Dragonball and Z discussion
 

Since just about everyone here has watched DBZ and Dragonball, what do you think of it?

Is it the classic shonen anime of all time? Every action manga/anime that came after it was directly influenced by it in some way. Goku is also one of the most iconic anime characters of all time.

Discuss.

Still waiting for the Kai season 5 dub.

Naruto did it better.

DBZ may have revolutionised Shounen Action Manga storytelling but Naruto perfected it. And One Piece is in a whole different league than both of them!

For Naruto are you strictly talking about the manga? Because the anime has even more horrible fillers than DBZ. :lol:

Its rather telling that DBZ was only 291 episodes....combine it with Dragonball and its only a little under 500....Naruto has what like 700+ episodes?

Uh no, Naruto is looking to be finished AT MOST by 420 which puts the entire series at barely 600 episodes.

There are specific Naruto fillers that completely own anything from DBZ but yes, in general, DBZ fillers are slightly less atrocious.

It's funny how you don't mention GT...

GT isn't canon anymore so it no longer matters. The 2013 DBZ movie retconned it, and they're making a sequel next year.

love this franchise, everything about it rocks. I'm just hoping that once they're done releasing DBZ on Blu-Ray that they'll go back and give Dragonball a proper release on BR as well

DragonBall >>>> DBZ btw!

I like DBZ because of how mindlessly fun it is. I don't care if its baby's first anime, I'll always love it.


Dragon Ball is pretty cool too.

I thought it was boring when I was a kid.

I think a lot of it comes down to nostalgia at this point, but there's nothing wrong with that.

I found Dragonball way more enjoyable. More focus on crtain characters, Krillin, Tien, Yamcha and Roshi all have their badass moments as well. IMO Z shoulda ended after Gohan blasted Cell into Oblivian.
To me though, the English dub with the different music made DBZ better than the original music, but that just might be nostalgia talking.

Who said Naruto was better than Dragon Ball / Z? Have you watched or read the series lately? :lol:

That's your taste though and that's cool.


For the series, I don't even remember when I'd fallen in love with the series. I'm a dub watcher, in my opinion I prefer the dub to Japan's version. For one thing, Goku's Jappanese VA bugs the crap out of me, it's hard to watch listening to his voice, it really distracts me :lol:

For once I feel like that's one of the things the dub did right, his VA fits in my opinion again. I watched the original Funimation version too, before all these remakes and Kai. I also remember watching it on it's first run on Toonami, man was I excited watching the Cell games for the first time, my favorite saga.

Gohan and Piccolo being my favorites followed by Goku had he not turned into an awful father by the end of the series :lol:

Re watching the series from Dragon Ball series, I at that time only knew about Z and watched Dragon Ball later found myself loving the Piccolo Jr saga the best.

Filler was odd at times, who thought it was a good idea to have Vegeta wear a pink shirt? :lol:

Music back in the original always my favorite. I choose to ignore GT and any thing after that, they seem to have forgotten how to write other characters :ohwell:

^^ GT was pretty bad. Everyone but Goku was useless up until Vegeta goes ssj4. ugh

Dragonball was great cuz of all the tournament fights too, I don't think Z ever had a proper tournament going for it.

Every once in a while, I rewatch all of Z. Never really could get into DB. Though, I do have all of GT on DVD too.

Favorite character is Vegeta. Wish Toriyama liked him more though.

Favorite movie is Broly The Legendary Super Saiyan.

I loved the intro to the Ocean Dub with Rock the Dragon, though I'd rather watch the Funi dub.

Also, a lot of times, I think Goku is overrated a bit by his fans also DB/Z fans can be insane. Still love the show. Only anime I watched all the way through. Read a few chapters of the manga.

*Cracks knuckles*

Okay, I must comment on this series. lol Now, I will say this, I personally prefer Dragon Ball to both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. I've never seen the dub of GT or DB, though, so I can't comment on them or changes. I've only seen them subbed/Raw years ago. I have seen DBZ subbed and dubbed. The Buu saga I saw subbed.

Anyway, the reason I like Dragon Ball more than the other two series, is due to the fact that those seemed to deal with real martial arts. It wasn't all "power level" stuff, or "ki blast, ki blast, ki blast." I also liked Dragon Ball more because it was more comedic, was more of an adventure, and the others (Chichi, Tenshinhan, Chaotsu, Yamacha, Kuririn, Turtle Elder, Oolong, Puar, Lunch, Yajirobe, etc.) all did more for it compared to DBZ.

