DRAGON BALL SUPER

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionDragon Ball Kai (2014)
MANGA ActionDragon Ball Super
ANIME ActionDragon Ball Z
ONA ActionSuper Dragon Ball Heroes
MOVIE ActionDragon Ball Z: Fukkatsu no "F"
MOVIE ActionDragon Ball Z: Kami to Kami
ANIME AdventureDr. Slump: Arale-chan
MANGA ActionGinga Patrol Jako
MANGA ActionDragon Ball Gaiden: Tensei-shitara Yamcha Datta Ken
MOVIE ActionDragon Ball Super: Broly
ONA ActionDragon Ball: Annecy Festival 60th Anniversary
SPECIAL ActionDragon Ball Z: The Real 4-D at Super Tenkaichi Budokai
ANIME ActionDragon Ball DAIMA

REVIEWS

• 

  AniFanatic

  74/100
  A great ride but just has so many problems

  I love the dragon ball series starting from kid Goku's adventures to fighting baddies and saving the universe. But there is a major problem that stems from the beginning of Super. It's the power scaling They introduce to us all these forms SSB, SSG, and continue to say that they are on god level with these forms. Yet someone like frieza who never trains a day in his life decides to train for four months and is on par with SSB Goku. Also Android 17 just because of the fact that he possesses infinite stamina and energy he too can fight on par with SSB. Krillin beam struggles a SSB Goku which doesn't make any sense at all. The pacing is completely wack with no development for characters at all I mean Piccolo is a freaking babysitter. They commit to many episodes to a arc with no build up or development. It's such a massive disappointment especially since said arc was teased so early in DBS's run. They didn't give a single character justice except for maybe Future Trunks or Roshi in TOP but TOP was a mess``. I miss the days where a weaker character would fight against a stronger one using tactics to beat their opponent whilst their life is on the line now it's just SSJ SSJ and SSJ. Super portrays Goku as a one dimensional idiot who is written to be dumber than what he was in dragon ball Z. Goku's character by nature is innocent and childish he has moments of cluelessness in Dragon ball Z but they never overstay their welcome. However in Dragon ball super they ruin the maturity of Goku's character. Goku by the cell arc showed a fraction of his naivety and his gullible nature, instead we see a character who has gained a lot of wisdom and experience and serves as a guiding force for the younger warriors such as Gohan, Goten and Trunks. This doesn't mean that Goku isn't silly or playful, in the manga Goku is a dependable warrior who looks like he knows what he is doing. By the end of Dragon Ball Z he not only shares his wisdom with his family but with Uub by choosing to help him by controlling his inner power. Goku is though to be a selfish character who doesn't value his family, but moments like Goku training with Gohan in the Cell arc of sacrificing himself during the cell games. And his relationship with Pan and his family at the end of Dragon Ball Z refute these notions. I'm not saying Goku is a perfect character It's just that his flaws were more balanced in the previous installments of the series. Toriyama even says that there is poison in his character, but Super just plays on the stupidity of Goku by dumbing his character down and rewriting him into a naive immature version of himself who at first glance doesn't appear to have a finely honed ability in martial arts. Super rarely exaggerates Goku's innocence and stupidity. The only time he isn't being a simpleton is in battles whereas previously Goku's maturity was always reassuring. Typically in the cell and Buu arcs when I was younger I knew cell and Buu were incredibly strong but my confidence in Goku always reassured me. that he seemed like he has something up his sleeve. Dragon Ball Super doesn't ignite the same level of confidence that I had before. it is just an example of lazy writing. So that wraps it up.

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• 

  Tobi404

  2/100
  Why I grew to hate Dragon Ball as a franchise in my adult years

  I like many many many people here grew up with the Dragon Ball Series as one of my first anime experiences. As a child I had nothing but love for it and thought Goku and his pales were the coolest strongest best characters ever. However as I kept aging , seeing other frankly better written anime and having deeper more adult experiences I learned how false this was or at least how false it was for me. The series is terribly written and at this point mostly a cash cow with little to no merit. I'll explain the main reasons why I grew to feel this way here.

  You want the biggest reason why as I got older I grew to hate the Dragon Ball franchise? I'll gladly give you it then , it's because they throw characters away. If you aren't a saiyan ect you get thrown away most of the time. Once your importance or more so your " power level " reaches it's peak you are thrown off the sidelines with at most the hope of becoming a funny comedic character at worst being written out of the series.

  No one got this treatment worse than Yamcha. Yamcha is probably the genuinely nicest guy out of Son Goku's pales and he was just a nice fun guy who wanted to get married and have a family. He not only got that taken away but he was forced to become a joke character. Never forgot that he defeated the Saibamen in battle but it kamikazee him and they both died. Krillin admitted NONE OF THE OTHERS would have survived that move either. He was NEVER weak ... until the creators and more importantly the fans MADE HIM weak. In the past yeah he was not exactly the strongest of Goku's friends but he was never weak in fact he was one of the strongest fighters on the earth and he showed it a lot. Filler even had him beating the piss out of Recoome ect among many other feats.

