Dragon Ball: The Rant

I recently finished reading the Dragon Ball manga and it put a new perspective on things for me. I saw the light, but it wasn't as bright as they say. What I mean is this, Dragon Ball is still pretty good but not as good as I remember. There's also some issues with the series. Some things the anime did better than the manga and things the manga did better than the anime. 

I've got some complaints. The fights in the manga consisted of mostly speaking and once the actual fights began they were over in a few chapters. On the contrary, the anime seemed to drag fights out forever. But that's not the only difference in pacing. The anime benefited from filler. I said it. The filler was a good thing. The manga just skipped ahead 3-10 years after each arc with 7 being the most frequent amount. That doesn't really lend a lot to character development. 

Characters also just disappear and come back at random in the manga. At the end of the Cell Saga Tien just says "Well, have a good life I'll probably never see you again." There was no explanation behind that at all. The Toriyama writes himself into a corner and needs someone to deflect Buus attack and Tien manages to teleport from one end of the Earth to block Buu's attack at random. Then he dies from one punch. Yes, Tien was strong enough to stop the ki attack with ease yet one punch killed him. Then he just disappeared. What about Launch? She left to follow Tien and never appeared again. Did Tien kill Launch? Say what you want, but at least the anime gave characters an epilogue.

The power scale is also screwy in the series. We understand Goku is the strongest and Vegeta is second but one day they're fighting to a draw. One day Vegata squeezes out a victory and one day Goku dominates. We have no idea how big that gap is. There's also moments ehen they say things like Vegeta's Big Bang will destroy the Earth. Other times it's no big threat at all. 

Don't get me wrong there's a lot of stuff Dragon Ball did right. It also is a clear influence to a lot of modern manga. In the first World Tournament Arc Goku and Krillin advance through the preliminaries by only using one hand. I know you probably thought that part was really cool when you saw it in the Tower of Heaven arc in Hunter x Hunter. Toriyama also draws these maps to show character locations when they're split up. Oda does this for One Piece. His are better drawn but it's obvious where the idea came from. 

It's also nice that there was a happy ending. I lied. Goku flew off and abandoned his family again. Piccolo might as well move in with Chi Chi, he's been more of a father figure anyway. Say what you want about Vegata. Sure he told Trunks he loved him one time and told Bulma it was just sex. But by the end of the Majin Buu arc he started calling Bulma his wife and threatened to kill Goku for taking naked pictures if her. They weren't even married yet. Vegeta even admits he tried to pretend he didn't care about his family because he thought it made him weak. Yet Vegeta is the one who doesn't get up and abandon his family on a whim.

Why do people make fun of Krillin for dying? He didn't die nearly as much as Yakcha and he remained a fighting threat longer than Tien. At the end of the series it's stated that he's the strongest human. We also need to give Krillin his props. You can't expect a normal guy to go against Saiyans, whatever Frieza is, Androids, Cell, Demon King Dabura, Buu etc. He's also the funniest character. Krillin has jokes, there is no lack of comedy from this man's mouth. "Bulma shut up, we need to fight the androids. The only reason any of us are friends is because stronger enemies keep showing up. I even hated Goku. Piccalo is probably fine but Vegeta, he might kill us. What are you looking at Piccolo, it's true." That was a monologue. Krillin don't care. Krillin is the honey badger. 

Also, how did Mr. Satan become World Champion? Sure the Z fighters like Goku let him take credit for their accomplishments and Android 18 extorted 20 million from him but he hasn't always had that money. He had to win his way to the top before he could pay people to lose. Who was losing to him? What happened to all the strong guys in the World Tournament?  

Dragon Ball is a great series. But when you start thinking about it some of this stuff is just bad and makes no sense. It managed to inspire countless manga and anime. But let's look below the surface. It's great but far from perfect.

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