I liked Dragon Ball GT in the beginning, mainly because it was going back to the whole "Dragon Ball" dynamic. An adventure to search for the Dragon Balls with obstacles, but, it became too much like Dragon Ball Z later on (come on, was SSJ4 Goku really necessary?), which turned me off from the series a lot. It became all about "power" as opposed to "skill", imo. I will admit to liking the last half of the final episode of the entire series. It was nice; Goku and Vegeta's descendants going against each other at a Martial Arts tournament while Videl (I think), Bulma, and Chichi were watching, while a "dead Goku" is watching as well. It was nice because it flashed back to how Goku's adventure first began all the way up to DBGT, while playing the full version of Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku. It made me incredibly nostalgic, and also made me want to watch Dragon Ball all over again, but never mind all that. lol

As for Dragon Ball Z, it had way too much filler, and the story took away from Gohan's character. These were the biggest flaws of this series, imo (aside from the fact that it wasn't like DB where it was "skill", not power that mattered, and the fact that the Z-fighters didn't get much screen time, imo). Goku was killed out for a reason, folks. The story for DBZ was supposed to have been Gohan's story, just like DB was Goku's, but, fans really liked Goku, hence his being brought back constantly to save the day. The only saga, imo, that was handled right was the Saiya-jin Saga.

Oh, and as for the filler...some eps I didn't mind (like when Piccolo and Goku were learning to drive lol). I prefer "original filler" as opposed to extending a canon arc. Freiza arc killed me with that. "There's only five more minutes until the Planet Namek explodes...will Goku survive? Tune in next time to Dragon Ball Z!" Twenty eps later.... "Goku is still on Namek, four minutes remaining..." You know where I'm going. lol I know why the filler was there, though. The manga and anime releases were too close, but I prefer original filler to extending a canon arc (like the Namek blowing up stuff).

Oh, fav characters...

Chichi
Lunch
Gohan
Mirai no Trunks
Android 18
Pan
Videl
Vegeta

Oh, one other thing I disliked about DBGT...lack of focus on Goten. I can understand his being "girl crazy", given his age at the time of DBGT, but he and Trunks are like the best of friends! I hated the fact that they were split up for the journey for the Dragon Balls.

Anywho, in conclusion...Dragon Ball is, and will always be, my favorite series. DBZ and DBGT, imo, can't truly compare.

As much as I enjoyed DBS it frustrated the crap out of me when they would spend two episodes with Goku yelling and powering up or making a spirit bomb...... ugh.... :ohwell:

Naruto isn't as bad, the problem with Naruto is the damn flash backs...... and dialogue at times... just too much of both.

I think I read somewhere that those extended power up scenes and the 5 minute Namek deal happened becasue the show was running the same time as the manga, so the show runners had to wait for the next chapter to see what would happen. Don't know how true that is at the moment though.

One of my pet peeves is when people insist on referring to characters and things in the show by their Japanese name, like Kuririn or Saiya-jin. :dead: If you're typing in English, why not use the English names? Another pet peeve, for anime in general, is when people say dubbed anime is never good.

:tthumbsu::tthumbsu::tthumbsu::tthumbsu:

Darn me for having more exposure to the Japanese version than the English. :p

To be honest, though, I didn't even realize I'd used the Japanese names. It's so second-nature for me since I have more exposure to the Japanese as opposed to the English. In other words, I've seen more Japanese than English. I've never even seen all of Z in English. Dragon Ball and GT I've also never seen in English.

That aside, Japanese names don't bother, although in the case of Dragon Ball, it's obvious who the characters are, especially Kuririn. It's just the katakanized/romanized transliteration of Krillin. In other words, the name is the same for both versions.

I really like the story of DBZ. Its basically the best "superhero" show to come out of Japan.

Other than the filler in some of the fights, the show always made it exciting to see who Goku and friends would fight next. Most of the main cast was also likeable.

I also love the sense of dread in the series. The heroes are always one step behind the villains in every saga, so to see them improve and find some way to beat the villains is always fun

Fun fact: I have never watched Dragonball or Dragonball Z. It was never aired in Ireland. I did see the live-action movie a few years ago and thought it was awful.

My friends and I went out to see that movie, but we already had below 0 expectation so we weren't disappointed with it. :lol:

Watch a few episodes of DB or DBZ on Youtube.

I do really appreciate DB's fun attitude and focus on real martial arts, and wished Z had kept that. But I will say that the power level introduction was supposed to be a parody of itself. Nobody was supposed to take it seriously because you can't measure power like that, as Goku & friends noted.

