Dragon Ball (And Shonen in general)

[soulfire916]

I was inspired to make this after I got some good amounts of mecha/military recommendations on my other thread. (Thanks a bundle guys)

If anyone saw my other thread. I said I wasn't a big fan of the cliches in shonen, this isn't entirely true. When it comes to mecha shows I prefer it to be more serious, but I dont mind it as much in shonen shows.

Anyway, feel free to discuss shows such as Dragon Ball Z and Bleach.

I'll start:

I'm very new to the whole DBZ thing, I hear its one of the most hyped animes of all time. I want to get into it, because I seen video games of some pretty sick god-like combat fights where planets explode, BUT I hear a lot of horror stories about filler arcs in the anime all the time. So I want to ask an experienced watcher, what seasons should I avoid of DBZ?

As for bleach, though it was dragged on for a long time, I was sad seeing it go when it finally ended in japan.

How about you guys?

[Kratos]

Never watched much Dragonball, unfortunately, and I haven't read or watched Bleach in years (though honestly, it only really "did it" for me up through the end of the Soul Society arc). I'm a big fan of Naruto, especially its earlier portions, but sorta fell off that train too.

I'm on a huge Shaman King kick right now though, actually; I started picking up the special editions of the manga (the KANG-ZENG-BANG! as the author likes to refer to them), and it really is one of the more understated Shonen series out there. Not perfect, mind: the pacing is all over the place and the characters, though initially endearing, tend to be about as one-note as most Shonen characters. Still, it's got a seemingly endless amount of creativity in its premise and visual designs, and the manga actually has a pretty solid ending. So there's that.

[GX9900-Gundam-X]

Okay on the line of DBZ if your going with the original Garlic Junior arc is out Really the best way id say to avoid filler is go with Kai till you get to the Majin Buu Saga

[Raikoh]

Yeah, to avoid Dragonball Z filler, Kai is your best bet. Of course, I'd also say that a second viable option is the Abridged Series (what? Don't look at me like that. It's actually really well put together.)

When it comes to Bleach, I'll say that it overstayed its welcome. After the end of the Aizen fight, there's no reason to keep going. After all, that was the Big Bad that was built up for the entire series so once he's beaten, it's really difficult to pick up the dramatic momentum and try to keep readers invested. While I haven't followed the subs or the manga, I think that Bleach should've just hung up its coat after that.

Me being averse to the mainstream stuff, the Shonen I usually partake in is more niche titles. Stuff like Hajime no Ippo, Akamatsu Ken's works, Hayate no Gotoku, etc. Basically I'm more into Sunday or Magazine than I am into Jump, and I'm certain that some of you don't have any clue what any of those are (except Jump).

[HellCat]

The thing that keeps me away from shonen is how the modern stuff is tons and tons of characters. I think a good shonen show needs a core group of varied personalities but stuff like Naruto and Bleach just frightens me off with how everyone needs to have a complex backstory, goals, etc. You could argue it's true to life but most modern shonen seem to have 40+ cast members, so that's way too much to keep track of for my tastes and plus most of them don't appeal to me anyway.

Dragon Ball expanded it's cast as it went but I think benefited from doing so over a much wider timespan. It's cool to see Goku go from being a clueless kid to the patriarch of a family.

[angelwingzero]

Watch Dragonball Z Kai, it cuts out a lot of the fat. One Piece, very good, but also very long. Buso Renkin, good show by the guy who did Kenshin and is actually over in 26 episodes.

[JulieYBM]

My suggestion is to start with Dragon Ball in Japanese. It's hilarious and the cast is made up a lot of Gundam voice actors like Furuya, Suzuoki, Furukawa, etc. Bleach is also good, the successor of Dragon Ball in a lot of ways. There's a lot of fun characters and the storyline has a number of good twists.

The thing that keeps me away from shonen is how the modern stuff is tons and tons of characters. I think a good shonen show needs a core group of varied personalities but stuff like Naruto and Bleach just frightens me off with how everyone needs to have a complex backstory, goals, etc. You could argue it's true to life but most modern shonen seem to have 40+ cast members, so that's way too much to keep track of for my tastes and plus most of them don't appeal to me anyway.

Dragon Ball expanded it's cast as it went but I think benefited from doing so over a much wider timespan. It's cool to see Goku go from being a clueless kid to the patriarch of a family.

I wouldn't say Naruto falls under that umbrella. Even after Naruto's classmates are introduced they don't actually factor much into the plot beyond their introduction. The core story is always on Team 7 and whoever the current villain is.