  It wouldn't last though. Eventually due to immense fan backlash and hate and contempt for the character as well as his waxing role in the series after Vegeta and Bulma get together he was pushed further and further onto the sidelines until they actually made him a weakling who could not beat any even remotely competent fighter. Culminating an the insulting gag Manga " That time I got reincarnated as Yamcha " in which a youth gets reincarnated as Yamcha but since he;s not Yamcha he gets to be strong. The joke is he gets reincarnated as the weakest most pathetic most worthless character in the series but manages to become strong. Despite how it seems its not an inspiring or beautiful message it;s just a way to take a steaming dump on a character who lost his limelight and was once considered one of Toriyama's favorite now became a complete 100% gag character.

  This behavior has been the status quo for a long time now for Yamcha. With scenes like him falling during the baseball game in Super mimicking his " humiliating " pose when he died against the Saibamen. The fact that he was strong at the time , the fact that all the other heroes would have died from that attack is completely ignored and pushed to the sied simply to mock and humiliate him eve further. To me this is a great representation of the lack of heart and soul in Toriyama's writing as it gets staler and staler. When a character is not popular any more they are tossed aside and literally pushed into the garbage.

  Krillin or " Kuririn " was lucky. He was Goku's best friend so he would always be important to the plot and he got a very strong wife which would further ensure his status as " important " even if he was not the strongest. Yamcha however was the " loser " who got dumped for the strong cool Vegeta a hip fan favorite so he had to go ... either that or he had to become the biggest laughing stock in the entire franchise. In a way he was dealt both blows. His importance was reduced to zero and his skills and power was reduced bellow zero. He became a pure and simple joke character with nothing going for him other than his baseball career. They could not even throw him a bone and let him get Krillin's old love interest Maron who was attracted to him in the past
  I know she's " filler " but she could still easily be accepted into further instalments of the anime version ) , they gave him nothing ultimately. That is nothing except the honor of being the butt of just about every joke and insult imagainable.

  Anyway that's enough about how they destroyed a wonderful character .... I want to talk about another issue with the series. The Secondary problem with Dragon ball is the power levels. This actually links back to what I was talking about earlier about how certain characters get thrown away though. It just so happens the less popular characters magically end up being weaker ... at least for the most part anyway. How convenient that for so long everyone who wasn't a saiyan was nearly totally useless. Unlike more well written anime everything in dragon ball comes back to power levels. It doesn't matter how strange or how unique or devastating an ability is as long as the other opponents power level is higher he or she will win every single time no matter what literally period full stop.

  Now if you ask me this will make for some very very boring fights. The fights in Dragon Ball after Frieza had become so stale , so power level based , so typical and so predictable it just started to lose any interest whatsoever. Krillin: " Did we get him? " the villain is hidden in a cloud of smoke as the other characters wonder if they killed him before he walks out of the smoke completely unharmed and proceeds to defeat every last one of them. Such became the status quo. When nothing matters except power levels the battles become soulless and mindless instead of intense , beautiful and moving struggles the battles become tedious pathetically written dribble that repeats on a continuous loop. This isn't interesting and it doesn't do anything except turn my stomach in disgust and abject boredom.

  The epitome of this problem is shown in Future Trunks final battle with Zamasu in which his victory is cut short because Zamasu has become vaper. That's right he became vaper! VAPER! So what do they do you might ask .. why bring in a new guy with a higher power level and he cleans things up nicely. The struggle and beauty of Trunk's victory is taken away. He used all the feelings of the earthlings who had suffered for so many years at the hands of the androids and others and used the power of their souls and feelings to win but in the end it meant .... NOTHING! In the end his struggle is NOTHING and he is humiliated and forced to step aside while a new character cleans house with the flick of his wrist. This scene right here was the final nail in the coffin for Dragon Ball for me and it killed nearly any and all love I have towards the franchise. For years I had been growing steadily angrier and angrier at how the series had been going and the direction it was taking but this was the very end for me and I buried it that night and locked it out of my heart. I was done and there was no turning back ... for me Dragon Ball had died that night but it was not so much that it had died but that I had finally completely outgrown any enjoyment of it whatsoever.

  My third and final complaint with Dragon Ball which I will cover a bit more briefly than the above is how death has no weight for these characters. In other anime character deaths are almost always final and can be a heartbreaking tragic yet beautiful send off for characters we've come to truly love as if they were our own friends and family in some cases. In dragon ball however death is as simple as " oh Piccolo died? Well no problem we can just wish him back! How cool is that? lol. " Something as final and as irrevocable as death has become the equivalent of dying in a video game. You died? Don't worry you save the game just restart from that point. Character deaths which are the cornerstone of emotions of loss and sorrow in fiction has been reduced to a fun little game or a slight inconvenience at best.

