Your opinion on how Toei worked on Dragon Ball Anime

[90sDBZ]

While it isn't perfect the DB/Z anime is very well done overall.

The filler does hurt it at times, but on the other hand some filler genuinely helps flesh out the story and characters.

I recently tried getting back into the One Piece anime after enjoying the live action series, but quickly gave up when I remembered how slow that anime moves. Seriously some of the filler in One Piece makes Fake Namek feel like a breeze in comparison.

There are some jarring moments in Z, like Vegeta acting like a jerk in the post Namek filler, beating up Gohan and flying off before the next episode acts like it never happened. And Goku's escape from Namek being made to look physically impossible before being retconned. And characters occasionally appearing in the wrong costume in the background along with inconsistent animation.

But these are nitpicks and aren't a deal breaker for me.

GT is mostly fine to me. It's short enough that I can fly through it and have a fun time. It did have a rough start, but gets much better with the Baby saga. And SS4 is an awesome design. And the Shadow Dragon saga is underrated.

Super is the one series that feels like a major chore to rewatch. Like the OP said it focuses too much on comedy at the expense of the characters. The constant jokes about food and everyone being scared of Beerus get old fast for me. It gets better later on, but those first few arcs are rough. I enjoyed both BoG and RF as movies, but the arcs are painfully slow to get through. The Universe 6 arc is just okay, and isn't really enough to make up for the retellings. The Black arc is when Super starts to redeem itself a bit.

[ABED]

I don't judge things anymore on how quickly it moves the plot, just how much I'm enjoying it. I don't mind filler for being filler. It's TV, so it's going to stretch things out. That said, there's a lot of bad filler in DB like fake Namek and endless cutaways to Bulma and Chichi. However, I don't mind fight filler or stuff like the mirror ship. Heck, I even enjoy half the Garlic Jr. arc.

Overall, I enjoy Toei's work on DB.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

And the Shadow Dragon saga is underrated.

In my experience the Evil Dragons arc is rather well liked, even when GT was the most hated Dragon Ball series most fans I know enjoyed the show once that arc rolled around. I enjoy it, although there's definitely room for improvement. GT's fights leave something to be desired compared to the fights in original Dragon Ball and Z to a lesser extent, and they don't improve in the Evil Dragons arc. It would have been nice to see other characters besides Goku and Pan involved with the first 6 Dragons. The ending is where the Evil Dragons arc really shines as we got another Spirit Bomb although it was short and sweet so not a retread of the climax of the Boo arc, and the final episode was a wonderful sendoff for Goku.

I agree with all your points about the other series, Super is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, although I'll likely only rewatch the big fights and sluce-of-life episodes randomly in future rather than rewatching it all from start to finish.

Sadly I've only watched the episodes of One Piece I've seen once, but I own the first 3 Manga UK Collections so when I have time I'll try going through the series again to compare it with Dragon Ball. The Netflix series was a pleasant surprise though, much better than I expected.

For better or for worse TOEI gave us the original three anime series with all the iconic SFX, voices of Nozawa, Kikuchi and Tokunaga scores, so it wouldn't feel right for any other studio to produce a Dragon Ball anime. They will forever be associated with bringing Toriyama's manga to life, because no one else can ever do it for the first time and have that lightning in a bottle moment.

[GhostEmperorX]

For better or for worse TOEI gave us the original three anime series with all the iconic SFX, voices of Nozawa, Kikuchi and Tokunaga scores, so it wouldn't feel right for any other studio to produce a Dragon Ball anime. They will forever be associated with bringing Toriyama's manga to life, because no one else can ever do it for the first time and have that lightning in a bottle moment.

And like a lot of their other legendary IP's, they were pretty much content to just throw it in the bin after they were done with it, as though it was expendable. I wonder what it takes to even contemplate doing that kind of thing to their own work that they poured a lot of time and effort into.

I don't judge things anymore on how quickly it moves the plot, just how much I'm enjoying it.

Ditto, it's a very different kind of discussion in the first place, and I think that distinction needs to be made as often as possible.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

And like a lot of their other legendary IP's, they were pretty much content to just throw it in the bin after they were done with it, as though it was expendable.

As far as I'm aware shows like Dragon Ball, which target kids were not considered worth preserving at the time. In the late 80s and early 90s Dragon Ball was not yet a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, I could imagine TOEI expected it to last well into the 90s and maybe into the 2000s in territories it hadn't been released in, but would be forgotten and never given a second thought by the generations of fans across the world who grew up with it. Hell the series didn't even have an official home video release in Japan until 2003 with the Dragon Boxes. The movies received laserdiscs, but that was probably because they were more of an event and a novelty. The series, in the eyes of the powers that be was ultimately only ever intended to be a product to sell the manga and merchandise, a fad and nothing more for companies like TOEI that no doubt had concerns about storage in the analogue era. It's not like today where everything can be stored on hard drives and digital betas.

Of course we all know Dragon Ball became something truly special, and meant more to millions of fans around the world than TOEI could have ever anticipated. Its a shame no one at the company had the foresight to know that nearly 40 years on we would still be getting so much enjoyment out of this weird and wonderful series. I for one couldn't be happier to have grown up during its golden era in the west and experienced all those iconic moments with so many other fans around my age.

[GhostEmperorX]

As far as I'm aware shows like Dragon Ball, which target kids were not considered worth preserving at the time. In the late 80s and early 90s Dragon Ball was not yet a worldwide pop culture phenomenon...

Meanwhile, what I've seen across the wider anime landscape tells a massively different story, as even properties of the same era (not by Toei) that were nowhere near DB's massive status either at home or abroad got far superior treatment in that regard, even before the era of Blu-Ray masters. And that includes toy commercial series of like 52 episodes tops.
And this is to the extent that it's not even funny anymore.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Considering the circunstances in which it was made, Toei did a competent/quite good job with the pre-Z content, the Z stuff was more of a mix bag by comparison, a weird mixture of both adding and not adding enough original material to make a well paced story.

