Dragon Ball introduced by far some of the greatest fictional concepts of all time, it did them justice better than most works and it spashed them PERFECTLY with japanese historical culture and storytelling. To this day no other manga and ever came close to DB's nutsack let alone anything above its waist. Its futurism is imaginative and does not take away from elements of the present, spy insects that were actually designed in the last 5 years or so, genetic tinkering to create a perfect creature, spaceships falling like meteors shaped like stone orbs that carry demigodly space warriors that destroy planets. Demons, freaks that mutate, humanoid bugs that suck people's insides while they're still alive. And all of this in a format that has constant testosterone pumping action, unlike modern shonen that's filled with annoying babble and gay shit powers that do not feel real.
The focus in DB is on the characters mainly and how to write them believably while still retaining your planned story. Most modern shonen changes controversial characters to be more complacent. Most of them don't even dare to introduce any controversy or god forbid kill their good guy faggot cast characters in a grusome manner like db does, the focus on moralfaggotry is always there. Whereas in db most of the cast by the end of it consists of former criminals, murderers, assholes, genociders and so on. And more importantly the characters feel like real people exactly because Toriyama takes nothing away from raw and simple human temperaments and never tries to tame his characters. DB went in places and directions that its numerous successors still do not have the balls or life experience to follow. One example being, Goku is a father. Try to stew that in your head that after all the copycats who came after, very few of them followed their protagonist after they had children, and if they did, they were no longer the protagonist and instead became glorified figureheads for the newer characters.
Dragon Ball has great character writing, and the reason most Zig Forumsutists fail to recognize this is they've never spent even an hour trying to read the manga. Characters are written like real, tangible persons; most villains are actual psychopaths, most characters are morally ambivalent and they are driven by actual personality and emotions.
Don't forget the paneling work and Chinese cultural references (Son Wukong=Goku)
Carter Wilson
ssj3 first transformation is ione of the greatest scenes in anime history
Juan Hughes
Dragon Ball's power continuity is what makes it such a beast of a series that every other Shonen COPIES from.
Daniel Flores
I kneel.
Camden Thomas
Bro, I'm ngl to you, I completely agree and this is completely true, but the people who don't see it simply don't have enough patience to truly enjoy and appreciate the show and they will either gain that patience through years of watching anime or they will never enjoy dragon ball. I used to post these threads bro, u just always end up with some guy going GO NAGAIS BETTER THAN TORIYAMA or DRAGON BALL WAS SIMPLISTIC blah blah blah. I don't know where Toriyama got it, but i watch stuff from the 70's and like, he got it from everything, Toriyama was honestly an artistic genius. Honestly though nobody ever talks about how Dragon Ball GT is low key the best part of the series. People are like "it's poorly applied" "it's not nuanced" but like none of dragon ball is nuanced, I like how it's sort of the ultimate culmination for all 90's dragon ball, including space exploration which literally like no anime has ever ever done well. The planet to planet thing like cowboy bebop or astra lost in space is such a basic yet interesting concept, and I'd argue GT does it nearly as well as cowboy bebop. God I love GT, the robot planet, the giant stuff planet, the dystopian planet, the indigenous culture planet, the baby arc, hell opening up, frieza and cell, super 17, the shenron battles, omega shenron, and the fucking end where he doesn't even become an adult again and just trains in space forever until his whole family is dead and becomes immortal? such a classic goku move fuck
Brandon Price
Oh forgot to add, the MC is total shit though. Now the review is complete.
Eli Anderson
When did "spam pasta about overanalyzing battle shounen" become a common thing on Zig Forums? This is getting ridiculous, you guys.
Nolan Peterson
the more I think about it, the more positive aspects of dragon ball stick out to me. Sure, the character design and backgrounds are amazing in the manga and even better in the anime, sure the action is extremely well choreographed in both, it's cute, funny, exciting, philosophical, pure adventure, it manages to be captivating throughout an entire 26 episode fight while shows like naruto can't even manage 1-2 episode fights without getting extremely gay and boring, but more than that, it's also honestly got really great character development despite it's seemingly simplistic story. Trunks' multiple timelines show some really interesting and multiple levels of his character development and I feel like it's always very real feeling for the son of vegeta, not to mention he's always a very clever character. If u haven't seen history of trunks you should definitely watch it, grittiest part of the whole series, really made me appreciate future trunks as a character And gohan as well has to struggle between making his parents happy when they both want different things, living his own life and being independent, literally saving the world AND becoming a scholar at like 8 years old, getting sent to the hospital and brutally wounded several times. And even though his childhood was extremely difficult and traumatic, it was a good childhood and he grew up to marry videl and become an extremely smart and powerful individual, I think there's something everyone can relate to in Gohan, people shit on him for being a nerd, but I really feel that he had some of the best character development of any character in any anime, it wasn't some big twist, it was just a kid growing up with two awesome parents...
