Dragon Ball

[gunswordfist]

happy birthday, db!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Happy 30th Birthday to the 2nd greatest Shonen Jump manga of all time!

I've already been re-reading and re-watching it in bits and pieces.

[gunswordfist]

i need to watch the anime. i've been planning to since the beginning of this year.

[Avaitor]

A few years ago, I started reading the manga all the way through, but I only got up to the 80's for whatever reason. Now seems like a good time to start again, and I'm thinking of saving some money aside to collect it all.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You should probably go for the Viz Big editions in order to save some money.

I've also wanted to collect the Dragon Ball Z Full Color volumes, myself.

One day, when I have the money, I will collect the entire series.

Anyways, the manga is excellent. I know I said that I prefer the first anime for Dragon Ball, but over time it has changed to me appreciating the thoughtful content of the first anime, yet I ultimately prefer the manga on the whole for its seamless pacing and excellent artwork, which has a liveliness to it that Toei's limited animation simply wasn't sophisticated enough to capture.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finished collecting the entire series in Viz Big editions earlier this year, myself. I also still have normal volumes of the series - the first Dragon Ball volume and volumes 17-26 of Dragon Ball Z. Fun fact: DBZ volume 18 was the very first ever volume of manga I ever bought, back in the March of 2005. I remember being confused reading parts of it because I wasn't used to reading unflipped manga back then. Ah...fond memories. Dragon Ball has given me so, so many fond memories...

I'm not really interested in collecting the Full Color editions, myself, mostly because I prefer manga in black and white, outside of a few exceptions (part 6 of JoJo's, for example, looks incredible in color). I have read the first few volumes of it, though, and they look solid, but at the same time I did feel something was lost in the digital coloring process from the original, but maybe that's just me being biased.

While I do still like the first anime, a lot of it for sentimental reasons, a lot of it because it does hold up as a fine adaption, there is definitely a cheapness to it that really weakens it and makes it feel less lively and energetic compared to the manga. The first Dr. Slump anime is the same way, though worse, since by slowing down the pace of that series Toei weakened the effect of a lot of it's humor. The Dragon Ball anime, in contrast, still managed to preserve the spirit of the show despite it's limitations, and even went out of the way to try and flesh out parts of it, much to great effect, which is why I still appreciate it, and why it's still one of my top favorite anime.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I love the Dragon Ball anime (I really don't like Z, though), and the filler is actually mostly great, but I just always end up going back to the manga as my preferred version because of the gorgeous artwork and style which I feel that Toei could never quite capture with their budget animation.

[Avaitor]

You should probably go for the Viz Big editions in order to save some money.

Yeah, that's the plan!

I think I'll get all of DB's first, then go for Kenshin's, since I've read all of the latter, but I have yet to fully experience DB in its original form.

[gunswordfist]

read samurai executioner.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, and on the subject of Dragon Ball Z in full color, while I agree with CX that the original art was perfect the way that it was, I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment that it loses something but doesn't add anything when published in color. Rather, it has a different, novel quality to it entirely, and one that I find to be very appealing in its own right.

It's sort of like a really well-done blend between the style of manga and Western superhero comics, which I find to be appropriate if only because the later parts of DB, while unquestionably very Japanese in execution, always had a quality to it that did often remind me of something I'd find in a silver age superhero comic rather than a typical shonen manga. I specifically mean more of the Sci-Fi elements, including how parts of Goku's backstory feel similar to Superman's (while still being its own thing entirely), the heroes fighting an Alien overlord on an exotic planet far outside the confines of their own galaxy, a plotline involving a hero from an alternate timeline teaming up with the main group to take down artificial humans and a bioengineered life form created by an old enemy. This is stuff that you just don't see in any other manga that I can think of, and if you were to just describe it to me without me actually ever having even heard of Dragon Ball before, I would think that you were talking about a comic book rather than a manga. Of course, in execution, it's unquestionably nothing like a superhero comic book, but some of that vibe is still there, and seeing the manga in full color kind of brings that out a bit more, and I just kind of like that for some reason. I'd honestly own both the original black and white version if I had the money (I'm really a massive Dragon Ball fan, so it'd be worth it for me) but right now I can't afford either, so it's a moot point, anyways.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, CX, I know that none of that stuff was ever Akira Toriyama's intent. I've read as much in some of his interviews, and if anything American ever influenced his work, it was classic Sci-Fi films rather than any comic book. My basic point being that, regardless of what his intentions were, it still came off to me the way that I described above. So there's no need to "correct" me on that bit.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, who knows, maybe he was inspired by some western superhero comics. He was at least familiar with them. I mean...



