Underrated Aspects of Dragon Ball

[Wrigglything]

What aspects of the franchise do you think deserves more of a spotlight? It doesn't just have to be what's on the pages or screen, it can also be behind the scenes and the fan community, if you'd like to.

The slice of life aspects from Super have always gotten a good reputation, for one. Seeing the characters being themselves in an otherwise mundane setting while still being entertaining just shows how much thought these characters are put into, or at the very least forces them to be creative with it.

[Majin Man 101]

I think pretty much the entire original series is under rated. Even though Dragon Ball is an action/adventure/comedy, I think that the story is so under rated in every aspect. There is so much lore behind everything in Dragon Ball that I think it is so much deeper than people give it credit for. The Greater Dragon World overall is so interesting and the amount of lore has given fans endless theories and speculation.

[Wrigglything]

I swear, the pre Saiyan saga material should at least be summarised. At the very least, we have some Red Ribbon callbacks later down the line, not just to the Androids/Artificial Humans, but also with the Dr Slump stuff too in that one really funny Super episode (I mean, it was in the manga), and the callback to Master Roshi's training during the TOP was pretty nice too.

Another thing that slipped into my mind, although one that you said earlier, is that the world building is surprisingly rich and interesting. For a guy who is infamously known to write on the fly, he sure put in plenty of cultures and landscapes for us to explore. It was an adventure, after all.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I find it funny that the narrator started out with a story about a young boy and a girl finding wish granting artifacts and ended it with a universe destroying monster facing off against the very same boy we've been following through blasts and kicks, destroyed the corrupted dragon from those wish granting artifacts, and the boy, a cyborg and a space emperor fighting for their lives in a inter universal tournament with serious consequences.

[WKZ]

I think that powerups were done well.
People always shit on powerups because it makes action and story linear and straight forward, which is fair criticism, but I think that all powerups were done very executed. Except maybe Holy Water in Piccolo Daimao arc, and some boosts that were given in Namek could be too much. Every powerup makes sense or was foreshadowed in some way.

[Grimlock]

Coming to think a bit, maybe it's possible that Dragon Ball Heroes and Dragon Ball Xenoverse doing the alternate dimension stuff and Dragon Ball Super doing the old formulaic sagas a sign that Dragon Room/Shueisha and Toyotaro underestimate this concept (I won't include Toriyama here since I kinda doubt he's aware of what's popular these days).

One would probably think that tournaments, Moro and Granolah sagas should come from games and the series should be expanding, taking risks, changing status quo and etc. But for some reason, the reality is that it's the other way around. Maybe they don't have much faith and prefer to stay where they know it's comfortable for the general audience. Although that would raise the question: why Heroes is so popular and basically the primary source of incoming if that were the case (and Xenoverse being the best-selling game out of all 2010s Dragon Ball games).
I don't know how popular Marvel movies are in Japan, but once you realize there are these movies earning billions worldwide and you have two games dealing with a very similar idea which also have been a great source of money, common sense would say you'd have no reason not to take such concept and do something about it.

So I'd say alternate dimension is an underrated aspect of Dragon Ball. Especially when you remember this idea is by Toriyama himself, you'd expect they would capitalize the shit out of it for this very reason.

Serious/more mature themes is also underrated. It would be awesome if we could get more of Bardock and Trunks TV Specials tone.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Mayumi Tanaka's Kuririn and just about any dub that did Krillin justice. Like the Latin American dub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8a8gczXpO4

[TheQuazz]

Maybe not Underrated among the general fanbase, but definitely in terms of Kanzenshuu's userbase: The crappy OG Z dub and its unique vibes. The original Japanese version has been available to own subbed for a long time now (pity about the audio, but it's not a problem for those "in-the-know" ), it's time to let go of the hate and enjoy the Funimation "reversion" for what it is