Dragon Ball (Warning: Untagged Spoilers)

[Soniman]

Bulma was responsible for giving Vegeta the ability to go SSJ4.

[Kuzu]

Bulma was responsible for giving Vegeta the ability to go SSJ4.

.....I think it speaks a lot when her greatest contribution in years came from GT of all things.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Ragna the Bloodedge

[Linkabel]

Bulma and her family also gave the means for Goku, Krillin, and Gohan to go to Namek

[Nintendoga]

It bothered me that the excuse they came up with was that quarter Sayains couldn't become Super Sayain or some bullshit like that.

Then in comes 1/10th Super Sayains with Goku Jr. and Vegeta Jr....

Bulma was responsible for giving Vegeta the ability to go SSJ4.

So many things wrong with that fucking scene man. So many things.

But yeah, Bulma did a bunch of stuff in the show.

[-Robin-]

There will never be a scene in any other anime that can compare to this. NEVER. They can try, only to fall short due to the song, the Oozaru screaming in the background, and the tears fucking flowing upward as a symbol of a proper ascension, previously thought impossible, finally being made. FUCK YES THIS SCENE. <33333333333

Kai horrifyingly ruined this scene with that horrible piece of music being played. Unmei No Hi, Tamashi v. Tamashi 4 lyfe.

/fangush

As a whole, I really like DB, DBZ, and even DBGT as well; they're really the only anime I watch nowadays, and I can never get tired watching it over and over. There was more than enough action to go around, and character development and expansion wasn't entirely pushed aside and never made; having the development be subdued in nature actually benefited the show imo.

I'm watching Season 8 of DB Kai again atm. Really wished Kai went on to include the Buu Saga, but as I understand it, merchandising was at such a low at the time of Season 8's production that it was more profitable to end it at Cell. Mr. Satan's Japanese VA dying during production, and Videl's VA's declination to provide her voice as a result, certainly didn't help either. Ah well, at least there's the 2013 Dragonball Z movie to look forward to!

Edited July 4, 2013 by Joshua

[MugiMikey]

Bulma also created Gohan's Saiyaman costume so he could fight crime in Satan City undetected.

Eh, I cared about the characters too, but I cared more about the actual fighting than their reasons for fighting, which mostly boiled down to "I'll blow up the earth, fight me" "Ok". Yes, there was development, but that doesn't change the fact that eventually every character who wasn't Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan got severely shafted and only served to show how inferior they were to the godly Saiyans, the villains didn't really have particularly deep motives for their plans, and the focus grew less and less on marital arts as it drifted away from it's DB roots.

The only villain that was actually like that was Boo... Sure, the other antagonists used that threat too, but they all had their own desires:

Piccolo wanted to rule the world. Vegeta and Nappa wanted immortality. Freeza also wanted immortality and to rule every galaxy he could get his mitts on. Cell wanted to be perfect and then prove it. And Boo? Well, he just wanted to have fun.

The funny thing is I never really noticed that and I never actually cared about it either.

Kids that watched the edited dub on Cartoon Network didn't really care that it was edited, either.

Edited October 24, 2012 by MugiMikey

[Urban Flow]

Kids that watched the edited dub on Cartoon Network didn't really care that it was edited, either.

Yeah.......because that is how we thought it originally was......But if you got the DVD's you get to see it uncensored and how it was originally done. Sure the dvd's might have the flaws you mentioned but you get to see how it was meant to be seen in terms of content/graphic.

[Nix]

There will never be a scene in any other anime that can compare to this. NEVER. They can try, only to fall short due to the song, the Oozaru screaming in the background, and the tears fucking flowing upward as a symbol of a proper ascension, previously thought impossible, finally being made. FUCK YES THIS SCENE. <33333333333

Kai horrifyingly ruined this scene with that horrible piece of music being played. Unmei No Hi, Tamashi v. Tamashi 4 lyfe.

This scene was ruined in the original dub too. We don't need Gohan to narrate what he's feeling when we can tell clear as day by looking at his face. "Show, don't tell" comes to mind, and that moment of silence from Gohan as he's processing what the hell just happened is intense.

And then he snaps, and proceeds to tear Cell a new asshole.

It also doesn't have Unmei No Hi, which is a sin in of itself.

Anyways, I love Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Say all the shit you want about it, this was my childhood and I'm not going to start hating it because I realized it has a bunch of filler and shit.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Pinkamina

[Kuzu]

I don't hate Dragon Ball, but I am all to aware of it's flaws.

[Andrew Albacia]

I don't hate Dragon Ball, but I am all to aware of it's flaws.

This is my position. If I hated it, I doubt I would have bought all the books XD

...well.

