Are there other shonen you acknowledge as better written than Dragon Ball?

[Demon Prince Piccolo]

I don't know what world where anyone lives in where someone could honestly believe a 10 year weekly story ended too soon.

Even though I think DB probably should've ended sooner, ending with Goku excited about the future bc there are more mountains to climb is as proper a place to end the story as any since it's in line with the central theme of the story. That said, it didn't need to take 10 years to get there.

YYH was about 112 episodes to DB's 600+. The chances of it not overstaying its welcome are much higher

That's pretty much in-line with my thoughts. I still feel like YYH could have gone longer, but I'm glad it ended where it did.

[Soppa Saia People]

given how depressed togashi was and how much jump was screwing with him, i'm pretty glad it ended when it did, and huge props to him for the ending lol, wish the anime had the same.

[MyVisionity]

I'm not sure that Dragon Ball nor Yu Yu Hakusho ever really reached their natural conclusions.

Hakusho ended with Togashi's health concerns. Who knows how long it could have gone on without that last story arc in the anime.

DB ended when Toriyama decided to call it quits. If he had been more energized and had better ideas, it may have continued. Of course, with a different Boo arc.

I don't think that the number of years or episodes necessarily makes a difference. Ten, twenty, thirty years, as long as it's appropriate for the story.

I don't follow One Piece but I think that series has been going for like 20 years and 1000 episodes or something.

Do some series overstay their welcome? Sure, but in my view, better to look back on a show that went on for way too long than to look back on a show that ended too early.

[ABED]

Togashi's health concerns aren't apparent in the final product.All the characters reach a very natural end. Kuwabara has left his delinquent ways behind and is becoming an adult, Kurama has left his demon life behind and is living happily as a human, Hiei is at peace with himself, and Yusuke finally has answers about who he is and has fully reconciled all sides of himself.

The reason Toriyama wasn't more energized with better ideas is it had been 10 years full time which means every path had been tread. There wasn't anywhere else to go.

I'm sorry but no story needs that long to fully explore its characters and its themes. After a certain point, it gets redundant.

Do some series overstay their welcome? Sure, but in my view, better to look back on a show that went on for way too long than to look back on a show that ended too early.

Eh, that's debatable. The only way I'll agree is if the story wasn't given any sort of conclusion. If the story ends well, but it was just brief, then fine. I'd rather something be short and left me wanting more than felling it ended too late. It's anticlimactic.

[MyVisionity]

Togashi's health concerns aren't apparent in the final product.All the characters reach a very natural end. Kuwabara has left his delinquent ways behind and is becoming an adult, Kurama has left his demon life behind and is living happily as a human, Hiei is at peace with himself, and Yusuke finally has answers about who he is and has fully reconciled all sides of himself.

Yeah the ending felt natural but the only reason it ended when it did was because Togashi wanted to end it as soon as possible because of his health. Had that not been the case, the story and characters may have gone into a completely different direction than they did, or at least have lasted for more arcs.

[Soppa Saia People]

i mean togashi wanted to end it after chapter black.

[Polyphase Avatron]

i mean togashi wanted to end it after chapter black.

Did he really, or is that just a rumor along the lines of 'Toriyama wanted to end DB after Freeza'?

[JulieYBM]

Pretty sure that at that point Togashi was so ill that he wanted out as soon as possible.

[Soppa Saia People]

Did he really, or is that just a rumor along the lines of 'Toriyama wanted to end DB after Freeza'?

from the man himself

Spoiler:

(god damn that dude was depressed.)

[ABED]

Togashi's health concerns aren't apparent in the final product.All the characters reach a very natural end. Kuwabara has left his delinquent ways behind and is becoming an adult, Kurama has left his demon life behind and is living happily as a human, Hiei is at peace with himself, and Yusuke finally has answers about who he is and has fully reconciled all sides of himself.

Yeah the ending felt natural but the only reason it ended when it did was because Togashi wanted to end it as soon as possible because of his health. Had that not been the case, the story and characters may have gone into a completely different direction than they did, or at least have lasted for more arcs.

Again, it's not apparent in the anime. It all feels organic. And just because he could have gone longer but that doesn't mean it would've been the best for the story.

[Yuli Ban]

Yu Yu Hakusho definitely didn't end on the best note. It should've ended either sooner or later; where it ended felt... hobbled and rushed, to put it mildly. Though I agree it should have ended at some point instead of going on as long as DB, just because something is the way it is doesn't mean that's the ideal.

But as a Bangsian wuxia/martial arts fantasy story, it's certainly better written than Dragon Ball. I think the only thing Dragon Ball does unquestionably better is catharsis, which is something I've said before. Schadenfreude is built into how fights and stories build up and pay off, and I feel YYH does bog this down sometimes. The Toguro/Dark Tournament arc did it right, but it floundered afterwards with Sensui/Chapter Black, and the Three Kings arc just flat out didn't really have a payoff except for certain character arcs.

I've said before that Dragon Ball's enduring popularity stems heavily from its catharsis-based plots, and the fact YYH rose to the top almost totally because of the Dark Tournament arc is an example of what I mean. Simple doesn't necessarily mean better or worse; vice versa with complicated and involved stories. It's about set up and satisfying payoff.

