The DB anime adaptation was the first piece of Japanese animation I ever saw back in the 90s, so I felt it fitting to make it the manga I first read all the way through.

It's aged better than both DB and DBZ anime with no old animation and dodgy voice acting with Toriyama's art still looking good and the manga moves at a much better pace without fillers and dragging the fights out. It's one of the better shounen series (better than most modern ones) with great character designs and fighting techniques. One of the things I like most about DB was how it gradually changed from a gag manga into an action fantasy comedy and then into a serious sci-fi action series.

If DG had ended at the Namek arc I would probably bump it up to an 8/10 or 9/10 but the Cell arc jumps the shark and brings the quality down with constant asspulls, characters becoming flanderized, fights being purely about power with no strategy involved, non-saiyan characters becoming irrelevant, the super saiyan which was supposed to be a once in millennia legend becoming a normal power up for every fighter etc It's just filled with those annoying problems that arise in shounen when the mangaka runs out of ideas.

Anyway, the two weak arcs at the end don't ruin the rest of Dragon Ball, and it's better than most of the modern fighting shounen that copy it. I think it's a series everyone should read once because of how iconic and influential it became.