There's a very good reason for that: Japanese Manga has always (for the most part) been much more creator-oriented rather than company oriented relative to the U.S./West. Western comics tend to be noted by what company produces them (Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc), whereas Japanese comics tend to be noted by who the author was (which is kind of ironic considering how individualistic American culture in particular is, and how much more collectivist Japanese culture has - at least historically - been).AliTheZombie13 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:25 pmHonestly, I have NEVER seen a single person complain about Spiderman canon, or argue "this isn't written by Stan Lee" when it comes to criticizing Sam Raimi's films, or anything of the sort. Heck, I doubt there's a single person alive who sincerely thinks Disney adaptations are worse than the books they're based on, and Disney is very liberal when it comes to adapting them. It's only Anime fans who ever do this when it comes to adaptations of the source material.
Spider-Man's comics have been written by a never-ending multitude of different writers rotating in and out constantly over the years because his comic is running in constant perpetuity and is generally branded in the public consciousness as a Marvel comic rather than a Stan Lee comic.
Whereas with Japanese manga, we don't typically think of them as a "Shonen Jump" manga or a "Young Jump" manga or a "Big Comic Spirits" manga, etc. Japanese manga - with some notable exceptions of course - tend to be written and drawn by the same author (or author/artist team in some cases) throughout their entire run and are synonymous with the creator rather than the company/publication. There's also usually a set beginning, middle, and end point to most manga. Again with some notable exceptions, most Manga don't run forever in constant perpetuity like most American superhero comics do.
Spider-Man's comic likely will never stop being published and pumping out new content until the Earth stops spinning, whereas in Manga, once the author is done then the comic is done and that's it. Time to move on. Again, with some rare notable exceptions.
Its just the inherently different nature of how Japanese comic publishing is versus Western comic publishing.
Honestly, I personally tend to much prefer how it is on the Japanese end of things, as I think the actual creators matter a helluva lot more than the wider "company brand" or whatnot. Plus I don't usually see the value in letting things run and drag on forever in perpetuity: let things have a real conclusion and then move on to something else entirely. But that doesn't mean that I don't still also love my share of Western/U.S. comics, and even Marvel/DC superhero titles specifically (die hard X-Men fanatic for life over here).
With American Dragon Ball fandom (and I'm speaking much more in general here overall, not necessarily just to AliThe Zombie's post in particular) there has always been a constant tendency to overly project our own sensibilities onto the series and view it through the same prism as U.S. superhero comics or wrestling or what have you, rather than as a Japanese manga in all that that entails on its end of the globe.
There has always been a driving need in U.S. DB fandom to see Goku as Superman and his friends as the JLA/Avengers, and I suppose that may well perhaps also be in some part where some of the desire to see the series continue forever in constant serialized perpetuity also might come from to one extent or another. There's long been this contingent of people who REALLY seem to want Dragon Ball - and also just wider Shonen stuff (Shonen Jump in particular) on some level or other - to be Manga Marvel or DC Comics... when that's never really ever been how its ever worked in Japan or in most manga (including Dragon Ball).
Japan obviously has plenty of its share of native superhero franchises (Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Super Sentai, etc), but for the most part the superhero genre - and with it, its manner of constant serialization under a host of different rotating creators - simply does not dominate the Japanese manga industry in the way that it always has the U.S./Western comics market. Japanese manga has traditionally not only been more creator-driven, but also far more genre-diverse and not so reliant upon superheroes and superhero shared universes. Again though, there's of course always exceptions and outliers to this, but they're just that: exceptions and outliers.
For all these reasons - and a host more I probably am not covering here - you simply can't make a reasonable comparison between stuff like Marvel and Spider-Man or the Avengers and Japanese Manga. Its not just apples and oranges, its like... ice cream and salad. Other than being a kind of food (or in this case, pages filled with sequential paneled art that tells a story), there's typically little else in the way to really correlate the two.