  Let it sink in how truly soulless this is! Death itself has been negated to all but meaningless and is now just a small inconvenience. Meanwhile in billions upon billions of other stories ( as well as our own lives ! ( well written lovable characters and our own loved ones are dying and being lost! They are moving our hearts as well as breaking them and making us look deep within ourselves at what truly makes us tick and what truly makes us human. There is one single thing of importance in this world and that is love and all it's forms and to lose a loved one is the most painful experience imaginable. The sorrow of loss never goes away and that pain remains in the heart as scars of sadness and despair that can both make us stronger and destroy us. To demote that to a mere inconvenience is truly soulless and it is an example of a childish brainless mind that only cares about making money and the status quo of keeping the power level induced fights rolling.

  So in conclusion these are my issues and complaints with a series I loved in my youth but grew to hate with intensity in adulthood. If you enjoy the series then good for you! Don't give me spam or hate or any bullshit or toxicity. Simply express your opinions intelligently and with maturity if you wish to. If you hate the series like I do you have my virtual pat on the back lol. Wishing you happiness and love .... peace out readers!

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• 

  WhatAGoodShow

  0/100
  Evil Goku? Female Broly? Golden Frieza? Blue haired Super Saiyan? Is this fanfiction? No, this is Dragon Ball Super...

  This review is written as a long time fan of the franchise that watched Dragon Ball since the beginning. And considering it is a continuation of an existing franchise, it won't be possible for me to evaluate it based on its own.
  I will use Japanese Terms mainly because I watched it mainly in Japanese. Whenever I know the English Terms, I will use them.

  Dragon Ball Super is a casual continuation of Dragon Ball and can be considered filler since it takes place within the timespan of the defeat of Majin Boo from the anime Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Z Kai and the manga Dragon Ball AND before Goku meets Oob. Meaning if you watch Dragon Ball Super expecting any high stacks that matter and real consequences that affect how characters will act at the end, you are watching the wrong anime. Moreso the ending of Dragon Ball has been out there for 3 decades. Meaning unless you are very new to Dragon Ball, there is no reason to watch Dragon Ball Super unless you are starving for more Dragon Ball.
  So in terms of tension, Dragon Ball Super has nothing to offer even if the universe is stated to be threatened to be destroyed because everyone who watched the previous shows know how it ends.

  Dragon Ball Super can be described as a Dragon Ball series with all the flaws of previous Dragon Ball series but with non of its strength.

  • it is as repetitive and unoriginal as the "story" of Z
  • Most the characters are useless like in GT
  • fan service and homages have higher priority over consistency and following the rules of the series, including its own, like in Super Dragon Ball Heroes

  On top of that Dragon Ball Super has its own flaws that ruin it further.
  For example, what is the story of Dragon Ball Super anyways?
  If you read any Dragon Ball fanfiction in the past decade, you can predict the story of Dragon Ball Super pretty easily.
  First arc focuses on a cat named Bills who is the god of destruction who Toriyama pulled out of his ass like Majin Boo by never mentioning until this very moment. Like in the Battle of Gods movie, he dreamed about a Super Saiyan God of all things which is also a prophecy. The entire premise of this arc is a plothole since it can't be fulfilled in other timelines because Dragon Ball is a show with multiple of them.
  The movie already was a waste of time with lots of slice of life filler that went nowhere. But as a story arc, it is dragged out to 12 episodes.

  The second arc is another movie rehash and basically filler in filler since Frieza comes back for the billions of time to lose again. Since the more powerful God of Destruction and his more powerful teacher is around, there is nothing to worry about even after Frieza became stronger than Goku and Vegeta with his pallet swap power up.

  The U6 arc which can be considered the best arc. It is a pointless Tournament which only exist to introduce the Super Dragon Balls which are always collected off screen and set up another Tournament. It is just a discount Otherworld Tournament arc from Dragon Ball Z which is filler. Only that that filler arc had meaningful stacks. The fights in the Tournament were better in the manga. The fight against the final boss was pretty underwhelming with the only highlight being Goku using an old technique he retired.

  Future Trunks arc is another filler inside filler arc since nothing of that arc affects the main timeline in Super itself except having 2 god of everything. Goku gets a plot device that could end this arc immediately and there is a guy they can ask everything. But instead they just waste their time by being stupid and not doing the obvious. The premise is also stupid since the enemy is a time travelling evil Goku who can turn into a pink Super Saiyan who in reality is an evil Kaioshin.