[Old dead account]

This is that one series that despite its issues I still fucking love to death. I've only watched the original DB series up to the end of the red ribbon army saga because I could never find what came after it, I know it's king piccolo and then something else though.

I should talk about how the humans have been slowly becoming more useless as the series progresses. In dragonball, first Master Roshi was an impressivefighter that blew up a whole fucking castle, then Yamcha became the guy that threatens them for a while, then Krillin comes in and become Goku's rival sort of. Then in the world martial arts tournament we see Goku Krillin and Yamcha are much stronger than any other fighters because of their training, but then we get to see that Master Roshi disguised as Jackie Chun has entered the tournament to test his students. In the tournament Roshi first fights against Yamcha, the one who didn't train under him and beats him with no effort at all, then Krillin fights him and gives him a bit of a hard time but still not enough to beat him. The in the final round he faces off against Goku, who gives him one hell of a fight but still beats him by just a hair. Then after that we start seeing other fighters like General Tao and General Blue who are able to beat Goku and are possibly stronger than Roshi. Goku trains with Korin and drinks the sacred water and is able to beat them. Then we see guys like Tienshinhan and Chiaotzu come into the picture. Chiatzu isn't that strong and is beaten by Krillin, but Tien is at the time one real tough motherfucker who even beats Master Roshi in the tournament and the proceeds to beat even Goku, Goku beats him in another tournament though. The comes king piccolo who is a Namekian but thought to be a demon at the time, who goes around killing several martial artists around the world and even kills Krillin Chiaotzu and Roshi until he is beaten by Goku. This is the point where they start to use nonhuman characters to become bigger threats since I guess Humans just aren't that intimidating anymore. So then we get the new spawn of King Piccolo which is the Modern Piccolo, a Namekian who is really strong too, even stronger than Tien who faces off against Goku to the point where the entire tournament ring was disintegrated, and Goku also manages to beat him. Ends the DB series. Krillin was useful in several times during DB, Tien was pretty badass, Chiaotzu has psychic powers, Yamcha was... a good support I guess.

Now DBZ. So we get the strongest guy in the world, Goku, (though I think there were others that were still stronger than him at the time) that turns out to be an Saiyan and his brother comes and is much stronger than him and Piccolo. Stronger saiyans are coming so the humans set out to train. This is the point where the humans were pretty much as useful as a bucket of shit, Nappa was able to kill all of them including Piccolo, except Krillin by a miracle. The laast useful things the human characters did was kill the saibamen and Yamcha couldn't even do that. After the Saibamen are Killed by Tien and Krillin they fight Nappa, an elite class saiyan. They are pulverized, Tien gets killed, Chiaotzu does a failed suicide bombing, and Piccolo who was the strongest in the group at the time, dies saving gohan, only krillin survives badly beaten. Gohan has some sort of secret saiyan powers that help him fight Nappa for a while but to no avail. Gokuarrives after training with King Kai and easily kicks the shit out of Nappa who laid waste to 3 other fighters. Then he fights Vegeta who almost kills him if it weren't for Yajirobe coming in to slice him (even Yajirobe has been more useful than Yamcha!) So now most of the humans are dead so they go to Namek to use their dragonballs to wish them back.

In the namek saga, Krillin's only good feat was killing a standard Frieza Soldier, who is very weak. Other than that he was clearly the weakest protagonist in this saga, getting owned by Recoome the fastest, getting impaled, and then later Killed by Frieza, while Gohan Vegeta, Goku and even Piccolo can hold their own against some of the stronger villains. In the other world though, it does show that the dead Tien Yamcha and Chiaotzu are strong enough to beat the Ginyu force who before had given Vegeta a hard time, but considering the strength of later villains it's not going to matter much.

Cell saga, Androids come, trunks warns for them to train, they do, and even then only the saiyans who are now all super saiyans can stand a chance against them. All Yamcha does is become a scapegoat yet again, to show off how powerful they are. Tien get one last shot in at only temporarily slowing Cell down with his life draining tribeam but that's it. At this point if you aren't a super saiyans you're useless.

Buu saga...Tien shoots cell with a tribeam and doesn't make a scratch.

GT. Humans? What are those?

Well, they do have one thing though, Hercule!

For atmosphere, I gotta say DB's felt more fantastical and unique, whereas Z's felt more scifi. You had things like tribes and bad guys like Oolong the terrible in DB and every new place Goku went to made it feel more adventure based than Z. They wen't to Namek in Z but that's about it.

[-Mark-]

Random fact but I just can't watch DBZ Kai. I need Bruce Falconer and the original Funimation Voices in order to fully appreciate DBZ and it's Wackiness.

