Is Akira Toriyama a bad writer?

Armados said:
He is in fact a horrible writer.
Let's look at a few tropes of Dragon Ball as a series, the lack of complexity, little to no character progression (except for Vegeta for whatever reason), a very simple and lackluster battle system, massive character regression, lack of decent world building, and constant use of the same old tricks.

What's so unique about Dragon Ball? Well, its a relatively simple story really, its as straight forward as it can get - "there's a villain who wants to destroy the world, Goku and friends go and stop him".
Now is that problematic? No, not really, but the way the story progresses is.

Character Regression - Characters tend to never learn from their own mistakes. Comparing a 20 year gap between DBZ to Super, Goku only became dumber, to the point where he acts like a little kid. Its frustrating and seriously stupid, the trope of having a dumb main character isn't as popular as it was in the 90s and early 2000s, what's the point of making him worse as time passes? Gohan became a meme, he's there for the sake of a nostalgic factor. Most of the main cast are completely useless, they just are there for the sake of having a cheerleader team for Goku (and sometimes Vegeta).

Tropes - from danger to a complete joke. While Frieza, Cell and Majin Buu weren't the greatest of villians in anime, they did serve as some sort of a threat. The entire gimmick of *The villain is stronger so I'll train for a few episodes or gain a new transformation, and then I'll just let him transform again just to prolong the arc so he'd overpower me and another good guy that is obviously stronger will replace me for the next x couple of episodes* is overused, on every single one of the them. While it was dumb, back in the 90s, there weren't too many things to compete against Dragon Ball Z, which means that I understand why it was popular, and as a kid I really liked the show, but when we look at Super - look at the tournament of power.




*SPOILER ALERT FOR THE TOURNAMENT OF POWER*




Jiren was essentially *afk*, meditating for whatever reason, instead of knocking everyone off the stage right away. Every single person has a reason to win that tournament, his and his precious loved ones' lives are in danger. Instead of actually acting, what does he do? ZzZzZzZ for 20 episodes, then fight for 2 to 3 episodes, and instead of once again, knocking down everyone, ZzZzZ until its his turn again, and his personality also shifts into being a cocky little boy who had a sasuke childhood.


Lack of complexcity - Why was there a conflict in Battle of Gods? Because a god, acts like an immature child, and fights with a piece of gum over pudding. That's pretty much the entire reason Goku had to fight, that's also how Dragon Ball Super starts - 5 year olds could probably write a more complex storyline if they'd really want to. I expect from someone that has been alive for thousands of years to actually be a little bit more mature. Fine, everyone likes food, but you could use the Dragon Balls to wish for the best food that has ever existed, instead you get mad and want to destroy everything for the sake of plot convenience because reasons. Let's also ignore the fact that Beerus and Whis just became mentors/fodder/cheerleading squad members ever since BoG ended.

*SPOILER TO DRAGON BALL SUPER BROLY THE MOVIE*



The conflict started because Frieza wanted to get to Earth to ask the Dragon Balls to increase his height by 5 cms. I know that Toriyama likes to joke, but its really out of character, its really stupid, and creates no tension. Frieza became a comic relief character, to the point where Vegeta and Goku could've instantly killed him but decided not to, because Toriyama wants to milk him as much as possible for more easy money, even though Vegeta said Frieza shouldn't be left alive on the very same movie.


Power Scaling - Oh boy this is a big one. Someone gets mad? Here have a power boost, get to the point where you can compete with characters that trained for decades, heck even thousands of years.


*SPOILER ALERT FOR THE TOURNAMENT OF POWER*



Goku temporarly mastered a technique, that gods couldn't, because he wasted all of his powers 3 times in 48 minutes!!! He reached Ultra Instinct 3 times in a row, and then mastered it for the finale and then forgot about it. The writing is SO BAD, BEYOND BELIEF. Seriously, how can that be considered good writing? The power system in Dragon Ball is - if you're relevant you're strong, when you're not gtfo you're useless. That's pretty much it.




Lack of creativity and giving no shit as a writer - Dragon Ball Super completely lacks of creativity. Transformations? These days they're just recolors of older, DBZ transformations. God/Ultra Instinct? = base Goku with different hair colors. Blue? = SSJ with a different hair color. Golden Frieza. They completely ditched SSJ3 because its more expensive for Toei to animate that form but its not Akira's fault. They reuse villians - Frieza was ressurected, got killed, ressurected again and now acts as a minor comic relief villian because "he's popular". Making Broly and Gogeta canon instead of making new plotlines and characters? Once again, easy money, little to no effort.



Retconing important things in the plotline - Well, Akira tends to forget about his own storyline, which is completely stupid, but he got to the point where he rewrites stuff just for plot convenience, because its either too much effort for him to work under the rules he creates for his own series, or he just doesn't remember anything - retconing the Potara Earrings, retconing the Saiyans' nature, pushing the Beerus telling Frieza to kill the Saiyans bullshit, while being afraid of the Super Saiyan had a major role in the Frieza arc, retconing Goku's history. There are so many stupid things that make no sense.




I could keep on going, but every single point I'm making just proves how bad of a writer Akira is. He's lucky his brand is popular. At this point he could make an arc where Goku just stays in the bathroom for 30 episodes in a row, while claiming the toilet is an evil villian that tries to destroy the universe and people would still get hyped and give Akira money. Its this stupid, and fans are that blind.