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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - A Trip Down Memory Lane with Dragon Ball Z
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1879 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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While Dragon Ball Z's impact in the public spotlight in America is indisputable as far as its legacy on Cartoon Network is concerned, it's also arguably, the most controversial considering the history of FUNimation's handling of the property, its release history that force fed the change to season set format at the expense of industry devotes without compromise, and the dysfunction that resulted from it. Ergo, I'm one of the few people who can no longer look at the property in a respectable light over it due to the result of such controversies.
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TheFanCon
Posts: 48 |
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Wasn't really expecting a feature on this series at this time. Well, it's been over 30 years since its original run and over 20 since it was officially imported to the US (for the second time, the first was by HG and it wasn't all that successful for clear reasons).
Glad to see what version was featured in the discussion, it's certainly true that the movies for this series were a trend setter for future series (like not just One Piece but also Naruto would have the same kinds of movies especially in its Z-esque second anime division, although I do prefer the ones in DBZ even if they're rehashes of some saga or other). |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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I could list several others, but 4Kids handling of One Piece easily trumps anything FUNi did to DBZ. I’m baffled at why moving to season sets should be controversial, we know by now that was going to be inevitable given anime’s growing popularity so the “it has to be expensive 4-episode singles, the hobby is too niche!” argument was rapidly losing strength, and I’d be utterly baffled by any consumer who wanted to never progress from 3 to 4-episode singles (unless you just wanted to spend more money for the exact same value). |
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Xeogran
 Posts: 33 |
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The jab at GT was unnecessary. The series still, after 25 years, has a lot of fans and continues getting new content in many shapes and forms (merch, game characters, new SS4 powerups in Heroes).
I wouldn't mind a repeat of what happened in GT, because I like that series 
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KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1879 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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4Kids had already shown from Day 1 that they had no intention of giving the source material a respectable release considering the demographic they were aiming towards but this is a whataboutism. We're talking about Dragon Ball Z, not One Piece. Furthermore, the move towards season sets would've been seen as controversial during the discussions of the era, at least on the Japanese side, because of concerns about Japanese fans reverse importing the sets due to how expensive local Japanese releases were which would've affected the ROI on the side of the production companies who wanted local demographic revenue. Even further, the cancellation of singles in favor of box sets during existing volume releases of singles left industry supporters out in the cold with no means of resolution to their patronage. Read up on a little piece of history called the Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Uncut Special Editions to understand more of this controversy. It's a legitimate case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. |
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dabanbo
Posts: 24 |
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The jab at GT is wholly necessary. It killed the anime franchise for almost 20 years. |
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doctordoom85
Posts: 2093 |
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Then specify you meant controversy regarding DBZ specifically (which is silly, a single series is not likely to a significant amount of controversies to warrant one being “most”) as opposed to the anime industry as a whole, so spare me the whataboutism (god, how did that become a phrase? So unpleasant to say). The singles bit I legit am trying not to laugh at. So what, FUNimation was supposed to meet up with ADV, Geneon, Bandai Ent., etc. and all work together to time the shift to box sets so no one had to alter things? Please. The clock was ticking on the shift to box sets, it’s not FUNimation’s fault they were smart enough to make the push. As for Japan, it’s been well established they block importing of anime DVDs