Today I pay my respects to one of the all time classics of shonen anime. Some of you might be thinking, "seriously? This filthy casual weak sauce!?" As someone who has always loved reading classical literature, biology, history, and art, the gradual evolution and shaping forces on a medium is of great interest to me. It is impossible to discuss shonen anime without bringing up Dragon Ball. The tremendous influence that Dragonball had on both the fighting Shonen genre and anime in general must be acknowleged, even by those that dislike the series. What the hell made this series so freaking popular and influential? That is what I wish to delve into.
Story: 8/10
The story as most people reading this review are no doubt aware, was based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West. In addition to this novel, Dragon ball also spoofs many East Asian folk tales that would all be instantly recognizable to the young Japanese audience in the same way the fairy tales being spoofed in Shrek are well known to Western audiences. In addition to folk tales, Toriyama REALLY likes Kung fu movies. The training from Master Roshi seems to be heavily inspired from the 1978 kung-fu movie "36 Chambers of Shaolin". Goku is based off the Monkey King Sun Wukong and instead of going on a Buddhist journey to India, he must accompany the daughter of a famous scientist to collect the Dragon Balls, which will grant any wish, such as immortality, or the panties off a hot babe. The first villain of dragonball is not a super powerful being that threatens the existence of the universe, but instead the bumbling "emperor" Pilaf. Although what country he is supposedly the emperor of is never explained. Dragonball starts out with a LOT less action focus and more comedy, similar to Toriyama's previous manga Dr. Slump. In fact, some of the early chapters of Dragonball reference running gags from Slump (like poop on a stick)... don't ask. The series gets more and more action oriented as tougher villains emerge like Tao Pai Pai, Tien-Shinhan, and Piccolo. However, the humor throughout dragonball is far more balanced with the action portions unlike DBZ, which often takes itself a bit seriously for such a silly story and characters. Another advantage that Dragonball has over its far more famous sequel is that prior to Kai, Dragonball had a LOT less filler. There is some bad filler to be sure, including an episode of nothing bu Piccolo powering up, but the total amount is FAR less than the original run of DBZ. The fight scenes in Dragonball are also more interesting to me because the emphasis is actually on martial arts and not JUST on screaming and lasers. By the time it got to DBZ, the battles were far more like a wizard duel firing spells back and forth and flying around than an actual martial arts match. In Dragonball however, people actually kick and punch each other, and it doesn't just show 2 blurs colliding across the screen because "they are moving too fast to see", which may be the laziest artist excuse in the history of comics. Even Toriyama himself admits this.
Characters: 7/10
The characters may not be very deep, but they are a lot of fun. In DBZ only a few characters actually mattered and the rest were pretty much worthless. In Dragonball it is far more balanced and the human characters actually manage to help out a LOT more often. The human characters that helped in all of DBZ were: Yajirobe once and Mr. Satan twice. That is really about it. I don't even think it is up for debate that Mr. Satan is the most useful fully human character in DBZ, which is pretty sad for humanity. Note that I said the most useful, NOT the strongest. The strongest fully human character in DBZ according to Toriyama is Krillen, so apparently Tien and #18 don't count as fully human? I guess since one is a cyborg and the other is...a mutant maybe? Either that or Toriyama simply forgot about Tien in that interview because he hasn't given a flying fuck about DB/DBZ in 20 years. Back to Dragon Ball, I also like the use of more comedic villains including General Blue (a psychic, gay Nazi) General Red (a guy who wants to collect the Dragon Balls so he can wish to be slightly taller) and Tao Pai Pai (a hilarious spoof of 70s Kung Fu movie masters that kills people with his tongue and throws objects so he can jump on them and ride them for hundreds of miles).
Sound: 8/10
The soundtrack is pretty awesome overall, although some tracks are repeated a bit too often.
Art: 5/10
The art and animation is not exactly gold standard today, but was acceptable considering this was the 1980s.
overall: 7/10
Along with spoofing already famous and well liked stories and characters, Dragon Ball manages to do an excellent job combining action and comedy together into a fun adventure with a little something for everyone. This formula may seem obvious now, but in the 1980s, most anime was VERY niche and most of it was not written to appeal to a very wide, general audience. Anime consisted largely of giant robot series including: Mazinger Z, the original Gundam, Macross, and Go Lion (known as Voltron outside Japan). These giant robot and sentai series were the most wide reaching and popular anime of their day, but still couldn't capture that large a demographic. Female viewers especially seemed to show ZERO interest in giant robot series. The martial arts anime that existed in the 80s were bloody, dark, and had little to no humor in them, except of course for the unintentional humor caused by the amount of sheer 80s action cheese. Some of the big martial arts anime prior to Dragon Ball were Fist of the North Star, Violence Jack, and the dozens of ripoffs that followed in their wake. Dragon Ball changed shonen manga and anime forever by finding a much larger audience and bringing it more into the mainstream, at least in Japan. The popularity of shonen anime and the magazine Shonen Jump exploded thanks to Dragonball and the entire industry began to grow rapidly and spread out demographically. Without the existence of Dragonball, anime may have stayed extremely niche and never really expanded outside of Japan with few exceptions. Were that the case, I wouldn't be writing this because no english language site devoted to anime reviews would exist.
