What are people’s thoughts on how increasingly “normal” the world of Dragon Ball became?

[Yuli Ban]

To put it another way, what people are picking up on is that Dragon Ball in the early arcs was like a demented kung fu Loony Tunes, complete with physics-defying gags straight out of old '40s and '50s slapstick shorts, superdeformation & visual comedy, no real definable setting, and a complete lackadaisical approach to biology and consistency. Everyone was designed with an extremely cartoony aesthetic in mind, something that by modern standards is closer to the early Westernized days of anime & manga (hell, Krillin looks like a Shaolin monk version of Charlie Brown). It's a pure cartoon and knows it. That's just what Dr. Slump was like. That's what helps distinguish early Dragon Ball from the rest of it. It arguably shifted away from that as soon as the Red Ribbon arc, but it definitely left the building by the Freeza arc.

Which is actually strange to say, in retrospect, because while we lost the furries of Earth, plenty of Freeza's men & other aliens were just as weirdly designed. I guess we take it more seriously when they're aliens?

[WittyUsername]

To put it another way, what people are picking up on is that Dragon Ball in the early arcs was like a demented kung fu Loony Tunes, complete with physics-defying gags straight out of old '40s and '50s slapstick shorts, superdeformation & visual comedy, no real definable setting, and a complete lackadaisical approach to biology and consistency. Everyone was designed with an extremely cartoony aesthetic in mind, something that by modern standards is closer to the early Westernized days of anime & manga (hell, Krillin looks like a Shaolin monk version of Charlie Brown). It's a pure cartoon and knows it. That's just what Dr. Slump was like. That's what helps distinguish early Dragon Ball from the rest of it. It arguably shifted away from that as soon as the Red Ribbon arc, but it definitely left the building by the Freeza arc.

Which is actually strange to say, in retrospect, because while we lost the furries of Earth, plenty of Freeza's men & other aliens were just as weirdly designed. I guess we take it more seriously when they're aliens?

I would say there was still plenty of that wackiness in the Red Ribbon arc. That arc did do a crossover with Dr. Slump characters, after all, and it also introduced us to a wise martial arts master who happens to be a cat. Even the Piccolo Daimao arc revealed that the king of the entire world is a dog with a mustache.