I honestly and truely despise this series, never like it much at all as a kid and that opinion steadily worsened as I aged. Most of the problems can be laid at the feet of the anime directors, and Toriyama for not having enough spine to control his own story (I mean c'mon! The series was perfectly set up at the end of the Namek Saga to finish off the tale of Goku and either end the series or continue under a fresher cast supported by a few surviving old-timers [ala Zeta Gundam]). Dragonball for the most part was fun and enjoyable, and Z was bearable for the first saga and a half, but after that went down the crapper.
Taken as a whole, the series is utter crap: No character developement (worsened by having many cardboard characters to begin with), majority of character designs are non-imaginative (why do the unique, interesting individuals get almost no screen time?), most boring fights ever, repetitive character design, after the Namek Saga the plot completely stopped, beyond hyper-powered characters, horrid pacing and episode padding, constipation grunts, "power level pissing contests", over-hyped fights, horrid voice work (at least the Japanese and English voices make my ears hurt), and too much in-fight dialogue.
The only saving graces for this series were, in my opinion, the minor characters and the humor.
Then again I'm very picky about anime (and considering how much you pay per episode, you have the right to be picky), and my tastes lean more towards comedy (Haruhi, Lupin) and hard sci-fi (GitS, FMP).
CRBWildcat wrote:Amongst other series, DBZ was one of the three shows that got me hooked on anime.
I was already into anime before the release of DBZ, but it very nearly killed any interest I had in this style of series.
Atlan wrote:But Boudokai: Tenkaichi was terible. One button for punch, kick, combo of the two? Aimed at retarded 7 year olds.
Simple fighting games are good for casual gamers like me, but that set of games is too simple. Although, it is great for when you just want to blow something up.
Atlan wrote:Its kinda sad that dbz makes in on tv, at a nice, kiddy friendly viewing time, and virtually nothing else does. There is a whole lot of anime out there ten times better than dbz, (and 100 times better than GT) yet all we get is this one. I mean, would it kill them to put on Kiddy Grade, Yu Yu Hakishu, Wolf Rain, Gundam, or something other than
Yeah, I agree. There are many good series to choos from that could be aired at that time of day and still meet the anal standards of the censors. Why they rely on craptacular series or the never-ending commercials (aka YuGiOh, Pokemon, etc), is beyong me.
DBZ or someting where everything revolves around a game (metabots, Duel Masters, YuGiOh, Beyblade, ect)
As someone in the teaching profession, I can tell you that kids are not stupid. At least, not before shows like that get to them.
And as for things like violence and mature subject matter, what do you think these kids are watching AFTER the horribly edited anime? Why, things like: the news, the CSIs, sitcoms, reality tv, wrestling, and all kinds of other programs that are definately not aimed a children; and then surfing the net.