Dragon Ball introduced new characters every arc, but like Naruto, didn't always carry over characters. The plot of a story arc is always very centered on two or three characters. Even during the twenty-second Tenka'ichi Budoukai the story was very clearly centered on Gokuu, the Muten Roushi, and Tenshinhan. The Tsuru-sen'nin had a part to play, but for the most part it wasn't quite as substantial as that of the Muten Roushi. These three characters are the central focus on the next arc, in addition to Piccolo Daimaou. Toriyama always knew when to write characters out of the plot to keep it concise. Mostly because it would be too much of a pain in the rear to write a bunch of characters at once, but whatever.

[Amion]

And then we have One Piece's current arc, which has more characters introduced in it I think than possibly all of Naruto's first half. Doubtful of course, but it literally feels like it's getting there. I enjoy this though, you have to think critically in a wacky way to enjoy that manga, which I do.

I still say that it's golden age passed with the Alabasta saga, that part of the story shown through in ways not much else has in my eyes.

I really wish I could enjoy reading Dragonball, but for some reason I couldn't make myself, too many good memories with the anime adaption I guess. Speaking of, how true to it is the anime Dragonball? I know Z was filled up like crazy, but what about the earlier years?

[JulieYBM]

I really wish I could enjoy reading Dragonball, but for some reason I couldn't make myself, too many good memories with the anime adaption I guess. Speaking of, how true to it is the anime Dragonball? I know Z was filled up like crazy, but what about the earlier years?

The 1986 TV series adapts comic chapters #1-194 across episodes #1-153. Several episodes do not cover chapters of the comic (#22-33, #79-83, #127-132), #149-153), but they're fun episodes anyway. The animation and directing is pretty strong for a long-running series in the 1980s and the vast majority of the staff carries over into Dragon Ball Z where they refine their abilities and create awesome work. The actors are all in top-form, too. Furuya gets to do some hilarious comic relief as early Yamcha, Suzuoki does a brilliant jerk as Tenshinhan, Furukawa is hilarious as General Blue and Menacing as Piccolo, and you can play a drinking game with the number of times Gouri Daisuke voices a background character. Kikuchi Shunsuke's music is brilliant and used as such. It's hard not to get excited when the wuxia-esque Tenka'ichi Budoukai themes play during the fights or the Red Ribbon Army arc's James Bond-esque music plays. There are also plenty of awesome insert songs, even one for Yamcha performed by Furuya Tooru himself!

The comic is great, too. Toriyama is a master artist, knowing exactly how to storyboard and layout panels to move smoothly and quickly. Nobody on this Earth has yet to match his prowess in creating fast, exciting battles. One of my big favorites is Son Gokuu versus Ma Junior in volume #16. It's a good one hundred-plus pages of these guys really tearing the Hell out of each other and the battle is draw in such a clear manner that you can never get confused like you might with other artists.

[Amion]

I see. I suppose I may try this sometime. Sad as it is I don't have time. Thanks for the info anyway. It is nice to know that there is quality. I do recall enjoying Dragonball's earlier stuff prior to the Cell arc. It just felt like mindless repetition after Freeza.

[JulieYBM]

I see. I suppose I may try this sometime. Sad as it is I don't have time. Thanks for the info anyway. It is nice to know that there is quality. I do recall enjoying Dragonball's earlier stuff prior to the Cell arc. It just felt like mindless repetition after Freeza.

I would say the series is strong up until Cell achieves his complete form. Toriyama's second editor, Kondou Yuu, left and his third and final editor for the series, Takeda Fuyuto, took over. Kondou was the editor during the time when Dragon Ball became hugely popular, the arrival of Raditz. Takeda was very lax and allowed Toriyama to do as he wished while Kondou and his first editor, Torishima Kazuhiko, really molded him into the writer he was. The early portion of the Articifial Humans story arc is exciting for this reason.

The constant changing of the villains is really very natural when you read the story. There's a goof early on when Trunks says "The Artificial Humans are No. 19 and No. 20!" but then when he returns a few chapters later he says "No, the Artificial Humans are No. 17 and No. 18!" It's easy enough to ignore and humorous to think about in retrospect. The arc is really a bit of a roller-coaster, a combination of The Terminator with other horror movies. This was also the last arc where Toriyama's art really shined. Many chapters had gorgeous drawings of Cell. All three of his forms were incredible to look at. The Cell chapters are also the most gore-filled chapters, with plenty of guts, gore, eyeballs, and brains flying around.

