Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

[IMJ]

This level of debate is what I sought to avoid - getting into the murky waters of how Japanese anime is handled rather than continuing to be straight-line serialized or anthology content.

From the more helpful posts, what I'm getting out of it is, as a starter, Dragon Ball began with "Dragon Ball". And then it became Dragon Ball Z.

The short of it is, you start with Dragon Ball and if you don't want to watch chibi-characters at the height of their weirdness, just go to Dragon Ball Z which is the first incarnation of the anime as we tend to see it in pop culture today.

Best places to do this are probably Crunchyroll or Funimation unless they can be easily DL'd somewhere because the on-disc releases have been a mess to invest into.

[CyberCubed]

Starting with the original dragon ball is how the story was intended and all the important characters are introduced. Many fans incorrectly view it as a prequel since they started with dragon ball Z but that's literally the beginning of the series.

Keep it mind DragonBall is 153 eps long and Dragon Ball Z is another 291 eps, so altogether this is like 400+ something eps if you want to commit to it. And that is not counting that there are also 15+ movies, specials, and GT and Super and some of it is non-canon so it's a wild ride.

[TheCanadiandrome]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Yes yes, I know. "Sacre Bleu, nous nous rendons!" and what not, but dude, trust me, the French Blu-Rays of Dragon Ball have the best sound quality of any home release ever. And I mean in the Japanese language, not some dub but the actual original language sounds amazing on the French Blu-Rays.

Ya kind have me curious

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by TheCanadiandrome

Ya kind have me curious

Basically, what happened was that the way Toei stored audio for the show degraded over time, they basically just kept some analogue recordings synced to the master tapes of the show, instead of the tapes they recorded the voice work on. This does result in crisp sound when initially airing but isn't as good down the line. However, fans managed to record the entire series on VHS when it was originally airing, which preserves audio quality much better. Fans offered both Toei and Funimation copies of these tapes but they went unused by them, instead trying to fix the broken audio digitally. THis method does improve the quality but isn't as crisp. The French distributor of the original Dragon Ball, AB group, did however accept the tapes and used them for their Blu-Ray remasters.

Here's a video detailing it:

[Allio]

Kind of weird coming to this thread to see a question about a “watch order” but I guess for anime viewers it might seem confusing with Kai, GT and Daima

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Allio

Kind of weird coming to this thread to see a question about a “watch order” but I guess for anime viewers it might seem confusing with Kai, GT and Daima

And typical watch order answers tend to be something like:
"The proper way to watch Super is to skip episodes the first 27 episodes and watch the two movies that have the same stories instead, then you need to be careful not to watch episodes 42-46, 68-76 and 90-91, then watch the Broly movie and make sure to read the Moro/Granolah arcs before you watch Super Hero. Oh, and by all means try to find a shortened fan cut of the episodes you still have to watch."

[CyberCubed]

I can see why people would he confused how to watch if you're not familiar with Dragon Ball or trying to get into it for the first time as there's multiple series now and some non-canon series and movies.

Granted we're on a TMNT forum and people also watch star wars, star trek, and DC/Marvel so people should be used to long running franchises with multiple continuities and series so people should be used to it.

[sdp]

Does anyone here actually care for the story to continue? I mean I feel Dragon Ball reached it's storytelling possibilities when it finished. A few specials or movie from time to time can be fun for a nostalgic look at the heroes we loved but giving them new adventures is just staining the story with bloat.

A remake wouldn't work since it already follows the manga fairly well and it'd feel unecessary. I think what I'd like is a series of "what ifs". They are always my favorite aspect in the video games, the world already has tons of interesting stuff to work with, it doesn't need to introduce new power ups. What if Vegeta had arrived to earth instead of goku like that fan manga, and what if Trunks hadn't come to the past to warn about the robots, how would our Z fighters have handled the situation with Mecha Freeza and King Cold. What if Raditz,Vegeta and Nappa had recruited successfully Goku to defeat Freeza through deception instead of fighting against him. So many dream matches could be had at different stages of the DBZ lore that never happened because of another big baddie appearing, but we'd still ike to see those what if events. Maybe it's just me. At least the video games like to have fun with these scenarios.

[CyberCubed]

I would have said otherwise but the floodgates have been opened already. I think it'll end again when Toriyama says so, Goku's VA dies, or they feel they exhausted the "new" era again.