One problem I've noticed in shonen is bogging this down with sappy backstories in lieu of actual build-up or Power of Friendship-centric writing. Because of a Writing Workshop 101 belief that "sympathetic/troubled = good character," these martial arts/post-wuxia/modern battle shonen works rarely reach the same level of satisfaction as DB or YYH because they're restraining themselves in the wrong ways. Fights are flashier than ever, but they feel so less impactful, and because combat is its own form of storytelling and dialog (a very bloody dialog), it's essentially talking like an erudite aristocrat and saying absolutely nothing of value. Dragon Ball was the hick who told you everything at a good pace. Mostly. In the manga. And even then only before Boo screwed it up.

[ABED]

Yu Yu Hakusho definitely didn't end on the best note. It should've ended either sooner or later; where it ended felt... hobbled and rushed, to put it mildly. Though I agree it should have ended at some point instead of going on as long as DB, just because something is the way it is doesn't mean that's the ideal.

Really? I love that ending

[Yuli Ban]

It works the same as Dragon Ball GT's ending as an ending, but it just doesn't feel like we got there at the show's best. YYH absolutely felt like it had at least another arc or two to tell to me before it was truly ready to wrap things up for good.

[Yuli Ban]

I heard a term called "shonen sentimentality" that sums up the combination of hero angst and forced-sympathetic villains we see in shonen works so often. That coupled with a lot of shonen action/DB-influenced works' desire to avoid the out of control power scaling by more traditional methods of min-maxing characters is probably another reason why it's hard to compare DB to them; they're different genres even when they're basically trying to be like DB without quite grasping why DB was the way it was. I barely follow shonen nowadays because so many of these "battle shonen" works come off as emotionally stilted and overly fantastic (ironically similar to a lot of modern, CCP-approved wuxia/Chinese dramas). The less that can be said about deredere character archetypes, the better. I mean, I have nothing against them, but the fact so many nerds think these are realistic representations of actual female characters because shonen and shojo anime rely on these instead of genuine true-to-life characterization (that you could glean just by interacting with real people for ten minutes) is... I don't know, spooky. And this might also be why storytelling in shonen feels like it struggles against DB counterintuitively. Dragon Ball, if nothing else, had several of its characters at least act like real people and those who didn't still had a consistent internal logic to them that made them feel more real. With so many other shonen works, it feels more like clockwork. Indeed, when the age of AI-generated media becomes matured over the next few years, I'm sure "shonen anime" will be one of the first things we'll get AI to create because it's rooted in the same pieces rearranged to an almost scientific perfection. Seasonal shonen/moeshit #42069 could be recreated and rewritten by AIs that will exist in the next five years, whereas I just don't think you could get an AI to recreate the outrageousness of Dragon Ball (at least not anytime soon).

Seriously, try writing Dragon Ball but restrain yourself to modern shonen tropes of the doubt-filled and awkward Hero, the deredere waifus, the sentimental villains, Humans Are the Real Monsters, etc. It'd feel stilted at best.

[ABED]

It works the same as Dragon Ball GT's ending as an ending, but it just doesn't feel like we got there at the show's best. YYH absolutely felt like it had at least another arc or two to tell to me before it was truly ready to wrap things up for good.

I never got that sense. It felt like a very natural conclusion. After going up the demon hierarchy, facing the three rulers is a natural end.

[MyVisionity]

It was a rushed ending because of Togashi's health. The anime did what it could, but to me it was always clear that something was off with the final arc. Not necessarily with how the plot itself unfolded, but the pacing. The episode count should have probably been at least double what it was, allowing the story and characters to expand and be fully realized.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I heard a term called "shonen sentimentality" that sums up the combination of hero angst and forced-sympathetic villains we see in shonen works so often. That coupled with a lot of shonen action/DB-influenced works' desire to avoid the out of control power scaling by more traditional methods of min-maxing characters is probably another reason why it's hard to compare DB to them; they're different genres even when they're basically trying to be like DB without quite grasping why DB was the way it was. I barely follow shonen nowadays because so many of these "battle shonen" works come off as emotionally stilted and overly fantastic (ironically similar to a lot of modern, CCP-approved wuxia/Chinese dramas). The less that can be said about deredere character archetypes, the better. I mean, I have nothing against them, but the fact so many nerds think these are realistic representations of actual female characters because shonen and shojo anime rely on these instead of genuine true-to-life characterization (that you could glean just by interacting with real people for ten minutes) is... I don't know, spooky. And this might also be why storytelling in shonen feels like it struggles against DB counterintuitively. Dragon Ball, if nothing else, had several of its characters at least act like real people and those who didn't still had a consistent internal logic to them that made them feel more real. With so many other shonen works, it feels more like clockwork. Indeed, when the age of AI-generated media becomes matured over the next few years, I'm sure "shonen anime" will be one of the first things we'll get AI to create because it's rooted in the same pieces rearranged to an almost scientific perfection. Seasonal shonen/moeshit #42069 could be recreated and rewritten by AIs that will exist in the next five years, whereas I just don't think you could get an AI to recreate the outrageousness of Dragon Ball (at least not anytime soon).

Seriously, try writing Dragon Ball but restrain yourself to modern shonen tropes of the doubt-filled and awkward Hero, the deredere waifus, the sentimental villains, Humans Are the Real Monsters, etc. It'd feel stilted at best.

You mean like that Rocketman quote? LOL.

[ABED]

It was a rushed ending because of Togashi's health. The anime did what it could, but to me it was always clear that something was off with the final arc. Not necessarily with how the plot itself unfolded, but the pacing. The episode count should have probably been at least double what it was, allowing the story and characters to expand and be fully realized.

I was always fine with that episode count. It might have been able to sustain a few more but not double. The final tournament felt quick but most of that is due to the comparison to the Dark Tournament's length.