Dragon Ball Thread - RIP Akira Toriyama

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Hot take: the only people on Youtube that understand how the writting of Dragon Ball works are Plague of Gripes and Mistare Fusion. For those who don't know, Plague of Gripes made 4 videos explaning why Dragon Ball's writting is shit using various case examples. Mistare Fusion made an extensive analysis of the whole frachise using the literal original manga in Japanese. Plague is a furry and Mistare it's a little bit of a fanboy of the SW Sequels but their content is interesting. If we are being generous, we can add Masako X that at least has an understanding of the LORE and the characters

The rest try to reason incomprensible, non-sensical and arbitrary power scales, lick Toriyama's balls everytime he pulls off a new transformation, overthink things where they are none pretending like DB is like fucking Lain or Evangelion or they just have clickbait content in general.
 
Hot take: the only people on Youtube that understand how the writting of Dragon Ball works are Plague of Gripes and Mistare Fusion

As a fan of both personalities, I have to take both of them with a grain of salt as well regarding Dragon Ball.

Plague clearly doesn't care that much about Dragon Ball's writing and is just, well, griping and having fun dunking on obviously dumb plot threads without the complete analytical scrutiny to justify taking his criticisms too seriously. (Not that they aren't good criticisms, mind you.)

Mistare Fusion on the other hand, while I do like his content, comes off as more than a little bit pretentious in his waxing and waning about the "good ol' days" of OG Dragonball, forgetting that there are a ton of subjective faults to that part of the series as well. (Personally, I can't stand the Red Ribbon arc, though bless the man for tearing apart the King Piccolo arc, I've been saying that shit's trash for ages.)

Meanwhile his complaints about the supposed flanderization of characters has always rubbed me the wrong way, especially in regards to his complaints about Super. I understand that it isn't the most progressive portion of the series, nor is it paced well, God no, but the fact that he along with other mouth-breathers continue to complain about characters like Goku, Gohan, and some of the newer characters for not being "as deep" as they used to be is just pure autism.

These characters have always been simple. Goku not verbally being as obsessed with fighting back in OG Dragonball does not mean it didn't define him or lest we forget that every single arc in the OG series aside from the Red Ribbon Arc was predicated by a time-skip where Goku goes training.
 
As a fan of both personalities, I have to take both of them with a grain of salt as well regarding Dragon Ball.

Plague clearly doesn't care that much about Dragon Ball's writing and is just, well, griping and having fun dunking on obviously dumb plot threads without the complete analytical scrutiny to justify taking his criticisms too seriously. (Not that they aren't good criticisms, mind you.)

Mistare Fusion on the other hand, while I do like his content, comes off as more than a little bit pretentious in his waxing and waning about the "good ol' days" of OG Dragonball, forgetting that there are a ton of subjective faults to that part of the series as well. (Personally, I can't stand the Red Ribbon arc, though bless the man for tearing apart the King Piccolo arc, I've been saying that shit's trash for ages.)

Meanwhile his complaints about the supposed flanderization of characters has always rubbed me the wrong way, especially in regards to his complaints about Super. I understand that it isn't the most progressive portion of the series, nor is it paced well, God no, but the fact that he along with other mouth-breathers continue to complain about characters like Goku, Gohan, and some of the newer characters for not being "as deep" as they used to be is just pure autism.

These characters have always been simple. Goku not verbally being as obsessed with fighting back in OG Dragonball does not mean it didn't define him or lest we forget that every single arc in the OG series aside from the Red Ribbon Arc was predicated by a time-skip where Goku goes training.
Of course, Plague of Gripes is not the more knowledgeable where it comes to DB ("I'm not a Dragon Ball channel). He is obviously focused on making furry art and talking about shit with his friends but I think he knows one or two things about writting. Even if he doesn't want it to be the focus of his channel, the guy is really at tearing apart bad writting. Hell, I never watched Naruto but I liked his video tearing apart the whole concept of the show. What I like about his DB videos, is that they don't have a stupid mentality of "Super is new so is bad": he actually tries to understand the logic behind the writting or what the writter is trying to do. It's really entreaining hear him rant about things. Is probably the only furry I respect.

Mistare Fusion has his problems (it's heavily implied through his social media that he is with the woke crowd) but I like his knowledge of the LORE in general. I only watched Z so I can't comment on his analysis of the original.
 
That video has reminded me how good the final Episode of DBGT was. Even though I'm not a big fan of GT overall, the finale was a really heartfelt send off to the franchise back then.

As a fan of both personalities, I have to take both of them with a grain of salt as well regarding Dragon Ball.

Plague clearly doesn't care that much about Dragon Ball's writing and is just, well, griping and having fun dunking on obviously dumb plot threads without the complete analytical scrutiny to justify taking his criticisms too seriously. (Not that they aren't good criticisms, mind you.)

