What is the lamest thing to come out of modern DBZ?

[JulieYBM]

Trunks was given an entire arc of trying to become a super saiyan so he could help Gohan fight the Androids, only for him to unlock said transformation because of Gohan's death. That right there is some tragic irony.

Toriyama's 'History of Trunks' is quite infamous for just how bare bones it is compared to the anime special, to appreciate the original work is one thing but to say it's a "better story" just because he drew it is laughable.

I actually thought that change was really disappointing. It's heavy-handed and melodramatic and really just a lazy callback to Goku unlocking Super Saiyan after Krillin dies. It's tidy and predictable and obvious and, when Dragon Ball is at its best, it should be none of things.

Predictable does not bad make. Storytelling is a process, and the Trunks television special followed that process, and let it build, because it was actually interested in the process. Toriyama's worst writing comes from when he is absolutely just trying to hit plot beats, without even trying to make the telling of that story interesting.

Curveballs are fun to throw, but when your story is nothing but curveballs, there's nothing for the audience to latch on to. Toriyama tries so hard to be unpredictable and break 'conventional rules' that he's breaking too many rules. Ironically, it's the constant edgy attempts at breaking the rules of characterization that is what's ultimately left Gokuu so flat and one-dimensional as a character.

[ABED]

Trunks was given an entire arc of trying to become a super saiyan so he could help Gohan fight the Androids, only for him to unlock said transformation because of Gohan's death. That right there is some tragic irony.

Toriyama's 'History of Trunks' is quite infamous for just how bare bones it is compared to the anime special, to appreciate the original work is one thing but to say it's a "better story" just because he drew it is laughable.

I actually thought that change was really disappointing. It's heavy-handed and melodramatic and really just a lazy callback to Goku unlocking Super Saiyan after Krillin dies. It's tidy and predictable and obvious and, when Dragon Ball is at its best, it should be none of things.

Predictable does not bad make. Storytelling is a process, and the Trunks television special followed that process, and let it build, because it was actually interested in the process. Toriyama's worst writing comes from when he is absolutely just trying to hit plot beats, without even trying to make the telling of that story interesting.

Curveballs are fun to throw, but when your story is nothing but curveballs, there's nothing for the audience to latch on to. Toriyama tries so hard to be unpredictable and break 'conventional rules' that he's breaking too many rules. Ironically, it's the constant edgy attempts at breaking the rules of characterization that is what's ultimately left Gokuu so flat and one-dimensional as a character.

This is by and large true, though Toriyama isn't a good example of a writer who disregards process and build for the sake of hitting a bunch of predetermined plot beats.

And of the reasons Goku is linear, how is one of them due to breaking conventional rules of characterization?

[dbs fanboy]

Toriyama relies on mostly un-depicted training for his new power-ups because he doesn't really want to do the work of building up and relying on characters' emotional arcs.

It's just like how he off-panels certain relationships between characters.
Meanwhile, it's a completely different story in some other series (like Saint Seiya for example).

Just wondering, you seem to have found other IP's that handle this and many other elements better. Is it ok to ask what it is that makes you stick around with this particular IP?
(Personally, I only want to review it properly since I did it wrong the first time, after that I may probably be done.)

I'm sticking with DB for the contributions of artists other than Toriyama or Toyo-tarou. For example, my favorite writer of Japanese cartoons—Tomioka Atsuhiro—writes a large number of Dragon Ball Super episodes. I also like the creative decisions of directors like Nagamine and others staff members in pushing certain character arcs to the forefront. For example, Toriyama's script is hardly the shining element of Dragon Ball Super: Broli. It's the contributions of others that really elevate that material (and even then I think Nagamime should have pushed harder to influence the story and find the time to focus more on Broli and Cheelai). Shimada Bin and Mizuki Nana do a lot of heavy-lifting to sell the Broli-Cheelai relationship before the script is so timid.

This is why I am so against the general fandom's—and the industry's—obsession with giving comic authors so much control over the film and television adaptions of their works. They're downplaying not just creators who are experts in their fields, but also downplaying more talented artists. There's a reason why when Nagamime ignored Oda's request for more comedy in One Piece Film Z he in fact saved the tone of his film (this is the only example that immediately comes to mind).

