Dragon Ball (All Series)

[LumRanmaYasha]

I dunno, man. Seems like they went out of their way to make Birusu too strong. He barely even touches Goku at any point of that sequence, and still completely dominates him.

Well, isn't this how it's always been in a Dragonball Z movie though? The villain is super uber strong and Goku can't win without some convenient power up or assistance? It's no suprise to me that Birusu dominates SSJ3 Goku early on in the film. I just hope the plot of the movie doesn't suffer as a result. It'd be a shame to waste all that gorgeous animation on a mediocre project.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Indeed, its easily the most budget that anything DBZ-related has ever had.

As for Birusu being overpowered, I feel like they are really trying to build him up to be a serious threat. I wouldn't mind him being so strong if it forced Goku to work with others again as a team to take him down (strategy over raw power). That's why I loved the Saiyan arc so much. Goku needed all the help he could get to stop Vegeta, even if the help was coming from his much weaker son and friends. It made the situation feel intense but not hopeless.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Are there any DBZ movies not centered on the Super Saiyans coming in to clean house? It's one thing I preferred about the earlier movies.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be fair, its possible that the movie could find a use for the other characters in terms of using strategy to help out Goku in some way rather than just having Goku save the day by himself. Its....possible....but probably unlikely.

Oh well, for once I'm going to say fuck it. I'm still excited to see this movie and hope that it turns out to be good in some way. From what I can tell, this movie isn't all about fighting and has a lot of Toriyama's trade-mark humor that is very reminiscent of early Dragon Ball, which if true is definitely a great element for the film to have. I'm actually glad that the film is trying to be true to the series, rather than trying to be some big, dark, epic affair that tries to treat the series like its something that it was clearly never meant to be. I don't know how to describe it, but I get a feeling that a lot of genuine heart and effort went into making this movie, from people who actually gave a shit about the quality of the original series in the first place. Of course, I could very well be dead wrong, but I hope that I'm not. I still want to see this movie, and apparently a recent interview with Toei reveals that they are trying to insure that this movie reaches the international market as soon as possible.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I now realize that Bils is me if I was a DBZ villain.

[Kiddington]

Are there any DBZ movies not centered on the Super Saiyans coming in to clean house? It's one thing I preferred about the earlier movies.

Maybe having more movies set in that period of the series (like, say, before the events on Namek) wouldn't be such a bad idea. I mean, none of them are canon anyway (Tree of Might is literally impossible to fit anywhere within the main timeline, even moreso than most), so how could it hurt?

It's DBZ. Sound logic was never one of its strong suits anyway. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I just finished re-watching Dragon Ball. It was around the last set of episodes, primarily with the battle with Piccolo Jr., that the bad habits which plagued Dragon Ball Z started to show up. That's when we had extended bouts of nothing happening except for character screaming, and things just felt clearly dragged out the slow down the story. Thankfully, this was already close to the end of the original Dragon Ball's run, so it doesn't really hamper its overall quality. Everything up to that point was quite good, including quite a bit of the filler material. Also, one thing that this series had which I realized that most shonen series lack which kept me watching so many episodes of the show at a time was that it was brilliant at keeping you interested. The series almost always left you off with a "hook" to keep you coming back for more, even at the end of story arcs, and if it didn't, it automatically dropped you into an interesting scenario with the next given episode (except for some filler episodes).

One prime example of that is how we transition right into the King Piccolo arc immediately after the conclusion of the 2nd Budokai tournament. It could have just been a run of the mill ending followed by some boring filler material (even in the manga, as a lot of authors seem to do that kind of stuff with shonen series in general, these days). However, the way things transitioned into the next conflict was brilliant. The tone of things get oddly ominous after the conclusion of the tournament. Goku realizes that he left his 4-star Dragon Ball back at the tournament building, and Krilling volunteers to go get it, but Goku gets a bad feeling that he can't explain. Then he gets a premonition and immediately rushes to the tournament grounds only to find Krillin, dead. Right off the bat, without any time to rest, we get a main character death introducing us to the next arc. That's what I mean about this series being perfect with providing you with a hook to keep you watching. It just leaves you eagerly anticipating what will happen next, which is something I find that most shonen series either don't or can't do, which is why there are so many that I can lose interest in so quickly.

Anyways, I'm now onto re-watching Dragon Ball Z Kai. While I still greatly prefer the manga even to this version of DBZ (though, Kai is much better than DBZ by default, but its still not what I consider to be a great adaptation of the manga more than it is a glorified director's cut of DBZ), I really have to give FUNimation credit for VASTLY improving on the voice acting for this show. If you go back and watch the old FUNimation English dub of DBZ, you can see how inexperienced the VAs in that are, as the voice-work sounds horrid, and the dialogue is equally atrocious. When they got around to dubbing DBZK, FUNimation clearly had a lot more talent to work with (including many of the voice actors who worked on DBZ having vastly improved their skills in the art), and this time they made a script that treated the series with the respect that it deserves, so as a result, we got a much more faithful English version of the story that accurately portrays the characters. The voice acting is especially great since I'm going into it right after having come off of Dragon Ball, which I also watched in English. To be honest, the only reason that I could tolerate it was admittedly because of nostalgia for the series, but the English voice acting for Dragon Ball is also actually pretty bad, and has not aged well. To be fair, though, it "mostly" had much more acceptable dialogue than DBZ did, though even that part of the series could be really off at time with FUNimation's dub of it.