and eventually BRs from outside their country so it should have little impact on how North America and other outside countries handle their releases. Not to mention ridiculous, a single country’s way of handling video releases of a series should not dictate the entire world’s handling of that series purely because the first country has a more niche set of consumers. Lord knows even Aniplex of America figured this out (somewhat). They still release more expensive sets compared to everyone else, but they’ve stopped bothering with 3 to 4 episode singles like they did with Kill la Kill, or even 6 episode sets like Erased. They also weren’t foolish enough to limit the home video release of Demon Slayer, a massive title, to a AoA release, so they gave the CE version to AoA and the regular sets to FUNimation. This is the way the North American market and others were going to be, as the fandom grew over time. It was either adapt or get left behind. I’m not about to throw FUNimation under the bus for having good business tactics and understanding the shifting market. That would be ridiculous. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 102 |
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That's.. not true at all. Dragonball was not meant to be a "franchise" like it is now. Toei animated all of the Toriyama's original manga and when it ended it was still popular so Toei asked Toriyama to help them make GT to milk it more. GT was quite successful and sold well going off the VHS numbers put out there. It didn't 'kill' Dragonball because Dragonball was already ended at that point. Sure, now we have tons of spin-off anime, manga, and it's being milked like a dead cow with Toriyama only in a 'supervisory' role, whatever that means, but it ended on it's own terms up until the Son Goku and Friends OVA in 2008 As far as the handling of the franchise in America, yeah, Saban/Funi Dragonball was awful back in the day and was the mockery of anime dubs before 4Kids came along to take that crown from them with Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and One Piece, but it had lasting effects on the franchise like names, the music, people who still think Goku is a heroic Superman-eque figure rather than a dumb shounen hero who likes to fight, and all that stuff. It's better now, but not perfect. I don't know if the OG Dragonball ever got a proper re-dub along with GT, or they just pretend Kai is the defacto version now, but yeah, I remember all those bad releases with poor video quality and cropped video. I think the Dragonboxes were the first good release,, to my memory. |
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dabanbo
Posts: 24 |
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There are no "VHS" numbers. GT didn't have a home release in Japan until 2005 on DVD, nearly a decade after it finished airing. They attempted to turn it into a long-running franchise at the time and completely failed because it lacked any kind of consistent direction, and GT's ratings in Japan compared to Z's are abysmal as a result. I was specific about the "anime" franchise, not the franchise as a whole. Even if you say "it was never meant to be turned into that" I hardcore disagree. If GT was near as successful as its predecessors, it likely would have lead to some kind of long-running continuous anime. I think the closest parallel I could think of here would be it could've been similar to what happened with Yu-Gi-Oh and its myriad sequels/spin-offs. Last edited by dabanbo on Wed Jun 28, 2023 6:18 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Avec ou Nous
Posts: 122 |
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@doctordoom85
There's something to be said of singles. I don't buy much anime these days, and when I do it's mostly importing from Japan, but I adore the way they look. High-quality, chipboard , embossed covers, tons of extras, neatly packaged. I only do it for series I truly like as If I just want to watch something I'll do it online. If I buy something I want to collect it and a gross brick with a spindle of 6 disks clumped together isn't really my jam. But for the average American market, i suppose cheap season box sets is what people want. I wonder how much demand there are for those in the era of streaming though. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6087 |
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The DragonBall IP by the time GT came into existence in addition to the original manga which had 42 volumes. Had two anime, numerous video games, three TV specials with a fourth that followed after the end of GT How was it not meant to be a franchise?
I mean we can say that now with the benefit of hindsight. But if it truly did no damage then Super wouldn’t blatantly look like it’s attempting to pretend GT never happened. Though it does retain some elements from GT such as having the Pilaf Gang unintentionally using the DragonBalls to make someone younger and Bulla.
