Dragon Ball

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Alternativas: English: Dragon Ball
Synonyms: Dragonball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragonball Z
Japanese: ドラゴンボール
Autor: Toriyama, Akira
Modelo: Mangá
Volumes: 42
Capítulos: 520
Status: Finished
Publicar: 1984-11-20 to 1995-05-23
Serialização: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

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4.5
(31 Votos)
56.67%
30.00%
13.33%
0.00%
0.00%
0 Lendo
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Alternativas: English: Dragon Ball
Synonyms: Dragonball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragonball Z
Japanese: ドラゴンボール
Autor: Toriyama, Akira
Modelo: Mangá
Volumes: 42
Capítulos: 520
Status: Finished
Publicar: 1984-11-20 to 1995-05-23
Serialização: Shounen Jump (Weekly)
Pontuação
4.5
31 Votos
56.67%
30.00%
13.33%
0.00%
0.00%
0 Lendo
0 Quero ler
0 Ler
Resumo
Dragon Ball series follows the adventures of Son Goku from his childhood through adulthood as he trains in martial arts and explores the world in search of the seven mystical orbs known as the Dragon Balls, which can summon a wish-granting dragon when gathered. Along his journey, Goku makes several friends and battles a wide variety of villains, many of whom also seek the Dragon Balls for their own desires. Along the way becoming the strongest warrior in the universe.

(Source: Wikipedia)
Avaliações (31)
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Dragon Ball review
de
alysho103
Mar 31, 2021
(just for the record, this is a mixing of my anime reviews about it)

The creator Akira Toriyama had just finished his Doctor Slump slapstick comedy and decided to make a more action-oriented show. Dragon Ball was the result and although it began as a slapstick comedy, it progressively dropped the comedy in favor of the battles. I guess he got affected too much by the trend of Saint Seiya and slowly went for that field.

The series began with a very magical atmosphere, reminiscent of ancient China. After a dozen chapters, the ancient China motif gives place to a more sci-fi world, were houses fit into portable capsules, huge monsters roam free in the wild and anthropomorphic animals coexist with humans. It is quite a wacky representation with little sense but with extreme originality and humor. Makes a fine JRPG world.

At first, it took me some time to get used to the characters’ chibi looks, as they looked extremely short and cartoonish. But their semi-funny, semi-battle frenzied attitudes make them bearable to watch. Later on, it is a bit annoying when it comes to character variety as most characters are just slight modifications of one another. A small change in the hair and in the cloths and they are presented as a different person. Especially the Super Saiyans, it gets hard to tell who is who after a while. The artwork is otherwise very good for its time, with dynamic and lively motions.

The dialogues tend not to be any smarter than the phrases “I’m going to beat you!” and “Are you looking at my panties?”. So, if you are looking for sophisticated talking, look elsewhere. Sure, there are some very classic shonen phrases in here that fit the genre just fine but then again prefer the smarter way Full Metal Alchemist uses, so I am torn between liking them for being stereotypically cheesy and just being plain silly. I guess the slapstick and the constant wordplays and teasing work fine for its kind but I’m not going to lose my mind over them.

The story began as a slapstick version of the most famous Chinese fairy tale, Journey to the West. Most elements and characters in the story are in fact, comical representations of those in the fairy tale. But the similarities become fewer and fewer as the story progresses and later on it reminds you of other famous stories, such as Superman or the Terminator (where again most elements and characters are comical representations of American superhero comic books). The scenario is about a strong boy, named Son Goku, looking for magical spheres that grant wishes, taking part in martial art tournaments and fighting evil people/demons/aliens that want to rule the world (and later on the galaxy).

Although the general story is quite simple, it is presented in a non-predictable way. There are various mysteries and some side stories that easily make you forget its predictability. And things get very complicated and atmospheric towards the end that really makes the general shallowness of the story a trivial thing. So yeah, I liked the story despite its simplicity. The world definitely isn’t detailed or realistic but it is still one of the most distinguished worlds, ever made into anime. Some silly explanations from time to time give a simple meaning to all the wackiness. Still, the general story:
-Undermines the gravity of pain and death to ridiculous levels. No matter how much someone is injured, he can easily be completely healed, without permanent damage or even scars. No matter how many die, they can easily be resurrected. And always only the good people return to life, while the bad remain dead.
-Undermines the idea of the after life and of the gods. Heaven and Hell are amusement parks and the gods are just strong creatures that even mortals can surpass in power.
-Has no realism in terms of empowerment. It makes no sense how someone can get a million times stronger in a few months, while others needed eons to do the same. Or it is quite stupid to always see someone getting stronger at the gravest moment and save the day in a Deus Ex Machina way.
-Pays no attention to the laws of physics. Energy beams that explode on air, cause dust even when they didn’t hit anything. A mountain or a moon or a planet that blows up has no effects on the surroundings (not much debris, gravity alteration or planet trajectory/axis mix up). Time travel does not cause time paradoxes. Faster than light speeds don’t increase the temperature of those running.
-Recycles the illusion of empowerment by continuously weakening the explosions. An energy beam that could destroy a planet on one arc, can blow a mountain at best on the next. The newest trick that could surpass any difficulty on one ark is completely useless and forgotten on the next.

Plus, the general story becomes more and more grand-scaled (and thus more interesting), as it progresses.
-The first villain, Emperor Pilaf, is a useless idiot who wants to rule the world. If he succeeds, the world will be at the mercy of a hapless asshole but nothing more.
-The second villain, General Black, is also an idiot but a heartless killer as well. If he succeeds, the world will be at the mercy of a hapless asshole in command of a merciless army of assassins. That’s much more serious.
-The third villain, Lord Piccolo, is a serious and very powerful demon. If he succeeds, the world will become a hellish place, at the mercy of demons that don’t care about life and justice. That’s even more serious!
-The fourth villain, prince Vejita, is the strongest Saiyan warrior in the universe who wants to become immortal and spend his eternity by fighting and killing every single person on every planet he goes to. If he succeeds, the universe will be at the mercy of an immortal battle-loving powerful warrior. There is also some drama on the parts of Goku who has to fight against his own kind, Gohan who has to fight against his will and Picollo who is forced to team up with the good guys and starts to like them.
-The fifth villain, emperor Frieza, is the strongest alien in the universe who wants to become immortal and spend his eternity ruling the universe in terror and destruction. If he succeeds, the universe will be at the mercy of an immortal heartless monster. There is also more drama on the parts of Vejita and Picollo who want to avenge the death of their races at the hands of Frieza.
-The sixth villain, Perfect Cell, is the strongest artificial creature of the future that wants to become perfect and spend his eternity destroying the universe. If he succeeds, the universe will be just destroyed. There is also more drama on the parts of Trunks who wants to change the grim future and the androids that want freedom and not be used only as weapons.
-The seventh villain, Majin Boo, is the strongest Jennie/God of Destruction. He is already the most powerful and if he is left alone, the universe will be destroyed in a few days. There is some drama on the parts of Vejita who has to decide if he will return to his evil self and Kaioshin who is afraid of the massacre Boo did to his people.

The upscale in interest works just fine, although the resolution to every arc is quite convenient. It may look cool at first but if you look closer you realize it has lots of plot armor in it, which eventually make it look bad in a way. There is conclusion but every time it is like that of a fairy tale, with the villains beaten and the good guys saved or resurrected. Because as Saint Seiya taught, you must never permanently kill your characters if you are to milk the kid audience for decades.

But the cast is definitely more interesting and colorful than that of Saint Seiya. Some men are funny, some are dramatic, and some are scary. But the thing they all have in common is that they all solve their problems with violence. Is something wrong in your life? Just kick the shit out of it and it’s solved! Expected in fighting shonen but this anime makes sure to even make fun with the premise. I mean Goku will challenge people to a fight even when there is no reason to it and the opponents are hardly strong. It’s not like the series doesn’t leave the option of diplomacy open… It simply never uses it.