By the Majin Buu arc his drawings really started getting weaker. This was especially evident in the manner in which the Cell arc ended poorly. Toriyama's plotting was going to Hell and there is a real sense of there being nobody to guide him. There's still good gags abound, but it's essentially the weakest arc of the series.

[Mu La Flaga]

You know I want to put this out there since alot of people are praising DBZ Kai.
But reall it's not that good in some regards.
1.Even if it removes some of the stupid filler, the driving school episode with Goku and Piccolo is gone.
2.The recasting of characters in the dub at least, namely kid Gohan and Android 18 both being done by Colleen Clinkenbeard, which I did not like either performance much(especially Gohan, her version of Gohan had too much of a weird female sound to it where as Stephanie Nanodoly got Gohan right when she portrayed that voice of his)
Android 18 just doesn't sound as smarmy or smug as what the original actress did with Android 18.
3.Some of the cast coming back to doing their roles have forgot how to do their roles, more then once between Vegeta and Piccolo did I hear Chris Sabbat slip in to Piccolo while voicing Vegeta for some silly reason.
4.Finally Bruce Faulconer's music, I loved the tv dub soundtrack for DBZ.


So there is 4 good solid reasons why DBZ Kai is not quite as good as the original DBZ to me at least.
Hell 2 of my friends could NOT get in to DBZ Kai because of this and one friend even sold all of his Kai dvds to a dvd trade in store.

Finally in regards to Z, well keep this in mind there is the Majin Buu arc.
However it's plot is not as strong it saccrificied plot for better battles in essence.
And some characters are just pushed to the wayside.
Like Piccolo, Yamacha, Tien ect.

[HellCat]

When I recently watched the FUNimation dub of the Android episodes I was surprised by 18 because it was...a good performance. Prior to this the only female pressence had been Bulma and ChiChi and for whatever reason their voice actresses gave performances I found to be annoying and awful. 18's voice is like a prelude to when FUNimation themselves started to improve and become a pioneer in terms of handling Japanese series.

[JulieYBM]

Well, since it's on the brain now I guess I'll add...

Artificial Human No. 18 is voiced by Itou Miki, who also played Mineva Lao Zabi in Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ. Miki's performance as No. 18 is one of my favorites among the Artificial Humans, although they're all great. She is wonderful in playing No. 18, both very quite and subdued, but also very hot-spirited. There's something very real about Miki's performance that sounds just like a young lady. The deliveries she gives are smooth, rolling right off the tongue. Although most of her dialogue is sex goddess dialogue or otherwise disinclined-woman dialogue it's fun stuff to hear. Dragon Ball Z #159 and Dragon Ball GT #44 are her best performances. The terrifying scream in the former as Cell absorbs her and the cries of rage in the latter are terrific. Her screams of "Kaese!" are enough to leave your throat dry and Al Pacino blushing. Miki doesn't get to do much in the series, but when she does act, she knocks it out of the park. She's right up there with the old veteran actors in the west who could really take a performance high. It's theater-sized in scale, but with the energy focused into just the voice. She's basically the female Wakamoto Norio for the series (Wakamoto himself knocking it out of the park in Dragon Ball Z, too).

[Mu La Flaga]

So no replies on my points for comparing Z to Kai in terms of the dub at least Jacob?
I know at least I'm not alone in my opinion.

[JulieYBM]

So no replies on my points for comparing Z to Kai in terms of the dub at least Jacob?
I know at least I'm not alone in my opinion.

Sorry, I don't really see the point. The dubs have nothing to do with those shows so I don't see the point in having an opinion on them. I'm not going to watch them, I can't stop anyone from watching them, and even if they did it's not like anything the dub says or the viewer says changes the facts of the situation. I simply turn off my emotions, like flipping a switch. The alternative is spending paragraphs doing nothing but complaining and indulging in negative emotions over a cartoon. So, I decide to focus on what I can control: my love for Dragon Ball and the things I love about it, something I opined about in my previous post (although not in the most coherent and vivid manner). That means dancing around a lot in threads, but it seems like the most logical decision to make. Well, when I'm a particularly restrained mood.

[Mu La Flaga]

Fair enough if you don't want to divulge in the dub vs sub debate.
But some people prefer one over the other and thus I also felt why I should post some reasons.
Obviously not always an issue where as in the Japanese they rarely recast unless someone dies(for instance Daisuke Gouri)
So makes sense, but equating dubs with negative, emmotions?, ok then.
Not all dubs are horridly bad and I would say Funimation did better then what Ocean/Pioneer did.