I think that Dragon Ball suffers a lot from too many people who have too much power and too few desires to make something thematically and rich in character development all tripping over one another. We're damned lucky to have gotten stuff like Kale × Caulifla subtext as heavily as we did, but it's also undoubtedly one of the best parts of the entire franchise, dating all the way back to 1984.

Toriyama: doesn't want to make something good, and often just wants to perpetuate dumb sexist ideas.
Toyo-tarou: wants to suck up to Toriyama like Geoff Johns wants to suck up to Alan Moore.
Producers/editorial: gotta make this shit as lowest common denominator as possible, all while letting weird sexist bullshit to slip through.

Anyway, more Kale and Caulifla having metaphorical sex, please (and if you make a project for us adults, judt have them fuck for real plz k thx).

Tomioka genuinely CARRIED the Goku Black arc, he clearly had a vision and you could tell when he was not writing, i kind wish he was much more involved in the ending? maybe he could have made it more compelling.

Super had a lot of talented and great writers working on the show, a few had not familiarity with dragon ball and you could tell, some had a lot of passion.
This is why it's so annoying whenever i see complaints about super's writers being bad or whatever. Super's main issue was the lack of consistency due to schedule problems, plus Toriyama's poor involvement, writing literal bare bones for the plot.

There a lot of greatly written emotional character interactions in the show, and it annoys me to no end when all the good shit gets ignored because it's just more fun to say "super sucks", this is the same thing fans did with GT back in the day.

Anyway to add to this thread, the lamest thing out of modern dragon ball in my opinion is the current state of super's manga, it doesn't matter how enjoyable it might be, but redoing Super Hero....again.......instead of writing new stories, is incredibly lame.

Edit:

Sorry it's been years since the last time i posted in here, i accidentally reposted too much and i don't remember how to delete the copies nor if i actually can do it.

[Grimlock]

It's not comparable to Dragon Ball Minus because each work had a different purpose. One was a story about Bardock, the other wasn't. It was just a prologue chapter depicting the circumstances behind Goku's departure from planet Vegeta.

Even if it wasn't the focus, Bardock TV Special still depicted the circumstances of Goku's departure, and it did better than Dragon Ball Minus.

Even though I quite like the addition of Gine, I can't bring myself to understand the purpose to straight up rip-off the Superman tale, down to loving parents and all. Also, it being just one mere chapter whose "goal" was just to depict Goku's departure is one of its major flaws. We just came from an eleven-chapter manga focusing on humans, surely something more could be done with the Saiyans too.

[capsulecorp]

Predictable does not bad make. Storytelling is a process, and the Trunks television special followed that process, and let it build, because it was actually interested in the process. Toriyama's worst writing comes from when he is absolutely just trying to hit plot beats, without even trying to make the telling of that story interesting.

Curveballs are fun to throw, but when your story is nothing but curveballs, there's nothing for the audience to latch on to. Toriyama tries so hard to be unpredictable and break 'conventional rules' that he's breaking too many rules. Ironically, it's the constant edgy attempts at breaking the rules of characterization that is what's ultimately left Gokuu so flat and one-dimensional as a character.

To be fair, everyone likes what they like, and I'm not here to tell anyone that they're wrong (and you shouldn't be either!) - I'm just trying to explain my own opinions.

It's true that storytelling is a process, but "storytelling" as an abstract concept is not very helpful here. To me, the Trunks special was sort of boring, sort of predictable... because we pretty much already know what happens! The tone is just sort grim and morbid, and the drama fell flat because it was just much more tropey and "generic" feeling than a lot of other DB stories. The "Super Saiyan as a response to Gohan's death" is a large part of that - its meant to be a big dramatic climax but its just like, yeah, we get it, I remember this from Namek.

It's possible that what you might consider "curveball" moments are some of my favorite elements of Dragon Ball! And that's ok! But it's not ok to consider those cases of "breaking the rules"... because there are no rules.

[goku the krump dancer]

When you say Curve Ball are you referring to an outcome or an event that pushed things forward? Because the original movies all had predictable outcomes of Goku/Gohan coming out on top. When I think of moments that push the story forward I think of almost anything including Vegeta including Goku letting him live, Trunks being revealed as his son, Vegeta letting Cell power up and him going Majin.

Wrestling is a great example at how predictability can be a good thing (Steve Austin or The Rock winning) or how too many curve balls can legit kill a company (WCW).

The right twists and swerves can be really captivating though.