Does Dragon Ball's simpler nature make it easier to rewatch?

[UltraInstinctRorikon]

Because the plot isn't so heavy and the mentality among the characters are rather simple and apolitical, does that make this series easier for you to rewatch whenever despite all the episodes / chapters?

[PurestEvil]

Yeah. In my opinion, it is one of the main factors of its immense popularity, along with flashy fights and novelty (mainly regarding the international audience)

[KBABZ]

In some ways that makes it less rewarding to rewatch because it isn't as interesting on repeat viewings compared to other stories, but on the other hand this makes it much easier to jump into a mid-point of the story if that's your favourite part (as any Western Z fan can attest to...).

[samuraix123]

I think it's that and because I've just seen it so many times that I know pretty much every aspect of it. Even though I have them on Bluray, I started watching the Kai broadcasts with Yamamotto and it's subbed, but sometimes I'll zone out while watching and not read the subs and pretty much know what they are saying etc haha and I can't understand Japanese at all except for bits and tiny pieces. bout like Spanish.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I would say it does. Dragon Ball is an easily digestible show, and it's always a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I also find new things to appreciate the show on rewatches, especially in the Japanese version.

[Robo4900]

In some ways that makes it less rewarding to rewatch because it isn't as interesting on repeat viewings compared to other stories, but on the other hand this makes it much easier to jump into a mid-point of the story if that's your favourite part (as any Western Z fan can attest to...).

Agreed.

I'm often just tempted to jump in to one of my favourite arcs and watch it on its own, and I often fall off rewatches of the whole run. (Such as the one we're running, which I haven't been caught up to since the first Z week )

[Yuji]

I'd say it definitely makes it easier to reread. I have a blast reading through pages of the manga every week or month when checking something and I only manage to stop myself long after I've finished the segment I wanted to check and have already finished the arc. When I do a full reread every year or two years, I often get it done in less than a week.

The anime, however, hasn't aged very well. My SO and I are watching it now, since she has never seen the series before, and we've just started the Red Ribbon Army arc, but the filler, slower pacing, along with the relatively poor animation really makes some episodes comparatively more of a chore to get through than the manga equivalent. The soundtrack, voice acting and direction really pull their weight in turn, though.

[Kinokima]

I actually have not watched it all the way through that often. I did so again fairly recently (and read the manga again) when getting back into Super but for years I didn’t watch any Dragon Ball

When I was first getting into it I would often watch my favorite episodes over and over. But that is how I am with a lot of things I can get very “obsessive” when I am really into something.

[Yuli Ban]

I'll have to break with this and say no. Dragon Ball could be a plot-driven show and it'd still be entertaining to rewatch because of how it uses its story.

Whether a story is simple or complex doesn't affect whether it's easy to rewatch or reread. Some incredibly simple stories are a slog to finish precisely because they're simple and don't really have much to keep you hooked. I've read some Dragon Ball fanfics made by authors who are honestly trying to capture the original manga but misunderstand Toriyama's style and confused "simply" with "boringly straightforward." In fact, I'm reminded immediately of the Ultimate Tenkaichi disaster, the Hero Mode's story that blew my mind when I was younger because of how miraculously bad it was. It had the same "simple, easy to understand" style of Dragon Ball ostensibly but was so stupefyingly dumb with no consistency or sense of payoff that it alone was a big reason why I never played that mode again (the shitty gameplay being the cherry-shaped turd atop the shit sundae). The Dragon Ball movies also fail to be gripping in any way and alternate between "trying to tell a story but completely bungle it up every which way (most notably with Broly which was too subtle for its own good)" and "not even trying and just skipping straight to the fighting (Super Android 17 is probably the most blatant as I think there's maybe 90 seconds of plot altogether). Having simple stories isn't what makes them rewatchable.

