This series feels very underwhelming

stevejawbs said:
Spoilers for up to episode 12.

I've been reading the comments in the episode discussions, and I'm surprised that most of the comments have been super positive. I feel like the show has fantastic visuals and the fights are great, but the story just feels so empty.

I think the main problem I'm having with the show is that it's trying to be early Dragon Ball, but with even less stakes. The Tamagami were introduced as these crazy strong baddies, but both Goku and Vegeta beat them with ease. Vegeta going SSJ3 came out of nowhere, and it felt like cheap fanservice. As soon as Goku and Vegeta beat the Tamagami easily, the whole story up to this point became pointless, and all the ridiculous contrivances that were supposedly hindering our protagonists become even more contrived than before. The fact that they're children seems to be almost completely forgotten about at this point, with only passing mentions to it when the characters struggle against their opponent, only to then completely destroy them in the next episode. The premise doesn't even make sense within the universe, considering Gotenks, a fusion of two actual children, was far stronger than SSJ3 Goku.

Seriously, "the air is too heavy to fly long distances", meanwhile Vegeta's spent hours training at 500x Earth's gravity, or that the Gendarmerie were ever a threat and that they had to hide from them, despite the fact that they are weaker than the Tamagami (or else why wouldn't Gomah just use them to get the dragon balls himself) and Goku could take out the entire army if he wanted, or that the kraken ever posed a danger when the last villain they fought was destroying literal planets in seconds, etc. There's just too much baggage from DBZ - you can't really go from "fighting an unstoppable evil that will destroy the entire universe" to "the air is too heavy to fly in" or "we have to hide from regular non-powered soldiers with spears" without some serious eye-rolling nonsense. I'm also hoping for a twist villain, because the thought of the big bad being a slightly modified copy of the previous one is a level of laziness I'm not prepared for.

Even though Dragon Ball was much more comedic and lighthearted than DBZ, there's still proper stakes and reasons to get invested. Even within the first arc, the protags almost lost everything to Pilaf and only just barely prevented him from making his wish for world domination. The tournament arc was the highlight of the show and a staple in shonen, showing the intense training that they went through and then the result from that hard work. Every arc after that had significant stakes, but it never stopped being a fun gag manga. It had a great blend of both that Daima is lacking in (at least so far).

I'll keep watching because I'm a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise, and I do genuinely enjoy the demon world and how fleshed out it is. But for every cool detail about the world, the actual story of saving Dende from Gomah is so underwhelming and lacks any tension at all. I'm not sure if the core problems I have with it can be addressed, but I'm hoping for it anyway. What do you all think?

stevejawbs said:
Spoilers for up to episode 12.

I've been reading the comments in the episode discussions, and I'm surprised that most of the comments have been super positive. I feel like the show has fantastic visuals and the fights are great, but the story just feels so empty.

I think the main problem I'm having with the show is that it's trying to be early Dragon Ball, but with even less stakes. The Tamagami were introduced as these crazy strong baddies, but both Goku and Vegeta beat them with ease. Vegeta going SSJ3 came out of nowhere, and it felt like cheap fanservice. As soon as Goku and Vegeta beat the Tamagami easily, the whole story up to this point became pointless, and all the ridiculous contrivances that were supposedly hindering our protagonists become even more contrived than before. The fact that they're children seems to be almost completely forgotten about at this point, with only passing mentions to it when the characters struggle against their opponent, only to then completely destroy them in the next episode. The premise doesn't even make sense within the universe, considering Gotenks, a fusion of two actual children, was far stronger than SSJ3 Goku.

Seriously, "the air is too heavy to fly long distances", meanwhile Vegeta's spent hours training at 500x Earth's gravity, or that the Gendarmerie were ever a threat and that they had to hide from them, despite the fact that they are weaker than the Tamagami (or else why wouldn't Gomah just use them to get the dragon balls himself) and Goku could take out the entire army if he wanted, or that the kraken ever posed a danger when the last villain they fought was destroying literal planets in seconds, etc. There's just too much baggage from DBZ - you can't really go from "fighting an unstoppable evil that will destroy the entire universe" to "the air is too heavy to fly in" or "we have to hide from regular non-powered soldiers with spears" without some serious eye-rolling nonsense. I'm also hoping for a twist villain, because the thought of the big bad being a slightly modified copy of the previous one is a level of laziness I'm not prepared for.

Even though Dragon Ball was much more comedic and lighthearted than DBZ, there's still proper stakes and reasons to get invested. Even within the first arc, the protags almost lost everything to Pilaf and only just barely prevented him from making his wish for world domination. The tournament arc was the highlight of the show and a staple in shonen, showing the intense training that they went through and then the result from that hard work. Every arc after that had significant stakes, but it never stopped being a fun gag manga. It had a great blend of both that Daima is lacking in (at least so far).

I'll keep watching because I'm a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise, and I do genuinely enjoy the demon world and how fleshed out it is. But for every cool detail about the world, the actual story of saving Dende from Gomah is so underwhelming and lacks any tension at all. I'm not sure if the core problems I have with it can be addressed, but I'm hoping for it anyway. What do you all think?

reiisnotreal said:

Better than dbs🥱🥱

FreedomKME said:
I am not reading all that, kid. If you can't be precise and concise with your thoughts, then the problem is you, not the show.

stevejawbs said:
@Chrissfrann1 I never said anything about it not being "something big and different"... I'm saying it's a worse version of Dragon Ball in almost every way, minus the visuals.

reiisnotreal said:

Better than dbs🥱🥱

animebuddy2005 said:

really, are you from another planet

FreedomKME said:
People are missing the point of no 6 months 1 hour fights here.
Well, people are missing a lot of points with this show and just coming up with excuses of their own to get salty.

Elfezen said:
Its easily the "worst" dragon ball series (dragon ball heroes was way better) but thats more like cause it simply couldn't compete with any of the other series of dragon ball overall rather than itself being bad as a standalone, for the rest they had a lot of great things to show, real overal direction and they knew what to do with them, this one feels more like an uninspired copy-paste and its basically a random kids story that isnt meant to make much sense, so it would have less appeal and also barely fits in the main series anyway, super saiyan 3 vegeta was good though, it needed to happen in canon at some point