Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Radd
4. Dragonball Z - The very definition of tournament shonen. This series is like shonen boiled down to it's purest components and done up in style. Increasingly epic in scale, with a large cast of interesting characters, unexpected plot twists and dramatic deaths at every turn it's no wonder DBZ became popular.
Still, hot on the heels of the much more interesting original Dragonball series, and featuring fights that were so drawn out as to become laughable, and (let's face it) this sort of testosterone fest just isn't created with elegant prose, deep, meaningful themes, and well developed (personality-wise) characters in mind, so to become the mascot of all of anime kinda leaves out a lot of what many like about anime to begin with.
|
Well, In Japan there was no distinction between dragonball and dragonball z, the series was just released under the name "dragonball". I would like to say though that the first 16 voumes of the 42 volume series, the line where americans try to distinguish from Dragonball to Dragonball Z is some of the most addictive manga's. If you have never had any experience at all in the dragonball world and then read the first 16 volumes of Dragonball, more than likely it will be put on most people's "10 greatest manga's of all time". That is what bothers me, the first 16 volumes of Dragonball is easily one of the best that you can read, it is humerous, charming, has a large cast of characters, well drawn, beautifully choreographed batte sequences (I am talking manga here). If you compare it, independent of the 26 volumes that follow it (dubbed Dragonball Z in the USA) it is a far superior series.
Latter the series loses it's charm, it loses most of the humor. It loses the adventure aspect of the storylines and turns into one big mess.