...is a major recurring character in Dr. Slump, after all. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

He also had a cameo in the Penguin Village arc of Dragon Ball, as well.

That said, from what I've gathered from interviews, Toriyama didn't consider himself to take a substantial amount of influence from superheroes, but I could be wrong as I'm thinking of some stuff that I read a few years back.

Fun (Unrelated) Fact: Nobuhiro Watsuki actually did take some influence from American Comic Books. I'm pretty sure I've already said this multiple times before, but Aoshi's costume design was directly modeled after Gambit's iconic coat, and Yatsume's mask was designed to resemble Venom's head.

[gunswordfist]

i was going to mention watsuki. i had no clue aoshi's design was based off of gambit's. he is a big fan of jim lee. i believe kujiranami is supposed to look like apocalypse and otowa appears to be a combo of the joker and mr. sinister to me. also, the turtles straight up have cameos in early chapters.

[LumRanmaYasha]

He also had a cameo in the Penguin Village arc of Dragon Ball, as well.

That said, from what I've gathered from interviews, Toriyama didn't consider himself to take a substantial amount of influence from superheroes, but I could be wrong as I'm thinking of some stuff that I read a few years back.

He cameoed in that arc because he is one of the main characters in the series and Toriyama had all the main characters make brief cameos in it. But in general Toriyama loved the Suppaman character. Originally he was the antagonist of a one-shot he did and he later wanted to make a series around him, but his editor shot it down, so he later ended up incorporating him into Dr. Slump instead.

He certainly didn't take a huge amount of influence from superhero comics, but he must have read some or watched film adaptions of them, so I'm sure some elements from them could have seeped into his work. Of course he's admitted to not being much of a manga or anime reader/viewer in general, and mostly was just inspired by television and movies, primarily of the sci-fi and martial-arts/action variety.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I know that he's a fan of Alien, among other films. I do distinctly remember him stating that in one of his old interviews, claiming that it was one of his early influences, and Freeza's 3rd form was also clearly paying tribute to the general design of a Xenomorph.

Personally I think that it's really cool when writers take influence from the works that they love from their childhood, not just from their own country, but from others as well. It makes their own indifividual works come off feeling more dynamic and unique. I think that's why I'm personally more attracted to series like Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Rurouni Kenshin, and various other classic shonen series from the 70's to 90's than I am to most modern shonen that I try to get into. That doesn't mean that the influences aren't there, but I can't help but feel that a lot of modern mangaka (not all, but still a fair number) seem to take most of their influence just from other manga, video games, and exclusively Japanese products, which isn't by any means a bad thing in and of itself, but a lot of their series tend to feel a bit less dynamic to me, personally.

For instance, I like Kuroko no Basket on the whole, but when you compare it to Slam Dunk, where Takehiko took WAY more influence in his work than just manga, you can see which series is clearly the stronger for it. Either that, or I'm just too biased, but that's about how I feel.

Also, what I said applies to Western series as well, of course.

Also, while we're on the subject of writers and their foreign influences:

Eichiro Oda- A huge fan of early Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino, and I would argue that you could probably see a tiny bit of the former's influence in his work, but not really any of the latter.

Osamu Tezuka- Was heavily influenced by the early works of Walt Disney (but that one was obvious).

Hirohiko Araki- A huge fan of Western music, with many references to his favorite songs, albums, and artists dispersed throughout his work.

I know that I'm missing plenty, but that's just what I can say off the top of my head. Does anyone have any to add to this list?