  Tournament of Power is by far the worst arc in the franchise. Goku is shown to be the dumbest character forgetting everything he learned over the course of the series and being a complete asshole. It also set up Vegeta's role in the series. Someone obsessed with Kakarot and they keep taking turns fighting. Then Vegeta would be beaten up and has to realize that either:

  • "Only Kakarot can save us"
  • "We need to work together, Kakarot."
    Like in the manga and movies Goku and Vegeta keep doing the same mistakes which even apply to the arcs I won't cover.

  These are just a fractions of the issues that make Dragon Ball Super as bad it is.

  Homages and easter eggs. By itself fan service isn't a bad thing but that is all Super can do. The iconic Final Flash scene was rehashed twice in Super taking away the magic that made the one in the Cell Saga amazing.
  Characters use outdated techniques even if it makes no sense such as the Special Beam Cannon which Piccolo still needs to charge for a long time instead of using the improved version from his fight against Nappa. Worse of all is that Piccolo used that technique during a Tournament where killing is illegal which makes no sense because the Special Beam Cannon like the Kienzan is a Killing Technique.

  Many characters got ruined too by the writers flanderizing their character traits or writing them like fans see them. Like Goku being an incompetent father and husband that can't think of anything but fighting and food even going as far as knowingly putting others in danger.
  Vegeta like stated earlier is still a tsundere for Kakarot.
  Piccolo is a girl for everything of the son family. He is Pan's babysitter and Gohan's personal meatshield.
  Not a single character in Dragon Ball Super is well-written or interesting.

  Flanderizing aside characters got ruined in other ways too like Trunks becoming a final fantasy reject character who cries all the time. His character being nothing like his original more serious and hopeful self who experienced 17 years of the androids wrath. And after losing everything he got over it almost immediately.
  Goku has become too strong for the writers so in order to give others a chance he became stupid to the point he forgot basic things like keeping his guard up in a tournament where his universe suppose to be at stake.

  Regarding Goku, before Super started Goku trained already under several gods and surpassed them. Dragon Ball Super devalued that by introducing a God that is far above Goku and he has to obtain a Godly power to even put up a fight. With this the writers devalued Goku's accomplishments in prior arc since he needed the power of a god. But now he can't even beat gods with Godly Powers and on top of that characters he surpassed manage to catch up or even surpass him. Those characters don't even use godly powers themselves. To put it simply there was no point in Goku obtaining Godly Powers in long terms since it only existed to satisfy Bills.

  Fanservice in general is plenty in Super and it ain't good. We get Vegito but with the cost of ruining what made him special. We get female Super Saiyans under the cost of ruining the efforts of established characters.
  We see Roshi fight again in exchange of ruining the power scaling and breaking the rules of the series. That is why fights in Dragon Ball Super can't be taken seriously. Nothing makes sense and anyone can be stronger than anyone through "off screen training". They become literally as strong as the writers want. And while that can be said about any series, if it doesn't seem believable, then it isn't well done. That is the difference between a well-told story and a badly told one.
  Heck, there is a character that is literally a gender swap of an iconic movie villain.

  You will hear the animation is amazing but that is only partly true. The early part of Dragon Ball Super looks like some kid animated it with Microsoft Paint. The fights look stiff too and barely any thought put into it. The last arc with claimed amazing animation is just the artstyle. Unique animation barely exists and most of it is repeated. Goku vs Jiren is just same punches and kicks only with Goku's hair color matching his current transformation. Episodes 129 to 131 have almost no original animation.

  The music is fine but most the series the thing you see and the soundtrack don't match. Most the soundtrack is also from Dragon Ball Kai if not all. They didn't even remix it like how Z did some original Dragon Ball soundtracks like Piccolo's theme.

  Another problem is characters stating the obvious a lot of times. Like during the Tournament of Power we see people in the bench infodumbing what another character is doing because the animators either suck displaying what is happening on screen or state the obvious like when Goku goes Super Saiyan Blue that "Goku went Super Saiyan Blue".

  Speaking of Super Saiyan Blue, that form got spammed against literal fodder. Even against Krillin and Android 17 which should be far below Goku's base power. Even if Goku can hold back a significant portion of his power while transformed, it devalues this power up that suppose to be stronger than anything we had seen thus far.

  One last criticism are the transformation power ups. They are all pallet swaps so far:

  • Golden Frieza: Final Form Frieza but Gold
  • Super Saiyan God: Base form Saiyan with reddish pink hair
  • Super Saiyan Blue: Blue haired Super Saiyan
  • Super Saiyan Rose: Pink haired Super Saiyan
  • Ultra Instinct: White Haired Super Saiyan God
    and it will go on more and more.

  Overall it is impossible for me to recommend this to anyone even if you are desperate for more Dragon Ball. Read any fanfiction and you get the same result.

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