Nobody seemed to get that memo, which makes it hilarious. Power level arguements are the funniest ****.

Oh man, same. I felt like turning Goku into a kid was a lazy way to do it, but aside from that, I was completely down for GT's premise... until we learned that they completely forgot how to write other characters.

AND IT'S SO UPSETTING, because early GT combined what I liked the most of DB [the adventure and the cute fun] with what I liked the most of Z [planetary travel]. And they ****ed it all up.

But anyway, I prefer Z to DB honestly, but I can't entirely explain why. I guess it's because Z inverts DB's feel and comedic scale? DB is mostly funny with fights, and Z is mostly fights with some funny. Z wasn't known for comedic moments, but when it's funny, it's funny. I might also like Z more just because I enjoyed its villains a lot more.

I'm also a fan of the earlier Z sagas that played with planetary travel and aliens and the like -- I absolutely LOVE their time on Namek, and the Bardock special is my favourite of all things DB. The Saiyan race interests me so much and I just wish there was more to them that made them very distinct from humans instead of just being... ripped humans that have a few quirks. Oh well I still love them.

I also wish we could have had more info on Freeza's race... good god there was some cool potential in there. They were all so awesome. Freeza for best villain, don't even care.

[My favourite characters: Vegeta, Freeza, Piccolo, Bulma, 18, 16, Mr Satan, Bardock]
http://38.media.tumblr.com/1e0e9b97f...frzeo1_250.gif

I watch it for Vegeta. I'm one of those people - I don't even care. I will sit through ten crappy episodes for just two minutes of Vegeta action. I think he's brilliant.

I use the Japanese spelling of names generally, because with a lot of anime, I've either read the manga first or watched the Japanese version first. Like ssjup, it's second nature to me - that's how I learnt their name initially so that's how I spell it. *shrugs* I don't really see that it matters; you can still tell which character is being referenced.

But I agree, dub purists can be painful.

Everyone thought the live-action was awful. The very fact that you've mentioned it has caused a gateway to hell to open up somewhere, and our earthly flesh is now in peril. I hope you're happy, young man. :lol:

The Dragonball Z dub was tremendously popular and spearheaded Toonami and the initial anime wave with Pokemon and Sailor Moon.

Given that happened more than 15 years ago, its no surprise that so many adults have nostalgia for the DBZ dub as they were all kids when it was originally airing.

Personally I really like the english voice actors for the DBZ cast, its only the scripting errors or dialogue changes that FUNi shouldn't have done.

Yeah, for several, several years I was one of those people too. If Vegeta didn't appear during something, I didn't give a **** about it. Over time it slowly became "if Vegeta or Piccolo didn't appear", then "if Vegeta/Piccolo/Freeza didn't appear" and so on.

But Vegeta will always be the best.

So people only watch for one particular character? Am I the only person who watches shows for the majority of the main cast?

Watching for only one or two characters makes zero sense, especially since there's whole episodes and tons of scenes certain characters are not even in.

I think I'm going to do what CyberCubed did with Avatar and watch this series for the first time and then be completely out of touch and insane with my critique! Watch for it!

Stop saying "Am I the only person" every second sentence. You're not better than other people just because they do things you don't; we all put our pants on one leg at a time, like every other person out there.

Seriously, who gives a crap if someone else watches a show for one character? It's not hurting you. You don't like it when others take shots at you for how you spend your time.

Why don't you stop hiding behind your Comic Book Guy persona and show the real you sometime - I'd wager there's a likeable person back there if you dropped the mask.

Really got into TFS DB Abridged. Since I've seen a good deal of the episodes (and lots of filler episodes), the abridged versions are pretty funny IMO.

Gonna have to go with the Cell Saga episodes as my fave. It was also fun watch Son Gohan take Cell down a few pegs in the later episodes of The Cell Games.

My worst experience with Dragon Ball Z is when Cartoon Network kept replaying the whole Namik series from the beginning because they didn't have the whole series, at that time. So, one day, they'd have a new episode, then, the next day, they start from the beginning.

I remember that as well..which is why I was beyond excited when the Trunks Saga was finally shown. Because we finally got to leave Planet Namek BEHIND.

Yeah, those were some dark times, and I definitely think it contributed to Trunks' popularity as well.

Anybody check out team four star's DBZ Abridged series? It's fun stuff.

Oh yes I have. Even got to meet them in person when they came to my city's last anime con.
They were a trip.

This made me lol :lol: