You get settled in, enjoy whats shaping up to be a great series, look forward to seeing what happens with the characters once they’re introduced … aaand the writing trips over it’s own feet and faceplants into the ground like so many defeated enemies.
What’s the worst one out there, and what happened to it?
So for me it would have to be the original Dragon Ball tv show. I fell in love with the show around the Tien Saga for how meticulously animated the fighting was. Every punch and kick was seen and the focus was on martial arts. This continued through the King Piccolo saga, which I also loved.
However, I was massively disappointed with the Piccolo Jr saga. To me, it seems like the show switched from being focused on martial arts to generic energy blasts and poorly animated “flurry of blows” that really watered down the quality of the fights. Where before we had well drawn punches and kicks now we had people yelling loudly while blasting energy beams.
I’ll die on the hill that this was a “jumping the shark” for the Dragon Ball franchise that it never fully recovered from. Future DBZ seasons were a bit more creative (thinking of Goku holding Raditz while Piccolo blasted him) but the show as whole never really returned to being about “martial arts” the way it was before.
I feel like an old man shaking my fist at a cloud though, as I’ve yet to meet one single person who misses that focus/aspect of the old show.
I saw a lot of DBZ when it was on Cartoon Network, and was always interested in seeing the original series but at that point I didn’t have any way to … DBZ was never my sort of thing (too many episodes spent “powering up” with no real story), do you think going back and seeing Dragonball is worth it despite the lapse in martial arts quality?
Eh if you want to scratch that itch I’d say just watch Yu Yu Hakusho instead. It’s slow to start in season 1 but it has the best animated martial arts combat I’ve ever seen. Absolutely worth a watch IMO
I’m not super into martial arts (I can definitely enjoy a well animated fight scene though), I was more curious about the world of Dragonball (because there were little snippets in the credits of Dragonball Z, which I hadn’t thought about in years until your comment) … does Yu Yu Hakusho have a good story?
I think so. It’s the story of a punk kid who dies pushing a small child out of the way of a speeding car. Because he died committing a selfless act he gets a chance to earn his life back.
This leads to him being a “spirit investigator” where he has to track down rogue spirits and other evil influences of the “other world”. There’s a lot more to the show too, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I’d say it’s definitely worth a watch.
Ok, that does sound good - I’ve added it to the watch list, thank you :-)
Happy to help! :]