At the very least Super ended in March 2018 which is nearly 6 years ago now. Imagine if Super was still going these 5 years, it'd have more episodes than DBZ by now. At least they took a break besides the 2 new movies since it ended.

[IMJ]

So I finally got around to watching something "Dragonball" and I have to say that as luck would have it the thing I watched I feel is probably the thing that you guys should have recommended all along.....

By some weird twist of fate, I sat through, beginning to end, "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods". Now I know, I know some of you argumentative savants want to immediately pull the "how do you know if you haven't seen more than thaaatttt?"

And the reason I know is because the movie checked all the boxes simply through some dialog cues here or there that bring you up to speed enough to draw you in.

-Goku and Vegeta are basically Superman and Zod. Due to anime tropes, there was probably an entire movie or season of them fighting only to reveal that Vegeta is misunderstood and is a good guy.
-Goku is the good guy who wins a lot.
-The universe consists of aliens and alien worlds with a variety of creatures rather than just humanity and whatever species Goku and Vegeta are the last of (can't remember what they were called)
-The show's vibe is a lot more slapstick and upbeat than I would have guessed. Honestly I thought that it had the same vibe as "Fist of the North Star" but it's actually incredibly light-hearted instead.
-Just from that one movie I can tell the show follows all of the standard "Japanimation" tropes. If I had to guess, at one point Picollo was a "bad guy" later to be revealed as having "motivation" instead of "evil" and he goes on to be one of Goku's buddies. All very "Power Rangers". All very "anime".
-The Egyptian Cat-God guy (can't remember his name) clearly becomes a future ally in some other movie or show, and this movie laid the groundwork for the iterations that were coming after it (increasing power-ups, next level "universal" villains, etc).

And so it's all nicely dialogged-in and also very cliche in a way that you could ascertain much of the story by sitting through this movie without being indoctrinated by hours and hours of series beforehand. Combine that with even a modest understanding of "anime culture" and you've got it pinned down.

But again, I lucked out having "Battle of the Gods" as the first one I watched. I stumbled upon it on YouTube and watched it while lying in bed. Like I was 12. I didn't necessarily "choose it", but instead just saw it on YouTube and said "ah what the hell".

It was cool, I liked that it was light-hearted - the comedy kept me from feeling like I was wasting my time. I don't know that I'll ever get around to watching more Dragon Ball, but I get it now. It's fine. It's cool.

[shihe]

I've watched all shows and movies.
It's been my #1 anime for a long time (and I've watched more than I'm proud of) until it was recently dethroned by another one. But still... I'm kind excited for Daima. Although I would've preferred a the Moro arc to be made into anime WAY more.

(Only one I didn't like was Super Dragonball Heroes)

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by IMJ

So I finally got around to watching something "Dragonball" and I have to say that as luck would have it the thing I watched I feel is probably the thing that you guys should have recommended all along.....

By some weird twist of fate, I sat through, beginning to end, "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods". Now I know, I know some of you argumentative savants want to immediately pull the "how do you know if you haven't seen more than thaaatttt?"

And the reason I know is because the movie checked all the boxes simply through some dialog cues here or there that bring you up to speed enough to draw you in.

-Goku and Vegeta are basically Superman and Zod. Due to anime tropes, there was probably an entire movie or season of them fighting only to reveal that Vegeta is misunderstood and is a good guy.
-Goku is the good guy who wins a lot.
-The universe consists of aliens and alien worlds with a variety of creatures rather than just humanity and whatever species Goku and Vegeta are the last of (can't remember what they were called)
-The show's vibe is a lot more slapstick and upbeat than I would have guessed. Honestly I thought that it had the same vibe as "Fist of the North Star" but it's actually incredibly light-hearted instead.
-Just from that one movie I can tell the show follows all of the standard "Japanimation" tropes. If I had to guess, at one point Picollo was a "bad guy" later to be revealed as having "motivation" instead of "evil" and he goes on to be one of Goku's buddies. All very "Power Rangers". All very "anime".
-The Egyptian Cat-God guy (can't remember his name) clearly becomes a future ally in some other movie or show, and this movie laid the groundwork for the iterations that were coming after it (increasing power-ups, next level "universal" villains, etc).