Dragon Ball manages this because it knows how to utilize set up/payoff and catharsis. I don't watch Dragon Ball because my puerile brain can't handle anything more complicated than a Sketchers commercial; I watch it because watching the Ginyu Force fuck up the senshi only to get their asses clapped by my favorite orange monkey through some absurd kung fu wizardry is an exhilarating feeling. The sheer hopelessness of seeing Freeza effortlessly overpower everyone only for Son Goku to explode into the Saiyan of legend and deconstruct the lizard's hubris one fist at a time (my that came out oddly) is too addicting to not watch. Toriyama never makes it easy for the protagonists and in every fight, they're usually pushed to the absolute brink and then pushed even further when things seem to be looking up so you can't look away. You've got to see how they get out of this one. And his disdain for clichés is endlessly entertaining even if Dragon Ball helped codify new cliché because the story is pissing all over what a more careful writer would've done, and that's fun to watch. Heck, the original Dragon Ball anime has a copious amounts of filler; Kai is vastly easier to rewatch just because it cuts it down (and a purified version like the manga is even easier still). Yet despite that things are always happening and they're always happening to an end that feels satisfying. It just helps that Dragon Ball is simple enough to feel like a summary version of itself. It's like a fairy tale in and of itself, and while I do think this helps explain some of its more overt popularity, I don't think that's the primary reason. Sometimes, flash can make up for a lack of substance, and Dragon Ball as an IP has more flash than the Flash. This is also what makes the movies entertaining. As long as the fighting's good and punchy (pun intended), who cares if they're trying (and honestly failing) to weave an intricate narrative of tragic revenge and fear of one's son or if they're bullshitting a couple of androids out of nowhere within the first 30 seconds and then commences with the punchy-punchy?

A much more plot-heavy story can have the exact same effect. Having a lot of things going on doesn't make for an intrinsically more interesting story; what matters is whether the story feels like it's going somewhere. There's a reason stories like The Brothers Karamasov and Tale of Two Cities remain very popular, for example.
To use a purely anecdotal example just remaining within the confines of anime, the first anime I watched that I can say absolutely "hooked" me to the point of obsessing over its next episode as an adult was the Durarara!! adaptation. I'm not saying that Durarara!! is anywhere near the level of Dostoevsky or anywhere close to the most interesting or most complicated anime plot (I've seen better since then; it's just the first one I cared for after rediscovering anime), but its story really gripped me at that moment in time, and yet if I had to write it out, there's little I could do to make it sound "simple" without subtracting very critical elements to the narrative itself. I've rewatched it countless times from start to finish and its more complicated story didn't at all subtract from that. If anything, it made rewatching it that much better as I picked up on things I missed the first time.

A similar feeling can be made for, say, Twin Peaks. There's a reason that show influenced half of all mystery and horror stories ever since, and I recommend watching the series at least once— because you won't, as you'll watch it again and again.

Or to put it another way, if there was ever a Twin Peaks-style version of Dragon Ball made by David Lynch himself, so long as it kept both's strengths, you'd be able to rewatch it just as much as either by themselves and still be extremely entertained each time.

TLDR: No. Dragon Ball is easy to rewatch because of the excellent use of set-up/payoff story structure and catharsis, as well as a lot of flashiness and excitement. That it's a simple story has little to no bearing on this.

[Planetnamek]

I dunno, one watch of Twin Peaks was more then enough for me, fine enough show but for me I can only tolerate Lynch's weirdness in small doses(and sometimes he does get a bit too far up his own ass like with Inland Empire which I personally detested), his work isn't the kind of stuff I find myself wanting to rewatch very often.

Anime on the other hand I find pretty rewatchable in general so long as I wait a few years between viewings.

[Matches Malone]

I'd say it does. There's also the likable characters that plays into that as well.

[Yuli Ban]

To put it another way, Dragon Ball's great to rewatch because of scenes like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyASQEM4izc


And all the build-up to it. Seeing the Androids wreak havoc, Cell's rise, everyone falling before him, and the humiliations wrought with his arrogant boasts basically culminates in this scene particularly. You're watching powerful, hubristic villains get one-upped, and that feels good. It feels good no matter how simple or convoluted the story is, whether there are plenty of twists and turns and clashing motivations and hidden secrets and unexpectedly "real" moments.... or if it's a surreal kung fu fantasy story whose idea of a "twist" is "and then someone even stronger appeared!" Dragon Ball doesn't need much more and it's still great to watch because of that sense of catharsis. It just feels awesome to watch the haughty and mighty get taken down. It doesn't matter if that's through handing a legal notice to a prosecutor that convicts a powerful, privileged rapist or through an explosive Buddha Palm to the face.

Whenever it doesn't do that, it gets frustratingly tedious and has to rely more on other elements to keep your attention, elements it never really did well precisely because of how simple of a story it is.
Because most of Dragon Ball is that, it just works. Slice of life also works, but the series rarely delves into that outside of filler.