See, the funny things is, whilst I initially saw DBZ on Cartoon Network here in the UK (I have no idea which dub we got; they kept changing throughout it's run, I think we got about three different sets of voices by the time the show finally ended- I know we didn't get the Funi dub, at least not for a long while since I don't really recognise any of the Funi voices and they all sound weird and wrong to me except Goku who's the same in all the dubs IIRC ), I watched Kai in Japanese during its first run and didn't have a problem with it. Oddly enough, now I find that I can't go back to the dub.

I think maybe it's because we didn't get the Funi dub, in a way. It's the only dub that's available these days on DVDs etc, and it's not the dub I recognise growing up with. All the voices are different from the ones I remember as a kid, so I have no attachment to them nor nostalgia for them, and seeing as I watched Kai in Japanese, I'm more familiar with the Japanese voices than I am the Funi dub ones.

I'm currently rewatching the Freiza arc on the recently-released third season UK DVD box set, and my god it's almost unwatchable. It probably doesn't help that my last experience with Dragonball in general was Kai, which actually condensed the show into something tolerable, and I'm now watching the original in its purest, most thinly-spread form (since even the dub cut and merged some episodes, at least making it somewhat faster).

I do think that, for all the agonisingly slow build-up, the conclusion of the Frieza fight is facepalmingly anticlimatic. He fucks up and slices himself in half? Really? After everything they made us sit through, a bit more of a concrete, actual victory for Goku would have been nice.

EDIT: I can't remember, does Gohan ever actually die at all throughout the course of the series? Admittedly my memory of much of the series post-Frieza is fuzzy at best.

EDIT 2: Post-Cell-arc Gohan sucks. Sorry, but he does. As does Goten. And much of the series in general at that point. Moreso than it already did. >_>

Edited October 24, 2012 by -Mark-

[Soniman]

He dies in the Buu Saga because he sucked so much shit and Goku was the one who had to save the day.

[MugiMikey]

I can't remember, does Gohan ever actually die at all throughout the course of the series? Admittedly my memory of much of the series post-Frieza is fuzzy at best.

EDIT 2: Post-Cell-arc Gohan sucks. Sorry, but he does. As does Goten. And much of the series in general at that point. Moreso than it already did. >_>

Gohan did die when Boo blew up the earth. He was actually the strongest character at that point, but he was overpowered once Boo absorbed Gotenks and Piccolo, and then he was ambushed and absorbed as well. He was unconscious when Goku and Vegeta rescued him from Boo's body and Goku needed to fight so he put him off to the side. Boo then started to destroy the planet, and naturally Goku was going to grab Gohan and teleport before the earth blew up, but he saw Mr. Satan and Dende first, so...

I wouldn't say the post-Cell material sucks that much; Toriyama tried bringing back many elements he used from the original DB series, such as more humor (breaking the fourth wall, for example), and more silly and rounded out designs. We also get great character development from Mr. Satan, and the Trunks and Goten stuff was pretty fun.

Edited October 24, 2012 by MugiMikey

[-Robin-]

To its credit, I really like how the Buu Saga didn't spell things out in big neon letters as to what was going to happen next.

Freeza mentions he has two more transformations in store? Yeah, he's totally going to use those forms. Mention of this Super Saiyan thing? Some Saiyan is powering up soon. Cell desires to achieve his Perfect Form? Grab the popcorn, we're going to see an impressive lightshow soon enough.

With Buu though, things came out of nowhere enough times that it kept me at the edge of my seat when I first saw the episodes. We're told that Buu is invincible as it is, and then he splits into two, rejoins after a struggle, and becomes even more powerful due to his prior form acting as a sort of limiter. The Fusion Dance is heralded as the one thing to beat Buu, then is rendered obsolete as Super Buu matches SSJ3 Gotenks inch by inch, only to get his ass handed to him by Ultimate Gohan. Gohan is set up to be there hero once again, taking so much time to power up, only for Buu to reveal his Absorption technique and turn the tables again. Buu becomes "The Mightiest Majin" by absorbing Gotenks and Gohan, but then powers down thanks to Goku and Vegeta ejecting them, plus the original Buu, from his head, but this new, and weaker, Buu that forms as a result is such a wild psychopath that he's even more dangerous than his prior forms. Goku is deemed the one person to beat this Buu, only for his SSJ3 form to wear off after a while, and so the Spirit Bomb is put back into play, which finally eradicates the bastard for good.

Buu's freakishly strong, but what's even scarier is how he was able to turn the tables in his favor again and again in ways that befitted a mythical genie-like creature like himself. His unpredictability is what made him so frightening, and captivating as a villain to me.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Joshua

[Soniman]

Not to mention he was the only villain to actually make good on his threat of destroying the entire planet (right after killing almost everyone on it), which I guess I can give credit where it's due.

