Lack of backstories: bad?

[Flame Dragon]

Dragonball is so long that the preceding chapters are the back story.

One Piece and Naruto can be a little jarring to me when they try to overly imbue a story with too many character flashbacks and tragic tales. It's all just a little bit forced, especially to the extent at which it's overly done.

On one hand, Oda can be quite good at it, and is certainly better than his Shonen contemporaries at keeping it light and interesting now and again.

In Naruto, it's just plain tiresome. Everyone has a tragic back story of death, orphan-hood or vengeance - or possibly all three. Gimme' a break!

I agree. I believe One Piece has the right balance of flashback and action, also the flashbacks tie nicely into the overall story, like the Norland Liar flashback, which was masterfully done.

Naruto instead has too many of the damn things, and they are always overdramatic and overzealous, even minor issues like "Who's Might Gai dad?" have a flashback to them, for fuck sake.

[Luso Saiyan]

He's talking about Episode of Bardock where they needlessly transformed him into something he was never supposed to be.

Episode of Bardock is too short to claim we learned everything about him.

[shinmaru]

One thing I find odd about Dragon Ball is that unlike many other Shonen series (see Naruto and One Piece) that came after it, few of the characters have backstories that are well detailed or even backstories at all. Why was Yamcha a desert bandit? Why does Tenshinhan have a third eye?

Thoughts?

I think it's better like this, so much what if's and mistery in a character that we want to know more.
Naruto showed so much it's no fun anymore it's normal, i really cant think of a Char Back story that i want to see.

[FortuneSSJ]

A lot of Naruto characters have the same backstory: Dramatic chilhood, parents killed and all alone. Some of them are interesting, others not.
A tragic past doenst make always a good character. I dont find backstories necessary. if the character behavior makes sense to me, thats all it matters.

[Mystic Buu]

If there aren't many backstories,that doesn't mean that the show is bad.And I don't want to know every backstory of every character.It leaves a place where we can imagine backstories.

[ABED]

If there aren't many backstories,that doesn't mean that the show is bad.And I don't want to know every backstory of every character.It leaves a place where we can imagine backstories.

It's someone else's story, so I don't care to imagine my own, what I like is that I don't want the back story (or the narrative) to be crappy. Sometimes the less that's known about a character, the better.

[DoomieDoomie911]

I don't think it's really a bad thing. It definitely would have been cool to see some though. Like a mini chapter on Oolong and Puar being in Transformation Kindergarten, or a back story of Yamucha or Tenshinhan... Maybe one day we'll get something like that.

[RocktheDragon]

He's talking about Episode of Bardock where they needlessly transformed him into something he was never supposed to be.

Episode of Bardock is too short to claim we learned everything about him.

I find Episode of Bardock just to be a fun one off that wasn't mean to bring much to DB in general. I mean, we can all take from it whatever we want, but Episode of Bardock is just such a unique beast in its own right.

Part of me is also bugged with the way Bardock was treated, along with his general story. But if we just take it as an exercise in giving us more stories about the DB universe, while not really trying to be too serious at the same time.

Yet at the same time I can't help but feel that Episode of Bardock has taken something away from the original Bardock special, but that's me just nitpicking. So in general I'd say that back stories are neither good and bad, it just depends on their execution and quality.

[Flame Dragon]

What i like about One Piece is that every Straw Hat has a good backstory, and each one of them has some dream that they travel together to accomplish. Meanwhile, in Dragonball the only backstories i found interesting were Vegeta, Future Trunks and Bardock (pre-SsJ).
Gohan story is also great, but not a backstory, since we experience his growth first hand.