And I will leave it at that.

[zerogradius]

You know I want to put this out there since alot of people are praising DBZ Kai.
But reall it's not that good in some regards.
1.Even if it removes some of the stupid filler, the driving school episode with Goku and Piccolo is gone.
2.The recasting of characters in the dub at least, namely kid Gohan and Android 18 both being done by Colleen Clinkenbeard, which I did not like either performance much(especially Gohan, her version of Gohan had too much of a weird female sound to it where as Stephanie Nanodoly got Gohan right when she portrayed that voice of his)
Android 18 just doesn't sound as smarmy or smug as what the original actress did with Android 18.
3.Some of the cast coming back to doing their roles have forgot how to do their roles, more then once between Vegeta and Piccolo did I hear Chris Sabbat slip in to Piccolo while voicing Vegeta for some silly reason.
4.Finally Bruce Faulconer's music, I loved the tv dub soundtrack for DBZ.


So there is 4 good solid reasons why DBZ Kai is not quite as good as the original DBZ to me at least.
Hell 2 of my friends could NOT get in to DBZ Kai because of this and one friend even sold all of his Kai dvds to a dvd trade in store.

Finally in regards to Z, well keep this in mind there is the Majin Buu arc.
However it's plot is not as strong it saccrificied plot for better battles in essence.
And some characters are just pushed to the wayside.
Like Piccolo, Yamacha, Tien ect.

1. The driving school episode, while entertaining, added nothing to the story, and was thus, unnecessary. I am sure there are those, whoever few, who liked the Bulma giant crab episode, but that does not mean it should be there in Kai. Remember, the whole purpose of Kai was to cut down on the filler to make the show more watchable and a closer representation of the manga. Adding a bunch of filler eps would defeat that purpose.

2. I agree about 18, the original voice was better, but the new one is not bad, just different. Gohan's new voice doesn't bother me.

3. Did not notice anything like that, but their voices are so similar, it would not surprise me.

4. Yeah, Faulconer's music was better. Cannot argue that.

DBZ Kai in many ways made the show more watchable by not only cutting out filler eps but by also removing time wasting scenes that added nothing to the story (like Tenshinhan, Yamcha and Chotzu fighting the Ginyu Force), speeding up fights that took an eternity (Goku vs Freiza was the worst example) and improving dialogue that was inaccurate or just silly (if I recall, Zarbon told Vegeta that Freiza could transform, but this was left out of the dub, which was rectified in Kai).

As for what arcs to avoid, I would recommend watching all of them, even filler like the Garlic Junior saga, which at least only lasted about 10 eps. What has to be avoided are filler eps like some of Gohan' s training, the fake Namek, Bulma chasing dragonballs on Namek, Goku, Gohan and Piccolo training for the androids, Goku and Gohan waiting for the Cell Games, and stuff like that. DBZ was 291 episodes long, but if most of the filler was cut out, I doubt it would even reach 200.

[JulieYBM]

I've never been a big fan of the driving episode, episode #125. Other then Hisada Kazuya's cool key animation for the cuts of Vegeta training there's not much to the episode. Dragon Ball has done much better humor without ever relying much on self-parody. The gags in the Garlic Junior arc are much funnier, especially since they all culminate in episode #117 where Kuririn and Tanaka Mayumi receive a standout episode.

Fun fact: the scene where Zarbon tells Vegeta that Freeza can transform was not included in Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball Kai. I'm not exactly sure why, perhaps the writer of Toda Hiroshi or Koyama Takao thought it was unnecessary information at the time? Either way, it's a neat little nugget.

[Zeonista]

i have never been a big DBZ fan myself, and I lost track of One Piece about episode 144 (I think). I stayed with Bleach until the end of the anime, and I still pop into the manga from time to time. It's a boss shounen action story, although the bi-weekly issue page count really cramps its style. OTOH I am still chasing after Naruto Shippuden because I like many of the characters, plus Saint Seiya Omega, which is finally getting good again with the return of the original Bronze Saints.

Now the true shounen series running so far to my mind is Kenichi: History's Greatest Disciple, which is running strong, dishing up action and character development (sic) like no tomorrow. I am hoping & praying that we get a new TV anime for the Fall 2014 or Spring 2015 season.