TOEI doesn't understand Akira Toriyama's humour

[foxfang4]

I really think that TOEI animation has never really understood Akira Toriyama's humour, and this usually explains why Dragon Ball feels so different when he has little involvement in the storytelling. The first obvious examples are the Dragon Ball films. This also extends to Dragon Ball GT, and most recently, the Dragon Ball Super manga.

Toriyama's Dragon Ball was always a satire of itself in general. The jokes weren't just gags for the sake of having a gag. His jokes were a mockery of our fallibilities [our egos/selfishness/pride/sense of grandeur, etc] and often made fun of typical genre trappings seen in Shonen manga. For example, he liked to make fun of narratives that took themselves way too seriously. For example, a typical "Toriyama joke" that I love is when he immediately reverses a super serious scene by making fun of how silly all of this is. [Too many examples to name; but *Buu Saga Spoiler* what happens to the old Kaioshin after he gives his life to Goku *end spoiler* ].

No matter how much TOEI tries to staple Toriyama's name on its recent manga covers, without this sense of humour, in my opinion, the franchise loses its unique spirit and what has attracted millions of fans to it for over 3 decades.

[jjgp1112]

Most of Toei's DB humor tends to fall into typical anime gag humor, while Toriyama's own style has a bit of a cynical bend.

It's also why I never got upset about some of the most ridiculous escalations, like Goten and Trunks going Super Saiyan, because that's a classic Toriyama gag - this thing that's supposed to be super sacred and important, done easily by some dumbfuck little kid who doesn't even grasp what it is. The manga paneling of Goten's transformation makes it really obvious, too - Gohan talking about how tough it was for him, his father, Vegeta, and Trunks to pull it off and BOOM. Just like the 8 billion things Arale did or Goku learning the Kamehameha in 5 seconds.

[foxfang4]

Most of Toei's DB humor tends to fall into typical anime gag humor, while Toriyama's own style has a bit of a cynical bend.

It's also why I never got upset about some of the most ridiculous escalations, like Goten and Trunks going Super Saiyan, because that's a classic Toriyama gag - this thing that's supposed to be super sacred and important, done easily by some dumbfuck little kid who doesn't even grasp what it is. The manga paneling of Goten's transformation makes it really obvious, too - Gohan talking about how tough it was for him, his father, Vegeta, and Trunks to pull it off and BOOM. Just like the 8 billion things Arale did or Goku learning the Kamehameha in 5 seconds.

Oh that's so funny. I had never considered Goten's transformation to be a gag. I used to see it as a lazy narrative shortcut just to get the 2 kids up to speed with everyone else. But you're right. You can can tell especially in the way that scene is depicted in the manga.

[ABED]

By and large, I think Toriyama knew when to undercut tropes and when to allow the emotion to land. Kaioshin giving his life to Goku and popping right back up or Goku pointing out that drawing out dormant power isn't special are great examples of poking fun at tropes.

[WittyUsername]

Toriyama’s humor does have a sense of irreverence to it, but the manga can take itself seriously at points. By his own admission though, Toriyama is most comfortable writing lighthearted stories with a quirky sense of humor.

[precita]

The Boo saga as a whole is a dark comedy, and it's baffling a lot of of people don't get that particularly in the west. It's probably why you see so many western fans say they didn't like the Boo arc or wanted the series to end in Cell, the whole Boo saga was a hilarious dark comedy that was almost like a borderline parody of Dragonball at that point. And you can tell Toriyama was having a lot of fun writing it.

It's one of the reasons I love the Boo arc, there's still a huge sense of darkness and the highest stakes of the series at that point, (the entire Earth's population is killed, Earth is destroyed the first time, Kid Boo was then going to kill everyone in the Universe...and back then there was only 1 universe so it meant everyone as Beerus/Whis didn't exist yet), but still had so many great character moments and funny moments too.

[Gligarman]

My big takeaway from the manga's humor vs. the anime is that Toriyama's jokes tend to work better when they're fast paced. This unfortunately wasn't realized as well in the manga since they had to intentionally slow down the pace of the show to keep from catching up to the manga. I do think the more recent movies have done a great job at portraying his humor though.

Probably the biggest example of a missed mark I can think of is Roshi chasing that girl around when they were recruiting Tenshinhan for the Tournament in DBS. Typically Roshi does or says something inappropriate and is immediately punished for it. This episode just made him look like a straight-up rapist and frankly, that's not funny.

[Cipher]

There are exceptions, but I think I can agree with the basic premise of the thread.

Seems to stem from a couple of things.

1) While Toriyama sometimes goes for big joke setups and slapstick, especially earlier in the series, a lot of DB's humor--and Toriyama's humor in general--is dry. That is, despite the colorful and wacky worlds, a lot of the biggest laughs simply come from blink-and-you'll-miss-them character interactions and quips. They rely on a particular dialogue tenor that's hard to recreate without being the man himself, which is why anime-only scripts tend to flounder in recreating it, going for broader, more obvious gags instead.

2) Toriyama's humor--both the broader slapstic and the more frequent dry bits of dialogue--depends on snappy timing, which the anime adaptations obviously struggle with even when adapting manga material. Hard to nail the quick timing of a comedy beat when you're committed to stretching episodes out, in ways that comes down even on scene-by-scene pacing.

That said, the DB anime series still manage to be frequently funny. Just not as funny, as frequently, as Toriyama's manga itself.

For what it's worth, the dry humor of DB is something I feel Toyotaro captures in DB Super about ... 75 percent of the time? It's a big part of what endears me to it as a sequel and vehicle for Toriyama's plots, and why I argue for it feeling tonally of a piece with DB.

Edit--

I'll go ahead and add a third factor, which is that Toriyama's humor tends to come from treating the characters sincerely. This also allows him to blend humor and tension together by having them feed into one another, rather than having to pause and switch between modes, insert out-of-place comic relief, etc. The Boo arc is probably the shining example of this, where there are plenty of laughs to be had with everyone else in the cast being forced to act as a straight man to Boo and Gotenks' antics, while said antics, true to both characters, ratchet up tension in turn. Or take earlier examples: a lot of the humor of the early arcs comes from Goku simply being Goku, having sincere interactions as he might. It's easier said than done, to go for comedy that feels like it's coming from the characters rather than being forced on them. See also: the entire casts of Slump, Neko Majin, Jaco, etc.