Mistare Fusion on the other hand, while I do like his content, comes off as more than a little bit pretentious in his waxing and waning about the "good ol' days" of OG Dragonball, forgetting that there are a ton of subjective faults to that part of the series as well. (Personally, I can't stand the Red Ribbon arc, though bless the man for tearing apart the King Piccolo arc, I've been saying that shit's trash for ages.)

Meanwhile his complaints about the supposed flanderization of characters has always rubbed me the wrong way, especially in regards to his complaints about Super. I understand that it isn't the most progressive portion of the series, nor is it paced well, God no, but the fact that he along with other mouth-breathers continue to complain about characters like Goku, Gohan, and some of the newer characters for not being "as deep" as they used to be is just pure autism.

These characters have always been simple. Goku not verbally being as obsessed with fighting back in OG Dragonball does not mean it didn't define him or lest we forget that every single arc in the OG series aside from the Red Ribbon Arc was predicated by a time-skip where Goku goes training.
I've always thought that a character like Goku doesn't need a lot of character development, as the beauty of the character comes from the world and others react to him and change around him. There's something great about a character that sticks to who he is no matter what, and is able to bounce back from virtually everything thanks to his strong sense of self. I think he's just the right amounts of reckless, outlandish yet likable protagonist for a series like Dragon Ball.
 
"Bit by Bit" is probably my favorite of the Dragon Ball OPs. Like at first glance it doesn't fit the series, but the longer you listen to it and it grows on you, the more you realize it works with Goku's character about why he protects the Earth, and perhaps it's a song by him for Chi-Chi or Pan. It's also catchy as hell and it brings a bounce to my step any time it comes on, though Field of View just has that kind of effect.
 
"Bit by Bit" is probably my favorite of the Dragon Ball OPs. Like at first glance it doesn't fit the series, but the longer you listen to it and it grows on you, the more you realize it works with Goku's character about why he protects the Earth, and perhaps it's a song by him for Chi-Chi or Pan. It's also catchy as hell and it brings a bounce to my step any time it comes on, though Field of View just has that kind of effect.
Personally I'd go with Makafushigi Adventure as my favorite DB opening. It's super funky and captures the sense of wonder, mysticism and, well, adventure of early Dragon Ball really well. Limit Break x Survivor is also pretty hype.

The French openings for the series are kinda abysmal though:
 
Personally I'd go with Makafushigi Adventure as my favorite DB opening. It's super funky and captures the sense of wonder, mysticism and, well, adventure of early Dragon Ball really well. Limit Break x Survivor is also pretty hype.
I love that one too!

Reminded an English version of that first one exists!
 
I love that one too!


Reminded an English version of that first one exists!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mVrVTinOsBw
Sweet Baby Raptor Jesus, the second hand embarrassment is real! Well, at least the lyrics are hilariously banal. "Dragon Ba-allll a boy and a girl!" almost feels like a literal version before it was even a thing.
 
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Sweet Baby Raptor Jesus, the second hand embarrassment is real! Well, at least the lyrics are hilariously banal. "Dragon Ba-allll a boy and a girl!" almost feels like a literaly version before it was even a thing.
True. Those French songs take the cake there.

I will say I still love Harmony Gold's take on Makafushigi Adventure, warts and all.
 
True. Those French songs take the cake there.

I will say I still love Harmony Gold's take on Makafushigi Adventure, warts and all.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=okGiT8GIY_g
Not gonna lie, that really isn't half bad, especially compared to AB Groupe's offerings. Also, the way a bunch of little kids just go "YAAAAAY" in the interlude never fails to crack me up.
 
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Not gonna lie, that really isn't half bad, especially compared to AB Groupe's offerings. Also, the way a bunch of little kids just fo "YAAAAAY" in the interlude never fails to crack me up.
It's like someone apparently felt there needed to be something there and having children enthusiastically screaming worked. Seriously, had this version got off the ground back in 1990 or such, I probably would've watched the hell out of it over Ninja Turtles!
 
I've read the manga through Super and it has felt satisfying for Dragonball. May get around to seeing the Super series sometime, but watching the Beerus arc was tedious in how stretched it felt.

The new Broly movie was outstanding, and had changes that are universal improvements imo.
 
I've read the manga through Super and it has felt satisfying for Dragonball. May get around to seeing the Super series sometime, but watching the Beerus arc was tedious in how stretched it felt.

The new Broly movie was outstanding, and had changes that are universal improvements imo.
Reminded I passed by a B&N and saw they had the "Super" manga volumes out on the shelf. Hadn't though of reading that at all personally, but nice if it holds up well to the namesake.
 
Reminded I passed by a B&N and saw they had the "Super" manga volumes out on the shelf. Hadn't though of reading that at all personally, but nice if it holds up well to the namesake.

The manga and anime are pretty different, which is bizarre af. I think the manga has the same amount of problems as the anime does, but I appreciate that the manga is trying to do it's own thing.

They totally fucked the Tournament of Power arc tho...
 
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