Now, I'm actually going to go all of the way through DBZ Kai and finish it. I honestly never watched past the beginning of the Cell arc since I pretty much got bored with the story by that point, like I always do, but its been a long enough while that I could probably stand to watch through the entire Android and Cell sagas once again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Maybe having more movies set in that period of the series (like, say, before the events on Namek) wouldn't be such a bad idea. I mean, none of them are canon anyway (Tree of Might is literally impossible to fit anywhere within the main timeline, even moreso than most), so how could it hurt?

If we're talking about having movies at specific parts of the Dragon Ball time-line, than I have to ask: Am I the only one who would legitimately be interested in seeing more movies set in the time-line of old-school Dragon Ball, when Goku is just a kid? I can't help but feel a little disappointed with how that particular element of the series has long since been forgotten and downright shoved aside in favor of exploiting the endeavors of the latter portions of DB's time-line, with Goku being an adult. I like the latter stuff well enough, but I would like more adventure-based stories centered around the earlier parts of DB, which were a bit more comedic and light-hearted in tone, but still tons of fun and really entertaining. The last "Dragon Ball" movie we got was in 1996 after DBZ had finished airing, and that was an homage to the early parts of the series as it featured young Goku and sort of had its own re-telling of a mix of events that occurred in his adventures up to the Red Ribbon Army arc. But, after that, any other new projects related to this franchise were strictly focused on the DBZ half of things, and the early Dragon Ball stuff was mostly forgotten, aside from maybe a couple of video games.

[Kiddington]

Easy answer to that is that DBZ was the most popular rendition of the series (especially stateside), therefore it continues to get the most attention.

Early Dragon Ball hasn't been totally forgotten (unlike GT... and rightfully so), at least as far as the video game side of things goes. But yeah, as far as movies go, it's pretty obvious the direction they prefer to take the series by this point, and that's a shame. I'd really like to see more of the original Z Fighters (Tien, Chiaotzu, Krillin, Yamcha, Roshi, and the like) get a chance to actually be useful again, and not just linger in the background for comic relief. Maybe having a couple of movies set in the DB portion of the timeline would remedy that, as these characters are all but useless by the time Z rolls around.

Now, I'm actually going to go all of the way through DBZ Kai and finish it. I honestly never watched past the beginning of the Cell arc since I pretty much got bored with the story by that point, like I always do, but its been a long enough while that I could probably stand to watch through the entire Android and Cell sagas once again.

You know, as much as I love Kai and how much they fixed things, I still haven't gotten around to seeing how they handled the Cell arc. I tuned right out once Frieza wrapped up.

It goes without saying that that point of the series was my least favorite everything. The filler was bad, the fights were equally bad, Cell himself is an extremely boring villain (as are the other Androids, for that matter)... even the Mr. Satan bits aren't nearly as offbeat and funny as they are in the Buu arc. The whole thing just bores the hell out of me every time I try to watch it. Granted, I haven't given the Kai alliteration a shot yet (need to get around to getting those last couple of DVD sets first), so maybe the improved voice acting will finally make it more watchable. 

[Silverstar]

If we're talking about having movies at specific parts of the Dragon Ball time-line, than I have to ask: Am I the only one who would legitimately be interested in seeing more movies set in the time-line of old-school Dragon Ball, when Goku is just a kid? I can't help but feel a little disappointed with how that particular element of the series has long since been forgotten and downright shoved aside in favor of exploiting the endeavors of the latter portions of DB's time-line, with Goku being an adult. I like the latter stuff well enough, but I would like more adventure-based stories centered around the earlier parts of DB, which were a bit more comedic and light-hearted in tone, but still tons of fun and really entertaining. The last "Dragon Ball" movie we got was in 1996 after DBZ had finished airing, and that was an homage to the early parts of the series as it featured young Goku and sort of had its own re-telling of a mix of events that occurred in his adventures up to the Red Ribbon Army arc. But, after that, any other new projects related to this franchise were strictly focused on the DBZ half of things, and the early Dragon Ball stuff was mostly forgotten, aside from maybe a couple of video games.