The U.S. had not been getting good anime dubs that were also unedited by and large even before DragonBall and later Z came around. Or are we going to sit here and pretend that stuff like Battle Of The Planets, Star Blazers, Robotech, & Voltron were good simply because these properties despite being bastardized so much from their original writing the dubs effectively turned them into completely new series. They’re fondly remembered by people who watched them as kids and even accept their existence even while acknowledging the original series they’re all based off of. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2589 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Not really, because Yu-Gi-Oh! anime continues to exist solely because the card game is still a big success, and each new anime is made to help advertise the new generation of cards (& accompanying rules) that continually come out. Dragon Ball isn't continually being made because it acts (in large part) as a promotion to another medium, so the comparison isn't truly fitting. Also, people want to act like GT "killed" things, but it's not actually true. After GT finished airing Toei debuted the Dr. Slump reboot anime the following week, and that series is what eventually killed the roughly 18+-year (1981 to 1999) stretch of weekly TV anime based on Akira Toriyama manga, because while Dragon Ball was the main part of that entire run, it was Dr. Slump that both started & ended it. Finally, a literal month after Dr. Slump '99 ended, One Piece began, so a proper replacement for DB was there. Simply put, there's no way Dragon Ball would have been able to continue for much longer after GT anyway, because by its very nature it requires a continual escalation of conflict, and an attempt to veer back to DB's more adventure-oriented roots with GT's early episodes showed that execution wouldn't appeal to viewers anymore, either. Simply put, Dragon Ball needed a rest come 1997, because it had been long overexposed. |
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Fedora-san
 Posts: 464 |
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GT is constantly referenced and brought up in various Dragonball media. It's hardly ignored or treated like some kind of black sheep no one mentions and pretends never happened. If we're going purely off what the 'canon' is then it doesn't really matter anyway since none of the original anime movies are canon either but people still love them and characters like Cooler, Janemba, and Broly. And in cases like Broly where they now say they're 'canon' with a new versio the original version still show up in media like FighterZ because plenty of people like that one more. Dragonball is, for better or worse, a multiverse at this point with multiple versions of the same character. If we want to get really technical, even Battle of the Gods and Resurrection F movies ignore the original ending of the manga and anime since it had a time skip forward and was what the basis for GT was with an older Pan being the star. And once we get into the Super anime the canon becomes completely muddied and indecipherable because now we're mixing in the Super manga storylines with the movie canon and additionally the anime canon which had it's own adaption of Battle of the Gods and Resurrection F which played out differently and honestly doesn't make sense time-line wise like how none of the old movies ever made sense either. By Broly nothing really makes sense any more because in the Super manga the Moro and Granola arcs happen after Broly but the manga never covers Broly and just assumes you watched the movie. But then the manga does Super Hero which takes place after Moro and Granola yet the anime decided to make that the most recent movie so is Moro going to be a flashback or changed to be after Super Hero now if the anime ever continues? GT's placement in the timeline isn't anywhere near as confusing since it could always be at the tail end after everything else, even if it wouldn't make much sense now without retcons for characters like Freeza and 17. But you could say that about the original manga ending at this point as well. Personally speaking, I was completely fine with DB > DBZ > GT. Things were a lot less confusing back then before modern era Dragonball. |
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doctordoom85
Posts: 2093 |
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Let’s not act like GT didn’t have some confusing messy elements to it as well. Beyond the dumb and unclear ending (also unearned, having Goku say goodbye to Krillin and Piccolo is so frustrating as the latter two barely appeared in GT. Felt like the anime was trying to earn goodwill but I wasn’t falling for it, don’t act like these characters who got proper focus in OG and Z were treated the same here), the complete retcon of Frieza being the strongest active being in the universe when his saga began (don’t get me wrong, that was a massive L in basic world building on Toriyama’s part, but it was canon whether we like it or not) as even Super handled that aspect better, and arguably the most inconsistent power scale moment imaginable when kid base Goku holds off Omega Shenron’s blast.
You’re also way over complicating Super. The initial two movies are not canon. The manga is its own thing and the anime is its own thing. Yes, the manga skipped Broly but do the following arcs even connect to the events of Broly at all? Also, you’re misusing “ignoring the ending”. Being set before the ending of Z isn’t ignoring it, it’s an interquel. The Super manga (can’t remember if the anime does this) even shows Uub is out there somewhere before he meets Goku. And yes, Super ignores GT, this should have been obvious really early on in Super. Toriyama even stated that GT is essentially an alternate timeline (but not like a timeline created by time travel and such). |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6087 |
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The video games and related stuff like Heroes whose canonicity is jank yes. But not Super. Not to mention even if people don’t like some aspects of GT such as the story they do like things like Omega Sheron & SS4 Gogeta who you’re not going to be able to not make merchandise of or feature as playable characters in the video games.
While that is true that’s generally only taken into consideration with stuff like Heroes & Xenoverse. Super hasn’t yet shown there to be a universe with “exact” alternate versions of the same characters. Which I would think the fanbase would be fine with given how having two or more versions of Goku running around would probably cause some people to hate Goku even more.
I’m glad I don’t follow the manga version of Super outside of simply reading the synopsis’ . As it makes the worst of Toriyama’s writing look flawless. And the Moro & Granolah arcs were easily the dumbest arcs in the manga. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:45 am; edited 2 times in total |
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