>hating goku how insecure and pretentious do you have to be to hate Goku, bro, what's to hate? Who do you think is a good MC?
Jonathan James
Goku would be better if he was less tame and not voiced by a woman. He was badass during the Frieza saga and then his intellect went downhill rapidly after he caught the corona. From then on he felt like a full blown tard.
ehh, I can see what you mean but I don't think he was all that dumb at any point in DBZ, I feel like a lot of his decisions like staying dead, making gohan fight cell, making gotenks fight buu, not coming back until he had to, were more out of selfishness/desperation/wanting to see his sons become as powerful as him, sure he doesn't do anything "smart" but like goku was never smart, that's the whole point, you don't need to read or write or be clever to be a good person, Goku's a simple man who enjoys the simple things like punching robot mutants. I feel like the middle of DBZ is more about gohan than goku anyway, and gohan is an extremely nuanced character imo
Cameron Wright
u should check out DB original and DBZ unabridged bro! It's a really great show!
Logan Morgan
>DBZ is more about gohan than goku anyway, Not really.
Aiden Reyes
just the middle part i said, like garlic jr filler, most of the cell arc and the movies during the cell arc, and the beginning of the buu arc. Gohan is basically the only person other than goku to beat big bosses the whole series if u think about it also
Tyler Garcia
Ok fine, Goku's a great mc. There, happy? But Gohan's still just a boring kid.
Liam Gomez
It's still pretty damn bad.
Carson Bailey
weren't you a boring kid once though? Gohan's not like some naruto type im gonna be hokage retard, he's literally just a normal kid, who happens to have the most powerful man in the world as his father. DBZ focuses a lot on his internal struggle as a child and I feel like people overlook that, also the 7 years that goku left clearly changed him drastically if you really think about it. He was depressed when goku died, but he's completely moved on with his life by the time he's in highschool. I feel like gohan's relationship with his father is very complex and people discredit it as "goku was a shit father" but Goku really did have good intentions and Gohan saw that, but Gohan also didn't exactly trust his father as a responsible adult. I feel like gohan is a normie, maybe the biggest normie ever, but his development from Goku's son into an actual normal functioning member of society, and a scholar at that, is some really interesting and well done character development. FUCK DBS gohan tho ugh
>weren't you a boring kid once though? No. I was always based since birth.
Sebastian Perry
yeah honestly I was pretty rambunctious idk why i said that... He's not naruto is my main point
Kevin Thomas
That's a problem though. Gohan's head should be fucked beyond belief. He should have been like naruto, acting out because his life was constantly fucked up through circumstances beyond his control. >Kidnapped as a kid by apparent uncle >Saw his teacher piccolo and his dads friends all die in front of him on earth >Sees more people die on Namek >All before he was a teen >Lives life not knowing fathers whereabouts >When his father comes home, immediately forced to train >Forced to fight an enemy he doesn't want to and sees 16 die for him >Has to watch his father die again >Lives without his father again
Gohan is way to calm and beta for the amount of shit he went through.
Grayson Martin
I feel like in the seven year period goku was gone he did a lot of thinking. It might just be filler but when goku was still in space after frieza but before trunks and the androids, there were several episodes detailing gohan's internal monologue, missing goku, his fears, hopes, dreams. I feel like Gohan is just kind of a psychopath by high school, I mean think about it, he can hardly even control how much more powerful than everyone else he is, he has just accepted violence and death as facts of life, he's accepted his father dying because he knows Goku was always noble, he remembers what android 16 said about violence being necessary to protect the worlds beauty sometimes... Notice HOW manic he is in the gohan in highschool arc, he really goes out of his way just to fight crime for fun. I feel like gohan is a very subtle and nuanced character that has been through so much he's basically just super b a s e d and well rounded, think about it he was already traumatized by like, the beginning of DBZ, he had basically overcome his insecurity before the end of the cell saga, remember the story about how he punched the tree as a baby?
I would say they were both individually super influential in their respective mediums, personally i do prefer the anime though simply because fights are more exciting animated and I feel like they did the backgrounds, coloration, and soundtrack and shit really well, so it really stands up to and even improves upon the manga. Also personally I like the filler
Hudson Moore
That's all well and fine for an adult, but Gohan wasn't an adult.
