[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Vegard Aune

Even speaking as someone who actually does like DBZ... I haven't the foggiest idea how it became so popular and influentual. I mean, I can basically point to two factors for why I even like it at all:
1: It was one of the first Japanese series I ever got into, back at the very beginning of it when it was still a comedy-series, and
2: I read the manga first, in the collected volumes that came out once a month over here in Norway. (Granted, the translation for those was really sloppy, but I didn't notice that back then.

When it comes down to it, the manga had very little content per chapter, which of course made things rather difficult for the anime when they'd have to stretch out basically 12 pages of people exchanging punches into a 20 minute episode when the content really didn't lend itself to much more than five minutes at best... and how ever people managed to actually stay invested in the story when it was being given to them in such ridiculously small portions in the manga back when Toriyama was still writing it, I'll never understand. Heck, one of the things that contributed to me eventually giving up on Bleach (I mean, before it became completely apparent that Kubo was just making stuff up as he went along) was how for a good while, it would take me less than two minutes to read a single chapter. And having actually tried looking through the Dragon Ball manga, a lot of the chapters there are just as quick reads, if not even quicker... How exactly did Toriyama even manage to keep the interest of the children of Japan for over a decade?

Ha, is that why it would take them 5 episodes to install a light bulb? I never read the manga.