You're not the only one. I enjoy the original Dragon Ball much more than Dragon Ball Z. I know Z was the more popular, especially here in the States (Toonami basically made DBZ a household word in the US, although Dragon Ball aired before it in syndication), but I've always preferred the lighter, more whimsical tone of DB overall to DBZ's nonstop "flex, charge up, fight, talk about fighting, train to fight and fight some more" formula. The original Dragon Ball was fun, it didn't take itself too seriously and I appreciate that it tried to entertain you a bit rather than just being a cover-to-cover adrenaline rush. No offense to DBZ fans, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, my main problem with DBZ is that it just dragged things out way too much, and also lost a lot of the great sense of humor that was present in Dragon Ball. In the manga, you don't have any filler or long power-up scenes to drag things out, and there was still a lot of humor present there, which is why I prefer that greatly to the anime. The biggest example of that would be how the Majin Buu saga was handled in the anime, in which they played it completely seriously, whereas in the manga it was treated with more humor as it was supposed to be a throw-back to the old-school Dragon Ball stories as a neat way to finish off the series (especially in terms of going back to the theme of magic and mysticism over the more science-fiction oriented themes of DBZ).

But, even as far as the manga goes, I always did just prefer the more adventure-heavy aspects of the series over the fighting. The fights can be great when they are distilled to their purest form and you have no filler or drawn out power-up scenes in-between, but unfortunately DBZ has that in spades, and it just really killed any good moments that the series had, for me. Overall, I don't really hate DBZ, but I have to be honest when I say it just hasn't aged well. In contrast, I just re-watched all of the original Dragon Ball anime, and I thought it was still just as fun as it ever was. Its one of those series that feels almost timeless, to me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, the movie apparently made about $7 million on its first day of airing, which is pretty good for a Japan only premiere. Of course, that's only about half as much income as the last One Piece film made on its first day in Japanese theaters, however if Toei gets this movie released on DVD and Blu-ray internationally, then I have a feeling that this movie's income would multiply by quite a bit give that DBZ had far more international popularity than One Piece does.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I kind of caved in and skimmed through a summary of this movie. Its a Dragon Ball movie, so its not as though I was expecting there to be much of a plot to be spoiled, in the first place. For what its worth, this actually seems like something that Toriyama himself would write. As far as the summary goes, the characters seem spot-on, and if nothing else, the movie doesn't end how anyone would probably expect it to. For better or worse, though, it sort of sounds like it could be part of a bigger story, and it seems like its deliberately left open for a sequel (which if the movie is good, I'd be totally up for). I'm actually even more interested in seeing this movie itself, now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I finished watching Kai. You know, watching the entire Cell saga again, I was reminded that I don't exactly hate all of it. I liked the beginning bits with how the plot was set-up, introducing Future Trunks and the whole part with the Androids was all good stuff. The build-up to Cell's appearance was also surprisingly well-done. I like how they made his presence very mysterious at first, with how they discovered an alternate time machine that had arrived years ago and had gathered moss, and found an egg in it and realized that some life-form had come out of it and melted through the glass. It felt a lot more like something out of an Alien movie than something from Dragon Ball, but it was still a cool and interesting way to introduce the new villain. Then Cell shows up....and basically the rest of the arc goes to shit. He's completely uninteresting as a villain given all of the build-up leading up to him. Really, the arc probably just would've been better if it had been about taking down the androids. But, at any rate, the arc did still have its moments. The scene in which Gohan is fending off cell with a one-handed Kamehame-ha wave and everyone else is trying to help him despite knowing that they are completely useless compared to any of the Saiyans is probably one of the most memorable scenes from the entire series. I also like how Future Trunks gets closure to his story-line in which he travels back to his dark future and ends up taking out both of the Androids along with Cell. Other than that, though, the entire arc felt like a chore to watch, even in Kai's condensed version of it. Hell, I still felt that things were really dragged out, and even this version of the anime had way too many power-up scenes and there were entire episodes where barely anything happened. It makes me wonder how I even managed to stomach watching the whole thing when the original anime was airing back on Toonami, and I had to watch everything at an even slower pace.

My other major problem with this arc is with Goku's character. Up until this point in the series, I had always considered Goku to be a fairly likable character, even given some of his more questionable choices in the Namek saga. However....the dude was a complete dick in this entire arc for no reason. To be fair, the other characters really point out how ridiculous he acts in this arc, but Piccolo nailed it about how wreckless it was for Goku to just throwing Gohan out there to fight against Cell, when he didn't understand that Gohan isn't like him and wouldn't behave like him, hence why he didn't immediately get angry enough to fight Cell at his full power, and a sacrifice had to be made in the form of Cell killing off Android 16, and later on Goku when he initiated his self-destruct function.

At any rate, things went back to the way they should be in the Buu arc, but the anime completely botched that up (it really is a good arc in the manga, though). Hopefully the "Kai" version of that arc which they are supposedly making turns out to alleviate the problems with the DBZ version of it, but somehow I doubt it.

[Dr. Insomniac]