Granted… Shonen Jump still plugs the ever loving shit out of it to this day, probably in the vain hope that one of their executives will eventually convince Toriyama to hop back in the saddle again and somehow work some sort of creative magic to revitalize their sales figures to its past uber-glory.Chrono Trigger wrote:Ok! but let me ask you this. Compare Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, and Dragon Ball. In Japan right now which is still the most popular even though all three series have been completed for years in Japan ? I don't know man for a show that's been over for years it still gets a lot of attention. It might not be as popular as it used to be back in the 90's but I bet a lot of companies wish their products were as marketable and as fresh.
Bear in mind that there was a GIGANTIC boom in sales for Shonen manga that was directly caused by the apex of Dragon Ball’s popularity in the early 90’s. When the series ended, there was of course the inevitable swaying of the economic pendulum in the form of massive sales drop offs, and a rather large decrease in profits that some people say Shueisha only started truly recovering from in recent years with the emergence of new cash cows like Naruto and One Piece (both of which naturally owe a MASSIVE debt to Dragon Ball).
Clearly though, regardless of how much the general Japanese public got sick of Dragon Ball during the immediate aftermath of it’s apex in popularity (pretty sick, judging by how short lived GT was and how utterly the franchise in general had vanished from Eastern radars in the late 90’s), it’s grown to become recognized as an enduring classic that’s remembered and looked back on fondly with the benefits of time and hindsight.
I would totally agree with you that this unique longevity makes Dragon Ball something truly special, even apart from past classic hits like Yu Yu, Kenshin, and HnK. Though again, bear in mind that this renewed Japanese interest was in part nudged along by all the noise made in the U.S. from the American mainstream JUST discovering the series like it was brand new.
Well yeah… what else would you expect in a situation where the U.S. market (in the form of VIZ and FUNi) are basically just leeching off the looooong dead corpse of a foreign franchise that had already been sucked bone dry in it’s native land several years before it ever got truly noticed in the mainstream of the Western part of the world?Chrono Trigger wrote:All I was getting at is that it's starting to get stale again. You got VIZ constantly re-releasing the manga over and over again. They teasing us with Daizenshuu. You got Funi constantly re-releasing the show on DVD. Then you have the video games where the developers are just re-releasing old games and putting out more and more rehash! How many times do I keep fighting Raditz!? Like I said before...We're complaining about box art. Not because the Japanese version of something had a better box art and they changed it for the american version. We're just complaining about regular ass box art....Box art dude....
The fact that Japan is only making new animated material NOW for the very first time since 1997 ought to clue you in to just how conclusively fucking played out the series had gotten over there. As I’ve been pointing out, clearly the Eastern and Western Dragon Ball markets are working from two completely different timeframes and mindsets.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder dude; the U.S. is still coming down from that first apex in mass appeal, while Japan already had that phase awhile back and has now settled into a comfort zone of having enough time off from the series to be able to look back on it with nostalgia.