Women are treated purely as fan service. You won’t find any good female fighters in it. Bulma, Lunch and Chichi are a bunch of brainless lolitas that exist just for to undress and make sexual jokes about boobs and marriage. Toriyama is a phalocratic bastard! It is yet another staple of shonen which holds true even today and it is fine for the target audience. I mean, who would cheer a girl or want to be like one if it’s a 100% male oriented show? But it’s true that a few token female warriors would be nice just to break the monotony.

In general, all the characters have a strong presence in the series (usually funny). Son Goku and Vejita are amongst the most distinctive fighting shounen characters, the Turtle hermit one of the most famous sleazy old men and Shen Long the most renowned Chinese dragon. All the character’s names are based either on the original fairy tale (Son Goku) or some cultural (Oolong) or fetish (Bulma) object. It is very funny to look for the meaning and origin of each one’s name. Their personalities are simply either comical or battle frenzied, making them quite repetitive so you almost feel like the series has only two characters that change cloths all the time. Still, they are two quite distinctive characters.

They all have their simple backdrop stories (just enough to excuse their existence in the story) and practically zero character development. No one really matures; just gets older and/or stronger. And always fights! No one tries to reason with his enemies; he just fights them. No one tries to trick his enemies with cunningness; he just gets stronger and fights them. This again sounds typical of shonen but it is true that Saint Seiya had given far more attention to backdrop stories and even the development of each major character would be triggered by an important event. There is no such thing in Dragonball as everybody is practically goofing around and just trains to get stronger.

I admit the Dragonball bunch has a lot more vividness and quirks to remember them more fondly. It is very cool to see them getting taller, breast-enlarged or stronger but it is also quite disappointing to see them acting the same way, no matter how many years pass and regardless of how many hardships they face. If some become a bit more mature, it is only after they lose to Son Goku. They were interesting antagonists up to the point they rival him; but after their defeat, they change to stunts and uninteresting underlings (such was the case with Yamcha, Krilin, Chaosu and Tien). Which feels poor to say the least. Vejita is an exception, as he can’t decide if he wants to be a good guy or a bad guy. He is by far the best character (although he is also quite shallow as a complete personality).

The series has a way of measurement, called Battle Power to determine someone’s strength. This made many to believe that characters mature and get stronger in a logical way and that they are different just because their strength is different. But in fact, the Battle Power is a stupid excuse to give just to know beforehand who is the strongest. And no matter how strong someone becomes, he is the same battle-frenzied idiot he was before. He doesn’t get wiser or smarter.

Anyway, it makes little sense as the characters raise their strength ridiculously fast. And since the strongest person in one episode mysteriously becomes weaker on the next, you can’t make a solid assumption of what can someone do with a given amount of power. For example, Frieza could easily destroy a planet with a Battle Power of 500.000. But even when he maxed out at 12 million, he could just blow a mountain at best. It’s a mockery of the reader’s intelligence. And it’s stupid to think that only power is the statistic that matters in battles. What about intelligence, wisdom, and cunningness?

It seems to be a rather bad legacy this show left to the following shonen, who in an attempt to mimic the glory would also opt for goofy characters and simplistic backdrops. Damn, looks like the subtle formula Hokuto no Ken began with faded even more and got replaced with a bunch of hapless idiots.

My enjoyment equals the percentage of the worthy arcs. I personally have the following remarks about the flow of the story.
-The first arc is pure slapstick/erotic comedy, with some cool explosions here and there. Not very funny or imposing but definitely bearable and worthy.
-The second was the same but also had a lot of martial art fighting that made it more interesting.
-The third was to the most part boring, as Goku feels like Rambo while protecting innocent people from the Red Ribbon Army of terrorists. Not much of story or battles. There was a cameo appearance of the Doctor Slump characters here, but who cares. It gets quite awesome only towards the end where Goku fights the extremely ruthless Tao Pai Pai (the first cool villain in the series who kills people in VERY cruel ways) and then storms the Red Ribbon Army base.
-The fourth was boring, as I didn’t found interesting the ghost tournament, or Tien Shin Han’s quest for revenge. And the battles were quite stale.
-The fifth was great all the way, as Piccolo appears, kills people by the HUNDREDS, mountains start blowing up, characters change and mysteries are solved. Very action-based, violent and cool.
Thus in overall I half-liked it.
-The sixth (Saiyan Saga) was small and solid. Very good as a whole. The chapters where everyone trains were generally boring. Gohan’s training was dramatic enough but it simply lasted too long.
-The seventh (Namek Saga) was solid but unnecessary long. Very atmospheric as a whole but with a lot of dead time. The chapters where the heroes go to Namek were boring. And the battle with Frieza could easily be done in half the pages.
-The eighth (Cell Saga) was unnecessary long. Very mysterious as a whole but with a lot of dead time. The battle with the androids could easily be done in half the pages.
-The ninth (Boo Saga) was unnecessary long. Very flashy as a whole but with a lot of silly ideas and dead time. The battle with Boo could easily be done in half the pages.

