Jan 5, 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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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