As a tangent, this, I think, is also why Fusion Reborn is more popular than Wrath of the Dragon, despite the latter being basically the movie with the most plot, the most well-developed plot, and the best animation of the entire classic run of Dragon Ball. I still dream of a Dragon Ball OVA or mini-series with that art direction and level of animation fluidity. It just doesn't have the same sense of payoff. Goku feels like he bullshits a victory and steals it from someone else just because He's Goku™. Compared to movie 12 where Janemba's fucking the Monkey Pair up so magnificently that he's considered one of the best movie characters just because of that alone, and right when you're getting tired of his shtick and the constant one-sidedness, here comes Gogeta to effortlessly destroy him. Out of all the end-of-movie asspulls of the movie series, this was by far the best one by some raging distance.

[Soppa Saia People]

TLDR: No. Dragon Ball is easy to rewatch because of the excellent use of set-up/payoff story structure and catharsis, as well as a lot of flashiness and excitement. That it's a simple story has little to no bearing on this.

i think people conflat that last part because, there is a fair bit of media that is viewed as complex that Don't do that. like for instance with music, just because a song goes verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus doesn't make it inhertly simple, it's just satisfying song writing, even if a lot songs that are "simple" (whatever that means in a music context) use it, and vice versa with a non standard time signature or whatever.

[MasenkoHA]

Even if you don’t bother with Super or GT or the specials and movies and specials and watch Kai instead of
Z you’re still looking at well over 300 episodes of a show.

[Vijay]

Fun to watch. Yes.

Some comedic timings in Japanese version esp was spot on..and it's part of its charm...

[90sDBZ]

There's no other series I've rewatched as many times as Dragon Ball, particularly Z. I think the simplicity plays a big role in that. It lets me forget about anything else going on in my life, and just feel like a kid again. I love how it boils down to a simple good guy vs bad guy showdown with no pretense or melodrama.

Rewatching it almost feels like meeting up with old friends. I always feel like I can get behind Goku and his friends. Even Vegeta was strangely likeable early on, despite being an evil bastard.

The fact that the characters are pretty simple makes it really easy to latch onto them and even identify with them. People try to use that simplicity as an argument against the series, but it's arguably its greatest strength. I'd rather watch a bunch of battle obsessed meat heads over some pompous asshole any day.

[Lightningexpose]

For me, Dragon Ball is rewatchable. But Z? Nah I can't rewatch it that easily. I tried a few years ago and I had to force myself to finish what I started.

Other anime are far easier to rewatch imo. I rewatched Attack on Titan the other week and binged like crazy.

Death Note is the anime I'd say for me is most easily rewatchable and I don't think it's "simple" for anime standards. Probably the only anime besides og DB that i've rewatched 3+ times.

But I do agree, it's easy to just put on a random episode of DBZ and watch it without caring what happened before or what happens next. I don't know whether that's a good trait for a show to have, or a bad one...

[DBZAOTA482]

I don't agree on the character front. While the plot is pretty straightforward, the characters are very well-defined.

I like that Goku isn't a typical goody-goody or is out to prove something. He's a country bumpkin who loves fighting but has a heart of gold. It leads to many contradictions within himself. He also moments that show he's a lot smarter than he leads on.

[kemuri07]

I rewatch DB on a yearly basis, largely just picking an episode and go from there. It's simple in the sense that DB is a simple morality tale. But I don't think that makes it any less effective. There was a time where, while DBZ was popular, there was a lot of people shitting on it largely influenced by the many, many youtube videos about how it's nothing more than two dudes screaming at each other. Never mind that that's such a misreading on DB, it ignores what DB does so, so well: Likable characters, great world building, fun fights. It succeeds because it knows exactly what it is.

The problem with a lot of anime is that they try to copy Evangelion and fail because they fail to rise above anything more than being tryhard.

[Jord]

Death Note is the anime I'd say for me is most easily rewatchable and I don't think it's "simple" for anime standards. Probably the only anime besides og DB that i've rewatched 3+ times.

But I do agree, it's easy to just put on a random episode of DBZ and watch it without caring what happened before or what happens next. I don't know whether that's a good trait for a show to have, or a bad one...

It also helps that DN is a relatively short anime. (although I wouldn't mind a kai-like version that cuts out the Yotsuba stuff )