[Kuzu]

I do admit the Buu arc had the most dire situations, in that literally EVERYONE dies, even the main and supporting cast......kinda loses its impact cuz of the Dragon Balls.

[-Robin-]

The impact would have remained there if Moori did not have the foresight to give the Namekian Dragonballs a power boost for later.

With Dende presumed dead after Buu escaped the Room of Spirit and Time, Piccolo's and Gotenks's only option if they beat Buu was to somehow find a way to Planet Namek, and wish for Dende specifically to come back to life so the Earth Dragonballs could reactivate. And then, even when Gohan was able to locate Dende, Buu absorbed Piccolo, who had the Dragon Radar with him, soon after; entering Buu to rescue him was not considered until Vegetto came around, so how was Gohan going to find the Dragonballs if he had killed Buu? Then Earth explodes, and suddenly the Dragonballs are simply gone, and the only option remaining was to summon Porunga, who could only revive one person at a time.

Lol, could you imagine if Porunga wasn't powered up? Goku and Vegeta would have to use one wish to revive only Piccolo so he alone could go search for the Earth Dragonballs, taking up precious time that the two Saiyans really did not have.

So while the Dragonballs being around did lessen the pressure a tiny bit, circumstances surrounding them kept getting put into danger, which kept the whole Buu struggle tense throughout.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Joshua

[Soniman]

Even if Porunga wasn't powered up, they still could of wished back Piccolo as well as Gohan (who could easily buy time to his super power Mystic Gohan state that was utterly wasted) and maybe Goten or Trunks (or Dende, since he's the Earth's Gaurdian.

[-Robin-]

Porunga wishes people back to the place where they died; had Porunga revived any of those 4, they would revive back into the void of space where Earth used to be. So Porunga would have to use all 3 wishes to

1) Restore the Earth

2) Revive Gohan, since he's the only one who can take Buu on alone.

3) Transport him to the Planet of the Kaio-shin.

Even if Gohan were to destroy Buu, those remaining would have to wait 130 days before using Porunga again, since Piccolo is still dead, and so the Dragon Radar is gone. By that time, some souls would be cleansed, their memories wiped away, and reincarnated as other beings in the universe, Vegeta would most likely return back into a soul, and undergo the same process, and Earth would remain an empty planet, unless Dende, Gohan, and Goku were really lucky and managed to find the 7 Earth Dragonballs by chance.

[Kuzu]

If there's anything I can give GT credit for, because lord knows it doesn't deserve it, I'm so glad it finally acknowledged their overuse of the Dragon Balls, and the repercussions behind it.

[-Robin-]

Fighting the equivalent of the god you've been reliant on for situations for decades was a fantastic way to end the Dragonball tale, definitely. Much better than in DBZ and DB, where Shenron's there for one last set of wishes, and that's it.

...though it does call into question of how much power Dende really has, since Shenron is only as powerful as the Namekian who created Shenron.

Unlock Dende's hidden potential, and let him be the guardian of the Earth, He certainly has the power to do so, evidently!

Edited October 24, 2012 by Joshua

[Nix]

If there's anything I can give GT credit for, because lord knows it doesn't deserve it, I'm so glad it finally acknowledged their overuse of the Dragon Balls, and the repercussions behind it.

If there's anything I give GT credit for, it's for trying to bring back a bit of that "adventure" element that Dragon Ball originally had. Adventure through the universe looking for the Dragon Balls? Hell yeah, that's an idea I can get behind.

Too bad it was terrible.

On the subject of Buu... I'm still at loss at how Supreme Kai completely forgot to mention that Buu can absorb people.

I mean, fucking rea- seriously? How?

Edited October 25, 2012 by Pinkamina

[batson]

I really like the Buu saga but i cant stand GT. For one thing, during the Buu saga character development was still going on, in this case mainly in the case of Vegeta. But once GT starts its like the new writers dont dare to change anything significant with the cast. Yeah yeah, they get all kinds of new transformations but thats not the kind of change im talking about.

And this is of course just one of GT's many huge problems. All things considered, i prefer to pretend that GT doesnt exist.

Edited October 25, 2012 by batson

[Old dead account]

It's funny, in DB we thought Roshi blasting a castle away was impressive. By the Cell saga, the ability to destroy a planet is pretty underwhelming. Then in GT, by the end, the strongest characters could probably blow up a galaxy by sneezing. LOL DBZ: Godmods vs other godmods. Oh, and Yamcha too.

What about the games? I personally have a lot of fun with DBZBT3, while I find Ultimate Tenkaichi to be shit. For the RPG's I really like Goku Gekitouden