And so it's all nicely dialogged-in and also very cliche in a way that you could ascertain much of the story by sitting through this movie without being indoctrinated by hours and hours of series beforehand. Combine that with even a modest understanding of "anime culture" and you've got it pinned down.

But again, I lucked out having "Battle of the Gods" as the first one I watched. I stumbled upon it on YouTube and watched it while lying in bed. Like I was 12. I didn't necessarily "choose it", but instead just saw it on YouTube and said "ah what the hell".

It was cool, I liked that it was light-hearted - the comedy kept me from feeling like I was wasting my time. I don't know that I'll ever get around to watching more Dragon Ball, but I get it now. It's fine. It's cool.

Yeah you guessed a lot right. Battle of God's came out in 2013 and was basically what started the revival of the series which ended back in 1996.

The original Dragon Ball anime starts off with Goku as a 12 year old and came out in 1986, with the manga in 1984. Basically started the same exact time Ninja Turtles did, so they were like sister series in the east and west.

If you ever check out the first series you'll see how all of Goku's friends and family in the Battle of God's movie were originally introduced over the years and see where they all came from and their backstories. But as said it's a time commitment, it's over 400 episodes with everything combined and then some non-canon shows and movies on top of that.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by IMJ

-Just from that one movie I can tell the show follows all of the standard "Japanimation" tropes. If I had to guess, at one point Picollo was a "bad guy" later to be revealed as having "motivation" instead of "evil" and he goes on to be one of Goku's buddies. All very "Power Rangers". All very "anime".

Piccolo is a bit complicated to explain. The simple answer is that he really is evil at the start (as in he plans to wipe out a city once per year just for fun when he takes over the world), but takes several actions that reduces his inherent evil and eventually becomes good.

As for what exactly goes on there… This is more or less it:

Spoiler:

Piccolo was once an alien child sent to earth alone because his own planet was going through a natural disaster. He wandered around earth for a while and learned evil from interacting with the natives. Eventually he came into contact with the god of planet earth and sought to become his successor once he died, but had to purge the evil from himself to do so. Thus he was split in two, one became the pure good new god of earth Kami, and the other became the demon king Piccolo.

Piccolo was eventually sort of killed by Goku but he spat out an egg containing a more powerful copy of himself who is treated as the same individual as the original (which on some level, he has to be the same one because the lifeforce of Kami and Piccolo is the same, meaning they both die if one of them die) but isn't as inherently evil, this is the version of Piccolo we see throughout most of the series. This new Piccolo learns that he still isn't powerful enough to defeat Goku so he puts his conquest on hold until he is confident enough to take him on. When Vegeta was going to show up, he decided to train Gohan (Goku's son) and bonded with him, thus learning what it means to care about someone. He eventually sacrifices himself to save Gohan but this also killed Kami (remember, they are still technically the same person) and because Kami created the Dragon Balls, this negates them.

In order to resurrect everyone, they go to Piccolo's homeworld to find other Dragon Balls and when they do, they bring Piccolo and Kami back to life so Piccolo can aid in their battle against Freeza and use the earth's Dragon Balls again. On this planet, Piccolo assimilates another of his kind to become stronger and get some knowledge needed to defeat Freeza, the exact effect this has on his identity or personality seems unclear, though he seems to become more analytical after this.

When Cell shows up, Piccolo and Kami decide to rejoin to make sure they're powerful enough to defeat him. This time around, remerging has a clear effect on him. He seems to have no trace of evil left in him, he seems to recall his time as both Piccolo and Kami in equal regard, a few characters refer to him as having been both, declares that he had no name because he was once again the same individual as that alien child and only goes by Piccolo because he probably needs a name anyway. This is the version of Piccolo seen in BoG.

In order to simplify this:

• Version 1: Alien Orphan
• Version 2 and 3: God of Earth and the Demon King split in two
• Version 4: Recreated Demon King
• Version 5: Recreated Demon King with an Alien Warrior absorbed
• Version 6: Version 5 and Version 2 combined into something that thinks of himself as Version 1

[Mad Dog McMutt]

Originally Posted by IMJ

So I finally got around to watching something "Dragonball" and I have to say that as luck would have it the thing I watched I feel is probably the thing that you guys should have recommended all along.....

By some weird twist of fate, I sat through, beginning to end, "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods". Now I know, I know some of you argumentative savants want to immediately pull the "how do you know if you haven't seen more than thaaatttt?"