But hey, it’s the series that hooked millions of people to shonen. It has memorable characters and a distinctive world and it’s not afraid to fool around for dozens of chapters before the actual story kicks in. After all back then the competition was almost zero yet it is still better than most modern shonen since it never lost its passion; like let’s say Naruto or Bleach. Or at least it didn’t up until GT came to be (although it is not canon). I still consider One Piece the only superior descendant of the formula it left behind, which for a 25 year old shonen, that means a lot.

SUGGESTION LIST
Famous Shounen to choose from:
Saint Seiya
Bleach
Fist Of The North Star
Naruto
One Piece

If you like Akira Toriyama’s style of animation, look for the series Doctor Slump and Blue Dragon as well as games such as the Dragon Quest series and Chrono Trigger.

And let’s not forget Journey to the West, the fairy tale Dragon Ball was based upon.
Dragon Ball review
de
BanchoBaby12
Mar 31, 2021
Be warned, there may be spoilers in my review.

As a whole, Dragon Ball is not a well-written series. The second half of the series is not nearly as enjoyable as the first half. At first, the series had cheeky humor, creative combat, memorable characters, and a unique setting.

That being said, I will admit, I was annoyed by a few things. For one, I would have liked to get to know the characters other than Goku more by actually seeing what their lives were like while Goku was off adventuring without them. I also did not care for the fact that Goku received a random powerup despite being taught by the same person who gave him said powerup that he did not need it as long as he worked hard.

Another thing, I think that it was a bad choice to have several characters be brought back to life. Since Goku was forced to come to terms with the fact that his grandfather was dead, it would have made more sense if he had to do the same with the deaths of his friends.

Anyway, my main grievance with this series is that it becomes unbearable after the infamous second time skip. The series lost everything that made it enjoyable in the first place; the humor was gone, the fan favorite characters were pushed to the sidelines, and the fights became grossly drawn-out. I had almost zero interest in the plot as well. Since the stakes became so high, the outcomes became horribly predictable.

In conclusion, this series should have ended at the sixteenth volume. Toriyama was not properly equipped to handle writing a "serious" work. In other words, he should have stuck with comedy.
Dragon Ball review
de
myabandonedacc1
Mar 31, 2021
I would like to preface this by stating this will be my first review of many to come. I decided to choose Dragon Ball because it is a series near and dear to me as is with thousands, tens of thousands, yet probably more. With that said, let's take a look at one of the most celebrated works of art in manga, and the artistic world as a whole.

NOTE: For the sake of being fair to the series, I am ignoring Super for the time being. This is strictly Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z

If you lived in the 90s, chances are you have tried to fire off a Kamehameha wave at least once and likely to no avail. This isn't to call up one of the over-done "90s kids cliches", but there is no other way to call how influential and defining the Dragon Ball franchise was for an entire generation.

You may be looking at the ratings and raising an eyebrow at the numbers, but let's look at this franchise objectively. The story is the series weakest point. Even for it's time it hits all of the formulaic beats that is expected for a 'battle' manga, not to mention it's riddled with numerous deus ex machina plot points that only get more and more exaggerated as time goes on. It's most egregious offense is that there is simultaneously a great importance placed on power levels and strength that mean nothing after a single tide-turning event that is dubious at best. There is nothing that is inherently offensive, but when you look at it objectively the story is average at best. Imagine if the story continued with the same tone is had during the first few volumes in Dragon Ball.

