull. Rock Lee and Might Guy are my favorite characters, and they are nothing like the other characters.

Yeah that's one of Shippuden problems, you see in DBZ human race became useless, but you feel like they exist and have enough screen-time. but in Shippuden i feel like they've been forgotten, unlike DBZ. so basically Shippuden did the whole "characters being useless" more than DBZ. except for Hidan and Kakuzu arc.

[sintzu]

Back in the 80s and 90s there wasn't long series like we see today, DragonBall was the longest one and it's only 42 volumes. now you see series like One Piece and Naruto which is way longer, One Piece is 71 volume and still ongoing and it doesn't look like it will finish anytime soon. Naruto is 66 volumes and still ongoing at it's final arc, which is suppose to be the end but the damn war is being milked and taking forever.

the problem isn't how long it is it's that the author continuing knowing that he's out of ideas and can't top the past arc

[sintzu]

Back in the 80s and 90s there wasn't long series like we see today, DragonBall was the longest one and it's only 42 volumes. now you see series like One Piece and Naruto which is way longer, One Piece is 71 volume and still ongoing and it doesn't look like it will finish anytime soon. Naruto is 66 volumes and still ongoing at it's final arc, which is suppose to be the end but the damn war is being milked and taking forever.

the problem isn't how long it is it's that the author is continuing the story knowing that he's out of ideas and can't top the past arc

[rereboy]

Back in the 80s and 90s there wasn't long series like we see today, DragonBall was the longest one and it's only 42 volumes. now you see series like One Piece and Naruto which is way longer, One Piece is 71 volume and still ongoing and it doesn't look like it will finish anytime soon. Naruto is 66 volumes and still ongoing at it's final arc, which is suppose to be the end but the damn war is being milked and taking forever.

There are at least 102 mangas with more than 40 volumes, many of them still on going and many of them started a long time ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ma ... count#List

[sintzu]

I don't like it. It also doesn't help that I find the characters to be completely dull. Rock Lee and Might Guy are my favorite characters, and they are nothing like the other characters.

basically Shippuden did the whole "characters being useless" more than DBZ. except for Hidan and Kakuzu arc.

and when it was getting good he had to ruin it by having naruto kill kakuzo when it should have been kakashi and chogi

[DonZ]

Back in the 80s and 90s there wasn't long series like we see today, DragonBall was the longest one and it's only 42 volumes. now you see series like One Piece and Naruto which is way longer, One Piece is 71 volume and still ongoing and it doesn't look like it will finish anytime soon. Naruto is 66 volumes and still ongoing at it's final arc, which is suppose to be the end but the damn war is being milked and taking forever.

There are at least 102 mangas with more than 40 volumes, many of them still on going and many of them started a long time ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ma ... count#List

i meant the mainstream mangas like Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Hokuto no Ken.