And the reason I know is because the movie checked all the boxes simply through some dialog cues here or there that bring you up to speed enough to draw you in.

-Goku and Vegeta are basically Superman and Zod. Due to anime tropes, there was probably an entire movie or season of them fighting only to reveal that Vegeta is misunderstood and is a good guy.
-Goku is the good guy who wins a lot.
-The universe consists of aliens and alien worlds with a variety of creatures rather than just humanity and whatever species Goku and Vegeta are the last of (can't remember what they were called)
-The show's vibe is a lot more slapstick and upbeat than I would have guessed. Honestly I thought that it had the same vibe as "Fist of the North Star" but it's actually incredibly light-hearted instead.
-Just from that one movie I can tell the show follows all of the standard "Japanimation" tropes. If I had to guess, at one point Picollo was a "bad guy" later to be revealed as having "motivation" instead of "evil" and he goes on to be one of Goku's buddies. All very "Power Rangers". All very "anime".
-The Egyptian Cat-God guy (can't remember his name) clearly becomes a future ally in some other movie or show, and this movie laid the groundwork for the iterations that were coming after it (increasing power-ups, next level "universal" villains, etc).

And so it's all nicely dialogged-in and also very cliche in a way that you could ascertain much of the story by sitting through this movie without being indoctrinated by hours and hours of series beforehand. Combine that with even a modest understanding of "anime culture" and you've got it pinned down.

But again, I lucked out having "Battle of the Gods" as the first one I watched. I stumbled upon it on YouTube and watched it while lying in bed. Like I was 12. I didn't necessarily "choose it", but instead just saw it on YouTube and said "ah what the hell".

It was cool, I liked that it was light-hearted - the comedy kept me from feeling like I was wasting my time. I don't know that I'll ever get around to watching more Dragon Ball, but I get it now. It's fine. It's cool.

In my opinion starting off watching Battle of Gods which is basically like watching Super is like first being exposed to Metallica by the St. Anger album. That's when the series got stupid as hell with an over abundance of transformations and terrible story writing. That's just my opinion.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by neatoman

All of the Piccolo stuff

Anime, man. smh
Thank you for that good character-training.

Originally Posted by Mad Dog McMutt

In my opinion starting off watching Battle of Gods which is basically like watching Super is like first being exposed to Metallica by the St. Anger album. That's when the series got stupid as hell with an over abundance of transformations and terrible story writing. That's just my opinion.

Wow! That is hysterical! Yeah - the Battle of Gods definitely struck me as over-the-top in so many ways, but I think my feeling that I "lucked out" in seeing it first was less about "quality" and more about the good "info dump" it provided in context of a now decades-old, complicated show.

But man... that Metallica analogy... oh man....

[Mad Dog McMutt]

Originally Posted by IMJ

Anime, man. smh
Thank you for that good character-training.



Wow! That is hysterical! Yeah - the Battle of Gods definitely struck me as over-the-top in so many ways, but I think my feeling that I "lucked out" in seeing it first was less about "quality" and more about the good "info dump" it provided in context of a now decades-old, complicated show.

But man... that Metallica analogy... oh man....

Glad you liked the analogy. I think if that was my first exposure to Dragonball I would be turned off by it, and this is coming from a huge Dragonball fan. If you thought it wasn't that bad then I am pretty sure you would love Dragonball and Dragonball Z where the story writing and characters are really good. None of that lame Beerus or SS God crap.

[CyberCubed]

Beerus is a great character, but the additional transformations did go out of control from there.

[Vegita-San]

SSJ god should have been the ONLY transformation. what should have happened was various levels. not new colors, or names, but levels. once you master SSJG, you become a God of destruction.

[sdp]

SSJ2 is so pointless even Toriyama forgot about it. I mean even fans debate if a certain character is in SSJ2 or SSJ1 since they're the same thing. I mean it really only existed because everyone and their mom was now a SSJ in the android saga.
SSJ3 looks cool but because of the restriction it wasn't really used so it might as well not exist. I mean when it was used correctly it was cool.
SSJ4 is somehow not awful and worked so well that even people who hate GT ask for SSJ4 to be added in games and whatnot. I think it helped.