Are you doing all right? Calmed down? It's difficult to hear something negative about Dragon Ball, but let's keep our composure. It gets better.

Despite having a weak story, Dragon Ball is still carried by its genius art style by Akira Toriyama and the diverse and interesting characters. Now, let's get this out in the open. Every character exhibits standard Akira Toriyama face structure. Take away the character frame, clothes, and hair, there are only three faces left; male, female, and animal. To compensate for this, every character is fully fleshed out with immediately identifiable features and personalities to distinguish themselves.

The beautiful art does not end solely on the characters. The battles and action scenes are fully fleshed out in the highest of detail. Every scene perfectly conveys the intensity and emotion of the situation. Looking strictly at the manga, the true impressiveness comes from the panel layout. This is admittedly a very technical aspect of the process, but it is one of the most important arts that is not appreciated. Each panel expertly lends itself to the next making it incredibly easy to picture the scenes coming to life in your mind.

So the art is terrific and the story is mediocre. Where does the magic come from then? Why is this series so critically acclaimed and fondly remembered? The obvious answer is that it's largely nostalgia. This series exists inside the heart of many individuals and witnessing its greatness forces you to revert to when you were only the playground trying to go Super Saiyan. If it were just that it would fade into the annals of history like many others, but the reason it remains at the top is hard to describe, but the best way to explain it would be it is sincere and honest. Dragon Ball knows exactly what it is and what it wants to be. It is that charm that makes it so that new fans can easily come on board and the old fans are happy to relive it.
Dragon Ball review
de
labrizzle942
Mar 31, 2021
Dragon Ball is probably the most important manga to come out after the works of Osamu Tezuka. Just about every shounen ever written is still either trying to be Dragon Ball or trying to prove that it's "not like Dragon Ball". It's the first thing (okay, maybe the second, after Pokemon) that most non-anime fans picture when they hear the words "anime", "manga", or even "action cartoon".

It also has some of the most crisp, understandable, and beautiful linework of any manga ever created. It's easy to forget how difficult it is to tell what's going on in manga fights. Even genius artists like One Piece's Oda, Berserk's Miura, and Naruto's Kishimoto have a great deal of trouble making it 100% clear what exactly is going on in any given panel involving combat. Dragon Ball has no such issue. If someone told me they'd pay me a year's salary to find a single panel of Dragon Ball where "you can't even tell what's going on", I seriously doubt I would make that money.

The story is more fun than anybody remembers, and more sincere than it will ever get credit for. The characters are iconic to the point of becoming exaggerated parodies of themselves in my mind when I remember them. Their motivations and personalities are simple, their arcs are satisfying. Read them to realize they were more complex than you remember! Read them again to realize they're even simpler than you worried. Learn to love Goku's flickering from "courageous hero" to "probably a sociopath". Hate the villains! Love them even more. Get angry that Toriyama's throwaway one-fight characters are gone since they are often good enough to carry their own arcs (along with pretty much the entire cast of the pre-Saiyan Arc with the exceptions of Goku, Kuririn, Bulma [kind of], and Piccolo).

Why a 9 instead of a10? I decided this when I saw the "enjoyment" scale on MAL's charts and immediately remembered a slight hiccup in my read-through. The Freeza section felt slow! There's a section of it where Kuririn is the protagonist, and Kuririn has no personality after the OG Dragon Ball arcs. The Buu ending felt rushed! It felt like Toriyama wanted to make sure he got every last Dragon Ball "thing" in that ending, but he didn't decide that until five chapters before the finish line. The most stupidly subjective of all my reasons to dock an enjoyment-point however, would be that I believe that the replays on Toonami, the endless video games, Dragon Ball Kai, and the fates of all the characters involved makes it VERY difficult to appreciate the Saiyan saga with all sincerity. I saw that three times on tv! I've played it at least twelve times on at least eight different games. There are arguments to be made that it could be the strongest Dragon Ball arc, but I said I didn't seriously slow down when I read it, I would be a liar. However, if I docked more than one point off of this glorious manga for reasons of personal overexposure to ONE arc, I would be a hater.
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