[ABED]

Considering the circunstances in which it was made, Toei did a competent/quite good job with the pre-Z content, the Z stuff was more of a mix bag by comparison, a weird mixture of both adding and not adding enough original material to make a well paced story.

Where do you think they didn't add enough?

[GokuHater]

For me TOEI has done enough good for the DB universe that it's bads can be forgiven. On the other hand when Toei is bad, it's REALLY bad.

For the original DB I find TOEI interpretation to be extremely valuable. Adding stuff - frequently about the characters, creating atmosphere, showing additional adventures - that's very Dragon Ball. DB anime makes the adventure into a real... well... show and I am for it. It's an excellent journey,very well paced, funny, action heavy and exciting. While there are occasional hiccups with filler (like General Red stuff) most of the filler is well done, thought out and can enhance the saga (such as in Piccolo Daimao arc).

DBZ is more of a mixed bag for me. Saiyan saga is a very okay watch. Sometimes it does show beginnings of dragging but it's kept at a reasonable pace and the filler is also what I like (especially Gohan's training adventure).
In Frieza saga the filler starts getting atrocious. We all know why is that but it doesn't change the fact the pacing suffers greatly. There are some stuff I like - Gohan fighting Frieza, Vegeta beating Gohan up, greater ending - but so many parts are just mind numbing and mind melting.
But the very worst kind of filler isn't any kind of new scenes (like Bulma and Ginyu) or a filler arc (like Gr jr.).
Worst kind of filler lies with the scenes themselves. Reused animation, slowdowns, stretching one move to a minute long, talking about (or even showing) what just happened 2 minutes ago.
That's something every fan forgets due to nostalgia but it's unbereable to watch.
Try to watch original uncut DBZ around that time right now, you'll be in for a shock

Now hate or love GR Jr. Arc but thanks to it, TOEI were able to ease up on all the filler and general pacing.
And it shows. Filler instantly gets better.
On the other hand around Cell Games various animation studios dropped the ball big time with animation paring the worst of DBS.

Overall I DO enjoy Toei take on DBZ though there are parts, I could not watch today

GT is again, a mixed bag. While the story is off course subjective, I think the animation is the best old DB has to offer bar the movies. The color pallete and look of characters is ągain, subjective, animation is at a high level.
Also the original music gets the job done.

In Super unfortunately everything goes downhill. The beginning of the anime is almost uncomfortably bad for 2015 standards. Slow pacing, characters which will only work for DB fans, retelling of movies and the animation flop. Many people hate Super a bit too much but one cannot argue these early days made a very negative effect.

I personally think DBS animation only starts looking tolerable near Tournament of Power and before it still has a very plastic, unrealistic look. Characters have no lighting, fight choreography is nothing to talk about. The only good thing is fights do not drag for eternity like in classic Z.
While animation gets REALLY good in ToP, the filler (if you could even call it that but is is kind of a filler) drags it so much, I had to start the entire thing 4 times just to pass through Ribrainne and the bugs names I forgot about.
Ultra Instinct is one of the best transformations in the entire series but all the others are very meh.

But the most atrocious sin i stupid super Goku, who drives me out of the story every time. While in all Super Goku is kind of an idiot, the manga at least balances it out a little and shows the glimpses of our old, loved veteran, anime makes his stupidity times ten and more.

[BootyCheeksJohnson]

I don't think that there's enough anime-original content in Dragon Ball (1986) or Dragon Ball Z to properly allow for the episodes that do adapt comic storylines to really flow well. We see this issue later in Dragon Ball Super, where instead of doing episodes with plots based on original ideas, they try to unnaturally stretch out the length of arcs based on Toriyama ideas.

Furthermore, because of the poor planning of the production, each episode suffered from a low number of well-animated series, and then animators would often be scrambling to solo half of every third or so episode, like Uchiyama Masayuki and Obara Tai'ichirou. This is to say nothing of uncredited key animators and uncredted chief animation supervisors being necessary. Albeit, this is a industry-wide issue, but it's still nevertheless a problem that affected how Toei Animation created their Dragon Ball animated projects.

Oh, and they made the one canonically and openly gay character a child predator. Eww.

I remember in EOZ a guy hitting on Trunks, although Trunks was uncountable with someone having a crush on him.

He looks just like Mr. Slave from South Park. I can't unsee it.

[Jord]

I don't think that there's enough anime-original content in Dragon Ball (1986) or Dragon Ball Z to properly allow for the episodes that do adapt comic storylines to really flow well. We see this issue later in Dragon Ball Super, where instead of doing episodes with plots based on original ideas, they try to unnaturally stretch out the length of arcs based on Toriyama ideas.

Furthermore, because of the poor planning of the production, each episode suffered from a low number of well-animated series, and then animators would often be scrambling to solo half of every third or so episode, like Uchiyama Masayuki and Obara Tai'ichirou. This is to say nothing of uncredited key animators and uncredted chief animation supervisors being necessary. Albeit, this is a industry-wide issue, but it's still nevertheless a problem that affected how Toei Animation created their Dragon Ball animated projects.

Oh, and they made the one canonically and openly gay character a child predator. Eww.

I remember in EOZ a guy hitting on Trunks, although Trunks was uncountable with someone having a crush on him.

He looks just like Mr. Slave from South Park. I can't unsee it.

Well, Mr. Otokosuki came first. Plus, he also appeared in GT, dressed in a suit, when he worked at Capsule Corp.

(Come to think of it, that last tournament in Z had all kinds of unusual characters. Like Captain Chicken)