Anything after just feels ridiculous:
SSJG: Talk about underwhelming, even in its debut it didn't feel like an epic transformation, just like another thing Goku got.
SSJGSS: So just back to SSJ but now blue hair.
Ultra whatever? Hard to get hyped about 7th or whatever transformation, there'll just be another one for next villain.

Originally Posted by neatoman

As for what exactly goes on there… This is more or less it:

Spoiler:

t
Piccolo was eventually sort of killed by Goku but he spat out an egg containing a more powerful copy of himself who is treated as the same individual as the original (which on some level, he has to be the same one because the lifeforce of Kami and Piccolo is the same, meaning they both die if one of them die) but isn't as inherently evil, this is the version of Piccolo we see throughout most of the series. This new Piccolo learns that he still isn't powerful enough to defeat Goku so he puts his conquest on hold until he is confident enough to take him on. When Vegeta was going to show up, he decided to train Gohan (Goku's son) and bonded with him, thus learning what it means to care about someone. He eventually sacrifices himself to save Gohan but this also killed Kami (remember, they are still technically the same person) and because Kami created the Dragon Balls, this negates them.

In order to resurrect everyone, they go to Piccolo's homeworld to find other Dragon Balls and when they do, they bring Piccolo and Kami back to life so Piccolo can aid in their battle against Freeza and use the earth's Dragon Balls again. On this planet, Piccolo assimilates another of his kind to become stronger and get some knowledge needed to defeat Freeza, the exact effect this has on his identity or personality seems unclear, though he seems to become more analytical after this.

When Cell shows up, Piccolo and Kami decide to rejoin to make sure they're powerful enough to defeat him. This time around, remerging has a clear effect on him. He seems to have no trace of evil left in him, he seems to recall his time as both Piccolo and Kami in equal regard, a few characters refer to him as having been both, declares that he had no name because he was once again the same individual as that alien child and only goes by Piccolo because he probably needs a name anyway. This is the version of Piccolo seen in BoG.

In order to simplify this:

• Version 1: Alien Orphan
• Version 2 and 3: God of Earth and the Demon King split in two
• Version 4: Recreated Demon King
• Version 5: Recreated Demon King with an Alien Warrior absorbed
• Version 6: Version 5 and Version 2 combined into something that thinks of himself as Version 1

I disagree with some of that, especially since this includes retcons that happened later which I think lessens the impact of who King Piccolo was. Originally he IS a demon, not this from another planet alien orphan story he got in DBZ. Picccolo was the embodiment of evil, and yes the first retcon we get is that he was Kamisamas evil being but whatever.

But Piccolo isn't meant to be the original Piccolo. King Piccolo even names him his son before he dies, hell they existed together for a few seconds if you really think about it. Even his name at first is Piccolo Jr./Majunia to make you know he's a different person. Yes he is the incarnation of King Piccolo but it's like in Avatar, Korra is the reincarnation of the Avatar but he's not actually Aang.

Now when he merges with Nail he does say he won't do anything to affect his personlity, but not because he can't just he didn't want to intrude but the way it's stated I feel like he could if he really wanted to and I think in a way he did. Even dende recognizes him as Nail. He clearly has his memories.

Even in the android saga Piccolo says he is the reincarnation of King Piccolo and still evil (ignore krillin speech). I don't necessarily think merging with Kami or Nail necessarily made him "good". It's also mentioned in the show how Piccolo Jr was never as evil as his father and his bond with Gohan and later sacrifice is what changed him.

Fusing with Kamisama the deal ends up being he'll only give him his strength and memories. He only fuses because he knows Piccolo is no longer evil. And Goku recognizes him easily as Kamisama/Piccolo together.

All this nonsense just to say that Akira Toriyama was very inconsistent so that makes it easy to argue one way or another. I don't think he cared much and just changed it as he remembered or was convinient.

[Mad Dog McMutt]

It did get pretty silly in Z with all of the SS transformations. In my opinion that was a huge weakness in the Cell and Buu sagas. In the Cell saga there was an ascended saiyin, then an ascension beyond that, then Super saiyin 2. Fans still argue about all of those ascension levels. DBZ is so good though it was allowed a couple of flaws and that was one. That flaw carried over to Super to a much greater extent though. I am so sick of transormations. In my opinion peak Dragonball is from the very first episode of DB to the end of Frieza. I still like the Cell and Buu sagas though just not as much.