Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
Hi, I never watched the original DB (i.e, the pre-DBZ part). But I am considering doing it now. I have only the first Season Set of Dragon Ball; i.e. the first Blue Brick.
So my question is: which one I should first experience? The manga or the anime?
Should I go ahead and buy the rest of the Season Sets, or I should get the manga before my experience is spoiled by anime (and it's inevitable fillers)?
To clarify: what would you do (if this were the first time you were seeing DB)?
Preferably answer with a justification, i.e. ''manga'' or ''anime'' followed by ''why''.
I'd say go for the anime first. Might as well experience the series with color, voices, and background music first. They enhance a lot of the earlier, more charming moments a lot.
The Blue Bricks are also only about $16.49 on Amazon, so it's actually cheaper to buy the rest of the anime compared to buying the first 16 volumes of the manga.
Last edited by Theophrastus on Sun May 22, 2016 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Since you already have the first Season Set of Dragon Ball, I would recommend the Blue Bricks.
The filler in Dragon Ball isn't as tedious as Z and the Blue Bricks have good quality. The manga is also censored in most English releases which doesn't help.
Also the Blue Bricks are cheap.
I started with the manga, but that was really because I wanted to try out the Viz Bigs.
JacobYBM wrote:Art is subjective but boobies are forever.
I think I've said this before. If anime is Body, manga is its Soul
But that is an exception when it comes to Original Dragon Ball
Anime reflects the Manga almost 99.9%
In fact, it outpaces the manga with these aspects:
1. Soulful Music: I refuse to use BGM. Right off the Opening Song, "musical feast" is on. The music for most part infuses the ancient, Chinese myth with modern day martial arts which gives great "moments" in the anime
2. Fillers: word thats dreaded in shounen. But DragonBall comes off as an exception. They're enjoyable just as the canon. Some great slice-of-life filler segments really fleshes out the characters of Goku, Muten Roshi & a ton of secondary characters
3. Voice acting. Read the manga if you wish. But Anime has flat-out most memorable voices by the "Dream Team" of Anime Industry. Nozawa's Goku, Hiromi's Bulma, Furuya's Yamcha, Toshio Furukawa's Piccolo Jr etc. Their nuanced performances simply magnifies every impact the words/sentences/monologues the characters had in manga by a 100 fold
I'd say start with manga first, because when you start watching the anime you can have more appreciate for some of filler which expands on elements that the manga left vague or just didn't explore such as Tien's redemption during the King Piccolo arc, Gohan's character development when training with Piccolo in the Saiyan arc and a good chunk of the Majin Boo arc.
Spoiler:
Akira Toriyama wrote:My policy is to try and forget things once they’re over. Since if I don’t discard the old and focus on what’s new, I’ll overload my brain capacity. I still haven’t lived down going, “Who the heck is Tao Pai-pai?” that one time I was talking with Ei’ichiro Oda-kun. But the fact that there are still people reading the series after all this time… All I can say is; “thank you.” Really, that’s all.
Akira Toriyama wrote:Drawing Dragon Ball again reminded me of two things--how much I love it, and how much I never want to do it again.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And if you're upset because all this new material completely invalidates the tabletop RPG rulebook-sized statistical system and flowchart for the characters' "canonical Power Levels" that you'd been working on painstakingly for the last bunch of years now... well I don't think there's a kind, non-blunt way of saying this, but that's 100% entirely your own misguided fault for buying so deeply into all this nonsensical garbage in the first place. And that you also have IMMENSELY skewed and comically backwards priorities in what you think is most important and needed to make a good Dragon Ball story.
Zephyr wrote:Goodness, they wrote idiotic drivel in a children's cartoon meant to advertise toys!? Again!? For the ninetieth episode in a row!? Somebody stop the presses! We have to voice our concern over these Super important issues!
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Fair enough, I concede. Sean Schemmel probably has some kind of hidden talent. Maybe he is an expert at Minesweeper. You're right; calling him "talentless" wasn't fair.
Michsi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:29 amIn Super Piccolo got yelled off the stage by Vegeta in the U6 Tournament arc and lost to Jiminy Cricket in the ToP , he deserved 15 new transformations with his theme song played by Metallica in the background.
Wow guys, thanks. Those are really great and thoughtful suggestions. It will help me to make my own mind on this issue.
Lord Beerus wrote:I'd say start with manga first, because when you start watching the anime you can have more appreciate for some of filler which expands on elements that the manga left vague or just didn't explore such as Tien's redemption during the King Piccolo arc, Gohan's character development when training with Piccolo in the Saiyan arc and a good chunk of the Majin Boo arc.
Thanks, but I already saw the entire anime series of DBZ, so there are no surprises if I read the manga version now. Besides, I already read about half of the DBZ portion of the manga.
Lord Beerus wrote:I'd say start with manga first, because when you start watching the anime you can have more appreciate for some of filler which expands on elements that the manga left vague or just didn't explore such as Tien's redemption during the King Piccolo arc, Gohan's character development when training with Piccolo in the Saiyan arc and a good chunk of the Majin Boo arc.
Besides, I already read about half of the DBZ portion of the manga.